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On race, America has far to go. Ferguson won't be the last flash point
The Manchester Guardian ^ | August 16, 2014 | Farai Chideya

Posted on 08/17/2014 3:19:01 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

The events in Missouri spring from America's deeply embedded segregation and black economic deprivation.

I spent my very early years in New York, living a very multiracial Sesame Street life, a big swinging bellbottom of a childhood. And then our family moved to Baltimore and the iron curtain of the "colour line" fell. I felt that I had moved from the 1970s through a time warp where black and white were the only two colours and never the twain shall socially meet.

I grew to understand what the 50s were actually like in Baltimore, when my mother, for example, was permitted to buy clothes from the major department store but not try them on. (Heaven forfend some black lady should be in the dressing room, right? You know they leave a residue of blackness on the clothes.)

America has never had one racial reality, but a series of them strung together from San Antonio to Pittsburgh to Appalachia. What we are seeing in Ferguson, Missouri, is the result of life in a specific type of heavily racialised zone. Yes, a city such as New York, where a black man was recently choked to death by police officers, has its own very clear forms of racialisation and it's a national issue. But the police killing, last week, of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen in Ferguson has sparked national protests because it represents a specific type of racialisation. This is of the majority black city, big or small, with a white economic and political power structure.

I grew up with mayor William Donald Schaefer, who presided over Baltimore from 1971-1987, an unusually long stretch....

(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: crime; ferguson; raceriots; racism; ursulathevk; zot
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To: Moorings

“Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged: “The cops shouldn’t have shot him.” What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else. And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said if you get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother.” Not, “You’re going to get your butt kicked.” No. “You’re going to embarrass your mother.” “You’re going to embarrass your family.” If you knock that girl up, you’re going to have to run away because it’s going to be too embarrassing for your family...

...Ladies and gentlemen, listen to these people. They are showing you what’s wrong. People putting their clothes on backwards. Isn’t that a sign of something going on wrong? Are you not paying attention? People with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn’t that a sign of something or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? ...

...Brown versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem. We’ve got to take the neighborhood back. We’ve got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It’s right around the corner. It’s standing on the corner. It can’t speak English. It doesn’t want to speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk: “Why you ain’t where you is go ra?” I don’t know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English.

Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t land a plane with, “Why you ain’t…” You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they’re moving ahead on this. Well, they know they’re not; they’re just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you’re just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.

Now, look, I’m telling you. It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing. 50 percent drop out. Look, we’re raising our own ingrown immigrants. These people are fighting hard to be ignorant. There’s no English being spoken, and they’re walking and they’re angry. Oh God, they’re angry and they have pistols and they shoot and they do stupid things. And after they kill somebody, they don’t have a plan. Just murder somebody. Boom. Over what? A pizza?...”

Bill Cosby, Address at the NAACP’ on the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/billcosbypoundcakespeech.htm


81 posted on 08/17/2014 5:04:09 PM PDT by Mr Rogers
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To: AlexW
I'm the whitest whitebread suburban guy there is. And I have no problem with Black People at all. My 6th grade teacher was Black, Mrs. Kirkwood and there was only one black kid in the class. I think I first saw black people on the streets when I was in jr high. Not a lot of exposure, there.

In my career as a sales rep, Black doctors and nurses were among the people I sold to. And I'm sure they have race-dar to pick up vibes from people, who don't like blacks. I developed many friendships and relationships over the years.

I've been hired by a black manager, who then had to let me go and then hired me back when he could. I work today with black people as customers, colleagues and admin support.

I've never had a problem with these productive, friendly and full of good humor Americans. I'm called a brother from another mother by one of my colleagues, who not coincidentally is an active believing Christian.

The black underclass is a creation of the Democrat Party (with zero pushback by the GOP) and is a catastrophe mostly for Black Americans, but for the entire country.

This is not a racial issue. Thomas Sowell wrote about this in his book Black Rednecks and White Liberals, about how black urban culture is very similar to white redneck culture back in the Hatfield and McCoys days.

Theodore Dalrymple wrote about the White Underclass in the UK, whose culture is practically indistinguishable to Black urban cultur in 'Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass'.

Socialism in both countries is creating this culture and this catastrophe.

82 posted on 08/17/2014 5:05:13 PM PDT by Jabba the Nutt (You can have a free country or government schools. Choose one.)
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To: tanknetter

I think it will be very limted at best.


83 posted on 08/17/2014 5:06:29 PM PDT by Biggirl (“Go, do not be afraid, and serve”-Pope Francis)
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To: Moorings

84 posted on 08/17/2014 5:12:46 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

The article is wrong. America has gone too far on race. Affirmative action and 70+ welfare programs have given minorities a sense of entitlement. We have told them they do not need to work, they do not need to study, there there we will take care of you.

Stop.

