The General American Politics Thread

[shdowhunt60]

On 5/21/2016 at 0:09 AM, Raccoonatic Ogilvie said:

My personal favorite goes to education. A college with an affirmative action program might allow slightly lower test scores for a minority student. Cue arms being thrown up in rage.

Even though things besides test scores determine entry anyway (character being one; you can be a genius and still be a major douchelord. This is one reason letters of recommendation play a role), plus there's the fact a lot of minority individuals will come from a background that isn't conductive to higher test scores to begin with. There's a proven correlation between nutrition and brain development, to say nothing of the poorer quality of schools in the inner cities (though of course not all minority people live in poverty and I won't suggest such as Bernie Sanders implied in one of his biggest faux pases). This is another case of glorious right-wing doublethink: they celebrate college assistance to the poor as a way to break the cycle, but continue to support policies that make sure the poor have far fewer opportunities to succeed in college.

It's no coincidence that college students from poorer backgrounds have a much larger sense of loss than their wealthier peers in the university environment.

Man, I'm just thinking how many brilliant people we've probably missed out on because conservatives won't get behind something as basic as food security.

Because that comes with the assumption that all minorities apparently need this assistance in the first place. Nevermind the condescending racism that you're supporting - that flat out ignores that:

1. You're applying collectivist reasoning to an individual problem: not all students that are in minority groups need to be coddled in order to have the same kind of success a white student has.

2. You're conflating poverty with racial ethnicity, which is stupid. This ignores, for instance, that some racial minorities, such as Asian Americans actually earn as much if not MORE than whites. And hey, it's not like there's no such thing as rich black people or hispanics, right?

What you're advocating creates the situation where an entitled rich black student can go to college, and get assistance that would be denied to a poor white student on the pure basis of race. There is no "doublethink" here, just "newspeak": "black" means "poor" now.

 

[Lover's Game]

13 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Because that comes with the assumption that all minorities apparently need this assistance in the first place. Nevermind the condescending racism that you're supporting - that flat out ignores that:

1. You're applying collectivist reasoning to an individual problem: not all students that are in minority groups need to be coddled in order to have the same kind of success a white student has.

2. You're conflating poverty with racial ethnicity, which is stupid. This ignores, for instance, that some racial minorities, such as Asian Americans actually earn as much if not MORE than whites. And hey, it's not like there's no such thing as rich black people or hispanics, right?

What you're advocating creates the situation where an entitled rich black student can go to college, and get assistance that would be denied to a poor white student on the pure basis of race. There is no "doublethink" here, just "newspeak": "black" means "poor" now.

 

One minority person not needing assistance does not mean it is wrong to provide some general assistance for a racial minority that has concrete statistics pointing to a greater degree of poverty than other minorities on average.   You can't just call other people condesending racists because they just so happen to disagree with you on the "appropriateness" of affirmative action on the off chance that one particularly fortunate minority might feel too entitled.

[shdowhunt60]

3 minutes ago, Lover's Game said:

One minority person not needing assistance does not mean it is wrong to provide some general assistance for a racial minority that has concrete statistics pointing to a greater degree of poverty than other minorities on average.   You can't just call other people racist because they just so happen to disagree with you on the "appropriateness" of affirmative action on the off chance that one particularly fortunate minority might feel too entitled.

Once again, if you're going to help people on the basis of poverty, then I don't know... Fucking help them on the basis of poverty. That's fucking simple. But that's not what it's about, it's about handing certain ethnic groups privileges while denying them to others, on the pure basis of race. How is that not racism?

[Dizcrybe]

Just because situations like the one you described can happen, it doesn't mean they will or at the very least, not hardly often. If anything, it's more likely that that black student getting the assistance would be, if not poor, then poorer than the white student. Are there rich black and Hispanic people? Yes. But that doesn't magically poof away the fact there there are far more of us that live in poverty as you seem to think it does.

I mean, the very idea of it is nonsense. "Not all minorities are poor, so why should we give the ones that aren't a boost?"

