Can democracy last?

Neither of them were white firstly which is who you are harping on. But this perceived power is nothing but ignorant people blaming others for thier own problems they created themselves.

And if you REALLY think there hasn't been, then you aren't looking. Which isn't a surprise.

You seem ready to paint victims where you see fit but no where else.

 

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"Some races have much more power than others"? Well, that might be because we live in a democracy. But just because one race outnumbers another, it doesn't follow that one has more power than the other, nor does it "ampilifies" their faults. What you do, you have done and continue to do, is give a rather lopsided viewpoint. You cannot seriously address racism while being dishonest as you have been.

Perhaps not, but that kind of screws your notion that one race has more power than another. If a black person had persued and shot and killed Zimmerman, the case may have never been widely reported in the media. So it would have been just another shooting of the kind that occurs several times each day across the nation.

 

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So? Zimmerman didn't live between 1650 and 1850, either, which is all the "harping" I've been doing.

btw: Zimmerman was white, until accusations of racial profiling came up. Then he was a "white Hispanic" for a while, until some people pointed out that still made him white and others pointed out that racial profiling doesn't depend on the race of the profiler. Now he's any of three or four classifications, often different from whoever is labeling him - nobody wants the guy.

Under former Louisiana 1/32 law - written, like all such laws in the US, by self-labeled white men - Zimmerman was black.

And so proceeds the creation of "community" by these people - still haven't checked out the Coates book, or any other such source, obviously.

Is that your contention? Are you actually claiming that, about the current US situation?

Are you denying that some US races have more power than others? Are you denying that the faults of the powerful have more influence than the faults of the powerless?

If a grown black man carrying a firearm, at night, in the rain, followed for several blocks by truck and on foot a white teenage boy walking home, confronted him a couple of hundred feet from the boy's back door, and shot him dead in the ensuing fight, my guess is we would have heard the news about his acquittal on "self defense" grounds. But hey - prove me wrong. Find one of those kinds of killing that occur several times each day, and post a link.

 

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Those were your words Iceaura. That was your contention.

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I'm saying it's unimportant and unknowable and probably not true. You have a very simplistic view and naive view of the world. You see the world through your perception of race. Who is black? Most American blacks have some European ancestry in them. So are they black or white? My ancestry is 100% European, but I have cousins who have African ancestry. So what race are they?

The American political system is much more complicated than you seem to be able to appreciate. If whites had more power, Martin Luther King would have never succeeded. When you assert, as you have, that whites are more powerful you diminish the very people you claim to support. Blacks in this country, while only accounting for about 12% of the population have a lot of power. They are not the powerless victims you would paint them to be. The complex nature of American politics favors minorities. That's why the US Senate and Congress are dominated by Republicans. Republicans are a minority part in this country. Republicans only account for at most 30% of the population but they control both houses of Congress.

Well, that is what you want to believe. But that doesn't make it so. I have some first hand experience with this. I worked the streets as an EMT. Black civilians shooting or attacking whites are barely reported in the local press if at all, much less the national press. Race will always be an issue as long as people like you continue to make it an issue. Ironically, people like you perpetuate racism.

 

Iceaura

Again, individuals made the labels, not white men. This is a fact, that you refuse to accept. But it is nonetheless factual. And you are objectively wrong.

Labels are necessary, something I just can't stress enough.

Zimmerman was hispanic, always was. Nothing changed that. It was only in the news because of how easily it is to get a rise out of the black community. If you think there aren't also many cases were the roles are reversed but not in the news you are a fool.

Your opinions are so hypocritical and vastly work against fighting racism. You are just to proud to admit.

 

Here are the words, including my post and your contention in response:

The contention is yours, in your words. You posted that the racial power distribution in the US might be a consequence of the mere fact that we live in a democracy. I think that's blindingly stupid, and requires actively ignoring even the most dramatically obvious circumstances involved as well as a huge body of public analysis and discussion.

If whites did not have more power, Martin Luther King would have had nothing to succeed at. For example, one of his major successes (in the 1960s) was simply forcing the white male power structure in his home region to begin to allow black people to register to vote in peace, like white men have been able to do since before 1800 - a very difficult and still unfinished attempt at beginning to gain a semblance of democratic power for black people in the US.

