Racism: glorified hyperbole in America

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Through our life experiences we learn things
these learn things are true to a certain extent
and like all learn things they can be unlearned
 
I spent a few weeks in Japan in the eighties and indeed the tourists were the most obnoxious people I met
the American tourists like myself
 
And I know I'll get blasted for all of this and some will take offense at even bringing up the idea of genetic aptitude when it comes to IQ, but tell me this, how many members of Asian countries were running in track and field at the last Olympics compared to black runners? If blacks are the best at basketball or track, does that make you racist for saying so? Or thereby implying that other groups are genetically terrible at such sports, etc? Likewise, if you can see the idiocy in trying to say that there's no genetic differences between human beings in terms of athletic success, then you can't just shut down a discussion on cultural reasons when it comes to other outcomes.

It makes you wrong for saying it. It doesn't necessarily make you racist, but it makes you vastly uneducated on the issue at hand, and when backed up with other statements, yea, probably makes you racist.

You are right that there are generic differences in human beings, and it's these genetic differences that make great athletes. There's no doubt about that, and it's scientific fact.

What makes you probably at best uneducated at worst racist is your insistence that it's racial and/or based on one's skin color, which is simply false. It's a gross oversimplification.

Even an oversimplification such as "Jamaicans are great sprinters" or "Kenyans make great distance runners" would be false, even though it's a much lesser oversimplification than simply using the word "black" as your description.

The overwhelming majority of elite sprinters are Jamaican or of Jamaican descent. This is undeniable. But the overwhelming majority of the overwhelming majority come from the same region in Jamaica. Most even from the same town. They're descendents of a warrior tribe in nnorthwestern Jamaica. It is not race, It's not even nationality, and it sure as hell isn't skin color. It's simply DNA. Jamaicans who are not descendants of the same tribe do not become world class sprinters. Period.

People of West African descent have the greatest variety of DNA because they've been around longer than anyone else. Much longer than boring ass Anglo Saxon white dudes. So to lump blacks in together, and to say that one is more likely to behave a certain way because of their skin color? Yea, that's pretty fucking racist, and just plain inaccurate. It might be "unintentional" racism, but alas... there it is.

You've said that you were mugged by two black men. You don't think that might have a little bit of an effect on your thought process? And hey, I can't blame you for that. Our thought process is shapes by our experiences. But you might want to rethink some of your theories and get more educated on them. Try The Sports Gene for a read... it'll change your thinking. Or not. But at least it'll educate you a little more on reality.
 
Last edited:
I was born white; therefore quiet, nonviolent, and stereotypeless.

It's not because of my skin color, it's because of my culture. White culture is polite and quiet. White culture does not glorify violence. White culture doesn't allow for neck tattoos. And white culture taught me to sell my old couch in a garage sale.

Make America White Culture Again

Make Mexico White Culture Again Also

Let's stop the glorified hyperbole!

Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference
 
It makes you wrong for saying it. It doesn't necessarily make you racist, but it makes you vastly uneducated on the issue at hand, and when backed up with other statements, yea, probably makes you racist.

You are right that there are generic differences in human beings, and it's these genetic differences that make great athletes. There's no doubt about that, and it's scientific fact.

What makes you probably at best uneducated at worst racist is your insistence that it's racial and/or based on one's skin color, which is simply false. It's a gross oversimplification.

Even an oversimplification such as "Jamaicans are great sprinters" or "Kenyans make great distance runners" would be false, even though it's a much lesser oversimplification than simply using the word "black" as your description.

The overwhelming majority of elite sprinters are Jamaican or of Jamaican descent. This is undeniable. But the overwhelming majority of the overwhelming majority come from the same region in Jamaica. Most even from the same town. They're descendents of a warrior tribe in nnorthwestern Jamaica. It is not race, It's not even nationality, and it sure as hell isn't skin color. It's simply DNA. Jamaicans who are not descendants of the same tribe do not become world class sprinters. Period.

People of West African descent have the greatest variety of DNA because they've been around longer than anyone else. Much longer than boring ass Anglo Saxon white dudes. So to lump blacks in together, and to say that one is more likely to behave a certain way because of their skin color? Yea, that's pretty fucking racist, and just plain inaccurate. It might be "unintentional" racism, but alas... there it is.

You've said that you were mugged by two black men. You don't think that might have a little bit of an effect on your thought process? And hey, I can't blame you for that. Our thought process is shapes by our experiences. But you might want to rethink some of your theories and get more educated on them. Try The Sports Gene for a read... it'll change your thinking. Or not. But at least it'll educate you a little more on reality.




