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Right now there are millions of blacks who are shaking their heads at you and those who espouse your defeatist approach as they blow right past you on their way up the economic ladder,
I dont see anything ''defeatist'' about education,self empowerment,and unity amongst black businesses and consumers.
BTW,Im doing fine in my journey up the economic ladder.I dont know why you all assume that because I realize the plight of my people and refuse to ignore it,it somehow means that I am not educated or productive.
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even as they agree with the spirit if not the detail of your sentiments. I seriously think it would do you some good to get the hell out of Milwaukee to some other place where maybe you'll have a better chance to witness the impressive upward mobility within the black community that is taking place elsewhere
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I have been all over the United States.Blacks have mass poverty all over this country.Sure,the black white disparity is not as severe in some places,but the ''best'' we have is the average black household having 60% of the average white households wealth.This is the treatment we will continue to get from whites,until we take the lead of communities such as Greenwood Oklahoma,and black wall street.I do not think my people should be content with second class treatment.You all seem to view black entrapenauership as a threat or somehow counterproductive.Interesting.
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Will blacks achieve economic parity with whites within our lifetime? Probably not.
Definately not if we continue to do as you all seem to advocate.Continue to depend on a labor market that gives us SECOND CLASS citizenship instead of doing more for ourselves.It is NOT our destiny to eternally be benieth whites.Financially,educationally,or in any way.There is NOTHING wrong with DOING FOR SELF.
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Will they have made huge strides toward that end within our lifetimes? Yeah, they will. Because they already have. And the gap continues to close. So join the wave or get left behind. It's up to you, but just know that the self-segregation approach isn't going to be the way to do it.
The gap does not ''continue to close'', many studies suggest otherwise.Sure some of us are doing well,however,the masses are not.
Something can be done about this.Blacks do not have to accept a labor market that prefers white felons over equally qualified blacks.Blacks have the potential to be our own CEOs.Own the stores that service our communities.own the companies that produce the products we use.Our destiny does not have to be mass unemployment and underemployment as it currently is.Our destiny does not have to be overrepresentation in prison and underrepresentation in schools.
WHY IS THIS VIEWED AS NEGATIVE TO YOU ALL?
Last edited by brewtown12; 09-21-2007 at 02:43 AM..
Discrimination, Not Illegal Immigration, Fuels Black Job Crisis
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, New America Media
LOS ANGELES--The battle continues to rage between economists, politicians, immigrant rights activists and black anti-immigration activists over whether illegal immigrants are the major cause of double-digit joblessness among poor, unskilled, young black males. The battle lines are so tight and impassioned that black anti-immigration activists plan a march for jobs for American-born blacks on April 28 in Los Angeles. This is a direct counter to the planned mass action three days later by some immigrant rights groups.
According to Labor Department reports, nearly 40 percent of young black males are unemployed. Despite the Bush administration's boast that its tax cut and economic policies have resulted in the creation of more than 100,000 new jobs, black unemployment still remains the highest of any group in America. Black male unemployment for the past decade has been nearly double that of white males. The picture is grimmer for young black males.
But several years before the immigration combatants squared off, then University of Wisconsin graduate researcher Devah Pager pointed the finger in another direction, a direction that makes most employers squirm. And that's toward the persistent and deep racial discrimination in the workplace. Pager found that black men without a criminal record are less likely to find a job than white men with criminal records.
Pager's finger-point at discrimination as the main reason for the racial disparity in hiring set off howls of protest from employers, trade groups and even a Nobel Prize winner. They lambasted her for faulty research. Her sample was much too small, they said, and the questions too vague. They pointed to the ocean of state and federal laws that ban racial discrimination. But in 2005 Pager, now a sociologist at Princeton duplicated her study. She surveyed nearly 1,500 private employers in New York City.
She used teams of black and white testers, standardized resumes, and she followed up their visits with telephone interviews with employers. These are the standard methods researchers use to test racial discrimination. The results were exactly the same as in her earlier study, despite the fact that New York has some of the nation's toughest laws against job discrimination.
