CatBus

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

Confederate statues are, to me, more akin to statues of Timothy McVeigh than Washington or Jefferson.

I am not sure it is valid to compare Confederates to the likes of Timothy McVeigh. A lot of people boil the Confederacy down to slavery and racism. I am willing to bet the truth is a bit more complicated.

People retroactively apply all sorts of alternate intentions on the Confederates. Fortunately, the Confederates documented their intentions when they wrote their various Causes for Secession. Slavery and racism were right there in black and white: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world”. “Fighting for southern hospitality and the right to sip sweet tea under the willow oaks” didn’t make the cut. South Carolina even included language explicitly opposing the principle of states’ rights (which is the one thing most commonly retroactively misattributed to the Confederate cause). Not a lot of scholars think the Confederates weren’t truthful when they wrote down their causes for secession, but I suppose the argument’s been made.

But all that is a little beside the point, since the statues were put up long after the Confederates were defeated, during the reign of terror (End of Reconstruction to Civil Rights Act), when Confederate identity was already undergoing changes, and was less about slavery specifically and more about white supremacy in general.

McVeigh isn’t a perfect analog for the Confederates, he’s just the best I could come up with. But the primary difference is he had a much lower body count.

Warbler said:

As for Washington and Jefferson, it would not surprise me if some wish to tear down their statues. They were slave owners. I’m sure some view them as nothing but slave owning racists.

Sure, that’s a view of it. A distinction most make, though, is that neither Washington nor Jefferson were so married to the idea of slavery that they were willing to murder US soldiers over it–or if they were, they never actually had the opportunity to prove it. Even Lee’s “the reluctant traitor” image doesn’t wash that part clean. Washington and Jefferson statues also generally were not placed around the nation as part of a broader effort to intimidate the local population into submission (i.e. lynching and the whole hundred-year reign of terror thing), which is why we have the Confederate ones in the first place. It’s more important to me to look at why the statue is there than who the statue is of, if that makes sense.

Confederate statues are, to me, more akin to statues of Timothy McVeigh than Washington or Jefferson. It’s no coincidence that many of the people at this march defending the Confederate statues were also McVeigh admirers–and not particular admirers of Washington or Jefferson.

Season’s Sprinklings Everyone!

Warbler said:

yhwx said:

God damn it. We had him then we lost him.

Or we never really had him in the first place.

?

There was a lot of wishful thinking that “this time for sure!” Trump would see how awful Nazis were and stop supporting them. But instead he dithered for a bit, released a late and mild statement condemning white supremacists, but continued to employ the ones on his staff. But apparently that was too extremist for Trump, so he walked back the statement part, and echoed some white supremacist talking points while he was at it.

SilverWook said:

When has anyone ever got into trouble prematurely blaming Nazis?

I called the 1990’s. I want my Godwin’s Law back.

Looks like Nigel Krofta, a Ridgeville, South Carolina Nazi, is out of a job. I am having a pity party right now, Nigel.

And I’ve been around white supremacists before, but one thing I never got was the haircuts. Okay, shaved heads we get, fine, that’s a thing. But what about the strange topiary disaster mop jobs? Is it some sort of a macho statement that you’re manly enough to be comfortable letting your mom cut your hair? Like that guy in Holland. Nazis and weird hair. I just don’t get it.

In the interest of law & order and fair & balanced and all that is right, I hope these people get a stiff fine for littering. Some poor county employee’s got to take all that trash to the dump.

DominicCobb said:

While mistakes being made are unfortunately possible (or even likely), exposing these scumbags for who they are is still an absolutely worthy effort.

Daniel Borden, one of the attackers who beat the man with a pipe in the OTHER white supremacist attack in Charlottesville, has also now been identified.

And this one is going to prison! I only hope he’ll rat more people out for a lighter sentence (and then not get one).

Jeebus said:

CatBus said:

This is interesting.

When you’re marching around in public as part of a hate group, people can widely distribute photos of you and ID you via crowdsourcing. First off, a caution–be damned sure about someone’s identity before you tag them with something like this, and secondly, if you actually can positively identify any of these white supremacists, please do. They wanted to tell the whole world what they thought, so it seems proper that the parts of the world closest to them shouldn’t be left out of knowing what they think.

