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What an educational thread.
This plays into a great many other issues, such as not being able to send one's children to the best schools, not being able to provide the best quality medical care, not being able to afford to live in neighborhoods which might provide one's children the most positive environment for future success, not being able to spend the necessary amount of time raising, disciplining, motivating, and supervising one's children required to keep them out trouble, and etca.
When one is talking about a group which tends to be somewhat disadvantaged to begin with, the damage this can cause is basically fatal to the goal of upward social mobility and material achievement.
Are they incapable? Really? You deduce that they are incapable based on outcome without looking into WHY? Incapable and unable are very different aren't they?No. However, they are, by and large, certainly incapable of providing the same kind of financial stability and quantity of care that a two parent household tends to be.
your response was a tit-for-tatRacism is irrelevant?
Did you not argue in a recent thread that modern young people were actually much better behaved on average than past generations?
What then, would you argue they have done which makes them in any way "responsible" for their current predicament?
To the contrary, culture and media play major roles. Black culture and media are worse than most, as a matter of fact.
If you had been paying attention at all, you would realize that this very culture is actually the primary thing about "Black America" that I have been arguing needs to change if African Americans are to get ahead.
However, culture can ultimately only influence behavior, not dictate it. Anyone who wishes to rise above it, can.
Just the names would suffice. I've researched academic journals plenty. I'd love to look up some information. Thanks.
I'm at work so I'll respond in detail later but no one is losing control of their emotions and I was simply pointing out the hypocrisy of those who share the same beliefs that you do.
Are they incapable? Really? You deduce that they are incapable based on outcome without looking into WHY? Incapable and unable are very different aren't they.
You sound confused. I'm not the one who has argued that anyone's lack of success is entirely their own fault
That would be you.
For one thing, I did not know that media companies, like TV networks and magazines, had a race.
For another thing, you are contradicting yourself when you claim that people are responsible for their own lack of success, but then say that culture and the media have an effect. You're trying to have it all ways at one. Try some straight talk for once
You speak about black culture and black america as if they were things entirely separate from white culture and white america, which they are not. This may surprise you, but more white people "consume" the products that black culture produces (music, clothes, etc) than black people do.
To the contrary, you are confused. I never argued any such thing.
Modern African Americans are not "victims." Frankly, the fact that so many of them insist on thinking of themselves as such is a major part of the problem where their advancement in American society is concerned.
I hate to break it to everyone, but the simple fact of the matter is that "success" isn't the kind of thing that is arbitrarily bestowed upon a person, or a people, by someone else. It is something that they have to reach out, take for themselves, and throttle into submission.
The "bleeding hearts" can bitch all they want. Nothing will change where the black community's situation is concerned until they make the decision to make it happen for themselves.
No, you never said anything like that!
Modern African Americans are not "victims." Frankly, the fact that so many of them insist on thinking of themselves as such is a major part of the problem where their advancement in American society is concerned.
I hate to break it to everyone, but the simple fact of the matter is that "success" isn't the kind of thing that is arbitrarily bestowed upon a person, or a people, by someone else. It is something that they have to reach out, take for themselves, and throttle into submission.
The "bleeding hearts" can bitch all they want. Nothing will change where the black community's situation is concerned until they make the decision to make it happen for themselves.
I have said nothing to contradict that point. :shrug:
Aside from saying that you didn't say it, you've said nothing that contradicts it
I never claimed that "anyone's lack of success is entirely their own fault" in the first place, let alone that it was any kind of universal principle.
they make the decision to make it happen for themselves.
You said that success is something that people reach out and take. Therefore, if someone is not successful, it is because they did not reach out and take it.
whose fault is it that they didn't reach out and take it? Someone elses?
If a person stops trying to be successful, then that is certainly their fault. To a certain extent, that's exactly what I think large portions of the modern black community are guilty of doing.
Again, as an Irish American, I am a "victim" (by proxy, same as you) of much the same. Do you see me complaining?
You were never enslaved. You were never faced with segregation.As a matter of fact, roughly half of the country's blacks were never faced with segregation even when it was in effect.
Because we made it happen.
They are already rising to overcome it, while African Americans continue to languish in poverty, and even backslide.
