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Black Futurists In The Information Age
First of a series on "Technology and the Future."
Every new edition of "Technology and the Future," edited by Albert Teich, Director of Science and Policy Programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is a monumental event.
First conceived more than a generation ago and repeatedly updated, Teich's book - there are eleven new pieces in this edition (Bedford/St. Martin's) - is almost a literary marvel. It collects and reflects more smart and provocative thinking about the future of technology than any given decade's worth of newspapers and newsmagazines.
In the next few columns, I'll select several of the essays and ideas in Teich's brilliant book to talk about. Then I'll start waiting for the next edition.
***
Sooner or later, race surfaces in discussions of almost every social and political issue in America. Because computing is, on the surface at least, a color- blind culture, it's been slow to join in the conversation.
But as Timothy L. Jenkins, (Yale Law School graduate, CEO of Unlimited Vision, Inc., and one of the creators of the first black online forum on the Net) makes clear in his essay, "Black Futurists in the Information Age," the Net means very different things to different people.
Computing is as white an industry as exists in American life, as any high-tech worker can see just from peering around. Although middle-class African-Americans and other minorities are getting online in substantial numbers, there remains an enormous disparity between whites' computer use and blacks', especially among the so-called underclass.
Online culture is too diverse to generalize about in political terms. But if there any universally-shared ethic among the Net generation, it might be the belief that getting online is an individual responsibility. That might fairly be described as the federal government's attitude as well: Here's the tent; anyone who can make it inside is more than welcome. But everybody has to get there on his own.
Given their histories and experiences, this has enormous different connotations for blacks than it does for whites.
"The benefit and the burden of being black in America arise from the ability and the necessity to view the same things the rest of society sees differently," writes Jenkins. African-Americans are historically suspicious of the larger society's ability to interpret or understand the population it has excluded from so many areas for so long.
Jenkins agrees with most philosophers and social historians that, on the surface, there's every reason to celebrate the proliferation of new Information Age technologies. But along with many other blacks, he can't buy the idea that universally -available information leads inexorably towards democracy.
There is, writes Jenkins, "palpable" evidence that without major social intervention, "the utopian predictions of the Information Age for the society as a whole will paradoxically result in a doomsday scenario for the masses of black people."
Black political leaders don't really have a technological agenda, he writes, and most white politicians ignore the issue of technological equality. Blacks need to move from being gatekeepers to gatecrashers when it comes to technology, Jenkins writes, and to set forth an agenda for technology and the future. As it now stands, prophesies Jenkins, many blacks, already suffering economically in the early stages of Information Age, "may be like the canary in a coal mine, forecasting climactic dangers before they become a general manifestation."
In the final analysis, he writes, the essence of technology ought to be service. "Judged from that perspective, it remains to be seen whether the interests of the black community are served or sacrificed. Absent purposeful leadership involvement, either could be true." And there is anything but purposeful leadership. Black politicians have been as muddled in their discussions about technology and the future as members of Congress.
Writes Jenkins: "If its (technology's) prime effect is to reduce the labor force to an absolute minimum in order to maximize profits or to allow jobs to follow tax breaks and the lowest wages wherever they might lead, then technology, while benefiting some, will have failed us all!"
The equitable distribution of technology has never been a mainstream political issue in America, though it might have more impact on shaping the future than any other single social or political development.
The United States has been embroiled for years in a raging, obsessive debate about sexual imagery online. But apart from the techno-millenial blabber that occasionally erupts from Al Gore and Bill Clinton, hardly anyone mentions the whopper moral issue surrounding technology and the future: What will become of the people who can't or won't learn how to use new information technologies?
What kind of education will be available? What kinds of jobs will they have? What kinds of lives can they aspire to lead?
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Jenkin's fears are well-grounded. About 42 per cent of all U.S. households now have a PC, says a government report released on July 9, l999 (www.usatoday.com). But they're in about 80 per cent of homes in which families make $75,000 or more a year and in fewer than 16 per cent in which families make less than $20,000.
Income isn't the only variable, found the Commerce Department. The gap in Internet use between whites and blacks expanded to 20.7 percentage points last year (32.4 per cent of white households vs. ll.7 per cent of black) from 13.5 percentage points in l997. The difference between white and Hispanic use in l998 rose to 19.5 percentage points from 12.5.
The recent history of computing is clear enough: technology provides an educational and economic bounty for society's best and brightest. The history of underclass Americans - especially black underclass Americans - strongly suggests that if any group is voluntarily or involuntary excluded, it will be the African-American poor.
If they don't catch up soon, Jenkins persuasively warns, they never will. Yet recent surveys show the techno-gap between haves and have nots widening, not shrinking. Don't look for politicians or the press to make this is a significant political issue in the coming presidential election either. It's much easier to exploit fears about new technology than to focus on its real consequences.
It's clear by now even to rabid Luddites that new information technologies will be critical in shaping economic and employment opportunity, freedom of speech and thought, educational advancement and, increasingly, political knowledge and participation. As such, cautions Jenkins, we stand on the threshold of the invention of what may well become a new worldwide technological caste system.
There is no real political ideology online, other than a vaguely Libertarian wariness of government intrusion and a widespread passion for the free movement of ideas and information. It is not an exclusionary culture.
But Jenkins is right. Hardly anyone has seriously addressed the long-term racial and class implications of the emergence of a new techno-elite in the United States - an educated, affluent, overwhelmingly white, and increasingly dominant group.
Next: Ethics for programmers.
There are elder highly educated blacks (Carl Rowan comes to mind) that are grateful that they didn't grow up with the poverty pimps. They do not feel that they would have the strong disciplined character that they do today if they had grown up with such nonsense.
30 years ago black families had less a percentage of illegitimate children, more black fathers at home with their families. Now it's worse despite the racially better conditions.
If YOU feel you owe it to them (I don't) then you open your bleeding ass wallet and make a personal committment. Don't commit me (taxes) to having to pay for them as well as work my 80 hours per week. If they want to be members of our civilization let earn their keep which I'm absolutely sure that, within a generation or two, they would do once the give aways from stupid bleeding liberal laws stopped.
Hey you SOB! I was born poor too. Our kitchen table was a damned wooden picnic table. We used to get one meat ball and fight over the extra one. My parents busted their butts working to allow their children to have a good private and then college education. And you dishonor their memory by implying that I should give up even one red hard-earned cent for other people who's mommas and daddies didn't give a damn about them. You're a traitor to true freedom and liberty.
Maybe this is a little off topic, but I have seen a number of posts referring to the Middle Ages as an example of Darwinism (presumably a reference to Social Darwinism). Feudalism, as personified by Europe during the Midlle Ages, was not an example of Social Darwinism.
Social Darwinism, to put it simply, is the concept of survival of the most socially fit. Some form of social mobility is a must for Social Darwinism. The typical example being the great American Robber Barons, some of whom came from nowhere to dominate the socio-economic scene. The means used were often ruthless enough to make Microsoft look like the Girl Scouts.
Feudalism is a system based around very stratified concepts of class level, obligation, and family. The idea of the vast majority of people, rich and poor, was that your lot in life was basically set. Not only could you not improve your station, it was morally questionable to even attempt it.
The very concept of the *best* rising to the top was totally alien to this entire society.
Nor is it fair to claim that 'people cared only for themselves'. The perceptual map of the average individual was set up around radically different lines than it is today, or than it was during the Roman Empire, when such a complaint might arguably have some validity. Ties along lines of family, allegiances, and friendships were every bit as strong, if not stronger than today. If the complaint is that most people didn't particularly care about complete strangers in different socio-economic classes, I suppose that is true, but then, it has *always* been true, to this current date.
Finally, the Middle Ages did not set Europe back 300 years. The Middle Ages was, more than anything, a time of cultural transition. Many concepts (the modern republic and legal system for example) have their roots during this time. The Renaissance was the culmination of the Middle Ages, (and renewed trade ties with Africa) not merely something that just popped out of the blue one day.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad I was not born during this time, it was decidedly unpleasant in many, many aspects. But it was not the black hole occupying time between Rome and the Renaissance that some people like to believe.
Think I'm deranged? Do some research on the time period. For a start, I highly reccomend le'Geoff's 'Medieval Civilization' and Bouchard's 'Sword, Miter, and Cloister'
As for it being a duty of anyone priviliged living in a civilized society to assist those who are less priviliged, I think that if that is your personal view of what you believe that you should be doing, than it is a highly admirable one.
However, I do not agree that it is the price you pay for living in the U.S. and I do not believe it should be either.
It is a good and decent thing to help those less fortunate than yourself, and I highly reccomend it. However, it is not, and should not, be made mandatory. Once you start mandating morality you wind up with the difficult question of whose morality. Whose values do you endorse across the board? So we just blithely let the government decide what causes are and are not worthy? I hope not.
Zach
When I was first married and a starving musician
and decided to switch to computer consulting
I had to hustle a loan to by my first CP/M
computer. I had to bust my butt studying as well
as hold down a poorly paying full time job. All
this despite a college degree which was paid for
in part because my parents lived a moral life
(and stayed together) and because my mother
as well as my father spent a life working.
What I think I'm hearing by reading the article
and whom it quotes is that while it's ok for
white people to bust their ass 80 hours a week,
blacks need to be pandered to and helped.
If I was a black I would be insulted by the
cyber poverty pimps. I know self respecting
good black people who would be emarrassed to
hear that they need special help when they
seem to be doing just fine without the handouts.
I guess the new political pandering theme
would be: "A computer (and internet)
in every home" instead of the old "A chicken
in every pot".
Will I have to work 100 hours a week to pay
the extra taxes necessary to "fund" the
cyber silver platter for those unwilling to
put 80 hours a week in for themselves?
""The benefit and the burden of being black in America arise from the ability and the necessity to view the same things the rest of society sees differently," writes Jenkins. African-Americans are historically suspicious of the larger society's ability to interpret or understand the population it has excluded from so many areas for so long. "
As a young science nerd, bullied at school and beaten at home, I learned the 'ability and necessity to see things...differently' and became suspicious of jerks' ability to understand me, all without the 'benefit and burden of being black'.
Why must the discussion of the effects of oppression always devolve to racial semantics, immediately shutting out the common experience of ALL human political groups (i.e., two or more nekkid monkeys )? All can realize that, if one can't overpower the oppressor, the option is to outsmart them. Becoming "educated, affluent" now MEANS "increasingly dominant", able to push any agenda of merit, regardless of color. ( check out Bobby Seale's Page).
Racists have suckered the black kids really well; learning in school is "white", thus uncool, and resisting the establishment's agenda of getting them to study becomes the height of emotional fulfillment. Bingo! Another batch of burger-flippers propelled out the door in a puff of self-fulfilling despair. The alternative is 'submission' to 'the Man', an obvious dead-end, right? Well guess what - the institutions ( and cliques ) are hardly less oppressive for any outcasts! Where's the anger, the determination to OUTLEARN the clueless old biddy, the high-handed ass't-principal, and the smug jock thugs?
Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different result. Smashing skulls with that jawbone no longer works at the 21st century's watering holes. The choice is to bite down, endure ( or teach yourself ), and learn, or to accept your masochism and let your morale improve with the beatings.
What some dead Klansman did to shatter the nerve of whatever good menschen, now poor, has no bearing on my aptitude as a programmer or the advantages that it merits. I'm refurbishing old junk boxes in my garage; I'll happily give a few to the Mexican family across the street, but will one of them learn enough to admin it themselves? I can only hope to impress them with the stakes involved in that decision - their daughter plays with mine, after all...
- A.Lurker@Hellmouth.Rim
This can't be first post, I previewed it too long.
If Mexico can do it, why can't the US?
I bought a pair a Adidas shoes in like March '97 for $30 at this big sale. I'm still wearing them now and haven't bought any other shoes since. They're real comfortable, but I'll probably have to replace them before school starts this year because they are falling apart and look like shit.
Who is the hell would spend that much on shoes?
BTW, My family is middle class and we live in the suburbs, my brother and sister have both buy many pairs of shoes every year.
Me, I'll stick with what feels good.
... that at least some in this country have common sense.
I hate listening to Jesse Jackson or people at the NAACP saying shit like they'll sue NBC to make them put clacks in starring roles on TV. Others saying how racist or insulting Jar-Jar is:
YOU PEOPLE ARE PATHETIC
Guess what, I bet one of the big reasons racism will continue is that some minorities feel they must shout from the hilltops about racial inequalities, etc. If they'd just shut up, people wouldn't care.
I have a part time job at a big company, and I needed to get my PC set up for NT and Lotus Notes and all. Guess what, the senior computer tech is black. But who cares. He's just a person. There's no conspiracy of people trying to oppress minorities, blacks in inner cities probably don't do any worse percentage wise than whites in inner cities. It's just that far more blacks are in inner cities than whites.
There are people at my HS in the suburbs who are black and whose parents pay a tuition so their kids can get a better education. Good for the parents.
Unfortunetely, many of these kids don't care and don't do work. Some do, and they do just as well as the kids that live in the suburbs.
I had aa kid in my math class two years ago, who was black, and who came in from the city. Well we had some weird debates in math class about racism. This kid was probably the most paranoid person I've ever talked to. He thought that the gov't was out to get blacks, that we were racists, that in fact we were inferior to him(and inferior to all blacks, he said he belonged to the 5% ers, anyone heard of this?), etc.
He was probably the most racist person I've ever known.
We also had a black speaker come to our school and talk to us about a bunch of things. One of the things she said was that pehaps John Brown(the pre-civil war guy) was really a good person, that the US gov't was making laws that prohibited people(aimed at blacks) from congregating in groups greater than 3 in public(meaning you couldn't go to a park w/ 3 other friends(this was supposed to be back years ago to try to stop protests)). That the US brought in cocaine to give to blacks in the inner city to put down protests. She also said that blacks should have a vioce in gov't. I asked what blacks would do different than whites, she said blacks wouldn't get power so why think about it. What BS. She also totally distorted facts about that incident in NYC last year where the cops shot the unarmed guy like 20 times.
She also vaguely mentioned that she worked in some gov't agency. We asked FBI, CIA? She said she couldn't say, but it was much higher-up than that.
My point is not that all blacks are like this, or that most are. That isn't true. But there are some people that love to get power by saying these things, and because the US treated minorities like shit for so long, now everyone thinks they're right or we should just let them preach this nonsense.
Everyone is basically equal, there is still some racism, but it is going down with every new generation. Let's not keep it going like this.
I also think affirmative action is about the worst idea ever. Hire people because they're qualified, not to be diverse.
Just my 2
I suck at typing. I don't know how I hit two keys down, but... is clack any kind of slur anyway? Not to my knowledge.
I understand what you're saying, and those incidents you discussed are really sad, but I don't think it invalidates my point. The vast majority of this country is not racist, and the few weirdos like Matt Hale or the World Church of the Creator are looked at as psychos.
But when things like the million man march, etc. are organized I just think that is very negative. If whites had a huge white-power march, minorities would scream about racism. And they'd be right. Why not just let it die.
IMO, the best situation would be, at some point inthe future, for skin color to be as important as hair color. You don't see red-heads marching and asking for more roles on TV.
My point is that if black leaders keep hilighting differences in culture, how blacks are better, etc., racism will never die.
My ancestors who came to this country God knows how many years ago were German and French and Italian and I have no idea what else. But I don't care. I think of myself as an American. I think it's strange when people say, oh you're English or German or something. After a certain number of years here(IMO, as long as you were born here and basically consier yourself American), you are just American.
These people who try to convince me of how great such and such African culture is just seem weird. It's like: who cares, what does that have to do with you? My great great(who knows how many) grandfather fought in the civil war. So what? Does that make me look better? I don't think so.
I took AP Computer Science and guess what: no blacks. But there were 2 Indian Americans(as in India, not the Iroqois), and there was only one girl. So yes there are problems. But our school is about 50% female and no one is stopping the girls to take computer science. No one is stopping blacks either. If they choose not to, that's their choice, and it's no fault of mine.
And I hope to have officials elected that will do this. We still can vote those people in and out of office yah know.
So on the one hand you say that people cannot be trusted to donate freely, but on the other they can elect officials to force them to?
This is an inconsistent and hence invalid position. The fact of the matter is, any payment extracted unwillingly is theft by force, pure and simple.
I'm wondering if there isn't starting to be a divide between the generations here. The first two apply to me but there weren't computers in homes when I was a kid and the 'computer' in my highschool was a teletype with a 300 baud modem connected to a 'mainframe' at the collage across the state.
I was writing programs, just for the fun of it, when I had no access to computers. I would go to the local Radio Shack and use the demo 'computer' (4Kbytes of RAM, I bet your keyboard has more now) to learn and enjoy. I dropped out of highschool but continued to learn computers and many other things.
The point being, I didn't need the 'net to learn... just good old RTFM. I leared computers and electronics because I'm obsessed with them. If anyone is obsessed with something, they will learn about it, regardless of what class/race they are. I worked at many drive-ins and shit jobs while at home I played with computers. I sought out and associated with other 'geeks'.
I'm now the Sr. Network Eng. at the 24th largest ISP. I hardly look at the education of job applicants... but rather look for the lust of computers and networks. Those that have it will learn what they need to know to do the job. Can't spell? Ok, can you configure ispell and use it? Ok, you're hired.
Another thing that seems to have been overlooked is that most IT people are in it for the pure love of tech. Most didn't get into the field for the money. I'm sure if you ask Rob if he put all the work into slashdot for the money, he'd just laugh at you and ask you to buy him a beer. We are just lucky that IT pays so well. I guess that I could have been wired to be a gearhead rather than a nethead I'd be making just a living wage working on cars. It takes about the same brains and the good ones are obsessed with it.
Most people I know have ended up in fields that they find interesting. As long as people make a comfortable living, no problem. Sure, most jobs require using a computer. The kid that changes my oil pulls up my record on a UNIX terminal everytime I pull up. Most McDonalds are more wired than most offices. When I was a kid (think early '70's) working at a place that required you to wear a radio headset would have been a dream. Now we 'pity' those people.
About 100 years ago the phone was a new as computers are today. Only the elite had them. Within a few decades, everyone had one. The same will happen with net access, but quicker. Look at what is happening with pagers and cell phones... everyone has them (blacks included).
This old-timer just says wait a few years and this whole topic will be moot. That doesn't mean don't help people that ask or stop coding freeware. It's just that I don't think it the crisis that Katz makes it out to be.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
I swear, I've never seen a such a bunch of whiners in one place at one time, so afraid that they might not have gotten their pathetic $50k jobs completely on their own. Get some self-esteem.
Nobody gets things on their own. The sooner society realizes that people rely on people, the better. I got to where I am not solely because of what I can do, but because people believed in me first and gave me that imporant spark which let me get to where I am.
I don't fully understand how it works, but essentially you get your self-worth from some kind of figurehead (be it a parent, a friend, hell even a stranger on the street). They instill that in you. A lot of kids don't have that today. Either the parents are too busy or just plain don't care or something. Regardless, that self-worth is the first thing.
After self-worth (and no I have no formal education on this at all, it's all from what I feel and have seen) comes self-discipline. You've got to want something bad enough that you're willing to do what it takes to get it. I may want a zillion dollars but if I don't have the self-discipline to do what it takes to get it, I won't get it. Self-discipline comes from knowing you're good enough to do it if you put your mind to and and are willing to work your ass off to get it.
See the problem for those who think that they did it all on their own? They needed self-worth first. Nobody has self-worth on their own; they get it placed inside of them by someone else.
Self-worth breeds self-discipline. Self-worth does not come without someone favouring you in some way. And that, right there, is what I think a lot of what you refer as "whiners" are not seeing. They think that they got self-worth by themselves, and they didn't.
Anyone of any importance has someone (or a few someones) to thank because of it. I'd wager that these someones probably aren't directly related to why that important person is important. Either they gave them a job, didn't report them to the police for doing something stupid, gave a caring word... something. People who say they did it all on their own are outright liars.
Thanks for your uninformed craptastic psychobabble.
For the time you spent getting a reply screen up to write your witty response, I'd at least have thought you would have come back with some kind of rebuttal or theory of your own.
As is usual with anonymous posters, however, the S/N ratio is way out of whack.
Anyhow, AAAS publishes Science, one of the long time standing top scientific journals, which has on occasion published bad science. While 90% to 99% of the submissions are top notch, bleading edge, Science is not definitive (Check the frequently quoted thing on global warming Rush L. loves to quote, but was later retracted). And Science has been pushing a lot of internet stuff lately, and my honest opinion is none of it is the quality of research that they publish on biology or environmental issues or other "true" sciences.
Sorry, I don't intend this to be a flame, but is the internet really a "science" like physics, chemistry, biology, and the likes? I do NOT think so. Because you can apply a scientific method to study internet traffic does not make the internet itself a science. In the defence of the internet, something doesn't have to be a science to be important, not much that goes on on Wall Street, or in Washington D.C. is "science" either, but it can be studied with a scientific method.
My opinion is Science (the journal) needs to get the heck out of "internet studies" and leave it to the people who do IT full time. I think a few of the editors are just feeling a little to "empowered" with thier publishing athority and making themselfs look a bit silly now that they figured out how to take a screenshot and get it published to a wide audiance... (So, in other words, I don't care WHAT they say at the AAAS about the net. They are important to the community of science, but they are out of thier element when when it comes to IT)
To apply pure logic, one would think that low income areas would be the places where families needed to cook economical meals, and spend less in restraunts and convenient stores (meaning 24 hour a day corner stores with prices 3x what grocery stores charge). So, you might try to take a logical leap, and say "There are probably less convenient stores and restraunts in low income areas." BBBBBBzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Wrong answer.
7-11 and McDonalds have known for a long long long time that low income areas are good markets for them to expand into.
While we would all like to sit here "High And Mighty" saying how wonderful internet access is, and how people of a certian income or color need to have it, that's not how the world works.
If they want it, they will get it. Before you say they can't, check if they have cable, and how often they dine in a restraunt. Then look at the $9.95/month internet service ads and $399 computer that are on about every third page of thier local newspapers. Do you truely believe that there are people out there who choose to have internet, but can't get it (but somehow can have cable TV, eat in Burger King or McDonalds daily, have a $800 car stereo, etc...).
Now, I am not saying that people of a ethnic background, or people of an income level all have made a choice to be that way. Not at all. I just think it's a little short sighted to say it's color or income that prevents people from getting on the internet. As for evidence, I think McDonalds and 7-11 have pretty well defined where they can make a profit, why not deal with a basic need like food first?
Why would the internet be any diffrent than dining habits, cable TV, or anything else? I guess maybe I am not seeing this as a color thing, because the only clear thing I can see about the internet is income levels, maybe. But I would agree that the internet isn't for everyone, just like everything else.
Not everyone watches CNN, not everyone reads the Wall Street Journal, not everyone goes to college... Making the government pay for access so that everyone could isn't going to mean everyone will, and that everyone will benifit from it. All it will mean is that you gave the government more control over a part of your life, and another reason to justify taking more money for "taxes" out of your paycheck.
(BTW, I believe in the LP which is my primary reason to object to seeing making another government run program a bad thing, nothing to do with race, color, money, any of that.. We don't live in a free country anymore at all, if you think so, you have confused freedom with democracy. Democracy is just orginized mob rule, which can be as bad or worse as tyrany. What if tomarrow the majority desides that we should all drive Mini-Vans? Because "the people vote for it" or "it will make life safer and more consistant" doesn't mean it has anything to do with freedom. And yes, there isn't a country in the world I would rather be in, I like it here, I just think we're slipping a little bit into "we should be like the EU" Freedom does mean not opressing people of any race, religion, sex, or income. Socialism is a diffrent belief, which intends to insure that everyone be given similar goods and treatment, and calling that fair. Freedom allow one to benifit from thier own hard work, if you want to free the oppressed, give them the chances just like everyone else. If you want socialism, thier are plenty of other countries to choose from.)
Do you speak from personal experience, or are you simply repeating doctrine?
Panaflex is speaking from his own personal experience which disagrees with some of the stuff that JK is rehashing. My experience agrees with that of Panaflex. When it comes to engineering, either you are good or you are on the path to management. Notice how skin color does not enter the equation, literally. Engineers appreciate that.
Funny how I don't notice skin color until someone suffering from "race accounting syndrome" mentions it. Can't call them racist, even though they obviously have an obsession with races. They'd get offended. You know, only white people can be racists, right? Now I check out the office map and see 8 colored people, and 22 non-colored. All the colored ones are good engineers BTW. The only ones that suck are non-colored and fortunately, they are managers where they are relatively harmless.
Everyone has 'net access here at work and at home.
Doesn't look like much of a problem to me.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Linus wrote his kernel because he was poor! He couldn't afford a *nix so he made his own.
Does anyone see the parallel?
Too bad so many minority whiners will never learn *that* lesson. If you can't afford something that you need, make your own, duh!
If the "minorities" are so stupid and prejudiced themselves that they choose their leaders based on skin color alone, so be it. Fools following fools deserve what they get.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I don't know all that much about the rest of the world, but here in the USA, all it takes to succeed is effort. That is honest, true, sincere, dedicated effort. Spend less time whining, more time working and you will succeed. No one is truly deprived of access to information, all they are is depriving themselves. No one is deprived of an education, they choose to drop out of school and spend time hanging out at the mall rather than hanging out at the library.
If you can't afford an entry level PC today, then you can't afford to waste time whining about it. Get to work, save your money, don't rent videos at blockbuster, go to the public library and educate yourself instead. A personal annecdote illustrates this very well. A man that has been a friend for twenty years was a burger flipper with only a high school diploma when I met him. Today he is a millionaire. How did he do it? It's really simple. He worked *hard*. Two jobs, seven days a week, no time spent wasting money on entertainment and 20 years later he is the wealthiest person I know and he is about to retire at the age of 40. My other friends and I have watched in amazement for 20 years as he has made the American Dream into reality right in front of our faces.
If I am denied boots, then I grow calluses on my feet and save my money until I can afford boots.
No whining, begging, or even demanding is required.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
This is not directly in reply to you Jim, but party to you and the other posts above...
The point is, almost everyone can't easily afford something.
I am too poor to buy the boat I want. Do I whine about it? No, I plan a path to my goal and work and save in order to reach it.
You were too poor(in money) to buy a computer so did you whine about it? No, you spent what you did have(time) in order to get what you wanted.
Linus was also too poor in money to purchase what he wanted. Did he whine? No, he applied what he had, his expertise and his time, in order to get what he wanted.
As far as everyone having a chance, I agree. Everyone gets a chance. OK, now what about the people that throw their chances away? Do we offer them another, and another, ad infitum? I say no. It is not my responsibility to rescue fools from their follies. All these people who are supposedly deprived of access are simply lacking motivation and depriving themselves. So they don't have the bucks to buy a PC and 'net service. Let them go to the library. Don't have the bus fare? OK, let them decide that they want access to the 'net more than a beer or soda. If they choose to have a beer and hang out on the local street, so be it. I am not going to drive down there, pick them up, build them a house, buy them a car, fix dinner, install a PC and set up 'net service for them.
They can do it all themselves, if they want it bad enough!
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Even if I'm a white, middle-class male?
--
If your map and the terrain differ,
trust the terrain.
http://www.alteich.com/futr8.html
I do not think that it is realistic for people to believe that they can make it from the bottom to the top. That rarely ever happens (Steve Jobs is a reasonably good example, Bill Gates is not)
It's really whacked to think that you can make it to the top through the kindness of strangers.
A person living in the conditions you describe is highly unlikely to ever succeed, really. That's unfortunate. However, this should not prevent her from doing as well as possible. Which is a matter of one's own abilities and will more than anything else. Even if she can make her children's opportunities better, it's worthwhile. This does not guarantee the success of later generations however. They have to do the same thing; give their successors enough forward momentum to give them a chance.
The momentum can be financial success, but I don't think that's the only form it need take, and it's probably one of the worst types. A motiviation to succeed, a sense of ethics, a strong will, etc. are all the sorts of things that are frequently rewarded if you're going to use them right. Even if you're poor, giving your kids the drive to better themselves is more important than money. There are ways around money, but there aren't any around drive.
