Skip to content

Politics. The feel in your country.

1478479481483484635

Comments

  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    Ugh I HATE the "Life is unfair" doge. As if people's choices have no effect in the world and there is no reason to ever try to make things better. "Life is unfair" my arse. People just want excuses to be jerks.
    booinyoureyesBalrog99
  • booinyoureyesbooinyoureyes Member Posts: 6,164
    joluv said:

    Dismissing overwhelming statistical evidence of inequality on the basis that numbers are dehumanizing is an absurd cop-out. Really disappointing.

    You are quite literally favoring using race as a dispositive characteristic for favorable treatment rather than individualized characteristics that would account for actual hardship, a method that would already help those who have been disadvantaged on account of race.

    That is dehumanizing.
    ThacoBellBalrog99
  • booinyoureyesbooinyoureyes Member Posts: 6,164
    Balrog99 said:

    As a scientist I agree with @FinneousPJ on this. There is likely more at play here than just race. Family dynamics is one factor. Culture is another.

    Even if it was just race in some instances, basing favorable treatment in hiring or acceptance into universities on more general hardship would help those who have suffered on account of their ethnicity/skin color. The problem is that this is apparently very hard to swallow in a culture that is increasingly placing racial identity above all else.
    ThacoBell
  • smeagolheartsmeagolheart Member Posts: 7,963
    Balrog99 said:

    As a scientist I agree with @FinneousPJ on this. There is likely more at play here than just race. Family dynamics is one factor. Culture is another.

    A prime example of this that mirrors the blacks is Native Americans. Many of them want to preserve their culture. That's fine by me but by not conforming to Western culture they won't be able to compete with that culture in what Westerners consider 'success' (ie: wealth). Is that fair? It's perfectly fair in that they're choosing to live by their norms, not mine. Unfortunately, they also get shafted by the dog eat dog nature of Western culture, have their lands confiscated because of natural resources for example, and that I don't like. They should be allowed to live the way they want to where they want to without undue interference.

    Native Americans are a whole nother can of worms. People have said that the White Man broke every treaty they ever made with Native Americans and it's not hard to believe that with some searching.

    https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/01/18/368559990/broken-promises-on-display-at-native-american-treaties-exhibit

    And of course, all the people that today are like "secure boarders! Build a wall" are not original native americans. If people can't see why it's problematic to come to someone else's land where at best you kick the people already there off of it and at worst you kill them off of it. Then turn around and say no one is welcome here and even people demanding native americans for their immigration papers...

    image
    Balrog99Grond0Proont
  • booinyoureyesbooinyoureyes Member Posts: 6,164
    edited February 2018
    Grond0 said:


    I've also seen the argument that if no causal relationship between race and wealth can be determined then it must be wrong to use public policy to address the apparent disparity. However, we take actions all the time based on symptoms not causes (think of health care). While it would certainly be preferable to understand the causal relationships underlying wealth distribution, if there is a huge apparent issue (which there clearly is) then it's not unreasonable to argue for taking action to address this while further research is being taken.

    The difference here is that hiring and acceptance into universities is unfortunately a zero sum game. There are a limited number of spots; if one person is benefited another is harmed. The proposed solutions by people here show a complete lack of sympathy for those who are handicapped on account of their race.
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    I am appropriating @Mathsorcerer 's comment here. If you were born in a country, you are native to that country.
    Balrog99semiticgoddessMathsorcererProont
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    Mantis37 said:

    Recently the Rooney rule - that minority candidates must also be interviewed for positions- has been imported to football in the UK from American football. This is an interesting example of giving more opportunities to candidates from minority backgrounds without explicit quotas, affirmative action in a slightly softer form. It's been welcomed by anti-racism organisations but will probably meet with a mixed reception within the profession.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2018/01/10/fas-rooney-rule-decision-watershed-moment-says-kick/

    The Rooney Rule was put in place in the NFL because, at that time, there had been a total of FIVE minority coaches in the history of the league. And two of them, both rather successful (Tony Dungy and Dennis Green) had just been fired. The rule was implemented in 2003, and simply stated that teams had to at least consider and interview a minority candidate for the job. Since the rule was implemented, 14 have been hired. Between them, they account for 5 Super Bowl appearances.
    Balrog99ThacoBell
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850

    Balrog99 said:

    As a scientist I agree with @FinneousPJ on this. There is likely more at play here than just race. Family dynamics is one factor. Culture is another.

    Even if it was just race in some instances, basing favorable treatment in hiring or acceptance into universities on more general hardship would help those who have suffered on account of their ethnicity/skin color. The problem is that this is apparently very hard to swallow in a culture that is increasingly placing racial identity above all else.
    Of course we place racial identity above all else. That is what happens when the founding of the country is based on a system of slavery. How else could things have possibly turned out?? Again, until the 1960s, white Americans were implicitly told by the culture they lived in that they were superior to other races (but mostly African-Americans). Their own government, in many cases, enforced this belief. We now have a situation where the President himself gets up on stage at far-right political gatherings and reads poems comparing immigrants to snakes.
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,366
    edited February 2018
    ThacoBell said:

    I am appropriating @Mathsorcerer 's comment here. If you were born in a country, you are native to that country.

