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Witness: Blacks, whites, and the politics of shame in America -- by Shelby Steele
Opinion Journal (Wall Street Journal) ^ | October 26, 2005 | Shelby Steele

Posted on 10/26/2005 9:20:58 AM PDT by EveningStar

Probably the single greatest problem between blacks and whites in America is that we are forever witness to each other's great shames. This occurred to me in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, when so many black people were plunged into misery that it seemed the hurricane itself had held a racial animus. I felt a consuming empathy but also another, more atavistic impulse. I did not like my people being seen this way. Beyond the human mess one expects to see after a storm like this, another kind of human wretchedness was on display. In the people traversing waist-deep water and languishing on rooftops were the markers of a deep and static poverty. The despair over the storm that was so evident in people's faces seemed to come out of an older despair, one that had always been there. Here--40 years after the great civil rights victories and 50 years after Rosa Parks's great refusal--was a poverty that oppression could no longer entirely explain. Here was poverty with an element of surrender in it that seemed to confirm the worst charges against blacks: that we are inferior, that nothing really helps us, that the modern world is beyond our reach...

(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: greatsociety; katrina; poverty; racism; responsibility; shelbysteele
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To: TaxRelief
The politics of shame taken to an even higher level:

I can't imagine why that was necessary. That idiot, and former NC State "professor" was discussed here already: LINK.


If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.

61 posted on 10/26/2005 10:10:58 AM PDT by rdb3 (Have you ever stopped to think, but forgot to start again?)
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To: WilliamWallace1999

Unless she's aboard a floating plasma screen, I see nothing wrong with taking groceries for personal consumption when the area is under three feet of water.


62 posted on 10/26/2005 10:11:44 AM PDT by gcruse (http://gcruse.typepad.com/)
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To: Revolting cat!
The problem is that we have a particular culture mapped extensively to a single race, encouraged by both whites who won't accept blacks as equals and blacks who consider the adoption of mainstream American culture as "selling out". I've had black friends be told by other blacks that they weren't normal because they weren't speaking to each other the way normal black people are supposed to. That all provides a powerful incentive not to stray from the cultural plantation.
63 posted on 10/26/2005 10:12:36 AM PDT by Question_Assumptions
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To: gcruse

"Unless she's aboard a floating plasma screen, I see nothing wrong with taking groceries for personal consumption when the area is under three feet of water."

LOL, if I had somehow managed to get stuck in NO after Katrina, I'd probably need a sixpack of Tall Boys too.


64 posted on 10/26/2005 10:13:36 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry (Esse Quam Videre)
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To: Question_Assumptions
I think that while some black people do overestimate the amount of white racism, I think that white people tend to underestimate it because they just don't see it.

Statements I have heard in my life:

"I'm not prejudiced but there are getting to be too many blacks around here."

"I have nothing against blacks, but don't want my kids going to school with them"

"I'm glad I no longer live in a 'diverse' community and now live in a white man's neighborhood."

Granted, these statements were largely made by blue collar Yobbos, but even well educated liberals make such asinine statements as "he talks so intelligent" when referring to a well spoken black person.

When it comes to race relations, I find blacks to be openly hostile, while whites tend to be condescending douchebags. Just my five cents.

65 posted on 10/26/2005 10:14:26 AM PDT by Clemenza (Gentlemen, Behold!)
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To: Arpege92
I'm happy to hear that the newer exurban communities seem to be more integrated than the older suburban communities. Too many folks on Long Island brought their parochial bigotries with them when they moved from Brooklyn and Queens during the era of "white flight."

Nevertheless, anyone of any color who commutes more than 25 miles is insane. Then again, so is the cost of housing in NY.

66 posted on 10/26/2005 10:17:33 AM PDT by Clemenza (Gentlemen, Behold!)
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To: EveningStar

Shelby Steele always has such a unique new insight into race issues.

I love reading him.


67 posted on 10/26/2005 10:18:40 AM PDT by Pessimist
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To: Question_Assumptions

"I've had black friends be told by other blacks that they weren't normal because they weren't speaking to each other the way normal black people are supposed to."

