Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

As a white hetero male, it's easy for me to not concentrate on race, because mine doesn't mean ****. I have no racial or ethnic heritage to speak of. "My people" have no struggle or identity tied to our skin color. Minorities, whether racial, ethnic, religious or sexual orientation, often bring heritage, culture and struggle to the table in a way that I never will. Not only should I see color, I should respect what it represents in a historical context.

Jeff said:

I went to school in rural Ohio. Trust me, the folks there don't fear skyscrapers and high density housing, they fear, and often hate, people of color.

My point I was trying to make was a divide on the issues you were discussing based on rural/urban perspective, not a literal Subject topical divide.

ApolloAndy said:

.Unrelated: You do know how tired of a trope the "my one black friend" anecdotal evidence is, right?

I am probably much closer to the black community that you give me credit for, however I am not one to reveal lots of details about myself online. But I have more stake in the game than most of you might ever imagine. I have many more minority friends, none of them poverty level.

Looking at everything and tying it to race only furthers the issue, race should be transparent, however when we keep saying that minorities are affects more it brings us to a racial divide discussion, when in reality I could replace race with poor and the message would still ring true in the majority of places.

Jeff, yes, people of various races might be passed over for a job because of name, that is absolutely a race affected item and something that should be extremely easy to fix, but needs to happen on an individual level. I have done many interviews, and I look at behaviors and traits, I have interviewed people of all sorts. I don’t care about color, but I did deny the guy who interviewed well because his bedroom was a disaster on camera, he is probably sloppy, not detail oriented, and was denied the position, he was also white if anyone cares.

As far as comment about sagging pants, society generally frowns upon sagging pants, society chooses what they do and don’t accept, and govern the masses accordingly. I would like to wear jeans and a t-shirt to work everyday, but I would get fired, just like I would fire someone for their underwear hanging out. My dislike of baggy pants isn’t rooted in race, it is rooted in the fact that I don’t want to see your loosely covered man ass. If you like saggy pants go be a plumber, you might have a better shot. I don’t want to see black man ass, but I don’t want to see Hispanic man ass, or white man ass. However we have managed to use it as an example of affecting a certain race when it has nothing to do with race.

I drive a blacked out car with rims, I have a set of subs in the truck, I listen to a lot of rap and dubstep, and I have had strange looks when I exit the car because people probably expect me to be black. Those looks and the occasional question typically come from the older white generation, so I would certainly expect a level of racism to exist there. I firmly believe that the old white generation needs to go, from government, from society. They created systems which benefit only themselves and they guard it viciously. But good luck pushing all of them out. They are a product of a different era, they lived through segregation, no different than my comment on police and military. People are a product of their environment and training. If we want to solve problems we need to retrain or cut off a segment of the population from society.

I don’t get it. You acknowledge that people who control a lot of opportunity are probably allowing their racial bias to affect their decisions, but then you don’t think we should actively name it and address it?

(I think I’m done trying to argue that “not liking poor people” has a super stong non-coincidental overlap with “not liking people of color.” I’m not sure I have anything left to say on that.)

I don’t really know what I am arguing anymore, the virus thread has covered every other topic under the sun since we started.

My argument here is this, I think we need to stop looking at race and start looking at resources. I think that many people love to attach race to things that are not necessarily race driven, but race is a really hot topic right now so it generates buzz. Look at our police headlines for example, it is never cop kills civilian, but rather white cop kills black civilian. Race could have had nothing to do with it, but now it does.

If we resolve the resources and the funding to the poor groups we would probably resolve almost all of the problems. However who is willing to do this? I am not rich, I have a metric **** ton of student loan debt, so I am not about to start giving away resources of my own to combat others resource related dilemmas. I always hear tax the rich and that is good to a point, but if the reward is too far reduced for the risk, then the attempt will never occur.

