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.
________________
* “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
First, Native Americans aren’t doing that great. They tend to be more rural, and not as much newslife is getting into wide stream media.. https://ncrc.org/the-economic-reality-of-native-americans-and-the-need-for-immediate-repair/
“My people” means Black people, in my case. That is where I am from, and are who are around in my life. And the see them as having a great needs. I have to live in the world that was created for me. But my goal is to leave a better world than i was born into. When I was 7, my family moved to a new neighborhood. The first class picture had about half white kids in it. By the sixth grade, there was only one or two white kids in the class. And by my high school graduation there were maybe 4 white students in a class of 340, or so. Then I went to a predominantly white college and had Jewish roommate my freshman year. I live in my family home over 50 years and there were no white people on my block. My point of saying this, is that you talk about eliminating race, but most all of my life I have lived primarily among black people. And now I understand that neighborhood segregation was made by purposeful government policies, and financial institution’s practices.
Something about the communication between, you seem to get the opposite of what I say. I that I specifically said that I see Jewish communities as models success., despite there being anti Jewish sentiments around.
You still don’t get about George Floyd. Perhaps if he had not been choked to death, he could have explained his actions or compensated for the $20. Whatever his was, he could have turned it around if he had lived. I have attended drug and alcohol recovery meetings mostly related to my previous employment. Jesus said, “That which you do to the least of them, you do unto me” (from Mathew 25). The protests were about the value of life. The real assumption of Black Lives Matter is the belief that blacks matter less than white lives. Of course all lives matter. It is just that many people feel that black lives are not included. in the ‘all. Net posters expression joy that a twelve year Tamir Rice with an air pistol was killed by police. When I look at young people, I see potential success.
“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.”
I understand that ages 12-13 is when children start to understand larger numbers. Most poorer children have no idea of how much money can be made looking a life career, of say, 40 years rather than a yearly salary. It is natural to admire all star athletes’ and entertainers. And I hate to say it, but but often drug dealers, related to gangs, are often put up as models of success. In those fields of those so called successful people, they often make obvious displays of money. whereas others learn about building wealth quitely.
I am not sure of the delivery system, but there may be openings, as our education systems seem to be fragmenting. Another thing needed is mass anger management, or public mental health.
Gilbert Charles Zachary: I will try to give you a Jewish perspective, since you have recognized honestly the general ability of Jews to succeed, despite the reccurrence over and over again of attempts to destroy us.
1. When I was growing up, it was clear from my parents and all their friends that just being Jewish was a completely worthless trait, if it wasn’t accompanied by personal achievement. This aspect is reflected in the generally weak effort among Jewish advocacy groups to try to make “Jewish” a special minority category. Jews generally don’t want such a label, and actually abhor it, for reasons I will describe next.
2. Jews never want special treatment or help, because special treatment as a group always engenders resentment among those not getting that special help, and as a group Jews strongly fear such resentment. What we want is simply the right to be treated equally as individuals, like everyone else, so that when any company hires a Jew, it is very clear that the hiring was solely for that person’s talent or skills, not a special “oppressed minority” status.
3. Education and learning is considered a very high value in every Jewish home, no matter how poor or weak the education of the parents. For example, my father was raised in the tenement slums of NYC. He never completed his high school education. Yet he was an avid reader all his life, and made sure, like my mother (who was better educated), that there were books in our house of all kinds. Both read to us as toddlers. Both bought us many children’s books to read, including many bible story books and others that retold the great lessons of western civilization, but in a form a child could understand. When we got older and wanted to buy our own books there was always money to do so.
4. The moral teachings of the Old Testament are deeply ingrained in Jewish culture. Doing the right thing, behaving as a civilized mature person, was not only assumed, it was practiced by our family and friends. To do an illegal thing would have brought great shame, because as children we knew that such behavior was considered absolutely wrong, and would have resulted in great punishment. As a result, Jewish children in general tend to be well-behaved, even if they are certainly not perfect.
5. Jewish parents, both secular and religious, in the past generally paid very close attention to their children’s social community. If the school or the kid’s friends were a bad influence, that school or friends were removed from the kid’s lives as quickly as possible.
Sadly, in this case secular Jewish parents have become very lax, and thus their children are increasingly poisoned by today’s public schools and social media culture. This failure is not so for religious Jews.
6. Keeping the family intact was priority #1, for the sake of the children. Divorce was unheard of.
Sadly, in this case also secular Jewish parents have become very lax, and thus their children are increasingly poisoned by broken homes. Religious Jews however have maintained this standard, with almost no divorce.
You will notice that, in general, the black community does not do almost any of these things. Instead, it has placed race first and made special treatment a requirement. Education and western values have been repeatedly slandered as “white culture” and thus not for blacks. Blacks have allowed their families since the 1960s to become destroyed, so most black kids are raised in broken homes.
Nor does it matter that government welfare encouraged the break-up of black families. Such things did not happen in the Jewish community, because getting a government hand-out in exchange for separating the parents was considered wrong, cruel to the children, and thus not done. Parents recognized the moral teachings of western civilization that requires personal responsibility. Everything you do is a moral choice. Don’t do anything lightly without thinking hard about the consequences, not just for yourself but for others around you.
I hope this gives you some thoughts on how the black community can move towards a solution.
“First, Native Americans aren’t doing that great.”
Whatever your definition of “great” may be, we still have to go back half a century to find a bad interaction with police.
“Something about the communication between, you seem to get the opposite of what I say. I that I specifically said that I see Jewish communities as models success., despite there being anti Jewish sentiments around.”
I don’t know what I said that gives you the impression that I don’t see Jewish communities as models of success.
“You still don’t get about George Floyd. Perhaps if he had not been choked to death, he could have explained his actions or compensated for the $20. Whatever his was, he could have turned it around if he had lived.”
Maybe he could have turned it around, but his track record suggested otherwise. He had been alive for forty-six years without having turned it around. The empirical evidence is against that outcome.
I may “get” more than you think I do. Or perhaps you have changed your mind that: “There is always the presence of individual opportunity. That is an undeniable fact.” Floyd had the opportunity to not be high on drugs. He had the opportunity to not pass counterfeit money. He chose differently on both counts. He did not take Ben Shapiro’s advice to say, “’no.’ Don’t rob the convenience store.” Once the police arrived, resistance was another choice and another lost opportunity.
Was there a different lesson that we didn’t get from this? Was the root cause of this incident the police training or was it Floyd’s actions? If we are to prevent this from happening again, do we want a less criminal Floyd or do we want a law enforcement department that does not enforce the law?
“Of course all lives matter.”
Unless you say such a thing out loud in the presence of BLM, in which case they call you out on it on YouTube.
“I am not sure of the delivery system, but there may be openings, as our education systems seem to be fragmenting. Another thing needed is mass anger management, or public mental health.”
This looks like another topic or chapter for your book.
@Edward Talking about George Floyd brings to mind, the story of Jesus’s crucifixion’s, especially since this time is considered Easter season. The story is that he was being executed, (crucified) between two thieves, who were also suffering from the same state. One of them chose to have faith in Jesus’s mission, whereas the other was a skeptic. Jesus ended up saying that the one who chose to believe, would be with him in paradise. So that story implies that someone can even repent on thier deathbed, so to speak. There was another Bible parable about day workers in a vineyard were all paid the same, even though others came to work later in the day. So this principle also could apply to the value of Floyd’s life. I see many people in discussion forums who question the existence of God, but don’t seem to understand the lessons of human behaviors it teaches. I understand this point is an aside from our direct discussion.
You seem to imply that the phrase, Black lives matter” could mean some think the black lives matter more than others. I can say that is is not true. It seems like most all black people know directly or indirectly of some incident that they would consider racial discrimination against black people. But some of what is called racism, I see as a human pattern of being less sympathetic to the situation of people different than us, or likewise being more sympathetic to those we identify with. An example of this is, that a gay friend saw George Zimmerman’s following Trayvon Martin, as Martin possibly believing that Zimmerman was a gay man, out ‘cruising’ for young men, or ‘trade’, as our friend said. Obama and I both felt like Martin could have been our own son. And I said many times, that i believe that Martin was in fact ‘standing his ground’, which was the law in that state rather than being obliged to run to his home. I’m not going to change my opinion on this. I brought it up, as an example of people having different view points.
Lastly, I regularly have dark visions of the future of the US. But i do understand that it is also my duty to promote positive v\sions. I see positive and negative to be basic forces of the entire universe, so positive and negative ideas, and their corresponding mental states are no exception. I ask you, as rational person, at least to sometimes step back and look at ideas from this basic universal perspective. A Youtube site I follow, regularly brings up comments from Donald Trump’s media posts. He recently had a three word post which said this only: “World War Three”. And this post goes out to millions of followers. Whereas, in the Bible, there is a passage that says, “Whatever is good and true; think of these things…” So at least, in our discussions, we could argue rationally about issues.
Thanks for your responses to my posts. I wish this site would have some form of notification, when people respond, however.
Gilbert Zachary,
You wrote: “You seem to imply that the phrase, Black lives matter” could mean some think the black lives matter more than others. I can say that is is not true.”
Sometimes, when someone says “All lives matter” instead of “Black lives matter,” they get a ration of trouble. This has happened many times, sometimes to the point of being cancelled. So, if saying something more inclusive results in trouble and argument, then what conclusion can we come to about the mindset of those who insist that only “Black lives matter” is said?
Here is a commentary that gives examples of some of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSwVt1tZces (8 minutes)
Here is why we are not allowed to say “All lives matter:”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk6eDKjQm4c (2 minutes)
If we include anyone who is not black in the list of those who matter, then the black lives don’t count, somehow? So, if blacks think that they are being excluded when someone says that all lives matter, why shouldn’t everyone else feel excluded when someone says that black lives matter? Why should we not conclude that only black lives matter when we are told that we cannot say anything else? Thus, how can we think anything other than black lives being the only lives that matter?
When someone is shut down for something he says, not argued with but shut down, then what has happened to free speech? Is forbidding free speech of other people part of the Black Lives Matter movement? If not, why do these people shut down other people’s speech?
This “back lives matter” issue is divisive, not inclusive. Trying to be inclusive results in being shouted down by those who are being divisive, whether or not they had intended to be. Why is it that ever since the Republicans had the civil rights issue stripped from then by the Democrats the issue has always been divisive, not inclusive? There was a time when white Republicans marched with blacks in order to support the Civil Rights Act, but since then the Democrats have insisted that blacks must consider themselves as a separate people, complete with a separate culture and community. With all these people being divisive, how are we ever to come together as one community that can all get along, as Rodney King had asked?
Even you don’t seem to be inclusive. You “ want write a book on building successful communities, for my people.” Not all people, not a community of Americans, but communities for “your people.” How can we all get along if there are two different communities that emphasize the differences rather than one community that emphasizes similarity and does not mind differences? Isn’t this how whites and the other minorities get along? How do you think that separate communities can result in equality? The Democrats have spent half a century building traps for you, and you have stepped into this one. Is this division a positive vision that you want to promote?
“And I said many times, that i believe that Martin was in fact ‘standing his ground’, which was the law in that state rather than being obliged to run to his home. I’m not going to change my opinion on this.”
You need not change your opinion, but the fact is that Travon Martin attacked George Zimmerman, so the one who could be considered as having stood his ground is Zimmerman. Martin did not stand his ground; he attacked. He was not defending himself or anyone or anything else. This attack also put Zimmerman in the position of being the one who needed to defend himself from the attack, because he was not the one who made the attack. So, who should we feel sympathy for, the one who initiated the attack or the one who defended his own life? Perhaps there can be different viewpoints, but I really don’t understand why someone would choose to defend the violent person.
Two or three times, I have followed around my neighborhood white guys with clipboards knocking on doors but not staying long at any door. I suspected them of trying to figure out who was not home. They noticed me following them, but none attacked me. They may have been legitimate or not, but just as there is no such thing as fighting words, there is no such thing as a legitimate reason to attack someone who follows people in public places. If anyone gets worried, call the cops. That is what they are paid for. Martin would still be alive today had he called the cops on Zimmerman rather than attack him. Vigilante justice against someone who is not doing an injustice has been wrong in the U.S. for a number of decades.
So, these comments of mine, above, are rather binary, as in positive or negative, right or wrong, but sometimes I see things as shades of gray or as a spectrum. Things may not be this way or that way but somewhere in between or even a little of both, such as a photon being both a particle and a wave. It reminds me of the word “Agathokakological,” which means composed of both good and evil.
@Edward
Sorry it has taken me so long to reply. Our conversation has come to my mind nearly everyday. I regret bringing up Trayvon Martin. I believe that aspect of conversation, diverted attention from larger issues, facing the US and world today. And that issue here is white nationalism and fascism. And you seemingly blaming this on Obama …. I just can’t seem to find the right word, to describe how I feel for your position, on this. I hear the term ‘civil war’ being used these days, coming almost exclusively from the right. Meanwhile, I see issues within the communities of color that I have lived in most of life. And some of the issues are related to the same things that the right uses to attack these communities. But those were purposely created and fueled by governments, and other institutions, such as banks. The vast majority of black do not wish to be separate. Black people have been separated from other from outside forces.
The real meaning of the term “Black Lives Matter”, is that many black people believe that their lives matter less than others. This is also includes blacks towards each other within black communities. White people have a guilt complex, when they think the meaning of the term is that other lives don’t matter. I have heard stories of blacks being killed because someone did not like the way someone looked at them.; a playground basketball game, a disagreement in line at liquor store, a fender bender. I say that, the root cause of this, is having no greater life purpose. So then a solution, is teaching people to have a greater life purpose, not arming everyone with an assault rifle. Even greater prison penalties has not deterred some people.
The vast majority of black do not wish to be separate. Black people have been separated from other from outside forces. “…the Democrats have insisted that blacks must consider themselves as a separate people, ” That is a lie, plain and simple”. I don’t blame you, however. Have ever heard of a long wall in Detroit along Eight Mile Road?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Wall Banks would not finance a community of whites, until they built a wall between tem and a black neighborhood, in the 1940’s.
I did not plan to plan to write a book for the black community to be separate. My goal is to unite people, with principles of success, with examples from other communities, and individuals in general. It is about self empowerment vs. the victimhood olympics. There are principles that are universal, and more powerful for good, than racism is negative. But this message is more effective coming from voices within the community, and examples from within the community. I took a little time to examine this site’s owner, Robert Zimmerman’s writings about slavery. He does have some credible views, about the larger context of slavery in the US. But I doubt that his views will have a large impact on communities of color. Some in ‘the hood’, may just take it just another white man telling people what best for them. I say that it needs to come from within the individual making a person choice. Then that choice, to let go of slavery will be a tool of self empowerment.
Lastly, blaming racial divide on democrats, is ridiculous, in my view. Donald Trump in recent just posted something calling black judges and prosecutors “riggers”. That is just one letter away from what could get someone banned from this site. he has millions of followers on his social media. And there is a subtext of him blaming his “stolen election” on areas that have high black population. What about him once telling two black congresswoman, born in the US and two others congresswoman of color, to “go back where they came from”?
I could cite other examples. All Trump followers are not racist, but every single racist is a Trump follower. meanwhile you focus on what Obama said about an interaction between two people; Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.
I hope that you get this. Once again, sorry for the long response time. I respect you enough to take time to reply to your posts.
@Robert Zimmerman I never thanked you for your reply. So consider this post as thanks.. As part of the thanks, I will tell you a true life story. Around 1999 or so, Congress passed a law limiting cash welfare payments to 5 years life time. So five years later, as a social worker, I was employed by a program that had me/us contacting families who were about to lose cash benefits., to assist them in future planning. Most all of my cases were black families. Few had any long term plans. However, I had one Jewish family, who was losing cash benefits. They were young and had young children., like many of the others. However, they had one major difference. The father was in his last year of dental school. That fact was a concrete lesson in life/career planning. Them being young, I believe their life plan came from learning what I call, community values.
But this leads me another story directly from my own family. My grandmother was born around the turn of the 20th century, and my mother was born in 1919. My grandmother was very hard working, and independent woman. My mother was a strong student who became a member of the National Honor Society in the ninth grade. At the time of her graduation in 1937 several of her friends were going to college. She asked my grandmother about possibly enrolling in college like some of her friends. My grandmother said no, because she saw blacks who had graduated from college, not working in the fields related to thier college degrees, doing menial jobs, such a driving cabs, etc. I believe that those my grandmother saw, eventually broke through after a time. Many found fields that directly serviced the black community, due the the segregated life of that time.
None off the eight siblings my father’s side went to college. However, the in the next generation that I was born into several went to college. I have one cousin who became a doctor, and another who became an lawyer and assistant prosecutor. And on the other side, I had one cousin who into the street life, and ended up being murdered. Another male cousin died in jail under questionable circumstances. He was arrested only for DUI, but the police claimed he committed suicide, in lock-up. He had two young. That was in the late eighties and the black community was not focused much on police misconduct, like today.
Gilbert Zachary,
Thank you for your reply. I checked this thread on occasion in hopes you would continue the discussion. I discovered your reply in the Recent Comments list on the right side of the main page.
“I regret bringing up Trayvon Martin. I believe that aspect of conversation, diverted attention from larger issues, facing the US and world today. And that issue here is white nationalism and fascism. And you seemingly blaming this on Obama …”
Considering that the Trayvon Martin case is one of the reasons that Obama is at fault for creating a divide rather than mending fences and uniting us as the American news media had expected Obama would do, there was no diversion with this case. Obama said that Martin could have been his son, emphasizing the racial difference and suggesting that the case was all about racism, but what father would want his son to behave the way Martin did?
This case is one part of the evidence that “Obama made racial bigotry acceptable in his fundamentally transformed America,” one of the two complaints from your first comment here.
Considering that you believe the issue is white nationalism and fascism, Obama’s Democratic Party is a major source of both. His party, the Democratic Party, was founded for the express purpose of defending the institution of slavery from increasing numbers of Americans who believed it to be a bad thing that should be stopped in this country and around the world. The Democratic Party has followed Lyndon Johnson’s lead and kept many of the Trayvon Martins of America in poverty and despair, and Obama did nothing to end this. He did, however, remind everyone that America should be considered a racist nation especially the whites, who he said are genetically racist, but he failed to point out that it was his own party that was the practitioners of both slavery and racism.
“The real meaning of the term “Black Lives Matter”, is that many black people believe that their lives matter less than others. … White people have a guilt complex, when they think the meaning of the term is that other lives don’t matter.”
