Is every fascist on here some dipshit small business owner who thinks they're hot shit?

Where'd you get this numbers on fatherless families? Stormfront? Provide actual data that isn't made up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/us/17census.html

The number of black families with two parents is 40%. Is it a decline from the 60% (not 90%, 60%) of 1970? Yes. But the level of decline is on par with the decline among other racial groups. Furthermore, the decline in the 1980s might something to do with the fact that there was escalation in the number of drug arrests during this period. Not to mention the growing norm of unmarried people living together and reduction in the stigma against divorce which has occurred nationwide since the 1960s. Also there was a systematic reduction in the welfare state, which you say will *help* and not hurt African-Americans but yet you complain about this issue.

When it's hard to find a job, the prospects for keeping the family together are not high.

"When it's hard to find a job, the prospects for keeping the family together are not high."

Mr. anecdotal makes controversial statement with nothing to back it up. Not even anecdotal evidence. Of course, the real evidence is that the families in financial trouble in poor white communities stay together and bond together to keep themselves afloat, even to the point of having extended family live with them... Ever see The Walton's? What do black families do when they have financial troubles?

The Waltons is a work of fiction.

Want a not for profit that's racist and not black-oriented? As Putin pointed out, the NAACP has had white heads (it was mostly formed by whites, in fact).

The Catholic Church is tax exempt. Also a global organization, with members in such places as Africa and Asia. In its two THOUSAND year history, there has never been a non-white leader.

There have been African popes. Not black ones, but non-white, non-Greek North Africans. There are plenty of black cardinals.

Also keep in mind that for a good chunk of those two thousand years all Catholics were white Europeans. All of them. And then due to the political pull and sheer numbers of them Italian cardinals had a lock on the papacy right up until John Paul II.

And by your own logic, is Islam bad because there was never a black caliph? I can't recall a non-white Chief Rabbi of Israel. Every Dalai Lama's been Asian. See how silly such an argument is?

The Church also heavily intervenes in the political process, which is the real reason to axe tax exemption.

"And by your own logic, is Islam bad because there was never a black caliph? I can't recall a non-white Chief Rabbi of Israel. Every Dalai Lama's been Asian. See how silly such an argument is? "

Except that Israel and the Dalai Lama have very specific groups they're pulling from. Not a worldwide organization like the Catholic Church.

Bull. That's a ridiculous and arbitrary standard. And at any rate, it doesn't even negate my black caliph point.

You just don't know enough about the issue. There are plenty plenty plenty of criticisms for the Catholic Church which have merit, but the fact that it hasn't had a non-European pope since the Muslims took North Africa is not one of them. Catholicism has been a presence in sub-Saharan Africa for not even two hundred years. While they've been in Latin America a bit longer transportation and communciation has only made it practical in the last hundred and fifty years or so for these cardinals to be in recent constant enough communication to get the support of their peers.

You're fishing for a controversy here. Go with something which the Church has actually done wrong. I can think of at least one off hand...

Supporting Hitler. There you go.

Not what I was thinking of and not exactly true, but at least that's a legitimate point.

And 150 years is less time than the NAACP has existed. Who determines which organization gets what timeline for integration?

Who determines whether integration is even a meaningful goal for an organization? If there's never been a black president of the plumber's labor union is the union racist? If there's never been a Pakistani British Prime Minister is Britain racist? If there's never been an Asian who wrote in Czech win the Nobel Prize in Literature is the Czech literary community and Nobel committee racist?

It's wrong to exclude people just because of their race, but it's also quite silly to thing that integration for integration's sake has any kind of value.

The point is, the NAACP, which has had whites lead it and was founded by whites, is being criticized as exclusionary. Is integration a meaningful goal for them?

I never said it was. I think, as a whole, race-based organizations shouldn't exist. We are all individuals after all. If they think it's important to have a white leader then more power to them, but it strikes me as unimportant.

I also think race-based organizations shouldn't exist but with the current state of the world, they have to exist.

"If there's never been an Asian who wrote in Czech win the Nobel Prize in Literature is the Czech literary community and Nobel committee racist?"

