Multi-Billionaire Oprah Whines About Sexism & Income Inequality At DNC

[Rhea]

So, to sum up - a policy that directed 10% of spending to be spent on 11.5% of the population makes the other 88.5% of the population who is receiving 90% of the spending into “Approved Racial Discrimination Targets”

Your math is not mathing, and so your made up definition is ridiculous. Those poor, unfortunate, racially targeted recipients of 90% of the spending!!

You're committing exactly the sin he's talking about!

1) This is blatant discrimination in favor of minority-owned businesses. Note the timeframe--not that long after the civil rights era. The percentage of businesses that were minority owned before the civil rights era was quite clearly less than their percentage in the population. This isn't going to magically change overnight when the civil rights measures were passed. Longstanding companies will likely be white owned, even in a system where you somehow waved a magic wand and removed all lingering effects you would still only expect 11.5% of the new businesses to be minority owned. Thus this is a big handout to the existing minority owned businesses and a slap in the face to everyone else.

As one would expect, a person against equity will shout from the rooftops, with exclaimation points, that no white business owner ever got any hand up from being white.

Except they did. They (white business owners) got lower loan rates than black entrepreneurs at that time, not to mention where they we able to buy or lease space. They got their handout ALREADY, and then started complaining when someone else was let into the club. Loren says this as if the white business owners of the 1970s were not already getting somehing that was being withheld from the Black business owners (or propsective business owners).

The reason why the Black business owners were fewer than their population percent was BECAUSE the white business owners were getting “handouts” off the backs of the Black business owners and prospective business owners.

The whole point of the equalizing law was BECAUSE barriers were being put in front of Black people and not white people, resulting in an advantage to the white business owners.

But Loren would like for us to beleive that there was less presence of Black-owned business for some other reason than they were being deliberately and systematically held back while things were made easier for white business owners. Lower loan rates and lease options being just two obvious of the hundreds of ways the system kept Black Americans from gaining a foothold in the economy.

Loren would like us to believe Black business owners deserved for some reason, to be only 3.3% of businesses, and that the white business owners didn’t ever enjoy an advantage from that artificial supression of competition.

But Loren doesn’t believe there was ever an artificial suppression of competion against white owned businesses, nor an artificial suppression of opportunity for Black Americans - in any way. That any artifical suppression never once manifested as a handout to white Americans.

2) The rest of the money businesses would bid normally one. No reason that process would not include minority businesses. Thus your 90% of the spending claim is pure fiction.

You are claiming that it was fiction that Black borrowers, renters, business people were excluded systematically from business using a variety of techniques and tactics? You really trying to say that Black business owners had any meaningful bite at the other 90%?

Bless your heart, Loren.

You are providing example A for why we are upset. You are endorsing blatant discrimination as fair and saying we are sinners for being white males.

“Sinner”? That’s pretty obviously made up.
Why would you make up a false claim like that? Doesn’t your argument have any strength? You need to fabricate a slur? A ridiculously religious one, at that?

I haven't discriminated, why are you punishing me?

Loren, with all the sincerity in the world, sweetie, your posting history on this topic does NOT build confidence that you have never discriminated.

You know who says “I’ve never discriminated”? People who discriminate without even thinking.

Original sin is a Christian idea, I've never been a Christian. And when people do evil while thinking they are doing good they tend to be far more evil than those who know they are doing evil.

Hyperbolic straw man, much?

Just because the KKKers don't like something doesn't automatically make it a good thing. The world isn't divided into those who discriminate for whites and those who discriminate against whites, there are a large number of us who are neither. But because we reject discriminating against whites you think we are for discriminating for whites. No, a pox upon both houses!

By rejecting methods to bring equality, you favor the status quo.
Black Americans have been free of slavery for 150 years. If discrimination is able to “go away” without deliberate effort to fix the system and never put out a hand to lift up those who were pushed down previously, it would be done by now.

It’s not.

Ask yourself why.

Ask yourself why you are utterly unwilling to step on the accelerator. Ask yourself why you think you can cripple a population and then yell at them for not running. Ask yourself why you think a society can steal generational wealth, give it to your grandparents and mine, and then pretend that our position was all our own effort and it’s stealing to give a small amount of it back to the grandchildren of the people from whom it was stolen.

It’s not guilt. It’s not “sin”.

I don’t identify with the people who cheerfully redlined and overcharged. So I have NO guilt, and no “original sin” (LOL) about joining the responsibility of correcting a problem. Maybe you have some unresolved issues to deal with. For me it’s “yeah let’s make sure we get to equality fast!” And when you help a disadvantaged community, all communities benefit.

If you feel unrequitedly mine-mine-mine about it, let’s make the programs funded by the ultra-rich, who are the major beneficiaries.

The problem is you feel that anyone who doesn't support your position is supporting the white-superior position. You do not accept the existence of a middle that takes a race-neutral position and rejects discrimination in either direction.

Your rejection of “discrimination in either direction” is a cover for letting the discrimination endure for as long as you can get away with.

Your claim suggests all this was gone by 1870. Or 1920. Or 1940. Or 1960.
But it’s not gone, and the fact is that people who were not even born before the civil war are still working to maintain that discrimination. And you support that.

 

[pood]

I grew up in white suburban Detroit, where everyone’s greatest fear was that black people would move in because, “there go the property values!”

I don’t know what everyone, including most members of my own family, were worried about. Didn’t they know about redlining?

Then there was the deal where whites began leaving Detroit proper because, you know, black people lived there. A lot of them moved in during the Great Depression and World War II to seek factory work. White flight began after the war and took most of the auto industry and the tax base with it, and because of, you know, REDLINING, black people were omitted form the suburbs. So inner city Detroit went economically downhill swiftly but blacks could not escape. The cherry on the top of this big fat white vanilla ice cream sundae of super duper racism was that blacks were then blamed for their own poor economic condition.

That’s how it works in the real world, but not Loren’s world I guess.

 

[Bomb#20]

1. I'll coin a new term. For decades white people have been Approved Racial Discrimination Targets Of Government. (See, for example, Fullilove v. Klutznick

Let’s look that up

Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that the U.S. Congress could constitutionally use its spending power to remedy the effects of past discrimination. The case arose as a suit against the enforcement of provisions in a 1977 spending bill that required 10% of federal funds going towards public works programs to go to minority-owned companies.

So, to sum up - a policy that directed 10% of spending to be spent on 11.5% of the population makes the other 88.5% of the population who is receiving 90% of the spending into “Approved Racial Discrimination Targets”

Your math is not mathing, and so your made up definition is ridiculous. Those poor, unfortunate, racially targeted recipients of 90% of the spending!!

You're pretty much repeating your argument from post #326, so I might as well address that.

We probably all experience racial or sexual prejudice in some form or another. But it is mostly the young white men trying to get a college degree who do experience most of the prejudice these days.

Young Asian men get it worse.

Oh, wait, needs more context”

That's so patently wrong it shouldn't need to be explained, but apparently it does. You are completely misrepresenting your opponents' arguments. I don't think you're doing it deliberately. You appear to be doing it because your commitment to your religious belief is putting blinders on you, crippling your reading comprehension.

The people you have assigned the "Help! We're being oppressed! So are we!" sentiment to are white and Asian CEOs, legislators, surgeons and physicians. Your graphic is perfectly clear on that point. But those are not the people your opponents claim are victims of racial discrimination. They are not talking about white and Asian CEOs, legislators, surgeons and physicians. Your opponents are talking about those white or Asian workers and students who never get promoted to upper management and never get admitted to law school and medical school, because some gate-keeper with the authority to decide who gets promoted or who gets admitted held their race against them when making that decision, and was authorized by government to do so, because they were approved racial discrimination targets, and hence those workers and students did not have an opportunity to become CEOs, legislators, surgeons and physicians. And it should not need to be explained, but it apparently does, that those who are CEOs, legislators, surgeons and physicians, and those who are not CEOs, legislators, surgeons and physicians, are not the same people! This is not rocket science. Your opponents are arguing that a bunch of people who are not CEOs, legislators, surgeons and physicians were oppressed, and you are ridiculing that perfectly arguable opinion by falsely making it out to be the patently ridiculous opinion that a bunch of entirely different people who are CEOs, legislators, surgeons and physicians were oppressed. That is a completely illogical answer to their argument.

