Saturday, April 21, 2012
In the Interesting/Did You Know? Category
That, during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, the Barbary Pirates of Northern Africa enslaved in excess of one million White-Europeans and that, even after the release of Africans from enslavement in North and South America, the slave-trading of these White-Europeans continued for several decades longer? Youza, huh?......Robert C. Davis "Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters" 2003
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43 comments:
Holy mackerel! I could be the child of a slave! My people have been oppressed for long enough! The trials of we white American males often go all too unnoticed.
Caught dmarks complaining about Whites being subjected to the racism of Blacks... AGAIN. He continually denies it, but here is yet another example for all to see.
The point that I was trying to make, John, is that the academics and others who've created and propelled the current narrative always seem to be able to leave minor incidents (I mean, we're talking, what here, a paltry 300 years or so?) like this one out.
Damn Will, better be careful lest you be accused of being racist.
It's not a question of if but when, I'm sure.
Will: It's not a question of if but when, I'm sure.
Sounds like a book a racist Right-winger would write to bash Muslims.
Certainly it could be used for that purpose.
You've got to wonder why Will is bringing this up, especially after his last post... in which he mentions Bill Cosby's criticisms of the black community.
Reminds me of dmarks' constant whining about Whites being discriminated against by Blacks.
Yeah, wd, we shouldn't write historically accurate books about the atrocities of the Barbary Pirates. That would be very imprudent, huh?............And aren't you the least bit curious as to why African immigrants and West-Indian blacks (who were also brutally enslaved, btw) do so much better than African-Americans?
Not wd.
To be fair here, both sides have tried at times to sanitize history and utilize it to bolster their narrative. Me, I'm for looking at everything and letting the chips fall where they may.
Davis' estimate is much higher than others and scholars have questioned his methods of arriving at it given the lack of hard numbers from that period. Even so, it does not come close to the millions of Africans sold into slavery.
Some scholars, Jerry.
WD: It is like you are commenting on something I said in response to another post. Or never said at all.
Your racist rants here make you look like a fool without a clue.
Just for the record, I don't think that any of us here are actual racists. We just disagree on political crap, that's all (though, yes, I half expect to be called a racist by wd for my praising of Mayor Daley).
Will said: "Just for the record, I don't think that any of us here are actual racists"
Actually, in discussion of specific policies, WD has come out as a racist. For example, the University of Michigan law school admissions policies which rewards varying points based on people's skin color. It clearly meets the "racial discrimination" part of the definition of racism. Guess who opposes this policy. Guess who favored it.
dmarks: WD has come out as a racist. For example, the University of Michigan law school admissions policies which rewards varying points based on people's skin color.... Guess who opposes this policy. Guess who favored it.
Yes, I agree that Will is wrong about none of us being racist, since I "came out" as strongly opposed to racism and thought this was a good program to do something about one of the problems caused by it.
You, on the other hand, said nothing should be done to alleviate the problems caused by racism, which is why you opposed the program, and, in doing so, came out as pro-racist. dmarks wears his metaphorical white sheet proudly.
"since I "came out" as strongly opposed to racism and thought this was a good program to do something about one of the problems caused by it."
How does it do anything about any problems?
It only causes problems by punishing and rewarding people based on their skin color, and denying equal opportunity.
"You, on the other hand, said nothing should be done to alleviate the problems caused by racism, which is why you opposed the program, and, in doing so, came out as pro-racist. dmarks wears his metaphorical white sheet proudly."
Bullsh*t
1) I strongly support fines/penalties/criminal action against racists, including them paying restitution or damages to victims. I always have.
2) The U of M program does nothing to alleviate "the problems of racism". Absolutely nothing. Because it does not even bother to to check if those it rewards and punishes have been involved in racist-related activity.
3) I oppose the program because it is racist. Check the definition. My opposition to it makes me anti-racist.
4) I oppose all racism, so your "white sheet" thing is an unintelligent insult. A person with a white sheet (KKK) would favor the same sort of policy you defend: denying admissions opportunity based on skin color.
5) You really are some kind of bonehead if you think I am racist because I want university admissions to be done entirely without regard to anyone's skin color. God man, think for once!
dmarks: You really are some kind of bonehead if you think I am racist because I want university admissions to be done entirely without regard to anyone's skin color.
Well, you really are some kind of bonehead if you think I am racist because I agree with Martin Luther King who voiced support for what Affirmative Action attempts to accomplish.
