Zone1 If Blacks Do What Whites Have Done We Will Be Successful

[Toddsterpatriot]

The same article that said racist whites lie about high black crime.

Don't be scared, post the link to the article.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

And 95 black guys don’t commit crimes.

Not when you look at 95 and 98%.

Someone you really care about gets a serious medical diagnosis.

Treatment comes down to two doctors. One loses 2% of patients, the other loses 5%.

Which one are you much more likely to choose?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Again, do whites really want us to do what they did in order to be "successful."

Yes.
Finish school, don't commit crime, don't have children until you're married.
Just like me.

 

[AZrailwhale]

It’s all in how you frame it….IM2 states it as 95% and 98%, you as 5% and 2%. Same stat, yet very different inferences depending on how you say it.

People who make big point of “black crime” never say 95% of blacks don’t commit crime. I guess that doesn’t sound as good.

In the end, there is very little difference between 5% and 2%.

Criminals of all colors are rare. Most people are honest.

 

[AZrailwhale]

There is no high black crime rate and the Chicago Defender says so.

Which article in the Chicago Defender says so?

You mean the all black on line newspaper?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

You mean the all black on line newspaper?

IM2 is grasping for straws, as usual.

He's really bad at math.

 

[JoeB131]

Of course the "scabs" were willing to take the job because they had no job and they weren't allowed into the whites-only unions. I can't believe how badly you're missing something that should be quite obvious: had whites supported the Black vote, had whites supported Blacks joining their union, they collectively would have had far greater power -- at least until the whites made the catastrophic decision to vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980, who basically helped to crush unions once and for all. Not surprisingly, income and wealth inequality for all people has increased to levels not seen since 1928, and white life expectancy in many parts of the country has declined with it.

I think you misunderstand the nature of factory towns back in those days. Usually, you had a town like Peoria or Joliet or whatever, and the factory was the only employer. So when the workers went on strike against it, the COMMUNITY was going on strike against it. And when someone was brought in from out of town as a strikebreaking scab, they got all the enmity they earned.

Right, and those compromises meant inequality, which is the point. Yes, whites benefited from FDR's reforms, and maybe Blacks did as well, but considerably less so.

Those compromises meant progress.

And union-busting.

Actually, I can say that the problem with Unions is that they contributed to their own demise. The union model made sense when most people walked to their company town job, but when we all got cars, we all got choices. As much as people resent the nepotism hire or the affirmative action hire, they really resent the guy who is only still employed because he has seniority, even though he can't pull his weight now that he is older.

To be candid, I am sometimes skeptical when people say that they lost out on a job due to AA, but at the same time, I'm sure it happens in some cases, and in any case, I wasn't there, so I'll assume you're correct. I'm sorry you lost out on those opportunities.

But you miss the point, of why AA causes so much friction. Because people see these hires, and they know damned well that person can't be fired for incompetence. Now, yes, I've also seen a fair share of nepotism hires, f**k-buddy hires, etc. that are equally bad. You don't cure one inequity with another inequity.

Sequel to Ms. Affirmative Action. After I got my current gig, she called me at the office inquiring about a job at another one of our branches. The company she worked for relocated, and she didn't want to drive that far. I told her how many hours we put in and how hard the work is. Never heard from her again.

I don't have time to commit to this discussion all day - probably spent too much time here as it is. But it seems to me your bottom line is, you're okay with discrimination as long as you to have to pay the price for it.

When you tolerate inequality and accept it as a necessary evil, you're playing their game. Stop playing.

Why should I pay a price for something I didn't do?

I never owned a slave, nor did anyone in my family.
I never made anyone sit at the back of the bus.
Heck, I'll go one further, I've probably HELPED a lot of minorities advance in their careers. One lady I helped at the beginning of her career (an immigrant from a southeast Asian country) is now applying for a vice-president role. I don't resent her because she actually did the hard work.

The problem with the incessant whining about "racism", is that Asians and yes, even Hispanics, are passing blacks up, just like the Germans, Irish, etc. did. It's the difference between overcoming an obstacle or whining about it.


You want to tell me that Jim Crow and Slavery were bad... Totally with you.
You tell me that we should have policies to fairly consider minorities for advancement, totally on board.

