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Of course you're correct. Police don't pull over Asians, nor do people move out when Asians move into a neighborhood.
Maybe the African American community have good reasons to be angry or resentful but the strategy of using political pressure to solve it has backfired.
Thomas Sowell made an interesting (and controversial) statement. He remarked that the original slaves were the ones who paid "reparations" to their descendants by allowing them to live their lives in the U.S., having a much better life than they would have had in Africa. Now, the "unfairness" of this is that my own ancestors did not have to pay such a high price on my behalf.
My own lineage contains no wealth, my entire family prior to about 1955 was pretty much hand-to-mouth, my parents didn't start to accumulate wealth until they were in their forties, and compared to my ancestors who came before me, I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, even though I worked hard for forty years myself to get to where I am today (retired, pretty much entrenched in the middle class). Any inequality that exists today is much less than it was than a generation ago, and I'm thinking it will be much less still as time goes on. Unless, of course, the BLM and CRT knuckleheads set that progress back a couple of generations first. You can see what fruits the "defund the police" movement have created in the last year alone - the advocates for that have done FAR more damage than the supposed "systematic racism" that started the movement to begin with. Geniuses, they aren't.
I think racism is bad including dog whistles like "scientific racism." It is pretty clear if you study science that there's not really a hard border between races. That being said America in its racist era chose to be fixated on race. The culture marinated in an obsession over racial issues for centuries so it is tough to suddenly say, "It's time to quit caring about race." I say this as somebody who thinks it is absolutely time to quit caring about race and just treat people like people, my point is that Rome wasn't built in a day. We can't just take a race obsessed nation and suddenly make it not be that.
There's also a tendency in human history that people like to flex their power. It is pretty rare for one group of oppressed people to come to power and take the high road. It has happened but it's rare. Mandela wanted South Africa to take the high road but in practice it hasn't been easy. There's a lot of people who suffered under racism in SA and want catharsis. Same thing in America. All the words of Mandela and MLK are not going to fix it.
White people had centuries of oppressing everyone else. Now most white people did not want oppression. It is just true that there aren't a lot of courageous people. My grandparents grew up in the South in the old days and moved North. I never remember them as being hardcore KKK racists. They had old fashioned views on some things but didn't hate any race. In fact most people were like them. However they were not courageous civil rights activists who boldly declared their beliefs. There were a few white people like that but not many. Most people are average. Most Germans weren't as obsessed with killing Jews as Hitler was but most were also not willing to put their own necks out there to stop it. People have been like that throughout history and there's a reason why there are certain select few that we remember as heroes because there are so few.
The bottom line is that strong personalities tend to win out. I have had a few co-workers I worked with who I just kind of deferred to because I didn't want the conflict because at the end of the day I knew they cared a lot more than I did and were the type of people who would make your life miserable for the sake of being right even if it gained them nothing. So you just kind of lay low. You know they are wrong but you don't trust that everyone else is going to care enough to take your side. It is like that with racism. The racists who yelled and screamed at the top of their lungs didn't have followers so much as people who felt like if they stood up to them that they would just end up getting steamrolled and nobody would join in. It took MLK and others to rally the people against them. They used their courage to wake up the people.
Now we are confronted with people who are espousing radical views in the name of anti-racism (the same thing with sexism, homophobia etc.) They are just living in this raw emotional world and are pushing with all their might. Some of their anger is justified at the oppression of the past but they are only going to divide society further. The problem is a lot of people who maybe see themselves as progressive or left-leaning are going along with it begrudgingly because they feel like it is what they are supposed to do to be good progressives.
In all honesty I want everything BLM claims to want. No racial oppression, no disparity in terms of income or criminal justice based on race etc. I think most people actually want society to be good. We just have different ideas of how to make it good and I think a lot of the hardcore left is looking at it through too simplistic and black and white of a lens. I grew up around a lot of very conservative right-wing Christians who thought the world was a black and white struggle between their 100% correct views and the forces of Satan. I remember realizing how ridiculous that worldview is and how it doesn't bring anybody in other than the people who are already "in" if anything that mentality is partly to blame for why America is so much less religious today. Also because their so-called "Godly leaders" were often caught with their pants down or the hand in the collection plate. Yet I had relatives who really, truly with all their heart genuinely believed that this type of thinking was good.
The world is a complicated place. Dividing people up into categories seems to almost always fail though. Yet you have to put yourselves in other people's shoes. White people and people on the right have got to understand why some black people are going to be angry about racism. You've also got to understand that not everyone who disagrees with your the left is racist. This applies to everything. I think about abortion. Obviously there are some people out there who just use abortion as a form of birth control. I'm against abortion but I recognize that this idea on the pro-life side that there's a wide swath of people out there who have a flippant attitude toward abortion is simply not borne out by the statistics.
How do you propose to have no disparity in terms of income or criminal justice based on race?
Do you believe all the races are the same in terms of educational qualifications or crime rates?
