@BillRM,
What is this nonsense about "a culture" that the "black community had on the whole decided to embrace"?
Are you aware that the birth rate for unmarried women has been on the increase since the 1940's for the entire U.S. population?
Quote:MAY 1, 2013
About 6 in 10 Recent Moms in Their Early 20s are Unmarried, Census Bureau Reports
As of 2011, 62 percent of women age 20 to 24 who gave birth in the previous 12 months were unmarried, according to a report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. This compares with 17 percent among women age 35 to 39...
In 2011, 4.1 million women reported that they had given birth in the last year. Of these women, 36 percent were unmarried at the time of the survey, an increase from 2005 when an estimated 31 percent of recent births were to unmarried women (2005 was the earliest year for which statistics are available from the American Community Survey).
"The increased share of unmarried recent mothers is one measure of the nation's changing family structure," Kreider said. "Nonmarital fertility has been climbing steadily since the 1940s and has risen even more markedly in recent years."
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/american_community_survey_acs/cb13-80.html
About 6 in 10 recent U.S. moms in their early 20's seem to be "embracing" this allegedly "black culture", BillRM, since 62% of them were unmarried when they gave birth.
Perhaps you should look at the factors, beyond race, that account for those numbers.
And I fail to understand why any of the very real problems, within the segment of the black population that remains a socio-economic underclass, remains a reason to excuse or express racially biased attitudes toward all blacks, or even toward the blacks within that underprivileged group.
I similarly fail to understand why you continually focus on Sharpton as the alleged main spokesperson for all African Americans. Is there a corresponding main spokesperson for all white Americans? Do only whites have diversity of opinions?
Nor do you give the historical context of slavery and institutionalized racism more credibility, in terms of its continuing influences in our society, when it is voiced by our first African-American President.
Quote:You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.
There are very few African American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. There are very few African American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me -- at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven't had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.
And I don't want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear. The African American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws -- everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.
Now, this isn't to say that the African American community is naïve about the fact that African American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system; that they’re disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence. It’s not to make excuses for that fact -- although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context. They understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history.
And so the fact that sometimes that’s unacknowledged adds to the frustration. And the fact that a lot of African American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuse is given, well, there are these statistics out there that show that African American boys are more violent -- using that as an excuse to then see sons treated differently causes pain.
I think the African American community is also not naïve in understanding that, statistically, somebody like Trayvon Martin was statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else. So folks understand the challenges that exist for African American boys. But they get frustrated, I think, if they feel that there’s no context for it and that context is being denied. And that all contributes I think to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/07/19/remarks-president-trayvon-martin
Did President Obama's comments give you any pause for thought?
Not a bit.
In fact, you compared the President to Al Sharpton and labeled him a "race baiter" as well. You were livid about President Obama saying, "Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago."
You just don't want to acknowledge your own racial biases, and you discredit and demean just about any black person, or black organization, that speaks out to identify or decry manifestations of racism or bias that continue to exist in our society.
There are definite reasons Sterling is considered a racist--and they go way beyond his remarks in that recent phone conversation--just as your own racially biased attitudes have been expressed in threads that go beyond just this one...
