A Dialogue on the infamous “N” word

I'm watching you guys slay liberal dragons that are somewhat true somewhere and quite a bit not true.

I wish this thread had never been posted. I'm done, I'll leave it to the racists...

I am glad you started this thread, Arg, because some honest discussion came out of it. Even CNN, after its stern opening warning, still wouldn't say "nigger" or "cracker" out loud--they had them written on cards, just re-inforcing the (to me) silly notion that these words are so inherently bad that you can't use them when "discussing" them.

Well, isn't that the irony? How can you have a discussion about the words nigger...

Some people have needed help despite their efforts. Some people are born into tougher situations than others and get lost in troubles.

He also talks about "low-expectation-havin motherfuckers."

It's a humanity thing.

In a famous June 1965 speech, the president [Johnson] suggested that the problems plaguing black Americans could not be solved by self-help....Thus began an unprecedented commitment of federal funds to a wide range of measures aimed at redistributing wealth in the United States. From 1965 to 2008, nearly $16 trillion of taxpayer money (in constant 2008 dollars) was spent on means-tested welfare programs for the poor.

The rise of the welfare state in the 1960s contributed greatly to the demise of the black family as a stable institution. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among African Americans today is 73%, three times higher than it was prior to the War on Poverty. Children raised in fatherless homes are far more likely to grow up poor and to eventually engage in criminal behavior, than their peers who are raised in two-parent homes.

As George Mason University professor Walter E. Williams [a black man] puts it: “The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, what Jim Crow couldn't do, what the harshest racism couldn't do. And that is to destroy the black family.”

Hoover Institution Fellow Thomas Sowell [another black man] concurs: “The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.”

During the nine decades between the Emancipation Proclamation and the 1950s, the black family remained a strong, stable institution....Post-Civil War studies revealed that most black couples in their forties had been together for at least twenty years. In southern urban areas around 1880, nearly three-fourths of black households were husband-or father-present; in southern rural settings, the figure approached 86%. As of 1940, the illegitimacy rate among blacks nationwide was approximately 15%—scarcely one-fifth of the current figure. As late as 1950, black women were more likely to be married than white women, and only 9% of black families with children were headed by a single parent.

As somebody who worked in low-income neighborhoods, I’ve seen it where people weren’t encouraged to work, weren’t encouraged to upgrade their skills, were just getting a check, and over time their motivation started to diminish. And I think even if you’re progressive you’ve got to acknowledge that some of these things have not been well designed.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. (Groucho Marx)

And that is what I've been trying to say, and trying to understand its' roots. That it is rooted in abuse and slavery is a form of abuse

Slavery was an abomination. There’s no argument, based on morality, that can justify slavery and its attendant evils...[But] "vestiges and legacy of slavery" arguments are simply covers for another hustle similar to the $6 trillion dollar War on Poverty hustle.

Or...am I misreading it?

Perhaps some of the "roots" consist of something more/other than than slavery and abuse, Arg.

As Professor Williams noted (above): “The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, what Jim Crow couldn't do, what the harshest racism couldn't do. And that is to destroy the black family.”