More straw men and inaccurate assertions about me and Coates. Yawn.
I’ll put a bit more effort into it:
Hateful language. Here’s why this is hateful language, IMO: it’s both intensely negative (“toxic” normally describes deadly substances, or extreme disease, or similar) and factually wildly inaccurate. The vast majority of people who are part of black culture are peaceful and decent and don’t harm other people. By describing their culture – their very way of life – as “toxic”, you’re slandering millions of mostly peaceful and decent people. The food they eat isn’t “toxic”. The music they make and enjoy isn’t “toxic”. The way they dance and create art isn’t “toxic”. Their churches aren’t “toxic”. Etc. That doesn’t mean everything is perfect. But using sweeping and intensely negative language that lumps all this together into the same bucket of shit is hateful.
You could talk about violence and other problems and challenges in black communities in a non-hateful way, if you wanted, though it’s irrelevant to Coates’ article and this thread. But you’re choosing a hateful way to talk about it. It’s always hateful to use such sweeping and harsh and negative language to describe the way of life of millions of strangers, most of whom are entirely peaceful. Always. I’ve criticized the same sort of hateful descriptors used against conservatives or Republicans on this board.
If you don’t want to be criticized for using hateful language, don’t use hateful language. Don’t slander millions of decent people when the way of life for most of them is entirely peaceful and decent.
This is straw man bullshit, and an inaccurate description of Coates’ article and my points in this thread. If you want to talk about black culture, I’d recommend starting another thread (and I’d also recommend against using hateful language). Coates’ article, and this thread, is about white supremacism in American culture and society, and its significance and influence, and how this is related to Trump’s electoral success.
If there is any culture there that is toxic, it is the culture of poverty. It is not a “black” thing, it is a poor thing. Poverty breeds crime. Poverty reduces educational desires and potential. As far as kids being made fun of for doing well in school, I went to a middle class suburban school that was nearly entirely white. The kids that got straight A’s got made fun of. It’s a kid thing. They will make fun of those who are different than themselves. Given the impoverished conditions many of these children are in, it is unlikely that academic success is a high priority for most. And for those that it is, they are dragged back down by the fact that kids make fun of kids that are different. Not to mention that for those who academic success is important are going to schools that often have little to offer them.
You are somehow trying to blame the people for the conditions that they were forced into. The way to change that culture is to alleviate the poverty, not to blame the people for their environment.
Damuri Ajashi, I’m sorry if calling out your hateful language hurts your feewings (I think that’s the word you used earlier), but when you use hateful language, sometimes you’re going to be criticized for it.
Toxic normally mean poisonous. You don’t need every ingredient in a sauce to be toxic for the sauce to be toxic. I am not slandering the people, I am criticizing a CULTURE. You attempts to turn this into a criticism of black people rather than black culture is a tactic we have become too familiar with in other contexts. This is the equivalent of calling a critic of Israel an anti-Semite. Sure some critics of black culture and critics of Israel are in fact racist and anti-semitic but not necessarily so. We cannot have a real conversation about race in this country if all criticisms of blacks and their culture are off limits. Thank god this is an anonymous board because in the real world your attempts to paint me as a racist would take root because even an accusation of racism can make someone a pariah in most decent communities.
When we talk about police culture (including the blue wall and the latent racism that seems to run through law enforcement) as a toxic culture, are we using hateful language? The vast majority of cops are decent honest hard working public servants.
What makes the way I describe black culture hateful (I think you misspelled “racist”), aside form the fact that you don’t like the way I do it. How is this more than tone policing? And its not even the tone you object to. Your objections to my criticism of black culture preceded my use of the word “toxic” You simply object to any criticisms of the culture that has developed in the black community.
So I address Coates’ article and your response is “bullshit”
Coates seems to be saying that Trump’s election was either the triumph of racism of would not have been possible in a country that was not profoundly racist. He is not saying that racists voted or Trump and that made a difference, he is saying that the only way someone like Trump even gets CLOSE to winning is if America I in fact profoundly racist. He lists a bunch of stats about how Trump did so much better among white folks than Hillary did. Well shit ROMNEY (an many Republican candidate before him) did about as well among white folks as Trump (remember those stats I cited earlier?). Where Trump improved on Romney was in the minority vote.