I recommend you take your own advice and "think for once".
dmarks: I oppose the program because it is racist. Check the definition. My opposition to it makes me anti-racist.
I have checked the definition. It says racism is, "a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others".
The history of the United States is that the Whites believed themselves to be superior (slave owners) and had the right to rule blacks (slaves). Our history is Whites being racist against blacks.
dmarks' definition ignores our history. My definition acknowledges our history, and says that, because of our history of racism (Whites discriminating against blacks) we need to do something that "helps to compensate for past discrimination, persecution or exploitation by the ruling class of a culture, and to address existing discrimination".
Ignoring our history is, IMO, racist, or at the very least quite ignorant.
When I think of racists, I think of guys like David Duke and the rabidly anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan. I don't think of guys like wd and dmarks.
WD, you are like a true "opinion journalist" cough "propagandist". You left out the second definition of racism:
"racial prejudice or discrimination "
The U of Mich admissions policy, designed specifically to punish and reward people based on their skin color, does discriminate and thus fully embraces this second definition.
"Our history is Whites being racist against blacks."
That is simpleminded and simplistic. While it is true that most and the worst racism has been white on black, such a simpleminded unintelligent summary as yours overlooks major and glaring examples of racism that don't fit into the generalization: whites against Native Americans, Native Americans against Blacks (Cherokee slaveowners), blacks against Jews (Farrakhan) and a lot of other examples.
The real history of the US is a lot more complicated than your statement.
"Ignoring our history is, IMO, racist, or at the very least quite ignorant."
I agree, which is why I have pointed out the rest of the history here.
"we need to do something that "helps to compensate for past discrimination, persecution or exploitation by the ruling class of a culture, and to address existing discrimination"."
I actually agree with this. Quite strongly. Yet, the policies you favor, such as the U of Mich policy, don't do this at all. They punish people whether or not they committed acts of racism. They reward people whether or not they have been victimized. The Constitutional concept of due process is, in fact, entirely left out.
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Will: That's a pretty good point. However, can you deny that a person who is denied admission to a university because of an explicit policy to shut persons out based on skin color is also a victim of a form of racism, even if it is a lot milder than that of Farrakhan and Duke?
I didn't leave out the "second definition" of racism. It isn't pertinent to a discussion on Affirmative Action because we're talking about minorities being discriminated against. Whites aren't in the minority.
Affirmative Action is a sane compromise view on how to deal with racism (I do not think there is a perfect solution). It is agreed to by me and many others. Affirmative action is eschewed by the extremists because they do not actually care about doing anything to solve the problem. You said you do, so why not step in from the cold fringes, embrace some sense, and sign on too?
This is a complicated issue and I intend to do an entire post on it in the future. For now, I'll just say that, while I don't necessarily oppose some methods of affirmative action, it is rather curious that the Armenians didn't need affirmative action in Turkey and the Chinese didn't need affirmative action in Malaysia (both groups having been repressed significantly at times), and that maybe we are in fact stigmatizing blacks by burdening them with this. I'm just saying.
Will,
I agree that Affirmative Action is complex, and I think most people don't understand the basic SCOTUS arguments for and against. I also have a partial post that I never had time to finish.
I find the question of whether others needed it to be utterly irrelevant. We can see why it was or was not needed here and the justice or injustice of it. Drawing foreign corollaries will take us off a rational path, in my opinion.
The American situation is unique.
John, I would just add that the Turks did more than try to enslave the Armenians. They tried to exterminate them......Here's what I think. Strive for diversity, initiate outreach, give people a chance. But do it in a way that doesn't include a rigid quota system that will more than likely tarnish a lot of the gains that it may or may not accomplish.
Also, West Indian blacks (who were also enslaved HERE IN AMERICA) - they tend to NOT need affirmative action. Hm. I guess what I'm saying here is that there seems to be something more than simple discrimination at work
Will, I don't want to have this debate, simply because I do not have the time, but the simple and obvious fact is that blacks were uneducated, poor, and partially socialized not to care, as a result of slavery. From this place, it is hard to reach equality, even if each individual int he group is offered the chance. You have to have a group that can compete before you open the floor to all competitors. Without Affirmative Action policies of the past, most black people would find competing to be a very difficult thing.
If you oppress a people and then offer them equality without any effort to make grasping equality as easy as it is for others, then this is not real equality. They have the same opportunities without the same tools.
You cannot maim a people and then offer them the same chance to run everyone else has. First you must restore their legs, then offer them equality.
