Race and Net Worth

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
Campitor
Posts: 1227
Joined: Thu Aug 20, 2015 11:49 am

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Campitor »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Thu Dec 21, 2017 7:53 am
It becomes even more clear, if you look at the matter as being mostly a problem of benign statistical swamping, that the core issue is the historical low rate of legal contract marriage(as opposed to natural, common, or "of the right hand" captive) between white men and black women. The reason I point to white men/black women as opposed to black men/white women is that the original expansion of franchise, privilege, liberty and property-rights in the New World was away from paternal line primogeniture.
I don't think it's that easy. Look at famous mixed heritage people with prominent African American features that expresses their African American heritage - they mostly identify or are identified as "black" despite their mixed heritage. Look at the former President Barack Obama. His mother was White and his father Kenyan. He identified as Black and was identified as Black despite having a Caucasian mother. Lenny Kravitz - half Caucasian but is considered Black - he identifies mostly with being Black but has talked about his Jewish heritage occasionally. Peter Wentz looks white but he is half Black - if he wasn't famous and he walked through a Black neighborhood, would anyone identify him as Black or give him any "cred" for being half Black? And this begs the question since it was discussed prominently a few pages ago. Would Barack Obama, Lenny Kravitz, and Peter Wentz, being beneficiaries of "White privilege", need to pay reparations? Or would the half Black/White heritage cancel each other out? Does Barrack need to cut himself a reparation check? Silly questions but you can see how muddy the topic of White privilege and Reparations becomes. And what was different about the above 3 that made them successful versus other mixed raced Blacks who are not?

Farm_or
Posts: 412
Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2016 8:57 am
Contact:

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Farm_or »

I think we all tend to forget that we can all be traced back to the original black woman in Africa, Eve.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9370
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

"BRUTE" wrote:there was a pretty qualitative difference in human standard of living between when the silent generation grew up and when they retired. nobody had a car, everybody had a car. nobody had a TV, everybody had a TV. blacks couldn't sit in the front of the bus, blacks can sit wherever they want. 12 humans lived in one room, 2 humans live in 1 room. meat once a week, meat every meal. that feels like it's worth something.

between 1950 and now, many of the "improvements" are either a parody of consumerism or pure decadence. twitter. 1 human lives in 4 rooms. the luxury of commuting in a luxury vehicle. McMansions. 800+ TV channels, but they all show mostly ads.

brute is quite sure that those stupid white male humans wouldn't be as upset if their "sacrifice" (=being outcompeted in the market) had ended hunger, poverty, crime, or anything else bad in the US. if all double-income families were doing well. if race and gender relations had improved. and if they weren't now blamed for the continued existence of all those things.
Eh, not quite. My paternal grandparents,who were a generation older than the Greatest Generation, were Yuppies before the term was invented. They both had professional careers (lawyer and nursing college graduate) in their 20s, and I have photographs of them on vacation in the 1920s. They are dressed in tennis clothes, bathing suits, and evening wear; lounging on the grass or leaning on shiny black cars, looking very happy. So, my Silent Generation father, who grew up in the 30s and 40s, believed that the pinnacle of human civilization was achieved right after the invention and widespread availability of penicillin. IOW, at the moment in history when an affluent human could be fairly well assured of the survival of progeny.

Ironic twist of fate was that my father couldn't quite afford to buy a home in his own parent's neighborhood in Detroit prior to the riots, so he built home in the suburbs. However, I still grew up in an extended family encompassing many individuals who were very bitter about how "the blacks ruined their city." My father's many older cousins who had been able to afford gracious homes in upper-middle-class neighborhoods in the city in the late 50s and early 60s suffered such losses, they were rendered loathe to re-invest a dime for the rest of their lives. The city was abandoned to "the invaders from within" and capital formed a series of circular boundaries, which were only semi-permeable at divisions such as those between historically affluent Jewish neighborhoods and neighborhoods full of decaying semi-subsidized government project housing. There were no black children attending my elementary school. I only saw them when I looked out the back-seat window, locked safely in the car my very nice Daddy was driving, as we drove through a "bad" neighborhood, on our way to visit Grandma or a museum downtown.

