Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

You can pay mine if you want.

Frickin' property taxes...

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

my daughter just got her first NTC jobs, on Madison in the 80s. Which means she'll be meeting ad men? Or is that lower. I don't think there are any decent husbands on Mad Men, are there? Maybe the guy who sold the short story?

And on another note, her temp place is on the line between Bushwick and Bed-Stuy. We walk past public housing called Bushwick Houses (maybe Homes) on the way to one of the subway stations near her. Last Friday we were walking by when we stepped into a grocery. Immediately after we got in, a gun fight broke out at the housing place. Police were there in a minute, I think maybe stationed there. It was crazy to see the reaction, the people outside in front of the building scattered, but within an hour people were back outside. I guess if you live there you learn to deal with it.

Re: Interesting Article
 

I don't agree. I think the divisions of recent decades are more a class thing than a race thing. FWIW, the middle/upper middle/rich black kids at my college hung out with the middle/upper middle/rich white kids. Nobody gave a shit about race. It wasn't something noticed. The defining line was having enough money to hang in certain circles on campus. It was entirely class based, and to harbor a racist attitude in the better circles was to embarrass and socially ostracize yourself (though I'm sure there were several closeted racists).

Re: Interesting Article
 

I sure would love to live in the world you inhabit where there are no racial problems and everything falls on class distinctions. I truly don't understand where you're coming from given the treatment of our President (and how it's now okay to completely disrespect that office) and the many instances of just outright racist behavior all over the place (including the latest with millionaire on millionaire athlete racism, from that Eagles receiver's actions to those of Incognito).

I mean, you're telling me shit like this no longer happens at elite schools?:

http://gothamist.com/2011/03/03/stuy...nded_for_r.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCIql73glq4

The real question I have for you is why are you always trying to negate racist shit? Is classism somehow better? Don't the two tend to exist at the same time and often go hand-in-hand? Does constantly taking time out to explain how something is probably the result of classism and not racism make you feel better about the world? Do you actually believe it?

I can freely admit that I (like most minorities) often jump to an explanation that's rooted in racism--sometimes mistakenly. But there's a clear, historical basis for that. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why you expend so much energy denying it. And to nip this in the bud, no, I absolutely do not think you're a racist. I just don't understand where you're coming from. And I think your thought process is common among white people now and I would like to know what's behind it.

TM

Top 20
 

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TM

Another Article
 

This school is in my neighborhood. I think it's completely fucking ridiculous.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/ma...ted=1&_r=1

TM

Re: Another Article
 

Give them time. My eldest went to a school that was started in the late 50s by a premature hippy. It's early days were more than a bit odd and wild. But it ultimately settled on stuff that worked and became a truly great little nerd factory.

Re: Interesting Article
 

Because I think it causes us to shift focus from wealth disparity, which I am coming to view as a more immediate danger to the social and economic fabric of the country than racism (which we have by no means adequately addressed, but have at least made significant strides toward fixing).

Yes and no. Classism has always and still exists apart from racism. And most people aren't racists today. I think they are classists, and in most instances (not the examples you offer, which are racist), what appears to be racism is collateral.

Yes and yes. Racism is offensive generally, but also an affront to rational thinking (a guy who makes a snap judgment based on melanin content before knowing someone holds a set of genes that ought to be winnowed from the Earth). So yes - it is comforting to assess that classism is more at play. But that's not how I reach my conclusion. I see classism as the driver because, having lived in flyover land, where racism is assumed to run rampant, and having lived and worked in a city alleged to have steep race division, I never saw racism. I'm exactly the sort of "ex frat guy" people to whom people who didn't know better might display racist attitudes. It rarely, if ever, happened. But classist attitudes? They're on endless display.

Re: Interesting Article
 

I could not disagree more with what you wrote above. I think the two problems continue to be huge problems and, as Atticus said, people prefer to use classism to discuss racist tendencies because the accusation of racism is so charged. Hell, people say shit like, "My father says, 'nigger,' all the time and he doesn't want me marrying a black man, but he's not racist."

