Quote :

"So can any of you guys then explain to me how the white man ruined the black family? 100 years ago, blacks had a higher employment rate, higher marriage rate, lower divorce rate, and 1/10 the out-of-wedlock birth rate they have now. Even the crime rate (eh em, or "arrest rate" if you're GOD) was nothing unique at all. They actually compared quite favorably to other races in the early 1900s in those respects. Today, all of that is long, long gone. Why? It wasn't slavery or Jim Crow or institutional racism, because I think you'll all admit that was worse back then than today. Illegitimacy and a loss of the stable family has done far more to ensure crime, poverty, and a lack of education in the black community than anything else. Where did that come from?"

interesting point.

7/21/2010 5:19:20 PM

came from the white man of course

7/21/2010 5:27:56 PM

Quote :

"came from the white man of course"

That's a huge point.

If a white person were to be vocal in their opposition to diversity busing, affirmative action, etc., many people will think, "They must be racist." If a non-white does the same thing....

Being called a racist (especially if the ones calling you that actually believe it,) REALLY FUCKING SUCKS.
Who wants to be a victim of that witch hunt?

You goddamn, "all fiscal conservatives, small government types, etc. are really just closet racists." people are hurting race relations more than the Black Panthers and the KKK put together.

Fucking stop, already.

7/21/2010 7:00:35 PM

The Roots of White Anxiety

Quote :

"In March of 2000, Pat Buchanan came to speak at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. Harvard being Harvard, the audience hissed and sneered and made wisecracks. Buchanan being Buchanan, he gave as good as he got. While the assembled Ivy Leaguers accused him of homophobia and racism and anti-Semitism, he accused Harvard — and by extension, the entire American elite — of discriminating against white Christians. A decade later, the note of white grievance that Buchanan struck that night is part of the conservative melody. You can hear it when Glenn Beck accuses Barack Obama of racism, or when Rush Limbaugh casts liberal policies as an exercise in “reparations.” It was sounded last year during the backlash against Sonia Sotomayor’s suggestion that a “wise Latina” jurist might have advantages over a white male judge, and again last week when conservatives attacked the Justice Department for supposedly going easy on members of the New Black Panther Party accused of voter intimidation. To liberals, these grievances seem at once noxious and ridiculous. (Is there any group with less to complain about, they often wonder, than white Christian Americans?) But to understand the country’s present polarization, it’s worth recognizing what Pat Buchanan got right. Last year, two Princeton sociologists, Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford, published a book-length study of admissions and affirmative action at eight highly selective colleges and universities. Unsurprisingly, they found that the admissions process seemed to favor black and Hispanic applicants, while whites and Asians needed higher grades and SAT scores to get in. But what was striking, as Russell K. Nieli pointed out last week on the conservative Web site Minding the Campus, was which whites were most disadvantaged by the process: the downscale, the rural and the working-class. This was particularly pronounced among the private colleges in the study. For minority applicants, the lower a family’s socioeconomic position, the more likely the student was to be admitted. For whites, though, it was the reverse. An upper-middle-class white applicant was three times more likely to be admitted than a lower-class white with similar qualifications. This may be a money-saving tactic. In a footnote, Espenshade and Radford suggest that these institutions, conscious of their mandate to be multiethnic, may reserve their financial aid dollars “for students who will help them look good on their numbers of minority students,” leaving little room to admit financially strapped whites. But cultural biases seem to be at work as well. Nieli highlights one of the study’s more remarkable findings: while most extracurricular activities increase your odds of admission to an elite school, holding a leadership role or winning awards in organizations like high school R.O.T.C., 4-H clubs and Future Farmers of America actually works against your chances. Consciously or unconsciously, the gatekeepers of elite education seem to incline against candidates who seem too stereotypically rural or right-wing or “Red America.” This provides statistical confirmation for what alumni of highly selective universities already know. The most underrepresented groups on elite campuses often aren’t racial minorities; they’re working-class whites (and white Christians in particular) from conservative states and regions. Inevitably, the same underrepresentation persists in the elite professional ranks these campuses feed into: in law and philanthropy, finance and academia, the media and the arts. This breeds paranoia, among elite and non-elites alike. Among the white working class, increasingly the most reliable Republican constituency, alienation from the American meritocracy fuels the kind of racially tinged conspiracy theories that Beck and others have exploited — that Barack Obama is a foreign-born Marxist hand-picked by a shadowy liberal cabal, that a Wall Street-Washington axis wants to flood the country with third world immigrants, and so forth. Among the highly educated and liberal, meanwhile, the lack of contact with rural, working-class America generates all sorts of wild anxieties about what’s being plotted in the heartland. In the Bush years, liberals fretted about a looming evangelical theocracy. In the age of the Tea Parties, they see crypto-Klansmen and budding Timothy McVeighs everywhere they look. This cultural divide has been widening for years, and bridging it is beyond any institution’s power. But it’s a problem admissions officers at top-tier colleges might want to keep in mind when they’re assembling their freshman classes. If such universities are trying to create an elite as diverse as the nation it inhabits, they should remember that there’s more to diversity than skin color — and that both their school and their country might be better off if they admitted a few more R.O.T.C. cadets, and a few more aspiring farmers. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/opinion/19douthat.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

