My position on kids is clear, no need to repeat here.
But marriage and homeownership are 2 primary drivers of stable middle class communities. If your goal is to achieve the benefits of stable, middle class communities, following the recipe is probably the easiest way to do this.
Looking at black families will reinforce this. I'm not comfortable with that, but my comfort isn't the issue here.
A justice system that rehabs violent offenders (assuming possible) and releases them to be productive members of society, is better than the alternatives for all involved (except the victims and families who want revenge.)
It's more than just the justice system. Once a record exists, even for nonviolent offenders, it is permanent (even if expunged, it will still be in the data system of all the background check providers out there). Such a record closes so many doors that at best a person could achieve only marginal reintegration.
And worse still, the society inside is so removed and distant from middle class norms, that learning to live inside is learning to be excluded outside. Etiquette forms walls, all the more impenetrable because they are not perceived.
Clearly correlation isn't causation. Just because stable middle class people tend to be married doesn't mean that it causes stability.
As someone who is pretty far left, my alarm bells start to go off whenever I hear anyone saying that everyone needs to have a kid/get married/go to church/insert religious right cliche here.
Ffj is speaking of community dynamics. By any measure, the relative number of married couples in a community, has strong positive correlation to stability and prosperity. This isn't my opinion, these is basic demographics. Read Thomas sowell or Walter Williams for all the details you want.
Does this mean you will become prosperous and stable by marrying? Of course not. Does this mean you can't be prosperous or stable with your girlfriend? Again, of course not.
But the relative number of married couples in your community will have a influence in how your community reacts and acts. This will have influence on you.
You make your choices, and live with the consequences.
I grew up in the worst parts of Tacoma, and dying logging towns. Wherever rent was cheapest. There is no part of dysfunctional family and community I'm not familiar with. I am not a big proponent of marriage, despite how well it worked for me.
But, when speaking of communities, you have to speak to the aggregate, not the individual.
Secondly we need to stop the condescension and treat the afflicted as adults that are capable of making adult decisions. Why is the drug policy racist? It's implied that blacks are incapable of not doing drugs, so we have to protect them.
bullshit. drug policy is racist because it was explicitly started to damage the Mexican and black communities (marijuana) back in the day. has ffj ever wondered why this plant is referred to by its Spanish name? politically unwelcome black community leaders were locked up for their drug habits back then. for that, drugs had to be made illegal.
and starting in the 80s, sentencing for crack was set much higher than the equivalent dose of cocaine - even though it's the exact same drug. the difference? black humans took crack, white humans took cocaine.
@ scriptbunny
I just finished the Atlantic article. Long on imagery, shorter on accuracy. Most of the crimes identied as a white supremacy war on blacks looks an awful lot like the typical BS poor people go through, regardless of race. I have direct, first hand knowledge of most of it, but no lynchings.
So let me talk about Troy Duncan, for a minute. Troy was a famous death in Seattle. Google him, he'd like that. Troy was a DJ at an after hours club in pioneer square. Around 10pm, as he was hanging out in his car, waiting around to open, he got in some kind of fight with 2 white guys and a girl. Not a lot of details, but he was rushed to the hospital, and died. The 3 whites were interviewed and released.
Now, I knew Troy from high school. We weren't close, but in a small school, everyone knows everyone, and this was a k-12 b school. Hell, he was our quarterback, our only black kid (half black, with a British accent, in a dying logging town, if any of that matters to you), and extremely social.
I was pissed. How can Troy get beaten to death on the streets of Seattle, and the cops just let them go!?! Then the stories from his friends, coworkers, and random people come out. It starts looking like maybe drug related. Rumors and more rumors. Marches. The whole package.
Well, me being me, I keep up with the case. It took about six months but eventually the DA announces he won't file any charges. More marches.
Eventually the details come out. interviews with the cops on the scene.
