I grew up in Montana. I had very little exposure to other ethnicities besides Blackfoot Indian.
I moved here to California when I was 13. When I was 16 I was jumped by black gang-bangers because I was white. They told me so, as they pummelled my friend and I.
When I complained to the school, I was told that nothing could be done about it.
A year later I got in massive amounts of trouble because a female who hated me for totally unknown reasons said that I called her a nigger. Untrue, but I still got detention, and a lovely discussion with the school counselor.
the majority of people I hang out with have no idea what their great-grandparents did. I would love to see how many black people in todays America can provide conclusive proof that they are descended from black people.
However, in the off-chance that reparations come though, I will be moving to Canada.
Yes, but who made them think that way? The white man? Or their own experiences? Who promotes an image of blacks as thugs? The white man? Or black men? Or, more likely, both working together?
And lastly, will reparations make that cab driver start stopping for blacks?
You are ignoring the point however. The point was: that ALL White Americans benefit from anti-black racism. I would like for you to point out to me how the poor whites in Appalachia benefit from it. Just because I can hail a cab easier than you can, does not benefit Jeb in South Carolina. So please, you made a broad generalized statement, that I claim is not true and you keep sidestepping the issue. Or else show me SOME way that black racism benefits ALL white Americans. Cabs not picking black people up is a very shallow comparison.
The practice, which I don’t deny occurs, has absolutely nothing to do with either discrimination or racism.
I know a few hacks quite well (2 dark-skinned, 1 white) and have asked all 3 why the practice occurs. Their answer to my very limited, 3rd person, unscientific poll had nothing to do with ignorance nor hatred, but rather…
Economics
Though all denied that they themselves have ever passed up a “black fare”, all 3 acknowledged that the co-workers they knew who did refuse them on the grounds they get “stiffed on the tip.”
How often that happens, I couldn’t say, I’ve never driven a cab. This much I do know, a cabbie can’t earn enough $ & on some shifts will end up in the red without tips from fares.
Strike One. Yup, I sure was. There are ghettoes for poor whites. Rural shantytowns full of poor whites were quite common in the South up until the last few decades of the 20th century and can still be found. Today they’ve mostly been replaced by rundown mobile home parks. Are you familiar with the term “trailer trash?”
Strike Two. Yup, I sure did. I remember having to crowd the desks into half the classroom so kids wouldn’t get drenched when rain seeped through the roof in torrents. A few teachers were heroes who did everything they could for us kids, up to and including buying our lunches. But many if not most clearly didn’t expect anything of us.
Not today, but it was certainly true back then. Adults were presumed to be no-account white trash, and teenagers were presumed to be juvenile delinquents until prove otherwise. Up against the car and spread 'em, boy. I’ve been patted down several times and jailed twice.
Strike three. You’re out.
By the way, not * all * cops do not automatically assume that * all * blacks are criminals. Huge over-generalization there.
Plenty of blacks in America today have had better lives than mine. Assuming that all whites are better off relative to all blacks is racism.
Nonsense. If paid at all, reparations should be paid to specific victims of specific injustices or at most to immediate relatives such a parent, spouse, child or sibling. You don’t pay reparations to fifth cousins or descendents six generations removed. Using your logic, the Catholic church owes me reparations for the religious persecution of some of my Protestant ancestors in France.
I’m not going to dig it up with the way the board is acting, but I’ve been called trailer trash right here on the SDMB.
I never said all. only three of the fortune 500 companies have black CEOs. I’m pretty sure that blacks make up more than 3/5% of the population. Either the system discourages success in blacks, or they are just lazy and stupid. If your answer is the first choice, you must admit that when success is discouraged in one group the likelihood of success goes up for the rest. If your answer is the second choice, I don’t think we have anything else to discuss. If you can somehow come up with a third choice, I’d like to hear it.
It’s not a shallow comparison, it’s a poignant illustration.
Let’s look at it as if where potential energy. A ball on a hill has more potential energy than one that’s on the ground, though both are at a stand still. The whites in Appalachia that you have latched on to are a ball on one of the hills. It’s not as high as the other hills that the other balls are on, but it isn’t on level ground either. The moment an event occurrs, i.e. gust of wind, gentle push, trip to NYC, that energy becomes realized.
I’m wondering mswas, what kind of world you think you live in. All of the stories of discrimination in housing, hiring, racial profiling, clearly someone is benefiting and it ain’t the person of color that’s being discriminated against! What part of that don’t you get?
