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[YoungHav]

For the bootstrappers... anytime we succeeded at making prosperous communities from the ground up your great grandfathers grabbed their hoods and burnt em to the ground. America has a wicked obsession with black people and refuses still to accept us as equals. Just let us be great.

I have to end my post there... my black skin commands me to punch the judge while screaming thug life when my case is called.

 

[lil smoke]

This isn't really my area

You are in the right area, I think

 

[Dion Blaster]

Nintendo is popular among black youth. Is Mario to blame for Trayvon Martin's death?

 

[Dash27]

Every time Cosby says "this is what black people need to change to make their problems better" he makes it a lot easier for everyone else to avoid responsibility. When someone suggests an anti-poverty program and someone else references Cosby to argue that this is the wrong way to solve problems, Cosby is doing real harm.

Avoid responsibility for what though, government programs? Can you point to a successful anti-poverty program that has made a significant impact? A lot of people argue government programs have made the situation worse.

I think the suggestion that things can be fixed or even helped by some ambiguous government solution is harmful. As you say it makes it easy for people to avoid responsibility.

 

[mckmas8808]

Avoid responsibility for what though, government programs? Can you point to a successful anti-poverty program that has made a significant impact? A lot of people argue government programs have made the situation worse.

I think the suggestion that things can be fixed or even helped by some ambiguous government solution is harmful. As you say it makes it easy for people to avoid responsibility.

That a chart of poverty for all races since 1959. Government has helped to bring down the rate of poverty. Of course they can't be the only ones involved, but looking to the government to help with the issue of poverty isn't a crazy thought.

 

[Mammoth Jones]

Those issues have fuck-all to do with George Zimmerman deciding to profile an individual because of his race.

I'm tired of closet racists like Oreally using the issues in the Black community as a deflection when it comes to what Zimmerman did. What does out of wedlock births have to do with profiling an unarmed Black kid?

 

[Dram]

Seems more like a list of reasons Conservatives don't like Black people than anything to do with Trayvon.

 

[Gotchaye]

Avoid responsibility for what though, government programs? Can you point to a successful anti-poverty program that has made a significant impact? A lot of people argue government programs have made the situation worse.

I think the suggestion that things can be fixed or even helped by some ambiguous government solution is harmful. As you say it makes it easy for people to avoid responsibility.

As I said, this isn't really my area, and I'm a lot stronger on philosophy than policy, but I think it's true that many government programs have made the situation much worse. Government action has also made black people much better off, though. Certainly no one's going to argue that banning slavery didn't help, if we're going back far enough, and almost everyone thinks the Civil Rights Act was a good idea.

But, for starters, we can at least stop or modify existing programs. Mass imprisonment is an obvious one. I'd say that the way we handle redistribution needs to be looked at - it's pretty easy for poor people to face extremely high effective marginal tax rates due to the phasing out of benefits, so this should occur much more gradually and benefits should be more generous at higher incomes (maybe this counts as doing something more).

As for doing more stuff, note that police response times are much higher in areas with lots of black people, that schools are much worse, etc. Black people often feel that the police aren't really there to help them, and this is reinforced by the police actually failing to be there to help them. Sometimes when the police do show up they're much more willing to risk hurting innocents. And absolutely nobody is clamoring to send their kids to public schools in the middle of cities. Yes, sometimes more is spent per person, but children are still being cheated. Health care for all seems like a no-brainer. I'd be interested in looking into ways of encouraging small, locally-owned businesses over large corporations who don't reinvest their profits in the community.

Edit: Maybe this was obvious, but I also think that there's just too little redistribution, and that it's a lot easier to justify more of it when we understand just how thoroughly we fail to provide equality of opportunity. People don't stop being poor when they're paid so little that they still qualify for welfare and welfare benefits are as stingy as possible out of fear that people will actually end up with extra money after spending on necessities.

 

[breakfuss]

But you haven't provided a single ounce of objective evidence or statistics supporting your claim.

You're right, got no empirical data for you. I'm simply extrapolating from what I understand about the media's influence on human thought and behavior. If that's being thrown off the table then I guess I have no leg to stand on.

Just to be clear, my original and only contention was that you can't use White youth as evidence that hip-hop doesn't affect Black kids.

Because Bill O is making a cause-effect relationship with rap music and homicides. 99% of hip-hop heads aren't making that point. They just want more diverse rap music on the radio and on TV. Nothing wrong with that.

But it's 2 complete different points.

C'mon, O'Reilly is obviously being provocative. Throwing out stupid polemics to reel his audience in. I don't think any intelligent person is suggesting you can distill Black plight down to some hip-hop songs. O'Reilly's rhetoric may be couched in a bad place, but that doesn't mean we can't re-purpose it for some honest discourse. The fact of the matter is that the most dirty and vile strain of hip hop is what's projected to the mainstream. That is troubling. I don't know who's to blame for it (I have my theories), but the fact that Blacks by and large accept it reeks of something awful. I certainly have no interest in absolving Zimmerman of his stupid and idiotic actions. Insofar that we are discussing the slaying of Trayvon Martin, hip-hop is irrelevant. BUT, if we're attempting to make sense of the chasm and misunderstanding that exists between Blacks and a large segment of society, how can you NOT discuss Hip-hop? If we're trying to get to the bottom of the unsubstantiated fear, contempt and suspicion some have of Black men, how can you NOT discuss Hip-hop?

 

[Hawkian]

"Stay classy, Bill O'Reilly" doesn't quite cover it.

 

[mckmas8808]

irrelevant[/B]. BUT, if we're attempting to make sense of the chasm and misunderstanding that exists between Blacks and a large segment of society, how can you NOT discuss Hip-hop? If we're trying to get to the bottom of the unsubstantiated fear, contempt and suspicion some have of Black men, how can you NOT discuss Hip-hop?

Okay I understand where you are now. But the problem with discussing hip-hop is that most people that have that unsubstantiated fear, contempt, and suspicion of some black men themselves TOTALLY don't understand hip-hop.

So it's tough to have a conversation with someone that thinks they know/understand something that they clearly do not. You simply can't blame gangsta rap anymore when Kanye, Drake, Wale, and J-Cole are topping the rap charts. You can't use that excuse. It's over! Those guys style is not the same as it was with rappers from the early to mid 90s.

 

[Jay Sosa]

Me and my friends all grew up with Pac and Eazy and all that eastcoast westcoast fun... Some of them have become lawyers other teachers and so on. It's almost like the music we listened to had no influence at all at how we acted and what we became.

That said I truly believe that listening to Wacka Flocka Flame will absolutely turn you into a terrible human being. If you aren't already.

Gucci is fine.