Be careful about appearing to agree with anything I say! They did Pit me for this…
Which is the issue with statistics - they are so easily skewed. And small samples may or may not reflect the whole. Omega Glory wants me to go Google this as if a few hours reading would even begin to uncover the facts of something like this.
No, just shot. However, it is obviously not a completely equivalent thing, since nothing could be, it is just yet another example of a people that had or are having a rough start here yet are able to make a go of it without speaches, marches and whathaveyou.
Which is where I came in. I don’t see how these effects can be put behind at all if there is still a body of blacks that want to continue to identify with slavery.
Wait. There is a big difference between the bigotry of the latter and the entitlement of the former.
I have no idea if it includes a majority or not. For me personally, it has been a majority of the blacks I have known, but then until very recently most were poor to lower middle class so that may make a difference. I have no idea, but until I got jumped upon here, I had no idea that my experience was all that unique.
I merely linked the first one I hit. Is there any proof out there? The fact that one article says there isn’t doesn’t mean that is true. However, even if it is a complete fabrication, or rather something else brought over from England, it is still something that the Irish deeply believe happened and so would color their image of the US until enough generations passed to make it fade.
Please make note of what you have written here. My heritage and the little I’ve had time to read on the internet recently tells me that altho there was some education available to the Irish in the east by the 1860s, it wasn’t all that widespread, and may not have been available to non-Catholics. Yet you feel qualified to tell me this is all wrong - because? Omega Glory says that when I dare to question statements made here, I’m being (trying to remember) nasty, provocative and something else. Yet what are you all when you just dismiss what I have believed for the past 50 years? And some things that I know to be true, such as my father was the first college educated person on his side of my family. You all want me to believe these things just because you say so and get mad when I have a problem with that.
Which is kind of immaterial anyway, since there is no intent on my part to claim that the Irish and black experiences are exactly the same. Nor were they the only folks to have a seriously bad start here - we could talk about the Chinese, or hey, the Japanese who were essentially stuck in corrals during the second war. The only group who didn’t face prejudice and struggle at some point here were the WASPs.
And here we come back to that “identify with slavery” meme of yours. Your perception that there is some significant body of Blacks who “identify with slavery” - which you have previously clarified as meaning that you perceive them to want to be taken care of - is not the experience that any one else who has posted here has had (or the attitudes that any of those of us who are Black - endorse) Oh, there are some of us, Black and White alike, who believe that systemic racism still needs remediation. And I am sure you’ll find the few who seriously argue for reparations here and there. Their position is not that they identify with slavery but that they do not see how these effects can be erased without looking at the history full in the face. A very defensible position.
The issue of course isn’t if the circumstances that faced the Irish and the Blacks in America were exactly the same; the issue is whether or not they are even meaningfully comparable. The point that has been made multiple times is that they are not.
No, it isn’t my meme. Right here in this thread I was told that blacks call themselves African-American to identify with the ancestors who were brought over from Africa as slaves.
It would surprise me if there was noone on the board who had not had these experiences. However, very few of the board members have posted here, and I have notices IRL that when anyone has the gall to say anything bad about a black or blacks in general, there is no lack of folks ready to rush in a beat that person about the head.
None of that seems to go together. Yes, any racism that still exists needs to be quashed and eliminated and yes there are those that still think that they should be given things simply because they have an ancestor or twelve who were slaves. However, I do not get how continuing to obsess on past history helps anyone. Remember it yes, but as if it happened to oneself?
By folks who were not there. According to my grandmother, they were at least somewhat comparable. Of course, the point of my even bringing that up has been swept aside in favor of jumping all over me, but hey, that doesn’t matter right?
Yes.
Again curlcoat, no, you were never in this thread told that “blacks call themselves African-American to identify with the ancestors who were brought over from Africa as slaves.” You were told, in response to your comment that most Blacks you’ve met were born in America, that “Since the term African American means a person who is the descendants of blacks brought to the United States as slaves, and their owners, often with a bit of American Indian mixed in, it’s completely unsurprising that the AA’s you know were born in the U.S.” (Whether or not that is the best definition of the term is another issue.) Your confusion about that has been addressed multiple times yet you persist in saying that those who use the phrase African American “obsess on past history” and that they have “an expectation that someone else will take care of them”
Why?
