Turnea, maybe because you're still in school you don't understand. The country operationally is run by people in their 30's.

Myself and all of my friends have roles that direct day to day lives of school kids, sales man, nurses (my wife), etc. Colleges are definitely the exception. Teachers in public schools, the Asst Principals if not the Principals, the police on duty, etc. All my age or very close to it.

The thing is that when speaking about racism, it seems to boil down to fair housing, job discrimination, etc. How are our HR managers? 30-somethings. Who are the hiring managers? Often times people in their 30's. Who are leasing agents, etc?

Seriously. The biggest impact of potential racism would be from people that have direct interaction, of course unless racism is the policy!
We know that's not the case.

You're right. Being raised in the 80's doesn't preclude you from being a racist. However- it decreases the likelihood that you will apply those values publicly. Racist ideals aren't values that contemporary society accepts as a general rule (maybe in some odd areas, but not the country as a generalization).

I know you don't profess those values, and, from our interactions here, I'd say you don't want to possess those values. But there's more to white racism than a sign on a water fountain. As I've said here, our culture's inability to analyze the fundamental racial assumptions our society was built on continues to perpetuate racism long after we as a society shot down the institutionalized racism of the South.

I love our country. 2 score ago ago, the majority of our nation, came together and decided that racism was against the values we hold most dear: we frowned upon it. We made 'colorblind' the highest compliment we can give ourselves. It took a 'race-baiting' 'agitating' Negro preacher to do it -- along with a black nationalist movement to back it, and decades of black intellectuals to get us there. But we made that commitment -- to become a country where little black girls play in the Mississippi hilltops with little white boys -- and I honestly believe the vast majority of white Americans want to become that society.

But then came this backlash that has prevented us from really getting there. We threw the signs on the water fountains on the floor, then moved out to the suburbs where we wouldn't have to think about this stuff. We sent out kids to private schools when the public schools integrated. We never stopped to think about the subtext of our speech, or the unspoken laws that still continue to dictate the interactions betweens blacks and whites in this country, and the expectations of both. We never tossed out the double standard or paternalistic tone of Liberal thought -- see "the Joe Biden compliment" -- or the selective empathy offered by mainstream news coverage of black issues.

I'm not saying any of that is villainous, mean-spirited racism, though when our guilt grabs us, the average, temperamental human being is inclined to take it there. The majority of the racial problems in this country, I'd argue, are innocent unconscious assumptions we have not challenged, and seemingly, are incapable of challenging as long as there is one bad apple in the whole black race -- like Cynthia McCain or Public Enemy or whoever else persons on here would like to demonize -- to distract us. Maybe that's a false assessment, there are certainly many openly racist cops, for instance... that point is open for discussion. But I think I'd stand by it.

Obviously any spec of humanity capable of empathy and vision would like to resume and build off of that original quest for profound change in our racial situation. Maybe not necessarily the quest for a 'colorblind' society,' which has always been a difficult reading of MLK's speech for America to stomach -- but at least society where we can borrow and learn from each others differences at will, until we are all rooted in each other's past, but not restricted by our race -- until we don't have posters on AD who think that black people, by virtue of being born in America, should fit the mold of a 'mainstream American.' (Should Germans fit the mold of a Good German?) It hurts me that we grow up in a nation where "we are allowed to pass our childhood imagining ourselves as indians, our adolescence imagining ourselves as negroes, before we are told we must become what we are -- white all along." somebody said that but google won't remind me who. And they said it a long time ago -- that could have been as true of blackface days as it was of the 50s or the 90s -- and its an interaction that continues to this day. That interaction is a racist interaction, and it leaves our culture with "white guilt," among other haunted signs of a nation burdened by its history. There are other racist interactions that time does not permit me type.

Now you would think it would be in our interest to chuck that burden to the bonfire of history -- you don't see a lot of catholics sparring in the Cincinnati streets with protestants anymore. But as our 'militant' Black distracting figures on the fringes of society -- aka new orleans -- will remind us, we shouldn't be so quick to congratulate ourselves. So let's talk about this stuff.

We can agree that thirty somethings are very involved in societies direction....but are they the owners? The ones making policy?

They sure as heck aren't the presidents or senators.

...and how far removed are they from rampant racism? One generation maybe?

I agree that racist attitudes fall with age statistically, but the problems like housing discrimination persist. The evidence is all there. I even provided a newer study

All I meant by that was that the economic theory of why racism hurts other whites is a bit overblown. Racists can be plenty successful and often economic factors encourage racial injustice.

May I politely say “bullhockey”?

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/post200...y-compensation/ Here’s some pictures of the highest paid CEOs in the country. Lots of wrinkled old white faces, one white woman, and some guys who look 40-ish.

If you look at Time's 100 Most Influential, there's a certain...mmmm, shall we say, maturity to the list.

Let's just make sure there is no racism in this. The late 20s and 30s crowd, who "run" things, get their jobs from people who were raised in an earlier, more racist, day. Is employment always based on merit, or does pull sometimes play a part? You know the routine, Daddy has the power and the son get's the job. How often does that still happen? Is a more qualified Black candidate sometimes bypassed for a less qualified white candidate?

