Racism did not end with slavery. And the perception of black people as a criminal community is not only shared by white people.
I'm fine meeting people halfway... I think people seem to forget that Racism was a huge problem not too long ago...we are not talking 100 years ago. We are talking about the Civil Rights Movement ending 1968...this was not that long ago, we have people that still fondly remember those times. That is 45 years ago. So I don't know how soon that gap is supposed to close when there are still people well and alive from those times. Actually when you think of it like that we've made a lot of progress in those 45 years but still... I personally think you could close the gap a lot quicker if everyone was more lenient on arresting black people for pot. There are also bigger issues with it but that is more about class separation and division than race.
It's odd how issues of race are turned into socioeconomics and issues of socioeconomics are turned into race based on convenience. When a black kid commits a crime he's a black kid but when he's profiled he's not black, it's a socioeconomic thing. And it takes little effort at all to know why panama. You talk about the lack of institutional racism, you ever heard how blacks and latinos with the same credit as whites get higher interest rates from banks on loans? How much blame do minorities get for failing in a game that's rigged? http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5878087 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/01/us/01minorities.html?_r=0
I never said Zimmerman did anything illegal. I went out of my way to make that point. Zimmerman was not following the directives and procedures of neighborhood watch. I didn't say Zimmerman was a racist. You are making stuff up about what I said. But Zimmerman did make incorrect assumptions about Martin. Without making those Trayvon Martin would be alive.
Yes, this is one way they are discriminated against. We have blacks with the same resume and no criminal record getting hired for jobs less often than whites with criminal records. We have blacks who commit the same crime as whites getting much longer sentences. There's even recent studies showing people with black sounding names not getting called to jobs even though they have the same resume as people with white sounding names. The game is definitely rigged but any time someone who's black brings it up, they are complaining for no reason and asking for a hand out.
Race had quite a bit to do with it. In all likelihood, Mr.Zimmerman would have never followed a white boy of the same age. Despite what some believe, race still matters is how many view others and how we respond to them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0kV_b3IK9M
Exhibit A of why the discussions are never productive. I am not interested in the outside reasons. There may be some outside forces working against the black community as well, as I just pointed out. This is where you must meet me halfway and have the black community shoulder some of the blame and we can try to come up with a solution. These are those tough discussions that Obama wants to have.
Again, these are the concessions that I am willing to make. The game is rigged. Now, you have to be willing to accept the other 50% of the blame and come up with the reason why the black community is doing even worse than they should be. It's like if the Rockets were 20-62 next year and then when we discuss why, we just talk about the 20 games that we lost when Howard and Harden were forced not to play by the NBA. That explains those 20 losses. What bout the other 42?
So basically you want black people to just talk about their problems and ignore these outside issues? That happens A LOT so I don't know why this is a argument. Maybe if you visit sites geared towards the black community and etc etc you would get enough of that I think. If you admit that the game is rigged or even partially rigged then isn't that a pretty big issue then? If someone says "Here are the facts. Black people for whatever reason are paying higher interest rates." Isn't that a pretty big deal there? Worse than they should be? Again, 45 years is not a terribly long time, so I'm not sure where the black community should be? There has been a ton of progress made since that whole civil rights thing, but that wasn't centuries ago or anything. Wouldn't the first part of the solution be fixing the game any way? Seems logical to me that would be the case.
On a national level, the talks never center around what the black community is doing wrong. You just constantly hear about these factoids concerning the stacked deck that they are playing against. That is understood, and I feel like society has been trying for decades with affirmative action and all other sorts of programs to eliminate that stacked deck. Paying a higher rate on your car loan. Again, why is that though? It never says what the credit rate was for the Latinos and Blacks in that study. A higher mortgage rate, interest rate, crime rate, incarceration rate, etc. does not always signify a stacked deck. Some of that stuff needs to be accepted as the fault of the community in which it is occurring. Maybe blacks and latinos are defaulting on a higher number of loans, which then gives them bad credit which makes the interest rates go up. There is not always a boogieman out there. This is, again, the crux of the problem. The blame needs to be accepted at some level by the community in question and only then can we have a rational discussion about it. I feel like the white community has accepted the blame for what it has caused, decades ago. White guilt and apologizing for everything has gone on for years and years and years. You can only stack the desk in favor of the communities in question, via affirmative action, etc. so far. At some point the deck needs to even back out and both sides need to be willing to support themselves on equal footing. That will not happen as long as excuses keep being made to try and explain the entirety of the problem. It's like an alcoholic in denial. You have to first admit that you own a part of the problem. If you keep pinning the entire problem on other influences, then you will never have the incentive to correct the problem.
