CDZ The Race to Success

[Kat]

I don't see how anyone can speak to something they refuse to watch. There's no way to know.

 

[Natural Citizen]

It's odd how so many have taken what is a simple exercise in the video and made so much more out of it than there is.

I don't see how anyone can speak to something they refuse to watch. There's no way to know.

Which video? Xelor's? He's just trying weasel out of taking responsibility for his own words. His words speak for themselves. And apparently, he's grown comfortable with debating amateurs.

If you're talking about the vid in the op, sure there's legitimacy to it. But, again, these are only symptoms of a much deeper issue.

Ah well. I'll leave you all with the thread. I've said what I wanted here.

 

[usmbguest5318]

It's odd how so many have taken what is a simple exercise in the video and made so much more out of it than there is.

I don't see how anyone can speak to something they refuse to watch. There's no way to know.

Which video? Xelor's? He's just trying weasel out of taking responsibility for his own words. His words speak for themselves. And apparently, he's grown comfortable with debating amateurs.

If you're talking about the vid in the op, sure there's legitimacy to it. But, again, these are only symptoms of a much deeper issue.

Ah well. I'll leave you all with the thread. I've said what I wanted here.

He's just trying weasel out of taking responsibility for his own words.

Well now, that remark illustrates that you don't fully understand what you've implied as a result of the fallacious inference you drew from my remarks. I'm not denying what I wrote. I'm saying the inference about me that you made based on what I wrote is irrational, and I provided you with two videos that explain the nature of the inference's irrationality.

The world of functional debate is one in which keen thinkers don't deign to refute irrational propositions, inferences and conclusions. Lines of thought/expression that are flawed from square one cannot be refuted; one can only point out the flaw in the speaker's/writer's reasoning and hope the individual has the cognition and integrity to appreciate that the notions they expressed sit on flawed reasoning and, in turn, either revise their argument or yield. That keen thinkers do not bother trying to refute materially flawed reasoning is part of why the following sayings and others resembling them came to be:

 

[MarathonMike]

The video has some merit. Some people start with significant disadvantages or advantages that is true. But the race was way too short. Life is not a short sprint decided only by your starting place. That was the implication in this video.

The best part of the video IMO was the overhead shot seeing people in the back streaking past people given a start ahead of them. You saw every person running his or her own speed and THAT is the way real life is. We are not all the same, we have different abilities and different levels of DETERMINATION.

If you are disadvantaged and you work hard and are determined, the resources are there for you to succeed. Millions of disadvantaged Americans have demonstrated this by emerging from poverty to independence regardless of their starting position in life.

 

[usmbguest5318]

The video has some merit. Some people start with significant disadvantages or advantages that is true. But the race was way too short. Life is not a short sprint decided only by your starting place. That was the implication in this video.

The best part of the video IMO was the overhead shot seeing people in the back streaking past people given a start ahead of them. You saw every person running his or her own speed and THAT is the way real life is. We are not all the same, we have different abilities and different levels of DETERMINATION.

If you are disadvantaged and you work hard and are determined, the resources are there for you to succeed. Millions of disadvantaged Americans have demonstrated this by emerging from poverty to independence regardless of their starting position in life.

The video has some merit. Some people start with significant disadvantages or advantages that is true. But the race was way too short. Life is not a short sprint decided only by your starting place. That was the implication in this video.

To take that inference from the video is to make more of it than it presented. The tacit claim of the video was not about the "voyage" called life, but rather the portion of the "voyage" that constitutes the period during which one makes one's way to the waypoint called "economic success."

The best part of the video IMO was the overhead shot

Yes, that was among the most poignant parts of the video.

The best part of the video IMO was the overhead shot seeing people in the back streaking past people given a start ahead of them. You saw every person running his or her own speed and THAT is the way real life is. We are not all the same, we have different abilities and different levels of DETERMINATION.

Yes, those different innate abilities, moxie included, play a material role in one's achievement of economic success. Be that as it is, the point of the video's metaphor isn't the role of innate abilities, but rather about that of constructs that delay or completely impede many people's reaching the "waypoint" we call economic success.

If you are disadvantaged and you work hard and are determined, the resources are there for you to succeed.

I don't disagree with that statement in general. What I take exception with and decry is the fact that race was made into and remains a construct that makes it a "failure factor" from which a host of additional and material other disadvantages issue. It should not be be.