That may be your opinion, but the actions of the Black Lives Matter group says otherwise. Anyone who suggests that “all lives matter” are harassed by the people who promote Black Lives Matter. The only phrase that these harassers allow is their own “Black Lives Matter” phrase. These people are against any other opinion and any other speech. It is not a guilt complex (that only Democrats deserve) that makes them believe that the term means that no other lives matter, it is the actions of harassing those who believe that any life that is not black also matters. It is the actions, not guilt, that shows the whole world that the correct opinion is that only black lives matter. If other lives mattered, too, then we would be able to publicly say so without the harassment. People are literally forbidden from having the opinion that any life other than a black life also matters.
The only lives that matter are black lives. By word and deed, that is the meaning of the term “Black Lives Matter.”
You may be interpreting it differently, but the creators of the term are very clear on this point. The term is yet another point of divisiveness and was created to be. It most definitely does not unite, because that could only happen if all lives mattered, if all opinions mattered, if all voices mattered.
“The vast majority of black do not wish to be separate.”
My experience is different than that. In college, I lived in a residential system in which many black students were choosing to live in one residence hall rather than in the others, they were choosing to live with others they felt were like themselves. Demographics were tracked (possibly by law), and the general manager went to the board with the statistics each year. One year he pointed out that the black population of the system were self-segregating; he didn’t have any recommendations to do anything about it, it was just informational. A few years later, the television magazine 60 Minutes aired a segment in which they pointed out that self-segregation was happening on college campuses all across America, not just in housing but in social groupings as well, showing groups of black students talking together on campuses but not so many integrated groups of students. A few years after that, the residential system that I had lived in bought an additional building to have an African-American theme, and black students did tend to live there (some white students too, but mostly black). As an aside, that worked out so well that the system then bought another building themed for gays and lesbians. For some reason, self segregation seems universal to groups that distinguish themselves as different.
Yes. Democrats insist upon focusing on people’s differences, socially separating them from others. Recently, minority groups have started advocating that they segregate themselves from other groups. Robert has several posts discussing companies, schools, and towns that segregate discussion groups. Apparently, we are so far gone that we can no longer discuss these issues together but must be separated in order to be presented with different lessons to learn.
This focus on differences is why “diversity” is so important to Democrats. Diversity focuses on differences, because we cannot have diversity if no one is different. Someone has to be different so that he can be included with the rest, with the “normals,” thus “inclusion” also focuses on differences. The same goes for “equity.” Without differences, how can you insist on equity? Without differences, there would already be equity. It is subtle, but there it is, the focus on differences that divide. If you didn’t notice, then you may have difficulties writing a book that unites, as you may accidentally divide rather than unite.
How do we become united as one when so many people focus on differences rather than similarities?
Self empowerment is an excellent goal, but any focus on differences may sabotage your effort. Examples of success from individuals may be the better way to go, without emphasizing the differences, which may harm your effort.
As you write your book, keep in mind that the more successful people tend to be long-term planners. If you have no plan, then how do you get where you want to go? Do you even know where you want to go? Without a plan, how do you know that you have deviated from the path to your goal, and how do you find your way back to that path again? The longer it takes to reach your goal, the more important is the long-term plan.
I am disappointed that your employer in 2004 had waited five years before helping people get off welfare, as they had come to the end of their lifetime of safety net. Instead of contributing to the economy, too many people had turned their safety net into a hammock, living an easy life off the hard work of others — no wonder Congress changed the system. Aren’t all these people better off with jobs than relying on the kindness of strangers? After all, in order to stay on welfare, they have to stay poor. I think we can all agree that the impoverished are worse off than the employed.
“Some in ‘the hood’, may just take it just another white man telling people what best for them.”
An example of the sabotage of differences.
“I say that it needs to come from within the individual making a person choice. Then that choice, to let go of slavery will be a tool of self empowerment.”
An excellent goal. There is nothing anyone can do to change the past, but we can learn from it. This is the purpose of Robert’s book Conscious Choice. He looks forward to the colonization of Mars and warns that a colony that is poorly founded can have terrible ramifications for generations to come. How would America look today if the Virginian colony had not focused on short-term gains over morality, religion, and family values? The colonists to the north quickly figured out that long term thinking produced more prosperity, producing enough food for a feast in which they invited their neighbors to celebrating their bounty.
“Donald Trump in recent just posted something calling black judges and prosecutors ‘riggers’. That is just one letter away from what could get someone banned from this site.”
Yeah, but that doesn’t mean what you want it to mean. Plenty of works are must one litter sway from another word that meads something diffident (and I can do more if In con ad ore subtract once better, to). Frankly, to equate those two words means that no one can use the word “rigger” ever again. (Oops. Now I am a racist.) So much for several professions, as no one can ever again be a rigger, limiting our methods of construction. And what about the objects that also use that word in their names? Do we now have to stop using them? Now that words that are one letter away from “the ‘n’ word” prove the racism of anyone who uses them, what is next? Any word that begins with ‘n’ becomes a forbidden ‘n’ word, as they also prove racism? Then any word that is one letter away from any of those ‘n’ words? And on and so forth until any speech is proof of racism? Why not just have the president declare that white people are racist merely because of their genes?
Oh, that’s right. Obama already did that in yet another of his dividing-instead-of-uniting speeches. (So it turns out that I was always a racist. Who knew?) One has to wonder whether Obama thinks he, too, inherited the racism gene.
If you have to go through such a contortion in order to make Trump seem a racist, he probably is not as racist as you think. Real racists are more obvious. They tend to make more general statements, like all whites are racist by birth or that you have to have a slight Indian accent to work at a 7-11. That second one was said by Biden.
“And there is a subtext of him blaming his “stolen election” on areas that have high black population.”
You mean … Democrat areas? Would you expect Republican areas to sabotage the Republican candidate? Considering the rhetoric of the Democratic Party ever since the 2000 election, it is logical to believe that they would do anything to win elections. They told us so in very certain terms. Time Magazine even bragged about how the American press rigged (may I use that word?) the 2020 election, making sure that the electorate was misinformed. How do we have fair elections if the fourth estate, whose civic duty is to inform the electorate, abrogates that duty?
“What about him once telling two black congresswoman, born in the US and two others congresswoman of color, to ‘go back where they came from’?”
So what state(s) did they come from? You can make anything mean anything, when you remove the context and couch it in a different context. Another contortion, on your part.
You try to make the claim that Trump is a racist, but you failed to come up with any evidence at all. One rhyme, one inferred “subtext,” and one paraphrased partial sentence, all out of context, are meaningless. It seems more like you drew a conclusion and then sought some evidence to support it, and finding none, you twisted meanings into something completely different. Confirmation bias looks very much like this. Apparently, when someone squints his eyes and looks out the corners of those squinted eyes, Trump almost comes close to nearly seeming like he might be something that vaguely resembles a racist wannabe. If only he had said something that he didn’t, then he would be closer to looking racist. As I quoted in an earlier comment, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. In this case, disregarding what was actually said.
Since that is the best you could come up with, I can only conclude that Trump is not a racist. So, why would I think that any of his followers are? Wouldn’t real racists want to follow real racists?
“All Trump followers are not racist, but every single racist is a Trump follower.”
You may want to rethink that, because there probably aren’t that many Democrats who are Trump followers. Keep in mind that the Republican Party was founded to end slavery and the Democratic Party was founded with racism as its primary purpose. It is the party:
– of slavery.
– of The Trail of Tears.
– of the Confederacy.
– who extended the Civil War to extend slavery.
– who maintained slavery in Texas until Juneteenth.
– of segregation.
– of the Klan.
– of Jim Crow laws.
– of the president who interned Americans descended from Japanese immigrants. .
– of the president who dropped the atomic bomb on Japan.
– who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
– who opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
– who opposed the Fair Housing Bill of 1968.
– of George Wallace.
– who used fire hoses and dogs for crowd control.
– who kills unborn babies.
– whose policies decimate the African-American community today.
The white nationalists are the Democrats.
If people are going to blame all of America for slavery and the racism of the distant past, then why do those very same people belong to the party that supported that slavery and promoted and advanced all that racism?
As for the issue of fascism:
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fascism
The Democratic Party is also the party behind our nation’s move away from “the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” promised by our Constitution, and toward the tyranny that has been normal throughout history.
Obama declared that he could get things done through the use of his pen and his phone, and Biden is hardly any better, sending governmental agencies to harass and persecute his political enemies and to reward his friends and family. It is the Democratic Party that directs companies as to how to run their businesses, with healthcare now entirely operated according to central national government direction. It was Obama himself that deviated from established bankruptcy procedure and nationalized General Motors and Ford after he mismanaged them when he took control of them on the excuse that the country lent them some money. It is the Democratic Party that is persecuting people who disagree with them, shutting down free speech and ensuring that the U.S. media misinform voters so that they are more likely to vote Democrat. It is the Democrat Party that fans the flames of racism.
“Donald Trump in recent just posted something calling black judges and prosecutors ‘riggers’. That is just one letter away from what could get someone banned from this site.”
Yeah, but that doesn’t mean what you want it to mean
I don’t know how to punctuate this double quote. I don’t want it to mean that negative. The point is what it means to his millions of followers. The names he mentioned had no relation to election activities, like say a poll worker, or higher member election administrator. He was talking about black judges and prosecutors, with no direct election connections. So what do they have in common? I believe that every election county he accused of fraud had the highest black population. So it should be obvious that what they have in common is race., i.e. the rigger race. lol!
It is entirely logical that out of tens of millions people a certain percentage will make that association. Trump recently reported 3.9 million followers. (I thought it would be bigger. But say 10% make that association. Then that is 390 thousand. There is a concept called ‘coded language’. That means something only some people, will get the true meaning. I think follower definitely understand, and thus influence others.
I will get around to reading your post in it’s entirety. But the part I quoted here just really jumped out to me. I want to see if we can agree to what I call, basic logic. All that being said regardless, since we responded so many times, I’m giving a special approval, that you can call me, “your rigger” I did work at the polls, three times. So that is free speech to call me that. That’s a special joke, that only you could inspire. Thanks
” It is the party:
– of slavery.
– of The Trail of Tears.
– of the Confederacy.
– who extended the Civil War to extend slavery.
– who maintained slavery in Texas until Juneteenth.
– of segregation.
– of the Klan.
– of Jim Crow laws.
– of the president who interned Americans descended from Japanese immigrants. .
– of the president who dropped the atomic bomb on Japan.
– who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
– who opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
– who opposed the Fair Housing Bill of 1968.
– of George Wallace.
– who used fire hoses and dogs for crowd control.
– who kills unborn babies.
– whose policies decimate the African-American community today.
The white nationalists are the Democrats.”
Your list does not include dates. Listing those would show proof of seismic shifts in US politics. For example the ‘Trail of Tears’ was in 1831, over 190 years ago. And the US Civil started over 160 years. For black american, a great shift came under FDR. In my view one important reason was the support of labor unions. And labor unions who accepted blacks were hugely responsible for the growth of a black middle class. Black left the south in large numbers moving to cities. This true in my own family. My grandfather left the south in the 1920’s and being a sharecropper, to working at a city electric utility. The family was able to purchase a large home and raised 8 children, who all obtained black middle lifestyles.
The next major shift came under Lyndon Johnson. The Civil Rights Act which legally ended racial segregation was passed in 1964. By that time, perhaps the majority of big cities were under democrats. But meanwhile in the south many the white democrats had fought against racial integration. Black civil rights leader coined a term for them, calling them, “Dixiecrats”. Look up that term to get a clearer understanding. Consider this; In 1968 five southern states voted for a 3rd party presidential candidate, George Wallace, who for racial segregation, over republican and democratic ones. And in 1980 this force crossed over to support Ronald Reagan. For a time some coined them “Reagan Democrats”. They have remained republican every since. Reagan started his 1980 campaign in Mississippi with a speech on ‘states rights’. Back in the 60’s, ‘states right’ were about southern states rights to enforce racial segregation. While some today do not recognize the roots of so called ‘states right’s’ term; it’s historical context should not be forgotten or ignored.
So let me bring this history to now. The same spirit of segregationist history/post slavery, outlined in this paper, is the same spirit of todays white nationalists. A good tool for understanding the concept of ‘fascism’, that I recommend, a book called “Bring the War Home”. I makes the connections in depth, the relationship between this movement; between the Klan (KKK) and today’s white nationalist movement. The author has interviews on YouTube
Gilbert Zachary,
“I don’t want it to mean that negative. The point is what it means to his millions of followers.”
Yes. It means that they believe the election was rigged. Time Magazine did a whole article on some of the ways that it was rigged. We saw other ways just after the election and and saw more ways a year and a half after the election.
As I said, it is confirmation bias, and it is on your part. You hear what you want to hear, even if you have to make it up.
I no longer think you are going to do a good job on that book. Even you cannot get past perceived racism, thinking that your own feelings must be truth and reality. Look where your confirmation bias has led you just in these recent comments. You accused someone who is on your side of being a terrible person, and your evidence lacks credibility.
“It is entirely logical that out of tens of millions people a certain percentage will make that association.”
Only logical to someone who assumes that “every single racist is a Trump follower.” It is not logical to make that assumption, and it is not logical to assume the percentage that you have arbitrarily chosen.
I know several Trump followers, and they are definitely different from what you think of them.
“you can call me, ‘your rigger’”
Considering what you think of that word, I’m not taking your permission as any kind of compliment or kindness.
Please don’t get the wrong idea; thank you for giving me special dispensation, but what about everyone else?* If I do this and someone who does not know about this special permission finds out, then I wind up in as much trouble as you have put Trump into, and it will have happened in exactly the same way, using a legitimate word that someone else decides is a racist insult. And the disintegration of the language begins, because more and more words become declared as forbidden, banned, and proof of abject racism.
Don’t you regret bringing up Donald Trump? That aspect of conversation is diverting attention from larger issues that face the US and world today: white nationalism and fascism. These are openly coming from this century’s Democratic Party, just as that party openly advocated for both during its first century and a third of existence. The party spent half a century convincing you that it was on your side, but it has never done you any good, and recently it is the Democratic Party’s policies that have been so bad for you and divisive for the country. It is why you think Trump is the leader of racists and that “every single racist is a Trump follower.” Lyndon Johnson succeeded in his promise to “have those [ahem**]s voting Democrat for two hundred years.” He made this promise after caving in to the idea of the Civil Rights Act. He didn’t sign because he thought it was good, he signed because it was politically expedient; he could twist it on its head and use it against the people he despised. He found a way to reward his friends and punish his enemies, and convince his enemies that he and his party were their friends.
The Democratic Party and Republican Parties did not switch places, the Democrats changed strategies to make it look like they were friends. The majority of the black population succumbed to the Democrats’ charms and switched parties. The racists stayed in the Democratic Party but were retrained to be more subtle about their racism, discovering that they could buy votes with taxpayer money and keep the poor poor by requiring poverty in order to receive the largess of the party.
The tolerant ones were called racists, because tolerance has higher expectations, that blacks could do for themselves, as your father did, and didn’t need handouts. The handouts by the Democrats were seen as friendly, and anyone who didn’t seem friendly was called a racist. The handouts were actually a soft bigotry of low expectations, keeping people poor who should have been employed and prosperous. Welfare allowed for single mothers to become more socially acceptable, so girls didn’t have to be so careful, anymore. Welfare started a terrible downward spiral, a problem that welfare just happened to be there to solve. Look how wonderful those Democrats are, creating and solving a problem, and sustaining it all at the same time.
Even you don’t see the truth of this situation, willing to accept those low expectations and seeing higher expectation as a bad thing:
“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.”
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/the-shift-away-from-government-schools-at-all-levels-might-be-accelerating/#comment-1398584
The Democrats’ solution to the higher incarceration rate, stop punishing the criminals. That isn’t working out in these Democratically controlled cities, such as Los Angeles, because without proper punishment there are more criminals, not fewer. Letting people get away with crime does not make them better people. So let me add one more item to that list:
— Democrats, the party of crime (2020).
Expecting the single mother to be unable to find a tutor is part of those low expectations, similar to the Democrats who think voter ID is racist because blacks cannot figure out how to get an ID. The tolerant ones, the ones with the higher expectations, know better. So do you.
You may want dates to affirm your biases, but the subtle bigotry of low expectations that Johnson started in order to keep his promise has lasted from the signing of the Civil rights act to today. Killing babies has been from 1972 to today. Welfare, keeping the poor poor, is still in effect today, started by Franklin Roosevelt, enhanced by Johnson, and encouraged by Obama, who increased welfare recipients from 10% to 15%. The Democrat party has found a way to convince people to re-segregate, so do you want the first date or today’s date on segregation?
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?
Why reject the party of abolition, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Civil Rights Movement? For half a century, trust was placed in the wrong people, and the right people were distrusted. No wonder the problems persist, inequality continues, and racial tensions recently increased. Two generations wasted by a confirmation bias in which truth and reality are ignored but lies and delusion are believed.
The Democrats are not persecuting Trump for being a racist. They are attacking him for defecting from the Democratic Party and following the policies of the party during the Clinton years. Today’s Democrat policies are so far to the left (fascism is a leftist system; the NAZIs were the Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party) that they make Clinton’s policies seem far right wing.
By the way, the NAZIs admired and copied the Democrats’ eugenics policies from a century ago. It was an early plan for “purifying” their country, and they implemented similar policies to the greatest extreme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#Influence_on_Nazi_Germany
Abortion in America comes from that very same Democrat eugenics policy. So, let me add another item to that list:
— Democrats, the party of eugenics (1920s).
Calling Trump a racist worked its charm. It got you and tens of millions of other Americans to turn against him despite a complete lack of evidence that he is a racist. What you presented as evidence does not support the accusation. In your mind it does, but that is confirmation bias. You were convinced of a falsehood, but because of that convincing, you now disregard any contradictory evidence and fabricate supporting evidence. That is what you presented to us, supporting evidence that was created by removing exculpatory context, by fabricating subtext, and by substituting rhyming words.
How does this focus our attention on the larger issues?
I recommend that you work hard on overcoming your confirmation bias problem before you publish your book. If your book starts with bad assumptions and personal biases, then it is unlikely to do what you want it to do.
As you noted before:
“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.”
The Jewish community does not fall for the handouts drill. They, individually, are self sufficient, overcoming problems without the Democratic Party proclaiming that they need help, implying a helplessness on their part. The successful communities are not suffering under the yoke of reliance on anyone, especially not the Democratic Party.
________________
* May we use the words “bigger,” “digger”, “jigger”, “trigger”, or “vigor?” What about Disney’s “Tigger” character?
** “Rigger” rhymes with the missing word here. Why was it OK for Johnson to use the actual word but bad when Trump used the rhyming word on the topic of people rigging an election?
“I don’t want it to mean that negative. The point is what it means to his millions of followers.”
Yes. It means that they believe the election was rigged. Time Magazine did a whole article on some of the ways that it was rigged. We saw other ways just after the election and and saw more ways a year and a half after the election.”
