It’s been suggested that I should apologize to you for how I took your post, the comments I posted about it, and the way I deleted those comments.

I do apologize for how I construed your post and for the counterproductive comments that I originally posted. The feeling that those were actually counterproductive was the reason that I deleted them, in fact. Thus, to whatever extent an apology for those comments is helpful, it’s hereby offered.

I will maintain that deleting those comments was appropriate. Those who write comments that they come to regret should be allowed to either delete them or have them deleted. There is no reason that they should remain out there as a continuing irritant.

Orson, Bravo to you, too. These are the kind of conversations that we all need to hear and become a part of.

Thank you both very much.

What I see, instead, is a broken society, with an each-man- for-himself attitude. I think, in this regard, you romanticize the past much too much. The good old days were not as good as one tends to remember them in the rosy glow of memoies, nostalgia or pure imagination.

Regardless of the past, I see today an ever increasing prison population and an ever increasing population of young people who are dropping out of school and dropping out of productive society. You are suggesting, it seems to me, that since it’s their own fault, we should not make it any of our collective society’s business.

Unfortuanely, it becomes everyone’s business sooner or later. We pay for the prison system, for example, huge sums. We pay for high crime rates, not only through the victimization and fear involved, but via the theft insurance and security systems etc. that we finance. We pay.

At the same time, our national treasury is missing out on the contributions by those who could be but are not productive citizens. We pay again.
There are many other ways we all pay when parts of the society are malfunctioning, but this is enough for demonstrating the idea.

I reject, then, the false notion that we are only a collection of separate individuals taking care of our personal lives , We are all interconnected, and just like the whole person suffers when one body part is diseased, all of society suffers when some parts are malfuntcioning.

The question remains: do we want to invest in preventative medicine, or do we want to pay the higher costs for advanced diseases. And that’s only speaking in terms of economics and pragmatism, without including concepts of justice and morale.

Personally,, I can’t condone letting bad conditions fester amd become worse conditions. While no society will ever be perfect, I see it as a matter of a nation’s survival to fight aginst decline.

You are right about the backlash to mandated behaviors, but not completely right. It’s a mix, IMO. If it weren’t for anti-discrimination laws in housing, most black people would still be limited to living in tthe ghettos of big cities, regadless of their income. The right to live among one’s own kind can trample on the right of others to live where they want. Individual rights can clash, and we do need a referee in those cases, unless you accept that individual rights should be limited only to the most powerful.
I also hink it’s a mistake to think in dogmatic ways about policies that might alleviate problems (never government, never federal government, etc.)
For me, it’s simply a matter of looking for policies and programs that work. Try new things, test to see if they work, try other new things.

I don’t begrudge the Buffets their money, BTW. I was disturbed to hear that he pays a lower tax rate than his employees, however. They work for their income, too.
Mostly, though I admire his spirit of asking about the sacrifices we could all make for the benefit of the “we’. ‘Me’ and personal liberty are critically important, but not so sacred as to be allowed to trample ‘we’ into the dust.

I am neither advocating government interference nor rejecting government interferenece as a blanket political postition. To me, all absolutes are suspect. Each case has to be looked at individually. assessed carefully and treated extremely cautiously.
Somewhere between doing nothing and doing too much, we must find doing just enough, and no more.

So where are we? I think the point Domajot raises about responsibilities as the other side of the demand for rights is a good place to begin. Governments have a responsibility to provide good schools. If they are failing, then hold the feet of the school board, the city government, and even the state government to the fire for adequate funding for teachers, equipment and facilities. However, I suspect that good schools are more than just dollars. Responsibilities include:

Parents – taking an interest in the education of their children. Not simply education, but recognizing that the education which will make their children able to compete in a global economy is going to be heavy on math, business English, and science. That is going to require the parents to work with children. That is one reason why as a group Asians are doing well in college and university work compared to some other groups, including whites. Now (are you reading, David) this is one of the few places I agree with David – whites whining about being victims of too many Asians need to get a grip – spend the time working with your child and encouraging them in academics, not sports. Life isn’t fair fellas, and if Joe Kee got straight A’s in math and a scholarship to MIT, it’s probably due to ability AND hard work by pupil and parent, not just Asian ancestry.

