Amen, brother.

My late mother, who was raised in the South, told me that her grandmother had explained it all to her when she was a child.

She said that there were nice white folks and not-so-nice ones, and there were nice black folks and not-so-nice ones. And at the end of the day, regardless of skin color, trash was trash.

Or--as they would put it in the rounded tones of academia--it's all about class, not about race.

There is a valid point in here about 'attitude' versus 'race', but the facile switching between "black Trash" and "average African-American" is a bit too close to opinion, and not enough like data supported analysis for my comfort. Ascribing the culture of 'black Trash' to the majority of African-Americans is no more valid than thinking you know the 'average Ugandan' because of your experience with the subset that has emigrated from their original cultural roots.

Agreed - completely. And over in the UK all that can be substituted by white trash (called chavs over here) and a segment of society that's getting bigger by the month, that could be called "immigrant trash" - people that exploit our nonexistent borders to stick their noses in the public trough. Coincidentally, many of them have intrinsically brown skin - but it's South Asian brown. Of course, too many of those cause trouble for religious reasons as well.

Agree with #2 - there is a true point about attitude. Are you hard-working? Are you optimistic? Are your values preferencing hard work, respect, intelligence, care for self, family, the community?

But the below invalidates the above, and shows you seem to have an implicit resentment against ALL blacks.

"bq." Bill Clinton has been described by some as "America's first black President" simply because Black Trash observed White Trash and found a kindred spirit."

Bill Clinton did more for this country, and has been more responsible for the advancement in this country, that the loser George Bush has. Smarter, more responsible, more ethical, more honest. George Bush is STILL lying, for example, with the FISA stuff he says over and over. He started lying with his "tax plan" before running, that he could balance the budget AND cut taxes. He has failed this country with being slack on warnings of Al-Queda before 9-11, with the drive to sell the invasion of Iraq, with the failure in the post-occupation, with the failure to staff properly FEMA agencies, leading to a horrible response in New Orleans, with the politicization of the LAW, with the Attorneys Office, culminating in the removal of all top staff at the Attorney General's office. Not to mention the politicization of the various science agencies.

Every President seems to be granted at least one massive FUBAR. But Bush used up that quota, plus at 4 more. You could make a case for 7 FUBAR's, but at least 5.

So who's the white trash?

And Bill surrounded himself with a LOT, a MAJORITY of african-americans that DID and DO have correct values in this country, but obviously with a liberal orientation.

So it looks as if you unmask your true agenda, with that sentence I quote above.

"Smarter, more responsible, more ethical, more honest."
And thinner.

"Smarter, more responsible, more ethical, more honest."
And thinner.

And better at Trivial Pursuit.

LOL!

Funny stuff.

Just how badly WOULD Bill Clinton beat George Bush at Trivial Pursuit anyway?

My money's on Bill. Clinton, that is. And Cosby, who has said a lot of the same things.

There is a valid point in here about 'attitude' versus 'race', but the facile switching between "black Trash" and "average African-American" is a bit too close to opinion, and not enough like data supported analysis for my comfort.

I think there is a lot of noise in the data confusing the analysis here. Noise generated by the African-American leadership (read identity politics mafia), which are facing their greatest crisis ever, namely intermarriage.

Basically if racism ends, intermarriage is going to spike way up, and at 12% of population and with insignificant replacement immigration, African American will simply blend with the rest of the American genetic pool, raising the average melanin content slightly.

And that's precisely what's happening, slowly but surely. This would of course be a disaster to the African American leadership, so artificial barriers needed to be found in a hurry. First they stole the KKK's old technique of any drop of black blood makes you black, and that'll buy time. It works for halfs and maybe for quarters (if someone else in there had sufficiently dark skin), but will fall apart completely below that.

So they need something with...more bite. So we get black values, black churches, black communities, etc etc etc. Basically segregation mark two with a strong wrapper of victimization and a subtext of whites are icky.

Interesting case in point, 10 years or so ago, interracial relationships on TV were all the rage. Now, not so much.

Unfortunately, since 'white' culture is sitting on the known working methods, any attempt to produce an alternate culture solely to differentiate is going to be sub par. Which I guess is a feature not a bug since it can be spun as 'racism', for further victimization brownie points.

Like all top down ideological imposititions, I don't think it's really working, but it's really hard to tell.

And Bill surrounded himself with a LOT, a MAJORITY of african-americans that DID and DO have correct values in this country, but obviously with a liberal orientation.

Like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

(sorry for feeding the troll but I couldn’t resist)

Actually, the Bush versus Clinton, while being a complete non-sequitur bring to mind a telling point.

Bush has done more for Africa than any prior president. Easily, not even close. Exactly how much credit has that won him from the African American 'community'? Zilch.

Attitude not race indeed.

I agree that Black fears of intermarriage and cultural assimilation drive a lot of negative cultural attitudes. It's not the KKK shooting people in South Central. It's Blacks. From a direct embrace of cultural separatism. Which is a dead end.

As for Bill Clinton, he's mostly a failed President. He was lucky AND good to inherit a good economic climate and not screw it up. But NAFTA and the encouragement of globalization destroyed wage growth in this country. Clinton ignored (1993 WTC bombing onwards) the gathering terrorist threat and the broad spread of technology that allows poor nations/factions/groups to kill masses of Americans at little cost. Requiring deterrence which means a large and robust military, and cultural attitudes to use force to stop small problems from growing into large ones.

I agree that Black fears of intermarriage and cultural assimilation drive a lot of negative cultural attitudes. It's not the KKK shooting people in South Central. It's Blacks.

Hogwash. If that were true, they wouldn't be marrying white folks, particularly not at the rates that are occurring.

My point was that the leeches who took over from the civil rights era aided by the, primarily, white identity politicians are attempting to create that condition and not really succeeding, media coverage notwithstanding.

Reverend Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, Ohio -- whom Sen. John McCain hails as a spiritual adviser

Cite please or retract.

Toni Morrison, in the New Yorker article that made Bill Clinton "the First Black President":

Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.

And that, saith yet another black Ivy League professor-doctor, is almost every trope of blackness. From which we learn that Bill Clinton is black, but Barack Obama is whiter than laundry day at David Duke's house.

Hell, give the Arkansas Ku Klux Klan saxophone lessons, and they're all black, too.

