New Orleans = New Haiti?
richas...@hotmail.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050903/ts_nm/mayhem_dc
http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20050902%2F2201449857.htm&sc=1110
Even I realize that not all poor people are created equal.
Your Mama!
Thanks for the good links.
A Concerned Citizen of the USA.
_______________________________________________________________________________
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beernuts
I can't help but feel especially sorry for the minority elderly white
folks in the Superdome and convention center, as I'm sure they were the
focus of anger and resentment. The first dead body I saw on TV was an
old caucasian woman who was simply covered by a blanket and pushed
outside with all the garbage.
FRED WELLMAN
<richas...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1125774358.7...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
It is such a shame that Hurricanes hit without warning. Why did not more
people take food with them. I do not condone the violence. Every one I saw
complained the Government was not taking care of them. The CITY government
failed them not the Federal. They responded in a timely manner. What the
news does not show is the people who made good choices and or left. This is
not about race or money but the fact people expect some one else to "save"
them. Fred
>
Neil Boss
This is America !!!
Having looked at the news reports and seen how Americans have treated their
own, in what is suppose to be the richest country in the world and being
told that capitalism and democracy is the ONLY way. Many people have to
wonder why we are told it is the Land of the Brave, Free, etc.
The poor that account for two thirds of the population of New Orleans were
unable to leave because they were far too poor to buy a ticket to leave the
city. They were left abandoned to face the harrican, to fend for themselves
while the governments at various levels sat on their backsides and did
nothing.
So the motto the Americans have had of "Give us your poor, hungry, etc.. and
we will take them in and build a great nation", really should be "Give us
your poor, hungry, oppressed and we shall use and abuse them make the rich
richer and then abandon those who helped create the wealth".
What a country ! We are told that all the wars that were fought were for the
freedom of people all around the world, mighty big words in the light of how
the poor are treated. The sacrifices of those who died are being honoured in
a very unusual way.
The USA holds its self to be the most just country in the world and a role
model to follow. If that is what is called the highest standards of
governance, morality, eqaulity and justice, please don't force your model on
others.
During the Cold War, I saw a documentary on the USA made by a Soviet
documentary makers that showed third world conditions many rural poor mostly
blacks Americans lived in, how people would look for food in Bins to get at
scraps of food to feed their family. The documentary was laughted at because
it was made by the enemy. Since watching that documentary in the early
1980's I see not much has changed.
Yet blacks make up a disproportionate number of personal in the armed forces
per head of population. Blacks give up their lives for the USA but share
very little of the wealth and privileges of the greater society.
Yet these Yanks and Westerners have the hide to point fingers at other
nations that are less well off if they do not meet there high standards.
Makes you wonder how these shameless people and carry on living with
themselves. NO wonder Iraqi's and many others are fighting for their
freedoms as they can see what type of governance they will be under if they
took up Western values.
Yanks and the rest of the gang you should be ashamed of yourselves.
Neil Boss
beernuts <beerwi...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:nHqSe.3071> I can't
help but feel especially sorry for the minority elderly white
> folks in the Superdome and convention center, as I'm sure they were the
> focus of anger and resentment. The first dead body I saw on TV was an
> old caucasian woman who was simply covered by a blanket and pushed
> outside with all the garbage.
The ones I saw were where the Balcks were helping whites. Helping little
babies and rescuing them. But then again it is America no good deed by a
black man will go unpunished.
Neil Boss
FRED WELLMAN <fwel...@wideopenwest.com> wrote in message >
> It is such a shame that Hurricanes hit without warning. Why did not more
> people take food with them. I do not condone the violence.
You MUST live in a third world nation that does not cover news at all !!!
There was a warning and people were asked to leave BUT the poor in the
richest cuntry on the world didn't have money to leave. My word what a
cuntry and not country ....
This is America .. what a laugh
kw
neilbo...@yahoo.com.au says...
> You MUST live in a third world nation that does not cover news at all !!!
> There was a warning and people were asked to leave BUT the poor in the
> richest cuntry on the world didn't have money to leave. My word what a
> cuntry and not country ...
You speak as if ignorance were a virtue. Why didn't they have money? In
short, losers will be losers no matter how much money they are given. If
everyone of them had been given the money to leave, then 99% of them
would still be found in the same situation because they would have
squandered the money and the opportunity. Losers are losers not because
of others, but because of their loser way of life.
FRED WELLMAN
"Neil Boss" <neilbo...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:dfdh2h$jav$1...@news-02.connect.com.au...
>
> FRED WELLMAN <fwel...@wideopenwest.com> wrote in message >
>> It is such a shame that Hurricanes hit without warning. Why did not more
>> people take food with them. I do not condone the violence.
>
> You MUST live in a third world nation that does not cover news at all !!!
> There was a warning and people were asked to leave BUT the poor in the
> richest cuntry on the world didn't have money to leave. My word what a
> cuntry and not country ....
I guess picking up sarcasm is not your strong point. My point is the young
had enough time to leave the city even by foot if needed. People were
smoking! They could have used that money for food and water. I do think
the city government failed its people. But I bet the Mayor will be
relected. Prior to the Hurricane 99 % of the poor lived better than most of
the world. What I find sad is the people that were victimized were done so
by their fellow citizens. Many areas of the country have had natural
disasters. Many with much less warning. This is the only time I have seen
people not trying to help themselves than whining about it. On 9-11 the
people did not stand around and wring their hands. They HELPED EACH OTHER.
Yes outside help came and I did not see one person complaining the
Government was not fast enough. Fred
Joe Delphi
>
> It is such a shame that Hurricanes hit without warning. Why did not more
> people take food with them. I do not condone the violence. Every one I
saw
> complained the Government was not taking care of them. The CITY
government
> failed them not the Federal. They responded in a timely manner. What the
> news does not show is the people who made good choices and or left. This
is
> not about race or money but the fact people expect some one else to "save"
> them. Fred
> >
>
>
Weather Service provided warning to the people of New Orleans that the storm
was coming and to get out of its way. The people who didn't listen suffered
but now the Feds are there to help them too. The City Government of New
Orleans is a different story - policemen walking off the job, a mayor who
yells like a three year old and takes care of his cronies while others
suffer. They say that disasters bring out both the BEST and the WORST in
people. I think it brought out the BEST in the Feds and the WORST in the
New Orleans City Govt.
JD
James H. Hood
> This is America !!!
And it still beats your socialist shithole.
zolota
"Joe Delphi" <delp...@nospam.cox.net> wrote in message
news:5NuSe.158655$E95.125573@fed1read01...
Can you tell us how many seats on buses were provided for the poor to
evacuate before the storm? All we heard here ( outside the US) was that the
city had made the stadium available for the poor who could not evacuate with
their own transport. given that a class 5 storm was approaching I find that
incredible.
Z
Mr. Snoopy
A Perfect Storm of Lawlessness
New Orleans' vicious looters aren't the real face of the city's
poor-their victims are. | 1 September 2005
New Orleans hasn't even been disarmed yet, but the story of those who
looted, trashed, and terrorized the city this week is already being
re-written. Al Sharpton went on MSNBC Thursday night to say that "looters
are people who pay their taxes whose infrastructure caved in on them." The
final PC version of the story is likely to go like this: The desperate
people left behind in New Orleans, nearly all black, had justification in
brutally attacking their city because the help they frantically sought didn't
come.
In truth, the looters, rapists, and murderers who have terrorized New
Orleans since Monday began their post-Katrina reign of terror a full day
before the situation grew truly desperate-and it was their increasingly
lawless behavior that kept willing but unarmed professional and volunteer
rescue workers away from the city and from the poor people who needed
saving.
Let's go back to last Sunday morning-such a long time ago, it now
seems. Most New Orleanians with means-the most resourceful poor, the middle
class, and the affluent-left the city of nearly half-a-million residents
that day, 24 hours before Katrina hit. They took planes, they drove, they
hitchhiked, and some walked. Save for the home and business owners who
valued their property more than their lives, most of the 100,000 or so who
stayed behind were those not only poor in financial resources but in human
capital as well.
Some who stayed behind are the New Orleanians who depend on the
government on a good day-impoverished women, children, and elderly folks who
went to the Superdome and to the Convention Center Sunday, expecting their
government to take care of them. And those were the smart ones-those who
moved rationally and proactively, despite a lack of transportation out of
the city and a lack of government co-ordination, to secure their own
physical safety. Thousands of others who stayed in their low-lying homes in
the 9th Ward (which predictably flooded, as it flooded 40 years ago during
Hurricane Betsy) drowned or now find themselves trapped-starved and dying of
dehydration.
And the others who stayed behind, unfortunately, are those who
terrorize New Orleans on a low-grade level on a good day-and have now taken
over the stricken city. What's happened is the predictable civil
deterioration of a city whose fragile civil infrastructure can't control or
contain its core criminal class in peacetime.
Katrina didn't turn innocent citizens into desperate criminals. This
week's looters (not those who took small supplies of food and water for
sustenance, but those who have trashed, burned, and shot their way through
the city since Monday) are the same depraved individuals who have pushed New
Orleans' murder rate to several multiples above the national average in
normal times. (New Orleans, without Katrina, would have likely ended 2005
with 330 or so murders-compared to about 65 in Boston, a city roughly the
same in size.) Today may not be the best day to get into New Orleans'
intractable crime problem, but it's necessary, since it explains how this
week's communications and policing vacuum so quickly created a perfect storm
for the vicious lawlessness that has broken out.
During the mid-1990s, New Orleans made some progress in cutting down
its murder rate from its one-time peak as the Murder Capital of America.
With the help of the feds, the city weeded out the worst of its police force
(including two murderers) and implemented some new policing techniques
borrowed from successful cities like New York, including COMSTAT. But New
Orleans-and the state judicial system-has never cemented a sustainable
institutional infrastructure to build on early progress, and the murder rate
had risen perceptibly again.
New Orleans, first off, doesn't have the middle-class or affluent tax
base to afford the professional police or prosecution force it needs-crime
has created a vicious cycle, pushing out taxpayers who fund the police. Nor
have the city and state cemented the command-and-control direction of
financial and human resources that police, detectives, and prosecutors need
to do their jobs.
In New York, the mayor, police, and prosecutors know that taking one
killer off the streets means preventing more killings, because a murderer
frequently murders again. In New Orleans, killers and other violent
criminals remain free, because in many cases, they aren't arrested or tried;
conviction rates remain abysmal. The lawlessness these criminals create in
pockets of the city breeds more killers and more lawlessness. Witnesses and
crime victims in the inner city fear to come forward: they know that even if
a criminal winds up arrested, his associates will be free to intimidate
them.
On a normal day, those who make up New Orleans' dangerous criminal
class-yes, likely the same African-Americans we see looting now-terrorize
their own communities. Once in a while, a spectacular crime makes
headlines-the shooting death of a tourist just outside the French Quarter,
or the rape and murder of a Tulane student. But day in and day out, New
Orleans' black criminal class victimizes other blacks. Churches put up
billboards in the worst neighborhoods that plead: "Thou shalt not kill." The
inner-city buses shuttle what look like hundreds of war veterans around the
city-young black men, many of them innocent victims, paralyzed in
wheelchairs.
This week, this entrenched criminal class has freely roamed the
streets-and terrorized everyone. On Monday, New Orleans still had food and
water stocked in stores across the city, but young looters began sacking
stores, trashing the needed food and stealing TVs, DVDs, and other
equipment. If the uncoordinated, understaffed New Orleans police had even a
prayer of keeping order, it was Monday. By Tuesday, the looters had armed
themselves with ample weapons supplies available in stores all across the
city; by Wednesday, the armed gangs, out of food and water like everyone
else, were not only viciously dangerous but desperate, hungry, and thirsty.
But while the looters have reportedly killed police offers and have
shot at rescue workers, they're mainly victimizing, as usual, other poor
blacks. The vicious looters aren't the face of New Orleans' poor blacks.
Their victims are: the thousands of New Orleanians who made their way to
shelter before the storm, and who rescued others and brought them to shelter
during and after the storm-but who now cannot get the help they desperately
need.
This week's looting was predictable. When Hurricane Georges, another
potentially catastrophic storm (it spared New Orleans at the last minute)
was about to hit in 1998, I foolishly refused to evacuate my Uptown
apartment. More than one person said I should evacuate not due to the storm,
but because looters would terrorize the city afterward.
Was this week's looting preventable? Failure to put violent criminals
behind bars in peacetime has led to chaos in disaster. New Orleans'
officials had only the remotest prayer on Monday of coordinating police
officers with no electronic equipment to rescue survivors while at the same
time stopping looting before it descended into wholesale terror. Now, those
uncoordinated police officers are themselves victims-according to multiple
accounts, dead officers, their bodies marked with gunshot wounds, litter the
city.
Armed marauders have now taken over every dry area of a deluged city.
They've hampered rescue efforts: without wanton looting, there was at least
a chance that individual police officers could have distributed food in
stores to those who needed it most. And they've likely hampered rebuilding
efforts down the road: they've smashed much of intact Uptown and the French
Quarter, which will surely be a pyschological barrier for those who knew
that the storm didn't destroy their homes and their livelihoods-fellow
citizens did.
Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco lost whatever fragile
authority they ever had over New Orleans early Monday, as the waters still
rose. The federal government was unacceptably slow at assessing a rapidly
deteriorating situation. Now, no civil authorities can re-assert order in
New Orleans. The city must be forcefully demilitarized, even as innocent
victims literally starve. What has happened over the past week is an
embarrassment to New Orleans-and to America.
"Neil Boss" <neilbo...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:dfdgtp$j52$1...@news-02.connect.com.au...
Mr. Snoopy
Open up that wallet of yours and donate money to those poor oppressed people
you are so concerned about..
You liberals are full of shit and caused this problem by breeding the worst
welfare idiots of 40 years of rule.
Read this asshole...
news:dfdh2h$jav$1...@news-02.connect.com.au...
Vernon North
says...
Verno
Joe Delphi
news:u_xSe.368939$s54.264437@pd7tw2no...
>
> Can you tell us how many seats on buses were provided for the poor to
> evacuate before the storm? All we heard here ( outside the US) was that
the
> city had made the stadium available for the poor who could not evacuate
with
> their own transport. given that a class 5 storm was approaching I find
that
> incredible.
>
> Z
The stadium was supposed to be a central gathering point for people so that
evacuation crews would not have to go door-to-door throughout the town
looking for people to evacuate. The message was, get to the stadium and you
will be picked up there. It is my understanding that the last people have
now been evacuated from that stadium.
Its not like the Federal Government keeps 10,000 buses in shelters in all
major cities ready to evacuate the entire population on a moment's notice,
nor should they. What taxpayer would stand for that? The best that they
can do is warn people as far in advance as possible (which they did) and
keep the highways open and moving (which they also did) so that people who
choose to heed the warning can leave. From what I read in the news this
morning, some people in New Orleans are STILL refusing to leave their homes.
How can you blame the Federal Government for THAT?
JD
Guy
"zolota" <zol...@REMOVEshaw.ca> wrote in message
news:u_xSe.368939$s54.264437@pd7tw2no...
>
There are credible reports that up to 300,000 people were left behind in NO.
At 50 people per bus, 6,000 buses would have been need to evacuate them.
That's SIX THOUSAND buses.
And another report suggested that, in the best case scenario, completely
evacuating NO would require 3 days minimum.
And we also know from reports of computer modelling, it ws well known that
the NO levees were at risk and required upgrading. When Bush signed the bill
that cut the funding for levee upgrades, he was effectively signing the
death warrants for thousands of residents of NO.
FRED WELLMAN
"zolota" <zol...@REMOVEshaw.ca> wrote in message
news:u_xSe.368939$s54.264437@pd7tw2no...
>
$72.00
http://www.greyhound.com/scripts/TicketCenter/
I doubt Amtrak would be much more. I am sure all of the people could not be
evacuated by them. However New Orleans has a mass transit system. I could
not get an accurate number of buses. They mayor could have commandeered
them. NO one tried to help themselves. Why is anyone who lives in America
surprised. We have very few good mass transit systems. This is also the
first time in any disaster, anywhere in the world, I have seen people
victimizing each other. Most of the time they try to help each other. Fred
Mr. Snoopy
FACT: A panel of local, state, and federal officials concluded last year
that once the bowl filled with water, "Residents should expect to be on
their own for several days". There is no expedient way to get water,
food, medicine, personnel, and equipment into New Orleans once it has
been flooded. That's FACT.
FACT: The Mayor and Governor knew this.
FACT: The Mayor and Governor had three days warning that a hurricane
that exceeded the protection of the flood control system was headed
toward New Orleans.
FACT: By virtue of the State or Emergency declared by the President on
Friday, the Mayor and the Governor had the manpower, the equipment, the
TIME, and the authority to help or force the citizens to evacuate.
FACT: Sitting ruined in New Orleans right now are over 200 school buses
and 350 mass transit buses. All told, operated by the Mayor's 800 police
officers and / or the Governor's 7500 State Police, those 550+ buses
could carry about 35,000 people per convoy.
FACT: The Mayor is responsible, per the emergency management procedures
of the City, for evacuation.
FACT: The Mayor and the Governor, knowing that the Feds, post-flooding,
could not possibly help the citizens for three or four days, DID
NOTHING.
"FRED WELLMAN" <fwel...@wideopenwest.com> wrote in message
news:9d2dnSPO9sr...@wideopenwest.com...
>
_______________________________________________________________________________
Mr. Snoopy
FACT: A panel of local, state, and federal officials concluded last year
that once the bowl filled with water, "Residents should expect to be on
their own for several days". There is no expedient way to get water,
food, medicine, personnel, and equipment into New Orleans once it has
been flooded. That's FACT.
FACT: The Mayor and Governor knew this.
FACT: The Mayor and Governor had three days warning that a hurricane
that exceeded the protection of the flood control system was headed
toward New Orleans.
FACT: By virtue of the State or Emergency declared by the President on
Friday, the Mayor and the Governor had the manpower, the equipment, the
TIME, and the authority to help or force the citizens to evacuate.
FACT: Sitting ruined in New Orleans right now are over 200 school buses
and 350 mass transit buses. All told, operated by the Mayor's 800 police
officers and / or the Governor's 7500 State Police, those 550+ buses
could carry about 35,000 people per convoy.
FACT: The Mayor is responsible, per the emergency management procedures
of the City, for evacuation.
FACT: The Mayor and the Governor, knowing that the Feds, post-flooding,
could not possibly help the citizens for three or four days, DID
NOTHING.
"Guy" <alib...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:9qNSe.65882$ja7....@tornado.ohiordc.rr.com...
_______________________________________________________________________________
richas...@hotmail.com
It's well known but barely mentionable. If you try to say this in
cocktail parties you'd be banished to the 10th circle of hell. Laugh
if you will - and I still do - except it's not that funny for some in
real life. Life's so sad.
FRED WELLMAN
"Mr. Snoopy" <no...@ha.com> wrote in message
news:431d5...@galaxy.uncensored-news.com...
> Everyone knows the facts now. Few are denying them anymore.
>
> FACT: A panel of local, state, and federal officials concluded last year
> that once the bowl filled with water, "Residents should expect to be on
> their own for several days". There is no expedient way to get water,
> food, medicine, personnel, and equipment into New Orleans once it has
> been flooded. That's FACT.
> "FRED WELLMAN" <fwel...@wideopenwest.com> wrote in message
> news:9d2dnSPO9sr...@wideopenwest.com...
>>
>>JUST SNIPPED>>
>> It is such a shame that Hurricanes hit without warning. Why did not more
>> people take food with them. I do not condone the violence. Every one I
>> saw complained the Government was not taking care of them. The CITY
>> government failed them not the Federal. They responded in a timely
>> manner. What the news does not show is the people who made good choices
>> and or left. This is not about race or money but the fact people expect
>> some one else to "save" them. Fred
>>>
Besides top posting and the inability to read English what problem do you
have with my post? I reread it and I clearly stated I felt it was the
city's fault not the Federal Government. I have not had time to watch much
coverage, and I probably will regret posting this, but it appears the only
poor in NO are black. No Cajuns, whites, Asians, Hispanic. Could be the
media but I doubt their were not the other poor people in NO. Fred
Mr. Snoopy
Leighton Levy
LET ME START by saying that if I had my life to live over a thousand times,
the one thing I would not change would be my race. I am proud to be a black
man. There are times however, when I wish that certain people and I did not
share that trait.
For the past few days, the whole world ... well, at least those who have
access to satellite and cable television, have been seeing pictures of the
virtually total devastation of the cities of the U.S. Gulf Coast by
Hurricane Katrina. An estimated 90 per cent of homes in New Orleans have
been destroyed by flood waters and more than 100 people have been confirmed
dead.
We see people standing on the roofs of their submerged homes desperate to be
rescued, others being airlifted to safety, and we have heard tear-jerking
stories of families losing their loved ones. But in all of this, we have
also seen the really dark side of black people.
The day after the hurricane passed, there were reports of looting but
network reporters had been saying that people were looting out of
desperation, in search of food and water. A lot they knew.
The pictures I have been seeing are of people - black people - stealing
shoes, diapers, and television sets. Not food and definitely not water. Not
unless the armfuls of clothing, shoes, and appliances I see people wading
through the streets with count as food and water.
Now, if all the looters were looting out of desperation, how desperate were
the guy and girls I saw toting several boxes of size 13 Nikes? How desperate
was the fellow with the stack of diapers? What, is it that he has several
babies at home suffering from loose bowels? What am I talking about, what
home? Everything is under water and what isn't, has been totally destroyed.
Plasma TV?
And just what are those guys stealing the plasma television sets going to be
watching when there is no power in the entire city?
Desperation? Yeah, right. I am beginning to believe that black people, no
matter where in the world they are, are cursed with a genetic predisposition
to steal, murder, and create mayhem.
The entire firearm department at a Wal-Mart department store, for example,
was cleaned out and the looters used the stolen weapons to rob people. How
low is that? Everybody is suffering and the black people would seek to rob
people who are suffering just like themselves.
No white looters?
And it has nothing to do with poverty. Where are the white people in all
this? I am sure there are poor white people living in New Orleans, Biloxi
and the other towns affected by what has been going on. Is it that the media
are not showing pictures of them looting and robbing? Or is it that they are
too busy trying to stay alive, waiting to be rescued, and hiding from the
blacks.
And you know what? Even if the poor whites were looting and robbing,
wouldn't it be nice if the blacks could have made them the only ones doing
it
Just once, I would like for us blacks to take the high road in situations
like this, where instead of showing our darkest side, we put our best foot
forward. But I guess that would be too much to ask, too much of a case of
wishful thinking.
http://www.jamaica-star.com/thestar/20050902/cleisure/cleisure1.html
"beernuts" <beerwi...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:nHqSe.3071$ia7.764@trndny08...
_______________________________________________________________________________
Mr. Snoopy
It Wasn't Supposed To Be This Way
September 7. 2005
I was traveling in China when pictures of the looters in New Orleans began
to appear on CNN. They were black of course. Looting and raping and burning
are what blacks do when the lid loosens. Yes, I could phrase this more
cautiously: These things are what some blacks, etc. or, more cutely, not all
blacks are looters, but all looters..blah blah.
Yet it happens time and again. There was Los Angeles, burned in 1992. There
have been Cincinnati, Miami, Seattle, Washington DC, Chicago, Detroit, Crown
Heights, Watts, Newark, on and on and on. When the law loses its grip, the
looting begins.
We have come to expect it. Members of my tour group in China to whom I spoke
assumed that the looters were black before watching. They had seen it
before. I knew it before I saw the pictures. The looters are always black
except when, occasionally, they are Latino. If they were looting for food it
would be understandable. But that isn't what is happening. Few of us eat
television sets. Nike's running shoes are not particularly digestible.*
With the dismantling in the Fifties of apartheid in the United States, many
hoped that blacks would rise, study, progress, and become genuinely as
distinct from formally integrated into the country. I hoped it too, though
my expectations were low. Southerners said it would never happen, but were
dismissed as prejudiced. They were right.