Quit whining about the cultural, and get busy in school – do what gets you an employable degree. Again, where are the parents? Responsible people put a child through college to get a degree that leads to economic success, not a wall ornament.

Families. Where the heck are the dads? Children are not some sort of little trophy, they are a major commitment of time and money. If you aren’t willing to put them ahead of your personal desires, you probably shouldn’t have children. Plenty of blame to go round; David. The yuppies I know who treat kids like some kind of accessories to bring out for an afternoon now and again fro visiting relatives are every bit as irresponsible as the guys in the ‘hood who sire one or more children they don’t help raise, both financially and emotionally.

Religious people – are you helping the less fortunate? I don’t care if you are Agnostic, Christian, Jewish, Moslem or Wiccan – all of these groups seem to place responsibilities to the less able high on the list of what good members of their faith do. Too many of us who claim some kind of faith get poor marks here.

So back to the beginning. Why are whites so reluctant to help others? Maybe some are bigots, but not all. Probably not even most. But, if we insist on telling members of a group that they are guilty of some other person or group’s poor fortune, we are not likely to make them feel motivated to help that person or group. Human nature and psychology seems to indicate that people relate better to individuals than to groups. People do not always make good choices in life. That seems to be universal – it isn’t just one ethnic or gender group, but everyone. So trying to force uniform compliance with social norms seems to get problematic once we get beyond not cheating, stealing or killing. As I asked – where has anyone seen success in governmentally enforced racial and gender standards?

I posed the question about Yugoslavia because it seems like an apt example. Marshal Tito kept the ethnic rivalries under check by exceptionally repressive means – and by golly, the country got along. Until he died. Then the Slavs, Serbs, and Croats began murdering each other, making up for lost time in settling old scores.

My point about the America my great-grandparents came to is this: If people want to change, then they will, but forcing change generally breeds resistance. In 1890 people pretty much understood the rules of the game to be assimilation into the larger US Anglo culture. In return for that, people moved up, eventually.

I agree, Domajot, it isn’t perfect. But what is better? Anyone got a real, concrete example of a society which has been more welcoming of people willing to assimilate? As to Jim Crow, I think we are back to my initial point: when racial or gender discrimination is mandated by the government – any government – it is WRONG. When people decide of their own free will to live with similar ethnic group members, it may not be ideal from an integrationist view, but it is not wrong. Again, there is no way to guarantee equal results. Some people work harder, some get some lucky breaks, some get both. Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and Bill Cosby have each gotten some measure of success – financial, social, etc. But they all worked for it – hard. And yes, they got some lucky breaks along the way. But that’s what we should be holding out as the role models for our young. A strong work ethic and sense of self-worth, not a sense of grievance and entitlement coupled with over-promoted and under earned self-esteem.

I edited nothing. I only deleted my own comments on this thread. Others have often done so, either by deleting their comments themselves or asking one of the editors to do it for them.

Your position about this is odd anyway, since you object to everything I say and then you also object when I try to take it back. The ability to remove counterproductive comments would seem to be a good thing, since it would allow the poster and other commenters to go back to talking about the original post. Apparently, you would prefer to keep it around so you can keep attacking me for it over and over?

Whatever. Since you have long made it clear that no matter what I do, you’ll think it an outrage, I would really appreciate it if you would let that just be assumed from now on and stop haranguing me.

While the issue of individual rights is writ large in every context of late,, the issue of individual responsibilities remains largely unexamined.
Does individual responsibility stop at the limits of each private life, or does a collective of individuals also bear responsibility for the actions and conditions of their communities and, eventually, their country?

In a post about racism, we hear all about individual ringts, but not one word about responsibilites. It almost seems like individual rights are used to isolate the American collective of individuals from any responsibility whatseever in this area.