And when we have a "race debate" in this country, people like Toni Morrison seem to do all the talking. Good luck with this one, boys and girls.

"Clinton ignored (1993 WTC bombing onwards) the gathering terrorist threat and the broad spread of technology that allows poor nations/factions/groups to kill masses of Americans at little cost. Requiring deterrence which means a large and robust military, and cultural attitudes to use force to stop small problems from growing into large ones."

Just a few thoughts sparked by Jim Rockford's comments above. I live in a city that had been attacked by terrorists, Irish and Islamic quite a bit in my lifetime and my neighbourhood recently found it was home to a community within which terrorists have recently been living and conspiring, about a mile from where I live:

I think it would be useful if you could consider the solutions to the conflicts the United States has found itself dealing with in a different way. For instance, is it not possible that Clinton could no more stop the spread of technology round the world than he could stop the sun coming up? I suggest this because the United States has no monopoly on technology, (and the President does not have full control over what technology the USA does have) and in many areas your country may be considered to actually be behind the technological advances that are in such widespread use in other parts of the world. (The USA doesn't lead the world at everything, as impressive as your scientific and industrial achievements are).

It is historically the case that the planting of bombs by terrorists has been around for a century: you may like to read Conrad's 1907 work 'The Secret Agent', for some background on this. Suicide bombers have been plying their trade in Sri Lanka from well before 1993 or when it became a fashion in the Middle East or London.

Even the ideas behind 9/11 are not exactly original. The idea of using planes, singly or in a co-ordinated manner, to kill a more powerful enemy is not something that Clinton could un-invent: it has been around since the Kamikazis.

I think that it should be clear enough by now that having a 'large and robust military' - something which the USA has had for many years - does not deter terrorism - it makes asymmetric tactics, guerrilla warfare, assassinations and terrorism a more attractive option for a desperate political opponent. What causes political opponents to become desperate and turn to such methods? There are many reasons I am sure, which are well worth studying and considering in depth.

One thing that I think may encourage rather than lessen the threat though is if these people believe their enemy has a 'cultural attitude' which means he's going to use force against 'small problems' at too early a stage: (His thought processes are that in the face of the inevitable that is coming anyway it may better to resign himself to the use of violence, indeed glory , guilt free in its use, arm now and go for the sneak attack). This would be on top of any of the other twisted ideology or feelings of anger, political grievances or peer pressures which might prod him in the direction of violence.

Dreuk, re: your comment Reverend Rod Parsley describes Margaret Sanger as having studied the works of Englishman Thomas Robert Malthus, and embraced his plan of eugenics. I appreciate you are quoting someone else but may I comment?

In the first edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus suggested that only natural causes (such as accidents and old age), misery (war, pestilence, plague, and above all famine) [Book I, Ch. 2], and vice (which for Malthus included infanticide, murder, contraception and homosexuality) could check excessive population-growth. In the second and subsequent editions, (There were six between 1798-1826) Malthus raised the possibility of moral restraint (that is, marrying late or not at all, coupled with sexual abstinence prior to, and outside of, marriage) as a check on the growth of population.

He listed infanticide, which in the England was then,as now, illegal, as was abortion until the mid 1960s, as a vice. He did not advocate misery or vice, if he advocated anything it was voluntary 'moral restraint' as a means of birth control.

He was not,as far as I can tell a proponent of eugenics - which is a social philosophy which advocates the alleged 'improvement' of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention. Malthus himself had a very visible birth defect, having been born with a cleft palate, something which was basically inoperable in those days.

I know my two posts are a bit off the topic of the main thread, so please forgive me making them. I just find it frustrating when I see some things pass by unquestioned or corrected.

Dreuk's post is plagiarized. I couldn't find a direct source for "spiritual guide" but McCain and Parsley campaigned together, so it's sounds plausible to likely. Are you-all going to agree McCain's association with Parsley is reprehensible if I can verify the quote?

I think that it should be clear enough by now that having a 'large and robust military' - something which the USA has had for many years - does not deter terrorism - it makes asymmetric tactics, guerrilla warfare, assassinations and terrorism a more attractive option for a desperate political opponent.

You haven't studied history. You've studied a bunch of cliches. Otherwise it would be friggin' obvious that while setting off of bombs and other 'asymmetric warfare' tactics have been around forever they've only entered widespread use recently.

Why is that? Because prior to the US the other users of 'large and robust military' force simply exterminated the civilian support populations. This tends to eliminate terrorist tactics pretty thoroughly. After all, if asymmetric warfare can not be countered by a traditional military, no one would bother possessing one in the first place. They are kinda expensive.

Of course the fact that the US is attempting to evolve a working strategy other than the historically proven 'kill them all and let God sort it out' kinda goes counter to the navel-gazing 'how can we make this somehow our fault' theology you're pushing here.

History extends further back then 10, 50, or even 200 years you know...

As far as the original post.

As far as the original post. Rev. Wright is the same age as Emmett Till. Well, that is, he would be, if Till were still alive. White Americans are a lot quicker to talk about "That's all in the past tense" to American blacks than analogous statements about Jews and the Holocaust, yet Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dutch girl Anne Frank, and my mother are all (or, rather, would be if the former two were alive) the same age. That's the immediacy of Jim Crow and the immediacy of the Holocaust.

I don't think Wright, Obama (who, of course, doesn't come from the African American tradition), and Bill Cosby are that far apart on the pathology of inner-city ghetto culture. Only white folks seem to have such convenient amnesia about the timeline.

[sorry for dbl post; unclosed tag]

Why is that? Because prior to the US the other users of 'large and robust military' force simply exterminated the civilian support populations. This tends to eliminate terrorist tactics pretty thoroughly.

Yeah, that explains the Nazis' problems in occupied Yugoslavia, insufficient brutality.

And I have a bridge for sale.

Are you-all going to agree McCain's association with Parsley is reprehensible if I can verify the quote?

Sure. I don't see why it's relevant though beyond this weird lib urge to find moral equivalence everywhere.

Trust me, the fact that McCain is a scummy politician is quite well known on the right. Or were you living in a yurt in Mongolia during the entire nomination fight?

But he's our scummy politician. And no one in their right minds thinks McCain hates America. Or the government. Actually, his biggest sticking point with the right is his tendency to regulate at the drop of a hat.

Or are we actually attempting to try and turn McCain into a 'Christo-fascist'? Seriously? MCCAIN?