7/21/2010 7:24:39 PM

Its racist because you don't care about people who aren't related to you and you care about people who are related to you. The least racist conservatives will still tell you they want to raise money their whole life to give to their kids and don't want the government taking it and giving it to other people. Well if you care about those related to you and don't care about those aren't related to you then you probably subconsciously care progressively less about people who look less like you and are from different backgrounds.

A lot of people who don't mean to be racist are racist in their sub conscious.

7/21/2010 9:48:22 PM

that is 100% unsubstantiated bullshit. good work, troll

7/21/2010 10:12:14 PM

IMO not all "fiscal conservatives" are racist, just the Teabaggers and the Republican hypocrites who cry for fiscal responsibility but IRL don't give a shit, especially when it pertains to programs intended for their own base

real fiscal conservatives aren't necessarily racist, even though given the initial conditions of society some of their proposals have the effect (yet not the intent) of perpetuating or exacerbating pre-existing inequalities

OTOH I fail to see how policies that effectively reduce inequality, even with little coercion involved, can be said to be fiscally conservative (they may be fiscally responsible but that has more to do with shrinking the debt than with shrinking the size of government), because some way, somehow, they would need to greatly disproportionately draw off wealth from the rich (I'm in favor of a massive estate tax BTW) and assist the poor toward escaping from the cycle of poverty, and that doesn't come cheap
(this is not saying that equality ought to be more important than limited government and the encouragement of economic growth via lower taxation...)

7/21/2010 10:20:54 PM

Quote :

"Its racist because you don't care about people who aren't related to you and you care about people who are related to you. The least racist conservatives will still tell you they want to raise money their whole life to give to their kids and don't want the government taking it and giving it to other people. Well if you care about those related to you and don't care about those aren't related to you then you probably subconsciously care progressively less about people who look less like you and are from different backgrounds. A lot of people who don't mean to be racist are racist in their sub conscious."

Caring about your kin more than other familial groups is not racism. It's an evolutionarily necessary trait we've developed to further our genetic code.

Also, what were you smoking when you wrote this?

7/22/2010 7:44:03 AM

I'd still like to hear an answer to my question from the folks it was directed to.

How do you explain the breakdown of the black family over the past 100 years, and the attendant increase in crime rate (or, arrest and conviction rate )?

As late as 1940, close to 90% of black children were born to married parents (much better than the white rate today). Today, it's nearly 70% in the other direction for black folks. Let that sink in: 70% of black children are born outside of marriage.

Do you deny that this change has a major impact on crime, poverty, and education? Is it possible for any jobs training program, school improvement campaign, prison rehab program, welfare, or anything else to make a dent when that number is still there?

If it is a serious problem, and since we know you believe it isn't a fundamental problem with black culture (for that would be blaming the victim), can you explain to me what the white man did to force all these black people to have so much sex?

[Edited on July 22, 2010 at 4:00 PM. Reason : d]

7/22/2010 3:56:31 PM

Quote :

"As late as 1940, close to 90% of black children were born to married parents (much better than the white rate today). Today, it's nearly 70% in the other direction for black folks. Let that sink in: 70% of black children are born outside of marriage."

All races have an increased divorce rate.

Quote :

"Do you deny that this change has a major impact on crime, poverty, and education? Is it possible for any jobs training program, school improvement campaign, prison rehab program, welfare, or anything else to make a dent when that number is still there?"

