Required viewing for anyone getting ready to offer their insight into such things!
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Obviously, its supposed to be satire.
But personally, I feel that there should be more attention paid to why some people feel that it's acceptable to riot after surfing competitions, or hockey games, or soccer games. So that aspect kinda falls flat.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
I want to know why some people think rioting and looting are ever OK.
Oh, nobody paid attention to you before you started breaking and stealing innocent people's things? You should try blowing yourself up instead, it's done wonders for other people's causes facing the same lack of interest!
Posted by GaalDornick (Member # 8880) on :
quote: I want to know why some people think rioting and looting are ever OK.
I don't think there are people who rationally think rioting and looting are ever OK.
I'd bet deep down the people who engage in those things know they're doing it for their own benefit and not for a social cause.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I opine that if you're going to use violence to protest police corruption, a riot is spectacularly inefficient. Get together five hundred men with guns, ideally rifles, and storm the police station. Shoot everyone you can get your hands on. Seize whatever weapons they have, free anyone in a holding cell, trash the paperwork and computers, torch the place. Leave before the National Guard arrives. That's the way to get your point across using violence.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
I think the point here is that in any given population of young men there will be a handful that engage in dangerous, irresponsible, or violent behavior, and that trying to establish some correlation between their said destructive behavior and their racial or cultural group so you can pompously and self-righteously criticize "black culture", rather than, you know, acknowledging that This Is Something Humans Do is pretty profoundly disingenuous and stupid.
It doesn't mean they're trying to say it's OK to riot and loot. It's a critique on some of the absurdly racist reporting on the issue.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I opine that if you're going to use violence to protest police corruption, a riot is spectacularly inefficient. Get together five hundred men with guns, ideally rifles, and storm the police station. Shoot everyone you can get your hands on. Seize whatever weapons they have, free anyone in a holding cell, trash the paperwork and computers, torch the place. Leave before the National Guard arrives. That's the way to get your point across using violence.
lol
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
It's sad that a small minority engaging in violence and looting are used by some to attempt to discredit the legitimacy of the protests. In fact, there wouldn't be cover for those actions if there weren't a large majority who are there for other reasons. The legitimate issue that gets masses of people onto the streets seems to be a prerequisite for the bad actions of a few opportunists.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Obviously, its supposed to be satire.
But personally, I feel that there should be more attention paid to why some people feel that it's acceptable to riot after surfing competitions, or hockey games, or soccer games.
So that aspect kinda falls flat.
Do you expect that there might be some general moral differences worth considering between
- a community engaging in a riot because of a sports win
versus
- a community engaging in a riot because of extraordinary events of police brutality against them, protected by its own systemic corruption?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
The former is more problematic, which as I reiterate seems to be a flaw in the piece. We're more convinced that white culture (whether it be the old white boys club in Wall Street as represented by Steve Cohen or rioting sports fans) needs a closer look than that black culture deserves a pass. If they had picked a less convincing example, then we might be more inclined to reject both criticisms to be consistent. But because it *is* convincing, we're more inclined to throw the white community under the bus which seems contrary to the intent of the piece I would have thought.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I opine that if you're going to use violence to protest police corruption, a riot is spectacularly inefficient. Get together five hundred men with guns, ideally rifles, and storm the police station. Shoot everyone you can get your hands on. Seize whatever weapons they have, free anyone in a holding cell, trash the paperwork and computers, torch the place. Leave before the National Guard arrives. That's the way to get your point across using violence.
Worked in Kiev, to be fair.
Posted by Risuena (Member # 2924) on :
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: I want to know why some people think rioting and looting are ever OK.
quote: It's not that Stewart is completely for the riots that erupted Monday after the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died on April 19 after suffering a spinal injury while in police custody. But his personal experiences with the police and general hopelessness about the way people like he and Gray — who he says was a neighborhood acquaintance — are treated won't let him be too strongly against them, either.
"At the end of the day I don't condone them setting stores on fire," he said from his perch just blocks from where Gray lived, in the city's Gilmor Homes (locals call it "Gilmor Projects") public housing development, on a dark street with faded multicolored rowhouses. "But it got the point across. Do I condone what they did? Hell no. Am I okay with it? Yes, I am. Because at the end of the day, you mean to tell me it takes 3,000 people to go all around one town for the mayor and the president to say something about what goes on in Baltimore? It should have been happening for years."
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
I think the people who are being violent are making a mistake, obviously. But it's unreasonable to expect people to act in accordance with the greater good when they've been so badly provoked. Not that it wouldn't be better if they made better decisions, but you can't blame them.
That's sort of how I feel about the way Palestinians handle their conflict with Israel a lot of the time, as well.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:The money paid out by the city to cover for the brutal acts of its police department would be enough to build "a state-of-the-art rec center or renovations at more than 30 playgrounds." Instead, the money was used to cover for the brutal acts of the city's police department and ensure they remained well beyond any semblance of justice.
Now, tonight, I turn on the news and I see politicians calling for young people in Baltimore to remain peaceful and "nonviolent." These well-intended pleas strike me as the right answer to the wrong question.
quote:When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is "correct" or "wise," any more than a forest fire can be "correct" or "wise." Wisdom isn't the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
How many of us were paying attention to the situation in Baltimore (and many other cities) before the riots? How often did the week of peaceful protests lead the national news? These people are invisible to most of us until stuff gets set on fire.
quote: Urban riots must now be recognized as durable social phenomena. They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood. Urban riots are a special form of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the white community. They are a distorted form of social protest. The looting which is their principal feature serves many functions. It enables the most enraged and deprived Negro to take hold of consumer goods with the ease the white man does by using his purse. Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights. There are thus elements of emotional catharsis in the violent act. This may explain why most cities in which riots have occurred have not had a repetition, even though the causative conditions remain. It is also noteworthy that the amount of physical harm done to white people other than police is infinitesimal and in Detroit whites and Negroes looted in unity.
A profound judgment of today's riots was expressed by Victor Hugo a century ago. He said, 'If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.'
The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society. - Martin Luther King Jr.
That being said, there is evidence that the blame for the escalation from peaceful protest to riot can be laid at more than one doorstep.
quote:The money paid out by the city to cover for the brutal acts of its police department would be enough to build "a state-of-the-art rec center or renovations at more than 30 playgrounds." Instead, the money was used to cover for the brutal acts of the city's police department and ensure they remained well beyond any semblance of justice.
Now, tonight, I turn on the news and I see politicians calling for young people in Baltimore to remain peaceful and "nonviolent." These well-intended pleas strike me as the right answer to the wrong question.
To add to this, I was watching local Baltimore coverage of the violence on Monday night. At one point, a teenager was interviewed near one of the fires and he basically said, "They took away our schools and rec centers"
quote: Economically, Gray’s neighborhood and the adjacent Harlem Park were found to be a disaster zone, with an unemployment rate of one in five (nearly double that of Baltimore as a whole), almost a third of families living in poverty, and more than half of all households earning less than $25,000 a year. Abandoned lots and unsound housing conditions were exceedingly common, with almost a quarter of all the neighborhood’s buildings standing vacant (compared with 5 percent of buildings across all of Baltimore) and the rate of lead paint violations almost four times as high as it was citywide. (According to a lawsuit filed by the Gray family against their landlord, Gray and his two sisters were all found to have “damaging lead levels in their blood.”)
Those underlying conditions are bad enough, obviously. But the Health Department report doesn’t get truly shocking until you read about what actually happens in Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park. For starters, look at the juvenile arrest rate: Citywide, Baltimore saw 145.1 kids out of every thousand arrested between 2005 and 2009; in Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park, that number was 252.3. As the Baltimore Sun pointed out in an op-ed, that means a quarter of all 10-to-17-year-olds in Gray’s neighborhood were arrested at some point during the time period in question. (A separate study, published this past February, found that Sandtown-Winchester had sent more of its people to state prison than any other census tract in Maryland.)
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
People keep posting Freddie Gray's "rap sheet" to show how he, apparently, deserved what was done to him. (As if a list of petty possession charges should warrant paralyzation and death.) Not, mind you, his record of convictions, but his arrest record. To me, it shows police harassment rather than a bad kid. With the history of "rough rides" given by the Baltimore police, it is no wonder the kid ran.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
The rough rides under O'malley were extremely conspicuously brutal and inexcusable for years. The dude was essentially practicing a version of Broken Windows Theory on steroids. In specific parts of Baltimore (aka, "the black parts") being a black male absolutely guaranteed most of you weekly or even daily harassment by police. Most of us, not having grown to accept the idea as commonplace and not having been taught by experience that it was beyond our power to escape, would not have ever been able to live with it.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: I think the people who are being violent are making a mistake, obviously. But it's unreasonable to expect people to act in accordance with the greater good when they've been so badly provoked.
No see that's precisely it. It's precisely when the greater good is so difficult to steer towards that we dig in even deeper. What value does good have if we only have to stick to it when it's priced low?
I feel like we already learned this lesson with the Boston Massacre. It didn't matter how passionately you hated the British presence in America. Assaulting sentries at their posts warranted a deadly response. If you wanted to raise any army to kick them out, fine.
If you want the resist police brutality, fine. If you want to set yourself on fire so people pay attention, fine. If you want to destroy and steal people's property to raise awareness, piss off, you don't get to force me or any other innocent to become part of your statement.
Besides your statement is no longer just, "The police are oppressive." It then becomes "The police are oppressive, and so am I."
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
No, I think it becomes more "The police are oppressive, but look that handful of people the police are repressing are acting not completely peacefully to this repression! This must now be more about what the black community is failing to do to police itself"
or really, to tie it back to the original post ... the sentiment of the satirical video, squared.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:I'm in little position to pass judgment on the behavior of people so beaten down that they have little hope. I'm certainly not in a position to offer the tired white liberal tripe, asking black folks in places like Baltimore to sit quietly and trust the system, waiting for me and those like me to rescue them through legitimate democratic means. While rioting, looting, and lighting stuff on fire is certainly not a productive way to achieve equality and real civil rights, I won't lie to these people and tell them that by doing so, they're undermining progress that might have been made through legitimate protesting.
That's because I understand the unfortunate reality that powers this kind of destructive protesting. That is - these people are aware in a way I can never be aware, that whether they choose to jump on cars, sing Civil Rights hymns, hold signs, or stage peaceful letter writing campaigns to their local congressperson, the situation is going to stay mostly the same.
Why do you see destructive rioting and looting? It's not because people think it's the best way to get things done. It's because the people have finally come to realize that no matter what they do, nothing gets done. No matter how loud they scream, the system still crushes them under its weighty wheels.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
There's no question in my mind that institutional racism is terrible, and it must stop. That the police have a huge problem with it. That the justice system has a huge problem with it. That even I have problems with it.
We should pay more attention to the people protesting peacefully. But if we can't agree on something easy like, "Looting is awful, and shouldn't happen."
How can we possibly deal with something like racism which is often an invisibly committed?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Honestly, you would rather oppressed people burned themselves to death than inflicted property damage? "I'm sorry you are being oppressed but if you want me to pay attention you must commit suicide in an excruciating way."
I may be being presumptuous, but I think I know you well enough to believe you don't really think that.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: There's no question in my mind that institutional racism is terrible, and it must stop. That the police have a huge problem with it. That the justice system has a huge problem with it. That even I have problems with it.
We should pay more attention to the people protesting peacefully. But if we can't agree on something easy like, "Looting is awful, and shouldn't happen."
How can we possibly deal with something like racism which is often an invisibly committed?
My issue with your remarks isn't your stance on rioting, which is stupid, self destructive, and distracting from the issues that caused it in the first place, in the case of most riots. My criticism of your remarks has to do with the indignant, shocked disapproval I am reading in your tone, perhaps too much.
Step on a community long enough, give them a few big, hateful punctuation marks such as brutal police deaths or maiming, and eventually rioting will happen unless that downtrodden population is so effectively tyrannized that they never get the chance. There is also the problem of a week of nonviolent protest not working, which really helps crank the dial up a few more degrees.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Honestly, you would rather oppressed people burned themselves to death than inflicted property damage? "I'm sorry you are being oppressed but if you want me to pay attention you must commit suicide in an excruciating way."
I may be being presumptuous, but I think I know you well enough to believe you don't really think that.
I would rather people not victimize the innocent to serve their own aims however righteous they may be.
Buddhists, and even the Falun Gong have self-immolated and it seems to get people's attention. I don't want anybody to kill themselves, but I respect that sort of action *far* more than committing violence against the innocent.
Posted by Risuena (Member # 2924) on :
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: We should pay more attention to the people protesting peacefully. But if we can't agree on something easy like, "Looting is awful, and shouldn't happen."
How can we possibly deal with something like racism which is often an invisibly committed?
That's the thing - we haven't been paying attention. In the case of Baltimore, these neighborhoods were destroyed in 1968 and never rebuilt. Nearly 50 years later, the residents of the neighborhoods have gotten tired of being ignored, being harrased, being brutalized. Can you blame them for rioting under those circumstances, especially when it's the first time anyone's paid attention during most of their lifetimes?
I have friends who have lived in Baltimore all their lives and have never even heard of the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, that's how forgotten and ignored these people are.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: There's no question in my mind that institutional racism is terrible, and it must stop. That the police have a huge problem with it. That the justice system has a huge problem with it. That even I have problems with it.
We should pay more attention to the people protesting peacefully. But if we can't agree on something easy like, "Looting is awful, and shouldn't happen."
How can we possibly deal with something like racism which is often an invisibly committed?
My issue with your remarks isn't your stance on rioting, which is stupid, self destructive, and distracting from the issues that caused it in the first place, in the case of most riots. My criticism of your remarks has to do with the indignant, shocked disapproval I am reading in your tone, perhaps too much.
Step on a community long enough, give them a few big, hateful punctuation marks such as brutal police deaths or maiming, and eventually rioting will happen unless that downtrodden population is so effectively tyrannized that they never get the chance. There is also the problem of a week of nonviolent protest not working, which really helps crank the dial up a few more degrees.
An action being understandable does not remove our obligation to respond to it correctly. I understand why my kid tried to smash in my car window because he woke up prematurely and was super tired/grumpy, but he's still getting punished for attempting it.
When the police commit acts of violence it's all about how scared they are and that people try to kill them. Is it OK then? So why is this OK now?
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:When the police commit acts of violence it's all about how scared they are and that people try to kill them.
No, that's not why they toss people around in the backs of vans.
quote:An action being understandable does not remove our obligation to respond to it correctly.
It does change what the correct response is, sometimes. If you poke a dog until it bites you, it's probably not a good candidate for putting down. The correct response is to stop poking it.
A crucial part of the correct response to the riots in Baltimore is to provide meaningful redress for the oppression some of them have endured. Until movement is made in that direction, tut-tutting isn't going to help.
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I opine that if you're going to use violence to protest police corruption, a riot is spectacularly inefficient. Get together five hundred men with guns, ideally rifles, and storm the police station. Shoot everyone you can get your hands on. Seize whatever weapons they have, free anyone in a holding cell, trash the paperwork and computers, torch the place. Leave before the National Guard arrives. That's the way to get your point across using violence.
Actually the Black Panthers in California did the the more ideal version of protesting police brutality and systemic injustice, by doing what white people were doing and armed themselves with assault rifles while calmly observing police interactions with members of the black community in order to deter brutality.
It worked too well because the NRA and Gov. Ronald Reagon banned public carry of fire arms.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
That your first comparison was to go to a misbehaving child with yourself as the stern, correcting parent here...well. It's not a damming comparison or anything, but it's a bit problematic.
The statement about police brutality *is* very problematic. I disagree strongly that police brutality such as happens in Baltimore is because police fear for their lives. One of the most incendiary cases documented in the Baltimore Sun report involves a grandmother, 84 or 94? Well past 70 at least, who came away from cops with a broken arm.
They ain't scared of a literal little old lady, BB.
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
Even "peaceful protesting" like blocking traffic is met with violent police reprisals, there's not much communities can do but might as well go the whole way because the response is the same.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
A dog biting a person who pokes it is not doing anything wrong. It's not the same thing. A dog that has been poked over and over and so now tries to attack all people is what we are talking about.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
Rakeesh:
quote:That your first comparison was to go to a misbehaving child with yourself as the stern, correcting parent here...well. It's not a damming comparison or anything, but it's a bit problematic.
I so knew somebody was going to go there. I already made the comparison to the Boston Massacre, nobody said anything there.
quote:The statement about police brutality *is* very problematic. I disagree strongly that police brutality such as happens in Baltimore is because police fear for their lives. One of the most incendiary cases documented in the Baltimore Sun report involves a grandmother, 84 or 94? Well past 70 at least, who came away from cops with a broken arm.
They ain't scared of a literal little old lady, BB.
You are misunderstanding me. I don't buy it from the police, why should I buy it from civilians burning a store down?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: We should pay more attention to the people protesting peacefully.
And then when the country doesn't?
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: We should pay more attention to the people protesting peacefully.
And then when the country doesn't?
There are precedents for it.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
BB, don't have time now but your point about referring to one comparison and not the other is fair. Wanted to say that before I forgot.
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Honestly, you would rather oppressed people burned themselves to death than inflicted property damage? "I'm sorry you are being oppressed but if you want me to pay attention you must commit suicide in an excruciating way."
I may be being presumptuous, but I think I know you well enough to believe you don't really think that.
I don't recommend self-immolation by any means but I have two issues with the rioting. The first being that I assume the people whose property is getting damaged are more likely to be victims of brutality and citizens of the bad neighborhoods versus the cops and public officials who looked the other way. I also doubt they were insured
The second, is that many of the people who are not inclined to side with the people rioting in the first place are now well aware that there are riots in Baltimore. They do not know why people are rioting, or about the rough rides programs or the settlements mentioned in the Atlantic article. There's a lot of talk about how it's everyone's job to educate themselves on these issues, but that's not what actually happens.
I pretty openly side with the protestors, but when I think about what is happening as an "uprising," I'm much more sympathetic towards it then when thinking about it as a "riot".
I think it's probably both - there are certainly people who are just there to cause trouble, commit violence, etc. But I'm sure there are awful lot of people who view this as an uprising and are out there to exert their rights.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:In the Sandtown neighborhood, many Asian-owned businesses were targeted for destruction. NPR's Nurith Aizenman visited a street close to the scene of Freddie Gray's arrest where Asian shop owners are assessing the damage.
While it can make sense to some white people to advocate violence and sacrifices by Asian Americans in order to convince a different group of white people of a political message, it should not be forgotten that real people get screwed. If this unfolds anything like with the LA riots, many of these explicitly targeted Asian American businesses will never re-open and people will lose their livelihoods.
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
^^ That was one of the points I was trying to making about why the rioting was bad.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
Police officers are being charged with murder and manslaughter.
I must admit that there is a very good chance these charges wouldn't have been filed if people hadn't been out in the streets.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus:
quote:In the Sandtown neighborhood, many Asian-owned businesses were targeted for destruction. NPR's Nurith Aizenman visited a street close to the scene of Freddie Gray's arrest where Asian shop owners are assessing the damage.
While it can make sense to some white people to advocate violence and sacrifices by Asian Americans in order to convince a different group of white people of a political message, it should not be forgotten that real people get screwed. If this unfolds anything like with the LA riots, many of these explicitly targeted Asian American businesses will never re-open and people will lose their livelihoods.
I heard that story. The audio of her being interviewed was awful:( if I'm thinking of the same one, she was taunted by someone for having been looted.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: Police officers are being charged with murder and manslaughter.
I must admit that there is a very good chance these charges wouldn't have been filed if people hadn't been out in the streets.
Yeah the situation as it has played out has been a near perfect backdrop for that prosecutor's magnum force opener there.
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
quote: About a year ago, I published “The Case for Reparations,” which I thought in many ways was incomplete. It was about housing and how wealth is built in this country and why certain people have wealth and certain other people do not have wealth, and the manifold implications of that, and the roots of that, through slavery, through Jim Crow, indeed through federal, state, and local policy.
The buzzword in that piece was “plunder.” If you want to understand the relationship between African Americans and the country that they inhabit, you must understand that one of the central features of that relationship is plunder—the taking from black people in order to empower other people. Obviously, enslavement, which lasted in this country for 250 years—the period of enslavement in this country is much longer than the period of freedom for black people—is the ultimate plunder. It is nothing but plunder; it is a total of your body, of your family, of your labor, of your everything—of your very essence.
And that plunder enriched this country such that in 1860, at the time of Civil War, the enslaved black population in this country—one-third of which constituted the amount of people living in the South—was worth something on the order of $3 billion, more than all the combined capacity of the nation. All the assets, all the banks, all the railroads, all the nascent factories and businesses in this country put together, were worth less than enslaved black people in this country. So plunder is not incidental to who we are; plunder is not incidental to what America is.
When you think about the period of Jim Crow and the stripping of black people’s right to vote, this is not the mere stripping of some sort of civic ceremony. It’s the stripping of your ability to have any sort of say in how your tax dollars are used. It’s this constant stripping, this taking away of rights that allowed us to enter into a situation that I talk about in “The Case for Reparations,” where—within the 20th century—you have programs being passed by which white families can accumulate masses of wealth through housing. The main group of people who are cut out of that are black people.
That’s federal policy. It’s not just a matter of private evil individuals. We get this picture of these white racists walking around with horns, you know, who use the “n-word” all the time, and I guess look like Cliven Bundy. That’s what we’re looking for, for a bunch of Cliven Bundys. But Cliven Bundy has never really been the threat; it’s the policy that’s the threat. And many of those people, are people who look like you and me—or maybe not quite like me—but who are like me in terms of they’re human beings. They’re mothers and fathers—good people, nice to their neighbors, but these are people who are responsible for policies in our country that leave us where we are.
Now, the reason why I say that piece was incomplete was because there is a methodology, a tool that has been used to make sure that black people are available for plunder. And a major tool in making that process happen has been the criminal justice system. It’s very, very important to understand. I read the governor in the New York Times today and he was saying in the paper that—you know, because it’s going to be a big day tomorrow—he was saying “violence will not be tolerated.” And I thought about that as a young man who’s from West Baltimore and grew up in West Baltimore and I thought about how violence was tolerated for all of my life here in West Baltimore.
When I was going to school, I thought about every little article that I wore when I walked out the house. I thought about who I was walking with. I thought about how many of them there were. I thought about what neighborhoods they were from. I thought about which route I was going to take to school. Once I got to school I thought about what I was going to do during the lunch hour—was I actually going to have lunch or was I going to go sit in the library. When school was dismissed I thought about what time I was going to leave school. I thought about whether I should stay after-school for class. I thought about whether I should take the bus up to my grandmother’s house. I thought about which way I should go home if I was going to go home. Every one of those choices was about the avoidance of violence, about the protection of my body. And so I don’t want to come off as if I’m sympathizing or saying that it is necessarily okay, to inflict violence just out of anger, no matter how legitimate that anger is.
But I have a problem when you begin the clock with the violence on Tuesday. Because the fact of the matter is that the lives of black people in this city, the lives of black people in this country have been violent for a long time. Violence is how enslavement actually happened. People will think of enslavement as like a summer camp, where you just have to work, where you just go and someone gives you food and lodging, but enslavement is violence, it is torture. Torture is how it was made possible. You can’t imagine enslavement without stripping away people’s kids and putting them up for sale. And the way you did that was, you threatened people with violence. Jim Crow was enforced through violence. That was the way things that got done. You didn’t politely ask somebody not to show up and vote. You stood in front of voting booths with guns, that’s what you did. And the state backed this; it was state-backed violence.
