Re: The Portrayal of Blacks in Popular Media

Man, the BS is deep in here. Apart from being self-serving crap, there's nothing in the record of your posting here to support such laughably absurd ego-centrism.

Snood appears to be uncomfortable when I relate real life experiences to him. I read that he has just received his teaching degree. I wait( if Snood is honest) for his recantation of his thesis and his statement that Movies do NOT portray blacks honestly--at least when it comes to students.

When Snood first encounters a strapping young man who stands up in his class and says:

"Stick it in your as, M-F." then he may come to the realization that Hollywood does NOT depict Blacks correctly. He may realize that "Finding Forrester" is one of the few films that nears the truth. He may then find that the few inner city scholars are IN REALITY continually regaled with the mantra--"Why do you want to act White? Study is for suckers.

Where is the movie that shows a teacher with a class of black high schoolers( there are thousands like this in reality) which graphically shows that the black high schoolers cannot read, write or spell beyond the fourth grade level on average?

Instead, we get the pious depictions of the "good" black student defending the harrassed teacher against the vicious Latino or the skin-head White.

Political Correctness, you know!!!!

People who really know movies are aware that the movies may, of course, tweak reality, but they also know that in the thirties and forties, movies about Irish, Italian and even Jewish criminals( the Cagney era) showed the irremediable criminal at the end of the movie either being killed by the just forces of the law or being executed.

Try to find a movie which depicts a black criminal meeting his just deserts from the law because he or she was an evil person!

Snood has a lot to learn. He will be ten years older in two years after his automobile windows are smashed by a student who did not appreciate his lectures. He will feel the whiz of a rock past his head when he ventures too far from the school area.


Anyone who thinks that the inner city blacks in our large cities are like a young Sidney Poiter is completely deluded.

These young men and women are, on the whole savagely opposed to mainstream society.

Jesse, Al, The Minister and Malcom taught them!!!!

Boy, you do spread generalizations like butter on bread, don't you, mortkat? That is stereotyping with a capital Ass. Go home and make sure your white sheets and hood are properly laundered for the next time you go to pay a visit on the 'uppity Nigras.'

My bet, Andrew, that now "Merry Andrew seems not to know and will have to learn ..." or similar rubbish will be spitted here ...

How tiresome, Merry Andrew. Are you so lacking in research skills or in general knowledge that you cannot completely destroy my arguements and statements?

Posts like your and Walter Hinteler's only show the inablity of the left wing to respond.

Try it, Merry Andrew or Walter..Try characterizing the inner city black students differently than I have--- with evidence of course.

Do you know that a large number inner city High Schools( almost completely black) in a city with which I am very familiar-Chicago- have an average score of 9 (NINE) on the ACT?

You can do as well randomly making dots.

What you do not appear to realize is that most of these students cannot get into any College or University because they do not have the minimum scores(MINIMUM SCORES) needed for admission.

Then we hear cries of" racism "from the African-Americans who can't read or write or spell that they cannot find work.

Do you understand that Hollywood and the left have created a "victim" class. I am poor. The society is racist. Study won't help me----and yet the majority of the recently arrived Vietnamese--mainly poor and with few resources--and of a different race bearing strange sounding names MAKE UP A GOOD SLICE OF THE PHI BETA KAPPA GROUP AT SOME OF OUR BEST COLLEGES>

"Generalizations"? You will have to do much better than that- Merry Andrew and Walter Hinteler.

You are correct: Merry Andrew and I aren't good at all with generalisations.

We wouldn't never try to compete with you in this field.

Mortkat wrote:

Try it, Merry Andrew or Walter..Try characterizing the inner city black students differently than I have--- with evidence of course.

This is your problem, Mort. You insist on "characterizing...inner city black students" as some sort of cohesive group, a herd of cattle, a gaggle of geese, all indistinguishable one from another. You do not even see them as individual human beings, just like adolscenets from any other subset.

Characterize "with evidence, of course"? My dear sir, I teach inner city youth in a detention facility within the juvenile justice system of the Commenwealth of Massachusetts. fully 80 to 85 percent of my students are people of color, in the age range of 14 to 18, some younger. I deal with these youths on a daily basis. That is my evidence and those are my credentials. What you describe is a small segment of that group. Yet your disgusting generalization would paint all young black males with the same broad brush.