If you oppress a group, you do not undo it by stopping oppressing them. You undo it by undoing the damage caused by oppression, and then stopping oppressing them.
I have no interest in trying to understand your exceptions to the rule or trying to form correlations to corroborate another notion. I have the actual exact scenario to work with, and that is most accurate correlation to the concept you will find, the exact scenario, not another different one that I can say is the "same thing" as this one.
To reiterate, if you oppress the group, you must raise the group up to undo it. Then stop oppressing them. That is the undoing of oppression. Stopping oppressing in all future actions does not undo the oppression that causes the oppressed group not to be able to compete. In the case of American blacks, education was denied to the group. Slaves were not offered college. Suddenly allowing them to compete for that job as an executive or compete for admission to the best schools is not equality, because they want get them. To call this equality is nothing short of hypocrisy.
Oh, and by the way, I support historical AF policies, not most current ones. Most current ones are divisive and have an effect counter to their intended goals.
WD said: "Affirmative action is eschewed by the extremists"
It is also eschewed by large numbers of people who reject racism and embrace equal opportunity. Thus the civil rights initiatives (which wipe out affirmative action quotes) in several states get approved by voters, in order to ensure equal opportunity in college admissions.
John said: "
If you oppress a people and then offer them equality without any effort to make grasping equality as easy as it is for others, then this is not real equality. They have the same opportunities without the same tools. "
This can be accomplished without any of the ham-handed quotas. For example. fix the atrocious situation of the inner-city schools that a large proportion of black families are stuck with. This will give them the tools.
"Suddenly allowing them to compete for that job as an executive or compete for admission to the best schools is not equality, because they want get them. To call this equality is nothing short of hypocrisy."
However, making special allowances to include the flat-out unqualified does not solve the problem wither. It ends up placing unqualified tokens into those executive positions; people there for skin color and not ability.
dmarks: It is also eschewed by large numbers of people who reject racism and embrace equal opportunity.
Unfortunately these people have been duped into believing getting rid of Affirmative Action will do this. It will actually expand opportunity for some at the expense of others. I think that's probably why some support doing away with it (but these people aren't duped, they're just racists covering up their racism by saying they support "equal opportunity").
dmarks: making special allowances to include the flat-out unqualified does not solve the problem either. It ends up placing unqualified tokens into those executive positions; people there for skin color and not ability.
So you're saying you think, that as a general rule of thumb, Whites are usually smarter?
Of course not. I said nothing even remotely like this, nor do I think this.
People who know that getting rid of racist quotas will improve equal opportunity are informed, not duped. At the 'expense' of whom? The unqualified only.
There is nothing racist about equal opportunity. Your last sentence was proposterous.
What is so wrong about admitting and hiring in a way where everyone is treated fairly regardless of race?
dmarks: What is so wrong about admitting and hiring in a way where everyone is treated fairly regardless of race?
There would be nothing wrong with it if racism didn't exist. Unfortunately it does exist. dmarks pretending it does not won't make it go away.
"Unfortunately it does exist. dmarks pretending it does not won't make it go away."
You are being intentionally deceptive. Of course I know racism exists. That is why I oppose racial discrimination in all its forms.
And the answer to my question? Nothing is wrong with treating everyone fairly regardless of race.
In any situation. All the time, always. Anything else is nothing more than racism in action.
racial discrimination in all its forms = "discrimination" against White people.
To you, perhaps. But to me it means any racism against anyone, regardless of color, and regardless of the color or the perpetrator. That much is overwhelmingly clear from my comments.
No, not to me. I was referring to how you view the issue. I believe you've made it overwhelmingly clear your main concern is Whites being "discriminated" against.
John, like I said, I'm not totally opposed to affirmative action (I personally prefer the terms, diversity and outreach). But to say that African-Americans in the United States are a "special case" is ludicrous. The Armenian minority in Turkey was just as subjugated as the African-American population in America was and they ultimately achieved at a level higher than even the Turks, and they did so without ANY remuneration.............And what about the West-Indian blacks? They were a part of the slave trade, too, and they're frigging kicking butts - caucasian butts!............Another problem with affirmative action is that it all too often tends to help blacks who don't always need the help; middle-class African-Americans who would probably do just fine without it.............And it also assumes that discrimination is the #1 problem that African-Americans face. One could clearly argue that illegitimacy and a skills/education-deficit are far more stultifying.............Like I said and you agreed, it's a pretty heady subject matter.
Will,
The Armenian minority in Turkey was just as subjugated as the African-American population in America was and they ultimately achieved at a level higher than even the Turks, and they did so without ANY remuneration.............And what about the West-Indian blacks?
