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First, thanks for leaving a great reply instead of questioning my motives! We need more of that on HN. I suppose my confusion or perhaps contention would be th
by mieseratte 7y ago
First, thanks for leaving a great reply instead of questioning my motives! We need more of that on HN.
I suppose my confusion or perhaps contention would be that it isn't slavery that is America's original sign but rather racism, or perhaps more generically "discrimination" as the definition of "white" is rather fluid over history itself.
> full enfranchisement
Would that be in the sense of removing barriers to voting (simply showing up) or re-enfranchisement of felony convicts? I wrestle with the former, security vs. incidental exclusion. The latter I'm fully in support of, though I don't know about voting while serving time but that is rather driven by a fear of some kind of "voting your way out."
> desegregation of schools.
In what sense? We do not have explicit segregation in schooling and haven't for decades, but people seem to group together along socio-economic lines which furthers the problem.
I know that education is a severe problem, my home state has a "Corridor of Shame"[0] such that entire counties are just academic dumpster fires. I don't know that desegregation would help so much as simply adequately funding and reforming our dysfunctional schools. Unfortunately I don't know how to do that in am appropriate matter, when you run into children who don't care about academics from families that don't care about academics.
[0] - http://www.corridorofshame.com/ http://www.corridorofshame.com/
- 40acres 7y agoGenerally I think you're correct, Jamestown was established prior to 1619 and those settlers had conflict with Native Americans, so I believe it's correct to say discrimination is a good catch all term to summarize my point. In terms of full enfranchisement I mean simply showing up, I live in Oregon which has vote by mail and it's wonderful. I first voted in 2012 (NYC) and had to wait outside online for hours to do so, I lived in a low income neighborhood at the time and many folks left the line to go to work because they could not deal with the cold. I believe voting in a right that should not be taken away for almost any reason (perhaps treason), it's difficult for me to promote removing voting rights for felons with the understanding that our criminal justice system has disproportionately affected others, so a blanket policy remains my default position. Desegregation is a tougher cookie, but fundamentally I believe it is up to us to understand the factors that cause it and work to remove them. Because desegregation is a multi variable issue it requires looking at housing policy, transportation, zoning, criminal justice and others.
- robmccoll 7y agoRegarding desegregation of schools - I'm not sure how to solve problems in rural areas, but in suburban ones, it seems like redistricting and redistributing students and teachers over the set of schools almost at random might be an improvement. This episode of This American Life makes a pretty compelling argument to me: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-one https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live...