Take a look at the following:

• Distribution of U.S. millionaires by race/ethnicity, as of 2013 -- In and of itself, that whites comprise the majority of U.S. millionaires is not disconcerting. That the distribution of millionaires by race is not fairly well in line with the distribution of race among the population is what's disturbing. To the extent that the lack of proportionality is attributable to constructs emplaced in association with the circumstance of one's race and the disadvantages accruing therefrom, we have an ethical (and macroeconomic, frankly) obligation to mollify as much as possible the impacts of those constructs.
  
• Income inequality -- Though I don't have a problem with the fact that some people make more, or even vastly more than others, I do have a problem with the fact that if one begins life poor and suffers the increased burdens that entails, the likelihood that one remains poor is far greater than the likelihood that one does not remain poor. And I disapprove of the fact that penury is for blacks the result of, among other things, past and current constructs combining to make it that much harder for them to alter that status than it is for non-minorities. (I linked the preceding sentence to an essay. I chose that essay for it's objective linked content more so than for its editorial content.)
  
  
  
  

Now as go these racially applied constructs of which I write:
-- I know am not the creator of them.
-- I know I am not a perpetuator of them.
-- I am not assuming blame for their existence, but I assume my part of the burden for effecting their end.
-- I know I am a beneficiary of them.
-- I don't feel guilty for so benefitting; I simply know it is unjust that I benefit thus.
-- I know that upon their diminution or removal, I and my kids will no longer benefit from them.
And I'm okay with all of that.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Someone shared this with me...and it's an eye opener.

We all run the same race...but we don't all start out in the same place. And it's not because of anything we did.

I posted this in CDZ to avoid the BS that goes on in Race. I would be curious as to what people think of this and in particular what the narrator is saying.

Yes, I saw that. You can imagine the rich kids going home that night and laughing about it, talking about how they live great lives. How America is their sort of place.

 

[frigidweirdo]

The video has some merit. Some people start with significant disadvantages or advantages that is true. But the race was way too short. Life is not a short sprint decided only by your starting place. That was the implication in this video.

The best part of the video IMO was the overhead shot seeing people in the back streaking past people given a start ahead of them. You saw every person running his or her own speed and THAT is the way real life is. We are not all the same, we have different abilities and different levels of DETERMINATION.

If you are disadvantaged and you work hard and are determined, the resources are there for you to succeed. Millions of disadvantaged Americans have demonstrated this by emerging from poverty to independence regardless of their starting position in life.

No, it wasn't implied in the video. The video was making a point, if you start picking up on silly little details rather than the ACTUAL POINT, then you're not watching the video properly.

 

[oldsoul]

racial inequities create "sub-colonies" within the "colony," and that is not good for the country.

I would reword that slightly as follows:
"...racial divisions create "sub-colonies" within the "colony," and that is not good for the country."
That is not to say inequalities based on race are not a problem (as they are), just to put an emphasis on the fact that the division along racial lines is a bigger problem. To put it another way: which is a bigger problem?

1. one is disadvantaged by their racial identity? or:
2. one identifies themselves (or is identified by society) based on race?

I contend that the answer is that number two is a greater issue, one that, if corrected, the other would no longer be a factor. Sure, everyone identifies with certain groups (some based on race) the problem is when it shifts from being a group you identify with, to an identity in and of itself.

I hope I am making myself clear here.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

I reject the video because it is racist and is pushing an authoritarian message.

I spent the first 5 years in a fucking logging camp up 20 miles of unpaved road, did not have a t.v., few toys, and was not priviliged by any stretch of the imagination. Having some idiot tell me I am privileged simply because of my skin color is just as offensive as it is racist.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

There are many factors that determine whether a person achieves 'success'. Of all of those factors, a person's will to succeed is the most important. You can overcome being born into a bad home, in the hood, a bad education, abuse you name it. You cannot overcome lack of will to succeed IMO.

and after two generations of affirmative action where those with one skin color receive an advantage over those with another, it should be obvious to any thinking individual that what matters is attitude.

Goodness, gracious sakes alive, if Vietnamese people can come to this country with just the shirts on their back and are thriving a couple of decades later, then it isn't race that holds anybody back. Heck, Asians are the MOST disadvantaged by affirmative action, yet they succeed. Blacks are the MOST advantaged by affirmative action yet they don't.

Can't people ever figure out that it is attitude and not color that determines outcome, DESPITE what the authoritarians pushing the victim mentality try to cram down everybody's throats?

