Thought this deserved it's own thread. What if we TRY to talk about issues in 2001 rather than pre-1965 or so? Let by gones be by gones as much as possible and look to the future rather than the past?
Questions up for discussion:
1. Should intergration of cultures/races be forced or should choice always prevail?
2. Is black/Asian segregation by choice the same as white segregation by choice?
3. Is the desire to preserve one's own culture or heritage always racism? or is that contingent on your race?
5. Can races/cultures equally respect one another while chosing segregation due to preference of their own culture (note-culture, not race)?
6. Is segregation (of race/lifestyle/moral ideals/religion/etc.) always a negative thing? or is it merely "freedom"?
I am sincerely interested and open minded in reading the ideas of others on this "current events" topic. I hope you will be the same.
posted on August 15, 2001 07:30:30 PM new
I'll start with #1
First, there must be integration to incorporate as equals into the society all different groups and races. Only then can choice be a fair consideration.
For example, you cannot have an oppressed and impoverished group and call it their choice to live on the south side of Jackson when in fact they are living there because they have no money.
posted on August 15, 2001 07:51:39 PM new
The seperation you make is not reality.
Show me a black skin person of European culture who is desiring to keep seperate from a white skin person of African culture.
We don't really care what culture our work mates and friends are from as much as we do how much money they make and what they look like and sound like.
If they have some quaint dietary difference it may irk us that they are hard to find a restaurant to go to for Islamic or Jewish approval or if they smell like garlic a lot.
Where it starts to matter is if they are from a culture that treats women badly or if they
have different views of what is honest such as coming from a culture that expects bribes as normal business practice.
Still those things can be minimized by avoiding bringing them into the family in marraige or into accounting at the firm.
If they speak different and are poor and look different than most of the people around us
very few people will treat them well SOCIALLY. You can regulate some behavior but you can't make people like someone and become their friend.
posted on August 15, 2001 07:56:37 PM new
I will start with #2.
There is a neighborhood (probably in everyones city) where a white person dares not enter without getting their butt kicked. So I guess it depends on what color of the fence you are sitting on if its by choice.
posted on August 15, 2001 07:59:18 PM new
Choice, choice, choice. It's all well and good to extoll "choice," but only if, as Helen points out, we all have the same choices. If we don't, where we end up might not be our choice at all.
I have a friend who isn't black. He says his family has some Indian blood, and maybe that's right. He and his brother have curly black hair. Their sister has very thick, very straight, black hair.
In the summer, my friend tans pretty darkly and, when it's humid, his hair gets even curlier.
About 10 or 15 summers ago, my friend was wearing his hair in a kind of bushy 'fro type thing. He and his wife saw an ad in the paper for a house for rent, they called the lady on the phone, and made an appt. to go see it.
They showed up on her doorway, she took one look at them and said - "Oh, I'm sorry, it was a mistake, the house has been rented." They thanked her and left. They didn't think much about it then.
Through the day, the man's wife started thinking more about it and, on a hunch, called the woman again, and, without identifying herself as the person who had been out earlier, asked again if the house was available. The woman told her - "Yes, it's available, would you like to see it?"
My friend's wife was sure then that she knew what had happened. The woman with the house for rent had assumed that my friend was black when they came to see the house and had lied to them about it already being rented.
So this was the white landlord's choice, to live segregated, apparently, and she excercised her choice by refusing housing to my friend and his wife, on the (as it turned out, mistaken) basis of my friend's race.
But you couldn't say that my friend chose not to rent that house.
Multiply that one incident, that happened to a white guy, by many many thousands of times it's happened, and, I'm sure, is still happening, to black people, and those assumed to be black people. And then think again about "choice," and what it means, not in the abstract, but in reality.
posted on August 15, 2001 08:13:40 PM new
Donny, your friend should set that landlord up for a very big fall. She could, you know. Might teach the landlord to not discriminate. Then again, it might not. Nobody can cure ignorance and bigotry.
posted on August 15, 2001 08:40:11 PM new1. Should intergration of cultures/races be forced or should choice always prevail?
