Originally Posted By RoadTrip ^^^ Springfield MO recently was listed as having the highest crime rate in the U.S. for a city of its size (160,000). Seeing as how the Black population is less than 3%, I doubt much of it is Black on Black crime.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. Higher than China, Russia, or Saudi Arabia. How's that working out for you?<< Exactly. Locking people up clearly doesn't serve as a deterrent. It is not working. That doesn't mean, DAR< that anyone is suggesting NOT locking up people responsible for stray bullets hitting children. But if we don't figure out pretty soon that the root causes of crime need to be addressed, you are going to have more and more people who really have nothing to lose. That's what happened when the gap between the haves and have-nots gets too wide. That also doesn't mean that I'm proposing a rush to communism. (It's exhausting trying to consider which red herring will be tossed into these discussions. No pun intended for once.) But it does mean taking a hard look at things such as public education. We either throw money at specific areas for a time, before we lose interest in it, and starve other areas. Other nations spend far more on education than we do, and we wring our hands and wonder why "Johnny can't compete" as we slash education budgets right and left, while increasing funding for police and prisons. A lot of white people can't understand why the average black guy can't just go out and start a business or work their way up the corporate ladder. Instead of realizing the deck is stacked, they prefer to blow it off as laziness.
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 Funny I've always used the word thug to be associated with criminal. Bernie Madoff is a thug. The guys that run FIFA are thugs.
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 No I'm not expecting everyone to go out and create a business form themselves. But I don't think it's that outrageous to expect things, like someone being a father to his children.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>But I don't think it's that outrageous to expect things, like someone being a father to his children.<< It's not, unless you lecture black fathers when the research shows they are more involved than white fathers.
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 No and those that stay and be fathers to their children deserve to be fully commended.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>That doesn't mean that anyone is suggesting NOT locking up people responsible for stray bullets hitting children.<< Bing. O. That's all I meant with the alcohol analogy. No one is saying drunk drivers aren't responsible for their actions. They are and they deserve to be locked up, especially if they kill someone. At a micro level, we're all responsible for our actions. No question. But we as a society recognize there's a marco context here. We see alcohol as a potential problem and we take steps to regulate it and to try and reduce DUIs and accidents, imperfect as those steps might be. That's all I'm saying about racism and poverty. They are deeply intertwined. Yeah, the guy who shoots a gun and kills an 8 year old is responsible and ought to be locked up for life, no matter how accidental it was. But it's also possible to step back and see the macro context that creates an environment where a guy decides it's a good idea to walk around with a loaded gun. I hear white Americans say all the time (and it's basically what DDMAN is saying here), "I'm sick of hearing about racism, it's time for black people to take responsibility." What they don't get is that's the equivalent of saying, "I'm sick of hearing about diet and exercise, I just want fat people to take responsibility and lose some weight." You cannot separate the two, no matter how badly you may want to.
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 (As an overweight person I do have to take responsibility for my diet and exercise)
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 (As an overweight person I do have to take responsibility for my diet and exercise)
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 <<But it's also possible to step back and see the macro context that creates an environment where a guy decides it's a good idea to walk around with a loaded gun.> But you and I aren't responsible for creating that environment.
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 BTW I look at post 258 and a previous post and just wonder how Skinner can talk to people like that.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>But you and I aren't responsible for creating that environment.<< We are responsible for sustaining that environment and we both benefit greatly from it. I suppose you and I aren't responsible if someone is nearly beaten to death with a tire iron, either, but if we keep stepping over them and telling them to suck it up, it's not our fault and they just need to deal with it while they lay on the ground bleeding in front of us, it makes us just as culpable.
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 There is a difference you should help the victim, not the thug that beat the person with the tire iron.
Originally Posted By ecdc ***Wooosh*** that's the point going right over your head. The tire iron analogy comes from Ta-Nehisi Coates. White Americans beat black Americans (figuratively, in this case, but also literally plenty of times) and now that they've stopped they want a big pat on the back and guys like you wanna say, "Hey, don't look at me, I wasn't holding the tire iron!" If you stop beating someone, they're still bleeding and broken, so what are you going to do to fix it? I will say it over and over and over, no matter how much you ignore it or dismiss it. Racism is baked into American identity. It is who we are, it is not some one-off event that happened in the past that guys like you can just brush off and say "Meh, that's over, get over it and pull yourself up." It has fundamentally shaped our country. It is who. We. Are. It keeps black Americans down every single day. White people created the ghetto. Until you accept that you can preach about personal responsibility all you like. You'll just still be wrong.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan I once tried to have an argument with a car that was covered in bumper stickers. I said, "We need to have reasonable limits on the kinds of firearms people own. The car pointed to a bumper sticker it was wearing, that read "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." Before I could answer, it pointed to another. "God, Guns and Guts made America free. Let's keep all three!" I didn't say anything. The car pointed to "FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!!!" Getting no response, the car went into reverse and ran me over. This is how I feel trying to have political debates online sometimes. Or like Calvin is peeing on me.
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 Fine you guys win. I won't say one more negative word about African Americans. That's what you want.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>I won't say one more negative word about African Americans. That's what you want.<< Right, because assigning specific characteristics to an entire race of people is the textbook definition of racism. Like, check it out in Webster's, dude. Or Wiktionary. It's not rhetoric to say that, it's literally in the dictionary.