As a matter of fact (and off-topic), we already had a Czech-Vietnamese girl winning the Czech book of the year award. Turned out some ethnic Czech wrote it instead but the day will come when such an event will be legit, second gen Vietnamese command Czech so well that they win all language competitions they enter :)

The rightwing solution to the race issue is either to pretend it doesn't exist and therefore it'll go away or to blame the entire problem on the group that is disenfranchised and without economic power. Both solutions involve whites having to do absolutely nothing to fix the problem and absolve them of any issue with having benefited for decades from this state of affairs, how convenient.

And there's a qualitative difference between 'race-based' groups (which NAACP isn't even one) whose mission is to achieve a level playing field and race-based groups whose aim is to defend racial disparities. The equation of the KKK with the NAACP or SNCC or CORE or SCLC (perhaps people will say MLK's group was "racist") is the kind of disgusting false equivalence that I should be used to by now, but is still stupid beyond belief.

Putin +1

"Skin color should be treated like hair or eye color. People are only individuals and should be treated as such." - Thanks Invictus for weighing in with the kind of insight that could only have otherwise been provided by a particularly sub-par episode of Sesame Street. The problem is some people seem to think the problems of structural racism can be be fixed simply by repeating these well meaning but useless platitudes, rather than any real kind of sacrifices by the majority groups that have been benefiting from the power disparity for centuries.

Centuries? Really? I guess two centuries as a nation is the plural, btu you make it sound like something even longer.

And again I *don't* get why the youth of today have to pay the price of my great great grandparents or even my grandparents, although in both cases they were from the mountains of Tennessee and Kentucky and not rich by any means. They weren't slave owners and they didn't have servants. They were just poor farm folk trying to survive.

OK Draug, European settlement in America predates the declaration of independence. And those European settlers had slaves BEFORE 1776. But even if we go with the date 1776, that's still 235 years, and I don't feel like the term "decades" really captures the idea of 23.5 decades. It sounds like I mean 70 years or so.
If you prefer I can say generations?

And the reason white youth today have to "pay the price" of their ancestor's sins, as you put it, is because they continue to reap the rewards of a system that, whether we like to admit it or not, values white people above all others, and certainly much higher than black people. You kinda make the situation seem as though, yeah it sucked to be black 200 years ago, but now that has no bearing on anything. If that were the case then yes, I agree there would be no point, but it isn't. Regardless of background society is biased in favour of white people. Whether or not you come from a background or poor farm folk, or rich plantation owners, whether your great great great great grandparents owned slaves or not is irrelevant.

I will make this easy; yes, racism is bad, but it doesn't happen without reason. Take stereotypes for instance. There is a reason stereotypes exist, someone didn't just think one day (I shall use an example I know: Turks are lazy people who think they are gang-bangers). Not every Turk I have met has been lazy, or attempted to be a gangbanger, in fact I have met MANY Turkish people that I have become great friends with, but there is an overwhelming number of Turkish people who attempt to be gangbangers and are just mooching off their parents (hard working immigrants) work.

Being German, there is a great negative stigma towards my feeling towards Jews. I have many Jewish friends, but I have never been able to agree about having friends with Zionists (those believing that they should own Israel because of some divine right). Israel has already stolen too much land and too many lives from Arabians who had made their houses on the land for many many years before.

So, I hate no human by the colour of their skin, or ethnicity, or race; but instead on their beliefs and ability for me to get along with them.

I would agree that stereotypes exist for a reason.

I would not agree that the reason is reflective of or the responsibility of the group being stereotyped.

Surely you can see the benefit to being able to write off entire ethnic groups as lazy and violent no matter the reality.

"First, it is the culture. Their culture does not promote such behavior. Listen to Rap/Hip Hop, which , regardless if you can admit it or not, has a HUGE incluence on the youth, since most grow up without a father in the house, these Rappers are now role Models.

What are they promoting? 'getting dat green' "pimpin dem hos' killing cops, etc. Nothing really there other than negative things. Also, you have parents who may not care so much also. I am saying this in general, as I know that is not true in every case, but I have a unique experience here. I taught in an all White school, and in an all black school. Totally different."

Hahahaha ohhhhh man. You sound like my grandfather.