The melding of the races just hasn't worked and, if examined honestly, shows
few signs of working. Fifty years after the Brown decision, blacks remain
unassimilated. They appear to be unassimilable. This, after endless
programs, after the nation has turned itself on its head trying to
encourage, promote, force, or imagine assimilation.
Integration of the schools degraded the schools, but did little for blacks.
Operation Head Start didn't work. Racial quotas in the universities didn't
work, nor did the awarding of unearned degrees or the establishment of
departments of Black Studies. Compulsory integration of restaurants didn't
work. Quotas in hiring, enforced by the federal government, didn't work.
Welfare didn't work. "Hate-crime" laws didn't work. Nothing has worked.
These attempts have not been without results, but assimilation of blacks
into the country has not been one of them. Compelled hiring by race instead
of merit has produced a black middle class, but those so hired are regarded
as a sort of tax, a cost of doing business. Saying this aloud is a firing
offense, so no one says it in the office. They say it later over a beer.
This was not the intended outcome. It is what we got.
Neither race shows much inclination to associate with the other. Left to
themselves, they quickly segregate, in housing, on campus, in night clubs.
Only heavy federal pressure produces an appearance of togetherheid.
As a police reporter frequently in the hearts of the big cities, I saw the
failure with a clarity available to few. The black regions are huge, and
they are purely black. Their denizens share little with a society of
European derivation. In particular, with not enough exceptions, they seem to
regard laws as restraints externally imposed instead of internally felt:
When the police go away, so do restrictions on behavior. So do televisions.
God help you if you are a white woman. If you don't believe this, check the
Uniform Crime Reports of the FBI. They are on the web.
I am not sure with what instrument one measures passivity, but passivity is
what I sensed in the moldering dark regions-people just waiting, for what
neither I nor they knew, just going from day to day, except for the gangs,
who killed people. There was a smell of violence awaiting its chance. If you
think I am imagining this, reflect on the looting and burning that erupt
when the lid grows loose. Always there is another city with young blacks
carrying television sets from stores.
I do not say these things with rejoicing. Morally it is saddening. For
blacks, for whites, for the country the best thing would be that blacks
genuinely flourish. They do not.
Something seems inherent in the race, or perhaps embedded in the culture,
that does not understand success or morals or responsibility as others
understand them. Perhaps, as many suggest, a history of being wards of the
state, of being given special aid and special privilege, of having nothing
expected of them, has inculcated passivity. Perhaps the persistently noted
difference in measured IQ is the explanation. Be that as it may, the blacks
of the rioting regions seem to labor under a crippling torpor and a dull,
paralyzing lack of concern for those things that define European societies.
Or, for that matter, Chinese or Japanese societies. Scholarship, reading,
study do not seem to appeal. In Washington, I almost never saw blacks in the
art galleries, the museums, or the public libraries. The races do not appear
to want the same things, do not value the same things.
Writers speaking of the looting in New Orleans regularly say that poverty
causes looting, and that as a society we should do something about it. But
why are blacks poor, and what could society do that it has not already
tried? Blacks are always poor, in Africa, in Haiti and Jamaica, in New
Orleans. It is a global pattern. Would that it were not, but it is. No one
knows what to do about it.
With the inevitability of gravitation, commentators attribute the
incompatibility with what we think of as civilization to oppression or
neglect by whites. Oh? In Washington, the mayor is usually black, along with
a majority of the city council and school board. The principals are black,
as are most of the teachers, almost all of the students, and their parents.
The funding per student is high. Yet the schools are horrifically bad.
Washington could have any schools it wanted: It is hard to imagine anyone
denying blacks better textbooks or forbidding the assignment of more
homework. I conclude that they do have the schools they want. Perhaps they
don't want schools at all.
Yes, there are exceptions, and they too flee the city's schools.
Unfortunately the exceptions are exceptions.
I will receive mail from blacks telling me that what I am saying is wrong. I
wish it were. Yet the riots continue decade after decade and the academic
necrosis never clears. The unseen downtowns wait, dead in the water,
profoundly isolated from America by their size and homogeneity. From time to
time they have exploded, and will explode.
Years back Carl Rowan, the black columnist, wrote a book called "The Coming
Race War in America." It couldn't quite be ignored, but could be ignored
mostly, and was. Though he had moved extensively among whites, Rowan had
little grasp of how whites think. He believed that they wanted to grind
their heels in black faces. That he was wrong doesn't matter. If he believed
it, one may imagine what the young black males of East St. Louis think.
Rowan wrote also of the anger and hatred seething in such places. He had
seen it. I have seen it.
What will happen if, or when, the economy weakens under rising Asian
competition, if good jobs are shipped to India and gasoline hits unheard of
prices and the standard of living falls hard? Under the imposed amity of
today there lurks powerful resentment on both sides. Prosperity has held
things together. A flourishing nation can afford affirmative action. But
when prosperity goes so will the amity. I can think of no solution other
than a passport and a Euro account.
"Neil Boss" <neilbo...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:dfdglj$irj$1...@news-02.connect.com.au...
_______________________________________________________________________________
Mr. Snoopy
29, the entire world has seen images that leave no doubt that what is
repeatedly called the sole remaining superpower can be reduced to squalor
and chaos nearly as gruesome as anything found in the Third World. The
weather--a Category 4 hurricane--certainly had something to do with it, but
the most serious damage was done not by nature, but by man.
Much has been and will be written about why the levees that are supposed to
keep the water out of below-sea-level New Orleans failed. There will be
bitter recrimination about whether the federal rescue effort could have been
launched sooner. Commissions will be set up to ask questions and lessons
will no doubt be learned. But there was another human failing that was far
more ominous and intractable. No commissions will be set up to study it, and
official America will refuse to learn any lessons from it. In the orgy of
finger-pointing that is coming, it will be all but forgotten. That human
failing--vastly more significant than the ones the commissions will
investigate--is the barbaric behavior of the people of New Orleans.
New Orleans is 67 percent black, and about half the blacks are poor. Of the
city's 480,000 people, all but an estimated 80 to 100 thousand left before
the hurricane struck. This meant that aside from patients in hospitals and
eccentrics in the French Quarter, most of the people who stayed behind were
not just blacks, but lower-class blacks without the means or foresight to
leave.
Katrina hit on the morning of Monday, Aug. 29. Immediately after the winds
died down, the first reaction was one of relief. The hurricane had jogged
east, and the city was battered but still standing. Then the levees
broke--apparently some time on Tuesday--and the city began to flood. Before
long, 80 percent of the city was under as much as 20 feet of water, and what
had been only a storm became a disaster.
The city's 70,000-seat football stadium, known as the Superdome, had been
officially designated as a public shelter before the hurricane, and several
thousand people were already there the night before the storm. It had some
food supplies, cots, and medical supplies. But when the waters began to
rise, people poured in from all directions, swelling its numbers to an
estimated 25,000.
People came because their houses were under water, but also because New
Orleans very quickly collapsed in banditry. Looting began even while the
storm was still blowing. At first there was sympathetic clucking about the
need for food and medicine, but news clips of blacks wading happily through
waist-deep water with television sets over their heads dispelled that view.
The day after the hurricane, a reporter caught the atmosphere of
high-spirited chaos at a Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District. People were
grabbing things as quickly as they could, smashing open jewelry cabinets and
scooping up double-handfuls. One man packed his van so full of electronic
equipment he could not close the rear doors. A teenage girl passed out, face
down, and people stepped on her. A man stopped to roll her onto her back,
and she vomited pink liquid. "This is f***ed up," he said, and rolled her
back on her stomach. An NBC correspondent filmed black, uniformed police
strolling through the aisles, filling shopping carts.
At one store, a police officer broke the glass on the DVD case so civilians
would not cut themselves trying to break it, but one man was ungrateful.
"The police got all the best stuff," he said. "They're crookeder than us."
One woman stocking up on makeup was glad to see the officers. "It must be
legal," she said. "The police are here taking stuff, too."
Violence of all kinds quickly spread through the paralyzed city, where
robbery, rape and even murder became routine. There were still thousands of
people trapped on rooftops and in attics, but on Sept. 1, Mayor Ray Nagin
called the entire police force off of rescue work and ordered it to secure
the city. The response form the force? An estimated 200 officers just walked
off the job. "They indicated that they had lost everything and didn't feel
that it was worth them going back to take fire from looters and losing their
lives," explained Henry Whitehorn, chief of the Louisiana State Police. Many
disappeared without a word. Sherrif Harry Lee of Jefferson Parish in New
Orleans also said his men were quitting. "They want to be with their
families," he said. "Well, I want to be with my family too, but you don't
quit in the middle of a crisis."
Two police officers, including the department's official spokesman Paul
Accardo committed suicide by shooting themselves in the head. The London
Times estimated that one in five officers refused to work, and some of those
who stayed in uniform were useless. When Debbie Durso, a tourist from
Washington, Michigan, asked a policeman for help he told her "Go to
hell--it's every man for himself."
The collapse of security made rescue and relief nearly impossible. "No one
anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force
in New Orleans," explained Lieutenant General Steven Blum of the National
Guard. He said the city was operating on only one third of its pre-storm
strength of 1,500 officers, and that the guard had to switch from rescue to
law enforcement: "And that's when we started flowing military police into
the theater."
New Orleans has had only black mayors since 1978, and has spent decades
making the police force as black as possible. It established a
city-residency requirement for officers to keep suburban whites from
applying for jobs, and lowered recruitment standards so blacks could pass
them. Katrina blew away any pretence that the force was competent.
(On September 5, exactly a week after the hurricane, Mayor Ray Nagin offered
to pay for the entire police force, firefighters, and city emergency workers
to go on five-day vacations--with their families--to Las Vegas or some other
destination. He said there were enough National Guard in the city to
maintain order, and that his men "have been through a lot." He brushed off
suggestions that this was dereliction of duty. He even asked the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to pay for the vacations, but FEMA
refused. "We haven't turned over control of the city," a city spokesman
explained. "We're going to leave a skeleton force--about 20 percent of the
department--for leadership and liaison with the troops while we get some
rest.")
New Orleans has a high crime rate at the best of times--it is usually in top
contention for the American city with the highest murder rate--and looted
and
stolen firearms spilled into the street. Some blacks fired on any symbol of
authority, blazing away at rescue helicopters and Coast Guard vessels.
Several days after the hurricane, with desperate people still waving for
help from rooftops, FEMA said conditions were too dangerous to attempt
rescues.
On Wednesday, along one stretch of Highway 10, hundreds of volunteer
firefighters, auxiliary coastguards and citizens with small boats were
anxious to reach people, but could not set out because of sniper fire. "We
are trying to do our job here but we can't if they are shooting at us,
explained Major Joey Broussard of the Louisiana State Fisheries and Wildlife
Division. "We don't know who and we don't know why, but we don't want to get
in a situation of having to return fire out there," he said.
Perhaps the most chilling accounts were from hospitals, where staff
desperately tried to move patients up stairs as the water rose, while blacks
invaded and looted the floors below. Most hospitals had emergency
generators, but these began to fail or run out of fuel. Two days after the
hurricane, the city had no running water, and as food ran out, doctors and
nurses gave themselves intravenous feedings to keep going.
Just outside New Orleans, gunmen held up a supply truck carrying food,
water, and medical supplies that were on their way to a 203-bed hospital.
Patients in hospitals all across the city eventually had to be taken out,
but rescuers met resistance. Coast Guard Lt Cmdr Cheri Ben-Iesan told
reporters at an emergency headquarters: "Hospitals are trying to evacuate.
At every one of them, there are reports that as the helicopters come in
people are shooting at them, saying, 'You better come get my family.' " An
effort to evacuate patients and staff from Charity Hospital in downtown New
Orleans was stopped by sniper fire. Other hospitals reported gangs of
looters attacking and overturning ambulances.
Chris Lawrence, a reporter with CNN, filed a report from the roof of a
police station: "Right now it's the only safe place to be in the city. We
were on the street earlier but the police said under no circumstances would
you be safe on the street. They said anybody walking in the streets of New
Orleans is basically taking their life in their hands. They directed some
of the young women to get off the street immediately."
What may have been the most shocking headline of the entire crisis was in
the September 2 issue of Army Times: "Troops Begin Combat Operations in New
Orleans." The article was about the Louisiana National Guard massing near
the Superdome in preparation for a citywide security mission. "This place is
going to look like Little Somalia," Brig. Gen. Gary Jones explained. "We're
going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to
get this city under control." The amphibious assault ship Bataan was in the
area, but kept its helicopters on board after pilots reported sniper fire.
Many soldiers came under gunfire from civilians. "I never thought that as a
National Guardsman I would be shot at by other Americans," said Philip
Baccus of the 527th Engineer Battalion. "And I never thought I'd have to
carry a rifle when on a hurricane relief mission. This is a disgrace." Cliff
Ferguson of the same battalion added: "You have to think about whether it is
worth risking your neck for someone who will turn around and shoot at you.
We didn't come here to fight a war. We came here to help."
Michael Brown, head of FEMA, said: "We are working under conditions of urban
warfare." Lieutenant-General Steven Blum, of the National Guard, said the
7,000 guardsmen arriving in Louisiana would be dedicated to restoring order
to New Orleans. He said half of them had just returned from overseas
assignments and were "highly proficient in the use of lethal force." He
promised to deal with thugs "in a quick and efficient manner."
Shoot-to-kill orders were supposed to have gone out, and Louisiana Gov.
Kathleen Blanco boasted that battle-hardened veterans would put down the
violence in no time. However, there were few accounts of soldiers firing
their weapons. The London Times reported that a New Orleans policeman
explained through tears that he had seen bodies riddled with bullets, and
one man with the top of his head shot off. He said looters were armed with
stolen AK-47 rifles, and that the police were outgunned just like in
Somalia. "It's a war-zone, and they're [the federal government] not treating
it like one," he said.
We will never know the full extent of the mayhem blacks loosed on their own
city. Many victims will not be found for weeks or even months, rotted beyond
recognition, their killers never found. Drowned or murdered, the bloated,
stinking bodies that turn up by the hundreds will look much the same. In
their haste to get cadavers off the streets, the authorities may not worry
much about cause of death.
::From Hurricane to Jungle::
In the two main refugee centers, however--the Superdome and the Convention
Center--too many people witnessed the degeneracy for it to be ignored. The
first refugees had arrived at the Superdome the day before the hurricane, on
Sunday, August 28th. The last finally left the stadium on Saturday, Sept, 3,
so some people may have spent nearly a week in what, after the toilets began
to overflow, became known as the Sewerdome.
Preparation for refugees was pitifully inadequate. By day, as many as 25,000
people sweltered in temperatures that rose into the 100s. Whatever order had
been established soon melted away, and the stadium reverted to the jungle.
Young men robbed and raped with impunity. Occasional gunshots panicked the
crowd. At least one man committed suicide by sailing off a high deck and
splattering onto the playing field. Bodies of the murdered, and of infants
and the elderly who died of heat exhaustion began to accumulate. Six babies
were born in the stadium. Charles Womack, a 30-year-old roofer, said he saw
one man beaten to death, and was, himself beaten with a pipe. Crack
addicts--who had brought their most valuable possession with them--smoked
openly and fought over drugs.
A group of about 30 British students were among the very small number of
whites in the stadium, where they spent four harrowing days. Jamie Trout,
22, an economics major, wrote that the scene "was like something out of Lord
of the Flies," with "people shouting racial abuse about us being white." One
night, word came that the power was failing, and that there was only ten
minutes' worth of gas for the generators. Zoe Smith, 21, from Hull, said
they all feared for their lives: "All us girls sat in the middle while the
boys sat on the outside, with chairs as protection," she said. "We were
absolutely terrified, the situation had descended into chaos, people were
very hostile and the living conditions were horrendous." She sad that even
during the day, "when we offered to help with the cleaning, the locals gave
us abuse."
Mr. Trout said the National Guard finally recognized how dangerous the
threat was from blacks, and moved the British under guard to the basketball
area, which was safer. "The army warned us to keep our bags close to us and
to grip them tight," he said, as they were escorted out. Twenty-year-old
Jane Wheeldon credited one man in particular, Sgt. Garland Ogden, with
getting the Britons safely out. "He went against a lot of rules to get us
moved," she said.
Australian tourists stuck in the Superdome had the same experience. Bud
Hopes, a 32-year-old man from Kangaroo Point, Brisbane, took control and may
have saved many lives. As the stadium reverted to anarchy he realized whites
were in danger, and gathered tourists together for safety. "There were 65 of
us altogether so we were able to look after each other, especially the girls
who were being grabbed and threatened," said Mr. Hopes. They organized
escorts for women who had to go to the toilet or for food, and set up a
roster of men to stand guard while others slept. "We sat through the night
just watching each other, not knowing if we would be alive in the morning,"
Mr. Hopes said. "Ninety-eight percent of the people around the world are
good," he said; "in that place 98 per cent of the people were bad."
John McNeil of Coorparoo in Brisbane tells what happened to their group,
too, heard the lights were about to go out: "I looked at Bud [Hopes] and
said, 'That will be the end of us.' The gangs had already eyed us off. If
the lights had gone out we would have been in deep trouble. We were sitting
there praying for a miracle and the lights stayed on." Mr. Hopes said the
Australians owed their lives to a National Guardsman who broke the rules and
got whites out to a medical center past seething crowds of blacks.
Peter McNeil of Brisbane told the Australian AP that his son John was one of
the 65 who managed to get out. The blacks were reportedly so hostile "they
would stab you as soon as look at you." "He's never been so scared in his
life," explained Mr. McNeil. "He just said they had to get out of the dark.
Otherwise, another night, he said, they would have been gone." No American
newspaper wrote about what these white tourists had gone through.
When guardsmen began to show up in force on Sept. 1 and take control, some
blacks met them with cheers, but others shouted obscenities at them. Capt.
John Pollard of the Texas Air Force National Guard said 20,000 people were
in the dome when the evacuation began, but thousands more appeared from
surrounding areas when word got out that there were buses leaving town.
Soldiers held their M-16s and grenade-launchers ready, and kept a sharp eye
out for snipers.
That same day, when it was time to board buses for Houston, soldiers had
trouble controlling the crowd. People at the back of the mob crushed the
people in front against barricades the soldiers put up to contain the crowd.
Many people continued to yell obscenities whenever they saw a patrol go by.
Some were afraid of losing their place in line and defecated where they
stood. The Army Times reported that Sgt. 1st Class Ron Dixon of the Oklahoma
National Guard had recently come home from Afghanistan. He said he was
struck by the fact Afghanis wanted to help themselves, but that the people
of New Orleans only wanted others to help them.
By the evening of Sept. 3, the Superdome was finally evacuated, but the
state-of-the-art stadium was a reeking cavern of filth, human waste, and an
unknown number of corpses. It, too, had been looted of everything not bolted
down. Janice Singleton was working at the stadium when the storm hit. She
said she was robbed of everything she had, including her shoes. As for the
building: "They tore that dome apart," she said sadly. "They tore it down.
They taking everything out of there they can take."
If anything, conditions were worse at the Convention Center. Although on
high ground not far from the stadium, it had not been designated as a
shelter. It was, however, beyond reach of the high water, and soon some
20,000 people were huddled in its cavernous halls. There were no supplies or
staff, and for several days neither FEMA nor the National Guard seems to
have known anyone was there.
Armed gangs took control, and occasional gunshots caused panic. There was no
power, and at night the center was plunged into complete darkness.
Degeneracy struck almost immediately, with rapes, robbery, and murder.
Terrible shrieking tore through the night, but no one could see or dared to
move. When Police Chief Eddie Compass heard what was happening, he sent a
squad of 88 officers to investigate. They were overwhelmed by superior
forces and retreated, leaving thousands to the mercy of criminals.
It was not until Sept. 2--four days after the hurricane--that a force of
1,000
National Guardsmen finally took over from the armed gangs. "Had we gone in
with a lesser force we may have been challenged, innocents may have been
caught in a fight between the guard and military police and those who did
not want to be processed or apprehended," explained Lieutenant-General Blum.
Sitting with her daughter and other relatives, Trolkyn Joseph, 37, told a
reporter that men had wandered the center at night raping and murdering
children. She said she found a dead 14-year old girl at 5 a.m. on Friday
morning, four hours after the girl went missing. "She was raped for four
hours until she was dead," Miss Joseph said through tears. "Another child, a
seven-year old boy, was found raped and murdered in the kitchen freezer last
night."
Africa Brumfield, 32, explained that women were in particular fear: "There
is rapes going on here. Women cannot go to the bathroom without men. They
are raping them and slitting their throats." Donald Anderson, 43, was at the
convention center with his wife who was six months pregnant: "We circled the
chairs like wagons because at night there are stampedes," he said. "We had
to survive."
The very few whites in the crowd were terrified. Eighty-year-old Selma
Valenti, who was with her husband, said blacks threatened to kill them on
Thursday, Sept. 1. "They hated us. Four young black men told us the buses
were going to come last night and pick up the elderly so they were going to
kill us," she said, sobbing. Presumably, the blacks wanted to take their
places on the buses.
The center was not entirely without a form of rough justice. A National
Guardsman reported that a man who had raped and killed a young girl in the
bathroom was caught by the crowd--which beat him to death.
At one time there were as many as seven or eight corpses in front of the
center, some of them with blood streaming from bullet wounds. Inside, there
was an emergency morgue, but a National Guardsman refused to let a Reuters
photographer in to take pictures. "We're not letting anyone in there
anymore," he said. "If you want to take pictures of dead bodies, go to
Iraq." By Saturday, Sept. 3, the center was mostly cleared of the living.
Refugees pulled shirts over their noses trying to block out the smell as
they walked past rotting bodies.
By the weekend, there were an estimated 50,000 soldiers and federal rescue
workers in the city, but even the massive presence did not bring calm. On
Sunday, Sept. 4, contractors working for the US Army Corps of Engineers came
under fire. Their police escort returned fire, in what became a running gun
battle. Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley said police killed four of the
attackers.
By Saturday, police had set up a temporary booking and detention center at
the New Orleans train station. State Attorney General Charles Foti said
there were plans for a temporary court system, but no one knew how they were
going to assemble juries or call witnesses. The grim business began of
combing the drowning city for corpses and the remaining survivors.
::Reactions::
The world reacted with astonishment to sights it never expected to see in
the United States. "Anarchy in the USA," read the headline in Britain's
best-selling newspaper, The Sun. "Apocalypse Now," said Handelsblatt in
Germany. Mario de Carvalho, a veteran Portuguese cameraman, who has covered
the world's trouble spots, said he saw the bodies of babies and old people
along the highways leading out of New Orleans. "It's a chaotic situation.
It's terrible. It's a situation we generally see in other countries, in the
Third World," he said.
The comparison would have been insulting to some Third-Worlders. "I am
absolutely disgusted," said Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, of the looters. The Sri
Lanka native added: "After the tsunami our people, even the ones who lost
everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering. Not a single
tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the
U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world's population
is."
In the United States, the stark contrast between endless scenes of appalling
behavior by blacks and rescue personnel who were almost all white was
greeted with the standard foolishness. Some people accused the "biased"
media of suppressing footage of rampaging whites and heroic black helicopter
pilots.
Most blacks made excuses for looters. "Desperate people do desperate
things," said U.S. Rep. Diane Watson of California. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.,
Democrat from Illinois, said we must not judge harshly: "Who are we to say
what law and order should be in this unspeakable environment?" Rep. Melvin
Watt, North Carolina Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Black
Caucus, was perhaps the greatest ass of all: "Whatever is being taken could
not be used by anyone else anyway," he said.
