But in all fairness, most of the people who had to wait so long are already dead, aren’t they? In fact, most of those now living have waited less than a generation, two or three at most. Kinda makes them look like a bunch of whiny crybabies.
Holy statistics, Batman! **EasyPhil’s **cites seem to further demonstrate at least a racial basis, if not a racial bias, in law enforcement encounters. From this it is not difficult to believe a similar situation obtains in actual prosecutions, convictions, and incarcerations, as a direct result. It certainly does not demonstrate that “blacks just commit more crimes” as some have asserted upthread.
And in other news, **Starving Artist **(Quote: "I think that these days the answer is probably more than they don’t want to enter the mainstream than it is that the mainstream doesn’t want to let them in…") blames the victims.
I get the joke. But this is one of the things that bugs me when people talk about racism in America. They act like it was something that happened in ancient history. But the reality is that there are plenty of people still alive right now who lived under legalized racism like Jim Crow laws.
Do you think being silly like that really accomplishes anything?
Of course there was more to the history of civil rights but I wouldn’t have expected you to want a book-length dissertation. Which of course you don’t; you just thought you saw an opening to try to make me look either racist or ignorant of past racial hardship and so you took your cheap shot.
So, since you set it up, let’s see what great idea you have about how to ensure than black people acheive full equality and live lives no different from the rest of American society. Economic, educational and social equality is never going to happen unless and until the two races become fully integrated. It’s as simple as that. You can continue to sit atop your high horse, full of indignation about the past, and it will accomplish absolutely nothing. Or you can encourage the idea that in order to live the same types of lives as everyone else, blacks need to join in with everyone else. The entire idea behind forced integration was to do away with segregation, and why do you suppose that was? It’s because racial equality will never truly happen unless the two races join into one. It’s just that simple.
All you’re doing is lending support to the harmful attitudes that are continuing to hold black people back. Attitudes like yours are doing more to hold black people back than than those of any racist in the country. Congratulations.
I remember institutionalized segregation, and de facto segregation after that.
I don’t see it every day, but when I’m running a project and I look at the original blueprints for the mill I work in I see the “Colored Restroom” designations. We were able to convert many of them to women’s restrooms as they entered the workforce, so nothing lost there, but it gives you a sense of history.
While we’re talking about this subject, one of the most unfair aspects of the drug war is the thousands of people every year who are denied Pell grants or federal loans because of drug convictions. Given the selective enforcement and selective prosecution rates after arrest, it seems designed to perpetuate an underclass.
Where did this meme come from that victims are totally blameless, now and forever, no matter what they do? It’s entirely possible for people to engage in behavior that is detrimental to their own well being as a reaction to wrongs that have been done to them in the past. For example, what if a woman were to become a shut-in because she had been raped at one time in her life, unable to leave her house even to buy groceries or earn a living. Would you recommend that she take efforts to overcome that and try to live in such a way as to take care of herself and get the most out of life, or would you simply pat her on the head and say “There, there, dear. I understand,” and support her efforts to shut herself off from the world for the rest of her life. Sometimes people have to take positive actions of their own to overcome wrongs that have been done to them in the past. In fact, they usually do. People like you only make things worse.
Moi?
But you’re the one claiming that present day problems experienced by blacks are caused by their own actions in setting themselves apart, failing to “join in”, and “a determination to maintain a separate culture”. Oh, and the “harmful attitudes” of 60’s liberals like myself, of course.
This is a bullshit argument. Try suggesting it face to face in the next group of random black people you encounter. Maybe at the unemployment bureau, the local jail’s visitor’s waiting room, or even just at the DMV or in WalMart. Tell them all about how equal they’d really be, if only they’d stop being so damn standoffish and just joined in. I believe you will find out just how bullshit it is.
Most of the blacks’ problems, like many peoples’, can probably ultimately be traced to parenting issues, namely the issue of absentee fatherhood. I don’t see how that is anybody else’s fault. Other ethnic groups manage to stick together and form stable families rather than a man knocking up a woman and then running off to do it to some other woman. I mean, they even have a specific word for it: “baby daddy.” It’s a big problem. Fixing this would probably fix a lot of other issues in the community. I fail to see how this is anybody’s fault other than the individual men who keep doing it.
Your version was a lot sillier than mine. Especially if you actually believe it.
America didn’t just hand over equal rights to black people like you claimed. It took centuries of struggle for black people to get any degree of equality with plenty of white people trying to stop them every step of the way. Including people like you who want to pretend racism is imaginary.
There were people like you who were defending slavery in 1850. There were people like you who were defending lynching in 1900. There were people like you who were defending segregation in 1950.
Of course, I’m sure in another fifty years, you’ll be the first to concede that there was still a lot of racism back in 2011 - as you deny there are any racial problems in 2061.
You want to know where it ends? It ends at zero. Not a relatively small amount of racism or an occasional incident of racism or less racism than in the past or just a little racism for old time’s sake. What we want is zero racism. No racism at all.
So every day and every year we going to take racism and squeeze it into a smaller and smaller circle. And we’re going to keep doing that until it disappears. And we don’t care if you find yourself getting uncomfortable in there.
No, I will simply see a demonstration of the resentment and harmful attitudes that we already know are there to begin with.
And besides, people in an unemployment line or working at Walmart are not who I’m talking about. I’m talking about black people who think doing well in school, having a cheerful, friendly personality, and striving to get ahead in the workplace are “white” behaviors and therefore to be rejected. I’m talking about black people who work with whites during the day but would avoid socializing with them after hours because of race-centric modes of speech, interests and behaviors.
The adage “When in Rome” didn’t just spring from out of nowhere. The only way black people are ever going to achieve a full and comfortable social and economic equality with whites in this country is to drop the attitudes and behaviors that set them apart, no matter how understandable or justifiable they were at one time.
