Exactly what race-centric interests and behaviors are you talking about?
'Cause I’m having a real hard time thinking of anything that Black people like to do that White people don’t like too. :dubious:
CMC fnord!
Does it matter that her rapist still lives in the neighborhood and has never been prosecuted for the rape, we simply made the rapist stop raping her?
BTW, was she wearing slutty clothes or otherwise asking for it when she got raped?
'Cause we all know that those black people were just asking for it. Slavery, I mean. And institutional racism. But see, despite the OP’s cites and all the other evidence to the contrary, **SA **is sure they’ve “more or less acheived the equality desegregation they had been striving for” and rather than like it (the more part anyway; well, maybe the less part too) instead they are “more or less segregating themselves now”.
More or less.
Who could argue with that?
And people like you lose their posting privileges for insulting others outside the Pit.
Knock it off.
[ /Moderating ]
Barring an actual connection between the views of Starving Artist and the views you attribute to him, you are also out of line.
Stop it.
[ /Moderating ]
To be fair, you haven’t been accused of defending lynching or segregation. You have been accused of being the sort of person that WOULD have defended segregation or lynching back when it was going on.
This is a good point and it might address why the cycle of poverty and crime has been so difficult to break in the black community but it does nothing to address the question of selective enforcement that lands a very large minority of black men in jail at some point in their life.
I’m glad somebody understood that. My point was that racial bias in law enforcement is the 2011 equivalent of what segregation was in 1950 or lynching was in 1900 - a form of racism that was excused by some people of its time while being universally condemned by future generations. (And obviously, I’m only predicting that future generations will universally condemn racial bias in law enforcement.)
And to address another issue that has been raised, I never said that we should wait fifty years to oppose racism. I said we should oppose racism today and continue to oppose it for the next fifty years.
And to be fair to starving artist, I think his point is that we may have reached the point where the majority of the cycle of poverty and crime in the black community is self inflicted and is no longer racism or the lingering effects of slavery and Jim Crow.
The self destructive behaviour may have its roots in racism but there is no evidence that reducing racism reduces this self destructive behaviour.
Too many conservatives today don’t realize that they are the spiritual descendants of folks with attitudes that are universally condemned today. In 50 years we may universally condemn homophobia, on the other hand we may universally condemn abortion as well.
Exactly so. Thank you.
But in addition to that I’m also saying that for racism and equality truly to exist, it will be necessary for the black population and the white population to mix socially and culturally to the point that there is no difference between them. As it is now, the races mix comfortably at work and out in public, but then each withdraws to its own kind to hang out, grill burgers, watch television, go shopping and so forth. This results in the perpetuation of the cultural differences that separate the two races, and as long as those cultural differences exist I don’t foresee a genuine end to racism. Blacks and whites are simply going to have to learn to like and become comfortable with each other, and as long as we can’t talk about the cultural differences that keep us apart and work to eliminate them, we’re never going to get to that point.
And that is why I don’t see any point in Little Nemo’s insistence that we wait 50 years or whatever until racism is totally eliminated before we begin to a have a dialog about the things that keep us apart and continue to keep much of the black population at a disadvantage economically and socially.
Then wouldn’t you think that is rather unfair? Democrats of the first half of the 20th century were every bit as racist as conservatives are thought to have been then by the liberals of today, and yet no Democrats that I’m aware seem to expect to be thought of the way they were then. And then look at Little Nemo’s gross over-reaction to the things I’ve said in this thread. Not a word of it is racist in any objective sense, but he went ballistic simply because of the stereotypes he carries in his own mind about what conservatives of today think. Recent polls have shown that more people self-identify as conservative than liberal, but even if we were to assume a 50/50 split and also take children out of the equation, we would be left with approximately 100 million conservatives in this country today. It should be obvious that if the conservative population were anywhere near as racist as liberals like to portray it, this country would not have made anywhere near the progress on racism that it has today, and that there would be much, much more overt racism than exists today. The fact of the matter is that we are all human and conservatives have grown to see the injustice and inhumanity of slavery and racism just like liberals have, and yet modern day liberals seem to want to hold conservatives to the repressive attitudes of 80 years ago while at the same time exempting themselves from those same attitudes which they held at that time themselves.
I understand that was his point. But I have a hard time accepting the idea that any group of people would choose to be arrested and imprisoned at a significantly higher rate than the people around them. That’s a pretty extraordinary claim which I think requires some strong evidence to support it being true.
Why would any group choose to go to prison? Why would any group choose to have a high crime rate (both as perpetrators and victims)? Why would any group choose to be have higher rates of poverty and unemployment? Why would any group choose to have lower rates for education and health?
To me, the most obvious answers to these questions are the group didn’t have a choice. It didn’t have a better alternative opportunity.
I can accept, as a hypothetical, the possibility that the group did have a choice. That it had better opportunities but chose to embrace hardship. But as I said above, this seems unlikely and I think it justifiably needs to prove itself with some evidence before anyone takes such an argument seriously.
You are again glossing over what really happened in history. The Democrats used to be the conservative party on racial issues. It was the Republicans who were liberals on race prior to the 1960’s.
And conservatives and liberals have not had equal records on racial issues. As I have repeatedly said, everyone, conservative and liberal, now recognizes that slavery and lynching and racism were racist and wrong.
But the difference is that liberals recognized these things were racist and wrong when they were still happening. It was liberals who put a stop to these things. And then after they were ended, conservatives came on board and agreed they were bad after the fact.
Wow…not only is America racist…from the evidence presented here, America also appears to be FAR more sexist!
Men and women comprise (roughly) equal percentages of the population, so naturally they should be getting locked up at equal rates.
…right?
I was really tempted to leave that rhetorical question as the closer to this post. But then someone would jump in with actual facts regarding biological and cultural differences between men and women, and my point would be lost.