I can’t even get by your first two sentences with my blood boiling. Believing the election was stolen is not a valid view point. That idea is a poisonous lie that is destroying this nation. We are talking about enough fraud that would change the outcome of state’s winner. Why has the matter been proven in court after all this time? How did the US get through over two hundred years of elections? Don’t you think something was learned in those 200 plus years? Why would an election be rigged and it only affected Trump? With 135 million people voting for president, yes there will be people attempting to cheat here and there. I made it a point to investigate every claim I have seen., such as the “dead voters” issue. Whoever made that claim, it has been refuted in the particular state, etc.
None the the hundreds of people convicted of J 6th crimes has proven that the election was stolen. If one have proved that, it should have cut their sentence. So why has no one proven fraud in court.
I really regret looking at your post when I was heading to bed.
Trump tweet about the “riggers” was also spread through the medea, so it was was made available to millions of people. The media I watched the commenters made the connection. There white people that have used the n-word now and throughout our history. So are claiming those with racists tendencies would not recognize Trump’s reference? Why is the word “civil war’ being used with increasing frequency in our nation? This is not about me.
And what are you saying about making me something up? Search it for yourself. I had a problem a while back when I had included some links on this site. But that was likely for some other reason.
But I’ll try again.
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/alyssa-farah-trump-riggers-racist-b2394613.html
Did you really call me a liar?
I’m dying on this hill. I did get to read more of your post. https://archive.nytimes.com/takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/lee-atwaters-southern-strategy-interview/
This is a link, which relates to ‘coded’ terms relating used by the right.
Trump has repeatedly called Fani Willis, the Georgia prosecutor, a racist. What does her race have to do with the case about his actions in Georgia?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/17/first-thing-trump-prosecutor-faces-racist-abuse-following-indictment
You didn’t address my point, that the that there is a subtext in the public discourse, including being used by Trump, that it was black people who ‘stole’ the 2020 election. The only two people specifically identified with this were the mother and daughter Shay Moss and Ruby Freeman. Now Giuliani has admitted that he lied. I noticed that in the movie 2000 Mules, they showed a black man, placing ballots in a drop box. This was the movie’s major video proof, that made media circulation.
This is not about only about Trump. However you accused Obama of stoking racism, but refuse to acknowledge Trump’s words that incite racist sentiments. I, and many other people saw Trump’s use of birther issue of Obama, around 2014(?) as in reality about race. Trumps family was sued by the government in the 1960’s m when Trump’s father was still running the business, for racial practices.
But I will end this by going back to my book idea, related to this discussion. You keep blaming issues related to the black communities on the democratic party. But I say that people are responsible for thier own actions, as individual choices. However, those actions are guided by the life views, which they have been taught. This includes peer culture. But as a hypothetical example; ending all Snap program benefits does almost nothing to address issues such as murder and robberies. I had an extended family member aged 31 murdered by someone he knew, within the past three months (June). He was shot in the back, so it was not self defense. Making such an as being related to say progressive prosecutors, is a distraction from addressing real issues such as this murder.
Gilbert Zachery: I had wanted to stay out of this debate, but your continuing slander of tens of millions of Trump supporters, accusing them of being racist, based on no evidence except your personal feelings, cannot go unchallenged. It disgusts me, and embarrasses you.
Please note, in the same comment you claimed that white supremacy is a growing problem, you also describe how your minority family has gone from no one with a college education a generation ago to several now with degrees and well-paying middle class jobs. Note too that this progress was culminated by the election of a black president, in a country about 83% white.
Sure sounds like that white supremacy has been oppressing you and blacks pretty horribly, eh? Whites gladly vote for blacks and do everything they can (ie the many civil rights laws) to end bigotry and discrimination, and so that obviously indicates an underlying racism for which they must be slandered. Essentially, no matter what the empirical facts for the past three-quarters of a century, you consistently and automatically view white Americans as hidden bigots, eager to establish a Nazi-like white supremacist regime under Trump, who until he switched parties had been lauded and awarded by the left for his civil rights record.
They say if you hear the dog whistle, you are the dog. Your only real evidence for the bigotry of Trump and his supporters has been accusations he is using dog-whistle “coded” words for racism that his supporters recognize and support. You however are the only one hearing the whistle.
In fact, everything you write exhibits an unhealthy obsession with race, something I explained to you in describing my upbringing as a Jew is a very big error and something to avoid.
You don’t want to avoid it. You have apparently decided that your race must always be the most important aspect of your existence, not what you do or achieve. And thus, everything others say or do in connection with you must be related to that race as well.
I am sorry for you, but I am more sorry for America, as this obsession with race is merely working to end the freedoms gained for all races by the civil rights movement. Instead, it is going to engender race hatred and violence. Unless something changes soon, violence will follow, as well as genocide. And since blacks still remain a minority, their future will be grim in this situation, a situation that the race-obsessed on the left is creating.
Gilbert
Ref:
“Believing the election was stolen is not a valid view point.”
So, who made you Komisar of Information?
Hoppewave:
“Absurdistan The Music Video”
Hans Hermann-Hoppe
https://youtu.be/x15LTalV1b0
4:33
Gilbert Zachary,
“I can’t even get by your first two sentences with my blood boiling. Believing the election was stolen is not a valid view point. ”
Why is it not valid? The Democrats said worse about the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections without any evidence whatsoever. Why weren’t those claims by the Democrats “poisonous lie[s] that is destroying this nation?” Why were they considered valid?
Once again, you are suffering from confirmation bias. It is OK and true when your party says it, but when the watchers and the press are sent from the count and the count continues without supervision, that is somehow OK?
“Why has the matter been proven in court after all this time?”
The real question is why weren’t any of the allegations investigated? How can you suggest that there weren’t enough faux votes to change the outcome when no one knows just how many (not few) votes were fraudulent? If it isn’t investigated, there isn’t evidence to prove the case in court. That is what the discovery portion of a case is all about. If discovery is prevented, there is no case to make. All you have is the plaintiff’s complaint, and that is not enough to make a case.
“Don’t you think something was learned in those 200 plus years?”
Yes. How to cheat in elections. Chicago is well known for the dead voting, especially voting Democrat. The movie The Great McGinty (1940) is a primer in one just way to commit election fraud. The New York Times, a decade ago, published an article on how mail-in voting and vote harvesting are easy ways to commit election fraud, yet that is how many Democratically controlled states chose to hold their elections, some of them changing to these methods in 2020 in ways that violate the Constitution. California even allows harvested votes to arrive a week after the election is over. What could go wrong with that?
“Why would an election be rigged and it only affected Trump?”
That was the person that was so adamantly hated by the Democrats. The other parties’ presidential candidates don’t ever have a realistic chance.
“With 135 million people voting for president, yes there will be people attempting to cheat here and there.”
And your attitude that this is OK is why there is such a problem. This is what has been learned over two centuries. No one will do anything about cheating, and they didn’t after the cheating in 2020, either. Nice of you to admit that there was cheating. Too bad you are among the millions who think it is OK and that nothing should be done about it. It is like the crime waves happening in cities that don’t arrest people for shoplifting and other crimes; it encourages more of the same crime. Since nothing was done about election fraud, Democrats did it in a big way — and still nothing was done, so why would anyone think that they will do less of it next time? It is like expecting the shoplifters to suddenly stop and being surprised that they have graduated into organized smash and grab mobs.
“None the the hundreds of people convicted of J 6th crimes has proven that the election was stolen.”
None of them were given a chance, and these would not have been defenses, either. No judge would let that be entered as evidence of innocence. Funny that you would think so, though.
“The media I watched the commenters made the connection.”
Because that is how racists think. The people you watch are racists. We non-racists do not think that way. My question is answered. The words “bigger,” “digger”, “jigger”, “trigger”, “vigor,” and Disney’s “Tigger” character may no longer be uttered without the claim of racism.
“There white people that have used the n-word now and throughout our history.”
That is right. People like Democrat Lyndon Johnson. Trump did not make the reference; racists made the connection. Your word. It is interesting that it is a word that only people from certain races may not say, but others may, especially in song. Is this not a racist policy?
“Why is the word ‘civil war’ being used with increasing frequency in our nation?”
For the obvious reason, which I have been telling you throughout this thread. Obama created a huge schism, and you are one of the ones who fell for it. It is about you as well as the others who fell for Obama’s treachery. Many people have come to realize that we cannot get out of Obama’s mess with political action, and they are not creative enough to think of another way, except for civil war, even if it is a social war, not an armed conflict. Many of those whom I hear use the word “civil war” say that we are already in one, one of the societal kind, a clash of conflicting cultures. They also say that your side of this supposed war has been in the fight for decades, which is why the other side is losing so badly.
“Did you really call me a liar?”
Once again, you are reading in something that is not there. You are hearing what you want to hear.
“Search it for yourself.”
And now you admit that it was made up specifically for this one accusation. The link gives better context, and the context is not what you said it was. I didn’t call you a liar before, and now I am emphasizing that you heard what you want to hear, and in this case you have disregarded the context.
“You didn’t address my point, that the that there is a subtext in the public discourse, including being used by Trump, that it was black people who ‘stole’ the 2020 election.”
I did, but once again, you heard what you wanted to hear. Since my response did not fall under that category, it was disregarded.
“but refuse to acknowledge Trump’s words that incite racist sentiments.”
Now you have moved the goalposts. You used to say that Trump’s words were the racist ones, but now you complain that Trump’s words incite the Democratic media into racist sentiments. Well, that happens no matter what Trump says, and has happened ever since he announced that he was running for president on the Republican ticket.
“I, and many other people saw Trump’s use of birther issue of Obama, around 2014(?) as in reality about race.”
Oh. My. Fracking. God!
You have got to be kidding me! Hillary Clinton started that issue — but she’s not racist — others rode that issue — but they’re not racist — and all Trump did was suggest to Obama that he release his birth certificate so that the stupidity could finally come to an end — and Obama did — and it did. Except then, once he announced, people claimed that Trump was the founder of the issue, was advocating the issue, and was guilty of racism.
Geez, Gilbert, I can’t believe you have me defending Trump! Are you suffering Trump Derangement Syndrome, that all evil comes from Trump?
And now the sins of the father are visited on the son? What kind of political party do you belong to? It gets worse every time you comment. And this assumes that “racial practices” means racism rather than being unable to find enough of the right kind of employees to fill the quota.
“However, those actions are guided by the life views, which they have been taught. This includes peer culture.”
And who are these peers? Democrats. Those actions are guided by the views learned from the Democratic Party. How do I know? because Democrats don’t want to hear ideas or opinions that differ from their own. My own family is a classic example, since we are bringing up family examples. Not only am I a dummy for not agreeing with their incorrect opinion, my nephew got “so mad, you don’t even know.” And I was literally forbidden by my brother from having an opinion that differed from theirs.
Why would anyone think that the SNAP program (food stamps, for the oldsters reading this) has anything whatsoever to do with crime? I’m sorry for your loss, but that didn’t happen because the SNAP program ended — because it didn’t end. It may have happened because when prosecutors allow smaller crimes to go unpunished, perpetrators do worse crimes to see where the limit is, and so on and so forth until they are committing the crime for which they finally get into trouble. It is like children.
Frankly, this discussion has degraded badly since our discussion six months ago. I was under the impression that we were talking to each other, back then, and now I get the impression that we are talking past each other. For a while there, it was easier to talk to you than it was to talk to my siblings.
This is yet another reason why you are not yet ready to write your book. You see the problems of society from only one viewpoint, not enough viewpoints to be objective. You are too willing to believe the lies and not willing to even consider any other possibility, getting emotional (too emotional to sleep) at even the mention of another possibility. Please take to heart Robert’s comments, earlier today. If you can overcome that, then you should be ready to write that book in a way to successfully do what you intend it to do: “building successful communities, for my people.”
I hope you sleep better tonight.
Wait, wait, wait.
If the sins of the fathers are visited onto the sons, then why are you supporting the party of slavery? That was so much worse than racism, yet their sons are OK dudes?
Democrat supporters are just so unbelievable.
Robert,
Something that you had written in late March, above, stuck with me, and I think I may have figured out why:
“Education and western values have been repeatedly slandered as “white culture” and thus not for blacks.”
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/the-shift-away-from-government-schools-at-all-levels-might-be-accelerating/#comment-1403490
Could it be that this is what Gilbert means by the “issue here is white nationalism and fascism“? It isn’t that there is actual white nationalism but a rejection of anything that whites value, do, say, believe, wear, have, or are. No matter what white people do or say, it is interpreted as racist, as white nationalist, and as fascist. Electing a black president seems to have been interpreted the pinnacle of racism, resulting in a renewal of the great divide between the races, rather than the post-racial America that the U.S. news media had virtually promised and had expected.
The problem that I have with this suggestion of mine is that the Democratic Party, which a majority of blacks seems to follow, is lead by a bunch of whites, who live in “white culture” and hold western values. It would mean that Gilbert and his people follow white nationalists and fascists, not just people with western values, with white culture, and worse: with a history of racism and support for slavery.
When Obama’s Boston friend had behaved badly when the police tried to find out whether someone had broken into his house, Obama blamed the Boston police as having behaved stupidly. Even the resulting beer garden gathering didn’t help, especially since Obama and his friend could not wait for that “white culture” guy to leave so that the two of them could finally chat together and have a good time. From that moment on, the U.S. news media realized that their dream of a post-racial America would not come true, and from that moment on, America’s race relations deteriorated rather than improved. Obama’s actions, attitude, and leadership caused this deterioration.
We both have been making suggestions about how Gilbert may be able to assure that his proposed book does what he wants, but I get the impression that he isn’t taking us seriously. It is almost as though he feels the way he said: “Some in ‘the hood’, may just take it just another white man telling people what best for them.” Presenting our point of view, a different point of view, seems futile, interpreted as white supremacists telling people what is best for them. He is not listening, not receptive, to anything he does not already believe.
So, if after this very long discussion, in which we have expressed our point of view, if Gilbert ignores and rejects what we express, are we wasting our time and effort in this discussion? I’m not sure that we are learning very much, because Gilbert’s views and opinions are pretty much the same as we hear from our Democrat friends, neighbors, the news media, and the entertainment industry, so there is not much new here.
If he refuses to understand the people he believes to be the problem, how is he going to write a successful book? How are we helping him write a successful book when he refuses to hear the alternate point of view? He won’t say anything new to the people he wants to build successful communities, so how are they going to change their efforts within their communities in order to succeed? He won’t say anything new to the people he believes are white supremacists, so how are they going to change in order to help those communities succeed?
The irony is that Gilbert, with his attitude, is the perfect person to break through to others with this same attitude, the people in “the hood,” to bring us together in the way that Obama was expected to do. He understands them very well and is in the best position to figure out how to influence them into building successful communities. Unfortunately, Gilbert’s attitude, as with Obama’s attitude, is the wrong one to help. It isn’t enough to elect a black president to lead the nation into a post-racial America, it requires a black president with the right attitude to lead us to that goal. It would also require that Gilbert, his people, and “the hood” to have an attitude of readiness for that leadership, for that goal.
It seems to me that America was not ready for a black president to lead us to a post racial America. The white population was ready, the American media were ready, but the black communities were not, including Obama himself.
America did the right thing but at the wrong time.
Edward: Gilbert’s problem is that he wishes to write a book to help “his” community, rather than write a book to help “all” communities.
The Enlightenment as well as the philosophies of Judeo-Christian western civilization were not written for “whites,” or any particular race. They were conceived and written as attempts to reach some fundamental global truths about all human nature and existence, in order to help all humans live better lives.
By limiting his work to just helping blacks, Gilbert automatically closes his mind to a much wider achievement, and likely also closes his mind to resources of great value.
Edward: As for the election of Obama, too many Americans of all races voted for him for exactly the wrong reason: That he was a black man. Electing a black man to be president simply to assuage your guilt over past wrongs is foolish and a grave error. It is also the wrong reason to vote for anyone, as it is based not on the qualifications of the candidate but simply on his race. It is bigoted, and no different than banning blacks from running because of their race.
Obama was a bad candidate, and an even more terrible president. His period of rule was a disaster for all Americans, of all stripes. Not only did his radical leftist policies poison our government and the people who run it, his legacy of hate, which introduced slander as a standard debate and campaign tactic, led directly to the blacklist culture of today.
These facts were obvious prior to his election. No one wanted to pay attention, however, because it was time to prove American racism was dead by electing a black man, simply because of his race.
The illogic of this thinking baffled me then, as it baffles me now.
Robert Zimmerman
You wrote: “Gilbert’s problem is that he wishes to write a book to help ‘his’ community, rather than write a book to help ‘all’ communities.”
I see two reasons for that. Gilbert sees “his” community as not doing as well as the rest of America, and just as with the term “black lives matter,” the rest of the world is not as important to him as is “his community.” .
As he said: “I see issues within the communities of color that I have lived in most of life. And some of the issues are related to the same things that the right uses to attack these communities.”
He sees his friends as the fiends and the fiends as his friends. The Democratic Party has fooled him and “his people” for more than half a century, so it is understandable that he sees America this way. Unfortunately, he does not see that the Democrats have made promises all that time and has only created a dependence on that party, not an independent community resembling the other minority “communities” in America. Those other communities are much more self-sufficient, and this is why he believes that his can be, too. He is right about that, but he is wrong about how to go about it. Independence comes from freeing oneself from those you depend upon, so he needs to free himself from the Democratic Party.
He also said: “The real meaning of the term ‘Black Lives Matter’, is that many black people believe that their lives matter less than others.”
Right now, he believes that the right attacks his communities because the right thinks his communities matter less than others. Because he does not get out very often, seeing what the right really believes, he truly believes this. Here he is, out and about on your site, but he still interprets everything in the same old way. We are having a difficult time convincing him that we are on his side, much less that we alway have been. He sees whites as the same duplicitous Democrats that he has dealt with his entire life. They make promises of prosperity, then their actions prevent that prosperity. It looks like handouts are a good thing, maybe even deserved (for those who cannot get over the ills the Democrats foisted upon them in the past), but handouts only prevent the independence that self-reliance brings. This is why handouts are a Democratic Party policy.
He sees those who advocate for self-reliance as being the enemy, because self-reliance requires work. It is not free. It is not as easy as his “friends'” solution. Prosperity is not given, it is earned. The other communities have earned their success, their prosperity, but his took the Democratic bait and, generally, rely on others, not themselves.
The Movie “The Usual Suspects” said: “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” The next greatest trick was convincing the world that he was their friend. He got in some good practice with Eve, way back when. Now he exists in the form of the Democratic Party. Here we are, in the garden of prosperity, but the Devil convinced some people to eat at the apple of largess.
