The President's Racism

[eohrnberger]

Look at the above bolded parts - those are all significantly more common in poverty-ridden areas...and not just in America. Anywhere you go, the poor and poorly-educated have much more of those same problems than those who are not so poor, not so poorly-educated. It's not just blacks, either - look at the Native Americans who tend to live in areas that are poor, where the schools are poorly funded. Do they have the same kind of problems listed above? Yep...with the possible exception of gang entanglements (which may be due more to the fact that Native Americans tend to not be clustered in urban environments).

What I'm getting at is that it's not just the centuries of slavery and the near-century of Jim Crow (and the ongoing racism that we do see even today), but it's also the poverty and the lack of education.

It's as if the Right expected that as soon as blacks were declared "equal", they could immediately overcome centuries of brutal oppression. I think you'd have to agree that it's not easy for a family that's had little or no education for many generations to suddenly become 'educated'...but this is precisely the kind of obstacle blacks had to overcome beginning with the Civil Rights Act. Though there were many exceptions to the rule, many - and perhaps most - black families did not have longstanding familial traditions of fluent literacy, much less higher education. When they as a people are faced with such daunting obstacles, how could we possibly expect that they could overcome those obstacles as a people in only two or three generations?

How can we look down our noses at them and blame them for their societal failings when the obstacles they faced - poverty, lack of education, and the lack of familial traditions of fluency and higher education (all of which was NOT their fault) - are obstacles that we whites never faced anywhere to the same degree?

It's not black society or black culture that's the problem - it's the lack of opportunity, made worse by the lack of funding for majority-black schools...and exacerbated all the more by those of our fellow whites who denigrate them for not having already risen above obstacles that we whites never faced as a people.

I disagree with your conclusion.

Why was it that in the 50's & 60's there were thriving black owned small businesses in the predominantly black neighborhoods? Granted, this was during the time of segregation, however, the black run businesses where servicing their black customers, black schools were teaching black children who were more often than not in regular attendance, and there was a stable family unit far more often than not.

What happened between this situation and the one that we have now? Why the huge march backwards in the intervening years? Surely, if it's as you claim, the families and communities should have been far worse off in this time, rather than now. But we find the reverse to be true.

Black victim culture surely is part of it. The soft bigotry of low expectations another. The race hustlers, and those that enable them, would have to be partly to blame as well. Don't you think?

 

[coldjoint]

I see. You're so quick to assume others don't defend or have never defended this nation...yet are unwilling to discuss what you yourself have done in that same vein. Are you a chickenhawk, one who's so eager to send our nation to war to "defend freedom", but is unwilling to be in the military yourself, or unwilling to send your own sons? Maybe...and maybe not. I have no way of knowing.

But I do know this - if there's something that burns me no end, it's chickenhawks like Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney and Donald Trump and Ted Nugent, men who begged their way out of the draft because of this or that bogus health problem, but who are SO doggone eager to send our troops to invade nations they don't like...and so send our own sons to die on the fields of battle.

I spent twenty years in the Navy, and I utterly despise those who are unwilling to serve themselves, but are so doggone eager to send our men and women in uniform into combat zones, and who are so eager to claim that those who are against such military adventurism are somehow unpatriotic. I think back to a quote by one of the greatest diplomats in history, Otto von Bismarck: "Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war."

Would that Limbaugh or Cheney or Trump or Nugent had ever had the courage to be there, to comfort those who are dying in service to their country...that any of the four of them would have the courage to ask themselves if war was ever "worth it".

Are you a chickenhawk? I don't know. I earnestly hope not.

Nice try. No cigar.

 

[Glen Contrarian]

I disagree with your conclusion.

Why was it that in the 50's & 60's there were thriving black owned small businesses in the predominantly black neighborhoods? Granted, this was during the time of segregation, however, the black run businesses where servicing their black customers, black schools were teaching black children who were more often than not in regular attendance, and there was a stable family unit far more often than not.

What happened between this situation and the one that we have now? Why the huge march backwards in the intervening years? Surely, if it's as you claim, the families and communities should have been far worse off in this time, rather than now. But we find the reverse to be true.