    As a matter of fact, if you go back far enough we're all native Africans! According to that fact, we should all be natives of everywhere...

    Edit: There's a theory that the seeds of life may have came here from Mars. That would mean we're all native Martians too! Sorry @mlnevese...
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,366
    Back to Parkland: how many think the Sheriff should resign. I do...
    semiticgoddess
  • smeagolheartsmeagolheart Member Posts: 7,963
    Balrog99 said:

    Back to Parkland: how many think the Sheriff should resign. I do...

    I haven't seen anything that it's his fault. Plenty of dropped balls all around in the FBI and the school guard not going inside. I don't see that he did anything wrong that could be solely pinned on him.
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305
    edited February 2018

    I said significant correlation. The whole issue is whether there is a statistically significant correlation separate from other factors in a multivariate analysis. That is to say race is a predictor in itself and not as a function of other predictors. I elaborated this in my example above. Yes the graph presented before implies correlation, but the model is too simple to draw a meaningful conclusion.

    Significant correlation in a statistical sense means whether you can more accurately predict one variable from knowing another. It is clearly the case that knowing race allows you to more accurately predict wealth and therefore those variables are correlated. It doesn't matter when establishing the existence of a correlation whether there is causation at all or whether other variables could explain causation better.

    I accept that when considering policy responses it's more important to know causal links than the extent of correlation - which was why in my earlier posts I separated the issues of correlation and causation. I also accept though that in common usage when someone says one thing is correlated with another they often intend that to mean there is causation as well and I think that's the sense in which you were using the word.

    I don't understand your argument. For example it's entirely possible that blacks have less wealth because they have a lower level of education on average. Therefore the it might be good to start programs that enable blacks access to higher education rather than a vague ideology of positive discrimination. A multivariate analysis could show this while a univariate cannot.
    In my earlier post I referred to the chain of causation and this is relevant to your example. If you did a detailed analysis it's possible you would find that education is more strongly correlated with wealth in the US than race is (though from the research I've done I very much doubt it). Even if that were the case though you would also find that race was correlated with education.

    That correlation doesn't require that there are causal links between race and education and education and wealth, but a lot of the affirmative action programmes that have been discussed recently have been established on the basis that there are those causal links - education is one of the main areas targeted by affirmative action.

    There are similar causation chains applying in other areas, e.g. home ownership is much lower among blacks and lack of a home has a impact on wealth.

    You suggested that researchers should look at the impact of other factors as well as race and that is indeed normally done by researchers. There are a lot more studies relating to income than wealth, but I already gave links to a couple of reports that looked at the impact of other variables on wealth, such as home ownership and education. If you want a more detailed approach you could try the following
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X0090677X
    or you could try a less academic approach shown in https://www.stlouisfed.org/~/media/Files/PDFs/HFS/essays/HFS-Essay-1-2015-Race-Ethnicity-and-Wealth.pdf?la=en where they are particularly concerned with controlling for age and education.

    If you want greater detail you could try and find a library or cheap copy of "Black Wealth / White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality, 2nd Edition", which tries to control for a large range of socio-economic indicators, such as family structure, age, education, occupation and income (I could only find summaries / extracts and not a free full version).

    All of the reports I've looked at agree that while other factors explain part of the disparity in wealth, the largest factor in that disparity is race, i.e. we're not in fact just looking at chains of causation through other factors, but race by itself is strongly linked to wealth.
    FinneousPJjjstraka34
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,366
    edited February 2018

    Balrog99 said:

    Back to Parkland: how many think the Sheriff should resign. I do...

    I haven't seen anything that it's his fault. Plenty of dropped balls all around in the FBI and the school guard not going inside. I don't see that he did anything wrong that could be solely pinned on him.
    As the boss he has to take responsibility for his underlings. It comes with the position of power.

    Edit: I never said 'sole' blame. I just said he should resign. If there's negligence in the FBI then heads should roll there too!
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305

    Grond0 said:


    I've also seen the argument that if no causal relationship between race and wealth can be determined then it must be wrong to use public policy to address the apparent disparity. However, we take actions all the time based on symptoms not causes (think of health care). While it would certainly be preferable to understand the causal relationships underlying wealth distribution, if there is a huge apparent issue (which there clearly is) then it's not unreasonable to argue for taking action to address this while further research is being taken.

