Ah thanks, that information helps me understand it better. I'm not entirely sure what it is evidence of, though, aside from people believing that racism is over (and especially conservative leaning people). I mean if everybody but the black guy says it is the black guy's fault he doesn't succeed, that doesn't prove anything other than that people have opinions.
An opinion that sort of makes things a self-fulfilling prophecy. When almost 2/3 of the country thinks there is no problem, it's kind of hard to fix the problem.
And 98 percent of the country doesn't think Obama is actually a secret Lizard Alien out to enslave humanity, so the evidence clearly points to that being a real problem that we will be unable to solve.
There's some weird double think you have to go through to site a poll that's more than 2:1 against your position, and in every demographic but one as high or higher against it and then go "see proof!"
good to know racism is over now that white people think it's over.
glad we sorted that out.
So if the poll said the majority of respondents said racism was the primary reason blacks can't get a head, then that's "evidence" for your position.
And if it doesn't that's also evidence for your position.
what it actually means is that this poll is an opinion poll not a fact poll. the poll is not evidence for any position, nor did i say it was.
institutionalized racism is a fact of life in the united states. people believing it doesn't exist does not make it go away.
Believing something isn't the primary cause of something and that it doesn't exist aren't the same thing.
I would probably answer that poll wIth lack of job skills before discrimination. You can make an argument linking one to the other, but unless pew is doing that with every respondent it doesn't tell you anything.
E:
I mean an equally valid reading of the poll is that blacks are simply not taking ownership of their short comings and mistakes and are simply placing all the blame on external forces.
Believing something isn't the primary cause of something and that it doesn't exist aren't the same thing.
I would probably answer that poll wIth lack of job skills before discrimination. You can make an argument linking one to the other, but unless pew is doing that with every respondent it doesn't tell you anything.
E:
I mean an equally valid reading of the poll is that blacks are simply not taking ownership of their short comings and mistakes and are simply placing all the blame on external forces.
.... no, it isn't
the poll is just a poll; it measures the opinions of the public. The public can be and frequently is wrong or misinformed about various subjects.
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
So one again polls that support the assertion are right, polls that oppose the assertion actually support it via the sometimes the public is wrong rule.
if you polled people on the answer to 2+2, even if 7 wins by 100 points it doesn't make 2+2=7.
not sure why you're hung up on this. the interest in the poll is that disbelief in a thing makes it hard to confront the thing. see: climate change. it doesn't make the thing not exist.
So one again polls that support the assertion are right, polls that oppose the assertion actually support it via the sometimes the public is wrong rule.
What the fuck are you even talking about?
An opinion poll by definition measures opinions. It is proof of opinions. And that's all it's proof of and all it's ever used as proof of.
The point being that opinions say X, while reality says Y.
Ah thanks, that information helps me understand it better. I'm not entirely sure what it is evidence of, though, aside from people believing that racism is over (and especially conservative leaning people). I mean if everybody but the black guy says it is the black guy's fault he doesn't succeed, that doesn't prove anything other than that people have opinions.
An opinion that sort of makes things a self-fulfilling prophecy. When almost 2/3 of the country thinks there is no problem, it's kind of hard to fix the problem.
And 98 percent of the country doesn't think Obama is actually a secret Lizard Alien out to enslave humanity, so the evidence clearly points to that being a real problem that we will be unable to solve.
There's some weird double think you have to go through to site a poll that's more than 2:1 against your position, and in every demographic but one as high or higher against it and then go "see proof!"
good to know racism is over now that white people think it's over.
glad we sorted that out.
So if the poll said the majority of respondents said racism was the primary reason blacks can't get a head, then that's "evidence" for your position.
And if it doesn't that's also evidence for your position.
'Blacks are responsible for their own social status' is a racist statement. If you agree with it, you're either a racist or hopelessly uninformed. So, pick one for the respondents, I guess?
The bills that would actually fund research into the causes of poverty in the U.S. have consistently been blocked by ideologues like yourself, so it's pretty disingenuous to say - having argued against the studies being done - "Where's all of the studies???"
