The Diversity Experiment Has Failed Spectacularly...Bring Back The BEST QUALIFIED People!!

So both of you guys offer up platitudes but neither one of you want to tell me what it is that I could personally do to change the public school system.

 

I don't know that your public school system is especially broken. Ours in Canada works pretty well.

I have suggested a fee times here now, that you could try finding it by federal or state taxes instead of by municipal taxes. That way schools in poor areas would get as much funding.

You could also bring in or bring back (I don't know what your exact situation is) standardized testing, fund school lunch programs for kids who need it, and put more focus on math, reading, etc.

 

We are down to repeating ourselves and you seem to have not come to grips with reality. You go on about "race" and how we need to ignore it, but what I am talking about is ethnicity. To be an American Black or African American is completely different from being a black Irishman. The Black culture has been brutalized for over 400 years. It continued after Emancipation with segregation, systemic racism, kept out of academia and the professional trades, controlled by fear (3500 lynching, unprosecuted rape and murder) and on and on. You would not think that would produce a healthy culture. We as US citizens should not ignore that, though many want to. We should help repair what, as a country, we damaged, but you along with the right-wing disagree.

 

That is an interesting shifting of the conversation. Upthread we were talking about DEI and Affirmative Action and racial discrimination in favour of black people, or in your case black Americans. You are now excluding black Americans whose ancestors were not slaves in the USA? Does DEI make this distinction? Does Affirmative Action? I have not seen that.

My understanding was that you asked me about how to address the problem of racism.
, so I did. I gave 10 ideas, and I explained why further additional racial discrimination is counter productive to this.

Racism still exists in present day, based on racial characteristics, skin tone, etc, and not family history. Does racism concern you? We should stop or at least minimize it. Not encourage more of it.

If you want to make a case for ancestral lineage claims, that's a different thread.

 

Interesting. So you seem to think African-American culture is severely damaged (in a way that has nothing to do with families or family formation) and your fix or solution to that is...affirmative action? I'm not seeing how that is a fix for a cultural problem.

 

Affirmative Action in the US makes no distinction between African Americans descended from slavery and Black people who immigrated from Nigeria or the Bahamas who are often professional people. Every year in the spring there is usually a feel good news story about some young black person being accepted to 5 Ivy League Colleges for the fall term. Invariably the kid is a child of immigrants, not actual American Black people. For the Universities, this is great since they get high preforming students who actually meet their quotas. Actual ADOS (American Descendants of Slavery) get nothing out of this system.

 

If so, that goes directly to one of my points above. That we shouldn't treat races as monoliths and pretend that giving special treatment to an already overprivileged black Harvard applicant somehow does anything for black kids struggling in poverty. Giving aid based on need instead of race does.

 

That seems to go against everything that the DEI crowd stands for. For them, race uber alles. There is nothing outside the racial construct they've built for themselves.

 

Maybe not for them, but Edna seems to be pushing at something different in her post above when she made a point of distinguishing black Irish immigrants from the black descendents of slavery in the US.

 

I did note that, and ask her about her new "culture" excuse. Traditionally using culture as an excuse has been to her DEI crowd simply more white supremacist claptrap to cover for the real reason, racial discrimination by whites. So I don't know if she slipped up from the sacred texts or she went in that direction in the heat of the argument.

In any case, culture, rather than white racism, invalidates the reason for the affirmative action regime we've crafted over the last 60 years. There is no push to get Appalachian whites up to the job, education, and income levels of Indians or Iranians.

So I'm curious to see how she either argues that she was misunderstood or backtracks.

 

Perhaps she is talking about a culture of learned helplessness, which I agree that affirmative action would not help counter that. Quite the opposite.

 

You go on about not treating a race as a monolith, but that is exactly how blacks who have adopted African American culture have been and are treated. They are fully aware that they are thought of as an underclass, that their culture is thought to be inferior. They as an individual of that culture are looked down upon by the wider society, not always consciously, which means the wider society is damaged as well from our history of dividing our society. You seem to think as a society we don't owe them anything for what harm we've done above and beyond any other ethnic group. Attempts to level the playing field you seem to think causes more racism. There is already lots of racism and the evil acronyms anger the racists. Civil rights legislation, a big attempt to level the playing field angered the racists. They largely got over it and they will get over what we are doing now....or not, they are an unimportant minority. What is important is making 12% of the population not feel and be treated like they are members of an underclass. A work in progress.

