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Jamal X's avatar

White Orange County Superior Court Judge in California has been arrested for shooting and killing his wife. As a prosecutor, he was honored with attorney of the year.

https://apnews.com/article/california-judge-arrested-wife-homicide-83257911dc9b2e00dc8e9bfd2d0a35b2

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J McCauley's avatar

No one is defending "the Lost Cause." Certainly not educational textbooks or publisher supplied curricula. Slavery as practiced in the West is rightly and roundly denounced for the unspeakable evil it was.

OTOH, I am always nervous when we as a society try to "memory hole" anything. We need to remember where we WERE so that we may advance to a more equitable and equal society. Destroying monuments and statues, well I'm not sure that's a wise course of action for a society to take. I'm afraid if we do we may prove George Santayana correct.

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Bill Heath's avatar

I've often wondered if I should have a pile of bumper stickers made up saying "Read the Moynihan Report." Except it isn't enough by itself. I read a study about two weeks ago tracking black versus white spending patterns. Blacks are far more likely than whites to buy luxury cars, high end clothing and expensive jewelry. That isi not a decent route to building intergenerational wealth.

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Jamal X's avatar

Blacks like myself and my wife can afford to buy high-end material possessions, for which we earned. We worked and planned very hard. Whites can't have all the fun. Lol! Besides, our children will be in very good financial shape after we both die. They are all productive black citizens. Thanks for your stupid ass stereotyping. Karen is ingrained in the anti-black stereotyping and loves to call 911 to weaponize the police against blacks, which adds to our demise. I used to rescue wannabe proud boys from Aryan Brotherhood prison gang rape during my 34-year professional career in the prison industrial complex. And my pay grade was way above being a guard.

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Bill Heath's avatar

Fascinating perspective.

Are you claiming that the Moynihan Report has not proved prophetic? The situation today is as Moynihan predicted, and it applies across an entire population, not one family. For buying patterns, see https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/how-blacks-and-whites-spend-differently/486038/

For the stereotyping, I would ask you to conduct some self-reflection. I am not a "Karen," and your assumption of racism.is unearned.

Thank you for your public service.

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Jamal X's avatar

I apologize for comparing you to “Karen.” Thanks for acknowledging my service.

Moving along, “Black Labor White Wealth---The Search for Power and Economic Justice” by Dr. Claud Anderson: Government’s conservatism alienates blacks. Anti-black conservatism from 1980 to 1992 severed the fragile relationship that was beginning to build between blacks and the government. The government established new priorities that reversed most of the progress made by blacks during the 1960s. It withdrew its marginal support of blacks for political and racial reasons, just as it did during the reconstruction period following the civil war. President Lyndon Johnson acknowledged the social and economic inequalities of black life. Through his Great Society programs, he sought to do what the government had failed to do during reconstruction---to relieve the depressed conditions of black America by redistributing opportunities and self-development tools. But again, the larger society would not tolerate it. There was a backlash against all programs and policies that suggested wealth and power redistribution between whites and blacks. Conservative whites opposed public policies that mandated bussing, affirmative action, quotas, equal housing opportunities, set aides and racial preferences. The conservatives insisted that their actions were not racist and that they were committed to equal opportunities for blacks. The hypocritical difference between their rhetoric and actions was like the old line that, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” They proclaim a belief in equality and parity for blacks, but they would not accept the measures that were needed to bring about that equality and parity.

Richard Nixon, the presidential successor to Lyndon Johnson, rode into the highest public office in this nation on the conservative white backlash to black power protests in the late 1960s. Shortly after his 1968 election, his domestic advisor, Daniel Moynihan, set out the 1st signal that the federal government was ready to use its powers to put blacks back “in their place’ by blaming them, not racism, for the breakdown of the black family and community as well as a widespread poverty and powerlessness that afflicted the black community.

The conservatives’ national goal was to abandon the civil rights agenda and move towards a “color-blind” society. In 1970, Moynihan issued his infamous “benign neglect” memorandum that announced a new public policy on blacks. The policy behind the memorandum moved attention away from blacks, saying: “The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect. . . We may need a period in which negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades.”

