Wrote this a couple years ago...didn't get much traction...
The past is prologue.
It's a classic "sins of the father" scenario.
Slavery to Jim Crow to Separate but Equal...segregation thwarted assimilation, and now instead of regional American cultures that blend together at the edges, African-Americans have...thru segregationist policies...developed their own distinct culture with sharp and distinct boundaries within the older regional culture.
And it is literally the inequities of our father upon black slaves and later free black men (and women) that are being visited upon us...the generations that followed.
How can we unring that bell? Appalachia has maintained it's own distinct culture since the dawn of the nation, despite the more "sophisticated" [
] Northeast's attempts to quash it. As has Massachusetts and NYC and Virginia and the South and the Ozarks etc. Once a culture is established, it's self perpetuating.
So the real question is...here we are, now what?
I Apologize for Slavery of Blacks
Slavery was not the only sin or was the only issue. Apologizing doesn't do it when you owe 10 trillion dollars in lost earnings and make excuses a to why you won't pay.
You've lost me.
There is a simple reality to the years of overt oppression of blacks in this country hat most do not understand. That is the economic reality of working with no pay from 1618 until 1863 by law, then the reduced income or lack of income caused by he national policy of Apartheid from the end if slavery until 1965 and that's a minimum. Experts have said bacs lost between 6.4-10 trillion dollars of earnings during slavery alone. This is what I am referring to OldLady. The post by Missourian is so inaccurate that it's a waste of time to read. Blacks have not developed any separate and distinct culture any more than any other ethnic group has in this country.
Certain whites want to us slavery to make excuses of what they aren't responsible for. But the issue is more than slavery and who somebody did not own. The issue extends into our lifetimes including right now.
I agree that the issue of slavery and 'apartheid' after certainly has extended into our lifetimes, including right now. I thought Missourian's post was spot on, in describing the problem, anyway. It is pretty rare for people to enter these threads with any understanding of why things are as they are.
Several trillion dollars would sure help the struggling communities that need it. That would go for any group caught in a poverty trap. They aren't all black. I don't know where you think that money is going to come from, or how it is going to be dispersed; my state gave large tracts of land back to the Native Americans, but they didn't have to buy it; they already owned it.
I think there is a separate and distinct subculture at this point, at least among black inner city communities. I think that you and some others here are feeding that on the one hand and then flipping to insist it doesn't exist. That makes no sense to me.
Well I KNOW you are wrong. And this is the problem with white people who think they can evaluate the black community better than blacks who live or work in those communities. You make the usual equivalence agument. No other group in America worked over 200 years for free. All other groups got paid for their labor and were able to build cmmunites that are now generations old, create businesses that gave people earning power and property ownership. If blacks had been able to earn the same amount of money as whites from 1618 until 1863 things would have been far different and would be today. There is no subculture in the black community. I think I would know better than you about this. .
Missourian is wrong for this very simple reason. Blacks fought to be integrated. If we had wanted to have this imaginary subculture it was already there for us and we could have remained segregated. Instead we went t courts, fought, died, got beat up and everything else so that we could be included in the overall American culture. What Missourian said was totally inaccurate based on history and modern fights being waged by blacks right now. You seem to have forgotten what the civil rights fights were for you to even consider any kind pf accuracy in the things Missourian said..
Blacks live with a 24 percent rate of poverty. So when you say backs are caught a poverty trap, you are missing 76 percent of the black peple in America.. We are saying that if not for white racism the rate pf poverty in our communities would be far lower. The other groups are in poverty because they got underpaid. And that's wrong. The history of blacks we that w got NO PAY, then underpaid and still are not equally paid. Yet you try making all these things the same and that's the standard mistake many whites choose to make. I am .black, and I live as part of the black culture. I get really tired and am running low on patience with whites who think they can tell me about the culture and community I exist in and live in everyday. We feed nothing. There is no such subculture and the reason why we don't make sense to you is that you have chosen to believe a made up set of circumstances that do not exist.