 

[Dogmaphobe]

Newsflash: humans are social animals. An ant will do the best it can to succeed at performing tasks appropriate to it as an individual ant; however, when it joins the rest of its colony, the single ant's success becomes subordinate to the that of the colony as a whole. Sometimes "it's all about the individual" and sometimes "it's all about the colony." It's essential that every individual understand and aptly recognize for what matters and when the colony is the greater priority and for what matters that is not the case. For humans, the "colony," encompasses the citizenry of one's country; however, racial inequities create "sub-colonies" within the "colony," and that is not good for the country.

Hm. So you're a fascist, then?

Here. Let's properly share what fascism means so everyone understands the nature of what you just said...

Xelor said: Newsflash: humans are social animals. An ant will do the best it can to succeed at performing tasks appropriate to it as an individual ant; however, when it joins the rest of its colony, the single ant's success becomes subordinate to the that of the colony as a whole. Sometimes "it's all about the individual" and sometimes "it's all about the colony." It's essential that every individual understand and aptly recognize for what matters and when the colony is the greater priority and for what matters that is not the case. For humans, the "colony," encompasses the citizenry of one's country; however, racial inequities create "sub-colonies" within the "colony," and that is not good for the country.


Mussolini in his Doctrine of Fascism (1932) said: In the Fascist State the individual is not suppressed, but rather multiplied, just as in a regiment a soldier is not weakened but multiplied by the number of his comrades. The Fascist State organizes the nation, but it leaves sufficient scope to individuals; it has limited useless or harmful liberties and has preserved those that are essential. It cannot be the individual who decides in this matter, but only the State.


Does everyone see this? This is what you're up against.

Composition fallacy and division fallacy.

• Composition
  
  
  
  
• Division
  
  

I'm not watching your videos.

You're echoing Mussolini's Doctrine of Fascism almost to the word.

You're busted.

And now everybody knows.

I'm gonna go watch some cartoons.

Later.

It is certainly dogmatic and authoritarian, that's for sure.

Heaven forbid anybody ever disagree with the victim industry that places blame for lack of success on anybody BUT the person whose attitude is so hostile to success that they crippled themselves. Making excuses for bad behavior only encourages more bad behavior. When you take a group with one shin color and remove responsibility for their actions, all you do is feed the very things responsible for their lack of success.

It is just too easy for some people to just continue with their pre-packaged orthodoxy, I guess.

 

[Pumpkin Row]

Eye opener? You've already posted in other threads, endorsing government incentivized failure. You posted it because you agree, not because it opened your eyes to anything.

Equality is a myth, and those who decide to pretend that 'advantages' that other people may have, or 'disadvantages' that they may have somehow keep them down in life, only trick themselves into never succeeding. Nothing the government does will ever make life 'equal' for everyone. That video is utterly pointless.

People are capable of succeeding in life regardless of challenges imposed on them, DESPITE government interference.

Did you actually watch the video?

Yes, I did. He specified things that would supposedly advantage a person and had people step forward based on it. He then said he was sure those in the back would outrun everyone else if they were 'equal'.

The goal apparently being to make other people feel bad for things that would be an 'advantage' and feel bad that other people didn't have those same 'advantages'.

Typical leftist stuff.

The goal was not that. He specified that he was sure SOME of those in the back would outrun some of those in front if all else were equal. Is he right...or wrong?

He also repeatedly empasized that those in front were not at fault in any way for having an advantage. Is he right or wrong?

No, the goal WAS that. Are you telling me that we weren't already aware that people taking some steps forward would have an advantage in a race? This wasn't a groundbreaking experiment, it was a move to attempt to force people to think with their feelings instead of their heads. He wanted people to feel bad for being born with 'advantages' and feel bad for the people who aren't. Your loaded questions can't distract from the intentions behind the video, and it being posted here.

It wasn't intended to be a "ground breaking experiment" but rather a really good way of showing it. And thinking with their feelings as opposed with their heads? No...it actually hit them on the heads so to speak.

Instead of automatically casting judgement on those who don't "win" that hundred dollar prize - think about your advantages and how they affect your life. And how disadvantages affect others. It's a very thought provoking lesson unless you happen to feel personally threatened by it.

People have no problem assigning character flaws to those who don't "win"...but they have a problem recognizing advantages to some of those who do "win"? Why is this?

