The Dangers of White Supremacy Ideology in America

[russ_watters]

Can you tell me how evolution would select high intelligence in a developed nation, and low intelligence in an underdeveloped nation?

...in the 150 years since such "development" started.

 

[Monique]

This is true. As shown by the absolute dominance of Africans in track & field.

Then why do the Dutch dominate in track ice-skating? You can not blindly connect one thing to the other.

 

[Nereid]

suggested framework for discussion

It might be helpful to break this discussion into three aspects (sure they're inter-related, but for clarity we could start discussing them separately):

1) Agriculture and animal husbandry - how did this as the basis of human food supply come about? what were the key factors? where is the scientific research on this topic up to now?

2) Technology and science - why did something like the Renaissance happen in Europe? why not in China (for example)? Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Europe? (and same questions as above)

3) The importance of 'intelligence' - how important was it in 1) and 2)? to what extent do today's service-based economies depend upon it?

If regular posters to this thread feel this proposal has legs, I'll start new threads on each topic.

 

[loseyourname]

Can you tell me how evolution would select high intelligence in a developed nation, and low intelligence in an underdeveloped nation?

No - I'm just trying to get these people to quit arguing with all of what I say.

 

[loseyourname]

One thing I do know is why Kenyans dominate distance running. They train constantly, from a very young age. The kids growing up in the countryside run everywhere they go, often to adjacent towns and settlements that might be many miles away. Heck, it's even easy to imagine that in an environment where running is so crucial to certain parts of country, that those who can't run would be weeded out of the gene pool pretty quickly.

 

[loseyourname]

1) Agriculture and animal husbandry - how did this as the basis of human food supply come about? what were the key factors? where is the scientific research on this topic up to now?

You know, I kind of forgot when I was talking about agriculture, but another notable thing about Africa is the lack of domesticable animals. The only one I can think of that is usable is the camel. There are certainly no animals that could be domesticated for food or dairy purposes. The whole point of this, of course, is that agriculture is a precursor to the development of advanced civilizations. The only parts of Africa amenable to agriculture, without first clearing rainforest, are the north coast and Nile Delta, which of course is where we have found the development of advanced civilizations (Carthage, Alexandria, Memphis, etc.).

Heck, I could be entirely wrong. I'm no anthropologist nor an agriculturalist - this is just my common sense hypothesis.

 

[Monique]

Heck, it's even easy to imagine that in an environment where running is so crucial to certain parts of country, that those who can't run would be weeded out of the gene pool pretty quickly.

You are talking about homo sapiens here: a social species, someone who can't run surely won't be left on its own. Unless you mean out-running a lion?

 

[plus]

Then why do the Dutch dominate in track ice-skating? You can not blindly connect one thing to the other.

There are many Dutch people of african descent.

Even if they are non african dutch which dominate ice skating, there are other factors affecting ice skating such as balance.

Your comment does not refute anything.

 

[plus]

You know, I kind of forgot when I was talking about agriculture, but another notable thing about Africa is the lack of domesticable animals. The only one I can think of that is usable is the camel. There are certainly no animals that could be domesticated for food or dairy purposes. The whole point of this, of course, is that agriculture is a precursor to the development of advanced civilizations.

The only parts of Africa amenable to agriculture, without first clearing rainforest, are the north coast and Nile Delta, which of course is where we have found the development of advanced civilizations (Carthage, Alexandria, Memphis, etc.).

Given the huge number of large animals in africa, I do not know why the blacks were unable to domesticate them. Examples: wildebeest, zebra, llama, all of the speces of deer, the hyenas...


And there are no farmers in nigeria, zimbabwe, ...?

 

[Monique]

Many dutch of african decent, right: not. Where did you get that information? Or do you mean the dutch that colonized s. africa?

Let me tell you why the dutch are so good at track ice-skating: practice. It's almost a national sport: that's why they're so good. Nationally there is a lot of competition of top skaters, this competition leads to high performance. Just to show that there are more arguments to consider than just genes, sure dutch are taller.. it's a balance.

 

[plus]

In civilized areas it stopped, since everyone gets a chance to reproduce.. it would be a degenerate evolution. But ofcourse, now with the mobilization of populations you get a lot of interbreeding.. which is also a kind of evolution?

Even in non civilised areas, almost every one too gets the chance to reproduce. It is just once in a while that people starve. Overwhelmingly the people in the developing world are benefiting in this regard, hence the population explosions in these areas.

