"... or that they are in need of moral instruction is an old and dubious tradition in America,"
writes Ta-Nehisi Coates.
The conservative version eliminates white supremacy as a factor and leaves the question of the culture's origin ominously unanswered....
The liberal version of the cultural argument points to "a tangle of pathologies" haunting black America born of oppression.
Coates associates the "conservative version" with Paul Ryan and the "liberal version" with Barack Obama. The conservative version isn't even serious, in Coates's view, but he's also critical of the liberal version because it "feebly urg[es] 'positive habits and behavior'":
There is no evidence that black people are less responsible, less moral, or less upstanding in their dealings with America nor with themselves. But there is overwhelming evidence that America is irresponsible, immoral, and unconscionable in its dealings with black people and with itself. Urging African-Americans to become superhuman is great advice if you are concerned with creating extraordinary individuals. It is terrible advice if you are concerned with creating an equitable society.
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161 comments:
Straw man much, Ta-Nehisi?
The opportunities are there - stop shooting yourselves in the foot.
Obviously white people aren't up to the task of creating an equitable America for black people. I suggest we assign the job to Asian people. Let them decide how to make black people "equal."
Hmm - thanks for distilling that down. I read that twice trying to understand who was being pilloried in Coates' view this time.
I'm puzzled how he can lay the blame squarely on "white supremacy" over and over again. Nowhere in history has anything so purposefully succeeded like "white supremacy".
Someone ought to patent the methodology.
...what I can't understand is why the "black community" is so hell bent on retaining its "cultural identity" to the point of staying poor. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't recall seeing anyone address this in any direct fashion.
Crack bait.
"There is no evidence that black people are less responsible, less moral, or less upstanding in their dealings with America nor with themselves."
Oh, good. I'm glad we finally have that established as a universal truth. Nothing to see here, you racists.
He seems to be over theorizing the outcome of ending affirmative action discrimination.
Nobody wants to be merely equal. Everybody wants to feel superior.
Every black in America is going to wake up today and have the same 16 waking hours to work with as the richest white hedge fund manager. How will they choose to use them? By learning something new? By studying what successful people do and learning to do the same? By relentlessly seeking self-improvement and taking responsibility for their own thoughts and emotions and channeling them in productive directions?
I would have a lot more empathy for arguments about white oppression if the free public libraries were brimming with blacks voraciously reading, and black children were sitting at home with their schoolbooks poring over their homework.
Instead it seems like about the hardest mental work most blacks like Coates do is rationalizing why their failures are someone else's fault.
There is no evidence that black people are less responsible, less moral, or less upstanding in their dealings with America nor with themselves.
Did ya try looking' for any?
Coates has a vested interest in making sure that he (and other African-American liberal elites) retain their exclusive status as spokesmen and interpreters for the black community. It makes him righteous and rich at the same time. He also has a vested interest in making sure that the black community remains angrily stuck as victims of poverty so that they will always need people like Coates as exclusive spokesmen and interpreters. Meanwhile, is anyone actually helping or being helped?
As a tie in to yesterday's long commenting thread on education (thanx Althouse for letting that one spool out)when black kids first arrived at my very Southern public school in 1967 they were whip smart with EVERY t crossed and I dotted. These were students who had it together educationally. All of them. No weak links. It's been my experience in the inner city classroom that generally black girls hold up their end of the bargain and matriculate on to college, government jobs, business, etc. It's the black male who is not keeping apace in his matriarchal milieu. But what do I know? I'm just an over educated Cracker with no emphasis on the over.
My black neighbors have a lot to answer to the black community for.
Them actin all white and all.
"super human". Nice strawman.
Shorter article:
All the dysfunction in minority communities is Whiteys fault and not that of those living in the community.
There is no evidence that black people are less responsible, less moral, or less upstanding in their dealings with America nor with themselves.
Ah yes, the Noble, Downtrodden Negro excuse, just this side of the Noble Savage romanticism of the late 19th Century.
The lack of introspection and accountability that allows one to believe that is astounding.
But there is overwhelming evidence that America is irresponsible, immoral, and unconscionable in its dealings with black people and with itself.
Blaming whitey or anyone else, is so much easier than personal accountability.
Plus, there's an entire Grievance Industry, complete with fraudulent sinecures posing as PHD level scholarship in the Universities that reinforces and rewards those that hew to that irresponsible notion. "White Guilt" is easier than hard work.
Claiming that whites, or the legacy of slavery, or whatever, as your excuse to not succeed as an individual is like me blaming the British for exiling my families to America as the reason I failed to attend college.
It may make you FEEL better, but it solves no problems.
Now, if one is talking about shitty, corrupt Government Schools passing failures on to the next grade, you have a point, as it isn't just being done to the black kids. Accountability there has been killed by the Teachers Unions and the results are known.
Wait, did the author just assert that white people are “superhuman”? I think he did.
Essentially he is projecting the failures of black culture externally, and explicitly avoiding the ownership of the problems.
He seems to place most of the blame on the high rate of incarceration of blacks and Jim Crow.
Jim Crow has been dead for 50 years.
Most blacks in prison are there for violent crimes, not smoking weed. And most of those crimes are committed against other blacks, but far too many are against other races.
The discouraging thing is that in his article he lays out that after slavery ended blacks in general emphasized the family unit, importance of education, etc. What happened to change that? Coates says it's due to white supremacy. Slavery didn't destroy it, but white supremacy did?
He totally ignores the effect of the Great Society welfare state on devastating the black community.
I should have said devastating the poor black community
Nowhere in history has anything so purposefully succeeded like "white supremacy".
Yes, Nazi Germany was the most purposely successful regime in the history of mankind.
Urging African-Americans to become superhuman is great advice if you are concerned with creating extraordinary individuals. It is terrible advice if you are concerned with creating an equitable society. .
Here are two simple things that require nothing like superhuman effort. Blacks will do neither, though both would produce noticeably better conditions for them, and are totally in their own control.
1. End 'snitches get stitches'
2. End 'acting White' as a pejorative.
Danged white people. We piss me off.
Coates prefers shooting and aborting oneself into oblivion, then.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is making big bucks at The Atlantic but isn't saying anything, or saying it better than our own Crack.
Not that either has much merit but there are some things to think about:
The pathology of the black community seems to be extraordinary levels of single motherhood and male criminality. I suggest that it is no intrinsic failure of character but rather a predictable outcome of well-meaning white liberal policy.
The most obvious being the welfare we grant to women who have kids but no husband, depressed wages for able-bodied men due to lax immigration enforcement and finally, crap inner-city schools which are just a piggy bank for unions.
They might try taking up a collection for poor whites.
Dignity as a race works the same as dignity for individuals.
Do something for somebody else.
You might be surprised.
Coates puts lipstick on the racism pig with a trowel.
What's wrong with working towards creating extraordinary individuals?
This is where the liberal vision of 'society' falls short. There *IS* no society... there is a collection of individuals. Helping each individual reach his full potential WILL create a more equitable society, at least WRT the various 'races' (which aren't even real things, from a scientific perspective.)
It's fascinating that the same people who have trouble imagining the concept of a soul as a separate entity from the collection of neurons in the brain can posit a 'society' as a separate entity from the individual humans who live in it.
The way to help the poor *IS* to encourage and support individual excellence. Because you can only control yourself and your own behaviors. You can't remake other people into your preferred image.
What bothers me about this, is that the decay of the black family is a recent phenomenon. The illegitimacy rate among blacks in 1960 was only 19%. This and the problems it caused happened as racism and white supremacy were decreasing to their objectively lowest historical levels.
The conservative version eliminates white supremacy as a factor and leaves the question of the culture's origin ominously unanswered....
Obviously misdirection. The conservative version has been clear for 40 years - the root cause is subsidizing family breakup and single parent families, primarily starting with LBJ's Great Society. When you subsidize something, you get more of it, and now we have some 75% of Blacks now being born out of wedlock, and the Black culture celebrating guys with a dozen kids from almost that many women, not taking paternal or financial responsibility for any of them. Its a double whammy for the children, and esp. the boys growing up in such an environment. First, the boys are never civilized by having a father in the household. And, then they never have to become part of the greater society through marriage to be a father themselves. All because of the financial incentives for women to have children out of wedlock.
If conservatives have no desire to learn how institutionalized racism against black people in the US did not end with slavery's end or Jim Crow's end then that's their loss. If you want to continue to blame the bare bones remainder of the Great Society programs for allegedly "promoting" shiftlessness instead of the widespread discrimination that exists in housing and employment then that remains your prerogative.
