8 ms·

I'm a Black Man. Growing up there was a realization that being alive and out of trouble over the age of 21 was an accomplishment. This would extend to middle cl

• javert 11y ago
  In the US we had segregation, not apartheid. There is a difference. As a white man living in the South, we still have segregation in practice. I rarely had interaction with blacks because they did different things and took different classes at school. We all went to the same schools---just didn't have the same classes or have the same social circles. Not much shared in the way of culture. I have had some black friends over the years who get berated by other blacks for "acting white." There is nothing white people can do to fix this. Blacks have always decided what kind of culture they want to have and they will continue to do so.
  • Taniwha 11y ago
    well that and slavery
    • illumen 11y ago
      Is it slavery if people are working for almost free in prison because of some absurd crime and a bullshit justice system? Yes. Therefore slavery still exists. It just got sneaky. Well sort of sneaky - the English were calling their white slaves convicts. When people did crimes like steal bread, they could be sent all the way across the oceans on six month voyages to work. Yeah, they could eventually be free... but even if they managed that; then getting back was near impossible for most.
      • Taniwha 11y ago
        the point I was trying to make was that there are actually things worse than apartheid
      • Crito 11y ago
        In fact the 13th Amendment explicitly calls out being convicted of a crime as an exception to the "no slavery" thing. The full text of the amendment: > Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. > Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. By word count, 30% of the amendment allows slavery under specific circumstances, but somehow that seems to get left out of the curriculum of most american civics classes (that I've seen / gone through anyway).
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • pyrocat 11y ago
    > There is nothing white people can do to fix this. Well, except confronting our own biases, encouraging diverse hiring practices, confronting both overt and covert racism when we see it, educating ourselves on racial privilege, fighting racial profiling and sentencing in our justice system, and just in general fighting for racial equality.
    • innguest 11y ago
      You're a Cultural Marxism peddler. I am white and I think I am in the very same group as blacks and all other races, namely the group called "individuals". All we need to do is fight for individual rights and teach people respect is earned on an individual basis. Nothing can be assumed from group membership in real life; every leftist would agree with this statement, yet you want to make laws based on group membership. Nothing can be assumed based on group membership. Whoever does is the true racist. Stop peddling your divisive ideologies. Stop drawing lines around people. We drew lines around places in maps and today we have wars over those lines. Your lines around people create the same kind of conflicts on a smaller scale. Please stop it. There's only one kind of person, the individual. Let's protect individual rights and everyone will be OK, and by that I mean everyone, not just the groups your crony leftists select to be privileged to the detriment of some other group's disadvantage. You can try and create "race", "religion", "gender" labels all you want but to me there's only one sort of person, the individual, and nothing can be said about an individual a priori. Stop propagating divisiveness.
      • hackuser 11y ago
        > Nothing can be assumed based on group membership. Nothing should be, but unfortunately for many minority groups, it is. The fact that it doesn't affect you is the great benefit of being white (and, if such things don't affect you, probably male).
      • burkaman 11y ago
        > Nothing can be assumed based on group membership. Whoever does is the true racist. Yeah exactly, and there are tons of these people, and at the moment they tend to have a lot more money and power than the people they make assumptions about. Promoting individual rights doesn't do enough, because we've had such a long history of not promoting them. You have to acknowledge race in order to fight the racists of the world.
  • daveloyall 11y ago
    I grew up white in the south, too. I took me years to really grok how I was part of the problem. Eventually, I figured out that I needed to do this: s/white people/people/g; s/black people/people/g Even today, I almost always have to spend a little cognitive load to patch my own though process at runtime. When I fail to overcome my upbringing, I fail to make new friends. I fail to be funny with strangers. I don't get smiles because, without thinking about it, I wasn't giving 'em. This is subtle. It's not just hard to talk about, it's hard to think about.
    • javert 11y ago
      I'm already friendly in equal measure to people of all races. You are right that white people being friendly is an issue. But that is the fly in the room. Black culture is the elephant. Admittedly, though, white culture has been in decline since the late 18th century, so that's also a problem. Whites are doing all kinds of things to exacerbate the problem. Like accepting postmodern views that reject individualism and reason in favor of racism, classism, feminism, psychological determinism, and so on. Totally rejecting individual responsibility. In other words, yes, white culture is a huge problem---but not in the way people think.
  • hackuser 11y ago
    > There is nothing white people can do to fix this. Blacks have always decided what kind of culture they want to have and they will continue to do so. This is so clearly untrue that I wonder if it's worth pointing out the obvious. In fact, black-skinned Americans rarely have had the option of self-determination, and mostly that is due to white-skinned contemporaries who enslaved them, forced them into ghettos, segregated them in public life, and denied them political rights, and social and economic opportunity. More concretely, in the southeastern United States, blacks were slaves (something local whites fought a war to try to preserve; take a step back and think how bizarre that is) and after that oppressed: They couldn't eat in the same restaurants, go to the same schools work the same jobs, live in the same neighborhoods, sleep at the same hotels; talking to a white-skinned women could result in a black-skinned male being lynched. Even today, there is much discrimination; consider whether they can join certain college fraternities in Oklahoma, for example, or walk the streets without being harassed or worse. To suggest social segregation is due to the choices of black-skinned Americans is absurd.
    • whatsgood22 11y ago
      This is a bunch of anecdotal bullshit, crime rate statistics paint a much different picture
    • Crito 11y ago
      > "I have had some black friends over the years who get berated by other blacks for "acting white."" What can white people do to fix this specifically?
