Re: Should he have been fired?
Reading the first two links he cited about the Trayvon Martin case, it seems to me that this article was meant to be satirical. The article seems meant to make fun of the supposed talk that African American parents are purportedly having with their kids, not a serious suggestion.
Re: Should he have been fired?
ITT FrozNLite wants to be a dictator and choose which opinions are the right opinions.
As much as I do not agree with the author of the article, people should have the right have their opinions as wrong as they might be. It's part of the freedom of speech that Americans love so much. People should only be condemned when they ACT on these wrong opinions.
Re: Should he have been fired?
Sounds to me like Dan is espousing a thought police. If you have thoughts of bigotry then you should be ostracized. I think that's going a bit far.
I don't think he should have been fired. He submitted an article that is similar to all of the other articles on the site. So why is it that he gets fired for that one? Is it because it's about blacks? I have no idea. Censoring bigotry and reacting with blind rage to bigotry does not solve anything. The cycle of humanity continues.
This reminds me of a similar instance last year where a woman said the word "nigger" even in a non-discriminatory way and still was fired just because she used the word. Seriously? What harm is there in talking about the use of the word nigger? I hope Eos doesn't fire me for saying nigger!
The thought police is alive and well. Have an unpopular opinion and you get trashed. No freedom to express yourself regardless of what the law says.
Regarding some of #10, I think some of this is grounded in fact (if only loosely so). Although there is some anti-intellectualism in predominantly white communities, it's twice as bad in black communities. I'll let a black man talk for me.
To be clear, when I say "he should not be fired", do not put words in my mouth saying I'm espousing the spread of racist black speech. I still think the guy is a douchenozzle. I think he has a right to his opinion whether or not I agree with it.
Re: Should he have been fired?
Bill Cosby has lamented that for years. I always felt bad for him that he tried so hard to give his people role models to show them they didn't have to be defined by, or play to, cultural assumptions and generally got nowhere for it. Goodness knows Obama was repeatedly accused of being "too white" because he didn't fulfill the stereotypes that many black people spend their entire lives trying to overcome.Originally Posted by Fiel
I think a large part of the problem is that a subset of them cling to stereotype in lieu of an actual cultural identity since so much of theirs was taken from them and wiped out and hasn't had time to redevelop independently. That's not very healthy though; look at the subset of gays who do the same thing by being promiscuous, drug abusing/alcoholic and super flamey because they think that's what's expected of them or view it as a form of rebellion.
Re: Should he have been fired?
No I dont think he should be fired. though It does seem a bit TOO racey for me. How he denounced ALL blacks from a public standpoint without so much as viewing their clothes first. But I think it would of been better to talk, just a little bit, about the "The Talk" for blacks. If you guys dont know what that is ill elaborate alittle as I have had it. I dont have much time so it will be short. ill come back later
People WILL stereotype you in a negative derogatory way wither you like it or not. You DO NOT give them ANY reason to do this other than their own prejudge against your own skin.
Thats the basic main point. theres more fine detals but I have class now.
Re: Should he have been fired?
Wow... being denied knowledge doesn't affect genetics at all. Unless they were making sure that mentally retard slaves were having babies you have no real basis.
Re: Should he have been fired?
If you beat and kill off anyone who's remotely intelligent and only leave the big dumb ones who can follow orders to potentially procreate then yes, you've selectively bred for stupidity, which is what is being referred to.
Hence him saying "Slaves are severely punished/killed for having/showing any semblance of intellect;"
Re: Should he have been fired?
The fiscal class you are born into has a positive correlation with what kind of fiscal class you will lead in your life. People whose parents have high wealth can afford better schools, education, health, social connections, and other higher class of genes with which to mate. All of these things let the wealthy stay wealthy through generations.
Fighting through fiscal barriers is extremely difficult. There are anomalies, though. Being pushed down for generations has affected blacks in their current environment. Being denied knowledge and forced into slave positions for generations will make coming back that much more difficult. This is the basis for affirmative action. Of course, the flipside is that this may allow people into positions they don't deserve because they don't have the capability or knowledge to do well. That's why there's a constant struggle between affirmative action and meritocracy.
Re: Should he have been fired?