    The difference here is that hiring and acceptance into universities is unfortunately a zero sum game. There are a limited number of spots; if one person is benefited another is harmed. The proposed solutions by people here show a complete lack of sympathy for those who are handicapped on account of their race.
    I can certainly see that and I have mixed feelings about affirmative action. That's not because I think the issue is unimportant, but that I can easily see how it could do more harm than good - for instance through a process of reinforcing racial stereotypes, increasing resentment between races or moving away from a culture of excellence.

    In looking at wealth it's notable that while black and hispanic wealth has hardly changed for a long time, asian wealth has grown more strongly in recent years than for whites - and I don't think that's been the result of affirmative action. Rather I think it's much more to do with a cultural mind-set valuing achievement and education. If you think that's a good thing the question is how can you best spread that mind-set. Affirmative action could help by making people more aware of opportunities as well as prioritizing them, but it also has the potential to convince all groups (including the group being helped) that they are being offered support because they are (and always will be) lower achievers.
    ThacoBell
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,366
    Grond0 said:

    Grond0 said:


    I've also seen the argument that if no causal relationship between race and wealth can be determined then it must be wrong to use public policy to address the apparent disparity. However, we take actions all the time based on symptoms not causes (think of health care). While it would certainly be preferable to understand the causal relationships underlying wealth distribution, if there is a huge apparent issue (which there clearly is) then it's not unreasonable to argue for taking action to address this while further research is being taken.

    The difference here is that hiring and acceptance into universities is unfortunately a zero sum game. There are a limited number of spots; if one person is benefited another is harmed. The proposed solutions by people here show a complete lack of sympathy for those who are handicapped on account of their race.
    I can certainly see that and I have mixed feelings about affirmative action. That's not because I think the issue is unimportant, but that I can easily see how it could do more harm than good - for instance through a process of reinforcing racial stereotypes, increasing resentment between races or moving away from a culture of excellence.

    In looking at wealth it's notable that while black and hispanic wealth has hardly changed for a long time, asian wealth has grown more strongly in recent years than for whites - and I don't think that's been the result of affirmative action. Rather I think it's much more to do with a cultural mind-set valuing achievement and education. If you think that's a good thing the question is how can you best spread that mind-set. Affirmative action could help by making people more aware of opportunities as well as prioritizing them, but it also has the potential to convince all groups (including the group being helped) that they are being offered support because they are (and always will be) lower achievers.
    Not to mention the fact that we (by we I mean Westerners) are applying our stereotypical definition of success to other cultures. Those other cultures may not value wealth or belongings as much as we do. By forcing them to comply with our definition we may be doing them a disservice. Without our intervention might Native Americans be 'happier' being left alone. We are forcing other cultures into defining their happiness the same way we do. Who knows what the repercussions are?

    Pursuit of happiness isn't necessarily the pursuit of wealth...
    ThacoBellGrond0Proont
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    Balrog99 said:

    Back to Parkland: how many think the Sheriff should resign. I do...

    No. What more could he have done? What more could anyone have done?

    Remember, the shooting that happened in the school took all of 6 minutes. If you think it's the deputies job to storm a building looking for an active shooter, you watch too much prime time tv.

    You and they do not know the hostage situation in the building, where the active shooter is. If they storm the school and he flees the premises and begins a rampage somewhere else. Whose to blame then?

    Making him resign makes law enforcement the scapegoat for this incident.

    "Well it wasn't the high powered gun that killed those kids. If those cops just did their job properly, this incident wouldn't have happened! You Liberals hate cops right? We can blame them..."

    Remember, the kid in question did not break any laws until he walked up to the school and began shooting. His guardians thought the guns were locked secure and they had the only key to it. Yes, the FBI and police force all received hints and tips that this kid was going to shoot up a school but law enforcement can't just act on tips alone.
    smeagolheart
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,366
    edited February 2018
    deltago said:

    Balrog99 said:

    Back to Parkland: how many think the Sheriff should resign. I do...

    No. What more could he have done? What more could anyone have done?

    Remember, the shooting that happened in the school took all of 6 minutes. If you think it's the deputies job to storm a building looking for an active shooter, you watch too much prime time tv.

    You and they do not know the hostage situation in the building, where the active shooter is. If they storm the school and he flees the premises and begins a rampage somewhere else. Whose to blame then?

    Making him resign makes law enforcement the scapegoat for this incident.

    "Well it wasn't the high powered gun that killed those kids. If those cops just did their job properly, this incident wouldn't have happened! You Liberals hate cops right? We can blame them..."

