The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Alan Rogers

Re: Alan Rogers

scottstev — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 10:20:30 -0000

@rikyrah you're absolutely right. The Civil Rights movement (which took much longer, and experienced many more ups and downs than is commonly believed)was a tremendous service to this country. More importantly, the dominant form of the movement was based on patriotism -on fulfilling the original promise of the fathers- and beginning the reconciliation from this nation's original sin.

Folks sacrificed their lives by accepting non-violently the horrific violence of the perpetrators. In doing so, they turned the hearts of said perpetrators and won a more lasting victory.

Re: Alan Rogers

cw — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:35:11 -0000

Has anyone seen Steve Sailer here yet?

Re: Alan Rogers

Fred — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:07:24 -0000

Doctor Jay,

Just because everyone may be related if you go back far enough, doesn't mean that there aren't biological differences between different groups today. There are certain diseases common to European Jews, for example; other diseases common to American blacks. Pretending there are no differences between different groups doesn't necessarily help the individuals in those groups.

Re: Alan Rogers

rikyrah — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:55:28 -0000

Good post.

Don't tolerate questioning Black folks' patriotism. I get in trouble for saying this, but who cares. I believe Blacks are the truest Americans, because we've fought FOR this country to live up to its creed. Of course, it was out of necessity, but we still fought FOR this country. I don't mean in uniform, I mean, the brutal fighting to make America live up to its myths. And, for our fight, we're despised.

A trip to the American Pavillion at Epcot just reinforced this belief.

Re: Alan Rogers

Sorn — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:52:26 -0000

The same problem exists everywhere also in the inner cities and in rural America as a whole. Those with promise move those with nothing stay.

The observation lends itself to an interesting question for whoever wants to field it.

The old type of Ghetto was an integrated community with members from all social classes coming together to make an integrated community. Newer Ghettos are no longer communities in the sense of which we understand the term. They do not have the same institutional support structures of the Jewish/Irish/Italian/African-American Communities of 50 years ago. Is it possible that the underclass of the next century will be segregated along geographic lines?

Re: Alan Rogers

JC — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:35:02 -0000

Sorn,

Yes, I have. Specifically, Central California, north of Fresno, etc. But I apologize, in the sense that the "improvement" comment was NOT about individuals - much more about the reservations themselves. But I didn't write that clearly.

You raise a very good point, with:

"In the present day many upwardly mobile Native Americans be they Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Blackfoot or whatever move off the reservation and never return"

Which of course makes perfect sense, and is probably a very good reasons why "reservations" themselves seem to not get better, if the best members of a community continue to leave.

Re: Alan Rogers

Doctor Jay — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:39:07 -0000

The problem, Fred, with "relevant biological differences" is that nobody is racially pure. Many of the oldest and most prominent families in Virginia trace a connection back to "Little Mother" -- Pocahontas. Very few black Americans don't have a white ancestor somewhere, and I daresay few whites in America don't have, excuse the expression, a nigger in the woodpile. I know my family tree does. Not to mention all the mixing it up we did in England and Europe before coming over here. Miscegenation is the natural state of humanity, and it serves a valuable, beneficial purpose.

In short, skin color doesn't predict a tendency toward alcoholism all that well. Definitely not well enough to make personal judgments about someone.

The second problem is that individual differences always trump trends among founder populations. Just because Amerinds have a higher vulnerability to alcoholism doesn't make any particular person an alcoholic. Maybe he is just on pain medication, but that's not the conclusion people jump to, is it?

Re: Alan Rogers

Fred — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:20:37 -0000

Now I'm curious what Bus Driver said in his last comment.

Re: Alan Rogers

Bus Driver — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:18:55 -0000

Deleted.

Re: Alan Rogers

Fred — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:59:45 -0000

This discussion also ignores the reality that there are some relevant biological differences between different groups. For example, Native Americans can't tolerate alcohol as well as members of other ethnic groups with a long history of alcohol consumption. Similarly, I would bet that there are some relevant differences between the Hmongs and, say, Han Chinese, that help explain the respective ethnic groups' different widely different economic outcomes in the U.S.

Re: Alan Rogers

Juan — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:52:36 -0000

No.

Re: Alan Rogers

Sorn — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:51:25 -0000

JC said:

"An example of this is why Native Americans continue to experience huge amounts of alcoholism, broken communities, no urge to self-improvement, etc. It seems to be passed down, somehow - beyond simply the economic conditions. CULTURE passes on the "wrecked" condition, onto the children."

