Discussion
  • Read More
    benjaminalloverHamilton Nolan
    12/18/15 10:47am

    Whites may comfortably absolve themselves of responsibility for social ills by telling themselves that they, personally, are not racist.

    This seems to be the single largest obstacle in having this conversation. White people feel personally attacked, because they’re wildly overestimating the portion of racial inequality that springs from contemporary white supremacy as opposed to legacy. You got your grandmother’s peals or your great grandfather’s farm or worked for your uncles company, and other Americans got a legacy of trauma instead of that wealth. The difference between these legacies is cumulative through generations. Even if your family were poor immigrants they were treated better than black Americans, and that (perhaps initially small) difference adds up over and over and over and over again.

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      ReburnsABurningReturnsbenjaminallover
      12/18/15 10:53am

      ecause they’re wildly overestimating the portion of racial inequality that springs from contemporary white supremacy as opposed to legacy.

      I regularly have discussions in my ultra-conservative workplace about this topic, and this quote perfectly summarizes the mental hurdle they just can’t or won’t get past.

      Reply
      <
    • Read More
      benjaminalloverReburnsABurningReturns
      12/18/15 10:59am

      That “but I’m not racist” response is very frustrating. Society is racist, period. If it’s racist now, imagine how many orders of magnitude more racist it was 3 generations ago, or 6. What white people need to consider is that ALL that racism cascades down into our own time, because it was never rectified or paid for.

      Reply
      <
  • Read More
    LeeedHamilton Nolan
    12/18/15 10:47am

    Are you going to voluntarily donate half your wealth to black people, Hamilton? I’ll volunteer to take the half of your wealth that you are going to donate to black people like me. If not, STFU. You are freeloader. You are not charitable at all. There is no virtue to being charitable with other peoples money. If you donated your money or job to a black person, then your article makes sense. But since you aren’t doing that, you are just another freeloader that loves being virtuous with other peoples money. I’ll take your articles more seriously when you have stake in the game and follow your policy prescription yourself.

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      the johnLeeed
      12/18/15 11:00am

      That’s not how society-wide prescriptions work. Just because one argues for higher taxes for all, including oneself, does not mean that he is arguing to be the only one “giving money.” Stop being intellectually lazy.

      Reply
      <
    • Read More
      EvelynChampagneKingsnumberonefanLeeed
      12/18/15 11:02am

      This is a dumbass basic logical fallacy that only basic ass bitches use.

      Tu quoque

      Tu quoque (/tuːˈkwoʊkwiː/;[1] Latin for “you, too” or “you, also”) or the appeal to hypocrisy is an informal logical fallacy that intends to discredit the validity of the opponent’s logical argument by asserting the opponent’s failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s).

      Tu quoque “argument” follows the pattern:

      Person A makes claim X.

      Person B asserts that A’s actions or past claims are inconsistent with the truth of claim X.

      Therefore X is false.[2]

      An example would be

      Bill: “Smoking is very unhealthy and leads to all sorts of problems. So take my advice and never start.”

      Bill: “I’m going to get a smoke. Want to join me Dave?”

      Jill: “Well, I guess smoking can’t be that bad. After all, Bill smokes.”[2]

      Admit that you are a basic bitch who makes basic ass comments filled with basic ass logical fallacies you basic ass bitch.

      Reply
      <
  • Read More
    ledariaHamilton Nolan
    12/18/15 10:46am

    Hmmmm.... I can’t find a chart on it but there’s also the issue of white people who have been convicted of a felony having lower unemployment rates than black people who haven’t. People can whine about affirmative action all they want but at the end of the day its just a small measure to correct the still pervasive inequalities minorities experience on every level.

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      Shmeg Griffinledaria
      12/18/15 11:11am

      The only people that have been helped by affirmative action, have been white women. So we can say that it's great, but in its current form, is still a way to keep black people out of jobs

      Reply
      <
    • Read More
      crouching tigerShmeg Griffin
      12/18/15 12:10pm

      White women aren’t the only people who could benefit from affirmative action, but you’re correct in saying that white women have been the greatest beneficiaries to date.

      Reply
      <
  • Read More
    WideMouthBassHamilton Nolan
    12/18/15 10:47am

    Well, intact families and a focus on education solves most of the problem actually. How about we start there and not rely on politicians to solve problems they can't ever solve through legislation?

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      flamingolingoWideMouthBass
      12/18/15 11:30am

      The first point you make is just wrong. There has been a good amount of recent research that demonstrates the causality runs the other way: generally speaking, poverty leads to broken families, not the other way around.

      And education is broken because white people don’t want to fund public education or send their kids to school with black kids. African American children who are in integrated schools do better than ones that go to de facto segregated schools. That’s because the integrated schools have more resources.

      The racial wealth gap can be solved by giving poor black people more resources.

      Reply
      <
    • Read More
      NicoWideMouthBass
      12/18/15 1:12pm

      The problem with that is education is funded locally, which means poor neighborhoods have underfunded schools. That’s a problem that would need to be solved through legislation.

      Intact families are easier accomplished with strong family planning (IE: no unwanted pregnancies) which means we need all schools teaching comprehensive sex ed and all states to have places where young people can go for education and contraceptive, another situation that varies GREATLY depending on where you live, another situation that would have to be addressed via legislation. Mississippi has one planned parenthood and still teaches abstinence only sex ed, as a result they have the highest teen pregnancy rate and highest STD rate is the country.

      You’re right, intact families and a focus on education will solve most problems, but you’re wrong saying these problems can't be fixed with legislation.

