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Black people in Baltimore absolutely do occupy a privileged position. I wouldn't quite describe it as "direct America", but it's a fallacy to ignore it. We bla

Black people in Baltimore absolutely do occupy a privileged position. I wouldn't quite describe it as "direct America", but it's a fallacy to ignore it. We blame poor rural whites (correctly, in my view) for their behavior, but make excuses for poor urban blacks who engage in similar behaviors. To do otherwise is racist. A poor Baltimore black kid with a 1500 SAT is guaranteed admission to multiple ivies - the same is not true of the poor rural white kid. Etc. I have little sympathy for either group feel they are largely responsible for their own problems. But it's silly to ignore this very large cultural distinction in how they are treated. And realistically, it's the cultural distinction rather than economic ones that are driving Trump, Wilders and Le Pen. Incidentally, people in cities try to push around rural folks all the time - forcing them to bake gay wedding pizzas, taking away their guns, etc. And in fact rural America isn't banning trannies in the ladies room in NYC either - recall that all Trump did was say this wasn't a federal issue. Rural America didn't start your culture war.

rayiner 10y ago
> Incidentally, people in cities try to push around rural folks all the time - forcing them to bake gay wedding pizzas, taking away their guns, etc. I think those are First and Second amendment violations, so I'm not going to defend either thing. > And in fact rural America isn't banning trannies in the ladies room in NYC either - recall that all Trump did was say this wasn't a federal issue. Rural America didn't start your culture war. LGBT rights aren't part of a "culture war." They're 14th amendment equal protection issues. States are entitled to vote to create whatever kinds of societies they want (and I agree we often don't respect that enough), but what they cannot do is start making laws that single out certain kinds of people for special treatment. We're a federal republic, but that's one of the things you don't get to do while flying the American flag. And it's something that a big chunk of Americans won't tolerate happening in a place that's flying the American flag.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I'm aware that blue state folks often declare their pet issues to be secret constitutional rights hidden in the auras and penumbra's. I hope Trump appoints enough judges to do the same - I enjoy watching the intellectually dishonest people around me squirm. That doesn't make them any less a part of the culture war.
  - pasquinelli 10y ago
    This is exactly what the trump phenomenon is all about, and all the hmming and hawing about it is just vain searching for substance were there's none. All power, no judgement. Make 'em squirm and fuck the consequences. "Since power over human beings is shown in making them do what they would rather not do, the man who is actuated by love of power is more apt to inflict pain than to permit pleasure. If you ask your boss for leave of absence from the office on some legitimate occasion, his love of power will derive more satisfaction from a refusal than from a consent. If you require a building permit, the petty official concerned will obviously get more pleasure from saying «No» than from saying «Yes». It is this sort of thing which makes the love of power such a dangerous motive." From: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/russell-lecture.html http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/...
    - someguydave 10y ago
      Do you think that some Trump voters might have taken the Alinksyist "will to power" idea to heart after being screamed at by radical leftists for 40 years?
  - rayiner 10y ago
    > blue state folks often declare their pet issues to be secret constitutional rights hidden in the auras and penumbra's My legal philosophy skews hard right, so I'm no big fan of penumbras. But LGBT rights are a straightforward, textual application of the 14th amendment: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It's there as clear as day: you don't get to single out particular people for special treatment under the law. The legal weaseling needed to avoid the plain text ("well the government is not denying anyone the right to marry someone of the opposite gender, even if they are gay") is right up there with reading the Second Amendment only to apply to militias. It's also where textualists and originalists have to part ways. The framers of the 14th amendment almost certainly didn't intend to preclude state laws that single out gays, women, etc. But that's irrelevant--they used unquestionably broad language and the text on the page is the only thing that matters. Particularly here, where there is no argument that the words would have meant something different to the framers (which is different from saying that the reading is different than what the framers intended).
jamesthesnake12 10y ago
A poor Baltimore black kid with a 1500 SAT is guaranteed admission to multiple ivies - the same is not true of the poor rural white kid. Etc. Eh not really true, schools really push state diversity , so if you are from the Mountain west or rural area and are decent you have a better chance to get in. But when the issue of gay marriage came up and R's wanted a federal ammendment to ban it in the mid 2000's that wasn't a state issue
jamesthesnake12 10y ago
A poor Baltimore black kid with a 1500 SAT is guaranteed admission to multiple ivies - the same is not true of the poor rural white kid. Etc. Eh not really true, schools really push state diversity , so if you are from the Mountain west or rural area and are decent you have a better chance to get in. But when the issue of gay marriage came up and R's wanted a federal ammendment to ban it in the mid 2000's that wasn't a state issue
jamesthesnake12 10y ago