More importantly, Trump’s distribution of WHERE his white votes came from was important. The geographic distribution of those votes towards the rust belt where we find a large population of struggling white working class that was being told that they had white privilege and that we needed to focus on social justice issues, free trade and amnesty. As stupid as the “Hillary lost because of misogyny” argument is (for several reasons), there is actually better evidence for misogyny than white supremacy. So yes, the conclusion that most experts (that don’t see the entire world through an “everything is about race” prism) reached was probably correct and “Donald Trump is not the product of white supremacy so much as the product of a backlash against contempt for white working-class people.”
I hear you. I agree with you. But even after you adjust for household wealth and income, blacks still have significantly higher rates of illegitimacy, violence and poor academic results. Poverty certainly creates challenges, but poor Asians and Jews manage to pull it off with some regularity and rather than implying that these poor Asians and Jews were actually wealthy, perhaps we can ask what they did differently.
In the effort to absolve the black community of any responsibility for their condition, we literally had someone imply that some significant portion of Vietnamese refugees came here with gold bars tucked away under their shirt. If someone implied that Jewish refugees fled Nazi Europe with gold and diamonds tucked away in their shirts to explain their relative success, this board would crucify them. Racism against Asians is the only form of racism that is still acceptable in polite liberal society.
We can’t alleviate the poverty without addressing the culture. I don’t blame them for the toxic culture. I thought I was pretty clearly blaming slavery and segregation for the evolution of this toxic culture. But if we never acknowledge that it exists, we will never be able to address it.
You didn’t hurt my feewings I am just annoyed and disappointed when someone like you hides behind accusations of racism to make their case.
I have a lot of respect for you but we’ve all got blind spots and I think your white liberal guilt and desire to be an “ally” have made you blind to any arguments that might place the responsibility of the condition of the black community on the black community itself. I’ve yet to hear you say, “yes this is a problem in the black community that the black community can and should address regardless of whether or not white people step up with whatever the fuck it is Coates wants them to do.”
I’ll note again that any discussion of black culture is a sidetrack. The article by Coates is not, in any way, about black culture. This discussion is not about black culture. That doesn’t mean that black culture is necessarily perfect and cannot be criticized, but doing so is an entirely separate topic from this thread.
Feel free to criticize any culture all you want (hopefully in another thread, since again, black culture is not part of the topic of this thread). I don’t think criticizing a culture from the outside has any hope of doing anything other than pissing people off, but if that’s what you want to do (in another thread!), knock yourself out.
But if you use hateful language, then you might be called out about it, in this thread or another. It’s no different than calling a culture savage, or animalistic, or primitive, or a dozen other hateful descriptors that have historically been linked with attempts to rationalize and justify various forms of supremacism. Human cultures include characteristics ranging from cuisines to language to religion to art to a million other things, and if you’re sweeping this altogether into a single bucket of shit, with a single highly-negative word, then you’re rhetorically dismissing a bit of that humanity. And I’m going to call that out as hateful every time I see it. Even if it hurts your feewings, and even if you don’t like my tone.
Whether true or not, none of this challenges Coates’ larger point – which is that Trump’s success was a direct backlash in response to Obama’s (that wasn’t the only thing it was, but it was a necessary thing for him to be successful). Only in a society in which white supremacism is profoundly influential could a white man with the history of Trump, and obvious lack of qualification, temperament, character, etc., be elected President, especially after someone who is essentially the Jackie Robinson of politics. Coates is saying that only significant white supremacism in the populace at large could have overlooked all these very obvious should-be-disqualifiers in Trump’s history. And he’s saying that the populace normally would have recognized Trump’s unsuitability – but the unease at 8 years of a black President, even (or maybe even especially because of) one with a particularly sober temperament and no character concerns, influenced enough of the population that these characteristics were acceptable, or even in a way positives, since electing a terrible, immoral, thoughtless white man is a direct repudiation of having elected a qualified and sensible black person.