BTW: Twenty-somethings sometimes do get executive power. Tom Hicks hired Jon Daniels, late 20s, as general manager of the Texas Rangers. How many ways can you spell disaster?

Update

Here's a link to a current episode:



http://msn.foxsports.com/cfb/story/7058854?MSNHPHMA

It doesn't seem like the ugliness of racism is as dead as some of you seem to think.

I don't think that anyone thinks that racists are gone. I believe that racism is effectively dead in corporate America, in housing, in government jobs, etc.

Hiring managers want the best employee because their success depends on it. Real estate agents want to sell homes to whomever can afford them. The government actually attempts to hire minorities more, etc.

We all know that one guy that thinks "this or that" about minorities. This applies to all walks of life and ages. I just think the people making the stupid phone calls to this couple are probably not Captains of Industry and aside from harassment, amount to no real + or - change in their lives.



I agree. Knowing "people" is as important as knowing "something" in some cases. However, knowing something is necessary to keep those jobs, and often times will get you in the door somewhere that doesn't require knowing "someone".

The thing I think people outside of business fail to understand about the overall impact on America is illustrated by the fact that Monster.com is over a $1B company in the US. If the "good ol' boy system" was truly an impediment, why are there thousands of jobs posted on Monster in DFW?

It's never going to be perfect, but God forbid a black man actually does miss out on something because of nepotism, frankly there is more opportunity in America than most people can fathom. Most of which has employees that don't even know what nepotism is.

Here's an example that is either a case of appealing to racial fears of Black criminals preying on White victims or just a simple case of low ball, race-baiting in a rough-and-tumble political campaign:

The Palmetto Scoop has obtained a flyer (above) attacking presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) over the accusation that he “voted to give criminal sexual abusers early release from prison.” In the flyer, Obama is compared to former Mass. Gov. Michael Dukakis - who came under fire during his 1988 presidential run for his release of convicted murderer William Horton who later committed rape and assault - and claims that the Illinois Senator “is a threat to our safety and security.”

At the bottom of the leaflet is the statement “Mike Dukakis, Willie Horton, Barack Obama, wrong for South Carolina, wrong for America.”

The image was e-mailed to TPS by a reader who saw it posted in various locations across Charleston in advance of yesterday’s Democratic presidential debate. The reader said the campaign of Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) was behind the attack. playing dirty?

I just saw a commercial for GSN’s new show called “Without Prejudice.” It shows a group of people sitting around making comments about their first impressions of others. Everything from abortion to interracial relationships to the death penalty is discussed. If you go to gsn.com/withoutprejudice you can see what I’m talking about. I can’t believe this is a show. It’s sure to be interesting and very controversial.

What's racist or race-baiting about this?

It seems like a little mud-slinging political ad, which really don't float my boat in general... but if it's true, how is it racist?
Just because he's black?
I'm confused about this one. Maybe I missed something.

Just for the record aevans176, nighttimer and I were talking about two different episodes. I'll let NT defend his. He can do that better than I can.

Here's what I posted:



Let's see - black guy, white girl, threats. If it smells like, and looks like it must be.

And your point is? Stop the press - some white folks still have a hard time with bi-racial unions! Oh boy, does that ever hurt white folks in general! You know, much like how some blacks will accuse a fellow black of jumping ship on them for marrying someone white - even to the point of never speaking to them again. This also hurts the black population at large but we're not surprised are we?

Granted, death threats are so far over-the-top it makes me think Idaho is on another planet! Fortunately if this black athlete is talented enough, he will go on to multi-million dollar contracts and become adored by the local white populace and all will be well. Good for him that Idaho doesn't have a professional team!

As for NT's example, I have to believe that if Mr. Horton had been white the ad would have still have gone out. Admittedly though, it seems more than coincidental that the article ran in So. Carolina. It certainly makes for cheap politicking though! Those darn dems...

Here is where my libertarian side comes out. I don't see how bi-racial unions have any impact on me period. I approach gay marriage from a similar position.

I would suggest that those whites, who still get bent out of shape by such things, are bogging their lives down with excess baggage. I can't believe such thinking doesn't negatively effect those who let it bother them.

Let's see, now. An bi-racial couple enters a restaurant. Some white person doen't like it and their blood pressure goes through the ceiling. Who gets hurt? Who gets an ambulance ride to the emergency room?

Without fail.

Let's look at Mr. Banneker a little more closely:


Benjamin Banneker was an astronomer, scientist, mathematician, surveyor, clock-maker, author, and social critic. Most notable about his accomplishments was that despite racial constraints and little formal education, he was a self-taught man. By the end of his life, his achievements were well known around the world.

Unlike many blacks of his time, Banneker was not born into slavery. The maternal side of his family determined this fate. His grandmother, Mary Walsh, was a white Englishwoman who was sentenced to seven years of servitude for stealing milk. She...bought a slave and married him. Mary and Robert had several children, one of whom was Banneker's mother.

Banneker's education began in the early years of his childhood. Banneker and his siblings were taught to read by their grandmother, who used the Bible as a lesson book. When Banneker was twelve, a Quaker named Peter Heinrich moved next to the Banneker farm. He established a school for boys, which Banneker attended. He excelled in mathematics and even progressed beyond the ability of his teacher.

