David:
I came across this well-written, and in-depth article in The Atlantic.
Portland is certainly one of the most liberal, progressive cities in one of the most liberal, progressive states in the USA. And yet this article describes the insidious nature of racism even in this bastion of progressivism. Rather than outright bigotry (although that is present as well), the author describes decades of racist activity under the guise of progressivism, and despite the city's progressive backdrop.
Oregon may well be the most racist state in the union, shielding itself behind denial and environmentalism.
Portland: The Whitest City in America.
The article indicates Portland has been able to continue this orchestrated racism just outside of public knowledge or scrutiny, and has allowed many young, white progressives to engage in systemic racism by displacing blacks from their traditional neighborhoods.
David:
I don't think there is that kind of racism in every state. Did you read the article? Apparently not. Oregon was and is an outlier. No other state to my knowledge banned blacks from living within the state's borders after the civil war. The article is very specific about the degree of racism and the tactics that were, and still are being used within Oregon, and within Portland. While other cities have plans to revitalize areas of blight, this article states Portland created a system to force blacks to live in a certain area, and ensured that the area would become blighted so it could then be literally bulldozed over to make room for white citizens. Where else has that occured? Where else, specifically, is that occurring today?
Doug:
Oregon does have a terrible, unique past. But I'm talking about racism now. If you read the comments at the blog Shit White People say to Black&Brown Folks in PDX, linked to in the article, you'll find comments that could be said anywhere in the US today. I think the racism in Oregon is surprising to many people because you might not expect it, given the progressive stories about places like Portland. You might expect that kind of racism in South Carolina, but Portland? Sadly yes. If there is one problem we need to work on, it is racism. But how?
David:
While there are certainly some things people say that is racist, many of the things appearing in that particular blog are overly-sensitive people misconstruing what someone else says. One of the comments is about a guy who was sweating in a gym while working out. He put a towel on his head, and someone commented that he looked pretty funny that way. He took that to be racist, because he's from the Middle East. But perhaps he just looked funny wearing the towel, the same as you or I would in the same situation. Hard to say without the context of the situation.
Doug:
What you don't understand is how those comments pile up, each like a little, annoying paper cut. As you have just shown, you can easily dismiss any single comment. But when you have to hear those comments multiple times a day, every day of the year, it is unbearable.
David:
Or, if you are trying to interpret everything every single person says to you as something offensive, you are likely to be frequently offended by innocent comments.
This reminds me of a story I alluded to in a very early BvB blog, but never got around to actually telling. My first roommate in college was Roger Hunter, a black man from England. He was at Indiana University on a track and field scholarship. At that time, Roger was the second-fastest man in the world running the 400m. (As an aside, the fastest man at that distance, Sunder Nix, was also on our team.) One evening we were eating dinner with two other black athletes and one white one. The waitress we had was pretty bad. The two black students claimed she was serving us poorly because she was racist. Roger pointed out that not all of us were black. "What about Dave and Scott?" They insisted that she was racist, but Roger argued she was just a bad waitress. Afterwards, back at the dorm, Roger noted that black people here in the US are quick to see racism everywhere they look, but it was not that way in England. I thought about that for a long time after that, and still ponder it today. I suppose, because England decided to do away with slavery as a matter of common agreement, that former slaves may have been more accepted into the culture. Fighting a civil war to end slavery left many bitter in America, and they may never have come to grips with reality through the 1960's, and some even today. The point of the story, though, is that everything someone says isn't racist. And even actions taken by a city or corporation may have more of an impact on a certain minority, but that does not mean that the action was racist, or had anything to do with race. I had thought that attitude had passed (the story takes place in 1983), but the recent rise of the Black Lives Matter movement causes me to frequently remember that meal with Roger and our friends. Reading the blog you linked us to also has numerous examples of the commenter assuming the person was saying something that was racially based, but I can see several instances where that is not necessarily the case. As Roger said, sometimes, you just get a bad waitress.
Doug:
The point of your story is that a single event can't tell the whole story of racism. If everywhere you go you get a "bad waitress" then you might start to wonder about your hypothesis and start to wonder if there isn't something systemic going on.
David:
The point of the story is that a black man from England felt that black people in the US are overly sensitive. Roger also lived his entire life as a black man, and he is the one who was making this argument.
If everywhere one goes they get "bad wait staff", then maybe there is a problem with the person complaining of racism. Perhaps their expectations are unrealistic. Don't you think that is more likely than every single waiter or waitress is racist?
