![Students this week sat in at the Coffee House in response to an offensive Cinco de Mayo party](https://davisvanguard.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/sit-in-coffe-house.jpg)
Last week, the NBA had to deal with owner Donald Sterling’s racism caught on tape. They had no choice, in a league with just about every star being African-American, to come down and come down hard on Donald Sterling.
How do you defend Donald Sterling when he says on tape: “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people. Do you have to?” He continues, “You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games.” He adds, “Don’t put him [Johnson] on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me. And don’t bring him to my games.”
Some people want to claim he has the right to free speech, but the right to free speech ends when you are an owner of an NBA team which is governed by rules and conventions much akin to a business. This is not the government threatening arrest, this is a private entity trying to save its business.
So the NBA has come down hard, banning Donald Sterling for life and planning to force him to sell his team.
Of course as former NBA Star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar notes, “Moral outrage is exhausting. And dangerous.”
As Mr. Abdul-Jabbar wrote in a Time Magazine op-ed that the NBA was looking the other way for years at Mr. Sterling’s racism.
- 2006: U.S. Dept. of Justice sued Sterling for housing discrimination. Allegedly, he said, “Black tenants smell and attract vermin.”
- 2009: He reportedly paid $2.73 million in a Justice Dept. suit alleging he discriminated against blacks, Hispanics, and families with children in his rentals. (He also had to pay an additional nearly $5 million in attorneys fees and costs due to his counsel’s “sometimes outrageous conduct.”)
- 2009: Clippers executive (and one of the greatest NBA players in history) sued for employment discrimination based on age and race.
“They caught big game on a slow news day, so they put his head on a pike, dubbed him Lord of the Flies, and danced around him whooping,” he writes. “I don’t blame them. I’m doing some whooping right now. Racists deserve to be paraded around the modern town square of the television screen so that the rest of us who believe in the American ideals of equality can be reminded that racism is still a disease that we haven’t yet licked.”
“What bothers me about this whole Donald Sterling affair isn’t just his racism. I’m bothered that everyone acts as if it’s a huge surprise,” he continues.
“All this other stuff I listed above has been going on for years and this ridiculous conversation with his girlfriend is what puts you over the edge? That’s the smoking gun?” he writes. “He was discriminating against black and Hispanic families for years, preventing them from getting housing. It was public record. We did nothing. Suddenly he says he doesn’t want his girlfriend posing with Magic Johnson on Instagram and we bring out the torches and rope. Shouldn’t we have all called for his resignation back then?”
On the local front, the news has been captivated by the insensitivity or racism of students who made the mistake of planning a drinking game scheduled for Cinco de Mayo weekend. On Friday, students counter-protested, perhaps numbering 100, and engaged in a sit-in at the Coffee House, where employees of the student-run organization planned the party.
An April 30 letter from students reads:
We, as concerned students of UC Davis and Davis community members, would like to declare our utter offense and disgust with an off campus event organized by UC Davis students.
It has been brought to our attention that a “Cinco de Drinko Sloshball” facebook event page was created by UC Davis Coffeehouse (Coho) student employees earlier this week. The event is a party intended to have attendees dress in “festive” attire, meaning stereotypical “Mexican” dress (a sombrero and sarape, fake mustache, etc.). In addition, attendees are given an image that demonstrates the attire they should wear, which includes a border patrol officer costume. These images are hurtful to our community and only serve to create a hostile campus climate by sending a message of disregard and disrespect for the Chican@/Latin@ and Undocumented/Immigrant campus community.
Cinco de Mayo is a holiday that marks and celebrates the victory over French rule that was momentous for the state of Puebla, Mexico. This holiday is often manipulated by individuals, who use inaccurate images of Mexican culture and affiliate it strongly with alcoholic consumption, despite the fact that there is no real correlation between the two. The fact that these student employees, who represent the university, are perpetuating this ignorance with no sensitivity towards the Chican@/Latin@ or Undocumented/Immigrant community on our campus,is a reflection of the lack of respect for different cultures and student experiences.
Similar events have been held in the past, such as the “Cinco de Drinko (Mayo) Sloshball” event that took place on May 5th, 2012 and the “Uni-Coho SLOSHBALL” event that took place on May 4th, 2013, both held at Slide Hill Park (See previous Facebook event pages). This should not be, nor should it become, a tradition for UC Davis students, especially not for student employees who should be upholding the UC Davis Principles of Community, since they are the face of the University.
It is ironic that this event is scheduled to take place on the same day as La Gran Tardeada (the culmination of La Raza Cultural Days), which in turn, marginalizes the Chican@/Latin@ community on campus even further. It is also an indication of where the campus-wide community stands when it comes to cultural competency and understanding and upholding our Principles of Community. La Raza Cultural Days and other cultural celebrations during the year are often denied adequate support. Regretful events, such as this “party”, tell us that we have not come as far as we’d like to claim with cultural competency and need to support these programs every opportunity possible. Cultural Days are in place as a means to educate the UC Davis and the community at large about the issues, culture, and struggle of various historically marginalized communities. This “Cinco de Drinko Sloshball” event invalidates years of work from multiple organizations, student centers, departments and students on a day that ironically is meant to celebrate and unite the community. We need to be mindful of the message that the UC Davis students who plan these racist and hurtful events send to prospective students, current students, their families and the community as a whole.
Students planning and participating in this event should be trained to understand why these events are hurtful, offensive, and backward. Despite the years of progress that have been made by strides in the Chican@/Latin@ community at UC Davis, these racist actions remind us that there is still much work to be done. We urge UC Davis and the Coffeehouse to hold its student employees accountable for their actions and take appropriate and effective steps forward to ensure that these type of events will not take place again.
University officials also quickly condemned it.
A letter from Adela de la Torre, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, stated, “Yesterday it was brought to my attention that a ‘Cinco de Drinko Sloshball’ Facebook event page was created by a group of UC Davis students. It encourages participants to wear stereotypical Mexican dress and depict images that debase the cultural identity of our Chican@/Latin@ students, staff and faculty. In addition, it has been scheduled during an important cultural period for our campus, La Raza Cultural Days, and a significant celebratory period for many Chican@/Mexican@ people, Cinco de Mayo.”
She would add, “Unfortunately, the insensitivity of this content has left many members of our UC Davis Chican@/Latin@ community feeling demeaned and demoralized. It is clear that the students’ actions are not aligned with our Principles of Community. As a teaching and learning environment, this is an opportunity to create a sustained dialogue about our distinct and diverse communities and to reaffirm our Principles of Community. Student Affairs staff will be working directly with the students who organized this event to heighten their cultural sensitivity and understanding of the impact of their actions.”
The students actions blew up the event. But some of the students did not seem to understand the fuss.
The Bee wrote this weekend, “Jonathan Beatty, one of the students wearing a sombrero during the protest, said he doesn’t think a drinking-themed party for Cinco de Mayo is racist, likening the holiday to St. Patrick’s Day festivities.”
“People were being overly sensitive,” Mr. Beatty said.
Perhaps, but perhaps they have reason to be overly sensitive. It was a few years ago that the College Republicans had the great idea of having an event called “Capture the Flag on the Illegal Immigrant.”
Everyone wants to believe we live in a color-free society, and that’s fine to aspire to. But, as we have seen in the past week, we are not there yet.
–David M. Greenwald reporting
I read a cartoon today that said Donald Sterling makes racist remarks and gets kicked out of the NBA. Al Sharpton makes racist remarks and gets his own show. Go figure.
Barack Palin
Nothing to figure out here. Racism should be unacceptable regardless of the color of the individual engaging in it.
One important distinction. I do not believe it is racist to point out historical or current fact. It is not for instance racist to point out that there are more Asian than African American students enrolled at UCD even though this clearly is a racial reference. It is racist to say that this is because of a potentially derogatory characteristic that one is attributing to one or the other group based on the color of their skin.
Tia wrote:
> It is not for instance racist to point out that there are more Asian
> than African American students enrolled at UCD even though this
> clearly is a racial reference.
I have been told that I was “racist” to point out UCD is probably doing a good job getting African Americans to enroll since about 6% of California’s elementary school students are African American and that about 2/3 of them graduate from High School (a little over half the African American male students).
told by whom and why?
“There’s white racist DNA running through the synapses of his or her brain tissue. They will kill their own kind, defend the enemies of their kind or anyone who is perceived to be the enemy of the milky white way of life.” — Jeremiah Wright”
“You cannot go to a 7-11 or Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian Accent.” — Joe Biden”
“The white man is our mortal enemy, and we cannot accept him. I will fight to see that vicious beast go down into the lake of fire prepared for him from the beginning, that he never rise again to give any innocent black man, woman or child the hell that he has delighted in pouring on us for 400 years.” — Louis Farrakhan
“White folks was in the caves while we was building empires,” he said. “We built pyramids before Donald Trump even knew what architecture was…We taught philosophy and astrology [sic] and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it…Do some cracker come and tell you, ‘Well my mother and father blood go back to the Mayflower,’ you better hold your pocket. That ain’t nothing to be proud of, that means their forefathers was crooks.” — Al Sharpton
Sharpton, speaking of the black politician David Dinkins, said, “David Dinkins … You wanna be the only n—-r on television, the only n—-r in the newspaper, the only n—-r to talk. … Don’t cover them, don’t talk to them, cause you got the only n—-r problem.” — Al Sharpton
And then there was Al Sharpton and the Tawana Brawley non-incident. Brawley told them said that a cop had been one of her attackers, and Sharpton named that officer as Harry Crist Jr., a police officer from a nearby town who had committed suicide shortly after Brawley was found. Sharpton also named a local prosecutor, Steven Pagones, as one of the attackers. He offered no proof.
After a six-month investigation a grand jury found that the entire episode had been a hoax, with Brawley having defaced herself to avoid the wrath of her stepfather after staying out late to visit a boyfriend.
Subsequently, both of her attorneys had their law licenses revoked (Mason for unrelated reasons) and Sharpton was found guilty of defamation in a lawsuit brought by prosecutor Steven Pagones, who quickly had been able to establish he had been nowhere near the scene of the alleged crime.
A Times documentary shows a wild-eyed Sharpton responding indignantly to a reporter’s question of what proof he had of the policeman’s guilt: “I have Tawana Brawley’s words,” he sneers.
Crown Heights Riot – With ethnic tensions already dangerously fraught, riots erupted in the Brooklyn, N.Y. neighborhood of Crown Heights after a Jewish man accidentally struck and killed a black child with his car in the summer of 1991. Never one to let a good crisis go to waste, Sharpton spoke at the boy’s funeral, referring to the “diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights,” and also led a march during the race riots that followed in which stores were looted, Jews were beat in the streets, and one Jewish student was fatally stabbed.
Then on the Duke Lacrosse non-incident… Sharpton in an TV news talk interview said: “…I think that when you look at the racial atmosphere, when you look at the fact that there again were the allegations of racial statements, when you look at a lot of people feeling that they have been treated differently, where this girl has basically had a character charged in the media, there is a lot of racism that’s in the air.”
Sharpton has never apologized to those kids that had their lives about ruined by the lies of stripper Gail Mangum.
The social and personal damage caused by Al Sharpton are orders of magnitude greater than that caused by Donald Sterling.. yet her were are today gleefully persecuting Sterling and conveniently ignoring Sharpton. In this twisted and screwed-up American political correctness media swamp… it stinks to high heaven and it is sucking the entire country down with it. And Obama and American liberals are the great swamp royalty.
There is a clear double standard b/c if you’re African American or Latino, you aren’t held to the same standard.
We’ve even got JayZ (sp?), Beyonce’s husband, wearing a Five Percent Nation medallion, a group which considers white people to be devils. But he is invited to the White House. Add in Jeese Jackson, and others who aren’t held to the same standard.
I did not know that wearing a sombrero today is offensive. On St. Patrick’s Day, people drink green beer. I’m Irish, but my mom and dad didn’t drink. I’m not offended when people drink green beer and display leprauchans on St. Patrick’s day. I think it’s all playful, and kind of fun. I had no idea so many people find sombrero’s offensive. I see them as decorations in Mexican restaurants all the time.
And the border patrol costume? That’d be like dressing up at a St. Patrick’s Day event dressed like the IRA and British Troops.
I see your point about the border patrol but siesta’s, sombreros, and cervezas seem like innocent fun. If sombrero’s are that offensive, someone better tell Chevy’s to stop giving them away on customer’s birthdays. That’s where I got mine.
D.D.
Two points for consideration.
There is no longer widespread discrimination against the Irish in this county although there certainly was in the past.
Latino folks are still discriminated against in many ways largely because of a “blame the immigrant” mentality and many in our society who cannot differentiate except by color of skin and so use that as their discriminatory characteristic. One example from not so long ago. My dark skinned, Turkish ex husband and I were on a road trip in Southern California when some women in a car next to us took exception to his appearance and began shouting at him to “go back across the border where he came from” using the endearing term “wet back”.
Context is extremely important.
A white bed sheet on a bed or in the linens section of a store is completely inoffensive. A white bed sheet with eye holes cut out on someone putting up a cross to be burned is quite another matter.
A sombrero in a Mexican restaurant is most likely non offensive. A sombrero on someone who is deliberately getting drunk, wearing a fake and stereotypical mustache and “making fun of ” ( Cinco de Drinko !) a day of national pride…..maybe not so much so.
Just my thoughts.
Tia wrote:
> Context is extremely important. A white bed sheet on a bed or in the
> linens section of a store is completely inoffensive. A white bed sheet
> with eye holes cut out on someone putting up a cross to be burned
> is quite another matter.
Since the most of the “professional victims” in America are of Black and Latino decent we have a culture where you can dress as a Greek in a toga, a German in lederhosen or wear a beret on Bastille Day and that is “completely inoffensive”, but if a white guy even thinks about putting a sombrero on (or dressing like the guy in the link below) he must be an EVIL RACIST and it is “quite another matter”…
http://theobamafile.com/_images/ObamaAsMuslim.jpg
My dark skinned, Turkish ex husband and I were on a road trip in Southern California when some women in a car next to us took exception to his appearance and began shouting at him to “go back across the border where he came from” using the endearing term “wet back”.
Before I lived in Mexico, I had never seen or experienced any sort of racism in person. Perhaps this existed in parts of our country in my lifetime, but never where I lived.
