Political Roundtable - Part VI

[Dat2U]

He mentions the legacy of slavery as a problem but doesn't really explain what slavery has to do with any of this. Slavery was 150 years ago. That's 7 generations. It's ancient history. White people today don't look at black people and think to themselves, "this guy should be a slave". It's absurd. The concept of slavery is foreign to white people today.

For white people slavery may indeed have been all but forgotten, but for black folks the terrible legacy of what has been called "the South's peculiar institution" lingers in profound ways. But I don't expect you to be able to relate to that.

Nate33 may never of heard of the Jim Crow laws that were in effect 100 years after slavery but i guess that may be a foreign concept to in the eyes of many repugs.

[Zonkerbl]

Typical white privilege response. "Slavery ended more than a hundred years ago - quit whining already! I've forgotten about it - why can't you?"

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Wonderful. You should obviously be very proud. What about people who aren't as gifted as you intellectually? Most people can't earn merit-based scholarships or teach themselves much of anything, let alone programming. You strike me as an exception, rather than a rule.

I've lived by the mantra "desperation is the best motivation" for decades. It drives you to succeed and take major risks. It made me leave NYC as a teenager to an empty studio in DC where there was a booming tech scene.

People with any talent should move from Baltimore, but that's been the mantra for decades now. You can't save a violent/dying former industrial city with no income opportunities or skilled labor. It's Detroit all over again. It's one of a handful of "Blue collar cities" that never evolved. This is an issue of the death of manufacturing in Baltimore/Detroit/Trenton/Upstate NY not the "plight of African Americans".

Migrate to survive, it's in all of our DNA....or none of us would hold blue passports.

Man I hate to agree with you but Dayton's the same way. RCA went to Mexico in the eighties, the air force kinda downgraded Wright Pat and boom. Dead city.

I think you should love and care for dying cities like you should love and care for aging parents. Make their passing as comfortable as possible.

New Orleans too. Man.

Well, I'm hoping what will happen is the internet will become so powerful that telecommuting will really take off. Then people who like to live in urban centers but want it on the cheap can buy a place in Detroit. Heck, Detroit will pay YOU to buy property there. Place is so empty there isn't even any crime anymore. Balti if you have family in the DMV. New Orleans if you like to party.

Dayton if you like... corn. Or Jesuits.

Zonker, I was at Wright Patterson back in the early 90s.

Speaking of corn, the first time I arrived at Scott AFB I noticed the cornfield. No way did I want to be stationed there....Of course that's what happened. I had orders to PCS to Andrews and a colonel who wanted me at Scott changed them. This after I was on an overseas remote for one year.

As fate would have it after I got to Scott this colonel liked my ex-wife more than me.

Ah, good times...

(I am way over that. Had totally forgotten, but corn reminded me.)

[fishercob]

If anything, whites should be protesting in the streets to put a stop to black violence and black racism, but instead all we get is the opposite.

That's pretty much what a Tea Party rally is.

[nate33]

He mentions the legacy of slavery as a problem but doesn't really explain what slavery has to do with any of this. Slavery was 150 years ago. That's 7 generations. It's ancient history. White people today don't look at black people and think to themselves, "this guy should be a slave". It's absurd. The concept of slavery is foreign to white people today.

For white people slavery may indeed have been all but forgotten, but for black folks the terrible legacy of what has been called "the South's peculiar institution" lingers in profound ways. But I don't expect you to be able to relate to that.

How does slavery have a bearing on the problems in Baltimore (and every major city with a large population of black people)? In his article, Mr. Connolly says the following:

Slavery was not so much a labor system as it was a property regime, with slaves serving not just as workers, but as commodities. Back in the day, people routinely borrowed against other human beings. They took out mortgages on them. As a commodity, the slave had a value that the state was bound to protect.

Now housing and commercial real estate have come to occupy the heart of America’s property regime, replacing slavery. And damage to real estate, far more than damage to ostensibly free black people, tends to evoke swift responses from the state. What we do not prosecute nearly well enough, however, is the daily assault on black people’s lives through the slow, willful destruction of real estate within black communities. The conditions in West Baltimore today are the direct consequence of speculative real estate practices that have long targeted people with few to no options.

He blames real estate speculators for a "daily assault on black people's lives through slow, willful destruction of real estate in black communities. Really? His premise is that real estate developers buy real estate in poor areas, and then willfully destroy that real estate value. To what end? Because they want black people to suffer more than they want to earn a profit?

