How Liberals Injure Blacks

[anon38216271]

@R. Daneel Olivaw

That’s changed. Most history books I’ve seen now go out of their way to highlight black achievements. Ironically, they usually give such additions (usually, that’s what they are) a different color background.

That’s great, but I’ve been out of H.S. for almost 20 years. Damn I’m old.

Part of the problem is that before the Civil War the primary contribution to American history was slave. Not that blacks were incapable of contributing, but that they were, for the most part, not allowed to. Then, most blacks were oppressed and the primary contribution of blacks was towards improving racial equality. But text books are now including “black achievements” throughout the book.

:roflmao: Sorry, I don’t mean to be snide but slavery in America was a major contribution to the American economy.

How Slavery Helped Build a World Economy

Each plantation economy was part of a larger national and international political economy. The cotton plantation economy, for instance, is generally seen as part of the regional economy of the American South. By the 1830s, “cotton was king” indeed in the South. It was also king in the United States, which was competing for economic leadership in the global political economy. Plantation-grown cotton was the foundation of the antebellum southern economy.

But the American financial and shipping industries were also dependent on slave-produced cotton. So was the British textile industry. Cotton was not shipped directly to Europe from the South. Rather, it was shipped to New York and then transshipped to England and other centers of cotton manufacturing in the United States and Europe.

As the cotton plantation economy expanded throughout the southern region, banks and financial houses in New York supplied the loan capital and/or investment capital to purchase land and slaves.

Recruited as an inexpensive source of labor, enslaved Africans in the United States also became important economic and political capital in the American political economy. Enslaved Africans were legally a form of property—a commodity. Individually and collectively, they were frequently used as collateral in all kinds of business transactions. They were also traded for other kinds of goods and services.

I would say that isn’t being incapable of contributing. Just not getting paid or recognized for a day’s work…

Modern social studies books seem to invariably feature Maya Lin (designer of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial). Her biography gets as much space, or more, as the memorial she built. Why? Because she’s an Asian that contributed to America. The books want to show how it recognizes all minorities. It’s not that her accomplishment is so stand-out as to be that remarkable, it’s that the books need to conform to social expectations.

I think Imaniou makes a great arguement about this type of recognition in this thread

Black History Month

I get bothered by the fact that a lot of “black achievements” being simply because the person achieving them are black. Do not get me wrong before anyone starts stuffing words in my mouth, I think it’s important for children to look up to people of all colors for their achievements, but not simply because of their skin color…let me revert to metaphors and analogies since I seem to argue better using these devices:

When you celebrate the first black person in space who did not get there until 20 years after the first white American in space, you are basically saying “We recognize your achievement only because of your skin color because a whole parade of white people accomplished this feat before you did.” It is like praising the slower child for doing something that the other kids his age had already accomplish long before him. I feel it only adds to our sense of inferiority that we should applaud ourselves for finally accomplishing what white people have already done. It’s like treating someone special because you know they couldn’t do it like the “normal” people could. George Washington Carver did many amazing things and was a prolific inventor. He is celebrated not because he was black, but because he was an incredibly intelligent and capable human being. That to me is someone that should be a hero to a young black child. He’s not considered an achiever for following in the footsteps of whites, but because he was a leader.

Richard Pryor was a great comedian. And he was black. But he was not a great black comedian (as opposed to a great comedian who was white), he was a great comedian. Full stop.

I think what I am saying (but I could be wrong Wink ) is that when you quantify a person’s achievements by their skin color, you also say that the reason why we should be celebrating them is because of the their skin color, rather than because of their achievement. No one calls Bob Hope “a great white comedian” or Buzz Aldrin “a white pioneer in space”. Dr. Mae C. Jemison should be celebrated, not because she was the first black woman, or even a woman, in space, but because she’s an astronaut and that in itself is an achievement. Martin Luther King was a great leader of the civil rights movement. Not because he was black, but because he was a great leader.
I think Black History Month is important to remind all of us of the great things black people have done and contributed to the world and to build confidence in our youth that they too can achieve greatness since there do not seem to be a lot of positive role models out there in their lives for them to look up to. But let’s celebrate the people who have made these contributions rather than just their skin color.