At the age of twenty-one, his abilities were finally utilized. He met a man named Josef Levi who showed him a pocket watch. Banneker was so fascinated that Levi gave him the watch. He studied how it worked, drew a picture of it, and made mathematical calculations for the parts. He worked on building the clock for two years. In 1753, it was completed. It was made of wood and he had carved the gears by hand. This was the first clock built in the United States. For more than forty years, the clock struck every hour. ...

Etc.


Now, what do you see about this man's CULTURE that is different than, say, your typical black man? Well, we was raised by a partially white woman who happened to be his mother, and by a white grandmother. He was educated by his white grandmother and by a white Quaker who formed a school. His met a white watchmaker who taught him watchmaking. Etc.

Now, he was born into and raised in WHITE EUROPEAN/AMERICAN CULTURE. He clearly was not inferior for his part black genetic makeup (see, e.g., the real definition of racism), but I can further assure you he was not taught that to learn math was too "white"; to learn good English skills made you an "oreo"; that he was too stupid to be anything but a ditch-digger (as many blacks say in one way or another to each other); and he surely wasn't taught to hate white people, despite the obvious fact that in his era whites perpetrated slavery. In short, he assimilated into predominantly white, mainstream culture, a culture which emphasized (and taught directly to him) the value of hard work, education, self-discipline, religious piety, etc., values which, I will readily admit, have been compromised in this nation of late and to which we need to return, as they work.

Mr. Banneker truly proves my point: adopt white/mainstream/whatever you want to call it/culture, and you will succeed. And we as a nation will be all the stronger for it.

Not always. What happens is that the black constituency on this board perpetually contends that there is some significant "man holding me down force", of which no one can find any contemporary proof for.

I don't know anyone who reasonably would say that there aren't still racists. I personally do believe that unfortunately it's something we'll have to deal with forever in some capacity.

The reason I still post on threads like this is with a shred of hope that someone will be able to prove or disprove these unsubstantiated claims that racism still impacts American lives in any long-term fashion.

Has anyone ever been to Minden, Louisiana? Probably not, but it's a small town of about 15,000-20,000 people just east of Shreveport/Bossier. Until SuperWalmart built a few years back, there were 3 grocery stores. Brookshires sold predominantly to the upper-class socialites in the town (people that might have good jobs in Shreveport and commute), Piggly Wiggly sold to the masses of white people that lived in town and outlying smaller towns, and OJ's sold to the black people.

No one really ever cared that there might be a black person in Piggly Wiggly. White people might wander into OJ's now and again. They actually were very similar stores in my opinion. The point is that it was by choice that the stores ended up being racially seperate. I had a friend who was black, and we both worked at Sherwin Williams. He was from Minden, as was my family originally (and at the time my Grandparents were still alive and lived there too) from there. Funny enough, he thought Piggly Wiggly was a nicer store.... but his parents truly frowned upon him going in there. His parents actually thought that people in Piggly Wiggly were mean to them. Black people rarely even DARED to go into Brookshires because they REALLY thought it was bigoted. Did my friend think that? No. Actually Piggly Wiggly's manager was eventually a black guy....

However- what was the overwhelming feeling about it? That PW was racist against black people. How much of that happens in the US today? How often is bad service, poor quality product, or untimely attitude blamed as racism?

You seriously don't think if the question had been posed on the flip side (i.e., "Does black racism hurt the black population?") that we would not have heard from numerous posters saying something like, "Yes, but can you blame them? Look at the decades of racism againt the black man!!" Your implication is almot comical, turnea!

I mention the flip-side because it is pertinent. BoF's commentary (i.e., looks like the ulginess of racism is still alive and well) is just a few rungs down from concluding, "Oh boy, do black folks ever need the governments protection still!"). His example of the athlete receiving death threats (I wonder how many of those phone calls came from a bunch of lug-headed high schoolers out on a prank?) is only a commentary on how there are still outliers who hold fast to the racist dogma of a past generation much like some black folks still do. In other words, it is a non-starter - of course there continues to be racism on both sides! And so?

To answer his OP, BoF is correct (and yes, I agree with his last post. Grrrrrr....) in saying that white racism hurts the rest of us. In fact, it tees me off. How can in not hurt the rest of us?

Great golly. Have you read any of the posts before you? The whole purpose of this thread was to discuss white racism and white racism alone, not because the issue is somehow exclusive of black racism, but simply because the post-creator believes that black racism is too often used to deflect serious discussion of white racism.

If you want to discuss black racism, or how black racism and white racism feed off each other, then please, start a thread to that effect. I personally promise not to distract from the subject. But this here is a thread about how white racism hurts white people, not about who made the world the way it is today, and who we should point the finger at.

If you would, I think we'd get farther if you focused on the question at hand. Just an opinion.

Just for fun's sake....

Recall that every word on this board is saved and search able. Find a counter-example, please I need the pick-me-up.


I've done so.. repeatedly even in this very thread. When asked to provide a newer study, I gave you one that runs up to 2000.

That was just housing discrimination. Every discrimination lawsuit won in employment, law enforcement etc. belies this statement. So drop the blanket denial and at least adopt a nuanced position.

hopefully one that works into the theme of the thread.

