[KaiserJeep]

I held my anger in check and thought about my response to these two bigoted members. Then I decided that for the sake of civility in this Forum I would not respond in kind.

To those of you reading but not participating, observe how the bigoted will do and say almost anything, rather that to confront their own Rascist natures.

I'll simply say that I do believe that Minorities - and not just Blacks - are the victims of bigotry from Whites, among others. They don't oppress themselves, either - the majority oppresses them.

The government(s) are doing something intended to help the situation, and the Reverse Racism that is the topic of this thread has clearly gone over the top, and in the opinion of many including me, is now harming rather than helping.

This thread has not IMHO produced any insights that are likely to help the situation. It has however, clearly demonstrated that the most prejudiced among the Majority are those blaming the Minority victims of Racism, for Racism.

Think about what you have seen here in this thread. Think long and hard. I will only respond to thoughtful and considered comments after this. To those who had the courage to participate, I thank you, one and all, regardless of whether I agree with you or not.

[Cog]

In a practical sense as both a buyer and seller of property its next to impossible for me to discriminate based on race. As a buyer of the house I live in now, I never met the owners. As a seller now, I will never meet the person who is buying it. A seller is not required to be at closing. I will also never meet the buyers agent. I only deal with my own agent.

A person is entitled to see and place an offer on any house on the MLS(Multiple listing service). The agent doesn't know the race of the person who asks to view the house prior to meeting them at the house. As a seller, I'm not in the house when its shown since my agent has advised, as most agents do, that the sellers not be there when the house is shown. If an offer is made and I accept the offer, I'm mostly stuck with the deal at that point. At closing, only the buyer has to be there signing his 40 pages of documents. All I care about is the cash. All the buyer and seller's agents care about is the deal closing because that is how they get paid.

I don't care if the new owner deals crack out of the house I just sold him. Because I won't be living there anymore. At least from the real estate end of things, the sellers and the various agents involved only care about closing the deal. Its how all the various parties get paid. I won't ever know the race of the person buying my house nor will I ever care.

Now maybe where you live there is a grand conspiracy between all real estate agents and sellers of property to keep blacks out. But in fly-over country, I've not seen it in action. The only thing that matters is the deal going through. Price is really the only factor from keeping you from buying the house of your dreams. And sorry I'm not giving you a discount because of past injustices to your race.

[KaiserJeep]

We are not talking about Blacks, but Minorities. If you want to understand this phenomenon of Racism in housing, then watch the NetFlix docuseries "explained", episode 3, entitled "The Racial Wealth Gap".



It's real, it is happening in the USA today, and has been happening forever. In spite of your belief or disbelief, this is very real, it is worsening as time passes, and it's happening in the country we live in, and it is perpetrated by Whites on Minorities.

I looked for a direct link to episode 3, but could not find one. You have to have a streaming provider to see it. 16 minutes only.

As a matter of personal experience, I did relate finding the modern equivalent of "redlining" online in a popular real estate application. I will not name the application, nor do I claim that the application enforces any requirement for use of the feature. If you are using it, and the first picture in the series of images of the residence is outlined in red, then the residence is in a Minority neighborhood. If the first image is outlined in blue, then the home is iin a Senior
neighborhood that is discriminationg against those with young children. Most listings are NOT color coded, but a fair number are. I just explained why it is possible that you both benefitted from such discriminatory practices, either in buying or selling, without any personal knowledge that such practices even exist.

Because, you can just bet that what I just related is understood by real estate agents, mortgage lenders, and insurance agents. Who will not talk about this or acknowledge it, ever.

[Plantagenet]

...bigoted ... bigoted ...Rascist...

I'll take your childish name calling as a "no" to my suggestion that you sell your home in a nice safe white neighborhood with good schools to a minority family so they can raise their children in a good environment. This would help their kids get a better education and help the family build equity so they can transmit intergenerational wealth. Those are good things.

You said that just reading the suggestion made you furious. Just out of curiousity----why did you get so angry at the mere suggestion that you sell your home to a minority?

Cheers!

