You may very well be right, however, you do not know the man personally so it is unfair for you judge him as a sell-out based on nothing more than your criteria of what is and is not acceptable rhetoric.



You don't have to admire him but it may behoove you to acknowledge that he may actually believe whatever ideology he is advocating.

There are plenty of things that I disagree with feminists on....it doesn't mean I'm a self-hating woman and it doesn't mean I don't have women's best interests at heart. Whether I'm right or wrong in my beliefs could be debated.

umm... did you read this?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A...anguage=printer


As for the rest... it's reality. A guy like me doesn't get spoken to in the fashion that you type on this board.



Again- NT, do me a favor, or yourself a favor. Quit playing the race card and dispute what he says? He's a suck up because he says negative things at times? Or is it because he says thing that are drenched in fact and you don't like it?

Refute what Larry Elder says. We've been down this road before. It's never happened... but if it's true, please open my eyes. I'd be very interested to see how Larry Elder just isn't an outlaw saying things that need to be said? Knock me out man. I'm all ears. (please ... no diatribes, just refute his facts)



Name one. I've never seen you post anything nice about Black Republicans.



I don't remember you posting one single fact in this post NT.
Denial is obviously in the eye of the beholder sir.

I have some good links in this thread that DO talk about, discuss federal cases, and show that there is racism. I have always said that it's on both sides of the fence, but some people want to say that white perpetuated racism is worse. Funny... none of the facts (or links, or lack there of) help the case.

What these last few threads have taught me is that there is some retarded emotion on cases like these that bust right on through party lines and right down the tone of skin it seems.

Everyone has a story. I'd like to see some facts that refute my claims....

That is why I brought up the confusion of systematic and personal regarding this debate. My community is currently undergoing a "crime wave" that is racially defined, it is always black males who are attacking, mugging, shooting and just generally bringing about fear and a lack of security to my town. It is not entirely unreasonable for me to fear black men when I close my business at night and make my way to my car with my bank bag full of cash.
Am I a racist for harboring these feelings? Is it a personal judgment or a communal one? Do I make these judgments on my own biases or do the actions of others, actions that to some extent have become systematic, also play a role in my current preconceptions? And do you think I wish or want to feel this way about my community and those who live in it and my place within it?

While I understand the great differences of our examples...as they perfectly make example of my point of argument on the personal and the systematic. They each define the relationship, they each cross over from personal and systematic, they each become more difficult to originate as time goes on.

I wish I could tell you my communities fears and misjudgments and preconceptions were now entirely based on personal misgivings or personal faults but they are not. I read in the paper that my town, a town the harbors the largest per capita living in public or subsidized housing than anywhere else in the USA, will be refurbishing several of our many government housing complexes. One is in such an ill state that it will be completely destroyed but because of what they consider to be "historical significance" to the Black community, this housing will not be relocated but rebuilt. 98% of those who live in govt. housing in my town are black. I read a quote from a judge of my city who said "I'm tired of sending black kids to jail," he said. "There are some days when my job is just to send young black men to jail."

This is all the system speaking to us above, this is not a personal account of what I think race relations are in my town, this is what the system bears them to be.



If this above statement does not so perfectly sum up the debate. Well some of us less "privileged" in life have in reality been spoken to on many occasions in such a fashion. Your self perceived righteousness to be held in a fashion superior or exclusive to the rest of us is a flaw of the system, not a reality that one has any authority in announcing or reminding others of.

I'm glad you commented on that. I did it intentionally.

It's not self righteousness. It's the fact that people won't say truly and intentionally offensive things to the face of a man like me. Do I mean that about finances? Of course not. I'm no Donald Trump. I mean man to man... guys like me don't work that way.

I don't think I'm better, and quite the contrary. It's more that I believe that some cultures of "the internet" dicatate that it's okay to be "over the top" online. It was to make a point that most of what people say in that inflammatory nature wouldn't happen in person. Not to me anyway.

What does it have to do with rac...isms and this debate? Tons.
I believe wholeheartedly that these types of racially motivated (whiny white republicans) prejudices are kept behind closed doors... or on online debates. In offices or homes of some races. All races probably. When confronted with bigoted statements like that in person... the tune nearly always changes.

I still don't completely understand where you are coming from aevans176. You must not frequent coffee shops. Debate sometimes gets heated and people do say things to others face-to-face. In fact, there is nothing - no point I've debated with you on this board - that I wouldn't say to you in person. That includes that wisecrack I made a while back about military recruiters offering a sports watches as incentive that angered you a bit. It’s now $20,000. The sports watch must not have worked.

You see, I’d say the same thing, about the sports watch, sitting across a table from you that I did on the board. You'd likely get angry in person. too.

People do rip scabs off in debate (internet or in person) and it isn't always intentional.

I disagree, doomed planet. I don't believe I need a personal introduction to Larry Elder to object to his publicly made statements. While it may be very possible Elder believes what he is says, that makes him sincere. It doesn't make him right.

Perhaps my criteria of what makes the Larry Elders of the world bought-and-paid-for sellouts does not seem sufficient to you, but it seems to work for me. I can respect and possibly admire Elder for having the courage of his convictions, but I disagree with them just the same.



"A guy like you?" And who the hell are you, Aevans176? What makes you think you deserve to be "'spoken to" in any different fashion than anyone else on this board? Because of what you do? Because of how much money you make? Because of how big your house is or what kind of car you drive? Because you're a White male?

None of that means squat. Here you're not rich, you're not influential and nobody cares how many nickles you have to rub together or how many bathrooms you have. The only thing that matters is how well you post and how well you debate the issues discussed here. Everything else is irrelevant to anyone not named Aevans176.

Maybe you're a big shot in your normal working day life. Maybe you're a homeless guy at the public library with a vivid imagination. Don't know. Don't care.