"Mugged."
 
I can agree that we're shaped by our experiences. Yesterday, I was awoken on BART on my way to work after a woman had abruptly sat next to me. I opened my eyes and there was a homeless black male who had just touched her in some fashion according to an onlooker talking to the driver a few minutes later. This same male proceeded to try and chase her when she got off at her stop (which also happened to be mine). And I'm telling you, this shit happens day in and day out and black men make up nearly all of these sort of incidents. In fact, on my way home biking to my house, a black guy walking along the trail accosted an Asian woman seemingly dressed for a night club (probably headed to BART) to the point where she tried to run away. There with other onlookers and I don't feel the need to be a hero every time so I just kept riding, but again, it's virtually always a black male. It kind of goes into the studies that have shown that whites in places like Iowa that have no contact with such a population don't harbor the same sort of racist views as somebody that lives in Atlanta. If you're only contact with a group of people is through the worst elements making themselves visible, you're only going to have bad experiences. And I never really dealt with this sort of stuff in my entire life until I became heavily reliant on BART and worked an occupation that deals heavily with street people, homeless or otherwise.

But to think cops haven't gone through what I have to a much greater degree would take an extremely hopeful mind. I am absolutely positive that this sort of constant having to deal with the black community for crime upon crime does lead to racially biased tendencies in police departments. It adds up to the point of you just becoming numb to what you've witnessed.

As far as the bit you were talking about concerning a specific group in Jamaica having great runners, that's basically what I was getting at with the genetic aspect of things. If one element can exist within a key group of, say, ten thousand people, can't there be a similar isolated gene in twenty thousand or two billion, etc.? I think we're on the same page here although I did a poor effort highlighting my thought process when just saying "black"...but going off of that argument, you could make a contention that there is a genetic element to criminal activity with genes being potentially responsible, such as a variant of the MAOA gene happenning to an extreme degree with a subset of black men and hardly anybody else and it was even effectively used as a defense in a criminal trial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A

Again, this would have nothing to do with Black Americans and everything to do with a small subgroup that just happens to be black but it can certainly go a long way when it comes to public perception.

BTW, I have never been mugged. Assaulted on the job once and calling the police on someone for committing a crime another time. But assault is assault and both times I was left speechless that somebody would attempt to do as such, especially given the circumstances. One individual who likes to hang around my building at work, so why shit where you live? And the other was effectively caught on public transit with all the cameras and everything else including the train STOPPED so the police could do a pick-up and he still decided to slap me on the head. Beyond the citation, he was arrested on an outstanding warrant unsurprisingly.

Again, the 80 percent rule of that many people lurking around the area where I work two night shifts a week being black or that many being responsible for this sort of stuff is about on the nose for what I've dealt with in the six years of what's a generally easy and rewarding occupation. And not once have I thought of any of these incidents (and believe me, they number in the dozens upon dozens) to be reflective of the black community at large or anything else. But I really can't understand, either, the naivete of some people because the odds are extremely likely that the able-bodied young black male out on the streets of a major city at 3 AM is likely not going to have your best interests in mind.
 
Last edited:
tourists of all colours are way louder than any local black people here.

Just an example to fit this stereotype that I was referring to...listening to music on public transit without headphones. As in, a young black person listening to rap on their iPod at an alarming volume and annoying everyone on BART or Muni. I've probably had this happen about a dozen times since moving back to the Bay Area and about ten of the incidents where a young black person. It's a cultural thing or whatever you want to call it, but that's an example of someone being needlessly loud, and again, blacks make up only 6% of San Francisco's population.

I do think the black community in general can be louder, but I don't see that as a racial thing but rather a social one. They tend to have much larger social networks, talk twice as much on Twitter, etc. Just in the same way you would consider teenage girls to be more sociable than your average teenage boy, etc. And I've never in my life been in close contact with men outside of a sporting event that were as excitable and loud as a group of young women going to the club or a concert, etc.

I think there's a lot of people outside the bubble although some can relate...it's just a different world in the inner cities of America and a lot of it is mind blowing in a bad way. I mean, you think watching a lot of shiftless males walk around your building at work for drugs or prostitutes can be soul draining, wait until you see a black guy in a wheelchair doing the same by pushing himself backwards with his feet. Yes, literally a down-on-their luck and barely mobile individual choosing to be outside at 3 in the morning in order to live the street life. That to me is an example of this sort of mentality through whatever confluence of society, culture and genetics that makes someone seemingly beyond redemption.
 
