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However, you will find far more whites who have worked less hard than you but that have more than you, by virtue of nepotism, inheritance, connections and a host of other reasons. I don’t hear you complaining about that.
I complain just as much about whites who get ahead of me through nepotism. But this thread is pretty much about racism, not classism or nepotism. I don't think I've complained about blacks who have gotten more than I have through inheritance, and I know plenty of them. Same with connections, so why would I complain about whites who have gained through the same mechanisms?
I'm just as opposed to legacy admissions in college for whites as I am to prefential admissions for blacks.
We can't always look at the past as to who started what. Sure white people left the city because it was becoming a bad place to live. Sure, maybe they should not have all left. We can't dwell on old things anymore. The whole issue was compounded by Coleman Young and his anti-white sentiments and policies. I think there are many people in Detroit who cater to a certain mentality that they don't WANT white people back. And if we're not wanted, why come? It reminds me of an interview I once saw on PBS or something. A very well educated black man was being interviewed about a project that the mayor of Gary IN had spearheaded. It was building many condos and storefronts in the downtown area. A lot of people felt good about it. The man that was interviewed said he was hoping the project would turn out to be a failure. The interviewer was puzzled. When asked why, the man replied "Gary is a black city, we took it from the white people, and we are going to rule it" or something to that effect. The mayor that had spearheaded this project was a white mayor, whose election was a surprise to the community, since mostly black people had held the seat. The man didn't want a white man to fix Gary, he only wanted a black person to rule the city, even if it meant there was no improvement. I think there is a good deal of this mentality, specifically among the leaders of Detroit right now, certainly not the whole city, but of a number of important people.
My parents moved from Ohio to the Detroit area in the late 60's. They seriously feared for their lives. It was not "white flight", it was everyone flight-blacks and whites. It was the peak of the race riots; buildings getting burned down, looting, fighting and killing. Anyone in their right mind would have moved on. Incompetent mayors (with the exception of Dennis Archer) mismanaged an already volatile situation and struggling economy. A single industry economy is never the best economic model. The struggling auto industry has resulted in a very high unemployment rate for the entire state. As a former Detroiter, I tried for years to buy into the notion "only buy American cars" but the fact of the matter is, Toyota and Honda make better cars. And don't even get me started on the United Auto Workers' union.
To the OP, you're right, Detroit is a nice city and it has come a long way since the 60's and 70's, but the demise of Detroit's downtown and surrounding neighborhoods is very complex and has been happening for over 4 decades. It's going to take a long time to be the metropolis that it once was, if ever.
..and that's why the Democratic nominee for Leader Of The Free World is black. No....wait.......
No you did not say that
Do you think white folks are going to elect a person of ANY color who is not going to look out for the interest of the white majority first and foremost? Why do you think that Obama is going around chastising blacks, not attending prominent black events, not attending the commeration of MLK in Memphis, throwing his black church under the bus and calling black fathers irresponsible? He KNOWS that is what white voters want to here and he KNOWS that he needs white votes to win.
I complain just as much about whites who get ahead of me through nepotism. But this thread is pretty much about racism, not classism or nepotism. I don't think I've complained about blacks who have gotten more than I have through inheritance, and I know plenty of them. Same with connections, so why would I complain about whites who have gained through the same mechanisms?
I'm just as opposed to legacy admissions in college for whites as I am to prefential admissions for blacks.
Well....based upon the blacks you KNOW....your life is certainly not a microcosm of American reality. Again, if black poverty, unemployment, wealth and a host of other socioeconomic metrics show blacks suffering far more......your life and the blacks you know are not representive of the BIG PICTURE....assuming what you say is true.
The reason Nearborn and others like him are so resentful of affirmative action is that by and large it is run in a wholly inappropriate manner by lazy and cynical white people to meet quotas. The minorities who take advantage of AA are relatively wealthy, well-educated ones who are aware of these opportunities, not the inner city kids who see nothing but poverty, decay and desperation all around them and for whom "the rest of us" may as well be in another country. Of course, AA as practiced by most institutions also serves the interest of the establishment because they only get the "good" minorities who behave in a "normal", i.e., white, manner with few adjustment issues.
Until AA sets out to accomplish what it was originally meant to do, and that is reach out to those dark and scary neighborhoods to find kids with true potential and show them that there indeed is a way out of that life, it is doomed to failure. As it is practiced now, AA leads only to resentment from the likes of Nearborn and stigmatized minorities who are viewed as manipulators of the system.