      • burkaman 11y ago
        Well, lots of white people perpetuate the same stereotypes, so obviously if you do that, stop it. And you can call other people on their bullshit if you ever hear it. Assuming you never encounter this particular type of racism, it's still all connected. Addressing any type of discrimination and racism helps solve the general problem, which this "acting white" stereotype is just a symptom of. I think it's a little disingenuous to look at these individual symptoms and say "nothing I can do". "Nothing I can do about prison populations, those people made their own choices." "Nothing I can do about poverty, I already support them through taxes, they can improve themselves if they want to." "Nothing I can do about education inequalities, they can apply to college just like I did." etc. Not saying you share these opinions, but you hear them a lot. And it's not like black people have no responsibility here, but there's plenty to be done by everyone.
  • rokhayakebe 11y ago
    Hi Javert, To fix something implies it does not work properly. When you say there is nothing white people can do to fix this, what is this broken "this" needing to be fixed? Edit: By the way I upvoted even though I think your line of thinking is incorrect, and that it intentionally contributes to the racial problem we face here. Edit2: I meant "un"intentionally. Sorry.
    • javert 11y ago
      Black culture. However, it doesn't really need to be fixed. All that needs to happen is for individuals to decide that they want to live rational, virtuous lives. If you doubt that black culture preaches the opposite, listen to (modern) black music. (Or look at black incarcertaion rates.) I say "modern" because much of the best American music was created by blacks. But that was a while ago.
      • rokhayakebe 11y ago
        Javert, Thanks for the clarification. Email me at 1000app@gmail.com so that I can email you my thoughts on this. From a black person's point of view. I suspect we will have to go a few back and forth. Maybe.
  • BibleBelt 11y ago
    Since we're sharing anecdotes: As a white man living in the South, we still have segregation in practice. I rarely had interaction with blacks because they did different things and took different classes at school. We all went to the same schools---just didn't have the same classes or have the same social circles. As a white man who was a child in southwestern Missouri in the 1980s, I took the bus to school. A black family with children moved into the area. When the black children tried to board the bus, the white children screamed and yelled at them and wouldn't let them board. I never saw them again, so I don't know if they went on to have the same social circles as white people.
  • cpncrunch 11y ago
    Actually, the segregation is a bit more sinister than just because they "did different things", although perhaps you don't realise this because you're white. Back in the mid 90s my wife's family wasn't allowed to stay in the nice part of a motel somewhere in the South. They had to stay in the slightly crappy "black" block of the motel. The irony is that all the cars parked in front of the shitty "black" block of the motel were expensive ones. Also they're not even black, they're Asian. Apparently every business in that part of the town had de-facto segregation like this. I'm curious if it's still like that. I've seen on recent TV documentaries (e.g. Louis Theroux) that there is still a hell of a lot of racism down there, so I imagine things haven't changed very much for the better.
  • _delirium 11y ago
    What the South had for much of the 20th century was much closer to apartheid. Blacks were not allowed to vote, for example, or to exercise generally protected rights that whites had, such as the right to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances. In a merely segregated situation, different races would be prevented from mixing but treated by the government as equal citizens. That did not come close to happening: the various Southern governments did not even make a pretense of being neutral arbiters of segregation, but were quite openly White governments, acting as shamelessly violent partisans of the White population's interests.
    • panglott 11y ago
      Louisville, Kentucky, had segregation but not Jim Crow. The black population was a minor but important voting bloc, that could unite to oust mayors who really crossed a line with the racist bullshit. But make no mistake about how people were "treated as equal citizens" under segregation. When the city started establishing a system of large parks, black people were to be excluded, and when the black community protested, the city created a smaller, special park that black people could visit. Add to that the problems of educational segregation, political corruption, voter fraud and intimidation. The North was not much better, where racial segregation in places like Chicago and Seattle was enforced through redlining, blockbusting, restrictive deed covenants, &c., and outright government policy. Much of the country was ruled by an explicit white supremacist ideology for much of the 20th century, often enforced through open terroristic violence (lynching).
• im3w1l 11y ago
  I hope you don't mind me asking you this. I've had this idea, that I think may make the situation better. They idea is that in black-on-black, as well as victimless crimes, the defendant is allowed to be judged by a jury of black people. Then the black community can decide for itself what punishments are best for the community, and could give more lenient punishments if the current ones are seen as harsh enough to be harmful. Do you think it could work?
  • itsybitsy 11y ago
    Are you American? If so, why do you think the parent is more qualified than you to answer such a question? What if only all-white juries were allowed to prescribe punishment for white defendants? I think there are much better solutions to the problem than the one you suggest (the recent crack/powder cocaine sentencing reform is one). You'll have to ask why congress has refused to enact laws that would reduce disparity in sentencing.
  • burkaman 11y ago
    This just sounds like another version of separate but equal. I understand the logic, but we want to work toward one big united community, not legally define racial communities. It's pretty obvious historically that separation doesn't work at all.
    • qnaal 11y ago
      separation doesn't work for what?
      • burkaman 11y ago
        It doesn't solve the problems of racial inequalities, and it generally makes them a lot worse.
  • kaa2102 11y ago
    Interesting point. A fraternity brother of mine was in a documentary called Gideon's Promise. The tragedy is that many of the people that get incarcerated never make it to court. The accused end up with underfunded, overburdened public attorneys They might end up taking a very bad plea deal.