The whole premise is absurd. Indeed, this whole idea that white people are still profiting off the backs of black people is absurd. Black people have been a huge burden on the profitability of rich white people for decades. Ever since the War on Poverty, there has been trillions of wealth transmitted from the pockets of middle class and rich tax payers to the pockets of welfare recipients on the dole - a disproportionate number of which are blacks. Furthermore, the (mostly white) rich and middle class have had to pay the costs of police protection and incarceration for the massively disproportionate number of black criminals. Does he honestly think that white people want it this way? That we're intentionally paying these high taxes due to our racist urge to keep the black man down? It's amazing that people can actually talk themselves into believing this stuff.

[Illmatic12]

He mentions the legacy of slavery as a problem but doesn't really explain what slavery has to do with any of this. Slavery was 150 years ago. That's 7 generations. It's ancient history. White people today don't look at black people and think to themselves, "this guy should be a slave". It's absurd. The concept of slavery is foreign to white people today.

For white people slavery may indeed have been all but forgotten, but for black folks the terrible legacy of what has been called "the South's peculiar institution" lingers in profound ways. But I don't expect you to be able to relate to that.

Nate33 may never of heard of the Jim Crow laws that were in effect 100 years after slavery but i guess that may be a foreign concept to in the eyes of many repugs.

Jim Crow?? Pshh.. literally 3-4 years ago, as I recall, Wells Fargo was forced to pay damages for proffering predatory loans to low income minority communities in Baltimore.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/us/07 ... .html?_r=0

Wells Fargo, Ms. Jacobson said in an interview, saw the black community as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania. Loan officers, she said, pushed customers who could have qualified for prime loans into subprime mortgages. Another loan officer stated in an affidavit filed last week that employees had referred to blacks as “mud people” and to subprime lending as “ghetto loans.”

Jim Crow didn't go anywhere. These same racist practices have simply taken on different forms and continue to be protected under the law.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Typical white privilege response. "Slavery ended more than a hundred years ago - quit whining already! I've forgotten about it - why can't you?"

I learned some things about the history of slavery in the US recently. I believe it was a History Channel program...

It detailed the crops and regions and the differences between how tobacco plantations, cotton plantations, and sugar plantations treated slaves.

nate, if you have some time I suggest you take a glance at Willie Lynch's, "How to Make a Slave".

Culture and education explain a lot of what's going on. A rare few rise above like Gandhi. I am learning about the young life of George Washington Carver. He was born in Missouri in 1864 to former slaves. He overcame. His faith and a lot of curiosity and resolve enabled him to complete a bachelor's and a master's. He was a faculty member at Tuskegee. Did a lot of things with the peanut and sweet potatoes. But he wasn't rich and he lived in the south when there were many lynchings.

I think our current culture and emphasis on shallow materialism, as well as systems that keep the underprivileged down have much to do with problems.

When a Trayvon Martin gets killed by a George Zimmerman, my suspicion is few would consider Trayvon might have been another George Washington Carver.

[nate33]

If anything, whites should be protesting in the streets to put a stop to black violence and black racism, but instead all we get is the opposite.

That's pretty much what a Tea Party rally is.

This post is gross.

What exactly in my post is gross. Are my facts wrong? Did I make any unfounded leaps in logic? My premise, totally supported by the facts, is that blacks are doing a lot more harm to whites than the opposite. Do you disagree? Why? The crime stats overwhelmingly support my premise. I'm willing to discuss why these problems exist and what should be done about them, but I've had enough with the Blame Whitey argument that persists throughout the media and on these boards. Whites did not cause this. Whites are usually the victim. It just never gets reported that way.

[Illmatic12]

He mentions the legacy of slavery as a problem but doesn't really explain what slavery has to do with any of this. Slavery was 150 years ago. That's 7 generations. It's ancient history. White people today don't look at black people and think to themselves, "this guy should be a slave". It's absurd. The concept of slavery is foreign to white people today.

For white people slavery may indeed have been all but forgotten, but for black folks the terrible legacy of what has been called "the South's peculiar institution" lingers in profound ways. But I don't expect you to be able to relate to that.

How does slavery have a bearing on the problems in Baltimore (and every major city with a large population of black people)? In his article, Mr. Connolly says the following:

Slavery was not so much a labor system as it was a property regime, with slaves serving not just as workers, but as commodities. Back in the day, people routinely borrowed against other human beings. They took out mortgages on them. As a commodity, the slave had a value that the state was bound to protect.

Now housing and commercial real estate have come to occupy the heart of America’s property regime, replacing slavery. And damage to real estate, far more than damage to ostensibly free black people, tends to evoke swift responses from the state. What we do not prosecute nearly well enough, however, is the daily assault on black people’s lives through the slow, willful destruction of real estate within black communities. The conditions in West Baltimore today are the direct consequence of speculative real estate practices that have long targeted people with few to no options.

