Let's Have a Frank Discussion on Race

[cosmosdan]

@Captain_Amazing

@cosmosdan

Just another thought;

maybe they’re suggesting we recognize the need in hopes a small percentage out of that 300 million will make an effort. We all have the power to do something , some great, some small.

First of all, most of us don’t have the power to do anything substantial. Over 99% of the American public is powerless to affect anything.

Secondly, this isn’t a call to make an effort to do anything other than talk about race. If either of the ladies mentioned in the OP had said “We need to do something about racism in this country”, or “We need to figure out how to reduce racism in this country and then do it”, I could get behind that.

I’m going to guess that they thought a frank discussion about race is one step in making things better. I’m going out on a limb here and guess that they didn’t think a frank discussion was all that we needed. I noticed they didn’t say that.

[Nzinga_Seated]

@Hentor_the_Barbarian

This is at least twice we’ve had this assertion that black people “prey on” their own community.

What does this mean? Do white people not cheat, steal from, or sell drugs to other white people? Would it somehow be better if they were selling drugs to a Latino community? Do suburban white kids never buy drugs from black drug dealers?

I was going to comment on this, but felt my post was long enough as it was. But, yeah, I cringe every time I hear the term, “black on black crime”. It is used in the black community even more than elsewhere, and it’s stupid, for the reasons that you listed.

[Dinsdale]

@Hentor_the_Barbarian

This is at least twice we’ve had this assertion that black people “prey on” their own community.

What does this mean? Do white people not cheat, steal from, or sell drugs to other white people? Would it somehow be better if they were selling drugs to a Latino community? Do suburban white kids never buy drugs from black drug dealers?

This idea that there is something unique about African Americans in terms of committing crimes within their own community is absurd.

Help me think this through, please.
-Is it possible to assess and compare crime rates between various communities?
-Do crime rates within black communities trend higher than within white communities?
-Do these comparisons account for income, education, etc?
-If such comparisons are possible, and if they show higher crime in black communities, does that not say something about the “culture” within those communities?

[Hyperelastic]

I’m going to do something that makes me uncomfortable, yet feels right: to discuss my own personal experience with race. I’m a white guy with both Appalachian and Italian-American roots. I have a tiny bit of American Indian in me. Grew up in a small town with virtually no nonwhite people. I married a woman who is half black and half Oriental (don’t bug me for using that word) and we have two obviously mixed-race kids. Man, are they mixed.

I bring this up because I believe, perhaps immodestly, that it gives me far more personal insight into racial issues than most people. It is the ideal toward which all “good Americans” aspire, if not for themselves, then at least for society, right? My family and I are post-racial. We never have “frank discussions” about race. It’s never been necessary. Discussions my wife and I have about race tend to be of the variety of “Your parents cook a type of food that my parents wouldn’t want to stand in the same room with, isn’t that amusing?” If we find it necessary someday to have frank discussions about race, the next stop will be divorce court.

I think that if it can work for us, and it does, then it can work for the country. Calls for “frank discussions” about race carry an underlying assumption that there is a serious problem. And if you believe there’s still a serious problem at this point in history, after all the frank discussions, more frank discussions are just going to make it worse. No, I am against further “frank discussions”. I know the SDMB is all about debate, but I don’t think it is nuts to suggest that there are some situations that are not improved by debating them. It’s time to let it go. I’d go a step further and claim that even if there is a serious problem with race relations, the best way to get the problem to go away is to act as though there isn’t a problem. That is almost never the right approach, but in this case I believe it is.

[Dinsdale]

@Hyperelastic

My family and I are post-racial. We never have “frank discussions” about race. It’s never been necessary.

Reminds me of the movie Bulworth, where the title character - running for political office - says: All we need is a voluntary, free spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin’ everybody til they’re all the same color…

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@cosmosdan

If a frank discussion is just a bitch or blame session this might be true but it doesn’t have to be that. You enter it with the goal of understanding and improving race relations.

The type of people who are interested in FDOR tend to already have opinions about race relations already. As I said previously, the implication that you can actually change anything with this type of discussion is that one or both sides are somewhat ignorant of the issues. Not likely, considering the vast amount of discussion about these matters that goes on already. People can have differing views without lacking in understanding. The question is what you gain from debating things that people feel very strongly about, versus politely leaving them alone and concentrating on more concrete practical matters.

It interests me that the two posts that dismiss the need or use of any FDOR assume that its all about blaming white people or white guilt. Do you have any idea why that is because I sincerely don’t get it.

I don’t claim to have made any sort of study of FDOR people. But my experience is that people most eager to talk about racial issues these days tend to have one particular viewpoint. YMMV.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Algher

@Damuri_Ajashi

@jsgoddess

A guy walks up to his neighbor every day for fifty years and punches him in the face. When year fifty-one rolls around, the guy goes up and stands in front of his neighbor and says, “Hi, idiot.”

