Didn’t we just do this a few hours ago?
Jack and Jill:
Michelle Bachmann Signs Pledge that Says Black Children Better Off During Slavery
In Iowa, there’s a social conservative pledge called “The Marriage Vow – A Declaration of Dependence upon Marriage and Family” that is anti-abortion, anti-same sex marriage, anti-divorce etc etc that GOP candidates are being urged to sign. It’s got some pretty rigid-sounding stuff, but there’s also this extra-special piece:Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.
Given that families were broken up regularly for sales during slavery and that rape by masters was pretty common, this could not be more offensive. I mean, putting aside the statistics on this, which are likely off-base, I could not be more angry. When will Republicans inquire with actual Black people whether or not we’re ok with invoking slavery to score cheap political points? It has to stop. It is the opposite of persuasive and is another reason Republicans repel us. It’s hard to believe that Michele Bachmann would be foolish enough to sigh this pledge.
But proving Bachmann may be crazier and more hardcore than Sarah Palin, she has.
What do you think? Will this torpedo her primary bid or propel her forward with the GOP base?
Okay, look – there is a statistical fact alleged in there. It’s either true or it’s not. It does not allege that “black children were better off under slavery.”
The truth may be painful or inconvenient, but it is never offensive.
According to the history classes I took, in terms of standard of living blacks were worse off immediately after the Civil War than they were immediately before. This is because even though the were now free they were unemployed and their former masters no longer felt obligated to feed and house them.
Were black children more likely to live in a two-parent home in 1860 than they are today? I don’t know the answer and I’m not going to do the research to find out. But I do know that far too many black kids are being raised in single-parent homes. I do know that far too many teenage black girls are getting pregnant.
These are not problems exclusive to the black community but these problems are hitting the black community harder than any other. We can’t address these problems if people keep engaging in tribal posturing and race-baiting.

Ta-Nehisi Coates:
Where was Barack Obama mentioned? If “a slave born into the 1820s had a thirty percent chance of being parted from his parents” then seventy percent of them did not.
Coates is a vicious fucking race baiter and has been for some time. He fits in well with Sully there.
Sully isn’t there anymore. He’s at the Daily Beast now. Just an FYI…
What kills me is that the most important part of the pledge for ThinkProgress was that the pledge sought to “ban pornography.” All these other issues; gay marriage, abortion, etc, and what The Dudes (TM) are worried about is their access to images of tits and pussy. Progressive Dude Nation is a live and well, ladies and gentlemen.
Allow me to man’splain:
Pornography empowers women by allowing them to pose naked and perform sexual acts for the amusement and pleasure of men.
(smacks forehead) And to think, I coulda had a V8! Thanks d00dbro!
My pleasure, sweetie!
LMAO. You are 2 funny, d00d. 😀
They are so full of crap. I’ve heard many black conservatives and even some black liberals make the exact same point when talking about the destruction of the black community especially in the cities.
If someone said it’s shamefully astounding that women actually had better access to childcare prior to the feminist revolution, because the extended family was more geographically close and cohesive at that time, and that we need to address that very real lack by getting some childcare, I don’t assume that their POINT was to say “women were so much better off in every way before they got all liberated, so let’s go back there!”.
I ASSUME that their point is to draw attention to the lack of childcare, and that something should be done about it, because that’s the point they are in truth MAKING.
There you go thinking again.
Yeah, what’s up with that??
The cities have not destroyed the black families. Slavery did that, and on purpose. It was not in the best interest of the slave owner to have strong bonds of families or even friendships. It was a policy of slavery to separate families.
The point of this post is not to debate the complex issue of broken homes in the black community. Nobody is denying that slavery was a terrible thing and caused enormous harm.
But at some point black people have to take responsibility for their own behavior.
Yes, you are right, but remember that slavery created a culture of its own. It was in place for more than 200 years. Behaviors, attitudes don’t change because it’s the right thing to do. If it was that simple, people would leave their bad behaviors, e.g. drug addiction, whenever they wanted to.
So we should hold back people to a different standard than everyone else?
It’s been a few days since the Emancipation Proclamation. Are you saying it had no effect?
All families, including black ones, had more 2 parent structures in the 50s and 60s than they do currently. Personally I believe the policy of not allowing a man in the home if families received AFDC payments has been disastrous and is responsible for some of the breakdown.
