Respect in the African-American Community....

[Queen Be Damned Sheiba]

So I made my first video blog after the theft of my beloved mytouch 3g. It's something I've had on my chest for a long time and had to get out. Now that it's out I feel better but I would definitely like to discus the issue more. Am I the only African American that feels we could do better as a people?... Here's the video, and tell me how you guys feel.

Black America

[Jude]

Any racial group is made up of individuals, to speak of a community you're really talking about a particular culture which a large segment of the black population prescribes to.  Being an African-American doesn't necessarily mean I'm part of that culture, I personally think the concept of a racial community is nonsensical and racist in and of itself (self-imposed as it is).

The problem is, I'd say, that the cultural values of the dominant black culture are not valuable.  They seem to center heavily on materialism (and success associated with it) and don't focus enough on true integrity.

[Serephino]

You make a point.  My father was racist for most of his life.  Why?  Because of black people that he'd met througout his life.  He was a truck driver for many years, and the sad reality is that when he parked in a major city or something it was mostly young black men that were circling his truck trying to steal his load.

Then he met my uncle.  Yes, my mother's sister married a black man.  But this particular man is educated and well spoken.  I myself have had very interesting and thought provoking discussions with him.  My dad got to know him and they actually got along well. 

[Queen Be Damned Sheiba]

Some people got mad about what I said, but the way I think is that if we would stop giving people a reason to think we're ignorant then there perceptions of us would change. I mean, I don't expect it over night, because it takes a long to time change peoples opinions, but if enough people change there attitude then people would have to notice.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

The question regarding perception though is are African-Americans as "ignorant" as they are portrayed, or is that simply highlighting a particular aspect of them.  A common example that one of my teachers would use is for people to think of a welfare mother, then take note that the most common recipient of welfare is a white, rural woman.

[Silk]

The question regarding perception though is are African-Americans as "ignorant" as they are portrayed, or is that simply highlighting a particular aspect of them.  A common example that one of my teachers would use is for people to think of a welfare mother, then take note that the most common recipient of welfare is a white, rural woman.

And what is the ratio between white rural woman compared to black rural women?



Blacks make up about 12.9 % of the American population and whites about 80%. The ratio breaks down to about 1 black for every 6.15 whites. Apparently

[Pumpkin Seeds]

I'm not quite sure what the ratio has to do with the question I asked, but thank you for the numbers.

[Jude]

The point is, the typical receiver being a rural white woman doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a disproportionate number of blacks on welfare.  6.15 whites to every black means that even if the incidence of welfare was equal in the population, there would be 6.15 as many whites on welfare by virtue of larger numbers.

You have to focus on ratios and not totals if you're asking about trends.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

I was pointing to the perception that the majority of welfare goes toward poor black mothers.  As whites are the larger portion of the population, they should be the largest portion on welfare.  Yet when you see the welfare discussion broached, a large amount of discussion is given toward inner city projects and ghettos.  Typically a black face is put to the discussion, giving the impression that the black community is most affected by any changes to the welfare program.

My point is in regards to perception, not reality.

[Kotah]

In an effort to not blunder around, and get told how "black and white" my perspective is... which is far to puny. I'm just going to point at this.

http://www.marxist.com/marxism-national-question250200.htm

The situation is far more advanced then simply an idea that "black have no respect" (which is by no means my opinions.)

Most African Americans are concentrated in cities, and live at or below the poverty line. For instance, 37% of people in Chicago proper are African American. In East St. Louis proper, the African American population is also the highest, and 98% of people. St. Louis as a whole is the most segragated city in the united states. You can literally lay down a map, and color in lines according to what race lives where.

