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Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
I don't think anyone is sweeping anything under the rug.
I'm just saying we can't change it and we can't do anything to make it right.
I think it's an insult to accuse people of being self-centered and non-empathetic because we don't hold onto it and feel guilty about something we didn't do. Because we don't walk around apologizing to black people for something we had no control over or knowledge of. I don't apologize to Jews either for what happened to them in the past. I was no more part of that than I was of slavery ownership.
Originally posted by HarlemHottie
That's the situation we're dealing with, or my point of view on it.
Originally posted by HarlemHottie
The humanity in us all should reach out and try to soothe the pain in others.
Originally posted by HarlemHottie
If we can all agree that the slaves worked for free, for a VERY long time, what we want should be referred to as deferred payment.
To me affirmative action takes away from the concept of rewarding those who work hard and who have rightly earned everything they get. I can tell you right now that my school has certain quotas that they have to fill with respect to minorities. What that means is that after a certain number of applications the main criteria which judgment is based upon is no longer academic performance but rather race and gender. That is not the way we should be doing things in America if we want to promote the concept of fair play and the concept of a level playing field.
Originally posted by ceci2006
What makes it so hard for you to recognize that people suffered during slavery as well as during Jim Crow?
Originally posted by ceci2006
Is there a racial hierarchy in the manner of suffering?
Originally posted by HarlemHottie
You say it's a bad analogy, then go on to recount a personal experience with affirmative action. What was so bad about the analogy?
Originally posted by nextguyinline
When certain folk are suppressed from their pursuit of happiness whether it be success in business or prefered area of living or what have you, hardly constitutes a fair and level playing field.
Originally posted by nextguyinline
Sometimes benefit of the group outweighs benefit of the individual and this doctrine is epitomized IMO with affirmative action.
Originally quoted by WestPoint23
I don't believe I have ever denied what happed in the past with respect to slavery, I understand that people suffered and I hope its never repeated. So with all due respect I don't see where your coming from on that.
Not at all, at least not for me, how about for you?
WHITE PRIVILEGE SHAPES THE U.S.
Here's what white privilege sounds like:
I am sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college admissions, which he opposes and I support.
The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that in the United States being white has advantages. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege.
So, if we live in a world of white privilege--unearned white privilege--how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I ask.
He paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter."
That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: the privilege to acknowledge you have unearned privilege but ignore what it means.
what is white privilege?
Some people have described white privilege as the flip-side of racism. Behind the violence and discrimination of racism that people of color are subjected to in this country are the advantages and protections of having white skin. Peggy McIntosh, a scholar on white privilege, describes it as "an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks."
[...]
Sharon Martinas describes white privilege as the preferential treatment, on an individual, institutional, and cultural level, to individuals whose ancestors came from Europe over people whose ancestors came from the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Arab world.This preferential treatment exempts European Americans from the forms of racial and national oppression inflicted upon people whose ancestors are not from Europe. Although this is true today, it has not always been true. The ethnic groups who are considered White have changed many times over the years.
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions which I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographical location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can see, my African American coworkers, friends and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place, and line of work cannot count on most of these conditions. I usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work to systematically overempower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex.
1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
6. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
9. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
10. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
11. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
12. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals,the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
16. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to "the person in charge," I will be facing a person of my race.
19. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.
20. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
21. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, out numbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.
23. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
25. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in flesh color and have them more or less match my skin.
Originally posted by WestPoint23
Originally posted by HarlemHottie
You say it's a bad analogy, then go on to recount a personal experience with affirmative action. What was so bad about the analogy?
The main problem that I have with your analogy is that its not really representative of this situation. What you should have said is that the grand children or associates of the rapist, generations after the incident, should be forced to pay the grandchildren of the raped woman.
And now that I’ve answered your points could you kindly do the same for mine?
Racial Etiquette: The Racial Customs and Rules of Racial Behavior in Jim Crow America
Most southern white Americans who grew up prior to 1954 expected black Americans to conduct themselves according to well-understood rituals of behavior. This racial etiquette governed the actions, manners, attitudes, and words of all black people when in the presence of whites. To violate this racial etiquette placed one's very life, and the lives of one's family, at risk. Blacks were expected to refer to white males in positions of authority as "Boss" or "Cap'n"--a title of respect that replaced "Master" or "Marster" used in slave times. Sometimes, the white children of one's white employer or a prominent white person might be called "Massa," to show special respect. If a white person was well known, a black servant or hired hand or tenant might speak in somewhat intimate terms, addressing the white person as "Mr. John" or "Miss Mary."