Coates isn’t saying that there were no other factors involved. Just that this was a critical and necessary factor, and without it, Trump could not have been successful. It’s almost a trivial observation, in a way – imagine America in 2016 in which anyone with a bit of white supremacist beliefs – anyone who had had even the slightest bit of concern or worry about Obama, conscious or not, due to his race or heritage – didn’t show up to vote. Hillary Clinton would have won in an electoral landslide in such an America, right? Trump’s support would have been tiny. Coates is saying that he thinks it’s highly likely that lots of Obama voters voted for Obama (and then subsequently Trump) despite having some nagging concerns about Obama’s race or heritage. He said specifically that white supremacism/racism/bigotry doesn’t mean necessarily that one would never vote for a black person, just that one has different standards for white and black (or other) politicians.
You might disagree with any of these points, but the arguments you’ve presented are knocking down other things, not Coates’ arguments. Some backlash to supposed contempt for the white working class was probably involved, but wouldn’t discount Coates’ hypothesis (which again is not the only factor, just a necessary and critical one for Trump’s success), which again is a pretty trivial and obvious hypothesis when we drill down, IMO. I think any such contempt was largely manufactured by media figures who have always inflated and promoted the idea that the only true America has always been blue-collar white people, and thus any politics and rhetoric that didn’t put their needs as the highest and best priorities was somehow called contempt, but that’s a different discussion.
I called your language hateful, not racist, and that was on purpose (even if there’s often overlap). I’m not hiding behind anything at all – I honestly believe what I’m typing. I honestly believe that sweeping up everything in a culture (food, music, language, religion, dance, etc.) as “toxic” is hateful.
I think you should do it in another thread, but why not actually put effort into this and be specific? Why not talk about the specific communities (you’ll note that there are tons of black communities in the US with no terrible crime problem, and decent education, etc.) that suffer from elevated levels of violence? There are very bad things going on in parts of Chicago. Maybe those things are related to some elements of culture that those specific killers and criminals grew up in.
But that’s not “black culture”. That’s (perhaps) gang culture in the South Side. Prince George’s County, MD is as authentically “black” as any part of the US, and it’s largely affluent and pretty well educated. There’s nothing “toxic” about the entire community or culture in Prince George’s County, or a hundred other black communities in the US without elevated crime and terrible education.
Again, why not talk about this without hateful words? Why not be specific and not broad-brush everything into a bucket of shit because there might be some problems with a part of a thing? It might take a bit more effort, but it’d be much more accurate and fact-based. And it wouldn’t be hateful.
I’m honestly typing what I honestly feel. I think you could talk about these things without hateful language, and without broad-brush negative sweeping language. But as long as you use language I see as hateful, I’m going to describe it that way.
When you say “black community”, are you envisioning that there is a single monolithic community taht emcompasses all black people, in all the cities and states around the country?
To say that the vast majority of black children in the US are born out of wedlock is not “wildly inaccurate” - it is literally true.
I understand that you don’t want to talk about anything except white racism. But that desire doesn’t make facts go away.
Regards,
Shodan
That wasn’t all he said. This is a larger conversation than a single statistical assertion. “Toxic” isn’t about statistics. Do you think that the culture of Prince George’s County MD, which is quite wealthy and well-educated, with a comparable crime rate to small majority-white cities like Fort Wayne IN, is “toxic”? I don’t. If you call the PG county culture “toxic”, I’m going to describe that language as hateful.
The article in question and this thread are about the extent and significance white supremacism in American society. I could be snarky and respond that “I understand that you don’t want to talk about anything except black culture. But that desire doesn’t make facts go away.”, but I’m not the snark-master that you are. So I’ll just hope that maybe we could have a thoughtful and reasonable and snark-free conversation. I understand we disagree about a lot of things, but hopefully we both agree that the culture of PG County (and lots of other decent majority-black communities) is not “toxic”, and actually a pretty damn good and positive part of America and American culture. Hopefully neither of us want to sweep vast parts of culture into one negative bucket of shit, but rather we’d like to be specific and challenge and criticize the particular aspects of things (like, say, the extent of white supremacism in broader American society and culture, even if we might disagree on how significant this extent is) that are causing harm rather than using broad and hateful language.
And we’ll probably disagree about the possible efficacy of criticizing cultures from the outside, but hopefully you’ll agree that Coates’ article was not about black culture in any way, and was rather about other topics that can be discussed reasonably.
I think there is a huge difference between calling a culture savage, animalistic and primitive and calling it toxic. YMMV.
I don’t mind your tone, I was saying you were objecting to my tone.