CometsWins, I truly feels sorry for you. You seem to look at everything through race. You need to let go of all the hate you have built up inside of you. You need to just let it go and learn to love life and look at everyone as equals no matter what race they are. You would be a whole lot happier person. I know you truly deep down do not like religion based on some of your post making fun of me and my beliefs. I am no fan of "religion" either but I am a huge fan of Jesus Christ. If anyone can help you it is Jesus. When a person accepts Jesus, it changes them. You really ought to give it a try. You have no idea how happy you would be. I will pray for you!!!!!
I hear about it every time I turn to a news channel about how many blacks kill blacks. How many black kids don't have a father, etc. I hear this stuff everyday so I don't know what else you want to talk about? How many times is this stuff bought up? You don't have to search far to find that, just listen to any conservative show for that. There is PLENTY of that again, so I don't know what else there is to talk about. When you bring up these facts some people just shrug and say "So what? Racism is dead, get over it." But just to be clear, the black community already knows it's problems and discusses them every single day. It would be nice to get some other hurdles out of the way. You called them 'excuses' when people bring up facts. So how do we proceed from there? Calling it a excuse is to invalidate completely what they bought up and not meeting half way at all.
Excellent post. You get it. It all starts with 1) a degenerative culture which doesn't value marriage, leading to the difficult experience of single mothers rearing kids 2) a celebration of thug life, which leads to the Rachel Jeantels of the world who cannot communicate 3) a lack of focus on education (e.g., getting accused of "acting white"), which perpetuates poverty 4) a lack of respect for laws and law enforcement, which leads to additional crime
Jay, the problem is that there has been so much energy put into the Trayvon case when the whole thing, while terribly tragic, was not a racial thing. If the black community would put just 10% of the energy it has spent on the Trayvon case into the deaths of all young black people it would make a huge difference. For Trayvon, there has been a lot of action. For all the black on black deaths there is only talk. Most black homicides are black on black. They are ALL tragic. The black community has proven they have the ability to come together for tragic events. They need to treat all black homicides as tragedies and do something about it.
Agree. He possibly just started a race war. These guys are demonstrating in just about every city in America right now. Thanks Obama.
I want you to say right now that the black communities issues are at least in some part due to their own actions and not because of a stacked deck. The other hurdles have been moving for a long time. They have not been cleared entirely I agree with you there. At least we all are aware of those hurdles and trying to move them. The last hurdle is the black community and what can we do to fix the problem within the community itself? What I am wanting to hear from you is the acceptance that it is not someone else's fault entirely. A substantial part of the blame should be placed on the black community. Then I would like to hear why you think the black community is failing without mentioning anything about the stacked deck, because we have already covered that as an issue.
And when I say "excuses" what I mean is when the issues that are known and talked about become pointed to as the entirety of the problem that is when the legitimate issues then turn into "excuses". There are legitimate issues but the issues themselves are not what has gotten the black community to this point. They did a lot of the heavy lifting on their own.
Martin would be alive if he hadn't attacked Zimmerman (which was an actual crime) http://www.talkleft.com/story/2013/7/19/161153/926
The entire thing is based on race and the only reason you know either of their names is because the media kept feeding the story to you. Why cant you name one of the 11,000 blacks who were killed by other blacks since Martin was killed? Are their deaths meaningless? Because trayvon martin had the honor of dying at the hands of a non-black man his story should get more coverage than all of the 11,000 combined, 150-fold.
