CardinalBacker

Here's the problem... .those are a lot of theories about "racism,' but not actual policies that negatively affect black people. For example... "the fact that there are more blacks in prison than whites PROVES that the criminal justice system is racist." Except it doesn't. Over 50% of the murders in the US are committed by black people... who only make up 13% of the population. So the fact that more black people are in prison for murder does NOT reflect "systemic racism." It's no secret that black people like to spend their money differently than white people as a general rule. Flashy clothes, expensive cars... You've heard the term- they called it living _______ rich. You know, you've heard it. But if I chose to blow my money on clothes, cars, hairdos, nails, chains, and live in a shack, it's hard to come back later and say "racism" is the reason that I don't have a house/personal wealth. How many times have you been through the McDonald's drive thru and been proud to see a young black woman standing there doing a job that I wouldn't want? Good for her! I'm freaking proud- but then you realize that she's having trouble pushing the keys because of her salon nails and that hairdo wasn't cheap. It's deflating to me personally. She can't afford to do those things, practically speaking... She's not going to get ahead with that McJob, and she dang sure can't if she's blowing her cash on stuff like that. I don't know how much tattoos cost in the hood, but I can't afford that kind of work over here at Flippers, but most black kids somehow find a way to get tatted up. That's cool, but you can't complain if my kid has more cash (but less tattoos) than you. In the 90s the federal government made it possible for disadvantaged people to buy homes with little or no money down... it was a focused effort to increase the rates of home ownership in the black community. However, these were non-traditional loans made to people who wouldn't have normally qualified for a home loan because of a lack of credit, down payment etc... when things went as they were easily predicted and these new homeowners started losing their homes, the program(s) were suddenly referred to as "predatory lending." And the whole argument about "redlining" is a dog whistle. Did it happen? Of course. Did it happen much? Heck, no... The fact that some people were wrongfully turned away from new developments in the cities has nothing to do with the fact that so many black families abandoned their homes for Section 8 housing or just left small town east texas for the city. But you have to be honest... homes in black neighborhoods won't sell for what similar homes will sell for in white neighborhoods. And that's not a racism, that's a reflection on higher crime rates, booming stereos, drug use, etc... Why should I expect to pay the same amount for a house in Groves that was built in the 1940s than I'd pay for one in Port Arthur that was built in the 1940s... except the one in PA has burglar bars installed. It costs the same amount of money to build in BC or PA... your new home in BC is just gonna be worth a whole lot more. That's a fact. That's the truth. That might hurt feelings... But it's reality. Is the East side of Port Arthur underserved by pharmacies? Absolutely. But they used to have pharmacies and most of them shut down (Gulfway/Savannah) because they couldn't stay open because of all of the shoplifting. But the fact that they are no longer serving the community is somehow proof of racism? Not at all. I'll give an example of where the system is blind. Race isn't taken into account when it comes time to get retail credit. This is pure speculation, for the sake of a story. Let's say that statistically speaking, black people are three times more likely to have their car repossessed than white people. Pure math... 10 blacks, three repos. 10 whites, one repo. The numbers don't lie. A statistician would start to say "wait.... we need to look a little closer at these black borrowers... their loans go bad at 3x the rate of white borrowers... shouldn't those riskier loans justify a higher interest rate?" Yet our federal government (correctly) disallows the use of racial data in the purchase of homes/cars/credit cards. But you'd look at that situation and say that the fact that three times as many blacks get their cars repossessed is proof of racism.... when the truth of the matter is that more owners of that color just happened to not pay their car notes. That's the fallacy of your arguments. My honest opinion is that without any proof from you of an actual racist policy that can be corrected today, I'll still agree that there are some biases built into our systems.... Some biases that negatively affect black people. But I also think that they account for about 2% of the reasons why the black community has struggled, yet that bias is blamed for 100% of the problems facing your community and that disingenuous and not helpful at all to mislead your community.

