Racism and sins of the past

[Salty]

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Republicans like to say "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". That only works if you can obtain boots.

BUT it takes work to find those boots - which means working at it. It may not be easy - but it is possible. And it does not make any difference what color you are. Think of Loretta Lynn - born into poverty - but she found a way - and worked hard - and became successful. Some join the military - find a great job - and retire (army has a great retirement system) - find a college where you can get a scholarship -- here is a list several blacks whoses inventions made a major difference in the USA

14 Black Inventors You Probably Didn’t Know About

Bottom line - work hard!

 

[JonC]

BUT it takes work to find those boots - which means working at it. It may not be easy - but it is possible. And it does not make any difference what color you are. Think of Loretta Lynn - born into poverty - but she found a way - and worked hard - and became successful. Some join the military - find a great job - and retire (army has a great retirement system) - find a college where you can get a scholarship -- here is a list several blacks whoses inventions made a major difference in the USA

14 Black Inventors You Probably Didn’t Know About

Bottom line - work hard!

Opportunity is definitely there. But the obstacles are sometimes too much (even if it is only one's culture). I have known many (black and white) who had to leave school to take care of family. We can say things like there is always a way, but often there really is not.

People are good at oversimplification. Outlaw abortion (I agree). BUT what about feeding the non-aborted child? What about providing that child an education? What about the mother?

Politics is about easy answers to get votes. Unfortunately politics is also the venue people trust for social good.

 

[MrW]

The onus is on the blacks to improve their lot in life. Nobody told me to get a job when I got out of school--I was already looking. Blacks did well before integration--they fought for the right to quality education. Today, blacks equate education with "being white" and since Johnson's New Deal, they have generations of food stamps and welfare. They have been disincentivized. Yet as for as racism itself goes, America was doing well (except for discrimination against whites) until the obama administration. He called cops "stupid" and he turned blacks against whites and started all this hate the cops trash. President Trump didn't do that; obama did.

 

[MrW]

Many organizations are glad to help take care of unwanted babies. At the very least (if abortion is to remain "legal") a women should be sterilized after the first (or at least the second) abortion. Of course there should be no abortions--it is extremely easy today to obtain birth control, and has been for about 60 years, I believe. Back to the subject of taking care of the unwanted children. What about the unwanted adults? Do we just start shooting them in the head to get rid of them because someone doesn't want them? Where does the killing stop? God said not to do it. Not to kill the innocent. We are allowed to kill in war and in the justice system and self-defense. Isn't that about it?

 

[evenifigoalone]

Poverty can breed crime. Much of the black community is still playing "catch up" to the rest of the nation and I think that's why a good deal are poor. Also, poverty is difficult to break out of.....it affects not only your circumstances, but it affects your mind as well. Our brains tend to work against us when in that situation, as well as society in general. (That's why it's so hard for homeless people to get work, society literally requires them to spend money in order to be able to get work--need money to afford hygiene supplies and decent clothes, for one, and that is just in addition to needing a home address to get things you need like an ID.)
Poverty can be generational, too, for these reasons.

This leads to stereotypes and stuff, which our brains latch onto even if it's not intentional. It's why police look at certain behaviors and looks (for example, things that look "ghetto") and profile based on that. Even when it isn't correct to do so, or that they would be more likely to pass over white people who might be guilty.

We will always have racism and prejudice, cuz that's just how humanity is. Some of it intentional, some of it not, some of it subconscious. That doesn't mean we shouldn't examine ourselves and correct others where we can when they are wrong.

I will end off with this: black people need to know that they matter to us. When we dismiss their concerns and argue with them, we are ignoring the hurt and fright they feel at the mistreatment of police to them. This is why I wear a "black lives matter" mask, despite not really supporting the organization known as BLM.

 

[atpollard]

Poverty has nothing to do with it.

Untrue.

 

[atpollard]

What's funny is that anyone in the world outside of the MAGA cult could see this. The delusion is great.

Visit the Furniture Making towns of North Carolina and see all of the impoverished predominantly white communities that never recovered. Visit the Italian American North Ward of Newark and see the areas blighted by the black rioters of the 1960’s that never recovered. I can show you the still vacant lot that was once my uncle’s Gas Station that was never rebuilt after the riots.

