The shift away from government schools, at all levels, accelerates
Parents are rejecting this mantra in droves
It has been clear for decades that the public schools in most major urban areas — all of which have been run by Democrats — have been failing badly at their primary task of educating children. Two recent stories underlined this failure.
First, in Baltimore a study found that not one student in twenty-three of the city’s schools was proficient in math.
Through an analysis of 150 Baltimore City Schools, 23 of them, including 10 high schools, eight elementary schools, three high schools and two middle schools, no students met math grade-level expectations, according to a report by Project Baltimore. Approximately 2,000 students took the state administered math exams that tested proficiency levels.
…An additional 20 schools in the district had no more than two students proficient in math, Project Baltimore reported. Another three schools in the district, which are for incarcerated students and students with disabilities, had no students that met grade-level expectations.
Essentially, just under one third of all of Baltimore’s public schools failed to teach any of their students math. Period. For any school system to accept this level of failure is beyond disgusting. Everyone who works for Baltimore’s schools should be canned, now.
Then, just days later, another story revealed that fifty-five of Chicago’s public schools were also totally incompetent at teaching math or reading, and should find other work.
In 55 Chicago Public Schools, not one student met grade level expectations in either math or reading during the 2021-2022 school year, according to a Wirepoints report.
Out of 649 Chicago Public Schools, 22 schools have zero students who met grade level expectations for reading while no students were proficient in math in 33 schools during the 2021-2022 school year, according to a Wirepoints report. The data analyzed is from the Illinois State Board of Education annual report which details how schools within the state are performing.
What is important about both stories is how totally unremarkable they are. Such stories have been reported over and over again for decades, not just in cities like Baltimore or Chicago, but in all the country’s major cities, from New York to Philadelphia to Detroit to Los Angeles to San Francisco. The Democrats who have controlled the local governments in these cities for decades have failed utterly in this most basic task of local government, even as these politicos succeeded wonderfully in funneling a lot of money to the incompetent union teachers and administrators at these schools.
Even more disturbing has been the utter disinterest in such stories for decades by parents in these cities. Their kids were not being educated, but still those parents in these cities continued to vote for Democrats to run the schools. Still they sent their kids there. And still for years they made no outcry when they found out their kids had learned nothing.
Something however changed as a result of the Wuhan panic. For two years all school instruction in these cities was limited to zoom sessions, therefore allowing parents to watch very closely what the schools were doing. To their horror parents found that not only were these schools doing a very bad job, it appears they were doing so almost intentionally, with their priorities shifting from reading, writing, and arithmetic to promoting queer sex and racial bigotry, almost non-stop.
The result has been a strong shift away from the public schools since the end of the COVID panic. Though this trend had been increasingly noticeable since 2021, recent data underlines it, in a startling way.
- Declining student enrollment may force some Washington schools to close, lay off staff
- Public school enrollment is dropping in New York
- The pandemic missing: The kids who didn’t go back to school
- COVID exodus: Where did 1 million public school students go? New data sheds some light
The first two stories above describe enrollment drops in specific urban cities (Seattle and New York), trends that have become typical of many urban cities. The next two provide national figures for the past year, showing that instead of enrollment numbers recovering after the end of lockdowns, they continued to drop. Parents have clearly decided to go elsewhere to educate their kids.
Where? According to data cited in the last link above, large numbers have decided to home school their children.
The share of families choosing to homeschool their children doubled in 2020, according to a Census survey. By that fall, about 11% of households with school-age children were homeschooling, up from 5.4% that spring and about 3% in prior years. The shift was especially dramatic among Black families, whose share of homeschooling families grew fivefold in 2020.
In the 21 states and the District of Columbia that track homeschooling, enrollment soared by 30% from fall 2019 to fall 2021, according to the Stanford and AP analysis.
These numbers are impressive, and indicate a shift that is likely permanent. The third story in the list above underlines this, noting the large numbers of students who have literally vanished from the system after COVID. While it is likely that many have simply given up, it is also likely that many are now being home schooled, with their parents not bothering to tell anyone this fact.
There is also ample evidence that many students have switched to private and religious schools.
- Survey: 55 Percent of Private Schools See Enrollment Rise
- Private School Enrollment Rising in America Since Onset of Pandemic
- Christian School Enrollment Booms: 79 Percent See Increase Post-Pandemic, Report Says
- Catholic schools see increase in enrollment
Nor is this shift limited only to the K though 12 levels. The imposition by traditional public universities of critical race theory and the queer agenda, often by force and blacklisting, has resulted in an increasing shift from those institutions.
- While Students Flee Public Universities, Christian Schools Are Only Getting Bigger
- As woke curriculum increases, classical education booms: Hillsdale College sees 53% increase in applications
It is important to note that this shift away from public schools at all levels is not universal, that in local regions where the public schools are still well run there has been no exodus of students. Consider for example this video of this high school in Carmel, Indiana. This school facilities are numerous, from several gyms to television studios to a planetarium to a weight room to several cafeterias. Not only are students well educated, the school system does it for about $9,600 per student, about half of what Baltimore taxpayers pay per student, $16K. Parents in Carmel are not fleeing their public schools, they are very happy with them.
The bottom line is the need for competition. For decades the public schools had a monopoly on education, a monopoly that parents accepted without question. The result was a public school system where failure became the norm, because there was no competition to challenge it.
This has now changed. Expect many more options beside home-schooling and private religious schools in the coming years. Soon for example we shall see the return of the equivalent of the traditional small private one-room schoolhouse, paid for not by the residents of a small village but by a group of big city parents who have pooled their resources to make sure their kids are well educated. Many now call these pods, but they are really no different than those pioneer schoolhouses.
And their existence is all to the good. The more the merrier.
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when I taught the rage was to put them in groups – still is, no doubt. this travesty did allow for one thing: competition. at the middle school I asked for competition between classes as a motivator, and the head of the union at our school stood up and shouted, “We don’t want competition, Peter!”
got it?
Sexualizing children and not giving them a solid education helps prepare them for one of the fastest growing occupations in Seattle:
“Prostitutes Prowl Seattle Streets With Hamstrung Police Watching Helplessly a Block Away
LINED UP FOR BLOCKS: These young women are waiting around side streets along Aurora Ave N.”
https://thelibertydaily.com/prostitutes-prowl-seattle-streets-with-hamstrung-police-watching-helplessly-a-block-away/
“The bottom line is the need for competition.” Absolutely.
The fact that Republican national leadership – right down to every State, County, and District Republican candidate for elected office, has not made “school choice” the civil rights issue of the 21st century is testimony to its impotence!
It would be almost a certain political winner because the existing travesty is increasingly seen for the loser it is!
Peter. I see nothing wrong with “tracking” students and assigning them to groups based on their abilities. We had Levels 1, 2 and 3 in my high school. In a mixed class, they would be approximately the A, B and C students. That way the Level 1 students got accelerated and went deeper into the subject matter (Think Advanced Placement) and the Level 3 students got extra attention. . In addition, my high school indicated on my transcripts which courses I took were at “Honors” level when I applied to college. Because of this system, I exempted out of Freshman English, Math and Chemistry in college. By the way, enrollment in Level 1 was voluntary – you were offered the opportunity – and you signed up for it knowing it would be rigorous and demanding applying oneself to one’s studies
My opinion of public schools took a definite downturn in the mid 1970s. I dropped out of the sixth grade in 1969 and worked with my parents. When I went back to night school at 19, I was not behind 11th and 12th grade drop outs. Passed a GED before completing and high school credits. Did some community college engineering with a high B average. There is no way any of this would have made sense if the other students had been getting an education.
Bottom line is that this has been going on for a very long time as I am demonstrably not smart enough to pass real classes in subjects that I’ve never studied.
A thing or two…
I think the “Pandemic Effect” is not quite as simple as laid out. I think there were a lot of parents who – pre-pandemic – were frustrated with their schools and wanted a way out. But the culture sold homeschooling as something those hillbilly neo-na zi kooks did, and it required a stay-at-home mom who was barefoot and pregnant, etc., etc. And private schools were just out of reach.
What the pandemic lockdowns did was force them into managing their kids all day, anyway, and therefore start considering that maybe they could do it. I think it also got them to talking more with various folks, some of whom did homeschool and weren’t that stereotype. They figured out the door wasn’t really locked.
It also taught them they seemed smarter and less doctrinaire than a lot of the teachers they were encountering.
If it were simply the observance of the vapid indoctrination in lieu of education, entire school systems would have emptied out.
[There are two primary obstacles to homeschooling.
First is the idea that “I can’t do it”, fed into by the idea that it must be structured like a public school – eliminating the possibility for moms who work nights, or single moms, or families struggling to make ends meet.
Second is the idea that parents aren’t smart/educated enough, and only an expert can teach children.
I regularly spend time re-educating people on those two facets of homeschooling.]
Col Beausabre
February 28, 2023 at 4:09 am
My education was much the same in the early 80s. Did your high school adjust your GPA for the Honors courses? So a 4.0 with an Honors class became a 4.5 or such?
Missing from this discussion, but hinted at in James’ comment, is the idea that the primary job of education is to at least perpetuate — if not to elevate — a functional country / culture / civilization. Unlike birds and other animals that rely mainly on instinctual behavior to perpetuate their species, human beings must be “taught” how to live successfully in the environment that their forebearers have created, thus education’s function as our most important institution for transmitting culture and values.
In the case of the United States, it used to be understood that such an education also included civics — a basic understanding of how our system of self government works and how to participate as a responsible citizen in one’s community*. Now, as outlined above, the woke educational clerisy seems to believe that neither the basic survival skills needed to live and function in a technological society nor the ability to engage in our established process of self government are all that important so long as students “feel” the right way. Likewise, children must be taught that they are all helpless victims of an evil society, and they are encouraged to disengage from it (and focus only on their group identity) and / or disavow it.
*Cf., Victor Davis Hanson’s recent book, The Dying Citizen
This is of course the perfect formula for cultural suicide. If a whole generation of people end up without the requisite skills (and values) needed to participate in / perpetuate their culture, then what do we think will come next?
Exactly. And this is the “agenda” of the progressive left — rather like Moses leading the Children of Israel into the Promised Land — to make sure that these refugees from their old bad culture are ushered into the new utopia of owning nothing (not even a culture) and being happy. [Please re-read Orwell’s 1984 for the particulars of how this works.]
From the point of view of the radical left, what is happening in the schools of Baltimore and Chicago is AN ENORMOUS SUCCESS, with the hope that their achievement can be replicated in every community in America. It is The Agenda, The Dream, the End Point of History on the Road to Serfdom.
Now if only something can be done about those troublesome home schooling parents….
I am all for standardized tests to graduate each grade.
I am all for, as we say in Ohio ‘the money follows the children’, what the state spends on the child is used in a voucher to send the child to any school they choose. Public or private.
Happily this also opened up an opportunity to our city school system. The student population dropped and they had to close a bunch of schools. They also dropped almost all athletic programs and moved them all to one school. If you want to play sports you go to that school.
The teachers cried about it until the state stepped in and forced all the changes.
