Honest Question

Geez, that seems terrible. I imagine this happens frequently to you.

 

Well you never know!

I remember when I first went about ship, the first or second evening I was talking with four black guys or trying to have a conversation. I was having a devil of a time understanding them though.
I finally gathered they were from Chicago and then it came to me, these guys were putting the new white nerd on. So that was the end of that effort.

 

Masters degree in Urban Planning, but I don't deal in social engineering.

Here's the part that is perplexing to me: You say your communities knows that there are problems that need to be fixed such as lack of jobs, gang violence, etc. I accept that and can understand how it would come across as condescending for whites to point out those problems and imply that they know more about what's wrong than the black community does. But certainly you have to recognize that those problems within your communities lead to greater likelihood of confrontations with law enforcement. I mean, if you could take race entirely out of the equation, you would certainly expect that there would be a greater number of interactions between cops and the community in areas where there was greater crime.

The part about cops getting off is worthy of a separate conversation. I think that, in general, the legal system gives deference to cops and tends to cut them some slack when there are violent interactions. I suspect that holds true across racial boundaries, but I don't have any stats to back that up.

 

They weren't playing. They were talking amongst themselves. Even if I thought it my place to tell them something like that, the chances of me flying off a 4 story platform far exceed any good coming from it.

Las Vegas schools are consistently at the bottom of the country.

 

The biggest problem that I see is trying to lump all black people into one "community." The experience of someone who grew up in Portland, is very different from the experience of someone who grew up in Atlanta, or New York, or Compton. This is true of all Americans. It's like trying to compare a black person from England with a black person from Germany or France or Spain. Other than having some similarities that all Americans share, the different parts of our country are so different. The east coast and the west coast. The north and the south. So how could anyone fix a community that spans across so many sub-cultures.

 

Well, they do all have a common list of negative attributes they share.

 

Oh, no way am I suggesting you should have butted in.

 

I know.

 

It isn't just black kids. It is most 15-20 year old kids in this city. I stopped paying attention in 9th grade English and I've been breathing bondo and paint fumes for 20 years and these kids still seem stupid to me.

 

You don't even know your history. While you may have 400 years of roots here, most white people are far more recent. The majority had ancestors that came to this country with dang near
nothing, many within the last 100 years. In my case, my father came in his early years and lived long enough to serve in the Pacific where his life ended during WWII. I have nothing to complain about, but I find no privilege in making my way to adult hood without family. But I do look look upon serving my years in the US Navy as a privilege but some how I don't think you use the term the same as I do.

 

My family came here in the late 1800s I think. So I'm on the hook for the recent racism at least.

 

The difference, of course, between the annoyances like men explaining about a book they never read or non-parents telling parents how to raise their children are, that while those are extremely ignorant and annoying, they are not systematized. Whereas literally hundreds of laws have been passed on the premise that women are incapable of making our own decisions about pregnancies and that we need male legislators to explain it to us. And TV is full of white pundits who lived their entire lives in all white communities whitesplaining the problems of African-American communities.

Not to mention a rich white man who has known nothing but privilege his entire life shouting to Black people "you have nothing! No education! No jobs! You get shot in the street (but not of course by police)! I am your savior!"

 

Maris should be hating on whitey.... it's all those damn white hipsters moving to Beautiful Central Oregon.

 

There are no rules here.... and I might just start tweeting mean things at you.

 

Unless I make fun of your age...... or your thievery from Reddit.

 

There's nothing there.