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Zonie63 -> RE: The Grand Jury has decided in Ferguson (12/2/2014 7:45:56 AM)
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ORIGINAL: kdsub
Zonie I believe you are wrong to think many, if not all, blacks do not think of themselves as a group opposed to the rest of America.
They act as a culture with ideals and mores different than whites.
Not all of them. I'm not even sure if it's most of them. There may be some slight cultural differences, but I think what you may be referring to might be better described as political factionalism, not culture as such. What you may be seeing here is the result of centuries of political baggage which has had a lasting effect.
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There is nothing wrong with this as long as these ideals promote progress within this cultural community. But in many ways their thinking is holding them back. This fear of authority and lack of interest in education is unwarranted and self defeating. They are not guiding" by example" their children and are passing this defeatist attitude along to the next generation.
Even if this were true, does this mean that it's "their" problem? They are US citizens just as we are, so if we look at it as "our" problem and not "their" problem, that might be a step in the right direction. Although I would agree that in this country, there are those who seemingly have an overly sentimental attachment to "culture" (sometimes "tradition") that it may retard progress and be self-defeating. However, I don't think this is limited to blacks; I think all races have this to some degree.
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They complain about under representation on police departments yet do not apply for the jobs on the forces.
I've seen police officers from every race out there. I also don't know that they're not applying. If there is a disproportional number of whites on the police officers, maybe it just means they're not hiring enough blacks.
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They complain about lack of jobs yet refuse to become employable through education.
The educational system definitely needs improvement from the top down; you'll get no argument from me on this point. But in this day and age, a high school diploma doesn't get one very far. One needs more education than that, although beyond high school, it can get very expensive and beyond the reach of many lower-class families. If tuition and room/board were made more affordable (or subsidized), then I believe there would be positive results overall.
The way we're doing it now, we're leaving millions of underprivileged people with nothing to look forward to and very little to lose. You shouldn't need a slide rule to be able to figure out where such a situation leads.
Apart from cost, the philosophy of education might also need to be changed, or at least updated. Academia is another tradition-laden entity, and their sentimental attachments to tradition may be counterproductive when considering the needs of the whole society.
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They complain about the lack of business in their communities yet refuse to cooperate with law enforcement to solve the crime that drives business away.
Cooperation is a two-way street, though. That's part of what this issue is all about. Law enforcement itself has also had a sullied reputation over the course of our history, so I hope you're not turning the blind eye to that. They've had ties to organized crime, the Ku Klux Klan, railroaders, robber-barons, and so forth. They're seen by many as nothing more than hired muscle for the wealthy and powerful, so I would say that the onus is on law enforcement to prove that they're not that. (And incidents like this one seem to prove just the opposite.)
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They complain about the cop who killed a criminal yet ignore the hundreds of fellow blacks killed by blacks.
I don't think they're ignoring it. The media tend to ignore it, though.
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They complain about being pulled over but refuse to understand why... they are committing the vast majority of crime in relation to their population and therefore a competent police force should be more suspicious of blacks than whites... that does and should mean more pull overs.
Perhaps, although this is hardly the expected attitude of an agency which claims to want cooperation with the local community. As I said, cooperation is a two-way street. How much cooperation can one expect if one is already suspicious of a community and goes in with preconceived notions?
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I could go on and on with more reasons but i would be wasting type... THERE IS NO SYSTEMATIC DISCRIMINATION in America today... there is only blacks failing to secure their communities and their own futures.
Butch
I think that with any given group of people (however you want to group them, whether by race, religion, culture, political affiliations, occupation), there's always going to be good apples and bad apples. I don't recall saying that there is systematic discrimination in America, so I'm not sure why you're so emphatic on that point. I think it's pretty clear that, historically, there was systematic discrimination in America which we've tried to do away with as a society, but there are still remnants, legacies, and lingering consequences. I think we can still move forward and away from that past, but it's obviously going to take some time. As you said, this is not an overnight thing.
A lot of what might happen next depends on the direction America happens to take on some of the larger issues related to the economy and international situation. If America's economy continues to suffer at the lower levels, we'll probably just see more of the same. When people are angry enough about their general situation and on edge already, waiting for an excuse to riot, then we have a problem of deeper proportions. You say that "they" need to fix "their" own communities, but I see this as a nation-wide problem which calls for a national solution.
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