So I was shocked by what I discovered living in Guadalajara and Mexico City in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Mexican racism is very intense, and it is largely based on hue. If you are a blue-eyed, super pale whitey (which I am), you are at the top of the heap. If you are a very dark Indian, you are at the bottom. Every shade darker than pale is one step down on the totem pole. Unlike the U.S. South, where Jim Crow laws enforced segregation, Mexican racism is entirely social. Some Mexicans are not racists. However, compared with Americans, their culture is.
The first time I experienced what goes on in Mexico was at a fancy night club. I was going out with my girlfriend (a blonde American girl) and a half dozen of our friends and colleagues who were Mexicans. I didn’t have any nice clothes to wear other than my two work suits, and they were at the dry cleaners. So I put on some Levi’s 501s, a pair of Nike high-tops (Carolina blues, if you know old Air Jordans) and a casual shirt. Everyone else in our group was dressed far nicer. When we got to the club, I discovered they had a strict “dress code.” But the doorman looked at me and let me and my girlfriend in. However, three of the Mexicans with us–the three with the darkest skin–were not allowed entry. They did not meet “the dress code.” Later that night, the Mexicans explained to me what exactly had happened. They said this sort of thing goes on all the time. I never again experienced anything exactly like that. But I recall other incidents–for example, I’ve seen private security guards in Mexico City harass dark-skinned people in front of fancy shops, making it clear they are not welcome inside.
I’ve been told the same thing by a fellow Aggie.
I also entered a restaurant once on a busy night, and couple after couple, group after group, who arrived after us, were seated before we were! After this kept happening, we scanned the crowd more closely and realized that most all of the people there were Persian, and we weren’t.
Rich wrote that he got in to a club before a dark skinned co-worker and TBD wrote that she got seated after Persians in a Persian restaurant.
If you ask anyone that works in the restaurant/bar/nightclub business the goal is to get the most “green”. A typical NYC doorman will look at the watches of the guys in line (and can also spot a fake a mile away). Any guy (of any race) wearing a JLC Spherotourbillion (just like a supermodel of any race) will never wait long to get in to a NYC club. Anyone that works in the restaurant business knows that some groups (both racial and socioeconomic) tip better than others and those groups tend to get better service when they are out.
Ouch. Davis folks won’t like this stereotype, but I’ve heard it many times. I will also add a positive stereotype I have heard. I met a woman who sells custom jewelry in a warm-weather vacation country several times a year, and she raved and raved about her gay customers. How they “had money”, had great taste, wrote her follow-up thank you notes, wanted to becomes friends, and we’re hands down the best customers she had.
I have a friend who owns a business. He met a guy from a “protected class” and offered to talk to him about a job. He ended up giving this unemployed guy a job.
As time went on, it turns out this large man had a huge temper. Women in the office were so scared they conducted a criminal background check, and he had done time for an extremely violent crime. Since he was from a “protected class”, my friend was scared. He was later one of two employees who were fired for a huge office blowup. This man then filed two separate discrimination claims. Even though a white male was fired for the same behavior, he sued him twice.
If you own a business, you know that superfluous lawsuits are just a very unfortunate cost of doing business. More often than not (not 100% of the time), if you treat your workers fairly, and pay them top dollar, they will not file fake workers comp or fake sexual harrassment or civil rights claims. If they are happy, and feel valued, they will not sue you, usually. And of course, it is prudent to spend the time & money to do a background check and do as many reference checks as possible.
A friend in the Citrus Heights area is in the “trades”. He hired an expereinced worker, and paid him the going rate. Turns out the guy had just come off disability of some kind, and after being on the job for a month or two, he let that out of the bag. My friend, a big liberal, had immediate concerns for his business, and what this worker could and couldn’t do, physically. This worker would then mess up his shops’ efficiency (limits on what he could lift or do), and he was already struggling to stay in business without having to ‘carry a worker’. The worker then went on disability of some type again, apparently he needed to meet certain time period requirements, so he worked a few months and went back to his gov’t check.
I have empathy for his injury, but can’t he do another kind of work?
“Rich wrote that he got in to a club before a dark skinned co-worker …”
To be clear, the darker skinned people in my group (two were colleagues and one was the wife of a colleague) NEVER were allowed in. It’s not that they were delayed entry. While there was no formal policy about racial exclusion (AFAIK), the de facto policy at that time in many night clubs, bars, restaurants and other businesses in Guadalajara (and in other Mexican cities) was to keep all people out who they deemed as too dark. … What I was told from Mestizo friends who faced this kind of terrible treatment was that they knew many Mestizos who would discriminate against people who were darker skinned than they were. They said this all emanated from a European sense of white is right and Indians are bad. The surprise is that so long after the U.S. changed its laws and our culture largely began to reject that kind of racism, nothing much had changed in Mexico. I have not lived there in over 20 years. So perhaps it is better, now.
My friend was there 10 years ago and had the same experiences.
Don’t you ever watch Spanish-language television?
The hosts / actors / actresses are almost exclusively light-skinned or white, whether it is novelas, the news, or Sabado Gigante (SG) on Saturday night. The host of SG might be considered medium-skinned, but the interesting sight is the few times I have seen the crowd, it seems as if there is a large contingent that is much darker skinned. My Spanish is poor, so I am not an authority. I also not sure which shows originate from Miami, and which are from central or South America. But across stations, it seems to hold true.
South of Davis
“If you ask anyone that works in the restaurant/bar/nightclub business the goal is to get the most “green””
And if you know that a large segment of your most devoted clientele prefer not to associate with others of different races, it will be in your “green” best interest to find a reason to exclude the less favored group.
I don’t go to clubs that size you up at the door before allowing only the hot women and rich men inside. Who would enjoy that type of place? It’s their own fault for going to the club and allowing anyone to treat them that way.
You’re saying that there is widespread discrimination against Latinos? We don’t enforce our immigration laws, our border, and we even allow millions of illegal immigrants to attend our schools and colleges, often for free! I have no idea how that is discriminatory.
You also take the ploy of not distinguishing between legal and illegal immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants, we love the contribution of immigrants.
Context is extremely important. Cinco de Mayo isn’t celebrated in most of Mexico! Also, the French re-armed and, according to the radio host I heard this AM, they went back and wiped out the small armed forces in Puebla, Mexico, in 1862.
“We don’t enforce our immigration laws, our border, and we even allow millions of illegal immigrants to attend our schools and colleges, often for free!”
that’s not a real accurate statement. we may not sufficently enforce our immigration laws, but we spend an incredible amount of border patrol, we have border patrol and ice, and i can tell as a prosecutor, there is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes putting holds on defendants for immigration status. there are periodic raids.
but the other side of the issue is that if you have millions of people somewhat integrated into the social and economic fabric of society, how do you remove them without creating huge disruptions.
that has been part of the reason that more hasn’t been done, there is also the cost involved, and the question about the benefit.
The government uses an estimate of 12 million illegal immigrants, and keeps using that same number, year after year. When Ronald Reagan was president and signed Amnesty, the estimate was 1 million illegal immigrants. 3.5 million signed up for Amnesty. A top professional consulting group did an analysis years ago and estimated 20 million illegal immigrants. If we take the Reagan underestimated, the number could be over 40 Million.
Davis Progressive, we don’t even deport illegal immigrants who break lower-level laws. Yes, there are sections of the border we protect, and sections we don’t.
I have read of a number of cases where Mexican cartels are growing marijuana on public lands, and also have personal knowledge of one of these multi-million dollar busts years ago. Mother Jones recently wrote an article on this topic.
Yes, it is a sticky problem, but we also have had an explosion of gangs in California the past 30 years which includes the Nortenos, Sorenos, M13, and Bulldogs to name a few. Who could have ever imagined that Fresno would become one of the car theft capitals of the United States?
Gang activity is not restricted just to latinos. Do you argue that all gang activity is connected to latino immigration?
That majority of gangs are Latino. And considering the Latino population, they are HIGHLY over-represented in gangs.
http://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/survey-analysis/demographics
Most gangs today seem to be Latino or African American. In prisons, there is the Aryan nation and / or Hells Angels, but they are numerically small. Some become an affiliate in prison to survive. There was a recent crime in Sonoma or Napa that made the news, and out of curiosity I looked up the gang activity in the area. In the serene wine country, in this one little area, they had gone from one gang to 20 known gangs in 2 decades. But the article focused on the economic disparity and possibly racism in this area, with little attention to this huge increase in gangs.
I have a friend who lives in Costa Mesa, and a few months back all of the vans and trucks in her area were spray painted with graffitti in her largely Latino area (85%). She went online and the explanation she read was “We are telling you this is out area now.” I could never have imagined that in Orange County!
“We don’t enforce our immigration laws, our border…”
Not true.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/may/10/barack-obama/obama-says-border-patrol-has-doubled-number-agents/
So border patrol agents doubled under Bush and Obama.
Statistics about border enforcement: http://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/media-resources/stats
— The Nation.
If millions of illegal immigrants continue to flood into our country, maybe we should double forces again, especially considering that we have had an explosion of gang activity and drug importation.
We should deal with the explosion of gang activity and drug importation, for sure. Easier said than done, and not entirely related to enforcement of people overstaying their visas or entering the US to work in hotels and farms. What you’re describing is really more a matter for the DEA and the Mexican federal police, not the INS.
take your comment a step further, the drug trade and gang activity that tbd describes would be much reduced if there wasn’t a black market in human trafficking to go along with the drug market. legalize immigration and decriminalize drugs and much of that goes away.
“legalize immigration”
wth does this mean? We already have legal immigration.
now you’re being obtuse.
I’m being obtuse!?
Why don’t you answer that question? What do you mean by “legalizing immigration”?
Yes, we do have legal immigration so that term is a little confusing, I agree. Also, I have read that the largest population of people coming to the U.S.A. illegally are Asian, not Mexicans.
“the largest population of people coming to the U.S.A. illegally are Asian, not Mexicans”
Ha! Yes, the Asians have built a tunnel under the Pacific and use it to traffic their poor and uneducated people, criminals and drugs.
Immigration from Asia surpassed immigration from south of the border in about 2010.
That is only documented/legal immigration. I think you know that.
Yes, and I also know that illegal immigration into the United States slowed to a trickle during the recession. You probably knew that as well. So both numbers have probably changed by now.
Please. A quick google showed that of the 12 million estimated illegal immigrants in our country (a laughably low number), most were from North America (77 percent). The DHS in 2011 estimates that 59 percent of illegal immigrants were from Mexico (6.8 million).
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/ois_ill_pe_2011.pdf
“Today we learned that Donald Sterling didn’t want to trade for a high-priced guard because he was (is) white. ”
that’s the same bigotry – blacks are better basketball players because as slaves they were bred to be faster and stronger. signed al campanis.
Don Shor wrote: “Easier said than done, and not entirely related to enforcement of people overstaying their visas or entering the US to work in hotels and farms.”
12-40 Million illegal immigrants don’t merely work on farms or hotels. The construction industry has been overwhelmed with illegal immigrants, and there are few construction projects that look “diverse”. Add in the restaurant business, landscaping, and many blue collar trades.
If you want to know why the middle class and blue collar trades suffer, this is a good start, and this demonstrates the hypocrisy of the progressives.
TBD:
> this demonstrates the hypocrisy of the progressives.
Most (but not all) “progressives” hate white truck driving low income whites more than anyone else (just about every “progressive has a Black, Mexican, & Gay friend, but never a poor white friend who didn’t go to college, but I bet you could go to 20 Yoga or Woman’s Studies conventions and not meet a single person friends with a white guy who owns a lifted 4×4 who has been hunting in the past year) so they don’t seem to care that 30 years ago “almost all the guys” on a construction site were white (making good money), while today “almost all the guys” are Latino (making good money) while the white guys without degrees are having a real tough time (and pretty much can’t get a construction job for any money if they don’t speak Spanish)…
South of Davis
“Most (but not all) “progressives” hate white truck driving low income whites more than anyone else ”
And who did the poll that provided you with this information ?
SoD, interesting observations. I will make a few small points.
You wrote: ” so they don’t seem to care that 30 years ago “almost all the guys” on a construction site were white (making good money), while today “almost all the guys” are Latino (making good money)…”
Actually, the men 30 years ago in NorCal could make good money, down south not so much, as unions had less strength there. You could have a house, and a decent life in a middle class area if your partner worked part time. Construction sites I saw were mainly white, with African American men, as well. Today, many crews are overwhelmingly Latino. Often the crew or business is led by a man who is perfectly bilingual, and then the English skills vary after that. I can’t recall the last black construction worker I have seen. No “diversity”.
My take is that the pay is less than back then, but it is still an upgrade for them from Mexico or elsewhere. It pays more than yard work, restaurants, or such. But these jobs often don’t include health care, and I get the feeling that the ER is used instead. A friend who works at a paint store also said that when he tried to shoo away day laborers, they waived their food stamp cards at him, a clever way to say “F- You!”. He found this disturbing. So government benefits seem to be filling in the gaps.
I asked a friend who works for Head Start in an semi-affluent area, “What percentage of your children are Hispanic?” She said, “What do you mean? I repeated my question. She replied, “One hundred percent.” Same answer for a different woman who led a coat drive three years in a row.
Lastly, reports are that men can live up to 12 in a 1 bedroom apartment in The Mission in San Francisco. So the contractors make out, but the system suffers added costs.
Whenever someone hears I am Irish, they usually make a joke that I must like to drink. I don’t drink very often, but in Ireland, most people enjoy a pint at a pub. So it could be a racist remark that all Irish people like to drink, but I don’t get offended. They also ask,ed, because I used to have naturally red hair, if I had a bad temper.
But that ‘s pretty funny, I don’t get offended that they assume I have anger management issues, or that I like to drink.
Tia–Re: ciinco de mayo a day of “nationaliist pride”.
Insomuch as those Americans of non-Hispanic backgrounds should have the grace to acknowledge the Hispanics right to celebrate the cultural traditions of their ancestors (or more recent); Hispanics should have the grace to tolerate some light-humored fun and rib-poking when celebrating their holidays in their new adopted country–perhaps think of it as a tribal ritual of entry into USA. I would contend most of those involved with costumes etc. are doing thiis in a light-hearted and friendly spirit (though undoubtedly there are a few cranks), and that allowing such a free informal fun atmosphere has more potential to help cross-cultural relations than hurt them–put strict rules on behavior, and you are more likely to alienate different groups (these are just college kids; they should be able to let their hair down now and then; they are regimented enough as it is).
tribeUSA, I wholeheartedly agree.