Many blacks took it for granted that federal relief was slow because the
victims were black. Rep. Elijah Cummings said "poverty, age and skin color"
determined who lived and who died. Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's
Washington bureau, blasted "disparate treatment" of Katrina victims. "Many
black people feel that their race, their property conditions and their
voting patterns have been a factor in the response," explained Jesse
Jackson, Sr. He said the rubbish outside the Convention Center made the
place look "like the hull of a slave ship." Black activist and
reparations-booster Randall Robinson said the relief effort was the
"defining watershed moment in America's racial history." He said he had
"finally come to see my country for what it really is. A monstrous fraud."
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick said she was "ashamed of America and of our
government." Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin shouted and wept on local
radio, demanding of federal officials: "Get off your asses, and let's do
something," (and gave city workers a vacation when the feds arrived). There
was an undercurrent of fury at a meeting of black leaders in Detroit. One
audience member wanted to know whether the slow federal response was "black
genocide." Another shouted, "African Americans built this nation.
Descendants of slaves are being allowed to die."
One black man, observing the chaos from abroad, took a different view.
Leighton Levy wrote in the Sept. 2 Jamaica Star: "I am beginning to believe
that black people, no matter where in the world they are, are cursed with a
genetic predisposition to steal, murder, and create mayhem." He wanted to
know why there was no footage of white looters: "Is it that the media are
not showing pictures of them looting and robbing? Or is it that they are too
busy trying to stay alive, waiting to be rescued, and hiding from the
blacks?"
Most blacks and many whites fell into the usual assumptions about omnipotent
white government and helpless Negroes. If black people were suffering it was
because whites had not done enough for them. It did not occur to them that
it was the responsibility of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana--not the
federal government--to prepare for hurricanes. Before the storm hit, Mayor
Nagin issued a mandatory evacuation only under pressure from the Bush
administration. The mayor then did nothing to enforce the order, leaving
hundreds of city buses and school buses to drown rather than use them to
offer transportation to people without cars.
Something of the mood of black New Orleans was caught by Fox News film crews
as late as Sunday, Sept. 4. White volunteers were trying to persuade a black
woman and her small children to leave her flooded house. "You've got to get
out," they explained. "The water isn't going away." A black man at the top
of a multi-story building told a helicopter crew he didn't need to leave.
All he needed was some supplies.
These people could not understand something that was obvious to the whole
world: New Orleans had no electricity, no plumbing, no transport, and no
food. Blacks refused to leave their flooded homes, even though to stay meant
near-certain death.
Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff noted how crazy it was to stay in
the wreckage. "That is not a reasonable alternative," he said. "We are not
going to be able to have people sitting in houses in the city of New Orleans
for weeks and months while we de-water and clean this city."
FEMA reported that it had pulled three Carnival Cruise Lines ships from
commercial duty to shelter the blacks of New Orleans. Maybe the chance of
berth on the Ecstasy, the Sensation or the Holiday would be enough to drag
them out of the muck.
::Lessons::
Ninety-nine percent of the white people left New Orleans when the evacuation
order went out. Some 80,000 backs could not or would not leave. Whites did
not "leave them behind," as the editorial-writers keep telling us. No one
could have gotten some of them to leave, but if it was anyone's job to give
them the option, it was that of the black-run city government. Of the blacks
who stayed, probably only a minority committed crimes, but they were enough
to turn the city into a hell hole. Some did unspeakable things: loot
hospitals, fire on rescue teams, destroy ambulances. No amount of
excuse-making and finger-pointing can paper over degeneracy like that. Black
people--and only black people--did these things.
The Superdome and the Convention Center were certainly unpleasant places to
spend three or four days, but 50,000 whites would have behaved completely
differently. They would have established rules, organized supplies, cared
for the sick and dying. They would have organized games for children. The
papers would be full of stories of selflessness and community spirit.
Natural disasters usually bring out the best in people. They help neighbors
and strangers alike. For blacks--at least the lower-class blacks of New
Orleans--disaster was an excuse to loot, rob, rape and kill.
Our rulers and media executives will try to turn the story of Hurricane
Katrina into yet another morality tale of downtrodden blacks and heartless
whites, but pandering of this kind fools fewer and fewer people. Many whites
will realize--some for the first time--that we have Africa in our midst,
that
utterly alien Africa of road-side corpses, cruelty, and anarchy that they
thought could never wash up on our shores.
To be sure, the story of Hurricane Katrina does have a moral for anyone not
deliberately blind. The races are different. Blacks and whites are
different. When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western
Civilization--any kind of civilization--disappears. And in a crisis,
civilization disappears overnight.
<richas...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1126057336.1...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
_______________________________________________________________________________
Vernon North
> I was traveling in China when pictures of the looters in New Orleans began
> to appear on CNN. They were black of course. Looting and raping and burning
> are what blacks do when the lid loosens.
>
You don't know, do you.
Verno
richas...@hotmail.com
Also quoted in a Japan forum that links to the original source -
replete with pics
http://forum.japantoday.com/m_566490/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm#566857
http://amren.com/mtnews/archives/2005/09/africa_in_our_m.php
Wouldn't it be wicked (pun unintended) if those generous Houstonians
are repaid with a crime wave (again not a pun!)? The average IQ of
those left behind in NO is around the high 60s to mid-high 70s
according to some on the web. There may be no winners in this story.
Mr. Snoopy
>
>By Brian DeBose
>September 10, 2005
>
>Some in the black community are beginning to question what happened to
>the black leadership during the Hurricane Katrina disaster, especially
>in the city of New Orleans.
>
> While a few black leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the
>Rev. Al Sharpton and the Congressional Black Caucus, have singled out
>the president for blame, others say Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who is black,
>is responsible for the dismal response to the flooding that stranded
>thousands in the city's poorest sections.
>
> "Mayor Nagin has blamed everyone else except himself," said the
>Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of the Brotherhood
>Organization of a New Destiny.
>
> "The mayor failed in his duty to evacuate and protect the people
>of New Orleans. ... The truth is, black people died not because of
>President Bush or racism, they died because of their unhealthy
>dependence on the government and the incompetence of Mayor Ray Nagin
>and Governor Kathleen Blanco," he said.
>
> As news and images of the dead, stranded, sick and hungry waiting
>days for help inundated Americans over the last two weeks, public
>officials at every level have sought to deflect blame. Federal
>Emergency Management Agency Director Michael D. Brown and Homeland
>Security Secretary Michael Chertoff have pointed their fingers at the
>first responders in New Orleans and Louisiana, while the mayor and the
>governor have sought to tag the Bush administration with botching the
>emergency response.
>
> The New Orleans mayor has criticized the president for the slow
>response and the resulting loss of life, but recent reports show he
>failed to follow through on his own city's emergency-response plan,
>which acknowledged that thousands of the city's poorest residents would
>have no way to evacuate the city.
>
> He took a second hit when an Associated Press photo showed 2,000
>school buses under water and parked in a lot, unused in the evacuation.
>Reports say those buses could have ferried thousands of residents to
>safety outside New Orleans had they been deployed.
>
> Black political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author of "The
>Disappearance of Black Leadership," said the problem lies with the
>current focus of black leadership, in both the elected and activist
>crowd, away from the poor and toward the new majority of middle-class
>black Americans.
>
> "In the past two decades, there has been a middle-class-focused
>leadership," Mr. Hutchinson said. "It is one thing to talk about
>affirmative action and moving people into top management positions in
>corporate America, but that does not do anything for the black poor."
>
> Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the
>Advancement of Colored People, said there is plenty of blame for all
>governments -- local, state and federal.
>
> "Something like this has been predicted for years and years, and
>it seems none of [the government officials] did anything about it to
>stop it, not simply for people who had nothing before the storm and now
>have less than nothing, but for everyone there," Mr. Bond said.
>
> But taking a cue from prominent black leaders, Rep. Charles B.
>Rangel, New York Democrat, put the blame on Mr. Bush and his record as
>commander in chief. "The president's policies in Iraq contributed to
>the slow response of federal troops who should have been on alert even
>before the hurricane struck."
>
> "Now, as bedlam reigns in New Orleans, 35 percent of Louisiana's
>and 37 percent of Mississippi's National Guard troops are in Iraq. The
>hurricane is clear evidence of how the war directly affects the
>domestic security of our country," he said.
>
> Mr. Peterson, however, chastised those who would lay all the blame
>at the feet of Mr. Bush.
>
> "If black folks want to blame someone for this tragedy, they only
>need to look in the mirror. Hopefully, this will help black people
>realize the folly of depending on the government or leaders and serve
>as a notice to avert future tragedies in other cities," he said.
>
>
>
>http://www.washingtontimes.com
>
"Joe Delphi" <delp...@nospam.cox.net> wrote in message
news:5NuSe.158655$E95.125573@fed1read01...
_______________________________________________________________________________
Mr. Snoopy
"Vernon North" <ve...@oyama.bc.ca> wrote in message
news:MPG.1d8ca51c5...@shawnews.vc.shawcable.net...
_______________________________________________________________________________
Mr. Snoopy
15 points lower than average, this makes the average negro borderline slow
(retarded)
This is why millions of dollars spent by liberals to turn each IQ 85 student
into the next rocket scientist fails.
Many of those Black schools have the highest per capita government funding
programs but still turn out retards.
We can spend 50K per student and still end up with a functional retard. You
can place reasons on this IQ gap, nutrition, drug abuse during prenatal, ect
ect. The facts state giving a "check" to some idiot to have 10 kids for a
bigger check, will dumb down the gene pool. The uneducated idiots were the
ones to breed under these government programs.
Thanks again liberals...you got your voter block but destroyed the country
in the process.
<richas...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1126377999.1...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
richas...@hotmail.com
Mr. Snoopy
Here watch the negro's in action beating a Chinese family up, caught on
video
Shocking video, niggers in New Orleans beating Chinese-Asian family to
death. http://media4.big-boys.com/content/ghettofight.wmv
<richas...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1126492572.2...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Do Jews score 10-15 IQ points higher than average?
>
_______________________________________________________________________________
richas...@hotmail.com
place because......?? Hmm???
Do Jews only score 105 points? Have to check it. I read in many places
they're higher.
richas...@hotmail.com
Mr. Snoopy
So this indicates millions of dollars will not turn them into rocket
scientist.
The Jew deviation was not into the gifted or superior range. A few points
above average is not a big deal. I hope you are above average, right?
The point , the Chinese should be able to go anyplace they want.
Are you making excuses for those criminals?
If this was your family would you be making excuses?
<richas...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1126660378....@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
_______________________________________________________________________________
richas...@hotmail.com
IQ of 85 is not "borderline retarded". I learn new things every day.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_retardation No one can deny
that the black IQ 85 figure is low. Borderline retarded however is
70-79. But then I read elsewhere that African IQ as opposed to
African-American IQ is in that range. What are Af-Ams complaining
against then??
Is it possible that some groups (e.g. blacks) may exhibit the following
traits?
* find it hard to remember things,
* not understand how to pay for things,
* have trouble understanding social rules,
* have trouble seeing the consequences of their actions,
* have trouble solving problems, and/or
* have trouble thinking logically.
Quoted word for word from above source on slower children
characteristics..
I know this sounds so 'racist' but still.....
And it's the tails of the curve that count. Especially since we're
talking about rocket scientists here. A slight change in the mean
changes the proportion/distribution of the tails significantly. The
lack of representation of blacks in professional schools or in the
creative elite is not surprising based on this scientific model. IT IS
TO BE EXPECTED. There are simply way way fewer higher IQ blacks around
compared to many other groups. I'm not saying that there CANNOT be an
exceptional high IQ blacks, just that in reality there are way fewer of
them when IQ-based demographics are taken into account compared to the
other racial, ethnic, religious groups on a per capita basis. And that
is a fact.
And that is precisely why it has been so hysterically shouted down and
denied.
About your IQ argument -- can it be for criminals? Sure. It can be a
case for criminals too. Afterall, the poor and the stupid are not as
smart, so we don't expect much of them. We don't expect them to
understand rules well, we don't expect them to see consequences of
their actions, and we don't expect them to think logically (see above).
Wasn't there some state in the south just recently that if you're
mentally retarded you should be able to get off easy? Mental
retardation IS a defense, you know. Just like because you're weak and
therefore you're strong? Others in these ngs please enlighten me. I
hate lawyers though.
Likewise Clinton, like, the 'leader of the free world' and who may have
a very legit and deserved extramarital fling or two or three (I think
he deserves it....or maybe not, depending on your politics -- but hey
where are MY morals now!!) then oh horror of horrors! What then will we
be teaching to our children!
See. Powerful and regular people are not treated the same. Rich people
and the middle class are not treated equally. Smart people and average
Joes are not treated uncolored (these puns...).
The former is always discriminated against. They always elicit envy.
Society wants to assuage this human instinct or deadly sin or whatever,
and make them pay a price.
Equality doesn't come cheap.
Like it or not, we're all socialists now.
Vernon North
> The point is.. Black IQ at normal range is borderline retarded.
>
retarded.
Verno
Neil Boss
kw <k...@libs.let.their.voters.die.org> wrote in message >
> You speak as if ignorance were a virtue. Why didn't they have money? In
> short, losers will be losers no matter how much money they are given. If
> everyone of them had been given the money to leave, then 99% of them
> would still be found in the same situation because they would have
> squandered the money and the opportunity. Losers are losers not because
> of others, but because of their loser way of life.
So what you are saying is if u have money then help yourself, otherwise just
die because no one gives a damn. Funny how the world is told that Americans
are generous, god fearing, Christians, etc.. and those nations who do not
care for their own are abusing human rights. Then you Yanks go and invade
those countries.
Well I hope more Americans die in Iran and Afganistan and elsewhere trying
to up hold such values ... bloody waste of a life if you ask me. Get your
own house in order before forcing your shit on others.
richas...@hotmail.com
with stunned silence.
Wow a shocking video.
What am I gonna say? To waltz into the ghetto number 1 - at night
number 2 - in front of a convenience store with a pack of predators
number 3 - and not move the car when confronted number 4 - is just
sheer lunacy.
But still no one should be caught dead in this situation (shut up
RichAsianKid! You're overdoing it with your puns!!! Hey I swear it
just comes naturally and I don't do it intentionally)
Don't forget white flight. Even middle class people have their gated
communities.
richas...@hotmail.com
same about racists' IQ?
Vernon North
richas...@hotmail.com says...
> Black IQs have been well studied and confirmed low. Can you say the
> same about racists' IQ?
>
argument to the contrary. How many brilliant racists do you know?
Verno
--
Most racists are morons
The rest are emotionally disturbed
richas...@hotmail.com
I still can't prove there are 17 gods if you ask me... :)
---
Most egalitarians are imbeciles
The rest are intellectually challenged
Vernon North
richas...@hotmail.com says...
> Abe lincoln
I don't know whether or not Lincoln was a racist. If he was, citing him
ignores the advancement of social philosophy since Lincoln's time.
Verno
richas...@hotmail.com
repatriation of (all) blacks to Africa, or so I've read. This has been
a subject of debate and some books have been written about this
recently. That would be more 'racist' than owning slaves? Even taking
time into account, I don't think in the 19th centuries people hated
blacks so much - when they were slaves - that they wanted them out of
the country totally.
Your 'hypothesis' on racists does have merit though. Today we see
racists primarily from minority organizations, especially from black
ones. These are not the smartest people you can find on earth. And to
be fair there are a handful of white racists as well, but these are
again predominantly lower socioeconomic status ones who have failed to
move up the socioeconomic ladder and hence developed antipathy towards
blacks and hispanics because they have to compete with them in the
lowest socioeconomic rung and live in crime-ridden downtown inner-city
ghettos. As blacks and hispanics do NOT move up the socioeconomic
ladder in spite of millions or billions of $ spent on them,
statistically speaking, upper middle class/near rich/rich people really
do not have much experience with them. Out of sight, out of mind.
Thus not coincidentally lower socioeconomic people focus on race. As
you move up the society hierarchy, race or ethnicity or religion is not
an issue any longer and I have maintained this position before.
I may even extend this further to say that many patriots may stem from
a modest upbringing; the current zeitgeist is one of globalization
where the entire world is your playground. I mentioned that I knew of
an acquaintance who has a villa in France, house in Japan, apartment in
Chicago near the Sears Tower, cottage in Canada etc, private jet, and 3
wives before. I doubt that person would be caught up with local
politics. He has become a 21st century global citizen.
This does not change the fact, as you probably understand, that some
groups (e.g. blacks) are not as smart - scientific studies have shown
this - and are thus less assimilable to this globalization trend. Even
reaching middle class status in the US is too hard for them. Many of
them will forever be trapped in inner cities and will never move up.
Katrina unmasked this for the world to see. Saying this is not
'racist', just as saying that men commit more crimes than women is not
'sexist'.
Vernon North
richas...@hotmail.com says...
> While Licoln contributed to freeing the slaves, he also wanted
> repatriation of (all) blacks to Africa, or so I've read. This has been
> a subject of debate and some books have been written about this
> recently. That would be more 'racist' than owning slaves? Even taking
> time into account, I don't think in the 19th centuries people hated
> blacks so much - when they were slaves - that they wanted them out of
> the country totally.
>
> Your 'hypothesis' on racists does have merit though. Today we see
> racists primarily from minority organizations, especially from black
> ones.
> These are not the smartest people you can find on earth. And to
> be fair there are a handful of white racists as well, but these are
> again predominantly lower socioeconomic status ones who have failed to
> move up the socioeconomic ladder and hence developed antipathy towards
> blacks and hispanics because they have to compete with them in the
> lowest socioeconomic rung and live in crime-ridden downtown inner-city
> ghettos.
I don't entirely agree since there are racists in most strata in
society. But there's no doubt that racists are either too dumb to have
thought about what that makes them, or are emotionally disturbed. See
my note on stereotyping below.
> As blacks and hispanics do NOT move up the socioeconomic
> ladder in spite of millions or billions of $ spent on them,
> statistically speaking, upper middle class/near rich/rich people really
> do not have much experience with them. Out of sight, out of mind.
>
> Thus not coincidentally lower socioeconomic people focus on race. As
> you move up the society hierarchy, race or ethnicity or religion is not
> an issue any longer and I have maintained this position before.
I generally agree -- my observation (unproven but I believe it would
hold up to scrutiny) is that the only really smart people who are racist
are warped in some noticeable ways.
>
> I may even extend this further to say that many patriots may stem from
> a modest upbringing; the current zeitgeist is one of globalization
> where the entire world is your playground. I mentioned that I knew of
> an acquaintance who has a villa in France, house in Japan, apartment in
> Chicago near the Sears Tower, cottage in Canada etc, private jet, and 3
> wives before. I doubt that person would be caught up with local
> politics. He has become a 21st century global citizen.
>
> This does not change the fact, as you probably understand, that some
> groups (e.g. blacks) are not as smart - scientific studies have shown
> this - and are thus less assimilable to this globalization trend. Even
> reaching middle class status in the US is too hard for them. Many of
> them will forever be trapped in inner cities and will never move up.
> Katrina unmasked this for the world to see. Saying this is not
> 'racist', just as saying that men commit more crimes than women is not
> 'sexist'.
>
This illustrates the difference between racism and "politically
incorrect" speech. Noting that there are differences in IQ scores among
ethnic groups is not, in itself, racist. However, it seems people
seldom introduce ethnic differences on IQ tests as a topic of discussion
purely out of intellectual curiosity. A racist message often follows
close behind.
Political correctness is refusing to acknowledge facts that are socially
inconvenient, such as the higher average IQ scores achieved by Ashkenazy
Jews or the lower average scores achieved by blacks. It doesn't help
anything, but it's often unpopular because many people don't recognize
the difference between *all people being equal* (a notion that is
obviously false) with *treating all people equally*.
Racism is discriminating against individuals on the basis of these
scores (or any other real or imagined difference). This was a topic at
dinner last night. One of our guests, a 22-year old med-school student,
said "Blacks may have lower average scores on IQ tests, but that doesn't
justify discriminating against the black guy who applies for a job at
your company because you think he's probably dumb". I agree completely
with his statement.
As I recently posted in another thread, all higher order animals
stereotype, and it *does* aid survival. Imagine the fate of Og, the
cave man, if he didn't stereotype. He might decide that it's unfair to
mistrust sabretooth tigers even though one had just eaten his pal Grog.
We all know what would happen if Og approached another sabretooth the
next day saying, "here, kitty, kitty!". Og gone.
That said, stereotyping is a blunt instrument to be used only when we
don't have better information. Cavemen didn't have the benefit of
reasoning, logic and probabilities, but modern humans do. That's why we
shouldn't rely on stereotyping when a small amount of thinking would
lead to better decisions.
In the case of the black guy who applies for a job at your company,
there's no need to make any judgements about him on the basis of
ethnicity. You can find out anything you need to know about his
suitability as an employee simply by asking questions and checking
references. You can hire him or reject him on the basis of his merits.
That beats stereotyping any time. If I were applying for the job,
that's what I would expect them to do for me, and I hold myself to the
same standard.
Verno
Chris Morton
says...
>
>In article <1127074844.1...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
>richas...@hotmail.com says...
>> Black IQs have been well studied and confirmed low. Can you say the
>> same about racists' IQ?
>>
>That's my hypothesis, and I haven't seen anyone advance a decent
>argument to the contrary. How many brilliant racists do you know?
Racism is almost universally used as an EXCUSE for the FAILURES of the racist.
It's much more comforting for the racist to blame "the Jews(tm)" or "the
Blacks(tm)" for his failure rather than his own lack of education, character,
and all too often, his sexual interest in children.
--
--
Gun control, the theory that 110lb. women should have to fistfight with 210lb.
rapists.
richas...@hotmail.com
Can you elaborate on this? You said emotionally disturbed above, and
now warped. Aren't these just labels? I know there are dumb
conservatives who call smart liberals loonies if they don't agree with
them, but again it's an easy cop out. It may be better to say "I don't
agree with them, I can't show them why they're wrong (probably because
this guy isn't so dumb), but I just find their personal traits or
personalities offensive."
> >
> > I may even extend this further to say that many patriots may stem from
> > a modest upbringing; the current zeitgeist is one of globalization
> > where the entire world is your playground. I mentioned that I knew of
> > an acquaintance who has a villa in France, house in Japan, apartment in
> > Chicago near the Sears Tower, cottage in Canada etc, private jet, and 3
> > wives before. I doubt that person would be caught up with local
> > politics. He has become a 21st century global citizen.
> >
> > This does not change the fact, as you probably understand, that some
> > groups (e.g. blacks) are not as smart - scientific studies have shown
> > this - and are thus less assimilable to this globalization trend. Even
> > reaching middle class status in the US is too hard for them. Many of
> > them will forever be trapped in inner cities and will never move up.
> > Katrina unmasked this for the world to see. Saying this is not
> > 'racist', just as saying that men commit more crimes than women is not
> > 'sexist'.
> >
> This illustrates the difference between racism and "politically
> incorrect" speech. Noting that there are differences in IQ scores among
> ethnic groups is not, in itself, racist. However, it seems people
> seldom introduce ethnic differences on IQ tests as a topic of discussion
> purely out of intellectual curiosity. A racist message often follows
> close behind.
>
First you don't encapsulate on facts; that's never healthy. You may not
want to deliberately broadcast it and that's understandable, but
politically correctness tries to suppress it so much so that uttering
group differences can, perhaps, ruin your career. And when this fails,
then IQ tests are no longer accurate, IQ tests do not measure anything,
and IQ does not exist. Second, the idea that different groups of people
have different aptitudes has often been foisted upon students in the
college scene by those who champion equality of outcome (rather than
equality of rights) and egalitarianism. I think falsehoods should be
answered. I tend to believe my own eyes rather than twisted logic and
ideologies as noble as they may seem to be.
Again, conservatives that I disagree with (I'm a libertarian) will
often say, "nah, you can't trust the source, it's too liberal".
