100m WR progression and slavery

Why not just be honest and say that, yes, blacks as a group are screwed because of slavery and the best we can do is teach a philosophy of self-reliance as there is no other fair way to address the problem since official barriers are dismantled and we can't precisely aportion blame in each individual case. That is sort of how I feel. Blacks are screwed, but there is no way to address the problem without creating other unfairnesses so we can just make sure opportunity is equal as best as possible and leave it at that. Why must conservatives feel morally justified? Old-fashioned conservatives wouldn't have argues about the causes, they would have just argued that one can engage in reparative actions that don't create other injustices (that is, punish people who aren't directly responsible). Why must conservatives always be smugly self-righteous? I am not so stupid to believe tham my success in life isn't predicated on that success having been a foregone coonclusion owing to my background. That doesn't mean I should be punished or feel badly about it, but I shouldnt' feel self-righteously indignant about others failures either. There is a middle ground between guilt and self-righteousness.

The problem wasn't just slavery, as most people tend to forget. It was segregation: Jim Crow laws in the South--where 90% of black people lived--that systematically excluded blacks from full participation in American civic and economic life.

We've really only had a level playing field for about 25 years, and even that's a stretch.

How many black anchor-people of local and network TV broadcasts do you think there were in, say, 1968? Not a whole heck of a lot. Why do you think that was?

The word "racism" comes to mind. I rarely use it, but it's called for in this case.

So please let's not talk about how "slavery ended almost 150 years ago, so why can't 'the blacks' just get over it?"

It's not about slavery. It's about the whirlwind of Jim Crow laws, customary discriminatory policies, restrictive covenants, and ethnic cleansing in the midwest (see James Lowen's SUNDOWN TOWNS) between 1890 and 1930.

It's about Levittown, the original suburban tract development, where Bill O'Reilly grew up. Levittown had no black people. It kept them out. Read Lowen's book.

roboto wrote:

nope wrote:

this is an example of natural selection, not of the evolutionary process in its entirety.

But that's how evolution works. The (mutant) trait already exists, and if that trait is favorable to survival/reproduction, it persists. Let's not split hairs here. I happen to disagree with the thrust of the OP, but his argument isn't ridiculous.

The argument is ridiculous for several reasons:

1)It assumes that black folks were just pliable animals that could be "bred" like animals.

2)Even it that were true, husbandry isn't terribly useful or cost-efffective in an animal that takes 18+ years to reach physical maturity. It would be much cheaper to simply buy an adult slave than to waste food and such breeding them and hoping they survive to adulthood.

3)It overlooks the diversity of skills one would want from a slave. Brute physical strength wasn't nearly as important as resistance to malaria (that is why Indians didn't work out) or even endurance. Brute physical strength, quickness, power is not what you want in most agricultural labor. And yes, intelligence was also a useful trait for some slaves.

4)The era of the slave trade was pretty short in evolutionary terms and there is no evidence of any sort of organized husbandry efforts. Again, the trans-Atlantic slave trade would have made purposeful husbandry (if it was even doable) not very cost effective. These are people we are talking about and slave owners had some economic interest in slaves having some semblance of cultural normalcy within slave society.

I personally think the economic facts of slavery are more relevant than simple racism. It is a staggering economic reality that in 1865 black people as a group literally owned absolutely nothing (educated slaves and free blacks being a miniscule minority) and didn't have any other way of making a living than physical labor. I think zero collective wealth (a vestige of slavery) is a bigger factor than overt racism post 1865. If blacks had been granted full civil rights with no racism in 1865, the economic inequality/poverty would still have produced exactly the cultural difficulties we see with all poor people in disproportion. It is just going to take a long time. I think blacks would be way better off now if they had gotten that 40 acres and a mule than if the reforms of 1964 had existed in 1866.

yeah right wrote:

Imagine wrote:

Just imagine what our crime and murder statistics would be like if they hadn't been brought over here.

Statistics would be the same, but it would be the Chinese immigrants committing most the crimes. And if not the Chinese, then the Irish, or the Polish, or the Mexicans or whoever we stick at the bottom of the economic ladder.

not the chinese. ever been to chinatown in san fran? lots of poverty, little crime, little drugs. walk over to the tenderloin and it's a different story.