Yes, boys and girls…we’re different.
Yeah…I’m a (mostly) white guy. But I move pretty easily between cultures, graduating from a couple HBCUs in the process. To stand here and say there isn’t a self-destructive culture of criminality and/or violence that has taken root in black culture (in general) and many black communities (in particular) is to deny reality. Just as it would be equally unjust to claim there are no peaceful, law-abiding black communities: I’ve lived in a couple.
But there *is *a problem.
Arrest rates are not the disease; they are the symptom.
I recently spent a week in Hyderabad, India. You want to see poverty??!! You want to see an unjust society?!?! You want to see a culture where violence is not a socially acceptable means to get by? Go there.
I just returned last week from two weeks in Changsha, China. Again…grinding inner-city poverty. But I could walk down any alley, in any slum, at any time of night, without any concern of crime. Shop owners do business freely without worry of being robbed…or even shop-lifted. Violence and crime are simply not part of their culture, and is not tolerated by the vast majority of the people living within the neighborhoods.
In both of these cases, there is tremendous local pressure to do what is right. The **culture ** is that of non-violence and harmony. Perfect harmony? Nope. Not even close. However, nor is there a hair-trigger default to violence we so on a daily basis in America’s black culture.
Let’s play a game.
If a Constitutional amendment was passed today, banning the arrest of anyone of African heritage and depositing $100,000 into the hands of every black American, what do you think the result would be? Would there be a flood of young black men enrolling college? Would the streets of inner-city Gary, Compton or Detroit suddenly become safe to walk at night? Would shop owners remove the bars from their windows?
An *honest * answer to the scenario of this ‘game’ reveals a self-destructive (violent) problem in America’s black culture.
Do I have the solution? Nope.
But the denial that there is a cultural issue at work is, in fact, part of the problem.
I believe I used the word conservative rather than Democrat. The Democrats of the 1850’s and the dixiecrats of the last century were in fact the conservatives of their time. You knew that didn’t you?
You think that the reduction of racism in America was some sort of organic development that sprang from the general population? It was imposed by courts and by the federal government. They literally had to pass laws making it illegal.
I think you miss the point, liberals were against salvery in the 1800s, they were against segregation in the 1900s, conservatives were either for slavery and segregation or indifferent to slavery adn segregation.
That doesn’t mean that all conservative ideas are bad (e.g. we might one daycondemn abortion as a form of infanticide), I just wanted to point out that history shows us a pretty bad track record for the conservative position.
I don’t think SA is saying that blacks are choosing to go to jail, I think he is saying taht the underlying reason for the high incarceration rates is no longer driven by racism (something that I don’t necessarily agree with considering how many blacks are in jail for drug offenses).
There have been studies linking crime and poverty to the breakdown of the black family. There have been studies that conclude that part of the reason for the breakdown of the black family was at least partly driven by the welfare system. But that’s not the whole story. The breakdown was driven by a combination of racism and the welfare system which denied black men the opportunity to provide for their families while at the same time providing black women a means of raising their families without partners. If racism didn’t exist and black men could get jobs at the same rate as white men, the existence of welfare would not have broken the black family.
Are you implying that there is no selective enforcement of drug laws in teh USA, because there have been dozens of studies in dozens fo localities that prove a very high statistical probablility that the drug laws are being enforced selectively (and implying that perhaps many other laws are also being enforced selsectively).
Of racism?
And is the racism really really bad there?
Is the racism there really bad too? I don’t bring this up to provide an excuse but to show taht these are not great analogies, if poverty were the only issue then you would be left with the gap between poor blacks and poor whites in all sorts of areas. We aren’t saying that the black community has these problems merely because of poverty, we are saying taht racism (both current and hsitorical) play a role.
I blame rap music
At least until the money ran out, I think these neighborhoods would be as safe as any other neighborhood.
I don’t think anyone thinks that there aren’t destructive elements of black culture (I was serious about blaming rap music and its glorification of thug life and violence).
However, never before in American history has the black man had as much opportunity as he has today and yet he is more likely to be born outside of marraige, more likely to engage in violent crime, more likely to be chronically unemployed than in the 1950’s during segregation.
Thank you. 
When the topic of black crime comes up liberals try to change the subject to “non violent drug offenses.” When thinking of non violent drug offenders it is easy to think of a harmless hippy sentenced to ten years of hard labor for possession of a few marijuana cigarettes.
Nevertheless, “In 2005, [murder] rates for blacks were more than 7 times higher than the rates for whites.”
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/race.cfm
There is no excuse for that. The only solution is more punishment.
Then I posit we should be doing something about, like, preventing and punishing murder. *Everyone *wants murderers behind bars, be they black, white, brown or purple-teal polka-dotted.
Again, one of the statistics being discussed involves an allegation that an inordinate amount of black arrestees represent cases where relatively small-time drug possession is the highest offense the person is being charged with.
I’m not sure anyone is classifying people charged for, say, grand theft + armed assault + lewd conduct + possession of marijuana + driving a gypsy cab, as merely a marijuana case
Oh, sure. That’ll work…
Try staying on topic, I know you may feel a little impotent because you lack certain information but I’ve provide links with statistics that you can study and get up to speed with and then you can intelligently contribute to this thread.
Life imprisonment or the death penalty is not enough of a deterrence?
Also, some argue that the large number of arrests of minorities for minor crimes drive up the more violent crimes. Once you’re arrested and charged with a misdemeanor your options in life become a lot more limited. Misdemeanors have to be disclosed on almost every job application. If you can’t get a job because of a drug arrest, then it’s more likely that you’ll turn to a life of crime to support yourself.
That’s not the case for everyone, but it will skew the statistics against minorities.