You tell me that in the name of "equity", I (a white person and a veteran) should get passed up for a job opportunity so some idiot in HR can fill a quota, I'm probably going to suggest you do something anatomically impossible.

 

[multivita-man]

Joe didn't lose a job due to AA. If anyone told him that he could have sued. Employers are not allowed by law to discuss things like that with employees.

Yeah I'm always skeptical. Most people can speculate why the lost out on a job but will never know the full answer unless they have insider information. It is true that there's AA in government contracting but there are other factors in play as well.

There's AA but whites have their own AA without realizing it.

 

[JoeB131]

Apparently numbers confuse you and Joe.

Context confuses you.

Average Black Single mother - Had her first kid in her teens, has had four babies by three different Baby Daddies.

Average White Single mother- Had her first kid in her late 20's, was married, advanced in her career, got a divorce, ended up with alimony and child support.

That's why she has more wealth. Not because of racism, but because of situations.

 

[JoeB131]

Joe didn't lose a job due to AA. If anyone told him that he could have sued. Employers are not allowed by law to discuss things like that with employees.

Apparently, you live in a world where people have to be TOLD things for them to be true. Nope, nobody said, "yeah, we hired this useless person to fill a quota". Nobody could give me a good reason why they DID hire her. They even threatened to send one of the other contractors to HR for being "mean" to her. (Which means he just didn't want to do her job for her.)

Way too many times, I had to go over to her desk to explain the same Return to Vendor procedure I had explained to her three weeks earlier.

So, yeah, there could be alternative explanations why someone thought she was a good hire. Maybe she had a picture of a senior manager in an embarrassing situation involving a farm animal. But employing Occam's razor here, the simplest explanation is probably the right one.

Now, for why I didn't sue. First, I was a contractor, which put me in a tenuous situation to start with (and which is why the contract ended when Trump Plague happened.)

Second, I really don't solve my problems in a courtroom. In my entire life I've been in a courtroom five times. Three were for moving violations (I'm 2-3 on that one. I probably could have beaten my third if I showed up in my Dress Uniform instead of civilian clothes. Oh, well.) One was an eviction action where I had to get rid of a deadbeat tenant. (The threat of court got him to capitulate). The third was a recent action regarding my former Condo where some nitwits were fighting deconversion. They spent TEN MONTHS in court with utterly frivilous arguments.

Third, I knew I always had other options. I'm a veteran with 30 years experience in my field and am very proficient at writing resumes (which I do as a side business). I gave them the opportunity to do the right thing, they didn't. Now they are floundering as a company, and Ms. Affirmative Action has moved on to a new company.

Yeah I'm always skeptical. Most people can speculate why the lost out on a job but will never know the full answer unless they have insider information. It is true that there's AA in government contracting but there are other factors in play as well.

There's AA but whites have their own AA without realizing it.

You miss the point. Yes, there are no "quotas" officially. Instead we have the stupidity that is "Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity" in the HR departments of the world. Which means if you can't prove you are demonstrating that, you can be sued. The good HR people actually navigate it well, and go that extra mile to find quality candidates.

And then you have the HR department we had. I heard last week they are doing a shitload of layoffs - again- because they are so disorganized. This is when the rest of the country STILL can't find enough warm bodies.

 

[multivita-man]

I think you misunderstand the nature of factory towns back in those days. Usually, you had a town like Peoria or Joliet or whatever, and the factory was the only employer. So when the workers went on strike against it, the COMMUNITY was going on strike against it. And when someone was brought in from out of town as a strikebreaking scab, they got all the enmity they earned.

I get all of that.

My rebuttal is that many Black workers would have joined unions if they hadn't been excluded. So to call them "scabs" is disingenuous in many cases. Black workers in the South themselves tried to organize labor movements, which is actually why many of these so-called "riots" happened and why many of them left in the period from 1890 - 1935 -- see the Thibodaux, Louisiana Massacre of 1887 or the Elaine, Arkansas Massacre of 1919. They weren't "riots", they were examples of political violence organized by elitist economic interests.

When Blacks moved to the North they wanted to join unions, understanding the value of organizing themselves. But they weren't allowed, so they had a choice: work or starve. And the racists within the unions were the ones who forced that choice upon them, and when they decided they'd rather work than starve, they were bloodied and forced to move somewhere else, only to face the same difficult choices again.

Those compromises meant progress.

