I stand corrected on that. He was just an expletive-deleted who blamed black culture for single black mothers and all of the other problems with black people. Like Magiver is doing in this thread.
So since, CLEARLY, blaming black people and their culture for 53 years has resulted in little to no changes to the situation, what other solutions do you folks propose? :dubious:
No, I’m saying that there is a reasonable avenue to success that anyone can apply regardless of income. If you’re poor it takes longer but the process is the same and it’s basic common sense. It’s not monetary poverty that’s holding our kids back. It’s social poverty. It’s a lack of guidance from an adult caregiver. That’s a really big deal because growing up in a neighborhood where parental guidance was sparse meant something akin to the Lord of the Flies.
You can pour money into an economically depressed school system but you can’t force a child to learn. That comes with social structure. The nuclear family is far more than 2 adults watching over their child’s behavior. It’s a community of parents on the same wavelength.
When I was a kid my mother would have known I’d screwed up at school before I got home. If one assignment wasn’t turned in or I was failing something my parents would have immediately intervened.
Then why are you so dismissive of the possibility that public policy can influence the ease or challenge of forming and maintaining stable families? Public policy has definitely affected this in the past. Why couldn’t it be involved now?
Actually I’m blaming poverty on the lack of parents and the collapse of social structure that surrounds it. And it’s funny that you would place the blame on singe mothers as it would be the absence of fathers creating the parental vacuum. And with the current problem with drugs we’re now seeing grandparents raising children.
Race has nothing to do with it unless you want to complain about race. Then it becomes a subset of the same issues.
It was institutional welfare that destroyed the family unit. We warehoused poor people in housing projects that destroyed the very mechanism necessary for success.
If you don’t fix the lack of parental guidance then the problem will continue,
Then you acknowledge that public policy plays a role, we just disagree on what role it plays.
You’re stating opinions, not facts, and many others have different opinions. It’s reasonable, at least, to consider the possibility that making sure families have jobs is part of maintaining stable families, along with health care, and a fair and equal justice system, and many other policies.
not exactly. I’m saying you can’t legislate behavior.
I’m stating common sense based on past societal successes.
If you try and force a “living wage” you’ll transfer jobs to other countries.
These are just opinion disputes. There’s been very little, if any, effort in the US to institute a real living wage. We’ve never had universal health care. We still have a justice system in which half of all black Americans report that they, personally, have been mistreated by. And much more. It’s reasonable to consider things like this when trying to craft policy to make it less difficult to form and maintain stable families. Blaming entire communities for the misdeeds of a much smaller number might make you feel good, but it’s never accomplished anything positive, and never will.
How about some patriotic respect! How about we don’t cheapen and commercialize the anthem by playing it at events that have little or nothing to do with patriotism? The NFL isn’t about America, its about Budweiser.
Well, except trans lives. And arguably women’s lives. We don’t have an awesome record on children’s lives…
(women don’t get shot by cops - well, unless you are Justine Damond - but they get beat to death by their spouses and ignored and dismissed by medical professionals. But if anyone’s life in this country is valued the least, I’d say trans people win that particular game of oppression olympics)
Unfortunately, they do.
I quit a political forum whose rules banned hate speech, but the administrators seemingly had zero issue with transphobia and hate. Of course, they also were very lax on homophobia and the ‘usual suspects’, which included half of the moderation team, could insult people on the board and be racist and homophobic as all fuck. :mad:
“I believe they are mentally ill and thus [hate]” seems to be all too common in places that otherwise won’t tolerate the same aimed at other groups. 
On a related note, another group whose lives don’t have much value are the mentally ill.
My thread didn’t get much traction, but if you have a chance to see the Showtime documentary on Mauro Ranallo, the Bipolar Rock and Roller, please do so. The man, who is a UFC, Bellator and WWE/NXT announcer, has come forward and made himself an advocate for removing the stigma of mental illness.
If you don’t have Showtime, this is a wrestling podcast, but Mauro is on the first 1/3rd of it discussing his issues and the documentary;
And we might as well add the disabled in general to people society doesn’t tend to give a flying fuck about.