Dumping the blame for the chronic job crisis of young, poor black men on undocumented immigrants stokes the passions and hysteria of immigration reform opponents, but it also lets employers off the hook for discrimination. And it's easy to see how that could happen. The mountain of federal and state anti-discrimination laws, affirmative action programs and successful employment discrimination lawsuits give the public the impression that job discrimination is a relic of a shameful, racist past.
But that isn't the case, and Pager's study is hardly isolated proof of that. Countless research studies, the Urban League's annual State of Black America report, a 2005 Human Rights Watch report and the numerous discrimination complaints reviewed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over the past decade reveal that employers have devised endless dodges to evade anti-discrimination laws. That includes rejecting applicants by their names or areas of the city they live in. Black applicants may be incorrectly told that jobs advertised were filled already.
In a seven-month comprehensive university study of the hiring practices of hundreds of Chicago area employers, a few years before Pager's graduate study, many top company officials when interviewed said they would not hire blacks. When asked to assess the work ethic of white, black and Latino employees by race, nearly 40 percent of the employer's ranked blacks dead last.
The employers routinely described blacks as being "unskilled," "uneducated," "illiterate," "dishonest," "lacking initiative," "involved with gangs and drugs" or "unstable," of having "no family values" and being "poor role models." The consensus among these employers was that blacks brought their alleged pathologies to the work place, and were to be avoided at all costs. Not only white employers express such views; researchers found that black business owners shared many of the same negative attitudes.
Other surveys have found that a substantial number of non-white business owners also refuse to hire blacks. Their bias effectively closed out another area of employment to thousands of blacks, solely based on their color.
This only tells part of the sorry job picture for many poor blacks. The Congressional Black Caucus reports that at least half of all unemployed black workers have been out of work for a year or more. Many have given up looking for work. The Census does not count them among the unemployed.
The dreary job picture for the unskilled and marginally skilled urban poor, especially the black poor, is compounded by the racially skewed attitudes of small and large employers. Even if there was not a single illegal immigrant in America, that attitude insures that many black job seekers would still find themselves shut out.
AP) When Vonnessa Goode gives birth in a few weeks, one of her first decisions could be among the toughest: whether to give her daughter a distinctively black name.
The resumes with white-sounding names received 50 percent more call-backs for interviews than those with black-sounding names. Resumes with white-sounding names received one call-back per 10 resumes, while those with black-sounding names received one call-back per 15 resumes.
Just a few years ago, a public opinion poll indicated that only 6% of
whites in the U.S. believed racism was still a "very serious" problem
facing African Americans. While larger percentages believed racism to be
somewhat of a problem, only this anemic share of the white community saw
it as an issue of great importance.
When you consider that twice that number--or as many as 12%--have told
pollsters they believe Elvis Presley is still alive, it becomes apparent
that delusion has taken on a whole new meaning among the dominant racial
majority. Apparently, it is easier for whites to believe that a
pill-popping, washed-up lounge singer faked his own death and is playing
midnight gigs at some tropical resort, than to believe what black folks
say they experience every day.
So it was no surprise to read that once again a poll has been released,
indicating that whites by and large don't think racial discrimination
remains a big problem, and that whites and blacks continue to view
issues of racial equality far differently.
According to the recent Gallup Survey on "Black-White Relations," 7 out
of 10 whites believe that blacks are treated equally in their
communities: an optimism with which only 40% of blacks agree. Eight in
ten whites say blacks receive equal educational opportunities, and 83%
say blacks receive equal housing opportunities in their communities.
Only a third of whites believe blacks face racial bias from police in
their areas.
Despite the fact that half of all blacks say they have experienced
discrimination in the past thirty days, whites persist in believing that
we know their realities better than they do, and that black complaints
of racism are the rantings of oversensitive racial hypochondriacs.
Blacks, we seem to believe, make mountains out of molehills, for Lord
knows we would never make a molehill out of a mountain!
