I think more of the same. Like I said, a low level civil war with an abortion clinic bombing here, a congressman shot there while the country continues to move towards a third world model. Social mobility is already stagnating and if you’re lucky in America you will die in the same class into which you were born without any backsliding. I think we’ll have a permanent underclass that we pander to with religion and bigotry and an entrenched oligarchy. National leaders will come from a handful of schools and families and the only institution that will have broad support nationally will be the military; certain departments of the government will be seen as either red American or blue American. People will continue to self segregate and the idea that a liberal would live in a conservative neighborhood will go from foolish to downright dangerous. I think the country can go on for decades like this.
Are you talking about the Clintons and how they followed Robert Byrd, a former KKK head?
Does it really make a difference? if a school formerly called Robert E. Lee high school was changed to say Malcom X High School would grades for black students jump? Can you show me that schools named after Martin Luther King have better outcomes for black students?
Kansas City has an all black school called the African Centered Academyand it has some of the worse test scores in the state.
Bottom line, the name on a school has nothing to do with black student outcome.
And so what? People cannot question Obama because he is black? Does being black mean nobody can question their background?
I agree with both of these. We focus on race too much where the real villains are the bankers.
So you categorically reject using empathy to help heal America’s wounds. This proves my point, we don’t heal, we continue the balkanization of America.
As a young man Byrd was in the klan. Later he unequivocally renounced it and apologized for it, and was strongly critical of it for the rest of his life. This is a good thing and hopefully all current klan members will one day renounce their klan membership.
I don’t know why Byrd is brought up so much. Renouncing for past racist behavior is an amazingly positive thing. When a former racist recognizes their past racism and tries to make up for it, then that’s a terrific thing.
It’s possible that whether or not black people, especially black children, feel “welcome” in our society, and feel like they have an equal stake in our society, might actually be related to how well they perform in school. And it seems reasonable that whether or not the institutions they attend, and the historical figures we have monuments and statues for, honor and celebrate individuals for efforts to enforce and extend horrible brutality against black people, might have something to do with how welcome black children feel in our society, and therefore how they might perform in school.
Good straw man!
That’s definitely part of it. Historically, the times when racial tensions have intensified have occurred during times when the white working class and working poor have felt threatened.
But I think there’s more to it than just class struggle, and it’s important to understand the relationship between racism in America and its embrace of a capitalistic system that can be brutally unequal. White Christian America has for centuries helped to nurture the notion that those who accumulate wealth and fortune deserve it, and those who struggle also deserve their fate. There’s also this reverence for the mythological bootstrapper who overcomes all kinds of challenges and hardships - sailing the rough seas, taking a wagon across rough terrain, surviving among the restless natives. It’s an extension of the outdated British colonial thinking that the rest of the world exists for the white man to conquer and reap the benefits. American capitalism was really born out of this type of thinking. Brutal competition, winners and losers, the quick and the dead. Although we may have officially legislated racism out of existence in theory, it is easy for racists to judge minorities - blacks especially - according to racist capitalist norms. A white person can look at a black person and conclude “They’re free and, look, they’re failing,” ignoring the consequences of creating an underclass over several centuries and then suddenly handing that legacy to subsequent generations without making much of an effort to reverse that legacy beyond token measures such as Affirmative Action and subsidized housing, and it hasn’t taken long for white conservatives to grow impatient with even these relatively minor reforms.
I think we need to take what capitalism does well, which is to use the creativity of individuals to create new ideas and products that the rest of us can use and enjoy, but it needs to simultaneously shift toward and understanding that those who don’t “produce” as much still have value. More than that, Americans need to understand that people were born with a built-in fairness meter. People know when they’re getting a raw deal and, regardless of race, they don’t tolerate it for long.
Never mind. Not worth the warning.
What a grotesque denial of agency.
Improvements in the quality of life for Black people in America came early when they subverted their slavers and governments that supported them. Their subversion made slavery inefficient when compared with voluntary economies. Later, Black Americans lifted themselves up from slavery through hard work, ingenuity, and community. All of this occurred despite whites, not because of them. Unfortunately, many whites, progressives, still saw Black Americans as their burden. They attempted to socially engineer economic equality when it was already approaching in the many decades prior to the Great Society. This had and still has a hazardous effect on Black communities, but despite the errors of governments, they continue to thrive as one of the richest and most socially and politically influential communities in the world. Despite white men who outwardly hate them and white men who deny their agency and therefore humanity.
“Every single improvement in America in the quality of life for black people and opportunities to improve their own lives for black people has been because white people have improved the way they interact with black people.”
-Andy or Richard Spencer?
Chilling stuff there.
The point is that black people have never had cause to improve their behavior. The problem has never been the behavior of black people.
In other words, the injustices have always been in how black people have been treated by government and broader society, not in how black people have treated others.
“Black” people are human, just like “White” people, therefore on an individual level, there is quite a bit of room for improvement. To suggest otherwise is to deny their humanity.
The problems of unjust treatment of black people in America have never had anything to do with the behavior of black people.
There have been plenty of Black Americans on the side of the “government and broader society” when these injustices have been perpetrated. Who do you think was calling for harsher policing in Baltimore City? Who participated in cultural shaming of Black people in America and perpetuated stereotypes? Who supported cultural reeducation in the Freedmen’s Bureau? Who participated in the slave trade?
The question is not as simple as you want it to be.
A tautology.
Unjust treatment never has any root with the victim’s behavior or else it would be just treatment.
So I’m putting you down for a “no” on the question of whether we can heal our wounds or not.
Yes, first you have to *want *to.
MrDibble is of course dead right, and I would go further and argue that India and Russia ought to be broken up too. I don’t consider either of them a well functioning nation state and I think part of the problem is they’re too large and diverse.
I don’t know enough about China to say, and of course neither Canada nor Australia has that many people.
I think for capitalism to work the best over the long run their must still be a basic, built in safety net for those at the bottom of the run. This is why I’m for universal healthcare, a decent minimum wage, good public schools, low income housing, and a welfare system to help those in need.
Otherwise we get into a situation where a few own all the assets and work on holding down all the others.
Actually its amazing how absurdly wealthy some people are and how much their wealth is outside any government controls and cross so many borders that they indeed “run the world”.
Stop subjecting one group to the democratic whims of another group. Democracy in too large and diverse a country pits one group against another in a struggle for control.
First by acknowledging that it might be his fault. Black people are not atoms ping-pinging around in the white man’s universe. They are humans with agency. Treat individuals as individuals, not blank faces in groups.
Everytime there is a race-based conflict, everyone wants to draw comparisons to when “all” whites were white supremacists and “all” blacks were victims. Teach more nuanced history.
By specifically stating why it was evil. It was not because they wanted to secede. It was not because they favored low taxes. It was not because 99% of their victims were Black. It is because they initiated violence on a lot of individuals.
The supremacist right do not understand history or economics. Besides those very few, I don’t think this is a point missed by people.
Encourage voluntary interaction and discourage participation in politics.
We can. Not the way many would seek to.
I don’t want to reforge a national identity under which much evil will be done. I do want to promote peaceful cooperation among individuals.