And to constantly strive to divorce the two strikes me as naive, given the percentages of black people who are stuck in poverty. People flee cities for lots of reasons. But the main negative reason is because they don't want to raise their kids in an urban (read: minority) environment. People shoot other, unarmed young black men, not because their clothes tell them they are of a lower class and therefore, dangerous. They do it because they are terrified of urban-looking young black men. Partners at law firms tend to work with young, white men and avoid young, black men and women because they automatically assume, based on their skin color, that they have nothing in common with them and gravitate to someone who they think belongs. There are laws against the practice of redlining not solely because of class, but because of race. The examples are absolutely endless.

And yet it is common, if not pervasive.

Racism is more hidden now, yes, for the reasons I stated above. But you'll have to excuse me while I don't take your anecdotal evidence as gospel when it comes to having seen racism. It's just not very convincing.

TM

Re: Interesting Article
 

I could say that about my dad when I was growing up, although not the saying the word too much. What I would mean is "compared to the other dads on my street he is less hateful." White people raised in those days were doomed to it in large part. My generation had a ton of baggage forced on us too. My kids generation hopefully not so much. We are getting better incrementally (hopefully).

But an American with no racial baggage at all? That's a pretty rare person right there.

edit: Detroit, 70, maybe 80% black, elected a white man as mayor tonight. Just saying, we may be moving forward.

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

Friend of mine lives in Detroit and can tell any gun just by hearing it.

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

A lot of that is just blanks, for effect. It help sell the "Detroit is bad ass" t-shirts to you tourists.

Re: Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!
 

I call bullshit.

Re: Interesting Article
 

In addition to squeamishness, we've also passed some stupid laws that prevent race from being considered for certain purposes, so the Democratic intelligentsia has been forced into using "low SES" as a proxy for race. Sadly, it works pretty well as a proxy, and buys a tiny increment of additional support from white folks.

As a part time school deseg lawyer who also does EPL cases, I wind up talking about race-qua-race a lot, and I have no patience for the squeamishness of privileged whites. There's a kind of sensitivity that gets in the way of truth, and a person who circumlocutes around race is often implicitly accepting that identifying a person as being from a racial background is stigmatizing. If you describe an African-American male as being "the dark-complected gentleman over there," you've told me a bunch of how you feel about race. Fortunately most of my school clients are people of good faith who can be blunt about the kids because for the most part they love them unconditionally.

Re: Interesting Article
 

Maybe I've lived in a bubble, or perhaps I've been lucky to have grown up around people who were largely oblivious to race. But I've never heard anybody who matters say something like the "Paula Dean" quote you offered above. I have heard that sort of thing from low class whites, but who really cares what low class whites say? They're invisible (yes, I realize the conflict this creates with my prior post regarding classism being a problem... but then, I never said I didn't have some classist leanings [it's hard to not loath dim whites growing up in PA]). The people I know of all backgrounds who have a decent number of brain cells recoil from racist sentiment. But they embrace all sorts of policies that keep poor people from mixing with their kids in schools, or living nearby and screwing up their property values. That many of those people happen to be black is collateral.

In flyover land, they set up suburban neighborhoods that price out poor people (gated developments, etc.). It's class flight.

I agree a lot of whites have an insane fear of black men. But that statement needs to be broken down a bit. You note it's "urban looking" black men. There are certain looks that the media has stereotyped (and not exactly incorrectly) as thug markers. And this extends beyond blacks. If you see a white kid dressed in "urban clothing" (quite common in flyover suburbs) coming toward you in a parking lot, you'll be tempted to reach for a pistol.

Is that really racism, or is it someone being lazy and not taking the time to build a relationship? I doubt these people view the black man as not belonging. They're just going for the easy connection. I have experienced this in reverse, where people with my cultural background gravitate toward me and assume I'm a good ole boy mick. (Then they talk to me and are a bit put off by my less than tribally-stereotypical views.)

This is unfortunately postured as an absolute disagreement. Perhaps that's my fault. If I suggested racism is over and it's all classism, I went too far. I don't think I did, and didn't intend that. If I could more concisely make my point, it's that racism remains a problem, but a significant portion of what appears to be racism is actually classism's collateral impact.