“What do you want?” the neighbor asks.

“Well, you’re hostile,” the guy says. “What’s your problem?”

“You’ve punched me in the face every day for fifty years and now you’re calling me an idiot.”

“Well, I’ve stopped punching you, idiot. You need to get over it. Then I’ll stop calling you an idiot.”

Lets not forget the 4 centuries of raping his mother that proceeded the punching in the face.

But to then make it a *Frank *analogy, let’s have the neighbor be hostile to my 7 year old white son. My son who has raped nobody, punched nobody (OK - his older brother), and taken nothing. ALL he now knows is that this neighbor seems to be a bit hostile. We seem to jump to groups when it comes to this discussion, and completely forget individuals.

This is an important point. The notion that there is hostility to white folks for stuff their forebears did. Not exactly fair. It would be like blaming japanese teenagers for the batan death march.

However, let me expand upon the anlogy, you didn’t simply punch your neighbor every day, you also took the fruits of his labor every day for centuries and using that wealth, denied opportunities to your neighbor’s son while heaping opportunity on your own.

The hostility towards white folks these days is at least to some extent not the result of their racism but their refusal to acknowledge that their position in society compared to blacks is at least partially attributable to the history of racism. This acknowledgement means trying to make amends, we can’t turn back the clock or even put blacks where they might have been if they came here like the pilgrims (or the Irish for that matter) instead of in chains on slave ships but the acknowledgement of that history as having modern day repercussion would be a pretty good start towards discussing what if anything can or should be done about it.

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

[quote=“mutantmoose, post:146, topic:548161”]

@The_Flying_Dutchman

If we don’t keep stats, how do we monitor whether racial discrimination is occurring?

At this point in the evolution of racism, why do we need to monitor racism ? We don’t monitor discrimination towards short people or ugly people.

We don’t monitor how light skinned black people discriminate against dark skinned black people either.

The obsessive focus on racism was needed in the past and has done miles of service in changing the wide spread attitudes of people who were willing to change. At this point however I fear the exercise of focusing on racial issues is more likely to create resistance and opportunities for recruitment by the racists.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Dinsdale

I don’t know that I can accomplish anything here other than make myself look bad,so I’ll step away for a while. But I never denied that racism is very prevalent and real and ongoing. Whether clearly or not, I merely intended to express my opinion that racism was not the sole cause for today’s African Americans’ relatively disadvantaged position. And even assuming tremendous institutional and personal racism, I do not understand why African Americans are unable to emulate other cultures in establishing their own institutions. I don’t think anyone has offered an explanation for that as yet.

I don’t think you are a racist and I do think that many of the problems in the black community are not the direct results of racism (rap music that denigrates women, glorifies violence and crime) at least not intentional racism (drug laws) but sometimes they are (the enforcement of drug laws). While I will denounce the poisonous rap music, there is plenty of edifying contructive hip hop out there that poses some really pointed questions to society and we can’t simply ignore them and say “well pull yourself up by your bootstraps and THEN we can talk about how much racism has prevented yuo from achieving.”

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Dinsdale

Help me think this through, please.
-Is it possible to assess and compare crime rates between various communities?
-Do crime rates within black communities trend higher than within white communities?
-Do these comparisons account for income, education, etc?
-If such comparisons are possible, and if they show higher crime in black communities, does that not say something about the “culture” within those communities?

1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. No. To put it clearly, when you account for the effects of socioeconomic factors on criminal behavior, race does not help you to predict criminal behavior.
4. Yes, they say clearly that attributing crime to the “culture” of the black community is itself a racist attribution.

I just found that the first issues of the Journal of Race and Social Problems are available online for free. You may find them useful in puzzling through these issues. Please look here: Race and Social Problems | Home

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Anduril

Not analogous at all. Among blacks, women and gays, who got their “complete package” of civil rights first? Blacks. And yet to someone who lives in the third world, blacks appear to whine so much more loudly than is necessary. Heck, gays can’t even marry yet and not only do blacks whine more, they are overrepresented among those who oppose gay marriage. Talk about hypocrisy.

When do you think the Civil rights act and the Voting rights act were passed?

the issue of gay marraige is at least to some degree about… well I don’t know what, I would have thought homophobes would want all homosexuals in committed relationships so they gay people won’t corner them in a bathroom or something. Its going to change and change soon.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Anduril

@Jackmannii

Of course there is residual racism in the U.S., as in every country in the world.

Preecisely. Americans act as if you invented that damn thing. Everybody had it in varying degrees. This whole talk about having a “frank discussion about race” is code word for “we will play the white guilt violin till the end of time”. Frankly, it’s transparent and pathetic.