I'm assuming that you mean integration of schools/neighborhoods and not integration by marriage It's sad that there is a need for integration to be forced, but as long as so many people refuse to look further than skin color, it will need to be so. Without it, there is a tendency for the best schools, the best neighborhoods, etc. to be reserved for whites and for others to get second (or third or fourth) best.
2. Is black/Asian segregation by choice the same as white segregation by choice?
Sometimes it is--those groups have their share of snobs & racists. But often, I think, such "segregation by choice" stems from a desire to have a place where they are not discriminated against, where they are free to "be themselves" as it were.
3. Is the desire to preserve one's own culture or heritage always racism? or is that contingent on your race?
It's not "racist" as we know the word at all to want to preserve the culture or heritage you come to the U.S. from. But those same people should also embrace the culture of the U.S.--and that includes the English language, abiding by *our* laws & customs when outside the home, and embracing citizenship in *this* country.
5. Can races/cultures equally respect one another while chosing segregation due to preference of their own culture (note-culture, not race)?
Not if the segregation is total as i home, school, work, public meeting places, etc.
6. Is segregation (of race/lifestyle/moral ideals/religion/etc.) always a negative thing? or is it merely "freedom"?
See my answer to #2...it is not *always* a negative thing. But when people are told "you CAN'T" live here, go to that school, work at that job, etc. because you are black, yellow, red, brown and--yes--even white then it is perforce a negative thing.
posted on August 15, 2001 08:50:59 PM new
Maybe they could have set them up for a big fall, Hepburn, but all they really wanted was to find a nice house to rent. They weren't social crusaders. They weren't even black. For them, this was an isolated incident. They just shook their heads, as much for the misidentification of my friend's race as for the discrimination, and went back to the classifieds.
And you're right, no one can cure ignorance and bigotry. If my friends had pressed it, what would they have gotten? At best, an angry landlord.
Segregation, as freedom of choice! And then, just to make it clear that we're not being racist, we can also say that those "other people," are segrating themselves by choice too! Like... maybe black people wanted to be segregated by the Jim Crow laws that required them to drink from "colored only" fountains, which Terri said just a thread ago, when she put the same link in that thread that she used in this thread.
Re-label racist segregation as "choice," and then declare that it's a current event topic. Okay!
posted on August 15, 2001 09:05:42 PM new
Im sure Terri did not mean it in that way. I didnt take it that way.
Donny, I feel bad for your friends. Me, I would have fought it just to be ornery, but thats me. I hope they found a nice house and a good landlord that see PEOPLE, not color.
posted on August 15, 2001 09:40:02 PM new
Those things seem to be "deliberate racism" or "poverty oriented". I don't mean those.
What about these?
The example in the story of professional black familes asking to live in an all black neighborhood in Atlanta. I watched the video clip and I saw the neighborhood. Poverty was not an issue there. Would it be ok to ask to live in an all white neighborhood? An all Jewish neighborhood? etc.
On the Gulf Coast each year, Mississippi has "Black Spring Break". Would it be unethical to designate Destin as "White Spring Break"?
What about BET? Would WET be ok? How about AET? How about JET? BET isn't about racism (I don't think), it's about promoting a particular form of entertainment. Is that correct? (I don't watch tv much.)
What about black colleges and schools that advertise they are black colleges and schools and do not at all encourage white attendance? Is that non-offensive?
I am trying to look at this in instances fairly where neither oppression, nor racism, nor poverty is an issue. When is segregation OK? Is it EVER?
***********
Second topic.
When do we reverse "minority status" and "affirmative action" in these cities?
Ever? Or should whites be forced to move in order to find employment? Do you think a white person or a Spanish person has the same advantage in Gary Ind. to be hired or elected as a black person does? (I don't know. Tell me, Gary Ind.)
60% of African Americans live in the South.