The welfare system as implemented actually encouraged the breakup of families.
People change very slowly.
I think if we are truly to discuss this, we would find that welfare became the double whammy that set back advancements made from the slave era to the civil rights era. Two-parent family rates among blacks were at 70% in 1970 and now we are at a 70% single parent rate in the black community. Both number were tragically below white numbers for both eras.
I think Dario has a point. Consider this: I have often wondered what the privilege of therapy might induce in the black character, and whether we owe that community something for what we as a nation collectively did to them. Family patterns don’t happen in a vacuum. We understand them much more now thanks to advances in psychology and other social sciences. A bunch of (mostly) white folks have spent three or four decades now confronting the truth of their own families and history via various mechanism, but this has not held true for blacks, and it’s not for lack of wanting. How do we overcome generations of desperation that bring about the scourges of alcoholism/drug addiction, child abuse, domestic violence, split families, etc? That is the question, and I don’t think fighting about what caused it is an effective strategy for addressing it.
Something has destroyed black families in the here and now. I did not say it was the cities themselves that did it. Please don’t put words in my mouth. Thanks.
May I also add that most women have gone to work, not because they were feminists, but for economic reasons. Women who normally had jobs before they had children, would stop working and stay home to raise children if that was possible. Divorce has played a big part on the increase of single mothers, but I can’t imagine a marriage sticking it out for the children being better than a divorce. The way I see it, it’s not the single parent family that’s the issue. One good parent is better than two bad ones, but that single parents need more support in terms of better schools and after school child care.
And better jobs too.
But what about the children. Are parents supposed to sit back and wait for the government to do something. Are they free to absolve themselves of responsibility when the government doesn’t give them the help they want?
I was a single father for over fifteen years. I never skipped my time with my kids. I adjusted my life (work, school, social) around them.
I was also a single father for close to 15 years. Raised a son and daughter who are now marvelous people. Life did revolve around them and it was sometimes stressful but the best thing I ever did by far!
Pay now or pay later. If a woman earns pittance from two jobs to put, as Bush said, food on the family, then clearly the children don’t have any sort of guidance, costing society much more in the long run than whatever tax credit could have been given to the low wage earner to make sure he/she is at home when the kid arrives from school.
So parents are supposed to sit back and wait for the government to do something. Horseshit!
There is a terrible lack of support for parents in this society. There should be affordable childcare, flexible schedules whenever possible and a change in the corporate culture that has people working fifty or sixty hours a week just to be considered a good employee.
They still only get paid for forty though.
Um, your hypothetical: “kids are better off with one good parent rather than two bad parents” seems to be a straw man to me. Two bad parents don’t somehow become one good one as a result of divorce. If there are two bad parents in the household, divorce only results in two separate bad parents.
+1000
Yup!
Last time I looked that was the truth.
Well, yeah. Except that a bad marriage often makes for bad parenting because unhappiness and frustration often results in bad parenting. it isn’t unheard of for a bad marriage with two bad parents to dissolve resulting in at least one good parent. Although the added strain of single-parenting often doesn’t help much.
You missed my point. I was addressing the divorce issue that forces women to raise the children as single moms. I was trying to say that though financially the family is worse off, if the marriage is not working, it’s better to divorce. One good parent is better than two bad ones because that’s what happens. Two parents fighting makes a bad family environment.
Sandress, you posted just before I clarified my point, but you got it.
No Dario, I didn’t miss the point. You didn’t write “a bad marriage” — you wrote “two bad parents.” Now, if that isn’t what you MEANT to write, that is one thing, but don’t try to pretend I didn’t read what you wrote correctly.
What the hell. That’s a pretty simple view of raising kids. Have you been a parent?
Good parents DO stick it out for the sake of the kids.
Now, I’m not talking about marriages where one person is an abuser — physical, emotional, substance — no one is going to argue that a parent shouldn’t get their kids as far away from an abuser as possible. Nowadays, though, with divorce at what — 50%? That isn’t the case with most of these “bad marriage.”
These non-abuse “bad marriages” are a result of one, or both, people in it only selfishly caring about being “happy” or “in love” 24/7 & they fail to realize that by virtue of the fact that they brought kids into this world they actually have a responsibility that they aren’t supposed to walk away from for the sake of “finding their bliss.” It is a bunch of selfish bullshit.