Have you ever spent time on a reservation? ever? White Society views Indians in two ways the "noble Savage" routine which blames all of the evils of the reservation on white people and the "Drunken bum" routine which views Native Americans as basically degenerate. Neither stereotype fits reality.

In the present day many upwardly mobile Native Americans be they Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Blackfoot or whatever move off the reservation and never return. This has a de-stabilizing effect on the rest of the community because those who aspire to be middle class have to move elsewhere to gain their opportunities.In my experience which has mainly been on dry reservations the only institution which has stuck around is the church. Indian churches do a lot of good but they cannot compensate for broken homes, broken schools, and an absence of ecconomic opportunity.

Please don't say that Native Americans have no desire to improve themselves. That is simply a lie. One of my Dad's students (He teaches on the reservation) was voted top sailor in the navy. Several of my friends have escaped and gone to college on the GI Bill as have I. (I'm not Indian but the analogy still holds).

In my honors classes in High School where the population was 50% native American the classes were predominantly middle class white kids the majority of whom have done extremely well. Those of us who weren't middle class and came from the reservation had to fight for admittance into the programs that would set us up for future success.

Life in many respects is a ladder if you start off lower on the ladder you need every bit of hard work and help you can get to make sure you make it higher on the ladder at the end than you started in the begining. "Culture" such as it is is not as cut and dried as you put forward in your argument.

Re: Alan Rogers

Jim — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:46:26 -0000

"which doesn't make it as threatening to other white folks as the looooooming specter .."

Fred doesn't speak for you, nolo, but you speak for white people and know what threatens us. Of course you do.

Re: Alan Rogers

Fred — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:45:30 -0000

Ta-Nehesi,

You deleted my comment here too? Because I mentioned Joseph Jett? That's wrong, T.

Re: Alan Rogers

Bus Driver — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:41:52 -0000

I re-read my post above and see that I have not done a very good job of expressing myself through the anecdotes I related.

JC writes: "EXCEPT for the "people who don't know how to act right","

The point I was trying to make above was that most of these young black people DO know how to act right (many of them are from good families and are not in poverty like the young men who stole the lunch or the girls who stole the cell phone in my anecdotes above) but CHOOSE to not act right. And they know that the stereotype that young black men have so carefully cultivated and nourished with their thug clothes and music and behavior intimidates people. And they play to that stereotype on the bus. Yes, most black people act just fine, and some whites do act up, but %80 0f the time that there is a disruption, particularly if it is violent, a young black person is involved.

Bus driving is a job that a lot of black men and women do. It pays a good wage and it's a government agency, that like the post office, is non-discriminatory in it's hiring. I currently live in a mixed-race neighborhood and once shared a house with a black man in a black neighborhood for four years. I play dominoes daily with a regular group of black bus drivers and we've been to one another's homes. I have much more experience with the black community than just driving the bus.

Imagine yourself a bus driver: You (as I have)have been threatened with violence, sucker-punched and spit on in the course of doing your job. Now how will you feel when you pull into a bus stop and there are two dozen young black men in thug clothing waiting to take your bus.

You'll do what I do-you'll judge them on their color clothing and behavior. And you won't be happy to see them.

Re: Alan Rogers

JC — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:38:23 -0000

The comments from "Bus Driver", and related, bring up that old saw - just how much - what I'll call incivility - is culture, how much is economic conditions?

For what it's worth, I would say, on a percentage basis, there is more acting out uncivilly - both in speech and in petty crimes - in the black population.

Not that most of the black population isn't civil, because of course, most people are just people, trying to get by, be law-abiding, and do well in the world.

Not that there aren't in poor white communities, youth committing petty crimes, and acting out socially. I've spent time around California Central Valley Hmongs - very poor communities - and there is no doubt the grinding poverty led to a major increase in petty crimes, gangs, etc.

Same thing in smaller, whiter towns - lots of meth related issues.

Funny enough, regarding the Bus Driver story - I had to go out to a training, down south a bit in the city - I always take public transportation in the city - the bus driver was black, and I ended up chatting with him a bit, as I was the last man on. I was asking him - how long was his route - when was he off, etc - and he was telling me how his route was fine, EXCEPT for the "people who don't know how to act right", that would get on around Hunter's Point - and then he told similar stories, and they involved black people.

(OF course the biggest evidence for the fact of larger percentage of participation in youth incivility and acting out, is of course, black on black crime - and the damage that causes for folks).

So - what accounts for the increase, as a percentage, of black folks who are "incivil and act out?", that isn't economically based?

