Y2HH

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 29, 2014 -> 06:37 PM) I can't figure out how you guys think this somehow gives you an out. It's not an out, it's accounting for a reality they don't have to deal with, which again, you want to ignore. Sorry, you can't just choose to ignore that massive cultural reality because it doesn't fit your narrow assed narrative.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 29, 2014 -> 06:35 PM) If we just focus on the metro areas, Sydney and Melbourne have about 4 million people each. The murder rate in Sydney is about 1 per 100,000, the murder rate in Melbourne is closer to 5. A metro area in the U.S. with a similar population is Phoenix. It reported 123 murders per 100,000 people last year. Another similar comp in size is the San Francisco Metro Area, with 70 murders per 100,000 people. Same sized cities. We're gunning ourselves down like crazy, they don't. AGAIN, I reiterate, you are ignoring the complex societal differences of the US vs Australia. People do this with a ton of countries as there is none quite like this one. The sheer mix of races, religions and languages is un-f***ing-paralleled. So accounting for nothing BUT "like sized populations" is weak, and you're smart enough to know it.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 29, 2014 -> 06:29 PM) That's one of the silliest statements I've ever read. No, it's not if you actually thought for yourself for a minute. The sheer societal complexity a massive population adds CANNOT be normalized and then compared to a completely different culture/society, which is exactly what you're attempting to do here. So as stated, try harder. Your argument is weak and you f***ing know it.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 29, 2014 -> 06:27 PM) Great, so you'd be in favor of much stronger measures? Kind of the opposite of his point. At this juncture, stop talking, as you aren't even reading.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 29, 2014 -> 05:56 PM) You can't possibly believe that I gave a number that wasn't normalized for population, can you?. I even gave the link if you were seriously that confused. Murders per 100,000 people: United States: 4.8 Australia: 1.0. Wow, that was lame. Account for gang violence now. We are taking about mass murders and the fact that they happen everywhere. So like I said, you built a straw man apples to oranges comparison and then tried -- and failed -- to defend it. You completely and convienently ignore the sheer population difference and the complexities it adds to the equation. Sorry but you can't just "normalize" something like that as it ignores the complexities added. Try harder.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 29, 2014 -> 05:27 PM) And they do so at 20% of the rate of the United States. If the United States had Australia's murder rate, there would be about 250,000 fewer homicides per decade in this country. ...with less than 20% of the population. You're a smart guy Balta, but this is another instance of posting an apples or oranges comparison because it fits your argument. Unfortunately, population size and density matter in cases such as this, whether you wish to ignore it or not. Allow me to reiterate... AUSTRALIA HAS ~ 23 MILLION PEOPLE LIVING ON A LAND MASS NEARLY THE SIZE OF THE US. THE US HAS ~ 315 MILLION.

QUOTE (Reddy @ May 29, 2014 -> 04:47 PM) Australia and every other civilized country on the planet say hi. gmafb Because nobody gets mass murdered in Australia. So say hi to Australia, Reddy, as they went from doing it with guns to doing it with arson in the recent years. But the fact is they still do it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia ...and let's keep in mind Australia is almost the size of the US in land mass with a population of ~24 million, as compared to our ~315 million, so yes, it will obviously occur with less frequency.