Yes, thinking with feelings instead of their heads, as the the man(And the rest of the left) try to beat people over their heads with false guilt over being more successful than other people.

It doesn't matter how advantages and disadvantages affect others, everyone is personally responsible for their own success in life. What people have or don't have when they finally kick the bucket is their own responsibility, as nobody is entitled to anything in life.

No, people don't CARE about those who don't win. Losers are generally ignored, and they should be, because everyone should care about themselves and their own success first and foremost, and those who are failures have only themselves to blame, because they're not entitled to anything anyone else has.

THIS didn't become a trend until the left stopped hiding that they're raging Socialists, what the point of this thread is should be obvious to everyone.

 

[Pumpkin Row]

Someone shared this with me...and it's an eye opener.

We all run the same race...but we don't all start out in the same place. And it's not because of anything we did.

I posted this in CDZ to avoid the BS that goes on in Race. I would be curious as to what people think of this and in particular what the narrator is saying.

Eye opener? You've already posted in other threads, endorsing government incentivized failure. You posted it because you agree, not because it opened your eyes to anything.

Equality is a myth, and those who decide to pretend that 'advantages' that other people may have, or 'disadvantages' that they may have somehow keep them down in life, only trick themselves into never succeeding. Nothing the government does will ever make life 'equal' for everyone. That video is utterly pointless.

People are capable of succeeding in life regardless of challenges imposed on them, DESPITE government interference.

That has nothing to do with the point of the video. That's what some are missing. No one doubts we all have our trials and tribulations.

It's the entire point of the man's experiment, and the entire point of Coyote posting it here. Identity politics is ALWAYS the reason behind this sort of thing.

That definitely not why she posted it.

I appreciate you not being cynical, but being such a sweet person is why you're wrong here.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

It's odd how so many have taken what is a simple exercise in the video and made so much more out of it than there is.

I don't consider such indoctrination to be a simple exercise, myself. It was called "eye opening" when the real objective is quite the opposite.

The exercise is not about opening minds, but forming them. It is a product of the authoritarian left's obsession with identity politics, replete with the de rigueur divisions accordingly.

When I was cutting my political teeth, liberals wished to establish a color blind society. For today's illiberal left, a color blind society is anathema to their rigid and divisive agenda.

 

[usmbguest5318]

racial inequities create "sub-colonies" within the "colony," and that is not good for the country.

I would reword that slightly as follows:
"...racial divisions create "sub-colonies" within the "colony," and that is not good for the country."
That is not to say inequalities based on race are not a problem (as they are), just to put an emphasis on the fact that the division along racial lines is a bigger problem. To put it another way: which is a bigger problem?

1. one is disadvantaged by their racial identity? or:
2. one identifies themselves (or is identified by society) based on race?

I contend that the answer is that number two is a greater issue, one that, if corrected, the other would no longer be a factor. Sure, everyone identifies with certain groups (some based on race) the problem is when it shifts from being a group you identify with, to an identity in and of itself.

I hope I am making myself clear here.

I hope I am making myself clear here.

You made yourself clear.

I could quibble about one piece of your remarks, but there's no point in my doing so for the fact is I agree with 99% of what you wrote and the way you presented your thought.

 

[Tresha91203]

Perhaps we should begin promoting family values and the nuclear family again. Every child should be afforded the advantage of both parents in the household whenever possible. Two role models, two incomes, two supervisors, etc. It's too easy and too socially acceptable to have children out of wedlock or divorce rather than work it out. We are a selfish society and do not put children first.

Parents generally choose whether their children will have that advantage or not. Parents sacrifice to give their children that leg up ... or not. While not ALWAYS true, generally, those kids starting ahead should be made aware they have their parents to thank rather than the luck of the draw, as implied. Those starting in the back should be made aware as well, so they don't blindly repeat their parents mistakes.

I'm not sure we should go back to the shaming of single mothers - many do a very good job...or to making it difficult to obtain divorces. It's a mixed bag...

My mother finally seperated from my father - he was an alcoholic and seldom there and when he was it was disruptive. We had a two parent family until highschool...but at what cost?

As I said, its not always true. A 2-parent household is no good if one (or both) is violent or a molester or a druggie, etc. However, generally, it is an advantage to have both parents in the household raising the children. It is a disadvantage to be raised in a single-parent household. That was a significant point in the video.

That was a significant point in the video.

