Almalieque wrote:
]Politics isn't a cult, you have the freedom to have varying points and still be considered a Republican or a Democrat. I can tell you from experience, it is assumed that military personnel are Republicans. It has personally eased up after 2008, but admitting to be a Democrat was like coming out of the closet. The reality is that because we have a two party system, you are more likely to vote against some of your interests. As a result, you will be criticized by the demographics that you belong to and vote against.
Again though, there's a difference between associating people politically based on their actions, professions, or income level versus associating them based on their skin color. I'm not sure how much more clearly I can state this. It's reasonable to expect that someone who is in a profession supported more by one party than another will tend to lean towards the more supportive party. It's unreasonable to expect such a tendency based on someone's skin color.
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See above. You're doing exactly that. Hannity, Romney, Paul Ryan, Stacey Dash and other Conservatives have continued to make the argument that voting Democrat is a form of enslavement that holds Blacks back and should vote Republican. HTF is that any different?
It's different because we don't say that this is about black people. We say that about
all people. Being on welfare is bad for anyone. Voting for the party that actively seeks to increase the welfare state is bad for everyone. Not just black people. Everyone. That this affects black people most is because black people are currently the group most likely to be impacted by welfare. As I mentioned in my previous post, we don't oppose welfare because it'll help black people (or any group for that matter). It will, but our objectives aren't about picking groups of people we like and helping them. That's how the left does things. Our objective is to try to eliminate (or at least reduce) things our government does that we think are counterproductive and harmful. Like Welfare.
That this would happen to help blacks more than any other group is a coincidence of the current condition. But you need to stop assuming that we're doing this based on the groups involved (in either direction). That's how the Left does things. Not the Right. I keep trying to explain this, and you just keep ignoring what I say. You're so caught up in your own identity based political viewpoint that you just assume that's how I and other conservatives are viewing things. We aren't.
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The issue that I'm trying to discuss is your disrespect towards black people as if they are too clueless to think beyond what is told to them. 90% of the black electorate didn't vote Democratic because they were brainwashed to do so. To believe that is disrespectful and ignorant. So, let's stay on topic shall we?
Again, your problem is obsessing over skin color. Welfare is a trap. It will trap anyone regardless of skin color. I'm not at all saying that black people are any less capable of rational thought than any other group. I'm saying that they were the ones in the most vulnerable position socially and economically when the welfare state was created, and thus they have been the most harmed by it. All people who become dependent on welfare tend to vote overwhelmingly Democrat. That's part of the "trap" of the program(s). They make those who receive the benefits dependent on them, and thus strongly pressured to vote for the party that supports more funding for the programs.
It's not that black people are any different in this regard. They just happen to have a far higher relative percentage of their population dependent on some form of welfare. Thus, they are stuck in the welfare trap more than other groups. My position has nothing to do with the skin colors of those involved. I would argue, however, that the decision to put our welfare system in place right when it was done was made at least partly with the intention of maximizing black dependence on welfare and thus simultaneously institutionalizing poverty and crime among the black population and forcing that same population to vote for the very people who did it to them.
The same negatives would apply to any group thus afflicted. But it was done to black people. You want to know why the crime stats are so skewed by race, that's your answer. And it wasn't us conservatives or Republicans who did it.
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We already went over this in the past, so I assumed that you didn't want to go into details. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/28/republicans-admit-voter-id-laws-are-aimed-at-democratic-voters.html
Um... Let's pretend for the sake of argument that I don't obsess over every post anyone's every made or every argument I've ever been in and if it didn't happen in this very thread, I'm
not going to have a freaking clue what you're talking about.
As to the link, it doesn't say what you claimed it said. Reading what someone else writes, interpreting it, changing the words, and then declaring it to be an "admission" of the changed version is pretty darn silly. No one admitted to voter suppression, much less voter suppression based on race. Once again, the problem is that you can't help by see things based on the skin color of those involved. When we push for things like voter ID, it's not based on which groups it'll benefit or harm, but out of a desire to be "fair" to everyone. Everyone is under the same requirements. That this may impact one group more than another is, just as in the case above, an artifact of the current status. If I raise the price of a ham sandwich, it's going to affect people who eat ham sandwiches more than those who don't. That doesn't mean that I wanted to hurt that group of people though. And calculating the percentage of which races eat ham sandwiches more than others in order to create some kind of racial element to it is freaking insane.
