No it isn’t. If I find one black person who voted for Trump, is that an awfully strong argument that Trump supporters aren’t racists?
Regards,
Shodan
I was talking about language like “toxic”.
Because Coates’ article, and this thread, have nothing to do with “the troubles within the black community”. If that’s what you want to talk about, why not start a thread about it? It’s certainly a reasonable topic of discussion. It’s just irrelevant to Coates’ article and this thread.
I think it’s reasonable to suppose that Coates doesn’t want to talk about black culture or the “troubles within the black community” in an article that has nothing to do with black culture or the troubles within the black community.
Okay. I’m asking – begging, even – for the thoughtful and reasonable Shodan, not the knee-jerk snark-master Shodan. Pretty please? Just give it a try for old time’s sake.
PG County is a pretty interesting case, isn’t it? High incomes, high education, relatively low crime (especially for such a large and mostly non-rural community)… and, at least according to an uncited claim earlier, high illegitimacy. But what if the illegitimacy isn’t the thing? What if PG County has mostly 2 parent families who stay together, but lots of them aren’t married for whatever reason? That’d be pretty interesting and quite different than the stereotyped social problems of “the black community”. Maybe it’s not marriage or legitimacy that matters. Maybe it’s parents who stay together.
I don’t know if that’s the case, but I also don’t know if there’s higher illegitimacy in the first place (my google-fu failed me on both these questions). But if it’s the case that PG County is good in every statistic except for illegitimacy, wouldn’t it be reasonable to maybe consider that illegitimacy might not necessarily be the cause of all the other problems that afflict some black communities? Maybe the problem is single-parent families (related to, but different than, illegitimacy). Maybe it’s some other thing. Maybe they’re symptoms of some other issue.
In any case, couldn’t that deserve a reasonable and non-snarky response instead of some silliness about how a single Trump voter is reasonably compared to an affluent community of more than a half-million people?
You said “toxic” was hateful language because it was wildly inaccurate to say that most black children are born out of wedlock. Since it is not wildly inaccurate, but quite true, then “toxic” must not be hateful language.
No, it is not irrelevant. Black illegitimate birth rates and lack of success in education and disproportionate crime rates are much more of a problem for society in general than white supremacy. Coates would like to claim it is irrelevant, but it is not.
And I think it is even more reasonable to suppose that Coates doesn’t want to talk about problems that he can’t blame on someone else.
My response was entirely reasonable. You made a ridiculous suggestion, and I ridiculed your suggestion.
Maybe it is. Prove it.
I’ve already done the legwork from my own side. [ul]
[li]Black children are born out of wedlock a large majority of the time[*] Most black children grow up without the long-term presence of a father figure in the home[/li][li]Blacks are about 13% of the population but commit about half of all murders[/li][li]The negative effects of illegitimate birth persist even when SES, income, and race, are held constant[/li][li]Black students underperform whites on academic tests even when other factors like parental education are held constant[/li][li]Blacks are disproportionately poor, disproportionately in prison, disproportionately unemployed[/li][/ul]All these have been cited in the past. What do we see from you? “Maybe it’s something else” and “I don’t want to talk about anything except Trump is a white supremacist”. :dubious:
Regards,
Shodan
I deeply apologize if I miscommunicated anything, but my characterizing of “toxic” as hateful language had nothing to do with statistics. If you read it differently, then you read it wrong or I communicated it wrong. That was not what I meant at all.
As for the rest, I hold that it’s reasonable for Coates to write an article about a topic other than problems in the black community. It’s okay that he wrote about something else, and it’s okay that we discuss those other things. If you, Shodan, want to talk about that, then okay, but that’s a new topic, and I recommend another thread. Not every topic, even related to racism, has to go back to problems in the black community. There can reasonably be discussion about other things. This thread was meant to be a discussion of Coates’ article, which is not about how to fix the problems in the black community, and I think it’s reasonable to ask that discussion be contained to the topics of the article.
Again, this article and thread are not about causes of or solutions to any problems in black communities or black culture. That’s a different topic.
You didn’t miscommunicate, you just said something that was wrong.
You claimed that “toxic” was hateful language in part because it was wildly inaccurate to say that most black children are born out of wedlock. It is not wildly inaccurate, thus your allegation that it was hateful language is incorrect.
Whether or not something is hateful language does have to do with statistics, because statistics is one way we determine if a given statement is true.
So either “toxic” isn’t hateful language and you were wrong to say it was, or being hateful language doesn’t relate to whether or not it is inaccurate, and you were wrong to say it does.
Regards,
Shodan
That’s not what I claimed. If you think it is, then you’re reading it wrong or I phrased it wrong. If I phrased it wrong, I deeply apologize, but hopefully we can move on now that it’s clear that my assertion that the language in question was hateful was not meant to be related to anything at all regarding statistics.
Yes. Its an exception from the rule.