My mom & dad have been married 43 years & one young woman asked my mom what her & my dad’s secret was. My mom replied: “Compromise. You have to compromise your own desires for the sake of your family.”* The young girl was shocked & disappointed in the answer, because that kind of selflessness is foreign to most people these days, but that is the truth.
*BTW, my parents don’t have an awful marriage, but to say they’ve been super “in love” and “happy” the entire 43 is unrealistic, fantasy-romance baloney.
Well said!!
Marriage changes through the years, and many times the latter years are really the best.
Statistics are numbers than we can play with. To say now that a slave born in the 1820s had a thirty percent chance of being parted from his parents does not take into account at what age the separation took place. If not at birth, it certainly happened after weaning. I don’t have the stats, but from what I read about slavery, children in the antebellum period were raised by older women who were not related by blood. A young woman was a “breeder” and men did not have any duty towards the children. It should not be surprising that it has taken many years to change the attitude that black men have towards the children they beget.
I’m sorry, Dario, but that’s a copout and a refusal to face the problem squarely. You jumped straight from slavery to the present day, as if the attitudes of black men had an unbroken history of being that way.
It’s simply not true. There were decades in there where black men largely stayed with their wives and cared for their children. They somehow managed to overcome that “conditioning” from slavery for years and years. So what happened to change it again?
If every single problem is always the fault of the history of slavery, then no solutions are ever possible.
Call it a copout or whatever, but it’s not surprising that blacks from other countries have very strong familial bonds. In fact it’s what drives them. Not so in the U.S., but what is more important, is that the lack of bond between men and their children is contrary to normal human behavior.
It’s not that it’s the fault of history of slavery, but it’s what one would call a legacy of that culture. As to no solution being possible, I disagree. It will take time, though.
For example, in a culture where a man cannot own anything because tomorrow he may be sold to another owner, instinctively will drive the man to spend whatever money he has to get some pleasure. If most of the people have that view, from one generation to another, savings will be low. Not feeling that one is part of a community has very detrimental effect.
Maybe we should force black people to save money in order to teach them.
Your statement is contrary to every statistic available about black families. Men for the most part do not stick around to raise their children. They fall in the minority. The black children being raised by their grandmother is very common. It’s not just the men, but even the women who are more likely to leave the child with their mother and take off.
Oops. I forgot to end the blockquote tag. Obviously.
Thanks for fixing.
Do you think any of this has to do with the enormous economic pressures and the institutional racism that results in a ridiculously high percentage of Black men ending up in prison? Hard to be a full-time parent from behind bars.
The problems in the black community are complex – you can’t just say it’s “this” or it’s “that.”
Myiq, was that at me? Because I wouldn’t say that’s the only factor. Hell, I hesitate to say anything here, because boy are race relations not my area of expertise. I just think those are some of the many factors involved.
From what I’ve seen on the intertubes from Obama campaigners and trolls this year, they are mostly blowing in the wind without much direction. No consistent messaging strategy, mainly they react emotionally to things others like Palin et al are doing and saying. But there is one campaign meme that has been very consistent and strong, and that is slavery slavery slavery, accompanied usually by Washington, Jefferson, and most all the founding fathers were racist, and the Constitution was racist. I recall some of this from 2008, but nothing like the wave this year. So I figure that’s the thing now. Obama is running on the anti-slavery platform. And who can argue with that.
Btw Dario, I wasn’t suggesting you were one of Obama’s trolls.
Anthea Butler:
Ms. Butler “knows” that no white conservative really cares about the problems in the black community. Them whiteys are just “afraid of all the black, brown, and red babies crowding out the white babies.”
Say what? That looks like a steaming mound. 😉
She’s saying the same thing Dario is – “it’s not their fault.”
It’s not so much that it’s not their fault, as much as they can’t help it, even if they know better.
They are sentient beings. They can help it and themselves, if they desire.
To say that one can’t help it is infantilizing. I don’t buy it when someone with personal trauma or a bad family history tells me they “can’t help it” that they are the way they are. That’s not to minimize the pain. But human beings are not mindless products of their raising, their history, or their community’s history.
To say that they are is to dehumanize and stereotype them in a much more insidious way than blatant bigotry.
they can’t help it, even if they know better
That my friend is racist.
And the next step is to take away some of their freedom because “they can’t handle the responsibility.”
HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dario man, that is racist…of the cynical patronizing variety.
