Big_Stacks"I don't worry about hittin' power, cause I don't give 'em nuttin' to hit." 4,670 Posts
Hey,
Also, I need to clarify something regarding Black folks. Most stand-up, hard-working Black folks I know, across economic strata, do not condone the wilin' you see in city urban areas (even in Milwaukee). I say this to address some of Rockadelic's arguments earlier, as if it seemed "shocking" that a Black man doesn't like when some of his people are on some wile-out bullshit, and wishes to avoid it. Chris Rock even covered this topic in his stand-up act. There is a segment of White folks that seem to generalize the idea that Black folks support some of their "folks'" fucked-up behavior. To the contrary (in contrast to that "snitchin'" bullshit in the media recently), good Black folks can't stand that shit and shake their heads in disgust in response to it, and I am one of them. Hence, my ability to relate to White folks' fears about racially-integrating suburban schools, given the fucked-up behavior they hear and read about occurring in urban schools. The point, however, is to generalize such thinking to all poor (and often dark) folks is wrong, as it is to exclude such folks from getting a quality public education, which is a legal right.
As I now am learning tons about the public school system by way of my ladyfriend getting hew PHD in educational policy, it's mindboggling how fucked it is for the disenfranchised. But isn't that why the mainstream spend so much time hanging on every move Paris makes?
what about the execution of mental incompetents? I thought that was a mistake. It was contrary to the AEDPA and went beyond the Ford standard. Sympathetic facts.
what about the execution of mental incompetents? I thought that was a mistake. It was contrary to the AEDPA and went beyond the Ford standard. Sympathetic facts.
***sorry about that***
Looks like you got a new buddy, Peter. Since you and Dolo had your big break-up.
what about the execution of mental incompetents? I thought that was a mistake. It was contrary to the AEDPA and went beyond the Ford standard. Sympathetic facts.
***sorry about that***
Looks like you got a new buddy, Peter. Since you and Dolo had your big break-up.
Stacks, I appreciate your comments and your candor. And I agree that poor education is one of the contributors to Urban Blight. And I'll even agree that Urban Blight mostly effects various minorities more than it does white folks. But here is where I have a problem......there are more white people who have dropped out of public school, are on the unemployment line or collecting welfare than there are black people. Less than 50% of the U.S. population live in Cities. The Trailer Park is the white version of "the projects" and they experience the same economic, generational and educational problems as those minorities suffering in Urban Blight.
The argument can certainly be made that blacks and probably Hispanics are proportionally worse effected by our much lacking educational system. But how can you call such a system, who by numbers have a majority of white victims, racist?? The answer is simply an economic one. Poor people don't get the same education opportunities as rich ones. And that includes your potential children, and the upper middle class black folk's children that Fatback mentioned, having better educational opportunities than BOTH the poor black kid from the ghetto AND the kid who's Mom & Dad sling Meth from the Trailer Park. This isn't racist, it's reality. Classist - Yes Racist - No.
Stacks, I believe that you and I are likely to have something in common along these lines. I'd bet that somewhere in your family history, whether it is you, your father, grandfather, etc. someone was able to use the poorer quality education they were offered to climb out of the economic doldrums and acheive your current "middle class" stature. I believe this is/was acheived with hard work, good parenting and a self pride that drives people to achieve such goals. My grandfather (and 7 of his siblings) all dropped out of school at 10-12 years of age to pick tobacco in North Carolina. I have plenty of relatives who have never been able to overcome that economic and educational dilemna and they have passed it on to what has now become three more generations. I escaped it by having parents who not only valued education, but spent their time helping educate me and as a result I was the first family member to EVER attend college.
The education problems poor people face today can be and has often been overcome. And while a big chunk of the problem may land on the shoulders of our government and their educational system, I believe the BIGGER chunk lies at the feet of poor or non-existant parenting. It doesn't cost a penny to read all the books in the world. Ask ANY teacher and they will tell you that more often than not, when an open house is held and parents can come to the school to meet with the teachers, the kids who's parents NEED to be there, never are. I'm confident that even in a school suffering from terrible Urban Blight like the one Motown teaches in, any student who comes there with the parental motivation to learn, can do so. And I bet he can give countless examples of this happening with success stories as the result. A bad parent is a bad parent regardless of their race or color, and bad parents are most likely going to raise bad kids.
