One glaring aspect of the mainstream media’s treatment of the Gates incident is its general failure to discuss research data on racial profiling. Data-free opinions increasingly trump investigative reporting seeking empirical evidence. Racist profiling of African Americans and other Americans of color of color remains widespread. There is much empirical evidence.
One Gallup poll found that 83 percent of the black respondents thought that racial profiling was widespread, and in another recent poll some 20 percent of black respondents reported that they had faced such such racial profiling or other discrimination by police in the last 30 days.
A recent ACLU report has summarized racial-profiling research studies involving numerous police departments as showing
large differences in the rate of stops and searches for African Americans and Latinos, and often, Indians (Native Americans) and Asians, even though these groups are less likely to have contraband.
There have also been a number of recent court settlements. In 2008 the ACLU and other plaintiffs settled a class action lawsuit on racial profiling by Maryland State Police (MSP) officers in the Interstate 95 corridor. Studies over a long period showed motorists of color were disproportionately targeted and stopped and searched without good reason. An ACLU report notes that the settlement
agreement provides substantial damages to the individual plaintiffs, a requirement that the MSP retain an independent consultant to assess its progress towards eliminating the practice of racial profiling, and a joint statement by all parties involved in the lawsuit condemning racial profiling and highlighting the importance of taking preventative action against this practice in the future.
This profiling by police is not the only racial profiling that Americans of color face. Researchers Thomas Ainscough, Carol Motley, and Anne-Marie Harris, among others, have reported on audit and other studies that show discriminatory treatment of black and white customers in retail establishments, including poor service and various kinds of surveillance, searches, and neglect routines.
A recent Southern Poverty Law Center report Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South found too that in southern areas Latinos
are routinely cheated out of their earnings and denied basic health and safety protections. They are regularly subjected to racial profiling and harassment by law enforcement. . . . And they are frequently forced to prove themselves innocent of immigration violations, regardless of their legal status. (p. 4)
Numerous other studies (see here) show these patterns for many other walks of live, for African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Middle Eastern Americans. Many whites seem predisposed to see African Americans and other Americans of color as inherently deviant or criminal, a centuries-old idea in the white racial framing of this society. It is no wonder black men like Professor Gates often run into this problem. It probably happens millions of times a year in the United States.
One can think of a number of strategies against profiling. For several years, U.S. House member John Conyers and U.S. Senator Russ Feingold have introduced the End Racial Profiling Act, which prohibits racial profiling and requires law enforcement departments to collect stop-and-search data, to have effective complaint procedures, and to insure that those abused by police departments have a right to sue. This legislation has yet to be passed. (Guess why?) In May 2008 even the United Nations Special Rapporteur on racism called on the US Congress to pass the End Racial Profiling Act, as well as to set up an investigative commission to examine continuing racial discrimination.
Interestingly, there are modest educational steps that might help somewhat. Thus, in one psychological study Canadian researchers showed 264 photos of Chinese, black, and white male faces to 20 whites. After they had been trained these volunteers for hours on seeing subtle differences in these human faces, white volunteers were less likely to associate negative words and concepts with black faces than they were before the training. One researcher suggests that such training in seeing facial differences might reduce racial profiling by police and others. What do you think?
Give me some time to read the research, I’ll get back to you on what I think about the training in facial differences. Just off the top of my head, I can imagine that the process humanizes people of color.
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In regards to the entire post – 2 thumbs up!
Hey all,
So i am a big fan of the shooter studies of Joshua Correll and the priming stuff of Jennifer Eberhardt (so, unlike No1Kstate, I will pull and Obama and speak before I know all the facts). Both of their work pretty convincingly shows that whites (and most people of color) will react to danger faster if they are primed with “blackness” in any number of ways. (Interestingly Eberhardts work shows that cops primed with whiteness slow their reaction times to the point of putting themselves in danger if the armed perp is white. How is that for white privliedge? The thing that bothers me in Corrells work especially is he shows that in the lab after some training cops and lay people can get their reaction times down and eliminate the bias. However, he fails to mention that cops have already had a TON of training, and after all this training, when they are brought into the lab they still have “fear of a black planet” and shoot before thinking. So. basically, we don’t know the duration of these effects, and I would tend to argue (again in an Obama-like fashion) that the effects won’t last that long, given the pervasiveness of the white racial frame when the officer leaves the lab and go back to their typical day of profiling Dr. Gates. I guess doing a day after follow up to Correll’s work would be a publishable extension…
The End Racial Profiling Act has died on the congressional vine since the 107th Congress being introduced in one, if not both Houses, in each of the last 4 congresses before the current 111th Congress.
Victor, thanks, can you post a few of those cites in a little more detail, for our viewers. Thanks.
@ Victor Ray – Have I done something to offend you? What’s the matter?
Nevermind, VR. After re-reading it a few times, I’m almost certain you’re not insulting me.
Hey No1K
I have never had any desire to offend you. I was apparently pretty poorly saying that you were being a little smarter than I by not speaking before you knew all the facts. So, the pieces I am talking about are by Joshua Correll at the University of Chicago. The piece is called “Across the Thin Blue Line: Police Officers and the Decision to Shoot” (2007). The point I was apparently un-eloquently making was that his research shows that you can train people to not have a split second reaction to blacks, but it ignores the fact that the duration of that training is unknown. So, how long this “training” lasts is an open question.
Eberhardts research is available here:http://www.stanford.edu/~eberhard/
She shows that priming whites with terms like “jazz” or “basketball” makes them more likely to perceive a weapon emerging from a background, (check the site if I am not being clear) and that this can actually make cops less likely to see a weapon when a white person is holding it.
Of course, all this is in a lab, generalizations from there to the real world are fraught, etc. But, it is very suggestive….
I hope I have been more clear that in my last post. And No1, no harm intended. I was making fun of myself for commenting before I had read the research, which you had (intelligently) refused to do.
@ VR – Yeah. I realized you were being self-depricating after a few reads, but thanks for being clear about it. That was really sweet. ;}
One of the references to rates of searches (the first) in the summary report refers to “Driving while Black or Brown,” another ACLU report about traffic stops in Arizona (http://www.acluaz.org/DrivingWhileBlackorBrown.pdf). I looked it up.
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Taking just a naive look at the report, what strikes me is how well-calibrated the stops and searches actually are. The report shows the blacks, whites, and hispanics are stopped just about in proportion to their percentage of the population in Arizona. They are searched at different rates, but the “hit rate” — the rate at which contraband is found — is closer to equal. Virtually identical for blacks and whites (34-38%), lower for hispanics (22%). That means that, although blacks and hispanics are more likely to be searched, they’re also more likely to be carrying drugs.
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This may or may not mean that racial profiling is actually going on, and it doesn’t address the fairness or rightness of profiling, but it does suggest that the cops are acting more or less rationally — the likelihood of being searched varies directly with the likelihood of carrying contraband. It does appear that hispanics could have a reasonable gripe, but you’d like to know something about the background crime rates before you concluded anything.
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So here’s the conclusion I’m leading up to: there’s evidence here that both sides are arguing in good faith. Blacks and hispanics ARE searched more frequently than whites, and they ARE more likely to be breaking the law. That’s where the discussion starts, not where it ends, of course.
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I thought many of the recommendations in “Driving while” were very sensible:
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“Consent searches” strike me as a farce, although you could just as easily suggest an education campaign informing drivers that they don’t have to consent. When a cop asks if it’s okay to search your car, the implication is clear. (By the way, ACLU publishes a card with advice when dealing with a cop; somebody should send one to Professor Gates.)
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A/V equipment for police vehicles makes good sense for all. If I were a cop, I’d insist on it, since it’s just as likely to protect him. Put in cameras! The sooner the better.
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The ACLU omits what would be the best solution — abandonment of the harmful, costly, and failed “war against drugs.”
Hi Darren,
That report is actually pretty clear that racial profiling is going on. In fact, that is the reason the report was written, to establish that fact. Also, if as the report claims, the so-called “hit-rate” for whites were slightly higher for contraband (for example page 9 claims they were 38% for whites vs. 34% for blacks on average) even though whites were less likely to be searched than people of color, it does not mean that “both sides are in good faith.” This dose not mean, as you claim, “the likelihood of being searched varies directly with the likelihood of carrying contraband.” It means that if whites are being caught at a greater absolute rate than people of color white they are being searched less, it varies inversely with the likelihood. From this follows 2 things. 1) if whites were searched at they same absolute rate they would most likely be seen to be carrying contraband (we can’t be sure because this is probabilistic, but we have good evidence that white teens are more likely to carry weapons to school, and sell/consume drugs at much higher rates than people of color 2) law enforcement in is dereliction of duty (and dishonest) because they are focusing their resources on people of color who aren’t breaking the law, while ignoring whites who are. This is basic statistics and logic. In fact, if you had read the next page of the article it shows results from a national study that whites are much more likely to be carrying drugs than people of color nationally. This is clear evidence that law enforcement in this country is suffering from a form of what Charles Mills calls “white moral cognitive dysfunction”-a collective hallucination and inability to see their own immoral behavior in the face of clear, scientific, unequivocal evidence that if they were not busy chasing blacks, latinos, and native americans the U.S. would be a safer place.
Good points, Victor. And one can add that the key to all this is that racial profiling is found in many other studies, and is reported by the majority of black folks in most studies. thus, You have to deny their everyday reality and testimony–which of course many whites do–to argue that there is no serious racist profiling. By definition, in the Western case, systemic racism means whites routinely denying the reality of those they oppress.
You got it backwards, Victor — 38% black, 34% white. But either way, I doubt that’s a statistically significant difference, the report doesn’t give the raw numbers so you can’t quite tell. It does NOT mean that whites are being caught at a higher absolute rate. We have absolutely no way to know that, because as I mentioned, we don’t know the background rate.
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Let’s look at your other points:
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1) “if whites were searched at they same absolute rate they would most likely be seen to be carrying contraband.”
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For this to be true, the rate of whites who are not searched carrying contraband would have to be higher than the rate for whites who are searched! Not very likely.
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I definitely question your statistics, anyway. I can’t find the reference to whites being more likely to be carrying, where is it? I’m sure that more whites carry weapons and sell drugs, but it seems unlikely that that rates are higher. We do know that the opposite is true for violent crime and the lifetime likelihood of going to jail, the rates of which are much higher for blacks and hispanics. It would be a real surprise to find that carrying weapons and selling drugs are exceptions.
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2) “law enforcement in is dereliction of duty (and dishonest) because they are focusing their resources on people of color who aren’t breaking the law, while ignoring whites who are. This is basic statistics and logic. ”
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It is? I don’t see it. Looks to me like the cops are actually about equally good at spotting somebody with “contraband” whether he’s black or white — worse if he’s hispanic. You’ll have to explain this “basic statistics and logic” to me, it must not be quite basic enough.
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I wish you’d have addressed my point that the cops are reasonably well calibrated (at least in Arizona), which means the debate about racial profiling is on valid terms. From your last sentence and from the fact that you claim the Arizona cops are “dishonest,” it sounds like you disagree, but you don’t explain how your assertions fit with the Arizona data. Do they, or is Arizona an exception?
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Bear in mind, I’m not saying this means racial profiling is good, I’m just saying that it looks like the reasons given by the “for” side are valid on their face.
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Joe, I don’t quite agree that the pro-profiling side ignores the testimony of blacks. They argue that it’s beside the point. I’ve never heard anyone deny that blacks are stopped or searched more than whites (i.e., no one denies that racial profiling happens). The issue is whether that’s justified. The pro-profiling side says it is because blacks are more likely to be doing something wrong, that they’re profiled for the same reason young men in general are; obviously the anti-side disagrees. As I recall, you gave some good reasons for opposing, based on blacks’ perceptions, which I thought were really good. I’m not sure I see any reality-denying going on.
Darin, actually younger whites are more likely to be using drugs (and probably selling, transporting, etc) than younger blacks, the data are pretty clear on that.
Indeed, numerous white college students put themselves through school selling cocaine. Tis rare for them to get arrested.
So young whites should be stopped and searched more often than blacks. Why is that not the case?
So young whites should be stopped and searched more often than blacks. Why is that not the case?
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I think Tim Wise’s piece, “… Dude, Where’s My Privilege?” amplifies that question.
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I’m a Mid-Westerner so I wasn’t aware of those annual 4/20 festivals. After learning about them from Wise’s piece, there is nothing someone like Darin or the Heather McDonald’s of the can say to me….
Darin, this is from the document you cited to prove that racial profiling was not happening, or only happening somehow “in good faith”:
In a 2002 study from the U.S. Department of Justice they found “8.1% of African American motorists stopped by police and 8.3% of Hispanics stopped were searched following the stop. At the same time, only 2.5% of whites stopped by police were searched. Contraband was discovered in 3.3% of African American searches and 13.0% of Hispanic searches, as compared to a higher 14.5% for whites.”
And this:
“Hispanics and African Americans are consistently being stopped by DPS officers at rates disproportionately greater than their representation within the violator population; and, white, non-Hispanics are consistently being stopped at rates disproportionately
less than their representation within the violator population. These differences are statistically significant and fit the Supreme Court’s definition of the presence of racial and ethnic discrimination.”
And this:
“An extensive study of 175,000 pedestrian stops by the New York City Police Department found a highly disproportionate rate of minority stops. The Office of the Attorney General of New York State, which conducted the research, determined that: (1) African Americans were stopped six times more frequently than whites; (2) African Americans were stopped at a rate more than ten times their percentage of the population; and (3) stops of African Americans were less likely to result in arrests than stops of whites. Even when adjusting for crime rates by race, the differences in stops of minorities – compared to stops of whites – was statistically significant, with African Americans stopped twice as often as whites.”
Oh, there is more:
“The current study finds that people of color were searched more frequently than whites (at least twice as often, in most cases) on Arizona Interstate highways between 2006 and 2007. However, white motorists were more likely to be carrying contraband than Hispanics, Middle Easterners and Native Americans.” (page 9)
So, uh, I’m very sorry I misinterpreted the data. And yeah, sorry I got the black-white percentages reversed. As I said, only 4% of whites were searched (as it says on page 7). Blacks were 2.5 times more likely to be searched, but the percentages carrying are about the same. This means that if they were searched at the same absolute rate, you would most likely find what you do all over the rest of the country. Whites are more likely to carry.
And just so we are straight. I don’t want to claim that only Arizona cops who profile are dishonest. I think it is pretty safe to blame any department in the country that does. That data shows it is not a good strategy. That is a denial of reality.
I am so happy to find this web site and am reading works by Tim Wise between semesters so I can better teach my students about the racism that still exists. Wonderful resources here. Thanks.
Joe, if you’re right, it’s not borne out by the Arizona study linked from the ACLU report. Whites who are stopped are about 2.5 times less likely than blacks and about 50% less likely than hispanics to be carrying contraband. Maybe white dealers don’t operate in Arizona, maybe they don’t transport stuff themselves, maybe, maybe, maybe. The point is, the Arizona study suggests that when it comes to blacks and whites and traffic stops on highways in Arizona, the ratios are about right.
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Again, this doesn’t automatically make racial profiling right, but it does suggest that the basis for the debate is correct — which nobody here seems very willing to join, by the way.
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Actually, the federal data I’ve seen suggest your statistics are not correct, anyway. Whites use less illegal drugs and blacks, more than hispanics (http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k7/popDensity/popDensity.pdf). However, this report is confounded by the “two or more races” category, which I assume would be broken into various minorities in most surveys, making their rates higher.
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A lot of the racial profiling stuff is really about drugs. It seems like the larger issue is not race but whether the so-called war on drugs is pulling its weight. I wonder what fraction of the disparate impact of traffic stops would vanish if drugs were de-criminalized.
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Nquest, if there’s nothing anyone can say to you, then I hope you enjoy your new religion. Go in peace.
Darin,
All of the statistics I cited are from the Arizona ACLU study you provided a (not working) link to, but apparently weren’t interested in reading. Here is the working link, in case anyone who is interested in reality wants to look at it:
http://www.acluaz.org/
Darin said: Nquest, if there’s nothing anyone can say to you…
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Typical and pathetic.
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I listed you by name and the Heather McDonald’s of the [world] and from that you cough out some nonsense equating that specific subsection of the American populace to ANYONE.
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Of course that’s emblematic of most, if not all, of your exchanges here. Unprepared or simply unable to present a logical counterpoint, you hope your little wit(less) shenanigans will provide cover or distractions for your ineptitude.
A lot of the racial profiling stuff is really about drugs…
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Yet… you were purposely silent on the 4/20 marijuana festivals that are “really about drugs”…
http://media.www.newsteamboulder.com/media/storage/paper1155/news/2009/04/21/News/420-Festival-3719387.shtml
http://www.ucsdguardian.org/news/ucsc-cracks-down-on-4-20-festival-1.1718806
Victor, I don’t know what document you’re quoting from. The link you gave just goes to the Arizona ACLU homepage. My link doesn’t work because the out-parenthesis shows up in the URL, just delete and you can see the report. But here it is again in case:
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http://www.acluaz.org/DrivingWhileBlackorBrown.pdf
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I think your math is wrong in your paragraph that starts “So, uh, I’m sorry….” If blacks are searched at a higher rate than whites, and searches turn up contraband at the same rate, that means more blacks are carrying contraband in the population from which the search sample was drawn. Does your argument about dereliction depend on your math, or is there another basis?
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Also, Victor, tone is notoriously difficult to convey in this medium, so I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. However, it seems like you’re going out of your way to sound sarcastic. I think you should save it. If I’m wrong, then that’s my bad.
Yeah, Darin. Exactly what are you reading?
Emancipation Proclamation? Not Really. Lincoln tryed, but the South was addicted to Free Labor. Thus, this is what they did:
After the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, all former slave states adopted new Black Codes. During 1865 every southern state passed Black Codes that restricted the Freedmen [blacks] who were emancipated but not yet full citizens. While they pursued re-admission to the Union, the southern states provided freedmen with limited second-class civil rights and no voting rights.
Southern plantation owners feared that they would lose their land. Having convinced themselves that slavery was justified, planters feared African Americans wouldn’t work without coercion. The Black Codes were an attempt to control them and to ensure they did not claim social equality.
Mississippi and South Carolina black codes have been detailed thus:[2]
“Negroes must make annual contracts for their labor in writing; if they should run away from their tasks, they forfeited their wages for the year. Whenever it was required of them they must present licenses (in a town from the mayor; elsewhere from a member of the board of police of the beat) citing their places of residence and authorizing them to work. Fugitives from labor were to be arrested and carried back to their employers. Five dollars a head and mileage would be allowed such negro catchers.
It was made a misdemeanor, punishable with fine or imprisonment, to persuade a freedman to leave his employer, or to feed the runaway. Minors were to be apprenticed, if males until they were twenty-one, if females until eighteen years of age. Such corporal punishment as a father would administer to a child might be inflicted upon apprentices by their masters. Vagrants were to be fined heavily, and if they could not pay the sum, they were to be hired out to service until the claim was satisfied.
Negroes might not carry knives or firearms unless they were licensed so to do. It was an offence, to be punished by a fine of $50 and imprisonment for thirty days, to give or sell intoxicating liquors to a negro. When negroes could not pay the fines and costs after legal proceedings, they were to be hired at public outcry by the sheriff to the lowest bidder….”
“In South Carolina persons of color contracting for service were to be known as “servants,” and those with whom they contracted, as “masters.” On farms the hours of labor would be from sunrise to sunset daily, except on Sunday.
The negroes were to get out of bed at dawn. Time lost would be deducted from their wages, as would be the cost of food, nursing, etc., during absence from sickness. Absentees on Sunday must return to the plantation by sunset. House servants were to be at call at all hours of the day and night on all days of the week.
They must be “especially civil and polite to their masters, their masters’ families and guests,” and they in return would receive “gentle and kind treatment.” Corporal and other punishment was to be administered only upon order of the district judge or other civil magistrate. A vagrant law of some severity was enacted to keep the negroes from roaming the roads and living the lives of beggars and thieves.”
Nquest, I didn’t respond about hempfest because there’s no response to be made. You cited Tim Wise speculating that if the 420 had been black guys the cops would have broken it up. Well, maybe they would have, who knows — since it never actually, you know, happened. What’s the point?
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Maybe we should all have toast and celebrate the fact that there are no more real racial issues to worry about — only fake ones.
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The defining characteristics of hempfest seem to be a bunch of slacker potheads saving up their allowance to buy dope, playing bongos and dabbing patchouli on themselves. I don’t think the cops SHOULD break it up because it’s irrelevant. If it was associated with violence or something, then they’d bust it up, and they’d probably use drug laws as a pretext.
Maybe we should all have toast and celebrate the fact that there are no more real racial issues
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Another one of those weasel statements that says it all. Darin who has claimed that he acknowledges that racism exists (a rhetorical ploy he now apparently has no more use for) AND just happened to make a remark about the “war on drugs” which has produced decidedly unequal law enforcement on the very issue of drug possession with Blacks being arrested practically twice as much for possession of cannabis than Whites.
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All that is okay with Darin because that’s all just fake up to and including his idle claim that he believes racism exists when he’s on a blog called Racism Review in constant denial…
You are just spoiling for a fight, aren’t you, Nquest! I don’t “claim” I acknowledge racism exists, I actually do acknowledge it. Acknowledgment is not a very high hurdle – I say, “racism exists,” and that’s pretty much the end of the story. But, hey, your skepticism is admirable. I hope you’ll apply it to everything you read here, not just my stuff.
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I wasn’t making a weasel statment. I was digging at you for treating a hypothetical scenario as if it’s a real racial issue. That’s all. There are plenty of real problems around, to argue about whether black hippies would get arrested the same as white hippies strikes me as borrowing trouble.
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And I’m NOT in denial. (Get it?)
(It seems as though Darin is crying out that he needs to get stoned with hippies…)
Many professional and upstanding citizens ranging from physicians to judges and attorneys, from professors to mental health professionals, actually back up the decriminalization of marijuana. And it’s not only “hippies” that smoke–stereotype if I’ve ever heard one.
On criminal profiling, just as America’s most brilliant Christian minister (hands down), Dr. Wright once said with relation to weapons of mass destruction and the U.S. invasion of Iraq before Iraq was illegally attacked: “…and if they don’t find them weapons of mass destruction, they gonna do just like the L.A.P.D. and plant them some weapons of mass destruction…”. Black men need only to be drug free and upstanding citizens as shown below to be targeted for profiling, along with Latino and other groups:
http://www.break.com/usercontent/2008/2/cops-plant-drugs-on-suspect-458524.html
And when the U.S. does eventually decriminalize, Blacks and other groups will still disproportionately be targeted by police because of racial profiling–they will be illegally stopped, searched, and seized, for other reasons, including made up reasons. It’s a systemic problem and the corrections need to take place at the roots.
We already know white hippies don’t get arrested as often as black “hippies.” That’s why white hippies have been able to do this 2o years in a row!
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So, Darin, what’s the hypothetical part? That blacks would be arrested or that whites aren’t?
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Also, where are you getting the studies you’re referring to? Both links are dead. But here’s what I got from what I imagine is the link you’re referring to:
http://www.acluaz.org/DrivingWhileBlackorBrown.pdf
(on the link above–the primary emphasis is on the cops planting drugs on the suspect, whom in this case is Latino. This happens to Black folks with no cause, and Latino, etc.)
*commercial break* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apMyjOAacyA
No1KState, that’s the report I am referring to. Unfortunately, the executive summary you’re quoting does not accurately represent the data in the report.
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The data show that, of the drivers searched, blacks and whites are found to be carrying contraband at the same rate. But that’s a misleading metric because blacks are 2.5 times more likely to be searched.
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They say, “on average, white were more likely to be carrying contraband” than a list of minorities (which did not include blacks, by the way). But you can’t conclude that from the data they provided. What you can conclude is only that OF THOSE WHO ARE SEARCHED whites are more likely to be carrying. Those are very different statements; you’ve got to get the denominator right.
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Also, as I pointed this out in my original post on this subject, they have no data on the ACTUAL rate of carrying contraband — the background rate. You can’t conclude too much without knowing this. In other words, maybe whites really do carry drugs at a higher rate than hispanice, but they’re better and hiding them or something. This report doesn’t give us any way to assess that.
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To answer your question: the hypothetical part is whether black hippies (does such a thing exist?) would be arrested. I already said I know the white ones are not. I’m not sure what point you think you’re making here. Is there a bunch of bongo-playing, flowers-in-their-hair-wearing, love-not-war-making, B.O.-smelling blacks getting together to smoke pot that ARE being arrested? Please tell me about it! Maybe we can get all the stinky hippies to consolidate their activities in one place.
Actually Darin, in terms of statistics, the only way to “justify” stopping people more is if
White people aren’t better at hiding (which, by the way, suggests some intellitual advantage we know doesn’t exist), what do they have to hide when they’re not being searched? No, they’re not better at hiding, they’re just white and beneficiaries of the related myths that blacks do more drugs than whites, and the whites who do drugs are harmless “hippies.”
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Stastically speaking, the only way to “justify” a disproportionate rate of searches is if there is a corresponding rate of hits. The reports puts it like this:
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Consider this:
http://www.alternet.org/rights/49782/?page=1
I agree that the war on drugs is a farce. I add that is racist, too. Yes, I noticed that the hit rate between blacks and whites were the same. But what about the fact that the hit rate for whites were higher when compared to Latino/as, Amerindians, and Asians? And then, of course, there’s this:
And since I was motivated to read the entire report:
And this from the conclusion:
This from a 2004 Arizona ACLU report:
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So, if not racism, what other logical reason is their for the higher rate of stops and higher rate of searches?
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That should’ve been deleted.