Moynihan's memorandum signaled that the old government policy of using blacks as cheap labor was ending and the new policy would declare blacks obsolete. Alfonso Pinckney, in his book, The Myth of Black Progress, indicated that Moynihan’s memorandum encourages the supplanting of blacks with other ethnic groups. Moynihan wrote that “greater attention to Indians, Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans would be useful.” Government justified supplanting blacks by promoting the myth that “black Americans were making extraordinary progress.” The nation swallowed the myth of black progress. Meanwhile, real change in black America's condition never even got off the ground. Most black Americans did not agree with Moynihan’s assessment that blacks had created their social ills through self-inflicted pathologies. And blacks didn't accept the government's claim that they were making extraordinary social and economic progress. “Making progress compared to what and whom?” They asked.

History has taught blacks that they, not the powerful social and economic system, are always blamed for their deplorable living conditions. Dominant society's belief that the negative conditions of black America are self-inflicted is based upon the fact that the conditions that blacks endured are almost peculiar to blacks alone. White society has never been enthusiastic about helping blacks nor has it permitted them to acquire the tools to help themselves. Blaming blacks for their underclass status keeps the largest society free from recriminations or obligations to blacks.

Ironically, if the deplorable conditions of black America were experienced by white America for even a short period of time, the government would not hesitate to declare a national disaster and activate emergency assistance measures. But since depressive socioeconomic conditions have been peculiar to black America for centuries, no such government interference is to be expected.

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Gigi's avatar

Thank you so much Glen and John for you're always thoughtful commentary!

20 years ago, our upper middle class white daughter was in Teach For America, at a i South Philly Middle School. Her students were predominantly Black. She invited a guest speaker, also black, to relate to and inspire these kids. She was appalled when during the speaker's talk many of the class behaved disrespectfully. As the speaker left our daughter apologized. The speaker brushed it off. Our daughter then turned to the class, " I am ashamed of the way you behaved to our guest". The class regarded her blankly. She went on, "I'd like you to write a paragraph about something you have done that has made you feel ashamed." To her astonishment most of the students in her class had no idea what that meant. Shame was a completely alien concept.

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Deltawhiskylima's avatar

NO P*SSY FOR THUGS

Put it on a T-shirt

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Kathleen Sykes's avatar

My most cancelable opinion is that many of the world's problems would be solved if women were so much pickier with whom they slept and under which conditions. 🤷🏻‍♀️

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JasonT's avatar

Women can have a civilizing effect which we would all benefit from were it more widely employed.

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Jamal X's avatar

I bet you're on a short leash, in repression, fantasizing about roleplaying Donald Trump.

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Deltawhiskylima's avatar

No P*say for Thugs

Put it on a T-shirt

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Dawn I. Martin's avatar

Thank you John and Glenn, for always having the courage to speak against the narrative, the conventional wisdom of the issue. This is why I’ve been following you since 2020, when I was trying to make some sense of the George Floyd killing and its aftermath. You are my heroes of intellectual discourse. Can’t tell you how much I appreciate you two gentlemen. Keep speaking out, please.

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aldous huxtable's avatar

Many a scoundrel can adorn themselves in respectability, but the honest man or woman in rags and dust is known by the light in their eye, and not the composure of their gown.

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JasonT's avatar

Hmmm. Perhaps for a time. Facades tend to crumble.

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aldous huxtable's avatar

.... to be replaced....

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JasonT's avatar

...by new facades...

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A Stranger in a Strange Land's avatar

I am against censorship of any kind. The pop singer Cardi B has simulated sex on stage. ( all too common now) Biden and Dems trotted out this talent and personality for her support. Wet Ass P say. Wap Trash message trash women oversexualizing kids with Twerking and Grinding. On Grammys too. No shame ?

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Jamal X's avatar

White women always come into my office twerking for pleasure and promotions. Lol!!!!

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Robert Redd's avatar

Nancy Mace spoke at a prayer breakfast for Tim Scott. She opened by announcing her fornication to the world.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a tantric sex practicing loose woman.

Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” is a disgrace, yet Republican politicians love him.

Republicans have no shame

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J McCauley's avatar

PLEASE! Can we do without "what-about-isms"? Let's stay on topic, please.

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Robert Redd's avatar

My response was on topic.

Edit to add:

The topic was trash messages.

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CHARLES's avatar

Ted Nugent has more stink on him than that.

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A Stranger in a Strange Land's avatar

Yes seeing Ted Nugent scissor with someone on stage at The Grammies singing about his hard on would be just as awful

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Robert Redd's avatar

I don’t watch the Grammies. I don’t understand your post.