Why would you so grossly mischaracterize their argument? Only one explanation makes sense: you are apparently falling prey to progressivism teaching its infectees to treat white and Asian people not as individuals, but as interchangeable parts, as mere representatives of their respective races. You are talking as though when a worker or student is denied an opportunity to prove himself worthy of high rank, he can't have been oppressed as long as some other worker or student of the same race will be there to represent him in the halls of high rank. Legislators, possibly. But CEOs, surgeons and physicians, not so much. Corner offices and operating theaters and doctors' offices are not a bloody legislature! No races can be over-represented or under-represented there, because nobody is represented there. It is not the job of CEOs or surgeons or physicians to represent anyone.

Which brings us back to your present post...

So, to sum up - a policy that directed 10% of spending to be spent on 11.5% of the population makes the other 88.5% of the population who is receiving 90% of the spending into “Approved Racial Discrimination Targets”

Your math is not mathing, and so your made up definition is ridiculous. Those poor, unfortunate, racially targeted recipients of 90% of the spending!!

Your reading comprehension is not comprehending and your characterization of your opponents is ridiculous. The people who are poor and unfortunate because they were racially targeted are not the recipients of 90% of the spending. They are the recipients of 0% of the spending. The mere circumstance that the actual recipients of 90% of the spending are the same color as they are has no mystical power to make them the recipients of anything. You can only believe your ridiculous misrepresentation is truthful by buying into tribalism -- a tribalism that gets off on telling itself how "progressive" it is. It isn't. It's regressive. People are not interchangeable parts.

 

[Bomb#20]

What they are not interested in is propping up a narrative that feeds the grievances of white men who absolutely resent no longer being first in line for all good things.

You know that's an ad hominem argument, don't you, and racist to boot?

It’s neither an argument, nor is it ad hom, nor is it racist.

This is all nonsensical, since no one is treating white men as second-class citizens. ...

Nobody owns the term "second-class citizen", so you'll define it as you please and debates over who is or isn't treated as one will go nowhere. So let's break this down into two parts.

1. I'll coin a new term. For decades white people have been Approved Racial Discrimination Targets Of Government. (See, for example, Fullilove v. Klutznick, US v. Paradise, Metro Broadcasting v. FCC). Let us call such people "ardtogs". ...

All this blathering is irrelevant because No. 1, in which you needlessly coin a new term, is false.

Any time you want to let up on the automatic gainsaying of anything I say and cough up a connected series of statements intended to establish a definite proposition, I'm all ears.

Also, it’s “Toni,” not “Tony.”

Hey, you said something you have a reason to think is true! Well done!

 

[pood]

Any time you want to let up on the automatic gainsaying of anything I say and cough up a connected series of statements intended to establish a definite proposition, I'm all ears.

There’s no need for me to present an argument against obvious blather. There are no “ardtogs.”

 

[Bomb#20]

You're committing exactly the sin he's talking about!

1) This is blatant discrimination in favor of minority-owned businesses. ...

As one would expect, a person against equity will shout from the rooftops, with exclaimation points, that no white business owner ever got any hand up from being white.

Well then, since Loren didn't say any such thing, can we take it as read that you agree there's no evidence Loren is against equity?

Except they did. They (white business owners) got lower loan rates than black entrepreneurs at that time, not to mention where they we able to buy or lease space. They got their handout ALREADY, and then started complaining when someone else was let into the club. Loren says this as if the white business owners of the 1970s were not already getting somehing that was being withheld from the Black business owners (or propsective business owners).

The reason why the Black business owners were fewer than their population percent was BECAUSE the white business owners were getting “handouts” off the backs of the Black business owners and prospective business owners.

The whole point of the equalizing law was BECAUSE barriers were being put in front of Black people and not white people, resulting in an advantage to the white business owners.

Strong in this one, the zero-sum-game thinking is. You appear to be assuming holding down a black business owner benefits all white business owners, as opposed to harming everyone, or benefitting only certain particular white business owners while harming other white business owners. Show your work.

Loren would like us to believe Black business owners deserved for some reason, to be only 3.3% of businesses

Quote him.

, and that the white business owners didn’t ever enjoy an advantage from that artificial supression of competition.

Which white business owners? Oh, wait, you said which: "the". It appears you'd like us to believe "no white business owner ever" suffered a disadvantage from that artificial suppression of customers, artificial suppression of suppliers, artificial suppression of the tax base, artificial suppression of overall economic growth by inefficient use of human resources, and artificial suppression of the myriad positive externalities a business that prospers by finding a need and filling it spreads into its environment.

Just because the KKKers don't like something doesn't automatically make it a good thing. The world isn't divided into those who discriminate for whites and those who discriminate against whites, there are a large number of us who are neither. But because we reject discriminating against whites you think we are for discriminating for whites. No, a pox upon both houses!

By rejecting methods to bring equality, you favor the status quo.

So your argument is that since he rejects one particular method to bring equality he must reject all methods. That is a Hasty Generalization Fallacy.

You are providing example A for why we are upset. You are endorsing blatant discrimination as fair and saying we are sinners for being white males.

“Sinner”? That’s pretty obviously made up.
Why would you make up a false claim like that? Doesn’t your argument have any strength? You need to fabricate a slur? A ridiculously religious one, at that?

Golly gee, how could he possibly think such a thing of you?

Ask yourself why you think you can cripple a population and then yell at them for not running.

Hey, maybe it's because you trump up accusations of Loren being one of the people who crippled the population, on no evidence other than that he's white. If that isn't saying he's a sinner for being white, it's operationally indistinguishable from it. Take some bloody responsibility for your own rhetoric.

For me it’s “yeah let’s make sure we get to equality fast!” And when you help a disadvantaged community, all communities benefit.

Hey, look at that! "When you help a disadvantaged community, all communities benefit", she says. Apparently, not only when you help a disadvantaged community, all communities benefit, it turns out you know that when you help a disadvantaged community, all communities benefit. So, since you already know it, repeat it to yourself enough times that you internalize it, and then go tell it to the Rhea who wrote all that zero-sum-game thinking earlier in your post. When you help a disadvantaged community, all communities benefit. That is inconsistent with your assumption that when somebody hurts a black business owner, it results "in an advantage to the white business owners".

 

[Bomb#20]

What they are not interested in is propping up a narrative that feeds the grievances of white men who absolutely resent no longer being first in line for all good things.

You know that's an ad hominem argument, don't you, and racist to boot?

An observation is not an argument. Since you have not demonstrated that observation exhibits antagonism or prejudice against white men, it is not clear how anyone could know that it is racist.

... [Toni] is smearing white men who don't want to be second-class citizens as wanting everyone else to be a second-class citizen. She does not have evidence that they do -- it's an illogical inference for the same reason "I don't owe you money." does not imply "You owe me money.". It is prejudiced against white men because wanting everyone else to be a second-class citizen is a negative trait, and she is pre-judging a subset of white men as having that negative trait, without evidence against them, based only on color, sex, and uppity refusal to accept second-class citizen status.

And that's racist because she would not smear black men who who don't want to be second-class citizens as wanting everyone else to be a second-class citizen. ...

You have no evidence to support any of your inferences. I have personally heard some white men express their resentment of no longer being first in line. Hence, that subset of white men is not being judged - it is an accurate representation of their resentment.

In the first place, those white men are not here to defend themselves.

Do you operate under the delusion that posters can only discuss the views of people who can actively defend those views?

Nope, and you don't have a reason to think I was implying anything of the sort. You can discuss anything you please. But you have a long track record of getting it wrong when you try to report others' views that you disagree with, so your readers have no reason to assume you're being accurate when you tell us what someone expressed to you.

Can you quote what those white men said that you interpret as "express their resentment of no longer being first in line"?......

Yes, I can quote them. I will go one better and quote them. One of those white men (one of my brothers) who said "Why is it that us white guys are no longer considered first"? I have heard "I have to hope some minority or girl doesn't apply so I have a chance".