They say, “on average, white were more likely to be carrying contraband” than a list of minorities (which did not include blacks, by the way.
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STOP LYING!!!
Page 10, 2nd and 3rd paragraphs of the AZ – ACLU analysis states:
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The results of the present Arizona study are consistent with the national literature that indicates Hispanics, African Americans and members of other racial and ethnic minorities transport drugs at lower rates than whites, yet are searched at higher rates. In a 2002 study conducted by the United States Department of Justice, African Americans and Hispanics were shown to be searched more frequently than whites across the nation. This study found that 8.1% of African American motorists stopped by police and 8.3% of Hispanics were searched following the stop. At the same time, only 2.5% of whites stopped by police were searched. Contraband was discovered in 3.3% of African American searches and 13.0% of Hispanic searches, as compared to a higher 14.5% for whites.
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Seven studies completed around the country in recent years reached similar conclusions: people of color are disproportionately targeted by police even though they’re less likely than whites to be involved in criminal activity. An analysis from 1999, conducted by the Attorney General of New Jersey, determined that discretionary consent searches of cars on the turnpike were even more racially disparate than the initial stops: 77.2% of all “consent searches” were of African-Americans and other minorities. An extensive study of 175,000 pedestrian stops by the New York Police Department found a highly disproportionate rate of minority stops. The Office of the Attorney General of New York State, which conducted the research, determined that (1) African Americans were stopped six times more frequently than whites; (2) African Americans were stopped at a rate more than ten times their percentage of population; and (3) stops of African Americans were less likely to result in arrests than stops of whites. Even when adjusting for crime rates by race, the difference in stops of minorities – compared to stops of whites – was statistically significant, with African Americans stopped twice as often as whites.
http://www.acluaz.org/DrivingWhileBlackorBrown.pdf
Is there a bunch of bongo-playing, flowers-in-their-hair-wearing, love-not-war-making, B.O.-smelling blacks getting together to smoke pot that ARE being arrested?
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Stupid question. We know for a fact that, per the “war on drugs”, that there aren’t any large gatherings (or any public gatherings) of Blacks in possession of ILLEGAL drugs out in public in plain view of law enforcement who have not been met with a law enforcement, war on drugs response.
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Your every post becomes more and more fake. You feigned concern over the disparate impact of the “war on drugs” but when you look at disparate treatment/impact right in the face via the decades old tradition of Whites gathering with ILLEGAL drugs in annual events were the ILLEGAL, criminal activity is advertised and scheduled yet is not met with a law enforcement response… Well, you show that same old hardly camouflaged White Nationalist (read: white supremacist) hypocrite side of Darin you just so happened to put on full display when you were suddenly church mouse quiet or auditioning for blind mice role in the troll’s school play when I presented data that ran contrary to your anti-affirmative action (read: anti-black) talking points.
Here’s your subliminal message for the day. Watch the movie Ghosts of Mississippi about the murder of Civil Rights Worker Medgar Evers. It features Whoopie Goldberg and Alex Baldwin.
Medgar Evers (1925-1963), American civil rights leader, born in Decatur, Mississippi. Evers served in the United States Army during World War II (1939-1945). After graduating from Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1950, Evers became a recruiter for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The next year he married Myrlie Beasley (now Myrlie Evers-Williams).
In 1954 he was named NAACP field secretary for Mississippi. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Evers was a leader in the struggle to gain equal rights for blacks in his home state. He conducted campaigns to register black voters and organized boycotts of firms that practiced racial discrimination.
Evers was killed by a gunman in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi, on June 12, 1963. Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, was tried several times for the murder but was not convicted until February 1994.
Beckwith, then 73 years old, was sentenced to life imprisonment. Evers’s brother, Charles, who succeeded him as Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP, served as mayor of Fayette, Mississippi from 1969 to 1981.
No1KState, I’m not saying white people are better at hiding stuff. If you look at my post, I think you’ll see that I’m saying that kind of reasoning would be needed to explain contradictions between search- and hit-rates. Make sense?
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You’re right, at least as a general proposition, that the way to justify a higher search rate is if it produces at least the same hit rate. So by that reasoning, the extra searches of blacks were “justified” and the searches of hispanics were not. I said that in my very first post on this topic, but it’s probably gotten lost in the shuffle by now. That’s exactly what the report says in the paragraph you quoted. So I think we agree.
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I’ll emphasize again that this is where the debate STARTS, not where it ENDS. In other words, I don’t think you can justify higher search rates without at least the same hit rate, but even with the same hit rate it may still not be acceptable. My point with all this is only that the terms of the debate appear to be on the up-and-up (based on the tiny bit of data from Arizona).
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You can’t use the Arizona report to vindicate blacks, though. Blacks and whites have the same hit rate.
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I’m not familiar with the ACLU report you cited, so I’ll have to tread cautiously. However, I suspect that the weak spot is probably that “estimated” 15% of of all users that are black. I bet it’s much higher than that — in fact the data I’ve seen suggest it is much higher. I linked a report from DHSH about that earlier. http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k7/popDensity/popDensity.pdf
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I hope you’ll look at the data rather that what the ACLU says about it. I’m not bringing any potentially biased outside information to the table, I’m just accepting what they presented at face value. And it doesn’t match their conclusions.
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Nquest, I’m going to ignore you every time you accuse me of being a liar or a racist. Just so you know. It’s boring.
Dude, if you’re ignoring me… then do it.
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You can’t use the Arizona report to vindicate blacks, though.
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Like I said:
“hardly camouflaged White Nationalist (read: white supremacist) hypocrite side of Darin”
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The discussion here by all other participants beside Darin has been about what that data/facts show. Not some racial vindication game that is such a transparent part of Darin’s exchanges here complete with the asinine, please help my racial self-esteem questions like:
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tell me whether people other than Whites can be racist
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Clear and pure quest for self-esteem help as evidence by your emotional outburst when I challenged you to make your question(s) relevant to the discussions regarding racism on this board. Notice how you couldn’t make an effective counterpoint so you took the weasel’s route, ramped up the emotions and hoped I would pity you and honor your rhetorical question (Do you have any idea how indefensible your definition [i.e. the strawman I erected] is?) as an actual valid argument.
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Catch a clue, Darin. Announcing now, two if not three times over, that you’re going to ignore me will not result in me ignoring any (non)point of yours that I choose to respond to.
The results of the present Arizona study are consistent with the national literature that indicates Hispanics, African Americans and members of other racial and ethnic minorities transport drugs at lower rates than whites, yet are searched at higher rates.
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Re-quoted for the truth that contradicts Darin’s “racial vindication” agenda.
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The Office of the Attorney General of New York State, which conducted the research, determined that (1) African Americans were stopped six times more frequently than whites; (2) African Americans were stopped at a rate more than ten times their percentage of population; and (3) stops of African Americans were less likely to result in arrests than stops of whites. Even when adjusting for crime rates by race, the difference in stops of minorities – compared to stops of whites – was statistically significant, with African Americans stopped twice as often as whites.
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Re-quoted because Darin wants to play “racial vindication” games with his blind mice/mouse costume on.
Darin, the rate of hits would have to match the rate of searches for it to be “justified.” So, if they have the same hit rate, they should have the same search rate. That 4% difference in hit rates doesn’t account for the 250% difference in search rates. So, I wasn’t necessarily looking to vindicate blacks – we aren’t the only group who suffers from systematic racism – but since you brought it up, yes, blacks are vindicated. The rate of search is disproportionate to the rate of seizures.
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A 2007 survey from the same agency (http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/nsduh/2k7nsduh/2k7Results.cfm#2.7) does show a .7% higher rate of usage for African Americans as compared to whites. So that still does not explain the disproportionate number of African Americans and Latinos stopped, searched, arrested, and incarcerated. So first, if you don’t think that’s an example of institutional racism, please let me know what it is.
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Also, according to the 2007 survey by the same agency (http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/nsduh/2k7nsduh/2k7Results.cfm#2.7) found:
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The second thing I need you to explain to me is why you don’t consider yourself a racist. You seem to believe, or are least accept, negative ideas about minorities while rejecting evidence that proves otherwise. You seem to have no problem with racial disparities across the board. Though, you never commented on the issue of the white-washing of history, so I don’t know your thoughts as that is concerned. So, considering everything else, if you’re not a racist, what does that make you?
No1KState, I disagree with your math. If the hit rate is the same, that means that the rate of carrying among those who are searched is the same. This is why I find the report so badly written, they seem to confuse the actual rate of carrying (which we don’t know) with the rate of carrying among those who were searched.
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That’s at least two steps between carrying and being caught, both of which involve judgment on the part of the cop. 1) Who does he stop; 2) of those he stops, who does he search. That can’t be expected to relate to the actual rate of carrying. See what I mean?
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That histogram in the OAS report looks like the one I linked. Different year, same basic result. By the way, that’s not a 0.7% it’s 16% (i.e., 9.5-8.2/8.2 = 16%) – probably higher if they did the demographics in the normal way. I found a DSHS report suggesting that the difference may be more like 30% for “current users.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=vG2-wEPpy-IC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false
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I’m not sure it’s up to me to explain why I’m not a racist. But since you’ve been civil I’m going to tackle your question sincerely.
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It’s true that I acknowledge that there are differences among races that go beyond skin color. Some of those differences are irrelevant, some are not very fun to contemplate. None of them relate to any person’s worth as a human — which is the valid basis for equality.
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It’s funny that you call them “negative ideas” about races. Well, those are the ones we focus on because they’re relevant to the tough questions. We’re not talking about why blacks succeed as salesmen or why Asians are good at math — those aren’t negative ideas.
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If your argument that racism is wrong depends on all races being identical, you are playing a dangerous game. Even if it looks like races are alike today, it’s still just a question of fact. Somebody could come along a prove you wrong, and then what? Does your argument against racism disappear? Mine does not, because it does not depend on races being equal, it depends on Men being created equal — which is not the same thing.
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I reject so much of what you believe is evidence because most of it is either a) opinion polling, which is subject to influence by the steady propaganda from places like this site, or b) simply disparate impact, which can often be explained better without invoking a racist conspiracy.
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There’s a tendency to assume that if I believe races are different, I must believe that one is “superior” and others are “inferior.” I don’t. I think some races perform better statistically than others in certain areas, but that does not make them “superior” any more than the fact that my little brother is taller than me makes him superior to me. First, the differences tend to even out in many ways, and second we all have a right to be judged as individuals, not as members of a race. (That’s why I think racial profiling is an open question even if the hit rates are the same, by the way.) This is the “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” part of Martin Luther King’s vision. I agree.
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It’s possible that what I’ve just described fits the definition of “racist” in your book. If that’s true, then so be it. But I hope you’ll consider that it’s a definition that will gradually expand to include everyone — including you. Besides that, pretending that every problem in the black community is the fault of whites is despicable because it distracts blacks from actually focusing on solutions to their problems.
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What does that make me, you ask. I don’t know. A realist? A jerk? I guess it depends who you’re talking to. Why don’t you tell me.
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I don’t know what “white-washing history” means. Explain it to me, and I’ll tell you what I think about that, too.
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Meanwhile, why don’t you answer one of my questions: How is it not racist to assume that whites are engaged in a conspiracy to keep other races (especially blacks) down? How is it that attributing the worst motives to whites and excusing bad behavior by blacks is not a bad thing?
My math is correct. Find a buddy who’s taken a least a freshman level statistics class. ACLU won the settlement. There’s no reason to believe their math is bad.
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I don’t understand the difference between the races being equal and Men being created equal. And I completely reject you forewarning of my impending racism. Don’t get me wrong, it is hard sometimes not to be angry at all white people; but I don’t believe any race is superior/inferior to the other, and I reject any proposition that any one race would be superior/inferior to another.
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But you haven’t given any better explanation. The only “better” explanation there would be is that the disparate impact would be the fault of either criminal or dumb people of color. And we know that people of color, blacks or any other group, are no more criminal or stupid.
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You’re absolutely wrong about absolving the black community of our responsibilities to ourselves. This disconnect you have is demonstrative of whites knowing nothing about the reality of African Americans and the inanity that whites continue to insist they do! And by continuously rejecting accusations of racism without even bothering to look at the facts, by necessarily insisting that they can interpret the black experience better than black people, white America(ns) proudly display their racism for all to see. This problem is most highlighted by the false assumptions white America(ns) have about the black community, ie
I mean to say that whites are wrong:
1) to presume to know more about the black experience than blacks do, especially in light of the fact that you know so very, very little. And I mean just a miniscule amount. Something on the lines of knowing that 96% of African Americans support Obama but know nothing else.
2) because of the way racism has worked out, whites can go throughout their entire day without one, single meaningful encounter with a person of color. People of color can hardly do the same. Including the fact that there’s only 1 TV network, and you have to have cable to get it, owned by African Americans that could even pretend to depect African Americans life. But on the rest of the other 200 networks, including Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS, and I’m gonna through in the CW after what they’ve done, white people have the opportunity to put themselves on display. . . . . I was about to really get into the media, but that aside, this disparity in knowledge, where people of color know more about white people than white people know about people of color is called – “knowledge of the oppressed.”
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Moreover, you can look at all the studies and stats, from education and health to employment and lending, there is a disparity in just about every phase of American life. Studies have been done to get at the root cause, and that root cause is racism. For example, we know socioeconomics is the indicator of crime rate, not race. But what’s causing the disparity in socioeconomic status? Racism, past and present. What’s caused the areas of concentrated poverty? Racism, past and present.
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What I mean by “white washing” history is that you take American history and tell it such that it appears that for good or bad, whites were the only group who did anything. For instance, when we talk about slavery, very little is mentioned about the efforts on the part of slaves to resist and free themselves. So the common “American” narrative is that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and white Northerners fought to free slaves. That myth is what enables people to say, with all sincerity, “Yeah, white people enslaved Africans. But white people freed the slaves, too.” You get this image that throughout history, no other group was empowered, or strong-willed enough, to determine their own lives and history. That’s just not true. Here’s the racismreview discussion: http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2009/07/23/banning-cesar-chavez-whites-sanitizing-us-history-again/
How is it not racist to assume that whites are engaged in a conspiracy to keep other races (especially blacks) down?
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Well, it obviously… clearly can’t be racist because no one but YOU, Darin, has suggested that there is any such conspiracy.
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The topic here: RACIAL PROFILING (RP).
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And, guess what? Not a single statement by anyone on this thread who said RP happens because “whites are engaged in a conspiracy to keep other races (especially blacks) down.”
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Nope! The simple REALITY (Mr. “Realist”) was examined and actual research on the question cited with no mention of said “conspiracy.”
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How is it that attributing the worst motives to whites…
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There we go with the vircarious, racial self-esteem, “racial vindication”, simple-minded mindset that equates stipulating to the REALITY of racism/RP — i.e. being a REALIST about the REALITY of racism vs. paying bs lip service to acknowledging its existence — with saying Whites=Bad. Darin, perhaps that’s how things work in your fragile psyche but this discussion about RP did not impugn the motives of Whites.
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No. Quite to the contrary, research data/facts were presented that you apparently want to minimize, dismiss, etc. because of your psychological issues. Issues that are not a product of you seeing yourself as an individual but, rather, seeing yourself, vicariously, as part of a besieged group.
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As such, your fundamental core of your argument(s) is emotion-based. This “conspiracy” notion of yours, a bs assumption and unsubstantiated notion you arrived here with, is just that: emotion-laden nonsense used when the rest of your talking points and lame rationales fail you.
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You say “conspiracy” and I say direct contradiction — i.e. you keep trying to make this “conspiracy” of yours fit without considering other possibilities, let alone the actual statements/arguments made by the people you’ve debated here.
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Again, no one here has suggested that “whites are engaged in a conspiracy…” but you. The data here on RP is research drawn from the REALITY of what happens — e.g.
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(1) African Americans were stopped six times more frequently than whites;
(2) African Americans were stopped at a rate more than ten times their percentage of population; and
(3) stops of African Americans were less likely to result in arrests than stops of whites.
Even when adjusting for crime rates by race, the difference in stops of minorities – compared to stops of whites – was statistically significant, with African Americans stopped twice as often as whites.
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Simply put, facts/data/REALITY that simply documents WHAT IS and makes no commentary about whether RP is the result of whites engaged in a “conspiracy.” And, really…. “Whites” aren’t the subject here.
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No1KState challenged you to do more than pay lip service to the existence of racism and asked you if you would acknowledge that RP is an example of institutional racism. The institution in this case being policing. That you view policing as synonymous with “whites” is a subject for another day.
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Speaking about other subjects… No “CONSPIRACY” assumption was behind Tim Wise’s exploration of Implicit Bias which, by the way, can hardly be about White motivations when Wise contrasted Implicit Bias with the notion that racism has to involve active, conscious bigotry and malice/bigoted intent, according to a lot of Whites who voiced anti-Gates views.
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No “CONSPIRACY” assumption is involved in Dr. Feagin’s “white racial frame” concept.
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Even when the subjects were Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing or the Valley Swim Club, no “CONSPIRACY” assumption was involved. Instead, clear-eyed observations about the actions and self-serving arguments of individuals made were the topic of discussion.
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How is it that attributing the worst motives to whites and excusing bad behavior by blacks is not a bad thing?
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Bad Black behavior is irrelevant on a blog focused on Racism Review and if your CLAIM that you acknowledge the existence of racism is anything other than lip service/cover… Then bad Black behavior would not only exist on some kind of zero sum continuum with [White] racism at the polar, either-or end.
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No, instead of seeing the examination of the presence and impact of racism as “excusing bad Black behavior”, instead of consistently arguing that racism isn’t present on these many topics where the facts were not on your side… a genuine response would be to acknowledge that said racism has a consequence. And it’s not like you’re not capable of doing that. That’s the very thing you tried to do in the Implicit Bias thread when you argued that “maybe” (your signature weasel bs) “Blacks are the ones holding a grudge, who are subconsciously racist.”
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My, how “bored” you must have been with yourself accusing a whole race (or a significant portion) of people of being “racist” not because of anything they done but because, as you put it, “far more historical mistreatment of Blacks by Whites…”
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Hmmm… That’s funny, when your racial self-esteem seeking, false moral equivalence question asking if other people besides Whites can be racist was rebuffed and I said:
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“…scanning over U.S. history and, for some reason, I can’t think of any other people beside White people who perpetrated acts like racial profiling or unequal sentencing (in schools and jails) either by force of widespread, “isolated”, individual or small group acts or by the force of momentary or sustained government or socially sanctioned power.”
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… you seemed to have a problem with me saying, in essence, “far more historical mistreatment of Blacks by Whites than vice versa.” And, while we’re at it, I welcome your data of historical mistreatment Whites have suffered at the hands of Blacks in this country or the settler colonies that formed it.
I wanted to save this last response for last, to be sure I got my thoughts together.
All right. So again, you’re wrong about blacks using racism to excuse our own bad behavior. We don’t. Period.
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What’s more is once you hold for socioecon status, our behavior is no worse than anyone else’s. So why so much interest on black behavior? Actually, in most discussions, it’s either talked about as part of talking about the “black community”; or, it’s used to excuse white racism. Including thinking that blacks are more aggressive – that’s racist!
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It’s not racist because it’s true. And please, Darin, pay attention. We do not believe you all have secret telephone calls and secret meetings on keeping black people down. So we don’t believe there’s a conspiracy or that white people have the “worst” motives. Not all of you, anyway. Now, of course, there are those of you who do have the worst of intentions, ie Pat Buchanan and that “wing” of the Republican Part. But on the whole, we believe the rest of you refuse to disabuse yourselves of all the lies and myths you’ve come to believe about America and the intereactions between whites and others. We don’t believe you’re evil; we think you’re ignorant and naive. If it’s one think I can figure out is how conservatives think the media is too liberal; liberals think it’s too corporate; but when it comes to race, it seems like whites, conservatives, liberals, and any other group, take it for the gospel truth. So we don’t think you’re evil. I think the blanket dismissal of the knowledge of blacks and our interpretations of our own experience(s) is evil-spirited, though. But when we look at the facts and listen to what white people say about themselves, it’s hard not to conclude that 10% of you are overt racists, 89% are subconscious/covert racists, .5% are true, blue anti-racists, and the other .5% know better but don’t say or do anything to promote justice and equality. And besides, all oppression needs to survive is silence. White Americans are 70%+ of the population. All of you don’t have to be actively racist for the rest of all to endure racism.
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And really, Darin, I’m not sure you’ve even dealt honestly, with yourself, about the implications of something like white people perceiving blacks as overly-aggressive regardless of the situation.
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And honestly consider this, Darin. Honestly. In fact, don’t respond to this for a day or two just to give yourself time to think about this. When we get books like this (http://www.amazon.com/Two-Faced-Racism-Whites-Backstage-Frontstage/dp/0415954762/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207574432&sr=8-1) that detail this:
The last blockquote should actually read like this:
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is it any surprise that black people would report experiencing racism and that these disparities exist. Do you really think these students who tell jokes about kittens and “niggers” and ashtrays, VW beattles, and “hebes” don’t take these attitudes to their jobs and aren’t effected by them?
pretending that every problem in the black community is the fault of whites is despicable because it distracts blacks from actually focusing on solutions to their problems
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I call bs. List “every problem in the Black community”. When you finish, explain this:
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Six in 10 black men said their collective problems owe more to what they have failed to do themselves rather than “what white people have done to blacks.” At the same time, half reported they have been treated unfairly by the police, and a clear majority said the economic system is stacked against them.
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Hmmm… It’s seems that actual Black people, Black men in this case, as opposed to biased White men/people speaking about Black people don’t locate “every problem in the Black community” and say it’s the “fault” of White people. Note: Police, an institution, is not synonymous with White people. The economic system, an institution, is not synonymous with White people.
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Oh, an example of “problems in the Black community” not attributed to being Whites “fault”:
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majorities also said that black men put too little emphasis on education and too much emphasis on sports and sex.
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(Of course, No1KState’s point here or elsewhere that Black people, by and large, are exposed to the same news and culture programming as Whites must be noted here when it comes to “framing”…)
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Speaking about “framing”… How is it that White people like Darin feel like “problems in the Black community” are things that they have the standing and credibility to discuss but never seem comment on “problems in the White community” and introduce those things as topics to discuss in interracial settings?
On White Conspiracy
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Obviously, I question the validity of Darin’s “conspiracy” idea where he CLAIMS those who look at American society and say there is racism present and implicated in disparities/inequalities do so on the assumption that “whites are engaged in a conspiracy to keep other races (especially blacks) down.” Now, I’ve only noticed Darin saying this to No1KState, a Black person, but maybe Darin believes it would be “racist” for Whites here (like Kristen who he has had significant exchanges with) to, as he says, attribute the worst motives to whites and excuse bad behavior by blacks. Perhaps there was an oversight on my part but, again, I’ve only seen Darin apply that race-based logic to No1KState.
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Anyway… What kind of conspiracy is it when scores of random, individual White persons across the U.S. — who probably have never met each other and probably never will — respond to topics like affirmative action, etc. by asking, almost verbatim, the same curious question (“How can America be racist when Asian Americans do so well?”) yet apparently never assessed what Asian Americans, collectively, have to say about racism themselves?
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What kind of conspiracy is it when scores of random, individual White persons across the U.S. say to hell with the 4th Amendment and insisted saying Prof. Gates was “at fault” for Sgt. Crowley arresting him on a charge that was at odds with the state’s case law regarding what constitutes a lawful disorderly conduct arrest?
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What kind of conspiracy is it when scores of random, individual White persons across the U.S., indeed, the overwhelming majority (90% or more) of Whites oppose reparations to African Americans for slavery in a nation that paid reparations to Japanese Americans and even to European Jews for the Holocaust (Gold Train reparations) no matter how much said White individuals were not personally responsible or living when the acts being repaired were committed?
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I could go on but it’s clear no conspiracy is needed when, on all things racial, all kinds of random White individuals, for whatever reason come to similar if not the exact same point of view frequently with no regard to data/facts and often times in complete opposition to the data/facts/reality.
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BTW, the poll data in post #47 came from:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/03/AR2006060300695_2.html
Also, just wanna point something out regarding Darin’s thoughts that the ACLU was just pushing propaganda – I want to say this delicately -> This idea that you’re advancing, Darin, that there’re other plausible explanations for these disparities besides racism is a version of the white racial frame. Ie, that there is no racism and blacks are either excusing their own misbehavior and poor judgement or really aren’t as “evolved.” So, actually, the idea that racism is no longer an issue is the propaganda we should be weary of. There’s no evidence to support that racism is no longer an issue; but, an incredible amount of evidence and proof that is remains a significant barrier to the full advancement/progress of the black community.
I should’ve addressed this earlier with Darin, but overlooked it:
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You don’t think that the better performance makes any group superior. That’s good. Fair enough.
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Here’s the problem. The better performance, on things like tests, are often not just a matter of sheer IQ. Sometimes, like with tests for firefighters, it depends on the availability of books; personal relationships with people already familiar with the subject matter; relationships with people who can give you the books for free; etc and so on. In her dissent, Ginburg does a pretty thorough job of listing out all the advantages white firefighters had in regards to the test that had nothing to do with IQ or leadership skills and everything to do with connections. You know the old saying, “not what you know, but who you know.” (By the way, we see the white racial frame and this idea of “conspiracy” pop up even in Alito’s concurring opinion – he alleged there was a conspiracy amongst blacks in New Haven to replace all white leaders in New Haven, something like that. Now, isn’t that projection?)
