Thoughts on the topic
Frencheneesz
The first couple paragraphs are right on. Nobody has dominion over your mind, and you are entitled to hate whatever and whomever you want. And, as yo note, it is possible to hate and still obey the law. I think of a record store in Seattle, whose owners are "Sandpoint" Nazis. Their minority hiring policy is to hire (1) homosexual (2) women. In other words, they'll hire anyone of either gender as long as you're not Jewish, black, Asian, hispanic, &c. The insurance company I worked for did that, too; stuck Hispanics in "executing" management positions (although I have to admit that the Hispanic woman who ran accounting scared the hell out of me; I would not want her collecting from me) but the most part of their "minority" hiring was homosexuals. The "planning" management positions were all staffed by white heterosexual men of Christian standards with a white woman in the number two or three spot. It was a little creepy, and it took me a while to figure out exactly what it was I was looking at, but I just don't get what it is about the color of a person's skin that is so bizarre. As one guy told me:
I figure I got this job because I'm gay. It's the only thing that makes sense. I mean, I can do the job fine, but there's no way I was the best person for the job. The best person for this data-coordination management position was Asian, and Asians were good enough for data entry ..... Seriously, it was
creepy. But it was all "legal".
Part of the probable cause related to law enforcement imbalances are rooted in prejudice to begin with. I still point to the absurdity of 1995's numbers, when DoJ and HHS checked in on the federal "crack standard" (five grams--two pennies' weight--earns a minimum of five years in prison): 2,400 people prosecuted (DoJ), 11 (raw number)
not black, and 3 (raw number) were white; HHS checked in with use statistics--an estimated sixty-five percent (65%) of crack smokers that year were white.
Shortly after the Waco disaster, the Clinton administration took heat when ATF killed a white man in his
bathroom on a raid. Now, sure, it was only a flintlock weapon, but those things can still kill; so they shot him.
Compare:
- Esquivel Hernandez, 15: Shot to death by US Marines patrolling the Mexamerican border for drug traffic; Hernandez was tending the family's sheep at the time, and simply wandered too close to the marines' position while in possession of a .22-calibre rifle. Shepherds in the area say it is common to discharge your weapon into the air in order to scare awy predators; it apparently doesn't rattle the sheep too much. The marines, operating on little or no intelligence, claim that they thought they were being shot at. In the end, Esquivel Hernandez died because he was Hispanic and either (A) the marines were operating with absolutely no intelligence support, as they did not understand shepherd habits, or (B) the marines were just that incompetent and left themselves so exposed that they felt there was no way Hernandez could not have seen him. Great, it's not racism, it's just incompetence ....
- Patrick Dorismond, 26: Black man shot to death by NYPD. Dorismond was approached on the street by a mendicant who asked him for money, and then drugs. Dorismond had no drugs. He attempted to continue on his way. Details become muddled here; police officers say he assaulted an officer, but other witnesses say that the bum, an undercover cop, grabbed or reached for Dorismond, who pushed him away. Having unknowingly assaulted a police officer, Dorismond was shot to death where he stood. He was killed for being a black man with no drugs on his person. Responding to the controversy, Hizzoner Rudy Giuliani (yes, that wonderful man whom people adore for his leadership and compassion on 9/11) broke the law, opened a sealed juvenile arrest record for a shoplifting charge Dorismond faced at 13, which was never taken to trial; on the basis of this illegal opening of a record, Giuliani dismissed Dorismond's murder as the police taking care of a career criminal.
- Amadou Diallo, 24: Black man shot to death by NYPD at the front door of his own home; the police, seeking another person, asked Diallo to produce ID, thinking he was their suspect. When he reached for his wallet, officers opened fire, discharging forty-one (41) rounds at point-blank and striking Diallo's body with sixteen (16).
- Mario Paz, 65: Hispanic man shot to death in his home by LAPD during a drug raid. Paz was shot in the back. Officers had the wrong house.