But unequal progress -- that's really the point of the thread, is it not? Whites want to dismiss Black people's concerns as though it's distant history. As I asked once before, do you think changing the law in and of itself replaces what was taken from Blacks over and over and over again, generation after generation?

When people through their systems have repeatedly inflicted injuries upon an entire group of people, just changing a rule or just saying "Oh, sorry" as though you just bumped into someone at a department store isn't going to do much. I'm not saying we have to commit 40 acres and a mule, but there has to be some recognition that a) an entire class of people were injured deliberately and repeatedly; and b) people have to have the awareness and patience to recognize that healing is going to realistically not going to be achieved within a generation and probably not even two or three. And I realize that probably few whites are going to agree with this, but there has to be an acknowledgement that even though you, I, we didn't actively participate in this institutionalized racism, the system was set up to benefit our demographic and we've benefited from it at the expense of Blacks, indigenous people, and others, including even poor white Catholic immigrants, but to a lesser degree.

Progress is the goal. The absence of absolute relative socioeconomic parity among the various demographics shouldn't be viewed as evidence that we're not making progress.

Actually, I can say that the problem with Unions is that they contributed to their own demise. The union model made sense when most people walked to their company town job, but when we all got cars, we all got choices.

I don't really disagree with this. I'd like to see unionization - or some form of it - written into the law. That probably won't happen until we recognize what a disaster Reaganism has been for our country.

As much as people resent the nepotism hire or the affirmative action hire, they really resent the guy who is only still employed because he has seniority, even though he can't pull his weight now that he is older.

Nothing to disagree with here. I personally agree that unions have done themselves a disservice whenever they've protected people who really have no business working in their firms. Modern unions have also had leadership problems, with executive VPs more concerned with scoring points so they can pad their resumes, as opposed to representing the interests of their members in the longer term. If a contract is making workers prohibitively expensive, they're setting themselves up to have their jobs shipped overseas.

But you miss the point, of why AA causes so much friction. Because people see these hires, and they know damned well that person can't be fired for incompetence. Now, yes, I've also seen a fair share of nepotism hires, f**k-buddy hires, etc. that are equally bad. You don't cure one inequity with another inequity.

I am sympathetic to that argument even if I don't entirely subscribe to it. But when I say I'm skeptical it's because of personal experience. I don't think I've ever had anyone ever tell me why I wasn't hired unless I had a close personal connection to people. And besides, just saying you're an AA employer really doesn't make you one. I once worked at a company that advertised the fact that advertised its AA hiring policy. Ironically, all of its senior leadership was white.

Sequel to Ms. Affirmative Action. After I got my current gig, she called me at the office inquiring about a job at another one of our branches. The company she worked for relocated, and she didn't want to drive that far. I told her how many hours we put in and how hard the work is. Never heard from her again.

Well she's not alone in not wanting to drive far, not wanting to put in excessive hours, and not wanting to work beyond one's capacity. I'm pretty much like her I guess. Most people I know are. That doesn't mean we don't work hard but we establish boundaries. That said, to each his or her own. I'm certainly not knocking those who go above and beyond. We all have to once in a while. And the world depends on people willing to do it. I have no doubt you're a solid, hardworking dude.

Why should I pay a price for something I didn't do?

I never owned a slave, nor did anyone in my family.
I never made anyone sit at the back of the bus.
Heck, I'll go one further, I've probably HELPED a lot of minorities advance in their careers. One lady I helped at the beginning of her career (an immigrant from a southeast Asian country) is now applying for a vice-president role. I don't resent her because she actually did the hard work.

I get all that, and that is probably the strongest argument against programs like AA and others that aim to rebalance things on a macro-scale.

The way I look at it is that there's an individual self and there's the self that's part of a larger community. There's the individual me that, like you, never called a Black guy the n-word or never participated in discrimination. But there's also the me that's part of this larger social system, and there's just no denying that the system itself punished certain classes of people, in particular Blacks and indigenous people. For sure, it's also punished others as well but these two groups especially. I am part of the group that has the power in this society.

Even though I didn't do these awful things, I am part of the group that did, and whether I realize it or not, in some ways small and in other ways not so small, I benefited at their expense. Relative to Native Americans, I live on, own, and enjoy the fruits of land that was taken from them by force and at the expense of their culture's demise. Relative to Black Americans, I can say that I enjoy the fruits of a civilization that was in large part built on the backs of their free (or really cheap) labor. We were able to have jobs, get an education, get property without having to compete with them, because our system made it so. We got the fruits, they paid the price.

