Awww. 
Did you feel like I hated you because of what I wrote? Well, I really don’t see how anyone could get hate from it, but I don’t want you to feel like I am discount your feelings. Rest assured, I don’t hate you. I just pity you.
That is a sad truth. And it isn’t only black people that have to deal with that.
But how is Kanye (or anyone) making bigoted remarks helping? Continuing to draw these imaginary lines between people based on their color or country of origin plants the seeds (or nurtures the growing tree, to extend the metaphor) of racism and prejudice.
And, you have to admit, there are people out there, of all colors, that do hide behind their racial differences as an excuse. And people like that have their beliefs reinforced by ignoramuses like Kanye spouting off any factless, nonsensical thing he believes for the moment.
Well, I appreciate the pity. But I’m doing much better in life than many. Save your energy for helping them. I find pity seriously lacks any power in helping people acheive a better life. YMMV.
The ‘persecution’ White people get in China do not even begin to outweigh the preferential treatment they get for being White. Stay in China for a while (for oh, say, 17 seconds), and you will notice this. It’s pretty in-your-face. Apparently it’s even much more so in Japan.
Thailand is the same. My wife is Thai, from an upperclass family and I get my eperiences from her people. You would be surprised how racist they are even to African Americans. I was anyways. My wifes family would never allow her to marry a black man. I asked.
Actually, I’m not that surprised. If you had asked me to guess where this kind of stuff is the most blatant, I would’ve said Thailand and the Phillipines. And Thailand was one of the few places in the area that never got colonized by westerners. I’ve been to Vietnam, and they get a lot of their glimpses to the outside world from western and Chinese media, so yeah, they’ve got the kind of mindset you just described, too.
What does surprise me is the amazing lengths some people will go to deny White privilege (mostly I see this from Whites and some Asians/Orientals). And by surprise I mean piss me off.
As for Kanye, well, I don’t listen to rap anymore ever since the westcoast stuff went out of style. I have nothing to add there except to say it cracked me the hell up when Mike Myers did that double take.
I lived in Hawaii for seven years and spent most of it working in Japanese tourism. I lost one job and was not even considered for an entry level position at another because I was white, and, more specifically, not Japanese. The entry level position, by the way, was one I’d held with another company and done well. I also spoke fluent Japanese, complete with a Kobe accent. In fact, when I held a job where I mainly dealt with people over the phone, when we met, they’d take a long look at me, and try to convince themselves that I was at least 1/2 Japanese. (I’m not; I was born in England and am mostly English and Irish.)
My freshman year of college, one of my roommates who was black told my other two roommates she couldn’t eat lunch with them any more because her black friends objected.
When I was working in Japanese tourism, I had to explain to an American woman that she couldn’t get on the van I’d just seen my clients onto because it was ordered for my clients who were Japanese. (They were also with a different tour company, and I forget exactly how I phrased it, but I must have mentioned they were Japanese.) She pulled the corners of her eyebrows up and said something like, “Oh. If I look like this, could I get on?” When she saw my reaction, she said it was OK because she was Hispanic.
I’m reasonably sure race was half the reason a less qualified woman was hired over me when the temp job we’d been sharing became a permanent one. The company was a non-profit aimed at helping women and minorities set up their own businesses. Management was entirely black. I do admit that another large factor was the company was in the process of splitting in two and I was the protege of the vice president, not the president.
My point is, I have seen racism not only from whites, but from other races as well. I know how it feels to know I cannot get a particular job because I’m the wrong race. That’s one reason I actively fight racism. To me, to say that white people cannot be victims of racism is ridiculous and unrealistic. Yes, it’s a lot less common, but it does happen. Racism in all forms is despicable and should not be tolerated by civilized human beings.
CJ
I think the group to look to for an example of overcoming poverty and discrimination are people like the Chinese and other Asian immigrants. They shared all the disadvantages of blacks - racially identifying physical characteristics so they had trouble “passing”, institutionalized discrimination - plus the disadvantages of Hispanics and Indians, such as speaking a language other than English at home and coming from a non-industrialized culture. Yet they overcame all that, and largely without affirmative action or outright political whoring by their leaders.
Which I suspect partially underlays the black resentment of, for instance, Korean store owners in Los Angeles. If you have been told all your life that the Man is keeping you down, it is natural to resent those who are getting ahead of you without political favors or special treatment. Their success in the face of many of the disadvantages you face tends to disprove the comforting notion that only white racism is preventing success among minorities.
If anyone suggests that racism doesn’t exist, they are wrong. If anyone says that racism is primarily responsible for the failure of some minority members to reach the American socio-economic mainstream, they are wrong about that too. As Thomas Sowell says, it’s present, but it doesn’t explain the variance.
Regards,
Shodan
At the risk of hijacking, I’d like to ask what does explain the variance?
I’m not trying to trap you or anything. I’m just interested in hearing what your opinion.
The short answer is, “Cultural differences”.
I don’t have time for a long answer right now, but I will give one example to demonstrate what I think is usually going on.
I don’t have a cite right now, but I believe this is accurate. If a poor person in America, regardless of color, does four things:
[ul][li]Graduate from high school []Get married and stay married []Don’t have children unless you can support them [*]Get a job, any job, even for minimum wage, and work at it for at least a year, and don’t quit the job until you have a better paying job[/ul] then after five years you will no longer be poor. [/li]
If racism were the primary cause, then black people who did the above would be poor at largely the same rate as black people who didn’t, and white people who didn’t would be less often poor than black people who did. This does not seem to be the case.
