cuchulainn
Member
Good example.
A Rational Discussion of Political Correctness
- Thread starter gc70
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"Social" PC isn't tyranny. It's the 1st amendment in action. Amendment One says that I have the right to tell you to shut up. It also says that you don't have too. Perfect.
As to Bill Bennett - I don't know the man, but nobody seems to be considering the fact that he could, in fact, really be as much of a racist pri** as he sounded like. And that's OK, too... You're allowed to be a jerk. But the Constitution doesn't protect you from getting called on it.
There's nothing PC about that.
--Shannon
As to Bill Bennett - I don't know the man, but nobody seems to be considering the fact that he could, in fact, really be as much of a racist pri** as he sounded like. And that's OK, too... You're allowed to be a jerk. But the Constitution doesn't protect you from getting called on it.
There's nothing PC about that.
--Shannon
Art Eatman said:
Bzzzt! But thanks for playing.
You're sexist if you insist that all men are better at math than all women -- and vice versa with respect to fine manipulation. Must I go find a big, hairy male watchmaker who can't balance his checkbook or solve a quadriatic equation? How about the top gun in the Meterology department at my work, a bubbly, blonde, soccer-Mom-looking young woman with advanced degrees in math and physics in addition to meteorology because, she says, "it's just fun."
"Hard-wired biology" only tells us about general trends. It is incapable of telling us about individual ability. The only way to learn that is to meet the person and see what they can and can't do.
...And that's the big logical error in Mr. Bennet's remark. Humans have got a "hard-wired biology" to be bad guys and in pretty consistent precentages of the population. Even if, in some ghastly alternate universe, his thought-experiment was carried out, the end result would not be less crime, just paler criminals. Man tries to rob me, his skin color is not a salient fact right at that moment; how about you?
--Herself
CAnnoneer said:
That was my point. You can't make jerks into gentlemen (or ladies) by legislative fiat or by workplace rule. And, sadly, nowadays it is considered impolite to shoot them. Even slapping is frowned upon.
So stop putting up with louts! And/or stop being a lout yourself. We're not talkin' PC, just saving the locker-room jokes for the locker-room; saving the class-bashing jokes for those who appreciate such, and puttin' a bit of effort into saying, "Please," Thank you," "Sir," Ma'am,", "Mister," "Miss," "Miz" and "Misses." You know what those words are? They're what we say instead of "go hump yerself, ya offspring of goats." It's not non-PC to find out if somebody can do the job before assuming he can't!
Nope; my argument is that more of us need to be armed, more of us unwilling to knuckle under to criminals and more of us need to be doing a better job of teaching basic safe gun-handling to others.CAnnoneer said:
We don't need laws against doing Bad Stuff With Guns any more than we need laws against rudeness -- in each case, we need more people who are unwilling to tolerate such behavior!
Sadly, it would seem that you are not among them, at least where civility is concerned. You see a gal post and you leap to assume she's a secret blissninny. Or perhaps a Tool of the New World Order:
You betcha. Anyone that favors polite discourse, my very dear sir, must be The Enemy. Why, I'm plotting to oppress you right now! H'mmm, shall I start with anti-maccasars, or move right in for the kill with Using The Proper Fork at a Formal Dinner? (Hint: the sideways one at the top is for the fish course).CAnnoneer said:
With warmest personal regards,
I remain,
--Herself
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Dionysusigma
Member
As the culture dies, the schools fail, the cities teem with functional illiterates and our children turn into tattooed primitives cosseted by a civilization whose origins they barely know, I watch them with--I will say it plainly--contempt. A mild contempt, but contempt. Sadness also, for they have lost much, but yes, a contempt I do not want yet cannot escape.
So, to judge by my correspondence, do many people old enough to read fluently. None use the word "contempt." The taboos are too ingrained, the penalties too harsh, the unspoken laws protecting everyone's self-esteem too punitively policed. Again, it is not a contempt that people want to feel: All would prefer that things not be as they are. Yet contempt is unmistakably what peers through their letters.
