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If dwelling on history motivates you.....then its good and if dwelling on history demotivates you its bad. Why assume that the past only can produce negative emotions such as anger, bitterness and loathing? That is simply not how human nature works in populations. It has a tendency to produce positive as well as negative emotions. Many people may be inspired to achieve for the sake of honoring their ancestors. So I guess I do not agree with you.
No. Actually I think we are agreeing more than disagreeing here, I got stuck riffing of off your victim deal. Positives need to be honored.
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Originally Posted by Indentured Servant
In regards to the Jewish situation.....from what I see the Jewish people DWELL ON THEIR HISTORY and have an anti-defamation league and have holocaust museums and such. It seems to me that they have the perception that they were VICTIMS as well.
Kinda sorta but not really. I think there is a great impetus to remember the horrors and the perpetrators (many of whom are still alive) and there is definitely anger in survivors....but pity party victim-hood, no I do not get that. Not in the slightest.
I have family in Israel, family in Germany, family in the UK and Hungary, family with concentration camp tattoos. None of them feel or act like victims. All of them are educated and successful. They are not victims, they are survivors. They honor their history, but do not dwell on it.
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Originally Posted by Indentured Servant
I have to much respect for persecuted people to get into comparing the Jewish experience with the black experience. However, I still stand by my assertion that all races would perform the same given the same circumstances. The thing is that the circumstances have NEVER been the same in degree, kind and context of the era. So you cannot really compare situations. However, if one fundamentally believed the premise that all races would perform the same given the same circumstances then they would accept that different circumstances explain the different outcomes. Its only when people DO NOT ACCEPT the premise that different races would perform the same given the same circumstances that they do not accept that different circumstances explains the different outcomes of the races.
Well.....I do not think anyone on this forum would come out right and say that they believe that blacks are inferior.......instead they just remove any external reason that would explain the unequal racial realities of performance and behavior... thereby not having to say it.....because that is the only thing left to explain the inequalities.... by default.
But am I right....you are the only person in this thread to explicitly say that blacks are inferior?
I, for one, haven't removed any external reasons that would explain the unequal racial realities. I believe the unequal realities are attributable to the choices that are made within black communities such as much of Detroit. I don't think history has much part to play other than as an excuse (which it shouldn't be because blacks have a lot to be proud of historically).
History would be and is an external reason and you just removed it! If you remove the evolution of something.....what is left. Do you think what this nation is today is influenced by the revolutionary war? Do you think what the world is like today is influenced by who won world war II? Do you think the way things are today and the choice people CAN make are influenced by the civil rights movement? How can one say that the present unequal realities have nothing to do with the past when the present situation evolved from the past?
There are three doors each with something behind it that explains the current conditions. Door three has behind it the choice that blacks are inferior, door one and two have explanations that point to external reasons. It does not take a rocket scientist to deduce that if someone eliminates doors one and two that they are selecting door three implicitly....whether they say it or not.
If the races took a multiple choice test and one race consistently scored lower than the other races and all external differences in situations were eliminated as reasons that would explain the difference, then is not one saying that one race is inherently mentally inferior and or inherently lazier to the degree that they can't seem to think (make the right choices) as well or work as hard as the others? A multiple choice question would be about CHOICES just like life. To draw into question a peoples ability to make the best choices is casting aspersion upon the intelligence of the people.
I know people make these assertions all the time when it comes to blacks in sports....so why would they not make the same conclusions in other areas. There are people who believe that blacks are inherently better sprinters and jumpers.....because of their genetics. There are also people who believe that blacks are inferior thinkers, like in making choices, because of their genetics as well. However, people will say the former before the latter because the clearly understand the implications of saying the later and what those implications say. They feel that they can say the former because it is seen as positive but will not say the negative because it is seen as a negative and would imply that they are racist. Well if you feel that blacks can run and jump better do to their RACE and no other reason then that is a pretty good indication that one has a mindset that probably would deduce blacks inferior performance in choice making is do to RACE as well.
Last edited by Indentured Servant; 11-23-2013 at 10:11 PM..
No. Actually I think we are agreeing more than disagreeing here, I got stuck riffing of off your victim deal. Positives need to be honored.