I suppose I need to point out that I am talking about long-term, chronic poverty among adults - not poverty caused by physical disability or among children. And I am fully aware that most welfare recipients don’t spend their whole lives on welfare, so I hope we can avoid that hijack as well.
Sowell also makes the point that, if poverty among blacks were caused entirely by racism, then all blacks would be equally subject to it. However, he presents evidence that West Indian blacks, who are not distinguishable by white racists by skin color, tend to be non-poor at a higher rate than blacks of other backgrounds. Sowell attributes this to a different cultural background. Thurgood Marshall and Colin Powell are anecdotal evidence of this.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Shodan
In other words, you think black people are morally inferior?
PS - I did not say it was easy, this is not the same as saying that poor people are lazy and stupid, this all applies to groups not individuals, racism does exist, YMMV, professional driver on a closed course, void where taxed or prohibited, use or distribution without the express written permission of the PGA is illegal, must be 18 to call, etc.
No, morally inferior people are those who misconstrue a post that they don’t like, and/or argue in favor of a racially based double standard.
Regards,
Shodan
But, in a similar vein to what I believe Dio is getting at, doesn’t your explanation simply push the question back another step? If something about certain cultures hinders them from performing your four criteria for escaping from poverty, then what about those cultures makes them, say, less likely to graduate high school or get/stay married.
The hell I misconstrued it. There’s no other way to read it.
You pulled a list of factors out of your ass (no cite, of course) and said, if black people would only do these things they wouldn’t be poor. Those things include:
-Graduating from high school (extremely difficult to do in the shit schools available in many urban areas. This is compounded by poverty and other problems at home).
-“Get married and stay married.” What kind of bullshit is this? Cite? Two incomes are better than one but marriage has fuck all to do with it.
-Don’t have kids you can’t afford. Natch, but that also means you have to support educating kids about birth control, and making contraception and abortion easily available.
-Get a job. Well, duh. Most impoversished black people DO have jobs. Many have more than one. And they’re still in poverty. Minimum wage is not a livable wage, and in many places, those kinds of jobs do not lead to anything better.
So what your list boils down to is a laundry list of stereotyped moral judgements. If that’s not the case, then please tel us WHY you think black people don’t follow your sanctimonious little guidelines? If you think they don’t graduate from high school enough, the WHY don’t they graduate from high school? WHY don’t they get married? Your last item is based on a false assumption that poor blacks don’t keep jobs, but if that’s what you really believe then tell us WHY you think they don’t keep jobs. Citing “culture” is not an answer, by the way. WHY is that the culture?
I’m sorry, your embrace of logical fallacies means that you are unqualified to participate in debate for adults. Isn’t there a thread about daytime TV you could infest?
Regards,
Shodan
What did I say that was a fallacy?
What’s the matter? Did you dig yourself a hole you can’t get out of? You should be more careful about parakeeting talk radio rhetoric. Someone should have told you that “culture” is a code word.
Well, then, let me ask nicely. Saying that cultural differences explain disparities between African Americans and whites doesn’t explain any variance, it only lumps the variance under a label. You were kind enough to provide some referents for the construct of “cultural differences,” to wit:
However, the reasonable follow up is why you propose that these referents identify the culture of African American, or distinguish it from other categories. It sounds to an outside observer that you are proposing that there is something about African Americans that makes them more likely to score high on these risk factors. What is it?
FWIW, I don’t think Shodan is a racist, I just think he’s regurgitating boilerplate conservative rhetoric on the issue and that he hasn’t really thought through the implications of shifting the blame to “black culture.”
I’m not quite sure what you are getting at. I am not pushing the argument back a step, I am saying that present-day black disadvantage is not primarily due to present-day white racism.
If you are asking why some aspects of Chinese immigrant culture tend to push their members in successful directions more than other cultures do, that is a far more complicated question. One aspect might be Confucian culture which more education oriented than American or Caribbean slave culture. Another might be the greater incidence of mutual benefit societies than existed among Asian immigrants, and thus enabled many newer immigrants to borrow money and set up businesses. Relatively fewer freed slaves had access to such benefits. Sowell discusses the large percentage of Chinese laundries in San Francisco, which he believes were caused by exclusion of Chinese from being hired for other businesses. Same for Japanese gardeners in Hawaii.
Diogenes would like to pretend that I am saying that blacks are inherently inferior, but he is a stupid and dishonest buffoon who is incapable of rational thought.
If you are asking why blacks are over-represented among the long-term poor, there are a number of reasons. One is the migration of Southern blacks to the urban centers of the North earlier in the twentieth century, which moved them away from the support systems of their extended families and communities. Another is the removal of segregation, where the middle-class blacks who were exerting a stabilizing influence on their local cultures moved to the areas of town from which they were previously excluded, and left behind the rest. Cultures tend to be self-reinforcing. Add to that the enabling influence of the welfare system, which removed some of the dependence of unwed mothers on men and thus de-emphasized the family, and you see another factor contributing to disproportionately black long-term poverty.
None of this is exclusive to blacks, as I mentioned, and there are certainly lots of other factors involved. But the closer the analysis, the closer you are getting to subsets of cultural members instead of large-scale groups. There is really no such thing as “black culture” that applies to all blacks, which was part of my (and Sowell’s) point about West Indian blacks. Therefore not all Chinese immigrants are prosperously middle-class, anymore than most blacks are poor because they played basketball instead of studying in high school. There are tendencies and factors, not iron-clad laws.
You are going to miss the point if you engage in black-and-white (ha!) thinking, or look for one single factor that covers it all. Especially if that one single factor is something nobody except fools and racists are arguing, like “the Man is keeping me down” or “blacks are inferior”, or something equally stupid.
Regards,
Shodan