Leftists resort to same type of name calling when facts clash with
their vision of society.
I 120% agree with the med student on the ethical treatment of different
people, but there's another dimension here and perhaps your
conversation missed it. I agree that the institution should not
discriminate against the black. Totally.
My concern has to do with Bayesian probabilities etc. Let's have our
two groups of students. Group B (black) has IQ of 85, standard
deviation of 15. Group W (white) has IQ of 100, deviation of 15. You
can substitute say Group G (Jews) who score maybe 110, deviation of 15.
It doesn't change the picture.
You now apply a uniform cut off of say 125, i.e. only those who score
over 125 can get into medicine. What will the post hoc curve look like?
The median and especially the mean of group B after the cut off will be
lower than the mean of group W.
You can substitute MCAT scores in the above scenario if you don't like
to talk about IQ, but the principle remains the same.
You're right that the institution should not discriminate against the
black. The average patient choosing the doctor, however, will have
reason to avoid a black doctor. He does not have the portfolio or the
dossier of the MD and all his credentials, unlike the university. He is
like your ignorant caveman in your example. He therefore will need some
type of crude stereotyping. This is especially true when you're
choosing between a Jewish vs a black doctor, as Jews score higher than
whites. Granted he should try to find out everything about a doctor and
not just randomly walk in and assume that a Jewish doctor is better,
but he is choosing from 'ignorance' - at least when compared to the
institution or hospital or university or whatever that hires the
doctor.
Now factor in affirmative action. The patient will have even MORE
reason to not choose a black doctor. He now knows that public policy
has made it clear to him that there are more than few who have gone in
through the back door and really shouldn't be there in the first place.
These black doctors are there for cosmetic reasons and not for reasons
of merit.
The above is too painful for some. Hence standardized tests are now
racist too, like the SAT. Probably the LSAT, MCAT, GMAT etc. And we're
not even talking about IQ.
Lastly - I'm not saying that race is the only criteria here. The same
applies to other factors, e.g. sex, socioeconomic status, or religion
etc. Males score somewhat higher than females I was told, but because
the difference is never of the magnitude of 1 or 1.5 standard
deviations, sex is less meaningful a predictive variable.
Diversity and meritocracy seldom mix.
Vernon North
richas...@hotmail.com says...
All words are just labels. :-)
By "emotionally disturbed" and "warped" I mean that they have difficulty
building and maintaining satisfactory interpersonal relationships, or
that they exhibit inappropriate types of behaviour or feelings under
normal circumstances. Most people wouldn't consider it appropriate,
healthy or normal to hate people whose ethnicity one doesn't share -- at
least under normal circumstances.
DSM IV uses the term "personality disorders" and puts it quite simply:
" . . enduring pattern[s] of inner experience and behavior" that are
sufficiently rigid and deep-seated to bring a person into repeated
conflicts with his or her social and occupational environment".
Sounds like racists qualify.
It certainly can when you don't have your "ducks in a row" with regard
to your research or field of study. And it has, recently, in some high
profile cases.
> And when this fails,
> then IQ tests are no longer accurate, IQ tests do not measure anything,
> and IQ does not exist.
My problem with it is that IQ alone isn't enough to explain differences
in cognitive ability.
> Second, the idea that different groups of people
> have different aptitudes has often been foisted upon students in the
> college scene by those who champion equality of outcome (rather than
> equality of rights) and egalitarianism. I think falsehoods should be
> answered. I tend to believe my own eyes rather than twisted logic and
> ideologies as noble as they may seem to be.
>
> Again, conservatives that I disagree with (I'm a libertarian) will
> often say, "nah, you can't trust the source, it's too liberal".
> Leftists resort to same type of name calling when facts clash with
> their vision of society.
I just say it's inadequate as a metric of ability. Some may see that as
ducking the issue, but I believe it. I've known some people who scored
a lot lower than me in the GMAT, for example, who made fortunes in
business. I'm quite comfortable, but I haven't hit any home runs. If
I'm smarter than they are, why are they so much richer than I am?
Philosophically, I don't have a problem with a clearly defined and
appropriate set of criteria used rigidly to accept candidates on the
basis of merit. You either make it on merit, or you don't make it.
Unfortunately, I don't think such a scoring system serves anyone well.
When I was at grad school, there were people in my class who seemed
brilliant at the start of the program, and who got excellent marks
through the program. But when you worked with some of them on case
studies, you could tell they didn't know how to apply what they could
reproduce on exams.
Recently I did a project with department heads in science and
engineering at a university. They were discussing the correlation
between academic results achieved by students entering PhD programs and
success in post-grad work. One department head lamented that there
wasn't a potential Nobel prize winner among the top ten applicants --
they all had superb grades, but lacked the creativity and imagination to
be great researchers. Grades ain't everything!
So while I agree in theory with "make in merit of not at all", there are
other reasons to consider applicants to med-school -- for example,
taking ethnicity into account.
Most people feel more comfortable dealing with a doctor who shares their
culture, and speaking their language is essential. People also
gravitate towards doctors who seem to understand their background and
experience. In the US, that means the universities *should* bring in
enough black med students to serve the needs of the community. I
wouldn't do it for affirmative action -- I would do it for the same
reason smart retail companies hire to the ethnic profile of the
communities they serve. If customers don't feel comfortable, they won't
buy. Period. Why not graduate the same proportion of black doctors as
their are black Americans? The system should be serving patients, and
it can't if some ethnic groups who are capable of being good doctors are
excluded. And there are some great doctors with IQs of 125, as well as
some shitty ones with IQs of 150. Neither intelligence nor MCAT scores
are perfectly correlated with success as a physician.
>
> You're right that the institution should not discriminate against the
> black. The average patient choosing the doctor, however, will have
> reason to avoid a black doctor.
Not so for the average black patient, I'll bet.
> He does not have the portfolio or the
> dossier of the MD and all his credentials, unlike the university. He is
> like your ignorant caveman in your example. He therefore will need some
> type of crude stereotyping. This is especially true when you're
> choosing between a Jewish vs a black doctor, as Jews score higher than
> whites. Granted he should try to find out everything about a doctor and
> not just randomly walk in and assume that a Jewish doctor is better,
> but he is choosing from 'ignorance' - at least when compared to the
> institution or hospital or university or whatever that hires the
> doctor.
>
> Now factor in affirmative action. The patient will have even MORE
> reason to not choose a black doctor. He now knows that public policy
> has made it clear to him that there are more than few who have gone in
> through the back door and really shouldn't be there in the first place.
> These black doctors are there for cosmetic reasons and not for reasons
> of merit.
Or to serve specific cultural communities, which I would support.
>
> The above is too painful for some. Hence standardized tests are now
> racist too, like the SAT. Probably the LSAT, MCAT, GMAT etc. And we're
> not even talking about IQ.
I haven't looked at an MCAT, but have written the LSAT and GMAT. They
do depend to some extent on your cultural background. I saw this
illustrated quite humorously when I was invited to speak to a class of
MBA students in the early 1990s who had come to Canada from China to be
"hot-housed" in an MBA program.
Their ESL teacher (who invited me to speak to them) had told me that the
students all spoke English, but were at a severe disadvantage when it
came to subjects like Marketing and Organizational Behaviour. She cited
an example that was humorous, but put the issue into context. One day,
in response to a question, she told the class that Canadians consider
cats to be pets, and they don't eat them. Some of the students thought
that was ridiculous (I agree -- to me, cats aren't good for much else).
One of the students went to the supermarket that evening, bought a can
of catfood, and confronted the teacher at the next class the next day,
saying she had lied to them. He triumphantly pulled out his can of
catfood as proof, thinking catfood meant cat meat. When the teacher
told him it was canned food FOR cats, he was even more incredulous,
since to him, no sane person would spend 49 cents on a can of food for a
cat! Cultural context matters a lot.
>
> Lastly - I'm not saying that race is the only criteria here. The same
> applies to other factors, e.g. sex, socioeconomic status, or religion
> etc. Males score somewhat higher than females I was told,
By a male, I assume. The student population at most universities in
Canada is more than 50% female. I think the same is true in the US.
> but because
> the difference is never of the magnitude of 1 or 1.5 standard
> deviations, sex is less meaningful a predictive variable.
>
> Diversity and meritocracy seldom mix.
>
Standardized testing and politics seldom mix, either. If a whole group
feels alienated and disenfranchised by the majority, eventually there
won't be enough police or enough jails to keep the lid on it. I'm not a
liberal -- but I am a pragmatist.
Verno
richas...@hotmail.com
So let's try this one more time. Maybe one last time. Let's recap how
far we've come.
This whole thread started off with my two posts of whether New Orleans
= New Haiti after Katrina.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050903/ts_nm/mayhem_dc
Excerpt: "She was raped for four hours until she was dead," Joseph said
through tears. "Another child, a seven-year old boy was found raped and
murdered in the kitchen freezer last night."
Subsequently another (? racist) poster replied with a graphic video
where a helpless "Asian American family" naively strayed into forbidden
territory:
http://media4.big-boys.com/content/ghettofight.wmv
The question of black IQ and racist IQ was brought up, and you admitted
that it was only a 'hypothesis' that racist IQ might be lower. I did
not disagree, given that there are probably many more 'racists' of all
stripes who are from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. I did also point
out that black IQs have been studied and has been documented to be
uniformly low.
You then proceeded to say that many racists are emotionally disturbed
and warped in some way, and proceeded to provide me with DSM-IV
criteria of personality disorders.
So I looked it up. What you said may or may not be true - it probably
is, if that someone who just expresses gratuitous hostility to people
of other ethnic or religious or racial groups. But the blindspot you
have is that you have forgotten that based on recent footage and all
that was discussed in the above thread, not an insubstantial proportion
of blacks MAY also have serious *antisocial personality disorders* - on
top of a IQ deficit, as defined by DSM-IV criteria here:
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/39/1/25-a
DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic Criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder
(301.7)
A. There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the
rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three
(or more) of the following:
1. failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful
behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds
for arrest
2. deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or
conning others for personal profit or pleasure
3. impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated
physical fights or assaults
5. reckless disregard for safety of self or others
6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to
sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or
rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
B. The individual is at least age 18 years.
C. There is evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15
years.
D. The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the
course of schizophrenia or a manic episode.
What do you think?
See above.
See, again, the scourge of political correctness. Maybe that should
apply to football, baseball, tennis, golf etc too, i.e. if you're not a
professional, shut up!
> > And when this fails,
> > then IQ tests are no longer accurate, IQ tests do not measure anything,
> > and IQ does not exist.
>
> My problem with it is that IQ alone isn't enough to explain differences
> in cognitive ability.
>
Like, personality issues that you raised. See my intro paragraph again.
Some of these drive people to other sorts of 'talents'. Asians are
known or at least thought of lacking in creativity not captured by IQ.
Blacks can be good at sports and music etc etc not captured by IQ. That
is assuming you want to subsume other desirable traits into 'cognitive
ability' or EQ. But I'm not even getting here. Too off topic.
> > Second, the idea that different groups of people
> > have different aptitudes has often been foisted upon students in the
> > college scene by those who champion equality of outcome (rather than
> > equality of rights) and egalitarianism. I think falsehoods should be
> > answered. I tend to believe my own eyes rather than twisted logic and
> > ideologies as noble as they may seem to be.
> >
> > Again, conservatives that I disagree with (I'm a libertarian) will
> > often say, "nah, you can't trust the source, it's too liberal".
> > Leftists resort to same type of name calling when facts clash with
> > their vision of society.
>
> I just say it's inadequate as a metric of ability. Some may see that as
> ducking the issue, but I believe it. I've known some people who scored
> a lot lower than me in the GMAT, for example, who made fortunes in
> business. I'm quite comfortable, but I haven't hit any home runs. If
> I'm smarter than they are, why are they so much richer than I am?
I'd be much more impressed if you said MOST of those who scored much
lower than you ended up richer than yourself, while MOST of those who
scored much higher than you ended up worse off. Can you say that with
confidence?
My parents have a friend who's in his late 40s or young 50s, owns an
entire building (probably around US $50 million or so) in the Far East.
He has other properties too. (No he's not the guy with 3 wives, geez)
He wanted to be a lawyer. He failed twice. In the end he did go thru
but is known, apparently, in his class, that he's not the smart one.
He's now probably much richer than his classmates who are lawyers,
judges.
I point this out because these are exceptions. And that's why you (and
I) remember them.
(My view is that there is an exception to this above but I won't
divulge the answer here and again it's off topic. That's particularly
seen between the upper middle class and near rich status which I've
defined in a previous post elsewhere with a $10 million household asset
demarcation. But that's a side point. Also don't forget range
demarcation. If you restrict your sample to post-grads, of course IQ
will be much less predictive. This is well known as range restrictive
effect. This does not change the fact that IQ is predictive for
all-comers. Or let's put it this way: would you prefer to be smart or
stupid, all things being equal?)
See below
> > You're right that the institution should not discriminate against the
> > black. The average patient choosing the doctor, however, will have
> > reason to avoid a black doctor.
>
> Not so for the average black patient, I'll bet.
>
And for all the rest of us, all the non-black patients? What's a
rational strategy when the GPA of the physician is not tattooed on his
forehead and when his records are not necessarily publically available?
The average black freshman is only at the 8th or 10th percentile of
their white counterpart, and even lower than their Asian or Jewish
counterparts. Same with lawyers, business school etc.
If you pick two doctors, one black and the other one Jewish or Asian or
white, chances are very good that the Jewish or Asian or white one has
outscored the black one. I'm not saying this with malice, but I'm
trying to illustrate a point. A person choosing behind this 'veil of
ignorance' will see skin color as a variable.
Being a pragmatist, what's your view of the current immigration here in
the US? That's a litmus test for you, since you said you're pragmatist.
Afterall there soon will not be enough police or enough jails to keep
the lid on it, as you said. When we import a people who are unlike the
host population and who may ditch meritocracy for tribalist concerns,
does this then not have a direct bearing on your question? Isn't it the
point of white racialist organizations? Integration has failed. People
are just more comfortable with their own. Re-read what you wrote.
You've just paved the way to racial discord, ethnic strife, and
linguistic balkanization!!
Why would I bring this subject of immigration up? Because you have just
treaded on a quagmire. One of the main things holding Americans
together is the belief in equality (of opportunity) and that people
should succeed by meritocracy regardless of their color, creed, and
yes, socioeconomic status.
But re-read what you wrote: you're saying that some people may not
choose their physicians or perhaps lawyers or their community
representatives based on merit, but based on people from their own
"community" ie based on language, based on ethnicity, based on skin
color, based on race.
Now that's fine with me. I'm all for freedom of association and I think
people can make rational or irrational choices, good or bad decisions
all by themselves and it's all their right. I can choose to sell my
house to whomever, and my neighbors can do the same.
But if what you said is true, that people really gravitate towards
their own communities (in this case black communities, and hence the
presence of a racial component), then it is a PRAGMATIC matter to limit
importing people who are utterly unlike the rest of the current
composition of the American population, people who don't see beyond
their communities **within** a nation. It is a pragmatic matter not to
create more unassimilable enclaves.
That's why I brought up this subject.
Not to mention that you have blurred the lines of standardized testing,
selection processes, and politics which you said seldom mix. Of course
GPAs and MCATs are not perfect predictors of outcome, but I bet that if
you add a race variable of "black" this will *not* predict a better
doctor. If you said "Jewish" or "Asian" I might have agreed that there
is some plausibility but I'm still not sure. You have to look at this
from (1) above, i.e. the institution where selection takes place and
this I agree should be color-blind vs (2) below, i.e. from the
customer, from the patient, from the public where it makes more sense
to open your eyes.
And assuming all that you said is true, that would put an even tighter
lid on the limits of public discourse. See a paper on affirmative
action at 3 universities that I came across just last night when I
looked up some points that you raised. I'll post this as a separate
message. I think many Americans will NOT agree with you that merit
should be brushed aside for social engineering purposes, although at
least you have the decency to admit it. You may not phrase it as such
but it's no different. You're tweaking an outcome. Not that higher ed
instituations have not done so in the past (e.g. alumni children may
get preferences) but think: will blacks admit this - that they're there
to serve their communities and not necessarily because of merit? Well?
And will people accept more lotteries and quotas where even now a black
applicant is more than 250 times the odds of being admitted compared to
an equally qualified white applicant to at least one law school?
http://www.ceousa.org/pdfs/VAS%20Report.pdf (you need Adobe Reader to
view it)
"The odds ratio for blacks compared to whites at NCS is 13 to 1, but at
UVA it is 106 to 1 and at William &Mary 267 to 1. In other words, at
UVA the odds of a black student being admitted is more than 100 times
the odds of admission of a white student with the same qualifications.
The odds of admitting a black applicant at William & Mary is more than
250 times the odds of admitting an equally-qualified white applicant.
The odds ratios for Asians at all three schools are less than one,
meaning that Asians are less likely to be admitted than
equally-qualified whites (the odds ratio for Asians at UVA is not
statistically significant). The odds ratios for Hispanics are 2.8 and
1.9 at UVA and NCS, respectively, but less than one at W&M. This means
that Hispanics are somewhat more likely than whites to be admitted at
UVA and NCS but less likely than whites to be admitted at W&M Law (but
this is not statistically significant)."
University of Virginia (UVA) undergraduates, North Carolina State (NCS)
undergraduates, and William and Mary Law (W&M Law) School.
richas...@hotmail.com
long)
Vernon North
richas...@hotmail.com says...
clips you saw are anecdotes, and anecdotes don't prove anything.
Let me address your statement:
"not an insubstantial proportion
of blacks MAY also have serious *antisocial personality disorders* - on
top of a IQ deficit"
First, what you saw on TV is "news". The networks are not in the
information business -- they're in the "fact-based entertainment
business" -- if it bleeds, it leads. I don't doubt that the footage is
real. I doubt that it's representative of typical situations.
Second, the Diagnostic Criteria above would probably include many white
anti-globalization activists, for example. I've seen them on the news
causing trouble, too, and some would exhibit at least 3 from the list.
Some white environmental activists would qualify, too.
Third, "a not insubstantial proportion"?? How big is that? 1%? 10%?
What's your estimate? (I wouldn't include those who were looting for
food and water -- most people would loot to get water after 24 hours,
and food after little more.)
For those involved in the violent crimes, how many do you think were
strung-out drug addicts, unable to get their fix? White drug addicts
commit violent crimes when they don't have their fix, too.
I repeat my closing remarks from my last post:
If a whole group feels alienated and disenfranchised by the majority,
eventually there won't be enough police or enough jails to keep the lid
on it. I think many blacks feel alienated and disenfranchised. That
drives a lot of attitude and behaviour that plays right into the hand of
racists.
Verno
Verno
Vernon North
Continuation -- as you suspected, I missed the last part.
LOL! Wouldn't that kill a big piece of the economy! ;-)
>
> > > And when this fails,
> > > then IQ tests are no longer accurate, IQ tests do not measure anything,
> > > and IQ does not exist.
> >
> > My problem with it is that IQ alone isn't enough to explain differences
> > in cognitive ability.
> >
>
> Like, personality issues that you raised. See my intro paragraph again.
> Some of these drive people to other sorts of 'talents'. Asians are
> known or at least thought of lacking in creativity not captured by IQ.
I doubt the truth of that one unless it's a culture-only reference. I
think Asians brought up in Asia tend to conform more due to their
upbringing (the nail that sticks up gets hammered down) but I haven't
seen any lack of creativity among Asians raised in North America.
> Blacks can be good at sports and music etc etc not captured by IQ. That
> is assuming you want to subsume other desirable traits into 'cognitive
> ability' or EQ. But I'm not even getting here. Too off topic.
>
> > > Second, the idea that different groups of people
> > > have different aptitudes has often been foisted upon students in the
> > > college scene by those who champion equality of outcome (rather than
> > > equality of rights) and egalitarianism. I think falsehoods should be
> > > answered. I tend to believe my own eyes rather than twisted logic and
> > > ideologies as noble as they may seem to be.
> > >
> > > Again, conservatives that I disagree with (I'm a libertarian) will
> > > often say, "nah, you can't trust the source, it's too liberal".
> > > Leftists resort to same type of name calling when facts clash with
> > > their vision of society.
> >
> > I just say it's inadequate as a metric of ability. Some may see that as
> > ducking the issue, but I believe it. I've known some people who scored
> > a lot lower than me in the GMAT, for example, who made fortunes in
> > business. I'm quite comfortable, but I haven't hit any home runs. If
> > I'm smarter than they are, why are they so much richer than I am?
>
> I'd be much more impressed if you said MOST of those who scored much
> lower than you ended up richer than yourself, while MOST of those who
> scored much higher than you ended up worse off. Can you say that with
> confidence?
No, and I don't think it's true, either. But I can't see any clear
correlation between net wealth and GMAT scores among my class. OTOH,
there DOES seem to be a fairly strong positive correlation between
social dominance and wealth. Those who were most outgoing tend to be
wealthier. I don't know if it's confidence, aggression, social skills,
or ?
>
> My parents have a friend who's in his late 40s or young 50s, owns an
> entire building (probably around US $50 million or so) in the Far East.
> He has other properties too. (No he's not the guy with 3 wives, geez)
> He wanted to be a lawyer. He failed twice. In the end he did go thru
> but is known, apparently, in his class, that he's not the smart one.
> He's now probably much richer than his classmates who are lawyers,
> judges.
>
> I point this out because these are exceptions. And that's why you (and
> I) remember them.
There are enough exceptions for me to toss out IQ or GMAT scores as a
predictor of income or business success. Being smart helps, but there
are other characteristics that seem more important. See above.
>
> (My view is that there is an exception to this above but I won't
> divulge the answer here and again it's off topic. That's particularly
> seen between the upper middle class and near rich status which I've
> defined in a previous post elsewhere with a $10 million household asset
> demarcation. But that's a side point. Also don't forget range
> demarcation. If you restrict your sample to post-grads, of course IQ
> will be much less predictive. This is well known as range restrictive
> effect. This does not change the fact that IQ is predictive for
> all-comers.
I agree with you on the population in general. But the entire
population isn't applying for med school, for example.
> Or let's put it this way: would you prefer to be smart or
> stupid, all things being equal?)
Heh, heh. Ask Kaz.
Make your own choice based on your own criteria. I don't think anyone
should tell you to go to a white/black/jewish/asian/whatever doctor!
> What's a
> rational strategy when the GPA of the physician is not tattooed on his
> forehead and when his records are not necessarily publically available?
Ask around. That's what most people do. In my business, nobody "buys"
on the basis of advertising or sales ability. They ask others if
they've ever used X service, and if so, who would they recommend.
Selling in my business is like trying to sell open heart surgery on the
street corner. It ain't gonna work! When you need a heart by-pass, you
ask around to find out who is the best. And then you go to that doctor
-- white, black, asian -- who cares at that point? Now THAT is
Bayesian revision. ;-)
> The average black freshman is only at the 8th or 10th percentile of
> their white counterpart, and even lower than their Asian or Jewish
> counterparts. Same with lawyers, business school etc.
>
> If you pick two doctors, one black and the other one Jewish or Asian or
> white, chances are very good that the Jewish or Asian or white one has
> outscored the black one. I'm not saying this with malice, but I'm
> trying to illustrate a point. A person choosing behind this 'veil of
> ignorance' will see skin color as a variable.
That's too blunt an instrument for me. I prefer a Bayesian approach.
See above.
All I know about the US is what I see on my visits (at least 4 times a
year) and what I see on the news. But I haven't read much about the
problems in the US, and without doing so, I don't know enough to venture
an opinion.
Canada seems to be different, at least so far. We don't have the
classic American "melting pot" -- we have Canadian "multi-culturalism".
