Going to be short post.
maz wrote:Blacks are not excluded from power though. Here are a list of black mayors in the US. This list is already outdated but at least one black mayor on the list was replaced by another black person in that same city. Please note that many of the cities where blacks are mayors happen to be in cities where blacks aren't even the majority demographic. Also, black mayors allbelong to an association, where they have consolidated their power.
And that's not even counting all of the black city council members and other elected officials. Hell, even chief of police in Minnesota is a black man.
The violence done to blacks in the ghetto are done first and foremost by other blacks, not whites or any other races who go out of their way to not ever find themselves in black ghettos. As a matter of fact, even police don't even want to police some of these ghettos, depending on the city. And when they are forced to go into these areas there can be violent confrontations. None of this is white people's fault by the way, as there are many programs establish by whites to help these people, such as food, housing and daycare subsidies.
Again, I just don't see any opposition to blacks collectively as a group. You seem to want to discount all of the black success in America, particularly in the music, arts and entertainment, where blacks hold a lock on many positions within them, and focus on the extreme low end of the black demographic. But I guess that is how the left always looks at everything; focus on the poor and use them as a battering ram to the rest of civil society.
As for your link, it left me repulsed.
Perhaps I was unclear although I don’t think I suggested black people bave been excluded from power and prosperity as an absolute. It’s untenable to deny the progress made through the civil rights movement and such although their primary success out of the formal equality they got was in terms of education.
Rather I said
My vague impression of the circumstance of blacks in the US specifically is that they have long been an underclass excluded from much power and prosperity afforded to others by a historical trajectory in things even as the new deal progressive reforms.
A single word but it changes the whole sense of it.
Individual black people in positions in power doesn’t necessarily show the overall position of black American. Just as having a white president means fuck all to the white family in a trailer park slum because whiteness is too abstract a category. One has to try and consider the whole, such that we aren't just assuming all blacks are in ghettos, but we don't then just one sidedly speak of the extreme cases of wealthy celebrities.
To which my point about averages is that there is a relationship between the position of a demographic on average and thus their status to the point that if one person gets far ahead of the others, their status is still largely effected by the material conditions of their demographic as a whole.
So the first women to rise to power whilst ideas about women's value being unpaid work might have positionally been in quite some power but they sure as hell weren't as powerful as much of the men of a similar position.
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/jackson/future.of.gender/Readings/DownSoLong--WhyIsItSoHard.pdfStatus Inequality and Positional Inequality. Not all inequality works the same. Gender inequality is an instance of status inequality. As such, it must be embedded in systems of positional inequality. Positional inequality and status inequality refer to two different kinds of inequality, one dividing social roles and the other dividing recognizable groups. Positional inequality divides locations within social structures. For example, organizational authority divides managerial positions from staff or wage labor positions. Positional inequality distinguishes people by the structural positions they occupy and the amount of inequality between people reflects the resources and rights characterizing their structural positions. In contrast, exclusionary status inequality separates types of people. For example, racial discrimination preserves whites' advantages over blacks. Similarly, sex inequality is an instance of status inequality. Status inequality distinguishes people by their personal attributes and the degree of inequality between people reflects the differences in opportunities available to the status groups to which they belong. The conditions needed to sustain or to change these two types of inequality differ. In particularly, inequality defined by personal characteristics, such as gender, can only persist if it is consistently associated with institutionalized inequality between positions, most importantly economic and political inequality. The two types of inequality link differently to the present and the past.
Positional inequality largely represents the demands and possibility of current social structures. Status inequality sustains historical relationships more likely to have arisen under earlier, different conditions.
...
Braungardt.trialectics.comoth positional inequality and status inequality motivate people in advantaged positions to defend the system of inequality. Those who occupy a similiar location may act in prallel or in concert to protect their advantages. The two types of inequality produce different characteristic strategies. Positional systems of inequality induce strategies to preserve the existing relationships between positions. The key actions sustain the rights and resources attached to positions. Status inequality induces strategies to preserve restrictions on people's access to differentially ranked positions. When the principal systems of positional inequality change significantly, status inequality can also induce strategies to translate exclusionary rights in the old system into equivalent rights in the new system.
sometimes one system of inequality is embedded in another. This embedded relationship happens when unequal standings in the second system produce the inequality that distinguishes groups in the first system. In particular, a system of status inequality is embedded in a system of positional inequality if the unequal status relations operate by creating differential access to structural locations in the system of positional inequality.
Status inequality must be embedded in positional inequality and this link much be reinforced by the solidarity of the advantaged group. Status inequality cannot exist independently of and apart from positional inequality .To be unequal, members of two groups must have different relationships to a society's systems of production, distribution, consumption, rulemaking, and control.