That white perceptions of the extent of racial bias are rooted in a
stupendous miasma of ignorance is made clear by a number of salient
facts. First, as will be shown below, there is the statistical evidence
indicating that equal opportunity is the stuff of fiction, not
documentary; and secondly, the simple truth that white perceptions of
racism's salience have always been splendidly naive. Indeed, as far back
as 1963, before there was a Civil Rights Act to outlaw even the most
blatant racial discrimination, 60% of whites said that blacks were
treated equally in their communities. In 1962, only 8 years after the
Brown decision outlawed segregation in the nation's schools (but well
before schools had actually moved to integrate their classrooms), a
stunning 84% of whites were convinced that blacks had equal educational
opportunity. In other words, white denial of the racism problem is
nothing new: it was firmly entrenched even when this nation operated
under a formal system of apartheid.
Of course, this ignorance of the lived realities of black people is no
surprise. Rather it is in large part the result of our isolation from
African Americans in daily life.
More than 80% of whites live in virtually all-white neighborhoods, and
nearly nine in ten white suburbanites live in communities with less than
1% black populations. What's more, only 12% of whites in law school
today--who by historical standards have had more opportunity to mix with
people of color than any generation before them--say they had
significant interaction with blacks while growing up.
One can only expect this degree of isolation to lead to a skewed
perception of what other people experience. After all, if one doesn't
know many blacks, or personally witness discrimination, it is all the
more likely that one will find the notion of widespread mistreatment
hard to digest. Especially when one has been socialized to give more
credence to what members of one's own group say, than what the racial
"other" tells us is true.
Of course, I'm not suggesting that every time a black person says they
have been discriminated against that they are, in fact, correct.
Individuals, after all, can misperceive certain situations. But the
reality of individual misperception should not lead to the widespread
white belief in mass black delusion, which is virtually the only way one
can read the Gallup figures.
For so many whites to believe that blacks have equal opportunity, is not
only to discount a few claims of discrimination that may be without
merit: rather, it is to reject the broad swath of claims that virtually
every African American can bring forth from their personal mental
rolodex. Fact is, if even one-tenth of the black claims of
discrimination were accurate, this would translate into well over 1.75
million instances of anti-black racial bias every single month, based on
survey data. Unfortunately, it is doubtful the numbers are this small.
Though the Gallup survey didn't address racial discrimination in the
labor market, there is little question that when whites say blacks are
treated equally, they are also assuming this to be true for the world of
work. But what is the reality? According to a recent study by the
Russell Sage Foundation, even though blacks search for work longer and
often more aggressively than whites, they are between 36-44% less likely
to be hired for jobs in mostly white suburbs, even when their experience
and qualifications are equal to their white counterparts. White males
with a high school diploma are just as likely to have a job, and tend to
earn just as much as black males with college degrees; and on average,
even when age, experience, education and other relevant factors are
considered, blacks are paid at least 10% less than similar whites.
As for education, the picture is much the same. Although formal
segregation is illegal, de facto segregation remains a reality thanks to
"ability tracking," which has less to do with actual ability, and more
to do with racial and class bias against children of color and those
from low-income families. Beginning as early as kindergarten, teachers
and counselors separate students based on so-called cognitive skill
levels, despite evidence that the tests used to determine these skill
levels are inaccurate predictors of ability and terribly biased against
students from non-dominant cultural backgrounds.
Even when black students show potential that is equal to or above that
of whites, they are 40% less likely to be placed in advanced or
accelerated classes, according to the head of the College Board. Despite
evidence of ability, blacks are 2.5 times more likely to be placed in
remedial or low-track classes, where they will typically be taught by
the least qualified teachers, be given less challenging material to
learn, and receive on average nearly 40 hours less actual instruction
annually.
So too is educational inequity fostered by unequal discipline, meted out
in a racially disparate manner. Even though black and white rates of
school rule infractions are roughly equal, black students are twice as
likely as whites to be suspended or expelled. Blacks are half of all
students suspended or expelled for weapons violations, even though
self-report surveys indicate whites are just as likely to bring weapons
to school, and white males are actually twice as likely as black males
to do so. Since blacks are more likely to be suspected--thanks to common
stereotypes about violence and delinquency--they are the ones who get
searched and caught, but this hardly means they break the rules more
often.