The problem with the incessant whining about "racism", is that Asians and yes, even Hispanics, are passing blacks up, just like the Germans, Irish, etc. did.

There are differences between immigrant groups who are forced to adapt to racism and groups that are treated as clear and present dangers.

Throughout human history, one of the most effective forms of conflict resolution was simply to move somewhere else. That probably explains why humans ultimately migrated out of Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. Tribe A threatens tribe B, tribe B moves on down the river. Problem solved. Civilization changed it all because the land suddenly had value and people developed an attachment to specific pieces of land.

Similarly, immigrant groups who were threatened, and in many cases, met with violence due to competition over jobs were forced to move somewhere else. But in many cases they had things going for them that enabled them to survive: In the case of the Europeans, for instance, they could just blend in over time. Much of many own family is German and Irish Catholic. They faced discrimination when they landed but over time adapted a strategy of Anglicization. They learned the King's English (Americanized, of course). They switched Catholicism to Protestantism. By the next generation, they fit in.

Asians and darker-skinned Hispanics and even darker-skinned Italians didn't have it quite so easy in this regard because they were clearly non-White, but even so, they managed to survive and even thrive by working within their communities, accepting that they weren't always welcome outside them. That's in no way to minimize their hardship or that of the Irish and Germans I mentioned.

Blacks were treated differently for two reasons: one because they were the only class of people after the 1680s who were treated as essentially less than human. That stigma and label puts them at the absolute bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. But for another reason, Blacks outnumbered whites in many parts of the South. Letting them vote, giving them agency was perceived as a threat economically and also politically. Unlike immigrants, Blacks couldn't use the conflict avoidance strategy of just moving somewhere else. They had no other skills. They were just as tied to the land as their white masters were. So as far as whites were concerned, they had to make it absolutely clear who owned the land, who owned the power, who was the master and who was the servant - again, this tension lasted well past 1866. That is why there was so much violence during Reconstruction and throughout the Jim Crow era.

Native Americans were in a similar position. White settlers wanted their land. Just moving wasn't really an option until it became clear that they were unable to hold on to the land and violently forced from it. Taking the land meant taking the things that came to define Native American cultures. Stealing land was bad enough, but stealing their cultures and identity was toxic. They've been forced ever since to live in conditions that are imposed on them by White America, just as Black America has, and not so coincidentally, they struggle with crime, with suicide, with alcohol and drug addiction.

It's the difference between overcoming an obstacle or whining about it.

Go back to what I wrote above and think about it.

You want to tell me that Jim Crow and Slavery were bad... Totally with you.
You tell me that we should have policies to fairly consider minorities for advancement, totally on board.

This is reasonable and I appreciate the acknowledgement.

You tell me that in the name of "equity", I (a white person and a veteran) should get passed up for a job opportunity so some idiot in HR can fill a quota, I'm probably going to suggest you do something anatomically impossible.

LOL, I get it. I just respectfully come to a different position for all the reasons I laid out. Now my fingers are tired.

 

[Coyote]

Criminals of all colors are rare. Most people are honest.

Exactly, that is why I question the motivation who try to make it about race.

 

[MizMolly]

So we are told that if blacks do certain things that we will suceed.

1) Waiting until marriage to have children, and then only when at least one of the marriage partners is gainfully employed in a job that allows them to afford them, and

2) A very strong emphasis that education is the key to success - including higher education in a marketable field - that is instilled beginning in elementary school.

Of course, there are other traits that contribute to one’s degree of success - motivation, ability, intelligence, discipline, etc. - but the two above, if followed, practically guarantees that one will become at least lower-middle class, and likely higher.

Are these things relly how whites became sucessful?

HELL NO!

