It is surely tempting to reduce the issue of race relations in America to a binary debate between two reasonable viewpoints and argue for a compromise somewhere in the middle, but that would be a mistake, here. It would be an instance of the logical fallacy Argument to Moderation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation). You frame the "race problem in America" as a problem "with the culture and values of both white people and black people" as if some intrinsic qualities of white and black cultures lead them to conflict. Does some cultural trait lead black people to subject themselves to ongoing discrimination in every step of the justice system. Does some value held sacred by white Americans lead them to segregate their children from those of blacks?

The problem of race in America is not symmetrical. The relationship between whites and blacks is not like that of rival nations who might simply set aside their differences and compromise. Blacks are literally victims of hundreds of years of white oppression, oppression which continues to this day in subtle but pervasive forms. Witness, for example, the failure to indict Tamir Rice's killer, today.

Systematic housing and banking discrimination throughout most of the last hundred years has held back blacks as white families accumulated wealth through the remarkably effective mechanism of home ownership. Relegated to inner-city ghettoes, black children today attend schools funded by property taxes levied on crumbling infrastructure, while their white counterparts enjoy educations funded by the largesse of wealthy suburbs.

The wealth disparity means that black parents must spend more energy just to provide the essentials, and cannot provide the same guidance and resources to their children that their white counterparts take for granted.

A justice system stacked against the poor further exasperates these economic injustices, and racist laws, policies, police, and administrators conspire to incarcerate black men far out of proportion to their culpability for crimes. As a result, black children too often lack the support of fathers altogether.

Acknowledging these grievances to blacks does not do blacks any disservice, as if they are inherently lazy, shiftless people looking for an excuse to give up. But to deny these inequities is to deny struggling blacks the respect their efforts deserve. The deck is stacked against them, making every achievement that much more impressive.

If we must reduce the issue to two sides, the other side is simply white indifference. It is not a malicious hateful racism, which exists but only in the margins of society. The other side of the race coin is just blissful white ignorance and indifference, such as showcased in this thread.

What folly it is to self-righteously exhort the oppressed to stop making excuses and meet their oppressors half-way! The way forward is to overcome the unending indifference and bottomless ignorance of far too many whites. The impetus is on us as whites to make reparations, to make blacks whole to whatever extent possible, and to ensure, if nothing else, that blacks enjoy full equality of justice and opportunity going forward.