Just an example to fit this stereotype that I was referring to...listening to music on public transit without headphones. As in, a young black person listening to rap on their iPod at an alarming volume and annoying everyone on BART or Muni. I've probably had this happen about a dozen times since moving back to the Bay Area and about ten of the incidents where a young black person. It's a cultural thing or whatever you want to call it, but that's an example of someone being needlessly loud, and again, blacks make up only 6% of San Francisco's population.

I do think the black community in general can be louder, but I don't see that as a racial thing but rather a social one. They tend to have much larger social networks, talk twice as much on Twitter, etc. Just in the same way you would consider teenage girls to be more sociable than your average teenage boy, etc. And I've never in my life been in close contact with men outside of a sporting event that were as excitable and loud as a group of young women going to the club or a concert, etc.

I think there's a lot of people outside the bubble although some can relate...it's just a different world in the inner cities of America and a lot of it is mind blowing in a bad way. I mean, you think watching a lot of shiftless males walk around your building at work for drugs or prostitutes can be soul draining, wait until you see a black guy in a wheelchair doing the same by pushing himself backwards with his feet. Yes, literally a down-on-their luck and barely mobile individual choosing to be outside at 3 in the morning in order to live the street life. That to me is an example of this sort of mentality through whatever confluence of society, culture and genetics that makes someone seemingly beyond redemption.

I go through the heart of Chicago every single day, often on public transit, and I can tell you that the type of derelict or perceived anti-social behavior you describe is distributed pretty damn evenly among races, ages, sexes, and basically any other demographic out there. It is absolutely not gravitational to any specific demographic.
 
And I've never in my life been in close contact with men outside of a sporting event that were as excitable and loud as a group of young women going to the club or a concert, etc.

I don't know what concerts you've been to, but there's been quite a few loud men at the concerts I've been to. Loud and incredibly drunk. And I know many other people who would say the same.

Edited to add: Wasn't it groups of young men who caused the biggest chaos at the Woodstock '99 festival, if I recall rightly? Burning things and knocking stuff over and assaulting people?
 
Last edited:
I mean, you think watching a lot of shiftless males walk around your building at work for drugs or prostitutes can be soul draining, wait until you see a black guy in a wheelchair doing the same by pushing himself backwards with his feet. Yes, literally a down-on-their luck and barely mobile individual choosing to be outside at 3 in the morning in order to live the street life.

if you'd like, i can easily take photos of about half a dozen native, asian, and white guys doing exactly that from my front window over the next 18 hrs or so.

it's interesting that when you describe your zombie hordes of hypothetical impoverished disabled addicts swarming your home, their skin colour is what seems to concern you.
 
1) It's not my home, it's my work in downtown SF.

2) I just notice that the bulk of them are black males and it's especially jarring given that roughly 3% of the population of the city falls under that category. That's where I think there's cultural or other reasons for this sort of behavior as it makes no sense that they'd be so widely over represented at night among the people with such an aimless nature. Nobody forces anyone to wander around late at night for no apparent reason, sometimes in the pouring rain. That's on them because it's a choice.

I do agree with you that there's men of every stripe that do this sort of wandering all over the major cities of America. That's undeniable. I've even seen guys (yes, they were black) pay money to ride BART and then wander around Market Street for hours afterwards as I'd see them go by my building multiple times. I don't know everything that causes this sort of behavior, or frankly, much about it, but it's probably habitual with low-income American males with little opportunities...they get used to just wandering the streets when they're young due to lack of funds or whatever and then continue with it onward for potentially the rest of their lives. It's sad and it seems like a byproduct of America's own ills as I haven't really noticed this sort of crap going on anywhere else I've traveled.
 
Last edited:
I don't know what concerts you've been to, but there's been quite a few loud men at the concerts I've been to. Loud and incredibly drunk. And I know many other people who would say the same.

Edited to add: Wasn't it groups of young men who caused the biggest chaos at the Woodstock '99 festival, if I recall rightly? Burning things and knocking stuff over and assaulting people?

If we're talking about chaos in general, when are men not behind it?
 
I go through the heart of Chicago every single day, often on public transit, and I can tell you that the type of derelict or perceived anti-social behavior you describe is distributed pretty damn evenly among races, ages, sexes, and basically any other demographic out there. It is absolutely not gravitational to any specific demographic.