Violence is not even in our past. Violence continues today. I was reading a stat that the neighborhood where the “riots” popped-off earlier this week is in fact the most incarcerated portion of the state of Maryland. And this is not surprising. We live in a country where the incarceration rate is 750 per 100,000. Our nearest competitor is allegedly undemocratic Russia at 400 or 500 per 100,000. China has roughly a billion more people than America; America incarcerates 800,000 more people than China. And as bad as that national incarceration rate is, the incarceration rate for black men is somewhere around 4,000 per 100,000. So if you think the incarceration rate for America is bad, for black America it’s somewhere where there is no real historical parallel.
And incarceration is, even in and of itself, a kind of euphemism, a very nice word, for what actually happens when they cart you off and take you to jail for long periods of time. Jails are violent. To survive, you use violence. To be incarcerated in this country is to be subjected to the possibility of sexual assault, is to be subjected to possibility of violence from fellow inmates, to be subjected to violence from guards. And the saddest part of this is that this mirrors the kind of violence that I saw in my neighborhood as a young man in West Baltimore.
There’s a phrase I’ve been thinking about a lot recently by the great Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn has this great, great quote that I think about all the time: He says in his book The Gulag Archipelago, “Wherever the law is, crime can be found.” And I love this quote—it’s a beautifully written sentence—because it hints at, though it does not say, the human agency in law and what we call people. And so, certain things are violence, and certain things are not. Certain things are the acts committed by thugs, and certain things are the acts committed by the law. And in terms of rendering black people illegitimate, in terms of putting black people in certain boxes where things can be done to them, the vocabulary is very, very important—the law is very, very important—in terms of where we draw the line.
My words, particularly here at Johns Hopkins, and since I’m here at Johns Hopkins—and I’m not out in West Baltimore and I’m not on North Avenue and I’m not at Mondawmin Mall—my words for Johns Hopkins is that you are enrolled in this. You are part of this. You are a great institution here in this city. And I know that the president of Johns Hopkins didn’t ask for this. None of us individuals asked for this. Nobody asked to be part of it. But when you are an American, you’re born into this. And there are young black people who folks on TV are dismissing as thugs and all sorts of other words (I know the mayor apologized, I want to acknowledge that), but people who are being dismissed as thugs—these people live lives of incomprehensible violence.
And I know this! This is not theory here. I’m telling you about what my daily routine was, but I went to school with some kids who I can’t even imagine what the violence was like. It was just beyond anything. You know, I had a safe home, I had people who loved me and took care of me. I can’t imagine how crazy it actually can get.
So when we label these people those sorts of things—when we decide we’re going to pay attention to them when they pick up a rock, and we’re going to call them “violent” when they act out in anger—we’re making a statement. Again, being here in a seat of power, being here at Johns Hopkins—where I’m happy to be, thank you for hosting me—it’s a very influential institution! You’re a part of that! There are powerful people here sitting in the audience who can talk to folks and say, “Maybe we need to change our vocabulary a little bit.” What are we doing to actually mitigate the amount of violence that is in the daily lives of these young people? Let’s not begin the conversation with the “riot,” let’s back up a little bit. Let’s talk about the daily everyday violence that folks live under.
Thank you for sharing that, Elison.
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
When the Stars Are Right even *I* can positively contribute to a thread (Though it is a crosspost from SA).
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I tend to side more with the protesters/rioters/uprisingers/black Baltimoreans, whatever you want to call them, than I do with the law and order folks on this one.
I guess I just don't understand the argument people like BlackBlade are making.
How long are they supposed to wait until they start throwing rocks? A year? Five years? The civil rights movement ended its zenith almost 50 years ago for two main reasons: 1. They'd gotten as far as they could get by asking nicely. 2. Their most powerful leaders were all assassinated.
So it's been decades...when exactly are we expecting the needle to move, and how long can you reasonably expect someone to keep asking nicely before they start demanding? Remember Freedom NOW was the cry in the late 60s when they were tired of asking and started demanding.
In many ways, the situation for blacks in America has really only deteriorated since the end of the Model Cities program when Johnson left office.
So how long is long enough?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
There are a few nuances in there that I think you're glossing over.
1) There's a big difference between protesters and rioters although you've grouped them together as "protesters/rioters/uprisingers/black Baltimoreans." Protesters demand, rioters destroy. I totally support protesters but when things descend into violence, that's entirely too far. Hell, if what I've pointed toward on Sakeriver is correct, the rioters aren't even only concerned about civil rights, there are supposedly plenty of white anarchists and opportunists joining in.
2) How long is long enough? Let's not pretend that these kind of riots started today. Korean and Chinese shopkeepers got targeted this time as per that NPR piece linked above. Korean shopkeepers were abandoned by the white authorities in LA and were targeted by rioters. Chinese shopkeepers were targeted during the Memphis riots.
So this kind of thing hasn't been going on for days or even twenty years, we're talking almost fifty years that violence has been committed against vulnerable groups in order to enlighten white people.
Chaos like this isn't equitable, it's not the well-connected, those that are well protected by insurance, or those who are in a position of authority to make decisions who suffer. Instead, as particularly shown in LA, the well-connected are perfectly happy to protect their own while leaving Korean shopkeepers unprotected, even criticizing them for protecting their livelihoods.
So yeah, maybe some charges get laid against low-ranking personnel. Maybe that's "worth it." But not in my book, because I fully anticipate that police brutality and racial inequity will continue in the US. The benefits aren't worth the costs. Like you said, the situation has been deteriorating for a good forty years and this kind of violence has been going on for fifty years or more.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
While I would agree that all protesters are not rioters, I would put forth that most rioters are protesters. Your delineation is PEACEFUL protesters, and that's fine, but to suggest they are completely separate removes the agency from rioting, which I disagree with.
Look, I personally think that rioting is a bad idea. The media is never going to give them the kind of advantageous coverage that could really uncover the roots of a riot, educate the viewers, and help usher in real change. They'll only cover violence because violence drives ratings and that's all they care about. Furthermore, politicians think that addressing these systemic issues rewards rioters, so they'd rather dig their heels in and do nothing rather than look like appeasers. So I don't think rioting is effective.
But I get it. I get why it happens. And we shouldn't be surprised when it does.
I don't think looking at it from a cost-benefit analysis as you do, though, really makes much sense. Rioting isn't rational in that way, though it tended to make more sense back in the 60s. Plenty of reports from the 60s showed that the businesses targeted in riots weren't because of racial animus, but because of the role those places played in the community. It's why a lot of PayDay type lenders and check cashing locations were attacked in Baltimore, because they're viewed as symbols of economic oppression. Yet I can see how once a riot starts, it takes on a life of its own, and there's really not much sense that goes into what gets attacked.
I think if you're going to riot at all, your biggest mistake is stopping. A three day riot every decade is a novelty. A 300 day riot is a historic event that can't be ignored.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
I'm not sure how you square "removes the agency from rioting, which I disagree with" with "once a riot starts, it takes on a life of its own, and there's really not much sense that goes into what gets attacked."
For my part, I don't think that there is no sense in what gets attacked. That NPR piece indicates that Asian American businesses were targeted while black-owned businesses were protected, which is understandable although not forgivable. Targeting government institutions, law-enforcement, or white-owned businesses in richer areas would probably lead to a stronger response.
There is some sense there in that it makes sense for the bigger, stronger minority group to target a weaker, smaller minority group to get the attention of the majority while evading a more serious response.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
A riot can be about more than one thing to different rioters at different times and in different places.
If any white people actually lived near any black people, Im sure the would have been targeted instead
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
Peaceful protesting is useless and is called for just to be convenient to The Powers That Be.
Just ask Occupy.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
occupy was not called for by the 'powers that be,' but the way it was structured under a hopelessly idealistic and hyperinclusive progressive stack guaranteed its paralysis and stagnation into irrelevance
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: Police officers are being charged with murder and manslaughter.
I must admit that there is a very good chance these charges wouldn't have been filed if people hadn't been out in the streets.
I don't know about that. I read somewhere that the state attorney ran for office on the platform of prosecuting police brutality.
most people i've talked to in the know about the folks who got put into office on a wave of de-o'malleying the city's brutal legacy say that the national attention and flashpoint attitude on baltimore created by the riots probably drove the opportunity to press past FOP protections and impediments and go large on a second degree murder charge
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: occupy was not called for by the 'powers that be,' but the way it was structured under a hopelessly idealistic and hyperinclusive progressive stack guaranteed its paralysis and stagnation into irrelevance
I'm referring mainly to people who insist that the only legitimate peaceful protest is one that "doesn't break any laws, doesn't bother anyone, and goes away as soon as a single cop shows up." This sort of protest is advocated for, for example, pundits, purely because it is what the PTB want.
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
So, I googled FOP. It's fraternal order of police. Never heard of 'em before. Tell me more about FOP rules.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
FOP is to the police as the NRA is to guns - there to strenuously defend police beyond the point of absurdity, prevent any regulation on police that they can, and throw up obstruction and lobby purely in defense of the police in a so far quite successful history of preserving various status quos. Already in the Baltimore issue they have tried getting mosby to recuse herself.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Peaceful protesting is useful because it demonstrates that manpower exists for a riot. Protest signs have two parts: There's the sign, on which you write a slogan; and there's the stick that holds it up. The stick has a slogan too, an unwritten one. It says "Look at all these people, with big heavy sticks. Wouldn't it be a pity if they decided not to be peaceful anymore?"
Occupy didn't understand that, and so they were roundly ignored; there was no chance a bunch of middle-class trust-fund babies were going to start a riot, so their protest wasn't credible.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
i think that is neither an accurate demographic assessment of occupy protesters, nor an accurate analysis of its failures. occupy was definitely not roundly ignored, either by media or police.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: i think that is neither an accurate demographic assessment of occupy protesters, nor an accurate analysis of its failures. occupy was definitely not roundly ignored, either by media or police.
Or by the parents of the protestors as this picketer found out. Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Peaceful protesting is useful because it demonstrates that manpower exists for a riot. Protest signs have two parts: There's the sign, on which you write a slogan; and there's the stick that holds it up. The stick has a slogan too, an unwritten one. It says "Look at all these people, with big heavy sticks. Wouldn't it be a pity if they decided not to be peaceful anymore?"
Occupy didn't understand that, and so they were roundly ignored; there was no chance a bunch of middle-class trust-fund babies were going to start a riot, so their protest wasn't credible.
I don't think almost any of that is true.
Peaceful protesting is abundant. Rioting is not.
For that to work, their would have to be more riots to be used as a stick so that peaceful protests could carry an implicit threat. In reality, that doesn't happen. It's also not. 1:1 ratio. It only takes a handful of rioters to really cause a ruckus. But it can take thousands of protesters to really get the media or officials to pay attention. No one takes a protest with a couple dozen people seriously.
Occupy's problem wasn't a lack of attention. Their problem was an inability to articulate a unified platform. There refusal to elect leaders and choose something specific to ask for squandersed a golden opportunity when everyone really was watching and the media was their ally. Once it became clear they were dysfunctional, the narrative turned against them and could never be revived.
And despite the incredible lack of threat of a riot, the police still horribly mismanage the situation in a way that gave the protesters a lot of political capital. The same kind civil rights protesters got after major protests were broken up with violence. But Occupy wasted theirs.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:For that to work, there would have to be more riots to be used as a stick so that peaceful protests could carry an implicit threat.
Yes. This is why peaceful protests no longer work. Quite possibly this pendulum will swing back a bit.
I wonder if you're aware of the origin of the phrase, "reading the Riot Act"? It is not a metaphor; it refers to a literal Act of the English Parliament, which provided that, after a peace officer had read the text of the Act three times, and rioters had not dispersed, deadly force could be used. That's not because anyone cared about shops getting looted; it's because they took riots seriously as a means of toppling dynasties and smashing established orders. The English Civil War started with king James getting the heck out of London because he was afraid the mob would storm the palace and kill him. (Which, incidentally, would be an actually effective use of a riot. If the idiots in Baltimore had managed to burn City Hall to the ground and lynch the mayor, they would have gotten their point across in a much more pointed manner.) The French Revolution, of course, started when the mob of Paris decided they'd had enough, and rioted. (And ended when Napoleon found some troops who would stand and shoot at the mob.)
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
There were actually millions of people protesting the invasion of Iraq - some estimate 36 million in over 3000 events, Something like 10 million in just one day. Hundreds of thousands repeatedly in protests and peaceful civil disobedience actions all that winter and spring in the US.
Given our success in stopping the invasion, I would have to agree that peaceful protests are almost entirely futile. We had exactly zero impact on anything.
Sometimes you have to protest anyway.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: (Which, incidentally, would be an actually effective use of a riot. If the idiots in Baltimore had managed to burn City Hall to the ground and lynch the mayor, they would have gotten their point across in a much more pointed manner.)
what
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: i think that is neither an accurate demographic assessment of occupy protesters, nor an accurate analysis of its failures. occupy was definitely not roundly ignored, either by media or police.
Or by the parents of the protestors as this picketer found out.
? Your parents objected to you picketing?
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: i think that is neither an accurate demographic assessment of occupy protesters, nor an accurate analysis of its failures. occupy was definitely not roundly ignored, either by media or police.
Or by the parents of the protestors as this picketer found out.
? Your parents objected to you picketing?
Sure did. And appearing on TV to talk about it.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Interesting. I'm sorry. My folks were worried - especially about the arrest - but even though they disagreed with me*, they were very supportive.
*Then. They changed their minds once they knew more about it. I like to think I helped. Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: (Which, incidentally, would be an actually effective use of a riot. If the idiots in Baltimore had managed to burn City Hall to the ground and lynch the mayor, they would have gotten their point across in a much more pointed manner.)
what
I actually agree with KoM on this.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
At least it would have made more sense, affecting the people in power to make decisions rather than bystanders that just live nearby.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:We are here because of blood, and mostly that of others; here because of our insatiable and rapacious desire to take by force the land and labor of those others. We are the last people on Earth with a right to ruminate upon the superior morality of peaceful protest. We have never believed in it and rarely practiced it. Rather, we have always taken what we desire, and when denied it we have turned to means utterly genocidal to make it so.
Which is why it always strikes me as precious the way so many white Americans insist (as if preening for a morality contest of some sorts) that "we don't burn down our own neighborhoods when we get angry." This, in supposed contrast to black and brown folks who engage in such presumptively self-destructive irrationality as this. On the one hand, it simply isn't true. We do burn our own communities, we do riot, and for far less valid reasons than any for which persons of color have ever hoisted a brick, a rock, or a bottle.We do so when our teams lose the big game or win the big game; or because of something called Pumpkin Festival; or because veggie burritos cost $10 at Woodstock '99 and there weren't enough Porta-Potties by the time of the Limp Bizkit set; or because folks couldn't get enough beer at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake; or because surfers (natch); or St. Paddy's Day in Albany; or because Penn State fired Joe Paterno; or because it's a Sunday afternoon in Ames, Iowa; and we do it over and over and over again.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: (Which, incidentally, would be an actually effective use of a riot. If the idiots in Baltimore had managed to burn City Hall to the ground and lynch the mayor, they would have gotten their point across in a much more pointed manner.)
what
I actually agree with KoM on this.
lynching the black mayor who is on their side though
Posted by Risuena (Member # 2924) on :
I'm not sure the Mayor is on their side.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
tonight on action hatrack news: baltimore rioters literally lynch a black woman, conspicuously barbaric act hands conservatives unexpected legitimacy in social issue for years to come
"we really just, uh, thought this would get our point across better," one rioter was quoted as saying. "looking back i really don't know what kind of message that was especially when Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was one of the ones pushing for an investigation of the police department, but oh well"
internet explodes with righteous indignation, and plenty of "we told you so's" from conservatives who had been calling for greater enforcement of order against "animals" and "thugs" before things came to this point. Police unions hold spontaneous parties over how this implosive action immediately took a serious load of heat off of their asses at the eleventh hour. "I literally can't believe it," said a staff sergeant. "they honestly went and murdered stephanie and legitimized us right before our asses were gonna be under some serious federal scrutiny. now we get to put the black parts of the city on indefinite curfew aw yiss"
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
President Obama attempted to strike a conciliatory tone, calling the lynching of Rawlings-Blake "mob justice" and "a terrible tragedy" conservative commenters called the remarks "grossly insufficient" and "outrageous".
TheBlaze in an opinion piece lambasted the President saying,
"The President is directly responsible for this atrocity having fanned the flames of racial discontent until they have burned hotly out of his control. I'd ask for an apology since Pres. Obama has proven quite willing to apologize to our enemies, but ironically he never apologizes to the American people for his base failures."
As expected nobody actually changes their minds about anything after reading their respective news outlet's coverage of the affair.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Fine, fine, /s/City Hall/police station/, s/mayor/Chief of Police/. The point stands, go after the decisionmakers, not random bystanders.
Posted by Risuena (Member # 2924) on :
Do you really think no one tried to do that? The first night with any violence, they predominantly went after police cars. Then on Monday, when the majority of violence occurred, the police herded everyone away from city hall and the police stations and kept it to confined to a few small areas.
And that continued throughout the duration of the curfew - with the curfew only really being enforced in poor areas of the city. There were restaurants in Hampden and people in Federal Hill and other areas that were breaking the curfew because all the police presence was concentrated on making sure the people in Sandtown-Winchester and similar neighbors stayed there.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Fine, fine, /s/City Hall/police station/, s/mayor/Chief of Police/. The point stands, go after the decisionmakers, not random bystanders.
breaking news update: baltimore rioters follow up their previous act by lynching another black person, the baltimore police chief who had been brought in as part of a concerted reform slate after the brutal reign of O'Malley
"Police chief Anthony had been holding press conferences where he was publicly acknowledging that his department was a part of the problem and that change needed to occur in his department," said one of the lynching rioters. "And I guess that fits with his m.o. or whatever, but for some ****ing reason I guess we decided it would be a great idea to go literally kill him in front of TV cameras or whatever. we really need to, uh, stop taking advice from hatrack"
American conservatives were unavailable for comment as they were busy airlifting in cristal and blow to joyously celebrate all this unexpected ammunition for their cultural war delivered to them free of charge
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Do you really think no one tried to do that?
Good for them. Too bad they didn't have the organisation to make an actual fight of it, as your next couple of sentences indicate.
quote:Police chief Anthony had been holding press conferences
Fat lot of good that did Freddie Grey. There's a time for working within the system and a time for smashing the whole rotten edifice. If you've decided that violence is the answer, then targeting collaborators and running dogs is perfectly sensible even if they do happen to belong to your own ethnic group.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I think this is where civil disobedience can actually do some good to draw attention to the issue.
Fill the jails. Force the police to reveal their true nature. Make sure cameras are on hand when the POLICE are the ones who instigate the violence.
Look, I think rioting is incredibly unhelpful. If you're going to do it, you might as well, as KoM says, attack the institutions that matter. But a far better tactic is to overwhelm them with a sea of humanity. Fill the jails. Refuse to move. Force them to force you off the position you've staked out. Break the law, but don't break any bones. Let them do the bone breaking.
It gets at the basic problem at the heart of the status quo; that black people are all too easily ignored. So, don't let them ignore you.
Go to downtown Baltimore and fill the streets. Block traffic. Don't hurt people, per se, but make their lives a little more difficult and force them to see you and confront your issues.
I don't think torching an innocent shop owner's business is a good idea, but that doesn't mean I think a protest should be totally convenient for "bystanders." I think almost any scholar of protest history and race relations would say when it comes to the continued crimes visited on minorities, NO ONE is a bystander, both because you benefit from the crimes committed against them, and because your indifference perpetuates their plight. So if that means you can't get to work one day because the roads are being blocked, tough. No one said effecting mass socioeconomic change was going to be a cakewalk for everyone.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote: If you've decided that violence is the answer, then targeting collaborators and running dogs is perfectly sensible even if they do happen to belong to your own ethnic group.
No group decided that violence was the answer. The rioting wasn't some organized intent on the part of a movement, it was a natural byproduct of the opportunity to loot stores and break shit in Baltimore while the protests were in full swing.
The vast majority of the protests were peaceful, it's just that when these kinds of protests reach a certain point you cannot meaningfully just 'elect' as a movement to not have the property destruction. When there is inevitably property destruction, it's not because they have 'decided that violence is the answer,' it's that violence is going to happen as a result of a certain threshold of protests.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:because you benefit from the crimes committed against them
I'll give you that I'm indifferent, but I have to say I really don't see how I benefit from black men being arrested for walking down the street. If anything it hurts me, in that it uses tax money that could go to better purposes, plus people in jail are not working and producing stuff for me to consume.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:because you benefit from the crimes committed against them
I'll give you that I'm indifferent, but I have to say I really don't see how I benefit from black men being arrested for walking down the street. If anything it hurts me, in that it uses tax money that could go to better purposes, plus people in jail are not working and producing stuff for me to consume.
I guess I was referring more to the past crimes committed against them. This country still is what is is in large part to the massive wealth gotten from slavery. And from the massive protections put in place in the first half of the twentieth century that kept resources and wealth concentrated in white America and out of the reach of black America.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:because you benefit from the crimes committed against them
I'll give you that I'm indifferent, but I have to say I really don't see how I benefit from black men being arrested for walking down the street. If anything it hurts me, in that it uses tax money that could go to better purposes, plus people in jail are not working and producing stuff for me to consume.
In many cities, one of the main functions of police is to generate revenue for the city. This may be a bit removed from you personally, but in those places everyone except the people who get targeted for bs citations benefits from the fine revenue.
Plus, some people in jail are producing things you consume.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:This country still is what is is in large part to the massive wealth gotten from slavery.
This is not in fact true.
quote: And from the massive protections put in place in the first half of the twentieth century that kept resources and wealth concentrated in white America and out of the reach of black America.
Ok firstly, this probably made America as a whole poorer, not richer. Secondly, even if we assume wealth is zero-sum, giving that one-tenth of the population access to an even share could not have changed things drastically.
quote:In many cities, one of the main functions of police is to generate revenue for the city. This may be a bit removed from you personally, but in those places everyone except the people who get targeted for bs citations benefits from the fine revenue.
So the thing about chiseling nickel-and-dime citations is that they produce nickels and dimes. There's only so much blood you can squeeze from a stone. I somewhat strongly suspect that the revenue thus generated is basically enough to run the occupation forces - excuse me, police departments - and the courts, with a bit left over for City Hall. It doesn't benefit a large number of people.
When you squeeze the bottom 10 or 15%, the amount you produce cannot be enough to benefit the remaining 90% a whole lot, if it's remotely evenly divided. Dividing it among a relatively small bureaucracy is another question.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:because you benefit from the crimes committed against them
I'll give you that I'm indifferent, but I have to say I really don't see how I benefit from black men being arrested for walking down the street. If anything it hurts me, in that it uses tax money that could go to better purposes, plus people in jail are not working and producing stuff for me to consume.
I guess I was referring more to the past crimes committed against them. This country still is what is is in large part to the massive wealth gotten from slavery. And from the massive protections put in place in the first half of the twentieth century that kept resources and wealth concentrated in white America and out of the reach of black America.
Of course it should be noted in the case of the Asian shopkeepers who were looted, they likely arrived after the first half of the twentieth century due to the Chinese Exclusion Act or similar policies for other ethnic groups.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:This country still is what is is in large part to the massive wealth gotten from slavery.
