I think it proves that everybody in that room understands that being treated like a black person means being treated like a second-class citizen.
If you have a problem with that interpretation, imagine asking that question to a bunch of white conservatives. How many of them would want to be black? You might see some raised hands from ham-faced MAGA trolls trying to be cute. But outside of the occasional race-fetishist, nobody really wants to their life to be burdened in the same way that black people are.
Most white people won’t even move into a black neighborhood unless it’s a gentrifying area that is getting whiter. You think a white person would chose to be black forever? It’s so telling that you can’t even answer that basic question without first attacking the speaker, the premise, and everybody in the room.
I think there is a lot more nuance to answering that question then you are giving credit to. As I said earlier, which black person?
My answer will vary from yes, to maybe, to hell no, depending on who you tell me I am going to be treated like. Tiger Woods, *Frank from IT, or the gangbanger in LA.
If the question is supposed to be I have MY life but am black instead, then uhh ok but what does that prove?
All the people i listed were black, but if you asked me the same question using a different race than I am, my answer would change as well. It would also change if you asked me to be treated like a billionaire, a millionaire, a middle class person, or a poor person.
Which correlates well to wealth. In my district the best indicator for school performance is the number of free meals served.
When I was house hunting in Silicon Valley every single real estate agent pulled out the school rankings first thing. Basically, you bought better schools with higher house prices. Those who couldn’t afford the high prices were in the lower scored schools.
One thing people don’t get is that test scores are determined by the population. One of our high schools, in the area that makes even my inflated value house look cheap, has very high test scores. It was also badly overcrowded, and the physical conditions were not that great. The district decided to move one of the feeder schools from it to balance school populations.
The affected parents had a fit. I went to the meeting - it was close to a white collar riot. They were sure that their property values would plummet because of this unfair move.
The district did it anyway, and what happened was that the test scores in the school where the affected kids went climbed. No new facilities, no new teachers, just new kids. In this case the scores of the old school stayed out, but just imagine if the cream were skimmed off by allowing kids to move.
How do you plan to figure that out? Not all bad parents are drug addicts. Not all good parents are rich. The urge to procreate is pretty strong.
I’m all for making it easy for parents who don’t want kids because they may not be ready for them to not have them. Let’s have free birth control and easily available abortions when that fails. But I don’t think those are popular positions to those bemoaning bad parents.
As a member of my community, I feel that I have an obligation to my local school, as well as to the students who attend and their families. Sending kids (and money) elsewhere makes the community weaker.
But, we can certainly encourage parents and communities to build and not abandon their community resources. If enough do so, we all benefit.
[/quote]Quick story.
KCMO SouthWest High School had a turbulent history and was closed but re-opened as a college prep school in 2005. It was a true magnet school who’s program required high grades and good behavior to stay there.
It was doing well. The community WAS involved. Many people volunteering and such. Middle class families were putting there kids in.
THEN, the district idiots took over. They closed another high school that was doing poorly and put those students into Southwest. They tossed the college prep program out and allowed students to cause as much chaos as they wanted.
Well as expected it turned into a dump. In 2010-2011 they had 3 principals. Police were called several times. Girls were raped. Neighborhood people who saw this complained to the press and the district, to hide the failures, banned community people from being in the school. After the rapes they put the blame on the principal and fired him. when actually it was the districts fault in not having enough security and having broken doors and cameras.
We talked about this earlier in the thread. Nobody raised their hand maybe because nobody wants to stand out. Maybe if they could write in and be anonymous they would say yes. It wasnt exactly a scientific poll. She starts slamming the audience and everyone just wants to sit and listen.
No, that’s not the question. You don’t get to pick which black person. It’s a random name that comes out of a random hat. So you might get to be Tiger Woods, but the odds are extremely high that you’ll play by the rules everyone else does, with no advantage of fame or wealth.
How do you like those odds, as compared to just staying with the known situation that comes with the white skin you were born with.
I’d like to point out the question is not “do you want to be Black?” or “do you want to be a Black person?” or “do you want to be a specific Black person?”
It’s “do you want to be treated like a Black person?” It’s a very different question. It’s do you want people to look at you and make assumptions about you the way they do when they run across someone Black? Do you think people would treat you the same? Or do they not?
I wouldn’t mind either one of your stop gap measures (free birth control (it currently is pretty close) and easily available abortions (with the laws we currently have on the books)), but it doesn’t go near far enough. When parents are failing their children, at some amount of times that is agreed upon by the powers that be (and this will be the sticking point) then those parents need to have parental rights stripped and the kids placed elsewhere for their benefit.
How many times do parents get to have their kids and eat them too? Currently, it is way too many times and it is not only detrimental to the children but to society that has to try and pick up the broken pieces later.
But that is just it, if you asked me to change positions with ANY random person, black, white, orange, it wouldn’t matter, my answer would always be NO. I am not wanting or willing to change places with anyone that hasn’t at least done as well as I have at life. The choices and sacrifices that I made to get where I am were MINE.
I wouldnt want to roll the dice to change places with any random person right now. I have a good family, job and such. I have already been thru tons of crap in my life. Why would I want to take a chance I could end up being someone else?
Now IF say I was currently homeless or dying of cancer - hell yes!
There have been times in my life if I was a black person with the same talents and academics I have I know I could have gotten a better job because the company I work for and others I have worked for, have gone out of their way to recruit and promote black employees. Years ago and even currently I would have qualified for more college scholarships.
Perhaps you wouldn’t have been able to get to that new job, because on the way there, you got pulled over for being black and then shot and killed while reaching for your wallet?
I understood the question, what I don’t understand is why the default is worse than most of the people attending these lectures.
The question is meant to be a gotcha but for those of us who don’t treat black people any worse than the white people it is a meaningless question designed with the intent to “prove” something, I just haven’t figured out what it is attempting to prove.
If it’s proving that in some cases black people are mistreated, by the police, by the teachers, by whomever, then yes that is a true statement. It is also true that lots of other people get the same mistreatment and I STILL would ask for specifics.
If it is like you state, then sure I’d change places, me being me, except my skin tone is darker.
I would not be one of the demographics I laid out earlier, and would not be mistreated due to me being me. Acting the way I act, working how I work, having kids like I have, schooling like I did.