There is a reason why the debates on about race get testy. All the masks are dropped and people can speak candidly and occasionally offensively about one of the great unresolved issues of American life. So if you don't like the way you are "spoken to" by me, I would suggest either learning to live with it or avoiding altogether debating me directly. I'll TRY--really try to respect you and your perspectives---- but only up to a point. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. When I don't feel I'm getting any I don't extend any.



Check your own thread from October 2006 Black Republicans, Are they sell outs?



In response to your question, Is it ok to call Black Republicans ephitets such as "uncle Tom" or "oreo"? Are these accurate and deserved remarks?, I wrote:



At which point your response was to pretty much ignore the positive things I said and ask WHY I considered Ward Connerly a Uncle Tom. Is this a situation where when I'm nasty to someone everyone notices and when I'm nice, nobody cares?



The fear of being a victim of a street crime is a real and realistic one, bucket. It doesn't make you a racist to be afraid of a Black man assaulting and robbing you if most of the street crimes are committed by Black men. It only means you recognize the reality that there are Black criminals preying upon innocents. That isn't racism. That's intelligence.

I'm not going to make any excuses for criminal behavior. There are a lot of historical, economic, and systemic reasons, but they can't be used as rationalizations or worse, apologies for Blacks committing crimes. When someone is behaving in a way that is dangerous to the community and law-abiding citizens, the inner motivations aren't important. Let the attorney save them for closing arguments. Just get them off the streets.

Racism comes into play when your fear of being robbed by a Black man becomes a fear of all Black men. If every time you pass a group of loud Black teenagers on the street you check to see if your doors are locked and you press down on the accelerator, then you may be crossing into a gray area. A healthy sense of caution is one thing. Paranoia is something else.

Racial paranoia would lead me to think that my Caucasian co-workers smile and laugh and joke around me on the job but at home around the dining room table it's, "Let me tell you what that dumb nigger did today" I prefer to think they just say, "Let me tell you what the dumb jerk did today."

It's hard to live worrying if you're going to be victimized by someone just because you're White. It's also hard to live worrying if you're going to be stigmatized by someone just because you're Black. Or as the rock band Living Colour put it in the song, "Funny Vibe:"

No, I'm not gonna rob you
No, I'm not gonna beat you
No, I'm not gonna rape you
So why you want to give me that
Funny Vibe!

No, I'm not gonna hurt you
No, I'm not gonna harm you
And I try not to hate you
So why you want to give me that
Funny Vibe!

It may seem at times that both Black criminals and White racists are running rampant. I would agree with Aevans176 on this one point: racism is not seen as acceptable behavior by Whites as it once was. Neither is coddling and protecting criminals by Blacks, especially since Black criminals primarily prey upon other Blacks. The absurd "stop snitching" street code has been widely denounced by responsible individuals in the Black community much as the White community looks askance at obvious and overt acts of racism.

But it's the subtle and less obvious and overt forms of racism that are tolerated or ignored by Whites that works my nerves just as it bugs Whites when Black people rally to the side of some miscreant that cries "racism."

Both sides of the racial split have work to do cleaning up their own act. We seem to get caught up in raging debates as Moif and I have as who needs to put more in more work towards racial reconciliation when the only logical answer is, "WE DO".

I hear ya. I do. Coffee shop debate usually isn't of this tone.

Sports watches and military recruiting is far different than racially centered remarks about being stupid or boorish sir.




BOF, I agree with what you're saying about most of the debate held in coffee shops...
But you also know what he's saying there too. If Larry Elder and White Conservatives agree... ... he's directly saying that white conservatives are delusional fools.

Like I said. I believe that certain racially centered remarks are generally relegated to the safety of being behind a dell.

*I DON'T BELIEVE THIS*
But what if I'd said... " any black men who still believe in AA are ignorant and should put out the torch of their unsuccessful lives and find their ways to the real world".

How would that blow over? It wouldn't.



hahahaha.... Calm down. You seriously wig out.

I do ok, and if you'd like to come visit I've openly offered anyone to come to Dallas. I'd love to meet any of y'all. That has no bearing on what I'm saying. I'm a mid-level manager in a very successful company that probably if they sold I'd be on the tollway with a sign like the engineers when TI laid off. It doesn't mean anything in the long-run.

I'm talking about a 5'10" 190lb man from the South. That's what I'm talking about Man to Man.... you'd never call me a delusional fool.

I liken it to Al Sharpton behind a mic. It's NT behind a Dell. I'd bet that if we went out for a beer and you sat in stool beside me that your tone would change. That's my point.

Funny thing is... that in my experience, a black man can say basically what he wants about someone that goes against the grain (Larry Elder). If I called someone that supports... say, the NAACP, a sell out. A hoser. A needy-black American lover. People would call me a bigot. Actually, because those are pretty cruddy statements. Guess it only works one way.

Any man of BoF's intellectual and rhetorical acumen hardly needs me to speak for him, but I'm fairly confident in saying that he knows the difference between my saying Larry Elder is a delusional fool and suggesting either directly or by inference that White conservatives are delusional fools as well. Pity you don't seem to share that abilty. To be sure, some of them are delusional fools, but I'll call them out on an individual basis instead of grouping them as a whole. There are always exceptions to every rule.



I believe you had a very intelligent, witty and insightful response to this kind of tripe. Now what was it...oh yeah. It went something like this:





Thanks for the standing invitation, but I've been to Dallas and there's nothing there that makes me want to come back. As you may have noticed from my avatar, I'm a 49ers fan so there's not much reason for me to dig Dallas (thank GOD Jerry Jones fired Jimmy Johnson--he owned the Niners). Move to San Antonio or Austin and then I might consider it.