According to studies by the Applied Research Center, the
disproportionate rate of black suspensions is the result of greater
punishment given for subjective infractions like "defying authority," or
"attitude problems," both of which are perceived as more threatening
when coming from black students than whites.
As for housing, white confidence in equal opportunity makes for nice
wishful thinking, but hardly comports with reality. Virtually every
study on housing bias in rental and mortgage markets for the past three
decades has found evidence of substantial ongoing discrimination.
According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, there may
be as many as 2 million instances of racial housing bias each year, and
as many as half of all blacks may face discrimination when trying to
rent an apartment or purchase a home.
According to the Boston Federal Reserve Bank, blacks are 56% more likely
than whites to be rejected for a mortgage loan, even after controlling
for 38 factors that could explain higher rejection rates for
blacks--including issues of credit history, collateral, and income.
Nationwide, mortgage loan rejection rates for the highest income group
of blacks is roughly the same as the rejection rates for the lowest
income whites.
Finally, white protestations that blacks receive equal treatment from
police in their communities, are nothing short of laughable. A look at
police prosecution of the war on drugs alone gives the lie to white
claims of equal law enforcement. Though blacks are only 14% of illegal
drug users, they are 35% of those arrested for possession. In many
communities, including some of the ones where whites claim there is no
bias in policing, blacks face arrest rates for drugs that are five, ten,
even twenty times higher than the rates for whites, despite roughly
equal rates of drug usage.
Though a slim majority of whites admit that racial profiling--one clear
example of unequal treatment--does happen, few believe it happens where
they live. Yet in state after state, studies have found a
disproportionate rate of highway and surface street stops of vehicles
driven by blacks, and searches of cars driven by blacks, above and
beyond the rates of black traffic infractions, which otherwise might
create reasonable cause.
In New York City, from 1997-1998, the NYPD's Street Crimes Unit stopped
and frisked 135,000 people: 85% of whom were people of color. Only 4500
persons were ultimately arrested and prosecuted, meaning that over 95%
of those harassed were innocent. Interestingly, whites who were stopped
were significantly more likely to be found with drugs or other
contraband, indicating that not only was this policy of racial stops and
searches a biased one, but it failed the test as valid crime control on
its own merits as well.
Of course, I hardly expect the facts to matter much, as an awful lot of
white folks seem impervious to them. When it comes to racial realities,
the levels of ignorance are so ingrained as to be almost laughable.
Perhaps that's why 12% of whites actually say blacks are a majority of
the nation's population, and why most whites believe blacks are a third
of the nation's population, instead of the thirteen percent they
actually represent. We seem to see black people everywhere, and
apparently we see them doing quite well.
We even see them as our buddies. 75% of whites in one recent poll
indicated that they had multiple close black friends. Sounds great,
until you realize that 75% of white Americans represents about 145
million people. 145 million who say they have multiple black friends,
despite the fact that there are only 35 million black people to go
around.
Which means one of two things: either whites are clueless about black
people, friendships, or both; or black folks are mighty damned busy,
running from white house to white house to white house, being our
friends. In which case, we can put away all that nonsense about blacks
"taking our jobs." After all, how could blacks have time to work, what
with all the backyard barbecues they're attending at the houses of their
white pals? Hell, maybe Elvis will even invite them all to Graceland
when he makes his triumphant return to Memphis. Don't laugh: some people
will believe anything.
OK, fine. White America invariably sucks. Black America is invariably blameless. And forever it shall be. Wallow in your pity. Just don't expect anyone to care when you're still doing it 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now.
OK, fine. White America invariably sucks. Black America is invariably blameless. And forever it shall be. Wallow in your pity. Just don't expect anyone to care when you're still doing it 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now.