He blames real estate speculators for a "daily assault on black people's lives through slow, willful destruction of real estate in black communities. Really? His premise is that real estate developers buy real estate in poor areas, and then willfully destroy that real estate value. To what end? Because they want black people to suffer more than they want to earn a profit?

The whole premise is absurd. Indeed, this whole idea that white people are still profiting off the backs of black people is absurd. Black people have been a huge burden on the profitability of rich white people for decades. Ever since the War on Poverty, there has been trillions of wealth transmitted from the pockets of middle class and rich tax payers to the pockets of welfare recipients on the dole - a disproportionate number of which are blacks. Furthermore, the (mostly white) rich and middle class have had to pay the costs of police protection and incarceration for the massively disproportionate number of black criminals. Does he honestly think that white people want it this way? That we're intentionally paying these high taxes due to our racist urge to keep the black man down? It's amazing that people can actually talk themselves into believing this stuff.

It's not about 'white vs black', it's about the American government vs the people.

It's pretty ignorant not to acknowledge that the current American political/legal/economic system is structured to take advantage of minority groups (particularly black males). It's blatantly obvious. The government is either failing to protect, or is outright ignoring the rights of American citizens on a daily basis. This is a matter that should concern everyone in this nation, regardless of race.

[fishercob]

He mentions the legacy of slavery as a problem but doesn't really explain what slavery has to do with any of this. Slavery was 150 years ago. That's 7 generations. It's ancient history. White people today don't look at black people and think to themselves, "this guy should be a slave". It's absurd. The concept of slavery is foreign to white people today.

For white people slavery may indeed have been all but forgotten, but for black folks the terrible legacy of what has been called "the South's peculiar institution" lingers in profound ways. But I don't expect you to be able to relate to that.

How does slavery have a bearing on the problems in Baltimore (and every major city with a large population of black people)? In his article, Mr. Connolly says the following:

Slavery was not so much a labor system as it was a property regime, with slaves serving not just as workers, but as commodities. Back in the day, people routinely borrowed against other human beings. They took out mortgages on them. As a commodity, the slave had a value that the state was bound to protect.

Now housing and commercial real estate have come to occupy the heart of America’s property regime, replacing slavery. And damage to real estate, far more than damage to ostensibly free black people, tends to evoke swift responses from the state. What we do not prosecute nearly well enough, however, is the daily assault on black people’s lives through the slow, willful destruction of real estate within black communities. The conditions in West Baltimore today are the direct consequence of speculative real estate practices that have long targeted people with few to no options.

He blames real estate speculators for a "daily assault on black people's lives through slow, willful destruction of real estate in black communities. Really? His premise is that real estate developers buy real estate in poor areas, and then willfully destroy that real estate value. To what end? Because they want black people to suffer more than they want to earn a profit?

The whole premise is absurd. Indeed, this whole idea that white people are still profiting off the backs of black people is absurd. Black people have been a huge burden on the profitability of rich white people for decades. Ever since the War on Poverty, there has been trillions of wealth transmitted from the pockets of middle class and rich tax payers to the pockets of welfare recipients on the dole - a disproportionate number of which are blacks. Furthermore, the (mostly white) rich and middle class have had to pay the costs of police protection and incarceration for the massively disproportionate number of black criminals. Does he honestly think that white people want it this way? That we're intentionally paying these high taxes due to our racist urge to keep the black man down? It's amazing that people can actually talk themselves into believing this stuff.

Yeah, no one is making money off of the prison system. No ones making money off of the militarization of police and proliferation of guns in cities. No white people make money off the drug trade. Rich white people are just victims of the crimes against humanity carried out by poor nigg*rs. You tell 'em nate!

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

He mentions the legacy of slavery as a problem but doesn't really explain what slavery has to do with any of this. Slavery was 150 years ago. That's 7 generations. It's ancient history. White people today don't look at black people and think to themselves, "this guy should be a slave". It's absurd. The concept of slavery is foreign to white people today.

For white people slavery may indeed have been all but forgotten, but for black folks the terrible legacy of what has been called "the South's peculiar institution" lingers in profound ways. But I don't expect you to be able to relate to that.

How does slavery have a bearing on the problems in Baltimore (and every major city with a large population of black people)? In his article, Mr. Connolly says the following:

Slavery was not so much a labor system as it was a property regime, with slaves serving not just as workers, but as commodities. Back in the day, people routinely borrowed against other human beings. They took out mortgages on them. As a commodity, the slave had a value that the state was bound to protect.