The easy answer to having people understand each other better is education and getting to know people who are different from us. But that is much harder to accomplish in reality for a host of reasons.
Doug:
Yes. And we need that everywhere, not just Portland.
David:
One of the things that the author of this article claims to be true, but may not be, is that black people live together in a certain part of town because they were forced to do so because of a vast conspiracy of banks and lending agents. But in almost every city in the country, there are areas and neighborhoods where minorities congregate. It's the same in grade school cafeterias, prison recreation areas, and any other locations where people have a free choice of the people they want to associate with ( known as homophily or assortativeness). People prefer to be with people they are most like. While this article makes a fairly compelling case for the situation in Portland, it is also likely that the situation in Portland is brought about, at least to some degree, by the people themselves and the choices they make.
In this example of friendships among high school students, the yellow dots represent white students, the green dots are black students, and the red dots are mixed-race or other minorities:
Doug:
I am a BLM protester. Who do you think I am? Who do you think that you are? Do you really think that you understand the life of a 22-year old black woman graduating from Harvard in 2017? You think you understand how to celebrate diversity better than they do? Do you think you understand why they had a separate graduation? Do you understand what it is like to have a "bad waitress" far more often than your white friends? Do you really think you understand Portland better than the city that you live in? Do you hear what the BLM protestors are "screaming"? Do you believe that you can lecture them about how to create a society that does not judge people by their skin color?
David:
You must be a BLM protester in abstentia. Their Memorial Day celebrations did not allow any white people to attend.
Doug:
Well, we don't live in NY, and we didn't get invited to that party on Memorial Day by those groups. And of course, there have many protests in the last year. We have a BLM sign in our front yard. Wait, what is your point? Oh, you are deflecting.
David:
Insisting that you judge by skin color seems a contradictory means of getting people to not judge by skin color. Celebrating diversity by eliminating diversity? More segregation to end segregation? These sound like arguments right out of the book 1984.
Doug:
You really do not understand. Or you don't want to.
David:
I'm calling it for what it is. It isn't subtle to promote segregation based on skin color. Back in the 1960's, that was called racism. Now, you're saying it's fine for blacks to be racist, but wrong for anyone else.
Doug:
No.
David:
Yes.
But you've said it all in a nutshell. While I'm quoting Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, you advise that I should not even be able to comment on the subject because I'm not black.
Doug:
I didn't say that you should not be able to comment on it. I want you to. But I would also like for you to ask questions, and listen to what the BLM protesters want. I want you to understand MLK, and how he effected change. He was feared by a great many white people. He broke laws. He did not protest the way that white people wanted him to.
David:
But I encourage you to continue thinking your way. This article from an English magazine notes that BLM actions lead to the election of Donald Trump, while completely overlooking the serious, provable problems that are found within the black community across the country, and brought about by that community itself.
Doug:
The Spectator is not just "an English magazine"... it is a conservative magazine. It is true that some people are afraid of BLM protesters (just like some people were afraid of MLK) and it is true that Trump used that fear. It is also true that some people did not want a woman president, and Trump used that fear as well. But the solution is not to break up BLM or to only run male candidates. We need to fight systemic racism and sexism.
David:
Here's a data-heavy article that discusses quite a few different statistics, beginning with the most notable: Blacks commit more than 50% of all violent crime in the country, despite being only 13% of the population.
Doug:
Yikes! That is not an article! It is a blog! Just like this one! You should be more discerning with your "heavy data." Your first statistic is way off. You aren't measuring "all violent crime committed"... you, or course, are measuring incarcerations. Could systemic racism affect the incarceration stats? Yes. Second, the basic statement is just false. The fact that you get wrong this basic idea leaves most of the rest of the "heavy data" highly suspect.
David:
Perhaps you missed that the data is from government reports.
Most of their victims are black. Focusing on the problems that create this statistic is important. Single-parent households leads to poverty which correlates to poor or limited education which leads to continued poverty which leads to crime which leads to violent crime.
"Unmarried black mothers with children under 18 are the most impoverished demographic in American society, and they are the most common type of family structure in black communities." ~ US Census Data
Since most violent crime is committed by black males between the ages of 16-30, and that age / gender demographic equals only about 3% of the American population, that makes young black males as a group, very dangerous. What is BLM saying about this? Nothing. They accuse the police of focusing too much on this group, even though statistically if you detained all black males in that age group, you'd eliminate half of all violent crime in the country. That is a truth that should be particularly troubling to the black community.