Whether it was colonial government or the current republic we have now, the government has provided whites with more than it has ever given to anyone else. This was not because people of color did not take the opportunity because most of these things EXCLUDED non white participation. The handouts/privilege started with this:

In 1618, the Virginia colony passed "the Great Charter of privileges, orders, and laws." Among these laws was a provision that any person who settled in Virginia or paid for the transportation of another person to settle in Virginia would get fifty acres of land per person. “The right to receive fifty acres per person, or per head, was called a headright.” It got even better for colonists as those who “imported” slaves also got fifty acres per slave. The practice was continued by the government of Virginia, for 161 years, ending in 1779. Headrights were not only limited to Virginia. The headright system was used in all the original thirteen colonies. Headrights were the first of many government handouts of free stuff or guarantees providing whites with economic development assistance.

It continued with this:

The Three-Fifths Compromise is found in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution. It says: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons.”

And with this:

The Naturalization Act of 1790 states: “any alien, being a free white person,” could apply for citizenship, so long as they lived in the United States for at least two years and in the state where the application was filed for at least one year. This law allowed “children of citizens of the United States that may be born … out of the limits of the United States shall be considered as natural-born citizens.” Please notice the first seven words. Only whites were entitled to be citizens of this country.

And with this:

One of the greatest miscarriages of justice in this nation’s history was a direct rebuttal to the claim that all men are created equal called Dred Scott v. Sandford. I am not going into all the particulars of this case. The court’s opinion says all you need to know. “A black man has no rights a white man is bound to respect.” The result of Dred Scott v. Sandford was that whites were given rights and status blacks were denied.Or- Affirmative Action.

And with this:

Anti-literacy Laws in the United States Once Prevented Blacks from Getting an Education

(NO OTHER RACE WAS DENIED THE RIGHT TO READ)

Passed in 1862, the Homestead Acts gave away 246 million acres of land. To qualify for Homestead land, a person had to be a citizen of the United States, and blacks were not given citizenship until 1866.

And this:

"After the Civil War ended in 1865, some states passed black codes that severely limited the rights of Black people, many of whom had been enslaved. These codes limited what jobs African Americans could hold, and their ability to leave a job once hired. Some states also restricted the kind of property Black people could own. The Reconstruction Act of 1867 weakened the effect of the Black codes by requiring all states to uphold equal protection under the 14th Amendment, particularly by enabling Black men to vote. (U.S. law prevented women of any race from voting in federal elections until 1920.)

During Reconstruction, many Black men participated in politics by voting and by holding office. Reconstruction officially ended in 1877, and southern states then enacted more discriminatory laws. Efforts to enforce white supremacy by legislation increased, and African Americans tried to assert their rights through legal challenges. However, this effort led to a disappointing result in 1896, when the Supreme Court ruled, in Plessy v. Ferguson, that so-called “separate but equal” facilities—including public transport and schools—were constitutional. From this time until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, discrimination and segregation were legal and enforceable."

July 9, 2018 was the 150th anniversary of the 14th Amendment, which purported to grant African Americans the rights and responsibilities of full citizenship, among other things. American history shows that people who are equal on paper can be unequal in practice—especially with regards to the right to bear arms.

On April 16, 1895, the United States Supreme Court rendered another one of the sorriest decisions in American history. It is known as Plessy vs. Ferguson. From this decision came the principle of separate but equal.

And this:

The National Housing Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934.29 This law created the Federal Housing Administration or the FHA. The National Housing Act is the policy that may have had the most impact on wealth accumulation in modern America.

Between 1934 and 1968, the FHA implemented and put into practice a policy that still negatively impacts communities today.30 The FHA Underwriting Manual set the guidelines real estate agents used to assess home values in American neighborhoods. This manual promoted racist real estate practices. It was done by defending racially restrictive covenants and segregated communities. Due to this manual, the FHA established a neighborhood grading system based purely on false racist perceptions.

Redlining was the name of that grading system. My point here is the FHA was a government agency whose policies specifically provided whites with opportunities to increase wealth through homeownership. The formation of the FHA and its guaranteed loan program only worked to increase white advantage. “Of the $120 billion worth of new housing subsidized by the government between 1934 and 1962, less than 2 percent went to nonwhite families.”

"The racial-exclusion clauses in deeds were not only recommended by the federal government, but in some cases required as a condition of Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration subsidies for the creation of all-white suburbs, like Levittown in New York state. And federal and state courts, in violation of their constitutional obligations, enforced those deed clauses by ordering the eviction of African Americans who bought homes where the deeds barred them from doing so."