I would like to see the word and the act of racism eliminated from our society sometime during my lifetime. I believe that one big step towards that goal is to properly define the term and not use it when it isn't appropiate. Even though an issue may have a big impact on certain minorities, that in itself does not make it a racist issue.
There is a certain segment of white folks, young and old, who have sort of "moved on" from thinking about race. I encounter it every day in the people who are moving into this neighborhood, they don't seem to think anything of completely remaking the city in their image and they seem not to care that Manhattan is less diverse than ever. The people and businesses of the old Lower East Side are either ignored or (sometimes worse) infantilized as lifestyle accessories: "gritty, chic" remnants that add patina, and go along with the $400 bag, the little dog, and the boyfriend with a scraggly beard and beer gut.
The figure about NYC schools in Kozol's lecture really struck me. I guess it makes sense... white people in this city send their children to private, alternative, or Catholic schools (in order of how much money they have) while Blacks, Latinos, and (increasingly) 1st gen Asians fill the public schools.
How do you deal with a problem when half the people refuse to acknowledge it? This court decision brought that to a point. How could you possibly compare these cases to Brown? It's insane.
There is a certain segment of white folks, young and old, who have sort of "moved on" from thinking about race. I encounter it every day in the people who are moving into this neighborhood, they don't seem to think anything of completely remaking the city in their image and they seem not to care that Manhattan is less diverse than ever. The people and businesses of the old Lower East Side are either ignored or (sometimes worse) infantilized as lifestyle accessories: "gritty, chic" remnants that add patina, and go along with the $400 bag, the little dog, and the boyfriend with a scraggly beard and beer gut.
The figure about NYC schools in Kozol's lecture really struck me. I guess it makes sense... white people in this city send their children to private, alternative, or Catholic schools (in order of how much money they have) while Blacks, Latinos, and (increasingly) 1st gen Asians fill the public schools.
How do you deal with a problem when half the people refuse to acknowledge it? This court decision brought that to a point. How could you possibly compare these cases to Brown? It's insane.
i dont think its that half refuse to acknowledge it, as much as that the half stuck with it have no recourse to do anything about it.
but distinquishing between racial discrimination and economic discrimination is a necessity.
Can one make that distinction if one of the reasons a majority of blacks (as well as other races) were brought to this country in the first place for economic reasons??
but distinquishing between racial discrimination and economic discrimination is a necessity.
Can one make that distinction if one of the reasons a majority of blacks (as well as other races) were brought to this country in the first place for economic reasons??
There is a cruel irony in The Chief Justice's reliance on our decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294 (1955). The first sentence in the concluding paragraph of his opinion states: "Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin." This sentence reminds me of Anatole France's observation: "[T]he majestic equality of the la[w], forbid[s] rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." The Chief Justice fails to note that it was only black schoolchildren who were so ordered; indeed, the history books do not tell stories of white children struggling to attend black schools. In this and other ways, The Chief Justice rewrites the history of one of this Court's most important decisions....
The Court has changed significantly since it decided School Comm. of Boston in 1968. It was then more faithful to Brown and more respectful of our precedent than it is today. It is my firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today's decision.
but distinquishing between racial discrimination and economic discrimination is a necessity.
Can one make that distinction if one of the reasons a majority of blacks (as well as other races) were brought to this country in the first place for economic reasons??
but distinquishing between racial discrimination and economic discrimination is a necessity.
Can one make that distinction if one of the reasons a majority of blacks (as well as other races) were brought to this country in the first place for economic reasons??
Yes....in order to progess we have to.
Treating the two as completely independent of one another is how a lot of people try to ignore racial disparity. We are talking about racial segregation - it's nothing new that poor people get less. They will always get less. The reason we're in this current situation is because now, racial segregation and discrimination is being justified through economic darwinism.
but distinquishing between racial discrimination and economic discrimination is a necessity.