It is unfortunate that AA, as well as some admittedly pigheaded behavior by city officials, overshadows the facts that Indentured Servant and others have logically and eloquently attempted to point out: that the Great Divide between races in this country is indeed a direct consequence of slavery compounded by Jim Crow as well as more subtle forms of racism further muddled by misguided and cynical apologist measures. The issue might be clearer if you look at the Native American situation in this country. After being beaten, raped, robbed of their homeland then forcibly marched out to the most remote areas of the country, slap-dash apologist efforts have done nothing but create an entitlement mess with disenfranchised people living on handouts and renewed tension between whites and Indians near the major reservations.
It is naive to think that the black kid in the ghetto just needs to get his act together and pull himself up by the bootstraps to have a chance at all the success in the world. When the world as you know it is full of abject poverty, violence, drugs and lack of hope, where the ones with power and money are drug dealers and pimps, and everyone around you calls you a sellout if you try to accomplish something, it takes monumentally greater courage, effort and luck to succeed than for an average middle class kid.
Some have pointed out that there are more black people with more problems living less responsible lives than those of their grandparents, who grew up under institutional discrimination. Well let me offer this for thought: institutional discrimination to some extent sheltered African Americans from the full brunt of white fear and hatred much in the same way that the Negro League of baseball did. But like the Negro League, the opportunities were limited, the pay exponentially less, and recognition of effort even lower. When official discrimination in both baseball and society were eliminated, all of a sudden black folks were thrown into the fray with less education, less money and in some ways less protection. Many white people back then were just as resentful of blacks just trying to live ordinary lives as some white people are today of black beneficiaries of AA. So I guess at least the "resentment threshold" has gotten a little higher in the last 40 years - great progress. It takes much more than one or two generations for all these issues to work themselves out, and thinking otherwise is naive and possibly even irresponsible.
Actually Ed, I was talking about Affirmative Action as administered by black leaders in a city that is 90% black that still managed to hire and advance a lot of incompentent people, let alone people who could not compete with those who were turned down for jobs and promotions.....all in a city that's 90% black in population and leadership.
They DID reach out into the scary neighborhood and hired criminals and drug dealers, illiterates and convicts.....while routinely "losing the files" of other more qualified applicants who they could not pass up legally after affirmative action had run its course, but whose files they could easily "lose".
Do you think white folks are going to elect a person of ANY color who is not going to look out for the interest of the white majority first and foremost? Why do you think that Obama is going around chastising blacks, not attending prominent black events, not attending the commeration of MLK in Memphis, throwing his black church under the bus and calling black fathers irresponsible? He KNOWS that is what white voters want to here and he KNOWS that he needs white votes to win.
That's just the price of doing business. They all do it. Was Bill Clinton "not white" when he put on some sunglasses and pretended (badly) to be Charlie Parker with a saxophone? The fact of the matter is, for all the racism in this country, Americans are going to nominate a black candidate for president. It's getting real close to the time when it's not going to be acceptable to rationalize failure by saying "white people kept me down" merely because I'm black.
That's just the price of doing business. They all do it. Was Bill Clinton "not white" when he put on some sunglasses and pretended (badly) to be Charlie Parker with a saxophone? The fact of the matter is, for all the racism in this country, Americans are going to nominate a black candidate for president. It's getting real close to the time when it's not going to be acceptable to rationalize failure by saying "white people kept me down" merely because I'm black.
Indeed! That is one of the reasons why Obama is popular with many whites. The moral nemesis of the white population has been the stigma of racism. It’s a stigma that whites are desperate to rid themselves of….but more so via perception than via reality. So one has to look at the Obama phenomenon in that context and thus, its clear to see that many whites support Obama because they see it as a SYMBOLIC opportunity to demonstrate that they are not racist and that the stigma of a racist white America is no longer true. That was glaringly obvious when Obama won the Iowa Caucus and so called journalist and pundits were salivating how it implied the death of the careers of people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and the politics of race. The truth is that if Obama were ALL WHITE, all other things being the same, he would have not done any better than John Edwards. Obama’s “blackness” is the attraction here…..for blacks and many whites, just like Clarence Thomas Blackness was of keen USE for white conservatives who had the power of replacing retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was black. You see, white conservatives wanted to use a black face to promote white conservative interpretation of the constitution. Now, white folks want to use a black face as proxy for discrediting the black civil rights establishment and the issue of racial inequality and white racism. That makes Obama VERY attractive to many white Americans who are tired of carrying the scarlet letter of racism. They see voting for Obama as clearing their name and like you…..that is the MAIN social benefit that attracts them from an Obama presidency.