There is no mind-reading involved.

See, this is what I'm on about. It would be enlightening if we could get your brother here to give us his own perspective on what he was expressing. "First" has two meanings: what we might call "inclusive first" and "exclusive first", analogous to "inclusive or" and "exclusive or". "Inclusive first" includes ties -- when two racers clock the same best time, both come in first and there are two winners. "Exclusive first" means there are no draws and only one winner, one who crosses the finish line before everyone else. Which "first" did your brother mean? We don't know. You appear to be taking for granted that he meant "exclusive first" -- that he was asking why us white guys are no longer considered before anyone else is considered. But your second quote, "I have to hope some minority or girl doesn't apply so I have a chance", suggests the "inclusive first" meaning -- that the speaker would be satisfied if minorities, girls, and white guys are all considered first -- if all have their qualifications looked at and compared in the first round of the selection process, as opposed to looking at minorities and girls in the first round and white guys only in the second round -- if there even is a second round, if the position hasn't already been filled before the speaker is even allowed a chance to compete for it.

When Toni wrote "white men who absolutely resent no longer being first in line", she evidently meant "exclusive first". You haven't given any reason for us to presume your brother didn't mean "inclusive first".

... Toni has not been presenting her characterizations as a representation of the views of the "some white men" that you personally heard, and personally interpreted as expressing resentment, and personally decided you could mind-read as to precisely what it was they resented. She has been presenting her characterizations as a representation of the views of other members of this forum, including Loren and me in particular. She has been presenting her characterizations as a representation of any white people who aren't on board with affirmative action. And she has been presenting her characterizations as a representation of white males at large:

Toni is presenting it as a representation of a portion of white males at large. But you keep being you with your malacious imputations.

I quoted her presenting it as a representation of white males in general, and you quoted it back to me. So give it a rest.

I’ve had this discussion many times. For white males, the fact that they are no longer first in line for all good things feels like prejudice to them. It’s not. It just feels bad to them to be treated closer to how everyone else is treated.

That's a racist, sexist stereotype.

How is it racist? To any rational disinterested reader who is even moderately fluent in the language, it does not exhibit any trace that white men are inferior or that Toni dislikes them.

Sure it does. She would not accuse black females who don't get to be the (exclusive) first in line of that feeling like prejudice to them. When everyone is treated the same -- all first when that's practical, or in random order or first-come-first-served when serialization is for some reason necessary -- she assumes this feels unprejudiced to others and prejudiced to white males. That being true would be a character defect in white males, a form of moral inferiority.

 

[pood]

I’ve had this discussion many times. For white males, the fact that they are no longer first in line for all good things feels like prejudice to them. It’s not. It just feels bad to them to be treated closer to how everyone else is treated.

That's a racist, sexist stereotype.

How is it racist? To any rational disinterested reader who is even moderately fluent in the language, it does not exhibit any trace that white men are inferior or that Toni dislikes them.

Sure it does.

Toni’s post is not racist. It is an observation. A lot of white people openly say this. In fact it seems to me in effect that YOU are saying it, even though you’d deny it. Of course not ALL white people feel this way, but a significant number do. Significant enough to put Trump in the White House at least once. Do you think disaffected whites have to decode his dog whistles? They are not even dog whistles, they are air raid sirens.

 

[Toni]

What they are not interested in is propping up a narrative that feeds the grievances of white men who absolutely resent no longer being first in line for all good things.

You know that's an ad hominem argument, don't you, and racist to boot?

An observation is not an argument. Since you have not demonstrated that observation exhibits antagonism or prejudice against white men, it is not clear how anyone could know that it is racist.

... [Toni] is smearing white men who don't want to be second-class citizens as wanting everyone else to be a second-class citizen. She does not have evidence that they do -- it's an illogical inference for the same reason "I don't owe you money." does not imply "You owe me money.". It is prejudiced against white men because wanting everyone else to be a second-class citizen is a negative trait, and she is pre-judging a subset of white men as having that negative trait, without evidence against them, based only on color, sex, and uppity refusal to accept second-class citizen status.

And that's racist because she would not smear black men who who don't want to be second-class citizens as wanting everyone else to be a second-class citizen. ...

You have no evidence to support any of your inferences. I have personally heard some white men express their resentment of no longer being first in line. Hence, that subset of white men is not being judged - it is an accurate representation of their resentment.

In the first place, those white men are not here to defend themselves.

Do you operate under the delusion that posters can only discuss the views of people who can actively defend those views?

Nope, and you don't have a reason to think I was implying anything of the sort. You can discuss anything you please. But you have a long track record of getting it wrong when you try to report others' views that you disagree with, so your readers have no reason to assume you're being accurate when you tell us what someone expressed to you.

Can you quote what those white men said that you interpret as "express their resentment of no longer being first in line"?......

Yes, I can quote them. I will go one better and quote them. One of those white men (one of my brothers) who said "Why is it that us white guys are no longer considered first"? I have heard "I have to hope some minority or girl doesn't apply so I have a chance".

There is no mind-reading involved.

See, this is what I'm on about. It would be enlightening if we could get your brother here to give us his own perspective on what he was expressing. "First" has two meanings: what we might call "inclusive first" and "exclusive first", analogous to "inclusive or" and "exclusive or". "Inclusive first" includes ties -- when two racers clock the same best time, both come in first and there are two winners. "Exclusive first" means there are no draws and only one winner, one who crosses the finish line before everyone else. Which "first" did your brother mean? We don't know. You appear to be taking for granted that he meant "exclusive first" -- that he was asking why us white guys are no longer considered before anyone else is considered. But your second quote, "I have to hope some minority or girl doesn't apply so I have a chance", suggests the "inclusive first" meaning -- that the speaker would be satisfied if minorities, girls, and white guys are all considered first -- if all have their qualifications looked at and compared in the first round of the selection process, as opposed to looking at minorities and girls in the first round and white guys only in the second round -- if there even is a second round, if the position hasn't already been filled before the speaker is even allowed a chance to compete for it.

When Toni wrote "white men who absolutely resent no longer being first in line", she evidently meant "exclusive first". You haven't given any reason for us to presume your brother didn't mean "inclusive first".

... Toni has not been presenting her characterizations as a representation of the views of the "some white men" that you personally heard, and personally interpreted as expressing resentment, and personally decided you could mind-read as to precisely what it was they resented. She has been presenting her characterizations as a representation of the views of other members of this forum, including Loren and me in particular. She has been presenting her characterizations as a representation of any white people who aren't on board with affirmative action. And she has been presenting her characterizations as a representation of white males at large:

Toni is presenting it as a representation of a portion of white males at large. But you keep being you with your malacious imputations.

I quoted her presenting it as a representation of white males in general, and you quoted it back to me. So give it a rest.

I’ve had this discussion many times. For white males, the fact that they are no longer first in line for all good things feels like prejudice to them. It’s not. It just feels bad to them to be treated closer to how everyone else is treated.

That's a racist, sexist stereotype.

How is it racist? To any rational disinterested reader who is even moderately fluent in the language, it does not exhibit any trace that white men are inferior or that Toni dislikes them.

Sure it does. She would not accuse black females who don't get to be the (exclusive) first in line of that feeling like prejudice to them. When everyone is treated the same -- all first when that's practical, or in random order or first-come-first-served when serialization is for some reason necessary -- she assumes this feels unprejudiced to others and prejudiced to white males. That being true would be a character defect in white males, a form of moral inferiority.

Thank you for mind reading and misrepresenting me.

Most of us have seen the movie when there’s a great football or basketball team with a star quarterback or center and everything is going along swimmingly until some new kid moves to town and it turns out he got game—a bit more than the star of the team. It is threatening to the star to have serious competition for the spot he figured he owned. And also to his cronies and maybe even to the coaches or AD or booster club. But the coach decides to give the new kid a shot, even though he ain’t from around these parts just to see what he’s got.

That’s not discrimination against the star. It’s not wrong to open up the position to others than the one who has held that spot, and his brothers and his daddy before him so he thinks it rightfully belongs to him.