I had to push through some of my cultural training (my other opposing training being early exposure to Canadian Children's TV-lol) when I was in college, and I first dated a young man who, like Obama, had an African-American father and a mother who was a Jewish academic type. He actually looked kind of like Lenny Kravitz, except a bit whiter (Yum!) As, I mentioned previously, I have dated several other Black-Red-Green-ish men since my divorce, so I know that internet dating sites in my region are still hotbeds of racism. Some of it is vicious, but mostly it is of the variety which has one of my female peers saying something like "I voted for Hillary, but I just don't find black men physically attractive." which I think is mostly a load of non-self-aware crap. But, I don't fuss too much, because obvious advantage to be shopping on a market where competition is rigid in functioning and lacking in analytical insight or practical experience.

BRUTE
Posts: 3797
Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:20 pm

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by BRUTE »

not directly about net worth, but in brute's opinion, the War on Drugs has to be the single biggest factor that systematically holds back blacks in the US, so probably related:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_ ... 96896.html

Portugal (not exactly Europe's beacon of economic wealth, no offense to any present Portuguese) has a rate of drug mortality 10x lower than Denmark or Britain, and 50x lower than the US.

decriminalizing all drug use (and long term, production and sale) would be brute's #1 policy wish, even slightly ahead of "reducing all taxes to 0%". that's how much brute cares about black humans.

The_Bowme
Posts: 56
Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 9:59 pm

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by The_Bowme »

@Brute

Apparently Norway just passed the same policy; we'll have another data point when it gets implemented. Seems like the results Portugal saw are so significant that quibbles about country size and diversity shouldn't hold much water. Nevertheless, I think the likelihood of a de jure decriminalization of all drugs in the US is quite remote (maybe a de facto one would be possible if any of many various doomsday scenarios are realized). More's the pity.

Campitor
Posts: 1227
Joined: Thu Aug 20, 2015 11:49 am

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Campitor »

I would like to see a decriminalization of drugs in the US as well with the focus being rehabilitation and treatment for those who can't control their habit responsibly. But I think there are too many vested interest in keeping the drug war going, and moralizing of the issue, for drugs to be decriminalized.

BRUTE
Posts: 3797
Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:20 pm

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by BRUTE »

the big difference could be that a large part of the Portugal program seems to be a public health support and treatment initiative. public health is not exactly the US' strong side. still, brute would suspect that simply not locking addicts up and not eroding police trust in those communities would be beneficial.

enigmaT120
Posts: 1240
Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2015 2:14 pm
Location: Falls City, OR

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by enigmaT120 »

I agree. What do you think is coming though with the media focus on the opioid death epidemic in the United States? I'm so distrustful of news about drug epidemics that I'm not even convinced it's real. That's what I learned from Reefer Madness. Are a lot of people mixing pain killers with booze? That would do it.

BRUTE
Posts: 3797
Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:20 pm

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by BRUTE »

brute would believe that there is an actual opioid death epidemic. it seems that this time, the narrative is mostly focused around these humans as victims, not "aggressive murderers" like with the crack epidemic. that might be because of racism (more white opioid deaths than black), or because opioids don't exactly make their users more aggressive. but overall, brute much prefers the "poor drug victims" narrative to the "zomg murderers and rapists on drugs!" narrative. at least it invites help, not moralizing and aggressive responses.

but brute has no idea how this could play out. the current AG seems to believe that even Marijuana makes humans murder in rage, aka Reefer Madness. brute is quite convinced that this isn't even the standard case for meth/crack, no matter how they're portrayed in the media.

brute hopes that long-term, younger humans will accept the realities of Marijuana and that acceptance will seep into other drugs as well.

it will probably be decades before any meaningful changes happen, though, so brute's not holding his breath. not taking any significant action on the War on Drugs is Obama's biggest disappointment to brute, btw. he could've made a huge difference on a much more economically and morally obvious front than health care.

Locked