Racist, funny or who cares?Follow

I think my posts are long enough without extraneous modifiers.

I said that black people are poorER. Naturally that is making a general comparison to white people. Obviously not all black people are poorer than all white people.

I was just thinking that I should stop using so many modifiers because they vastly extend the length of my already-long posts, but apparently they are necessary to avoid confusion. Realize that although I often attempt to speak with strict technical accuracy, I sometimes assume the reader can accurately glean my intent.

Speaking in generalities, it was bound to be.

Even with the statement of "poorer" that hasn't been the case for me either. I'm not saying that you are wrong or anything, I was just curious on your frame of thought.

Edited, Mar 3rd 2011 12:18am by Almalieque

lol

Having followed this thread:

I was interpreting Alma's "shopping list" in the following manner:



"I can buy all these products at any major/minor supermarts...but if I pay a little more at the local (neighborhood) supplier rather than Wal-Mart, etc. then I am helping the local (ethnic) retailer and thus "helping my own".



Have I missed the mark, Alma, or is this what you meant?

Sure. No one is debating the value of filling a market void if no one else is providing a product a group of people want to buy. The question is whether or not you believe it's helpful for the members of said group to continue "helping" their own group by buying those products from members of their own group even after said products are available elsewhere.

At some point, doesn't the practice become harmful and just racial discrimination?



Yes. But in the example Bijou gave, the consumers are paying more money for the same product in order to "help out" black businesses. So every gain by the black business is made up from a loss by the consumers of the same community. While you can certainly argue that this keeps the money in the community, I argue that it also insulates them and prevents money from outside from flowing in. The net effect is a perpetuation of the poverty conditions within the community itself.


Let me see if I can present a clear explanation of what I'm talking about. And remember that "helping out" doesn't just have to be about economics, but the same principle applies to many areas of society. One of the factors we talk about in the context of race relations isn't just money distribution but also "power". Specifically political power. If you look across our political demographics and compare it to the racial demographics, you find that there is a significant and noticeable lean in favor of white politicians. In other words, minorities don't have the same representation in our government at most levels as they exist demographically within the population.

This discrepancy is often explained as some kind of holdover of "white power", but I believe it's an aspect of the harm caused by minorities following the "help your own kind" mentality that you have said is good for them. On the surface it seems like a good idea, but what ends out happening is that minority groups block themselves demographically. The simplistic example would be if we assumed a population made up of 20% black, 20% latino, 20% asian, and 40% white. You'd expect that representation should more or less follow that distribution, but what typically happens is more like 80% white, 10% asian, 5% black, and 5% latino.

The reason is because each of those groups is voting for their own group and not for any other. Thus, in a field in which one candidate of each group is running, the white guy will get 40% of the votes and win. Even if we assume a run off is required since he didn't get a majority of the votes, if the white guy is running against any black, asian, or latino candidate, and each person will prefer to vote for his own group, the white guy will tend to win, since the asian and latino voters are no more likely to vote for a black candidate than a white one.

And in fact, they are more likely to (usually). As I explained earlier, white people have shown a strong movement within their own population of *not* judging and selecting based on skin color. Thus, if you are a member of a minority who has adopted the "help your own kind" belief, and you're presented with a choice between a candidate of another minority which has also adopted that same belief, and a white candidate which most likely hasn't, who are you going to vote for? The black voters aren't going to vote for the asian or latino candidate because they'll believe that those candidates will favor their own group over them. Same deal with the other minority groups.


The same applies to the business model. If the black business appeals to black customers, and black customers prefer to shop there to "help their own group", but the latino's and asians are also doing the same thing, they are going to tend to *not* shop at eachothers stores. But the white owned Wal Mart, which carries products designed to appeal to all groups and not just white people will get *some* of the business from all of those groups.

Do you see how such an approach to race is harmful to the minorities themselves? They aren't helping themselves. They are hurting themselves. If the minority store owner instead provided products designed to appeal to all groups, and members of each minority gave up the idea that they should shop only at their "own stores", you'd find that the money flow would be much more equitable and the prospects for minority communities would improve over time. By closing themselves off, they're making any growth nearly impossible.

Edited, Mar 2nd 2011 4:03pm by gbaji

Sigh. Broken record much? You don't think so? You don't think that white people made slaves out of black people because they believed it benefited their own race to do so? You don't think that if white people as a whole believed that they should act to benefit their own race even at the detriment of others, that this wouldn't have hindered that whole civil rights movement thing?

I think that's a pretty ridiculous position to take, but you're welcome to it.

That was too harsh :c



Well the solution is to force white businesses to provide those products and services, I guess. But that's part of the complaint, isn't it?



It's a pretty safe bet without doing so, honestly. Schools also offer minority scholarships to increase diversity, which is important to student body outcomes. Besides that, determining need is very difficult. Schools and the federal government ALREADY do that based on immediate family income via FAFSA and Pell grants, but SES is based on a lot more than your immediate family's income, like their education and social capital, among other measures which are impossible to check for but are decidedly disadvantaged in minority groups.