Contempt is the proper reaction to the contemptible.
I sometimes think the country is dividing itself into two cultures. The first, and much the smaller, will be of those who read widely and know much, who are cultured and live in a wider world than the merely present. The second will be of those who received high grades without understanding that they were being cheated by their elders. An abyss will separate the two.
The chain of cultivation, once broken, is not easily rejoined. We are doing everything we can to break it. It is a shame. People deserve more. We are doing this, as nearly as I can tell, so that the dull and uninterested will feel good about themselves. We are doing it to conceal that some of us are better than others.
Yes. Better. That word.
In the past it was recognized that certain qualities were superior to others, and that people who cultivated those qualities were superior to those who didn't. The honest were thought superior to the thieving, the kind to the cruel, the provident to the shiftless, the wise to the foolish, the learned to the ignorant. Today one must not hold these views. They constitute the crime of elitism, which is the recognition that the better is preferable to the worse.
One must never, ever notice that some people are better than others.
Not to notice the inescapable requires either stupidity or moral blindness. Since few people are very stupid, we have chosen the road of blindness. We feign stupidity for reasons of politics.
It takes some serious feigning. If I said that Mother Theresa was no better than the Hillside Strangler – "she wasn't better, just different" – people would laugh. If I said that Albert Schweitzer was of greater worth than an illiterate drug-dealing parasite in what is called the inner city, I would be called a racist. If I said that a white suburban kid who couldn't do long division amounted to a medieval peasant without the excuses, I would be called, spare me, an elitist.
Which I am.
What, pray, should one feel toward intelligent people who cannot read without squinting laboriously, who know less of their language than a fourth-grader in 1954, have a shaky grasp of the multiplication tables, cannot write a coherent paragraph, and seldom read a book? Respect comes to people who merit respect. It isn't an entitlement. Contempt also comes to those who merit it. And should.
I do not scorn, say, savages from Papua-New Guinea who wear penis gourds, eat huge grubs from within logs, and peer at distant airliners as those vouchsafed a glimpse of divinity. It is unreasonable to blame them for not having profited from opportunities they didn't have. I watch them with wonder, but not contempt.
But the lazy, shiftless, deliberately half-lettered, the feckless and socially worthless – yes, worthless: that, and "shiftless," are words that could well be resurrected – those who have had every opportunity to better themselves but couldn't summon the effort…for them I cannot help feeling pity. And contempt.
And what should one think of the bloated welfare mother with a second-grade education, with a litter of five she can't feed and won't school, by twenty-five fathers she can't remember, who spends her limited time between couplings in watching Oprah and feeling abused? The best I can come up with is revulsion. And pity, yes. Being a public uterus cannot be pleasant. Yet I will not pretend that it is admirable.
And what of the mall children of the suburbs, who leave high school with less arithmetical fluency than I had in the sixth grade in 1957 in the schools of Alabama? I didn't know arithmetic because I was particularly meritorious. I was a barefoot Southern kid with a BB gun in one hand and a fielder's glove in the other. I knew arithmetic, we all knew arithmetic, because the society, the schools, and our parents made it plain that we ought to know it, and in fact were going to know it, at which point the conversation was over.
This brings us to a greater question: What should one feel other than contempt for a society that, enjoying virtually unlimited resources, deliberately enstupidates its children? We don't have to do it. We choose to. We are ruining our society on purpose.
Today I see mall rats who go through high school with the red puffy eyes born of dope, and literally count on their fingers to do multiplication. On graduation they take one course at the community college, play video games, and hang out pointlessly with their friends. I've got more respect for dirt. You can grow plants in it.
I once wrote a column on the almost comic state of regained subhumanity. A friend of mine responded:
"Johnny can't add coz (a) his grade school teachers are moron socialists, (b) his parents are mouth-breathing, TV watching losers, and (c) he's majoring in sociology so he can get a gov't job like everyone else."
I can't see much wrong with that analysis.
