Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 54: Line 166 (959)

 But the broader issue remained.

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"the broader issue"
Gun control onboard the Inconvenience. Or, perhaps taking "broader issue" a littler more broadly, gun control in America. Would a gun offer the Chums more security or would they create one more risk to considered aboard an already risky affair of living in a hydrogen balloon floating across various nations of the world? The argument against gun control is a paradox because it relies on the foundational argument that guns are deadly weapons and therefore guns are needed to protect people from guns. But in America, the argument for guns, and why America has so many, has always come down to racism. White Americans treated Black Americans like shit (I know, a totally reductive statement) for, well, ever. So when Black Americans were freed from slavery, white Americans were afraid of what they would do to them. So obviously they needed as many firearms as possible. And that same feeling continues on through every aspect of Black Americans trying to gain equality in this country. It's not just, "I need my guns to protect myself." It's almost always, "I need my guns to protect my property from those impoverished by the systemic racism of a white supremacist country." It's a projection of who are criminals and shouldn't be allowed to have guns and who are proper citizens and should be allowed to shoot whomever they want whenever they want.

Americans exist who don't believe they're accommodating white supremacy or that systemic racism isn't a real thing. But anybody who looks into the history of what white Americans chose to do to public pools once pools were integrated will see reflected in it the way the accommodation of white supremacy informs how the American government's decisions are often made. If a public good or service exists and Black Americans benefit from it, the government (the GOP, mainly, but Democrats are too often willing to compromise with racism, or accommodate white supremacy) will generally do away with that public good or service and allow private enterprise to take over, meaning those whom systemic racism keeps impoverished will lose out on that good or service. Just look to the pools.