Nobody is ''wallowing in pity''.On the contrary,there is nothing pitiful about self help and rejection of white supremacy.I dont expect whites to ''care'' about the condition of blacks,they never have.We need to care about ourselves,and become more self sufficent instead of waiting on whitey to stop being racist and to give us the same treatment that he gives other whites.It wont happen.
Last edited by brewtown12; 09-21-2007 at 03:11 AM..
The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 – also known as the 1921 Race Riot, the Tulsa Race War, or the Greenwood Riot – was one of the nation's worst acts of racial violence and large-scale civil disorder. From May 31 to June 1, 1921 during 16 hours of rioting, 39 people were officially reported killed, over 800 people were admitted to local hospitals with injuries, an estimated 10,000 were left homeless, 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire, and $1.8 million (nearly $17 million after adjustment for inflation) in property damage. Confined mainly to the segregated Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, the riot was responsible for wiping out nearly all of the prosperity and success that Black Wall Street had achieved
^^^^Study how prosperous black tulsa was under a self reliant,upwardly bound black community.Unfortunately,hateful,evil whites destroyed this community.
This is a model of what blacks can achieve when we work together,educate ourselves(not to run to others for jobs,but to employ ourselves),open businesses,create jobs,and spend our dollars with each other.We dont have to be content with 50-60% unemployment while whites have less than 5%.We dont have to be content with earning several dollars less per hour than whites doing COMPARABLE JOBS.We dont have to be content with blacks having 49-60% of the net worth of the average white household.We do not have to be content with white sounding names on applications recieving 50% more callbacks from employers.We do not have to accept the glass ceiling that many of us face at our places of employment due to our race and or sex.We can alleviate these statistics only by doing for self.
Last edited by brewtown12; 09-21-2007 at 03:09 AM..
Your viewpoint is one of self hate and white supremacy.Based off your comments,you believe that blacks should continue to rely on a racist labor market,strive to ''earn'' respect from whitey,dont generalize whites by realizing that most of them are bias towards us (as proven by various studies of not only the labor market,but the justice system,loans,etc),yet generize our own people as if we are some sort of problem race.
I dont blame ''whitey'' for anything he doesnt deserve to be blamed for(oppressing blacks through rampant discrimination).More importantly,i feel it is up to blacks to pull ourselves up,as ''whitey'' wont do it for us.
You have demonstrated that you haven't the slightest clue what I believe but you have shown that your mind is as nimble as a slab of stone. You are not even aware that you are part of the problem so it's true that "ignorance is bliss." You demonstrate in the most inarticulate of fashions here that you bring that same old, tired black "self-empowerment", hate "whitey" rhetoric that has done nothing but lead to the enormous levels of black-on-black crime that plague cities like Milwaukee. The high crime rate indicates that an enormous number of black people have serious character flaws, preferring to take the low road rather than having some integrity and sense of positive direction. It is EASY to commit a crime and get thrown in jail, harder to stay up late nights, show discipline, determination, and resolve while earning a degree that matters. Why isn't the inner city a place where education is valued above all else? Continue the empty, meaningless rhetoric. Also, "Total empowerment is a term that is as outdated as processed hair, used by the uneducated to appear progressive. "Self-reliance" is the term I used and it starts with high academic achievement. Continue to deny this if you want, but until the more ignorant blacks quit killing each other and blaming "whitey" for their own lack of effort, there will be no business ownership. People don't want to be around ignorance, and it is prevalent in Milwaukee. So just stay out of the way.
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I will continue to live a productive,progreessive life.When YOU see another black person who is preparing him/herself for SELF RELIANCE,and TOTAL EMPOWERMENT,and CONTRIBUTION BACK TO THE COMMUNITY THROUGH JOB CREATION/BUSINESS OWNERSHIP,you stand aside.
No worries here. That one person won't be coming my way.
Last edited by LexusNexus; 09-21-2007 at 04:19 AM..
Your posts have so many absurd factual assumptions that it would take weeks to unpack them all. Not to mention it probably wouldn't do any good. By the way, thanks for the negative rep. Grow up.
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