It took many millenniums to figure out how to be prosperous, and it was learned in Europe with the invention of capitalism. Placing that into a free market system resulted in the prosperity the dreaded Western World has today, the creation of vast amounts of wealth, which results in prosperity. Each person gets to keep the new wealth that he created — what he earns (except for taxes, which is why high taxes are bad) — so each person rises to his earned level of prosperity. Across entire communities, this results in vast amounts of prosperity. That prosperity is less if the earnings are withheld or taken.
The Democrats use a different economic system, redistribution of wealth. Rather than everyone creating prosperity, some people’s living depends upon taking the earnings of those who are productive. Fewer goods and services are available than if everyone were productive. Prosperity withers.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he can trade the excess for other goods or services. Everyone is better off when everyone is productive. More goods are available to go around, and more people can provide more services to those who produce goods. There isn’t a fixed amount of pie to share with all, as more pies can be baked, if only we have the people willing to bake them.
This is how communities succeed. This is how communities become prosperous.
We understand Gilbert’s points of view, we hear them every day, but he does not understand ours, as he rarely hears it. It is hard to impart that understanding, because he is so set in his ways that he does not desire this understanding. How can he and his community succeed if he and it are not willing to learn from the successful ones? How can they learn if they believe that education comes from the wrong people — the people who must be rejected and ignored?
You, Robert, also wrote: “The Enlightenment as well as the philosophies of Judeo-Christian western civilization were not written for ‘whites,’ or any particular race.”
Considering that the Judeo Christian civilization was created and written in the Middle East, it almost certainly was not written for “whites.” However, “whites” saw a good thing and embraced it.
“As for the election of Obama, too many Americans of all races voted for him for exactly the wrong reason”
Correct. Virtually every Democrat recommended him based solely on his skin color, from Tom Hanks to Joe Biden himself. He was not vetted as a president but solely as a black man. Biden didn’t think he was just any black man but the first who was clean and well spoken. Biden needs to get out more, because has always been a large number such black men and women. Thus, we ended up with someone with poor presidential abilities in favor of racial preferences.
The 2008 election was the most important election we will have in our lifetimes, and we lost. Now we live in a tyranny in which Gilbert has given up hope that outside help will arrive to create success for “his community.” And of course he gave up. Even a black president was unwilling to help from the inside, preferring increased racial tensions to successful black communities. What a great job the community organizer did for his people.
However, Gilbert’s despair is a good thing, because success does not come from the outside, not from the Democrats and not from the Republicans, but from the inside, from each individual doing his part to raise up the whole. With the lack of hope of outside influence, he can now begin to promote the hope and change that comes from within, and raise himself and his community to success and prosperity.
These are some of the concepts we have difficulty imparting onto Gilbert, as he prefers to argue with us rather than acknowledge any validity to our points of view. I can only hope that he understands them sooner rather than later. It would be good to have a book for success.
Robert Zimmerman
“Edward: Gilbert’s problem is that he wishes to write a book to help “his” community, rather than write a book to help “all” communities..”
Any book can be read by anyone, who then apply any principles in that book, to their lives. Case in point; The Bible, including both the Old and New Testaments. And I happen to believe that The Ten Commandments in the Bible are really a roadmap to community success. At least six of the ten, are related to community behaviors. Also the Bible has stories of the Hebrew nation, and their various struggles, including being enslaved. So my point is that trying keep black people from murdering one another, or anyone at all, by promoting positive mental states, could help anyone, even though it may address specific communities.
The Bible also has philosophical principles that apply to anyone. The most important of these is Love. I believe that too many people do not look at Love from the broad philosophical concept, that it is. One thing Jesus did was heal the sick, according scripture. He also told his disciple to go out and do likewise. And he also , on at least one occasion credited that healing to one’s inner believe system, or ‘faith’. Healing the sick, has little negative consequence to healthier people. It leads to things like increased productivity, for those who have been healed. .
Lastly, as an aside, many people worship Jesus, according defined doctrines such as, “The only begotten son of God”. I define that as doctrine. But I advocate principles, which require people to guide their thoughts and actions, towards positive goals/results. Principles are more or less universal and eternal, if one has understanding of their specific applications.
Robert Zimmermann
I don’t understanding why you spend so much time talking about Obama, when there is talk of ‘civil war’ these days. And I see the concept of ‘white nationalism’ to be a significant force in US politics today. I recently watched a video of a TED Talk presenter, that helped me define the issue of a new civil war, in the US. the presenter Barbara F Walter, studied modern civil war around the globe, and this helped me to to clarify the issue, as it relates to current US politics. And this helps also for me to explain Obama’s role in this as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yilgr2SJ3xQ
Walter’s basic premise on civil wars is that, it is the class that feels they are losing privilege’s, that fuels the war, not the class that some would call the ‘underclass’. One example she cites is Iraq. She states the civil war there was fuel by Sunnis who were losing influence that they had under Saddam Hussein. They were one of the main forces behind the rise of ISIS. I followed the conflict, and I believe this to be true. Many people think ISIS was all about it’s religion. But the Shiites they fought against were in reality also Muslims, who a different leadership structure. ISIS was all about being subservient to their caliph leader. Walter cited other examples, such as Yugoslavia, in her talk.
How does her premise relate to the US? Since 1989 republicans have only one the majority once in presidential elections. One of thier big constituencies are ‘social conservatives’, is my belief. This includes people, were for racial segregation in 1960’s. Many of them were democrats in the 60’s, but switched to republican under Reagan. Obama’s election was symbol to many; of the US being a pluralistic nation, with equal opportunities for everyone. But what this symbolized to others, was a loss of power and privilege to the white race. The FBI noted a large growth ‘white militia’ groups after the election of Obama. This phenomenon was a sign of whites feeling they losing power. This relates to this discussion of a new ‘civil war’, and an attack on our democracy itself, (such as J6th).
But here is an example: Certain people on the right embrace of Viktor Orban. He once said this:, in a 2018 speech; ” We must state that we do not want to be diverse and do not want to be mixed: we do not want our own colour, traditions and national culture to be mixed with those of others. We do not want this. We do not want that at all. We do not want to be a diverse country.”
Obama himself was a ‘diverse’ person, being biracial. I view his political career to mostly centrist than anything else. Especially in light of words of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Donald Trump. I plan on highlighting their words, to show what the real issues are today. And one is lies vs truth. Another is fear vs optimism. I myself, am not that optimistic in what I see, possible. One of Obama’s main campaign themes was, Hope. Like it or not, hope is really about having positive vision, whereas Trump projects darkness and fear, unless we accept him as god/God. A subtext of the idea of a US civil war, is a race war. But I think a more realistic result, would be placing as many black people as a permanent underclass, as possible.
Gilbert Zachary,
You wrote: “Any book can be read by anyone, who then apply any principles in that book, to their lives.”
Maybe, but then why do you want to write your own book rather than recommend The Bible to your intended readers? You earlier suggested that some books may not be well received:
“But this message is more effective coming from voices within the community, and examples from within the community. I took a little time to examine this site’s owner, Robert Zimmerman’s writings about slavery. He does have some credible views, about the larger context of slavery in the US. But I doubt that his views will have a large impact on communities of color. Some in ‘the hood’, may just take it just another white man telling people what best for them. I say that it needs to come from within the individual making a person choice. Then that choice, to let go of slavery will be a tool of self empowerment.”
The Bible, your case in point, is thought by many to be from western culture, not from the Middle East (King James’ interpretation is popular, so let’s blame him for “westernizing” it). Will it have much impact on people in communities of color who do not already accept its teachings? In 2012, the Democratic National Convention had a difficult time getting the Democrat delegates to agree to religion as a Democratic value; the leadership had to misinterpret a voice vote that was clearly a loud nay.
“Principles are more or less universal and eternal, if one has understanding of their specific applications.”
Not necessarily. Some cultures have very different principles. We don’t all have the same goals, where the differences are only on how to achieve them. Evil does exist in the world, and it is a mistake to think otherwise. Evil has different principles, not just different goals.
The principles of Marxism differ greatly from those of free market capitalism. One has principles of communal ownership, central decisions on production, and central decision of the price set on the product. The other has principles of personal ownership and personal choice of what to produce, personal choice of business partners, and personal choice of the price set on the product. One reacts slowly to market changes, and the other reacts swiftly. The behaviors of the people living under each of these systems differ greatly. In one, the people tend to do minimal work, and in the other the people tend to be more productive. The principles are different, the values are different, the incentives are different, the resulting behavior is different. “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.” In this principle of equity, each gets the same no matter how little he works.* In a meritocracy, the principle is that the hard workers and the smart workers keep what they earn; more work and better work are rewarded.** Different principles, different results.
prin·ci·ple | ˈprinsəpəl |
noun
1. a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning: the basic principles of Christianity.
The principles of Genghis Khan (“ruler of all”) and Hitler were similar (rule the world) but were not universal, as they differ from the United States (liberty). Democrat/progressive principles (the government has power over the populace/the populace fears the government) differ from Republican/conservative principles (the populace has power over the government/the government fears the populace). The Democratic Party was founded to defend the institution of slavery, really and truly, and now that this is no longer possible, it exists to perpetuate racism, even if it has to do it so subtly that few people recognize it for what it is. The Republican Party was founded to end the institution of slavery, really and truly, and once that was accomplished, it worked to preserve freedom and liberty. Now that it has lost that battle (e.g. most recently, the New Mexico governor having dictatorially suspended the Second Amendment, and several years ago the Republican Party allowed Obamacare, not ourselves, to rule our medical decisions), the Republican Party is adrift, bereft of purpose, unwilling to do what it takes to regain the principles it was founded to protect.
The Republican Party no longer has the principles to rescue you from the Democratic Party (principles are not eternal), again, but the Democrats still have the principles to prevent your prosperity and to make the government more powerful than you.
______________________
* This is only fair,*** right? Everyone gets the same. It is an equality of results.
** This is only fair,*** right? Everyone keeps what he earns, the fruit of his own labor. It is an equality of opportunity.
*** What is fair? Is it fair that one person does all the work and the other sits around and plays X-Box all day? Is it fair that one person has more and another person has less? Is it fair that both people have X-Boxes, but only one has the time to play his? Is it fair that I make you read long philosophical rants about principles and fairness but reach no conclusions about what fairness is? Maybe I would have had better conclusions if I had been a philosophy major. Unless they train philosophers only to ask questions, not to provide the answers, which would explain why we still have so many questions and so many different non-answers to each question.
Gilbert Zachery wrote, “I don’t understanding why you spend so much time talking about Obama, when there is talk of ‘civil war’ these days.”
Um, I think you are confusing me with the commentator Edward. I don’t talk about Obama that much, though I readily admit that I believe he was a terrible president who did great harm to the nation.
I’ll talk obama briefly, and I like it when Edward reminds us all:
He and his ilk are running the Country and have been doing so for a long time.
None of these even approaches ending, as long as obama is walking around free.
Edward
Lots of misunderstanding here as usual. Mr Zimmerman made a comment that I should address my proposed book for everyone instead. My point was, that the Bible’s Old Testament was written about one group of people, Hebrews, aka Jews. But people around the world have read the Books and used them as examples of human behaviors, and consequences of actions.
And I still argue that principles are generally eternal, and can be used by anyone, if they choose. I don’t like what Hitler did to the world. But tools that he used can still be used by anyone who chooses to do so. Proof of this is that many people label the claims of a stolen 2020 presidential election as “The Big Lie”. There are other uses for the word ‘principle’, however.
Robert Zimmerman
I want to understand. Are these your words? ” his legacy of hate, which introduced slander as a standard debate and campaign tactic, led directly to the blacklist culture of today.” Or if not your words, could you still cite an example?
Aren’t these your words? : “No one wanted to pay attention, however, because it was time to prove American racism was dead by electing a black man, simply because of his race.
The illogic of this thinking baffled me then, as it baffles me now.”
My clues as to why you are baffled is; why did Bill Clinton win two terms, and why did Biden get 70 million votes to win the 2020 election? And even though they lost the electoral college Hillary, Al Gore still won the popular vote. None of them are black. I could also throw in FDR, winning four terms. I’ll cite one factor: That is the democratic party’s support of labor unions. It attracts working class people of all races. The republican’s support of ‘right to work’ laws is seen by many to be anti union and thus anti working class. Reagan firing of the air traffic controllers, has been seen by many as an opening to the decade long attacks on labor rights. I have lived practically all my life of 70+ years living in communities that are considered working class. And 60 of those years were in communities that were predominantly black. And consider that blacks voted over 90% in favor of Bill Clinton, who is not black. I know that Edward may get on here and cite the 1994 crime bill. But I can place that into a larger context. Democrats were trying to out republican, republican’s who had been successful with thier anti-crime themes in 1988. Making Obama’s election only about race is a very narrow view, in my opinion.
I understand republican claim to be ‘job creators’, but there many people that don’t believe that is the real reality. Trump’s major tax cut was an example. It was reported that corporations spend 90% of their tax cut savings on stock buybacks..
Lastly, I have found remarks made in Edward’s conversation here with you to be very condescending. For example, a remark he made that I could not understand his, and your positions in these discussions. One major example is him claiming to know the true motivations of ‘democrats’, when I have participated in democratic campaign activities, on a local level as a teen. And I have voted in elections for 50 years, mostly as a democrat. And I have spent a great deal of time consuming politics. I have a BA degree in Sociology, and 47 years of life experience after getting that degree. . So if Edward and you can define what being a democrat is about, and I, a life long cannot, it means that I am considered an inferior, here on this discussion board. Like I only supposed to be here to take instruction from my benevolent ‘masters’.
Gilbert Zachery: First, you need to develop a thicker skin. In any intellectual debate, people will strongly disagree. You may be right, they may be right, you may be wrong, they may be wrong. It is very difficult for anyone to say anything that will offend me — unless they descend to simple insults, something you clearly do not do. Even Edward, at his most sarcastic, doesn’t come close to that. You should not let yourself get offended so easily.
Having said that, your comment here once again suggests you aren’t reading what I write as close as you should. For example, you wrote:
Under the words “legacy of hate” was a link to an essay I wrote on the subject back in 2019, detailing at great length with actual examples of how “slander as a standard debate and campaign tactic” was allowed to fester and prosper during Obama’s term. I never write anything without backing up what I say with facts. You want examples, go and read that essay.
Putting this disagreement aside, in reading your comments I find we really have a lot in common. I still don’t know if you have actually read “Conscious Choice”, but your references to the standards provided by the Bible match with my conclusions there (spoken as a secular man).
Our one difference is what to me seems to be your obsession with race, something that really is beyond my understanding. I take people by what they do. Their skin color is really just an aspect of their countenance. Some people have big noses, others small. Some have blue eyes, others brown. Some are dark-skinned, others fair. Who cares?
What I write I write for everyone. If they reject my work because of my skin color, then they are the bigots, not me.
For example, to me Obama’s race was and remains entirely irrelevant to my poor opinion of him. And as for his election, my complaint had to do with the many people who voted for him because of his race, many I knew personally (my many liberal Jewish relatives), many I listened and watched in the media, and many others who I ran across on a day-to-day basis in 2008. Many whites wanted so much to elect a black man to atone for slavery, while many blacks so much wanted to get a black man as a president, just because he was black. Such thinking is mindless, bigoted, and guaranteed to lead to disaster, especially because a careful review of Obama the man, his background, his beliefs, his career, and his goals, clearly showed he would be poor president who would foster ill will on many sides.
Finally, you spend a great deal of time describing why you have voted Democrat in the past. None of that matters now. The Democratic Party of 1990 or even 2008 no longer exists. What it is now is a party of power-hungry politicians out to oppress anyone who disagrees with them. And once again, that isn’t my opinion, that is simple fact, documented daily by that party’s own actions. My blacklist column alone proves it. I try to write about all forms of oppression by both sides, and if you search it thoroughly, you will find a handful of examples where I lambast the right for bad behavior.
The problem is those examples are rare. The vast majority of oppressive blacklisting and censorship now comes from the left, and from the modern Democratic Party. If you are unwilling to see this then you are simply what I like to call “a good German,” willing to look the other way while people you support do bad things. To vote for any Democrat today is allowing evil to be done, in your name.
I am not being condescending. I am desperately trying, with all my heart, to make you realize these facts, if only to prevent that evil from growing even more so.
Gilbert Zachary,
You wrote: “Robert Zimmermann
“I don’t understanding why you spend so much time talking about Obama, when there is talk of ‘civil war’ these days.”
Robert Zimmerman replied: “Um, I think you are confusing me with the commentator Edward.”
In your very first comment in this thread, Gilbert, you were not worried about civil war or the talk thereof, but you complained that Obama was being mistreated, although you failed to give examples of what was wrong with the statement. You were willing to blame “right wing militias” for all the ills of Obama’s fundamentally transformed America, despite Obama’s promise to fundamentally transform America. Again, you failed to give examples of how these groups did what Obama actually did.
“ 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.”
( https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/the-shift-away-from-government-schools-at-all-levels-might-be-accelerating/#comment-1398319 )
Obama did as he promised, and turned America into such a bad place that Black Lives Matter was founded to complain about the transformation. That group and their philosophy were not needed before Obama, but it was deemed necessary during his second term in office.
“… when there is talk of ‘civil war’ these days.”
What changed in the past six months? You were not concerned about a coming civil war back in March. You had been concerned about poor education, also a feature of Obama’s fundamentally transformed America (the three Rs: reading, ’riting, ’rithmetic being replaced with the two Rs: racism and racy-ism). Since the Democrats have been in charge of education (especially through the school unions) for the past several decades, “right wing militias” are not the source of the poor American education system. Democrats have changed the specific techniques of education in this nation. They are the root cause of the degradation of America’s education system.
Why are there only “right wing militias?” What about the actual violent natures of BLM and AntiFA? They actually go around being violent in a militia sort of way, shooting police officers, throwing Molotov Cocktails, and attacking federal buildings. Why don’t you think that these left with militias are bad? They do actual damage, not imaginary damage.
“Walter’s basic premise on civil wars is that, it is the class that feels they are losing privilege’s, that fuels the war, not the class that some would call the ‘underclass’.”
Since the white Democrats are the ones in power, they are the ones who are threatened with losing power, which explains all the unconstitutional treatments they are performing on their primary rival, Trump. Their tyrannical behavior is not justified by a mere hatred of their rival; they have hated every Republican for several decades without such massive governmental attacks. The proper thing for them to do is not to act like the tyrants that Obama changed American government into but to tell the truth in an attempt to convince Americans why Democratic Party tyranny is preferred to Republican Party liberty. Rather than send the FBI to intimidate the news media and social media to toe the Democratic Party line, the U.S. government should not take sides in politics and should allow and encourage free speech and free debate, both necessary for republics and democracies.