This is not in fact true.
If anything, the opposite. Slavery generated very little wealth, and caused the southern economy to stagnate for over a century- which was the cause of the civil war to begin with, a small oligarchy trying to maintain itself against a rising tide of technology and a market based economy.
People often look at slavery as if it's just like work for wages, minus the wages. The problem is that in an economy where the majority of workers are not paid, there is very little incentive to diversify, and very little actual liquidity to work with or invest. You can be "rich" in comparison with your neighbors, but you can't a) borrow money b) start a new business or c) change jobs, because there is no money to a) lend, b) buy anything with, or c) pay salaries. And since the cost of labor is so artificially low, that means that the funneling of money to the land owners is a perpetual cycle that never lets up. Eventually in the south, very few people were wealthy, and even their wealth was as nothing compared to the new industrialists in the north.
Thus you got the social construct that persisted for over a century in the south, that certain families had "family money," even when they had no money at all, because they were from families that had been at the top of that zero-liquidity pyramid- they owned land they couldn't sell or leverage, and relied on a lowest-possible margin crop to survive, and cheap labor to produce it.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
the primary means by which oppression of blacks up into the current day has benefitted white americans has to do with a legacy of preference and inclusive cycles in wealth creation opportunities and real estate, honestly
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:This country still is what is is in large part to the massive wealth gotten from slavery.
This is not in fact true.
If anything, the opposite. Slavery generated very little wealth, and caused the southern economy to stagnate for over a century- which was the cause of the civil war to begin with, a small oligarchy trying to maintain itself against a rising tide of technology and a market based economy.
People often look at slavery as if it's just like work for wages, minus the wages. The problem is that in an economy where the majority of workers are not paid, there is very little incentive to diversify, and very little actual liquidity to work with or invest. You can be "rich" in comparison with your neighbors, but you can't a) borrow money b) start a new business or c) change jobs, because there is no money to a) lend, b) buy anything with, or c) pay salaries. And since the cost of labor is so artificially low, that means that the funneling of money to the land owners is a perpetual cycle that never lets up. Eventually in the south, very few people were wealthy, and even their wealth was as nothing compared to the new industrialists in the north.
Thus you got the social construct that persisted for over a century in the south, that certain families had "family money," even when they had no money at all, because they were from families that had been at the top of that zero-liquidity pyramid- they owned land they couldn't sell or leverage, and relied on a lowest-possible margin crop to survive, and cheap labor to produce it.
I'd have to see numbers before I could buy into this. The idea that slavery generated little wealth is basically the opposite of every 19th century American history book I've ever read.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I'd also argue that, even if you want to argue over the wealth gained from how we've treated black people, it's difficult to argue that you don't benefit from the lack of resources spend that are owed to them to correct for the crimes committed against them.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:This country still is what is is in large part to the massive wealth gotten from slavery.
This is not in fact true.
If anything, the opposite. Slavery generated very little wealth, and caused the southern economy to stagnate for over a century- which was the cause of the civil war to begin with, a small oligarchy trying to maintain itself against a rising tide of technology and a market based economy.
People often look at slavery as if it's just like work for wages, minus the wages. The problem is that in an economy where the majority of workers are not paid, there is very little incentive to diversify, and very little actual liquidity to work with or invest. You can be "rich" in comparison with your neighbors, but you can't a) borrow money b) start a new business or c) change jobs, because there is no money to a) lend, b) buy anything with, or c) pay salaries. And since the cost of labor is so artificially low, that means that the funneling of money to the land owners is a perpetual cycle that never lets up. Eventually in the south, very few people were wealthy, and even their wealth was as nothing compared to the new industrialists in the north.
Thus you got the social construct that persisted for over a century in the south, that certain families had "family money," even when they had no money at all, because they were from families that had been at the top of that zero-liquidity pyramid- they owned land they couldn't sell or leverage, and relied on a lowest-possible margin crop to survive, and cheap labor to produce it.
I'd have to see numbers before I could buy into this. The idea that slavery generated little wealth is basically the opposite of every 19th century American history book I've ever read.
I think wealth generation is the wrong way of looking at it. Did people get rich off slavery, absolutely. But we are generating the same sort of rich folks in our society now. You can't even make the trickle down argument for slavery in the South because the slave owners weren't paying wages to most of their workers. If they opened up a new plantation, few if any paying jobs were created. Since wages weren't going to slaves, they weren't spending virtually any money.
I think the correct way of looking at money is "flows". Slavery restricted flows to just a few people, who could not possibly spend that money in such a way as to distribute it to wider society, much like our uber rich cannot possibly buy enough yachts to get that money to other people. If you aren't spending your dollar, I'm not earning a dollar.
So the South stagnated because flows were restricted. America in the early 20th Century as a whole had this same problem, and we're going through it all over again today.
Posted by Wingracer (Member # 12293) on :
It's interesting, I was just listening to a podcast that talked about some of these same topics. It was basically making the point that yes, the US was built on slavery but that wasn't a good thing in the economic sense (since it's obviously bad morally) because it could have been built even faster and better without it. Slavery can help some people make some money but seriously retards economic growth of the state on average.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:The idea that slavery generated little wealth
There's a difference between making a small elite class rich, and creating a wealthy society. Money earned from slaves was, by and large, not reinvested in capital assets; owning ships, machinery, mills and what-have-you was "trade" and declasse. A factory owner in the North, making a profit, would build another factory, or invest in a railroad or canal, or otherwise participate in the economic growth that made the North so rich. A slave owner would buy his wife the latest dresses from Paris, because what was there to invest in?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Well just as an example the people who owned those ships, capital investments all, sometimes used them in the transportation of human slaves and were well paid for the work.
Your stance seems to be a bit of rhetorical judo: slavery is not the best way or even second or third best as an economic model to generate wealth for a society, and therefore slavery generated little wealth.
Lyrhawn can tell it better, but for example a number of those factories which were built from industrial profits went to build or were themselves textiles. Which weren't whether they were in England or the North fed by the millions of acres of cotton fields worked by paid citizen labor.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:those ships, capital investments all, sometimes used them in the transportation of human slaves and were well paid for the work.
Again, individual wealth is not the same as wealth for a society. What would those ships have been used for, if the slave trade hadn't existed? It would probably have been better for economic growth. Observe the Royal Africa Company, which for a while had an actual monopoly on transporting slaves to the Spanish colonies, managed to lose money on the deal and go bankrupt! And when the Royal Navy was intercepting slave traders, then sure, a ship that made it through could make its owner a rich man, but the traders as a whole lost money.
quote:for example a number of those factories which were built from industrial profits went to build or were themselves textiles. Which weren't whether they were in England or the North fed by the millions of acres of cotton fields worked by paid citizen labor.
They would have been, however, if the slaves hadn't been there - as was demonstrated during the Civil War. The blockade prevented England from getting American cotton; so in the space of two years they got Indian and Egyptian cotton instead. You're trying to compare Southern fields full of slaves to the South as an uninhabited wasteland, and call that difference the wealth created by slaves. But the correct comparison is to think what would actually have happened if slavery had been abolished much earlier; that is to say, the Southern fields would have been worked by freemen (and probably not as a monoculture), and the US as a whole would likely have been wealthier. But some rich planters, of course, would have lost out.
It's similar with India: The British Raj was likely a losing proposition for Britain as a whole. But it made money for the decision-making class.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
You're pivoting again to rebutting the notion that slavery was the best moneymaking option at the time. No one is saying that.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:This country still is what is is in large part to the massive wealth gotten from slavery.
This is not in fact true.
If anything, the opposite. Slavery generated very little wealth, and caused the southern economy to stagnate for over a century- which was the cause of the civil war to begin with, a small oligarchy trying to maintain itself against a rising tide of technology and a market based economy.
People often look at slavery as if it's just like work for wages, minus the wages. The problem is that in an economy where the majority of workers are not paid, there is very little incentive to diversify, and very little actual liquidity to work with or invest. You can be "rich" in comparison with your neighbors, but you can't a) borrow money b) start a new business or c) change jobs, because there is no money to a) lend, b) buy anything with, or c) pay salaries. And since the cost of labor is so artificially low, that means that the funneling of money to the land owners is a perpetual cycle that never lets up. Eventually in the south, very few people were wealthy, and even their wealth was as nothing compared to the new industrialists in the north.
Thus you got the social construct that persisted for over a century in the south, that certain families had "family money," even when they had no money at all, because they were from families that had been at the top of that zero-liquidity pyramid- they owned land they couldn't sell or leverage, and relied on a lowest-possible margin crop to survive, and cheap labor to produce it.
I'd have to see numbers before I could buy into this. The idea that slavery generated little wealth is basically the opposite of every 19th century American history book I've ever read.
I doubt that sincerely. Slavery generated a high degree of wealth disparity. But if you're talking about gross purchasing power, slavery tamped down economic diversity and depressed the economy as a whole. The wealth it generated in the hands of a few was, compared to the expected output of a free market economy, pretty paltry. There's a good reason the south lost the war and never recovered economically.
Look, I'm not saying that in a purely objective sense, slavering didn't generate wealth. It did of course. Every pound of cotton has a price on the market. What I am saying is that in a relative sense, if you let the southern economy play out in two alternate universes, one in which a supply of slaves didn't exist, and one in which it did, the one in which there were no slaves would have seen economic growth and total wealth generation (per capita, as the population would have also been smaller), many times what slavery produced.
We have a very good test case for that: the northern states and the southern ones. While their economies were fundamentally different in many regards, slavery is owed a great portion of the blame for the south's stagnant economy, not to mention its moral perfidiousness. This was observed by De Tocqueville half a century before the war.
And this was not a new thing in history. The demographic and economic impacts of a saturated slave economy and wealth/land disparities was what toppled the Roman republic. Once the economic interests of the landed class reached far enough in the opposite direction from the majority of actual citizens, let alone the population, conflict is inevitable.
[ May 16, 2015, 11:50 AM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:This country still is what is is in large part to the massive wealth gotten from slavery.
This is not in fact true.
If anything, the opposite. Slavery generated very little wealth, and caused the southern economy to stagnate for over a century- which was the cause of the civil war to begin with, a small oligarchy trying to maintain itself against a rising tide of technology and a market based economy.
People often look at slavery as if it's just like work for wages, minus the wages. The problem is that in an economy where the majority of workers are not paid, there is very little incentive to diversify, and very little actual liquidity to work with or invest. You can be "rich" in comparison with your neighbors, but you can't a) borrow money b) start a new business or c) change jobs, because there is no money to a) lend, b) buy anything with, or c) pay salaries. And since the cost of labor is so artificially low, that means that the funneling of money to the land owners is a perpetual cycle that never lets up. Eventually in the south, very few people were wealthy, and even their wealth was as nothing compared to the new industrialists in the north.
Thus you got the social construct that persisted for over a century in the south, that certain families had "family money," even when they had no money at all, because they were from families that had been at the top of that zero-liquidity pyramid- they owned land they couldn't sell or leverage, and relied on a lowest-possible margin crop to survive, and cheap labor to produce it.
I'd have to see numbers before I could buy into this. The idea that slavery generated little wealth is basically the opposite of every 19th century American history book I've ever read.
I think wealth generation is the wrong way of looking at it. Did people get rich off slavery, absolutely. But we are generating the same sort of rich folks in our society now. You can't even make the trickle down argument for slavery in the South because the slave owners weren't paying wages to most of their workers. If they opened up a new plantation, few if any paying jobs were created. Since wages weren't going to slaves, they weren't spending virtually any money.
I think the correct way of looking at money is "flows". Slavery restricted flows to just a few people, who could not possibly spend that money in such a way as to distribute it to wider society, much like our uber rich cannot possibly buy enough yachts to get that money to other people. If you aren't spending your dollar, I'm not earning a dollar.
So the South stagnated because flows were restricted. America in the early 20th Century as a whole had this same problem, and we're going through it all over again today.
Two sides of the same coin. You need liquidity to have credit in the market. You need credit to start new businesses and leverage land ownership. You need wage earners to buy from new businesses, and on and on it goes. No workers, means no customers, no customers means no new businesses, no new businesses means no net wealth creation, means no liquidity, means no credit. It's a cycle. Slavery interrupted the cycle.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:The idea that slavery generated little wealth
There's a difference between making a small elite class rich, and creating a wealthy society. Money earned from slaves was, by and large, not reinvested in capital assets; owning ships, machinery, mills and what-have-you was "trade" and declasse. A factory owner in the North, making a profit, would build another factory, or invest in a railroad or canal, or otherwise participate in the economic growth that made the North so rich. A slave owner would buy his wife the latest dresses from Paris, because what was there to invest in?
Again, this is not a version of history I'm familiar with.
Cotton money went extensively to the north, because the South produced almost nothing other than cotton, tobacco and other cash crops. Much of their cotton was exported to Britain, which made up the vast of American exports during the first half (and later) of the 19th century. Much was also sold to northern traders for export or use in northern textile mills.
What money was gained from cotton did not sit idly in the banks of large landholders. That money often went to northern and western industries in return for manufactured goods, crafts and large amounts of food stuffs, since southern lands were not self-sufficient, choosing only to grow cash crops and import food from the north instead.
Too, most slaveowners were not the super rich. A teeny tiny percentage of southern slave owners had more than a handful of slaves. The large uber plantation we all think of as iconic of Southern slavery was in fact a very small piece of the overall picture, where tens of thousands of small land owners owned one or two slaves, or a dozen. They weren't sitting on millions. Their money was all flowing north to buy goods.
Southern wealth flowed into the north and west, spurring industrialization, playing a huge role in developing the modern banking industry and giving America a credit worthiness that allowed for foreign capital to come into the country, it also financed large chunks of the growth of the US railroad industry - the backbone of American industrialization.
The idea that southern money sat in banks waiting for finery from Europe suggests that the South was in general self-sufficient and required nothing from the north, nor contributed anything to it. The truth is the exact opposite.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:those ships, capital investments all, sometimes used them in the transportation of human slaves and were well paid for the work.
Again, individual wealth is not the same as wealth for a society. What would those ships have been used for, if the slave trade hadn't existed? It would probably have been better for economic growth. Observe the Royal Africa Company, which for a while had an actual monopoly on transporting slaves to the Spanish colonies, managed to lose money on the deal and go bankrupt! And when the Royal Navy was intercepting slave traders, then sure, a ship that made it through could make its owner a rich man, but the traders as a whole lost money.
quote:for example a number of those factories which were built from industrial profits went to build or were themselves textiles. Which weren't whether they were in England or the North fed by the millions of acres of cotton fields worked by paid citizen labor.
They would have been, however, if the slaves hadn't been there - as was demonstrated during the Civil War. The blockade prevented England from getting American cotton; so in the space of two years they got Indian and Egyptian cotton instead. You're trying to compare Southern fields full of slaves to the South as an uninhabited wasteland, and call that difference the wealth created by slaves. But the correct comparison is to think what would actually have happened if slavery had been abolished much earlier; that is to say, the Southern fields would have been worked by freemen (and probably not as a monoculture), and the US as a whole would likely have been wealthier. But some rich planters, of course, would have lost out.
It's similar with India: The British Raj was likely a losing proposition for Britain as a whole. But it made money for the decision-making class.
On your last point, that freemen in the south would have produced greater economic benefits...we have evidence of how that would have gone. When the slaves were freed, the vast majority went right back to work in the fields for very, very low wages, often living out a life of indebtedness to their former masters because they now had to pay for all the equipment and seed (and food and housing) that previously was just part of their servitude. Because their wages never actually covered their costs, most died in what was effectively still slavery. That continued for another century.
Sharecroppers also produced little in economic activity that could be called an increase. Slave owners essentially used them as a revenue stream for all the same things they would have needed t buy anyway. Poor sharecroppers couldn't afford any goods that would have generated additional economic activity. They couldn't even afford the food, clothing and housing they now had to pay for.
We also know that yields did not increase as a result of sharecropping. Chemical pesticides helped make up for the bole weevil infestation, but until the advanced mechanization that came decades later, there was no great increase in American cotton production. Yields fell after the civil war. Yields also fell in middle states when abolitionists who were convinced free people could produce cotton more efficiently tried their hand at it and found they simply could not find anyone who do the work slaves were doing as quickly as they were doing it to generate that level of profit.
I see no evidence to suggest that freeing the slaves any earlier would have led to any better an outcome, unless we'd done it before we ever landed in America. But then you'd have to deal with the fact that the trade lanes opened by slave traffic never would have existed as well, which puts a crimp on global trade.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:This country still is what is is in large part to the massive wealth gotten from slavery.
This is not in fact true.
If anything, the opposite. Slavery generated very little wealth, and caused the southern economy to stagnate for over a century- which was the cause of the civil war to begin with, a small oligarchy trying to maintain itself against a rising tide of technology and a market based economy.
People often look at slavery as if it's just like work for wages, minus the wages. The problem is that in an economy where the majority of workers are not paid, there is very little incentive to diversify, and very little actual liquidity to work with or invest. You can be "rich" in comparison with your neighbors, but you can't a) borrow money b) start a new business or c) change jobs, because there is no money to a) lend, b) buy anything with, or c) pay salaries. And since the cost of labor is so artificially low, that means that the funneling of money to the land owners is a perpetual cycle that never lets up. Eventually in the south, very few people were wealthy, and even their wealth was as nothing compared to the new industrialists in the north.
Thus you got the social construct that persisted for over a century in the south, that certain families had "family money," even when they had no money at all, because they were from families that had been at the top of that zero-liquidity pyramid- they owned land they couldn't sell or leverage, and relied on a lowest-possible margin crop to survive, and cheap labor to produce it.
I'd have to see numbers before I could buy into this. The idea that slavery generated little wealth is basically the opposite of every 19th century American history book I've ever read.
I doubt that sincerely. Slavery generated a high degree of wealth disparity. But if you're talking about gross purchasing power, slavery tamped down economic diversity and depressed the economy as a whole. The wealth it generated in the hands of a few was, compared to the expected output of a free market economy, pretty paltry. There's a good reason the south lost the war and never recovered economically.
Look, I'm not saying that in a purely objective sense, slavering didn't generate wealth. It did of course. Every pound of cotton has a price on the market. What I am saying is that in a relative sense, if you let the southern economy play out in two alternate universes, one in which a supply of slaves didn't exist, and one in which it did, the one in which there were no slaves would have seen economic growth and total wealth generation (per capita, as the population would have also been smaller), many times what slavery produced.
We have a very good test case for that: the northern states and the southern ones. While their economies were fundamentally different in many regards, slavery is owed a great portion of the blame for the south's stagnant economy, not to mention its moral perfidiousness. This was observed by De Tocqueville half a century before the war.
And this was not a new thing in history. The demographic and economic impacts of a saturated slave economy and wealth/land disparities was what toppled the Roman republic. Once the economic interests of the landed class reached far enough in the opposite direction from the majority of actual citizens, let alone the population, conflict is inevitable.
The South lost the war because of a lack of manpower and a lack of industry. Ultimately the pool of military age men was much, much smaller than that of the north, and despite the fact that Southern generals were superior to northern ones, and that they managed to kill a hell of a lot of Union soldiers, in the last couple years, Grant and Sherman just kept pumping more and more men into the meatgrinder, overwhelming the South. They also had access to most of the navy, which blockaded large scale attempts to procure foreign military goods to the South, and they had almost all of American industry, which was used for the Union war machine. There was absolutely no lack of money in the South. If you're talking about diversification as a means to fight a war, then yes, the South was doing a terrible job. If you're suggesting their poor economy meant they couldn't afford to fight a war, then you're very wrong. That's not why they lost.
You might have to explain to me what you're talking about when you describe the Southern economy as if it was on the brink of failure. When are you talking? What time period? Before the Civil War I assume. And in what way was it stagnant? The price of cotton was rarely higher and exports never higher than in the years leading up to the Civil War.
If your problem is that there wasn't a vibrant consumer middle class in the south, then I'm really not sure what you're comparing it to. That didn't come into being until 60+ years after the Civil War.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:This country still is what is is in large part to the massive wealth gotten from slavery.
This is not in fact true.
If anything, the opposite. Slavery generated very little wealth, and caused the southern economy to stagnate for over a century- which was the cause of the civil war to begin with, a small oligarchy trying to maintain itself against a rising tide of technology and a market based economy.
People often look at slavery as if it's just like work for wages, minus the wages. The problem is that in an economy where the majority of workers are not paid, there is very little incentive to diversify, and very little actual liquidity to work with or invest. You can be "rich" in comparison with your neighbors, but you can't a) borrow money b) start a new business or c) change jobs, because there is no money to a) lend, b) buy anything with, or c) pay salaries. And since the cost of labor is so artificially low, that means that the funneling of money to the land owners is a perpetual cycle that never lets up. Eventually in the south, very few people were wealthy, and even their wealth was as nothing compared to the new industrialists in the north.
Thus you got the social construct that persisted for over a century in the south, that certain families had "family money," even when they had no money at all, because they were from families that had been at the top of that zero-liquidity pyramid- they owned land they couldn't sell or leverage, and relied on a lowest-possible margin crop to survive, and cheap labor to produce it.
I'd have to see numbers before I could buy into this. The idea that slavery generated little wealth is basically the opposite of every 19th century American history book I've ever read.
I think wealth generation is the wrong way of looking at it. Did people get rich off slavery, absolutely. But we are generating the same sort of rich folks in our society now. You can't even make the trickle down argument for slavery in the South because the slave owners weren't paying wages to most of their workers. If they opened up a new plantation, few if any paying jobs were created. Since wages weren't going to slaves, they weren't spending virtually any money.
I think the correct way of looking at money is "flows". Slavery restricted flows to just a few people, who could not possibly spend that money in such a way as to distribute it to wider society, much like our uber rich cannot possibly buy enough yachts to get that money to other people. If you aren't spending your dollar, I'm not earning a dollar.
So the South stagnated because flows were restricted. America in the early 20th Century as a whole had this same problem, and we're going through it all over again today.
Two sides of the same coin. You need liquidity to have credit in the market. You need credit to start new businesses and leverage land ownership. You need wage earners to buy from new businesses, and on and on it goes. No workers, means no customers, no customers means no new businesses, no new businesses means no net wealth creation, means no liquidity, means no credit. It's a cycle. Slavery interrupted the cycle.
Interrupted it for who? Southern money flowed into the north which meant northern factories and farms had money to hire and pay workers who could then buy goods and companies could, to a degree, reinvest.
But really wonder at a lot of your language. Antebellum America was not 20th century America. There was really no consumer class. We were not a consumer-driven economy. Lots of people buying up lots of goodies did not drive out economy. It didn't really drive ANY economy. Mass production wouldn't lower the price of most goods to consumer-approachable levels for decades, and wages wouldn't rise to the levels appropriate to buy those goods for decades as well.
If your suggestion is just that, why gee, if only 19th century America used 20th century economics, things would have been better, then why not argue if only they'd had satellites and computer things would have been better as well?
You venture into fantasy history at that point.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:The idea that slavery generated little wealth
There's a difference between making a small elite class rich, and creating a wealthy society. Money earned from slaves was, by and large, not reinvested in capital assets; owning ships, machinery, mills and what-have-you was "trade" and declasse. A factory owner in the North, making a profit, would build another factory, or invest in a railroad or canal, or otherwise participate in the economic growth that made the North so rich. A slave owner would buy his wife the latest dresses from Paris, because what was there to invest in?
Again, this is not a version of history I'm familiar with.