I am all for testing out of grades and letting the child advance at their own pace.
I am all for letting the students take summer school in order to advance, not just to make up failed classes.
I am all for trouble students being sent to a school just for them.
The students will naturally separate into classes and groups of like minded individuals.
This is hardly surprising. For many decades, the neighborhoods with the better schools were the popular neighborhoods, where housing prices were higher than the average for the town or city. Most parents are interested in their children learning well and getting good jobs.
The movie Waiting for Superman, from a decade ago, shows this very well, centering the documentary around several families who have entered their children into the lottery for the city’s good schools, but also describing many problems and showing where and how government-run schools go wrong. Clearly, as GWB, above, pointed out, the parents were frustrated with the schools that their children were otherwise to attend. The rising tension, like a story plot, is that the students who don’t get into these good schools are doomed to poor educations, and every parent and child knows this as the day of the lottery approaches. The children’s futures depend upon the lottery. By the end of the documentary, the audience feels sorry for the children who lose the lottery, as their hopes and dreams for a prosperous future are dashed forever. Also noted in this documentary is the union that does not care about the students. The teachers elect the union officials, so no matter what the teachers say about caring for the children, their choice of union officials belies this claim.
As Robert noted: “Their kids were not being educated, but still those parents in these cities continued to vote for Democrats to run the schools. Still they sent their kids there. And still for years they made no outcry when they found out their kids had learned nothing.”
The parents believe in the Democratic Party so much that they are willing to accept their poor results, because they have been convinced (conned) into believing that The Party’s policies produce other benefits that are just about to come. For decades, those benefits have been just around the corner. It is part of the soft bigotry of low expectations. The bigotry of the parents (bigotry: “intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself”) prevents them from embracing the better policies of some of the other political parties, policies that produce better results now, not the worser results in a future that never comes. Over the past two centuries, members of the Democratic Party have lowered their expectations so much that they accept the lack of results. I have come across several Democrats who have stated that “all politicians lie,” but when I ask them how they choose one politician over another, I get no answer. If they don’t believe their Democrat candidates during the primaries, how do they choose which to vote for? Seriously, I have no idea. Race? Sex (these days, “declared gender”*)? Intersectionality? Inability to define the word “woman?”**
Among other things, Obama made racial bigotry acceptable in his fundamentally transformed America, an acceptance of bigotry that has not been seen in this country since before the Democratic Party tried to reject the Civil Rights Act. Since the Democratic Party was founded to defend the institution of slavery, they have been keeping down their descendants, yet they have successfully managed to get those same descendants to vote for the Democratic Party, just as President Linden Johnson promised. Part of keeping them down is, as they did with the slaves, poor education, especially in reading and mathematics. Thus, as Milt said, above, the education system is a success for the Democratic Party. The three basics, “the three Rs:” reading, ’riting, ’rithmetic. Rather than teach the three Rs, schools are down to the two Rs: racism and racy-ism.
As Robert noted, the difference between pre and post Wuhan flu is the new knowledge that children are being taught to accept things that the parents do not think are acceptable to be taught to such young children. The children are being taught pornography in grade school. This, not the poor education, is what it took to finally get these parents so upset with their schools that they are finally becoming willing to abandon them. Ruined lives from low-income jobs or no jobs was accepted by them, but the sexualization of the children was the step too far. If the major field of study in school is sex, what is the children’s future career path? James Street, above, has that answer. If the minor field of study is racism, what is their future social path?
_____________
* In many states, a person’s “gender” is what the person says it is, and it need not be permanent. Someone’s gender can change over time. So, there you are, feeling feminine, a man trapped in a woman’s body, so you go into the lady’s restroom, but as you sit in the stall, you begin to feel masculine. Now you are a man trapped in a woman’s lavatory.
** What kind of country accepts its senate confirming a Supreme Court Justice who is not even smart enough to recognize what a woman is? What are they teaching in school? Oh, that’s right, this post is all about that. It is sex (not man/woman) and how to be racist. Welcome to Obama’s fundamentally transformed America, land of the formerly intelligent. What the hell are they putting in the water, these days?
Edward, I think, has penetrated to the heart of the problem in all of this. What is required to get the attention of parents with respect to what is being done to their kids by the entrenched educational Powers That Be? And, the all important next step, what can be done to help them to understand the agenda that is at work here, connect the dots, and assign blame to those who are responsible?
Sadly, as he suggests, many blue city / state parents have been willing to see their kid’s futures diminished — often for generations — in the irrational expectation of government-mandated social “gains” that never quite seem to materialize. (Imagine a play called “Waiting for Godot at PS # 29.”) And, as Edward also recounts, apparently it took the recognition that not only were their kids being denied access to a decent exposure to the 3 Rs — bad enough — but (the last straw) they were also being indoctrinated with race hatred and groomed to fulfill the pornographic fantasies of the radical left.
Here in Florida, and also in Virginia, we have seen parents “connect the dots” and make rational choices at their polling place, but in each case they have had the help of articulate leaders who have crystalized such an awareness and outlined what needed to be done to counteract such perversity. The preservation of our country / culture / civilization is indeed an “issue” — and most people will respond positively to it — but it would be nice if more of our political class spoke / acted as though it mattered.
As a practical consideration, more conservative leaders need to specifically address precisely this situation and call the left out for the culture destroying jihadists that they are, but this is still a hard slog for many Republicans who still want to “go along to get along” with these people. (If an image of Mitch McConnell or Lindsey Graham does not flash into your mind as you read this, you are simply not getting the point.) Indeed, if asked, I doubt that — even at this late date — more than one in four Republican “conservatives” could cite the fundamental role of education in preserving our basic culture and civilization and why that might be “important.”
Clearly, *individual* parents can respond to this crisis through everything from home schooling to the educational lotteries that Edward describes*, and good on them for looking out for their own kids, but it is going to take a concerted *political* effort to rescue all of the kids who will inevitably remain in our public schools.
* And, again as here in Florida, voting out the radical school board members who support such perverse polices. Likewise, the “radical” idea of giving money directly to students’ families and allowing them to determine where it might best be spent in educating their kids. Choice — what a concept.
The bottom line: work to raise awareness of this, especially among traditional Democrat voters, and do your damnedest to support any candidates for office who commit themselves to fundamental, culture / civilization-preserving change.
PS — Did everyone notice that, even in Chicago, the electorate was not well pleased with life under Democrat rule?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/01/lori-lightfoot-chicago-mayor-election-runoff
This suggests that there is still hope for our cities and our kids.
Teaching
The only job you can not be fired from for not doing your job.
You teach the kids and they never graduate. You just get more kids to teach the next year.
I just happened to have wandered in here. I don’t understand how a city being democrat run, automatically mean poor education? I graduated from high school many decades ago, and our ‘inner city’ most all black class has people who became doctors and lawyers, etc. I myself obtained a BA degree, but did not understand the essential importance of graduate studies. But my generation was the first to attend college.
My point is, should discussion of education be about specific techniques that work, not about political party affiliation? I did see someone mention the three R’s. So that is at least about a specific approach.
Lastly, this part of a post above; ” Obama made racial bigotry acceptable in his fundamentally transformed America,” There is so much wrong with that statement in my view. That is, unless he is referring to the rise of right wing militias. I am older than Obama. I am old enough to remember when they had separate water fountains and bathroom facilities for ‘colored people’, among other things, across several southern states. Obama was only three years old, when this was made illegal. And this law making it illegal was made 99 years, after the end of slavery. That may not seem to be a big deal to you, but it had important psychological effects, across black communities all over the nation. I’ll explain later, if I get the chance.
Gilbert Zachary,
You didn’t understand: “Lastly, this part of a post above; ” Obama made racial bigotry acceptable in his fundamentally transformed America,” There is so much wrong with that statement in my view. That is, unless he is referring to the rise of right wing militias.”
It started when Obama took sides when one of his friends was caught breaking into his own house. Obama himself admitted that he didn’t know the details when he suggested that the Boston police were racist, “behaved badly.” It all snowballed from there, including the founding of a movement calling itself “Black Lives Matter.” Racial tensions had been low, before Obama, and on his election the news media were positively giddy that it was the finally the beginning of a post-racial America. Instead, Obama made many comments that only inflamed racism and divided the races. According to Obama, whites are racist due to their genetic makeup — they just cannot not be racist.
Racial tensions are far higher now than before his election. The attempt that the media thought would prove that America was no longer racist, the election of a black president, failed due to the actions and words of that very same president. He had lingering racial animosity and used his bully pulpit to spread it all around the country.
My point is, should discussion of education be about specific techniques that work, not about political party affiliation? I did see someone mention the three R’s. So that is at least about a specific approach.
It is about political party affiliation because one party is concentrating on the two Rs: racism and racy-ism, rather than the traditional three Rs that are needed in order to properly function in American society and in order to get the better jobs in American commerce: reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic. These latter techniques work, but in places where the Democrats control the schools, the former techniques are being applied. This is why math skills and reading skills are tested in American schools, and we are pointing out that in Democratically controlled schools these skills are not being learned by the students. Replacing the emphasis on the three Rs with an emphasis on the other two Rs is a matter of political party ideology, and thus it is about political party affiliation.
The discussion is about specific techniques that work over what does not work. We know what works and are horrified that these techniques are being abandoned in favor of techniques that do not.
@Edward It sounds to me that your opinion is very subjective. That is you became aware of racial issues, when Obama was president, and appear to have little understanding of the historical, and systematic issues, related to race., in the US. It’s like black people should be invisible, when we have faced specific systematic issues, throughout our history. Here’s an example: Predominately white schools typically have more money per student, than black schools. Which often translates to better education. And you may think this is a southern thing, but I saw a picture of blacks protesting this very issue in New York City in the 1950’s. And again this was before Obama was even born. I do understand some the sources of that issue, being related to property taxes. Still that leads to a never ending cycle, of the poor receiving less educational resources. I read that poor whites in urban areas are in smaller groups, meaning that some will be poor but also can part of more well funded educational schools, Then an issue like blacks having a higher incarceration rate, means less two parent households. So one might have working mother raising a family alone, and not having as much time to focus on their children”s education. Things like spending time help a child with homework. One thing is that I see democrats, at at least recognizing these type of issues, and coming up with ideas like expanded tutoring services. Whereas the right often ignores such issues, in my book. In this very thread, I see people blaming democrats, and ignoring the real issues facing cities. People in cities want to see things that will help crimes from being committed, instead only having longer prison sentences.
Are you aware of how the 1994 Crime Bill gave blacks longer jail sentences, than the same drug, in different form used more by whites.? Then when more whites started to get issue with opiods, they started to recognize drug use more in mental health terms. Meanwhile black have more prison records, which hold back thier entire career. And this is a concrete example, of how black lives matter less than whites. Their real name should have been, “Blacks Lives Matter Too” . Show me an unarmed white person, shot 30 times by police officers, and I’ll show you two. Or a white US Supreme Court Justice, who being taken up into the woods by the police, until someone intervened.
