Okay, I agree with parts of that, and I don't think we're as far apart overall as it may seem, BUT:Civilized said:Pacfanweb said:
So you're not willing to consider anything that requires them taking the slightest bit of responsibility for their own actions, then. Everything in their entire lives somehow has to do with racism, and they bear no responsibility at all for their lot in life. I figured that was where you were.
Don't know where you got that from.
Sure, personal responsibility plays a role. Perfectly willing to consider its role in the context of a multi-faceted situation.
It's not all or nothing.
Poverty
Neighborhood crime
Responsibility
Education
Food insecurity
Housing insecurity
Physical, sexual, and emotional abuse
Role modeling
Parenting
Criminal Justice
Physical health
Mental health
Hiring practices
Community resources
Family wealth
And yes, implicit racism.
We can talk about any or all of those. They all play their part.
But there's no reason to do what many (almost exclusively white men) do and condition black Americans' ability to discuss implicit racism on first discussing and resolving any or all of the other contributing sociological factors to outcomes.
To do so is condescending and paternal and not tolerated in any other aspects of your life.
If your wife says "I'd like for us to discuss the way you sometimes speak to me makes me feel," let me know how it works out when you counter with "Not until we talk about your unresolved issues about your mom and dad's divorce."
Or when your boss says, "A bit of constructive criticism - we really need to hammer down on you pursuing incoming sales leads more aggressively" and you retort, "Only after we talk about the inadequacies of our company's health care package."
There's a huge difference between bringing up legitimate issues that warrant discussion - yes, including personal responsibility - independently, and bringing them up as a retort to other concerns raised by the black community.
One does not counter or invalidate the other, and worse, its a disrespectful deflection.
Those are some terrible examples.
The husband/wife and boss/employee....those are totally unrelated issues that are brought up in response to the original issue.
With the subject at hand: When talking about police shootings/interactions with blacks, it's perfectly reasonable to bring up "Why don't blacks talk about reducing their involvement in crime?" "Maybe stop committing half the murders while being only 13% of the population?"
It's the same subject, basically...it's not apples and oranges. They really go hand-in-hand.
To use an example like yours, but correctly: Let's say a wife does most of the cleaning, but forgets to do the dishes occasionally, and the husband says "Let's talk about you not always doing the dishes like you're supposed to"
And the wife comes back with "Okay, then let's talk about YOU hardly ever cleaning a damn thing around here while I do almost off of it!"
That's the exact thing we're talking about. Blacks want police and white people to be perfect in their dealings, but then they don't expect the same of themselves.
Whatever happened to "Do unto others...."?
The world doesn't work that way. You can't demand everyone else BUT you make changes. especially when your proverbial house is in FAR less order than theirs.
IMO, if anyone should be outraged regarding murders, it's white people. Black people kill roughly twice as many whites as there are whites that kill blacks.
Think about that. They're raising holy hell about their treatment by police, parlaying that into an overall race discussion.....but are unwilling to talk about the fact that THEY are responsible for most of the violent crime, while being such a small % of the population?