Wait, so when I talk about their culture, you think I’m talking about their cooking? I think I see the problem. When I say culture, I am mostly talking about the values that are transmitted through culture. The sort of values that make illegitimacy so prevalent and academics so unimportant.
A lot of things were necessary for Trump to be successful, he won by a handful of votes in several states. But if you want to blame backlash against Obama, then why in the world wouldn’t that backlash take place when we were re-electing Obama? Why in the world would that backlash take the form of Trump doing about the same with white voters generally and doing better with minority groups? Where is the white supremecism there? I think he is blowing off the more commonly accepted argument that “Donald Trump is not the product of white supremacy so much as the product of a backlash against contempt for white working-class people.” because he wants everything to be about race.
Well, that’s a stupid argument. This profoundly white supremacist society elected a black man TWICE. Sure we may be racist and there may be white supremecists floating around but its not profound.
I had previously made the argument that one of the reasons that the populace did not recognize the Trump’s unsuitability is because the pitch of partisan politics had reached the point where we used up all the bad words to describe guys like Romney and McCain. We almost literally ran out of words to use when Trump came along because we had used them all on up guys like Romney. So when we used the same words against Trump, well, Trump just seemed like Romney. Why the fuck would a conservative or Republican ever believe what you or Coates had to say about Trump. If there is one truth that Trump made popular, it was that the news organizations had severed its relationship with the truth and journalistic integrity a long time ago. You don’t need white supremacy for Trump to win, you just need ignorance and marginally involved voters who generally vote party line.
Why didn’t they show up to vote when Obama won…TWICE!!!
I think you must not know a lot of registered Republicans. I think the world where that would happen is if voting was limited to members of the SDMB.
So they would vote for a black man but not a white woman. Does that sound like a white supremacist to you or a sexist?
He’s saying that it was more than a contributory factor. He is saying it was the driving force. I think that’s laughable.
I’ll stop using the word toxic if it offends you but your objection to my criticism of black culture preceded my use of the word toxic. Prince Georges county is the most affluent majority black county in the country. Its an aberration. That is the DC suburb that well educated blacks in the DC area flock to. Just a few minutes, you find Anacostia and Baltimore.
Well at least no ones come along and said that Asians were handed their success by white people just to spite blacks (at least not in a while).
I don’t know. Is there a single monolithic Asian community? Is there a single monolithic Trump supporter? Is there a single monolithic ANYTHING?
Prince georges county is unique in that it is the most affluent majority black county in the country. There are very few other affluent majority black counties. You might get small pockets of affluent black communities near each of the historically black colleges at stuff but Prince Georges county (which still has a higher than average murder rate for Maryland) is fairly unique and not representative. And even with their higher than average levels of education and affluence, the illegitimacy rate in PG county is STILL above average.
I’m kind of gobsmacked. Reading through most of the last few posts and alternately nodding and shaking my head, but no horrible or hateful disagreements, from my perspective, through most of the posts.
And then you call Prince George’s County MD “an aberration”. Incredible. Black culture is “toxic”, and then when I point out a place in which the great majority live in “black culture” but without bad education, low income, and horrible crime, for the most part, it’s “an aberration”.
Almost unbelievable. I think you should take a good, hard look at yourself and whatever is driving you towards these wide, sweeping, and horribly negative terminology that even manages to slander a relatively wealthy, educated, and peaceful black community.
PG County is just as authentically black as the South Side or Compton. They’re just as much a part of “black culture”. They’re not “toxic”, and they’re not “aberrant”. Whatever is the problem in South Side or other troubled communities, it’s not a problem with “black culture”, since PG County and many other affluent black communities have a culture just as “black” without terrible violence or education.
If PG county has significantly higher illegitimacy than the national average (and you haven’t provided a cite), then that’s an awfully strong argument that high illegitimacy is not the cause of the problems in various majority black communities.
No.
“Wildly inaccurate”, or in this case, “accurate” is, in fact, about statistics.
And when I and others point out that other factors far outweigh white supremacy in causing the troubles within the black community, you say you don’t want to talk about that.
Coates doesn’t want it to be about black culture - he wants to take it for granted that it is all about white supremacy. I don’t think that is a reasonable presupposition.
Regards,
Shodan