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Or when we constantly see African Americans getting higher costs loans despite having a comparable/equal credit history, credit rating, income, downpayment, collateral, etc. In fact, Wells Fargo has been giving white people making less than $40K better loans than black people making more than $120K (http://chicagoreporter.typepad.com/chicago_reporter/2009/06/wells-fargo-gave-wealthy-blacks-subprime-loans-more-often-than-poorer-whites.html). That’s not racism? And that’s just one example of one bank. Like I said, black people are paying more for the same loans through lending.
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I agree with Nquest’s comment: Issues that are not a product of you seeing yourself as an individual but, rather, seeing yourself, vicariously, as part of a besieged group.I think that’s a huge problem amongst white folks, and in fact, there is some research into “white racial identity.”
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So, let me try to reach out to you, Darin, in the most nonthreatening way I can. No one is blaming you, as an individual, for racism. I can understand the resistance white Americans have to being “blamed” for stuff they don’t think is their fault. But think of this as less assigning fault and more accessing cause/reality. The harsh truth of it is that we see these disparities of impact and outcome, we study to find the cause, and there’s nothing to suggest black deficiency. Then we study whites’ racial attitudes in regards to minorities and themselves as whites, and there we see the issue. In study after study, whites have irrational and unsubstantiated biases against people of color. These biases lead them to, as policement, racial profiling; or, charging blacks more for loans; or, placing a black children in a “regular” class even though the his/her scores on standardized tests suggest s/he be in advanced classes, etc. That sort of thing is implicit. But these same biases are at work when things are done explicitly, as in the case Baltimore has against Wells Fargo, but it’s “okay” with everybody.
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Now. The truth is that when whites first came across black Africans, there were astonished by the beauty of the people and the continent. In fact, Africa is where Europeans discovered palm oil and regular bathing. You’re probably familiar with “palm olive oil.” Initially, as Europeans explored Africa, the sent back reams and reams of letters and notes describing the black Africans as beautiful. They had wonderful things to say about the people and their culture. – It’s not until several years later, after “discovering” America and the riches ready for exploitation, that Africans became ugly and brutish and savages. Several centuries have been spent rationalizing the exploitation and terrorizing of Africans. Several centuries have been invested in defining Africans as inferior. From the 1500s to 1970. Do you really think close to 500 years of ideology was undone in the matter of around 40 years? It’s only been since 1970 that African Americans have had some legal protections and equality. Up till then, communities and business, both North and South, were based on legally imposed racism. Do you really think, in your heart of hearts, that the infrastructure built up to keep black people as a second class citizenry had really been completely destroyed in the space of 2 generations? What little acts Nixon did in support of Civil Rights was done in response to public pressure. Reagan wins in 1980 mostly on a wave of white resentment. In the 90s, Bill Clinton had to contend with people wanting to end affirmative action programs – as though in just 20 years, in the space of a single generation, all the injustices had been undone and everything was equal.
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If you really wants to argue that racism is no longer a barrier to black advancement, Darin, shouldn’t you be able to point out some point in time where we know racism no longer had widespread impact?
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Some gentle truth is this. Like I said, for the most part, we regard whites as naive and ignorant. To that extent, we really don’t blame anyone for much. It’s only when you attempt to deny the obvious that we question your sincerity and desire for equality and justice.
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And I need to cap a thought I had a few comments up. I’ve said before that all evidence shows that once socioecon factors are held for, blacks are no better or worse than anyone else. What I didn’t say is this – I find it insulting that anyone would continue to insist that in order for black people to be treated fairly, we have to act a certain way. That argument was used during slavery and later to deny voting rights. It was even used during a time when blacks were focused on building their lives and families, schools, churches and communities; and, black deliquincies were very low. That argument has been used to rationalize slavery, it never went away, so here it is again. First, I find it insulting on an individual basis. Why should I have be denied opportunities because of what some other blacks are doing? Then, I find it insulting on a ethnic group level. Because the reality is that to demand blacks improve our “deficiencies” when ours are the same as everyone else’s, is not demanding that we act the same as whites; it charging us to act better than whites. Immediately after the Civil War, we did have better indicators than whites – less crime. Even today, we attend church more than whites, whatever that’s worth. And what did/do we get for it? Nothing. So, no. I have no intentions of even pretending that blacks have to become more “cultured” in order to receive full equality. I agree with Nquest that it’s besides the point. But if you wanna make it the point, you should understand what you’re asking and be aware that the answer is “no.” We’ll let you handle your white trash; back up and let us handle ours.
No1KState, we’ve reached an impasse. I’m starting to suspect we’re not having the same conversation. I haven’t read everything you wrote, yet, but I will, and I’ll either post a response here or maybe we’ll encounter each other in another thread or something.
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Nquest, it’s hard to read your posts because I keep getting spit on me, but I did pick up this little beauty: “Bad Black behavior is irrelevant on a blog focused on Racism Review….” Huh. That pretty well sums it up. You’re here to talk about white racism, come hell or high water. You’re not interested in even the slightest tangent. Your focus is admirable, although I do sort of question your commitment to reality.
*slow clap building to crescendo*
I’m talking about racism. What are you talking about, Darin? Are you still trying to prove that there’re other plausible explanations? You’ve failed to give any. Do you think that we always, come hell or highwater, first blame racism? That’s not true. We, like other reasonable people, look at all options and explanations. After diligent study, racism is the only option. It may help if you’d read the books and articles that have been suggested to you. If we are having two different conversations, I’m referring to research and facts to reach my conclusions. What are you referring to? I repeat, we have considered other explanations. Racism is the only one that works.
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The reasons bad behavior on the part of blacks is irrelevant are 1) we “misbehave” at the same rate as everybody else. What’s stressing our numbers is socioecon factors. I repeat, once you hold for socioecon factors, we “misbehave” at the same amount as other people. If you replaced every black person in South Central with a white person, I kept everything else the same – rate of employment, amount of welfare and help from family, etc and so on – it would not take long, if it took any time at all, for the crime to get to the same rate. In fact, many early immigrant communities had the same crime rates before they successfully assimilated. And 2) the actions of other blacks shouldn’t effect the opportunities of any one individual. And the reason it does is . . . RACISM.
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Sorry, Darin. But I’m not going to let you off that easy, with some “we’ve reached an impasse” nonsense. Not even Nquest is “spitting on you.” He’s just deconstructing your arguments using your own words. You’ve used just about every defense mechanism: defence and selective attention; rationalization or transference of blame; projection; and especially intellectualization (http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:WXRjChZOYFMJ:hoopinstitute.org/document/teaching_white_racism.ppt+white+racial+identity+defence+mechanisms&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us). You aren’t doing or saying anything that hasn’t been done or said before. And now, you’re using some weak comment thread excuse to leave the discussion – “we’ve reached an impasse. I’m starting to suspect we’re not having the same conversation.” ~ I’m not letting you off that easy. If you don’t wanna respond or can’t think of a response, fine. If you can’t emotionally handle all these truths and facts about white racism coming at you all at once, that’s fine. But we are having the same conversation. I can respond to your comments without blithely questioning math and alleged “propaganda.” I can come with facts, figures, and research. But you don’t wanna accept it. You seem unable to grapple or even engage the facts. You wanna continue to deny racism when it’s impossilbe! You saw the signs at the tea-parties and the “monkey see, monkey spend” signs at these new demonstrations; you know about the “birthers”; with all that anti-black prejudice and bias, do you seriously contend that none of that effects white people’s intereactions with black people such that we see all the disparities in education, medical treatment, lending, criminal justice, etc. Are you saying that with all that anti-black angst from all those people, even just the visible ones, none of it, or so little of it, reaches into other aspects of daily life?
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So, yeah, you can leave the discussion. That’s your decision. But we are having the same conversation.
Whatever. There’s nothing more awesome than an online psychoanalysis, so I really appreciate the insight into what I can and can’t “handle.” I’ll check that against my horoscope once the paper gets here this afternoon.
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To answer your question: yes, I think you blame racism first and last for any misfortune that befalls racial minorities. I’d be really interested to hear about what other explanations you considered and how you decided they didn’t work. Why don’t you tell me about some of them?
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Life is too short to wade through a bunch of sermons and lectures, so that’s where I draw the line. On the other hand, we could both take a deep breath and start again on some other post at a later time. That’s what I’d like to do. I actually enjoyed our discussion.
Darin – You make my point for me. What do you know about the black community that even though I tell you we’ve considered other options, you doubt me. You doubt me based on what? And besides, I wasn’t asking you anything. It was a rhetorical question for me to answer; and I did. But since you want evidence – I’m black; I’ve lived in a community that 98%+ black my entire life even though every school I went to was evenly integrated – I live in a semi-rural area; my family is part of our area’s black elite; I had some stature in our local community of faith; I’ve spoken to a few groups about the importance of education; I majored in history, US history was my concentration and that allowed me to take a lot of classes on black studies and historoy. Now please sure with me your bona fides to share credible information about the black community.
~ What have we considered? Our attitudes; dress; behavior; education; competence; speech; recreational activities; dance moves; work ethic; job experience; shopping habits; rate of saving, etc and so on. Every step of the way, we’ve had to fight for educational opportunities, housing, jobs, and just about everything else. Now, every study shows that where there is a disparity, it is not due to black deficiency. The disparity in employment and income has nothing to do with education, experience, job skills, or people skills. The disparity in higher education has nothing to do with intellectual ability. Disparities in lending have nothing to do with our credit-worthiness. Plus, most of all this “bad behavior” on the part of blacks in done by what would be our “black trash.” Why should we answer for them anymore than white America accounts for white trash?
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And now, Darin, I repeat my challenge to you: at what point did anti-black bias recede so much, that it can no longer have an impact. For all this brouhaha, you haven’t presented the least bit of evidence that white racism doesn’t have a widespread negative impact on people of color, especially black people.
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And there you go again, using a defence mechanism, refusing to address any of the research or facts I brought up because “life is too short for a bunch of sermons and lectures.” (Sermons? Where did that come from?) But I guess life is just long enough for white people to continue their anti-black bias that results in all these disparities, huh? — Yeah, you can walk away from this with all your excuses about the length of my comments or the length of life. Make any joke or rationalization you like, get as angry as you like, use whatever defence mechanism is at your hand – you know, it’s funny that my comments were preachy and lengthy, but you at least read that far -. The fact is, you have not dealt honestly with any information shared with you and questions asked of you. (Have you even looked on Amazon to check the price of the books that have been suggested to you?) You haven’t even given any serious thought to the real life implications of white people misperceiving African Americans as overaggressive no matter the context, the situation, or even what actually happened. Until you do, don’t dare pretend you’re walking away because “life is too short.” The truth is, you’re just too scared.
Nquest, it’s hard to read your posts because I keep getting spit on me
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Yeah, “spit” as in…
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YOU: pretending that every problem in the black community is the fault of whites is despicable…
ME: WaPo survey data directly contradicting Darin’s preconceived, stereotype-laden strawman argument.
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There is nothing hard about that. There is nothing hard about understanding that this blog is: RACISM REVIEW.
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WTF do you think is supposed to be discussed here but RACISM and racism that’s RELEVANT to the “social science disciplines” the authors/contributors here choose to focus on?
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YOU: You’re here to talk about white racism, come hell or high water.
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Talk about HUH!@!^&*^$!!
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“Bad Black behavior” — which you contrast with racism as the mutually exclusive source-explanation for racial disparities like those found in the racial profiling data discussed here — simply doesn’t fit the description of the kind of topics to be discussed and placed under RACISM REVIEW.
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Like…….. DUH!!!!
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You’re not interested in even the slightest tangent.
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CORRECTION: I’m not interested in nor am I fooled by your dime-a-dozen, cookie-cutter bs. Again, “bad Black behavior” — again, the thing you contrast to racism as the cause of racial disparities/inequalities — is IRRELEVANT to the whole purpose of this blog and totally irrelevant to this topic.
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No distractions, Darin. Deal with the issue at hand. YOU LIED when you said:
“… They say, “on average, white were more likely to be carrying contraband” than a list of minorities (which did not include blacks, by the way….
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I guess it’s HARD to read just how quick and easy all your DIVERSIONARY, tangent-games are exposed.
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I do sort of question your commitment to reality.
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LOL… This is from YOU, Darin… The very person who far up-thread made this statement:
“Blacks and hispanics ARE searched more frequently than whites, and they ARE more likely to be breaking the law.”
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Funny how when the 4/20 festivals of LAW BREAKING were brought up, you danced the fantasy cha-cha — aka the unREALITY — of drug decriminalization and stated outright that the lily White LAW BREAKING at the 4/20 festivals should not be met with a law enforcement response in a country that locks up a whole lot of black and brown folk for simple possession.
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And you did that in a thread dealing with RACIAL PROFILING which is all about the disparate (call it discretionary) law enforcement treatment between Whites, who are more likely to receive leniency if any law enforcement response at all. It’s like you insisted on providing a ready example of how White racial bias works.
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It’s like you’re completely out of your element when it’s you who are put on the spot, challenged to PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH and provide alternative explanations for (mis)characterization of other people’s, Black people’s views.
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You’ve been repeating this CONSPIRACY bs over and over but have yet to BE HONEST regarding the statements made on this thread and others.
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“Bad Black behavior” does explain:
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(1) WHY African Americans were stopped six times more frequently than whites (in the NY survey data); (2) WHY African Americans were stopped at a rate more than ten times their percentage of population; and
(3) WHY stops of African Americans were less likely to result in arrests than stops of whites..
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BECAUSE… even when adjusting for crime rates by race, the difference in stops of minorities – compared to stops of whites – was statistically significant, with African Americans stopped twice as often as whites.
… and acknowledging that factual data has nothing to do with thinking that “whites are engaged in a conspiracy to hold Black people down.” It’s simple assimilation of the factual, actual REALITY.
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It is your signature (though predictably common) racism denial that suffers from a lack of commitment to, let alone a firm grasp of, the REALITY.
I think you blame racism first and last for any misfortune that befalls racial minorities.
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WTF is that? “any misfortune that befalls racial minorities…”
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This is not you acknowledging racism. This is you trying to diminish it. Use rationalizing euphemisms to ignore or accept the racist status quo. Out of all the topics discussed here, it is you who has rushed… leaped to any and every kind of popcorn logic/rationale to DENY, DENY, DENY the existence, impact and importance of racism in ANY and EVERY topic discussed here.
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But, go ahead, be my guest and show me where you have contributed to ANY discussion here providing insight or perspective on the type/issue of racism that Joe or Jessie brought up for discussion.
I’ll repeat:
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“Bad Black behavior” does explain:
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(1) WHY African Americans were stopped six times more frequently than whites (in the NY survey data);
(2) WHY African Americans were stopped at a rate more than ten times their percentage of population; and
(3) WHY stops of African Americans were less likely to result in arrests than stops of whites..
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BECAUSE… even when adjusting for crime rates by race [i.e. EVEN WHEN adjusting for “BAD BLACK BEHAVIOR” via Black crime], the difference in stops of minorities – compared to stops of whites – was statistically significant, with African Americans stopped twice as often as whites.
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Simply put… Darin has no choice but to scramble for a subject-changing, White racial self-esteem boosting tangent or a quick route to the exit.
@Kstate: In your post #55, you asked Darin What he knows about the black experience? I find this statement to be a quasi-light bulb moment for me. Yes, you are right, what does he know about the BE? Unless of course, he is withholding something that would be evidence to the contrary, but doubtful. So…with all due respect, what do you or any AA know about the white experience? I know you are bombared with daily images through media outlets, personal interactions, etc. but do you feel that qualifies you as “know ing our experience”? In the same context of “knowing your experience”? If so, please explain. Sorry if that wasn’t clearly worded, I couldnt find a better way :). This is an honest question I have been savoring the past few days and would love to hear your thoughts. Also, I would like to commend you on your patience with Darin; there’s something to be said about how calm you are able to remain. (unlike nquest, mr. too-many-axes-to-grind-cant-get-his-point-across-although-there-is-some-thruth-to-his-arguement-because-he-is-so-abrasive-and-rude-i-ignore-everything-he-says) Sorry, stepping of my soapbox.
@ Nquest –
You mean “does *not* explain” right?
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I know, right? The really ironic thing is that he comes here to challenge us to prove racism. When we do, he has some racist myth to rationalize the racism. Then we disprove the racist myth and he beats it to the exit! If anything, he’s proven the virility of the white racial frame and that racism is more common than not among white Americans.
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Now, since I’ve characterized his interactions as proving what he’s trying so very hard to disprove, he might come back to refute my claim. But, let’s see if he can deal with the facts as they are.
Siss, you think No1KState is calm? Okay, I’ll leave open the possibility that I’ve misinterpreted his tone — he seems highly agitated to me, and that’s why I find his last few posts to be such a turn-off. It’s not interesting to debate with someone who’s so worked up he’s not really paying attention.
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No1KState, if that’s true, then I’ll offer you this olive branch: It’s entirely possible that I’ve misinterpreted your tone in the last few posts. In return, I hope you’ll acknowledge the possibility that I’m not ducking any issue or refusing to engage you because I don’t think I can. I am fully confident I can.
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Fair enough?
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NQuest, Siss has hit the nail on the head. You’re all over the map. It’s impossible to respond to you. Maybe you should focus on a couple key points…
Darin: If I’m not mistaken, I believe Kstate is a female. Also, since I have stayed quiet through ou this debate, I’ll ask this – What do you know of the black experience? I am white myself and in my previous post had posed that question. I have to do some serious self-analysis to determine what qualifies me, if anything really does, to *truly* understand the BE. I’ll get back to both of you on what I figure out. But in the mean time, I would be interested inhearing your thoughts.
Darin claims that No1KState is: “Okay, I’ll leave open the possibility that I’ve misinterpreted his tone — he seems highly agitated to me, and that’s why I find his last few posts to be such a turn-off. It’s not interesting to debate with someone who’s so worked up he’s not really paying attention.”
Darin, I looked up HER website. No1KState is a black woman with a master’s degree. She is very dedicated to trying to eradicate racism in America. I find all her posts Extremely Patient and Easy to Understand. She’s not worked up. She hasn’t called you any derogatory names or been abusive. Just because she’s passionate about her cause is no reason for you to criticize her.
She has attempted to explain her position in umpteen different ways to you. If you don’t agree..then don’t agree. Frankly I don’t know why you stick around here if you truly don’t believe racism exists in America. I posted a web address on here a week ago. In April 2009 the PULITZER PRIZE WAS AWARDED TO DOUGLAS BLACKMON FOR HIS BOOK: SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME. He is a white journalist operating out of Atlanta.
He discusses how blacks were arrested for misdemeanors from the 1880’s until WWII in the South. Then they were put into chain gangs and sold as “free labor” to various companies. Many of these blacks died under horrendous conditions to be put into Unmarked graves. Then he Shows You via Video on this site the “Cemetary” in the Outskirsts of Birmingham, Alabama.
Please, please, please go to the website and click on the right hand side of page where it says “videos” and just Watch one video where he speaks to an interviewer. Can you just do that? Can you? It’s easy.
Blackmon says that many white southern business owners were Addicted to free labor and literally conspired with law-makers to re-invent this free labor after the Civil War. In the South, for almost 100 years after the Civil War, the life of a black man was Worth Nothing. If one was arrested for Vagrancy and then never returned home..well..happened all the time according to Blackmon’s research. Outstanding research..according to the Pulitzer Institution..and they should know right?
Why did this stop at the advent of WWII? Cause the South didn’t want Europe pointing fingers at us for our Racism when we were pointing fingers at Hitler regarding his Jewish Policies. The Southern beaurocrats had a good deal going..but realized they were in a vulnerable position on a global culpability level..so they stopped. People do all kinds of strange things in their quest for profit. Why does this seem so bizarre to you? Please don’t respond unless you go to the website, so your remarks are relevant to what I’ve written. Thanks.
http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/
1 – I don’t have a master’s degree. Though, it’s something I hope to achieve one day. As well as a Ph.D. But for what it’s work, Ellen, since graduated college in 2004, I’ve read lots of books and articles – including SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME. That’s a very important book that makes it even more clear why African Americans were unable to “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” for so long.
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2 – @ Darin – Not paying attention? I read through your posts and respond to what you’ve written. I read through again to make sure I haven’t missed anything. It’s you who dismiss correct math, ie, if blacks are searched 2 and a half times as much, the hit rate should be 2 and a half times as high, not just 4%. You’re the one who wants proof that the black community doesn’t blame racism first, last, and only. Remember the discussion on whites perceiving blacks as overly-aggressive no matter what actually took place? First you excused this misperception on the basis on a higher criminal rate. Of course, attempts were made to explain that crime rate was related to socioecon factors not race. I’m not sure if you’ve come to accept that fact or not. So anyway, I tried to address you from your own proposition that it’s reasonable for whites to have this misperception and asked you to consider the real life implications of such misperception. And you said this: [with my thoughts in bold brackets]
So, again you rationalize disparate impact, by promoting a racist myth concerning black criminality, without even acknowledge how unjust that is. Each crime (or criminal) is supposed to stand on its own. The judge, jury, and cops (whatever their race) are supposed to look at the facts of that particular case. The race of the defendent doesn’t matter, otherwise you end up with the disparities and complaints about racism. If in the situation you raise, anti-black bias is not at play, then what is? And however “rational” you may find it, the reasoning is based on a racist myth that’s been propagated by white (Southerns) since the end of the Civil War. (Shout out to Ellen and SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME!)
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And not just in criminal cases. For example if teachers view that actions of black children as more aggressive than white children, then the disparity in school discipline is not the fault of the black community. See how that works?
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So no, Darin. I have been paying attention. Though, not enough to have predicted that you’d try some “you’re too emotional to be reasonable” excuse to get out of a substantive discussion.
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But I’ll admit that yes, I am agitated. It’s frustrating to imagine all or even the majority of white America being as willfully ignorant.
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Think about it, Darin. I mean really think about it. Let’s accept your premise that different races have different traits/skills that doesn’t make one race better or worse, just different. All right? I’m going to accept that. — Here’s the problem. We don’t live in a world where the different skill sets of different races are rewarded equally. What makes that okay? How is that just? Not rational, cause rational may get an innocent black man convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. How is that right?
I’m not sure what difference it makes that No1KState is a woman, or black — or has a master’s degree, for that matter. I must be missing something. Am I supposed to give more weight to her arguments because she’s black and female?
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I don’t think I accused No1KState of calling me a derogatory name, just as I didn’t call her one. That’s not a very high standard of civility. Like I said, if I misread her tone, then that’s on me. I guess I’ll wait for No1KState to confirm or deny or whatever.
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Ellen, give me a link, I’ll watch. But before I do, I want to be crystal clear what point you’re trying to make. Are you saying that racism exists? I already conceded that — in fact I’m one of the hard-liners around here on that subject. Are you saying that things have been bad for black in some times and places — very bad indeed in the extreme example? Yes, I know. Are you saying that blacks have a tougher time even now than whites do? Obviously the answer is yes. Is that partly due to racism? Yes, it probably is. Is white racism a particularly good explanation for the differences in achievement between races from an objective, statistical perspective? No, it doesn’t appear that it is.
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I suspect the only one we disagree on is the last one. Is there anything in those videos that’s going to address that?
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I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten an answer to my two favorite questions. Maybe one of you will answer them.
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1. It seems that your argument that racism is wrong depends on all races being identical. You are playing a dangerous game. Even if it looks like races are alike today, it’s still just a question of fact. Somebody could come along a prove you wrong, and then what? Does your argument against racism disappear?
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2. How do you explain the success of Asians and Jews relative to blacks, hispanics, and whites? Are whites racist in favor of Koreans?
@ siss – Do I know what it’s like to be white or anything besides who I am? No. So I can’t tell you what goes on within the white community (or communities). All I can comment on is the scholarship I’ve read, research and studies, and whatever first hand info I may be privy to from white friends who are anti-racist or if I’m in good enough that I’m not like the “others.” I have to know what and how white America thinks on a general sort of level in order to navigate from day to day without too much trouble. If I were in corporate America, I’d have to know enough to navigate the white-centrism of that world. . . . Think of it as ethnographical research. Black people have to know a certain amount of info in order to “pass.” But there aren’t any questions about black people on these imaginary “test,” except those that are related to racism – and that’s only recently. The actually academic term for this is “epistemic privilege.”
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And you have to remember that until just the couple of decades or so, for a very long time in US history, even poor white families had black maids or cooks. There’s a lot we’ve had access to over the years that whites haven’t. And even now, if we attend an HWCU, it’s not odd to be the one of 2-3 minority students in a class. So, we know a lot about white America. But I’m not claiming to know what it’s like to be anyone but me.
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What I was getting at with Darin is whether or not he’s had enough contact with the black community to make the assumption that he does – that we use racism as a fall back for our own failures. Right? So my question is how does he know that; what evidence is he basing that on? Cause that’s not the conversation we have within the black community.
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And what you have to keep in mind when it comes to racism is that there’s no reason for us to say to you what we say to each other. We just need the racism to stop, and that’s the conversation we have with you. Our response to racism or rather, inspite of racism, isn’t a conversation we have to have with you. Cause first off, white America does use our “dirty laundry” against us. Obama’s most recent NAACP speech, case in point. He said a whole lot more than even Olbermann reported. And secondly, it doesn’t really matter how “dirty our laundry” gets. We’re not asking you to wash our clothes, so to speak. But white America has the new “Black and Decker” double-load, top-loading, see-through washer models. And we’re stuck with a 1985 Whirlwind. Can we get some of the new models, please?
