i need white people's perspective on this

[JayHawk]

Who is to blame for the state of US education? We gotta have someone to blame.

It's a collective effort, everybody gets to be guilty, sorry if you were looking for a specific bogey man.

Nah, most of the blame goes to 'best friend' parents that are not parents.

 

[bankside]

JUB is as far removed from afro-american culture as it gets, i was hoping as outsiders you guys might offer an objective perspective

Interesting that you would put it that way. Far removed? In my world JUB is a reliable and ever-present portal into the world of Afro-American culture, and before JUB, my knowledge of African-American culture consisted of (in rough chronological order):

• The black guy on Sesame Street.
• George and Weezie, and Helen from Helen and Tom
• Stevie Wonder
• Arnold and Willis
• Reruns of Sanford and Son
• Reruns of Good Times
• That Martin Luther King Jr. existed
• Some of the characters in a book we had to read for school called The Underground Railroad by Barbara Smucker
• Michael Jackson
• Detroit school war zones and New York ghettoes in the news.
• Sammy Davis Jr.
• NELSON MANDELA
• Bill Cosby
• Black people on Phil Donahue
• Oprah
• Janet Jackson
• Naomi Campbell and then we hit the 90's so I'll stop.

Basically about 20 people defined what it was to be African American. This is a 100% factual chronology of how I came to know what I knew about african american realities by the time I was an adult. I didn't grow up in a farm village or something. I've spent my days in cities of about a million and up.

I was an adult, and I'd never heard about redlining, or segregation, or bussing. As far as I had heard, slavery ended a hundred years before, MLK put the last of the remaining bigots in their place before I was even born, and Bill Cosby represented reality for black people in the same way that the Brady Bunch or Philip Drummond represented reality for white people: Sure not everyone grew up with parents who were doctors and lawyers like the Huxtables, or an architect like Mr. Brady, or a company owner like Mr. Drummond. Or the rich people in California who had ET visit their house. So we knew it wasn't quite real, but they all had nice houses and it was fun to pretend we could all live like that too one day soon enough, and everybody knew somebody who had made it that far so the world was great, right? Incidentally, about the Huxtables? I remember watching that show, loving it, but thinking "What are the odds that two black people would actually meet? Even if they did, what are the odds they'd be right for each other? This seems like a bit of a stretch. Probably each of them would have married someone white just because there are so many more white people. You know, like Helen and Tom."

I couldn't help notice something at the edge of my awareness: there were some people who didn't seem to get it. Most of the characters in that list or the real people on talk shows seemed determined to make something of their lives. Even if they had worked their way up from humble beginnings, maybe moreso then....defiant to succeed. Insisted on it. But there was this thing called "rap music" and some of it was just lefty beatnik hippie poetry with drumbeats and cool dancing, but there was this other harsh bullshitty proud-to-be-low-life criminal-glorifying woman-hating ego douche "music" that at first I thought was just a mistake. How could anyone be proud of that kind of squalor? Nobody should be. Maybe I had misunderstood. Everybody wants to be Cosby, right? Hell I wanted to be Cosby. Everybody wants it to be like on TV!!! They must!

Now that immigration has changed my country, I know lots of black people who didn't live here, whose parents didn't live here, in the 70s, when I was watching those shows. They're from Ghana and Zimbabwe and Somalia and Nigeria and Jamaica...Trinidad and Tobago...but not from the US. So my impression of African Americans still comes from TV, and, of course, from JUB. Which despite your pointing out the limits, is a surprisingly big portal into a part of North America that not everyone knows.

As much as that may seem like a restricted view, that's the view I've got. And all that time from the earliest seasons of the Jeffersons to my amazement that rap actually lasted more than 4 years into the early 80's and my rejection of the butthurt side of it as a complete cultural dead end, I always figured we should be able to relate, not because I know so much about African American culture, but because of all the different humans I've actually met so far, we all seem to want the same things out of life. Why should it be any different now?

 

[JayHawk]

Interesting that you would put it that way. Far removed? In my world JUB is a reliable and ever-present portal into the world of Afro-American culture, and before JUB, my knowledge of African-American culture consisted of (in rough chronological order):

........

Won't quote it all cause that is silly. Your experience was obviously different than mine but that is a decent summary of perception.

 

[bankside]

And I think the reason most people haven't noticed it in those golden olden (objectification/violence) is because they slur.

I think it's because most people don't listen to the lyrics of most songs. It's beat, melody, and background noise.

 

[bankside]

Won't quote it all cause that is silly. Your experience was obviously different than mine but that is a decent summary of perception.

