Trayvon Martin

RW81233 wrote:

it's also been a city that has a history of struggling with race (see: LA Dodgers and spring training)

I'm going to make an assumption that a few things have changed since 1946 and an incident that involved the first person to break the color-barrier in baseball.

RW81233 wrote:

have you ever lived in the south? old times there are not forgotten

I spent a summer working as a day laborer in Texas along the coast .... and made a mental note to never return. Way too hot for me down there.

RW81233 wrote:

moto, both asian-pacific islander (a small but not insignificant portion of our population) and caucasian are making significantly more per year (like 20-30k more). I also didn't just mean income, you have to take into account incarceration rates, job stability, hiring practices, media treatment, so on and so forth. again i don't mean to take away from the topic at hand it was just an ancillary argument i was having about white privilege.

Fair enough, but income is arguably a good proxy or output of all those factors you mention.

Why do you implicitly lump whites and A/PI together in order to compare them, combined, to other minorities? I pointed out the A/PI demographic as a counterpoint to the notion of white privilege. The success of certain minorities points to the idea that the issues here are more nuanced than simply "the system is set up to make white people win".

Look, I'm not blind. I don't deny that there are aspects of the system that are set up to favor the white man, as he has been defined thus far in our culture. I joke around with my (part chinese) wife all the time about how "well, us whities have had a good run, it's probably someone else's turn to own shit for a while."

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

polaris_x wrote:

perhaps you should start a thread on institutionalized racism ... i think most people want to believe that it doesn't exist just like most people want to believe that the army is in iraq to promote freedom ...

institutionalized racism absolutely exists...unfortunately those of us that see it are the ones that have taken a sociology class or 4, while in general, those that do not see it did not study it.

First, I don't think most people want to believe that the army is in Iraq to promote freedom.
secondly, I think simple generalizations made about the legal system based on population and incarceration statistics is a far cry from institutionalized racism.

But let's start with this, which social institutions create and perpetuate racism?

by the way...sociology major...taken way more sociology than I would ever like to admit . I have always enjoyed the discussions raised, but have a serious problem attributing individual motivations to a behavior by a group. So contrary to your position (i know you are shocked) I think it is just as dangerous to have a little knowledge of what sociology brings to the table as it is to have no knowledge of it.
Individually we all have prejudices...Long hair, skin color, age, tattoos, piercings, large groups...they can change with the time of day.
I believe it is a fallacy to call what we have today institutionalized racism. There is a large difference in the racism that is felt by minorities today and what happened 50 years ago. There is no state sponsored racism and discrimination. There are programs that try to combat racism's effects...but that is a different discussion all together. This kid did not die because of racism. Trayvon dieed because of an idiot. George Zimmerman is a lot of things, but racist probably isn't one of them. And some may disagree, but racial profiling =/= automatically equal racism(IMO). As hard as that is to believe, it more deals with individual prejudices based on life experience. Thinking that young black men are all criminals because you live in a neighborhood dominated by gang violence mainly perpetrated by young black males, as ignorant as that may be, is not necessarily racist behavior. It does not automatically equal a hatred for all African Americans...but maybe a mistrust of young black teens. It is a tough distinction to allow, but I think it is necessary in order to really deal with the "institutionalized racism" that is felt by some to exist. When the definition of what we wish to combat changes and becomes interwoven with other behaviors, it gets increasingly hard to combat.
I also think there is a distinction between systemic racism and institutionalized racism.

Tough solutions all around...but I truly feel that ending the ridiculous drug war, most definitely pot prohibition will do much to solve the issues facing Black America in the inner cities than any race related programs or "solutions". But even if we do legalize pot, the affects won't be felt over night.
Sadly there is much more than white privilege and racism that have kept perpetuating the cycle of criminality in the gang culture. Many smart kids along with potential wasted.

After all the media manipulation on all sides of the spectrum throughout this circus proves to me two things...

1. people love jumping to conclusions that prove their point even without sufficient evidence to back it up

2. They are unwilling to budge when presented with evidence that disagrees with their initial assessment of the situation.

