Then, Now, and Another Then
Superstring01 said:
Chasing after a statistic (i.e. a time when there is an economic parity between whites and blacks) looks good on paper, but it ignores the individual and that stark fact that if you're the poor white kid, you shouldn't get a slightly raw-er deal because you had the good fortune of being born white.
What is the detail of the trade-off, there?
I think part of it is the fact that this FMAFE is clearly a supremacist organization trying to make a point.
I'm of the opinion that we could, as a society, do away with all of this by simply taking the proposition of education seriously.
I remember in the '80s when the "$3,000 toilet seat" issue came up at the Pentagon ... well, that's sort of the point. It was at the
Pentagon. Even without crippling our defense capability, just think of what we could have done spending that excess on education.
Education has always been among the lowest of the politicians' "top priorities". They talk big words about education, but it
clearly isn't as important to Americans as blowing up dark-skinned people around the world.
We could afford an elective war. Over a trillion dollars spent for a bogus war in Iraq, and that speaks nothing of the lives.
But we can't afford to educate people, or help them stay healthy, to the benefit of our society specifically and the world in general. That's just too damned expensive.
Once we get over that absurdity, I think we will be much better postured to work in the realm you're considering.
Meanwhile, however, a truly universal solution for Americans just isn't something people want. They might complain about crime and such, but they don't want to actually do anything about it unless it involves abusing human beings. We can overcrowd prisons, then complain that they aren't effective, then hire private contractors who run overcrowded prisons that people complain aren't effective. We can invade other countries for the hell of it, because some moron got elected president and wanted to slaughter Iraqis. But, no. Educating our own citizens to be enlightened, productive contributers to a secure society is simply an absurd notion.
So in the meantime, with our resources devoted in other ways, what are we supposed to do with the meager educational pie?
In the end, when it comes to the proposition of "racism", as such, we can either spend to reduce racism, or spend to inflame it.
The problem with race issues in the United States is that they are not nearly so simple as some pretend.
I look at my daughter and think, "Okay, her generation is going to have to have this discussion, too." Unfortunate, but true. Indeed, they're making great progress compared to my school years, but it's a hundred fifty years after Sumter, and we're still paying, morally and psychologically, for that one. It's two hundred years after Manifest Destiny, and we're still paying, morally and psychologically, for that one.
Among the reasons we continue this slow strangling of white privilege in the United States is the fact that the empowerment majority refuses to do it any other way. I mean, think of a horse with a broken leg. They shoot the thing to put it out of its misery. They don't torture it to death, taking as long as they can possibly manage.
But we're trying to torture racism to death, to slowly strangle it, make it suffer as much and as long as possible. Or, at least, that's how it looks. In part because to take any dramatic steps to end white privilege and institute genuine equality are, well, unfair to white people.
Imagine that my daughter bears me a grandchild someday. And from that one comes a great-grandchild.
Now here's the deal:
We can do away with heterosupremacy right now, or we can slowly give homosexual relationships little treats. A little bit now, a little bit then. And when my great-grandchild faces the question, what will the opposition say? Look at how the gays have had all this special privilege for a hundred years. Why do they have privilege? Well, what's the privilege? You mean all these scraps we've handed out, piece by grudging piece, because it wasn't fair to heterosupremacists that gay people might fall in love and marry one another?
We can do away with ethnosupremacy right now. Certainly, the supremacists will hang on, but listen to them complain these days about all the minority "privilege" that was installed as patchwork because it's just too damn expensive, or offensive to the genteel supremacists, to do the right thing and do it properly.
