« Bloggingheads | Main | The return of double-digit inflation? » Random musing29 Apr 2008 06:54 pm I defy Jeremiah Wright: I have always clapped syncopated. And there is no chance that I have any cultural or genetic African heritage--indeed, if I were any whiter, you could use my albedo to end global warming. Luckily, I'm not running for president, so no one will bring it up. I mean, except me. TrackBackTrackBack URL for this entry: Comments (46)
I know you're kidding, but, I mean, it's all African heritage if you go back far enough-- and actually not as far back as people usually think. 
Thanks, Megan, for providing a link so we know what you're talking about.
Plies, that spittle flecked invective is my niche, thankyouverymuch.
I don't think we white people should be getting indignant about Rev. Wright's stereotyping. So he stereotypes us. Big whoops. It's small payback for what the this country has done to his race. I don't like the guy, and I think he's not good for white-black race relations, but I personally am not gonna get annoyed by what he has to say. He's got a far more righteous gripe than any of you above does. And clearly it's scarred him. Just as it has scarred thousands of black men. It's an anger that is hard to let go of, and completely wrong for any white person to mock. Be impatient with it because it doesn't aid in the cause of race relations and moving this country forward, be angry because his narcissism is undermining the candidacy of a man who could actually do a good deal toward solving some of the problems Wright rails agains. But don't mock it. I have worked in a poor urban black community for years. The anger and rage so many young black men feel is akin to Rev. Wright's. And much of it is as ignorant and intolerant and conspiracy theorist. I take real exception to a young white woman (who you seem to be) mocking that anger. It's not funny or cute.
Sorry, but any preening jackass who craves the spotlight as much as that freak should get mocked mercilessly, and our society would be better off if most preachers with large congregations, or U.S. Senators, for that matter, were subjected to extreme ridicule every time they opened their fat mouths, and subjected us to their views of morality. These gargoyles are so nauseating it can barely be measured, but it's worse than that. They're boring, too, which is quite a combination to pull off.
Give it a rest, Mary. That PC crap is so 20th century. Your life is what you make of it. Period. And no, I won't join you in singing "Kumbaya."
Your life is what you make of it. Period. How can anyone smart think this?
Random events occur, but at the margin, your life is what you make of it. Only losers dispute that contention.
Freddie, Confident, self-motivated people think it, smart or not (usually, they are). Mary, I also could not care less for what Jeremiah Wright says or does. He is completely free to vent whatever comes to his mind, and I will even grant that he probably has great cause to feel the way he does, but he isn't running for president. It is completely legitimate to wonder what, exactly, that Obama received from having him as a pastor and a mentor. I would guess, if I had to, that Obama coddled the guy for political reasons early in his career, and is now finding it difficult or impossible to claim that he didn't know what Wright is about.
no, I'm not twentieth century. And your life is not always "what you make of it." That's true only up to a point. Come work where I do and then tell me that bullcrap.
Adulthood isn't easy. You're not missing that much.
Also, I'm not saying I agree with Rev. Wright AT ALL. Clearly, you did not read my post in its entirety, Occam's Beard. I don't like what he said, I think it's inflammatory and self-destructive. But at the same time, it speaks to an anger that is real and justifiably so. All I'm saying is that cutely mocking it is not an appropriate or mature response. And for you to say life is what you make of it. Yes, that's true up to a point, but if you think that's completely true, then I'm guessing that you are a Republican? Because I think the Democrats know better. Socio-economic and cultural circumtances (i.e., centuries of racism, poverty and bad education) can be devastating.
The Democrats know that if the downtrodden adopt my perspective then they'll out a guaranteed bloc of votes. That's pretty much what they know. Which party stands to lose, and which to win, by the rising of a large, prosperous black middle class? Blacks will never achieve equality on handouts, but only through their own efforts. Yep, they've gotten a rotten deal, but the fact remains that they'll only improve their lot through their own efforts - just like everyone else. That's the message you should be disseminating. "Understanding" a maladaptive response only perpetuates the problem. Losers wallow in the past. Winners draw a line, turn the page, and move on. It's true in sports (bad calls by referees), it's true in life generally.
Magical thinking, and magical thinking only possible for those who, knowingly or not, have been the beneficiaries of luck or privilege.