Cotton money went extensively to the north, because the South produced almost nothing other than cotton, tobacco and other cash crops. Much of their cotton was exported to Britain, which made up the vast of American exports during the first half (and later) of the 19th century. Much was also sold to northern traders for export or use in northern textile mills.
What money was gained from cotton did not sit idly in the banks of large landholders. That money often went to northern and western industries in return for manufactured goods, crafts and large amounts of food stuffs, since southern lands were not self-sufficient, choosing only to grow cash crops and import food from the north instead.
Too, most slaveowners were not the super rich. A teeny tiny percentage of southern slave owners had more than a handful of slaves. The large uber plantation we all think of as iconic of Southern slavery was in fact a very small piece of the overall picture, where tens of thousands of small land owners owned one or two slaves, or a dozen. They weren't sitting on millions. Their money was all flowing north to buy goods.
Southern wealth flowed into the north and west, spurring industrialization, playing a huge role in developing the modern banking industry and giving America a credit worthiness that allowed for foreign capital to come into the country, it also financed large chunks of the growth of the US railroad industry - the backbone of American industrialization.
The idea that southern money sat in banks waiting for finery from Europe suggests that the South was in general self-sufficient and required nothing from the north, nor contributed anything to it. The truth is the exact opposite.
What's confusing me here is that you are describing the other half of the same phenomenon that KoM is describing.
The cotton industry generated *money* but that money was spent on goods manufactured in the north- manufacturing which generated *wealth.* What version of that history are you not familiar with? You're both outlining the same problem.
quote: On your last point, that freemen in the south would have produced greater economic benefits...we have evidence of how that would have gone. When the slaves were freed, the vast majority went right back to work in the fields for very, very low wages, often living out a life of indebtedness to their former masters because they now had to pay for all the equipment and seed (and food and housing) that previously was just part of their servitude. Because their wages never actually covered their costs, most died in what was effectively still slavery. That continued for another century.
That's being rather disingenuous. The scheme set up after slavery was essentially another form of slavery. Its economic modality was not different from that of slavery, and thus it was just as dysfunctional. With legal protection for blacks, and a true market economy, things might have been different- but that was a function of the system that had already been in place, and was not about to let itself be replaced so quickly.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:This country still is what is is in large part to the massive wealth gotten from slavery.
This is not in fact true.
If anything, the opposite. Slavery generated very little wealth, and caused the southern economy to stagnate for over a century- which was the cause of the civil war to begin with, a small oligarchy trying to maintain itself against a rising tide of technology and a market based economy.
People often look at slavery as if it's just like work for wages, minus the wages. The problem is that in an economy where the majority of workers are not paid, there is very little incentive to diversify, and very little actual liquidity to work with or invest. You can be "rich" in comparison with your neighbors, but you can't a) borrow money b) start a new business or c) change jobs, because there is no money to a) lend, b) buy anything with, or c) pay salaries. And since the cost of labor is so artificially low, that means that the funneling of money to the land owners is a perpetual cycle that never lets up. Eventually in the south, very few people were wealthy, and even their wealth was as nothing compared to the new industrialists in the north.
Thus you got the social construct that persisted for over a century in the south, that certain families had "family money," even when they had no money at all, because they were from families that had been at the top of that zero-liquidity pyramid- they owned land they couldn't sell or leverage, and relied on a lowest-possible margin crop to survive, and cheap labor to produce it.
I'd have to see numbers before I could buy into this. The idea that slavery generated little wealth is basically the opposite of every 19th century American history book I've ever read.
I doubt that sincerely. Slavery generated a high degree of wealth disparity. But if you're talking about gross purchasing power, slavery tamped down economic diversity and depressed the economy as a whole. The wealth it generated in the hands of a few was, compared to the expected output of a free market economy, pretty paltry. There's a good reason the south lost the war and never recovered economically.
Look, I'm not saying that in a purely objective sense, slavering didn't generate wealth. It did of course. Every pound of cotton has a price on the market. What I am saying is that in a relative sense, if you let the southern economy play out in two alternate universes, one in which a supply of slaves didn't exist, and one in which it did, the one in which there were no slaves would have seen economic growth and total wealth generation (per capita, as the population would have also been smaller), many times what slavery produced.
We have a very good test case for that: the northern states and the southern ones. While their economies were fundamentally different in many regards, slavery is owed a great portion of the blame for the south's stagnant economy, not to mention its moral perfidiousness. This was observed by De Tocqueville half a century before the war.
And this was not a new thing in history. The demographic and economic impacts of a saturated slave economy and wealth/land disparities was what toppled the Roman republic. Once the economic interests of the landed class reached far enough in the opposite direction from the majority of actual citizens, let alone the population, conflict is inevitable.
The South lost the war because of a lack of manpower and a lack of industry. Ultimately the pool of military age men was much, much smaller than that of the north, and despite the fact that Southern generals were superior to northern ones, and that they managed to kill a hell of a lot of Union soldiers, in the last couple years, Grant and Sherman just kept pumping more and more men into the meatgrinder, overwhelming the South. They also had access to most of the navy, which blockaded large scale attempts to procure foreign military goods to the South, and they had almost all of American industry, which was used for the Union war machine. There was absolutely no lack of money in the South. If you're talking about diversification as a means to fight a war, then yes, the South was doing a terrible job. If you're suggesting their poor economy meant they couldn't afford to fight a war, then you're very wrong. That's not why they lost.
You keep stating the same problem from different perspectives and claiming it's a different problem. A lack of manpower is a consequence of the economic structure. As is the lack of capital and industry.
And yes, I am suggesting that their economy gave them no means to fight a war. When their cash crops were cut off, their credit was worth nothing in Europe, and they weren't able to feed themselves and buy weapons. Thus, they lost. If they'd had credit, much less the means to manufacture their own weapons, they might have stood a better chance. We're talking about the same problem here.
quote: You might have to explain to me what you're talking about when you describe the Southern economy as if it was on the brink of failure. When are you talking? What time period? Before the Civil War I assume. And in what way was it stagnant? The price of cotton was rarely higher and exports never higher than in the years leading up to the Civil War.
If your problem is that there wasn't a vibrant consumer middle class in the south, then I'm really not sure what you're comparing it to. That didn't come into being until 60+ years after the Civil War.
It was not on the brink of failure. By the yardstick of the time, it had already failed. I'm not describing a middle class revolution- that didn't even happen in the north until the 20th century. I'm talking about an industrial revolution. The south missed out on theirs, and it cost them dearly.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Two sides of the same coin. You need liquidity to have credit in the market. You need credit to start new businesses and leverage land ownership. You need wage earners to buy from new businesses, and on and on it goes. No workers, means no customers, no customers means no new businesses, no new businesses means no net wealth creation, means no liquidity, means no credit. It's a cycle. Slavery interrupted the cycle.
Interrupted it for who? Southern money flowed into the north which meant northern factories and farms had money to hire and pay workers who could then buy goods and companies could, to a degree, reinvest.
Yes, reinvest in the North. I'm not as interested in the consumer aspect as the industrial one. Real capital formation started with the entrepreneurial class in the northern cities. You have to have industrial cities and reasons to form capital. Reasons the south didn't have.
quote: But really wonder at a lot of your language. Antebellum America was not 20th century America. There was really no consumer class. We were not a consumer-driven economy. Lots of people buying up lots of goodies did not drive out economy. It didn't really drive ANY economy. Mass production wouldn't lower the price of most goods to consumer-approachable levels for decades, and wages wouldn't rise to the levels appropriate to buy those goods for decades as well.
If your suggestion is just that, why gee, if only 19th century America used 20th century economics, things would have been better, then why not argue if only they'd had satellites and computer things would have been better as well?
You venture into fantasy history at that point.
This is a pretty bad reading of what I've said. I don't know what to tell you. There are many steps between capital formation and a consumer driven economy, and those steps involve slow diversification of consumption (by governments as well as consumers). Increasing diversification and increasing consumption (and we are talking about more than just a consumer driven economy, but industrial consumption of materials as well), leads to capital formation and the extension of credit, because a diverse industry based on resource exploitation has a great deal of growth potential.
The south never diversified, never built up capital, and never created an entrepreneurial class- its economy was based on exports, rather than resource exploitation, so it had little incentive to find new efficiencies (you produce more, only to see prices fall). It stayed dependent on a crop that could only ever become cheaper. The north was taking those first steps in the 1860s. That is my point.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:What's confusing me here is that you are describing the other half of the same phenomenon that KoM is describing.
The cotton industry generated *money* but that money was spent on goods manufactured in the north- manufacturing which generated *wealth.* What version of that history are you not familiar with? You're both outlining the same problem.
I think the point that Lyrhawn and certainly myself are making is this. It's my understanding that you and KoM are rejecting the premise that slavery had a significant part in establishing the foundations of what is the modern American economy. Your evidence for this is how bad slavery was at generating wealth for the South, compared to other potential systems.
My point and again I think Lyrhawn's is contained in the bolded quote. The South thanks to slavery and their reliance on cash crops needed to import so much to continue to survive. These things were very often manufactured in the North, or imported from elsewhere and shipped by the North, sometimes on Northern ships. The Industrial Revolution in the North was built in part with the wealth generated by slavery-wealth generated in the North.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote: The biker gang shootout this weekend in Waco, Texas, that left nine people dead, 18 wounded, and as many as 192 facing organized crime charges has sparked a lot of scrutiny over how police and media are treating this incident compared with how they approached the protests in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore.
The relatively relaxed-looking police presence in Waco was a big topic of discussion. Photos taken by news organizations in the aftermath of the incident showed arrested bikers — who were mostly white — sitting without handcuffs and able to use their phones, while law enforcement officers looked casual and minimally attentive.
quote:Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary Stephen T. Moyer said in a statement that authorities began investigating the two officers following a tip.
“We will not allow the vast majority of our employees who are honest and hardworking to be tainted by the actions of a few,” he said.
Right on.
I wonder why it's harder for some people to realize that the actions of a few looters do not reflect on the rest of the protestors.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
It's a mystery!
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary Stephen T. Moyer said in a statement that authorities began investigating the two officers following a tip.
“We will not allow the vast majority of our employees who are honest and hardworking to be tainted by the actions of a few,” he said.
Right on.
I wonder why it's harder for some people to realize that the actions of a few looters do not reflect on the rest of the protestors.
Police will also infiltrate protests and attempt to provoke them towards violence in order to justify escalated responses.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Orincoro -
quote:What's confusing me here is that you are describing the other half of the same phenomenon that KoM is describing.
The cotton industry generated *money* but that money was spent on goods manufactured in the north- manufacturing which generated *wealth.* What version of that history are you not familiar with? You're both outlining the same problem.
I guess I'm just confused by the terminology then. This point originated from the argument you and KoM were making that slavery did not generate wealth. But now it sounds, when you dig into the details, like your problem is that they were only INDIRECTLY creating wealth.
Southern money was being invested in northern factories to create wealth. So your problem is that the South was creating gasoline instead of engines. Seems to me it was actually a rather solid symbiotic relationship for the United States as a whole to create wealth.
quote:That's being rather disingenuous. The scheme set up after slavery was essentially another form of slavery. Its economic modality was not different from that of slavery, and thus it was just as dysfunctional. With legal protection for blacks, and a true market economy, things might have been different- but that was a function of the system that had already been in place, and was not about to let itself be replaced so quickly.
And now we're back to fantasy history. This was never going to happen. You might as well argue that the contribution of slaves is meaningless because if only we'd managed to skip the Dark Ages, the 19th century would have been the Computer Age. Maybe it's true, but it's also pretty much meaningless.
You're really going to sit there and tell me that what happened, and the contribution made, was basically pointless because a fantasy history existed that would have worked better? That's freaking bizarre, and I'm going to assume that's not what you mean. So please elaborate further.
quote:You keep stating the same problem from different perspectives and claiming it's a different problem. A lack of manpower is a consequence of the economic structure. As is the lack of capital and industry.
I think that's an interesting way to look at history...viewing a country's economy through the lens of its ability to fight a war. By that metric, Holland has one of the world's worst economies, despite the fact that, you know, it has incredibly high GDP and one of the highest standards of living in the world. But what's that, no navy and no tank factories? They're basically a third world country.
Once again, the South did not lack capital. They did lack the means to move their capital and received goods, that's true. But again, it's kind of bizarre to look at a breakaway region from a country and hit them for not being 100% self-sufficient. That's certainly not how the modern world works. Countries today specialize in what they can make the best and sell it to people in other countries who make something else better. The South made cotton and tobacco better than anyone else, and they had a ton of money. They could purchase the goods they needed with that money, and that worked. They had no need to build shipyards and factories to make guns; they were part of a country and the country as a whole had those things. That's like saying Massachusetts has a terrible economy because it could never feed itself on its own.
quote:And yes, I am suggesting that their economy gave them no means to fight a war. When their cash crops were cut off, their credit was worth nothing in Europe, and they weren't able to feed themselves and buy weapons. Thus, they lost. If they'd had credit, much less the means to manufacture their own weapons, they might have stood a better chance. We're talking about the same problem here.
Yeah sort of, but you're coming at it from (in my view) a really weird perspective that's getting us to very different conclusions.
quote:It was not on the brink of failure. By the yardstick of the time, it had already failed. I'm not describing a middle class revolution- that didn't even happen in the north until the 20th century. I'm talking about an industrial revolution. The south missed out on theirs, and it cost them dearly.
By WHAT yardstick? Seriously, what hard metric are you using to judge failure?
quote:Yes, reinvest in the North. I'm not as interested in the consumer aspect as the industrial one. Real capital formation started with the entrepreneurial class in the northern cities. You have to have industrial cities and reasons to form capital. Reasons the south didn't have.
What does it matter? It was NATIONAL growth. Southern money was fueling NATIONAL growth for the country by pumping large sums of money into American industry and infrastructure.
I don't understand what's happening here. Why are you separating the South out like this? This discussion began over the role the South played in NATIONAL growth. You're trying to argue that just because reinvestment didn't happen in the south the way it did in the north that southern money that got it all going doesn't matter? Where do you think that money came from? And so long as we're playing fantasy historian, how does the north grow WITHOUT southern money?
quote:The south never diversified, never built up capital, and never created an entrepreneurial class- its economy was based on exports, rather than resource exploitation, so it had little incentive to find new efficiencies (you produce more, only to see prices fall). It stayed dependent on a crop that could only ever become cheaper. The north was taking those first steps in the 1860s. That is my point.
Near as I can tell, that's half your point; you haven't given me the second half yet. And further, I think your whole point is built on a rickety foundation.
The South didn't diversify, but it DID build up tremendous capital - much of which went north to fuel NATIONAL growth. And cotton running up to the Civil War did not become cheaper. The South created greater and greater amounts of it to feed an ever growing global demand. No, that wouldn't have lasted forever, but it was doing fine at the time.
The second half of your point would have to answer this: So what?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:What's confusing me here is that you are describing the other half of the same phenomenon that KoM is describing.
The cotton industry generated *money* but that money was spent on goods manufactured in the north- manufacturing which generated *wealth.* What version of that history are you not familiar with? You're both outlining the same problem.
I think the point that Lyrhawn and certainly myself are making is this. It's my understanding that you and KoM are rejecting the premise that slavery had a significant part in establishing the foundations of what is the modern American economy. Your evidence for this is how bad slavery was at generating wealth for the South, compared to other potential systems.
My point and again I think Lyrhawn's is contained in the bolded quote. The South thanks to slavery and their reliance on cash crops needed to import so much to continue to survive. These things were very often manufactured in the North, or imported from elsewhere and shipped by the North, sometimes on Northern ships. The Industrial Revolution in the North was built in part with the wealth generated by slavery-wealth generated in the North.
My point is half this. I find it baffling that Southern money is being pulled out of the equation as if the North would have continued on its merry way without it. I don't see any evidence to suggest that's the case. Without customers - especially continental ones who helped fund the railroad system to DELIVER goods to those customers - northern factories would never have gotten far past the blueprint stage. British factories were doing just fine to supply Europe with most of what they needed.
The KoM/Orincoro counterargument seems to be based on fantasy. In a perfect idealized ahistorical Southern system, we can IMAGINE a system that would have worked much better to generate long term wealth.
The final conclusion drawn from this seems to be that the contribution of slaves doesn't count based seemingly on 2 points: 1. That a non-slavery fantasy system could have done a better job. And 2. The North would have continued along merrily without the South.
You can understand why for me, as an historian, that line of argument doesn't really work.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Without customers - especially continental ones who helped fund the railroad system to DELIVER goods to those customers - northern factories would never have gotten far past the blueprint stage.
How many customers did the South generate, noting that the slaves weren't buying anything? You can't tell me that the tiny plantation elite were a significant market on the scale of the industrialisation of the US. Indeed, the railroads you mention demonstrate the point: They didn't run in the South! If we replace the slaves with wage laborers (not sharecroppers), they would have formed an extensive market and boosted industrialisation everywhere.
Here's a simple model that clarified my thinking: There is a worker, a landowner, a hairdresser, and a manufacturer. The worker produces stuff that is split between him and the landowner; if he is a slave, he gets the minimum that will keep him alive, if free, he gets something more. The landowner spends some of his stuff on getting his hair cut, and some on factory goods from the manufacturer. The manufacturer invests some of the stuff he gets - he is the only one who does so.
Now, if the worker is a slave, then the manufacturer gets the business only of the landowner, and has to take his investments out of that. But if the worker is free, the landowner spends about the same amount on factory goods, and cuts down on the haircuts; the worker, however, starts spending on factory goods. So when the worker becomes free, the hairdresser loses out, but the manufacturer gets more stuff to invest with, creating economic growth.
quote:In a perfect idealized ahistorical Southern system, we can IMAGINE a system that would have worked much better to generate long term wealth.
So when we are talking about the effects of slavery, exactly what the devil are we supposed to compare it to unless it's an ahistorical system that doesn't have any slaves? You cannot possibly have this discussion if you're going to disallow subtracting the slavery!
To the extent that slavery hurt economic growth relative to hypothetical free labour, our wealth exists in spite of slavery, not because of slavery. We would have been even richer without it.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:To the extent that slavery hurt economic growth relative to hypothetical free labour, our wealth exists in spite of slavery, not because of slavery. We would have been even richer without it.
Alright, but in the real world where wealth was actually generated, a portion of the northern industrial revolution was built on the back of the cotton crop grown in the south and shipped abroad, among other things. That's really not up for debate, is it? That the North made at least *some* money on the profits from slave-based cash crop agriculture?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I'll do a longer point later, but out of curiosity, how much disposable income do you all imagine the average northern worker had to spend on anything other than necessities?
Keeping in mind that when Henry ford instituted the five dollar day, it was a huge deal in marking the beginning of the consumer spending era in large part because previous to that, most people who were common laborers simply didn't have the money to spend on anything above subsistence living. That wouldn't happen until the twentieth century.
There's a difference between a likely alternate history and a complete fantasy history. Proposing an alternative that actually could have happened had different decisions been made here and there to alter things is an interesting way to look at historical figures. But I think you cheapen history by looking back at it 200 years later and say, gee, if only the entire fabric of their existence was fundamentally altered they could have done so much better.
Suggesting that slavery played no part in making America wealthy because a better fantasy system could have generated MORE money doesn't make any sense. Suggesting slavery held back america from becoming even wealthier, now, go ahead and make that argument and go ahead and use your fantasy history. Totally fair. But to suggest we don't owe slavery anything for our wealth because we could have been even wealthier is illogical.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:To the extent that slavery hurt economic growth relative to hypothetical free labour, our wealth exists in spite of slavery, not because of slavery. We would have been even richer without it.
Alright, but in the real world where wealth was actually generated, a portion of the northern industrial revolution was built on the back of the cotton crop grown in the south and shipped abroad, among other things. That's really not up for debate, is it? That the North made at least *some* money on the profits from slave-based cash crop agriculture?
Of course it isn't up for debate that slavery generated some wealth. If it didn't, it would have been abandoned. But the opportunity cost of slavery- the economy it stopped from forming, represents a colossal loss of opportunity. We can't saw in a raw sense they slavery made america poorer, but it kept us from being much, much richer, particularly the southern states.
And in response to what lyr has said about it being a symbiotic relationship, well, if it really had been, there wouldn't have been a war. It was a client state relationship, and the south was the client. When the terms became unbearable for the north, there was a war. At that point, the reasons for the war were also the reasons the south lost.
quote: What does it matter? It was NATIONAL growth. Southern money was fueling NATIONAL growth for the country by pumping large sums of money into American industry and infrastructure.
I don't understand what's happening here. Why are you separating the South out like this? This discussion began over the role the South played in NATIONAL growth. You're trying to argue that just because reinvestment didn't happen in the south the way it did in the north that southern money that got it all going doesn't matter? Where do you think that money came from? And so long as we're playing fantasy historian, how does the north grow WITHOUT southern money?
I'm differentiating the south because it was differentiated at the time. The structure of the US was fundamentally different- secession was an open question, and the southern states leveraged the threat of leaving the union to extract compromises from the north in the 1820s, and again in the 1840s. It was by dint of the situation becoming unbearable for the north that the south finally seceded, and when it did, it did so according to a real dilineation between the southern economy and the northern. The southern economy was a client of the north, and did not view itself as part of a "union." That view of the states was instituted during the war, as a way of arguing in favor of fighting the rebellion, and after the war, in the process of reconstruction.
The political crisis that led up to the civil war has as its primary cause the very real economic disparities between the north and the south. If they were symbiotic, as you view it, then what led to the conflict? Whatever wealth the south did generate for the north, and of course it did (I am not arguing otherwise), this was still viewed by the north as a poor bargain. The south's cash crops and injections of capital into the northern economy were seen as so worthless compared to the prospect of a modernized southern economy, and the expansion of slavery to the western colonies was seen as such an opportunity loss, that the north was willing to cut trade ties with the south and fight for half a decade to open its markets back up and displace slavery as the basis of the southern economy. That's a very powerful sign of motivation, and a sign that the south was not performing a useful role in the union. If the north had been content to simply quarantine the south and isolate it diplomatically, while continuing to benefit from its client economic status, it could have done so easily. But that is not what the northern states wanted to do.
While you can view that as a sign that the north did see the south as part of a symbiotic relationship, you have to also accept that this symbiosis was dysfunctional, and that the north wanted to gain influence over the southern economy in order to modernize it- which is exactly what the war ended up being about.
[ May 20, 2015, 05:50 AM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Orincoro -
quote:The political crisis that led up to the civil war has as its primary cause the very real economic disparities between the north and the south.
Yes, but much of the discussion was political and moral, not economic. I note this, because the big Northern promise to freed slaves wasn't a job in a factory, it was a subsistence living as farmsteader. In other words, they could go right back to growing cotton, but the North got to assuage its guilt. For the South it was about a genuine feeling that they were a people apart in need of self-rule. It's why the Crittendon Amendments failed so strongly, when enshrining legal protections for slavery in the Constitution even failed to mollify Southerners. I've not heard a version of Civil War history told that uses as its primary motivator a desire by the North to declare war to remake the South in its economic image. Do you have some reading you could point me to?
quote:If they were symbiotic, as you view it, then what led to the conflict? Whatever wealth the south did generate for the north, and of course it did (I am not arguing otherwise), this was still viewed by the north as a poor bargain.