Those things go for people on all sides of this argument. Trayvon is dead. No amount of vilification will bring him back. Zimmerman is the only one who knows what truly happened. If he is lying, it will come out eventually, if he is telling the truth there needs to be a serious discussion about what self defense laws should cover. In a country where pre-emptive strikes are considered defense of the nation, is it any surprise that this type of law that allows this behavior exists? Who knows what happened in this situation, but Trayvon should not be dead.

Godfather. wrote:

RW81233 wrote:

Godfather. wrote:

thank you for keeping racism alive and well,Al sharpton and Jesse Jackson love you...they've made a good living on racism and with followers like you they'll never go broke.

Godfather.

Funny thing is that yesterday you said it's not like Fox only hires white people then you gave me three pages of talking heads where there was exactly one non-white person and you stopped defending yourself. Whatevs though this thread is meant for discussion on a kid who was murdered for having the audacity to wear a hoodie.

good grief man ! you seem to be anti-white and talk as if the black community gets shit on everyday, your view of racism is very one sided, I don't think you understand what racism really is...it's not just white people who can be racist but that's all you seem to see so again the 60's have past along with the hippie movement,
the US is full of other races and still guy's like you still scream about the white racist.

Godfather.

According to 2010 FBI statistics, blacks, while making up 12.6% of the population, suffer 70% of racial hate crimes in the US. A very troublesome burden indeed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/opini ... old&st=cse (I know the NYT,, that liberal rag of propaganda)

What do you call it then when blacks are the repeated victims of high interest rates for car loans and mortgages (BOA and GMAC have both paid huge fines to settle lawsuits) despite having the same credit scores as whites, don't get the same SBA or Farm Bureau loans, disporportionately receive stiffer prison sentences for the same types of crime, are paid less for the same work, see their polling places run out of ballots (Florida) or have less voting machines in their districts than wealtheir districts with less turnout (Ohio) etc. etc.? What would you classify that as? Equal opportunity? No, overt racism is not as open as it used to be 50 years ago. Now its just much more subtle, insidious and harder to identify because it takes a class action lawsuit to expose it.

Peace.

mikepegg44 wrote:

well I was answering based on the idea that currently the majority of people are against the war in iraq, see no purpose, and want us out of there. The start may have been different. And that brings me to a much larger point i will try to illustrate. Looking at the past and judging today by it may lead us to faulty conclusions.

you don't honestly believe that the civil rights movement and the changes caused by it are mostly superficial? hopefully you meant something different.

Again i understand what the statistics could be said to show. But to me that isn't a result of current institutionalized racism. The past certainly has an affect on the present, but let's be honest...at what point will we say, the past injustice felt no longer applies to the future. When will that day occur?
The plight of those in the inner city ( I agree with your comment on class being a bigger problem ) is exacerbated by the actions by those same people. It is a catch 22...It will be very hard to convince the people to spend even more money on schools when the kids in those areas don't want to go and damage the schools that are there.
I don't know the solution. But pragmatically, focusing on the past will not solve the problems of the day. It will help prevent us from making those same mistakes if we are able to learn from them. Does that makes sense?

either way...we both think there is a problem. I just think that the solutions will come from a different way of thinking, but the prevention in the future will spawn from the statistics of the past. I don't know...whatever it is we are doing isn't helping current generations in the short term...so isn't it time for a fresh view?

but most people still believe that going into iraq was the right thing to do ... just because a current belief that the US should be out doesn't change the fact that people still believe the motive was fine ...

let me put it another way ... if a group wanted to exert racial policies today ... they do so in a more insidious manner ... for example ... if a store wanted to ban blacks ... they aren't going to hang a sign saying "no blacks allowed" ... instead ... they put up signs that say "no baseball caps" ... now, this example is just meant to show how it's done now and uses generalizations and what not ... so, anyone who replies to this focusing on the baseball caps is going to be ignored for not understanding my disclaimer ...

as much as the civil rights movement gave certain minorities rights and freedoms - all it did was change the way the racism was shown ...

yes, things are different from 50 years ago ... but there is a looong way to go ...