4 ms·

I'd concur with less hesitation if not for the fact that many nations are so much more successful than the US (in this respect). There are alternate framings up

I'd concur with less hesitation if not for the fact that many nations are so much more successful than the US (in this respect). There are alternate framings up the wazoo on offer, with hard examples to back them up. That caveat aside, I suspect you're right: America is stuck, and getting unstuck will need a novel stimulus of some sort. As to what that might be and where it will lead? Not necessarily 'upwards'.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
Other nations don't have our exact history and circumstances. I am not aware of another nation that historically used skin color to demarcate slaves from free.* The original pilgrims came here voluntarily because they could not fit in back in Europe, so comparing it to European norms isn't likely to ever work. If Americans could go along and get along with European norms, the country would have never been born. We are misfits and mavericks and we are coping with an ugly racial legacy that is quite challenging to fully resolve. And maybe part of the answer lies in the current calls for reparations to African Americans. Maybe that will both make Blacks less angry and Whites less likely to feel that Black anger is unjustified, thus ill behaved. Jane Jacobs wrote that eyes on the street is the key to safety. Fostering a safe and civilized climate means working on ideas like that. Confining these discussions to what should happen at the point where a cop has pulled a gun is pretty much guaranteed to fail to solve it. * http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/05/why_america_adopted_race_based_slavery.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_s...
- bambax 9y ago
  > We are misfits and mavericks Just because some of today's Americans' ancestors may have been misfits in their home country 400 years ago, doesn't mean every American today is a maverick. And what about Australia? Many Australians descend from actual criminals. Yet when they thought their gun problem was getting out of hand, they decided to fix it... and they did.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    Australia was a penal colony. They did not choose to go there. They were sent. American colonists chose the hardship of leaving their known world for a harsh and deadly new world, often on the idea that you could not make them deny their true religious beliefs merely to get along with the rest of society.
    - crispinb 9y ago
      OK the settler-historical determinism is getting the dramatic overreach treatment here. Nearly 30% of Australia's contemporary population are migrants. Of those born here, only a minority (estimates vary) are descended from convicts. Of those convicts, many committed 'crimes' (such as cussing their master or stealing a cake) quite deliberately in order to be transported rather than rot their days away in Old Blighty's grinding poverty and injustice. And then there were large numbers of free settlers, during and after the convict period. Obviously Australian culture has not come out of nowhere, but a simple line from its 'convict' past cannot be drawn as anything other than a very poor caricature. Whereas there are of course historical/cultural contributors to Australia's sanity re arms (notably: a liking of order, and tolerance of authority where it can help maintain that order), there are many others more contemporary in origin. We don't have a large arms industry (our governments choose instead to be corrupted by fossil fuel corporations; arguably just as dangerous). We have had genuinely courageous leadership at pivotal moments. We are not burdened with an archaic constitution. We tend to dissimulate regarding our violent history rather than valorise it. All of these features have their negative contributions in some policy arenas, but have helped nudge us away from a strong gun culture (which has at moments had the potential to emerge). This has very little to do with "us" having been "sent here".
      - DoreenMichele 9y ago
        I am not suggesting cultural determinism. I am suggesting that culture has roots in past events and that the origin story of the US and Australia are not identical. That they have some things in common, yet have not turned out identical, is not a good rebuttal to or dismissal of the idea that America's current situation has roots in a long, ugly past that we are struggling to live down.
- zaarn 9y ago
  > I am not aware of another nation that historically used skin color to demarcate slaves from free. The romans did if I recall history class correctly. So did the french for a while and of course pre-WW germany in their colonies (we don't know how the Nazis would have handled it, their black population was so low that they didn't bother to do anything about it other than "if it's a problem, deal with it") I think you could also count the british since they definitely had skin-color based slaves at times. (Atleast history class told me)
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    Having some race based slaves is not the same as using race to clearly demarcate slave from free across a nation. We live with the legacy that Black Americans are descended from slaves, slaves who were forbidden from learning to read, so they imposed the grammar of their native tongues on English, resulting in a distinct speaking style that still tends to persist, culturally, even if it is not so in every individual case. The implications are both broad and deep and they mostly aren't nice. It is a terrible legacy that still leaves its mark on the Black American population in ways that are very frequently used to suggest that Blacks are simply morally defective and their lives would work if they would just behave themselves.
    - zaarn 9y ago
      So what? I live in a country that killed around 17 million people during WW2, particularly jewish. You think American legacy is bad? Other countries did much worse and still repent for that. We had a situation in which the birth certificate of your grandmother could decide whether you die under most terrible conditions or live. And please don't think that the whole "black skin = slave" is unique to america, the egyptians for example enslaved jewish people (as you might recall from some stories in some old, dusty book), some african countries warlords enslaved white people for their skin color, the british enslaved everyone who wasn't european. This is not unique to America.
- crispinb 9y ago
  Several cheers for any mention of Jane Jacobs. One of the greats.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