    Remember, the kid in question did not break any laws until he walked up to the school and began shooting. His guardians thought the guns were locked secure and they had the only key to it. Yes, the FBI and police force all received hints and tips that this kid was going to shoot up a school but law enforcement can't just act on tips alone.
    I still think that the people in power should take the blame when things go awry. If that was the case maybe we'd have more responsible people seeking those positions of power. That means the Sheriff in this case. It appears that his deputies did not do their sworn duty. That falls on him ultimately. Trump is to blame for choosing the morons in his inner circle too in my opinion. If you're a bad judge of character you should not be in a position of power...
    semiticgoddessThacoBell
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    I don't object to the officer losing his job. I certainly don't expect a lone man with a pistol to engage in a shoot-out against somebody with an AR-15, but the fact that this guy was unable to make an impact on this situation suggests his position at the school is extraneous.
    Balrog99 said:

    ThacoBell said:

    I am appropriating @Mathsorcerer 's comment here. If you were born in a country, you are native to that country.

    As a matter of fact, if you go back far enough we're all native Africans! According to that fact, we should all be natives of everywhere...
    Well, we weren't all born in Africa, and being born someplace was @Mathsorcerer's and @ThacoBell's criterion for being a native. We're just descended from people who were born in Africa.

    I would say you're native to the place where you were born or have spent the majority of your young life. That definition offers a bit of wiggle room. If we go by ancestry instead, then things get a lot more complicated and we run into some very weird conclusions. My earliest ancestors in the United States arrived on the Mayflower; my ancestors have been in America for hundreds of years. Yet my living family members have only spent decades in Texas specifically. If you have to be here for thousands of years to be a native (small "n") American, then I'm native to England. But if you go back for tens of thousands of years, I have no idea where I came from. Go back hundreds of thousands of years, and I'm native to Africa.

    If ancestry rather than one's own individual birth and life determines nativity, we'd need to designate a specific time frame.
    ThacoBellMathsorcererProont
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,366

    I don't object to the officer losing his job. I certainly don't expect a lone man with a pistol to engage in a shoot-out against somebody with an AR-15, but the fact that this guy was unable to make an impact on this situation suggests his position at the school is extraneous.

    Balrog99 said:

    ThacoBell said:

    I am appropriating @Mathsorcerer 's comment here. If you were born in a country, you are native to that country.

    As a matter of fact, if you go back far enough we're all native Africans! According to that fact, we should all be natives of everywhere...
    Well, we weren't all born in Africa, and being born someplace was @Mathsorcerer's and @ThacoBell's criterion for being a native. We're just descended from people who were born in Africa.

    I would say you're native to the place where you were born or have spent the majority of your young life. That definition offers a bit of wiggle room. If we go by ancestry instead, then things get a lot more complicated and we run into some very weird conclusions. My earliest ancestors in the United States arrived on the Mayflower; my ancestors have been in America for hundreds of years. Yet my living family members have only spent decades in Texas specifically. If you have to be here for thousands of years to be a native (small "n") American, then I'm native to England. But if you go back for tens of thousands of years, I have no idea where I came from. Go back hundreds of thousands of years, and I'm native to Africa.

    If ancestry rather than one's own individual birth and life determines nativity, we'd need to designate a specific time frame.
    No Mayflower for me. My ancestors came over due to the Irish potato famine and German immigration of the 1800's.

    The difference with the blacks is that for the most part their ancestors didn't choose to come here voluntarily. That's where the biggest difference in experience lies. They're definitely American citizens now but because they didn't have a choice, they didn't have the same desire to conform. They didn't come here due to some American dream, they came because they were bought to perform manual labor. Their value was solely linked to their physical attributes and that was likely drilled into their very nature by their owners. It's disgusting to think of that now but it's the truth. Luckily for me my ancestors settled in the north, specifically Minnesota which was pro Union in the Civil War, so I don't personally feel like my family had a stake in slavery. I'm not sure what to think of wealthy Southerners who's wealth can be traced back to those days. I think many of them lost most of their wealth after the war, but they likely amassed more wealth on the backs of freed slaves anyway. Damn, it sure is complicated...
    jjstraka34semiticgoddessThacoBell
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    Balrog99 said:

    I don't object to the officer losing his job. I certainly don't expect a lone man with a pistol to engage in a shoot-out against somebody with an AR-15, but the fact that this guy was unable to make an impact on this situation suggests his position at the school is extraneous.

    Balrog99 said:

    ThacoBell said:

    I am appropriating @Mathsorcerer 's comment here. If you were born in a country, you are native to that country.

    As a matter of fact, if you go back far enough we're all native Africans! According to that fact, we should all be natives of everywhere...
    Well, we weren't all born in Africa, and being born someplace was @Mathsorcerer's and @ThacoBell's criterion for being a native. We're just descended from people who were born in Africa.

    I would say you're native to the place where you were born or have spent the majority of your young life. That definition offers a bit of wiggle room. If we go by ancestry instead, then things get a lot more complicated and we run into some very weird conclusions. My earliest ancestors in the United States arrived on the Mayflower; my ancestors have been in America for hundreds of years. Yet my living family members have only spent decades in Texas specifically. If you have to be here for thousands of years to be a native (small "n") American, then I'm native to England. But if you go back for tens of thousands of years, I have no idea where I came from. Go back hundreds of thousands of years, and I'm native to Africa.