My paternal great-grandfather immigrated to the US from Russia. He eventually ran a scrap metal business in New Hampshire. His son, my grandfather, joined the Army Air Corps during the war, became a teacher, and after that took up various administrative jobs related to teaching. My father put himself through college and law school, and is now a successful lawyer. Upon leaving school, I started working and I've supported myself for some time now. I'm just starting out, but I want to surpass previous generations in being able to give that boost to my kids.
Some people just don't have what it takes, and will pretty likely fail. I know a lot of people like that. Ultimately it happens to everyone's line, and that's natural. When you get to be at the top of the heap there's not always anywhere to go.
The cycle that you speak of can be broken, but I don't think that that's the important issue here. Lots of people who happen to be minorities have the right kind of drive. Starting from a worse position (using wealth to gauge success) just means it'll take longer. The better people will, in time, rise to the top. Some of them have enormous forward momentum, and this can translate into inertia that their descendants can ride on for years.
If Gates gives all his money to his kids, his family will be set for a long time, but unless they have the right kind of spirit to them, sooner or later his descendants will be asking yours if they want space fries with that.
Just try to succeed. If you keep at it, and get your kids to do the same, and so forth, someday there will be rewards for it. Just don't go expecting to reap a thousand times what you sow.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Well, as far as Japanese go, here's my opinion, which is probably not worth a wooden nickel, but what the hell:
During the Shogunate, which is what most people think of when they think medieval Japan, was quite similar to medieval Europe. There was a lot of social stratification, and not much social mobility.
When Perry opened Japan in the 19th century, some groups saw the advantages that access to the west could grant them, and this sparked the Meiji Restoration. During this period, Japan adopted a lot of things from the west, and it became possible for people to actually work hard and increase their, or at least their descendant's chances in life.
It's impressive as hell that the Japanese could go from their medieval culture to one that was a major world power in less than a hundred years. Given that this was happening at the same time as a dynastic cycle was ending in China (exacerbated by similar contact with the west), it doesn't seem likely that it's genetic.
Anyway, the culture hadn't changed _that_ significantly in some ways though. After we thoroughly destroyed Japan during the war, and sent MacArthur to rebuild it in his image, then Japanese culture was massively altered.
Flashing back to Perry, the nobility and samurai began to listen after they kept getting beaten in combat. This was a very basic way of measuring superiority, and new tactics (like adopting some of ours) were a smart plan. To keep trying the same thing would have been futile.
After the war it again became evident that old tactics, like conquering the Pacific Ocean and everything in and near it, were not going to go over well.
During the economic bubble of the 80's was probably Japan's height (so far) as a world power. They're still way the hell up there, but no one is seriously considering that they'll own everything anymore. Oddly enough, this is what people thought about Americans during the 50s and 60s.
I'd say that all of those generations, for whom failure was fresh in their minds, tried new things harder and found success.
Now we face the current generation, which is riding on the success of the prior one and is not actively going forward. IIRC they've got a nasty recession in Asia (and Japan specifically) right now. This should not daunt sufficiently motivated people. The US went from a crippling depression to being the #1 country in the world in less than twenty years. Japan went from rubble to a major world economic power in less than forty.
We, ourselves, may be having trouble, but it's interesting to note that the in charge generation here are the Baby Boomers, who also rode their parent's success and as they took over in the 70's and 80's we started having problems. My generation is up next, but a significant number (it's really stupid to measure these things by birthdate, I know - there will always be people too dumb to achieve anything no matter how rich or poor they are) are pretty hard driven sorts. I am, and my friends are. So this could be good, although it's horribly depressing if the failure that eggs us on to success is internal in origin.
So as for Japan, the 'otaku' generation (which only describes a small number of people, but is the only nickname I've heard) is probably going to screw up, and the one after that may do much better.
YMMV - I'm not a fortune teller, nor do I know very much about the Japanese. Corrections are gladly accepted.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
No I don't. Although the proper American English spelling of the word is 'color' there are a lot of bad spellers in America.
coler, culer, kulur.... you reading this Altus? ;)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
>there are more poor white people that there are black people total.
no shit. And there are many, many more white people than black people in the U.S. So the difference is in one case color is a primary indicator of your economic status, and in the other case it isn't.
>Your analogy is flawed. Nothing I own was ever the property of any minority, what was the property of someone else was purchased legally for a fair some of their choosing.
This misses the point, again. Steps people are taking today to bring minorities into the mainstream generally do not attempt to correct wrongs of the past, since, as you correctly point out, it can't be done. Rather, they try to address the widespread economic racism that has been demonstrated to exist in the U.S. E.g. the sting operations at realtors which have repeatedly established that blacks with identicle economic records are offered less favorable loan terms.
>BUT, if your great great grandfather stole my great great grandfathers horse and buggy, I'm not going to try to charge your daughter the cost of the horse and buggy. That would be ludicrous.
It's only ludicrous because of the "buggy" part. If we're talking about righting wrongs that happened in reality -- rather than your silly example -- we would start by taking land away from white families that got them from land grants which excluded blacks. The economic make-up of America would be a bit different if black families owned significant portions of the west and midwest.
Before accusing anyone of trying to correct wrongs of the past, remember that in America that would begin with taking land from white families and giving it to black families.
No one is proposing that.
(btw, I'm not suggesting your family has land, but rather that there is this bias in land holdings directly caused by racist land grants, among many other racist practices).
>As for the rich american families, they are there for a reason. They were smart enough to realize when they could make a profit, and they did
Or, more accurately, the government gave them free land based on their race, banks gave them better loan opportinities, based on their race, they were given better schools, based on their race, and they were given better jobs based on their schooling.
>Show me the documents
You might start with "Continuous vs. Episodic Growth: the case of blacks" (I believe that's the title, I don't have the author's name at the moment). It's a paper by an economist which didn't believe this bias existed, until he compiled the data. There are many others. You might also look into the history of sting operations on banks, realtors, etc., regarding their giving less favorable loans to blacks.
>As for that, I'd just have to say you're wrong. Most high paid jobs are high paying for a reason, it takes skill. Otherwise it wouldn't be high paying.
Dream on. To paraphrase a fortune on the Caltech undergraduate computer lab "Want a carreer paying over $100k to surf the web and write email? Consider computer science."
>This is true. Such policies as affirmative action have perpetuated themselves into making more problems. They are only short term solutions to appease a certain political group.
No, this is false. There is an economics paper I've referred to elsewhere, "Continuous vs. Episodic growth" which compiles data on the economic status of blacks yearly since they were freed. In short, the status of the black community has not changed *at all* except after specific events, e.g. their migration from the south, WWII, and the passing of affirmative action. Otherwise, their economic status has been as flat as a pool table. Affirmative action is the only public policy besides entering a world war which has moved the black community toward the national average, and its effect has been long-lasting, not short-term.
And btw, affirmative action is not about lowering the boundaries. It's about correcting for measures (e.g. norm referenced test scores) which are known to be racially biased.
>We would start with getting the fuck out of the country and giving it back to the natives.
As I already said, no one is proposing that, so it's beside the point to accuse people of it.
You allow that we've taken land, e.g., from the natives, but then persist in this myth that we somehow earned it?
White ownership of land throughout the west & mid-west is directly because of racist practices, not because of any sort of meritocracy. These arguments about equal opportunity are nonsense. Given family farms for blacks a hundred years ago, and subsequent leveraging of that wealth into education & jobs -- as white families have been able to entrench themselves -- and you might be able to talk about equal opportunity.
Short of that, equal opportunity does not exist, unless we make some effort to provide it.
And the bottom line is, you really, really want to do this: it's going to be cheaper for you than paying the taxes to feed them, build the housing projects, mop up after the crime, keep them in
prison, pay the uninsured emergency room visits, and all of the other woes of our inner cities.
Give them training, and a good job, and everyone wins.
>If you want to offer that the poor are still poor compared to the rich, than that is a universal constant that has haunted us for all of history.
Well... perhaps consistent, but not constant. The relative poverty of the poor (relative to the rich) has varied hugely in this century, peaking before the depression, and shrinking fairly steadily until the 1980's. We're now about where things were before the depression: with the most wealth in the hands of the least number of people.
>The priorities are different. And we can't fix these from the outside.
The priorities are different, but perhaps not for obvious reasons. Malcolm X wrote about white people being annoyed when black people got anything "nice", in particular a nice car. The truth is the whites were not annoyed by the car, but by what they saw as a waste of money. In the same position they would have saved for a house, etc.
Part of the problem is blacks don't see or don't have larger opportunities -- e.g. the loan issue I keep raising (that banks have been repeatedly found to offer worse loans to blacks, even blacks with identical financial histories). Saving for a house is not as realistic if the banker is holding you to a different standard.
If no one they know has gotten into a good school, it's not exactly on their mind to be preparing for a good school by investing in a computer. In contrast they may know of someone who went from the ghetto to professional basketball, so buying good shoes may look like a wise investment.
The issue really is about making opportunities as well as educating people about them. We are not
helpless to do this from the "outside". We can work to eliminate racially biased loan practices, etc., as well as fostering out-reach programs which teach kids about preparing for good schools and good jobs. We can work to eliminate racially biased admissions practices. If the admissions process is thought to be racist, many blacks won't even apply.
It is in everyone's best interest to do this quickly and effectively, because of the social costs of decaying inner cities.
>At least it has in many people's minds
Yeah, that's clear. There is a huge problem of perception. In the long run it would definately be better to develop better testing paradigms, but unfortunately the testing practices in America seem to be getting worse, not better. Few have taken the time to investigate the validity of the tests we regularly administer to students.
>Wasn't it only introduced this decade?
No, it's been with us for three decades or so. It was one of the later civil rights acts. '64? Something like that.
In reply to this, and the other reply on the same subject (re: asians), there are at least two reasons this argument doesn't work, one of them which is fairly obvious: the sample set is bad.
Asians are recent immigrants, so they both self-select, and are selected by U.S. immigration policy. That is, it tends to be the richer and more intelligent that make it to the U.S., and U.S. immigration policy attempts to select more skilled immigrants.
To make this comparison you have to first select by similar criteria whites & blacks before doing the comparison. Without a valid sample set your data is spoodge. There is no evidence of either a genetic or a cultural advantage of Asians, as there's no evidence of any advantage at all.
The second reason, which is more direct, is there is data showing that minorities who feel at risk because of their minority status perform less well on tests if they are asked about their ethnicity before taking the test. There's no definative theory why this is (AFAIK), but self-reporting indicates that filling out this information reminds the student of stressful racial issues, makes them doubt whether the test will be fair, etc., and their performance suffers.
Minorites who are not at risk due to their race, e.g. Asians, don't show this effect.
... all of which presents a further difficulty to testing. It's fairer to at-risk minorities to test them w/o having them fill out race info, but then it becomes very difficult to verify that tests are not racially biased.
In every age those in power have used bullshit arguments about why that ordering is the "natural" ordering. Kings and nobelmen invoked the will of god. Rich American families invoked bullshit science (IQ testing, etc. See _The Mismeasure of Man_ by SJ Gould).
./ers are sitting here browsing the web while others sit in the inner city is those in the inner city have poor schools, few resources, and no realistic expectation of good jobs. I promise they can browse the web as well as you can.
Now squid proposes ability and gumption.
I hate to break this to you, but most high paid technology jobs are hardly rocket science. It's almost criminal how easy many of them are. People in the inner cities could and would do these jobs if they had the training and opportunity.
Widespread economic racism in America has been very well documented, even by economists who started out believing racism couldn't exist in a free market. If you need money to get on the net & light skin to get money, the equation is fairly obvious.
The only reason
In response to other posts, a few miracle stories of success are hardly relevant. The issue is bringing the average inner city person into the mainstream, not getting half a dozen geniuses.
And regarding the "nanny state", if you don't support efforts to move these people into the mainstream, you *will* end up supporting them via taxes.
First, I shall beleaguer a point which can't be made enough times..
My ethnicity is in a minority. Without these words being in this message, you would otherwise have had no idea. Nor would you know which minority I was a part of if I also did not say. Nor do you necessarily know that I'm telling the truth.
This is the Information Age, the dawn of the Scientific Age, precursor to the Space Age... Humanity is at an unprecedented point in history. Humanity has constructed devices that potentially allow the entire species to communicate with one another regardless of location anywhere on the planet. Anyone who identifies with computer culture should recognize this, let us focus on the issues, for those who don't quite understand:
All racism is ignorance. Any other outlook on racism is incorrect.
Though we are not all racist, we [the human race] are all guilty of ignorance.
Ignorance is a disease which can be cured. In an emerging economy where knowledge truly is the power, the cure is beginning to reach everyone.
Teach people how to learn, and you've given them the only tool they need to combat their own ignorance. Be patient with those who never learned how to learn, even the racists.
Ignorance itself needs to become recognized as the real threat, people will come around when they realize we truly are all the same. Homo Sapiens is a mammal with a diverse range of pigment. Any two participants of opposite sexes who fall anywhere within that range of pigment are going to have fertile offspring, unlike the Mule or the Liger.
You know what this means? Whether you're a Creationist or a Darwinist, people are all the same. Any other outlook is ignorant. Teach your children, learn from your neighbors, use the Internet.
Great, fine, wonderful.. That'd work out perfect at 0 degrees in a vacuum. What is the stumbling block? Culture.
Culture is entirely extra-genetic. Culture defines how a person identifies with the society around him. Look at "Internet Culture", if there could be said to be one. Anyone who identifies with this culture already knows race is a dead issue, but the many many legacy cultures aren't really even aware there's such a thing as an "Internet", much less that an online culture exists in that medium which only recognizes one's knowledge level as being the difference between people. Legacy cultures will wind up on the net somehow, and there will be great social upheaval. This is especially true in America, a country built from the ground up on prejudice; the cotton fields, the railroads, the textile and garment industry, factories, service sector, ad nauseum..
I remember when floppy disks cost $50, then they were $50 for a box of 10, then they were free, then AOL started giving away CDs which lie face down in the street.. How long until little computers start getting bundled with MicroTimes, and anybody who can read, rich poor, whatever, is on the net for 40 free hours, with the option of subscribing or tossing the little device away?? then what?? no more Legacy Culture issues, we can go forth with our new tools, and tackle a brand new set of problems which won't be as petty as race.. God or genetics [take your pick] didn't care to make us all the same color, why should it matter to us?
VT
"And even after all my logic, AND my theory, I add a motherfucker, so you ig'nant niggas hear me." -- Lauryn Hill
US$0.02++
These days, I think the word has come to mean "whoever's not in power". That's really what's most relevant about it anyway. Because various social structures have persistence (and other reasons), a true minority can still hold the bulk of the power. I think almost anyone would agree that white males dominate the power in America today. I'm not stating any further conclusions, not trying to start a flamewar, I'm just observing an obvious fact. (I'm a white male myself.) Ultimately I'd like to make gender and skin color irrelevant, but look at Congress and most CEO's today and you can see it's still an issue.
Hey, I'm all for it! I wish that everyone in America could rely on these basic elements of survival. Unfortunately, many here go without. It should be a no-brainer that if people aren't desperate for survival, we as a society would have a lot fewer problems (crime, etc.), but there is strong opposition in the USA against giving anybody *anything*. I don't know what country you live in, but I wish we had it as good here.
Accepted by you, perhaps. Welfare has never really been implemented well in America, having been continually crippled by political wrangling. Some form of welfare seems to work great in many countries outside of America, such as in most of Europe. People keep working, except without the edge of desperation we're used to in America. Some countries even have a higher standard of living than the US.
I don't know what country you live in, but that's certainly not true in America. Try telling that to all the homeless people I pass every day, including many who die on the street. Housing is not universally available, nor is food, nor is basic medical care. Homeless people don't even have a way to urinate legally, for Chrissake.
This is information we should really be thinking about.
The 42% refers to a report released in July 1999. The lesser percentages refer to 1998.
Actually, this isn't true. I've been to a few libraries with Internet terminals. They're always full and have a line waiting for them. Access is limited to 15 minutes if there's a wait.
Believe me, I'd LOVE LOVE LOVE it if libraries had enough Internet access to meet the demand. I think it WOULD help with a lot of social issues. I think it would provide an excellent return on our tax dollars. Unfortunately, we're not there yet. If you think it would be a good idea, please tell your local, state, and federal legislators.
I've never been on welfare, but I hear it takes a bit more than that. It's by no means guaranteed. Even for those who do manage to get welfare, the payments usually don't cover basic expenses. Sometimes it doesn't even pay enough for rent, literally. Thus, many people end up living on the street, or in their cars if they have them.
Also, I think welfare payments end after two years. After that, no more.
Contrary to what you've been told, there is no real safety net in America. We have scapegoats instead, victims of propoganda that they're living like "European monarchy two centuries ago". (Note that the powerless are usually chosen for scapegoats, because they can't fight back.)
Street people are fucked one way or another - many of them have psychological issues and would die peniless and filthy in any system.
Well, maybe some would (though many countries don't have a homeless problem-- how does that happen?). But many homeless are not so different from you or me. If you started to interact with them, you'd find some intelligent ones.
Filthy? You would be too if you didn't have a place to shower. These people are perfectly capable of cleaning themselves; they just don't have a place to do so.
Psychological issues? Sure, who doesn't have those? And we'd have them a lot worse if we had to deal with being homeless all day and night, year-round. That's gotta screw up your mind. Risk arrest whenever you urinate or sit in one place too long. 90% of the people you pass on the street look at you in disgust, if they don't ignore you altogether. Can't get a job, because who would hire you? And the simple fact that hunger affects the mind in a way that's hard to control-- try it if you don't believe me (though the effects vary for different people).
Actually, I'm surprised how well most homeless people deal with it psychologically. I suspect I'd go totally nuts.
I have. I didn't.
Where on earth do you get your information? Specifically, where have you been and what did you see there? Otherwise, quit making up data and spreading ugly stereotypes. It's called lying, and you're harming people with it. And whoever told you these things is lying to you.
The reality of the modern economy is that more than a third of the population is limited by ability or gumption to working in the low-end service sector. We can't change that, and unless you want to make your own McFries, I humbly submit that we don't really want to.
This comment gives me the creeps. "We need to keep a third of the population uneducated, because we'll need servants."
What if it's your own brother or sister or mother that has to make those fries? How would you feel then? Would you help them improve their situation? If so, then you acknowledge that social connections do help. If not, then that indicates weak family bonds, IMHO.
It's a good thing there is some sort of inequality, as well. ... Do we really want a world in which everyone thinks he should be a sysadmin or a programmer?
You're confusing different meanings of the word "inequality". Of course we need different professions, but that doesn't mean one part of the population has to be controlled by another. Our economy doesn't have to devolve into a caste system, the way it has.
You're essentially saying "The caste system is a good thing, because I'm in the upper caste." (The scary part is that so many people agreed with this post.)
All I have to say on this matter is that I hope Jon Kats was just joking with us about how he's planning to write on subjects relating to that book. I have personally had enough of Jon's narrow minded, and mis-guided articles. He's barely a few steps above Jesse Berst with his stories on subjects he hasn't the vaguest idea about. Just cut it out and stop wasting the few kb of bandwidth it takes to realize that the article I just loaded was written by you!
Quandary in the Making
For example, a few months ago, Harper's Bazarre had an interesting stat. I don't remember the exact words/numbers, but these are close:
Dollars the average American highschooler spends on sneakers in a year: $1100.
Dollars the average inner-city African-American highschooler spends on sneakers in a year: $2400
The priorities are different. And we can't fix these from the outside. We can't drag them up-hill. It's finally a clear case where they can't scream and cry "racism".
There is one solution: That community must switch philosophies from that of entitled victim to that of self-empowerment. Just like the rest of us. They finally can't blame anyone else.
!Dozer wrote:
A big chunk of that difference can probably be explained by the higher prices charged by "inner city" retailers.
Is it better to build walls or build bridges?
Are we together or apart?
Do you want to do work or watch someone else work?
Put your hand in, don't put your hand out.
I believe that such funding is available to all students who wish to go to college. This is in the form of the federal student loan program. It is geared towards providing money to even the poorest students. You simply have to pay it back, with interest, after you graduate.
It would be great if all needy students could just get a handout, but not politically feasible (as the opinions of other posters here have demonstrated). Really though, I feel that the loan system is commendable. Often, loans will cover more than tuition, but books and sometimes part of living expenses. Interest rates are breath-takingly low, there is a payback plan for any situation, none of the plans puts a great stress on even a tight budget (under the control of a level-headed person).
Best of all, it's a smart investment from the government's standpoint! You get your money back (mostly), from a population that is college-educated (read: low default rates). Best of all, the primary side-effect is an infusion of educated young people into society.
(end propoganda)
"That's the great thing about kill-bots, you can always make more."
Yep, and that $1300 difference can get one a pretty good computer with a few years of Net access (esp. if you do the CompuServe $400 rebate thing).
Extra sneakers, or a computer I can use to teach myself something? I wonder what the right choice could be?
It seems to me that the problem we have here is not one of race, or even very much of economics. It is a problem of culture.
/.ers cited a statistic that I will use here: the average black, inner city high-schooler spends $2400 a year on sneakers. That's a lot of money. You could easily spend half of that, still have damn good sneakers, and buy a computer that comes with years of Net access for $1200. And then teach yourself how to use it (I bet most of us /.ers taught ourselves) and the Net. But do we see this happening? Not really.
If you look at it, suppose you're some poor black kid living in the inner city somewhere. Suppose you're sufficiently poor that buying a computer is totally impossible. There are still public libraries that have free Net access, where you can gradually learn how to use the Internet and a PC. If you really want to. But if you'd rather go play basketball on the almost zero chance of getting in the NBA someday, well, that's the choice you make. It's not because of your race, or your lack of money, it's a lack of desire to work at a goal. And that work ethic isn't something the government or whites can force on somebody.
And suppose you're a little better off than that. Suppose you're the average African-American, inner city youth. One of the other
The important question, I think, is why we don't see this happening. Why don't many blacks go out and use the opportunity to get into the high-paying IT fields? Or even a non-IT field where computer use is a plus?
My suspicion is that the problem is two-fold. First, some people just don't know about the opportunities that this could open up for them. They see the Net as some sort of porn-infested nightmare, since that's about all that public television says about the Internet. They don't see it as a path to success. Thus, learning about computers and the Internet are not a priority. Second, some people know about it but don't have the work ethic to get off their ass and do something to help themselves. They've been in this "I'm a victim" culture so long that they don't necessarily realize nobody's trying to keep them down.
The other interesting question is, what if anything can society do to wake these people up? Computers in schools aren't going to help if nobody uses them. I don't think that much can be done from outside the black communities, for the reason that it is a cultural problem. Black leaders ought to start worrying a little less over whether South Carolina flys the Confederate flag and more over things that matter, like the possibility of blacks getting left behind in the "Information Age". There isn't going to be any sort of economic equality between the races until blacks start taking advantage of the opportunities that are out there. Because it isn't their skin color that's holding them back - it's a cultural bad attitude towards education and computers.
EXACTLY.
Have you seen Ironstayn vs Supergovernment yet?
yeah, that's it george. i can appreciate your sarcasm, but that's about it.
guess what - even a human that has been labeled a minority by the govt can do some things on their own. i know you don't believe in this 'philosophy', but give it a chance.
bye now, i have to go back to keeping 'them' fat, dumb and non-rioting.
Have you seen Ironstayn vs Supergovernment yet?
"Life is only worth something because we've decided it is."
we? you mean you. i happen to value my life, regardless of what 'we' think.
"By deciding that all those lives are not worth anything, that even caring a little is a bad thing, you've managed to devalue your own life."
he's not saying others lives are worthless, he just values his own. big difference.
Have you seen Ironstayn vs Supergovernment yet?
That bit that quotes the government statistic has the number L-9-9-8 (as opposed to 1998) in it ...
OK, ok, so I haven't participated in the debate on sociological factors. But then, I'm german and I'm still mulling over the meaning of the choice of words in a recent press release of my government: they want people to take more "initiative" where Americans encourage "responsibility" ... should I agree?
From my fortune file:
Equality is not when a female Einstein gets promoted to assistant professor; equality is when a female schlemiel moves ahead as fast as a
male schlemiel.
-- Ewald Nyquist
What part of the word "many" do you not understand?
Did your graduate school education leave you unable to parse the words "many," "most," and "all" correctly?
Here's some questions for your meritocractic worldview: George W. Bush,heir to an old fortune, does cocaine. So does some poor kid in Dallas. The latter gets caught, and does a minimum 15 year stint due to the mandatory sentencing guidelines that GWB has instituted in Texas. Now, does GWB get to be governor of Texas because he made the right choices?
Here's another. Michael Jackson gets paid more money to endorse a pair of sneakers than entire FACTORIES of women in Asia get paid to make them. Did he work for that money?
My fingers did not type what my brain thunk. I hate it when that happens.
Re: GWB - frankly, if it weren't for his hypocrisy in regards to the whole war-on-drugs thing, I'd rather like him as a candidate. His willingness to send other people to very long jail sentences for the mistakes that he had the luxury to simply 'outgrow' puts him on the other side of the pale for me. At best, his opportunistic cowardice to keep playing the war-on-drugs game is despicable. If his hypocrisy is genuine, all the worse.
The fact that he didn't get caught is part and parcel of the continuing racism in this country: the selectiveness of law-enforcement. 27% of black men will go through the prison system - I believe as many as 70% of them for non-violent drug offenses. Law enforcement agencies target black (and often hispanic) men - racial profiling remains a widespread phenomenon. George W. Bush was never really in danger of being caught doing drugs unless he was INCREDIBLY stupid, while just being a black man driving a car can expose you to vehicular search.
The metric for a fair society isn't how it treats its best members, it's how it treats its average members, people who make some mistakes, aren't completely driven to success, and generally just want to get by.
The National Institute for Drug Abuse estimates that while 12% of drug abusers are black, 50% of drug possession arrestees are black.
55% of the prison population is black, despite the fact that only 12% of the US population is black. 96.5 % of those tried for crack cocaine charges are minorities, although 2/3rd of all crack cocaine users are white.
Look here (wherein Janet Reno admits a 100 to 1 disparity in enforcement, and commits to get it down to "only" a 10 to 1 disparity) and here (a surprisingly good essay in a Scientologist magazine. Go figure.).
Note: talking about pervasive, systematic racism in law enforcement and the justice system is distinct from discussions about affirmative action or equal opportunity.
You want numbers> here are some numbers. Keep looking around that report for a more detailed breakdown. Frankly, I despair of knowing just what you think would qualify as a sound basis for criticism - you seem to have invested a lot of energy in trying to deny this phenomenon is real.
There was also a study in Florida done on pull-overs and searches of cars, and the numbers are available if you poke around on the web. (current Florida law makes it legal for police to sieze and sell your car and keep any cash over $100 if they just suspect you of drug activity.)
Um, here are some numbers.
Most all studies are regional samples, since most law enforcement is local. The statements of Janet Reno are consistent with that finding. So are the wide variety of statements made in the report I linked.
I meant, and subsequently linked to, the Nation Institute on Drug Abuse. I frequently mistype.
The crack-cocaine statistic is also from the report I linked to, and no one contests it. In fact, the difference between enforcement and sentencing procedures between races is well documented therein.
The idea that black kids will be inspired to excel if and only if they have black models is either bullshit, or else black kids are racists. My chief personal heroes from the time I was a boy were, in no particular order, George Washington Carver, Lao Tzu, and Imhotep, none of whom were white. Admittedly, that's an odd set of role models, but the point is that if I were the only white man in the world, there have been plenty of creative and admirable people distributed through all of the so-called races to choose from. If you have to pick your role models from within your own ethnic group, not only are you needlessly narrowing your own horizons, but you are actively perpetuating racism.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
drugs half the time and unable to give you attention, let alone raise you, with a
boyfriend that beats her and sells drugs, where you don't play outside of the house,
and you're lucky to get enough food to eat, let alone nutritional food, that you'd be
able to end up where you are today? If you do, then you're living in a different reality
from the rest of us.