      Reply
      <
  • Read More
    JohnConHamilton Nolan
    12/18/15 11:28am

    I’m totally LOL-ing at the image choice here. Was this perfectly lovely, well-manicured cottage plucked from a Disney stock photo website? Like, are we trying to illustrate that poor people live in cartoon shacks from the early 1900s? As a 30-something gay dude living in NYC, I can tell you this charming country hovel is basically my dream home.

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      Hamilton NolanJohnCon
      12/18/15 11:57am

      I’m not sure they’ll let you live there, since it’s a slave cabin. Thank you for reading though.

      Reply
      <
    • Read More
      GawkerLiberalsShouldDieHamilton Nolan
      12/18/15 12:04pm

      you’re a shitty writer.

      Reply
      <
  • Read More
    nocturnalkittyHamilton Nolan
    12/18/15 4:21pm

    I always think about the fact that Asians and Native Americans have gotten reparations in this country, but Latinos and Blacks have not.

    Anytime people talk about Black reparations people say, “Slavery has been over and no one who was a slave is still alive” That is 100% true, but what I do know is that segregation also caused a ton of harm to black people and my Grandmother and mother and tons of other people in my family were alive during it, and it caused them financial, emotional, and psychological damage. They might not even see it themselves, but I know that they missed out on opportunities in life because of it. I know that I missed out on opportunities because of what they went through. Who is trying to make that right? Who is saying sorry?

    You know if the racists come out, I’ll get a ton of replies about welfare and what not, even though whites are the majority of welfare users. I’ll get hate and anger over what? Over people in my life that I can talk to being humiliated and treated like subhumans for part of their lives? I don’t need the comments, I can see it with my own eyes everywhere around me. Lost potential, lost hope all because so many people want to see a section of the population as whiners and lesser than, when in reality they are abused and scarred.

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      TheHeartWantsFreedomnocturnalkitty
      12/19/15 6:22pm

      The Chinese laborers who were brought in to build the railroads and left for dead, unable to gain US citizenship got reparations? When?

      Your use of the term “Asians” is pretty strange here.

      Reply
      <
    • Read More
      nocturnalkittyTheHeartWantsFreedom
      12/20/15 5:04am

      Pretty much anyone who looked remotely Japanese was placed into an interment camp during WWII.

      Sorry you don’t like my use of the term Asian.

      Reply
      <
  • Read More
    Hollow_LogHamilton Nolan
    12/18/15 10:44am

    to be fair, one white guy (admittedly he was born a poor black child) lives in that house!

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      okiedokieokieHollow_Log
      12/18/15 10:45am

      Sooner or later that house will be on Fixer Upper.

      Reply
      <
    • Read More
      KinjaNinjaOnABinjaHollow_Log
      12/18/15 11:05am

      Maybe the answer is to introduce a nationwide pre-K curriculum on how to tell shit from Shinola?

      Reply
      <
  • Read More
    nosleepdreamsHamilton Nolan
    12/18/15 3:38pm

    We also need to adress the history of racist housing policies -or the racialization of state policy during the 60s and 70s that created outright housing segregation and unequal tax codes to impede the accumulation of black wealth. the overwhelming consequences these policies have had have been further impeeded by the employment and incarceration practices in the contemporary moment. I suggest reading Black Wealth/White Wealth for anyone interested in this topic.

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      TheHebrewHammernosleepdreams
      12/18/15 4:18pm

      Excellent point, projects are probably the biggest impediment to black prosperity in America. We have a very similar situation with native reservations/gettos in Canada.

      Reply
      <
    • Read More
      nosleepdreamsTheHebrewHammer
      12/18/15 5:11pm

      I’m not sure they can be equated, nor am I sure I agree that housing projects are the biggest hurdle facing racial economic equality. More of what I was getting at are the real estate and housing laws and policies of the 60s and 70s that kept blacks in rental housing while endorsing home ownership to whites. One sure fire way to ensure wealth disparity is to deny an entire population of people the ability to own homes. I believe this practice was called red zoning.

      Reply
      <
  • Read More
    ReburnsABurningReturnsHamilton Nolan
    12/18/15 10:55am

    Ending the racial wealth gap is not the same thing as ending racism. It does, however, have the advantage of being much more imminently achievable.

    I mean, that is a very relative statement. The first task requires fundamental changes to human culture.

    The second is definitely a lot easier to accomplish, but it is still a distinctly remote possibility in our current political environment.

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      mechavoltReburnsABurningReturns
      12/18/15 11:21am

      I agree, but with the wealth gap, we can theorize “If we implement these policy changes, then the wealth gap should close.” It’s testable, and you can measure your success. With changing cultural opinions, I don’t think anyone has a good theory on how to go about doing that or even how to measure it well.

      Reply
      <
    • Read More
      ReburnsABurningReturnsmechavolt
      12/18/15 11:24am

      of course it is testable, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is the fact that the political will simply does not exist, and is not even close to existing, to enact a progressive tax policy that has, among other goals, the intention of paying reparations. You will note that zero Democratic candidates have addressed anything like this proposal directly, and none of them will.

      Reply
      <
  • Read More
    VanNostrandHamilton Nolan
    12/18/15 11:19am

    “THE RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH”

    “FIX IT”

    -HamNo

    You’re preaching to the choir here, dude. Details on how to fix it please.

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      bhutjolokiaVanNostrand
      12/18/15 11:21am

      Reparations. Pay them and be done with it. It is a screamingly obvious debt that needs clearing.

      Reply
      <
    • Read More
      badchipmunkbhutjolokia
      12/18/15 1:50pm

      Hah. That’s not happening. Let’s try something with a higher likelihood of actually occurring.

      Reply
      <