[Lover's Game]

8 hours ago, shdowhunt60 said:

 

Because the reasons why minority groups get assistance are more nuanced than simply poverty, involving a large amount of societal and financial issues that minorities have had to face, and those reasons, as far as I know, have not prevented poor white students from getting the assistance they need.  It's kind of like how disabled students getting benefits in class compared to other students such as extra time and tutoring aren't taking anything away from those other students, just getting the assurance needed to keep up in an uneven playing field.

sorry ahead of time, my thoughts are kinda scrambled at the moment

[Nepenthe]

Affirmative action looks at race because race alone is an active variable in the chances of any given person's success in country that continues to support racist practices. But AA doesn't just look at race, nor does it just look at test scores. It looks at your schooling situation, your family's schooling situation, your economic situation, your family's economic situation, your extracurricular activities, your volunteer work, work history, whether or not you're a native on a reservation or a foreign student- a whole host of things that make it impossible for laymen without access to any given university's process to be able to say with any reasonable certainty why any one person got in. So just because someone got a lower test score than another person but still got accepted into the university doesn't mean you can conclude that they "stole" a slot from someone more deserving due to AA, and thus AA is a free ride for minorities. Perhaps the person with the higher test score also happens to be a shittier and lazier individual. Not like this matters in the long run anyway when there's still noted schooling disparities between whites and non-whites in this country and yes, that includes Asians in all of their "model minority" glory (Seriously white people: stop using Asians as a bat to beat other races over the head with, especially since they still experience their own forms of racism. For all that talk about how hard working they are, white people still won't promote them in positions of power as often as they will other white people). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[shdowhunt60]

15 hours ago, Dizcrybe said:

Just because situations like the one you described can happen, it doesn't mean they will or at the very least, not hardly often.

Because, remember kids, racism against white people doesn't matter.

15 hours ago, Dizcrybe said:

If anything, it's more likely that that black student getting the assistance would be, if not poor, then poorer than the white student.

Okay then? I fail to see how this defeats what I'm saying. If you're going to lend assistance to someone on the basis of poverty, then do so on the basis of poverty. That means if a black student comes from a more economically disadvantage background, that he gets more of the assistance that he requires.

15 hours ago, Dizcrybe said:

Are there rich black and Hispanic people? Yes. But that doesn't magically poof away the fact there there are far more of us that live in poverty as you seem to think it does.

Beg your pardon? I'm not the one who's saying that a ethnic group does not have poverty. Because, last I checked, there are twice as many poor white people than there are black people, and at least %40 of the population below the poverty line was still white.

Yes, I agree that poverty plagues ethnic minorities disproportionally more than it does whites, and this is certainly a problem, but it doesn't change that there aren't still a shit ton more poor whites, and that you're proposing to deny them assistance on the basis of their ethnicity.

15 hours ago, Dizcrybe said:

I mean, the very idea of it is nonsense. "Not all minorities are poor, so why should we give the ones that aren't a boost?"

How is objecting to racism nonsense? My rhetoric is simple: lend people assistance based on their economic background rather than their racial one. That sounds pretty damn sane to me. 

15 hours ago, Lover's Game said:

Because the reasons why minority groups get assistance are more nuanced than simply poverty

Then why is it that the initial argument to lend assistance to blacks was on the basis of poverty in the first place? And if the problem is nuanced, then why are we using ridiculously broad strokes here?

15 hours ago, Lover's Game said:

It's kind of like how disabled students getting benefits in class compared to other students such as extra time and tutoring aren't taking anything away from those other students, just getting the assurance needed to keep up in an uneven playing field.

sorry ahead of time, my thoughts are kinda scrambled at the moment

Lending students with disabilities is different from lending them assistance as a racial ethnicity, because disabilities are a more granular and individual issue than ones of ethnicity. Same goes for poverty, poverty is more of an individual problem than a collective one.

[Nepenthe]

Poverty is a collective, systemic problem. The fact that people can escape it doesn't make that any less true no more than Madam C.J. Walker becoming a millionaire in the 1900s meant racism wasn't a systemic problem.

[shdowhunt60]

1 minute ago, Nepenthe said:

Poverty is a collective, systemic problem. The fact that people can escape it doesn't make that any less true no more than Madam C.J. Walker becoming a millionaire in the 1900s meant racism wasn't a systemic problem.

Is it? What rights to white people have that black people do not have in modern day America?

[Nepenthe]

Are you now about to argue that because racism isn't distinctively and overtly codified into American law anymore that systemic racism doesn't exist and act against the benefit of racial minorities? You can see why this is a bad argument, right?