“one party is concentrating on the two Rs: racism and racy-ism” . You obviously aren’t paying attention to the issues. For an example, I believe that those former students are given debt relief that money would circulate better through the greater economy. They would buy cars, homes etc. As it is now, the money stays at the top, then they outsource jobs overseas, and now AI. But city schools have to focus so much on proficiency testing, most of their time is focused on the test itself, and they are neglecting critical thinking behind the subjects. They mostly just preparing them for the big tests. I did some volunteer work in public school, a couple of years back.
I see this nation to be in the process of makin a permanent black underclass, or worse. Who else’s history is being criminalized to be taught?
Gilbert Zachary,
You wrote; “It sounds to me that your opinion is very subjective.”
Except for those pesky facts I used as a basis for my opinion.
“That is you became aware of racial issues, when Obama was president, and appear to have little understanding of the historical, and systematic issues, related to race., in the US. It’s like black people should be invisible, when we have faced specific systematic issues, throughout our history.”
You’re right. You caught me. In all my six decades, I have never heard of race or understood that there was ever any animosity, that there was a need for a Civil Rights Act, or even understand what people were talking about during Obama’s election.
No, wait. I did understand all that. It sounds to me like you are the one who was born yesterday, projecting yourself onto me because you want to pretend that you understand me without knowing me at all. You know history because you once saw a picture? You try to teach me a history that I lived through? I was there when these things happened, and I already understand what they were, what they meant, and how they affected the nation and the town I live in. You clearly do not understand these things, thinking that 2008 was the same as the 1950s, because you saw a picture.
I already understand — but you don’t — that Obama’s Democratic Party had the White House and Congress in 1994, so they are the ones who passed the law you don’t like.
“‘one party is concentrating on the two Rs: racism and racy-ism’ . You obviously aren’t paying attention to the issues. For an example, I believe that those former students are given debt relief that money would circulate better through the greater economy.”
Ah, yes. The issue isn’t racism after all! It isn’t even the sexualization of our youth so that they have only one career path. It is redistribution of wealth in a Keynesian Economic fashion. Here’s how that works:
The newly graduated student is given money from a worker’s taxes so that the graduate can spend money in the economy. The worker would not have spent his hard-earned money, because he does not want to enjoy the fruits of his labors. However, the graduate no longer needs to get a job so that he can produce goods and services that contribute to the economy, he only takes from the economy, because he is given all that free money.
If, on the other hand, the student were not given a free ride, he would be earning his own living, and taxes would be able to be lower and spending greater, giving yet another graduate a job producing more goods and services. The graduate would be productive so that there is more to buy, and the economy grows.
Give a man a fish, and each man has one fish, which is fair because of equality of result. Teach a man to fish and each man has two fish, which they can trade for berries from the two gatherers, which is unfair, because everyone must pull his own weight rather than some getting a free ride. In the second case there is more prosperity (a fish and berries for all rather than a fish or berries) and lower taxes (zero fish instead of half his fish); but there is also more work being done, less relaxation, and less time to spend on the X-Box that was also a gift from the government to the non-workers.
“Who else’s history is being criminalized to be taught?”
Oh, look at that. Your ignorance is showing. There is nowhere in the U.S. in which teaching black history is being or has been criminalized. Where did you get such a notion, and why are you trying to pass it along to the rest of us? We are beginning to know you and your subjective, fact-less opinions.
“I see this nation to be in the process of makin a permanent black underclass, or worse.”
And this is because of Obama’s presidency. This permanent underclass was not being made in 2008. I know. I was there.
You are the one that claimed that Obama caused racial division. This seemed to me, that you are ignoring the entire post slavery history of the United States. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, was 103 years after the start of the Civil War. How are some words Obama said, comparable to 100 years of racial discrimination? And it wasn’t only the southern states. There were organizations across the board that could ban blacks from their ranks, such as skill labor unions. Such acts have economic repercussion to those denied access. By the way, a significant impact of Obama’s presidency was the rise of white militia. And this was in response to having a black president. I believe that the FBI had made this analysis, among others. The Oath Keepers are a good example. When Obama was in office they were considered anti-government. However they seemed to be willing to die for Trump. Obama’s skin color was more important than anything he said, in my opinion.
There seems to be a misunderstanding. What I was referring to, was the issue of student debt forgiveness. This issue is currently before the US Supreme Court. This is not giving them money. This is forgiving debt, not giving them money. If the debt were forgiven, they still have to eat and otherwise live. They would live better and contribute more to various aspects of society, such as homes, automobiles, etc. {Reader’s Rules} “I welcome all opinions”. My opinion was that a generation of college students was ‘sold into indentured servitude”. My daughter’s college debt was a projected to be ten times as much as my own if she had continued on that path. And her college went out of business. But she still owed the money.
I brought up the 1994 Crime Bill as an example of things that had negative outcomes towards the black community. And this is way more important, than something Obama may have said. But it is very notable to me, that you blame the entire thing on democrats, when the bill passed the US Senate 95-4. The most important thing is to understand the how the consequences had different effects on the black communities than the white communities. And this was the result of system issues. I believe one the causes of the severity of that crime bill, was democrats trying to overcompensate from accusations of republicans not being tough on crime. This brings me to CRT.
CRT has been attacked, and that is essentially part of the history of blacks in the US. I don’t believe that it is really being taught is primary schools, anyway, since it is in reality a post-graduate course. One can debate about the appropriate age, but at some point students need to learn the negative aspects of history, as well as good things.
“I see this nation to be in the process of making a permanent black underclass, or worse.”
“And this is because of Obama’s presidency. This permanent underclass was not being made in 2008. I know. I was there.”
You are wrong. The ‘housing bubble collapse started to happen in 2007, and continued onto a worldwide financial crisis. That was due to a large extent to the US mortgage backed instruments they were selling worldwide. And I blame lax oversite of the financial industry under GW Bush. Obama assumed office in 2009. And communities of color were hit particular hard. I live through it as well. And I lived next to the zip code, which had the second highest of foreclosed homes in the nation. And that zip code was almost entirely black homes. Black communities lost all the gains made from 40 years of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. That act was created to counter the negative impacts of the 1934 Federal Housing Act. The 1934 Act, contributed to the making of the ‘ghettos’ of the inner cities. It contributed to building wealth in white communities, and denying blacks the same opportunities.
You are still proving my point that you are ignoring around 150 years of history at this point, by making the issue about Obama instead. I tried to provide specific links, but this site seems like it won’t let me do that. I need to note that I read some of the site’s owner, Robert Zimmerman wrote about slavery. Seems to me, he did do an in-depth analysis of the subject. However the treatment of former slaves for the past 150 years, after the end of slavery is an additional story. The most important negative impacts were done through legal and other systematic ends. !. Jim Crow laws 2. Neo slavery (1865-1942) 3. 1934 Federal Housing Administration practices 4. Legal segregation by race. 5 Inequalities in educational funding, by race; 6. Financial practices, sometimes called ‘predatory lending’. 7. Inequities in criminal sentencing by race.
Gilbert Zachary,
You wrote: “You are the one that claimed that Obama caused racial division. This seemed to me, that you are ignoring the entire post slavery history of the United States.”
No, I didn’t, and no, I didn’t. I said that racial tensions had been low before Obama, not non-existent, which means that there was a history. I said that Obama increased these tensions, and that is true.
You don’t read carefully, then you foolishly make comments that make no sense whatsoever.
“This is forgiving debt, not giving them money.”
I know. I’m not as stupid as you hope.
There is no difference, either morally, ethically, or financially. Rather than paying down the debt, the graduated student will keep that money in his pocket to spend. It is the same as being given money for the original duration of the debt service terms.
The debt was money that came from somewhere, and now it either will not be paid back or the taxpayer will be robbed in order to pay it, so once again, everybody except the graduate loses in the same way that I describe. If debt forgiveness were such a good thing, then why does not the government forgive all debt — mortgages, credit cards, or the fiver I borrowed from my colleague for lunch? The same failed Keynesian Economics applies, and we are all worse off.
“I brought up the 1994 Crime Bill as an example of things that had negative outcomes towards the black community.”
And now we can see that you refuse to believe that Obama’s Democratic Party is the one causing these negative outcomes. You refuse to believe that Obama took part during his disastrous presidency. Similar to the song, you believe what you want to believe and disregard the rest.
“You are wrong. The ‘housing bubble collapse started to happen in 2007, and continued onto a worldwide financial crisis.”
Actually, I am would have been right about that one, except that you are wrong in so many ways.
First, the collapsed housing bubble did not cause the permanent underclass that you claim is being made now, and even if it did, that would have been due to Obama’s reaction to the collapsed bubble. Had your comment about the causation been true, it would actually make my point that Obama is responsible. It would also diminish your point that the underclass is being made now.
Second, I was not at all making any references to the housing bubble, much less a reference to it causing an underclass. I said that your permanent black underclass was not being made in 2008, and it was not.
“You are still proving my point that you are ignoring around 150 years of history at this point, by making the issue about Obama instead.”
Until your most recent comment, this was never your point. If it is your point now, then you are changing the subject, which means that you lost your original argument and are now trying to find one that you can win. You are doing a poor job of it, because you are making false claims, trying to make it seem seem as though I said things that I didn’t say.
If this is how you want us to discuss this, then:
You are wrong. The 1938 martian landing in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, was not a real space alien invasion. It was just a fictional radio play by Orson Welles.
Gilbert Zachary:
Thank you for your posts here and I truly hope you’ll continue to “stop by.”
“You are still proving my point that you are ignoring around 150 years of history at this point, by making the issue about Obama instead.”
Until your most recent comment, this was never your point. If it is your point now, then you are changing the subject, ”
This was always my point. In my first post I made mention of the practice, of having separate bathrooms, and water fountains for blacks across entire states. That also meant they could refuse use, entirely if they id not have the separate facilities. My wife and I have spoke of this time, several times, over the years. Although we both lived in the north, our families would sometimes visit relatives in the south. And my point was that this policy carried on for decades and had direct life consequences for say, a millions of black people, who lived in those states, and relatives for other states. in contrast to Obama making a statement.
But since you keep referring to Obama, I’ll bring up a racial controversy that he spoke about; that being Trayvon Martin. If you remember, he was walking home from a store, talking to a girlfriend on the phone, and apparently ‘looking around’. I walk in my neighborhood often, and look at my neighbors decorations, etc on the way. And I do not do so, because I am considering burglarizing them. I felt the George Zimmerman was wrong for following him, and not identifying himself. And that because of this, Martin had a right to be fearful. And that he likely did not want go into his father’s home, where this unknown person would know where he live. So in fact when Martin attacked he was ‘standing his ground’, as was his legal right. No one else gave that idea any legal consideration.
My point of this story, is that Obama spoke on this incident early. And he even said that Martin could have been his son. i remember saying to myself; ‘finally there is a president who understands my own perspective.” He received a lot of flack for that. Right wing media until they found, that Martin had been suspended from school, etc. As usual, in my view, in the case of a white person killing a black person, the victim is put on trial. Like in this case the victim was drug tested, but the killer was not. And later Zimmerman’s medication history was not allowed in court, despite the allegation of certain left media. So point is that Obama spoke on it, and I agreed with his sentiment at the time. Trayvon could have been my own son, as well in my own view. Tens of millions of people have smoked marijuana, and that has not been a cause of murderous rage, like Martin was accused of,.
