5 ms·

I think you might be confusing crime and race although they happen to be tied closely together. My family decided to moved out of the city when they were follo

by theklub 11y ago

I think you might be confusing crime and race although they happen to be tied closely together. My family decided to moved out of the city when they were followed home one day. Not sure race had anything to do with it but crime definitely did.

wpietri 11y ago
You are ignoring the key part of what he said. Why else would there be racial covenants explicitly excluding non-caucasians? Sure, fear of crime was one of the mechanisms of white flight, but American fear of crime has a big racial component to it. Historically, America has kept black people poor, confined them to poor neighborhoods, and then blamed blackness for the high crime rates that go with poverty and desperation. This game continues today. Donald Trump recently tweeted something with totally made up statistics blaming black people for murders of whites: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/that-racist-trump-tweet-about-blacks-killing-whites-isnt-just-false-its-neo-nazi-propaganda/ http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/that-racist-trump-tweet-abou... It wasn't just wrong and it wasn't just racist. It was literally neo-nazi propaganda.
- thedavinci2000 11y ago
  I wonder if the guy is stupidly ignorant or willfully ignorant. He has said some really despicable things.
  - DarkTree 11y ago
    The scary part is that he has gained a large following of people who think he's just saying "what everyone's thinking". There are many, many people in the U.S. who hear what he says, and then think, "Yeah! That's so true!" on their gut instinct without having any background knowledge on the subject. I'm living in the U.S. and it's a scary momentum.
    - zo1 11y ago
      ""Yeah! That's so true!" on their gut instinct without having any background knowledge on the subject. I'm live in the U.S. and it's a scary momentum." This happens on the other side of the fence, and no one bats an eye about it. In fact, they call it democracy, or something like that. Snarkiness aside, if these people agree with him, then that is their vote. Really, we can't have democracy if we don't call it democracy when people vote the way we don't like them to. It's the same as free-speech: we can't suddenly abandon it if we don't like what's being said.
      - DarkTree 11y ago
        Right, but this conflation comes up with most political arguments and I think it's a straw man. I don't think that people shouldn't have the right to follow Trump, but it's also true that people are free to hate certain types of people. That doesn't mean it isn't scary.
      - wpietri 11y ago
        Populism does have both right and left forms (and others besides), but that doesn't mean that it isn't inimical to democracy. It is not hard to find historical examples of populists who have used the vote to seize power. Democracy is a lot more than voting, and it's certainly more than having one last free vote for a populist who ends free voting. There's also a particularly ugly history of populists stirring up racial hatred as a means to power, which I think is especially dangerous.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    I don't think Trump is really in either of those categories. He's optimized for feeling confident and saying things that (some) people want to hear. It's not that he's lying, because he doesn't even know what the truth is. I also think he doesn't know that he doesn't know that. In this regard, I think of him as like a sophisticated bot: he doesn't track input in terms of true or false facts, but in terms of word-strings to say that are useful for his particular purposes. Any belief necessary to sound convincing is generated from the word strings. My grandfather was a master salesman and as best I can tell, this was his basic approach to managing reality.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  I think the reason these threads about suburbs explode is because people who grew up in suburbs that have never had restrictive covenants and have nothing whatsoever to do with racism feel personally attacked. Plus as another commenter said, not everyone wants to live in a concrete jungle. So if someone wants to have a back yard and not hear constant traffic noise, let them.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    I can understand why they'd feel that way, but a request to acknowledge the actual facts of history is not actually a personal attack. It's frustrating when people take it that way, as it makes the discussion about white people's feelings, thus reinforcing the notion that the white person's narrative is and should be the dominant one.
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      You're still assuming race where none is given when you describe suburban feelings as "white people's feelings". It's unhelpful to the cause of racial equality and righting past wrongs to talk about the "white person's narrative" as if that's what I'm doing here. My narrative isn't white, black, brown, red, yellow, green, purple, or rainbow; it's just mine. So let's just talk about people as people and their lives as they want to describe them, rather than in terms of racial narratives.
      - wpietri 11y ago
        Suburbs are broadly white. Many of them were established to be explicitly white. Some older, inner suburbs, which have become more diverse, are now experiencing white flight of their own. Suburban feelings tend to be white people's feelings. It's a generalization, but as a white guy who when to school in the 'burbs, I'm comfortable with that. > My narrative isn't white, black, brown, red, yellow, green, purple, or rainbow; it's just mine. If you narrative is American, race is an inescapable part of that. Saying your narrative has no race is basically to say that it's white. We white people can talk as if race doesn't exist because we have made whiteness the default, the perspective, the unmarked case. But non-white people in America don't talk like that. If you're looking for an expanded version of how this works, search for critiques of "I don't see race", which has been thoroughly examined and found wanting.
- dclowd9901 11y ago
  So are you saying higher crime rates in those areas is caused by poor people or black people? Because you're not saying that there isn't more crime where black people live...
  - wpietri 11y ago
    I am saying higher crime rates in those areas are caused by endemic structural and personal white racism.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  >Why else would there be racial covenants explicitly excluding non-caucasians? Late to the party but I think Jews were also usually excluded.