And, just maybe, the students feel very comfortable ribbing their Latino frienss. Maybe they thought it was all in jest, harmless fun. The more comfortable you feel around someone, the more one jokes and kids around. For example, I bet the students would feel less comfortable making fun of fellow Muslim students, because they may feel less comfortable around them. Which is a shame.
tribeUSA
I think that “light humored fun” is often in the eyes of the beholder. Those who remember their own innocent experiences will not see the potential for harm. Sometimes things aren’t as innocent as they seem.
Hazing on college campuses has by some been considered “light humored fun” right up until the point where someone is sexually assaulted or dies.
The culture of drinking to the point of inebriation can lead to very questionable sexual interactions where it is hard to discern what was consensual and what was rape as our recent case illustrated.
One doesn’t even need to invoke race to realize that excuses to start binge drinking are not a good idea. Add to this the component of singling out a particular group be it racial or sexual or other status ( such as pledges) for denigration is just not a good idea. The mixture of alcohol with its lowering of inhibitions and out group identification can be a volatile mix and should not be encouraged in my opinion.
Tia wrote:
> Hazing on college campuses has by some been considered “light humored
> fun” right up until the point where someone is sexually assaulted or dies.
Funny you mention hazing since for 30+ years any (white) fraternity or sorority caught hazing will be punished (and often kicked off campus). Minority (especially black) fraternities and sororities still openly haze at most schools (since “no one wants to go there”).
When I was in college a (mostly) white fraternity was put on probation for making pledges wear a (2″) I Heart Sigma Chi button while school “looked the other way” as the black fraternity pledges were forced to march around campus in combat boots with backpacks full of bricks…
How about the black fraternity members who were BRANDED! I saw a few at Davis (on the arm or chest), but not sure where they were actually branded … I heard it was considered a requirement at one legendary black fraternity at San Jose State. To be crystal clear, this is black fraternity members branding their fellow (black) pledges in a bizarre bonding ritual. As a child I was told this existed at UC Berkeley, but as I got older I figured it was an exaggeration. I found out it wasn’t.
I was recently told this has been stopped, but my google search still brings up many references to this practice.
SoD is right, if you had black friends who you were tight with, they could tell you whispered stories of the violence that was a part of black fraternity pledging. There was one Aggie who was super nice, and a huge “nerd” who was black. He pledged a fraternity, and the whole pledge class had to endure the same physical violence they dealt out to the “nerd” until he thankfully dropped out.
I agree with Tia re: binge drinking. When young, underdeveloped brains overindulge, nothing good ever comes of it.
Davis wrote:
> Everyone wants to believe we live in a color-free society
The people that get money and power from crying “victim” all the time do NOT want a “color-free society”
They want a world where a white guy who asks his (half black) girlfriend to bring less black guys to a basketball game is an “EVIL RACIST”, while black guys (who as BP mentioned got his own show) can say “Blacks taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it” and is a CIVIL RIGHTS HERO.
If a white guy says the “N-Word” even once he is an EVIL RACIST and should never work again while NWA (you can use Google to see what the “N” stands for) have songs that use the “N-Word” dozens of time and they are talented rappers and CIVIL RIGHTS HEROs.
If a white guy wears a sombrero to a cinco de mayo party he is an EVIL RACIST, but if an illegal alien wears a leprechaun hat to a St. Patrick’s day party he is just a hard working undocumented person having a good time.
We all know that there are a small number of racists out there, and is sounds like Donald Sterling (who was born Donald Tokowitz before he changed last name) is one of them, but I bet that 99.99% of the people in Davis that have some Mexican beer wearing a sombrero on cinco de mayo are NOT racist (just like the 99.99% that drink green beer on St. Patrick’d Day are NOT anti-Irish)…
“If a white guy says the “N-Word” even once he is an EVIL RACIST and should never work again while NWA (you can use Google to see what the “N” stands for) have songs that use the “N-Word” dozens of time and they are talented rappers and CIVIL RIGHTS HEROs.”
Many minority groups have incorporated derogatory terms into their vernacular. There are varying explanations for it. One is that they are trying to retake the language, the other is that if they call themselves that, maybe the next time someone puts them down it will not hurt nearly as bad. Mostly it is a defense mechanism.
David wrote:
> Many minority groups have incorporated derogatory terms into their vernacular.
Going back to college the black fraternities would routinely yell racist terms at their pledges (and kick them and spit on them), Then NAACP get’s to call backs “colored people” (but we are racist if we do) and the United Negro College Fund get’s to help “Negros” (but we are racist if we say the word).
If the goal is to get to an equal society I think we need to decide what words are OK in polite society and have them apply to ALL people. Saying it is OK for blacks to use the N word or Gays to use the Q word just seems like going back to where Blacks had to call whites “Mr.” and blacks were called “Boy”…
“Many minority groups have incorporated derogatory terms into their vernacular. There are varying explanations for it.”
I’m not sure that this is true. Obviously, every linguistic group or sub-linguistic group has insulting or derogatory terms. And those terms can be used against others within the group. However, I don’t know of any other group which takes the most hateful word that comes from the outside and uses that term casually within the hated group. In some sense, I think this sort of self-denigration is unique to African-Americans.
And I suspect it has never been the case that African-Americans on the whole have used this term against other blacks. Rather, I think this is clearly part of the black underclass, which, going back to the days of slavery, has imbued in itself tremendous self-hatred as a consequence of all of the racism and brutality they were subjected to.
Rich wrote:
> I suspect it has never been the case that African-Americans
> on the whole have used this term against other blacks
Years ago I was out with a black friend (who like his Dad was a Cal grad) and other (born in politically correct Northern California) white friends when the black friend pointed to some drunk grill wearing lower socioeconomic African Americans and said “N-Word like those guys are pathetic”. My (super politically correct) friend Meghan told him he should “never use that word” and he responded “My daddy told me when I was a little boy that there are black people and N-words”…
a friend of mine, a white woman, from mississippi once told me that too. but the word usage continues to evolve.
I don’t know of any other group which takes the most hateful word that comes from the outside and uses that term casually within the hated group.
I think this is a very strong point and one that gets scant attention. But added to this is a similar acceptance of blacks’ use of derogatory terms for other groups… primarily whites. It is accepted in our main media and in our entertainment industry.
For example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWuJHbVZBQg&feature=player_detailpage
From one perspective black self-deprecating humor and denigration of other groups can be a sign of self-confidence and social sophistication. But it can also signal a lack of self confidence. The problem is the long-lasting impacts to group and self image. Making light of serious problems within the black community while denigrating other more-successful groups, is not helping.
I think this latter point is where we find ourselves with our black population. A lack of group self-confidence and a sort of sick humor about it to attempt to make light of it so that individuals within the group feel better about themselves and their situation. Think of the tremendous negativity and depression that would exist having to always accept and dialog about these things in a non-humorous way. Since the use of this self deprecating humor is to feel better, any of it coming from outside the group has the opposite effect… and so it elicits a visceral and angry response.
Unfortunately it is this inability for individual and group introspection with a serious and factual tone and dialog, combined with the inability to accept outside constructive criticism, that is preventing the social and economic advancement of blacks in America.
Related to this… what is “black culture” in America? Why do we have it? African culture would make sense… just as we have Latino culture and Asian culture. But the existence of black culture will always be a sign that blacks are not sufficiently integrated into American society.
And American liberals that continue to defend and protect the practice of “black culture” and also prevent any constructive dialog that causes hurt feelings within the black community. As usual, Liberals enable and propagate the very problems that makes up their self-designated political drive and identity. In a world where all groups were sufficiently integrated into the American economy, what would a liberal do? Racial strife and liberalism are co-dependent and self-propagating.
rich: while your comment is interesting, it seems limited. i remember reading about NWA which was a pioneering rap group standing for N’s with attitude. what was interesting was reading about how the rap world changed people’s perception about places like comptom, all of a sudden people – even a white audience – was yelling out comptom, long beach, south central, places where people used to think of with shame and suddenly they became cool and romanticized. i think the issue is much more complicated than self-hatred. what gets captured is rising anger in urban youth.
Does this mean I can “take back” the language and use the term “gay=very happy”, and “faggot=stick or cigarette”, “queer=strange, odd”?
Why aren’t the MSNBC hosts who wore a sombrero on Cindo de Mayo called EVIL RACISTS?
Wait, it gets better. One of the hosts was guzzling tequila as he walked back and forth in front of the camera… and his colleague said “You have to drink that all.”
Even more. You’d figure they would wake up. No! They came back later in the show with five … 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 WHITE MALES … still with the sombrero and tequila. This time, one of the guys says something like “You smell like the gutter in Tijuana.”
Now, WHY does this get so little attention… but the UC Davis party that was to happen as a private event by college kids, get nationwide coverage?
Because… drum roll … MSNBC IS A LIBERAL STATION!!!! BINGO. They get a pass.
It got plenty of attention, and they’ve apologized for it and are going to be disciplined for it.
Maybe they should be fired for this act. MSNBC has lost a lot of people due to hate talk, one of the more recent ones being Martin Bashir for advocating someone do barbaric things to, I believe, Sarah Palin.
I see it writter up on the latintimes, dailycaller, fairfaxundergroundnews, yeplol, prisonplanet, weaselzippers, and other obscure websites. But where are the heavy hitters? Where is the mainstream liberal press?
If Fox News did this, it would be prominent, national news for days.
And CNN, Washington Post, Associated Press, Huff Post, and any number of other sites. You’re being selective.
FWIW, I did review the first 5-6 pages from a Google search. I did see HuffPo.
I didn’t see CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, PBS, Bill Maher, or such.
The important thing is that there’s something for all of us to feel guilt over. lol. Should people stop being racists a-holes? Absolutely. Should the NBA be investigated for any number of offensive acts and statements by management and players, alike? Quite possibly. Does a bunch of undergrad yahoos making inappropriate statements on Cinco de Mayo rate this much concern? No way.
I’m returning to mashing and mixing up my guacamole and then doing small repairs to my sombrero, in preparation for a fiesta, later.
;>)/
Another unmentioned aspect of this event is the organized call for a “bright and early” gathering of persons in a public park for the exclusive purpose of drinking kegs of beer.
Public binge drinking has been condemned by the University and other community leaders in the context of Picnic Days gone bad. It’s consequences here should not be ignored or missed in the context of the larger issue of racial stereotyping.
Thank you. So if 10% or 20% of the kids get horribly drunk, that’s OK? Kids driving drunk mid-day is also tolerated?
I don’t recall this widespread behavior 30 years ago. Heavy drinking was usually confined to Friday and Saturday night, not near tests or finals.
TBD wrote:
> I don’t recall this widespread behavior 30 years ago.
> Heavy drinking was usually confined to Friday and
> Saturday night, not near tests or finals.
Were you in Davis 30 years ago? It was not as bad as Chico or Sac State 30 years ago (where kids drank Friday & Saturday MORNINGS and BEFORE tests and finals) but there was quite a bit of mid week drinking (including some splurging for expensive Coronas on Cinco de Mayo).
Yes. I didn’t see much outside of the drink specials on Wed and Thursday nights at two establishments.
“As Mr. Abdul-Jabbar wrote in a Time Magazine op-ed, the NBA was looking the other way for years at Mr. Sterling’s racism.”
This is interesting, because a few days after the Sterling scandal broke (I think it was the same day Adam Silver announced he was banning Sterling for life), I heard an interview with Kareem, in which he said he knew Sterling personally (Jabbar had been a coach on the Clippers) and he had no idea he was a racist. Kareem said he had a very positive relationship with Sterling and that Kareem was a guest recently at Sterling’s daughter’s wedding.
A point of view I heard yesterday–from former NBA star Rick Barry, who supports the banishment of Sterling over his words on that tape–was that the NBA never before had any possible way to ban him over anything that had taken place in the past. He was, in fact, accused of bias in a big housing discrimination case. However, he was not convicted and he never admitted any wrongdoing. He was also accused of racial discrimination by his very long time (and terribly inept) GM, former NBA star Elgin Baylor. However, in that case, Sterling was acquitted. So the NBA in neither of those cases had just cause to ban Sterling or force the sale of his team. It’s an open question in the present case, but at the very least, the evidence here is not in doubt. That just was not true in the other cases.
As an aside, a friend of a friend of mine played for the Clippers. He also played for a handful of other NBA teams and some in Europe. Through my friend–I should add that I once met the former pro player but don’t know him personally–I was told that Sterling is a creepy dude. He also said that Sterling never had an interest in winning. He was super cheap and was just cashing his checks from the league. Other owners 20 years ago wanted to get rid of him for that. But, unfortunately, they did not have a legal route to do so, then.
“I heard an interview with Kareem, in which he said he knew Sterling personally (Jabbar had been a coach on the Clippers) and he had no idea he was a racist. Kareem said he had a very positive relationship with Sterling and that Kareem was a guest recently at Sterling’s daughter’s wedding.”
if you read his time article, he references this, but i think that’s part of the point
from time: “But let’s start with Sterling. I used to work for him, back in 2000 when I coached for the Clippers for three months. He was congenial, even inviting me to his daughter’s wedding. Nothing happened or was said to indicate he suffered from IPMS (Irritable Plantation Master Syndrome). Since then, a lot has been revealed about Sterling’s business practices…”
A woman at work just showed me a picture of her six-month-old grandson sporting a mini sombrero and a baby rattle painted like a Mexican shaker. I yelled “racist baby!” and tore the photo to pieces.
Cinco De Mayo is a false Mexican holiday not even celebrated within the real culture of Mexico except for the import of American commercialization. It is only a reason to party and for business to sell the party supplies and services.
Let’s not get too hung up on it as an indication of racism.
“Cinco De Mayo is a false Mexican holiday”
Dig deep enough and you will find that almost all holidays have some falsity to them. In the end, most are an excuse to have a party. And since Mexican beer is so very good, and so is Mexican food, no one should really care about the origins of the celebration.
I don’t care about the origins except when the party behavior of some is trotted out as some indication of racism or cultural insensitivity.
I support it as a reason to enjoy Mexican beer, tequila and Mexican food. All three great things.
it is true that cinco de mayo is not a mexican hooliday. but the rest of your comment is rather ignorant.
a researcher a few years ago discovered it was “created by Latinos in the West during the Civil War”
“Cinco de Mayo does indeed mark a Mexican military victory over the invading French army on May 5, 1862, but it’s celebrated more in the United States because in 1862, U.S. Latinos of Mexican heritage parlayed the victory as a rallying cry that the Union could also win the Civil War.