Sure it’s quieter and safer to maintain the status quo but it’s not better for anyone, including the star.

Everybody needs to learn more than one position. Everyone needs to learn to share the ball, to support the team.

Sorry for the sports metaphor but I figured some people would understand it better if I brought it down to the high school level.

 

[laughing dog]

What they are not interested in is propping up a narrative that feeds the grievances of white men who absolutely resent no longer being first in line for all good things.

You know that's an ad hominem argument, don't you, and racist to boot?

An observation is not an argument. Since you have not demonstrated that observation exhibits antagonism or prejudice against white men, it is not clear how anyone could know that it is racist.

... [Toni] is smearing white men who don't want to be second-class citizens as wanting everyone else to be a second-class citizen. She does not have evidence that they do -- it's an illogical inference for the same reason "I don't owe you money." does not imply "You owe me money.". It is prejudiced against white men because wanting everyone else to be a second-class citizen is a negative trait, and she is pre-judging a subset of white men as having that negative trait, without evidence against them, based only on color, sex, and uppity refusal to accept second-class citizen status.

And that's racist because she would not smear black men who who don't want to be second-class citizens as wanting everyone else to be a second-class citizen. ...

You have no evidence to support any of your inferences. I have personally heard some white men express their resentment of no longer being first in line. Hence, that subset of white men is not being judged - it is an accurate representation of their resentment.

In the first place, those white men are not here to defend themselves.

Do you operate under the delusion that posters can only discuss the views of people who can actively defend those views?

Nope, and you don't have a reason to think I was implying anything of the sort. You can discuss anything you please. But you have a long track record of getting it wrong when you try to report others' views that you disagree with, so your readers have no reason to assume you're being accurate when you tell us what someone expressed to you.

Can you quote what those white men said that you interpret as "express their resentment of no longer being first in line"?......

Yes, I can quote them. I will go one better and quote them. One of those white men (one of my brothers) who said "Why is it that us white guys are no longer considered first"? I have heard "I have to hope some minority or girl doesn't apply so I have a chance".

There is no mind-reading involved.

See, this is what I'm on about. It would be enlightening if we could get your brother here to give us his own perspective on what he was expressing. "First" has two meanings: what we might call "inclusive first" and "exclusive first", analogous to "inclusive or" and "exclusive or". "Inclusive first" includes ties -- when two racers clock the same best time, both come in first and there are two winners. "Exclusive first" means there are no draws and only one winner, one who crosses the finish line before everyone else. Which "first" did your brother mean? We don't know. You appear to be taking for granted that he meant "exclusive first" -- that he was asking why us white guys are no longer considered before anyone else is considered. But your second quote, "I have to hope some minority or girl doesn't apply so I have a chance", suggests the "inclusive first" meaning -- that the speaker would be satisfied if minorities, girls, and white guys are all considered first -- if all have their qualifications looked at and compared in the first round of the selection process, as opposed to looking at minorities and girls in the first round and white guys only in the second round -- if there even is a second round, if the position hasn't already been filled before the speaker is even allowed a chance to compete for it.

When Toni wrote "white men who absolutely resent no longer being first in line", she evidently meant "exclusive first". You haven't given any reason for us to presume your brother didn't mean "inclusive first".

... Toni has not been presenting her characterizations as a representation of the views of the "some white men" that you personally heard, and personally interpreted as expressing resentment, and personally decided you could mind-read as to precisely what it was they resented. She has been presenting her characterizations as a representation of the views of other members of this forum, including Loren and me in particular. She has been presenting her characterizations as a representation of any white people who aren't on board with affirmative action. And she has been presenting her characterizations as a representation of white males at large:

Toni is presenting it as a representation of a portion of white males at large. But you keep being you with your malacious imputations.

I quoted her presenting it as a representation of white males in general, and you quoted it back to me. So give it a rest.

I’ve had this discussion many times. For white males, the fact that they are no longer first in line for all good things feels like prejudice to them. It’s not. It just feels bad to them to be treated closer to how everyone else is treated.

That's a racist, sexist stereotype.

How is it racist? To any rational disinterested reader who is even moderately fluent in the language, it does not exhibit any trace that white men are inferior or that Toni dislikes them.

Sure it does. She would not accuse black females who don't get to be the (exclusive) first in line of that feeling like prejudice to them. When everyone is treated the same -- all first when that's practical, or in random order or first-come-first-served when serialization is for some reason necessary -- she assumes this feels unprejudiced to others and prejudiced to white males. That being true would be a character defect in white males, a form of moral inferiority.

None of that makes sense. First, whatever anyone might say about those of another race does not determine whether a statement is racist. Describing that black people have brown skin is an observation. No rational person would say it is racist because I would not describe white people as having brown skin.

Second, your example of black women is bizarre because in US history, black women are used to not being first in line.

Third, both plain literate reading of Toni’s statement and her repeated explanations that it means “some” not “all”. So your argument is founded in a false premise.

From what I can tell, it seems to me that you misinterpreted Toni’s observation, took umbrage and launched a baseless argument that slander’s Toni.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So, to sum up - a policy that directed 10% of spending to be spent on 11.5% of the population makes the other 88.5% of the population who is receiving 90% of the spending into “Approved Racial Discrimination Targets”

Your math is not mathing, and so your made up definition is ridiculous. Those poor, unfortunate, racially targeted recipients of 90% of the spending!!

You're committing exactly the sin he's talking about!

1) This is blatant discrimination in favor of minority-owned businesses. Note the timeframe--not that long after the civil rights era. The percentage of businesses that were minority owned before the civil rights era was quite clearly less than their percentage in the population. This isn't going to magically change overnight when the civil rights measures were passed. Longstanding companies will likely be white owned, even in a system where you somehow waved a magic wand and removed all lingering effects you would still only expect 11.5% of the new businesses to be minority owned. Thus this is a big handout to the existing minority owned businesses and a slap in the face to everyone else.

As one would expect, a person against equity will shout from the rooftops, with exclaimation points, that no white business owner ever got any hand up from being white.

Except they did. They (white business owners) got lower loan rates than black entrepreneurs at that time, not to mention where they we able to buy or lease space. They got their handout ALREADY, and then started complaining when someone else was let into the club. Loren says this as if the white business owners of the 1970s were not already getting somehing that was being withheld from the Black business owners (or propsective business owners).

The reason why the Black business owners were fewer than their population percent was BECAUSE the white business owners were getting “handouts” off the backs of the Black business owners and prospective business owners.

And, once again, you apply the past situation as if it were the present. There certainly was a lot of discrimination in the past.

The fundamental problem is that we believe the proper solution is to allow things to drift to parity and you believe that the solution is to shove things to parity--neglecting the fact that this is a big disadvantage to those who are of the previously on top group but who have done no wrong.

This of course causes a backlash as you have a bunch of people who are being punished for their race or gender. Yet you think they should not object.

The whole point of the equalizing law was BECAUSE barriers were being put in front of Black people and not white people, resulting in an advantage to the white business owners.

Barriers had been put. You continue to ignore the timeline.

But Loren would like for us to beleive that there was less presence of Black-owned business for some other reason than they were being deliberately and systematically held back while things were made easier for white business owners. Lower loan rates and lease options being just two obvious of the hundreds of ways the system kept Black Americans from gaining a foothold in the economy.

Loren would like us to believe Black business owners deserved for some reason, to be only 3.3% of businesses, and that the white business owners didn’t ever enjoy an advantage from that artificial supression of competition.

But Loren doesn’t believe there was ever an artificial suppression of competion against white owned businesses, nor an artificial suppression of opportunity for Black Americans - in any way. That any artifical suppression never once manifested as a handout to white Americans.

Once again, faith prevents you from understanding blasphemy.

There unquestionably used to be major discrimination. What you fail to understand is that we don't have a time machine, we can't change that. All we can do is try to be fair going forward. And attempting to push things into a supposed balance is not being fair.

2) The rest of the money businesses would bid normally one. No reason that process would not include minority businesses. Thus your 90% of the spending claim is pure fiction.

You are claiming that it was fiction that Black borrowers, renters, business people were excluded systematically from business using a variety of techniques and tactics? You really trying to say that Black business owners had any meaningful bite at the other 90%?