It is ignorant to think that the issue is strictly racial and only impacts blacks. That is just not true. (Ask Barack Obama or Kamala Harris).

 

[JonC]

Untrue.

True.

 

[JonC]

Visit the Furniture Making towns of North Carolina and see all of the impoverished predominantly white communities that never recovered. Visit the Italian American North Ward of Newark and see the areas blighted by the black rioters of the 1960’s that never recovered. I can show you the still vacant lot that was once my uncle’s Gas Station that was never rebuilt after the riots.

It is ignorant to think that the issue is strictly racial and only impacts blacks. That is just not true. (Ask Barack Obama or Kamala Harris).

We were not talking about poverty but the results of past racism (which can include poverty).

If I die of drinking poison and you die of old age we are equally dead....but we did not get there the same way.

Poverty is a result - not the problem.

 

[atpollard]

Many organizations are glad to help take care of unwanted babies.

Not true for African-American babies in the Foster Care system.

 

[evenifigoalone]

We were not talking about poverty but the results of past racism (which can include poverty).

If I die of drinking poison and you die of old age we are equally dead....but we did not get there the same way.

Poverty is a result - not the problem.

Ok, I understand what you are saying.

I'll explain this badly, but one reason black people today are inproportionately poor is laws of the past literally kept them from living in the "good neighborhoods" where all the good paying jobs were. They were effectively forced to live in low income housing.

 

[atpollard]

We were not talking about poverty but the results of past racism (which can include poverty).

If I die of drinking poison and you die of old age we are equally dead....but we did not get there the same way.

Poverty is a result - not the problem.

Poverty has a small handful of specific causes. Lack of access to quality jobs (like when an industry dies in NC ... or all businesses flee from Detroit). An inferior education system that creates a generation unqualified for most emerging job markets (like small towns in NC and urban Detroit). Crime and Drug Abuse brought on by a culture of despair (like the whites of rural NC abandoned by the mills that went overseas and the furniture shops that shuttered their doors leaving generations unable to earn a living or move somewhere else ... or the blacks left behind in Detroit when anyone that could leave the city did leave the city making robbing tourists on the interstate the second largest employer, after the drug gangs that run the streets).

So my question to you is this: Are the blacks in Detroit really the victims of slavery from the 1860’s or the same economic forces that impoverished the whites in North Carolina?

How does “affirmative action” really help a semi-literate former crack baby with an untreated reading disorder get into college to become a nurse and get a good job in someplace where they are hiring?

 

[JonC]

Ok, I understand what you are saying.

I'll explain this badly, but one reason black people today are inproportionately poor is laws of the past literally kept them from living in the "good neighborhoods" where all the good paying jobs were. They were effectively forced to live in low income housing.

That is certainly a possibility.

There have been "resets" in history (eg. the Great Depression) that insulates today from the time of slavery in regards to oppression- the crux is not slavery but post WW2 racism.

That said, we also have to remember we are speaking of possible opportunity. As @atpollard points out, poverty is not restricted to race. Odds are most Black Americans would not have been better off had racism not been a factor. And today Black Americans enjoy many more opportunities than are afforded their white peers, which is also a type of disadvantage.

It is complex.

I mentioned elsewhere that the largest owner of slaves in SC in the 1870's was a former slave who owned 3 plantations and supported the Confederacy.

At the same time white people in SC were generally worse off than slaves. They enjoyed a "higher" status by virtue of a caste type system. But they also had no viable opportunities.

 

[JonC]

Poverty has a small handful of specific causes. Lack of access to quality jobs (like when an industry dies in NC ... or all businesses flee from Detroit). An inferior education system that creates a generation unqualified for most emerging job markets (like small towns in NC and urban Detroit). Crime and Drug Abuse brought on by a culture of despair (like the whites of rural NC abandoned by the mills that went overseas and the furniture shops that shuttered their doors leaving generations unable to earn a living or move somewhere else ... or the blacks left behind in Detroit when anyone that could leave the city did leave the city making robbing tourists on the interstate the second largest employer, after the drug gangs that run the streets).

So my question to you is this: Are the blacks in Detroit really the victims of slavery from the 1860’s or the same economic forces that impoverished the whites in North Carolina?