Ah thanks, that information helps me understand it better. I'm not entirely sure what it is evidence of, though, aside from people believing that racism is over (and especially conservative leaning people). I mean if everybody but the black guy says it is the black guy's fault he doesn't succeed, that doesn't prove anything other than that people have opinions.
An opinion that sort of makes things a self-fulfilling prophecy. When almost 2/3 of the country thinks there is no problem, it's kind of hard to fix the problem.
And 98 percent of the country doesn't think Obama is actually a secret Lizard Alien out to enslave humanity, so the evidence clearly points to that being a real problem that we will be unable to solve.
There's some weird double think you have to go through to site a poll that's more than 2:1 against your position, and in every demographic but one as high or higher against it and then go "see proof!"
good to know racism is over now that white people think it's over.
glad we sorted that out.
So if the poll said the majority of respondents said racism was the primary reason blacks can't get a head, then that's "evidence" for your position.
And if it doesn't that's also evidence for your position.
'Blacks are responsible for their own social status' is a racist statement. If you agree with it, you're either a racist or hopelessly uninformed. So, pick one for the respondents, I guess?
Doesnt that imply that the question 'Blacks are responsible...' generates a different response to the (unasked) question 'People are responsible...'?
So one again polls that support the assertion are right, polls that oppose the assertion actually support it via the sometimes the public is wrong rule.
honestly I don't even understand what assertion you think somebody claimed this poll supports
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Doesnt that imply that the question 'Blacks are responsible...' generates a different response to the (unasked) question 'People are responsible...'?
No, because the two questions have completely different contexts. 'People are responsible...' usually follows the argument that everyone owns the consequences for the actions they take. 'Black people are responsible for their own social status' declares all black people to be some monolithic entity, and always has ugly subtext (Black people wouldn't be imprisoned so often if they weren't all crooks, black people wouldn't be poor if they'd stop being lazy & got jobs, black people have poor STEM metrics because they're all stupid, etc).
Doesnt that imply that the question 'Blacks are responsible...' generates a different response to the (unasked) question 'People are responsible...'?
No, because the two questions have completely different contexts. 'People are responsible...' usually follows the argument that everyone owns the consequences for the actions they take. 'Black people are responsible for their own social status' declares all black people to be some monolithic entity, and always has ugly subtext (Black people wouldn't be imprisoned so often if they weren't all crooks, black people wouldn't be poor if they'd stop being lazy & got jobs, black people have poor STEM metrics because they're all stupid, etc).
The question may be "Racist" (although the declared monolithic entityness also applies for the use of "People"), but if someone responds "Yes" to "People are responsible..." then they should also respond "Yes" to "Blacks are responsible..." In such a case, it's difficult to draw conclusions for anything specific to "Blacks".
In fact, in such a case it would be arguable that racism would be applicable if they answered "No" to "Blacks are responsible..." as that would imply that "Blacks" aren't "People".
As with most statistics, it's difficult to draw any solid conclusions from a poorly designed questionnaire.
Doesnt that imply that the question 'Blacks are responsible...' generates a different response to the (unasked) question 'People are responsible...'?
No, because the two questions have completely different contexts. 'People are responsible...' usually follows the argument that everyone owns the consequences for the actions they take. 'Black people are responsible for their own social status' declares all black people to be some monolithic entity, and always has ugly subtext (Black people wouldn't be imprisoned so often if they weren't all crooks, black people wouldn't be poor if they'd stop being lazy & got jobs, black people have poor STEM metrics because they're all stupid, etc).
The question may be "Racist" (although the declared monolithic entityness also applies for the use of "People"), but if someone responds "Yes" to "People are responsible..." then they should also respond "Yes" to "Blacks are responsible..." In such a case, it's difficult to draw conclusions for anything specific to "Blacks".
In fact, in such a case it would be arguable that racism would be applicable if they answered "No" to "Blacks are responsible..." as that would imply that "Blacks" aren't "People".
As with most statistics, it's difficult to draw any solid conclusions from a poorly designed questionnaire.
That's a weird assumption to make. Yes, "blacks" are a subset of "people", but "Blacks are responsible..." and "People are responsible..." are two completely different questions.
Doesnt that imply that the question 'Blacks are responsible...' generates a different response to the (unasked) question 'People are responsible...'?