Bless your heart, Loren.

They hadn't had in the past so there weren't as many people trying to get a bite. That does not mean that the situation going forward was unfair.

You are providing example A for why we are upset. You are endorsing blatant discrimination as fair and saying we are sinners for being white males.

“Sinner”? That’s pretty obviously made up.
Why would you make up a false claim like that? Doesn’t your argument have any strength? You need to fabricate a slur? A ridiculously religious one, at that?

"Sin" is not uncommonly used in a secular context to indicate wrongdoing.

I haven't discriminated, why are you punishing me?

Loren, with all the sincerity in the world, sweetie, your posting history on this topic does NOT build confidence that you have never discriminated.

You know who says “I’ve never discriminated”? People who discriminate without even thinking.

Rather like someone I used to know who was diagnosed as an alcoholic because denying they had an alcohol problem was showing they had an alcohol problem. (Reality: She had answered yes to "Have you ever lost friends due to alcohol?". Note that it doesn't specify whose alcohol use.)

And the reality is that I've never been in a position of gatekeeper.

Original sin is a Christian idea, I've never been a Christian. And when people do evil while thinking they are doing good they tend to be far more evil than those who know they are doing evil.

Hyperbolic straw man, much?

In other words, you have no response.

Just because the KKKers don't like something doesn't automatically make it a good thing. The world isn't divided into those who discriminate for whites and those who discriminate against whites, there are a large number of us who are neither. But because we reject discriminating against whites you think we are for discriminating for whites. No, a pox upon both houses!

By rejecting methods to bring equality, you favor the status quo.
Black Americans have been free of slavery for 150 years. If discrimination is able to “go away” without deliberate effort to fix the system and never put out a hand to lift up those who were pushed down previously, it would be done by now.

It’s not.

Ask yourself why.

If it really was discrimination why do we see Asians outperforming whites? Nobody's discriminating in their favor. And before you bring up the fact that blacks were oppressed a lot longer than Asians do you think oppression is somehow baked into their genes? No, it's a cultural issue--and can only be fixed by addressing the problem. Continuing to claim that it's discrimination prevents the real issue from being addressed and perpetuates the problem.

Ask yourself why you are utterly unwilling to step on the accelerator. Ask yourself why you think you can cripple a population and then yell at them for not running. Ask yourself why you think a society can steal generational wealth, give it to your grandparents and mine, and then pretend that our position was all our own effort and it’s stealing to give a small amount of it back to the grandchildren of the people from whom it was stolen.

Ask yourself how generational wealth is even relevant as most people inherit little if anything at a point in their life where it matters.

And it most certainly is stealing. I know my parents started with nothing and inherited basically nothing. Thus where did I get any of this supposed stolen wealth?? Look at most families, you'll find the same thing--in the present or recent past there's no wealth transfer. And when there is wealth transfer it's usually late enough in life to be irrelevant.

It’s not guilt. It’s not “sin”.

I don’t identify with the people who cheerfully redlined and overcharged. So I have NO guilt, and no “original sin” (LOL) about joining the responsibility of correcting a problem. Maybe you have some unresolved issues to deal with. For me it’s “yeah let’s make sure we get to equality fast!” And when you help a disadvantaged community, all communities benefit.

If you feel unrequitedly mine-mine-mine about it, let’s make the programs funded by the ultra-rich, who are the major beneficiaries.

Except you aren't getting the result you're after. You're not going to fix it by throwing money at it. All you're going to do is breed legitimate backlash.

The problem is you feel that anyone who doesn't support your position is supporting the white-superior position. You do not accept the existence of a middle that takes a race-neutral position and rejects discrimination in either direction.

Your rejection of “discrimination in either direction” is a cover for letting the discrimination endure for as long as you can get away with.

Your claim suggests all this was gone by 1870. Or 1920. Or 1940. Or 1960.
But it’s not gone, and the fact is that people who were not even born before the civil war are still working to maintain that discrimination. And you support that.

The problem is that you persist in using a disparate result as proof of discrimination.

Hint: When you consider other socioeconomic factors race turns out to have no predictive value in how children turn out.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I grew up in white suburban Detroit, where everyone’s greatest fear was that black people would move in because, “there go the property values!”

I don’t know what everyone, including most members of my own family, were worried about. Didn’t they know about redlining?

Then there was the deal where whites began leaving Detroit proper because, you know, black people lived there. A lot of them moved in during the Great Depression and World War II to seek factory work. White flight began after the war and took most of the auto industry and the tax base with it, and because of, you know, REDLINING, black people were omitted form the suburbs. So inner city Detroit went economically downhill swiftly but blacks could not escape. The cherry on the top of this big fat white vanilla ice cream sundae of super duper racism was that blacks were then blamed for their own poor economic condition.

That’s how it works in the real world, but not Loren’s world I guess.

It's commonly called "white flight" but you see the same effect whenever inferior students show up in large numbers. Parents who care get out when the schools start to go downhill. And they will generally get out at the first sign because they know things are going to downhill and it's better to get out early before property values are depressed too much.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Why would you so grossly mischaracterize their argument? Only one explanation makes sense: you are apparently falling prey to progressivism teaching its infectees to treat white and Asian people not as individuals, but as interchangeable parts, as mere representatives of their respective races. You are talking as though when a worker or student is denied an opportunity to prove himself worthy of high rank, he can't have been oppressed as long as some other worker or student of the same race will be there to represent him in the halls of high rank. Legislators, possibly. But CEOs, surgeons and physicians, not so much. Corner offices and operating theaters and doctors' offices are not a bloody legislature! No races can be over-represented or under-represented there, because nobody is represented there. It is not the job of CEOs or surgeons or physicians to represent anyone.

Exactly. Group averages mean nothing. What matters is how individuals are treated. Group averages are inherently incapable of either proving or disproving discrimination. It's a matter of faith that what's being modeled is a bell curve--but what we actually see is a double-humped curve. The people at the bottom are still at the bottom, those that were higher on the curve have been pushed to the right. Shoving them further right actually increases the disparity even though the "average" moves towards parity. And us white males have been watching our fellows tossed aside to make way for the group being unfairly elevated for at least 40 years. And there's no fairness being produced--the people at the bottom are still there, untouched.

I do not know how to fix the problem but our current approach is clearly counterproductive. We are doing evil in the name of doing good.

Which brings us back to your present post...

So, to sum up - a policy that directed 10% of spending to be spent on 11.5% of the population makes the other 88.5% of the population who is receiving 90% of the spending into “Approved Racial Discrimination Targets”

Your math is not mathing, and so your made up definition is ridiculous. Those poor, unfortunate, racially targeted recipients of 90% of the spending!!

Your reading comprehension is not comprehending and your characterization of your opponents is ridiculous. The people who are poor and unfortunate because they were racially targeted are not the recipients of 90% of the spending. They are the recipients of 0% of the spending. The mere circumstance that the actual recipients of 90% of the spending are the same color as they are has no mystical power to make them the recipients of anything. You can only believe your ridiculous misrepresentation is truthful by buying into tribalism -- a tribalism that gets off on telling itself how "progressive" it is. It isn't. It's regressive. People are not interchangeable parts.

Which is the heart of the leftist fallacy--their faith says that people are interchangeable parts wholly shaped by the powers that be.

 

[Toni]

What they are not interested in is propping up a narrative that feeds the grievances of white men who absolutely resent no longer being first in line for all good things.

You know that's an ad hominem argument, don't you, and racist to boot?

An observation is not an argument. Since you have not demonstrated that observation exhibits antagonism or prejudice against white men, it is not clear how anyone could know that it is racist.

... [Toni] is smearing white men who don't want to be second-class citizens as wanting everyone else to be a second-class citizen. She does not have evidence that they do -- it's an illogical inference for the same reason "I don't owe you money." does not imply "You owe me money.". It is prejudiced against white men because wanting everyone else to be a second-class citizen is a negative trait, and she is pre-judging a subset of white men as having that negative trait, without evidence against them, based only on color, sex, and uppity refusal to accept second-class citizen status.

