There are other answers. For instance, that America is intended to be a meritocracy, but racists in the government (on both sides of the aisle) have subverted the system against certain minorities for their own separate purposes with, for example, the drug war and financial dependency programs.
You're assigning too little credit, I think. Remember, to a conspiracy theorist, all evidence is in favor of the conspiracy.
Its called the Great Curse inseries
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That's when she starts to really act unhinged and racking up that sweet sweet Limit.
The part about central government apart, that doesn't seem like a small community.
The core of the illusion is taking the white perspective as the universal perspective. America feels relatively meritocratic, if you happen to be white.
Imagine being raped by the local diversity, and then having to listen to something like this from a teacher, in a public indoctrination facility slash daycare funded by the same government that inflicted said diversity on you in the first place. Probably for the best that Taylor skipped a lot of school.
Everyone wants to be safe. Racial violence and racial inequality are a feedback loop.
The Empire would say that if there is such a relationship, the obvious the way to break that loop is through segregation. After all, it's not acceptable to sacrifice some fraction of their children to racial violence for any reason. Good fences make good neighbors, so get the races separated and they'll have an easier time being neighbors. The more separated the better.
And in the Empire's opinion, the separation between the alive and the dead is just about big enough to solve the problem...
I was expecting a horror-verse omake after a title like this.
The most important part vis-a-vis Danny and Taylor is that the whole thing requires reducing whites (and particularly white children) to non-humans whose suffering does not matter, and can simply be ignored in favor of changing the topic when they bring it up. Necessary sacrifices for the glory of Omelas.