No, because the two questions have completely different contexts. 'People are responsible...' usually follows the argument that everyone owns the consequences for the actions they take. 'Black people are responsible for their own social status' declares all black people to be some monolithic entity, and always has ugly subtext (Black people wouldn't be imprisoned so often if they weren't all crooks, black people wouldn't be poor if they'd stop being lazy & got jobs, black people have poor STEM metrics because they're all stupid, etc).
The question may be "Racist" (although the declared monolithic entityness also applies for the use of "People"), but if someone responds "Yes" to "People are responsible..." then they should also respond "Yes" to "Blacks are responsible..." In such a case, it's difficult to draw conclusions for anything specific to "Blacks".
In fact, in such a case it would be arguable that racism would be applicable if they answered "No" to "Blacks are responsible..." as that would imply that "Blacks" aren't "People".
As with most statistics, it's difficult to draw any solid conclusions from a poorly designed questionnaire.
That's a weird assumption to make. Yes, "blacks" are a subset of "people", but "Blacks are responsible..." and "People are responsible..." are two completely different questions.
They are, but the answer to both can be "Yes" without giving any meaningful information regarding respondents' attitudes specifically to blacks.
EDIT: Apologies, this isn't really a meaningful tangent - I used Ender's paraphrasing "'Blacks are responsible for their own social status" in lieu of checking the original phrasing on the previous page.
I guess if you want to very pedantically ignore all of the cultural context / subtext of that question, sure. But I'm not interested in being a pedantic hack or interacting with one, so...
I guess if you want to very pedantically ignore all of the cultural context / subtext of that question, sure. But I'm not interested in being a pedantic hack or interacting with one, so...
Wow... I just said that the phrasing I used was irrelevant to the study as quoted, but "I'm not interested in trying to qualify any of my assumptions when interpreting data" is pretty shitty attitude to take.
What 'data'? You went on to equivocate between a neutral question ('People are responsible...') and a racially charged question ('Black people are responsible...') and want to pretend that the latter isn't really racially charged. I mean, go ahead if you like, but I'm not going to follow you there.
What 'data'? You went on to equivocate between a neutral question ('People are responsible...') and a racially charged question ('Black people are responsible...') and want to pretend that the latter isn't really racially charged. I mean, go ahead if you like, but I'm not going to follow you there.
That's not what I said.
I said that you can't interpret meaningful information on the respondents' answers to a "racially charged question" (using quotes because it's a quote) without knowing how they respond to a non-racially charged question.
I said that you can't interpret meaningful information on the respondents' answers to a "racially charged question" (using quotes because it's a quote) without knowing how they respond to a non-racially charged question.
For this statement to be true, you'd have to accept a premise that everyone or almost everyone polled saw the question about black people and magically became socially color blind / insulated themselves from all cultural bias.
I said that you can't interpret meaningful information on the respondents' answers to a "racially charged question" (using quotes because it's a quote) without knowing how they respond to a non-racially charged question.
For this statement to be true, you'd have to accept a premise that everyone or almost everyone polled saw the question about black people and magically became socially color blind / insulated themselves from all cultural bias.
Yeah, nope.
This is off topic. You are being obtuse.
Be aware that there are people who believe that EVERYONE is responsible for their own place in society, and answering "Yes" to "Blacks are responsible for their own social status" is consistent with that belief. Expecting these people to answer "No" is fucking stupid, and ascribing racial motivations to their "Yes" answer is equally fucking stupid.
I said that you can't interpret meaningful information on the respondents' answers to a "racially charged question" (using quotes because it's a quote) without knowing how they respond to a non-racially charged question.
For this statement to be true, you'd have to accept a premise that everyone or almost everyone polled saw the question about black people and magically became socially color blind / insulated themselves from all cultural bias.
Yeah, nope.
This is off topic. You are being obtuse.
Be aware that there are people who believe that EVERYONE is responsible for their own place in society, and answering "Yes" to "Blacks are responsible for their own social status" is consistent with that belief. Expecting these people to answer "No" is fucking stupid, and ascribing racial motivations to their "Yes" answer is equally fucking stupid.