The degenerative evolution goes on faster in areas in which women have much liberty and are pushed to work. The women with education (and usually this correlates not perfectly with higher IQ) want to work and delay having chilren, and the women with less education (which not perfectly correlates with lower IQ) have more children.

 

[plus]

Many dutch of african decent, right: not. Where did you get that information?

Are you saying that there are no dutch of african descent? The netherlands is a country of immigrants. As such there are many people who are not only of african descent, but people who were born in africa to african parents.

Let me tell you why the dutch are so good at track ice-skating: practice. It's almost a national sport: that's why they're so good. Nationally there is a lot of competition of top skaters, this competition leads to high performance. Just to show that there are more arguments to consider than just genes, sure dutch are taller.. it's a balance.

Ice skating is something which practise can make up for differences in genes, and maybe the white dutch have other advantages over the blacks. Maybe the larger calf muscles is useful.

 

[iansmith]

You know, I kind of forgot when I was talking about agriculture, but another notable thing about Africa is the lack of domesticable animals. The only one I can think of that is usable is the camel. There are certainly no animals that could be domesticated for food or dairy purposes.

You are wrong. the masai (a pastoral tribe of kenya and tanzaniain close to the vinicity of mount kilimanjaro) have more or less domesticated african cows as a source of food. The masai do not have enclave as in the westernized agricultural system, they moved the cows within a territory in the grassland where good feed is available.

the major problem with westerned agriculture in africa and tropical and equitorial environement is the high degradation of organic waste. Land is only fertile in the first few centimeter of ground. Therefore, nutriment required for organic growth degrades rapidly and in agricultural system it get depleted within 3 years.

Most of the domesticated animals now found in africa are from the european settlers. these animals are not well adapted to the environment found in most african countries.

 

[Monique]

Are you saying that there are no dutch of african descent? The netherlands is a country of immigrants. As such there are many people who are not only of african descent, but people who were born in africa to african parents.

I asked you where you get your information, I get mine from the CIA. The only African country would be just below Spain. Have you ever seen Dutch Maroccan immigrants compete in ice-skating? It's actually the conservative nothern province of Friesland where most ice-skaters come from.

But that's not the issue, mine was an example that you cannot blindly connect one fact to the other.

 

[BlackVision]

Then why do the Dutch dominate in track ice-skating? You can not blindly connect one thing to the other.

Oh no ice skating! Come on now. You can't compare the strength, stamina, and speed needed for the countless track & fields to ice skating. The more testosterone driven a sport is, the more likely it is that Blacks will dominate. Let's take a sport that requires the most speed. 100M dash. I wonder who's going to win the Olympics this year in this category. Let's take a sport that requires the most stamina. Marathons. Once again, who would win here? Let's take a sport that requires the most strength. Boxing. Again, who dominates this? Ice skating. Yeah ok. What are you going to bring up next? Golf?

I also highly doubt Africans were running around in ice and snow in their native African continent for the thousands of years that evolution shaped their development. If they're not good in winter sports, that would certainly make sense.

 

[BlackVision]

One thing I do know is why Kenyans dominate distance running. They train constantly, from a very young age.

To say that genetics has absolutely no role in the dominance of Kenyans in marathons would be completely inscientific.

Heck, it's even easy to imagine that in an environment where running is so crucial to certain parts of country, that those who can't run would be weeded out of the gene pool pretty quickly.

If running was crucial for survival in the history of the Kenyan people then yes, those who can't run would have been weeded out of the gene pool.

 

[Monique]

Either extreme standpoint is not correct, the truth lies in the middle.

 

[Monique]

Ice skating. Yeah ok. What are you going to bring up next? Golf?

How different is track ice-skating from 100m dash? huh?

 

[BlackVision]

How different is track ice-skating from 100m dash? huh?

It's a winter sport for one. The evolutionary development of Africans was not in cold regions that had ample ice and snow. Second, there seems to be a genuine lack of interest for ice skating among blacks. Something that isn't true for whites in black dominated sports. E.g. Basketball, boxing. Where the fans are predominately white, while the players are predominately black. There is also an extraordinarily lack of blacks in upper latitudes today where ice will actually exist.

 

[Nereid]

To say that genetics has absolutely no role in the dominance of Kenyans in marathons would be completely inscientific.

I think you mean 'unscientific'.

Perhaps too you meant to say 'the extent to which elite Kenyan marathon runners achieve their dominance in that sport as a result of their unique genotypes has yet to be established; however, as DNA analysis of elite athletes has already shown some rare mutations to contribute significantly to success, it would not be surprising to find that many or most elite Kenyan marathoners do possesses rare genes.'