Again, the conflict was about self-rule, control, and morality. The North touted an economic plan for the South, post-war, that was basically the same thing as pre-war, it just would have redistributed a lot of cotton growing land to former slaves. But even before Reconstruction ended, there was little sign that the North was attempting any sort of wholesale change on the focus of the Southern economy. It was still focused on cash crops, primarily cotton, for decades to come, only now it was impoverished by a combination of serious global competition from Indian and Egyptian slave labor, and a bole weevil infestation.
In your version, the North declared war on the South because they were upset there weren't more southern factories and customers?
quote:The south's cash crops and injections of capital into the northern economy were seen as so worthless compared to the prospect of a modernized southern economy, and the expansion of slavery to the western colonies was seen as such an opportunity loss, that the north was willing to cut trade ties with the south and fight for half a decade to open its markets back up and displace slavery as the basis of the southern economy. That's a very powerful sign of motivation, and a sign that the south was not performing a useful role in the union. If the north had been content to simply quarantine the south and isolate it diplomatically, while continuing to benefit from its client economic status, it could have done so easily. But that is not what the northern states wanted to do.
Oh, you're viewing the alternative of just letting them go and continuing to make money off them vs. forcing them back into the union. I think you're missing a couple of key factors. 1. The Republicans were in large part an abolitionist movement. It was a key component of their platform back when platforms actually meant something. A lot of them, especially the loudest among them, were vehemently opposed to slavery. To say nothing of the fact that many supported the notion of an eternal federal union, and that also meant a lot to them, they couldn't stomach the idea of A. Not freeing the slaves and B. Then continuing to make money off of them.
2. If their plan was to remake the South...well...where did that go? Reconstruction lasted more than a decade and they didn't really lift a finger to institute any sort of wholesale remake. They mostly focused on getting black former slaves back onto farms to grow cotton. The first experiments with free black colonies? They grew cotton. Your problem seemed to be both with what they were doing and the lack of customers it created. Well, for a decade, the North had carte blanche to rebuild the southern economy any way they wanted, and they chose to go right back to cotton and put black farmers into a subsistence living that probably didn't produce any more consumption that it did previously, since they were buying the same things their former owners had.
Can we just agree that slavery was part and parcel of a great deal of American wealth generation, regardless of how much fantastically richer we might theoretically have been, and call it a day? And that when we look back on the contribution American slaves made to what America is today, we can say they played an important role in getting America to where it is, even if a different method might have gotten us much further?
I feel like you're looking at this like this:
Random person - "Slavery generated a billion dollars! Wow, they really contributed a lot." Orincoro - "They could have generated TEN billion dollars, therefore that billion dollars is totally meaningless and completely worthless."
Even if I said you were right about the waste involved, I can't fathom your end point.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
KoM -
quote:How many customers did the South generate, noting that the slaves weren't buying anything? You can't tell me that the tiny plantation elite were a significant market on the scale of the industrialisation of the US. Indeed, the railroads you mention demonstrate the point: They didn't run in the South!
What are you talking about? Of course railroads ran in the South. The network wasn't quite as heavy as it was in the north by 1860, but there were plenty of lines in operation in Southern states.
If we compare the situation to the South to the situation in America today, your conclusion would have to be that America is currently generating very very little wealth. Why? Because while there is in fact a lot of wealth concentrated at the top (our current 1% vs. the landed gentry of the South), there was a very large class of what I suppose for the time could be called "middle class" who owned 1-10 slaves who had enough money to do more than just survive. In the tens of thousands. As we seem to agree, the Southern elite were both small in number and held a relatively small amount of the South's slaves. The vast majority of slaves, and thus the vast majority of money generated by their activity, was held by the average slave owner, not the super rich. Tens of thousands of Southern customers for northern businesses.
quote:If we replace the slaves with wage laborers (not sharecroppers), they would have formed an extensive market and boosted industrialisation everywhere.
How? And when? When was slavery supposed to be abolished and how would decent wage laborers exist in the South? For that matter, where is all this money coming from to begin with to start all the factories?
You're trying to mix and match about a 100 years of American history pulling a lot events really far forward and it's nearly impossible to gauge your scenario without a lot more detail.
Suffice it to say I certainly agree with you that if America developed in an alternate universe where they advanced 100 years forward in their way of thinking and economic practices and slavery was abolished 100 years earlier and the people were magically transformed in their culture and attitudes and the union movement happened 50-60 years earlier....America could indeed have been far, far more prosperous. I won't argue that point.
But to say that the South played little to no role in American wealth generation doesn't make any sense to me.
quote:So when we are talking about the effects of slavery, exactly what the devil are we supposed to compare it to unless it's an ahistorical system that doesn't have any slaves? You cannot possibly have this discussion if you're going to disallow subtracting the slavery!
To the extent that slavery hurt economic growth relative to hypothetical free labour, our wealth exists in spite of slavery, not because of slavery. We would have been even richer without it.
If the point of the discussion is to prove that slavery generated no wealth, then I don't see the point of the comparison, because it's immaterial to the point.
If the point is to prove that slavery wasn't the best system for wealth generation, then I concede the point.
It's fantasy history. It's not so much that it's ahistorical. It suggests a fundamental reordering of the basic social, cultural and economic fabric of the entire country. It's maybe a fun academic exercise, but it's not like we were a few beats of a butterfly's wings away from it actually happening. And I think its purpose, ultimately, is to seriously cheapen the efforts and suffering of people who actually lived and died under the system we had and carry forward today. Like you're trying to brush off any any responsibility we might bear because, although you might benefit from what happened, you don't feel guilty because they were so inefficient about it.
That's the part, ultimately, that rubs me the wrong way.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Of course railroads ran in the South.
Half the track length that the North had. But more to my point, there were not many North-South links; the Southern railroads tended to connect plantations to ports, while Northern ones connected cities to each other. There was apparently not much money in connecting plantations to factories - contrary to your assertion:
quote:the railroad system to DELIVER goods to those customers
quote:Tens of thousands of Southern customers [among small slaveowners]
Still a drop in the ocean on the scale of industrialising the entire continent.
quote:how much disposable income do you all imagine the average northern worker had to spend on anything other than necessities?
What makes you think their necessities weren't made in factories? Clothing is a necessity, and was the original driver of the Industrial Revolution. But to answer your question more directly, this nice summary shows, on page 231, that for the period 1869-1873 (a little after the war, but presumably close enough that the difference won't be huge) consumers are spending 2.8 billion (in 1929 dollars) on consumables, 1.22 on semi-durables, and 0.64 on durables. For that period it seems likely that these roughly correspond to food, clothing, and furniture. So, while they're clearly spending a very large part of their budget on food, nonetheless they do go quite a bit beyond subsistence. Do note that, while dirt poor by our standards, American industrial workers in the nineteenth century were still one of the richest populations in the world!
quote:Can we just agree that slavery was part and parcel of a great deal of American wealth generation, regardless of how much fantastically richer we might theoretically have been, and call it a day?
No, actually, I don't agree that that's true. Wealth in 1850 is only part of our wealth now if it was invested, not consumed. Money that was used on Parisian dresses was wasted, so far as generating twenty-first century wealth is concerned. (Assuming that the dressmaker was not an investor.) You have to show, not only that the slaves generated X amount of money for their owners, but that some significant amount of that production was invested.
quote:If the point of the discussion is to prove that slavery generated no wealth
No, it is to show that slavery didn't generate any (or very little) wealth today. Nobody disputes that it generated wealth in 1850. The question is to what extent that wealth descends to today.
quote:[Like] you don't feel guilty because they were so inefficient about it.
No, actually, I don't feel guilty because it happened before I was born. Somewhere among my ancestors is a rapist and his victim - probably more than one; should I feel bad because I wouldn't exist without that violent act? Nonsense. That way madness lies. "Should we feel guilty for slavery" is a much easier question than "Are we wealthy because of slavery"! The answer is a simple "no, because we didn't do it". The wealth thing requires at least a little bit of economic analysis. I mean, I could even be wrong on the point - it could be the case that most of those ill-gotten gains actually were invested somewhere; but that still wouldn't make anyone now alive guilty, or morally liable to reparations. Both legally and morally, guilt requires not only that you benefit from the act, but that you committed it with that benefit in mind. You cannot be guilty of an act you didn't commit, no matter how much you benefitted.
"We have to abandon the hope of a better past."
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:No, actually, I don't agree that that's true. Wealth in 1850 is only part of our wealth now if it was invested, not consumed. Money that was used on Parisian dresses was wasted, so far as generating twenty-first century wealth is concerned. (Assuming that the dressmaker was not an investor.) You have to show, not only that the slaves generated X amount of money for their owners, but that some significant amount of that production was invested.
It's a strange notion you have, where the profits from the cash crop of nearly a century, the cash crop that was one of the chief necessities for the industrial revolution, textiles, just somehow evaporated from that time until now. Spent on Parisian dresses and haircuts, it would seem. I'm trying to think of another piece of an economy, one which actually produces things that people buy such as textiles, that could just disappear out of any consideration such as you're describing. I'm drawing a blank.
As for a question of guilt, you are again recasting Lyrhawn's argument into something he didn't say. He didn't say you should feel guilty over slavery, he said that the American economy benefitted from it. And it's ridiculous to assert that one should feel no guilt from benefitting from a crime.
Anyway, it's all very academic anyway. Even without this fantasy you've created, where all of those millions over several generations contributed little to the industrial revolution in the north, the case for reparations is still solid. Because, you know, we rather reneged pretty horribly on all of the promises we made after the Civil War in terms of things like voting rights and equality, something something acres and a mule, so on and so forth. You can't dodge your way out of guilt for that, not if you're going to actually buy into the notion of each citizen having a stake in the state as a whole. Or is it somehow more ethical to say 'we don't have to feel guilt as long as our predecessors run out the clock on a crime'?
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Orincoro -
quote:The political crisis that led up to the civil war has as its primary cause the very real economic disparities between the north and the south.
Yes, but much of the discussion was political and moral, not economic. I note this, because the big Northern promise to freed slaves wasn't a job in a factory, it was a subsistence living as farmsteader. In other words, they could go right back to growing cotton, but the North got to assuage its guilt. For the South it was about a genuine feeling that they were a people apart in need of self-rule. It's why the Crittendon Amendments failed so strongly, when enshrining legal protections for slavery in the Constitution even failed to mollify Southerners. I've not heard a version of Civil War history told that uses as its primary motivator a desire by the North to declare war to remake the South in its economic image. Do you have some reading you could point me to?
I am not saying that the object of reconstruction was to make the south in the north's image. I am saying it happened because of a toxic economic relationship. The moral and ethical argument doesn't fly for me. People don't go to war because of how they feel about things- there are always deeper economic motivations. Vietnam- it was about dominance of the US centered world system against the USSR. Iraq, it's about more or less the same thing, along with a sense that somehow (mistakenly to be sure) war was just going to be generally good for business. Economic motivations don't have to be smart or true, they just have to be there.
Even the second world war was rooted in economics and resources. That is what Hitler's adventurism was really all about. That's not a novel idea at all.
quote: In your version, the North declared war on the South because they were upset there weren't more southern factories and customers?
No, they declared war for many reasons- most proximately because the southern states seceded. The secession happened because the souther oligarchy saw it as the only way of preserving their current status in a dysfunctional economic paradigm. For the north, this paradigm needed to be set up for gradual change. It had been halted in progress, by slavery, for generations.
And yes, of course, the proximate goal of the north was to re-establish the same economic pattern that predated the war, on slightly different conditions. But this is always the near-term goal for complex political systems. You want reform without anything really changing. But the reforms they did want would allow the south to slowly evolve into a better economic partner. Those efforts failed in many ways, but they were clearly a goal for the north's political agenda, long term.
quote: Oh, you're viewing the alternative of just letting them go and continuing to make money off them vs. forcing them back into the union. I think you're missing a couple of key factors. 1. The Republicans were in large part an abolitionist movement. It was a key component of their platform back when platforms actually meant something. A lot of them, especially the loudest among them, were vehemently opposed to slavery. To say nothing of the fact that many supported the notion of an eternal federal union, and that also meant a lot to them, they couldn't stomach the idea of A. Not freeing the slaves and B. Then continuing to make money off of them.
2. If their plan was to remake the South...well...where did that go? Reconstruction lasted more than a decade and they didn't really lift a finger to institute any sort of wholesale remake. They mostly focused on getting black former slaves back onto farms to grow cotton. The first experiments with free black colonies? They grew cotton. Your problem seemed to be both with what they were doing and the lack of customers it created. Well, for a decade, the North had carte blanche to rebuild the southern economy any way they wanted, and they chose to go right back to cotton and put black farmers into a subsistence living that probably didn't produce any more consumption that it did previously, since they were buying the same things their former owners had.
As I've said, I don't see reconstruction as a success in most regards. I'm not saying the north got what it wanted- it mostly didn't. No one did.
And I think, in regard to the first point, that you're too much of a social historian to appreciate what I'm getting at. Why does an abolitionist party thrive and rise into power? Why do people vote for it? Did people vote for a war? Lincoln's unpopularity all over the north during the war, and references to the "black republicans," among the less socially concerned entrepreneurial classes, were very real, during and after the war.
Ideas are fine. They are the reasons people claim to vote for the people they end up voting for. They are rarely the real reasons people win elections. And I think underlying the idea that slavery needed to be abolished as a moral imperative (which was of course powerful), there was an economic imperative as well. People recognized, and government institutions recognized, that the dysfunction at the heart of the southern economy was a cancer on the union, economic as well as moral. De Tocqueville recognized this, as I said, decades before, and spoke of it in those terms- moral as well as economic.
quote: Can we just agree that slavery was part and parcel of a great deal of American wealth generation, regardless of how much fantastically richer we might theoretically have been, and call it a day?
Can you just stop being a dick about this? We are defining the terms that are important to us in this discussion. And I have agreed, more than once, that yes, slavery generated wealth. No one is arguing against that, except perhaps in the horrible effrontery involved in complicating that precious moral view of history that you have with the vile idea that economics motivate people to do things.
quote: Random person - "Slavery generated a billion dollars! Wow, they really contributed a lot." Orincoro - "They could have generated TEN billion dollars, therefore that billion dollars is totally meaningless and completely worthless."
This, is why I think you're being a total dick to me for no reason.
It goes more like this for me:
Lyr: Slavery generated a lot of wealth.
Me: Yeah, it did. But you have to consider that it also stood in the way of the south generating a great deal more in different ways.
Lyr: HOW DARE YOU SIR!
Everyone: Wow, what an interesting and nuanced discussion you guys are refusing to have because Lyr is "a real historian," and Orincoro is a mere musicologist, who dares to study this subject with some interest.
quote: Even if I said you were right about the waste involved, I can't fathom your end point.
Clearly because my end point involves discussing the fascinating subject of history without winning anything. Stay classy.
quote: quote:KOM
quote: LYR: Can we just agree that slavery was part and parcel of a great deal of American wealth generation, regardless of how much fantastically richer we might theoretically have been, and call it a day?
No, actually, I don't agree that that's true. Wealth in 1850 is only part of our wealth now if it was invested, not consumed. Money that was used on Parisian dresses was wasted, so far as generating twenty-first century wealth is concerned. (Assuming that the dressmaker was not an investor.) You have to show, not only that the slaves generated X amount of money for their owners, but that some significant amount of that production was invested.
I love watching scientists talk to historians. That's meaty discussion.
KOM:
quote: No, actually, I don't feel guilty because it happened before I was born. Somewhere among my ancestors is a rapist and his victim - probably more than one; should I feel bad because I wouldn't exist without that violent act? Nonsense. That way madness lies. "Should we feel guilty for slavery" is a much easier question than "Are we wealthy because of slavery"! The answer is a simple "no, because we didn't do it". The wealth thing requires at least a little bit of economic analysis. I mean, I could even be wrong on the point - it could be the case that most of those ill-gotten gains actually were invested somewhere; but that still wouldn't make anyone now alive guilty, or morally liable to reparations. Both legally and morally, guilt requires not only that you benefit from the act, but that you committed it with that benefit in mind. You cannot be guilty of an act you didn't commit, no matter how much you benefitted.
I'll quibble with this slightly. Your analysis is correct re: guilt in the criminal or moral sense. Where I think we depart is in responsibility. Whether or not you can show that America as a whole benefited from slavery in a material sense, you can certainly easily show that America was economically divided, and that certain citizens were systematically disadvantaged by slavery, and when it comes to discussing *responsibility*, if not for the act, then for correcting the consequences of the act, then I think we can say that the state of today has a responsibility to rectify the adverse consequences of slavery.
But we should do this as much because it is right to do, as because it *makes sense* to do it. The recent violent confrontations with police, the majority of them white, in areas in which black people live in economic isolation, under constant fear of police brutality and exploitation by means of fines, jailing, and red-lining, have shown that not only can we suffer serious consequences and political and social instability as a result of our history, but also that addressing these situations proactively would make us richer as a society in general. Nobody can look at our incarceration rate, our dropping crime rate, and our ever increasingly punitive judicial system, and say that this is an economically rational situation. Much less a morally rational one.
[ May 21, 2015, 09:30 AM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I think that you are getting to the point. Regardless of what wealth was generated by slavery, it and the policies of segregation for more than a century after that concentrated whatever wealth and opportunity and real estate into white hands. We are still seeing the fruit of that.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Of course- and that is orders of magnitude more important than whatever wealth slavery generated. That wealth was not managed efficiently or effectively anyway because of the system it was generated in. Economic growth is non-zero sum. The system got set up so that growth was not rationally or efficiently distributed as the economy grew. Of course, most black people in America still live lives undreamed of by the richest southerns of the slavery days- they don't die of small-pox and they have access to information technology, phones, and cars. But the disparity is the important point. They still live, on average, far beneath their potential living standard.
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
This reminds me of the arguments in the Song of Ice and Fire books where the Slavers argued the Slavery made the slave states of Slaver's Bay supposedly vastly wealthier than say, Westeros that didn't practice slavery and seemingly doesn't even have serfdom. I was pretty frustrated because seemingly not a single character had a logical counter argument to this despite how obviously wrong it was.
The South-North wealth disparity is the historical example of the counter argument I wish someone would've elaborated on in the books. The South concentrates its wealth in the hands of a minority; its cities and manor houses may look "nice" but the society itself is not wealthy.
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
I think I have to agree with KoM in the point that I believe guilt is a worthless, or even detrimental, concept to bring into play in these sorts of discussions. For three reasons:
First, it's application by a lot of well-intentioned "social justice" types (usually coupled with self-righteous and hypocritical anger and condemnation, "how dare you be born into a privileged socioeconomic or racial group! You should be ashamed!") leads quite a few people to conflate and dismiss any sort of reparations or appeals for actual social justice with this sort of guilt-tripping.
Second, it's entirely absurd to believe someone ought to feel ashamed or guilty for the actions of their ancestors. Responsible as a society to fix the mess previous generations left us? Yes. Able to recognize and rectify issues of wealth disparity and privilege? Absolutely. Guilt? Shame? Remorse? Hell no. Forgive me, but that's just stupid.
Half of my ancestors belong to perhaps the most discriminated, reviled, persecuted group of people in history. The other half were hairy blonde savages who made blood sacrifices to the old gods and raped, pillaged, murdered and enslaved their way across western Europe for hundreds of years and otherwise were just total assholes. (they got better and mostly just get it out if their system with Death/Viking Metal bands now) So I guess maybe I'm a wash? Neither set had anything to do with the trade or oppression of African slaves or African American people. But again, trying to calculate the precise amount of ancestral guilt I should feel is an exercise in futility.
Third, and most importantly, feeling guilty doesn't actually accomplish anything. In fact, White Guilt is actually worse than useless, because it imputes a false sense of moral superiority and accomplishment and sates/assuages impulses towards justice that might have actually been used to break down social and economic barriers and effect racial reconciliation.
And this is a pretty touchy subject, admittedly, but I know several arrogant white people like this. People who feel the need to constantly (mostly online) harp about privilege checks, share trending articles and hashtags, and patronizingly lecture their hopelessly close-minded "friends" about how deeply ignorant and privileged they are and how bad they should feel about it. Here's the thing - and I hate saying this because it's such a fricking stereotypical argument Jamaican neighbors black best friend etc - but I can pretty confidently say I've had more close, deep, meaningful friendships and with black people (and thanks to the military black people who grew up in poverty, and also frequently were in authority positions over me) than all of them *combined.* They live in a privileged little upper middle class bubble of all white friends. Because actually getting off their pasty white asses and *doing something* meaningful might mean genuinely interacting with people from radically different cultural backgrounds with totally different ideas about how life works, and God knows that can be just terribly unsafe and uncomfortable.
A lot of them actually brag about not voting.
Sorry for the tangent. Anyway, I liked Elison's comic. I think a big part of the way forward from here starts with calmly and dispassionately trying to understand *why* the injustice and inequality we see continues to exist, analyze all of the nuances that race and class privilege, and then takes steps to rectify that, both personally and as a society. And that could mean everything from reparations paid, political redistricting, and even some social upheaval at the macro-level, to being aware of one's cultural biases when conducting a job interview, or deciding when to cross the street, or what social clubs you're part of and how you socialize in general.
But there's no place for guilt in the way forward, and here's why, here's what I'm trying to get at: guilt is a selfish emotion. It's all about *you*, your feeling of sorrow for a perceived or actual wrong, and your desire to make things right for *you* so you don't feel guilt any more. What we need is empathy. The ability to connect with, feel, and understand the struggles of those who have been oppressed, and then take action to rectify. Empathy makes demands that guilt never can, because it means coming to terms with the needs and desires of the person you're empathizing with, rather than assuaging your own wounded conscience.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:I'll quibble with this slightly. Your analysis is correct re: guilt in the criminal or moral sense. Where I think we depart is in responsibility. Whether or not you can show that America as a whole benefited from slavery in a material sense, you can certainly easily show that America was economically divided, and that certain citizens were systematically disadvantaged by slavery, and when it comes to discussing *responsibility*, if not for the act, then for correcting the consequences of the act, then I think we can say that the state of today has a responsibility to rectify the adverse consequences of slavery.
I would quibble with your quibble: I think we have a responsibility to ensure that the system is fair and gives everyone a reasonably even playing field. I would not put it in terms of slavery, however. For one thing, it's much too limited: Suppose that there had never been slavery, but we did have a minority that was unfairly treated by our courts, harassed by the police, and what-have-you. Would that be ok? Obviously not; the argument from fairness carries through entirely without any mention of the consequences of slavery. Further, to take slavery specifically is to pick out one injustice from a history swimming in them. Should the US compensate the descendants of the Loyalists, because they were badly treated after the rebellion? Do the descendants of the winners in the African tribal wars, who captured the slaves in the first place, have any responsibility for fixing the crimes of their ancestors? Should Mongolia compensate Russia for the invasion that left them poorer than the rest of Europe? (I'll note that the Russians did think so at one point, and acted accordingly to conquer Mongolia.) Ought Norway to give Ireland some oil money in trade for all that rape, pillage, and looting? Conversely, should Sweden pay an indemnity to Norway and Denmark for all our territory that they stole, without which we are that much poorer? There's no lack of grievances; history is a cesspool. Why is this specific injustice different from all other injustices?