Races in St. Louis:

    * Black (51.2%)
    * White Non-Hispanic (42.9%)
    * Hispanic (2.0%)
    * Two or more races (1.9%)
    * Vietnamese (1.0%)
    * American Indian (0.8%)
    * Other race (0.8%)
Percentage of residents living in poverty in 2008: 22.9%
(11.5% for White Non-Hispanic residents, 32.6% for Black residents)

So while black/white is a difference of 9% (aprox) 21% more African Americans live in poverty. 27%
percent of single-race blacks 16 and older who work in management, professional and related occupations. The drop out rates for African Americans are slowly declining, but not nearly enough.

When people of any color are given no other means of survival, crime is going to happen. Also, when you have a large population of people living under the poverty line, you are going to have crime. Even in us small towns here in the mid west. We have the "white trash" that are always in trouble for drug use and theft- they also live below the poverty line.

[MercyfulFate]

Luckily this site is more respectful and enlightened than most, because simply posting about this topic most places causes a massive uprising of the PC police (See: Senator Reid's recent comments).

Part of the problem with the black community is obviously poverty. The poverty leads to despondency, drugs, gangs and a lot of problems plaguing their community. The problem comes in when it seems like there isn't a widespread desire to better the situation. As a comparison, while I didn't live back then it seems like when oppression and bigotry on blacks was much worse, before and through the civil rights movement, that as a people everyone was striving for more and refused to give up.

It seems like today no one cares, that the majority see life in poverty or crime as the only ways to get anywhere. The racism within the black community towards blacks also baffles me as well. As a story, I'll tell you about something that happened to a co-worker of mine.

I worked with a kid from Kenya for a couple years, he was a great guy. He had come to the US to get a college degree, work and return to his family to better his, and their lives. That's an extremely noble goal in my mind, and he was genuine about everything he did.

Well one day he came up to me clearly upset about something, and I took him aside to talk about it since I was his supervisor. He told me that when he was dealing with a customer, another black man, the man basically went nuts on him. He said "You're doing the white man's job" "Stop being a N-" and a bunch of things.

He looked at me and said "What is wrong with black people in your country?" because he truly did not understand why someone would say that to him for working and trying to better his life. He was one of the nicest people I ever met, and it still bothers me that someone said that to him. Even when Obama was running for President, there were people who said "He's not black enough" or "He's too white".

A lot of discussion on race and things is met with cries of racism and is stifled. These things need to be talked about.

[Callie Del Noire]

This was something one of my chiefs (who was black and literally clawed his way out of the gutter by his own words) put up a while back.

He was a hard man, put forth a TERRIBLE pace on everyone and swore the only respect anyone deserved was 'what everyone merited plus what you've earned'. I miss the mean old codger. :D

Ladies and gentlemen, I really have to ask you to seriously consider what you’ve heard, and now this is the end of the evening so to speak. I heard a prize fight manager say to his fellow who was losing badly, “David, listen to me. It’s not what’s he’s doing to you. It’s what you’re not doing. (laughter)."

Ladies and gentlemen, these people set, they opened the doors, they gave us the right, and today, ladies and gentlemen, in our cities and public schools we have fifty percent drop out. In our own neighborhood, we have men in prison. No longer is a person embarrassed because they’re pregnant without a husband. (applause) No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child. (applause)

Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle economic people are [not*] holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. (applause) In the old days, you couldn’t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye. (laughter) And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had one and where you got it from. Parents don’t know that today.

I’m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? (applause) Where were you when he was twelve? (applause) Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you don’t know he had a pistol? (applause) And where is his father, and why don’t you know where he is? And why doesn’t the father show up to talk to this boy?

The church is only open on Sunday. And you can’t keep asking Jesus to ask doing things for you. (applause) You can’t keep asking that God will find a way. God is tired of you. (laughter and applause) God was there when they won all those cases. 50 in a row. That’s where God was because these people were doing something. And God said, “I’m going to find a way.” I wasn’t there when God said it… I’m making this up. (laughter) But it sounds like what God would do. (laughter)

We cannot blame white people. White people (applause)... white people don’t live over there. They close up the shop early. The Korean ones still don’t know us as well…they stay open 24 hours. (laughter)

I’m looking and I see a man named Kenneth Clark. He and his wife Mamie…Kenneth’s still alive. I have to apologize to him for these people because Kenneth said it straight. He said you have to strengthen yourselves…and we’ve got to have that black doll. And everybody said it. Julian Bond said it. Dick Gregory said it. All these lawyers said it. And you wouldn’t know that anybody had done a damned thing.