- Pedro Oregon Navarro, 22: Shot to death by Houston police officers who were later cleared of murder charges; one was indicted for misdemeanor trespassing. No drugs were found, no warrant for the raid existed, and the informant was not appropriately registered according to department policy. Officers claimed that Oregon shot at them while hiding in his bathroom. It was later determined that a shot from one officer struck another's bulletproof vest; Oregon did have a gun, which was never fired. Oregon was struck twelve times by police bullets. Nine shots struck him in the back.
I always wondered at the outrage over Waco, Ruby Ridge, and others. Here we have botched raids against dangerous people known to have guns. Why is everybody so outraged when a white guy goes down? Where is the outrage for the people who owned no illegal guns, had no illegal drugs, and died because they weren't white?
Also consider economy: The better lawyer you can afford, the better your chances of getting away with it. Think about OJ Simpson: the only reason that black man was acquitted was because he spent ten or twelve million dollars on attorneys: Cochran, Scheck, Shapiro, et al, versus what? Marcia Clark, a ditzy prosecutor who might actually be the Affirmative Action hire? Chris Darden, a token black man to counter the presence of Johnny Cochran? Look how important race is to people: OJ Simpson got away with murder because he had the money to shatter the race politics. I'll see if I can dig it up in the near future, but I read a report a couple years ago that started in places like Philadelphia and Houston and noted that for comparable crimes, both in degree and nature, blacks received heavier sentences than whites; some of this is prejudice, some of this is economy.
As to the restaurant owners ... well, sure. I'll hand you that just as soon as we fix the massive economic imbalance. The statistical corellation that more businesses are owned by whites than notnwhites is a mere convenience to racists. Why not? Suddenly the majority of the population (e.g. nonwhite) in the US is locked out of the labor pool and also has fewer places to spend money.
The reason why not is simple: Everyone is equal before the law, entitled to the same opportunities. Put Kid Rock, for instance, Eminem, Sir Mix-A-Lot, and ... oh, hell, I don't know who the latest flava of da month is among dark-skinned rappers. But the point being is that I would have reasons to not hire any of them that have nothing to do with their skin color. Rock's foul arrogance, Mix's bizarre post-racist and post-sexist pomposity; Eminem's self-centered incoherence; the latest Gangsta's incomprehensible and brash dialect ... these things, the inability to pronounce certain simple words like "ask", the attitudes and mannerisms that are incompatible with the intended work environment, these should be enough. If I have to reach down to someone's skin color, I'm not respecting the very laws and ideas that respect me. And at some point, stupid greedy people just have to accept the fact that other people exist, and that at some point the rest of us have to deal with the stupid, greedy people, as well, so we'd best try to get along.
What's my racist hiring policy? Well, I'm tempted to follow Michael Moore's suggestion of hiring only nonwhites, but I'll worry about that when I'm actually in a position to hire people. But more specifically, and closer to my own experience, I'm absolutely furious at the willingness of banks, insurance companies, and others, to staff the front lines of their customer-service with ESL employees (English as a Second Language). Seriously, the young Vietnamese gentleman who opened my bank account several years ago spoke that stereotypical clipped Asian dialect of English we all grow so weary of in the movies. But he left out a few
important words such as
no and
not, so that I made the mistake of taking my account agent at his word and not reading through the pages of too-small type explaining the bank policies as they pertained to me that come with the account. In the end, it cost me a bit of money, and the bank advised me that the law allows them to misrepresent their account policies as long as they're written down somewhere. Apparently, it was too tough for them to hire people who speak the language. So, sorry ... doesn't matter where you're from. If I can't understand you perfectly in this flat, Northwestern-US anti-accent that I both speak of habit and despise for its lack of character, I'm not going to hire you. Seriously, if you're from New Jersey, or Pittsburgh, and speak the "romantic" dialects that come down to us through stereotype, characterization, and histrionics, you're as unlikely to get hired as the guy who speaks coolie-English or that hideous stereotype of Punjabi-English.