"Code switching" is the term for what I was taught in my first sales job. I had (and still can have, if it's advantageous or to make friends and family comfortable) quite a southern Appalachian twang. Learning to deal with the larger world on the terms of that larger world is not selling out, unless you are so uncomfortable with your own origins that you want to shed any evidence of those origins completely. I don't, and haven't. I can't help but think that my own experience can be applied here.


68 posted on 10/26/2005 10:19:42 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry (Esse Quam Videre)
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To: Clemenza

Yep....I've heard those comments myself. This subject has brought up a situation I found myself in a few years ago. I have five God Daughters. Four are white and one is black. Around Christmas time, I went shopping for my God Daughters and decided to get everyone a barbie doll. This store had white barbie dolls but no black barbie dolls. I was a little ticked off because they didn't have black barbie dolls and I realized then that I had just gotten a little taste of what it must be like to be black.

By the way....I had to go to three seperate stores before I finally found a black barbie doll.


69 posted on 10/26/2005 10:21:54 AM PDT by Arpege92 ("I am happy, be it yourselves." - Pope John Paul II)
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To: EveningStar

It has become increasingly difficult for poor Blacks to make the case that their plight is due to White racism. Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan and scores of others whose talent and determination made them hugely successful are counterexamples easily used to refute the old echoes from the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons.

Beyond the individual African-American superstars, there is also a growing, but overlooked Black middle-class. In large cities like Atlanta, and smaller ones like Montclair, New Jersey, Blacks and Whites live in the same neighborhoods, go to the same schools, work at the same types of jobs, and have similar economic profiles. It is clear that in these and other exemplars, the key ingredient to a successful Black integration into mainstream societal success is the presence of two caring, involved parents. No group, Black, White, Red, or Yellow, can hope to achieve economic success when the "family" consists of an absent father and a promiscuous mother who often has several children (from different sperm donors) whom she can not properly care for, nor can she become gainfully employed after dropping out of school to raise them.

Blaming others for one's plight is a way of life among most of the poor and backward populations of the Middle East. It is neither healthy nor documentable that this is the cause of lingering Black poverty. White racism and oppression was certainly responsible for a great percentage of Black poverty up through the mid-1960's.
Civil Rights legislation has removed most overt barriers to success. Indeed, Affirmative Action has manifested a situation where, in many cases, Blacks are given a better opportunity than equivalentally-talented Whites in school admissions and in hiring. There are really no longer any valid excuses for Black failure and poverty that are external. As Steele suggests, they need to look within.


70 posted on 10/26/2005 10:22:47 AM PDT by TruthShallSetYouFree (Abortion is to family planning what bankruptcy is to financial planning.)
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To: Clemenza

I know I wouldn't want to commute that far everyday.


71 posted on 10/26/2005 10:22:53 AM PDT by Arpege92 ("I am happy, be it yourselves." - Pope John Paul II)
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To: USAFJeeper
I assume this is ignorance speaking? I dont have to enumerate the importance of the port to United States as a whole? The oil industry? Seafood? I know you typed that tongue in cheek. You forgot to put the /sarcasm mark I think.

Having a large (and unproductive) population in an area that will flood over and over is absurd. Having taxpayers pay for rebuilding it does not make sense at all.

As far as the issues you refer to they do not outweigh the fact that putting billions in to New Orleans is A-OK as long as it's not taxpayer money. If the commerical industry you mention is so valuable it does not need taxpayer money to rebuild. In that regard I say rebuild New Orleans. Just use other than taxpayer money and maybe not let FEMA/NFIP sell flood insurance unless the structues are out of the flood plain. The real flood plain, not the pretend ones that FEMA/NFIP have had mapped out that are made up to allow development in areas that inn other parts of the country nobody would be allowed to build in.

I'd go point by point but instead refer you to the end of this piece.