Mano-a-mano over a tall, cool one, I would never call you a delusional fool? Well now that depends. What if you are acting like a delusional fool? You wouldn't want me to lie to your face, would you?

You said you had never seen me post anything nice about Black Republicans. I showed you where I had. Isn't this your cue to "cowboy up" and admit you were wrong?

And by the way? Larry Elder isn't a Republican. He describes himself as a cross between Libertarian and Republican or a "Republitarian." Whatever.

Trust me when I say this if you don't trust anything else: I am who I am. 24-7, 365. This is not some pose I strike in front of a computer monitor. I don't have to. My tone wouldn't change in person or behind a HP (not a Dell). It doesn't get any more real than me. That's my point.

Along with this...

I want to expounds on nighttimer's statement above.

From reading your posts for a long period of time, aevans176, we know that you are white, Christian , live in the suburbs and have a good job with an international company, which has offices in Dallas and elsewhere. You seem satisfied with your life and lifestyle.

I think others have danced around the issue, but I want to stop the parsing and go directly at it.

What we want to know is how you got there. Did you become part of the privileged class because you graduated from college summa cum laude or did you get where you are because of pull - you know, something like the daddy factor. Seems to have worked well for a U. S. president most of us would like to see gone.

Did it ever occur to you that Blacks, Hispanics and others did not have the nepotism advantage, simply because their fathers and grandfathers didn't generally hold positions to pass to the next “generation.” I put in quotes, because you seem to enjoy lecturing Turnea, who is only seven years your junior, as if he were from another generation.

Here’s an example of lack of previous generation pull. What could the late Buck O'Neal have accomplished if baseball had integrated before Jackie Robinson's 1947 entry. Woud he have been included in those Negro league players inducted into the Hall of Fame if he had that pull.



http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/sports/b...and&emc=rss

While O'Neal and Minnie Minoso were rejected, there was room for two white owners.

One was B. L. Wilkinson.

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/jl-wilkinson-hof.htm

This was, in my opinion, one of the greatest injustices in modern history - 2006 - not so long ago. Sort of makes the Hall of Fame the Hall of Shame. Cooperstown needs to get its collective head out of whatever comfortable spot it keeps it.

Is racism against whites in America as prevalent as that against blacks? More So?

No and no. Does anyone really believe this is the case?

Is "reverse racism" a significant factor in harming the opportunities of white Americans?
Only to white males who feel threatened by minorities.

I hate participating in race threads here because they turn so hateful and ugly. But I could not let this statement stand unchallenged.



I don’t know where you got that ludicrous statistic, but certainly not from the FBI’s Hate Crimes statistics (turnea supplied a link).



I'm not a statistician, but when you have 1,027 victims out of 80% of the total population vs. 3,475 victims out of 13% of the total population, it certainly doesn't add up to "85% of racist crimes are carried out by blacks against whites".

I am aware of turnea's link. I responded to it in post nr 45 of this thread.

The 85% was a percentage I kept coming across and thus quoted.

I shall repeat my conclusion however:

It seems to me that if three quarters (74%) of Americans stand for 3,475 crimes (as turnea's link implies) and less than a quarter (12.1%) stand for 1,027, then what you've said is only partly true. Black people in the USA seem to be just as dangerous as white people.

In other words, the problem of racist attacks seems universal. I say 'seems' because of course, we can't know for sure what motivates people to attack each other and what comes across as a race crime could be an 'equal opportunity crime'. I make no assumptions about this. My POV is that human being are equally nasty to each other (or kind to each other) regardless of race.


edited for clarification

Irony in life... I apologize if I miss some spots on this, but I'm on a conf call and have been here since 630a and my coffee pot is empty. Trust me Bof, nepotism is nowhere in this story.

Turnea seems to be from another generation. It's not the calendar date you were born on that dicates experience, Bof, you should understand that by now.

I'll give you the 2 word rendition of my career and how I got here.
Hard work.

Seriously. Bof, my Dad is a retired Army officer who is now an HR person for Home Depot. He doesn't know ANYONE in the industry I work in. I opened my own doors.

Quick history? It's not quite the "pursuit of happiness" story, but it's at least true and a real snapshot of America.

I paid my own way through school, working full time nearly the last 3 years. I learned the wireless business as it began, coupled with the CLEC industry by working for a national company in Baton Rouge. I was promoted 4 times while I was there (and still in school for the most part). We took that inside sales project from about 150 reps and $20M to about 400 reps and $75M in revenue. When I started, I was an inside sales person, and got promoted after the first 2 months because why? I was the best by at times $10-$15K/month more than the 2nd best guy. During my tenure there, I helped to open a 2nd center in Shreveport, which still exists and consequently is still extremely profitable years later (We hired a rock star staff and implemented some great policies/procedures). There were times there that I'd work 50 or 60 days straight due to my school schedule to put the time in that it required. While people were sleeping on Sat am, or drinking away Friday nights... 1/2 or 3/4 of that time I was at the office or attempting to find time to study.

I decided about 6 mos or a year after graduation that La wasn't going to make my career goals, so I took a job in Allen, Tx with a then small telecom firm. Similar story. We took that company from 150 total employees (including cleaning crew) to over 400 in a year. The VP of that company had comp tied to my performance. He bought a lake house in 1 year from what we did. Seriously. He still has it. How'd I do that? I made Saturday trips to a 3rd party sales center in OKC every couple of weeks. I took 11p conference calls from our outsourced night center in Monterrey a couple nights/week. I showed up at 6am sometimes, and stayed until the cleaning crew had left many days. I spent my own money on lunches for good sales reps, I made an investment in the people and the company. In the beginning, I even watched two ladies' kids until the day care opened one summer, so that they could be there early. That meant that I was working sometimes until after 8p.

