Ch. 1: NOTES FROM THE FIRST YEAR - "THIS IS HOW WE LOST TO THE WHITE MAN"
Please use this thread to discuss the above referenced chapter.
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I am sorry if I suggested the "never" in that sentence. I don't think it is intended by Coates, either. The point seems to be (the introduction to his second essay is a little plainer) that people had hoped that Obama's election meant racism as a social force was already a thing of the past. That it could just be politely ignored and the result would be racism withering away on its own. The sad truth is that his election did not mean that, and the events of the last 24 months have made that clear.TEKennelly wrote:Mr. Marks, I do not agree that one election and one unfortunate act of hate motivated by racism somehow mean that racism can never become a thing of the past.
Well, there are many truths at work, and that is just one of them. As a matter of recognizing facts, we should acknowledge that race continues to be a potent social construct, and people's ideas about it continue to matter very much to the people who have been victimized by it all along, as well as to any country which, like ours, has more than 10% of its citizens facing this nasty pattern.TEKennelly wrote:The truth is: race does not form character any more than eye color or preference of ice cream flavor.
And in fifty or a hundred years it may not matter. But that depends partly on our willingness to confront the implicit racism still pervasively facing African-Americans, and the overt racism still hanging on among the fringe.TEKennelly wrote:Race should not matter at all. It should be altogether a matter of indifference in business, politics and life.
From your mouth to God's ears, as they say. I share your evaluation and your optimism. But I also think it's a good idea if white people like myself acknowledge the cost that continued racism still imposes.TEKennelly wrote:Are there still racists? No doubt. There are haters of every stripe and will continue to be, but it is not unreasonable to hope and expect that racism will continue to be marginalized in American culture and society. There are, after all, still Nazis...but they are marginal.
Yes, I think that is a good comparison. I tend to focus on the recent research showing that conservatives, on average, are more wary, more focused on threats, and in Haidt's findings, more sensitive to "disgust" and rejection of things that are "unacceptable" in the typical social mores. But going back a long way, self-reliance was a lot of what conservatism was about, and still is.DWill wrote: For anyone who is also reading the J.D. Vance book, do you think there is a rough similarity between Bill Cosby's conservatism and Vance's conservatism? Both say that their cultures need to stop blaming others for problems and look within for solutions.
And yet Vance was able to rise above the low expectations of his culture due to the Marines, which is government. Lest we forget, the military was racially integrated before Southern and urban Northern schools were. As far as I'm concerned, the government has some responsibility to make opportunities available to common people, even though it can't fix everything.DWill wrote:I'm not sure, though, that that is what qualifies each as conservative. Maybe that has more to do, in Cosby's case, with wanting to return to a previous time when the black family supposedly didn't have the problems it has today. In Vance's case, conservatism probably lies in the folly of relying on the government to solve the dilemmas of his people.
Thomas Edsall, in the NY Times, interviewed a researcher with interesting findings about the effects of immigration on voting patterns:DWill wrote:Someone I read recently brought in Haidt to explain Trump's aversion to immigrants, citing the moral foundation of purity/contamination. I believe that Haidt has found this moral "taste" to be more active in those identifying as conservative.
I do think dependency was sometimes a problem, but that has as much to do with lack of jobs as with government assistance. The same thing is happening in small factory cities of the Midwest - a combination of disability status being available and lack of jobs to move to, or unwillingness to move (people over 40 are not usually willing to move to a different city just for a job, unless they really have to or they are used to being moved by their company).DWill wrote:There is much talk of bootstrapping out there. Ben Carson, Trump's puzzling choice for HUD sec., likes to pound that theme. The belief that government benefit programs create dependency is deep-seated. These days, it would seem that the short-term availability of these programs gives the lie to that belief, whatever the truth of the fear may be.
Your idea might be correct. I've wondered why there can be so much prejudice in areas that are homogeneous.Harry Marks wrote:Thomas Edsall, in the NY Times, interviewed a researcher with interesting findings about the effects of immigration on voting patterns:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/opin ... ation.html
What is odd about them is that counties with very few immigrants to start with were most likely to have their voting pattern changed by an immigrant influx. Now, some of that may be quirks of quantitative measurement - I haven't seen the research, but if the absolute size of the influx is the same, its relative effect (i.e. percent change) is much larger from a small base. But it looks very different from Gladwell's "Tipping Point" observations.
One way to explain it would be as a violation of "purity" perceptions. Tipping point research sees something between 15% and 25% presence by a minority group to change the perception that a place is "ours" (by whites). But if someone is reacting to "impurity" a small presence can have a stronger effect. Given all the Fox News attention to "sharia law coming here" and other such scare-mongering, that is actually possible.
I knew about the sharp increase in disability awards over the past 20 years or so, but had not known about this specific cause. It makes sense. Disability due to mental illness has increased the fastest, which has made critics suspect that real illness is not present in many cases. They might not be wrong about that.I do think dependency was sometimes a problem, but that has as much to do with lack of jobs as with government assistance. The same thing is happening in small factory cities of the Midwest - a combination of disability status being available and lack of jobs to move to, or unwillingness to move (people over 40 are not usually willing to move to a different city just for a job, unless they really have to or they are used to being moved by their company).
It often isn't realized that states deliberately moved many welfare recipients onto SSI disability as a response to Welfare Reform. With time limits pressuring them and quotas for reducing the rolls, case workers looked for possible reasons a person might be classified as disabled. There was a huge shift in the late 90s from state welfare (which was, ironically, usually more temporary) to federal SSI.