Omegavegeta wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
Jesus F'ing Christ. Are you kidding me?
No; African Americans, the VAST majority whom are descendents of slaves, have been at an economic disadvantage in American society since slavery. This is a fact. If you'd like to dispute it, I'd love to see a cite.
No. But is that the "only reason"? When you use the phrase
for no other reason, it means that "there is no other reason for this". When I then call you on this and you say "I'm not saying that's the
only reason", you are either being deliberately misleading, or you have no freaking clue what the bolded phrase above means. Stop using that phrase if you aren't actually going to support a position that something is the "only reason". Can you do that? Pretty please?
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What's a bigger contributing factor to how much money someone can make over their lifetime? I thought you agreed it was whom their parents are? If their parents are African Americans, they've descended from slaves & their family has ALWAYS been at a disadvantage.
They could be descended from a whole bunch of different people. It's not the condition of your ancestors 150+ years ago that matters, it's the actions and choices of your parents
right now which affect your own outcomes. I'm trying to get you to grasp that by focusing only on the whole "descendants of slaves" angle, you're ignoring the things people are doing right now that harm their own outcomes and the outcomes of their own children. And those actions and choices have vastly more weight.
Middle class professional black people are *also* descendants of slaves. Yet, amazingly, black kids who grow up in middle class neighborhoods have about the same rates of success as their white peers. The fact of their ancestors enslavement has very very little to do with success or failure today. But for some reason, you want to focus entirely on that one thing. That's the problem. You're ignoring the real factors that have far more relevance.
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AA addresses this disadvantage for a small percentage of African Americans whom can use it to pass on wealth to THEIR descendents, but I don't feel it goes far enough to solve the cause of that disadvantage.
It will never go far enough. Because just as you can't seem to look past the slave issue, neither can those who receive AA. They also ignore the mistakes they are making and blame every failure on racism. As a result, they don't take as much responsibility for their own lives are are less likely to ever actually make the changes they need to in order to actually give their children and grandchildren the better opportunities we all agree they should have.
The solution *is* the problem.
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It happened because George W. Bush doesn't care about African Americans & cares more for his rich white friends. I'm sorry, that can't be proven. What CAN be proven is Dubya's economic policies benefited rich white folks MUCH more than poor black folks, which caused the loss in wealth for blacks.
Lol. Can't see past your own propaganda, can you? I'd say that it happened because black folks, being most dependent on public assistance already, are most affected by any sort of reduction to those programs. You're basically trying to argue that someone failing to give money to someone else, is the same as taking that money away. I think that's a totally BS argument, but it's funny how often that crops up in liberal socio-economic ideology.
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I agree it didn't truly help, but for different reasons and motivations. Those programs were advertised and supported politically as programs designed to help poor and minority people become home owners, but in reality were just another way rich white folks in the banking industry were trying to make cash off of poor black folks whom couldn't afford the loans to begin with. I'm glad they got what was coming to them.
Ok. But the same folks who pushed for that also push for AA. Can't you see that maybe the intent of AA is for rich white folks to make cash off the poor black folks? It's the same thing. You're promising that by giving them things they can't afford themselves, we're somehow going to erase the socio-economic gap. But, just as the CRA stuff didn't help poor blacks in the long run, neither does AA. It's funny that you can see this in one case, but not in the other.
Giving people things they can't afford on their own doesn't help them. It doesn't free them. All it really accomplishes is to make them dependent on the people giving them the free stuff. It makes them slaves.
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Erm, the Bush tax cuts disproportionally give rich white folks tax breaks while poor black folks pretty much didn't benefit from them at all.
And the entire nation is divided into "rich white folks" and "poor black folks"? There are no rich black folks, or poor white folks? The Bush tax cuts affect everyone exactly the same regardless of their skin color. The issue is that there are disproportionately more poor black folks than poor white folks. But that's not the fault of the tax law. It's the fault of other factors. You're confusing cause and effect here. People who lay on train tracks are more affected when a train comes through, but the correct answer isn't to outlaw trains. Do you see how your logic is backwards?
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Furthermore, ending them puts more tax revenue into the system that can be used for other things that COULD benefit poor black folks.
We could give everyone a free pony too. But that doesn't mean we should. Tell me why it's a good thing to raise taxes in order to provide benefits for poor people. Even leaving the racist aspect of your argument aside, it's a bad idea. It's counter productive.
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Spoken like someone whom believes he's earned everything he has in life on his own & expects darkies to do the same.
I believe that anyone can succeed, if they try hard enough. I think that the counter argument is pretty weak when there are so many examples of people insisting that they can't succeed, while not actually trying. It has nothing to do with skin color either. There are plenty of lazy/poor white folks out there. And they're poor for the same reason. It has nothing to do with skin color. It has nothing to do with being descended from slaves. And frankly, it's a racist cop-out to use those as excuses.
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But guess what? Some of what you have is unearned. You got it for no other reason than you are a white person, living in a society run (mostly) by & for white people.
Stop using that phrase, if you don't actually mean to say that there are no other reasons. Ok? Please?
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You've got a MUCH better chance than an African American to: not be in jail, get an education, get a job, get credit, get access to healthcare, get a car, buy a house, get a "good" mortgage...and the list goes on.
All of which have nothing to do with race, and everything to do with statistical games. It has to do with poverty. If you start in poverty, you're more likely to have negative outcomes. Thus, things which make it harder to get out of poverty will tend to keep the poverty statistics similar with regard to racial makeup. Do you see how implementation of programs like AA actually work to keep that disproportionate racial representation intact?