If the left can't figure out why Wright hurts Mr. post-racial-I'm-different-then-everyone-else-CHANGE-Obama more than far far more than any equivalent (if it holds up - and it won't because wackiness in regards to Abortion is a whole different animal than wackiness in regards to Race) relationship would touch McCain, than there is no hope for the left this election.

When did a very reasonable site for discussing politics turn into a sewer?

Yeah, that explains the Nazis' problems in occupied Yugoslavia, insufficient brutality.

No, they lacked sufficient force. The Wehrmacht wasn't exactly the overpowering military machine historians later turned it into in an effort to provide a sop to French egos. Particularly not the low quality, barely mechanized, garrison divisions that ended up on backwater fronts like the Balkans.

Look up what the Mongols did to the prototype original terrorists, the Hashshashin (Assassins), for the textbook historical example of why people invest in competent militaries instead of legions of suicide bombers.

AL, once you are out of Milwaukee, it might be a good time to make a statement on where the "discussions" have been heading lately.

In fact, I'd hire a jet-black Nigerian, or Ugandan long before I'd ever hire an "African-American," and until our folks from the 'hood figure that out, American politics will remain distorted and dysfunctional.

Where is your plan to make this happen? Can you offer your own experience as proof positive that by saying you hate "black" and "white" trash alike that you've solved anything or even pointed us in that direction?

American political dysfunction is not due to "white" and "black trash". It is due to white elitists. Welcome.

When did a very reasonable site for discussing politics turn into a sewer?

AL, once you are out of Milwaukee, it might be a good time to make a statement on where the "discussions" have been heading lately.

TOC - why is this thread worse than many others? Expand...

A.L.

AL,

First, your criteria is why is something worse than many others? I must admit I am quite surprised.

Second, I don't care if it is worse or better. I judge it on its merits.

Third, I would expect a higher standard from the site than a rehash of peoples hearsay, prejudices, fears as far as a discussion of race is concerned.

Fourth, you question seems to tell me that I have mistaken what the criteria for discussion is here.

Back on topic,

Here's the rate of growth for black/white marriages (all sexes combined)

1960: 51,000 couples
1970: 65,000
1980: 121,000
1991: 231,000
2006: 403,000

Since the rough guesstimate of African American population in the US is roughly 12.5% of approximately 300 mil, or about 3.75 million, this means a touch over 10% of the African American population is married to a white man/woman.

And that's accelerating far faster than the rate of growth in either base population.

I'd submit that interracial marriage is the single best acid-test for determining the status of racial relations. If there were any widescale, systemic racism in the black population against whites, I'd say these numbers provide a fairly powerful argument against it. Certainly you wouldn't expect the numbers to keep exponentially growing.

Sources:

Census
And More Census

TOC - race is hard to talk about, isn't it?

A.L.

By the way, the cohabitation figures would add a lot to these numbers, but I think the formal, societally approved, marriages are a more powerful indicator.

When I lived in Jamaica, many Jamaican blacks spoke of American blacks using the n word, considered them trash, and forbade thier children from dating them.

Frankly, I'm not fond of the word 'trash' applied to either blacks or whites. It's a slur that tends to obfuscate the real claim, which is that there are cultural issues which need to be addressed in a serious and honest manner and that too often these issues are allowed to hide behind the aegis of race so that they are impossible to talk about.

Read this article on the 'Culture of Success'. It is not for those troubled by political incorrectness.

Whether Obama wins or loses the Presidency, black victimology is going to be dead by 2012. No matter what.

Why?

Asians and Hispanics are growing in numbers rapidly. Hispanics already outnumber blacks, while Asians are wealthy and successful (wealthier than whites, in fact). Neither group complains about racism nearly as much as blacks.

By 2012, Asians and Hispanics will, directly and indirectly, tell blacks to 'get over it'. It will be very hard for Jesse Jackson & Co. to still conduct shakedowns when America now has far more than just 2 races, AND when more people figure out that Asians are wealthier than whites.

By 2012, Asians and Hispanics will, directly and indirectly, tell blacks to 'get over it'.

I'm confused, I guess. I don't think victimization has much political future for a host of reasons, but I don't see Jewish sense of victimization (how many Holocaust memorials are getting built these days?) going away because by 2012 there might be more Muslims and Buddhists than Jews in America.

Jews don't use the holocaust as an excuse for any trouble they have today. They don't let it inhibit their success, and they are successful. They don't demand affirmative action, shakedowns, reparations from people who had nothing to do with it, etc.

You don't see any Rabbi ranting the way Pastor Wright was, to a large room full of people in full agreement.

I remember when Jesse Jackson tried to shake down Silicon Valley. He walked into companies with primarily Chinese, Vietnamese, and east Indian engineers, and didn't do so well. He hasn't been back. It's hard to argue that Evil Whitey is in charge when the boss is a guy from Mumbai and most of the engineers are East or South Asian.

That said, there are virtually no non-immigrant Blacks in the Valley. In my 20 years here, every Black I've worked with was an African or Caribbean immigrant.

The only American Black engineer I've worked with in the past ten years was our field engineer in Detroit; he was quite good and we tried to get him to relocate to HQ when we closed our Detroit field office, but unsurprisingly he didn't want to trade his 3000 square foot house in Michigan for a 1 bedroom condo in Palo Alto.

Bill Clinton has been described by some as "America's first black President" simply because Black Trash observed White Trash and found a kindred spirit.

And that's the moment that an essay, already careening wildly and perilously around a dangerous subject, went irretrievably off the tracks.

Dreuk -

Why are you being dishonest?

From the same link:

When Sen. Lieberman had a chance to speak at the press conference, he placed the blame of the mistake on himself. "I had a brief exchange with one of the mothers whose children was in there in a costume for Purim," Lieberman, who is Jewish and celebrates the holiday, said. "And it's my fault that I said to Senator McCain that this is the Israeli version of Halloween. It is in the sense because the kids dress up and it's a very happy holiday and actually it is in the sense that the sweets are very important of both holidays."

It's not "dementia" for McCain to characterize a Jewish holiday in the same way that his Jewish colleague had described it to him.

They don't demand affirmative action, shakedowns, reparations from people who had nothing to do with it, etc.