96 counties in America reported that they were majority African American. Of those 95 were in the South. Black population is growing at the rate of 16-22% where as white population is growing at a rate of 5.9-8.6% in America.
Black population in the South is growing FAR beyond the birth rate because black who moved north in the 1940 and 50's are returning "home".
At what point do we end up with the some states being majority black in EVERY county and others being majority white in EVERY county and blacks still being protected by "affirmative action" and "minority status" (which results in business loan advantages and many other things).
The reason I wonder this is because I AM THE MINORITY and rapidly growing more so every day. I don't want racism, or poverty, or oppression for ANYONE. I only want EQUALITY for ALL. I do sometimes feel as though I am unfairly treated because of my race ESPECIALLY and OFTEN when dealing with government offices that "tradionally" work with the black population and where the staff is generally entirely black. (Had an incident TO-DAY.)
What if, when an entire state becomes majority black (or any other race) we reverse affirmative action and minority status only in that state?
What about Georgia where the majority black legislature voted not too long ago to deny "minority status" to the growing Spanish population there? Was that fair since blacks are the majority in Atlanta and Spanish are CLEARLY a minority?
Now in this article I observe black on white racism. (Do you?)
http://cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,306249-412,00.shtml
Acknowledging that black on white racism DOES exist (questioning whether a white man should be allowed to be mayor? Encouraging voting along racial lines?), do you think whites in majority black cities have true equality?
I hope at least some of you in majority white states will begin to see the problem the majority African American states face and try to be more understanding of something that is unfamiliar to your area. I am willing to throw warped "political correctness" out the window to make others aware of the growing problem in the South and in a few states in the North.
posted on August 15, 2001 10:30:45 PM new"I hope at least some of you in majority white states will begin to see the problem the majority African American states face and try to be more understanding of something that is unfamiliar to your area. I am willing to throw warped "political correctness" out the window to make others aware of the growing problem in the South and in a few states in the North".
What is this Growing Problem", what is "warped political correctness", and who are you asking?
posted on August 15, 2001 11:23:33 PM new
Good questions, Krs.
"Donny, I feel bad for your friends. Me, I would have fought it just to be ornery, but thats me. I hope they found a nice house and a good landlord that see PEOPLE, not color."
You shouldn't feel too bad for my friends, Hepburn. I think that they, especially the man, felt more insult at being assumed to be a mixed couple than they felt insult at being discriminated against on the basis of race. So, it was easy for them to shrug it off as a "just a mistake of misidentification."
This was back when we were young marrieds, our children were small, we were all just getting started, and finding a decent place we could afford wasn't easy. After being turned away from that place, and looking at a few other places, my friends ended up renting in a predominately black neighborhood. The houses were nice, their neighbors were nice, they could afford the rent, and they stayed there for about 5 years or so;
And that little anecdote is about "choice." As white people, they had the choice to rent in the predominately black neighborhood. As (misperceived) black people, they didn't have the choice to rent in the white neighborhood.
Happily, they got over their 5 minute blackness without any evident ill effects. Last time I saw them, they were doing a rent-to-own, very inexpensively, on a rambling old house in the country, with a great, huge, old stone fireplace in the kitchen, private entrance to the bedroom (also with old fireplace), huge yard with pecan trees, and their own catfish pond.
posted on August 15, 2001 11:31:54 PM new
The more I read here, the more I realize that soo many people are sooo out of touch.
If the shoe fits, and all that.
*edited for this*
On the Gulf Coast each year, Mississippi has "Black Spring Break". Would it be unethical to designate Destin as "White Spring Break"?
What about BET? Would WET be ok? How about AET? How about JET? BET isn't about racism (I don't think), it's about promoting a particular form of entertainment. Is that correct? (I don't watch tv much.)
What about black colleges and schools that advertise they are black colleges and schools and do not at all encourage white attendance? Is that non-offensive?
