Senate "Race" Relations (was "U.S. Society and Black Men")

I like that you are more patient with me. I appreciate that. A lot.

Believe it or not I understand your point. I know how and why you think the way you do. I can follow the thought. But I don't agree with it.

We've elected a black man president twice. I think just the opposite: individuals may still not have come to terms with racism. But the country as a whole has.

 

I know you believe that. There's just a massive amount of evidence to the contrary. I highly recommend reading Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow." You can find it here:

https://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow...d=1469645709&sr=8-1&keywords=the+new+jim+crow

There is a direct line from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration. There are endless damning statistics that show how we favor whites and treat blacks very differently (in a negative way). What you see are the exceptions to this, and you mistakenly apply them our society in general. What you don't realize, I believe, is that for every one black man and woman who makes it, there are dozens who didn't, having dealt with circumstances that would be scandalous if they had happened to whites.

 

I seriously wonder why so many of you bother.

 

"the new jim crow" is excellent. i've also really gotten a lot out of bryan stevenson's work, including his book "just mercy" and also his ted talk https://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice?language=en]here[/url].

 

I bother with J-Rod because, while I disagree with nearly everything he posts, he's at least more respectful than most (definitely more respectful than Beezer), so I feel better engaging with him than I do with others that I frequently disagree with. Sometimes it's like talking to a brick wall, but I'd rather argue with a brick wall than a Beezer.

 

A beezer is a curious species, prone to aloofness.

 

whatever happened to beezer?

 

Banned for being a dick in the homosexuality thread.

 

4eves?

 

because it's absolutely necessary.

and J-Rod is at the very least respectful.

 

Hopefully.

 

And to be fair, he is actually interested in hearing other viewpoints. He's just very wedded to his own as politics is identity politics and challenging notions on equality, justice, gender and race (to name a few) challenge notions on his identity.

People like beezer or wannabee are just hateful, spiteful little trolls who hate themselves and get off on being hated by us. J-Rod's not that guy and there's a reason engaging with him is worth it - I've known him a long time and I promise he's actually changed over that time.

 

//appreciates the irony

 

Commenting on the title change,

What does everyone mae of the term "race relations" in general? For most of my adult life, I've regarded it
as a polite euphemism for black politicians to use for "racism" to not draw the ire of whites, since racism is basically
a one-way street in America (explained more eloquently here.)

Then I watched The People vs. OJ Simpson and the O.J Made in America. Basically, in every "racially divisive"
episode in our country's history, while you can quibble about tiny details, it's always racist whites who are the
"villains" of the story. Well, in this case, not. A black man killed a white woman. His black lawyers
cynically played the race card (in the truest sense of the term, way before that became a hackneyed slogan for racist whites),
and millions of blacks did a touchdown dance over a double murderer being acquitted.

A more recent equivalent is probably the initial Mike Brown narrative, which has been totally exposed as fraudulent, but still,
even though the "responsibility" ratio is probably something like 95-5 instead of 100-0, "race relations" seems like way
too much of a euphemistically irenic term.

 

Slavery is a terrible thing. We all know this. However, I honestly think that its unfair to tell white people that they are the only one who benefited from slavery. Why? Because when one says that they're making it sound like white people should feel guilty 24/7 over slavery. It's like lecturing the Germans by telling them they should feel guilty 24/7 about Nazism.

Slavery is terrible, Nazism is terrible, but we can't change the past. Instead we must learn from it. However, I would never go up to some random white person and tell them that they benefited from slavery or that they should check their privilege. That would make me look like a complete jerk. Besides let's be honest here: how many white people actually know about white privilege? I mean I actually didn't know about white privilege until after the Mike Brown and Eric Garner incidents.

Bill Maher, one of my favorite comedians, once said that there are two types of white people that he can't stand: white people who despise everyone who isn't white and white people who despise themselves just because they are white. And you know what? I'm on the same page. I can't stand bigoted white people but I can't stand self deprecating white people either. They both suck as far as I'm concerned.

I think white people can stand up for other groups without putting themselves down in the process or being a complete snob about it. I'm not accusing anyone here of harboring this mentality but I have seen it elsewhere and it's annoying.

I mean take cultural appropriation. Remember when university students in Canada cancelled a Yoga class because they claimed that it would offend/oppress people from India?

Ah yes because people from India, a country where rabies is still a serious public health concern, are overly concerned about a bunch of Canadians doing Yoga. /very heavy sarcasm

 

I don't think anyone should feel guilty because of their ethnic or racial identity. But I think people should recognize the idea of privilege. It has nothing to do with making them feel guilty; it's just about information and helping people think about their lives in different ways. And it's about more than just racial privilege. There's also social privilege. I mean, let's face it; as an American, I'm incredibly privileged, even though I am part of a minority group. I don't feel guilty about that, but it does move me to think about how I should act in relation to those in third world countries and in grinding poverty of the kind I've never known. There are also a lot of people more privileged than me. Me saying that isn't an attack on them. I recognize my own areas of privilege; I think all people should do the same.