Other than 80 years, can you explain the difference between the Jewish claims against European insurance companies and African American claims against various slaveholding and/or Jim Crow enterprises? I think you'd admit that few of the shareholders or employees of 21st century insurance companies had anything to do with the Holocaust. There's also a whiff of affirmative action in the founding and recognition of Israel. Of course, I'm not philosophically opposed to affirmative action in the US context, either, so it's easy for me to say so.

Celebrim:

When I lived in Jamaica, many Jamaican blacks spoke of American blacks using the n word, considered them trash, and forbade thier children from dating them.

One of my (Boricua) wife's US-born friends refuses to refer to herself as black, calling herself "Jamaican" instead.

Buy the pimp suit, live the pimp life. That's what it boils down to, whether the pimp suit is a seersucker suit with lots of bling or full trucker regalia.

Trash is what trash does.

One of the funniest things in the world, according to the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, Henry Orombi, "is to see the expression on the faces of so-called African-Americans when they finally figure out that we consider them to be White."

Something similar happens at some levels in Europe. They simply aren't "black" compared to the African immigrants.

I'm afraid that the reparations analogy doesn't quite hold water Andrew. The claims that Jewsih families are making in Europe seem to be for the return of specific monies, properties and art taken from specific families. Not for cash payments to every living jew in Israel from every living citizen in the country in question. And despite claims to the contrary that is indeed what the supporters of reparations here in the states are aiming to legislate in the long run.
As far as the creation of Israel goes I wasn't aware it was an affirmative action progam. Perhaps you'd like to expalin that one. The Bush White House supports the creation of a Palestinian State. Is that simply an affirmative action progam as well? Come to thik of it, was the creation of every state on earth ( amd most of them seem to have been created in their inception by like minded people of similar race and religion) affirmative action start ups as well?

Dreuk, first please stop hijacking the threads for your anti-McCain comments; there will be plenty of other threads where they will be very appropriate, believe me...

...second, calling other commenters - as opposed to their ideas - names isn't what we do here. Stop it, please.

Feel free to join the discussion and take whatever positions you want, but also be aware that this isn't your house and your rules don't apply.

A.L.

Corvan, I take it that those American blacks who are able to trace ancestry to a specific enslaved ancestor are entitled to reparations from the descendants of the owners? No, that doesn't quite fit, because Jewish survivors collect Holocaust reparations from the German government, and not from individual camp guards or SS soldiers. It looks to me that we do have a precedent for a successor government making reparations for an atrocious policy of its predecessor. Is the rule that specific survivors can collect from the government but descendants can only collect from the individual? My first thought is that's special pleading, but perhaps you can justify it.

As far as the founding of the State of Israel with the support of the USA, Western Europe except Greece, and the USSR, if you don't think there's a strong element of "make-good" in that, why didn't it happen in 1937? Something between 1937 and 1948 changed a lot of opinions in the Americas and Europe and I think we both know what it was.

In looking over the thread, I think that except for TOC—I can't tell just what he's objecting to—the Original Poster is getting off easy. The Kansas white boy is the authentic African. American blacks are really white. The experience of American blacks of middle age or older under Jim Crow, why, that's ancient history about as relevant as the Sack of Rome. Nice self-absolving, there.

Dreuk -

Here's the Ynetnews description:

Often referred to as the "Jewish Halloween", Purim is the Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Jews of Persia from a massacre planned against them. It falls on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Adar, which is usually in March, and one month before Passover.

(No doubt Ynetnews is just another demented source, with deteriorating or diminished mental faculties:

Ynetnews is the English-language website from Yedioth Group, and a sister site to Ynet, Israel’s leading news web site. Ynetnews provides Jewish communities and others worldwide interested in Israel with the same authoritative, fast, and world-class news reporting and commentary Hebrew-speakers receive from Ynet and “Yedioth Ahronoth,” Israel’s most-read newspaper.

)

You mindless Townhouse spammer drones are pathetic.

Not a special pleading at all, simple proof of proximate damages a concept universally and traditionally required for tort relief, also a concept you throw out the window. You also offer no proof at all that Israel is any more or less a matter of affirmative action than say, the founding of the Roman Republic. Lucius Junius Brutus was entitled to the services of HUD. Who knew? Sorry, but if Obama's speech was a muddled concept brilliantly presented ( as some have argued) yours is a poor concept poorly delivered.
It is also rather amazing that the author of the post here deserves more literary punishment in your eyes, but you feel you deserve none at all for treating the entire state of Israel, a deomcracy by the way, as a special interest group whose very existence can only be deemed appriopriate based upon whether they meet your criteria in regards to their past greivances. And some say George Bush didn't respect the soveriegnty of Iraq.

Not only that, I'm not certain Abrahm Lincoln considered himself president of a successor government. Nor that the government that actually freed the slaves should be sued for slavery when it in fact did not of itself possess slaves. Granted slavery was legal at the time the Civil began, but even then not in every State. Nor so far as I can tell were Federal troops used for the express purposes of systematically eliminating African Americans as was the case with jews in Germany. No as horrible as the suffering of Africans Americans has been at times what you are trying to do, rather than justice, is create an enormous special interst group that can be used for poltical gain by politicans cold blooded enough to shamelessly pander to it. And though that would be a natural extension of American poltical thinking over the past forty years, I believe our body politic has featured quite enough of it.

Corvan, the Roman Republic did not come into existence as a result of the votes of the United Nations. Israel did. What motivated the votes in favor of partition and the establishment of Israel? More than one reason, to be sure, but if you don't think Anglo-European guilt was one of those reasons, you're just kidding yourself.

Am I correct that you are now arguing against reparations to African Americans but in favor of reparations to Holocaust victims on the grounds the former didn't suffer enough? That only deliberate eliminationism constitutes grounds for reparations?

Dreuk - just a gentle warning; when I ask you to stop doing something - please stop. Otherwise I'll suggest you take a break from commenting here and think about it.

A.L.

Dreuk appears to be our banned friend Alan, returned under another name.

His comments are about to vanish.

A.L.