Well yes, those people are upholding racism. You don't have to be malicious to be racist, you don't have to hate [ethnicity] to be racist. You simply have to unquestioningly apply cultural standards that, however slightly, advantage one race above another. This is how the concept of disparate impact works in employment law: if a set of conditions of employment result in racist hiring practices, it doesn't necessarily require bigotry by any person implementing them, we can see from the results that the practices are racist.
I said that you can't interpret meaningful information on the respondents' answers to a "racially charged question" (using quotes because it's a quote) without knowing how they respond to a non-racially charged question.
For this statement to be true, you'd have to accept a premise that everyone or almost everyone polled saw the question about black people and magically became socially color blind / insulated themselves from all cultural bias.
Yeah, nope.
This is off topic. You are being obtuse.
Be aware that there are people who believe that EVERYONE is responsible for their own place in society, and answering "Yes" to "Blacks are responsible for their own social status" is consistent with that belief. Expecting these people to answer "No" is fucking stupid, and ascribing racial motivations to their "Yes" answer is equally fucking stupid.
Well yes, those people are uphold racism. You don't have to be malicious to be racist, you don't have to hate [ethnicity] to be racist. You simply have to unquestioningly apply cultural standards that, however slightly, advantage one race above another. This is how the concept of disparate impact works in employment law: if a set of conditions of employment result in racist hiring practices, it doesn't necessarily require bigotry by any person implementing them, we can see from the results that the practices are racist.
I'm going to drop this, because it was based on a (incorrect) paraphrasing, but I will point out:
What if the evidence either (a) says that the bolded assumption is false (i.e. giving the same response irrespective of race), or (b) is missing?
Be aware that there are people who believe that EVERYONE is responsible for their own place in society, and answering "Yes" to "Blacks are responsible for their own social status" is consistent with that belief. Expecting these people to answer "No" is fucking stupid, and ascribing racial motivations to their "Yes" answer is equally fucking stupid.
And you should be aware that 'Blacks are responsible for their own social status' is a racially charged question, and that it needs to be taken in context with the culture surrounding it, and that people who answer 'yes' to that question are very, very likely to be racist.
I mean, depending on how deftly you wish to come to the rescue of the Totally Not Racists, any question can be construed as neutral so long as you ignore all context. "Were black people better off as slaves?" Oh, well all of the respondents who answered 'Yes' might just be socially color blind Totally Not Racist liberal arts hipsters who think that society itself is a form of benevolent slavery. They weren't thinking of black chattle slavery because the question wasn't specific enough.
I said that you can't interpret meaningful information on the respondents' answers to a "racially charged question" (using quotes because it's a quote) without knowing how they respond to a non-racially charged question.
For this statement to be true, you'd have to accept a premise that everyone or almost everyone polled saw the question about black people and magically became socially color blind / insulated themselves from all cultural bias.
Yeah, nope.
This is off topic. You are being obtuse.
Be aware that there are people who believe that EVERYONE is responsible for their own place in society, and answering "Yes" to "Blacks are responsible for their own social status" is consistent with that belief. Expecting these people to answer "No" is fucking stupid, and ascribing racial motivations to their "Yes" answer is equally fucking stupid.
Well yes, those people are uphold racism. You don't have to be malicious to be racist, you don't have to hate [ethnicity] to be racist. You simply have to unquestioningly apply cultural standards that, however slightly, advantage one race above another. This is how the concept of disparate impact works in employment law: if a set of conditions of employment result in racist hiring practices, it doesn't necessarily require bigotry by any person implementing them, we can see from the results that the practices are racist.
I'm going to drop this, because it was based on a (incorrect) paraphrasing, but I will point out:
What if the evidence either (a) says that the bolded assumption is false (i.e. giving the same response irrespective of race), or (b) is missing?
If that evidence exists, I'd like to see it. In the case of societal behaviors regarding the treatment of black people, we have literallyoverwhelmingevidence that even given the same input, the output by cultural institutions like the law, the job market, and education will be biased against black people. Given that those three areas are literally the cornerstones of the American economy, people who insist that it's the victim's fault are merely upholding racist lies that underpin American society.
Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
Counterpoint- giving every black person a check for three hundred dollars is a ridiculous idea. Ever hear of "teach a man to fish"? They need jobs, good jobs, not a single cash payment. Maybe do something with tax incentives for factories in urban areas? End free trade to bring back manufacturing to the U.S.? Enact regional growth restrictions to force developers to turn inward towards the core + build mass transit linking city cores to one another?
Counterpoint- giving every black person a check for three hundred dollars is a ridiculous idea. Ever hear of "teach a man to fish"? They need jobs, good jobs, not a single cash payment. Maybe do something with tax incentives for factories in urban areas? End free trade to bring back manufacturing to the U.S.? Enact regional growth restrictions to force developers to turn inward towards the core + build mass transit linking city cores to one another?
...ban payday loans/Aaron's?
Fix the problems that John Oliver brings up on a weekly basis, all the mind-numbingly terrible ways that we keep the poor and minorities down.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
+4
Options
Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
you know when this thread first started i argued pretty hard on the whole 'reparations doesn't have to mean money' idea. that an admission of wrongdoing and a concerted and genuine effort to affect change could be a legitimate course of action.
but honestly, now, after reading about Ferguson and the way in which fines are used as a source of income for the city/township/whatever, and getting even a hint of how widespread that practice is across the US, maybe the idea of a monetary payment isn't such a bad idea after all.
would it fix things? no. there would still need to be a concerted and genuine effort to change things and that would require an admission that things just aren't working now. but perhaps a payout, alongside those other things, would at least be just.
you know when this thread first started i argued pretty hard on the whole 'reparations doesn't have to mean money' idea. that an admission of wrongdoing and a concerted and genuine effort to affect change could be a legitimate course of action.
but honestly, now, after reading about Ferguson and the way in which fines are used as a source of income for the city/township/whatever, and getting even a hint of how widespread that practice is across the US, maybe the idea of a monetary payment isn't such a bad idea after all.
would it fix things? no. there would still need to be a concerted and genuine effort to change things and that would require an admission that things just aren't working now. but perhaps a payout, alongside those other things, would at least be just.
One theme that Coates has brought up quite a bit is the idea of the relationship of black Americans to society as a form of plunder. You see throughout the history of the US the forcible extraction of value from blacks by society, both direct and indirect.
you know when this thread first started i argued pretty hard on the whole 'reparations doesn't have to mean money' idea. that an admission of wrongdoing and a concerted and genuine effort to affect change could be a legitimate course of action.
but honestly, now, after reading about Ferguson and the way in which fines are used as a source of income for the city/township/whatever, and getting even a hint of how widespread that practice is across the US, maybe the idea of a monetary payment isn't such a bad idea after all.
would it fix things? no. there would still need to be a concerted and genuine effort to change things and that would require an admission that things just aren't working now. but perhaps a payout, alongside those other things, would at least be just.
One theme that Coates has brought up quite a bit is the idea of the relationship of black Americans to society as a form of plunder. You see throughout the history of the US the forcible extraction of value from blacks by society, both direct and indirect.
One of the things I took away from reading the Autobiography of Ida B. Wells is the lost promise of the period of Reconstruction. Blacks in the South flocked to the schools set up by the Freedmen's Bureau, joined benevolent societies, started businesses and generally had a quiet golden age where they thought they'd be welcomed into mainstream American life.
Then Reconstruction ended and the lynchings started, and the first victims weren't criminals. The first blacks killed were the storeowners. The benevolent societies were banned, and the only place blacks could legally congregate was in the churches. The Freedman schools were shuttered and replaced by poor imitations run by the states. That's when the Great Migration started, with millions of blacks fleeing persecution in the South.
+3
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
edited June 2019
Yes, I know this thread hasn't been active for four years. However, I think it's relevant to bring it back up.
Ta-Nehisi Coates testified in front of a House Judiciary Subcommittee in regards to slavery reparations. The full testimony is here:
(Video begins at 11:36, but nothing really happens until 14:15.)
On a side note, a response to people who say that there's no point in reparations because none of those slaves are alive today and neither are the people who perpetrated that slavery - there were black slaves in the United States well into the 1960s, prevented from leaving the land under threat of beatings and death, with people being raped and tortured. Many of them are still alive and if anyone deserves reparations first, it's them.