Gilbert Zachary,
You wrote: “This was always my point.”
Well, that’s interesting, because in your first post you specified a very different point:
“My point is, should discussion of education be about specific techniques that work, not about political party affiliation? I did see someone mention the three R’s. So that is at least about a specific approach.”
Although you made reference to these other things, they were not specified as part of your point but just as an addendum comment that you would explain later. However, rather than explain the comment you attacked my understanding of your unexplained addendum. If this was your point all along, and not the stated point, then here is how you “explained” your point: “That is you became aware of racial issues, when Obama was president, and appear to have little understanding of the historical, and systematic issues, related to race., in the US. It’s like black people should be invisible, when we have faced specific systematic issues, throughout our history.”
“My point of this story, is that Obama spoke on this incident early. And he even said that Martin could have been his son. i remember saying to myself; ‘finally there is a president who understands my own perspective.’”
Once again, you make my point. Martin was yet another way that Obama divided rather than united the races. Your story explains one way in which he did it. Clearly, you were influenced by Obama and now have more animosity than before he did this. You are an example of it happening. And once again, Obama spoke without knowing all the facts, just as in the case of his Boston friend that I mentioned in a previous comment. Obama’s uninformed perception became your reality.
So, to you, is it acceptable for one person to walk in a neighborhood and beat a man over the head with a planet, but not OK for the beaten man to walk in his own neighborhood? That was the way you seemed to describe it. The beaten man was a threat despite not looking around and the first man was not acting suspiciously for looking? Did Martin identify himself, or do you only require non-black people to do the identification thing? Did George Zimmerman shoot Martin first or only after Martin started pounding his head with the planet? Martin “had a right to be fearful” merely because another person was walking the streets, so why didn’t Zimmerman have a right to be fearful for his life when being beaten over the head with a planet by the guy who attacked him?
You have presented us with differing standards, one for the guy “looking around” and another for the guy merely walking without looking around. One standard for the guy attacking the second guy and another for the guy being hit on the head with a planet. Why do you say that the person looking around would be fearful of the one who was only walking? Could it be that the person looking around was doing something nefarious and feared being caught by a walking “bystander?” We don’t know his motivation for the attack, but presumably there was a motive, although it could have been a drug-induced attack. Might the police and prosecutor wanted to determine that?
“As usual, in my view, in the case of a white person killing a black person, the victim is put on trial. Like in this case the victim was drug tested, but the killer was not.”
If you hadn’t noticed, Zimmerman, not Martin, was put on trial. Zimmerman was the one attacked, so how was he not the victim of the attack? In this case, when a white person was attacked by a black person, the victim was put on trial. When the victim defends his life, he remains the victim. The way you describe it, the victim, Zimmerman, was the demon. Unless that is a double standard between the races.
These examples seem to me to demonstrate the very type of racial bigotry that I said Obama made acceptable, and you have accepted it, embraced it, and argue in favor of it to the point of being confused as to who was the victim of the attack. You may have too much of a stake in this Obama-viewpoint to see something different. If it was acceptable for the person looking around suspiciously to attack the guy just walking around, would it have been acceptable for the guy walking around to attack the guy looking suspicious? In my way of thinking, under these circumstances it was not acceptable for either to attack the other, and one of them didn’t attack the other. Only one of them.
Ever since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we Americans have faced specific systematic issues and worked hard to resolve them. Before this act, the work was not as hard. People assumed it would work itself out. The hard work was making forward progress until Obama came along and stirred up the issues, making them fresh again, and destroying all those decades of progress. This is why we don’t pick at scabs, because we make them bleed again and set back the healing process. Obama picked at the scab, and we are bleeding again, complete with riots in the streets throughout the summer of 2020, as well as other times since Obama’s reign of bigotry.
Welcome to Obama’s fundamentally transformed America.
I have a few questions for you to answer: How do you see the resolution of these specific systematic issues that have been faced throughout our history? In your opinion, how did Obama unite rather than divide the races? If a white president had said similar things when a black man killed a white man, would it have been acceptable for me to have had the same thoughts that you had had in the Martin case? Why do you think that race should matter — and be noted by the president — when someone kills someone else rather than have the race not matter — be invisible? How do you propose to resolve issues with people that have been demonized?
These are not rhetorical questions. I am genuinely curious how the specific systematic issues can be resolved, because the path taken from the 1960s to the end of the 2000s turned out to be unacceptable. There are many, many other issues that need resolution, but perhaps we can start with these and return later to the topic of education.
Edward: I replaced “planet” with “plank” throughout your comment, which seems to make more sense and appears to be what you intended to write. Spell correction apparently decided otherwise, and idiotically (Why are we in such a rush to replace human thought with this kind of software I ask again?)
If I am wrong let me know and I will fix it.
It was in fact “planet.” His head was being bashed against the ground or sidewalk, and that is the planet, a much more formidable weapon than a plank. Please uncorrect the correction. However, your attention to detail is appreciated.
Edward: “planet” it now is, though I still say that is confusing.
You’re welcome, David. k
I am saying here, is that you seem to put everything on Obama and ignore other events, that affect communities. Things like a black couple in a vehicle shot 77 times. It turns they weren’t even armed. They were surrounded by 21 armed police officers. Or 12 year old Tamir Rice being shot to death playing with an air pistol, in the playground next to his school, within less than 2 seconds after the police arrival. And this is in an ‘open carry’ state. And somewhere else in the state, a young black man is killed by police in Walmart while holding an air rifle, he picked up off the Walmart shelves. But meanwhile elsewhere a white man kills 9 black people in church, and is taken alive. Or a white man kills 4 in Colorado, including a law enforcement officer, but he is taken alive. In my city a driver was shot in the chest, accidently, for attempting to make a ‘left of center- right turn, which is a ticketable offense. Or shooting Jacob Blake in the back seven times, never considering that he may have wanted to speak to his children, who were in the vehicle. So in this case, the only lives that mattered were the police officers, and the presence of the the black is entirely ignored by the public.
These are issues which affected the communities we live in, and more. All these incident happened during Obama’s time in office. All these things had nothing to do with Obama, and everything to do with the historical relations of of the black community with law enforcement. For me. I had a first cousin who died in jail, after being arrested on a DUI, but this was before Obama’s time. He had young children, who ended up being lost to the family for decades. Interactions with the police and black people been an issue since the very beginning, starting in 1619.
I plan to get back to you about the rest of your post, including talking about solutions.
Gilbert Zachary wrote, “Interactions with the police and black people been an issue since the very beginning, starting in 1619.”
Based on all your comments, my impression of your education about American history is sorely limited to modern political diatribes, and lacks much depth. I apologize for this blunt wordage, but that remains my impression, as someone who has done many deep dives into American history, as a historian. I don’t just read modern interpretations, I always go back to original sources.
And before I do any debating with you, I insist you make the small effort to education yourself. For example, your reference to “1619” indicates you buy into the 1619 project, a project that every qualified early colonial history has rejected. I myself have written a detailed history of the origins of slavery in Virginia, <em>Conscious Choice, and can tell you the premises of the 1619 project, that slavery was fundamental to the establishment of the United States, is utterly bogus.
I know it sounds self-serving to say this, but why don’t you read my book, and get another perspective? At a minimum you will learn that the northern colonies as well as British culture in general opposed slavery deeply, and did everything possible to keep it out, even as they simultaneously welcomed all to their colonies, including slaves — who were then soon freed.
Gilbert Zachary,
You wrote: “I am saying here, is that you seem to put everything on Obama and ignore other events, that affect communities.”
I did not place all the blame on Obama. On many occasions in our discussion I included the Democratic Party as having responsibility.
These events affect the communities because of Obama. Before Obama, we were caring less and less about color and more about character, as Martin Luther King dreamed we would. Obama and his Democratic Party have put an emphasis on color, highlighting racism, and this emphasis has caused the communities to react in such ways as to seem as though it was the event that had the affect on that community. The cause was the Democratic Party. The affect was the reaction elicited by the Democratic Party. The events that you think affect communities are extremely rare, coming perhaps one every couple of years or so across the country. These communities were not this affected before Obama came along and exacerbated a problem that was finding resolution. He rejected that resolution and highlighted small events as being worse than they were, even before he knew much about them. This caused emotional responses rather than reasoned responses, causing irrational social movements to form and become violent. Or as the news media reported: “mostly peaceful.”
You describe several encounters, but you barely describe them. I recall one encounter with a black child with a toy gun being shot, but the rest of the story is that the child pointed the gun at the police officers, who then believed themselves to be in imminent danger. What detail did you provide? That it was an open carry state, but how does an open carry state reduce the danger to the police officers if an open-carried gun is pointed at them? It is the responsibility of the carrier to handle his gun, toy or not, safely and responsibly.
You and Obama cherry pick your accounts, but those are out of millions of police encounters. Before Obama, how many of these adverse encounters caused riots? How many caused hundreds of riots across the country for an entire summer? Once Obama came into office, adverse encounters were reported with much more bias, a bias coming from Obama’s mouth, meaning that it had everything to do with Obama. The history cannot be changed, but Obama changed the way we dealt with that history, from a good way to a bad way of dealing with it. He also changed the way we dealt with the future, from a good way — as the U.S. news media had expected — to a bad way.
What is a good way of handling history? Acknowledge the history and work to improve. What is a bad way of handling history? Declare that a history starting in 1619 means that things cannot change in the future, that racism is genetic and can never change, and to praise Black Lives Matter as they demonize the police and others.
Rather than making America a post-racial country, as the news media had believed would happen (a good way of handling the future), he increased the racial animosity, convincing millions that there are unresolvable differences (a bad way of handling the future). He declared that racism in America is genetic. That is something that cannot be changed. It is nature, not nurture.
By the way, your 1619* reference was also a result of Obama’s way of handling the situation, making a peaceful resolution into a split that even you are rationalizing as justifiable, by making your accounts of police encounters with unfortunate outcomes racial in nature rather than human in nature. You do not mention things such as hair color, eye color, or shape of nose (everyone dislikes their own nose, which is why the play “Cyrano de Bergerac is so popular that it was made into the movie Roxanne).
Who was it that asked, “People, I just want to say, can’t we all get along? Can’t we all get along?” Obama replied, “No,” and he has convinced you of that same answer. Otherwise, you would be making different points, points about education, which was the original topic of Robert’s post. You controlled the deviation of this discussion by insisting that your point was about race rather than about education.
Your very first point was about education:
“My point is, should discussion of education be about specific techniques that work, not about political party affiliation? I did see someone mention the three R’s. So that is at least about a specific approach.”
Later you changed it by declaring that I was “ignoring around 150 years of history at this point, by making the issue about Obama instead” and that this “was always my point.”
1619 goes back a little farther than 150 years.