 

I think all of American culture is damaged. One example is you and your obsession with owning the Blacks posts. It is a divided culture and the US consciously did that and now we want to undo that and its not so easy. The entire psychology of the US was built around a superior and an inferior culture. Affirmative Action is one way for Blacks to gain power where they have traditionally been denied it and it will go away when things are thought normalized, but until then people can cherry pick where it didn't work out well.....like the presence of Clarence Thomas.

 

Hence why I say we should not do it. Stop doing it. Don't encourage more of it. Treat people as the individuals they are instead of as interchangeable representatives of races.

Again, you are treating them as a monolith and not as individuals here. And you didn't answer my post above about your momentarily distinguishing between race and culture. Why not?

Actual attempts to level the playing field, such as helping those in need, need not cause more racism. Doing it by racial discrimination and other racist means such as treating races as monoliths does. Again, giving even more privilege to an already wealthy high status black man does nothing to help a poor low status black man.

Civil rights legislation that demands we all be treated as individuals and as equals is anti-racism. Efforts to push racial discrimination is the opposite of that. Why can't you get your head around that? It isn't complicated. And no, those who object to racial discrimination are not an important minority. What a horrible thing to write.

I listed 10 ways to actually fight racism. You have offered none, other than to defend racist policies. It is you, not I who doesn't seem to want to combat against racism. It is you who pushes for more racial discrimination.

 

"...is you and your obsession with owning the Blacks posts."


I really have no idea what is meant by that. Maybe this is some reddit-speak that I'm "owning the Blacks." Sounds a bit racist if you ask me but I can't say for sure since I don't have any real idea of what you're talking about.

"Affirmative Action is one way for Blacks to gain power where they have traditionally been denied it and it will go away when things are thought normalized."

Your meaning in this is, again, unclear. What in the world is "thought normalized?" Is that an actual common phrase?

Anyway I was wondering how you were going to spin your black-culture-is-bad thesis. Since you made several unclear comments I'm still not sure, but I think your comment on Affirmative Action is referencing some imaginary future in which Black people and White people are statistically identical in every aspect; education, income, crime rates, ect... Since that has never happened for any other group in this country there is no reason to think that it's going to happen between Black and White people. So affirmative action is eternal.

Got it.

 

In the paper this morning there was a story about the city's Black Church Coalition (something you feel should not exist?) that advocates for the concerns of the Black community (racist?) and one of the pastors said “I know some of the word choices and the language that we use made some of you uncomfortable, and that is intentional. We’re going to continue to make folks uncomfortable because that’s how anything gets done."

Attempting to level the playing field one has to know where it isn't level. Who decides that? The Black community has an opinion that needs to be listened to, not individuals. Unions are more effective in making change than individuals.

You certainly go on about racist policies. I assume you mean affirmative action. It certainly grinds you and the right's gears. I've quoted many times racism is the negative bias against a race with no push back from the right or you. There is no bias against a race with AA. There is a positive bias for underrepresented minorities in specific categories. That could mean hiring more Black police to police Black communities to admitting more minorities to ivy league schools because that is where tomorrows leaders come from. There is also a push for a conscious increase in diversity in hiring. How is that racist when there is merit in diversity, unless you believe there is no merit in diversity?

It sounds like you should spend a little time on introspection.

AA will be left behind when its felt no longer needed.

You are the one saying "black-culture-is-bad", I didn't. As I said it is time for a little introspection. I think my response was about the history of damage done to Black culture, which damaged all of US culture by creating two classes of peoples. I have given many examples. No one is expecting Blacks to be " statistically identical in every aspect" to whites. That is hyperbolic nonsense. Do whites complain about them being statistically behind Asians in every respect? That is not the aim of AA.

 

What is the criteria for determining that?

No, you did. Here is what you said:

So if that's not saying that black culture is damaged, I don't know what else it could mean.

 

Reality. Again pretending that doing something to give a rich high status black man special treatment does NOT level any playing field for a poor low status black man. If you want to level the playing field, help those who need it because they need it, and not those who don't because they merely look like others who do. This should not be hard to understand. Why can't you wrap your head around it?