Other nations don't have our exact history and circumstances. I am not aware of another nation that historically used skin color to demarcate slaves from free.* The original pilgrims came here voluntarily because they could not fit in back in Europe, so comparing it to European norms isn't likely to ever work. If Americans could go along and get along with European norms, the country would have never been born. We are misfits and mavericks and we are coping with an ugly racial legacy that is quite challenging to fully resolve. And maybe part of the answer lies in the current calls for reparations to African Americans. Maybe that will both make Blacks less angry and Whites less likely to feel that Black anger is unjustified, thus ill behaved. Jane Jacobs wrote that eyes on the street is the key to safety. Fostering a safe and civilized climate means working on ideas like that. Confining these discussions to what should happen at the point where a cop has pulled a gun is pretty much guaranteed to fail to solve it. * http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/05/why_america_adopted_race_based_slavery.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_s...

bambax 9y ago
> We are misfits and mavericks Just because some of today's Americans' ancestors may have been misfits in their home country 400 years ago, doesn't mean every American today is a maverick. And what about Australia? Many Australians descend from actual criminals. Yet when they thought their gun problem was getting out of hand, they decided to fix it... and they did.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  Australia was a penal colony. They did not choose to go there. They were sent. American colonists chose the hardship of leaving their known world for a harsh and deadly new world, often on the idea that you could not make them deny their true religious beliefs merely to get along with the rest of society.
  - crispinb 9y ago
    OK the settler-historical determinism is getting the dramatic overreach treatment here. Nearly 30% of Australia's contemporary population are migrants. Of those born here, only a minority (estimates vary) are descended from convicts. Of those convicts, many committed 'crimes' (such as cussing their master or stealing a cake) quite deliberately in order to be transported rather than rot their days away in Old Blighty's grinding poverty and injustice. And then there were large numbers of free settlers, during and after the convict period. Obviously Australian culture has not come out of nowhere, but a simple line from its 'convict' past cannot be drawn as anything other than a very poor caricature. Whereas there are of course historical/cultural contributors to Australia's sanity re arms (notably: a liking of order, and tolerance of authority where it can help maintain that order), there are many others more contemporary in origin. We don't have a large arms industry (our governments choose instead to be corrupted by fossil fuel corporations; arguably just as dangerous). We have had genuinely courageous leadership at pivotal moments. We are not burdened with an archaic constitution. We tend to dissimulate regarding our violent history rather than valorise it. All of these features have their negative contributions in some policy arenas, but have helped nudge us away from a strong gun culture (which has at moments had the potential to emerge). This has very little to do with "us" having been "sent here".
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      I am not suggesting cultural determinism. I am suggesting that culture has roots in past events and that the origin story of the US and Australia are not identical. That they have some things in common, yet have not turned out identical, is not a good rebuttal to or dismissal of the idea that America's current situation has roots in a long, ugly past that we are struggling to live down.
zaarn 9y ago
> I am not aware of another nation that historically used skin color to demarcate slaves from free. The romans did if I recall history class correctly. So did the french for a while and of course pre-WW germany in their colonies (we don't know how the Nazis would have handled it, their black population was so low that they didn't bother to do anything about it other than "if it's a problem, deal with it") I think you could also count the british since they definitely had skin-color based slaves at times. (Atleast history class told me)
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  Having some race based slaves is not the same as using race to clearly demarcate slave from free across a nation. We live with the legacy that Black Americans are descended from slaves, slaves who were forbidden from learning to read, so they imposed the grammar of their native tongues on English, resulting in a distinct speaking style that still tends to persist, culturally, even if it is not so in every individual case. The implications are both broad and deep and they mostly aren't nice. It is a terrible legacy that still leaves its mark on the Black American population in ways that are very frequently used to suggest that Blacks are simply morally defective and their lives would work if they would just behave themselves.
  - zaarn 9y ago
    So what? I live in a country that killed around 17 million people during WW2, particularly jewish. You think American legacy is bad? Other countries did much worse and still repent for that. We had a situation in which the birth certificate of your grandmother could decide whether you die under most terrible conditions or live. And please don't think that the whole "black skin = slave" is unique to america, the egyptians for example enslaved jewish people (as you might recall from some stories in some old, dusty book), some african countries warlords enslaved white people for their skin color, the british enslaved everyone who wasn't european. This is not unique to America.
crispinb 9y ago
Several cheers for any mention of Jane Jacobs. One of the greats.