But Coates has been making post after post describing the various ways the modern inner-city ghetto was created by public and private policies and various other sources can easily be found backing him up on this. Stop playing ignorant. If you keep promoting the same "welfare makes people lazy" narrative without acknowledging arguments from outside the conservative bubble then people have no obligation to take you seriously.
Abraham Lincoln appears to have been correct when he originally wanted to return the blacks to Africa. Since then nothing that whites have done seems to be correct and nothing that blacks have done has been incorrect.
When ever I see this type of analysis I wonder what happened to the thriving black communities in LA depicted by Walter Mosley. Was it "Whitey's" fault that those disappeared? Did we somehow re-enslave those people? Or Detroit? There had to have been thriving black communities there as well. Where are they now?
I do not subscribe to the theory that blacks have cultural infirmities that make them inherently inferior. I think that those problems that many experience have largely been caused by well meaning (often Liberal sponsored) programs that have created perverse incentives that have resulted in family disintegration and the destruction of the strong values of family and education that early freedmen espoused. (See Patrick Moynihan:"From the wild Irish slums of the 19th century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history; a community that allows a large number of men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future -- that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder -- most particularly the furious, unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure -- that is not only to be expected; it is very near to inevitable. And it is richly deserved."
The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (1965)
Obama's hypocrisy regarding Charter Schools is the most recent example of blacks betraying blacks. Coates, of course, ignores that.
Andrew, I read your links.
They are all socialist conspiracist scapegoating bullshit.
I don't take you or Coates seriously.
ALex,
The issue is what needs to be done to break the cycle, not to go over and over and over what happened to blacks in the past. Clearly those conditions no longer exist, and there are opportunities available that are not being used. And a great deal of the blame for those missed opportunities lies with those who are refusing to take them.
Let me add to my theory, (in anticipation of Crack showing ultimately showing up here) about the government subsidizing single fatherless parenting, that Blacks (descended from slaves) were probably hurt worst by these social programs for a couple of historical reasons. One reasons is probably that while most Blacks in this country by the middle of the 20th Century were probably being born into two parent families, and marriage was seemingly strong, it was fairly recent, having been discouraged under slavery. Rather, I think that there may have been a stronger tradition of Black women raising their children without fathers, given the frequency that male slaves were separated from their mates and children. So, there may have been less resistance to the incentives to break up families from the modern welfare state (primarily starting with LBJ's War on Poverty). Also remember that the War on Poverty was enacted by the party of slavery, Jim Crow, and the KKK, and arguably could be seen as their continued attempts to subjugate Blacks.
The other reason that the War on Poverty hit Blacks harder than other demographics is that they tended to be poorer at that time, and a lot of that was probably also a result of Dem policies, stretching, again, through their support of slavery, Jim Crow, and the Klan. For over 200 years now, the Democratic Party has been the party of Black subjugation. The difference today is that it is now done through economic incentives, instead of slave whips and lynching nooses.
Andrew - you seem to be arguing in circles.
Are you arguing that there are no longer financial (and now moral or societal) incentives to have children out of wedlock, and to raise them without their fathers in the household? Or, are you arguing that these incentives are irrelevant?
...and the "out of wedlock" births argument has been addressed as well:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2009/02/the-math-on-black-out-of-wedlock-births/6738/
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2008/07/even-more-on-out-of-wedlock-births/4998/
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/understanding-out-of-wedlock-births-in-black-america/277084/
Freder Frederson said...
Nowhere in history has anything so purposefully succeeded like "white supremacy".
"Yes, Nazi Germany was the most purposely successful regime in the history of mankind."
Ya maybe should have waited an hour or two and then re-read that before you posted it.
Being that Crack has been brought up, but not yet arrived...
Some thoughts on Althouse and the Crack Emcee
Education, for instance, was not merely a status marker. Literacy was protection against having your land stolen or being otherwise cheated. Perhaps more importantly, it gave access to the Bible.
And yet, for neo-Marxists like Coates, religion is just the opprobrium of the massahs.
No identifiable group of people with a 70% illegitimacy rate is going to have good outcomes. In America the illegitimacy rate is creeping up for everyone. In this, as in many things in our culture, black Americans simply got there first.
Underclass culture is the same all over the world. White people do the exact same things when not raised in families- commit crimes, have children out of wedlock, fail to take advantage of education, poor work ethic, etc.
There's nothing "black" about any of that. Someone is going to be on the end of the curve and in America that happens to be disproportionately black men.
How that happened must be explained, and it seems to me that ignoring history when looking at the question is crazy. Social dissolution is happening to all of us, but the reason black Americans got there first surely has to do with hundreds of years of government and societal attempts to destroy whatever traditions and institutions the black community adapted.
There's no basis for blaming the most downtrodden class in America for simply being an early adapter of behavior that the rest of the country has embraced. All races and classes now have children out of wedlock, free love, divorce, etc. What's really disturbing is that white America seems to think that it is magically immune to the same consequences of this behavior that black Americans have suffered.
That's what is really racist.
Oh good, Crack gets another post to pimp his failure of a website.
Way to go with the AA, AA!
What Coats and his defenders overlook is something the sociologist Gunnar Myrdal observed in his study of race in America in 1944, namely that a time would come when all legal vestiges of Jim Crow would be gone but the dysfunctional sociocultural pathologies exhibited by blacks in America (i.e., "low standards")these practices/former policies engendered would remain to be viewed by both whites born long after Jim Crow and later immigrants--both white and of color--all of whom had had no role in the process, and thus all would show little if any political sympathy for, or identification with, the black "experience" as an excuse for their continued, readily observed current-day black dysfunctional behaviors--be they individual or of mass culture. Evidence of that fatigue and an unwillingness to support "black" political objectives is all around us.
Andrew, I read those out-of-wedlock links as well.
In the end, Coates is unable to explain away the fact that 70-plus% of Black children are born to unmarried women.
An inability to accept blame is not an admirable trait.
In regards to black people, America's heritage is kleptocracy—the stealing and selling of other people's children, the robbery of the fruits of black labor, the pillaging of black property, the taxing of black citizens for schools they can not attend, for pools in which they can not swim, for libraries that bar them, for universities that exclude them, for police who do not protect them, for the marking of whole communities as beyond the protection of the state and thus subject to the purview of outlaws and predators.
Are you noticing that, white progressives? All those things you've done to help blacks - from ending slavery, to wiping out the Klan, to school desegregation, affirmative action, trillions in welfare payments, special school programs, section 8 housing, electing Obama, everything - count for nothing in his eyes. Nope, America, in that black man's eyes, is nothing but racial oppression.
So one must wonder: if 150 years of whites bending over backwards to help blacks counts for nothing, how much longer must whites try and how much more money must they spend before blacks absolve you white progressives for the sins of white people who lived hundreds of years ago? A hint is given in Coates' closing:
I view white supremacy as one of the central organizing forces in American life, whose vestiges and practices afflicted black people in the past, continue to afflict black people today, and will likely afflict black people until this country passes into the dust.
In other words, never. No matter what you do, you will never satisfy Coates or the blacks like him. I suspect the only thing you could do to satisfy him is to die, and for all whites to die, to vanish.
Denial
Elizabeth Kubler Ross
a stage in the process of dying
Black Culture is dying. It is a culture of hate and death. And there are those blacks who are of the Black Culture who are in that phase of the process that Ross identified as Denial.
Coates is there.
I read somewhere that according to the 1970 census, the highest class of blacks were having about 1.5 children per couple, while the lowest class were having something like 5.8 children. (Poorer whites also had more children than richer whites, though the difference was not as pronounced.) There's been about three generations of blacks since 1970, which means the dimmest, least functional blacks have grown significantly as a percentage of the total black population since then. That would explain the rise in illegitimacy rate from the 20s to the 70s. (It would also explain the growing white illegitimacy rate.)
The population is getting aggressively stupider through dysgenic reproduction. The black population is just getting aggressively stupider at a faster rate than any other.
There is a real need for a talented, thoughtful black pundit of the new generation. As Coates obviously isn't it, any suggestions?
"But a new study of 212 black college students made available to Secrets found little open-mindedness: Blacks don’t like it when other blacks associate with whites, to the point of refusing help to an African-American experiencing “a run of bad luck” — just because they have white friends.
The study in the April edition of the authoritative journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found the so-called “black code” alive and kicking, prompting blacks far more than whites to frown on one of their own if they associate with the other race."
http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2546046#.UyyBciPiXis.twitter
"Racial Solidarity" is simply racism in leftwing empowerment drag
Until the black community acknowledges and confronts their own racism against whites, things will not get better. .