Oh dear lord, grendel, it’s not as if one has to be lazy or stupid to not be CEO of a Fortune 500 company. I am, as far as I know, neither lazy nor stupid, and I’ll never be CEO of a Fortune 500 company, nor can I just wake up one morning and decide that I think I’ll become CEO of UPS tomorrow. Does that mean that the system discourages success in Floridians? Of course not!
I’m not sure what that has to do with the price of tea in China to begin with, mind you, but in any event there’s this little concept called “small sample size” which you might wish to look into.
So tell me, how many Fortune 500 CEO’s came from poor, white and/or rural Southern backgrounds? Does anybody even know? Did anybody even think to ask? Do you imagine that all white people start out with an equal opportunity to become an executive at Enron and loot the employees’ pension funds?
You are aware that white Southerners are disproportionately poor, too, right? You are aware as well that this is due to in large part to a political system that was more or less designed to keep poor whites “in our place?” Has it never once crossed your mind that many whites are poor because they got fucked politically for generations, that the politics of racism was designed to screw both blacks * and * poor whites? Encouraging blacks and poor whites to hate each other was one of the tricks the upper classes used to hog more of the goodies for themselves. The difference is that we don’t hear many windbag liberals blubbering over us.
Christ, if I keep this up, I’m going to become a freaking Marxist again.
I don’t see that it went up for many of my people.
**
Perhaps by encouraging blacks to blame their failures on whites, many black leaders and white liberals discourage them from making any effort on their own behalf. Perhaps the politics of resentment, of which the demand for reparations is a part, drains off energy and resources from the black community which could be put to much better use.
Of the whites who graduated, how many were from poor white backgrounds? The article has much to say about race and gender and nothing to say about class.
Okay, so you’ve just shown that whites start college at somewhat higher rates than blacks. This means what exactly? I’m not trying to be dense, but it’s just a statistic; interpretation is as always necessary. Do whites enroll more in college because more of them can afford it, or because more of them are accepted to college, or because more of them apply to college, or why? And once we know why whites enroll in colleges to a greater extent, then we can talk about something meaningful, whether that’s societal pressure or some other reason.
Put it another way; the statistics from the site you linked also say that women made up 54% of college enrollees in 1993 and 44% in 1973… does this mean that either the system was biased against women in '73 and is biased against men now or that men were smarter than women then and the reverse is true now? Or might there perhaps be other reasons that this enrollment disparity exists?
Look, I’m not trying to deny that on average, blacks do have it harder than whites. But lets at least try to at least have a meaningful discussion about why this is, rather than just tossing out statistics that really don’t mean a thing by themselves.
The college entrance numbers are shockingly low all around in my opinion. What I am attempting to show is that blacks are not encouraged to succeed, that what I’ve observed with my own eyes (which has been laughed off as anecdotal evidence) is in fact true. This is part of the legacy of racism, that success is not encouraged for all.
More to the point, some people don’t want to face up to the fact that racism has benefitted them whether they like it or not.
Fuck it, I’m through here. I don’t even favor reparations, I just oppose the sanctimonious tone that some of the more ignorant opponents of reparations have taken. I first posted here only to counter the disgustingly racist tone of the thread, then I was attacked for positions I don’t hold and never stated.
…sure wish I could get my home system up and running so I wouldn’t have to sneak in here during work hours…
ahem
Realizing that I may be going over ground already covered, it seems to me that GRENDEL72’s position is:
Black people generally are not as successful in this society as white people are.
This is caused by how our society is structured today (ie, it automatically favors all whites over all blacks, on all levels)
This, in turn, is caused by the existence of slavery 200 years ago.
So cough it up, Jack.
ummm…huh??
There is a lot of generalization here, I understand, but I wanted to make it as clear as possible; so while the devil may be in the details, let me reiterate once again:
I never owned any slaves and neither did ANY of my ancestors. So why the fuck should I have to pay any reparations? You can argue all you want about how many CEO’s are black and whether they are proportionally represented by race, but the simple truth remains: I am not guilty of slavery, so why the hell should I have to pay for it?
And btw…my ex-wife is a Lakota Sioux, so I know quite a bit about racism. But rather than crying to the government or the media about how bad her ancestors were treated, and so she should therefore be cut a check to assuage her feelings, all she did was get off her butt, get a degree and work hard. It’s why she now makes tons of money as a registered nurse and is successful, respected and happy.