Rubbish, but spoken like a true loser. Ask yourself this: do athletic coaches "understand" failure? Do they give the failing athlete a hug, and help him to overcome his background, when he misses his block, throws up a brick, or loafs down to first base? No. He bellows at him across the field/court to get his finger out and perform, or else he'll find someone who will. And blacks do pretty well at sports, yes? So we see what works, and you see every day what doesn't. Bottom line: making provision for a problem guarantees its existence, and conversely. People bust their butts to get their income taxes (or request for extension) in by April 15th. Would they do that if the IRS were understanding?
Magical thinking is thinking that "understanding" and wetnursing is going to make the problem go away. It won't. It isn't intended to, either; it's intended to keep the patronized down on the plantation, nice and dependent and docile and loyal to their "betters" trying to "help" them. Any behavior that's subsidized (financially or, in this case, psychologically) is encourage; any that is taxed is discouraged. Put it another way: if you were trying to keep people dependent, would you espouse to them your philosophy or mine?
actually, I am to the right of many democrats on this and don't believe in handouts, and I frankly think welfare has only exacerbated the problem and think that as it now exists, it needs to go. But I think it's a complex problem that requires some kind of intervention, not an attitude that there should be none. And I think understanding is necessary to move in a direction of real problem solving. Because the problem isn't going to go away. And it's a problem we as Americans all own. Simply thinking it can go away if people pull themselves up by their bootstraps so to speak, is unrealistic and will solve nothing.
I have worked in a poor urban black community for years. The anger and rage so many young black men feel is akin to Rev. Wright's. And much of it is as ignorant and intolerant and conspiracy theorist. - mary This is exactly right. It looks to me like the attacks on Wright over the past two months have pushed the guy over a line to where he's now making a fool of himself in public in a doomed attempt to clear his name. It was courageous and decent of Obama to try to get out of this situation without condemning a guy who had taught him a lot about community mobilization and helped connect him to the black community's real grievances, but at this stage Wright leaves him with no choice; he's just humiliating himself. His anger at his own public humiliation in March is leading him to repeat most loudly precisely those of his opinions (the CIA-HIV conspiracy, etc.) which were always indefensible. It's not that surprising coming from a fiery old guy under attack, but it's also completely self-destructive and embarrassing behavior from someone who is supposed to take his responsibilities as a leader seriously.
Mary, I'm with you up to the last sentence. We're born alone, die alone, and have to do most things alone. Encouragement is great, but facilitating a culture of dependency (as you clearly recognize) is not. So the question is to what degree any given outside intervention promote dependency. Again, to put it another way, it's impossible to promote heresy in a church to which one does not belong. The converse is also true. In the case of blacks, vilifying rappers and drug dealers instead of "whites," promoting intellectual over athletic achievement, and generally accepting responsibility for one's own life I suspect would work a miraculous transformation. (Btw, a neighbor of mine - a black dentist - makes me sound like Al Sharpton. I literally cringe to hear his views on this subject. He's the one who should be running for President.)
Wright is a goof of the first order. My favorite goofism is his right brain-left brain black/white racist blooper. Black kids don't stay at their desks because they have a differently dominant brain. Any port in a storm or any crappola for victimization bandwagon. How else does the guy get his multimillion dollar mansion and an ego like that?
Ask yourself this: do athletic coaches "understand" failure? Do they give the failing athlete a hug, and help him to overcome his background, when he misses his block, throws up a brick, or loafs down to first base? Hey Occam. How are athletic coaches doing at bringing down the massive failure rate in athletics? Did you realize that in every game, fifty percent of football players, basketball players and baseball players lose? In track and field the percentages are more like 90 percent! And these failure rates haven't improved one iota in the past hundred years, despite all the efforts of all the coaches in America! It's pretty clearly wasted effort; we should eliminate funding for sports, it's like money down a hole. The difference between society and competitive sports is that in society, we want everyone to succeed. And that means we reach out to the losers and try to get them involved again. In sports, if someone loses a lot, they stop playing the game, and that's fine. In society, arguably, the same thing happens, but it's not fine: if they lose at one game, they invent another one -- dealing drugs, say, or mugging people -- where they can win.
You continue to astound, Brooks. If we find a way to harness silliness as an energy source, you'll be the new Saudi Arabia.
We're born alone, die alone, and have to do most things alone. In many of the most economically dynamic societies today -- Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, India etc. -- this sentence literally makes no sense whatsoever. I'm not sure it makes any sense in America either. We are born with our mothers. We die, generally, with our families. We never accomplish anything in our lives alone.
well, Occam's Beard, it was a nice interchange. I think you missed some of the nuance of my position. My original post stands: I was responding to what I saw as immature and cutesy mocking of something that should not be mocked. But nor do I think it should be enabled. The longer I have done the work I do, the more "conservative" my views have become. Having said that, I'm of the "it takes a community to raise a child" school. I think that the community extends beyond the immediate environs of the neighborhood or town to our society at large. You and I probably agree more than you think on the mechanisms of that. However, I still believe empathy is important. ANd the problem, is a lot more complex than you realize.
