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Knowing very little about the US educational system, I wonder if this is somehow a symptom of unresolved trauma of the historical crimes against African slaves.

Knowing very little about the US educational system, I wonder if this is somehow a symptom of unresolved trauma of the historical crimes against African slaves. They were enslaved then, many died an awful death, then technically freed, but still living as an underclass for decades, arguably still today. It never ceases to amaze me how many societal statistics in the US - education levels, wealth, teenage pregnancies, crime and incarceration rates - are explained by something as superficial as skin colour. So you see this every day, poor neighbourhoods are full of Black people, and you know why they are there - because White people enslaved them, brought them to America, then gave them a very sub-standard freedom. There is a hypocritical narrative of how we're all equal, but we're not (affirmative action?), but we ought to be, but really you know the society is so unequal, based on race. So what do you do? Most people cannot do anything of major practical impact. Maybe there are charities you can donate to or work with. Maybe you can vote for the right political candidates - but that's so indirect and diluted, it doesn't feel real. So the least you can do is be very vocal about how guilty and outraged you feel about the whole situation. It probably feels very genuine, it may be 100% genuine, just not actually productive. You put the sticky tape on the crack in the wall so it looks less bad. I don't know how that massive historical injustice can be fixed, but I think it should. I don't think Woke inc. is doing anything productive towards that though, and I understand the OP's frustration. But that's my best guess as to what the root cause is. I hope none of this comes as disrespectful to Black people. My point is they were very badly mistreated, and the consequences of that last until today too, not to posit that one race is better than another. Based on 2 trips to America, some reading and some very unwoke thinking. But I care about it a lot, not just for its own sake, but also as Woke is being exported, with some success, as the new prevailing ideology to shape the Western world.