Troy got in a fight. The only eye witnesses were the 2 guys and girl. Their story all matched that they bumped the car he was in, when going down the street between bars. Troy jumped out of the car and started talking smack. Words were exchanged, then punches, the 2 guys pinned him to the ground and the girl called the cops. Troy struggled and the big guy just got on top of him and held him down. With his knee on Troy's abdomen. The cops showed up, the guys backed off, and started talking, Troy was unresponsive. And ambulance was called, Troy was pronounced dead when they couldn't revive him. Turns out having a heavy guy hold you down and kneel on your diaphragm is an effective way to be suffocated.
The cops had 3 stories that matched the evidence. The damage to Troy even matched.
Now, maybe it was drug business, maybe it was 2 racists with an axe to grind. But our justice system worked the way it was supposed to work. I chalk that up as don't be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That story is only relevant, in that the Atlantic link talked about lynchings. So when I looked up the stories on Wikipedia, they reminded me alot about what happened with Troy.
In America we are trained in the legal system by "law and order". The cops get the bad guy, and it all wraps up in an hour, including commercials. This makes us think we can know who is guilty. We can't. We can just make up a story, that makes it make sense. Like all good stories there are good guys and bad guys.
In the real world, there are only a few bad guys, and a bunch of assholes. And you can mess up your whole life by getting too caught up in those stories and trying to sort the assholes from the bad guys.
I am certain that there are bad guys in the deep south, but most are just assholes, like everywhere else.
I bring this up, because my ideas of race relations in the South matched the Atlantic article back when I was a young man. Then, I joined the army. The South, both black and white are overrepresented in the army.
4 years, and lots of long shifts with nothing to do but talk. Sooner or later, I got a chance to to talk to all the southern blacks about home. And politics, and drinking, and girls, etc. But the answer that kept coming up was it wasn't like I thought it was back home. That there were hassles, but nothing like the crap they saw on TV, not for any of them.
And that matched my own experience. With the exception of Smith and Riley, a couple of southern white boys trying to outdo the stereotype of dumb rednecks, the folks with real racial baggage were all from Northern cities. And there were a lot of them.
Now, I don't think you could or should change your opinion of race relations based on the story of a grey bearded, very white guy who lives on a very white island in a white state. But I do think you should spend some time with some southern blacks. Not the ones who are politically active, but regular folks, and see if their experience matches your expectations.
I do not feel competent to write a comprehensive policy primer for reparations. I believe it is possible, but I do not feel sufficiently well-versed in this area of policymaking, nor do I feel comfortable in dictating how resources should be allocated for a population I am not a part of.
You've got to have an opinion on who should benefit and who should pay, though, right? Otherwise its just "wouldn't it be nice if...."
How much do you think would be enough to fulfill our moral obligation as a country for supporting the institution of slavery, for reneging on the promises of Reconstruction, for redlining, for the legal enforcement of segregation, for the suppression of black voting rights, for disproportionately incarcerating black individuals vs. others for similar crimes, etc.?
I am not a country. I, as an individual, did not support any of those things. If reparations are to be paid, they will come from taxes paid by me since I would not qualify to receive the benefits you are suggesting.
Am I responsible to pay up? Am I responsible if all my ancestors came to this country after those policies were corrected? Am I responsible to pay this tax if all my ancestors were proud confederates, but I disavow them? Am I responsible to pay if I'm a minority who was historically mistreated by US policies, but do not qualify for the particular benefit?
If you give GI bill benefits to the relatives of vets who were denied them, how much does each person get? Is it just their direct descendants? What if one guy has 1 grandkid, and another has 20; do they all get the same quantity? What if they are adopted? What if the adopted kid is not a minority?
I just don't see how any form of reparations for grievances greater than one lifetime ago could avoid provoking disdain from people who don't get them.
I vote Dem because the party platform and policy prescriptions more close align with my values and beliefs than the other options.
Yeah, I used to as well. Last year I did go to the primary to vote Bernie, like everyone else there. But for the most part I have abandoned them.