If caught they were punished most never tried that doesn't mean they were dumb all that means is that they fear the punishment of trying that's more conditioning then anything else. From a genetic stand point that doesn't make them have any less aptitude for intelligence. You could take any one of those slaves and teach them how to read and write.
Re: Should he have been fired?
You're mixing arguments here.
If you actively try to weed intelligence out of a population with absolutely no concern for whether or not you over do it, you're going to succeed to a significant degree in both reducing the intelligent population, and making the ones that survive more capable of hiding it.
That fact aside, the fact that they can be taught to read and write does not have any reflection on their intelligence. The mentally retarded can be taught to read and write. They're not considered to have higher intelligence. It's only in cases of extreme deficiency that you lose that functionality, and slaves weren't wanted quite that stupid, because they needed to be capable of retaining and following instructions. They were targeted for the low end of average. There were definitely incidents of significantly retarded slaves as well, which does sort of blow your 'any' claim out. Those slaves were more limited in what they could be used for and less likely to breed though and naturally weeded themselves out more often than not.
Even if one in one hundred of them were potential geniuses they would've had little to no way to actually foster that spark into something meaningful, or to pass it on to offspring. At the genetic level intelligence isn't a magic number that defines who you are, at best it's an indication of your natural predisposition towards how quickly you assimilate new information, how you relate it to existing information and how readily you can recall and correlate it. A person with an IQ of 70 can still learn everything that a person with an IQ of 150 can, the higher IQ is just capable of learning it more quickly and using it more readily. A person with a lower IQ and determination can easily equal or exceed a person with a high IQ and little motivation/interest. It's not a cap on how much you can learn or know. It's not even a fixed number, it's one that can expand or atrophy as the brain itself evolves and adapts to how it's utilized. In the case of slaves and their offspring, a lower IQ was the norm because they were not given situations or tasks that would've stimulated them. Lacking parents with a higher IQ children are less likely to be higher, and lacking people in their lives to stimulate and encourage that sort of growth, something slaves certainly didn't have, there was no catalyst to spontaneously develop them. Throw in post emancipation education, which was shoddy at best while segregated and is pretty much still crap now, and as a culture the average African-American has not had the opportunity to be naturally blessed with the higher IQs of the privileged upper classes and have to strive significantly to keep up or exceed. Those who've been able to, through sheer determination or luck, get ahead and develop themselves are often ostracized by their peers, who either haven't had the same luck, the same determination, or in some particularly sad cases have bought into the cultural lie that the world owes them something and they don't need to try.
I think you're taking it personally because of how it makes you feel to be told your ancestors were "dumber" than average, but that's silly. Almost all of our ancestors were dumber than the average person today, because none of our cultures was as advanced as we are now, or had the opportunities we do today for education. Yours was just more recently repressed than most. That's not a reflection on you, or them. How you evolve going forward however is. Now that you have the option to grow and expand as a culture if you fail to utilize it, or create excuses for why you can't, that's all on you, which again is something Cosby and Oprah have both preached, as have many others.
I fully believe that anyone, black, white, red, yellow, green or purple, anyone can accomplish the basics - graduate high school, get a degree or trade certification, have a decent job, raise a family and contribute to society. As long as they're willing to put forth the effort.
Re: Should he have been fired?
ITT a bunch of privileged middle to upper middle class white men advocate the merit of racism categorized as an opinion and thus allowed to exist. Which, in turn, advocates for the allowance for vocalized -isms and phobias classifying certain communities of humans as inferior.
SMH.
I'm assuming you all protested Don Imus' firing a few years ago for what he said on the radio as well. Or that you all support the protests of U.S. military funerals by the Westboro Baptist Church.
This sickens me the most:
We're not talking about liking Justin Bieber or MLP. We're talking about ostracizing black people to their own communities because they're black. Apparently ostracizing people for their thoughts is absolutely reprehensible but ostracizing people because of the color of their skin is, well, just an "unpopular opinion."
Re: Should he have been fired?
I think the excude is right. (I dont like big words......). Excluding people because of there skin is wrong and should be unpopular you can not control your skin's shadding. You however can control your thoughts and thus can control not showing them. Ask yourself this. Would you rather be with someone who looks like you or who shares how you think?
Elaborate on how sharing views or looking like someone are relevant, please?
Re: Should he have been fired?
