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happeningthang
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
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 Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 9:28 pm Post subject: |
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| thepeel wrote: |
The history of the United States has created a hyper race sensitive and race aware culture. While the DNA project has taught us that race is a social construction, tell that to the white lady being chased home from the subway. The language of race is used because it is the most simplistic.
I'm reminded of a post from the Mother Jones blog (from a black lady).
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In fact, we'd do best to assume whites will never be any more enlightened than they are now because, to paraphrase Chris Rock, it wasn't the white media chasing him home from the subway. |
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/10/5648_jena_just_isnt.html
There have to be serious attempts at lifting the quality of life for the average black as a means to lessen criminality. We simply can not expect white people to become less black/white aware until then. |
I understand what you're saying, but it sounds a bit too fatalistic to accept that this is the way it is. It would help people's perceptions to adress the reality that it's poor people committing crimes. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 9:33 pm Post subject: |
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| I generally agree. But teaching people about poverty/race/crime intersections doesn't, in a meaningful way, negate the way that middle class whites experience crime in America. Of course, we should all go out of our way to correct people when they make ignorant statements, and the schools should teach people to think critically about these issues. However, and it is fatalistic, America (like Canada, with the Natives) has to first address the structural reasons for this poverty and hopelessness. Only that, in my opinion, can bring meaningful change in the perception of non-blacks towards blacks. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 9:38 pm Post subject: |
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Read the LA Times homicide report to see who the dominant victims of black crime are.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/homicidereport/
Pretending things aren't the way they are does a great disservice to victims of violence. Only when the scope of the problem is openly discussed can there be change. And again, this is exactly the same in Canada. |
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seoulunitarian
Joined: 06 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 10:40 pm Post subject: re: |
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| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
endo imagined:
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I thought New Orleans or Philly would easily be in the most dangerous category. Even Miami. Also, Chicago and Minneapolis did not report. The latter, incidentally, is the hometown of most of my father's side of the family going way back, and didn't have a violent crime problem until the city became a welfare haven for neighboring states (another brilliant liberal idea of a bygone era).
There's also a racial element to these statistics which I'm not even going to touch right now. |
Have you actually read the report? It explains why these cities weren't included. New Orleans leads the nation in the number of murder victims but not per capita. Got it yet? Philadelphia and Miami did not make the top ten for the same reason.
Why be afraid to state the obvious? All of these cities have disproportionately higher concentrations of Blacks. There, I said it for you. But why should that surprise any one, given the homicide rate in the Black community? (Now watch some liberal whine racist and racism on this thread...).
East St. Louis is mostly black, is it not? |
I'm not going to whine about racism unless you go further in your analysis of why the homicide rate is so high among blacks, and only then if your analysis refers to it as an innate problem. Stating facts is not racist, as you've done.
Peace |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 9:59 pm Post subject: |
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happeningthang wrote:
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Since some have pointed out that there's a lot of black gun violence (with varying degrees of subtlety) I wonder if it's more related to poverty and the association of crime that goes with it. The poorer a community, the more motivation for crime and violence.
If that's the case then why not describe these statistics in terms of poor communities being more prone to violence, instead of in racial terms? |
Your concern reeks of liberal naivete--or is it just plain wishful thinking?
Let me clue you in: the majority of the country's poor are white. Do you see Charleston, West Virginia and other Appalachian cities listed among the most violent? So that point alone shoots your argument full of holes.
Second, the Black community wasn't always "prone to violence." In the days of Jim Crow, there was less violence even though most white police forces cared little about what went down in segregated sections of town.
What we are witnessing over the past two decades is a deterioration within a large segment of the Black community, which conservative black commentators (and occasionally even the likes of Jackson and Sharpton) have lamented without notice in the liberally-biased television media.
Gangsta rap culture permeates the urban Black communities of this nation and, sadly, so does a mentality that schooling amounts to "acting white." I know; I've seen it firsthand more often than I care to count.
thepeel surmised:
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| However, and it is fatalistic, America (like Canada, with the Natives) has to first address the structural reasons for this poverty and hopelessness. |
Here we go again with more of the neo-Marxist tainted kazoo tooting its tired one-note warning. Ever heard of self-agency; ever heard of self-help and getting ahead on one's own? The majority of Blacks no longer live in poverty and yet these problems persist. How do you explain that? Moreover, last time I checked affirmative action in college admissions, grants, scholarships, and employment was still providing a structural redress to this concern, although social engineering won't do the trick.