Does it bother you that the Democrats were the party of the Confederates? That they wrote the Jim Crow laws? That they enforced the Jim Crow laws? That they wrote the social security laws to exclude blacks? That democrats created abd funded the FHA that creates and enforced redlining? That as late as the Johnson administration, northern Democrats worked with southern Democrats to keep the South under Democratic control? Have you heard of a Yellow Dog Democrat?
Now, that is a lot of loaded questions. But I'm not trying to set you up. This is just all stuff that I put together as an adult. As a kid, I was raised and educated by Democrats, so, those details were...
de-emphasized. I grew up knowing that Republicans were all racists. I'm not sure how that happened.
Maybe Goebbels was right, and truth is merely repetition.
It's fun to reference this because like the black community they fail to identify the root causes of poverty. Nothing is stopping these people from moving into an area where there are jobs and getting the education to be worth hiring. Much easier to pity them and reference their proud Scots and Irish heritage.
Regarding my job, it wasn't magic that allowed me to procure a job with the department I retired from as I paid my dues for years beforehand volunteering and working smaller departments. I also competed against over 3,000 other applicants when I was hired. However, I do acknowledge how good I have it in life but I can assure a lot of it was because of my efforts. What was afforded to me is available to most people in this country.
Oh, I know. That all looks so familiar. Back home, half the town still gets dressed up to attend the HS graduation. I was one who moved away for work.and, it turns out that the casualty rate of my high school is much higher than a combat tour in the military.
My point was that growing up there, is a world of difference from growing up poor in the city. We could hunt when hungry. Horses were a sign of prosperity, when I was coming up. Horses have to eat, so you either have spare money to feed them or spare land. (Yes, I still have a bit of resentment toward little rich girls and their horses, lording over their 9-14/year old peers, even though I now know their fathers were probably making less than median income at the time.) My point is that that poverty is lack of skill and opportunity, not a lack of money. I. The country, there's still opportunity, even without money. There is work to be done, and people to teach you.
In the city, you can stand on a corner with a "will work for food" sign, and random people will give you money. All you have to do is defend your corner.
In the country, if you have a "will work for food" sign, random people will give you work, show you how they want it done, and food when it is done.
Well, I guess that's not true anymore. You will need a better scheme than that. If you have a "will work for food" sign in the country, most folk will assume you belong back in the city, and encourage you to return, possibly with random things thrown from a car.
@scriptbunny -- I appreciate what you're trying to accomplish. As a woman though, how do you see it if you remove race from the problem? Up until recently, women were treated as property in western cultures. Not to the same extent as slaves, but most women didn't enjoy freedom in the same way that men did. Many women around the globe are still treated as property. I'm old enough to remember women trying to break into male-dominated jobs. It upsets me when I think about some of the smarter women I knew growing up who couldn't go to college or pursue a career beyond the typical stuff (teacher, nurse, etc). It upsets me that most of the 'history' I know is really just the history of white men.
What can be done about that now though? I could demand that women be compensated, but what sense would it make to have men who weren't even alive back then compensate women today for indignities from which they would never suffer?
To my mind, it makes more sense to start from where we are. Where (specifically) aren't things fair (like in the criminal justice system)? How can we fix that problem? Can we make sure that education is equally good regardless of race or geography. Can we make sure that healthcare is equally good? I think those kinds of actions would produce more bang for the buck than trying to compensate people individually. (Wouldn't that create problems within the community since not everyone would benefit?)
I really hope this doesn't sound condescending. I don't mean it that way at all, but I know that it's bad form for white people tell non-white people what to think and I don't want to do that. It drove llorona away and I'm still sad about that. Hopefully you see this as people sharing their honest opinion in a way that opens up a dialogue more than shuts it down, if that makes sense. Stay engaged, challenge what people have said or ask for explanations if something doesn't make sense. Some differences are simply from different life experiences or living in different areas of the country. And sometimes the old curmudgeons are wrong and don't be afraid to call them on it.