Personal experience.
Personal experience shapes all of our views of life, but when that experience is challenged, relying solely upon that experience does nothing to support one’s argument or broaden one’s perspective.
There have been no cases of entire towns turning out to shoot “uppity” Mexican immigrants, taking photos with the bodies, and having the police department participate, so I doubt that you have actually discovered an equivalent experience.
Not there isn’t. The whites who want to send blacks back to Africa typically claim that they are being “oppressed” by the presence of blacks, here. Each bases their positions on personal beliefs filtered through their own experiences without seriously studying the issues.
So, Irish immigrants “believing” that they were kept from being employed has the same moral weight as blacks actually having documented history that they were kept from jobs, kept from voting, etc.? What makes your (invented) “memory” worth anything if you want to prevent other people from maintaining their memories?
I have not accused you of anything except a lack of knowledge, so you will have to square away the complaints of others with them.
As to your first couple of points: the Irish who suffered discrimination were the Catholic Irish, (which was the overwhelming majority of Irish immigrants). The Know Nothing Party and other groups, organized for the purpose of opposing Irish immigration, were probably more upset about their Catholicism than their place of origin. As to most education being available in the East: most people were in the East. Denver, founded in 1858, had a Catholic school by 1864, Seattle, settled in 1851, had to wait until 1889 for a Catholic school, but San Francisco had its first successful school by 1850, while Los Angeles and Monterey had Catholic schools by 1856. New Mexico had Catholic schools even before the advent of the Anglo migration. Similar dates for Catholic education are found throughout the West.
As to family histories: my dad was in the first generation of his family to go to college and my generation was the first one in my Mom’s (Irish descended) side of the family. However, getting a college education–first expanded to large numbers only following WWII–was not the issue; getting a basic education was.
Every group of immigrants tended to suffer oppression of one sort or another. However, newer immigrants were routinely used as clubs to further oppress blacks, often being given jobs taken from blacks.
Has anyone yet been able to challenge the results of my experiences? No matter what you all say, it still boils down to I have simply met way too many blacks that act in a way that has taught me (ha ha, I can learn…) to be cautious. There has been all of this focus on details of my posts, such as whether or not I should be “allowed” to “blame” my poor education for my not knowing historical details. I get it, it was fun, but for me it has gotten really boring to keep seeing the same thing over and over again in my mailbox. It has also gotten tiresome to have to defend myself against accusations of racism, ignorance, trolling and whatever else from people who cannot be arsed to actually read what I post. Or at least read it without bias.
So, not quite knowing the rules so I am probably doing this wrong, I have snipped the rest of your post because it was just more of the same. You say I am wrong to feel the way I do because the comparisons I’m making are not exactly the same as the black experience. Fine, I get that and have said I get that. It doesn’t mean I agree with it, but it is such a side issue that I am simply not interested in discussing it anymore, particularly ad naseum. My original misconception, that African-American was the first whatever-American label, has been corrected. Is there anything else you want to do? I mean other than continue to belittle and deny my experiences?
I have called you no names, at all. I have not made fun of you. I have not told you that you “have” to feel any particular way or hold any particular belief.
::: shrug :::
If you want to wander into a thread in a debate Forum and assert some sort of “truth” based on nothing more than your personal feelings, you are welcome to do so. On the other hand, the rest of us understand that other people read these threads and we feel that we are justified in pointing out the factual, historical errors in your beliefs. What you do with the facts is up to you.
Which is all you doing here, even when you are completely misunderstanding what I am saying. Such as your post before this one - blacks are not having ‘entire towns turning out to shoot “uppity” blacks, taking photos with the bodies, and having the police department participate’ now, they are not lacking in access to good educations now, they are not in danger of being deported back to a third world county now. Yet all you are interested in is arguing about whether or not black slavery and subsequent lack of civil rights back then is comparable to suffering experienced by any other race. I am not interested in debating something which can have no right or wrong and cannot be settled with the lack of facts from decades past.