Coates is the one who is “acting white.” He assumes that the things that white people aspire to, and are relatively better at than black people- better living conditions, material wealth, education- are what black people aspire to. If you look at Black Africa, they don't seem to be too good at it, either. Is it because they are just not able to achieve what white people have achieved in Europe and the North America, or is it that it's not what they want? Americans can't really comprehend the mind of the jihadi suicide bomber, and we white folks can't understand why our black fellow citizens have not taken advantage of the opportunities that living in the USA offers to people lucky enough to be born here.
Coates will no doubt claim that the legacy of slavery makes black people unique in the American experience. Tell that to the folks affected by the Chinese Exclusion Act, which, in different form, is still in effect in American higher education. Tell that to people whose parents saw signs proclaiming, “Help Wanted – No Irish Need Apply.” Or Jews who were subject to hard numerical quotas at Ivy League Schools. Or Japanese who were imprisoned and lost their possessions. Slaver ended along time ago in the United States.
It's time to consider the proposition that either black people are incapable of achieving what every other ethnic minority in this country's history has accomplished, or, that they just do not want the same things that Chinese, and Filipinos, and Jews, and Irish, and Japanese want and have worked so hard to accomplish.
Another possibility is to consider the 2 groups who have made the least progress (blacks and Native American Indians) are the 2 groups that have had government program explicitly aimed to “help” them.
It's a good thing that there was never a “Bureau of Chinese (Jewish, Japanese, Irish) Affairs.”
Coates is proof that by acting white, it's possible to achieve white. That's a good thing.
The conservative version eliminates white supremacy as a factor and leaves the question of the culture's origin ominously unanswered. This version can never be regarded seriously.
Straw man indeed, Sharc. So extreme he doesn't even deem it worth of his time to knock it down.
Coates is the one who is “acting white.” He assumes that the things that white people aspire to, and are relatively better at than black people- better living conditions, material wealth, education- are what black people aspire to. If you look at Black Africa, they don't seem to be too good at it, either. Is it because they are just not able to achieve what white people have achieved in Europe and the North America, or is it that it's not what they want? Americans can't really comprehend the mind of the jihadi suicide bomber, and we white folks can't understand why our black fellow citizens have not taken advantage of the opportunities that living in the USA offers to people lucky enough to be born here.
Coates will no doubt claim that the legacy of slavery makes black people unique in the American experience. Tell that to the folks affected by the Chinese Exclusion Act, which, in different form, is still in effect in American higher education. Tell that to people whose parents saw signs proclaiming, “Help Wanted – No Irish Need Apply.” Or Jews who were subject to hard numerical quotas at Ivy League Schools. Or Japanese who were imprisoned and lost their possessions. Slaver ended along time ago in the United States.
It's time to consider the proposition that either black people are incapable of achieving what every other ethnic minority in this country's history has accomplished, or, that they just do not want the same things that Chinese, and Filipinos, and Jews, and Irish, and Japanese want and have worked so hard to accomplish.
Another possibility is to consider the 2 groups who have made the least progress (blacks and Native American Indians) are the 2 groups that have had government program explicitly aimed to “help” them.
It's a good thing that there was never a “Bureau of Chinese (Jewish, Japanese, Irish) Affairs.”
Coates is proof that by acting white, it's possible to achieve white. That's a good thing.
The cookie cutter academic Marxist racial bullshit presented by Andrew is so precious.
There is no evidence that black people are less responsible, less moral, or less upstanding in their dealings with America nor with themselves.
One of the leading indicators for poverty is the destruction of marriage. Liberals have wrecked havoc with marriage, and since an overwhelming majority of black people identify as liberals, single moms have become an epidemic in black communities. Thus black people remain mired in poverty.
Throughout the 20th century, black people had marriage rates quite similar to white people. There's nothing racial about this. It's cultural. And it's a culture many white people are adopting, too. Which means we will see an increase in poverty among white people.
Marriage is an important institution for the raising of children. Liberals should have more respect for it.
"There is no evidence that black people are less responsible, less moral, or less upstanding in their dealings with America nor with themselves. But there is overwhelming evidence that America is irresponsible, immoral, and unconscionable in its dealings with black people and with itself. Urging African-Americans to become superhuman is great advice if you are concerned with creating extraordinary individuals. It is terrible advice if you are concerned with creating an equitable society."
Oh bullshit.Stop infantilizing black people. And stop villifying white people the pathology of others.
Who knew that going to work everyday and paying my bills was a "superhuman" effort only performable by white people?
You're never going to be able to talk someone like Coates out of his view that white supremacy is the organizing principle of US history any more than you can talk a Marxist out of seeing history as class struggle. Race supremacy is the organizing principle, the heuristic lens that these folks use to create "their" histories.
Just like the 19th & 20th centuries produced thousands of histories written by Marxists using Marxist analysis, expect there to be thousands of histories written through a racial prism in the 20th-21st centuries. Most will be awful. Some, like this one, are actually pretty good.
"What bothers me about this, is that the decay of the black family is a recent phenomenon. The illegitimacy rate among blacks in 1960 was only 19%. This and the problems it caused happened as racism and white supremacy were decreasing to their objectively lowest historical levels."
Have you considered the possibility that the two phenomena are causally related? That perhaps the decline of institutionalized white supremacy gave blacks the freedom to behave according to their inclinations?
"Urging African-Americans to become superhuman is great advice if you are concerned with creating extraordinary individuals."
Coates is really setting the bar low for black people. What he calls superhuman is actually just asking blacks to compete like everyone else.
And you want an equitable society? How about, you go to work and I go to work? You're responsible for your choices and I'm responsible for mine. I wont judge you for the sins of your fathers, and in turn don't judge me for mine. And even worse, dont judge me for the sins of other peoples fathers who share my skin tone simply because they share my skin tone.
In short, stop with the black aggrievement, grow up and be productive. That's what integration means. You don't get a free ride. You get on the hamster wheel like everybody else.
"Blacks don't like it when other blacks associate with whites, to the point of refusing help to an African-American experiencing “a run of bad luck” -- just because they have white friends.
The study in the April edition of the authoritative journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found the so-called “black code” alive and kicking, prompting blacks far more than whites to frown on one of their own if they associate with the other race."
http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2546046#.UyyBciPiXis.twitter
Slavery wasn't immoral in the first place.
It was a standard economic system. To the victor go the spoils, and enslaving the enemy was smarter than killing him.
A slave supports himself plus a little, and you get the little.
The hit the guy on the head and take his stuff system is a stable economic system. It's just fairly inefficient, because you have to devote so much to defense if you have anything to defend.
Obama likes it though.
Slavery ended with the industrial revolution. You get more out of a slave letting him work in his own interest, then.
The economic reason for slavery disappeared.
There appeared a rear-guard and doomed-to-fail theory to support slavery in its place, that of racial inferiority ("naturally subjugated").
This didn't work, but that's how racism got into slavery where it had not been before. A rear-guard action.
Nowadays the slavery is from the left. Wait for white people to give you something, they urge.
That something is something you can only give yourself, by doing something for others.
Michael K said it very well in the other post - if every white person on the planet were suddenly (or gradually) transported to a different planet, would black people be better off or worse off?
If you are still thinking, consider any randomly chosen country in Africa. Or Detroit.
I am perplexed. Coates makes the case he does not intend to make: after the Civil War the freed slaves made or re-formed their families and displayed an enormous desire to become educated. The attributes that northern do-gooders attributed to freed slaves turned out to not be true at all: they were not lazy, they were not stupid and they were eager to strengthen marriage as a part of their culture and to aggressively educate themselves.
So what happened? Are we to believe that white supremacy, a clear and present factor in American life, was more capable of undermining the desire for family life and eduction than slavery itself? I cannot think this proposition is what he intended but how else can you read this article? The attributes he lays on freed slaves do not pertain to parts of the black community today. Did white supremacy convert a population eager to be educated to one that views education as acting white?
Ok, slavery and Jim Crow left scars, and scars can be more debilitating than the original wounds. But you have to play the hand you're dealt and not try to change the rules to makes deuces the high cards......The unstated assumption is that blacks are not clever or autonomous or moral enough to overcome white discrimination.
If we want to fix this clearly the libertarian view is the correct one here. Obviously those who are helped by government programs learn how to place blame and deflect it from themselves. The last thing we find is that they are grateful. Instead they demand more and more and call it, "A start" but certainly never enough.