Now onto my next rant…

As far as environment, it’s a known fact that most cushy teaching jobs (those in well-off schools and school districts with lots of resources) go to tenured, experienced teachers. Teaching jobs in impoverished schools and school districts often go to inexperienced teachers or teachers who are not dedicated to their work. As a reward for becoming better teachers, those who make improvements go on to the nicer schools where parents are more dedicated to their children’s education, the students all have goals that usually include tertiary education or trade schools, and the community has the money to provide the school with the resources it needs to produce the programs it wants.

Meanwhile those kids attending school in the more impoverish districts keep teachers that no one else wants and the teachers who don’t know what they are doing, using what little resources the district can afford to give them. Can you imagine feeling motivated to learn and pursue higher learning when all the teachers you get don’t want to be at your school, could care less whether or not you learn, and live for the weekend? What kind of message would you get about your self-worth when your own parents (or rather parent) doesn’t or can’t support you in your learning and your teacher would just as soon have you drop out so her class can go from 30 students to a slightly more manageable 29?

All of us on this website are lucky that we had someone out there who cared enough for us to inspire us to learn. I cannot say there is anyone here who did not have at least one really good teacher. And even if your home environment was not perfect, you still had someone in your life who believed in you. Not many of these kids get that. And if your life is devoid of hope, of the idea that you can escape the misery around you, then why bother getting better if becoming a part of that negativity is inevitable (or so you are led to believe)?

I am one who believes that genetics has nothing to do with how successful one’s life can be. Environment plays a big role in who we are. If we are taught that XYZ people are inferior to us, then until some opportunity comes along to show us something different, we will continue to believe that XYZ people are inferior to us. If we live in an environment where we are treated as if we are animals incapable of achievement, then if no one comes along to tell us otherwise, we will continue to follow the path we think we are meant to follow. Many people in the US (and our other home countries) believe that life outside of their own community/country is not safe or is too difficult to survive in. They never leave their home country. I think that idea is similar to what impoverished people, who are never told that they don’t have to live in poverty and can choose to improve their lives, go through. Granted, I was a linguistics major and not a sociology one, but I think it’s self-evident:

If you don’t teach a child to be respectful at home, most of them won’t learn it on their own, ignoring the fact that they do learn something through school culture and outside of the home.

If you don’t teach your child how to delay gratification, chances are they won’t be able to do it on their own.

If you don’t teach a child that they are worthy of success and capable of achievement or push them to do their best, you cannot expect that they will do these things on their own.

Let’s face it, it’s much easier to be disrespectful, get what we want immediately, and be lazy than to be respectful, patient, and hard-working. But it takes discipline and love to help us understand why it’s worth having the latter characteristics. Unfortunately, not everyone gets this discipline and love. Especially in impoverished urban environments.

Again, ImanioU at her finest…

I don’t mean to diss the talented ethnic minority Americans who get mentioned in these books. But I think it’s obvious that they are being put in because diversity is popular-- not because American history included that level of diversity.

People like Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, and Joseph McNeil, etc. deserve to be mentioned because the anti-slave and Civil Rights movements were an important part of our national history (CR still is). I don’t feel George Washington Carver or Benjamin Banneker should really be included, though, unless it is along with other inventors because their inventions did not really shape the industrial revolution. Yet these two inventors are often given special space in our textbooks- just like Maya Lin.

Carver’s inventions have been questioned because he kept no record, and yes they didn’t impact society at large. But Benjamin Banneker is different.
Benjamin Banneker

At 21, Banneker saw a pocket watch that was owned by a traveling salesman named Josef Levi. He was so fascinated by it that Levi gave it to him. Banneker spent days taking it apart and reassembling it. From it Banneker then carved large-scale wooden replicas of each piece, calculating the gear assemblies himself, and used the parts to make a striking clock. The clock continued to work, striking each hour, for more than 40 years…In 1791, he was hired by George Washington to work with brothers Andrew and Joseph Ellicott and French architect Pierre L’Enfant to survey the Federal District for the design and lay out of the new capital of the United States. It was a six-man team. This made Banneker the first black presidential appointee in American history.