That’s because the French sympathized with the Confederacy, and Hispanics sided with the Union in its fight against slavery and elitism, Hayes-Bautista said. France sought to impose a monarchy over democratic Mexico while U.S. foreign power weakened during the War Between the States.”
this is from 5/5/2012 in cnn:
“I’m seeing how in the minds of the Spanish-reading public in California that they were basically looking at one war with two fronts, one against the Confederacy in the east and the other against the French in the south,” Hayes-Bautista said in an interview with CNN.
“In Mexico today, Cinco de Mayo means the Mexican army defeated the French army,” he continued. “In California and Oregon, the news was interpreted as finally that the army of freedom and democracy won a big one against the army of slavery and elitism. And the fact that those two armies had to meet in Mexico was immaterial because they were fighting for the same issues — defending freedom and democracy. Latinos were joining the Union army, Union cavalry, Union navy.
“The French goal was to eliminate democracy, and remember that Mexico had democracy only for 30 or 40 years at that point,” he added. “Remember, Europe was ruled mostly by monarchs.”
Don’t be ridiculous. Only an academic liberal could come up with that nuanced argument for why we should be culturally sensitized to it. Ask 1000 Mexicans what Cinco De Mayo is about, and maybe one of them could match your explanation.
It is a false Mexican holiday. Only a reason to party and enjoy the food and drink of the Mexican culture.
It is a classic “Hallmark Holiday”
The Civil War was not fought about “slavery and elitism”. Anyone who truly believes it was, does not understand history. The ‘south’ was disassociating themselves from the possibility that the federal government for a number of political and economic issues. The trigger was Lincoln’s election. Lincoln, and the ‘north’ went to war to ‘preserve the union’, and for economic reasons.
It took Lincoln a couple of years in office to end slavery ‘in the regions in rebellion’. The Emancipation Proclamation did NOT free slaves in non-rebellious states (that came later). Lincoln was partly motivated to try to deny the south of a workforce that could be forced to fight with their white masters on behalf of the confederacy (remember the original Constitution was the ‘articles of confederation’).
The idea that the Civil War was about “slavery and elitism” is nonsense. That it was about slavery was a construct that formed during the war, and afterwards. One only has to look at the history of “reconstruction”, to see the concept of defeating elitism was not present.
Thanks hpierce. The revisionists started very early on this template of purpose of the civil war. Unfortunately, it also disingenuously taints the south for any continued wound-licking. The media template is that the Union Jack is an icon of racism. It is in fact an icon of southern pride and a continued historical reminder of what the North did to the south and why. Slavery was only an opportunity for the North to recapture a high moral ground from their largely immoral treatment of the south.
Those are not mutually exclusive. It is both. It all depends on which side you’re looking at it from.
The Union may not have gone to war to abolish slavery; the South absolutely seceded to protect it. It’s right there in virtually every state’s secession articles. No one was seceding over a tariff structure enacted by a southern-controlled legislature, and signed by a southern president. There were almost no “political reasons’ or “economic reasons” for secession… other than those directly relating to slavery. Not that a debate over the Northwest Ordinance, Missouri-Kansas, or the FSL has anything to do with Cinco de Drinko….
W.P.: The Union may not have gone to war to abolish slavery; the South absolutely seceded to protect it. It’s right there in virtually every state’s secession articles.
And here are some of those secession documents.
I’ve always wondered if the Northern industrialists (remember the industrial revolution was just gathering steam then) worked behind the scenes to liberate the slaves so these industrialists would have a much larger pool of labor for the factories springing up, and thus depress factory wages. I believe from circa 18670 to 1900, worker pay, conditions, and lifestyles in these factories were comparable to those of slaves (only with fewer holidays or down periods between crop cycles), with a high percentage of workers working 60+ hour weeks doing grueling repetitive work in unsafe conditions for poverty wages.
“doing grueling repetitive work in unsafe conditions for poverty wages.”
Kind of sounds like the conditions some of my current patients in their 50’s who work in warehouses for wages that keep them under the poverty level right now. Oh, but not with the 60+ hour week, because then they would have to be offered benefits and overtime. Best to provide less hours so that these workers have to work two of these types of jobs to survive.
But don’t worry, just like the folks laboring for the Northern industrialists, these folks can, in their “spare time” get training so that they can move up to the next step of the “free market” economic ladder. That next step up should be no problem for an experienced mid to late life woman.
Tia wrote:
> But don’t worry, just like the folks
> laboring for the Northern industrialists,
> these folks can, in their “spare time” get
> training so that they can move up
Nice try at sarcasm, but lets be honest and admit that ANYONE making “poverty level” wages in “their 50’s” has a LONG history of BAD decisions, POOR choices, and LOW motivation…
Some of them have been driven there by millions of illegal immigrants who have taken their livelihood. It’s hard to change careers when you have children and bills, and we have had some large changes in our workforce and economy over 2 decades.
Or they are uneducated and illiterate immigrants from south of the border. I wager that this is most of these people that Tia and other liberals are obsessed with trying to save from themselves.
I think you make a good point above about the northern industrialists. I think more to the point, there were a lot of northerners that disliked slavery not for moral reasons but for reasons of regional envy… they hated that the south had both the “free” labor (although we know it was not free) and the wealth of slave ownership (slaves were expensive to acquire, but they would produce offspring and thus more value assets for the southern business owners.)
With respect to workers, jobs and the definition of slavery… I find it so interesting that the same people so quick to denigrate the south and continually go back in time to pull they slavery card to prop up the arguments for their world view… are also continually demanding social, environmental and economic policies that essentially comfortably lock people into a state of dependency and less economic freedom (i.e., slavery).
The liberal progressive mind is a study in conflict and hypocrisy. While the moral indignation over slavery is largely the same for liberals and conservatives, liberals then hit a point where pure freedom makes them uncomfortable. They cannot stand a business owners’ economic power over his workers even those workers are free to quit and go elsewhere. They cannot stand a system where the worker’s failure is of his own making. The liberal mind (emotionally-driven) is stuck in an irrational conundrum of demanding individual freedom but is not accepting of many, if any, negative individual consequences.
They are conflicted and destructive because of they are conflicted. They devise nuanced arguments surrounded by their ideologically-same, similarly-afflicted friends, and their peer-reviewed academic papers to help prevent them from doing the hard work to resolve their people-damaging conflicts.
I have a number of good liberal friends, but only one ever came clean on this point. When I challenged the elitism in a position of demand that we take care of people that are supposed to be free to succeed or fail based on their own decisions and effort, this liberal friend said that I was correct… that liberals do feel that they are elite… most of them feel they are lucky and that they did not really earn what they own. They feel a constant pull of guilt for their success. But more importantly they see the world as stratified into the capable and the incapable… and that many of the incapable are chronically incapable and in need of constant help. The point was that the “hand-up” would not help enough… we always have to provide the hand-out.
I respected that explanation and still do. I wish more liberals would be honest about it… that they feel capability-superior, capability stratified and guilty about it. And to satiate that guilt, they need to find people to save. And to make it easy to find people to save, they need policies that create more people in need.
It is that looter-moocher codependent relationship.
I think this also explains why liberals are so anti-business and so indignant about economically successful people. If a liberal feels capability-superior… then how do you explain that the B-average lacrosse captain is a much more highly compensated business executive, or that the guy that cut class and partied a lot during high school is a wealthy business owners?
Economic success envy… that is another driving force for liberal pursuits.
And how do you satiate that problem of envy?
You destroy the economic system that rewards the type of people that liberals feel superior to, and you replace it with a more collectivist system that liberals are better able to leverage to acquire wealth.
The problem with this is that liberals tend to acquire their wealth not from production… but from increased looting from the producers.
The problem with liberals is that they eventually run out of other people’s money. But while they are working toward that end, more of us become slaves of their system and pursuits.
Interesting points, but it would be hard for me to generalize so much. Yes, I have found that many liberals are emotion based.
I find the contradiction of illegal immigration, and support for blue collar workers, troubling. By definition, when you let in 20 or 30 or 40 million illegal immigrants, you really hurt blue collar workers, the trades. I know that the power brokers want the votes, and groups like La Raza and the NAACP successfully have cried racism at every turn, so everyone is scared.
If you support illegal immigration, you hurt American workers who are white, brown, and black. The consequences with young men not marrying, women being single mothers, and more people relying on the system is troubling. WE continue to have President after President focus on “young women”, but it is young men who are in prison, can’t find jobs, and have been passed by their female counterparts.
The cry of racism is so superficial in so many ways, not the least of which are Americans who retire in mexico, Panama, or Texas. If they were so racist, why don’t they move to North Dakota?
You’ve researched this? Primary historical sources? Or is this just your pop psychoanalysis of “a lot of northerners?”
I wonder if you realize how ironic it is when you contradict your specious definition from one paragraph in your very next paragraph.
Slavery, says Frankly, is equivalent to economic dependency.
In the next paragraph, Frankly says workers are free to quit and go elsewhere.
Perhaps we need a review of what slavery was?
I seriously wonder why you’ve suddenly decided to defend the Confederacy.
I seriously wonder why you’ve suddenly decided to defend the Confederacy.
Talk about irony.
“The Confederacy”
So that is how you still see the south?
My work is done here.
You were talking about slavery. Was there some other part of the United States where slavery prevailed, other than the Confederacy? Was there some other part of the country that seceded specifically in order to preserve the right to enslave others, other than the Confederacy?
Nice deflection, though. Your work is done here? What exactly was “your work?”
Just to remind you of what you said….
Don – Read up on the Civil War. Here is a good book to help you understand…
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson This book clarifies and dispels many of the war and its connection with slavery. The war started as a result of southern secession not from the north’s position on slavery per se. That position evolved over time.
Southern secession started because of slavery. Wdf posted the links.
Frankly: Link to here
Northern publicists ridiculed the Confederacy’s claim to fight for freedom. “Their motto,” declared poet and Editor William Cullen Bryant “is not liberty, but slavery.” But the North did not at first fight to free the slaves. “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists,” said Lincoln early in the conflict. The Union Congress overwhelmingly endorsed this position in July, 1861.
Within a year, however, both Lincoln and Congress decided to make emancipation of slaves in Confederate states a Union war policy.
By the time of the Gettysburg Address, in November 1863, the North was fighting for a “new birth of freedom” to transform the Constitution written by the founding fathers, under which the United States had become the world’s largest slaveholding country, into a charter of emancipation for a republic where, as the northern version of ”The Battle Cry of Freedom” put it, “Not a man shall be a slave.”
From the book “Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States)” by James M. McPherson
Frankly: the north fought to preserve the union and prevent secession of the states. The southern states seceded because of laws that affected their right to continue, uphold, spread, and practice slavery. They said so in their published reasons for seceding. Primary sources, and all that.
You are not making your point by cutting and pasting from a history book. You are not making your point because you are wrong. And again: I don’t know why you have chosen, on a thread about racism, to defend the Confederacy and criticize the north. Weird is hardly the word for it.
Don: Frankly: the north fought to preserve the union and prevent secession of the states. The southern states seceded because of laws that affected their right to continue, uphold, spread, and practice slavery. They said so in their published reasons for seceding. Primary sources, and all that.
You are not making your point by cutting and pasting from a history book. You are not making your point because you are wrong. And again: I don’t know why you have chosen, on a thread about racism, to defend the Confederacy and criticize the north. Weird is hardly the word for it.
Are you this stubborn and dense with your wife? Don, sometimes it is just better to admit that you are wrong and move one. It really won’t harm you.
My point has been made very well, you just cannot read or comprehend anything other than what you are already programmed to believe. You have proven that over and over again on many topics.
When have you every said, “beg your pardon, I was wrong?”
Go back and read it all again, start with what hpierce wrote and I responded to, and then read what I posted and note that it is from the same book that I suggested you go read. Instead you and WDF1 just post Wikipedia links that include – at best – a summary explanation.
Did you even read Lincoln’s quote “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists,”
Did you read “The Union Congress overwhelmingly endorsed this position in July, 1861.”
This was during the first year of the war.
Do you want to challenge these points? Do you have any facts to do so, or just air?
With this quote and this endorsement from Congress, then how could the civil war initially been about slavery? And if it wasn’t about slavery, then what was it about?
The facts are that the south was feeling the pinch of northern elitism, northern dominance and northern aggression in many areas at the time. Southerners in general felt the government in the north was growing too strong and too intrusive. Slavery was only part of that larger opinion trending with the south at the time.
The north was at first just going to war to prevent the separation of the union. The slavery cause might have develop as a moral calling, or a PR convenience to justify the atrocities of war methods that the north used against the south. In any case, it was the right thing to do. The point I was making is that it was not the initial reason for the war.
You can see similar responses from states today that talk about seceding from the union. Those states that are having their sovereign rights trampled on by the elites in Washington that think they know better.
Southerners did not think the government had the right to tell them how they should live. They felt if they stayed in the United States, the North would control them. Damn where they right.
I’ll try for a third time.
The north went to war because the south seceded.
The south seceded because of slavery.
Slavery was the cause of secession. Secession was the cause of the Civil War.
End. Of. Story.
I am mystified as to why you would want to believe something else. Except that somehow it all feeds into your conservative ideology.
I didn’t say the north went to war to end slavery. I didn’t say that at any time.
The south seceded to protect their institution of slavery. Their secession caused the war.
Are you from Confederate lineage or something? Because that’s usually where I see this kind of pro-Confederate historical revisionism that you’re espousing.
Frankly: Southerners did not think the government had the right to tell them how they should live. They felt if they stayed in the United States, the North would control them. Damn where they right.
But those Southerners did think it was okay to tell the slaves how they should live and to control them.
wdf1: But those Southerners did think it was okay to tell the slaves how they should live and to control them.
They did. And it was morally wrong. But slavery was only the later face of the war… a secondary moral front… but the fear of abolition was the straw that broke the camel’s back over southern anger about the north. We have a similar thing going on today in the Washington and the red states. And the northern elites are now all the coastal and big city blue population areas where again we have them promulgating a new moral front (immigration and racism, gun rights, Obamacare, etc…) to justify the trampling of states sovereign rights.
