Hodad

he Ring Of Al Sharpton? (thefederalist.com) It’s sad to see 2020 Dems kissing Sharpton’s … ring (nypost.com) So why is this career race hustler so revered by the Democratic party? You said yourself, he's no kind of serious thinker, yet he has many top and up and coming Democrats fawning over him? I think "revered" is a massive exaggeration. Sharpton has influence in Black politics and there aren't that many figures in the role. So yeah, if you want to reach Black voters you talk to Sharpton, Jackson and a few others. Those are valuable endorsements. But also keep in mind that while you see the term "race hustler" as a derogatory, Sharpton's advocacy for Black individuals, causes and communities is a decades-long mission. He has indeed "hustled" on behalf of Black America. There are blemishes and missteps on his record, but he's the guy who shows up and fights for them, often when no one else will.

You're just lashing out because you've been caught fudging. Grow up. As before, if you find you can't support your argument with theory or evidence, best to revise your position.

WTF? Are you just trolling now? A) Harvard is an university, it doesn't hold opinions. B. The article is from the Harvard Business Review which is a great journal, but the article is nearly 30 years old. Really? C) In no way, shape or form does the article "agree with you." Not even a little. The article is entirely about economic redevelopment planning and strategy in inner cities. Nowhere does it even come close to analyzing the effect of social programs on unemployment, relationships etc. Amidst thousands of world there are like two sentences that make the point that social programs are critical, but not sufficient without a comprehensive redevelopment strategy: "social programs will continue to play a critical role in meeting human needs and improving education." An article about weather patterns in Spain would do as much to support your argument. So, again, WTF are we doing here? If you are making a claim that you can't defend, reevaluate your beliefs. Don't make shit up and post random articles hoping no one will read them. Yes, enough silliness.

Dude, you claimed that social programs cause Black unemployment. If you use your eyeballs to look at the graph you mentioned, you can plainly see that there is no correlation. Black unemployment was about 2x white unemployment before the social safety net existed and remains about 2x for decades afterward. Which is literally what the authors explain. So you don't have correlation, and you can't posit an explanatory mechanism. So WTF are you doing?

Honestly, this reply is not even close to making sense. The data you provided shows the opposite of what you claimed. The only rational response is to find data or explanations that further illuminate, or to revise your claim. You doing neither is just burying your head in the sand. We been all still see your ass.

I really couldn't give a single crap about Al Sharpton. Indeed, he is no kind of serious thinker. Just an activist. And, intellectually, he's not in the same league as Sowell. But in a sad turn of events, they've ended up playing the same role for opposite teams. If you wanna take shots at Locke or Kant or Rawls, have at it. Or even pop-ier thinkers like Hitchens or Dawkins. The thing about great thinkers though it's that they're making great arguments to withstand the most rigorous examination. And Sowell hasn't had to do that for a long time. He's more columnist than economist now and the arguments are paper thin.

^^ This is complete nonsense. You set out to demonstrate cause and effect, but the data you provided showed the opposite. It specifically showed that the Black/white unemployment gap existed BEFORE the social programs you tried to blame, and had been more or less steadily at 2x for as long as we've been tracking it. The data you provided showed that there was no correlation to the advent and escalation of the social safety net. It's there for everyone to see. Why are you pretending otherwise?

?Yes, the data is quite clear. The unemployment disparity between Blacks and whites has beep persistent and relatively steady since long before the Great Society. You made a number of claims to the contrary, trying to tie unemployment to social programs. Obviously, that's pure bunk. But instead of revising your thinking, you simply pretend that night is day. Fascinating. And, yes, the political parties reversed polarity over the course of the civil rights movement. That's all well documented. It why overt, unrepentant racists like Strom Thurmond moved to the Republican party, the South turned red, why even today, Neo-Nazis show up to wave flags at Republican events and why Black Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.

Nah, Blacks are welcome to be conservative, but when one starts minimizing, rationalizing and justifying policies like racial profiling, stop and frisk and even slavery it's pretty clear what's going on. Ask Black Americans what they think of Sowell. No offense, but you think Sowell is brilliant because he puts a thin intellectual facade over arguments that you want to hear and accept. You are his target audience. He's more pop-culture ideologue than a real thinker, not trying to investigate, but rather to justify. Perhaps he could be-- or could have been brilliant --had he put his intellect to honest work, but at some point very early he embraced the allure of heterodoxy. Maybe because of the Chicago School? Maybe being "different" is somewhat addictive? At any rate, that's all he is now: a man who plays devils advocate, occasionally for the most atrocious stains on human history and on this society.

How in the hell are you satisfied with your explanation when it was wrong top to bottom--as is apparent in the data that you shared? What you're saying here is that you don't care about facts, or reality at all. That it's your feelings that matter.