Aw, the “learned helplessness” diagnosis of the problems within the black community.
Not patronizing or racist at all. /snark.
She should look at the studies that were coming out surrounding the civil rights movement. Welfare was invented because white politicians were afraid that blacks were out-breeding whites after introduction of the pill, and the network of liberal social programs that came out of the 1960s were aimed at addressing that problem. What kills me is that people can no longer see it. They think LBJ was just an enlightened Texan. As if.
What a piece of bull.
No, not really. If you have read up on the history, it’s plain as day. The history of the modern Democratic Party and the modern black community has been a series of deliberate obfuscations that are driven by inherent racism and misogyny. http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_3_black_family.html
FTR, I’m not referring to reports coming FROM the civil rights movement. I’m talking about reports from outsiders that influenced it. My apologies if my verbal inelegance led you to the wrong conclusion.
Welfare started during the New Deal
And by “influenced it” I mean specifically how white, largely male politicians chose to address it.
Myiq, AFDC was a small New Deal program that was created for the benefit of widows. It’s dramatic expansion under LBJ’s War on Poverty is what I’m talking about. Also, the invention of Medicaid.
What these programs did was replace a vibrant sub-economy (very much like you see with today’s immigrants from around the world) with government dependence. I’m not saying that “separate but equal” was the way to go, but black families were doing much better before the War on Poverty. Not only were black children more likely to be raised by two-parent families, but the black middle class was actually expanding. Those facts indubitably call into question the efficacy, if not the intent, of these programs.
One of the reasons for the Great Society programs were television documentaries that showed people in Appalachia living in cabins without running water or electricity. Starving children without shoes or decent clothing.
It shocked the conscience of the nation.
Welfare is the institutionalization of charity. It started because the existing charities were religion-based and tied eligibility to morality. Unwed mothers were deemed unworthy of assistance because they had sex outside of marriage. As a consequence many single mothers invented dead husbands.
During the New Deal it was decided that we should support single mothers so they could stay home with their children instead of working.
Have you been to Appalachia recently? Because I have. Like I said, racial and gender bigotry informed modern welfare programs. Not saying that men are never poor, but the greatest losers in the welfare games of 1965-Present are disproportionately racial minorities and women. Their poverty rates have increased, and their family dysfunctions too.
I’ve seen it firsthand as a child who lived on welfare while my mom got her nursing degree (after her divorce), and as a person who used the system for three short years to obtain my associate degree after my daughter was born (out-of-wedlock, ftr–third generation of pre-marriage pregnancy). I was one of the few who made it out, or even attempted to.
But wait, weren’t a bunch of you just arguing that welfare was the problem, not slavery? I’m getting a bit confused here…
I’m sure that the loss of manufacturing jobs, the decline in the overall standard of living and the decay of the inner cities had nothing to do with it.
“Welfare causes poverty” is a right wing trope. It’s tied to the idea that if we make being poor harsh enough people will quit being poor. Remember Ronnie Raygun’s “welfare queens driving Cadillacs?”
I blame
rap musicjunk food.One of the things which Jesse Jackson has said which is absolutely true is the majority of poor people in America are white, female, and young.
You are misreading my argument if you think I am placing the blame on “welfare queens.” I am clearly blaming white male politicians who didn’t have a clue how to honestly address the inequities of our system at the time. Poverty was already a generational problem; modern welfare programs just exacerbated and entrenched that dynamic. That is in no way a “right wing trope” and I resent that you would suggest such a thing. I thought you knew me better than that.
And ftr, I agree that other things also influenced the problem, including the loss of manufacturing sector and the decay of our cities. I never argued that it didn’t.
I don’t think Lola is saying “welfare causes poverty”. I think she may be saying that the way is is structured contributes to perpetual dependence, and fathers leaving homes.
Thank you, WMCB. You are getting what I’m saying. It is very difficult to get off welfare, and that’s by design. I don’t blame anyone who is on welfare or has ever been on welfare. Poverty sucks more than anything else in this world outside of being a victim of violent crime. And like victims of violent crime, they didn’t invite anything on themselves.
I wouldn’t even blame addicts, as some here have, because if someone has spent 2 seconds inside a ghetto (which I have) one understands immediately how drug abuse and addiction actually happens in such communities, and how ineffective the “bootstraps” mentality is.