[Cog]

KJ ignores anything that is not in his narrative. I just explained in detail to him the real estate process and he completely ignored it. No one cares about race when you are selling a house. The sellers don't care and neither do the two realtors. All we care about is getting paid. Correct me if I'm wrong, KJ but minority people's money is just as green as us racist white folk's money.

[KaiserJeep]

Tanada: Again I apologize, and I understand that Plant is baiting me, and I am taking the bait. Cog, if you still feel the same after reading this next message, say so and I'll take aim at YOUR prejudices.

Plant, I could care less what color skin my neighbors have, or who moves in to this neighborhood. Because in Silicon Valley, it truly doesn't matter - if you can afford to live in this neighborhood, you have the only qualification they care about, which is money - an income that supports this toney neighborhood.

The one thing they discriminate against in my neighborhood is "multiples". Truth be known, that is why we have a Homeowners Association, and why there is a law that says that a "private residence" cannot be occupied by more than three people "unrelated by blood or marriage". There in fact is one such home in our tiny HA of 38 homes, that is occupied for nine months out of the year by three college kids. The home itself was purchased by the parents of the listed owner, who is one of the three. Between them, these kids (and their girlfriends) have 7 vehicles, and all 7 are parked on the street, as the garage MAY be their "party room", because they have a lot of parties. They are - barely - within the law, and we have never been able to prove that the girls actually live there, they have listed permanent residences in other parts of the Valley, probably at their parent's homes.

And aside from the annoyances that the constant partying and the lack of parking spots on the street, nobody gives a damn, least of all that these kids and their GFs are of several different skin colors.

On Nantucket, you may or may not remember that I am a contributor to the historical publications of the Nantucket Historical Society. Which is how I come to know that there is a beach within the border of the town of Nantucket that used to be named "Black Bottom Beach", because it really was a segregated beach that was reserved for the use of the Minority domestic servants on the island, almost all Black, who probably would not have dared to swim anywhere else. The beach itself had the name changed in the 1960s, according to the NHS archives. However the locals still call it "Black Bottom Beach", and anybody is welcome to swim there.

As for my own newly inherited home, which appraised for $1.15M in 2016, it is NOT in a segregated area. It is a slightly run down 900sq ft, 2 bedroom, 2 bath home, on a private unpaved road that the residents must maintain, and the town does not grade or plow snow on, and which has no mail delivery. You also must have a well and a private septic system to live there, and you will find multiple skin tones on the road, since it was one of the last places on the island that appreciated to a level that is unaffordable to most Middle Class people. I have both horses and my Brother-In-Law as neighbors, and he annoys me more, since there are a number of direlict trucks and a rotting wooden boat parked on his property. Those last may be going away, since he has said he is sub-dividing his land so that his son can build there.

For the record, there are streets that were largely occupied by Blacks when I last lived there in the 1970s. Now they are just as expensive as everywhere else on that island, and few Black faces remain. The only Middle Class people that can afford the place inherited a house, just like me.

Now I have more information for you about housing discrimination, and you can take it or leave it, I am only offering information. First, a couple of years ago, I fell into the habit of using one particular online real estate application. I also took an embarrassingly long time to understand what the red and blue borders around the photos of the listed homes meant. In fact it took multiple trips to Wisconsin, and whenever we had a half day free when the grandkids were busy, we drove and looked at neighborhoods that had homes on the "shortlist". When I noticed such a red border around a recent home listing in Southern Wisconsin, near the Illinois border, I went and signed onto three other real estate apps, and found that ALL THREE had the red border on photo #1. I have concluded that these red/blue borders are inserted by the "listing agent" and that they frequently get removed, probably by the MLS itself. But on some apps, after the listing appears in the MLS with the border, it remains until the next update FROM the MLS to the app, probably a sale or a pending sale or a price change.