(By the way, for WHITE COLLAR CRIME, I think we'll find there is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE - if not a higher pre-disposition in us white folks.)

I'm not sure of percentages - but say that 5% of people commit "uncivil" crime. And say asians commit at a rate or 8%, whites at 11%, and blacks, at what - 12-15%?

I don't have any evidence for this - but looking at Native Americans may be instructive. It does seem, that if your ancestors had SIGNFICANT VIOLENCE perpetrated upon them, then this violence, then this seems to stay in the system, somehow, get internalized, in the descendants.

(Now, this might be bull**it, of course. But I'll finish the thought experiment).

An example of this is why Native Americans continue to experience huge amounts of alcoholism, broken communities, no urge to self-improvement, etc. It seems to be passed down, somehow - beyond simply the economic conditions. CULTURE passes on the "wrecked" condition, onto the children.

The same thing may be happening to African Americans - in the culture's allowance for "not acting right", or politely, "incivility".

Now - how does this get fixed? Who knows? Most people are simply people, and so the vast majority of people you meet are not going to be in that minority of people who "don't act right", no matter the race. And you can be very confident the odds are in your favor - when you meet people, that they won't be part of that minority.

The 1st thing to do, of course, is fix broken communities economically.

But, in the cultural "acting out" aspect, what is there to be done?

Re: Alan Rogers

Chauncey DeVega — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:12:47 -0000

Black folks are indeed change agents (consider how far ahead the black community has been on political issues which the mainstream then later adopts or moves towards) and barometers of America's political health--I prefer the analogy used by the critical race theorist and legal scholar Lani Guinier of the miners canary...there to alert you to the problems precisely in many regards because he/she/they are most vulnerable.

This string, and these conversations about patriotism and America always bring me back to the power and role of historical memory. We are of the same country, and largely subject to the same political socialization, yet have quite divergent perceptions and experiences of what America is and was because of our divergent experiences.

Furthermore, I would suggest it is in our efforts to come together across that difference where much of the discord occurs: for example, the controversy about Reverend Wright or Obama's patriotism when viewed from a white racial frame, especially a conservative one, was significant and troubling (my God America does wrong! Obama doesn't wear a flag pin! 9-11 could be payback? These ideas are "un-American) while for many black Americans and those who are Othered it was a non-event, nothing of interest because the comments, and by implication, the criticism of this country was nothing groundbreaking or especially perceptive. Like many, I have heard far "worse" and more "radical" politics from my middle class and upper class family and friends (who are black) than anything voiced by Wright, or by extension applied to Obama.

It would a cathartic, and perhaps quite troubling experience, fingers crossed for the best, if white Americans and black Americans really knew what they say about each other in private, and how they memorialize this country in their private thoughts.

Chauncey DeVega

Re: Alan Rogers

Tel — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:03:02 -0000

"I must tell you, white folks don't sit around and think about what it means to be white."

To follow up my earlier post, no, we don't. But we do sometimes wonder about what it means to be black ... which is essentially the same thing, since there's that block of separation in the mind.

Re: Alan Rogers

professordarkheart — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:11:05 -0000

laborlibert writes:

Again, you pull a Toby Keith. Thanks Mr. Coates, but white people don't need you to tell us what we think.

The problem with Toby Keith isn't that he guessed about what black people were thinking. It's that his guess was ignorant and repellent. You don't see all of the white commentators saying "I think black people must be proud to have a chance to vote for a black candidate for president" raising a lot of hackles.

I must tell you, white folks don't sit around and think about what it means to be white.

This is, of course, the primary privilege of whiteness. It's also why the idea that we'll ever be "post-racial" is so ridiculous: "post-racial" is white people's way of saying "every race except ours will stop worrying about race, while we will continue to deny the fact that we have a race at all." White people are never assumed to succeed because they're white, or to fail despite being white, or, if they're very unique people, to be "not exactly white" or "post-white." The opportunity to enjoy the benefits that accrue to whiteness in our society without having to worry about whether you've really deserved them is a pretty significant disincentive to thinking about what it means to be white.

Re: Alan Rogers

Daniel Litt — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:56:26 -0000

Coates: "Because of our outsider status, blacks have been the most consistent agent of change in this country's history."

This seems false. Admittedly, much of the change in this country's history was related to African-Americans, most notably emancipation. That said, from a common sense point of view, blacks were heavily disenfranchised for most of the country's history, and to a large extent, still are. To enact change, one must have the power to do so--and generally, that power has lain in the hands of white males. So it seems likely that most change has been enacted by white males (for example, pick a random president).