Instead, Obama encouraged the U.S. government to reward his friends and punish his enemies, and the people in government responded, as we saw with the IRS’s hostility toward conservative groups, the National Intelligence Agencies spying on Trump for the Democrats, the FBI blindsiding General Micheal Flynn and many others, the Department of (In)Justice persecuting Trump and anyone associated with him while letting Democrat felons go un-indicted, the Capital Police inviting people into the Capital Building then shooting and arresting them, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board declaring any conservative opinions as disinformation.
Who is the underclass? It is the one that the Democrats are targeting: conservatives. They are the ones being cancelled. They are the ones being fired from their jobs. They are the ones that Democrats are calling for arrest, conviction, and the death penalty. They are the ones invited into the Capitol Building only to be shot to death or arrested and imprisoned for following the direction of the Capitol Police. Meanwhile, the DC Police are unwilling to find the guy who planted bombs at both the Republican and Democratic headquarters in DC. Be invited to tour the Capitol: prison. Plant bombs at occupied offices: not even a search.
However, when you mentioned this talk of civil war, last month, I responded. You had asked:
“Why is the word ‘civil war’ being used with increasing frequency in our nation?”
I responded:
“For the obvious reason, which I have been telling you throughout this thread. Obama created a huge schism, and you are one of the ones who fell for it. It is about you as well as the others who fell for Obama’s treachery. Many people have come to realize that we cannot get out of Obama’s mess with political action, and they are not creative enough to think of another way, except for civil war, even if it is a social war, not an armed conflict. Many of those whom I hear use the word ‘civil war’ say that we are already in one, one of the societal kind, a clash of conflicting cultures. They also say that your side of this supposed war has been in the fight for decades, which is why the other side is losing so badly.”
Me spending time talking about Obama is because he is the root cause of you hearing “talk of ‘civil war’ these days.” This is the fundamental transformation of America, the loss of liberty and the sudden rise in tyranny. It isn’t one “class that feels they are losing privilege’s.” Black Lives Matter was created because people felt that they were losing the power that they had gained over the decades from 1965 to 2009. It is why they had their own form of civil war, their own form of insurrection, in the summer of 2020.
To solve a problem, it is necessary to find the root cause of the problem, otherwise you may solve a symptom only to find the disease remains. Thus it is important to discuss Obama and examine what he did and how he transformed America, how he caused blacks to become so upset that BLM was formed. If your book is to do as you hope, then these have to be corrected so that communities can be successful. They cannot succeed if they are trying to fix the wrong problems, and they will misspend resources that they desperately need. This misspending of resources is what has caused them such problems for the past fifteen years. The misdirected energy has taken them farther from success and prosperity, not closer. This is misdirection is why you feel compelled to write your book.
“Obama himself was a ‘diverse’ person, being biracial.”
He may have been diverse, but neither he nor the Democratic Party considered him anything other than black. He is still advertised as our first black president, not our first biracial president or first diverse president.
“One of Obama’s main campaign themes was, Hope.”
That may have been a theme, but his presidency resulted in hopelessness. That is why BLM was formed. Rather than a post racial America, within six months we had a greater schism between the races than we had had in decades.
“Like it or not, hope is really about having positive vision, whereas Trump projects darkness and fear, unless we accept him as god/God.”
No. Trump did not project these things, they were inferred by those who are hateful* and had been so badly affected by Obama’s fundamental transformation of America, which the Democrats clearly have successfully blamed on “right wing militias,” diverting attention from Obama’s transformation of America. When I say that you have fallen for Democrat deceit, this is one of the tricks you fell for. Trump is to Democrats and blacks what Jews were to the Nazis.
Speaking of gods, it was Obama who had haloes drawn over his head by the news media. Did Trump? If not, then why would you think anyone accepts him as god/God?
“A subtext of the idea of a US civil war, is a race war.”
Another inference. The idea of a U.S. civil war I have heard is between blue states and Red states, between progressives and conservatives, not between the races. I don’t know why there would be a race-based civil war. Maybe a race war is a goal of Obama, BLM, and the Democratic Party, which would explain why they have been so divisive rather than unifying.
Ah. Looking at a race war from the point of view of the racist Democrats, I see why you believe the subtext is a race war. It is what the Democrats want.
The much greater numbers of one race is most likely to overwhelm the other, ultimately decimating the smaller race, which has been a goal of the Democrats ever since the 19th century war between the states. Add to that the Democrats’ policy of segregation, and we see that clustering the second race into groups makes targeting them in large numbers becomes easy. Convincing blacks to be Democrats, and therefor afraid of guns, results in a virtually defenseless black population in easy to find, easy to target self-segregated neighborhoods (sometimes called “the hood”). Since Democrats have convinced the black population that it is Republicans and conservatives that are the racists, the Democrats obviously plan to be able to perform a surprise attack, using its armed government agencies and departments as its army. The best part of this plan is that blacks are now trained to hate the Democrats’ other enemies.
All the Democrats have to do is start a race war, making it look like whites (rather than Democrats) started it so when blacks fight back — or better yet, are convinced to start the war — the blacks reduce the number of white members of Republicans and conservatives, not the number of Democrats. It is win-win for the white Democrats and lose-lose for blacks, Republicans, and conservatives. The Democratic Party secures its power forever after, and everyone blames someone other than the Democrats by using Barbara F Walter’s basic premise to point the finger. The way she phrased things shows that she is definitely Democrat. So, Democrats convince blacks that a race war is coming, and that is what blacks prepare for. Democrats convince Republicans and conservatives that a blue v. red civil war is coming, and that is what they expect, so when the tottering, senile, white Democrat leadership finally starts the war, everyone but them are surprised at who are the combatants. No wonder the senile Democrats won’t retire: they are the ones who intend to get the race war started, it is their plan, so they need to stay in power until the time is right.
The Democrats have been plotting such a civil war (this time a race war) for a long time (“the South shall rise again!”), and the conditions for them to win it, this time, are getting closer. Congratulations, Gilbert. You chose the wrong political party to be your friend.
________________
* Hate of all things Trump. Always remember: Orange man bad!
Gilbert,
It is refreshing to have this discussion with you. It is difficult to have discussions with many Democrats, liberals, and other left-leaning people.
You wrote: “I understand republican claim to be ‘job creators’, but there many people that don’t believe that is the real reality. Trump’s major tax cut was an example. It was reported that corporations spend 90% of their tax cut savings on stock buybacks.”
And the other 10% on creating jobs.
But, wait! They are buying back their own stock, yes, but they buy it from people who invest, which means that those investors now have cash that they can invest in companies that are creating jobs, smaller companies that can now expand. In fact, investors often prefer growing companies, the types of companies that would sell their stock to raise expansion capital, rather than buy stock in stalwart companies, the types of companies that would buy back their own stock. That is where the most growth and potential for increasing the value of their stock. Stalwarts are excellent for widows and orphans, because they tend to be stable and safe and provide good dividends to live on.
The economy is not a zero sum equation, as many believe is the real reality. It isn’t just a single pie, where only those who get a part of that pie get any pie at all. Additional pies are baked by the investors who sold their stock to the companies who were buying it back.
By the way, those stalwart companies may need to sell that stock in the future in order to improve their businesses, perhaps to expand and hire more people; they just weren’t in a position to do it when the taxes decreased. They may not have been prepared for the Trump economy, thinking that it would remain a Democratic Party economy, like it is today.
Look how much better the economy got when the taxes were reduced. Look how much additional taxes the government received when the companies bought back their stocks, trades happen that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, and taxes collected that wouldn’t have been collected otherwise.
Meanwhile, the additional pies are now available for all to enjoy. When taxes are high, there is less available cash to spend on the products that are the reason for the jobs in the first place. Once taxes are lower, even the individual taxpayer has more money to spend on the products that create jobs. For the economy, zero taxes would be best, and the job creation would be at a maximum. For the economy, high taxes are bad, because after paying the rent there is little left over to buy goods and services.
Gilbert,
You wrote:
“So if Edward and you [Robert] can define what being a democrat is about, and I, a life long cannot, it means that I am considered an inferior, here on this discussion board. Like I only supposed to be here to take instruction from my benevolent ‘masters’.”
That is a non sequitur. The conclusion does not follow from the premise. Being in a position that does not allow for self analysis does not make someone inferior, it just makes him not in a position that allows for self analysis. Besides, Trump is unable to describe what conservatism is.
I’m not sure that we talked about “what being a Democrat is about” as much as we discussed Democrat policy.
Robert and I get a larger viewpoint. We are outside the Democratic Party, so we see it from the viewpoint of outsiders. We understand other viewpoints, so we can easily compare.
“Like I only supposed to be here to take instruction from my benevolent ‘masters’.”
* Sigh* Well, unfortunately, I called that one right.
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/the-shift-away-from-government-schools-at-all-levels-might-be-accelerating/#comment-1426260
I wrote:
“Right now, he [Gilbert] believes that the right attacks his communities because the right thinks his communities matter less than others. Because he does not get out very often, seeing what the right really believes, he truly believes this. Here he is, out and about on your site, but he still interprets everything in the same old way.”
I also wrote:
“We understand Gilbert’s points of view, we hear them every day, but he does not understand ours, as he rarely hears it. It is hard to impart that understanding, because he is so set in his ways that he does not desire this understanding. How can he and his community succeed if he and it are not willing to learn from the successful ones? How can they learn if they believe that education comes from the wrong people — the people who must be rejected and ignored?”
Come to think of it, Gilbert, the view you get of conservatism is what the Democrats tell you it is, not what it really is. You haven’t tried to tell us what you think it is, but my point is that your view is obscured by those around you.
In addition, I wrote:
“We both have been making suggestions about how Gilbert may be able to assure that his proposed book does what he wants, but I get the impression that he isn’t taking us seriously. It is almost as though he feels the way he said: ‘Some in “the hood”, may just take it just another white man telling people what best for them.‘ Presenting our point of view, a different point of view, seems futile, interpreted as white supremacists telling people what is best for them. He is not listening, not receptive, to anything he does not already believe.”
So, disappointingly, I was right. As you said yourself, this discussion has made you feel as though you are: “supposed to be here to take instruction from my benevolent ‘masters’.”
We have given recommendations for your book from a point of view that is not your own, yet you interpreted these suggestions in the same old way: as instruction, and you interpreted our intentions as wanting to be your “benevolent ‘masters’.”
I understand you better than you think. You are not the first person that I have had similar discussions with, but I suspect you have not had discussions like these as many times as I have.
You see, Gilbert, Robert and I live deep inside Democrat culture. No one in America can get away from it without isolating themselves from American culture. It permeates our schools, our entertainment (now it is even in our sports), our news, social media, workplaces, and even our hobbies and clubs. We talk to people like you all the time. The difference is that you are immersed within Democrat culture, and you don’t get other points of view very often. Robert and I — and other conservatives here — talk to liberals and Democrats all the time. We understand them very well. We cannot help but understand their viewpoints, but we can disagree with those viewpoints. We can present reasons for our disagreement.
This does not mean you are inferior; it means your view is limited by those around you. Specifically: Democrats. They want you to think a certain way, and they insist that you do.* Anyone who doesn’t, even Democrats, gets cancelled. Just ask Rosanne Barr, whose television show was literally cancelled because she spouted the previous month’s politically correct opinion, not that month’s. The employees of her show suffered, too. For Democrats, keeping up with the latest PC positions is literally worth your job.
Many of the white Democrats around you may subtly treat you as inferior, subconsciously they may think so, because they are Democrats, trained to think in terms of the color of a man’s skin, not the content of his character. This means that they necessarily judge blacks one way and whites another way, otherwise skin color would not matter. Even Obama declared that whites are racist due solely to their skin color (although I do not know what shade allows someone to not be racist). When the content of one’s character is the defining measure, we can judge Hitler and Pol Pot one way and Lincoln and Mandela another way.
I had hoped that you would be receptive to other viewpoints, but instead you proved to be set in your own views and not open to consider others. I didn’t really expect you to be receptive, because arguing the facts, logic, and reason have not had good results with other Democrats. Democrats cling to emotion, to what they think the world should be like, explaining why gender is considered to be a choice, not determined by birth or genetics. It is very difficult to convince emotional people that the real world is not like that.
The racism, subtle that it is, that you experience from the whites in the Democratic Party is not shared by conservatives. We do not make skin color our measure of a man. We depend upon a man’s character. Your character has been molded by the racists in the Democratic Party, so you see everyone from that viewpoint. When Robert and I present another viewpoint, you see it as us trying to be benevolent masters, as your fellow Democrats treat you. It is difficult to overcome experiences. We all learn from them, and you have learned from them, too. You assume that all whites are like the whites in the Democratic Party. That is only natural. I really don’t know how to convince you that conservatives took King’s words to heart, because you live in a world where everyone does the opposite.
Keep in mind that Martin Luther King was a Republican and that it was his fellow Republicans who marched with him, even as the Democrats were so very opposed to him. No wonder the Democrats do the exact opposite of his dream.
It is a pleasure to have this discussion with you. Too many people who lean to the left are difficult to have reasonable discussions with. It is why I hold out hope that you will eventually at least consider the viewpoints that Robert and I, and some others, have presented in this thread. I believe that they will improve your book, as successful communities tend to be the ones that lean toward the right of center on the political spectrum. I believe that it is important for you to understand why and how they are successful in order for your book to succeed in its purpose. You may have to speak emotionally to your intended audience, but the fact is that the methods and philosophies of the successful communities are important to their success.
_____________________
* What was it Biden said about blacks who didn’t vote for him?
https://news.yahoo.com/opinion-biden-says-youre-black-210325801.html
Oh, look! Carla Hall, whoever she may be, agrees.
Robert Zimmerman
I do thank you and Edward for responding to my posts. Your 9-14, in particular, seems to be for the purpose of calming the conversation down, for the purpose of communication. i\
“your obsession with race, something that really is beyond my understanding. I take people by what they do. “. Yes this is a good view. But I see some ‘dark forces gathering, on the right, that are fascist leaning, that also could be called ‘white nationalism. And this appears to be a multinational, phenomenon. In my view critiquing Obama distracting from what is going on today. We are still trying to deal with resolving the violent attack on our democracy. The stolen election idea is like injecting poison. But more so at this very moment. And it’s not just about Trump. I look at the right wing talk, over the attack of Nancy Pelosi”s husband. But they make no connection to Marge Taylor-Greene, doing a commercial starting with Nancy”s name, and then firing a 50 caliber automatic gun.
And a part of this come from a perceived loss of power, in direct reaction to Obama simply being black. Every black person, in America, agrees with this, except Tim White. lol! The was a large increase in the number militias starting operations, in various parts of the country. This was documented by the FBI. And now they have drawn hate, for simply documenting potential violence, etc. Speaking more directly about your view of Obama, I want to point our that in only presidential election in the last 30 years, only one time did their total votes was greater than the democratic one. So were are talking about 1-of-8, popular wins. Two of those were the black guy. So the over five were white guy wins. Or another way to put it, is that 45 white guys who weren’t black, have won the presidency.
But deep inside, I have a fear of what could be happen here in this nation. I think there are future outcomes that make black people, permanent underclass, and that genocide of substantial numbers of blacks is not off the table. I leave you with this: Around Dec 2020 Margorie Taylor-Greene speaking before, a seemingly. all white crowd. Said; “Democrats want you dead; and the killing has already started.” That statement in a perfect example of the term, “screaming bloody murder”. I take note of things like people getting caught attacking a larger electric power suppliers, as a sign of that destructive mindset Or that Buffalo mass shooter, and the Synagogue attack. etc.
The las paragraph got deleted., I’m going to send this, anyway.
Gilbert Zachery: That you send this comment this week, even as Hamas — strongly supported by the left worldwide — is slaughtering innocent women and children, including decapitating babies, makes me think this discussion is truly pointless.
For you to worry now about a “dark forces gathering, on the right, that are fascist leaning, that also could be called white nationalism” is more than absurd, it is blind to actual reality. It is not the right that is killing babies. And it is not the right but leftist and Marxist organizations like BLM that are either applauding this slaughter or making excuses for it.
If you fear the rise of white race hatred you are not doing anything really to stop it. Instead, your willingness to look the other way, to make believe your side is doing nothing wrong, is exactly what might be fueling its rise.
Furthermore, your incessant obsession with race sickens me. You can’t seem to put this aside and look at people as people. This too is going to fuel a race war, because if the only thing that matters is race, than others are going to take your advice and make race the most important thing to them.
And I once again note: You accuse whites of being racist, and have the gall to use opposition to Obama as proof. Yet, he a black man and was elected by a nation made up almost 90% by whites. Your logic is thus beyond thoughtless. It is so focused on race that as it searches madly for reasons to accuse others of racism, it only ends up proving the most racist person in this conversation is you.
*Gilbert Zachary*
How many black militias were formed in the last few years?
Your misinterpretation and myopic view about what the degrees of political discourse, from the oh so very civilized discourse within our governing bodies, to the extreme expression of discontent with politics and government in the streets, either by the Left OR the Right.
From political junk yard dogs like MTG, to the ridiculous “Democrat Socialist” AOC, their having their say and what they support is a part of the process.
And it seems that you are the bigger racist, as are most Liberal Democrats worship at the altar of MESSNBC, CNN and the like.
Our system is built for contention, it is structured by the Constitution exactly for it, and the purpose of the contention in all of the ways that it is expressed is for one primary reason………………………….so that over time the public, the citizens that must cast their vote and direct THEIR country will have some measure of truth with which to do so.
And what happens when those who become empowered within the political parties deny the people the measure of truth by obfuscation and strings of out and out lies?
You have projected weakness as in what we are all witness to regarding the Potemkin Joe Biden administration as those who take their strategic advantage from the weakness and the lies that those who are politically empowered use to retain their power.
Are you really paying attention?
Q: Do you know who Ray Epps is before spouting off about Jan 6th? Don’t be a tool!
Edward September 1, 2023 at 3:48 pm
“* May we use the words “bigger,” “digger”, “jigger”, “trigger”, or “vigor?” What about Disney’s “Tigger” character?”
If is using any of these terms to refer to black person, and it has no real meaning or context, then it can be taken as likely/possibly a racist implications.
As of late, in social media posts Trump has been using the the word “peekaboo” , as an adjective describing the NY State Attorney General Leticia James. What does this have to do with the case she filed against, now underway? The most likely meaning, is the word’s close sounding the the racial insult term “jigaboo”. You may are may not be familiar with the term.
“Slang: Extremely Disparaging and Offensive. a contemptuous term used to refer to a Black person. ”
Trump’s social posts, news which go to his state of mind. The post are exposed to perhaps millions people, due to media attention, along with his direct followers. You cannot say, than none of these people will get the racist implication of that word, associated with the NY State AG.