The funny thing is we encourage this type of lifestyle by subsidizing it.
We should be rewarding the poor people for making GOOD decisions, not bad ones
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
We should certainly help them, but in the right way. I would gladly give the unused computers and/or parts in my basement to a poor person who wants them.
But I would not want to pay the government more to create a Federal Commission to give computers to a few poor people that happen to meet its requirements, and line the pockets of bueraucrats and lobbyists.
With the governments track record, they probably wouldn't differentiate between a poor person who genuinely wants a computer to improve his/her life, and one who wants to sell it for drug or booze money
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I've seen some of that.
The truth is that women just aren't interested in the numbers that men are. For example, I would love for my wife to get into a better paying tech job, but she makes excuses "I'm not smart enough", (yet she's smarter than many people that I work with) "It doesn't interest me" (yet many times she uses my computer more than me, and she's looked at as an expert on PCs where she does work.)
The College that I went to had a higher female enrollment, yet there was only one woman in CS in our graduating class
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Well there are certain black "leaders" who profit off discrimination, whenever something doesn't look quite right racially, they will show up and make a big production. They've succeeded in convincing many blacks that they have no chance to succeed, that things are too stacked against them... Their only hope is to support these "leaders". This has done more harm than good for the black population.
The minority groups that seem to do well (Asians for example) don't have such leaders, they just go out and do what needs to be done.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I saw a lawyer once explain that the definition of minority is "someone who is discriminated against".
With such thinking, whites can never be a minority because discrimination against whites is termed "reverse discrimination", and is often deemed acceptable.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I don't know if the UK suffers from the same silly social notions that the US does.
For example, any British Black I've ever seen speaks perfect English, in the US, we have this silly notion that the natural language for blacks is something called "Ebonics". Ebonics is an English subset. An employer would be as likely to hire an ebonics-speaking black for a good job as he or she would be likely to hire a street-slang speaking white kid who uses the word "sh-t" every third word.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Where did he say that? He said that there are some in the black community who criticize other blacks for trying to suceed. This is true. An "Oreo" is a person who is accused of being black on the outside, but white on the inside, the other two terms are different ways of saying the same thing.
But it seems that you can't even try discuss racial problems at any real depth because people like you will automatically jump in and label them a bigot.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
a preacher state, actually. I hope you never make a bad decision.
Where in my post do I say that? Bad decisions are usually their own punishment. Do you like the idea of somebody snorting your tax money up their nose? I don't. I'd rather pay for rehab.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Well gee, I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Whether you see it or not, there is an Orwellian, New-Speak type mentality built into that type of thinking.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Um, I think you meant Michael Jordan? ;-)
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
In recent years there has been a real effort to get rid of male-only educational institutions by integrating them, while leaving female-only institutions intact.
My Wife is a feminist, and she attended a Woman's college. When I asked why this is fair, she tells me it's because in a male-only school, the men bind together and discuss how to oppress women.
Really?
Now my wife is generally an intelligent woman, but she's been brainwashed by this stuff
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Yes, the Oakland incident was blown out of proportion, however even before that I have seen ebonics advocates try to spread the notion that ebonics was the natural way for blacks to speak, and we should just accept it.
However even with many of the other English dialects you mention, the speakers have the same problem, if they don't learn to drop it, at least in formal situations (job interview or whatever), they won't go very far.
Up here in Bahs-tuhn (Boston) people take classes to learn to drop that regional accent for the same reason.
So anyway, I guess my point is that it bothers me to see things like ebonics advocated that will only futher hold back the blacks in this country. If it's used as a teaching tool, that's great.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
We should be rewarding the poor people for making GOOD decisions, not bad ones
And punish them for making bad decisions? Now that is a nanny state! More like a preacher state, actually. I hope you never make a bad decision.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
If you make race the issue then it becomes the focal point of the discussion. It seems to me that the issue is really one of economics - people that do not have the income available to them to purchase a computer and internet service. Those people could be white, black, hispanic, tall, short, fat, hairy or blue.
This of course ignores the question of why racial minorities are disproportionately economically disadvantaged. It is all very well (and quite fashionable in the Libertatrian white overclass) to say that these things should be race-blind, but the fact is we live in a society full of racists.
I'm not exaggerating. My ex girlfriend's parents had been middle class for generations and I met her at an Ivy league school. Her parents were racists who believed in segregation. "They will be happier." they would say. "Their cutlure is inferior" they would say. It drove me nuts hanging out with them. Multiply this by several million rich white folks (rich == members of the creditor class) and you begin to get an idea of what American minorities are up against.
Maybe the world doesn't owe us a living, but it doesn't owe us a peaceful life or the right to keep our wealth either, no matter how we obtained it. These things are cultural constructs we use to make life better for all. As the essay points out, unless these constructs work for all of us, Objective reality (in the form of hopeless violence from people who refuse to die off quietly just because the overclass views them as economically useless) seems hard to avoid.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
Racism adequately explains why the average US black person makes less money than the average US white person. However, if you compare internet usage between white people and black people with comparable income, and there is a significant discrepancy, then racism does not explain the difference. I'd like to see the stats on that, myself.
As would I. I have actually heard that it is the other way around: There was some sort of convention here in Seattle the a month or two back and some minority spokespersons were joking about teaching white folks how to get connected.
A rumination on why might that be. Several years ago when I was in graduate school working on a math Ph.D., we all occasionally wondered why there were so few black mathematicians. There were (relatively speaking) plenty of doctors and engineers, but math was something that didn't seem to attract blacks. My own theory is that math doesn't pay as well so if you are from a background where you are the first person in your family to have a shot at a really good education and job, and you have technical aptitude, then you go into the professions that pay rather than those that don't. If your family has been doing all right for hundereds of years, then you don't really worry about making a little less money, but if you are the one escaping from the ghetto (and maybe trying to bring some of your extended family along) you are probably more conservative in your career choices.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
We now live in a society that thinks that luxuries are basic rights.
Part of the issue under discussion here is whether computers are luxuries. From an educational standpoint I think an argument can be made that net access is part of being educated. We educate folks in public schools because it is a social good that we all benefit from (well except in Kansas apparently;-))
Computers are tools; you do not have a right to own a computer.
I don't agree that a computer is just a tool, and the analogy to cars is a false one. Most areas provide public roads (free) so that we can all get around, and public transit (cheap to free) for those who cannot afford a car simply because we all benefit from increased mobility. We don't have to provide free computers to everyone, but improving access by dealing with social and education problems seems like a good idea to me. Besides, a machine for getting on the net is essentially free these days if you get a used one or sign up for some evil service that will shove advertising in your face. What is missing is education in their use and organization to provide the machines.
This I believe is just another example of 'class warfare' that goes on in America.
Oh come on. As if the rich and powerful are somehow the victims in America and have no way to defend themselves. If there is 'class warfare' in America (or anywhere else), guess who started it? Who runs the Fed so that it consistently benefits the creditor class (45% max of the population)? Who steals the wealth produced by workers to pay investor dividends? Who treats those same workers as commodities to be sacrificed for the quarterly earnings report? If that isn't warfare, I'd like to know what is.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
Who started those companies to give those workers jobs in the first place?
This dichotomy between labor and employer is false and the cause of endless problems and arguments. Why can't the workers start the companies themselves? There are places in the world where they do and it works quite well. Spain and Japan if you want specific examples.
Who worked night and day for years to make the company profitable?
Usually the folks who were asked to stay late, work extra weekend shifts and then dumped when their saleries cut into shareholder profits. Never mind that the company is profitable for the employees as long as it is in the black and pays their salaries.
Who put their life savings, house, car, everything on the line?
Very few. Jeff Bezos certainly didn't. The only people risking anything are the workers themselves who have the wealth generated by their hard work appropriated to pay idle shareholders and overpaid idiotic managers.
Incidentally, I did all that you mentioned with my business, but I don't intend to use that as a justification to steal from future employees. They get to take the same risks for an equal share in the glory.
Gee, I guess we should get rid of those damn rich people, they're nothing but trouble.
Sounds good to me (and incidentally to a Libertarian friend of mine). I went to school with the rich for 13 years and there is nothing particularly virtuous about them. Many of them are fools and most of them are no better or worse than the rest of us. A lot of them got rich through very dubious means (the Kennedys were bootleggers == drug dealers - maybe decendants of the Crips will get buried at sea by the Navy!)
There is this myth (probably due to that fool Ayn Rand) that wealth == virtue. Wealth ususally indicates some form of theft in my experience, sometimes legal, but theft nonetheless.
So why don't workers just start their own buisinesses? Partly because it is rather difficult to do so under US law. By contrast, Spanish law has a special category for worker-owned cooperatives. Doing the same thing in the US seems to involve strange kludges with stock issue and bylaws.
Another reason is that we are all brainwashed by this myth of the "Captain of Industry". This myth causes municipalities to give endless tax breaks to "job creators" (which studies show don't work) rather than encouraging the growth of locally owned businesses. The idea that we can all create wealth without the help of these bozos is supressed.
So yes, I don't think that the rich are necessary, virtuous or even worth listening to most of the time. And I speak from experience.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
Correct, Wealth != Virtue.
However, Wealth == Spending Power.
Rich people buy more stuff. The more stuff they buy the more jobs there have to be to support that.
The more jobs there are the smaller the labor pool is and the more workers must be paid to continue working at a place.
It seems like Rich people seem to be plenty useful... Of course, the rest of the population does the same thing, on a smaller scale. The common man isn't exactly going to fuel the Yachting industry, or Porsche...
Exactly. Social spending priorites are connected to wealth distribution.
Now, let's say some workers start a business, it is extremely succesfull, they become very wealthy. Are they then evil now?
No, and I never said that the rich were evil. I just was annoyed at the deference paid to them. Success in some genetic/market system is not virtue. Just because they are not virtuous by this mesasure says nothing about other measures.
You seem to forget that a lot of people who are wealthy now weren't wealthy 50 years ago, or 20 years ago, or even 5 years ago.
Define "a lot". Maybe a lot of your friends fit that description, but in the population as a whole their number is quite small.
Why do people like you keep insisting that greed is a bad thing? Everyone is motivated by greed. There isn't a worker on the planet that is doing his job ONLY because he wants to.
I think our definitions of greed are not the same. Greed to me involves more than self-love. People have multiple sources of motivation and greed occurs when desire for one's own gratification greatly exceeds one's concern for the well-being of others.
Also, it isn't that difficult for workers to start their own businesses. Why gee, look how many independant resteraunts there are...
I know of no restaurant that is a worker-owned cooperative. They are all owned by an individual, a family or a national chain. The employees are hired help, not owners. It is that aspect of the business structure that is difficult to arrange.
Any business where the owner also works on the product is a worker owned business.
But it is not owned by all the workers, just some. And this is a crucial distinction.
But any succesfull worker owned business quickly grows too large to be managed from the plant floor. How can someone know what's going on, how much money is being made, where it is being spent, etc... if they are busy all day building widgets?
These are valid concerns, but they can be solved in a number of ways.
Democracy does not imply that everyone does the same job. Of course cooperatives have a management structure, but managers are just workers, not flunkies of the owners. In addition to being more just, it also leads to a lot less Dilbertisms.
Problems of scale often requires "hiving" the business into two or more once the size gets over about 500 or so.
For a good book on this model, try reading We Build the Road as We Travel.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
Panaflex is right; this is only a problem "in Jon's area." His concern can only be genuine and legitimate if he has not danced with that demon yet; only bigots and recovering bigots find dwelling on the "race issue" gratifying. The correct approach to curing social diseases like racism and fanaticisms is not overt confrontation; we must simply turn our back on the "old ways," just as Merlin suggested in the recent made-for-TV movie. Bigots and zealots are only powerful because they command our attention.
Good call, Sun Tzu! This sort of obsessive reference to racism is racism in itself. It can only be genuine and legitimate when one has not yet danced with that demon; only bigots and recovering bigots should find dwelling on the "race issue" gratifying. I believe that the correct approach to curing social diseases like racism and fanaticisms is not overt confrontation: we must simply turn our back on the old ways and concentrate on doing things differently this time. Bigots and zealots can only have power over us if they can command our attention. And I wish one could simply link one's comments to other posts and thus not have to paraphrase oneself. :-)
Here is some additional information: lately, most graduate students of physics in the US are not WASPs -- many aren't even US citizens! Chad is the only white US citizen in our Applied Optics grad program (hi, Chad). So, I have shown that I propel in an environment that is at least as diverse as your own (assuming Chinese and Indian count as "colored" :-) and at least as technology- driven as your own (though we are not engineers in the strict sense of the word). 'That good enough?
AS an African American with a "tech" education I can say that racism is diminishing in America. It has not, however, disappeared entirely. As far as white Americans being around "violence prone" people, I think that it is instructive that this summer of hate violence (e.g., Columbine, Atlanta, Los Angeles, etc.) have all been perpetrated by white male racists. I wonder what their neighbors think about living next to so many potential "hot heads".
Most of the upwardly mobile (in economic terms) blacks that I know just want to be rewarded appropriately for their contributions, and wish to avoid the weird racist fantasies of people like you who see a potential black mugger everytime they see a non-white face.
As far as computers for minorities and the poor are concerned, I agree with many of the other poster. Economics is a shrinking barrier to computer and internet access. Anyone with access to an old 486 can get on the net. Free software is an additional enabler in this area, but it really just further reduces an access cost that is already dimishing every day.
Donate your old computers if you like. Make sure schools have at least minimum access to computers. Then make sure that teachers know how to use computers in their curricula.
Most don't, and all the computers in the world won't save you from a bad teacher.
ELITISM: It's always lonely at the top. Uninvited company is rarely welcome.
The only concern I would have with reports like this is that it gives the Federal Government all the incentive it wants to start taxing Internet access in a BIG way so it can fund computers for economically-depressed areas. I don't think that would be a good idea, because that would instantly kill off the Internet (imagine having to pay 2 to 3 cents per minute access charges in addition to your $15-$20 per month ISP access rate).
A better incentive is for tax breaks for any company that is involved with creating Internet access for economically-depressed areas.
By the way, one of the big problems of Internet access in rural areas, namely the lack of high-speed access (and the costs involved in overcoming that) will be cured when the Teledesic system of satellites becomes operational in 2003. That way, you can get 1 Mbps access via satellite anywhere in the world, including places that it'll be unlikely you'll get a cable modem, xDSL or T-1/T-3 line set up.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
No matter who you are, you are the one responsible for making the most of your life. If you choose to watch TV and work at McDonald's, that's your choice, not something someone forced on you. Unless you have no time to yourself whatsoever, you could choose to educate yourself and build skillsets that will get you better jobs and a better position to self-improve even more. At the very least you could choose to maintain a good attitude about whatever you are doing and that alone is sure to lead to advancement. But if people aren't willing to take responsibility for their own lives, they won't ever amount to anything anyway, so they don't deserve any coddling.
If people choose to be left behind in the information age, I have no sympathy.
-- Moderation in all things, exceptions to all rules --
> Assuming that the experience of Chinese and
> Indian immigrants is basically the same as that > of the descendants of the slave trade is, IMO a > lie every bit as horrible as Holocaust denial.
An incorrect assumption != a lie
(honestly, you would think that those of us in technical circles would be a little more careful with our definitions. The post you followed up to is perhaps guilty of "not getting" something, but the author is not in any way guilty of "lying.")
You are correct though, in saying that the previous poster's assumption is very inaccurate. 500 years of abuse and discrimination doesn't magically go away simply because the unjust laws are revised to become more just. Some pro-active, fair, and racially unbiased method needs to be developed to address all of the issues which this dark history has confronted us with, not just the unequal access to technology based on socio-economic (and thereby indirectly on racial) status, but access to education, the political establishment, the economic establishment (the "good 'ol boy" network is, alas, still alive and very much among us), and all of the other benefits of society that we "more priveleged" folks take for granted.
I don't see free handouts or Affirmative Action approaches as too effective, and they appear to have a nasty way of perpetuating the very racism the effects of which they are trying to counter, but clearly doing nothing and lamenting the resulting problems as "unavoidable" is not only not the answer, but a copout of our basic responsibilities as member of this society. Perhaps we need to step back and stop applying kludges, and rather address the underlying structural problems that prevent ANY disadvantaged group from having opportunities equal to those the more advantaged groups seem to have. How to do this would be an intersting (and long) discussion in and of itself.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Life is unfair. Kill yourself or get over it.
Race is part of the issue; the "digital divide" is not merely a question of economics. See http://www.ntia.doc. gov/ntiahome/fttn99/FTTN_I/Chart-I-14.html, a chart breaking down computer ownership based on both income and race. (The full NTIA report is at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiah ome/fttn99/contents.html.) For every income bracket, black people have a lower rate of Internet access. There is something besides income at work.
Studies have consistently shown that different content draws large black audiences, vs. large non-black audiences, in other media. For example, last time I saw statistics on this, of the top 10 TV shows watched by blacks vs. watched by whites, there was an overlap of 1 or 2 shows. Different things were drawing people of different ethnicities to watch television.
As long as most Internet content is not created by black people, and the websites that get most of the press and scrutiny are created by white people, the things that would draw black people to the Net will be few and far between, or not known about. As a result, you'll have fewer blacks using the Net, regardless of income. And so you'll have fewer people building content that might appeal to blacks. And the cycle will perpetuate.
This is bad for a few reasons. One, because you'll end up with a certain number of black kids growing up not inspired to get on the Net, and not realizing their full potential - as geeks, as content providers, etc. (Yes, exceptional folks will overcome whatever barriers are placed in their way. But let's face it: most of the world - including the people who succeed in life - are mediocre.) You'll also end up with this supposedly global resource not truly being global, and non-blacks will remain unexposed to parts of African-American culture which could otherwise benefit them.
When thinking about this thread, do keep in mind: the original article didn't cry "racism" - it didn't say people are trying to keep black people down. It just said technology has different effects on different people, and some of those effects can be unintended and negative.
--------- http://www.ahref.com: a community for web developers http://www.piou.org: yet another blog ---------
This is probably the point to make the "hey, RMS created the *license*" argument (but then I'll be accused of being a GNU bigot... hmmm...). Linux would certainly not exist without the GNU tools before (gcc has always been used to develop Linux, even before it was self-hosting).
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
This reminds me of computers/Internet in the schools. There has been much said about the disparity of deployment of computers and the Internet in inner city/minority schools versus suburban, majority white schools.
Never mind the fact that the inner city schools are falling apart. Never mind the fact that the kids that graduate from these schools can't read. Let's give them a computer on every desk and access the the Internet. That should fix everything.
Why is it that the media seems to see technology as some sort of universal panacea? A computer and Internet access is not going to fix a broken household.
The underlying problems are economic and social. One of the symptoms *may* be (I haven't seen good stats) less prevalent access to computer technology and the Internet.
Let's get to the root cause, and stop treating the symptoms.
-josh
Being a programmer, I work with about 50% non-white programmers(And I live in Dallas?). The only place where I've worked with less than a 25% minority was at a large telecom company.
As far as a internet-culture is concerned.. here in dallas, internet service is cheaper than cable! And you get the computer for free.
Maybe some people are just more interrested in the internet than others in your area.. but I just don't see that.
Besides, being of a hispanic origin.. what about us Latino's!?!? I'd rather not care. The nice thing about the internet is the lack of a class system. (Well, except for developers.. they're pretty classy)
A right to net act is surely in the works. That's okay with me. It may not be needed, but why not make certain? As long as poeple leave their
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
While your reply about Black Leaders (applied to Al Sharpton) may be more or less on target, forget about the example of Asians.
Because of the immigration laws, most Asians immigrants in the US were professionals, i.e. doctors, lawyers, management, etc. Most blacks emmigrated as slaves. That's why Asians are better off economically.
Many posters have objected to the racial basis of this discussion, claiming that the real issue is economics. Maybe even pointing out the economic history of most African Americans in the United States -- that until 30 years ago they have been legally prevented from being full citizens, and are thus many years behind the privledged whites who have had centuries of inheritance and schooling. Others claim that since it is an economic issue, it should be dismissed -- not everyone can have a million dollars, there's nothing to be done.
:-), is that it is an economic issue. Poor people have greater difficulties buying computers. Blacks and other "minorities" represent a disproportionate percentage of the poor of the United States. But there is one more issue at play...
The fact, IMHO
Even more so than the rest of capitalism, the computer industry is a winner take all proposition. For those who win the competition, there is a huge reward. For those who lose, there is nothing. One might point to the legions of web developers as evidence of a middle class in computing, but how many print designers have been replaced by web developers? and for that matter, how many legions of designers, type setters, printers, etc. were replaced during the rise of desktop publishing?
The Internet right now has been an amazing oppurtunity. But the Internet is moving towards eliminating that working class -- try getting a job doing HTML / JavaScript coding. They still exist, but it isn't easy. The reason why businesses like products like DreamWeaver or NetObjects is that they eliminate jobs. How many people do you know who hand code PostScript anymore?
If there are a limited number of decently paying jobs available, then there will be a group of poor (who will be mostly black and other "minorites," though there are plenty of poor whites) who aren't going to get them. Whether the Internet will be good for the poor is a question of whether it will create more jobs than it will eliminate.
I got offered an production job at an e-commerce website by a skin-flint business man who had just closed down one of his stores. Same products, same inflated prices, much larger market, one sixth the workforce (and he didn't offer six times minimum wage). This is the future of the Internet.
A lot of people live off of the inefficiencies of dinosaurs such as storefronts and management, and these people are the people who are being put out of work by the Internet.
So the Internet in its current incarnation does not help poor people. It does not help most "minorities." It does help the mostly white rich people who are in a position to reap almost all of economic benefits of the Internet -- solidifing their economic advantage.
So if I steal your car and give it to my daughter, she shouldn't have to give it back, since she didn't steal it herself?
But I work hard for what I have and no one else is taking it away from me.
Bet you'd hate to be a slave, then.
The numbers were for all clothing and all ages and were $1508 vs. $2440.
A big chunk of that difference can probably be explained by the higher prices charged by "inner city" retailers.
It's finally a clear case where they can't scream and cry "racism".
No, it's a Harper's "statistic", on the same page as Percentage of Americans who describe "barbecue" as the aroma that best defines America : 39
No, they're only oppressing you.
right on,
i doubt it will become a real political issue. we have more important things to talk about like abortion and building more prisons.
cheap REAL computers are the only way to "get everyone connected" i think linux would fit nicely into this model, but we need to be very careful what direction this goes...
when "computers" as we know them become even cheaper and more ubiquitous and corporate amerika finally figures out how to cram the "high bandwidth internet for the masses" concept into the TV/Consumer/entertainment based box, we all lose anyway. the poor just have more channels... and they gain no real understanding of how it all works, and they might as well be watching tv.
as long as we are all buying the shite the box pushes at us, it doesnt matter what the OS the box runs... we're all slaves anyway.
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
Among people who are already online, there are obvious cliques. Linux fans, for example, have their own favorite newsgroups and Web pages, and their own set of sources that they trust. MacOS fans, I presume, have a different set of trusted sources. Within each group, there are people who will preach to the choir, praising the One True Superior Operating System and flaming all rivals. You can spend all your on-line time with your favorite clique, and never be confronted with a serious challenge to your OS preference.
I can imagine a future where different online news sources cater to different ethnic groups (the one popular among white Anglos will not be white-supremacist, of course, but just consider itself "mainstream"), filtering and spinning the news in a way that fits the biases of its editors and audiences, and members of each group get all the information they (think they) need from the source that's marketed to them.
In such an environment, how many members of one group will peek at another group's favorite news source, to see a different perspective on the world? (How many Linux fans read the Mac-oriented magazines and Web sites? How many white people read Ebony, Jet, Essence, and other black-oriented magazines?) If another race-related scandal, like the O. J. Simpson trial, reveals a deep chasm beteween black and white folks' view of the world, will people make an effort to understand why this chasm exists, or will they just shrug and say, "Those guys must be crazy to believe that"?
What can prevent, or alleviate, this problem?
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
One of the best ways to find a job is to exploit social networks. If the social network of people who already have tech jobs is primarily white, then black people are at a disadvantage, even if the people making hiring decisions are not racists.
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
When I read the headline I didn't even consider that this book might be about racial inequality. I was thinking about people predicting dark futures or something like that on the Internet. Only once I read the first couple paragraphs did I realize they were talking about a "racial issue".
Guess I'm just not used to thinking about that, eh?
Um, but doesn't racism mean that class and race
are assumed to be the same (or at least
confused). I mean if the limit of racism was
assuming that different skin color implied a
different penis size I can't imagine many people
would worry about it. But if you assume black
neighbourhoods are poor or black people are
uneducated or drug dealers then it becomes a
problem, as well as something of a self-fufilling
prophecy.
But doesn't the fact that the group is in the heads of quite a few americans including some in public office make it something to worry about?
I do tend to agree with you, the idea that black people must be natural victims of technology or
anything, however well intentioned, does tend
to institutionalise racial difference.
As a bald statistic that isn't very helpful.
Besides just replacing race by culture doesn't
clarify anything. Where does culture come from
and why does it have a particular content?
Moreover culture seems unlikely to be produced
entirely internally, either to the individual
or the 'race'. Don't white people play any
role in forming 'black' culture?
To the degree that social mobility has improved
since then it is an improvement.
Though I think the original article's concern was
with the lower chances for mobility among black
people.
Did help a lot of people
> The reality of the modern economy is that more > than a third of the population is limited by
> ability or gumption to working in the low-end
> service sector. We can't change that, and
> unless you want to make your own McFries, I
> humbly submit that we don't really want to.
>
What a depressing thought. Better start
stockpiling shotguns and canned food now then.
Moreover it isn't at all obvious that that a situation is natural, not more than a couple of hundred years ago everyone worked in the fields. To those who didn't that seemed quite natural too. Is there some reason why social development should stop at the end of the twentieth century?
Oh, if only I had a moderator point...
I must say, most of the rhetoric in here is about "Well, it's not my fault that all blacks are poor..." I have to say, that your more level-headed and rational argument is the best one I have seen in this thread so far. I only wish I could express my views (which are remarkably similar) with such eloquence.
In short, you are the first comment I have seen that actually cuts through all racial stereotypes and pregidousness, to get to the real point of the situation. I wish more people would realize that "People of all colors are equal, it's not my fault that blacks are too lazy to work for what they want" is a worse, more destructive, and more racist, view than just disliking minorities. At least KKK members acknowledge that they are racists.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Damn it, damn it all to hell...
I should have logged in BEFORE I posted my comment. "...if only I had a moderator point..."
I freakin' did, I just hadn't logged in yet!!! Anyone know how to revoke a comment so I can moderate in a discussion that I have already commented in?
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
For an (allegedly, and in my experience, practically) "color-blind" profession and environment, there is a dearth of black American computer folks. Why?
I'm sure that, for a complex situation such as this, it's foolish to point to a single cause and say "this is it." Still, here are a few likely problem spots --
And, the one that SlashDot readers won't like to entertain ...
There is probably not a "silver bullet" answer to this. But a good first step is to actually think about the problem, instead of just assuming that the sunny claims about how the Internet is going to solve all our problems will come true.
While you are quite right that this is about more than technology, there are more options than the "liberal/conservative" dichotomy (and duopoly).
I suggest plugging "Distributism" into Altavista, following some links, and then doing some research into what a sane economy might look like.
This would ring less hollow if we didn't live in a society that deliberately maintains a certain unemployment rate "to avoid inflation" through monetary policy.
No, it isn't. But being able to put food on the table and clothes on your kids is. Or ought to be, in any civilization worthy of the name.
Both the characteristic modern parties believed in a government by the few; the only difference is whether it is the Conservative few or Progressive few. It might be put, somewhat coarsely perhaps, by saying that one believes in any minority that is rich and the other in any minority that is mad.