How does “affirmative action” really help a semi-literate former crack baby with an untreated reading disorder get into college to become a nurse and get a good job in someplace where they are hiring?

I do not believe anyone alive today is a victim of slavery.

Affirmative action is detrimental, never helpful. It devalues the people it "helps".

 

[evenifigoalone]

Poverty has a small handful of specific causes. Lack of access to quality jobs (like when an industry dies in NC ... or all businesses flee from Detroit). An inferior education system that creates a generation unqualified for most emerging job markets (like small towns in NC and urban Detroit). Crime and Drug Abuse brought on by a culture of despair (like the whites of rural NC abandoned by the mills that went overseas and the furniture shops that shuttered their doors leaving generations unable to earn a living or move somewhere else ... or the blacks left behind in Detroit when anyone that could leave the city did leave the city making robbing tourists on the interstate the second largest employer, after the drug gangs that run the streets).

So my question to you is this: Are the blacks in Detroit really the victims of slavery from the 1860’s or the same economic forces that impoverished the whites in North Carolina?

How does “affirmative action” really help a semi-literate former crack baby with an untreated reading disorder get into college to become a nurse and get a good job in someplace where they are hiring?

I think it's not slavery, at least not directly, but stuff like racial prejudice and people who had racial prejudice being the ones in the government making laws that affected black people disproportionately.

 

[atpollard]

Untrue.

Can you provide an example of a prolonged consequence of past systematic racism that applies to wealthy blacks? (One unrelated to poverty).

 

[atpollard]

I think it's not slavery, at least not directly, but stuff like racial prejudice and people who had racial prejudice being the ones in the government making laws that affected black people disproportionately.

How have those laws disproportionately affected Detroit compared to Appalachia?
The poor whites are just as poor and for all of the same root economic reasons, they just have no benefit from affirmative action because they were born with the “white privilege” to grow up below the federal poverty level, in a community with double digit unemployment and a median income close to federal minimum wage, surrounded by drugs and no opportunities.

So explain to me what makes poor blacks different from poor whites?
What do poor blacks and rich blacks have in common?

 

[JonC]

Can you provide an example of a prolonged consequence of past systematic racism that applies to wealthy blacks? (One unrelated to poverty).

Racism itself is a consequence of past racism not related to poverty. You have instances where Black men are stopped and searched because they are suspicious (they are Black), like Salehe Bembury who was stopped, searched, and detained for jaywalkingin LA (he is a Versace executive who stopped by the LA location for business).

It is not about poverty, although often poverty is the possible result.

We have to keep in mind we are speaking of possibilities- what might have been, not what would have been. That is why reparations is such a silly idea (there is only a possibility of a wrong to those alive today, and many have actually benefitted from the past wrongs at least in some form).

 

[evenifigoalone]

How have those laws disproportionately affected Detroit compared to Appalachia?
The poor whites are just as poor and for all of the same root economic reasons, they just have no benefit from affirmative action because they were born with the “white privilege” to grow up below the federal poverty level, in a community with double digit unemployment and a median income close to federal minimum wage, surrounded by drugs and no opportunities.

So explain to me what makes poor blacks different from poor whites?
What do poor blacks and rich blacks have in common?

I'm talking specifically about housing laws that specifically barred black people from living in "good neighborhoods", like actually targetted them directly, and effectively kept them from the good jobs.

 

[RighteousnessTemperance&]

Racism itself is a consequence of past racism not related to poverty. You have instances where Black men are stopped and searched because they are suspicious (they are Black), like Salehe Bembury who was stopped, searched, and detained for jaywalkingin LA (he is a Versace executive who stopped by the LA location for business).

It is not about poverty, although often poverty is the possible result.

We have to keep in mind we are speaking of possibilities- what might have been, not what would have been. That is why reparations is such a silly idea (there is only a possibility of a wrong to those alive today, and many have actually benefitted from the past wrongs at least in some form).

Racism is worldwide, an inherent aspect of the human condition, and profiling is a legitimate law enforcement tool that can be abused.

Just how poor, compared to counterparts in Africa, are these blacks who have not benefited from the past wrongs in America?