There is another interesting historical consideration. Did the north have to go to war to kill so many to solve this problem? Considering that slavery was not even the initial justification for the war from north, is it really possible to honestly and factually make the case that it was justified for this reason? I think not.
The fact is that the slaves were very expensive and the southern economy had itself wrapped around the need for slaves to support ag production. Think about this… Don Shor makes the same claim that ag can not survive without all the imported cheap Mexican labor. You cannot unwind that labor construct quickly. Could the north have taken a different approach to end the conflict and free the slaves? Certainly.
I know quite a few southerners that hold this view.
– Slavery needed to be abolished, but the north unnecessarily killed many people initially for reasons other than slavery, and later for reasons including slavery.
– Democrats and liberals that continue to point to the south as being connected to slavery should consider that they are connected to the political and military leaders that killed millions of people unnecessarily.
My moral indignation cuts both ways. How about yours?
Nope. Nonsense.
Yes. Unless they wanted the union to dissolve.
I see. So your completely inaccurate revisionism does, in fact, derive from your Tea Party ideology. Got it.
Certainly not. Not a chance. This is more nonsense.
Whoa, Nellie, the north caused all that unnecessary bloodshed? Really? Wow.
And with this, you have almost surpassed the most outrageous nonsense that you have posted on the Vanguard. Almost. Liberals, says Frankly, are like the perpetrators of the War of Northern Aggression. I’ll add that to your ever-growing list of outrageous statements.
Not that I’d noticed, it doesn’t.
Don – now you are just throwing another “I’m not going to listen” tantrum.
I would have a better debate partner just talking to the brick wall outside.
You tend to dig in your heels and ignore facts put in front of you. And you get hostile as you run out of facts to back your position and then you go personal and start calling people names. You have done it with numerous topics here on the VG. Bad habit.
The majority of the Southern leaders who attended the convention expected a peaceful secession; they did not anticipate that their action would lead to bloody conflict. They were wrong.”
Sorry, Frankly, but your position is simply historically incorrect. You haven’t put any “facts” in front of me. You’re just engaging in historical revisionism. I’m listening. I’m listening to someone who thinks slavery wasn’t the cause of the Civil War. Someone who thinks that the north could have prevented the bloodshed. What I’m reading here, I can find on any number of very unsavory websites. Google it. You’re not keeping very august company on this, my friend.
“The point was that the “hand-up” would not help enough… we always have to provide the hand-out.”
If this is true, tell me who you think is still providing me with the “hand-out” ?
Obviously if the hand up is enough to get some going, it has the possibility to be enough for others. The trick is to decide prospectively who will make it and be self sufficient and who will not. I am not godlike enough to determine this, are you ?
Interesting points, but it would be hard for me to generalize so much.
Someone once told me that my partisan tone and style just makes people angry and they stop listening.
And that I should not generalize because all people are different and have different thoughts and ideas and views and values.
And then I watch an episode of Crossfire on CNN where Congresswoman Barbara Lee says she supports a minimum wage of $26 per hour and I realize that someone needs to start generalizing about liberals as they and the media have perfected in doing to conservatives (you know, “those people” that cling to their guns and religion and are racist and hate women and gays) because a liberal protected by the demand for respectful nuance that rises to political power is freaking dangerous as hell.
“lets be honest and admit that ANYONE making “poverty level” wages in “their 50′s” has a LONG history of BAD decisions, POOR choices, and LOW motivation…”
You don’t know that. What about a woman who has been married being supported by her husband, raising the kids according to their agreement, until he dies, or decides he wants out. Now she is, at whatever age, forced into an untenable work situation as her reward for having followed all the rules. I suppose you could say that she made a poor decision by marrying a man who got cancer and died, or someone who decided
late in her life to “trade her in for a newer model”. You are making sweeping generalizations which for many simply do not match reality.
Tia wrote:
> You don’t know that.
Unless you are saying that it is a good idea to get married with no education and/or job skills then after getting married and having kids not bother to take the time to learn anything while not having a term life insurance policy on your husband than it sounds like we DO know that…
Yikes. I agree with Frankly. Uh oh!
There goes your reputation as a good Davis liberal progressive!
Oops… I did not mean to post this a response to your post Alan Miller. I was chuckling too hard and must of clicked Reply on accident.
I have succeeded. My work is done here.
Thanks for taking Mrs. Hernandez to task about the racist way she dressed little Juanito today. I hope you will do the same thing on St. Patrick’s Day to Mrs. O’Malley and on Yom Kippur to Mrs. Steinberger if they ever cross the line and dress their children in a way that does not meet the Davis (avoid offending anyone at all costs) dress code.
I let my son die his hair green for St. Patricks Day, but Judy Davis sent him home. Oh well!
*dye* And it was a temporary green spray, not permanent green. But Judy still wouldn’t allow it, years ago! 🙂
I think making a connection between Sterling and some young kids that want to use any event as an excuse to get drunk not wise or useful. Same for KKK or white sheet references. Yes, the border patrol pictures are insensitive, but I don’t know about racist.
Clearly racist is the La Raza slogan: “Por la Raza, todo. Fuera de la Raza nada.” For the race, everything; outside the race, nothing. You’ll note this wasn’t written in English, French, German, or Portuguese.
Given that we have tens of millions of illegal immigrants in this country, and some have been given a pass onto college campuses and sometimes gain significant financial support, I can understand the hurt feelings that some undergrads might hold. College costs have skyrocketed. But contrary to what many assert, I don’t think they’ll find many places where they can discuss their views, concerns, or feelings. It’s not PC.
TBD wrote:
> I can understand the hurt feelings that some undergrads might hold.
Back when I was in college a Mexican American fraternity brother (from a rich family) told me about some great “free” tutoring at our (public) University. When I went down to sign up I was told it was ~$20 hour (a lot of money for a guy working his way through college making $3.35/hour+ tips) and I asked about the “free” tutoring and I was told that it was only available to “minority” students…
I know someone who was a pre-med major, Latina woman from a good family. This free tutoring discrimination was still happening in 2005 at UCD. She was a single Mom, so her rent was only $200 a month for a two bedroom. Her parents were very comfortable, they are both educators in another city. (A junior high counselor, and a vice principle.)She did not work, even part time. Her young son was in one of the most expensive daycares in Davis, for free. As liberal as I am, when I was spending $1000 for diapers and daycare in the late 90’s, and $1400 per month for my rent, I must admit, it did not seem fair. She was supposed to do volunteer work in the summer but she always made excuses & was allowed to get out of it. One summer, her Momtook her and her son to Europe instead.
D.D.
Ronald Reagan used a single example of a woman
gaming the system to illustrate what he implied was the widespread practice of
“welfare queens”. There will always be individuals who are willing to take advantage of any system designed to help those in legitimate need. This is no secret, and should not be used to justify why we should not offer help to those with legitimate need.
I met a woman, Maria, with a Latino friend of mine. She has 3 children by 2 different men, and works at a fast food place. I asked my friend, “How can she afford child care working fast food?” He replied, “The government pays for it.” Just as we have seen an explosion in food stamps under Obama.
I was in the Clear Lake region last summer, and I continually bumped into people who were living on SSI or disability, these being primarily European individuals. I don’t recall the same level 20 years ago.
imagine if she had a living wage, then the government wouldn’t have to pay for her child care.
That is actually the argument of some conservatives. But..
1. We don’t know that she would spend that money wisely.
2. Liberals would just reset what is required for a living wage.
3. Liberals would reset the level of income that qualifies for benefits.
4. She and others would lose motivation to increase their education and skills to make a higher wage.
5. More young people would be out of work.
6. There will be fewer jobs for all.
Sorry – but your are not including ALL the pros and cons in your analysis. There are better ways to get to the goals you are interested in.
Rich, even if I buy your logic, what is the math there? What is the “living wage” for a single woman with 3 children? $30 an hour?
Maybe better life choices, education, and contraception should also be considered. I know plenty of people who have said “I wanted more children, but couldn’t afford them.”
About $38 – $46 per hour, depending on the ages of the children.
http://www.insightcced.org/index.php/insight-communities/cfess/calculator
It used to be the model that you got an education, got married, saved money, tried to have a tight extended family, bought a small house and/or opened a small business, saved, and got ahead. And ethnic groups that have followed this model have thrived. Now we want to support bringing in millions of illegal immigrants, native and non-native adults having children out of wedlock, having multiple children with multiple different men out of wedlock, education is optional, families are scattered, men don’t support their children financially, we rarely talk about gangs, some on the left push for marijuana to be legal even though we have proof that it causes harm to the brain of teenagers and even harms occasional users … and a living wage is going to solve all of this?
I’m not sure who you’re arguing with here. I disagree with most of your analysis, as well as your bizarre stuff about marijuana, but I certainly don’t think a living wage will solve any of what you’re talking about. Nor, actually, do I know anyone who believes it will.
“Maybe better life choices, education, and contraception should also be considered.”
Some stats on contraception. The only 100% certain means of prevention of pregnancy is abstinence. IUDs/DepoProvera/and Nexplanon will get you a < 1 % chance of pregnancy per year. Pills a 3-5% chance. Condoms or diaphragm a one in five chance that you will get pregnant within one year.
So, until recently, our young woman may not have had access to health insurance and thus may have been precluded from getting a statistically effective means of contraption.
One benefit of Obamacare is that with a greater than anticipated enrollment, I am now putting in IUDs and writing pill prescriptions at a much higher rate than previously. Can we all admit that having access to effective pregnancy prevention is a good for the individual and the society ?
Can we all admit that having access to effective pregnancy prevention is a good for the individual and the society?
Can you give us a sense of percentage of these women being recent immigrants.
Define recent.
define recent
First generation. Not born here.
I’m not sure what you mean by “with a greater than anticipated enrollment”. The Obama Administration has been playing games with the numbers for a while, so an accurate picture is very tough to come by. A major issue also will be how many people lose their existing HC plans b/c they don’t meet the ACA requirements. How many enrollees actually signed up (and paid a premium); how many paid their first month’s premium but not their second or third; and
how many received a subsidy (raising concerns about fraud).
I also disagree with your assertion that “until recently” effective birth control may not have been available. Condoms aren’t perfect, but they’re far better than nothing. There are also Planned Parenthoods all over the place, as well as other alternatives.
Don Shor wrote: “as well as your bizarre stuff about marijuana”. What is it that I wrote, which is bizarre?
I wrote: “…some on the left push for marijuana to be legal even though we have proof that it causes harm to the brain of teenagers and even harms occasional users”
What was bizarre here? We already have proof. On NPR this year: “Lisdahl [director of the brain imaging and neuropsychology lab at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.] points to a growing number of studies that show regular marijuana use — once a week or more — actually changes the structure of the teenage brain, specifically in areas dealing with memory and problem solving. That can affect cognition and academic performance, she says.”
Just recently, Harvard and some other colleges released a study which shows that even casual marijuana use effects the teenage brain in three distinct areas.
I read nothing here that is “bizzare”.
I’ll debate marijuana with you on a thread that’s about drug policy.
I’ve been surprised by the number of pot smokers who are completely unaware of the clinical studies that specifically warn of the harm caused to teenager pot smokers, specifically their brain, memory, and mental well being.
A recent study also identified harm to even casual teenage users. I encourage anyone grappling with this issue to educate themselves, and not buy into the ramblings of our President Obama that marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol. If this is the case, I expect him to light up with his daughters when they turn 21, but I’m pretty sure Michelle will put a stop to that. Actually, Obama will show his own liberal hypocrisy in that he won’t offer them a bong, but he will offer them a glass of wine or champagne.
As I said, I’ll be happy to debate this topic some time. But to answer your specifics here, my view is that no adult should suffer any criminal or civil sanctions for marijuana. I don’t know anybody who advocates legalization of marijuana for teenagers, but, as with alcohol, we need to recognize that its use is pervasive. Drug education should be realistic, drug policy should be based on science, and the judicial system should be completely reformed as to how we handle drug offenses. The disparity in how minorities are treated regarding drugs is an example of systematic bias in our society — a point which neatly brings this topic back to the thread. Nobody should ever serve any jail time for use, possession, or cultivation of marijuana.
I would politely disagree with you for numerous reasons. But if we were going to “go there”, I’d have to have a stipulation that we test anyone applying for welfare benefits, food stamps, or section 8 housing, as we really don’t need people taking a drug that has proven to rob motivation and affect short-term memory. Failt the test, no benefits.
You wrote: “my view is that no adult should suffer any criminal or civil sanctions for marijuana.” The problem is that rarely are adults sanctioned for small amounts of marijuana. It is typically for selling drugs, or numerous larger crimes are plead down to a smaller conviction.
“I don’t know anybody who advocates legalization of marijuana for teenagers,”
But I’ve known numerous pot smokers or former smokers / drug users who like to recall their glory days of drug use in front of their children to show how cool they are, or other fuzzy thinking. I recently heard an adult brag to a child and group: “We figured the person who used the least amount of LSD was the one who should drive, so that was usually me. LOL!!” So of coarse, the kid knows that pot is child’s play, to them, compared to LSD.
Actually, this same man looked the other way when his child lied when she got her medical marijuana charge. (She didn’t tell the pot doctor about the numerous prescribed drugs she takes.) I’ve also known parents who supplied their kids with pot and booze when they were under 18, on a consistent basis.
“drug policy should be based on science,” – so if a drug is shown to impair memory, and harm the brain in 3 different ways, should it be legal at 21? or never legal?
“…and the judicial system should be completely reformed as to how we handle drug offenses. The disparity in how minorities are treated regarding drugs is an example of systematic bias in our society — a point which neatly brings this topic back to the thread.”
The “disparity in how minorities are treated” was championed by many, including African Americans, who saw the extreme violence and carnage that accompanied the introduction of crack cocaine into the inner city. I was there. I debated some of these “leaders” who at the time denied that different ethnic groups used different drugs! I told one leader, “I’ve seen a number of white guys buy a joint here or $20 of pot there, but I have never seen a white guy buy crack or use crack in over 12 years… I’ve never seen it, and my friends have never seen it. We’ve seen or heard about mushrooms, qualudes, etc., but never crack.” This leader was adamant that there was no difference in who used the drug. Fifteen years later he conveniently forgot his previous position.
I find it amusing that the fuzzy thinking employed by our current President is also the same person who has probably smoked the most Reefer ever before entering the White House.
“The problem is that rarely are adults sanctioned for small amounts of marijuana.”