It seems to have worked well, although recently the rate of immigration
has been high enough that there are some signs of ghettoization. I
suspect my parents and grandparents may have thought the same thing at
some point, but the second generation have integrated. I think the
issue here is quite manageable.
>
> Why would I bring this subject of immigration up? Because you have just
> treaded on a quagmire. One of the main things holding Americans
> together is the belief in equality (of opportunity) and that people
> should succeed by meritocracy regardless of their color, creed, and
> yes, socioeconomic status.
>
> But re-read what you wrote: you're saying that some people may not
> choose their physicians or perhaps lawyers or their community
> representatives based on merit, but based on people from their own
> "community" ie based on language, based on ethnicity, based on skin
> color, based on race.
Individuals will choose which businesses they will or won't patronize
for their own private reasons. There's nothing we can do about that,
nor should we.
>
> Now that's fine with me. I'm all for freedom of association and I think
> people can make rational or irrational choices, good or bad decisions
> all by themselves and it's all their right. I can choose to sell my
> house to whomever, and my neighbors can do the same.
Refusing to sell to anyone on the basis of ethnicity would be a crime in
Canada, and I assume in the US, too. Refusing to buy would not.
>
> But if what you said is true, that people really gravitate towards
> their own communities (in this case black communities, and hence the
> presence of a racial component), then it is a PRAGMATIC matter to limit
> importing people who are utterly unlike the rest of the current
> composition of the American population, people who don't see beyond
> their communities **within** a nation. It is a pragmatic matter not to
> create more unassimilable enclaves.
From a pragmatic point of view, bringing in too many immigrants too
quickly will cause problems -- for the native population and for the
immigrants. Governments need to keep that in mind, as politically
incorrect as it may be.
>
> That's why I brought up this subject.
>
> Not to mention that you have blurred the lines of standardized testing,
> selection processes, and politics which you said seldom mix. Of course
> GPAs and MCATs are not perfect predictors of outcome, but I bet that if
> you add a race variable of "black" this will *not* predict a better
> doctor. If you said "Jewish" or "Asian" I might have agreed that there
> is some plausibility but I'm still not sure. You have to look at this
> from (1) above, i.e. the institution where selection takes place and
> this I agree should be color-blind vs (2) below, i.e. from the
> customer, from the patient, from the public where it makes more sense
> to open your eyes.
>
> And assuming all that you said is true, that would put an even tighter
> lid on the limits of public discourse. See a paper on affirmative
> action at 3 universities that I came across just last night when I
> looked up some points that you raised. I'll post this as a separate
> message. I think many Americans will NOT agree with you that merit
> should be brushed aside for social engineering purposes, although at
> least you have the decency to admit it. You may not phrase it as such
> but it's no different. You're tweaking an outcome. Not that higher ed
> instituations have not done so in the past (e.g. alumni children may
> get preferences) but think: will blacks admit this - that they're there
> to serve their communities and not necessarily because of merit? Well?
I'll stick with my line, thanks. Those who will use the services have a
say in who they like to buy from. If the intention is to choose a range
of doctors who can serve the needs of the population, you will need to
take race and gender into account. It happens at our med school in
Vancouver, and it's widely accepted as being appropriate.
>
> And will people accept more lotteries and quotas where even now a black
> applicant is more than 250 times the odds of being admitted compared to
> an equally qualified white applicant to at least one law school?
>
> http://www.ceousa.org/pdfs/VAS%20Report.pdf (you need Adobe Reader to
> view it)
>
> "The odds ratio for blacks compared to whites at NCS is 13 to 1, but at
> UVA it is 106 to 1 and at William &Mary 267 to 1. In other words, at
> UVA the odds of a black student being admitted is more than 100 times
> the odds of admission of a white student with the same qualifications.
> The odds of admitting a black applicant at William & Mary is more than
> 250 times the odds of admitting an equally-qualified white applicant.
> The odds ratios for Asians at all three schools are less than one,
> meaning that Asians are less likely to be admitted than
> equally-qualified whites (the odds ratio for Asians at UVA is not
> statistically significant). The odds ratios for Hispanics are 2.8 and
> 1.9 at UVA and NCS, respectively, but less than one at W&M. This means
> that Hispanics are somewhat more likely than whites to be admitted at
> UVA and NCS but less likely than whites to be admitted at W&M Law (but
> this is not statistically significant)."
>
> University of Virginia (UVA) undergraduates, North Carolina State (NCS)
> undergraduates, and William and Mary Law (W&M Law) School.
>
This is, indeed, a very sticky problem. In Canada, where the government
subsidizes approx. 75 to 80% of tuition fees, it's appropriate for
admissions policies to take account of societal ("customer")
preferences. I haven't thought much about the situation in the US, where
it seems tuition fees are not subsidized to anywhere near that extent.
On one side, we have the belief in the inherent rightness of a fully
merit based system. On the other, we have the likelihood that continuing
to have a large minority who believe they're oppressed is likely to
cause social upheaval that could tear apart the fabric of society.
Damned hard forces to balance. I don't have the answers, but I am sure
that encouraging racism is NOT part of the solution.
Verno
richas...@hotmail.com
Name me on example. Also how are Asians more creative here in North
America compared to Asia? I'm not sure what you mean (I'm not
sarcastic)
How do you know what your classmates or colleagues scored in their GMAT
anyway? Do they brag about it (which means it's unlikely true)? Also
did you mean social dominance vs subsequent wealth? In any case do you
think that those personal characteristics are at least partly inborn?
You know those 5 dimensions of personality. Like biological caste
then...
> >
> > My parents have a friend who's in his late 40s or young 50s, owns an
> > entire building (probably around US $50 million or so) in the Far East.
> > He has other properties too. (No he's not the guy with 3 wives, geez)
> > He wanted to be a lawyer. He failed twice. In the end he did go thru
> > but is known, apparently, in his class, that he's not the smart one.
> > He's now probably much richer than his classmates who are lawyers,
> > judges.
> >
> > I point this out because these are exceptions. And that's why you (and
> > I) remember them.
>
> There are enough exceptions for me to toss out IQ or GMAT scores as a
> predictor of income or business success. Being smart helps, but there
> are other characteristics that seem more important. See above.
Aha! it helps. It helps! I never said IQ's everything, but it's
*something*, and I prefer to be smart rather than dumb, all other
things being equal. See my point now?
> >
> > (My view is that there is an exception to this above but I won't
> > divulge the answer here and again it's off topic. That's particularly
> > seen between the upper middle class and near rich status which I've
> > defined in a previous post elsewhere with a $10 million household asset
> > demarcation. But that's a side point. Also don't forget range
> > demarcation. If you restrict your sample to post-grads, of course IQ
> > will be much less predictive. This is well known as range restrictive
> > effect. This does not change the fact that IQ is predictive for
> > all-comers.
>
> I agree with you on the population in general. But the entire
> population isn't applying for med school, for example.
>
And as another example, the entire population doesn't choose not to
finish high school either. You shouldn't be too harsh on those who
don't go on to post-grad ed, huh?
> > Or let's put it this way: would you prefer to be smart or
> > stupid, all things being equal?)
>
> Heh, heh. Ask Kaz.
> >
> >
Who?
Great you assented finally
> > What's a
> > rational strategy when the GPA of the physician is not tattooed on his
> > forehead and when his records are not necessarily publically available?
>
> Ask around. That's what most people do. In my business, nobody "buys"
> on the basis of advertising or sales ability. They ask others if
> they've ever used X service, and if so, who would they recommend.
> Selling in my business is like trying to sell open heart surgery on the
> street corner. It ain't gonna work! When you need a heart by-pass, you
> ask around to find out who is the best. And then you go to that doctor
> -- white, black, asian -- who cares at that point? Now THAT is
> Bayesian revision. ;-)
So now you're telling me that it's worthwhile to trust testimonials and
anecdotes, like gossip between maids in a market. Is that what you're
telling me here? Did I read you wrong? Tell me not please!!!
>
> > The average black freshman is only at the 8th or 10th percentile of
> > their white counterpart, and even lower than their Asian or Jewish
> > counterparts. Same with lawyers, business school etc.
> >
> > If you pick two doctors, one black and the other one Jewish or Asian or
> > white, chances are very good that the Jewish or Asian or white one has
> > outscored the black one. I'm not saying this with malice, but I'm
> > trying to illustrate a point. A person choosing behind this 'veil of
> > ignorance' will see skin color as a variable.
>
> That's too blunt an instrument for me. I prefer a Bayesian approach.
> See above.
Me too. I think you agree with me, just that you can't bring yourself
to the unpleasant but rational conclusion.
Wooooo, I sense flinches there. Never mind, I won't move in for the
kill. I'm a gent, as always. :) You told me that you're not a liberal.
But now you're saying it's manageable, holding out that last ray of
hope, like a lost romantic. Why?
> >
> > Why would I bring this subject of immigration up? Because you have just
> > treaded on a quagmire. One of the main things holding Americans
> > together is the belief in equality (of opportunity) and that people
> > should succeed by meritocracy regardless of their color, creed, and
> > yes, socioeconomic status.
> >
> > But re-read what you wrote: you're saying that some people may not
> > choose their physicians or perhaps lawyers or their community
> > representatives based on merit, but based on people from their own
> > "community" ie based on language, based on ethnicity, based on skin
> > color, based on race.
>
> Individuals will choose which businesses they will or won't patronize
> for their own private reasons. There's nothing we can do about that,
> nor should we.
See above.
> >
> > Now that's fine with me. I'm all for freedom of association and I think
> > people can make rational or irrational choices, good or bad decisions
> > all by themselves and it's all their right. I can choose to sell my
> > house to whomever, and my neighbors can do the same.
>
> Refusing to sell to anyone on the basis of ethnicity would be a crime in
> Canada, and I assume in the US, too. Refusing to buy would not.
I did NOT know that about Canada. That's an infringement of freedom! I
should be allowed to do whatever I want. And don't be surprised that
may be soon we will not be allowed to buy from where we choose either.
Maybe I should exercise any remnant of freedom in whatever way I can.
Anything not compulsory will be forbidden.
Eh?
> >
> > But if what you said is true, that people really gravitate towards
> > their own communities (in this case black communities, and hence the
> > presence of a racial component), then it is a PRAGMATIC matter to limit
> > importing people who are utterly unlike the rest of the current
> > composition of the American population, people who don't see beyond
> > their communities **within** a nation. It is a pragmatic matter not to
> > create more unassimilable enclaves.
>
> From a pragmatic point of view, bringing in too many immigrants too
> quickly will cause problems -- for the native population and for the
> immigrants. Governments need to keep that in mind, as politically
> incorrect as it may be.
> >
That's just common sense, not politically incorrect. You are just
revealing your colors as being the left side of the political rainbow,
hey, again, no pun there!
No, but you said in your other post that it should be color blind and
it shouldn't discriminate.
I say choose from those who have highest marks, highest scores, and
ignore the rest. There may be a disproportionate number of Jews or
Asians who succeed by this criteria, and if it turns out that not one
single black or native Indian or whoever gets in medicine or law or
whatever, then so be it. Life's never fair.
Why don't we have affirmative action for 100 m Olympic races? I find
those races too dull (oh please, richasiankid, not another pun!)
I know that immigration is NOT part of the solution.
As I said, immigration is the litmus issue here for you. I wouldn't
have brought this up but I think it illustrates this point perfectly
that's germane to this discussion. Underlying all this is that you have
a commitment to your fellow citizens be they black, white etc, and
that's understandable and so if they prefer to see black doctors or
native shamans or faith healers or whatever than so be it. Just because
your aunt is crazy doesn't mean you carelessly ship her to a nursing
home etc. But there is no reason that we should feel obligated to the
rest of the world and worsen current problems here by importing people
who may not share the same values as we do especially when there are so
many domestic problems here already which you admitted that you don't
know the solution to.
Pragmatically speaking that proposition makes a lot of sense. Better
safe than sorry. So damn am I now a conservative?
richas...@hotmail.com
black minority achievement. It's not to be trusted. It's an
exception! Afterall it's about edutainment. It's about what
sells....right?
And of course, criminal elements are everywhere in every country, every
ethnicity, every race, and every sex too. Women can still sometimes be
dangerous you know, hehe, with their seduction and all.... But still I
don't recall the last time that lesbians or anti-globalists ruined a
city, do you?
After what you said, now I'm not sure if a riot (in some US cities if
not in Canada) is only a verdict, a hurricane, or an earthquake away.
Like, come on, please tell women they are just as likely as men to be
rapists. I'm sure they'd buy.
Did you hear about looting incidents in Japan when the devastating 1995
Kobe earthquake struck for instance? What about riots in the recent
Talim typhoon? Stories about police participating in riots? Me neither.
The proportion of crime elements in some black communities may be less
than say 2-3%, but once your 'anti-social personalities' reach a
critical mass (who knows that critical mass is) you get trouble. OK OK!
An all female society is safer. Now it's your turn to tell me why a
society sprinkled with crime ridden people is more fun.
As I said in my other thread I also trust based on what you wrote that
you have similar views with me on this litmus test issue of
immigration, since (1) you didn't defend your position vigorously and
(2) you're a pragmatist after all. If *whole* minority groups indeed
feel alienated and when all sorts of problems are still being worked
out along racial and ethnic cleavages to perhaps no satisfactory
solution or conclusion, then there is no point sailing uncharted waters
in exacerbating this uncertainty in the US is there? Yes? No? Better
safe than sorry. Or would you say just dive in and let all hell break
loose? Because that'd be too liberal even for my taste - and I'm
not a conservative as I've said many many times before. ;)
Vernon North
richas...@hotmail.com says...
I said "I haven't seen a lack of creativity among Asians raised in North
America." I could be wrong.
My experience in Asia is mainly in HK and China, where people tend to
conform to family and societal norms more than in North America. This
is a well established difference between our cultures.
No, but some people did discuss GMAT scores and GPAs.
> Also
> did you mean social dominance vs subsequent wealth?
Yes.
> In any case do you
> think that those personal characteristics are at least partly inborn?
As with most human personality traits, research indicates that
leadership is partly heritable, partly nurture. I haven't seen research
on social dominance, but they're related.
> You know those 5 dimensions of personality. Like biological caste
> then...
>
> > >
> > > My parents have a friend who's in his late 40s or young 50s, owns an
> > > entire building (probably around US $50 million or so) in the Far East.
> > > He has other properties too. (No he's not the guy with 3 wives, geez)
> > > He wanted to be a lawyer. He failed twice. In the end he did go thru
> > > but is known, apparently, in his class, that he's not the smart one.
> > > He's now probably much richer than his classmates who are lawyers,
> > > judges.
> > >
> > > I point this out because these are exceptions. And that's why you (and
> > > I) remember them.
> >
> > There are enough exceptions for me to toss out IQ or GMAT scores as a
> > predictor of income or business success. Being smart helps, but there
> > are other characteristics that seem more important. See above.
>
> Aha! it helps. It helps! I never said IQ's everything, but it's
> *something*, and I prefer to be smart rather than dumb, all other
> things being equal. See my point now?
Of course. It's one of a few important factors to take into account. It
just isn't conclusive by itself.
>
> > >
> > > (My view is that there is an exception to this above but I won't
> > > divulge the answer here and again it's off topic. That's particularly
> > > seen between the upper middle class and near rich status which I've
> > > defined in a previous post elsewhere with a $10 million household asset
> > > demarcation. But that's a side point. Also don't forget range
> > > demarcation. If you restrict your sample to post-grads, of course IQ
> > > will be much less predictive. This is well known as range restrictive
> > > effect. This does not change the fact that IQ is predictive for
> > > all-comers.
> >
> > I agree with you on the population in general. But the entire
> > population isn't applying for med school, for example.
> >
>
> And as another example, the entire population doesn't choose not to
> finish high school either. You shouldn't be too harsh on those who
> don't go on to post-grad ed, huh?
You're not attributing that idea to me, are you?
>
> > > Or let's put it this way: would you prefer to be smart or
> > > stupid, all things being equal?)
> >
> > Heh, heh. Ask Kaz.
> > >
> > >
>
> Who?
Anko eater.
Assented? Was that ever in doubt?
>
> > > What's a
> > > rational strategy when the GPA of the physician is not tattooed on his
> > > forehead and when his records are not necessarily publically available?
> >
> > Ask around. That's what most people do. In my business, nobody "buys"
> > on the basis of advertising or sales ability. They ask others if
> > they've ever used X service, and if so, who would they recommend.
> > Selling in my business is like trying to sell open heart surgery on the
> > street corner. It ain't gonna work! When you need a heart by-pass, you
> > ask around to find out who is the best. And then you go to that doctor
> > -- white, black, asian -- who cares at that point? Now THAT is
> > Bayesian revision. ;-)
>
> So now you're telling me that it's worthwhile to trust testimonials and
> anecdotes, like gossip between maids in a market. Is that what you're
> telling me here? Did I read you wrong? Tell me not please!!!
You must be kidding. You wouldn't be influenced by a testimonial from a
friend whose judgement you trust? I certainly am, and will continue to
be. Testimonials from trusted sources have great value.
>
> >
> > > The average black freshman is only at the 8th or 10th percentile of
> > > their white counterpart, and even lower than their Asian or Jewish
> > > counterparts. Same with lawyers, business school etc.
> > >
> > > If you pick two doctors, one black and the other one Jewish or Asian or
> > > white, chances are very good that the Jewish or Asian or white one has
> > > outscored the black one. I'm not saying this with malice, but I'm
> > > trying to illustrate a point. A person choosing behind this 'veil of
> > > ignorance' will see skin color as a variable.
> >
> > That's too blunt an instrument for me. I prefer a Bayesian approach.
> > See above.
>
> Me too. I think you agree with me, just that you can't bring yourself
> to the unpleasant but rational conclusion.
Agree with you about what? What rational conclusion are you hoping I'll
arrive at?
"Flinches"? "Last ray of hope"? You're inferring far too much. Do you
know a perfect country? I certainly don't, and I don't pretend Canada
is perfect.
>
>
>
> > >
> > > Why would I bring this subject of immigration up? Because you have just
> > > treaded on a quagmire. One of the main things holding Americans
> > > together is the belief in equality (of opportunity) and that people
> > > should succeed by meritocracy regardless of their color, creed, and
> > > yes, socioeconomic status.
> > >
> > > But re-read what you wrote: you're saying that some people may not
> > > choose their physicians or perhaps lawyers or their community
> > > representatives based on merit, but based on people from their own
> > > "community" ie based on language, based on ethnicity, based on skin
> > > color, based on race.
> >
> > Individuals will choose which businesses they will or won't patronize
> > for their own private reasons. There's nothing we can do about that,
> > nor should we.
>
> See above.
>
> > >
> > > Now that's fine with me. I'm all for freedom of association and I think
> > > people can make rational or irrational choices, good or bad decisions
> > > all by themselves and it's all their right. I can choose to sell my
> > > house to whomever, and my neighbors can do the same.
> >
> > Refusing to sell to anyone on the basis of ethnicity would be a crime in
> > Canada, and I assume in the US, too. Refusing to buy would not.
>
> I did NOT know that about Canada. That's an infringement of freedom!
Yes, it's against the law to discriminate on the basis of gender,
religion, sexual orientation, race, and a few other differentiators. As
I believe it is in the US.
Are you telling me that it's legal to refuse to sell something in the US
to a buyer because he/she isn't the colour you prefer? I don't believe
it.
> I
> should be allowed to do whatever I want.
Really? Do you own a gun? Ever feel like offing someone?
> And don't be surprised that
> may be soon we will not be allowed to buy from where we choose either.
Again, you must be kidding.
> Maybe I should exercise any remnant of freedom in whatever way I can.
>
> Anything not compulsory will be forbidden.
>
> Eh?
>
> > >
> > > But if what you said is true, that people really gravitate towards
> > > their own communities (in this case black communities, and hence the
> > > presence of a racial component), then it is a PRAGMATIC matter to limit
> > > importing people who are utterly unlike the rest of the current
> > > composition of the American population, people who don't see beyond
> > > their communities **within** a nation. It is a pragmatic matter not to
> > > create more unassimilable enclaves.
> >
> > From a pragmatic point of view, bringing in too many immigrants too
> > quickly will cause problems -- for the native population and for the
> > immigrants. Governments need to keep that in mind, as politically
> > incorrect as it may be.
> > >
>
> That's just common sense, not politically incorrect.
It's politically incorrect in some circles in Canada.
> You are just
> revealing your colors as being the left side of the political rainbow,
> hey, again, no pun there!
I may be on the left side in the US, but I'm on the right in Canada.
No I didn't. I said:
"Philosophically, I don't have a problem with a clearly defined and
appropriate set of criteria used rigidly to accept candidates on the
basis of merit."
And in the same post I also said:
"So while I agree in theory with "make in merit or not at all", there
are other reasons to consider applicants to med-school -- for example,
taking ethnicity into account."
And still in the same post, I followed that with:
"The system should be serving patients [of all ethnicities], and
it can't if some ethnic groups who are capable of being good doctors are
excluded."
>
> I say choose from those who have highest marks, highest scores, and
> ignore the rest. There may be a disproportionate number of Jews or
> Asians who succeed by this criteria, and if it turns out that not one
> single black or native Indian or whoever gets in medicine or law or
> whatever, then so be it. Life's never fair.
I disagree for the reasons I advanced earlier.
>
> Why don't we have affirmative action for 100 m Olympic races? I find
> those races too dull (oh please, richasiankid, not another pun!)
Medicine is not an athletic competition. It involves critical
relationships with patients who have preferences, and those preferences
may affect the quality of their outcomes. In a country in which taxes
subsidize med schools (Canada), admissions criteria should seek
demographic balance. Capitalists who want to run highly successful
corporations do it to connect with their customers. Why should med
schools be any different?
You obviously haven't looked at the demographics of Canada. Without
immigration, we're going to run out of workers. Our birth rate is too
low -- just barely above the population replacement level. Immigration
IS a necessary solution for us. Maybe not for the US, which has a much
higher birth rate.
>
> As I said, immigration is the litmus issue here for you. I wouldn't
> have brought this up but I think it illustrates this point perfectly
> that's germane to this discussion. Underlying all this is that you have
> a commitment to your fellow citizens be they black, white etc, and
> that's understandable and so if they prefer to see black doctors or
> native shamans or faith healers or whatever than so be it. Just because
> your aunt is crazy doesn't mean you carelessly ship her to a nursing
> home etc. But there is no reason that we should feel obligated to the
> rest of the world and worsen current problems here by importing people
> who may not share the same values as we do especially when there are so
> many domestic problems here already which you admitted that you don't
> know the solution to.
I don't agree with indiscriminant immigration, either. But ethnicity is
too blunt an instrument for deciding who gets in and who doesn't. I'm
sure many wasps felt the same way about the admission of Italians and
Irish immigrants into the US during part of the 19th and 20th century --
the ancestors of Rudy Guliani, Fiorello La Guardia, Ronald Reagan,
Richard Nixon, the Kennedys, Henry Ford, etc. But their offspring did
OK after all.
>
> Pragmatically speaking that proposition makes a lot of sense. Better
> safe than sorry. So damn am I now a conservative?
>
You live in a different country with different problems. It's not
surprising we don't agree.
Verno
Vernon North
richas...@hotmail.com says...
> I'll keep your statement in mind next time I hear some news story on
> black minority achievement. It's not to be trusted. It's an
> exception! Afterall it's about edutainment. It's about what
> sells....right?
"It's on TV isn't it?" (Seinfeld quote) ;-)
But let's get serious about this. If you're going to use TV coverage as
evidence of black lawlessness or whatever, you need to back it up with
an estimate of how widespread and pervasive the pictured phenomenon was.
Not counting the thirsty and hungry people breaking into stores to get
food and water, what percentage of the black population do you suppose
was involved in rape, shooting, robbery, non-food looting, etc? Give me
a percentage. Could you tell from the TV coverage? Can you logically
generalize it to an entire race? I don't think so.
