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Diesel42 wrote:What VMI77 said... x2.

A few years ago I PO'd a cultural diversity training facilitator during required training at work. She began the training by making everyone introduce themselves to the group and identify their race. This was humorous to me because I work with several folks of mixed heritage.

Naturally being onery, when my turn came I said my race was Texan. The facilitator informed me that Texan isn't a race and asked me to tell everyone my race. I smiled and said, "Little lady, you're obviously not from these parts. My folks came across the Atlantic in 1750, fought in every war since then and got to Texas in the 1850's. I am a Christian Texan first and anything else a distant second."

You could hear a pin drop as I sat down. Then folks started clapping. I got a dirty look as she moved on to the next part of her social programming.

The Annoyed Man wrote:

VMI77 wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:

VMI77 wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:But I am suggesting that—absent the poisonous effects of the democrat entitlement machine—black people are no more likely to be racist than pink people, and that lifestyle has a lot to do with whether or not people are bitter against those who they (wrongly) view as their oppressors.

It's more than just the entitlement machine (and mentality); it's also the liberal use of racial identity politics and a race baiting media that goes out of its way to focus on race and inflame racial tension. We're way past the time when the stated objective was equal treatment and a colorblind society comprised of Americans. The left has been pretty successful in stoking racial hatred and separating people by race. Democratic Party power is now almost entirely based in racism, racial animosity, separation of the races, and identity politics.

Well of course it is, but the degree of the overt expression of that racism at its most confrontational between individuals is still directly linked to the degree of poverty in any given area. I want to be clear here that I'm not making excuses for it. Poverty does not excuse racism. It's just that the people trapped in poverty are more likely to express that racism because they are angry and envious of those who have it better than they do......even if it is their own fecklessness which traps them in that poverty.

I'm not so sure, I think it is more than just poverty....I think it's location plus poverty. In my experience at a given level of poverty, the level of confrontation, if any, is higher in the larger cities. Well, "location" is not quite right, but it plays a part in producing the attitude that leads to envy and confrontation.

OK, I'll buy that. I'm just trying to make the point that, all other things being equal, if black people were automatically more racist than white people, then I would have experienced it in the middle class black neighborhood I lived in. Since I didn't experience it, I draw the conclusion that they are not any more or less racist than white people, and that the kind of vicious and racist criminality experienced by the poor woman in the OP must be motivated by other factors like poverty, class envy, general lack of morals, intellectual laziness, etc., etc., etc.

I actually don't have a problem with people who instinctively find themselves prejudging others based on race. I think that is almost normal. The problem I have with them is if, once they realize that they are doing so, they willfully continue doing so, standing proud of their sin. The former is merely a result of our spiritually fallen condition. The latter is a deliberate decision to revel in that fallen condition instead of acknowledging it and seeking to correct it. It's like the temptation to view pornography or to stare at your friend's teenage daughter in a lustful way. The temptation is irrelevant if we don't act on it. We sometimes can't help what the world throws in front of our gaze, but we always have the authority to avert our gaze. So it is with racism. I'd be a liar if I said that I have never ever experienced a ding of racial fear when confronted with a scary looking guy on the street late at night if he were black instead of white. It's an automatic response based on the fundamental sociological/cultural imperative that he is "other." The real issue is, what do I do with that? If I consciously and deliberately suppress that natural tendency to prejudge and give the other person the chance to show me that he is as decent a person as I am, then it can be fairly said that I am prejudiced, but not a racist. And as an old friend of mine, Darryl Pinckney, a black author originally from Indiana once told me, "If you're afraid of walking through a black neighborhood at night, can you imagine how I feel walking through a white neighborhood at night?" He said this in the 1970s, when it could be fairly said that a black man walking through a white neighborhood at night might be dealt with by police with less equity than if he had been white.