"We must abandon the hope of a better past". We can't fix the past. We can only fix the present and the future. Restitution has nothing to do with it. Fairness does.
quote:But we should do this as much because it is right to do, as because it *makes sense* to do it. The recent violent confrontations with police, the majority of them white, in areas in which black people live in economic isolation, under constant fear of police brutality and exploitation by means of fines, jailing, and red-lining, have shown that not only can we suffer serious consequences and political and social instability as a result of our history, but also that addressing these situations proactively would make us richer as a society in general. Nobody can look at our incarceration rate, our dropping crime rate, and our ever increasingly punitive judicial system, and say that this is an economically rational situation. Much less a morally rational one.
If you want to reform the American justice system, I'm entirely with you. I just don't think it has anything to do with slavery.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Should the US compensate the descendants of the Loyalists, because they were badly treated after the rebellion?
Sure.
quote:Do the descendants of the winners in the African tribal wars, who captured the slaves in the first place, have any responsibility for fixing the crimes of their ancestors?
Sure.
quote:Should Mongolia compensate Russia for the invasion that left them poorer than the rest of Europe?
Sure.
quote:Ought Norway to give Ireland some oil money in trade for all that rape, pillage, and looting?
Sure.
quote:Conversely, should Sweden pay an indemnity to Norway and Denmark for all our territory that they stole, without which we are that much poorer?
Sure.
quote:Why is this specific injustice different from all other injustices?
Wait, what? It is?
I feel like your examples aren't very good at leading up to your intended point
Edit to add: Which is to say, that normally I would actually be a little more sympathetic to your point. For a multicultural society, this isn't just a black and white issue (hah!). Its just that your examples seem kinda poor at making your point.
[ May 23, 2015, 01:52 AM: Message edited by: Mucus ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Thinking that we should not single out slavery (not that anyone in this conversation is, actually, it's just the topic being discussed) is one thing. There's plenty of traction with that argument. Thinking that the systematic mistreatment of African Americans at the hands of the American criminal justice system has nothing to do with slavery makes even less sense than the idea that the wealth generated by slavery and cash crop farming simply vanished out of the American economy with little or no impact on its future wealth. Of course a systemic form of basically the worst kind of racism (ethnically justified human slavery) short of genocide, for nearly half of our history as a nation, has an impact on the justice system today. Those other (much older) events you named had an impact as well, obviously.
Man, I am almost cringing imagining what y'all might say about how we should feel about American treatment of Native Americans.
----- Dog, I'm on my phone right now so I can't do it justice except to say that you're defining 'guilt' differently than I used it. 'Guilt as felt in a responsibility to address a wrong done' is the way I'm using it. Certainly not (and I will confess some frustration, since I feel it was pretty plain I didn't mean it this way) as in 'guilt for something you, personally, did'.
------ Orincoro, if Lyrhawn was being a dick to you I missed it. Further if he was being a dick to you, based on his posts to you, then frankly you're a bit ridiculous to complain about it, if his tone to you is dickish. On that scale you're almost Hulkish in your dickishness.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Dog, I'm on my phone right now so I can't do it justice except to say that you're defining 'guilt' differently than I used it. 'Guilt as felt in a responsibility to address a wrong done' is the way I'm using it. Certainly not (and I will confess some frustration, since I feel it was pretty plain I didn't mean it this way) as in 'guilt for something you, personally, did'.
Lyrhawn and KOM were both definitely using it in that context though, Rakeesh. I honestly have never seen guilt used in the definition you just described - taking responsibility for a wrong done by someone else. The word "guilty" by it's very nature implies personal responsibility for a wrong done. Otherwise the phrase "feeling guilty for something I didn't do" doesn't need the qualifier. Likewise, if you're found guilty for a crime you didn't commit, that implies an mistake was made somewhere alone the way in reaching that judgement.
I think it's pretty clear I'm using the standard definition of the word, and so I think your frustration is misplaced here. You can't expect me to guess you're using a rather bizarre definition, or even what that definition is, especially when the person you were addressing (KoM) was also obviously using the same definition I was.
You're free to define words however you choose, and I'm definitely not interested in starting a debate about semantics here or to lecture you in any way. But I don't think any agreement about whether or not we should feel guilt in this situation is possible if we don't have a common definition. Your definition of guilt is something I would probably define along the lines of "moral imperative" or maybe "responsibility."
And in that case, yes, as just and moral humans (or I guess, humans who strive to be just and moral) it's our responsibility to try and put and end to injustice and oppression. But I think that's something everyone in this thread would agree on, and indeed something I'm pretty sure everyone *has* said so far. So I'm really at loss where the disagreement lies, unless your definition of "guilt" is more granular in way that both defies the standard "personal responsibility for a wrong" but is also not in line with "moral imperative", which is certainly possible. Again, I'm not trying to be pedantic here, but slippery definitions like this can cause a lot of exasperation if they're not nailed down, as I'm sure you're aware.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Dog,
It's 330am right now and I'm about to crash, so please remind me later if I leave this conversation dangling. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/guilt The very second definition of the word doesn't lay claim to personal wrongdoing needed to feel guilty for something, so I'ma hafta object to your objection;)
It's a long conversation, but if you can point out to me where Lyrhawn said or suggested anyone here should feel personally guilty for slavery in the meaning you use, I'll cop to being wrong about that.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
I never said you had to actually have done anything to *feel* guilt, Rakeesh. (if that were true my entire post would be pointless) You can be made to feel guilty about just about anything.
But if you read the definition you mentioned it says "a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined." That still pretty clearly imputes a personal sense of culpability for the wrong committed. Can you feel guilty about slavery? Absolutely. Again, you can *feel* guilty for anything. *Are* you guilty that slavery existed or *should* you feel guilty about slavery? That seems to be the question at hand, as KoM clearly stated he shouldn't feel guilty about slavery existing (because he wasn't around at that point), and you told him he should.
But honestly, seriously, I have never seen anyone but you define "guilt" in such a bizarre fashion. And with the way you're dancing around the definition by changing the terms from "should" to "can" (which is a pretty cheap move fwiw) it's making it harder to figure out what exactly you mean. I'm specifically referring to you telling KoM "You can't dodge your way out of guilt for that". You and I both know damn well you weren't telling KoM "it's possible for you to feel guilt about this issue." you're either saying A) he *is* guilty for it or B) he *should* feel guilty about it. Which is a very SJW/White Guilt move, and I addressed it in my first post. (And yes, I assumed B by default since I think it's a safe assumption that you don't believe KoM is literally actually guilty for slavery so A doesn't apply.)
So you're saying he should feel guilt - which is a very distinct emotional response of responsibility for a wrongdoing - but you're saying it's some sort guilt that somehow isn't personal. Which tautologically just doesn't make sense - guilt is by nature a personal emotion.
(And let me reiterate this again since I suspect it's going to come up, this is not about whether it's *possible* to feel guilt for something you didn't do. It's possible to feel guilt for a supernova, if you really set your mind to it.)
So by telling KoM he *should* feel guilty about slavery, you're telling him he *should* feel personally responsible. Because that's what guilt is - being or feeling responsible for a wrongdoing. If you're not telling him he should feel personally responsible, than you shouldn't be telling him he should feel guilty. You should be telling him he should feel bad about it, or have empathy.
Or put in another way.
"Rakeesh, you should feel bad about the recent Earthquake in Nepal"
vs.
"Rakeesh, you should feel guilty about the recent Earthquake in Nepal"
Or even,
"Rakeesh, you should feel bad King of Men ate my cookie"
vs.
"Rakeesh, you should feel guilty King of Men ate my cookie"
Do you see how one of the two phrases imputes a personal responsibility?
The *entire* difference between "guilt" and "empathy" in this sense - the feeling bad about something wrong happening and/or feeling a moral imperative to rectify it - is the feeling of personal responsibility. If something isn't "personal guilt" than it's not guilt.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Dogbreath -
I don't think I ever used the word "guilt" or implied it in any sense you're suggesting.
But to clear things up: I don't think you should feel guilty about slavery.
The only way I could see a person today feeling guilty is if they haven't done enough to fix the problem that exists today before of 200 years of institutionalized oppression. I certainly agree you shouldn't feel bad about what happened 140+ years ago.
But there's plenty of pretty bad stuff going down right now that you bear a shared responsibility for fixing. That is, unfortunately for many of us, how society works. You don't have to feel bad for slavery, or Jim Cros laws, or police brutality. How you feel is immaterial in that sense. But society has a "you break it you buy it" policy that you're a signatory of by being born here and living here. So you might not bear guilt, but you bear responsibility.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
Lyrhawn: FWIW, I'm mostly addressing KoM's and Rakeesh's use of it, but what started this all was you saying this:
quote:Like you're trying to brush off any any responsibility we might bear because, although you might benefit from what happened, you don't feel guilty because they were so inefficient about it.
That's the part, ultimately, that rubs me the wrong way"
What sense did you mean it in then? You saying that it "rubs you the wrong way" that KoM doesn't feel guilty sure makes it seem like you think he should feel guilty about it.
Other than that, I agree with what you said 100%. Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I would say that guilt, in that particular passage, was directly tied to the responsibility I mentioned in the first half of the sentence.
"I don't feel guilty about the current state of minorities in America, so I don't feel a responsibility to help them."
You shouldn't feel guilty about what happened in the past. But you should feel guilty if you're shirking your responsibility to make up for the crimes committed by our society. In this sense, guilt and responsibility are linked. But none of it has anything to do with feeling DIRECTLY guilty or responsible for what happened before we were born.
If the semantics are tripping you up, then just replace "guilty" with "responsible" or "responsibility" every time you see me say it.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Re: "guilt"
I'm not guilty of anything. To hell with white guilt. But I don't get to be running around doing some Billy Joel style "well, WE didn't start the fire" panacea.
Independent of any other facticity indelibly providing for a person's privilege, if you have privilege that comes at the expense of other categories of people, it is your moral responsibility to actively eschew and work to counter and tear down that privilege. Do whatever you sincerely think is the most appropriately productive method for removing the benefits you get from the very real legacy of privilege for and marginalization against entire classes of people. The more power you have to affect this condition, the more you have the responsibility to apply your efforts and attitudes towards change.
Posted by GaalDornick (Member # 8880) on :
quote: Re: "guilt"
I'm not guilty of anything. To hell with white guilt. But I don't get to be running around doing some Billy Joel style "well, WE didn't start the fire" panacea.
Independent of any other facticity indelibly providing for a person's privilege, if you have privilege that comes at the expense of other categories of people, it is your moral responsibility to actively eschew and work to counter and tear down that privilege. Do whatever you sincerely think is the most appropriately productive method for removing the benefits you get from the very real legacy of privilege for and marginalization against entire classes of people. The more power you have to affect this condition, the more you have the responsibility to apply your efforts and attitudes towards change.
I agree with this sentiment, but I have no idea how this translates to real world practices. How does one eschew privileges that are inherent in their skin color or upbringing?
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
Well, you can see my earlier post in this thread (the first one on this page) for some broad examples. The "job interview" one is a good place to get started, and there's a reason I posted it. Applicants with "black sounding" names are 33% less likely to receive a call back than applicants with "white sounding" names in a wide variety of industries, and this trend is even more exacerbated by other factors. I.e, the quality of the resume highly effecting the callback rate for white-sounding names but having almost no impact on black-sounding names.
sam's point about the more power you have to affect the condition applies exactly to this: if you're an employer or hiring manager or even HR rep who sifts through resumes and decides who to pass on, it's your responsibility to understand the (often subconscious) impact racial bias plays in your interview, hiring, and salary decisions and work towards mitigating that bias.
This is just one of the many, many ways systemic racism works. Some of these things you can impact and change yourself, some you have to be in a position of power to change, some require you to do things that may feel highly uncomfortable and break social/cultural boundaries somewhat. De facto segregation is still a huge problem, especially in social situations. Some of this is classism as well, but you're a lot more likely to, say, find a poor white person in the social circle of wealthy and powerful persons than you will a poor black person, which can make upward mobility a lot easier for whites than blacks.
Posted by GaalDornick (Member # 8880) on :
I agree with all that. But Sam said "it is your moral responsibility to actively eschew and work to counter and tear down that privilege". How am I supposed to counter the fact that I'm more likely to get a job because I'm white? Or eschew my privilege that got me an education that someone born in a lower-income area did not receive?
On a personal level, I treat people equally. I'm confident enough in my self-awareness to know that applies subconsciously as well. On social media, I grudgingly take up arguments to provide an alternative voice to the people posting "Black cop kills white man, where's the outrage???" articles. (I just realized this sounds like I'm asking for a pat on the back, I don't mean this post that way) Other than that, I don't know what else I'm supposed to do.
In your earlier post you wrote "Because actually getting off their pasty white asses and *doing something* meaningful might mean genuinely interacting with people from radically different cultural backgrounds with totally different ideas about how life works, and God knows that can be just terribly unsafe and uncomfortable." What physical actions do you think the average non-hiring manager privileged person should be doing?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Voting. Supporting affirmative action. Volunteering. Mentoring.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: In your earlier post you wrote "Because actually getting off their pasty white asses and *doing something* meaningful might mean genuinely interacting with people from radically different cultural backgrounds with totally different ideas about how life works, and God knows that can be just terribly unsafe and uncomfortable." What physical actions do you think the average non-hiring manager privileged person should be doing?
FWIW, my criticism was levied particularly at the people I mentioned and their hypocrisy.
That being said, there are all sorts of things you *can* do. (I'll leave "should" out of this) When I was in college I volunteered for a non-profit called Rebuilding the Wall, an organization that does everything from construction work and landscaping on damaged and/or dilapidated property in underprivileged (read: "ghetto") neighborhoods to funding and supporting local entrepreneurs from those neighborhoods and empowering them to be job creators. I still regularly send them money. (mostly because they still e-mail me all the time telling me about all the incredibly wonderful stuff they do, and I don't have the heart to block their e-mails)
I used to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity on weekends and do projects in Florida/eastern Alabama when I lived in Pensacola.
That's sort of "entry level" basic stuff you can do that might take a few hours of your week/a little bit of money to make a real and noticeable difference. If you want to get more involved, there's the Big Brothers/Big Sisters where you get to be mentor to children who are in disadvantaged situations. And it's one I've been thinking about doing for a while now as I've realized just how important mentor ship and good advice can be to success.
But seriously man, almost anywhere you will find an abundance of non-profit organizations that do a lot of good work bringing about justice. Anything from literally just working with your hands to - as a lawyer friend of mine did volunteering for a place called the Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic - providing free legal counsel and services to underprivileged people.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Dogbreath,
OK, returning to it after a few days of holiday weekend.
quote:But honestly, seriously, I have never seen anyone but you define "guilt" in such a bizarre fashion. And with the way you're dancing around the definition by changing the terms from "should" to "can" (which is a pretty cheap move fwiw) it's making it harder to figure out what exactly you mean. I'm specifically referring to you telling KoM "You can't dodge your way out of guilt for that". You and I both know damn well you weren't telling KoM "it's possible for you to feel guilt about this issue." you're either saying A) he *is* guilty for it or B) he *should* feel guilty about it. Which is a very SJW/White Guilt move, and I addressed it in my first post. (And yes, I assumed B by default since I think it's a safe assumption that you don't believe KoM is literally actually guilty for slavery so A doesn't apply.)
Have you truly never encountered someone using 'guilt' to refer to something done by someone else, without their consent, but from which they still benefit? Suppose for example you were in college and it turned out that your instructor was simply giving everyone As or Bs to pad their own scores for their own record. For whatever reason in this hypothetical, you had not done the work to make an A but received one anyway. You hadn't done anything to deserve it, but would you experience any feelings that might resemble guilt?
As for my statement about 'not being able to dodge guilt', I think you cut off some rather critical context there. "You can't dodge your way out of guilt for that, not if you're going to actually buy into the notion of each citizen having a stake in the state as a whole." Is what I said. Is it simply the case that our society utterly resets into something entirely new, a blank slate, blameless, on each succeeding generation? That would be a pretty strange thing, historically speaking, rather unique really.
Or is it right to feel that the obligations our government has taken in the past ought to be met by us in the present as well as them in the past? Especially if those obligations were never met in the past at all?
quote:So you're saying he should feel guilt - which is a very distinct emotional response of responsibility for a wrongdoing - but you're saying it's some sort guilt that somehow isn't personal. Which tautologically just doesn't make sense - guilt is by nature a personal emotion.
I don't grant your premise that guilt is by definition such a personal-as in, in response to personal actions-emotion. That hasn't been my experience. Pride in accomplishments certainly isn't strictly a personal emotion, particularly if we're talking about taking credit for past achievements of ours as a nation.
quote: So by telling KoM he *should* feel guilty about slavery, you're telling him he *should* feel personally responsible. Because that's what guilt is - being or feeling responsible for a wrongdoing. If you're not telling him he should feel personally responsible, than you shouldn't be telling him he should feel guilty. You should be telling him he should feel bad about it, or have empathy.
Oh, I'm not so much telling him he should feel guilty. I'm telling him-and anyone else-that white American men have inherited a system which benefits them substantially to the detriment of others, and that to experience a benefit where others suffer through no fault of your own...feelings of guilt are not an inappropriate response. None of this 'better past' nonsense, I am speaking of the present.
(As an aside I should note that rjectiong notions of a better past go strangely with the theme of 'lets examine how supposedly the institution of slavery had no impact on the modern economy'.)
quote:But there's plenty of pretty bad stuff going down right now that you bear a shared responsibility for fixing. That is, unfortunately for many of us, how society works. You don't have to feel bad for slavery, or Jim Cros laws, or police brutality. How you feel is immaterial in that sense. But society has a "you break it you buy it" policy that you're a signatory of by being born here and living here. So you might not bear guilt, but you bear responsibility.
Lyrhawn and I are using different language to arrive at generally the same point. For me, if something is broken and you have a responsibility to fix it, a feeling of guilt is not inappropriate-but then in my experience 'guilt' does not always have to mean personal responsibility. I may be utterly isolated in that use of the word, but it's not been my experience.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick:
quote: Re: "guilt"
I'm not guilty of anything. To hell with white guilt. But I don't get to be running around doing some Billy Joel style "well, WE didn't start the fire" panacea.
Independent of any other facticity indelibly providing for a person's privilege, if you have privilege that comes at the expense of other categories of people, it is your moral responsibility to actively eschew and work to counter and tear down that privilege. Do whatever you sincerely think is the most appropriately productive method for removing the benefits you get from the very real legacy of privilege for and marginalization against entire classes of people. The more power you have to affect this condition, the more you have the responsibility to apply your efforts and attitudes towards change.
I agree with this sentiment, but I have no idea how this translates to real world practices. How does one eschew privileges that are inherent in their skin color or upbringing?
For most people, this means talking about it a lot, without actually getting close to anything remotely productive or transformative. But you know, hire people of color, rebuke your friends and colleagues for latent racism, protest your school's recruitment practices, etc, etc.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
While I don't think those measures are useless, per se, they also won't really do anything.
Something more concrete would be donating a significant sum of money to a charity that helps minorities in poverty.
Something more sincere and lasting would be to devote a significant amount of your time to organizing and protesting until real change comes about. This is something very, very few white people will ever do.
Liking something on Facebook or even yelling in an internet forum don't really count, but it's what seems to make most people feel good about themselves.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
I'm really curious as to why what I suggested "won't really do anything." The organization I mentioned has, along with it's partners, helped transform entire neighborhoods.
Posted by GaalDornick (Member # 8880) on :
It looks like he's referring to Orincoro's suggested measures
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
Orincoro also suggested a couple of concrete actions including protesting, so it doesn't seem super responsive to him either.
quote:Liking something on Facebook or even yelling in an internet forum don't really count, but it's what seems to make most people feel good about themselves.
While I'm not going to argue that these things are maximally beneficial, I also don't think that they are always useless. A lot of people spend a lot of their lives online. Online activity, I think, does influence other things.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I think, in the grand scheme of things, compared to the level of effort required to solve problems we haven't been able to solve in some 50-60 years of actively trying, you're talking about small ticket solutions rather than massive changes that are required.
Again, I didn't say those things are entirely useless - in fact I specifically said they aren't useless - they're like tasking an ant colony with building the Great Wall of China; good effort but not even close to what's needed.
We haven't made a really concerted national effort to solve poverty or racial problems in America since the mid to late 60s. And when we did, we spent billions, enlisted the aid of hundreds of thousands of volunteers and more. It moved the needle a little bit for a few years until Reagan dismantled it, and then we never really tried again. Teach for America is basically a broken system, a meat grinder the chews up idealistic young educated people and leaves them embittered and hopeless. Welfare reform in the 90s left millions behind and cuts to national and state level assistance in the last half decade have hurt even more. Incarceration rates are at all time highs for minorities. Government is even less representative of the people, and minorities have less access to the polls in many places than they did in the 70s.
If anything, we need a movement far greater than what we had in the 60s, with no signs of anything even close to it ready to materialize.
What exactly is online activity influencing if no one actually gets OFFLINE and does something?
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
Ok, so you saw Gaal ask what sort of things he can do, as an individual, to help make a difference and bring about change. I responded with several different suggestions as well as talking about probably over 1000 hours cumulative I've spent volunteering doing construction work, and gave him some resources as far as how he can get involved with those nonprofits - talked about lives and neighborhoods transformed - and your response is pretty much belittle those achievements because they haven't made an impact on a national level.
Yeah, get over yourself. Seriously. How the hell do you expect people to start working towards the sort of national change we need if your apparent response is to condescendingly dismiss their efforts as just not good enough? I gave Gaal some real and useful suggestions he can immediately apply to his personal life to make changes at a local level - which is about all he has the resources to accomplish - and you arrogantly swoop in and shit all over that because I didn't say "Gaal, what you really need to do is start a multi-billion dollar nonprofit and/or become the next Martin Luther King Jr. and change the political landscape of America." Just because something may be meaningless on a national level doesn't mean it isn't meaningful or even profound on a personal or local level, and ultimately the national change is going to *come* from enough people getting involved on that local level bringing about something greater.
Or, in other words, if all you have to build the Great Wall of China is ants, maybe shit-talking the handful on ants building isn't the best way to go about it.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
If you think Lyrhawn's frustration was directed specifically towards you or Gaal, well, you read a very different post than I did. Which is possible, subjectivity being what it is and all, but it feels a bit like when all of a sudden social justice warriors entered the conversation out of nowhere. That kind of thing cuts both ways, you know. There's a bit of a stink on painting with that brush just as much as in Lyrhawn's (supposed) 'shitting all over' Gaal's potential efforts.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
Social Justice Warriors? Where?
Yes, I read Lyrhawn's post as a reply to my question. Which it certainly appears to be. I think the source of my frustration here is it where his immediate response to suggestions about how to personally make a difference is "the problem is so much bigger than you that you're practically an ant in comparison." Which you'll notice I'm not disagreeing with, I just think it's a terrible response to someone genuinely interested in taking action and making a difference. I don't think I (or anyone else) was remotely under the impression I was changing the world or solving racism single-handedly, needlessly pointing it out like he did is kind of a dick move.
That being said, yes I'm probably taking it too personally, but I'm not sure it's an unwarrented response.
Edit: on second reread my earlier post is a lot more overtly hostile than intended, for which I apologize. (the "get over yourself" part, which I meant as "that sounds pretty arrogant." I'm sorry for making it more personal than really necessary, Lyrhawn)
[ May 29, 2015, 05:04 AM: Message edited by: Dogbreath ]
Posted by Men's Rights Forever (Member # 13269) on :
The "social justice warriors" slang has outlived its usefulness. It was spawned by GamerGate, but now you have actual racists and bigots coming out saying anyone who opposes their hatefulness is an SJW.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
I'm pretty sure it predates GamerGate.
