And ponies for all? It's not on the table, the forced pregnancy folks are willing to make exceptions for rape and incest but that's about it. (And of course de facto for the upper middle class)
With respect to people with different skin colour, affirmative action is not equal rights, but unequal rights.
Yeah, right. I mean it's clear that we've now achieved a non racist society and that all the legacies of American apartheid have long since disappeared. Judging from your diary I presume you have some sympathy for the old Anatole France quote about the equality of the law and sleeping under bridges, but I guess that only applies to class, not race. This is one area where the European left could seriously benefit from learning a few lessons from America. And I really, really don't think that US liberals need lessons on race from German conservatives.
I have no idea, how you judge from my diary, that I want different laws for people from different classes. It certainly is not the case. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
? Higher taxes for the rich, higher benefits for the poor - i.e. differential treatment based on class. My question was why is it ok to have government policies designed to address class inequality, but not the effects of racism.
In any case it is rather dubious to suggest that this would help the dems. On both abortion and affirmative action the dem position tends to be marginally more popular than the republican one. Sure it costs us the racist fundie working and middle class white vote - i.e. we don't do well in the South. However, given that poor Southern whites already vote majority Dem and the middle income ones tend to be more economically conservative than upper middle class northeastern liberals this is not only a recipe for selling out on principles, it's a recipe for trading socially liberal economically centrist suburban seats in Blue states for socially conservative economically centrist ones in Red states. So you end up selling out on core values for absolutely no benefit.
On the question of different treatment, the law is the same for the rich and the poor. Affirmative action is usually something which has words like Afroamerican, female or something like that in its wording. I want only laws, which you could as well apply, if you could not distinguish if somebody is coloured or not. Some people have reduced chances, because their parents were not well educated, because their parents were not well educated, because their parents were not well educated... And no, I don't want laws, you can only apply if you know if the grandfather of someone was an academic or not, despite it has the real world consequence, that somebody whose grandfather was an academic has much better chances to become as well an academic. If the 'racism' is a racism of today, e.g. if a judge gives a too high punishment to a coloured person, then a law of truly equal rights will make this illegal. But that is probably not, what republicans are fighting. Mistreatment of ancients is generally not corrected. 99% of Europeans have been something similar like slaves, too, and still we don't disfavour people with of/de/von/van in their names. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
Or are you perhaps proposing to do things German style and confiscate the property of the majority of whites? (The old agrarian elite was very disproportionately located in the ex DDR and Ostgebiete) That's a bit more radical than affirmative action...
You're saying that the US left should adopt a neoliberal approach to racial inequality. Personally, I think it's high time the European left had the courage and honesty to reject neoliberalism in that realm.
or
this: The biggest chunk of people, who made it to the top, comes from the upper quantile. As members of the elevated bourgoisie, they have the properties, which are decisive at same qualification. [...] He found that the bourgoisie as well chooses different names. Chantal, Jacqueline oder Kevin are taboo. They sound like welfare and ghetto." Is it your fault, if your parents give you the wrong name? Or do you really think people called Kevin are less capable of leading an enterprise than people with name Peter? And don't underestimate that effect, it is real. And unlike the coloured American, the Kevin might not even notice, that his name dooms him. There are no laws to prevent Kevins from becoming bosses. But there are social stigmas, which sometimes have as big effects.
You think we live in a meritocracy, where always those are the winners who are the best for a job? Rediculous. And why should they, intelligence is probably about half genetically.
And should we in Germany have a special ossi treatment? After they were not allowed to give any meaningfull vote until recently. And after they have collectivly hardly a chance to have learned our elitists culture? I had at least twice here craftsmen, where the was a Badenian and an ossi. The ossi was doing the dirty work in the basement and the Badenia was doing the less dirty work in the flat.
Besides being ideological against such things as affirmative action, I'm afraid, that the explicit use and definition (what the hell is a coloured person, am I coloured, too, after sunburn?, maybe without a commitee saying who gets the benefits and who not, people wouldn't know anymore who to discriminate) of special treatment gives afterwards justification for social behaviour disfavouring those the lawmakers wanted to help in the first place.
