How to Avoid a Discussion on the Race Relations Forum

[sealybobo]

Why do you believe this?

I looked into the difference between discussing an issue and debating it and I think the following fairly covers things for the most part:

Socratic Seminar as Dialogue vs. Debate
​

The best Socratic Seminars are those in which something new and unexpected is discovered. This happens
when the seminar is approached as a joint search or exploration through dialogue rather than a defense of ideas

View attachment 195764​

Your list is exactly why I say time for debate is long gone. Confrontation hasn't and won't do any good. It might be entertaining, but it won;t solve our problems.

MLK used a method of direct confrontation that was non violent. It worked. It's the only thing that has ever worked.

No, it’s not.

Actually it is.

Direct confrontation that IS violent also works.


Of course nothing works as well as being an adult with an education, a backbone, and human decency.













None of which you seem to have.

I’ll agree with you here. The cops kept defending their murdering blacks but then some black guy went crazy and shot some cops and suddenly the cops are open to looking at what they maybe could do to stop this anger towards cops. One thing they decided to do was wear body cams. I’m happy. They have too much power to not be recorded.

 

[IM2]

Why do you believe this?

I looked into the difference between discussing an issue and debating it and I think the following fairly covers things for the most part:

Socratic Seminar as Dialogue vs. Debate
​

The best Socratic Seminars are those in which something new and unexpected is discovered. This happens
when the seminar is approached as a joint search or exploration through dialogue rather than a defense of ideas

View attachment 195764​

Your list is exactly why I say time for debate is long gone. Confrontation hasn't and won't do any good. It might be entertaining, but it won;t solve our problems.

MLK used a method of direct confrontation that was non violent. It worked. It's the only thing that has ever worked.

No, it’s not.

Actually it is.

Direct confrontation that IS violent also works.


Of course nothing works as well as being an adult with an education, a backbone, and human decency.













None of which you seem to have.

I'm talking about what worked for blacks in to get civil rights. You are talking stupid.

 

[Slyhunter]

This is a curious forum in that almost no one who posts here is interested in a discussion.

Monologue, lecture, insult, venting, emoting, and lying seem to make up 99% of what goes on here.

That is more words than you normally use. Usually your posts are like "not true" "you're a pinhead" etc.

Fuck off

See.

 

[IM2]

Aren't we supposed to be discussing race according to Unkotare?

Racism is not natural. But in America racism has become so common and accepted that it seems like part of the human condition, like love or poverty. Some do not even notice it except in its more extreme forms. But, as Malcolm X discovered in Mecca, racism does not have to be. It is not something we are born with.

Seeing racism as natural allows whites to believe there is little they can do to make society more just. Fighting racism would be like trying to stop the rain. It excuses inaction.

How do we know that racism is not natural?

First, racism is not built into human nature. If it were we would see it in the Bible, we would see it in the Greeks. Both the Jews and the Greeks divided the world into an us and a them, but neither used race to do it: the Jews used religion and the Greeks used language. The colour of your skin meant little to them.

Second, there is no reason for racism to be wired into our brains by evolution: coming across people of other races was rare till the last few thousand years. Not enough time to affect evolution. Europeans did not even think of themselves as “white” till about 1500: race as we know it is a side effect of ocean travel.

Even in America blacks were made into slaves at first because of religion: they were not Christians. Race as an excuse came later, not till the 1660s.

It was only when race became an excuse for keeping blacks as slaves and taking land from the American Indians, only when society was built on skin colour, that racism began to seem part of the “natural” order of things.

The races in America are not “natural” either. Most countries with blacks and whites see mixed-race people as separate, like in Brazil, South Africa or New Orleans under the French. But not in America. There you have the One Drop Rule: if you look at all part black you are seen as all black. So the “black race” has some people who are 90% white!

What Americans see as the races of man and how they feel about them is not something they were born with – it is learned from a society built by slave owners, by people whose relationship with blacks was a thing of whips and chains.

Even now, more than a hundred years after the slaves were freed, whites still look down on blacks like there is something wrong with them. Whites would rather hire a white man with a prison record than a black man without one; the police can still spend more manpower looking for a dog than for a black woman – or shoot an unarmed black man dead with 50 bullets and call it a “mistake” – and be believed! And on and on. This stuff goes against all common sense. It is not one bit natural.

 

[BULLDOG]

I don't take anything here personally. I will point out bullshit though.

So you don't have anything to contribute? Thus far the only thing you've done is deflect and reject every idea of how we might engage in a meaningful and less contentious "discussion" on race relations. I mean is it really all that offensive to expect people engaging in a "discussion" to be able to explain why they believe or feel the way they do?

What are you talking about? I said I thought discussion was better than debate specifically for the reasons you listed, and then you eliminated half of the characteristics of debate from your list. I have deflected nothing, and only expressed my preference for discussion if the goal is solving a problem instead of confrontation. Obviously you're just wanting to argue, but I'm not sure why you want to argue with me. I've given you nothing to argue about.

 

[sealybobo]

I don't take anything here personally. I will point out bullshit though.

So you don't have anything to contribute? Thus far the only thing you've done is deflect and reject every idea of how we might engage in a meaningful and less contentious "discussion" on race relations. I mean is it really all that offensive to expect people engaging in a "discussion" to be able to explain why they believe or feel the way they do?

The truth might be he’s a racist prick.

 

[sealybobo]

This is a curious forum in that almost no one who posts here is interested in a discussion.

Monologue, lecture, insult, venting, emoting, and lying seem to make up 99% of what goes on here.

That is more words than you normally use. Usually your posts are like "not true" "you're a pinhead" etc.