So having examples of some black people in power in itself doesn't actually make explicit the relationships of power for black Americans as a whole. So for example, having some black police chiefs hasn't done much to get convictions or even charges in some cases on police or members of the public who have killed black men, women or children. And this anchoring of positional inequality as the foundation for the modern status of blacks is that their status has changed but it's not the case that black Americans have been so integrated into the structural relations of American society that their status on average is on par with that of white Americans. Which isn't a denial of the valid point that police brutality has not been confined to the black population but they're the only ones that take issue with it whilst others use example of brutality and killing of whites only to downplay the injustices in the context of black deaths rather than as a point of solidarity with them.
Part of historical trajectory in attempting to restrict the power of blacks is found in their exclusion from polices and practices that have benefitted white Americans historically and thus made a gap in terms of wealth and also the generational inheritance of that wealth. Poor people tend to come from poor families. Whilst many black Americans have done moderately well for themselves, there remains significant economic segregation between blacks and whites such that blacks still function as an other. Entire cities where the majority of blacks live in poorer parts of the city on the otherwise of a river or some other dividing geographical point. And this isn't to make out that this is the situation of all black Americans, but that their position has an effect on the status of other black Americans such they are still subject to problems as they aren't saved from confrontations with the police and such due to their better economic circumstance.
To which there remains significance economic segregation following racialized policies/practices although formally not racist in language but in content. The point being that a law can in its language make no distinction between people but clearly affect some populations more than other.
Anatole France summarized as much with his quote that both rich and poor alike are prohibited from sleeping under bridges, such is the majestic equality of law.
And such a Lee Attwater's remark in the 80s.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*****, N*****, N*****.” By 1968 you can’t say “N*****”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N*****, N*****.”
The intuition here isn't that things haven't improved, but that Black Americans on average are behind that of whites in large part because of the history that has disrupted their development of wealth and thus generational wealth and their communities. That things have changed in a matter of degrees rather than in essence. That there remains a significant gap between being black and white in America despite prominent examples of black Americans whose position in society has helped shield them from the worst of it.
And as I mentioned the broad principle of the BlackLivesMatter is against violence against black people in general, so to has it always been a point that communities have sought to deal with the crime and violence in their neighborhoods.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/why-dont-black-people-protest-black-on-black-violence/255329/The Black Panther's program was itself significantly about community activism and restorting the strength of a community rather than as a fragmented sort.
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/In Chicago, the outstanding leader of the Panthers local, Fred Hampton, leads five different breakfast programs on the West Side, helps create a free medical center, and initiates a door to door program of health services which test for sickle cell anemia, and encourage blood drives for the Cook County Hospital. The Chicago party also begins reaching out to local gangs to clean up their acts, get them away from crime and bring them into the class war.
And part of their organizing was thoroughly put down tragically, why such a group would be targetted by the government as they were doing so much for black people should give an intuition made in this thread that it's better to let black people have the catharsis of protest and riots than it is to have them organize themselves. And none of this stuff is new.
Young rappers, one more suggestion before I get out of your way
But I appreciate the respect you give me and what you got to say
I'm sayin' protect your community and spread that respect around
Tell brothas and sisters they gotta calm that bullshit down
Cause we're terrorizin' our old folks and brought fear into our homes
And they ain't got to hang out with the senior citizens
Just tell 'em, dammit, leave the old folks alone
And we know who rippin' off the neighborhood
Tell 'em, that BS has got to stop
Tell 'em you're sorry they can't handle it out there
But they got to take the crime off the block
And it makes sense that blacks commit a lot of crime against other blacks with the sort of segregation in America where one does it in their neighborhood not too far from where they actually live.
So much so that being black in a white neighborhood is cause for suspicion by many and they get racially profiled.
And charity doesn't uplift a community, throwing money at things doesn't really solve a problem by itself although it can be a means to an end because the community doesn't base itself on such a thing.
Hence why groups like BLM and the Black Panthers are needed in organizing their community. They don't just give them cash.
And the problem isn't something in isolation from the rest of America's history or policies and practices towards black people. And regardless of trying to blame the point is that there is a problem and in need of a solution and white people stand in front of identifying the nature of the problem or proposing solutions. Speaking out two sides of their mouth saying I see your plight my brother, but this is the wrong way to go about it, slow down, its not a racial problem is an everybody problem but lets not do anything together in solidarity.
And not sure which link you're talking about and why it repulsed you somehow.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics
That's right-wing pro-Trump rubbish. If Obama was President still, everyone would be blaming things on his actions, and rightly so.
if you think I will not support people getting the justice they deserve. What did you think that I am some kind of liberal "pussy", pussyfooting around? Have never been that in here, so I'm really surprised by your surprise.
- By Pants-of-dog
- By Rugoz