Gosh allmighty! Have you read any of the previous posts before you? How is BoF's anecdote (sorry B, and just when we were starting to get along!) on the black athlete's exposure to white racism germaine to the very topic he introduced? If there were a connection he certainly didn't elaborate until much later. How about NT's example of white America playing the race card in politics? Smells like another sky's-the-limit" build-up to a racially-charged exchange to me. What about turnea's response to aevan's just before my post? What exactly are you shocked at drewyorktimes? Did you read my final comments from my previous post? I did come full-circle and answered BoF's original question which by the way deals with how white racism affects white perpetrators and non-perpetrators alike not whether white racism still exists (you should reread his OP).

Finally, reminding the other side of the aisle is sometimes necessary when that other side begins to run roughshod over a racially-charged topic without being reminded that the very character defects they lament in one sup-group can be seen as equally in their own. You know, it's kind of a human condition wouldn't you say?

Redaction - drew, I recognize that you get the point of the thread but why are you not surprised when virtually everyone else seems intent on wandering just a bit themselves?

(edited after 5 minutes of coming down of my high-horse!)

The point on continued discrimination was to counter the view that white racism harms whites economically.

It does...sometimes.

Often time it helps, especially in the housing market.

Funny enough, I've never seen any of them. I suppose maybe you did one that I missed? I work and only post when on conf calls or when I have a few min extra.

The thing is that isolated discrimination suits don't prove anything but isolated incidents.
http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/race.html

I'd love for you to have a "nuanced" perspective based upon... maybe fact.

How about some of the stats on that link?!?! Good stuff.
Between 1997 and 2006, 284,505 EEOC claims were made based upon race (predominantly black people claiming discrimination). Of those, 212729 had no reasonable cause. 3/4 of the cases had literally no reasonable cause.

What else? Only 3.9% showed reasonable cause.

The issue remains. It generally is minute, and frankly as a whole doesn't amount to a hill of beans according the EEOC link I've provided.







Yep. All people that live in predominantly white neighborhoods have devalued homes as soon as black people move in. Perfectly true. Sure.

You certainly saw one because you criticized its age... it's why I responded with the second... it's still there.

Thousands of settlements for millions of dollars every year... mighty big beans.

What percentage of rape cases go to trial?


It ain't because they have lousy lawn fixtures.

What about this for an example of some "proof" that racism is a learned experience?

A video - reportedly circulated among Connecticut state troopers - depicting a little white girl being coached into saying the word ``nigger" brings back painful memories. In the video, the little girl of age 3 or 4 is at her kitchen table with a fork in her hand as she is coached by two off-camera voices to say the word "nigger." out of the mouth of babes?



Are you seriously saying you don't understand what is racist about trying to link a presidential candidate to a convicted murderer and racist?

Are you seriously saying you doubt the author of the pamphlet is trying to stir up latent suspicions that a Black politician might be sympathetic and soft on Black criminals?

Are you seriously saying you don't understand that the name of Willie Horton is invoked to inflame irrational fears of murderous Black rapists preying upon innocent White victims?

Because if you are saying any of those things, Aevans176, may I politely suggest that you have indeed, "missed something" and might benefit from finding out how Horton was used successfully to smear Michael Dukakis.

No, it's not just because Barack Obama is Black. But it's got a helluva lot to do with it.




You leave out quite a bit about Mr. Banneker's life and times with a terse, "etc," quick. Banneker did not thrive due to "White European/American Culture." His genius and intellect thrived despite it.

From your extremely selective editing one would have to conclue that Benjamin Banneker was not only a obviously talented and briliant man, but a exceptional Negro who had successfully assimilated into "White European/American Culture" with nary a complaint. You're correct that Banneker wasn't taught to hate White people. But neither did he sit back quietly without a dissenting word from the virulent White supremacy that oppressed the majority of his race.

"...we are a race of beings, who have long labored under the abuse and censure of the world ; that we have long been looked upon with an eye of contempt ; and that we have long been considered rather as brutish than human, and scarcely capable of mental endowments."

"How pitiable it is that although you are so fully convinced of the goodness of the Father of mankind you should go against His will by detaining, by fraud and violence, so many of my brothers under groaning captivity and oppression; that you should at the same time be guilty of the most criminal act which you detest in others." Banneker letter

Who was on the receiving end of Banneker's poignant words about the condition of Blacks? None other than one of the Founding Fathers (and slave owner) Thomas Jefferson.

The values of of hard work, education, self-discipline, religious piety were not originated by or exclusive to "White European/American Culture." Like many others quick you judge the Eurocentric way as far superior to any merely because you have been born into it. which completely ignores the fact that there are billions of people who live and die quite happily never having consumed a Big Mac and all the other fine things "White European/American Culture" have brought about including wars of conquest, The Third Reich, The Spanish Inquistion, The Tuskeegee Experiment, the Salem Witch Trials, apartheid, and Manifest Destiny.

In 1965, the author and essayist James A. Baldwin in his book The Fire Next Timewrote with a fierce passion how subtle, pervasive and complete the brainwashing of Blacks in America had been.

In the case of the American Negro, from the moment you are born every stick and stone, every face, is white. Since you have not yet seen a mirror, you suppose you are, too. It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, 6, or 7 to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, and although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you.

