The notion that race conveys responsibility is utterly bogus. Does anyone think I should move to a low rent trailer park to improve life for low income whites?
Race doesn't convey responsibility. It injects a pretty standard set of forces into our varied lives. It only makes sense for those who deal with those forces to see themselves as a constituency.
Would low income whites benefit from mingling with middle-to-upper class whites?
Unless black managerial and professional workers move back into the hood in droves, and, reinstall a stabilizing guardian syndrome within our social collective that provides moral, legal, educational and commercial impetus for the whole - the hood is for all intents and purposes, a collective lost cause incapable of bootstrapping itself out of its present plight.
Getting picky-particular with terminology, I think "support" is better than "impetus," only because I think folks are about to run into situations in which we need social maneuverability. Also I'm not prepared to predefine the direction future folk should take
Exploit an inherent sense of racial inferiority and oppression, by measuring success solely by one's attainment of material wealth
Inherent?
I'll name Quaker in Basement for this observation:
Beyond maintaining the system that put 'em there in the first place?
...
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Would low income whites benef
Sure.
But consider this. They might well benefit even more by mingling with middle-to-upper class blacks.
So a story. Y'all are going
So a story. Y'all are going to guess where it's heading but it was for real.
In my professional life I have colleagues who work remotely. One, a man whom I've worked with for a couple of months now was coming in person, not so much to see me, but because I work in the center of things.
I've had a few detailed interactions with this guy lately. He's solved some tough problems well, and I've provided crucial support. We're confident of our ability to work together. I'm looking forward to meeting him.
Recently a jacket was offered as a company reward. I wear 2XL. After the jackets were distributed, a broadcast message arrived from my colleague: have XL, need 2XL, anyone want to trade? Confirmed, the guy is good like me, he even looks like me.
So today I look at the man for the first time. He's younger than me, taller, athletic. And of course, black.
It took about one second to sink in. Not zero, but not two either. Then all was well, life was good. A mental sonic boom.
They might well benefit even
That's the whole "diversity" argument, you know.
WHich I mention to avoid discussing how curious it is that you make the statement after blowing off the entire possibility of yourself mingling with low income white folks in the other thread.
I mingle with low income whit
I mingle with low income white folks, p6, I know where I came from and still enjoy interacting with the people in the equivalent of my old 'hood. I do it for pleasure, I do it to retain valid instincts of how life goes.
But I have no intention of moving somewhere out of some sense of responsibility.
Sounds to me like DW only vis
Sounds to me like DW only visits his hood when he feels the need to *keep it real*.
other than that, he's got entirely too much important fake shit to do, you know, unpleasant, instinctually invalid shit that pays the bills for the life he's traded his soul for
I actually don't see it like
I actually don't see it like that.
Everyone is representing positions they feel make sense (we judged the actual representation seperately). I get to extrapolate backward, like "what does a world in which such a position makes sense look like?"
Something in DW spoke to plea
Something in DW spoke to pleasure and instinctual validity in his "hood". As if to suggest that pleasure and instinctual validity might not be so readily available in his "sub-urb". Sounds an awful lot like the Cobb Paradox of the Ghetto to me. To the extent that *we* identify the material poverty of the ghetto with all that is bad, yet remain conflicted over the essentially sentimental and therefore good nature of that place, then it is important to distinguish between *thinking* and *feeling*.
To your question of what makes sense, it appears to me that there is world that makes sense to our thoughts and a world that makes sense to our feelings.
Re-COGNITION and re-CONCILIATION of the two seems to me to be of paramount importance. Much, MUCH more can be said about his subject..., all depending on how far down the rabbit-hole you care to go (:
Something in DW spoke to plea
As it should. I've yet to see a valid observation about X folk that wasn't useful in dealing with Y folk. It's like no matter what we wear we're all naked under our clothes.
No doubt. It's actually the sort of thing I periodically consider opening a whole new blog to discuss. Then life slaps me upside the head...
Sounds to me like DW only vis
It's nowhere near as heavy as you suggest, cnulan.
I grew up in small towns in the west, and didn't join the middle class, and the giant California suburb until I was about 30.
Unlike many people I work with, I feel quite comfortable in such small towns even today. A big difference one notices is that what we might euphemistically call "lower middle class" is far more integrated. Where I live, I don't sit next to a drywall guy in the restaurant. I don't often encounter old people just hanging out, eager to talk, and with an interesting life to tell. The real estate is too valuable.
