Because Internet.
You really think the Internet gives you a good picture on what it's like to be black in America? What sites have helped shape this viewpoint?
The internet gives me a window on the world, and the ability to communicate with people from (almost) anywhere. Over the years, I've been exposed to a huge amount of information coming from the USA and I've even managed to make some friends from that part of the world. But since none of that matters to you, here's a video of another black person agreeing with me. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. Are you going to say that they don't have a good picture of what it's like to be black in America?
I can watch three hundred videos about England on Youtube and I might learn some things about English life but I don't think that will give me a full picture of what life is like in England. Until I am actually living in England, I won't really know what's it like to be England. I may have an idea of what's it like in England but that will not give me a full picture. For me to say that I fully know what life is like for the average British person after watching three hundred Youtube Videos on England just wouldn't make sense if I have never actually been there. All the videos posted are rants and they might tell you some thoughts on what some African Americans think of this matter but it doesn't give you a complete picture. Until you and me are actually blacks living in America, we will never fully understand what going on in their lives and what struggles they face. Overall, the race issue is a really complex problem that is more than just blacks blaming their problems on whites.
Do you think you have a "full picture" of anything, really? I doubt it. If having an opinion on any given subject required having a complete picture of it, conversations would be over before they even start. I certainly don't understand everything about the condition of black Americans, but neither does anyone else in this thread.
This was a bit of a cop-out in my opinion. People were implying that because Grendel is not a black american that he doesn't understand the situation enough to come to a conclusion. He linked videos to black americans who do understand the situation and who share his viewpoint. At the very least, he has proven that people with his viewpoint aren't just uneducated white people. You're one black American. I can easily dismiss you in the same way you dismissed him by saying "Oh good! one whole black person has this view! Clearly you speak for African-Americans everywhere.
I'm not one black person, I'm white. People were dismissing Grendel because he seemed uninformed; he linked to six pieces of anecdotal evidence, whereas my (other) response linked to two pieces of statistical evidence and referenced years of well-established historical fact. That's what I was mocking.
An honest mistake. I made the assumption based on the following line. Apologies nonetheless. | ... and whatever other bullshit white people think goes into our success. Thanks for replying to the post anyway and clarifying things up. You seem passionate about what's being discussed here, so I might as well ask: What are the "well-established historical facts" to which you are alluding? You made an oblique reference to "years of white antagonism" in your original response to Grendel; could you give me an example of how average white Americans have antagonized black people in recent years? From my (admittedly limited) understanding of the situation there, the problem seems to be quite heavily a class issue. In any case, I am not an American, and I don't attempt to keep on top of the narrative. I was merely commenting on the arguments outlined in this thread as I saw them. However, there is the worrying case of some people claiming that minorities can do no wrong, and that they "can't be racist against white people". As long as people are "punching-up" so to speak, being racist is fine. There was quite some discussion about everybody's favourite Goldsmiths Diversity Officer, just as an example. Initially thought that it was just hardliners over there in the US, but the trend seems to have spread across the pond to some hardliners here. What's your opinion on the issue? Is it still racist if you're punching up?
Yeah, I meant "whatever other bullshit white people think goes into [white people's] success." My bad on the lack of clarity. Also important to note, I'm not talking necessarily about white antagonism in recent years. I'm talking about white antagonism--from any time period--that has affected minorities in recent years. Here's some of the well-established historical fact about these effects: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States Jim Crow laws mandated the segregation of public schools, public places and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated, as were federal workplaces, initiated in 1913 under President Woodrow Wilson, the first Southern president elected since 1856. His administration practiced overt racial discrimination in hiring, requiring candidates to submit photos. These Jim Crow laws followed the 1800–1866 Black Codes, which had previously restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans. Segregation of public (state-sponsored) schools was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 but years of action and court challenges were needed to unravel numerous means of institutional discrimination. Such challenges continue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws A major driver of this shift has been the rise of more punitive treatments for criminal offenders, resulting in skyrocketing incarceration rates. These changes 'have had a much larger impact on black communities than white communities because arrest rates have historically been much greater for blacks than whites,' the authors write. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/15/charting-the-shocking-rise-of-racial-disparity-in-our-criminal-justice-system/ I definitely think racism is racism, no matter who's the target. But I also think the US must reckon with our troubling history of enforcing white supremacy, and this will require some sort of reparation. Imagine: a woman has her purse stolen. Some years later, after the thief and woman have died, and the purse has passed on to the thief's heir, the crime is exposed. Is it unjust to take the purse from the thief's heir and return it to the woman's?Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
Lynching, the practice of murdering people by extrajudicial mob action, occurred in the United States chiefly from the late 18th century through the 1960s. Lynchings took place most frequently against African-American men in the southern U.S. after the American Civil War and the emancipation of all slaves, and particularly from 1890 to the 1920s, with a peak in 1892. [...] It occurred most frequently in areas with large concentrations of blacks, dominated politically by Democrats, and with competition among local churches, as part of the enforcement of white supremacy by whites in the late 19th century following Reconstruction. The granting of U.S. Constitutional rights to freedmen after the American Civil War during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877) aroused anxieties among white Southerners, who were unwilling to concede such social status to African Americans. They blamed the freedmen for their own wartime hardship, economic loss, and loss of social and political privilege. During Reconstruction, freedmen and whites active in the pursuit of civil rights, were sometimes lynched in the South. In addition, blacks were intimidated and attacked to prevent their voting, with violence increasing around elections from 1868 into the late 1870s. White Democrats regained control of State Legislatures in 1876 and a national compromise on the presidential election resulted in the removal of federal troops and official end to Reconstruction. There continued to be violence around elections to suppress black voting, particularly with the rise of the Populist Party and some victories by Populist-Republican candidates in the 1890s.
