And EasyPhil, I would suggest you examine your own biases, with statements like, “Every white person benefits from racism whether they know it or not . . .” That’s as much racism as anything anyone else has said in this thread.
Just for kicks, I took some of the tests at your link. Here were some of my results.
1. Black/White Adults Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for White (13% of respondents had this results)
2. Black/White Children Your data suggests little to no automatic preference (19%)
3. Blacks/Whites and Weapons Your data suggest a slight automatic association between White and weapons (5%)
4. Gay/Straight Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Straight people (15%)
5. Asian Racial Bias
Your data suggest a slight automatic association between European faces and American (18%)
Arab Muslim racial bias
Your data suggest little or no automatic preference (25%)
Not sure it means anything, but there you have it.
Gee, imagine how much good could be done if the 13th ammendment was repealed.
I’m through trying to convince you fuckers- nobody’s even listening.
Cash reparations are a bad idea, but at the very fucking least an appology is deserved- an honest appology, which can not be made as long as we have segregationists like strom thurmond in elected office.
fuck! does anyone have the common fucking decency to at least quit suggesting that black Americans should be thankful for slavery, that bullshit is pissing me off.
I dunno, does anyone have the common fucking decency to at least quit suggesting I should feel guilty for something neither I nor my ancestors participated in, just because I am white?
Wow, I almost never use the quote the whole post option, but the racist drivel contained within your post was too much to just blow past.
Yes, it’s impossible for me to empathize with black people and know exactly what they go through, but you are perfectly capable of being able to tell that I am obviously advantaged because I’m white.
You’re a racist.
As I said before, slavery came after racism, not before racism, so your paragraph seems to be a non sequitur. Basically slavery is the effect of racism, and not the cause of it. So saying that modern day racism is an effect of slavery is a fallacy.
The point is that slavery didn’t affect all these groups yet racism does, so it kind of blows out the idea that slavery caused modern racism.
No I don’t think I am unbiased, it is impossible for any individual to put for an unbiased opinion. However I will check this out as soon as I am done addressing your blatant racism.
And here we come to the crux of the reparations movement. “Where’s my free money?”
You’ve never been to a poor white neighborhood have you? You think poor white kids growing up in a black ghetto are benefitted? Do you think they don’t suffer racism at the hands of black racists? You make it sound like racism cuts just one way.
You’re a racist.
Since when does hating someone based upon race give someone power?
Make you a deal, I’ll check out my house and my head, if you’ll do the same. Do we have a deal? Then we can fix those problems and have two less racists in the world. Now onto your little survey.
After taking two of the tests, I came up with a moderate association between whites and weapons and little or no automatic preference for skin tone. Those are the only ones I took so far because I have the attention span of a mosquito and I got bored.
So am I sufficiently non-biased to be able to participate in this thread, EasyPhil?
Not really. We have had people with varying levels of melanin make racist comments and we have had people of more than one “race” both support and oppose reparations in this thread.
I would certainly agree that this thread has evoked several racist comments, but it is hardly divided along racial lines. (It has also evoked more ignorance than I have seen in a while with that sad trait being demonstrated both by some opponents and by some supporters.)
Rather than castigating those posting racist comments, I think we’re better off pointing out how their comments are simply ignorant. Regardless which side one supports in the discussion, we’re all supposed to be fighting ignorance.
Tom: My point is that the the entire issue of reparations is that white (one side) people owe black (other side) people money.
That’s dividing along racial lines.
mswas, I can’t answer for EasyPhil, who may very well ba a racist as you claim, but your responses to his points are bullshit.
As I pointed out in my anecdote earlier, we have benefitted whether we like it or not, simply by not having our hopes and dreams discouraged as children. By competing in a much smaller pool of qualified employees than we would if potential wasn’t discouraged in others.
Certainly racism was used to excuse slavery, but the state of former slaves has led to worse racism than would have existed otherwise. If it wasn’t for slavery, employers in the post civil war south couldn’t have held “cheap black labor” over the heads of their white employees.
It isn’t about money. The fact that I was shouted down for the mere suggestion that an appology might be in order suggests that for many in the anti-reparations crowd it isn’t about money at all. They can’t, or won’t, admit to themselves that others who work as hard as they have have not gotten anywhere. You all want to claim that “hard work” is all that is needed.