They have much less power than white men.

But that's not what's being discussed here. You claimed several assaults and acquittals like that of Zimmerman on Martin, only with the races reversed, every day. You can't post even one?

Five million white male individuals, acting collectively and in concert, in the US, between 1650 and 1850. The last addition to the white race I know of was the Catholic Irish, in the years leading to the Civil War.

Unless you have some other collection of individuals, times, and locations, in mind. If so, post them. I have been specific in my claims. The historical record I based them on is available to everyone here.

We agree. They were indeed very significant, perhaps even necessary for their purpose, at the time, and have proven enormously influential ever since. The factor at hand was, has been, and is: necessary for what?

Says who? The newspaper accounts, his public identification until the nature of his actions became clear and in almost all venues of information even since, labeled him "white", modified on CNN and others as "white Hispanic" - which is white, in the US.

During the time at issue - when the races of the US were still a work in progress - Zimmerman would have been labeled black in many regions of the US. By law, enacted (like all such laws) by white men.

My foolishness remains uncontradicted by example - of even one case, let alone the "many" hypothesized (by the same people who think "a small number of individuals" are and have always been in control of the racial divisions in the US).

Is your point still that that the consequences of the racial divisions of the US are not present factors in these matters, and only become involved when "dragged in" by troublemakers?

Is your point that democracy in the US is not threatened by the obstacles to community these racial divisions present?

 

No time to make a long indepth post. Zimmermans origins, make him hispanic lol. Duh. Which was the same from beginning to end of that case.

There are just as many instances of blacks targeting whites, you just don't hear about it, for various reasons.

My point was never that racial divisions haven't hurt us. Just that these labels were equally "forced"on every race, including white. And those labels are necessary. Which is still objectively true.

And that actions of individuals don't represent races. Objectively true still.

And that there are just as many cases of black people attacking white people that you just don't hear about. Also objectively true.

Every point I have made are truths, that any reasonable person with no agenda can see. You just have an agenda, which is painting victims that don't exist.

 

Please, at least attempt to be honest. You are mixing your words with mine and falsely attributing them as is your custom. I wrote much more than write about democracy. I suggest you go back and reread what I previously wrote.

Well, this is where time plays an important role. If you go back more than century, blacks were mostly slaves. So yeah, back then whites were more powerful. But in case you haven't heard, slavery was done away with more than a 150 years ago. The issue is today. And were blacks so feeble and inept and you would have them be, Martin Luther King would have never succeeded. But it did. And the fact is your penchant for victimizing black folks demeans them. They are a powerful voting block. They have very real political power, and no honest person can deny that fact.

Two, whites don't vote as a race. There isn't a unified "white" power block. This may be news to you, but all whites don't think alike just as all blacks don't think alike. The whites of this country fought a war over slavery. You may have heard of it, it's called The Civil War. As previously pointed out to you power in the US is multifaceted. There is no single source of political power.

Who has much less power than white men? As previously and repeatedly pointed out to you, whites are not of a single mind. Your assertion that they are is in and of itself very bigoted. Additionally, how do you know I can't post even one? I said, based on my experiences as an EMT working in a high crime area in a major metropolitan city, I witnessed a number of such incidents. They happen all the time. You want some cases? One of the most brutal rapes I have ever witnessed wasn't mentioned in the press. A young white woman was raped and beaten to death by a young black teenager. A young white boy was riding his moped down a major street when a black man stabbed him in the back and killed him. It never made the press either. I could go on and on. You don't hear about a lot of this stuff because there is too much of it. It happens all the time. It's commonplace. But most violence is within the same racial group.

The point being you have absolutely no evidence that if race were reversed in the Zimmerman case that it would have made a difference. White people are killed all the time, and it goes largely unnoticed by the press. That is a fact. It's just one of the many facts you don't like.