It is fallacious to assume that if person A succeeded, person B can also succeed. Different people have different circumstances / skill sets / oppressive factors. I am not as familiar with other oppressed peoples. I am familiar with the situation in America, and I see why Affirmative Action was needed. People who have been taught that they are inferior, stupid and worthless, and who cannot even read because they were taught nothing else, require extraordinary measures to overcome this.
During the days of Mark Twain, you would not have hired a black man to be your accountant. Don't pretend you would have. He would not be qualified. Blacks were not educated. This changed slowly and at some point, AF has run its just course. Prior to that, blacks could not possibly compete to get into the good schools or to get the good jobs. To rise above this, some blacks already had to be in the good schools and already had to have the good jobs. Only then would a black man A. Become qualified and B. Be perceived as qualified in America. To use the Armenians as a rebuttal this is to commit a fallacy of complex question, actually multiple ones, as there were probably thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of differences, too numerous to compare with in depth research that you don’t claim to have done anyway. If you did the research, you would undoubted answer your own trivial questions.
Successful conservatives use the same fallacious reasoning against the poor (if I succeeded, anybody can), as if the poor simply prefer being poor and don't want to succeed, as if they choose dearth because they prefer it (as a very wise man once noted). In reality we all want to be rich and that fact that a few rich men exist does nothing to prove that we can all be rich, which is patently false.
You can prove that just about anyone can do just about anything if your method is to find someone who has done it and say "see?" Of course, that is not real proof of anything, and is even less with a situation with this great number of variables, such as we find in communities of oppressed people. For one to even claim they understand all the variables well enough to form a correlation to a faraway people strikes me as improbable.
I see why blacks needed AF to undo the inequality whites created and I clearly see how it could not be undone, at least not nearly as soon, without it. I don't find the argument that another people with their own kind of oppression rose above the oppression to be definitive. I find that argument about as persuasive as Mitt Romney's argument that your average illiterate street bum can become wealthy if he chooses to, because after all, his father did.
I am educated and I have thus far failed to become rich, even though the desire burns within me. When I find that his kind of reasoning used to indict those who have not succeeded above their circumstances to meet our expectations is anything other than fallacious, I will let you know. Until then, the more precisely we examine the real thing without trying to correlated into another thing, the more accurate our analysis will be. Additionally, the more variables involved in a thing, the less valid a correlation is. This specific question has many variables and very specific obvious problems. Disregarding the problems because we formed an arbitrary correlation to something else with equally many variables may give us a warm fuzzy feeling, but it will not guide us to rational opinion (in my humble opinion, anyway).
How much longer, John? Until Jackson and Sharpton say so? And affirmative action tells people that they aren't "stupid, worthless, inferior, etc." exactly how?............And, yes, there probably ARE differences between the Armenians and the African-Americans (one of the reasons why I through West-Indian blacks into the mix) - Armenians being the subject of attempted genocide probably being one of the main ones.............Do the poor prefer being poor? Probably not but, as Benjamin Franklin said, when you make poverty easy you also tend to get more it. The rest of it I couldn't quite follow.
How much longer, John? Until Jackson and Sharpton say so? And affirmative action tells people that they aren't "stupid, worthless, inferior, etc." exactly how?
Perhaps if you reread the thread you will find that I am not an advocate of most affirmative action policies today, only historically. I approve of Affirmative Action to undo oppression. I do not approve of most kinds today. I believe I started out with that.
You mentioned genocide being the major factor. Perhaps it was a major one. If the blacks had risen up and oppressed the oppressors, as happened, for example, in Rwanda, that may have accelerated their advancement. They did not do that and they were oppressed longer because of it, and the effects of the oppression had to be handled, and was.
And this:
stupid, worthless, inferior, etc.
That is the biggest reason I think AF has mostly run its course in America.
As for the past, blacks were intellectually inferior, educationally inferior, and capably inferior, through no fault of their own. They were disrespected as the inferior specimens oppression had made them. They were not inherently inferior. Therefore, we needed to undo the oppression. I see this in America. Your rebuttal seems to be that some Armenians survived a genocide. You really should include the Rwanda's in the mix, as their scenario with the Beligians is a much closer correlation, though still a false one, I am sure.
Discrimination is tricky. There were cases in South Africa in which it was against the law to hire black people and a lot of white businesses disregarded that law because a lot of the black people were better workers than the whites. Crazy, huh?
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