What are your overall opinions of the term "blue eyed soul"?

[Ana the Ist]

I was just setting the limits on my "free for all" notion.

Fair enough.

I do think the USA is making progress on racism, and I do think it stacks up quite well against many other countries in that regard. I'm really glad that we are constantly working through race issues in the media, movies, news, etc. Its an ongoing effort, much to the chagrin of people who'd rather the topic just 'go away'.

I'll agree that there's racial issues which could be worked on...but they need calm, detached, respectful people working on them by their very nature. That's hard to find because racism is a very emotional issue. The problem comes when recognizing the emotional element of racism turns into legitimizing the emotional element of racism.

I also think there's a legitimate point where it's entirely reasonable to ask "are these problems worth the attention we give them?" If you had a patient dying from multiple lacerations and severed arteries....and you were devoting 90% of his care to curing his headache....then there's a legitimate question of priorities and efforts. If the left devotes the majority of it's narrative to racism, sexism, and the like....then it's not unreasonable to ask just how important those issues are and if the efforts given to them are appropriate.

Still, I hardly know a single person, myself included, who's free racist tendencies.

Is that a realistic goal?

And as a country we still havent recovered from brutal systemic racism in terms of poverty.

I'll agree with that...there is a wage gap between whites and blacks. The sad thing is, it was at it's smallest in the mid 60s or so. The wage gap has either remained the same or increased since the 60s, and I don't know anyone who claims that we're more racist now than we were then. Indeed, since then pretty much all laws that allowed for discrimination have been removed...and many incentives for helping minorities have been put into place. Things like affirmative action have increased diversity in colleges and businesses. There's also any number of small business loans and grants that are subsidized specifically for blacks, minorities, and others from disadvantaged communities.

The problem I see today is mainly from those using things as general as "statistical disparities" to make claims about the racism of entire institutions. That, and the use of rare incidents as emotional fuel for racially driven agendas. It's the sort of thing that you'd expect people to be smarter about...but they aren't. So instead of examining why, for example, there's a disparity between the outcomes of whites amd blacks in grade school from every possible angle....they just point to the disparity and claim there's widespread racism amongst teachers. Teachers, obviously deny this...and I think it damages race relations. Instead of examining the issue further, groups decide it must be "white privilege" or "unconscious bias" and start changing policy. Companies and the government spent billions on "bias training" that in most cases changed nothing....or made racial relations worse. Some schools saw "discrimination" in the punishment of black students and removed the ability of teachers to punish anyone. The result? Black student's test scores actually got worse...and good students left because their parents rightly didn't want to be a part of those schools. It's literally a "solution" in both cases that made the problems they tried to fix worse....and no one suggests that perhaps the problems weren't caused by racism in the first place.

Specifically, if we're talking about poverty amongst minorities...how much of the problem is due to "systemic racism"? It seems that the left understands that wealth being passed on to future generations has a tremendous impact on the wealth of those generations. In fact, much of their narrative about poverty is related to that idea. Yet there's no acknowledgment that whites had all the wealth...even before they bought a single slave and brought him to the US. There was a tremendous difference between the wealth of the two groups. So even if slavery had ended...and whites treated blacks as equals and there was no racism at all...I don't think we would expect the two groups to be exactly the same in terms of wealth 150 years later. I'm not sure if it would even out after 200 or 300 years. So it's hard to say just how big a role racism has played in poverty when it's not a measurable thing.

I play drum kit. The bulk of my formal education was actually from a master drummer of the Ewe tribe from Burkina Faso. I appropriated lots of great knowledge from him!

Favorite living drummer that's playing? I like Elliott Hoffman of Car Bomb. There's a great video of him by "sick drummer" on YouTube.

This isn't an isolation of one of his songs...its a lesson. I think it gives a good idea of his play style though...

Watch "Elliot Hoffman-Somethings odd 11.2010 Sick Drummer Magazine lesson" on YouTube

 

[durangodawood]

Fair enough.



