06-08-2020, 09:24 AM
(06-08-2020, 05:47 AM)Isoko Wrote: So, I am sure most of you have read my thoughts relating to how I feel about what has been happening in America. Most will probably be shocked and even accuse me of racism, to which I don't really care because I'm not being racist about it, just offering my own insights into how I feel.
With that aside, I'd like to offer my opinion on what the real problem is.
The truth is - America is just a basket case and always has been. It started out being founded on white supremacy as did all of the European colonies. However it never reached South African levels of white supremacy, which would shock even an American black living under segregation. Wrong side of the bus? Try living with your ancestral home crushed by a bulldozer and forced to live in a cramped shack with no basic sanitation, just so a white guy could have a better beach. You get the picture.
Race-based slavery existed about a century before the American Revolution and entwined itself into the very fabric of society. But outside of the South, Americans were proud of what the Talented Tenth did as an illustration of what competence, learning, dedication, and hard work could do.
I know of some very rich people in Dallas; they held onto farms around the time when Dallas was experiencing rapid population growth in the 1970's and 1980's. They sold out their farms for a pretty penny.
Quote:What the whites did in America to the blacks is wrong. The lynchings were evil. The outright racism was wrong and I agree, it was bad and did oppress black people.
No fooling. Tell me something that I didn't already know!
Quote:However, times have moved on now. Whilst I am sure there are racist police still out there, the fact remains the racism is now being focused on the white community and white people there are grovelling like slaves for forgiveness. What the blacks once were, cowed and frightened people, has now become the white man.
So far as I know, none of my ancestors in America -- certainly not the Mennonites in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia -- owned slaves.
Quote:Unfortunately many blacks there have formed a ghetto mindset and are heavily involved in violent crime through choice, despite there being opportunities to better themselves aplenty. Only white people claim this is because of injustices when in reality, they are not helping themselves.
Consider that there might be other causes. As late as the 1970's, environmental lead concentrated heavily in the ghettos of American cities. That is where commuter traffic got heaviest and slowest, and lead in vehicle emissions was most concentrated. Lead is a noxious, cumulative poison that leads to both learning disabilities and impairment of impulse control. Both contribute to crime -- especially violent crime. You will notice that crime rates have gone sharply down since their peaks around 1980. Note that Howe and Strauss recognized that for their Thirteenth Generation (a/k/a "X"), pathology such as crime, drug use, alcoholism, and poor academic performance have fallen with younger cohorts of Generation X. Note that the number of pathologies increased among Boomers.
Let me tell you a few things about black people in Michigan. Many are trying to go to rural areas in Michigan, where the schools are much better (get out of southeastern Michigan and you are either in Nebraska or Maine)... Lots of black parents know this. One day in which I was driving back from Greater Detroit I took a side trip to see some of the northwestern suburbs of Greater Detroit so that I could familiarize myself with the area in case I had to apply for a job in that area. I expected light commute traffic out of Detroit on Interstate 96 in the morning, but I saw quite the opposite. People in Detroit seem to have been driving from Detroit to suburbs that seem to have more jobs in retail and fast food. The commute goes both ways, and it is heavy. (Sure, there were some night-shift workers, but I can draw some conclusions). No, those people were not commuting to Lansing.
An observation that I have made: if you want to know where the economic activity is strongest, then look for the traffic jams. Lansing, Toledo, and South Bend have light traffic, but highways systems made for a time when the factories were busy. The good times are over there.
Quote:When it comes down to it, I blame both white and black Americans for not coming together to build a better society. I blame whites for the past oppression and the present babying. I blame blacks for taking advantage of this and not trying better. Both are equally to blame in this and how much more grovelling will it take to make people realise - this ain't working?
Have you been to eastern Kentucky or the great state of West Virginia lately? Not that central Appalachia was ever a great place for economic opportunity... at one time the most obvious career advice for kids in those parts was to take 19 to Pittsburgh, 21 to Cleveland, 23 or 25 to Greater Detroit or Flint (they merge in Toledo, which used to be a great industrial city); 33 to Columbus, Fort Wayne, or South Bend; 27 or 127 to Cincninnati, Fort Wayne, or Lansing... 52 to Cincinnati, Indianapolis, or (with 41) Chicago... most of those cities are now urban wrecks! See also Dayton, Akron, and Buffalo.
LBJ's Great Society was tailor-maid for a prosperous industrial country in which people with minimal education but strong muscles and a solid work ethic was adequate for earning middle-income means. The problem is that that industrial reality, one that Booker T. Washington touted as more reliable than elite education for blacks, vanished about the same time. Today people need college degrees to do work that used to not need a degree -- and the work is as mindless and menial as ever. Go figure.
Quote:Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter. The day when the two groups can stop bitching and being stupid with each other and build a better society will be a miracle.
Black parents have been telling their kids to be deferential to police to avoid trouble. Need I tell you that we have an opiate epidemic... and it seems to not be hurting black people as it is poor white people? Black Boomers remember when heroin ravaged their communities and impress upon their grandchildren that heroin is an evil to avoid no matter what.
Remember, though: poverty is still debilitating, no matter what one's ethnicity. Criminality is stupid But let us remember: white cops are more likely to hold "ghetto" culture in contempt to the point of associating it with danger. Overstated danger, to be sure. Maybe black cops would be more trigger-happy with white meth fiends.
Quote:What I saw in America reminded me how pathetic a nation it really is. You guys have really got to sort it out and build a better, brighter future. Not engaging in religious rituals in the street begging for forgiveness.
This country is pathetic for having Donald Trump as President. It also gave the world Dr. Martin Luther King, a model for anti-Apartheid struggles in Zimbabwe and South Africa and even anti-Communist struggles in central and Balkan Europe. Let's not forget there is much race-mixing going on, some of it black people marrying and having children by white people. I figure that that will solve lots of political discord in the future.
Ask yourself this: would you rather that your precious white daughter marry a good black bourgeois man with a a solid income and good attitudes or some white meth fiend? I rest my case. Now we do need to reform police forces so that cops know that they are not around to punish people. .
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.