I don't have a victim deal....you and Tekkie are the ones that identified this phenomenon as being something that is endemic to blacks. I really do not even know what the term means...to tell you the truth. What I do know, however, is that if blacks have it more than others then there is a non genetic reason why they do. Retroit says its culture and that might be true but the culture of African Americans is the creation of the experience in America....and not Africa and our experience in America has been one of centuries of racial abuse. Its like someone with diabetes causing them to have bad kidneys then the person dies. Retroit would say that the person died from Kidney failure while I would say that the person died from diabetes because the diabetes produced the problem with the Kidneys. When Retroit focuses on culture, he ignores the conditions that evolved the culture.
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Kinda sorta but not really. I think there is a great impetus to remember the horrors and the perpetrators (many of whom are still alive) and there is definitely anger in survivors....but pity party victim-hood, no I do not get . Not in the slightest.
I have family in Israel, family in Germany, family in the UK and Hungary, family with concentration camp tattoos. None of them feel or act like victims. All of them are educated and successful. They are not victims, they are survivors. They honor their history, but do not dwell on it.
To me that is a distinction without a difference from the black situation. As an insider you interpret it that way, but as an outsider I might not. Just like you do not see a difference in the oppression, I do not see a difference in how we deal with it. You have your organizations and museums and so do blacks. You honer your history....and so do blacks. Jews accuse people of being anti-Semites and blacks accuse people of being racist. The distinction is that when blacks claim racism....where dwelling and playing the victim but when Jews claim antisemitism their making sure that what happened in the past never happens to their people again.
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But am I right....you are the only person in this thread to explicitly say that blacks are inferior?
Nope.....I have said that the logical implication of the reasoning of dissenters has been that blacks are inferior. I do not believe or infer that blacks are inherently inferior because I attribute differences in outcomes to different experiences, while dissenters dismiss different experiences which only leaves the inherent to explain it.
I focus on the inferiority angle because the ROOT of racism in this nation has been the doctrine of white supremacy....which has as its corollary black inferiority.
Last edited by Indentured Servant; 11-23-2013 at 10:08 PM..
History would be and is an external reason and you just removed it! If you remove the evolution of something.....what is left. Do you think what this nation is today is influenced by the revolutionary war? Do you think what the world is like today is influenced by who won world war II? Do you think the way things are today and the choice people CAN make are influenced by the civil rights movement? How can one say that the present unequal realities have nothing to do with the past when the present situation evolved from the past?
The past has produced the present, but very few people think of history when living their daily lives. When I see an American flag waving, I don't contemplate the possibility that it could be the Union Jack. When I see a Volkswagen drive down the street, I don't shout out "You damn Nazi!" When I see a black person sitting in the front of a bus, I don't think "If not for Rosa Parks this would not be possible." Therefore it makes no sense to me that a black person would say "My ancestors were treated poorly by whites, so I am entitled to waste my opportunities in life". I think blacks are selective in their historical perspectives: too much focus is on how blacks have been held back, not enough focus on the achievements of blacks such as George Washington Carver, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, Benjamin Banneker, Scott Joplin, the Tuskegee Airmen, all the blacks soldiers that have fought in for America in wars from the Revolution onward, Frederick Douglass and the early black congressmen (all Republicans File:First colored senator and reps.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), etc.
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There are three doors each with something behind it that explains the current conditions. Door three has behind it the choice that blacks are inferior, door one and two have explanations that point to external reasons. It does not take a rocket scientist to deduce that if someone eliminates doors one and two that they are selecting door three implicitly....whether they say it or not.
If the races took a multiple choice test and one race consistently scored lower than the other races and all external differences in situations were eliminated as reasons that would explain the difference, then is not one saying that one race is inherently mentally inferior and or inherently lazier to the degree that they can't seem to think (make the right choices) as well or work as hard as the others? A multiple choice question would be about CHOICES just like life.