Brian wrote:

I personally think the economic facts of slavery are more relevant than simple racism. It is a staggering economic reality that in 1865 black people as a group literally owned absolutely nothing (educated slaves and free blacks being a miniscule minority) and didn't have any other way of making a living than physical labor. I think zero collective wealth (a vestige of slavery) is a bigger factor than overt racism post 1865. If blacks had been granted full civil rights with no racism in 1865, the economic inequality/poverty would still have produced exactly the cultural difficulties we see with all poor people in disproportion. It is just going to take a long time. I think blacks would be way better off now if they had gotten that 40 acres and a mule than if the reforms of 1964 had existed in 1866.

slavery is an entirely economic institution. it's a business model which allows for the plantation owners to become excessively wealthy. by adopting racist views the owners are able to sleep at night, convinced they're not doing something terribly immoral.

in fact, slavery has existed for thousands of years, blacks enslaving blacks and whites enslaving whites and blacks enslaving whites and whites enslaving blacks: lower classes and prisoners of war become property belonging to the upper classes, skin color only started to be used as a reason a few hundred years ago.

FYI ..there is plenty of crime in Chinatown and what the Chinese Communist Party does to the Chinese is a Crime in itself. you just don't see it or hear of it because you are not Chinese.

anyone who says people with dark skin have an unfair advantage at sprinting needs to stop kidding themselves

___________________________________________________________

cept were not talking bout people with black skin, more like peoples from a particular region in Africa. They do have an advantage- high % of FT muscle

Right, so for the first time in history, we have an idneitifable group who we know has a heritage of slavery. In the past, nothing in particular united the offspring of slaves. Where the hell are the helots now? Who knows, but I'll bet there descendants were pretty much at the bottom of Greek soociety for generations after (who, Alexander?) freed them from Spartan control. But a hundred years later, nobody could have physically recognized them as such.

I HAVE SAID IT BEFORE- white people dont dance,jump or RUN as fast - why is not important- they do usually make higher SAT scores for many reasons -

I am not arguing that homogenously intermarrying groups don't exhibit phenotypical traits more similar within their groups that might be advantageous in a given sport. What I do argue is that slavery has nothing to do with it and that "race" broadly conceived has nothing to do with it. I think we are looking at a smaller unit of measure than a race, whatever that even is. East Africans and West Africans are far more diverse phenotypically than they are with other ethnicities (we just happen to stress skin color as an important trait, which they happen to share). Why are northern Europeans (countries that were genetically touched by Vikings) so utterly dominant in pure strength sports (how many blacks or Africans do you see in strongman competitions, amid all the Nordic types?) We just have to remember that white folks have been intermarrying (having fused tribal identities into nation-states long ago) for a long time and thus have a less homogenous gene pool.

Brian wrote:

The argument is ridiculous for several reasons...

What is this, then?? Ridiculous?

You are ridiculous.

To argue that people aren't personally responsible because of something that happended 100 or even 40 years ago is laughable.

The last time I checked, no one is making black people kill other black people.

No one is making them have babies out of wedlock 80% of the time, then completely abandoning their responsiblity (OOPS! Did I say a dirty word?) to provide and raise that child.

No one is keeping them from attending college and making something of themselves.

The only thing holding black people down is themselves. And people like you, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who continaully feed them the line of bullshit that they aren't responsible for their plight and that it all falls on Whitey.

Until they acknowledge that they are responsible for what they become, they will remain what they are.

Case closed!

What is this? The article you sent me is for a hypothesis, not any studies proving it.

Even so, dying immediately from the effects of salt deprivation is a much stronger selector than the vague notion that the multivariate concept of "strength (power, endurance, speed, what exactly? If any of you have done agricultural labor, you know that strength and explosive power isn't really what you need to get through years of daily work - they don't use throughbreds or Arabs to pull plows) enabled blacks to survive in slavery. And is completely separate from the idea of slave husbandry, which only existed in the mind of Jimmy th Greek.

Yeah So wrote:

You are ridiculous.

To argue that people aren't personally responsible because of something that happended 100 or even 40 years ago is laughable.

The last time I checked, no one is making black people kill other black people.

No one is making them have babies out of wedlock 80% of the time, then completely abandoning their responsiblity (OOPS! Did I say a dirty word?) to provide and raise that child.

No one is keeping them from attending college and making something of themselves.

The only thing holding black people down is themselves. And people like you, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who continaully feed them the line of bullshit that they aren't responsible for their plight and that it all falls on Whitey.