However, I think redstar has a good point, when asserting, that race in the US covers so much other things, and with people still living who were victims of racial discrimination, one can of course think about helping them. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
There are good reasons for government intervention to redress class inequality - which you argue for and I agree with. Yet not only do you reject it with respect to race, you insist on making ludicrous arguments that dismiss the very notion that it is a serious problem. And it is one not just in the US, but also in Germany. Suggesting that the US ignore it the way the Germans do (except of course when the CDU/CSU is outright inciting it) is really not appealing to US liberals. The idea is to copy the good sides of the European system, not the bad ones.
what the hell is a coloured person, am I coloured, too, after sunburn?, maybe without a commitee saying who gets the benefits and who not, people wouldn't know anymore who to discriminate
are you really this clueless or are you deliberately seeking to incite? It's the kind of stuff you'd expect to find on a freeper thread.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
I am not claiming that France is the only country to have such problems (but it happens to be an example I know of), nor that the problems are nearly as virulent as they are across the Pond. But I think that a case can be made that they exist.
Of course, in general your point still stands: European countries generally have a much more complex history of interaction with foreign ethnic groups, which of course means that the history of European racism is rather more complicated than the American ditto.
I'm not excusing or minimising European racism: I'm saying that viewing it through the same lens as US anti-black racism is inappropriate and unhelpful.
In the meantime many people are here and can stay here and can get the citizenship and often don't want it, when they have to give up their old citizenship for that.
Currently about 20% of the population has "migration background". But in most cities more than 40% of poeple under 40 have. The oldest living generation has nearly none. So what's your problem? Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
Are you really excusing that appalling piece of racism that was(?) German citizenship policy?
And yes, I fully excuse what I know about the German citizenship policy as non racistic. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
...have you spent much time in Europe? No shortage of racism there.
In order: no and I know it, too.
I don't, and didn't, object to the message. I do, and did, think the rhetoric carrying that message jumped the shark.
Unless we are talking about widescale amnesia experienced as a collective defense mechanism. "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
Don't you think people can have multiple or mixed identities, as well as loyalties and residence? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Is there an official Latin name for the rhetorical device of grasping at straws?
And it seems I wasn't clear enough. I don't think that most Turks born in Germany have rally a split loyality. At least not one, where Germany could get a similar priority for them as Turkey. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
There is a Turk from Turkey, who just came for phd, in the institute I work. I have never met a Turk less nationalistic than him. I have the impression, that living in Germany may make Turks more nationalistic instead of less. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
But the relevant question is, is that the typical case.
Relevant to what, and typical in what sense?
I have some migration experience, and I'd say mixed loyalties are almost universal - but there is a wide scale of the relative weights.
But with non-EU citizens this a real problem.
Why do you consider this a significant problem? Especially when compared to the problem for those non-EU citizens, whom you'd bar from influencing decisions affecting their lives (in addition to several little bureaucratic obstacles to conducting their lives)? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I have no figures broken down by generation, but by the end of 2006, there were some 720,000 Turkish citizens naturalized post-1990, and 1.74 million who were not - and methinks the first group contains a good deal of the multiple-generation Turks.
Also, many with dual identities (though that probably applies less to the third generation) would rather wait for dual citizenship to become law at last than having to choose. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
There is no difference in the treatment of eastern Germans by law. The corresponding measures to what was done here would be to give economic weak states subsidies. There were lots of former east Germans going to the West and there were as well west Germans going to the east. I have no clue why this should be seen as any specific treatment for east German people. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
And a side effect of affirmative action is that some blacks benefit who aven't been discriminateed against and come from well-off families, and some people of mixed descent who don't qualify as "blacks" but have suffered racial discrimination as such don't.
Why aren't there ghetto uplift programms
Because socialism didn't get as far as the fight against racism. Note though that the New Deal and the post-WWII programmes in the US also worked to lift a lot of people out of the non-black, immigrant ghettos in East Coast major cities.
it wouldn't be, 'you are treated different because your skin is dark'
Now, are you claiming that there is no trend of US blacks being treated different because of the colour of their skin, only because of their ghetto origins? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I think I could dig up some studies on that from Hungary. No serf just peasant, and no study but anecdote, but I witnessed discirminative comments towards a classmate (he was a trouble kid, at another time he played xenophobic with me) based on being a farmboy at my West German school.