50 percent drop out rate, I’m telling you, and people in jail, and women having children by five, six different men. Under what excuse, I want somebody to love me, and as soon as you have it, you forget to parent. Grandmother, mother, and great grandmother in the same room, raising children, and the child knows nothing about love or respect of any one of the three of them. (applause) All this child knows is “gimme, gimme, gimme.” These people want to buy the friendship of a child….and the child couldn’t care less. Those of us sitting out here who have gone on to some college or whatever we’ve done, we still fear our parents. (laughter and applause) And these people are not parenting. They’re buying things for the kid. $500 sneakers, for what? They won’t buy or spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics. (applause)

A Kenneth Clark, somewhere in his home in upstate New York…just looking ahead. Thank God, he doesn’t know what’s going on, thank God. But these people, the ones up here in the balcony fought so hard. Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged, “The cops shouldn’t have shot him.” What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? (laughter and applause) I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else. (laughter) And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said if get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother. Not you’re going to get your butt kicked. No. You’re going to embarrass your mother. You’re going to embarrass your family.

If knock that girl up, you’re going to have to run away because it’s going to be too embarrassing for your family. In the old days, a girl getting pregnant had to go down South, and then her mother would go down to get her. But the mother had the baby. I said the mother had the baby. The girl didn’t have a baby. The mother had the baby in two weeks. (laughter) We are not parenting. Ladies and gentlemen, listen to these people, they are showing you what’s wrong. People putting their clothes on backwards—isn’t that a sign of something going on wrong? (laughter)

Are you not paying attention, people with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn’t that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up. (laughter and applause) Isn’t it a sign of something when she’s got her dress all the way up to the crack…and got all kinds of needles and things going through her body. What part of Africa did this come from? (laughter). We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans, they don’t know a damned thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap and all of them are in jail.

Brown v. Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem. We’ve got to take the neighborhood back. (applause) We’ve got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It’s right around the corner. (laughter) It’s standing on the corner. It can’t speak English. It doesn’t want to speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk. “Why you ain’t where you is go, ra,” I don’t know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk (laughter). Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t land a plane with “why you ain’t…” You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they’re moving ahead on this? Well, they know they’re not, they’re just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you’re just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.

Now look, I’m telling you. It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing. 50 percent drop out. Look, we’re raising our own ingrown immigrants. These people are fighting hard to be ignorant. There’s no English being spoken, and they’re walking and they’re angry. Oh God, they’re angry and they have pistols and they shoot and they do stupid things. And after they kill somebody, they don’t have a plan. Just murder somebody. Boom. Over what? A pizza? And then run to the poor cousin’s house. They sit there and the cousin says “What are you doing here?” “I just killed somebody, man.” “What?” “I just killed somebody, I’ve got to stay here.” “No, you don’t.” “Well, give me some money, I’ll go…” “Where are you going?” “North Carolina.” Everybody wanted to go to North Carolina. But the police know where you’re going because your cousin has a record.

Five or six different children, same woman, eight, ten different husbands or whatever, pretty soon you’re going to have to have DNA cards so you can tell who you’re making love to. You don’t know who this is. It might be your grandmother. (laughter) I’m telling you, they’re young enough. Hey, you have a baby when you’re twelve. Your baby turns thirteen and has a baby, how old are you? Huh? Grandmother. By the time you’re twelve, you could have sex with your grandmother, you keep those numbers coming. I’m just predicting.