If we want to help people who need it, step one is to remove the government from their lives.
The decline of institutionalized white supremacy gave blacks the freedom to behave according to their inclinations
You're assuming an "institutionalized white supremacy" that was benevolent. That's absurd as a reading of history.
Much of liberalism assumes there is still an "institutionalized white supremacy," and writes as if black people need to be rescued from it. These liberals are convinced that they (unlike the white racists of the past) are benevolent. And yet that too is absurd as a reading of history.
For instance, making an effort to sign up as many black people as you can for food stamps is not helpful to black people. Indeed you might say it's a cynical attempt to keep them in debt, forever.
Blacks have been about 12 percent of the population in the US for awhile. America is becoming less white but not more black. It's odd to ignore this. The white black back and forth has been the same for the last 25 years and is as predictable as a football interview.
@Michael,
So what happened? Are we to believe that white supremacy, a clear and present factor in American life, was more capable of undermining the desire for family life and eduction than slavery itself?
Yes, that's what we're asked to believe, and that's the problem.
In my point above, remember that Marx posits Capital as the immanent & empirically verifiable replacement for Hegel's Geist, i.e. Divine Providence. Marx thinks that Capital acts in history in ways as polymorphous & totalizing as Providence was thought to.
Replace Capital with White Supremacy & you have a racism that works itself in to every nook & cranny of existence as did Providence.
Yeah, I don't believe it either.
Interesting link Insty has today about how blacks treat blacks who have white friends.
I despise these racial terms, by the way. They are so simplistic and stupid.
We're talking about tens of millions of people we have not met and do not know. It's important to be cognizant of how ignorant we are and how little we know.
Arguments from statistics are not science, by any stretch of the word "science." I hate this divisive rhetoric and I see it as poison. Unhelpful poison.
Coates is kind of interesting. From Chicago, rails about the racism, especially in Chicago, but chose to leave instead of staying. He's a writer, with today's technology, he didn't have to move. He could have made a difference in Chicago.
1960 damm boomers. And the rise of the "war on poverty."
If Coates made enough of a difference, in Chicago or elsewhere, he would have to work for a living.
Can't have that.
When you get penalized for having a husband and rewarded for not having a husband or more kids, you're going to get what you incentivize. Just like Obamacares marriage and wage penalties.
Blue states hardest hit with Obamacare. You get what u vote for.
Saint Croix said...
We're talking about tens of millions of people we have not met and do not know. It's important to be cognizant of how ignorant we are and how little we know.
Good point. As I have been reading the comment thread, replete with observations about generalities like "society" and "culture," in my mind I keep reducing the argument to my own personal experience. At the risk of making the some-of-my-best-friends argument, I can only observe that in my workplace, with hundreds of employees and dozens of ethnicities represented, there is no racism. None. If anyone exhibited the tiniest evidence of racial animosity they would be gone, immediately. Coates may want to keep his blinkers on, but equality of opportunity is the standard in this country.
Coates is the "Resident Racist" at the Atlantic where he produces screed after screed on how it's all about white guilt, white privilege or else some other form of white conspiracy to keep blacks down. The guy that bans anyone who disagrees with his "wisdom" in the comments section (note that the latest over the top essays have had the comments closed from the start)
I wish Mr Coates would first realize that the word "Slave" (common in most languages) comes from the word "Slav" - meaning that that whites taken from eastern Europe are the basis of the word we use today. And millions of those people were taken in the times before the discovery of the Americas to North Africa. Somehow they managed to get past that dark period in their history without forever being in guilt mode.
Black Slavery wasn't about racism - it was because they were the only people that had resistance to Malaria which killed or incapacitated so many in the Caribbean and the US South. (and I am NOT defending slavery, merely pointing out why blacks became the physical labor majority in areas where malaria was present - it killed or incapacitated most of the natives or white laborers from Europe)
Based on the reading of Coates' latest essay, the only obvious solution is a mass "back to Africa" movement to escape white oppression. Back to the paradise where they were cruelly enslaved by their fellow africans and sold to allow the others there to take their lands and possessions. I am sure in that long lost home , they can find the sweet balm of equality and acceptance.
Until the machetes come out like in Rwanda.
Coates is delusional. Until he starts examining the toxic culture that is producing black society and tries to do something about it, it's just going to get worse.
I think Coates is right, but it makes me think all those things said before the end of slavery by people worried about ending it are justfied:
"The white and black will never be able to live together as equals" from Lincoln and others, etc.
Why that is is debatable, but since whatever reality stands in for 'white supremacy' in Coates discussion isn't going to change in our lifetimes (even when whites arent 50% of the country (asians and white latinos will probably get 'whited')) we get what we have now.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is making big bucks at The Atlantic but isn't saying anything, or saying it better than our own Crack"
True indeed. Indeed Coates should help a brother out and swap places with Crack. From what he has written on various threads he is hurting financially and could use a high paying gig Coates has and in this genre Crack is far more talented.
Is it really superhuman for black women to stop having children out of wedlock? Only a liberal would say so. Because racism.
West Texas Intermediate Crude@1046/
Yes, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is the closest thing to pure Socialism we've ever had in the US. Talk about an object lesson! "Gaze upon its works and despair!"
Only when a smidgen of capitalism arrived in the form of "gaming" casinos have those Indian Tribes fortunate enough to have them prospered..
"If you want to continue to blame the bare bones remainder of the Great Society programs..."
What is the bare bones today? A trillion dollars a year? Actually, total welfare+medical care spending (which is LBJ great society) is 1.8 trillion dollars. Total pensions is 1.2 trillion dollars.
But until every penny of your income is spent on handouts, it's always "bare bones" to liberals.
All prejudice. All the time. They cannot bear the idea of integration and thereby reduction in their corrupt notion of diversity, which will necessarily undermine their exploitation of democratic leverage through division.
The Left, and their Democrat representatives, need to stop denigrating individual dignity and devaluing human life. The Right needs to moderate their ambitions and promote the general Welfare for our (i.e. American's) Posterity.
Both the greed and fundamental corruption of the Left, and greed and exceptional corruption of the Right, will ensure a dysfunctional convergence, which will be a burden on not only clumps of cells from conception to birth, but also surviving clumps of cells from birth to death.
What I notice in all of these threads is the assumption of The Monolithic Negro Culture. One would think that based on the presumption that middle-class, upper middle-class and especially wealthy Negroes are a rarity. Yet there exists a large number of dark complected people-indeed at least half of the population of the dark complected people who do not live in the ghetto and by and largely mirror their white counterparts in their mode of living and behavior. Have these unseen people been magically metamorphsized into dusky whites?
Hyphenated American:
Welfare is a trillion dollar enterprise and there are still homeless and hungry people. Education is a trillion dollar enterprise and there are still functionally illiterate individuals. The federal government is a 4 trillion dollar enterprise and they still cannot afford to subsidize medical insurance. So many "decent" women and men who demand abortion for the sake of money, sex, ego, and convenience, and social activists who advocate for abortion in order to reduce the problem set.
Extraordinary corruption.
Coates seems to be saying: let's not blame individual black people for problems because there are millions of wonderful people who shouldn't be held responsible for the mistakes of others.
Ok. That sounds perfect. So let's de-group everyone then. Individual white people aren't to blame for the faults of other white people, either. Let's fight the political forces that seek to divide us according to our physical differences.
Black Slavery wasn't about racism - it was because they were the only people that had resistance to Malaria which killed or incapacitated so many in the Caribbean and the US South. (and I am NOT defending slavery, merely pointing out why blacks became the physical labor majority in areas where malaria was present - it killed or incapacitated most of the natives or white laborers from Europe) "
Interesting argument. You have any cites on that? Malaria was present in Southern Europe as well yet that didn't seem to burden whites in terms of incapacitating them for manual labor.
Andrew said…
Seriously? What a crock of crap. I also notice that you conveniently played the game of don't name the political party largely responsible for the ills you ascribe to White America.
But lets play along with this nonsense. Blacks are a minority in this country-12%. Whites are still 70%. The rest are Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans. So until such time that the present white population willingly agrees to beggar itself financially the reparations simply aren't going to happen. So the question then becomes when are the ghetto blacks going to get the reality check that the best White America is going to do for them is what they currently have and sooner or later even that will shrink as those who pay get tired of it. When that happens what will those people do? As noted in another comment on this thread, America may be getting less white but it isn't getting more black and the others-Hispanics and Asians aren't going to buy the White Man's Guilt and White Man's Burden so perhaps those in the hood who think they are entitled ought to consider that those who are supposedly going to be tasked to pay are going to refuse to pay. And then what are they going to do?