You act as though I live in some type of rich, white, Republican bubble.
Doug:
No, you act as though you live is some type of rich, white, Republican bubble.
David:
... says the liberal,elite, college professor surrounded by his liberal,elite, college professor peer group.
I spend time regularly with 22 year old black women in my ER, taking care of both them and their children. I did my residency in Detroit (a city of blacks and by blacks), where I had young black men screaming at me, "You better get me some mo-phine right now, you honky M*****F*****r", while I was holding 4x4 bandages over their gunshot wounds trying to save their lives. After a while, I thought maybe my name badge actually said "Dr. Honky M*****F****r". It's what the young people called all of us who were white. The older black patients were all very nice, polite, and appreciated anyone who was trying to help them. While people from that older generation were fighting to end segregation, this new generation appears to be fighting for segregation.
Doug:
See, this is useful: we see where your stereotypes come from. Why are all of the black women you spend time with 22 years old? I don't want to know. I like how all of the young black men said the same thing, and how you held a collective 4x4 bandage over all of their wounds. This doesn't sound like broad generalizations at all. Nope, not at all. And you sure you want to claim that Portland is worse?
David:
I chose 22 years old to compare with your 22 year old black woman graduating from Harvard. You talk about stereotypes, yet you don't ever deal with actual poor or homeless people; Certainly not on a regular basis.
The world of the Harvard graduate is a very far cry from from the real world that most blue-collar Americans live in, no matter what color you are. But I certainly encourage the Democratic party to thoroughly embrace identity politics and the idea that everyone is a victim. It's working well for you. Identity politics transforms other Americans that disagree with you from being a political opponent into an oppressor. The more the Left denigrates and insults average, hard-working Americans, the less likely they will ever win them over.
You should live for just a short while in Detroit, or at least visit Detroit Receiving's ER. I cannot remember any young black men that I saw in the ER during my trauma rotation that were not victims of penetrating trauma. The 4x4s are just to stop the bleeding until they get to surgery. DRH keeps three trauma teams in service 24/7. We had a shootout inside the hospital while I was there. Another resident and a nurse were killed in the staff parking garage while I was training there. You have not been there, nor have you ever experienced anything like that, yet you are certain that what I'm telling you isn't true. You know nothing about what you speak. Nothing.
Doug:
You aren't implying that BLM protesters or Harvard graduates aren't average, hard-working Americans are you? In any event, some things are working well: Harvard Law Review just elected its first black woman president in 130 years. Perhaps this will just help Trump get re-elected. So be it.
David:
Back to Oregon. Two Portland women were forced to shut down their burrito stand when they were accused of culturally appropriating their recipes. The diversity police are paradoxically alive and well in the City of Roses, The Most Racist City in America.
I came across this well-written, and in-depth article in The Atlantic.
Portland is certainly one of the most liberal, progressive cities in one of the most liberal, progressive states in the USA. And yet this article describes the insidious nature of racism even in this bastion of progressivism. Rather than outright bigotry (although that is present as well), the author describes decades of racist activity under the guise of progressivism, and despite the city's progressive backdrop.
Oregon may well be the most racist state in the union, shielding itself behind denial and environmentalism.
Portland: The Whitest City in America.
 |
| KKK march in Oregon, 1920's |
Doug:
There is that kind of racism in every state, of course. Was it easy to occur everywhere, and to keep occurring? Or does racism require work? But it isn't outside public knowledge. Are you just discovering racism in America? |
| Racism in Portlandia? |
I don't think there is that kind of racism in every state. Did you read the article? Apparently not. Oregon was and is an outlier. No other state to my knowledge banned blacks from living within the state's borders after the civil war. The article is very specific about the degree of racism and the tactics that were, and still are being used within Oregon, and within Portland. While other cities have plans to revitalize areas of blight, this article states Portland created a system to force blacks to live in a certain area, and ensured that the area would become blighted so it could then be literally bulldozed over to make room for white citizens. Where else has that occured? Where else, specifically, is that occurring today?
Doug:
Oregon does have a terrible, unique past. But I'm talking about racism now. If you read the comments at the blog Shit White People say to Black&Brown Folks in PDX, linked to in the article, you'll find comments that could be said anywhere in the US today. I think the racism in Oregon is surprising to many people because you might not expect it, given the progressive stories about places like Portland. You might expect that kind of racism in South Carolina, but Portland? Sadly yes. If there is one problem we need to work on, it is racism. But how?