I still play golf w/ the guy (who happens to be black, and of course from Louisiana) that replaced me every 4 or 5 weeks. Having an idea of his comp plan, that guy probably makes more than I do.

That VP took a job on the board of the company I work for now. This company had been successful to spite itself, but needed a breath of life.A few years ago, I got call from the CEO of this company. Here I am. Similar story. In the time I've been here, retail sales have grown by about 300%. I started with the local Dallas sales office and it's people. Now I manage Chicago, Seattle, LA, DC, and part of the NYC sales functions. Our company has offices in the UK, France, Tokyo, and an outsourced gig in Syndey. I really don't work that hard now, but even when I started the story was the same. I came in on Sundays to talk to the tech support people to get feedback. I used to come in to work with reps that covered both coasts, which sometimes meant 7a-7p. Now it's more like 830-5 or 530, but maybe that's 330p on Fridays. Funny enough, I still put in the hours. A few weeks ago I went running with a fortune 500 VP in OKC at 5a on Wednesday, had a 10a meeting, flew to Seattle at 2p, and ended up at a happy hour w/ a sales rep in our Seattle office and our contact at a Redmond based gaming company... getting home at about 10a PST. Then we had a 830a w/ a processor company in Tacoma, and of course a conf call on the way back to the office. I flew home that day at 4p CST. Get it?

What's the recurring theme? Very hard work. Honesty. Taking care of people. Ensuring that my character and my work ethic were always intact and what helped to define me. I married a woman with a similar story.

Was it being white? Heck not . It was the theme of GREEN. I never got hired into a job because of my pedigree. I never got promoted because I knew someone. I got here because I made people money, and they continually positioned me to make them more. That consequently generally has helped my wallet over time...

Could a black man have done this? Go to that same Allen Telecom firm and find a man named Troy. He has my last job, and is doing very well. Why? He came from a lower-middle class family in Lake Charles. He went to USL.... you get the picture.

I literally get sick of apathy. My parents don't have any money. Sure- I grew up in a 2 parent home with lots of LOVE. But also a monster work ethic. I admit that can happen in any color family, but are surely advantages to having learned those lessons early.

I really hate to jump into this slugfest, but I just want to add a little anecdote to perhaps add to the debate. After reading through most of the posts, I want to comment on something aevans176 touched on, even if he didnt consciously know he was. I wont be nearly as bold in my rhetoric, but hopefully my experiences can add to the discussion. Onto a story:

Second semester freshman year, I took a sociology class titled Inequality: Race, Class, Ethnicity. The teacher was supposed to be a good one and I was somewhat excited to take it. Unfortunately, the teacher was killed in a tragic accident before the semester and he was replaced by another professor who may be the worst teacher I have ever had. She was short, female, former-NYPD cop, part Native American, a feminist, and probably a socialist as well. It was bad. She was heavily biased in the classroom and didnt do any actual sociology teaching. Her class consisted of sitting down and calling on students to talk about how bad racism was. The white students, who it appeared mostly came from suburban households, appeared dumbfounded that racism even existed. The class devolved into an hour and a half echo chamber that I had to sit through twice a week. No sociology was taught whatsoever and I never spoke up, fearing for both my grade and my reputation. It didn't appear that even moderate opinions were worthy.

Well one day late in the semester, the professor was on another rant and I just couldnt take it any more and I spoke up. She was talking a lot about the White Privilege and white man's burden and other such things. I put it bluntly: "I don't own slaves. I am not related to anyone who has ever owned slaves. My family came here as immigrants after slavery even occurred." This sparked a debate on the "responsibility" of an entire race. My point was this: My grandparents on my mother's side immigrated from Spain and Colombia. My great-grandparents on my father's side immigrated from Italy. All in the early-mid 20th century. I, as a white man, did not feel responsible for the actions of others. I can empathize, I can criticize, but I felt like I could not bear responsibility. Many did not like what I had to say and thought I should feel sorry for slavery and my teacher thought I should feel sorry for her being she was part Cherokee (and there was some government program that took indian babies off reservations and into white families, she being one of them). I couldn't do it. I adhere to my individualist notions that people should be judged on their individual merits. I felt that as long as I am not a racist in my social relationships, that that should be enough. What got the teacher really riled up was that some minority students agreed with me.

But here is the point in relation to this thread. I think just as African Americans do not like to be grouped together and called inferior or to be discriminated against, that white people do not like it when they are grouped together and labeled with "privilege." So what I take from aevans176, even if he didn't mention it, was that he and his family had to work for everything they currently have and that there is pride in that. I feel the same way about my family. I know my father doesnt think he was privileged when he had to work the graveyard shift at Rikers Island as a Corrections officer. So here is the thing. A good amount of White Americans are from the poor and/or middle class. Most of them have had to work very hard through generations to get where they are today. To say that those accomplishments occurred through a racist power structure is in effect, hurting that pride. I would say it is akin to saying that a black man only succeeded through Affirmative Action. Many poor and middle class white Americans have had to work for everything just as African Americans and Hispanics,etc.. have. I think that a level of animosity occurs when whites are all grouped together and well (I don't want to say accused) with perpetuating racism. I think maybe I have lost my train of thought here but I mean that both Whites and Blacks work hard for what they have achieved and neither want to hear that their accomplishments are due to anything other than their own merit.

So its kind of like this. NT, I cannot empathize with what it is like to be a black man living in modern America. I am sure you have gone through much hardship with your career and family. I am sure aevans176 has also gone through hardships as well working his way to where he is. I think the problem occurs when people say that blacks suffer a constant barrage of racism that hinders their ability to succeed. Its a problem because I think it is said in such away that it is perceived totrivialize the hardships of white people. Almost like "your white, so you will be alright" kind of mentality. This is kind of what I see in this thread. I know I do not want to be told that my family had any privilege or that they had it easier because they are white. I'm sure this sentiment is shared by many blacks who may or may not have benefited from AA. I really think that we have to stop grouping people into such large groups because that leads to generalities that hinder positive discussion.