Can one make that distinction if one of the reasons a majority of blacks (as well as other races) were brought to this country in the first place for economic reasons??
Yes....in order to progess we have to.
I think the point being made though is that economic discrimination in America has long been inseparably intertwined with racial discrimination. The two are fundamentally related to one another. Black people, as a whole, did not get into the economic state they are in without a component of racism attached to it. One big, big reason why rich people stay rich and poor people stay poor has to do with legacies of privilege and there is certainly a racial component to how that plays out, though, as Rock notes, it certainly affects many poor whites too.
However, just because there are many poor whites and blacks doesn't level the playing field in terms of the causes or effects of economic discrimination and any set of policies undertaken would have to address those differences rather than treating the underprivileged like some monolithic group.
I think JP really hit part of this on its head. For whatever the successes and failures of the Civil Rights Movement, it really pushed race to the forefront of American media and federal politics. In the intervening years, there is quantifiable evidence that shows the ways in which we've actually BACKSLID on racial progress but there isn't a general consciousness around this. People assume - wrongly - that "things have gotten better" simply because we don't have segregated bathrooms anymore (though apparently, segregated schools are no big deal). I'm not saying there hasn't been progress but it's modest compared to what remains to be done but what's happened since the 1980s is that the general perception around race has become entirely focused on individuals: see Don Imus! What's been lost is looking at racism as a systemic problem vs. a personality one. It's stunning really. Nowadays, we think racism is about how people act towards one another instead of thinking of it as a structural problem and really, the latter is where change needs to happen.
But related to this: I see the Supreme Court decision as rather inevitable given the basic weaknesses in a lot of affirmative action and desegregation policies to begin with. I support them in concept but I never thought they were politically feasible policies to pursue in the long run. Court challenges have been coming since the 1970s - this latest one is simply one in a long line - and rhetoric is really on the side of the colorblind faction even though I find the whole concept rather disingenuous. However, it's easier to explain to someone, "no one gets preferences" and then point at quota-style systems for critique then explain to someone, "ideally, we shouldn't have preferences but sometimes they're necessary to redress past wrongs." Emotionally, I just think it's a lot harder to get the public behind the thinking of the latter and I think that's why affirmative action and desegregation mandates - in the forms they've typically taken - were unlikely to survive assaults by legislators and lawsuits.
but distinquishing between racial discrimination and economic discrimination is a necessity.
Can one make that distinction if one of the reasons a majority of blacks (as well as other races) were brought to this country in the first place for economic reasons??
Yes....in order to progress we have to.
How? Clearly those who were the workforce for the tobacco, steel, railroad, etc. companies don't benefit like the owners of those companies in the short of long term. How does one create the "this is because of systemic racial bias but that isn't?"
To progress, the USA really needs to do more. Affirmative action is so watered down, it's beginning to loose its effectiveness. Also, we've clearly re-segregated our schools.
I'm in favor of reparations. This is the philosophical underpinning of our justice system. When you do something that is wrong, you don't just stop. You have to stop AND make up for it.
People will always harbour racist attitudes, I believe it's natural and most are unwilling to keep them in check. I keep mine in check with this idea: All people share more in common than their differences. Therefore, it is my choice to focus on the differences or what's common. When I focus on what's common, I am so much happier.
Big_Stacks"I don't worry about hittin' power, cause I don't give 'em nuttin' to hit." 4,670 Posts
I would like to see the word and the act of racism eliminated from our society sometime during my lifetime.
could this be realistically possible if it's never acknowledged to be in practice in the here & now?
Of course not.....but distinquishing between racial discrimination and economic discrimination is a necessity.