I know people make these assertions all the time when it comes to blacks in sports....so why would they not make the same conclusions in other areas. There are people who believe that blacks are inherently better sprinters and jumpers.....because of their genetics. There are also people who believe that blacks are inferior thinkers, like in making choices, because of their genetics as well. However, people will say the former before the latter because the clearly understand the implications of saying the later and what those implications say. They feel that they can say the former because it is seen as positive but will not say the negative because it is seen as a negative and would imply that they are racist. Well if you feel that blacks can run and jump better do to their RACE and no other reason then that is a pretty good indication that one has a mindset that probably would deduce blacks inferior performance in choice making is do to RACE as well.
Well, you certainly present a convincing argument in favor of blacks being inferior, but I'm not going to fall for it. First of all there is a difference between physical and mental capabilities. While we have evidence that we have physical differences, that has not been shown mentally. So, scientifically, I would say we can't compare the two. That may change with further research, but I doubt it.
But for arguments sake, let's say that blacks are better runners in general and that whites are better thinkers in general. That does not give white people an excuse to say that they can not run, nor does it give blacks an excuse to say that they can not think. I've never said that since blacks are equal to whites they should all be PhDs, but rather that they are capable of bettering themselves enough that they don't have to live in a crime infested city full of broken families and welfare dependents.
Retroit says its culture and that might be true but the culture of African Americans is the creation of the experience in America....and not Africa and our experience in America has been one of centuries of racial abuse. Its like someone with diabetes causing them to have bad kidneys then the person dies. Retroit would say that the person died from Kidney failure while I would say that the person died from diabetes because the diabetes produced the problem with the Kidneys. When Retroit focuses on culture, he ignores the conditions that evolved the culture.
That's true that I would say that the person died from kidney failure. Not everyone with diabetes dies from it, but everyone with renal failure has (unless they go on dialysis or get a transplant).
I do focus on culture and I recognize the conditions that produce that culture, I just don't think that people should handicap themselves by tying their success/failure in life to their culture or the conditions that produce their culture. I person should be focused on their own betterment regardless of culture/conditioning. And black communities should provide a culture where black individuals are encouraged to succeed despite past conditioning. And past conditioning should not be ignored, however it should not be emphasized.
As for African-American culture being American and not African, I would say that it can not be attributed to either exclusively. Much of American/European culture derived from Africa. Slavery came from Africa. And since all human life supposedly came from Africa (according to the anthropologists), then we could rightfully attribute all other social injustices to there. Personally, I don't see the benefit of this exercise. Suffice to say that people treated each other poorly in the past and that that doesn't excuse us from treating each other poorly today. And people oppressed each other in the past, but we don't have to carry on the legacy of that to our present life.
The past has produced the present, but very few people think of history when living their daily lives. When I see an American flag waving, I don't contemplate the possibility that it could be the Union Jack. When I see a Volkswagen drive down the street, I don't shout out "You damn Nazi!" When I see a black person sitting in the front of a bus, I don't think "If not for Rosa Parks this would not be possible." Therefore it makes no sense to me that a black person would say "My ancestors were treated poorly by whites, so I am entitled to waste my opportunities in life". I think blacks are selective in their historical perspectives: too much focus is on how blacks have been held back, not enough focus on the achievements of blacks such as George Washington Carver, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, Benjamin Banneker, Scott Joplin, the Tuskegee Airmen, all the blacks soldiers that have fought in for America in wars from the Revolution onward, Frederick Douglass and the early black congressmen (all Republicans File:First colored senator and reps.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), etc.
I would agree and I think anyone who believes that blacks sit around and think like that don't know blacks too well. What one has to realize is that America has been in REAL decline since the 70's when it had to go off the gold standard. Hence, real opportunity has been on the decline, while the larger culture is on the decline as well. Hence, as legal oppression ended for blacks, REAL opportunity was declining for Americans, manufacturing, which employed a disproportionate share of blacks, started to close factories and ship jobs oversees and drugs began to flood into America and the black community.
Its a false premise to assume that opportunity is there for the taking for those who are simply willing to be responsible and work hard. If opportunity is a function of personal responsibility, the recessions and depressions would be caused by changes in individuals propensities to be responsible. Michigan's economic woes, then, would simply be the result of people wanting to make excuses and wanting to feel sorry for themselves and born simply from personal irresponsibility and having nothing to do with changes in the world, trade agreements and the behavior of other external parties past and present. If its good for the goose its good for the gander.
