Wells Hall Off Topic Board

We have a Jew hater. (so called) manifested your bigotry. I bet you have lots of friends.

It is important to remember these things because as the old saying goes " Those who fail to remember the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them."

I'm only racist against tan lawyers, and the dutch.

I'm on my iPhone, but here are two excerpts from two separate posters:

"crushing sense of worthlessness on the white working class that forces them to take refuge in any sense of superiority available to them.

Statements like this are evidence that we are nowhere near the "post-racial" society in which so many white Americans claim to live."

And the post directly above mine works too.

I am more likely to ignore the reverse discrimination, but it gets harder every day that I have to hear we are not doing enough while in my personal experience some stereotypes have unfortunately been accurate more often than should be expected. I was not alive to reap the benefits of being Caucasian, so why should I be penalized for being Caucasian now? I would honestly say that there are a lot of issues which could result in a new wave in racism primarily being linked to the "ghetto" mentality in general. ( A mentality linked to "African"- Americans a large majority of the time) The glorification of that lifestyle in black media and actual life circumstances has a severe negative impact in that regard. The only people I know who has a strong racial preference are those who has been strongly turned off by that mentality and "African" Americans in general as a result. (I would not say to the extent of actual racism but enough to discourage them.)

They came from a slave background? FYI slavery was outlawed in the U.S. in 1865. Are they 147 years old?

This is not equivalent to a Jew collecting swastikas. If you want to make that comparison, this is more similar to a holocaust museum collecting Anti-Jew propaganda posters, and most of them do. If you are being genuine about your aversion to inequality and injustice, I have to assume that you haven't seen the ways in which racial discrimination has destroyed the ability of millions of black Americans to participate in mainstream society. There's a reason that poverty and crime disproportionately affect blacks, and it certainly isn't because blacks are somehow inherently lazy or violent.

Even overlooking the very significant issues of past discrimination and generational poverty, blacks are significantly disadvantaged in most urban areas today. This is largely due to the extreme commercial disinvestment in black neighborhoods. With very few options for low-skill employment (important for both young people and under-educated adults) within a reasonable distance, many black men and women turn to alternative economies (including illegal trades) to provide for their families. Those participating in legal alternative economies like in-kind exchange of services are essentially locked into poverty because the majority of resources they gain through their labor cannot be invested or saved in a bank. Those participating in illegal alternative economies are disproportionately arrested and incarcerated because catching drug dealers and prostitutes concentrated in ghettos is like shooting fish in a barrel whereas it requires much more time and effort to track down and prosecute the same type of criminals in more private, suburban areas. Although some blacks have been able to break out of this cycle, the fact of the matter is that there are many, many more black workers than there are accessible jobs for them in the mainstream economy. They are the lucky few, an exception, not the rule.

The root cause of these (and other) problems that disproportionately affect blacks is the overt racism of the pre-civil rights era. The problems are perpetuated by modern "politically corrected" racism, as well as the false notion that society is equal and these inequalities are the result of free market forces. Because both the cause and effects of these problems are racial in nature, many solutions to them are racial in nature as well. This is not, however, "reverse discrimination" as many would have you believe. No one is talking about denying whites home loans or arbitrarily increasing their insurance rates. Most affirmative action policies are intended to simply level the playing field on a statistical, if not individual, level. Simply put, the goal of affirmative action is to increase the degree to which minority representation in education, business, and government reflects the proportions of the population at large.

I would argue that these types of policies are only necessary within the context of the currently subsidized economic investment and residential development patterns in America. A more efficient and effective solution would be a comprehensive federal policy for eliminating urban poverty and improving the quality of life in American inner cities. Unfortunately, the means to reach such an end involve stepping on a lot of toes in special interest groups. Oil and automotive interests lobby against improving mass transit. Construction and real estate interests lobby against any reduction in the subsidy of suburban sprawl. For-profit education companies and the privatized prison complex lobby against investment in inner-city public schools. For these reasons, any realistic attempt at moving toward equality must use race as a major criteria.

Let me add the following:

1. Slavery was never legal in MI. It was specifically outlawed in the Nortwest Ordinance for all the terrority now known as the Midwest.

2. Jim Crow was never a fact of life in MI in that it was never incorporated into the state and local laws as it was in deep south.

There will always be racism as long as there is an emphasis on race and power associated with it.

Would Obama have been elected tot he Presidency is he were not black? Recall that he was the one who introduced race into the campaign. If there were no political advantage what would be the point of doing it?

There is a race industry. These people need to perpetuate "racism" to make a buck.

I don't deny there was as and still is discrimination. It is as stretch to keep talking about slavery though.

I have no doubt that absolutely everyone on the planet is descended from slaves since it was a vile and widely practiced institution. Certainly pervasive in the Roman, Greek and Ottoman empires among all races.

You are the only one who is still talking about slavery. Nitro Biscuits mentioned it as a factor in the origin of modern black poverty, but he also mentioned the discrimination since that time as a more important issue. Slaves could not own property, and the laws and private-sector policies of the following years were specifically tailored to prevent blacks from owning property and accumulating wealth.

You're arguing semantics. Segregation and discrimination were very real in Michigan well into the post-Civil Rights era. This de facto segregation was harder to eliminate than the de jure segregation in the deep south, and it was equally damaging from a social and economic standpoint.

Why don't you go to Dexter and Collingwood in Detroit and tell me if your life has ever been that hard?