Warren has been trying to woo black voters, who made up about 25 percent of the primaries and caucuses in the 2016 election. Her stump speech includes repeated references to the need for racial justice and the harm caused by discrimination. She's also made several trips to South Carolina, where blacks made up more than 60 percent of the vote in the 2016 primary. But she's had difficulty attracting black audiences in that state. A town hall she held at a community center that was associated with a black church in Greenville last weekend attracted an audience so white that one reporter asked about the lack of diversity, and what she planned to do to speak to more minorities. "I'm just going to keep coming back," said Warren. "And I'm going to go to every community I can get to in South Carolina and all around our country."
Repeating a question from the previous thread: Is anyone here familiar with the Boston Review?
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with The Boston Review. Over the past couple evenings, I've been catching up on past threads and leaving comments thereon. Sorry about that. I realize it's untidy. :(
God or thermodynamics seems to favor high entropy. Boston Review seems like a high-fallutin' publication, and it is rather expensive. I do feel impelled to exert some caution about expenses now that I am retired, and art classes are a very significant activity.
Analysis: Bernie Sanders may not need 2016 magic to be 2020 force [Click] Note: Not only has Bernie had better first-day fundraising than any of his competitors so far, he also has a bigger archest—15 million dollars left over from his 2016 presidential race and from his senate race. Lots of sour grapes quoted in this wire service column, but so what.
Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are both speaking about favoring reparations. I simply don't see how it would be possible. Also, we are STILL stealing land from Native Americans. We stole this whole country and penned them up on little reservations without many natural resources. We owe so much to so many I don't see any way it could ever be repaid.
I thought that the casinos were a form of reparation. And although there was no shortage of terrible things that happened generations after the arrival of Europeans, the overwhelming majority (an estimated 90-95% of the precolumbian population) of deaths among the indigenous populations was due to disease, which both the European and indigenous populations saw as the will of supernatural beings, the germ theory of disease not having even been formulated at the time. The wire services are today confusing the ideas of reparations for indigenous Americans with reparations for African Americans. The latter, so far as I can see, has no historic parallel anywhere in the world. People who aren't about to be bothered with facts not infrequently say that the nominal compensation to Japanese-Americans who were interned is a precedent, but it is not at all. It was very small compared to their actual property losses, and was only paid to US citizens who could themselves prove to the government that they had been interned. Their children got zero, and they got zero if they could not excavate government records of their internment--the government would not do it for them. It did not apply to the Japanese Peruvians who were interned in the US, either. And granted that the horrors of European colonists' slavery are just that, should not the people who initially enslaved their neighbors and sold them to European slave traders be held primarily responsible? The numbers of Europeans at the slave trading depots along the African coast were very small--certainly insufficient to mount slave raids (unlike the Barbary Pirates, who mounted slave raids as far away as Iceland). The fact that those who initially enslaved the people sold into the Americas were black should in no way absolve them. Granted that the slavery practiced by the peoples of the Bight of Benin and thereabouts was not nearly so onerous as what was practiced in the Americas, there was no shortage of peoples in the area who viewed their neighbors as a harvestable crop--like coconuts or ivory or giraffe leg bones (which latter were in demand for billiard balls). Or so it seems to me. And why should both people descended from slaves, and those not descended from slavers, pay compensation when those descended from the people directly responsible are forgiven? And for how many generations can guilt be carried down? Probably most people with Celtic or Roman ancestors are descended from slaves. Justice is impossible, but a hand up is not.
A smallpox epidemic swept through the Inca empire before Pizarro appeared. The common cold, hepatitis and various other diseases *completely* destroyed many Indigenous tribes well before European settlers even reached the fall line and long before the smallpox blankets incidents or the purposeful and neat total extermination of the buffalo. Although significantly more has since been discovered, Charles C. Mann's 2005 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus [Click] or for young readers his Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491 [Click] are necessary reading to understand what seems to be the greatest holocaust ever to strike humankind.
The Documentary Highlighting the Real Green Book [Click] “A new Smithsonian Channel film positions the guidebook for black travelers as a necessary response to white-supremacist violence—and as a community-building tool.” Contrasted with the commercial movie Green Book. The Green Book: Guide to Freedom airs February 25th. Here is how to see it. [Click] Includes both a trailer and a short sample of the documentary, and a link to a free trial of the Smithsonian Plus Channel for online streaming. I’m pretty sure I have to see this.
Surely, there's a limit to useful breast beating. No nation, just as no person, is perfect and pure. Humans, individually and collectively, do horrendous, vile things to other humans, along with animals and the environment. The best we can hope is to do better over time. Reparation and restitution are the ideal, but seldom practical and never convenient, see Alan's comments vis. reparations or lack thereof to Japanese-Americans. In my view, the best form of reparation is to ameliorate current conditions to, as Alan says, offer a hand up.
This does not sound good, I am afraid:
ReplyDeleteWarren has been trying to woo black voters, who made up about 25 percent of the primaries and caucuses in the 2016 election. Her stump speech includes repeated references to the need for racial justice and the harm caused by discrimination. She's also made several trips to South Carolina, where blacks made up more than 60 percent of the vote in the 2016 primary. But she's had difficulty attracting black audiences in that state. A town hall she held at a community center that was associated with a black church in Greenville last weekend attracted an audience so white that one reporter asked about the lack of diversity, and what she planned to do to speak to more minorities. "I'm just going to keep coming back," said Warren. "And I'm going to go to every community I can get to in South Carolina and all around our country."