For me, my main question is what is the [your] ultimate goal? If the goal is full equality, I'm not sure if continuing to pick at the proverbial scab is the quickest route. I came to that conclusion about women's battle for equality. When the old guard of feminism cried misogyny every time someone criticized HRC during the campaign, I think it did more harm than good. I think it would have been better to avoid the issue entirely and let anyone with misogynist thoughts believe that their opinion was so outmoded that it wasn't even worth mentioning anymore.
All that said, no amount of money can make things equal -- it can only provide equal opportunities. The rest is up to the individual. This forum is proof of that when it comes to finances. It's the difference between agency and empowerment. I dislike the term empowerment because it implies success is contingent on the support of someone else. Agency comes from within.
And sometimes the old curmudgeons are wrong and don't be afraid to call them on it.
Well, I for one, come here (in the politics forum) to be called on it.
Here, I can rub my notions against other people's notions. Where my ideas are better, they will round off yours, and vice versa. Nothing is gained by talking to people who agree with me. There is no friction, and no improvement down that road.
I'm here for the better ideas. I'm here to have my blind spots pointed out.
And after doing this for decades, I seem to have a pretty thick skin, yet still find I am wrong on occasion. And that's the best, when I see there is something I was wrong about, and fix it.
I should have said 'us' instead of 'them' since I count myself among the old curmudgeons, especially if we're going to start rubbing our notions up against each other.
I'm a minority (hispanic), a 1st generation immigrant, grew up with 1 parent until age 10 when grandmother moved in, experienced racism growing up (some of it violent), and family was poor in my early years.
What was emphasized in my house growing up:
1) You can always do better.
2) Read lots of books - it's your gateway to a better life.
3) Do good in school.
4) Welfare is for people who need it or people too lazy to work. If you're healthy and can work - you don't need it.
5) You better be the hardest working guy in the room because life doesn't give you anything unless you work hard for it.
6) There are bigots and idiots in every culture - don't let it taint your opinion about a particular ethnicity or class.
I understand there are groups who need help to get on their feet or those who need long term assistance to survive as a result of circumstances or injuries beyond their control - I'd truly want to help those people. But I get upset when a hand up becomes a hand out. It was tough growing up poor but I was still happy because I loved reading and had a local library to support my reading addiction. I worked 30 hours a week through middle school and high school because my parents couldn't afford to buy me clothes or school supplies. I worked over 40 hours a week to pay for my college tuition and books. I worked 60+ hours a week in a minimum wage job when I got laid off so I could put food on the table and provide for my wife and newborn. I could have collected unemployment or welfare - I refused both because I was healthy, knew I could work, and a better paying job would eventually show up. It's amazing how many opportunities develop when you constantly go the extra mile.
Black people don't need reparations - they have the intelligence and wherewithal to improve their own lives. What is needed in the poor Black, Hispanic, and <insert race of the month here> is a culture shift that promotes education, integrity, and self reliance. My family, who couldn't speak a drop of english when they arrived in the USA, became successful via unrelenting effort and education. I've met too many wealthy and successful African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, Africans, etc., to swallow the "institutional racism" narrative.
In my book the opposite of poverty is self reliance - its the only true path to prosperity. The USA provides every opportunity to succeed. It provides free education up through high school, builds libraries that provide every convenience needed to be a polymath or narrowly focus on a single discipline - you can even learn how to invest, save, and ERE. It contains a vast infrastructure geared towards churning out massive amounts of money. This country is so full of opportunities that a homeless and illegal immigrant was able to find a road to success and citizenship by "whispering" to dogs. If you can't outcompete a homeless and illegal Mexican - you have no hope - no amount of reparations or "justice" will turn you into a success. There is a group of people who have tons of money thrown at them but 70% of them still go broke - lottery winners. Throwing money at a person doesn't automagically guarantee success.