And its just not ghetto blacks that will be facing the contraction of the welfare state. Hispanics and poor white culture is going to hit with the same contraction along with a boatload of white civil servants whose living depends on income redistribution schemes.
Based on the reading of Coates' latest essay, the only obvious solution is a mass "back to Africa" movement to escape white oppression.
They tried that. It was called Liberia. Didn't work out too well, because the Americo-Liberian ruling classes lorded it over the people that were already there. When it broke, Liberia became a slaughterhouse.
A mass "Back to Africa" movement cannot work, because the Africans won't have the African-Americans. Oh, they're always welcome to "come home" to visit their "homelands," bringing much by way of tourism dollars into various West African economies. Slave tourism, based on the presumption of American blacks getting back to their "Roots" is one thing; staying and imposing "America" on them is something else entirely.
"You're assuming an "institutionalized white supremacy" that was benevolent. That's absurd as a reading of history."
I'm assuming an IWS that rewarded some behaviors and punished others. If you want to call that benevolence, feel free to do so.
"If anyone exhibited the tiniest evidence of racial animosity they would be gone, immediately."
And that's a good thing, right? That people who don't parrot the Party's ideology can't make a living? It was good for the Soviet Union, and it's good for the USSA!
@CM,
Slave tourism, based on the presumption of American blacks getting back to their "Roots" is one thing; staying and imposing "America" on them is something else entirely.
It's not just that. Returning New World blacks remind the African nations of their sordid past in the history of slavery, and nobody wants a public discussion of that topic, especially in Africa.
The face of the slave trade that the New World saw was the "retail level" of the trade. The African part of the trade was the "supply chain & wholesale" part of the trade, and it matched the retail end for brutality.
What ultimately shut down the oceanic slave trade was the British Royal Navy, and not the development of "racial consciousness" by any of the African kingdoms.
@YoungHegelian:
Very good and salient point.
There is no evidence that black people are less responsible, less moral, or less upstanding in their dealings with America nor with themselves
If you ignore crime, illegitimacy, graduation rates, and poll results then yes, there is no evidence of any problems of that sort in the black community.
Young Hegelian wrote:
What ultimately shut down the oceanic slave trade was the British Royal Navy, and not the development of "racial consciousness" by any of the African kingdoms.
And that ties into the modern notion posed by lefties and many libertarains that we have no right as a country imposing our will on other countries (even though for the left they seem to have no problem demanding Israel be held to account to a standard no other ME country would ever be held).
But the fact of the matter is, slavery required a country acting on principle and imposing it's will. Not through a live and let live attitude of countries.
Every right thinking person stands against slavery NOW, but would they have tolerated it THEN if it meant that the US or Brittain had to exert military force to end it.
There is no evidence that black people are less responsible, less moral, or less upstanding in their dealings with America nor with themselves"
as Rev says, of course there is evidence. The crime rate,the drop out rate, the expulsion rate in schools, the out of wedlock kids, the single family house holds, the unemployment rate etc.
I think what some are having a problem with is the implication is that the reason that the stats are this way is because blacks are somehow incapable of being as moral or responsible. i.e. confirming negative stereotypes about the race itself.
And so Ta_Nahesi and Crack want to suggest a white supremacy is the cause and not personal responsibility. If they are that way it's not because of things they do or don't do its because of the remnants of slavery. They just cant help it.
Meanwhile, I'm saying blacks are perfectly capable of being moral, being responsible etc. And in fact saying they HAVE to be. if some in the community are not, then it doesn't help to pretend theres a white oppressive force keeping them down rather than addres why certain people are failing and address those root causes.
You'l notice that my view of black people gives them a lot more credit than the Ta-Nahesis's who seems to suggest that blacks are permanent victims suffering from pathologies making them incapable of acting up to par. And to even ask that of them is a request to make them attempt a superhuman task.
Meanwhile, I'm saying blacks are perfectly capable of doing for themselves, there is a large record of blacks actually doing for themselves, and making excuses for behavior doesn't help those who aren't measuring up.
And yet, liberals will say I'm the racist.
What do you really think about blacks, liberals? Are you the patronizing dad who's hand the black child must hold to get through the day because they are incapable of doing for themselves? That's the racism of low expectations.It's patronizing. And Ta-Nahesi perpetuates that garbage with his white supremacy bull crap.
Even if there is a white supremacy Ta-Nahesi was still able to get a job at the Atlantic where he's spewing his vile crap. How did that happen if there is such a white supremacy? if he could still make it, others in the community can as well. He shouldn't sell them short simply to peddle racism.
Maybe Ta-Nehisi Coates is just behind on his terms.
Back in the 1960s or so, "liberal" was a bad word. It meant left-of-center, but centrist nonetheless. Richard Nixon was a liberal; so was Scoop Jackson.
Old-time leftists hated those liberals, because they hate that those liberals are not farther left. New-time leftists are doing that again.
If you tie in the study I and someone else linked to which suggests that many blacks view other blacks as less black who have white friends, to Ta-Nahesi's argument, you see some of the flaws in the white man oppressor being the cause of black's plight argument.
First off, does anyone doubt the study's conclusion? This is the same OLD argument that the black community has had amongst itself about "acting white, and talking white. And Uncle Tomism". Who are the Uncle Tom's? They're the ones with white people as friends. Who talk white. Who do well in school. Who sellout They are not authentically black as defined not by white folks but by other black folks. And what then is authentic black? Not playing the game. not integrating.The militant who is oposed to the culture of oppression. This is not true of all blacks certainly, but it seems to be true of the ones who might read a Ta-Nahesi article about the white oppressor and nod their heads in agreement.
But, this country is still majority white. If you don't want to associate with the majority, and are standoffish it's going to limit your opportunities. If you don't play the game you don't win.
I'm not getting into this. It's too rich. I did enjoy the Duck Dynasty guy:
"If anyone exhibited the tiniest evidence of racial animosity they would be gone, immediately."
That explains black's high unemployment rate, huh? Still kinda pissed off about something, but what could it be? How about a policy that says, if your family's been raped, you can't feel anything - and it's instituted by the rapists?
Oh man, Y'all go 'head:
It's a White Boy Gangsta Party,….
Crack: Own something. Anything. How about employers preferring that their hires not have their asses hanging out of their pants or that they can only work with one hand because the other is needed to keep the pants from falling to the ground. Slavery? No. Stupid? Yes. How about employers preferring that their hires be able to make a subject and verb agree?
Otherwise you are whistling Dixie, dude, and everything is just dandy in the black "community".
Brando,
What, do you think Thomas Sowell is on his last legs or something? That's an alarming thought. So I just went to wikipedia and looked: holy cow, the fellow is 83 years old! Hope he's doing well, but yeah he's not going to be active in intellectual life for much longer, sadly.
Jupiter @ 11:20am,
Ah, no. That's a completely preposterous suggestion. At the very least, it bears not the slightest relation to what I observed among African-Africans while living on that continent, though admittedly that was in East Africa so maybe people of West African origin are catastrophically different in this regard?
rh,
Hmmm. Ok, the 'hit the guy on the head and take his stuff' system is coherent, but I'd hardly call it stable--the stability therein is only of the overall system, for the individuals involved it's uncertainly, chaos, and dread.
to cubanbob:
Read the book 1493. It will open your eyes to a lot of things that are not cited much in history books, but seem to be more of the prime motivators of events (disease and environmental changes after Columbus) Both of those wiped out 90-95% if the pre-Columbus population in the Americas)
Malaria is not native to the Americas. It was brought over by the English (it was present in South England in the marsh areas, actually made worse there by Elizabeth I in trying to drain the tidal marshes they created stagnant water areas for mosquitos). The breeding cycle is temperature dependent, so the warmer the area, the higher the potential infestation.
In the USA that line of demarcation fits pretty well along the Mason-Dixon line. So the North had little, but the South had a lot. (you can see it plainly in the sickness that incapacitated the British at Yorktown or in the few campaigns in the South, same in the Civil War campaigns on the Northern Forces)
It was 25% cheaper to hire an indentured laborer from Europe than to buy a slave at that time. But the laborers (in the south) died at an huge rate, or were out of service for 6 months if they survived the disease). That is why the North never really had slavery - the economics were totally against it.
The Southern Planters needed labor (since this was the time before steam power). It was noted that African workers could work almost immediately off the boat, and didn't die at such huge rates. No disease theory there - just observation, so in the South - they became the physical labor pool. (the nightmare in the Caribbean slavery area was much worse, as the conditions there killed after a year or too - and most slaves went there too)
Disease shapes history in ways we just don't appreciate.
