A Startling Statistic at UCLA

[mini]

<p>"In what way have you been able to take advantage of affirmative action mini?</p>

<p>Homebuying, access to mortgages (and at lower rates), access to capital (for businesses), access to better schools for the kids (if I wanted) because I had access to mortgates and my parents' access to houses (which had restrictive covenants), access to certified teachers and better ones in neighborhoods where the schools were better, access to roads and trains to carry my family out to the 'burbs where the restrictive covenants were in force; affordable housing further away from toxic waste dumps; GI bill (not available to Black women who built the battle ships, and Black soldiers from the South weren't allowed in to state universities; that's how my father got his education, and moved us on the path, along with GI mortgages); better access to health care even when I had exactly the same income and same insurance as Black folks; longer life expectancy, and Black folks subsidizing my family's Social Security, which then became part of my parents' estates; access to less dangerous employment, and hence more access to "healthy parents"; access to parks and spending on parks and recs in my all-white neighborhood; stay-at-home tax breaks for my mother and others in the middle and other income groups at a time when almost all African Americans with two parents had two parents working - therefore, access to my mother! The list could be much, much longer. What Black folks have is affirmative action to the criminal justice system, with conviction rates for exactly the same crime roughly 5-6X greater, and chances of prison time (for the same crime) roughly 11X times greater (this is in our state). </p>

<p>You will (as a class) find the same benefit - a white, working class family at the median family income has between 6 and 7 times the assets of a Black, working class family at exactly the same income. You can tease out why for yourself.</p>

[rorosen]

<p>looks like my friend HH has made the predictable transition from conformist liberal to grumpy conservative,..books on the shelf indeed.</p>

<p>mini,..eye opening(although I liked your earlier funnier movies better)</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>Thanks for sharing your absolute distain of my life experience. Didn't know I was a stereotype until you just told me (seriously).</p>

<p>I will surely consider casting aside my deep feeling about this matter and take to intellectualizing about it from a safe distance, as you do. One gets a lot more brownie points that way in the world of "caring" - huh?</p>

<p>Maybe I could write a little poem about racism for example? Sort of sum everything up that way?</p>

<p>P.S. Once again, I didn't address my post to YOU, sir.</p>

[rorosen]

<p>lukewarm disdain would be a more accurate description, my friend</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>Oh, thank you so much. I feel so much better now. ;)</p>

[rorosen]

<p>are you really smiling behind that tiny smiley face or just pretending?</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>That's not a smiley face, it's a wink, my friend. ;)</p>

[rorosen]

<p>even more disturbing then. </p>

<p>p.s. anyone can respond to any post here.
(it's an open system)</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>Thanks for clarifying that! Gee, where would I be here without you? :)</p>

[rorosen]

<p>rather where would the rest of us be without your wisdom and guidance
to shake us from our misconceptions and shortsightedness, our clinging to unproductive illusions such as the consequences of racism or the consideration of consequences that are quite possibly near invisible to us?</p>

[Drosselmeier]

<p>Uc…dad:</p>

<p>
[quote]
I agree that whites can also benefit from AA. This is clearly proven by taking a look at what's happened to the demographics of the most selective UCs where racial discrimination isn't permitted. The majority group is now Asian and the ration of non-hispanic whites is down. IMO, this is as it should be since these accepted Asians are perfoming at a higher level than the displaced whites. So be it.

[/quote]
The Asians are performing at a higher level only by a narrow standard. In my opinion, education, real education, is comprised of the study and experience of as much of reality as possible, and to get here will require much more than a dependence on some narrow standard. It is my hope that some schools will always be free to craft scholarly communities using human thought and personality, rather than let them develop by animal darwinian process.</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>Though not as INTELLECTUAL as you and Dross, rorosen, I am quite confident, I have nevertheless tried to alleviate the consequences of racism in my life toward blacks in my own SMALL way. Something is not setting well with me in these discussions. Perhaps I cannot even clearly say what it is so as to make people understand. All I know is that I am thoroughly dejected, if you want to know the truth, to know I will probably go to my deathbed without seeing any improvement in the state of race affairs in this country in the thirty years I've been aware of them. If you want to believe it's because I'm a hypocritical armchair liberal/johnny-come-lately conservative, so bit it. Frankly, I don't really care that much about what a complete cyberspace stranger thinks of my attempts to explain my feelings.</p>

<p>Thanks, peace, OUT (as my son would say!).</p>

[Drosselmeier]

<p>hereshoping:</p>

<p>
[quote]
Dross: I have just gotten up the courage to read your reaction to my last post for fear of your response.

[/quote]
Well I do not think I have been so mean here that you should actually fear my response. I think you are yet continuing to be uncharitable and unfair.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I do appreciate your clarification and I do understand the context in which you were writing. Yet I still maintain that if I exhibited surprise that the black students at my son's school were "pretty decent" toward him (contrary to what I expected, obviously), I would be accused of racism...

[/quote]
If this is what I did then you would have a point, but I did no such thing. You are, once again, corrupting my statement when you remove it from its overall context.</p>

<p>I gave a basis for apprehension regarding whites, especially white kids of a certain age, because I myself have incurred a lot of embarrassment from whites and had great concern for my children. I expressed this basis and shared that it was in part to blame for a lot of my ill feelings on these issues. But because of the considerable kindness of whites today toward my children, my apprehensions are fading. I had every reason to expect that by now my children would have experienced racism from whites that is at least as awful as the racism I have experienced. But to my surprise, they apparently have not. And this is causing me to question whether my views on race are entirely accurate. Now that is the context of my statement. If you had made a similar statement regarding blacks, no reasonable person in the entire country would accuse you of racism because you would in fact be acting in the very opposite manner of a racist.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I was "passionately" on your side way back in the seventies, my friend. I have on my bookshelf "Soledad Brother" and "Black Like Me" and "Soul on Ice" and Nikki Giovanni and on and on and on. I've had deep relationships with blacks, my friend. I even believed the rage was justified - BACK THEN. But it's served its purpose; it's done its time, and the time is OVER.