The differences in performance between the elite athletes of any background are razor thin, <0.1%; the fact that if Mark Spitz (sp? - US winner of 7 gold medals for swimming in the 1972 Olympics) were to try for a place on the US *women's* swimming team today - in his favourite distance - he wouldn't even qualify speaks volumes about the role of training, diet, etc.

 

[Nereid]

Even in non civilised areas, almost every one too gets the chance to reproduce. It is just once in a while that people starve. Overwhelmingly the people in the developing world are benefiting in this regard, hence the population explosions in these areas.

The key statistic would be the incidence of mortality before puberty or late adolescence. However, 'child under 5' mortality rates would give at least a lower estimate; IIRC there are still quite a few countries where these are >100 per 1000 live births ... given that these numbers are national averages, the rates in rural and remote areas in these countries will surely be considerably higher.

I guess it depends on what you mean by 'almost every one' [sic]

 

[BlackVision]

I think you mean 'unscientific'.

Don't make me dig up your spelling errors.

The differences in performance between the elite athletes of any background are razor thin, <0.1%; the fact that if Mark Spitz (sp? - US winner of 7 gold medals for swimming in the 1972 Olympics) were to try for a place on the US *women's* swimming team today - in his favourite distance - he wouldn't even qualify speaks volumes about the role of training, diet, etc.

No one is saying training does not matter. The argument is against people who attempt to say it's 100% environment.

 

[Monique]

It's a winter sport for one. The evolutionary development of Africans was not in cold regions that had ample ice and snow.

Either you use the muscles or you don't, either you sprint on ice or on gravel.. there's not much evolution that goes into that.

 

[Evo]

I have to agree with Monique. If you are saying that blacks are stronger, more athletic, able to run faster, etc... Whether it is on ice or not should make no difference, should it?

 

[Nereid]

No one is saying training does not matter. The argument is against people who attempt to say it's 100% environment.

But who would argue that it's 100% environment? To pick just one example - the variation in athletic ability among the ~20,000 healthy adults aged 15 to 45 of any mid-sized town anywhere on the planet is enormous; it's certainly far, far greater than the variation between the elite athletes from different countries. Further, no amount of training of those 20,000 will reduce the variation so that it's comparable to that between 20,000 elite athletes; the back of my admittedly very small envelope suggests at least an OOM difference, maybe two.

 

[Nereid]

If so, I confess to being confused by your comment BV, how is 'a person with higher intelligence will have higher probability to have a job that will give him higher SES' (in modern US society; assume it's consistent with research results for the moment) relevant to the study which Evo referenced?

Because many if not most people in high SES got there due to their high intelligence.

In particular, how is the study's method flawed by not taking this into consideration?

Because you can't directly cross SES without taking into consideration that a person's probability to be in high SES is increased with higher intelligence. It would be like crossing college graduates with non college graduates and going, "see college graduates have a higher IQ by 10 points." Which will probably end up to be true, but attempting to argue that it's because that person went to college that he has an IQ surplus rather than the fact that it's his intelligence that got him to college. It working backwards.

How do you know Turkheimer et al didn't take this into account? From the description that Evo provided, it would seem likely that they did: "Biometric analyses were conducted using models allowing for components attributable to the additive effects of genotype, shared environment, and nonshared environment to interact with socioeconomic status (SES) measured as a continuous variable."

Or, to repeat the part of my original post which you conveniently omitted:

Seems to me that, without knowing the details of the models Turkheimer et al used, there's no way to make your 'flawed study' claim.

 

[BlackVision]

Either you use the muscles or you don't, either you sprint on ice or on gravel.. there's not much evolution that goes into that.

Ice skating and jogging requires different muscles. Go on a skating rink and pretend to jog and see how well it works. Go on a pavement and pretend to glide from side to side with your shoes. See if it's the same. You should easily be able to notice they are different movements that require different things. If they were the same, the world's best runner would also be the world's best skater. And vice versa. It does not work that way.

You also forgot to reply to the fact that Blacks lack interest in skating. Something that isn't true for Whites in sports Black dominate. E.g. basketball, boxing. Where the majority on the amateur level ARE white. But that as you go higher up the ranks, the more Black it becomes.

 

[BlackVision]

I have to agree with Monique. If you are saying that blacks are stronger, more athletic, able to run faster, etc... Whether it is on ice or not should make no difference, should it?