    If ancestry rather than one's own individual birth and life determines nativity, we'd need to designate a specific time frame.
    No Mayflower for me. My ancestors came over due to the Irish potato famine and German immigration of the 1800's.

    The difference with the blacks is that for the most part their ancestors didn't choose to come here voluntarily. That's where the biggest difference in experience lies. They're definitely American citizens now but because they didn't have a choice, they didn't have the same desire to conform. They didn't come here due to some American dream, they came because they were bought to perform manual labor. Their value was solely linked to their physical attributes and that was likely drilled into their very nature by their owners. It's disgusting to think of that now but it's the truth. Luckily for me my ancestors settled in the north, specifically Minnesota which was pro Union in the Civil War, so I don't personally feel like my family had a stake in slavery. I'm not sure what to think of wealthy Southerners who's wealth can be traced back to those days. I think many of them lost most of their wealth after the war, but they likely amassed more wealth on the backs of freed slaves anyway. Damn, it sure is complicated...
    Do you really think that if they can choose, they will choose Africa instead of USA?

    Was the White man that created the best nations in world. Even the white minority regions like Bermuda(British territory) is only rich because the institutions developed by Europeans. I an not saying that whites din`t made bad things because Bolshevik ideologies and left ideologies come from white man.
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,366

    Balrog99 said:

    I don't object to the officer losing his job. I certainly don't expect a lone man with a pistol to engage in a shoot-out against somebody with an AR-15, but the fact that this guy was unable to make an impact on this situation suggests his position at the school is extraneous.

    Balrog99 said:

    ThacoBell said:

    I am appropriating @Mathsorcerer 's comment here. If you were born in a country, you are native to that country.

    As a matter of fact, if you go back far enough we're all native Africans! According to that fact, we should all be natives of everywhere...
    Well, we weren't all born in Africa, and being born someplace was @Mathsorcerer's and @ThacoBell's criterion for being a native. We're just descended from people who were born in Africa.

    I would say you're native to the place where you were born or have spent the majority of your young life. That definition offers a bit of wiggle room. If we go by ancestry instead, then things get a lot more complicated and we run into some very weird conclusions. My earliest ancestors in the United States arrived on the Mayflower; my ancestors have been in America for hundreds of years. Yet my living family members have only spent decades in Texas specifically. If you have to be here for thousands of years to be a native (small "n") American, then I'm native to England. But if you go back for tens of thousands of years, I have no idea where I came from. Go back hundreds of thousands of years, and I'm native to Africa.

    If ancestry rather than one's own individual birth and life determines nativity, we'd need to designate a specific time frame.
    No Mayflower for me. My ancestors came over due to the Irish potato famine and German immigration of the 1800's.

    The difference with the blacks is that for the most part their ancestors didn't choose to come here voluntarily. That's where the biggest difference in experience lies. They're definitely American citizens now but because they didn't have a choice, they didn't have the same desire to conform. They didn't come here due to some American dream, they came because they were bought to perform manual labor. Their value was solely linked to their physical attributes and that was likely drilled into their very nature by their owners. It's disgusting to think of that now but it's the truth. Luckily for me my ancestors settled in the north, specifically Minnesota which was pro Union in the Civil War, so I don't personally feel like my family had a stake in slavery. I'm not sure what to think of wealthy Southerners who's wealth can be traced back to those days. I think many of them lost most of their wealth after the war, but they likely amassed more wealth on the backs of freed slaves anyway. Damn, it sure is complicated...
    Do you really think that if they can choose, they will choose Africa instead of USA?

    Was the White man that created the best nations in world. Even the white minority regions like Bermuda(British territory) is only rich because the institutions developed by Europeans. I an not saying that whites din`t made bad things because Bolshevik ideologies and left ideologies come from white man.
    At the time their ancestors were brought over it's very likely they would have chose to stay in Africa rather than come here as slaves. The ones here now? Probably not with the state of Africa vs. the US currently. If they had come over here by choice things would be very different. Human beings generally don't like anything forced on them without choice, regardless if it ultimately turns out 'good' or 'bad'.
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    Balrog99 said:

    Balrog99 said:

    I don't object to the officer losing his job. I certainly don't expect a lone man with a pistol to engage in a shoot-out against somebody with an AR-15, but the fact that this guy was unable to make an impact on this situation suggests his position at the school is extraneous.

    Balrog99 said:

    ThacoBell said:

    I am appropriating @Mathsorcerer 's comment here. If you were born in a country, you are native to that country.

    As a matter of fact, if you go back far enough we're all native Africans! According to that fact, we should all be natives of everywhere...
    Well, we weren't all born in Africa, and being born someplace was @Mathsorcerer's and @ThacoBell's criterion for being a native. We're just descended from people who were born in Africa.