And Iraq, and Iran, and Venezuela, all put together.
Actually, Mary, I agree that we're closer than it may seem. We differ primarily in our tactics to tackling the problem. I spent many years in academia, and learned to hide my empathy, to prevent it being exploited. Faculty members who were openly empathetic were inundated with importunate students trying to con them. I wasn't. (Partially) feigned indifference sent the message that I wanted: that the first person to look out for you is...you (i.e., one). I think that that was a more important lesson than anything I could teach them about chemistry.
Occam, you flirt with breaking the ad hominem rule. You may never have worked in fields where the goal is to get people to do things they don't naturally do of their own effort. Things like quitting drugs or alcohol, having safe sex, or, in many black and hispanic communities, finishing high school. In your college-level chemistry classes, everyone came of their own will, and if they decided to drop out, that was fine. Same with sports. When you are looking at this question from the perspective of an entire society that wants to improve behavior by a class of its citizens who are currently not participating, the goals are very different, and so are the methods. Of course abandoning standards is foolish. But simply shrugging your shoulders is foolish too -- unless you simply do not care what the high school graduation rate among poorer American kids is. But then you fail in your duty as a citizen (or patriot, if you prefer) to look at a problem from the perspective of American society as a whole, not from your narrow private perspective. (Even from your narrow private perspective, arguably, low educational achievement by the rest of your society is a problem.)
Let me see if I understand this correctly: poor educational achievement by others is ...my fault? I appreciate your perspective, however. It must be frustrating to plow such stony ground, and I respect those such as yourself who attempt to do so. Still, as a matter of principle, I believe it is important to meet people halfway - and no further, to avoid the enablement problem.
The difference between society and competitive sports is that in society, we want everyone to succeed. No, we don't. Or, at least, only in a very limited sense of "succeed." Society, just like competitive sports, has winners and losers. Society, in case you hadn't noticed, is intensely competitive. We pit people against one another pretty much from pre-school until the time they die. People compete for access to schools and colleges, for jobs, for money, for status, for power, for friends, for romantic and sexual partners, for spouses, for pretty much everything they value. Life is a lot like competitive sports. In sports, if someone loses a lot, they stop playing the game, and that's fine. They might stop playing, or they might just compete at a lower level, or play for fun. Same as in other areas of life. In many of the most economically dynamic societies today -- Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, India etc. -- this sentence literally makes no sense whatsoever. It's obviously not meant literally. It's intended to convey the fact that in a very important sense no one ever truly shares the life of anyone else. I don't think this is really very hard to understand on an emotional or intuitive level.
On the issue at hand: I actually would not be surprised if folk prejudice were correct and there were a widespread innate African talent for rhythm. But anyone who's ever seen a West African school classroom -- rows of kids in uniforms, quietly and obediently memorizing lessons by heart -- knows this line about black kids being genetically unable to study the way white and Asian kids do is utter crap.
I think - and fervently hope - that you're right, Brooks. I had a Nigerian grad student who singlehandedly belied Wright's assertion, at least on an anecdotal level.
poor educational achievement by others is ...my fault? I don't think that's the best way of expressing things, but I think there's a continuum of "fault" and "responsibility for solving". I don't think it's right to use "fault" for things that don't involve any active decisions or at least clear negligence. But it's not my fault that America's bridges are falling apart; still, they're not going to get fixed unless I vote for people committed to fixing them and pay the taxes needed to do so. Obviously this is not a very good analogy for schooling -- I'm just using it for the "fault" issue. Basically I agree with Mary's point that America "owns this problem." I don't think there is any realistic prospect that black high school graduation rates will rise to parity with white ones in the US any time in the next 30 years. I think "success" would look like a marked, noticeable rise in black graduation rates. I think that could be achieved with different education policies and a national social commitment to valuing education for poor Americans -- paying teachers more, reforming bureaucratic systems that hamper good teaching, shaming culture industries that demean learning, etc. I agree with what libertarian econ prof Tyler Cowen wrote a few days ago, that America faces a serious problem with the apparent "ineducability" of a large portion of its citizens. That has social roots, and it has to be tackled at a nationwide level.