Not at all I'm pointing out to you that specific Jewish families can make specific cases for the intentional misbehaviour of the German government which involve specific losses of chattle and real property. It would be practically impossible to make those same cases against the American govenrment for Americans of African descent. That in no way excuses the way that African Americans were treated for a huge portion of American history. It is a sad, but true. Creating more special interest groups for opportunistic poiticians won't fix that reality.
As for your points on Israel they have gone from weak to just plain silly. You still offer no evidence at all that Israel is an affirmative action state or that there is even such a thing or that the presence of such a fiction has any effect at all on your thesis. You yourself admit there were other factors in the creation of Israel besides affirmitve action. Which leads me to suspect your use of the subject was a clumsy attempt at misdirection.

#32 from Armed Liberal at 11:41 pm on Mar 21, 2008

TOC - race is hard to talk about, isn't it?

A.L.

No, AL it is not very hard to talk about at all. What is hard is is believing that "peoples hearsay, prejudices, fears" are taken seriously on what is usually a pretty good site for discussing politics, especially at this late a date.

You reprimand Dreuk for his remarks, but you can say Most Black People are Racist on the site, (In another thread) which pretty run of the mill racial grouping and prejudice, and nothing is said.

#2 from Ian Coull at 6:20 pm on Mar 21, 2008 Touches on my problem here

There is a valid point in here about 'attitude' versus 'race', but the facile switching between "black Trash" and "average African-American" is a bit too close to opinion, and not enough like data supported analysis for my comfort. Ascribing the culture of 'black Trash' to the majority of African-Americans is no more valid than thinking you know the 'average Ugandan' because of your experience with the subset that has emigrated from their original cultural roots.

On the other hand is this sort of nonsense that follows, which although tree frog probably wouldn't think so is his own half baked ideas on race that pretty much mirror both the KKK and the Black leadership he is trying to lump together.These sorts of "theories", quite simply, deny peoples individuality by lumping them into groups, they have their roots in Social Darwinism and Eugenics. If you think that is a stretch, think again.

9 from Treefrog at 7:32 pm on Mar 21, 2008

Basically if racism ends, intermarriage is going to spike way up, and at 12% of population and with insignificant replacement immigration, African American will simply blend with the rest of the American genetic pool, raising the average melanin content slightly.

And that's precisely what's happening, slowly but surely. This would of course be a disaster to the African American leadership, so artificial barriers needed to be found in a hurry. First they stole the KKK's old technique of any drop of black blood makes you black, and that'll buy time. It works for halfs and maybe for quarters (if someone else in there had sufficiently dark skin), but will fall apart completely below that.

He goes further. In this segment we get the theory of the manufactured differences in culture, even religious belief.

So they need something with...more bite. So we get black values, black churches, black communities, etc etc etc. Basically segregation mark two with a strong wrapper of victimization and a subtext of whites are icky.

Interesting case in point, 10 years or so ago, interracial relationships on TV were all the rage. Now, not so much.

He ends with this which clearly tells us where superiority lies

Unfortunately, since 'white' culture is sitting on the known working methods, any attempt to produce an alternate culture solely to differentiate is going to be sub par. Which I guess is a feature not a bug since it can be spun as 'racism', for further victimization brownie points.

The coup de grace is that he uses top down ideological impositions to come up with the following

Like all top down ideological imposititions, I don't think it's really working, but it's really hard to tell.

So, it would seem to me that we are not talking about race, but "peoples hearsay, prejudices, fears" about race, which like all discussions based on prejudices, hearsay and fears are pretty shallow.

TOC, I'm not being clear about standards here.

It's acceptable here to say that "all white people are racist" or "all black people are racist" and support your case with argument and facts...there are cases to be made for both of those. Neither of those (or almost any other argument) is off-bounds or grounds for banning - as long as you're making an argument. Namecalling alone - not so much.

In my view, it's almost impossible to talk about race in today's society without excavating layer after layer of hearsay, rumor, innuendo, and myth.

I think we need to talk about it, and do that hard excavating, and arguments are the best way I know how to do it.

But we can't simply wait this issue out.

A.L.

It would be practically impossible to make those same cases against the American government for Americans of African descent.

On the contrary, I think millions of Americans of African descent could make documented claims against specific slave owners (rather, their heirs) and against specific enterprises that used slave labor. I also suspect that ample documentation exists for lawsuits against the government itself for, say, returning escaped slaves to their owners, if you believe that this is a valid cause of action. For some reason, the statute of limitations on atrocities has tolled for American blacks, but not for European Jews. As far as Israel goes, let's go to an original source.

The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations.

That's from the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel. I suppose that denial of the plain fact that guilt was a significant component of support for the establishment of the State of Israel is part of some general backlash against the cult of the victim. Well, OK, but that doesn't change history. You can also find the Jewish Agency making specific mention of the Holocaust in their case to the UN Special Committee on Palestine (1947)

127. The Jewish case seeks the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine, and Jewish immigration into Palestine both before and after the creation of the Jewish State subject only to the limitations imposed by the economic absorptive capacity of that State. In the Jewish case, the issues of the Jewish State and unrestricted immigration are inextricably interwoven. On the one hand, the Jewish State is needed in order to assure a refuge for the Jewish immigrants who are clamoring to come to Palestine from the displaced persons camps and from other places in Europe, North Africa and the Near East, where their present plight is difficult. On the other hand, a Jewish State would have urgent need of Jewish immigrants in order to affect the present great numerical preponderance of Arabs over Jews in Palestine. The Jewish case frankly recognizes the difficulty involved in creating at the present time a Jewish State in all of Palestine in which Jews would, in fact, be only a minority, or in part of Palestine in which, at best, they could immediately have only a slight preponderance. Thus, the Jewish case lays great stress on the right of Jewish immigration, for political as well as humanitarian reasons. Special emphasis is therefore placed on the right of Jews to "return" to Palestine.

Do you really want to claim that out of all the arguments Zionists made for partition of the Mandate and establishment of the State of Israel, this one was ignored? Be serious.