Welfare was invented because white politicians were afraid that blacks were out-breeding…
Welfare was invented as a safety net for the poor. It was designed for the vast majority of the poor, who, both then and now, are mostly white. It has nothing to do with black people per se. This is utter nonsense.
Fine, I should have said modern welfare. I’m not arguing against welfare, ftr. I am arguing that the design of modern programs has a discernible effect, and that effect is related to the racial and gender enlightenment of white, male politicians of another era.
I agree with you that more white people are on welfare then blacks. However to ignore that there is a higher percentage of welfare in that community than in white communities is to smooth over the problem.
It’s a little difficult to say on the one hand that most poor people are white (true), then to say we ought to be concerned that there is so much poverty in the black community. If we have to look at the percentage of that population as the standard when bemoaning the poverty and difficulties, then that has to be the standard when discussing the welfare as well.
One might as well say that because more white people are unemployed than blacks, therefore there is no problem with disproportionate unemployment in the black community, and it doesn’t exist, and nothing really needs to be done about it.
It’s disingenuous to say that discussing welfare, and how it helps or hurts or is structured, is not a discussion that affects the black community more as a whole than it does the white community as a whole. Because it does.
I’ll tell you what: a lot of black people that I know believe that, regardless of it being true or not. And I’m not talking about black people who are actually on welfare — I’m talking about educated, middle class people. One friend of mine in particular comes to mind — she told me that welfare was a way for white people to make sure blacks “stay dependent” on the government & don’t rise up in socio-economically so that white people will not have to worry about them moving into their neighborhoods.
It may not be the why welfare was started or its original intent, but I can’t say she’s 100% wrong on how it is being used today.
I’m not an expert in history but wasn’t welfare started in the ’30’s? It’s been a long time but I’m pretty sure that my mother told me that her grandmother was “on the dole” in that time period. She received $10.00 a month to keep her from being homeless and starving.
If that’s true, welfare wasn’t a conspiracy bt LBJ and other whites to keep blacks in the minority.
I have no idea why black families seem to be disintegrating but white families are disintegrating, too. I’m not an unabashed supporter of modern welfare. I very much resent paying taxes to support addicts and those who simply refuse to work. I just don’t know how to put the brakes on it and it’s not a conversation that we’re having honestly, imo.
I wrote this before I read all the other comments but I still wanted to put in my two cents worth.
I see welfare was a way to appease an angry group that was burning the cities. Peace at a price.
I didn’t say it was designed to keep blacks in the minority. I said it was designed to control the population that white male politicians were most concerned about, and that their ideas about the patterns of human behavior, particularly with regard to reproduction, played into those (admittedly paranoid) fears. It’s not like Charlie Manson came up with the idea of Race Wars all on his own. He was parroting what he was hearing. And he wasn’t a Republican or a conservative at the time.
It’s worth more than 2 cents 🙂
My apologies for misstating your point, Lola.
No problem, JL. Just glad we could get to the heart of the matter. But I am also done with this thread now. It’s been said that I am reciting right wing tropes, and insinuated that I am anti-black and anti-poor. When things degenerate into name-calling, I get done real fast. Y’all enjoy.
I hope that you don’t mean that you are leaving the blog, Lola. I like the fact that you and I can disagree amicably.
Neither does Obama.
True story
Absolutely
Agree.
The Congressional Black Caucus is beginning to get that message. I understand that they held a press conference to challenge Obama to do more for the unemployed in the black community. I have not heard that he made a response.
Yeah, well, he will not respond & guess what? The CBC will endorse him & vote for him anyway.
When you don’t back up your “threats” they are meaningless. That is one thing Obama knows.
Obama has the black vote and doesn’t have to do anything to get it. Blacks may not vote GOP, but will stay home if they don’t see a reason to vote for Dick, and he will go back to Chicago.
It’s anecdotal, but something to think about. I was walking on the street and saw two hermanos working a hard job, laying a thick sidewalk cement. I couldn’t help but to wonder if the two Hispanics were illegals. If that was the case, I think they earn less than a legal worker would make. I accept that. Nevertheless, when one is out of work, it’s in my culture to accept whatever job I can get. It’s how I behave. But in the slave culture, for 200 years, one worked as little as possible, just enough to get by, get food and shelter and stay out of trouble. I’m not saying that all black people have bad work ethics, but certainly, I don’t see that group with the same work ethics of other immigrants who come here knowing that it’s their work that will pull them ahead. New immigrants rarely look at the government as a solution. They know they came here to work and pull themselves from their own bootstrap.