Until they acknowledge that they are responsible for what they become, they will remain what they are.

Case closed!

So you think that you make your decisions out of thin air and they have nothing to do with your upbringing, genetics, and early experience? You make the choices you make because of who you are and you didn't consciously bring it about that you are who you are. They I take it you won't take any great pains to raise your kids a certain way since they have this sort of strong free will. This isn't taking away responsibility, it is just bracketing that responsibility as owing to one's role as the agent of an action. You can't be so dim as to think that everyone received a blank slate at some age of responsibility where everything that happened to that point plays no role? That, my friend, is a liberal point of view. The conservative point of view (mine) is that people are already mired in their characters pretty early in life and that character resists change.

Instead of making absurd causa sui argumnets, it might be more interesting to decide why it is so important to insist on attributing this sort of strong free will to people when it is so clearly illogical. Why must we feel morally justified in blaming people for their status instead of just punishing and rewarding actions and leaving it at that, without having to worry much over where they came from? This might free us up to maybe solve the problems we can solve and just admit it when we can't.

"Until they acknowledge that they are responsible for what they become, they will remain what they are."

Well, that observation is a completely different point and not at all incompatible with my argument. You seem to be so scared that someone might be let off the hook that you are reading things into my argument that aren't there. The sort of ultimate responsibility you want so badly to exist jusdt isn't necessary to undergird our notions of justice. I don't have to think I am exercising some great will-driven choice when I don't murder people or commit other crimes to understand that those who do should be punished. I have simply never been so inclined. It is that simple.

So let me get this straight. Are you saying that the history of slavery and racism has no bearing on why blacks exhibit problems as a group such as higher rates of poverty and the pathologies associated with it? Or are you saying the only way to get over these problems is to stress personal responsibility and stop worrying over a past that can't be changed? I completely agree with the second point. Exposure to arguments and policies that encourage personal responsibility are yet another deterministic external factor that can coalesce with other deterministic factors to change behaviors. We can't change the past (or in any way fairly atone for it in a way that would be effective.

You must think at some point in our history the past of slavery mattered as a determinant in black demographic outcomes? I just want to know in what magical year it ceased to matter.

I think the resentments you display in your post are pretty much of the same specie as those of the ever dwindling population of black demagogues and race hucksters like Sharpton.

Well, I see you're seeing things as they should be.

Yeah, I raise my kids the way to behave a certain way. That's my point, dumbass. Black people are having kids by the busload by several different daddies who fail to support those kids in any shape, manner or form. They are void of any responsibility. Where does that come from? Well, from their black parents. Is it Whitey teaching them to have kids out of wedlock as a statement of manhood then bailing out on the responsibility to raise them to be responsible???

Is it Whitey teaching themselves to commit 80% of the violent crimes in this country?

is it Whitey teaching them to deal drugs and murder each other?

Is it Whitey teaching them not to takc advantage of the countless opportunities that exist in this country to succeed?

Is it Whitey teaching them to have kid after kid after kid and then not raising them properly?

Please tell me when black people become personally responsible for the problems that exist in their community.

I'll say it again. As long as people like you continue to tell black people that someone else is responsible for their problems, they will never, ever, ever be anything more than they are today.

But, it's a lot easier just to blame someone else than to have responsibility, isn't it?

Yeah So wrote:

You are ridiculous.

To argue that people aren't personally responsible because of something that happended 100 or even 40 years ago is laughable.

The last time I checked, no one is making black people kill other black people.

No one is making them have babies out of wedlock 80% of the time, then completely abandoning their responsiblity (OOPS! Did I say a dirty word?) to provide and raise that child.

No one is keeping them from attending college and making something of themselves.

The only thing holding black people down is themselves. And people like you, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who continaully feed them the line of bullshit that they aren't responsible for their plight and that it all falls on Whitey.

Until they acknowledge that they are responsible for what they become, they will remain what they are.

Case closed!

P O D!!!

roboto wrote:

Wrong! Actually evolution can happen over short periods of time. Have you ever heard of the peppered moth? It changed color due to the industrial revolution:

http://www.mansfieldct.org/schools/mms/staff/hand/genNaturalselection06.htm

true but they have a much shorter generation length.

the length of a generation for these moths is how long? and ours is how long?.... sorry but you're an idiot.

generation length determins the rate of evolution.

besides color is a much more simplistic evolutionary change compared to a complete overhaul of the body.