My conclusion, is that there are more people who believe in NOT doing this color coding than who do, and yet it is still happening, often enough that eventually a denser type such as myself figures it out. During the period when I had noticed the color codes, but not yet reached the obvious conclusion, I had a conversation with an older woman we knew slightly, as she was the Mother of another girl who worked at the US Red Cross with my daughter (they worked back in the Hurricane Katrina years, but are still freinds today). I asked this woman (a licensed Realtor) what the red/blue borders meant, and she was too embarrassed to tell me, so I was motivated to figure it out.

I'll say this, a lot of online listings have the first picture in the group of home pictures slightly blurry, or at least smaller than the others in the series. Knowing this, the logical conclusion would be an edit to eliminate the color border. There is obviously a movement at eliminating such pernicious and subtle discrimination, whether driven by some government agency, or the owners of the RE agencies, or the threat of lawsuits, or whatever.

Now Plant, I'm going to ask you specificly to address your own bigotry, as I have confronted and overcome my own in the last 3-4 years. This includes understanding where such a thing originated. In my case, it was my Father, rendered homeless by the Dust Bowl, who became an "Oakie", after the farm blew away and was taken by the bank. He left school and lived in an old Black sedan as a migrant farm worker for 4 years, then ended up a few miles North of where I live now, my Paternal Grandparents became shipyard workers during WW2, building "Victory Ships" at a North Bay shipbuilding firm which folded after VJ day.

Niether of my Grandparents could read then, although they insisted that my Father go to school, right up until they lost the farm in Oklahoma. My Father used the "N" word every day. When POTUS Eisenhower, fresh from a post as Supreme Allied Commander, de-segregated the US Armed Forces, he was motivated to get his GED, and to take the "servicewide" examination for Warrant Officer, which required a High School level of education, which his current rank of Master Chief Petty Officer did not. Then with his newly enlarged salary, and his newly acquired motivation (racially integrated military housing) he signed his first mortgage.

That is the thumbnail sketch of my background. I do not doubt that you have something similar. I think you need to think long and hard about this before you answer.

For the record, I think that it will be a frigid day in He!! before any form of Reverse Racism corrects the differences that humans feel for "us" versus "them". I think these things originate in our primate genes, as do most behaviors. I believe you have to understand and confront such feelings before you can overcome them.

Last parting thought: The Federal government very probably understands even better than you where and why Racism exists. In fact I am pretty sure that they spend a lot of your money figuring such things out, via "consultants" and expensive "research". They probably even understand how much resentment the various forms of Reverse Racism invoke. They would do something more effective if they could. Meanwhile, there are things they are NOT going to admit to anybody, because they are not PC. One of those is the infamous HGP we discussed earlier in this thread. My guess is that if they admitted the underlying facts, they would have to abandon the FHA and AA and all other forms of Reverse Racism, which will NEVER correct the differences that arise in the genes of human beings.

One of those BTW, is atheletic abilities of various types. If you ever wondered why Blacks dominate professional sports, the reason was also discovered and published in the HGP. But among other things, if this information became well known, the NBA, the NFL, etc might be forced to institute "Affirmative Action" until racial diversity existed in the professional sports, and Whites represent approximately 2/3rds of the players.

It's not happening, because all they really care about at this moment is housing and wages. But it could happen in the future. My guess is, it won't, because they will NEVER be frank and truthful about their discoveries in the HGP.

Because, as far as they are concerned, YOU CAN"T HANDLE THE TRUTH.

[Plantagenet]

On Nantucket...there is a beach within the border of the town of Nantucket that used to be named "Black Bottom Beach", because it really was a segregated beach that was reserved for the use of the Minority domestic servants on the island, almost all Black, who probably would not have dared to swim anywhere else. The beach itself had the name changed in the 1960s, according to the NHS archives. However the locals still call it "Black Bottom Beach", and anybody is welcome to swim there.

Yes, I've been there. I visited Nantucket quite a few years ago and had a great day bicycling all over the island. I even checked out a real estate open house for a small cottage a bit like yours----the house I looked at was selling for about $800K back then. AND I'm aware of the past history of segregation on Nantucket.

As for my own newly inherited home, which appraised for $1.15M in 2016, it is NOT in a segregated area.