I'll agree that there's racial issues which could be worked on...but they need calm, detached, respectful people working on them by their very nature. That's hard to find because racism is a very emotional issue. The problem comes when recognizing the emotional element of racism turns into legitimizing the emotional element of racism.

I also think there's a legitimate point where it's entirely reasonable to ask "are these problems worth the attention we give them?" If you had a patient dying from multiple lacerations and severed arteries....and you were devoting 90% of his care to curing his headache....then there's a legitimate question of priorities and efforts. If the left devotes the majority of it's narrative to racism, sexism, and the like....then it's not unreasonable to ask just how important those issues are and if the efforts given to them are appropriate.



Is that a realistic goal?



I'll agree with that...there is a wage gap between whites and blacks. The sad thing is, it was at it's smallest in the mid 60s or so. The wage gap has either remained the same or increased since the 60s, and I don't know anyone who claims that we're more racist now than we were then. Indeed, since then pretty much all laws that allowed for discrimination have been removed...and many incentives for helping minorities have been put into place. Things like affirmative action have increased diversity in colleges and businesses. There's also any number of small business loans and grants that are subsidized specifically for blacks, minorities, and others from disadvantaged communities.

The problem I see today is mainly from those using things as general as "statistical disparities" to make claims about the racism of entire institutions. That, and the use of rare incidents as emotional fuel for racially driven agendas. It's the sort of thing that you'd expect people to be smarter about...but they aren't. So instead of examining why, for example, there's a disparity between the outcomes of whites amd blacks in grade school from every possible angle....they just point to the disparity and claim there's widespread racism amongst teachers. Teachers, obviously deny this...and I think it damages race relations. Instead of examining the issue further, groups decide it must be "white privilege" or "unconscious bias" and start changing policy. Companies and the government spent billions on "bias training" that in most cases changed nothing....or made racial relations worse. Some schools saw "discrimination" in the punishment of black students and removed the ability of teachers to punish anyone. The result? Black student's test scores actually got worse...and good students left because their parents rightly didn't want to be a part of those schools. It's literally a "solution" in both cases that made the problems they tried to fix worse....and no one suggests that perhaps the problems weren't caused by racism in the first place.

Specifically, if we're talking about poverty amongst minorities...how much of the problem is due to "systemic racism"? It seems that the left understands that wealth being passed on to future generations has a tremendous impact on the wealth of those generations. In fact, much of their narrative about poverty is related to that idea. Yet there's no acknowledgment that whites had all the wealth...even before they bought a single slave and brought him to the US. There was a tremendous difference between the wealth of the two groups. So even if slavery had ended...and whites treated blacks as equals and there was no racism at all...I don't think we would expect the two groups to be exactly the same in terms of wealth 150 years later. I'm not sure if it would even out after 200 or 300 years. So it's hard to say just how big a role racism has played in poverty when it's not a measurable thing.



Favorite living drummer that's playing? I like Elliott Hoffman of Car Bomb. There's a great video of him by "sick drummer" on YouTube.

This isn't an isolation of one of his songs...its a lesson. I think it gives a good idea of his play style though...

Watch "Elliot Hoffman-Somethings odd 11.2010 Sick Drummer Magazine lesson" on YouTube

Wow. Id never heard of him before. Amazing creativity. I dont know who may favorite drummer is these days. Usually its the last one I saw who impressed me.

 

[Chesterton]

I play drum kit.

"I play drum kit." Whoever said drummers were dumb? Just kidding, dude. But, have you ever watched the documentary Beware Of Mr. Baker? It's interesting. As a non-drummer I actually learned some stuff about drumming from that film.

 

[Dave-W]

Is Vanessa Williams "blue eyed soul?"

No - her eye color has not been adjusted.

 

[durangodawood]

"I play drum kit." Whoever said drummers were dumb? Just kidding, dude. But, have you ever watched the documentary Beware Of Mr. Baker? It's interesting. As a non-drummer I actually learned some stuff about drumming from that film.

Interesting film. He was a firecracker drummer. But what a weirdo.