You, sir, are descpicable, a pimple on the posterior of the human race. If, in fact, you are human, you make me ashamed of being in any sort of relationship to you. It's hard to hate someone I have never met in person, but in your case I shall endeavor to make an exception. To top it, your arguments are illogical, full of bile and venom and have no relationship to the points being argued the majority of the time. I will never again respond to any post of yours on any thread. It would demean me to do so. The only way to treat bigots and cretin of your type is to ignore them.

Now, if this gets me banned from A2K, it was well worth it! Somebody has to put the mirror to your ugly features and show you up for what you are.

Merry Andrew, Thank you!~

I can honestly say I have seen both sides of the inner city spectrum, I have had students that were stellar in thier academics. I have had students that were lazy and chose to be unmotivated. On the reverse, I have taught in, for lack of better phrasing, all white schools. I say this because the overall student population was 98% white and the other 2 percent were latino, black and middle eastern. In that school I also had students who were stellar students and had students who could barely motivate themselves to walk.
I understand where all the last few arguments come from. The problem everybody(choose that word as you will) is prejudicial. The more thoughtful members will know the true meaning of the word. The last thoughtful will respond with "no I ain't."
To go back to the original thread, I will say this. Regardless of how minorities are portrayed in the media, somebody will always complain.

Interesting article about New York City slaves.

November 26, 2005
The Anger and Shock of a City's Slave Past
By FELICIA R. LEE
They have the awkwardness of amateur home videos: background noise, long silences, people looking away from the camera. But inside a booth at the New-York Historical Society, visitors to the exhibition "Slavery in New York" are recording their reactions, creating snapshot reflections on race and history in the nation's largest city.

"It allows our young people to understand, really, how this city was born and who carried the brunt of the prosperity that we see in New York, not only then but now," a black man from "Harlem, New York," said of the show, the largest in the museum's 201-year history. The man, who appeared to be in his 30's, said he wanted to know what businesses in the city today derived profits in the past from selling human beings.

A white lawyer went into the booth twice to sort out his feelings. "This has just been devastating," he said. As he looked at the exhibition's array of documents, he said, he realized that the some of the laws used to isolate and dehumanize enslaved black New Yorkers became custom after the laws vanished and "contributed to the way whites look at blacks," even today.

"It's striking for any of us who are New Yorkers to realize that the ground we touch, every institution, is affected by slavery," he said.

Two young African-American brothers crammed into the booth together. "Slavery in New York was bad, and it's how New York became the richest city in the world," one of them declared.

The exhibition, which illustrates the centrality of 200 years of slavery to the growth of New York City, opened on Oct. 7 and runs through March 5. The very idea of slaves walking the streets of what is now SoHo or of slave auction blocks in Lower Manhattan - in a city known for tolerance and diversity - has attracted people of varied races and ages. There are no specific attendance figures yet, but museum officials said the exhibition galleries had been packed and attendance was up 83 percent over the same period last year, when the museum presented an exhibition on Alexander Hamilton.

The $5 million slavery exhibition features more than 400 artifacts, documents, paintings and maps spanning 9,000 square feet in 10 galleries. Visitors can see advertisements for runaway slaves and "negroes, to be sold"; caricatured drawings of blacks; items like chairs and cribs made by slave hands; and a 1644 document granting slaves "half freedom" and land around what is now Washington Square.

The visitor response booth is at the end of the exhibition. There, visitors touch a blue-screened computer asking questions about what they have seen: their overall impression, how it added to or altered their knowledge on the subject, what they found noteworthy. They then look at the camera and speak their answers.

"This is a much more qualitative way of knowing who's coming to the museum," said Richard Rabinowitz, the show's curator. "We really wanted to let people talk and think through things. We wanted people to frame a meaning for this as they leave." Museum officials plan to use those responses to figure out what and how people learn from such exhibitions.

So far, about 400 responses have been videotaped. Some will become part of the "visitor reaction" monitors now in three galleries, which showcase selected people who previewed the show.

In one, for example, a middle-aged white woman says the exhibition can make a difference. "A difference when you look at a black person on a subway train," she says, "or you're working next to a black person, that you have a little more empathy and understanding and also praising for how far so many people came."

In the raw videotape, the names given are not clear, one has to guess at ages and there is no consensus on what people found most noteworthy about the show. Some said they were shocked to learn that some slaves fought with the British during the Revolutionary War (in a bid for freedom); others said they had discovered that George Washington owned slaves; and some mused that New York City slavery was no more benign than the Southern variety.

