Posted by bad_luck on 8/23/2018 6:18:00 PM (view original):
Posted by gomiami1972 on 8/23/2018 5:55:00 PM (view original):
Posted by bad_luck on 8/23/2018 5:38:00 PM (view original):
Posted by cccp1014 on 8/23/2018 5:28:00 PM (view original):
Whatever. There are biases but whites don't have an advantage just for being white any more than tall being have one for being tall. This is my stance at 5:27PM on August 23rd, 2018 on page 85. Now it can never be disputed again.
I think your overall point is that there are several types of advantages and disadvantages in our society.
Christians tend to have an advantage over other religions. Good looking people tend to have an advantage over ugly people. Skinny/fat. Tall/short etc.
Right?
He'd be wise not to take such tasty bait...assuming you are trying to set him up with this oblique trap.
This has existed in every society, in every possible permutation, for the history of histories. The blunt area I see in your otherwise very sharp point is that you are trying to extend situational truths to encompass the ENTIRETY of American society. Universal statements ultimately ring hollow because they are almost always not true, and, in this case, is not true. Using the word "tend" just makes your argument arbitrary.
You are seriously entertaining, I'll give you that.
I mean, if cccp doesn't see exactly where I'm going with that, he is dumber than even I thought.
Obviously NOTHING encompasses all of society. There are all kinds of people with major disadvantages who end up very successful. That doesn't mean we should ignore the broader implications of how our society interacts with different groups.
Blacks drop out of school at a rate much higher than whites. Blacks score lower on standardized tests, face disciplinary issues far more often, don't get into college at anywhere near the same rate as whites, the list goes on. And these things aren't new. This stretches across decades and all demographics.
And it really leaves us with two, big-picture explanations:
1) There is something about the way our society functions that puts blacks at a very real disadvantage
2) Blacks are at a disadvantage because they are inherently dumber and lazier.
Hmm. I probably shouldn't attempt to get into this right now. This is not to gain sympathy (or anything else) but I underwent chemo yesterday and am not thinking at my best. Nausea and intellectual thought rarely mix well. That is a fact. I'll try anyway and will probably fail.
By including religion, body weight, height, beauty, etc. as analogous to skin color, you marginalize your main argument that institutional racism against black people exists in this country. In a world of utopian perfection, everyone would be blind to superficial differences. We do not and never will live in such a world. With that said, whatever the competition is for - a job, a promotion, a university admission, a scholarship, a loan - there is one winner and a whole bunch of losers. Those losers will include whites, blacks, asians, males, females, christians, jews, muslims, homecoming queens, disgusting fat bodies (Full Metal Jacket,) blondes, brunettes, short folk, gays and so on. Every single loser can thus claim some sort of societal discrimination based on some sort of self-identified societal deficiency and thus stake a claim to some sort of self-identified societal bias. The problem becomes so vast as to elude any practical solution.
If you would have stuck to just skin color, your point would have been much harder to refute.