oh shoot! i didn't notice you already posted this. ah well, great minds i guess.

how did the speech go? i forgot my freakin' headphones today so i didn't get to listen in.
anna | Email | Homepage | 11.05.03 - 4:04 pm | #

“Today in America, you have a better chance of being called back for a job interview if you’re white with a criminal record than you do if you’re black with a clean record – never having been arrested or convicted."

This comment is absolutely untrue! Fact is you have a better chance of being called back for a job interview, or a medical or law school admission if you're an underqualified black than a white with an advanced degree and five years experience. Besides, whether you're white or black, if you've paid your debt to society, it shouldn't matter who else is applying for the job. When are we going to do away with racist affirmative action and sexist Title IX laws and really sit down at the table as equals. As long as race and gender quotas exist, there will be racism in the United States.

Furthermore, the civil war was not about racism anymore than World War II was about anti-semitism. The civil war was about Northern industrial aggressors foisting their views of economy and morality on the South. Slavery was an afterthought and not a particularly popular afterthought to most Yankees.
Greg | Email | Homepage | 11.05.03 - 8:57 pm | #

Hey Greg,
Where are your links about that civil war stuff.

Bill M.
Bill M. | Email | Homepage | 11.05.03 - 9:13 pm | #

greg, statistics don't back you up. recent studies have shown that the white applicant has a better chance of being called back. the problem with people not being able to find jobs lies not with minorities or affirmative action, but rather with the all-too-common practise of multinational corporations moving jobs away from the united states. it has to do with cheap labor that can be fond around the world due to trade treaties without labor and environmental standards. if a company can close it's USA factory and move overseas and save money, they'll do it because they make more profit. that's where your jobs are going.

as for your comments, i understand where you're coming from (i'm a southerner and i've heard that line a million times). i agree that one day we will do away with affirmative action, but right now we are not equal. and until we have this discussion of race and we come to a place where everyone is equal, we need to leave those laws in place. one day when we reach that american dream of equality that MLK spoke of, then maybe we won't need those laws. but right now this discussion shows that we still need them.
anna | Email | Homepage | 11.05.03 - 11:33 pm | #

Hell, I'm white and I'm applying for college right now. There are many times more scholarships at my school for minority students than there are for whites. But do I mind? No, and for exactly the reasons Gov. Dean (and anna, above) talked about. Institutional racism exists. One day, we will get rid of affirmative action. But not yet.
Dan B-P | Email | Homepage | 11.05.03 - 11:51 pm | #

Greg is buying the racists' lines. He can't prove his point, because the facts speak otherwise.

The problem is that millions of whites believe the same lies Greg does. They are lies, yet these people believe it.

How do we get the facts to them, so the discussion can truly begin? How do we break through the walls of excuse Greg has built so we can reach the real man inside?

I'm just asking.
Dana Blankenhorn | Email | Homepage | 11.06.03 - 8:52 am | #

dana, that's a great question, and i believe it starts with being able to sit down face to face and talk about this stuff. we can't rely on the media to get our message out, we can't rely on the republicans to be honest about the issue. we must do it ourselves. all of us who have the power of truth on our side must make our case honestly.

but it all goes back to the problem with political dialogue in this country. i think most of us would agree that people don't talk about politics anymore. they yell, they flame, they scream and kick and fight and then nothing is accomplished. we're still right where we started. in order to move forward i feel that we need to be civil to each other and respect each other as human beings even if we vehemently disagree. and that's why i responded to greg the way i did. i don't need to yell at him mor tell him he's bought the party line. i need to present him with facts and show him the truth. i swear to god, eventually it will sink in.

i say this as someone who was raised to be racist (hell, my dad who lives in central florida still calls puerto ricans "spics" and boy do we have some interesting discussions about that), and it took me years to overcome my ignorance. i've said it before and i'll say it again: racism can and must be unlearned.
anna | Email | Homepage | 11.06.03 - 11:27 am | #

My parents, both midwesterners, very reasonable, rational centrist Lutheran types, can still slip the occasional racial slur into their conversation. I call them on it straight away, pretty forcefully at times, and that has had a positive effect of helping them to become aware that the words themselves are hurtful. They don't intend to be mean, but these are habits ingrained in most cultures for many generations, all over the country and the world. That's how deep this goes, and only by bringing it to the fore and looking at these attitudes in the light of reason will we ever bring people to an honest understanding that we're all alike inside, we all want and need the same conditions to be happy, and our differences are only on the surface.
tencentlife | Email | Homepage | 11.06.03 - 11:52 am | #

The only problem with this speech is it doesn't really make a point of how right he was in the first place. There's a LOT of people in the South for whom the flag isn't about racism, it's about getting shafted by the North, the Federal Government, History, Liberals, whatever. Is Tom Petty a poor white guy? He had a video wrapped in a confederate flag "Born a Rebel." That got plenty of air-play on MTV in the 1980s, but I don't remember any scandals.

I'm not saying we should embrace the confederate flag either, I realize it's hurtful & for good reason to a lot of people, but I am saying we should embrace some, probably the vast majority, of confederate flag wavers, and tell them we're on their side, that the Democrats are the people's party.
Joanna Bryson | Email | Homepage | 11.06.03 - 2:08 pm | #