A poor Baltimore black kid with a 1500 SAT is guaranteed admission to multiple ivies - the same is not true of the poor rural white kid. Etc. Eh not really true, schools really push state diversity , so if you are from the Mountain west or rural area and are decent you have a better chance to get in. But when the issue of gay marriage came up and R's wanted a federal amendment to ban it in the mid 2000's that wasn't a state issue
Frondo 10y ago
"Incidentally, people in cities try to push around rural folks all the time - forcing them to bake gay wedding pizzas, taking away their guns, etc" Neither of these is true; the bakery in the gay wedding controversy is in a city. City folks are telling other city folks that you can't refuse to serve customers only because they are gay. And no one is taking anyone's guns away.
MandieD 10y ago
Being from a "big, square state" was a non-trivial admissions bonus when I was in high school - once I got my SAT scores back, I was flooded with mail from schools I hadn't dreamed of applying to, full of references to "need-blind admissions" and examples of estimated financial aid for truly middle-class/working-class families. I grew up in Texas, but outside of the big urban/suburban areas. I'm white, as are most residents of "big, square states".
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  At Michigan - the one university where numbers were made explicit - being black is worth +1.0 on GPA, whereas underrepresented state is +0.1 and underrepresented county in Michigan is +0.3. https://www.cir-usa.org/Images/mich_index.gif https://www.cir-usa.org/Images/mich_index.gif Do you have any data suggesting that other universities give even remotely as much weight to underrepresented state as they do to race?
  - rmxt 10y ago
    It's flagrantly misleading to claim that "being black is worth [x]" when this scale is dated and explicitly prohibited from use after Gratz v. Bollinger (2003). See here for UMich's 16 year old explanation of this scale: https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/archivedocs/uapolicy.html https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/archivedocs/uapolicy.... Do you have any data suggesting anything of the sort is still in use?
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      Colleges are secretive, so we need to make do with what little data the court forced them to reveal. I know of no data more current than this. Do you have any evidence things have changed?
      - rmxt 10y ago
        How can you take something as useful evidence when it has been explicitly prohibited from use? Unless public colleges are secretly flying in the face of a Supreme Court ruling, your assertion that "being black is worth +1.0 on GPA, whereas underrepresented state is +0.1 and underrepresented county in Michigan is +0.3," is unproven by the evidence you provided. Had you said "was," and explained that you don't believe things have changed, that would have been far more intellectually honest.
norea-armozel 10y ago
>Rural America didn't start your culture war. As someone from Kansas I can say that many people in that state have wanted and pursued legal/social action against LGBT people for as long as I can remember. Whether you want to admit it or not there's a strong undercurrent of anti-LGBT still alive and well in parts of the country, especially in the rural areas. The only time these folks "tolerate" LGBT people is when we toe the line of what is deemed "normal." So, if you're an effeminate gay man well it sucks to be you in rural (and most of south central) Kansas. If you're transgender (like me) it's double that. Basically, if you're not presenting straight (aka "normal") then you're boned. >Incidentally, people in cities try to push around rural folks all the time - forcing them to bake gay wedding pizzas... And all that talk about forcing people to cater gay weddings, well that's part of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment as one other commentor pointed out. If we throw out that law then that means I can open any public facing business like a bakery and refuse to hire or serve Christians. Let's see how long before this country goes back to the days of the Thirty Years War where we're even asking people if they're a Catholic or not before transacting business. Seriously, think about the consequences of this before asserting that anyone's force to do anything because as long as you got a society you got compromises and more so if you got government with relatively uniform laws. Those compromises ensure sectarianism is kept to a minimum. Now which do you want if you're a rural Christian American, sectarianism where you got an equal chance of being the victim of it or possibly having to cater gay weddings once in a while but getting paid well? BTW, catering in this instance isn't celebrating sin either nor does any part of the Bible say you can't economically benefit from transactions that are not in themselves sinful (ex. you can still sell guns to people whether or not one of them happens to be plotting murder for which you have no foreknowledge of).
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I don't recall Kansas folks trying to tell NY what to do about LGBT. That's the point I was making. Let's see how long before this country goes back to the days of the Thirty Years War where we're even asking people if they're a Catholic or not before transacting business. We're already there - just ask Brendan Eich, Curtis Yarvin or Donald Sterling. Companies do check social media to make sure people haven't expressed views outside the overton window, e.g. being anti-gay or anti-fat. See also my reply to Rayiner which asks the question why people who prefer not to buy health insurance (as opposed to people who prefer sex with men) don't also get equal protection under the law. Personally I quite enjoy sectarianism - I like the transactional society, where even a Nazi can peacefully purchase a Pepe-as-Hitler cake without getting sucker punched by a cowardly masked thug. (I have no strong opinion on forcing someone to sell it to him, though I support cultural norms that would encourage it.) But most of the people I see pushing a culture war - and I admit, I've never been to Kansas - are opposed to that.