Ahh, but Andrew your position has changed. Causes of action against those who owned slaves is something very separate from reparations made by the United States gonverment. It is a simple tort action to be pursued in american courts. Something I think you realize would be a pretty impractical undertkaing as far as presenting proximate causes of action and damages go, otherwise you wouldn't be clamoring for federal legislation on the matter. Still, if you feel that suing the descendants of all those who may have once owned slaves is a good idea or at all practicable find lawyers who are willing to take the case and have at it. That's not reparations. That's using the legal system.
As to the causes of action of Jewish families ( funny how you seek to confuse people of the Jewish faith with Zionists, eh?) those are pursued against those who actually still have the stolen stuff (banks, art galleries, etc.) I'm not certain how many descendants of the O'Hara clan are still living large off the money they raked in during the eighteen sixties, but if you can find one or two bring your cause of action.
Likewise, noticing that Jewish folk happen to remember the Holocuast back in the late nineteen forties (what temerity those zionists have, hunh?) is not actually the same as saying that Israel is a state founded upon affrmative action at all. Though you're more than willing to make the leap if it allows you to change the subject. A lot of people in this thread are trying to figure out what to do about race in this country, some of them inartfully. You're screaming look at the Jews! Look at the Jews! That's not very impressive.

#56 from Armed Liberal at 3:37 am on Mar 23, 2008

It's acceptable here to say that "all white people are racist" or "all black people are racist" and support your case with argument and facts.

Can you give me some facts that support either of these statements. I would guess not since they are not only patently absurd, but also pernicious.

My point in calling you out specifically was to get you to clarify your position, which you have. Unfortunately, your position undermines what I thought was a relatively high standard for debate on the site. Now it seems that statements,like the above which do nothing but debase the debate are Hunky Dory, Not very high standards.

I have witnessed first hand what this sort of stuff does, especially to young children. To accept it without challenge, seems to be counter productive at best and craven at worst. Why on earth would you deem such obvious prejudice to be acceptable? Why would you want the site to wallow in a filth that has been discredited.

I remember in the south 40 years ago it was that there was a Jew-Communist conspiracy, that all Jews were a part of to take over the world. Would that be acceptable here?

TOC, how long do you think such an argument would stand up? How long do you think an argument about race such as I framed would stand up?

My position is that open debate is good and that bringing pernicious or just wrong ideas out into the daylight and exposing them to air is the best way to deal with them. It is also, I believe the best way to deal with the deep emotions that surround issues as charged as this; we talk about them and talk about the triggers for them and bring what facts and understandings we can to bear on them.

Are there things that I won't countenance discussing? Sure. "Let's kill all the whites/blacks/Jews/Palestinians" "Let's move them to Alaska".

But saying that racism exists on both sides, and that it's a real problem not only when framed by a white man but by a black woman isn't an argument in that class. And I'm confident that the people here would pretty quickly excavate it to it's roots and we'd have an interesting discussion.

And if we stack enough of those discussions on top of each other, we might change some minds.

A.L.

Corvan, the UNSCOP report itself enumerates the Holocaust as one reason the Jewish Agency desired the establishment of the State of Israel. Without some countervailing evidence that the subsequent establishment of Israel was based upon all of the good reasons except this one, you'll just have to accept that, as I put it earlier, this decision by the UN was in part a "make-good". What's fascinating is that acknowledging what was obvious in 1948 is now somehow taboo.

That may, of course, be in part because of the reparations issue. The antebellum American government was an active participant in slavery, even in the North where some attempt was made to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Of course, Southern state governments were complicit, after the Civil War, in both Jim Crow and on extrajudicial acts such as lynching. But on your thinking, American blacks have no course of action against either specific actors (there's lots of documentation on who owned whom) or against the government, while Holocaust victims have both. I suggest that this has more to do with atrocity fatigue with respect to blacks that hasn't yet set it with respect to Jews.

corvan, I think you're arguing on a losing side here. The historical record as I understand it is pretty clear that the British and American opposition to a Jewish homeland in Palestine before WWII was rolled over by the reaction to the Holocaust.

A.L.

Andrew, I think that the deaths of 600,000 Americans in a war fought - substantially - to end slavery may have something to do with the reluctance to sign on for reparations. Many people see the check as having been written in blood.

Is some compensation or aid justified to make up with the 100 years of discrimination that followed the Civil War? Absolutely. But it's got to be compensation and aid that works and meets the goal of better enabling black Americans to better participate in the American project.

Figuring out what that aid might look like is an interesting topic of discussion.

A.L.

TOC expresses major concerns about the uncensored nature of this WOC comment thread. I recognise the discomfort level of hearing things deemed 'obscene' by our society, but am much more discomforted by the level of censorship you advocate. In Canada, that level of censorship has resulted in something called a 'hate crime'; wherein it is ostensibly illegal to utter negative thoughts about any identifiable group. The paternalistic nature of this offends my belief that adults can and should make their own judgements about the validity of any and every expressible idea. Like everything, there are practical limits to the implied anarchy of 'free speech', but to date I am comfortable with the minimum levels of censorship imposed by the WOC.

Sorry AL, but on this one we disagree. The change in America and Britian's stand on a jewish state can't be layed at the feet of affirmative action. The votes weren't designed to group people into competing grievance groups maquerading as nations. Instead they were a simple reaction to a contemporary occurence (the holocaust.) The same way the civl war was a reaction to a set of contemporary problems.
Reparations sadly aren't the same thing. They are instead a political decision to forgo basic tort law in order to ensure that one group of people ( who did not particpate in the wrong committed one hundred and forty years past) write checks to another group of people (who were not alive one hundred forty years past when the wrong was committed.)
As far as the measures correcting the wrongs that were committed after slavery had passed from the books go( something that is different from what Andrew has been arguing I think) I suspect some would argue those would look an awful lot like a thing called affirmative action. The results of that have been mixed. With some very tangible successes and failures. If one wants to adjust the way affirmative action is administered and used on college campuses and in the issuance of government contracts that is one thing. Tax payer assisted school vouchers for minority children from under privileged neighborhoods would probably be a good idea to add to the mix, for instance. Creating a new layer of programs designed to divide americans based on color and creed (thus creating more fertile ground for the Jeremiah Wrights of the world) probably wouldn't be.

I thought someone else would have pointed this out by now, but, hey, whatever...

Treefrog, you slipped a decimal place that critically undermines your argument. At 12.5% of a U.S. population of 300 million, blacks are 37.5 million, not 3.75 million. Therefore 403,000 black-white interracial marriages comes to a little over 1% of the current black population, not 10%. In terms of the actual number of black married people, the numbers for interracial partners are about 4% for black women and 8% for black men. About 70%, in each case are black-white couples.