Anecdotally, I agree. I have just enough natural aversion to work that I don’t enjoy that, if not pushed by my mother, I might have done just enough to get by. Instead, I was told, in no uncertain terms and with a strong tug on my hair, that I would go to work when I was in high school, that I would earn my pay while I was at work and that there were few, if any, good reasons to be late or to call in sick.
Those values guided me throughout my career and allowed me to retire with a decent pernsion. Well, it’s decent right now but who knows what will happen when my union-busting GOP governor gets his thieving hands on it.
I forgot to proofread, again. That should read ‘pension’.
It’s not your fault because you were raised in a patriarchy.
{{pats JeanLouise on head}}
I can be humor-challenged, d00dbro, so I will just assume that you were trying to make a joke. For the record, I didn’t think it was funny and get your hand off of my head before you draw back a stump.
When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
The first rule of holes
So I’m not black, but if I were I think I’d be offended by some of these paternalistic generalizations you’re making about ‘black people’, Dario. This is the same deal with creative class liberals pleased with themselves that they elected a ‘historical’ president, but could care less about how much the working class (black white brown red) is struggling economically. It’s patronizing stuff. One way to work past this is to stop dropping people into pre-labeled identity buckets, and respect the individual for the content of his character and not the color of his skin, per MLK.
I’m sorry if I offended you. I’m simply looking at a legacy of a culture that is well documented in history. It’s not race based. Any group living under the same conditions for 200 years, would see life more more immediate, imo. The problem is not a race thing, but a misguided policy of slavery that saw profits without consequences. And if I may say, segregation, lack of justice and lack of economic advance through because of discrimination continued the harm of the group into the 60s. I’m not an apologist or a racist. I’m convinced that with time we’ll have a mixed society where race is not something to select so that the government can keep track of the different groups.
Funny you should pick that example because I was just thinking about that.
So why don’t Mexicans have a poor work ethic?
Different cultures. First of all, the natives were never good slaves. They could run away with ease. Second, the Spanish did not have the same policies in slavery that the English did, e.g. a strong policy of the destruction of the family.
Oops, I didn’t see your question about Mexicans having poor work ethics. I never considered Mexicans as having poor work ethics. I’m not sure that’s true. Their values are different in that they’re not into accumulation and more likely to spend what they earn. One could explain that to be a combination of reasons. First of all, unlike the Europeans who must work hard to store for the winter, people who live in temperate zones don’t have that drive. The Europeans who live near the Mediterranean (Greeks, Spanish, etc.) also are not as driven to accumulate. Another reason is that the way the Spanish and the English worked the colonies. The Spanish were more top down type government, whereas the English allowed the colonies to be more independently run. Those two reasons would create a different culture.
I’m leaving this thread now. I just can’t anymore.
I understand how you feel Angie.
I’m stuck here.
I’m getting drunk. The only answer.
It’s almost 4:20
I thought the answer was 42?
Buffoon Juice:
Once again Buffoon Juice sets the standard for misogyny
Well, to be fair, he’s using the weakest link in Floyd to do it. 😉 It is ironic that a sexist pig would use that song in particular….
Wow!
It might be true in practice but it’s not by design. To get off welfare you need a job. That requires:
A) skills (including the ability to read and write)
B) Available jobs
Lets not forget that the welfare reform signed by Bill Clinton provided job training and child care.
And tax credit. That was a very good part of the reform.
In your world, just picking up some hours at Micky Dees will solve the problem. And I’m the right winger here, according to you. Sigh.
Just. Done.
I am not saying you are a right-winger. But right-wing tropes are sneaky and pervasive.
I agree, they are. Like “getting a job” is a solution to generational welfare. Sneaky and pervasive.
Look, I’m at least glad you came back and clarified that you weren’t calling me right wing. I appreciate that. I’m still bowing out of the conversation because it’s just going in some unsavory places overall.
myiq, I would add a C) to your list: a culture that values and supports a and b.
Some of the problem with getting off welfare, especially if it’s been a generational thing, is not having your own community admiring you for doing it.