How did we get so distracted by race? Because after Obama, racism and racy-ism are the main topics in school, not “the three Rs:” reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic. The problem is not the immutable history,** the problem is the change that Obama made to the solution. He curtailed the solution and exacerbated the problems. Part of that change was a change in the school curriculum, and that change makes everything worse. It has even affected this discussion, making it worse, detracting from the topic of how our education system is declining from bad to worse to worser still. Not everything is on Obama, just the recent decline. Before him, the Democratic Party had an affect on education and communities, causing the decline from bad to worse.
Obama greatly disappointed the U.S. new media by rejecting a post-racial America in favor of a race-based America. Rather than things getting even better, they turned around and got much worse. Many people went along with him, and now some of those people defend his affect on our communities and on the media’s disappointed expectations.
_______________
* The 1619 Project is changing what people think the history was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project
The project “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States’ national narrative.” Slavery was only one aspect that mostly affected certain colonies. Other colonies banned slavery as soon as they could, but other aspects of life were more central to their own colonial narratives. Vermont was the first place in the world in all of history to ban slavery outright. Other places did not practice it or banned the enslavement of “us” but allowed the enslavement of “them.” The King’s refusal to allow the banning of slavery is the top of the list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence, which has a long list of grievances, encompassing only some of the many other important aspects of the national narrative.
** Did I call history immutable? The 1619 Project is attempting to change that history, or at least the history that we are taught in school. Since this project came to exist due to Obama’s poor leadership, your reference helps make the point that you have been influenced by Obama. You are following and defending his negative outcomes, outcomes that are a worse course for America to follow.
Keep the Change
Hank Williams Jr.
https://youtu.be/w4VJZAiUMQs
3:31
“We know what we need, we know who to blame…”
(Welcome to Obama’s Amerika.)
@Edward
One major difference in our views is that I see you as having ‘ A president as god/God. Whereas I see an administration, with president as being a team leader. And likewise I see individual groups, such as police departments, as being thier own cultures, (sometimes on a department level) while also being plugged into larger cultures.
An example of this was AG Merrick Garlands recent announcement on the conclusion of the investigation into the Louisville police department. One of the major conclusions was that there was a culture abusive practices. One reason I bring this up, was to point out that this conclusion was not related to who was president. Breonna Taylor’s death happen under the Trump administration. But I put no blame on Trump. Within the last few days, half of the police force of a local suburb was arrested. And the majority were black I believe, as was the vast majority of the city population. So which president are you blaming this conduct on? And what the the George Floyd protests under Trump?
At the very least, 12 year old Tamir Rice’s death was due to poor police tactics. He was shot before the second policemen, who was driving, had exited his vehicle. They didn’t take the location as a hint to who might be there. It was between a K-8th grade school and a city recreation center. Tamir was by himself, thus no one else was in immediate danger. All they needed to to do was to let the driver, stop the car and participate in the engagement, along with using the police car itself as a back up protection. I had something similar happen to me, as I was pulled over and struggling to fasten my seatbelt. The two officers engaged tactically, by approaching my vehicle from two sides.
There were two other things beyond the T Rice incident, that bothered me. 1. The police union attempted to get the shooter policeman rehired, after his firing. (By the way, he had been let go from another police department, in a suburb, that did not have as many problem areas. He was able to get a policeman job, somewhere else, but i think he may have been fired again, once his history was discovered. Secondly, in places, such a YouTube, (aka, ‘troll heaven’), certain people expressed delight that the 12-year old had been killed. Also certain media tried digging not the family’s court history, once again putting the victim on trial. I personally believe deeply in the teachings of Jesus, t guide my actions and attitudes. So for someone to express delight in the killing of a 12 year old, is deeply offensive to me. And I feel similar sentiments, with those who have no sympathy for the death of George Floyd. As is customary, after he was killed, his life was put on trial, in the court of right wing media. But the sentiment of viewing this event as tragedy, was not because of his life achievements, it was because the incident started over a $20 bill. So that is to say, in general, a black life in America is not worth $20. And this includes me. It was Jesus who said; “That which you do the the least of them, you do unto me.” Matthew 25: 31-46. For the whole story.
And the fact that Floyd’s death sparked national outrage, is evidence of a mass mindstate of dissatisfaction with the status of race relation, in the US. People in the poorer black communities, only have to look into other communities to note the difference between lifestyle. sometimes this is even evident in the same street, that starts in a black community,,but winds into more affluent suburbs. I will add to the story, that in my professional career, along with other areas of my life, I have been to programs for recovering alcohol and drug addicts. So I believe that anyone can turn their life around to be a more productive person. In that same Bible passage, Jesus says; “You visited me, while I was in prison…”
Lastly, for now, I had planned on getting into a discussion about solutions, that you asked about. However, I will stop here for now. One important thing in my writing here, that i need to clarify. The reason I mentioned the past 160 years ago is that I basically gave a pass to the entire system of slavery itself, to focus on the events of post slavery, instead. Once the legal system of slavery was ended, then there was a new ball game, by my definition. So this puts the emphasis on post slavery systems instead. And by association more important on current, and past systems which have led to unequal outcomes. I believe such issues are part of what is now defined as CRT. CRT is simply analyzing historical events and thier effects. So I end with repeating my assertion, that placing so much emphasis on Obama, ignores my people’s real history.
Gilbert Zachary,
You wrote: “One major difference in our views is that I see you as having ‘ A president as god/God.”
I don’t know what I said to give you that impression. It is clear that Obama led by example, and you have followed his example. I do not think that your opinions came from some divine Obama intervention.
“So which president are you blaming this conduct on?”
Um … I’m confused … I didn’t blame anyone. You were the one to bring it up just now. Perhaps to divert attention away from my previous questions and to avoid my previous comments?
“And what the the George Floyd protests under Trump?”
So, you put no blame on Trump for the Louisville police department, but you do for the Floyd incident? Nothing is Obama’s fault but the blame for a summer of hundreds of “mostly peaceful” protests is to be assigned to Trump?
You cherry pick which cultures have changed with changing presidents. Isn’t that more along the lines of you thinking of a president as a god, where Trump automatically divinely imbues a protest culture upon Minneapolis and many of the other blue cities of the country? So, aren’t you merely projecting your own beliefs onto me in your first sentence of your most recent comment?
Couldn’t the culture have existed or even been created during Obama’s reign of bigotry? Earlier, you were complaining that I was ignoring history, but now you seem to be ignoring it, putting the blame for the “mostly peaceful” 2020 protests onto Trump rather than consider that the history of the 8 years before him could have had an effect.
“At the very least, 12 year old Tamir Rice’s death was due to poor police tactics.”
How do poor tactics make it race related?
Your description of the Rice incident is different from my research. Even Wikipedia says that “The officers reported that when they arrived at the scene, they both continuously yelled ‘show me your hands’ through the open patrol car window.” Unlike your first description, in your earlier comment, it does not sound like the police shot him “2 seconds after the police arrival.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tamir_Rice
Your other concerns don’t sound like racism, either. Without viewing the YouTubes you mention, I cannot judge as to whether they were showing happiness that a 12-year-old was killed or happiness that the police were not killed. Either way, it still does not sound like racism. Agism, maybe, but not racism.
“And the fact that Floyd’s death sparked national outrage, is evidence of a mass mindstate of dissatisfaction with the status of race relation, in the US. People in the poorer black communities, only have to look into other communities to note the difference between lifestyle.”
A mass dissatisfaction that did not exist before Obama started making race the defining factor of who is guilty in any interracial interaction. By telling us that racism was in our genes, he made sure of a national attitude that someone had to be guilty thus any interaction must necessarily be driven by that declared racism. The one with the racism genes, of course, is guilty of that necessary racism.
“CRT is simply analyzing historical events and thier effects. So I end with repeating my assertion, that placing so much emphasis on Obama, ignores my people’s real history.”
CRT came out of Obama’s reign of bigotry. It places emphasis on your people’s history, real or not. It looks backward, emphasizing the history and the problems, not forward to emphasize the solutions. It continues what Obama started and continues declaring that racism is genetic, thus unsolvable. It assures that students think only about the past without presenting the students with the solutions for the future. It propagates anger and discord due to a past that cannot be changed and ignores solutions that lead to amity.
The past is not the concern. The future is the concern. Concentrating on the past has only aggravated a situation that had been improving. Yet here you are, insisting that the distant past, with the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws, is more important than the more recent past, when race relations had been improving. Solutions are not to be found in the distant past, as that past led to the unrest of the 1950s and 1960s. Some solutions can be found in the decades since, but you prefer to ignore those decades and the solutions tried.
For the past couple of days I was pondering why it was taking you so long to think of any solutions, but I think I now understand.
Since your solutions are not forthcoming, or maybe nonexistent, please allow me to present some of my thoughts:
With the Democratic Party in charge, there will never be any solutions. We have already seen that after the nation had great progress by 2008, the party favored a candidate who was clearly going to be divisive instead of unifying, at least it was clear to the party rather than to the rest of us. They favored him over Hillary Clinton, who was a favored candidate by many Democrats. The Party was not disappointed by Obama’s divisiveness, as evidenced by the party not reining him in or convincing him to be unifying.
Affirmative Action has been in place for two generations, and it has not helped. How many times have you heard that someone was an Affirmative Action choice? It is a euphemistic way to say that the person was not chosen for his superior abilities but for his minority status. Affirmative Action has only made a joke out of the attempt for this policy to be a solution. Choices should be made from merit and ability, otherwise the population will continue to be given the idea that the demographics favored by this policy are not able to make it on their own merits. A colorblind choice would prove that merit was the determining factor in the choice, that the person is capable, not incompetent.
Making race or sex an issue is likewise counterproductive, as it makes race or sex the issue, not merit. Merit should be the issue. We are already colorblind to eye color and hair color, as well as nose shape, but for some reason we continue to focus heavily on skin color. We made much progress when we reduced our emphasis on skin color, since the 1960s, but once Obama made it a major issue again, all that progress was lost. The Democratic Party won that battle.
For more than half a century, the Democratic Party has made promises that it has not even attempted to keep. Why do those who suffer from disappointed expectations continue to support this party?
Three steps toward solution:
First, follow Martin Luther King’s dream of judging a man on his character rather than the color of his skin. Be colorblind and make choices based upon merit. This eliminates a culture that calls some people “Affirmative Action” choices.
Second, look forward, not backward. The solutions are not in the racist part of the past. The solutions are in the post-racial America of the future, the future that the U.S. news media thought Obama would bring. Despite a 150-year history of racism against Chinese and Japanese immigrants, they have done well in America. They do not emphasize their history but look to their next generation as a vital part of America. They do not think of themselves as separate from America and they don’t have their own national anthem to sing at the Superbowl. The strategies used to accept them into the rest of American society may also work for blacks in America. What we have been doing ever since Obama has not worked at all, making a once-improving situation far worse. Some of what we had been doing before Obama also did not work, and those strategies should also be abandoned. Which brings us to:
Third, abandon the Democratic Party, as they only make things worse, not better. They were founded to defend the institution of slavery (a party with more than 150 years of history), and when they lost that war they concentrated on keeping the liberated slaves out of the rest of American society. Even today they advocate that blacks in America should be called African-American, not American, as though they do not fit in with the rest of the country. The Democratic Party created and constituted the Ku Klux Klan, and they created the Jim Crow laws. In WWII, a Democrat president interned Americans with Japanese ancestors — but not Americans of German descent. The first Democrat president ordered the Trail of Tears. This is the party of racism. It has alway been and most certainly always will be. They advocate for segregation, just as they did through the 1960s. “Separate but equal” is making a comeback within the party. They emphasize the two Rs in the schools, racism and racy-ism, rather than the three Rs. They are the problem, not the solution.