Thats exactly my point. There aren't any segregated areas anymore. Anyone who can afford 1.2+ million for a small cottage can move in and live right next door to you, no matter what their skin color is.

Get it now?

Now I have more information for you about housing discrimination, and you can take it or leave it, I am only offering information. First, a couple of years ago, I fell into the habit of using one particular online real estate application. I also took an embarrassingly long time to understand what the red and blue borders around the photos of the listed homes meant. In fact it took multiple trips to Wisconsin, and whenever we had a half day free when the grandkids were busy, we drove and looked at neighborhoods that had homes on the "shortlist". When I noticed such a red border around a recent home listing in Southern Wisconsin, near the Illinois border, I went and signed onto three other real estate apps, and found that ALL THREE had the red border on photo #1. I have concluded that these red/blue borders are inserted by the "listing agent" and that they frequently get removed, probably by the MLS itself. But on some apps, after the listing appears in the MLS with the border, it remains until the next update FROM the MLS to the app, probably a sale or a pending sale or a price change.

My conclusion, is that there are more people who believe in NOT doing this color coding than who do, and yet it is still happening, often enough that eventually a denser type such as myself figures it out. During the period when I had noticed the color codes, but not yet reached the obvious conclusion, I had a conversation with an older woman we knew slightly, as she was the Mother of another girl who worked at the US Red Cross with my daughter (they worked back in the Hurricane Katrina years, but are still freinds today). I asked this woman (a licensed Realtor) what the red/blue borders meant, and she was too embarrassed to tell me, so I was motivated to figure it out.

I'll say this, a lot of online listings have the first picture in the group of home pictures slightly blurry, or at least smaller than the others in the series. Knowing this, the logical conclusion would be an edit to eliminate the color border. There is obviously a movement at eliminating such pernicious and subtle discrimination, whether driven by some government agency, or the owners of the RE agencies, or the threat of lawsuits, or whatever.

Your whole idea that using red or blue color backgrounds behind the house pictures in house ads at on-line sites are a form of racial discrimination just sounds nutty to me. What is to prevent a person of any race from clicking on any on-line house ad they want, irregardless of what the color background of the ad is?

I hate to be the one telling you this....it would be better if your own family members would discuss this with you ----but you aren't making any sense when you talk about the red or blue backgrounds behind photos being racial discrimination. I suggest you might consider the possibility that the real estate agent you asked about this wasn't embarrassed because the red and blue color backgrounds behind the real estate ad pictures was a form of racial discrimination, but she was embarrassed because you were asking such a wacko irrational question.


KJ---think about it....red or blue backgrounds behind house photos on the internet have nothing to do with racial discrimination. They are just different colored backgrounds!

Cheers!

[KaiserJeep]

As somebody once said, "There are none so blind as those who will not see". It was a proverb from around the 16th Century, I think.

Plant, you have taken denial to an absurb level. It's not worth any more of my time, I made a sincere effort to help you, even after it became clear that you obviously do not want any help.

As I am sure you understand full well, I was giving examples of the implementation of covert Racism online, in a way that was deniable. Sure enough, you denied it, just as you are denying your own Racism to yourself.

Cog, I'm done with Plant now, bring it on.

[Ibon]

As somebody once said, "There are none so blind as those who will not see". It was a proverb from around the 16th Century, I think.

Perhaps more appropriate

don't cast your pearls before swine. ... In Matthew 7:6: “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

[Plantagenet]

As somebody once said, "There are none so blind as those who will not see". It was a proverb from around the 16th Century, I think.

The idea behind this saying is actually thousands of years old. It has its origins in the Old Testament of the bible, specifically Jer. 5:21 (King James version): "Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not."

. ... In Matthew 7:6: “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

I'd much rather discuss this subject calmly and rationally and without all the name-calling and appeals to biblical authority. I don't even see much disagreement on the main issue of the discussion at this point. KJ says his very wealthy community on Nantucket used to discriminate and have housing segregation, but now it doesn't. And that is exactly my point---overt de jure segregation and housing discrimination on the basis of race in the US is against the law now. No doubt there remain some local problems areas, but things are much better then they used to be.