When it comes to whites its ok to blame external things....but not for blacks. Its all BS. America has gone into decline at the same time it ended its legal oppression of blacks but people still act as if blacks should have been able to make up 3 centuries of lost grounds in a few decades, despite being in an era of American decline.
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Well, you certainly present a convincing argument in favor of blacks being inferior, but I'm not going to fall for it. First of all there is a difference between physical and mental capabilities. While we have evidence that we have physical differences, that has not been shown mentally. So, scientifically, I would say we can't compare the two. That may change with further research, but I doubt it.
What is the evidence that we have physical differences? Where is the evidence that we know more about physical difference, in science, than mental differences? Present the evidence.
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But for arguments sake, let's say that blacks are better runners in general and that whites are better thinkers in general. That does not give white people an excuse to say that they can not run, nor does it give blacks an excuse to say that they can not think. I've never said that since blacks are equal to whites they should all be PhDs, but rather that they are capable of bettering themselves enough that they don't have to live in a crime infested city full of broken families and welfare dependents.
Of course blacks have the capability....but if they are not doing it and everyone else is, then its the circumstances. Again, it comes back down to this fundamental question. Would whites be able to do any better if they were in the situation as blacks? I do not think that whites would be in any different situation than blacks are in today if they were enslaved, had their indigenous culture usurped, and then acculturated through what they learned from their abusers and segregated and kept from cultural immersion through integration because the oppressing group did not want to coexist with them. If whites had to deal with that situation, in this era, or any other race or group for that matter, they would be IN THE SAME SITUATION AS BLACKS TODAY!!!! To conclude that whites or any other race would do better is to suggest that those other groups are superior to blacks.....that they can think their way out of the situation by there super ability to make better choices
That's true that I would say that the person died from kidney failure. Not everyone with diabetes dies from it, but everyone with renal failure has (unless they go on dialysis or get a transplant).
I do focus on culture and I recognize the conditions that produce that culture, I just don't think that people should handicap themselves by tying their success/failure in life to their culture or the conditions that produce their culture. I person should be focused on their own betterment regardless of culture/conditioning. And black communities should provide a culture where black individuals are encouraged to succeed despite past conditioning. And past conditioning should not be ignored, however it should not be emphasized.
That makes no sense to me. People do not wake up in the morning, shower, brush their teeth and then go in a closet and decide what culture to wear for the day. You do not choose your culture any more than you choose your parents.....as one is born into it. One can disown their family later in life, or disown their culture, but the norm is that it is atypical to do either. The culture shapes a persons belief, their values, their aspirations, their language, customs and so forth in the most formidable years. Thus if he culture has been infected that infection is passed to all born into it. That does not mean that the exceptional, which exist as part of every group, as everything is relative, may be able to fight off the infection and rise above the situation, the typical will likely be stunted by it.
The black community is not autonomous. It cannot usurp the laws of this land to create laws that would facilitate taking control. Whites are the majority and when whites need to engineer culture they pass laws to shape things to be the way they desire them to go or they use taxes or the lack there of to encourage or discourage a behavior. Blacks do not have the power to usurp state or national laws to shape and change their situation in way that majority populations can.
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As for African-American culture being American and not African, I would say that it can not be attributed to either exclusively. Much of American/European culture derived from Africa. Slavery came from Africa. And since all human life supposedly came from Africa (according to the anthropologists), then we could rightfully attribute all other social injustices to there. Personally, I don't see the benefit of this exercise. Suffice to say that people treated each other poorly in the past and that that doesn't excuse us from treating each other poorly today. And people oppressed each other in the past, but we don't have to carry on the legacy of that to our present life.
Well now you are becoming hyperbolic. The reality is that African Americans only speak a European language, we do not eat an African diet, we do not dress in traditional African clothing, we do not practice the traditional rights of passages or religions that our enslaved ancestors had prior to coming America as slaves. Instead of dealing with that truth you go hyperbolic to obfuscate and deflect by going back to Adam and Eve. Its quite clear that who black people were when they arrived here, culturally, is not who they are now culturally and since they were separated from Africa they could not have learned it from Africans, as culture is a LEARNED BEHAVIOR....but rather the Europeans that we have been surrounded by the last 300 years. Heck....where do you think we got the N word from that we call each other....we learned it from whites calling us that.....its clear that our culture, black culture, is what we learned from our abusers.....as there was no one else around to learn from the past 300 years.