Repeating a question from the previous thread: Is anyone here familiar with the Boston Review?
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with The Boston Review. Over the past couple evenings, I've been catching up on past threads and leaving comments thereon. Sorry about that. I realize it's untidy. :(
DeleteGod or thermodynamics seems to favor high entropy. Boston Review seems like a high-fallutin' publication, and it is rather expensive. I do feel impelled to exert some caution about expenses now that I am retired, and art classes are a very significant activity.
DeleteAnalysis: Bernie Sanders may not need 2016 magic to be 2020 force [Click] Note: Not only has Bernie had better first-day fundraising than any of his competitors so far, he also has a bigger archest—15 million dollars left over from his 2016 presidential race and from his senate race. Lots of sour grapes quoted in this wire service column, but so what.
ReplyDelete"archest" should be "warchest."
DeleteWhat a sneering, condescending article. Still, we'll have to get used to that attitude.
DeleteElizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are both speaking about favoring reparations. I simply don't see how it would be possible. Also, we are STILL stealing land from Native Americans. We stole this whole country and penned them up on little reservations without many natural resources. We owe so much to so many I don't see any way it could ever be repaid.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the casinos were a form of reparation. And although there was no shortage of terrible things that happened generations after the arrival of Europeans, the overwhelming majority (an estimated 90-95% of the precolumbian population) of deaths among the indigenous populations was due to disease, which both the European and indigenous populations saw as the will of supernatural beings, the germ theory of disease not having even been formulated at the time. The wire services are today confusing the ideas of reparations for indigenous Americans with reparations for African Americans. The latter, so far as I can see, has no historic parallel anywhere in the world. People who aren't about to be bothered with facts not infrequently say that the nominal compensation to Japanese-Americans who were interned is a precedent, but it is not at all. It was very small compared to their actual property losses, and was only paid to US citizens who could themselves prove to the government that they had been interned. Their children got zero, and they got zero if they could not excavate government records of their internment--the government would not do it for them. It did not apply to the Japanese Peruvians who were interned in the US, either. And granted that the horrors of European colonists' slavery are just that, should not the people who initially enslaved their neighbors and sold them to European slave traders be held primarily responsible? The numbers of Europeans at the slave trading depots along the African coast were very small--certainly insufficient to mount slave raids (unlike the Barbary Pirates, who mounted slave raids as far away as Iceland). The fact that those who initially enslaved the people sold into the Americas were black should in no way absolve them. Granted that the slavery practiced by the peoples of the Bight of Benin and thereabouts was not nearly so onerous as what was practiced in the Americas, there was no shortage of peoples in the area who viewed their neighbors as a harvestable crop--like coconuts or ivory or giraffe leg bones (which latter were in demand for billiard balls). Or so it seems to me. And why should both people descended from slaves, and those not descended from slavers, pay compensation when those descended from the people directly responsible are forgiven? And for how many generations can guilt be carried down? Probably most people with Celtic or Roman ancestors are descended from slaves. Justice is impossible, but a hand up is not.
DeleteP.S.: If Japanese American citizens who were interned and could prove it died before they could collect, they "of course" got nothing.
DeleteWell, giving the Indians blankets loaded with smallpox germs sure as hell didn't help!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteA smallpox epidemic swept through the Inca empire before Pizarro appeared. The common cold, hepatitis and various other diseases *completely* destroyed many Indigenous tribes well before European settlers even reached the fall line and long before the smallpox blankets incidents or the purposeful and neat total extermination of the buffalo. Although significantly more has since been discovered, Charles C. Mann's 2005 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus [Click] or for young readers his Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491 [Click] are necessary reading to understand what seems to be the greatest holocaust ever to strike humankind.
Delete"neat total" should read "near total."
DeleteMueller Files Lengthy Sentencing Memo for Manafort DC Case [Click] Yes, I should agree that more than 800 pages is “lengthy.”
ReplyDeleteThe Documentary Highlighting the Real Green Book [Click] “A new Smithsonian Channel film positions the guidebook for black travelers as a necessary response to white-supremacist violence—and as a community-building tool.” Contrasted with the commercial movie Green Book. The Green Book: Guide to Freedom airs February 25th. Here is how to see it. [Click] Includes both a trailer and a short sample of the documentary, and a link to a free trial of the Smithsonian Plus Channel for online streaming. I’m pretty sure I have to see this.
I think we need to do a long needed assessment of just how great we are. Has felt to me for long that we're a disease.
ReplyDeleteAgree, puddle. It seems we have little to be proud of when we examine our history.
DeleteSurely, there's a limit to useful breast beating. No nation, just as no person, is perfect and pure. Humans, individually and collectively, do horrendous, vile things to other humans, along with animals and the environment. The best we can hope is to do better over time. Reparation and restitution are the ideal, but seldom practical and never convenient, see Alan's comments vis. reparations or lack thereof to Japanese-Americans. In my view, the best form of reparation is to ameliorate current conditions to, as Alan says, offer a hand up.
DeleteBeto’s senate campaign grew out of Bernie’s 2016 Presidential campaign [Click]
ReplyDeleteGrand on the premises since yesterday! I'll be back sometime Sunday.
ReplyDelete