Cut the umbilical cord. The best thing this country can do is to push people back out to the work force. No more preferential treatment. No more coddling in the schools.

and

You do the crime you do the time.

Maybe once they start taking care of themselves instead of expecting more and more from everybody else, they will EARN something to be proud of.


85 posted on 08/17/2014 5:23:25 PM PDT by GeronL (Vote for Conservatives not for Republicans)
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To: Mr Rogers

Cosby got in trouble for saying the truth. Especially at the NAACP, which has outlived its usefulness, and now exists solely to maintain a victim mentality and enslavement to a culture of entitlement.


86 posted on 08/17/2014 5:23:47 PM PDT by Moorings
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Thanks!


87 posted on 08/17/2014 5:24:07 PM PDT by Moorings
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Farai is a fat ass, loud mouth bigot. If she thinks America has far to go she’d love anywhere else in the world. Western Europe, Russia(Russians HATE blacks) Asia, South America. She wouldn’t last a day in any of these countries, not with her attitude.


88 posted on 08/17/2014 5:25:02 PM PDT by jmacusa (Liberalism defined: When mom and dad go away for the weekend and the kids are in charge.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

So that’s the cue to riot all over the place. Blacks rioting. The first person to defend themselves against these animals will be labeled a racist or something ....


89 posted on 08/17/2014 5:25:55 PM PDT by SkyDancer (If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper you are misinformed)
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To: Moorings

Wasn’t the NAACP created by the New York Republican Party in 1908 to protest lynching in the South?


90 posted on 08/17/2014 5:28:58 PM PDT by jmacusa (Liberalism defined: When mom and dad go away for the weekend and the kids are in charge.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
"He could have tackled the unacceptable level and variety of unwarranted stops, searches and frisking of black men in particular. For bonus points, he could have gotten into black incarceration rates or, as author Michelle Alexander puts it, the "New Jim Crow"."

Horse puckie... black people are in jail for the same reason that they find themselves alone in neighborhoods that once had a diverse population... "DRUGS AND VIOLANCE.!"

But...that's ok....its just their "culture".

91 posted on 08/17/2014 5:32:25 PM PDT by unread (Rescind the 17th. Amendment...bring the power BACK to the states...!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Days after the first serious tax revolt, when America cannot avoid defaulting on its debt, the “race problem” will largely solve itself.


92 posted on 08/17/2014 5:39:20 PM PDT by Trailerpark Badass (There should be a whole lot more going on than throwing bleach, said one woman.)
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To: Smokin' Joe
"But can she read/write cursive?"

:)

93 posted on 08/17/2014 5:41:39 PM PDT by unread (Rescind the 17th. Amendment...bring the power BACK to the states...!)
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To: The Toll

To me it looks like she is gravitationally challenged as well.


94 posted on 08/17/2014 5:57:06 PM PDT by saintgermaine
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To: The Toll

To me it looks like she is gravitationally challenged as well.


95 posted on 08/17/2014 5:57:26 PM PDT by saintgermaine
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Blacks still think they should be allowed to commit violent crimes with no consequences.


96 posted on 08/17/2014 5:59:31 PM PDT by <1/1,000,000th%
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To: Mr Rogers
"And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house."

It's ok....like I said in an earlier post...it's just their culture.. It's all that they expect of themselves... And there ain't a damned thing whitey can do about it..!

97 posted on 08/17/2014 6:02:41 PM PDT by unread (Rescind the 17th. Amendment...bring the power BACK to the states...!)
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To: Don Corleone

exactly


98 posted on 08/17/2014 6:09:16 PM PDT by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole..)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Look at all the money we have tossed at miniorities in this nation. I’d defy another nation to stand up and prove they have paid more the help their lower class citizens.

None the less society in the U. S. is seen as a racially motivated. Why it’s guilty of all sorts of stuff. It’s even guilty of killing an eighteen year old 260 pound 6’4” kid charging and officer, after he had already proven his wanted to take his gun.

Isn’t it amazing how the U. S. is the focus of all sorts of searches for evil, and beheadings, stonings for having been raped, child marriage sub 10 years old, the ownership of wives, the forcing of women to hid themselves from public view and much more goes unaddressed almost universally?

Folks, the U. S. isn’t perfect. We’ll all attest to that. It sure is a lot better than most places. Evidently those places are very jealous, and plenty willing attack it to level the playing field.

Those that do, screw ‘em. Who needs ‘em anyway?

The place ain’t perfect, but there are plenty of places to escape to, and nobody is stopping anyone from voting with their feet.

People below the poverty line, go anywhere you like, that you think is better. Loud mouth nations around the world, take these people and treat them better than we do.

I double dog dare you.


99 posted on 08/17/2014 6:26:15 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (We'll know when he's really hit bottom. They'll start referring to him as White.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Your affirmative action tax dollars at work.


100 posted on 08/17/2014 6:31:26 PM PDT by bray (Palin/Bibi 2016)
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