Oh yeah the fact that ice is absolutely foreign in the development of African evolution. Yeah that has no impact at all.

It's been proven infinite times that Blacks are better runners. I am yet to see a study that states otherwise. If you have one please by all means share it with us.

You must also have a good reason why the extra testosterone level that Blacks have would somehow not give them an advantage in many sports correct?

 

[BlackVision]

How do you know Turkheimer et al didn't take this into account? From the description that Evo provided, it would seem likely that they did: "Biometric analyses were conducted using models allowing for components attributable to the additive effects of genotype, shared environment, and nonshared environment to interact with socioeconomic status (SES) measured as a continuous variable."

Or, to repeat the part of my original post which you conveniently omitted:

Believe me they didn't. They would show specifically how they did it. They would go on for pages and pages just explaining this one aspect as it is a difficult aspect to factor in. And if it did, Evo would be all over me about it. But she's not. This study is nothing new. As soon as the Bell Curve was released, they attempted this exact same method to try to counter the Bell Curve. And since then, I'm seen numerous studies all doing the same thing. It didn't work then, it doesn't work now.

Seems to me that, without knowing the details of the models Turkheimer et al used, there's no way to make your 'flawed study' claim.

Seems to me unless you can prove this study weighed the fact that the more intelligent a person is the higher probability there is that a person will be in higher SES, this study is void correct? If you're going to try to use this study, seems like it would be you that would need to prove something.

Like I said. Studies like this, and there are a lot, are all going by a faulty method. They attempted the exact same thing with SAT scores. Since there's a 200+ point gap between the low class and the upper class, they tried to attempt to argue that SES effects your SAT score. When it's really that intelligent people were able to put themselves into high SES BECAUSE of their intelligence, and that their SES has absolutely nothing to do with their higher SAT score.

 

[Monique]

Oh yeah the fact that ice is absolutely foreign in the development of African evolution. Yeah that has no impact at all.

It's been proven infinite times that Blacks are better runners. I am yet to see a study that states otherwise. If you have one please by all means share it with us.

You don't seem to get it, why would the dutch have an evolutionary advantage to be able to track ice-skate better over other nations?

You mention a study, let me ask you how that study was carried out: how did they make the comparison that blacks are better runners? How can you assume it is mainly genetic? Why is it not mainly environmental? How is that balance? You know how the balance is? How could you find out how it is balanced?

 

[Nereid]

Seems to me that, without knowing the details of the models Turkheimer et al used, there's no way to make your 'flawed study' claim.

Seems to me unless you can prove this study weighed the fact that the more intelligent a person is the higher probability there is that a person will be in higher SES, this study is void correct?

There's a simple way to address this - look at the details of the models. They have not yet been posted here (unless I missed that post). Until we can all look at those details, this discussion isn't going to go anywhere useful.

 

[Nereid]

It's been proven infinite times that Blacks are better runners. I am yet to see a study that states otherwise. If you have one please by all means share it with us.

I think you probably mean 'many times'.

It would help greatly if you could state more clearly what 'Blacks are better runners' actually means.

To pick just one example - the variation in athletic ability among the ~20,000 healthy adults aged 15 to 45 of any mid-sized town anywhere on the planet is enormous; it's certainly far, far greater than the variation between the elite athletes from different countries. Further, no amount of training of those 20,000 will reduce the variation so that it's comparable to that between 20,000 elite athletes; the back of my admittedly very small envelope suggests at least an OOM difference, maybe two.

And

The differences in performance between the elite athletes of any background are razor thin, <0.1%; the fact that if Mark Spitz (sp? - US winner of 7 gold medals for swimming in the 1972 Olympics) were to try for a place on the US *women's* swimming team today - in his favourite distance - he wouldn't even qualify speaks volumes about the role of training, diet, etc.

It may indeed be the case that in the period 1990 to 2010 (say) a few world-level track and field events had a significant number of Kenyans and Ethiopians (for example) among the top 10. However, that's a very different thing than (say) 'there is a complex of ~300 genes, in the genotype of several populations of Africans, which leads to an inherent ability of people with these genes to be able to run 2% faster than those without them.'

Out of curiosity, what is the difference between the average times for groups of high school kids for the 100m and 1500m (or the 'yards' equivalent in the US)?

 

[Marijn]

And that in comparison with the times ran by top athletes (of any color, form, race, fabrication date, favourite color, just all of them. So that takes care of any race issues)

 

[BlackVision]

You don't seem to get it, why would the dutch have an evolutionary advantage to be able to track ice-skate better over other nations?