The reason there are historical black colleges is because white (mostly southern) universities refused admission to black students. Are people so dense that they can't remember history? No state or federally supported institution of higher education "advertises" admission for a specific race. That would be against the law. Sheesh.
As far as BET, versus, WET: WET exists daily, yanno, Friends, Seinfield, et al, hence the creation of BET. Seems it only becomes an issue when some white people are forced to look outside of their world.
Why am I even responding to this crap?
[ edited by Baduizm on Aug 15, 2001 11:38 PM ]
[ edited by Baduizm on Aug 15, 2001 11:41 PM ]
posted on August 15, 2001 11:39:08 PM new
Hello KRS. How are you this lovely evening?
The problem is that the minority is no longer the minority but the majority and racism in reverse is also alive and well.
However, "warped political correctness" deems that you can not speak of it. As far as many go, whites in the South are doing he same evil deeds that they did in the past when the truth is that the opposite is too often happening but to mention it is deemed "racism". It's a trap. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Let me give you a real example of an incident recently.
The state received some hugh chunk of money for "energy assistance" and it was daily announced with the qualifications on tv. Everyone was ENCORAGED to take advantage of it to offset the high utility increase. The qualifications were NOT that hard and according to the news I met them. So I called to the number to find out how to apply.
I was told, based in my voice alone that "Only CERTIAN people were allowed to apply at this time. Call back later." So I did...every week. "NO, we are only accepting CERTIAN applications at this time." Until..."We are sorry but the funds have been all used up."
I was not even allowed to fill out the blasted application and yet blacks that I know with equal or higher incomes got $300 checks to offset the high gas bills. Who are those "CERTIAN people" based on voice alone?
Now if I was black, I could call Jessie Jackson, or the NAACP, or the ACLU but what are my choices?
The general "theme" seems to be that any "agency" is FOR the blacks, only employs blacks top to bottom and if you are white and TRY to use that agency then you are "trying to get something that isn't "for you"".
Stuff like this is NOT any MORE uncommon that the white toward black racism that has been pointed often.
At the same time, here at AW, I am alleged as being a "racist" based soley on geography and skin color when I am NOT.
I think that I (we-whites in these cities/states) are geting a double whammy.
I am NOT a racist, KRS, despite what anyone alledges. I believe that ALL people are created EQUAL as children of God and deserve EQUALITY (black, white, rich, poor)...but of course we live in a highly imperfect world.
I think that the tables are turning and those in areas that are still predominately white have no idea of the present and can only see the past.
Remember not too long ago when I mentioned the black fireman who burned a black church and it was deemed "not a hate crime" but a job related arson case? He will NOT get 30 years in prison as a result...which I think is FAIR because I don't think it was a hate crime. BUT, what if that fireman had been white and acted for JUST EXACTLY the same reason? Would he have been treated fairly? NOoooooo. Jessie and the NAACP, and the ACLU and CNN would have been here in FIVE MINUTES to nail him with a 30 year sentence on national TV. Does that make sense to you at all?
T
posted on August 15, 2001 11:47:37 PM newthe problem the majority African American states face
Dead giveaway there, Terri.
Out of curiousity, and really without implication, may I ask: off the boards, do you use the "n-word" in casual conversation?
-gaffan- [email protected]
posted on August 15, 2001 11:49:21 PM new
You are not, by your statements a racist, yet you make racially inflammable/questionable comments that belie otherwise.
You home school your children also? You call yourself enlightened, yet stand by your posts in this thread?
You remind me of my childhood tormentor: the one who used racist language anonymously. However, you are not anonymous, you speak your feelings plainly under an ID.
I'm so glad I don't live in a community that you call home.
posted on August 15, 2001 11:53:12 PM new
Terri, when Borillar makes a comment on a thread about the "Colored-Only" drinking fountains of the past, and you answer that "They (the blacks) may not want to share the water fountain," you can keep on posting over and over that you're NOT racist, and capitalize the whole thing if you like, and it's still gonna come out like garbage.