-- G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World
Nicely put.
/. readers' race would be interesting, if accurate.
In my immediate department, we have two African Americans, one Hispanic American and the rest of us are white. The effects of race are not apparent.
The effects of economic status, on the other hand, are very obvious.
Those of us who are put in leadership positions, given the *important* projects, allowed to spend more time training, and recognized as knowing more than most got there not by our damn skin color, but by desire, perseverence, and an admirable work ethic.
I'm not sure if it's been done, but a poll reflecting
Linux: Because rebooting is for adding new hardware.
Somehow even the most poor in this country can afford a TV set. What's a TV set cost these days ? A used computer system is affordable for those who want it bad enough, even on low incomes.
I've noticed that too. Even if there's no food in the kitchen, everyone's got enough money for a TV set. Maybe even cable. I suspect this is because even poor people grew up with television, and are convinced that it's vital to have one. What is needed is not free computers, or even government-subsidized ones. The computers are already cheap. What is needed is for someone to convince the poor that they need computers at least as much as they need television. And no one "needs" television, right? But right now it's not happening. The poor grew up without computers. They know they can live without them. But they've never lived without television.
The computer can be more entertaining than television, and it damn sure will provide better marketable skills (who ever got a job because of their vast knowledge of TV trivia?). But someone - probably a poor and/or minority individual - has to communicate this to the poor and the minorities. They aren't too likely to listen to non-poor non-minorities, and why should they? What worked for one group won't neccesarily work for another. Though in this instance I suspect that it will.
...is to tell you to go fuck yourself. There will always be poor. Poverty is relative. As long as someone has a place to live and food, and education, I owe them nothing. Our current society is a far from Pure Darwinism as you can get. Heh.
Blar.
I agree that something more than eliminating prejudice is needed (though I'd like to hear some suggestions on how to achieve this) but I really find your overgeneralization of minority populations to be very disturbing. You are displaying your prejudice in assuming minorities tend to lead such desperate/hopeless lives. Instead of a life of victimization that will ensure the continuance of this cycle of poverty, people in such situations should be shown the rewards of hard work and perseverance. Technology should be used as a tool to help break this cycle. There are numerous examples of people (minority or not) who have refused to accept their victim status and have prospered.
You're on to something. Like the clueless poster who claims people are poor because they're born poor, it's all about what you think and believe. If you think you can't do something (whatever, cook, drive, work, succeed) because you've been told all your life you can't, you start to believe it. You can't make it in whitey's world ® so don't try. That's the message a lot of kids get today. A lot of women are told they can't do math. (remember Barbie ® "math is hard") When I was teaching a statistical methods course, a lot of the women in the class were handicapped by years of math is hard (this was a grad level class - not yer typical underachievers). It's all in what you believe you can do, and getting off yer butt and doing it.
This doomsday talk is great for inciting controversy but has little to do with
- --------------------------------
reality. Support for computer literacy courses in every public school is the
obvious way to empower people . Such courses do exist. In addition, adult
computer literacy reach-out programs exist; my girlfriend is involved in such a
one in Boston. These programs teach such basic skills as how to navigate the
Web with a browser, how to write email, etc. One of her students, a welfare mom
with an alcoholic husband in prison and seven children, obtained her high school
equivalency, learned a lot about computers as a lab assistant, and obtained a
$30K/year job as a computer administrator working for the state (more money than
her teachers make, mind you). Obviously this individual was particularly
motivated but the point is that opportunities exist.
Volunteering once a week at one of these outreach programs is a fine way to help
fix the problem; writing doomsday articles about supposed racial divides
achieves nothing.
Yog
-----------------------------------------------
This application has encountered an internal problem and will be terminated. It
is recommended that you close all windows and restart your computer.
--MS Windows
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
My family helped me buy my first computer. Not a government program. Most of my family was poor then (the ones that helped me -- me, too), and most are poor now. But, now even some of the poor ones are scraping together enough money to go out and buy cheap PCs. I help them out as I can, too. That's how you get online.
I'm already paying taxes on my phone bill so that the poor can access the internet. If it had been a voluntary thing, I'd say, "sure, no problem... might help some other poor slob find a brighter future". But it's not. It's being forced away from me by the government - if I want phone service, I must pay this tax. That bites me.
I'm not a stingy person, but I'd rather give freely than be coerced into giving by some government power.
I see this article as a plea to black political leadership to try to extract money from the government (MY dollars, YOUR dollars!) to buy all black people a computer.
Well, that's a bunch of bullshit. En toto, I pay probably close to 50% of my income to the government for taxes and fees of one form or another. The interstate highways in this state are in horrible condition. Use those dollars to fix my roads before you go out spending money needlessly on stuff that should be taken care of by the individual, anyway!
Aggravated,
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
Maybe instead of standing around like a bunch of sheep, scoffing at us "lucky Americans" who complain a lot about our taxes, you should start complaining about your taxes, too.
There's absolutely no reason on God's earth that anyone, anywhere should pay half their income or more in taxes. You work for the money, so you ought to be able to spend it how you see fit!
For the religious, consider this: God himself only requires 10% of your income.
For the not-so-religious: if you didn't pay so many taxes, you could afford more $4/liter gasoline, and you could drive a nicer car. You could afford to pay your own health insurance, dental insurance, admission to art museums, and all that good jazz. Or, you could use public transit (one of the only good things government does, the others being national defense and helping to fund education) and not go to any museums, don't buy a lot, and retire early.
For goodness sake, though, don't deride us for being activists (well, some of us - a lot of us would like to be just like you, letting the government bend us over and rip every last penny out of our pockets without saying a single word), become activists yourself!
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
> Are we talking about the money per month on clothes statistic!? Think about it... if we
> believe that $2400 a month is spent on black children for clothes, that adds up to $28,800 a
> year AFTER TAX! This is simply not realistic.... gimme a break! Not even mentioning
> that most families have more than one child.
The statistic was for $2400/year. That's not unrealistic, considering that the favorite shoes costs $300/pair, a jacket costs $400, and all the other tripe.
Christ... when I got my first pair of Air Jordans (at $110 - and that was DAMNED expensive), I about creamed my jeans. I got them because to buy one pair of shoes every couple of years (they LASTED A LONG TIME) was cheaper than to buy a pair a month from Wal-Mart and have them fall apart.
I wore them out, and gave them a proper ceremonial cremation after their life was ended. They were good shoes.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
While it is true that the correlation between ...
poor economic conditions in the US and race is
not _currently_ a causal relationship, the
fact remains that _historically_ it was
people who grow up in poor economic conditions
statistically are far more likely to remain in
poor economic conditions than not, and the fact
that there is a correlation today is largely
because there was a correlation in the past
that came about because of racist policies
and practices.
To simply stick your head in the sand and say
"we're color-blind now", even if it were true,
would miss the point: people remain trapped in
poverty now because we weren't color-blind in
the past, and it's a reasonable social policy
to try to correct that. Indeed, arguably
failing to attempt to correct that would lead
to greater social instability than we see now.
Arguments that say "it's our responsibility to take care of people in situation [x]" often have logical problems. But there's another approach: when does it benefit society to take help individuals _not because they deserve the help_ but because the harm that they will or may inflict upon society is more than the cost of helping them?
A few years ago California adopted a law which prohibited the children of illegal immigrants from being educated in the public school system. Most of the discussion boiled down, on the one hand, to "but they deserve an education" or, on the other, "but they're freeloaders who don't belong here." I was distressed by the whole conversation because almost nobody would state the obvious --- that illegal immigration is not going to go away and, given that, and regardless of what's better for the _individuals_, it's better for everyone else if their children are educated and not uneducated drones that can only make money by stealing or (insert other unpleasentness here).
Most debates over social responsibility are like this --- nobody makes the pragmatic argument for helping people. Anyone know why?
It's hard to save up money for a computer when
you make $960 a month _before taxes_ and have
a family to support, and no friends to get
a computer from.
OK, so the people in question are idiots. But
what about their children?
We now live in a society that thinks that luxuries are basic rights. This is bad. A luxury is a one because everyone does not or cannot have one. Just because a group of people has something that a 'poorer' group does not doesn't make it a right to have one.
Computers are tools; you do not have a right to own a computer. You may own a computer or you may not, that is ok, but it is not ok to say "I am poor, give me a computer because I cannot afford one for myself". An example: I currently do not own a car. It would help me a great deal to own a car, but I cannot afford one. It would also help a lot of people a great deal to own a computer. I don't have a 'right' to get a free car nor should someone have a 'right' to get a free computer.
This I believe is just another example of 'class warfare' that goes on in America.
I think killing the AOLusers is going too far. Why not just take their computers, give them typewriters, and tell them that they just got a free upgrade to the latest in laptop technology? "Doesn't even need to be plugged in! Built-in printer!" etc...
JonKatz:
I was wondering - given you obviously have strong opinions on the topics you talk about... but, as suggested by your instructive tone of writing, one can only assume you must be a serious authority on a hell of a lot of topics.
In the below excerpt from your article you have laid down a system where by you will dictate 'the way things are' and expect your readers to accept this.
Computing is as white an industry as exists in American life, as any high-tech worker can see just from peering around. Although middle-class African-Americans and other minorities are getting online in substantial numbers, there remains an enormous disparity between whites' computer use and blacks', especially among the so-called underclass.
Of course, I've picked on a small, harmless piece of text. The thing is, there's a general tone throughout 'JonKatz' articles that indicates you not only believe what you say to be, somehow, unquestionably 'true' - but given the context of you expressing yourself on slashdot, there is an intrinsic suggestion that this truth exists for everyone. Anyone who has the time to trundle through your previous articles will find plenty examples of the nature of your expression.
A great example was your 'Hellmouth' series. Sure, it was obviously a topic that sent a rusty nail to the heart of a helluva lot of people - but throughout your articles you wrote not of suggestions, ideas and potential reasons for the aftermath of the school killings - but you dictated why and why not things happened.
Just look at the way you write what would normally be considered mere 'opinion' - something "is" wrong... rather than you believe something to be wrong and why.
What I say now is more of a request than anything else. Throughout this article, you refer almost exclusively to America. Given that not only can the internet be considered racially-blind, but surely it is also geographically-transparent. If this book is as significant as you suggest - surely it would have a broader perspective. Consider countries like India, China - Some of the largest populations in the world. Surely they have some significance? It would be refreshing to see some more consideration to a country other than America in such articles. And if there is nothing to consider - then maybe the article shouldn't be written.
Certainly looking at the above article it seems like just another hype, bandwagon thing - but enough people have already suggested very decent arguments against what you've written. I would add, that if an article about race were to be written - it might cover more relevant topics... the BNP (British National Party) still exists and has a strong enough following in Britain... I assume the Klu Klux Klan is still surviving and the term "Redneck" was coined for a reason.
You spoke of how this book contains more smart, provocative thinking about the future and technology than a decade of Web-gassing and media hype. Well... interpreting "web-gassing" and "media-hype" as intrinsically useless by the very fact that it's the "hype" of the media and the "gas" of the web, surely you have really said nothing? If you explicitly refer to the worst part of the media and the web, then by definition surely anything would be more provocative and smart. If, however, you did not waste such a line and actually intended to refer to all material available from the media and on the web - then, well, that's a sweeping statement if I ever heard one. And a judging one as well. I only point it out because if the topic about which you speak is so significant, then - reiterating my above point - why does it only refer to America. Given that the internet is geographically independant (for most intents and purposes) there's a lot of people reading slashdot that care of such implications outside of America.
BlueSky
Did this study draw any conclusions regarding internet usage in other American ethnic groups? What were percentages of internet connectivity when normalized against household income? I'm not sure that the data in this artical allows us to paint a complete picture about internet access and ethnicity in America. For example, it may be that internet access appears to be doubling (percentage wise) every year for all ethnic groups, but income factors are creating a temporary lag in usage percentage among various ethnic groups. If that is true, then all American ethnic groups mentioned would achieve near 100% connectivity within 4 years. PS: Some of these comments are just downright racist.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
So basically, you're saying that black people in general:
"were born in the middle of a housing project, with 4 siblings, no idea who your father was, a mother on drugs half the time and unable to give you attention, let alone raise you, with a boyfriend that beats her and sells drugs, where you don't play outside of the house, and you're lucky to get enough food to eat, let alone nutritional food"
And you were calling that other guy racist? Hmm, anybody else notice a slight discrepency. I think that poor people in general should be given more access to computers (not necessarily through the government though), but that this should be irrespective of the color of their skin. Why should a poor underprivelaged white kid get the shaft while a poor underprivelaged black kid is given a boost up and a chance to get a good, high-paying job? I try to live my life as color blind as possible (which isn't completely possible for anybody and if they say it is, then they're lying to you or themselves) and I refuse to be racist one way or the other.
*cough*RACIST*cough*
Excuse me, just clearing my throat.
First of all, the idea of giving black people computers is not aimed at older people, it's aimed at people much younger. As hard as this seems to be for people to believe, young black children were never slaves. They were never taken from their homeland, put into ships, and hauled off to pick cotton for a few hundred years. They weren't oppressed. If they were born to poverty, then they have a disadvantage there, but it's the same disadvantage that a poor white child has! Why then should they be given special treatment? Who cares if they're black? I sure as hell don't!! I just care who they are & who you are is not the color of your skin. Experiences aren't inhereted. They happen for each of us on our own. That's just plain crazy talk! What the fuck is wrong w/ you?! I didn't keep anybody from opportunities 30 years ago. I wasn't even born! And none of the people you're talking about helping were either!!!
Second, "Pure Darwinism worked in the middle ages..."? Um, I'm guessing you weren't much into attending history class back when you were younger. Social Darwinism (which is what you must mean, because Darwinism is a term that speaks of genetic evolution) wasn't applicable in the least in the middle ages. That's what was wrong. People were born into a caste system with no social mobility whatsoever. In our current class system social mobility is a lot greater, as is the application of Social Darwinism. In a completely libertarian society (that's libertarian with a lower case 'l') social mobility is far greater, because government beaurocracy doesn't attempt to keep people in their place. Under the system of hand-outs to the racially impaired (as you seem to think that being black is a disability), you're really just trying to keep people in place even more so, by making it a lot harder for their individual merits to allow them to change position. Poor whites sans computers would find it almost impossible to change positions, while poor black would be moved w/o them doing anything. Quite an unequal system IMHO.
Third, I just noticed that few if any people have used the PC term "African American". Good job! That term is absolutely rediculous and even less expressive than "black" is. I personally am African American in the most literal sense, but am anything but brown (as the term most logically should be). hehe, it helps me in putting down African American in this highly biased and racist society and provides unending amusement and joy over using the system, but it's still a grossly inaccurate term and it's nice that the far more expressive term "black" is being used, though judging by some of these posts, perhaps "brown crack head w/o a father living in poverty with no motivation whatsoever" should be used. That seems to be what many mean when they say "black" including Rabbins here.
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord:
1.My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.
From Peter's Evil Overlord List http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html
I personally would love to see some more women get involved in computers and go into CS!!
1. Most important of course, it's a bit lonely as a heterosexual guy who's into computers. It'd be nice to have some more good quality potential gfs around.
2. I think that we need some more quality people in CS. Most people in this field are idiots, both male and female. Why just 2 days ago I spent 15 mins explaing to a guy in my Computer Programming class why he couldn't place a function within another function in C++. Our final is next week and all we've done is C++. Oy Vey! At least some of the other stupid people had the decency to drop out!!
3. See number 1. It'd be nice to have a few more female nerds. Some of use geeks get horny too and could use gfs who share some common interests.
Incidentally, if you're a human female ~17 who lives in the Philadelphia area (preferably near ambler), my e-mail's listed.
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord:
2.My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
From Peter's Evil Overlord List http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html
To continue to place emphasis on the correlation between economic disadvantage and minority racial status is to encourage the problem. Those who've said that our society is becoming more colorblind are exactly right; how ironic, then, that there are activists who continue to beat the drum of racial divide-and-conquer!
The activists' attempts at "helping" racial minorities have resulted, simply, in more inequality and more divisiveness. Economic disparity won't change overnight, but it will take much longer if we persist in preying upon color of skin as a political weapon.
MJP
Don't try that "protecting the children" shit you people use to keep the tits and bad words off my TV. --Seanbaby
Sorry to have to tell you this sir, but in our economy hard work does mean shit. Its drive and determination to learn and be able to acheive that is worth shit. I worked some service jobs in my day, and would definatly say that I worked much harder than I do now, but I think I deserved my lower wage because what I offered was fairly useless and could be done by anyone.
Hey, here is the obvious solution: lets give computers to minorities. After all, giving hand outs to people helped end poverty in this country, right?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
You'all need to take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself what you are doing to make the world a better place to live.
Glad you asked. I'm making as much money as possible and spending it, thus creating additional demand in the economy, stimulating growth, and rasing the standard of living for everyone. When I don't spend I invest so that capital is available for other businesses which wish to expand their businesses by either hiring new workers or purchasing additional products, also creating demand and stimulating growth.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I grew up poor and paid for my own college (and Grad School). Go fuck yourself and your assumptions. People get what they want out of this world by working for it, not having it handed to them.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Here's some questions for your meritocractic worldview: George W. Bush,heir to an old fortune, does cocaine. So does some poor kid in Dallas. The latter gets caught, and does a minimum 15 year stint due to the mandatory sentencing guidelines that GWB has instituted in Texas. Now, does GWB get to be governor of Texas because he made the right choices?
George W. has never been caught or convicted of drug use. Does your meritocratic world view allow you to slander people with whom you (obviously) disagree?
Here's another. Michael Jackson gets paid more money to endorse a pair of sneakers than entire FACTORIES of women in Asia get paid to make them. Did he work for that money?
Sure he did. He provided a service to a company. MJ has a relatively rare talent, the ability to make companies think that people care what shoes he wears. They are willing to pay a premium for that. Asian women who will work on shoes are literally a dime a dozen.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
What does it matter if I am indicative of the average IT worker? The point is that anyone can do pretty much anything if they put their mind to it....
Sorry my parser skipped past your qualifier.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
27% of black men will go through the prison system - I believe as many as 70% of them for non-violent drug offenses. Law enforcement agencies target black (and often hispanic) men - racial profiling remains a widespread phenomenon...
Boy, I love this argument. Rather than state the obvious, which is that Blacks and minorities commit a disproportionately high percentage of crimes.. not that you can say that because it is Politically Incorrect, you accuse the police of racism. Not that there aren't cases of that, but not to skew the statistics to the extent that they are.
27% of black men go through the prision system... its not a lottery, you know. If you don't commit any crimes the odds are pretty close to zero that you will go though the prision system. What percentage of black men commit crimes that if they result in conviction typically result in prision sentences would be an intersting counterpoint to this statistic.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Some people are smarter than others too... should we require that they work harder in order to achieve the same results as people who are aren't as bright, in order to make the playing field more "level"? Affirmitive Action for the stupid... Sorry Mr. Smith, we noticed the average IQ in your department is way too high, we have a few, ahem, undereducated people for you to take on...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
A study of six California counties showed that 100% of their drug convictions were of people of color, although 60% of the drug-using population was white.
OK, so at worst you've shown that six California counties have problems with their police. I don't see how you can generalize from these numbers.
The National Institute for Drug Abuse estimates that while 12% of drug abusers are black, 50% of drug possession arrestees are black.
The National Institute for Drug Abuse?!?
Can't say I've ever heard of 'em.
55% of the prison population is black, despite the fact that only 12% of the US population is black. 96.5 % of those tried for crack cocaine charges are minorities, although 2/3rd of all crack cocaine users are white.
So? What percentage of crime is commited by blacks? Where do the 2/3 of all crack cocaine users are white statistic come from? I don't remember drug dealers (this is from my college days), doing a lot of demographic collection.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Normally I would be on the side of economics over race as the determining factor in a situation like this, but in this case I must disagree. Even if you only look at middle and upper class families, black families are only 1/3 to 1/4 as likely to be connected to the internet as white families with equivalent incomes according to an article i saw in the nytimes and a second i saw in the Washington Post.
Yes, the computer world is colorblind, and also age, sex, looks, etc, aren't important. But you need to be able to afford a computer and have a minimum of schooling in how to use it.
This is a racial issue in that there are more poor blacks and hispanics than poor whites.
But, dealing with this from a racial angle is completely wrong. Not only does helping someone because of their race pretty well equate with holding others back because of their race. (Would it be racism to give blacks a 50% off coupon for a computer? How about to do it for whites?)
What needs to be done is to target the situation people are in. If the poor can't get good schooling then chances are that they won't be eligible for any decent jobs, or better schooling, etc, and won't know what to do with a computer if the government requires that they be given one.
This is *not* a racial issue. I went to school with plenty of white kids who were destined to live McLives when I transfered into the inner city for my final year of high school.
We need to reach these children somehow. Offering them real choices and the education to make the most of their chances. It's not fair to say that the poor have as good of a chance at winning a scholarship when they have to grow up in a slum and are sick all the time and it's not enough to simply raise welfare payments hoping that it will miraculously make these children live an easier life.
I think advocates do themselves a disservice by making issues like this racial. I would be behind anti-poverty movements, but the minute someone brings race into it, like "Helping poor *black* families" I rebel completely. Treating one race differently from another is what got us into this mess in the first place and repreating that mistake won't help anyone.
So yes, technology is completely color blind. Computers don't care who hits their keys and the users at the other end won't know who you are unless you tell them. They are economically discriminatory because you need to buy them and they're fairly expensive to a family barely getting by as is.
There is a small racial issue here in that there are many poor blacks, but this just clouds the real issue by ignoring all the poor of other races.
Consider that computers are in most schools and they are integrated into most cirriculums in one way or another. This is true even in some of the most depressed schools in the nation due to federal funding.
Middle-age low income people may have missed the boat in computing, but poor youth are being exposed to computers. Somehow even the most poor in this country can afford a TV set. What's a TV set cost these days ? A used computer system is affordable for those who want it bad enough, even on low incomes.
This isn't a doomsday scenario at all for minorities and low income people. It's not about race or economics. It's an opportunity to escape the jaws of poverty.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Yes, the federal government should pass some new laws, making Internet access a fundamental right of all Americans! And a new agency should be created at the cabinet level to fund and oversee the deployment of systems to all households nationwide! And, of course, this agency should also be empowered with regulating content on all these systems. And, oh yeah, since addiction to the Internet is a BIG RISK, then this agency should not only monitor who sees what, but for how long. Basically, the federal government needs to get intimately involved with every U.S. citizen's daily Internet utilization, and ensure equal access by all. And while we're at it, let's have some laws to enforce literacy! Shouldn't it also be against the law to be stupid?
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Aurther C. Clarke
This is bullshit.
We don't need to _give_ anybody anything. If you want something, learn to fight for it. Most people aren't able to rise above it? So what, the world needs janitors too.
And yes I've been poor before. I've shoplifted just to be able to eat and I've worked shitty manual labor jobs to be able to buy computer equipment and go to school.
As far as the contention that the computer industry is all white, it looks more like all brown from where I'm sitting, most of the people I work with are from India or Pakistan, but why let facts get in the way of a good piece of whining, right?
Someone wants to learn how to program they can get a used Pentium for a couple hundred dollars. You can get a dial up connection for free if you can stand the ads. You can get C/C++ compilers for free. Perl, free. PHP/MySQL, free. The JDK, free. A terrabyte of source code, free. Programming is one of the least exclusionary professions on the face of the earth. Ask all the 18 and 19 year old programmers and sys admins.
And, in fact, you don't even deserve what you worked for. No one does
No, I do. You don't. And I bet it burns you up, too.
Truly, I'm utterly unimpressed with everyone's suffering, but it's nice to know that everyone on this board had to walk uphill both ways to make it to school each day
From your other posts, that doesn't seem to be true. You seem to be quite impressed with black people's suffering, and unimpressed with white people's suffering, and totally and completely ignorant of any other ethnic group's suffering. In other words you're a fucking racist.
As far as 'everyone on this board' talking about how hard they had it, that doesn't seem to be true either. It would seem that the people who claim to have had to overcome some pretty serious obstacles don't appreciate being told that they need to help other people overcome those obstacles. If someone wants to know how to become a programmer, I'll tell them. I'm not going to wipe their butts for them and pay for their crack habits.
Get some self-esteem.
Go fuck yourself.
While your relatives were fighting for a decent job, they were fighting for the simple right to vote. For the right to ride the same bus, use the same restrooms and go to the same schools.
And how well off would those people today if they hadn't been brought to America as slaves? Slavery still exists in Africa today, if you feel so strongly about slavery, why aren't you doing something about it?
And now that you have made something of youself you flaunt it and denounce those that could not.
Fucking right I do. If black people would have the same attitude instead of the contempt for education and hard work that many of them display, half the problem would be solved.
You do not need to do this personally, but try to see to it that your tax money goes there, and elect the people who say they will enforce that.
You didn't understand a word I wrote. It doesn't take much money. What was the statistic that was posted somewhere on this discussion about how much money was spent for clothes for a black child in a year? $2400 or something. And they can't afford a computer? Give me a break. I doubt I've spent $2400 on clothes in the last 10 years.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the color-blind, non-sexist, intellectually rigorous, all-inclusive meritocracy that is the net
Nobody knows what color you are here unless you tell them. It seems that for some people, the color of their skin is such an ingrained part of their identity that they can't go more than 25 or 30 seconds without mentioning it. It's pretty boring, actually.
Same thing goes for sex.
You expected the net to be 'intellectually rigorous'? Then you are 'intellectually challenged'.
All inclusive? Well, you have to know how to type.
A meritocracy? Well, if you had posted your comments to this dicussion without making references to your skin color or level of education, what else would we judge them on? But fortunately, you make an easy target. People who obsess about their race seem to be drawn to the lure of well-crafted flamebait, thus providing me with some cheap laughs. Have a nice day, dumb ass.
So some of the supposed bias disappears depending on the attitude of the test taker? How real then, is the supposed bias?
Asians self selected to come over here? So did whites, hispanics, American Indians, other kinds of Indians, and everybody else except some percentage of the black population. The vast majority of people in America today have great grandparents or great great grandparents who were born in another country. Is your argument that because many blacks didn't select to come here that we got the stupidest blacks instead of the smartest? Well, then the tests would seem to be doing their job then right? Or do you think the gap between test scores for whites and asians will disappear in a decade or so? I sincerely doubt it.
Actually, I never "cried" because the net isn't as rigorous and anti-racist as I preferred. I simply used your post as a clear example that it wasn't, in response to claims that it was
You still have not ( because you can not ) answered the basic charge I have made: no one knows your race, sex, religion or level of education here unless you personally make it a point of broadcasting it. The fact that racists and sexists use the internet does not mean that the internet is sexist and racist anymore than the fact that racists and sexists use typewriters means that typewriters are racist and sexist.
And expecting intellectual rigor from a medium open to anyone is obviously sub-moronic.
it's fun to watch you try, especially when you use big words like specification and adequate
I apologize if you have trouble understanding big words like 'adequate'. I could really have fun with this one, but it's too easy. I'm disappointed, quite frankly.
For example, any British Black I've ever seen speaks perfect English, in the US, we have this silly notion that the natural language for blacks is something called "Ebonics". Ebonics is an English subset.
You've been misled. Ebonics is not a subset of English, it is a dialect in its own right. It is just as expressive as NSAE (Network Standard American English), RP (British standard), Cockney, Ozark, Canuck, or any other English dialect. It got some rather unfortunate publicity when Oakland schools intended to acknowledge it as such; they weren't intending to teach in it (at least, not generally), they hoped that by recognising it as a dialect they could more effectively teach the students NSAE. The theory is, students are more receptive to ``in this classroom, I want you to speak formal English'' than to ``you're wrong''. From all I can tell, that's exactly correct.
I've seen the same thing as you wrt British black people, but I assume that's due to me mostly seeing foreigners who are educated enough to either get on TV or travel to the US for school or a conference; I don't interact with the poor British black people, but I interact with poor American black people on a semiregular basis. I should note that most of the well-educated American black people I know speak perfectly good NSAE.