David:
While there are certainly some things people say that is racist, many of the things appearing in that particular blog are overly-sensitive people misconstruing what someone else says. One of the comments is about a guy who was sweating in a gym while working out. He put a towel on his head, and someone commented that he looked pretty funny that way. He took that to be racist, because he's from the Middle East. But perhaps he just looked funny wearing the towel, the same as you or I would in the same situation. Hard to say without the context of the situation.
Doug:
What you don't understand is how those comments pile up, each like a little, annoying paper cut. As you have just shown, you can easily dismiss any single comment. But when you have to hear those comments multiple times a day, every day of the year, it is unbearable.
David:
Or, if you are trying to interpret everything every single person says to you as something offensive, you are likely to be frequently offended by innocent comments.
This reminds me of a story I alluded to in a very early BvB blog, but never got around to actually telling. My first roommate in college was Roger Hunter, a black man from England. He was at Indiana University on a track and field scholarship. At that time, Roger was the second-fastest man in the world running the 400m. (As an aside, the fastest man at that distance, Sunder Nix, was also on our team.) One evening we were eating dinner with two other black athletes and one white one. The waitress we had was pretty bad. The two black students claimed she was serving us poorly because she was racist. Roger pointed out that not all of us were black. "What about Dave and Scott?" They insisted that she was racist, but Roger argued she was just a bad waitress. Afterwards, back at the dorm, Roger noted that black people here in the US are quick to see racism everywhere they look, but it was not that way in England. I thought about that for a long time after that, and still ponder it today. I suppose, because England decided to do away with slavery as a matter of common agreement, that former slaves may have been more accepted into the culture. Fighting a civil war to end slavery left many bitter in America, and they may never have come to grips with reality through the 1960's, and some even today. The point of the story, though, is that everything someone says isn't racist. And even actions taken by a city or corporation may have more of an impact on a certain minority, but that does not mean that the action was racist, or had anything to do with race. I had thought that attitude had passed (the story takes place in 1983), but the recent rise of the Black Lives Matter movement causes me to frequently remember that meal with Roger and our friends. Reading the blog you linked us to also has numerous examples of the commenter assuming the person was saying something that was racially based, but I can see several instances where that is not necessarily the case. As Roger said, sometimes, you just get a bad waitress.
Doug:
The point of your story is that a single event can't tell the whole story of racism. If everywhere you go you get a "bad waitress" then you might start to wonder about your hypothesis and start to wonder if there isn't something systemic going on.
David:
The point of the story is that a black man from England felt that black people in the US are overly sensitive. Roger also lived his entire life as a black man, and he is the one who was making this argument.
If everywhere one goes they get "bad wait staff", then maybe there is a problem with the person complaining of racism. Perhaps their expectations are unrealistic. Don't you think that is more likely than every single waiter or waitress is racist?
The easy answer to having people understand each other better is education and getting to know people who are different from us. But that is much harder to accomplish in reality for a host of reasons.
Doug:
Yes. And we need that everywhere, not just Portland.
David:
One of the things that the author of this article claims to be true, but may not be, is that black people live together in a certain part of town because they were forced to do so because of a vast conspiracy of banks and lending agents. But in almost every city in the country, there are areas and neighborhoods where minorities congregate. It's the same in grade school cafeterias, prison recreation areas, and any other locations where people have a free choice of the people they want to associate with ( known as homophily or assortativeness). People prefer to be with people they are most like. While this article makes a fairly compelling case for the situation in Portland, it is also likely that the situation in Portland is brought about, at least to some degree, by the people themselves and the choices they make.
In this example of friendships among high school students, the yellow dots represent white students, the green dots are black students, and the red dots are mixed-race or other minorities:
When given a choice, people don't often associate or become friends with people of other races. Nor do they choose to live in a neighborhood that is mainly occupied by people of other races. This is as true today as it has ever been.
I think this is much more likely to be the true reason things have ended up as they have in Portland, rather than a massive conspiracy that forced all of the minorities to live in slums, and then forced them out of the city. Portland actually has a fairly extensive system of diversity programs ongoing in all levels of city government. They even host numerous national diversity programs in the city.