The desire to disguise differences in merit by ideological cleansing, and the atmosphere of pre-human irredentism now earnestly promoted in what were for a time the schools, will promote precisely the elitism they pretend to vanquish. Those who achieve will always look down on those who didn't bother. This is certainly true in regard to schooling. As the gap increases between the few who know their history and literature, and those who gurble ungrammatically about their favorite situation comedies, the contempt will become sharper. Two cultures.
Maybe self-esteem comes too high. Besides, who will have greater respect for themselves, the puzzled and half-literate, or those who read confidently and know that they have been well educated? If you want to respect your self, do something worthy of respect. Now there's a concept.
-The Two Cultures (With All Due Respect) by Fred Reed
So, to judge by my correspondence, do many people old enough to read fluently. None use the word "contempt." The taboos are too ingrained, the penalties too harsh, the unspoken laws protecting everyone's self-esteem too punitively policed. Again, it is not a contempt that people want to feel: All would prefer that things not be as they are. Yet contempt is unmistakably what peers through their letters.
Contempt is the proper reaction to the contemptible.
I sometimes think the country is dividing itself into two cultures. The first, and much the smaller, will be of those who read widely and know much, who are cultured and live in a wider world than the merely present. The second will be of those who received high grades without understanding that they were being cheated by their elders. An abyss will separate the two.
The chain of cultivation, once broken, is not easily rejoined. We are doing everything we can to break it. It is a shame. People deserve more. We are doing this, as nearly as I can tell, so that the dull and uninterested will feel good about themselves. We are doing it to conceal that some of us are better than others.
Yes. Better. That word.
In the past it was recognized that certain qualities were superior to others, and that people who cultivated those qualities were superior to those who didn't. The honest were thought superior to the thieving, the kind to the cruel, the provident to the shiftless, the wise to the foolish, the learned to the ignorant. Today one must not hold these views. They constitute the crime of elitism, which is the recognition that the better is preferable to the worse.
One must never, ever notice that some people are better than others.
Not to notice the inescapable requires either stupidity or moral blindness. Since few people are very stupid, we have chosen the road of blindness. We feign stupidity for reasons of politics.
It takes some serious feigning. If I said that Mother Theresa was no better than the Hillside Strangler – "she wasn't better, just different" – people would laugh. If I said that Albert Schweitzer was of greater worth than an illiterate drug-dealing parasite in what is called the inner city, I would be called a racist. If I said that a white suburban kid who couldn't do long division amounted to a medieval peasant without the excuses, I would be called, spare me, an elitist.
Which I am.
What, pray, should one feel toward intelligent people who cannot read without squinting laboriously, who know less of their language than a fourth-grader in 1954, have a shaky grasp of the multiplication tables, cannot write a coherent paragraph, and seldom read a book? Respect comes to people who merit respect. It isn't an entitlement. Contempt also comes to those who merit it. And should.
I do not scorn, say, savages from Papua-New Guinea who wear penis gourds, eat huge grubs from within logs, and peer at distant airliners as those vouchsafed a glimpse of divinity. It is unreasonable to blame them for not having profited from opportunities they didn't have. I watch them with wonder, but not contempt.
But the lazy, shiftless, deliberately half-lettered, the feckless and socially worthless – yes, worthless: that, and "shiftless," are words that could well be resurrected – those who have had every opportunity to better themselves but couldn't summon the effort…for them I cannot help feeling pity. And contempt.
And what should one think of the bloated welfare mother with a second-grade education, with a litter of five she can't feed and won't school, by twenty-five fathers she can't remember, who spends her limited time between couplings in watching Oprah and feeling abused? The best I can come up with is revulsion. And pity, yes. Being a public uterus cannot be pleasant. Yet I will not pretend that it is admirable.
And what of the mall children of the suburbs, who leave high school with less arithmetical fluency than I had in the sixth grade in 1957 in the schools of Alabama? I didn't know arithmetic because I was particularly meritorious. I was a barefoot Southern kid with a BB gun in one hand and a fielder's glove in the other. I knew arithmetic, we all knew arithmetic, because the society, the schools, and our parents made it plain that we ought to know it, and in fact were going to know it, at which point the conversation was over.