That’s partly true. Do you remember Strom Thurmond? He was a Democrat turned Dixiecrat from South Carolina who eventually turned Republican. He was a long-term Senator who served in the Senate from 1954 to 2003. He spent his later years apologizing for his previous stances on segregation and his opposition to the Civil Rights Act. He eventually died and you’ll never guess who was the main speaker at his funeral. A young senator from Delaware named Joseph Biden. Apparently Thurmond was Biden’s hero. Apparently race hustlers respect each others’ games. You literally can’t make this stuff up. [Hidden Content]

Can you point at a racist policy that exists today that we can fight?

Sure. It was in German occupied territories during WWII. Y’all then appropriated their culture, lol. So how were you successful with all of the racism that exists here? I don’t know you, but I’ll bet that you: 1. Finished high school 2. Got married 3. Got a degree or at least a tech school 4. Attend church 5. Didn’t have kids before you could support them 6. Were raised in a home with a mom and dad. If not all, at least five of those things. Your success or lack thereof has nothing to with your skin color. EDIT… And based on your description of your son, I’ll bet he had most, if not all, of those things working in his benefit, too.

My contention is that they didn’t. The Democrats have always been the party of racial politics. When it got the point that being anti-black wouldn’t earn the Dems any votes, they tapped into the OTHER races’ anger towards whites. Now being a dem means being anti-white for the most part. The republicans have literally been on the moral side of every argument from slavery to abortion for the last 180 years.

Closer to home… look at Port Arthur. I was born in Port Arthur. I left for good in 1999. What was a diverse area in the ‘60s has been decimated in my lifetime with no help from the Klan. The Klan wasn’t a force in Chicago, Detroit, East St Louis, the Bronx, the fifth ward in Houston, etc… those urban areas were destroyed by their inhabitants in my lifetime. So why are we still talking about things that occurred to your community 100 years ago by long dead whites when y’all are doing it to yourselves in 2022?

That’s an interesting article… it’s just a little misleading in my opinion on a few issues. While it’s true that black farmers’ are shrinking, the number of white farmers has shrunk by comparable numbers. Corporations hold the vast majority of farmland, not whites… something that the article doesn’t present. One absolute fact that the article presented is that black people almost NEVER do any type of estate planning. There almost never wills probated, so the land is considered “heirship property.” That’s a term that is almost never heard regarding white-held properties. My grandparents weren’t wealthy, but all four had their estates handled… my parents are still alive, but their arrangements are already set. That’s just not something you see in the black community and it’s led to a lot of property being lost to the tax man. There are a lot of different reasons for that… I don’t imagine that I’d be comfortable around the county courthouse in East Texas if I were a black man in the 1950s. But neglecting to handle ownership issues and pay property taxes has definitely hurt the black community.

That’s never been proven.

Do you really think that slave owners (many of whom bred livestock) weren’t doing the same thing with their slaves? Those people were literally treated like cattle. Just property. Bred to be sold in many cases…. It created an unintended benefit for the descendants of slave owners… many of whom have made fortunes based on genetics that were refined by old racist slavers. Kinda ironic, wouldn’t you say?

UT is going to be really sad when he realizes that he owes the white man a big debt of gratitude for the husbandry programs that nurtured the bloodlines that we see in professional sports today. 😂🤣😂

The articles that I’ve read indicates that the newspapers printed inflammatory articles about a lynching being scheduled. I guess they’ve been stirring both sides up for a while, huh? The fact remains that neither side was blameless. You are so upset about this riot, but not about all of the other ones that your side “won.” Are you busy protesting the fact that blacks destroyed Korean businesses in LA in your lifetime? Nope. Not a bit. We’d all be in a lot better place if we could live in a post-racial society, but nobody wants to let go of the past.

He’s a rarity, and will spend his life trying to prove to himself and others that he earned it…. That’s a very real and unfortunate side affect of giving people something that they didn’t earn… except because of their race.