We want voter ID because we believe it'll make the outcome of votes more accurate and fair. If this negatively effects the Democrats, it's because the status quo involves Democrats winning elections because of inaccurate or unfair voting practices. One person's voter suppression is another person's "preventing voter fraud". And I tend to lean in the latter direction on this one.
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It only harms black people if you believe that black people want to be poor and don't desire to move up.
Huh? No. Welfare imposes an opportunity cost to upward mobility. It makes it harder for the person receiving it to become able to support themselves fully via employment. It we take two sets of people, both with the exact same average desire not to be poor, and put one of them on welfare and the other not, the group receiving welfare will tend to be less successful than the group that does not. Again, you are assuming some kind of racial trait is involved here, but I have
never said that. The reason blacks are stuck in this condition more than any other group is because they were already the most poor (and thus going to be recipients of welfare at the highest rate) when welfare programs were created. That's it. The only possible relationship between their skin color and this current condition is if we assume (as I do) that the time at which welfare was implemented was intentional and designed by the racists in the Democratic party as an alternative means to keep black people poor because earlier methods like segregation were being made illegal.
You're free to assume it was just random bad luck (which I suppose is possible, but given the Dems long history with racially oppressing black people, it's hard to imagine), but even without some kind of evil motivation behind it, the outcome is still negative.
Oh hell. I even gave you this answer in my previous post. Why did you respond as though I didn't?
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gbaji wrote:
]If you want my opinion as to why that is, it might tie back to the whole labeling of blacks who don't support the cause that I mentioned earlier. I don't think it's that black people are incapable of thinking for themselves. I think it's that they are so heavily targeted with social pressures to vote one way and support specific causes, that they are more likely to comply. Additionally, as I also mentioned earlier, blacks are far more likely to be recipients to the very welfare programs that the Dems support, thus creating a financial incentive to support that party. I think that any group subjected to those pressures would likely do the same.
You say that you're not implying that blacks can't think for themselves, but then say it's "social pressure" to vote a certain way. You do realize that's the same thing right?
Show me the statistics that blacks are far more likely to be recipients to the welfare system. No. It's not the same thing. You're applying an absurd absolute condition. There's a huge difference between "influenced by outside factors" and "incapable of thinking for themselves". If I put green shirts on sale in my store, it'll increase the likelihood that someone will buy a green shirt instead of another color. Would you argue that everyone who purchased a green shirt is incapable of thinking for themselves? That's ridiculous.
As to the stats? Are you kidding? African Americans are a lot more likely to be on welfare or to have been on welfare than whites. Period. Here. I'll even link what has to be the most
unlikely site and article to support my position. She's obviously not a friend of conservatives, but she's arguing more or less the same thing I am: That the problem is with black poverty. She and I may disagree on how that comes to be, and probably what to do about it, but the underlying cause is at least the same. Black people are much more likely to be poor than white people. And they are much more likely to be on welfare as a result. Oh. And they're also much more likely to be living in a high crime neighborhood as well.
My point (and where I'm going to guess the author would disagree) is that I believe that welfare acts to generationalize poverty. Meaning that those who receive it have a harder time getting out of poverty than if those programs didn't exist and thus their children will be more likely to be recipients of welfare as well. It'll make poverty more comfortable, which is the exact point. But it's that discomfort that acts as an incentive to pursue upward mobility. Combine that negative reinforcement with an environment where good paying jobs are harder to find and it results in the ghettoization of black communities, rampant poverty, and rampant crime. It's how we get neighborhoods like those in Ferguson.
Look. I can accept and even respect a difference of opinion about the effect of welfare on those receiving it. I can certainly accept a difference of opinion with regards to root causes, racial bias, and possible solutions. But you're unwilling to even acknowledge some very basic truths about the reality of the situation itself. Which makes it kinda hard to even discuss those other things. We kinda have to start with things we can agree on. But it seems like you're willing to pretend that any stat which might support my position just doesn't exist, even if said stat is commonly known to be true. I guess I just don't get that. I'd think that as a black man yourself, you'd want to actually try to find solutions to the problem of unequal racial outcomes in America, but you can't ever do that if you're unwilling to look at reality of the situation.
Edited, Mar 31st 2015 4:15pm by gbaji