I don’t know what’s more precious–that Cole White lost his job at Top Dog, LLC (ohh, so sorry, it turns out “assclown” is not a legally protected class!), or that Peter Cvjetanovic is now making the media rounds saying “that’s not me in those super-clear photos!” (when it definitely is – it reminds me of when Richard Spencer recently denied he was Richard Spencer because he was too delicate of a snowflake to cope with being disliked in public). It’s like there’s consequences or something. I wonder if he’s also going to deny that’s him in those (not rally-related) photos with US Senator Dean Heller, or vice-versa.

More consequences (preferably law-enforcement-style consequences, but I’m not picky) are needed to make sure this shit gets shut down right now. Or at least make the Klansmen have to wear their goofy hoods again.

Yeah, get those Nazis! Fuck 'em, and what are the chances the angry mob of losers internet detectives get the wrong person? Next to none, I’m sure. Oh shit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/charlottesville-doxxing.html

Hmm, I’m suddenly reminded of /pol/'s mad attempts to find the person who committed the vehicular terror attack that day, only to find the wrong guy.

I wish my warning wasn’t warranted, but thanks for the sad news that it definitely was.

yhwx said:

http://originaltrilogy.com/user/TVs-Frink/id/6930

You’ll have to pry Secret Agent Frink from my cold, dead imagination.

Hey, where’s Frink?

[Cut to a scene with Frink in secret agent garb opening a vault door under a doghouse]

yhwx said:

What are we going to do about it? Redistribute the wealth?

We do that anyway. All taxation redistributes wealth, maybe not with a social engineering intent, but it redistributes it nonetheless. Even the complete lack of taxation in a market economy redistributes wealth. The only question regarding redistribution is how do you want it done, because it’s going to happen regardless.

CatBus said:

As long as Trump’s approval stays above ~32%, they keep the Senate–with no real risk of losing it until 2022.

About two more percentage points until the Senate wakes up and remembers it has a job to do. Two very difficult percentage points – core supporters don’t change their minds easily.

The fact that there are no easy answers doesn’t mean there’s not a problem. It sounds like we actually completely agree on the nature of the problem. You’ve proposed some solutions, but frankly I don’t think they’re very good, nor do I think you really want to implement them, so I don’t see much point in arguing positions nobody supports.

There are people who hunt down ill-gotten gains, passed through generations, and make attempts at some sort of restorative justice. They’re Nazi hunters. The records were better then, and not as much time has passed, so it can and is done. Lots of stories where perfectly innocent Germans hand back stolen paintings they got from their Nazi relatives, and so on. You very correctly point out that money has no label on it saying “I was earned unjustly” – and certainly much of the ill-gotten gains have been diluted to the point where they cannot be reclaimed. But as the Nazi hunters have taught us, sometimes the wealth follows a straight enough line to follow. Not all of the wealth, not even a fraction of the wealth. But if it does, I don’t have a problem following the line.

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

Well yeah, people are allowed to decide who gets their stuff when they die. So what?

Well, I have lots of opinions on this matter, but the one most topical is this: if you have a time, 50 years ago when redlining was legal, and a time 100 years ago when murder was tolerated and even encouraged in the form of lynching, and 150 years ago when slavery was legal, that is a lot of time to build up a pretty substantial reservoir of unearned, unfair, unjustified advantage. And if you have a system that allows those ill-gotten gains to legally be transferred people living in the present even though the means used to accumulate that wealth is no longer legal… well, you’ve got a problem.

I think it is wrong to simply label everything that white people have today as ill-gotten.

Me too, which is why I so carefully tagged only those gains made via slavery, etc as ill-gotten, though they are substantial. I think this moots the rest of your questions, so I’ll leave it at that.

Would you agree that wealth earned from slavery is ill-gotten wealth? If so, we’re pretty much in agreement.

Warbler said:

Well yeah, people are allowed to decide who gets their stuff when they die. So what?

Well, I have lots of opinions on this matter, but the one most topical is this: if you have a time, 50 years ago when redlining was legal, and a time 100 years ago when murder was tolerated and even encouraged in the form of lynching, and 150 years ago when slavery was legal, that is a lot of time to build up a pretty substantial reservoir of unearned, unfair, unjustified advantage. And if you have a system that allows those ill-gotten gains to legally be transferred people living in the present even though the means used to accumulate that wealth is no longer legal… well, you’ve got a problem.

There is no single solution to this problem. However, we are living with the consequences of not solving it.