No. It's basically only wrong if you're deliberately (or arguably ignorantly) acting differently with intent to do harm based on that.

It's somewhat analogous to protecting endangered species but not other species.



Not anytime even remotely soon.

Rest was tl;dr, so I'm thankful you weren't talking to me.

But Alma's argument suggests that even if a white business carries those products and services, minority members should stick to buying from their own racial group. That's the part I don't agree with. I think it just perpetuates racial divides.



But what do they use to measure "education and social capital"? And if they are "impossible to check for, but are decidedly disadvantaged in minority groups", how do we check to see if they still exist? How do we know when the pendulum has shifted?


That was my original point. If our criteria is (for example) "Black==disadvantaged", and we create laws and systems to account for that disadvantage, what process is in place to uncreate those things later? If it's so hard to determine need, and so hard to determine the exact nature of that disadvantage, then don't we run the risk of embarking upon social policy based on pure assumption and an accumulation of beliefs? Do you think that successive generations will be less certain that black kids need more help going to school that this one? Because the numbers would seem to suggest otherwise, right? I mean, we'd assume that we should be seeing improvement with each generation from slavery to civil rights to today, yet the use of entitlements and benefits aimed towards minorities has increased over time, not decreased.

Why should we assume that trend will reverse itself? I would absolutely love to be wrong about this. I'd love for the future to reveal that as each of these minority groups gained socio-economic position that their political leaders and representatives would drop the issue of benefits for their group, and allow those benefits to be phased out over time out of a recognition that they don't need it anymore. But I don't see that. Certainly, so far it looks as though the more power these groups gain, the more they use it to "educate" everyone about the plight of their group and push for yet more benefits for their group.

Show me evidence to the contrary. Show me where the NAACP has decided that black participation in some area of society has improved sufficiently that government intervention on their behalf is no longer necessary. Like I said, I would love to be wrong about this. I just see no indication that the current trend wont just continue.



But what is "harm"? If you choose to buy something at a store because the owner has the same skin color as you, aren't you harming the owner of the store you might otherwise have purchased that item from? It's just strange to me that things like differences in hiring rates and pay, with no definitive motive behind them are fairly universally assumed to be proof of "institutional racism" by whites against blacks, but a black person deliberately choosing to financially benefit a black person in preference to a white person isn't?

Why are those different? We condemn the former and embark on massive social agendas to correct for those discrepancies, even in the absence of clearly stated racial motives. But a black person choosing to buy from a black owned store is no different in terms of harm than a white person choosing to employ a white person. Both are the same thing, right? In both cases, you're "helping out" a member of your own racial group in preference to a member of a different group.


The difference though is that some in our society are so twisted around on this issue, that they condemn one and praise the other. As Alma has done.

They're wrong in both cases. If it's wrong for a white employer to prefer to hire white people and tend to pay white people more than black, then it is equally wrong for a black person to prefer to buy from a black owned store. There is no difference. Regardless of what label you use for it (racism, racial discrimination, bigotry, whatever), those are both equally wrong. What astounds me is just how many people don't see that they are.

Edited, Mar 2nd 2011 7:02pm by gbaji

If you honestly believe that white people didn't know that what they were doing were "wrong", then you have serious issues my friend.

As I said before, the Golden Rule is universal. Everyone naturally knew what they had done was wrong, else they would have included family, friends and themselves. You bringing up global slavery just proves my point. If you look in history, even though other countries had slaves and servants, they had MORE rights than the U.S slaves. This supports the claim that there is NO connection between civil rights and economical power. These people CHOSE to restrict social liberties.



You're actually confusing me. It's simple.. No matter what your intent was, only hatred, ignorance, evilness, bigotry, etc. would cause a person to use slavery as a means to get to the top. It's a very simple concept. It's not that hard to grasp.



Because, obviously using a gun to kill people is never the ONLY way to gain power. You can, I don't know, build trust with people by doing good and become a good leader to gain power.

If you chose to kill as opposed to building positive relationships, then that's a direct reflect on your personality. That's why that was a great example.



You're only saying that because you obviously never been a minority in any meaningful situation. Go live in a foreign country for a year where people don't look like you or speak a language that you speak, has a complete different culture and tell me if you still think the same.

That's why I asked if China Towns, Little Tokyos and Asian supermarkets equally offend you?



Besides the fact that we'll never get to that point, if it did, then the new minority, "white people" will have the same "legal benefits" that the former minority had. Exactly what "legal benefits" are you talking about anyway?

Edited, Mar 3rd 2011 9:07pm by Almalieque

This whole argument sort of reminds me of all of the "Buy American" campaigns...

Edited, Mar 3rd 2011 9:38am by Belkira