I simply do not think that any given black person’s slave ancestor necessarily had it worse (much less much worse) than my great grandfather did. I seriously doubt that any given black person alive now had a parent who was a slave. So, we are talking years in the past for that. Yes, there is still a problem with severe anti-black feelings in this country, but is that being helped by separating them into African-Americans? (As an aside, does this happen in any other country? Are there African-Canadians or African-Brits?) Is peace between the races helped by any “discussion of African-American issues/values/culture” separate from the issues/values/culture of non-African-Americans?
How long will the blacks be separated from the rest of us before they themselves realize it just isn’t a good idea?
Thing is there are facts available. They have been pointed out to you. (That’s the stuff that you call “debating” - that you are not interested in - something that tends to happen in a forum called Great Debates.) But okay, you are not interested in them because you have your family story and your other fictional beliefs such as that “the blacks” are trying to separate themselves from “the rest of us” - cause y’know you have “personal experience” and a story passed on through several generations about your grandfather … or great grandfather … it’s foggy in your memory if I recall … but clearly he was a slave who had it as bad as any Black did … and you are sure that it is true … even if your not sure that the rest of well documented recorded history is … and that is supposed to mean something. And that justifies your “negative internal reaction” to any given Black you might have contact with (especially those young females).
Your position such as it is clear. Have a nice life.
You are the one who has tried to claim that every group has had equal issues and problems. My recounting the differences between the black experience and the experiences of the various other immigrants was in direct reponse to your claim that everyone has had similar experiences. They have not and the differences in the past have shaped much of the situation, today. So noting those differences in history has a direct bearing on examining the differences, today.
I’m not sure why you believe that there is a lack of facts regarding history; we have lots of historical records, including newspapers, official records, personal mail, private journals, and a host of other sources of information. You have made the claim that the Irish got ahead because they did not dwell on the past, yet you have offered the odd claim that one of your ancestors was a slave and we have already seen evidence that people such as Ted Kennedy and Tip O’Neill were willing to tell stories about the Irish facing NINA signs as late as the twentieth century when the evidence indicates that such prejudice only occurred on limited occasions for a limited period of time, ending even before the freeing of the black slaves in the U.S. in the middle of the nineteenth century. Remembering bad things that did not even happen does not sound much like “not dwelling on it” to me.
On the other hand, if you are not interested in debating, it seems odd that you would post in this debate forum and then keep coming back to talk about the same subjects on which other people disagree with your odd conclusions.
If it helps you, in some way, to believe that your great grandfather had a worse life than the typical slave in the U.S., feel free to believe that. However, that leaves you with three other great grandfathers who certainly did not suffer anything as bad as the typical black slave in the U.S.
Beyond that, this great desire for separation appears to be something that you have taken from a small number of black people and projected it onto the entire community. If all those people really wanted to be separate, they would not be moving out into the suburbs with the white folks–and I can guarantee that that movement is occurring today.
If you believe something to be a fact and you keep running into evidence that indicates that it is not a fact, you might want to consider revising your opinion.
You are not interested in doing anything other than pick at details so you can look good, and imposing your bias on what I say. I am not interested in having to repeat myself yet again.
Have a nice life.
Please point out where I ever said that every group has had equal issues and problems.
Ah, now we are down to similar experiences. Closer.
Exactly. Now, if you would accept that there are other races/religions/whatevers out there who have had a bad go of it at some point in their history, and some who are still going thru it, why is it that only the black history is accepted as an excuse for bad behavior now in the present?
We are talking over a hundred years ago. Plus, there seems to be more interest in finding, preserving and publishing black history.
There is a difference between dwelling on something, and simply remembering it. Which was sort of the point I was making way back when - we must remember history so we are not doomed to repeat it, but dwelling on it just seems to bring the past into the present.
Interesting that you prefer to believe some evidence from somewhere rather than what are supposed to be first party witnesses (Ted and Tip). We are all more likely to want to believe that which supports our preconcieved ideas. I believe in NINA because of what I was told by my grandmother - why do you disbelieve in it?
“Odd conclusions”. And only a post ago you were proclaiming your innocence re this sort of thing.
I respond because I have an, er, odd need to answer people that write to me. I suppose the thing to do would be to unsub to this thread so I wouldn’t keep getting emails.
This, right here, is such a great example of what I have been saying about you all reading my posts with bias. Not only have I never said anything about it is “helping” me to “believe” that my great grandfather was a slave, I’ve specifically said that his descendants have moved on from that. The only reason I know about it is it was included with everything else I was told about my family history. The whole point of bringing up my family history was as an example of how one can know negative history but not be affected by it.