Doug:
There are people that study such ideas. They're called sociologists and anthropologists, and they would not agree that "people don't often associate or become friends with people of other races." But there are some interesting computer simulations/models that come out of that research. Thomas Schelling showed mathematically that just a slight preference to be with just a few similar people could, over time, end up with segregated neighborhoods. In the computer simulation, there are green and red "turtles" (pixels). The turtles are slightly more happy when they are nearer to a same-colored turtle. Run the simulation (click "setup" and then "go") to watch the turtles move around randomly based on their "happiness" levels. You'll see over time that they end up segregated. So, you can explain segregated neighborhoods by jumping to the conclusion that "people don't often associate or become friends with people of other races" or see it as an emergent pattern that occurs based on small preferences.
Of course, there is also institutional racism from our government and other organizations. Consider the activity called "redlining". I also just watched an excellent Frontline special last night on affordable housing. It is sad how the best intentions from some can be transformed into terrible situations by others.
David:
But that's just it. Even small preferences lead to self-segregation. The studies that have been done on assortativeness show that in all situations where people have a choice of where they live or with whom they hang out, they all lead to self-segregation. While someone may not care very much or have much of a preference, your own argument is that even a tiny hint of preference leads to this outcome. The only way to change that would be to force people to move or live in different areas, which results in loss of freedom.
Doug:
But segregated environments are not what most people want---usually people just don't want to be too isolated and that preference builds up over time. If you want to make this about freedom, sure! I should be able to have the freedom to live in an area with good schools, good drinking water, and good public services.
David:
Most people don't want to be isolated, and polling shows that many support diversity itself, but studies also show a preference to live in neighborhoods with people that are like them. Studies like the ones we have both presented show that people prefer (if even slightly) to be friends and hang out with people they are most like.
You and I are both making the same argument: there is plenty of evidence that the situation in Portland and other cities is caused by the people themselves. You say that there is institutional racism going on, but your Wikipedia article on redlining lists practices from the 1960's through the 80's. That's from 40-60 years ago. The rest of the article describes practices that may have nothing to do with race, but may just be good business practice (put your business where you can sell the most of what you're selling. That's called Business 101). There are more recent cases mentioned of institutional racism, mainly among banks and lenders, and they all occurred in liberal bastions: Chicago, New York, and the liberal Northeast. Hmm, maybe the author of my article from The Atlantic is on to something.
Doug:
Redlining was a past activity, but is an example of how racism can be codified. The Frontline special is about today's practices. The racism continues, and it isn't confined to your imagined "liberal bastions."
David:
It's your article. Argue with it as much as you want, and if you think their argument is imagined, or that Chicago and NYC are not blue, well...
Doug:
It isn't an article, it is a video. It isn't about Chicago and NYC, but it does explore Dallas and Florida.
David:
I'm still talking about your linked Wikipedia article.
The government is full of people who had good intentions, but government programs are always subjected to the gauntlet of lobbyist and others with competing goals. The farther the government is from the people, the worse the results. Local government is more responsive to the needs , and their programs subject to closer scrutiny, by the people who are affected by laws and rules set up by government. The feds should butt-out when it comes to social programs, and just provide block-grants to the states. That would help to prevent those wonderful programs from becoming so terrible. (By the way, if there are government programs that are "terrible", perhaps we should eliminate them.)
Doug:
By the way, I didn't say that the government programs are terrible, I said that some people are terrible. But we shouldn't "eliminate them"... perhaps just give them a punishment. I think that you would agree that just because medicine is administered poorly that doesn't mean we should "eliminate" medicine. It just means that we need to give it in the right doses, and make sure that there are follow-up visits.
David:
You said people in government create terrible situations from good ideas.
Doug:
If you watch the video, you'll understand that I am not talking about "people in government." In this case it is people that are taking advantage of the government.
David:
Hmmm. You are saying that there are actually people who are taking advantage of government programs? People who are getting benefits that should not be? How can that be in a Big-Government utopia?
If a doctor or hospital performs "poorly" they get sued or fired, or both. Yet Lois Lerner got a fat pension by pleading the 5th, and no one at Justice ever turned over anything related to the government's Fast And Furious gun-running operation. Maybe we should pay a follow-up visit to those scandals?
Doug:
Let's try to focus on the current conversation, otherwise it looks like you are saying "what about them?" So, I think we agreed that we don't want to "eliminate" medicine. We agree that you can't just give out the medicine, but that a proper program requires follow-ups. And if the doctor (or anyone in the process) is acting against the health of the patient, we'll deal with them rather than "eliminate" the medicine.