Changing the subject; your posts are just too long for me to adequately respond. In one instance, I did ask you to respond to a specific point, in an attempt to narrow the focus of the discussion.
Cotour October 11, 2023 at 3:37 pm
I don’t get the point of you calling me “racist”? I’m a human being, who has a right to form opinions. I worship, the God of the Bible, and other religions which recognizes It (God), as a force, which is greater than individual humans. One of the characteristics of God is that of Truth, in my understanding/definition. Of the major media out their, which one was successfully sued for 780 million dollars.? I think that it was OAN that settled out of court. But more important than money, is the damage, caused by the ‘stolen election’. That lie was/is poison to the American psyche. There is no documentation of 2020 election results, that would have changed the winner outcome in any state. It will be three years ago, in less than month.
By the way, you appear to be way behind on the Ray Epps saga. Peace, out! As some of my people used to say.
https://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/bible-verses-about-truth/
Cotour October 11, 2023 at 3:37 pm
I don’t get the point of you calling me “racist”? I’m a human being, who has a right to form opinions. I worship, the God of the Bible, and other religions which recognizes It (God), as a force, which is greater than individual humans. One of the characteristics of God is that of Truth, in my understanding/definition. Of the major media out their, which one was successfully sued for 780 million dollars.? I think that it was OAN that settled out of court. But more important than money, is the damage, caused by the ‘stolen election’. That lie was/is poison to the American psyche. There is no documentation of 2020 election results, that would have changed the winner outcome in any state. It will be three years ago, in less than month.
By the way, you appear to be way behind on the Ray Epps saga. Peace, out! As some of my people used to say.
https://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/bible-verses-about-truth/
Philosophically, we all decide was is true in many ways. What many do not understand, is that there is always a greater truth than what we see, or know. The way I like to phrase is “greater truth”. So instead of labeling me as ‘racist’, cannot you see me as, just a person with life experiences different from you? Some of them were even funny.
Gilbert Zachary,
You wrote: “If is using any of these terms to refer to black person, and it has no real meaning or context, then it can be taken as likely/possibly a racist implications.”
I guess that is the question, then. Do any of those words fit your requirements? If so, which ones? I may need a full list of words to avoid. You choose arbitrary words based upon rhyming quality, rhyming with other difficult to predict arbitrary words. Thus, the list of usable words is limited to some unknown (unknowable?) subset of the English language. It was bad enough when it was words rhyming with a word so bad it may not be used at all (except by certain privileged people), now it is any word that rhymes with any word that you find even mildly offensive.
The problem is that during the period of your life that you are so eager to demonize someone that you fabricate new meanings for words in order to call your nemesis a racist, you are not in a state of mind to create successful communities. A successful community must get along not only with itself but with the other communities around it.
The NY State AG fabricated a crime in order to honor her pledge to get a specific citizen — a sign not only of a corrupt politician and a corrupt government but also of a tyranny: show me the man and I will show you the crime. No one complained of a crime, and no one was victimized. From out of nowhere, a sudden revelation of a crime that never happened. Peekaboo! You made a similar fabrication in order to do the same kind of thing to Trump. He must be a racist, because a word he used rhymes with a word that offends you. Offense == racism.
A successful community is a free community, not a tyranny. In a tyranny, only the tyrant can succeed, all others in the community are subjugated.
“You cannot say, than none of these people will get the racist implication of that word, associated with the NY State AG.”
I definitely cannot say so, because I know of one, but only one, who did. So, how racist can it be if only one person believes that it has a racist implication. The word comes from the game that adults play with infants, where a sudden revelation of the adult’s face is the point of the game. Peekaboo! Can we even play that game anymore? Is saying “cootchy coo” to an infant also now forbidden because it is close to another offensive word? (Actually, close to two offensive words, but only one is race related.)
The NY State Attorney General has obviously done wrong, and everyone knows it. She ran on the platform that she would find some way to get Trump, and that is what she did, fabricating a crime that hadn’t been committed. In a free nation, law enforcement investigates crimes to find the person responsible. In a tyranny, law enforcement investigates the disliked person to find a crime. Who was it that said, ‘show me the man, and I will show you the crime?’ That Attorney General did exactly that, even though she had to fabricate the crime. New York State government has decided to punish Trump for disagreeing with the Democratic Party. Government has taken sides in politics, and everyone knows it.
If Trump’s social posts demonstrate his state of mind, then your comments must demonstrate yours, right? You continue to point to words that rhyme with other words that offend you, and that seems to be your proof that the person who uses the non-offensive rhyming word is a bad person, even a racist person. What do you suppose that says about your own state of mind? You are quick to judge, especially when it comes to racial issues, and you are willing to twist reality to prove your point.
If you have to convolute and twist words in order to prove someone is racist, then how racist can he really be? What do you suppose all that effort on your part says about your own state of mind? Cannot a human being who has a right to form opinions and worships the God of the Bible also be a racist, disparaging the white guy just because he disagrees with him?
This reminds me of a time when a reporter asked Oprah Winfrey to tell of a time she was a victim of racism. She told of a trip to a high-end Paris store and asked how much a purse was, and the clerk said that she couldn’t afford it. Not only did Oprah assume that the clerk was racist, rather than assuming her American clothing was the tell, but Americans are so racist that she had to go across the Atlantic and all the way to Paris France in order to experience what she could manipulate in her own mind to be racism. I think you are doing something similar to Trump. You can’t find an example of real racism, so you invent the crime.
Exactly what Leticia James did. She couldn’t find a real crime, so she fabricated one.
Why isn’t believing in a stolen election a valid viewpoint? The Democratic Party insisted that the 2000 election was stolen despite a complete lack of evidence, yet that is a valid viewpoint to this day — the Democrats even tried to overturn the election by recounting over and over until enough votes could be found, yet that is deemed to be a valid way to win an election — when Democrats do it. The Democratic Party insisted that the 2004 election was stolen despite a complete lack of evidence, yet that, too, is a valid viewpoint to this day. The Democratic Party insisted that the 2016 election was stolen, yet that is a valid viewpoint to this day despite a complete lack of evidence and boatloads of evidence that not only did the Democrats try to steal it from Trump but that the FBI also helped Hillary Clinton in her attempt — the Democrats literally tried to overturn the election twice: during the Electors’s vote as well as during the House proceedings. Trump only claimed that the 2020 election was [form of rhyming bad word]-ed, and Time Magazine printed an article on how the American press did its part to [ibid.] the election, and we later learned how the FBI recruited the American social media companies to do their part, too. But that isn’t a valid viewpoint — so invalid that just to use the verb is deemed racist and boils your blood so badly that you needed Robert to calm the discussion.
The day after the 2020 election we learned that the press and the watchers in several places were told to go home because counting was done for the night, but then the counting continued; there is only one possible reason for the people counting the votes to do so unsupervised. A couple of days later, we saw security video of one of those counting places. They had ballots hidden away from the press and from the watchers and then counted them in secret. There is only one reason to hide ballots from the watchers, and there is only one reason to count in secret.
A year and a half later, video was released of Democrats literally stuffing ballot boxes; there is only one possible reason for a political party to stuff the ballot box. It looks for all the world that a massive, widespread election fraud was perpetrated in 2020, yet despite all the evidence, you consider it an invalid viewpoint. Apparently, only Democrat viewpoints are allowed to be valid, with or without any corroborating evidence, and any other viewpoint gets your blood boiling.
I’m thinking that Robert was right, Gilbert. You may have closed your mind to resources of great value, because to you only certain viewpoints are valid and all others are upsetting. How are you going to write a book on creating successful communities if you cannot tolerate the viewpoints that lead to the methods that create successful communities?
“[Y]our posts are just too long for me to adequately respond. In one instance, I did ask you to respond to a specific point, in an attempt to narrow the focus of the discussion.”
I went way back, but I failed to find an un-responded request. You may have to be more specific.
Thinking about it, I am assuming that you are complaining that I did not respond. Did I respond, and your point is that you were trying to narrow the focus of the discussion so that my comments might not be too long for you to respond to them? I write lengthy comments in order to be clear as to my meaning and points. In the case of your two sentence comment, it was brief, but left me thinking that I failed to respond to something you wanted to know, but maybe you are just complaining that you want me to give less support to my points, be less clear in my thinking and meaning. You left me with some confusion — perhaps a misunderstanding of what you meant.
This may be why there is “Lots of misunderstanding here as usual.” The miscommunication is on your part, because you are so brief that your point is not properly made. Wouldn’t brevity on my part only increase the amount of misunderstanding here? It is already difficult enough to get you to see my own viewpoint without boiling your blood, but if I cannot even explain, then there is no chance that your blood won’t boil, as you would think I meant something else, maybe even something racist.
Ah. I think I now know what happened to make this discussion not as pleasurable as it was a few weeks ago. It could be that over the past eight months I have wasted hours and hours in this discussion, attempting to help you write a successful book, but you aren’t willing to consider the advice.
The discussion began with the differing educational techniques, but you did not recognize that the two major political parties are the source of the differing techniques. In your very first comment, you wrote: “My point is, should discussion of education be about specific techniques that work, not about political party affiliation?”
The discussion has been about the parties, because the parties have different techniques. One party desires teaching the three R’s, the other party emphasizes two completely unrelated R’s. You focused on one of those two R’s: race. To solve the education problem, we have to use the correct techniques, but since one party’s techniques have failed, we should go back to the more successful techniques used by the other party. Thus, we must reject the bad party and embrace the right one. The bad techniques are the basic philosophy behind the bad party.
Why should we ignore and even violate Martin Luther King’s dream? King and his fellow Republicans had hoped for America to be a melting pot, but the Democrats insist that it be a bean salad, with each type of bean being pointed out and its existence emphasized. Instead of everyone being Americans, Democrats want us to be hyphenated-Americans, emphasizing some sort of distinguishing characteristic, dividing us from each other. It is a trap that you not only fell into but that you embrace.
The Democrats want us to live and learn differently than the Republicans do. When it comes to discussion of education, the differences in political philosophy is vitally important. Democrats are not educating us for success or for creating successful communities. Republicans want to, but do not have the necessary control over much of the country’s education system. If you want to write a successful book, understanding this difference is paramount. You need to release your knee-jerk support of and dependence upon the Democratic Party and see how that party harms your interests and the communities that you want to succeed.
@Edward Perhaps your issue, is that you don’t have enough ‘racist’ friends. They are leaving you, out of the loop. Lol! But seriously just google Trump and the word “Peekaboo James, and you will see that I’m not the only one making that connection. But here’s one link. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trumps-attacks-on-prosecutors-echo-long-history-of-racist-language
I thought this particular forum had a problem with including links. And that is the main reason I have not posted more of them.
I thought, that I did point out to you, about a presidential advisor name Lee Atwater was caught on tape talking about racial code words. Google- “Lee Atwater-code words”,, ‘coded language’, or coded speech. Now if you have friends of different ethnicities, they will likely tell you, if something offends them personally. And that is okay, because they will like understand it was done out of ignorance, not malice.
Changing the subject: In recent weeks, there was a large flash mob attack, on bossiness in downtown Philly, around 9-27-23. From the reports, I get the impression that it was all black teens. Me, being a YouTube junkie, I tend to look at the reader’s comments, to gage the general public’s reaction. The vast majority the comments called for stricter punishments, as the only solution. Donald Trump’s reaction was to call for the death penalty. While I hate that it happened, I don’t believe those youth should be put to death. Other commenters just blamed on race. I did notice, that not one commenter called for anything like social interventions, to attack the mass mind state, of those youth. But I say to you, attacking such group mindsets was/is the purpose of the ideas, behind my proposed book. In my job experiences, I worked for two years in a jail for kids, as I like to call it. They were all juvenile felony offenders, most 3-4 class offenders. That can sometimes have negative outcomes, as the juvenile offenders can end up teaching each other crime techniques, such as stealing cars, etc. But I am not saying the youth should not have been incarcerated either. My position is, that there needs to be ideas/programing to penetrate that specific youth and gang culture. And as it is now there is a large entertainment culture, glorifying gangsters, and drug dealers as models of success. What most people do not understand is that gangsters also represent some traditional values of manhood, that are in fact cross-cultural. The negative outcomes of that lifestyle are obvious to those that understand the larger rewards of the greater society. But gangs are smart enough to recruit new members, before their minds are developed to see life’s larger perspectives. And just learning the three R’s, may not necessarily address life’s larger perspectives (of real success), especially if it not in the youth’s natural environment. I remember many decades ago, some people were encouraging a 4 year old youth to be a pimp. His father was a pimp, and pimps were visible models of success, in that community. I heard that he was on his way, as he came in my father’s grocery store, in a suit, with two young ladies around his age. He died a few days later in a house fire. But I have never forgotten him. My point of the story was that his life was not about the color of skin, but about community signs and values of success. And racial segregation away from larger models of success, is important factor,in this little story.
I plan to get back to you about Trump, and other related subjects.
Gilbert Zachary,
You wrote: “Perhaps your issue, is that you don’t have enough ‘racist’ friends.”
Apparently I choose my friends well. I don’t plan to change that any time soon.
“a large flash mob attack”
“Flash mob” must have changed definitions. It used to be that a flash mob would suddenly break out in song or dance, or both. I guess these days it means crime. Where is our society going, if this is the case, and maybe your book on building successful communities is more urgently needed than I had thought. Are you making progress on it?
“And just learning the three R’s, may not necessarily address life’s larger perspectives (of real success), especially if it not in the youth’s natural environment..”
Maybe a person can be a successful criminal without the three Rs, as tearing down things is easy, but it is difficult to be successful at being a productive person without them, because building up anything is difficult even with the three Rs.
Play a game of blocks with a three-year-old. You build up a stack, and he knocks it down. You rebuild, and he knocks it down again. That is the game. Play the same game with a college student and you get a bridge or other nice structure, and the college student doesn’t like it if you knock it down. The difference is maturity. The mature person desires being creative and productive. He desires the successful communities.
“I plan to get back to you about Trump, and other related subjects.”
You may not have noticed, but I don’t give a rat’s patootie about Trump.
By the way, for those who don’t know, patootie really means “girlfriend,” which makes it not so good as a replacement for the other rat anatomy that is often used for these kinds of statements.
The “compassion”, generosity and more better and highly educated “leaders” of the Liberals (D) now radical Marxists took care of this.
“My point of the story was that his life was not about the color of skin, but about community signs and values of success. And racial segregation away from larger models of success, is important factor, in this little story.”.
And the Republican operators who are now full blown RINO’s are not much better.
Trust a politician never by their words but by their actions.
There was a line where the black population in America benefitted from social programs. But that line has long ago turned into a political weapon that the Democrats being essentially authoritarian Communists at heart have taken the good and turned it into an un and anti-American / destroy America movement in the pursuit of absolute political power and authoritarian control.
GZ seems to be another person immersed in the minutia.
NO ONE CARES. The minutia is set in history and is immutable. What will be done from today and into the future? The same thing? If you continue to do the same thing you are going to get the same results.
We as Americans are where we are, where our politics has delivered us to, and it is no longer acceptable to continue down this political road. This road is un American.
@Edward “I guess that is the question, then. Do any of those words fit your requirements? If so, which ones? I may need a full list of words to avoid. You choose arbitrary words based upon rhyming quality, rhyming with other difficult to predict arbitrary words. Thus, the list of usable words is limited to some unknown (unknowable?) subset of the English language. It was bad enough when it was words rhyming with a word so bad it may not be used at all (except by certain privileged people), now it is any word that rhymes with any word that you find even mildly offensive.”
The problem is that during the period of your life that you are so eager to demonize someone that you fabricate new meanings for words in order to call your nemesis a racist, you are not in a state of mind to create successful communities. A successful community must get along not only with itself but with the other communities around it.”
Context is everything. I am not making up new word meanings. This is why I included links. Aren’t you aware of the various ethnic slur words? I can recall words for Hispanics and Italians, Chinese, Arabs, Jews. All these were around before I was born in 1950. so that is proof that I did not make them up. Have you heard of a book called slurring Jews, called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. It was written over 120 years ago, I believe. I previously wrote, that it is okay, if something is done out of ignorance, and that person is corrected.
Here is a definition of what is called coded language. https://languageplease.org/coded-language/ But you claim that I am making things up. ‘wtf’ By way I could give specific names for all the ethnicities I mentioned, in my post. But the rules of this site might apply. So I will refrain from saying them in this post, out of caution. I deserve an apology for you coming at me like that. But perhaps you were born and raised outside of the US, and are not aware of US history. That would be be one the few acceptable reasons. But still, an apology from you, is in order. I will add one additional thing, on this topic. The city I was born in an the area where I still live, was once home to many ethnic neighborhoods, such Hungarian, Polish, Italians, etc. However now the groups are more spread out, in my area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs
I deserve some respect for my knowledge base, my age, and education. But I also concede that certain things that i have written could have been stated more clearly.
@Edward
Here is a white woman named Alyssa Farrah, who was an direct aid to Donald Trump, who said that she believes his use of the term “riggers” was a “racist dog whistle”. https://news.yahoo.com/ex-trump-aide-says-trumps-
https://news.yahoo.com/ex-trump-aide-says-trumps-121011539.html#:~:text=HuffPost-,Ex%2DTrump%20Aide%20Says%20Trump's%20Use%20Of%20Word%20'Riggers‘,Is%20A%20Racist%20Dog%20Whistle&text=Former%20White%20House%20communications%20director,whistle%20following%20his%20Georgia%20indictment.
Just search Google with the term Donald Trump and “riggers” if you don’t trust this link. And in larger irony, is she served as Trump director of communications at the White House.
So Trump actually said this: ““They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!”. Clearly talking about the many, many election day anomalies and manipulations that were very apparent.
And other people that worked for the Clinton machine (D) say that he really meant things like this: “Keith Boykin, a former White House aide to Bill Clinton, accused Trump of thinly veiled racism, writing on social media: “He wrote ‘RIGGERS’ but what know what he really meant.”
Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper, Griffin agreed with that assessment. “With Trump, you don’t need to look for a dog whistle — it’s a bullhorn when it comes to race,” she said. “And I do think that’s deliberate.”.
Solid lock, racist, case closed. But who exactly is the racist the person who made a statement in his own style, way and vernacular? Or those people who politically oppose him and have chosen to interpret what that person said in his own style, way and vernacular as being racist?
Which is which?
(Seriously?)
All: The triviality of this conversation, and the focus of Gilbert Zachery on minor wordage to try to gin up accusations of racism against conservatives, has now become downright embarrassing. Only two weeks ago Hamas storm-troopers killed between 1,000 and 1,400 Israeli citizens, torturing many beforehand. Many of those victims were women, children, and babies. They burned some children alive. They raped some women so viciously they broke their pelvis.