Darin’s EXCUSE now (post #61): NQuest, Siss has hit the nail on the head. You’re all over the map. It’s impossible to respond to you. Maybe you should focus on a couple key points…
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LOL…
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Darin’s EXCUSE then (post #51): You’re here to talk about white racism, come hell or high water. You’re not interested in even the slightest tangent. Your focus is admirable, although I do sort of question your commitment to reality.…
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Seriously, Darin… Stop making excuses. Stop running for exits. In every post between your two conflicting excuses… I mean… statements, I have responded directly to things you have said. Apparently, that’s why it’s so hard… (strike that)… impossible for you to respond. I’m so all over the map that I got all the bases covered and you have no effective comeback/counterpoint.
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That’s completely understood.
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But, to be clear, in post #56, I responded directly to what you said in post #51 and did so by connecting my response in post #56 to your “Bad Black Behavior” EXIT/tangent strategy introduced in post #42. I dealt directly with your bogus question about my “commitment to reality” by citing (vs. merely claiming, aimlessly, like you) when and where you failed to deal with reality and preferred to EXCUSE white law breaking IN REALITY for your fantasy-ideal of drug decriminalization… on a thread about RACIAL PROFILING where the disparities have everything to do with law enforcement’s disparate (drug) search response.
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So “all over the map” = I got all the bases covered; hence my “too-many-axes-to-grind”; aka “Nquest won’t let us [Whites-in-willful-denial] get away with nothing.”
That’s where Siss is coming from. Sorry, but I refuse to play make-believe and excuse all the phony pretenses…
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RE: “Key points.”
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(1) I got your bogus “conspiracy” argument… COVERED. Key point made.
(2) I got your bogus “excuse bad Black behavior” argument COVERED (notwithstanding the does/doesn’t typo). Key point made.
(3) I got your curious, ridiculous and hilarious “blame racism” argument COVERED. You know you rushed to hyperbole and you know you can’t substantiate your claim. You know there is no way you could possible list/name EVERY “problem in the black community”, let alone show how anyone here “pretends every problem in the black community is the fault of whites.”
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So, of course, it’s IMPOSSIBLE for you to respond. All the “key points”… I go them COVERED.
Yes, you are right, what does he know about the BE? Unless of course, he is withholding something that would be evidence to the contrary, but doubtful. So…with all due respect, what do you or any AA know about the white experience?
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I know this blog is about anti-racism but the “WHITE EXPERIENCE”, in and of itself, is hardly the focus. There is simply no such moral equivalence. No person who is not White has really even had the occasion to talk about the W.E. Even more, no one who is not White including No1KState (and myself) have done what No1KState has charged Darin and others of doing — i.e. pretending to know the Blacks/POC experience better than Blacks/POC themselves.
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So, Siss… I got an “axe-to-grind” with your bs statement. To put it in the simplest (“abrasive”) terms: I call bs.
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So, go ahead and show where No1KState or anyone else have made statements where they claim to know something about the “white experience.” The little substitution game is lame, lazy and just plain lacking. Lacking in evidence unless you, Siss, can show where its been done — i.e. when and where No1KState or someone else who is not white has pretended to know what the “white experience” is/entails and does so while making an argument in opposition to what someone White has said about their W.E.
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You simply can’t do that. You think you can smooth over bs by making phony concessions.
What I was getting at with Darin is whether or not he’s had enough contact with the black community to make the assumption that he does – that we use racism as a fall back for our own failures. Right? So my question is how does he know that; what evidence is he basing that on?
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Now that ball is in your court, Siss. Show the basis of your “substitution” game-question by showing where No1KState or anyone not White… show where they have made claims about something Whites do that not only would require being privy to or having the “white experience”… show where that person(s) were wrong. You know, like I did by (1) challenging Darin to list “every problem in the Black community” [as Blacks/African-Americans see it] and (2) providing information/data that shows how, in this case, Blacks/African-Americans via the WaPo “Being A Black Man” poll see a range of problems “in the Black community” that they don’t attribute to racism.
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Beyond that… there is no way Darin has been around Racism Review long enough to know whether “every problem in the Black community” has been discussed, as if that’s what this blog is about anyway.
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It’s all backwards thinking on his part. Instead of being honest vs. willfully being in denial… Darin doesn’t want to acknowledge racism when and where it exist and has consequence/bearing as a cause/factor in “the problems in the Black community.”
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Clearly, because racism is implicated in so many areas — e.g. housing, employment, criminal justice system, etc. — Darin’s EXCUSE… Darin’s denying rationale is to impugn the motives/character of Blacks/African-Americans and claim that they/we are “pretending as if every problem in the Black community is the fault of Whites.”
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Most of the time, hardly anything said about racism is personalized like that. So there’s a problem in the communication channels here. The White receivers like Darin have a decoding (preconceived-notions-AND-racial-self-esteem-issues-getting-in-the-way) problem.
Check It Out Darin:
Slavery by Another Name
Awarded Pulitzer Prize
New York, NY (April 20, 2009) — Columbia University awarded its 93rd Annual Pulitzer Prize in the General Nonfiction category to “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II,” by Douglas A. Blackmon (Doubleday), a precise and eloquent work that examines a deliberate system of racial suppression and that rescues a multitude of atrocities from virtual obscurity.
(www.pulitzer.org)
Darin said: “Give me the Link. I’ll Watch”. Here it is Again:
http://www.slaverybyanothername.com
When you get to the site, look for “watch videos” in red on the right hand side of the page. Click this. Watch these 2 Videos:
1.” Buried in Alabama” ..this video takes you to the burial ground outside Birmingham, Alabama where thousands of black convicts were thrown in wooden boxes and dumped when disease/whippings/ starvation killed them. This was highly illegal..even then!
But it was a total conspiracy utilized by southern white companies who needed the free labor. Nobody asked any questions. The blacks were afraid to and the whites just looked the other way..kinda like Germans did regarding the Jewish Final Solution during WWII.
Now go to the video “Bill Moyers Slavery Book” This video has 2 parts where Bill interviews Blackmon. Bill asked Blackmon if anything in particular surprised him in his research and Blackmon said, “Yes. The brutality with which these men were treated. I just couldn’t believe it.” [I’m paraphrasing here.] Blackmon was astonished at the horrific treatment with which these men were treated: beaten, starved, chained, disease-ridden..check out the photos Darin! The “photo album” is at the top of the website.
After you see the site, and tell me what You Think Of Blackmon’s Observations.. then I’ll do my best to address your question regarding black vs Asian achievement. A picture’s worth a million words, and a video’s worth a million pictures. Fair enough? I look forward to reading your thoughts about the videos and your impression of Blackmon..a man of honor I believe by anybody’s estimate.
And yet another one of my “axes-to-grind”:
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“…whites are engaged in a conspiracy to keep other races (especially blacks) down.”
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That’s how Darin has consistently characterized what others (especially Black people) have called racism in the various discussions on various topics on this blog. This is interesting because it suggests that Darin applies two different definitions and, indeed, two different standards for what constitutes racism when he perceives Whites are held responsible and what constitutes racism perpetrated by people who are not White.
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I find it awfully interesting how Darin sees the following things as essential components to “real racism”:
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(1) active, coordinated “conspiracy”;
(2) the act of “holding” other people/race(s) “down”
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This is interesting because, from the moment he started posting here (or, at least, for most of the time…), Darin was virtually begging someone, anyone to tell him if people who are not White ‘can’ be racist. Obviously, it was a rhetorical question but I answered it anyway and Darin had a problem with it, so he reworked his question hoping to increase the likelihood of an answer that would satisfy him. He asked if the Nation of Islam is racist.
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Hmmm…. Leaving aside the active, coordinated people/RACE-WIDE “conspiracy” aspect, its pretty hard to see how the Nation of Islam has or is “holding” White people “down.” And the strangest, most interesting about Darin’s racism=”conspiracy [by one race/people]”+”holding other people/races down” equation is that it fits the very definition he called himself arguing against. Well, it wasn’t really an argument; Darin, hoped his display of emotion would distract me from seeing his lack of a legitimate argument through the not-so-clever-art of suggestion.
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Specifically, Darin played the rhetorical/leading question game trying to spin what I said — willfully ignoring the word *OR* in my statement — to build a strawman that he was too weak to even knock down:
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So racism is not an attitude, it’s an action. And only people with “power”… can be racist. Is that it?
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Like I said: interesting. But maybe Darin can explain how Whites or any racial/ethnic group can “hold” people of other races/groups “down” without power. I just trying to understand how the many faces of denial (and confusion) works.
Darin stated: “I’m not sure what difference it makes that No1KState is a woman, or black — or has a master’s degree, for that matter. I must be missing something. Am I supposed to give more weight to her arguments because she’s black and female?”
Yes! I think you should give more weight to her arguments cause She’s Black. It’s very likely she’s experienced [what you’re trying so hard to deny exists] the discrimination and difficulties blacks have faced OVER AND ABOVE JEWS AND ASIANS regarding being rewarded for her achievements, and probably being accepted socially also..which, of course, impacts financial recognition. In other words, she’s familiar with the entire Black Experience that neither you nor I [as a white] can ever fully understand. Will you give me that point? We don’t GET IT Darin..even if we try all day, all night, and all day again Until Christmas.
Do you want to talk reality here? The truth is people in general feel more comfortable around people who are similar to themselves. Jewish people and Asians have some facial differences from the typical “white European” but the color of their skin is Not Black. If given the choice, in a work setting, I think people would choose other humans who “look similar to themselves” and who have the same psychological/sociological backgrounds.
Whites not only look Very different from blacks, but their experience in America hardly includes [c’mon Darin..show some empathy here!] as a race: 1.whippings 2.starvation 3. chaining 4.forced labor in excruciating conditions 5.laws deliberated enacted to keep them in a servile position. 6. Dumping in mass graves without any headstones! We’re talking concentration camp material here! I mean, Hitler could take notes in regard to what the southern whites did to black convicts for 100 years After the Emancipation Proclamation. It scares the sh– outa me. I can hardly believe Americans would treat other Americans with such ferocious brutality.
I do want to apologize to the blacks who post on this site if I sound like I’m “speaking for you”. I know I can’t do that..Cause I’m White. I’m just trying to make some cogent points I believe in to Darin. The best I can do as a white is empathize. I can’t be black. But I can try to see things from your perspective. That’s the best I can do.
@ Ellen – Do not feel compelled to answer Darin’s rhetorical questions, re:
The admins have answered the 2nd one throughout earlier posts. I answered the 1st one in comment #43.
But I guess I better take another whack at it. — All races are identical/equal in terms of intelligence (someone already explained the dubious nature of IQ tests) and morality and creditworthiness. All races seem fairly equal to me in athleticism. Sure, the NBA and NFL are 80%+ black, but MLB, NHL, and MLS are mostly white. As well as tennis, swimming, and lacrosse. Did I leave anything substantive out? I hardly foresee someone coming out with concrete evidence of any particular difference that would result in the disparities we see in the US. For heaven’s sake! I watched a PBS special about the brain and music across the globe; and, what they demonstrated is that even though all over the world, there’re 101 (I’m using that coloquially) different types of music, they all map the same in the brain. By that I mean, you can take a community of people in Nigeria who have never heard Western music, and a “sad” concerto will sound “sad” to them and a “happy” concerto will sound “happy” to them. With the exemption of phenotypical adaptations to the amount of available sunlight, no one has found any “different” between the races.
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My definition of “racism” involves not just prejudice but also power. Exempting power and the impact of 250mill+ people all have the same, false and easily disprovable ideas about another group of people, there’s really nothing to talk about.
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No, Darin didn’t call me any name and I’m sure no one accused you of doing so. It would be nice, though, if you would stop asking the same questions repeatedly as though they haven’t been asked. It would also be nice if you’d respond to the questions and issues as they are raised and not come up with some absurd reason to dismiss the findings, re: in an earlier comment thread, you dismissed the findings about the success rate of vocational students on the basis of IQ. As though it makes a world of difference whether my mechanic’s IQ is 145 or 115. Either one knows more about cars than I do!
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In defence of Nquest – He sticks to the issues. He responds to what is written. Quite honestly, he says much of what I think. He’s one of the reasons I can be so patient. I know sooner or later he’ll “bust some caps” – that’s a line from a movie. I don’t think white people have much appreciation for the patience and “slowing to anger” it takes to deal with racism. You hear the things your family and friends and neighbors and coworkers say about black people. Do you really need us to tell you all those negative, and false and easily disproven, ideas will eventually have a negative impact? Even Darin hasn’t given any other explanation for the disparities besides racism. – Oh, and Darin, yes, when you come on a blog titled “racismreview” arguing that there’re other, more plausible explanations, it is incombent upon you to provide these explanations and explain how even your own reasoning doesn’t make you, or at least your reasoning, racist. And so we’re working with the same definition, I mean different people would get different results for no other reason than their phenotype. (Remember kids, you don’t have to be evil to be racist. Chicago contract buyers who bilked hundreds of thousands out of black people wouldn’t call themselves evil, just business men taking advantage of a business opportunity. So please disabuse yourself of the notion that you have to be Bull Conner to be racist. You can Tim Wise and still be racist! [Tim admitted to a moment of fear upon realizing both pilots on the plane were black.])
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@ Nquest in defense of siss – I think she was asking a sincere question. I had no qualms answering it. At anyrate, it’s like you said, black people aren’t making the claim to know the white experience the way white people are necessarily making the claim to know the black experience when they deny racism. So, it’s good.
Nquest in defense of siss – I think she was asking a sincere question.
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Sincere or not, as you acknowledged, it was a question without basis . That is, Siss had no reason to raise it other than some kind of tit-for-tat, substitution logic which just happens to fall in line with her on long-standing attempts to do what Darin tries to do — i.e. deny racism and, in this instance, question Black people/POC ability to raise issues/concerns about racism since we don’t know the “white experience.”
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Also, sincerity necessarily must have a basis in fact. I question the sincerity Siss’ question because I obviously see it as factually challenged and the result of the lazy substitution logic (stuff that’s been done/said so much its appears to be a knee-jerk, unthinking reflex) that figures it/she can use a rhetorical question, alone, to flip-the-script, put you on the spot with no need to actually have a point or reason (based in fact) for doing it other than to turn things around.
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Really, its rather transparent (and not-so-sincere) to me.
@Kstate: Thanks for your response. I was just wondering what types of exposures you have had with the white community. I think I remember you mentioning you grew up in a primary black community, so I needed some clarification.
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As for me, I’m on the same page as you in that, [“Do I know what it’s like to be white [in my case, black] or anything besides who I am? No.”] The only thing I have to go on is personal experience and what little statistical evidence I have read (which this site has provided me with a great abundance). I am weary of using that as my qualifier, like I said before, if I am even able to be qualified. What I take issue with, and I think many whites do, is that our experience and the data aren’t matching up. Let me explain with an example. Further up the thread there was mention of blacks being no more aggressive than whites, with SES factors equated. (correct me if this wasn’t the case). While the data may be correct, my experience tells me otherwise. So what should I believe, my experience or the facts that don’t correlate? I’m working on separating my experience and general reality, as they are two lenses I switch back and forth from. At least I am aware of the lenses, as most whites, and some other non-whites fail to see. This is a barrier, IMO, that whites struggle with. Do you, or anyone else (besides nquest) have any suggestions to overcome that “my-own-experience-bias-which-makes-me-disregard-fact” problem?
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Also, Im curious about your POV on assimilation. Not in terms of US assimilation, where the standards to which you must integrate are white (because from previous exchanges, I think I know your view on that 🙂 ), but from a “you-vs-them” mentality. The reason I ask is because these series of statements jumped out at me, [“And what you have to keep in mind when it comes to racism is that there’s no reason for us to say to you what we say to each other. We just need the racism to stop, and that’s the conversation we have with you. Our response to racism or rather, inspite of racism isn’t a conversation we have to have with you.”] (my emphasis, not yours). The first thought that came to mind was, Isn’t this backstaging going on? Then I re-read it and reflected and assumed maybe it was codeswitching. Then I got all confused, stopped assuming, and figured I would ask for your explanation.
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Loved the analogy about the washing machines, it’s so very true! Even though I am guilty of it, whites do need tend to our laundry not yours. Im still struggling with feeling like those shortcomings are (sometimes) the reason, rather than racism at play.
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@nquest: you are beyond silly. Re-read what I asked her and understand that: I wasn’t accusing her, or any other AA, of knowing our experience, I was ASKING IF she thought she knew. Call bs till your blue in the face, its makes no nevermind to me. If I was having a meaningful discussion with you, then maybe I would care to rebut your points, but like I have previously mentioned – I don’t engage with persons of your kind. However I will say this: you are correct, this site isn’t about the WE. But, if you ever intend to change white attitudes (which IS important because it will deconstruct white supremacy), our system in place (ei: the CJ system), and how it operates, this is valid point we must muddle through and deal with. What exactly IS your point of commenting if you’re not trying to spread the anti-racist movement? Shouldn’t you be educating the ignorant (Darin and myself) rather than condemning them? It’s people of your demeanor that puts off POTENTIAL anti-racist whites and pushes them back to their comfort zone and thus discourages important dialogue. So comment, grid axes, call bs, poke holes in my arguments to your hearts content because until you have settled down a bit and get off the defense, I have nothing more to say to you. Best wishes nquest.
Guys, I’m now juggling comments from three people, and that makes it very difficult to get to everything. I swear I’m doing my best to answer the key points, but if I miss something, I’ll just have to ask you patience. Please, stop accusing me of ducking questions or ignoring them (except Nquest). I’m not, honestly.
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On the other hand, No1KState, you are explicitly avoiding my questions. That doesn’t seem quite fair, but since I’m a guest here, I won’t let it get to me.
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Ellen, I haven’t watched the video yet because you haven’t addressed whether it goes to the area we disagree. If all it’s going to do is tell me things are bad in the South, then I already know that. I’m sure the video will be very disturbing to watch, but it won’t change my mind about anything because I already agree with it. So please let me know if the video talks about racism as an explanation for variations in outcomes here and now.
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No1KState, I want to clarify something. I’m not saying “black culture” is providing blacks with a ready-made excuse for failure (although that may or may not be true). I’m saying that you personally are, with your assertion that white racism is a powerful explainer of racial disparities. That’s why it doesn’t matter that you’re black (assuming you are) and I’m from Mars.
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By the way, you guys seem to think that our respective backgrounds are highly relevant to the debate. I don’t. At least not for my arguments. I’d just as soon not turn this into an exchange of bona fides, since they’re impossible to verify. I have not asked any personal questions about any of you, either.
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A few posts back I said I thought we were at an impasse. I still think that’s possible. As I see it, the heart of the debate is whether there’s anything else besides white racism that COULD explain the variations in outcomes by race. I have suggested a few — cultural and genetic differences — which you reject out of hand. I can see why you would WANT to reject those arguments — they’re not very nice to contemplate — but I have not idea what the rational basis for rejecting them is. You seem to be saying “everybody knows” what I’m saying is wrong, and then you go back to accusing me of not offering any explanation.
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Meanwhile, you refuse to address the questions I bring up. Can you see why I might be a little baffled as to where to go from here? If we were being rigorous, I suppose we’d start referencing competing studies, but I’m under no illusion that that would resolve it. My explanation for why that wouldn’t end it is that your side is heavily invested in a particular world view, and you can’t afford to lose it. I suppose your explanation would be white racism.
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You say you just want the racism to stop. Let me ask you a question: how will you know when it’s stopped? I can see two possible definitions of the end of racism, neither of which is probably going to be acceptable to society in general:
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1) When you say it’s stopped.
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2) When all races are equal.
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The second one is unacceptable because it’s impossible. Let’ s just use the most obvious example — which you brought up: sports. Sports are heavily stratified by race. You are quite right that some sports (basketball) are dominated by blacks, while others (swimming) are dominated by whites. The point is that pretty much none of them are proportional by race. Races have different physical abilities that make them better at some sports. Do you remember the Olympic 100m discussion? All eight finalists for the last four Olympics have been blacks of Western African descent — though they lived in many different places. The probability of that happening by chance is 0.00000000000000000000000000000001 percent (i.e., zero).
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How do you EXPLAIN that? Isn’t it just simpler to say, “You know, it looks like black guys run a lot faster.”
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The reason the Olympic 100m is a particularly good example is that it’s completely objective. It’s impossible to attribute that disparate outcome to anything other than differences in foot-speed.
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Finally, you say that my questions have been answered, however I can’t find an answer to either question — not in post 43 or by the admins. I’m sure I’m just missing it, so maybe you can indulge me by repeating the answers for me. These are not rhetorical questions, I actually want to see how you’ll answer them.
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1. It seems that your argument that racism is wrong depends on all races being identical. You are playing a dangerous game. Even if it looks like races are alike today, it’s still just a question of fact. Somebody could come along a prove you wrong, and then what? Does your argument against racism disappear? Mine does not.
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2. How do you explain the success of Asians and Jews relative to blacks, hispanics, and whites? Are whites racist in favor of Koreans?
I know this sounds very “everybody knows that book”. However, I re-discovered a fantastic classic that is Mandatory [because I just believe it] reading for all Americans. It’s the classic Black Like Me written by John Howard Griffin [are you listening DARIN?] who in 1959 chemically dyed his skin black and traveled to Mississippi. This was a huge best seller when it came out in 1962. It helped to galvanize the Civil Rights Movement.
From the book: “This is a shocking book. It is the story of a man who underwent a series of medical treatments to change his skin color temporarily to black-a transformation that was complete when John Howard Griffin shaved off his hair, and looking in a mirror, saw a bald, middle-aged black man. For six weeks, he hitchhiked, walked, and rode buses through Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Georgia, looking for work. The experiences he encountered in the Deep South-the squalor, the violence, the antagonism, the hopelessness-will burn deeply into the conscience of every American who believes in the justice of democracy”.
I think you should try that sometime Darin. If you Really Have This Curiosity to Understand..and you’ve written enough posts that I believe you do..dye your skin black and check it out. Really. I’m not being sarcastic or trying to be rude.
I wonder what would happen if I did that. I bet I’d suffer alot of psychological hurt. I know I would. Stuff I would never even see coming. And that’s what’s so sad about white people making conclusions about what it must be like to be black..how can we make these conclusions? All we can do is listen I guess and try to empathize.
To No1KState: You have a great heart..anybody can see that. God always rewards people with good hearts. Honestly, I don’t know how I got drawn into this. But I guess I’m here now. Karma or something. Ever since I discovered this site, it’s been haunting me. Well, actually that book Slavery By Another Name has haunted me. It’s so horrible, it’s like a nightmare that you wanna wake up from. Only if you’re black, you don’t get to wake up.
A passage from the book: ” As the Negro Griffin, I walked up the steep hill to the bus station in Montgomery to get the schedual for buses to Tuskegee. I received the information from a polite clerk and turned away from the counter.
‘ Boy!’ I heard a woman’s voice, harsh and loud. I glanced toward the door to see a large, matriarchical woman, elderly and impatient. Her pinched face grimaced and she waved me to her.
‘Boy, come here. Hurry!’ Astonished I obeyed.
‘Get those bags out of the cab’, she ordered testily, seeming outraged with my lack of speed. Without thinking I allowed my face to spread to a grin as though overjoyed to serve her. I carried her bags to the bus and received three haughty dimes. I thanked her profusely. Her eyebrows knitted with irritation and she finally waved me away.”
This is another passage as he rode on a bus through Poplarville, Mississippi.
“As we neared Poplarville, agitation swept through the bus. Everyone’s mind was on the Parker youth’s lynching and the jury’s refusal to consider the FBI evidence against his lynchers. ‘Do you know about Poplarville?’ Bill whispered. ‘Yes’. Some of the whites on the bus looked back. Animated Negro voices turned stony.
Bill pointed out places in a quiet expressionless voice, ‘That’s the jail where they snatched him. They went up to his cell and grabbed his feet and dragged him down so his head bumped against each stairstep. They found blood on them, and blood at the bottom landing. He must’ve known what they were going to do to him. He must’ve been scared shitless.’
The bus circled through the streets of a small Southern town, a gracious town in appearance. I looked about me. It was too real for my black companions, too vivid. Their faces were pinched, their expressions indrawn as though they felt themselves being dragged down the jail stairway, felt their own heads bumping against the steps, experiencing their own terror.”
Well, I guess that just about says it all. That’s a tough passage to read if you’re black Or white, and have any compassion for your fellow man. I can’t add anything to the impact of this. It paints a horrific picture.
FBI re-opens Mack Charles Parker lynching
By Patricia Older
Item Correspondent
POPLARVILLE May 09, 2009 11:47 pm
— Fifty years ago, Poplarville, along with Pearl River County, was unwillingly thrust into the national spotlight involving the civil rights movement. It is an event, and time, most residents old enough to remember would like to forget happened. Even today, with 50 years in between the night of April 24, 1959, and this day, most people still refuse to discuss the kidnapping and murder of Mack Charles Parker, bring up the names of the people directly responsible for his death, or explore the ramifications that exploded from the incident. It was an incident so significant that it is infamously considered one of the last civil rights era lynching in America .
So significant, that the case is one of 100 civil rights era cold case files, 43 statewide, that has been re-opened by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “All 43 cases in this state, along with the rest of the 100 nationwide, are being actively investigated,” said FBI media representative Deborah Madden. “If we can determine if a federal violation occurred and if a suspect or suspects can be identified … we will file charges.”
http://www.picayuneitem.com/local/local_story_129234307.html/resources_printstory
I agree. Those are terrible stories. It’s amazing how people can treat each other sometimes.
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Ellen, I actually think the point in your suggestion is valid: it would do us all good to walk a mile in the other guy’s shoes. I assume you would also suggest to No1KState that she should walk a mile in a white person’s shoes. She might notice the the consternation among whites about racial disparities, and how embarrassed they are at the merest hint that they might be racists. Would that be of benefit, too?