rayiner 10y ago

> Incidentally, people in cities try to push around rural folks all the time - forcing them to bake gay wedding pizzas, taking away their guns, etc. I think those are First and Second amendment violations, so I'm not going to defend either thing. > And in fact rural America isn't banning trannies in the ladies room in NYC either - recall that all Trump did was say this wasn't a federal issue. Rural America didn't start your culture war. LGBT rights aren't part of a "culture war." They're 14th amendment equal protection issues. States are entitled to vote to create whatever kinds of societies they want (and I agree we often don't respect that enough), but what they cannot do is start making laws that single out certain kinds of people for special treatment. We're a federal republic, but that's one of the things you don't get to do while flying the American flag. And it's something that a big chunk of Americans won't tolerate happening in a place that's flying the American flag.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
I'm aware that blue state folks often declare their pet issues to be secret constitutional rights hidden in the auras and penumbra's. I hope Trump appoints enough judges to do the same - I enjoy watching the intellectually dishonest people around me squirm. That doesn't make them any less a part of the culture war.
- pasquinelli 10y ago
  This is exactly what the trump phenomenon is all about, and all the hmming and hawing about it is just vain searching for substance were there's none. All power, no judgement. Make 'em squirm and fuck the consequences. "Since power over human beings is shown in making them do what they would rather not do, the man who is actuated by love of power is more apt to inflict pain than to permit pleasure. If you ask your boss for leave of absence from the office on some legitimate occasion, his love of power will derive more satisfaction from a refusal than from a consent. If you require a building permit, the petty official concerned will obviously get more pleasure from saying «No» than from saying «Yes». It is this sort of thing which makes the love of power such a dangerous motive." From: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/russell-lecture.html http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/...
  - someguydave 10y ago
    Do you think that some Trump voters might have taken the Alinksyist "will to power" idea to heart after being screamed at by radical leftists for 40 years?
- rayiner 10y ago
  > blue state folks often declare their pet issues to be secret constitutional rights hidden in the auras and penumbra's My legal philosophy skews hard right, so I'm no big fan of penumbras. But LGBT rights are a straightforward, textual application of the 14th amendment: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It's there as clear as day: you don't get to single out particular people for special treatment under the law. The legal weaseling needed to avoid the plain text ("well the government is not denying anyone the right to marry someone of the opposite gender, even if they are gay") is right up there with reading the Second Amendment only to apply to militias. It's also where textualists and originalists have to part ways. The framers of the 14th amendment almost certainly didn't intend to preclude state laws that single out gays, women, etc. But that's irrelevant--they used unquestionably broad language and the text on the page is the only thing that matters. Particularly here, where there is no argument that the words would have meant something different to the framers (which is different from saying that the reading is different than what the framers intended).

jamesthesnake12 10y ago

A poor Baltimore black kid with a 1500 SAT is guaranteed admission to multiple ivies - the same is not true of the poor rural white kid. Etc. Eh not really true, schools really push state diversity , so if you are from the Mountain west or rural area and are decent you have a better chance to get in. But when the issue of gay marriage came up and R's wanted a federal ammendment to ban it in the mid 2000's that wasn't a state issue

jamesthesnake12 10y ago

A poor Baltimore black kid with a 1500 SAT is guaranteed admission to multiple ivies - the same is not true of the poor rural white kid. Etc. Eh not really true, schools really push state diversity , so if you are from the Mountain west or rural area and are decent you have a better chance to get in. But when the issue of gay marriage came up and R's wanted a federal amendment to ban it in the mid 2000's that wasn't a state issue

Frondo 10y ago

"Incidentally, people in cities try to push around rural folks all the time - forcing them to bake gay wedding pizzas, taking away their guns, etc" Neither of these is true; the bakery in the gay wedding controversy is in a city. City folks are telling other city folks that you can't refuse to serve customers only because they are gay. And no one is taking anyone's guns away.