Let me just, i dunno, complicate this simplistic point a bit for you, just give you some shit to think about.

A) how come school shooters are usually white dudes, and not black dudes, if hip hop is so corrupting?

B) how come you ignored the negative lyrics in "white" music? I have heard plenty of depressing, violent, suicidal, disrespectful, misogynistic druggy songs in the rock genre. Hip hop isn't the only music in the world that is vulgar.

C) Why did you ignore positive rap? Does this music not count in the same way as you believe negative rap does in terms of influence? If not, why not?

D) Why do you assume all black people listen to rap, and no white people listen to rap, implicitly, in your post?

E) Why do you equate hip hop culture with African American culture?

F) Why do you assume negative aspects of a culture cause the misfortune of a group instead of considering that the negative aspects of a culture may instead emanate from the misfortune of a group? To give you a more concrete example: is it your belief that Africa is poor because their culture is not suited to making them rich, or something along those lines? If not, why do you apply the same logic to African Americans?

Have you considered that perhaps the music is a reflection of the reality of their world more than it is a cause of their behavior? Have you considered that things such as dealing drugs and killing cops which, yes, do happen, are not a result of black culture but are a result of systemic oppression, which incidentally enough is *exactly what AA is attempting to correct*?

PS Can I also just quickly ask why you capitalized “White” but not “black”? Moreover can I ask how your experience at a grand total of two schools is in any way more than an anecdote with all the rhetorical power that entails?

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsc2p542Lq1qkdvqeo1_500.jpg

I have to give a +1 to Thucy. Hip hop can be a reflection of urbanism and is not necessarily a cause of it's problems. Yes, there are some hip hop/rap artists who are about the violence and the se and drugs and treating women like animals, but much of hip hop is about how the artist feels leaving in that world, not about promoting that world.

And, as Thucy points out, hip hop and rap aren't limited to black culture. Look at Eminem and the youth of today who run around dressed the same whether they be black or white or latino or asian. It's a multi-racial culture and should not be blamed for all the ills of the inner city.

@Thucy, you eliminate a whole group of blacks when you say African-American as it has been pointed out that African-Americans are descendants of slaves and doesn't include other blacks whose heritage may not even trace back to either the slave trade or Africa in general. There are black people from places other than Africa.

Also yeah, on the subject of the nature of hip hop and gangster rap culture being opposed to authority, I think that's a two way street as Thucy pointed out. Look how authority treats black people in North America? Everything from the phenomenon of "driving while black", to the Reagans' anti-drug campaign (which was targeted mainly at crack, the drug used by inner city black people, but more or less ignored cocaine, used by rich white yuppies), to the incredibly high incarceration rate for black men (1 in 9 black men under 40 are in prison in the US), to the ridiculously high number of black people on death row, and then you sit here saying "Why has the African-American community developed this counter culture that is so hostile to authority?"

Pope Gelasius I sure wasnt a white european.
good lord get your facts straight.
I am not 100% sure but I beleive there were at least three others.


thucy, mafia, putin +1

Gelasius I was the third and final, artwork of him appears European (which doesn't really mean much), and that was in 496 CE. So okay, for about 10 years total 1500 years ago, what a great diversity record.

POWER TO THE WHITEY!! Time to start the "Congressional WHITE Caucus". The "National Association for the Advancement of White people", the blah blah blah.

Fuck all you idiots that see the world as black and white. I can't tell you how many black guys I know that have had grade-point bumps, or white people that have been denied jobs in favor of less-qualified black people. And now stupid kids are on Wall Street bitching because there are not enough jobs. Well....hmmmm...maybe if corporations hired the BEST and BRIGHTEST....instead of filling QUOTAS....there would be more jobs, because businesses would GROW with the BEST employees.

By the way...Putin...others....WHEN exactly will you dickheads say, "yes....all is equal....we can stop playing favorites?" The FACT is that with a black President, you STILL don't believe racial equality is at hand. You will NEVER be convinced that race is a secondary or tertiary issue at best. And yet....if I...a white guy....walk down a back street in Detroit....I ***will**** get mugged, probably murdered....and no Liberal will bat an eye at that....

Fuck you all.