Possibly. Would you also deny that crime, poverty, and lack of education contribute to the breakdown of the Black family?

Quote :

"can you explain to me what the white man did to force all these black people to have so much sex?"

I'm not sure what you mean by this, or where this is coming from. This is also a rather stereotypical comment. "What did the white man do to make the black man rob so much/do so much drugs/listen to loud music?"

The group in poverty will be more affected by things like crime, drugs, lack of education, etc. This results in many things like lack of protection. There's also an unfortunate pride issue around many Black men about using condoms.

7/22/2010 4:09:07 PM

Quote :

"Possibly. Would you also deny that crime, poverty, and lack of education contribute to the breakdown of the Black family?"

I do deny that.

Because when the social and legal discrimination against blacks was far greater, when poverty was worse, the black family and society was better off in these respects - the crime rate was lower, the employment rate was higher, and they took greater advantage of the lower amount of education that was available to them.

The correlation is the opposite of what you suggest.

7/22/2010 4:17:45 PM

Everyone's divorce rate declined in the past 60 years.

I just find it disgusting that you blame a maligned minority group for their problems, as if somehow they love being uneducated, in prison, and dying.

Your insinuation is that they somehow yearn for failure.

It's not only stereotypical, it's explicitly racist. Do you think they're all fucking idiots or something?

[Edited on July 22, 2010 at 4:21 PM. Reason : ]

7/22/2010 4:20:09 PM

Oh shit, I can't argue any of your points, time to call you a racist!

Sounds really familiar.

Also, you suck ass at math.

7/22/2010 4:31:35 PM

^ do you think a drug addict yearns for failure? sometimes the reasons that people do things isn't quite so simple as their "yearnings"

7/22/2010 4:33:07 PM

He is literally arguing that the only reason Black people are poor, in prison, lack education, etc is due to their own making.

Seriously. He's seriously making that argument.

This is how conservative White middle America views the Black community:

Quote :

"AH DUN DIDNT WANNA READ NO BOOK NO HOW *SMOKES BLUNT* *EATS WATERMELON* *COLLECTS WELFARE*"

[Edited on July 22, 2010 at 4:35 PM. Reason : ]

7/22/2010 4:34:36 PM

Quote :

"Everyone's divorce rate declined in the past 60 years. I just find it disgusting that you blame a maligned minority group for their problems, as if somehow they love being uneducated, in prison, and dying. Your insinuation is that they somehow yearn for failure. It's not only stereotypical, it's explicitly racist. Do you think they're all fucking idiots or something?"

Dude, as a group, they do love being uneducated, in prison, and dying. That's a stereotype, and it's a true stereotype. Recognizing that is the only way to fix it.

There is nothing inherently wrong or deficient in black folks, as evidenced by the fact that they bounced back so amazingly well, and so quickly, after slavery ended despite the social hardships that remained. There was nothing the white man could do to keep them down and out. Their families were proud and strong. The character of their community was shown beautifully for a few generations.

And then it disappeared, and we're left with the tragedy we have today. I work in the Durham projects with these kids multiple times a week, and it pisses me off what has happened to them. And it's their parents' fault. And I'm doing what I can to make sure it doesn't happen to the next generation.

The hip-hop, gang, welfare culture is pure poison in every possible way. I'm a racist for trying to get them to stop taking it?

[Edited on July 22, 2010 at 4:35 PM. Reason : a]

7/22/2010 4:35:01 PM

Quote :

"Dude, as a group, they do love being uneducated, in prison, and dying."

Are you fucking kidding me? I wish I knew who you actually were so I could forward this to your fucking employer. Stop this racist shit.

7/22/2010 4:36:23 PM

Quote :

"There was nothing the white man could do to keep them down and out. "

7/22/2010 4:37:28 PM

Come on, God...

7/22/2010 4:40:15 PM

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

You take a fucking group, enslave them for 400 years, literally build the country off the backs of their bloody beaten bodies.

Then you release them, except you create laws intentionally designed to keep them under your boot for the next one hundred fucking years.

And then, even when it's illegal to keep them under your boot, you still have police officers who get away with murdering them, housing communities who keep them out, you shuffle them away into projects and ghettos.

They respond by developing a culture around celebrating violence and poverty, a culture that you fucking created by shoveling them into there.

