How One Liberal 'Proves' Republicans Are Racist

[little bongo]

Also, has no one on this thread heard or seen the musical "Avenue Q"? And the song, "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist"? Musical theatre, people--it solves the world's problems.

For the good of the fora, I present some cogent, to-the-point, non-accusatory, applicable anti-racism training in about 5 1/2 minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqiVLlYyvTs

Interesting video, but since 2011, it would now be considered very offensive by many on the left, and the concept of "equality of bigotry" would be vigorously opposed. (And talk of everybody just being less "PC" would be considered "violence".)

Well, ideally that's why I'd love for everyone to listen to it for a bit. I'm a lefty myself, but I hope I haven't completely lost my sense of humor.

[mahagonny]

Multiple things can be true: Fatherless homes in black communities can be a deterrent to upward mobility or success, but by the same token structural forces can be at play (e.g. poor public schools in urban minority communities, biased and generally poor policing, etc.), and of course the high rates of fatherlessness in black communities is itself affected by structural factors (e.g. the drug war waged largely in poor urban neighborhoods that leads many black men to long-term prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenses).

Drugs are a big problem that I care a lot about, one that resonates with me in my life and the life of many friends (some now dead). Despite the fact the white people who read Rolling Stone and  think everything black people do is cool are the biggest consumers of hip hop recordings, people who make recordings about 'purple drank' and other unhealthy glorifications of drug culture and create untold harm in urban black communities have not made one thin dime off me since the days of Jimi Hendrix.

There's a Candace Owens video where she talks about how black Americans are the only group who regularly turn the worst among them into heroes while ignoring their great achievers. With the help of certain whites.

Just doing my part.

[marshwiggle]

Also, has no one on this thread heard or seen the musical "Avenue Q"? And the song, "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist"? Musical theatre, people--it solves the world's problems.

For the good of the fora, I present some cogent, to-the-point, non-accusatory, applicable anti-racism training in about 5 1/2 minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqiVLlYyvTs

Interesting video, but since 2011, it would now be considered very offensive by many on the left, and the concept of "equality of bigotry" would be vigorously opposed. (And talk of everybody just being less "PC" would be considered "violence".)

Well, ideally that's why I'd love for everyone to listen to it for a bit. I'm a lefty myself, but I hope I haven't completely lost my sense of humor.

Sadly, in the last decade the Overton window has shifted a great deal.

[mahagonny]

Mahagonny, for whatever reason you are deeply invested in insisting that racism is not a problem in America, but I would encourage you to clear your priors and look at America's history.  Blacks in America were just given equal rights in the 1960s, after decades of slavery, followed by jim crow, separate but equal, etc.  Do you honestly not think that that recent history has no effect on our society and the people in it today?

History, as in, what has happened to us, or how liberal academics explain it to us? Recent history includes many things, affirmative action, quotas hiring, etc.

Equal rights doesn't mean equal success. It means equal opportunities under the law and individual freedom. What people do with that freedom can vary a lot. From what I hear the Asian Americans are outdoing Caucasian Americans scholastically by a big margin. Does this mean someone is being oppressed or unfairly advantaged by the system?

I honestly have to wonder how people who want to talk about structural racism all the time think arriving at a stage where black Americans are not oppressed, by their definition, will be achieved? We can't even agree on how it's measured. What is the resolution envisioned here? I see that Ta Nehisi Coates thinks simply paying money to black Americans (reparations) will do this. It won't, because one party giving money to another does not create wealth and lasting success. 

[Sun_Worshiper]

Multiple things can be true: Fatherless homes in black communities can be a deterrent to upward mobility or success, but by the same token structural forces can be at play (e.g. poor public schools in urban minority communities, biased and generally poor policing, etc.), and of course the high rates of fatherlessness in black communities is itself affected by structural factors (e.g. the drug war waged largely in poor urban neighborhoods that leads many black men to long-term prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenses).

Drugs are a big problem that I care a lot about, one that resonates with me in my life and the life of many friends (some now dead). Despite the fact the white people who read Rolling Stone and  think everything black people do is cool are the biggest consumers of hip hop recordings, people who make recordings about 'purple drank' and other unhealthy glorifications of drug culture and create untold harm in urban black communities have not made one thin dime off me since the days of Jimi Hendrix.

There's a Candace Owens video where she talks about how black Americans are the only group who regularly turn the worst among them into heroes while ignoring their great achievers. With the help of certain whites.