I suggest you go back an reread my previous post. My point is your beliefs and views about racism and politics are naive and overly simplistic. You've got this good-bad model that is overly simplistic and therefore inaccurate. But it suits your need for demagoguery. My point is democracy is threatened by demagogues. And as I said before, you demean every black person when you paint them as perpetual victims. They aren't as evidenced by Martin Luther King and any number of successful black folks. As tough as this is for you there is no single stereotypical white man in this country. Power in the US is multifaceted. Some black men have more political power than me and other less. That is your nightmare.

 

The enforcement was originally, has been for hundreds of years, and still is, by one race, on the others as well as itself.

Yes the labels are and have been forced on all races. But they were and still are not forced by all races.

Agreed, as always. Neither does the collective action of a newly established race represent each of its individuals. So?

His "origins" as described by Wikipedia are 50% German (white), as much as 1/32 African unknown tribe/nation (black), the remainder Peruvian (red and/or brown in unspecified ratio). He looks like a lot of Germans look, especially in sunny climes like Florida - he'd blend in here, for example: http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/content/wls/images/cms/317117_1280x720.jpg

He's still white, in the US, unless he insists on learning and speaking Spanish some day (he apparently speaks little, if any, Spanish) http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...nd-the-messy-nature-of-american-identity.html

(Hispanic is not a race, btw, in the original US classification as established by the Civil War, or on US census forms, or unidentified on the street - Hispanics like Jews and Catholics can be any race in the US classification. Many are black, many are white, many are brown, and a large but often overlooked percentage are red).

And quite irrelevant.

I don't, for sure. I simply point out that despite your claim that there are several every day you haven't posted any, I suspect for very good reason - namely that the racial situation in the US is as I describe it.

And if you did go on and on, you would still have posted nothing relevant. None of you guys have. Why is that?

My suspicion is that you simply don't recognize the racial significance to black people of the Zimmerman/Martin event, for the same reason you never did figure out why so many people saw the Ferguson police killing and official response as institutional racial bigotry in action, and so forth.

And so the community you rightly recognize as important for healthy democracy, isn't going to appear any time soon, in the US. Too many Flints, too many Baltimores, too many Fergusons, and too many people just flat out oblivious.

 

Forced on all races by individuals. I see we are making progress. Good.

The vast majority of these police killings are absolutely justified. Not all, but most. And the ones that aren't justified are not automatically because the officer was racist, which seems to be a common theme these days.

And you are wrong, he is Hispanic. This is another self attesting truth.

Everything I've said is absolutely relevant and makes sense logically. You purposefully refuse to see it.

The race issues we face are mostly because people like you see racism as the default reason for incidents.

Also police departments have open records, if you did even an ounce of actual research instead of getting baited so easily by media you would see we are correct.

 

? No.

You apparently misread all the earlier posts as well.

This is the claim: Imposed on all races (therefore each individual assigned to them) by self-defined US white men collectively (a collection of individuals numbering in the millions), essentially as it is now since about 1850.

That shortens to - more simply, but less detail so you have to read: imposed on all individuals by one (the white) race. The opposite, in a sense, of your attempted paraphrase.

So? "Flint" doesn't even refer to one police killing.

Do you have some kind of point you are trying to make?

I posted my evidence, and arguments - including the obvious fact that even if he were Hispanic, which he isn't, he would still be white. You keep saying I'm wrong, but no evidence, no argument - not even a mention of mine.

People like me don't do that.

We face, among others, the following "race issues"among the modern races as established in the US by self-identified white men between 1650 and 1850 ("assigned"):

the people assigned to the "black" race in the US have failed to accumulate wealth, education, or skills, equivalent to the people assigned to the "white" race over the past century.

the people assigned to the "black" race have been poisoned by lead at significantly higher rates than the people assigned to the "white" race over the past century

the people assigned to the "black" race have been arrested, fined and burdened, and jailed by the US courts in higher proportions for longer times, both absolutely and relative to their criminal behavior over the past century, than the people assigned to the "white" race

the people assigned to the "black" race have been segregated, by law and by rule and by custom, into areas of less desirable and more crowded and more expensive housing, over the past century, than the people assigned to the "white" race.

And so forth.

These race issues you purport to explain as "because" people like me see racism as the default reason for incidents. You need somewhat of an argument, one would think, for that explanation.