Point to three other majority black counties out of over 100 majority black counties that have anything close to what Prince Georges county has. Out of all the cities with large black populations. Yes the African American culture is broken. Perhaps you don’t like the word aberration. I am happy to use the word “exception” to describe PG county if that makes you feel better.
Peaceful? No. The murder rate is still higher than neighboring counties with similar socioeconomics.
OK, name three other affluent black counties that don’t have the problems I describe.
Unlike the poster that assumed that some significant portion of Vietnamese refugees came over with bars of gold based on a story their dad once told them, I am presenting statistics and facts that show evidence of a problem within the community. One that does not exist (at least not as badly) for other communities with similar socioeconomics.
To be fair, Trump really is starting to look like a white supremacist or at least willing to embrace them.
You are basically saying that the truth can be hateful.
And you wonder why the country is getting “social justice fatigue”
No I’m not, not at all. “Toxic” and “aberrant” are entirely subjective descriptors, when it comes to things like culture. They don’t describe objective truth, they describe your feelings about something. And I object to your continuing use of hateful language to describe the way of life of millions of decent and peaceful Americans, even when there are others (who live quite differently, in general, than peaceful folks) who have behaved in ways worth criticizing.
Again, this article and this thread are entirely unrelated to black culture. It’s possible to write about and discuss white supremacism in broader American society and culture, as Coates does, without delving into black culture. If you want to discuss this topic so much, why not start your own thread, or add to the many other threads about how terrible black culture is?
I said I can stop using the word toxic to describe the unhealthy, counterproductive and self destructive elements of black culture if you want. I meant aberration in the sense that it was an exception. So now that we have the tone policing out of the way.
Do you have anything you want to say about the unhealthy, counterproductive and self destructive elements of black culture that are direct contributors to the disparities that some people want to lay entirely at the feet of racism?
Do you have examples outside of PG county?
Its also possible to discuss this article without talking about reparations but you went off a tangent about that. Does the OP have special powers to choose the direction and tangents that spin off the OP? Coates blames white supremacy for a bunch of stuff, particularly the election of Trump. That turns into a discussion of race generally, including a discussion of viability and reasonableness of reparations… and black culture.
Perhaps Trump won because blacks didn’t come out and vote. Perhaps its their fault. After all whites vote for Hillary about as much as they voted for Obama. Blacks did not. Hispanics did not. Asians did not.
This wasn’t a repudiation of Obama and the ascendancy of white supremacy. This was a repudiation of Hillary and the corporatist political establishment on both sides of the aisle along with the reversion to the norm for black voting patterns when there isn’t a black candidate. Perhaps Obama was the manifestation of black solidarity and this was all just a reversion to the norm.
Coates just sees everything through the prism of racism. His entire argument is based on anecdote and speculations about human nature. That is the problem with crit race theory generally. It places anecdotal evidence ahead of statistical evidence and makes all sorts of unfounded intuitive leaps in logic to to explain away inconvenient facts in an effort to make themselves right.
It assumes that disparity is proof of discrimination because there is no other POSSIBLE explanation for a disparity exists between one minority group with an incredibly high illegitimate birth rate, an above average rate of murders and violent crimes, a glorification of thuggery and a low reverence for education; and another minority group with a very low illegitimate birth rate, low violence and glorification of criminality, and an extremely high reverence for education. It must be discrimination or maybe the Vietnamese refugees all came over with bars of gold tucked in their shirts.
I am probably philosophically close to you than Shodan, but I can’t eat bullshit arguments just to reinforce my currently held views. E.g. I have rational arguments and bases for supporting affirmative action but I will not accept arguments that say that anything less than equality of result is proof of a need for affirmative action. Unfortunately what I see is more and more hyperbole in the arguments. The right started to use scientific racism to argue that the differences in outcomes between races was the result of genetic differences in the races and rather than point out how bad the “science” was, some on the left found it simpler and more convenient to turn their back on science rather than explain that more racially pure Africans (e.g. African refugees and Caribbean immigrants who come over wit next to nothing) did better than African Americans with some white ancestry. That you couldn’t line up a school of African American kids according to shade like a pantene color and have the vaguest idea of their IQ. But some have abandoned these uncomfortable arguments because of what it might say about black culture in America.
I’m not interested in talking about black culture in this thread. Certainly not with someone who, by their posts, seems to utterly despise it.
Sounds like a fun game! Will the Mods let us start in in Thread Games or does it have to go in BBQ Pit?
Sure, I understand. You only want to talk about black culture with someone who isn’t critical of it. That’s called a bubble. When you insulate yourself from inconvenient facts because it will force you to re-evaluate your opinion, you are encapsulating yourself in a bubble.
I have seen you be very polite and engage opposing opinions thoughtfully and respectfully but now that I think about it, I can’t recall you changing your opinion on anything. How open are you really to ideas different than your own?
And for the record, I do despise the unhealthy, counterproductive and self destructive elements of black culture. Why don’t you?!?!?!
At no point do I imply that every African American is violent any more than I imply that every Asian values education but there is a difference in culture and that difference makes a difference.