>
> And of course, criminal elements are everywhere in every country, every
> ethnicity, every race, and every sex too. Women can still sometimes be
> dangerous you know, hehe, with their seduction and all.... But still I
> don't recall the last time that lesbians or anti-globalists ruined a
> city, do you?
Well, depends what you consider "ruined". Anti-globalists have done a
lot of damage during a few international summits -- take Seattle a
couple of years ago. And I wouldn't have wanted to be walking down a
Seattle street in front of them wearing a business suit. Would you?
>
> After what you said, now I'm not sure if a riot (in some US cities if
> not in Canada) is only a verdict, a hurricane, or an earthquake away.
Many people are wondering the same thing, I'm sure. Got your gun and
ammo at the ready?
> Like, come on, please tell women they are just as likely as men to be
> rapists. I'm sure they'd buy.
I'll send you a can of pepper spray if you're worried about it.
>
> Did you hear about looting incidents in Japan when the devastating 1995
> Kobe earthquake struck for instance? What about riots in the recent
> Talim typhoon? Stories about police participating in riots? Me neither.
> The proportion of crime elements in some black communities may be less
> than say 2-3%, but once your 'anti-social personalities' reach a
> critical mass (who knows that critical mass is) you get trouble.
And this small percentage is a reason to condemn the whole group?
Sheesh! Are all cows brown, too?
> OK OK!
> An all female society is safer. Now it's your turn to tell me why a
> society sprinkled with crime ridden people is more fun.
>
> As I said in my other thread I also trust based on what you wrote that
> you have similar views with me on this litmus test issue of
> immigration, since (1) you didn't defend your position vigorously and
> (2) you're a pragmatist after all. If *whole* minority groups indeed
> feel alienated and when all sorts of problems are still being worked
> out along racial and ethnic cleavages to perhaps no satisfactory
> solution or conclusion, then there is no point sailing uncharted waters
> in exacerbating this uncertainty in the US is there? Yes? No?
I don't know what the solution is for the US. It is certainly different
from the solution in Canada because of our different needs for
immigrants and our different cultures. Despite the fact that Canadians
and Americans are superficially very similar, there are big differences
in attitudes. While the US is the land of "life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness", Canada is the land of "peace, order and good
government". These values take you to very different end points. And
they have different affects on how people feel about equity. As a
nation, we tend to place more emphasis on peace and less on liberty than
the US, in general. Why, in a recent "greatest Canadian ever" contest,
the winner was the politician who brought socialized medicine to one
Canadian province, and championed it in Canada's parliament. He wasn't
even the Prime Minister who brought in the program and backing
legislation -- just its most vocal booster. What does that tell you
about the difference between Canada and the US? Do you think Hillary is
going to be selected as the Greatest American of all time? ;-)
Anyway, I'd need a lot of convincing to agree that stopping immigration
is the solution to America's problems. I prefer understanding causes
before prescribing solutions. One wag said that "the biggest cause of
problems is solutions", and I agree when the problem is not first fully
understood. A one-word example of how "solutions" can cause serious
"problems": Iraq.
> Better
> safe than sorry. Or would you say just dive in and let all hell break
> loose? Because that'd be too liberal even for my taste - and I'm
> not a conservative as I've said many many times before. ;)
I'm getting the sense that you think immigration is America's biggest
"race" problem. Right? Wrong?
I'd say American's biggest "race" problem is the perception of social
inequity. There is a lot of stuff that comes together to create that
perception. Some of it has a basis in fact, some not. One notable
"non-fact" example is the commercial culture of the US (and Canada).
People have increasingly high expectations of material "success", driven
by advertising. This has created a culture in which a high proportion
of the population feel they should be able to "have it all" -- maybe
that they even have a RIGHT to have it all! And if anyone denies them
that right, the "system is unfair" or "stacked against them"!
Of course, I *totally disagree* with that sentiment -- nobody has a
right to any such thing. But that perception IS a big problem. A
significant proportion of poor people of every colour feel
disenfranchised because they can't afford a Lexus or to shop at the Gap.
Who do they blame? Themselves?? Not a chance! It's "the system", "the
rich", "corporations", or even "the Jews" or "whitey".
We see a similar phenomenon in Canada (although perhaps not to the same
extent because of our more comprehensive safety net), only it is
socialists of all colours blaming the rich and the powerful for
"stacking the system against them". But what happens when the poor have
a disproportionate representation from one racial group, as in the US?
Why, then of course, racism *must be* the cause! At least that's the
"logic" that is followed.
I don't think immigration is as big a problem for the US as this
perception of social inequity.
Anyway, the US is going to have to sort this out if it wants to avoid
serious future problems. New Orleans was an extreme example of what can
happen when order breaks down. I don't think you're on the brink of
that happening on any widespread basis -- Katrina was a very extreme
event exacerbated by poor execution of apparently inadequate disaster
plans -- the confluence of three extreme events leading to a social
"perfect storm". But it does expose a problem that should be dealt
with.
Canada's problem is different, as I stated in my other response. This
morning's paper quoted our new Governor General (the Queen's official
representative in Canada -- an arcane holdover from the past) as saying
that Canada's "multiculturalism" policy has resulted in too much
ghettoization in Canada, and not enough integration. (This new GG is a
black, female Haitian immigrant who is fluent in French. How Canadian,
eh?) As you know from my previous posts, I agree with her, and it's
refreshing to see her speak of this. One of the editors of our local
newspaper, Fazil Mihlar, recently wrote a column expressing similar
ideas -- another "person of colour" speaking out constructively on what
needs to change. These two were able to broach a subject that might
have brought cries of "RACIST" if it were raised by whites. This is a
great example of how touchy issues can be dealt with openly when the
"face" of power reflects the face of the community.
Verno
richas...@hotmail.com
we cannot generalize from anecdotes re: rates. But amazing anecdotes
may reflect the tails of the curve. A curve shifted to one side will
have more members along its tails, and that becomes a sentinel factor.
That's what I meant that when I hear about black minority achievement -
we should also not forget that it's an exception rather than the rule.
And that's why we have stats, mean, standard deviations, etc, re: IQ
etc, which brought us here.
But since we're talking about race, crime etc, here's an interesting
document by the FBI. It's long but start from page 53.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/adducr/age_race_specific.pdf
You'll notice that minorities combined commit way more crimes than
whites. **Furthermore, if you stroll down, blacks commit way more
crimes than minorities.**
You can check out the precise figures yourself.
Do blacks commit more or less crime compared to whites in Canada? Do
you know? What's your guess?
Also found this from Cornell U: some things should not be spoken
http://www.cornellamerican.com/main/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=78
You can change your suit and avoid being beaten up; you can't change
your color unless you're Michael Jackson. But yes, you can always move
out of your neighborhood.
> > After what you said, now I'm not sure if a riot (in some US cities if
> > not in Canada) is only a verdict, a hurricane, or an earthquake away.
>
> Many people are wondering the same thing, I'm sure. Got your gun and
> ammo at the ready?
>
Not really but maybe I should be now that you mentioned it.
> > Like, come on, please tell women they are just as likely as men to be
> > rapists. I'm sure they'd buy.
>
> I'll send you a can of pepper spray if you're worried about it.
> >
> > Did you hear about looting incidents in Japan when the devastating 1995
> > Kobe earthquake struck for instance? What about riots in the recent
> > Talim typhoon? Stories about police participating in riots? Me neither.
> > The proportion of crime elements in some black communities may be less
> > than say 2-3%, but once your 'anti-social personalities' reach a
> > critical mass (who knows that critical mass is) you get trouble.
>
> And this small percentage is a reason to condemn the whole group?
> Sheesh! Are all cows brown, too?
>
see above. Surrogate marker perhaps? I read somewhere (I can't find it
now) that some sociologists use the amount of pickpockets or garbage in
subways to ascertain the moral fabric of the culture. (Huh?) It's a
small thing but it is like the canary in the mine - small factor but
can be surprisingly revealing. I don't know about this, just throwing
out in the open.
Canada's immigration may be different. First in the US there are loads
of anchor babies and illegals. Canada has the benefit of bordering the
Arctic. Even when shiploads of Chinese illegals go to Vancouver they're
still far in between.
Second Canada has a point system (is this true?) so you score points
and so it is indirectly a meritocractic system. I've heard stories of
Russian neurosurgeons being cab drivers over there. In the US you have
many illiterate Mexican peasants crossing over. So stopping all
immigration may not be the ultimate or ideal solution but may be a
start. I think a trickle of quality immigration may perhaps even help,
I don't know.
I've said before I'm a libertarian and I think that in a perfect
system, immigrants are beneficial. However that's the case when people
share the same values, when there isn't a welfare state etc etc. When
these factors are present and when many immigrant groups become net
welfare recipients then you get a problem.
The war of Iraq is stupid. Many empires outstretched themselves in the
past before they fell. The US is doing the same. But then no
civilization is eternal.
And herein lies the irony: the US has power to send troops to change a
regime half way around the globe, but it doesn't have the power to stop
illegal immigration after 9/11. Farce.
Just some thoughts...
> > Better
> > safe than sorry. Or would you say just dive in and let all hell break
> > loose? Because that'd be too liberal even for my taste - and I'm
> > not a conservative as I've said many many times before. ;)
>
> I'm getting the sense that you think immigration is America's biggest
> "race" problem. Right? Wrong?
>
Wrong. Afterall we're not importing huge number of blacks. I'm just
being pragmatic: there is a race issue in many predominantly lower
socioeconomic communities - why worsen it when solutions are not at
hand? A rational person will just hold off. Because keep in mind once
people arrive, there is really no way to kick them out unless you're in
a totalitarian country which same say it's not that far down the road.
> I'd say American's biggest "race" problem is the perception of social
> inequity.
THIS, my friend, is a classic 20th century modern liberal line. I don't
like to cut people off in the middle of a paragraph but this one is
just very very typical. Just wanted to highlight this for you.
> There is a lot of stuff that comes together to create that
> perception. Some of it has a basis in fact, some not. One notable
> "non-fact" example is the commercial culture of the US (and Canada).
> People have increasingly high expectations of material "success", driven
> by advertising. This has created a culture in which a high proportion
> of the population feel they should be able to "have it all" -- maybe
> that they even have a RIGHT to have it all! And if anyone denies them
> that right, the "system is unfair" or "stacked against them"!
>
> Of course, I *totally disagree* with that sentiment -- nobody has a
> right to any such thing. But that perception IS a big problem. A
> significant proportion of poor people of every colour feel
> disenfranchised because they can't afford a Lexus or to shop at the Gap.
> Who do they blame? Themselves?? Not a chance! It's "the system", "the
> rich", "corporations", or even "the Jews" or "whitey".
It's funny because someone once derided me for *possessing* these
potato chips in university:
http://www.c-els.com/sfCatalog.asp?sn=E102120010060006&pchid=65656
At the time I didn't even know the price. So it's $4.69 for 7.5 oz.
Hmmm. Apparently $0.99 and $1.99 makes a huge difference for some. It
may be a 100% percentage, but it's only a dollar!
People envious not being able to shop at The GAP? I hope you're not
serious. That's barely above Walmart. And I thought I was deliberately
dressing down and 'rebelling', adopting a very middle class look. (I
swear if you see me on the street you'd say I'm very middle class. I
hate country clubs attire...too sterile, not a pun)
Geez. A&F and A&E are cliche, common, hence suitable when trying to
hide a 'class advantage'. And I like them for this reason. It makes you
look 'common' (oh now I'm succumbing to peer pressure) But I'd
seriously doubt the GAP is in the same class? My typical colleagues go
the FCUK route like $70 for a Tee.
As for the Lexus, unless you get the SC 430 don't bother. The new IS
350 may be worth a look though.
Oh, see how "middle class" or wait, low class, I've now become?
Discussing race (a lower socioeconomic past time) and now indulging
thoroughly in pop modern culture that is materialist-based. ;)
Anyway. I wonder: is it true that the poor don't really think. They
just lash out. I used to think of them as disadvantaged. I am now
beginning to wonder if they are stupid not able to see thru this.
>
> We see a similar phenomenon in Canada (although perhaps not to the same
> extent because of our more comprehensive safety net), only it is
> socialists of all colours blaming the rich and the powerful for
> "stacking the system against them". But what happens when the poor have
> a disproportionate representation from one racial group, as in the US?
> Why, then of course, racism *must be* the cause! At least that's the
> "logic" that is followed.
>
> I don't think immigration is as big a problem for the US as this
> perception of social inequity.
>
> Anyway, the US is going to have to sort this out if it wants to avoid
> serious future problems. New Orleans was an extreme example of what can
> happen when order breaks down. I don't think you're on the brink of
> that happening on any widespread basis -- Katrina was a very extreme
> event exacerbated by poor execution of apparently inadequate disaster
> plans -- the confluence of three extreme events leading to a social
> "perfect storm". But it does expose a problem that should be dealt
> with.
>
Let's see if Rita wreaks some/same havoc.
There is one other problem here: there are police looting at New
Orleans (captured on video) and who now need 'vacation time' etc, not
to mention some say the lack of foresight in planning. I don't know
enough to comment, but it just appears to contrast with white ethnic
(italians, irish) firemen who save those 9/11 victims.
> Canada's problem is different, as I stated in my other response. This
> morning's paper quoted our new Governor General (the Queen's official
> representative in Canada -- an arcane holdover from the past) as saying
> that Canada's "multiculturalism" policy has resulted in too much
> ghettoization in Canada, and not enough integration. (This new GG is a
> black, female Haitian immigrant who is fluent in French. How Canadian,
> eh?) As you know from my previous posts, I agree with her, and it's
> refreshing to see her speak of this. One of the editors of our local
> newspaper, Fazil Mihlar, recently wrote a column expressing similar
> ideas -- another "person of colour" speaking out constructively on what
> needs to change. These two were able to broach a subject that might
> have brought cries of "RACIST" if it were raised by whites. This is a
> great example of how touchy issues can be dealt with openly when the
> "face" of power reflects the face of the community.
>
> Verno
They're probably right. Maybe immigrants or ethnic minorites have seen
ethnic balkanization and other conflicts themselves in their own
country so they don't want to see their adopted country undergo the
same process. And then there is a double standard of speech. i.e. often
people romanticize about people they don't know (wouldn't it be nice to
watch a Cambodian sunset as long as you don't have to live there) that
sort of thing. That's why I suspect the lower middle class are very
wary of the lower class (blacks). Middle class people likewise do re:
lower middle class etc.
richas...@hotmail.com
> anecdotes, like gossip between maids in a market. Is that what you're
> telling me here? Did I read you wrong? Tell me not please!!!
You must be kidding. You wouldn't be influenced by a testimonial from
a
friend whose judgement you trust? I certainly am, and will continue to
be. Testimonials from trusted sources have great value.
------
Of course I was. Just my wayward humor. But you're introducing
'knowledge' into this so this 'choosing behind a blind veil' doesn't
apply; the probs are skewed. So you're right if you say, this black guy
graduated from Harvard vs this Jewish guy who graduated from Haiti.
With this new knowledge it may be reasonable to think this black guy
did better. All factors being equal (including testamonials) race is
still an additional factor based on the Bayesian analysis, strictly and
rationally speaking.
Medicine or other post-grad or in fact universities should be
competition for the best brains. I can't say anything else if you
disagree with this. Maybe we should have separate med schools or
universities or whatever for different ethnic groups then. That way
people won't complain. The problem with having people whose merit is
diluted by racial social engineering is that this process drags down
the standards of the rest of the class. I've said before I don't really
care about this; being a student who does reasonably well, it actually
makes things even easier for me, shifting the curve to the left. But if
you're the president of the school it's a concern. You cannot apply
uniform criteria and then flunk a huge proportion of students who are
less able. So you make things easier for everyone. Hence the slow but
sure downward slide.
You mentioned: You obviously haven't looked at the demographics of
Canada. Without
immigration, we're going to run out of workers. Our birth rate is too
low -- just barely above the population replacement level. Immigration
IS a necessary solution for us. Maybe not for the US, which has a much
higher birth rate. "
What do you think of Japan? It has a low birth rate. Do you think they
should let in third world immigrants?
Lastly about the white ethnics. First their IQs and other social
indices are very similar to Anglos. Second, they've assimilated
pre-official multiculturalism when aggressive assimilation campaigns
were held, now it's expected that people join the disunion. Third
whatever degree of residual animosity between them is likely masked by
racial problems which are much bigger. You can be right in that let's
say that US is an only all white countries. These ethnicities will
likely break out into tension.
It doesn't have to be race or ethnicity. Look at Quebec in Canada. It's
linguistic. No doubt exacerbated by politics and history but you do see
my point.
Me against my brother, Me and my brother against my cousin; me and my
cousin against the world.
Vernon North
richas...@hotmail.com says...
> We're talking about two different things. Of course you're right that
> we cannot generalize from anecdotes re: rates. But amazing anecdotes
> may reflect the tails of the curve. A curve shifted to one side will
> have more members along its tails, and that becomes a sentinel factor.
>
> That's what I meant that when I hear about black minority achievement -
> we should also not forget that it's an exception rather than the rule.
>
> And that's why we have stats, mean, standard deviations, etc, re: IQ
> etc, which brought us here.
>
> But since we're talking about race, crime etc, here's an interesting
> document by the FBI. It's long but start from page 53.
>
> http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/adducr/age_race_specific.pdf
>
> You'll notice that minorities combined commit way more crimes than
> whites. **Furthermore, if you stroll down, blacks commit way more
> crimes than minorities.**
>
> You can check out the precise figures yourself.
I've checked out the stats previously.
>
> Do blacks commit more or less crime compared to whites in Canada? Do
> you know? What's your guess?
From what I understand, the crime rates among Canadian blacks is
significantly higher than average. The crime rate among aboriginals is
also significantly higher than average.
Are you asking these questions to validate my previous statement that
when a minority group feels oppressed, there won't be enough police or
jails to keep the lid on it? Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence!
;-)
Group that feels oppressed, perhaps?
But my point was that the proportion of the group that commits crimes
like those we witnessed on TV in the aftermath of Katrina is an
important input to Bayesian revision. If drawer A has 0.5% green sox
and 99.5% red, and drawer B has 3% green sox and 97% red, should the
blind man assume every sock he pulls out of drawer B is green? That
would be quite irrational, wouldn't it.
> I read somewhere (I can't find it
> now) that some sociologists use the amount of pickpockets or garbage in
> subways to ascertain the moral fabric of the culture. (Huh?) It's a
> small thing but it is like the canary in the mine - small factor but
> can be surprisingly revealing. I don't know about this, just throwing
> out in the open.
Ah, the Rudy Giuliani effect! Yes, I've heard of it. There's also the
"Vernon North Effect" -- the same theory, only the marker is people's
obedience of parking regulations.
Both true - there is a point system, and the professional bodies haven't
got with it enough to accept highly skilled people from other countries
into their professions. We had a case recently of a well-known German
cardiac surgeon who (I think) wasn't admitted to one of the provincial
"medical colleges" (like licensing boards) and thus couldn't practice.
Yet, the skills he possesses are in high demand here. Pretty stupid,
but I think it will eventually get straightened out.
> In the US you have
> many illiterate Mexican peasants crossing over. So stopping all
> immigration may not be the ultimate or ideal solution but may be a
> start. I think a trickle of quality immigration may perhaps even help,
> I don't know.
There are some who feel that the illiterate Mexican peasants illegally
entering the US are critical to the economy, doing jobs no-one else
wants. What do you think?
Anyway, are illiterate Mexican peasants the immigration problem that has
you worried?
>
> I've said before I'm a libertarian and I think that in a perfect
> system, immigrants are beneficial. However that's the case when people
> share the same values, when there isn't a welfare state etc etc. When
> these factors are present and when many immigrant groups become net
> welfare recipients then you get a problem.
We know that Canadian immigrants contribute more, on average, than it
costs us to bring them in. There are exceptions (particularly "family
unification" candidates) but in general, immigration is an economic
plus. And that is true even when you don't include the other class of
immigration which I think ought to be stopped -- "investor immigrants",
who get to the front of the line without having to qualify on points
because they invest ~$250,000 in a business and create jobs. To me,
this is a bad policy. But that's a different story.
>
> The war of Iraq is stupid. Many empires outstretched themselves in the
> past before they fell. The US is doing the same. But then no
> civilization is eternal.
>
> And herein lies the irony: the US has power to send troops to change a
> regime half way around the globe, but it doesn't have the power to stop
> illegal immigration after 9/11. Farce.
Yes, it's too bad. It looks to me like a typical end of empire
phenomenon is starting in the US. I watched a few newsgroups very
closely just after 9-11 to see what Americans were saying. Instead of
trying to "understand the enemy", they fell for the Bush
administration's patriotism and jingoism. Those who don't take the time
to understand the enemy are sure to make many mistakes. And those who
don't seek to truly understand a phenomenon they're trying to change
will do the same. Hence, my campaign against racism.
>
> Just some thoughts...
>
>
> > > Better
> > > safe than sorry. Or would you say just dive in and let all hell break
> > > loose? Because that'd be too liberal even for my taste - and I'm
> > > not a conservative as I've said many many times before. ;)
> >
> > I'm getting the sense that you think immigration is America's biggest
> > "race" problem. Right? Wrong?
> >
>
> Wrong. Afterall we're not importing huge number of blacks. I'm just
> being pragmatic: there is a race issue in many predominantly lower
> socioeconomic communities - why worsen it when solutions are not at
> hand? A rational person will just hold off. Because keep in mind once
> people arrive, there is really no way to kick them out unless you're in
> a totalitarian country which same say it's not that far down the road.
>
> > I'd say American's biggest "race" problem is the perception of social
> > inequity.
>
> THIS, my friend, is a classic 20th century modern liberal line. I don't
> like to cut people off in the middle of a paragraph but this one is
> just very very typical. Just wanted to highlight this for you.
And that, my friend, is a typical example of dismissing an idea without
addressing it. If it's wrong, surely you can explain why.
I'm not much of a consumer. Never mind the specifics -- it's the
phenomenon that matters -- envy.
>
> Geez. A&F and A&E are cliche, common, hence suitable when trying to
> hide a 'class advantage'. And I like them for this reason. It makes you
> look 'common' (oh now I'm succumbing to peer pressure) But I'd
> seriously doubt the GAP is in the same class? My typical colleagues go
> the FCUK route like $70 for a Tee.
>
> As for the Lexus, unless you get the SC 430 don't bother. The new IS
> 350 may be worth a look though.
>
> Oh, see how "middle class" or wait, low class, I've now become?
> Discussing race (a lower socioeconomic past time) and now indulging
> thoroughly in pop modern culture that is materialist-based. ;)
>
> Anyway. I wonder: is it true that the poor don't really think. They
> just lash out. I used to think of them as disadvantaged. I am now
> beginning to wonder if they are stupid not able to see thru this.
It's not just the poor who don't think. It's depressingly common in all
socioeconomic groups.
>
> >
> > We see a similar phenomenon in Canada (although perhaps not to the same
> > extent because of our more comprehensive safety net), only it is
> > socialists of all colours blaming the rich and the powerful for
> > "stacking the system against them". But what happens when the poor have
> > a disproportionate representation from one racial group, as in the US?
> > Why, then of course, racism *must be* the cause! At least that's the
> > "logic" that is followed.
> >
> > I don't think immigration is as big a problem for the US as this
> > perception of social inequity.
> >
> > Anyway, the US is going to have to sort this out if it wants to avoid
> > serious future problems. New Orleans was an extreme example of what can
> > happen when order breaks down. I don't think you're on the brink of
> > that happening on any widespread basis -- Katrina was a very extreme
> > event exacerbated by poor execution of apparently inadequate disaster
> > plans -- the confluence of three extreme events leading to a social
> > "perfect storm". But it does expose a problem that should be dealt
> > with.