Now housing and commercial real estate have come to occupy the heart of America’s property regime, replacing slavery. And damage to real estate, far more than damage to ostensibly free black people, tends to evoke swift responses from the state. What we do not prosecute nearly well enough, however, is the daily assault on black people’s lives through the slow, willful destruction of real estate within black communities. The conditions in West Baltimore today are the direct consequence of speculative real estate practices that have long targeted people with few to no options.

He blames real estate speculators for a "daily assault on black people's lives through slow, willful destruction of real estate in black communities. Really? His premise is that real estate developers buy real estate in poor areas, and then willfully destroy that real estate value. To what end? Because they want black people to suffer more than they want to earn a profit?

The whole premise is absurd. Indeed, this whole idea that white people are still profiting off the backs of black people is absurd. Black people have been a huge burden on the profitability of rich white people for decades. Ever since the War on Poverty, there has been trillions of wealth transmitted from the pockets of middle class and rich tax payers to the pockets of welfare recipients on the dole - a disproportionate number of which are blacks. Furthermore, the (mostly white) rich and middle class have had to pay the costs of police protection and incarceration for the massively disproportionate number of black criminals. Does he honestly think that white people want it this way? That we're intentionally paying these high taxes due to our racist urge to keep the black man down? It's amazing that people can actually talk themselves into believing this stuff.

HOW?

Every since slavery most black men haven't been able to raise their families. Bill Cosby played Heathcliff Huxtable. Not many dads like him exist.

I had a great dad (definitely not a perfect dad). Military officer who nurtured from when he was in his 50s until he died at age 84. Before that he provided and stayed married to my mom for over 25 years. I literally saw him redirect a white man who yelled at me and my mom. He did so without gunplay or violence, despite having been a combat veteran with two tours in Vietnam.

If not for his example and my mom's constant prayers I would be putting the I in ignorant.

nate, slavery destabilized black families and stigmatized black men, particularly.

My thought about the "hero mom" who beat her son was "Where is his dad?"

Nate33, I wish you could be a big black man for a week.

[nate33]

Yeah, no one is making money off of the prison system. No ones making money off of the militarization of police and proliferation of guns in cities. No white people make money off the drug trade. Rich white people are just victims of the crimes against humanity carried out by poor nigg*rs. You tell 'em nate!

Of course there are private contractors who make money off of prisons. There are private contractors that make money off of every facet of government (including imprisoning white people). Is it really your argument that this small lobby of prison operators are responsible for the plight of black America today?

The same goes for the drug pushers. Yes, there are evil SOB's running the trade, but what makes you think they're white, and what makes you think they are somehow aiming to destroy blacks. And how is it that it they are harming poor blacks more than poor whites?

The argument just doesn't fly. You can surely find some individuals who profit off the poverty of black people (or white people, or anybody), but their numbers pale in comparison to the number of people who would love to lift everyone out of poverty so that their tax burden would be considerably lower and their living conditions safer.

[Wes_Tiny_Abe_]

Nah, indu sounds more like one of those "Crazy Baldheads" that Bob Marley sings about.

When you've been on a journey from being born in 3rd world poverty to lower middle class NYC, to success as someone everyone thought was African-American it gives you a different perspective. Baltimore isn't going to recover from this, it's only downhill financially.....companies will leave and poor areas will no longer targets be for targets for renovation companies.

First thing I did was short Marsh and McLennan USA. They have over $713 million in liability and property insurance in Baltimore.

But you are not "African-American"...and it's a little insulting when you constantly suggest that because you are "dark-skinned" you somehow know what it's like to be an African-American. It's good that you have a "different perspective." You are certainly entitled to it. And (surprise, surprise) I agree with many aspects of it. But you will always be someone who can only view things from outside of the African-American experience in the US...no matter how dark your skin is.

He is still black though.



David Ortiz is still black. It doesn't matter if he was born in the Dominican Republic or Atlanta.



Don Francisco is still a Jew. It doesn't matter if he was born in Chile or Jew York.

[nate33]

HOW?

Every since slavery most black men haven't been able to raise their families. Bill Cosby played Heathcliff Huxtable. Not many dads like him exist.

I had a great dad (definitely not a perfect dad). Military officer who nurtured from when he was in his 50s until he died at age 84. Before that he provided and stayed married to my mom for over 25 years. I literally saw him redirect a white man who yelled at me and my mom. He did so without gunplay or violence, despite having been a combat veteran with two tours in Vietnam.

If not for his example and my mom's constant prayers I would be putting the I in ignorant.

nate, slavery destabilized black families and stigmatized black men, particularly.

My thought about the "hero mom" who beat her son was "Where is his dad?"

Nate33, I wish you could be a big black man for a week.