And that's racist because she would not smear black men who who don't want to be second-class citizens as wanting everyone else to be a second-class citizen. ...

You have no evidence to support any of your inferences. I have personally heard some white men express their resentment of no longer being first in line. Hence, that subset of white men is not being judged - it is an accurate representation of their resentment.

In the first place, those white men are not here to defend themselves.

Do you operate under the delusion that posters can only discuss the views of people who can actively defend those views?

Nope, and you don't have a reason to think I was implying anything of the sort. You can discuss anything you please. But you have a long track record of getting it wrong when you try to report others' views that you disagree with, so your readers have no reason to assume you're being accurate when you tell us what someone expressed to you.

Can you quote what those white men said that you interpret as "express their resentment of no longer being first in line"?......

Yes, I can quote them. I will go one better and quote them. One of those white men (one of my brothers) who said "Why is it that us white guys are no longer considered first"? I have heard "I have to hope some minority or girl doesn't apply so I have a chance".

There is no mind-reading involved.

See, this is what I'm on about. It would be enlightening if we could get your brother here to give us his own perspective on what he was expressing. "First" has two meanings: what we might call "inclusive first" and "exclusive first", analogous to "inclusive or" and "exclusive or". "Inclusive first" includes ties -- when two racers clock the same best time, both come in first and there are two winners. "Exclusive first" means there are no draws and only one winner, one who crosses the finish line before everyone else. Which "first" did your brother mean? We don't know. You appear to be taking for granted that he meant "exclusive first" -- that he was asking why us white guys are no longer considered before anyone else is considered. But your second quote, "I have to hope some minority or girl doesn't apply so I have a chance", suggests the "inclusive first" meaning -- that the speaker would be satisfied if minorities, girls, and white guys are all considered first -- if all have their qualifications looked at and compared in the first round of the selection process, as opposed to looking at minorities and girls in the first round and white guys only in the second round -- if there even is a second round, if the position hasn't already been filled before the speaker is even allowed a chance to compete for it.

When Toni wrote "white men who absolutely resent no longer being first in line", she evidently meant "exclusive first". You haven't given any reason for us to presume your brother didn't mean "inclusive first".

... Toni has not been presenting her characterizations as a representation of the views of the "some white men" that you personally heard, and personally interpreted as expressing resentment, and personally decided you could mind-read as to precisely what it was they resented. She has been presenting her characterizations as a representation of the views of other members of this forum, including Loren and me in particular. She has been presenting her characterizations as a representation of any white people who aren't on board with affirmative action. And she has been presenting her characterizations as a representation of white males at large:

Toni is presenting it as a representation of a portion of white males at large. But you keep being you with your malacious imputations.

I quoted her presenting it as a representation of white males in general, and you quoted it back to me. So give it a rest.

I’ve had this discussion many times. For white males, the fact that they are no longer first in line for all good things feels like prejudice to them. It’s not. It just feels bad to them to be treated closer to how everyone else is treated.

That's a racist, sexist stereotype.

How is it racist? To any rational disinterested reader who is even moderately fluent in the language, it does not exhibit any trace that white men are inferior or that Toni dislikes them.

Sure it does. She would not accuse black females who don't get to be the (exclusive) first in line of that feeling like prejudice to them. When everyone is treated the same -- all first when that's practical, or in random order or first-come-first-served when serialization is for some reason necessary -- she assumes this feels unprejudiced to others and prejudiced to white males. That being true would be a character defect in white males, a form of moral inferiority.

None of that makes sense. First, whatever anyone might say about those of another race does not determine whether a statement is racist. Describing that black people have brown skin is an observation. No rational person would say it is racist because I would not describe white people as having brown skin.

Second, your example of black women is bizarre because in US history, black women are used to not being first in line.

Third, both plain literate reading of Toni’s statement and her repeated explanations that it means “some” not “all”. So your argument is founded in a false premise.

From what I can tell, it seems to me that you misinterpreted Toni’s observation, took umbrage and launched a baseless argument that slander’s Toni.

He just wants to argue and he thinks I’m an easy target that he wants to strike back at because I hit too close to home.

So, to sum up - a policy that directed 10% of spending to be spent on 11.5% of the population makes the other 88.5% of the population who is receiving 90% of the spending into “Approved Racial Discrimination Targets”

Your math is not mathing, and so your made up definition is ridiculous. Those poor, unfortunate, racially targeted recipients of 90% of the spending!!

You're committing exactly the sin he's talking about!

1) This is blatant discrimination in favor of minority-owned businesses. Note the timeframe--not that long after the civil rights era. The percentage of businesses that were minority owned before the civil rights era was quite clearly less than their percentage in the population. This isn't going to magically change overnight when the civil rights measures were passed. Longstanding companies will likely be white owned, even in a system where you somehow waved a magic wand and removed all lingering effects you would still only expect 11.5% of the new businesses to be minority owned. Thus this is a big handout to the existing minority owned businesses and a slap in the face to everyone else.

As one would expect, a person against equity will shout from the rooftops, with exclaimation points, that no white business owner ever got any hand up from being white.

Except they did. They (white business owners) got lower loan rates than black entrepreneurs at that time, not to mention where they we able to buy or lease space. They got their handout ALREADY, and then started complaining when someone else was let into the club. Loren says this as if the white business owners of the 1970s were not already getting somehing that was being withheld from the Black business owners (or propsective business owners).

The reason why the Black business owners were fewer than their population percent was BECAUSE the white business owners were getting “handouts” off the backs of the Black business owners and prospective business owners.

And, once again, you apply the past situation as if it were the present. There certainly was a lot of discrimination in the past.

The fundamental problem is that we believe the proper solution is to allow things to drift to parity and you believe that the solution is to shove things to parity--neglecting the fact that this is a big disadvantage to those who are of the previously on top group but who have done no wrong.

This of course causes a backlash as you have a bunch of people who are being punished for their race or gender. Yet you think they should not object.

The whole point of the equalizing law was BECAUSE barriers were being put in front of Black people and not white people, resulting in an advantage to the white business owners.

Barriers had been put. You continue to ignore the timeline.

But Loren would like for us to beleive that there was less presence of Black-owned business for some other reason than they were being deliberately and systematically held back while things were made easier for white business owners. Lower loan rates and lease options being just two obvious of the hundreds of ways the system kept Black Americans from gaining a foothold in the economy.

Loren would like us to believe Black business owners deserved for some reason, to be only 3.3% of businesses, and that the white business owners didn’t ever enjoy an advantage from that artificial supression of competition.

But Loren doesn’t believe there was ever an artificial suppression of competion against white owned businesses, nor an artificial suppression of opportunity for Black Americans - in any way. That any artifical suppression never once manifested as a handout to white Americans.

Once again, faith prevents you from understanding blasphemy.

There unquestionably used to be major discrimination. What you fail to understand is that we don't have a time machine, we can't change that. All we can do is try to be fair going forward. And attempting to push things into a supposed balance is not being fair.

2) The rest of the money businesses would bid normally one. No reason that process would not include minority businesses. Thus your 90% of the spending claim is pure fiction.

You are claiming that it was fiction that Black borrowers, renters, business people were excluded systematically from business using a variety of techniques and tactics? You really trying to say that Black business owners had any meaningful bite at the other 90%?

Bless your heart, Loren.

They hadn't had in the past so there weren't as many people trying to get a bite. That does not mean that the situation going forward was unfair.

You are providing example A for why we are upset. You are endorsing blatant discrimination as fair and saying we are sinners for being white males.

“Sinner”? That’s pretty obviously made up.
Why would you make up a false claim like that? Doesn’t your argument have any strength? You need to fabricate a slur? A ridiculously religious one, at that?

"Sin" is not uncommonly used in a secular context to indicate wrongdoing.

I haven't discriminated, why are you punishing me?

Loren, with all the sincerity in the world, sweetie, your posting history on this topic does NOT build confidence that you have never discriminated.

You know who says “I’ve never discriminated”? People who discriminate without even thinking.