Damn, Danny Glover really is getting too old for ... some shit of some sort.
Reparations seems like it would be a colossal logistical nightmare and hopefully if it does go through, you wind up with something like "kids/people get free college/university" instead of some one time cheque as an option. Feels like that would have way more value and do more in the long term.
Sadly, reparations will never go through in this country. Just looked at what's happened after electing a black man as President.
The main problem is that, like Obama's election, reparations are sold as this one panacea that will forever "solve" the racial tensions on this country (aka will finally get black people to shut up without white people having to change any of their bias or their behaviours).
Now that everybody knows that the above is not going to happen, that any resolution of the race question requieres the South to either change or submit, is far easier to do what has always been done: nothing.
Honestly, probably just easier to go with UBI at this point. It's a system that sidesteps some of the bullshit reparations runs into. It would also do a better job at getting blacks out of poverty and actually be more than a one time deal. Not to mention it has more buy in, so that makes it a bit harder for asshole oligarch assholes to attack.
Posts
what it actually means is that this poll is an opinion poll not a fact poll. the poll is not evidence for any position, nor did i say it was.
institutionalized racism is a fact of life in the united states. people believing it doesn't exist does not make it go away.
I would probably answer that poll wIth lack of job skills before discrimination. You can make an argument linking one to the other, but unless pew is doing that with every respondent it doesn't tell you anything.
E:
I mean an equally valid reading of the poll is that blacks are simply not taking ownership of their short comings and mistakes and are simply placing all the blame on external forces.
.... no, it isn't
the poll is just a poll; it measures the opinions of the public. The public can be and frequently is wrong or misinformed about various subjects.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
if you polled people on the answer to 2+2, even if 7 wins by 100 points it doesn't make 2+2=7.
not sure why you're hung up on this. the interest in the poll is that disbelief in a thing makes it hard to confront the thing. see: climate change. it doesn't make the thing not exist.
What the fuck are you even talking about?
An opinion poll by definition measures opinions. It is proof of opinions. And that's all it's proof of and all it's ever used as proof of.
The point being that opinions say X, while reality says Y.
'Blacks are responsible for their own social status' is a racist statement. If you agree with it, you're either a racist or hopelessly uninformed. So, pick one for the respondents, I guess?
The bills that would actually fund research into the causes of poverty in the U.S. have consistently been blocked by ideologues like yourself, so it's pretty disingenuous to say - having argued against the studies being done - "Where's all of the studies???"
honestly I don't even understand what assertion you think somebody claimed this poll supports
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
ITT people jump to conclusions
No, because the two questions have completely different contexts. 'People are responsible...' usually follows the argument that everyone owns the consequences for the actions they take. 'Black people are responsible for their own social status' declares all black people to be some monolithic entity, and always has ugly subtext (Black people wouldn't be imprisoned so often if they weren't all crooks, black people wouldn't be poor if they'd stop being lazy & got jobs, black people have poor STEM metrics because they're all stupid, etc).
In fact, in such a case it would be arguable that racism would be applicable if they answered "No" to "Blacks are responsible..." as that would imply that "Blacks" aren't "People".
As with most statistics, it's difficult to draw any solid conclusions from a poorly designed questionnaire.
That's a weird assumption to make. Yes, "blacks" are a subset of "people", but "Blacks are responsible..." and "People are responsible..." are two completely different questions.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
EDIT: Apologies, this isn't really a meaningful tangent - I used Ender's paraphrasing "'Blacks are responsible for their own social status" in lieu of checking the original phrasing on the previous page.
I said that you can't interpret meaningful information on the respondents' answers to a "racially charged question" (using quotes because it's a quote) without knowing how they respond to a non-racially charged question.
It's science 101 - get your damned control first.
For this statement to be true, you'd have to accept a premise that everyone or almost everyone polled saw the question about black people and magically became socially color blind / insulated themselves from all cultural bias.
Yeah, nope.
Be aware that there are people who believe that EVERYONE is responsible for their own place in society, and answering "Yes" to "Blacks are responsible for their own social status" is consistent with that belief. Expecting these people to answer "No" is fucking stupid, and ascribing racial motivations to their "Yes" answer is equally fucking stupid.