David:
But we're not talking about eliminating the government, just government programs. If a medication doesn't work, or something better comes along, we do, in fact, eliminate the use of that medicine or practice. Medicine is always working to be better and more efficient. Government should work the same way: eliminate programs that don't work or are inefficient. Maybe we should be able to sue individual government employees and regulators when they screw up. But we digress.
Doug:
I'm not sure what problem has suing more people as a solution.
David:
Good, you're finally on-board with medical tort reform.
Doug:
No, you can sue some people, but let's not advocate suing even more.
David:
Sounds like you just said it's OK to sue doctors who are trying to help you, but you should not be allowed to sue incompetent government workers who screw up your life. Whatever.
Doug:
But let's just agree that if you don't have follow-ups, it is hard to tell whether the medicine is working. Government is the same way: if you don't follow-up to make sure your policy is working, then the government needs to do its diligence. We need to operate on facts, and we need to make sure the system is working. And if it isn't working, then, yes, we need to fix it. That doesn't necessarily mean to "eliminate" it.
There are, no doubt, racists in the Democratic party, just like they are in all parties. But affordable housing and environmentalism (both progressive ideals) do not create these situations. Rather, corruption and money cause these problems. To your original point: Portland has racial problems like any other city, town, or village in the US.
David:
Affordable housing and environmentalism are also conservative ideals.
Doug:
I wish that were true.
David:
And that is why you don't understand conservatism.
Doug:
That must indeed be true. How could killing the EPA be supporting the environment? How could cutting affordable housing be supporting affordable housing? I do not understand.
David:
Right. Cutting back the EPA to it's intended job is "killing" it. Making sure able-bodied, working aged folks are not living in subsidized housing or taking food stamp money from people that can really use it is just making sure government is responsible.
Freedom is a conservative ideal, too. Allowing people to live where they want to and associate with whom they want to are hallmarks of America.
Doug:
And that is what the Frontline special is all about: people just wanting to live where they choose. Unfortunately, one can use money (or the lack of it) to control where you live.
David:
But as we've shown, the majority of people choose to live in segregated communities. It's called human nature, not racism.
I noted last week that Harvard had a separate graduation for black students. While we all recognize the hardship these students had to endure attending the most elite and progressive of colleges in America, it seems very self-defeating to enhance the differences we might have based solely upon skin-color, rather than working harder to break down those barriers. The more racial divisions that get institutionalized, and the louder Black Lives Matter protestors scream, the harder it is to become a society that judges people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
I am a BLM protester. Who do you think I am? Who do you think that you are? Do you really think that you understand the life of a 22-year old black woman graduating from Harvard in 2017? You think you understand how to celebrate diversity better than they do? Do you think you understand why they had a separate graduation? Do you understand what it is like to have a "bad waitress" far more often than your white friends? Do you really think you understand Portland better than the city that you live in? Do you hear what the BLM protestors are "screaming"? Do you believe that you can lecture them about how to create a society that does not judge people by their skin color?
David:
You must be a BLM protester in abstentia. Their Memorial Day celebrations did not allow any white people to attend.
Doug:
Well, we don't live in NY, and we didn't get invited to that party on Memorial Day by those groups. And of course, there have many protests in the last year. We have a BLM sign in our front yard. Wait, what is your point? Oh, you are deflecting.
David:
Insisting that you judge by skin color seems a contradictory means of getting people to not judge by skin color. Celebrating diversity by eliminating diversity? More segregation to end segregation? These sound like arguments right out of the book 1984.
Doug:
You really do not understand. Or you don't want to.
David:
I'm calling it for what it is. It isn't subtle to promote segregation based on skin color. Back in the 1960's, that was called racism. Now, you're saying it's fine for blacks to be racist, but wrong for anyone else.
Doug:
No.
David:
Yes.
But you've said it all in a nutshell. While I'm quoting Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, you advise that I should not even be able to comment on the subject because I'm not black.
Doug:
I didn't say that you should not be able to comment on it. I want you to. But I would also like for you to ask questions, and listen to what the BLM protesters want. I want you to understand MLK, and how he effected change. He was feared by a great many white people. He broke laws. He did not protest the way that white people wanted him to.
David:
But I encourage you to continue thinking your way. This article from an English magazine notes that BLM actions lead to the election of Donald Trump, while completely overlooking the serious, provable problems that are found within the black community across the country, and brought about by that community itself.