Rather like someone I used to know who was diagnosed as an alcoholic because denying they had an alcohol problem was showing they had an alcohol problem. (Reality: She had answered yes to "Have you ever lost friends due to alcohol?". Note that it doesn't specify whose alcohol use.)

And the reality is that I've never been in a position of gatekeeper.

Original sin is a Christian idea, I've never been a Christian. And when people do evil while thinking they are doing good they tend to be far more evil than those who know they are doing evil.

Hyperbolic straw man, much?

In other words, you have no response.

Just because the KKKers don't like something doesn't automatically make it a good thing. The world isn't divided into those who discriminate for whites and those who discriminate against whites, there are a large number of us who are neither. But because we reject discriminating against whites you think we are for discriminating for whites. No, a pox upon both houses!

By rejecting methods to bring equality, you favor the status quo.
Black Americans have been free of slavery for 150 years. If discrimination is able to “go away” without deliberate effort to fix the system and never put out a hand to lift up those who were pushed down previously, it would be done by now.

It’s not.

Ask yourself why.

If it really was discrimination why do we see Asians outperforming whites? Nobody's discriminating in their favor. And before you bring up the fact that blacks were oppressed a lot longer than Asians do you think oppression is somehow baked into their genes? No, it's a cultural issue--and can only be fixed by addressing the problem. Continuing to claim that it's discrimination prevents the real issue from being addressed and perpetuates the problem.

Ask yourself why you are utterly unwilling to step on the accelerator. Ask yourself why you think you can cripple a population and then yell at them for not running. Ask yourself why you think a society can steal generational wealth, give it to your grandparents and mine, and then pretend that our position was all our own effort and it’s stealing to give a small amount of it back to the grandchildren of the people from whom it was stolen.

Ask yourself how generational wealth is even relevant as most people inherit little if anything at a point in their life where it matters.

And it most certainly is stealing. I know my parents started with nothing and inherited basically nothing. Thus where did I get any of this supposed stolen wealth?? Look at most families, you'll find the same thing--in the present or recent past there's no wealth transfer. And when there is wealth transfer it's usually late enough in life to be irrelevant.

It’s not guilt. It’s not “sin”.

I don’t identify with the people who cheerfully redlined and overcharged. So I have NO guilt, and no “original sin” (LOL) about joining the responsibility of correcting a problem. Maybe you have some unresolved issues to deal with. For me it’s “yeah let’s make sure we get to equality fast!” And when you help a disadvantaged community, all communities benefit.

If you feel unrequitedly mine-mine-mine about it, let’s make the programs funded by the ultra-rich, who are the major beneficiaries.

Except you aren't getting the result you're after. You're not going to fix it by throwing money at it. All you're going to do is breed legitimate backlash.

The problem is you feel that anyone who doesn't support your position is supporting the white-superior position. You do not accept the existence of a middle that takes a race-neutral position and rejects discrimination in either direction.

Your rejection of “discrimination in either direction” is a cover for letting the discrimination endure for as long as you can get away with.

Your claim suggests all this was gone by 1870. Or 1920. Or 1940. Or 1960.
But it’s not gone, and the fact is that people who were not even born before the civil war are still working to maintain that discrimination. And you support that.

The problem is that you persist in using a disparate result as proof of discrimination.

Hint: When you consider other socioeconomic factors race turns out to have no predictive value in how children turn out.

the problem is that you see no problem with letting those who have been kept in lower positions by discrimination to simply remain in those lower positions, although they have done ‘nothing wrong.’ What? Do you think they should just wait for white men to die off, freeing up some space up at the top? Because if that’s what you actually think, you should keep very quiet about it. We might get tired of waiting and decide to help some old white men to their graves.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Can you quote what those white men said that you interpret as "express their resentment of no longer being first in line"?......

Yes, I can quote them. I will go one better and quote them. One of those white men (one of my brothers) who said "Why is it that us white guys are no longer considered first"? I have heard "I have to hope some minority or girl doesn't apply so I have a chance".

There is no mind-reading involved.

See, this is what I'm on about. It would be enlightening if we could get your brother here to give us his own perspective on what he was expressing. "First" has two meanings: what we might call "inclusive first" and "exclusive first", analogous to "inclusive or" and "exclusive or". "Inclusive first" includes ties -- when two racers clock the same best time, both come in first and there are two winners. "Exclusive first" means there are no draws and only one winner, one who crosses the finish line before everyone else. Which "first" did your brother mean? We don't know. You appear to be taking for granted that he meant "exclusive first" -- that he was asking why us white guys are no longer considered before anyone else is considered. But your second quote, "I have to hope some minority or girl doesn't apply so I have a chance", suggests the "inclusive first" meaning -- that the speaker would be satisfied if minorities, girls, and white guys are all considered first -- if all have their qualifications looked at and compared in the first round of the selection process, as opposed to looking at minorities and girls in the first round and white guys only in the second round -- if there even is a second round, if the position hasn't already been filled before the speaker is even allowed a chance to compete for it.

When Toni wrote "white men who absolutely resent no longer being first in line", she evidently meant "exclusive first". You haven't given any reason for us to presume your brother didn't mean "inclusive first".

Good point, I missed that. I do agree that white guys only in the second round is often the reality.

 

[Toni]

So, to sum up - a policy that directed 10% of spending to be spent on 11.5% of the population makes the other 88.5% of the population who is receiving 90% of the spending into “Approved Racial Discrimination Targets”

Your math is not mathing, and so your made up definition is ridiculous. Those poor, unfortunate, racially targeted recipients of 90% of the spending!!

You're committing exactly the sin he's talking about!

1) This is blatant discrimination in favor of minority-owned businesses. Note the timeframe--not that long after the civil rights era. The percentage of businesses that were minority owned before the civil rights era was quite clearly less than their percentage in the population. This isn't going to magically change overnight when the civil rights measures were passed. Longstanding companies will likely be white owned, even in a system where you somehow waved a magic wand and removed all lingering effects you would still only expect 11.5% of the new businesses to be minority owned. Thus this is a big handout to the existing minority owned businesses and a slap in the face to everyone else.

As one would expect, a person against equity will shout from the rooftops, with exclaimation points, that no white business owner ever got any hand up from being white.

Except they did. They (white business owners) got lower loan rates than black entrepreneurs at that time, not to mention where they we able to buy or lease space. They got their handout ALREADY, and then started complaining when someone else was let into the club. Loren says this as if the white business owners of the 1970s were not already getting somehing that was being withheld from the Black business owners (or propsective business owners).

The reason why the Black business owners were fewer than their population percent was BECAUSE the white business owners were getting “handouts” off the backs of the Black business owners and prospective business owners.

And, once again, you apply the past situation as if it were the present. There certainly was a lot of discrimination in the past.

The fundamental problem is that we believe the proper solution is to allow things to drift to parity and you believe that the solution is to shove things to parity--neglecting the fact that this is a big disadvantage to those who are of the previously on top group but who have done no wrong.

This of course causes a backlash as you have a bunch of people who are being punished for their race or gender. Yet you think they should not object.

The whole point of the equalizing law was BECAUSE barriers were being put in front of Black people and not white people, resulting in an advantage to the white business owners.

Barriers had been put. You continue to ignore the timeline.

But Loren would like for us to beleive that there was less presence of Black-owned business for some other reason than they were being deliberately and systematically held back while things were made easier for white business owners. Lower loan rates and lease options being just two obvious of the hundreds of ways the system kept Black Americans from gaining a foothold in the economy.

Loren would like us to believe Black business owners deserved for some reason, to be only 3.3% of businesses, and that the white business owners didn’t ever enjoy an advantage from that artificial supression of competition.

But Loren doesn’t believe there was ever an artificial suppression of competion against white owned businesses, nor an artificial suppression of opportunity for Black Americans - in any way. That any artifical suppression never once manifested as a handout to white Americans.

Once again, faith prevents you from understanding blasphemy.

There unquestionably used to be major discrimination. What you fail to understand is that we don't have a time machine, we can't change that. All we can do is try to be fair going forward. And attempting to push things into a supposed balance is not being fair.

2) The rest of the money businesses would bid normally one. No reason that process would not include minority businesses. Thus your 90% of the spending claim is pure fiction.