@Robert Zimmerman Sorry I missed you post, as I came on looking for ‘Edward’s’ post. In my quick research reveals that slave patrols were started in 1704. I am not looking to attack the origins of all US police. I only mentioned it as a a point of the historical relationship between law enforcement and black communities in general. And i am aware of the elements that resisted the institutions of slavery. So for me, it has never been about attacking all white americans. Here’s another example: There are those who attack Christianity saying that it was the ‘white man’s religion. But my understanding that the whole of the Bible was not used. And regardless, I have long seen religions as tools, who use is determined by the user. I define myself as a Christian, who also accepts other religions as, spiritual practices, or different paths to the same goal; higher mental states of enlightenment. And of course, I am aware of the many people who used the the Bible as a source to inspire the abolitionist movement. And looking at today, I believe that The Book has several concepts that could be strong tools to raise the consciousness of our communities.
I am not sure if you have read my responses to Edward. But one of my points is, that I skipped past the period of slavery, in facing the issues of the black communities, and focused more on the systems put in place after slavery, such as “Jim Crow Laws”, vagrancy laws, etc. What I don’t remember is being taught about how instrumental the US FHA act of 1934 was so instrumental in defining today’s ‘inner city ghettos, and largely excluded blacks from the accumulation of wealth through homeownership. I tried to post links on this page, but it would not let me do it.
I personally don’t feel that certain issues on the left are that important; such as criticizing the founding fathers who owned slaves. And I feel that Robert E Lee, is still an american hero, for accepting the end of the US Civil war, which was instrumental in reuniting the United States. And we have a rising issue facing us today: That is the rise of US fascism, aka white nationalism, aka ‘christian nationalism”. I spent a great deal of time in my youth reading about the rise of the Nazi Party, and the related events of the Second World War. It is the same worldview today, as repackaged from “Mein Kampf”. That is “The Great Replacement Theory. Meanwhile Jesus commanded us to ‘love one another’.
I was able to peruse some of your book, so at least i got a general idea. I commend you for your research and advancement of the subject. Meanwhile, this evening when I came in, my wife happened to be listening to slave narratives. I heard some bad things. But the most important part of the story is that they got through it, so that we could be here today to carry on. So let us be thankful for this day. Amen!
Gilbert Zachary–
only 1/2 paying attention—
Our modern-day police are completely disconnected from the role they historically played in our Country. Police historically only responded to criminal activity after-the-fact, unless a crime happened right in front of them. The locus of every day protection fell upon the citizenry themselves, and most everyone had a firearm.
It was only in the 20th century that police acquired the ability to communicate instantly and utilize automobiles. It was also the time when firearms were restricted in major cities and somehow the police became the monopolized security apparatus they are today.
Lee Surrenders
Appomattox Courthouse
April 9, 1865
https://youtu.be/Y2VlNKNmnhs
1:20
@wayne The public has little knowledge of the incidents that happen with police and the public. The Federal government issue a written report on our local police dept and spoke of numerous mistakes and incidents, many of which never had media coverage. Things like firing on a hostage, who had escaped from an armed hostage situation. I mentioned above, about a situation where a driver was accidently shot in the chest, while being stopped for attempting to make a left of center right turn. It also said that the officer placed himself in needless danger by reaching over the driver to turn of his ignition. Also the police officers place themselves in needless danger, by all firing into a vehicle which they had surrounded. It said that it was practically a miracle that none of the policeman’s 121 bullets hit other policemen. And it turned out that the couple in the vehicle were hit with 77 bullets, but were unarmed
Gilbert Zachary,
Several of the cases that you present are not described well enough to find information about them. Sometimes they are too vague and match too many reports, and sometimes they don’t match any reports. It would be nice if you could provide links to reports, dates of the incidents, names of those involved, or something that helps us to find them.
Also, I am still awaiting the answers you “plan to get back to [me] about the rest of your post, including talking about solutions.” It seems to me that the question about the white president and the question about why you think that race should matter should not be so difficult to answer. Shouldn’t you have a ready answer for the latter question? You consider the race of the people to be important to each of the incidents that you present. The topic of solutions is much more difficult, but I am eager to hear a solution from your viewpoint.
One of these days, we should get back to the topic of education. Perhaps you believe that teaching American racism in school is more important than teaching the three Rs. You were unclear in your first comment in this thread. You seemed more concerned that we thought that the specific techniques that work had something to do with the political party that controlled the schools.
Gilbert Zachary,
Among the problems with focusing on race, as you do, is that you pick only certain examples: the ones involving race and more specifically a black victim, or victim as you see him.
Without a valid cross section of the population or incidents, your data is biased in one direction, the direction that confirms your expectations. The choices you make for your examples give what is known in science as confirmation bias. From this, you draw your conclusions, but those conclusions may not reflect the reality on the ground. What you believe to be reality is corrupted by the data you chose over data that would have given more accurate view of the world. From this view, you then draw conclusions, and solutions to the problems do not come to mind, perhaps because the problem appears too formidable to solve or because you may have concluded, as Obama did, that racism is in the genes and therefore unsolvable. This is a path that leads to unnecessary frustration and resignation.
We may be better off returning to the topic of education. Finding the specific techniques that work in schools and the curriculums best to be taught are most definitely solvable.
@Edward
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Timothy_Russell_and_Malissa_Williams
I passed by part of the scene of the deaths as the police were searching the route, in search of a weapon, they never found.
I’ll get back to you soon.
Gilbert–
If you have 20 minutes, I’d like your opinion on the video linked below.
https://archive.org/details/grand-rapids-mi.-police-patrick-lyoya
Gilbert–
If you have 20 minutes, I’d like your opinion on the video linked below.
https://archive.org/details/grand-rapids-mi.-police-patrick-lyoya
@wayne It looks to me that the officer was somewhat justified.. However, some things were questionable. And I have to assume that the incident was thoroughly reviewed. I did notice that the bystander said that the victim did not have possession of the stun gun.
Gilbert Zachary “I’ll get back to you soon.”
After reading the account in the link you gave, there was no evidence that these two were being targeted due to their skin color. It seems that a backfiring car was mistaken for gunfire and that the couple running away in a long car chase was mistaken for evidence of guilt — the possession of a firearm and the eagerness to shoot it at police. Perhaps the police should realize that those who run from them are the innocent ones and that the guilty are the ones who pull over.
Meanwhile, you focus on cases that have no racism associated with them, only ex post facto assumptions of racism, and ignore other cases that involve other races, such as the entrapment into criminality of people at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6th, 2020, in which we now know the Capitol police waved almost a thousand American tourists inside the building at a critical time, shot dead one unarmed tourist, blamed these tourists on heart attacks that happened long after the incident (any stress happened during, not after, the incident — unless these officers were stressed over what they did to innocent Americans), arrested the tourists, and then the Capitol police withheld their exculpatory evidence from the trials — a legal and constitutional requirement. These officers are required to present all exculpatory evidence, yet the defense attorneys were denied this evidence. The tourists were convicted for following Capitol police direction. No wonder Speaker Pelosi turned down President Trump’s offer of National Guard protection; these honest citizens would have foiled or exposed this governmental crime. It was the Reichstag all over again.
Blacks are not the only victims of police malfeasance, and that assumes that they even are victims. The evidence is that black Americans are not being targeted for the color of their skin. But by focusing only on cases in which you are able to assume racist intent, you easily fool yourself into believing racism is rampant. The problem is not racism but perceived racism.
_____________
It has been a week since my questions for you have gone unanswered. This convinces me more than ever that Obama has had a tremendous negative effect. You defend him, yet you demonstrate that we have gone from a country in which the U.S. news media could reasonably expect a post-racial country to one in which Obama’s supporters cannot even discuss solutions. If you cannot discuss the solution, then you cannot be part of the solution. We are now being told that ever since 1619 the colonies and the United States are forever tainted from slavery and post-slavery history to the point that racism is in our genes, with the implication that this history prevents reconciliation. Before Obama, the solution was at hand; after Obama, we are told that the solution is impossible. We have gone from imminent solution to no possible solution. That is a tremendous widening of the gap over the course of one presidency.
Through all of history, slavery was an accepted concept throughout the world. It was not practiced everywhere, but it was not rejected anywhere. When Georgia was founded, it wanted to be a free colony, without slavery, but that was forbidden under English rule, and it was required to be a slave colony. Slavery had never been banned outright anywhere in the world until the American colonies separated from King George’s rule. In 1777, Vermont was the first place on Earth to ever ban slavery outright. The abolitionist movement started in the northern colonies. A young United States was a major driver in stopping slave trade in the Atlantic. More recently, in two generations, we went from Jim Crow laws to the verge of being a post-racial country, but in one presidency we lost all that progress.
No wonder the news media never mentions a post-racial America anymore. Shouldn’t this dramatic change in social justice make Obama’s presidency one of the most disappointing of all time?
Yet you have complained that we blame the party that is responsible for the 150 years of history that you think is so important for concluding that America and its police departments are racist. It isn’t all of America that is racist, but it is the political party that formed the KKK and created the Jim Crow laws that is racist — meaning it still is racist. It is the Democratic Party that has always insisted skin color, not the content of his character, that defines the person. Post Obama, this party is still as insistent as ever.
Post Obama, the problem is so intense that it is difficult to turn a discussion toward the direction of solutions to the problem of our students not learning math and not learning to read in America’s schools due to the focus on race and sex.
Edward wrote: “Through all of history, slavery was an accepted concept throughout the world. It was not practiced everywhere, but it was not rejected anywhere. When Georgia was founded, it wanted to be a free colony, without slavery, but that was forbidden under English rule, and it was required to be a slave colony. Slavery had never been banned outright anywhere in the world until the American colonies separated from King George’s rule. In 1777, Vermont was the first place on Earth to ever ban slavery outright. The abolitionist movement started in the northern colonies.”
There are some things in your paragraph above that need clearer nuance.
1. England never accepted slavery. It was never part of that culture. The closest parallel was indentured servitude, but in England that was specifically used as a tool for educating the young, and was administered under very specific rules that protected the rights of the indentured. Above all, terms were limited so that the servant was guaranteed to become free with time. Slavery itself was abhorred and never practiced.
2. Georgia was not forbidden from being a free colony because of British law, but because the people who founded it wanted it to follow the Virginia model so as to make money (large tobacco and cotton plantations with lots of slaves and owned by a limited upper class). Also, if anyone in Britain insisted on this slave culture it was the King, to enhance his financial interests in the slave trade. (He couldn’t sell slaves to the British, but if he created slave colonies in North America he created more customers for his slaves.)