Warbler said:

If you want something nice, you have to earn enough money and buy it. We don’t give mansions away for free.

In our system, you don’t have to earn any money at all to get what you want, due to a thing called inheritance. We do indeed give away mansions for free. After being born a multi-millionaire, you can spend your life pissing it away like Trump (he’d actually be much richer today if he’d just invested the wealth he had as an infant in a diversified fund and spent his life playing golf), or you can be born a multi-millionaire and build on it like Bill Gates. But would you have done as well had you not had multiple millions of dollars when you were still in diapers?

Warbler said:

If I shuffle a non-trick deck of cards and pick four cards at random, is there any guarantee that I will get 1 card of each suit?

No, but if you do it a hundred times and get a minimum of three diamonds every time, your initial assessment that it’s a non-trick deck is wrong.

CatBus said:

This is interesting.

When you’re marching around in public as part of a hate group, people can widely distribute photos of you and ID you via crowdsourcing. First off, a caution–be damned sure about someone’s identity before you tag them with something like this, and secondly, if you actually can positively identify any of these white supremacists, please do. They wanted to tell the whole world what they thought, so it seems proper that the parts of the world closest to them shouldn’t be left out of knowing what they think.

I don’t know what’s more precious–that Cole White lost his job at Top Dog, LLC (ohh, so sorry, it turns out “assclown” is not a legally protected class!), or that Peter Cvjetanovic is now making the media rounds saying “that’s not me in those super-clear photos!” (when it definitely is – it reminds me of when Richard Spencer recently denied he was Richard Spencer because he was too delicate of a snowflake to cope with being disliked in public). It’s like there’s consequences or something. I wonder if he’s also going to deny that’s him in those (not rally-related) photos with US Senator Dean Heller, or vice-versa.

More consequences (preferably law-enforcement-style consequences, but I’m not picky) are needed to make sure this shit gets shut down right now. Or at least make the Klansmen have to wear their goofy hoods again.

It was all Schadenfreude until this. Bravo to Pearce Tefft for your courage in publicly disowning your son – may your family heal soon.

But please keep identifying these dangerous people.

Meanwhile, the leader of the free world has denounced white supremacists.

Re: the lunchroom scenario – it was more than just the division, though, it was the hierarchy. Due to the layout of the room, generally desirable seats were at one end (sunlight, view), and the gradation from the desirable to undesirable seating followed a racial pattern. Racial division wouldn’t matter as much if “separate but equal” was nonfiction.

yhwx said:

CatBus said:

And don’t even get started with the lunchroom. That was discouraging.

Do tell.

It was terrible. You know how I know about 30% of my school was comprised of minorities when only about four of them were ever in any of my classes? Because an aerial view of the lunchroom would easily have shown that a 30% contiguous chunk of it was occupied by minorites, while another 70% contiguous chunk was entirely white kids. Pretty much zero mixing except at the sparsely-occupied border tables (read: poor white kids like my friends, who, I’ll be honest, were frequently racist as shit, but they didn’t have the money to sit elsewhere). The side of the lunchroom with the outdoor view? White (and rich). Now this was probably exaggerated by “you sit by your classroom friends and the classrooms are segregated, so of course the lunchroom is segregated” but shit. Every single day it’s right there in the open for everyone to see, and every single day it’s normal. Late eighties, Ohio.

Still beats the other district I attended which had the only black family move in while my sister was in high school. They got a cross burned in their yard, and didn’t stay.

Not a fan of the racial climate in the Buckeye State. I was surprised when Trump won overall, but not one bit surprised he took Ohio.

Warbler said:

I pretty sure that housing segregation is not allowed under the civil rights act. People have the right to live where they want regardless of skin color, assuming they can afford to live in said place.

And yet there it is, no longer de jure but still very much de facto. Admittedly many of these homeowners bought their homes back when redlining was legal, or inherited it from their parents who bought it under segregated circumstances. Hell, I’ve got a covenant on my property from 1954 that I believe literally says no “negroes or yellow races” can live on the property, except as servants. Sure it’s unenforceable now, but it was normal then. But I’d like to get it removed in case the legal landscape changes and it’s enforceable again (it’s hard to remove because the covenant was applied to a vast swath of land, not just my property).

again school segregation is unconstitutional.

If 100% of the people living in your district are of a certain race, their schools inherit their racial segregation from the housing segregation, now that busing is pretty much over. De jure or de facto, amounts to the same thing.