> >
>
> Let's see if Rita wreaks some/same havoc.
>
> There is one other problem here: there are police looting at New
> Orleans (captured on video) and who now need 'vacation time' etc, not
> to mention some say the lack of foresight in planning. I don't know
> enough to comment, but it just appears to contrast with white ethnic
> (italians, irish) firemen who save those 9/11 victims.
I didn't see that TV coverage. Were they looting for food and water, or
for non-essentials?
>
> > Canada's problem is different, as I stated in my other response. This
> > morning's paper quoted our new Governor General (the Queen's official
> > representative in Canada -- an arcane holdover from the past) as saying
> > that Canada's "multiculturalism" policy has resulted in too much
> > ghettoization in Canada, and not enough integration. (This new GG is a
> > black, female Haitian immigrant who is fluent in French. How Canadian,
> > eh?) As you know from my previous posts, I agree with her, and it's
> > refreshing to see her speak of this. One of the editors of our local
> > newspaper, Fazil Mihlar, recently wrote a column expressing similar
> > ideas -- another "person of colour" speaking out constructively on what
> > needs to change. These two were able to broach a subject that might
> > have brought cries of "RACIST" if it were raised by whites. This is a
> > great example of how touchy issues can be dealt with openly when the
> > "face" of power reflects the face of the community.
> >
> > Verno
>
> They're probably right. Maybe immigrants or ethnic minorites have seen
> ethnic balkanization and other conflicts themselves in their own
> country so they don't want to see their adopted country undergo the
> same process. And then there is a double standard of speech. i.e. often
> people romanticize about people they don't know (wouldn't it be nice to
> watch a Cambodian sunset as long as you don't have to live there) that
> sort of thing.
Like a few white morons at my Tai Chi club, "sinophiles" who think
anything Asian must automatically be better. It isn't better unless it
IS better.
Verno
richas...@hotmail.com
Do oppressed people express themselves so creatively in crime? Remember
you said that North American Asians are more 'creative' than Asians in
the Far East. I hope you weren't inferring that they commit more crimes
over there too? I doubt it.
Men commit more crime than women. So are they oppressed? Can some
people be just naturally more violent?
Let's say the blind man has both drawers side by side in front of him.
He pulls out a green sox and he gets killed. He pulls out a red sox and
he lives. Yes he likely won't die drawing from drawer B, but why
wouldn't he draw from drawer A?
Maybe if you live in a black neighborhood you won't be killed. Or maybe
if you have have to choose between a black doctor and a white or asian
(or Jewish) chances are that you won't die from complications. But if
you know nothing else about the doctor and you have this choice and all
you see is color vs colorless, why not choose from one with a higher
probability of success? What have you got to lose? Statistically
speaking.
No becaase I can hire them cheap, hahahaha! And they are usually
subservient. I was illustrating a point. If these people aren't here
then I'd be forced to choose alternatives. Maybe it even stimulates
innovation like robots who knows.
> >
> > I've said before I'm a libertarian and I think that in a perfect
> > system, immigrants are beneficial. However that's the case when people
> > share the same values, when there isn't a welfare state etc etc. When
> > these factors are present and when many immigrant groups become net
> > welfare recipients then you get a problem.
>
> We know that Canadian immigrants contribute more, on average, than it
> costs us to bring them in. There are exceptions (particularly "family
> unification" candidates) but in general, immigration is an economic
> plus. And that is true even when you don't include the other class of
> immigration which I think ought to be stopped -- "investor immigrants",
> who get to the front of the line without having to qualify on points
> because they invest ~$250,000 in a business and create jobs. To me,
> this is a bad policy. But that's a different story.
This is just crazy. How many Mexican immigrants have 250k? You now
should understand our angst. I favor raising this to at least $1
million US.
250k - that's the boundary between middle class vs lower middle class
household (family) asset in my opinion. The entire idea of having
immigrants is that so they can be better than 'us'. (not another pun,
geez, us = US, get it?)
See my previous post here:
Anyone can come up with $250k in US or Canada if they have the will to
migrate. I understand that this is more difficult elsewhere to attain
but why lower the standard?
See, Canada already has a big bonus/advantage compared to the US. As I
said I want it even higher.
You again exposed yourself to be liberal. You don't want these
so-called middle class but 'rich' (by your definition) people
immigrate? Jump ahead of whom? Any idea of how many immigrants to the
US who don't even have 25k? Maybe we should resort to meritocratic IQ
tests like, what, the 1920s. This should be a composite score with $ in
bank account, like GPA + SAT or IQ or whatever. That'd be an idea...
You cannot administer to the billions of the world who want to come
here. What you can do is to select those who enter. And that a country
can choose rationally, morally, ethically. And that country has no
obligation to non-citizens.
> >
> > The war of Iraq is stupid. Many empires outstretched themselves in the
> > past before they fell. The US is doing the same. But then no
> > civilization is eternal.
> >
> > And herein lies the irony: the US has power to send troops to change a
> > regime half way around the globe, but it doesn't have the power to stop
> > illegal immigration after 9/11. Farce.
>
> Yes, it's too bad. It looks to me like a typical end of empire
> phenomenon is starting in the US. I watched a few newsgroups very
> closely just after 9-11 to see what Americans were saying. Instead of
> trying to "understand the enemy", they fell for the Bush
> administration's patriotism and jingoism. Those who don't take the time
> to understand the enemy are sure to make many mistakes. And those who
> don't seek to truly understand a phenomenon they're trying to change
> will do the same. Hence, my campaign against racism.
What? Against racism? Come again?
You can be a paleo-conservative.
BTW do people cry anti-semite in a round-about way when you say that?
I've seen more Jews compared to gentiles, for instance, who are in
favor of this war. I have Brit relatives who confirmed these
suspicions.
> >
> > Just some thoughts...
> >
> >
> > > > Better
> > > > safe than sorry. Or would you say just dive in and let all hell break
> > > > loose? Because that'd be too liberal even for my taste - and I'm
> > > > not a conservative as I've said many many times before. ;)
> > >
> > > I'm getting the sense that you think immigration is America's biggest
> > > "race" problem. Right? Wrong?
> > >
> >
> > Wrong. Afterall we're not importing huge number of blacks. I'm just
> > being pragmatic: there is a race issue in many predominantly lower
> > socioeconomic communities - why worsen it when solutions are not at
> > hand? A rational person will just hold off. Because keep in mind once
> > people arrive, there is really no way to kick them out unless you're in
> > a totalitarian country which same say it's not that far down the road.
> >
> > > I'd say American's biggest "race" problem is the perception of social
> > > inequity.
> >
> > THIS, my friend, is a classic 20th century modern liberal line. I don't
> > like to cut people off in the middle of a paragraph but this one is
> > just very very typical. Just wanted to highlight this for you.
>
> And that, my friend, is a typical example of dismissing an idea without
> addressing it. If it's wrong, surely you can explain why.
> >
Tautology. Why are people unequal? Because they're oppressed. How do
you know they are oppressed? Because they're not equal - how else would
you explain it?
Envy may be hate but in reality it's flattery.
Afterall it's hate directed against oneself, and thus much more
powerful, no?
> >
> > Geez. A&F and A&E are cliche, common, hence suitable when trying to
> > hide a 'class advantage'. And I like them for this reason. It makes you
> > look 'common' (oh now I'm succumbing to peer pressure) But I'd
> > seriously doubt the GAP is in the same class? My typical colleagues go
> > the FCUK route like $70 for a Tee.
> >
> > As for the Lexus, unless you get the SC 430 don't bother. The new IS
> > 350 may be worth a look though.
> >
> > Oh, see how "middle class" or wait, low class, I've now become?
> > Discussing race (a lower socioeconomic past time) and now indulging
> > thoroughly in pop modern culture that is materialist-based. ;)
> >
> > Anyway. I wonder: is it true that the poor don't really think. They
> > just lash out. I used to think of them as disadvantaged. I am now
> > beginning to wonder if they are stupid not able to see thru this.
>
> It's not just the poor who don't think. It's depressingly common in all
> socioeconomic groups.
Some are smarter than others though...
For brand name clothing items, and VCRs (yeah you read that right) and
TVs, and in another story (not in the vid) all the non-brand name items
were left behind
One tact you can use is a post-modernist one. Nothing exists. If you
don't agree with it then just smash everything and say everything's an
artificial construct anyway. They call it philosophical
self-liquidation but I call it 'extreme' subjectivism (like 'extreme'
sports)
Vernon North
richas...@hotmail.com says...
Straw man.
> I hope you weren't inferring that they commit more crimes
> over there too? I doubt it.
Straw man.
>
> Men commit more crime than women. So are they oppressed? Can some
> people be just naturally more violent?
Straw man.
The vast majority of interracial contacts involve no such risk. But the
risk is why I favour profiling at airport security. And that's why Og
the caveman to whom I referred several posts ago should have "profiled
and stereotyped" the sabre-tooth tiger.
>
> Maybe if you live in a black neighborhood you won't be killed. Or maybe
> if you have have to choose between a black doctor and a white or asian
> (or Jewish) chances are that you won't die from complications. But if
> you know nothing else about the doctor and you have this choice and all
> you see is color vs colorless, why not choose from one with a higher
> probability of success? What have you got to lose? Statistically
> speaking.
I don't know. Do you? Let's not just guess. Do you have any data
suggesting that black doctors have more malpractice suits than white
doctors? Let's see it.
Would that be any more effective against illegals than the current
system? I doubt it.
>
> 250k - that's the boundary between middle class vs lower middle class
> household (family) asset in my opinion. The entire idea of having
> immigrants is that so they can be better than 'us'. (not another pun,
> geez, us = US, get it?)
>
> See my previous post here:
>
> http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.asian.american/browse_frm/thread/7c2d2d6b039f2cb3/73dda7974d74a18b?lnk=st&q=richasiankid+class&rnum=8&hl=en#73dda7974d74a18b
>
> Anyone can come up with $250k in US or Canada if they have the will to
> migrate. I understand that this is more difficult elsewhere to attain
> but why lower the standard?
>
> See, Canada already has a big bonus/advantage compared to the US. As I
> said I want it even higher.
>
> You again exposed yourself to be liberal. You don't want these
> so-called middle class but 'rich' (by your definition) people
> immigrate? Jump ahead of whom?
Another straw man. Don't you get tired of attributing silly positions
to me, then "demolishing" them?
My objection to the practice has nothing to do with their being "rich"
or jumping a queue. Few of their businesses succeed because they don't
understand the differences between doing business in their home
countries and Canada. They're not great entrepreneurs, and they don't
bring any other skills into the country. I'd prefer a brain surgeon, a
mechanic, and a plumber. Those are skills we need and from which we
would benefit. But another failed entrepreneur? No thanks.
> Any idea of how many immigrants to the
> US who don't even have 25k? Maybe we should resort to meritocratic IQ
> tests like, what, the 1920s. This should be a composite score with $ in
> bank account, like GPA + SAT or IQ or whatever. That'd be an idea...
>
> You cannot administer to the billions of the world who want to come
> here. What you can do is to select those who enter. And that a country
> can choose rationally, morally, ethically. And that country has no
> obligation to non-citizens.
With the exception of a small proportion of refugees who are in terrible
situations, I agree.
>
> > >
> > > The war of Iraq is stupid. Many empires outstretched themselves in the
> > > past before they fell. The US is doing the same. But then no
> > > civilization is eternal.
> > >
> > > And herein lies the irony: the US has power to send troops to change a
> > > regime half way around the globe, but it doesn't have the power to stop
> > > illegal immigration after 9/11. Farce.
> >
> > Yes, it's too bad. It looks to me like a typical end of empire
> > phenomenon is starting in the US. I watched a few newsgroups very
> > closely just after 9-11 to see what Americans were saying. Instead of
> > trying to "understand the enemy", they fell for the Bush
> > administration's patriotism and jingoism. Those who don't take the time
> > to understand the enemy are sure to make many mistakes. And those who
> > don't seek to truly understand a phenomenon they're trying to change
> > will do the same. Hence, my campaign against racism.
>
> What? Against racism? Come again?
>
> You can be a paleo-conservative.
Well, I am pale white, and conservative. ;-)
>
> BTW do people cry anti-semite in a round-about way when you say that?
BWAAHAAHAAHAAHAAA! You obviously don't know how "popular" the war in
Iraq is in Canada. Very few Canadians endorse it.
> I've seen more Jews compared to gentiles, for instance, who are in
> favor of this war. I have Brit relatives who confirmed these
> suspicions.
Not here.
>
> > >
> > > Just some thoughts...
> > >
> > >
> > > > > Better
> > > > > safe than sorry. Or would you say just dive in and let all hell break
> > > > > loose? Because that'd be too liberal even for my taste - and I'm
> > > > > not a conservative as I've said many many times before. ;)
> > > >
> > > > I'm getting the sense that you think immigration is America's biggest
> > > > "race" problem. Right? Wrong?
> > > >
> > >
> > > Wrong. Afterall we're not importing huge number of blacks. I'm just
> > > being pragmatic: there is a race issue in many predominantly lower
> > > socioeconomic communities - why worsen it when solutions are not at
> > > hand? A rational person will just hold off. Because keep in mind once
> > > people arrive, there is really no way to kick them out unless you're in
> > > a totalitarian country which same say it's not that far down the road.
> > >
> > > > I'd say American's biggest "race" problem is the perception of social
> > > > inequity.
> > >
> > > THIS, my friend, is a classic 20th century modern liberal line. I don't
> > > like to cut people off in the middle of a paragraph but this one is
> > > just very very typical. Just wanted to highlight this for you.
> >
> > And that, my friend, is a typical example of dismissing an idea without
> > addressing it. If it's wrong, surely you can explain why.
> > >
>
> Tautology. Why are people unequal? Because they're oppressed. How do
> you know they are oppressed? Because they're not equal - how else would
> you explain it?
Read more slowly. PERCEPTION of social inequity. PERCEPTION.
Having people hate me because of my wealth or success is a "flattery" I
could do without, thanks.
Bad news. Now I understand the attitude of the Police Chief of NO when
he was asked about the 30% of his police force who did't stay on duty.
but 70% did, and in many cases, their own homes were destroyed.
Doesn't it disturb you just a little, though, that the frequent careless
attribution of this to "black" police officers, without also showing the
heroic role of the majority smears a lot of very good people? It does
me. (I'm not accusing you of this.)
You haven't got around yet to dismissing my statement that America's
biggest race problem is perception of social inequity. Your tautology
argument is simplistic in the extreme.
Verno
richas...@hotmail.com
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000698.html
"A Courant analysis of disciplinary actions against doctors nationwide
found, however, that both Howard and Meharry produce troubled doctors
more frequently than most other schools - at rates about 10 times
greater than the schools with the lowest numbers. The actions ranged
from a simple citation to permanent license revocation for a range of
misdeeds including medical incompetence, ethical lapses and criminal
behavior."
Granted I haven't read the original paper (link de-linked) but I'd love
to see it. Both Howard and Meharry are historically black schools.
Separate issue: black docs also fail USMLE exams more often, or so I've
read - that's the licensing exam I think so it's not just the entrance
MCAT
It still beats family unification, and illegal immigration.
Does paleoconservatism exist in CAnada?
Not a chance you're a 'conservative' in the US as you admitted. I'm not
one and I sense that on a number of issues I'm already 'right' of you
in the political spectrum.
see end
not really, bad things are said about men all the time and I don't
really care, right?
Let's imagine that you're right in everything and in every count. My
naive answer is this: perception or rather misperception should be easy
to change by education. I have contributed slightly to this (I hope) by
that affirmative paper I cited - it shows that blacks are at much
greater odds at being admitted than a comparable white or asian with
similar qualifications. SATs likewise are not biased against blacks or
so I read in that blacks with same SAT scores do roughly the same as
white counterparts. This should assuage some envy or perception of
injustice.
We should abandon this preposterous notion or illusion equality of
outcome, and it should be taught early that not everyone can become a
rocket scientist when they grow up. Some will end up as janitors.
Discussing racial differences is also very important and blacks need to
be aware that their own shortcomings are a result not *because of* but
*in spite of* what society has done for them. HOpefully this can be
done thru education and a re-orienting of priorities.
Failing this, in the end and in violation of my libertarian
sensibilities I submit that it may be possible that a substantial
proportion of the population may perhaps need to be siphoned off as
permanent wards of the state in 21st century American dystopia.
Increased $ will be needed for centralization and managing an
increasing prison population, when black males are more likely to go to
prison than college (if that already hasn't happened)
And there are increasing numbers of people to my right who support
racial separatism as a last resort. (Those further right will say it's
the first resort) Good fences do make good neighbors afterall (?Robert
Frost)
You can chase nature away but it always returns with a pitchfork....
Vernon North
richas...@hotmail.com says...
Of course, you know the dangers of taking the results from 2 schools and
extrapolating to the entire population of black doctors . . .
>
> Separate issue: black docs also fail USMLE exams more often, or so I've
> read - that's the licensing exam I think so it's not just the entrance
> MCAT
What conclusion would you draw from that?
Regardless, I would prefer it be dropped.
Anything with the word "conservative" in it is anathema to most
Canadians. ;-)
>
> Not a chance you're a 'conservative' in the US as you admitted. I'm not
> one and I sense that on a number of issues I'm already 'right' of you
> in the political spectrum.
I think so, and defying the "normal" progression of political
consciousness, I think I'm becoming less conservative over time. I'm
still a fiscal conservative, and in Canada I'm right of centre on social
issues, but I would certainly be left of centre on social issues in the
US.
You're acquiescing to the feminization of America! Don't go down
without a fight! (I can pun, too.)
That would be nice. But I doubt it. Anything "the man" tells you is
probably a lie. ;-)
> I have contributed slightly to this (I hope) by
> that affirmative paper I cited - it shows that blacks are at much
> greater odds at being admitted than a comparable white or asian with
> similar qualifications. SATs likewise are not biased against blacks or
> so I read in that blacks with same SAT scores do roughly the same as
> white counterparts. This should assuage some envy or perception of
> injustice.
Not as long as elements within the black community deride going to
university as "trying to be white".
>
> We should abandon this preposterous notion or illusion equality of
> outcome, and it should be taught early that not everyone can become a
> rocket scientist when they grow up. Some will end up as janitors.
Agreed. This is not, and should never be about, equality of outcomes.
>
> Discussing racial differences is also very important and blacks need to
> be aware that their own shortcomings are a result not *because of* but
> *in spite of* what society has done for them. HOpefully this can be
> done thru education and a re-orienting of priorities.
You're more optimistic about this than I am.
>
> Failing this, in the end and in violation of my libertarian
> sensibilities I submit that it may be possible that a substantial
> proportion of the population may perhaps need to be siphoned off as
> permanent wards of the state in 21st century American dystopia.
> Increased $ will be needed for centralization and managing an
> increasing prison population, when black males are more likely to go to
> prison than college (if that already hasn't happened)
>
> And there are increasing numbers of people to my right who support
> racial separatism as a last resort.
> (Those further right will say it's
> the first resort) Good fences do make good neighbors afterall (?Robert
> Frost)
>
> You can chase nature away but it always returns with a pitchfork....
>
Sticky problems, indeed, that stereotyping exacerbates rather than
helps.
Verno
Chairman Mao
Statistics don't lie even ones like these from the typical political correct
US Government sources.
Amerika's ugly secret is the cultivation of 40 years of liberal/welfare
negro's to give an extra 10% vote for the Democrapic party.
They don't live in these hell hole areas they created.
<richas...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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Vernon North
says...
> Statistics don't lie even ones like these from the typical political correct
> US Government sources.
>
you the numbers don't support your point of view, I'll bet.
Verno
richas...@hotmail.com
Remember a while ago we talked about a 'blind spot'? It may be more
properly labelled as 'tunnel vision'. You can debate about small points
of course, but let's look at the big picture. I think that an important
issue here is *convergence* of the evidence.
Blacks have lower IQs (this is where this thread started off from)
Blacks have lower SATs
Blacks have lower university GPAs
Blacks have lower MCAT scores
Blacks have lower medical GPAs in med school
Blacks have lower USMLE scores, and while it is true that they fail
more often, most do get their license in the end thru test re-taking
At least 2 black medical schools produce more troubled doctors (see
immediate post above)
One black hospital commit recurrent errors (read it; it's an
eye-opener!)
http://www.latimes.com/news/yahoo/la-me-031704kingdrew,1,1210692.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
(Quoted none other than the liberal LA Times!)
Background:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-kdday5dec09,0,2275709.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
"That flood of anger led directly to the creation of Martin Luther King
Jr./Drew Medical Center, which opened in 1972. And the power of that
feeling, rooted both in centuries of black struggle and in pride and
hope for a better tomorrow, has always been as much a part of the
hospital as IV drips and surgical gloves.
>From the beginning, King/Drew was to be something special - a
hospital that reflected African American achievement and power, a model
for urban hospitals nationwide.
But within three years, it had become clear that, for all the
aspirations the hospital represented, it was falling far short. **At
times, instead of healing its patients - almost all of them black and
Latino - it was killing and maiming them.**" (my emphasis)
Seems like nothing has changed over 30 years!
http://www.latimes.com/news/yahoo/la-me-031704kingdrew,1,1210692.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
(Quoted above)
What did you say about having black physicians serving black
communities again?
Now, dissect it more.
Blacks have both lower verbal and lower performance IQs.
Blacks have both lower math and lower verbal SATs.
Blacks have lower MCAT scores across all sections, including the essay
component.
Blacks have all these lower indices across individual states and
individual universities, and this is reproducible year after year.
Taken together, the evidence is *consistent*, and all powerfully point
in the same direction and *converge*.
> >
> > Separate issue: black docs also fail USMLE exams more often, or so I've
> > read - that's the licensing exam I think so it's not just the entrance
> > MCAT
>
> What conclusion would you draw from that?
see above
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/dp20030812.shtml
You may be interested in the above
I'm not sure i totally agree, but the part on religion is interesting.
I think it's no accident that many new age hippies who are 'liberal'
endorse Eastern mysticism, for example. It's just so much softer, so
much more 'connected', and so much more ego-dissolving, which has
psychological connections perhaps with political environmentalism and
collectivism.
In reality I think no one really believes it. I was just replying to
your point there about perception. Afterall if it's only about
perception and not about a deliberate intent to misperceive, then
pointing out the error would be sufficient, no?
In fact I wrote this earlier:
> > > > One tact you can use is a post-modernist one. Nothing exists. If you
> > > > don't agree with it then just smash everything and say everything's an
> > > > artificial construct anyway. They call it philosophical
> > > > self-liquidation but I call it 'extreme' subjectivism (like 'extreme'
> > > > sports)
This is precisely why many liberals are in bed with this post-modernist
ethos where reality is comfortably in flux. You choose what you like,
like a dinner combo at a fast food store.
In this case, few will admit that their own group has lower IQ because
it's a huge psychological undertaking. As such there will be
rationalizations and obfuscations etc etc and so they just sweep
everything off and justify that it must be this X-factor, 'racism',
that is so durable and all-permeating that no amount of correction is
able to attenuate let alone eradicate its pernicious influence. Thus no
amount of affirmative action or rule-bending will be sufficient until
outcomes are equal. And who knows maybe even that will not be enough.
After equality is achieved, more vocal minorities within the minority
group itself will likely want to get even. That's just human nature.
Can your wanton liberalism blind you to some obvious facts, perhaps?
;)
> >
> > Failing this, in the end and in violation of my libertarian
> > sensibilities I submit that it may be possible that a substantial
> > proportion of the population may perhaps need to be siphoned off as
> > permanent wards of the state in 21st century American dystopia.
> > Increased $ will be needed for centralization and managing an
> > increasing prison population, when black males are more likely to go to
> > prison than college (if that already hasn't happened)
> >
> > And there are increasing numbers of people to my right who support
> > racial separatism as a last resort.