[/quote]
Oh? I just had no idea the time is over until you managed to make this declaration here on my behalf. I don’t wish to sound mean to you. But you should perhaps consider that unlike you, many of us are unable to just up and walk over to the “other side”. A white boy just tried to take my son down, my own dear child, by deceitfully claiming someone called him a nigger. That is going on pal—right now. It is over only for you.</p>

<p>I just want a country wherein I don’t have to put up with this stuff – where I can no have to worry about whites having seminars on how to murder me and my family when the race war they are trying to create finally comes down. I want to be able to just relax in a country where I don’t have to worry about white scientists crafting biological weapons for the express purpose of murdering me and my kids. They tried that in South Africa, you know? And apparently whites here knew quite a lot about it. That stuff is going on right now, friend. It ain’t over for me. You went to other “other side” because it is nice over there. You don’t have to worry about the stuff that’s on me all day long for all my whole cottonpickin’ life.</p>

<p>But hey. Its cool. Stay as you are. I’d like those books if you’re done with ‘em. LOL.</p>

[rorosen]

<p>well, hereshoping, that was a good start, admitting you care and yet don't really have the solutions. And yes, we are disembodied voices trying to create a conversation of value here with the luxury that being honest doesn't chase into our everyday lives. And as I believe I said, I do understand very well the feelings behind your position, even as it has shifted over the years. I simply cannot stand witnessing any condescension toward the wise and patient voice possessed by drosselmeier who nearly singlehandedly provides generous accounts of his life experience which resonate with me as few other accounts have, all the while fending off a chorus of voices deflecting the guilt that they feel should not be tossed at their feet which remember the boatride of threadbare ancestors across the atlantic. Achieving a good and fair society simply seems to require more than instructing the disadvantaged to dust themselves off and continue the fight.</p>

<p>there's still hope, hereshoping.</p>

<p>yipes, Dross the speedy typist slipped the above post ahead of mine. Please understand it was composed as a direct response to your apparent resignation.</p>

[Drosselmeier]

<p>
[quote]
All I know is that I am thoroughly dejected, if you want to know the truth…

[/quote]
Don’t be dejected. Really. I am trying to make a point here that maybe you are trying to avoid. I just want you to see that there is a world of thought that is perhaps hidden from you, but that is a serious burden to others.</p>

<p>When big named authors casually write things like the Bell Curve that seem to condemn my kids because of their race, it hits people like me in a place that is not really good at all. To keep going, we have to either harden, or be in self-evaluation all the time. Many people just don’t have to care about this at all.</p>

[rorosen]

<p>we might be accused of tag team wrestling here, dross. But let's think of it as a coincidence of individual knitting needles that somehow turns out a scarf,..</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>Ok, thanks, Dross, I'll try not to care. Sure is easier that way. (Not being sarcastic.)</p>

<p>And something is still not setting well with me in your response which I just reread. No heart, maybe, I think it is. </p>

<p>Don't forget I believe I'm still entitled to my opinion! Thanks.</p>

<p>And I am so pleased I have had so much better experiences with blacks than you have with whites in my life. Maybe that's the divide we can't get over here.</p>

<p>And rororsen, I know you're trying to be kind, but please don't tell me I'm at a "good start" now after thirty years! This has been a journey, from my limited viewpoint, yes, of my own little meager life, but it's been mine, and it's due its own due as much as dross's is - as anyone's life is. Thanks.</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>Just reread your last paragraph of Post #553 about whites having seminars planning to murder you and your family when the race war they are trying to create is going to come down? </p>

<p>As I've suspected all along, you're a radical, my man. Smooth but not that smooth.</p>

[rorosen]

<p>well, to keep beating this horse, I have wondered to what extent the humiliations Dross has experienced fit on the same emotional line as the notions contained in the word 'alienation' which at one time was such a prominent term used to describe each individuals struggle to belong. This is a vast and unformed idea that perhaps unfairly imports the social/politcal (whatever that is) into the psychological (whatever that is) but doing so goes a long way toward releasing my sympathy for the predicament of non-whites and yet at the same time, and this is the tricky part, casts the old categories of racial unrest into a different light. For instance, how to categorize the suffering of a young person who simply does not blend into a peer group, who does not 'smell' right to the others and therefore doesn't fit in and has a lonely childhood. Should the pain of this 'not belonging' have a dimension that is any less tragic because the source of it can not be located in race? Economic injustice only accounts for so much of the heart. And isn't everyone, with clothes and hair and car and other signs, always struggling mightily for acceptance? This desperate instinct is at the root of what was called an identity crisis whether it plays out in racial tensions, family tensions, peer group tensions. And so race might belong to some larger more fundamental problem of the human soul rather than the ugly prosaic world of school districts, wages and bowling teams,..in other words, we are all, to some extent, black.</p>

<p>I reveal this in an attempt to convince you, hereshoping, that I am not finding any of this simple and that the more deeply I go into it, the less I know.</p>

[rorosen]

<p>whoops again. Took so long to write, you slipped in the two posts above. One, I meant 'a good start' not to refer to your life, but to the earlier paragraph you wrote that seemed from the heart. And two, reading a reference to extremists, whose plans and actions should not indict anyone but those extremists, sadly you slipped back into simple formulations like some wacko who hearing a word similar to the name of his enemy then reverts to his old habit of piling sand against his bunker. </p>

<p>And radical, meaning challenging, is good,..</p>