And people like you are idiots. It’s obvious you don’t know the first thing about me or what I think or how I feel. This imbecilic post of yours is proof of that. And while you’re busy waiting for fifty more years to go by trying to squeeze away the last of racism, fifty year’s worth of black people are going to be deprived of the benefits of the strides that have been made so far.
And besides, what leads you to think that when that magical moment arrives when the last drop of racism has been eliminated, black people, whose resentments and self-segregation have been championed by people like you, will magically drop all those resentments and attitudes and suddenly start to embrace a resistance to crime, an appreciation of education and suddenly begin living in friendly brotherhood with whites?
Good grief, what nonsense. :rolleyes:
I’m judging you by what you post on this board.
Bullshit! I utterly defy you to point to one single post I’ve ever made that would suggest I favor racism in any way, much less anything that would suggest a defense of segregation and lynchings. Perhaps it’s escaped your attention, but I’m arguing against segregation in this very thread!
You aren’t judging me by what I’ve said around here; you’re judging me by your Kool-Aid driven ideas of what conservatives think.
Here’s an opportunity to redeem yourself and to get backon topic…
Did you read the links that I provided? What’s your thoughts on them?
I have absolutely nothing to redeem myself for. Not. one. thing.
And if you want to get back on topic, I suggest you tell that to the people whose off-topic posts I was responding to rather than to me for answering them.
This is not acceptable in GD. I’m not reporting your post, but I will remember it.
There will be nothing magical about the (eventual) end to racism. It will be the product of enormous and diligent effort by millions of people across this country and throughout a broad swath of its history. It has taken people begging for equality, people both covertly and overtly aiding the oppressed, people demonstrating for equality, people marching for equality, people legislating for equality, people suffering and dying for equality.
Four hundred years of societally accepted chattel slavery, institutionalized segregation, Jim Crow, de facto segregation, lynchings, the KKK, cross burnings, church burnings, the “Mississippi Burning” murders, Martin Luther King Jr., and even this.
Finally, the OP’s cites suggest that institutional and/or flagrant but accepted individual bias continues in law enforcement today. And you have the overwhelming nerve to tell us that black people are simply resentful and self segregating, and all they really need to do is “begin living in friendly brotherhood with whites”.
You are one truly amazing self parody.
Little Nemo said that people “like me” supported Jim Crow laws and lynchings. I believe his insults were far worse, and if a person can get away with such insults in this forum by couching them in phrases like “people like you” then I should be able to retaliate in kind.
And I am well-aware of the struggles of black people to gain equality in this country in the aftermath of slavery, and perhaps I was too cryptic in my little analogy that was intended to carry the message that, having more or less acheived the equality desegregation they had been striving for, blacks are more or less segregating themselves now. And it’s my belief that the true end to racism and the road to maximum happiness for blacks and whites both lies in the two races becoming as well integrated as, say, the European immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centruries.
With regard to the “50 years to squeeze out every drop” remark Little Nemo made, I just happen to think it’s ridiculous to believe that we should wait 50 years or however long it takes for the last vestige of racism to die out before black people begin joining the rest of society and abandoning the self-destructive, anti-white resentments that are doing more to hold them back these days than any racist ever could.
Again, I would suggest that in reality I’m the poster in this thread who is most in favor of the end of racism and the one who is truly saying the things that need to be said in order to advance that end, rather than merely sympathizing with black resentments and offering nothing whatsoever for 50 years or whatever in hopes that eventually these problems will evaporate on their own - something which is highly unlikely in my opinion anyway, given that the vast majority of people in this country today, both liberal and conservative and the non-political too, are not racists themselves. If other words, if a 97% reduction of societal racial attitudes are not causing black people to abandon their resentments and join with whites, I doubt that a 100% reduction is going to bring it about either, and in the meantime things will more or less remain static and the quality of life for black people by and large will be no better than it is now. And that is why I reject the idea that people should just sit on their hands and sympathize with the black resentments of history past rather than encouraging them to abandon ideas and ways of life that are ultimately more harmful to themselves than anyone else and which again are hurting them far worse than the vestiges of racism that still exist ever could.
“Mommy, he did it first!!” really doesn’t work here. Everybody’s watching.
And in the memorable words of that conservative hero Ronnie Raygun (who, whatever else might be said about him, apparently wasn’t a racist bigot) “there you go again!”
This thread is exploring the appearance of actual racial bias and/or measurable racism in law enforcement today. A number of cites have been offered which appear to support this. No countervailing evidence has been offered, although some posters have made the unsupported claim that “blacks actually commit more crimes” than other racial groups. This would not be the first thread in which current, demonstrable instances of race-based inequality and even racial animus have been demonstrated in hiring, firing, housing, promotion, and other areas of life. Nor is it the first time that you have offered your – well, let us say special – interpretation.
Almost unbelievably, you continue to blame the victims of historical and current bigotry for their own inequality. Your statements would be pathetic if they weren’t so disgusting.
Good, then they can see that I don’t let people get away with accusing me of murderous racism.
And it’s telling that you have chosen to chide me for responding to Little Nemo’s totally unfounded racist accusations, especially considering that he came up empty when I challenged him to come up with one post out of 10,000+ posting history to support even the assertion that I’m racist, much less that in an earlier time I would have supported lynchings.
As in the analogy I posted above about the housebound rape victim, it sometimes, perhaps even often, happens that the victims of abuse adopt self-destructive behaviors in the wake of that abuse. Pointing them out and encouraging positive steps toward a better life is not blaming the victim, it is supporting the victim. People like me are encouraging racial progress; people like you are standing in the way of it.
When you grow up seeing teh evidence of that past injustice all around you, it doesn’t really feel like the distant past.