However, I definitely wouldn't judge serf origin comparable in seriousness with slave origin. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
having observed the complex and arcane genetic requirements to be classified 'hawaiian', (6 generations born and raised), i think i know what Martin meant.
it was phrased a bit funny... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
People think slavery ended in 1865. It didn't. Segregation was one thing, which turned whole parts of the US, and not just in the South, into a police state if you happened to be black well into the 1960's. But laws beyond segregation were also put into place, making the station of many blacks in the US de facto slavery:
In the past decade, several influential studies of this period have revealed the relationship between emancipation, the 13th Amendment, and the convict lease program (Lichtenstein, 1996a; Mancini, 1996; Davis, 1999). Built into the 13th Amendment was state authorization to use prison labor as a bridge between slavery and paid work. Slavery was abolished "except as a punishment for crime." This stipulation provided the intellectual and legal mechanisms to enable the state to use "unfree" labor by leasing prisoners to local businesses and corporations desperate to rebuild the South's infrastructure. During this period, white "Redeemers" -- white planters, small farmers, and political leaders -- set out to rebuild the pre-emancipation racial order by enacting laws that restricted black access to political representation and by creating Black Codes that, among other things, increased the penalties for crimes such as vagrancy, loitering, and public drunkenness (Davis, 2000). As African Americans continued the process of building schools, churches, and social organizations, and vigorously fought for political participation, a broad coalition of Redeemers used informal and state-sponsored forms of violence and repression to roll back the gains made during Reconstruction. Thus, mass imprisonment was employed as a means of coercing resistant freed slaves into becoming wage laborers. Prison populations soared during this period, enabling the state to play a critical role in mediating the brutal terms of negotiation between capitalism and the spectrum of unfree labor. The transition from slave-based agriculture to industrial economies thrust ex-slaves and "unskilled" laborers into new labor arrangements that left them vulnerable to depressed, resistant white workers or pushed them outside the labor market completely. The transfer of power to the state signaled by the 13th Amendment profoundly reshaped the political landscape along with emancipation. By empowering the state to regulate relationships between private individuals, the state also gained the ability to determine the contours of freedom and unfreedom. The expansion of state jurisdiction thus had the dual effect of establishing legal rights for African Americans while paving the way for new, state-maintained structures of racism. Convict labor became increasingly racialized: it was assumed that blacks were more suitable for hard physical labor on Southern prison farms and on corporate railroad and construction company projects (Lichtenstein, 1996b). Contrary to popular representations of chain gang labor, not only black men, but also black women were forced to work on the lines and on hard labor projects, revealing how the slave order was being mirrored in the emerging punishment system. This mimicking of the slave system structure in the post-emancipation prison system, particularly in the South, suggested a belief that the performance of antebellum culture could bring the slave system back to life (Jackson, 1999). In Northern prisons, which had historically been structured around industrial rather than agricultural labor, racially based divisions were sharpened after emancipation as well. African Americans were criminalized for committing Black Code-type crimes and often were subject to tougher sentences than those imposed upon whites convicted of similar crimes (Du Bois, 1935).
The transfer of power to the state signaled by the 13th Amendment profoundly reshaped the political landscape along with emancipation. By empowering the state to regulate relationships between private individuals, the state also gained the ability to determine the contours of freedom and unfreedom. The expansion of state jurisdiction thus had the dual effect of establishing legal rights for African Americans while paving the way for new, state-maintained structures of racism. Convict labor became increasingly racialized: it was assumed that blacks were more suitable for hard physical labor on Southern prison farms and on corporate railroad and construction company projects (Lichtenstein, 1996b). Contrary to popular representations of chain gang labor, not only black men, but also black women were forced to work on the lines and on hard labor projects, revealing how the slave order was being mirrored in the emerging punishment system. This mimicking of the slave system structure in the post-emancipation prison system, particularly in the South, suggested a belief that the performance of antebellum culture could bring the slave system back to life (Jackson, 1999). In Northern prisons, which had historically been structured around industrial rather than agricultural labor, racially based divisions were sharpened after emancipation as well. African Americans were criminalized for committing Black Code-type crimes and often were subject to tougher sentences than those imposed upon whites convicted of similar crimes (Du Bois, 1935).