It comes as a great shock to discover that the country which is your birthplace and to which your life and identity has not, in its whole system of reality, evolved any place for you. The disaffection and the gap between people, only on the basis of their skins, begins there and accelerates throughout your whole lifetime. You realize that you are 30 and you are having a terrible time. You have been through a certain kind of mill and the most serious effect is again not the catalogue of disaster--the policeman, the taxi driver, the waiters, the landlady, the banks, the insurance companies, the millions of details 24 hours of every day which spell out to you that you are a worthless human being. It is not that. By that time you have begun to see it happening in your daughter, your son or your niece or your nephew. You are 30 by now and nothing you have done has helped you escape the trap. But what is worse is that nothing you have done, and as far as you can tell nothing you can do, will save your son or your daughter from having the same disaster and from coming to the same end.

When I was brought up I was taught in American history books that Africa had no history and that neither had I. I was a savage about whom the least said the better, who had been saved by Europe and who had been brought to America. Of course, I believed it. I didn't have much choice. These were the only books there were. Everyone else seemed to agree. If you went out of Harlem the whole world agreed. What you saw was much bigger, whiter, cleaner, safer. The garbage was collected, the children were happy. You would go back home and it would seem, of course, that this was an act of God. You belonged where white people put you.

It is only since World War II that there has been a counterimage in the world. That image has not come about because of any legislation by any American Government, but because Africa was suddenly on the stage of the world and Africans had to be dealt with in a way they had never been dealt with before. This gave the American Negro, for the first time, a sense of himself not as a savage. It has created and will create a great many conundrums.

It is a terrible thing for an entire people to surrender to the notion that one-ninth of its population is beneath them. Until the moment comes when we, the Americans, are able to accept the fact that my ancestors are both black and white, that on that continent we are trying to forge a new identity, that we need each other, that I am not a ward of America, I am not an object of missionary charity, I am one of the people who built the country--until this moment comes there is scarcely any hope for the American dream. If the people are denied participation in it, by their very presence they will wreck it. And if that happens it is a very grave moment for the West. Baldwin

Your ability to delude yourself, quick that all Blacks need do is assimilate and accept the innate greatness of the "White European/American Culture" leaves out one critical point. Admission into that culture has never been as easy as you depict it and the gatekeepers have always reserved admittance to only a precious few. It has never been the goal or even the desire to bring all Blacks into the mainstream of the presently dominant cultural paradigm. It was never the goal or even the desire to educate Black children.

It was the goal and the desire that Blacks should be taught to be grateful to Whites. First, for making them slaves and taking them out of Africa and then for setting them free and having made them people without land, a history or a culture to instead love and look to the same individuals whom they once called "master" for deliverance.

The choice whether or not to embrace "White European/American Culture" was never left for Blacks to make.



The paltry Black constituency on this board that perpetually contends that there is some significant "man holding me down force" has always been outnumbered by a significant White constituency on this board that perpetually contends that there is NO such force holding down the Black constituency.

Quite possibly because the acknowledgement that such a force of deliberate, entrenched and largely invisible institutionized racism does exist would reveal how much hostility and resistance to racial equity persists in the psyche of Whites even now in this presumably more enlightened and progressive climate.

Vanguard: There is a huge difference between other digressions on this thread -- like "what age group runs the country" -- and yours. The age group, question, for instance, may not be totally on topic, but it is pertinent to any discussion of our racial attitudes, as racism tends to change shapes, allow new possibilities, and even ebb away as new age groups take the sceptor. JFK may have been cool, liberal, hip, but he would have never played sax on arsenio hall. Richard Nixon, in all his globe-trotting diplomacy, would have never done this.

Having said that, those benign digressions do not suddenly flip the thread and blame blacks for the way things are. Your disgression did exactly that. Hopefully, the intent of this thread is not to blame any one person for the way things are, just to acknowledge the ways in which the racism hurts those who inherit it. Of course very few of us have been 100 percent on topic, but yours was the least constructive, least on topic post I'd seen in a while, so at some point, you gotta bring things back online. No hard feelings, even if you were on your 'high horse' there.

Was that Al Gore's intent when he brought up Willie.? Was there a similar incidence of a white criminal engaging in rape while on release?

Except that, according to Media Matters, Gore never brought Willie Horton up.



http://mediamatters.org/items/200411100007

Gore brought the issue up. The Repubs capitalized on it. If Willie had been white the same ad would have ran. People pretty much abhor rapists regardless of the rapist's race.

Melinda: I was raped yesterday.
Bertha: I hope he was not black.
Melinda: I was lucky, it was a white man.

I don't understand the relevance of Melinda and Bertha.

I provided a credible source disputing Sean Hanniy's claim that Gore brought up the Willie Horton affair in the 1988 campaign.

What source do you have to corroborate your accusation? I have yet to see one.

I first mentioned Willie Horton as a issue regarding a scurrilous political ad that was circulated in South Carolina as a thinly-veiled attack against Senator Barack Obama. The author of the ad is unknown.

deng, you asked a question about Al Gore bringing up Horton, but provided no source for the remark. BoF replied to the question and provided a link disputing Gore making any such remark.