You can try to dress it up with as much "preserving culture" and protecting "Southern heritage," as you want, which you've done in the past and you're still edging around with in this thread, and it's still the same old thing.
posted on August 16, 2001 12:03:55 AM new
I am so angry, I think my head is going to explode. I must, I believe, go to bed.
But before I do, I have to say this:
Who the hell do you think you are, in speaking for oppressed people of color?
You talk about becoming "a minority." What minority?? Listen, if you really would like to experience being a minority, lemme know. I can hook up a flight for you out of rural Mississippi to an urban school here in Indy, where the kids, black and white are impoverished. That's the norm.
Then, I will take you to a white magical palace in the suburbs, K?
If this trip fails to show a point, I promise to immerse myself in your make-believe reality.
posted on August 16, 2001 12:09:54 AM new
Race is such an explosive issue that it is hard to talk about objectively.
To be fair to jt, she *did* state in the thread opener that rather than talk about the *past* she desired to talk about today & the future. It seems that some don't wish to do this.
If we were all to be honest, "reverse racism" not only does exist, it is flourishing. But it is not PC to notice or mention this fact. Yes, we should remember the past for fear of repeating it. But IMO we must also try to leave the past behind in changing and improving the present & future. And certainly not use it as a crutch & excuse.
How about the ONLY public University within 150-200 miles of Jackson? It's in one of those neighborhoods previously mentioned that I could not go in after dark without being stopped by the police or worse. (I HAVE ACTUALLY been stopped by the police in that area and they told me to leave because I had "no business there." )
Fall 2000 Enrollment from their web site:
Black: 6,467
White: 189
Hispanic: 8
Asian: 20
American Indian: 5
T
Fix url. and I did not intend to wink by any means.
[ edited by jt on Aug 16, 2001 12:29 AM ]
posted on August 16, 2001 12:23:40 AM new
Bunnicula:
"To be fair to jt, she *did* state in the thread opener that rather than talk about the *past* she desired to talk about today & the future. It seems that some don't wish to do this."
It's not that I don't wish to, it's that I recognize the masquerade JT is playing, even if she doesn't. I can believe that she sincerely does not understand what all the fuss is about. I can't help that. She trots out this same stuff, over and over. She dresses it up in the new terminology, but it's the same old thing. Just because she says it isn't what is it, doesn't mean her characterization of it is going to go unchallenged.
Baduizm, if this is for me:
"Who the hell do you think you are, in speaking for oppressed people of color?"
posted on August 16, 2001 12:27:13 AM newjt: Let's be realistic about your example of black universities. Most whites simply would not apply. Period. So it's not a matter of a black university not accepting whites.
On the other hand, I did see a program in the last year or so (on 60 Minutes, I think) about white students going to black universities on *scholarships* who did face anger & discrimination by black fellow students based on the scholarship angle. The white students (most anyway) did admnit that the only reason they were at that particular college was because of the scholarship, true. But the black students were upset that the whites had gotten the scholarships in the first place--"they were taking scholarships away from black students."
edited cuz I can't spell.
[ edited by bunnicula on Aug 16, 2001 12:29 AM ]
posted on August 16, 2001 12:29:49 AM new I did see a program in the last year or so (on 60 Minutes, I think) about white students going to black universities on *scholarships*
posted on August 16, 2001 12:31:31 AM new
Or maybe the guy in the movie just applied for a black scholarship at a white school ... I know it was something about a white guy getting a black scholarship.
posted on August 16, 2001 12:35:02 AM newspazmodeus: No, Soul Man is about a white guy who disguises himself as a negro in order to get into Harvard, bypassing black quotas. No scholarhip involved, just entrance quotas.
[ edited by bunnicula on Aug 16, 2001 12:35 AM ]
It's sad that there is a need for integration to be forced, but as long as so many people refuse to look further than skin color, it will need to be so. Without it, there is a tendency for the best schools, the best neighborhoods, etc. to be reserved for whites and for others to get second (or third or fourth) best.