And as far as the curious appeals to biblical authority go, consider what William Shakespeare had to say about quoting scripture as a way to win arguments.

“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”

― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Cheers!

[KaiserJeep]

Plant, in your dream world where things are "better" and "improving", this is happening:

[Plantagenet]

Plant... this is happening:

Yes, you've posted that before. That graph shows the wealth of both white famiies and black families is increasing, but white Family wealth is increasing more rapidly then black family wealth.

First of all lets begin by noting that black family wealth is increasing. Thats a good thing. But the growth in black family income should be better. Does racism have something to do with that? Probably. But other factors also play a role---and perhaps a more important role then racism.

Consider the fact that 70% of births in the inner city today are to unwed mothers. That means the majority of black kids grow up in families without a father to provide an income for the family, provide a male role model and disciplinarian for the family, and provide the stability that comes with having two loving parents in a family. Other harmful factors include the poor schools in inner cities, and the high crime rates and high rates of alcoholism and drug use in inner cities. There also isn't the emphasis on education in the black community that you find in other groups, like Asians, that lead to success in this modern world. Blacks would do better if there were fewer black kids playing basketball in the evenings, and more black kids working hard in study groups to improve their writing and calculus skills.

Basically, we need more black nerds.


Black nerds rule.


Cheers!

[KaiserJeep]

What argues against your theory is that I am talking about Minorities, while you choose to focus on Blacks.

The majority of Hispanics are conservative, religious (even Catholic) and believe in strong family values and have a strong middle class work ethic. Yet because they suffer from the EXACT SAME discrimination from the US White Majority, they have the very same wealth disparity afflicting Blacks.

So try again. Make another excuse for the discrimination inflicted upon Minorities by YOUR RACIAL GROUP, THE WHITE MAJORITY. Then find another excuse after that, then another. Because after all, YOU just couldn't be wrong about such a thing. Even though YOU have benefitted YOUR ENTIRE LIFE from White priviledge, and those Portuguese and Spanish speaking, conservative people with a strong middle class work ethic and even stronger family values than most USA citizens, must be doing something else to explain why they don't get ahead as fast as their OPPRESSORS, which (if you haven't figured this oh-so-obvious point out yet, include your own bigotted, prejudiced self). Because after all, this is the USA, and even though THEY are US citizens, along with all the Blacks that YOUR RACIAL GROUP has been oppressing for 300 years, you are oh-so-sure you have it right.

Because if you haven't fiigured this out yet, the US Government stats don't have a lot to do with illegals. They are measuring US citizens of Hispanic and African ancestry. So go ahead, make another excuse, because you couldn't possibly be prejudiced, could you?

[Tanada]

What argues against your theory is that I am talking about Minorities, while you choose to focus on Blacks.

The majority of Hispanics are conservative, religious (even Catholic) and believe in strong family values and have a strong middle class work ethic. Yet because they suffer from the EXACT SAME discrimination from the US White Majority, they have the very same wealth disparity afflicting Blacks.

So try again. Make another excuse for the discrimination inflicted upon Minorities by YOUR RACIAL GROUP, THE WHITE MAJORITY. Then find another excuse after that, then another. Because after all, YOU just couldn't be wrong about such a thing. Even though YOU have benefitted YOUR ENTIRE LIFE from White priviledge, and those Portuguese and Spanish speaking, conservative people with a strong middle class work ethic and even stronger family values than most USA citizens, must be doing something else to explain why they don't get ahead as fast as their OPPRESSORS, which (if you haven't figured this oh-so-obvious point out yet, include your own bigotted, prejudiced self). Because after all, this is the USA, and even though THEY are US citizens, along with all the Blacks that YOUR RACIAL GROUP has been oppressing for 300 years, you are oh-so-sure you have it right.

Because if you haven't fiigured this out yet, the US Government stats don't have a lot to do with illegals. They are measuring US citizens of Hispanic and African ancestry. So go ahead, make another excuse, because you couldn't possibly be prejudiced, could you?