In small towns, I find all those things and more. I find people telling the story of how some orientals moved to San Francisco and the massive stray cat problem was solved. I find people who couldn't put together a convincing argument to save their soul. I find farmers and truck drivers and Mexicans all there together getting along, and I feel happy to be part of it.
My regular life is indeed lacking in such experiences, and I take the opportunity when it arises.
However, my regular life isn't painful. Sure, I have to put up with everyone being polite, intelligent, articulate, logical, and wealthy, but you know, I like them too, and I'd miss them if I had to move back to the small towns. They're Chinese and Indian and black from Back East, and their views shape my understanding of the world.
I assure them all that they'd be welcome in small town America, and they would, but there's this fear of the unknown...
It's nowhere near as heavy as
With all due respect, were I the subject of your brief description before, in which;
hood = pleasure/valid instinct
and lengthier description after, in which;
suburb = polite, intelligent, articulate, logical, and wealthy
I'd consider that heavy as hell itself.
Oops, what am I saying. I am and I do.
I guess that's why I spend as much of my waking life as possible exemplifying in my hood...,
So tell me cnulan. What is it
So tell me cnulan. What is it that would bother you about participating in the pleasure or another, or in validating their instincts? Do you resent my positive experiences with you?
I enjoy both sides. Pleasure begets pleasure, knowledge begets knowledge. If I've participated in any way toward the positive experience of another, that is what I have to offer in exchange for their participation in my experiences.
when I was a kid, growing up
when I was a kid, growing up poor-as-Murkan-hell in my hood, and not even aware of or caring about that fact but rather, caring single-mindedly about all my peculiar expanse of friends, adventures, and tiny enterprises, I recollect being about as happy as it is possible for a human being to be.
In the 30 odd years since then, I've mortgaged my freedom and my priorites for a slice of Murkan *wealth* and *status* - and the requisite knowledge, skills and abilities - none-of-which I can take with me or meaningfully pass on to my children (because 15 years hence, the industrial *world* for which I'm a fairly optimal fitness specimen -won't exist short of a series of miracles) and I have no faith in miracles which depend on the hegemonic energy-technology-society base.
I harbor no resentment toward you DW. I wish your understanding of our collective and individual psychological situation was deeper than it seems to be. I wish you would give yourself over more fully to the interlinear truths expressed in your writings. From time to time, I've observed you to express a great many feelings that you subsequently seem to/choose to deny.
What you wrote at the top of our *conversation* today - had the feel of authenticity to it. What you've written in defense of the status quo of your life as you *choose* to lead it, strikes me as a departure from that authenticity.
At the end of the day, I'm only mirroring my own world view in your written thought exteriorizations..., that's all any of us ever can do in this context. I want you to persist in this exploration and hopefully useful exchange.
What you wrote at the top of
I write sincerely cnulan, which doesn't of course rule out that I'm sincerely expressing inner inconsistencies.
I don't see them, but be assured I welcome observations.
===
I wonder if the word "validate" has a special meaning that I don't appreciate. As I intended "validate my instincts" to mean, if one is going to hold opinions regarding life among people making $8/hour, then those opinions ought to be based on real experience, and real experience needs to something recent rather than something recalled from 30 years ago.
For example, meth was not a serious factor in the hood I left. Now it is. It's horribly devisive, not to mention fequently fatal, and people don't know what to do about it. This is by far the biggest change since I left. One's understanding of small towns in the west had better incorporate that change if one is to hold valid opinions.
rule out inconsistencies D
DW got jokes.
You've demonstrated a willingness to accept more unverified historical and contemporary just-so-storytelling (so long as it's consistent with your self-calming internal representations of Murkan rectitude) - than anybody I've observed in a looooong time.
OTOH - to your credit, you haven't gone into terminal brainlock like many another host of the *conservative* memasite. (:
As for meth, the obvious thing to do would be to address it in precisely the same way as the government addressed rock cocaine. The laws and the apparatus for their enforcement are already well established and the prison-industrial complex could use an extra million+ essentially non-productive white males for its labor appropriation operations. Wouldn't you say?
Finally, I exemplify in my hood at least three days a week, every week. I have been and intend to remain responsible for my brother as long as I'm able. I believe it's fundamental to live in a manner consistent with my religious convictions.
I have been and intend to rem
Check it out, cnulan. You and I select different techniques, but we're aimed in the same direction.
(also, we can't rouse much of an argument about drug policy, because we generally agree)