3. While Vermont might have been the first colony to ban slavery outright, Massachusetts had freed all blacks before the Revolution, while Pennsylvania (home of the abolutionist movement) had made slavery difficult and unprofitable. As I note at length in Conscious Choice, slavery was never popular in the northern colonies, even before the Revolution, and it was those colonies (after they became states) that eventually opposed slavery so much they were willing to fight to end it.
And yes, the American abolutionist movement was a new idea. Beforehand slavery was not considered an outright evil, but a difficult solution for dealing with prisoners of defeated nations. Rather than commit genocide, it seemed more humane to make them slaves. In Africa however some tribes used it simply as a way to make money by kidnapping their neighbors and selling them.
It was Americans who were the first in human history to say slavery was wrong, immoral, and should be stopped.
4. While the U.S. played its part in the effort to end the slave trade in the 1800s, it was Great Britain that led this battle following the Napoleonic Wars, specifically using its navy to block the trade.
Robert,
1. Slavery may not have been practiced in England, but the English did not much complain about its use in the American colonies. They did not reject its use in their own colonies overseas.
2. I must have misunderstood something that I heard from Thomas Sowell on the topic of slavery in Georgia. However, this evening’s research didn’t find that Georgians wanted to emulate Virginia’s model so much as they believed that they couldn’t make money without slavery. Since plenty of places did well without it, the Georgians may have been wrong in this opinion. No matter, the Georgian parliament had originally wanted Georgia to be free from slavery.
3. My point about Vermont is less about freeing slaves as it is about completely rejecting slavery to the point of banning all forms for all peoples.
It may have been due to the harshness of the conditions in the southern colonies that America was the first to voice the immorality of slavery. These conditions were not the worst ever, as slaves in the English colonies were not used in dangerous work, such as mining (as the Spanish used slaves to mine in Central America), but I think that the northerners became appalled at the conditions in the southern colonies. Many places in the world used slaves more as servants than laborers, and this gave somewhat better living and working conditions, making it more acceptable to the rest of the population, thus few people were appalled enough to think it immoral.
One of the rationales for slavery in many places was that it gave something to do with captured enemies. They could put them to work to earn their keep, or they could do as some Central Americans did and sacrifice them to the gods in hopes of favorable crop yields, which may have seemed a moral thing to do with captured enemies — at least they weren’t starved to death and feeding them didn’t cause their captors to starve to death.
4. Both Britain and the United States had a problem with illegal slave trading, and both sent their navies to stop the practice. Great Britain had the larger navy, but the United States also had a stake in ending slave trade. The U.S. wasn’t the major driver in stopping the trade in the Atlantic, but it was a major driver. Many other countries didn’t care, and some countries and places made money on slave trade. It was the west, Europe and America, which spearheaded the end to slavery worldwide. Although there are many forms of slavery (I include indentured servitude as one form) few countries officially permit it anymore, in some form or another.
Edward: We are almost entirely in agreement on this subject, with just minor differences in interpretation. One point however: You wrote “this evening’s research didn’t find that Georgians wanted to emulate Virginia’s model so much as they believed that they couldn’t make money without slavery.”
That essentially translates as “We need to follow the Virginia model to make profits.” Which also means they were putting profits above all other things, another component of the Virginia model that led to its failure. A colony in a new world is not merely there to make money, it is building a new society. The Virginians forgot this. The Puritans and Quakers in the north did not. Hence the difference.
I will once again plug Conscience Choice. If you haven’t read it you should. It address this every subject at very great length.
I have read Conscience Choice. It is a good book. I have highlighted a few passages, for example:
Since making money is the purpose of all commerce, making deals in which both sides come out ahead and are thus satisfied enough to be repeat customers, this does not mean that they wanted to emulate Virginia, which had virtually forsaken education, religion, and a regular society in favor of individual pursuit of profit at the expense of others, such as the new immigrants. Did Georgia also grant land to people who imported immigrants? Virginia’s model was not a good one, and I hope that Georgians did not choose to follow it.
Gilbert Zachary,
You wrote: “I plan to get back to you about the rest of your post, including talking about solutions” and, “I’ll get back to you soon.”
Is it “soon” yet? Can we talk about solutions?
Is Ben Shapiro right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMrzNdkQps4#t=250 (1/2 minute)
“If the idea is that traumas of the past invariably bleed down into the present, that doesn’t explain why certain groups that have not only been historically marginalized but slaughtered in mass genocide are some of the most successful groups in our society. So if the idea is past trauma always equals current inequality, or that my actions in, say, robbing a convenience store are attributable to bad actions that happened in Alabama in 1930, the answer to that is, “no.” Don’t rob the convenience store. The only way they are going to be able to break the chain of history is to make good decisions. What people on the left don’t like to talk about is actual solutions. What they like to do is bitch about problems that existed sixty years ago and blame those for failures to solve them now.”
Gilbert-
thanks for reviewing the video to which I linked.
What I saw– a suspect who escalated at every single juncture.
Nirvana –
“You Know You’re Right”
https://youtu.be/qv96yJYhk3M
3:41
@Edawrd
“Among the problems with focusing on race, as you do, is that you pick only certain examples: the ones involving race and more specifically a black victim, or victim as you see him.”
You only pick Obama, as being responsible for all the race relation issues today; or focus on race at all. According to one source, in 2020 there were over 8,000 public demonstration related to BLM protests., some being in other nations. While I am not endorsing everything of the formal organization, those amount of [demonstrations show that there is widespread public distrust of this policing issue. This means that are a large numbers people who feel this is an issue. In my opinion there are deeper issues facing my communities, but at least the issue of police misconduct had large number of people paying attention to a public issues, rather than just individual pursuits.
“Without a valid cross section of the population or incidents, your data is biased in one direction, the direction that confirms your expectations.”
I mentioned specific incidents such as Tamir, and the couple shot 77 times. Upon research, I found a black officer who, killed what appears to be a Hispanic 12 year old. But there are differences; the 12 year old here, did fire a gun at officers, vs Rice with an air pistol, had not fired. And another major difference is that the black officer was fired and charged with murder, whereas in the Rice case, the police union attempted to get the the shooter’s job back, the officer eventually got another job, as a police officer. But overall, one needs to understand the historical relationship. of the police and the black community. After slavery ended they eventually passed vagrancy laws in the south. Mostly Black people looking for work, would be arrested, fined and put to work paying off their fines. The local municipality would received the monies, hiring out those who were convicted and fined. so it was essentially slavery continued. And this practice continued for 75 years after slavery was outlawed. In more recent times, (2007) there was news of a memo, reported to be by the FBI that white supremacist groups were encouraging members to join city police forces. After reading about this, I began to take more notice of one on one encounters, with police and individuals late at night, for one example.
“While it is true that a highly disproportionate number of black victims are shot by cops, unarmed white Americans comprise some 40% of police shooting victims. (The New York Post) White victims have also been killed by cops in circumstances that mirror their black counterparts” But the article goes on to cite the percentage of whites as 64% as of 2020 census. So that percentage shows that non whites are killed more often. Regardless, I think that recent arrests of black police officers, in Memphis and East Cleveland OH, is strong evidence of issues within police cultures, and that the issue goes beyond race. And many have recognized that police are not the best equipped to deal with mental health issues. I worked in community mental health related field, where BA degrees were required, and made decisions to not involve the police, if possible.
By the way, I don’t know of anyone who said; “racism is the genes”. History is record of specific actions which lead to future events. CRT and other disciplines involving history often use legal statutes, such as the “grandfather clause” used to restrict voting rights, of descendants of slaves. That was a specific law, which eventually struck down, as were laws which upheld racial segregation. It is about system approaches which promote fairness, not genes. Obama himself is bi-racial, so it makes no sense that he would say, the issue is genetic.
But let’s get to solutions. I believe the real solution involves education. (The original topic of this thread) But that needs to go beyond, ‘the three R’s’. To a child/person with no life vision, they may have a problem understanding why the subjects are important. Successful people move out to their communities, so they may not have many successful role models. And in fact, negative models are put up as examples of success. So working backwards from an issue such as crime,one looks for approaches to solutions. Somewhere, and early enough youth, need to shown what real success in life is, and the values that help to achieve it. I sometimes say that we are rich in negative examples of what should be thought of as lessons. I look at an example of two black 13 year olds murdering a white 17 year old in a car jacking, as an example. That was a community issue, along with the parents issues. At this point, I say, we need to get the message out by whatever means possible , such as religious institutions, if it cannot be addressed in the traditionally education systems. I believe that Jews are so successful because of their systems of education, which includes Bar and Bat Mitzvahs’
In my view, the right has no interest in preventing black crime. Crime is an essential part of the right’s narrative, in the path for power. if they cared they would be critical of the glorification of crime and physical violence and overt sex, which passes for entertainment of black youth
Gilbert Charles Zachary,
“You only pick Obama, as being responsible for all the race relation issues today;”
On more than one occasion in this thread I have explicitly stated otherwise. Apparently, I am waisting keystrokes in repeating myself.
“After slavery ended they eventually passed vagrancy laws in the south. Mostly Black people looking for work, would be arrested, fined and put to work paying off their fines.”
OK. I’m going to take that as a “Yes, Ben Shapiro is right” when he said, “What [people on the left] like to do is bitch about problems that existed sixty years ago and blame those for failures to solve them now.”
“In more recent times, (2007) there was news of a memo, reported to be by the FBI that white supremacist groups were encouraging members to join city police forces. After reading about this, I began to take more notice of one on one encounters, with police and individuals late at night, for one example.”
This sounds, once again, like confirmation bias in action, but this time based upon a game of “telephone.” Confirmation bias is a serious problem in science. Great care much be taken when designing an experiment or a study. It is one of the reasons for peer review, an opportunity to spot confirmation bias, but it also assumes that the reviewers do not also suffer from a similar inability to find it.
An obvious example of confirmation bias could be seen in global warming. Less snow was considered proof of global warming, because it was too warm for as much snow to fall as in previous years. But also, more snow was considered proof of global warming, because the warmer planet caused more evaporation from the oceans, resulting in more precipitation. No matter what happened, global warming was proved.
Confirmation bias was the meaning behind the words in the song The Boxer “Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest.” That I have to keep repeating myself in this thread demonstrates to me that this is true.
“By the way, I don’t know of anyone who said; ‘racism is the genes’.”
Obama did.
https://www.investors.com/politics/columnists/obama-racism-is-in-american-dna/
Interestingly, racist laws and policies (governmental and corporate) were outlawed in the 1960s, just about the time Obama was born. Well, except for Affirmative Action, of course. Speaking of which, after two generations, why hasn’t this worked?
“To a child/person with no life vision, they may have a problem understanding why the subjects are important.”
Thank you for getting to the topic of solutions. It looks like you are saying that we need to instill life visions into our children and others who lack vision. If this is lacking, it sounds like an excellent step in the solution. The earlier the better.
“I sometimes say that we are rich in negative examples of what should be thought of as lessons.”