I really feel that the government is hugely wasteful and there is certainly far more good that could be happening on this level. We probably don’t need the level of military we have, we certainly shouldn’t be policing the rest of the world. We could certainly come up with welfare programs that required people to contribute to receive. This is basically what the government work programs did that helped dig us out of the depression. Don’t just donate, teach and build skills, you know give a man a fish, teach him to fish, that whole deal.

What do you think the response will be from a Black person who has been harassed by police, pulled over for driving while Black, when you say, "I think we need to stop looking at race and start looking at resources?" It's never "cop kills civilian, but rather white cop kills black civilian," because it is objectively disproportionately Black people. That was the whole point of the protest movement last summer.

I mentioned earlier that I feel ex military make for bad policing. They have had it beat into their heads that the only person to trust is the teammate standing next to them, they have been in situation when being shot at by various other races. Take someone with that training and exposure and put them in a stressful situation. It is no surprise to me at all when cops end up killing civilians through excessive force. That is exactly how they were trained in the military. That training surfaces and takes over, that is exactly the point.

Also, I mentioned earlier that I think white crime occurs more behind the scenes and black crime is typically more visible, when you have extra resources you are better at covering your tracks. Additionally once you do have anything on your record you are a target for future harassment. Past behavior is a great predictor after all.

Or are cops objectively more racist than the general population?

You're focusing on trees and missing the forest. It's not just about cops. It's not just about teachers. It's not just about infrastructure. It's not just about admissions officers. It's not just about X or Y or Z. Nearly every facet of American society offers more opportunity to white people than people of color. Even if you gave every person of color a huge pile of resources right now: money, degrees, jobs, houses, it wouldn't change the fact that the system is designed to disproportionately take their resources. That's not a problem that can be solved by ignoring race.

Well just lump me in and call me racist, I guess this is another example where someone has a thought that doesn’t align with the bigger group, so I will then be silenced. I will let you guys finish this discussion peacefully.

Call me when you guys fix the system.

Quote where anyone here called you racist.

And like Andy said, this isn't about cops. The general population is objectively more racist than you're giving them credit for so far.

Dude, nobody called you a racist. Maybe you're getting uncomfortable because you're being challenged, which is a perfectly valid response, but no one is accusing you of being racist.

I challenge how “closer you are to the Black community than we think” when systemic/institutional racism is such a bewildering topic for you.

Immediate family.

One of my college courses involved multiple case studies in how large scale systems we rely upon each day are not created to discriminate against the poor, but the effect is that they do. Proxies used for data analysis and interpretation to design our systems affect the poor, credit scores, resumes and job searches, penal system, car buying, loans and banking, house buying, schooling, you name it. Pretty much it costs more to do everything when poor further exacerbating the problem.

Why are these some of these systems in place? Because we have far to many people to hand process job apps and credit apps and whatever else you have a huge mass of people trying to do. I truly feel that the human race has spread to the point of unsustainability. Maybe not, science will probably continue to swoop in and save us last minute as it typically does.

Are minorities typically affected, yes. Why? Because they are disproportionately poor.

Just remember when stuck in that cycle of being poor with no resources that you have no further downhill you can go, so why not rob and steal, is jail worse than living on the street or in a halfway house? Poor people are more likely to rob and steal and commit petty crimes because they don’t have anything to lose. The other part of society doesn’t want to get involved in that mess so they stay their distance.

Thus why I believe that systemic racism stems from them being poor more than being a certain race. Thus fix the lack of resources and you should resolve a good majority of the issues.

Or you know, just overhaul every other system in society, with a government that can’t even figure out how to properly roll out a vaccine, or provide reliable power to its residents.

Good luck.

Jeff said:

What do you think the response will be from a Black person who has been harassed by police, pulled over for driving while Black, when you say, "I think we need to stop looking at race and start looking at resources?" It's never "cop kills civilian, but rather white cop kills black civilian," because it is objectively disproportionately Black people. That was the whole point of the protest movement last summer.

When you normalize the rate at which black people are killed by police against the rate of violent crime, it is not disproportionate.