I hope this makes sense. If I was way off at any point, please flame away, I am interested in honest opinions.

Not way off.. but again before I get to the numbers (Ive got a bit for both moif and aevans176's point soon enough, I'm a bit of a perfectionist though so I'll need to follow my lines till they end).

Let's bring the anecdotes down to Earth.

First, I don't think anyone has even claimed here that continuing racism plays a significant role in "holding blacks back". Certainly it's still documented as occurring in employment, housing, etc. but the numbers are in the single digits now and have been for ... maybe twenty years.

Second comes from the first, that is not at all a long time and what frustrates blacks the most is typically that many cannot seem to understand that has a lasting effect on the prospects of the black community. The effects of hundreds of years of persecution take more than forty years to wear off economically.

Third comes from the second. The typical response to that reality if "Well I (or grandad or whoever) started from poverty and look where I am today."

Congratulations, but recall that this is a discussion on s national level, not just about the isolated anecdote. "Hard Work" could allow a black man to succeed in the fifties too. Just look at A.G. Gaston, the problem is in the rule not the exceptions so all of this "bootstrap talk" is pointless. African-American were and remain some of the hardworking people in this country, the last people who need to learn about a work ethic.

Responsibility isn't even the point, that sociology teacher missed than entirely. They call blame a game for a reason, let's talk the facts.

Facts are black have been put at an economic disadvantage worse than any group in this nations history, except maybe Native Americans. Check out the poverty stats.

Poorest communities?

Blacks and Native Americans.

Not a coincidence so let's get real, as the saying goes.

I hate to keep harping on this but again the personal is being offered as the systematic. Personally I am sure many white males here have faced adversity or have not lead a privileged life. But the system reflects a completely different picture.

Which should we a citizens of the US concern ourselves with more? The personal or the systematic?

I already spoke of my own community where over 90% of those in government housing, housing that is also funded, operated and managed by the Federal government, are black. That shows a huge disportion of blacks living in poverty and without question the most depressing and violent areas in my town...which means their children are attending the worst schools. I think we can all at least agree to the fact that the biggest hindrance to success and the good life in America is poverty, and I think in these discussions we all need to own up to the fact that poverty in the US is in racially defined. That is a problem we are all responsible for.
How lederuvdapac can you claim you bear no responsibility to this? It is your federal govt too isn't it? How are you absolved from your own society's failures?

I think we often try to excuse ourselves from social conditions on the idea that the history of the condition is still somehow the current failure. When perhaps instead of explaining how we were not living, or personally involved with conditions a hundred years ago we should be asking ourselves what our involvement is now.

I was reading this thread and these two sentences struck me. If it is true that racism isn't legally prohibited (due to the interpretation of the First Amendment), then this could be seen as one of the causes as to why racism/discrimination is, since the end of the civil rights movement in the late sixties, still such an important social issue in the U.S.. I believe that an important step in fighting racism and disrimination (in which form it occurs; white against black, black against white, white against white, black against black etc etc etc) is to make it legally prohibited. Make anti-discrimination laws, prosecute any people (regardless of their social background, skin color or believe) who expose their racist and discriminating ideas in public. (In Europe many countries already have laws like this and the European Union has adopted a Charter of fundamental rights article that specifically prohibits racism and discrimination of any form.)

This, in my opinion, would be a step in the right direction, a step further away from past sins.

Odd, I thought that is where I was.



I was talking about perception. Perception of each other is real factor in race relations. I do not deny the facts that you present. I was just commenting that grouping all white people together and making generalities is as faulty as doing the same with blacks.



You do not have to be snide with me turnea, save it for people who deserve it. I prefaced my post noting that I was presenting an anecdote and then continued to relate that anecdote to the current discussion.



And i never claimed otherwise. You are completely misinterpreting my post. I was simply making observations on social relationships based on my own experience. The debate has to do with race relations and I commented that I felt that each group firing at eachother on all cylinders was due to unfair generalizations on both sides. And this was a result of grouping people by race in the first place. The discourse is tainted from the very start. What I was trying to get across was that people do not like to be accused of wrong-doing or of having it easier than the next person because it trivializes their achievements. This is true for everyone.



Only if you look at it from the wrong perspective. If you look at the top 1%, then you would probably view the system poorly. But measuring how many minorities are in the top 1% disregards the millions of people in the bottom 99%. If we look at the absolute number of people considered in poverty in the US, whites greatly outnumber blacks and other minorities (although the % is smaller due to the larger white population). link My point is that while there is a strong correllation between race and poverty, the hardships of poverty is not monopolized by any single race.



I wouldn't agree that poverty is racially defined. Poverty is a problem that effects all individual regardless of any social factors.



I am not responsible. I am a 20 year old white male and I am not responsible for society's ills. Those are the sins of the father. I am working to make this what I feel, a better place. But I do that by example, by being a person who does good things. I am an individual. "Society" in terms of a unitary, conscious entity is a fallacy. There are only individuals. I am absolved because in my eyes, I have never done anything to perpetuate what you deem to be failures.



And I have answered this. I will live my life according to my own morality and hope that it is enough to positively influence my neighbors. I will not however, be lectured by someone on their high horse about things that I should or should not do in order to free us from the failures of "society." I am a single person and thats all that I have control over.

Poverty in the US is racially centered upon "Black Americans", with the 2002 census stating that about 1/5 of black people in the US are under the poverty line, where as about 1/10 white people were. (give or take)

The question always will be why? Why are the projects by your house predominantly black? I think that's a thread all alone.

