Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black man

[TomB]

The situation in poor communities in Appalachia is a lot more complex. I ran across this rather long blog post that deals with the subject. Yes, it's a blog, but it contains quite few links to more primary sources. It's an interesting read: https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/are-white-appalachians-a-special-case/

There's a lot of material in there, some of which I haven't quite wrapped my head around, but a few quotes stand out:

Data does show that poor whites are more likely to own a house than poor blacks. Those houses in many cases are inherited along with land. People forget that many blacks used to own houses. A lot of their inherited wealth was loss. When blacks were driven out of communities and entire areas, there homes and property was either stolen or destroyed. This happened over many generations.

Whites, on the other hand, experienced generations of white affirmative action.

[Snip]

In so many ways, black poverty is far worse than white poverty. Most poor whites have no idea how bad poverty can be.

It is possible to be dirt poor and still own your home. This is, I think, not uncommon in rural areas. I'm thinking of some of of my parents families in Kansas. My dad's uncle rented 40 acres my dad inherited from his grandfather for I think, $400/year. Between that, an additional forty he rented from my aunt and his own land he farmed maybe 120 acres. The house on my great uncle's property was falling down and unlivable. He lived in a mobile home parked on the property. A small one...not a double wide. He would have been considered "poor" as in below the property line, but he could make ends meet because of the family land. I suspect there is a lot of that in Appalachia. There's poor and then there's poor.

Then there's this:

There is a lot more going on in this region and in these communities. The history alone is fascinating and times heartbreaking. Appalachia and the larger region isn’t even just about whites. Many areas that are majority white today had large black populations in the past, prior to Jim Crow, the KKK, and redlining. Even so, many blacks remain in these rural areas, especially in the South, but also in Appalachia.

Poverty is not a race issue. Rural blacks are basically the same as rural whites in rates of social problems, although rural blacks are less likely to commit suicide. The same goes for comparing inner city blacks and inner city whites. Back when most blacks were rural, they had strong communities and high marriage rates; and at least in some places (e.g., rural Louisiana) blacks committed less violent crime than did whites, both intraracial and interracial. Inner cities are a very different kind of place, but it’s been hard for blacks to escape those conditions. It’s similar to why poor Appalachians get stuck in poor communities, long after the employment dried up. Inner cities also at one time had high employment rates for blacks. Loss of factories in inner cities had the same basic impact as loss of mining in Appalachia.

The point from this is that you have to compare like to like. Rural and urban environments are different, and thus the effects of poverty are going to be different. And, again, rural poverty and urban poverty are not the same animal.

So comparing Inner city Chicago to Appalachia doesn't really work.

 

[angrysoba]

Unfortunately he lost my sympathy a short way into the first video with a story about how he as a black man cycling shouts at a white girl running in front of him to get out of his way. She fails to do so, and he rides into her. No recognition that a person on a bike coming from behind has the responsibility to avoid the collision. No recognition of how scared the girl must have been to have him land on her. He assumes she did not hear him because she had head phones in, but she might also have been deaf, a complete lack of awareness of invisible disability, and the need of the able bodied to accommodate the less abled. No recognition that as a man he somehow felt entitled to the right of way and women should give way to him.

Yes, that part was where he lost me, too.

Hans

It's a really terrible analogy if he means that some people are not heeding the warning signs. It would be better if in his example, he was an observer yelling at the woman that someone on their bike was coming and that she wasn't listening rather than that he was the one plowing into her where the culpability becomes all his. In fact, it has the really terrible implication that he has no agency at all even while riding the bike. He could just slow down and tell her that she is a danger to herself and other people on the road. It's like someone in a car beeping their horn for several seconds instead of applying the brakes and then crashing into someone.

Whatever...

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

At the risk of repeating myself, again... again... The OP already said what it was about, when he posted the video!

I know. I was responding to what you, specifically, said. I even quoted it. I'll quote it again, if you like:

If people have questions about it or want to know what its about, then they should watch it.
If they don't want to do that, then they should just shut up about it and leave.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Regardless, the video host said outright that he doen't like riots.

But.

If you repeatedly and pointedly ignore or encourage people that, again and again, shout about their urgent issues, with increased frequency and anger, sooner or later you'll end up with a riot.

It's not a surprise that almost every riot in recent memory has been sparked by the exact same thing that sparked them in the days of MLK Jr. - namely, an out of control police force that's openly violent and disrespectful, people that at best live paycheck to paycheck (again, "I've got a job!" isn't enough here), and when people finally protest, authorities scream and inflict mass violence - often on people who were at most just marching down the street, or who weren't even doing that.