No you don't get it. Different races will tend to excel in different areas. The fact that Blacks do not dominate ice skating can be attributed to one or many reasons. There are not many Blacks in locations that would have ice, there is a general lack of interest for ice skating among Blacks, and/or Blacks simply do not have the body designed for skating.

You mention a study, let me ask you how that study was carried out: how did they make the comparison that blacks are better runners?

Because studies show that Blacks have narrower hips than other races, longer legs than other races, more testosterone than other races, and faster reflexes.

How can you assume it is mainly genetic?

Because the differences I mentioned above is contributed to genetical differences.

For more information on this. Read "Taboo : Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It" written by Jon Entine. 400 pages of facts and evidence.

Click here for a short review of this book: http://www.sptimes.com/News/020600/Perspective/The_game_in_black_and.shtml

 

[BlackVision]

I think you probably mean 'many times'.

No I think "infinite times" is quite fine.

Out of curiosity, what is the difference between the average times for groups of high school kids for the 100m and 1500m (or the 'yards' equivalent in the US)?

That would be one to look up. And the relevance to this would be?

 

[Monique]

The fact that Blacks do not dominate ice skating can be attributed to one or many reasons.

Right, exactly my point.

Different races will tend to excel in different areas

There are a few elite people that tend to excel, not a whole race. You can't generalize. It's like saying 'heart disease runs in that family, thus everyone in that family has heart disease'.

I think you need to deepen yourself into bioethics.

 

[BlackVision]

Right, exactly my point.
There are a few elite people that tend to excel, not a whole race.

Yes but if a certain race has a higher median, they're also more likely to have more elites.

 

[selfAdjoint]

My wife used to watch a lot of ice skating, especially women, and it's obvious that the sport favors short people with light upper bodies and well developed legs and hips because it involves jumping and maneuvering in the air. There was one black star among the many oriental and white ones, and it seemed from watching her that her problem was her heavier upper body structure. The same factor caused teenage stars to drop out as they matured. So physical characteristics - bone length, basically, seem to be a determining factor for success in this sport. And bone length distribution is a physically detectable, stable difference in the almost reproductively isolated populations formerly known as races.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Yes but if a certain race has a higher median, they're also more likely to have more elites.

Not at all necessarily so. The tails of a distribution are dependent on the higher moments, not on the measures of central tendency. A peaky distribution with a higher median may have skinnier tails and fewer representatives far out on a tail than a less peaky one with a lower median.

 

[Nereid]

Out of curiosity, what is the difference between the average times for groups of high school kids for the 100m and 1500m (or the 'yards' equivalent in the US)?

And that in comparison with the times ran by top athletes (of any color, form, race, fabrication date, favourite color, just all of them. So that takes care of any race issues)

That would be one to look up. And the relevance to this would be?

It could be a Q&D way to get an indication of distribution of athletic abilities - what sort of variation is there? what shapes are the distributions? Even simple statistical measures - such as means, modes, medians, standard deviations, skewness, kurtosis - would give us something concrete to discuss; I find the waffly qualitative stuff (e.g. 'better') so common here to be much too vague for any meaningful discussion (SelfAdjoint's last post illustrate of how easy it is to draw inaccurate conclusions from vague words about unknown distributions).

 

[plus]

I asked you where you get your information, I get mine from the CIA.

Are you claiming that there are no dutch of subsahara african descent?
The CIA statistics notoriously underestimate the numbers of recent immigrants. For example it says the following about the ethnic groups in UK:


English 81.5%, Scottish 9.6%, Irish 2.4%, Welsh 1.9%, Ulster 1.8%, West Indian, Indian, Pakistani, and other 2.8%

In fact, the percentage of non whites is about 7.5%.

It says the following about the netherlands:

Dutch 83%, other 17% (of which 9% are non-Western origin mainly Turks, Moroccans, Antilleans, Surinamese and Indonesians) (1999 est.)

So this probably means that at least 30% of dutch people are recent immigrants. I get my information from looking around netherlands and talking to people. There are many nigerians in netherlands.

The only African country would be just below Spain. Have you ever seen Dutch Maroccan immigrants compete in ice-skating?

They are irrelevant to this debate, as it was about blacks.

But that's not the issue, mine was an example that you cannot blindly connect one fact to the other.

...and you have trouble doing this yourself.

 

[Nereid]

Yes but if a certain race has a higher median, they're also more likely to have more elites.