I'm sorry man, but if there's a problem here, it's not "the system." It's African Americans.
A) Blacks only "built" the South.
B) Every new immigrant group to enter the United States has had to sacrifice its original culture. That is, quite frankly, what "America" is all about.
C) Plenty of other groups have faced that discrimination, and overcome it.
The excuses will only carry you so far, I'm afraid.
To a certain extent, I think your beliefs about black people are delusional
By proxy of whom?
So how does that work? Do only half of the people in this country get excused for not having accomplished anything? Or do the other half get 3/5ths of an excuse because they were apparently orphaned away and didn't have to deal with the segregation and oppression? Lol.
Or did the Irish suddenly stop being oppressed as a group of people to the point where the cultural and social oppression of the past was no longer an issue? Think about your answer very carefully now.
Only that isn't true and you know it. There are more college educated black people today than ever in the history of this country. More blacks with HS diplomas than ever before. More black millionaires than ever before, more black CEOs than ever before. So yes, your argument doesn't really hold that much water. I'm just stating all of this before you go into the nonsense of the "BEFORE'EM BLACKS GOT THE CRA'64 PASSED!" argument.
Leaving poverty doesn't work the way you think it works. It is a slow process which takes quite a few generations and social policy changes to overcome.
Statistically that is not so. To assert that race has no bearing on many social (cultural?) trends within the US is dishonest. What other group voted 90% for Obama?
Our ancestors, obviously. You are no more a "victim" of slavery or segregation than I am a victim of the potato famine or "Irish Need Not Apply" signs.
Claiming otherwise is simply delusional.
Did the Irish suddenly stop being oppressed as a group of people to the point where the cultural and social oppression of the past was no longer an issue?
No one gets excused, because it was in the past, and therefore completely irrelevant to anything taking place today.
I was simply pointing out that the extent of the discrimination against African Americans was no where near as complete as you were making it out to be. In the North and the West, anti-Irish and anti-black discrimination were probably on about equal terms.
Again, the black community was well on its way towards the same in many parts of the country prior to the 1970s.
And whose fault is that? The poor white community doesn't punish whites for trying to get out of the ghetto. The poor Hispanic community doesn't call Hispanics who try to better themselves "Uncle Tomas". It's only the black community who turns on their own for trying to be successful.
I'm glad you basically ignored the question I asked you so you could repeat the same catch phrases over and over again. However, here it is again it's not going away:
The fact is that they stopped being oppressed and the cultural and social oppression of the past is still an issue for most Irish. How was 1960s Ireland after the British got done with it? It was in shambles. The Irish in America? Thriving thanks to the fact that they were first class citizens. Hell, the Irish had almost become full Americans by the 1930s thanks to the fact that they were white. All of which reinforces the white privilege argument. The Polish, the Germans, the Swiss all were fully integrated into American society (remember: a culture doesn't integrate itself, it has to be integrated) by the time the 1960s rolled around. Blacks were completely rejected by the same society. And this was DURING the supposed period in the 1920s where race relations mended.
During the late 19th century and early 20th century, Italian Americans were subject to racial violence. One of the largest lynchings in US history occurred in New Orleans in 1891, when eleven Italians were violently murdered in the streets by a large lynch mob. In the 1890s a total of twenty Italians were lynched in the South. Anti-Polish violence also occurred in the same time period.
Ah, so people who were oppressed and are still alive, don't get an excuse for not becoming as successful as those who've had centuries to amass wealth? LOL. You're the type that blames the rape victim aren't ya?
Only they weren't. Whereas Irish were able to own property and amass wealth countrywide (thanks to Jim Crowe laws, urbanization laws etc), this was denied to blacks countrywide. This is a fact.
WHERE? In Harlem? In one neighborhood? In the 1920s? You're simply being disingenuous now. For the most part, black poverty was levels above what it is today. Your claim that black people were coming up in America before the the 1960s just isn't founded on any kind of data but historical revisionism.