Sorry KJ but I have to call BS on that one. I have an extended family with Hispanic roots who are doing excellently in terms of financial conditions. All of the kids grew up, did well in High School and 2/3rds have or are in the process of getting University level degrees. The difference is they were legal citizens of the USA as were their parents. They never had to sneak around taking below minimum wage work to stay below the radar and live in a house with a dozen other below minimum wage workers so that as a group they could pay the bills and still send cash back to relatives outside the USA.

Lumping citizen Hispanics and illegal under the radar border crosser's together into one income group is no more valid than comparing 5th graders from a slum school with 5th graders from an elite private academy in terms of educational achievement and awards.

This kind of group think is the root of the problem. Just because someones ancestors were Hispanic they get lumped together with third world migrants as if they were 'the same' when culturally, politically and in terms of life experience and wealth they are completely different.

By the same token suburban professional African Americans are getting lumped in with inner city gang members and rural whites are getting lumped in with George Soros and the Koch brothers. It doesn't take a lot of Billionaire old white guys like Soros, the koch's and even the Trump family to skew the statistics for 'white' Americans very high.

This is why a proper statistical analysis would require you to say, cut the top and bottom 5% of members of the 'group' you are talking about out of the calculation. When you do that simple step suddenly the 'white, african american and hispanic' groups of people suddenly resolve into Joe6P with the same kind of life quality. True the African American community has more than the typical European American membership in the bottom 5%, but a lot of that is due to living in the inner city which in North America is primarily African American and poor. However the kind of things creating that excess membership in the bottom of the bottom are things that are cultural, like the illegitimate birth rate and lousy inner city schools people keep pointing out to you. So long as inner city culture is anti-education in its viewpoint the situation is not going to improve. What took place is something of a self selection process where pro-education African-Americans fled the city cores to escape the culture of failure that pervades those places. They raised their kids to be well educated and professional people, not government subsidized dependents. The same process holds true for Hispanic Americans and White Americans, those who value education have done everything they can manage to get their children in school systems where the culture is one of achievement, not the culture of pass them through as babysitters without teaching them a darn thing. If you take the time to read the biographical stories of successful African Americans or Hispanic Americans they have one thing in common with successful European Americans. Their parents emphasized learning as a pathway to success in life.

Turn your kids against education and acculturation into the American way of life and you are setting them up on a road to failure. Second generation Hispanic Americans born in the USA whose parents emphasize learning excel compared to the ones who join the gang oriented inner city survival system. Those who buy into the dependency culture of the inner city lifestyle do not excel, they have typically poor, short, and brutish lives surrounded by angry resent filled poorly educated people who separate out into 'tribal' affiliations based on theoretical race lines.

If you really want to confuse yourself look at a professional African Hispanic. They look like African Americans, they talk like Hispanics, but they succeed like professional European Americans. If your group think is so pervasive how is that possible?

[KaiserJeep]

Tanada, I think you completely missed my point. There have always been Minority professionals, who are Black, Hispanic, Asian, whatever, and whose earnings and achievements are on a par with White professionals. Just as there have always been broken homes, drug addicts, and petty criminals of all sorts and all races including White. We are talking about a bell curve and those are the extremes, with a relative few at each end. What is interesting is the center or Middle Class, and that is where the racial wealth gap exists, that is where White priviledge exists, and that is where discrimination in housing and wages exist.

There are larger numbers of people in this class, and the matter of upward mobility depends not only upon ability, but the network of contacts and the opportunities that this brings. That is also where Racism, both overt and covert, sorts out those who are upwardly mobile from those who are not. In my extended family group, for example, I am upwardly mobile, the first one to get a college degree, a management position, and a professional job in Silicon Valley. I worked hard, and I didn't have the additional baggage of a non-White skin. But I have cousins who still exist in Oklahoma and Arkansas, and lead lives of grinding poverty today, in rural areas.