(Meanwhile, how many MAGAts have we seen acting out for no real reason at all? Screaming at poll workers, waving their expensive new guns because they hate face masks, blocking highways, and so on? And that's *before* we get into the cases of MAGAt police in heavy armor outright shooting people in the face with flashbangs, beating people they snatched out of cars, happily waving through white nationalists who, to return the favor, shoot and kill other cops, and the like).

I watched two so far, and...it's a somewhat different perspective on the same questions, giving answers I sometimes disagree with - my view on "black on black crime", for example, is that black communities discuss this all the time, and have for decades, and that this is often just a distraction from the subject which, for decades, has included reforming police so they stop acting like a violent street gang.

WRT rioting, this woman's passionate speech, made during the George Floyd protests, is worth watching:

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

It's a really terrible analogy if he means that some people are not heeding the warning signs. It would be better if in his example, he was an observer yelling at the woman that someone on their bike was coming and that she wasn't listening rather than that he was the one plowing into her where the culpability becomes all his. In fact, it has the really terrible implication that he has no agency at all even while riding the bike. He could just slow down and tell her that she is a danger to herself and other people on the road. It's like someone in a car beeping their horn for several seconds instead of applying the brakes and then crashing into someone.

Whatever...

Not just that but he presents it as an event that actually happened to him, personally. There's no indication that it shouldn't be taken literally.

All in all, regardless of whether or not it's something that really occurred, it's an odd choice of anecdote to tell and a very strange metaphor to use.

 

[Brainster]

The issue here is that black/brown people in the US are overwhelmingly unfairly treated compared with white people, and this is especially so where the Police and Justice are involved.

Here's another interesting data point:

A newly instituted performance-review process gives every [New York] Times employee one of six ratings; the lowest is reserved for employees who don’t meet expectations, with the other five in ascending order, from “Partially Meets Expectations” to “Substantially Surpasses Expectations.” A study conducted by members of the Times’ editorial union found that in 2019 Black and Hispanic employees received 33 percent of the former rating, despite making up only 16 percent of the staff, while receiving less than 5 percent of the highest rating.

Yep, systemic racism at the New York Times.

 

[bluesjnr]

Yep, systemic racism at the New York Times.

How did you arrive at that conclusion?

 

[Thermal]

WRT rioting, this woman's passionate speech, made during the George Floyd protests, is worth watching:

I saw this vid before. Really passionate and convincing, isn't it? The thing is, it relies on very flawed assumptions. A small one is her depiction of looters as having to loot because it is their only way of getting what they need. Bull ****. No one needs an 80" flat screen or Timbas or Eagles jersey. They wanted free luxuries, and that is a very different thing. Ignoring this motivation is dishonestly reframing the problems.

Speaking of dishonesty, the bulk of her impassioned tirade hinged on another flawed premise: continuity of race. Her Monopoly analogy shows this perfectly. She asks if you played the game and were allowed 400 rounds of amassing wealth before she got to play, that wouldn't be fair, right? I have bad news for her: Most bad old whiteys don't have generational wealth dropped in their laps. When my father passes, he will be a net loss, in fact, owing much and having no assets at all.

But her analogy relies on treating people as a skin color, nothing more. She says "we" were brought to America. She is not one of those "we"; she pretends to be, assimilating the suffering of others to excuse bad behavior. That's cheap.

"White people" are not some faceless multigeneratoonal conglomerate who have oppressed her for centuries. My immigrant grandparents do not owe her a store to burn down, and it is revoltingly entitled for her to say they do. We have real generational ripples that plague us to this day, most importantly the lack of real education and opportunity in poor areas. But don't you dare blame anyone with lighter skin for all your problems, and justify your crimes by pretending the sins of someone else's fathers are mine. Looting swag from someone who did nothing to you is not a ******* virtue or something that is owed to you.

 

[psionl0]

Police do this because its easier to just dish out traffic tickets for minor infractions, and citations for minor drug possession and then pile on extra charges to make them into crimes. They can also make money at it using "civil forfeiture"

https://ij.org/report/policing-for-...ate-protections-nebraska-troopers-seize-cash/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/1/16686014/phillip-parhamovich-civil-forfeiture

https://amp.flipboard.com/@WashPost...OFg:a:234908068-767ee18584/washingtonpost.com

Doing actual police work to catch murderers, burglars, fraudsters etc well that is harder, and it COSTS money, with no way to get it back.