You ignored the attempt by BoF to clarify the matter and merely repeated your accusation--again, without any attribution. Then you followed up with an utterly outrageous "quote:"

Melinda: I was raped yesterday.
Bertha: I hope he was not black.
Melinda: I was lucky, it was a white man.

I have no idea where this quote comes from but as a Black man, I find this to be one of the most offensive and overtly racist remarks I have read on . It is beyond belief that ANY victim of rape would consider themselves "lucky" to be raped by an assailant, be it White, Black or otherwise.

Rape is too heinous a violation to be so trivialized. You should either clarify your remarks, deng or remove them. As is stands you have provided an horrific example of your own racism.

Let me repeat: People pretty much abhor rapists regardless of the rapist's race.

You left out a few: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, Copeland, Gershwin; Michelangelo, David, Rubens, Van Gogh, Monet, Turner; Louis XIV, Napoleon, Bismarck, Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, FDR; Shakespeare, Houseman, Dickens, Hawthorne, Warren, Faulkner; Descartes, Newton, Einstein, Teller, Shockley, Edison, Wright, Oppenheimer; Concrete, transistors, automobiles, internal combustion engine, steam power, powered flight, interchangeable parts, electric generators, mass production, nuclear power; Morgan, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Stanford; ad infinitum.

No culture can touch this list, which could go on page after page, decade after decade, century after century. EuroAmerican culture literally controlled the entire known world over the last 200 or so years.

Has the culture produced problems?--of course. As all men are sinful, all men of any culture, creed, color or religion will make terrible mistakes. European/American culture gets criticized for its mistakes more than most because it was so much more successful that its failures were on display for all to see. Other cultures during this same time period to a great degree lived lives so nasty, brutish and short, so wracked by disease and failure, so much at the subsistence level, that they never did anything anyone remembered, except die young. Unlike others, Europeans were travelling and conquering the world with superior transportation, military technology, and ambition, and brought with them the greatest art, music, literature, and culture the world has ever seen. This is simply not debatable.

I get a kick out of your listing "wars of conquest" as a negative. As there is no such thing as a stagnant world, all cultures will either conquer, or be conquered. If one attempts to avoid wars of conquest, be they military, economic, or political wars, one will lose. This is unavoidable. I fear that our "I'm OK, you're OK, coffee house, cinema, and tolerate everthing" culture of today, naive and feckless to a fault, is doomed to failure because our ambition is now channeled into extreme sports or the NFL rather than into inventing, pioneering, exploring and yes...conquering. Show me a man who withdraws from a challenge, and I will show you a man who is not long for this world....

Say what you will, but the truth is written throughout the world, on great monuments standing on every continent....

So what? You’ve posted misinformation about Al Gore. Offended nighttimer with a tasteless joke he deemed racist ...

... and, in my opinion, you still haven’t contributed anything constructive to this thread.

Neither racist or rape jokes are funny. It must really be gratifying to laugh alone.

In 1990, Texas Republican Gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams sank fast after this remark:



http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1148683

The late Ann Richards became Governor of Texas.




I think you err by defining culture too narrowly. After all, practically every European rock group since the mid-60s has covered one or more songs written by a Black American. The list includes The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Foghat, ELO, The Dave Clark Five and on into ad infinitum.

Let me answer you with an "oldie but goodie" post quick - one I made to rebut a short term poster named Wehrwolf on May 12, 2005.



I don’t want to repost the entire thing, but here’s the link. I think this was one of my better posts on .

http://www.americasdebate.com/forums/index...st&p=151212

Edited to add:

I certainly do not devalue European culture, but culture is sort of like the "blob" it's constantly changing and morphing into something else.

Quick,

You left out a few:

Bach, Beethoven, Mozart,

Each of these three composers epitomizes a feature of the old world that would become a feature of the new. In Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart's day the poor folk musicians were considered to be an inferior race, their music was taboo to borrow.

Yet, prefiguring dixie and ragtime, those first three composers (especially Mozart) subtly incorporated folk diddlies from the inferior races into their high art. There was nothing High European Culture about some of the folk melodies those composers used... And Liszt, after all was a poor-born Hungarian immigrant. A perfect example of someone who lay outside of the walls of EuroAmerican Cultural Greatness, at least as far as those EuroAmericans saw it.

Had Liszt never performed brilliantly in front of the 88 keys, High EuroAmerican Culture -- the one that painted the Sistine chapel and invented democracy -- would have never accepted him. Yet here you hypocritically hold him up as an example of why High European culture should close itself off and allow no compromise... Liszt was the Jimi Hendrix of his day: a virtuosic genius from the 'inferior races.'[/i]


Copeland,

A Jew whose name belongs in a long list of Isrealites who drew musical inspiration from the struggle of that other lost tribe, Black Americans.

Gershwin;

Are you kidding me? Gershwin was a white man -- a 'negrotarian' as Zora Neal Hearston tartly dubbed his ilk -- digging for Jazz in Tin Pan Alley. It is precisely the influence of black musicians that drew him the admiration of European High Society, or so said Maurice Ravel: "Personally I find jazz most interesting: the rhythms, the way the melodies are handled, the melodies themselves. I have heard of George Gershwin's works and I find them intriguing."