Well, that's certainly interesting. In San Francisco at night and throughout the day in a lot of other nearby regions, it's mostly black males. I wouldn't say they are over represented in the day time for anything other than property crime (of which they're the biggest perpetrators) as SF has so many issues stemming from the general homeless population itself.

But again, SF's black male population is 3%. At night on Market Street after the bars close and the street itself is scarcely populated, I still couldn't throw a boomerang on any intersection and not hit multiple black men with it. Or go down to Oakland's most troubled areas late at night for a similar and far less safe example.

It's just an entirely different world in a city after midnight (with the exception of 24/7 cities like New York). San Francisco is also something unto itself as the night life is notoriously poor compared to elsewhere. So instead of throngs running over to another bar or to get pizza or whatnot, you've just got the worst of humanity outside downtown since there's nobody else really doing much. I blame part of it on terrible public transportation access that for years has made it a nightmare to come into and out of the city at night, but it makes it pretty damn obvious who the vagrants and such are when there's nobody else around.

A lot of it could just be related to the conspicuous nature of some of these people. If you get on a BART train with a bunch of people dressed like they make $100,000 or more a year, that bum is going to stick out a lot quicker.
 
growing up, the people i'd see causing the most problems were white. and i lived in memphis, where whites are the minority. most of the times i've been cat-called to the point where it goes beyond that and is harassment, it's a white guy. most of the times when i see someone acting like a douchecanoe, it's a white guy. you hear about someone making meth on the news, oh look it's a white guy or a white couple. someone leaves a baby in a car, it's almost always a white person.

most panhandlers you see walking around the streets are white. i'm not going to pretend blacks don't commit crime, both of my parents were part of an armed robbery involving them held at gunpoint inside a store — thankfully neither of my parents were robbed, just the store.

if you're going to assume blacks are going to be more likely to commit crimes, then your view will be skewed to see it happen, especially if you live in a city where only 3% of the population is black. it's pretty rich to call whites intolerant and paint blacks with such a broad brush.
 
Intolerant of upstart Democrats such as Barack or Bernie, so they vote for Hillary in the primaries. :up:
For fucks sake the majority of Bernie suppoeters were white, the main reason why he couldn't beat Hillary was because the only people voting for him were white, and he might be from the whitest state in the country.

Look, you're stuck on this idea that what you see at night occurs because if somebody's skin color. That's just racist thinking. Period.

Whatever decent points you have are all clouded by that fact, and prevents this from being anymore than a session of banging ones head against a brick wall. But I suppose that's par for the course.
 
Look, you're stuck on this idea that what you see at night occurs because if somebody's skin color. That's just racist thinking. Period.

Whatever decent points you have are all clouded by that fact, and prevents this from being anymore than a session of banging ones head against a brick wall. But I suppose that's par for the course.

:up:
 
Or maybe there is something cultural about 3% of the local population causing virtually all of the crime that I've personally witnessed? And again, I'm arguing about a subset of the black community and one that many prominent members of said community have publicly aired their grievances about for decades and led to the tough on crime movement.

There has to be something behind it and I don't really think it's just our country's history of racism that is solely responsible for these insane murder rates and higher rates within the community for virtually every crime.
 
Or maybe there is something cultural about 3% of the local population causing virtually all of the crime that I've personally witnessed?


Maybe this says more about you. It says something about what you do, where you've been, and how in your limited ability which you try and pretend is superior, you've allowed it to shape your world view.


Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference
 
I'm curious, why is that? Its model has always been to craft shows on the fly to mock current social events, and it's always been successful. I'd be upset if it went away.
 
i am never surprised to find someone do the totally-not-out-of-touch "hur hur that's still a thing?" bit every single time South Park is mentioned these days :rolleyes:
 
Eh, it's no longer appointment viewing and you could make a strong argument that it hasn't been now for just over half of its lifespan. And I honestly love most of the stuff they put out in the first eight seasons.
 
Chicago's 500 Homicides: How We Got Here

"Some Chicagoans partly blame the violence on economic struggles and lack of jobs. However, Chicago's unemployment rate fell from 6.1% in 2015 to 5.5% in 2016."

Again, the violence has more to do with a cultural thing than it does with a lack of opportunity. Being poor doesn't just make someone pick up a gun and shoot somebody else. Media aimed at the black community glorifies violence and so does street culture. Couple that with a country as gun loving as ours and you get such a predictable result.

I agree. Also, Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned in the 60s that the welfare state, as it is set up, would destroy the black family. It has.
 
Back
Top Bottom