I think that some of the problems in the black community have been badly exacerbated by white guilt and the race hustlers. Because for a long time, almost anything any black man did was immune from criticism lest one be insensitive to black culture. So it became okay for thuggery, and violence, and viewing education as “white”, and glorifying criminal and drug culture to be lauded. Guilty whites helped establish many very unsavory and unhealthy things as “authentic black culture”, and therefore not to be critiqued with the same standards we critique others. Because whites (and the race industry) patronized and patted heads and said that incredibly dysfunctional and misogynistic attitudes (especially in music and in sports figures) were something laudable because they were “part of the black identity”, the problem was made MUCH worse. No one would stand up and say: “No, you are not a hero and icon, you are a fucking thug, advocating and modeling thuggery” The very things that are destroying the black community were turned into a point of pride, and the things that would help end that cycle came to be viewed as “white”.
That makes it much much harder for some young person who wants to go to school, work their tail off, take two jobs etc – because on some level they can’t do that without also feeling like they are rejecting what has become their “culture”, destructive and dysfunctional as it is.
I think the black community themselves are going to be the only ones who can change that. But I also think that the Guilty White Left needs to admit some responsibility. Because in treating blacks with kid gloves, it cut them off from the normal societal feedback loop that says in a million ways “That is not acceptable”.
The Case for a Primary Challenge Against Obama
Conor Friedersdorf has a very good post at The Atlantic.
This will probably make him racist.
Bye for now
Oh man, you left too soon.
See my comment below
Dario:
If what you say is true then “black” culture is defective. It’s not their fault, it’s ours.
So here is what we should do:
We’ll take all the black children from their parents and place them in homes with white people where they can learn proper white values of hard work, sobriety and thriftiness.
Within a generation we will have eliminated the defective black culture from our society.
It’s a win-win for everybody because today’s blacks will be freed from their parental responsibilities while their children will be better citizens!
/snark
Why do you do that? You shut down honest debate when you slice people into little pieces, apparently for your own and others’ amusement.
I’m not trying to shut down discussion. I was taking Dario’s argument to it’s logical conclusion.
He argued that the problems in the black community are a cultural thing caused by slavery. So how do we fix it?
We fix it by replacing defective values with appropriate ones.
No, you sliced him up. Civil discourse would have included asking him how he thought that the problem could be resolved. He and Lola are not trolls.
I have to stop myself from being snide, too, and I’m not always successful but I hate to see thoughtful posters turned off by over-the-top, hostile responses. That happened to me so often at The Confluence that I stopped posting there for about a year. I had hoped that I had found a place where I could offer my unfettered opinions without being belittled by a front pager. And if you’ll do it to Dario and Lola, no matter how much you disagree with their comments, you’ll eventually do it to me, too.
Blog Rule #5:
There is a big difference between ridiculing an idea and ridiculing the person expressing it. I did not attack anyone personally.
Several people including myself were outraged and/or offended by the ideas Dario was expressing. But I have no doubt that Dario has a good heart. I was using a form or argument known as reductio ad absurdum. That is is a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd consequence.
BTW – d00dbro is a sockpuppet who can be counted on to behave like a sexist pig. Feel free to abuse and insult him.
Ouch, clown! I gotta say, I think that may be a bit much.
Did you notice the snark tag?
Yeah. And it was funny. You weren’t horrible, just a little sharper and slicier than you usually are when talking to an individual. I have to be honest – I winced a tad.
I do that sometimes because I really love heated debate, and it’s easy to not see the line when your brain is whirring with points and counterpoints. It happens.
It was A Modest Proposal
Myiq, I don’t think you did anything to merit making a federal case out of. I know you – if you’d actually WANTED to rip her to shreds, that’s not what it would have looked like.
It was a wee bit wince-worthy, but not OMG he’s being horrible!
Since Dario crossed the line earlier — see my comment above to Dario — I think that myiq’s sarcasm was completely appropriate. That sort of patronizing/racist stuff is what was a bit much. But what do I know.
I don’t think that Dario intended to be patronising or racist but I don’t have any problem pointing it out to him if you perceive him to be that way. There’s a difference between pointing it out and clobbering him, imo.
Ideas must be subject to scrutiny, and yes, mockery if it is merited. So long as we respect the people, the ideas are fair game. It’s the only way to get strong ideas without needlessly alienating our allies. You don’t get strong ideas by letting weak ones whiz by untouched.