These Nazi-inspired brownshirts, whose only goal is to kill as many Israelis (especially Jews), then kidnapped more than 200 others, also many of whom were little children and old women, and are holding them as hostages in Gaza.
Meanwhile worldwide mobs of Hamas supporters are holding demonstrations and protests, many of which have devolved into violent attacks on Jews, and almost all of which have called for a genocide against the entire Israeli state. In taking a close look at many of these demonstrations it is difficult to distinquish them from the Nazi horrors of the 1930s.
And you are arguing right now whether Trump might maybe possibly have sent out a racist dog whistle when he referred to those he thought rigged the 2020 election as “riggers”?
I find this disgusting. I also find this petty debate sadly illustrates where Gilbert Zachery’s priorities lie. He really doesn’t care about stopping racism, because outright actual genocide right now against others doesn’t appear to concern him in the least. What he cares about is making sure no one ever does or says anything that might someday maybe possibly offend him and any black.
It is very shameful. He worries about the chimera of “white supremacy” when all around him — often within his own black community — a racist movement against whites and Jews is now in power and committing acts of evil. If he truly wanted to help that black community it would be this issue that would scare him the most. But it apparently does not.
Let me add this: Gilbert Zachery says he “deserves some respect for my knowledge base, my age, and education.” None of that matters. What matters is what you do. If you act with wisdom and focus on defeating actual evil, you will earn people’s respect. Focus on trivialities and people will see you as trivial.
That’s your choice. Not ours.
Gilbert:
Please remember, you need to be thinking about what others tell you. You need to prioritize based on what others tell you is important.
Seriously, I thank you for your contributions.
Robert,
These trivialities germinate many of the greater problems in an otherwise free society. Muslims believe in terrorism, it is built into their religion, but the rest of us have to be carefully taught, as the song in South Pacific says. These trivialities are where the teaching begins.
At one point in history, a century and a half ago, the word that must not be named was the regular word, but these days it is the worst of all possible ethnic slurs. So bad that it must not be named.
Last month I asked, twice, what the Germans should have done in the 1920s and 1930s to stop the NAZIs from doing their damage. There are many smart people who read and comment on this site, but I received no answer. It is a difficult question to answer. Not only do we not know what works in these situations, but it requires knowing how alternate histories would turn out. Counterfactuals are difficult to determine.
This might seem trivial, considering the enormity of current events, but the nature of world events should not and must not prevent us from discussing what may be able to prevent other communities — our communities — from falling for the trap that the Germans fell into a century ago. Robert, you are doing your part by pointing out how bad and widespread blacklisting has become, and I am doing my small part by trying to educate someone who wants to cure the problem from the inside. If he is to succeed, he needs to know what makes for successful communities and why other communities are not successful. Avoid the pitfalls, get back on the right trail.
How did one valid word transform from acceptable into the one word that must not be named? How did it transform into such a terrible word that rhyming words may not be used, whether or not Gilbert or his people made that connection and created that new politically correct paradigm? How do we keep it from spreading to other words or spreading to other aspects of life?
If Gilbert is to succeed in directing his people into building successful communities, then he needs to understand where the weaknesses lie and he needs to figure out how to avoid them. If the weaknesses are built into the community, then the community may advocate for and celebrate terrorism, as is happening with Hamas and the people who continue to elect it as their leadership.
Let’s face it, Robert, no one from outside his community can explain how to build successful communities, because the chip on that community’s collective shoulder prevents them from taking advice from the outside. Look how difficult it is just to get one person to listen and to understand, and he seems receptive to new ideas, or at least receptive to the discussion. However, this discussion began with how Americans are being educated, these days, and I believe that we are all learning something through this discussion. Even those of us who live immersed in a PC world that declares us racist for nothing more than just existing — a privilege that I count when asked to count my privileges (being asked is another of my privileges). We are learning how to convince him what makes success and what kills it.
If we do not nip this thing in the bud, then we could eventually become just as irretrievably divided and violent as they are in the Middle East. We already see signs of it, and we saw what happened in Europe. All it takes if for bad men to not follow the laws of civilized society, as is already happening within our government. Let’s try what we can to prevent it from happening here. Gilbert is not the only one who wants us to build successful communities. I want us to remain successful and to create the additional success that the U.S. press said would happen with Obama’s election (too bad the press didn’t vet him before drawing their conclusions).
Thus, Robert, I will continue this discussion despite your justified disgust. I believe that it is important in finding solutions to the racial problems in this country. Our solutions may not solve anyone else’s problems, but it is a start and an education.
As Gilbert’s comments demonstrate, the election of Obama set back race relations by decades. He blames Trump, but Trump did nothing to set back these relations; it was those who oppose him, those who chose to claim racism where none exists. It may be impossible to negotiate with people whose religion demands your death, but it is still possible to negotiate when it is merely a politically correct position.
Gilbert Zachary,
Your interest — obsession — with Trump only demonstrates that racism is a freaking mine field. No one knows what the hell will set you off. Every little thing in life can suddenly pop up as racist, without warning, without relief.
Some word rhymes with a well known racist word, and BOOM, suddenly I’m a racist.
Some word merely rhymes with a non-racist word, and BOOM, suddenly I’m a racist.
I put a pull-rope on my garage door, and BOOM, suddenly I’m a nationwide racist.
I switch political parties and run for president, and BOOM, suddenly I’m a racist.
I have a school named after Abraham Lincoln, of all people, and BOOM, suddenly my school district is racist.
What, pray tell, will be next to set off you or your people?
Obama even declared me to be an irredeemable racist merely due to the color of my skin. (At what skin shade does this racism end?). I didn’t have to do anything or say anything. I exist, and BOOM, suddenly I’m a racist.
The man who freed the slaves is now a racist. Who is safe from sudden declaration as racist? Who can possibly be safe?
Roseanne Barr spouts off, misunderstanding someone’s ancestry, and BOOM, suddenly she’s a racist; her show is cancelled; her cast and crew are unemployed; and she’s wondering what just happened.
What happened: it is politically incorrect to criticize someone if they have a certain ancestry. Politically correct is fluid and has been for decades. When I was in college, we wished there was a PC magazine to tell us what was politically correct this month.
What next will set off the woke folk?
It has even spread to the free-est government in the world, the one government whose purpose is explicitly stated to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
I install a water deluge system on my launchpad, and BOOM, suddenly I cannot obtain a launch license, because the local swamp might get wet.
The Constitution itself is now racist. It limits the power of the slave states through limiting the way slaves are counted for determining the number of Representatives — who will represent not the slaves but the slaveowners (Article I, Section 2, third paragraph, first sentence), and BOOM, suddenly it’s racist.
It was that same power of the slave states that spread slavery so widely throughout the expanding early United States, demonstrating that even the “three fifths rule” was not strong enough to prevent it from happening. How limiting the power of the slave states could possibly be racist is a mystery, but there we are.
The United States is now racist. It is where first place in all the world that absolutely rejected slavery for the first time ever throughout all of history (Vermont being that first place ever to outright ban slavery in all forms). At that time, slavery existed around the world and was considered around the world as an acceptable part of the human condition. It was the United States, during its founding, that began the process of completely rejecting slavery, but the Founding Fathers, their posterity, and their great country are the racist ones.
How can we have successful communities when just living and working within those communities can create sudden, unexpected, random, and unjustified controversy, rejection, shunning, cancellation, and blacklisting?
Edward: You write some wise words, which are sincerely appreciated. I think however that pointing out the trivialities is part of the battle. To teach you sometimes need to tell people to their face where they are going wrong.
Robert “To teach you sometimes need to tell people to their face where they are going wrong.”
Good point. I wrote a lot of words to Gilbert but failed to be explicit that the triviality of banning a single word grew into governmental abuse of power and the disparaging of the one government that has had to do the hardest work to eliminate a slavery that was deeply ingrained into the society and economy of the southern states.
@ Robert Zimmerman Yes, the issue in the Middle East is a serious issue. For me, that does not mean we should ignore issues that are already here. Who becomes President of the United States is important. And at this time, I see the issue, as very important. As someone who has been around for a long time, I see a growing divide here in the US. This includes talk of a civil war. I see signs of fascism rising, here in the US. I have mentioned this in some of my posts. I don’t believe that I have gotten much response on this, not even negative response. I have mentioned, that I read extensively about the rise of fascism, in my youth . I see the buds of it here, as being directly related to the old. The Great Replacement Theory, is a child of Hitler’s world view as he expressed in his views.
I see signs of making blacks in the US, a permanent underclass, and genocide of black people is not off the table, as an option either. Of course there will still be some social mobility for a few. But looking at todays line up, blacks have supported democrats, and that is becoming the great divide. I have tried to explain the reasons in past posts. But it seems that commenters here, have their minds made up, and believe they know more about my life, and understanding than I do. When I say ‘my life’ I am including the mostly black communities, that I have live in most of my life.
Getting back to my earlier point, I believe that a possible civil war, would also be a race war. It could be used as a rationale for genocide of black people. I don’t see many people aware of this as a possibility. What would be called a war, would be in reality, just taking out black people, genocide more or less. From what I see, Trump has helped to set things up, by covertly accusing black people of stealing the election, and ‘persecuting’ him, among other things. This is why, him attacking black judges and prosecutors, and using racial code terms, is important to me. The issue is bigger than Trump. The real force is white nationalism. But Trump has been the perfect vehicle, for that force to obtain power
I see the attacks on CRT as hiding the treatment black people in history, I see that a prelude, to actually taking black people out. of existence. Because the negative images of crime, on the news will always be there, to reinforce negativity.
All this goes to my discussing writing a book, to help the communities I have lived in., which are majority black. This is why I feel those communities need a more positive direction, overall, or face dire possibilities; that being permanent second class citizen ship, or genocide. There are historical precedents, which include Nazi Germany.
As far as Israel and the Middle East, I have been seeing this brewing for decades. And people who wanted to address deeper underlying issues, seem to get labeled as ‘antisemetic’. But I will have to address that another time.
Robert Zimmemran
“Let me add this: Gilbert Zachary says he “deserves some respect for my knowledge base, my age, and education.” None of that matters. What matters is what you do. If you act with wisdom and focus on defeating actual evil, you will earn people’s respect. Focus on trivialities and people will see you as trivial.
That’s your choice. Not ours.”
The truth does matter. And an analogy I use, is to say, life is more complicated than white and black. There are different shades, or sub categories of each. I would like to point out, that on this very forum, you said that Obama caused the rise of racism or something to that effect. I disagreed and provided rationale, why it wasn’t true. I also asked you to elaborate more specifically. I recall getting what I considered to be a more in depth response. Perhaps I have forgotten something about that discussion, however. I am not asking for a revisit of that. Don’t you see the hypocrisy of the fact that, you can criticize Obama, but I cannot critique Trump. And he happens to be running for president, whereas Obama is not. And in my case, Edward accused me of making the whole thing up, more or less.. Trump’s social media todays goes out to tens millions of people. So obviously with that many ‘hits’ there will be a variety responses/interpretations. I mentioned the concept of racially coded terms, in previous post, and cited one famous definition, being explained on tape; that of Lee Atwater. One can also find the concept defined on Google, with examples. And the purpose of racial code term, is that ‘non-racists’ might not understand the real racial meanings of certain words. I consider Edward’s response very condescending. Sometimes it referred to, in the more general term as “coded language” .
I have submitted a response that has not yet been posted. I feel I could say it better, responding to you. I will relist the major components terms, or factor in this post: ‘civil war in the US’; race war, rising US fascism, and white nationalism. These concepts are not trivial, due to the possible outcomes of those issues. You have right to argue how important, those terms are in the public discourse. But to pretend that they do not exist, is dangerous.
I do understand, how serious the current situation is in Israel and the Middle East. But some these terms can also be related the the Middle East, as well. I hate that this current situation is happening. Jesus is associated with Peace, for those that study/follow his principles. I get the feeling that you want to discuss this issue. Yes the attack was a terrible thing, I agree. But, I have seen the issue brewing for decades. I knew back then that the tactics of the State of Israel back then, would never lead to a lasing peace. But I have once again strayed too far from my original topic. So I will end with my most important statement:
Truth matters.
@Edward
Edward
October 27, 2023 at 7:02 pm
Robert “To teach you sometimes need to tell people to their face where they are going wrong.”
Good point. I wrote a lot of words to Gilbert but failed to be explicit that the triviality of banning a single word grew into governmental abuse of power and the disparaging of the one government that has had to do the hardest work to eliminate a slavery that was deeply ingrained into the society and economy of the southern states.”
In an interesting development, today (10-30-23) Judge Chutkan in the Washington DC case issued a ruling, reinstating her partial gag order against Donald Trump. Within her ruling, she specifically mentioned Trump’s ‘infamous’ ‘rigger post. It was done in an attempt to clarify her gag order, that is, to define his speech that violates her gag order, vs those that do not. And she specifically stated that, that ‘riggers’ post would not violate her gag order. And that helps define that her gag order, is only about issues that directly affect, the administration of justice. To specify, that would include; court personnel, prosecutors, and potential witnesses. And it my understanding, that he can still criticize her as the judge.
I realize that my posts, are sometimes not as clear, as I intend them to be. But now I want to clarify, that it was not about banning a word. It is about words and actions that potentially incite violence. People who have been mentioned in Trump’s media post, negatively, have complained about receiving violent threats and other forms of intimidation. Recent media have reported, that in Mitt Romney’s new book, he mentioned that fellow senators, spoke about fear for the safety of their families, if they voted yes, in regards to Trump’s impeachment. So this is yet another example, of people fearing violence from Trump supporters. I do recognize other forms violent actions. All them are wrong, in my view, except in a case of self, or family-defense. Reducing violence, in general, is one the the goals of my proposed book. But, I also believe that, violent inspiring talk, coming from a person, who is running for president, is very important, to the mental health of our nation. One YouTube channel that I view regularly, frequently covers Trump’s social media posts, along with his reposts of other’s posts. So I am more directly aware of what he is feeding, his readers and followers.
A must admit, that I do feel somewhat vindicated that a DC judge, made legal note of a post, that you more or less accused me of hyping up. I had no role in Judge Chutkan, citing that very post.
Lastly, I have posting so much here, that I am starting to refer to myself as; “The Black Edward” Lol!
Gilbert Zachery: You are a very typical Democrat, all for censorship and imprisonment for anyone who says anything that offends you. You don’t know what freedom is, you don’t understand the Bill of Rights, and you help illustrate why the Democratic Party has been trying to get it repealed now for the past decade.
You of course will reap what you sow, as the people you support so blindly will stab you in the back, as soon as they realize they can do so.
Gilbert Zachary,
You wrote: “I see the attacks on CRT as hiding the treatment black people in history, I see that a prelude, to actually taking black people out. of existence. Because the negative images of crime, on the news will always be there, to reinforce negativity.”
CRT is not about expounding on the treatment of black people in history. It is about making all the current white people become guilty for the actions of southern Democrats, even and especially creating guilty people out of those who are not descended from those southern Democrats. The guilt is supposed to extend to white people who are only now arriving in America. Attempting to guilt people has even become part of your own argument technique.
The Democrats started CRT in order to keep alive the anger so that no healing can begin again. Obama’s division of us was a major part of phase 1. CRT is part of phase 2. CRT is about making the current black people angry, despite not having been poorly treated. It is about division, not unity. It is the Democrats hiding that their party was the one that did and still does the ill treatment.
If there is to be a race war, CRT is intended to be part of the cause, and if there is to be a race war, it is the plan of the Democrats to finally take black people out of existence. The reason we are not as concerned as you, Gilbert, is that we are not being riled up by the Democrats into thinking that there will be a race war. We don’t really think that a civil war is coming, but the Democrats keep suggesting it, keeping the discussion alive.
Gilbert, you may not know that a century ago Democrats and Germany’s NAZIs were friends. Eugenics wasn’t a NAZI idea, it was the American Democrats who advocated for it back in the 1920s, and the NAZIs learned it from America’s Democratic Party and took it to an extreme, using it to inform their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups.
CRT is yet another Democrat trick on black people. It looks good in the short run, but it is one of the reasons that you “see a growing divide here in the US. This includes talk of a civil war. [Seeing] signs of fascism rising, here in the US.” Did you see this growing divide before Obama? Neither did the American media.
Attacks on CRT are an attempt to regain the harmony between the races that we had before Obama destroyed it. The harmony was so prevalent that the American media truly believed that Obama’s presidency would finally make America a post-racial country.
However, Obama’s stupid friend broke into his own house, and when neighbors called the police out of concern for his property and maybe his safety, Gates behaved badly toward the officers who responded. Instead of being grateful for the protection and being cooperative in order to demonstrate that he was the homeowner and was safe from a burglar or kidnapper, he put a chip on his shoulder, as though if he had been white the police would have left him alone without checking to see if the white guy was a burglar or being kidnapped. Obama, however, sided with his obstinate friend and told the country that it was the Boston police who behaved badly. The American media tried hard to help Obama recover from this misdirected destruction of final harmony between the races and forced Obama into a beer bash party with Gates and the officer. Unfortunately, Obama and Gates had no interest in racial harmony, behaved coldly while the officer was there, and once the officer left, the two of them finally behaved like great friends, laughing and talking about good times. It was a disaster for race relations, and that was when the American press completely gave up on a post-racial America. Obama’s behavior about race relations continued to be one of division, not unification.
Your comments, Gilbert, are similar. The American press understood that post-racial harmony is absolutely necessary for successful communities and were all for it until Obama changed the narrative. My recollection is that either Robert or I have previously suggested that you look at other communities that succeeded. I suggest this again, looking at such communities as the various Asian communities in America, the Polish and Irish communities, and hispanic communities. All of these had some difficulty fitting in with the existing cultures in America, but they are successful now.
A major difference between these successful and the unsuccessful communities is that no one riled up anger over the Democratic Party’s past behavior, the party of the Trail of Tears and the internment of Japanese immigrants and their descendants. Instead, the Democratic Party is blaming all whites for their own bad behavior, past and present, but it isn’t all whites, just the Democratic Party. It is the party of CRT, replacement theory, and President Johnson’s plan to make blacks in the US a permanent underclass. Before Johnson it was Franklin Roosevelt, who instigated the redline policy for black neighborhoods for FHA loans
Many people believe that fascism is a right wing concept, but it is left wing. The NAZI party was the National Socialist German Workers Party. The NAZIs and Italian fascists were proud socialists.
