thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

I looked up synonyms to "open your eyes" and I did not find "agree with blurry".

Rose42

Yes it is. Apples to apples.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

You can deny the t***h all you want, hey, when are they going to open the schools out there in the liberal state of California, word is that the black parents demanding the reopening of schools out there are w***e s*********ts, that is how your party works, sold out and doing no good for the communities they serve.

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

This whole discussion has failed to distinguish individual r****m in this country from s******c r****m. America is NOT systemically r****t as South Africa was or even we once were.

Our system of government has done all it can to remedy that. ALL it can.

FrumCA

letmedance Loc: Walnut, Ca.

Saying exactly what you refuse to believe.

Wyantry Loc: SW Colorado

At the risk of condemnation, I would like to bring up a paraphrase of what Andy Rooney stated (that got him censured and booted from a show for a while): “They did not breed them for their intelligence.”
Certain racial groups seem not to “advance” no matter what opportunities are provided. Some groups value education very highly, and go to lots of effort to promote education. Some groups seem to value cultural integrity and hard work. Some groups appear to value tradition in religion and beliefs. The list goes on . . .
And that is what makes us so diverse — and so human.

dennis2146 Loc: Eastern Idaho

While I understand what you are saying I simply cannot agree, not these days anyway.

My belief is anybody, with few exceptions, can be raised to become well educated and hard working individuals in society. America’s problem is we have allowed some individuals of all races to prosper on the welfare rolls without being educated or putting out any effort to work or join the military. I am NOT talking about individuals who because of mental or physical impairment are unable to work.

I know of at least one family of a number of individuals, none of whom have ever worked a day in their life. Why should they when welfare takes care of them from tax money.

Dennis

Texcaster Loc: Queensland

You reach a point where what these Trumpanian Moons believe isn't important enough to bother with anymore.

This is the crowd that will not answer or even acknowledge the fundamental question ...

... "Is it an advantage to be white in America?"

This is the crowd that took ... 'Black L***s M****r' ... to mean ... 'White Lives Don't Matter'. B*M could have

saved a lot of grief by calling themselves B*M-Too.

This is the crowd that, as we speak, are trivializing Trump's doofus c**p as little more than a rowdy buck's night.

It's a good thing the The Proud Oather Boys didn't catch that treacherous weasel Mike Pence on the 6th.

"If Pence does the right thing, we win" Mighty DJT, 1-6-2021. The stable genius almost got Pence lynched.

Wyantry Loc: SW Colorado

Ah, but DO they? If a free handout is given there is no incentive to do anything. And entire generations do not progress. Is it a cultural thing? A genetic predisposition? I do not know, but it is obvious that something is going on. (I am going to leave the “racial” discussion out of this — as far as I know, there is only one race: Human).

dennis2146 Loc: Eastern Idaho

My friend I believe we are saying the very same thing. Of course if a handout is given there is no incentive to do anything. That is what I said. I pointed out an entire family in Denver who has been on welfare for generations. The excuse the woman gave me, she is black, is that nobody will hire people in her family because they are black. When I pointed out thousands of other black families are hard at work in Denver she became angry and the discussion ended.

Of course there is only one race, the human race. But that race is made up of various other races such as Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid and so on. It is not quite so simple as you would portray. It should be but it isn't. Political arguments keep the r****m argument alive and has for years and years. America and the world would be much better off if race was just never brought up. It is best forgotten. What matters is what happens, good and bad, not the color of the person doing good or bad. In today's political climate the bad done by white people is over emphasized while the bad done by black people is not reported as it should be. The Left Wing media lies by omission when they report white racial crimes but omit black racial crimes. W****s look like the bad guy when in reality b****s are every bit as bad and percentage wise, are worse. But that is not how it looks from watching/reading the news.

I wish you well,

Dennis

hondo812 Loc: Massachusetts

Seriously, what the heck is "s******c r****m"?

What is 'S******c R****m,' Really? | The American Conservative
Robert W. Merry

Feels like another power grab designed to humiliate white middle and working class 'deplorables' already hunkered down and defensive.