I highly recommend "River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom" by Walter Johnson. For anyone actually interested in learning about the horrors of the slave economy in the Mississippi Delta and its ties to the world economy via steamship and the port of New Orleans. Requires actual reading and not cutting and pasting to lunatic websites. Johnson is probably the preeminent scholar on the topic. He also wrote "Soul by Soul: Inside the Antebellum Slave Market." Another important work.
Coates is clearly better read on these issues than I am. And in his discussions of the 70% of black children born to single mothers ( linked by Andrew ), he is correct about that stat being the wrong one to use when considering the change in black culture.
However, the fact that that stat is the wrong one does not mean the ones he presents are the correct ones. Probably the most accurate way would be to look at the ratio of black out-of-wedlock births to the total black population. If that number is increasing ( and it is ) then there is a problem.
If Coates can write three articles on the subject and still miss this, then I see no reason to trust his assessment of any issue.
TNC might provide a tool for a sociologist's thesis. You know one of the psychological maxims is 'Nobody can make you feel anything.' Nevertheless, it might be interesting to stratify people into groups in traditional ways and see 'how mad' TNC's columns make them comparing the groups.
"That explains black's high unemployment rate, huh? Still kinda pissed off about something, but what could it be? How about a policy that says, if your family's been raped, you can't feel anything - and it's instituted by the rapists?"
i don't know what policy crack is actually referring to. But in terms of unemployment lets first stipulate that things are tough all over. And this is becasue this adminsitration has done a terrible job creating a climate that would hire folks of any race.
But in terms of black in specific, the fact that blacks are unemployed disroportionally doesn't mean that the reason they aren't getting hired is because of some racist desire to exclude blacks. What is required to get a lot of jobs, certainly ones that pay above the minimum wage. Finishing at least high school, but more preferably college. Then look at the drop out rate. If people arent completing their education they will not be eligible for those jobs that would get them out of poverty.
And why aren't they completing their education? (those that aren't) What do we expect the outcome to be?
I was struck by this sentence:
There certainly is no era more oppressive for black people than their 250 years of enslavement in this country.
That's a provocative sentence. Are we to assume that slavery in the USA was somehow worse than slavery in Africa? Or slavery in Brazil?
Slavery was a worldwide phenomenon, dating back centuries, one that affected every color and creed. Africans enslaved the Jews. White people enslaved white people. Africans enslaved Africans. Indeed, in the 21st century we still have slavery in Africa. Not to mention Asia.
So how can you be certain that slavery in the USA was the most oppression black people have ever seen?
And that's just comparing slavery to slavery. What about other atrocities?
For instance, how you can be "certain" that the American slave trade was more oppressive than, say, the genocide in Rwanda?
Yet contrast your attitude about the mass murders in Rwanda with your attitude about American slavery.
Yet in Rwanda, where just 20 years ago a genocide claimed approximately 1 million lives, the government has transformed HIV care for the poor by redefining the standards for successful treatment.
You just kind of glide right over "genocide." One half of one sentence! Why so little interest in these modern atrocities?
Or we might contrast the evils of slavery with the horror of a child who is dying from malaria.
Why are we not using DDT in Africa to eradicate this disease? That's an interesting question, but the ugly answer implicates liberals and the over-white environmental movement.
Is that why you skip over it, Mr. Coates?
This is not to absolve anybody for the atrocities in the USA. It's just that there are far more recent atrocities suffered by black people in the 20th and 21st centuries. Why skip over these modern outrages?
jr565,
"The fact that blacks are unemployed disroportionally doesn't mean that the reason they aren't getting hired is because of some racist desire to exclude blacks."
I never said it was - I said blacks don't want to be around their oppressors no matter what their oppressors desires - or what little money they wave. Until whites deal with this, nobody gives a shit about anything because absolutely nothing makes sense.
Anyone outside of the racist conservative bubble - anyone - can read this thread and know you have no respect for life, or justice, or truth.
You're destroying America,...
In a, shall I say, nut shell:
"...blacks don't want to be around their oppressors no matter what their oppressors desires - or what little money they wave. Until whites deal with this, nobody gives a shit about anything because absolutely nothing makes sense."
Crack Emcee wrote:
"I never said it was - I said blacks don't want to be around their oppressors no matter what their oppressors desires - or what little money they wave. Until whites deal with this, nobody gives a shit about anything because absolutely nothing makes sense.
Ok, but are black companies producing the number of jobs required for black people to get the money they need to pay for their family's needs? If not, then those blacks who can't get jobs with other blacks but who also don't want to associate with whites are shit out of luck. This might also be why they aren't hired in the first place. if you are calling the guy who might hire you your oppressor or telling your coworkers that they are the oppressor it's probably not going to be a great career path to advancement.
And why should whites have to deal with this and not blacks? It's the black people who disproportionately arent going to be getting the jobs.
Its not like whites lives aren't complete if they can't get the black guy to work for them. Their attitude most likely would be, no skin off my nose I'll just pick the next guy to fill the chair, whatever his race might be.
So the only person who really loses out is the guy who is then left without a job or an education.
Macklemore. White Rapper. Not very good but white kids propelled him to stardom.
He did a song called White Privilege and acknowledged he understood what was happening.
The white Grammy Awards gave him the Best New Album Award - an honor he didn't deserve.
He publicly stated the winner - a black kid - "got robbed."
He's got a bunch of the best Rappers - black - on his tour, befriending others any way he can.
That's how Americans are supposed to act, in the face of this,...
Anyone read "Out of America" by Keith Richburg? You should.
jr565,
And why should whites have to deal with this and not blacks?
Blacks deal with it every day - we're waiting for you.
It's the black people who disproportionately arent going to be getting the jobs.
Who don't, you mean.
Its not like whites lives aren't complete if they can't get the black guy to work for them. Their attitude most likely would be, no skin off my nose I'll just pick the next guy to fill the chair, whatever his race might be.
Which is why nobody wants to be around you. You look like Nazis. You kill, don't care, exploit the next guy - maybe a talented illegal Mexican, for far less money than hers worth, on the construction job. It's all the same to Nazis.
"the only person who really loses out is the guy who is then left without a job or an education."
Like I said, who cares? You seem to expect some reaction that any extremely depressed human being in a no-win situation wouldn't reach.
That's what the term "superhuman" means,...
Mackelmore's lyrics:
"where's my place in a music that's been taken by my race
cultural appropriated by the white face
and we don't want to admit that this is existing
so scared to acknowledge the benefits of our white privilege
cause it's human nature to want to be part of something different
especially when your ancestors are European Christians
and most whites don't want to acknowledge this is occurring
cause we got the best deal, the music without the burden
What a bunch of white man's guilt. First off, he's wrong about whites culturally appropriating rap and stealing all the black profits. There are a handful of white rappers out there. If Eminemen can sell records its' because he's a good artist. And Mackelmore doens't have to make rap be about black culture.
The Fresh prince had a rap about how parents just don't understand which would appeal to any white kid living in the suburbs. was that appropriating white culture? I dont see why Will Smith couldn't write such a song. Is it authentic black? Who cares?
If Mackelmore has a problem with white people culturally appropriatiing black culture then why is he putting out a rap album? He's the one he has a problem with. And so, if its really a problem for him, the best solution is no more Mackelmore albums. I'm sure we'd both be ok with that.
Was he gracious with his win? Sure, and more artists should do that.
Crack Emcee wrote:
I said, who cares? You seem to expect some reaction that any extremely depressed human being in a no-win situation wouldn't reach.
What no win situation? We're talking about a job vs no job. If you need the money, not having the job is worse.
"Which is why nobody wants to be around you. You look like Nazis. You kill, don't care, exploit the next guy - maybe a talented illegal Mexican, for far less money than hers worth, on the construction job. It's all the same to Nazis."
I don't own a company so am not hiring people. I'm talking about people that do. They just want a body to fill the seat if the person is qualified. The race is largely immaterial. So then, if blacks don't want ot associate with people because of skin tone they are depriving themselves of the oppurtunity to earn cash.The guy hiring them isn't going to fix the world, he's just filling a position.
That's what the term "superhuman" means,..
Day-um...I was hoping it meant something Nietzschean.
I love it.
Crack wants us whites to emulate a white rapper named Macklemore, who:
- Took a Grammy he claimed he didn't deserve. Such high moral posturing!
