Re: Driving & Race Relations

[creepsinc]

SCR, you do blame everybody for all of your problems. That's your whole schtick here. Ok, commence hysterical feature-length essay where you froth at the mouth about being owed an apology. ..

[wpipkins2]

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

The steel mills in the mon valley opened up jobs to African Americans since at least 1892, Frick recruited some blacks as well as eastern Europeans to help in that expansion.

White revisionist history? Black Americans were offered the worst jobs known to man in the mill. My grandfather retired from US Steel Coke Works in Clairton. Black people worked these jobs and many were never allowed to advance within the ranks.


The industrial unions did initially bar blacks- as well as some other ethnicities- from membership, and separate Jim Crow seniority lists were maintained through the 1960's, making it more difficult for blacks to get into the choice jobs.

White revisionist history? Black union workers never worked enough to cover union dues. Black union workers never reaped the benefits of the union. This is still happening today. Look at any large construction site.

Remember that the Civil Rights act banned discrimination by labor unions. No law is written up outlawing something that isn't happening.

Are you saying the Labor Unions stopped discrimination after the signing of the Civil Right Act? If so, you can truly believe that.

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by wpipkins2

Are you saying the Labor Unions stopped discrimination after the signing of the Civil Right Act? If so, you can truly believe that.

I know they say they don't discriminate, and that Trumka and Sharpton look like they are BFF's.

But I'm not part of the labor movement, I couldn't guess what they do.

I know that you have to know someone to get into the unions and actually sent out on jobs, it seems like black people might be less likely to know business agents personally. I can certainly see why there are fewer blacks on union construction jobs.

[montymontage]

On occasion, I feel that Americans with emotional attachments to their ostensible whiteness or blackness are the worst persons able to speak intelligently about race in America. Is that pragmatic or burying head in sand? Idk, perhaps a touch of both and many other things besides such as my horror over the paltry terms we use when have the media driven 'conversation' on race.

But then there are facts. It's undeniable true that African Americans suffered absurd degrees of historical discrimination. It's undeniable true that African Americans do face real discrimination in contemporary America.
I believe it's likely true that many persons, regardless of race but most especially those really into their whiteness and blackness are way too entrenched in patterns of thought that are not sufficient to make sense of today's reality)

.....read some august wilson (to make it relevant to Pittsburgh) some history, then think outside of personal experince, of affronts that made one angry and take the line in the sand position
.

[HarryRSpooner]

monty, at the end of the I hope we're either Americans or not Americans. Whether your family arrived at Plymouth Rock or Plymouth Rock landed on your family.