And this:

The Social Security Act of 1935 created the Social Security program, state unemployment insurance, and assistance to single women with children.Today, most Americans love the program. However, when the act was signed, the law excluded occupations mainly done by blacks. When President Roosevelt signed the law, approximately two-thirds of the blacks in America were ineligible. For years, most blacks were excluded from social security savings and could not get unemployment.

And this:

Title 4 or IV of the social security act of 1935 provided grants to states as Aid To Dependent Children. Eventually the name of the program was changed to Aid to Families with Dependent Children. This was welfare, folks. Assistance for single moms with children and no daddy at home. In 1935. Blacks were excluded.

And this:

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 created the minimum wage and time and a half overtime pay for working over forty hours a week. Child labor was eliminated by this act. All these were good things, but… In every law that was passed as part of The New Deal, Roosevelt had to compromise with southern representatives to get the votes he needed. In the case of the FLSA, due to pressure from southern congress members, he decided that industries would be excluded from the regulations where the majority of workers were black. Because of this, blacks were paid less than the minimum wage.

And this:

On June 22, 1944, President Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, better known as the G.I. Bill.38 This law provided benefits for veterans returning from World War Two. This act included funds for college tuition, low-cost home loans, and unemployment insurance. As in every other program during this time, southern members of Congress fought the passage of these laws unless there were provisions that limited access to blacks.

Over one million returning black soldiers were unable to get GI benefits. My father was one of those soldiers.


Headrights, Headrights (VA-NOTES)

What was the Headright System? Headright System History & Significance | What was the Headright System? - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

Williams, T. (2000). The Homestead Act: A major asset-building policy in American history (CSD Working Paper No. 00-9). St. Louis, MO: Washington University, Center for Social Development. Pg.11 The Homestead Act: A Major Asset-Building Policy in American History
Freedmen's Bureau Act, Freedmen's Bureau Act, March 3, 1865 | The Freedmen's Bureau Online

Anti-literacy Laws in the United States Once Prevented Blacks from Getting an Education - TalkAfricana​

talkafricana.com

The Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws | National Geographic Society​

After the United States Civil War, state governments that had been part of the Confederacy tried to limit the voting rights of Black citizens and prevent contact between Black and white citizens in public places.

education.nationalgeographic.org

The Unequal History of African American Gun Rights​

When it comes to firearms, some Americans are more equal than others.

www.topic.com

James Chen, National Housing Act, Updated Sep 3, 2019, What Is the National Housing Act?

Alexis C. Madrigal, The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood, The Atlantic, May 22, 2014, The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood

Segregation has been embraced, mandated, and maintained in the United States by law and policy — here's how​

A conversation with author Richard Rothstein on the laws and policies that prevent Black and white Americans from living in integrated neighborhoods.

www.businessinsider.com

PBS, Race-The Power of An Illusion, Uncle Sam Lends A Hand, Did the Government Racialize Housing and Wealth? RACE - The Power of an Illusion . Go Deeper | PBS

The Social Security Act of 1935, Social Security History

Larry DeWitt, The Decision to Exclude Agricultural and Domestic Workers from the 1935 Social Security Act, Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 70, No. 4, 2010

Brad Plumer, A second look at Social Security’s racist origins, Washington Post, June 3, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...cond-look-at-social-securitys-racist-origins/

Linda Gordon and Felice Batlan, The Legal History of the Aid to Dependent Children Program, Aid To Dependent Children: The Legal History

Johnathan Grossman, Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage, U.S. Department of Labor, Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage | U.S. Department of Labor

Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (G.I. Bill), Servicemen's Readjustment Act (1944) Facts - G.I. Bill for Veterans

Erin Blakemore, How the GI Bill's Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans, How the GI Bill's Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans, June 21, 2019

Brandon Weber, How African American WWII Veterans Were Scorned By the G.I. Bill, The Progressive, November 10, 2017, How African American WWII Veterans Were Scorned By the G.I. Bill
Sally Kohn, Affirmative Action Has Helped White Women More Than Anyone, Time, JUNE 17, 2013, Affirmative Action Has Helped White Women More Than Anyone.

