In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
On January 22 2016 03:29 Deathstar wrote: Who does "we" apply to? Does we apply to Kwark? Does we apply to people who didn't have family here during slavery? What about families who never even lived in the South?
"We play a large part in current general black economic status" lol please.
"We" applies to Americans, as a whole. I'm a white dude from New England - I hold about as little personal "blame" as I possibly could. But I acknowledge the sordid history that America has regarding the rights of generally non-white groups and the long term effects that has had. It's not like this is ancient history. These are systemic wounds that are still very fresh.
Now, I do strongly believe things have improved since. But that doesn't mean there's still not a lot of work to do.
Just have means tested benefits programs. Don't call them reparations. If there are historical race based poverty imbalances, then means tested programs will seamlessly provide more to those on the bad end of the historical poverty curve.
On January 22 2016 03:43 ticklishmusic wrote: I'm second generation Asian, how does this apply to me?
Do you live in the US?
On January 22 2016 03:40 CannonsNCarriers wrote: Just have means tested benefits programs. Don't call them reparations. If there are historical race based poverty imbalances, then means tested programs will seamlessly provide more to those on the bad end of the historical poverty curve.
That is what caused the discussion. Bernie said they are not possible and would be to difficult to do fairly and provided other routes.
I don't think that's what Bernie said unless you can point me to him saying that. The original article I posted by Ta-Nehishi Coates was asking why, exactly, Bernie was opposed to "reparations" because someone asked him about reparations and he pivoted to infrastructure and job creation in cities.
I then asked what, exactly, Ta-Nehisi Coates meant by or wanted from "reparations." I read and posted excerpts from his longer article "the case for reparations" to try and get a sense of what he meant, and my conclusion was that even he doesn't know.
School systems legal systems and police systems only work if there is a culture of organizations. That culture simply never was there from the time of the civil war. Even the poorest migrants from Ireland had the culture that they brought over from Ireland. At the least of these was an identity and an organization for then to fit themselves into. Chinese people organized themselves into cohesive communities before they were able to vote I have to belive.
The black culture (what little survived supression) was as compatible with white culture as native American culture was. So of course the systems created by white culture won't be compatible with black culture.
Again I'm not trying to come off as racist the point is that the former slaves were incompatible with Americans reference of an assimilated society instead of a multicultural one.
On January 22 2016 02:51 Plansix wrote: Most of the people I talk to are not looking for quotas or just more hires. They are looking for improving hiring practices, actively seeking out referrals and resumes from minorities from broader networks. One CEO for a tech company said he only receive 15% resumes from women for almost all jobs, regardless requirements. This included HR and support staff positions. Because of that he tasked his HR department to find out why they were getting so few resumes from women. They found it was due to where they placed ads for hiring and their staffing agencies.
The interesting thing about this solution is that it touches on a larger problem than just race and gender. Job postings and hirings are in a deplorable state right now despite all the new tech that has come about due to "big data" kinds of research. It would do wonders for the economy if everybody used these kinds of methods to conjure up job descriptions and weed out job applicants, but nepotism is much cheaper/easier in the short run.
I find this to be the overwhelming case for most of our racial woes. The problem isn't that people/institutions are racist (at least negatively), but that inefficiencies have arisen due to lack of resources and information. We rely on methods that were created in environments with limited information and resources and a side effect is an outcome that is racist without context.
I mean, is acting (even subconsciously) on the fact that black people tip less on average racist? Is it the fault of the cab driver or the fault of "black culture" that he doesn't want to pick up people that don't tip well (based on the limited data he has)? This stuff is all over the place. Solutions that don't single out race will, more than likely, have better end results for everybody than kludging your way through quotas, reparations, and "social lynching" of perceived racism.
On January 22 2016 03:29 Deathstar wrote: Who does "we" apply to? Does we apply to Kwark? Does we apply to people who didn't have family here during slavery? What about families who never even lived in the South?
"We play a large part in current general black economic status" lol please.
My family did not come to this country until well after civil war, but I am part of that “we”. We, the United States and its citizens, collectively. The nation as a whole. None of this happened in a vacuum.
Who are this "we" paying reparations to? You say you are a part of the "we" who should pay. Does that make people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali part of the "them" who receive reparation based on skin color? Or doesn't she count, because she may be black, but immigrated post-slavery? Now I'm sure Ayaan (or Obama, if you prefer) is doing perfectly well, but there are undoubtedly plenty of poor Somalian, Kenyan and other African immigrants who could apply for reparations if the cutoff was purely economic. Just as there are probably plenty of white people who would fall under that economic cutoff limit and think they might want some reparations too.
The thing is you can't pick and choose your history. Either you embrace all of it together with the responsibility of the bad parts or none at all, everything else is just opportunism. You really can't seriously act like your country is the greatest nation of them all and on the next day don't want to have anything to do with history that is not even three or four generations old, you end up like a caricature if you start doing that.