In Solano County, a person can get twelve months in county jail for cultivating two marijuana plants for their own personal use, even if they have a medical card and a legal medical condition.
In practice, how often does that happen? My guess is, rarely. Meanwhile, the same area has seen an explosion in gang activity the past decades.
Napa County Grand Jury: “Lack of public acknowledgment by local governments, school officials and the community denies the urgency of the problem and forestalls meaningful action.
“According to the National Alliance of Gang investigators, gangs are growing throughout
California. Migration of gangs from Mexico and Central America are increasing. They are
no longer a threat limited to major cities. Their influence is now evident in surrounding
suburban and rural areas. Napa County has been impacted by the increase in Hispanic gang
migration bringing a multitude of social issues associated with their lifestyle including
violence, intimidations, increased high school drop-out rates, and high incarceration rates.
“The Grand Jury found two major Hispanic gangs are most prominent in Napa; the Sureños
and Norteños. These gangs are bitter rivals and their presence has been documented in every
community in Napa County. Every middle school and every high school in the County is
impacted by gang presence….”
After working at W.I.C. for a number of years, I wholeheartedly agree. And to repeat, we need to teach young children and young adults assertiveness.
I would be interested in reading your comments about this program. In the past, it was highly regarded and considered effective. I worked in a grocery store, and we saw parents using the coupons from time to time. I’m all ears.
I believe many school systems discriminate against people when it comes to free tutoring. Middle income students get the short end of the stick when it comes to high quality tutoring.
that’s not discrimination. discrimination is the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people. in this case, you have a limited benefit that is given to the poor to offset disadvantages that you. since there is likely insufficient resources to give free tutoring to all, you have the choice of giving it to low income students or none.
But if I have to pay full price for my rent and my groceries, I do not have money for a very high quality tutor for my child with a learning disability.
DP wrote:
> that’s not discrimination. discrimination is the
> unjust or prejudicial treatment of different
> categories of people. in this case
When I was in college the free tutoring (and the free bus trips and tours with free lunches) were just for black and brown kids, not white kids (they did not care about income). You may think that it is fine that the Obama girls will get free tutoring while the white kid from the trailer park has to pay, but I think it is racist.
Having affirmative action based on income would take care of this problem. You wouldn’t believe how many liberals have a crow when I offer this proposal.
A number of politicians have tried to reduce the role of welfare, which means essentially reducing the chronic long-term welfare recipients. President Ronald Reagan and Senator Edward Kennedy both advanced proposals to cut the relief rolls, as well as Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. It has been a bipartisan effort. President Bill Clinton also signed major welfare reform, but Barack Obama reportedly gutted his landmark legislation. (I have yet to look it up.) Some feel the “War on Poverty” has failed miserably. I know that the food stamp program has exploded.
I agree. I just think that UCD and other expensive schools should monitor their students. UCD receves a lot of money in registration fees, college application fees, bookstore revenue, etc. After they take our money, they should monitor who is getting free or low cost services more efficiently.
The same young woman sold her extra parking permit (she rec’d an extra one for her “daycare provider”) to the highest bidder.
One or two fraudulent students can really damage a program meant to help the truly needy.
The NBA has dealt with Sterling.
I find it interesting that there is not a stitch of empathy for the patterned thinking and probably cerebral decline of an 80-year old person. What he said was disgusting. What a lot of older people say about people in other racial groups is disgusting.
Racial bias = ignorance.
Many Americans in their late 70s and 80s are from a generation that predated our civil rights advances. They have ugly patterns of racial bias injected into their being. My dear sweet departed mother that would never have hurt a fly and loved everyone she came in contact with would (infrequently, thank God) make comments about blacks, Hispanics and gays that would make me cringe and then scan the room for political-correctness police. These comments she would make were obviously not in synch with her real feelings for people she would meet. She embraced and mothered everyone. But her language was patterned from a generation that was not so sensitized to the impact of certain words and phrases and expressed thoughts. She was in fact ignorant to these things. And at her advanced age, those patterns were more than difficult to change. As a society we would be better off just waving off these things from our advanced-aged seniors… because that problem will correct itself in the next decade and two.
I think we can give some older people a pass on their language.
I think the problems with this dialog on racism is down to words versus material harm.
The NBA appropriately dealt with Donald Sterling as an NBA owner. If he truly discriminated against potential tenants, then he deserves fines and other punishment for that too. Otherwise he is just some old guy lacking post-civil rights patterns of sensitivity on race and other protected groups.
Watching all the NBA players and coaches interviewed by the media giddy with the money-making opportunities for sensationalizing this story within their racism template… it was clear that they were both terrified of saying the wrong thing and depressed that they keep getting drug back into the racism template… a template that really does not jibe with their real life of fully integrated and diverse millionaire pop culture icons. You could see the furrowed brows and the look of “can’t we just drop it and move on?”
Can we just move on?
Many? Your comments about a few older folks ring true, but I wouldn’t say “many”. I heard more racist comments when I worked in the poor inner city from people of all walks of life.
Well, the term “many” is completely subjective. Maybe 10-20%. I think that is “many”.
And where do you get that figure?
You raise a possible interesting point… bias against, Irish, Germans, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, etc., may be rooted more in economic ‘fears’ for oneself, rather than truly based on race. But I’m not a social science major.
“Paddy wagon”
An anti-Irish slur, published repeatedly on this blog, that I have cited, without retraction or apology, continues in common usage. Whether it refers to the officers driving it or it’s occupants, it’s offensive.
;>)/
Years ago, I volunteered to get the vote out in a very wealthy senior home in Marin County. A few of the seniors there said some very nasty comments about Michelle Obama. I realized they were very old, and suffering from dementia, and they suffered from being raised by another generation. The generation that raised those senior citizens was the generation before the Civil Rights movement.
Frankly
” make comments about blacks, Hispanics and gays that would make me cringe and then scan the room for political-correctness police.”
Now this is interesting. You scanned the room of PC police. Did you also scan the room for children of the group being referenced to see what effect this might have had on them ?
My step father also made derogatory comments about other groups in public. Unlike your mother, he was not a sweet harmless giving person. He was a mean, nasty, dirty minded bigot who deliberately raised his voice when making his vicious comments to make sure that he was heard by those he was attempting to injure.
This cuts both ways, and until we are beyond the point where individuals no longer choose to do this, I do not think it is time to just “move on”.
I apologize but I still do not understand why the student who invited people to have a siesta on the lawn and enjoy a beer – why that tweet or text, whatever, is racist. The border patrol stuff- that was over the line. But inviting your friends for a siesta on the lawn, and a beer? What is the big deal?
D.D.
If the intent was to have “a beer” with one’s friends and then hang out and rest, or siesta , without implying that hunting down desperate people on the border is light hearted, then no problem and no big deal.
I see this invitation differently. I think that posting pictures of border patrol, and an invitation to an early day
beer party where the more limey outcome than “a siesta” is the inability to maintain consciousness because of alcohol consumed is not the innocent event that you are painting it as.
Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle, or that some potential partiers had one intent, while others had quite another. Anyway you cut this, excessive drinking in this town has had a very bad history in terms of outcome
( Picnic days gone wrong, a fall leading to death, accusations of sexual assault). When you mix alcohol and immature brains ,already more impulsive and less likely to perceive and evaluate potential consequences, and then identify a specific group deemed “different from us” in any way, I think it is an invitation to trouble.
The last few times I was on campus, I’ve seen graffiti that we never had before. Will the same leaders address these behaviors?
Today we learned that Donald Sterling didn’t want to trade for a high-priced guard because he was (is) white. Rich may have to alter his analysis.
Also of note was that TMZ altered the racist comments to remove 3 or 4 minutes of the tape. What did TMZ and Harvey Levin removed comments about how racist Israel is. Sterling noted that there are white Jews and black Jews, and he claimed that black Jews are “treated like dogs”. So the question is, if TMZ wanted to out racism, why did they remove the comments about racism in Israel?
This seems to be getting off the subject … which is my specialty … but the Ethiopian Jews of Israel do face racial discrimination there. The situation is well documented and a stain on that country’s reputation. Exactly what percentage of non-black Jews hold prejudiced views against the black Jews I don’t know. Yet certainly not all whites there are anti-black. … And, FWIW, the reigning Miss Israel is black.
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/meet-black-woman-crowned-israel-article-1.1702592
Sterling never made any comments about slavery and athletes that I am aware of. He didn’t want this player because Kris Kaman (who may be white), apparently, made a lot of money and played below expectations. Thus his muddled thinking.
I find it interesting that La Raza is considered an acceptable campus group. La Raza = the Race. (???)
perhaps just as the naacp is an organization for the advancement of “colored people.” in this case, the group formed in 1968.
it’s also worth noting that while la raza literally means the race, it’s colloquial meaning in space means “the people” or more precisely “the hispanic people” not “the race.” and it was meant as an inclusive term to include chicanos, latinos, mestizo’s, and native americans.
Sorry, see below for a reply.
DP wrote:
> it was meant as an inclusive term to include chicanos, latinos,
> mestizo’s, and native americans
Nice to know that the (racist) Mexicans in “La Raza” also include “mestizo’s, and native americans”. I believe (racist) Hitler also included some other Slavic Northern Europeans in his “Master Race”…
in what way would you characterize what la raza does as being racist? is it your view that any group that advocates and tries to increase opportunities for youth is racist if their work primarily focuses on one ethnic group?
The Spanish word “raza” can be translated as “race,” but it can also mean “people.” I think the group, La Raza, uses that word to mean “the people (whose heritage is from Mexico),” no different in that sense than Irish-Americans have Emerald Societies and so on. I am not excusing any policies of La Raza which may be objectionable. I have not studied their views. However, just calling themselves “the People” does not strike me as worthy of any scorn.
Google Translate: La Raza = race
The people = Pueblo
There is a long history here, and lots of politics. I even saw there is a website called http://larazaracism.blogspot.com/ in which Latino Americans protest the use of the term and movement.
The quote that says “for the race, everything; for the others, nothing” should tell you something.
TBD: You seem to have been hoodwinked. There are several right wing bloggers making the claim that is La Raza’s motto. But they just made that up apparently. There is not one reliable source I could find on Google which confirms it. Moreover, La Raza itself has responded to this charge. Here is a quote from Wikipedia:
“(La Raza) responds to critics by stating that it has never been racially or ethnically exclusionary, has never supported the notion of a “Reconquista” or “Aztlán”, has never used, and unequivocally rejects, the motto “Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada” [“For the Race, everything, outside the Race, nothing”], has supported numerous measures to ensure that all Americans have the freedom to choose where to live, and that its programs are covered by civil rights laws administered by independent agencies at the federal, state, and local level.[13]”
I am sure there are plenty of policy areas to disagree with La Raza. However, it is quite disingenuous to attack them for having a motto, when in fact that never has been their motto.
As to the translation of la raza, trust me. It means race or people.
You have to consider that those terms were used interchangeably in many languages, including English, for a long time. Consider this quote from Winston Churchill:
Side by side … the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue … mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history. Behind them … gather a group of shattered States and bludgeoned races: the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians — upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must; as conquer we shall.”
Notice how he uses people and race in that statement interchangeably. The same type of uses for la raza take place in Spanish. Again, trust me. I know Spanish better than the Google program does.
Someone always brings up Hitler;
because Kris Kaman (who may be white),
Yes, he is white. But the technical term for Chris Kaman is … journeyman. He’s 7 feet tall, but not superbly athletic. He did have a couple of good seasons for the Clippers. I think he once was an All-Star. But he was never dominant. He’s mostly just been one of those guys who is good enough to play in the NBA — which means relative to normal humans he is extremely good — but not one to build a team around. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Kaman is that he became a German citizen in order to play on Germany’s Olympic team. He and his parents were born in the U.S. But I think some of his ancestors–grandparents or great-grandparents–came to the U.S. from Germany many moons ago. … Along those lines: I was told, after Poland became a capitalist democracy following the overthrow of the Communist dictatorship, that I could apply for Polish citizenship due to my heritage. My mother’s father was born there, back when Poland was ruled by the Russian Csar. I presume my heritage in that country goes back 1,000 or more years. Yet, of course, I have no interest at all in polishing up my Polish.
I have a friend in SF that told me his (German-Jewish) Mom was give the cold shoulder by many (German-Jewish) friends AND family after she married his (Polish-Jewish) Dad in the 1960’s. He recently (when we were talking about the SF Concordia-Argonaut Club building that was for sale earlier this year) told me that to this day many German Jews (especially SF German Jews from Bavaria who’s families came to CA in the 1800’s treat him like he is “not as good as they are”…
One thing to note about the German Jews’ treatment of the Slavic Jews who came later: Their generosity made life for the latter ones much, much better. They not only gave scholarships for the children of the immigrants, they paid for orphanage, they paid for the poor kids’ music lessons and took them to see the opera and other aspects of high culture, they paid for necessary medical care, etc., etc. There were around 100 fabulously wealthy German-Jewish families in San Francisco in the first half of the 20th century and they gave incredible amounts of aid to thousands and thousands of poorer people (mostly Jews, but some to others in need).
After the Holocaust, that same community came to the aid of thousands of Jewish orphans who had been sent to England in the 1930s and early 1940s and then were sponsored to come to the United States.
A side note on the German Jews of San Francisco that has to do with Davis history: William Dresbach, who was not Jewish, but was German, was the first wealthy citizen in the village of Davisville. He had been a postmaster, but he went into business with Isaac Friedlander, who was a German-Jew. Friedlander was the “Wheat King.” Dresbach became his agent in Davisville, buying up as much of the local grain as he could, and shipping it to SF, where Friedlander would then export it to the Orient or Europe or elsewhere. Dresbach made a bunch of money in Davis, built his mansion (the one at 2nd and E), and then left town to try to make more money in SF on his own. He was successful at times, and other times he went broke. But it was his connection with his fellow German, Mr. Friedlander, that turned him from a simple postmaster into a millionaire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Friedlander
Except for the picture with the border guards (distasteful, to put it mildly), I don’t think there is much that the students can hope to change about the planning of Mexican themed parties on May 5th. In fact, this seems to be the whole purpose for starting Cinco de Mayo by Mexican-Americans back in the late 1800’s. Every TV talk show today has people wearing ponchos and sombreros and cooking Mexican food. Every restaurant and bar has its own Cinco de Mayo menus and drinks. Cinco de Drinko is an oft used term to describe the activities of the day, unfortunately. The offended students need to drill down on what exactly they didn’t like about the promotion of the event – the image of the fence and border guards, I’m guessing – and forget trying to change the rest.