[shdowhunt60]

Just now, Nepenthe said:

Are you now about to argue that because racism isn't distinctively and overtly codified into American law anymore that systemic racism doesn't exist and acts against the benefit of racial minorities? You can see why this is a bad argument, right?

That's not what I am arguing at all. I am arguing that you're barking up the wrong tree. The "system" (what the fuck is this, the 60's?) does not oppress black people. I argue that the issues that plague the black community are largely internal. If it was systemic, then how the fuck do we have a black president that went to Harvard?

[Nepenthe]

You literally are arguing that America as a whole doesn't oppress black people not because a black woman made a fortune during Jim Crow, but instead because we have had a single black President. I guess you must also think that Pakistan is a fucking godsend for women compared to the United States because it had a female President before we did in the form of Benazir Bhutto? Individual exceptions to the rule do not disprove the rule. This is an argument an elementary school child can unpack, good fucking Lord.

[Dizcrybe]

22 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Because, remember kids, racism against white people doesn't matter.

Bruh, please, the most you have to deal with is being trash-talked on social media. Compared to what other races face, I'd say you're getting off easy.

22 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Beg your pardon? I'm not the one who's saying that a ethnic group does not have poverty. Because, last I checked, there are twice as many poor white people than there are black people, and at least %40 of the population below the poverty line was still white.

Yes, I agree that poverty plagues ethnic minorities disproportionally more than it does whites, and this is certainly a problem, but it doesn't change that there aren't still a shit ton more poor whites, and that you're proposing to deny them assistance on the basis of their ethnicity.

A poor white is still more likely to get hired than a poor black person anyway, so if he doesn't get a job while a poor black person does, he'll probably have more luck somewhere else.

22 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

How is objecting to racism nonsense? My rhetoric is simple: lend people assistance based on their economic background rather than their racial one. That sounds pretty damn sane to me.

First of all, It's not racism, as if an employer decides to hire a black guy over a white guy, it's probably not due to a prejudiced notion that the white guy won't work as hard, and second, what I'm objecting to is you objecting to the concept of giving impoverished minorities a leg up because some minorities are well off. Nowhere in either of these posts did I argue that if a poor black guy and a poor white guy are trying to get the same job, it should go to the black guy because there are white people that are wealthy. Why? Because it doesn't work as an argument.

22 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Beg your pardon? I'm not the one who's saying that a ethnic group does not have poverty. Because, last I checked, there are twice as many poor white people than there are black people, and at least %40 of the population below the poverty line was still white.

I'm 90% certain I never even implied that there are no poor white people.

[shdowhunt60]

1 minute ago, Nepenthe said:

You literally are arguing that America as a whole doesn't oppress black people because we have had a single black President.

Yes, I am arguing that the collective United States of America as a whole doesn't oppress black people. How is this fucking hard to understand?

1 minute ago, Nepenthe said:

''I guess you must also think that Pakistan is a a fucking godsend for women compared to the United States because it had a female President before we did in the form of Benazir Bhutto?

Are you seriously equating the horrors and physical mutilation that women are inflicted upon in the Middle East to the modern black woes of teenage pregnancy, gang violence, unemployment, and single motherhood? There's a very distinct difference to what plagues blacks compared to middle eastern women, and I want you to figure it out for yourself.

" This is an argument an elementary school child can unpack, good fucking Lord. "

Given that you've taken to misconstruing what I've said and resorted to hyperbole, this does have some resemblance to an elementary school argument.

[Dizcrybe]

1 minute ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Yes, I am arguing that the collective United States of America as a whole doesn't oppress black people. How is this fucking hard to understand?

If you're the parents of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, or any other young black person killed by police brutality, I imagine it'd be pretty hard to understand.

[shdowhunt60]

7 minutes ago, Dizcrybe said:

Bruh, please, the most you have to deal with is being trash-talked on social media. Compared to what other races face, I'd say you're getting off easy.

And I'd like to keep it at that, thank you.

7 minutes ago, Dizcrybe said:

A poor white is still more likely to get hired than a poor black person anyway, so if he doesn't get a job while a poor black person does, he'll probably have more luck somewhere else.

This is one of the few concessions I'm willing to make. I oppose adding racism to the system to correct it, because that's fucking madness, but employers should be punished if they're favoring certain ethnicities for its own sake.