Rock,
You can't disentangle race and class. This is exactly the argument right-Wingers try to advance, that it's not about race. Quite frankly, the argument is bullshit. Most reasonable people know race and class are highly intercorrelated, and decades of research (even my own) shows as much. For example, correlations from a table of my research (with two racial dummy codes contrasting Blacks and Hispanics with Whites in terms of income):
Income 6. Black -.21*** 7. Hispanic -.18***
***p < .001. Black (0=White, 1=Black); Hispanic (0=White, 1=Hispanic). The negative correlations mean that Blacks and Hispanics have significantly lower income than Whites. These figures were drawn from a national Gallup poll sample. Also, this sample was restricted in terms of education-level (mostly folks with some college education and up), and significant racial-ethnic differences in income still showed up. So, the correlations are even stronger in data (like the Census) that draw from people with a greater variety of educational levels. Education-level and income are strongly and positively correlated, as most sociology types know.
And yes, I came from poor descendants who got their Booker T on (pulled themselves up by the bootstraps). You sound like my mom, asking what is wrong with "poor folks." I don't condone bad behavior, but as I tell her, systemic barriers make it HARDER for poor folks to succeed, starkly reducing their probabiliy of doing so. It's easy to judge from afar, but if put in bad conditions, we too may behave badly. Doesn't make it right, but it is what it is. Inequality of education will certainly perpetuate social stratification by race, and somehow, I think the powers-that-be want it that way. Unfortunately, they don't realize that if "people who look like me" had an equal opportunity at a top-notch education, they would be less likely to rob people who look like "the powers-that-be." Ensuring equal access to good education for ALL would serve the greater good for everyone. Ethnocentrism (and fear) among the elite doesn't allow them to process accurately this notion. Sociological research has illustrated the negative economic prosperity-crime relationship decades ago.
Comments
Also, I need to clarify something regarding Black folks. Most stand-up, hard-working Black folks I know, across economic strata, do not condone the wilin' you see in city urban areas (even in Milwaukee). I say this to address some of Rockadelic's arguments earlier, as if it seemed "shocking" that a Black man doesn't like when some of his people are on some wile-out bullshit, and wishes to avoid it. Chris Rock even covered this topic in his stand-up act. There is a segment of White folks that seem to generalize the idea that Black folks support some of their "folks'" fucked-up behavior. To the contrary (in contrast to that "snitchin'" bullshit in the media recently), good Black folks can't stand that shit and shake their heads in disgust in response to it, and I am one of them. Hence, my ability to relate to White folks' fears about racially-integrating suburban schools, given the fucked-up behavior they hear and read about occurring in urban schools. The point, however, is to generalize such thinking to all poor (and often dark) folks is wrong, as it is to exclude such folks from getting a quality public education, which is a legal right.
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
As I now am learning tons about the public school system by way of my ladyfriend getting hew PHD in educational policy, it's mindboggling how fucked it is for the disenfranchised. But isn't that why the mainstream spend so much time hanging on every move Paris makes?
***sorry about that***
Looks like you got a new buddy, Peter. Since you and Dolo had your big break-up.
i dont get it?
I appreciate your comments and your candor. And I agree that poor education is one of the contributors to Urban Blight. And I'll even agree that Urban Blight mostly effects various minorities more than it does white folks. But here is where I have a problem......there are more white people who have dropped out of public school, are on the unemployment line or collecting welfare than there are black people. Less than 50% of the U.S. population live in Cities. The Trailer Park is the white version of "the projects" and they experience the same economic, generational and educational problems as those minorities suffering in Urban Blight.
The argument can certainly be made that blacks and probably Hispanics are proportionally worse effected by our much lacking educational system. But how can you call such a system, who by numbers have a majority of white victims, racist??
The answer is simply an economic one. Poor people don't get the same education opportunities as rich ones. And that includes your potential children, and the upper middle class black folk's children that Fatback mentioned, having better educational opportunities than BOTH the poor black kid from the ghetto AND the kid who's Mom & Dad sling Meth from the Trailer Park. This isn't racist, it's reality. Classist - Yes Racist - No.