I do know Mike Huckabee played bass while Nugent sang the full lyrics to “Cat Scratch Fever”.

https://youtu.be/SyDFtJdh0Zs

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aldous huxtable's avatar

Perversion of society is a necessary tool to break humanity into shards and then reassemble it into a new inhumane vision.

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Maci Branch's avatar

“Write off the riff raff?” The violence in urban communities is more comparable to the Troubles of Ireland than it is Bonnie and Clyde. Terrorism designed to divide communities for political purposes. Soldiers indoctrinated into this army have no idea what it is for, and mistake it for culture. They assume it is Bonnie and Clyde. But it’s more like the Troubles of Ireland. A nation is the same people in the same place.

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MH's avatar

It just always seems to boil down to victim hood but the lack of shame is central. At one point there was a lot of shame for being on the "dole" aka welfare. One year our school/church had delivered a food basket to us over Thanksgiving because they knew my dad had been out of work. Well even though my Dad was white he flipped out when that basket came. I was young and couldn't for the life of me understand why (there was good stuff in that basket). He wouldn't accept it. Now I understand as an adult it was Shame that he couldn't provide for his family.

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John Robert's avatar

A story from a church (Episcopal) friend of mine tells: a young single mother of two young girls had moved to a small town in Virginia. Neighbor ladies noticed she had not been seen going to church, at least not their Baptist church, so they came to visit to invite her to church. She explained that money was very tight for her, and she was too ashamed of her girls' shabby clothes to take them to church and Sunday school. The ladies got the girls' sizes and told their church friends of her plight and asked for donations of clothes for the kids. When they delivered the exceptionally generous gifts of clothes for the girls, the young mother was clearly delighted and grateful, so the ladies were puzzled when she did not show up the next Sunday. When they came to visit again, her explanation was, "When I got them all washed up and dressed in their new clothes Sunday morning, I thought they looked so nice I decided to take them to the Episcopal church."

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MH's avatar

Im not sure if I should be laughing? maybe because I'm Catholic & don't quite understand the references.

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John Robert's avatar

That's all I intended, a little giggle at the effects of social and religious stereotypes, and not just in Virginia.

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MH's avatar

Ok good because I did think it was funny.

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Robert Redd's avatar

The incarceration rate for Black men is falling at the state and federal level. There are more Black men in college than in prison. If we create policy telling Black men to aim for respectability rather than education, teachers will focus on correcting perceived behavior rather than education and we will lose the race.

Decreasing incarceration rate

https://www.statista.com/chart/18376/us-incarceration-rates-by-sex-and-race-ethnic-origin/

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/05/06/share-of-black-white-hispanic-americans-in-prison-2018-vs-2006/

College vs prison

https://www.vox.com/2015/2/12/8020959/black-men-prison-college

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J McCauley's avatar

I applaud the decline in incarceration rates. but have to also ask if this is the result of non-prosecution of various types of crime. Are DA's simply reducing charges (for whatever reason) or deciding not to prosecute at all. I don't really know how the rates/numbers are arrived at. Example/Question: If someone commits a murder and the charge is reduced to manslaughter, does that lower the "murder" rate and as a result skew the violent cime rate. Or, if someone shoplifts $950.00 of merchandise and the minimum "felony" threshold is $1,000.00 do we skew the number of felony crimes? These are real questions for me.... I guess I'm the type of prson that questions the results of ALL data driven reports (Data can and often is skewed to reflect the desired outcome.)

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Robert Redd's avatar

Go search and inform us of your results.

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J McCauley's avatar

Robert, I posed questions. Please re-read

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Robert Redd's avatar

I thought you were interested enough to find answers.

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J McCauley's avatar

I AM interested. With your education and deep research and knowledge, perhaps you'd pass along the fruits of YOUR research. Again, I posed questions and hope someone here is able to answer. If not you, perhaps someone else more informed will help me out.

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Robert Redd's avatar

So you are not willing to find your own answers?

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JasonT's avatar

Education without respectability is no gain. We have those types by the drove as well; in prison or in politics.

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Jamal X's avatar

I had lots of white educated pedophiles on my old prison caseload, especially the religious. Preaching God one day and humping their biological children at night while momma was away.

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Robert Redd's avatar

If an educator is banning books and teaching Lost Cause history, that educator is not worthy of respect.