That said, if we were to account for political enfranchisement and income, it is possible that African-Americans would come in at the top of the list of agents of change. This is still far from obvious, however.

Re: Alan Rogers

cnnr — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:54:38 -0000

to piggyback on nolo (see my posts above): "It's just that it's white folks doing all that stuff, which doesn't make it as threatening to other white folks": Exactly so. There's a little bit of xenophobia/bigotry that occurs on both sides in interactions like those on the bus. When you see somebody who looks different from you doing something illegal or offensive, it's reflexive to blame it on the visible difference rather than the underlying problem (poverty, ignorance).

Also, and I say this in admiration: there's a bit of in-your-faceness that goes along with poor black culture, that is not the case with poor rural culture, a "yeah, whatcha gonna do about it?" that comes, I think from a response to historic racism, but also from being urban, where people are up each other's butts anyway. Due to physical space (heck, even in the local grocery store or convenience store, or walmart, it isn't crowded out there in the sticks), and lack of racial tension between poor whites and other whites around them, the poor white crudeness, crime, disrespect, etc. is less in your face. Unless, of course, you're a teacher. Then it's just as in your face, and just as challenging to contend with. I got cursed at just as often, and had as many books thrown around, and and as much property destroyed,and as little self-control/inner-discipline, and as many fights between students, and as many academic and social skills deficits with my poor white rural students as I do with my urban ones. But the "in your faceness" I talk about has one academic benefit that I've found gives my urban students a leg up on their rural equivilants -- it seems to go with a greater willingness to think outside the box/critically, and to question the status quo. Which I can use to help them with critical reading/writing/comprehension.

Re: Alan Rogers

dbt — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:52:13 -0000

I live in an area (sadly for only another month) that's famous in Chicago for being a mixed, multi-cultural area (Rogers Park). In the 3 years we've lived here, there have been three shootings within a 3 block radius of my house, including one where a young man opened fire on the police at 8pm a half a block away.

These aren't the people I'm going to remember.

I frequently walk past groups of young black men standing around in saggy pants and plain white t-shirts speaking loudly.

They've never even been rude, much less threatening, to me.

I take my kids to the local park, and they play with kids of all sorts of backgrounds. They play games together. They don't think anything special of it.

If the negative is all you see, you have not invested enough in where you are.

Re: Alan Rogers

laborlibert — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:39:12 -0000

Coates said: "The real deal behind defining Barack Obama as "post-racial" or "post-black," is that to accept him as a black man, would cause a crisis of identity for a lot of white people--for if Barack Obama Ivy League grad, brilliant orator, and most importantly unencumbered by racial paranoia is a black man--and seemingly quite comfortable with it--who am I? What is "whiteness" in that context?"

Again, you pull a Toby Keith. Thanks Mr. Coates, but white people don't need you to tell us what we think.

Jokes about hypocrisy aside, I'm actually fine with cross-racial judgments on state of mind, although the source may, as here, go to the weight of the judgment.

I must tell you, white folks don't sit around and think about what it means to be white. In my experience that sort of introspection and reflection on color/identity is engaged in mostly by blacks and interracials.

Re: Alan Rogers

Juan — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:32:24 -0000

Obama is an interesting character. The question remains in mind how much he actually identifies with African Americans. He is so ambitious that I wonder. If it had been more politically expedient to identify himself as mixed-/post-racial, would he have done so? To what extent has the black community been his step ladder? The black liberation theology of his church probably isn't so far removed from the leftist, anti-white ideology of his mother, who, according to Obama, refused to meet with visiting American businessmen when her Indonesian husband asked her to join him at dinners, saying "they're not my people".

Re: Alan Rogers

nolo — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:28:10 -0000

This is what most non-blacks who live in areas with significant black populations think about when they think about black people -- where can I move where my kids and my property will be safe? Can I afford it? Can I still get to work from there?

You do not speak for me, Fred. I've lived in the majority-white sticks and I've lived (and now live) in an urban center with a significant african-american population. I'm at least as safe here, and my property is at least as safe, as in the sticks. I like it here and I'm staying. But then again, I'm a lot less delusional about how effin' safe and crime-free things are in the lily-white sticks than you and a lot of other white people apparently are. There are crackhouses in the sticks (not to mention the meth heads), drug-related crimes, domestic violence, child abuse, welfare fraud, B&E rings, vandalism, and all that stuff. It's just that it's white folks doing all that stuff, which doesn't make it as threatening to other white folks as the looooooming specter of Urban Black Crime.