    I would say you're native to the place where you were born or have spent the majority of your young life. That definition offers a bit of wiggle room. If we go by ancestry instead, then things get a lot more complicated and we run into some very weird conclusions. My earliest ancestors in the United States arrived on the Mayflower; my ancestors have been in America for hundreds of years. Yet my living family members have only spent decades in Texas specifically. If you have to be here for thousands of years to be a native (small "n") American, then I'm native to England. But if you go back for tens of thousands of years, I have no idea where I came from. Go back hundreds of thousands of years, and I'm native to Africa.

    If ancestry rather than one's own individual birth and life determines nativity, we'd need to designate a specific time frame.
    No Mayflower for me. My ancestors came over due to the Irish potato famine and German immigration of the 1800's.

    The difference with the blacks is that for the most part their ancestors didn't choose to come here voluntarily. That's where the biggest difference in experience lies. They're definitely American citizens now but because they didn't have a choice, they didn't have the same desire to conform. They didn't come here due to some American dream, they came because they were bought to perform manual labor. Their value was solely linked to their physical attributes and that was likely drilled into their very nature by their owners. It's disgusting to think of that now but it's the truth. Luckily for me my ancestors settled in the north, specifically Minnesota which was pro Union in the Civil War, so I don't personally feel like my family had a stake in slavery. I'm not sure what to think of wealthy Southerners who's wealth can be traced back to those days. I think many of them lost most of their wealth after the war, but they likely amassed more wealth on the backs of freed slaves anyway. Damn, it sure is complicated...
    Do you really think that if they can choose, they will choose Africa instead of USA?

    Was the White man that created the best nations in world. Even the white minority regions like Bermuda(British territory) is only rich because the institutions developed by Europeans. I an not saying that whites din`t made bad things because Bolshevik ideologies and left ideologies come from white man.
    At the time their ancestors were brought over it's very likely they would have chose to stay in Africa rather than come here as slaves. The ones here now? Probably not with the state of Africa vs. the US currently. If they had come over here by choice things would be very different. Human beings generally don't like anything forced on them without choice, regardless if it ultimately turns out 'good' or 'bad'.
    I agree but i an dating a girl of mostly slav ancestry. Slavs was the people who mostly suffered by slavery on history. Slaved by Romans, Nords, Arabs, Mongols... Slavs should receive affirmative action too?
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,366

    Balrog99 said:

    Balrog99 said:

    I don't object to the officer losing his job. I certainly don't expect a lone man with a pistol to engage in a shoot-out against somebody with an AR-15, but the fact that this guy was unable to make an impact on this situation suggests his position at the school is extraneous.

    Balrog99 said:

    ThacoBell said:

    I am appropriating @Mathsorcerer 's comment here. If you were born in a country, you are native to that country.

    As a matter of fact, if you go back far enough we're all native Africans! According to that fact, we should all be natives of everywhere...
    Well, we weren't all born in Africa, and being born someplace was @Mathsorcerer's and @ThacoBell's criterion for being a native. We're just descended from people who were born in Africa.

    I would say you're native to the place where you were born or have spent the majority of your young life. That definition offers a bit of wiggle room. If we go by ancestry instead, then things get a lot more complicated and we run into some very weird conclusions. My earliest ancestors in the United States arrived on the Mayflower; my ancestors have been in America for hundreds of years. Yet my living family members have only spent decades in Texas specifically. If you have to be here for thousands of years to be a native (small "n") American, then I'm native to England. But if you go back for tens of thousands of years, I have no idea where I came from. Go back hundreds of thousands of years, and I'm native to Africa.

    If ancestry rather than one's own individual birth and life determines nativity, we'd need to designate a specific time frame.
    No Mayflower for me. My ancestors came over due to the Irish potato famine and German immigration of the 1800's.

    The difference with the blacks is that for the most part their ancestors didn't choose to come here voluntarily. That's where the biggest difference in experience lies. They're definitely American citizens now but because they didn't have a choice, they didn't have the same desire to conform. They didn't come here due to some American dream, they came because they were bought to perform manual labor. Their value was solely linked to their physical attributes and that was likely drilled into their very nature by their owners. It's disgusting to think of that now but it's the truth. Luckily for me my ancestors settled in the north, specifically Minnesota which was pro Union in the Civil War, so I don't personally feel like my family had a stake in slavery. I'm not sure what to think of wealthy Southerners who's wealth can be traced back to those days. I think many of them lost most of their wealth after the war, but they likely amassed more wealth on the backs of freed slaves anyway. Damn, it sure is complicated...
    Do you really think that if they can choose, they will choose Africa instead of USA?