An employer would be as likely to hire an ebonics-speaking black for a good job as he or she would be likely to hire a street-slang speaking white kid who uses the word "sh-t" every third word.
I feel the need to clarify: it's not the ability to speak ebonics that would disqualify them, but an inability to speak a more standard dialect. The well-educated American blacks I mentioned above do speak perfectly good NSAE, but they can drop into the thickest of Ebonic dialects when they're around friends and family. This isn't all that different from the second-generation immigrants who speak English natively with the public but drop into a foreign language when speaking with their parents---and there's nothing wrong with that.
``This, too, shall pass.'' ---Eastern proverb
Really? Because most British people I know don't speak perfect english. They speak some whacked-out version with no 'r' sounds and strange words I don't recognize.
But having said that, I've heard there is a real problem with "intellectual" english in black communities in the US. I've seen reports saying that blacks tend to drag eachother down. If you speak properly, or do well in school, or show an interest in science, you're insulted by your peers and are told you're "acting white".
Now I don't know any of this first-hand of course, but if it's the case, it's no wonder it's hard for a black person to succeed.
It's really depressing to see all these white /.ers posting how they had it so tough, just as tough as any poor black kid, and how since they struggled to the top, so should the black kid. This position sounds so rational, but it's really very naive. The problem stems from the culture into which a person is embedded. It's not that a poor black kid in a ghetto _physically_ can't go get a paperroute, and eventually buy a PC, but that the idea is so alien to his or her surroundings that it practically never happens.
Let me make an analogy. After I graduated from college, I took a couple years off and backpacked around Asia. Whenever I tell people back in the U.S. what I did, they always say, "you're so lucky! I wish I could do that!" "Lucky," I think? What's "lucky" about it? I worked for a few months, saved some money, and went. Living there is so cheap that it doesn't take a lot of money to go -- I met plenty of travellers who had worked minimum wage jobs to save money for such a trip. And there were five times as many English travellers as Americans. The concept of taking off for such a trip is alien to most Americans, and _that_ is why people don't do it more. Not because they physically can't. The precedence, personal role models, and cultural encouragement just aren't there. And for working class blacks in America today, they face a similar environment in regards to computers.
adum
First of all, I am nor suprised by any of this, because if you have a legit 100000/year income, you can get yourself a 7-series BMW, along with a bunch of other nice stuff.
I think a lot of the issue is that many high-paying jobs require regular computer usage -- for intraoffice communication, making databases, whatever. THAT is probably the main reason people get computers at home -- 'cause they want to be able to do all the same things. I wouldn't dream about writing a paper without a computer to do it on, and I think that if I had a kid, I would make damn sure he/she had all the same benefits as I had. The problem here isn't that blacks don't want to use comptuers or whatever. It's that when you flip burgers, or haul luggage at the airport, you don't get to use a computer at work, and therefore you don't really know what to do with one at home, especially when you can get cable TV and a Sega console. The problem isn't racial at all, it is economic, and I really don't like it when somebody confuses the two.
And that economic problem ain't gonna be solved anytime soon, and I don't even know who might go about finding someone to think of how it might be done 20 years from now.
-S
so, *most* of them are collage educated, middle class people, just like most white people. as a persentage there are more poor blacks then poor whites, but in total there are more poor whites then poor blacks. this is a common misconseption, but to say The majority of this culture has grown up knowing absolutely nothing but poverty and ignorance... it is not as simple as many have suggested to just state that they now have the oportunities as everyone else. They do not.
is completely wrong, racist and stupid
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Racism adequately explains why the average US black person makes less money than the average US white person. However, if you compare internet usage between white people and black people with comparable income, and there is a significant discrepancy, then racism does not explain the difference. I'd like to see the stats on that, myself.
Black Leadership has always reminded me of Labor Leadership (I've never been black, but I've been in a union). They seem to be awfully happy to increase their own income at the expense of the constituency they claim to represent, while accomplishing little or nothing.
While there are obviously many differences, I try to picture how South Africa (where I live) might look 30 years from now by taking a look at America. Its obvious to me that 30 years is not enough to completely reform a country as socially damaged as this one - yet people always somehow seem to think that reform happens overnight.
Despite what many
I've heard "poor" people on this thread whining about how terrible they had it because they had to 'put together throw away scraps from the University' to get their first computer. You haven't got a clue what "poverty" means. Come walk around in a South African township, and then tell those people living in shacks, who can't even afford the basics such as clothing, blankets, food etc, that they should "lift themselves up out of it by taking the initiative to learn about technology". Get real. Those people aren't there because they are lazy, they are there because they weren't given the opportunity to get any reasonably decent education whatsoever.
It takes money to make money - a university education is an expensive thing. I'm not naive - I actually realize just how incredibly lucky I am to have been born into a wealthy white SA family, with parents who could afford to send us all to University - even though I saved for years to be able to afford my first computer. I am where I am now not just because I worked hard but because I had the opportunities available that many here do not - and America is just the same, despite the fact that racism 'on paper' has been gone for several decades in America, it takes more than one or two generations to reform a system.
Take a closer look at how much of your current success was hard work, and how much was luck (ie opportunities you had that others dont/didnt). Not everyone is as lucky as you.
This is an excellent idea. An internet appliance in every home should be written into the constitution. Webcams should be made mandatory, to avoid the perils of internet addiction (and other various dangers).
The responsible organization could be called:
Bureau of
Internet access
Grants for
Blacks and other
Racial minorities
Otherwise
Too poor to
Have
Equal access
Rights
couldnt resist...
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
lemme tell you a little story. a story about a chap named bill. he desperately wanted to dominate the world. so his well-connected socialite mommy introduced him to some suits at ibm who wanted to buy an operating system. only problem? he couldnt write his own operating system. so he asked his daddy for a quick $50,000 (not inflation adjusted, kiddies). he bought his operating system. and now his company has a net worth of a mildly successful third-world nation. oh, and bill is a billionaire _many_ times over now. and if he hadn't had access to that quick $50,000 , he never would have achieved world domination.
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
somehow i don't think VC firms were as friendly to crazy programmers back then...
i agree that hard work and greed are the main drivers in success in the biz. MY point was (perhaps you didnt get it) that coming from a privileged/connected environment raises your likelihood of success. i'm black, and can see bot hsides of this whole thing. however anyone who thinks it isnt harder if your black is crazy.
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
difference is, jobs and woz had a _choice_ . this is all highly symbolic but look at the recent cheesy movie on them - when apple took off jobs cut his beard, and blended in with the reast of the suits. back then if you were black you couldnt lead a successful fortune 500 company no matter HOW clean-cut or smart you were.
so, once again i think things are a lot better now but i think its foolish to stick your head in the sand about where the u.s. was/is in terms of equality. votings rights act was was what, forty eyars ago? seems like a lot to those geeks out there but not a lot historically speaking. i'm not an apologist - frankly i think often black people are our own worst enemies. but i dont think historical amnesia is the answer.
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
The problem with couching the problem in racial terms is that it implies that the idea of learning about computers is foreign because the child has black skin when, in fact, there are absolutely no significant racial obsticles to learning about computers. As several people have pointed out, they are dirt cheap. Kids with absolutely no training whatsoever can learn how to use and program computers (neither of my parents knew anything about computers when I got my Vic 20 in middle school and bought a few magazines with the BASIC code for simple games).
The fact that computers are low priority in the ghetto does not stem from the fact that a particular ghetto is predominantly black. The problem is with the ghetto subculture, in which children are more concerned with basic survival and their relationship with gangs than with their intellectual development. It is not just a black thing - similar problematic subcultures exist in many racial groups thoughout the world. The "black ghetto" subculture is probably just as interested in computers as any "italian ghetto" subculture or "white trash trailer park" subculture. It's not the skin. It's the subculture. If I were a middle class educated black, I would take offense to the idea that my race puts me at an intellectual disadvantage.
No doubt, a middle class kid of any race will have easier access to $$ for a computer and books, or more likely, there will already be a computer waiting for him when he crawls out of the crib. A middle class kid of any race will likely become more educated in any particular intellectual pursuit that you care to name, not just computer science.
I simply do not believe that skin color is a significant obstacle to intellectual pursuit in this age. Nor do I believe that a recent history of oppression counts an a direct obstacle either. The British empire was quite adept at oppression, and yet many of their former subjects in the east are quite determined to learn about computers. The mayor and most positions of power in my city are held by African Americans - there is no "white oppression" here. Yet the now nonoppressed "black ghetto" subculture has not taken an interest in computers. Even though people of their race (but not subculture) are in power. It has nothing to do with oppression. That particular subculture just isn't very interested in computers. The American Amish subculture hasn't been particularly oppressed, and the Amish still aren't very interested in technology. And they are not particularly weathly either. Is this a problem? Should we be spending more tax money so that we can expose more Amish kids to the computers that their subculture denies them. After all, those kids didn't choose to be born into that subculture, and they actually seem to have even less of a choice to take up computers than the poor black ghetto kid. How can we just stand by and let the Amish kids remain computer illiterate? Well, one difference here is that the Amish subculture does place some emphasis on education and intellectual pursuit, whereas the "black ghetto" subculture does not.
The controversy presented here is laughable when, despite a lot of time, money, and ideas, we still haven't solved the basic problem of teaching everybody in our country how to read and write. The same obstacles we have faced with this longstanding problem will be there when you try to teach computers. So why don't we concentrate on reading and writing before worrying too much about web surfing skills that depend on reading and writing. After we master those problems, then we can move on to the social gaps in mathematics, physics, astronomy, geography, chemistry, and philosophy.
Let's not complain about a flat tire when we don't even have an engine!
Freedom, which is the thing that was stolen, cannot be returned to the slaves at this point. The life my great grandfather lost at the hands of your murderous great grandmother's second cousin cannot be returned. So how are you going to make it up to me?
Other robots! Once the system is bootstrapped, it should not require much human labor.
Okay, so do the descendants of murderers or other criminals owe the descendants of the murdered for lost wages, mental anguish, and other punitive damages. Are the descendants of criminals responsible? Do the modern Babylonians owe money to the decendants of the israelites they enslaved? Will little German boys and girls born in the year 2100 still owe money to the little Jewish boys and girls?
I personally know very few white people whose ancesters were even in the country during slavery. Do the vast number of people descended from european immigrants that came after slavery was abolished still owe resititution? I would be willing to bet that the number of "white people" descended from post slavery immigrants exceeds the number descended from plantation owners. What about immigrants of other races living here that own land? Do they owe money too? Do the African decendants of those who initially sold people into slavery also owe money and land?
The fallacy in your argument is that you believe people living in America today are responsible for the actions of those who are long dead and gone. How could they be? If you go back in time far enough, I'm sure that everyone has an ancester that has caused uncompensated damages to someone else's ancester. You caveman ancester may have maimed my caveman ancester's left leg, leaving him unable to hunt and gather effectively. Let's see now how much compound interest has accumulated from those damages!
There is a line of thought that expresses that all (human) conflicts arise from divisions.
... "all poor black people will be given free net access at libraries (or something)"
Divisions can be of any form, and you can without exception, attribute ALL human conflicts documented by history to one simple division.
These divisions can be racial, religious, political, geographical, idealogical, based on physical weight, age, OS preference, programming language preference, what uni you associate with, whether you are left handed or right handed.
The most important thing to realise is that ALL divisions are abstract. They dont really exist. They are merely defined in ones thought habits. A black person can be genetically more similar to a white person than an other black person. geographical divisions dont exist (try zooming in on the ground to see the line) etc. etc.
So yes, Katz's article (and the paper he is talking about) does more damage than anything else because it concretizes (and maybe introduces) a division in people's thinking.
Rather than waste time talking about shit like this, we should be trying to understand why thought creates "thought" divisions so easily.
YOu can go blue in the face making rules like "all companies who have more than 10 employees must have min 20% women workers" or
its symptomatic, wont change anything.
its all about how people think.
this still economic. why did white people leave? 'cause they could afford to. the welfare state has create a ghetto culture and culture is like software. it's just programming. doesn't make a difference of color. but if you get bad programming you're going to get bad results.
Pork is not a verb
I'm so sick of people whining about how they are being victimized I could puke blood. Katz, I enjoy your articles, but I have to break it to you that this is the kind of thinking that leads to the restrictive and beaurocratic bullshit that you complain about so much.
The internet knows no physical identifiers. Nobody I communicate with knows if I'm a 19 year old white male or a 34 year old black woman unless *I* want them to. The net is no place to whine about racial discrimination.
We've lost the concept of individual responsibility, imho primarily as the result of the "me generation." Our generation has grown up with so much "guidance councelling" and "awareness training" bullshit that we don't know how to think properly any more. Any time anything goes wrong, instead of trying to figure out ways to fix it or do it better the next time around, we start looking for ways we've been victimized by the big bad [insert ok-to-hate group here].
Victim mentality is just a way to avoid the (ghastly) thought that each individual person is (gasp) individually responsible for their own actions. "Oh, [insert anything here] didn't work out for me because I'm [insert victim group here]."
(I can just hear my 5th grade guidance counselor saying in her prozac and vailum drone "but that's oooohhhh-kaaaayyy")
Wake up. Quit whining about how you've been shit on. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Realize that there's no such thing as a group, there is only the individual. The group is in your head.
kum-ba-ya my lord
kum ba ya
Pissed.
Anthony DiMarco
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
(offtopic)
I lived near Philadelphia for the first 18 years of my life, then in Cincinnati for 6 more. In all that time, I never had anyone (other than friends) offer me drugs. I'm in Baltimore three hours and someone tries to sell me crack. WTF?
I'd like to see this study, I have a suspicion you are misremembering it or misinterpreting it.
I always thought it had more to do with things like real-estate agents tending NOT to show black families houses in white neighborhoods. And things like white-flight, where white families used to live in the inner city, but have now fled to the suburbs. It think it has more to do with whhite middle class america rejecting the notion of living across the street from those people. Bahh, I've never met a person yet who liked living in those kind of cramped conditions. I really do question this.
I wasn't talking about whether this was based in economics or race or whatever. I simply said I would like to see a reference to this study so I could see it myself. And most of the things I was talking about were not economic, they were social. The black people wanting to get a new house have money, they are economically equal to the rest of the people in the neighborhood.
As to ghettos being bad, absolutely. (I am talking about a ghetto in the dictionary sense of the word, where a culturally/racially homogenous group of people lives together). This is a bad idea, because it is much easier to remain isolated from the rest of the culture and language of the society around you. Look at the Jews in mideavil (sp?) Europe who paid for the privilege to set up separate communities (ghettoes) in the german cities where their own laws were enforced. Six hundred years later the languages of the Jews had drifted so far apart from German it became a separate language (yiddish).
Free the slaves and identify the ppl who use the powers of others for their own gain. (Enslaving Scientists, Kids in Mines, Streetworkers in Prisons etc.). If u all give them less money, they will dry up naturally. And get addicted to smiling not fear.
:-)
>Someones economic level, beyond the age of 18 or
>so, is their own doing for the most part, nothing
>that happened so long ago is still causing them
>to be poor. Get off it man.
Reasons for ppl not doing well:
living in a shit part of town.
result:
no *good* jobs avialable, depreciation of value. Can't sell house, if you can, can't get the money you paid.
cause (for some): FHA discrimination back in the 50's when many good jobs were moving from the cities to the suburbs. the suburbs became almost all white communities. Minorities were kept in the cities.
Resons this still afects ppl: cant sell house, no money cause there are no good jobs, hence can't get a house in a nice area, with good jobs, so you can't get a good job to aford a good house in a nice area... the cycle continues with the children.
Whites: Easily able to obtain a mortgage on a house in a suburb with an increasing land value (ie a base amount of wealth from which it was easier to gain more). Good jobs available. and so on.
The goverment invested in one group of people and excluded another. Of course it still afects people today, just like investing money in a bond or something. Some people are getting twice the value back, some are losing value. This is just one discriminatory policy of the goverment. there are more.
nothing is cut and dry.
-Alex
>People are not responsible for what someone else >did .because it's unclear when
>n years ago. Why. .
>the blame should stop. IOW, using your line
>of reasoning (term applied quite loosely) >couldn't
>we all be held responsible for Eve's temptation
>of Adam.
Isn't this what the bible says? (correct me if i am wrong)
-Alex
I'll probably regret even bothering but here goes...
;-)
/. piss me off once again with the "I know it all because I have a clue about 'puters attitude?" Well needless to say in the most predictable fashion I was not disappointed.
/. lack social protocols and thus have no clue.
/. readers are failing to realize is that the same things that disgust them about people and computers, read ignorance, is the exact same thing that they are guilty of. Sure not all of you are closet racists, or insensitive (yes insensitive, if you are a tough ass then go be tough and don't complain when the universe sh!ts on you!) morons, but there are quite a few or many they are the most vocal. See it's always hard to tell with these things. But they don't really concern me. It's the intelligent people that I know are out there that say nothing. Yes it is easy to ignore something if it doesn't affect you. But this will.
/.ers need to start getting their fair share.
I once read an interview of Larry Wall in which he talked about "glue people"." Well I am definitely one of those people in the worst way. Never fear I enjoy it. I will not place a string of qualifications either. You are just going to have to trust me.
When I saw the the title to this article I immediately tensed. Would
If you think of a network running all types of hardware and software connecting all manners of people doing all manners of things you realize a subtle complexity there that has been utilized by way of protocols. I think that many on
I need not argue or try to convince you of anything. Yelling that you know something to be true and it actually being true is the slight point that many miss in life.
The sociopolitical situation is more complex than the U.S. economy. Armchair sociologists such as yourselves should actually cringe at what you don't know. "I have black friends." "I know this one black person that..." Please, spare us all the gross show of your stupidity.
I am not sure who, but someone once said that our language aids in the dehumanization of people. Those Jews. Rednecks always... Blacks need to... Gross generalizations that only make the user more ignorant to what is going on around them.
Race, economics, gender, personality, those other people. What many
Here's a clue: Ask yourself how far you have gone out of your way to get someone to try Linux or to help them start using it. Now tell me the difference between that and helping someone become more technically savvy? Who was this person you helped? A friend, a girl you were interested in, a family member, or a complete stranger? What makes them different from some browned skinned person residing in America that was always interested in tech but did not know where to start?
It's not just about the internet it is about information and knowledge and these can be withheld. It is wisdom that comes freely from the individual and I think many
nothing excels in every environment
I need not argue or try to convince you of anything. Yelling that you know something to be true and it actually being true is the slight point that many miss in life. The world sociopolitical situation is more complex than the world economy. Armchair sociologists/economists/psychologists such as yourselves should actually cringe at what you don't know. "I have black friends." "I know this one black person that..." Please, spare us all the gross show of your stupidity. It's not just about the internet it is about information and knowledge and these can be withheld. It is wisdom that comes freely from the individual and I think many /.ers need to start getting their fair share.
nothing excels in every environment
...this matter. You'all need to take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself what you are doing to make the world a better place to live. I believe that social Darwinism is a valid theory too, but I don't try to perpetuate it. I spend a few hours a month helping a local United Way organization that specializes in providing mentors for disadvantaged youth (read: kids growing up in the 'hood).
Check out a web site called "http://www.tutormentorconnection.org". It may just open your eyes a little as to what these children have to deal with on a daily basis. It's hard to think of how difficult it can be to have technological prowess if you had your first computer at the age of 8. I feel that it's very important to start early with children when it comes to technology. Kind of like learning a new language. You know how children pick up languages like they would a ball in the yard? Same goes with computers. None of you Linux gurus (or at least very few of you) got as good as you are by firing up a computer for the first time at the age of 20.
1. The government could assemble a squad of assassins to kill off all of the white AOL users. This would serve two purposes; it would even out those percentages a bit and would raise the average IQ of internet users by at least twenty points.
2. The government could confiscate computers from white families and distribute them among minority communities. Optionally, the government could require all manufacturers of computer-related equipment to set aside a percentage of their products to be donated to non-pigmentally-challenged citizens.
3. The government and private institutions could provide scholarships and grants based on merit and/or financial need in an effort to make sure that all students have an equal chance to go to college and learn the skills that they will need to survive in our changing society. Oh, wait, they're already doing that.
4. People who can't or don't want to learn how to use computers could work construction or drive trucks or work on an assembly line or. . . no, this one's already being done too.
Personally, I prefer choice #1.
--
"Bother," said Pooh, as lightning knocked out hi%#&(F*@NO CARRIER
good post... hope someone moderates it up.
also on technology.
technology makes it so one can do more with less. so what we are seeing is that we dont need all of the population employed. yet, everyone thinks that unemployment is a bad thing. so what we need is some means for people to receive necessities of live. this "problem" so far hasnt been solved... and it keep coming up. ie "how will programers eat if software is free?", "how will the economical underclassed eat if they can't do any 'work'?"
does anyone else see the similarity? that the march of technology, will change everything? that our money system can't coup with unlimited suplus? that draging our feet and anvoiding the problem doesnt help?
for more on the quest for a 'fix' read RAW's illuminati papers. ( wish i had the time to write more but work calls... )
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
Doesn't seem to you guys that things are going the other way tho.? Maybe i've sucked down too much coffee and am feeling optimistic :) Computer prices are dropping out of control (price of a vcr), we now have a completely well designed beautiful development environment (linux and friends for kidz to learn how to code).. Net access is dropping to about $10 a month .. about the same as a water bill.. We're *really* close to people thinking its economically viable to have free net access for all as well as free machines.. That is the infrastructure, now we just have to convince the kidz that its worth their while (free pr0n d00d :)) The good side of the net has always been start up costs for creating businesses, it doesn't take old money anymore.. (i.e. no more $250k to open the restaurant get space etc etc) this will benefit minorities and the poor more than anything else.. old money is getting their money the same way as they ever were the stockmarket.. lets laugh heartily when nasdaq goes south :).
-avi
(who thinks the problem is much more class than race)
Right. What the poor people need to do to imporove themselves is get the 'gumption' to go to Harvard Business School.
No, we don't need a world full of programmers.
What we need is a world where you maintain your status by doing good work, not by preventing poor people and their children from having access to the knowledge and education you were priveleged enough to get.
Great!
We can use the Internet to figure out how to help!
A brief search (using Google of course) for terms like names of local underpriveleged communities, 'community', 'internet', 'computer', 'nonprofit', and 'organization' turned up http://www.pluggedin.org/involved/ways.html which is ideal for me! Good luck on finding your own cause!
I'm sure there are a few exceptions here, but I suspect 95%+ of us fall into a very specific category:
* White
* Male
* Parents owned a home computer
* Our primary schools had computer labs
Yes, maybe we were made fun of when we were nerdy little kids, and that sucks.
But really, who can say they really 'work harder' than the average poor person? Look at you. You're spending all day reading usenet and responding to slashdot. You're not working harder than Inez who's going to come by this evening to clean your cubicle or your dorm floor.
Don't give in to selfishness. Help people. You'll enjoy it. I promise.
Except the article was about blacks. Where are the blacks in Silicon Valley? I work here, and of about 300 employees, we employ two blacks. One as a secretary, and the other as a receptionist.
Oh get off your 'hard work' horse, mister spent-all-day-posting-to-slashdot.
You really expect us to believe you worked harder today than Louis your garbageman?
If you had REALLY worked hard to get where you are today, then you should be mad as hell at me for having it so easy, and you should be arguing the other side.
What are you afraid of? Is it a job security thing?
And so after your hard, hard life, you're arguing for the rich kids who had it easy?
You're arguing that Bill, who grew up spoiled rich, and went to Harvard, is different from Jawad who operates a catering truck only because he 'deserves' it somehow?
How do you know how many Bills, or Perots, or Georges or Forbeses are living dirt poor right now because you are conspiring to keep them that way? And what are you going to do to help them?
If you make race the issue then it becomes the focal point of the discussion. It seems to me that the issue is really one of economics - people that do not have the income available to them to purchase a computer and internet service. Those people could be white, black, hispanic, tall, short, fat, hairy or blue.
A specific demographic may have a larger number of economically depressed people per capita, but that doesn't mean that a poor person of European descent doesn't deserve the same access as some poor person of African descent.
I don't think access to a computer or the internet is a right of individuals, but it would be nice to make sure that we, as a society, help as many people get access as we can. (And free software matched with cheap hardware can really bring us a long way towards that...)
It would be great if everyone could afford a computer. It would also be great if everyone could afford a house, a car, and a nice cruise one a year...
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
Why should we have to help *anyone*? I didn't grow up rich. In fact, in the late 80's I was trash picking computer parts out of dumpsters behind universities just so I could have a computer to use. You can't tell me they can't pick up a used 486 out of the trash and make it work. I see lots of them on the street every trash day. If they want it bad enough, it's out there. I can't stand notions of entitlement.
This problem of economic and technological isoloation and frustrauion will hit everyone regardless of race. If it happens at all, it will be on the poor. This is not a racial issue but an economic one. Why does every problem in society have to always have a racial angle. Is any one group worse off than the rest? Sounds like a martyr syndrome to me
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
"This isn't a doomsday scenario at all for minorities and low income people. It's not about race or economics. It's an opportunity to escape the jaws of poverty."
Although the issue of race is important, I think the deeper issue is the economics of technology in general. Technology is power. That power will create equality only in proportion to the good intentions of those who wield it. I don't see much in the way of good intentions and I think the economic benefits are going to be short lived. Once the hardware and software infrastructure are in place, the internet may very well serve to accelerate the exploitation of the poor and the undermining of Democracy. It has the *potential* for the opposite effect, but that potential is dependent upon the moral values and motivations of those who have economic and technological power (primarily the multinationals). Just because the internet has great potential, doesn't mean it will realize that potential. Just look at basic areas of human life like food and drugs. We have the technology to feed the world and provide cures for deadly diseases while a huge proportion of people suffers needlessly anyway. Why should we expect the internet to be any different?
Your first paragraph is an economic argument -- not a racial one. You are making the mistake of equating correlation with causation.
The subject of your first paragraph could be black, white, hispanic, or asian, etc. Using racial instead of economic methods to identify such an economic situation is simply racist.
The reality of the situation is that the net is, at least until we hook up cameras to each PC, colorblind. I respectfully suggest that that is a Good Thing.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Really, give the city a chance. It's not as bad as the evening news and the politicians would have you believe.
Would he have had enough computer experience to start Linux, or would he have ended working as a security guard or cashier?
Think of the human potential being lost because poor, minority kids are being underexposed to computers. I'm not saying we need to buy every underprivileged kid a computer, but someone needs to let them know that being computer and internet illiterate is going to be a bigger handicap than being unable to drive a car.
The article is saying that black leaders are indifferent to the impact of computers and the 'net on our society, and may lead their children into permanent second class citizenship.
And of course with Linux and old 486's and Pentiums, net access can be almost universal in the United States.
George
I don't think it's totally economic, I put my in-laws on the net for $150 last year, and I could do it even cheaper this year.
I think it's more philosophical. The internet has barely begun to change society, it's a tidal wave bearing down on our society, and large portions of the poor populations aren't even being told about it.
I suppose we can let them founder, a few exceptional ones will learn on their own, the rest can live with minimum wage service jobs, just as long as we have enough TV and fast food to keep them fat, dumb and non-rioting.
George
Yer right, sloppy and imprecise writing on my part.
The article mainly refers to blacks, and a few times to Hispanics.
I suppose when the white population of America dips below 50%, all Americans will be minorities.
Do you have any information on computer usage of other minorities? Are there minority groups that promote computers and education ( I suppose Asian are the stereotype here).
George
That wasn't my point. My point was that sometime a single person can make great changes in society.
Maybe if Linus hadn't come along, FreeBSD would have exploded, but it might have happened a few years later.
What if Berners-Lee hadn't worked to create the web. Maybe Xanadu would be coming to fruition, and for the proceeding 5 years the biggest impact of the internet would still have been USENET.