QUOTE (Tex @ May 29, 2014 -> 10:03 AM) I rarely french press anymore, I am very happy with my Keurig. I still pull out the french press, grind my own beans, and enjoy a cup from time to time, but the Keurig is a great substitute for weekdays when I'm heading to work. Even I sold out and got a Keurig, and use that now because of how easy it is, but I'll openly admit the coffee it makes is sub-par in comparison to what I consider real coffee (french press/non paper filtered). HOWEVER, it's more than good enough considering the factors surrounding making/cleaning up "real" coffee. And while I agree we benefited from the snobbish nature of craft brew people and coffee people, that doesn't make them less annoying.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 29, 2014 -> 07:46 AM) I wonder if you can articulate what you even mean by that and how it applies to this article. Hell, more importantly, put me aside entirely and just engage the article. My opinions on it fall in line with what Soxbadger has written about quite a few times in this thread. There is no need to rehash what he's saying, he's already said it perfectly.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 28, 2014 -> 09:05 PM) Also apparently y2hh hasn't bothered to read the article or this thread, because I've said feeling white guilt is dumb and unproductive anyway. You can say anything you want, but the actions of your words say otherwise. You are so full of white guilt you can't even see anymore.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 28, 2014 -> 09:29 PM) Especially considering the arguments they've posed to avoid it. ...and we have the second guiltiest white man at Shawshank.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 28, 2014 -> 10:10 PM) I used to get a delicious medium cup of hot coffee with cream and sugar every day across the street from work. I also had several diet cokes a day or Coke Zero's. I decided to stop drinking both products about 5 weeks ago and haven't had a coffee or soft drink in 5 weeks. I am starting to miss the coffee. My question to you is ... a.) Now that I've given it up, should I continue to not drink coffee? I'm over the Coke thing. I drink juice and iced tea and water. b.) Is coffee with cream and a good mixture of sugar fattening? c.) Is coffee evil or not? Thank you for your answers! I drink coffee every day, but I try to limit it to 1-2 small or medium sized cups. I also use half & half and sugar (only 1 sugar). Yes, I use real cream in my coffee, I do not like skim milk or milk in it, and never have. I'd cut down on the number of diet drinks, simply because of the chemical compounds in them, I don't trust things I cannot pronounce. But with anything, try to limit your intake, just because something says 0 calories doesn't mean it's something you should be filling your body with on a daily basis. Drink water. It also has zero calories, and your body actually wants it. Juice is terrible for you, it's high sugar/high calorie and the vitamins it provides aren't important unless you have some sort of vitamin deficiency. If you love juice, just eat fruit. Eating fruit will trigger your brain to tell you that you're "full", while drinking juice will not, and you'll just want to drink more, or you'll drink too much (keep in mind, it's high in sugar/calories, and it's easy to drink a lot of considering how small a serving size actually is). Even the iced tea is better than the juice. No, coffee is not evil, it's good for you in moderation.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 28, 2014 -> 07:56 PM) I don't even know what that's supposed to mean You absolutely do, and you absolutely personify it. Maybe you should donate all of your money and give your home/apartment away to a black person, perhaps that would make you feel better and absolve you of sins you never committed.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 28, 2014 -> 05:43 PM) Again, the NYPD had a policy of explicitly stopping and frisking black people, particularly young men, simply for being black people. Up until last year. How can you discount the policy of the police in the country's largest city? And then throw the ongoing housing discrimination on top of it by major banks. The disparity in discipline for young children. The disparity in crime prosecution rates and sentencing. etc. etc. edit: so S&F is still the policy of the NYPD, but the new mayor has promised to reform it. You've officially become the guiltiest white man at Shawshank.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 28, 2014 -> 08:29 AM) Now you've just gotten onto a thread I believe in a lot more. IMO the problem is much more the one you just discussed than the one that has been discussed already. I think that the complete breakdown of how our society distributes wealth is the elephant in the room that underlies this entire discussion and I think fighting that should be our number 1 priority. The top 0.01% have skyrocketed to the detriment of everyone else because they've been able to rig the system. Fix that problem and suddenly you'll discover you've taken large steps towards fixing the others I won't disagree with you here...the concentration of wealth also concentrates the power. They're the ones that basically chose politicians, fund them, get them elected, and then have them pass laws that benefit them. Corporations do this on a national level, and individuals tend to do it on a local level...in either case, the rich get richer, and the powerful get more powerful. The issue is electing politicians that will actually help the poor/middle class, versus electing the ones that CLAIM they will help the poor/middle class, but don't. And then re-electing them after they've proven time and time again they won't help anyone but themselves and their rich owners. And then re-electing them AGAIN after that. Something important to remember is that ultimately, the system is rigged because the poor/middle class ALLOW it. They have the numbers to vote these people down and out while electing the guy nobody ever heard of that would actually do something ... but they won't. And why? Because we're too busy worrying about Kanye and Kim's wedding to give a f*** about NOT electing some corporations/rich persons hand picked rich politician friend. I'm sure Blue-Ivy is up to something pretty awesome today with JayZ and Beyonce, too... So, wait, what were we talking about?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 28, 2014 -> 08:21 AM) Let's state more clearly how this is not a short term outlook. The wealth of the average African American household is comparable to what it was in 1990 right now and it's more than 5 years since the crash. 2 decades of even tiny wealth growth have been wiped out completely and 5 years later have not recovered. Furthermore, even when things were "improving", the gap was still widening. A lot of white families lost a lot during this crisis too...but lumping them all into "white families" is what makes this comparison look worse than it is. The top 1% of white families in Chicago will largely offset the losses suffered by the bottom 90% of white families. You may not believe this, but I'm a white guy who happens to know a LOT of white families...and not many of them are doing very well compared to the housing boom, so I'd put them in that same group with the black families that lost just as much.