Is it racism that did that? Hmmm....
Nope. Not any more in my mind. Maybe at its roots, but now it's really a socio-cultural epidemic clashing with the unfortunate end of capitalism.

According to this:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/bythenumbers/...education_x.htm


Interesting. What does this mean? I'd suppose that possibly it's not skin color alone. Not a "conspiracy to keep welfare mothers in the projects and poor for sure.

My real question would be, how can the government in a capitalist society stop poverty? Does it owe black people more because of our history? What if the dynamic of poverty in reference to race was more egalitarian?

Its a step in the far right direction. Laws such as this are the antithesis of a free society. And we would not be alleviating past sins, we would be hiding from them. The right way to address past sins is to discuss them freely and openly in a public forum. It is through understanding and not obedience that racism has a better chance at being quelled.

This is exactly the point we don't agree on.

The vast majority of American society wasn't part of any of that.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m126...v23/ai_13523966


I know how you feel. We just don't agree, and the statistics really don't either.

As America more and more is being run by children born in the 70's and raised in the 80's, the less creedence anything of this nature will have. Right now, frankly, the only people I'm empathetic to in reference to racism in the US are people that have truly experienced it (i.e. elderly blacks, Irish, American Indians, Chinese, etc). If anyone deserves something... it's them.

Ever read "Life is so good" by George Dawson? It's a great dose of perspective for everyone.

This and related threads have proven statistically and via anecdote that most of us have not in any impactful fashion.

I wasn't.

That was mostly in response to aevans176 and I was being serious, being rewarded for hard work is something to be congratulated for.

I was merely pointing out that we've got a lot more ground to cover in this debate.


Doesn't matter whose fault it was, we are all having to pick up the pieces.

The point is that the historical affects are still with us. You've noted that black progress has been tremendous since the seventies, the very moment systematic discrimination was disavowed.

...but moving a whole community takes time. Rome wasn't built in a day and the history of racism in this country still has a substantial affect on where blacks and other minorities start from in the race on a macro level.

Work ethic has nothing to do with it.

Haha, when I read the first sentence I actually thought you agreed with me, I should have known better.

I know that we have completely different political views (libertarian vs social-democrat), but honestly why would such laws be the antithesis of a free society? I live in a free society (according to these statistics the Netherlands are the #1 in regard to civil and political freedoms) and we have these kind of laws. Almost nobody (except of course racists themselves) has a problem with these laws or has the feeling that their personal freedoms are being restricted in a negative way by these laws. As a matter of fact they are regarded as a good thing for society.

I agree with you of course that public and fair discussions are the best way to adress the past sins of society. Understanding is of course the best way to deal with these negative aspects which can be found in any society. But unfortunately a racist, who truly believes in his own personal opinions, will never change his views, no matter how many discussions he has been in. Sometimes as a society you have to draw a line. A law against any form of discrimination or racism is, in my opinion, such a line that ought to be drawn.

What you're advocating is perpetual and open-ended discrimination (as I've shown here:http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38468-2002Mar4?language=printer)?

What you're saying is that it's okay to literally punish a generation with no culpability?

Work ethic has everything to do with it Turnea. Socio-economics of poverty and how certain groups (and the US gov't) have dealt with it are part of it, but people were discriminating against the Chinese and Irish immigrants long after 1964....

Gave a man a fish. He ate for a day.

I'm not saying poor people are all lazy. I'm saying that poor people that stay that way are.

Discussions like this always make me think of some of the more fundamental questions that, if we can agree on the answers to, may allow us to find common ground for debate - or expose fundamental differences that won't be overcome by any amount of shouting.

How much of what we accomplish in life is through luck, and how much through effort alone? Examining this honestly, most of us will concede it is some of both, though we'll differ perhaps on how much of each.

If luck is a factor at all, do historical discriminations, translated into cultural perceptions and ethnic prejudices, play a factor in this? To me it certainly seems they might. In fact, that's sort of the area where, if these exist, they would impact individuals in the society. This would be the area where the discussion we are having takes place.

Are there preferences, even if invisible, for white males even today? Or if not outright preferences, is there a lack of discrimination for white males that amounts to the same thing? Again, the answers require honest examination. In my opinion, there are. As Turnea has stated, it takes a long time for systemic discrimination to 'clear itself out' of the collective consciousness. A black man in America has to prove himself more than a white man. They come to the table with a burden on their backs. And I think it's more of a burden than the various burdens we all bring to the table. A white man from Mississippi, looking for a job in Maine, will have to prove himself more than another candidate from New Hampshire. His drawl alone will cause this. Likewise, but perhaps even more so, a black man has to prove himself more than a white man - all other factors aside.

And just as the southern man has to work against prejudices that are reinforced by those who, in the perception of society, are gladly fulfilling the stereotypes of southern white men, so the black man must work against the prejudices reinforced by societal stereotypes that some black men seem eager to fulfill.

When we work hard, and succeed, it is easy to assume it was our effort alone that got us there. When we work hard and fail, it is easy to blame someone else. Might there not be a more middle ground? Just as not everyone works hard to achieve their success, not everyone who remains poor is lazy. The world is a complex place; we are constantly affecting and being affected by everything around us. How much of who we are is our genes? How much is our childhood? How much is just what we decided to be? How much of our success is from our personality? From our being in the right place at the right time? From our looks? From our parents? Even, from our race?

From your article:

Link

The article itself says circumstances are different in the civilian world. I agree that the military has been at the forefront of integration, not every sector can claim that, however.


I'm not interested in punishing anyone, except the KKK bombers still fighting conviction, but the FBI will handle that...

This isn't about punishment, but about ameliorating the effects of the long, recent, history of discrimination in this country.