    Was the White man that created the best nations in world. Even the white minority regions like Bermuda(British territory) is only rich because the institutions developed by Europeans. I an not saying that whites din`t made bad things because Bolshevik ideologies and left ideologies come from white man.
    At the time their ancestors were brought over it's very likely they would have chose to stay in Africa rather than come here as slaves. The ones here now? Probably not with the state of Africa vs. the US currently. If they had come over here by choice things would be very different. Human beings generally don't like anything forced on them without choice, regardless if it ultimately turns out 'good' or 'bad'.
    I agree but i an dating a girl of mostly slav ancestry. Slavs was the people who mostly suffered by slavery on history. Slaved by Romans, Nords, Arabs, Mongols... Slavs should receive affirmative action too?
    In the US they probably would if they lobbied enough! Seriously though, they fall under the category of folks who don't really need help due to their culture. If the Nazis had won WW2 then the Slavs would have been treated exactly the same way as the blacks were here. After 200 years of that they might even be in the same boat if they were freed. I can recognize the problem for the blacks, it's the solution that's complicated...
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited February 2018

    Balrog99 said:

    I don't object to the officer losing his job. I certainly don't expect a lone man with a pistol to engage in a shoot-out against somebody with an AR-15, but the fact that this guy was unable to make an impact on this situation suggests his position at the school is extraneous.

    Balrog99 said:

    ThacoBell said:

    I am appropriating @Mathsorcerer 's comment here. If you were born in a country, you are native to that country.

    As a matter of fact, if you go back far enough we're all native Africans! According to that fact, we should all be natives of everywhere...
    Well, we weren't all born in Africa, and being born someplace was @Mathsorcerer's and @ThacoBell's criterion for being a native. We're just descended from people who were born in Africa.

    I would say you're native to the place where you were born or have spent the majority of your young life. That definition offers a bit of wiggle room. If we go by ancestry instead, then things get a lot more complicated and we run into some very weird conclusions. My earliest ancestors in the United States arrived on the Mayflower; my ancestors have been in America for hundreds of years. Yet my living family members have only spent decades in Texas specifically. If you have to be here for thousands of years to be a native (small "n") American, then I'm native to England. But if you go back for tens of thousands of years, I have no idea where I came from. Go back hundreds of thousands of years, and I'm native to Africa.

    If ancestry rather than one's own individual birth and life determines nativity, we'd need to designate a specific time frame.
    No Mayflower for me. My ancestors came over due to the Irish potato famine and German immigration of the 1800's.

    The difference with the blacks is that for the most part their ancestors didn't choose to come here voluntarily. That's where the biggest difference in experience lies. They're definitely American citizens now but because they didn't have a choice, they didn't have the same desire to conform. They didn't come here due to some American dream, they came because they were bought to perform manual labor. Their value was solely linked to their physical attributes and that was likely drilled into their very nature by their owners. It's disgusting to think of that now but it's the truth. Luckily for me my ancestors settled in the north, specifically Minnesota which was pro Union in the Civil War, so I don't personally feel like my family had a stake in slavery. I'm not sure what to think of wealthy Southerners who's wealth can be traced back to those days. I think many of them lost most of their wealth after the war, but they likely amassed more wealth on the backs of freed slaves anyway. Damn, it sure is complicated...
    Do you really think that if they can choose, they will choose Africa instead of USA?

    Was the White man that created the best nations in world. Even the white minority regions like Bermuda(British territory) is only rich because the institutions developed by Europeans. I an not saying that whites din`t made bad things because Bolshevik ideologies and left ideologies come from white man.
    Pretty easy to create great institutions when you have human property doing all the manual labor for, literally, not monetary cost. Britain didn't eliminate the practice completely until 1843. Spain until 1820. France in 1848. Granted, all 3 of those examples had it mostly take place in their colonial holdings. But, as far as America is concerned, it was built on the backs of slaves. There were only 13 colonies originally, and at least half of them were utterly dependent upon slave labor for their entire economy. It's immaterial whether their ancestors would have chosen to come here or not, since, without the slave labor, America never becomes the power it is to begin with.

    And that is the major difference, in a historical perspective, of immigrants and African-Americans when it comes to minorities in this country. One group of people were brought here in chains, and the rest came here looking for a better life voluntarily. And I know @Mathsorcerer especially is not overly fond of people being responsible for what their ancestors did. And that's true, no one is "responsible" for that. But it is a very important point to dive into when we are talking about this subject. Again, it's impossible not to talk about this on a macro-scale. No group of people gave more to this country and were treated worse than African-Americans, from the middle-passage til at least the mid-60s. It's absolutely true that every group of immigrants since, has, in a sense, been treated essentially the same way blacks have been treated. Irish, Italians, Mexicans, more recently those from the Middle-East. They've all taken their turn facing the xenophobic ire of the Protestant white majority. But the greatest social stigma and hatred is still saved for the people who were originally brought here against their will.

    And then, of course, there are the Native Americans, who were essentially just killed off wholesale, and now exist in pockets on reservations scattered across the country, where alcoholism and poverty are rampant.
    Balrog99Proont
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    Blacks are indeed better off in the United States than in almost any African country except for perhaps South Africa simply because the standard of living is so much better. Being poor by American standards is still better than being middle-class by African standards.