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Of course, I doubt it would change the views we’ve expressed here, for the reasons I noted before;.and as I hope I’ve made clear, none of this is justification for treating individuals badly.
Darin Said: He won’t watch the videos I recommended on the Slavery By Another Name site because:
“If all it’s going to do is tell me things are bad in the South, then I already know that.”
That’s not fair to anybody in this discussion Darin. By the time you wrote that last post, you could have seen these Excellent informative videos. Why will you not view the videos? I don’t understand your attitude.
It’s like a professor says: “Please read the following and then we can discuss” and you’re the only kid in class who refuses to read the material. I’m not trying to be rude here, but really Darin..this is simply ridiculous for you not to take the time to view a website? Again, no disrespect intended. Just go to the Website!
Darin said: “That’s why it doesn’t matter that you’re black (assuming you are) and I’m from Mars.”
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“By the way, you guys seem to think that our respective backgrounds are highly relevant to the debate.”
Darin, who are we talking about here..people or giraffes? Cause if we’re talking about People, why wouldn’t our “respective backgrounds” play into our perceptions? And if we’re talking about race, specifically blacks…why wouldn’t No1KState have more credibility regarding the black experience in America than a white person?
That’s like saying, “Just because you have a degree in mechanical engineering, it doesn’t mean you know more about how an engine works than say..a person who’s been managing a bank for 2o years. What’s the difference?”
Siss said: “Re-read what I asked her and understand that: I wasn’t accusing her, or any other AA, of knowing our experience, I was ASKING IF she thought she knew.”
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And I quote…
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“Yes, you are right, what does he know about the BE? Unless of course, he is withholding something that would be evidence to the contrary, but doubtful. So…with all due respect, what do you or any AA know about the white experience?”
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So, your question was not “IF she thought she knew.” You asked her what qualifies her as someone who knows the “white experience.” It’s clear you were trying to turn her question/statement (to Darin) around and use it against her even when you knew No1KState had made no statement even remotely equivalent Darin’s… even when you knew No1KState hasn’t suggested that “she knew” or knows the “white experience.” So the only purpose of your question was some kind of petty, tit-for-tat gotcha statement because you thought you had an angle due to No1KState “mentioning [how she] grew up in a primary black community.”
>
Another quote:
“I know you are bombared with daily images through media outlets, personal interactions, etc. but do you feel that qualifies you as “knowing our experience”?“
>
So you didn’t just ask No1KState “if” she “knew” or thought she “knew”… You asked her what “qualifies” her as “knowing” the “white experience.” And what makes matters worse, you even framed your question to say “in the same context of ‘knowing your experience’…” — i.e. in the same manner in which she questioned Darin’s statement which was, by any other name, No1KState “accusing” Darin of pretending or presuming “to know more about the black experience than blacks do.”
>
So, when you raise that kind of substitution, turn-around question and specifically state that it’s “in the same context”… you were/are indeed “accusing” No1KState and other AA’s of presuming to know the W.E.
>
If you were not, you would have never asked or questioned what “qualifies” No1KState, e.g., as “knowing [the white experience].”
>
REVIEW LESSON:
Don’t ask me to re-read what you wrote/said when your throw-rock-hide-hand tactic is blatantly obvious and over-used.
>
PS:
Regarding POTENTIAL anti-racist whites and “important dialogues”… Seems like you could do more in terms of talking about the “white experience” especially since you see it as so important. One of these days, I’ll go back through old threads and see what you’ve shared in dialogues between you and No1KState or anyone else regarding “the white experience.”
>
Frankly, this “white experience” rhetoric of yours is rather ironic especially in a thread where I raised this question:
.
How is it that White people like Darin feel like “problems in the Black community” are things that they have the standing and credibility to discuss but never seem comment on “problems in the White community” and introduce those things as topics to discuss in interracial settings?
Darin said: By the way, you guys seem to think that our respective backgrounds are highly relevant to the debate. I don’t. At least not for my arguments.
>
Darin when you said:
“…pretending that every problem in the black community is the fault of whites is despicable because it distracts blacks from actually focusing on solutions to their problems.”
>
You necessarily assert that you have the background to know what Blacks/African-Americans or even No1KState have to say about “every problem in the black community” — AS IF YOU’RE PRIVY TO EVERY SUCH DISCUSSION which you’re obviously are not — but you also necessarily assert that you have the background to know whether or not Blacks/African-Americans or No1KState are “distracted” from “focusing on solutions to their problems.”
>
Last I checked, there is no island in the U.S. called “Black.” But, as Siss probably knows, there is segment of the [White] anti-racist movement that emphasizes how White reactions to POC claims re: racism and, indeed, White racist resentment of POC for whatever reason functions as “distractions” and excuses for White shortcomings, mediocrity, failure and dysfunction.
@ Darin – Seriously, you’re kidding, right? You got to be kidding! I’ve answered every question you’ve asked. You’ve been avoiding mine. You start answering the questions I’ve raised and grappling honestly with facts and research, I’ll answer the questions you raised in comment #77.
Just to repeat – Even assuming it’s “rational” for white people to perceive black people are more aggressive (and it’s not), how does that get justice? And assuming all races are different, none better or worse, just different – what do you think happens when one race gets to decide from themselves and everyone else which traits/characteristics are more or less valued? And assuming that you really do believe that races are different, none better or worse, just different – what makes it so hard to understand every other white person attaches some moral or monetary values, some better or worse judgements, to these differences? Also, with all the evidence we have of white racism – the jokes, for example – do you really suggest none of that leaves the white “quorum” where the joke was told? We have the jokes, the emails, the “nappy headed hos” type comments.
~
@ ellen – Thanks. Blackmon’s book haunted me, too. I’m a little haunted from the passage you shared!
~
@ siss –
You should believe the facts. Whites are usually oblivious to the racism that they perpetrate and/or that occurs around them. When you’re out for dinner, do you notice whether or not you’re receiving the same attention from your waitor as the black couple? Also, because you know someone very well, even though they do/say something blatantly obvious, you’re quite apt to dismiss it because “John Doe would never do something like that!” When the reality is that people who make racist comments, however benign they may seem to family and friends, also charge black people more for the same loan or hire the white guy with a criminal record over a black guy without one. (It’s been documented that that happens.) That’s the way racism works now. It’s not calling someone the n-word, it’s a joke about “jungle monkeys” after you’ve gotten drunken. I guess that’s where political correctness kinda gets off the tracks – It’s not only the words you use, it’s the attitude those words come from. I just can’t say it enough: a person doesn’t have to be evil to be racist.
~
To use the example of the misperception of black aggressiveness – It’s actually quite simple when you think about it. First off, black crime is reported on at a much higher rate than it actually occurs and white crime at a much lower rate. Also, the myth of black over-aggressiveness has been handed down from one generation of white Americans to the next. With all that in mind, there is the workings of the human mind. You’re around white people all the time. White people are for you like water for fish – you don’t notice them. But because of the unfamiliarity with black people, you notice us more and fear the unknown. Also, because it reinforces previous knowledge, you’re more likely to remember black over-aggression as opposed to black “under” aggression, which can be dismissed as “rare.” If you ask me, a lot of the negative impact this has on black Americans, men in general, would be mitigated if white Americans would just acknowledge the facts and behave accordingly. For example, we know that whites and blacks use illegal drugs at about the same rate – stop racially profiling!
~
To your “us vs them” question. I try not to use the language unless it’s on my own blog or I’m kinda out of linguistical options and “you” is easier to write than “white people.” I feel like racism is an issue blacks and whites can work together to end; but, there’s not doubt it’s something whites are doing to blacks and that’s what makes it an “us vs them” thing. But if it helps, since there are clearly some whites who are anti-racist, like Joe and Jessie, and some blacks who are racist, like any black person who agrees with Rush Limbaugh – think of it as a racist vs anti-racist thing.
~
Now that you’ve explain why you asked about my experience with the white community . . . I’m still right to assume you weren’t asking just to attempt to flip the point, right? But, personally, yeah, I know quite a bit about the white experience, I guess. I’ve spent time in white homes and tons with white classmates. I’m not sure what it is you want me to say. I know white women are treated more nicely by strangers than black women cause I’ve been with different groups and know different treatment. Plus, you gotta remember, any one black person is much more likely to actually have to be in a white-dominant environment than whites are in a black-dominant environment. If you’re asking what’s my experience within the white community that lets me know that the majority of white people are actively racist? Well, I’ve been told friends don’t think of me as black – that says plenty. Once you’re in that well, you get to hear stuff. And you gotta remember that I’m comparing what I hear from white people to what I see from black people – so I know we’re just as smart, not as aggressive, etc and so on.
Oh, yeah! More questions for Darin. – For over 450 years, this country was steeped in racism, legal and extralegal. Can you describe for me the steps this country has taken in order to remove at least enough racism, laws and ideology, so that it, as you argue, not the main keeping more black people from being successful?
Ellen- with all due respect, thank you for your book recommendation, but your multiple posts about it are excessive and it disrupts (IMO) the dialouge.
*not more aggressive*
MOM-NKState
I haven’t read anything you wrote, but I just want to say,”YOU GO GIRL” LOL
Darin asked: “…2. How do you explain the success of Asians and Jews relative to blacks, hispanics, and whites? Are whites racist in favor of Koreans?”
>
“Anecdotal evidence suggests that Korean American adolescents’ perceptions of racial discrimination may be a risk factor for developing deviant behavioral problems in this population. In ethnocultural interviews conducted with Korean American adolescents by the authors, unpleasant racially based experiences were frequently mentioned as a part of their problems. Those adolescents described their embarrassment and resentment when they were pulled over by police for no specific reason except that they were of Asian descent, or when they were mistreated or stereotyped by school personnel and other majority-group students. ”
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2248/is_155_39/ai_n9488744/pg_9/
>
City facing lawsuit
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MARIETTA – Two current and one former city of Kennesaw employees have filed suit against the city claiming racial discrimination and harassment.
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The lawsuit was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
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The plaintiffs are Willie Smith, Stanley Mitchell and Gary Redd. All three employees have worked in Kennesaw’s Public Works Department.
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Smith and Mitchell, who are black, are still employed by the city. Smith has worked for the city since 1995 and Mitchell has worked for the city for 22 years.
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According to the lawsuit, the men say they have been called “niggers” by employees and have heard racially charged jokes by city employees. The suit claims city management has done nothing to stop the racial slurs.
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The suit also claims that a hangman’s noose hung in one employee’s truck in 1996, and a white only sign was put on the bathroom door in 2001.
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Redd, who is from Korea, quit the department in August after two years.
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During that time, the lawsuit says he faced repeated racial harassment. The lawsuit states he has been called a “wetback” by his co-workers several times in front of supervisors . . .
http://www.mdjonline.com/content/index/showcontentitem/area/1/section/21/item/129440.html
The Bias Breakdown
Friday, December 9, 2005
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Fifteen percent of all workers say they have been discriminated against in their workplace during the past year, according to a new Gallup Organization poll.
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The survey was conducted to discover workers’ perceptions of discrimination in their workplaces during a year that marks the 40th anniversary of the formation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The EEOC’s chairwoman, Cari M. Dominguez, said the information will help the agency compare employee perceptions of discrimination with complaints actually filed with the agency.
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For example, 31 percent of Asians surveyed reported incidents of discrimination, the largest percentage of any racial or ethnic group, with African Americans the second-largest group at 26 percent . . .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/08/AR2005120802037.html
http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2006/03/asian-workers-report-most-discrimination/
>———————————————–<
WHY NAKA? [National Association of Korean Americans]
When the Los Angeles civil riots erupted in 1992, there was no national voice speaking on behalf of Korean Americans. It was apparent that a strong, effective national Korean American organization was needed to help safeguard civil rights, facilitate communication and cooperation with other racial and ethnic groups, and actively combat discrimination and racism . . .
http://www.naka.org/about/
2000 U.S. Census indicates Korean Americans have the highest poverty rate (30% vs. 29% for African-Americans) in Chicago, Illinois of all racial/ethnic groups. Among the highest poverty rate among senior citizens in New York (36% vs. 31% for African-Americans) and in California (18% vs. 15% for African-Americans).
>
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17176701/Asian-Americans-Poverty
http://www.calstatela.edu/centers/ckaks/census/71803_table5.pdf
For over 450 years, this country was steeped in racism, legal and extralegal. Can you describe for me the steps this country has taken in order to remove at least enough racism, laws and ideology, so that it, as you argue, not the main keeping more black people from being successful?
>
No1KState, that’s an unfair question. It imposes the arbitrary constraints of REALITY on Darin. You know Darin doesn’t want to deal with REALITY, so stop being so unfair.
>
You know Darin would rather frame his “how do you explain the success of Asian/Korean Americans if America is as racist as you think” questions as some kind of proof instead of dealing honestly with the question of whether there is racism experienced by Asian Americans, Korean Americans, African-Americans, etc. Why should Darin subject himself to debate he know he can’t win? It’s only fair to let Darin come up with his own ways of DENYING anti-Black racism. DENIAL that has no interest in assessing whether there actually is or is not anti-Black or anti-POC racism.
>
It’s only fair to allow Darin to continue his subterfuge. It’s all he’s got.
Oh, and No1KState, please don’t make Darin chronicle the history of Korean Americans in the U.S. and ask him when Korean Americans were enslaved en masse or any of racist and racial discriminatory events that characterize the African-American experience with White racism.
>
No, don’t ask him about any of this:
>
“After the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910, Korean migration to the United States was virtually halted. The Immigration Act of 1924 or sometimes referred to as the Oriental Exclusion Act was part of a measured system excluding Korean immigrants into the US. In 1952 with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, opportunities were more open to Asian Americans, enabling Korean Americans to move out of enclaves into middle-class neighborhoods. When the Korean War ended in 1953, small numbers of students and professionals entered the United States. A larger group of immigrants included the wives of U.S. servicemen. As many as one in four Korean immigrants in the United States can trace their immigration to the wife of a serviceman. With the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Koreans became one of the fastest growing Asian groups in the United States, surpassed only by Filipinos.”
>
“In a 2005 United States Census Bureau survey, an estimated 432,907 Koreans in the U.S. were native-born Americans, and 973,780 were foreign-born. Korean Americans that were naturalized citizens numbered at 530,100, while 443,680 Koreans in the U.S. were not American citizens.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_American
>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
"Many theories or frameworks have been proposed to explain the phenomenon of international migration of professionals, or better known as brain drain. For the practical purpose of this article, brain drain is defined as the migration of professionals and technical personnel to other countries, resulting in a perceived loss of real or potential human capital to their homelands. Brain drain was once a highly emotionally charged phenomenon that became the subject of scholarly and policy inquiry for hundreds of books, reports, and articles during 1960s-1980s. Since then, the debate on the pros and cons of brain drain has become less intense as more professionals return to their homelands after political and socioeconomic conditions improved, as in the cases of Korea and Taiwan.”
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/465919_3
siss Says:
August 7th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Ellen- with all due respect, thank you for your book recommendation, but your multiple posts about it are excessive and it disrupts (IMO) the dialouge.
With reciprocal all due respect to you Siss, my posts had the desired effect on Darin. Read below. We all use intellectualizing/semantic-splitting to debate in this forum, however sometimes it helps to remind us WHY we’re doing this in the first place. It’s for the “blood on the jailhouse steps” when the mob got that man out of jail and dragged him by his feet Before Any Trial, tortured him, chopped him up, and then hung him. That was in 1959?!
That was not supposed to happen in America. And the psychological tone preceding that event continues today in many states, corporations, small businesses, private homes, whispers among ‘friends’. Maybe if people at least Read About where those cruel little racist comments can lead, maybe they’d stop and reflect. As in…That Was Haunting!
I mean, Jewish people won’t forget for a Jerusalem Minute about the Holocaust. And they don’t make any bones about it either. Why should they? So, what’s wrong with wrenching images? Helps to re-situate the mind as it were, and actually Keep Us On The Right Track.
Darin Johnson Says:
August 7th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I agree. Those are terrible stories. It’s amazing how people can treat each other sometimes.
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Ellen, I actually think the point in your suggestion is valid: it would do us all good to walk a mile in the other guy’s shoes.
@ Mom – Thanks. LOL!
~
@ Nquest – Okay, okay. No more reality based questions. :/ My bad. 😛
@Siss
>It’s people of your demeanor that puts off POTENTIAL anti-racist whites and pushes them back to their comfort zone and thus discourages important dialogue.
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those people aren’t potential anti-racist whites in the first place. If a white makes his/her anti-racism dependend on how People of Color act, s/he isn’t anti-racist but a bigot and nothing else.
The important dialogue should take place among whites because they are the ones who impose white supremacy, therefore they are the ones who are in political power to stop it and they are the ones who have to find a way to stop this system. Victims of oppression aren’t obliged to educate their oppressors about how they oppress.
But the only thing most white people do in ‘dialogues about race’ is starting their defense and denial and distraction and then blaming People of Color that they lack patience or whatever.
But only you are in the position to change your own mindset and to educate yourself about social and political reality and the struggle or so what it means to be white and all connected with it will be your personal one.
@siss
and this
>Shouldn’t you be educating the ignorant (Darin and myself) rather than condemning them?
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you should ask yourself the question: Do other whites respect you for who you are or do they only ‘respect’ your whiteness? When you are able to honestly answer this question for you, you will perhaps also be able to look at the system of white supremacy from another perspective.
Unbelievable! You STILL haven’t even attempted to answer either of my questions!
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Ellen, the reason I don’t think the races and sexes of you, No1KState, me, or anyone else are relevant is that I am not interested in talking about “perception,” I’m interested in facts and values. I wouldn’t expect you to care very much about my perceptions unless I could back them up with something more convincing. I mean, I could just as easily create an online identity with a compelling back story, and then you’d believe what I say? Of course not.
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And you’re not my professor. If we’re going to do it that way, then I assume you’ll be wanting a reading list from me, too. Right?
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No1KState, you’re accusing me of ducking a question again. You say the question is in this paragraph, from post 85:
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“Just to repeat – Even assuming it’s “rational” for white people to perceive black people are more aggressive (and it’s not), how does that get justice? And assuming all races are different, none better or worse, just different – what do you think happens when one race gets to decide from themselves and everyone else which traits/characteristics are more or less valued? And assuming that you really do believe that races are different, none better or worse, just different – what makes it so hard to understand every other white person attaches some moral or monetary values, some better or worse judgements, to these differences? Also, with all the evidence we have of white racism – the jokes, for example – do you really suggest none of that leaves the white “quorum” where the joke was told? We have the jokes, the emails, the “nappy headed hos” type comments.”
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I don’t understand the question. There are lots of assumptions built in, many of which I simply don’t buy, so I’m not sure I’m going to be able to give you an answer that will satisfy you even if I do understand what you’re getting at. Can you simplify?
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Regarding your question in post 86, do I really have to tell you about the changes in American law and attitudes over the last hundred years that have made life easier for blacks?
.
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To refresh everybody’s memory:
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1. Asians and Jews in America perform better than whites. How can that be?
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2. What if races are proven NOT to be identical, is racism okay by you, then? (Not by me.)
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3. Olympic sprinters — how do you explain that?
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Three cheers to the first person who takes an honest stab at answering all three.
I just had a thought and I think it’s valid. When we try and understand and diminish racism against blacks, are we Exclusively Helping Black People? If we re-open [and the FBI is doing this] the Mack Charles Parker lynching in 1959 and examine the evidence, and attempt to identify the culprits, are we just belatedly furthering Justice For Blacks?
Is this all we’re doing? I don’t believe so. Does anyone remember the Salem Witch Trials wherein people were suspected of being witches and then burned at the stake on “the heresay of a neighbor”?
Fast Forward 300 Years: How about the McCarthy Communism Scare tactics of the 1950’s where, again “the heresay of a neighbor” could lose someone their jobs on the suspicion of being a member of the Communist Party? What happened to innocent until proven guilty?
Why does anyone in America, including the whitest of the white, think We’re Safe from a Nazi Police State if we allow injustice to happen to Any American Citizen? Do you know how many white Nordic Germans Hitler found “under suspicion” of not being “loyal enough” to the state and had executed or worked to death in labor camps and factories?
If we elevate all Americans to the level of being totally worthy of just and equitable treatment, we are Only Ensuring that if the Fatal Finger of Fate falls on Us, we will receive like treatment under the Constitution. We, as a nation, need to be extremely cognizant of Americans receiving Due Process else if it’s Our Turn..uh oh..guess what? It’s a thin line that separates us from chaos.
From 1951 to 1955, the FBI operated a secret “Responsibilities Program” that distributed anonymous documents with evidence from FBI files of Communist affiliations on the part of teachers, lawyers, and others. Many people accused in these “blind memoranda” were fired without any further process.[20]
The FBI engaged in a number of illegal practices in its pursuit of information on Communists, including burglaries, opening mail and illegal wiretaps.[21] The members of the left-wing National Lawyers Guild were among the few attorneys who were willing to defend clients in communist-related cases, and this made the NLG a particular target of Hoover’s. The office of this organization was burglarized by the FBI at least fourteen times between 1947 and 1951.[22]
Among other purposes, the FBI used its illegally obtained information to alert prosecuting attorneys about the planned legal strategies of NLG defense lawyers.
The FBI also used illegal undercover operations to harass and disrupt Communist and other dissident political groups. In 1956, Hoover was becoming increasingly frustrated by Supreme Court decisions that limited the Justice Department’s ability to prosecute Communists. At this time he formalized a covert “dirty tricks” program under the name COINTELPRO.[21] COINTELPRO actions included planting forged documents to create the suspicion that a key person was an FBI informer, spreading rumors through anonymous letters, leaking information to the press, calling for IRS audits, and the like. The COINTELPRO program remained in operation until 1971
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
If a white makes his/her anti-racism dependend on how People of Color act, s/he isn’t anti-racist but a bigot and nothing else… Victims of oppression aren’t obliged to educate their oppressors about how they oppress.
>
Thank you, JWBE.
>
I was hoping that I didn’t have to point out Siss’ own tender embrace of WHITE SUPREMACY (WS) and her pathetic attempt at child psychology… trying to convince me to honor the kind of white supremacy/double-standard she was advocating…. like so many other Whites I’ve come across in internet discussions over the years. Whites, even those who claim their interested in equality for all and/or fighting [anti-Black, anti-POC] racism, who adhere to this WS ethic who are too numerous to mention.
>
Somehow, I’m supposed to believe something I’m refuse to believe: that White people in 2009, after “450 years… [of] racism, legal and extralegal”, are THAT DAMN DUMB that they need POC to “educate” them about something “they do” or about things that happen in the country they live in.
>
No. I simply don’t believe that White people are THAT DAMN STUPID or THAT DAMN DUMB (or somehow incapable of educating themselves). This is 2009.
>
Also, I guess I’m supposed to disregard how:
o – “racism is a white problem, and a problem that all whites must address”
o – “The problem is WHITE RACISM and it rests squarely on the laps of the white society”
>
No, I’m supposed to subscribe to this counterintuitive, the opposite of what you said, JWBE:
“… only [the individual is] in the position to change [his/her] own mindset and to educate yourself about social and political reality”
>
For some reason, I’m supposed to ignore how Darin (and Siss) responded to all the “patient” people with “demeanors” Siss approves of. And, for the life of me, I’ll never understand the point in people like Siss trying that bs with me. Such lame and sorry fallacious appeals that are too obvious, so typical and so based on faulty assumptions, you just have to wonder…
Darin said: “And you’re not my professor. If we’re going to do it that way, then I assume you’ll be wanting a reading list from me, too. Right?”
No. But I’d really like you to see the videos on the Slavery By Another Name website.
Darin Said: “Regarding your question in post 86, do I really have to tell you about the changes in American law and attitudes over the last hundred years that have made life easier for blacks?”
You mean like the Mack Charles Parker lynching in 1959? Those people who lynched him definitely had an attitude about blacks. I wouldn’t exactly label it positive though.
I already respectfully requested you to watch the videos and then we’d discuss. Quid Pro Quo.
Actually..now that you mention it though Darin..I could be a professor. I have a BA degree in history from Cornell University and a Teaching Certificate [6-12] in Social Studies from the University of Virginia. I think that puts me on the playing field.
@Ellen, very important points you mention, I have always wondered why white Americans feel safe and also why so many can’t understand as it seems that what happens to one happens to all.
@Nquest, you are welcome
Ellen, I’ve been thinking about your post 95. You seem to think it’s some kind of coup, like I’ve conceded something by saying that the stories you relayed are terrible. Why? I’ve never said there’s been no mistreatment of blacks or even that things are good for blacks now.
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What I’m saying is this: white racism is not a particularly good explanation for blacks’ underachievement.
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That’s it. I don’t accept the framing of the question you all seem to like, that we should expect equality of outcome, and if we don’t see it, we look for a racist conspiracy to explain it. Those aren’t the only two options.
Darin –
1 – The question regarding Asians has been answered. Interesting that you throw in a new dynamic. But, Jews are white.
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2 – I’ve answered that. I think it’s besides the point. But if you insist, no.
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3 – Another new question?
~~~
Let’s see if I can simplify my questions.
1 – You said:
Disregarding the factual inaccuracies, my question to you is how does your reasoning result in racial justice and equality?
~~~
2 – You said you don’t believe any race is better or worse, superior or inferior, just different. Science aside, my question is in a country where one race has gotten to decide which traits are, at least, more valuable and honored and celebrated, how does that get us to racial justice and equality?
~~~
3 – With all the examples of continuing white racism, from studies finding irrational anti-black bias to jokes about kittens and niggers, are you suggesting that the anti-black bias whites have doesn’t effect their dealings with any one particular black person or couple? If that is what you’re suggesting, what proof do you have to support that notion?