Last edited by Campitor on Thu May 25, 2017 1:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
It upsets me when I think about some of the smarter women I knew growing up who couldn't go to college or pursue a career beyond the typical stuff (teacher, nurse, etc). It upsets me that most of the 'history' I know is really just the history of white men.
http://info.vassar.edu/about/vassar/history.html A History of Vassar College: A pioneer for women’s education and liberal arts education in the United States, Matthew Vassar founded Vassar College in 1861. Opening its doors to its first class of 353 students paying $350 for tuition and “residence” on September 26, 1865, the college offered young women a liberal arts education equal to that of the best men’s colleges of the day. Coeducational since 1969, Vassar College set the standard for higher education for women for more than 100 years and now sets the standard for true coeducation. Recognized as one of the best liberal arts colleges in the country, Vassar has successfully fulfilled its founder’s goals.
"...couldn't go to college...": Vassar has existed since 1865. They were one of many.
"...the history of white men...": When I was in school we learned about the history of China, Africa, Mughals (India), and Europe. Although, I will admit the history of Latin America was limited at best. At university my major did not require a history component, but if one was so inclined one could take courses in virtually any field of history. There was no history of white men. The purpose of History is to provide an understanding of the past so as to provide guidance for the future. To that end it is the responsibility of the Historian to write history in as objective a fashion as possible. Likewise, it is the responsibility of the reader to understand that objectivity is an elusive goal.
...
In my book the opposite of poverty is self reliance ...
This struck me as the most profound idea to emerge in the thread. It captures the philosophy of my grandparents (the three I knew were all children of immigrants that grew up on farms).
It speaks to a different definition of poverty than how it's defined by the government and most people (generally income is less than X, X being a function household size). Your words speak more to a poverty of spirit. Certainly the deepest form of poverty is heavy one-way reliance on others. Sadly, it is too often unnecessary (I have a nephew who is the embodiment of that).
It's the difference between agency and empowerment. I dislike the term empowerment because it implies success is contingent on the support of someone else. Agency comes from within.
I've never been able to explain why "empowerment" was such an annoying word. That pretty much sums it up. Can you do "privilege" and "awareness" next? Or "family values?"
And +1 to RiggerJack's statement about wanting to have a change of mind. I love when someone can change my opinion about something. It feels like I'm learning.
There was no history of white men. The purpose of History is to provide an understanding of the past so as to provide guidance for the future. To that end it is the responsibility of the Historian to write history in as objective a fashion as possible. Likewise, it is the responsibility of the reader to understand that objectivity is an elusive goal.
Laudable thought, but not in keeping with the realities of the human condition or the way historians work -- i.e., the way people perceive reality and their pasts. There is no such thing as "objectivity" in the telling of stories from the past unless you suddenly become omniscient and able to comprehend everything at once. What you end up with in "popular history" is a series of fallacies about Golden Eras and Dark Ages that various people find attractive depending largely on who they are.
The way it really works in that each age looks at history through its own lens, which may be clear on some things and cloudy on others, and will care or find more meaning in some things than others. E.g., why very few people actually celebrate Columbus on the US holiday of Columbus Day anymore.
Case in point -- the recent removal of various historical statues in New Orleans, including a monument that commemorated an 1874 attack on the racially integrated city police and state militia by a white supremacist group called the Crescent City White League -- and yes, there is a white history all over the place if you look. Or the 1990s removal of Marx and Lenin statues all across Eastern Europe for another example.
And the backlash by the Alabama legislature to "preserve" such historical monuments, which ironically are not in fact histories of what they depict, but actually the history of the priorities of society at the times they were erected -- often generations later.
The history of history is that it is constantly being revised, albeit usually more on emphasis than on factual disputes -- as it should be in a dynamic, pluralistic society. There are, occasionally, incredible factual breakthroughs, though, such as the development of carbon dating and the use of DNA testing to verify that Jefferson did in fact sire children with Sally Hemings, despite the consistent denial of that inconvenient fact by contemporary historians for 200 years.
I grew up knowing that Republicans were all racists. I'm not sure how that happened. 