The so called "war on drugs" was never anything more that a war on poor people because apart from a few cases where the cops got lucky with an inside tip and made a big drug bust, the drug lords were able continue to go about their work unfettered.

you are absolutely 100% correct.

 

[angrysoba]

I saw this vid before. Really passionate and convincing, isn't it? The thing is, it relies on very flawed assumptions. A small one is her depiction of looters as having to loot because it is their only way of getting what they need. Bull ****. No one needs an 80" flat screen or Timbas or Eagles jersey. They wanted free luxuries, and that is a very different thing. Ignoring this motivation is dishonestly reframing the problems.

Speaking of dishonesty, the bulk of her impassioned tirade hinged on another flawed premise: continuity of race. Her Monopoly analogy shows this perfectly. She asks if you played the game and were allowed 400 rounds of amassing wealth before she got to play, that wouldn't be fair, right? I have bad news for her: Most bad old whiteys don't have generational wealth dropped in their laps. When my father passes, he will be a net loss, in fact, owing much and having no assets at all.

But her analogy relies on treating people as a skin color, nothing more. She says "we" were brought to America. She is not one of those "we"; she pretends to be, assimilating the suffering of others to excuse bad behavior. That's cheap.

"White people" are not some faceless multigeneratoonal conglomerate who have oppressed her for centuries. My immigrant grandparents do not owe her a store to burn down, and it is revoltingly entitled for her to say they do. We have real generational ripples that plague us to this day, most importantly the lack of real education and opportunity in poor areas. But don't you dare blame anyone with lighter skin for all your problems, and justify your crimes by pretending the sins of someone else's fathers are mine. Looting swag from someone who did nothing to you is not a ******* virtue or something that is owed to you.

Yeah, the apologetics for looting and burning of shops has to stop. I don't buy the argument that the majority of it is born of revolutionary fervour. Most of it is simple opportunism, or recreational (some people just enjoy a good riot: see these London riots for example).

 

[Brainster]

How did you arrive at that conclusion?

Any difference in outcomes between the races is due to systemic racism, according to Ibrahim X. Kendi.

"A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups."

If the NY Times was not systemically racist, then only 16% of those receiving the lowest marks would be Black, and 16% of those receiving the highest marks would be Black, directly in line with their percentage of all employees.

 

[smartcooky]

If the NY Times was not systemically racist, then only 16% of those receiving the lowest marks would be Black, and 16% of those receiving the highest marks would be Black, directly in line with their percentage of all employees.

NYT employs less that 5000 people, Far too small a sample size to glean any real statistical significance, but of course, you already know that.

In any case, the article you linked goes on to say some far more interesting stuff...

"Everyone I spoke to at the Times thought the place needed to diversify: more Black journalists, more Evangelical Christians, more Cuban émigrés, more “people who grew up on ranches who aren’t Nick Kristof,” as one put it. The racial-justice reckoning that shook the nation this summer brought a new urgency to the effort. Managers were required to attend unconscious-bias training. The Times Magazine commissioned a diversity study of bylines and subject matter “to quantify what everyone already knows,” as one staffer put it. The Times gave employees the day off on Juneteenth, which marks the emancipation of America’s slaves. The efforts felt sincere, but everyone knew the road to real change would be long. All employees could do was sigh when one masthead editor explained, in a town-hall meeting, that the paper’s diversity study was being led by Ivy Planning Group, a consulting firm named for the fact that its three founders all went to Ivy League schools.​

I'm not seeing a lot of US Police forces doing any of the highlighted!

 

[cullennz]

NYT employs less that 5000 people, Far too small a sample size to glean any real statistical significance, but of course, you already know that.

In any case, the article you linked goes on to say some far more interesting stuff...

"Everyone I spoke to at the Times thought the place needed to diversify: more Black journalists, more Evangelical Christians, more Cuban émigrés, more “people who grew up on ranches who aren’t Nick Kristof,” as one put it. The racial-justice reckoning that shook the nation this summer brought a new urgency to the effort. Managers were required to attend unconscious-bias training. The Times Magazine commissioned a diversity study of bylines and subject matter “to quantify what everyone already knows,” as one staffer put it. The Times gave employees the day off on Juneteenth, which marks the emancipation of America’s slaves. The efforts felt sincere, but everyone knew the road to real change would be long. All employees could do was sigh when one masthead editor explained, in a town-hall meeting, that the paper’s diversity study was being led by Ivy Planning Group, a consulting firm named for the fact that its three founders all went to Ivy League schools.​

I'm not seeing a lot of US Police forces doing any of the highlighted!

