4 ms·

Sacrificing Inheritance for Equality

1 points by dasmithii 13y ago

PaulHoule 13y ago
I'd say that classism is the issue and not racism. Leftists of the 1960s handed the government on a silver platter to Republicans by promoting a 1-d view of "race". I grew up in New England where it didn't matter if you were black or white but rather what kind of black or white you were. There were blacks living in Beacon Hill in the 1950s but it all changed when the mechanization of agriculture sent southern blacks off the land and up north, and all of a sudden "homies" were colliding with refugees who were fleeing WWII and similar demographic and technological changes in Europe. (Why did Hitler think so many Europeans had to go?) My ancestors came from Poland and French Canada and we were the people on the bottom in the mills, we wouldn't even get foreman jobs. If any of us had applied to WASP Harvard or other elite institutions we'd face the same kind of discrimination that Jews faced except we wouldn't even apply because family and social pressures pushed us into blue collar work. If the left pushes the idea that all whites are privileged over all blacks that just means the numerical majority of whites go to the right. Big Win. To be a working class white and believe that guff you have to have your mind colonized. I would say that the attack on explicit racism that has happened since the 1960s has made classism all the more dangerous because the current system leads people to believe that they earned what they got (i.e. are not "privileged") whereas at least an occasional WASP might look at his circumstances and realize he won the lottery. (Oh, BTW, in economic terms there is no such thing as a majority oppressing a minority, the math doesn't work. For instance, if 90% of white people stole everything that belonged to 10% of black people, the whites only improve their standard of living by a little more than 10%.) If on the other hand, 10% of descendants of invaders of a country like Holland or England can steal 10% of what the 90% indigenous population have they can double their standard of living which is worth doing. That is, "whites" did not enslave "blacks" in the old South, it was a small class of rich white slaveowners who enslaved blacks.)
11thEarlOfMar 13y ago
If this is a riff on the US, the whole premise is flawed. Only 16% of US millionaires inherited their wealth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire That means 84% of US millionaires earned it themselves. White, black or otherwise, for most of the wealthy, it still requires a lifetime of hard work to achieve it.

1 points by dasmithii 13y ago

I'd say that classism is the issue and not racism. Leftists of the 1960s handed the government on a silver platter to Republicans by promoting a 1-d view of "race". I grew up in New England where it didn't matter if you were black or white but rather what kind of black or white you were. There were blacks living in Beacon Hill in the 1950s but it all changed when the mechanization of agriculture sent southern blacks off the land and up north, and all of a sudden "homies" were colliding with refugees who were fleeing WWII and similar demographic and technological changes in Europe. (Why did Hitler think so many Europeans had to go?) My ancestors came from Poland and French Canada and we were the people on the bottom in the mills, we wouldn't even get foreman jobs. If any of us had applied to WASP Harvard or other elite institutions we'd face the same kind of discrimination that Jews faced except we wouldn't even apply because family and social pressures pushed us into blue collar work. If the left pushes the idea that all whites are privileged over all blacks that just means the numerical majority of whites go to the right. Big Win. To be a working class white and believe that guff you have to have your mind colonized. I would say that the attack on explicit racism that has happened since the 1960s has made classism all the more dangerous because the current system leads people to believe that they earned what they got (i.e. are not "privileged") whereas at least an occasional WASP might look at his circumstances and realize he won the lottery. (Oh, BTW, in economic terms there is no such thing as a majority oppressing a minority, the math doesn't work. For instance, if 90% of white people stole everything that belonged to 10% of black people, the whites only improve their standard of living by a little more than 10%.) If on the other hand, 10% of descendants of invaders of a country like Holland or England can steal 10% of what the 90% indigenous population have they can double their standard of living which is worth doing. That is, "whites" did not enslave "blacks" in the old South, it was a small class of rich white slaveowners who enslaved blacks.)

11thEarlOfMar 13y ago

If this is a riff on the US, the whole premise is flawed. Only 16% of US millionaires inherited their wealth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire That means 84% of US millionaires earned it themselves. White, black or otherwise, for most of the wealthy, it still requires a lifetime of hard work to achieve it.