A white protester in the large crowd that gathered in Foley Square in NYC, June 02, 2020, USA. (Photo by Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images)

Sometimes big political developments arrive in the country like Sandburg’s fog, on little cat feet, silent and unnoticed until they envelop the nation. The emergence of Donald Trump four years ago is an example. Though a loud and clamorous candidate, he seemed to many like a kind of political clown destined for defeat. Establishment politicians believed almost to a person that the “blue wall” of Democratic e*******l dominance would hold against this guy. The Midwest would stay solid, and Hillary Clinton would win the presidency.

But a silent fog was moving in. It was a growing sense among middle-class v**ers in heartland America that something was seriously wrong with the country, that the nation’s leaders were t***sforming America in bad ways and unraveling their future in the process. But there was no street protest or fiery rhetoric, no coalescence of civic activism or public demands. Certainly the mainstream media, so aligned with the country’s elites, didn’t detect anything of consequence bubbling up from within the polity. Why would they? Everything seemed fine to them.

Meanwhile, the disaffected merely bided their time, silently waiting for their opportunity to express themselves in the quiet sanctity of the v****g booth. After they did, Donald Trump was the next president. Hardly anyone saw it coming.

Something similar is likely to happen in the wake of the widespread street demonstrations–with attendant r**ts, l**ting, destruction, and violence–that followed the awful death of G****e F***d in Minneapolis at the hands of a brutal police officer who pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. That a black man could have his life snuffed out by a white cop in such a manner is just cause for a national outpouring of grief and soul-searching. Not surprisingly, public-opinion surveys showed widespread popular support for the peaceful demonstrations that were organized to honor the life and condemn the senseless death of G****e F***d.

But the polls also demonstrated widespread indignation toward the r**ting and l**ting. Thus, the civic drama that followed Floyd’s death, including the sprees of destruction and increasingly aggressive rhetoric from the left, intensified some ongoing political tensions that lie at the heart of the country’s current distemper. It accentuated the extent to which America is becoming two nations with two narratives about the times we live in and the problems we face.

One narrative, call it the liberal one, has been projected with increasing force in recent years and particularly since G****e F***d’s death. It is that America is an inherently r****t country, infected with something called “s******c r****m.” You can’t always see it; often it is hidden behind a facade of phony white benignity. But it lurks in the hearts of w****s nonetheless and is activated in subtle ways to keep down minorities, particularly b****s, and make them feel inferior.

This systemic civic v***s, according to the narrative, is particularly problematic in police departments throughout the land, in which rampant r****m poses serious dangers to b****s, particularly young black males. Much of the rhetoric that emanates from this narrative would have us believe that innocent b****s are k**led in accumulating numbers across the country in a surge of uncontrolled law enforcement bigotry and brutality.

There’s a corollary to this narrative of s******c r****m and ongoing violence against b***k A******ns. It is that w****s, based on the sins of their forebears and today’s lingering bigotry, need to be put in their place. In this regard, a certain abasement and humiliation is prescribed. This part of the narrative has become increasingly brazen in recent years.

The other narrative, the conservative one, is largely defensive. In this view, there is no doubt that r****m lingers in the body politic and must be addressed when it can be seen. Racial profiling by police also must be dealt with whenever and wherever it appears. But the country has made tremendous progress since the Civil Rights era of the 1960s in addressing overt r****m, eliminating barriers to equal opportunity, and recognizing the racial sensibilities of minorities. The problem with the allegation of s******c r****m is that it is too vague to be discerned clearly and hence can’t really be effectively addressed even if it exists, which many dispute.

As for police r****m leading to the k*****g of b****s in telling numbers, the statistics simply don’t bear that out. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute notes that, based on a Washington Post database, police fatally shot nine unarmed b****s in 2019 (and 19 unarmed w****s). Based on the numbers of black homicide victims generally (7,407 in 2018), Mac Donald calculates that the fatal shooting of unarmed b****s represents about 0.1 percent of all African-Americans k**led in 2019. She bolsters her position by citing studies by the National Academy of Sciences, a Justice Department survey of Philadelphia police practices, and research by a Harvard economist. The Academy of Sciences study found “no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police.”