After all, slaves in New York worked sunup to sundown. Slaves helped build the wall on Wall Street (and were sold there) and built the first City Hall and Trinity Church. Slavery was the lifeline for hundreds of city businesses. During British rule, about 40 percent of the city's households owned slaves. Institutional exhibitions about America's slave-holding past are relatively new and help foster a national conversation about race, said James Oliver Horton, the chief historian for "Slavery." This show's size and location facilitate that dialogue, he said.

"Back in the 90's, when Bill Clinton asked for a national conversation about race, most people didn't have the context in which to have the conversation," said Dr. Horton, a professor of American studies and history at George Washington University. "This exhibition will help Americans have such a historical context. It will help people start with a common experience."

One commonality that emerges from viewing five hours of the visitor videotapes is how much people do not know. Many were unaware of the existence or extent of slavery in New York, which lasted until 1827, longer than in any other Northern state except New Jersey.

"It's terrible to know that the city that I love was part of the slave trade," said a middle-aged white woman from New Jersey. "I'm shocked to hear about it."

An African-American man in the booth with his young daughter said: "It's just a constant reminder that here in New York, like in other places in the United States, we were nothing more than cattle in the eyes of the owners and were treated that way. It's just amazing that people were able to survive and thrive after that."

An elderly white woman who said she had two college degrees said, "I never knew until I walked in here about slavery in New York." Now, she said, "It just breaks my heart."

An African-American woman who identified herself as a graduate of Cornell University said, "I've actually had people tell me that black people in New York had no history."

"I can now feel that I have information I can share," she said.

A middle-aged white woman who said she lived down the street from the museum noted that her daughter's advanced placement courses in history included only one hour about slavery. "It made me realize how history doesn't go away," the mother said of the exhibition. "These burdens are carried through generations."

Clearly, schools are failing to educate students about slavery, said Louise Mirrer, the society's president. Dr. Mirrer said she would be gratified to see the public schools use the educational materials developed by the society for "Slavery."

While most visitors are admirers, the exhibition comes in for some criticism, too. Some said it was saturated with facts but failed to convey slavery's brutality. One woman wondered why she did not see a single shackle. Dr. Rabinowitz said it was an informed decision to let the facts speak, without graphic depictions of beatings or family separations.

But in the reaction booth, a young black man from Harlem argued that the show should be enraging. "Why are there ghettos in New York City? Because of slavery," he said. He learned many facts from the show, he added, but wanted explicit connections between race and class. "The ramifications of slavery still affect the world," he said. "It's not something to be put in the past, like dinosaurs or fossils."

An African-American woman from Washington complained, "The soul of it was completely gone." She added, "It was spoken about as if it was any economic phenomenon instead of human."

But some people caught on camera said the show had certainly made them think harder about skin color and the echoes of the past.

A woman from Chicago, who described herself as an artist and a second-generation Slovakian, said the exhibition helped her in that way. She watched two African-American children playing in the museum, and it dawned on her that in another time they would have been slaves. "They had no choice," she said. "They had no power."

And after learning that at one time 20 percent of New Yorkers were enslaved, the artist said, she went to the lobby of the grand Historical Society building and began imagining the past. "I'd look around and look around," she said, "and one in five people would be a slave."

Ironic how someone who prides himself in being such an adept of sarcasm can't recognize it.

Merry Andrew- I don't know what you teach and I must commend you on your service. Teaching is a difficult job but, it would appear that you don't know very much about presenting evidence.

You give none except what is called "anecdotal evidence". It is the lowest and least reliable form of evidence because it is usually about the experiences of one person in one place.

My characterizations as you call them, are based on EVIDENCE. They are based on measurements. They are based on data. I can give you far more data than I will give you on this post if you need it.

SAT's do not characterize people as a herd of cattle, a gaggle of geese. They take scores achieved and give an average.

I am so very sorry if this offends you.

Now, as usual, and unlike people who wish to vent their personal grievances in a personal way, I will give a link to which anyone who is interested may refer. I don't believe, as some seem to do, that my personal opinion, UNBUTTRESSED by evidence, is quite enough. Apparently, you and others do, Merry Andrew.


http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_mODXK/is_16_21/ai_n6355356


The average score of African-Americans on the SAT verbal dropped one point to 430 from the previous year. The math score, however, went up to 427, a six point gain. OVER THE LAST TEN YEARS, AFRICAN AMERICANS HAVE MADE A 2 POINT GAIN.