And that’s not even considering places like where I went to school, where the school was integrated, but the individual classrooms were not.

? Please explain. Also how is this not sued out of existence?

About 30% of my school was racial minorities. But there were “tracks”: remedial, general, college prep, International Baccalaureate. It wasn’t segregated directly by race, but you could walk into an I.B. classroom and be blinded by the whiteness. Segregation by racial proxies (teacher recommendations were a big factor, and that could easily have a strong bias), failing to address other racial inequities, gets you the same results. A minority could get into the higher tracks, and they occasionally did, but they often outclassed the whole school, when simply being pretty bright was enough for the rest.

And don’t even get started with the lunchroom. That was discouraging.

This is interesting.

When you’re marching around in public as part of a hate group, people can widely distribute photos of you and ID you via crowdsourcing. First off, a caution–be damned sure about someone’s identity before you tag them with something like this, and secondly, if you actually can positively identify any of these white supremacists, please do. They wanted to tell the whole world what they thought, so it seems proper that the parts of the world closest to them shouldn’t be left out of knowing what they think.

I don’t know what’s more precious–that Cole White lost his job at Top Dog, LLC (ohh, so sorry, it turns out “assclown” is not a legally protected class!), or that Peter Cvjetanovic is now making the media rounds saying “that’s not me in those super-clear photos!” (when it definitely is – it reminds me of when Richard Spencer recently denied he was Richard Spencer because he was too delicate of a snowflake to cope with being disliked in public). It’s like there’s consequences or something. I wonder if he’s also going to deny that’s him in those (not rally-related) photos with US Senator Dean Heller, or vice-versa.

More consequences (preferably law-enforcement-style consequences, but I’m not picky) are needed to make sure this shit gets shut down right now. Or at least make the Klansmen have to wear their goofy hoods again.

Warbler said:

public school segregation is unconstitutional. As for white kids going to private schools, I am not sure what can be done about that. This is America, if you have enough money amd want to send your kids to private school, you can.

Sure, but you can make sure public schools have the resources to provide an adequate education. The trick is that wherever most of the white kids go to private schools, the (disproportionately minority) public school system can, and does, go to hell from lack of funding.

Also, my experience is that school segregation happens everywhere as a function of housing segregation, which is also a serious issue. But in some places, the school segregation is out of proportion with the housing segregation, which is what I was talking about. And that’s not even considering places like where I went to school, where the school was integrated, but the individual classrooms were not.

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

DominicCobb said:

I assume the meaning is that even Michelle Obama, descendant of slaves, was benefiting from racism insofar as the house she was living in was built by slaves.

Maybe, but what you want to do? Knock down a perfectly usable White House and waste money building a new one, just so we can say the President no longer lives in a house built by slaves? The White House was built by slaves. It was wrong, it was racist, it was a crime. But it is too late to reverse it. The While House is already built. Nothing can undo the fact that it was built by slaves. The slaves that built it are long dead, there is no way to help them, there is nothing to do that will do any of them any good. Make sure it is remembered how the White House was built, build a monument to the slave that built there. Put up a plaque to remember it. But it is done and can’t be undone unless someone invents a time machine.

The literal level isn’t where the useful discussion is. It’s not about a physical structure per se, it’s about a nation. It’s not about living in a house per se, it’s about benefiting from past injustice. So – to refrain from the original post, what is she (and what are we) going to do about that?

I don’t know that anything can be done. Unless you have a time machine, you can’t change the past(even if you did have one, there are a whole slew of problems with trying to alter history).

You’re still looking at it very literally. The slavery happened and can’t be undone. The lynching and redlining happened and can’t be undone. But the current injustices that are derived from these things? Those can be undone. The trouble is that the current injustices are much more subtle, institutional things, and perpetuated by largely well-meaning people with no racial animus. Nevertheless that’s our responsibility, to wipe out the legacy of slavery, since the slavery itself was already wiped out by previous generations.

What do you mean by “current injustices that are derived from these things?” How do you wipe out the legacy of slavery?

Dang, stealth edit fail. Your questions about job interviews are a great example about how people can do this. Public school funding equality issues are another (many southern schools are still segregated, for the most part – the white kids just switched to private schools). Sentencing/prison reform. Anywhere you look really, there’s something to be done. The legacy of slavery is everywhere. In other words, embrace the dark side and become a SJW 😉