A white guy speaks on racism

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Of course that's BS. Of course. Only someone heavily indoctrinated in Catholicism believes like that; my family may be Catholic, but I am not. Suffering does not always 'build character.'
However, sometimes suffering does explain people's bad actions. Sometimes context even excuses people's bad actions. There's a reason killing a person is not always 'murder in the 1st degree' without exception: sometimes it's involuntary manslaughter, sometimes it's self defense, sometimes it's any of half a dozen things that all mean that one person was responsible for another person's death. Looking at the context of an individual's actions makes for a more just world, not for a less just one.


Here is where I disagree with you. When someone says, "That's not fair," the response should not be, "The world isn't fair, just deal with it."
When (for example) a black woman gets charged with manslaughter because a drunk man ran over her child as she was walking her family across a (mostly empty) freeway, because she couldn't afford a car and the only bus stop was on the other side of the freeway from her home, and the (white) drunk driver gets off scott-free, the response should not be, "Deal with it." The response should be, 'Call the DA responsible and make them ashamed of what they did.' Saying 'Deal with it' changes nothing. Saying 'Deal with it' perpetuates the injustice. Unless, of course, by 'deal' you mean something other than 'grin and bear it.' Sometimes 'dealing' can be taking action that the other guy doesn't necessarily like: calling the ACLU or the SPLC. Naming and shaming. Demonstrating.

I agree with you that black culture has some issues that perpetuate the injustice that black people deal with - disrespect for learning and science, for example, and being too tolerant of deadbeat parents. But the idea that black people can fix all, or even most, of the injustices visited upon a black child all by themselves, when they have so few resources to fall back on, is not only cruel but deliberately unjust.

Of course that's BS. Of course. Only someone heavily indoctrinated in Catholicism believes like that; my family may be Catholic, but I am not. Suffering does not always 'build character.'
However, sometimes suffering does explain people's bad actions. Sometimes context even excuses people's bad actions. There's a reason killing a person is not always 'murder in the 1st degree' without exception: sometimes it's involuntary manslaughter, sometimes it's self defense, sometimes it's any of half a dozen things that all mean that one person was responsible for another person's death. Looking at the context of an individual's actions makes for a more just world, not for a less just one.

I certainly agree with you in regard to the DA. If I were more old-fashioned, I'd say hang him at high noon in the public square.

This actually brings up something concrete for discussion, which is neglect of public infrastructure in "black" areas. There is a stretch of road in South Raleigh that gets the use of a four-lane interstate and is even called a "busy commuter route" in discussions about getting some resurfacing done in the (more visible and mostly white) downtown area, but it's more like a gravel pit than recently paved asphalt through the "black" part of South Raleigh (which is like saying the "white part of Vermont"). It's really pretty horrible, and my s.o., who is a long-time citizen here, has explained to me that South Raleigh is not only a "black" part of town, but it is the historically black part of town. The people who live there probably still know what "rabbit town" means, simply because that's all South Raleigh ever was.

I know it's tempting to think that the legislature has failed here so badly because of racism, but the problem doesn't come down to something as simple as "racism." If racism is involved, it's only utility to the central problem. If you want to know the truth, it comes down to the fact that the General Assembly is the only legal public bordello in North Carolina. If you don't have money to hire a lobbyist in North Carolina (in normal states you call them "prostitutes"), I hope you give good head.

Fortunately, there are actually some pretty good mostly "black" neighborhoods in Raleigh, and there are plenty of mixed areas. One "black" (the pc term is "mixed-income") part of Raleigh that is seeing some relatively recent attention is so-called "Olde East Raleigh."

http://raleigh-consult.limehouse.com/po ... 6630591009

My neighborhood actually is mixed, in the color sense. I wouldn't have it any other way, actually. The local boys here aren't like those hopeless inner-urban guys. These guys actually go knocking on doors harassing people for work, and I wonder if they even bother putting in applications at established business venues. What they're doing probably brings in more money than they would get out of hourly wages and better security. The leader of one of the local rake posses was talking last year about saving up for a truck, and it really is looking like what might have turned into a gang problem is developing instead into a successful enterprise. The black family that lives next-door are like extended family for me and my SO. This area has in general made me a firm believer in integration.

Therefore, if you want to talk solutions, something that I would put in a vote for would be to bust up economically homogeneous neighborhoods. I don't like them. I don't like neighborhoods full of nouveau riche yuppie scum who put up those unsightly "security gates," and I call them "upscale white trash." I call the places where they live "white ghettos," if you want to know the truth, just with a different set of social ills (arrogance, hostility toward anything different or out of the ordinary, conservatism, how are these any less of a social ill than crime or poverty?).

Yeah, that's more what I meant. What I meant by "deal with it" was that the grim reality of life is that there is injustice in this world. Dwelling just on what white people do to keep black people down only serves to maintain the external locus of control.

It's one thing to have the realization, "part of my problem is that the world is simply unfair." Okay, that's part of the problem. I acknowledge that. I tell other people that. However, if there is a white person in your life who is determined to be a racist cracker, you're not going to change that person. That person is an as*hole. A guy who is determined to prove that he can be an as*hole, if he wants to prove that there is nothing that anybody can do about it, he invariably will. I know these people. They are the true vermin of society. If you want to pick up some placards and picket in front of this guy's house telling him we'd all be better off if he coughed and died, I'd join ya just out of spite, and I wouldn't stop until the skunk rolled over with heart failure from prolonged stress (it is my sincere hope that this is what ultimately killed James Forrester). Given the established and acknowledged fact that the unfortunate existence of racist (and homophobic) vermin is an irremovable obstacle in your life, short of driving them into the grave, what can you do? Look at the list because it's a long, long list. Let's not limit ourselves.

