Neutral 123 wrote:Roy The Natural wrote:Neutral 123 wrote:Change to what? The problem is society is sick, and blacks will be more negatively affected by these same sicknesses. This is a violent, sexist, materialistic society, so it is no surprise we see some of the things we do. Whites did not pull themselves up by the bootstraps. The wealth of the white middle class was created through a massive, historic, welfare program. As long as this remains a blacks just need to be better people narrative, nothing will change. It is the very excuse being used to deny any real change.
Sorry an abuser will always be sicker than the abused, and while they both need help, the narrative is a dishonest one that shouldn't be embraced and conceded.
WHHAAAAAATTTT!!!!!!!?????? You're insane... My father's real father was an abusive alcoholic who beat the **** of his mother, him, and his sisters. They packed up and ran away when he was 8. He started working when in construction he was 14, he worked after school every day and on the weekends. He started out hammering nails into scaffolding, and for 30 years he slowly worked his way up in the field. He's now the COO of a small construction company making really good money, he's worked over 50 hours a week and through weekends the vast majority of his life.
Racial profiling does exist, and it is wrong and needs to be fixed, but quite frankly, I find the implied notion that white people, and non-blacks in general don't pull themselves up by the bootstraps everyday in this country insulting. You aren't handed a ruby talisman and a golden ticket for success when you're born as a white infant.
You wanna make a change? Then go out there protest the damn budget cuts to education around the country. Everything starts at school, poor neighborhoods in general are far more of an issue than actual racism. Awful education, horrible crime-rates, and a lack of upwards mobility in these regions are far more damaging than racial profiling from your local police force.
I find these discussions to go more smoothly when we try to avoid personal stories as much as possible. One, your personal stories are pretty much irrelevant as nothing I've said suggests that exceptions to anything can't exist, and two, my questioning of your stories could be interpreted as a personal attack.
My question for you is, do you not believe that people worked hard before the government welfare that created the white middle class? The issue is whether or not they were receiving a fair share of their labor. Were the many waves of immigrants who came to America lazy and didn't work hard in their old countries? Or was it they saw better opportunity for their hard work to benefit them in America? Did black slaves not work hard? Where were their gains? When the purse strings opened and an earnest attempt was made to more fairly distribute wealth, it meant a lot more white people enjoyed more from their labor . Its time for the same for blacks. Its time to stop the theft.
I believe comparing the 1950's to the current day economic system is a fallacy in general. The issue here is technological advancement and globalization. Unskilled labor is in a worse position than ever before, and this hurts the lower class as a whole, not just one specific sector of it. Asian and Indian, and even many middle-eastern immigrants are becoming wildly successful today, so in some ways they are dispelling the notion that white's are the only one's with these privileges.
There is no cure for unskilled labor job reduction, it will continue, and continue, until unemployment levels rise to unacceptable levels. It's why I believe that capitalism as a concept is not sustainable. As long as the corporate ideal is to create revenue and not jobs, the middle class will continue to bleed into the lower class. What I believe IS extremely unfair is that African-Americans didn't really get a chance to establish a foothold in the middle class in the past do to pervasive societal racism. This is not something that I still believe is a major issue through most of the country (IMO of course).
I believe the current issue is one of culture, and whether white-america, is responsible for that culture is to me, at this point in time, irrelevant. The only important notion going forward, is how do we fix it, so that every ethnicity gets a fair shot at putting its best into a position to be successful. I believe the government and the country have attempted to even the playing field through affirmative action and increased university enrollment for minorities, more work needs to be done though, that's for sure.
African-American culture as whole needs to put a HUGE emphasis on education, yet here we are talking about giving young African-American men the opportunity to see how important and valuable education can be,and these aren't just any African-American men either, these are guys that all sorts of kids look up to. These players have a HUGE opportunity to make a difference in African-American culture, and a player like Damian Lillard or even Anthony Davis can walk up to kids and tell them how important school and willingness to do well in school is. Kevin Garnett can't really make this point to a kid effectively when all they'll think is, "screw that, I don't care about school, I'm just going to go straight to the NBA, just like KG." (Obviously every kid won't think this, but I think the reasoning is a viable notion)
Then there's the point that the vast majority of players on that list are either known for getting in trouble, or have notoriously had immaturity issues. Even the good players on that list are often plagued with questionable maturity.