7 minutes ago, Dizcrybe said:

First of all, It's not racism, as if an employer decides to hire a black guy over a white guy,

Oh fucking here we go, it's "You can't be racist against white people: unemployment edition!"

7 minutes ago, Dizcrybe said:

it's probably not due to a prejudiced notion that the white guy won't work as hard,

Again, I agree that this is bullshit and should be quashed.

7 minutes ago, Dizcrybe said:

and second, what I'm objecting to is you objecting to the concept of giving impoverished minorities a leg up because some minorities are well off.

I'm objecting to the concept of adding systemic privileges.

Think about the long term ramifications to what you're proposing, please. We lend all this assistance to blacks, and make it easier for blacks to succeed than whites. What happens to those privileges when blacks achieve parity with whites? Do they just, I don't know, go away? What happens to them then?

7 minutes ago, Dizcrybe said:

Nowhere in either of these posts did I argue that if a poor black guy and a poor white guy are trying to get the same job, it should go to the black guy because there are white people that are wealthy. Why? Because it doesn't work as an argument.

 

And yet, this is the system that you're proposing to create.

7 minutes ago, Dizcrybe said:

 

I'm 90% certain I never even implied that there are no poor white people.

That's the narrative you conjured up by fixating solely on poor minorities, and deliberately ignoring the existence of poor whites. It's like when I have to ask a Black Lives Matter activist "do only black lives matter?".

[Nepenthe]

23 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Yes, I am arguing that the collective United States of America as a whole doesn't oppress black people. How is this fucking hard to understand?

It's not hard to understand. It's just false to the point of being flabbergasting. And I've demonstrated it's false in a few respects while simultaneously providing a book that will educate you on the rest. You could try disproving this by doing your own research from non-media sources like Fox or Breitbart, or at least reading what I've posted and considering the evidence, but for some reason I think you'll ignore it due to the convenience of running away from these arguments, and then in a few days to a week or so you'll be right back here complaining about how horrid racism is against white people in the United States. Prove me wrong for once. 

Quote

Are you seriously equating the horrors and physical mutilation that women are inflicted upon in the Middle East to the modern black woes of teenage pregnancy, gang violence, unemployment, and single motherhood?

Ignoring your Reagan-esque boogeymen about the "woes" of a community with which you have proven time and time again you know nothing about either intellectually or through experience but seem to have a hell of a lot of opinions about anyway, you cannot complain about disparaging comparisons after arguing that a single black president out of 44 is the smoking gun that racism in America is magically over, particularly when it misses the point of the comparison (as if black people still aren't physically mutilated by cops, but whatever; I guess being paralyzed and having your skin melted off are just like knee scrapes or something). You said that having a black leader meant that the United States isn't racist. So I hold that- if your logic holds true- you must admit that Pakistan isn't sexist, or at least is much less sexist than we are, because it has had a female President before we have. That's because the underlying logic to your argument is that individual demonstrations of surmounting oppression means that all oppression in that area has just magically disappeared into the sky or something.

If you object to the Pakistan example, you can rescind the argument about black people on account of how dumb it is.

5 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

That's the narrative you conjured up by fixating solely on poor minorities, and deliberately ignoring the existence of poor whites. It's like when I have to ask a Black Lives Matter activist "do only black lives matter?".

[shdowhunt60]

16 minutes ago, Dizcrybe said:

Michael Brown

Oh fuck off. Michael Brown strong armed a bunch of cigars from a corner store, and later tried to kill a cop with his own gun.

And I sincerely doubt that Eric Garner was a racism case either, because he was a big fucking guy, who resisted arrest, so a cop did something stupid to try to get him to stop, you know, resisting.

[Nepenthe]

If only Eric Garner remembered he had access to Seikatsu ga Iji Shimasu (Life Sustain) technique, which allows us Negroes to block the normal physiological reactions that occur in otherwise normal human beings when they're being physically threatened and deprived of air, he could have survived the illegal maneuver and been home with his family.

[shdowhunt60]

3 minutes ago, Nepenthe said:

It's not hard to understand. It's just false to the point of being flabbergasting. And I've demonstrated it's false in a few respects while simultaneously providing a book that will educate you on the rest. You could try disproving this by doing your own research from non-media sources like Fox or Breitbart, or at least reading what I've posted and considering the evidence, but for some reason I think you'll ignore it due to the convenience of running away from these arguments, and then in a few days to a week or so you'll be right back here complaining about how horrid racism is against white people in the United States. Prove me wrong for once. 