Also, based on the data you present, you cannot argue that the increase in black-white interracial marriage over time is even close to exponential. Such a curve does not fit the data. I reproduce your figures here, for convenience, along with my computations of percentage rate of increase per decade:

1960: 51,000 couples
1970: 65,000 +27.5%/decade
1980: 121,000 +86.2%/decade
1991: 231,000 +82.6%/decade
2006: 403,000 +49.6%/decade

The percentage rate of increase per decade appears to have peaked 20 or so years ago and to be falling off again. Given these quite variable figures and the miniscule base from which projections must be made, it is impossible to say what future rates of black-white intermarriage are likely to be, but there is no obvious case that they will be very significant in the near- or even medium-term future.

Rates of intermarriage among other significant racial groups in America are much higher than the black-white rate. The various East Asian ethnic groups in America, for example, have interracial marriage rates ranging from 10-15% to as high as 45% (Japanese). Hispanic intermarriage rates also seem to be apprreciably higher than those for blacks, though hard numbers are more difficult to come by as most Hispanics are identified as white on U.S. Census bureau databases.

I believe America is, indeed, growing more "bronze" as time passes, but it is doing so with only trivial amounts of black participation. I see no reason to anticipate any major change in this situation.

I guess what I'm saying is this. We currently have terrible problems in the black community (crime, drug use [which should be a problem considered quite separate from crime, I think] under aged pregnancy, broken homes, single parent families, poor education, and little respect for academic achievement. I am more than willing to fund far reaching programs to correct those problems. I don't really have any problem with the Bakke decision's purpose ( even if its jurisprudence is all messed up) Qualified minorites deserve a shot at college and post graduate educations. It is a serive to them and the country to make certain they get them. I'd also like to see a number of novel programs for kids in grade school (school vouchers) that would get them into top notch schools early when study patterns and expectations can be built.
But tying these necessary solutions to current problems to acts that happened four generations past is simply an invitation to grievance fetishists like Wright for more of the same.
What we are dealing with here is a (just and fair) political decision to correct a current problem. Don't pretend it is a quasi legal action that will earse the sins of generation past and marks everyone who supports it for saint hood. To do so cheapens history and the law.

Corvan, your distinctions are artificial or non-existent. The purpose of American-style affirmative action is not to organize competing groups into a grievance competition, although for the sake of argument I'll concede this is an undesirable side-effect. To put it in your terms, affirmative action was also a reaction to a contemporary occurrence. Jim Crow had, of course, literally just been abolished, while less official racist practice (including outside the South) resulted in deficits in education and capital accumulation nationwide. As with American Indians, the payment to date from the USA as a whole to the oppressed group is completely inadequate, on a cash basis, to the value of expropriated labor or land dating back a century. But on these issues, the statute of limitations has tolled, on laws that were not entirely fair in the first place. (By statute, for example, Indian treaty claims receive only simple, uncompounded interest.) Tort law is not something divine and absolute, and in a country where slavery was at-the-time legal, there is not to my knowledge any basis in traditional tort law for ex-slaves (or their heirs) to sue ex-masters (or their heirs), regardless of the degree of documentation available. Tort law is a red herring.

As far as Israel, you are getting my argument backwards. The change in American and European attitudes towards the establishment of Israel can not be laid at the feet of affirmative action. I am arguing that to a (considerable) degree this political support, which was much greater than before WW2, arose out of guilt, remorse, and sympathy; that is, it could well be labeled "affirmative action", but for some curious reason, isn't.

After Treefrog's pro-genocide statements that were both immortal and ahistorical I pretty much tuned him out, but a shout out to comment 66 for showing just how stupid he is.

Andrew #69
Is slipping a decimal place more or less stupid than either spelling immoral incorrectly, or using the word immortal inappropriately in its place? A published comment is very much a 'glass house'.

Ian, a typo does not vitiate an argument.

An order of magnitude error in the key statistic of Treefrog's argument renders his entire claim nonsense. His fingers are in gear while the brain is in neutral.

My distinctions aren't non-existnat at all, Andrew they are the difference between building one country and building a series of greivance communities demagogued by people like Jeremiah Wright...and people who blithely accuse others of being pro-genocide merely to score debating points.

Let's search around for some grievance communities.

One of the most energetic confrontations between [Menachem] Begin and Ben-Gurion centered on the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany, signed in 1952. Begin vehemently opposed the agreement, claiming that it was tantamount to a pardon of Nazi crimes against the Jewish people. While the agreement was being debated in the Knesset in January 1952, he led a passionate demonstration in Jerusalem in which he scathingly attacked the government, calling for civil disobedience. Incited by his speech, the crowd marched towards the Knesset, throwing stones into the general assembly and injuring dozens of policemen and several Knesset members.

Here's a 2006 headline from "Jewish Week":

[Holocaust] Survivors Balking At Lawyer's Fee Lead counsel in Swiss bank settlement asking for $4.1 million, says he 'acted honorably.'

Somehow it's fair game to attack the Rev. Wright, and affirmative action advocates, and other African American reparationists, but not Jews. I'm rather sympathetic to African Americans who do not understand this.

#66 Dick

Ack, was away on the road over the weekend...

Thanks for the catch, that was a pretty bad slip. That'll teach me try and post and work at the same time...

Hmm, that does rather scuttle the things are improving slowly but surely argument. Well, they are still improving but rather slowly.

Course, this now makes the whole picture far bleaker. Not a good thing.

After Treefrog's pro-genocide statements that were both immortal and ahistorical I pretty much tuned him out

Huh?

I just made a throw away suggestion that evolving a successful pattern of response to terrorism/insurgencies OTHER than the historical flatten them approach would be a very very good thing. Something to be applauded.

How you equate this over to me being pro-genocide is quite beyond me.

TOC

You attempt to find insult and racism where none exists.

This is the first time I've ever seen anyone decide that the melting pot observation is defacto racist. I always thought is was a kinda straightforward, literal application of e pluribus unum.

Straightforward genetic population theory. Barring some sort of block to genetic intermixing (which if we had a post-racial environment no such thing should exist, right?) large scale interracial marriage should result. How many pure blood Irish are there in America? German? English?

People meet. Fall in love (or lust). Have kids. The kids are mixed race. Rinse and repeat. Gene pools mix.

That's a good thing. Actually you can make an interesting argument that a lot of the success of the United States can be attributed to the simple fact that we're all genetic hybrids, and biologically speaking hybrids tend to be superior to either parent line.

To prevent the melting pot from occurring you have to create artificial, since there definitely aren't biological, walls against cross racial mixing.