To be honest, they’ve tried your solutions and they don’t work. Black kids drop out of college at much higher rates than their white counterparts. Your solution is to make an education that they don’t want free to them, as if it isn’t already? The kids who are motivated enough to go to school now will still be motivated. Public high schools are free and you can’t get black kids to stay enrolled. Free college won’t make a difference. My buddy owns a shipyard in Orange and they can’t get guys to show up for work every day. Ownership proposed a weekly bonus of $150 for hands that made it to work all five days. He said it was a waste because the guys who previously came to work all week started getting a bonus… but the guys that called in just kept on calling in and never got the bonus: the problem wasn’t compensation, it’s individuals’ lack of work ethic.

Ok, I like that answer. Kirby and the railroad. So why wasn’t the “other side” of town similarly affected? But it’s not just true of Silsbee…. It’s every town in SETX that has a heavily minority population. I just have a hard time accepting that “racism” is why black home ownership (and the accompanying personal wealth) is low, when we could literally drive to one part of any town and find dozens of abandoned homesites with unpaid taxes and deceased owners. This is simply not true of the other part of town. But then an “educated” black person would turn around and tell me that it’s my fault that they didn’t handle their business.

So that’s your solution? Confiscate private land and give it to other people? How has that worked in Africa? You know “repatriation without compensation?” I’ll give you a hint… famines. But seriously… black families owned property all over East Texas and abandoned it. Why is the west side of Silsbee full of old home places that have been abandoned by their owners? Or any other city, for that matter… it’s just abandoned homesites everywhere.

Who is general sherman? Please point me to any sort of legal reasoning that would support some random dude from the Military's opinion as law, lol.

Black Wall Street did, eventually, rise from the ashes and Greenwood enjoyed another heyday in the 1940s, but integration and urban renewal in the 1960s and the 1970s led to new declines the neighborhood was unable to fully overcome, Johnson said. The setback has only compounded since then as Tulsa remains largely segregated and riddled with racial disparities. Source: [Hidden Content] So let me get this straight... the neighborhood bounced back from 1921, was prosperous, then fell apart again in the 1960s and 1970s like a lot of communities... but it's still the blame of the Tulsa "Massacre?" Get out of here.

Sure... you can lose your job and be charged with a hate crime for saying certain words... unless you're black. Black people can use it any time they like. You can also be given preference in college admissions and hiring because of your skin color... but only if you're black. If you lose your job, you can file a lawsuit against your employer based solely on your race and get paid.... but not if you're white. You can set up charities to exclusively support your own race...but only if you're black. Want to use federal funds to build and institution of higher learning that caters to just one race? Better not try that if you're white. Want admitted to a prestigious university for which you're not academically qualified? Better check that box marked "African American." We've catered and catered to that population in the name of "progress" and it's done nothing but set them further behind.

You missed the point... on day one the score was 10 dead whites, 2 dead blacks. So the whole "massacre" thing is a lie. It was fight.... which apparently the blacks were initially winning, but ultimately lost big. It was a mess, it shouldn't have happened, hopefully it never happens again. But to pretend that it was just a bunch of white people killing blacks unprovoked is a fairy tale. In fact, you could argue that the blacks instigated the whole thing. Long story short, it's not a massacre if both sides are to blame. That's just a battle that one side won. It's funny how we're all so alienated. The "official" death toll from tulsa is 10 whites and 26 blacks. Some people say that number could be as high as 300... but nobody knows. On the other hand, we can definitively say that 63 people were killed in the LA Race Riots in 1992. Notice how those are riots, not "massacres."