Not nearly as much as blacks, especially on the part of the Irish. That community was Americana enough that rioting broke out in Boston over integration in the sixties.

The bulk of Chinese-Americans do not come from the communities were exploitation led them to build Chinatowns, which at the applicable time were veritable dens of poverty and crime, but are part of the diaspora fleeing communism long after the railroad days.

Can you substantiate that work ethic is lower among blacks in the US?

I don't think this excuse of youth is very convincing. My children have already, at the young ages they are, been taught about being a “good citizen” and what “citizenship” means. Even at the elementary school level this includes discussions on race relations in America.

Sure you can shirk this responsibility to some extent, as pointed out earlier raising your child well is not a responsibility our society holds accountable when it comes to racism. If you wish to teach your child that being racist is ok then yes that is an individual failure, but if you wish to not feed your child, or properly clothe them or provide them with an education then society will hold you accountable for your failure to uphold your “social responsibility” to your own individual responsibility. If you desire to fulfill these above responsibilities but are unable to society will even provide them for you, as the concept of personal and social responsibility is a shared burden. To lay claim that no individual is expected to fulfill responsibilities to the vagueness that is our society seems to be a theory absent of any consideration of the very basics of government and social orders. You honestly believe every ill action or event or condition of your life or any other's has been only defined by what you claimed to be “sins of the father”
Is this democracy of ours really a predestined order of events already set in motion and locked into course by the past actions of one's father? Isn't there any concurrency to consider? Any progression or evolvement at our own hands?



I don't understand your reluctance to admit to or perhaps even concede to the fact that you do not live your life by only your own personal morality. You live in our society don't you? And if so then you do in fact live your life within the morality of our society too, and you certainly never arrived to your own personal moral code absent of our society's own moral codes. You are as much a product of your own individual morality as you are our shared social morality. And that is why conflicts, of these sorts like racial conflict, are not only harmful to individuals, or even individual races, but society as a whole. Because in order for society to clearly and purposefully act as one we have to share some basic understanding and agreement of morality.




You seem to view the world and all in it with such a selective perspective that it obviously effects your ability to debate this fairly. Your article offering is a perfect example of this as it also concluded at the end that:
For instance, nearly 39% of families headed by a single black woman were in poverty, compared with 21% of comparable white women, according to census estimates released last year.
You also don't seem to consider the idea that this "work ethic" is an ideal that white men have constructed in our society ..an ideal that frowns upon and brings about penalties for anyone who works as a mother, a maid, or housekeeper, or gardener, or perhaps even a teacher. Working hard is never a guaranteed return of wealth and success ( I know this all too well) and I am sure a good portion of those who live in America could attest to the falsehood of this fairytale. There are people who work hard and are still poor. Also I have to assume in this discussion when you lay claim to the idea that poverty in America is a result of "socio-cultural epidemic" you refer to black culture, well what if your "culture" is perceived as lacking in work ethic? Are blacks not often racially stereotyped as being lazy and not willing to adopt or put into practice the ever coveted concept of "work ethic"? Could this perception work against them in a culture that is so persistent and focused on the virtues of hard work?
I also have to take exception to what many today define as hard work being either hard or much work at all, but that is likely off topic.

If you are truly interested in honest opinions, lederuvdapac, I hope you mean it because you're about to get one.

On a personal note, there are some important matters that require my undivided attention, however, as some of my prior remarks continue to be referenced, I feel compelled to add this reply.

You are still a very young man, leder and as smart as you are and as much as you know, I hope you are aware that you have much further to go down the road of knowledge. There are things that you fiercely believe at age 20 that you will not believe when you are 30 or 40 or 50 years old. That is not to say you are shallow or superficial, but only that many of your beliefs that seem carved in stone are in reality written in pencil. And pencils have erasers.

I don't believe anybody benefits from White guilt. Nor do I believe it is helpful to racial relations for one race to continue to guilt trip the other into eternity. Neither is it helpful to believe the world only began when you were born. Are the sins of the fathers (and mothers) always visited upon the sons (and daughters)? Not necessarily. But just because you bear no personal responsibility for the sins of previous generations of White Americans that does not mean you do not reap any benefit from the forced subjugation of Black Americans by those long-dead White Americans.

Racism and slavery and Jim Crow didn't begin two decades ago when you crawled from the womb and into the light of day. But it didn't end with your birth either. Saying you are a good person and you try to live a good life and you've never uttered a racial epithet in your life (Right?) is all very well, but nobody is good merely because they proclaim they are. If you have to say you're a good person you may well be the exact opposite. Everyone thinks they wear the white hat. Nobody sees themselves as the villain. From everything I have read about Adolf Hitler (and I have read a LOT about him), perhaps the most evil man ever to walk the planet, he never saw himself as a bad man. Everything he did in Germany was legal and millions of Germans supported him with love and passion right up until the bitter end.

I'm not comparing you to Hitler, so please relax. What I am saying is good intentions are not enough. If you proclaim you want a colorblind society but don't work to bring about racial justice, I find myself unimpressed by empty rhetoric and self-serving proclamations that "I am a good person." Was that ever in question?

I'm fairly certain that I may have said at some point that there was no slur that a Black person could make to Whites that was as hurtful as nigger. I have come to realize that it really bothers White people to be called a racist. When people whom see themselves disconnected and distanced from this nation's racist history they protest, they become defensive and they assert their innocence:

I am not a bad person. I never owned slaves. I am not responsible for the choices that African Americans have made or what happened to them. Don't call me a racist.

Maybe if I were to go through the genealogy of every person who is and ever was a member of America's Debate, I might find someone who owned slaves or was a slave. But we all know there are no living slaves or slaveowners. So what are the statue of limitations for White America? No, Negroes never got their 40 acres and a mule, but how long are Whites expected to feel bad or responsible for something they had nothing to do with?