A few points worth making here. 1. This is a sort of loose associative history as you see it rather than an explanation of the mechanism by which the safety net causes unemployment, dissolution of relationships etc. Still waiting on that. 2. You've badly misread and misinterpreted the data. You've noted a dramatic increase in Black unemployment around 1972. Well, sort of.?‍♂️ They didn't START independently tracking Black unemployment until 1972. So you do see it appear on the graph at that time. 3. What the data actually shows is that unemployment rates for non-whites, and later for Blacks independently, has been roughly double that of white unemployment, going back to the 50s. The numbers follow the economy and down, but track at nearly 2x throughout. However, economic turbulence-- recessions, like the Reagan recession (peak Black unemployment)or the 2008 crash, appears to hit non-whites a little harder. And in 2019, the low point for Black unemployment, it was still about double that of whites. From your cite: 4. So the correlation you want to spin as causation in your narrative history is definitively not causal. The data you shared directly contradicts that story. And indeed, because they interpreted the data correctly, the conclusion of the authors is quite the opposite of yours: "This blog takes a step toward communicating what many may have already suspected: due to systematic exclusion and discrimination of Black people in the labor market, racism in the education system and throughout U.S. society, Black men and women have endured double the unemployment rates of white men and women since at least 1954." So with you narrative thoroughly debunked, would you care to posit a new theory, or are you prepared to consider that your assumptions were incorrect?

So you can't explain it, but you have your feels. Okay.

Yes, there are problems. You are arguing that those problems are caused by the existence of safety nets. You think people are splitting their relationships and jobs etc, to chase a few dollars a month. Essentially giving up on life in exchange for abject poverty and bare subsistence. I'm asking why you think that. If it doesn't appeal to your (and it shouldn't) why do you think it is irresistible to Black folks? I think the entire premise is or nonsense. Safety nets don't cause poverty any more than airbags cause car crashes. They are there for when shit doesn't work out. But you explain to me why you think otherwise. By what mechanism?

Nope. But for some reason you think others will find those options incredibly attractive So again, why do you imagine something that holds no appeal for would be so irresistible to Black folks that they're ending relationships and leaving jobs to live in subsidized miserable poverty?

So what amazing social safety net opportunities are you taking advantage of? The proof is clear as day?

Of course. What more can be said about a man who make his money rationalizing the mistreatment of Black Americans. He's done quite well for himself, built a lucrative career of making white people feel better about being shitty to Black people. And if he had to shit on Black people to do it, hey, it's just business. He makes shallow, specious arguments that are prime for the internet era. They don't have to be compelling enough to withstand the intellectual rigor of the academic world. Just superficially academic enough to embolden the dogmatic conservatives looking for any flimsy reason to cast whites as the heroes and blacks the villains in the story of American racial disparity.

Sure, just like how you tried to get fired so you could collect unemployment. And how you stopped making your mortgage payment to get subsided housing. And how you didn't feed your kids because they could get meals at school. Wait, none of that happened? Well no shit. That's because nobody chooses a shittier life to score baseline benefits. You wouldn't, so why would you assume Black people do? Do you believe they are somehow less than you? The social safety net is there to catch people who fall. It doesn't knock them down.

Nothing to apologize for. And I'm not sure it's the only reason. There are lots of people who feel conflicted, as you do. And the fact is that non-discrimination IS a trade-off. Freedoms are often in conflict with one another. We just decided a half century ago that the right of minority people to exist and function was more important than the right to mistreat and exclude them from places of public accommodation. The law was clear: if you choose to operate a business that serves the general public, you can't exclude protected classes from service. No one was forced to work for others, but if they wanted to operate a public service business, that was a condition of doing so. As it's now done many times, this compromised court has discarded both precedent and decency to reach tortured conclusions that unravel decades of maturation to drag us back to an uglier time.

Well, your two hands are headed for a fist fight.??

Black men are disproportionally denied property, jobs, wealth respect and liberty, and now you'll complain that they struggling or absent? And it is and always had been bullshit to claim that "welfare" is breaking up families. You're as eligible as the next guy. Has it ever tempted you to divorce? Ever even give it a thought? -- That's simply not how safety nets work.

It's not an attack. That's just reality. There's no mystery. The country has already lived through it. That's simply what life was like before protected classes were protected.

Nah, his nephews and nieces are right about him.

Sure, why should a restaurant have to serve Blacks? Or gays, or Jews? Why should a hospital? Why should an apartment owner like Trump's father? Why shouldn't a little Black girl pee herself outside of a gas station because the proprietor "disagrees" with the fundamental humanity of Blacks and chooses not to "work" for them. Sorry, but we've HAD the country you're advocating for, and it was a miserable place full of heartache and abuse for anyone not white, straight and Christian. You can keep your apartheid. No thanks.

No, you can refuse service to an individual. If someone is an arsehole, don't serve them. But you, or anyone else, shouldn't be able to refuse service to an entire protected class. This isn't the 1950s. At least it wasn't until this backward-ass court decided that was "society goalz!"

Nah, I didn't assume that you were defending the decision. My point was that once you break it down, the argument doesn't hold. And worse, the decision does set a precedent that could affect any target for any reason. One vendor might serve that's under some circumstances, others might serve none, and others still might not serve blacks or Jews or whomever else--and it's all equally protected.