How different that approach is from responsibilites when discussed at the international level.in other contexts. After the Holocaust, the German state assumed responisbillity and paid reparations from their national treasury to which contibuted imany ndividuals who were not personally responsible. How tolerant would anyone be about outcires of individual rights in that context? What would have been the reaction if Germany had simply said: “Sorry. Now you are free to pursue the individual responsibility of making new lives for yourselves. We can’t help you with that.”

I am not speaking about any particular policies for action here. In choosing among approaches, I would be interested simply in what works.

I am speaking, however, about the collection of individuals who form a nation,, but then deny any individual or collective responsibility for actions by that nation. “Sorry, It wasn’t me. I just want my rights.”

This is a regrettable attitude to take, and it’s dangerous, as well. Whether we are talking about racism, global warming, health care, poverty, crime, or any of out problems. The loudest reastion is always:
“Sorry, It wasn’t me. I just want my rights.”
That gets us nowhere.

You said what you said and for you to have the ability to return and flippantly unsay what you said is not right. (I used words other than ‘not right’ but they were so harsh and judgmental that I would have wanted to unsay them later and as I don’t have the power… I didn’t)

Your capricious editing of another “TMV Assistant Editors” posting is outrageous.

Shame on you. Your ability to remove “comments” that you made, also made the comments of others moot, AND you deprive new readers to the thread the ability to see what happened and why we said what we said…

Why don’t you just remove the entire post? I’m sure David won’t mind… Just a minor re-write of history.

I can counter your grandmother’s experience without going back to previous generations: I am
an immigrant (at the age of 12, several decades ago). I am also white and of physically obvious European descent.

While going through the pangs of acclimatization in the USA, it was obvious that in applying for jobs or receiving class assingment in school, I was given preferential treatment over the blacks and native Indians who were citizens from birth. I was given a leg up by virtue of my skin color.

There are two separate issues here. One concerns which policies are appopriate to improve the lot of the disadvantaged, with the subsection of diversity as a goal or a tool.

The other issue is racism and what we really mean by ‘equal opportuniy’. I submit that the opportunity given me was far above that of my darker skinned
peers. My accent was ‘charming’, while the idiom and speech inflection of my less favored peers was a sign of intelligence shortages. I sat in the front rows in class and was called on, while my less favored peers sat in the back and were ignored.

Who do you think was better positioned to succeed in landing a job after graduation? We sat in the same classrooms and heard the same lessons, but we did not all have an equal opportunity to learn and profit from the experience.

There is a cumulative effect of racism over generations. Being told you are without intrinsic value often enough and long enough, the effort to overcome it becomes ever more of a struggle. Those unwilling to address it, should at least acknowledge what we are demanding, when we talk about persoanl responsibility and equal opportunity.

Jason… You may very well have valid points but until you learn to soften your approach… you’re going to estrange, not engage, readers with differing opinions. Intentional or not you come across with a real nasty attitude.

The idea that people have individual rights, rather than just group rights, is well enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. That is the crux of this disagreement. Those of us who feel that individual rights trump most group rights are making the case that any form of governmental action based on racial or gender categories is wrong, except under the most narrowly defined circumstances. In other words, government mandated school segregation is wrong; but de facto school segregation based on people making their own choices is not wrong. Topeka’s school board was wrong in telling blacks they could not attend certain schools based on race; Seattle’s school board is doing the same thing. It was wrong in Topeka, and it is wrong in Seattle.

No matter how much you or I might like certain things, like racially balanced neighborhoods, it is not our right to tell others where to live, just to give us the ideal neighborhood. It was wrong to have housing covenants that kept blacks, Asians, Jews and others out of country clubs and subdivisions. It is equally wrong to force people to buy homes where some government agency dictates just ot insure racial balance.

Your approach to mandated diversity strikes me as wrong. Just as wrong as the Puritans, who also felt that they knew what the ideal society was, and who dictated that all who lived in their “city on a hill” would comply with their understanding of the Godly life or leave – or be executed.