Latinos went up in verbal scores-451 to 458. Latinos have made a 63 percent increase between 1994 and 2004.

African-Americans are still the lowest group on average compared to all minority group on SAT scores.


I do hope, Merry Andrew, Walter Hinteler and ralpheb, that you are aware that since the GREAT SOCIETY was put in by LBJ, MILLIONS OF DOLLARS have been funnelled to the inner cities to improve the educational background there. That effort has been a dismal failure. The failure is largely due to culture. African-American culture with its emphasis on VICTIMOLOGY," I can't get ahead because of racism" and heavy concentration on hip-hop and basketball IN THE INNER CITY doom these boys and girls to second class citizenship. Middle class blacks who try to assume the ideologies of the mainstream do somewhat better but many of them are partially crippled by "group loyalty" As Thomas Sowell writes--"Exaggerated group "identity" makes copying others akin to treason."

That is a shame because African-Americans,( Whites and Latinos too) would gain so much by attempting to subscribe to Asian ideals with regard to Education, Schooling and drive for success.

And, Merry Andrew, please do not be concerned about your vow not to interact with my posts. I am not aggrieved. It just makes one less left winger with which to contend with.

Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

Why God Bless You( if one may use such an expression in an increasingly secular and atheistic society) Walter Hinteler, you are correct. But do not fear, sir, there are numerous sources which show that African-American students, on the whole(--there are some outstanding African-American thinkers like Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele and Bill Cosby, of course) are the lowest scoring ethnic group in the USA.

I hope that you are aware, Walter Hinteler, that the African-Americans in the ghetto( which accounts for the most dismal scores) have gotten millions of dollars of educational aid since LBJ began his Great Society Programs.

I urge you to try

http://www.fairtest.org/univ/2005SATScores.html

There you will discover that Blacks score 433 on Verbal and 431 on Math ON AVERAGE. This is below Mexican, Puerto Rican, Other Latino, WHite American Indian and Asian.

The gap between the Asian score in verbal is huge--Asian 511 verbal,
Black 433 verbal and even more pronounced in Math-
Asian 580 Math, Black 431.

As I said, Blacks, especially the inner city blacks, should try to get rid of the victimology and racism excuses and adopt the work ethic and respect for education found in the Asians in our country. That would make a difference.

Again, Walter, I do appreciate the fact that you pointed out that the link does not work but I assure you the facts are true as you can note from the new link above.

I can, of course, supply more evidence.

Shall I whet your curiousity, Walter? Do you know there is a city which had a majority black population in the USA which received massive amounts of monies from tax dollars through judicial fiat so much so that the schools in that city were the largest, most well equipped schools in the nation?

Do you know what happened to the test scores in that city after the largely black population were taught in those schools for TEN YEARS?


nothing--the test scores were flat putting the lie to the old chestnut that says--but if you only gave the inner city students more money.


I assure you Walter, people like Merry Andrew are doing a good job by helping poor black students and they may by now have identified so strongly with them that they are not able to admit the truth.

AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS, ON THE WHOLE, AS REVEALED BY OBJECTIVE TEST SCORES DO NOT DO WELL IN ACADEMICS.

The reason is that they have accepted the culture of the ghetto- they see themselves as victims held down by racism.

Well, since you quoted your response obviously from a findarticles site, please just correct the URL and post that corrected link.

Thank you.

Walter- I don't need that site anymore. Do you need more evidence? Are you now convinced that African-Americans are the lowest scoring group?

I can provide a great deal more!!

the lowest scoring group are the native americans. They are also the lowest scoring on economic scales as well. Interesting?

Ironic how someone of such known conceit can believe anyone intelligent will buy such a feeble attempt at cop-out . . .

Mortkat, What your research shows is probably true, but it does not take into consideration many historical factors that are absent from those scores.

I believe it would be the better part of fairness to look at the socio-economic disadvantages of some groups in relation to others in this country - without ignoring the outright discrimination suffered by black Americans.

The big picture says alot about not only how blacks are performing in schools, but how they were/are treated in our society. Those experiences are not benign.

A good point, CI. Children who are chronically malnourished suffer a debility as certain as the results of extreme trauma.