Michelangelo, David, Rubens, Van Gogh, Monet, Turner;

No comment.


Louis XIV,

Versailles- a palace built from Gold Robbed from the coast of Africa, at gunpoint, because European miners never figured out how to mine gold as successfully as the indigenous people.


Napoleon,
A brute who failed to squash the Haitian revolution -- a revolution waged by slave-musicians in the name of "Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite." What revolution could be more beautiful?


Jefferson, Washington,

These two slave owners could not have possibly had any contact with an African culture that desired freedom and equality. These two men were extremely conflicted about their slave ownership. I'm sure they never learned anything about the self-evident value of freedom from watching plantation babies turn into plantation slaves. I'm sure Jefferson, in all his pillow time with that slave mistress of his, was never moved by the emphasis on deliverance in Black culture.


Lincoln,

Question: Who would Lincoln be without Minstrelsy? Read your bios, again. His love of minstrelsy and the black culture it offered access to earned a reputation as a full-blooded mongrel. He had a black minstrel band lighten the mood at the corpse field of Antietam. Where would Lincoln be without abolitionists of either race, but especially those blacks, like Douglas, who so heartily disproved the notion of racial inferiority? Lincoln was a great fighter for democracy, but his ammunition was the eloquence of the black struggle for freedom. The idea that Lincoln is a product of pure, filtered EuroAmerica culture is just wrong.

Churchill,
No comment.

FDR;
A class traitor, loathed by the creme de la creme of New York High Society.

Shakespeare, Houseman, Dickens, Hawthorne, Warren; Descartes, Newton,


No comment.


Faulkner

A Southerner whose characteristically long sentences drew from the cadence and story telling techniques of local dialects, black and white. Without Uncle Remus, there was no Faulkner.

Einstein,

One of the greatest critics of European High Society, not to mention your 'necessary wars of conquest' that ever lived. Huge Jazz fan.


Teller, Shockley,
no comment.


Edison,
Checkmate: at a time when black children couldn't even get a decent education in most of the country, it was a black man from Massachusets, Lewis Latimer, who invented the filament Edison needed to power his light: What Edison did was learn how to enclose that filament in a vacuum. Latimer also worked with Alexander Graham Bell to draw the sketches for the telephone.

Wright, Oppenheimer; Concrete, transistors, automobiles, internal combustion engine, steam power, powered flight, interchangeable parts, electric generators, mass production, nuclear power; Morgan, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Stanford; ad infinitum.


I don't feel like continuing.

Here's what you fail to see: it is not that European-American culture has created so much of the great things in the world-- our culture has always been far more hybrid than the people at its helm. In simpler words, it wasn't EuroAmerican culture than created so many of the things you list: Just EuroAmericans.

Seriously Turnea.

Debate my statements. I feel like the older kid on the playground consistently winning a "rank" contest and your arguments are always "yo mama".

The thing that I'm attempting to prove (and my stats back it up) is that black perception of racism seems to far outweigh reality.

If only a few % of EEOC claims are settled with reason, is this a good barometer as to how much of American culture and its perception of racism is valid?

For instance. Turnea, if you go to the local Tech firm after graduation and apply for a job, and similar candidates are hired who are Indian or white, but you aren't... is it racism? Or was it a bad interview?

If you get your first job and it pays well, and you go to the local "nice apt complex", and they don't wait on you quickly.... is it bad service or racism?

The stats I posted would lend my argument some credence.

It's better than the yelling with fingers in the ears approach I see from over here. I think I'll quote the post where you "responded" to my original studies for fun.




Not as strong as the direct evidence to the contrary. Legal standards of proof are high, few people even know how to pursue a claim and only some of those actually bother.

Exactly....

Without clear record keeping it's hard to tell. What studies there are prove racism is not dead.

Reeling from public disillusionment, but not dead.


Depends, studies say racism is certainly a good possibility.

I'm sure that in your evaluation of those EEOC claims you took into consideration the incredible difficulty in proving discrimination, and the effect that difficulty would have on the outcomes of those claims, when presenting your statistics. I mean, without doing that the raw information you provided would be completely useless...

You left out a few as well: Henry Lee Lucas/11 confirmed kills and 200 suspected, Gilles de Rais/200, Erzsébet Báthory/36-200, Dr. Harold Shipman/284, H.H. Holmes/27, Randy Steven Kraft/67, Ted Bundy/30, Andrei Chikatilo/67, Gary Leon Ridgway/48, John Wayne Gacy/33, Jeffrey Dahmer/17, Fred West and Rosemary West/12, Dennis Rader/10, Danny Rolling/5, Martin Bryant/15, Paul John Knowles/18, Andrew Kehoe/42, Martin Bryant/35, Thomas Hamilton/17, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols/168, Stalin, Mussolini, Ceaucescu, Pinochet, Smith of Rhodesia, The Shah of Iran, Bormann, Himmler, Gobbles, Goring, Eichmann, Heydrich, Hess, Mengele, Hitler.

And one from your list of notable White men (what no women?) I'll comment on is (William) Shockley.