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JasonT's avatar

Or teaching CRT or failing to teach precision in math…

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Jamal X's avatar

It's essential that white kids know the horrors of their white ancestors---wealth and power mal-distribution to whites because of being given billions of acres of free Indian land and access to abundant free African labor. Jim Crow, wherein whites benefitted more from FDRs New Deal to build their middle class. Under Jim Crow, I lost a grandmother and an aunt because white hospitals refused to give them emergency medical care. Whites wanted to lynch my dad after he returned from the pacific theater during WWII wearing an army uniform. Respecting the American white horror show of deceit, murder, rape, and divide and conquer?

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Robert Redd's avatar

Name the schools

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J McCauley's avatar

One pose the same request to you. I have a degree in Secondary Education (Social Studies) from the University of MD (2002)and can state NOWHERE in any material ot curricula did I see the "Lost Cause" being discussed with anything but distain.

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Jamal X's avatar

I live not too far from disgusting "Stone Mountain" in Georgia where the lost cause is glorified with huge carvings with General Lee, etc. It's surrounded by a black community. This wickedness is certainly a middle finger to those who were forced to work with a whip constantly on their back, forced to breed with their mothers after the British ended the transatlantic slave trade, conditioned to hate themselves, subject to the breakup of the family at any given moment, etc.

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Lynn P's avatar

Just finished Losing the Race, and part way through Winning the Race, and I’m struck by how John (who writes he prefers John to Professor or Doctor McWhorter) was even back then emphasizing the cultural influences of Victimization, Separatism, and Anti-Intellectualism. In Winning, he highlights the influence of the radicalism of white college kids who legitimized drug use and the culture of alienation on Black identity.

What I am struck by is the unfortunate degree to which white progressives continue to support these aspects of Black identity and how Victimization, Segregation and Equity (dumbing down standards to reduce differences) are more prevalent today than when John was writing.

The Cosby who spoke in the clip would be a “Tom” today, and KendiAngelo passes for serious thought.

Question: Has John thought of updating or reflecting on the themes he so cogently wrote about in those two books?

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Lynn P's avatar

Winning, p. 149. “. . . Where white radicals taught us to take a page from their new animus against The Suits and thumb our noses at The System and go on welfare because whitey wasn’t devoted to us getting ahead, they sent us to hell”.

Captures one of the worst consequences of the ‘60s. More entrenched than ever, sadly.

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David Bradley's avatar

Glenn, are you aware that the ethical philosphy of Immanuel Kant is all about respect? And the central idea is that we OWE each other respect, which is the opposite of forcing someone to EARN respect? Being respectful is just how we're supposed to treat each other. It's an obligation or duty as Kant calls it. Surely you're aware of this.

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JasonT's avatar

We may be owed respect as a human being, “made in the image of God,” but we earn respect as an individual by how we comport ourselves. There is no other way to build a coherent society.

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David Bradley's avatar

Are you constantly judging people to figure out how much respect to give each person?

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Grow Some Labia's avatar

It's something that comes naturally. Everyone is due a basic level of respect, and then more or less based on their compartment.

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David Bradley's avatar

You are judging people individual by individual? Does that take a lot of time? It seems like it would.

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Grow Some Labia's avatar

No it doesn't. It starts out like this:

"David, I'm Nicole. Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too, Nicole." Blah blah blah we talk.

I offer you the basic respect accorded to a new human being I've just met that hopefully you will accord me. And if we're both reasonable people, we can talk and chat and not necessarily have a flame war over some political point. Or, if the other person says something truly outrageous, we find an excuse to walk away.

We *should* judge each other on a case by case basis. Otherwise it becomes too easy to fall into stereotypes. "He's wearing a MAGA hat; he must be an asshole." "She's waving the trans flag; she must be a nightmare."

Maybe we are and maybe we aren't, but it wouldn't kill us to get to know the other person a bit.

Maybe not all MAGAS - or trans flag wavers - are the embodiment of all evil we imagine.

In fact, it took a lot more time to write these 'graphs then it does to take each person at face value when you meet them. And work from there.

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David Bradley's avatar

That's not how democratic politics work. We support or don't support policies which affect people we'll never meet. E.g. are you having conversations with everyone who claims the police harasses them in order to determine if you support defunding the police?

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JasonT's avatar

You make no character judgements?

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David Bradley's avatar

What is a character judgment? I notice if people tell the truth or not. I notice if people exploit others or not. I don't spend my days squinting at every individual to see if they're the kind of person I should treat with respect or not.

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JasonT's avatar

You pass the strawman test. Nicely done.

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