Yeah I know it's just my perception. But I would say if that's the limits I'm stuck with trying to understand people who grew up somewhere else, it's mutual, and they know just as little about me and my community.

You've travelled more than most people. What have you seen around the world?

 

[luckynumbah7]

I think it's because most people don't listen to the lyrics of most songs. It's beat, melody, and background noise.

not to derail, but have you heard Axis of Awesomes' 4 chords yet? The melody, beat and background are strangely hypnotizing these days.

 

[xbuzzerx]

I said that much more. I didn't say not at all.

Asian Americans also live in poverty in high numbers. So do Native Americans, Hispanics, and Slavic. And yet the percentage of illegitimate children born in those communities don't even cross the 40% line. Something else is happening that wither people don't know or they don't want to admit. But harping the same old politically correct arguments ain't helping. Hint: the percentage of illegitimate kids being born in the black community has been rising and continue to rise. There's no end in sight. Unless you want to start arguing there's nothing wrong with pumping out kids without father in sight and make the rest of us pay for it.

Poorer Asian immigrant communities-- as well as Native American, Hispanic and even Russian and Eastern European immigrant groups on the East coast, are indeed associated with large family sizes, higher criminal records, more gang culture and a more visible presence in the drug trade. And I say "more visible presence" because it's the bottom of the chain that we see being arrested, popping up in the news and going to prison. The white collar, rich, or trans-national hands of the drug trade have mansions and smoke Cuban cigars and have pocket Senators or politicians. They don't do prison time and they're not people's mental image of who is responsible for the drug trade or who is benefitting from it, and are not affected or targetted by the "War on Drugs."

Perhaps before jumping to the Model Minority mythos to validate your judgments of the black community, you should take a look at some stats of poor Filipinos, Cambodians and similar groups who live in urban poverty in the U.S. before claiming other groups en masse are simply vastly less likely to exhibit the social ills associated with the very bottom of our socioeconomic ladder.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Perhaps before jumping to the Model Minority mythos to validate your judgments of the black community, you should take a look at some stats of poor Filipinos, Cambodians and similar groups who live in urban poverty in the U.S. before claiming other groups en masse are simply vastly less likely to exhibit the social ills associated with the very bottom of our socioeconomic ladder.

You said that soooo much more eloquently than I was going to.

 

[xbuzzerx]

I couldn't help notice something at the edge of my awareness: there were some people who didn't seem to get it. Most of the characters in that list or the real people on talk shows seemed determined to make something of their lives. Even if they had worked their way up from humble beginnings, maybe moreso then....defiant to succeed. Insisted on it. But there was this thing called "rap music" and some of it was just lefty beatnik hippie poetry with drumbeats and cool dancing, but there was this other harsh bullshitty proud-to-be-low-life criminal-glorifying woman-hating ego douche "music" that at first I thought was just a mistake. How could anyone be proud of that kind of squalor? Nobody should be. Maybe I had misunderstood. Everybody wants to be Cosby, right? Hell I wanted to be Cosby. Everybody wants it to be like on TV!!! They must!

Where've I seen this idea before..?

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

Interesting that you would put it that way. Far removed? In my world JUB is a reliable and ever-present portal into the world of Afro-American culture, and before JUB, my knowledge of African-American culture consisted of (in rough chronological order):

• The black guy on Sesame Street.
• George and Weezie, and Helen from Helen and Tom
• Stevie Wonder
• Arnold and Willis
• Reruns of Sanford and Son
• Reruns of Good Times
• That Martin Luther King Jr. existed
• Some of the characters in a book we had to read for school called The Underground Railroad by Barbara Smucker
• Michael Jackson
• Detroit school war zones and New York ghettoes in the news.
• Sammy Davis Jr.
• NELSON MANDELA
• Bill Cosby
• Black people on Phil Donahue
• Oprah
• Janet Jackson
• Naomi Campbell and then we hit the 90's so I'll stop.

Basically about 20 people defined what it was to be African American.

Nelson Mandela has never been American. Naomi Campbell is of Jamaican descent and was born a Briton.
Don't use the term "African American" as an equivalent for "black person", it's silly.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Nelson Mandela has never been American. Naomi Campbell is of Jamaican descent and was born a Briton.
Don't use the term "African American" as an equivalent for "black person", it's silly.

His post was so expressive I didn't wanna split that hair.