Posted by Men's Rights Forever (Member # 13269) on :
Nah uh.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: While I don't think those measures are useless, per se, they also won't really do anything.
Something more concrete would be donating a significant sum of money to a charity that helps minorities in poverty.
I don't actually agree with you. Until the underlying systemic causes of poverty and racial division are addressed, charity will treat the symptoms, not the disease. And like any treatment, charity has its own adverse effects, on recipients as well as the people who give.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: Social Justice Warriors? Where?
Yes, I read Lyrhawn's post as a reply to my question. Which it certainly appears to be. I think the source of my frustration here is it where his immediate response to suggestions about how to personally make a difference is "the problem is so much bigger than you that you're practically an ant in comparison." Which you'll notice I'm not disagreeing with, I just think it's a terrible response to someone genuinely interested in taking action and making a difference. I don't think I (or anyone else) was remotely under the impression I was changing the world or solving racism single-handedly, needlessly pointing it out like he did is kind of a dick move.
I also find it frustrating. It's bizarre to tell others that their personal efforts are meaningless, when one's own efforts are directed at, well, affecting other's personal efforts. There's a trap in this sort of activism whereby the activist needs to fail constantly in order to justify his own lofty ambitions as suitably martyr-like. It's a "to the success of our impossible task," sort of thing.
And it's also just plain wrong. Lyr dismisses internet activism- liking and tweeting, etc. I myself am a vociferous critic of slactivism. However, I have real numbers. In 2014, $1.5 Trillion dollars were spent online. That's somewhere in the realm of a 200% increase over the past 10 years, and an order of magnitude increase over 15 years ago. If the trend continues, online retail will eclipse in-person retail within the decade.
And advertising money is following the same trend. What people read and associate with online matters more every day. We can vote with our feet, and more and more, we can vote with our clicks. And yes, that will matter to the people who need to make money selling the products we buy, asking for campaign donations in the places people will give them, and making the movies and television shows, and news, that we consume.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: I'm pretty sure it predates GamerGate.
It absolutely does, unless gamergate wants to pretend that it was around in 2009
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
i literally even have posts on this forum using the term before gamergate existed. maybe i can claim i invented it for gamergate. you're welcome gamergate
Posted by GaalDornick (Member # 8880) on :
Links or it didn't happen.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
A social justice warrior reads an essay about a form of internal misogyny where women and girls insult stereotypical feminine activities and characteristics in order to boost themselves over other women.
The SJW absorbs this and later complains in response to a Huffington Post article about a 10-year-old feminist's letter, because the 10-year-old called the color pink "prissy".
#2: Commnter: "I don't like getting manicures. It's too prissy."
SJW: "Oh my god, how ***ing dare you use that word, you disgusting sexist piece of ****!"
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: Links or it didn't happen.
i can't be the only one who knows how to search here
but if i am required to be the keeper of history here, so be it
we've finally reached a meta level of my correctness where i get to source myself to demonstrate my own exemplary standard of being right all the time
Samjectivism confirmed, analytical philosophy world rocked
Posted by GaalDornick (Member # 8880) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: Links or it didn't happen.
i can't be the only one who knows how to search here
Burden of proof is on the one making the claim, brah. Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
On MRF's part at least, it was not a serious claim. He knows and the term goes back past GamerGate.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
I like how we now have a user whose nick is literally "Men's Rights Forever" who everybody knows is Clive Candy but that's now ok I guess who just posts here in regular conversation, and nobody bats an eyelash. I wonder what it would look like if everybody here changed their nicks to their pet political/social issue.
Like, "damn it, Public Erections are Nothing to Be Ashamed Of, we've already had this discussion on the geopolitical impact of China's aggressive economic policies..."
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Well, particularly by his standards he has been remarkably well behaved lately, sticking almost entirely to cinematic topics I think. Though there have been testings of the water, and I have little doubt that a splash of some thinly veiled or outright misogyny will come up again.
Then a few months after that, there will be another 'new' poster asking, "Who's Clive?"
Posted by GaalDornick (Member # 8880) on :
More like "Subtle condescending aggressor with subsequent denial-er"
Edit: for Dogbreath
Double edit: err denial-er = denier
Posted by GaalDornick (Member # 8880) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: On MRF's part at least, it was not a serious claim. He knows and the term goes back past GamerGate.
I also wasn't seriously doubting that Sam had used the term before Gamergate here
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: More like "Subtle condescending aggressor with subsequent denial-er"
Edit: for Dogbreath
Double edit: err denial-er = denier
As (unintentionally) ironic as this may sound, I actually have no idea is this is meant to apply to me as something I do, something I complain about, something a certain someone else complains about me/someone else doing (and therefore is their pet issue), or D all of the above.
Posted by GaalDornick (Member # 8880) on :
I was jokingly referring to the complaint that a poster here kept lobbying against you.
I'm running on very little sleep which is my excuse for it apparently being a lame joke
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
No, it's a good joke, I'm just a little slow on the uptake/over analytical.
OT: Insomnia sucks man. For some reason I haven't been able to sleep more than 2-3 hours a night for the past week or so. All day at work all I can think about getting home and lying down in bed and sleeping for 12 hours straight... until I get home and suddenly can't seem to fall asleep. it's maddening.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: Ok, so you saw Gaal ask what sort of things he can do, as an individual, to help make a difference and bring about change. I responded with several different suggestions as well as talking about probably over 1000 hours cumulative I've spent volunteering doing construction work, and gave him some resources as far as how he can get involved with those nonprofits - talked about lives and neighborhoods transformed - and your response is pretty much belittle those achievements because they haven't made an impact on a national level.
Yeah, get over yourself. Seriously. How the hell do you expect people to start working towards the sort of national change we need if your apparent response is to condescendingly dismiss their efforts as just not good enough? I gave Gaal some real and useful suggestions he can immediately apply to his personal life to make changes at a local level - which is about all he has the resources to accomplish - and you arrogantly swoop in and shit all over that because I didn't say "Gaal, what you really need to do is start a multi-billion dollar nonprofit and/or become the next Martin Luther King Jr. and change the political landscape of America." Just because something may be meaningless on a national level doesn't mean it isn't meaningful or even profound on a personal or local level, and ultimately the national change is going to *come* from enough people getting involved on that local level bringing about something greater.
Or, in other words, if all you have to build the Great Wall of China is ants, maybe shit-talking the handful on ants building isn't the best way to go about it.
To be perfectly honest, I missed your post the first time around and was responding to Orincoro.
But to be clear, once again, I don't think that kind of volunteering is meaningless. If I did, I wouldn't have worked to found my own non-profit after college and I wouldn't have spent hundreds of hours with it trying to help a small group of high school kids in the City get a little bit ahead.
Looking back and rereading what I wrote I can totally see how you'd take it as an attack on what you're doing and what you've done, but I didn't mean it that way. It's aimed toward people who aren't doing anything at all.
The problem with ants is twofold -
1. There aren't enough ants.
2. Eventually those ants need to get together and organize.
It's not like we haven't had volunteerism for decades, and it makes an immense difference to individuals, small groups, and occasionally, entire neighborhoods. But the problem is that 50 years from now, the problems will all remain, and will require just as many or more volunteers doing just as much or more just to make people's lives tolerable without ever solving the problem.
In the Summer of 1964, COFO (a conglomerate of SNCC, CORE, NAACP and the SCLC) organized a thousand mostly white male and female college students, mostly from the north, to go into the Deep South, where they opened Freedom Schools and tried to organize the local population. They did a lot of great work. All of it was important.
But what they actually physically did while in the South paled in comparison to what happened as a result of their organizing. They came back from Freedom Summer with a whole new perspective on the world that influenced the greatest decade of political organizing of the 20th century (with the possible exception of the labor movement in the 20s). It's when they came back from Freedom Summer and organized thousands more that real systemic change came about.
Now, for those in Mississippi, I doubt they ever forgot about Freedom Summer. Those volunteers helped organize a local movement that made a brief play at the national stage before being swatted down hard by LBJ. But their lives were made immeasurably better by what came later.
So, it's not to denigrate volunteerism. It's to say, that's step one. Then there's step two. Otherwise we're just ensuring that generations to come will require a perpetual step one just to get by.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: While I don't think those measures are useless, per se, they also won't really do anything.
Something more concrete would be donating a significant sum of money to a charity that helps minorities in poverty.
I don't actually agree with you. Until the underlying systemic causes of poverty and racial division are addressed, charity will treat the symptoms, not the disease. And like any treatment, charity has its own adverse effects, on recipients as well as the people who give.
Depends on the charity, though I think it's interesting that you've flipped and made an argument I've been attacked here multiple times for supposedly making. In fact, you take it a step further by saying helping minorities is not only useless, it's actually damaging.
But I tend to disagree in the aggregate. Many rely on charity just to get by. The problem is when you only give them enough to just barely keep their heads above water. We need to throw them a lifeline and reel them in.
And of course, I obviously agree that the root causes are the real things that need to be tackled...that's the main point I've been making all along.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: Social Justice Warriors? Where?
Yes, I read Lyrhawn's post as a reply to my question. Which it certainly appears to be. I think the source of my frustration here is it where his immediate response to suggestions about how to personally make a difference is "the problem is so much bigger than you that you're practically an ant in comparison." Which you'll notice I'm not disagreeing with, I just think it's a terrible response to someone genuinely interested in taking action and making a difference. I don't think I (or anyone else) was remotely under the impression I was changing the world or solving racism single-handedly, needlessly pointing it out like he did is kind of a dick move.
I also find it frustrating. It's bizarre to tell others that their personal efforts are meaningless, when one's own efforts are directed at, well, affecting other's personal efforts. There's a trap in this sort of activism whereby the activist needs to fail constantly in order to justify his own lofty ambitions as suitably martyr-like. It's a "to the success of our impossible task," sort of thing.
And it's also just plain wrong. Lyr dismisses internet activism- liking and tweeting, etc. I myself am a vociferous critic of slactivism. However, I have real numbers. In 2014, $1.5 Trillion dollars were spent online. That's somewhere in the realm of a 200% increase over the past 10 years, and an order of magnitude increase over 15 years ago. If the trend continues, online retail will eclipse in-person retail within the decade.
And advertising money is following the same trend. What people read and associate with online matters more every day. We can vote with our feet, and more and more, we can vote with our clicks. And yes, that will matter to the people who need to make money selling the products we buy, asking for campaign donations in the places people will give them, and making the movies and television shows, and news, that we consume.
Once again, I never said meaningless. I never said useless. I also don't think the task is impossible. It's incredibly difficult, but people power can be concentrated to achieve truly incredible things. It's one of the few things I'm an optimist about. It's a problem we CAN solve.
Nothing in your last two paragraphs connects - to me - to make the point that clicking "like" has had any affect on anything. I feel like you sort of just tried to Underpants Gnome me. I don't see how your evidence leads to the point you're making.
Now Twitter, in COMBINATION with foot traffic and organizing, can do incredible things. But Twitter in that regard is an evolution of a useful too for organizing. By themselves, I still think these things are not helpful.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: Social Justice Warriors? Where?
Yes, I read Lyrhawn's post as a reply to my question. Which it certainly appears to be. I think the source of my frustration here is it where his immediate response to suggestions about how to personally make a difference is "the problem is so much bigger than you that you're practically an ant in comparison." Which you'll notice I'm not disagreeing with, I just think it's a terrible response to someone genuinely interested in taking action and making a difference. I don't think I (or anyone else) was remotely under the impression I was changing the world or solving racism single-handedly, needlessly pointing it out like he did is kind of a dick move.
That being said, yes I'm probably taking it too personally, but I'm not sure it's an unwarrented response.
Edit: on second reread my earlier post is a lot more overtly hostile than intended, for which I apologize. (the "get over yourself" part, which I meant as "that sounds pretty arrogant." I'm sorry for making it more personal than really necessary, Lyrhawn)
Apology unnecessary. We're just having a discussion.
Unless you were aiming Social Justice Warrior at me in the pejorative sense, in which case apology not accepted, and I'm done talking to you.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: While I don't think those measures are useless, per se, they also won't really do anything.
Something more concrete would be donating a significant sum of money to a charity that helps minorities in poverty.
I don't actually agree with you. Until the underlying systemic causes of poverty and racial division are addressed, charity will treat the symptoms, not the disease. And like any treatment, charity has its own adverse effects, on recipients as well as the people who give.
Depends on the charity, though I think it's interesting that you've flipped and made an argument I've been attacked here multiple times for supposedly making. In fact, you take it a step further by saying helping minorities is not only useless, it's actually damaging.
But I tend to disagree in the aggregate. Many rely on charity just to get by. The problem is when you only give them enough to just barely keep their heads above water. We need to throw them a lifeline and reel them in.
And of course, I obviously agree that the root causes are the real things that need to be tackled...that's the main point I've been making all along.
I think it's possible he's defining "charity" (as I've seen some people do it) as merely the act of giving things to people in need. If you expand that more broadly to charitable NPOs, like the organization I talked about earlier that does everything from restoring dilapidated properties to empowering local entrepreneurs and creating jobs to organizing after school programs, and definitely *does* treat the disease and not just the symptom. They've helped lift hundreds of families out of poverty in some of the worst neighborhoods of the city, and as a result have drastically lessened a lot of those "symptoms" - childhood hunger, violent crime, poor education, drug abuse - in those neighborhoods. And a lot of those changes are self-sustaining. This is an organization that - along with it's partners - gets to know the people it helps them at every step of the way as they transition out of poverty, and helps them stay out of poverty.
quote:Unless you were aiming Social Justice Warrior at me in the pejorative sense, in which case apology not accepted, and I'm done talking to you.
What? No, it's a question to Rakeesh who mentioned SJWs entering the conversation. To which I replied "where?" Did you read the post immediately before that one? It's not a term I've overly fond of.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
On another note, I missed one of Orincoro's posts on the last page and wanted to cover a couple points. I'm not getting back into the meat of the economics argument because I think we can just leave that where it is. Clearly we don't agree, and short of getting each other to read a thousand pages of selected material to make our points from outside sources, or a class field trip to a southern archive, I don't think we're going to bring each other around to our points.
That being said...
quote:And I think, in regard to the first point, that you're too much of a social historian to appreciate what I'm getting at.
...
Ideas are fine. They are the reasons people claim to vote for the people they end up voting for. They are rarely the real reasons people win elections. And I think underlying the idea that slavery needed to be abolished as a moral imperative (which was of course powerful), there was an economic imperative as well. People recognized, and government institutions recognized, that the dysfunction at the heart of the southern economy was a cancer on the union, economic as well as moral. De Tocqueville recognized this, as I said, decades before, and spoke of it in those terms- moral as well as economic.
I think you and I definitely come at history from different angles, possibly so much that it's impossible to really have this conversation at all since you've apparently been disregarding most of what I've said as social history nonsense.
But I think you vastly underestimate the boost the abolitionists got from the Second and Third Great Awakenings. There was a religious fire that drove a lot of them to destroy slavery as an abomination. When you look at why the average northern soldier volunteered (for those who did volunteer), I think you'll find the backbone of the army (at least the early soldiers) was made up of people who felt slavery was wrong, not people who wanted to remake the south for economic reasons so the upper classes could invest and make money.
History isn't a science, you can't always come to hard answers. But if you just assume that what everyone says is a lie and everyone is ultimately driven by money, I think you're doing history and people a pretty serious disservice and I simply don't share your worldview.
quote:Can you just stop being a dick about this? We are defining the terms that are important to us in this discussion. And I have agreed, more than once, that yes, slavery generated wealth. No one is arguing against that, except perhaps in the horrible effrontery involved in complicating that precious moral view of history that you have with the vile idea that economics motivate people to do things.
I apologize if I came off condescending or dickish. From my point of view, you were being incredibly dismissive with no small amount of condescension yourself. Of course economics motivates people. It's ONE factor that has to be accounted for when doing an historical analysis. One factor. There are many others. I don't discount numbers for the sake of reading historical diaries and love letters. I also don't discount historical diaries and love letters because I'm reading the tea leaves in a book of 19th century statistics and think I know what people must have thought 150 years ago because of those numbers.
Taken in concert, on the issue of slavery, I think the moral imperative in abolitionism was a strong, driving force. You also seem to think that I think historical populations are politically homogenous. I don't know what gave you that idea, but I absolutely don't think that.
quote:It goes more like this for me:
Lyr: Slavery generated a lot of wealth.
Me: Yeah, it did. But you have to consider that it also stood in the way of the south generating a great deal more in different ways.
Lyr: HOW DARE YOU SIR!
Everyone: Wow, what an interesting and nuanced discussion you guys are refusing to have because Lyr is "a real historian," and Orincoro is a mere musicologist, who dares to study this subject with some interest.
If you think that's my response, then I don't think you really understand what I've been saying the entire time.
Me: Slavery generated a lot of wealth.
Orincoro: Yeah it did, but I'm not sure why that matters because it was a flawed system that cold have generated a lot more wealth.
Me: Okay, even if that's true, so what? You're making an argument I don't necessarily disagree with but I'm failing to see how it connects to my larger point.
As for your second point; BS. I don't think anyone here is looking at my credentials as a reason to discredit you. And I have NEVER made an appeal to authority in order to swat down your arguments. I've argued with you on the merits of your points, not on you the person.
quote:Clearly because my end point involves discussing the fascinating subject of history without winning anything. Stay classy.
I think - once again - this demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding between us. Do you think I was trying to argue that the south couldn't have had a more productive wealth generation system? I didn't for a second make that argument. My overriding point was that we owe it to those we oppressed for a few centuries to help them out of the bad situation we put them in. My connected point was that slavery was part of what made America as wealthy as it is today.
So when it appeared to me that you were trying to argue against the idea that slavery helped make America wealthy BASED ON THE IDEA THAT IT COULD HAVE BEEN WEALTHIER, I didn't really understand what you were driving at.
Was the whole thing, to you, just a discussion on how the southern economy could have been better? If so, we were on wildly different pages the whole time.
quote:I love watching scientists talk to historians. That's meaty discussion.
And speaking of staying classy, this came off as incredibly condescending to me.
"Silly historians, let's not confuse what you do with REAL academia where scientists come up with REAL answers while you make stuff up.
Especially since you picked a weak piece of KoMs argument to attack me with since I'd already refuted everything he said. But I guess none of my points matter since I'm a silly social historian.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Dogbreath -
quote:What? No, it's a question to Rakeesh who mentioned SJWs entering the conversation. To which I replied "where?" Did you read the post immediately before that one? It's not a term I've overly fond of.
I did read it, but you were pretty amped up at the time and I thought you might have been speaking sarcastically about me.
And to your previous point, yeah, neither of us really defined "charity," which taken broadly could mean all sorts of things.
That's fine, I was just clarifying.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I did read it, but you were pretty amped up at the time and I thought you might have been speaking sarcastically about me.
It's kind of hard to see how as it was Rakeesh who used the term. All I did was literally ask him what he was talking about. A quick search for the term (you're not alone, sam) shows that that is the single instance I've ever used it on this forum in the 7 years I've been posting here.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
i'm a social justice mage
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
What kind of spells can you cast?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I did read it, but you were pretty amped up at the time and I thought you might have been speaking sarcastically about me.
It's kind of hard to see how as it was Rakeesh who used the term. All I did was literally ask him what he was talking about. A quick search for the term (you're not alone, sam) shows that that is the single instance I've ever used it on this forum in the 7 years I've been posting here.
I didn't know what you knew or didn't know. But I believe what you're saying so it's all good on my end.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
A further point on historical wealth creation: Wars are expensive. If we are making some sort of credit-and-debit ledger for slavery, and counting up how much of the fruits of that forced labour is available to us today in some form, should we subtract the Civil War? And not just the direct financial costs, but the lifetime labour of that quarter-million young men who went out and "died to make men free". Think what that might have amounted to, invested in productive assets like farms and factories!
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Sure.
On the other hand, they hand-waved a lot of that money into existence by creating unbacked currency to pay soldiers and many war bills. This is money that it's unlikely would have existed if not for the war, and was America's first experiment with an unbacked currency.
I don't know as much about the history of how the treasury has created money. But you could argue the Civil War kicked off a 50 year period that lead directly to the creation of our modern financial system. Who knows what things would look like today if not for the beginning of fiat money during the Civil War.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: A further point on historical wealth creation: Wars are expensive. If we are making some sort of credit-and-debit ledger for slavery, and counting up how much of the fruits of that forced labour is available to us today in some form, should we subtract the Civil War? And not just the direct financial costs, but the lifetime labour of that quarter-million young men who went out and "died to make men free". Think what that might have amounted to, invested in productive assets like farms and factories!
All of which is, again, more on the point of 'more wealth could have been generated with a different system' which isn't actually a refutation of Lyrhawn's argument at all.
On a related note, do you dispute what he said about abolitionism being a significant early motivator for enlistment in the Union military?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: A further point on historical wealth creation: Wars are expensive. If we are making some sort of credit-and-debit ledger for slavery, and counting up how much of the fruits of that forced labour is available to us today in some form, should we subtract the Civil War? And not just the direct financial costs, but the lifetime labour of that quarter-million young men who went out and "died to make men free". Think what that might have amounted to, invested in productive assets like farms and factories!
All of which is, again, more on the point of 'more wealth could have been generated with a different system' which isn't actually a refutation of Lyrhawn's argument at all.
On a related note, do you dispute what he said about abolitionism being a significant early motivator for enlistment in the Union military?
I don't really think KoM and I are going to see eye to eye on any aspect of this discussion. If we can't even agree on the fundamental point I made, that we have a moral imperative to help those the government intentionally disadvantaged, then there's not really much point in digging into the minutiae.
I appreciate your defense throughout this thread though. Thanks Rakeesh Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: What kind of spells can you cast?
A level six barrier against cherrypicked 101-level Social Conflict Theory
Tenser's Citation
Detect Pseudoscience
Circle of Protection against Evopsych Determinism
(Empowered) TomDavidsonkaiser's Elenctic Questioning
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:On a related note, do you dispute what he said about abolitionism being a significant early motivator for enlistment in the Union military?
I don't know, I don't remember what it was and I'm too lazy to dig through 150 posts to find it.
quote:All of which is, again, more on the point of 'more wealth could have been generated with a different system' which isn't actually a refutation of Lyrhawn's argument at all.
I don't think that's true; the Civil War was a direct consequence of slavery, same as the cotton exports. If you're going to count up the wealth effects of the one, why not the other? Apart from not supporting your argument, I mean?
quote:On the other hand, they hand-waved a lot of that money into existence by creating unbacked currency to pay soldiers and many war bills. This is money that it's unlikely would have existed if not for the war, and was America's first experiment with an unbacked currency.
I really have no idea where you're going with that, but in any case the greenbacks are just an administrative device. The little slips of paper are irrelevant, the question is what happens to loaves of bread, tins of meat, and young men. Whether they are moved around by direct force, appeals to volunteer, or promises that are later inflated away is all one; the point is that a lot of labour and capital is spent shooting people and breaking things instead of feeding people and building things.
quote:If we can't even agree on the fundamental point I made, that we have a moral imperative to help those the government intentionally disadvantaged
Let me know when you have a way to help out the slaves, or indeed the sharecroppers.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:I don't know, I don't remember what it was and I'm too lazy to dig through 150 posts to find it.