Um, yeah, there is a black family across the street and down three houses, and until a couple of months ago there was one kiddy-corner from us as well. OTOH, I take it that you disagree that the term African-American is not a label that separates one subset of Americans from all others? That having a black history month, but no other (whatever) history month isn’t cutting them out of the herd? That expecting that our new black president-elect will “discuss African-American issues/values/culture” isn’t separating the blacks out as at least apparently more important to the leader of our country?
I could really say the same to you. I gave you a page of NINA examples, you say it didn’t exist, even tho you are the one that came up with the evidence from Ted and Tip.
Well, I have not excused any bad behavior, so now you are projecting your beliefs onto my words.
However, to address your point, since you have ignored it when I have made the point earlier: events have consequences. Every immigrant group was used as a club to beat down the black community. When times got bad, blacks were the first laid off. When times got good again, immigrants were typically hired before the blacks who had been let go from the same jobs. This had two effects: it reduced the income level that could be returned to the black community while increasing the income returned to the immigrant community and it encouraged a sense of despair in the black community. Similarly with the lynchings and other events. The fact that any black who was perceived to be “uppity” or too good for his station in life faced a serious threat of death or financial ruin cultivated an attitudue similar to hopelessness in the black community. No immigrant community was subjected to the same forces for as long, so there are more cases of hopelessness within the black community than outside it. For years, blacks who actually spent the energy to get a college degree wound up working as manual laborers because no one would hire them. When other blacks saw that getting a college education was a waste of time, that attitude crept into the black community. None of these problems affected every black person. Many, perhaps most, continued to strive to better themselves. That is why three out of four black people are not considered poor at this time. However, it had an effect on enough black people that it has been harder for more blacks to overcome those issues.
You appear to want to pretend that there is no discrimination any more and that the discrimination of the past has no legacy in today’s society. This is simply silly. You also appear to want to write history your own way, for example:
Slavery ended over 100 years ago, but the subjection of the black people to restrictive laws and inadequate education ended only forty years ago. (Actually, less than that since the laws passed forty years ago took ten or fifteen years to implement in many cases. The denial of job opportunities continues on a reduced scale, even today. It takes time to overcome the amount of abuses that I have already described. The black community is making progress, but it has not finished the task, yet. You have posted about the many years of your experiences with black people, but the further back you go in your own history, the closer you come to the time when they had no serious opportunities. If you are allowing those memories to color your views, then you are ignoring history while you impose your beliefs upon it.
Given the amount of history of which you appear to be unaware, it would seem that they should, perhaps, have dwelt on it more and taken more steps to make sure you were actually aware of it.
Are there some black people who sit around thinking “my great great great grandparent was a slave; I’ll never have a chance to succeed.”"? Sure. But those people are not anything resembling a majority of black people, yet your initial posts seemed to say that all black people felt that way.
Human memory is malleable. Anecdotes that are repeated are internalized so that people begin to believe them and even begin to believe that they witnessed them. Note that neither O’Neill nor Kennedy recalled having seen a NINA sign in the previous week. Each was referring to a very old and vague “memory.” Against that we have actual evidence. The link I provided noted that lots of old newspapers have been electronically recorded and a study of all the stories and ads from dozens of papers over the course of more than 100 years found only two examples of an actual NINA ad. That is serious evidence that such ads were hardly common. In contrast, we can find hundreds of ads specifying “white” as a criteria for hiring–and white includes the Irish, but it excludes blacks. So we have evidence that people were excluded from employment, but only evidence of two small jobs in over a hundred years that excluded the Irish. Similarly, we do not have a single example of an actual employment sign from that era that says “No Irish Need Apply.” We have one photograph of one sign using modern fonts that was intended as a(n inaccurate) replica of a sign that apparently never existed. (It appears to have been created to be used in the movie The Molly maguires–a movie that was not noted for its historical accuracy.) There are also a few photos of a copy of that sign, using the same font, but a slightly different border. However, no photograph of city streets showing "Help Wanted"signs includes any sign with the NINA addition. No one has found a NINA sign in the basement, attic, or back room of any store or factory built in that era. If it was such a common event, there should be some evidence of it lying around, and there is none.