When a bunch of people disagree with you, that’s not always groupthink silencing differing opinion. Sometimes that’s you being wrong or at least not making your points well enough. After all, flat earthers, holocaust deniers, moon landing hoaxers, Qanons etc. all always claim that they’re being silenced by group think. I’m not saying you’re any of those things and I’m not comparing your arguments to any of those claims. Just pointing out that being wrong often looks a whole lot like being silenced.

If I understand your claim, it seems to be that everything can be explained by poverty and none of it has to do with race. But resumes with “African American sounding” names get less call backs with exactly the same credentials. How is that poverty based? How will giving minorities a bunch of resources help that? Also, did you ever stop to think about why so many people of color are so poor? Even if there were no racial bias now (which I categorically reject), our history with people of color didn’t exactly give them a fair starting line and I think we’ve all agreed that in the race of opportunity, the haves get more and the have-nots fall further behind

And I notice your argument is that a bunch of resources need to be reallocated, but in the same breath you say the Govt. isn’t the correct vehicle to do that. I’m curious how you see that happening.

I can’t type or speak my thoughts as quick as they tend to stream along. I always did better writing and revising over long term.

I know there are still pockets of racism, but I feel the resource divide creates the biggest problem and continues to rear its head. If we fix the majority of the issues the few minor ones that exist won’t be as damaging and I also believe some of them will self resolve as more time passes and the old fogies get cleared out of everyday life.

I am unsure of the vehicle, toss this one in the same boat as global warming. I don’t think the government is a super effective vehicle, so I don’t have an answer to who is going to get it done. The government is still dicking around on giving out $1400, so large mass changes? Maybe in another 20 or 30 years we might see some progress. I mean you could sell your house and buy a less costly one and Jeff could sell the Tesla and buy a civic, maybe toss together the earnings and get a couple families some relief and a savings account? If we did that on a large scale with the entire country we could right the ship quick and in a jiffy. I’m just throwing mud at the wall here, I know that isn’t realistic either. Keith Gill just made millions in GameStop maybe we should ask him?

Well, for most efficiency, we’d need some centralized body to incentivize or mandate that and to appropriately distributed those resources once they were collected. Maybe they could provide some universal services and arbitrate disputes between people. I feel like there’s a name for that idea that’s on the tip of my tongue.

And I don’t think you’re trying to take a dig at my personal finances, but if you were I feel pretty good about the amount of money that I give to non-profits and charities.

Jeff quoted this earlier from Dr. King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

(Emphasis mine)

No I wasn’t taking a dig, just cocking about.

In regards to your other post, yes, I am probably the worst kind of person on this earth, I have been stepped on and burned too many times to count, I have no faith in humanity, we might have done some great things, but we have done even more things that are selfish and ****ty. I have no faith in people to better humanity, but only themselves. There are exceptions to everything, and if you can step back and say you are an honest good person then I applaud you, if not then you are just another one of the masses. I have helped people along my path to have my hand bitten by those same people. So yeah screw it, let humanity continue on its path to self destruction.

When we moved to NE Ohio from Columbus in 2009, it was a bit of a whirlwind. I had my first meaningful career-based job we were moving for, the real estate market was still reeling from the economic collapse, and my wife and I were buying our first house. We were truly adulting (in a financial sense) for the very first time.

One of the homes we looked at was a 2-story on a hill. Very picturesque, but we knew the home wasn't the one for us. Among other strange quirks about the home, the previous owners were including their golden retriever (who greeted us at the door) as part of the deal. Let that soak in for a moment.

After taking a quick tour of the house, I remember standing in the driveway looking out over the hill with my wife when the realtor we had came up behind us and put her arms on both of our shoulders. As the golden retriever wagged his tail looking for pets in front of us, she glanced at our 1-year old daughter in my wife's arms and said, "Don't worry, we'll find a home for you here. It's very safe here, and a great place to raise kids. We don't let a lot of colored people move into this town".