This brings us to a greater question: What should one feel other than contempt for a society that, enjoying virtually unlimited resources, deliberately enstupidates its children? We don't have to do it. We choose to. We are ruining our society on purpose.
Today I see mall rats who go through high school with the red puffy eyes born of dope, and literally count on their fingers to do multiplication. On graduation they take one course at the community college, play video games, and hang out pointlessly with their friends. I've got more respect for dirt. You can grow plants in it.
I once wrote a column on the almost comic state of regained subhumanity. A friend of mine responded:
"Johnny can't add coz (a) his grade school teachers are moron socialists, (b) his parents are mouth-breathing, TV watching losers, and (c) he's majoring in sociology so he can get a gov't job like everyone else."
I can't see much wrong with that analysis.
The desire to disguise differences in merit by ideological cleansing, and the atmosphere of pre-human irredentism now earnestly promoted in what were for a time the schools, will promote precisely the elitism they pretend to vanquish. Those who achieve will always look down on those who didn't bother. This is certainly true in regard to schooling. As the gap increases between the few who know their history and literature, and those who gurble ungrammatically about their favorite situation comedies, the contempt will become sharper. Two cultures.
Maybe self-esteem comes too high. Besides, who will have greater respect for themselves, the puzzled and half-literate, or those who read confidently and know that they have been well educated? If you want to respect your self, do something worthy of respect. Now there's a concept.
-The Two Cultures (With All Due Respect) by Fred Reed
RealGun
Member
Herself said:
Nonsense. There is no criminal vacuum to be filled, except maybe to support demand for drugs. You breed fewer potential criminals, a product of parents who need parenting themselves, and you get fewer incidences of crime. You also don't get cops who won't go into "the project" without backup.
As a bonus, you get fewer bogus motives for gun control.
CAnnoneer
Member
+1 RealGun
So you agree that PC laws are ineffectual in anything but harassing the general populace? Just like gun laws?
So now I am a lout? Exactly where did I say we should tolerate the few louts that every place has?
But because you do not have more people like that, you want to legislate them into existence? If yes, then you defeat your own argument. If no, they you agree the PC laws are extraneous and ineffectual. Which is it?
You are the first to go ad hominem. I will not follow suit. These methods are not fooling anybody.
Also, in an intellectual discussion, expect no punches to be pulled just because you are XX, instead of XY. Making gender an issue is yet another transparent ploy often used to guilt/embarass the opposition into a corner. Again, the method is not fooling anybody and is completely ineffectual in a worthy company.
<claps>
Is this being rude in one's politeness, or polite in one's rudeness?
Switching from insults to stereotypes to ridicule makes no worthy argument other than condemning its author.
Herself said:
So you agree that PC laws are ineffectual in anything but harassing the general populace? Just like gun laws?
So now I am a lout? Exactly where did I say we should tolerate the few louts that every place has?
But because you do not have more people like that, you want to legislate them into existence? If yes, then you defeat your own argument. If no, they you agree the PC laws are extraneous and ineffectual. Which is it?
You are the first to go ad hominem. I will not follow suit. These methods are not fooling anybody.
Also, in an intellectual discussion, expect no punches to be pulled just because you are XX, instead of XY. Making gender an issue is yet another transparent ploy often used to guilt/embarass the opposition into a corner. Again, the method is not fooling anybody and is completely ineffectual in a worthy company.
<claps>
Is this being rude in one's politeness, or polite in one's rudeness?
Switching from insults to stereotypes to ridicule makes no worthy argument other than condemning its author.
CAnnoneer
Member
Herself said:
That is not what the Harvard president said, yet he got jumped by PCers, feminists, feds, etc. In fact, he worded it very much in terms of general trends, but that did not prevent the flak he attracted.