Shapiro noted something that gives me the idea that there are successful examples that we can follow. To repeat Shapiro’s words from above: “If the idea is that traumas of the past invariably bleed down into the present, that doesn’t explain why certain groups that have not only been historically marginalized but slaughtered in mass genocide are some of the most successful groups in our society.” The successes of these marginalized or slaughtered groups demonstrates that history has little to do with current outcomes. Using those certain groups as models of success should result in the remaining groups becoming successes, too. The main factor in success is the attitude and expectation each individual has, and when too many individuals in a group have poor attitudes or low expectations, then success cannot come easily. That group would suffer from the soft bigotry of low expectations, as someone noted.
“In my view, the right has no interest in preventing black crime. Crime is an essential part of the right’s narrative, in the path for power. if they cared they would be critical of the glorification of crime and physical violence and overt sex, which passes for entertainment of black youth”
I’m not sure what “right” you are speaking about, but conservatives do not believe that crime is any part of any path for power or success. It was the leftist Democratically controlled Congress and a Democrat president, not the right wing Republican Party, that passed the 1994 Crime Bill that you complained about, earlier, as being racist. Of course, I already pointed that out, so I am still waisting keystrokes in repeating myself. Conservatives tend to be far more in favor of law and order than you seem to think they are. Your view that the right has no interest in preventing black crime is incorrect. The right complains continually that Democratically controlled cities fail to prevent black crime, and Republican controlled cities tend to have less black crime, which should tell you that the right is in favor of preventing this crime. The empirical evidence is that the left, not the right, has no interest in preventing black crime, otherwise it would be a high priority in Democrat cities, too.
Perhaps part of the problem is that crime, physical violence, and overt sex pass for entertainment for black youth, and perhaps part of the solution is to stop these things from being their entertainment. The entertainment industry would have to take on this task. Isn’t the entertainment industry mostly left wing? Hasn’t the right complained about all three of these things for many decades, only to be ridiculed by the left for being prudish or otherwise too easily offended?
@ Edward. I see that you made a prior point, before my post. (March 19th) So this post is a response specifically to that post. I agree with many of Shapiro’s basic points. Sounds like he is talking about Jews without mentioning them directly. I look at the example of the Jews, and also the reason why they are successful. And this is a major reason, I want write a book on building successful communities, for my people.
Speaking of the quote directly: “…. past trauma always equals current inequality”. The word ‘always’ here pushing the argument to an untrue extreme. This word makes a mischaracterization of any left argument. There is always the presence of individual opportunity. That is an undeniable fact. I also criticize his example of, using the convenient store robbery, as being the blame of other than what it is; it is an individual choice. My father and mother raised us, and supported us ,by running a family grocery. in the hood, The store was open for 40 years. Near the end, he was robbed twice, by the same man, and my father ended up shooting him the second time. But my point is, only a criminal or a drug addicted mind would rationalize robbery for some past injustice.
With Black people being the most likely victims of crime, I believe the majority would agree with programming , to prevent crime. That was a main point of people calling for police reform. It could be as simple as, ‘life/career planning.
Gilbert Charles Zachary,
“Sounds like he is talking about Jews without mentioning them directly. I look at the example of the Jews, and also the reason why they are successful.”
Or American Indians, who had been pretty badly treated, including some attitudes such as “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” They seem to be doing OK, now.
“And this is a major reason, I want write a book on building successful communities, for my people.”
Is “my people” the American people or a subset? One of the things that separates us is the way of thinking that there are differences between us, such as skin color, gender, or preference for Coke rather than Pepsi. It is a divisive way of thinking, similar to “us vs. them,” “my people vs. everyone else,” “what works for them doesn’t work for us.” If that last one is the case, then perhaps my idea, using the previously marginalized or slaughtered groups as models of success, will not result in the remaining groups becoming successes. In which case, we have lost what had seemed to be an excellent route to success for these remaining groups. Rats. Why wouldn’t it work, and what would work?
While writing your book, please keep in mind that to solve a problem it must be identified — the correct problem. In engineering, the root cause is identified so that we don’t solve a mere symptom or solve a problem that happened after a cascade of effects only to have the problem reoccur. It is too easy to think that the effect is the problem to solve, because the effect is what is desired to be prevented, but the cause and the root cause must be identified and solutions found.
It is easy to think that history is the problem, but history cannot be changed. It cannot be solved. Since other groups had worse histories — genocide, not just discrimination — and found eventual success, we can be sure that the problem is not the history. A successful outcome can be had despite the history.
The problem could be the reaction to the history, but it is more likely that the root problem is related to why the reaction occurred. If the reason for that reaction were changed, then could the reaction be different, and if that reaction is different in the correct way, will the desired results follow?
We already know that things done by Obama had moved us in the wrong direction, away from the results that the news media and the rest of us desired and expected. Obama had focused attention on history and differences and had induced distrust and division.* We also know that, in the four decades before Obama, things had moved enough in the direction of the solution that the news media had high expectations that Obama could and would bring a post-racial America — the desired result.
It is one thing for you and I to discuss it casually, but it becomes much more important when the next generation is at stake. How are we to unify if we cannot become a post-racial America? How are we supposed to become a post-racial America when race keeps being so important that it dominates discussions and “your people’s” thoughts? Is that what dominates the discussions and thoughts of the successful groups? How many riots happen in the streets of American cities due to police interactions with Jews or American Indians?
“The word ‘always’ here pushing the argument to an untrue extreme. This word makes a mischaracterization of any left argument.”
That is a little out of context, resulting in an unsupported conclusion, because Ben Shapiro is asking a conceptual question about what is the idea. If that is not the idea, then perhaps his answer does not apply. It is a little hard to know, because his conditional was an “if,” not an “if and only if.” Your conclusion is based upon his statement not being a conditional statement. For instance: if the sky is always green, then nitrogen is not the major component. The sky is not green, so “always” does not push the argument to an untrue extreme.
Shapiro said, in context: “So, if the idea is [that] past trauma always equals current inequality, or that my actions in, say, robbing a convenience store are attributable to bad actions that happened in Alabama in 1930, the answer to that is, ‘no.’ Don’t rob the convenience store. The only way they are going to be able to break the chain of history is to make good decisions.”
On the other hand, we already know that the successes of these marginalized or slaughtered groups demonstrates to us that history has little to do with current outcomes. So, even if no one blames past trauma for current inequality,** the “or” part of his sentence, then isn’t the answer still the same: don’t rob the convenience store? Isn’t Shapiro’s point that the action is an individual choice despite someone’s claim that it was the result of a century-old bad action? If the robbery were caused by the ancient bad action, then there would be no possibility to not rob the store — the store must be robbed, because the cause of the robbery already happened, so the effect, the robbery, cannot be stopped.
On the third hand, isn’t past trauma the whole reason for summer-long riots*** in Minneapolis and many other cities, all of them over some guy who tried to surreptitiously rob a convenience store by passing counterfeit cash? If there hadn’t been a traumatic history then would the riots have happened anyway, and if so, why would they have happened? What will you write in your book that prevents similar riots the next time a similar event occurs? What can make America post-racial, as the U.S. news media had expected to happen post-Obama?
Hadn’t the police, in the past, been thought of as traumatizing blacks by arresting them more often or using violence against them more often? Isn’t the truth that blacks are arrested more often because they commit more crime per capita, and police violence is used against them more often because they are more likely to disobey police orders (as in wayne’s video), resist arrest, or grab for a policeman’s weapon? And aren’t they more likely to disobey or resist because they perceive historical inequality and are thus traumatized by the past and a nurtured (not natural) distrust of the police? Isn’t distrust a major part of the problem? Isn’t the distrust a result of the trauma? Isn’t the trauma reinforced with each police encounter, reinforced by the distrust?
How can the problem be solved and successful communities built if the immutable past remains so important that it is the immovable object in the way of finding the solution? Wouldn’t this emphasis on history merely traumatize every new generation that you had hoped to be the key to the solution, the reason and purpose of your book? The past should not be ignored, but there must be a way to get beyond the trauma, as other groups have done, even groups that have suffered genocide. Learn from history, but be sure to learn the right lessons.
It is like testing a rocket. If the first one blows up, do not conclude that rockets are impossible, but learn where it went wrong and how to do it better. Then build and test another rocket.
Why do blacks vote for Democrats in such large numbers when that was the party of slavery, the Trail of Tears, the KKK, Jim Crow, Japanese Internment Camps, segregation, and was the party that fought against Civil Rights? Why reject the Party of abolition, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Civil Rights Movement? How can the problem be solved by embracing the party that gave the history and the systematic issues? (E.g. different school funding resulting in differences in education quality. Aren’t Democrats in charge of most of the educational institutions in the U.S.?) How can the problem be solved by rejecting the party that has provided the historical solutions? No wonder the problems persist, inequality continues, and racial tensions recently increased. For half a century, trust was placed in the wrong people, and the right people were distrusted. Two generations, waisted.
Maybe the next generation can be taught to do it better. Otherwise, what do they inherit from us?
“With Black people being the most likely victims of crime, I believe the majority would agree with programming , to prevent crime. That was a main point of people calling for police reform. It could be as simple as, ‘life/career planning.”
Police don’t prevent crime, except through deterrence — the fear of being caught. Reforming the police won’t prevent crime, unless the reforms increase the likelihood that criminals are caught. How does defunding the police do this?
Life/career planning does seem like a simple solution, but how can it be successfully implemented? Don’t we lose a lot of students in the early grades of high school but the planning and career counseling come in the later grades of high school? That was when they emphasized it in my high school, but then again, we were all expected to be college bound, preferably to colleges that are well known worldwide. Geez! What pressure. These were not low expectations but were high expectations. What is the opposite of the soft bigotry of low expectations?
If emphasis is placed on life/career planning, then the students must have the high expectations that their lives and careers are worth planning.
Raising expectations could, perhaps, be a good topic for your book. Maybe even a chapter. Where are the low expectations coming from, and how can they be raised. I am expecting to see your book, and I will buy it. I want it to be a best seller with real solutions to the root causes.
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* “Could have been my son” rather than “could have been anyone’s son.” His Attorney General’s “my people” (“I will not prosecute any of my people”) rather than “all people” or “Americans.” “Black lives matter” but not “all lives matter.” If not all lives, then why not? Don’t these distinctions help to divide rather than unite? Don’t they exclude rather than include?
** Isn’t that why you wanted to bring up post Civil War history? You didn’t like that I was putting emphasis on the recent presidency of Obama rather than encompass all post Civil War history. You didn’t like that I was acknowledging the progress made since the Civil Rights Act, and you didn’t like that I said that racial tensions were much lower just before Obama’s presidency than they were after it.
Weren’t you implying that the trauma of the past history is the reason for the current, post Obama, racial inequities?
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/the-shift-away-from-government-schools-at-all-levels-might-be-accelerating/#comment-1398584
*** Before Obama, when was the last time that we had summer-long riots in so many cities in the U.S.? Decades ago? Before the Civil Rights Act? Why did we suddenly have them now, when widespread, months-long riots were non-existent in the decades before Obama? How are the “defund the police” cities doing now that the police are fleeing them for cities that still believe in law and order?
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
“They Don’t Love the Poor, they just Hate the Rich”
https://youtu.be/VvWJ1ihinK0
7:17