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I can’t answer for EasyPhil, but I live in a poor neighborhood right now. I grew up in poor neighborhoods, my mother was a single mom trying to raise two kids on a teacher’s salary. There are assholes everywhere, but I’ve never been discriminated against for being white. Once again I direct your attention to my anecdote about my lab partner in high school, despite the fact that Marshell was from a slightly wealthier family than mine, I was encouraged in school while he was discouraged. I benefitted from racism, whether I wanted to or not.
Poor whites from Appalachia are discriminated against more than middle class blacks? A stone cold fact? No. Sociologists have been doing double blind testing for over 25 years comparing the way blacks and whites are treated in a variety of situations - applying for a job, renting an apartment, getting service at a restaurant, etc. Black people are consistently treated worse than whites, without regard to social class.
Appalachian whites can avoid most of the discrimination directed against them by losing their distinct accents, getting better educations, dressing better, and generally joining the white American mainstream. Growing up in the MD suburbs of DC, I knew hundreds of whites with Appalachian origins who did this very thing.
I wouldn’t deny that whites straight out of the mountains are denied certain jobs or prevented from renting or buying in certain neighborhoods. I wouldn’t deny that middle class whites feel free to stereotype and slur these people in a way that’s no longer acceptable with black people.
That, sir, is a crock. The very word “reparations” implies that someone is owed.
If all you want is an apology, then here you go:
I’m terribly sorry that your ancestors were enslaved, treated as livestock, and dealt with in the most cowardly, contemptible way possible. If there were anything I could do, I would. I mean that sincerely.
But, since there is in fact nothing I can do, and I have just assumed guilt that I am not obligated to carry since nobody in my family were slavers or slave owners, you can keep your hands out of my pocket, since both my wife and newborn child have to eat and I will not allow them to starve at your expense.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, and good day, sir.
Perhaps some white people HAVE benefitted. Perhaps some have not. I grew up in an area where there were almost no black people. The black kids across the street from me, who incidentally were some of the kids I played with the most growing up, were one of like two or three black families in my entire town. I didn’t have any classes with any of them cuz one was a grade up from me and the other two were two grades down.
However, one of these kids was the one I first heard a racist slur from, disparaging white kids, and he attributed it to the school principal who was hispanic.
I was in fact discouraged from trying to do anything better with my life by my school counselor because it was assumed I would never leave the state of New Mexico.
When I was in HS, and my mother found out I was doing drugs, she told my school counselor who started telling my friends, incidentally the kids who I BOUGHT my drugs from, that I was selling drugs and that they needed to watch out because I was a drug dealer.
I had a run in with a cop, who assumed I was in a gang, when I told him I wasn’t, he kept acting like I was lying to him. Started off on this spiel about how his gang was the biggest gang blah blah blah.
When I moved to the east coast, I lived in a well to do suburb with my grandmother and the cops in the neighboring town strip searched me in public saying that someone pegged me as a heroin dealer. They didn’t find anything on me. I made them do it in public just to make sure nothing got planted. I was advised by just about everyone not to lodge a complaint about it. This was when I was 19.
The only really good job I had, I shared an office with a black guy from Louisiana named who made more money than I did. He ended up being the coolest guy at that company and the only one I really stayed in touch with after leaving. The woman that I got hired to replace me was layed off, and the black guy I shared the office with ended up taking over her duties in addition to his own. So in essence eventually he got my job.
The only benefit I can see, is that my father made more money than most people in my area because he was a lobbyist and executive director of the association he ran. So he was able to afford to have computers in the house, usually old computers that his office was getting rid of. When I was 16 I got my own 486. This was the ONLY step up I’ve gotten in life because I’ve been able to turn that into a career path and make decent money despite the fact that I never went to college.
I have been finding it very hard to find a job during this recession in New York.
So I seem to have misplaced my racial benefits, since you and EasyPhil seem to know where they are, can you please let me know? Cuz I could really use them right about now.
Admittedly I don’t know much about the history post-civil war, however, this doesn’t make much sense to me. If the employers owned slaves and essentially had free labor, not counting room and board, and suddenly this labor was eliminated essentially creating more jobs. I understand that the plantation owners couldn’t afford to pay them reasonable wages, and that was a problem, but how did they take jobs from white people? Wouldn’t having them as slaves make it harder for white people to get a job, then having to actually pay them an equitable wage? This doesn’t make one bit of sense to me.