Shockley, along with two other scientists, won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for co-creating the transistor. From his Wikipedia entry: Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s led to California's "Silicon Valley" becoming a hotbed of electronics innovation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley

Hooray for Shockley.

...BUT

Shockley believed that the higher rate of reproduction among African Americans was having what he called a "dysgenic" effect due to their presumedly lower IQs. Shockley's published writings and lectures to scientific organization on this topic, such as the National Academy of Sciences, were partly based on the research of Berkeley psychologist Arthur Jensen, Cyril Burt and H. J. Eysenck. Shockley also proposed that individuals with IQs below 100 be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization.

He donated sperm to the Repository for Germinal Choice, a sperm bank founded by Robert Klark Graham in hopes of spreading humanity's best genes. The bank, called by the media the "Nobel Prize sperm bank," claimed to have three Nobel Prize-winning donors, though Shockley was the only one to publicly acknowledge his donation to the sperm bank. However, Shockley's views about the genetic supriority of whites over blacks brought the Repository for Germinal Choice notable negative publicity and discouraged other Nobel Prize winners from donating sperm.

In 1981 he filed a libel suit against the Atlanta Constitution after a reporter called him a "Hitlerite" and compared his racial views to the Nazis. Shockley won the suit, but received only $1 in damages.

Boo for Shockley.

In May of 1963, he gave a speech at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota suggesting that the people least competent to survive in the world were the ones reproducing the fastest, while the best of the human population was using birth control and having fewer children. He had slipped into eugenics.

In an interview a year later with U.S. News & World Report he fell into the trap of discussing race. He pointed out that African Americans as a group scored 15 points lower on IQ tests, and suggested the cause was hereditary.

Shockley found himself -- not unhappily -- in a swirl of controversy. Biologists and geneticists blasted his theories, pointing out that eugenics was a rationale used by the Nazis during World War II, and was an idea that had a weak scientific foundation. Shockley was attacked in print, on television, and in scientific journals.

The battle was furious, uncivil, and often dishonest. Shockley, a terrible debater, lost his arguments most of the time. Although he had no training in genetics, he studied the field energetically. He was an expert on the use of statistics, and while his opponents, especially in the early years, knew far more about genetics than he did, he could pull apart their statistical arguments easily. Unfortunately for him, even when he scored his points, hardly anyone in the audience noticed.

He was caught in the whirlpool of an ancient debate in science: Are we the product of our genes or are we mostly the product of our environment? Are all men and women truly created equal? Is intelligence genetic? Is race a determining factor? The consensus then and now among scientists without political agendas is that both Shockley and his opponents were at least partially right. We are the product of both our genes and our environment; some aspects of our intelligence are genetic. Race, however, has nothing to do with it. He pursued his argument with his usual thorough scholarship and his almost pathological insensitivity, allowing himself to be painted a racist. The more he was pushed, the more extreme he became, until the debate became about him, not about genetics, undermining his own argument.

He could not make an appearance without demonstrators showing up. He seemed to revel in the tumult. link

How could such a smart guy be such a stupid bigot? Very easily apparently.

You can list from daylight to daybreak all the Great White Guys in the world, quick and for the most part there won't be much argument that many of the world's greatest inventors, scientists, scholars, builders, artists, musicians, politicians, and heroes come out of the EuroAmerican gene pool.

But out of the EuroAmerican gene pool also comes some of the world's worst murderers, psychopaths, dictators, con men, madmen and racists. The bloody fingerprints of EuroAmericans can be found in centuries filled with massacres, wars, purges, wars of conquest, genetic cleansing, religious persecution and imperialism, assassinations, exploitation and supremacy.

In the overall history of the White EuroAmerican there is much glory and much shame. You've gotta take the good with the bad and sometimes there's an awful lot of bad. You want to brag and take all the credit for all that's good in the world. Fine. But you can't sugarcoat and ignore all the evil and dirty crap that White EuroAmericans have done as well.

Cover yourself in the glory of the Great White Race all you like, quick. I got "A's" in history too, so you can't b.s. me with a one-sided presentation. I haven't won any Nobel Prizes like Bill Shockley, but I'm smart enought to know when someone's telling half-truths and ignoring the parts of history that aren't so flattering. There's a good side and a bad side to the accomplishments of White people. Don't try to sell me just one side. Tell it ALL and tell it like it IS.

Shockley considered Blacks his intellectual inferiors and he was better than them. But they were smart enough to know people like Shockley aren't better than anyone.

Brothers and sisters, I am here to tell you that I charge the white man. I charge the white man with being the greatest murderer on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest kidnapper on earth. There is no place in this world that this man can go and say he created peace and harmony. Everywhere he's gone he's created havoc. Everywhere he's gone he's created destruction. So I charge him. I charge him with being the greates kidnapper on this earth! I charge him with being the greatest murderer on this earth! I charge him with being the greatest robber and enslaver on this earth! I charge the white man with being the greatest swine-eater on this earth. The greatest drunkard on this earth! He can't deny the charges! You can't deny the charges! We're the living proof *of* those charges! You and I are the proof. You're not an American, you are the victim of America. You didn't have a choice coming over here. He didn't say, "Black man, black woman, come on over and help me build America". He said, "Nigger, get down in the bottom of that boat and I'm taking you over there to