Fact Sheet: Affirmative Action and What It Means for Women, July 1, 2000, The National Womens Law Center, https://nwlc.org/resources/affirmative-action-and-what-it-means-women/

Tim Wise, Is Sisterhood Conditional?: White Women and the Rollback of Affirmative Action, September 23, 1998, Is Sisterhood Conditional?: White Women and the Rollback of Affirmative Action

Victoria M. Massie, White women benefit most from affirmative action — and are among its fiercest opponents, White women benefit most from affirmative action — and are among its fiercest opponents

Do you really want blacks to emulate the actions of "more successful" groups?

Once again you post shit from long ago, before our lifetimes. Most whites worked for their money, it is not connected to inherited wealth.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Exactly, that is why I question the motivation who try to make it about race.

Don't be mean to poor IM2, math is hard!

 

[JoeB131]

My rebuttal is that many Black workers would have joined unions if they hadn't been excluded. So to call them "scabs" is disingenuous in many cases. Black workers in the South themselves tried to organize labor movements, which is actually why many of these so-called "riots" happened and why many of them left in the period from 1890 - 1935 -- see the Thibodaux, Louisiana Massacre of 1887 or the Elaine, Arkansas Massacre of 1919. They weren't "riots", they were examples of political violence organized by elitist economic interests.

Ah, this bad thing happened 100 years ago, so let's keep whining about it.

When Blacks moved to the North they wanted to join unions, understanding the value of organizing themselves. But they weren't allowed, so they had a choice: work or starve. And the racists within the unions were the ones who forced that choice upon them, and when they decided they'd rather work than starve, they were bloodied and forced to move somewhere else, only to face the same difficult choices again.

Bull droppings. At it's very height of unionization, no more than 33% of the workforce was unionized, and a lot of non-union jobs benefitted from the increase in wages union people won. There is absolutely no excuse for crossing a picket line.

I am sympathetic to that argument even if I don't entirely subscribe to it. But when I say I'm skeptical it's because of personal experience. I don't think I've ever had anyone ever tell me why I wasn't hired unless I had a close personal connection to people. And besides, just saying you're an AA employer really doesn't make you one. I once worked at a company that advertised the fact that advertised its AA hiring policy. Ironically, all of its senior leadership was white.

You are right, I have no way of knowing all the other opportunities I lost because of AA hires. However, in this case, I worked as a contractor, was passed over for a full-time position, and Ms. AA got hired instead.

Well she's not alone in not wanting to drive far, not wanting to put in excessive hours, and not wanting to work beyond one's capacity. I'm pretty much like her I guess. Most people I know are. That doesn't mean we don't work hard but we establish boundaries. That said, to each his or her own. I'm certainly not knocking those who go above and beyond. We all have to once in a while. And the world depends on people willing to do it. I have no doubt you're a solid, hardworking dude.

I will try to pretend that last sentence isn't sarcasm. For the record, I've always gone above and beyond. It's why the Army promoted me to Staff Sergeant.. it's why I've progressed in my career despite all the recessions and management bad ideas I've encountered. Because I have a work ethic. Someone hires you, you bring your A game. I don't think Ms. AA had a A-Game. I don't think she had a B-game.

I get all that, and that is probably the strongest argument against programs like AA and others that aim to rebalance things on a macro-scale.

The way I look at it is that there's an individual self and there's the self that's part of a larger community. There's the individual me that, like you, never called a Black guy the n-word or never participated in discrimination. But there's also the me that's part of this larger social system, and there's just no denying that the system itself punished certain classes of people, in particular Blacks and indigenous people. For sure, it's also punished others as well but these two groups especially. I am part of the group that has the power in this society.

No, you are part of the group that BUILT this society, and now you are feeling guilty about it. I refuse to feel guilty because my grandparents and parents worked hard to get the ball as far down the field as they did. I didn't lose a finger in an industrial accident like my grandfather or die of lung cancer at 56 like my dad did, but I'll be damned if I am going to let anyone make me think that their sacrifices - or mine - were privilege.

Even though I didn't do these awful things, I am part of the group that did, and whether I realize it or not, in some ways small and in other ways not so small, I benefited at their expense. Relative to Native Americans, I live on, own, and enjoy the fruits of land that was taken from them by force and at the expense of their culture's demise. Relative to Black Americans, I can say that I enjoy the fruits of a civilization that was in large part built on the backs of their free (or really cheap) labor. We were able to have jobs, get an education, get property without having to compete with them, because our system made it so. We got the fruits, they paid the price.