So make up your mind which side of the fence you are on. Either Minorities are being repressed by those who are in the Majority and have White skins, or they are not, and the differences exist because they are inferior and cannot compete.

...I think it's prejudice, and have said so repeatedly, and even given personal anecdotes that I believe support such discriminatory practices in housing. Are you agreeing with me, or saying that Minorities are inferior and simply can't compete?

The Reverse Racism that the government(s) is/are applying is - I think all of us agree about this much - fundamentally unfair, and creating a backlash that may be perpetuating racial prejudices. But the wealth disparities exist and continue to be measured and are worsening as time passes, and regardless of the root cause, the government(s) are attempting to eliminate such.

[Outcast_Searcher]

The Reverse Racism that the government(s) is/are applying is - I think all of us agree about this much - fundamentally unfair, and creating a backlash that may be perpetuating racial prejudices. But the wealth disparities exist and continue to be measured and are worsening as time passes, and regardless of the root cause, the government(s) are attempting to eliminate such.

On that much, we certainly agree. And that there is still a significant wealth disparity, based on your comments, we also agree.

Perhaps a more productive line of discussion would be, in the world we have, how do we fix that over time? Because, presumably, that's what everyone who isn't a racist wants -- for people to truly be equal regardless of what they look like, and that issue to be a thing of the past.

My perception is (though others will disagree), that for the average person in the US, we have made significant progress in terms of far less blatant open discrimmination and bad treatments of people due to race. (FAR from perfect, but better overall. One simple example is that now it is definitely NOT cool for people to use racial slurs (at least about other races). 30 to 40 years ago, that was MUCH more accepted, or at least tolerated.)

So we have affirmative action, protected groups, numeric goals, and all kinds of social groups pushing against things like the glass ceiling for women in corporations. And that is probably helping overall, but it takes time.

And of course, there, is as you said above, the backlash of such groups and rules being seen as "reverse discrimmination". Since that's seen as unfair, since ideally it would be best to have a meritocracy and let everyone compete on results, that might be slowing down progress.

So now what? I honestly don't know. It's not, IMO an easy issue. If one tries to help with cultural issues which could be holding certain groups back (i.e. not conforming to traditional US cultural norms), then that's often cited as insensitive, and attacked.

So if, for example, broken families are holding back children from having equal opportunity, but trying to get "disadvantaged" people to see that as a cultural weakness holding them back is deemed improper, insensitive, racist (pick your label), then that doesn't help.

So, WHAT? Throw money at the "disadvantaged" groups? If so, for how long? And though that might help them buy a bigger house today, how does that help them and their offspring compete more effectively tomorrow?

And like all complex issues, one big problem with finding a solution will be a WIDE disparity of perceptions and opinions on the way things are, the way things should be, AND the way to make things better. And that most certainly doesn't make progress any easier.

And that, IMO, doesn't make America a pack of racists.

[KaiserJeep]

Fair enough. But I want to make one thing clear. If you have an income that is not growing AT LEAST 10% PER YEAR, you are losing ground, and experiencing reduced purchasing power. That average 10% annual inflation compounds rapidly. The charts above are in constant 2013 dollars, and are among the few that account for inflation. The huge numbers of people on government so-called "entitlements" are facing desperate circumstances as these simply do not increase due to the COLA (cost of living adjustment) which is based on the CPI (consumer price index), a deliberatly inadequate measure of inflation that excludes food and energy costs.

Now that (by the prevailing opinion here) the oil peak is in the recent past, we are looking at energy costs that will steadily increase along with increases in food and actually anything transported with fuels. Things are going to be worsening and these trends are long term.

There is already a basic unfairness in the way things are shaping up, and there are bound to be many lower income people in the White majority which blame the increasing numbers of Minorities who are sharing these changing circumstances with them. It has always been so, now it will get worse, faster.

Edit: Perhaps this will stimulate a few thoughts: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/

[Plantagenet]

Perhaps this will stimulate a few thoughts: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/

That article in the Atlantic says exactly what I've been trying to tell you. The US isn't a racist society, where racist white people are keeping minorities down. The US today is a meritocratic society, where those people who get educated and/or work hard and succeed in their careers tent to earn more money and do better then people who don't do well in school, and don't work hard and don't succeed.