Take
Jerrek's point, for instance: It's merely greedy, and there's not a whole lot wrong with that on the surface. I generally say something to that along the lines of how amazing I find it that people think the world is there to make them happy. But think about American history: slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, an ugly civil rights war, severe economic imbalances, severe educational imbalances, and as the country moves toward integration, there are racists who hold the problems of the black community over blacks even today. Look, my buddy can do exactly what I do, and if a cop stops us, I get, "May I see your ID?" and he gets, "Would you please step over here and place your hands behind your back?" What's the difference? He
looks like a minority (he's half-black, and it's worth noting that less and less racism is aimed at me over the years because as I grow, I look less and less Japanese).
If going to work wasn't a necessity, I wouldn't care who you refused to hire for whatever reasons you chose. But nonwhites have to pay rent, too, and taxes, and they have to pay for their food, too. It just seems really dumb to me that someone's bigotry should be the primary reason for denying someone the ability to earn or spend money.
I ask the war supporters if the US should withdraw from the United Nations. I suppose the other question is whether or not we should withdraw from
civilization, as civility seems rather inconvenient to a good many people who would rather protect their god-given right to be uncivilized.
Let's put it this way: When people refuse to hire people based on ethnicity, it ends up being the deprived minorities who steal your car. It's not anything against you personally, but that nobody else can afford that nice of a car. If Jose and Kweme were determined to steal a nice car, don't you think they'd steal one that's closer to them instead of coming across town to the honky hoods? If they were going to mug someone, shouldn't they pick a target that actually has money?
I'll even explain that briefly: In Tacoma, Washington, the "Hilltop" neighborhood, including K Street, was the dangerous gangland of my youth. For instance, Brenda Harris, driving a blue Chevy Blazer, waved to a friend while sitting at a traffic light; interpreting her blue vehicle and wave as a Crip sign, several Bloods emptied automatic and semiautomatic weapons into the vehicle, killing the 17 year-old Harris and riddling the vehicle with over 400 bullets. Later in the drama, Army Rangers would stage a community day in Hilltop that ended in a firefight with local gangs. Hundreds of rounds were expended on both sides of the fight, and strangely nobody was injured. Most people I know looked wisely on these neighborhoods as statistically dangerous, but some went so far as to make it about black people. They're all violent, dangerous, stupid, &c. And in the 1980s and into the 1990s, I still wondered how it is that Americans could spend centuries making the attainment of equality such an unnecessary trial for a group of people, and then turn around and hold the results of those meddling efforts against the people. A quick example:
- About ten years ago, the perception of blacks and Hispanics as violent and dangerous still persisted in and around Salem, Oregon. One person I know, who lived in McMinnville, Oregon, explained that he didn't like blacks because of the gangs. I pointed out that there were white McMinnville kids forming gangs. But the black gangs are dealing drugs, the guy said. First of all, I pointed out, show me a black gang in McMinnville. When you go up to Portland, you can be paranoid, but your wife shops at Nordstroms, not in the more difficult neighborhoods. Secondly, I advised him, Yamhill County, Oregon (where we were), had been noted as one of the top per-capita methamphetamine-producing areas in the
world, and most of those producers were white folks who owned property throughout the largely-agricultural county. Instead of convincing him that he need not fear blacks for drug reasons, I apparently convinced him that the manufacture and sale of methamphetamine was every man's right. In other words, some people will do
anything in order to continue hating someone for their skin color.
It's not so much that they don't have the right to feel that way, but I see no reason to respect such a thought process. Seriously, if hating black people is as important to someone as it was to this particular Yamhill podunk, I see no rational recourse; it's kind of like arguing with religious fanatics. It's best sometimes to leave them in whatever condition you find them and hope that they don't go hurting anyone.
Just some thoughts ....
:m:,
Tiassa