actually, I am to the right of many democrats on this and don't believe in handouts, and I frankly think welfare has only exacerbated the problem and think that as it now exists, it needs to go. But I think it's a complex problem that requires some kind of intervention, not an attitude that there should be none. And I think understanding is necessary to move in a direction of real problem solving. Because the problem isn't going to go away. And it's a problem we as Americans all own. Simply thinking it can go away if people pull themselves up by their bootstraps so to speak, is unrealistic and will solve nothing. Actually, I can agree with you on the merits of this, but I also take some exception on the last sentence. Strictly speaking, most problems DO go away when people pull themselves up by the bootstraps. The problem in many low-income communities, and especially in black communities, is that many children are growing up without ever having seen a role model for it in their personal life. If you never knew your dad because your mother got knocked up at age 14 and dropped out of high school, then took up prostitution a couple years later in order to support her drug habbit, her warped view of romantic relationships, her current boyfriend-of-the-week's drug habbit, and you, in that order...what do you feel? Who do you look up to? Who do you despise? The too-usual answers to those questions seem to be "powerless", "the powerful", and "whitey", with the latter two being exemplified by a gangster culture (lawless powermongering) and radical black nationalism (scapegoating). I have never met a social policy that could effect a sea change when dealing with large populations of people who are completely disaffected in that fashion. I do know, however, that the answer is definitely NOT persons like Jeremiah Wright, using the pulpit to drag the name of God through a sewer of cultish vanity while building up their own wealth and power base in the process. The only difference between a Wright and a Phelps is the skin tone, which turns out to be a superficial detail after all.
What particularly bothers me about Wright, and his reception (among whites), and what Mary pointed out, is that if you talk to enough black people, you find that viewpoints like his are running wild. It's disturbing. People look at Wright and say, "Wow, what a yahoo" but you might as well ditto that thought across a huge swathe of the black population. Talk to enough black about Iraq, the government, race, and some of the wildest things start to come up. So clearly one has to ask WHY blacks are feeling this way, and what can be done to change it, because ignoring it, dismissing it down to the lone loon (Wright) does not help society progress. Some of it is lack of education and navel gazing. When you grow up telling the young generation "You don't know your future unless you know your past" it does not help them to step outside themselves and see what works in the wider world, whether looking at whites in general, Chinese, how Koreans or Jewish people live, etc. As to Megan's level of syncopation, I wonder. I think there is truth in all stereotypes and I grew up in black and white churches and differences in clapping styles were often quite interesting. Usually classified as "clapping on the beat" or off. And in some of the mixed non-demoninational churches you would even see this battle at the beginning of certain songs, with certain people clapping certain ways until one group dominated and the others fell in line (with help from the music ministers up front, who usually clapped "the right way"). I think we need to drop Megan into one of the more rythmic churches and see what she does. I remember even tamborine playing was different. In the white churches I grew up in, you basically hit your tamborine one hit at a time, on or off the beat or "hit and shake, hit and shake" kind of Josie and the Pussy Cats style. But in the black churches, you played your tamborine almost like a bongo, stuffing about ten hits in between the beat, with little shaking. I have almost never seen that style of playing in a white church. Needless to say, Wright should be enjoying his retirement but the attention might be going to his head.
Well, in the churches I grew up in, the congregation would have run screaming from the sight of a tambourine. That sounds too much like fun. I have no idea why I clap syncopated. In fact, I didn't even know the word for it until a musician of my acquaintance pointed it out, and also alleged that I was the only white person in America who did it. (Though he did not suggest any genetic roots for the phenomenon). My mother believes that it is symptom of a larger pattern of contraryness. :)
Mary - I agree that the emotion of frustration and anger by blacks (such as Wright) shouldn't be mocked. But that isn't what's being mocked. Wright is ridiculous because of his apparently unchecked ego and selfishness matched only by his factual cluelessness and he's reviled for spreading evil lies (about AIDS). I think you're being too generous to Wright, in sum.
I think y'all are missing the real problem here. I don't think Obama understands that, while these issues aren't such a big deal in the Democratic primary, the general election is a vastly different game.