Stacks, I believe that you and I are likely to have something in common along these lines. I'd bet that somewhere in your family history, whether it is you, your father, grandfather, etc. someone was able to use the poorer quality education they were offered to climb out of the economic doldrums and acheive your current "middle class" stature. I believe this is/was acheived with hard work, good parenting and a self pride that drives people to achieve such goals. My grandfather (and 7 of his siblings) all dropped out of school at 10-12 years of age to pick tobacco in North Carolina. I have plenty of relatives who have never been able to overcome that economic and educational dilemna and they have passed it on to what has now become three more generations. I escaped it by having parents who not only valued education, but spent their time helping educate me and as a result I was the first family member to EVER attend college.
The education problems poor people face today can be and has often been overcome. And while a big chunk of the problem may land on the shoulders of our government and their educational system, I believe the BIGGER chunk lies at the feet of poor or non-existant parenting. It doesn't cost a penny to read all the books in the world. Ask ANY teacher and they will tell you that more often than not, when an open house is held and parents can come to the school to meet with the teachers, the kids who's parents NEED to be there, never are. I'm confident that even in a school suffering from terrible Urban Blight like the one Motown teaches in, any student who comes there with the parental motivation to learn, can do so. And I bet he can give countless examples of this happening with success stories as the result. A bad parent is a bad parent regardless of their race or color, and bad parents are most likely going to raise bad kids.
I would like to see the word and the act of racism eliminated from our society sometime during my lifetime. I believe that one big step towards that goal is to properly define the term and not use it when it isn't appropiate. Even though an issue may have a big impact on certain minorities, that in itself does not make it a racist issue.
Not if their kids are going to charter schools or Bronx Science-type spots...
Transparent
Ugh. I still dont get it?
could this be realistically possible if it's never acknowledged to be in practice in the here & now?
wow. i didn't think he was so lame that he would reregister, but i guess i was wrong. He really is that lame.
Of course not.....but distinquishing between racial discrimination and economic discrimination is a necessity.
The figure about NYC schools in Kozol's lecture really struck me. I guess it makes sense... white people in this city send their children to private, alternative, or Catholic schools (in order of how much money they have) while Blacks, Latinos, and (increasingly) 1st gen Asians fill the public schools.
How do you deal with a problem when half the people refuse to acknowledge it? This court decision brought that to a point. How could you possibly compare these cases to Brown? It's insane.
i dont think its that half refuse to acknowledge it, as much as that the half stuck with it have no recourse to do anything about it.
Can one make that distinction if one of the reasons a majority of blacks (as well as other races) were brought to this country in the first place for economic reasons??
Yes....in order to progress we have to.
Racial/Economic/Sexual discrimation overlap.
Treating the two as completely independent of one another is how a lot of people try to ignore racial disparity. We are talking about racial segregation - it's nothing new that poor people get less. They will always get less. The reason we're in this current situation is because now, racial segregation and discrimination is being justified through economic darwinism.
What about when economic discrimination is the result of racial discrimination. How do you propose that we untie this knot?
I think the point being made though is that economic discrimination in America has long been inseparably intertwined with racial discrimination. The two are fundamentally related to one another. Black people, as a whole, did not get into the economic state they are in without a component of racism attached to it. One big, big reason why rich people stay rich and poor people stay poor has to do with legacies of privilege and there is certainly a racial component to how that plays out, though, as Rock notes, it certainly affects many poor whites too.
However, just because there are many poor whites and blacks doesn't level the playing field in terms of the causes or effects of economic discrimination and any set of policies undertaken would have to address those differences rather than treating the underprivileged like some monolithic group.
I think JP really hit part of this on its head. For whatever the successes and failures of the Civil Rights Movement, it really pushed race to the forefront of American media and federal politics. In the intervening years, there is quantifiable evidence that shows the ways in which we've actually BACKSLID on racial progress but there isn't a general consciousness around this. People assume - wrongly - that "things have gotten better" simply because we don't have segregated bathrooms anymore (though apparently, segregated schools are no big deal). I'm not saying there hasn't been progress but it's modest compared to what remains to be done but what's happened since the 1980s is that the general perception around race has become entirely focused on individuals: see Don Imus! What's been lost is looking at racism as a systemic problem vs. a personality one. It's stunning really. Nowadays, we think racism is about how people act towards one another instead of thinking of it as a structural problem and really, the latter is where change needs to happen.