Let's assume for the moment that that were true. Then it follows that all races and both genders, being equal, should have the same percentage of the "criminality gene". Then our prisons and crime statistics should mirror the population percentages along racial and gender lines. However, the observed is drastically different from that prediction. Therefore the model is wrong.
RealGun covered that. I will only add the very real statistics from the security mailing list of a major university in my area. Two crimes on average a week, each involving on average two suspects. We are talking robbery, burglary, sexual assault, assault with a deadly weapon. For the past couple of years, NOT A SINGLE TIME did it involve an asian or a white as the suspects. Please explain this fact within your framework.
cuchulainn
Member
<sigh>
Actually, a program to abort all the babies of a particular race would create great social upheaval and backlash -- and that likely would increase crime. It likely would backfire.
But let’s say it didn’t do that. Let’s pretend that blacks meekly and voluntarily lined up en masse at the abortion clinics like Eloi:
1) At best, there'd be no crime reduction for at least 10 to 15 years because the already-born babies and toddlers would continue to reach adolescence, which is when most criminal activity begins. Only when you reached the years when the aborted babies would have hit adolescence could the benefit show up.
2) In ensuing decade-plus wait, there'd no way to tell what societal factors might erase the "coming benefit." Maybe criminal activity among the now-grown white, brown, yellow and red babies would increase enough to negate Bennett’s supposed benefit. There’s no way to tell or predict.
Art Eatman
Moderator In Memoriam
Alright, Herself. In math, the average ability for men is notably greater than the average ability for women. Same deal for spatial relationships. (Which doesn't mean that some men aren't lousy architects, or that some women aren't great.)
Regardless, it's built in to Homo Sap. Nuthin' can be done about it, whether the PC crowd likes it or not. No different from the issue of upper-body physical strength...
And, as I said, it's not at all a "good" or "bad" thing. It's a Cronkhite thing: "And that's the way it is."
G'night...
, Art
Regardless, it's built in to Homo Sap. Nuthin' can be done about it, whether the PC crowd likes it or not. No different from the issue of upper-body physical strength...
And, as I said, it's not at all a "good" or "bad" thing. It's a Cronkhite thing: "And that's the way it is."
G'night...
, Art
grampster
Member
What Art so deftly said is that "you is what you is", but also he said, "it's how you use what you is, that defines who you are". To that, I wholeheartedly agree.
I also agree that I don't need a law to define the obvious. Sigh.............
I also agree that I don't need a law to define the obvious. Sigh.............
I never didn't agree; I said that such laws are what you get when a society no longer bothers to control the manners of its members by a means other than looking to government.CAnnoneer said:
Never said you were a lout. I did leave room for you to be one if you so chose. I should not wish to be accused of leaving louts out -- although in the real world I do so, every chance I get.
Not everything that is not prohibited is therefore mandatory. Not-A isn't always B.
Neither, see above. If you want better-behaved people, put your shoulder to the wheel and start movin' society in that direction. Mandatory, large-scale social engineering is a tool of authoritarians. The traditional method is to do so one-on-one or a few at a time, instead.
Y'all are saying I was the first? (Didn't even know I had. Thin-skinned?) Ummm, parm'me, but did you not accuse me of favoring the logic that calls torture good? Yes; you did. The innocent act doesn't suit you, dear.You are the first to go ad hominem. I will not follow suit. These methods are not fooling anybody.
"Fooling?" You leapt to assumptions about me that appear to be based on my sex. No foolin'. N.B., words have gender; critters have sexes.
You're the one championing rudeness and prejudice as Good Things, simply because they are not PC. There are plenty of reasons to despise rudeness and impoliteness other than because the PC types claim to be against them.
In the real world, the enemy of one's enemy is not necessarily one's friend. That's a lesson gunfolk often forget, to our peril.
--Herself
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grampster
Member
Ok dudes and dudettes. This is a place where we agree to disagree. However, we all agree that peeing on our leg is not preferred. I hear a pssshhhing sound.
Oh, there, it stopped. Now, what's on yer mind?