In the wake of the Floyd k*****g, the liberal narrative soon dominated the country’s political discourse. It is seen everywhere–in most of the mainstream media, in stark expressions from agitated civic groups, in the ravings of the celebrity culture, in mass street demonstrations, and, yes, even in the r**ting and l**ting that destroyed businesses, livelihoods, and neighborhoods.

The rhetoric of the liberal narrative these days is delivered vociferously, with defiance and a forcefulness that brooks no dissent or even passivity. Consider the experience of Drew Brees, the heralded quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, who responded to a question about whether the G****e F***d fallout would include a revival of NFL players protesting racial injustice by taking a knee during the playing of the National Anthem before games. He would not participate in such a protest, said Brees, because “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the f**g of the United States of America or our country.” He followed that with a plainly heartfelt and eloquent expression of patriotism, harking back to the memory of his war-veteran grandfathers and the courage of Civil Rights activists who struggled to improve the nation.

The result: an explosion of opprobrium, vicious attacks, and mean-spirited vitriol. An telling example was a Washington Post piece by a black sports columnist for the paper named Jerry Brewer. First he praised Brees as “among the most exceptional human beings in sports,” a man who “epitomizes the character, benevolence and grace that people seek in a sports role model.” But just because he’s a good guy and exemplary human being, snarled Brewer, that doesn’t mean he should get away with distancing himself from the Colin Kaepernick brand of protest.

Brees, wrote Brewer, showed himself to be a “misguided, insensitive dolt….a sometimes ignorant, lazy thinker in desperate need of a broadened perspective.” It was journalistic thought control in action, and it worked. Brees abjectly apologized–twice–for his t***sgression against humanity.

Jerry Brewer was serving as enforcer for the proposition that the liberal narrative is sacrosanct, and you can’t say or do anything that calls it into question in any way. You see the same motivation behind the recent fate of the University of Washington women’s basketball coach, Jody Wynn. In response to G****e F***d’s death, she issued a sincere statement of concern that read in part that “we must stand with our Black Amerians & seek justice! Black, brown, yellow…ALL l***s m****r.”

Oops. You can’t say that! S******c r****m in action. We’re talking about black lives here, and to confuse that with expressions of concern about other racial groups is absolutely unacceptable. Her Twitter account was deactivated, according to the Seattle Times, and Wynn quickly issued a replacement statement saying she was talking only about black lives. “I would like to sincerely apologize,” she wrote in a gesture of self-abasement, adding that she understood that her words were “hurtful to people of color….I’ve learned a hard and important lesson in this moment and am committed to educating myself…on how we can best create change.” She vowed to be part of change that is aimed at ending r****m.

But it isn’t enough for those of the liberal narrative to bully and humiliate genuine heroic figures like Drew Brees into recanting their expressions of genuine patriotism. They also refuse to condemn the r**ts and l**ting that unfolded on the nation’s television screens, as local police officials hovered out of the way. Why? Because, it seems clear, they want to preserve the narrative that animates the left and gives it propulsion in the fiery discourse of American politics.

The underlying essence of the narrative is an increasingly brutal and incendiary polemical assault on a demographic segment of the nation–white people. They are guilty, it is said with increasing aggressiveness, for the sins of their forebears, for the r****m of the past. And they must confess their guilt and seek absolution through self-abasement.

This was captured in stark reality in a video segment aired on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program the other day. A young white woman on the street during the New York protests is approached by a man who identifies himself as working for Black L***s M****r. “Since I work for that company,” says the man (who is white), “my CEO has told me to come out today and bring you on your knees because you have white privilege. So if they see that a white person is getting on their knees, that shows solidarity for the situation.”

She slowly, without saying anything, gets down on her knees on the sidewalk.

“And could you just please apologize,” says the guy, “for, you know, your white privilege?”

She doesn’t seem to know what to say.