brodouevencode 5y ago
There are historical aspects that the US must contend with, even some 150+ years on after the official end of slavery (the American Civil War) and 50+ years on after the practical end of slavery (Civil Rights bill). Many injustices will take generations to work through. It's not something that will just happen naturally over night - humans are messy creatures. However there are people, mainly of the progressive left, that are pushing for these changes to happen much faster than they naturally would and that's fine up to a point. Many, many of them, driven mostly by ideology and internet points, have forced the pendulum of reconciliation completely off it's course in favor of their own power grabs. It is no longer about putting everyone on equal footing. It's about moving perceived power structures away from some and towards themselves. The US education system is a pivotal battleground because that's where many young minds are molded and formed. It's actually kind of brilliant that the secondary education system was one of the first institutions to be captured by these radicals. But now that the public at large is starting to wake up and realize what's going on the radicals are using the other tools at their disposal (censorship, shaming, rioting, attacking other normed institutions) they are being called out and brought to light. Boghossian did just this and on their turf, and is currently being ostracized for it.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  > There are historical aspects that the US must contend with, even some 150+ years on after the official end of slavery (the American Civil War) and 50+ years on after the practical end of slavery (Civil Rights bill). Many injustices will take generations to work through. One timeline I like to refer to is how long it took France to transform from an absolute monarchy to a stable republic; by my count 81 years, from the French revolution of 1789 to the Third Republic of 1870. Yeah, these things take time. I suspect some things could be done more proactively, just not easily or cheaply. Suppose state schools got some really beefy funding, to attract better teachers, have less kids per teacher, had more fun activities for kids to keep them out of trouble. Would that tip the scales in favour of poor kids, many of whom are, I believe, Black? Maybe that's not the best use of the money for the cause, who knows, but it's doable. You "just" need the money and the political will to make it happen.
908B64B197 5y ago
> Based on 2 trips to America, I assume you're British. Difference is, descendants of slaves have a voice in America. But those of colonized Africans by the British? They got independence, then puppet government and borders drawn to make sure to divide ethnicities and keep them infighting. And of course, no hope of ever making it in the UK (after all, it's not "their" country).
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  I'm not in fact British. But you're right, every country has its own sins, UK, and Poland, my homeland, do too, there's no pretending it is different. Also I'm not saying US is worse: maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it is orthogonal to my point. That's kind of part of my point by the way. They all have slightly different sins that need their own debate and atonement, certainly not copying US Woke.
Factorium 5y ago
If you delve into the data, African slaves were taller (and thus presumably healthier) when living in the USA, than in Africa. African-Americans today are substantially wealthier and live in better societies than the average African. There are also more slaves today, than at any point in human history. The problems of the African American community can be mostly blamed on low average IQ due to genetics, and family culture being replaced by welfare culture starting from the Great Society program.
TMWNN 5y ago
>So you see this every day, poor neighbourhoods are full of Black people, and you know why they are there - because White people enslaved them, brought them to America, then gave them a very sub-standard freedom. Keith B. Richburg (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Richburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Richburg>) of The Washington Post wrote in 1995: (<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/richburg/richbrg1.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/richburg...>) >Somewhere, sometime, maybe 400 years ago, an ancestor of mine whose name I'll never know was shackled in leg irons, kept in a dark pit, possibly at Goree Island off the coast of Senegal, and then put with thousands of other Africans into the crowded, filthy cargo hold of a ship for the long and treacherous journey across the Atlantic. Many of them died along the way, of disease, of hunger. But my ancestor survived, maybe because he was strong, maybe stubborn enough to want to live, or maybe just lucky. He was ripped away from his country and his family, forced into slavery somewhere in the Caribbean. Then one of his descendants somehow made it up to South Carolina, and one of those descendants, my father, made it to Detroit during the Second World War, and there I was born, 36 years ago. And if that original ancestor hadn't been forced to make that horrific voyage, I would not have been standing there that day on the Rusumo Falls bridge, a journalist -- a mere spectator -- watching the bodies glide past me like river logs. No, I might have instead been one of them -- or have met some similarly anonymous fate in any one of the countless ongoing civil wars or tribal clashes on this brutal continent. And so I thank God my ancestor made that voyage. >Does that sound shocking? Does it sound almost like a justification for the terrible crime of slavery? Does it sound like this black man has forgotten his African roots? Of course it does, all that and more. And that is precisely why I have tried to keep the emotion buried so deep for so long. But as I sit before the computer screen, trying to sum up my time in Africa, I have decided I cannot lie to you, the reader. After three years traveling around this continent as a reporter for The Washington Post, I've become cynical, jaded. I have covered the famine and civil war in Somalia; I've seen a cholera epidemic in Zaire (hence the trucks dumping the bodies into pits); I've interviewed evil "warlords," I've encountered machete-wielding Hutu mass murderers; I've talked to a guy in a wig and a shower cap, smoking a joint and holding an AK-47, on a bridge just outside Monrovia. I've seen some cities in rubble because they had been bombed, and some cities in rubble because corrupt leaders had let them rot and decay. I've seen monumental greed and corruption, brutality, tyranny and evil. >But even with all the good I've found here, my perceptions have been hopelessly skewed by the bad. My tour in Africa coincided with two of the world's worst tragedies, Somalia and Rwanda. I've had friends and colleagues killed, beaten to death by mobs, shot and left to bleed to death on a Mogadishu street. >Now, after three years, I'm beaten down and tired. And I'm no longer even going to pretend to block that feeling from my mind. I empathize with Africa's pain. I recoil in horror at the mindless waste of human life, and human potential. I salute the gallantry and dignity and sheer perseverance of the Africans. But most of all, I feel secretly glad that my ancestor made it out -- because, now, I am not one of them.

brodouevencode 5y ago

There are historical aspects that the US must contend with, even some 150+ years on after the official end of slavery (the American Civil War) and 50+ years on after the practical end of slavery (Civil Rights bill). Many injustices will take generations to work through. It's not something that will just happen naturally over night - humans are messy creatures. However there are people, mainly of the progressive left, that are pushing for these changes to happen much faster than they naturally would and that's fine up to a point. Many, many of them, driven mostly by ideology and internet points, have forced the pendulum of reconciliation completely off it's course in favor of their own power grabs. It is no longer about putting everyone on equal footing. It's about moving perceived power structures away from some and towards themselves. The US education system is a pivotal battleground because that's where many young minds are molded and formed. It's actually kind of brilliant that the secondary education system was one of the first institutions to be captured by these radicals. But now that the public at large is starting to wake up and realize what's going on the radicals are using the other tools at their disposal (censorship, shaming, rioting, attacking other normed institutions) they are being called out and brought to light. Boghossian did just this and on their turf, and is currently being ostracized for it.

rich_sasha 5y ago
> There are historical aspects that the US must contend with, even some 150+ years on after the official end of slavery (the American Civil War) and 50+ years on after the practical end of slavery (Civil Rights bill). Many injustices will take generations to work through. One timeline I like to refer to is how long it took France to transform from an absolute monarchy to a stable republic; by my count 81 years, from the French revolution of 1789 to the Third Republic of 1870. Yeah, these things take time. I suspect some things could be done more proactively, just not easily or cheaply. Suppose state schools got some really beefy funding, to attract better teachers, have less kids per teacher, had more fun activities for kids to keep them out of trouble. Would that tip the scales in favour of poor kids, many of whom are, I believe, Black? Maybe that's not the best use of the money for the cause, who knows, but it's doable. You "just" need the money and the political will to make it happen.