Venturing into risky territory, I think there's a reluctance on the part of the black community to support race-blind assistance programs which have the possibility of demonstrating differentiated results (ex. a poor Hmong community responds better to a community literacy program) and revealing that there are more problems specific to the black community (it goes both ways of course, maybe the Hmong community has problems/ advantages).
On January 22 2016 04:37 ticklishmusic wrote: Venturing into risky territory, I think there's a reluctance on the part of the black community to support race-blind assistance programs which have the possibility of demonstrating differentiated results (ex. a poor Hmong community responds better to a community literacy program) and revealing that there are more problems specific to the black community (it goes both ways of course, maybe the Hmong community has problems/ benefits).
I wouldn't limit this reluctance to the black community.
On January 22 2016 04:37 ticklishmusic wrote: Venturing into risky territory, I think there's a reluctance on the part of the black community to support race-blind assistance programs which have the possibility of demonstrating differentiated results (ex. a poor Hmong community responds better to a community literacy program) and revealing that there are more problems specific to the black community (it goes both ways of course, maybe the Hmong community has problems/ benefits).
I wouldn't limit this reluctance to the black community.
On January 22 2016 03:40 CannonsNCarriers wrote: Just have means tested benefits programs. Don't call them reparations. If there are historical race based poverty imbalances, then means tested programs will seamlessly provide more to those on the bad end of the historical poverty curve.
That is what caused the discussion. Bernie said they are not possible and would be to difficult to do fairly and provided other routes.
Bernie is right? How do we fix 150 years of history? Income based plans have shown that they work (social security, medicare, food stamps, medicaid). Trying to come up with some kind race based reward program as opposed to an income based reward program would be a political disaster.
On January 22 2016 03:43 ticklishmusic wrote: I'm second generation Asian, how does this apply to me?
Do you live in the US?
On January 22 2016 03:40 CannonsNCarriers wrote: Just have means tested benefits programs. Don't call them reparations. If there are historical race based poverty imbalances, then means tested programs will seamlessly provide more to those on the bad end of the historical poverty curve.
That is what caused the discussion. Bernie said they are not possible and would be to difficult to do fairly and provided other routes.
Bernie is right? How do we fix 150 years of history? Income based plans have shown that they work (social security, medicare, food stamps, medicaid). Trying to come up with some kind race based reward program as opposed to an income based reward program would be a political disaster.
I have completely agreed with that point for the last 3 pages and opened up with the talking about most discussions about reparations accept that they are not possible. Like many internet arguments, you seem to be arguing with a fictional version of me.
On January 22 2016 03:43 ticklishmusic wrote: I'm second generation Asian, how does this apply to me?
Do you live in the US?
On January 22 2016 03:40 CannonsNCarriers wrote: Just have means tested benefits programs. Don't call them reparations. If there are historical race based poverty imbalances, then means tested programs will seamlessly provide more to those on the bad end of the historical poverty curve.
That is what caused the discussion. Bernie said they are not possible and would be to difficult to do fairly and provided other routes.
Bernie is right? How do we fix 150 years of history? Income based plans have shown that they work (social security, medicare, food stamps, medicaid). Trying to come up with some kind race based reward program as opposed to an income based reward program would be a political disaster.
I have completely agreed with that point for the last 3 pages and opened up with the talking about most discussions about reparations accept that they are not possible. Like many internet arguments, you seem to be arguing with a fictional version of me.
But aren't you say the issue with black poverty is an issue that needs to be addressed specific to blacks? How do you do that in a more pointed way than food stamps and other income based programs?
Whenever topics like this come up I'm reminded of how not black this forum is.
First Jim Crow was not that long ago, there are still plenty of people who lived through a time when black folks couldn't buy certain property because of the color of their skin, couldn't get jobs, couldn't get educations, etc... So just gtfo with the "just because some great great grandpa" crap.
Slavery was more than dehumanization and economic exploitation to the max. On top of that, White Americans systematically destroyed black cultures, families, and social groups. Then they spent the next 150 years after slavery doing everything they possibly could to hold black people down. Including mass incarceration of black men based off of insane laws or no legal reason at all.
Oregon... Moo... Oregon doesn't have many black people because they made it illegal for black people to move into Oregon (even if they didn't enforce it legally), and they didn't take the law off the books until the 1920's, and left blatantly racist language in their constitution until the 2000's. While Oregon only legalized slavery for about 3 years they've never liked or wanted black people in their state.
So if you don't see many black owned businesses in Oregon it probably has less to do with the potential business acumen of black folks in Oregon and more to do with historical discrimination that has excluded black folks from building the networks, amassing the required resources and gaining access to the people and places they needed in order to make it feasible.