And that’s the issue with “Black Lives Matter.” Of course they do. And of course society values them less than white straight able bodied and neuronormative Christian cis-male lives. But its a fucking huge damn club of oppression, disregard for our safety and health, and discrimination out here - and a big tent would be far more successful than the stupid games of oppression olympics we play.
It’s not a competition. We don’t have to make the mentally ill etc. wait until after blacks get treated fairly before they get their turn. Rather, getting the idea in place that black lives matter as much as any others brings along the idea that *all *lives matter as much, too. But you have to focus on a problem to fix it, and the defense against fixing it has been to diffuse that focus.
I am disabled, and a mental health problem. And this is utter bullshit. Please do not use us as political props to try and undermine another movement.
BLM is about a real issue, that of discrimination in police enforcement. Disabled people have a ton of issues, but most don’t really have that problem at all. The mentally ill do have some overlap in getting shot, but less so in being arrested, since we don’t usually look different than others. Our issues just are are not their issues.
Seeing it as “why don’t they care about the disabled” is just pitting us against each other. That is the “oppression olympics.” It’s acting like we can’t support their movement. It’s acting like we have the right to demand that we be included, and be allowed to set part of the agenda of another group.
Consider the Democratic Party. I’ve constantly heard that they don’t really care about black people. They have such a big tent that black issues often get pushed back. I largely think that, if it wasn’t for the racism in the Republican Party, a lot of black people would be open. If they could appeal by becoming the party that cares about racism but not about the other social justice issues, I’m sure a lot would jump ship.
Or consider Occupy Wall Street. Everyone had different issues. And what happened? They basically lost everything. There was no way to keep them together. There were too many causes, and too many ways to dismiss them. They had the outrage, but the lack of ability to agree on the actual underlying issues completely neutered their ability to get anything done.
Plus there’s just how history has been shown to work. If you put too many causes into one, all the causes suffer. There’s a reason why the civil rights movement keeps on focusing on one issue at a time. We went from focusing on black people, then women, then gay people, and now trans. Focusing on one issue allows the next issue to be easier, because a lot of the battle has already been fought. Focusing on all the issues just gives more places for people to object.
I am disabled. I have a mental illness. But I am 100% in support of Black Lives Matter. If the police can’t work on becoming less racist in enforcement, and continue to attack the movement, then there is no hope for us with causes that are less popular.
If BLM succeeds, then we can succeed. We have no reason to be at war with them, trying to force them to include us. We can continue to fight our own battles, while allowing them to pave the way. We can ally with them, and work together where our movements coincide. But we have no reason to try and fight them.
I secretly believe that black lives don’t matter? Okay then. Being asked why you would flip over a tortoise when you insist that you wouldn’t can cause interesting reactions also, I hear.
(Although there is a chance that you are refering to someone else when you call someone “upset” because I don’t feel upset. Then again, it gets back to that communication thing, since words generally are meant to communicate information, the easiest thing is to assume that you think I am upset.)
So am I - disabled and mentally ill, and I don’t think its bullshit at all. Please don’t forbid me from having my own opinion on the matter. Plus I’m a woman, I’ve been told my opinion doesn’t count my whole damn life. Plus, historically, my issues have been backburned in favor of someone elses my whole life (yes, I’m still bitter about women getting cut from the from Section II of the 14th amendment). And I have a non-gender binary child. I’m rather impatient on getting our issues handled one by one, while non-gender conforming people face violence, women’s reproductive rights are under fire, and the mentally ill suffer.
It shouldn’t be a competition, but plenty of people perceive it as such. Plenty of people feel their issues aren’t addressed. Instead of saying “hey, lets make society better for EVERYONE” (as much as feasible) and address injustice, we play the “black lives matter” game.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be marching for police violence against black men - its horrifying. I’m saying that their slogan SUCKS.
Dismissing ‘Black Lives Matter’ with a variety of excuses, annoyance, irritation, including insisting that they are entirely responsible for all of the ills that befall them is pretty clearly saying that they don’t matter all that much to you.
I don’t generally get annoyed or argue with people who passionately make statements about things I already agree with.