Allegedly when L’Enfant was fired as chief architect of Washington, he spitefully took the plans for the city with him. Supposedly, Banneker used his photographic memory to recall the plans enabling Washington, DC to continue to be built. However, what more likely happened was L’Enfant’s replacements, Banneker and the Ellicotts used a variety of smaller drafts for subsections of the planned city to reconstitute the main plans.

I disagree with “The Teacher” (KRS-ONE, for those who don’t know) that “in a school that’s ebony African history should be pumped up steadily.” The US isn’t Africa. We should not go out of our way to teach black history in American history class. Black history has its place, people do need to know that there are role models of their race to give them hope and inspiration. But we should teach history as it happened, and what we choose to focus on should be representative of reality, not calculated to show off the modern social virtue of multi-culturalism. There are surely blacks who ought to be mentioned in general histories (MLK, Malcolm X, naturally), but not the disproportionate highlighting I’ve seen.

Why shouldn’t we go out of our way to teach “Black” history? We learn about European history via WWI,WWII and Revolutionary War. It wouldn’t be “Black” history if we just introduced the person via their accomplisments and impact on American history, rather than saying, Joe Smo, A BLACK BLAH BLAH, who invented roller skates.

When’s the last time you’ve seen an onscreen love relationship between the races? Or a movie that has Blacks and Whites as equals without playing on racial tensions as a subplot?

Onscreen love relationships between races? I remember quite a few involving Wesley Snipes, and I’m sure he’s not the only one. Fact is, it is now popular to glorify inter-racial relations and homosexual relations on-screen. It’s a mark that you are daring and enlightened-- and accepted far more in most liberal media outlets than actually reflects the general acceptance of society.

*edit: my mentioning of inter-racial and homosexual together is due to the fact they are both relationships that were previously frowned upon boy society. No other connection is implied.

I think that Hollywood is moving more toward homosexual onscreen relationship due to the fact that there is an economic base for it. This year there has been one interracial relationship themed movie, but it was low bugdet with B list actors. Now, you may say what difference does that make. It does in terms of getting it to be the norm. If Tom Cruise,Brad Pitt,Will Smith did such a story, that star power draws audiences, which begins to shift the perception of Hollywood, getting them to greenlight more. Hollywood is about money, if someone pitching them a good interracial story but if the Execs can’t see $$$, then it’s out the door.

As for whites and blacks shown as equals without racial tension as a sub-plot— a number of films with Will Smith and Morgan Freeman seem to fit that bill. On the other hand, stories with racial undertones do a great job bringing the whole issue into relief as often as they exploit the issue.

Yes but Will Smith and Morgan Freeman are well known actors, who’ve crossed over-meaning they have a white audience fan base. There are plenty of good or better Black actors out there who aren’t being given the chance to show their skills in other types of characters because of lack of recognition. Or maybe their agent sucks. Nonetheless, I don’t want to keep seeing Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett,Morgan Freeman,Vivica Fox as my only main choices for lead roles.

Now, having said that, I doubt I would be as willing to speak so freely in a room of strangers where there were a number of black group members until I had sounded them out. There is merit to the argument that white people are afraid of speaking their mind when it would openly contradict a black people. I don’t think it’s because we (white people) think blacks are not individuals or like children, but it is because of the public backlash against “counter-anti-racism” (to borrow Communist China’s terminology).

I think anyone would be willing to speak so freely in a room of any type of strangers. There is always that fear of offending or being misunderstood. Also, what is correct to talk about culturally. Even if I were in a room full of Jewish people, I would be very careful about what I said about the Middle East crisis. Not a fear of insulting them but rather being seen as taking sides or being brushed off because I’m not Jewish. Heck, men could feel that way about discussing sexism with a room full of women…