Oh, there, it stopped. Now, what's on yer mind?
As for the "more blacks, less crime" nonsense, I see we have people here who don't do math at all well.
Crime levels are closely linked to two things: Poverty and lack of upward mobility.
The more po'folks with no lawful or honorable way out of poverty a society has, the more crime it will have. D'ye lads not read history? Some of my ancestors were ghetto-scum in their day: Irish and Scots. Last time I looked, they were among the paler sort of folks, generally. And when they'd come to the States in vast numbers and lived in teeming slums, they formed gangs. They robbed. They kidnapped. They murdered. They ran drugs. They ran prostitutes.
Color? Color's an historical accident. At one time, red hair and freckles was an "uh-oh." At another, straight black hair and a ruddy sunburn. Right now it's curly dark hair and dark skin -- and a War On Drugs that makes it look a lot easier to make a lot more upward progress outside the law than within it helps preserve that status quo, right along with Welfare in all its forms.
C'mon -- ask the boys in the SouthWest, last seen fretting about the crime and trouble arising from their latest group of outsiders; a group that -- oh, picture it it! -- ain't of African descent.
Can't have it both ways. Wanna hear about Amish teen gangs?
--Herself
Crime levels are closely linked to two things: Poverty and lack of upward mobility.
The more po'folks with no lawful or honorable way out of poverty a society has, the more crime it will have. D'ye lads not read history? Some of my ancestors were ghetto-scum in their day: Irish and Scots. Last time I looked, they were among the paler sort of folks, generally. And when they'd come to the States in vast numbers and lived in teeming slums, they formed gangs. They robbed. They kidnapped. They murdered. They ran drugs. They ran prostitutes.
Color? Color's an historical accident. At one time, red hair and freckles was an "uh-oh." At another, straight black hair and a ruddy sunburn. Right now it's curly dark hair and dark skin -- and a War On Drugs that makes it look a lot easier to make a lot more upward progress outside the law than within it helps preserve that status quo, right along with Welfare in all its forms.
C'mon -- ask the boys in the SouthWest, last seen fretting about the crime and trouble arising from their latest group of outsiders; a group that -- oh, picture it it! -- ain't of African descent.
Can't have it both ways. Wanna hear about Amish teen gangs?
--Herself
Cosmoline
Member
I remember the first time I heard "PC" was in the early '90's when socializing with old high school friends who were going to an elite liberal arts college in Portland. It had already gripped social life at that institution to such an extent that people decided whether or not to go to parties based on how "PC" the person throwing them was. At my own university I saw things getting increasingly dogmatic. The PC movement has restricted free expression. That is its goal. If wrongspeaking is forbidden, wrongthinking can be cured. It goes way beyond merely being polite, and seeks to change society by punishing what it deems are the wrong thoughts. The excesses of the PC movement are in fact what converted me from liberalism. I began to realize I was being force fed a new dogma, much of which had little or no support in reality.
cuchulainn
Member
Indeed.
Moreover, the problem with the thought experiment -- other than the fact that Bennett didn't present it seriously, so why are we?
-- is that it assumes a static culture. The thought process: Today, in January 2006, blacks account for a disproportionate share of crime. Thus, people assume that it's obvious that aborting all black babies would cut future crime.
That's far from an absolute. As I stated above (in post #84):
1) The effects couldn't appear for 10 or 15 years (if ever).
2) Lots might change in that time to negate any positive effects.
And all that assumes there would be no social backlash against the abortion program, increasing crime rather than decreasing it.
RealGun
Member
Herself said:
If you are proposing that you are somehow smarter, you might want to demonstrate it. I see no equation here...agreeable, yes (yawn)...enlightening, no.
Taurus 617 CCW
Member
Now that the Christmas season is over I can discuss the latest go around with the PC reform. I had not been so pissed off as I was this year by everyone saying things like "Let's decorate the holiday tree," "Happy holidays to you," and I even heard "Merry Santa day." When I heard statements like that I couldn't resist wishing them a happy political correctness day back. I work at Lowe's Home Improvement Center and we actually had a lady complain about a sign that said Christmas trees out front of the store. Lowe's ended up taking it down voluntarily as a result of her request. I never became offended over the terms Hanukah, Kwanzaa, or Christmas. I truly believe that political correctness will be the downfall of our society. 