Let me correct a few assumptions for you - I grew up in a single parent household that made less than 14k a year. I was the only white male in my preschool class for two years, and there was only one white female and one hispanic boy. I was in government housing until I was 8 and a predominantly black trailer park for three years after that. My family's only privilege has been to pull ourselves from the desperate brink of poverty to where I am now, and I did it entirely alone on my own merits with no assistance. My first "real" job was working for six years with the deaf and blind.
I have little tolerance and less respect for the sniveling about the fairness of life, the horrible disrespect of others and how much the universe owes anyone for their past. The history of this country is founded on people who came over with nothing and made a life for themselves. The American dream is that anyone with guts to try can make it.
Racism exists. Classism exists. Religious persecution exists. Obstacles. Exist. The universe does not exist to affirm you, regardless of who you are. There will always be someone who thinks they're better than you for some reason most likely out of your control, let alone theirs. Sometimes they may even be right.
The answer to ignorance is always education. Let people share their views, their fears, their concerns. Stifling it is never the answer, because until you know the idiotic crap that's going through their minds you have no idea what you're dealing with and where to begin finding commonality and moving towards acceptance.
Your entire premise here is that by hushing people it'll all go away, or at least make you feel better because you can pretend it's gone.
How well has that worked so far? How well is that working for China?
ITT: FrozNlite thinks black people are the only ones who "stick to their own" and that they don't do by choice.
The vast majority of every community sticks to what is familiar to it. That's why you have portions of towns that are considered asian, black, latino, jewish, whatever. Pretending that people don't have a natural inclination to stay within their comfort zone and should never speak of it because it's a foul and hideous thing is absurd. There are in fact, statistically, more black people who are afraid to mix with white people than there are white people afraid to mix with black. But both sides exist. Both sides fear each other because of things have happened in the past, and trying to prevent people from mentioning it isn't a cure.
If anything it should be talked about so people can ask the single most important question we all learn as kids; Why?
Because if the other person's reasoning isn't sound, you learn for yourself the basis of such silly fears and feel better making your own informed decision rather than just doing what you've had subtly reinforced.
Re: Should he have been fired?
They are the same in that you can bother be ridiculed/hated for them.
@Eos. Im suprised that more blacks are afraid of mixing genes than whites. I can see myself "mixing" genes with any other race than my own. Which I claim to be black. (I'm more like mix white+black i suppose. but not a "Light" black person.) But this could also be due to where I was brought up from.
Re: Should he have been fired?
I never said anything about mixing genes. I said socializing, period.
Re: Should he have been fired?
Privileged middle to upper class? My father is a MINISTER. We don't even own a house! How rich do you think my family is?!
I think I'll get out of this conversation before I blow a lid.
DO YOU SEE THE GODDAMN IRONY IN THIS STATEMENT. LOOK. IT'S RIGHT THERE.
Re: Should he have been fired?
So because I disagree with the firing based on the websites clear regulations not opinion makes me a "privileged middle to upper middle class white man". Okay.
Well since we're doing stereotypes, you're gay therefore support Obama who therefore supports Socialism. So you want me to give all my hard earned money to a bunch of lazy mother f`uckers who feel like they are entitled to leech off the government!
See what you JUST did. Here's the fact's, no matter how pure you may find yourself, you by your very nature are racist/prejudice/judgemental. It's a fu`cking defense mechanism that you subconciously deal with. It's the extremes that determine how inhumane you are.
Re: Should he have been fired?
Call me a cynic, but I believe the only reason he was fired was to generate more traffic for the site. And not from people who threatened to boycott it because of this oh-so-intolerably-offensive-even-for-them article, which they didn't even remove.
Re: Should he have been fired?
I think some people are assuming that this guy's opinion (or anyone else's for that matter) will suddenly and inevitably replace the opinion of the general populace. And thus, protection shall be provided from such satanic topics by interferring with free speech and thought!
A rather dangerous thought if the ideal world/society you envision includes the right of free thought, speech and flow of information.
Anyway. I don't think he should've been fired for stating his opinion. That's because I don't believe society should be a pile of overprotected wuss that is unable to debate freely about any kind of topic because it's afraid of getting its feelings hurt.
edit: This reminds me of a certain coach who was forced to apologize after saying that he admired Fidel, in Florida (aka Cuba 2).
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