And then you blame THEM for it.

7/22/2010 4:41:45 PM

Quote :

"Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one's opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness."

--Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She teaches history and law

http://tinyurl.com/2ce8oac

[Edited on July 22, 2010 at 4:44 PM. Reason : Right?]

7/22/2010 4:43:14 PM

Quote :

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again. You take a fucking group, enslave them for 400 years, literally build the country off the backs of their bloody beaten bodies. Then you release them, except you create laws intentionally designed to keep them under your boot for the next one hundred fucking years. And then, even when it's illegal to keep them under your boot, you still have police officers who get away with murdering them, housing communities who keep them out, you shuffle them away into projects and ghettos. They respond by developing a culture around celebrating violence and poverty, a culture that you fucking created by shoveling them into there. And then you blame THEM for it."

You're forgetting the inconvenient little fact that immediately after slavery ended, their culture was just fine and their virtue was pretty amazing.

The black culture of violence, poverty, ignorance, and baby-mama-drama is an invention of the last 40 years.

That's why I can blame them. Because they had it completely fixed for nearly a hundred years (end of the civil war until around the 60s).

I'm glad you posted the pictures of those hangings. Even that could not keep them down and out. The black family was fine throughout all of that, and they were not a culture that loved violence or ignorance, even when that was going on.

That's exactly my point. Hanging them didn't touch their pride and they shined. Something changed in the last generation or two to make the group what it is today. If it was slavery, institutional racism, or Jim Crow, these problems would have existed then. But they didn't. And that's an inconvenient truth for you.

So, you want a pissing contest? How many at-risk young, urban black men do you mentor? Other than TWW and voting for race-baiters, what have you done to help these people you claim to love?

[Edited on July 22, 2010 at 4:49 PM. Reason : a]

7/22/2010 4:47:55 PM

Reminder that lynchings still regularly occurred when your parents were born, and the Civil Rights act was passed while most of your parents were teenagers.

This shit isn't that far in the past, so don't act like it was all ancient history and they should move on and forget about it.

Quote :

"their culture was just fine and their virtue was pretty amazing. "

A man named Jim Crow would like to have a word with you.

Quote :

"So, you want a pissing contest? How many at-risk young, urban black men do you mentor?"

You shouldn't be near any of them with your idiotic bootstraps rosie-eyed view of the past 100 years bullshit.

Seriously, if I knew who you were I'd forward all of your posts to whatever fucking place you mentored at.

[Edited on July 22, 2010 at 4:52 PM. Reason : ]

7/22/2010 4:49:04 PM

When did I say they should move on and forget about it?

They should remember how they responded then, and respond the same way. By proving the haters wrong. Now, they love proving the haters right.

Quote :

"You shouldn't be near any of them with your idiotic bootstraps rosie-eyed view of the past 100 years bullshit. Seriously, if I knew who you were I'd forward all of your posts to whatever fucking place you mentored at."

They probably wouldn't appreciate it very much. And many of them would disagree with the strength of my position. But my work with these boys speaks for itself.

I don't unload this full story to every kid. That's not the point, and would just beat them up. The work is in getting them to think critically about their environment and how it affects them. And it works. A middle-school boy I work with was forced to choose between continuing to meet with me and joining a gang. They still want him. They aren't going to get him. Seriously, take all your rage at me and prove me wrong by getting black boys to grow up and be men, and change what I'm talking about.

[Edited on July 22, 2010 at 4:57 PM. Reason : a]

7/22/2010 4:50:22 PM

God is trolling you. he is only baiting you.

7/22/2010 4:56:09 PM

^ You don't debate to convince the other side, necessarily. You debate to convince the audience.

7/22/2010 4:59:08 PM

^^It's so much easier to cry victim and expect a handout. God has proven this already in this thread.

7/22/2010 4:59:55 PM

Hi, my name is Tulipluvr.

I work at a battered women's shelter. I also believe that women who dress slutty deserve to be raped.

7/22/2010 5:20:47 PM

[Edited on July 22, 2010 at 5:52 PM. Reason : ]

7/22/2010 5:51:19 PM

God might benefit from a week or so in the hole

Probably not though, theDuke is white, so a temporary suspension would further increase God's hatred towards his fellow white people

[Edited on July 22, 2010 at 6:01 PM. Reason : maybe get EMCE to ban him?]