 

Had a small leap of absence.

But again you made mention of white men creating labels.

These labels however do objectively serve a good purpose as previously stated. Your attempts to address this argument are flawed at best, this point still stands true.

However, it was individuals, not white men. Your portrayal of that is objectively wrong and I promise I will not stop correcting you on it. Accept that you are wrong and make the correction.

Your "evidence" of zimmermans race is flat wrong, he is not nor was ever white or caucasion. A self attesting truth.

Reread what I have said, in the context that I've said it, and the point I'm making should be evident.

 

That's the historical fact, yes.

They didn't then. The only defensible purpose they serve now is in attempts to repair the damage they caused then and have caused ever since.

So which of the several items of evidence I posted was in error? His father was not white? His mother was not mixed race black and red? He spoke Spanish or immigrated from somewhere people did? He was not accepted in white society - including the local police department - as a white man? He doesn't look like those pictures of German white men I linked?

Be specific - where did I post something wrong?

Ok. About five million individuals, all of them white and male, self-identified as a "race", acting over a time period of about 200 years - 1650 to 1850 or so - in what is now the US. Nobody else had any say.

Is that the correction you wanted? You wanted me to acknowledge that white men are all individual human beings? Done. Four times now.

Nothing changes the history of the racial division in the US. It is what it is, and has been since decade leading up to the Civil War.

 

The historical fact is individuals made the labels.

That's where this entire argument started.
You are portraying it wrong. Individuals do not represent entire races and that is exactly how you portray it.

5 million individuals did not create the labels, that is historically wrong, you are attempting to rewrite history.

You are objectively wrong.

And this is still a complete non issue, as labels are needed. I already explained why, and your arguments against are way lacking.

And no, the correction I want is to stop portraying white men as villains, which like it or not, is exactly what you are doing when you portray your opinions in the way you do. It's almost as if you want to increase racial divisions. I don't say "black people sold thier own as slaves" because there is a lot of baggage, intended or not, that comes with that statement.

I also would love complete non issues like this to stop being clung to. Of all the real world issues, we are arguing about these labels of black, white, asain, hispanic, etc....sooooo ignorant and a waste of time.

Racial divisions have been an issue, but thinking that these labels are in any way linked to that is complete ignorance. There are much bigger reasons why, reasons that don't serve practical purposes such as these labels. I'm still so mind blown how you even thought it reasonable to start this.

 

Individuals I have identified, during a time and in a place I also identified. You keep posting as if you disagreed with my identification - ok, what's yours? Who, when, and where were these individuals, if they are different from the ones I claim?

I'm trying to rub your nose in a plain and overwhelmingly documented fact.

Not unless you need races - why would anyone need to invent a race?

We know why, of course, but go ahead and try to answer that on your own. To research the matter, look into why and when these "individuals" of yours invented the white race.

If you want to interpret the plain facts of history as "white men are villains", that's your business. You have plenty of company - there was a school of thought in the US Black Power movement that drew the extreme conclusion that white men were the Devil - seriously, the capital D Devil, Shaitan as described in the Quran.

Since then, wiser or maybe just more sophisticated black thinkers have pointed out that accepting the existence of "white men" in the first place was victimhood - falling prey and incurring damage, allowing one's thinking to be crippled by a label that reinforced the confusion of a biologically non-existent category. So your modern black intellectual tends more toward the "victim of mass delusion" description. Coates - in that book I pointed you toward, which you have not read - calls them the "Dreamers". The People Who Think They Are White.

The reason I wouldn't say it is because it is physically, factually, wrong, and would reveal me to be a deluded racial bigot, which would be embarrassing in my case. I should know better.

There is no such thing as "their own", racially, outside of some culture like the US where the necessary racial divisions have been made and enforced by some dominant sociological group. It's as if you talked about white people selling "their own" as slaves when the Romans sold the Celts they captured, or Cromwell sold the Irish he captured, or the northern Africans we call Moroccans now sold the northern Africans we call Kenyans now, or the Vikings sold the British and European women they captured. When the Mongols sold the Han they captured, was that selling "their own"? Aside from selling their children, is anyone selling a slave ever selling "their own"? It probably happens, but it's an ugly thought.