- Continued touring with black rappers in tow, exploiting them to give himself an air of authenticity by their presence. See? I'm down with the brothers! I give them props!
Boooyyeeee is laughing all the way to the bank on the backs of credulous chumps like Crack.
Yeah. I'm gonna use HIM as a life example. Give me old school Beastie Boys any day of the week. Jews who EARNED their respect.
"You look like Nazis. You kill, don't care, exploit the next guy - maybe a talented illegal Mexican, for far less money than hers (sic) worth, on the construction job. It's all the same to Nazis."
-- The Crack Emcee
Because "white guilt", he explained.
Because "you're racist", he noted.
Because "you kill", he reasoned.
-- The Crack Emcee, paraphrased
So here we can witness the "conservative" The Crack Emcee uttering Marxist cant.
And we can feel sad that another human being is so miserable because of external forces beyond their control.
Tell us, The Crack Emcee, is it conspiracy theories all the way down? Or are turtles somewhere involved?
Like I said, it's a White Boy Gangsta Party.
Nazis.
Crack. Rap music is definitely the way to go. Ii met a rapper called 2 chainz on a plane home from LA. Nice guy. Over uses motherfucker, and theN word but fairly creative lyrics otherwise. Typical rapper voice. He is racking up.
You should try getting into rap, it could be a medium where you could make some big money like 2 chainz. Met his producer on the plane as well, a guy who has worked with my daughter in the Atlanta music, movie and club scene. Nice guys all around. I dont like the message of most of if and think it is corrosive to the listeners and fans moral fiber but, hey, they are raking up.
The white "supremacists" want, nay, demand integration, at least in public. Perhaps they have evolved. While the black supremacists are fighting black, white, browns, and others for supremacy. Hitching their wagons to left-wing ideology for leverage.
The South African "progressive" solution to break white and black control, in order to establish a competing white and black regime, through massive warfare was brutal. Let's hope dreams of redistributive and retributive change in the modern era do not follow the same course.
The Crack Emcee said...
That explains black's high unemployment rate, huh?
There are plenty of black people working where I work. They stayed in school, didn't get a criminal record, and reliably report for work. They are not ashamed of "acting white." They are not unemployed.
Far from blaming the victim, Moynihan identified what he memorably called a “racist virus in the American bloodstream” as the source of “three centuries of sometimes unimaginable mistreatment” of black Americans. Though he dwelt on the disastrous legacies of slavery, his report focused on contemporary economic problems, notably black male unemployment. It was a structural, not cultural, explanation for the subordination of black people—one that made a “Case for National Action.”
Michael,
"You should try getting into rap, it could be a medium where you could make some big money like 2 chains."
You're being sarcastic, aren't you?
Please tell me you're being sarcastic.
n.n,
"Hitching their wagons to left-wing ideology for leverage."
You guys are nutty - we'd hitch to the Right if you weren't a bunch of indifferent asses.
Tyrone Slothrop,
"There are plenty of black people working where I work. They stayed in school, didn't get a criminal record, and reliably report for work. They are not ashamed of "acting white." They are not unemployed."
And they also aren't going to tell you if there's a racial problem because you'll fire them, so they keep their mouths shut and hate you behind your back.
Capiche?
"First, the racist virus in the American blood stream still afflicts us: Negroes will encounter serious personal prejudice for at least another generation. Second, three centuries of sometimes unimaginable mistreatment have taken their toll on the Negro people".
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan
"There is no evidence that black people are less responsible, less moral, or less upstanding in their dealings with America nor with themselves"
Oh? Compare the out of wedlock pregnancy rate for blacks, compared to everyone else in America. Compare the teen pregnancy rates.
Or does Ta-Nehisi just not think it's irresponsible to get yourself pregnant when you're incapable of handling the responsibility of a child?
"I refuse to deal with how our culture and society treats people of color because it makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want to understand how having a different skin color or ethnicity affects other people because that means I would have to think and consider other points of view. What I want is to not have to think. I prefer to believe I live in a fantasy land where no one ever pays attention to skin color, ethnicity, culture, or religion."
In many cases, what [whites] are also saying is that the topic of race is getting under their skin, and that's just not necessary. 'Since race doesn't matter at all to me,' the thinking seems to go, 'why are those annoying people making such a big deal about it?' Since most adults who encounter such thinking in children encourage them to learn how to take other people's thoughts and feelings into consideration, it's surprising how many white adults fail to do so when confronted with perspectives on race that differ from their own."
Crack
. Moynihan was the first to note the dramatic and terrible consequences of a rise in black out of wedlock births he was terrified of the results of a rate that had gone from less than 10% to more than twenty in a decade or two. Poor Moynihan. He was called a racist (familiar?). The rate is today around 72%.
May he rest in peace. A real liberal.
Michael,
He was called a racist (familiar?).
You talk like conservatives gave him an easy time.
What was their answer to him?
You could care less,...
Seriously, when it comes to this liberal/conservative shit, you guys are dogma stooges.
The liberal plantation.
Playing the victim.
Brainwashed by government programs.
You really don't have anything significant to say about real people's lives.
Since leaving high school, I have not had many nor actively sought opportunities to make friends with white people.
When you are 9, or 12, or 17, it is easy to overlook racist comments. That your friends’ dad does not like black people has little to do with what your friend thinks, right? When you cannot yet vote, the fact that your friends’ parents are Republicans means little. With age, these things start to matter. At 25 or 32, it is harder to overlook the inevitable racially ignorant comment that will come, especially when you have had access to friendships where this is never an issue. At 30 or 35, the fact that your white friends now vote Republican alongside their parents strikes you as a choice that detrimentally impacts your material existence.
It is hard to stomach.
Several years ago, I had the opportunity to attend the wedding reception of two of my old debate teammates, who were getting married. I went with another teammate, also black. When we arrived, we were shocked to discover that among a gathering of probably 75 people, we were the couple’s only black friends. And it had been years since we had spoken to them.
This is why the Reuters poll is unsurprising. I have always been skeptical of white people who claim that “one of my best friends is black.” Internally my response has always been, “They may be your friend, but are you their friend?”
I believe deeply in the power of friendship to make us better human beings. But interracial friendships, especially in adulthood, require a level of risk and vulnerability that many of us would rather simply not deal with. And that is perhaps one of racism’s biggest casualties: Beyond the level of systemic havoc that racism wreaks on the material lives of people of color, in a million and one ways every day, it reduces the opportunity of all people to be more human.
Don't be a dumbass, Crack. What I said was that anyone at my workplace who exhibited the tiniest bit of racism would be fired. It's the truth, no matter how your paranoid delusions may inform you. All it would take would be for a black person to claim I said something racist to them, and I would be fired. Got that? I would be fired, not the accuser. This is the reality. Maybe if you had a job, you would experience the same thing.
Crack
Look, asshole, i was a liberal at that time and the liberals were calling him racist. Get it? Liberals. You were a child at the time. You dont know your fucking history.
I cared a lot and still do. Assholes like you, smug shitheads with the glib comebacks who got interested in this topic fifty years on when their New Age rant wore thin.
Fuck off, Crack. Go write some great rap like you did fifteen years ago over in Los Angeles.
That explains black's high unemployment rate, huh?
"I refuse to get a job until someone apologizes to me!"
And they also aren't going to tell you if there's a racial problem because you'll fire them, so they keep their mouths shut and hate you behind your back.
A Chef I worked for once said, "I don't care if they hate me, as long as they do their fucking jobs and cook great food."
Chef was black. Graduate of University of Pennsylvania on a full ride. Had a fraternity brand on his arm. Taught math to kids in DC public schools. Wanted to be a chef, so he shows up at CIA without applying on the first day of classes for that term, and TALKS his way in for a full ride. One of the best people I ever worked for. The epitome of self made in America. I was the only white guy in his kitchen.
Crack, you wouldn't be fit to shine his shoes.
Several years ago, I had the opportunity to attend the wedding reception of two of my old debate teammates, who were getting married. I went with another teammate, also black. When we arrived, we were shocked to discover that among a gathering of probably 75 people, we were the couple’s only black friends. And it had been years since we had spoken to them.
People who have studied the issue have reported that when the IQ gap between two individuals gets much over 25-30 points, communication and long-term friendship become very problematical.
Perhaps that is the reason you don't have many white friends, and vice versa.
"There is no evidence that black people are less responsible,"
And then he goes on to blame America.