Fuck off

You

 

[Unkotare]

It has been my experience that if people try to communicate with respect and good will, over time familiarity obviates ignorance and prejudice

 

[sealybobo]

It has been my experience that if people try to communicate with respect and good will, over time familiarity obviates ignorance and prejudice

You should try it sometime!

 

[Unkotare]

It has been my experience that if people try to communicate with respect and good will, over time familiarity obviates ignorance and prejudice

You should try it sometime!

It’s what I do every day while you are talking to your crappy little boat.

 

[sealybobo]

It has been my experience that if people try to communicate with respect and good will, over time familiarity obviates ignorance and prejudice

You should try it sometime!

It’s what I do every day while you are talking to your crappy little boat.

It’ll be ready tomorrow. I’ll have it delivered on Saturday. Saturday night me and the boys will crissen it then my girls coming out Sunday. My life is going exactly like I want it to.

Anyways, by now you should try to stop being a dick and start communicating better. You’re half the problem. Maybe one day you’ll explain why you imply this tactic. Do they teach it in the art of war or something?

 

[sealybobo]

It has been my experience that if people try to communicate with respect and good will, over time familiarity obviates ignorance and prejudice

You should try it sometime!

It’s what I do every day while you are talking to your crappy little boat.

Show us you can do it here.

 

[sealybobo]

It has been my experience that if people try to communicate with respect and good will, over time familiarity obviates ignorance and prejudice

This coming from the guy who one post up told sly to fuck off?

I don’t believe you are any of the things you claim to be. You’re a fraud. You must be. You claim to be this wonderful person but then you’re literally the worst person on usmb

 

[Unkotare]

...

I don’t believe you are any of the things you claim to be. ....

 

[Unkotare]

.... You claim to be this wonderful person ....

I don't recall ever making such a claim.

 

[sealybobo]

.... You claim to be this wonderful person ....

I don't recall ever making such a claim.

Ok good

 

[katsteve2012]

Watching television you would think that black ghettos in the big cities are the poorest and most dangerous parts of America. Well, it is not quite that simple.

In 2007 the four precincts in New York City with the worst rates of major crimes were these:

• Bed-Stuy
• East Harlem
• Midtown South (42nd to 34th Street)
• Lower East Side

Only Bed-Stuy is mainly black. East Harlem is Hispanic, Midtown South is white and the Lower East Side is Asian and Hispanic.

True, taken as a whole the black and Hispanic parts of the city have a higher crime rate than the white and Asian parts. But each part of the city is different. You cannot just go by race or even poverty or even the two together. For example:

• The middle of Harlem, which is mainly black, is safer than Midtown Manhattan, which is mainly white – and far richer.
• In the late 1980s Jamaica, Queens and Harlem were both mainly black, but Jamaica had way more of a black middle-class – and yet it was far more violent.

So you cannot make general rules. Different things are in play in different parts of the city. You have to go case by case.

Likewise, here are the five poorest parts of America:

• Indian reservations
• South-west Texas
• The middle of Alaska
• The Mississippi Delta
• Appalachia

Only the Mississippi Delta is mainly black. Appalachia is mainly white, south-west Texas is Hispanic and the Indian reservations and the middle of Alaska are Native American.

Most people do not even think about these places because you hardly ever see them on television or even hear much about them in school.

The reason black ghettos star on television is because they are the main example of poverty – and of Black America too – if you live in the two places where most of American television comes from: Hollywood and New York.

Most poor people are white. Most poor people do not live in cities, but in places where reporters and film-makers hardly ever go.

And, just as you almost never see the poor Indian reservations on television, so you barely ever see black suburbia either – further strengthening the idea that most black people are poor and most poor people are black, neither of which is true.

And even when television does present poverty it rarely explains it. So people think what they want about bootstraps and all that – a comfortable thing to believe if you are middle-class or rich.

Television is not a mirror of American society. It is not even an imperfect mirror. Television is the creation of a very small number of people – most of them white, male, liberal and well-to-do – who have their own ideas about America. Many of those ideas are not true and many come from yet older Hollywood output, so the thing feeds on itself.

But their picture of America becomes our picture of America – even if the little bit of America that we know first-hand is nothing like what we see on television.

It’s true I think the south is like Dallas Mayberry petticoat junction or green acres only racist. Milwaukee is like happy days. California saved by the Bell. Good times Chicago. Welcome back cotter different strokes Archie bunker and Jefferson’s New York and of course Miami vice.

Truth be told, the vast majority of California is farmland and looks a lot like the midwest.

Besides the 3 major cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, and a few coastal areas, much of it is rural.

Chicago is definately a must see. I used to travel there frequently. Lots to do there. One of my favorite cities....except on St. Patricks Day.

 

[sealybobo]

This is a curious forum in that almost no one who posts here is interested in a discussion.

Monologue, lecture, insult, venting, emoting, and lying seem to make up 99% of what goes on here.

So you start a thread in the history forum trying to divide us by talking about how we treated Jap Americans during WW2? What is your purpose doing that? It seems like you a special kind of racist righty trying to divide us.

 

[sealybobo]

This is a curious forum in that almost no one who posts here is interested in a discussion.

Monologue, lecture, insult, venting, emoting, and lying seem to make up 99% of what goes on here.

You start first and see who shows he is classless. What’s the subject you want to discuss? Affirmative action? BLM?
Why don’t you express an opinion first and we will react.

Ps. Aren’t most of your threads designed to get other people to respond and then all you ever come back with are insulting one liners?

Well unk?

 

[Tumblin Tumbleweed]

This is a curious forum in that almost no one who posts here is interested in a discussion.

Monologue, lecture, insult, venting, emoting, and lying seem to make up 99% of what goes on here.

I noticed that. Interesting reading...