You wouldn't need to. It was maybe three or four posts of his back, addressed in response to a statement you made?
quote:I don't think that's true; the Civil War was a direct consequence of slavery, same as the cotton exports. If you're going to count up the wealth effects of the one, why not the other? Apart from not supporting your argument, I mean?
Now that you have arrived at a new argument-which is not that slavery generated no wealth that had an impact on modern America, but that any that it would have was offset by the Civil War-maybe we can talk about that.
Before we do, though, I have to wonder if you have anything other than the vaguest speculations for that argument? I'm not sure how you could, since not long ago you were arguing that slavery generated no wealth that would impact the present for the civil war to offset. Some might question how scientific that sort of reasoning is. Promises to be a meaty discussion.
quote:Let me know when you have a way to help out the slaves, or indeed the sharecroppers.
Is this merely a dubiously honest gotcha or are you claiming it was ever anyone's argument that something could be done to correct the past in the past? Some quotes along those lines would be great, unless you're still feeling lazy.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: What kind of spells can you cast?
A level six barrier against cherrypicked 101-level Social Conflict Theory
quote:When you look at why the average northern soldier volunteered (for those who did volunteer), I think you'll find the backbone of the army (at least the early soldiers) was made up of people who felt slavery was wrong, not people who wanted to remake the south for economic reasons so the upper classes could invest and make money.
Sure, I agree. I don't see the relevance.
quote:I'm not sure how you could, since not long ago you were arguing that slavery generated no wealth that would impact the present for the civil war to offset.
And I stand by that, subject of course to future arguments that don't boil down to "the plantation owners were rich"; so when you offset zero by the costs of the Civil War, what do you get?
quote:are you claiming it was ever anyone's argument that something could be done to correct the past in the past
Obviously that is not what Lyrhawn thought he was saying here:
quote:we have a moral imperative to help those the government intentionally disadvantaged
but that's our basic disagreement: Lyrhawn wants to justify reforms today as reparations for injustice done to the slaves, and I think that's nuts. You can't repair an injustice when both victims and perpetrators are long dead. If reforms are needed, fine, let's have them on their own merits; what our great-great-great-grandparents did has no bearing on that debate.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:You can't repair an injustice when both victims and perpetrators are long dead.
If I'm a member of native american tribe and we had had an area of land guaranteed to us by treaty, because it's pretty much the most sacrosanct homeplace of our people, and then it was taken by force from us about a hundred years ago and sold to a mining and timber operation, meaningful reparation for my tribe is possible whether or not the people who originally did it to us (and the people who it was done to at the time) are dead. You can "repair the injustice" by taking the land and giving it back to us. This is a meaningful correction. The idea that it wouldn't be is a fairly easy to dismiss concept.
And if we are talking about the victims and perpetrators of systematic injustice and discrimination against blacks, they are very much so alive.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Yeah. To reiterate Sam's last sentence to KoM -
I know the conversation veered toward slavery and the Civil War heavily at times, but if you want to focus on direct, living victims of government mandated discriminatory policies, you don't have to look very far. Millions of them are still alive today.
quote:but that's our basic disagreement: Lyrhawn wants to justify reforms today as reparations for injustice done to the slaves, and I think that's nuts. You can't repair an injustice when both victims and perpetrators are long dead. If reforms are needed, fine, let's have them on their own merits; what our great-great-great-grandparents did has no bearing on that debate.
That's clearly not our disagreement.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:if you want to focus on direct, living victims of government mandated discriminatory policies, you don't have to look very far. Millions of them are still alive today.
That's fine, then we can by all means discuss them. I'm just saying that has nothing to do with slavery.
quote:You can "repair the injustice" by taking the land and giving it back to us. This is a meaningful correction.
No, it's not. The idea that it is, is very easy to dismiss. Watch me dismiss it, very easily. Poof! There it goes! Dismissed! That was easy, wasn't it!
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:I'm just saying that has nothing to do with slavery.
I am fairly positive you are saying more than just this but if you want to amend the scope of your statements down to this, it would remove the need for correction.
quote:No, it's not. The idea that it is, is very easy to dismiss. Watch me dismiss it, very easily. Poof! There it goes! Dismissed! That was easy, wasn't it!
Yeah things are pretty easy when they don't bother to be substantive.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Yeah things are pretty easy when they don't bother to be substantive.
Are you actually that lacking in self-awareness, or are you trying to be funny?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:That's fine, then we can by all means discuss them. I'm just saying that has nothing to do with slavery.
That's most of what I was talking about from the very start. Somewhere along the way my argument got truncated. But if I spotted you all of slavery and said I'm not arguing for reparations for that, only for stuff that happened after, I'd still have a very solid argument for my case.
The discussion got sidetracked on the Civil War and slavery, but you don't really have to look back all that far to find victims of systemic oppression. Even if you want to argue we stopped most of it in the 60s (which isn't a very good argument, if you ask me, but you'd have some evidence to try it), that doesn't really ameliorate the situation already created by decades (centuries) of that oppression, whose effects are visited upon future generations kept from ever moving up.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:That's fine, then we can by all means discuss them. I'm just saying that has nothing to do with slavery.
That's most of what I was talking about from the very start. Somewhere along the way my argument got truncated. But if I spotted you all of slavery and said I'm not arguing for reparations for that, only for stuff that happened after, I'd still have a very solid argument for my case.
I actually think that case would be stronger. As I noted, and as KoM has also argued, slavery was in general a losing proposition for *most* of society, and for the nation as a whole. One is not really able to tally the positives and negatives in any common terms, just as one is not really able to say what wealth or potential economic development slavery erased or repressed, but we can be sure that in the end, with the coming of the civil war and reconstruction, slavery probably had a net negative impact on the south: economic, social, and other.
That that negative was borne most by blacks is obvious of course, but the negatives extend also to many of the whites; particularly to the unlanded ones. And in the wake of the war and of reconstruction, the punishment or degradation meted out to at least some of the whites was punishment in as proportionate a manner as feasible (death in battle, loss of land and wealth, etc).
In any regard, if one were to construct a legal argument in favor of restitution, one would have to avoid setting the precedent of punishing or requiring remuneration for acts which were not illegal when they were carried out. Reparations for activities before the passage of the 13th amendment face the impassible obstacle of their being for acts not then seen as illegal.
Of course, very many of those who benefited from pre-war arrangements, continued to benefit from virtually the same arrangements post-war, with only minor pro fascia changes to the labor economy. If you really hope to actually chart the degree to which reparations are owed, I think you have to start with the end of slavery.
The actions of slave owners pre-war were then in accord with the constitution and with contemporary laws. When the 13th amendment was fully ratified (after the war ended keep in mind), slavery also formally ended. And from a legal standpoint, that is when the abuses for which punishment might reasonably be assessed were begun. This ignores, of course, the complicated legal situation of the South during its rebellion, during which Lincoln applied the War Powers clause, and the Emancipation Declaration, effectually turning slavery into a crime against humanity by a sovereign nation he didn't officially recognize.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I agree with you in the sense that starting post-slavery is easier and the case is stronger (and more easily made).
But I have a problem with not making restitution for things that were legal at the time. You'd basically have to handwave away most of what was done to blacks in the pre-1960s era. Redlining was legal. Underfunding black schools was legal. For that matter, segregation was legal, not only legal but MANDATED in many places. Multiracial marriage was illegal.
In many places, it was illegal for a black person to leave the county he lived in if he owed a debt, which basically EVERY sharecropper did. In effect, it was illegal to leave the plantations they lived and sharecropped on for millions of blacks. When many made the journey north near the turn of the century looking for jobs, they actually had to sneak out of the South using the same abolitionist routes escaping slaves used because the police could (and would) legally hunt them down and return them to their farms.
All perfectly legal. All in the last 100 years.
To say we can't mete out remuneration for acts that were legal at the time is basically to say no to reparations in general.
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
quote: Residential schools findings point to 'cultural genocide,' commission chair says
Final report from Truth and Reconciliation Commission to be released June 2
At least 6,000 aboriginal children died while in the residential school system, says Justice Murray Sinclair, the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Sinclair, who has been tasked with studying the legacy of the residential schools, says that the figure is just an estimate and is likely much higher. Residential schools were established in the 19th century and the last ones closed in 1996.
"We think that we have not uncovered anywhere near what the total would be because the record keeping around that question was very poor," Sinclair told Rosemary Barton of CBC's Power & Politics. "You would have thought they would have concentrated more on keeping track."
Sinclair offered the figure of 6,000 in a later interview with Evan Solomon to air Saturday on CBC Radio's The House — much higher than earlier estimates that put the number of school children who died in the system at less than 4,000, but still possibly far short of the real outcome.
Sinclair, who was Manitoba's first aboriginal judge, said one estimate made in the early part of the 20th century was that 24 to 42 per cent of aboriginal children who attended the residential schools died at school or shortly after leaving school.
Most of the children died from malnourishment or disease. Some children who attended the schools in the 1940s and 1950s were even subjected to science experiments in which they were deprived essential nutrients and dental care.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, struck in 2009, is writing an exhaustive history of the residential school system. The commissioners interviewed over 7,000 people, and the final report, which is expected to be released on June 2, will span six volumes and include over two million words.
'Cultural genocide'
The new death toll comes in the wake of comments made by Beverley McLachlin, the chief justice of the Supreme Court. At an event on Thursday, McLachlin said that Canada attempted to commit "cultural genocide" against aboriginal peoples.
"The most glaring blemish on the Canadian historic record relates to our treatment of the First Nations that lived here at the time of colonization," McLachlin said. She was delivering the fourth annual Pluralism Lecture of the Global Centre for Pluralism, founded in 2006 by the Aga Khan, spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, and the federal government.
Canada, she said, developed an "ethos of exclusion and cultural annihilation."
Sinclair said he agrees with McLachlin's characterization of the country's history.
"I think as commissioners we have concluded that cultural genocide is probably the best description of what went on here. But more importantly, if anybody tried to do this today, they would easily be subject to prosecution under the genocide convention," Sinclair told Evan Solomon of CBC Radio's The House.
"The evidence is mounting that the government did try to eliminate the culture and language of indigenous people for well over a hundred years. And they did it by forcibly removing children from their families and placing them within institutions that were cultural indoctrination centres.
"That appears to us to fall within the definition of genocide under the UN convention," Sinclair said.
The United Nations' convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide does not address "cultural genocide," but it says genocide may include causing "mental harm" to a racial or religious group.
A spokesperson for Bernard Valcourt, the minister of aboriginal affairs, would not comment on the chief justice's remarks, but issued a statement saying, "While we cannot undo the past, we can learn from it and we have taken the steps necessary to bring closure to the legacy of the Indian residential schools."
Policy of 'aggressive assimilation'
In the 19th century, the Canadian government developed a policy of "aggressive assimilation" calling for aboriginal children to be taught at church-run, government-funded residential schools.
The government felt children were easier to mould than adults, and the concept of a boarding school was the best way to prepare them for life in mainstream society.
Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, was a strong proponent of the system.
"When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with his parents who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write," he told the House of Commons in 1883.
The last residential schools, St. Michael's Indian Residential School and Gordon Indian Residential School, both located in Saskatchewan, closed in 1996.
In 2008, Prime Minister Harper made a historic apology for the harm caused by the residential school system.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I agree with you in the sense that starting post-slavery is easier and the case is stronger (and more easily made).
But I have a problem with not making restitution for things that were legal at the time. You'd basically have to handwave away most of what was done to blacks in the pre-1960s era.
Well, this is essentially what we already do. And I would caution not that I think it's a good thing, but rather it is too dangerous to consider retroactive assessment of damages for crimes that were not crimes. That is in itself highly questionable, and unconstitutional.
Legally, you have to dance with the one that brung you.
quote: In many places, it was illegal for a black person to leave the county he lived in if he owed a debt, which basically EVERY sharecropper did. In effect, it was illegal to leave the plantations they lived and sharecropped on for millions of blacks. When many made the journey north near the turn of the century looking for jobs, they actually had to sneak out of the South using the same abolitionist routes escaping slaves used because the police could (and would) legally hunt them down and return them to their farms.
All perfectly legal. All in the last 100 years.
To say we can't mete out remuneration for acts that were legal at the time is basically to say no to reparations in general.
As I understand it, and this is not my strong area of knowledge, many of those laws were later deemed unconstitutional to begin with. You can retroactively assess damage of that nature because the laws under which the abuses were carried out were not necessarily legiminate.
You *couldn't* punish the officials who acting according to those laws, in most cases, but you could assess damage to the states and counties that perpetrated them. That's a difficult road in itself, but it was done, for example, with Japanese internment camps.
[ June 01, 2015, 11:21 AM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:Yeah things are pretty easy when they don't bother to be substantive.
Are you actually that lacking in self-awareness, or are you trying to be funny?
You don't get that what you were doing doesn't exactly work as a pinch hit against what I was saying. "This would be an easy thing to dismiss" is a lot different than just saying "I just dismissed it! Wasn't that easy"
The fact of the matter stands. I presented a pretty good case for an example of effective and meaningful reparations over an injustice that was enacted by and initially suffered by now-dead people. If you both don't agree with that AND only want to offer "No it isn't I dismissed it like that poof" then you are neither being funny nor demonstrating better self awareness, so you might at least want to put in the effort for why you disagree beyond nuh-uhism.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:Well, this is essentially what we already do. And I would caution not that I think it's a good thing, but rather it is too dangerous to consider retroactive assessment of damages for crimes that were not crimes. That is in itself highly questionable, and unconstitutional.
Are you assuming that reparations will involve punishment for certain offenders or their descendants, rather than being something we fund collectively.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I agree with you in the sense that starting post-slavery is easier and the case is stronger (and more easily made).
But I have a problem with not making restitution for things that were legal at the time. You'd basically have to handwave away most of what was done to blacks in the pre-1960s era.
Well, this is essentially what we already do. And I would caution not that I think it's a good thing, but rather it is too dangerous to consider retroactive assessment of damages for crimes that were not crimes. That is in itself highly questionable, and unconstitutional.
Legally, you have to dance with the one that brung you.
quote: In many places, it was illegal for a black person to leave the county he lived in if he owed a debt, which basically EVERY sharecropper did. In effect, it was illegal to leave the plantations they lived and sharecropped on for millions of blacks. When many made the journey north near the turn of the century looking for jobs, they actually had to sneak out of the South using the same abolitionist routes escaping slaves used because the police could (and would) legally hunt them down and return them to their farms.
All perfectly legal. All in the last 100 years.
To say we can't mete out remuneration for acts that were legal at the time is basically to say no to reparations in general.
As I understand it, and this is not my strong area of knowledge, many of those laws were later deemed unconstitutional to begin with. You can retroactively assess damage of that nature because the laws under which the abuses were carried out were not necessarily legiminate.
You *couldn't* punish the officials who acting according to those laws, in most cases, but you could assess damage to the states and counties that perpetrated them. That's a difficult road in itself, but it was done, for example, with Japanese internment camps.
I see what you're saying, and if we're going by similar parameters to what was done for Japanese internment, yes, I'd agree with you.
But I was thinking less in terms of back payments to victims or families of victims than I was a national effort and investment in more fundamental change. Because frankly it's just easier.
Even if we decided tomorrow that direct reparations were something we wanted to do, it'd take decades to sort it all out, at the end of which half the country would likely, for whatever reasons, still think the process was unfair. And for all that, the money might never add up to widespread, overall improvement of their situation.
I think it'd be better spent on huge, fundamental changes. That, of course, is just my opinion. Perhaps the money would be better spent with plain direct cash payments, but a national spending program would be much, much faster to implement. I think the next generation to grow up in poverty would rather the process be faster if it meant a better life than wait and have the money be handed directly to them.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
To add to your point, I think there are two additional reasons why cash payouts are probably a bad solution.
Before I get into that, we should take a second to address the fact that not all black people have been equally impacted by the effects of systemic racism and generational poverty.
- And seeing that this is a thread where there has been a lot of jumping to conclusions and reading into ulterior motives with relatively simple statements (and I've done more than my fair share too), so let me ask that what I say here be read at face value. I'll go into *why* I'm bringing it up later in the post, but as a disclaimer I bring it up to discuss the efficacy of reparations, not the morality or justification thereof. -
Black people as a group certainly *have* been deleteriously and severely impacted across the board by institutional racism. Due to this, they suffer from the highest rate of poverty by ethnic group in the United States: 27.4% of blacks are in poverty compared to 9.9% of whites, and most strikingly, 38.2% of black children live in poverty which is incredibly disproportionate to the 12.4% of white children who live in poverty. (think about what that means regarding social mobility)
Nonetheless, the fact is the majority of black people are not in poverty, and I feel in this thread we have in many ways conflated the two issues. I say this because there are a lot more ways in which discrimination has negatively impacted the lives of blacks in the US, and for the majority of black people - poverty is not the biggest issue personally. I would say it's the most *pressing* issue and the one that needs to be addressed first, but it's not the only one. And here's why this matters:
1) Paying out a certain dollar amount in reparations gives the impression (or indeed, the legal exoneration of sorts) that justice has been done and therefore no further action needs be taken. And you see some of this mentality with modern conservatives - "the civil rights movement was 50 years ago, we already have equality, shut up already!" And this is why I'm so adamantly opposed to such concepts of "guilt" or "reparations" in this sense: we need to keep enacting changes until justice is achieved in outcome. By which I mean, when you no longer see significant statistical differences in poverty levels, pay, violent crime rates, police brutality, property ownership, etc. between various ethnic groups. *That* is social justice. (and yes, I know I'm channeling LBJ here) We need to focus less on "how much reparations do we pay until we are no longer guilty" or "what dollar amount can we put down to 'fix' centuries of injustice" but "what are the things we can do now and continue to do *until* we see equality."
More technically:
2) If we're going to focus on poverty (which we should), it's my believe that cash money is not necessarily the greatest factor in or even the greatest solution for poverty. By which I mean, if you were to offer me $100,000 in cash but put me in a situation where I had no job, no education, no marketable skills, no social network to help me *find* a job, no transportation, and no understanding of how to rectify the issues - I would actually be far, far worse off than I am right now. The $100,000 would almost certainly be insufficient just to bring myself up to my current level of employability and income generation, and there's no guarantee I would spend it wisely and judiciously for those purposes. Maybe I would spend it trying to feed my kids, or getting a warm, dry house in a non-violent neighborhood.
The reason I bring this up is because I have a hard time seeing a payout for much more than $100,000 - which would be, even if you only paid to to black people currently in poverty, $800 billion. It would be over $3 trillion if you did a flat rate payment across the board. If you want to talk about a more reasonable number (i.e, that could even remotely get passed), talk about maybe $100 billion in reparations - which would barely make a dent in the problem. Quite simply there will never be any equitable reparation payout that *would* solve the problem (which comes down to hundreds of thousands of dollars per person) that could possibly be paid. It's just too expensive.
And this isn't a "the problem's too big, we can't solve it" issue, it's a "the problems too big to remotely solve with reparations, we need to think a little more creatively" issue. Thus - education programs, property renovation, affirmative action in loan management maybe, etc. etc.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
when it comes down to attempting to come up with what useful concepts of reparation to integrate, I still of course refer to this article
Dogbreath - I generally agree with most of your points.
I'll respond at length later.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote: "This would be an easy thing to dismiss" is a lot different than just saying "I just dismissed it! Wasn't that easy"
No, it's exactly the same thing except that if someone calls you on it, you can come back "I meant that there's a trivial dismissal, I just didn't have time to write it down just then". And if nobody calls you on it, you get to "easily dismiss" something. Well, here I am, calling your bluff. Let's see your dismissal. Put up or shut up.
quote:I presented a pretty good case for an example of effective and meaningful reparations over an injustice that was enacted by and initially suffered by now-dead people.
No, you didn't. You said "X would be a good reparation". You offered no argument for this except "the opposing case is easy to dismiss". That is a simple assertion, which I am entirely comfortable just dismissing; "nuh-uh" to your "uh-huh". If you have an argument, let's hear it. Otherwise, yep, you're going to get "nuh-uh", because that's what your post is worth as it stands.
quote:By which I mean, when you no longer see significant statistical differences in poverty levels
Suppose, arguendo, that there are statistically significant racial differences in intelligence, even after all environmental factors have been evened out - that is, differences that are not due to lead paint, lack of books in the home, or any other environmental factor, but are purely genetic. Then it seems like you ought to expect differences in poverty even in the fairest possible society, unless you would also level out differences due to intelligence within races. Would you accept such differences?
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum:
quote:Well, this is essentially what we already do. And I would caution not that I think it's a good thing, but rather it is too dangerous to consider retroactive assessment of damages for crimes that were not crimes. That is in itself highly questionable, and unconstitutional.
Are you assuming that reparations will involve punishment for certain offenders or their descendants, rather than being something we fund collectively.
If you view reparations as punitive measures, then yes. If you view them as public expenditures, then I suppose not. I am not an expert on the proposals that have been made. I think I would generally be in favor of reparations as public expenditures in the form of educational and housing funds.
quote:Lyrhawn: Even if we decided tomorrow that direct reparations were something we wanted to do, it'd take decades to sort it all out, at the end of which half the country would likely, for whatever reasons, still think the process was unfair. And for all that, the money might never add up to widespread, overall improvement of their situation.
I think it'd be better spent on huge, fundamental changes. That, of course, is just my opinion.
With which I generally agree. But there are fine lines between expenditure for economic development (which I think is needed and fair), and punitive measures, or even measures that may be seen as punitive. By your lights, we might as well become a socialized country to address deep racial inequalities, and do away entirely with who is really to blame. I would still agree with you, but you can see where some would take that line of reasoning, and why they would object to it. To wit: many black people would see this as a mere obviation of white responsibility for institutional racism because it *isn't* punitive and also, conservatives would see it as a socialism, which is what it is. I have no innate problem with socialism, other than the pragmatic knowledge that it is not politically feasible in the United States right now.
[ June 02, 2015, 03:54 AM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: [QUOTE]it's exactly the same thing except that if someone calls you on it, you can come back "I meant that there's a trivial dismissal, I just didn't have time to write it down just then".
so then it's exactly the same thing, except it ...isn't exactly the same thing
ok
thank you
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
anyway, reparations to a class of people that are based off of correction of rights, property, or land entitlements — whose current order of possession is the direct product of clear discrimination, is meaningful at bare minimum in that it can help correct an inherited socioeconomic pattern. Take land, property, and rights necessary to secure an equal potential economic situation to the racial majority away from a group, and it is entirely unsurprising that they will be navigated down a road that maximizes the potential exploitation of that group. To return land that was clearly unfairly taken from a tribe in an established pattern of treaty annulment is an easier example than most, since land allows property rights, individual agricultural or industrial use, mineral and water rights, to be returned to the controlling authority of a group that should have had it in the first place even by U.S. law at the time. If I'm the controlling business interest/owner of some land that might go back to a tribe that has successfully petitioned for reparations, it would be a pretty stupid and desperate argument to say "no, that's not meaningful reparations" or "no, there's no victims here because it happened so long ago" — especially if circumstances had changed well enough that I couldn't pull a BLM on them and try to limit their options for utilizing the land. I would just be trying to prevent reparations from occurring so that I could continue profiting off of a situation I get to inherit because of past intentional crimes.
Coates' excellent article which again should be read again and again unsurprisingly hammers home the importance of real estate discrimination and how, again, the correction of a lopsided set of economic standards based on a clear and evident discriminatory pattern (illegal, even) can be meaningfully corrected, if we just wanted to. We'll just see if we can get away with not, because we're like that.
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