Last edited by Indentured Servant; 11-24-2013 at 12:13 AM..
Let me give you an era in America to consider when thinking about the black condition and culture and how the era was changed. That era is the era of prohibition and depression. During the era of prohibition and depression, there was a lot of violence in the white community (the white culture) and there were a lot of white people who were not working and not bettering their lives....in the "land of opportunity". During this era, white culture was dysfunctional as many people were not bettering their lives and violence related to illegal sale of a product radically increased the murder rate. Note to chiroptera : A JEWISH GANG in Detroit, THE PURPLE GANG, was a leader of the violence and crime in Detroit that era. Info
Now, the question is how was this condition changed? Did the people change their situation on their own like is proposed that the black community do? Did criminals just decide to put down their weapons, get a good paying job and stop making excuses for why they were doing what they are doing, given that everything comes down to personal responsibility and the choices one makes? Did the people in that era make the choice that they wanted to be poor and without work? Did not some people have jobs and were not many other people not committing crime and violence like the Purple Gang were doing? Just like blacks are told today, the fact that some people found success during that era, means that they all had the opportunity to find success if they simply were responsible and stopped making excuses. Right?
Again, though, did the people change their culture and pull themselves up out of this condition organically on their own, like people are disparaging blacks for not doing today? If you don't know the answer to that I will tell you. NO THEY DID NOT! How did they end the violence that was plaguing the white communities? LAWS CHANGED AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL!!! The prohibition law was repealed and soon afterward rates of violence plummeted in the white community. How did they tackle the rampant laziness and irresponsibly of the era, as demonstrated by the high number of people who were not taking advantage of the infinite opportunity that America provides for anyone who simply wants to make the right choices? Did the people pull themselves up organically? NO again. There was massive effort from the government to stimulate the economy and create opportunities for people to provide for themselves. Ultimately, however, WWII resulted in increased demand for work and after the war the devastation of all the major economies in the world, except our own, created hyper economic opportunities for white Americans. In other words, people did not organically change their situation, but rather, their situation was changed via EXTERNAL things changing.
Blacks, on the other hand, are expected to solve our problems organically and internally, but that is not how whites solved and got through their trying times. Blacks cannot change national laws through the representative process, to deal with things that are impacting us adversely. We cannot craft government effort tweaked to help our specific condition. We are only 13% of the population and we cannot shape government to write a prescription for our specific illness, if it differs in degree or kind from the majority. The only prescriptions that we get are prescriptions whose dosage is designed for the majority. White America can write a prescription for itself, because whites are the majority. Thus, when white society and culture is sick......it uses the government to write itself a precise prescription through laws and policies. That is how you change your conditions or seek to change them. Blacks do not have the power to do that. We cannot write a prescription for our problems.....and you will not write one for us because you don't see a benefit to you...and you do not want your tax dollars used for that purpose....because you say you did not have anything to do with blacks getting sick.
Last edited by Indentured Servant; 11-24-2013 at 09:23 AM..
And what about places like Detroit where blacks did have control over the government and laws...why did they not enact the laws that would have helped black people?
As for prohibition, while a few Jews and later Italians were running the mafia, most were not (choice) and most of their children did not follow their footsteps (individual choice and a culture that discouraged it).
As for the economic changes to improve the economy, they lift all boats. True, there was some discrimination in the past. But it is different nowadays with equal opportunity, affirmative action, minority contracting, etc.
We are arguing this on a theoretical level, off course. Blacks and whites are not as isolated as we are making it seem. There is tremendous variation within black and white communities and there are much more integregated areas. Many blacks such as yourself hardly fit the mold of the stereotypical black person who lives in poverty in a run-down crime-infested ghetto. So many blacks now live in the suburbs (about half of the blacks in metro Detroit). So things are changing and have already changed to a great degree. In a few generations, this won't even be a topic of conversation (as it apparently isn't now based on the few participants in this thread).