It was a point of the video, and I suppose one can call it material;however, it was not the central point of the video. When considering whether to eat an apple, one's focus and the seller's focus is the pulp not the seeds, which contain cyanide and are thus poisonous. It's important to deal appropriately with the seeds, i.e., don't eat them, but the problem of the seeds isn't what's on one's mind when thinking through the matter of whether to eat the apple.

So it is with the thread's rubric video. There are a number of risk factors for why one may not realize success; however, but the central point is that our society must acknowledge that collectively extant inequity of the sort that is not intrinsic to individuals inhibits the success of whole classes of people before it can make material progress on attenuating the various risk factors.

And if one is honest, one will recognize that multiple types of cultural inequities; however, those based on race are the only ones whereof one who is the object of them can cannot alter the circumstances that make them so. Whereas one can bring one's talents to bear to alter the state of one's, say, financial position, one can bring nothing to bear to alter one's racial status. Thus, while some blacks are financially well-off, they are nonetheless subject to the constructs that impose inequities on blacks, and that is something black wealthy people's white financial peers simply do not face.

For instance, neither I nor any of my white friends have been by cops asked "where are you going/why are you here," "is this your car," yet each of my black friends has been asked that, and other than their blackness there is no difference between us in terms of where they go, what kind of car they drive, the genre of neighborhood in which dwell and frequent. Hell, when I walk through my neighborhood, which is in the city center, I'm never approached by a cop, yet blacks get approached "all the time" in my neighborhood. (I know this because some of the blacks to whom that has happened had it happen when they were walking from their car to my home.) Similarly, while one may be white and mendicant, one nonetheless benefits from, if nothing else, the benefit of the doubt.

I'm sheltered. I don't live in a city or an area with racial strife. We don't have an active city center. We have Friday night high school football. I was raised here, in an upper middle class small town with a 40/60 black/white mix. There's no one out running the streets here so no one getting hassled by cops like that. Also, I am a private academic tutor so deal with children whose parents are helping them with homework, seeking a tutor as needed, attending parent/teacher conferences, monitoring their child's internet activities, involving their child in community or church groups, etc. We still have income inequality, but most children here are raised well so become competent, productive adults.

An hour away is New Orleans. From my perspective, the difference isn't race at all. More than a third of my students are black. Their parents aren't getting stopped for DWB. Their children aren't being gunned down.

I'm sheltered. I don't live in a city or an area with racial strife. We don't have an active city center. We have Friday night high school football. I was raised here, in an upper middle class small town with a 40/60 black/white mix. There's no one out running the streets here so no one getting hassled by cops like that. Also, I am a private academic tutor so deal with children whose parents are helping them with homework, seeking a tutor as needed, attending parent/teacher conferences, monitoring their child's internet activities, involving their child in community or church groups, etc. We still have income inequality, but most children here are raised well so become competent, productive adults.

There's nothing wrong with being sheltered, provided one doesn't allow the fact of one's limited exposure to cloud/prejudice one's thinking about people and situations that such that one discounts (however much) the validity of credible testimony and research that indicate one's situation and personal observations are more rarefied than they are common. For instance, though my black friends' financial position is uncommon, without regard to race, their experiences with being denied the benefit of the doubt, to cite one type of inequity, is not uncommon among black folks.

Do I have any fair reason to suspect you are among the folks who allow their minds to become thus addled? No. The tone of your comments above (because they are the one's I am currently aware of) doesn't allude to your indeed thinking that way, and you certainly didn't explicitly indicate you do. Does that mean you are not at times, or often, not given to irrational lines of thought about matters of the human condition in general and that of various racial communities? No. How could it? I know almost nothing about you, and, more importantly, I don't at all know you. I can say only that I see no evidence of it based on what you've here written and that I recall. I realize that's hardly a glowing commendation, but, given the nature of our "non-relationship," it's the best I can do and be confident I'm not mistaken.

Their parents aren't getting stopped for DWB.

You don't need to answer the question that follows; I ask it only as something to think about.

• Is your relationship with the black parents such that they'd bother to mention to you an incident in which they felt they were, since we're using it as an example of the inequity that arises from race-related denials of the benefit of the doubt, stopped for DWB?

I posed the question because I know that my black friends would not, have not, and will not share with me every single incident in which that or some similar manifestation of racial inequity happens to them. They know the inequity is "there," and they most certainly want to see it dramatically reduced attenuated; however, they just aren't going to mention every manifestation of it. There are two reasons why that's so, one reason being their former reason and the others being their current reasons.