AStone
Member
That's a very important, key distinction in this argument folks. It deserves to be addressed.jfruser said:
Waitone
Member
Oooooo, so that explains the huge wave of crime and violence during the great depression. That explains why our crime levels are so much lower today than they were in the early '30's.
Crime is a moral problem.
CAnnoneer
Member
Herself said:
I am of the opinion people should be free to make total jackasses of themselves. Engineering them in any direction, personally or by force of law, diminishes their freedom. A lout suffers ostracism from polite company without any legislation or private tutoring. That is a condition he naturally reaches on his own. Whether it is a loss or a gain is for him to decide, not for anyone else to mandate.
Extrapolating your logic to refute it is not ad hominem. Also, "dear" is bit too familiar, to the point of being disparaging. Yet another transparent method to undermine the opposition without offering meaningful logic. At least there is behavioral consistency. And again, nobody is fooled.
You misstepped, I called you on it. No assumptions involved.
Read some classics, e.g. Dickens and Jane Austin. They talk of "gender", not "sex".
PC is anti-freedom and pro-social-engineering. Just because I am anti-PC does not make me pro-rudeness. Also, the truth is often harsh. Harshness is often taken for rudeness, and dismissed as such together with the truth. My priority is truth above all, no matter whose feathers, fur, or scales get ruffled. A society that sacrifices truth in any way, shape, or form is not for long in the real world.
Do some searches on this forum and you will convince yourself very few to nobody here has much of an illusion about the enemy of the enemy. The problem is many people feel they only have to choose between two evils.
CAnnoneer
Member
Herself said:
If indeed poverty and no upward mobility characterize and determine the condition of all new-comers, please explain why it is that prisons are not filled with asians and why it is not drugged asians that would mug you on the street.
We in the pacific west have a large continuous wave of asian legal immigrants that come, integrate, root, bloom, and prosper, outstripping many "natives" in both social and financial succes by legal means. It seems poverty, crime, drugs, Maltusian catastrophe, welfare.gov, and whining are not their destiny somehow.
Damn counterexamples, ay?
Excuse me? Man, there are Vietnamese street gangs in the quiet Midwestern city where I live and work. Not where you live? No Hmong punks? (And I suppose you never, ever heard of the Tong?)CAnnoneer said:
Couple of points:
1. Aisian immigrants are not, as a group, immune to the lures of vice and crime
2. However, unlike Americans of African descent, they are not the inheritors of the actions and attitudes of a patronizing government that assumes they can never do as well for themselves as whites, that assumes they are in need of an extra break or a hand-out on the sole basis of skin color, that beleives they can never compete evenly with persons of European descent. (Look up what President Wilson told W. E. B. Dubuois after Wilson segregated the Federal government and Dubious called on him to object, for example).
When Aisians were seen and treated as underpeople -- out West during the 19th century, for instance -- they were disproprtionately involved in vice and crime. This is a combination of a lack of any legitimnate way to get ahead of the rat race and of "living down" to the low expectations of the culture they were surrounded by. (I am once again led to suspect that you have not read much history).
It changed, but it changed slowly. While asians as a group were doing considerably better in the States by the early-mid 20th Century than the had been in the 19th, the surrounding majority culture still did not quite view them as full members, and had no qualms at all about singling out a particular subgroup and collecting them in internment camps after Pearl Harbor.
Indeed. Sharply pointed at both ends, too.
As for the remainder of your replies to me, I shall ignore them, as you have chosen to ignore any area of similarity in our conclusions, let alone work to mutual understanding. I have no need of dominance games.
You have taken umbrage at being called "dear;" please read back. Such terms are what one uses in polite discourse when tempted to speak harshly.
--Herself
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