Well yes, those people are upholding racism. You don't have to be malicious to be racist, you don't have to hate [ethnicity] to be racist. You simply have to unquestioningly apply cultural standards that, however slightly, advantage one race above another. This is how the concept of disparate impact works in employment law: if a set of conditions of employment result in racist hiring practices, it doesn't necessarily require bigotry by any person implementing them, we can see from the results that the practices are racist.
What if the evidence either (a) says that the bolded assumption is false (i.e. giving the same response irrespective of race), or (b) is missing?
And you should be aware that 'Blacks are responsible for their own social status' is a racially charged question, and that it needs to be taken in context with the culture surrounding it, and that people who answer 'yes' to that question are very, very likely to be racist.
I mean, depending on how deftly you wish to come to the rescue of the Totally Not Racists, any question can be construed as neutral so long as you ignore all context. "Were black people better off as slaves?" Oh, well all of the respondents who answered 'Yes' might just be socially color blind Totally Not Racist liberal arts hipsters who think that society itself is a form of benevolent slavery. They weren't thinking of black chattle slavery because the question wasn't specific enough.
If that evidence exists, I'd like to see it. In the case of societal behaviors regarding the treatment of black people, we have literally overwhelming evidence that even given the same input, the output by cultural institutions like the law, the job market, and education will be biased against black people. Given that those three areas are literally the cornerstones of the American economy, people who insist that it's the victim's fault are merely upholding racist lies that underpin American society.
Speaking of which, Coates posted a three part bibliography, listing the works that influenced his piece.
(Big graphic, so not posting here. Go look it over, though!)
...ban payday loans/Aaron's?
Fix the problems that John Oliver brings up on a weekly basis, all the mind-numbingly terrible ways that we keep the poor and minorities down.
Then you misread it. The $300 was the amount that the US government under Lincoln paid per slave when he ordered the abolition of slavery in DC.
To the former slave owners.
but honestly, now, after reading about Ferguson and the way in which fines are used as a source of income for the city/township/whatever, and getting even a hint of how widespread that practice is across the US, maybe the idea of a monetary payment isn't such a bad idea after all.
would it fix things? no. there would still need to be a concerted and genuine effort to change things and that would require an admission that things just aren't working now. but perhaps a payout, alongside those other things, would at least be just.
One theme that Coates has brought up quite a bit is the idea of the relationship of black Americans to society as a form of plunder. You see throughout the history of the US the forcible extraction of value from blacks by society, both direct and indirect.
One of the things I took away from reading the Autobiography of Ida B. Wells is the lost promise of the period of Reconstruction. Blacks in the South flocked to the schools set up by the Freedmen's Bureau, joined benevolent societies, started businesses and generally had a quiet golden age where they thought they'd be welcomed into mainstream American life.
Then Reconstruction ended and the lynchings started, and the first victims weren't criminals. The first blacks killed were the storeowners. The benevolent societies were banned, and the only place blacks could legally congregate was in the churches. The Freedman schools were shuttered and replaced by poor imitations run by the states. That's when the Great Migration started, with millions of blacks fleeing persecution in the South.
Ta-Nehisi Coates testified in front of a House Judiciary Subcommittee in regards to slavery reparations. The full testimony is here:
(Video begins at 11:36, but nothing really happens until 14:15.)
On a side note, a response to people who say that there's no point in reparations because none of those slaves are alive today and neither are the people who perpetrated that slavery - there were black slaves in the United States well into the 1960s, prevented from leaving the land under threat of beatings and death, with people being raped and tortured. Many of them are still alive and if anyone deserves reparations first, it's them.
Reparations seems like it would be a colossal logistical nightmare and hopefully if it does go through, you wind up with something like "kids/people get free college/university" instead of some one time cheque as an option. Feels like that would have way more value and do more in the long term.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
The main problem is that, like Obama's election, reparations are sold as this one panacea that will forever "solve" the racial tensions on this country (aka will finally get black people to shut up without white people having to change any of their bias or their behaviours).
Now that everybody knows that the above is not going to happen, that any resolution of the race question requieres the South to either change or submit, is far easier to do what has always been done: nothing.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.