908B64B197 5y ago

> Based on 2 trips to America, I assume you're British. Difference is, descendants of slaves have a voice in America. But those of colonized Africans by the British? They got independence, then puppet government and borders drawn to make sure to divide ethnicities and keep them infighting. And of course, no hope of ever making it in the UK (after all, it's not "their" country).

rich_sasha 5y ago
I'm not in fact British. But you're right, every country has its own sins, UK, and Poland, my homeland, do too, there's no pretending it is different. Also I'm not saying US is worse: maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it is orthogonal to my point. That's kind of part of my point by the way. They all have slightly different sins that need their own debate and atonement, certainly not copying US Woke.

Factorium 5y ago

If you delve into the data, African slaves were taller (and thus presumably healthier) when living in the USA, than in Africa. African-Americans today are substantially wealthier and live in better societies than the average African. There are also more slaves today, than at any point in human history. The problems of the African American community can be mostly blamed on low average IQ due to genetics, and family culture being replaced by welfare culture starting from the Great Society program.

TMWNN 5y ago

>So you see this every day, poor neighbourhoods are full of Black people, and you know why they are there - because White people enslaved them, brought them to America, then gave them a very sub-standard freedom. Keith B. Richburg (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Richburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Richburg>) of The Washington Post wrote in 1995: (<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/richburg/richbrg1.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/richburg...>) >Somewhere, sometime, maybe 400 years ago, an ancestor of mine whose name I'll never know was shackled in leg irons, kept in a dark pit, possibly at Goree Island off the coast of Senegal, and then put with thousands of other Africans into the crowded, filthy cargo hold of a ship for the long and treacherous journey across the Atlantic. Many of them died along the way, of disease, of hunger. But my ancestor survived, maybe because he was strong, maybe stubborn enough to want to live, or maybe just lucky. He was ripped away from his country and his family, forced into slavery somewhere in the Caribbean. Then one of his descendants somehow made it up to South Carolina, and one of those descendants, my father, made it to Detroit during the Second World War, and there I was born, 36 years ago. And if that original ancestor hadn't been forced to make that horrific voyage, I would not have been standing there that day on the Rusumo Falls bridge, a journalist -- a mere spectator -- watching the bodies glide past me like river logs. No, I might have instead been one of them -- or have met some similarly anonymous fate in any one of the countless ongoing civil wars or tribal clashes on this brutal continent. And so I thank God my ancestor made that voyage. >Does that sound shocking? Does it sound almost like a justification for the terrible crime of slavery? Does it sound like this black man has forgotten his African roots? Of course it does, all that and more. And that is precisely why I have tried to keep the emotion buried so deep for so long. But as I sit before the computer screen, trying to sum up my time in Africa, I have decided I cannot lie to you, the reader. After three years traveling around this continent as a reporter for The Washington Post, I've become cynical, jaded. I have covered the famine and civil war in Somalia; I've seen a cholera epidemic in Zaire (hence the trucks dumping the bodies into pits); I've interviewed evil "warlords," I've encountered machete-wielding Hutu mass murderers; I've talked to a guy in a wig and a shower cap, smoking a joint and holding an AK-47, on a bridge just outside Monrovia. I've seen some cities in rubble because they had been bombed, and some cities in rubble because corrupt leaders had let them rot and decay. I've seen monumental greed and corruption, brutality, tyranny and evil. >But even with all the good I've found here, my perceptions have been hopelessly skewed by the bad. My tour in Africa coincided with two of the world's worst tragedies, Somalia and Rwanda. I've had friends and colleagues killed, beaten to death by mobs, shot and left to bleed to death on a Mogadishu street. >Now, after three years, I'm beaten down and tired. And I'm no longer even going to pretend to block that feeling from my mind. I empathize with Africa's pain. I recoil in horror at the mindless waste of human life, and human potential. I salute the gallantry and dignity and sheer perseverance of the Africans. But most of all, I feel secretly glad that my ancestor made it out -- because, now, I am not one of them.