 

Nice book. I mean, the link doesn't lead anywhere, but hey I'm sure it's as lovely as any of the other pieces of literary indoctrination that have been published throughout human history.

3 minutes ago, Nepenthe said:

Ignoring your Reagan-esque boogeymen about the "woes" of a community with which you have proven time and time again you know nothing about either intellectually or through experience but seem to have a hell of a lot of opinions about anyway, you cannot complain about disparaging comparisons after arguing that a single black president out of 44 is the smoking gun that racism in America is magically over, particularly when it misses the point of the comparison (as if black people still aren't physically mutilated by cops, but whatever; I guess being paralyzed and having your skin melted off are just like knee scrapes or something). You said that having a black leader meant that the United States isn't racist. So I hold that- if your logic holds true- you must admit that Pakistan isn't sexist, or at least is much less sexist than we are, because it has had a female President before we have. That's because the underlying logic to your argument is that individual demonstrations of surmounting oppression means that all oppression in that area has just magically disappeared into the sky or something.

I guess in the world of hyperbole anything goes, amirite?

3 minutes ago, Nepenthe said:

If you object to the Pakistan example, you can rescind the argument about black people on account of how dumb it is.

Hey, nice strawman you got there dude! :^)

[Nepenthe]

So I guess you're out of arguments to support your racism. That's fine, although thanks for telling me the link to the book is broken (Pretty easy dodge, btw- anything that disagrees with my worldview must be brainwashing because I obviously have everything figured out by now). For anyone who cares to be indoctrinated, the magical scroll is called "Racism Without Racists" by demonic scribe Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. You can find PDFs of it online everywhere.

Edited May 23, 2016 by Nepenthe

[shdowhunt60]

2 minutes ago, Nepenthe said:

So I guess you're out of arguments to support your racism.

Funny, when I argue against your racism, it makes me racist. Ta-ta then! :^)

[Kuzu]

15 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Funny, when I argue against your racism, it makes me racist. Ta-ta then! :^)

Is it really racism to acknowledge very real fact that minorities are statistically proven to be more disadvantaged than whites; even if whites are disadvantaged, it still does not change the fact that they statistically still get more opportunities than other qualified individuals.  

[shdowhunt60]

15 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Is it really racism to acknowledge very real fact that minorities are statistically proven to be more disadvantaged than whites; even if whites are disadvantaged, it still does not change the fact that they statistically still get more opportunities than other qualified individuals.  

No, but it is racism to propose racist policies that serve nothing else but to give special rights and privileges to a certain race.

[Dizcrybe]

1 hour ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Oh fuck off. Michael Brown strong armed a bunch of cigars from a corner store, and later tried to kill a cop with his own gun.

I thought we were all in agreement that this is absolute bullcrap

Also, I'm at least trying to argue this like an adult. Could you at least put in the small effort I am?

1 hour ago, shdowhunt60 said:

And I'd like to keep it at that, thank you.

It's going to be kept at that for the foreseeable future. I have to question this fear of white people suddenly being seriously oppressed just because miniorities are being given access to things they previously didn't have just to try level the playing field between them and white people.

1 hour ago, shdowhunt60 said:

This is one of the few concessions I'm willing to make. I oppose adding racism to the system to correct it, because that's fucking madness, but employers should be punished if they're favoring certain ethnicities for its own sake.

I already explained why this is not equivalent to racism. An explanation that, judging by this quote and you quoting my explanation not even two lines later:

1 hour ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Oh fucking here we go, it's "You can't be racist against white people: unemployment edition!"

you seem to be all too willing to ignore.

1 hour ago, shdowhunt60 said:

That's the narrative you conjured up by fixating solely on poor minorities, and deliberately ignoring the existence of poor whites.

More like you just jumped to conclusions because poor whites didn't immediately spring to mind during our back-and-forth.

1 hour ago, shdowhunt60 said:

It's like when I have to ask a Black Lives Matter activist "do only black lives matter?".

As someone else once said, "Black Lives Matter" is saying that "black lives matter too", not "black lives matter only".

On a more general note, it is incredibly saddening how so many people are convinced that BLM is all about "screw Whitey" or that they're a "hate group", just because, what, they're asking to be treated with the same respect that white people are? Come on.