“Just apologize?” he persists, ever so politely.

“I am,” she says. “I’m trying to think of the words to thank you.”

No doubt many within the nation’s elites would view that scene as touching, perhaps even inspiring–a young white woman getting to her knees and apologizing for….what exactly? Certainly not anything she did, as far as we know. No, she was placed into humiliation because of her race, and she accepted it, apparently, as a normal consequence of her heritage.

But a lot of Americans aren’t going to view it that way. They will see it as a racial assault and a huge power grab. The cry of “s******c r****m” constitutes a threat to white people. We all know that r****m is the country’s most potent social taboo. Even innocent slips of the tongue or benign observations can bring severe opprobrium, societal and professional sanctions, ostr****m. Thus does the allegation constitute a serious threat to millions of Americans. And it constitutes also great political leverage for those tossing around the allegation.

But, if America is infected with s******c r****m, who are the systemic r****ts? Certainly not, in the view of those pushing the liberal narrative, themselves. Not the cable news liberals who toss out the allegation with abandon. Not the mandarins of Hollywood who spout out about it constantly. Not the think tank mavens with their phony studies and charts. Not the Democratic establishment persistently leveraging identity politics. Not the professional celebs whose household recognition qualify them, in their view, as authority figures. Not those in the top level of the meritocratic elite living their pristine lives in gated communities. And certainly not the nation’s minorities, spoon-fed the liberal narrative day by day.

Who’s left? Middle-class and working-class w****s, already beleaguered economically by the hollowing out of the nation’s industrial base and struggling to survive in the new service and high-tech environment. And now they have to worry about becoming the next Exhibit A in the elites’ persistent search for evidence of s******c r****m. Deplorables again.

This is scary stuff to people who just want to live their lives without feeling vulnerable to being singled out as specimens of s******c r****m and called to account for slipping into some hazardous lapse such as thinking that all l***s m****r or any other innocuous racial observation that never would have raised eyebrows among w****s or b****s just a few years ago.

When the political reaction comes, as it inevitably will, it will come on little cat feet. And the nation’s elites, secure in the thought that the s******c r****m charge has worked brilliantly in intimidating any lingering dissenters into submission, won’t see it coming.

It’s an open question whether this can help Donald Trump in November. His is a failed presidency, and the collective e*****rate seldom rewards failed presidencies with retention in office. But down the road, as the issue intensifies and as w***e A******ns feel increasingly beleaguered by the left’s identity politics and disdain for Middle America, as more demonstrations and r**ts ensue with more destructive force, a counter-movement will emerge. It likely will approach the body politic as quietly as Sandberg’s fog. But, once it arrives, it won’t stay quiet for long.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-is-systemic-r****m-really/

Yeah so I googled it and found this interesting op-ed or wh**ever you want to call it. Personally I think this notion of "systemic racisim" is pure unadulterated baloney.

hondo812 Loc: Massachusetts

Early on in my career I had a job as an engineering technician. I was pretty good at it and eventually went back to school .....but that's another story. One of the engineers I worked with was the antithesis of the engineer stereotype. He was cool, told jokes, played guitar, and smart as a whip. One of the stories he told me, and I honestly can't recall why, but it was about a new engineer they had hired where he worked earlier in his career.

Now, here I am close to 40 years later telling it and I can tell you, in all that time and at all the companies where I've worked (at least a dozen) I have only worked with 3 Black engineers. I guess its not a field of choice. Anyways, the engineer tells the story that it was this guys first day on the job and he was supposed to shadow him all day. This is all happening in the early 70's and this new hire, we'll call him "Bob", basically gets into character or something like he's in a 70's black sitcom. Jive talking and the requisite gestures. This goes on for a few hours. The engineer finally pulls him aside and tells him, look, this is a business. We dress for business. The way we speak and handle ourselves at work is what the business expects of us. Save the routine for somewhere else or the powers that be will have you looking for your next job.

A few moments of silence followed by a "yes sir". Bob was still working there a few years later when the engineer left for another job.