    But that's just for the present day. Thomas Jefferson was quite right when he pointed out during the slave days that if a black person could choose to live in any country in the world, the United States would be the absolute worst place they could possibly live.
    Balrog99Proont
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    edited February 2018
    Balrog99 said:

    (...)

    In the US they probably would if they lobbied enough! Seriously though, they fall under the category of folks who don't really need help due to their culture. If the Nazis had won WW2 then the Slavs would have been treated exactly the same way as the blacks were here. After 200 years of that they might even be in the same boat if they were freed. I can recognize the problem for the blacks, it's the solution that's complicated...

    The problem of trying to solv via affirmative action is that upper class high educate blacks will receive affirmative action while extremely poor blacks will not. Other problem is how much black someone needs to be to get help? There are 1/4 black, 1/8, 1/16(...) people. Obama have a white mother... Why not help miserable and poor people regardless of race?
    semiticgoddess
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited February 2018

    Balrog99 said:

    (...)

    In the US they probably would if they lobbied enough! Seriously though, they fall under the category of folks who don't really need help due to their culture. If the Nazis had won WW2 then the Slavs would have been treated exactly the same way as the blacks were here. After 200 years of that they might even be in the same boat if they were freed. I can recognize the problem for the blacks, it's the solution that's complicated...

    The problem of trying to solv via affirmative action is that upper class high educate blacks will receive affirmative action while extremely poor blacks will not. Other problem is how much black someone needs to be to get help? There are 1/4 black, 1/8, 1/16(...) people. Obama have a white mother... Why not help miserable and poor people regardless of race?
    Because, in general, the United States public hates poor people (as a group) even more than they hate any individual minority group. Our social safety net programs are bare bones, almost designed (at this point) to be as humiliating as possible. Poverty is a cardinal sin in a capitalist wonderland.
    ThacoBellsemiticgoddessProont
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,366

    Blacks are indeed better off in the United States than in almost any African country except for perhaps South Africa simply because the standard of living is so much better. Being poor by American standards is still better than being middle-class by African standards.

    But that's just for the present day. Thomas Jefferson was quite right when he pointed out during the slave days that if a black person could choose to live in any country in the world, the United States would be the absolute worst place they could possibly live.

    Ironically, he owned slaves!
    ThacoBellsemiticgoddessProont
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited February 2018
    Balrog99 said:

    Blacks are indeed better off in the United States than in almost any African country except for perhaps South Africa simply because the standard of living is so much better. Being poor by American standards is still better than being middle-class by African standards.

    But that's just for the present day. Thomas Jefferson was quite right when he pointed out during the slave days that if a black person could choose to live in any country in the world, the United States would be the absolute worst place they could possibly live.

    Ironically, he owned slaves!
    He also had one as a mistress (and likely far more than one), and that dynamic, in modern understanding, really can't be considered anything other than rape. The founding fathers are a deeply problematic bunch, who came up with an above-average system of government for the time, but, even if you excuse much of their behavior as a product of the time, do not hold up well. Look into how Patrick Henry insisted on changing the wording of the Second Amendment specifically to protect the slave patrols, because he was the largest slave-owner in Virginia. Geniuses?? No, I don't think they were at all. They have been deified beyond all comprehension at this point. Certain things they did are worthy of praise, certain things absolute scorn, but the way they have been mythologized is embarrassing.
    ThacoBellsemiticgoddessGrond0Proont
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,366

    Balrog99 said:

    Blacks are indeed better off in the United States than in almost any African country except for perhaps South Africa simply because the standard of living is so much better. Being poor by American standards is still better than being middle-class by African standards.

    But that's just for the present day. Thomas Jefferson was quite right when he pointed out during the slave days that if a black person could choose to live in any country in the world, the United States would be the absolute worst place they could possibly live.

    Ironically, he owned slaves!
    He also had one as a mistress (and likely far more than one), and that dynamic, in modern understanding, really can't be considered anything other than rape. The founding fathers are a deeply problematic bunch, who came up with an above-average system of government for the time, but, even if you excuse much of their behavior as a product of the time, do not hold up well. Look into how Patrick Henry insisted on changing the wording of the Second Amendment specifically to protect the slave patrols, because he was the largest slave-owner in Virginia. Geniuses?? No, I don't think they were at all.
    Compared to the other schools of thought at the time they WERE geniuses. They weren't perfect by any means but they were at least able to compromise. Too bad that's seen as a weakness nowadays. A hard line on slavery back then would likely have ended up meaning two separate countries. Who knows how much longer the South would have kept slavery around if that would have happened? I'd bet it wouldn't have been emancipation in 1865.
    semiticgoddessProont
This discussion has been closed.