I haven’t forgotten about you phil, our discussion had just become long so the quote trees are hard to prune, and your post requires much thought and time for me to compose a response.
[quote]phil_leotardo wrote:
After 40 years of voting Democratic, especially in presidential elections, I think it’s more become part of their racial consciousness. Besides, what other ethnic group bloc votes or votes solely on economic issues, especially when economic interests usually vary along classes within any ethnic group?
Are you old enough to remember for example when people like Spike Lee were calling black conservatives like Clarence Thomas racially denigrating names like “uncle Tom”?
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part of the reason I don’t buy this is it just doesn’t fit the historical pattern, blacks have changed their votes as historical circumstances have changed. you yourself pointed this out to me. So why all of a sudden are these views entrenched? I just don’t buy it, sorry.
I don’t remember Spike Lee’s comments but I’ve read of them and that sentiment is not uncommon. Black racialism might occur more often than other kinds of racialism because of the disproportionate racism directed against the black community in the past. it’s not unreasonable to assume that over time this racialism will lessen. Look at how polls after Obama’s election showed the scales falling off of cynical black people’s eyes, saying “hey, maybe this America place isn’t so bad after all”. It takes time but this racialism will die down to the levels of other races over time and as racism croaks out its last death throes.
[quote]phil_leotardo wrote:
More like 5% actually which is a joke really.
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I won’t quibble with you about the number but its 5% more than I’d like to see, and I’d argue that conscious admission of racist attitudes is very different from the incidence of racist behavior (as seen by my links below… I’ll get to that later in the post I guess)
Furthermore, 5% of the white population is a HUGE number on the order of 10 million or so people which is close to the number of illegal aliens in this country (or is at least no less than half that number) Breitbart News Network or Numbers of illegal aliens in the U.S. by Fred Elbel - THE AMERICAN RESISTANCE FOUNDATION - Information on illegal immigration numbers
While 5% of the black population is tiny. Heck even if a majority or all blacks were racist they’d only outnumber racists 2:1 at best, and that’s lowballing with 5%.
[quote]phil_leotardo wrote:
The fact that he was black AND Democratic was a huge plus for black Americans. I don’t remember any blacks honking their horns in cities across America when say Bill Clinton was re-elected.
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I won’t deny that his being black was a huge plus, I just don’t see that as awful. It’s an objective sign of a barrier being broken in American politics and in American life. It’s a first. It’s not just “root for the black guy no matter what”, it’s “hey he has the same policies as me, he’s black so he’s likely to look out for me and be sensitive to my issues in a way white politicians often are not, and he’ll also break down the door to the previously all White president’s club.” Doesn’t seem so awful to me. Sure SOME people voted for him only because he’s black, but there are idiots of every race and persuasion and polling shows there weren’t many people voting solely on race for any reason.
It’s not exactly hutu vs tutsi here. We’re not in danger of a tribalized/racialised government. You have to give some time for historical racism to die off and the resultant black racialism to die down.
[quote]phil_leotardo wrote:
Black racialism is a concern to me because it seems to be acting as arm to the Democratic party. It is also a concern to me, because as a general rule I have found that many racialists are also racists.
Many black people are racists. Many white people are unaware of this fact because they live in suburbs or rural areas in America. If you live in the city like I used to, hearing words like honky, cracker, devil, white boy,etc. thrown at you is not that uncommon. Neither is more vicious verbal or physical harassment or assault uncommon. Especially if you have to take public transportation through largely non-white areas. Speaking of this,I wonder about you and what your background is?
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Many white people are racists. Blacks are aware of this, but the whites themselves often aren’t.
I’m black, 22, with a BS in Biology from Cornell University and come from the suburbs around NYC (after living in Harlem and Queens) but I live in OH now. I’ve always been surrounded by non-blacks and I’m really as far from “typically black” as you can get, if I do say so myself. I wear argyle for christsakes. I’m more often accused of being an oreo than of being a black racialist, so this line of questioning is highly amusing. I doubt my race came as a surprise to you, so there’s your confirmation.
What is your background? (I’m not going to make any predictions here but I bet I can guess)
[quote]phil_leotardo wrote:
Why do you attribute biological racism to all of those problems?
I used to hear in places like NYC and Philadelphia, for example, black people complaining about not being able to get a taxi cab and crying racism because of it.