I’ve always wondered why there is racism against dark skin everywhere in the world. I Asia which has almost no exposure to blacks, there is racism against dark skin. In Europe, there is racism. In South America, there is racism.

WTF is the deal with that? Is it the connection between dark skin and working in the sun all day? Is it because of something about dark colors thatt make su more afraid?

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Der_Trihs

@Anduril

Of course protest matters. Making your voice heard matters. But whining past the point of getting to your goal is just plain tiresome to watch.

Except they aren’t at their goal yet. And no, you don’t get to determine what their goals are, they do.

I think there are objectively determinable goals we can achieve and say, we are there.

[Dinsdale]

Thanks for the link, Hentor. I’ll take a look.

I don’t know how well it is respected, but one book I found quite interesting in thinking about how I think about race, was Faces at the Bottom of the Well by Derrick Bell. Several thought experiments I found quite enlightening.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Anduril

There is no abridgment to any rights regarding employment - in fact, a slight bias is in their favor (as with other minorities) because of affirmative action.

Tell that to the Asians.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Honesty

IMO, to have a discussion on race would be futile because white people generally don’t look at blacks as equals. If you need evidence of this, just watch FOX news. James Baldwin once said (paraphrase) that blacks don’t want equality they simply want to live their existence in America without being beat, bludgeoned, and imprisoned by whites. That’s all.

Now if you were to ask me what I want? I’d say I want Affirmative Action back but since whites only gave us from 1965 - 1978 before they decided to renege on the Civil Rights deal; I’ll take reparations instead.

• Honesty

What happened in 1978?

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@toofs

There needs to be a cultural shift within the black community in regards to role models and accepted paths to success. An emphasis on education, providing for your own children, and not victimizing your own people can only come from within the black community.

I think that shift is starting to occur. I think Michele Obama needs to go into black neighborhoods and talk about the poisonous aspects of the black community.

[Anduril]

@Damuri_Ajashi

@Anduril

@Jackmannii

Of course there is residual racism in the U.S., as in every country in the world.

Preecisely. Americans act as if you invented that damn thing. Everybody had it in varying degrees. This whole talk about having a “frank discussion about race” is code word for “we will play the white guilt violin till the end of time”. Frankly, it’s transparent and pathetic.

I’ve always wondered why there is racism against dark skin everywhere in the world. I Asia which has almost no exposure to blacks, there is racism against dark skin. In Europe, there is racism. In South America, there is racism.

WTF is the deal with that? Is it the connection between dark skin and working in the sun all day? Is it because of something about dark colors thatt make su more afraid?

Well, there’s racism against the Chinese - they’re not dark-skinned. But at least for some parts of Asia, dark skin is associated with working under the sun and by extension, poverty. It’s a class distinction rather than race.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Nzinga_Seated

Racism against blacks in this country was on a whole other level than racism against Asians.

Yeah but there was enough of it for me to know how much it can fuck you up.

Blacks have to, as we say, do the damn thang! In spite of all kinds of reasons for us to fail, we have to succeed, anyways. Or else, we’ll just be a bunch of losers with a good reason. That’s worthless.

Exactly.

…I think fertile ground is sometimes underestimated. If your mom was raised by a mom who was raised during a time and place of legal racism…I mean the kind of racism that was considered so right and true that the police would come and back a racist’s right to discriminate against you, using dogs and hoses…well that kind of thing is going straight into the psyche of the woman who endures it, and to her child and her child too. Don’t think it just all washes away when the laws are changed. It’s ingrained.

[

Exactly.

I never wanted to be one of the ones on board for Obama’s hopey-changey train, but I will admit to my own cornball heart that deep down, I believed that having a black family in the white house just might bring a bit of hope and change to poor black folks who have been damaged by black racism in the minds and memories of their parents and grandparents. Maybe some fertile ground could be laid down where struggling black folks can heal up and start to really not only see the cream of the crop rise, but have all of the crops thrive. Because, let’s face it…we all can’t be cream.

So you think that Obama in office might make a difference for the black communities perspective of the world? As an Asian it certainly made this country seem a little less hostile to me.

I was with some guys at country club locker room when someone cracked a black joke, I laughed and after they left, a Jewish guy said you really think they aren’t telling those same sort of jokes about Asians when you aren’t around. It dumbfounded me because I had heard those same guys tell anti-semetic jokes when the Jewish guy wasn’t around and it dumbfounded me that I hadn’t put two and two together.

[Algher]

An interesting perspective would be to get the input of white kids who are minorities in their community. I have developed a much greater empathy for the path of minorities watching what my son has gone through at his school. The junior high is majority Asian (Chinese and Korean), and the percentage of Anglo Whites (i.e. not Persian or Hispanic) is below 30% I think.