I’m saying Brown Vs. Board of Education. We’ve got to hit the streets, ladies and gentlemen. I’m winding up, now , no more applause. I’m saying, look at the Black Muslims. There are Black Muslims standing on the street corners and they say so forth and so on, and we’re laughing at them because they have bean pies and all that, but you don’t read “Black Muslim gunned down while chastising drug dealer.” You don’t read that. They don’t shoot down Black Muslims. You understand me. Muslims tell you to get out of the neighborhood. When you want to clear your neighborhood out, first thing you do is go get the Black Muslims, bean pies and all. (laughter) And your neighborhood is then clear. The police can’t do it.

I’m telling you Christians, what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you hit the streets? Why can’t you clean it out yourselves? It’s our time now, ladies and gentlemen. It is our time. (applause) And I’ve got good news for you. It’s not about money. It’s about you doing something ordinarily that we do—get in somebody else’s business. It’s time for you to not accept the language that these people are speaking, which will take them nowhere. What the hell good is Brown V. Board of Education if nobody wants it?

What is it with young girls getting after some girl who wants to still remain a virgin. Who are these sick black people, and where did they come from, and why haven’t they been parented to shut up? To go up to girls and try to get a club where “you are nobody..,” this is a sickness, ladies and gentlemen, and we are not paying attention to these children. These are children. They don’t know anything. They don’t have anything. They’re homeless people. All they know how to do is beg. And you give it to them, trying to win their friendship. And what are they good for? And then they stand there in an orange suit and you drop to your knees, “(crying sound) He didn’t do anything, he didn’t do anything.” Yes, he did do it. And you need to have an orange suit on too (laughter, applause).

So, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for the award (big laughter) and giving me an opportunity to speak because, I mean, this is the future, and all of these people who lined up and done...they’ve got to be wondering what the hell happened. Brown v. Board of Education, these people who marched and were hit in the face with rocks and punched in the face to get an education and we got these knuckleheads walking around who don’t want to learn English. (applause) I know that you all know it. I just want to get you as angry that you ought to be. When you walk around the neighborhood and you see this stuff, that stuff’s not funny. These people are not funny anymore. And that's not brother. And that’s not my sister. They’re faking and they’re dragging me way down because the state, the city and all these people have to pick up the tab on them because they don’t want to accept that they have to study to get an education.

We have to begin to build in the neighborhood, have restaurants, have cleaners, have pharmacies, have real estate, have medical buildings instead of trying to rob them all. And so, ladies and gentlemen, please, Dorothy Height, wherever she’s sitting, she didn’t do all that stuff so that she could hear somebody say "I can’t stand algebra, I can’t stand…" and "what you is." It’s horrible.

Basketball players, multimillionaires, can’t write a paragraph. Football players, multimillionaires, can’t read. Yes. Multimillionaires. Well, Brown v. Board of Education, where are we today? It’s there. They paved the way. What did we do with it? The white man, he’s laughing, got to be laughing. 50 percent drop out, rest of them in prison.

You got to tell me that if there was parenting, help me, if there was parenting, he wouldn’t have picked up the Coca Cola bottle and walked out with it to get shot in the back of the head. He wouldn’t have. Not if he loved his parents. And not if they were parenting! Not if the father would come home. Not if the boy hadn’t dropped the sperm cell inside of the girl and the girl had said, “No, you have to come back here and be the father of this child.” Not: “I don’t have to.”

Therefore, you have the pile up of these sweet beautiful things born by nature raised by no one. Give them presents. You’re raising pimps. That’s what a pimp is. A pimp will act nasty to you so you have to go out and get them something. And then you bring it back and maybe he or she hugs you. And that’s why pimp is so famous. They’ve got a drink called the “Pimp-something.” You all wonder what that’s about, don’t you? Well, you’re probably going to let Jesus figure it out for you. (laughter) Well, I’ve got something to tell you about Jesus. When you go to the church, look at the stained glass things of Jesus. Look at them. Is Jesus smiling? Not in one picture. So, tell your friends. Let’s try to do something. Let’s try to make Jesus smile. Let’s start parenting. Thank you, thank you. (applause, cheers)