JL — I’m sure Dario didn’t mean to be patronizing either, but “intent” * “effect” are 2 different things.
I suspect this is a “modest proposal” from you, myiq, but I think they did that with aborigine children in Australia.
Very sad.
djmm
Yeah, they did this to the half-white kids.
It was done to Native American children, too, and it was horrific. I just don’t see it as the logical conclusion of Dario’s argument.
It wasn’t a modest proposal. It was A Modest Proposal
I didn’t see your comment djmm.
They did something like that in the 1930’s to remove aboriginals from the wilderness of Australia and “civilize” them.
There was a drama/movie about it “Rabbit Proof Fence”.
They did something very much like that here, except with boarding schools instead of foster homes, and North American Indians rather than Aborigines.
This is very close to what I believe is possible.
How the Tea Party can win the left
I would generally agree, but did you catch this?
Actually, no – it is not THEIR media and elites who are doing that. It’s the left’s media and elites. The teaparty is portraying themselves just fine.
What the Tea Party has to do is rid themselves of radical right religiosity. I’d rather be poor than be deemed less than an ‘acceptible’ human being because I don’t exhibit their very narrow definition of valued human behavior as described in the ‘marriage pledge’ that Michele Bachmann rushed to sign.
Ah, shite, I did it again. It should be ‘acceptable’.
I think this topic is about talked out for now, at least for me. Gonna go surf the intertoobs while I eat my spicy beef and rice (I ordered Chinese today, because I wanted to be a lazy ass. 😀 )
Then I’m pouring myself some cherry rum and sprite.
Damn, I was just getting ready to pick another fight.
I don’t fight drunk – I love EVERYBODY when I’m drunk.
That’s no fun. I was just getting ready for a brawl… aw nuts.
Did somebody say “nuts?”
Well, Alley Cat is going to have a rude awakening when he can’t find his later tonight….
Myiq, even we’ve left this discussion, I will leave my response about your snark idea that taking the children from their parents is a solution to fix a culture molded to a great degree by the old slavery policies. You are almost taking a position, like Swift did, in his essay, A Modest Proposal. Snark aside, taking the children from their mothers is what the slave owners did and is not a solution, but would be a throw back to the days of slavery. More often than not, I believe a child is better off with his/her mother, even if the environment is not the best. So what’s the solution? The blacks will have to figure out that expecting help from the government doesn’t help them, but chains them. So I don’t believe we need to do anything. The situation for blacks is already better today than it was a few years back, but their unemployment rate is too high relative to other groups. Slowly, but surely the blacks will change the part of their culture that’s put them at a disadvantage. I don’t doubt that.
I only spoke how I see it, not to put down a group, or to find solutions, but to understand that history is not left behind with a proclamation of emancipation or laws.
You know, the decent solution would be to pay people for the work they perform regardless of race or gender.
I have heard of women who received public assistance who were still “with” the children’s father. They couldn’t get married because they would lose the support and wouldn’t be able to survive. He paid his support to the state and then the state added money to that support to supplement and then gave it to the mom.
She didn’t work but she was unskilled and would have to pay pretty much everything for childcare or swap schedules with the dad and then they never see each other. They would be broke and have a ton of stress in the relationship over never seeing each other and having no money… poor is poor and it is always hard – doesn’t matter what color you are.
They weren’t laughing all the way to the bank with the extra state subsidy and welfare either. They lived in a crap house with a moldy, leaky roof and drove cars that didn’t look like they would run.
Equality is must. I agree. That’s why I find it surprising that people don’t seem or want to understand the impact on the psyche of black people. Up until the the civil right laws passed, blacks were subjected to a place of inferiority. To believe their psyche was changed to go out and compete with whites because suddenly they could drink from any water fountain and ride in front of the bus is simplistic. It helps the younger generation, but I seriously doubt the older generation felt equal after the laws were passed. And even the younger generation will have a difficult time throwing out old beliefs because those impressions are passed from parent to child, most often in non-verbal behaviors.
Here is an example of how the psyche behaves. Elephants are incredibly strong and could crush a man without any effort. But to train them to stay in place, men put chains around one foot and keep them bound to a stake with the chain. After an elephant is trained, the chain is not necessary. The elephant forgets that it can go as it wishes and believes in nonexistent chains. Gurdjieff studied how beliefs, established while young, remain in the subconscious and are almost impossible to throw out..
Word.