 

Despite having a pretty clear cut case of a black man having killed a white woman, the police and DA office participated in needlessly attempting to frame a man for a crime he probably committed instead of giving him a fair trial, thus reinforcing the idea in every socially conscious person's eyes that a black man can't get treated fairly by the justice system. This led to the events that played out and a trial becoming a referendum on the police, the justice system, and race relations in general. You tell me where the cynicism is, because to me it's awfully looking like a bunch of racist ****heads in the justice system couldn't even give a guilty man a fair trial and had to cynically pull **** regardless.

 

Likewise, the protestors in Ferguson were always crystal clear that Michael Brown's death was only symptomatic of a vast pattern of abuse and racism committed by city officials against its black citizens. Subsequent federal investigation uncovered a vast pattern of abuse and racism by city officials against its black citizens.

I fail to see what your problem with this is.

 

Are you responding to JediVision, or Vivec?

 

Both, in a way.

JediVision held up the OJ Simpson trial and the Ferguson protests as two examples of concern about race relations gone awry. Lord of Vivec offered a defense of the first. In complimentary fashion, I offered a defense of the second.

 

Just one more example that BLM is not this nationalized, central movement but a very loose network of affiliated groups:

A local Ohioan BLM group just endorsed Rob Portman:

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/new...-black-lives-group-endorses-portman/87734308/

 

Did you actually watch that? It's mostly black people admitting that the Japanese see them as a novelty, give them jobs just because they're black, think they're cool and know TuPac just because of their race...

How is that anything but the kind of 'positive' racial stereotypes that Asians in America face?

Most of their positive comments about Japan (less violent crime, not worried about being shot) apply to anyone living there. In fact, many white Americans experience 'positive' racism there, too. Simply put, they just find Americans in general a bit novel.

This positivity doesn't extend to actually fully welcoming black people (or in fact, any non-ethnically-Japanese folks as there's a lot of racism towards Japanese people of Korean descent) into Japanese society as equals. It ignores the fact that just a few years ago, a Japanese woman raised entirely in Japan who won Miss Japan was resounding rejected by the public because her father was black. They said this made her not Japanese.

All this only to say... Japan has its own unique set of racism and racial challenges. Let's not hold it up as a beacon of some kind of non-racist society.

Hmm... I want to dig into this. Because my immediate reaction to this was that it is absolutely false that being a white female in that bracket is easier than being a male of most non-white ethnicities in that same bracket.

While I fully acknowledge that being a black man in any income bracket is more difficult than being a white woman (since cops and dangerous racists don't know your income or education level and can be dangerous to you anywhere in the country)... are we sure this is true with reference to men of all other races?

Maybe we need to see stats. Maybe my instincts are wrong. But I may have been born near that bracket (at least for my region... Certainly not for the coastal regions though). And I can't help but feel that an Asian American or even perhaps Hispanic man born into that same bracket might have an easier path than myself, or indeed any woman in any bracket except maybe the very top.

I say this mainly because 1) Education levels being equal, all men earn more money on average for the same jobs as all women, as far as I know and 2) All women have at least a 1/4 chance of being sexually assaulted, which can majorly damage and derail your life and 3) day to day racism those men face is probably about on par with day to day sexism women face and 4) women still have a huge burden of childcare and healthcare that isn't adequately funded or protected.

I'm not trying to be flippant. I really want to know if the stats say I'm wrong on this. I just feel that perhaps men are underestimating just how difficult it can be to be a woman in the US, even if you've had educational opportunities...

Ugh... Just *sigh*. I think it's pretty clear from my posts here over the years that I'm totally sympathetic to the complaints about police brutality and murders. I'm on board with protesting peacefully and asking for fair trials and aggressive prosecution of criminal officers. Absolutely.

However, BLM keeps giving me reasons to facepalm and feel they are just actively working against their own interests even in some cases like this.

For one thing, BLM has the same problem as Occupy Wallstreet: no specific leadership and no specific demands. The 60s civil rights movement would not have had the successes it did if it were like BLM. People have to know what specific policies you're protesting against.

But for another thing... If getting officers in your community to talk with and get to know black people in their community so they can all see each other as humans and hear each other's perspectives isn't part of your agenda, then I'm sorry, but what the hell are you doing?

Wait, wait.

Are you seriously trying to push the absurd narrative that they actually tried to frame him? There are so so many things wrong with this.

Not least of all that if they were trying to stack the deck against him, why the hell would they have had the trial in downtown when they were under no obligation to and could have gotten a conviction much more easily in Santa Monica?

But also, please watch the ESPN doc. And please watch the scene in the People vs. OJ Simpson where Marcia explains how to plant the blood evidence, Furman would have had to basically have psychic knowledge of everything that was going to happen once he got to OJs house.

There are plenty of things wrong with how the LAPD handled the case. Tons. But the framing theory, if you watch the doc and hear from his defense team, was pretty clearly a clever fabrication by the defense.

Mostly, the LAPD were just entirely incompetent.

Not to mention, several jurors in the doc basically admitted that Nicole being white actually made them less sympathetic to her than if she had been black.

Now I feel like I am about to go full tilt into all the crazy things about racism in America that case brought to light.