This is just one instance, but let's look at Chicago. Rhammel was overwhelmingly elected by both white and black Chicago, hail him as the savior. We have no money for poor schools, but we have a few hundred million dollars to tear down a perfectly good park (Daley Bicentennial Plaza), and rebuild it into Maggie Daley park. This is just one that's seared into my mind as I work right across the street from what was a beautiful, perfectly fine park and watched them tear it down to it's foundation and rebuild it (in progress), to the tune of hundreds of millions. But f*** schools, we need a new park.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 28, 2014 -> 08:15 AM) Economically there is a real strong case to be made that as of 2008 this is no longer true. Thanks to the combination of a housing crash and a stock market boom, the average African American family has less wealth available than a couple decades ago while the average white family has basically recovered, and that was from a place where the average white family already had a huge lead. That's a very short term outlook -- housing will recover along with the rest of it. In either case it will only get better with time...there is no switch we can flip to fix this overnight.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 28, 2014 -> 08:11 AM) Well, it doesn't really get better when we as a society refuse to actually talk much about the problem and pretend its all just something from the past that we have no responsibility for today. Society doesn't refuse to talk about it...I hear about things like this on a daily basis. Hell, we are actively discussing it right now, so to pretend nobody talks about it is disingenuous. Edit: Also, if we truly want things like this solved, people need to stop re-electing congressmen and politicians that have approval ratings in the low single digits. Otherwise, this is what we get.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 28, 2014 -> 08:06 AM) I think it's important to note that TNC does not actually call for any specific sort of reparations in his article. He mentions some things that have been tried, and brings up HR 40 several times which would merely study the issue. He also points out an idea by Charles Ogletree: In the present black america suffers from a huge wealth gap from white america. Educational resources are worse. Economic resources are worse. Employment across all levels of education is worse. To again quote the article, "Sharkey’s research shows that black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000. “Blacks and whites inhabit such different neighborhoods,” Sharkey writes, “that it is not possible to compare the economic outcomes of black and white children.”" How do you concentrate on the problems of the present if you aren't willing to use the same tools that created so many of these problems (government policy) to correct them today? I think this is irrefutable...but the entire point of these posts of yours is that we learn from the past. We have. And things ARE getting better, it just doesn't happen overnight.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 28, 2014 -> 08:01 AM) I'll just quote bmags again, because he does a good job of summarizing some of the keystone 20th century public policies that deliberately excluded black america. And do they still exclude black america?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 28, 2014 -> 07:56 AM) I meant read TNC's "The Case for Reparations" article, I added the Wells Fargo thing in an edit, sorry that wasn't very clear. TNC's focus is more on mid-20th century public policy to plunder black americans, as he puts it, than on slavery or even Jim Crow. The Wells Fargo example is just another example that this sort of thing isn't some long-ago sin for which few if any people who actually suffered or profited are still alive. It continues to this day, and the effects of the centuries of plunder continue as well. But, ultimately, I think this is the main thrust of his argument, which comes in the context of relating how Germany initially rejected any sort of national responsibility for what the Nazis had done to the Jews but ultimately came to terms with their responsibilities and reparations: An America that has this discussion and acknowledges the past, present and future sins is an America that can be honest and honestly work to prevent the present and future sins from continuing to happen. For all of these recent dealings, which can be tracked, traced and proven, I have absolutely no issues with reparations being paid by the Fargo's or BOA's who are lending with predatory practices. I'm not saying "move on" to things that occurred 5 years ago. I'm acknowledging the past, and in doing that I'm not saying to "forget the past" so we can repeat the same mistakes, but I am saying it's time to move on from it, and start concentrating on the present/future.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 28, 2014 -> 07:38 AM) Please read the article. Slavery is only a small part of what's discussed. The focus of Coates' recent work, including a bulk of this article as well as the one linked back in the OP, are of public policy much more recent than slavery, e.g. the redlining that is still going on to this day: http://therealdeal.com/blog/2012/07/12/wel...ination-charge/ There isn't much to read there...it's a few short paragraphs about Well's Fargo, and in this instance I'm not defending Well's Fargo, that was pretty recent, and provable.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 28, 2014 -> 07:19 AM) It's probably easier to say that when you and your ancestors haven't been the target of economic and social oppression in this country since before it was even a country. No, but they WERE targets of this in a different country, and they moved on. 1) My family, and probably a lot of your families, weren't even part of this. This happened before my ancestors even arrived here. Also, as perviously mentioned, my ancestors (I'm 1st generation American), suffered horribly in Nazi Germany which wasn't a walk in the park based on any comparison, and imagine coming here during WW2 as a German family that couldn't speak English. However well you think they were received, it was worse. 2) My family lost everything their ancestors had built up for them in Germany when they came here, not that it was much, but all of it was taken. Gone. No property. No possessions. No money. But f*** them because they were white or something, right? 3) What happened during slavery was terrible, harsh, and a thousand other political buzzwords to speak on something with kid gloves. BUT, are you saying they'd STILL be better off today had their ancestors never been forced to come here? Like my ancestors, and probably like yours, their people went through hell so they wouldn't have too. And hell in the US, especially today, is absolute heaven as compare to most other nations. 4) ALL of our ancestors went through some terribly hard times to get us to where we are today. This isn't something African Americans or women own all to themselves. A lot of our families swam through an ocean of s*** so we could be where we are today. So, yeah, I'm sick of hearing about this...and I'm sick of having white guilt forced upon me...because although I'm white, I don't feel guilty in the least. Move on. I had as much to do with this as I had to do with the hardships my family suffered to get me here today.

Nope, but we sure can move on.