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Well, it is red meat thrown to the activists to avoid talking about issues that would make them shout down the article and its publisher. For example, if we ta
by EGreg 4y ago
Well, it is red meat thrown to the activists to avoid talking about issues that would make them shout down the article and its publisher.
For example, if we talk about racial issues in this country,
we don’t usually focus on the capitalist music industry using gangsta rap to export role models spewing misogynistic lyrics to Black kids many of whom identify with them, we don’t talk much about the breakdown in the nuclear family, the rise of divorces or out-of-wedlock births. (People used to — see the Moynihan report for instance.) We hardly talk about welfare traps or minimum wage laws (Milton Friedman used to etc.) We don’t talk about academic performance of Black kids being affected by stuff like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_white https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_white
Whenever Bill Cosby or Stephen A Smith or Deloris Tucker someone like that goes on a rant, they are shouted down.
That is why it is far safer to attribute it all to slavery 150 years ago, and Jim Crow laws, even though the previous generations who had marriage and school uniforms and higher church attendance etc. are horrified at what many in the current generations have been doing, and the lyrics in Drill music or Gangsta Rap etc. People are starting to wake up — I have been in a clubhouse room with 2000 people about whether a lot of rap is leading to violence, and almost everyone on stage was Black and most were saying absolutely. Some people said it creates jobs in the music industry, others pointed out how many jobs are destroyed overall because the kids can’t pass an interview. And so on. It was really nice to see but only possible because Black people got together to honestly discuss what has been going on. Now we need to turn it into action, in our own lives, with our own kids, and what they are exposed to. Most parents work so much or are divorced and the kids are raised by the street or by the government!
- asdff 4y agoThere's also the fact that things are getting worse in terms of the reproductive rights among females. If you are a teen girl growing up in a red state where you have the national culture celebrating how we have supposedly advanced past bigotry and hate, while you have your local state legislature making it impossible to get an abortion and general being cruel and corrupt, its hard not to get depressed about the situation.
- arp242 4y agoThis rise also seems present in e.g. The Netherlands; ~24% of women aged 12 to 25 in 2021; up from ~14% in 2020.[1] It's less than "3 in 5" from this article, but the age brackets are different and differences in the asked questions might influence things, so it can't be directly compared. [1]: https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2022/22/mentale-gezondheid-jongeren-afgenomen https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2022/22/mentale-gezondheid-j...
- jessaustin 4y agoI think we're supposed to stop looking to Cosby for moral advice? Anyway, complicating an already contentious issue (parent stipulates that he is "angry") with one's own idiosyncratic take on "race in America" seems bad for reasoned discussion.
- EGreg 4y agoWho do you look to for moral advice? What is wrong with Deloris Tucker and Steven A Smith? And anyway, one does not need to be a paragon of virtue in every fact of their life to denounce current trends. Many people who were very loud turned out to do shady things in the background. Are we supposed to look to BLM leaders for advice, for example? NAACP has a far longer track record and their leaders seem to have acted with more integrity over the decades: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/black-lives-matter-activists-accuse-executive-stealing-10-million-dono-rcna46481 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/black-lives-matter-activ...
- jessaustin 4y agoNormally I wouldn't respond in a thread I had already declared OT, but you've asked a fairly direct question. Smith is a windbag who riles up viewers about controversial trivia. He is less obnoxious than most such, since his topics typically relate to sports rather than politics, but nothing he has said outside the realm of sports (and fairly little he has said within it) would indicate a habit of deep thought. Tucker passed away 17 years ago, and in the preceding decade seems primarily to have been a one-note instrument. Cosby's infamy perhaps doesn't disqualify him as a source of advice, but it makes one wonder. What common thread weaves through these three seemingly different exemplars you've chosen? I prefer to think in terms of ethics rather than morality, and in terms of timeless values rather than current events. I struggle with this, but I feel I have benefited from the works of Walter Kaufmann, Kierkegaard, and other existentialist and existentialist-adjacent thinkers. If you seek moral advice and can't find it in your bible or at church, perhaps you might appreciate e.g. Jason Whitlock? I do, but in a different way than most of his other fans, I suspect.
- 4y ago