 

[JPGhost]

Perhaps before jumping to the Model Minority mythos to validate your judgments of the black community, you should take a look at some stats of poor Filipinos, Cambodians and similar groups who live in urban poverty in the U.S. before claiming other groups en masse are simply vastly less likely to exhibit the social ills associated with the very bottom of our socioeconomic ladder.

Filipino are poor in the US?
I didn't know that since they're ok when I call them by their last name "nurse"/ rich nurse
You were right on Cambodian http://immigrationinamerica.org/400-cambodian-immigrants.html
They're not my countries though

but still aren't asian like 4.8 % of entire US population? Dont you think they're pale to be compared as model minority? ^^

 

[bankside]

Nelson Mandela has never been American. Naomi Campbell is of Jamaican descent and was born a Briton.
Don't use the term "African American" as an equivalent for "black person", it's silly.

Not American? Madiba was a citizen of my country. I thought every country was smart enough to make him a citizen.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...-mandela-the-honorary-canadian/article548188/

And Naomi I'm glad to concede is British, but I came to know her through her presence in US culture. I know that Turlington is American, but I forget that Evangelista is actually Canadian!

His post was so expressive I didn't wanna split that hair.

Thank you.

BTW, Karen, have you read any John McWhorter? I haven't read his books but his talks on just about any subject are captivating, even if I disagree.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

Not American? Madiba was a citizen of my country. I thought every country was smart enough to make him a citizen.

Honorary citizen.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

BTW, Karen, have you read any John McWhorter? I haven't read his books but his talks on just about any subject are captivating, even if I disagree.

Who him is? I have to check him out on amazon.

 

[JayHawk]

Yeah I know it's just my perception. But I would say if that's the limits I'm stuck with trying to understand people who grew up somewhere else, it's mutual, and they know just as little about me and my community.

You've travelled more than most people. What have you seen around the world?

I think it aligns almost with my perception with a few outliers.

When I was just hitting my teens I made some black friends that my Dad told me to stay away from in racist language. I thought him a total shit until I learned the reasoning. Which did not justify the racist language but did justify his looking out for my safety. Both of those older teens died in drug related shootings over the next few years. Had we been friends who knows where I would have been at those times. My father also had real reasons driving his racism based in race fights and shitty things done by both sides in 1950's Cincinnati.

Still at the same time I have a mixed aunt who is in a interracial relationship and I have mixed cousins but have never really thought of it. My dad told me as a kid his mother married a black man and they lived in rural South Carolina. That is the relationship that my mixed aunt came from and also resulted in the Klan burning may father and his family out of their home and chasing them out of the county. SO they ended up in Cincinnati.


Around the world? Racism and oppressing those not like you is the absolute norm. While we have a lot wrong with our socioeconomic system, the average citizen living in america has so much opportunity in comparison with so many other places. But people only perceive their reality and they don't see over the horizon. That and many more reasons are the foundation for why i believe a peace corps and mandatory civil service should be required of all. Open those apertures.

 

[xbuzzerx]

Filipino are poor in the US?
I didn't know that since they're ok when I call them by their last name "nurse"/ rich nurse
You were right on Cambodian http://immigrationinamerica.org/400-cambodian-immigrants.html
They're not my countries though

but still aren't asian like 4.8 % of entire US population? Dont you think they're pale to be compared as model minority? ^^

There are a lot of very urban, very poor Filipino populations and Filipino gangs in the U.S., yes. I don't have stats on hand for where they average along the economic curve but I am sure it is lower than most northeast Asian groups in the U.S.

 

[xbuzzerx]

Yeah I know it's just my perception. But I would say if that's the limits I'm stuck with trying to understand people who grew up somewhere else, it's mutual, and they know just as little about me and my community.

You've travelled more than most people. What have you seen around the world?

I don't think there's much validity to that idea. It's not as though the airwaves, news and fictional visual media represent a proportional pie slice and representative voice of every background of which just one is the western European-extracted demographic.

I think it remains true to this day that many white people in western countries "know" blacks and other non-white demographics primarily through reputation, stereotype and what you see in the news rather than from people who live and work and socialize in a diverse, daily exposure to other groups. The latter group is almost undoubtedly a minority of the total population.

I don't know what part of Canada you live in but I know that when I visited the country I could go days without seeing a nonwhite person if I wasn't in a downtown area, and the same statement could be made about many neighborhoods in the U.S. in between the two coastal metropolitan areas.

 

[phillo]

image post

 

[phillo]

From this white guy's perspective it seems that some of the "problems" with black culture could have to do with a 27% poverty rate, an incarceration for black men 6 times the national average, lack of social mobility...


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