But related to this: I see the Supreme Court decision as rather inevitable given the basic weaknesses in a lot of affirmative action and desegregation policies to begin with. I support them in concept but I never thought they were politically feasible policies to pursue in the long run. Court challenges have been coming since the 1970s - this latest one is simply one in a long line - and rhetoric is really on the side of the colorblind faction even though I find the whole concept rather disingenuous. However, it's easier to explain to someone, "no one gets preferences" and then point at quota-style systems for critique then explain to someone, "ideally, we shouldn't have preferences but sometimes they're necessary to redress past wrongs." Emotionally, I just think it's a lot harder to get the public behind the thinking of the latter and I think that's why affirmative action and desegregation mandates - in the forms they've typically taken - were unlikely to survive assaults by legislators and lawsuits.
How? Clearly those who were the workforce for the tobacco, steel, railroad, etc. companies don't benefit like the owners of those companies in the short of long term. How does one create the "this is because of systemic racial bias but that isn't?"
I'm in favor of reparations. This is the philosophical underpinning of our justice system. When you do something that is wrong, you don't just stop. You have to stop AND make up for it.
People will always harbour racist attitudes, I believe it's natural and most are unwilling to keep them in check. I keep mine in check with this idea: All people share more in common than their differences. Therefore, it is my choice to focus on the differences or what's common. When I focus on what's common, I am so much happier.
Rock,
You can't disentangle race and class. This is exactly the argument right-Wingers try to advance, that it's not about race. Quite frankly, the argument is bullshit. Most reasonable people know race and class are highly intercorrelated, and decades of research (even my own) shows as much. For example, correlations from a table of my research (with two racial dummy codes contrasting Blacks and Hispanics with Whites in terms of income):
Income
6. Black -.21***
7. Hispanic -.18***
***p < .001. Black (0=White, 1=Black); Hispanic (0=White, 1=Hispanic). The negative correlations mean that Blacks and Hispanics have significantly lower income than Whites. These figures were drawn from a national Gallup poll sample. Also, this sample was restricted in terms of education-level (mostly folks with some college education and up), and significant racial-ethnic differences in income still showed up. So, the correlations are even stronger in data (like the Census) that draw from people with a greater variety of educational levels. Education-level and income are strongly and positively correlated, as most sociology types know.
And yes, I came from poor descendants who got their Booker T on (pulled themselves up by the bootstraps). You sound like my mom, asking what is wrong with "poor folks." I don't condone bad behavior, but as I tell her, systemic barriers make it HARDER for poor folks to succeed, starkly reducing their probabiliy of doing so. It's easy to judge from afar, but if put in bad conditions, we too may behave badly. Doesn't make it right, but it is what it is. Inequality of education will certainly perpetuate social stratification by race, and somehow, I think the powers-that-be want it that way. Unfortunately, they don't realize that if "people who look like me" had an equal opportunity at a top-notch education, they would be less likely to rob people who look like "the powers-that-be." Ensuring equal access to good education for ALL would serve the greater good for everyone. Ethnocentrism (and fear) among the elite doesn't allow them to process accurately this notion. Sociological research has illustrated the negative economic prosperity-crime relationship decades ago.
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
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Month Daily Avg Monthly Totals Hits Files Pages Visits[/b] Sites KBytes Visits Pages Files Hits
Jun 2007 10096 8036 844 415 11886 29537432 12052[/b] 24486 233050 292784
May 2007 8160 6247 765 356 15088 169949831 11040[/b] 23733 193664 252979
Apr 2007 8904 6951 766 348 13804 177027973 10450[/b] 22982 208551 267124
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Feb 2007 8517 6901 889 398 11490 162204589 11148[/b] 24902 193229 238493
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No. 7: 858 0.29% http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php
Holy fuck did you site something properly. Color me shocked shitless.