Pointing out that you reach conclusions that are not corroborated by any evidence is hardly the same thing as name calling. I have not suggested that you are stupid or malicious, but your statements are not consistent with fact and that makes them odd.
But, you see, that is not how you are using it. You have taken one poorly recalled memory of a single ancestor’s apparently hard life, (ignoring the fact that he was only 25% of the men of one generation in your family), and generalized it to claim that if your family can survive one bad life, (regardless of any other mitigating events that happened to the other three quarters of that generation plus all the other generations leading to your immediate family), then this other people who suffered the same sort of thing among all the members of all the generations, including many subsequent generations, should have been just as successful in overcoming obstacles.
My mom refers to herself as an Irish-American. My Dad called himself a German-American. My classmates referred to themseles as Irish-American, German-American, Polish-American, Italian-American, Lebanese-American, etc. Why would I think that someone who self identified as African-American was separate from the voting, taxpaying, military-serving Americans among whom I grew up and went to school?
The tragedy of Black History month is that it is simply a couple of dozen sound bites scatered among some TV commercials during the shortest month of the year and too few people who are ignorant of the U.S, history as it was experienced by blacks ever actually learn why it is important that we realize how they were treated and what that means, today.
I’m not sure wha this is supposed to mean. Peresident Elect Obama has actually not made an issue of his ethnic background, so I am not sure why it is an issue. On the other hand, I very definitely recall presidents Kennedy and Reagan making a point to refer to their Irish ancestry, so perhaps we should be condemning the Irish for seting a bad example in that regard.
I have addressed this, but I will repeat it: neither of those gentlemen provided evidence that their memories were based in reality. We have thousands of documents from newspaper ads and newspaper stories that never mention anything like that. We have tens of thousands of photogrphs taken of streets and businesses through those years that provide no evidence of any such signs. We have ample evidence that human memory is malleableand that people often create memories to match their beliefs. Without ever suggestijng that either of those gentlemen spoke anything other than their sincere beliefs, it makes much more sense to consider their “memories” to be apocryphal than to consider them “evidence.”
I said no such thing, and you know it. I never once told you that you were being nasty simply by asking questions. That’s all I’ll say in here on this subject. I’m not going to hijack this thread, but for some reason, you felt the need to drag bits and pieces of the Pit thread in here, so it is being addressed here.
So, if no more is to be said in here, how am I to refute what you said?
I wasn’t speaking specifically about you, just generally, but you did say “There are some black people who want more handed to them”.
And you have ignored my response to this as well. The blacks are no longer slaves, nor are other immigrants typically hired before blacks (unless hiring quotas are still around), they are not being lynched, etc etc. Right here you are excusing their current behavior of “hopelessness” based on what happened to their ancestors. So, my question remains - if not a separist attitude, what is different about the blacks that they have not been able to shake off the effects of their past as well as other peoples who have suffered long term issues like poverty, hatred, murder, etc? Yes, they have had a past that is unique in it’s details, but certainly not unique overall. Everything that happened to them has happened to others, and there are some things that didn’t happen to them - for example they were not cooked in ovens or starved into skeletons. Do you think the difference is simply the unique combination?
No, all I “pretend” to is that blacks are not the only ones that are being discriminated against now or in the past.
Why silly? As long as discrimination - either for or against - continues, there will be resentment. Noone should be set ahead of anyone else based solely on their color or sex or religion or whatever else is used to do so, other than whatever they may have earned themselves.
Why do you continue to do this?
Except, in my person history regarding jobs and housing, there was never any apparent discrimination against the blacks. We lived in the same neighborhoods and worked side by side. The only difference between now and then for me is when I lived in Washington there were fewer blacks than in Southern California, but that is the only difference that could be seen. So the only person experience I have had with black discrimination has been for them in the positive.
I know just as little about the history of the Jewish people or the Asian peoples who came over here after being “boat people”. Indeed, the only reason I know as much as I (think apparently) I do about Irish history is because my grandmother talked about it - the other side of the family didn’t. Dwelling on didn’t happen, which is a good thing since the negativity of it didn’t affect me.
My initial posts were about the label African-American and what I thought about it. Nowhere did I say that all blacks are anything.