You think that the Democratic Party is your friend, but it is advocating the return of segregation. It was the Republicans who walked with Martin Luther King and the Democrats who opposed him. The Democrats only pretended to be your friends when Johnson showed party leaders that they could trick you into joyfully returning to the permanent underclass status that the Democrats always wanted, and they are already at the self-segregation stage, which 60 Minutes noticed back in the late 1980s. You want to write a book for building successful communities for your people, not have your people successfully join the already successful communities. You are just as eager for segregation as the Democratic Party is. Were the Democrats right: separate but equal?
You get to critique Trump, but just as you get to rationalize Obama’s actions to rile up black people, I get to tell you how you are calling a non-racist a racist. What upsets me most is that this has me defending the useless Trump. He deserves plenty of criticism, but not the only kind that you are able to dish out. For you and your political party, anyone who fails to agree with you is a racist. The word loses its meaning.
It’s interesting that you make disingenuous arguments against things that I didn’t say, as though you cannot make arguments against the things that I do say. I did not say that Obama increased racism or that racism started with him. I said that he increased the tension between the races. You cannot argue my points, because you know I am right — no wonder you get so upset at what I say — but you can argue different points, because I would have been wrong to make them.
The Democrats have reinstated the racial hostility of the past. Obama, BLM, and Antifa (whose behavior is fascist) have done well for the Democratic Party, riling up black people, even to the point that they think there will be a civil war between the races. Even to the point of believing Trump to be racist, even though he didn’t do or say any racist things and accomplished many things that helped blacks and their communities succeed. Isn’t it curious that Trump’s attacks on lots and lots of white people are considered his standard operating procedure, but when he makes a lesser attack on a black judge, that is suddenly racist? It is almost as though black judges were specifically chosen so that Trump could be discredited to people who are so easily manipulated, people who see racism in common, everyday activities that when they happen to whites are not considered racist.
If a blatant violation of the First Amendment is your vindication, you are in real trouble. The First Amendment is there to guarantee that we may be critical of government, including and especially judges, who rule as tyrannical dictators.
Calling someone racist may give you instant gratification, but when he isn’t one then the rest of us notice the false accusation. “J’accuse” worked during the French Revolution, but guilt-by-accusation doesn’t work in successful American communities. I will continue, without guilt or apology, to point out when someone is using bogus arguments of racism against a non-racist. I’m not the one who should apologize. It is Trump who is owed an apology — many of them from many people.
You have called wolf too many times, over the decades.* You keep saying “racist” at people who are not racist, so now it could take months or years for you to get our attention if you ever come across a real racist. They are definitely out there, and that is why Robert is disgusted by this discussion. Real racists are now busy being racist in the Middle East, and you are still trying to get us to believe a non-racist is one in America. Worse, it is a guy who is on your side despite your ill treatment of him. Isn’t that the kind of guy you want on your side?
You cannot have a successful community if it keeps seeing its friends as enemies or keeps seeing its enemies as friends.
When you complain about the press presenting a bad picture of black people, keep in mind that the vast majority of the American press are Democrat activists. That is why “negative images of crime, on the news will always be there, to reinforce negativity.” The press has taken direction from Obama’s Democrats and are no longer longing for a post-racial America but for an America divided along racial lines. And divided along gender lines. And divided along several other lines. United we stand, divided we fall, and we are being divided by the left and its Democrats. The people dividing us are the ones who want us to fall, including you and your communities.
The Democrats have control over the schools, yet they don’t try to prevent an abnormally high percentage of black students from dropping out before graduating from high school. It is that soft bigotry of low expectations. The subtlety is difficult to detect, because it looks like the decision of the dropouts. These dropouts feel better, because they are no longer doing what someone else says they should do, and they experience the instant gratification of doing what they want to do. The dropouts ran into a lot of discouragement from continuing on and graduating. Where did that discouragement come from?
Affirmative Action is used by the Democratically controlled colleges to prevent black people from graduating college. Administrators look like they are on their side, but they make sure that most black students end up in colleges that are too difficult for them. The colleges that attract the best of the best also attract the best of the best black people, who are the ones who compete well, but these same colleges attract the best of the black people, and they have a harder time competing against the best of the best, which tends to result in them not graduating, giving up on college, and never getting a college degree. And so on and so forth down the spectrum of colleges, always competing with better students and often failing to keep up, which is why we only see admission rates, not graduation rates. It looks good in the short run, but it is harmful in the long run, but the Democratically run colleges make black people believe that they are on their side. They are not. It is a trick. It is a trap. It gives instant gratification to the students getting into the more prestigious colleges, but it harms them when they cannot graduate.
Gilbert, the people that you think are advocating for you are actually betraying you. Intentionally. So subtly reinforcing negativity that you don’t realize that it is Democrats who are doing it. This was the genius of President Johnson’s plan.
In order to build successful communities, you need to realize this and abandon these false friends, these frenemies, and embrace the people who have been your friends for over a quarter millennium, from opposing slavery to marching for civil rights to creating conditions for blacks and their communities to succeed. These people have also known that instant gratification is not the solution but the problem. It takes patience to be successful. It takes being realistic to be successful. This is why those who embrace the Democrats’ and liberals’ fantasy policies are failing so badly. They have been tricked by instant gratification policies, and they are doing great harm to themselves and those around them. A boy should not be leering at the girls in their own locker room. Children should not be making irreversible life-changing decisions while they are undergoing confusing teenage transformations into adulthood. These give instant gratification, but are harmful.
The Democrats talk about being on the side of black people, but they never have been, all the way back to their founding, which was specifically to defend the institution of slavery. The Republicans actually are on their side, and always have been since the party’s founding, which was specifically to end the institution of slavery, and three or four generations of the Republican’s ancestors were on their side. A hundred million white people are on your side despite being disparaged by the Democrats and the black Democrats. That sounds to me like quite a bit of loyalty that is not being reciprocated.
Gilbert, I know this goes against decades of your life experiences, but it is the reality of life in America. The racist Democrats did not suddenly become your friends, and the helpful, friendly Republicans did not suddenly become your enemies. The Democrats just made it look that way by providing you with instant gratification and by lying to you. The price was your success and prosperity, and as you pointed out, it cost you your reputation on the news.
This is that “greater truth” that you pointed out many do not understand. It has been part of your world, your community, and it has been difficult for you to see it for what it is, much less understand it. It was difficult for slaveowners of the south to imagine a world without slavery, and it was difficult for the northerners to understand the world of slavery — all they saw was the terrible stuff and did not understand the reasoning of the slaveowners. Those were the worlds they were born into. Sometimes it takes outside eyes to see that greater truth, and it took the northerners to understand it for the southerners. Unfortunately, the Democrats still don’t understand it, but they do understand the incentives of instant gratification.
If the Democrats are your friends, then why aren’t your communities already successful?
We were making plenty of headway, but Obama destroyed that progress, just as it was about to pay off with peace and harmony. Now, a decade and a half later, you fear a race war. Toeing the party line hasn’t gotten you anywhere in the past half century.
Isn’t that why you have to write a book?
Robert,
I think you are right. Sometimes you really do need to tell people directly where they are going wrong. It may not work, but at least we tried. If it does work, maybe we can prevent an unnecessary civil war or a futile race war. It would be a terrible thing if the equivalent of Hamas happened here in America.
__________________
* By the way, sometimes when I use the word “you,” I am using the collective “you all,” second person plural. I guess the southerners did one thing right. I guess sometimes I am not as clear as I intend, thinking that context is explanatory.
Robert Zimmerman:
“Gilbert Zachary: You are a very typical Democrat, all for censorship and imprisonment for anyone who says anything that offends you.”
Who said anything about jailing anyone because their speech.? I am simply talking about the meaning of words /phrases to their larger context. And the case of Trump, his words get out to millions of people at a minimum. And the larger issues I’m try to address, seem to get little response, even if is to deny there is an issue. The larger issues I have brought up are; an american civil war: Related to this; race war: lastly, the overturning our democracy. I define that as a force, which attempted to overthrow our democracy, as basically fascist. January 6th, 2021 was an attempt to prevent to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. I hear talk of an new American civil war. MTG once said the “blue and red states should separate…”. She is an elected congresswoman. ” She also said, in December 2020, “Democrats want you dead. And the killing has already started.” The is the literal defining of “screaming bloody murder”, if you have heard of that term. An average person, would just write her off as crazy. But I ask myself, what if a percentage of listens believe this? What would the logical consequence of a person believes this? And now the new Israeli-Hamas conflict is opening the doors to the realization that human race is not over war. I heard that is a movement that wants to three adjacent states, and make them into a white homeland. That is a sign of separation, if nothing else.
Making this about ‘free speech’ is missing the real larger issues. I repeat again, that I studied about the rise of fascism in my youth.; and lifelong efforts to expand my knowledge, and philosophical base. I am just standing back and observing, human societies, and possible outcomes. I have said many times; that Biden ran for president, Trump was/is running for God/god. I could make my case, in larger philosophical ideas, as I consider myself to be a spiritual person. So no. this is not about him saying a word, that I disapprove of. I about to say a word, you might disapprove of. Lol!
Cotour
October 26, 2023 at 2:39 pm
“No One Cares” This statement by itself, denies my humanity. At the very minimum, it say ‘all lives do not matter’.
But I acknowledge that your view is one of the possibilities. I did try to find the entire post, but could not find. I remember seeing screen shots.
But in case you don’t have time to read my latest posts. This issue is only important because of the larger context. I have noted here, on this board, that there is a racial context, behind the whole ‘stolen election’ story. Most all the locations the right has chosen to accuse of voter fraud, had large black populations. For example Maricopa County in Arizona has the states’ largest black population. And where the two people identified by name, in Georgia? A black mother and daughters. Just a coincidence, yeah? There is more, but I will stop for now.
Let me step back and say this; the purpose of coded language in general, is so that all people don’t get the hidden meaning. Meanwhile people claim that the ‘stable genius’ didn’t understand the possible implications of his words.
But I’ll step back to an even larger term; that is Truth. On this forum, I have noticed that it is all black and white, seemingly. I’m right and your wrong, type of thinking. In real life, most often two opposing ideas can both be true. In most debates, it is mostly likely, that there is truth on both sides, and the real debate is, which of the two sides are the greater truth. So in reality, a question like, ‘Is Trump racist?’, has no real way to objectively measure, one way or the other. I cite what I know, and you cite what you know. Meanwhile, you can’t acknowledge that anything I say could possibly be valid. So this goes back to the first part of my post. You deny my humanity by believing that, nothing I say can possibly be valid, along with numerous, others posting with similar view points. It’s like believing that 70 million people voting for Biden, has no valid views of life. There are no colors, but black and white? But there shades between those two colors.
@Edward
I try to read your posts out of intellectual curiosity. But I cannot get through even the first paragraph, without my blood boiling with anger. I need to look out for my health, especially as a senior. You consistently say that I am inferior to you, in a roundabout way. I would have very stupid, to not know what the democratic party is, after voting mostly democrat for over 50 years. I wrote a post here, explaining the basic demographic shifts, since its founding in 1859. Yet you claim things about the party, and say their followers are duped, etc. So you are basically that black people, among others, are stupid, unlike you who claims to know the real truth. I am literate enough to explore subtleties of various issues. I now understand that critical thinking was the real focus of my undergraduate education. They did not indoctrinate me. The basic ideas were mainly to take our own ideas, examine them in depth, and relate those larger streams academic discourse. In this environment, we respect opposing ideas as valid. It could be put this way: Which of truths, are of greater consequence, not ‘they are wrong and I am right”?
“CRT is not about expounding on the treatment of black people in history. It is about making all the current white people become guilty for the actions of southern Democrats,”
This is wrong on so many levels. One of the problems is that you take the focus, entirely off black people, make it all about white people’s supposed reactions. You are saying, it was created to make white people feel bad??? Your statement by itself is proof that blacks lives do not matter, as much as whites. The true value of that theory is that it takes focus off individual views which might be considered racist, and moves to focus to institutional practices. Institutional practices can be modified by policy changes within each institution. A specific example was the FHA Act of 1934. It excluded black people from the benefits. This was really addressed until 1968. The 1934 act, created generation wealth for white people and excluded blacks. This had other wider results, such as blacks being placed areas with lower tax base, meaning leas money has been spent on educating black youth in general, than whites. This was/is even true in urban areas such as New York City. And speaking of such, there is a lot more to discriminating policies than southern democrats. Why is that money spent, per student, was less for blacks than whites, even in NYC, a hundred years after the end of slavery? That is obviously a system issue, not just about individual prejudices. There is a Bible passage, from the Book of Proverbs, that says; : “With all thy getting, getting understanding.” . That is what theories in general, are about.
I want to reiterate: I am not inferior to you. I have been blessed to follow a path, that looks at life in broad spiritual terms, such as love compassion and forgiveness. It is my view that each of us lives will be judged, by what we do with the talents we have been given. I do not claim perfection. I do say that I will continue to seek wisdom and understanding. I suggest that you read some of my posts to others. Some of my posts are so long, that I have referred to myself, as ‘the black Edward’. Yes I’m talking about you, on here.
It is time for this thread to end. Now. It no longer has anything to do with my original post, which was about how the government schools run and controlled by Democratic Party apparatchiks are slowly being abandoned by the public.
Gilbert: If you want to continue to comment here you are more than welcome, but I think it time you read some of my other work and respond to that.
Robert,
Please allow me this one last comment.
I started this comment yesterday, taking David‘s advice, before your request to end this thread. I think all of my responses to recent comments are in the footnote. I, too, think that it is time for Gilbert to stop arguing and to move on to building his successful communities. This was intended to be my last comment to him, outside of genuine questions about how to complete his important mission and his book.
________________________
Gilbert,
A week ago, David gave some good advice.
This is your opportunity.
You are eager for successful communities, and now is your time. Take advantage of this time. Learn who are your real friends, avoid your false friends. This is the largest issue to discuss.
Your communities are failing because they are on the wrong track, they took the wrong direction. Your book needs to put them on the right track, to guide them toward the right direction and convince them to take that direction.
Life isn’t simple. It’s complicated. It’s a world full of chaos and confusion, a world full of questions and no clear answers. Uncertainty abounds. Robert continually points out the uncertainty in science, which was invented to find certainty. We do our best. We can only do our best. You have to go after what you want in life. Whether you succeed or you fail, the most important thing is to have tried. You can only be guided toward the right direction. In the end, you have to learn for yourself.
The current failure of your communities is because they took the wrong direction. They tried, but they failed. They were on the track of civil rights when Johnson threw the switch, putting them on a different track — a wrong track. It looked like the right track, but now you all are right back where you all were half a century ago, seeking successful communities. Don’t blame the people who are on your side. It is the fault of your false friends, who have intentionally led you all astray.
It is time to try a new direction. I ask you to try the one we have shown you, the one that brought you all civil rights. Robert and I have been guiding you toward a right direction for building or joining successful communities. That is all we can do. You have to get there on your own.
It may even require solving the problem that pzatchok noted, it is a specific technique that does not work. If a teacher can’t get the job done, maybe it is time for a new teacher. If a direction is the wrong direction, maybe it is time for a new direction.
America is a place of opportunity, and you and your communities need to take advantage of these American opportunities, as other communities have done, not the instant gratification* that you all are given by your false friends. Your heroes have not taken you all to where you all long to be but have kept you all firmly in the same place. When you all started getting close to your desired destination, your false friends and your heroes led you all right back to the place where they want you all to stay.
You all have been following the wrong leaders, people who have not taken you all where you want to go. You all have forsaken the right leaders, people who are on your side and whose ancestors took you where you all wanted to go.
You may not agree with what we say, but consider that what you believe has not worked for your communities. Half a century and a couple of generations wasted. It is time for a belief that will actually work for you all.
“It’s not what we don’t know that prevents us from succeeding; it’s what we know that just ain’t so that is our greatest obstacle.” — Ambrose Bierce, Josh Billings, Mark Twain, someone else?
Stuff that is wrong is believed to be right. Then we make law to force people to swear to error. We teach the populace such falsehoods, to the point where a Supreme Court Justice was confirmed even though she was not smart enough to say what a woman is (which even a three-year-old knows). What just ain’t so are great obstacles that must be removed from our paths to success.
Please take your opportunity to create success. It requires your people changing their beliefs, because their current beliefs are wrong for obtaining success, but these beliefs are right for the racists in the Democratic Party. This is why they have spent half a century drumming these poor beliefs into your (all) collective head, especially starting in the schools. This may be how a city being Democrat run can automatically mean poor education. The Democrats have benefitted from you all having these current beliefs. You all have suffered. It is time for something different.
Quit harping on trivia. If you want successful communities, now is the time to hunker down and make it happen. If you are serious, do it. If not, I am wasting my time, effort, and resources talking to someone who only claims to care.
Now is your opportunity.
_____________
* I’m not the one who thinks that only stupid or inferior people succumb to instant gratification, but if you think so, well, I cannot help what you think. However, I resent that you project your thoughts and emotions onto me. Emotional people are susceptible to these tactics and strategies.
The past is the past, no one can change that. The future is the future, and that is what we seek to build. Blaming the current generation for the failings of past generations does no good. Blaming the descendants of those who helped you may build resentment. Most amazing, however, is that you continue to support the party that is responsible for the 1934 act that you despise. You refuse to see that it is still doing the same types of things to you.
You all have been following the wrong leaders, people who have not taken you all where you want to go. The resulting frustration is why your people are talking of a race war. You all are taking it out on your friend Trump, disingenuously pretending that the January 6th parade (that is the common charge) that the participants were invited to by the Capitol Police was something it is not.
I think that Robert is correct, in a way, but not that your skin is too thin to build successful communities but that your emotions have put a chip on your shoulder, just as Professor Gates had. Seeing insult where assistance is offered is one of the great obstacles to your mission. What you think you know is just not so. You set your own greatest obstacles in your own path.
Once again, this is not stupidity. It is emotion. A problem that has apparently tackled you all through this discussion. It almost certainly is why you see your friends as enemies. When someone tells you the truth but it is not what you want to believe, then you get emotional and see him as an enemy. This is not how to build successful communities. You need to recognize your friends, even though they are telling you the hard truths, and you need to recognize your frenemies, even though they tell you what you want to hear. You may have to work a bit more on that love, compassion, and forgiveness and try to understand the other person’s actual point of view, rather than the one you assume he has.
Con men work by telling smart people what they want to hear. It works. You are being conned by confidence men who have genuinely gained your confidence. The time is now to recognize these truths.
Just some quick ending notes. I am not very concerned about it being posted.
1. Edward I had not seen David’s post, and could not find it on this pages. So thanks much for reposting it. I tend to agree with most all of it.
I don’t know if you found my occasional humor intended comments, funny. But I smile, when a called myself, “the Black Edward”.
@Robert Zimmerman Thanks for providing the space, and for your reply. I do have more important things, I should be doing, so I accept your decision.