The Jim Crow laws were racial segregation state and local laws enacted after the Reconstruction period in Southern United States that continued in force until 1965 mandating de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern U.S. states (of the former Confederacy), starting in 1890 with a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. Conditions for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to those provided for white Americans. This decision institutionalized a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages. De jure segregation mainly applied to the Southern United States, while Northern segregation was generally de facto — patterns of segregation in housing enforced by covenants, bank lending practices and job discrimination, including discriminatory union practices for decades.
The position of most black men, relative to white men, is no better than how things stood after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1965. That's the sobering conclusion of a new paper out from University of Chicago economists Derek Neal and Armin Rick, who find that the considerable economic progress among black men between 1940 and 1980 has halted, and in many cases reversed.
When did I ever dismiss your opinion because you're not a black American? And no, I'm not dismissing the opinions of black Americans, I'm dismissing the absurd notion that six pieces of anecdotal evidence constitute justification for an otherwise unsupported argument regarding a general trend amongst a population of 45 million.
I apologize for my sarcasm, it's just that your position stems from a place of such ridiculous misinformation (e.g.) that it's difficult to do anything but mock it.
The argument is that black people need to start taking some responsibility for their lives and stop using racism as an alibi for their misery. Do you disagree with that, and why? Attacking my person, calling me misinformed, etc, won't be considered an acceptable answer.
I disagree with how you've framed the argument. Your argument, as originally conveyed, was that black Americans have an annoying habit of blaming all their problems on whites. My original retort (through implication) was that black problems are frequently actually caused by racism, and I later edited that comment to convey an additional assertion, viz. that fighting to success is substantially harder for minorities in America. This is in contrast to the strawman claim that black people cannot succeed through hard work, which serves your argument (that black people should just work instead of complaining about racism) much better than acceptance of my argument does. I do not disagree that black people should work to achieve success. But I do disagree that if everyone just shut up about racism, everything would be fixed. The fact is that there are visibly harmful remnants of past racism and visibly harmful manifestations of present racism that continue to affect minorities in this country and will not be solved without meaningful public dialogue; furthermore, I see the original post as a response to the unfortunate reality that many POCs see no remaining recourse for fighting oppression than to express violent emotion, whether that's manifested in rants, rioting, or terrorism. Justice is not achieved by placing the burden of achieving equality on an oppressed minority. Justice is achieved when visible and invisible manifestations of oppression are alleviated; when the majority owns its mistakes, apologizes, and then fixes them; when the minority no longer has to work so much harder than the majority to achieve success that the gap between the average wealths of the historical majority and of the poorest minority is $105,774. PS Crucial distinction: I never attacked your person. I said your position stemmed from misinformation, which was directly relevant to the argument. I never said you were misinformed about everything, nor that you were stupid, nor however you interpreted my (admittedly somewhat unnecessarily biting) claim.
In other words, your response to my criticism of the black community's toxic victim mentality is to simply reassert that blacks are oppressed and that white folks are the problem, and now you're even trying to imply that it's okay for a black person to express his anger through terrorism? And you wonder why there's no "meaningful public dialogue" on racism? I'm trying to imagine what it must be like to be a white person in America today, and to be considered "privileged" even though your life kind of sucks and you have to work your ass off like everyone else, and to have to listen to someone tell you that it's all your fault if black people are poor and violent, that you have to apologise, and somehow fix their problems, which probably translates to special treatment and free stuff. If my position stems from misinformation, yours stems from delusion. You seriously think this kind of attitude is conducive to the end of racism? You're treating whiteness like some kind of original sin that white people have to repent for, while using words like "equality" and "justice". If this is how the average American anti-racist reasons, I expect blacks to still be an oppressed minority long after Asians (who themselves used to be an oppressed minority) have overthrown whites and become the dominant group. Who are you going to blame then?
This is what that white American you are trying to picture sounds like: "My life isn't ideal! I have to, like, I don't know, work at stuff sometimes! This shit stinks. How can anyone say that the vast majority of other people in my country have it worse off than I do, considering I still have to, like, do stuff that I don't always want to do like pay my fines and taxes?" Sure the average white American does have to, like, get by in society. No, they can't just wave a magic wand and have whatever they want without struggle work or hardship. Guess what. It's easily possible for other classes of people to still have it way worse. So yeah if you're white and average and american and you had a bad day, maybe it's off-putting when someone else tells you that what you just went through isn't shit. It could get on one's nerves. God it just sucks when someone points out I don't have the biggest problems, it sucks even more when someone points out that, of the possible problems a person could have, mine are probably the smallest, because then I realize what a fucking DICK I am for playing the world's tiniest violin.
I agree with you. For whatever it's worth, "galen" is "crazy" in Swedish. I can't help but wonder if he's being honest with you here.
These days I'm fairly certain people like him are just psychopaths playing games with us. They see that we care about the truth, and then they proceed to fuck with us by spewing endless reams of sophistry for us to unpack. That's true. But I bet in reality, neurotypical human beings who: 1) are very intelligent, 2) feel strongly about an issue, and 3) are genuinely, severely irrational are rare. Therefore, it's relatively safe to assume that people who seem like a match are actually psychopaths fucking with us. See some recent responses to my messages for example. Intellectual dishonesty combined with hostility / shaming, etc.As much as I wish he was a troll, I think he's serious.
The opinions he's expressing are mainstream; we're the crazy ones.