7/22/2010 5:58:46 PM

personally, i think about half of soap box needs to go

7/22/2010 6:57:45 PM

Quote :

"I just find it disgusting that you blame a maligned minority group for their problems, as if somehow they love being uneducated, in prison, and dying. Your insinuation is that they somehow yearn for failure. "

There has certainly been some evidence that this is true at least to some degree:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ogbu

Quote :

"Involuntary minorities Ogbu observed that in some cases groups of people of the same race but located in different countries manifested different ability and/or achievement levels according to some measures. He studied how, why and to what degree this might be so. He concluded that U.S. Americans could be divided into "voluntary minorities" (groups of immigrants who chose to come to the United States, and their descendants) versus "involuntary" or "caste-like" minorities (descendants of groups of persons who found themselves in the United States, or under United States jurisdiction, against their will). In Minority Education and Caste (1978), Ogbu argued that "involuntary minorities" often adopted an "oppositional identity" to the mainstream culture in response to a glass ceiling imposed or maintained by white society on the job-success of their parents and others in their communities. Therefore, he reasoned, some non-whites "failed to observe the link between educational achievement and access to jobs." [1] Acting white In 1986 Signithia Fordham co-authored, along with Ogbu, a study which concluded that some African American students in a Washington, D.C., high school did not live up to their academic potential because of the fear of being accused of "acting white." Ogbu further echoed these findings in his 2003 book Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement (which summarized his nine-month research on the educational gap between white and African-American students in the Shaker Heights City School District located in the upscale Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, Ohio). He concluded that these students' cultural attitudes hindered their own academic achievement and that these attitudes are too often neglected by parents, educators and/or policymakers. Though the study's conclusions gained a popular foothold and have been espoused by such noted figures as Bill Cosby, a later study obtained different results. In 2003, Karolyn Tyson, a sociologist, and William Darity Jr, an economist, both at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, directed an 18 month study at eleven North Carolinian schools which found that white and black students have essentially the same attitudes about scholastic achievement; students in both groups want to succeed in school and show higher levels of self-esteem when they do better in school. The results of this study have been published in a book by Stanford sociologist Prudence Carter. [1] A 2006 study titled An Empirical Analysis of "Acting White" by Roland G. Fryer, Jr. at Harvard University and Paul Torelli suggested that the phenomenon has a significant effect on black student achievement, especially in schools with high interracial contact and among high achieving students, but little or no effect in predominantly black or private schools.[2]"

It's certainly not the only cause, but such attitudes have an impact

7/22/2010 10:37:23 PM

^ the article you posted has no bearing on the quoted statement you're responding to.

7/22/2010 10:42:32 PM

Quote :

"TULIPlovr: How do you explain the breakdown of the black family over the past 100 years, and the attendant increase in crime rate (or, arrest and conviction rate )?"

This question is easy. Really, really easy. And your inability to see the simple/obvious truth here is something you should think about.

You've got your claims reversed. The break down of the black family (some of them) did not cause an increase in the crime rate. It's the other way around. The increase in arrests and convictions led to the break down of black family (some of them). In short, it's hard to build a family when members of that family are in and out of prison.

Now you've identified the 1960's as a sort of turning point for African Americans. A couple things come to my mind when I think about that decade and into the 70’s: Civil Rights and Drugs. Before the Civil Rights movement, black families had little freedom in choice of housing. So they lived together and in that way supported one another—less affluent blacks were bolstered by the proximity of their more affluent peers. Following the Civil Rights movement, more affluent black families were able to leave those communities, and many of them did so, leaving behind neighborhoods of poor blacks with no support.

The Civil Rights movement had another consequence, which some may refute. Basically, when blacks and whites had to use separate facilities, and blacks had less rights…this created a sort of order that whites were comforted by. When that order was removed, police stepped in to create it yet again by targeting blacks with arrests.

And then come the drugs… Men returned from Vietnam, traumatized or addicted to opium or whatever, to find communities that had been deserted with no jobs. And drugs were beginning to become more prevalent. Of course, the response of the US government was to pass a series of extremely punitive laws, which only made the sale of drugs even more lucrative. Furthermore, those laws were largely enforced against African Americans, robbing black communities of their fathers as they spent chunks of their lives behind bars.