Parity is a red herring. You can't even make those things happen in a homogenous society. Humans are too disparate in their abilities and drives to have equal outcomes even when they are handed them. And that doesn't even take into account the daily glitches in lives that sometimes knock any one of us out of the game.
It's a red herring but it is a very delicious looking red herring.
Of course you're correct. Police don't pull over Asians, nor do people move out when Asians move into a neighborhood.
Maybe the African American community have good reasons to be angry or resentful but the strategy of using political pressure to solve it has backfired.
Of course police do pull over Asians. If you are in a bad neighborhood, you will get pull over regardless of the color of your skin.
Asian always get the bad end of the bargain, but they never complaint, they just work hard and don't create trouble. The parents focus their kids on education.
The black community can fix it, but they have to stop play victim and let the politician "help" them. They need to work hard like the Asian and get the recognize of a hard working person instead of someone who go around creating trouble.
IMO the 'systematic racism hand' has been so over-played, the cause has lost its popular advocacy and is having an adverse affect in society. A big part of this is due to the BLM and other organizations intent on persuading the world that all American blacks are victims, with no personal accountability or responsibility for their own lives. Add to that the lunacy of reparations (for what?); a media that promotes the notion that every black person shot or imprisoned is actually a choirboy who has been unfairly targeted by racists; politicians who only want the black vote and no part of any real solutions; an entertainment industry so anxious to prove they are not racist that they become racist towards anything white ... and on and on.
In place of a sympathetic or empathetic ear, the 'black obsession' is generating antipathy, antagonism and even newly minted 'racism' among the audience from which it seeks acceptance and support. Something can only be shoved down people's throats for so long, before it is regurgitated in a much less palatable form.
Of course police do pull over Asians. If you are in a bad neighborhood, you will get pull over regardless of the color of your skin.
Asian always get the bad end of the bargain, but they never complaint, they just work hard and don't create trouble. The parents focus their kids on education.
The black community can fix it, but they have to stop play victim and let the politician "help" them. They need to work hard like the Asian and get the recognize of a hard working person instead of someone who go around creating trouble.
I’ve been pulled over multiple times, in different situations, warranted or unwarranted.
Was pulled over for a broken tail light on a desolate stretch of the highway late at night once, with the exchange ending in a verbal warning, but only after an excruciatingly long time to do a background check.
I am seeing more Black people succeed through the system than I have since the Sixties. There are increasingly more Black people in the people-helping professions and I am hoping that this will be a large part of the solution if those stirring hate and discontent will allow it.
I'm retired now but at one time had the knowledge and the skills to help people set foot on the path to better lives regardless of the color of their skin. But there were times when I was rejected as being "'too white' to be able to help me."
With that mindset implanted in young peoples' brains they already have a hurdle to achievement. Rejecting before even investigating. We are back to that defeatist attitude.
Then there was the flip side of that that any Black person who had succeeded through the system had become an outsider to the Black community and no longer trustworthy.
Divisive nonsense, all. The programs are there in abundance and so is the financial aid and human resources. And there are people in those jobs who genuinely want to help or they wouldn't be there. But that help can't be rejected on the basis of skin color or fear of micro-aggressions.
Want to see micro-aggressions? Just wait until you get into the working world. You have to learn the skill of dealing with them or spend your whole life in fighting phantoms, annoying gnats. And missing valuable opportunities to rise above. We all have to do it for one reason or another. (I'm white and I got them aplenty for being a female with authority. Some people don't like that.)
That's all people can do to you legally is micro-aggressions. They are part of daily life for everyone in the public eye and not worth your emotional health. Truth.
"Yeah, but aggression towards Black people is worse." Nope. What hurts, hurts. Don't allow it and don't get seduced by it.
I think when we see a larger amount of young Black people apply themselves to helping other people of color we will see a change for the better. The Black community deserves leadership who reject the lucrative racism train and tell the truth about how that mindset can prevent not only success but also mental and physical health. Only Black people can tell that truth with credibility.
Want to make a difference? Get in there and help. You'll find many white people already devoted to it to support you.
I understand the "racism" game well enough after watching the struggle since the Civil Rights Act began that I am able to go through the entire paragraph above and explain why everything I just typed is really a racist rant against Black people.
But it's words of hopeful support from someone who put their life where their beliefs were.
Yes! It's called reaching a point of over saturation. Let's say you are the world's biggest pizza fan and you find the worlds best restaurant at making this pizza. One day you win a contest and 50 pizzas are delivered to your door step. BTW, you can't give any of the pizzas away to friends, family or neighbors.
After you eat the first 3 or 4 pizzas, regardless of how good they are, you reach this point of over saturation.
Same thing is now happening to the racism topic. It's a great topic similar to the pizza being really good, but when you reach that point of saturation, people don't want anymore.
I think we've reached the point of saturation with the racism topic. I could potentially be flamed for my comments, but I stick by them
Topic closed due to having run its course and also having been cross-posted elsewhere.
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