• Old reason: Before they knew me as well as they do now, they didn't know whether I'd be amenable to having such a discussion, and they knew many white folks aren't. Insofar as they didn't know me well enough to know my tolerance for such a topic, they kept mum about it.
• New reasons: First and foremost, we've already discussed the matter of their experience racial inequity and the conversations in which we did so went well. My black friends thus have come to know that I "get it;" indeed, one of my black friends tells me he thinks I "get it more than some blacks do" because I have little to no tolerance for racial bias of any sort from any source.
  
  For instance, he and I "got into it" once when I chided him for harboring a prejudicial POV about a specific white individual whom I didn't know, and short of the person's name, race, and a few other superficial details, he didn't either. I made it very clear to him that although I understand and accept that because they are minorities, blacks cannot be racists, that they cannot does not prevent them from being racially prejudiced, and that's not acceptable either.
  
  The other reason is that quite simply, there's nothing new to say. I know they experience that crap. They know I have no forbearance for it and that, when and where possible, I speak up against it and manifestations of it. We both know that while we are equally successful, I had a far less challenging way to be so than did they. Unless the matter is something for which they need my help in resolving, there's nothing to gain by telling me about every last incident. Hell, they also don't tell every black person they know about every last incident of inequity they faced.

Their children aren't being gunned down.

Oh, my. Well, okay...I thought we were having a more "evolved" discussion than that; however, I was mistaken....Anyway, insofar as you "went there," out of courtesy, I'll respond to it...Does the nature of inequity need rise to that level, ever, to be something we are obliged to mitigate or, where and when possible, eliminate? I don't think so.

My apologies. I was making a comparison to New Orleans, where people do literally get gunned down in the street. I was not alluding to anything else. In no way am I minimizing another's experience.

What I am trying to say is that these are the same people. I am only an hour away from New Orleans, which consistently ranks in the top 5 (sometimes #1) states for murder and gang violence. We descend from the same stock. We are French Catholic culture with vibrant splashes of Haitian, NA, Caribbian and Creole flavor. The difference (as far as I can see) is family, community and even church structure. There are other factors, of course, even significant ones.

I do see what's going on out in the world. However, I also see what it is (or can be) when the majority of families are functional. The norm can be (because it is here, so must be elsewhere as well) 2 functional adults both raising their children, even if divorced. I know these families, usually 3 generations. They are sacrificing to help their child, so I am told very personal information, almost always including detailed family life. These are good people who were raised well themselves, both black and white. They are no different. There is still inequality. Some are poor, some are not. Two are scholarship (pro-bono), one is charity (local Catholic church) and a few are paid by grandparents. New Orleans is different, IMO, largely because the family structure broke down.

I cannot speak to several facets of the whole issue. Like I said, I've been sheltered. I've lived here, WA state and Vancouver, where racial strife is limited to a part of the big city or "over there" somewhere.

 

[usmbguest5318]

I'm not sure we should go back to the shaming of single mothers - many do a very good job...or to making it difficult to obtain divorces. It's a mixed bag...

My mother finally seperated from my father - he was an alcoholic and seldom there and when he was it was disruptive. We had a two parent family until highschool...but at what cost?

As I said, its not always true. A 2-parent household is no good if one (or both) is violent or a molester or a druggie, etc. However, generally, it is an advantage to have both parents in the household raising the children. It is a disadvantage to be raised in a single-parent household. That was a significant point in the video.

That was a significant point in the video.

It was a point of the video, and I suppose one can call it material;however, it was not the central point of the video. When considering whether to eat an apple, one's focus and the seller's focus is the pulp not the seeds, which contain cyanide and are thus poisonous. It's important to deal appropriately with the seeds, i.e., don't eat them, but the problem of the seeds isn't what's on one's mind when thinking through the matter of whether to eat the apple.

So it is with the thread's rubric video. There are a number of risk factors for why one may not realize success; however, but the central point is that our society must acknowledge that collectively extant inequity of the sort that is not intrinsic to individuals inhibits the success of whole classes of people before it can make material progress on attenuating the various risk factors.

And if one is honest, one will recognize that multiple types of cultural inequities; however, those based on race are the only ones whereof one who is the object of them can cannot alter the circumstances that make them so. Whereas one can bring one's talents to bear to alter the state of one's, say, financial position, one can bring nothing to bear to alter one's racial status. Thus, while some blacks are financially well-off, they are nonetheless subject to the constructs that impose inequities on blacks, and that is something black wealthy people's white financial peers simply do not face.

