Ferguson unrest

[Michael Hardner]

Your arguments and views only serve to continue an unhappy past that we should all learn from and grow away from.

How can we grow away from an unhappy past without recognizing that past problems still linger today ? Recognizing differences in races, in peoples' lives, in circumstances isn't racism. That sounds like political correctness gone amuck to me.

[Smallc]

Because it's a political construct that I don't accept. Laws that treat people equally are not racist. The most racist thing today is affirmative action. It's pandering and assumes that minorities who do badly cannot do better.

[sharkman]

What's sad is that a bunch of white people are going to sit here and dismiss the experiences of people of colour by pretending that racism doesn't exist or that we're in a post-racial society that is colour blind. Colour blindness is the new racism. It ignores people's lived experiences and trivializes the barriers they face. At best it's gaslighting, at worst it's stunning ignorance and bigotry.

I can't speak for all of the white people here, but I don't think racism is extinct. Colour blindness is what the left preached for decades, and they were right, you shouldn't judge a man by the colour of his skin, but by the content of his character. I am proud to say I'm colour blind. This may be a case where the left is simply moving the goalposts.

[Smallc]

How can we grow away from an unhappy past without recognizing that past problems still linger today ? Recognizing differences in races, in peoples' lives, in circumstances isn't racism. That sounds like political correctness gone amuck to me.

Race is almost never the root of the problem. Poverty, education, and violence are. Work to solve those problems on an individual basis and then you're actually making some progress.

[Michael Hardner]

Because it's a political construct that I don't accept. Laws that treat people equally are not racist. The most racist thing today is affirmative action. It's pandering and assumes that minorities who do badly cannot do better.

Laws are only part of the system. People are also part of it, and they can be racist.

Minorities aren't doing better. If you don't think the system is the problem, then what is it ? Are they inferior ? Affirmative Action recognizes systemic barriers and helps people who need help. How can that be racist ?

[Michael Hardner]

Work to solve those problems on an individual basis and then you're actually making some progress.

Which is what affirmative action does ....

[Smallc]

Which is what affirmative action does ....

White people can't have those same problems (and yes I know they have them in fewer numbers but I know people)?

[Argus]

Laws are only part of the system. People are also part of it, and they can be racist.

Minorities aren't doing better. If you don't think the system is the problem, then what is it ?

Who says minorities aren't doing better? Better than when? What criteria are you using to evaluate whether minorities are doing better or not? Which minorities? All of them or just Blacks?

[Michael Hardner]

White people can't have those same problems (and yes I know they have them in fewer numbers but I know people)?

They can have some of the same problems, but not all of them.

[Smallc]

Laws are only part of the system. People are also part of it, and they can be racist.

Minorities aren't doing better. If you don't think the system is the problem, then what is it ? Are they inferior ? Affirmative Action recognizes systemic barriers and helps people who need help. How can that be racist ?

Minorities aren't doing better than in the past? I'm not sure where you live, but it isn't here. It has little to do with colour or race, and everything to do with individual circumstance that simply happens to be more common to certain racial groups. Of course history plays a part in that. What's really hard to see is how the system as it stands could be perpetuating that today when it gives a leg up to people of colour. The reality is that poverty and violence beget poverty and violence. Race isn't the major cause.

[Michael Hardner]

Who says minorities aren't doing better? Better than when? What criteria are you using to evaluate whether minorities are doing better or not? Which minorities? All of them or just Blacks?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/19/charts-the-economic-gap-between-blacks-and-whites-hasnt-budged-for-50-years/

Our colleague Zachary Goldfarb published a big piece over the weekend noting that the United States hasn't made much progress in closing the economic chasm between blacks and whites over the past 50 years.

"Many of the most overt forms of racial discrimination and bias have faded," Goldfarb writes, "but yawning economic gaps have persisted since 1963" — that's the year, note, that Martin Luther King Jr. led the The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

[Smallc]

They can have some of the same problems, but not all of them.

They can't have all of the same problems of poverty and violence?

[TimG]

Colour blindness is the new racism. Now if that doesn't top the ridiculous meter, I don't know what does.

Cyber has also said that only whites can be racists. He personifies why it is simply not possible to have a rational discussion on the issue.

[Smallc]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/19/charts-the-economic-gap-between-blacks-and-whites-hasnt-budged-for-50-years/

As the link says, racial discrimination has faded. What has continued is a cycle of poverty and violence that can afflict any community.