~~~
4 – For almost 500 years, this country built its infrastructure on the basis of the supposed inferiority of people of color, particularly black people. Do you suggest that in just about 40 years, all of that legal and extralegal racism was done away with, or just enough so that racism isn’t a significant barrier? If so, what is your proof for this?
~
Now, let me jump in on the discussion about how blacks should treat white people who seek to learn more about racism. And let’s deal with some truths. Most black people I know, including Nquest, are more than happy to explain to a sincere white person how racism operates. That’s the truth. What angers us is when you try to deny the obvious or play “double standard” games as though symetry = equality. (It doesn’t.) Stuff like that. When you attempt to find ways to excuse racism or play semantics with comments. When you do stuff like that, what you’re really saying is that racism is okay because black people really are inferior/more criminal/less concerned about home maintainance. Why shouldn’t we be upset with that? How is it even fair to require us to maintain our cool while you use racist myths to justify racism? It is quite unreasonable, and even racist, to demand people of color maintain a certain decorum while you ask us (ignorant) questions. See, this game basically hasn’t changed since 1492. If we get upset, you say we’re being “rude” and so feel justified in not talking with us. But if we maintain our cool, you say racism must not be that bad cause we’re not that upset about it. While I’m glad it’s easy to follow my thoughts and comments, I decline the distinction of virtue that’s being place between Nquest and myself. Consider this: how does the “rudeness” whites may have to contend with compare to the racism people of color have to contend with? I think in the interests of moving forward to equality, white people should be able to withstand a few rude comments here and there.
>white people should be able to withstand a few rude comments here and there.
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because you mention this, one thing with what I have truly difficulties to understand is how ‘rude’, ‘offensive’ etc. is ‘measured’.
This: ‘If you don’t talk friendly/nice, I won’t listen.’
For me this is always a signal that such a person won’t listen in general and that the person is already in defense.
The content is important and not the style. And it’s also ones personal perception I think what is considered ‘rude’. I consider Darins behavior rude. Already because of his presence here and the points he makes.
The other thing I can’t deal with is that it seems to be acceptable to say all offensive, racist etc. things as long as words like azz, idiot etc aren’t used, despite the fact that offensive content packed in ‘nice’ language can be more hurtful than name-calling. Discussions are called ‘civil’, even if they aren’t, but they appear to be civil because there is no name calling.
For me a discussion is no longer civil when some participants consider other participants as inferior because of race, gender etc., and also display this attitude. People are then no longer equals with equal rights to be heard and to speak and for me such discussions are very exhausting I admit because of the condescending atmosphere such whites are able to create and also their power to distract, in reality I think it is for them only about them and getting attention and getting one opportunity after the next to insult others.
No1Kstate, only two cheers. I still don’t know your answer to the Asian question. And then, to top it off, you say “Jews are white,” but that’s not the issue. The issue is whether the supposed white racists you’ve got a bead on think they’re white. Do you think the old-boys’ network you’re describing thinks Jews are “in”?
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Regarding my second question, I think you can do better than that. You INSIST that all races are identical and that anyone who says otherwise is a racist. Yet you claim that your anti-racism does not depend on the races being identical. Well I have to say, it seems obvious to me that your refusal to address obvious, objective racial differences (e.g., the Olympic sprinters) suggests that you are heavily invested in the assumption that races are identical. Why, if anti-racism doesn’t depend on it? (Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to answer that one — I know you can’t.)
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Okay, I’ve decided that even though your answers to my questions are lame, evasive, and dismissive, I’m going to answer your question anyway. Here goes.
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Your Point 1:
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You’re right on the money that “prior degrees of belief” may not result in equality or justice. That’s why I’ve always insisted that the discussion about racial profiling STARTS rather than ENDS with the question of whether races commit crimes at different rates. As you may have gathered, I don’t care much about equality for its own sake, but it’s still a valid consideration, I agree.
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As for justice, its far from obvious to me whether racial profiling increases or decreases justice — assuming it’s rational. It results in more criminals being caught for each dollar of enforcement (good), but it also results in the perception that some races are being singled out (bad). Like I said, this is where the discussion starts.
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My argument on this thread has not touched on that at all. The only point I’m attempting to bring up is whether racial profiling is rational from the perspective of the police.
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Your Point 2:
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You think races decide which traits are valuable? Really. How do they do this? And it goes right to my Asians and Jews question. If whites somehow “decided” to value some traits to the detriment of blacks, why are they so inept as to make Asians and Jews achieve at a higher level than themselves? Are these the most incompetent supremacists ever?
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And again, I don’t think this DOES get us equality — at least not equality of outcome. I suspect races will succeed and fail and different rates and in different areas because I think they all have different genetic and cultural endowments. I’m not all that interested in racial equality, to be honest with you. I think it’s a red-herring.
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As for justice, I’m concerned with justice, which I think is only possible when you aren’t busily distributing merits and demerits according to race. What do you mean by “racial justice”?
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Your Point 3:
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I keep offering the same evidence: when you control for the relevant criteria, there’s not a difference between black and white populations in terms of achievement. You don’t LIKE my evidence, but you haven’t refuted it — except to keep saying it’s been refuted.
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Let me ask you a question: if you were convinced (I say “if”) that the black-white gap in IQ was real, would you then concede that the difference in outcomes might not be based on racism?
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Your Point 4:
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The second one, just enough has been done. Same evidence as Point 3. I’m not saying racism does not exist or that it’s not relevant or that it’s morally acceptable. I’m saying it doesn’t seem to explain the differences in outcomes.
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Finally, I’ll respond to your last point.
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I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I really don’t care about your patronizing offer to teach me if only I demonstrate the right attitude. In fact, I’m becoming convinced that in terms of the social science I am significantly more familiar with it than you are. I’m sorry to hear you’re angry with me. That’s not my intent. but I’m not all that surprised because I believe you’re making a mostly sentimental argument. As you know, I’m opposed to online-psychoanalysis, but if you don’t mind I’ll indulge in a little. What’s making you angry is partly my arguments, which you don’t like, and partly the fact that I don’t acknowledge your moral authority.
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By the way, it’s not NQuest’s rudeness that make him impossible to deal with. It’s his incoherence. The rudeness just makes it easy not to feel bad about ignoring him.
Here’s an interesting observation. I think many whites, if you asked them, would say they’re not racists. The whites I am referring to here are people who say this not because they’re “embarrassed” at the label, but because they are sincerely trying to be fair and kind to black people. I like to consider myself a member of the latter group.
However, I think many of This Group are subconsciously racist. This is a difficult problem to address. Since I discovered this site, I’ve asked myself if I’m subconsciously racist.
If I was walking down the street and saw an angry looking white man walking toward me in one instance/ an angry looking black man walking toward me in instance # 2: In which case would I feel more anxiety?
My honest answer is if I saw the black man approaching. Why? Well, that’s the issue. Maybe because I’ve seen alot of movies wherein black men are really angry at whites. Maybe because I believe Black Men Should be Angry at Whites? Maybe because I’m more familiar with my own race, and just less threatened by like/like.
Would be interested in responses here. Thanks.
In regard to post # 108: qualifier is that both men would be Strangers. I have some black male friends, as well as white male friends.
If either my white male friends Or black male friends approached me on the street looking angry, I can safely say I’d just laugh at Either of them as in,”whoa! somebody’s in a nasty mood? what’s wrong with you?” So the Friendship, and the safety factor implicit in friendship, plays into this.
@Ellen,
the tragic fact is that stereotypes are stronger than real life experiences?
I guess that most whites lost count how often they were threatend, offended, degraded, verbally attacked out of the blue by white people. And most whites can probably remember every single case where somebody Black acted that way, because it actually happens so rarely.
Sorry Darin – To answer your question about my question in comment #86 – No, just the last 40.
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And let me repeat: when we see disparities in outcome, we study to find out what’s causing the disparities. When we study to find out what’s causing the disparities, the answer becomes white racism – Nobody’s saying anything about a conspiracy but you, Darin. You can let that go now.
@ jwbe – 111 and 108 – I completely agree. I’ll also add that, I guess, when it comes to discourse that excludes name-calling, that’s what I was attempting to get at. Whites have a tendency to say some awfully racist and seem to expect black people to not respond.
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@ ellen – re 110 – Those are precisely the questions white Americans, and white Europeans for that matter, need to ask themselves.
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@ Darin – You consistently state you don’t believe racism is a good explanation for black underachievement. The fact that black achievement is much more common aside . . . Would you please explain your alternative explanations?
No1KState said: @ ellen – re 110 – Those are precisely the questions white Americans, and white Europeans for that matter, need to ask themselves.
I believe this is very true. Moreover, I feel equally comfortable teasing/laughing with/ giving a hard time/ to my black male friends And white male friends. Why? Because I trust my black male friends. I know they care about me and I feel safe with them. Plus, addressing gender, I feel safer with a black male friend than a white female friend, cause my black male friend would physically protect me if need be, in a circumstance that warranted it.
However, and this is where it gets complicated. I am more uncomfortable around strange black men than around strange white men. Cause I don’t know how the black man will perceive me. Does he see me as a friend or foe?
Again, I personally think it has alot to do with movies and the media. I’ve seen alot of movies where blacks are angry with white people and I think this has affected me. I think, “Are you one of those blacks who are angry with whites?” This is all done in a split-second. I am attempting to slow the process of what I experience.
I would surely welcome some other remarks from white readers here. What would your reactions be in a similar circumstance and why? Also, from black readers, have you noticed a split-second hesitancy [I guess this is a dumb question cause I’m sure I already know the answer] from whites maybe in the I-can-tell-this-white-person-doesn’t-know-if-I’m-friend-or-foe scenario.
By the way, it’s not NQuest’s rudeness that make him impossible to deal with. It’s his incoherence.
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Please. It’s the fact that I have all the bases covered and you simply can’t go point-counterpoint with me. Period.
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Stop making excuses and stop overtly shifting rationales…
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Earlier in this thread you thought by announcing that you were going to ignore me that I would stop responding to things you posted. Then you whined about being “spit” on and how I wouldn’t allow you your racial self-esteem tangent life-line (i.e. the pretense that “bad Black behavior” was relevant in this thread or worth dignifying).
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Just stop the lying and excuse making.
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No1KState: “Whites have a tendency to say some awfully racist and seem to expect black people to not respond.”
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That’s pretty much it because it sure isn’t anything about me being “all over the map” or “incoherent.” Especially not when Darin was whining because I was so focused that I wouldn’t allow the standard anti-black stereotyping tangent road he wanted to take. Especially not when I’ve observed several rambling posts from other people he’s had an exchange with where “all over the map” and “incoherent” has never been his response to them from what I’ve seen and, ironically, Darin hasn’t stopped responding to them.
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Darin should learn how to be honest or just go back to that line where he said I talk to him like he’s stupid. At least that might be closer to the truth.
Okay, so we’re down to two important points:
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1) What’s happened in the last 40 years to improve opportunities for blacks to the point that racism is not an important explanation for differences in outcome.
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2) What are my alternative explanations.
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I actually think the other unanswered questions (What about Asians? Would you agree racism is not important if some other explanation was proven? What about the Olympic sprinters?) are basically subsets of these.
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Let’s tackle the second one first, since the second one is of academic interest only if you accept my first point. If there is no racist conspiracy, then it doesn’t matter exactly what the changes have been, we just know they exist.
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I’ve offered my alternative explanation (which has the advantage of explaining all the relevant data — Asians and Jews, blacks and hispanics, Olympic sprinters, and even variations among whites): genetic and cultural differences that produce statistical disparities in important traits, especially IQ.
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The trouble is that you don’t like my explanation. You can’t exactly argue against it, except to say that “everybody knows” it’s wrong. But you don’t like it. I don’t really like it either, to be honest, but it seems to be true.
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Remember when I said we’re at an impasse? This is why. I refuse to consider your racist conspiracy theory until you seriously address my varying endowments argument. And you won’t consider my argument because you think it’s “racist.” So… impasse.
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I admit I’m less knowledgeable about the first one — what have been the changes in the last 40 years. But I will suggest at least three, in no particular order.
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1) A general and widespread change in the attitude of whites that racism is morally wrong. (I can’t prove this one yet, but if you disagree I’ll see what evidence I can dig up.)
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2) An increased emphasis on free-market economics, including reductions in union power and protectionism, making racist practices in hiring and contracting harder to sustain.
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3) Time passing since formal segregation practices have ended, helping to close the gaps in education and assimilation.
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No1KState, I think you’re last point is beautiful and true – black achievement IS much more common. I totally agree, and I wish you guys would emphasize that point instead of suggesting that the the deck is stacked. If most can succeed, why not all? A fantastic point.
Darin posted: By the way, it’s not NQuest’s rudeness that make him impossible to deal with.
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Post # 51 Darin said: Nquest, it’s hard to read your posts because I keep getting spit on me…
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Maybe “spit” is Darin’s code word for “incoherence.” And maybe Darin’s response in post #21 was also a statement about my supposed “incoherence”:
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You are just spoiling for a fight, aren’t you, Nquest!
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Which is funny because I merely mentioned Darin’s name in my first post here which was directed to a comment Dr. Feagin made. But Darin thought he’d be cute and figured he’d take a “dig” at me.
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So, yes, there’s obviously this expectation for POC not to respond to stupid sh*t Whites-in-denial tend to say lest we have “too many axes to grind” or some such…
But it’s clear that Darin
, but I did pick up this little beauty: “Bad Black behavior is irrelevant on a blog focused on Racism Review….” Huh. That pretty well sums it up. You’re here to talk about white racism, come hell or high water. You’re not interested in even the slightest tangent. Your focus is admirable, although I do sort of question your commitment to reality.
ding Says:
jwbe said: ” The other thing I can’t deal with is that it seems to be acceptable to say all offensive, racist etc. things as long as words like azz, idiot etc aren’t used, despite the fact that offensive content packed in ‘nice’ language can be more hurtful than name-calling. Discussions are called ‘civil’, even if they aren’t, but they appear to be civil because there is no name calling.”
I hear what you’re saying jwbe. It’s called the Southern Two Step. Southerners are great at this. They perfected the art. They can smile ‘real na-a-hce an’ jes let y’all have it!’ I don’t respect this kind of phoney crap myself. However, the older I get, the more I do see a need to keep communication civil to some extent else “communication” entirely breaks down.
And yes, you’re correct that real cruelty can be couched in sophisticated polite demeanor. Again, however, if someone is too upset as in swearing and just won’t calmly hear the other person’s point of view..I have a tendency to think he/she is upset about Many Other Things over and above the discussion at hand.
And I don’t feel I can be responsible [or should be at some point] for this person’s tantrum. Especially if you’re Trying to be decent. I mean, if you’re just egging somebody on..you deserve it. But some people have an extremely low boiling point and it’s hard, for me anyway, to have a long term relationship with people like this. They get mad at everything and it’s difficult to predict when they’ll blow.
I guess my feelings here are “Don’t be a two-faced phoney, but try to stay calm when you’re arguing a point cause too much anger equals: people stop listening.”
Re: President Obama’s World Wide Charisma.
I happen to like President Obama very much. I think he’s trying extremely hard to be fair to everybody. Of course, being president, he has to take so much sh– from everybody. I don’t know how he stands it frankly.
Plus, Michelle is the essence of class, if you ask me. Then some jerk-ff comes along and criticizes what she wore to meet the Queen of England. Who Cares? Anyway, this idiot says “you don’t meet the queen in a cardigan sweater”. Plus, apparently Michelle sort of hugged queenie and this “is just not done”. The old lady’s a figure head..nothing more! England just likes having a royal family cause it’s fun..they freely admit it. It’s not like these ‘royal’ morons actually do anything productive besides climb in and out of horse-drawn carriages while waving hankies.
Actually, I think the globe-at-large has definitely fallen in love with Barack and Michelle. Also, this is an intriguing concept, maybe it’s Because they’re Black. They are black And governing the most powerful country in the world..and this makes them unique. People seem to find them “adorable”. This is an interesting phenomenon. Europe did not seem very smitten with Laura Bush [yawn] so why so enamored with Michelle? And does race play into this? I believe it does.
Note: I intended to stop my last post after saying “too many axes to grind” or some such…
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Re: Incoherent…
As noted, I commented on something Dr. Feagin posted:
So young whites should be stopped and searched more often than blacks.
Why is that not the case?
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My response consisted of me linking to a commentary by Tim Wise regarding 4/20 celebrations which, IMO, “amplified” Dr. Feagin’s statement/question. And, outside of me referencing part of the title of Wise’s commentary and noting how it was the first time I heard of the 4/20 festivals, I said nothing about the commentary. But Darin ASSUMED that the point I wanted to emphasize or the crux of the commentary was Wise “speculating that if the 420 had been black guys the cops would have broken it up.” Not that Whites can “break the law” and feel like they have every right and privilege to not only “break the law” but have no restrictions or interference in doing so, as Wise points out in the commentary. No. The only thing Darin thought was relevant and the only thing he pretended the commentary said was “had it been black guys…” Incoherently amazing!!
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Incoherent on Darin’s part because that idea did nothing to reinforce or “amplify” Dr. Feagin’s point that “young whites should be stopped and searched more often than blacks [BUT ARE NOT].” Incoherent because Darin seemed oblivious (and willfully blind) to the fact that the 4/20 marijuana festivals were examples of Whites going unpunished for committing the types of crimes (marijuana/drug possession) Blacks/POC are routinely arrested for.
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What makes Darin’s dismissive comments about Wise’s “if it were Blacks” hypothetical — a hypothetical I never made and never made any direct references to — so weird and off-the-wall is how my next post included direct links to articles about the 4/20 festivals (i.e. no commentaries for Darin to be distracted with) and me quoting what he had to say about the role of policing drugs have to play in the Racial Profiling stats.
Darin Said:
“Ellen, I’ve been thinking about your post 95. You seem to think it’s some kind of coup, like I’ve conceded something by saying that the stories you relayed are terrible. Why?”
I thought it was a coup because you seemed to acknowledge compassion for black people and what they’ve endured. But I don’t think of it as a ‘coup’ like: ‘Wow. Checkmate. I scored a Debate Point.’ It’s more like a being gratified that you’ve seen this. Arguing for the sake of arguing is egotistical and cruel. I hope nobody here thinks I do that.
Again: please go to Slavery By Another Name Website. Take someone else’s word for it Darin, you may have all kinds of untapped realizations/revelations after you’ve seen it. Why not just look? This is confusing to me.
@ Darin – You consistently state you don’t believe racism is a good explanation for black underachievement.
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No1KState, I see this is a framing issue. And the framing problem, IMO, is all Darin’s. I’m not sure anyone is saying racism explains Black “underachievement.” For one, your question about 40 years since formal, overt state-sanctioned racism ended also seems to apply in terms of the strides African-Americans have made… strides where a lot of Black/White gaps have narrowed.
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So, really, I’d like to know how someone determines “underachievement” in that context. I’d also really like for people like Darin to actually deal honestly with the issue and face the REALITY instead of trying to use the most indirect means (how do you explain the success of Korean Americans? – for example) to support a bogus racism-denier’s argument.
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After the experience with slavery and then neo-slavery and Jim Crow… where are Black people supposed to be according to racism deniers like Darin? How, given that history and still unresolved issues just from past racism, let alone any of it today which Darin claims he acknowledges…. How given that scenario do we/he arrive at the idea that Black people have “underachieved”?
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Seriously, the way the whole question is framed is all messed up.
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Tons of scholarship say that the “promises of Brown v. Board” are unfulfilled — i.e. Black kids still receive inferior education which has a lot to do with “past” racism not being resolved. So, in that context, how have Blacks/African-Americans “underachieved”??
Ellen, why do you think I have no compassion for blacks? I have never said that. Maybe you assume that because I don’t support affirmative action or believe that white racism is the most important feature of America, I must therefore believe blacks are worthless and deserve whatever they get. No!
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However, personal compassion is a poor basis for public policy — or scientific inquiry.
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The real difference between you and me is that I believe the relevant unit for moral questions is the individual, not the group. Don’t you think?
Darin said:Ellen, why do you think I have no compassion for blacks?
1. I never said this verbatim. I just am Still wondering why you won’t visit that website. Not visiting the website shows somewhat of a lack of “wanting to understand” the misery blacks have suffered Way Over and Above Jim Crow after the Civil War. It was an eye-opener to many white people.
Darin said:However, personal compassion is a poor basis for public policy — or scientific inquiry.
2. Well, that’s a tough one for you to defend in terms of absolutes. I [officially] if you will, am in favor of compassion coupled with reason/common sense as a basis for adopting policies. We can’t operate on the level of unfeeling robots and still call oursevles humane and/or meet the needs of American citizens.
Personal compassion, as an isolated factor, Is a poor basis for public policy. The government cannot operate as a totally philanthropic organization. There’s not enough money in the treasury to do this. However, in a democracy, compassion should/must [for the definition of democracy to be met] be a component of decision making.
As far as scientific inquiry, I know that the pursuit of Pure Science demands Not Addressing ethical issues. This is true. Science for the sake of science. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
However, here we go again Darin with the problem of defending absolutes, much scientific research had its origins in Compassion. Compassion for disease victims, victims of parasites, famine, poor water supplies etc. The polio vaccine, measles, mumps, rubella, cancer research etc ad infinitum was driven by compassion as well as [lest we forget the passion behind profit.sigh.] the profit motive by the drug companies.
Darin said:
The real difference between you and me is that I believe the relevant unit for moral questions is the individual, not the group. Don’t you think?
3. Actually, I believe in both. Here we go again with the absolute thing. As a race, I think black people need a break.[Because, for Pete’s Sake, they’ve really been put through the ringer in America!] Therefore, I think affirmative action was an extremely positive policy.
Some people claim abuses have been committed with this policy..but individual cases of abuse are Committed by All Ethnic Groups of Every Single Policy the US has Adopted Since Adam and Eve. I don’t think we should point fingers at blacks, when white people commit all kinds of sneaky “maybe I’ll beat the ‘policy’ if nobody’s looking” stuff. As in AIG. How many blacks were on the board of directors of AIG?
It’s easy to blame an ethnic group for “abusing policy”. It’s called scape-goatism [I just coined that word.] Gosh, if it just weren’t for [fill in the ethnic group] think how smoothly America would run..uh..ya mean like the AIG thing?
I think blacks deserve a break. I also think blacks should be held [just like whites] individually accountable for their actions. Thus, summarily I believe in 1. giving blacks a break via laws/enactments 2. but asking individuals to also be accountable for their actions.
Now, #2 is the hard part cause it seems in America we have historically tended to judge blacks with a harsher ruler than many whites. This is Exactly where the problem lies. What constitutes Too Harsh? What constitutes Fair? Where does racism stop and individual accountability start? Well, depends on who you ask Plus it’s a very emotional issue. This is Where Our Problem Ultimately Lies.
>I would surely welcome some other remarks from white readers here. What would your reactions be in a similar circumstance and why?
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what remarks do you expect from other white readers? The intention of such questions are mostly to get confirmation: ‘Don’t you feel the same way?’
>I hear what you’re saying jwbe. It’s called the Southern Two Step. Southerners are great at this. They perfected the art. They can smile ‘real na-a-hce an’ jes let y’all have it!’
I don’t know why you have to stereotype Southerners when I talk about a quite typical white behavior, also you didn’t get what I was saying. I was responding to No1K and responding in this context
To Darin: Please read my post # 110. In this post I ask myself if I am subconsciously racist via: Would I be more/less anxious if I saw an angry white/black man walking down the street toward me. I answered I would experience more anxiety with the black man.
The thing is, I believe even whites who are trying to empathize with blacks and who would not deliberately hurt a black person’s feelings Can Still Have Racist Tendencies in a Reflex/React situation.
I think it takes guts [thank you, thank you] to say you would behave like a racist in a quick-react setting. Given this is true, should whites take this into account when we formulate “policies” regarding black Americans?
Darin, just as a side-note, without Black people the USA today wouldn’t be the nation it is. And I don’t refer just to wealth. Just think of the CRM, that the US became something like a democracy is thanks to Black people who risked and lost their lives. Not whites. Because whites were resisting, they were the ones who didn’t want a democracy and still don’t want it.
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When you want to talk about ‘under-achievement’, let’s talk about the under-achievement of whites to create a democracy. Why do they ‘have to’ stereotype PoC, why did they have to have laws that tried to prevent Black people to compete on equal footing with whites?
Why do whites even consider Black success as competition to them, what are they afraid of?
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You say you are against affirmative action which means that you support affirmative action for whites. Why do you think it is necessary for whites to receive affirmative action, I mean, it’s the year 2009 and during all this long history of oppressing others they still can’t do it without this ‘help’?
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Where would white people be today without white privilege which for example makes it possible for underachieving white males to get in top positions, just because they know somebody who knows somebody. I mean there is already with white privilege a very high rate of poor white people in America.
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My, and your IQ-thing. Obsessed with IQ are whites/Europeans, and first forgetting EQ, and second, alleged intelligence alone when you don’t respect or realize possible negative consequences is for me not intelligent. Inventing items that finally will destroy the only place humans can live is not very intelligent. But exactly this is considered by the Western world as ‘civilized’ and ‘progressive’.
Odd, don’t you think?
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@ Darin’s comment # 109 –
1 – Your question about Jews is a red herring. You didn’t ask me specifically to explain Asian achievement; but if you are, I do refer you to all the other answers admins and others have left to that question.
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2 – According to the stats, racial profiling in NOT rational. Take the Arizona example. The hit rate for whites was 34% and blacks was 38%. Only 4% difference. Yet, blacks were searched at a rate 250% higher than whites , and I forget the rate of stopping, but blacks were stopped at a higher rate, too. So more stops, more searches, and yet almost equal hit rate. Where’s the rationality in that?