I think you can connect the dots from here. This is, by no means, meant to be comprehensive or even well written/persuasive. Just some stuff for you to think about when you ponder why children may be born out of wedlock.

7/22/2010 11:12:25 PM

i respect your opinion, but i disagree.

racism was much more prevalent in the 20's than the 60's. you were not even a generation removed from chains. the further we get from actual slavery, the less general racism IMO.

further, a lot more white men went to Vietnam than black men - by a huge margin - blacks were like 12% of the combat force. probably not relevant here.

[Edited on July 22, 2010 at 11:29 PM. Reason : .]

7/22/2010 11:28:47 PM

^It's fine to disagree on a couple points (I wasn't tryna say anything big about Vietnam, by the way...just a mention of the war in general cause it ties into drugs). But you understand the general workings of how things changed in the 60's and 70's? And how that affected people.

Surely, you don't agree with TULIPlovr that black people randomly and spontaneously stopped getting married and broke their families down and then spiraled into crime, poverty, and lack of education...?

[Edited on July 22, 2010 at 11:48 PM. Reason : ]

7/22/2010 11:45:48 PM

Quote :

"Surely, you don't agree with TULIPlovr that black people randomly and spontaneously stopped getting married and broke their families down and then spiraled into crime, poverty, and lack of education...? "

It's not uncommon for conservatives to believe that effects don't have causes.

7/23/2010 12:04:13 AM

^I'm baffled by TULIPlovr cause he seems to have a good grasp on some stuff (almost like he's been schooled by someone). And then there's just this giant blind spot where he's refusing to use any sense at all. And he really thinks he has a compelling argument, asking his questions like they're supposed to be stumpers or some shit...

7/23/2010 12:16:53 AM

Quote :

"I think you can connect the dots from here. This is, by no means, meant to be comprehensive or even well written/persuasive. Just some stuff for you to think about when you ponder why children may be born out of wedlock."

I agree with your overall point. Yes, black people were at a disadvantage for most of our nation's history. They might even be at a statistical disadvantage now because of remaining prejudices. The reasons you cited are valid.

The question, though, is not whether past injustices were right or wrong. We know they were wrong. The question is what, if anything, should be done by the government or other institutions. Some would say that we should pass legislation, or direct state and federal funding, in the direction of people that have been, or are, at a disadvantage. If we go that route, just looking at skin color as a determinant strikes me as wildly inappropriate. We should be looking at socioeconomic conditions, or education, or any number of other considerations. The amount of melanin in one's skin should have absolutely nothing to do with how much help they get. If anyone disagrees, start by telling me what, exactly, you think the government should do to solve this problem.

When I talk about equality, I don't mean giving special perks to people that meet a certain criteria as determined by elected officials. I mean leveling the playing field as it exists today. That's the most government should do. On a social level, we should all be denouncing racism, and actively discouraging it.

[Edited on July 23, 2010 at 1:31 AM. Reason : ]

7/23/2010 1:08:51 AM

In before God tells destroyer that he doesn't feel guilty enough for being white and we should be paying black people into perpetuity. (because that'll fix the problem of black kids generally not wanting to excel at school )

[Edited on July 23, 2010 at 1:12 AM. Reason : .]

7/23/2010 1:11:50 AM

Quote :

"blacks were like 12% of the combat force. probably not relevant here."

they were also about 12% of the population...but the point wasn't that black men were disproportionately sent to Vietnam, but that black Vietnam vets who used drugs were disproportionately punished, compared to all druggies carrying that fear of Charlie with them

and that pattern persists today, black drug users are more likely to be prosecuted and more harshly punished than whites using the same drugs

7/23/2010 1:25:41 AM

I don't know, TULIPlvr's views seem somewhat consistent with Daniel Patrick Moynihan's prescient 1960's report on African-American families:
http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/webid-meynihan.htm

Quote :

"The question, though, is not whether past injustices were right or wrong. We know they were wrong. The question is what, if anything, should be done by the government or other institutions. Some would say that we should pass legislation, or direct state and federal funding, in the direction of people that have been, or are, at a disadvantage. "

Well, there has been a lot of government and private initiatives in the form of affirmative action (AA) and trying to close the achievement gap in education. To me these efforts have not seemed very effective and AA just tends to increase white resentment towards blacks. I really don't know what the government can do to lift disadvantaged groups out of dysfunction.