You are claiming that it was fiction that Black borrowers, renters, business people were excluded systematically from business using a variety of techniques and tactics? You really trying to say that Black business owners had any meaningful bite at the other 90%?

Bless your heart, Loren.

They hadn't had in the past so there weren't as many people trying to get a bite. That does not mean that the situation going forward was unfair.

You are providing example A for why we are upset. You are endorsing blatant discrimination as fair and saying we are sinners for being white males.

“Sinner”? That’s pretty obviously made up.
Why would you make up a false claim like that? Doesn’t your argument have any strength? You need to fabricate a slur? A ridiculously religious one, at that?

"Sin" is not uncommonly used in a secular context to indicate wrongdoing.

I haven't discriminated, why are you punishing me?

Loren, with all the sincerity in the world, sweetie, your posting history on this topic does NOT build confidence that you have never discriminated.

You know who says “I’ve never discriminated”? People who discriminate without even thinking.

Rather like someone I used to know who was diagnosed as an alcoholic because denying they had an alcohol problem was showing they had an alcohol problem. (Reality: She had answered yes to "Have you ever lost friends due to alcohol?". Note that it doesn't specify whose alcohol use.)

And the reality is that I've never been in a position of gatekeeper.

Original sin is a Christian idea, I've never been a Christian. And when people do evil while thinking they are doing good they tend to be far more evil than those who know they are doing evil.

Hyperbolic straw man, much?

In other words, you have no response.

Just because the KKKers don't like something doesn't automatically make it a good thing. The world isn't divided into those who discriminate for whites and those who discriminate against whites, there are a large number of us who are neither. But because we reject discriminating against whites you think we are for discriminating for whites. No, a pox upon both houses!

By rejecting methods to bring equality, you favor the status quo.
Black Americans have been free of slavery for 150 years. If discrimination is able to “go away” without deliberate effort to fix the system and never put out a hand to lift up those who were pushed down previously, it would be done by now.

It’s not.

Ask yourself why.

If it really was discrimination why do we see Asians outperforming whites? Nobody's discriminating in their favor. And before you bring up the fact that blacks were oppressed a lot longer than Asians do you think oppression is somehow baked into their genes? No, it's a cultural issue--and can only be fixed by addressing the problem. Continuing to claim that it's discrimination prevents the real issue from being addressed and perpetuates the problem.

Ask yourself why you are utterly unwilling to step on the accelerator. Ask yourself why you think you can cripple a population and then yell at them for not running. Ask yourself why you think a society can steal generational wealth, give it to your grandparents and mine, and then pretend that our position was all our own effort and it’s stealing to give a small amount of it back to the grandchildren of the people from whom it was stolen.

Ask yourself how generational wealth is even relevant as most people inherit little if anything at a point in their life where it matters.

And it most certainly is stealing. I know my parents started with nothing and inherited basically nothing. Thus where did I get any of this supposed stolen wealth?? Look at most families, you'll find the same thing--in the present or recent past there's no wealth transfer. And when there is wealth transfer it's usually late enough in life to be irrelevant.

It’s not guilt. It’s not “sin”.

I don’t identify with the people who cheerfully redlined and overcharged. So I have NO guilt, and no “original sin” (LOL) about joining the responsibility of correcting a problem. Maybe you have some unresolved issues to deal with. For me it’s “yeah let’s make sure we get to equality fast!” And when you help a disadvantaged community, all communities benefit.

If you feel unrequitedly mine-mine-mine about it, let’s make the programs funded by the ultra-rich, who are the major beneficiaries.

Except you aren't getting the result you're after. You're not going to fix it by throwing money at it. All you're going to do is breed legitimate backlash.

The problem is you feel that anyone who doesn't support your position is supporting the white-superior position. You do not accept the existence of a middle that takes a race-neutral position and rejects discrimination in either direction.

Your rejection of “discrimination in either direction” is a cover for letting the discrimination endure for as long as you can get away with.

Your claim suggests all this was gone by 1870. Or 1920. Or 1940. Or 1960.
But it’s not gone, and the fact is that people who were not even born before the civil war are still working to maintain that discrimination. And you support that.

The problem is that you persist in using a disparate result as proof of discrimination.

Hint: When you consider other socioeconomic factors race turns out to have no predictive value in how children turn out.

The problem is that you see things only through the lens of those like yourself: a certain kind of white make who believes that parity is best achieved only if it does not disturb the comfortable spot you feel entitled to because ‘ you’ve done nothing wrong.’

Neither have the people who have histicakky been discriminated against and who are still waiting for their shot at all the good things that fall into the Laos of certain white males.

It is easy to conclude that change in societal order is fine with you so long as it doesn’t disturb the comfortable position you occupy abd preferably takes place sometime after you die and are not inconvenienced.

Be careful what you wish for.

 

[Bomb#20]

I’ve had this discussion many times. For white males, the fact that they are no longer first in line for all good things feels like prejudice to them. It’s not. It just feels bad to them to be treated closer to how everyone else is treated.

That's a racist, sexist stereotype.

How is it racist? To any rational disinterested reader who is even moderately fluent in the language, it does not exhibit any trace that white men are inferior or that Toni dislikes them.

Sure it does.

Toni’s post is not racist. It is an observation. A lot of white people openly say this.

If it's true that a lot of white people openly say this, that would be a relevant observation to introduce, if only Toni had written:

* "For a lot of white males, the fact that they are no longer first in line for all good things feels like prejudice to them."​

But that's not what she wrote, so your supposed observation isn't relevant to the issue in dispute.

In fact it seems to me in effect that YOU are saying it, even though you’d deny it.

I don't doubt that in fact it seems that way to you. And the fact that it seems that way to you even though there is no observational reason for it to seem that way to you, indicates that you are imputing that sentiment to me for some mind-blowingly stupid reason -- most likely prejudice against anyone who blasphemes against your faith-based ideology.

And the fact that a stupid reason is sufficient to cause you to deceive yourself into thinking another person is saying it demonstrates that you are not a reliable witness. When you made the so-called "observation" that inclined you to write "A lot of white people openly say this.", it's quite plausible that you were deceiving yourself as to what you'd heard those white people say. You did it to me in full view; why should anyone who saw you do that assume I'm the first guy you've done it to?

Of course not ALL white people feel this way, but a significant number do. Significant enough to put Trump in the White House at least once. Do you think disaffected whites have to decode his dog whistles? They are not even dog whistles, they are air raid sirens.

You appear to be assuming the people who put Trump in the White House in 2016 were motivated by his dog whistles. This is America -- people vote against far more than they vote for. The Democrats keep nominating one highly unpopular candidate after another, and when Americans don't vote for them, finding somebody besides themselves to blame. Everybody wants to be the hero of his own narrative.

 

[pood]

About the above, there isn’t much to respond to, because it’s so silly. I’ll just say that anyone who thinks huge numbers of Trump supporters aren’t motivated by racism is living in an imaginary alternative reality.

 

[pood]

Oh, look, here’s a nice Trumpanzee right here.

See how easy that was to find?

 

[Toni]

I grew up in white suburban Detroit, where everyone’s greatest fear was that black people would move in because, “there go the property values!”

I don’t know what everyone, including most members of my own family, were worried about. Didn’t they know about redlining?

Then there was the deal where whites began leaving Detroit proper because, you know, black people lived there. A lot of them moved in during the Great Depression and World War II to seek factory work. White flight began after the war and took most of the auto industry and the tax base with it, and because of, you know, REDLINING, black people were omitted form the suburbs. So inner city Detroit went economically downhill swiftly but blacks could not escape. The cherry on the top of this big fat white vanilla ice cream sundae of super duper racism was that blacks were then blamed for their own poor economic condition.

That’s how it works in the real world, but not Loren’s world I guess.

It's commonly called "white flight" but you see the same effect whenever inferior students show up in large numbers. Parents who care get out when the schools start to go downhill. And they will generally get out at the first sign because they know things are going to downhill and it's better to get out early before property values are depressed too much.

How do parents ‘know’ other students are inferior? How do they define ‘inferior?’ How do you define ‘inferior?’