Read your own comments and apply them to yourself. Driving a stick shift in the U.S. just means that you are either really poor and drive an old, very basic car or you are an auto enthusiast that likes more things to mess with. I can drive a stick shift just fine and did it for years but it is mostly an obsolete skill now except for some niche vehicles. Most cars sold for the American market don’t even have a manual transmission as an option anymore because there is no need for it.
Computer controlled automatic transmissions can beat almost any human driver in any measure with none of the hassles. The gap has swung in favor of automatics even for many sports cars these days. Show me your exotic prized Porsche or Lamborghini with a manual transmission and a professional driver. I will show you a mass market American car (Corvette Z06 with an automatic transmission) that can beat it on almost any measure for less than $80,000.
This pissing match has gone on way too long. The automatics won. The question becomes, why doesn’t the rest of the world realize that yet?
I think foreigners are amazed at how American Democrats use simple OPs as a platform to piss about Republicans, irrespective of what the thread is about.
One thing that REALLY confounds and confuses the issue of racism in the US is the fact that with few exceptions, the minority groups are almost always impoverished relative to the white majority. The black community accounts for roughly the same amount of welfare recipients as the white community, despite only being 15% of the population, and something like 27% of the black community is below the Federal poverty line, which is something like an income of $23k for a family of four.
Here’s a link showing the income disparity between whites and blacks.
Anyway, what I’m getting at is that a lot of what black people identify and decry as racist is really classist, and is not necessarily white people having a bone to pick with black people, but rather with poor people and their behaviors, which are often considered trashy. White America says pretty much the same hateful and condescending things about poor whites as poor blacks, except that curiously enough, the poor black person is given more of a pass on it, due to historical circumstance, while the poor whites are regarded as wretched good for nothing losers who should be ashamed.
Yeah, but when you discover that part of the reason for the income disparity stems from blacks and whites with the same income getting different financial treatment… things go back to the “it’s racist” square.
Sometimes it is difficult to get the right word, though. I know many people who say “racist” when they mean “xenophobic”, but damnit, “xenophobic” is one dang complicated word, and sometimes yes, the problem is actually income.
It’s not about which type of transmission is superior, it’s that Americans who drive sticks think they are somehow exceptional. If the sample size is one country, the US, then they are. But as the thread asks for non-US perspectives and we broaden the sample size to include the whole world, we see that people who drive stick shifts are the norm not the exception.
Yeah, but when you discover that part of the reason for the income disparity stems from blacks and whites with the same income getting different financial treatment… things go back to the “it’s racist” square.
That’s not quite what I was saying. My point was that in normal social interactions and commentary by most white Americans, the things that are afforded the most opprobrium are behaviors and beliefs that are lower-class (i.e. “trashy”), and that since a large percentage of black americans are poor, there’s a lot of assumption on their part that when white people decry these things, that they’re being racist, when in fact, they’re being classist. Doesn’t really have to do with differing financial treatment at all.
There also seems to be a cultural difference. I’ve known a few white people who have received welfare. It’s embarrassing to be white and paying with food stamps, checking in to subsidized project housing, etc. They wanted to get off of it as soon as they could. Many black people, however, seem fairly comfortable with the “welfare queen” lifestyle and only appear vaguely motivated to change.
wiki:* In 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act changed the structure of Welfare payments and added new criteria to states that received Welfare funding. After reforms, which President Clinton said would “end Welfare as we know it”*
Reminds me of one of Steven Wright’s jokes: “I went down to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, 'Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours. He said, ‘Not in a row.’”