As far as the French Quarter? Maybe have someone like the money bags in Las Vegas relicate it in Vegas. They'd build the thing out of their own pockets. A Wynn-Wynn situation:)

72 posted on 10/26/2005 10:24:31 AM PDT by isthisnickcool (Get the incumbents out of politics!)
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To: Clemenza
When it comes to race relations, I find blacks to be openly hostile, while whites tend to be condescending douchebags. Just my five cents.

Well, I've also heard white people say things to me when no black people are around that they'd never say in front of a black person, despite the fact that they knew I have very close black friends. Depending on how well I know the person, I either carefully disagree to present a different point of view to them or ignore it and file it away. But it's there. And it feeds the hostility that blacks have just as the open hostility that some blacks show toward whites (and cheering for OJ's aquittal sent a very bad message to white people) feeds white racism. It's rational for black people to think white people are racist because quite a few are to some degree or another. And it's rational for white people to think black people are indifferent to black-on-white crime and black misbehavior in general (a big reason why white people tell me they don't want black neighbors, by the way) when black people exhibit that behavior. And these two somewhat rational racisms simply keep feeding each other. The more distrustful whites get of blacks because they are hostile, the more hostile blacks get because whites distrust them out of hand. It's a feedback loop that won't be stopped until the rational underpinnings are kicked out by one side or the other. Living up to the worst expectations of the other side just isn't going to stop racism.

73 posted on 10/26/2005 10:27:01 AM PDT by Question_Assumptions
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To: EveningStar
I read the article and appreciated the email access you included.

The unspoken point of the article is that the person who assumes responsibility assumes power as well.

When you allow another person to be responsible for you, you have lost, not gained...it doesn't matter if you're white or black.

As conservatives, we should all decry a government that seems intent on systematically "giving us" things at the expense of others. The whole process makes us all less free.

In Jacksonville, I rode out the effects of two hurricanes last year. I made the decision to stay. I stocked up my house with water, fuel, food and batteries. I stayed home for three days after each storm to avoid downed power lines. Who are these idiots standing in line for ice and gas one day after a storm that was expected for five days?

74 posted on 10/26/2005 10:27:55 AM PDT by Dutchgirl ("We recognize your right to be an ignorant moron," -Just A. Nobody.)
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To: isthisnickcool

"A Wynn-Wynn situation"

I'm sure that would be real "classy," in the way that middle aged men who unbutton their shirts to show their gold chains think they're classy. A Hooter's on every corner, LOL.


75 posted on 10/26/2005 10:28:13 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry (Esse Quam Videre)
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To: Clemenza

"Granted, these statements were largely made by blue collar Yobbos.."

I wouldn't ascribe that type of thinking to blue collar people alone. Think the people in any higher end lilly white suburb want to live around blacks or have their kids go to schoolw /them, etc...?

When you get right down to it, the blue collar whites probably live in more integrated areas then higher class whites and know more blacks personally to boot.


76 posted on 10/26/2005 10:31:49 AM PDT by Pessimist
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To: EveningStar

Are you two gonna kiss each other or what?


77 posted on 10/26/2005 10:32:18 AM PDT by ShutUpandSing
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To: RegulatorCountry
One of those two friends is actually Jamaican but speaks with a TV English accent except when he's speaking to his relatives or other Jamaicans. The first time we heard the accent shift, it sounded like a different person talking. The other friend was a military brat. Their common dialect was TV English. There was no other common dialect for them to switch to.
78 posted on 10/26/2005 10:37:33 AM PDT by Question_Assumptions
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To: Question_Assumptions

truth.


79 posted on 10/26/2005 10:38:38 AM PDT by King Prout (many accuse me of being overly literal... this would not be a problem if many were not under-precise)
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To: Question_Assumptions

"There was no other common dialect for them to switch to."

Well, that's a different matter. The military brats I've known are most comfortable with each other. It must be tough, not being able to identify with any geographic place as "home," or at least I'd think so. Mine is my refuge, my safe place when the world gets overwhelming. I couldn't go back permanently, because it is limiting. But, just knowing it's there and that I can go back when I need to, is a source of stability for me.


80 posted on 10/26/2005 10:42:06 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry (Esse Quam Videre)
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