It appears that you just wish to believe what you want here. Not that I really care either way, since whether NINA was true or not it was still something I grew up on (the stories of it) as did, apparently at least two Irish men. There are at least a few records left of NINA ads that are not done in “modern” fonts. For some reason, the Irish are supposed to ignore this but the blacks are supposed to dwell on their history. Why?
My conclusions are corroborated by evidence you don’t agree with, which is a different thing. Saying you don’t agree with my conclusions is debating a subject - calling them odd is not.
No, just dismissive of my logic, opinions, experiences and I forget what all else.
Ah. So because only 25% of the history of one generation of my family tree survived (partially) to the present, this means that the Irish in this country were welcomed with open arms, suffered not at all and moved onto greatness right off? Because there is only a hazy memory of what went on in my family back then, my other examples of history beating up on subsets of humans should be ignored? The blacks are the only ones who were mistreated? Or is it that their experience was so much worse than everyone else’s?
None of that answered my question. Apparently tho, you don’t think that putting labels on different people separates them from others.
At least they have Black History month and those couple of dozen sound bites. No shows on BET even? I don’t know since I don’t see that much TV and of what I do see, very little of it is network.
WHY is it important that we realize how they were treated, over and over and over again? They were slaves, then they lacked civil rights, and thing are not perfect now but - news flash - things aren’t perfect for non-blacks either! Do you want us to dwell on this to make sure slavery doesn’t happen in the US again? To make sure we don’t have separate white and colored water fountains and schools again?
WHAT does this past history mean today?
I was quoting the very first post in this thread - apparently there are black leaders that think that Obama should be doing something about African-American issues/values/culture because he is half black himself.
Anyone who expects preferential treatment simply because they are Irish, black, Catholic or whatever should be condemned.
I have pointed out the ways in which actual history is studied and how it is confirmed to neutral observers. You have provided no evidence for any part of history that you have claimed. There are exactly two references to NINA that appear in ancient newspaper ads and not one single posted sign that is not a modern creation for a movie prop. Claiming otherwise without providing evidence is wholly unpersuasive. Show me a picture of a NINA sign from the 1800s. There are none.
In fact, you are doing exactly what you claim to protest. You are believing a story handed down that is greatly exaggerated to support some sort of justification for the general success of your ethnic heritage while claiming that blacks have no justification for pointing to genuine history, (and current events), when they discuss their situation.
Well, if you did not actually demonstrate an ignorance of history and a logical disconnect between the events of history and the current situation, I would not be quite so dismissive. However, you want to pretend that history has no ramifications, that the events of the past did not affect the current reality, (except when it does, of course, to make your points), and I do not find that sort of ignorance and illogic persuasive.
The bolded portion is the part that you have failed to recognize from the very beginning of this thread. The black experience for the overall group was much worse for much longer and has lasted until much more recently.
That makes a difference.
Your strawman claim that I have said the Irish were welcomed with open arms is irrelevant. The Irish Catholic immigrants did face discrimination and oppression. However, they did not face as much oppression for as long or as recently as the black population that was brought here in chains, held in slavery as a group for generations, condemned to treatment as second class citizens for more generations, and continue to face (at reduced levels) discrimination that the Irish have not suffered in over 80 years.
It depends on the labels. People who identify themselves for purposes of solidarity and celebration are not “separating” themselves from anyone unless they actually refuse to participate in the greater society–something that is not going on, here. My parents celebrated their German and Irish ancestry, and they still voted, paid taxes, served in the military, and worked and worshipped and played with people of other ethnic backgrounds, so the labels they embraced did not separate them from society. With that experience, I do not go about assuming that all labels are divisive.
History, for those who actually pay attention to it, provides insights into the origins of current problems so that solutions are not proposed that will cause more harm. If you are not going to study history or understand it, fine. It is, however, counterproductive to criticize people who are attempting to use it effectively.
Actually, you seem to have been misquoting the OP. There was no talk in the OP about the opinions of black leaders. There was a statement that some unidentified group was angry that Obama was identified as black rather than as bi-racial. Given the prevalence of the “one drop rule” in this country, (which one would know about only by understanding history), the challenges by those unidentified callers had nothing to do with anything “black leaders” might have called upon Obama to do.