George
kewl,
so the next time one of the neighborhood children offer to sell me their microbus and HP calculator, I'll take them up on it.
George
As has been discussed in many of these threads, in a capitalistic system there is inherently a class structure. The reason that America is a social-welfare state and that reforms have been passed is because we don't want a bloody revolution as they had in France. We want our poor to feel empowered through the legislative process, which they really aren't because the poor don't pay the taxes which pay our legistlators salaries. This class structure didn't just happen, it was created by immigration, slavery, and various other social and economic events. And for those of you who say "my ancestors may have owned slaves, why should I have to pay for their misdeeds?" Well as long as people aren't paying for their ancestors' misdeeds, should people born into poor families be given money to compensate for their ancestors status? And though we are capitalist, and even if we can't achieve equality for all, isn't our responsibility as members of the human race to strive for it? Put that in your proverbial pipe and smoke it. We are moving from an age of racist bigotry to one of economic.
[WARNING: this post written in Rant Mode]
There's a lot that goes into this "problem," and unfortunately it's not going to be looked at in anything even approximating a sensible fashion by most people. Too easy to sound off on the position of the moment.
First and foremost, I see "race" is being used as a metaphor for "class" yet AGAIN because we Americans are so damn allergic to talking about "class" -- that's "communist." *rolls eyes* The end result of this, of course, is that upper-middle-class African-Americans who don't need the money get the scholarships etc. anyhow, because they're able to outperform their poorer counterparts. I've always found this rather asinine, myself.
Secondly (and I know that a lot of folks on
For that matter, when new technology shows up, we generally lose as much as we gain. It takes at least an associate's, probably a bachelor's degree to be considered as "educated" as someone with a lowly high school diploma was 50 years ago. And I'm not convinced that we have that much more knowledge or street-smarts. It's gotten too easy to get someone else to do the work for us, and too many of us make fun of the people who DO that work later and call them stupid. Well, can YOU fix your own pipes, or do you have to call a plumber?
In ancient times, bards were expected to memorize book-length epics. How many of us would be able to do that today? Probably not many. Admittedly, it's not the most useful skill in the world, but neither is being able to program a new version of Quake. Sorry, guys.
For that matter, different subcultures put an emphasis on different skills. The slaves in this country had a strong oral tradition (in part because they weren't allowed to learn to read) that for a long time wasn't seen as "artistic" because it wasn't written down. Doesn't make it any less valuable. And if I were part of a culture that depended heavily on oral traditions and interpersonal face-to-face contact, a Net connection would probably be about the LAST thing I'd want.
There's no push-button solution here, but realizing that people not chomping at the technological bit aren't necessarily morons beneath your notice would be a damn good start.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Golley, I'm poor and white, and I still think that a man should make money, not parasitically take it from those that can and do.
I suppose it would be easier if it just took something like my skin tone to get me in a leather chair with my own secretary.
I guess I just like earning my living too much.
*yawn too*
I would guess that there are few pragmatic arguments *for* helping people besides yourself. It's just that simple.
You're capable of feeding yourself. No one should force you to feed another, even if they are in the most destitute of states, against your will. That *is* slavery, my friend, not social responsibility.
Wow, that us utterly sickening...
I make my own way, thank you. If I choose to stand on some people's shoulders, then fine, that's my choice. I don't have to.
Morally wrong? You can't possibly be approaching that from the standpoint of morality. I see your hand in my pocket, taking the money that is *mine*, not the society's, and giving it away. That is criminal. I'm sorry you don't see it that way.
No. Your socialist bent isn't surprising. I assume by saying you're in some 'high' position in 'our' social structure indicates you're job is something of a governmental nature.
Fine.
I hope I didn't vote for you. It would have been irresponsible of me. If you aren't a 'public servant', then I suppose your stance is a natural result of 'working for the state' just like mine is a natural result of 'working for me.'
AC, Hmmm?
I never said I didn't like the *services* the police provide. I don't mind paying them (I just don't like it being mandatory -- it gives me no leverage if they perform their jobs poorly).
Government? Well....I would suspect you probably can find some very strong arguments that the gov't has been both a white knight and a villan with my money. I would just as soon put it where I wanted to, though. Even a popular direct vote for fund allocation would be better than the murk and mire that currently exists. I want to know where it *goes.* It is my property being used in my name, after all.
Oh, and yes, I think a private contractor with his job on the line can do a better job with the roads around here.
>>>I ain't no jeenyus
Yep, that's true.
Man, if I lived in a place where my work, talent, and capacity weren't rewarded (and I mean with cold, hard cash, not to mention the self satisfaction of a job well done), I'd just nip off and shoot myself.
Listen, my dad's a farmer, I know all about 'all sorts of effort with little gain.' It's just not the resposibility of me, or any (wo)man to make sure everyone is doing a job that is
1. worthwhile
2. making them feel good about life
3. feeding their families (which begs the question why anyone would start a family they could not guarantee to sustain)
Frankly the logic flaws about social responsibility in general are *huge* in this day and age. It really cannot be morally correct to force a man to feed another. Ever.
I had a simlar situation. Although I never got abused(well endlessly verbly abused if that counts) or had to live in a FHA house. My mother divorced my father, she remarried a drunk, who stole *MY* child support money to buy wastful things, all I had was food and cloths. Then when got older I moved in with my Dad, and he was so poor all he could do was feed, cloth, and give me a warm place to live in the winter. Then when I was about 12 years old I wanted a computer but there was no money for it. So I decided to go out and get a paper route. I worked my ass off, I remember one winter we had about 6 or 7 inches of snow, and I had to carry 100 news papers in the snow on a sled to have them delivered just to make $15.00 that day. Any how I saved all my pennys and bought myself a brand new 286 computer. Then the 386's came out and well no money for that, so I waited and bought myself a 486 a year or two later. By then I knew enough about computers and got some lame computer job, earned more money, put myself through technical school, got a better job, earned more money and now I'm making $50,000/yr. Now when I look at computer prices you can pick yourself up a Pentium machine for around $200.00 geez, when I did it, I had to pay $1,500 it took me quiet awhile to save up for that 286. Now if you can't come up with $200.00 these days you're just a lazy fool and deserve to be a janitor.
Most of my friends are black. If there is a divide, then I don't see it.
:).
:P) She is great in Win9x environments but she despises using a computer and the fact that so many people are dependent on computers to run their lives. I think that computers are tools and nothing more. The best tool ever invented, but a tool just the same.
Granted that my friends are not in techie jobs but to say that they are enthusiastic about computers and the Internet is the understatement of the year.
When I first got my current computer about a year ago, I believe my friends clocked more time on it then I ever did. Always on the Internet and not just surfing for porn (like I usually do).
Finally, they got a computer and their phone stays tied up constantly. (I keep pushing them to get Cable Modem or DSL but whatever...).
I have another friend (who is black) who just got out of school for AutoCAD and I am helping him build a system for AutoCAD and a music studio (I will probably recommend two systems and the one for music running BeOS).
My girlfriend's aunt (who is black) needs a computer for her bakery and I am going shopping with her this weekend to Gateway Country (unfortunately, I cannot build a cheap enough system because I keep putting stuff in like a 17" monitor and 16MB Video Card
Where the actual divide comes in is personal choice. My girlfriend is a technophobe to the death while I rather have ZDTV on 24hrs/day and working at 3 computers at a time. The thing about it is as much as my girlfriend hates technology, I would rank her just above a common end-user. She figured out how to merge data with databases and I barely have a grasp on how to do that. (Hey I can do other stuff... I am a network engineer
Every public library has at least ten computers with Internet access that is free. All you have to have is a library card.
Our economy is going through a shortage of qualified people for tech jobs so therefore we cannot afford to be racist, sexist or any type of 'ist'. We would be denying such untapped talent and screwing the e-community as in the process.
Incidentally, I live in Fort Worth (sister city to Dalas, in reference to "Couldn't agree... at all" by Panaflex) so maybe we live in a great area where we actually hire minorities.
One note of interest: Dan Geiger from OpNet has created a community program for underclassed teenagers and young adults and then placing them in high tech jobs. Not only giving them technical know-how but giving them the tools to succeed in the corporate environment. I got this info from ZDTV's Silicon Spin. Watch the segment in RealPlayer.
ChozSun [e-mail]
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
THAT is the problem in the FIRST PLACE. Are you really advocating increasing technology access to poor, sick, junkies, so that in some bizzarre manner that would help them one damn bit?! Feed them, cure them, and got them damn jobs! The scenario you describe will not be fixed by increased access to new technology!
I hope the person writing the article realizes that FIRST one must fix the underlying problems. When it is found that there is a humongous gap in homeless people's access to computers, is the solution to increase their access to computers! Of course not! It's to make them NOT homeless.
There is nothing about being black or hispanic or any other "race"/"color"/whatever that inherently keeps anybody from accessing technology. If all these people were on the same economic footing they would have the same capability. Please Mr. techno-futurist, let's not step into the next millenium thinking that if we cure the symptoms we cure the disease.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
This is exactly what 'gumption' is! I applaud you. If more and more people would stop whining about their 'racial' inequities and do something to make themselves more equal *without* the government's assistance.
/w 'racism' that the word no longer means what it used to mean.
As for the price for internet connectivity, it is steadily decreasing to $0. Yes, FREE. There are at least four companies out there (Gateway, Compaq, Dell are a few I think) that offer free PCs with a pre-installed advertisement window that stays on the monitor at all times. Or you can buy a computer for $200 and be contracted to buy service from an ISP for 3 years or so. Either way, there are definately opportunities out that allow people to gain internet access without shelling out over $500.
My opinion is that as the govt. and other political leaders consistantly emphasize the inequalities based on race, more and more people feel that they are the 'victims' of society and _deserve_ instant gratification because of that.
Salis
I am neither a racist or a bigot, but to discriminate a person based upon your race, color, or origin for negative OR positive intentions is racism. There's such a double standard when dealing
Favorite
And tell me again how this is my responsibility?
I just fail to see the reasoning which leads to the inevitable conclusion that *I* should be the one to go fix this. I personally don't give a shit whether some inner city kid ends up working 70 hours a week at McJob to fuel his crack habit. BFD, just means I get a hot cheese burger when I have to work late.
Nobody said you personally had to fix it yourself. But anyone with a caring bone in their body would realize that it could just as easily have beem them born into these horrible situations. You didn't deserve to be in the life you're in - the world wasn't set up so you can have your nice white life while the bad people were made black and poor.
From the tone of this message, I have more respect for a poor mother who works her way off welfare than I can possibly have for someone like you who seems to think that you deserve your life.
Life is only worth something because we've decided it is. By deciding that all those lives are not worth anything, that even caring a little is a bad thing, you've managed to devalue your own life. When you think everyone else is worth nothing, everyone else will think you're worth even less.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Let's keep the government and everyone else out of this and let the cream rise to the top naturally. Black, white, et al - who cares?
You don't get it, do you? Do you really think that if you yourself were born in the middle of a housing project, with 4 siblings, no idea who your father was, a mother on drugs half the time and unable to give you attention, let alone raise you, with a boyfriend that beats her and sells drugs, where you don't play outside of the house, and you're lucky to get enough food to eat, let alone nutritional food, that you'd be able to end up where you are today? If you do, then you're living in a different reality from the rest of us.
The point of this article is the fact that the economic disparity is also very much a racial one. Society has put the minorities into these poor situations because of countless years of prejudice. Now just eliminating the prejudice isn't enough. because we've established a cycle of poverty.
If you're going to live in a dream world, and pretend that everyone has a fair chance of rising to the top, then at least realize it's a dream world.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
I agree with Kintanon completely. I have every reason to believe that blacks doing tech jobs _have_ to know what they are talking about, because they are under a microscope. I have a job where the CIO is a complete idiot (most of the company thinks so!) but is a white guy so its okay. I'm a black girl, and as such, I run into much prejudice, but because I know my stuff, people shut up and leave me alone. Thank GOD for TECHNOLOGY!!!! I finally have a career where there is tangible evidence of my prowess--everyone loves me cuz I keep the network humming! Sharkfish
I debated with myself over and over, wondering if I was going to respond. It never ceases to amaze me when so many people claim to know the experiences of a culture of people of whom they have no knowledge. YES, blacks are excluded from 'net discourse, despite the fact that the 'net is supposedly race/gender free. As a person of color and as a woman, I can tell you that this has not been my experience at all.
There are so many things to which to respond in this thread. I'd like to thank Jon Katz, first of all, for bringing this discussion to the fore, as it would be my guess that most /.ers don't even think about it.
There have been alot of discussion about how black people, in discussing this & other areas in which things like the information infrastructure leaves us out are just crying "victim." It amazes me when people won't even take the time to think about what is being said here. We (black folks as well as Latinos) are being left out of the information age. Discussing this is not us crying victim. There are reasons for this that go far beyond the idea that we aren't willing to particiapte. We are. Most black kids I know are very interested in computers (and let me tell you, I guarantee I know more black folks than all of you who talk about "my black friend" or "the black guy at work.")
The person above wrote this:
Guess what, I bet one of the big reasons racism will continue is that some minorities feel they must shout from the hilltops about racial inequalities, etc.. If they'd just shut up, people wouldn't care.
The mind truly boggles. So nice of you to point out that racism has been in my head all these years. I'm glad you cleared that up for me.
What has always struck me is how little people are willing to recognize what they themselves dont' face. I could write for days about specific examples of racism in schools, for example, but I won't. I will give a particular incident, however.
I grew up in the predominatly white Upper Penninsula of Michigan. I went to a good public school where my mother had to go to my brother's middle school & correct the teacher in the classroom because the teacher was teaching in his social studies lesson that blacks were treated well during slavery because much like a person nowadays takes care of an expensive car, slaves were an investment so they were treated wonderfully & it wasn't that bad. This kind of thing is being taught in schools today! How are poeple expected to develop a proper perspective on the effects of slavery if the effects of slavery aren't even taught? And how are the repercussions of slavery, repercussions which last to this very day, supposed to ever be truly dealt with, if slavery can't be?
Another example: A young white boy who went to the same middle school got off the bus with two of our black friends one day. He didn't like black kids & he was going to take it out on those two boys. The boy had fashioned a weapon out of a steel ball which he'd attached to a pipe. He hit one of the boys in the head with this ball knocking him out cold. The boy's brother stepped in front of the assailant as he was about to hit his brother again. The assailant hit the second boy, seriously damaging the boy's shoulder. My brother saw this from the bus & begged the bus driver to stop, but the driver wouldn't. When my brother got home, he called my mother at her job, crying hysterically. He thought his friend was dead & he would have been had a neighbor not come out and given the boy CPR. The school's administration did nothing...the assailant didn't get in trouble, the bus driver didn't get suspended & the mother of the boys who'd been assaulted was told that "boys would be boys" and there was nothing they could do. The police would not prosecute the assailant, nor would they report it as a hate crime. Had the roles been reversed & a black boy had attacked white boys, that black boy would have gone to jail, guaranteed.
What does this have to do with computers & black people? Well for starters, can schools where black children's lives are not even valued seriously be counted on to give a damn about whether or not black children become computer literate?
Children in inner-city schools are taught in buildings that are literally dangerous to be in--not because of potential shootings, but because of falling roofs & asbestos & other conditions to which suburban kids would never be subjected. Rural children often face these problems, too. If you go to school in a building that really should be condemned, is learning how to use a computer really going to be your first priority?
Granted, a lot of these problems are socio-economic, but it is just willed ignorance to suggest that skin color is not a factor. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but it is.
I'm reminded of the part in The Autobiography of Malcolm X where a young Malcolm Little, a straight-A student, told his teacher that he wanted to be a lawyer. The teacher told him that being a lawyer was impossible for a black kid & he should really consider becoming a carpenter instead.
If you think teachers discouraging black students, black males especially, is a thing of the past, think again. It's always been in vogue for this country's intelligensia to discuss the ways in which they consider the black mind to be inferior. From The Bell Curve (which I've read) to the writings of Dinesh D'Souza, people are always willing to tell us why we're stupid & why racism is all in our heads. It isn't, and until people stop getting angry at us for bringing it up, and until people stop calling us whiners & actually listen to what we have to say, it will always continue.
I and the rest of my family are computer literate. A large reason for that is the fact that learning has always, contrary to the stereotype, been held in high value by my family. It has also been held in high value by every black family I've ever known. Those of us who can afford computers have them. A lot of people are left out of that category for whatever reason. I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter how inexpensive a computer is, if the question is one of putting food on the table or buying a box, food should win out, and for a lot of families, this is the reality.
Also, for a lot of black families, the added reality is that black students are tracked into high school curriculums wherein they are expected to go on & learn a trade. They aren't even considered for tracks that could lead to Computer Science programs in colleges. I've seen it happen, again especially to black males.
Everyone is basically equal, there is still some racism, but it is going down with every new generation. Let's not keep it going like this.
Believe me, I'd love to see it go away, but that's just not the case. Thirty years ago it was legal to use racist tests at polling places to keep black people from voting. Brown vs. the Board of Eduction was a decision that was handed down the year my mother was born. Slavery existed in this country for hundreds of years & specific effects, de facto & de jure, continued thereafter. Are we supposed to seriously expect that all of these effects have gone away?
I'm sorry for the long-winded post. I suppose my point is that ignoring racism or calling those of us who have experienced specific, repeated instances of it will not make it go away. Take some time to open your mind. The next time someone discusses racism, either on an individual level or as a societal institution, take the time to really consider what those people are saying & don't dismiss it out of hand. You may learn something.
Think like a person of action, act like a person of thought. --H. Bergson
I'm from the south, I have long hair and dress in blue jeans and t-shirts. If I'm walking around the mall late at night after a movie I get trailed around the mall by security guards. I recently moved to baltimore, some people realize I'm from the south and immediately say, 'But you speak so clearly!'
So what's your point? Almost all young people get followed around by cops, and if you go anywhere that has a different dialect then people are going to marvel if you don't speak the way they percieve people where you are from to speak.
This is NOT helped by the number of black people who can not, or do not, enunciate words. It also isn't helped by the number of southern people with heavy southern accents, or the number of Bostonians with that northern whatever it is.
That isn't exactly racism
Oddly enough, this helps my point. You say most young people get followed around by cops, but this is ageism, not racism. I'm 23, but people have thought that my 45 year-old mother and I are twins. Most people think I'm in my thirties. I'm not getting followed around because of my age.
There are various forms of discrimination, and I'm not invalidating yours by discussing mine.
Racism is 6 black kids yelling, 'White muther fucker! I'm gonna kill yo' ass!' while they kick the shit out of one of my friends while none of us were around. Stop pretending that racism is all one way against black people. It isn't.
Yes, blacks can harbor prejudices based on skin color just like anyone else. I never said otherwise.
My point is that as a society, racism, which I believe is related more to power than to anything else, still exists on a lot of levels. Yes, it's tied into economics, but not always. Ask any rich black people who get repeatedly pulled over by cops because they're driving nice cars that cops assume must be stolen or be driven by a drug dealer if a black person is driving it.
And I promise you that if you put a mix of small children of all different races into a room they won't care what color anyone is.
But as these kids get older, they will be taught to see differences where none existed before. They will be taught lop-sided history in schools & will see mostly negative images of blacks & Latinos on television and in other forms of media (including the 'net). They will be exposed to institutional racism without even knowing it, and some will assume that just because they personally can't see it, racism doesn't exist or is the fault of people holding on to "the victim mentality". They will continue to profess that they don't care about skin color, but they will.
My point through all of this has been that racism is still a reality. Slavery based on race existed in the Americas since before the United States became a country. Jim Crow laws existed for almost a hundred years after the end of the Civil War. Why are people so desperate to believe that the effects of institutionalized racism just disappeared after 30 years?
Think like a person of action, act like a person of thought. --H. Bergson
I pay $20 a month for my earthlink account.... what is keeping the blacks from paying $20 a month? If you are too $%^&ing lazy to save up for a computer and buy a monthly internet account then you get no sympathy from me. Last thing we need is for racists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to push for (and probably get) socialized internet access.
---Got Coffee?---
Hmm... perhaps in the near future, people will stop trading goods and services. It is also entirely possible that they will all agree to stop breathing. Only a product of the welfare gift economy could believe that sort o' thing.
It's amazing what kind of tripe gets trotted out when harsh economic realities are discussed. The work you put in to get where you are is dismissed as unimportant because you are (presumably) white, while the children of government programs hide behind notions of entitlement and endeavor to take some false pride in a self-immolatory helplessness...
This individual, Mr. Isbell, doesn't believe in hard work, so he's not going to agree with you, no matter what. Let him go. If you and I work hard enough today, we can make up for him and ten other like him...
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
The inequality of the Web is not racial - it's economic. It's a good thing there is some sort of inequality, as well. Remember the "Shoe Event Horizon" in Hitchhiker's Guide, where everyone on the planet was making shoes? That could be us. Do we really want a world in which everyone thinks he should be a sysadmin or a programmer?
The reality of the modern economy is that more than a third of the population is limited by ability or gumption to working in the low-end service sector. We can't change that, and unless you want to make your own McFries, I humbly submit that we don't really want to.
Let's keep the government and everyone else out of this and let the cream rise to the top naturally. Black, white, et al - who cares?
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
This is somerhing I hadn't consciously considered. I saw the stats ad they seemed to indicate the same trends as other studies have shown. However, reading this also brought another question to mind: what will "disadvantaged" homes use a computer for? Before you set your flamethrower to kill, please let me finish.
I think an important piece of information is missing--in the homes having a computer what is the break down of activities it is used for? A similar break down of Net usage would also be good. I don't think owning a computer or having Net access is the cause of a new division. It's just the result of pre-existing discrepancies.
If computers are usually used for entertainment (games, recreational chatting, scanning for porn, etc.), then does it really make a difference? It seems, then, that the owning a computer is just a luxury item. The traditional descrepancies (e.g. eduation level) returns to the spotlight. I think it is obvious that eduation is an important factor in computer and net ownership and usage.
Yes, a computer CAN be used for learning. But, the manner in which it is used for learning is proactive. The Linux community is a good example. When our effing old Sound Blaster card with the proprietary CD-ROM interface doesn't get recognized, we go out to a HOWTO and learn how to set it up. But, just having the computer wouldn't have made a difference. IT'S OUR DESIRE TO LEARN THAT ENABLES THE POWER OF THE COMPUTER AND THE NET. The Net is great for those who use it proactively. But, having Net access and a computer won't change the lives of disadvantged families unless they become proactive about using it. And, for those people who are proactive, wouldn't they find "a way out" anyways?
Observations:
1) There are more ethnicities in the world than black and white.
2) The information age is a global phenomenon, not just American, not just black, not just white.
3) Americans, both black and white, tend to forget both 1 and 2 while obsessing about blacks and whites in America.
4) African Americans tend to behave just as boorishly "superior" in "black countries" outside the US as their white compatriots do in all non-US countries. (I've witnessed this).
5) Face it. Black and white in America has a very ugly 300 year history. It's been ugly even for most of this century. There are social scars and human lives marred by this ugliness. It will take time to heal this malady. Maybe a good place to start is by making the hugely expensive American college/university system a little more affordable to those who can't get in on a basketball scholarship.
6) Stop peering into your navels and maybe admit that you may be able to get ideas from other countries. (ie: hmmmm, higher taxes, cheaper University, less guns, less social strife.)
-M
> Computing is as white an industry as exists in American life, as any
> high-tech worker can see just from peering around.
The typical make up of software engineering groups here in Silicon Valley is 25% chinese, 25% indian, 25% american and 25% european. That would make it one of the most non white industries in America.
Granted, there are very few blacks around, but such a blatant asertion of total untruth just put me off from the whole article.
"PS In any case, these people we're talking about are black, and therefore poor mainly as the historical result of the single most horrific act of violence by one group of people toward another. America (and England, and Portugal, Belgium, France and Italy) owes them, big style."
I'd don't care what color they are - it's not relevant. If you think that episode of slavery was in any way unique you're misinformed. Slavery has been a historical fact for all of known history. The various justifications over time change - but the fact is it's always been part of human culture. Happened to my ancestors, to yours, to everyone at one point or another. Still going on in case you're so ignorant to not realize it.
The logic of your assertion that various political entities should now make some sort of restitution relies on whether or not the "body politic" would support such activities. As a member of that body in the US, I tend to think that we've already gone a long way toward making restitution (ever heard of the civil war? Seems like several white folk sacrificed lives in support of the emancipation proclamation and national unity ).
"I believe the children are our future: nasty, brutish and short."
You know, its sort of strange to see people so involved with a gift culture, an effort to make software infrastructure free to the masses, both economically and politically, get so upset at the notion that software and technology might present an economic barrier.
I think a lot of us agree that government programs are grossly inefficient. They have a tendency to promote their own existence at the expense of the very people they were created to help. Besides, there may be things like tax writeoffs for donations of older equipment that the government can do without terrible harm. Even if the government shouldn't or can't solve it, should we throw up our hands?
Maybe for those in the open source movement all that's required is to continue to donate time to providing excellent software free to anyone who needs it. Would that be so terrible?
Believe me, this is not insignificant. I had to pay the $800 yearly compiler tax from Microsoft for some years and it IS a barrier, especially for young people asking their parents for the money. Helping anyone with sufficient interest to be able to obtain good development tools does a lot to allow people without means to consider programming as a career.
On the hardware side, maybe its just a matter of taking a few minutes to make sure that old machine gets a better home than your closet or dumpster. Not *too* draconian, eh?
I suspect that it may not be all that helpful to involve race in the question. Not that I believe there aren't still real issues, but just that its easier to promote the idea that if any kid really wants a computer, and for whatever reason can't obtain one or use one, helping them is a Good Thing(tm).
Jim
Wow. It only took him several articles to get it right. I'm glad /. entrusts people with such a solid grasp of technology to write about technology.
L.
>>If you're too poor to afford a computer, make
>>your own out of baling wire and thread spools.
Why not???
I'll tell a little story.
It's about a fellow named Steve. He desprately wanted his own computer. Only problem? He was too poor to afford one. So he built his own. He also wrote the OS himself. A friend of his (also named Steve, and also too poor to afford his own computer) came along and realised that other people might like a computer like the one built by the first Steve. So they started a company to build and sell them. They sold their most expensive belongings (a VW microbus, and an HP scientific calculator) to finance their new company, which is now on the Fortune 500. Oh, and both Steves are millionaires many times over now.
Anyone care to guess who I'm talking about?
And all this because two drop-out kids were TOO POOR to afford their own computers.
Imagine all the people...
So billyg got some of his VC from daddy, big deal.
You think he couldn't have gotten it from any number of VC firms?
"Well, we have this contract to sell millions of copys of DOS to IBM, but we need $50000 to get things going"
What VC firm in their right mind would say no???
So much for daddy's money.
Oh, and the only reason he got the deal with IBM in the first place was because a certian Mr. Killdal(inventor of CP/M) decided to go flying one day instead of meeting with the suits from IBM.
Oops, there goes mommy's influence.
Now, I'm not at all a fan of Bill Gates. In fact, I'm counting the days until the new Linux kernel with USB support becomes available so I can purge the last remenants of MS contamination from my hard drive.
But, whatever anyone's opinion of the man, Bill Gates got where he is through hard work, good marketing, good lawyers, good luck, and lots of stupid, gullible people willing to buy his mediocre products. We're hardly talking inherited wealth like a Rockafeller or Kennedy here.
Oh, and even if billyg HAD inherited his billions instead of making them himself, that still does not invalidate my example of Jobs and Wozniak building a billion dollar company from next to nothing. It CAN be done, if only you're willing to do the work.
Imagine all the people...
Jobs and Woz were something worse than black in the eyes of soceity at the time. Just look at any picture of them back then.
They were hippies.
This at a time when it was considered okay to gas them, beat them, jail them for no explicable reason, etc.
Hell, on at leats one college campus I can think of off the top of my head, the national guard had made a little habit of using hippies for target practice with their machine guns.