> > (Those further right will say it's
> > the first resort) Good fences do make good neighbors afterall (?Robert
> > Frost)
> >
> > You can chase nature away but it always returns with a pitchfork....
> >
> Sticky problems, indeed, that stereotyping exacerbates rather than
> helps.
>
> Verno
The issue of black IQ (again, what started this thread) is therefore
important, and psychologists now think that this has some awesome
explaining power in societal outcome. When one says that blacks have
lower IQ than whites, as a group, that is obviously not stereotyping
(not saying that you said I was) because that's just stating a fact.
And I don't think facts can be racist. Unless, of course, facts and
reality do not exist.
In the case of separation, that's where the 'class' or $ issue helps in
a fractured society. It helps prevent poorer (and often blacker) people
from coming in, so it's an invisible barrier if you will. It allows you
to choose your neighborhood that you like and stay away from areas
which can be problematic. In that sense many neighborhood is already de
facto segregated, more or less voluntarily.
Some go further. I'm not sure if there are Anglos who don't really mind
Quebec leaving. Some Americans are now saying and wondering if only
they can somehow entice and coax Mexico into taking back California!
Vernon North
I said that lower average MCAT scores don't automatically mean some
black doctors will not be fully competent. MCAT scores don't tell the
full story.
Neither do the articles you have cited. There are equally plausible
explanations of why, for example, black doctors at King/Drew exhibited
such failures. Let's see if you have a blind spot. Can you think of
them?
>
> Now, dissect it more.
> Blacks have both lower verbal and lower performance IQs.
> Blacks have both lower math and lower verbal SATs.
> Blacks have lower MCAT scores across all sections, including the essay
> component.
>
> Blacks have all these lower indices across individual states and
> individual universities, and this is reproducible year after year.
>
> Taken together, the evidence is *consistent*, and all powerfully point
> in the same direction and *converge*.
But converge on what? On your belief that all medical school placements
should depend solely on MCAT scores and GPAs? I have already rejected
this idea based on my own experience as a student in 2 professional
faculties, as an instructor in one faculty, and as a consultant to
faculty members. Test scores alone aren't enough. Any professor with
admissions responsibilities will tell you this.
Let's further test your own blind spot. Can you think of any reason why
the US experience may dramatically overstate the differences between
black and other doctors? Let's see if you can go beyond the binary.
Not really. Prager's article is a joke. He exhibits the hallmark of
ideologues of all stripes. It can be simplified to "what's wrong with
Liberals? They aren't conservatives". Ideologues on all sides reduce
every issue to stereotypes rather than understanding and addressing the
underlying causes. Too bad. See how he reduces "liberals" to his
stereotype:
""Character" is no longer a liberal word because it implies self-restraint.
"Good and evil" are not liberal words either as they imply a moral
standard beyond one's feelings. In assessing what position to take on
moral or social questions, the liberal asks him or herself, "How do I
feel about it?" or "How do I show the most compassion?" not "What is
right?" or "What is wrong?" For the liberal, right and wrong are
dismissed as unknowable, and every person chooses his or her own
morality."
Character, right, wrong, good, and evil" are all important parts of MY
vocabulary and values. But as soon as someone labels me as a "liberal"
they infer beliefs and attitudes I don't have, based on that label.
If your mental model for human beliefs has only two categories --
liberals and conservatives, there's no room for the many shades of gray
that make up the real world.
>
> I'm not sure i totally agree, but the part on religion is interesting.
> I think it's no accident that many new age hippies who are 'liberal'
> endorse Eastern mysticism, for example. It's just so much softer, so
> much more 'connected', and so much more ego-dissolving, which has
> psychological connections perhaps with political environmentalism and
> collectivism.
It's sophomoric pap, like the article.
No. One or two data points, no matter how good, don't usually change
people's world view because people aren't rational, and data virtually
always presents an incomplete view. Most people either ignore data
completely, or they seize on it to draw simplistic, premature and
unwarranted conclusions. If you don't understand a phenomenon, any
attempt to change it will likely make it worse. That's one of the
reasons why politicians' "solutions" to social problems have often been
big failures. They idealize the "problem" to pander to a constituency,
then apply a solution that the constituency likes. It wins votes, which
may be their real objective. But it doesn't solve the problem, and may
actually exacerbate it. Example: quotas at med schools, anyone?
>
> In fact I wrote this earlier:
>
> > > > > One tact you can use is a post-modernist one. Nothing exists. If you
> > > > > don't agree with it then just smash everything and say everything's an
> > > > > artificial construct anyway. They call it philosophical
> > > > > self-liquidation but I call it 'extreme' subjectivism (like 'extreme'
> > > > > sports)
>
> This is precisely why many liberals are in bed with this post-modernist
> ethos where reality is comfortably in flux. You choose what you like,
> like a dinner combo at a fast food store.
Conservatives do exactly the same thing -- it's popular with ideologues
not matter what their ideology. They just choose from a different menu.
>
> In this case, few will admit that their own group has lower IQ because
> it's a huge psychological undertaking. As such there will be
> rationalizations and obfuscations etc etc and so they just sweep
> everything off and justify that it must be this X-factor, 'racism',
> that is so durable and all-permeating that no amount of correction is
> able to attenuate let alone eradicate its pernicious influence. Thus no
> amount of affirmative action or rule-bending will be sufficient until
> outcomes are equal. And who knows maybe even that will not be enough.
> After equality is achieved, more vocal minorities within the minority
> group itself will likely want to get even. That's just human nature.
>
> Can your wanton liberalism blind you to some obvious facts, perhaps?
> ;)
See my point below.
>
> > >
> > > Failing this, in the end and in violation of my libertarian
> > > sensibilities I submit that it may be possible that a substantial
> > > proportion of the population may perhaps need to be siphoned off as
> > > permanent wards of the state in 21st century American dystopia.
> > > Increased $ will be needed for centralization and managing an
> > > increasing prison population, when black males are more likely to go to
> > > prison than college (if that already hasn't happened)
> > >
> > > And there are increasing numbers of people to my right who support
> > > racial separatism as a last resort.
> > > (Those further right will say it's
> > > the first resort) Good fences do make good neighbors afterall (?Robert
> > > Frost)
> > >
> > > You can chase nature away but it always returns with a pitchfork....
> > >
> > Sticky problems, indeed, that stereotyping exacerbates rather than
> > helps.
> >
> > Verno
>
> The issue of black IQ (again, what started this thread) is therefore
> important, and psychologists now think that this has some awesome
> explaining power in societal outcome. When one says that blacks have
> lower IQ than whites, as a group, that is obviously not stereotyping
> (not saying that you said I was) because that's just stating a fact.
I agree that is isn't stereotyping, but unfortunately, that's where it
usually leads. Frank discussions involving racial differences usually
lead to people drawing conclusions about individuals based on averages
-- clearly stereotyping.
And this is the point in the movie where I came in. To state "blacks
have lower IQs and make worse doctors" (I'm not attributing that to you)
results on the weak-minded ~95% of the population concluding that
there's great risk in being treated by a black doctor. That may be true
in a society that mandates quotas.
But let's say there are no mandate quotas, and say university X includes
more than GPAs and MCAT scores in their admissions criteria, admitting
black med students who meet the school's high standards (including
stringent requirements for high GPAs and MCAT scores) for social
reasons, as I previously suggested. People CAN have good assurance that
a black doctor graduating from university X is likely to be a good
doctor. That would be "good" -- black patients could choose a black
doctor with confidence.
Now, when you apply a quota that forces the U to accept a set percentage
from "target groups" that have significantly lower average MCAT and
GPAs, you're virtually *guaranteeing* that the target group will, on
average, under perform upon graduation. Could that be what's behind the
anecdotes you've cited?
In general, focusing any discussion on a emotionally charged dichotomy
(like black/white) obscures other causative variables that may be
equally or more important. That is the hazard in race discussions.
Imagine Jack Nicholson from "A Few Good Men" shouting angrily "You can't
handle the truth". On one level he's saying you can't handle unpleasant
truths about black IQs. But go deeper, and maybe he's saying you aren't
smart enough to resist using overly simplistic models to draw
superficial conclusions, and your solutions won't work.
That is what happens all too often on race (and too many other)
questions. And when it does, it plays into (for example) black
perceptions that they don't get a fair shake because *the system* is
stacked against them.
That's why I contest racial remarks posted here and try to get people to
focus on individuals and behaviour rather than race and stereotyping. I
don't think most people are smart enough to get past the simplistic
binary view.
Here's my challenge to you. Try it for a while. I think you'll find it
isn't easy. Look carefully for the stereotypes in what you and your
friends say, and call yourself/them on it. See how many say "hey,
you're right -- that IS stereotyping". I think you'll be unpleasantly
surprised at how weak minded or careless most people are -- "liberals"
and "conservatives" alike. I started doing this myself about 4 years ago
after I did some volunteer work for the Holocaust Education Centre (if
that doesn't move you to examine your perceptions about race, nothing
will). It struck me how easy it is to see stereotypes when you look at
someone instead of seeing the individual. It has made a difference in
how I view people, and it has opened up channels of communication for me
that were previously closed. It's been "good".
> And I don't think facts can be racist.
Not facts alone -- only the ways they are usually misused.
> Unless, of course, facts and
> reality do not exist.
I hated Kant. Let's not go there.
>
> In the case of separation, that's where the 'class' or $ issue helps in
> a fractured society. It helps prevent poorer (and often blacker) people
> from coming in, so it's an invisible barrier if you will. It allows you
> to choose your neighborhood that you like and stay away from areas
> which can be problematic. In that sense many neighborhood is already de
> facto segregated, more or less voluntarily.
>
> Some go further. I'm not sure if there are Anglos who don't really mind
> Quebec leaving.
There are many who say "Not only will I LET them go, I'll help them find
the #$@% door!"
Quebec's quest for "Sovereignty Association" was morphed in the public
mind into a false "French/English" dichotomy, when in fact many
Canadians are asking for the same thing -- decentralization of powers
and taxation authority from the Federal Government to the Provinces.
This is what I mean by a simplistic dichotomy blinding people to the
deeper, and more important issues. If we worked WITH Quebec, we'd all be
better off except the bureaucrats and lobbyists in Ottawa.
> Some Americans are now saying and wondering if only
> they can somehow entice and coax Mexico into taking back California!
>
As long as dull-minded morons run amok unchallenged, the world will only
get worse. Would the US REALLY be better off without California? I
don't think so. But if you-all do, we have a plan for a new country
called Cascadia -- BC, Alberta, Washington, Oregon, Idaho - - - and we'd
accept Nevada and California as participants, too. ;-)
At this point, I've got to abandon this thread. It's been fun -- and
it's by far the best exchange I've had on soc.culture.japan. But it's
costing me too much billable time, and during the fall and spring I
can't afford to let the available hours go by unbilled. :-)
Thanks, it was both challenging AND civil -- a rare combination here!
Verno
Chairman Mao
Affirmahtive Aktion kills when the doctor is an unqualified idiot.
The same situation exist for those idiots given command rank in the US
military.
You greatest president ordered that the officer ranks become "less White"
and more "black" in 1993.
I saw the biggest idiots get promoted to positions that resulted in death
from helo crashes to safety and maintenance issues.
Friendly fire was another problem.
Now this niggarized military is stuck in Iraq, the Active Duty forces were
so destroyed with social engineering experiments that the brunt of the
fighting today is placed on the reserves and National Guard troops.
Have any of you ever wondered why?
If so, read above...
Thanks Clinton you piece of shit...
<richas...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1127894339....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Ladies and gentlemen, then, it is an honor to close this thread after
such a stimulating debate and discussion.
There are many valid points put forth here indeed, but I submit that
one of them, with regards to this black doctor merit issue, is the
principle of consistency and convergence. One of the accepted reasons
that our meritocratic society uses GPAs, SAT scores, and MCAT (or LSAT
or GMAT) scores and other quantifiable indices to select our
'elite' is the belief that these are *objective* surrogate
quantifiable markers for a socially desired outcome. We believe that
people should be judged by merit, and not by distracting, irrelevant
and extraneous factors such as race, sex, religion, origin, or
socioeconomic status.
In addition, my discussant brought up pragmatism. In a multicultural,
multiethnic, multiracial, and increasingly multilinguistic society, a
quantified and objective criteria to selection is essential to avoid
the *perception* of unfairness. Will my opponent agree with this given
that he is a pragmatist? If selection process is based on vague
criteria such as 'interpersonal skills' or 'degree of patient
concern' or 'capacity to serve' one's community, this softness
will *much more* likely to foment further discontent amongst those who
now feel dispossessed. Why is this so? Because it is softer and less
transparent, and ANY lapse from a quota-like outcome will create
suspicions in this scenario and lead to cries of 'unfairness'.
The evidence that I presented converges on the fact that blacks are
less likely to be competent doctors. Even the most ardent AA supporter
had a difficult time finding data to support that black doctors are
equal to, let alone surpass, non-black ones (I came across a paper in
support of AA actually, and it wimpishly cited that affirmative action
beneficiaries performed 'nearly as well' as non-affirmative action
beneficiaries). Medicine in relation to real life medical situations
are more knowledge based than law in relation to being in a court of
law, which in turn may be more knowledge based and concrete bound than
in business school in relation to business, where one is more prone to
macro-fluctuations and yes, luck. And for this reason I think acquiring
a basic knowledge base in medicine and law is more important than in
business. And this is what some of these tests are good at measuring.
Furthermore, there is no reason to suspect that intellectual
incompetence or lack of knowledge as reflected by low GPAs, SATs, and
MCAT scores will not translate into practical ineptitude. To counter
this one would have to really seriously believe that someone scoring
higher on a GPA and/or higher on a MCAT scale will likely, at a
statistical level, somehow, perform equal to or worse off in a real
life clinical situation in a patient counter, more likely to make wrong
clinical decisions, commit more errors, and lead to more adverse
outcomes. It is imaginable, but how likely is it?
In addition, the data also suggests quite powerfully that there will be
more intellectually incompetent black doctors vis-à-vis other groups,
even when selection criteria is blind, via Bayesian analysis which has
been discussed here. This is an uncomfortable implication that I will
not go into. One can of course stipulate and speculate on contributing
factors of this differential group outcome, from environmental or
culture causes, to biological or genetic ones. The MCAT and USMLE
predicts, however imperfectly, physician competency at least according
to their stated goals - unless one faults the entire meritocratic
selection enterprise as being 'unfair' or rigged - which is what
egalitarians (and not even liberals) ultimately want to do.
One can add the case of Hispanics and Asians into the equation. Asians,
in spite of being a recent immigrant group, perform equally or slightly
better than whites. Furthermore Russians do remarkably well in SATs,
and Indians likewise do. Jews outscore everyone. Discrimination cannot
explain all. Neither does culture, although it probably explains some
of the differential within a generation. And certainly not environment:
rich blacks score lower than some poor Asian refugees in the SAT for
example.
Now, as for dichotomies, I think dichotomies are fittingly both
simplistic and true. People develop in-group and out-group bonding all
the time, as shown in sports, in sociological experiments, and in
prison populations which are in reality sociological experiments if you
will. And for this reason cooperation comes hard, and it is often
difficult to cooperate with each other in the absence of an external
threat or common interest. Again this is a pragmatic concern. As I
quoted before, 'me against my brother, me and my brother against my
cousin, me and my cousin against the world'. Battles may not be
necessarily done over racial fault lines, but any visible divide is
likely to accentuate rather than attenuate conflict. Are you in or are
you out, *that* has been perennial battle cry throughout human history.
The human propensity to battle is well known. And in the microcosm of
wars - i.e. battles for scarce goods in society, the operant
principle is the same.
As for politics which after all is war by other means, politics can no
longer be simplistically classified as a one-dimensional right or left,
black or white. Libertarians like myself are especially aware of this
fact that we can be homeless refugees in the political domain. Many
libertarian sites will have a left-right x-axis superimposed on an
anarchy-authoritarian one in a (still) simplistic 2D one. That of
course is part of the charm and we comfort and self-confront ourselves
as ideological loose canons.
But what liberals often seem to indulge in and to celebrate in is this
world painted in this anonymous mishmash spectrum of gray. But wait.
>From a common sense viewpoint, without black and white, there cannot be
shades of gray. Isn't gray a combination of black and white after
all? Indulging in this ecumenical grayness only decreases cognitive
resolution. It blurs rather than enlightens. Gray is only a secondary
color, not a primary one. By the way is this why 'multifactorial'
has become such as buzzword?
What left wingers and yes, ideological right wingers want to slip
through in this color metaphor (? Pun - 'color' metaphor) or
whatever is inconsistency. Reality is consistent and truth is
ultimately connected. This is not universally loved if accountability
is not what you ultimately desire. And that is why consistency is
anathema to so many, be they liberal or conservative, left or right.
Consistency in this sense rightly or wrongly has psychological
connections with dogma and truth thus feels threateningly rigid and not
malleable. But I shall defer metaphysical questions till another time.
Prager's article, while simplistic, does resonate in some ways. I
suspect that liberals whether deliberately or not infuse this
postmodernist type thinking in a way with a reason - this fuzzy factor
gives some intellectual leeway and indirectly implies freedom from
responsibility and allows an escape hatch when conclusions become
unpleasant enough. Those who are practical try to keep things as simple
as possible. They don't try to deliberate inflate the number of
variables. In my view, reductionism is not a dirty world. I believe
that simplicity is elegance.
I've asked if paleoconservativsm may be of a more tenable and
consistent position or if it exists in Canada. I've gotten no reply
but I think I know the answer. In pre-WWI Europe, the middle East, in
China and Japan, and in Africa, people subscribe to a worldview that I
suspect differs far more from current modern American neo-conservatism
than it does with modern liberalism and now defunct socialists. The two
ends of a string meets in a circle. Communism and fascism have much
more in common than capitalism. The atomistic individualism espoused by
libertarians may in reality be a flash in the frying pan I graciously
admit, just like the current Bush jingoistic neoconservative cultural
imperialistic policy. I'm willing to entertain this discomforting
viewpoint in spite of my political persuasion in the larger scheme of
place and in the grander scheme of time. What will be left ultimately
may be a collective right vs a collective left. And based on human
nature and human history, I suspect that the collective right wins.
Mother nature trumps human nature.
There is also discussion of perhaps 95% of the population may be
weak-minded. Unfortunately that is true, and it is a relative concept.
I think it illustrates the discontinuity of the elite from the common,
and I admit that I am not exempt from this paternalism in my class
musings. I do however think that if this is true, then honestly
democracy is in itself in peril. Why on earth would we want to delegate
the common people the right to 'rule' or elect 'rulers'? Why
would people want the poor, the less smart, the less educated, and the
less capable make or even partake in their smart part political
decisions? Is this just another pragmatic maneuver to assuage their
anger and envy and thus a Noble Lie - and like magic once revealed it
loses its power and is hence taboo in society? That is, is it that we
need to give most every one false hope so believe that they have a
shot, and so we entertain, recreate, and retell this myth where
everyone can be a rocket scientist and thus live happily after in the
greatest nation on earth?
And this self-contradictory position by my discussant remains yet
unresolved: "Now, when you apply a quota that forces the U to accept
a set percentage from "target groups" that have significantly lower
average MCAT and GPAs, you're virtually *guaranteeing* that the target
group will, on average, under perform upon graduation. Could that be
what's behind the anecdotes you've cited?" So, are we now to assume
that a certain degree of lowering of average MCAT and GPAs are
guaranteeing underperformance - which was really my original point
that so needlessly generated so much discussion (illuminating value
notwithstanding)? It's only a matter of degree that's in question.
As long as the "main" selection criteria is MCAT and GPA scores
however undercut, spiced, salted and peppered with race, sex or other
criteria then it's OK? Yet when there are outright quotas, then no?
This type of ambivalence is politics of appeasement perhaps, and the
consistent side independent of whether it's true or false usually
wins in a debate. I suspect that when it comes to a polarizing issue
when you try to please everyone then you please no one.
Lastly, I think if data presents an incomplete view, the appropriate
approach is to gather more data. This is what scientists do routinely.
Newton admitted that when he was a boy playing on the sea-shore, he
diverted himself once here and once there, trying to find a smoother
pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, only realizing that the great
ocean of truth laid all undiscovered before him. He was humble but he
also honestly enunciated the truth. Honest people in real life don't
try to hide inconvenient facts, and they don't try to suppress
discussions or sweep things under the rug. In this case, it is prudent
to ask if black doctors do better or worse than their white
counterparts in the UK, for example. What about Canada? What about
Australia? Or in Europe? This is a valid question. For now we can have
more data points and a hypothesis becomes testable, and this in fact
becomes a prospective project in the sense that we have a hypothesis
that is empirically falsifiable. If the data points converge, then we
will have a stronger hypothesis or thesis. If not, then the hypothesis
is weakened. I don't know what the answers to these questions are,
but the reason this question is not asked may have to do with the
variety of answers that may come about. And some of the answers can be
scary and may not be palatable. Asking the questions can be easy. But
confronting the answers can be hard, especially from the ivory tower.
May be that's why they are not asked in the first place. No one
really wants to know. No one needs to know. No one should know.
But I have one more reason to ask this question. It's about the
principle of parsimony. If black underachievement is seen all around
the world - with blacks being downtrodden for whatever reasons
everywhere constantly, throughout place, throughout time, throughout
history - then it is something to seriously deliberate on. One can
pan out and be less seriously concerned about black underachievement in
the US as it will need much less explaining. Of course there are unique
local conditions and political factors that contributed to this but
again it's the big picture that matters. But ultimately the question
has to be why did Europe conquer Africa and not the other way around? I
know that books have been written about this, and this violates taboo
in every imaginable way but is it possible that underachievement and
dependency can be endogenous rather than exogenous? I've never heard
of blacks being smarter or overachievers compared to say Arabs,
Indians, or Chinese for example. Maybe it's not just in the Western
world that their mental acuity is in question. Why is that? Is this
another question that we should avoid? I think that consistent with my
discussant, we should be able to raise tough questions. The tough
answers, however, may undermine what many implicitly cherish. And to
ask them risks shattering their romantic ideals.
Lastly, finally and finally, I'd say that the difference between
liberal and conservatism is not necessarily about the narrow topic of
limits of government. It's about something deeper. It may have to do
with a belief in our capacity for change, for better or for worse. I
for example do not approve of the Iraq war in part because I'm not
optimistic that we can make Muslims look more like us. If anything I
suspect that we'd be dragged down to their level and instead of we
changing them, they may end up changing us. I think that people differ
in many ways, and it'd be a statistically safe bet to think that our
generation, as proud and optimistic as I am, will not change the course
of history in the grand scheme of things. In this sense I guess I am a
closet-pseudoconservative. I therefore dissent quite forcefully from my
upper middle class and near-rich contemporaries: and they also
forcefully disagree with me. Maybe it is possible that we create
something new, but if you're a betting man we may perhaps do just as
well place our bets on history and historical momentum. Maybe it
doesn't hurt looking back, learning from the past and sampling
ancestral wisdom. Maybe rather than looking up to our idealized and
idolized supernatural God for guidance, naively thinking that we are
made in His image, we may just as well look down to our natural
carbon-based cousins and tap them for directions to map out our future
genetic trajectory. Meteorologists have always said that you have a 2/3
to 3/4 chance of predicting the correct weather if you just
simplistically assume the weather tomorrow will be the same as
today's. There are times when even I can't fault inertia, when I
see almost all people who invest in lottery tickets do not get rich.
And with this I close this discussion,
Sincerely,
Jasper Towing Co; Ltd.
Where ya been ya little CUNT?
"Chairman Mao" <nih...@shanghai.com> wrote in message
news:43417...@galaxy.uncensored-news.com...