Then why did he point to one of the biggest examples of the need for tort reform in this country, as a reason why reparations are justified? It’s not that reparations are justified because that lady made money. It’s that reparations are not justified and neither was giving that lady any money.
Well maybe you did benefit from racism, as I had no black people around to subjugate, I didn’t really. Where I grew up it was mostly hispanic and white and there was a large enough portion of hispanics that the hispanic lobby in local politics was very strong and got catered to quite a lot.
Like I said, go up to El Cerro Mission in Valencia County New Mexico where there is a veritable sea of trailers, you hear gunfire on a regular basis, and yet it doesn’t have it’s own police department. This is a white and hispanic neighborhood. Explain to me how these people are benefitting from racism before you take their tax money and start doling out reparations.
As for an apology, this might be a good idea, however would it be taken at face value or would people just shrug it off and say “too little too late” and claim the politician who issued it was just pandering.
Hey, Grendel72, I’m sorry and you can have all the riches I’ve got hoarded away from the money somebody’s gggrandpa didn’t get when he was a slave. But when the time comes, I want a check too. This is slave reparations right? or is it restricted to JUST black people?
So we’ll just kinda swap money, okay? You can take whatever I’ve got and in return pay me w/ interest the money my gggpa has coming.
The argument that whites have benefitted from anti black racism is tricky. Clearly it’s been easier for a white person to get ahead than a black person. In many cases this is true even now. A good case can be made, however, that racism has cost the whole society vast sums of money. Unused potential; frustration vented in anti social behavior; irrational, unproductive investment decisions based on avoiding black people; widespread distrust and division; these have cost all of us.
No I’m not, I don’t believe that some races are superior by nature, and I don’t descriminate based on that belief. Find another name to call me.
Belowjob, I agree with your statement that racism has cost soceity vast sums of money because of unused potential.
I was taking music lessons at a public school in Harlem, NYC and there wasn’t a clock in the place that worked! There’s no excuse for that. But things like that persists because for some reason the people that are responsible for the city’s infrastructure have determined that clocks with the correct time in a school are not important.
Now, the White Appalachian example is sort of a joke, because if you take one of them and put them on a street corner in Harlem along with a black person and have them both hail a cab, the Appalachian will, more than likely, get the cab first. If you think this is far fetched, ask Danny Glover and former mayor David Dinkens.
This isn’t a litmus test, just some additional information out there to ponder. When I took the test, I believe that I had a bias towards white people.
Okay, so, let me get this straight. You’e saying that poor white from Appalachia are the equivalent of middle-class blacks? Or did you mean to say, lower-class blacks? What’s the population of Appalachian whites, compared to say blacks living in major metropolitan areas?
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I grew up in rural Northeast Ohio, at least once my parents were divorced. I spent all of junior high and high school there, in any case. My schools were underfunded, and the curriculum was without a doubt the least advanced in the county. There were no advanced placement courses, there was little care given to students with special needs, the number of graduates going on to college was less than one-third of the class, materials were severely outdated, etc. And the school was 100% white.
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Sounds like a class issue to me. What’s your point?
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The schools in the communities on either side of ours were well-funded, had much better curricula, better extracurriculars, more students, had advanced placement opportunities, and sent more graduates to college. And both had mixed student bodies.
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Mixed what, male and female? What was the breakdown with respect to “race”?
Like I said before, because you’re white you are more likely than not a beneficiary of racist policies still lingering around from the institution of slavery. You shouldn’t feel guilty, but you should take a stance whenever your friends, associates or co-workers use racial slurs. Yeah, I know, I know, you’re going to say you already do that. Good, you’re doing your part.
That’s how you see it. Reparations is more about getting redress from the government and corporations that benefited from slavery and from racial descrimination.
I’m glad that this topic is now on the national stage and I’m also glad the some people are feeling uncomfortable about the issue. This is something that has been a long time coming. I’m just dissappointed that we didn’t have a Truth and Reconcilation Commission a la SA after the civil war, but, sigh, that wasn’t a war for black liberation.