Well, for one, besides maybe a few Russians, most of the Taxi drivers in both of those cities are even white to begin with.
They have a dangerous job. If they pick up the wrong person or group of people, they could get robbed of their days hard work or even killed. This is why only usually foreigners are desperate enough to even take the job in the first place.
So if a taxi driver passes by a bunch of young black men who embrace the hip hop culture that glorifies violent crime, drug dealing and the like, what the fuck do they expect? Is it that they are passing a well spoken black guy in a suit, or some thug in his designer jeans hanging down over his exposed underwear wearing a gold chain?
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Often black men who are well spoken are passed by in taxis. You’re sticking your head in the sand if you don’t know that. It’s gotten better in recent years:
I’d note that taxis aren’t even an issue I raised. Where’s the discussion of the substantive issues that affect career and freedom and home?
And it’s not only whites who are racist against blacks, other races (and blacks themselves) can hold racist attitudes against blacks and many do.
[quote]phil_leotardo wrote:
The police have an even more dangerous job; one wrong decision and they again can get maimed or killed in a second. If they are looking for more blacks than whites in a city, it is because more blacks than whites or say Asians are the ones committing the majority of the crimes there. And often violent crimes too. So again, they are dealing with potentially very dangerous people. Police forces in cities too are also fairly integrated. The juries that try people in New York City are also fairly well integrated and in some areas, exclusively minority dominated.
Are the sentencing disparities because of economics? I.e. poor black kids are stuck with a public defender, as opposed to an OJ Simpson with his dream team? Or is it because repeat offenders get longer sentences? Or is it, as you suggest, a few closet racists here waiting like cheetahs in the dark to spring on prey…
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It’s nothing as silly as cheetahs waiting in the dark. It’s ingrained biases that people often aren’t aware of that take their toll of black lives over the years. If you believe black males are dangerous you are that much more likely to pull the trigger on an innocent black man. You don’t have to be david duke or consciously racist at all for these thought patterns to affect you. See Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell or even http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/dangerdoublestands.html
[quote]phil_leotardo wrote:
The common thread here is the existence of a violent black uunder class in American society. Any honest and open discussion of race in America can’t happen without it. And I am not sure if this is the right place to have it either…
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wait what? where did this come from?
[quote]phil_leotardo wrote:
Also what does it mean to “talk black”? Does Obama “talk black”? How about Condi Rice? Or are they “talking white”? How about the white kids around here that use ebonics? Are they talking white or black? Again this is culture.
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If you’re interested in the linguistic characteristics of talking black: African-American Vernacular English - Wikipedia might be one place to start. I’m not a linguist so I can’t rattle them off the top of my head, but instinctively many of us know what they are. We know this because the accuracy of identifying a voice with a race was something like 75%+.
I’d agree that some of this is culture but the cultures are associated with a certain race more often than not. We can tell black names from white names and black voices from white voices. The cultures are attached to races, so cultural discrimination manifests as biological discrimination. I would argue that cultural discrimination is only marginally better than racially discrimination anyway since many cultural markers like religious ceremonies and weddings and names and accents and such are all morally neutral. It’s only the negative traits that should be discriminated against–like laziness, anti-intellectualism, or propensity to violence.
I do see what you’re getting at: cultures are mutable, why not change so you can accrue the greatest advantages? Well, some aspects of black culture (if I’m permitted to simplify in saying there’s only one black culture) do need a change–like anti-intellectualism or the high rate of babies born out of wedlock. But I see no reason to change black speech, names, food, music, and culture just to get rid of some problems. That’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater and smacks of 19th and 20th century White Man’s Burden style imperialism.
[quote]phil_leotardo wrote:
As for non-mainstream names, well if you are black or white and give your kid a strange sounding name, yes it might hurt them in the workforce. So does using any kind of slang in, say an interview.
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Why should discrimination against the names of a certain culture be the same as slang? Slang and ebonics I understand, but why should having a funny sounding name be an impediment in an interview? I’m not asking why it is one, I’m asking if that’s right to you–regardless of if racism is involved.
And make no mistake, racism is involved. If something like 70% of the country is white, then non-white names will be funny sounding and this aversion to funny sounding names will manifest as racist biological discrimination, even if it is only risk aversion. Racist intent matters, but so does the result; and the end result here would be racist discrimination against blacks, regardless of how benign the intent.