All black men, on the other hand, were called by their first names or were referred to as "Boy," "Uncle," and "Old Man"--regardless of their age. If the white person did not personally know a black person, the term "'n-word'" or "'n-word'-fellow," might be used. In legal cases and the press, blacks were often referred to by the word "Negro" with a first name attached, such as "Negro Sam." [...]Whites much preferred to give blacks honorary titles, such as Doctor, or Professor, or Reverend, in order to avoid calling them Mister. While the term "'n-word'" was universally used, some whites were uncomfortable with it because they knew it was offensive to most blacks. As a substitute, the word "niggra" often appeared in polite society.
[...]
This practice of addressing blacks by words that denoted disrespect or inferiority reduced the black person to a non-person, especially in newspaper accounts. [...]In general, blacks and whites could meet and talk on the street. Almost always, however, the rules of racial etiquette required blacks to be agreeable and non-challenging, even when the white person was mistaken about something. Usually it was expected that blacks would step off the sidewalk when meeting whites or else walk on the outer street side of the walk thereby "giving whites the wall." Under no circumstances could a black person assume an air of equality with whites.
Almost always, however, the rules of racial etiquette required blacks to be agreeable and non-challenging, even when the white person was mistaken about something.
One of the first interview tips we get is, don't 'talk black," and that same advice applies to personal life too. I have very clear diction and a large vocabulary at my disposal, because I was well-educated. Some black people don't think I 'talk black' well enough. Yet, I've had white friends overhear me talking to someone else and kind of lift their eyebrows at me and say flatly, Oh, I didn't know you talked like that(their emphasis). Yes, that could be attributable to the fact that I didn't speak to them like that, but that still doesn't explain the disdain in that look. It made me realize that it disturbed some white people, even in my own peer group, to hear me speak that way, and it made me uncomfortable in their presence, like, I better make sure not to slip up like that again, or face social censure. So what I did, and what I lot of black people do, it seems, is make damn sure I didn't slip up, which can be very stressful. What if that was the only way I knew how to talk? How many people would not want to know me based on such a silly thing?
That was 9th grade at a preppy private school (hence the "social censure"), but, since then, I've learned to speak in whichever way I'm comfortable (which shifts back and forth with my mood) from the very beginning. That way, you can take it or leave it, but I can imagine that some less stalwart souls decided, what the hell, I don't mind throwing away one more piece of the minicule bit of cultural history we were allowed to retain. Although I speak several European languages as well, I would never give away the one that promotes kinship with my people.
Originally posted by ceci2006
1)What would be the remedy for Blacks in light of all this suffering if reparations are not an applicable solution?
Biblical-era tomes actually mention groups that are unable to pronounce certain consonants correctly as a criteria for being "different".
So, everything was just fine until Darwin published his book?
Then go after the "folk" who are suppressing the pursuit of happiness of whomever. However don't make blanket laws that unjustly and wrongly apply and affect all.
Forgive me if I have misinterpreted you but are you trying to say that the "benefit" of one group outweighs that of another? Isn't that what started this whole thing?
Originally posted by ceci2006
Originally quoted by TrueAmerican
ceci, you wanna solve a problem right? So if the solution is to remove all the cards, then how can the systematic removal of the first card in line (the racist one, and mingling of the races) not be working towards that end? I really, no I REALLY mean sincerely that I do not understand your position on that. At all. Sorry.
I think that a way to rid the problem of racism is to accept diversity as it is.
It is as if someone who is espousing the Melting pot theory advocates erasing the different cultures, races, languages, customs and contributions belonging to different races save one. That is why it is a rather problematic way to solve racism.
It seems people who are non-white always have to give up their culture and social practices to satisfy that of the dominant culture in order to assimilate. That is what makes non-whites more acceptable to the dominant culture. And those of the dominant culture do not understand how much non-white people have to give up to be accepted. It isn't easy. To have someone "seasoned" out of their culture to satisfy one race smacks of superiority disguised as "equality".
In much of the rest of the world, arranged marriages and inbreeding are the norm. Among Muslims in West Asia and North Africa, the ideal marriages are arranged ones with first cousins. In Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan close to half of all marital pairings are between first or second cousins.
Not surprisingly, individuals in these regions tend to be intensely nepotistic toward their extended families/clans/tribes, and thus unpatriotic toward their countries. Nor should it be shocking that—due in part to the nepotistic corruption, lack of civic trust, and general political fractiousness caused by their extreme endogamy—these pseudo-nations tend to get their butts kicked by more unified armies from countries where the breeding pools are larger and more inclusive.
It's not that easy to say that the melting pot theory will solve racism. It won't work.