And whats wrong with that? As Barack obama pointed out, the whole point of our society is that those people who work hard and play by the rules SHOULD succeed. Science nerds and law nerds and medical nerds and computer nerds and engineering nerds and business nerds wind up earning more money. And thats how it should be.

The Atlantic article is clear that eople of any race can succeed if they work hard and choose a career that pays good wages. In talking about the meritocracy, that article says:

"We are also mostly, but not entirely, white. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, African Americans represent 1.9 percent of the top 10th of households in wealth; Hispanics, 2.4 percent; and all other minorities, including Asian and multiracial individuals, 8.8 percent"

Notice that federal data shows that far more Asians are in the top tier then you would expect just from their percentage of the population. When you look closer at the top earning ethnic groups in American you find they aren't whites---they are Asians. Federal data shows that in terms of average median household income, Asians are far wealthier ($80,720 per year) than whites ($61,349). The top three ethnic income groups in the United States are not categorized as “white”: Indian American ($110,026), Taiwanese American ($90,221), and Filipino American ($88,745).

I will assert that the fact that Asians earn on average $20,000 more as a family to spend each year than whites isnt' due to the fact that Asians are racist against whites. Its because Asians do very very well in school and work hard and succeed.


The USA is a meritocracy where Asians and other talented people of all races who work hard and play by the rules tend to do well, and people with less talent or people who choose to not work hard tend not to succeed.

Cheers!

[mmasters]

The Atlantic article is clear that people of any race can succeed if they work hard and choose a career that pays good wages. In talking about the meritocracy, that article says:

Not everyone is created equal. Some people are more evolved than others. I have a lot of experience with blacks and very few have the abstract mind necessary to succeed in most of the higher paying jobs. They haven't evolved it. When you look at the significant discoveries in scientific history it's like 90%+ european white guys. I would speculate at some point in Africa when there were early humans some decided to stay in the trees and some decided to venture out. The ones that ventured out developed new skills necessary to survive and evolved themselves further. The ones that stayed in the trees evolved at a much slower pace and the end result is what we have today. I will say some blacks are talented at language and physical pursuits but very few are able to compete with the whites when it comes to higher level mental abilities. In a meritocracy all the blacks in general are left with is the race card. It is what it is and most people aren't willing to accept the reality.

[KaiserJeep]

mmasters, the terms Black/White/Asian are actually obsolete, these three broad labels for the races based on skin color do not match well with the discoveries of the Human Genome Project. The human evolutionary tree is also much more complex than you would think, watch the 2018 NOVA documentary "Dawn of Humanity", concerning the discoveries of Homo Naledi in South Africa from 2015 to 2018.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/dawn-of-humanity.html

I believe that in the present American society, the ability to make money is related to intelligence. Those non-PC HGP results demonstrated that Intelligence was related to certain gene clusters, and Asians were smarter by about 5 IQ points. The smartest of all groups measured were the Ashkenazi Jews who do indeed have large incomes, as they dominate the diamond trade in NYC. The typical American WASP of course is also somewhere in the mix.

Obviously, exceptions exist. Few have the earnings potential of the Black NBA players, for example. Or that of the giant Blacks and Samoans who dominate the NFL with their freakishly large physiques. Blacks have long dominated Boxing as well.

The endpoints of the IQ bell curves are pretty much in the same places for all races, the median does in fact differ, but we cannot have a conversation on this topic without causing discomfort in many people. But it pretty well demonstrates that the various forms of Reverse Racism are never gonna fix these differences that arise in genes.

The danger associated with this knowledge is that we now know which genes are associated with IQ, both in a negative fashion and a positive fashion. Once you make genetic testing part of anything, the probability of financial success could be calculated for an individual. The injustices that this would impose were explored in the 1997 science fiction film Gattaca, and of course in Huxley's 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World.

Small wonder that Bill Clinton didn't want to share the knowledge with you.