The various handicaps black people endure at the hands of racially bigoted and economically powerful white people, whose attitudes are holdovers from the very recent past. Not necessarily - but the inherent contradictions between inherited wealth and free-market captialism are a serious problem in a country that has excluded a "race" from wealth accumulation for hundreds of years. You can't pretend that the past never happened. The question is what to do. For example, Black people never got their forty acres and a mule, or the various farm subsidies and loans etc of the more recent past. Do you pay them with interest ? Some of these handicapped black farmers are still alive, and of course hundreds of children and grandchlidren can put specific dollar values on benefits denied them, granted to whites.
That is an individual trait and is present across the board. The only other thing i would add is there are a lot of successful black people and a real lot of not successful white people. The main factor is ability and intelligence. Look at Oprah Winfrey. You cannot get more successful than that, it is an incredible story if you think about it.
Are they worse than the handicaps fat people, ugly people or short people face? Everyone has their cross to bear. Government should make sure people are equal before the law, not try to undo every inequality imposed by nature There's no contradiction there. Property rights includes the right to determine what happens to your property when you die. That's all ridiculous. My grandfather came to this country and couldn't even speak English. No one gave him 40 acres or a mule and he did just fine. If government subsidies are the key to success, why do asians (a minority also never given any mules or vast tracts of real estate) do better than whites?
The good news for blacks is that White bigotry has been reduced to the point that Oprah can be highly successful and Perhaps Obama can be president. The bad news for blacks, particularly stereotypically black people is that there is still plenty of bigotry. Hilary Clinton is banking on that bigotry because she has figured out that in order to win the presidency she needs the votes of some marginally racist people who like Obama more than they like her but who are uncomfortable with the more stereotypically black Reverend Wright. It is hard to separate out whether Wright's blackness, his leftness, or his hurtfulness to the idolatryistic form of blind American patriotism is the cause of Wright's usefulness as a means to get people to not vote for Obama.
I was talking to a white guy who owns a moving van and pays his movers in cash under the table. He has some guys he call repeatedly to work when he needs workers. He (and I, I met his workers) presumes they are illegal immigrants but he does not want to know for sure. When he needs additional workers he lets his workers bring a friend. He trusts his workers to only bring other good workers. The moving Van owner (White born and working in the USA) told me he will never again hire anybody of any race who was born in the USA. He says people born in the USA don't appreciate what he is paying (not much but not rock bottom) and will not work hard for him. Meanwhile the ghetto kids who go to high school near me speak ebonics get a bad education and are screwed up by hanging out with each other. This ridiculous stuff about not being disrespected was in part a normal ugly side of adolescence but it is mad worse in people who sometimes treat each other the way white racists in the Jim Crow South and slave owners, and some current day racist cops treated blacks. Some black families have managed better than others to get the bad affects of the American past out of their children's lives. The bad aspects (there are a few positives) of black ghetto culture did not just create themselves out of thin air. In my opinion they are a direct result of past racial abuse internalized and past down in twisted ways within black families and black neighborhoods. When somebody wounds a people not all of the damage just goes away as soon as the the fresh wounds stop being created. Being an immigrant who does not speak English is a better place to start from on the American dream than the starting point of some of the screwed up people in the ghetto. So you say the capable should leave the ghetto and you have no answer for what to do with the incapable other than to throw them in jail after they commit a crime. They capable have left and continue to leave and that makes the ghettos more dysfunctional than they were in the 1940s when blacks were not allowed to live among whites so the capable blacks continued to live next door to the incapable blacks. Where should the semi capable move to, a Mexican neighborhood? They can't afford to move to White neighborhood on their salaries. If they stay at mom's house like the semi capable whites do they are still in the ghetto. The situation is just not as simple as you make it out to be. Now I probably have offended blacks who don't want to think about so many black families as being damaged families and I have offended whites who don't want to think that America still owes an unpaid debt to our blacks. Until American blacks don't do any more crime to blacks than whites do to whites America has not undone the damage that America did to American blacks with slavery and racism. If some immigrant comes to America to take advantage of all that is good about America then they also should become responsible for America's debts. When you buy a company you buy it's assets and it's debts.
It is not present across the boards of the major corporations, funding agencies,etc. Don't forget inherited wealth and class membership (by birth or marriage). Due to the heritage of racism, still strong in at least the older generation that grew up under the Jim Crow residue, inherited wealth and class do not benefit nearly as high a proportion of black people in the US. Meanwhile,inherited handicaps of poverty and class affect a far higher percentage of blacks. The odds are stacked. The main factor for whites may be ability and intelligence - and (just to pick a very visible example) the 50% of the richest and most inherently powerful dozen people in the US who are Sam Walton's heirs may indeed be white only by chance, and owe their (and their spouses, children's, etc) control of the fortunes of others to their extraordinarily superior ability and intelligence, as you claim. But I doubt it. And W may owe his Presidency to his superior ability and intelligence, while his inheritance of class membership and power relationships may have nothing to do with his race and the race of essentially every single one of those US benefactors and friends of family who have been of so much help to him - they may essentially all be white just by chance. But I doubt that as well. Black people with ability and intelligence can, with luck and a lot of work, succeed. White people with ordinary intelligence, serious drug problems, shady religious and commercial associations, spotty official records, indifferent effort, and no demonstrated ability, can be President. There is a difference there. Black people come in short, fat, and ugly versions as well. Additionally, they have melanistic skin, which means they are about one percent as likely to have a rich uncle, or a comfortable family farm upbringing, or a third generation tradition of higher education and legacy admission to a high class University. Where you are much more likely to meet, and marry, a heiress who can finance your political ambitions, among other class advantages not as available to black people. The odds are stacked. That situation is self-perpetuating if allowed to proceed naturally. If you set things up in that feudal manner, sure. Property rights are whatever the government you have established to define and enforce them says they are. But that undermines free market economics, and erodes the benefits of capitalism, of course. And it carries the effects of racism over into succeeding generations.
Really? Well, I guess anyone who would turn a phrase like hurtfulness to the idolatryistic form of blind American patriotism would have trouble understanding the motivations of ordinary, patriotic Americans. Here's a hint for you, it's not the first one. You're right. Many people in the US are soft and lazy. I've always been a hard worker and have never had trouble standing out from the crowd. So look at the bright side, all those lazy SOB's just make it that much easier for the rest of us to get ahead. You displayed an excellent understanding of the problem there. I agree with your diagnosis 100%. But the tough part, the part where we're likely to part ways, is the solution.