And all this was considered okay. After all, they were only hippies.
I hate to burst your bubble, but blacks were hardly the only group peresecuted in the 60s and 70s.
Imagine all the people...
If I take away all your knowledge (assuming you have any) on how to build a computer, and an operating system, and a web browser, and the access to the online world of HOW-TOs and do-it-yourself web sites, could you build your own - assuming you had extremely limited financial resources?
/. to reply.
If not, then you need to go see a doctor of some sort - having your head inserted into your ass like that is probably unhealthy.
Let's drop you in the middle of ghetto Baltimore with amnesia and see how long it takes you to get yourself back onto
-- Scream, Dracula, Scream!
I'd just like to point out that this time IT'S NOT OUR FAULT. we didn't bring anyone over from Africa this time and sell them as slaves, we just developed a family of protocols. Boy thats a relief.
Let's not look at college as the place to throw blame around. College is something that requires money to get into. Not really a level playing field when you start talking about who should get in.. If we can solve the problem before college, the problem doesn't exist in college.. Going back in time.. Public schools in the inner city (and other places where minority youth don't achieve the same level as the white majority in academics) can do little to prepare children for a self-sufficient and rewarding life in the state that they are in now. Inner city schools are basically cattle farms with too few teachers. It's pathetic. First though, keep asking yourself the question WHY before you find the blame.. Why do inner city schools suck? Lack of funding? Partly.. But I'm sure you can find a "majority" (not of the minority) school in suburban America with similar funding per student and not as many problems in motivating students toward greatness.. So why? Growing up, every child is shaped by their environment. It's not always predictable, but I believe it safe to assume that children that grow up in poor surroundings (not just poor themselves) are going to feel less a need to rise above it. It's a comfortable kind of depression, being with your people, and it can hold you back.. If a child grows up poor in rich surroundings, that can motivate the child to achieve more, maybe out of spite, maybe out of subconscious reflex to become part of the surrounding "culture". This is the part you can read if you want to flame me. I think subpopulations divided by race and culture can be dangerous to themselves. When you take into account the dynamics of multiculturalism and isolate a culture (or race) from the mainstream, you shut it off from new ideas and aspirations. And from that cultural isolation also comes economic isolation and academic isolation. This goes against yearnings for minority pride, as it may look like pride and individuality (and culture!) are being sacrificed for membership (geographically, economically, academically) in the majority. This doesn't have to happen though. America is not a place where a culture ceases to survive if the members of the culture cease to stick together.. This isn't Serbia, or Nazi Germany - please.. And it won't get that way if there is integration. And if you're afraid your culture will cease to exist if you integrate yourself, ask yourself what your culture is based upon if not integrating it strangles the nourishment of the mind. S.
I find some of these viewpoints amazing. It seems there are many complaining that because the internet is a true meritocracy, nobody should bitch and whine about racial differences. In theory perhaps this is true, but this is a very easy conclsion for /.ers to reach, given that:
Many of us grew up in good neighborhoods, went to good schools, and had parents that encouraged education.
Many of us (I suspect) are not a minority, and have not been the subject of prejudice in our lives.
Many of us had a computer at a young age which our parents could afford to buy for us.
Many of us went to good universities paid for by, yep, you guessed it, our parents.
I'm not saying that any of these are necessarily impossible for someone from a disadvantaged background to achieve, but the probability that they will achieve it against overwhelming odds is low, so please don't act as if getting online (which can, I think, be seen as a pretty natural byproduct of the things I mentioned above) is somehow *natural* and is equally easy and obvious to everyone.
My mother has a Masters degree and speaks seven languages, yet until recently she was hesitant to get online -- does this make her lazy or stupid? Now that she's playing the game, learning it is slow and intimidating because it is still a foreign world to her. The same could be said for many from poorer (unfortuantely often coinciding with minority) families. Don't pretend that the playing field is level, because it ain't. The internet may be a meritocracy when you get there, but if you aren't given directions on how to find it, you're as screwed as the next guy.
just my blog and pix
It matters because of the starting assumption for your point - yes, people *can* do pretty much anything if they put their mind to it, and that should always be rewarded in our society.
However it is equally important to bear in mind that a lot of people have a lot of help in getting where they are, so they have no right to pretend that the playing field is level.
just my blog and pix
Most respectfully, Bull Shit.
I do not owe any minority anywhere in this country ANYTHING. My great great great great grandfather owned a huge ass plantation and a bunch of slaves. I went to high school with some of those slaves descendants. I don't owe those people anything. I haven't done anything to them.
If you feel that you owe restitution to a large chunk of societ you feel free to hand over every penny you want. But I work hard for what I have and no one else is taking it away from me.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Ummm, my family lived in an 8x24 travel trailer for several years after I was born, before moving into a slightly larger trailer. I was born white and poor. My father had some serious issues that caused him to get very paranoid and beat my mom and trash the house. Who owes me? Where's my stuff? Why isn't anyone offering me hand outs? I had a hard life! Yeah, whatever, whiny little bastards. You wanna give them cash you go right ahead. When one of them ASKS me to teach them something I will, and not a second sooner.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
And by pampering, i do not mean welfare... i mean going out of our way to see to it that black children receive scholarships (not the parents, they will never be able to get out of it) and computers. We need to give them the chance that they really do not have now.
Would that be at the expense of other people who might have EARNED a place at college? There isn't exactly an unlimited amount of space at most campuses. So for every undeserving person you force into school you are taking an opportunity away from someone who might have been trying very very hard to get a scholarship to that school.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
So if I steal your car and give it to my daughter, she shouldn't have to give it back, since she didn't steal it herself?
Your analogy is flawed. Nothing I own was ever the property of any minority, what was the property of someone else was purchased legally for a fair some of their choosing.
If you BOUGHT my car and gave it to your daughter she wouldn't have to give it back.
BUT, if your great great grandfather stole my great great grandfathers horse and buggy, I'm not going to try to charge your daughter the cost of the horse and buggy. That would be ludicrous.
Bet you'd hate to be a slave, then.
Hell yes I would. No one LIKES being a slave, which is why slavery no longer exists in this country. But that doesn't mean we now have a responsibility to GIVE people whos ancestors were slaves a better shot than everyone else. If we are going to start giving out PCs and net access then give one to EVERYBODY. Fair is Fair, right?
Of course... I don't LIKE working, but I DO like eatting, and playing Q2 at night, and having season passes to six flags, and a car. So I WORK.
And if someone wants to try and enslave me, then they are going to have to walk through a hail of bullets to do it.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
No, my price for living in this society is that I pay taxes and provide a valuable service to the community. I have no obligation to provide anyone else with anything unless I have children. I can choose to give away my money, but I won't. I'll happily educate someone else if they ask me. But I'm not going to search through the baltimore getto every afternoon trying to find the 1 in 1000 kids who won't try to knife me for the 20$ I keep in my wallet.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
The point of the $40,000 is not the absolute number $40,000 (that is simply inflation). The point of the quote is to say that if everyone is fed, clothed, well educated, and living in a decent lifestyle where they aren't forced to work crappy jobs and have financial freedom.... then they won't steal the hubcaps from your 'mobile. The point of the whole thing is to make everyone as free as possible, and instead of doing it through a communist revolution, we can do it through capitalism.
Sooo.... you want us to abolish all of those nasty menial jobs like construction workers and burger flippers so everyone can have a 'good' job.
Hmmm... Ok. I'm sure we won't need any more buildings built or ditches dug for the next few years, and by that time we'll have robots to do it for us, oh wait, no that won't work... Who is going to build the manufactoring plant? Who is going to build the components? Where do we find people who are willing to do hands on labor? I guess all of those professors and techs and theorists will just have to pick up shovels and start digging, pouring concrete, etc... Even though they have NO IDEA how to build the thing because they spent the last 20 years specializing in a field. Contrary to what some people would like to believe we DO need manual laborers. And those people are going to be paid less than people who spend 6 years in college and even more time keeping current in their rapidly changing field.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Your great grandchildren shouldn't be punished because you did something wrong though.
Also, a lack of car wouldn't stop me from getting to work. A can take a bus, I can take a cab, I can hitch a ride with a neighbor going the same way, I can get someone who works with me to give me a ride in... Gee, there seem to be a whole lot of options that would allow me to recover.
And of course I'll appeal to whatever authority is in charge of such things to get my car back. But My great great grandchildren shouldn't be trying to have your great great grandchildren imprisoned because you did something wrong.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
It's only ludicrous because of the "buggy" part. If we're talking about righting wrongs that happened in reality -- rather than your silly example -- we would start by taking land away from white families that got them from land grants which excluded blacks. The economic make-up of America would be a bit different if black families owned significant portions of the west and midwest.
Wrong again. We would start with getting the fuck out of the country and giving it back to the natives. And most of the people in south american and central america would be leaving too, so that the descendants of Aztec and Mayan civilization could have their land back. How far do you want to take it? Get those bloody Normans out of England! Then get the bloody Saxons out too! Give the land back to whoever originally held it. Are we going to revert the stat of land in the world back to what it was around a few hundred BC? People need to stop looking towards the past and look to the future instead. No one is actively opressing black people. We all come out naked and screaming, we all end up cold and dead. Everything that happens in the middle is optional.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Please reference my post concerning the true owners of the US.
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Please reference my post concerning the true owners of the US.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
You are either a blithering idiot, or you completely misunderstand me. I want everyone in this country to have equal opportunity, not standing... that does not exist right now. And I believe our tax dollars should go towards mending our mistakes in the past. And I want people like you to understand why these were mistakes.
This is where you are screwing up. You can send your money wherever you want to. BUT as soon as you start dictating where MY money should go I start getting pissed. What if I believed 'our' tax dollars should go towards teaching Dolphins sign language? would you let me just drag another 50$ a week out of your paycheck for it?
I understand that slavery was bad, and slavery was wrong and that slavery never should have happened. But Get a CLUE Slavery was not INVENTED in America. Africans sold each other into slavery for guns so they could kill their neighbors. They had been practicing slavery for centuries before we ever caught onto it. If I personally find out I have opressed someone I will apologize to that person and attempt to right my wrong. BUT, I'm not going to reimburse someone just because my great great great grandfather owned his great great great grandfather.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Umm, Where did I say the word Black?? A massive chunk of the people in Baltimore are white, a proportionate number of white people live in the inner city and ghetto of Baltimore. 999 out of 1000 of those people would knife a wealthy looking person of any race who was walking alone through the streets. I think the fact that you just assumed I was talking about black people says a lot about your own racist attitude.
I'm equally afraid of getting knifed by a strung out white crackhead as a strung out black crackhead if I go into downtown baltimore after 5pm.
As long as the high-tech industry has people in it who believe that 99.9% of all black kids are thieves, anyone who says this is a non-racist business has his cracker head so far up his ass that that he's probably browner than the people he hates so much.
I really pity this idiot, but his attitude is not uncommon, and that's why there aren't more blacks in this business. Putting up with crackers like this is stomach turning. Would you want to be white and work next to this guy's black equivalent? And you wonder why so few blacks get into computers. Open your eyes a little and maybe you'll figure it out.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I find your statement to be racist and offensive.
No one is allowed to express any negative inclinations along racial lines. It's not nice.
Lemme think here... Middle Ages... Serfs... Born into poverty... never knew anything better... Violent revolution... I'd say that one way or another poor folk who want to get a better life will. And they don't need a handout from some yuppy geek that wants to make himself feel better.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
No one is actively opressing black people.
No, they're only oppressing you.
Let me rephrase, no one is Actively opressing ONLY black people. The government is shafting all of us. And perpetuating racist dogma to keep the people from uniting and destroying it.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Aren't the ones in schools and community centers after hours the ones who are already escaping? They have found a way to learn and have the desire, they don't need our help anymore. Wouldn't it be the ones who say, 'Fuck you!' that need our help most??
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Wow, I didn't know you were psychic...
I guess you can just dictate to me what I do and do not think, you can just declare me a racist and that's that. I wonder what you are basing that on? I really can't say I care if you personally believe anything I say. But for my own peace of mind, I am equally afraid of all varieties of crackheads.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Gee, the stark logic of your argument has defeated me, I guess I should find the nearest black person and give them my every worldly posession because my some odd great grandfather owned slaves. Of course, that's only logical...
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
HOW the HELL is a test going to be racially biased if you don't know the race of the person taking it?! Give me an example of a Racist question that could be asked in the US that someone couldn't be reasonably expected to know the answer to. I can't think of any.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I'm not black, or racist, or anything for that matter, I just wish , that everyone in this forum (the enlightened or educated or interneted, would follow a couple of guidelines.......not all people are white suppremists or gay bashers......and not everyone believes that everyone has the right to everything....being a straight white male,...I know that I don't have a right to anything that I want, including free speech.....some may think that anyone has every right, but when you get into the work force, you really don't have shit......I know cuz I don't have shit if I was to talk about anybody at my work.....and it really galls me that people think that freedom of speach (speech) means what it does to them..... noone really has freedom of speech because the simplest of terms means that everyone else gets to judge you about what you say and what they think that you believe.......
Dion
Katz has jumped on the bandwagon big time with this one. The whole fabric of society will unravel because the less productive elements of society don't have 500 MHZ PIII systems in their apartments.
Give me a break. There is no right to computer ownership, no right to Internet Access, and certaintly no right to expect those of us that can afford this stuff to pay for those who can't. The vast majority of people who can't afford a computer are in that position because of choices they've made in life. They chose to get pregnant at 16 and drop out of school, they chose to waste away on drugs,etc. in short they chose to be poor.
People that can't even feed their families without using the police power of government to force those of us that can to pay for their food have no business worrying about a damn computer. Its a tool, nothing more, and it isn't going to change the fact that they are continuing to make bad decisions in their life - thus they are poor.
... than a first-poster, is the person who *replies* to a first poster.
;-)
(And the person who replies to the replier, I suppose..)
"Don't touch the bunny!"
I think that whole article was pointless. We might as well start giving everyone Ferrari's because it wouldn't be fair. More White people own them. Give me a break. Computers cost money. If you don't have money, you don't get a good computer. Although they are so cheap today you really have to be serious poverty not to be able to afford something good enough to access the internet. I think the problem is people's desire. I'm only 21, but old enough that when I went to school I didn't have the internet to use for educational purposes. Learned as much as I could through books. They are free anyone who wants to can walk into a public library and read enough to get a college degree. And minorities have more than an opportunity to go to school. I, with help from my parents, pay for every single cent of my education. And they don't make enough to make it no problem to pay. I think that people bringing up race make it worse. I don't know how it used to be, but people of my generation don't give a shit about race. There are different classes of people but money has not one thing to do with it. I'm talking about a class of life. There are people who want to learn and better themselves, and there are people who don't want to do anything but sit around for the rest of their lives. I know people who are dirt poor and keep their houses emaculately clean. I also know doctors who's houses I think are filthy. Start looking at the individual not the whole. Now I do agree that many minorities have problems. Especially since most of the minorities come from urban areas. Where it isn't the greatest place to life. Most don't have any desire. I don't know how to change that, but making issues about race won't help anything. Example... Ever have a test (especially in College) where everyone bitches about how hard it is and you get a feeling of helplessness. "why not just give up?" So that doesn't solve anything, now people just loose hope because they feel like they can't win. Anyway I'm off track. If people really want to access the internet it is possible. I'm a computer engineer so I love it, but I imagine is I was in a labor part of industry I could care less.
People, their what's for dinner.
Judging by my experience in working in IT in the UK, I would say its pretty much equal opportunities in terms of race.
Probably it's more of class thing here, with poor working class kids of all races being underepresented.
What about women though, why aren't feminists not being worked up by the lack of female participation in the curent information technology revolution?
As i have posted down further...
these people were not awarded full participation in our society until only 30 years ago! You have to remember that. No other ethnicity in America had to work so hard just to become equal.
Blacks in America have grown up with poverty for so many countless generations that it takes a rare individual indeed to rise above this. If all you, your family, your friends and community know is ignorance and poverty... your chances of overcoming this are very slim.
Yes, many are able to do it, but the majority are not... and it is not because they are lazy, they just know nothing else!
we live in a civilized society. It is not insulting to "pamper" one aspect of our society that has been shit on for hundreds of years.
And by pampering, i do not mean welfare... i mean going out of our way to see to it that black children receive scholarships (not the parents, they will never be able to get out of it) and computers. We need to give them the chance that they really do not have now.
Because you live in a civilized society.
Because it is your duty as a privileged member of this (what I consider excellent) country to help your fellow citizens.
This is the price you pay for living here.
The most Darwinian society I can think of was Europe in the Middle Ages... people only cared for themselves, and the best rose to the top. Well, progress was only set back about 300 years under this system.
Capitalism is not Darwinism. We are better than that.
Would that be at the expense of other people who might have EARNED a place at college? There isn't exactly an unlimited amount of space at most campuses. So for every undeserving person you force into school you are taking an opportunity away from someone who might have been trying very very hard to get a scholarship to that school.
No. Unfortunately this happens... and I feels it perpetuates itself into more prejudice and hard feelings. That is an easy solution that does not take the whole issue into play.
Instead, you create more schools and oportunities for enrollment. This is a long-term goal... not something to merely keep a certain people content for the time being.
Ah... but it was an almost pure form of "survival of the fittest" that instituted Feudalism.
The most powerful became kings and rulers of their fiefs, and succesfully instituted a system to keep their offspring in power. And to keep people well-inside of their castes.
Yes, I was reffering to social darwinism (which is a mutation of darwinism). But I really feel that if what a lot of the posters are screaming for would result in such a system. And that would be horrible. As you have pointed out.
As for it being a duty of anyone priviliged living in a civilized society to assist those who are less priviliged, I think that if that is your personal view of what you believe that you should be doing, than it is a highly admirable one.
However, I do not agree that it is the price you pay for living in the U.S. and I do not believe it should be either.
It is a good and decent thing to help those less fortunate than yourself, and I highly reccomend it. However, it is not, and should not, be made mandatory. Once you start mandating morality you wind up with the difficult question of whose morality. Whose values do you endorse across the board? So we just blithely let the government decide what causes are and are not worthy? I hope not.
It needs to be mandatory, or not enough people would do it. We need taxes (though not to the extent we currently pay), there is no denying it. I just feel that a different road needs to be followed with this money. And I hope to have officials elected that will do this.
We still can vote those people in and out of office yah know.
I was guilty of generaliztion in my previous statement... yes.
I meant that the majority of poor blacks in America have known nothing else.
Some of them know more. But my point was that these people are not "lazy", as many peolpe like to shrug them off as... they are taught to be that way from their parents, creating a horrible cycle.
They need to learn, at a young age, that there is *more* out there, than the world they know. And that it accessable to them...
I never meant to state the majority of black people are poor and ignorant. Sorry.
There is no denying that children should be reached at a young age.
We really do not care how great you are.
(at least under this topic)
The activists' attempts at "helping" racial minorities have resulted, simply, in more inequality and more divisiveness. Economic disparity won't change overnight, but it will take much longer if we persist in preying upon color of skin as a political weapon.
This is true. Such policies as affirmative action have perpetuated themselves into making more problems. They are only short term solutions to appease a certain political group.
More long term solutions need to be taken. That is why I am in favor of giving increased scholarships and education to these underprivilidged kids.
By lowering the boundaries for black adults, you promote lackluster work... and merely piss off a whole lot of people who would otherwise deserve the job.
Give the kids the means to make themselves nito a person who could get that job without affirmative action!
But you do not conveniantly forget the past.
I believe that the majority of poor black people are there because they were born into it, and simply have not had the opportunity to know anything better. History gives us the reason why this is so.
I believe the majority of poor white people are there because they have refused to take advantage of the opportunities given to them, or are just plain ignorant and lazy.
This does not apply to everyone of course... but I really feel that poor blacks are at a disadvantage from the beggining, in our country.
To ignore that is wrong.
You have a many valid points... but I think it is a mistake to state there is no difference between a poor black family, and a poor white family.
A poor white family was not "placed" there by our government because of the color of their skin. There is often a reason they are poor.
PS, I'm as white as can be, and southern to boot.
Really!? I find that really hard to believe.
America is not a place where a culture ceases to survive if the members of the culture cease to stick together..
I agreee. While I feel it is important to identify and celebrate your culture, isolation is a very bad thing.
To back this up, I believe that the cretion of Indian reservations in the United States is one of the worst things we could have done for American Indians.
This is where you are screwing up. You can send your money wherever you want to. BUT as soon as you start dictating where MY money should go I start getting pissed. What if I believed 'our' tax dollars should go towards teaching Dolphins sign language? would you let me just drag another 50$ a week out of your paycheck for it?
So you think that the money you pay for taxes is being used properly!? The goverment has been dictating where your money has been going... but you get pissed when I suggest that money should not go towards wellfare, but towards scholarships and the like!? If you believe that taxes should be increased for animal intelligence projects... preach it, try and raise concern for it. That is what I am trying to do. I do not have the power to make you pay an extra 50 bucks for poor black children (maybe I could beat it out of you:), but I can hopefully raise a concern from you. And maybe you might take the time to vote for someone who is advocating these kind of things.
I believe that our government has put a large group of people in a bad situation, and I want to see them right it.
I understand that slavery was bad, and slavery was wrong and that slavery never should have happened. But Get a CLUE Slavery was not INVENTED in America.
Wow!? I had no idea!
I am not talking about slavery as much here... I am talking about the fact that blacks were not even full citizens of this country until 30 years ago!
Come on, that is has a lot of bearing on their lives today! More so than slavery.
I find your statement to be racist and offensive.
No one is allowed to express any negative inclinations along racial lines. It's not nice.
Not sure what you are refering to.
Lemme think here... Middle Ages... Serfs... Born into poverty... never knew anything better... Violent revolution... I'd say that one way or another poor folk who want to get a better life will. And they don't need a handout from some yuppy geek that wants to make himself feel better.
So you would prefer a bloody revolution to reform? That makes a lot of sense.
I think you have reached a point where you are disagreeing with me just to disagree with me.
The price of living in the United States is that you pay taxes. I prefer my taxes to go to work as a means of opening opportunities for people I feel would not have one by any other means. As opposed to wellfare... which I do view as a form of "handout".
In a civilized society you help those that are poor. The reason taxes exist is so that people like yourself are forced to help the general populace, as well as the poor... we both know you would not do it otherwise (who would!?). Your responsibility is to pay those taxes, and in my view, I think you should care that those taxes are being used in the best means possible.
I believe that such funding is available to all students who wish to go to college.
You are right, but often, the children we are talking about do not even make it to a point where college is an option.
I am speaking of earlier funding for high school and gradeschool. Instead of money merely going to parents in the form of welfare, and hoping they will provide for their children. That money should go directly to the children and help to provide for them early... while they still have a chance to get an education.
How this would work... i do not know. Send the kids to newly created boarding schools, where they can get away from the poverty in order to really learn. Set up a fund where the money can only be put towards educational materials.
I do not know the specifics... but i do know that by the times most people start receiving help... it is too late to help most.
It is not wrong to want everyone to have the opportunity to "work hard" and earn a living.
I am not talking about hand-outs here. I am talking about giving opportunities to a group of people who have not even enjoyed equal citizenship in this country for 30 years now.
Many of these people simply do not know of the opportunity out there. What they see around them is wellfare and laziness... if you are taught that working hard takes you off wellfare so you can make minimum wage flipping burgers, you would not give up the freedom that wellfare offers you either!
But if we teach the kids that there is more than flipping burgers (or being a sports star or musician) as a means for them... many will take advantage of it.
I do not think Mr. Isbell is advocating we reward laziness... but merely, seeing to it that funding goes towards insuring that ALL Americans have the opportunity to work hard (as Kintanon has repeatedly proved he has) and make a living.
Poor black people in this country are at a tremendous disadvantage towards realizing these opportunities than others. This, specifically needs to be addressed.
I am not talking in absolutes. But, yes, I do feel that the poor white people in america have more of an advantage than poor black people.
My belief is that a certain percentage of all races are lazy and ignorant, and deserve to be poor. That percentage is probably close to realized in the white community. But blacks are not so out of whack with the rest of the human race that a much larger percentage deserves to live in poverty. I believe they have had those opportunities kept from them, and that they are not a lazy and incompetant peolple.
i would prefer my taxes to not fund welfare (at least the way it is now) and social security (again, at least the way it is now).
But I do not believe in simply abolishing them... I believe in reform.
I believe we pay way too much in taxes. I believe the government is too large right now.
BUT, it still needs to have a presense. If the government lost 85% of its power... the depression would happen all over again. It would be possible to live in a country with 70% unemployment. Even for the 30% that are employed, it is a bad place to live because you have to be constantly wary of crime.
The government, through various measures can prevent this from happening. That is important.
This may shock you, but I have voted Republican and Independat my entire life. I want less government. But I am also realistic, and know that it is needed. And I want as many people as possible to have the opportunities America has given me.
I am sorry that you want to revoke your citizenship. I can not think of any place better.
So on the one hand you say that people cannot be trusted to donate freely, but on the other they can elect officials to force them to?
:)
This is an inconsistent and hence invalid position. The fact of the matter is, any payment extracted unwillingly is theft by force, pure and simple.
Arg... This is what I mean:
We need to pay taxes. Most would not donate their money for a common cause.
However, we have the oppportunity in this country to elect officials who will (hopefully) put that money to good use, and raise or lower our taxes as we see fit. Entiendes?
If you do not like that... leave. Go live in a country where you have to either live under socialism, or constant fear of getting physically robbed (instead of legally
Argh... I am not talking about slavery here. In my opinion, that is not much of an issue on today's current state... though it is important to know.
I am talking about blacks in america not being able to even vote until 30 years ago!!!
You are calling me racist because I feel this has a bearing on the FACT that a disproportianate number of black americans are living in poverty, compared to whites!?
I am racist because I feel there is a genuine reason for this.... as opposed to blacks, as a race are simply genetically stupid and lazy!?
Is this what you are trying to tell me?
We have a problem in America, and it is directly related to one specific race inproportianately.
We need to deal with that.
That blacks have been victims in this country is simply true. It is not an insult. You identify the problem and force people to deal with it.
You do not turn your back to it, ignore it, and hope it goes away... believe it or not, that does not work in most cases (though it did with that one girl I was forced into a blind date with two years ago).
This is quite a strong flame against me.
Sorry to bring up the point that a culture (other than our own) in our country has suffered more than necessary.
Yes, I am sure that many of you were poor, and I am sure that many of your parents were poor. But at least your parents and grandparents were EQUAL CITIZENS of this country!
This goes a long way towards your children and grandchildren to eventually make it.
The fact that I want my tax dollars to help underpriviliged, prejudiced against kids makes me a traitor to true freedom and liberty?
You are either a blithering idiot, or you completely misunderstand me. I want everyone in this country to have equal opportunity, not standing... that does not exist right now. And I believe our tax dollars should go towards mending our mistakes in the past. And I want people like you to understand why these were mistakes.
I am far from a bleeding heart liberal, and I consider myself to be a huge advocate of liberty, freedom, equality and the capitalist society.
It is unfortunate that African Americans are continuously used as a substitute for "the underclass". Largely true, but unfortunate.
There is often a reason why people are poor.
Some were born poor, without the means to rise above it. Whether lacking skills or the ability and oportunities to learn those skills, it rarely happens that someone is able to overcome their birthright. If all you know is based on ignorance and poverty, chances are, that is all that will ever come out of you.
Then there are people that are lazy. Their job or trade gets "replaced", and they simply do not want to learn another. Our society has made it relatively easy to live by essentially doing nothing. For many of these people the effort to get educated and get a job that might pay a smidgin above wellfare is not economically sensible.
Why are blacks considered poor and lazy?
You have to consider where these people come from. Here you have an entire race that did not earn their full participation in this country until only 30 years ago!!! That always blows my mind. This culture has been associated with poverty in the United States since the country was born. The majority of these people have known nothing but ignorance and poverty, and it is only because they had the bad luck to born black in the U.S.