I don't think you a making much of an effort to look.

 

[Mumbles]

WRT rioting, this woman's passionate speech, made during the George Floyd protests, is worth watching:

I somewhat agree - with the rather obvious caveat that much of the rioting has been aligned with, or directly from, the police themselves.That's more or less been the case since Ferguson's PD decided the right response to local anger over police violence was to spend a year putting an entire neighborhood under siege, and attacked high school students trying to go home from their schools in Baltimore, and when the wealthier white supremacists decided to riot in Charolettesville back in 2017.

But yeah, "We don't own any of this" is pretty common to hear from black rioters, and in their individual cases, they're usually right, and it's usually by design.

 

[Bogative]

Any difference in outcomes between the races is due to systemic racism

Any outcome gap between the races that could be viewed as unfavorable to blacks is also known as racism of the gaps. The religion of Woke has its own apologetics.

 

[Mumbles]

NYT employs less that 5000 people, Far too small a sample size to glean any real statistical significance, but of course, you already know that.

I'm old enough to remember when columnists across the country were terrrified that black people would burst into riots as they left showings of Do the Right Thing - back in 1989. And when they rushed to paint black murder victims as more violent than the white people who killed them - through today. A lot of people in the US struggle with this sort of thing.

(I'm also fully aware of the fact that this is a common phenomenon among even well-meaning people who rate performance in myriad fields)

 

[Brainster]

NYT employs less that 5000 people, Far too small a sample size to glean any real statistical significance, but of course, you already know that.

Gee, that means they employ fewer than 900 Black people. Yeah, I can absolutely see how with that tiny a workforce, you cannot get anything statistically significant, and it could be purely chance that Blacks are twice as likely to be receiving an unsatisfactory performance review.

And you are seriously deluded if you don't think cops get diversity training.

 

[Planigale]

I saw this vid before. Really passionate and convincing, isn't it? The thing is, it relies on very flawed assumptions. A small one is her depiction of looters as having to loot because it is their only way of getting what they need. Bull ****. No one needs an 80" flat screen or Timbas or Eagles jersey. They wanted free luxuries, and that is a very different thing. Ignoring this motivation is dishonestly reframing the problems.

Speaking of dishonesty, the bulk of her impassioned tirade hinged on another flawed premise: continuity of race. Her Monopoly analogy shows this perfectly. She asks if you played the game and were allowed 400 rounds of amassing wealth before she got to play, that wouldn't be fair, right? I have bad news for her: Most bad old whiteys don't have generational wealth dropped in their laps. When my father passes, he will be a net loss, in fact, owing much and having no assets at all.

But her analogy relies on treating people as a skin color, nothing more. She says "we" were brought to America. She is not one of those "we"; she pretends to be, assimilating the suffering of others to excuse bad behavior. That's cheap.

"White people" are not some faceless multigeneratoonal conglomerate who have oppressed her for centuries. My immigrant grandparents do not owe her a store to burn down, and it is revoltingly entitled for her to say they do. We have real generational ripples that plague us to this day, most importantly the lack of real education and opportunity in poor areas. But don't you dare blame anyone with lighter skin for all your problems, and justify your crimes by pretending the sins of someone else's fathers are mine. Looting swag from someone who did nothing to you is not a ******* virtue or something that is owed to you.

One thing that I think is interesting to reflect on is that the origin of slave is from Slav. Being a Slav and being a slave were synonymous. To what extent this attitude continued into Nazi racist ideology and considering Slavs as sub-human and their use as slave labour is interesting. For those who try to suggest that racist terminology disappears or the consequences of being a slave race disappears once people are no longer slaves should reflect on this. The racist term slave is still being used; Slavs were used as slave labour in twentieth century Europe.

 

[dann]

Slavs were used as slave labour in twentieth century Europe.

They still are! And if you include working in slave-like conditions, it seems to be almost ubiquitous:
Poles work in slave-like conditions in Spain (NewEurope, Nov. 4, 2006)
Cheap Polish Labor in Swedish Forests (SverigesRadio, Jan. 12, 2011)
Forced labour in the UK (Joseph Rowntreee Foundation, June 2014)

Not just Slavs:
Dansk skibsreder anklaget for slaveri: Han tjente 4 millioner kroner (AvisenDanmark.dk, Aug. 27, 2020)
Danish shipowner accused of slavery: He earned 4 million DKK

And not just in Europe:
Labour exploitation, slave-like conditions found on farms supplying biggest supermarkets (ABC News.au, May 7, 2015)

 

[theprestige]

"Slavery".