Occam and Brooks are a nice representation of the two sides in politics (right/left) banging heads against each other. When Occam says, "I believe it is important to meet people halfway - and no further" he says something that a lot of people can agree with. However, what is "halfway" for some, is not "halfway" for others. That's the difference brooks is talking about. For the inner city kid of whatever color, you may have to do a lot more than hand them a book and tell them to read it. Because life has thrown a whole crummy different set of circumstances at him. That doesn't mean the kid in suburbia is temptation free, but it is cleary different. The biggest issue that I have with "entitlements" is that people feel entitled to them. You are never entitled to other people's money. When you are needy, you are DEPENDANT on others. There are some, and there used to be a lot more, who refused to take charity (entitlements) not because they were too proud and stubborn, but because they felt they didn't need them because they could work for themselves. That's less and less these days... The big issue I have with the welfare system is that it takes service and charity out of the individual/community realm and places it at the foot of the state. We are denying all of us a chance to serve and help the downtrodden in our areas and passing it along to someone else. WE are to blaim for letting this happen. I may like it to be otherwise, but I certainly know the feeling of "let someone else deal with it".
I view this as an exercise in the admittedly oversued definition of insanity -- the repetition of the same mistake over and over again hoping for different results. The black community has been the recipient, directly and indirectly, of hundreds of millions of dollars over the past 40 years, mostly via federal tax dollars directed at providing assistance to the group -- what Brooks and Mary seem to advocate, i.e. federally funded community outreach programs, affirmative action, etc. Are they better off today as a result of those efforts? Maybe on the edges, but no sane person could say these efforts have been resounding successes. So the question is whether to continue with policies (directed at the group) that for the most part have not proven to be very successful. Some think we should up the ante, as though we are not already spending enough money at this, which seems to be the Wright approach and agreed with by Brooks and Mary, or try a different approach, advocated by Occam and many others, that only through their individual efforts, collectively applies, will the black community ever see any progress. Addressing philosophical questions about lifting up everyone is ok for academia, but in a world of limited resources, ie. my taxable income, it's a pipe dream. We do what we can, but only to a point. As Sam points out, the argument is where the "halfway point" is. Many will never agree with me, and I will never agree with them.
"Contraryness"... typical mom talk. My mom has a whole handful of largely imprecise explanations for my behavior.
I'm in the middle. I think everyone understands that prostrating your self at the victimhood shrine and praying for reparations or entitlements is a BAD strategy. It gets worse when your kids start modeling you... and they have, you know, OPPORTUNITIES. That said. Build a mental timeline:
The black community has been the recipient, directly and indirectly, of hundreds of millions of dollars over the past 40 years, mostly via federal tax dollars directed at providing assistance to the group - johnmc Uh, sorry, but what exactly are you talking about here? First of all, "hundreds of millions of dollars" is diddly squat. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the war in Iraq every day. Look it up. Second, the white community has been the recipient of dozens of trillions of government dollars over the last 40 years: the public school budget, transportation, farm price supports, and basically everything else the government spends money on. So what exactly are you talking about? What government spending do you see as specifically targeted at blacks, and how has it failed to help them? You may be making an argument here but I don't see it yet.
brooksfoe, I am fairly confident he meant "hundreds of billions". Even that is an understatement of what has been in spent in welfare since 1965. Also, the "white community" as a whole is not a recipient of government spending- they are it's largest source of funds. Certainly, segments of that community are net recipients and others net providers. The point he was making is that, despite the vast amounts spent on welfare and other spending for the poor, you see even more of the social pathologies within the black community today than you saw 40 years ago. You also see more of these pathologies in other ethnic groups, too.
As long as our society fails to acknowledge that a group with an average IQ of 85 will be poorer and more criminal than a group with an average IQ of 100 or even that easily identifiable groups differ on average in IQ people will always look for explanations. The left has hit on "racism", as illustrated by J. Wright. The right talks about how the culture of the 85 IQ group is maladapted; Occam's Beard argues well for the cultural impact on this thread. Racism is a funny thing; you'd think that if a society were racist against a given group that at least one of the following would be true: 1) They would be held to higher standards for college admissions or corporate employment
Brooks --- You don't see the argument because you don't want to. I can't help you with that. And I did mean billions. Thanks Yancy. I don't think any "group" should be the recipient of public tax revenue, and I don't care what their grievance is. You wrote: "What government spending do you see as specifically targeted at blacks, and how has it failed to help them?" Are you really trying to make the argument that the black community has not been the recipient of billions of dollars of direct and indirect federal and state aid over the past 40 years? Really? I have neither the time nor inclination to reserach the obvious for you. Oh, and the public school budget that you say I benefit from -- would that be the same budget that comes DIRECTLY from my property taxes? I might also add that a large portion of my property taxes are appropriated by state mandate for redirection to lower income school disricts. Please don't preach to me about who gets what and who's paying for it.
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So I take it Wright endorsed the view of music depicted in The Jerk?
Posted by Rob Lyman | April 29, 2008 7:17 PM