It's not cool to be smart in much of Black America; it's only cool to be street smart.
endo:
You call my retort lame? You sidestepped my points more than once on this thread--now that's what I call lame. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 1:52 am Post subject: |
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| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
Here we go again with more of the neo-Marxist tainted kazoo tooting its tired one-note warning. Ever heard of self-agency; ever heard of self-help and getting ahead on one's own? |
So, it just so happens that the people who were enslaved, defined as less than a full human and then systematically discriminated against for hundreds of years tend towards more social dysfunction that the people who enslaved, oppressed and discriminated against them. It just so happens? |
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mistermasan
Joined: 20 Sep 2007
Location: 10+ yrs on Dave's ESL cafe
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| Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 2:33 am Post subject: |
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are there any american slaves still alive? i hope not. they would be about 142 years old minimum. how long shall we use the comfortable excuse of "they are slaves"? can we stop using such in 8 more years (an even 150 years)? counting 25 years as a generation that is six generations removed from the last born slave.
oh, wait...let's start using self-acountability the day after tomorrow. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 2:38 am Post subject: |
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| It isn't that simple. |
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wannago
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 3:32 am Post subject: |
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| thepeel wrote: |
| It isn't that simple. |
If this :
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are there any american slaves still alive? i hope not. they would be about 142 years old minimum. how long shall we use the comfortable excuse of "they are slaves"? can we stop using such in 8 more years (an even 150 years)? counting 25 years as a generation that is six generations removed from the last born slave.
oh, wait...let's start using self-acountability the day after tomorrow. |
"isn't that simple", then this:
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| So, it just so happens that the people who were enslaved, defined as less than a full human and then systematically discriminated against for hundreds of years tend towards more social dysfunction that the people who enslaved, oppressed and discriminated against them. It just so happens? |
is just ridiculous. You know, my ancestors were under the yoke of the Romans not so many centuries ago. Can I blame all my misfortunes on Italians now?
Wait, it isn't that easy? How many years does it take to make it easy? |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 4:58 am Post subject: |
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thepeel persisted:
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| So, it just so happens that the people who were enslaved, defined as less than a full human and then systematically discriminated against for hundreds of years tend towards more social dysfunction that the people who enslaved, oppressed and discriminated against them. It just so happens? |
Good grief, do you have any idea how naive you are on this issue? And your tone, unwittingly, is patronizing if not demeaning toward those you seek to defend.
Think for a minute, man: the level of violent crime in the Black community was much less BEFORE the civil rights legislation took effect in 1964. By your reasoning, it should have been through the roof back then, yet it wasn't. So how do you account for that apparent contradiction? Or would you prefer to just put your head in the sand?
Asian Americans were also the victims of racial discrimination (as Ronald Takaki has amply chronicled in Strangers from a Different Shore) yet NONE of these social problems affect that community on anywhere near the scale that it has assumed in the Black community. And Asian Americans comprise upwards of one-third of the entering classes at some of the most selective universities. How can that be, given your presumption of victimization?
Here's a quote for you to ponder: "The Black community today is in crisis. It faces moral degeneracy never seen before."
Those words have been oft repeated on-air on the radio show, "The Black Avenger," by Ken Hamblin, who is himself a middle-aged African American.
Want to become really informed? Read Losing the Race by John McWhorter, a young Black linguist at the Univ. of California at Berkeley. He describes this mentality in eloquent prose.
Or try Shelby Steele's collection of personal essays, The Content of Our Character.
But please remove your blinders first. |
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adeline
Joined: 19 Nov 2007
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| Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 10:23 am Post subject: |
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| my city used to b #1 in its size category (130,000) but then some crazy guy drove through being chased by police and shot a bunch of people... |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 10:36 am Post subject: |
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| thepeel wrote: |
| [I]t is fatalistic, America (like Canada, with the Natives) has to first address the structural reasons for this poverty and hopelessness. Only that, in my opinion, can bring meaningful change in the perception of non-blacks towards blacks. |
What do you mean by structural reasons? |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 8:48 am Post subject: |
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| Off hand I'd say that the two biggest barriers to a wide-spread increase in black socio-economic improvement are the state of schools in predominately black neighborhoods and the war on drugs. Not exclusively these, but dominantly. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 5:19 pm Post subject: |
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| thepeel wrote: |
| Off hand I'd say that the two biggest barriers to a wide-spread increase in black socio-economic improvement are the state of schools in predominately black neighborhoods and the war on drugs. Not exclusively these, but dominantly. |
Both of which are staggering issues. The sheer amount of vested interest in continuing the drug war is huge. Do you have any idea how many gov't jobs and subcontractors are involved in the investigation-incarceration complex?
The drug war is the relatively simpler of the two problems. What to do about sagging inner-city schools? This is not simply an issue of socio-economic disparity, although thats certainly there. Its also an issue of states appealing for funding from the federal gov't, the strength of teachers unions v. institutions of change, the ever absurdly increasing emphasis of athletics in our nations' schools (in rich communities as well), and finally, yes, the inability for many innercity youths to see any hope for themselves getting into a good college (or being able to pay for it). |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 5:39 pm Post subject: |
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Agree agree agree.
Two points. Firstly, I believe the biggest barrier to ending the war on drugs are the firms that have been granted the legal monopoly on getting high (alcohol, phama, tobacco). Secondly, I'm a true believer in the ability of school vouchers, over time, to dramatically raise the quality of education for kids in bad socio-economic situations. |
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