The Race Card - Page 6

The op asked what we thought of the gates situation... well

I would say I understand why Gates might have been a little angry, barely getting home from the airport from China, a bit of a long flight, having to force his way into his home, and probably being dead tired. I do think just about everyone might have been a little frustrated if an officer comes into your home and thinks you are burglarizing your own home. He probably should have used a little restraint and been a bit more cooperative with the police officer, and probably was unjustified in bringing up race as an issue, however, I do not blame him for doing so, as I'm sure his life experiences have probably included many justified racial (racist) encounters that were real which are probably still experienced by a large majority of black people, especially with regards to police.

I was also watching this police chief on pbs the other day, and I would agree with him when he said it was an issue of training rather than race in this instance, the police officer made a stupid decision when he decided to arrest Gates, he certainly could have handled the situation better than he did. Some departments do a better job of training than others, emphasizing good decision making and being able to use their discretion more wisely.

In regards to the discussion on self-entitlement, I think it's too abstract to measure or get any real sense of how it affects the black community, it can only be an assumption, and I do not think it would be a major influence of why blacks perform poorly or why they earn less money. I think saying it's self-entitlement is just an easy way to avoid addressing the real root problems of black issues, such as the cultures of poverty, poor education, drugs and gangs, single mothers. I also think the migration from urban centers since the 1950's has also played a major part in keeping poverty in densely populated black urban areas (also urban areas in general). As the city centers grew more dense, people who could afford to moved to the suburbs, and eventually people moved from those suburbs to new suburbs while economic opportunities and wealth moved with them leaving the poorer families behind, mostly black. I do think though Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton promote their own interest and are parasites and make issues out of non issues.

I think my general point would be that I think people do not take enough into account the black experience in American society, historically and even today when thinking about why they might play the race card sometimes, justifiably or unjustifiably so, its only been 45 years since the civil rights act of 1964, and around 100 years prior from the emancipation proclamation/13th amendment before that. The perception is there that it is them against society and has been ingrained and embedded into their minds from their relatives, ancestors, life experiences despite what may or may not be reality, I think it is difficult for other people to understand that life experience if you are not black, myself included even though I have experienced some racism when I was in school, and my mom went to a school for the "mexicans" in the same town when she was a kid, I still don't think I can comprehend what it would be like to be black, but I don't know if they place the race card too much or not, probably more than it is actually true.

this was a long post and here is chappelle vid fast forward to 3:50 for relevant section

rushz0rz

Canada5300 Posts

July 24 2009 20:22 GMT

#103

Hey, at least in America you got rid of Affirmative Action in most states. In Canada, it is still very much alive. There is a "visible minority" box you can check on many job applications and if you aren't white, you WILL get the job even if you are under qualified. Employers are even allowed to post "looking for Asian applications" or shit like that. It is ridiculous.

ItsYoungLee

Korea (South)227 Posts

July 24 2009 22:42 GMT

#104

On July 24 2009 15:11 dasanivan wrote:

Show nested quote +

before i say anything, i will mention that this system is flawed because you have no definition of progress. progress could be the genocide of an entire group of people, as certain leaders in history have defined it.

if you were to reduce this situation into a dichotomy of "not self-entitled" and "self-entitled," naturally those who do not feel self-entitled will lose everything to those who feel self-entitled. naturally.

for a group to survive in the dichotomy, they must be "self-entitled," or they will not survive.

I think you have it completely wrong here. You argue against my point by saying (1) the definition of progress does not exist. In fact, it does - Just because I can't define it perfectly doesn't mean that there doesn't exist a definition of process that would serve as a useful indicator of a racial group's "success". That argument is completely invalid. There does exist a meaningful measure of success that can be deemed as "progress"

What if I told you that breathing too fast was detrimental to your health? Take the breathing rates of a million people, take the top 10%tile, and compare this group to the rest. I'm pretty sure you would find that the top 10%tile are at greater risk of health problems. You obviously don't understand the principle of dichotomization based on a certain cut-off. (there are varying degrees of self-entitlement, not just 0 or 1) Obviously the "not self-entitled" will include people with lesser but nonzero amounts of self-entitlement, while "self-entitled" group will include people with more amounts of self-entitlement. You read too much into the titles.

Please stop arguing about the language and focus on the questions themselves.

Magic84

Russian Federation1381 Posts

July 24 2009 23:17 GMT

#105

The police demanded an apology and Obama actually kind of apologized for his comments.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8168313.stm

This whole thing is soo awkward

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