You have to admit that a document that claims that all men are created equal while simultaneously allowing for the enslavement of others is kind of..... crappy? But we agree... It's over and I'm glad for that. The problem is that in America we're never more than one generation from poverty... going either direction. It doesn't matter how good your parents had it, you CAN mess up badly enough that you end up penniless. Also, your folks can be broke but you can surpass them without trying too hard. That's the beauty of it. But to claim that your life is bad because 150+ years ago, someone was a slave is preposterous. I'll tell you a story about a young man. He dropped out of high school and he smokes a little grass. He's got two baby mamas (three kids total and pays zero child support) and has a criminal record. He's done a little time and usually won't work because that's for suckers. Neck tattoos... the whole nine yards. That's obviously oppression and systemic racism that's keeping him down, right? No... this kid is white... he's just a screwup. That's the problem with false claims of racism.... it allows people to escape the accountability that would encourage changes that would improve their life.... Or you can sit around and wait on your "reparations." Systemic racism does exist... but it didn't just happen because people are mean. How many times does a firm have to get sued for racial discrimination before they start considering race in the hiring process? People complain about home values being lower based on the race of the seller.... but nobody wants to admit that factually speaking, values in areas inhabited by black people are lower... that's a fact. Best case scenario you buy into a black neighborhood and are suddenly accused of trying to "gentrify" the place. But to be honest, the plight of black americans rests almost entirely upon bad decisions made by that community... then gets passed off as racism. We went to the PNG/SOC game this last Friday. They kept showing the crowd from both sides and it was obvious that SOC's crowd had a TON of obese people. Everybody from the dance team to O-Line and at least 2/3 of the crowd were obese. PNG's crowd? Relatively height/weight proportionate. "It costs more to eat healthy than to eat junk food... Racism!" they all cry. Except you can walk into walmart and without fail tell who is using SNAP/EBT to buy their groceries... they're riding a scooter and have a basked heaped to overflowing with junk food that people who pay with real dollars can't afford. Is the argument that giving those fatties MORE money for food would fix their chronic obesity? Because only a fool would argue that. Cut those stipends and watch the weight fall off of them.

If you want your eyes opened, this documentary will do it for you. So much of this went on in my grandparents' lifetime, and so many of these places I've visited. It was disturbing. This is just the trailer.

Don't kid yourself.... a large chunk of the Founding Fathers were huge supporters of slavery and were slaveowners themselves. They didn't see slaves as men, so the "all men are created equal" part didn't apply to slaves. They certainly weren't afforded liberty, lol.

They started it! Heck, the black people won the first battle that day. The media/education system always leave that part out. "The most widely reported and corroborated inciting incident occurred as the group of black men left, when an elderly white man approached O. B. Mann, a black man, and demanded that he hand over his pistol. Mann refused, and the old man attempted to disarm him. A gunshot went off, and then, according to the sheriff's reports, "all hell broke loose."[24] At the end of the exchange of gunfire, 12 people were dead, 10 white and 2 black." Source: [Hidden Content] Long story short, they started, got smoked, then people cry about the outcome 100 years later. It's the exact same thing as the Palestinians complaining about land lost to the Israelis when the Palestinians and their allies started the freaking war. I mean, tell the story.... it's history. But tell the truth. And FWIW, there was no "black wall street." That's another myth that's been perpetuated to keep us at each others' throats.

Went to the game… first time I’ve seen PNG’s o-line struggle. SOC was stacked and probably more athletic at every position on the field. Png has played smart, disciplined football through the playoffs but it kinda slipped away on Friday, and a lot of that came from the defensive pressure that SOC was bringing. I thought SOC’s coaching made adjustments early… there really wasn’t a lot more that PNG could have done. I was also impressed with SOC’s composure when they fell behind early. They didn’t even come close to giving up. A lot of character was shown. I was disappointed by how sloppy SOC played though. Personal fouls, penalties, etc… their athleticism allowed them to get away with playing sloppy. Good team, two really good programs for completely different reasons.

Yes. In 1988 each LIVING person who had been incarcerated by the GOVERNMENT was given $20,000. I’ve highlighted the problems with your comparison. There are no longer any people in America who were victims of slavery. People who weren’t slaves are asking to be compensated for something that happened to other people over 150 years ago. Also, the government made the decision to lock up those American citizens of Japanese descent. The government didn’t enslave anyone… it was private citizens that owned slaves. Your argument is that 150+ years after slavery ended, a current day government that never held any slaves should order people who never owned slaves to give money to people who were never slaves. The truth is that slave owners were crushed economically by the freeing of the slaves. Any wealth or benefit that came from slave ownership was destroyed. Who else should receive reparations? The people whose legally held slaves were freed? The families of those conscripted to fight in the Union Army to free the slaves? The list goes on and on. The reparations argument is nothing but a play for the vote of people who are looking for a handout.