As for culture, it's a bullshit excuse. Cannabis use is practically the same between black and white young adults but black young adults get arrested and incarcerated at a rate 3-15x more frequent. White people go and shoot up loads of innocent people in a school/movie theater every month and I've never heard it talked about as a "white culture" issue.
"It's black culture that keeps them down" is just one tiny step past "it's because they have black skin that they behave the way they do".
The problem isn't that the solutions aren't viable, the problem is too many people still want to minimize and dismiss the impacts of multi-generational racism and discrimination. As was said here people consistently want to just forget all about Jim Crow or how the "drug war" was primarily used to incarcerate millions of young black men (leaving their families without a breadwinner).
It wasn't an honest mistake or simply a part of the times. White America was absolutely atrocious to black people from the start of this nation and is just now starting to punish people like cops for shooting innocent black people in the back. To pretend that it's something of the past is to be blind to the present.
On January 22 2016 03:43 ticklishmusic wrote: I'm second generation Asian, how does this apply to me?
Do you live in the US?
On January 22 2016 03:40 CannonsNCarriers wrote: Just have means tested benefits programs. Don't call them reparations. If there are historical race based poverty imbalances, then means tested programs will seamlessly provide more to those on the bad end of the historical poverty curve.
That is what caused the discussion. Bernie said they are not possible and would be to difficult to do fairly and provided other routes.
Bernie is right? How do we fix 150 years of history? Income based plans have shown that they work (social security, medicare, food stamps, medicaid). Trying to come up with some kind race based reward program as opposed to an income based reward program would be a political disaster.
I have completely agreed with that point for the last 3 pages and opened up with the talking about most discussions about reparations accept that they are not possible. Like many internet arguments, you seem to be arguing with a fictional version of me.
But aren't you say the issue with black poverty is an issue that needs to be addressed specific to blacks? How do you do that in a more pointed way than food stamps and other income based programs?
There are endless ways to do it. Reforming the justice system for one. Addressing laws that disproportionally effect blacks. Investment in poor communities. Studies on how to address diversity in hiring without quotas and the most effective ways to do so. There is no silver bullet, but we can do more than what we currently are doing.
People are pretty creative. We went to the moon using slide rules. We can come up with more solutions than food stamps and income based programs. More than half the problem with this issue is people denying it exists or claiming we have done all we can. Coming up with solutions is the easy part, tbh.
They think he wasted money on everything from an iPad-sized video mailer to direct mail for donors in states that don’t yet matter. They think his attacks on Marco Rubio are doing more harm than good. And they worry that, at the end, all he will have accomplished is the destruction of the Bush family brand.
The big-money supporters fueling Jeb Bush’s super PAC have found their boogeyman: Mike Murphy, a sharp-witted, Twitter-obsessed veteran GOP ad man who runs Right to Rise.
If Bush’s campaign ends with anything other than the GOP nomination, blame is certain to be widespread. But that donors and GOP operatives are already sniping at Murphy before the first votes are cast demonstrates the depth of frustration and displeasure with the Bush-world loyalist.
“It looks like they’re blowing the whole thing up, like even if Jeb can’t win, they’re not going to let anyone else win either,” said a Florida Bush backer and Right to Rise donor who worked on Bush’s gubernatorial campaigns and in his administration. “You might as well light all of this money on fire. Most of all, they’re hurting the reputation of a really great man.”
POLITICO interviewed nearly two dozen Right to Rise donors and Bush supporters, and all blamed Murphy for a super PAC strategy that has failed to boost their struggling candidate. Multiple advisers to the Right to Rise super PAC concede privately that the $40 million spent on positive ads aimed at telling Bush’s story has yielded no tangible dividends.
Among the many and varied complaints, several Republicans close to the Bush campaign have questioned the PAC’s decision to let John Kasich own the airwaves in New Hampshire this fall, allowing the Ohio governor to get a foothold in a state where Bush must perform well to keep his White House bid alive. Others faulted Right to Rise for spending so much money on telling Bush’s story and not changing tactics immediately after Donald Trump entered the race and began stoking the groundswell of anti-establishment sentiment and defined Bush — lastingly — as “low energy.”
“At a time when so many voters are anti-establishment and angry at the government, the last thing you should say in all of your campaign ads is ‘I am a former governor with a great record of governing,’” said Joe Culotta, a former Republican Party of Florida consultant who is supporting Rubio. “Don't get me wrong, I respect Gov. Bush and totally agree that he did great things in Florida. But to voters, that translates to ‘I have a lot of experience in being part of the establishment and the government that you all hate.’”
These sour feelings about Murphy’s management of Right to Rise mark a dramatic turn for a group that came out of the gate in stunning fashion, raising a record $103 million last summer and setting a breakneck pace that many, a year ago, thought couldn’t be matched.
EPT