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3 –
What do you mean by relevant criteria? Do you mean quetions of IQ? Or, do you mean how even when education, experience, people skills, etc is controlled for, white men still make more than black men? The question about IQ is a red herring. No one’s come up with a way to measure it that doesn’t involve some type of bias.
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4 – I don’t think the “Olympics” counts as “objective study,” that’s why I dismiss that issue. There’s no way to hold for who chooses which sports and why. And while most track sprinters are black, most swim sprinters are white. There’s no objective difference.
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5 – Yes, one race – white people, American and Europeans – have decided which genetic traits to reward. Remember this, Darin?
See, what happens in white men get a bunch of guns, kill and enslave a bunch of people, then decide that since they won the “war” that:
Note that if a Latina reaches the same conclusion as a white male, then her race and sex didn’t matter, as though white men are raceless, genderless beings. (That just made me have a whole other thought, but I’ll save that for another time.)
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6 – Darin, the last paragraph was written to specifically you. I was joining in on another conversation.
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7 – My comments seemed dismissive because I was dismissing your questions. I’d answered them repeatedly. So yes, I was dismissing the opportunity to answer them again.
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8 – Racial justice means, for example, that blacks receive the same education, medical treatment, presumption of innocence, mortgage rates, just to name a few, as everyone else.
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9 –
That pretty much sums it up, huh? I haven’t read past comment #109, so maybe later you explain what real issue is, but up to now, you have.
I’m not all that interested in racial equality, to be honest with you. I think it’s a red-herring.
>The thing is, I believe even whites who are trying to empathize with blacks and who would not deliberately hurt a black person’s feelings Can Still Have Racist Tendencies in a Reflex/React situation.
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for me, and up to now nobody could show me otherwise, there is no such thing like ‘racial empathy’, means this thought that whites can empathize with whites but not with Black people. Somebody who can’t empathize with somebody Black because s/he is Black also can’t empathize with any other person.
I guess that then empathy is confused with ‘racial solidarity’.
Just as a hint: For example, guess, how many ‘subconsciously racist’ whites can empathize with me (I am white). This “empathy” gets lost when I open my mouth, lol.
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In addition, when you can feel the humanity of somebody else, I think all else will follow. For me this is the starting point: Respect. Also respecting myself. I am not born to be a puppet for this system, just because a social construct of race considers me as white.
reply to comment # 117
Not only do I not like your explanations, I can definitively say they have been disproven.
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1 – What’s “morally” wrong is too say or do something with obvious ill-intent on the basis of race. So long as there’s no obvious ill-intent, everything’s okay with white people. That’s the reason the white public took Crowley’s side – they didn’t see any obvious ill-intent.
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2 – No it hasn’t.
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3 – The gap in wealth accululation has increased over the last couple of decades. Assimilation and equality are two different things.
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the “bonus” – Let me be clear. Black “achievement” is more common than black “failure”. That refutes your argument that blacks using racism just to explain away black failure, so please don’t try to use my own words to back up your own logical fallacy. And it seems like I’m explaining this again, so I’m going to put it in bold: When we find disparities, we do studies to discover what the problem is. The studies looking for the problem find racism. The only reason people through the years have tried to find genetic/cultural differences is to excuse racism.
@ Nquest – I agree. Thanks for fleshing that out.
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@ Ellen – Lots of enlightening research have been suggested for Darin. I’m not sure he’s read any of it.
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@ jwbe – #130 – Yeah! That’s why the big brouhaha over Sotomayor’s level of “empathy” and race.
To jwbe: “What remarks do you expect from other white readers? The intention of such questions are mostly to get confirmation: ‘Don’t you feel the same way?’ ”
Well..that Was Not My Intention. And I’m not “most readers”. For you to assume that was my intention was erroneous. Sorry. If I had no interest in hearing other people’s honest opinions about what I write, I wouldn’t stick around. Please don’t make negative assumptions about what I expect. Like I just people to pat me on the back. You don’t know me that well.
I try very hard to say what I mean, and mean what I say. I am not a game-player. People who know me well understand this. I don’t believe the Tone of my posts is in any way reflective of a person who plays mind-games.
If you would, in a similar situation, have a different reaction, I want to know why. I am interested because I think racism is an extremely complex issue. I don’t even know myself why I’d have this reaction. I am trying to do some self-examination here.
If anyone is taking a flippant attitude here, it’s you..toward my post and questions.
I said: “The thing is, I believe even whites who are trying to empathize with blacks and who would not deliberately hurt a black person’s feelings Can Still Have Racist Tendencies in a Reflex/React situation.”
I think this is a very valid observation and if whites agree/disagree I’d like to hear about it. I minored in psychology, hence my interest here. The implications of this are very far-reaching. It means that even whites who believe they’re not racists could surreptitiously be racists under various conditions. Which means, furthermore, that blacks are up against Overt as well as Clandestine racism.
jwbe said: “I don’t know why you have to stereotype Southerners when I talk about a quite typical white behavior, also you didn’t get what I was saying. I was responding to No1K and responding in this context.”
Sorry if I offended you. Maybe you’re from the south. I’m a yankee and I found alot of older Southern Whites really had the two-faced “Ya’ll hav ta com fa dinnah somtaam!” song and dance down. Yankees aren’t used to this flowery sh–. Again, we’re pretty up front, no nonsense. Different perceptions, different people.
Darin posted: “I refuse to consider your racist conspiracy theory…”
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In a word: BORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrring.
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Not only did Darin try to play the “racist” card (KNOWING HE CAN’T SUBSTANTIATE THE “RACIST” CHARGE) but he keeps floating his bogus stereotype he brought to this blog and has never found support from in any of the statements made by people who have engaged him. And, as noted, he’s used this “conspiracy” idea in a racially selective fashion — i.e. the only people he charges with subscribing to this “conspiracy” notion have been so-called “Black” people. It appears that alone would make his “conspiracy” charge “racist” in his book.
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Of course, that explains why he says it’s impossible for him to read/address my posts because that kind of bs of his gets directly deconstructed/challenged. Separate Darin from his talking points and he’s left with little, if anything to say or than some whiny “I’m going to ignore you” or “I question your commitment to reality” bs said to excuse his ineptitude/inability to engage in debate on real, substantive, core issues.
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Darin posted: I’m not all that interested in racial equality, to be honest with you.
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That was clear a long time ago, my dear transparent White Nationalist, White racial advocate/partisan friend.
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It’s also clear that you’re not at all interested in assessing whether racism exists and impacts people who are not White. Instead, you want to skip over that discussion and talk about some weird “success” formula like “success=no-racism” which is an idiotic idea, historically or otherwise. There were “successful” Black people who were alive during the slavery era and the during the era between slavery and passage of civil rights laws.
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(Also, your racist “bad black behavior” notion, a notion steeped in racist stereotypes no doubt, is itself evidence that “no-racism” does not equal “success.” That’s the very reason why you keep grasping at those “alternative explanation” straws. So DON’T TRY TO DEBATE WHEN YOU CAN’T KEEP YOUR SH*T STRAIGHT.)
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And, yes, the “success=no-racism” notion of yours is idiotic because you’re not here arguing that since some Blacks were “successful” prior to 1960 or 1970 then why we’ren’t they all successful? The only RELEVANT question is:
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WHY ARE YOU SO AFRAID OF BEING HONEST ABOUT THE RACISM THAT EXISTS? Why all the other bs (i.e. in appropriate and, as such, inapplicable and inadequate) measures of whether racism exists or remains salient? A straight line is always the direct route. So, instead of trying to find Asian American tangents or outside of the U.S. tangents, let’s see you deal directly and honestly with whether Black people (whom you seem most concerned about) experience the kind of racism topics/posters on Racism Review claim they do.
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Your approach so far has been like this: instead of you honoring what Korean/Asian Americans and what the data/facts have to say about the racism they face (let alone what African-Americans and the data/facts say), you prefer to leapfrog the RELEVANT data and come up with an absurd “success=no-racism” calculus. In fact, in none of the threads where I’ve seen you post have you EVER acknowledged beyond mere lip service that [White] racism/institutional racism exist. That is, out of all the threads I’ve seen you post on, NOT ONCE have you said “this is an example of racism.” So, yes, mere lip service acknowledgement that racism exist is easy. What you’ve found all too hard is actually admitting that even incontrivertible evidence of racism cited in threads here actually is racism and when you could outright deny racism was going on… the White racial partisan that you are had you arguing that the racism was rational=excusable=justified.
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YOU HAVE BEEN EXPOSED.
The Epidemic of Pot Arrests in New York City
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http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/141866/the_epidemic_of_pot_arrests_in_new_york_city/
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http://www.nyclu.org/node/1736
No1Kstate, I thought your point 8 was interesting:
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“Racial justice means, for example, that blacks receive the same education, medical treatment, presumption of innocence, mortgage rates, just to name a few, as everyone else.”
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I thought that might be what you meant by it. I hope we never get the the point that we’re deciding things are “right” based on proportionality of whatever racial or other groups. That sounds like a horrible place to live, and it’s a sure path to poverty and discord for any country that goes down that path. No thanks.
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Ellen, my problem with affirmative action is not that somebody might abuse it. My problem is that the whole concept is doomed to result in the kind of race-based quotas people like No1KState want. It’s poison, and I’d be interested to hear you defend your statement that it’s been “extremely positive.” A necessary evil perhaps, but not positive.
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How am I supposed to respond to your post in 110? You seem to assume that “fearing” a black man more is a) irrational, and b) racist. Well, I question the second because I completely disagree with the first. This isn’t a matter of opinion, black men commit crimes at a vastly higher rate than white men. You can try to explain it by income or education or even racism, but none of those things change the underlying truth that you’d be foolish to treat blacks and whites alike in that circumstance.
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Notice, for example, that you didn’t ask whether it’s sexist to fear a white man more than a white woman. Why not? The relevant difference is that men of any race commit crimes at a higher rate. It’s not rocket surgery.
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I already watched the videos. Listen, I’m not even close to denying or (certainly!) defending any of this behavior. It’s completely inhuman (not to mention inhumane). But what does it have to do with the point at hand? What do you think are the implications?
Darin Said:” How am I supposed to respond to your post in 110? You seem to assume that “fearing” a black man more is a) irrational, and b) racist. Well, I question the second because I completely disagree with the first. This isn’t a matter of opinion, black men commit crimes at a vastly higher rate than white men. You can try to explain it by income or education or even racism, but none of those things change the underlying truth that you’d be foolish to treat blacks and whites alike in that circumstance.”
Well, I honestly don’t want to pound on you Darin, because you get alot of that already. So I’m going to say this in a diplomatic way. It’s Simply Unjust to see a man of one color and make negative assumptions about him: Then see a man of another color and make positive assumptions about him/or at least Not Negative.
My own Personal Experience with my black male friends has been very positive. Their loyalty towards me, kindness, courteous Does Not At All Vary from my white male friends. I know for a fact, as I mentioned earlier, that they’d physically protect me if they felt I was in danger. Actually, an incident happened where one of them did.
This is why I feel there must be some surreptitious racism at work within me when I have a knee-jerk reaction of anxiety in an isolated incident if an Angry Black Man approaches me as opposed to an Angry White Man. I keep asking myself what’s operating here? And I think this is beneficial to ask such a question cause it addresses the heart of racism.
After now 3 days of ruminating about this, I’m still confounded. I maintain the media has alot to do with it. If my personal experiences tell me there’s nothing to fear, why am I afraid? I have, as mentioned, seen alot of movies portraying Some[qualifier] black men as angry with whites in general and then perpetrating acts against whites.
Even though this is cinema and nothing more, why did it have an affect on me? Maybe cause I’m female, and women in general do have a paranoia about being accosted. We know we are physically weaker than man, which translates into more vulnerable. I don’t know..I’ve still got to sort this out.
I also think it would behoove many whites to “Sort This Out” cause it is the basis of much racism to the detriment of the black community. That’s why I invited other whites to Please Comment and Tell Me Your Honest reactions in like situations. I don’t want to feel this way. It’s unfair to an entire race of people.
The bottom line Darin, and this is all I’ve reasonably got to go by: there’s no personal life experience that tells me I Should Be Afraid. All ethnic groups commit crimes. All ethnic groups have their “fine upstanding citizens” and their “not so find citizens” so to speak.
99% of the blacks I see on the street and say “hello” to and “open doors for” etc in the course of the day seem like very nice people to me! Cause they are! In the city where I live, on the surface for all intents, blacks and whites are Very Courteous to each other. In fact, we’re almost a little [I’ve noticed this] SHY with each other as in [you first..that’s ok! Oh no, you first, no problem. No really go ahead! Well thank you if you really don’t mind. etc etc] like we’re bending over backwards to show the other race “It’s ok..we can do this..we Can be Friends.”
I think this is pretty decent of blacks, given their history. I’ve also noticed since Obama was elected, this “extra courtesy” has really increased as if blacks realize that not all whites dislike them since many white people [myself included] voted for Obama. Kindness starts with..well..Kindness. And it proliferates exponentially.
Trust begets trust.I think Blacks want to know if they can trust whites. I think they’re willing to go half way..but that means whites have to meet them at the half way point! If anybody drops the ball, so to speak, we’re right back to square one. [ Again, I’m not trying to speak for Blacks here..these are just a white person’s observations.]
The blacks are doing the best they can. This is my daily observation. That’s because there’s literally millions of black people in the city where I live, so we’ve learned to get along on an overt level, and it does make a difference. It’s the clandestine racism in this city that I think whites need to spend some real time considerating.
And what is wrong with this Darin? Again, I’m not trying to be combative [cause I know you get alot of that] but you can’t mend fences if you won’t pick up a hammer. [yes, I just made that up.] Plus, I’m glad you went to the website!
Wow. I’ve never suggested “quotas” be used. As long as everyone has the same opportunities and requirements, I’m okay with that. The problem is that due to RACISM everyone doesn’t have equal opportunties and/or requirements. So would I mandate that everything throughout American life be held to “quotas”? No. But when instances like mortgage lending show drastic disproportionality, we have a problem. If in the process of finding out what the problem is, we discover it’s anti-black racism, then it’s anti-black racism. In terms of crime, it would not be “right” from an innocent person to be presume guilty based on the color of his skin. Odd that you agree with the justness of presuming everyone’s innocent until proven guilty but insist that it’s only rational for whites to fear blacks more than other whites. Which is interesting because not even holding for socioecon factors, most victims of black criminals are black. It’s much more likely that a white person would be victimized by another white person than a black person. So while you’re busy trying to get to conspicuously distance yourself from the “scary” black guy, you’re walking right into the arms of the “unthreatening” white guy you should really be afraid of. Again, Darin, don’t try to use my words to support your arguments.
@ellen
>Sorry if I offended you. Maybe you’re from the south.
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I am not talking about like you say “Ya’ll hav ta com fa dinnah somtaam!”, but about a typical WHITE behavior, this also could include you, regardless if you are a ‘yankee’ or not. As a side-note, I find it respectless to indirectly or perhaps not so indirectly, this I can’t judge as a non-American, make fun about the language/dialect of any group of people. So please stop this.
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>That’s why I invited other whites to Please Comment and Tell Me Your Honest reactions in like situations.
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I have some difficulties to understand what you mean with an angry looking Black/white man approaching you. Just coming along the street and looking angry?
I wouldn’t feel addressed and therefore wouldn’t care.
@Darin, because most crime is intraracial (white on white, Black on Black) whites would be wise to stay away from other whites;-)
But why don’t you go back to stormfront?
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But nonetheless my congrats to you: You are allowed as a white person on an anti-racist blog to continue with your racism and insulting Black people. The white racial frame works. Because if I or others started like in the other thread to use ‘not so civil language’ to challenge the racism the thread would be closed I assume like the other. So keep your language civil and hijack one thread after the next while others are obliged to ‘behave’.
jwbe said: “I am not talking about like you say “Ya’ll hav ta com fa dinnah somtaam!”, but about a typical WHITE behavior, this also could include you, regardless if you are a ‘yankee’ or not.”
Again, I’m confused. Are you saying it is “typical white behavior” to do what? Couch unpleasantness in “polite” terms? Actually, now that we’re on the subject, the Japanese have perfected this art. It’s called “saving face”. There have been volumes written about it. Since the Japanese live in such close contact with each other, they had to find a way to deliver even “bad news” in a manner that would Not start a fist fight..else it would be very difficult to maintain order on that not very small island. As long as the bad news was articulated in a non-insulting way, the recipient felt [even though disappointed on whatever level] not insulted.
Saving face and couching negativity in a polite format is considered an art form actually among linguists. It’s been around for Thousands of Years and not peculiar to whites..so I really don’t know where you’re getting this..like it’s a white thing? Not really. In ancient Egypt, when addressing the pharoah and his court, an extremely elaborate protocal was called for..even if the messenger was telling the pharoah that his enemy thought he was a cowardly scum bag.
Again, it’s admirable to fight racism, but please be accurate in what constitutes negative “exclusively white” behavior. Else, you just sound angry, swinging at empty space, and attributing Every Negative Human Trait to whites.
By the way, I got on this site because I believe racism exists extensively in America and am learning alot from these discussions, so it’s not like I disagree with your encompassing view here. Just don’t say things that aren’t accurate out of frustration and anger.
Like black people don’t say “please” and “thank you” and “excuse me”? Cause they do.
If you’re talking about being phoney..affecting sincerity when you really want to hit the person..yes, I hate this too. And I Always make fun of Pretentious Southern Whites..cause they’re comical and extremely phoney. Sorry if you don’t do this.
If you wouldn’t feel addressed if an angry black man was walking down the street toward you, that’s a good thing. I guess I’m a more nervous person than you are. I know my feelings are not justified. I just feel more nervous/uncomfortable around black men I don’t know as opposed to white men I don’t know.
I’m still thinking of other scenarios in which I have covert racist tendencies. I think the basis of these feelings, again, is I don’t know how I’ll be received. Some black people really dislike whites. I think I’m nervous about, “Are you one of those blacks who don’t like whites”.
Anyway, thanks for the comments. It was real.
jwbe said:
” I am not born to be a puppet for this system, just because a social construct of race considers me as white.”
Could you translate this into English, cause I have no idea what this means. It does sound vaguely poetic though. Almost martyrdom-ish?
Do You Think You’re Black? I mean, cause you’re not. You’re white, just like the rest of us jerks who struggle for whatever reason to understand the black experience from white eyes.
I made the point again and again that No White Can Fully Understand What It Feels Like To Be Black. Was it your head bouncing down the jail house steps on the way to be lynched in 1959 in Poplarville, Missippippi? Cause I thought it was a black man named Charles Mack Parker. I thought maybe you got confused and thought you were him.
Point is: I kinda resent your Holier-Than-Thou attitude. I mean I could understand if you were Black. But You’re Not Black! So how come you have some “inside track” on what it feels like to be black over and above me?
Here’s the Thing: You don’t know any more about what it feels like, on a Visceral Level, to be Black than any other White. So what gives you the right to call out somebody like me who is trying to read and understand the black experience? Sorry. I won’t buy this. Not from a White Girl.
CHICAGO (CN) – Wells Fargo targeted African-Americans and Latinos for risky, subprime mortgage loans with “reverse redlining” practices, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan says in Cook County Court. The 62-page complaint accuses the bank of a litany of biased and fraudulent practices during the “heyday” of subprime lending.
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Madigan says Wells Fargo charged blacks and Latinos much more for mortgages than white borrowers with the same income – and even with lower incomes.
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Madigan cites a 2007 story from the “Chicago Reporter” that reported 34 percent of African-American borrowers who earned more than $120,000 received high-cost loans from Wells Fargo, compared to only 22 percent of white borrowers who earned less than $40,000.
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http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/08/05/Illinois_Sues_Wells_Fargo_for_Biased_Lending.htm
http://chicagoreporter.typepad.com/chicago_reporter/2009/06/wells-fargo-gave-wealthy-blacks-subprime-loans-more-often-than-poorer-whites.html
Darin said: “I already watched the videos. Listen, I’m not even close to denying or (certainly!) defending any of this behavior. It’s completely inhuman (not to mention inhumane). But what does it have to do with the point at hand? What do you think are the implications?”
I think the implications are so vast reaching that it’s beyond a white person’s mind to even begin to understand. Darin, you went to that website. saw the photos. How would you feel [really close your eyes and contemplate this for a few minutes] if one of those photos had been Your Great Grandfather.
If you knew that your great grandfather had been dragged from place to place to work in horrible dark mine shafts in chains; then deprived of adequate food; then called insulting, cruel names and laughed at; then forced to sleep without a blanket in the winter; then kicked, whipped, clubbed with 2×4’s; and if he died kicked into a pine box and buried without a head stone.
Remember this is Your Family. Your great grandfather, husband of some sweet little great grandmother who baked your mother cookies and tucked her in bed at night and sang her songs so’d she’d get to sleep. How do you think this would affect you? Wouldn’t you want a little compensation to balance the equation like Affirmative Action? I think that’s an extremely viable program and has helped many blacks become a true working part of the American Business Machine. So those are my ideas regarding “the implications” of neo-slavery.
How would You personally feel [think before you reply] if you knew for a fact that one of the men in those photos was your great grandfather? I’d like to know your emotional reactions here.
Ellen, I’m glad you put that last post up, because it allows me to make point.
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How would I feel? I’d be enraged. I’d probably want to kill whoever did it. In fact, I’d probably be tempted to impute guilt for it to the entire race of those who did it. And its entirely possible that I’d want “compensation” of some kind. I’m not any different from you or anybody else here, except in one way:
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I don’t think how I “feel” about an issue is particularly relevant.
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Your own personal experience, which you talk about in your posts, is important to one person: you. It means little to others, just like my experiences should not matter to you (that’s why I never talk about my own experiences except to illustrate a larger point). What matters is what is true – and truth goes a lot deeper than what we see with our own eyes, and is a lot more complicated than what we can figure out based on our own limited experiences.
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If you want to talk intelligently about, say, reparations, it’s not enough to feel guilty and ask your representative to write a check. You have to have answers to other questions:
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What about whites who had no part in slavery?
What about blacks who had no part in slavery?
What about other races?
Would reparations actually make things better, anyway?
How will we all act the day after reparations have been made?
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These questions matter, but your personal experience is not very helpful in answering them.
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Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying your personal experience is not important at all. It is. To you. That’s as it should be, that’s what makes you (Ellen, individually) different from me (Darin, individually), and THAT kind of diversity is very good and important.
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The problem is that you can’t just scale your experience up by 300 million and think you’ve got a fix on what America is like. And no matter how hard you try, you’ll never know what it’s like to be somebody else. That’s just how it is.
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Do you mind if I offer you a suggestion? Don’t worry yourself about those “split-second reaction” type tests. They’re probably just measuring your biological reaction to traits that manifest themselves physically. You’ll naturally favor your own race because your race is a big, inbred extended family – they carry your genes. Maybe you’ll be fearful of faces that show signs of high testosterone, because testosterone makes men strong and violent. And so on. Your body is evolved to respond to those markers, and no amount of de-programming is going to change that.
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Fortunately, it doesn’t matter. “Ellen” is not the split-second reaction. “Ellen” is the process that either accepts that reaction or overrides it. There’s no morality in biological; morality can be based only on what we actually do.
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Oh, and don’t worry about pounding on me. I know I’m the away team here. No problem, but thank you.
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I’ll come back here and look for a response from you, but this thread is running pretty long. Thanks for an interesting discussion.
@ellen
>Again, I’m confused. Are you saying it is “typical white behavior” to do what? Couch unpleasantness in “polite” terms? Actually, now that we’re on the subject, the Japanese have perfected this art. It’s called “saving face”.
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from post 107 by No1K
Consider this: how does the “rudeness” whites may have to contend with compare to the racism people of color have to contend with? I think in the interests of moving forward to equality, white people should be able to withstand a few rude comments here and there.
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my response was in this context, RACISM + WHITES, to NO1KSTATE.
I am pretty sure that No1K as well as some other readers here understand what we (No1 and me) are talking about, because first, it is part of the life experience of PoC and second it is part of the life experience of those whites who challenge racism in for example discussions like this
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whatever odd thoughts come up as distraction from the topic No1 and I were talking about…
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>Again, it’s admirable to fight racism, but please be accurate in what constitutes negative “exclusively white” behavior. Else, you just sound angry, swinging at empty space, and attributing Every Negative Human Trait to whites.
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No1 and I were talking about a real life observation and experience. When talking about reality sounds angry to you, you should work on your biases and not try to diminish other people’s experiences and observations.
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>Just don’t say things that aren’t accurate out of frustration and anger.
Like black people don’t say “please” and “thank you” and “excuse me”? Cause they do.
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What have Black people saying please etc or not to do with what No1K and I were talking about? Why do you think our experiences aren’t accurate, just because you don’t get it?
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>And I Always make fun of Pretentious Southern Whites..cause they’re comical and extremely phoney. Sorry if you don’t do this.
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I take racism seriously and I am pretty well aware of the power of stereotyping and othering any other group. I am definitely not always as ‘perfect’ as I would like to be, but I have my own thoughts about white/European culture, and othering is an extremely strong element of this culture.
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>Could you translate this into English, cause I have no idea what this means. It does sound vaguely poetic though. Almost martyrdom-ish?
Do You Think You’re Black?
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Do you think there is only black and white on earth and when somebody white makes the decision trying to combat white supremacy and considering anti-racism as a way of life and not just lip-service this makes this white person black?
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>You’re white, just like the rest of us jerks who struggle for whatever reason to understand the black experience from white eyes.