CCJ, I hope you keep challenging me on my arguments. I appreciate our back and forth on these issues.

While there can be no doubt that slavery destabilized black families, it is my understanding that black families had largely recovered within the next 75 years.

According to Thomas Sowell:

• In 1950, 72 percent of all black men and 81 percent of black women had been married.
• Every census from 1890 to 1950 showed that black labor force participation rates were higher than those of whites.
• Prior to the 1960’s the unemployment rate for black 16 and 17-year olds was under 10 percent.
• Before 1960, the number of teenage pregnancies had been decreasing; both poverty and dependency were declining, and black income was rising in both absolute and relative terms to white income.
• In 1965, 76.4 percent of black children were born to married women.

So in the 50's and into the 60's, the black family was doing pretty well by many measures. But since then, this is what happened:

Illegitmacy Rates

[nate33]

For white people slavery may indeed have been all but forgotten, but for black folks the terrible legacy of what has been called "the South's peculiar institution" lingers in profound ways. But I don't expect you to be able to relate to that.

Nate33 may never of heard of the Jim Crow laws that were in effect 100 years after slavery but i guess that may be a foreign concept to in the eyes of many repugs.

Jim Crow?? Pshh.. literally 3-4 years ago, as I recall, Wells Fargo was forced to pay damages for proffering predatory loans to low income minority communities in Baltimore.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/us/07 ... .html?_r=0

Wells Fargo, Ms. Jacobson said in an interview, saw the black community as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania. Loan officers, she said, pushed customers who could have qualified for prime loans into subprime mortgages. Another loan officer stated in an affidavit filed last week that employees had referred to blacks as “mud people” and to subprime lending as “ghetto loans.”

Jim Crow didn't go anywhere. These same racist practices have simply taken on different forms and continue to be protected under the law.

Give me a break. The whole "predatory loan" issue is pure propaganda. 20 years before that, Banks wouldn't loan to poor black people because they were a credit risk. (Banks didn't do this out of racism, they did so because they're really good at dispassionately evaluating risk.) Democrats instituted the Community Reinvestment act that basically forced banks to loan to high risk blacks under the threat of government sanction. The government expanded Fannie Mae to reduce the risk exposure of banks. Then, when the real estate bubble predictably collapsed, those high risk loans blew up. THAT'S WHY THE BANKS DIDN'T WANT TO LEND IN THE FIRST PLACE!

The banks were damned when they didn't lend, and damned when they did.

[DCZards]

Black people have been a huge burden on the profitability of rich white people for decades.

This statement totally blows me away...given that many rich white people have wealth that is the direct result of HUNDREDS of years of the forced and free labor of black people. It's almost comical that you would now turn around and claim that the sons and daughters of the slaves on whose backs much of this country's wealth was built are now a "burden" to the sons and daughters of the slave masters.

If black people are indeed a burden to rich white people, maybe that's the "chickens coming home to roost."

[Wes_Tiny_Abe_]

Image deleted
- nate33

Unless something is done about illegal immigration, this entire Black/White debate is going to be irrelevant 20 years from now when the illegals and their offspring outnumber everybody and take over everything.

[dobrojim]

I believe it's all about money. It's so much easier to do well when your parents did well.
It's so much harder to do well when your parents did not do well. So many virtuous as well
as vicious cycles. And there is a ton of institutional racism that has nothing to do with white
people consciously plotting in their own minds or with other white people, about how they
can keep 'the other' down. There is a great dearth of empathy in terms of understanding
the full life experiences of other people, especially those of a different race. African
Americans are still clawing to catch up from starting 250 years behind white Americans
in the struggle to be economically successful.

[Dat2U]

If anything, whites should be protesting in the streets to put a stop to black violence and black racism, but instead all we get is the opposite.

That's pretty much what a Tea Party rally is.

This post is gross.

What exactly in my post is gross. Are my facts wrong? Did I make any unfounded leaps in logic? My premise, totally supported by the facts, is that blacks are doing a lot more harm to whites than the opposite. Do you disagree? Why? The crime stats overwhelmingly support my premise. I'm willing to discuss why these problems exist and what should be done about them, but I've had enough with the Blame Whitey argument that persists throughout the media and on these boards. Whites did not cause this. Whites are usually the victim. It just never gets reported that way.

For someone I thought was pretty smart, the myopic nature of your posts is shocking. I guess in your world, see no evil, hear no evil really rings true.

[Dat2U]

Unless something is done about illegal immigration, this entire Black/White debate is going to be irrelevant 20 years from now when the illegals and their offspring outnumber everybody and take over everything.

Really? Why does this dude even post here again? Reported...