I think if you had kept an open mind, lederuvdapac instead of becoming defensive and tuning the professor out, you might have learned something. Maybe revealing something that challenged the preconceptions that keep you comfortable.

The purpose of higher education is not merely to learn. It can also provide a means for us to unlearn as well. Perhaps the overbearing professor got on her moral high-horse and annoyed you with her laying all the ills of the world at your feet. What makes you getting on YOUR moral high horse any different than hers?

White Privilege exists. White Privilege is not just some figment of a "short, female, former-NYPD cop, part Native American, a feminist, and probably a socialist professor's" imagination. Not that ANY of those things mean you couldn't learn something from her. (Perhaps those are some of your prejudices kicking in?). You said it yourself, "The white students, who it appeared mostly came from suburban households, appeared dumbfounded that racism even existed." Are you including yourself among their numbers?

I don't kid myself that there's anything I can say that can convince you of something a tenured professor could not. But you asked for feedback and here it is. I think you are being overly congratulatory. I think you are being extremely callow.

You denied yourself a chance to learn. You refused to entertain even the possibility that the professor might be correct because you could not--would not--allow her contradictory perspectives to coexist with your already established views.

White people benefit from possessing White skin. If they did not, how many would exchange their Whiteness for Blackness?
If it were possible for me to change you from a White male to a Black male, how much would you demand in compensation?

Researchers said they found a $10,000 answer to a priceless question in a recent study: What is the cost of being black?

The study, conducted by researchers at Ohio State, Harvard and Georgia Southern University, found that white people are unaware of the complexities of being black.

The researchers asked the participants, who were white Americans of different ages, questions such as how much they would need to be paid to have television completely taken away from them for the rest of their lives. The majority of people said about $1 million.

Comparatively, they were asked how much they would need to be paid to be black for the rest of their lives. The majority answer to that question was less than $10,000. link

I truly wonder if people who doubt they enjoy any benefit from being born White would be willing to give it up to be Black?

Most people regard the overt racists such as the Ku Klux Klan as little more than an impotent, ineffectual, embarrassing anachronism that has no place in a civilized society. But overt racism is easy to spot and easier to condemn as being part of a lower social class. As Aevans176 recently quipped, "White racism nowadays is primarily marginalized to hillbillies and weirdos who make comments over Busch Light in the trailer park."

Which I think misses the point that racism can be found in condos and mansions and suburbs because nice people can be racist too. Or they can just convince themselves that they're too smart, too educated and too sophisticated to be racist.

You don't have to be a racist for racism to work for you.

The noted journalist Tom Wicker once said, "Centuries of discrimination had significantly diminished the economic competition encountered by whites. Loud proclamations of white self-sufficiency ignored a more subtle truth: The incalculable value of being white in America rested to a large extent on the calculable disadvantage of being black."

You don't see any particular value in your Whiteness, do you leder? No silver spoons in your mouth and no rich daddy to pave your way through the world. Good. I'm glad you understand the value of work, self-denial, delayed gratification and perseverance. Anyone who reads your posts can tell that you are preparing yourself to be a leader, and not a follower of the pack.

Still, you have a ways to go before you possess the wisdom and maturity required to be a leader, leder.

I'm not trying to get you to bend the knee to my morally superior position. There is much I can learn from you, or Moif or Aevans176 or many (but not all) of the usual suspects that participate in these racial debates. More likely than not it's young men like yourself and Turnea that will come up with the answers to the seemingly intractable problem of race in America.

However, it will take both sides coming to the table with open minds, candid words and a shared desire to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution. That isn't likely when you have already assumed a position of lofty and unassailable moral superiority.

White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex. In a white supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist themselves. There are general patterns, but such privilege plays out differently depending on context and other aspects of one's identity (in my case, being male gives me other kinds of privilege). Rather than try to tell others how white privilege has played out in their lives, I talk about how it has affected me.

I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in the country. I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and institutional. Because I didn't live near a reservation, I didn't even have exposure to the state's only numerically significant non-white population, American Indians.

I have struggled to resist that racist training and the ongoing racism of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I fix myself, one thing never changes--I walk through the world with white privilege.

What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don't look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me for those things look like me--they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves, and in a racist world that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I'm white.

My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white. Some complain that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority faculty who are mediocre, though I don't know very many. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for the next hundred years, it's possible that at the end of that time the university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has mediocre white professors. That isn't meant as an insult to anyone, but is a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate white professors have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology.

I am not a genius--as I like to say, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I have been teaching full-time for six years, and I've published a reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the unexceptional stuff one churns out to get tenure, and some of it, I would argue, actually is worth reading. I work hard, and I like to think that I'm a fairly decent teacher. Every once in awhile, I leave my office at the end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash my paycheck, I don't feel guilty.

But, all that said, I know I did not get where I am by merit alone. I benefited from, among other things, white privilege. That doesn't mean that I don't deserve my job, or that if I weren't white I would never have gotten the job. It means simply that all through my life, I have soaked up benefits for being white. I grew up in fertile farm country taken by force from non-white indigenous people. I was educated in a well-funded, virtually all-white public school system in which I learned that white people like me made this country great. There I also was taught a variety of skills, including how to take standardized tests written by and for white people.

White privilege is not something I get to decide whether or not I want to keep. Every time I walk into a store at the same time as a black man and the security guard follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am benefiting from white privilege. There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege plays out in our daily lives, but it is clear that I will carry this privilege with me until the day white supremacy is erased from this society. link 2

I'm not making any assumptions about you leder. Maybe you're that exception to the rule and White privilege has never touched your life. You ARE more than just an individual. You are a White male American college student of great intellectual acumen. That puts you in