Very responsible, Mr. Coates
"Black Slavery wasn't about racism - it was because they were the only people that had resistance to Malaria which killed or incapacitated so many in the Caribbean and the US South. (and I am NOT defending slavery, merely pointing out why blacks became the physical labor majority in areas where malaria was present - it killed or incapacitated most of the natives or white laborers from Europe)"
Black Africans were common as slaves because they were very available. There was a widely expressed belief that blacks were more able to cope with the Southern climate and attendant disease than whites. It's likely that any advantage was small, and of course counterbalanced by the conditions in which slaves lived and worked, which made their mortality higher than that of whites in most cirumstances. Moreover, Malaria, while not insignificant, was far less of a cause of mortality than viral diseases spread by bad water. Stomach and intestinal disorders, and lung problems were much more deadly than malaria.
(The natives were largely killed off before slavery became well established. Throughout North America they died in large numbers having never seen a white person, as the European diseases spread.)
The real reason black slaves were used was that the Southern colonies were unable to attract whites in sufficient numbers to develop a labor force. For example, when Georgia was first chartered, slavery was illegal. That lasted only until it became clear that white labor was not choosing to come to the colony. South Carolina flirted with limiting importation off and on because blacks were outnumbering whites, but the pauses in the trade were brief.
The weather and disease issues in the south were part of the cause of white avoidance, but the other part was the land policies, which made it more difficult for settlers to acquire land unless they were well connected in the first place.
Availability not racism was the cause of black slavery. Racism was more an effect of black slavery than a cause. The whites became very attached to the idea of black inferiority because this was the only way they could argue that slavery was not a moral wrong. This effect was especially striking in the southern churches, which first accepted slavery as a necessary evil but soon embraced it as a positive good. The bedrock of that approach was a unshakable belief that blacks were innately inferior.
"The machine broke because someone threw his shoes in it" doesn't mean you can fix the machine it just by pulling the shoes out, and that you can identify the cause of the break doesn't mean you can ignore that it's broken. The machine is not to blame for the fact that it's broken, but that doesn't change the fact that it needs to be fixed.
Tyrone Slothrop,
"Maybe if you had a job, you would experience the same thing."
Another thing you guys love is slagging the unemployed, the poor, the disabled, anybody.
I've had jobs - so have lots of black people - and surrounded by your types, it NEVER happens as you say.
You act like blacks don't experience the country we live in.
Oh yeah - you, calling blacks crazy (or even this thread's content, period) is a perfect example of the non-racist work environment blacks can find out there:
Where we're all "imaging things." All 97% who don't vote as you do.
You clown yourself.
""I never said it was - I said blacks don't want to be around their oppressors no matter what their oppressors desires - or what little money they wave. Until whites deal with this, nobody gives a shit about anything because absolutely nothing makes sense."
And this is why there is high unemployment among the blacks - according to Crack they don't want to deal with white people, and thus cannot succeed. Whites, Asians, Hispanics don't have this inhibition of working with people of difference race, and they have lower unemployment.
Crack, freezing off your ears to spike your grandmother - this is how it's called in Russia. And that's what you are doing now.
Crack shows up at 3:07 to say he's not getting into this. Fair enough and I respect that. And then proceeds to use the next three and a half hours to post thirteen more times, five in a row at one point. Five in a row. Really? It reminds me of shouting thomas and sometimes others who say they have something else to do but appear again minutes later with yet another comment.
But to the point of this post, just about everything anyone expert or commenter says about race in America generalizing beyond statistics or their own personal experience says more about themselves than it does about race. That includes me, and you in particular as well Crack.
Michael,
Assholes like you, smug shitheads with the glib comebacks who got interested in this topic fifty years on when their New Age rant wore thin.
Ig-nant. Tyrone are you listening? This is a non-racist environment blacks like in. One where whites even think they know everything - about the details of my life through the computer!
Really, Micheal, I got to this when my NewAge rant wore thin? Or wouldn't conservatives tolerate another opinion, so I kept it to myself until I couldn't stand your white bullshit any longer?
The truth hurts - blacks - that's why I didn't say shit.
You know nothing.
SomeoneHasToSayIt,
"People who have studied the issue have reported that when the IQ gap between two individuals gets much over 25-30 points, communication and long-term friendship become very problematical."
Hey, Ty, I'd love to be in the next cubical next to this guy - we'd get along great.
Until I smashed a chair over his head.
Hyphenated American,
Crack, freezing off your ears to spike your grandmother - this is how it's called in Russia. And that's what you are doing now.
How? By not wanting to endure this thread of insults in person?
Please. Being around you guys is nothing to desire,..
The Crack Emcee said...
SomeoneHasToSayIt,
"People who have studied the issue have reported that when the IQ gap between two individuals gets much over 25-30 points, communication and long-term friendship become very problematical."
Hey, Ty, I'd love to be in the next cubical next to this guy - we'd get along great.
Until I smashed a chair over his head.
The people who study IQ differences would have predicted that very response.
In an IQ mismatch, guess which one is almost certain to threaten violence first? By the way, it's called 'assault'. Congratulations.
And as I've said many times before, if I could wave a magic wand and make it happen, we would have:
President Herman Cain.
Chief Justice Clarence Thomas
Secretary of Defense Alan West
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of Health and Social Services Dr. Ben Carson
Secretary of Treasury Charles Paine.
I could go on and on in similar fashion.
And if the above were to happen, things would soon be on a great path for all Americans.
So, try to square that with charges of 'racism'.
to David -
Slavery in the Americas by Europeans started with Columbus when his party took Indians to work the areas, or find gold. When they started dying off from the European diseases and hard work, the whole enterprise almost failed.
When sugar became the cash crop (since sugarcane grew so well in that area) the demand for labor went through the roof. White labor from Europe could not be enticed to work in those areas too - too much disease and too hard conditions. That is when the slave trade took off - well before it got established in what is the USA.
Slavery really had pretty well been abolished in Europe before the 1100s. Christian belief and Roman law pretty much got rid of it (there still were serfs though, tied to the land). Slavery got reintroduced through Spain after the Muslim conquest. The Spanish seem to have taken it up big time after they threw the Muslims out - using it in South American and then Africa.
It still came down to economics, sadly. The Northern Colonies could import cheap labor from Europe, while the Southern could not. When the lure of money from indigo, tobacco and then cotton exploded, the demand for labor went to the Caribbean market for slaves. It wasn't racism at first - it was pure greed.
And don't forget that the Southern colonies were the rich ones in the early days - after the Industrial Revolution, the roles changed. That is precisely why the South got Slavery into the Constitution - they were paying most of the bills at the time.
Professor has a Crack addiction.
"How? By not wanting to endure this thread of insults in person?
Please. Being around you guys is nothing to desire,.. "
Which is why you keep coming here to talk with us? Come on, crack, talking about racism and evil white people who are screwing you gives validation to your life, which is why you keep coming here and talking to us. You need an excuse for your failures, and you need to keep saying it over and over and over.
And yes, one of the reasons blacks are failing in such high numbers is their racism. You are the prime example of that. You are the hateful negro that every Kkk member dreams about.
Which is why you keep coming here to talk with us?
To drive up search rankings for his blog.
I take offense that 'indifferent' is somehow bad.
Indifferent is exactly what I want out of people I meet in life who do not become friends.
Freinds I want to be loyal because I have earned it.
Everrybody else, I want to be indifferent.
Things go poorly when people choose sides in advance.
When they are pre-judiced.
1) The claim that white supremacy is the cause of today's problems in the black community seems rather weak in the face of the incontrovertible evidence that there is far less discrimination against blacks today than 50 or 100 years ago.
2) The problems of the subculture are not racial. Kevin Williamson at NRO has written about the poverty culture of Appalachia, and what is peculiar is that the people there are white, religious and for the most part married. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367903/white-ghetto-kevin-d-williamson. Now Appalachia has a relatively low crime rate (although there are plenty of illegal drugs), and maybe the persistence of religion and marriage has something to do with that. But religion and marriage have not helped the white Appalachians escape poverty.
Douglas wrote: Now Appalachia has a relatively low crime rate (although there are plenty of illegal drugs), and maybe the persistence of religion and marriage has something to do with that. But religion and marriage have not helped the white Appalachians escape poverty.
White Appalachia is fixed and immobile, much like inner-city black America is. Jobs don't migrate to poverty; rather, poverty migrates to jobs. It's always been that way, and it probably always will be. Ask a Mexican.
It's astounding that Obama can exacerbate the poverty of America's two largest ethnic groups in need and get away with it: Appalachian whites and urban blacks.
His idiotic "war on coal" harms the former and job-killing policies harm the latter.
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