Darryl was my companion on a drinking foray into harlem, which I have posted about before. He lived upstairs from my ex-wife and me in an apartment building on W. 87th St in Manhattan. He dared me to go with him to his favorite bar in Harlem, and I took him up on it. Now you've got to figure this....at the time, I'm a 150 lb white guy wearing snap-button western shirts, faded Wranglers, and Justin boots. I do NOT look like I belong anywhere near Harlem.....specifically anywhere near the Hucklebuck Bar at 133rd & Adam Clayton Powell. The nearest white man besides me is at least a mile away. Until the moment that I stepped out of the cab, I honestly thought that I had no prejudices. I mean....after all, I went there with a black friend........a gaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy black (did I mention that he was Jewish?) friend. But the minute I stepped out of the cab, I realized that my cherished self-image was not in fact true, and I was scared as heck.....and it was too late to back out. So I just told myself "to heck with it," and I tried to walk in like this was perfectly normal for me and I did this every day. I could hear the sounds of boisterous good times coming through the door as I pulled it open, and when I stepped into the room, the place went dead quiet and all eyes were suddenly riveted on me. I've never felt so naked, and I think I must have thought that this is where I was going to die. Darryl was a grad student in literature at Columbia University at the time, and the Hucklebuck Bar was where he went to study sometimes, so they knew him there. He dragged me over to the bar and we took a couple of stools there. Now mind you, I believe that I'm wearing my best poker face. The barmaid is an enormous black woman, somewhere north of 6'2", and she is patrolling up and down the length of the bar with a 5' or 6' long piece of very stout 3" wooden dowel in her hands, and she has a look on her face like, "I WILL use this on you if you trifle with me!" She walks up to me, behind the bar, stares me in the eye, and she says, "What's your name?" I told her "TAM." And she says, "TAM, try hard not to look so scared. We're not going to hurt you."



I decided then and there to trade in my poker face for a new one, 'cause mine obviously wasn't worth a cup of warm spit. After that, I did relax a bit and begin to enjoy myself, but I did remain the focus of several concerted attempts to sell me obviously stolen merchandise; and in one case, a guy tried to sell me some pot and offered to go out back in the alley and let me sample the goods before I bought. I declined. I noticed that none of these enterprising individuals tried to sell anything to anybody else in the bar—only to me. There were two types of prejudging going on there that night. I prejudged them in terms of my fear, automatically assuming that they would hurt me because I am white and they were black. They prejudged me in terms of money, assuming that A) because I was white I had money; and B) that I would be willing to buy what none of the other people in the bar was willing to buy. In each case, each thought of the other person as "other," and there were some prejudices and fear involved in those social transactions. Equally, each made an attempt to get past that and coexist with the "other."

That's about the best one can hope for in a strange, potentially dangerous situation. At the time (roughly 1977), for a white man to go to 133rd and Adam Clayton Powell was pretty much as dangerous as for that couple in the OP to go into that neighborhood where they were assaulted. I just now google-mapped the intersection, and it looks like NYC has really cleaned that area up. But back then, it was really grim looking. The buildings were all coated in soot and graffiti, and half the businesses were boarded up, and people on the street looked pretty desperate.

I'm not so naive as to say that there is no racism or prejudice among black people.....but I tend to see that is frequently the case regardless of the beholder's skin color, and the real issue is, what is that individual going to do with their own prejudicial impulses. I think that the less financial pressure that individual is under, the less likely he or she is to act out his or her prejudices in an unlawful way. In terms of my former neighbors in California, I don't know whether or not they had any prejudicial thoughts when they saw a white family moving into their neighborhood, but to their good credit, they never made me feel unwelcome, and at some point, they each saw past their own foibles and accepted me as a friend.

The Annoyed Man wrote:

VMI77 wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:But I am suggesting that—absent the poisonous effects of the democrat entitlement machine—black people are no more likely to be racist than pink people, and that lifestyle has a lot to do with whether or not people are bitter against those who they (wrongly) view as their oppressors.

It's more than just the entitlement machine (and mentality); it's also the liberal use of racial identity politics and a race baiting media that goes out of its way to focus on race and inflame racial tension. We're way past the time when the stated objective was equal treatment and a colorblind society comprised of Americans. The left has been pretty successful in stoking racial hatred and separating people by race. Democratic Party power is now almost entirely based in racism, racial animosity, separation of the races, and identity politics.

Well of course it is, but the degree of the overt expression of that racism at its most confrontational between individuals is still directly linked to the degree of poverty in any given area. I want to be clear here that I'm not making excuses for it. Poverty does not excuse racism. It's just that the people trapped in poverty are more likely to express that racism because they are angry and envious of those who have it better than they do......even if it is their own fecklessness which traps them in that poverty.

The Annoyed Man wrote:But I am suggesting that—absent the poisonous effects of the democrat entitlement machine—black people are no more likely to be racist than pink people, and that lifestyle has a lot to do with whether or not people are bitter against those who they (wrongly) view as their oppressors.