by theklub 11y ago

wpietri 11y ago

You are ignoring the key part of what he said. Why else would there be racial covenants explicitly excluding non-caucasians? Sure, fear of crime was one of the mechanisms of white flight, but American fear of crime has a big racial component to it. Historically, America has kept black people poor, confined them to poor neighborhoods, and then blamed blackness for the high crime rates that go with poverty and desperation. This game continues today. Donald Trump recently tweeted something with totally made up statistics blaming black people for murders of whites: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/that-racist-trump-tweet-about-blacks-killing-whites-isnt-just-false-its-neo-nazi-propaganda/ http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/that-racist-trump-tweet-abou... It wasn't just wrong and it wasn't just racist. It was literally neo-nazi propaganda.

thedavinci2000 11y ago
I wonder if the guy is stupidly ignorant or willfully ignorant. He has said some really despicable things.
- DarkTree 11y ago
  The scary part is that he has gained a large following of people who think he's just saying "what everyone's thinking". There are many, many people in the U.S. who hear what he says, and then think, "Yeah! That's so true!" on their gut instinct without having any background knowledge on the subject. I'm living in the U.S. and it's a scary momentum.
  - zo1 11y ago
    ""Yeah! That's so true!" on their gut instinct without having any background knowledge on the subject. I'm live in the U.S. and it's a scary momentum." This happens on the other side of the fence, and no one bats an eye about it. In fact, they call it democracy, or something like that. Snarkiness aside, if these people agree with him, then that is their vote. Really, we can't have democracy if we don't call it democracy when people vote the way we don't like them to. It's the same as free-speech: we can't suddenly abandon it if we don't like what's being said.
    - DarkTree 11y ago
      Right, but this conflation comes up with most political arguments and I think it's a straw man. I don't think that people shouldn't have the right to follow Trump, but it's also true that people are free to hate certain types of people. That doesn't mean it isn't scary.
    - wpietri 11y ago
      Populism does have both right and left forms (and others besides), but that doesn't mean that it isn't inimical to democracy. It is not hard to find historical examples of populists who have used the vote to seize power. Democracy is a lot more than voting, and it's certainly more than having one last free vote for a populist who ends free voting. There's also a particularly ugly history of populists stirring up racial hatred as a means to power, which I think is especially dangerous.
- wpietri 11y ago
  I don't think Trump is really in either of those categories. He's optimized for feeling confident and saying things that (some) people want to hear. It's not that he's lying, because he doesn't even know what the truth is. I also think he doesn't know that he doesn't know that. In this regard, I think of him as like a sophisticated bot: he doesn't track input in terms of true or false facts, but in terms of word-strings to say that are useful for his particular purposes. Any belief necessary to sound convincing is generated from the word strings. My grandfather was a master salesman and as best I can tell, this was his basic approach to managing reality.
nitrogen 11y ago
I think the reason these threads about suburbs explode is because people who grew up in suburbs that have never had restrictive covenants and have nothing whatsoever to do with racism feel personally attacked. Plus as another commenter said, not everyone wants to live in a concrete jungle. So if someone wants to have a back yard and not hear constant traffic noise, let them.
- wpietri 11y ago
  I can understand why they'd feel that way, but a request to acknowledge the actual facts of history is not actually a personal attack. It's frustrating when people take it that way, as it makes the discussion about white people's feelings, thus reinforcing the notion that the white person's narrative is and should be the dominant one.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    You're still assuming race where none is given when you describe suburban feelings as "white people's feelings". It's unhelpful to the cause of racial equality and righting past wrongs to talk about the "white person's narrative" as if that's what I'm doing here. My narrative isn't white, black, brown, red, yellow, green, purple, or rainbow; it's just mine. So let's just talk about people as people and their lives as they want to describe them, rather than in terms of racial narratives.
    - wpietri 11y ago
      Suburbs are broadly white. Many of them were established to be explicitly white. Some older, inner suburbs, which have become more diverse, are now experiencing white flight of their own. Suburban feelings tend to be white people's feelings. It's a generalization, but as a white guy who when to school in the 'burbs, I'm comfortable with that. > My narrative isn't white, black, brown, red, yellow, green, purple, or rainbow; it's just mine. If you narrative is American, race is an inescapable part of that. Saying your narrative has no race is basically to say that it's white. We white people can talk as if race doesn't exist because we have made whiteness the default, the perspective, the unmarked case. But non-white people in America don't talk like that. If you're looking for an expanded version of how this works, search for critiques of "I don't see race", which has been thoroughly examined and found wanting.
dclowd9901 11y ago
So are you saying higher crime rates in those areas is caused by poor people or black people? Because you're not saying that there isn't more crime where black people live...
- wpietri 11y ago
  I am saying higher crime rates in those areas are caused by endemic structural and personal white racism.
fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
>Why else would there be racial covenants explicitly excluding non-caucasians? Late to the party but I think Jews were also usually excluded.