Black victim culture surely is part of it. The soft bigotry of low expectations another. The race hustlers, and those that enable them, would have to be partly to blame as well. Don't you think?

Ah, I see - you think life was better for them under Jim Crow, back when they were forced by law to keep to themselves.

Let's see if your assumption is true:



So...what happened to the poverty rate of blacks after the end of Jim Crow - did it increase? Or did it drop much more than did that of any other race?

But what about the out-of-control crimes, you ask? See how violent they are, you say. From a site referencing a Time magazine article in 1958:

NYC = Black 14% of city population. Of those arrested in 1957, 44% black males; 65% black female.

Chicago = Black 15% of city population. 49% of all the predatory crimes of rape, robbery and murder are attributed to blacks.

Los Angeles (city) = Black 13% of city population. 48% of all arrests for predatory crimes of rape, robbery and murder are attributed to blacks.

Detroit = Black 25% of city population. In the county of Detroit, 66% of the person in its jail systems are black. Of all arrests in the county, 50% are black.

But wait! I thought you were saying they were better behaved back then! I suppose that just like today, back then there was no racism at all among law enforcement or the judicial system, huh?

And lastly, you mentioned the failure of the family units among blacks. Educate yourself by studying the findings of scholars who've studied that very question...and see that while there are cultural factors, the single biggest factor is poverty...which is what I've been trying to tell you all along.

 

[eohrnberger]

Ah, I see - you think life was better for them under Jim Crow, back when they were forced by law to keep to themselves.

No, that's not what I was saying. I even included the statement "Granted, this was during the time of segregation", which is by no means any sort of endorsement of that.

Let's see if your assumption is true:

View attachment 67204507

So...what happened to the poverty rate of blacks after the end of Jim Crow - did it increase? Or did it drop much more than did that of any other race?

But what about the out-of-control crimes, you ask? See how violent they are, you say. From a site referencing a Time magazine article in 1958:

NYC = Black 14% of city population. Of those arrested in 1957, 44% black males; 65% black female.

Chicago = Black 15% of city population. 49% of all the predatory crimes of rape, robbery and murder are attributed to blacks.

Los Angeles (city) = Black 13% of city population. 48% of all arrests for predatory crimes of rape, robbery and murder are attributed to blacks.

Detroit = Black 25% of city population. In the county of Detroit, 66% of the person in its jail systems are black. Of all arrests in the county, 50% are black.

But wait! I thought you were saying they were better behaved back then! I suppose that just like today, back then there was no racism at all among law enforcement or the judicial system, huh?

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I think it's a flawed conclusion that the crime stats you cite are 100% totally because of racism and racist law enforcement. Why is it that the Black minority, a mere 13% of the population is yet responsible for nearly 1/2 of the murders in the nation for the last 30 years?

According to FBI data, 4,906 black people murdered other blacks in 2010 and 2011. That is 1,460 more black Americans killed by other blacks in two years than were lynched from 1882 to 1968, according to the Tuskegee Institute.

In 2012, white males were 38 percent of the population and committed 4,582 murders. That same year, black males were just 6.6 percent of the population but committed a staggering 5,531 murders.

In other words: black people–at just a fifth of the size–committed almost 1,000 more murders than their white counterparts.

DOJ statistics show that between 1980 and 2008, black people committed 52% of homicides.

In 2013, black criminals committed 38% of the murders. Whites accounted for just 31 percent.

When so few murder so many and apparently so casually, there's a serious and real problem far beyond just poverty.

I go back to my original premise that a value system that allows and accepts this level of violence against itself is a mal-adpated value system, and the root cause for these problems and probably many others in these communities. Seems rather obvious, when cast against the above facts.

And lastly, you mentioned the failure of the family units among blacks. Educate yourself by studying the findings of scholars who've studied that very question...and see that while there are cultural factors, the single biggest factor is poverty...which is what I've been trying to tell you all along.

The solution for poverty is education, self restraint, and opportunity. But that hard work is a hard sell when the Gangsta culture makes the lawlessness so much more profitable and so much more glamorous.

What's you solution? Just give more free government money? Further ingrain the dependence on government handouts?

I'd contend that this would worsen the problem, and not make it better.