It takes an exceptional person to rise above this. We all have seen it done on many occasions, but unfortunately the majority are not able to. And it is not because they do not try and are lazy, but because they have been ingrained that life is this way from the day they were born.
As to the people who state, "well now they have every oportunity as everyone else and we should not bend over backwards to accomodate them!", I do not really agree with. They do not have every oportunity in the world. Not when the a large number of them are born poor. That is a huge disadvantage, and the reason they were born poor is because of the direct (or lack of) actions of our country.
So I do think we need to go out of our way to help this society of poor black americans. I do think we "owe" it to them in a way. Not to go so far as to disadvantage others, but to concentrate more on giving more opportunities to rise above the poverty they have known for generations and generations. These are not people getting "replaced" and are now lazy... they never had a place!
And I guarantee that those that now and hopefully will have a place in our society, will stay there!
We need to go out of our way to give them the oportunities that we kept away from them only 30 years ago!
They are members of our civilization, and whether you like it or not, we have a duty to see that all of us can make it. Pure Darwinism worked in the middle ages... and society was set back 100's of years.
And the losers just HAPPEN to be 90% of african-american households and 70% of white households? Hmm, I see a gap here!
The "losers" just happened to be descendents of those captured, shipped to America, and sold as slaves! They only recently gained full citizenship in America in the last 30 + years...Yes, oh well, who the hell cares, huh? They're "just" losers! And the winners "just" happened to be those who OWNED the ancestors of the "losers!" WOW! What a coincidence!
Oh, BTW, the middle class is NOT part of the upper class, in fact, the upper class NOW has even a LARGER share of the wealth than it used to in the mideival ages. The middle class arose out of the artisans who made up a separate class from the lower and upper, but merely widened to include a larger percentage of the population.
Zilfondel
A problem occurs when a large percentage of one population group has the "fair" advantage over another large population group. Generally, when you have 2 perfectly average people, with one having a huge advantage over the other, that person prospers more than the other. You can't get by telling anyone that the disadvantage person is going to do better than the advantaged. That's BS-only a select few can do that.
You completely missed the boat here-who told you you are supposed to give up the boat to some underprivelaged kid? Noone. What SHOULD be done is aid the underprivelaged-give them the knowldedge they need to compete in our society. Don't turn your back on them. Especially in a democratic nation where attention is given to minority groups. In fact, we already do that, to an extent. It's called public schools. The only problem, however, is when schools are located and serve in neighborhoods where poverty prevails, they do not have the financial resources other schools in rich neighborhoods do. There is a high school 3 blocks down the road from where I work-Intel is based right by it, which donated over $3 million in computers last year to it (I work in Hillsboro), and there are 50+ other high tech companies, many of them who donate things to it. In addition, 90% of the kids there have parents who work in these rich high-tech companies! At the school I went to, we had used text books that were 17+ years old. 1 computer hooked up to the internet, and a library smaller than my living room in my house. Most teachers were so incompetent, I swear I know more than they do, and I'm not even through with college yet. And look: during summer, the kids from the school here intern at Intel, making some $10-15 an hour. Back where I grew up, the kids intern at gas stations, making $6 an hour (min wage).
Now, who is going to do better in the long run?
Zilfondel
Fine. Now please also mention which of the following burdens you also lived under:
- Even if your family obtained the means to move to a better neighborhood, you may have been driven out by murderous, torch-wielding mobs in white hoods.
- Many private institutions, critical to integrating into successful society, had policies barring you from joining whether or not you could afford it.
- Many corporate decision makers had already decided that you were ineligable for high positions in their companies, regardless of whether or not you could perform the duties.
- Law enforcement agencies had developed profiles stating that if someone like you were to achieve the trappings of material success, it was so likely to be through criminal means, that they should constantly harrass you.
C'mon, whitey! Share your tales of oppression!The only thing I can think to say (that hasn't already been said), is that I bet Rob and Jeff can figure out whena Katz posting has been sucessful by the sudden flood of packets alone :-)
It's an interesting thesis statement to say that a minority of some kind is getting the short-shirft in a technological country, because it helps to expose some of the racist tendancies that we, even in our wonderful towers of morality, still have not eliminated. The reason that most people of a certain skin colour seem to be poor can be traced back to the rampant racism and stereo-tying that still existed after Licoln's emancipation proclimation. The recent SouthPark movie illustrated this (enjoyably so, including the awsome Win98 bit). Chef: "Haven't you ever heard of the emancipation proclimation?" General: "We're not communists here!"
African-americans were gradually allowed to have the freedoms guaranteed them by the US consitution, something I completely support. If you say on paper everyone is equal, implement it that way. However, the until the 1980s, when it became finally a bit better for them, it was horrible. Even the 1970s were awful, with may living in squalid conditions. Do this conditions still exist today? Most certainly, yes. I've seen through TV a few of the public housing areas in the US that are, quite frankly, unfit for habitation, human or otherwise.
Now enter Canada. Here we have a proper support infrastructure for a society. Health care, REAL health care is available freely for all. I certainly don't mind a percent of my paycheque going to perhaps fund an operation that will save someone's life if I myself am fine, well fed, and have a nice house to live in.
Welfare? We have that, too. Anyone can apply for it, even "homeless" people. As long as you're a citizen of Canada, and sometimes if you're not, the Canadian Government will help you along for a bit, and try to get you back into society nicely.
From what I have seen of the US, this structure is sorely underdeveloped. Do you think the great economic imbalances would still exist if people didn't have to pay for live-saving operations? Perhaps if they also could be guaranteed enough food to eat, so they can focus on education (through the many public libraries, perhaps). Where there is a will, there is a way.
This is why I do not understand people who cry, "why should I give MY money to lousey deadbeats who can't even go out to find a job?" Have you ever been so hungry, that the thought of movement is painful? Have you ever had a hard time concentrating, or even thinking in a class situation, because you were so hungry feeling? I have. I lived in househould that was supported through welfare most of my childhood. You learn to live off whatever you can. It's not a life I would wish on my most hated enemies.
Today, I am succesfull. Why? I managed to parley a small job into enough money for a computer. From there, my talents snowballed to the point where I have very markettable and lucrative skills at a time when they are most in demand. Good luck? Perhaps, but certainly it would have been much harder, if it would have happened at all, without the proper social infrastructure a society should guarantee its citizens. I propose that the US consitution have a clause that provides live-saving health care for free, a clause that provides a guarantee of at least minimum food and shelter, in a decent way. And most of all, something to let these people live, not as "deadbeats" or "drifters," but as people who can not worry about their lives long enough to find a job, and give back to the community. To be able to serve and help their fellow humankind with dignity, like the rest of us. We are all humans, much more brothers and sisters to each other than the animals many of us seem ready to die to protect.
Note: I'm Canadian. I'm caucasian, 18, and happy where I am, well fed, nicely housed, and educated.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
What the hell is a "clack" ???
Damnit, man. So much for not being entirely non-racist.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Well, I could be blamed for my ignorance, but I have no experience living in a multi-race community. Paraphrasing David Howell's metaphor, I sit on the fence and see those funny people down there throw pieces of sh*t onto each other through the fence.
Would anybody stop for a while and tell me what really the problem is? To be honest, I also expected a kind of pessimistic prognosis, not a racial problem.
As far as I could get into author's idea, some people can't get 'Net access. He thinks this is because they look different. It sounds doubtful to me. What about people in Europe, mostly white, who can't afford phone/ISP bills and even a cheap PC? I don't think their problem is related to their race. People talking 'Net can't feel safe being ethnocentric and leaving their asbestos suite at home.
Computers are like cars. Someone buys a van and drives out for a weekend, someone buys a taxi license and drives for living. Usually as*holes driving those vans make so much fuss. Same things are happening on the net. Damn hordes of ignorant lamers just spoil the bandwidth.
And don't talk to me about the speech freedom. 'Net has nothing about that. Want your freedom- go to the streets. Many people moan about it just because this is the only place they can show at anonymously. Freedom is protected on barricades, not in front of your monitor.
KuroiNeko
An interesting piece of writing. In one respect I can see the cry of the developer community who say 'why should we help?' and the plea of the advocates for the poor. While it would be nice to live an equal society, it is not possible now or ever.
People must make choices. Anyone can strive to overcome life's difficulties. If you do then you succeed and are rewarded. If you don't you fail - and try again. If a person regardless of race wants to gain something, they can.
To counter this, as we move up the food chain in computer hardware, we should at the very least consider making our old hardware available so that others might gain a foothold in technology rather than trying to complete some obscure project that we never seem to get around to doing.
Just a few thoughts...
- We dream of the stars. Now let us return to them.
I sure hope more people start becoming aware of the fact that African-Americans are not participating enough in the IT movement. I see kids from all over the world getting involved with computers, but I don't see enough from my own neighborhood. I read an article in Harpers that blamed it on a distrust of technology (for the most part)...but that's a load of BS... It's sentiments like that that keep perpetuating nonsense and provide excuses. The truth is that a lot of kids feel as if they're left outside at a certain point because they don't have the necessary role models to follow. Sure, most kids love to mess around on the computer and get online, but I would say that too many African-American kids don't see IT as a "career for them" because of the "standards" within most IT-oriented companies. Plenty of Black secretaries and maintainence workers...but who's sitting behind the monitors? Just my observations from St. Louis...
is it really only a "self-imposed" stereotype when you have just posted
1.) "black society seems to hate anyone that succeeds in the white world",
2.) black americans are "steeped in ignorance and unwilling to make sacrifices to change that",
and 3.) your perpetuation of the "white community" idea and its superiority over a black community for not using certain colloquialisms (sic).
think about that when you're feeling more open-minded...
What do you do that you consider important and not necessarily self-motivated? I suppose your beliefs compelled you enuff to reply, you might try to focus that drive on something a bit more productive and less cynical...
I'm not really sure how all of this relates to my original posting anyway, and it doesn't do any good pointing fingers. Would you not agree that African-Americans are pretty under represented in the IT workplace? And you mentioned role models from the entertainment and sports worlds as a counterpoint to my postulating that these kids lack role models in IT. Music and Sports (but not all sports) are two arenas that African-Americans are gaining acceptance in. Sure kids are going to look up to those types. Who likes being in situations or environments where you don't feel accepted or wanted? Take a stroll through the posts regarding this article and tell me how many non-european-americans would feel welcome (or could relate to the mindset)in this setting. So, role models or not, we still have a problem. You can say what you want about my post, but my experience and opinions are based on this: 34-caucasian, dated strictly African-American women for the past three years, over half of my friends fall into this group, managed several FootLocker stores for 9 years in inner-city areas (where the only time I saw a white guy was when I passed a chrome fixture), and I work for an international company (3,000+ employees just at headquarters alone-- I've yet to see more than 10 black employees not pushing a broom) developing an international software application.
That's where I'm coming from, so I see holes in your reasoning... plus the fact that it's off-topic. I never said anything about you buying anybody anything.
peace out
Again and again, America is not the sum and be
all of the Internet. The Internet is color-blind.
If racism is an issue it is only in America, think
of all the other non-white countries that are on
the Internet. I started out as poor, white
Euro-trash and I got on the Internet.
India is on the Internet (non-white)
Africa is on the Internet (non-white)
Asia is on the Internet (non-white)
Europe is on the Internet (mixed races)
South America is on the Internet (mixed races)
And what does that leave?
America has a race problem.
Get a grip, these problems are the results of
the sublte ontinuation of racist policies that
American society pursues. It is not the fault
of the Internet. Handle it!
Euro-trash American Geezer Geek!
Well what else should he call it? I mean it's politically correct to say "black community", isn't it? What is the politically correct way to refer to white people collectivly?
It's not politically correct for whites to have a community. If Blacks or Hispanics or Asians choose to have communities or organizations made up of their race only, they are praised for embracing their people. If whites do the same they are labelled as racist.
You cannot fix racism be treating people differently based on race.
This debate is simply not limited to technology. At its core its the heart of the liberal/conservative debate. (I rule out all the truely rabit bozo's on both sides.)
At the end of the day you have to decide that either the rich/elite/havess are responcible under threat of a gun (taxes are at the end of the day under threat of a gun) to give away a percentage of what they have worked to attain to the poor/underclass/havenots.
If the infrastructure is in place to allow people reasonable access to learning (e.g. schools) the government has done is job. If you choose to not take full advantage of public education and the current set of programs that are offered by society, the end result should not continue to be someone elses responcibility to continually give you further options.
Acheiving fame and fortune isnt a right. It something people work for all their lives, starting at early ages in primary schools. If you've fallen behind the curve, perhaps theres a reason that has nothing to do with race. In a technical industry that is STARVED for smart intelligent bright eyed people, race will not be the card that holds you back.
This comment is mostly a reply to the other comments, as I found the article to be much too melodramatic and inaccurately founded to allow a rational discussion.
... everything, from which you can probably extract some useful skill). Books are the most valuable resource for any child.
As usual, there are essentially two sides of the fence regarding this issue. One side thinks that blacks are persecuted and disadvantaged, while the other thinks otherwise. And I would like to submit that neither side is right.
In actuality, everyone is born with a certain disadvantage. And some are born with economic disadvantages, while others are born with a silver spoon up their ass. The latter, though you may not think so, are still at a disadvantage. When your life is handed to you on a platter, you are bound to be unprepared for the world, and spoiled rotten. Being spoiled and having success handed to you will never get you a happy life. If you think money has anything to do with happiness, think again. Money has to do with comfort, and the kind of money you need to be comfortable is accessible to EVERYONE. And this is what we want, right? Everyone wants to be happy and comfortable (nothing else really matters that much). I won't go into what it takes to be happy, because it's quite relative and frankly no one can totally agree. But to be comfortable is a good start, and that requires some money (but not as much as most people think).
But obviously, you need a job to get money, and to get a job you need marketable skills. So what of the poor children of the projects (of any race)? Can't they speak? If so, they can find a job. In fact, an applicant who could actually speak clearly would be a godsend to the fast food industry. The drive through window would be revolutionized. They wouldn't even need computer screens to tell you what they think you ordered, since at present you can't possibly figure it out from their garbled headset transmissions and mumbling speech. An employee who could actually be clearly understood from the drive through is almost certainly manager material. (Compare to your local fast food locations)
Speaking clearly is just one skill that EVERYONE has access to. Reading is fairly accessible, although it is not as universally free as speech. For a child not enrolled in public education, learning to read is a challenge, but hardly impossible. There is still a wealth of written language accessible for no cost whatsoever. For a child who does attend school, reading is absolutely accessible. Any child with access to a school's library or even one single textbook has the full opportunity to learn to read, and to learn anything from any book they will ever have access to (which covers the topics of
Next on the economic chain, we have the computer. But the computer will only benefit those of moderate educational background (this is where the books come in). Anyone who has been self-taught by books can be further self-taught in a multitude of skills and professions by way of the internet. I won't spend any more time on the internet issue, because it's mostly immaterial to my argument, and the logical conclusion should be self-explanatory.
My argument is this: *almost* everyone has a chance. And by almost, I mean with the exception of the very smallest percentage of children born into a TOTALLY inescapable environment, whose chief obstacle is surviving to reach adulthood (or similarly drastic situation). Anyone can learn to read. Anyone can hold a job. It takes effort, and that's the problem. When disadvantaged citizens are paid by the government to sit at home, a cycle of poverty and codependence is created. The government should place these economically disadvantaged people in jobs (if they have skills), or tell them to f*ck off and get an education (if they're incompetent). I've already explained how everyone has a chance at an education, and for some it's not easy. But it's ridiculous for anyone to complain that "I never had the opportunity to learn any marketable skills." The opportunity is called LIFE. And in America, opportunity is so incredibly abundant that I can't imagine why people pass it up, and it disgusts me that so many choose to forego opportunity and leech from society.
Now, to backtrack: yes, prejudice still exists. And yes, prejudice will never totally go away. Human nature includes the fear of the unknown, and the distrust of the unsimilar. Humans are naturally predisposed to socialize with similar humans. Occupationally, techies usually associate with techies, musicians usually associate with musicians, construction workers usually associate with construction workers, doctors with doctors, etc, etc. In the same way, whites usually associate with whites, blacks usually associate with blacks, hispanics with hispanics, asians with asians, etc, etc. We can't avoid this innate tendency to segregate, and it's this instinct that eventually is taken to the extremes of prejudice and bigotry by the ignorant and foolish. While we may not always be comfortable with the dissimilarities of others, we can avoid the urge to reject diversity. Diversity is how the world evolves, and it should be encouraged. The reason minorities are at a disadvantage is because the majority exists. The same happens with democrats and republicans (in America), and the result is that the minority gets short-changed in some way. Unfortunately, there is no real solution to this problem. However, the American party system has not yet become totally one side or the other, so it's obvious that this exchange of minority and majority is not fatal to either party. The best way for the minority to gain its majority is through advancement, and advancement can only be done through education and perseverence.
But for each bigot and racist, there are many, many accepting and unprejudiced people. And these people are perfectly willing to give a person a job regardless of their diversity, but the person has to demonstrate a work ethic and marketable skills.
Thoughts?
David Howell
(RANT)
You know, I'm getting sick of people screaming
about equality, and how so-and-so minority doesn't
meet this spec, and so and so minority isn't on
the same level as this other group of people..
Yes, we're all equal, then, we aren't. I can't
rap for the life of me, i'm just an average white
boy, I can't jump either. I can't cook well, I
certainly do not have the social ties or the
culture that I see in a lot of minority groups
all I have is what I've worked to aquire myself,
Knowledge. Pretty much what I'm saying is that
no matter what the color, we all have the -capacity-
to be 'equal' but you know, I think some of us
just don't want to be, maybe there are black
americans that just don't WANT to screw around
with computers, they're happy with their lifestyle
and their education, and what they do, and they're
good at what they do, when I probably suck at it.
As for this article, I look around at my coworkers
and have to say that it's total BS. I work in a
company that prides itself on the fact that it has
tapped the great resources in the masses of
america, all of america, the red, yellow, black,
white, orange and plaid.
Maybe if people will STOP looking at America as
being comprised of a lot of groups of people of
different colors we'll be able to get somewhere
and stop worrying about discrimination damnit,
I think the only reason the children even have
an inkling of discrimination is because they hear
about it so much, and they see it from their
parents, it WILL go away if we just stop making
it such a big deal, it seems now to just be
something to bitch and whine about. heh.
(/RANT)
Just because you disagree doesn't make it offtopic or flamebait.
It really bothers me how much crypto-racism I am seeing amongst the replies to this issue.
If you are praising the "greatness" of a libertarian capitalist society, then you are supporting the side effects of such a society: economic, technological, technical, and information poverty. This poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans and Latinos.
When inner city schools do get computers, have you have any idea what they are used for (assuming that students get access?) They are used almost exclusively for web browsing and "educational" games, perhaps even for word processing. Computer science is not a subject being taught.
Yes, you can build a good machine for cheap from spare and used parts, but who has that knowledge? How many people with the knowledge are sharing it with the less well off or even teaching young poor people why they should want the knowledge?
So long as you sit by the sidelines and say that you don't want to help because your parents didn't make the same mistakes as someone else's parents, or that because they made the mistake of being born poor and to a race that is targeted for discrimination and considered dispensible by corporate and governmental powers, you are part of the problem.
"Thousand Points of Light" was a fine nonsensical campaign slogan, but it only makes a difference for the handful of people lucky enough to be blessed by one of those points of light. It will take a long term commitment by the society to heal society's ills.
Wake up. So long as you buy the libertarian line you are siding with the rich in a class war against the poor-- and in the USA, that means furthering racial inequality.
Nice bit of racist baiting. I can see why you want to be an "Anonymous Coward."
If you don't feel comfortable hanging around at 7-11s late at night, you could decide to instead go into a school during the day time or a community center in the afternoon and offer your knowledge.
Your racism and classism are made obvious by the fact that you think the only place to find "poor disadvantaged youths" and "black men" are on street corners and 7-11s. It's sort of funny that you focus on such stereotypically seedy locations when in my original post I suggested schools as a point of intervention.
Believe it or not, if you step into a school or a community center, you'll find at least a few young people who aren't interested in "malt liquor and rolling papers" and won't tell you "to go fuck yourself," when you try to offer them something better than the squalor they rather avoid.
Sadly, some individual people are already lost causes-- but that doesn't mean that everyone in their neighborhood is a lost cause.
Of course, judging from your comments, you are too much of a racist to even want to go near any black people.
I wish it were the case that the kids who are in school are all escaping poverty by getting an education.
/., being ostracized and picked upon for being a geek is the least of their problems.
However this is not the case. In the United States, education is compuslory; they have to go.
Of the kids who are in inner city schools who want to learn, they are generally hindered by over crowded classrooms, schools with limited material resources, over worked teachers and generally underfunded schools. In addition, when they go home, many of them live in unsafe neighborhoods, in rundown buildings in poor households.
Unlike many of the people who are posting on
No matter how eager you are to learn, if you don't have the resources, your ability to suceed is limited. The problem is that for the most part, this society is not even making the effort to help those who want to learn if they happen to be poor.
It would be nice to help the ones who say "fuck you" but we're not even helping those who say "I want to learn the skills," or just "how do you do that?"
Your example is annecdotal and the fact that you use such an annecdote as an excuse not to take positive action only confirms to me that you are a racist.
Your argument is that you should not share your knowledge to inquisitive inner city kids in schools and community centers because of rude teenagers who hangout on corners and black men who buy malt liquor at 7-11.
I work in the inner city; my students are in the inner city; I know the inner city-- or at least Roxbury and I recognize your annecdote for what it is-- a racist generalization.
Three suggestions:
1.) Try eating properly-- your brain will function better with some proper nutrition.
2.) Take a logic class next semester. You learn how to reason.
3.) If you are going to be a racist, at least learn to use Republican Party approved code words so you don't come across as an ignorant cracker.
The problem is that libertarianism is an 18th century political philosophy that is unable to respond to the realities of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
The libertarian party line essentially eliminates social spending and erodes public institutions, the result, if fully implemented would be a pay as you go society where poor people cannot pay for services and thus do not receive services while rich people never have to worry about healthcare, education or having their garbage picked up.
In a situation like that, you are not rising or falling on your own personal merits, but on your fortune or misfortune of birth to a given class, race, family or locale.
Try reading the platform of the Libertarian party and actually think through the consequences instead of parroting their slogans.
The internet's initial construction was funded by the government, corporations receiving government subsidies, and universities receiving government subsidies. Those subsidies came out of taxes, which all but the very poorest and those rich or sneaky enough to find loopholes have to pay.
The rich did not lay the wires, drive the trucks or work on the assembly lines that made the internet possible-- the working class did.
As far as your statement that, "What creates a class war is people thinking that they're entitled to [the fruits of] someone else's labour for no reason other than wanting it," well that sounds like what the rich have been doing.
Let us examine the flow of this discussion:
I: Kids in inner city schools are not receiving adequate computer education even when they do get access to computers. Who is going to share technical knowledge with them? [rhetorical question-- meant as a call to action.]
AC: But if I were to walk up to these kids hanging out on street corners they would say "go fuck yourself," and it would be ridiculous for me to talk about computers to the black men who biy malt liquor and rolling papers at the 7-11.
Perhaps I am jumping to conclusions to label "go fuck yourself" as rude, but humor me. Do you not see the lack of logical connection between my thesis and suggestion and your objection? Do you not see that my suggestion is a general suggestion while your objection is purely annecdotal?
Your point being?
Before you start calling people 'techo-libertarians' you may want to...oh, i dunno.... KNOW WHAT THE HECK THAT MEANS.
The idea that you are a autonomous subject that should have as little government interference is LIBERTARIANISM.
The idea that we should be a forward-looking society is LIBERALISM (actually, that probably is not right either: so many versions of 'liberal that it means absolutely everything and nothing)
Being a selfish jerk means you are a REPUBLICAN (just kidding... I love George Will).
What the people above are suggesting is that we people need to be compassionate. kind. human/humane. We don't want people left behind just becuase of some accident of where they are born. Teach them how to fish, don't give 'em a fish for one day.
OK, fine, be selfish. But, as Michael Moore says, "If everyone in America is making $40,000 per year, it is a lot less likely that your BMW will get stolen." The reason slavery sucks economically is becuase people are not used to the bes tof their ability, and they also do not feed the economy money through spending.
So if you want to be a good republican, or a good libertarian, then you should be the first one to say, "hey, lets get everyone to a comfortable lifestyle so they'll spend MONEY and make me rich!"
By the way... yes, I realize I have made gross generalizations and no, I don't know of a way to compact 6 years of schooling into 4 paragraphs. But all I REALLY know is that people should be humane....
The point of the $40,000 is not the absolute number $40,000 (that is simply inflation). The point of the quote is to say that if everyone is fed, clothed, well educated, and living in a decent lifestyle where they aren't forced to work crappy jobs and have financial freedom.... then they won't steal the hubcaps from your 'mobile. The point of the whole thing is to make everyone as free as possible, and instead of doing it through a communist revolution, we can do it trhough capitalism.
"Can't happen," you say? Well then why does Free Software ahve any meaning. We CAN change the world for the better.
two more points:
"Welfare recipients in our country live better than the European monarchy did two centuries ago."
No, they don't, becuase they have little to no freedom. If I hadn't gotten college scholarships, I would still be 'back in the holler' stripping tobacco. Education and the financial freedom to get computer time, etc. has made all the difference. Yeah, the standard of living may be better, but we still have serfs (read Das Kapital about that one....)
Second, No Michael Moore is not the god of scoail commentary. But he does make some compelling points. Would he last 2 seconds with George Will or Willaim F. Buckley in a debate? Heck no. But that doesn't mean he can't make compelling points. You made an ad hominem remark about the guy to discredit him. Screw that. When a good, logical point is made it matters little who made it.... otherwise you trivialize other people. And who said debate is the onl.y form of discourse, anyhow??
THis article has seriously made me want to go out and join a club or other organization that helps poor people 'get connected.' In a sense, the whole 'free software' movement is great, as long as we realize that it isn't just about freedom, it is also about free beer.
Everyone keeps harkening on, "Oh yeah, and you can SELL linux too." But you know what I think is another aspect of the revolution? The fact that you can make a $200 box for a home, with a free (as in beer) OS, so that your grandma or a poor inner-city youth can experience the same inforation as everyone else.
Freedom is not freedom if you have to buy it from (Choose your favorite software vendor).
Maybe it is not time yet to start calling for free beer (and the social-guerilla tactics are exactly why I like ESR), but soon (comrades) soon we should stop putting down and rather pick up our neighbors. Strange that code may set us free....
write shit like this. "Black/Yellow/younameit coloured people will suffer in future unless they will learn how to use computers". ;LOL!!
Dont you get it? I bet not. Let me explain.
The major mistake in this theory of new underclass of people is the ignorance of progress.
You see, we are still living the days where using computers HAS TO BE LEARNED. It isnt easy or simple... YET! In ten years, things will be different.
You dont need to educate yourself to get services from the net. You dont need FIGHT to install drivers. You dont need to use keyboard or mice unless you want to.
All you do is just talk and watch, maybe point something with your index finger. Computers will understand speaking, and see our motion in front of them. Is this something SO DIFFICULT that a racial group is totally out of business? I dont think so.
-
These were the things authors of this propaganda have forgotten. They were building their estimates based on the assumption that computers will be as hard and painfull to use in future too.
I am sorry idiots, but you are dead wrong. Windows and this Microsoft style shit will be gone in few years. So will be many other "common and timeconsuming" things too.
It may be even that people who are verbally talented may have edge on future. We may have problems outlearning things we now take granted "as a normal computer usage".
This reminds me of the cry of "What will happen to the buggy whip manufacturers?" around the turn of the century. There were efforts to restrict the automobile because it wasn't "fair" to those who had invested their lives in other things.
In spite of a lot of hand-wringing and silly laws that were passed, time moved on and the problem became non-existant. This problem will too as the Internet becomes even more prevelant around the world than the automobiile.