There are no peacemakers in American politics. It's mostly agitators and zealots.
Usually talking politics is a good way to lose friends permanently.
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Back when naked, painted snowboarding WASPs were pillaging northern Italian villages leading to Roman Centuries following them back to their native lands to carry them off as slaves into parts unknown, there was a good reason for this. Back then in this Edonic era before the Enlightenment screwed everything over with notions like rights and democratic societies, people living in small communities needed their neighbors to want to do business with them to make their way in the world. Turned out, removing people from connectedness deranged multiple millennia worth of evolutionary forces effectively that signaled if you wanted to be able to provide for your family you might need to tone crap down a bit and, if not exactly lose the radical fringe views then at lease recognize the borders and give them a bit of respect. Not to say that was all good. But it did serve a purpose and it's modern value should still be evident in at least providing a signal that one is walking a lonely path for reasons that include some cause for blame on one's own part as well.
But hey, might made right back then so it was a better time, right? No one to say killing a bloke, raping and murdering his wife and carrying their kids off as slaves was "wrong" and violated some sense of shared traits inalienable to the human race, right? Dude should have been better at swinging a sword or something if he didn't want that to happen.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Ajax's point, dim as it may be, is that historical wrongs are so manifold that any reparations project is inherently arbitrary and, in actuality, represents who is imposing power at the time it is put into place. Because he conceptualizes virtually everything in terms of race, he thinks about it as "races" committing offenses against one another.
This really misunderstands what reparations arguments are. First, it's not some racial group paying back harm caused to some other racial group. It's normally a specific institution - a government, organization, or business - that was involved in some form of exploitation or oppression offering recompense to some group or their heirs for this. When you realize this, asking why aren't Romans paying for their enslavement of WASP's is even dumber than it first sounds.
Second, this kind of nihilistic view of compensation can be applied to any attempt to pay a person back for wrongs committed against them. There's always someone left out when this occurs because the reach of justice can never be complete. This at least seems like an unacceptable outcome that undermines how society normally operates. If you reject this, and I think almost everyone does once they think about it for a second, then the real discussion is under what circumstances are people deserving of reparation and why and when is it practical to put into place. This a debate Ajax18 deliberately skirts despite being obsessed with the topic. Imagine being obsessed with a topic, but not doing the first thing to learn about it.
It's kinda nutty, and that's why you end up with "WHAT ABOUT VIKING RAIDS?!?!" level argumentation.
This really misunderstands what reparations arguments are. First, it's not some racial group paying back harm caused to some other racial group. It's normally a specific institution - a government, organization, or business - that was involved in some form of exploitation or oppression offering recompense to some group or their heirs for this. When you realize this, asking why aren't Romans paying for their enslavement of WASP's is even dumber than it first sounds.
At its core, Ajax seems unable to associate the values that defined the ideal that is the United States of America with it being the US he holds dear that differentiates it from, say, the Roman Empire. Ancient Rome can be seen as a parallel to the US at the level of an institution if one wants. What creates the awfulness of his analogy, besides historic illiteracy, is that he equates the two as similar institutions with similar societial norms, values, and purposes. So yeah, race, identity, us v. them, what's the dif?
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
If systemic racism is constant, how do you explain the OJ Simpson case and outcome? How do you explain the Kobe Bryant rape case? Was there systemic racism in the Duke rape case as well or Tawana Brawley? I'd say these are demonstrations systemic reverse racism that have existed almost 40-50 years.
Last edited by ICCrawler - ICjobs on Thu Jul 09, 2020 4:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
And when the confederates saw Jackson standing fearless as a stone wall the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
If systemic racism is constant, how do you explain the OJ Simpson case and outcome?
It pays to be rich enough to afford really good attorneys?
No one is proposing that racial discrimination affects everyone in the exact same way. What's being proposed is that biases in the criminal justice system by policy choices and individual actors systemically produce outcomes that are discriminatory. This, on average, impacts black people negatively.
If you send police with aggressive searching tactics primarily into black neighborhoods, black people will be more likely to be searched with a lower threshold of suspicion. This doesn't mean that ever black person is going to be unreasonably searched and every white person not. It's means that on average, black people are more likely to be searched unreasonably. And, if some police officers racially profile blacks because of personal bias, that can produce the same effect and magnify the former. Then you might say that the system is embedded with racism.
If systemic racism is constant, how do you explain the OJ Simpson case and outcome? How do you explain the Kobe Bryant rape case? Was there systemic racism in the Duke rape case as well 8r Tawana Brawley? I'd say these are demonstrations systemic reverse racism that have existed almost 40-50 years.
Folks will try to tell you that Babe Ruth was great at hitting runs, but don't you listen. All you have to do to prove them wrong is point out that Ruth only hit a home run 6.7% of the time, and that is a BASEBALL FACT (references available upon request). So when someone tells you a person who fails 93.3% of the time is great, you just tell them to pull the other one.
You got vision, ajax; the rest of the world wears bifocals.
(Edited because I can't math in bifocals.)
Last edited by Guest on Thu Jul 09, 2020 11:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
If systemic racism is constant, how do you explain the OJ Simpson case and outcome? How do you explain the Kobe Bryant rape case? Was there systemic racism in the Duke rape case as well 8r Tawana Brawley? I'd say these are demonstrations systemic reverse racism that have existed almost 40-50 years.
Supporting argument - On a message board full of posters, how come less than a handful are confirmed racists if racism is systemic?
If systemic racism is constant, how do you explain the OJ Simpson case and outcome? How do you explain the Kobe Bryant rape case? Was there systemic racism in the Duke rape case as well 8r Tawana Brawley? I'd say these are demonstrations systemic reverse racism that have existed almost 40-50 years.
Supporting argument - On a message board full of posters, how come less than a handful are confirmed racists if racism is systemic?
Not sure if this is a good analogy. The word "systemic" is key. You can reform it, though. If Stormfront was a racist message board, how come there's poster A, who clearly is not a racist, posting there?
But once you clean up the analogy, Ajax18 might go, "Yeah! How come?"
Facebook might be a good analogy. There's a decent case that Facebook encourages systemic racism. Its algorithms reward engagement based on inflammatory, racist posting and it connects people to ever more extreme circles to fuel that engagement. The platform doing this has been a major factor in at least one genocide.
So suppose you assert that Facebook encourages systemic racism and inculcates cultural attitudes that preserve it. Then Ajax18 hobbles along and says, "Ta Nahesi Coats has a Facebook page. Is he racist?!?!?!?!" Problem is, that's exactly what Ajax18 (or even DocCam) would do, so pointing it out doesn't help. It might help an independent reader make the distinction though.