I mean all policies that push racial discrimination. That includes slavery, Jim Crow, AA, red lining done by race, allowing for racially biased hiring when one could blank out names on resumes, etc. You appear to be against some racial discrimination and for some, depending on who benefits and who suffers in the particular case. That is in itself racist. We should recognize all of it is fundamentally wrong.

Racial discrimination, prejudice and racism involve viewing races as monoliths, saying whites are this and blacks are that, think this or that, do this or that, etc, disregarding individuality, and treating people accordingly. It doesn't have to be "negative". It racist to insist a person must be a good dancer just because they have dark skin. It is racist to insist a person must be good at math just because they have narrow eyes.

Racism is a zero sum game. Positive bias for one race is negative bias for another. That's why White Nationalism is racist, regardless of whether or not you mention any other race.

 

Yes.

I suppose a culture of learned helplessness could develop in some people who are abused long enough, and such a culture does seem to exist for some black people. But I refuse to call that "Black Culture", because there are also many black people, including many who are the descendants of black slaves, who do not adopt such a culture.

I think labelling such a culture as "black" is racist against black people.

 

Well I'm waiting for Edna to clarify her meaning on that. Right now she seems to want it both ways.

 

What society needs is decided by society and that is a very uneven thing, emotion vs logic, trial and error, losers and winners.
Black culture is bad and Black culture is damaged are not synonymous. One is a victim and the other not.

I've tried to explain that US whites and Blacks developed very different cultures because of the history of the US. Black culture, which they named by the way, is acutely aware of its continuance. Whites not so much, because they have the superior culture that sets the standards for society. So they feel no discomfort. An example I've been over of the difference in cultural development is the suppression of the development of a scholarly tradition. Slaves were prevented from reading. 75 years after Emancipation 87% of Blacks were in poverty and poorly educated. Prevented from higher education and entering the trades. Their schools poorly funded. By 1959 Black poverty rate was 55%, and again poorly educated. Also, those that rose out of poverty had migrated north to work in the factories and steel mills and they needed little education to do that. A study done on teen homework habits showed Asians did homework for 2 hours, whites 1 hour and Blacks for 30 minutes. That is cultural and part of the damage done in the development of Black culture. You don't change it by being color blind.

 

"What society needs is decided by society..." That sounds like you are simply talking in circles. That means absolutely nothing.

"Black culture is bad and Black culture is damaged are not synonymous. One is a victim and the other not."

That is a distinction without a difference. You are saying that Black people are not responsible for their own culture because they are victims, but that same culture isn't bad. Well if it's not bad, what business is it of ours?

It's almost as if you've not given any thought at all to these issues until asked. In this thread you've blamed black culture for social problems, while at the same time excused black culture because black people have no agency in their own culture.

Remarkable.

 

What is damaged in black culture and how do you prescribe to fix it? Are we talking about learned helplessness leading people who adopt this culture to not try as much as they could have? Are we talking about anti-social behavior being encouraged? Are we talking about internalized racism against other black people? Racism against people who are not black? The treasuring of victimhood status? What?

What about the "black" culture (a misnomer since many black people don't embrace or adopt this culture, including many descendants of slaves) itself is damaged? Note you said "black culture" is damaged , so this is aside from racism or attitudes or behaviors of people not within this culture .

 

I think you may see more clearly if you stopped naming these cultures after races of people. You yourself said that a black Irish immigrant is not part of this "black culture" despite him being black. Mike mentioned Jamaicans and Kenyans (I think it was?) who come over and also aren't part of this culture.
So clearly "black culture" isn't the same as being black.

Is white culture the same as being white? What is white culture? Do all white Americans belong to it? Do some asian, latino and black people belong to it? You aren't saying that white people feel no cultural discomfort, are you?

Yes you do. You absolutely do change it by being colour blind, if by colour blind you mean treating people as equals and not differently based on race. Encouraging kids who aren't focussing on their homework to focus more on their homework is absolutely a way to change that. So is providing them and their families with financial and other support as needed, regardless of their skin tone.

What absolutely will not change it is reinforcing racist expectations and pushing them onto children, making black kids think they aren't expected to work as hard as the other kids, or that they are lesser than and can never excel because of their race. That kind of racism is exactly what we need to do away with, not encourage more of.

 

Further reading, I would suggest, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabell Wilkerson. I'm sure it is in your local library.