Doug:
The Spectator is not just "an English magazine"... it is a conservative magazine. It is true that some people are afraid of BLM protesters (just like some people were afraid of MLK) and it is true that Trump used that fear. It is also true that some people did not want a woman president, and Trump used that fear as well. But the solution is not to break up BLM or to only run male candidates. We need to fight systemic racism and sexism.
David:
Here's a data-heavy article that discusses quite a few different statistics, beginning with the most notable: Blacks commit more than 50% of all violent crime in the country, despite being only 13% of the population.
Doug:
Yikes! That is not an article! It is a blog! Just like this one! You should be more discerning with your "heavy data." Your first statistic is way off. You aren't measuring "all violent crime committed"... you, or course, are measuring incarcerations. Could systemic racism affect the incarceration stats? Yes. Second, the basic statement is just false. The fact that you get wrong this basic idea leaves most of the rest of the "heavy data" highly suspect.
David:
Perhaps you missed that the data is from government reports.
Most of their victims are black. Focusing on the problems that create this statistic is important. Single-parent households leads to poverty which correlates to poor or limited education which leads to continued poverty which leads to crime which leads to violent crime.
"Unmarried black mothers with children under 18 are the most impoverished demographic in American society, and they are the most common type of family structure in black communities." ~ US Census Data
Since most violent crime is committed by black males between the ages of 16-30, and that age / gender demographic equals only about 3% of the American population, that makes young black males as a group, very dangerous. What is BLM saying about this? Nothing. They accuse the police of focusing too much on this group, even though statistically if you detained all black males in that age group, you'd eliminate half of all violent crime in the country. That is a truth that should be particularly troubling to the black community.
You act as though I live in some type of rich, white, Republican bubble.
Doug:
No, you act as though you live is some type of rich, white, Republican bubble.
David:
... says the liberal,elite, college professor surrounded by his liberal,elite, college professor peer group.
I spend time regularly with 22 year old black women in my ER, taking care of both them and their children. I did my residency in Detroit (a city of blacks and by blacks), where I had young black men screaming at me, "You better get me some mo-phine right now, you honky M*****F*****r", while I was holding 4x4 bandages over their gunshot wounds trying to save their lives. After a while, I thought maybe my name badge actually said "Dr. Honky M*****F****r". It's what the young people called all of us who were white. The older black patients were all very nice, polite, and appreciated anyone who was trying to help them. While people from that older generation were fighting to end segregation, this new generation appears to be fighting for segregation.
Doug:
See, this is useful: we see where your stereotypes come from. Why are all of the black women you spend time with 22 years old? I don't want to know. I like how all of the young black men said the same thing, and how you held a collective 4x4 bandage over all of their wounds. This doesn't sound like broad generalizations at all. Nope, not at all. And you sure you want to claim that Portland is worse?
David:
I chose 22 years old to compare with your 22 year old black woman graduating from Harvard. You talk about stereotypes, yet you don't ever deal with actual poor or homeless people; Certainly not on a regular basis.
The world of the Harvard graduate is a very far cry from from the real world that most blue-collar Americans live in, no matter what color you are. But I certainly encourage the Democratic party to thoroughly embrace identity politics and the idea that everyone is a victim. It's working well for you. Identity politics transforms other Americans that disagree with you from being a political opponent into an oppressor. The more the Left denigrates and insults average, hard-working Americans, the less likely they will ever win them over.
You should live for just a short while in Detroit, or at least visit Detroit Receiving's ER. I cannot remember any young black men that I saw in the ER during my trauma rotation that were not victims of penetrating trauma. The 4x4s are just to stop the bleeding until they get to surgery. DRH keeps three trauma teams in service 24/7. We had a shootout inside the hospital while I was there. Another resident and a nurse were killed in the staff parking garage while I was training there. You have not been there, nor have you ever experienced anything like that, yet you are certain that what I'm telling you isn't true. You know nothing about what you speak. Nothing.
Doug:
You aren't implying that BLM protesters or Harvard graduates aren't average, hard-working Americans are you? In any event, some things are working well: Harvard Law Review just elected its first black woman president in 130 years. Perhaps this will just help Trump get re-elected. So be it.
David:
Back to Oregon. Two Portland women were forced to shut down their burrito stand when they were accused of culturally appropriating their recipes. The diversity police are paradoxically alive and well in the City of Roses, The Most Racist City in America.
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