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I don’t struggle to understand the Black experience, I struggle to understand my own experience within society and culture, I developed my own thoughts about this system and I have my personal reasons trying to combat it. You don’t have to be Black to see injustice – and empathy, Nquest once posted a great quote about empathy, unfortunately I didn’t bookmark it:-/
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>Point is: I kinda resent your Holier-Than-Thou attitude. I mean I could understand if you were Black. But You’re Not Black! So how come you have some “inside track” on what it feels like to be black over and above me?
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regardless what you call me, you won’t be able to deny my own reality and experiences. If you can’t endure that not every white thinks like you or has similar problems like you with the inner racism you suffer from, thats you and your problem, not mine.
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>Here’s the Thing: You don’t know any more about what it feels like, on a Visceral Level, to be Black than any other White.
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you are correct, I don’t know how it feels to be Black, but I know how it feels to be me in a society like this
Darin, slavery isn’t all that needs to be made reparations for. And reparations would certainly improve socioecon factors that lead to the crime rate and provide more money to fund better schools.
jwbe reminded me that No1KState said: ‘Consider this: how does the “rudeness” whites may have to contend with compare to the racism people of color have to contend with? I think in the interests of moving forward to equality, white people should be able to withstand a few rude comments here and there.’
Actually, I couldn’t agree more! Never said I didn’t. I just Don’t Agree [cause I think this is silly..sorry!] that “it’s a White Thing to couch insults in pretty language”. I made the excellent point that this has been done by All Cultures For Thousands of Years. Again, it’s called saving face.
I get that you’re angry with whites, but it’s just as ridiculous for people who are anti-racists [again, I count myself as one of these people] to use Whites as scapegoats for everything as it is for White People to use Blacks as scapegoats for everything. I mean, exactly what point were you trying to make? I’m Still Confused.
Are you trying to say whites are phoney and blacks are sincere..as a Race? I think whites deny racism in general. That I totally believe. As far as personally being sincere/ phoney..I think this depends on the individual.
jwbe said: “you are correct, I don’t know how it feels to be Black, but I know how it feels to be me in a society like this”
If I may say so, with all due respect, you do express yourself in a very esoteric/obsure manner. Doesn’t Everybody “know how it feels like to be me”?
Never mind, don’t bother answering. I just think I don’t understand your style of communicating. Again, I know this must sound terribly rude, and I apologize if it does. I’m just used to communicating with people who have a little better command of the language.
Obviously, your heart’s in the right place. I know that’s all that counts. I just find your style of writing a little muddled. I’m sure you don’t Intend to obfuscate..it’s just that you speak in a kind of poetic/rhetorical style that I find a little illogical and non sequitur.
According to Wikipedia: “The use of non sequitur in humor can be deliberate or unintentional. Literally, the expression is Latin for “it does not follow.”[2] In other literature, a non sequitur can denote an abrupt, illogical, unexpected or absurd turn of plot or dialogue not normally associated with or appropriate to that preceding it. It is a type of logical fallacy.”
Darin said: “What about whites who had no part in slavery?
What about blacks who had no part in slavery?
What about other races?
Would reparations actually make things better, anyway?
How will we all act the day after reparations have been made?”
You made several points Darin. But I’ll address the above tonight. Also, it was actually heartening when you said:
“How would I feel? I’d be enraged. I’d probably want to kill whoever did it. In fact, I’d probably be tempted to impute guilt for it to the entire race of those who did it.”
First of all, I think the reparations issue is extremely complicated. Congress could yell all year on this one and never even come close to a resolution. Plus, the questions you raised are Exactly the ones congressmen would argue about.
What about whites whose ancestors actually never owned slaves? What about black men who never experienced actual neo-slavery but Were subject to Jim Crow? What about whites whose ancestors never owned slaves but /who worked for/ received paychecks from/ companies like US Steel who used free black convict labor after the Civil War?
And what about dollar amounts? How is that calculated? Does the treasury calculate all the monetary value a given slave’s work was worth and then pay their progeny [300 years later] this amount? And how do we track down progeny? It’s not like careful birth records were kept on a computer 400 years ago, or even 175 years ago.
What do I believe? In a perfect world, blacks should be compensated for the horrors their ancestors suffered. In the world we live in, I think Affirmative Action is the least America should guarantee its black citizens, and absolutely Should be enforced. So, the reparations issue, as you stated it Darin [in terms of actually handing each black person a check for lost income due their ancestors] is probably never going to happen. Again, in an ideal world it would be a wonderful concept. But then, in an ideal world, Slavery Would Never Have Existed.
I don’t think any whites should whine about affirmative action. Period. I think whites are being cruel to deny racism exists. I also think whites are being unrealistic to claim “America is wide open to blacks..they just have to want it badly enough.” Not true. Racism is all over the place and the Advantage is on the side of the White Man. Asians also have the advantage of Just Not Being Black. I know they work their butts off, but they’re also not vastly different looking from whites.
I could tell you So Many instances of observing black people lately where I see racism that I never considered before. You just have to look with new eyes. This website has made me do this. Like I said in an earlier post, I’m surprised at myself for the amount of time I spend thinking about racism. It’s so obvious, but I really have blocked it out for years.
For example: I went to the bank yesterday with a friend who saw a very over weight black woman getting into a Mercedes. She looked at me like, “Wow, she’s not so poor after all.” I said, “Why are you surprised she drives a Mercedes?” She replied , “I don’t know I thought she was poor.” Then I said, “Why did you assume she was poor, because she was black and over weight?”
Well, my friend, to her credit, is a decent person and after a moment said, “You’re right. I guess I assumed she was poor because she was black And very over weight. If it had been an over weight white woman, I would not have assumed that.”
Before I discovered this website, I would have let my friend’s comment go..even though I wouldn’t have agreed with it. I just wouldn’t have Really Been Curious What Her Rationale Was For Saying This. Now I feel compelled to discover these hidden rationales.
See Darin? These stereotypes that whites carry around in their heads are Hurting Black People Tremendously On So Many Levels! That’s what I mean by this racism stuff is literally everywhere. You just have to want to see.
>Again, it’s called saving face.
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this what No1 and I mentioned is not about ‘saving face’ but (white) power
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>I just think I don’t understand your style of communicating. Again, I know this must sound terribly rude
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You don’t understand my point of view which isn’t a problem of style. Even with Oxford English you wouldn’t understand, because you don’t want or can’t. When you have a problem to talk with somebody with English as a second language, just skip my posts.
in addition ellen, for me all your antics are just a sign to avoid the topic No1 and I were talking about, for whatever reason you feel the need to consider it as something universal rather then typical for whites in denial and/or also deliberate racism.
My additional thoughts about your fear of an ‘angry looking Black men’ approaching you are even related with the topic at hand: The subtle demand of whites that Black people don’t act or speak in a ‘threatening’ way. And what is considered as threatening is perception.
>“What about whites who had no part in slavery?
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irrelevant. Reparations are paid by governments and not individuals. Furthermore, racial discrimination in the US was supported via government (laws etc.) until 1964 which means that Black people directly affected are still alive. Indirect racist laws like drug laws for example negatively impact Black people up to today.
jwbe Said: “The subtle demand of whites that Black people don’t act or speak in a ‘threatening’ way. And what is considered as threatening is perception.”
There was Nothing Subtle about my psychological Self-examination/Test. It Was A Clear Case of Criticizing Myself! I asked myself why I felt this way, already Acknowledging How Wrong It Was. Can’t you READ?
You admitted English was Your Second Language. Now I get it. You just don’t pick up on written subtleties very well. Not your fault. Wish you’d explained That In The First Place! THAT EXPLAINS WHY YOU WRITE IN A MUDDLED FASHION. Cause you really do!
But doesn’t it follow that if I have difficulty understanding the gist of your arguments, you have difficulty understanding mine? So, don’t bug me if you’re not entirely clear about What I Said. Thank you!
ellen, read more about Joe’s white racial frame, one day you will perhaps understand how it works.
You already don’t understand No1Kstate’s comment, therefore my English can’t be the reason. You can of course blame me, that’s easier for you;-)
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>I asked myself why I felt this way, already Acknowledging How Wrong It Was. Can’t you READ?
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and nonetheless, what looks ‘angry’ or sounds ‘angry’ is perception
Whoa, whoa jwbe: “Reparations are paid by governments and not individuals.” By a goverment that is supported by individual’s tax dollars. Im not sure how it works in Europe, but some of those reparations (if monetary means were used) would come from good ol’ American tax $$$. 🙂
@siss, I know that government spends tax money and also would use tax money for reparations.
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This part is irrelevant: “What about whites who had no part in slavery?
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In the same way that it is irrelevant how every individual white German acted in Nazi Germany, nations committed the crimes against humanity, directly and also via laws etc. They offered the frame in which these crimes were possible, therefore these crimes can’t be reduced to individuals. Whites benefited and acted as a collective, therefore they are also responsible as a collective.
Silent by-standers do have a part in any oppressive system, because their silence supports them.
Also for example, there is only a certain number of American soldiers in Iraq, it’s nonetheless the US as a nation that is on war with Iraq. Not just some soldiers. The soldiers can only fight there because the US makes it possible. Therefore the US is responsible, regardless if individual citizens are opposed to the war or not. Your tax money is spend on this war and nobody makes a survey to only collect the money from those who are pro war.
ellen and jwbe – Calm down, both of you. And take a deep breath. You guys are on the same team, as it were, you’re both anti-racist.
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ellen – I think jwbe’s original point, the one about the Southern accent, is that the dynamic he (he, right?) and I were discussing is something all whites do, not just Southerners.
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jwbe – I don’t think ellen intended on “othering” Southerns. I think she just wanted to demonstrate that she knew what we were talking about, that people could say very hateful things in a very nice voice.
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As for ellen’s requests for other whites to comment, I found it odd, too. But I’m going to take her word for it that she wasn’t looking for any “pats on the back,” she was just doing an unscientific survey and/or trying to point out to whites their own biases. But at the end of the day, you’re both trying to learn more about racism in order to combat it. And it seems, ellen, that jwbe sensed a hint of residual racism and was responding to that. She (or maybe, she as opposed to he?) was just trying to help you uncover your unexamined biases, not accusing you of being a racist or taking on some holier-than-thou position. So . . . lets kinda of calm down and assume the best of each other until the other person shows we shouldn’t. Now, I haven’t read through every single one of your posts to each other, just the initial ones. I think if you go back to square one, you can easily resolve your disagreement and then address whatever other conflicts arose out of arguing the first disagreement. It’s something I do myself – resolving the initial conflict first. It generally works and you discover the other disagreements are actually neither here nor there, just a result of misunderstanding.
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And as for seeing a strange man coming towards me looking angry . . . the sense of alert is the same for me, ie an angry strange man is coming towards me, let me get out of his way! I feel as though everyone’s sense of alert should be the same regardless of race. Few black people go around angry with white people just because you’re white. We don’t assume you’re “against us” just because you’re white. I haven’t made a point of noticing whether or not whites display that hesitance. Which is to say, I’m sure it’s happend, I just haven’t kept specific memories. If I do noticed it, I just try to give a general greeting and comment on something inucous like sports or the weather. Essentially, I think it’s a bit silly that any one white person would feel s/he needed to prove their anti-racism to me, a completely stranger. Just so you know, black folks don’t go around sizing up who’s a friend and who’s a foe. If anything, we take the same precautions with all whites cause even “friends” are subject to unexamined racism, subject to becoming “foes.” And we don’t walk around angry over racism. We have groceries to shop for, bills to pay, kids to chauffaur, etc. Online, if we comment on racism, it’s because racism is the topic of the thread, or we saw something racist in the post. It’s not because we got racism on our minds 24/7. In real life, you may indeed come across a black person who’s just experienced some racism and is still in that mood. That’s that individual’s feelings in that moment. Or, maybe we’re angry because, just like your boss is an idiot, our boss is an idiot. So don’t worry that we think you’re a Rush Beck acolyte. We don’t usually care – this is going to be the first and only time we cross paths if I actually notice you in the first place. Don’t be so self-conscious!
* If a black person or a group does harass you cause they’re angry at all white people – access the situation. Is there something else they want that they’re using “white guilt” to get? If that’s the case, just play cool and skoot over so they can have room to sit down or whatever. If that’s not the case and they really are angry at all white people, then ask yourself how many times in your lifetime that has happened to you and get over it.
Sorry to go “schoolmarm,” but you two are on the same side. You definitely have different perspectives, experiences and dispositions; but, ultimately, you’re own the same side!
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@ siss – You show jwbe’s error in stating that “reparations are paid by govts not individuals” by conversely pointing out that the US is “a goverment that is supported by individual’s tax dollars.” Allow me to point out that as a democracy, the individuals are the govt, right? So it’s not like we’re supporting some other entity with our tax dollars. It’s not like we’re supporting a ceremonial head of state (sorry Britain). We’re supporting ourselves. The strange thing about democracy, though, is that even if individuals die, the govt remains the same. We’re the same country with many of the same laws and certainly much of the same Constitution. All the slaves and slaveowners and whites who benefitted tangentially from slavery are dead, yes. But the govt has been the very same. A govt, by the way, that was supported by tax dollars funded by slave labor. Let’s face it, if it weren’t for the wealth the “Founding Fathers” were able to amass due to slavery, they would have never had the time or energy for some Constitutional Convention. Not to mention on the govt programs, funded in part by blacks paying our share of taxes, that built the white middle class and left black people out, ie GI Bill scholarships and FHA and VA loans. The US owes reparations for slavery, but that ain’t all. And if you feel it’s unfair for you to have to pay for crimes you didn’t commit, hey! As a group of people whose ancestors didn’t get to enjoy the fruit of their labor, a group of people who helped pay for highways that destroyed our communities, we feel your pain. . . . Reparations are due. Individuals die, not governments. People die; money gaims compound interest.
Yes, leave it to Darin to raise a series of IRRELEVANT questions. Always searching for a tangent, forever fumbling with fallacies…
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1) “What about whites who had no part in slavery?
2) What about blacks who had no part in slavery?
3) What about other races?
4) Would reparations actually make things better, anyway?
5) How will we all act the day after reparations have been made?”
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My response to 1, 2 and 3…. What about them?
Re: #4… Yes, paying reparations will make the situation for which restitution/repair is required “better.” Paying reparations will “make things better” via addressing the debt/deficits instead of allowing the debt/deficits to accumulate, compound and/or persist. That’s all it’s supposed to do.
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Now, if #4 is little more than another way of phrasing #5, then the whole basis of the questions are not only IRRELEVANT (and fallacious) but really speaks to deep-seated psychological issues of anyone who would act differently “the day after reparations have been made” (whatever that nonsense means — i.e. whatever that nonsense is based on).
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Regarding “the day after” mindset… Hmmm… When will that day be? You see, this all comes down to ignorant people basically trying to have their own facts (which is not to be confused with their right to an opinion). One can only have this concept of a “day after reparations” if reparations to African-Americans is seen as a one day event which is terribly at odds with any serious treatment/knowledge of the kind of reparations being sought.
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One last point, which sort of addresses 1, 2, or 3… It’s funny how people who were not alive or not in the country when the U.S. Constitution was drafted feel okay with accepting the privileges and rights (i.e. the protections of individual rights) offered by U.S. citizenship which also comes with all kinds of other ASSETS, material or otherwise, that U.S. citizenship affords them.
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The “whites who had no part in slavery” and “other races”, etc. ALL enjoy those ASSETS — assets which include direct and indirect benefits that came from slavery and anti-black (and anti-Black-competition) discrimination — but then want to act all brand new when its time to deal with the DEBTS/DEFICITS the nation has incurred the same way the ASSETS, call ’em opportunities (the general economic well-being of the U.S. through the years, etc.), were accumulated.
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So these dime-a-dozen (and IRRELEVANT, fraudulent) questions that Darin gave voiced to are flawed on a number of levels. But let’s get on with it: since anti-reparations people want to have veto powers over what their taxes go to, LET’S DO IT.
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Let’s have a nation-wide movement, a virtual tax referendum, that sets up this kind of individual citizen-approval-necessary tax regime and make it applicable to everything tax dollars go towards and make sure we include back taxes because there’s a bunch of things “MY TAXES” (lol), no doubt, have been used for which includes crimes against humanity which occurred before I was born and ostensibly without a single Black person responsible for or contributing to the crimes (e.g. reparations to Japanese-Americans and to German/European Jews via “Goldtrain” reparations).
Not to mention on the govt programs, funded in part by blacks paying our share of taxes, that built the white middle class and left black people out, ie GI Bill scholarships and FHA and VA loans.
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Thank you for making the case for “my” BACK TAXES.
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Let’s do this people!!
Thank you No1KState. I feel better. I’m going to read two chapters of Beloved by Toni Morrison and call you in the morning! lol
But seriously, thanks. You make me feel welcome here. Plus, I have a great post. check this out:
Crime in the News
According to Peter Dreier’s 2005 Journal of Urban Affairs article entitled “How the Media Compound Urban Problems,” a study of news programming was conducted in 56 cities which found that violent crime accounted for two-thirds of all news. While most people are aware that crime is prevalent in the media, this statistic indicates that Americas are being presented with stories that are dangerous in nature—usually about urban areas—almost any time they turn on the television, read the newspaper, or look at news online. One of the reasons this may be the case is that news “sells” when there are sensational stories of this nature. News sources claim to show stories based on the facts, but they also compete with other sources for viewership. Knowing that violent crime stories attract viewers, most news sources report on that as much as they can to draw viewers to watch their particular programs.
Crimes are not shown equally when it comes to race or social demographics. According to R. Elias’ 1994 Humanist article entitled “Official Stories: Media Coverage of American Crime Policy,” most criminals shown are minorities, which is an exaggeration when compared to the number of crimes that minorities actually commit. Additionally, when portrayed in the media, minority suspects are typically shown in handcuffs and escorted by police officers and white suspects are usually shown with their attorneys, according to Dreier.
The point is minority crime Sells! The media Is Irresponsible about this! Way back about a million of my posts ago, I gave the example of how I would feel more anxious if an angry black man were walking down the street toward me than/ angry white man.
I stated, “Maybe this is because I see alot of movies [I Know They’re Fictitious but we’re talking about reflex reaction here] about black men disliking whites and this scares me.” My anxiety would be ‘Does this black man like or dislike whites?’
I already stated I’ve never had any unpleasant experiences personally with black men. Plus, I have black male friends who are very kind to me. So what accounts for this anxiety? I don’t know. However, I think the cause is Extremely Important. That’s what I’ve been ruminating over for a week.
And please assure jwbe that looking for pats on the back are totally juvenile. I am extremely interested in this topic as a sociological/ psychological phenomenon. If I want a pat on the back I could hug my kids/cat. Please don’t put an educated woman in that dumb category jwbe. Thanks.
Read more: http://racism.suite101.com/article.cfm/stereotypes_of_minorities_in_the_media#ixzz0O78c1Fd0
@ellen
>Please don’t put an educated woman in that dumb category jwbe. Thanks.
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I didn’t say you are looking for a pat, I said that such questions are often looking for confirmation: ‘Don’t you feel the same’.
I also said, ‘I feel what it means to be me in a society like this, you only read, ‘I feel what it means to be me. The difference you don’t seem to understand and your minor in psychology and your education doesn’t help you alot as it seems.
My writing becomes ‘muddled’ in your perception, because you even don’t try to empathize with what I write.
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There is an article about stereotypes, quote:
“The success of this process of “de-automatization” comes with a few caveats, however. First, even its proponents concede that it works only for people disturbed by the discrepancy between their conscious and unconscious beliefs since unapologetic racists or sexists have no motivation to change. Second, some studies have shown that attempts to suppress stereotypes may actually cause them to return later, stronger than ever. And finally, the results that Monteith and other researchers have achieved in the laboratory may not stick in the real world, where people must struggle to maintain their commitment to equality under less-than-ideal conditions.
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Challenging though that task might be, it is not as daunting as the alternative researchers suggest: changing society itself. Bargh, who likens de-automatization to closing the barn door once the horses have escaped, says that “it’s clear that the way to get rid of stereotypes is by the roots, by where they come from in the first place.” The study of culture may someday tell us where the seeds of prejudice originated; for now, the study of the unconscious shows us just how deeply they’re planted.”
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199805/where-bias-begins-the-truth-about-stereotypes?page=4
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This is were I come from: Questioning society and with it its entire culture.
You ask where your anxiety might come from, I could give you some of my thoughts to it, but I realize that you aren’t seriously interested in it, otherwise your reactions towards my already existing posts would have been different.
@ jwbe: I Never Said:
‘Don’t you feel the same’.
I specifically said I would welcome other reactions to my “experiment”.
Sorry, once again you are itching for a fight For Some Strange Reason you target me. Why don’t you attack Some Real Bona Fide Racists who post on this site Instead of Someone who Just Doesn’t Understand your English As A Second Language writing?
By your own admission, you have a reading comprehension problem. If this is the case, then why do you dissect another’s writings if This Is Your Achilles Heal? [I assume you know What That Means..Greek Mythology? I’m beginning to realize with you, I have to spell everything out else you get Confused.]
Stick to the basic 6th grade text from the White Racists who utilize poor vocabulary and spelling. Surely you can understand Them. Then you can vent all your frustrations and criticize Them! Or are you too timid to tackle a Real Racist so you attack me?
What Is It With You? Just jealous of my Cornell Degree in History? Where did you go to college? Yeah..let me guess..you never went. Just as I suspected. And what country are you from anyway? Someone who is so Full of Criticism should be a little more self revealing. Why take stabs at me and then run and hide?
To jwbe: I refuse to respond to any more of your posts until you answer three questions:
1. What college did you graduate from [if indeed you went at all]?
2. What country are you from?
3. What is your First Language if English is your second?
That’s simple enough. Think you can do that? Thanks. It’s been real.
This is yet another reason for a Health Care System in America that is accessible to all. This would help many citizens, especially the ones mentioned in the article below.
Young Black males facing mental health crisis
Posted: Friday, September 19, 2008 12:52 pm
A significant increase in mental illness and behavioral problems among adolescent African-American males demonstrates the need for new approaches to treatment and better understanding of the complex challenges facing these youths, according to a policy paper issued by Community Voices: Healthcare for the Underserved, an advocacy group based at Morehouse School of Medicine.
The paper, titled “The Secret Epidemic: Exploring the Mental Health Crisis Affecting Adolescent African-American Males,” outlines data indicating that mental health problems are rising among members of this at-risk group, their access to treatment facilities is relatively low and treatment strategies must be revamped to address the socioeconomic issues that confront them.
“Our research found that many young Black males are treatable, but they are going undiagnosed because of failures in America’s health-care system,” said Dr. Henrie M. Treadwell, Director of Community Voices, a nonprofit seeking to improve health services and access to health care. “Our entire society feels the impact of this failure. Suicides and homicides have increased for this group, and the residual effect is impacting communities across the country. This problem must be addressed.”
Dr. Claire Xanthos, a health services research specialist, wrote the paper, which cites studies showing that Black males ages 15-19 die from homicide at 46 times the rate of their white counterparts and that from 1980 to 1995, the suicide rate for Black adolescents rose from 5.6 to 13 per 100,000 of the population.
Xanthos writes that “these figures should not be surprising since adolescent African-American males in contemporary American society face major challenges to their psychological development and well-being. In addition to dealing with the physical, mental and emotional issues typically experienced during adolescence, adolescent African-American males are confronted with unique social and environmental stressors. They must frequently cope with racism and its associated stressors, including family stressors, educational stressors, and urban stressors.”
Moreover, the paper notes that:
• Racism can affect mental health by reducing socioeconomic status, diminishing access to desirable resources and contributing to poor living conditions.
• When positive adult male role models are absent, many Black youths turn to their peers for help in forming a male identity, an adaptation that often means absorbing negative influences.
• Urban stress is an important factor in the psychological development of young Black males because many live in deprived and dangerous neighborhoods where they are exposed to violence.
• Significant problems are also encountered by Black males who grow up in predominantly white, middle-class communities where they feel distanced from the white youths and also from Blacks from poorer communities.
http://www.louisianaweekly.com/news.php?viewStory=343
>I specifically said I would welcome other reactions
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I told you my reaction, and I can see now your reaction towards me;-) You try to nullify my knowledge and my experiences.
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>1. What college did you graduate from [if indeed you went at all]?
2. What country are you from?
3. What is your First Language if English is your second?
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1. education is irrelevant when it comes to real life knowledge, most of all in a system of white supremacy where education is eurocentric.
2. Germany
3. see above;-)
jwbe said: “1. education is irrelevant when it comes to real life knowledge, most of all in a system of white supremacy where education is eurocentric.”
Wow. You really hard core. There’s still a tremendous amount you can learn from written history..including the history of minorities. But, if you want to take the stance, “I’m not reading history, and I don’t have to cause It’s All Eurocentric!”..that’s fine.
By the way, in case you haven’t read about it: the Revolutionary War ended 230 years ago, President Kennedy was assassinated, lots of Hitler’s henchmen got the death sentence at Nuremburg, Micheal Jackson’s dead, Russia is no longer Communist, the Berlin Wall’s down, nobody dances the Jitter Bug anymore, Egypt is no longer ruled by pharoahs, and Cleopatra committed suicide with an asp. Just a quickie run-down.
for ellen: because I was quoting your question with the college degree, it’s of course: school eduaction is irrelevant when it comes to real life knowledge.
You reveal a lot about yourself btw:-)
@ Ellen – You’re welcome. Now, I don’t exactly understand the problem between you and jwbe, but just so you know, I don’t want it to seem like I’m welcoming vs jwbe being unwelcoming. jwbe’s cool.