So where, precisely, has enforced diversity led to improved civility and peace and harmony? Yugoslavia? Sudan? Rwanda? Detroit? Boston? So far, what I’ve observed is that once people start officially classifying people based on race, religion, and the like, we tend to have less harmony, not more. Groupthink sets in, and it becomes easy to simply discount the ‘other’ as beneath basic humanity. Cambodia under Pol Pot, anyone?

The Khymer Rouge. Now that, David, might be something to consider. Intellectuals, who often have sentimental notions of utopia often think that if they re-shape the world according to their utopian dream, they will be the people in charge. But in Cambodia, the first thing the group-thinking social reformers did was kill all the people with glasses, college degrees, and the like. By all means,bring your own rope to the hangman.

No matter how much it may gall you, it is not the government’s job to make its citizens make decisions that you or I may think are wise and socially ideal. I don’t want the government deciding where my kids should go to school, or where to buy a house for all the same reasons that many people don’t want the government deciding who they should marry, if they should get an abortion, or what career to pursue. Some people make bad decisions. I don’t want to live in your utopia of enforced equality any more than I want to live in Pol Pots, or Stalins.

There are many ways to help those you feel are unfairly disadvantaged without having to resort to state-sponsored racism. If you want to feed the poor, do it. If you want to house the poor, do it. You can buy a home or rent an apartment in a blighted area, and work with a soup kitchen or food bank, help Habitat for Humanity or some similar group build homes, or volunteer with one of the failing schools. Help teach kids to read and write. Now there is the first logical thing that all the Seattle reformers might have done.

Domajot – I think you make a good point. But it seems to me, the USA had a much better, more cohesive sense of self before the diversity argument became so popular. My great-grandparents came from Europe, and no one said, “poor things, let us offer to help you in French and German.” Nope – they learned English in a hurry in the tenements of New York City, and they promptly, legally became citizens. They worked hard, and sent their children to school, to become teachers, and professionals instead of day laborers and seamstresses. But the thing was, they all were “Americans,” who spoke English. they no longer saw themselves as Frenchmen or Germans. Theodore Roosevelt was correct in stating that he welcomed all who wanted to be Americans, but he had no use for what he called ‘hyphenated Americans’ who had divided loyalties. I think TR was correct. Our diversity agenda has not helped bring us together, it has driven us apart.

The ‘I’m the real victim” argument sounds suspiciously like the “War on God” campaign. It’s a ploy to avoid genuine discussion by declaring pre-emptive victimhood. It relies on claiming that not getting one’s way is equivalent to being attacked.

Michael Moore is a self-promoting kook, but he did make one interesting observation, which I have noted for years. Unlike Europe, Americans lack a sense of ‘we’. We’re disparate groups and individuals incacaple of identifying with the good of the country, the ‘we’, Consequently, even though Europeans pay higher taxes, they complain about it less. (This is true among people I knwo in France, Denmark and Spain.) They think of taxes as their share in providing a benefit for the whole country.
My friends in France laughed when I told them about the ‘wealth redistrubution’ label.
Perhaps it’s this mindset in the US of not being able to think of “we’ that is the biggest barrier to making headway as to racim and other forms of injustice.

But your entire rant is especially absurd because you’re sidetracking here–my post wasn’t about White people’s complaints about anti-racism remedies and their relative merits, it was about whether a given remedial strategy does what people within Jill’s and my framework want it do. The phrase you oppose barely even qualifies as marginal to the post I wrote. Picking out something that was labeled a quick note before I proceeded, taking it out of context (I wrote that Jill was too quick to dismiss such complaints, though clearly I think she has a point and your immediate dash to call yourself the victim of “rhetorical bully[ing]” does nothing to prove her wrong), and turning into the center is the behavior of someone looking to pick a fight. In that context, I’m amused more than anything else at your self-righteous proclamation to be a defender of open public discussion, but its also getting a bit tiring.

So it goes.