7/23/2010 1:38:38 AM

Quote :

"The amount of melanin in one's skin should have absolutely nothing to do with how much help they get. If anyone disagrees, start by telling me what, exactly, you think the government should do to solve this problem. When I talk about equality, I don't mean giving special perks to people that meet a certain criteria as determined by elected officials. I mean leveling the playing field as it exists today. That's the most government should do. On a social level, we should all be denouncing racism, and actively discouraging it."

Agreed.

This is why things like universal healthcare, universal equal education and other forms of social justice should be made available by the federal government to ALL AMERICANS. There are many groups black white and hispanic that have been disadvantaged and they should all be brought up. How do you pay for all of this? Progressive taxes on the rich and other wealth taxes like the estate tax. Taking the money away from those who benefited from wrongdoings and giving it to the victims.

7/23/2010 1:50:11 AM

Quote :

"Taking the money away from those who benefited from wrongdoings and giving it to the victims. "

how do you prove any "wrongdoing" and how do you prove who are "victims?"

I am white but I have a some Native American heritage. my ancestors were done wrongly. I am the victim!! pay me bitch!!

7/23/2010 8:37:25 AM

Quote :

"Taking the money away from those who benefited from wrongdoings and giving it to the victims."

What should the guidelines be for determining who benefited from wrongdoings, and who was harmed? If my great grandfather, who died 20 years before my birth, was wronged in some way, am I entitled to take property from some other person that isn't personally responsible for the wrongdoing?

7/23/2010 11:24:05 AM

Waiting for the comic to be reposted by God or him to conjecture the myriad ways prejudices against black people has helped you. Very compelling stuff.

7/23/2010 11:36:24 AM

Racism doesn't exist anymore! Being Black isn't so bad!

http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/07/23/593942/victims-race-skews-death-penalty.html

Quote :

"Someone accused of killing a white person in North Carolina is nearly three times as likely to get the death penalty than someone accused of killing a black person, according to a study released Thursday by two researchers who looked at death sentences over a 28-year period. The findings come as many in North Carolina are focusing on the death penalty and race. Death-row inmates have only a few more weeks to file challenges to their sentences under the Racial Justice Act approved by the legislature last year. For the study, touted as one of the most comprehensive examinations to date of the modern administration of the death penalty in North Carolina, Michael L. Radelet, a sociology professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and Glenn L. Pierce, a research scientist in the Northeastern University school of criminology and criminal justice in Boston, examined 15,281 homicides in the state between Jan. 1, 1980, and Dec. 31, 2007. Of those, 368 resulted in death sentences. The researchers looked at many factors, such as the number of victims and whether other crimes such as burglaries and robberies were committed during the homicide. They also tried to consider similar homicide cases. Their analysis of the data showed that the odds of receiving a death sentence in cases where the victim was white were 2.96 times as high as the odds in cases with black victims. "It's just kind of baffling that, in this day and age, race matters," Radelet said. Jay Ferguson, a defense lawyer in Durham, said the study found what others have shown - that it's not so much the race of the defendant, but the race of the victim, that determines the punishment. "I think, over the years, the white-victim cases seem to get more attention in the criminal justice system," Ferguson said. "They seem to get more attention from the district attorneys and the juries. The legislature has made it clear that if we're going to have a death penalty in North Carolina, it's got to be colorblind. And these studies show it's not.""

7/23/2010 12:41:22 PM

there are more than 3x the number of white people in North Carolina as there are black people

7/23/2010 12:46:13 PM

How in the world would that affect whether or not they received the death penalty?

7/23/2010 12:46:47 PM

And how exactly have I benefited from this injustice? Was I sentenced to life in prison for the exact same crime that a black person was sentenced to die?

Lemme check...

...Oh, that's right, I haven't. No one in this board is suggesting that racism or prejudices don't exist. Every single person on the planet is affected by the prejudices of others, and not just because of the color of their skin.

Any legitimate cases of prejudice in our judicial or hiring or housing systems need to be investigated and punished harshly but crying and spouting statistics about the racism inherent in the system will do exactly nothing.

Actually, especially in the case when you start making shit up about how there are 6 poor minorities for every 1 poor white person we stop listening to the rest of your numbers bullshit.

7/23/2010 12:48:28 PM