For instance, neither I nor any of my white friends have been by cops asked "where are you going/why are you here," "is this your car," yet each of my black friends has been asked that, and other than their blackness there is no difference between us in terms of where they go, what kind of car they drive, the genre of neighborhood in which dwell and frequent. Hell, when I walk through my neighborhood, which is in the city center, I'm never approached by a cop, yet blacks get approached "all the time" in my neighborhood. (I know this because some of the blacks to whom that has happened had it happen when they were walking from their car to my home.) Similarly, while one may be white and mendicant, one nonetheless benefits from, if nothing else, the benefit of the doubt.

I'm sheltered. I don't live in a city or an area with racial strife. We don't have an active city center. We have Friday night high school football. I was raised here, in an upper middle class small town with a 40/60 black/white mix. There's no one out running the streets here so no one getting hassled by cops like that. Also, I am a private academic tutor so deal with children whose parents are helping them with homework, seeking a tutor as needed, attending parent/teacher conferences, monitoring their child's internet activities, involving their child in community or church groups, etc. We still have income inequality, but most children here are raised well so become competent, productive adults.

An hour away is New Orleans. From my perspective, the difference isn't race at all. More than a third of my students are black. Their parents aren't getting stopped for DWB. Their children aren't being gunned down.

I'm sheltered. I don't live in a city or an area with racial strife. We don't have an active city center. We have Friday night high school football. I was raised here, in an upper middle class small town with a 40/60 black/white mix. There's no one out running the streets here so no one getting hassled by cops like that. Also, I am a private academic tutor so deal with children whose parents are helping them with homework, seeking a tutor as needed, attending parent/teacher conferences, monitoring their child's internet activities, involving their child in community or church groups, etc. We still have income inequality, but most children here are raised well so become competent, productive adults.

There's nothing wrong with being sheltered, provided one doesn't allow the fact of one's limited exposure to cloud/prejudice one's thinking about people and situations that such that one discounts (however much) the validity of credible testimony and research that indicate one's situation and personal observations are more rarefied than they are common. For instance, though my black friends' financial position is uncommon, without regard to race, their experiences with being denied the benefit of the doubt, to cite one type of inequity, is not uncommon among black folks.

Do I have any fair reason to suspect you are among the folks who allow their minds to become thus addled? No. The tone of your comments above (because they are the one's I am currently aware of) doesn't allude to your indeed thinking that way, and you certainly didn't explicitly indicate you do. Does that mean you are not at times, or often, not given to irrational lines of thought about matters of the human condition in general and that of various racial communities? No. How could it? I know almost nothing about you, and, more importantly, I don't at all know you. I can say only that I see no evidence of it based on what you've here written and that I recall. I realize that's hardly a glowing commendation, but, given the nature of our "non-relationship," it's the best I can do and be confident I'm not mistaken.

Their parents aren't getting stopped for DWB.

You don't need to answer the question that follows; I ask it only as something to think about.

• Is your relationship with the black parents such that they'd bother to mention to you an incident in which they felt they were, since we're using it as an example of the inequity that arises from race-related denials of the benefit of the doubt, stopped for DWB?

I posed the question because I know that my black friends would not, have not, and will not share with me every single incident in which that or some similar manifestation of racial inequity happens to them. They know the inequity is "there," and they most certainly want to see it dramatically reduced attenuated; however, they just aren't going to mention every manifestation of it. There are two reasons why that's so, one reason being their former reason and the others being their current reasons.

• Old reason: Before they knew me as well as they do now, they didn't know whether I'd be amenable to having such a discussion, and they knew many white folks aren't. Insofar as they didn't know me well enough to know my tolerance for such a topic, they kept mum about it.
• New reasons: First and foremost, we've already discussed the matter of their experience racial inequity and the conversations in which we did so went well. My black friends thus have come to know that I "get it;" indeed, one of my black friends tells me he thinks I "get it more than some blacks do" because I have little to no tolerance for racial bias of any sort from any source.
  
  For instance, he and I "got into it" once when I chided him for harboring a prejudicial POV about a specific white individual whom I didn't know, and short of the person's name, race, and a few other superficial details, he didn't either. I made it very clear to him that although I understand and accept that because they are minorities, blacks cannot be racists, that they cannot does not prevent them from being racially prejudiced, and that's not acceptable either.
  