Just doing my part.

I'm happy to acknowledge that people in a community can do harm to that community and there are surely examples of that in the black community.  However you seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge that racism has held back black Americans or that racism is a problem, even though your opening post clearly suggests that many Americans have racist attitudes.  You exclusively blame black people for the problems that their community faces, without any acknowledgement of the historical legacies that contribute to these problems:
- Blacks experience police brutality? If only they had been more cooperative!
- Blacks disproportionately imprisoned for nonviolent drug offenses? Rap music!
- Blacks earn less than whites for the same jobs? That's ok! Adjuncts!

I've been arguing with you for days, across threads, but you are clearly not budging off of your position, and you are not going to convince me that racism is a myth (or whatever it is exactly that you think), so what is the point of continuing this discussion?

Mahagonny, for whatever reason you are deeply invested in insisting that racism is not a problem in America, but I would encourage you to clear your priors and look at America's history.  Blacks in America were just given equal rights in the 1960s, after decades of slavery, followed by jim crow, separate but equal, etc.  Do you honestly not think that that recent history has no effect on our society and the people in it today?

History, as in, what has happened to us, or how liberal academics explain it to us? Recent history includes many things, affirmative action, quotas hiring, etc.

Equal rights doesn't mean equal success. It means equal opportunities under the law and individual freedom. What people do with that freedom can vary a lot. From what I hear the Asian Americans are outdoing Caucasian Americans scholastically by a big margin. Does this mean someone is being oppressed or unfairly advantaged by the system?

I honestly have to wonder how people who want to talk about structural racism all the time think arriving at a stage where black Americans are not oppressed, by their definition, will be achieved? We can't even agree on how it's measured. What is the resolution envisioned here? I see that Ta Nehisi Coates thinks simply paying money to black Americans (reparations) will do this. It won't, because one party giving money to another does not create wealth and lasting success. 

I'm not aware of a difference between real history and "liberal history."  Is Jim Crow liberal history or real history?  Did slavery really happen, or was that just liberal history?  In any case, there have been some social programs to help correct the injustices inflicted on Black Americans prior to the 1960s, and some of those programs have been somewhat successful. However, they are tiny in scale compared to the massive injustices that had been inflicted on black people for centuries prior to ~1965 - which really was not that long ago.

And you are right that equal rights does not necessarily lead to equal rates of success, but the historical legacies also don't evaporate overnight.  While Asian Americans have been very successful, despite discrimination, it does not follow that we should say "racism isn't a problem because one group overcame it."

As for the resolution, it is a matter of improving the situation with reforms that create de facto equality.  There are plenty of policies aside from reparations that could be administered, and reparations could take lots of forms (e.g. subsidies for minority-focused scholarships).  Black people also have agency and it isn't just up to policymakers to fix problems in the black community, but lots of structural factors that currently exist are impediments and I can't imagine why anyone would be opposed to removing those impediments.

[mahagonny]

You don't have to convince me that racism is a problem. The disagreement as I see it is over how much attention should be paid to it. And my position is not 'always more than we have been.' The disagreement is also over to what degree systemic racism is responsible for the problems we have today.
Two people I have listened to recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3POpubeoIc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp4fg9PWuhM

However you seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge that racism has held back black Americans or that racism is a problem, even though your opening post clearly suggests that many Americans have racist attitudes. 

The article does not convince me anything much about racism and republicans versus democrats. For one thing, we have vivid memories of recent protest involving many blacks that resulted in pain for innocent bystanders. What do we we have to compare that to as far as recent protests not about race issues? If different groups of people play music differently, dance differently, they could also protest differently.
If you don't know the BLM protests caused people pain, you're not paying attention.
If anything the 'polling' done by Meyerson could indicate republicans are more forthcoming with their impressions or the usefulness of protests.
Meyerson is a far leftie and is looking for a gotcha moment before the election.
Of course, as finance guy points out, we might be using different definitions of racism.

- Blacks earn less than whites for the same jobs? That's ok! Adjuncts!

It wouldn't be a matter of it being OK with me or not. What's OK with me is of no consequence. It's more a matter of who you trust to try and remove the hidden demons of racism from your white soul or to change laws, and what reason is there for them to be trusted.

I feel a lot of peer pressure at work and on Facebook to say the protests are cool, the looting and violence is not by BLM people, it's all either Richard Spencer's friends, Martians or someone else. I call bullshit.