Hell, for your argument to hold water, poverty in the US would have had to gone up by 10% in the last few years instead of down 65%! The fact of the matter is that entering poverty and coming out of poverty works in generational terms. For large groups it doesn't happen over 10 years, it doesn't even happen over 20 years. It takes decades of economic development as well as economic favoritism for it to happen. The same kind of economic development that benefited the Irish must happen for African Americans, only it's not because of the pull yourselves up by the bootstrap mentality. Essentially, it works this way:
1. America got rich off black backs and their cheap labor.
2. Blacks ask for a hand in economic terms.
3. America now tells blacks to get rich on their own.
I haven't lost control of my emotions in the slightest.Well, first of all, no, I'm not "upset." Some of us are capable of looking at problems without losing control of our emotions. Foreign, I know.
OK, but that has nothing to do with the origins of PP.Planned Parenthood is subject to a lot of the same bureaucratic problems that any other large organization is, but apart from that, they're pretty straight.
Her beliefs were not "questionable", they were downright racist and abhorrent. To call them "questionable" is the understatement of the year. She was a proponent of eugenics and sought to "assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit" - the "unfit"! You can say that her "surrounding culture" wanted wanted to eliminate the unfit, but that doesn't make it right - then or now.If you're referring to some of Sanger's questionable beliefs, first of all, she's been dead for an awfully long time and we've all moved on. Second, she really wasn't any worse than her surrounding culture. If you want to use that argument, I could just as easily say we should overthrow the Constitution because the founders didn't believe in rights for the poor, women, or black people. It's equally ridiculous. We simply updated the document, like PP updated as well.
"Us folks" aren't resorting to anything and we aren't on "shaky ground". We aren't the hypocrites that "you folks" are.Myself and other pro-choicers don't support Sanger's fashionable social Darwinism by supporting the modern PP any more than an American patriot supports slavery and reducing women to legal children by going into the military. The fact that you folks have to resort to something so absurd says a lot about what shaky ground you really stand on.
I didn't change the subject at all. You showed your hypocrisy quite clearly, just as I knew you would.And the fact that you have to change the subject entirely to save some face shows that you're on even shakier ground on this particular issue (which is race in America, remember?).
I haven't lost control of my emotions in the slightest.
OK, but that has nothing to do with the origins of PP.
Her beliefs were not "questionable", they were downright racist and abhorrent. To call them "questionable" is the understatement of the year. She was a proponent of eugenics and sought to "assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit" - the "unfit"! You can say that her "surrounding culture" wanted wanted to eliminate the unfit, but that doesn't make it right - then or now.
And your analogy of overthrowing the Constitution is an odd one and one that doesn't make any sense. The writers of the Constitution created the greatest country on earth. Margaret Sanger sought to "eliminate the unfit". There is a huge difference as nothing in the Constitution, as originally written, that sought to hold anyone back. The definition of the word "person" may have held a different meaning to many back then, but again it wasn't right then and it isn't right now. My point is that PP was rooted in racism during it's creation and it's held up high on a pedestal among liberals and progressives. Drug laws were written to target drug users. To attach "racism" to drug laws is quite a stretch.
"Us folks" aren't resorting to anything and we aren't on "shaky ground". We aren't the hypocrites that "you folks" are.
I didn't change the subject at all. You showed your hypocrisy quite clearly, just as I knew you would.
I didn't say it makes it right. And my Constitution analogy is precisely on point; you are arguing that modern PP is evil on the basis of the cultural evils of a previous century. Well, I would say the cultural evils in the era of the Constitution were even worse, and far more wide-reaching. So does that make the modern Constitution evil?
I notice you did nothing at all to address any of my points.
Sanger did not create PP to eliminate black people, dude. She was a racist social Darwinist, as the majority of white people were at the time, but she was serving white women in abundance. That's like arguing -- to keep with the same analogy -- that the only point of the Constitution was to perpetuate slavery. That's absurd.
Sanger is dead, dude. People who support PP do not "support Sanger." People who support the Constitution do not support slavery and the degradation of the poor and women.
And as someone linked to up-thread, the racist roots of the modern drug war are clearly on display, and weren't even particularly secret at the time. You can deny it all you like, but it's right there.
You didn't change the topic? You went from racial issues to reproductive health care. And what's hilarious is that you lost that diversion as much as you lost on the original topic. :lol: