:raises hand:
Although, watermelon is a summer thing for me.
Short answer to the OP: Yo; honkeys be trippin’, bro.
As a white person, I can willingly say I voted for the half-white guy. At least there is some in there!! 
I understand this perfectly well. I also understand that the tax - the gasoline tax - that we pay to pay for roads has not been raised at the federal level since the 1980’s.
You’re putting words in my mouth. I never mentioned reparations in this thread nor have I implied anything about it. If you can point to any post in this thread that I mentioned the word “reparations” I’ll send you $20 dollars to any address you provide. I swear, it must be people’s user agreements with SDMB or their ISP to conflate my reparations thread in every other subsequent thread. Jesus Christ.
Dude, you live in Chicago, right? Take your car on Lawrence, Wilson, or Irving Park and head west toward I-90/94, and let us how many pot holes you see and how many cars you see swerving around them. Or, if you’re feeling adventurous, go the southside: start at Chinatown on State Street and head south. Come back and tell us how great your roads are and how misinformed I am.
- Honesty
That, and if I’m not mistaken, the majority of roads are paid for at state level, rather than federal. (Not all, but most) Correct me if I’m wrong.
The DoT offers funding to States to fund their roads and bridges, it’s just not enough. Clearly. As for the freeway, the Government pays is 90 - 95% of the cost of the Interstate Highway System.
- Honesty
You’ve been lied to. The LA freeway system is in pretty decent shape.
City streets, and especially sidewalks, yeah, problems.
Freeways? Running fine.
Ignorance fought.
Yeah but LA people drive like this. And other people drive like this. lol It’s funny because its true!
Those are all Republican policies. I could rant about them too. A majority of the country voted for a Democratic President, Senate and US House of Representatives last election. But because of gerrymandering and the tendency for Democrats to be bunched up in smaller areas, the Republicans control the House of Representatives while a correspondingly large number of Democratic House Representatives win by larger margins.
The Republicans are increasingly driven by a populist voter base that is charged up by talk radio and Fox News. Fox News earns incredibly high profit margins. Their ratings are solid but generally lower than that of the 3-4 main networks and their demographics are elderly and therefore not advertising friendly. So how do they do it? Fox News charges the cable companies hefty fees for carrying their network. Cable companies go along because they know they would have a shitstorm if they cancelled Fox News: a slice of their audience would cancel their cable. For many of them, that’s the only channel they watch. So again, it’s not raw numbers that Fox pursues but a committed and revved up audience. The revved up elderly presumably have high turnout during Republican primaries.
Anyway, there are plenty of media demagogues pitching racially tinged stories to a resentful and somewhat paranoid audience. The nuttery feeds on itself. That said, I can understand it when O’Reilly acts like a sanctimonious blowhard. And I can understand it when he peddles filth. What I have trouble wrapping my head around is him doing both at the same time within the same hour.
What the fuck does this have to do with white people?
I’m pointing out your less than exemplary posting history…
How the fuck is this a white person problem?
Honestly, this is one of the most blatantly racist threads on the Dope.
Ever step in shit and not stop to wash every lil bit off from in the deep recesses of your sole? The stink follows you.
The OP seems to be akin to saying “90% of the US population is right-handed. Therefore, anything bad in the US – heck, let’s make it the world! – is specifically the fault of all right-handed US citizens, while the lefties are blameless.”
Now, I am very aware of the kinds of horrific, mundane, and horrific-because-mundane discrimination people of color suffer in much of the world, including in the US. But this OP does nothing to illuminate the issue or any aspect of it. Quite the opposite.
Is that just because it came closest to your expectations/assumptions? What about the answers that were wildly different than puddleglums – it was not educational to learn that other white people had vastly different opinions?
Did you expect consensus? “White people” is a massive and incredibly diverse group of humans (just like “black people”, of course, and just like “black people” it has no basis beyond a sociological/historical definition that was largely tied to discriminatory practices). Making any assumptions about such a large and diverse group (as were implicit in your OP) is usually unwise.
watcha talking about willis? It’s the tail end of a hard ass winter, all ya’lls roads suck! Tell it to the black DPW guy I saw working in hot asphalt this week trying to plug some of em up on S division in your neighborhood too~
hey ElmwoodI think white people are better freestyler dancers, but black people have the group stomp thing down.
No, zoid, you’re trolling. I know this is like **The Village **where we can’t say that word under threat of banishment, I also know that it’s only applies when people direct it toward me, but you’re trolling. Keep your threads straight. I’ve posted threads ranging from vaginas and European royalty all the way to car insurance, I’ve also engaged in a host of science-related posts in GQ, and you’re hyperventilating about a single thread about reparations? STFU, or, better yet, have the balls to rebut what I am saying IN THAT THREAD rather than trolling and trying to revisit it in this thread.
Then you must choose not to see the monthly “The blacks are dumb” threads that the SDMB features on Great Debates. Have you missed those? Serious question. Or do those threads don’t make the count in the “most racist threads on the Dope”?
[QUOTE=kayaker]
Ever step in shit and not stop to wash every lil bit off from in the deep recesses of your sole? The stink follows you.
[/QUOTE]
One could say same thing about white people regarding their treatment of black people over 400 years.
[QUOTE=Trinopus]
You’ve been lied to. The LA freeway system is in pretty decent shape.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, really? There’s more red than a Christmas Tree. A cursory search of pothole and los angeles freeway turns up over a million results, here’s a recent article on one pothole eating 22 cars. Here’s a novel idea: four lane freeways don’t work in a second-most populous city in the United States. Your mileage may vary (actually, it won’t by much, but it’s fun to say anyway).
- Honesty
You’re right and I agree with you here. If I could go back in time, I would slightly change the title to questions for conservatives/republicans, but it’s too late for that now.
- Honesty
You could probably just say “conservative people” and get very little argument at all.
When it comes to roads, US roads are pretty boring. You can travel all over this country and, not counting weather or traffic, not be delayed because of a road. No one has ever said “it took me 9 hours to drive 30 miles on that treacherous highway” in this country.
In other countries you may have to wait until the road thaws out in the spring then drive through two feet of mud, or pass other vehicles with a half inch to spare on the side of a mountain.
Well, by his logic, we get credit for all the good things too. No need to thank us, apparently. We essentially cure AIDS but we missed a pothole. Sorry, we’re really trying, it’s just that it’s such a thankless job and it gets us down sometimes. Thank goodness it pays well, amirite white guys?
Honesty, I tried to engage you earlier in the thread, but you’d have none, of it … I understand, but … on a slightly different subject: potholes … are you saying that white neighborhoods have nice roads and Black neighborhoods have crappy roads because White folks own and control everything in this country … and they like to torment Black folks with broken down roadways? Because the roads in the poor neighborhoods in Africa are horrible, and the roads in the rich sections there are groovy … and they’re all Black (at least in the parts of Africa I’m describing).
Or am I missing something? What exactly do potholes have to do with racism … in one sentence?
There is no link between potholes and racism that I know of. My point was (and still is) that white people should focus on fixing domestic problems (their roads, their bridges, their income inequality, their consumerist culture, etc etc) before meddling in other country’s problems all the damn time. How can one help fix your neighbor’s house if your own house in disarray? IMO, white people should stop giving our tax dollars to white people in other countries (with better roads than us) and spend that money on America. Why this is controversial, I’ll never know. In the 1970’s, American public schools were some of the best in the world, now look at them, you guys suffocate them until they are forced to be privatized and your sons and daughters are still behind the world in STEM testing. I will freely admit that I am petrified that you’ll let the interstate highway system languish for a few more decades until it has to be privatized (like ya’ll did with primary and secondary education).
- Honesty
Again, remove the word “white” and just say “people” and you’d find wide agreement.