  The other reason is that quite simply, there's nothing new to say. I know they experience that crap. They know I have no forbearance for it and that, when and where possible, I speak up against it and manifestations of it. We both know that while we are equally successful, I had a far less challenging way to be so than did they. Unless the matter is something for which they need my help in resolving, there's nothing to gain by telling me about every last incident. Hell, they also don't tell every black person they know about every last incident of inequity they faced.

Their children aren't being gunned down.

Oh, my. Well, okay...I thought we were having a more "evolved" discussion than that; however, I was mistaken....Anyway, insofar as you "went there," out of courtesy, I'll respond to it...Does the nature of inequity need rise to that level, ever, to be something we are obliged to mitigate or, where and when possible, eliminate? I don't think so.

My apologies. I was making a comparison to New Orleans, where people do literally get gunned down in the street. I was not alluding to anything else. In no way am I minimizing another's experience.

What I am trying to say is that these are the same people. I am only an hour away from New Orleans, which consistently ranks in the top 5 (sometimes #1) states for murder and gang violence. We descend from the same stock. We are French Catholic culture with vibrant splashes of Haitian, NA, Caribbian and Creole flavor. The difference (as far as I can see) is family, community and even church structure. There are other factors, of course, even significant ones.

I do see what's going on out in the world. However, I also see what it is (or can be) when the majority of families are functional. The norm can be (because it is here, so must be elsewhere as well) 2 functional adults both raising their children, even if divorced. I know these families, usually 3 generations. They are sacrificing to help their child, so I am told very personal information, almost always including detailed family life. These are good people who were raised well themselves, both black and white. They are no different. There is still inequality. Some are poor, some are not. Two are scholarship (pro-bono), one is charity (local Catholic church) and a few are paid by grandparents. New Orleans is different, IMO, largely because the family structure broke down.

I cannot speak to several facets of the whole issue. Like I said, I've been sheltered. I've lived here, WA state and Vancouver, where racial strife is limited to a part of the big city or "over there" somewhere.

My apologies. I was making a comparison to New Orleans, where people do literally get gunned down in the street. I was not alluding to anything else. In no way am I minimizing another's experience.

TY for the clarifying/explanatory remarks. I understand now what you were meaning. In essence, I agree with your sentiments.

 

[JoeMoma]

There are many factors that determine whether a person achieves 'success'. Of all of those factors, a person's will to succeed is the most important. You can overcome being born into a bad home, in the hood, a bad education, abuse you name it. You cannot overcome lack of will to succeed IMO.

Yeah, and many of the people that had to stay back didn't even attempt to run the race. They were too busy being oppressed.

While it's true that life isn't fair, life is a marathon not a sprint. Hard work and determination can overcome the adversities of life. Also, the race of life does not have only one finish line and only one winner. We each can create our own finish lines and create our own prizes.

 

[Coyote]

Someone shared this with me...and it's an eye opener.

We all run the same race...but we don't all start out in the same place. And it's not because of anything we did.

I posted this in CDZ to avoid the BS that goes on in Race. I would be curious as to what people think of this and in particular what the narrator is saying.

Yes, I saw that. You can imagine the rich kids going home that night and laughing about it, talking about how they live great lives. How America is their sort of place.

Actually...no, I can't. I think it's an eye opener for all kids, because it's easy to take for granted your advantages - who ever needs to think about them? The end showed how thought provoking it was.

 

[Coyote]

The video has some merit. Some people start with significant disadvantages or advantages that is true. But the race was way too short. Life is not a short sprint decided only by your starting place. That was the implication in this video.

The best part of the video IMO was the overhead shot seeing people in the back streaking past people given a start ahead of them. You saw every person running his or her own speed and THAT is the way real life is. We are not all the same, we have different abilities and different levels of DETERMINATION.

If you are disadvantaged and you work hard and are determined, the resources are there for you to succeed. Millions of disadvantaged Americans have demonstrated this by emerging from poverty to independence regardless of their starting position in life.

Yes, it was and those are good points - but, equally important is realizing some of us have advantages that others don't. Maybe they have to be ten times better than ordinary to get past them. Or maybe they get lucky. And for some, even with advantages, they don't "win" the race.

The video really had two messages to take in - the one you pointed out, at the scene at the end (great point you made) - and the one at the beginning, where the advantages were pointed out and how some people started ahead and others behind.