That said, blacks, as only 10% of the electorate and even less than 10% of the money lobby interest that influences politicians, will always exists under the tyranny of the majority. Racism is not, however, how one feels about an INDIVIDUAL of a particular race, its how one feels about the GROUP as a whole. Only extreme racist are unwilling to accept ANYONE from another race, even if that person believes the same things that they do and is smarter than them (Most extreme racist have low IQs). The typical racist, on the other hand, can have black friends, date blacks (for sex), do business with blacks and reluctantly accept that there are blacks SUPERIOR to them. However, these white racist believe that the TYPICAL black, is inferior to the TYPICAL white, notwithstanding the exceptions to the rule. Thus, such a racist white person can accept Obama because he is EXCEPTIONAL and the don’t really see him as “black” like the image of blacks in their mind. Moreover, they see someone who was reared TOTALLY BY WHITES. He is not the descendant of Slavery in America, like over 90% of blacks in America. He has no linkage to that long ugly history of white’s mistreatment of black Americans…..and he is also HALF WHITE biologically. All these attributes comfort whites. If Obama was a dark skinned black, with two black dark parents who were sharecroppers and descendants of slaves who grew up in the inner city.... AND HE WAS A LIBERAL…..that would scare the sh1t out of white America and they would not vote for him because many would feel he is too connected to the long history of white oppression of blacks and thus he may harbor some hidden “chips” on his shoulder that could manifest once he gained power. Yaw not fooling anyone…..but yourselves.
Oh….by the way NearBorn…..I bet YOU are not voting for Obama…..so why are you trying to take credit for what it symbolically means for America…..when YOU played/ are playing a COUNTER ROLE to his ambitions? See….again….you want to take credit/benefit from the deeds of OTHERS….even though you did not have a thing to do with it and actually resited it. Yet…..again…..you reject the responsibilities of citizenship and past liabilities because……YOU did not have anything to do with it. Granted....I am only speculating that you are a republican/conservative type or they type of West Virginia white liberal who will vote for McCain or not vote...rather than voting for Obama. I know yaw well.....don't I
Last edited by Indentured Servant; 06-26-2008 at 07:41 AM..
So, in other words, Obama, like Freeman Hendricks, is not "black enough"? Maybe he's just doing what he has to do to get elected and will become blacker as times goes by? You know, like Kwame pretended he was a thug/player just to get elected.
As far as who I'm voting for, you're right, I'm not voting for Obama. I'd vote for James Brown or George Clinton though if one wasn't dead and the other was able to get the nomination. I'd probably vote for Bill Cosby or maybe even Prince too.....Those guys are just black enough, but not too black for me.
So, in other words, Obama, like Freeman Hendricks, is not "black enough"? Maybe he's just doing what he has to do to get elected and will become blacker as times goes by? You know, like Kwame pretended he was a thug/player just to get elected.
As far as who I'm voting for, you're right, I'm not voting for Obama. I'd vote for James Brown or George Clinton though if one wasn't dead and the other was able to get the nomination. I'd probably vote for Bill Cosby or maybe even Prince too.....Those guys are just black enough, but not too black for me.
Yadda yadda... you talk about what it dispells about America to have a black nominee and possible president....yet....you played NO role in making that happen. Yet....you want to use that to somehow dispell the proposition of a racist America.....WHEN YOU DID NOT AND WILL NOT VOTE FOR HIM. So what does that say about YOU?
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Anyone in their right mind would have moved on. Incompetent mayors (with the exception of Dennis Archer) mismanaged an already volatile situation and struggling economy. A single industry economy is never the best economic model. The struggling auto industry has resulted in a very high unemployment rate for the entire state. As a former Detroiter, I tried for years to buy into the notion "only buy American cars" but the fact of the matter is, Toyota and Honda make better cars. And don't even get me started on the United Auto Workers' union. 
It takes much more than one or two generations for all these issues to work themselves out, and thinking otherwise is naive and possibly even irresponsible.