This persisted well into the 1950's in large sections of the US and, in some places, well after that.
No, the US still has a race problem to remedy it, and it colors (no pun intended) treatments of class at every stage of the game. Arguably, race is precisely why Americans are so bad at class consciousness. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
Here's what white privilege sounds like: I am sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college admissions, which he opposes and I support. The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that in the United States being white has advantages. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege. So, if we live in a world of white privilege--unearned white privilege--how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I ask. He paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter." That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: the privilege to acknowledge you have unearned privilege but ignore what it means.
I am sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college admissions, which he opposes and I support.
The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that in the United States being white has advantages. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege.
So, if we live in a world of white privilege--unearned white privilege--how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I ask.
He paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter."
That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: the privilege to acknowledge you have unearned privilege but ignore what it means.
About the first twenty years of my life I spend in the Emsland. I like to compare it to the Shire, where Hobbits live, because it is about the unimportant and 'boring' place one can find in western Germany. It is in general very catholic and in the 3000 people village, where I lived, were nearly no foreigners. My parents of course were in some sense as well foreigner coming from Rheinland-Pfalz. As there is so many space and illicit work/neighbourly help is so common the houses the typical Emsländer lives in are so big, that the major of cologne once said when he came to the Emsland, that in Cologne only millionaires live like the normal ones in the Emsland. Despite the general lack of foreigners, my first best friend was a foreigner, a real foreigner. His last name Haouati was always great fun, when somebody tried to pronounce it for the first time. The reason why we were best friends had a lot to do with football. Actually I can remember much what else I have done as a small child than playing football. We were not only playing one against one in our normal free time, but were as well going to the local football club, where we played every second year together as he was a bit older. I played defense, Armin was striker, a very good one and often the only hope for our very grotty team. His father was a simple worker. Armin lived with his 4 siblings in a small flat with only 2 children rooms for the five kids. When we reached primary school age, it was usual to invite all boys of our 18 children class. A tradition which all but one followed. He invited only me to his birthday. In the summer holidays, he was always going home to Tunesia. Shortly after we had learned to write, I got my first holiday card in my life, he wrote only 'Martin, you are a good friend'. His parents planned to go home, when Armins father would reach retirement age. I have the strong impression, that they somehow assumed their children would like to go to Tunesia, too. Armin was the oldest, a younger brother had the name Ali, a sister Bashra, when I met him first, later there was born a sister Maura. His mother wore a headscarve, Armin was following the rules of Ramadan, at home they spoke Arabian. Sometimes it is difficult to judge oneself, so I'm not doing that. In all the years, I went together with him to school, I was playing football in a club and our free time with him, I can't remember to have seen any sign of racism or any kind of discrimination, because of him being a muslim. But I know, that on his birthday he would have invited all the boys of our class, if it were not for the reason, that his his father earned so little money. Already after we were going on different high schools, another sister was born. The parents gave her the name Ines. So it seems they have decided to stay for ever. When Armin turned 18, he applied to German citizenship, made his military service and studied economy.