Apparently the Latino students / protesters consider “Cinco de Drinko” to be racist.
I heard on the radio this morning that there may be a push by the chancellor for all students at Davis to be required to take a diversity class.
I still don’t understand how a group called “The Race” isn’t a problem. (La Raza)
TBD wrote:
> I still don’t understand how a group called “The Race” isn’t a problem. (La Raza)
The student group MEChA is affiliated with “La Raza” and their web site says:
“Aztlán (California) belongs to indigenous people, who are sovereign and not subject to a foreign culture; 3) We are a union of free pueblos forming a bronze (Chicana/Chicano) Nation”
This is NOT racist according to most in the academic world (but forming a “white” nation or playing softball on “Cinco de Drinko” is racist)
http://www.nationalmecha.org/philosophy.html
Yup. I didn’t learn til last year that Ernesto “Che” Guevara was a flaming racist, but he is held up as a (Marxist) icon on college campuses.
Meanwhile, Christian girls are sold into slavery by Muslims in Africa, and we here nothing about it.
“I didn’t learn til last year that Ernesto “Che” Guevara was a flaming racist”
you didn’t learn it until last year, but expect that a bunch of college kids trying to be cool would know?
I didn’t read on topics or persons having to do with him. I’d figure someone who was into La Raza or Mecha or such would know, and would warn their friends of their ignorance.
I’m sure everyone doesn’t share that explanation. I wonder how many of the students who drove this protest are students in ethnic studies classes? And why so few Latinos (male students) at the protest?
not following you. i basically stated that your interpretation of the spanish phrase was incorrect, you took the term literally rather than how it’s actually used.
Isn’t it true that Hispanic or Latino isn’t a race? It’s a cultural construct?
Mr Rifkin, I took a look at numerous postings per La Raza, and it is a mixed bag. It is not clear to me that it is a neutral name, or a racist name. There are names they could have used, which are more clear cut, like pueblo, gente, or even communidad (sp?).
Some sources pointed to La Raza as first being used as part of radical Mexican American or Chicano movements in the 1960s. But I also found references to José Vasconcelos, from the the National University of Mexico in the 1920s.
I glimpsed at some controversial articles that had to do with alleged Hispanic-on-black crimes in South Central LA as part of some supposed “cleansing” of South Central. I’ve also seen websites where Mexican Americans don’t like the negative connotations of “La Raza”. Further, many seem to see La Raza as an advocay group for open borders and Amnesty, so there is a lot that comes with this group.
Frankly: The war started as a result of southern secession not from the north’s position on slavery per se. That position evolved over time.
Lincoln was elected President. Lincoln was a Republican. The Republicans began their party as avowed abolitionists. That was completely unacceptable to the South. source
Why question or tone down that historical political heritage of the Republican Party? I find that weird.
Don:I’ll try for a third time.
The north went to war because the south seceded. We agree… the North did NOT go to war to end slavery. glad you can finally admit it
The south seceded because of slavery. not just slavery. Have you read the complete declaration of each state, or only cherry picked the phrases that cover your position?
Slavery was the cause of secession. Secession was the cause of the Civil War.
End. Of. Story. Yeah. Just like you can keep your doctor and your health plan… PERIOD! I see how you are skirting the details to simplify to protect your position. But you seem to forget that a war takes two. The south did not attack the north and seek to conquer the north. The south wanted to be left alone. From you argument any territory seeking independence would be the responsible party for any war to prevent it.
Let’s go back to the beginning of the thread that seemed to set you off…
Hpierce: The Civil War was not fought about “slavery and elitism”. Anyone who truly believes it was, does not understand history. The ‘south’ was disassociating themselves from the possibility that the federal government for a number of political and economic issues. The trigger was Lincoln’s election. Lincoln, and the ‘north’ went to war to ‘preserve the union’, and for economic reasons.
It took Lincoln a couple of years in office to end slavery ‘in the regions in rebellion’. The Emancipation Proclamation did NOT free slaves in non-rebellious states (that came later). Lincoln was partly motivated to try to deny the south of a workforce that could be forced to fight with their white masters on behalf of the confederacy (remember the original Constitution was the ‘articles of confederation’).
The idea that the Civil War was about “slavery and elitism” is nonsense. That it was about slavery was a construct that formed during the war, and afterwards. One only has to look at the history of “reconstruction”, to see the concept of defeating elitism was not present.
You seem to have drifted way off course.
I agree with what hpierce wrote and said so. Do you not?
I’d like to ask Davis, and others here, for an official or unofficial poll about the original topic. Was the planned Drinko de Mayo Fiesta:
a) an ugly veil of racism (as David wrote)
b) insensitive, but not racist
c) highly insensitive, but not racist
d) dumb and foolish, but not racist
e) dumb, foolish, and insensitive, but not racist
f) none of the above – you cats are too hypersensitive… the Irish don’t get butthurt over depictions of Irish culture and drinking
g) none of the above – jus the Left and ethnic studies majors being ginned up for political purposes
h) insensitive to only the hypersensitive, left-leaning people and ethnic studies majors ginned up for political purposed, but not racist.
I’ll vote for g), and I’m and getting ready for the next “outrage”/”faketroversy” like not enough Latinos on Dancing with the stars or how it is racist because the Blacks and Latinos on the Bachelor are not Black and Brown “enough” to make left-leaning people and ethnic studies majors (who all claim they don’t watch TV except PBS when they give at each pledge drive) happy. Today white males are only about 15% of the students at UCD (and most other schools in California) and looking out 20 years white males will probably be less than 10% I have no doubt that the “Left and ethnic studies majors” will still find a way to keep blaming the white males for every problem they have…
http://starcasm.net/archives/258896
Are you telling me that Hollywood liberals are … hypocrites? No!
Are you telling me that Jewish-Americans, who are well represented in Hollywood, are hypocrites? No!!!
And was I telling you that from my perspective, is Latin TV in America very … WHITE? (Yes, that’s what it looks like.)
Given that European-American students are now under-represented at UCD, will there be a new affirmative action program?
Frankly: The idea that the Civil War was about “slavery and elitism” is nonsense. That it was about slavery was a construct that formed during the war, and afterwards.
That the Civil War was also about other things besides slavery I can agree with. But slavery was right there, front and center, as a cause just before the war started.
I’ve been reading that very book you recommended (James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom) for about 45 minutes so far (starting Chapter 8, “The Counterrevolution of 1861”, p. 234), and I don’t see your point. The chapter is on Southern secession (early 1861) following the election of Lincoln. Every other justification refers to slavery and the right to institutionalize racial superiority over blacks.
pg. 237
pg. 243
same page
First of all, that quote was hpierce’s not mine. But I agreed with it in principle.
Here is the bit that I think you and Don are missing. The war as not caused by southern military aggression toward the north. Lincoln played it well, but his failure to evacuate Fort Sumter, and his decision to attempt to stock it, was clearly the first sign of aggression. The north refusal to remove its armies from this fort and other forts located in southern territory… and its refusal to capitulate and honor the southern states’ desire for sovereignty that led to fighting and led the north to be the primary aggressor. And our Commander In Chief and Congress did not initially go to war with the south to end slavery. The war was perpetrated by the north to prevent the south from seceding. The majority of southerners believed that there would be a peaceful resolution to the conflict between the north and the south. Unfortunately the hotheads prevailed.
The war was not caused by southern secession. The war was caused by northern refusal to accept southern secession.
But you and Don are stuck on this incomplete fact-pattern that you think “proves” that the war was all about and only about slavery. You both are completely wrong about this.
What percentage of southerners owned slaves? It was less than 5%. So how do the southern states motivate millions of boys to give up their lives to retain the right to own slaves if less than 5% even owned slaves? You don’t unless the right to own slaves is only part of a larger motivation.
With the American revolutionary war still reasonably fresh in the minds of many Americans, the behavior of the north against the south during the time leading to the Civil war was absolutely identifiable by the southern mindset as the same form of tyranny that the British government applied to the colonies. The moral argument about slavery never got much traction with the strong-arm tactics of the elites in the north. But the perceived threat of abolition resulting the election of Lincoln was only the proverbial straw.
The left and media template is so myopic on this “racism is the explanation for everything”, and so self-serving from a political perspective, it makes me sick sometimes. We can see the same type of thing with respect to Arizona and border security. The left and media template is that Arizona is filled full of white racists that hate Mexicans. The truth is that Arizonians, like the southerners massacred by the north, are just demanding their state sovereignty to provide for the needs of their people because the federal government in the north is doing a lousy job at it.
Of course slavery was and always will be immoral. But in the context of a mid-1800’s mindset that perspective had not set in yet… just as US black-white mindset did not change until after our civil rights progress and the South African mindset about Apartheid did not sink in until the 1990s.
I have read quite a bit about the civil war and I have developed my own opinions about it. My general opinion is that the northern elitism and overbearing was the primary cause of southern hatred that led to secession, and that the north failed to pursue a peaceful resolution to the problem of slavery. The real motivation was power, money and land. The government in the north would lose political power, the territory and all the tax revenue derived from it. But the north needed a higher moral ground from which to justify the coming atrocities. Enter slavery. And the southern idiots served it up on a silver platter with their angry and racist declarations.
Did the end justify the means? I think only if you believe that the end was not achievable any other way. I don’t believe that to be the case. I think the civil war is celebrated incorrectly and I think the south is justified in having a bit of a chip on its shoulder for the continued left and media template of northern racial negativity about the south.
What a funny way of dancing around the point and ascribing blame. And if the north had “accepted” southern secession, what would have happened to the United States of America?
Ah, now you’ve added the word “only.” Which I never said. Slavery, the right to own slaves, the right to take them wherever the slave owners wanted to take them, and the right to have them forcibly returned to their owners should they escapt to free states? That was the primary issue leading to secession. Not the “only” issue.
Nice use of rhetoric. My impression is that the war was really bad for both sides in terms of casualties.
Your general opinion is not substantiated by primary historical sources. And there was no “peaceful resolution to the problem of slavery” as evidenced by the various ineffective compromises that preceded the Civil War.
The end of preserving the Union, what we call the United States of America, was not achievable if secession was allowed, and there was no peaceful way to prevent secession.
I support the United States of America. Evidently you don’t. Evidently you believe we should be a loose confederation of states that retain strong individual sovereign powers. When states have had those powers, they have historically used them to withhold rights from individuals. Hence the actions of the federal government, federal judges, and the Supreme Court to restore and protect the rights of individuals against racist laws and practices.
“States rights” has always, always been a code phrase and justification for civil rights violations. The new rage of historical revisionism dovetails perfectly with the renewed efforts by states to take away voting rights, restrict marriage rights, constrain reproductive freedom, and enact draconian immigration laws.
Now we are getting somewhere.
Don Shor: “I support the United States of America.”
Don Shor: “Hence the actions of the federal government, federal judges, and the Supreme Court to restore and protect the rights of individuals against racist laws and practices.”
You are at complete conflict here. If you support the “United States of America”, the republic as designed to provide states’ sovereign rights specifically because of the problems that happen when territories are dictated to from a remote central authority, then your second statement contradicts the first. You and many people on the left today have a lot in common with the elites in the north back in the mid-1980s and with England in the mid-1970s. You believe you know better and your are determined to make the rest of the population bend to your will. It is tyranny. And you have grown quite sophisticated with it in exploited the media and the education system and money flowing from the those you can pay off to get your way. You have elected a dictator that ignores the law and forces rules on the population. You justify his actions because of course for you, your desired ends will always justify the means. Just like the north… the means of killing millions of young men justified the means to prevent the northern economic damage resulting from secession. How can you or anyone else celebrate that God awful period in our short history?
Your template of “states rights” being “always” some form of civil rights violations is an extreme, fantastic and fanatical opinion that is common with liberals and the source of our great ideological political divide in this country and the very thing that was at the source of the civil war and responsible for millions of deaths. It was the very thing that our founders feared and were determined to prevent.
Like I said, the left (otherwise known as elites) uses racism, and every other type of ism they can find to divide and stratify the population so that they can gain control and extract that feeling that they are politically and/or economically powerful and relevant in their own minds. The left is the primary enemy within every previously successful country that has failed.
The main problem with liberals is that they have their nose in everyone’s business while they squeal when someone puts a nose in their business. That is the essence of their elitism. They know better. The rest are just stupid, racist and biased and need to be controlled and milked for the dollars that liberals need to satiate their savers obsession.
Sure Don, the federal government knows better than the states and the states know better than their local governments and government in general knows better than the individual. I completely understand your mindset on this, and we will always completely disagree about it.
Thank God it looks like the GOP will keep the House and retake the Senate. The GOP is also likely to continue to expand in dominance of state legislatures and governors. Hillary will probably win the next Presidential election because she is the next divide and conquer “ism” idol. But at least we can stop some of the destruction of this once great country…and hopefully prevent another civil war.
States do not have the right to take rights away from individuals. The states in the south (and some other) did that routinely. It is the history of race in this country: deprivation of rights of individuals based on race. If you deny that, you are blind to the reality: federal courts, federal laws, and the federal government have had to protect individuals from states encroaching on the rights of those individuals. Eisenhower had to use the federal government to enforce integration in Little Rock. Do you believe Arkansas had the right to segregate schools? Is that a sovereign right of a state? Are anti-miscegenation laws the right of a sovereign state?
As we said at the start of your strange neo-Confederate screed on this thread: this is just plain weird. I don’t celebrate the Civil War. I regret that the South caused it.
Here’s how “states rights” is used in American politics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics#United_States
States do not have the right to take rights away from individuals.
Like gun rights?
Like the right to police borders and prevent a costly invasion of poor and uneducated illegal immigrants?
Like the right to keep your healthcare plan and doctor?
Like the right to pay a market wage to your workers?
Like the right to use and get a plastic bag at the market?
Like the freedom to associate?
Like the right to fire under-performing employees?
Like the right to use my land as I see fit?
Like to right to keep my land and not have it taken away by government?
Like the right to use the water on my land, and that I have a legal right to?
Your one-sided absolutism is childish Don. Talk about blind to reality. The federal government has been trampling on states’ and individual rights since Democrats were invented. States’ trample on local and individual rights and local government tramples on individual rights.