Not at all necessarily so. The tails of a distribution are dependent on the higher moments, not on the measures of central tendency. A peaky distribution with a higher median may have skinnier tails and fewer representatives far out on a tail than a less peaky one with a lower median.

On top of that, at least for some sports (e.g. running, swimming), the changes in world records, development of training, incidence of drug taking, etc would all suggest extreme caution about generalising from the performance of a very small elite.

 

[Monique]

plus: whatever, we had this debate before.

 

[Nereid]

The CIA statistics notoriously underestimate the numbers of recent immigrants. For example it says the following about the ethnic groups in UK:

English 81.5%, Scottish 9.6%, Irish 2.4%, Welsh 1.9%, Ulster 1.8%, West Indian, Indian, Pakistani, and other 2.8%

In fact, the percentage of non whites is about 7.5%.

Well, it would seem that the CIA data is a little dated, but not that far from the UK 2001 Census results (note that the categories are quite different in the 2001 Census, so a straight-forward comparison isn't possible). Where did your figure of 7.5% come from? It seems high, even for just England.

 

[plus]

Well, it would seem that the CIA data is a little dated, but not that far from the UK 2001 Census results (note that the categories are quite different in the 2001 Census, so a straight-forward comparison isn't possible). Where did your figure of 7.5% come from? It seems high, even for just England.

The figure from your census gives 9% for England, and then presumably 8% got UK total.

 

[Nereid]

The figure from your census gives 9% for England, and then presumably 8% got UK total.

Hmm, you are aware that in the context of the UK 2001 Census, 'minority ethnic groups' includes 'White Irish'? That 'Other' is just that ... no way to tell what the 'white/non-white' mix is? That a person who was born in India, and whose grand-parents may have described themselves as 'White British' had they had an opportunity to do so, may have described themself (in the Census) as 'Indian'? And so on.

If you take a look at the various countries' census pages, and look in some detail at their methodologies etc, you quickly realize that mapping results onto US 'race' categories is extraordinarily difficult; the Australian one is particularly illuminating.

 

[Loren Booda]

Statistics are problematic when used to compare individuals.

Can population or genomic probabilities do justice to whether a given white-complected person may have suffered more or less than a given black-complected person?

I believe such an anomaly of statistics, evolved in a survival reflex, to be the cognitive basis of racism: individuals become labeled as ethnicities, and ethnicities as individuals.

Each of us performs similar behaviors semi-consciously many times daily. At best they define our identity; at worst, they confirm our fears of the Other.

 

[AndrewEskeClarke]

I do not want to sound rude, but the handle NoahAfrican strikes in me memories of stories of Marcus Garvey, founder of the "Black Star Line" and a leader in the "back-to-Africa" movement, as well as sounding quite similar to the kind of name one use to spoof a black supremacist for a character in a movie.
Also, the tone of your first post implies that you feel all "whites" are racist. I believe that racism is defined, as per dictionary.com, as "The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others." I would think that claiming one group of people shares the same characteristic, of course excluding the pervading characteristic in that group that makes them a group, whether this characteristic is complimenting or insulting, would be racist. Personally that makes me racist because I think the fastest black people are faster than the fastest white people. But it would also make someone racist who says something derogatory about any race, whether or not that race is a minority or not.
I am sorry to bandy about this word racism, because, as Blackvision says, we should debate an arguements merits and not call people racist.
I would like to address the issue of reparations though. Some would have us believe that poor african americans are in such a state in large part because of the reprucussions of slavery. But slavery ended over 140 years ago. And we all have many examples and role models in the "black" community to look up to from 40 years ago, a mere 100 years after slavery was abolished and during a time when racism permeated a much larger part of american culture than it currently does, all of whom overcame not only the more recent reprecussions of slavery but also the much more difficult hurdles of mass racism, which was much more prevasive back then. So how is it that they overcame all these hurdles 40 years ago that we are now supposed to think will still hold down many poor african americans?
These are just my veiws, and are pretty ignorant and not exactly expressed as clearly as i would like, but I'm by far not the brightest nor the most articulate member of these forums and in fact am quite new and not used to how y'all do things, so i hope I haven't offended anyone.

 

[plus]

plus: whatever, we had this debate before.

..and you finished it prematurely by ending the thread. You obviously wanted to say some things otherwise why bother bringing it up again.

You should at least have admitted you were wrong.

 

[Monique]

Get over it plus, we discussed it a long time ago.