Later when I was in high school, I had a very unusual teacher of the name Kristof Tondera. He had a very strong accent and was talking Polish with his kids. All except one year in high school he was my physics teacher, which is, as you may know, the subject which I have studied afterwards. He was as well most of the time thye physics teacher of my younger brother, who as well studies physics. My brother once told me, that a pupil said something which implied Mr. Tondera to be a Pole. He said he is no Pole. He is a German. The constitution says, a German is somebody who has a German passport. Up to that point I had never really thought about citizenship, but diffusely I had the impression, of German being a race, as often in the media there is spoken about 'Deutschtürke' or something like that, which implies, that somebody is still a Turk, even once he has taken the German citizenship and has given up on his Turkish citizenship. But Mr. Tondera, one of my favourite teachers, said, he is a German. Not because he was born in Germany, or because he could speak German that greatly (he really has a strong accent), but finally, because he decided to become one, and was accepted. I think from that day on, I began to think of being German as of a clubmembership, not as a race or something like that and always get angry, if in the media there is said somebody was a 'Deutschtürke', even if his ancestry as Turk was completely irrelevant, as it is in most of the times, it is mentioned.
If I could have wished something for Armin, it would have certainly not been, that he would be more white. I never had the feeling that this makes any difference. I would have wished him, a birthday party with all children like the one had it, who were living in the big houses. When thinking about my physics teacher (you may say, he is not coloured, but speaking with a Polish accent is certainly in Germany not so far apart from being, well, different in an important aspect), the one who has probably done a big part for that I'm going the way of my live, as I do, I can't think at the same time of a disadvantaged person and of the role model, he indeed is.
Some were talking about the question if there is racism in Europe/Germany. There is. But to lump all those together in a group who are somehow different, labelling them as disadvantaged and creating a compensation, which then is statistically provided to them, in no correlation to the question whom of them really got big disadvateges and who not, is in my opinion a form of that collectivist thinking, which creates the disadvantages in the first place. It is judging people by their skin colour, by their ancients, not by what they do, what they achieve, what is their desire. The playing field is not levelled. So is not for the Kevins or the Jaquelines in Germany, so is not for those who can't speak the elitists slang, despite doing all the things superior which are officially required of them to be part of the uberwinners gang. But the field bumpy, not simply high for those who are white and low for the others. If some ETers want to call me racist for insisting on looking on the full person, not labelling people in a box. So be it. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
I can't think at the same time of a disadvantaged person and of the role model
Maybe I should ask others, where I have the impression they are not discriminated, maybe they can name some occasions, where they were discriminated. But what exactly is the problem? We are what we are mostly either by genome or by environment interacting with the phenotype. Discrimination doesn't justify affirmative action unless it is that pronounced that it becomes dominant over other e.g. genetic factors. Whatever they will tell me, if I can't see any discrimination on people who I well know, than this discrimination will not be pronounced enough to trump other factors, the least socio-economic background, which in contrast to what Marek said, is not countered with affirmative action (that would be e.g. giving some of my commillitons better marks for the same diploma thesis than I get, because they have working class parents, or give them some extra lessons or whatsoever different treatment). Socio-economic background I can watch every week on meetings where my mostly working class commilitons behave in an attitude untypical for the upper class.
Statistical Italians in Germany have nearly as bad chances in our school system as Turks, and Spaniards nearly as good chances as native Germans. So anti-Italian racism trumps the effects of ghettoisation, which affect the more numerous Italians compared with the less numerous Spaniards?
Racism in Germany is strongly concentrated on regions and in milieus, and as our minorities are ususally not coloured, it is often an accentism. With all I know up to know, I can guarantee you, that if coloured, but accent free, Ines is going the way of her brother and studies, she will face less mutual exclusion than a white Jaqueline - despite the indignities a Gerald Asamoah has to face in some stadiums, despite burning asylum homes in Solingen or Rostock, and despite Mügeln. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
Geoff Gerbers wife: "Don't answer it."
"I beg your pardon."
"Don't answer it."
"And may I ask why?"
"--it's a wrong number."
"Well then by all means let's not answer it. Heh heh. But I think I should ask you this Althea, uh, how do you know it's a wrong number?"
"It has a different sound. Wrong numbers sound more neurotic because the circuits are confused--"
"I see."
"--and it just upsets it if you answer it."
"Uh huh, it's strange but, it sounds like a right number to me."
"No, you're wrong."
"You're nuts!" Picks up phone. "Hello?"
"Geoff Gerber?"
"Yes."
"Move out, nigger."
Puts phone down.
"It was a wrong number..."
"They've been calling all day."
Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