There is nothing “strange” about my position unless you are a product of our liberal education system and have not left the belly of the liberal beast to go out and talk to people living in other parts of the country. From within a bubble, everything outside the bubble can certainly look and sound “strange”.
And your use of the term “confederate” again is a sign of your intellectual cracks… or some intellectual dishonesty. Talk about code words. Similar to your link. Either you are truly blind to half of our political goings on, or you are just a hopeless leftist ideologue. For you to post something that uses only GOP examples for code messaging… when our current presidential Messiah is nothing but one big pile of codes… well let’s just say you quickly lunge off the credibility cliff.
Slavery is the dog whistle for the civil war. It is the one you and the left and media still come running to. The truth, as usually, is much more complicated.
Gun rights are granted by the federal constitution. They have been upheld by – wait for it! – federal courts.
States do not have the right to usurp or supercede federal immigration law.
Your health insurance policy jibe is nonsensical. There is no such “right.” Nor are there any “rights” to pay market wages or use plastic bags.
“Freedom to associate” has been another historical argument for racist behaviors. But yes, you still have the right to be a racist under certain circumstances.
You can fire an under-performing employee.
Zoning laws are local. There are even some places where they don’t have them. So I don’t know why you included that one.
Eminent domain is applied at all levels of government. So it’s irrelevant to your argument.
Water rights are decided in court.
You didn’t answer my question. Do you believe states have the right to make laws that segregate schools and prevent inter-racial marriage?
As to the rest of it, I seem to recall just yesterday you were saying something about personal attacks. Oh yeah:
So I won’t call you childish or a ‘hopeless…ideologue’ or tell you that you live in a bubble or to get out and talk to people or anything like that.
Your whole reply here completely ignored my central point: federal government has been necessary, over and over, to protect individuals from racist policies of states. Somehow you missed any examples that might have to do with that.
Too much to correct you on.
Individual gun rights trampled on by the fed: http://www.justice.gov/usao/ut/documents/guncard.pdf
Beyond that you don’t seem to understand what a “right” is. You can’t just define the things you want as a right and the things that others want that you disagree with as not deserving the same protection. What about the wedding cake shop owner forced to have to make cakes for gay couples? What about other private businesses forced to serve gay weddings. Whose rights are trampled on there?
The gay couple can always go to another service provider, but what can the service provider do?
And you use this tone of absolutism. You do know that both Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama have been against gay marriage, right? But then you are so absolute that it is and has always been a right.
There is nothing absolute except death and taxes. it is all a question of balance. And the balance has shifted far too far toward the federal government being intrusive and controlling to prevent state, local and individual rights. The same was true in the mid 1800s.
But you are right that I called you names. Not good on my part. I am in a bad mood lately. Sorry, I will clean that up going forward.
Frankly: The war was not caused by southern secession. The war was caused by northern refusal to accept southern secession.
Secession is not a right. If there was any doubt, well the Civil War cleared that up. But it has also been established by the federal courts.
So did the courts also decide that Ireland and Scotland should also not be independent from England?
What about the US and England?
Don’t be silly. Of course the courts would find secession illegal. In the case of the US, it was the courts of the north. The south had a difference constitution and a different court.
Think of it as a divorce from an abusive partner.
So, you favor secession?
You think states should be able to pass laws restricting races from marrying?
You think states should be able to have segregated schools?
You keep going way off track. We’re discussing racial issues and the role of the federal government. You have continued to endorse the behavior of the Confederate states. You seem to recoil from the use of the term Confederate, but that is what you are supporting.
You keep blaming the north for the Civil War, and want to minimize slavery as an issue.
Your antipathy toward any role for the federal government seems to be leading you to support secession and the right of any state to pass any kind of discriminatory law if the voters of that state so choose. Really? I’m not quoting you, I’m describing the logical outcome of all the arguments you’re putting forth.
The states in question have a century’s worth of racially discriminatory laws and practices. It took the federal government to undo them. Forcibly at times. Still, you seem to support what those states were doing, at least inasmuch as you seem to think they had the right to do so.
Really?
So, you favor secession When the people of a territory are oppressed, controlled, abused, over-taxed without representation or even with under-representation, have their human rights trampled on, have their values tramped on and their valued rights taken away… by the people of another territory, then in all cases I prefer a decentralization of control. I prefer the decentralization of control by peaceful means.
If a territory wants to behave like idiots, then as long as they are not harming another territory, I say let them be. And let the freedom of association serve the verdict for their behavior. I would not live in a place where too many exhibit racist behavior. But I honor their freedom to behave like an idiot up to the point there is material harm to another. You have previously expressed criticism of Utah and I’m sure your view of Utah is something less than positive because of the influence of the Mormon church and the intolerance you perceive over certain groups. In your worldview it would be fine for the federal government and federal courts to dictate more rules for Utah to have to live by. you have opined for this very thing before. That is clear.
In my worldview I say leave the states alone and don’t go there and don’t do business with them if you don’t like their rules and/or their behavior. And if you go too far, I support their secession.
Freedom comes way before the requirement that we force acceptance and force association. It does not work anyway. We end up with a list of acceptable speech codes that are enforced by the PC police, but causing more hidden true feelings and beliefs, and people even more pissed off and resentful that they are being so controlled.
Counties and cities are not held together in a state with governance construct similar to how states are held together in our federal governance construct. The federal construct was for the good of the states for the good of the people. That is what a union of states is supposed to be.
What the left does is twist it so the federal construct is for the good of some people at the expense of independent state governance and also at the expense of the freedoms of other people living in those states.
Liberals like central control. They like controlling things in general. They really don’t like and do not trust free will and self-determination. Like Tia says, she dislikes competition and demands cooperation… code for she likes rules and central control. Liberals demand social justice in their design through forced social engineering from a central point of power.
But again, there is a need for some of this as well as a need for independence and freedom. We need a balance. When it gets out of balance and there is not cooperation to bring it back into balance, then I support secession. Again, thing of it as a divorce from an abusive relationship.
I guess what you are saying is that you would have forced Ireland and Scotland to remain with England. Would you have also forced the US to remain a British colony? After all, British law forbade the colonies of America to secede.
Look at South Africa… how much death result from the overturn of Apartheid? Compare that to the death in the Civil war. You were not talking about simple rights, you were talking about a huge cultural and economic shift. The “enlightened” and elite people of the north that did not need slaves were quick to come to the conclusion that slavery was wrong and immoral and so they would be justified in pushing their views onto people with different views… and to kill them if they resisted.
The north traded one immorality for another.
Why is this any different than Obamacare or a national minimum wage or federal involvement in states’ right-to-work decisions or police protocol for dealing with people in the state illegally because the federal government is comprised of people that benefit politically from more immigrants?
Thankfully, the federal government today does not have to kill people that resist, they can just sick the IRS on them and use their media levers to destroy reputations, careers, families, livelihood, etc.
Loooooong way around to saying you do favor the right of a state to prohibit marriage between the races and to maintain segregated facilities.
Welcome back to the 1950’s, folks!
Short way to you making up things that I said. Welcome to Don the projector folks.
So do you think Scotland and Ireland should go back to England?
I don’t care what Scotland and Ireland do. I don’t believe they’re trying to maintain slavery. If I’ve misunderstood your position, then you can answer these questions.
Do you think states should be able to pass laws restricting races from marrying?
Do you think states should be able to have segregated schools?
You said:
So it’s easy to conclude you don’t think the federal government should interfere in such laws and practices. But perhaps you see that there is material harm to others when they do, and since they won’t change their laws and practices — perhaps you see a role for the federal government in that?
Do you believe Ike was right to send in the troops in Little Rock?
Do you think states should be able to pass laws restricting races from marrying?
I would never live in nor do business in a state that restricted people of different races from marrying. I would not be friends with anyone holding this view. I would shout at family holding this view and I would tell them that they are wrong and why. But I don’t support the federal government telling states what they can and cannot do with respect to this type of thing. There is no material harm because nobody in this country HAS to live in one state or the other. They can chose where to go and whom to associate with. I am talking about adults here.
Do you think states should be able to have segregated schools?
The schools issue is different because the public schools get federal money and because children do not have freedom and authority to make choices. So in this case, I do and would support federal oversight to demand schools to end segregation. I do not support this for private schools that don’t get any public money. If they want to have racist admissions, then let them suffer the consequences of this practice from the freedom of association.
I think Jerry Brown had a segregated school in Oakland when he was Mayor.
Frankly
“The real motivation was power, money and land”.
I believe that this statement is probably true for many of the politicians of the day.
The main difference that I see in our positions is that you seem to believe that this only applied to the politicians of the North, while I see it as equally applicable to politicians of the North and the South.
I believe that a statement of secession was a very aggressive position to take and that had the South not insisted on secession, the North would not have been placed in the position of using force to maintain the union for what ever reason.
I see this as a situation in which both sides had an opportunity to stand down and resolve the issue peacefully. Neither side took the course of peace and the disaster that was our civil war ensued. I fail to see why either side is painting this as though only one side was to blame.
Every American, regardless of the state he or she was born in, raised in, or moved to, is entitled to equal protection under the law. That is not subject to the capricious whims of a racist majority of the state’s voters. It is protected by the federal government, because it is written in our Declaration of Independence and is a fundamental, inalienable right of every American. The notion that somebody should have to move to exercise his or her free right guaranteed as an American is preposterous and literally unAmerican.
Your anti-federalism is so radical that you would deny the most basic American right of equality. You also diminish the ability to pursue ‘life, iiberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ as you allow states to deny rights to individuals.
Our rights are not subject to a majority vote. Something which has been established as a right by the federal government is not subject to being overruled by state legislatures or voters. The ideas of nullification and secession were rendered non-existent by the Civil War. They are not part of our government. They are not part of what being an American means. States don’t get to choose which rights to allow or deny. Our rights are guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence. You frequently like to post about “American values.” Yet you suborn the most fundamental, fully accepted American values, embodied in our Declaration of Independence, to your radical anti-government ideology.
It has often fallen to the federal government to protect the rights of individuals from encroachment by the states. In most instances, those violations have been racial — either specifically, or in their outcome (gerrymandering, voting restrictions, etc.). Whether it’s voting rights, personal freedoms, religious freedoms — the push to protect our rights has had to be enforced by the federal government. And unfortunately, it tends to be those same Southern states that want to violate rights of certain minorities.
It was the mid-1800s, not the modern day area where liberals have infested government, the schools, the courts and the media and corrupted the original intent of the founders in their crafting of our system of governance. In that system design, government was always supposed to remain small and non-intrusive. It was supposed to be there for the national militia and a few other things. Northern elites, like liberals today, are afflicted with a personality disorder where they cannot stop putting their nose in everyone else’s business.
It was this that caused the population of the south to support the hot-head southern radicals that demanded secession. The confederacy was still a democracy. It still needed the support of the people to do what it did.
It is what elites and liberals do… they intrude, and push, and control, and demand… and then they blame others for the consequences. Because they are the smart ones.
The point of history here is that the narrative never includes how the elites in the north pushed the south to secession. There was a better way to have resolved the slavery issue. Just like today liberals and elites demand so many restrictions and regulations to stop economic activity… let’s use fracking as an example. Liberals are obsessed with this practice and instead of looking at the big picture and working at some reasonable compromise, they pick a moral argument and demand it all. Let’s say they get their way and the cost of energy skyrockets and a cold spell in the northeast results in a great number of deaths from freezing. Well of course that would not be the fault of the liberal elite. That will be because Republicans did not agree to vote for another spending bill to send more money to people unable to afford energy.
The north did not put much of any effort working with the south to negotiate a phased-out end to slavery. It could have started with a demand that salves be paid a minimum wage. The problem with the all-or-nothing position of the north is that the entire southern economy was depended on the labor of slaves. The north knew that… and the smug elites in the north were thinking that collapsing the southern economy was a good thing for their pockets.
Before and during the Civil War, the North and South differed greatly on economic issues. The war was about slavery, but primarily about its economic consequences. The northern elite wanted economic expansion that would change the southern (slave-holding) way of life.
The southern states saw Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans making enormous changes to their way of life using free slave labor. Southerners believed that Abraham Lincoln, if elected, would restrict their rights to own slaves. When Lincoln became president 11 southern states seceded rather than to give up their economic system and their way of life. Lincoln and the North opposed the South’s withdrawal.
http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/american-civil-war-brief-summary
Numerous compromises were attempted. The Fugitive Slave Act was an abomination which fed the growing opposition to any aspect of slavery in northern public opinion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1850
As to your quote:
Yes. The war was about slavery. Which, 200+ comments in, you finally acknowledge. I note that you haven’t retracted your unAmerican radical anti-federalism. Not that I expect you to. Just noting it for the next time you accuse anybody of not sharing “American values.”
“primarily” about its economic consequences.
Do you need me to buy you a Webster’s dictionary?
“The northern elite wanted economic expansion that would change the southern (slave-holding) way of life.”
That has been my primary point from the beginning of this debate. Do you just routinely ignore stuff that doesn’t fit in your views?
With respect to American values. There are conflicts. The checks and balances of the federal government as designed in the constitution have always been accepted conclusive evidence of the framer’s intent to prevent expansive powers. The debates that raged during the constitutional convention were strongly in support of a limited central government… the American Revolution was still fresh in the minds of these men and they clearly understood the need for balanced and distributed power to maintain the effectiveness of government for the people and to combat tyranny.
You simply cannot use your modern-day lens to view the position on slavery in the mid 1800s. Certainly there were people appalled and in support of abolition even as the Constitution was drafted. But even for some northern states, their politics were altered post civil war because of fear of free slaves migrating north. Racism was prevalent, and only a small minority of people had evolved sophistication to see black and white as equal.
I have always been irritated with the media and left template of the Civil War and the continued labeling of the south as bad and the north as good.
Liberals decry the few thousand young American’s that died fighting in the Iraq war, but not a tear for the millions of young Americans that died fighting in the Civil War. The north effectively starved the southern soldiers to win the war.
Did the end justify that means? I say no. I say that the Civil War should by rebranded as a horrendous mistake of our new country and of our government. And it should be a reminder of what we can face when states are trampled on by the elites in control of the federal government.
Slavery needed to be abolished… but not by the death of millions of young men… and not primarily because the north wanted to gain an economic advantage over the south.
Weren’t most segregationists Democrats? Just asking.
Yes. So what?