MandieD 10y ago

Being from a "big, square state" was a non-trivial admissions bonus when I was in high school - once I got my SAT scores back, I was flooded with mail from schools I hadn't dreamed of applying to, full of references to "need-blind admissions" and examples of estimated financial aid for truly middle-class/working-class families. I grew up in Texas, but outside of the big urban/suburban areas. I'm white, as are most residents of "big, square states".

yummyfajitas 10y ago
At Michigan - the one university where numbers were made explicit - being black is worth +1.0 on GPA, whereas underrepresented state is +0.1 and underrepresented county in Michigan is +0.3. https://www.cir-usa.org/Images/mich_index.gif https://www.cir-usa.org/Images/mich_index.gif Do you have any data suggesting that other universities give even remotely as much weight to underrepresented state as they do to race?
- rmxt 10y ago
  It's flagrantly misleading to claim that "being black is worth [x]" when this scale is dated and explicitly prohibited from use after Gratz v. Bollinger (2003). See here for UMich's 16 year old explanation of this scale: https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/archivedocs/uapolicy.html https://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/archivedocs/uapolicy.... Do you have any data suggesting anything of the sort is still in use?
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Colleges are secretive, so we need to make do with what little data the court forced them to reveal. I know of no data more current than this. Do you have any evidence things have changed?
    - rmxt 10y ago
      How can you take something as useful evidence when it has been explicitly prohibited from use? Unless public colleges are secretly flying in the face of a Supreme Court ruling, your assertion that "being black is worth +1.0 on GPA, whereas underrepresented state is +0.1 and underrepresented county in Michigan is +0.3," is unproven by the evidence you provided. Had you said "was," and explained that you don't believe things have changed, that would have been far more intellectually honest.

norea-armozel 10y ago

>Rural America didn't start your culture war. As someone from Kansas I can say that many people in that state have wanted and pursued legal/social action against LGBT people for as long as I can remember. Whether you want to admit it or not there's a strong undercurrent of anti-LGBT still alive and well in parts of the country, especially in the rural areas. The only time these folks "tolerate" LGBT people is when we toe the line of what is deemed "normal." So, if you're an effeminate gay man well it sucks to be you in rural (and most of south central) Kansas. If you're transgender (like me) it's double that. Basically, if you're not presenting straight (aka "normal") then you're boned. >Incidentally, people in cities try to push around rural folks all the time - forcing them to bake gay wedding pizzas... And all that talk about forcing people to cater gay weddings, well that's part of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment as one other commentor pointed out. If we throw out that law then that means I can open any public facing business like a bakery and refuse to hire or serve Christians. Let's see how long before this country goes back to the days of the Thirty Years War where we're even asking people if they're a Catholic or not before transacting business. Seriously, think about the consequences of this before asserting that anyone's force to do anything because as long as you got a society you got compromises and more so if you got government with relatively uniform laws. Those compromises ensure sectarianism is kept to a minimum. Now which do you want if you're a rural Christian American, sectarianism where you got an equal chance of being the victim of it or possibly having to cater gay weddings once in a while but getting paid well? BTW, catering in this instance isn't celebrating sin either nor does any part of the Bible say you can't economically benefit from transactions that are not in themselves sinful (ex. you can still sell guns to people whether or not one of them happens to be plotting murder for which you have no foreknowledge of).

yummyfajitas 10y ago
I don't recall Kansas folks trying to tell NY what to do about LGBT. That's the point I was making. Let's see how long before this country goes back to the days of the Thirty Years War where we're even asking people if they're a Catholic or not before transacting business. We're already there - just ask Brendan Eich, Curtis Yarvin or Donald Sterling. Companies do check social media to make sure people haven't expressed views outside the overton window, e.g. being anti-gay or anti-fat. See also my reply to Rayiner which asks the question why people who prefer not to buy health insurance (as opposed to people who prefer sex with men) don't also get equal protection under the law. Personally I quite enjoy sectarianism - I like the transactional society, where even a Nazi can peacefully purchase a Pepe-as-Hitler cake without getting sucker punched by a cowardly masked thug. (I have no strong opinion on forcing someone to sell it to him, though I support cultural norms that would encourage it.) But most of the people I see pushing a culture war - and I admit, I've never been to Kansas - are opposed to that.