 

You lump the individuals in with an entire race, which is something you claim shouldn't exist. Oh the irony.

And black people did sell other black people as slaves, they even caught them, they were effectively slavers in many cases. You should brush up on your history. This is factually true. And again you are objectively wrong.

And we did not invent races, races have always been there. We just gave a name to them. This is not wrong, it absolutely serves a good purpose. Once again you fail to comprehend even such obvious facts. Well, obvious to those whom are reasonable.

You are full of such hypocrisy, and you don't even know it lol. You ARE a racial bigot.

 

I didn't do that. White men did that, in the US, between 1650 and 1850.

People labeled "black" in the current US system of race classification sold people also labeled "black" in the current US system of race classification into slavery.

That still happens, btw, in parts of Africa and southern India and - rumor hath it - in pockets of South America and Polynesia , here and there.

But you posted this:

In that post you assumed - simply took for granted - that your labeling two people with nothing much in common both "black" somehow put them into a category together - that one selling the other as a slave could be described as selling "one of their own", if it weren't for the baggage. Where did you get that silly and offensive presumption?

Nonsense. This is a science forum. Aside from the labeling criteria and process established by white men in the US between 1650 and 1850 and still part of the social structure of the US, the races as they labeled them have never existed.

You might as well claim that the castes in India have always existed, and the individuals who make up the society involved just gave a name to them.

btw: Who, exactly, are you talking about when you say "we"? Who was this "we" who "just gave a name to them"?

The purpose it originally served was the justification and bureaucratic enablement of plantation slavery in the Americas, followed by the justification and bureaucratic enablement of Jim Crow laws and racial oppression generally. That was not so good, eh?

The only good purpose racial designation has ever served is rehabilitation and amelioration of the damage done by racial designation in the first place.

And whether that rehabilitation will be enough to keep US democracy healthy, or even operating, indefinitely into the future remains to be seen. We've had a good run, but so far that's been largely by way of keeping some of the racially labeled individuals out of the voting booth and otherwise away from the power they would need for redress of grievances on their own. Sooner or later that's going to stop working.

 

Once again, white men did not create the labels, individuals did. This is objectively fact you cannot seem to comprehend. To say white men did something implies that entire race did it. You are still wrong.

Labels also have a practical use. Still haven't provided a shred of good evidence to deny that.

When I stated why I don't say that blacks sell thier own as slaves, it's because baggage comes with a statement of lumping an entire group into the actions of some. This is reality. And it's because of that baggage that saying that is offensive. I made a point you seem to miss, but it happened nontheless.

We don't keep different races out of the voting booth, where do you come up with this stuff?

Racial divisions come from alot, but labeling is not an issue.

I've shown you to be objectively wrong on more than one instance here that you just refuse to come to terms with but before this is over, I'm sure you will come to terms with it.

I'm here for you.

 

I didn't "imply" anything. I flat out stated that a subset of what "we" now label "white men" did that - the few million of them who lived in the US between 1650 and 1850. Nobody else had any say.

I never denied that. I agreed with it. I emphasized it. I repeatedly referred to specific examples of it. I described a few. And I asked you to consider what those practical uses were, in the first place, and what they are now.

Of course "we" - white men - did exactly that, for centuries, and still do it in various ways. By law, by custom, by terrorism, by manipulation, in all kinds of ways. For recent examples old enough to have the evidence sorted out, check out the purging of the voter registration rolls in Florida in 2000, or the current attempts to require "voter ID".

The reality is that white men in the US invented the "group" in the first place. It has no other reality. The problem is not that you would be unfairly maligning a group, the problem is that you assume there is a group to malign - which means you haven't considered why the "group" was invented, and on what basis.

You don't get to claim it's not an issue, any more. The people who got labeled against their will and against their interests have decided that it was and is an issue. Refer to the Coates book you still have not read - it's short, well written, easy read.

And there is probably no more immediate threat to democracy in the US. If you are worried about the survival of democracy in the US, the revolt of the racially labeled against the consequences they suffered and are suffering is an issue you cannot avoid by denying.