Therefore, there really isn't necessity for me to tell all blacks to better themselves as many/most are already doing this. My only gripe is that there are a few so-called leaders or spokespersons for blacks that seem to constantly make it seem as if blacks will never get ahead because the white dominated world won't let them. And that is clearly not the case. Unfortunately, a small and ever-shrinking segment of blacks buy into this victim mentality and it holds them and their community back. If the black leaders would spend less time fighting phantom white racism and more time fighting the black-on-black crime in the black community, they would do themselves a huge service.
That is not the point right now. I am pointing out that whites did not make organic changes, like you propose that blacks magically do. They used the laws and government to impact change. If I tell you what laws, then the discussion will go off on a tangent about whether it would work or not and other stuff.
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And what about places like Detroit where blacks did have control over the government and laws...why did they not enact the laws that would have helped black people?
Detroit is NOT a nation. It cannot print money and enact laws that usurp all other laws. For example, remember when Detroit wanted to create an Africa Town? Again, that is not how whites solved their problems in Detroit back then either. The violence was solved by NATIONAL laws the repealed prohibition because it was a national problem. The problems of blacks in Detroit is not endemic to Detroit. Its a national phenomenon.
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As for prohibition, while a few Jews and later Italians were running the mafia, most were not (choice) and most of their children did not follow their footsteps (individual choice and a culture that discouraged it).
And the same is true of blacks? Do you actually think that makes a distinction and difference between blacks today? Do you think the majority of blacks are engaged in criminal enterprise?
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As for the economic changes to improve the economy, they lift all boats. True, there was some discrimination in the past. But it is different nowadays with equal opportunity, affirmative action, minority contracting, etc.
That is not the point I was making. During the depression unemployment was about 25%. People create the supposition that the opportunity to find success is always there and the only thing preventing people from doing that is personal responsibility and making the proper choices in life and not make excuses. Thus, I can only conclude that Depression was caused be a massive wave of excuse making and irresponsibility in white America.....because if they had got their act and culture together, organically, like blacks are told to do, then the era would have enjoyed full employment. The truth is, during those trying times whites did not find solutions the way that they propose that blacks find solutions today. THEY FOUND EXTERNAL SOLUTIONS!
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We are arguing this on a theoretical level, off course. Blacks and whites are not as isolated as we are making it seem. There is tremendous variation within black and white communities and there are much more integregated areas. Many blacks such as yourself hardly fit the mold of the stereotypical black person who lives in poverty in a run-down crime-infested ghetto. So many blacks now live in the suburbs (about half of the blacks in metro Detroit). So things are changing and have already changed to a great degree. In a few generations, this won't even be a topic of conversation (as it apparently isn't now based on the few participants in this thread).
Again, that is not the point. Many people during the depression lived the good life too and not the typical life that is stereotypical of the depression era. Also, I want to point out again that when black people manage to find success against the odds of racism and discrimination, that fact is used to discredit those who failed to succeed against the odds. However, nobody uses the fact that during the depression that there were many successful people who had plenty. So that means that all the rest of the people suffering could have found success too....right....if they did not sit around making excuses and feeling sorry for themselves and blaming external circumstances.
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Therefore, there really isn't necessity for me to tell all blacks to better themselves as many/most are already doing this. My only gripe is that there are a few so-called leaders or spokespersons for blacks that seem to constantly make it seem as if blacks will never get ahead because the white dominated world won't let them. And that is clearly not the case. Unfortunately, a small and ever-shrinking segment of blacks buy into this victim mentality and it holds them and their community back. If the black leaders would spend less time fighting phantom white racism and more time fighting the black-on-black crime in the black community, they would do themselves a huge service.
Point them out and provide the quotes? I don't believe it. Show me the black leaders....which I imagine have followers because you say they are leaders....who tell black people this. Provide examples or I don't believe it because I know of know black leaders telling black people that today. I mean....who cannot see that there are blacks who have made it like Oprah and Obama, as well as, wealthy athletes and entertainers? No black leaders are telling black people that.....and few black people would believe it if they did because there is too much evidence to the contrary.
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