Sorry, but a bunch of inner-urban black trash are not going to listen to a powdered-ass white boy coming into their neighborhoods and telling them how they should live their lives. They'd kill me, and I would deserve it.

What might actually change their attitudes would be a strong insurgency of angry black moms lobbying the media to suppress imagery that perpetuates bad behavior in their own offspring. They have a right to be angry, and they should be angry. Not at the white people but at the black fools in the media who are instilling extremely negative and destructive imagery in their kids' minds. They ought to be thirsting for blood over that crap.

The only role that I can play in it, though, is to continue my support for socio-economically integrated schools and neighborhoods. I could take my NC State education and choose to spend part of my time tutoring the next-door neighbor's daughter, who wants to go to the same college herself one day. I might even direct her mom, when I take over the Sunday slicks, to take her daughter over to pay a visit to my calculus instructor, who would be a good role model for the little girl being a black lady herself. I haven't been sure which way to go on that, so I've been looking into different programs offered by the university that might be more appropriate.

I know there is a lot that I can do and should do. I'm DOING a lot of it. What I'd like to see, though, would be for her to join a "Pissed-Off African-American Moms Association" aimed at destroying media moguls who are setting a bad example for their children. I think that's a perfectly sound suggestion.

As Shirley Sherrod pointed out, being poor is as important a factor (if not more so) than race. The point of the OP was partly that there are factors that have established that, statistically, black folks are more poor than white folks, and there are many factors in play to keep that the case.


Sounds like a good idea. I'd actually mix it up further and relax zoning so that there can be some types of business mixed in with neighborhoods - or that the 'neighborhood' and 'business' blocks were smaller and intermingled - so that people could do things like walk to their local market past houses with many different types of people inside.


This is true. What is also true, though, is that white folks recognizing that they have an easier time getting a job from the as*hole just because they're white can help to solve the problem rather than perpetuating it. Just having non-racist white folks on the same page wrt. privilege and the humanity of black folks can go a long way. Words may not break anyone's bones, but because we're human (therefore strongly social - even us aspies) they can still hurt. Likewise, words and recognition can heal.


What gave you the idea that I was asking for anything like that?


What makes you think that they aren't?
What makes you think that, just because the media doesn't show that black folks are upset about media portrayals of black folks, said black folks are not actually upset? The media caters to what sells, just like the politicians.


I disagree. You can speak up. Next time your white co-worker makes some joke about black people, or makes some statistically-inaccurate assumption about racial profiling, or whatever, you can speak up. When your tea-party neighbor makes a crack about the President being illigetimate due to having been 'born in Kenya,' you can ask him why he won't accept a long-form birth certificate that multiple experts have said is valid. You can check yourself for stereotypes, and try to correct them when they occurr. I have them too - we all do - but we can try to be better people, and we can try to make the world a better place.

Why can't we just speak up when lies are treated as truth? A person who knows the truth and remains passive when lies are passed as if they were truth is as guilty as the liar.

The problem with trying to eliminate "stereotypes" altogether is that there remains a basis for many of them, and many of the criticisms against the black community are legitimate. The issue is not the general truth on which the stereotypes are based but on the failure to graduate from a general understanding to applying it to particulars.

For example, it would be true to say "many black people live in ghettos." However, this begs the questions, "which black people?" and "which ghettos?" Does Barack Obama live in a ghetto? Is the area near 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue then a ghetto? If I wanted to be more specific, I would say, "Southeastern Raleigh is home to one of the oldest African-American communities in the Triangle area. Because of severe disrepair in this area and high crime rates, it should be a focal point for urban rehabilitation efforts."

Therefore, the problem is not the specific stereotypes but the way we use general ideas. If we use general ideas to form judgments, especially snap judgments, we are moving in the direction of prejudice and ignorance. If we are using general ideas to help us know the right questions to ask, we are making progress.

Been there.

the men were jerks. The girls were awesome

@ W. Delaney, did you notice that I said, "statistically inaccurate"?
I think that you know what I mean at this point. Short version: don't be an as*hole, and don't stay silent when other people are as*holes around you. Don't pretend that you got everything you have solely because of your qualifications, and don't pretend that poor black people lack what you have solely because they're incapable of working/stupid/whatever.

LKL, you might find it easier to converse with me constructively on this topic if you were to take into account that I have decided to be pleasant about it. I know that this is unusual for me, but the fact of the matter is that I'm not finding much fault with your point of view here. My last post here was an attempt to say something insightful and analytical about the subject, and there was no inherent intention there to damage your position on it.

Really, thank you for opening this discussion, and thank you for introducing us to this talented speaker. I found the video to be very rewarding to listen to, and the length and depth of my original reply is testament to how much I liked and agreed with both your OP and the video you directed us to.

Now, I have for a long time held what I think is an interesting notion about stereotypes, which is simply that the destructiveness of stereotypes stems from the use of general ideas to make hasty judgments about particular individuals. It is poor sleuthing in general: even if it is valid to think that "black skin" might mean "trouble," to jump directly from this to pulling out your gun without going through the intermediate steps that might lead to a definite conclusion of "trouble" is not only unfair, but it's dangerous and arguably immoral. Ultimately, it is a failure to ask the right questions before proceeding to action, which is the same failure in thought that leads people to committing horrible crimes. That was the point of my last post, and I think that it is an interesting line of thought.

Couldn't have stated it better.

I do in fact firmly believe that we should fix our own f*****g problems instead of pushing around everyone else. Its a big reason why I feel the Arab world hates us (aside from a religious basis). Of course that will never happen seeing as our government answers to lobbyists and Israel instead of common sense.