You know what, everyone has a sad story. My grandfather left his home in Germany after WWI (after he had done his duty for the Kaiser) with the contents of two steamer trunks. And it wasn't easy for him, I'm sure a lot of people called him a Kraut and worse. So I guess at some point in the 1950's, he got to stop being a Kraut and started being part of the White Oppressor Class, but he must have missed the memo. He just watched as his nice neighborhood changed into a slum. When he found one of his neighbors in his kitchen at 2 AM, that was the time to move.

Go back to what I wrote above and think about it.

I did.. it was stupid.

Blacks were treated differently for two reasons: one because they were the only class of people after the 1680s who were treated as essentially less than human. That stigma and label puts them at the absolute bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. But for another reason, Blacks outnumbered whites in many parts of the South. Letting them vote, giving them agency was perceived as a threat economically and also politically. Unlike immigrants, Blacks couldn't use the conflict avoidance strategy of just moving somewhere else. They had no other skills. They were just as tied to the land as their white masters were. So as far as whites were concerned, they had to make it absolutely clear who owned the land, who owned the power, who was the master and who was the servant - again, this tension lasted well past 1866. That is why there was so much violence during Reconstruction and throughout the Jim Crow era.

Okay, this is where I got to call shennanigans. I'm the first one to admit, life kind of sucked for a southern slave. It also kind of sucked for northern immigrant industrial workers.

Let's check out some of that white privilege now!

Native Americans were in a similar position. White settlers wanted their land. Just moving wasn't really an option until it became clear that they were unable to hold on to the land and violently forced from it. Taking the land meant taking the things that came to define Native American cultures. Stealing land was bad enough, but stealing their cultures and identity was toxic. They've been forced ever since to live in conditions that are imposed on them by White America, just as Black America has, and not so coincidentally, they struggle with crime, with suicide, with alcohol and drug addiction.

First, want to qualify that I am 1/8th Native American.

Secondly, I don't own any land that my grandfather owned, either, here or in Germany. I still own a stake in property my father bought, but that's more of a liability, as I am paying $3000 a year for it and I maybe get up there one week a year. Most of what I have I've earned... So I kind of don't want to hear it.

No one is making people STILL live on reservations. It's up to them. Blaming other people for addiction or suicide is a cop out.

 

[JoeB131]

Exactly, that is why I question the motivation who try to make it about race.

Probably because there is a higher tolerance of crime, and there shouldn't be.

This man didn't deserve to die, but he committed a lot of crime in his life, and he wasn't a saint, either.

 

[multivita-man]

Once again you post shit from long ago, before our lifetimes. Most whites worked for their money, it is not connected to inherited wealth.

Point taken, but even if we don't inherit monetary wealth, we inherit other things, like collective social, economic, and political power as a group. And as a member of that ethnic majority, you are closer to power and power is more accessible to you than it is for Black Americans.

 

[JoeB131]

Point taken, but even if we don't inherit monetary wealth, we inherit other things, like collective social, economic, and political power as a group. And as a member of that ethnic majority, you are closer to power and power is more accessible to you than it is for Black Americans.

That would be awesome, but then how do you explain Asian Americans building so much wealth only a generation after arriving? They aren't white, they didn't inherit anything.

 

[multivita-man]

Ah, this bad thing happened 100 years ago, so let's keep whining about it.

It's not whining about something that happened 100 years ago. The fact you don't recognize it as a rebuttal to your argument that Blacks were, in your words, "scabs" is a pretty glaring, conspicuous omission on your part. You're apparently not interested in an honest discussion. It's not honest to bring up an argument, have it rebutted, and come back with a total non-sequitur in response.

Bull droppings. At it's very height of unionization, no more than 33% of the workforce was unionized, and a lot of non-union jobs benefitted from the increase in wages union people won. There is absolutely no excuse for crossing a picket line.

Again, another rebuttal that was completely, deliberately ignored. I thought you were interested in a fair discussion, but all you keep doing is pouting with speculative shit about how you lost a job due to AA..

Hey motherfucker: receipts, please.

 

[multivita-man]

That would be awesome, but then how do you explain Asian Americans building so much wealth only a generation after arriving? They aren't white, they didn't inherit anything.

Which Asian Americans? You do realize that many "Asian" Americans who immigrated here came here with STEM degrees and were recruited to work in high-paying IT jobs.