Which led to my point about people attempting to create (or bolster) exactly that to keep the races separate.

Help me out here, I think that it is a good thing for young folks to fall in love and have kids with someone with a different skin color.

You think that constitutes eugenics and is an evil thing.

Which of us is the one denying individuality and lumping people together in a racist manner again?

Which led to my looking for (and screwing up) the numbers on current interracial marriage. We aren't as far along that curve as I'd hoped we were and that makes me sad. It should make you sad as well.

He ends with this which clearly tells us where superiority lies

Unfortunately, since 'white' culture is sitting on the known working methods, any attempt to produce an alternate culture solely to differentiate is going to be sub par. Which I guess is a feature not a bug since it can be spun as 'racism', for further victimization brownie points.

Oh for the love of pete, you really want to work yourself into a lather here.

Hint, there's a reason why there are quotes around white. I find it ridiculous myself that working hard, going to college, getting a good job with a nice company, marrying, having kids (and the whole enchilada) has somehow been designated the 'white man way', but that sure as hell isn't coming from me. Check any campus minority studies department for more details.

They'll be happy to tell you how all that icky capitalist competitiveness is part of the white male conspiracy to oppress everyone else.

Or read any of the numerous accounts of those who worked their way up out of some of the uglier inner city high schools.

Unfortunately that capitalism stuff works really well (or at least better than anything else) so attempting to differentiate for the sake of differentiation creates suboptimal results. See Soviet Union/Cuba/Zimbabwe/etc etc.

Again Andrew, we're debating what to do about an American community that is in deep trouble and you're screaming look at the Jews! in hopes of changing the subject.
1952 was only seven years after the Holocaust the damages for properties stolen and confiscated were determined based upon negogiations between to separate nations after negogiations which involved an exchange of information and study of the damges alleged. The 2006 settlement was beween a Swiss bank and holocuast survivors, not their great, great, great, great grandchildren. The agreed compensation was based upon property taken from those survivors and placed in Swiss banks. Neither example does one bloody thing to bolster your argument or to show that the United States government should create a permanently aggrieved class that should be entitled to checks cut by the rest of the citizenry outside of the principles of tort law.
One cannot rebuild a shattered portion of its society (no matter how terrible and unjust that suffering was) by dividing it away from the rest of the society at large, telling it is is different and its differences entitle it to special treatment, rules and compensation for ever more. Unless of course one's object is to create a compartmentlaized voting group that can be bought and paid for with more compensation and newer and more elaborate rules.
Can you fashion even one argument on this subject with out pointing to Israel and raising your voice in outrage? Even one?

Corvan, it will be quite impossible for me to argue without reference to the Holocaust because my claim is not that reparations or tort lawsuits on behalf of African Americans are justified, but that very different standards are applied in these two cases.

First, I am rather tired of your invocation of "tort law" as a magic bullet. Tort law is not the same in every jurisdiction and Holocaust victims' recovery is not based on tort law as it existed at the time of the action. Plunder of European Jews was quite lawful under the "legal" system of the Third Reich. Termination of Jewish retirees' pensions was lawful under the "legal" system of the Third Reich. Only in this case, a more equitable system was imposed after the war. I doubt if even Radical Republicans considered allowing freedmen to sue their former owners as tortfeasors, and clearly you do not believe their descendants should be allowed to do so retroactively.

Second, your argument about 1952 is a negative pregnant. Exactly how many years is it permitted to carry grievances before one becomes a whining grievance community? Of course, 1952 was still two years before Brown v Topeka Board of Ed. But blacks are expected to surrender their grievances quickly and quietly (and inexpensively) and all come together now, smile on each other.

I'm not even in favor of many forms of Affirmative Action, but because I see them as inefficient or counterproductive. I would no more spend my time trying to say that they are undeserved compensation than make the same argument about Holocaust reparations.

Undeserved? Where in blue blazes did you get that? Of course compensation for the horrors of slavery are deserved. There's just no pracitcal way to do it now something your latest post seems to recoginize. Glad to have you aboard on that.

It is a stretch, but not a huge one to see parallels between the (presumably unintended) results, of the 'compensation' afforded the Native Indian community, and the other disadvantaged groups referenced here. If you are a determined 'ethnic cleanser', you need not look for any more lethal weapon than to cultivate the 'victim/entitlement mentality' that special compensation based on race, ethnicity, etc. produces. I can only speak from my own experience having once lived on an Indian Reservation, but the damage done to a once respectable culture by just a couple of generations poisoned by a culture of special entitlement should give pause to anyone contemplating 'compensation' as benefit.

the damage done to a once respectable culture by just a couple of generations poisoned by a culture of special entitlement

Yeah, it's not the way whites took the Indians' land, it's not even the incompatibility between white settlement of the land and traditional Indian culture, but the folly of (very) occasionally adhering to the special entitlements Indians were promised in treaties.

Andrew #81
I am not sure what your experience with the phenomenon is, but on the reserve I lived on it pretty well encompassed the entire thousands of acres of traditional hunting territory, there were and are no white (or any other coloured) settlers, it is after all an area reserved for first nations persons, and the welfare was regular and generous to a fault. Turns out that in at least that instance, the creation of an 'entitlement' mentality did its dirty work all by itself.

Judging from the terminology and the spelling, Ian, your experience is in Canada. I don't know much about the situation of Canadian Indians. Many USA reservations, no matter how large they may look on the map, are a lot smaller than traditional hunting grounds, and US policy in some cases (e.g., the Sioux) was to discourage even ranching, much less hunting, as insufficiently "civilized". Unfortunately, the remaining Sioux reservation is low-quality land for farming. There's also plenty of white ownership or long-term leasehold on what's nominally Indian land. I'm sure you're aware of the long-running legal case that's demonstrated the US government made almost no effort to collect mineral royalties due to Indian tribes, and indeed seems not to have the most elementary records from which to calculate them.

I'll be the first to agree that Indian reservations are reservoirs of social pathology, but access to general welfare programs and special privileges isn't the reason. Indeed, much as I dislike the Indian mega-cas1nos (or white mega-cas1nos), there is no question that this privilege has pulled a number of tribes out of poverty. On a recent trip through Oregon, the spanking new schools were right next to the cas1no. (A certain word in this post is blacklisted.)