Cinnesthesia wrote:Noah, you sound like an unhappy person. Personally unhappy, not just in the Angry Black Man sense.
The only way that one can be truly happy is to divorce oneself from the needs and conscerns of others.
-quote from an author whose name I cannot remember...but it is one of the wisest quotes I have ever read. With so much suffering in the world...how can anyone be happy unless they ignore it?
"The only way that one can be truly happy is to divorce oneself from the needs and concerns of others. "
Noah, I understand what you are saying, but there will always be pain in the world. The point is not to ignore it, but for each of us to do what we can to alleviate suffering where we can, and for the greater good, while living our own lives in a joyful manner. Life is short. Find your own happiness while doing the best you can as an individual.
Noah...I think if you wanted a less heated debate, you should have come in here and discussed slavery, back when slavery was in exsistence.... I'm sure everyone in here would have agreed with you on the horrors of it. How wicked it really was. I maybe mistaken, but there is not one person in this thread that agreed with slavery. I think it was a unspeakable crime.
But you'd never get my backing with the hatred that you have spewed through these pages for YOUR fellow americans. Whether you like it or not, you have white folks to deal with the rest of your God given life. And I do believe it would be easier on you to try to make the best out of what life has given you...instead of sitting around in some funk being mean and spiteful about it.
Which reminds me...the venom you have spewed at some of the posters here in A2K is uncalled for. What do you expect, for us to step back and let you be the hateful man that you are protraying yourself to be, and us not say anything? You have insulted and offended many. And its totally uncalled for here. Are anyone of us to blame for you being so called kicked down..? Noooooo, we aren't. None of US...had a hand in it. We did not decide who our parents were going to be or where we'd be born..Maybe its your parents you need to be speaking too. For starters, work ethic is taught to your children though the parents...lazyiness is taught as well. Did you parents not teach you to work hard? Did they teach you to stand your ground and finish what you started? Didn't they teach you to get up, if you were kicked down? Or did they teach you to sit around and wait for a handout? Which was it Noah? Lay the blame where the blame is to be laid Noah! The man you are today, is that the man your father was? Did you follow in his footsteps or did you hit the sidewalk and go in the opposite direction?
Because whether you like it or not...THE FELLOW AMERICANS that your blaming now, DID NOT have anything to do with it. And further more, just like you...we didn't get to pick our race. Like Dys said, there is only one race...HUMANS!
TY, sublime1.
I doubt that anything I say will have any effect on Noah's sense of entitlement.
My ancestors struggled too. They had hard lives. They didn't leave me an inheritance. My parents insisted that I work hard and get an education. No one gave me anything . . . I had to earn a living, pay for my own college, and struggle to get ahead just like everyone else.
Few people are born with silver spoons in their mouths.
Debra...Wonderfully Stated!!
Black Americans are a diverse group, with many able to function on a level totally removed from a long history of oppression, which lasted until late in the 20th Century, and lingers still in pockets all over the country. Still, to characterize the total population of ex-slaves as free to pursue the American dream from 1865 on is ridiculous. When I was a child, black Americans were portrayed in the media as simple and stupid. They had to go to the back of a restaurant to get served, eating outside the building. They rode in the back of the bus. They were murdered for being 'uppity.' In Houston they were considered too dumb to operate a city bus. Even after I grew up the places I worked were not hiring when blacks applied, but they were hiring whites.
What I'm leading up to is, when it is beat into your head for three hundred years that you are little more than a high grade animal, made to live in miserable poverty, not even allowed to look up from the sidewalk when passing a white person, there is a cultural mindset ingrained that high platitudes cannot penetrate. You can call the man who started this thread all the names you wish; you can preach the white man's version of self reliance, but you will be whistling in the wind. The mindset perpetrates itself, while the disgusted whites write them off as unworthy because they don't help themselves. Mental handicap is as debilitating as being a paraplegic. These people still are in need of a hand up. There goes the alarm bells in your rock hard mentalities. "Edgar wants us to put them on generational welfare." Wrong. I just want a real effort to be made to incorporate these folks into the human race rather than preaching platitudes at them. So here begins the circle again. "Why don't they get off their asses and help themselves", which is turning a blind eye to every word I've said.
Edgar:
You have told us what life might have been like for a black person living in the South in th 1950's.
This is 2005. Maybe it's a difference in our geography, but I don't see what you see.
I don't see a race of mentally handicapped people. On the contrary, I see black people as capable, intelligent human beings. I see a society that has worked diligently over the last several decades to remove the social, economic, and political barriers that once stood in the way of equality. Today, I see a society of equal opportunity for persons of all colors.
In addition to all the social programs already in effect, what more do you think we need to do to give people a hand up?
Noah
Why do you hate yourself so much for being black?