[Michael Hardner]

Minorities aren't doing better than in the past? I'm not sure where you live, but it isn't here. It has little to do with colour or race, and everything to do with individual circumstance that simply happens to be more common to certain racial groups. Of course history plays a part in that. What's really hard to see is how the system as it stands could be perpetuating that today when it gives a leg up to people of colour.

It's hard to see unless you look more closely. The programs you mention have marginal effect, clearly.

The reality is that poverty and violence beget poverty and violence. Race isn't the major cause.

Race isn't the cause, I agree. It's social mechanics around race. That's as far as I can go in terms of explaining it, how about you ?

[Michael Hardner]

They can't have all of the same problems of poverty and violence?

No, they're different problems.

[Michael Hardner]

As the link says, racial discrimination has faded. What has continued is a cycle of poverty and violence that can afflict any community.

Why ?

[Smallc]

Why ?

Because the cycle doesn't just go away. That doesn't mean that systemic racism is the cause. My fiancée comes from a very poor and very violent family (the non aboriginal side). They don't know how to break the cycle so they just continue it. She did break it. I had to pretty much drag her from it and it still crops up. It's not easy.

[Michael Hardner]

Because the cycle doesn't just go away.

Why ? Why aren't black Americans just blended in the way Irish, Germans, Swedes are ?

That doesn't mean that systemic racism is the cause. My fiancée comes from a very poor and very violent family (the non aboriginal side). They don't know how to break the cycle so they just continue it. She did break it. I had to pretty much drag her from it and it still crops up. It's not easy.

So you helped her and it seems to have had an effect. I laud you for having a positive effect in someone's life. Collective action by a society can have similar results too.

[Smallc]

Why ? Why aren't black Americans just blended in the way Irish, Germans, Swedes are ?

Not everyone is colour blind. From experience some older people still are and most minority people are because of past experiences and stories of past experiences. It helps to perpetuate an already difficult cycle. I didn't say racism doesn't exist anymore. Societal systems though are very colour blind.

[eyeball]

As I repeatedly point out, the issue of excessive police force and the unnecessary suffering and death it's causing cuts across racial lines.

I suspect most people who deny the racism also deny that there's a problem with excessive police force unless it's to say we need more of it.

There's is a much deeper wellspring of malaise afflicting society.It's not to say racism isn't an issue, it suggests racism is springing from the same source.

[Argus]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/19/charts-the-economic-gap-between-blacks-and-whites-hasnt-budged-for-50-years/

So you're not talking about minorities in general but Blacks, and American Blacks at that. And you're talking specifically about economics.

Racism could be involved, perhaps this amorphous, difficult to define 'institutional racism' but we KNOW there are a number of reasons why Blacks are poor, and none of them are related to racism. The breakdown in Black families, for example, is a huge cause. When your mom is 15, and your dad is absent and you grow up in a slum on welfare what are the odds your unemployment rate is going to be higher and your income lower than average? When all your friends disdain education and worship fighting prowess and gangsters, and all the 'tough guys' join gangs what are the odds you're going to be introduced to the criminal justice system? I doubt the situation is any better for Hispanics.

Now you can trace this back to racism, surely, such as all the Negros being freed, and flooding into cities, into those parts of the cities where they were allowed to live, and even to the sixties when school desegregation helped introduce the concept of white flight, where whites abandoned the urban areas for suburbs away from the perceived threat of black gangs harming their kids, or abandoned public education for private schools (and thus eroded support for public schools). And you can discuss economic policies which might do something to help this situation.

But demanding a cop be hung for shooting a criminal who happened to be Black really isn't the way to go.

[Michael Hardner]

Not everyone is colour blind. From experience some older people still are and most minority people are because of past experiences and stories of past experiences. It helps to perpetuate an already difficult cycle. I didn't say racism doesn't exist anymore. Societal systems though are very colour blind.

That's an acknowledgement that I agree with. The question to my mind is to what degree people, such as older people, effect the system. It's an ongoing conversation...

[TimG]

I suspect most people who deny the racism also deny that there's a problem with excessive police force unless it's to say we need more of it.

Not true. There are many examples of police using excessive force and the officers that use it need to be held accountable. The only caveat is that each incident has to be judged on its own and what appears to be excessive force in one incident could be acceptable in another. For example, the white guy killed by cops at YVR with tasers was an excessive force incident because they never attempted to de-escalate the situation even though tasers are normally a good way to limit the need for excessive force.

[Argus]

Not everyone is colour blind. From experience some older people still are and most minority people are because of past experiences and stories of past experiences.

In my experience the most racist people are minorities in their views and behaviour towards other minorities.