by SixofNine 72 Replies latest jw friends
Most of the people working on my line were black, and most of them worked just as hard or harder than the white people at the plant. I will admit, there were some who would do a lot of sleeping and wandering around, but there were more who would work than wouldn't. The people who didn't want to work didn't last very long.
Finally a voice of reason!
Or, am I missing something here?
Yes. Let's use your own psuedo logic about the Japanese. Prior to and during WWII, what kind of culture did the Japanese have? Was it modern? Industrial? Organized? Were they bought and sold like cattle? Were they educated/literate?
After WWII, did the Japanese people suddenly have zero cultural foundation? Did they live in a country where they were 3rd class citizens?
Now how about African Americans coming out of slavery?
I often lament that we humans are just Comparison Monkeys, and unfortunately, not nearly as talented comparison monkeys as we think we are. For a guy as intelligent as you, Terry, to mess it up so bad (this oh-so-human business of comparing things, usually beyond, but not this far beyond, any relevancy) I've created a new moniker: the "Comparison Jiggaboo", who lives on a steady diet of apples and oranges but knows not which is which.
Don't compare "black people" with "japanese people" in a cultural sense. It may or may not be racist, but it's definitly silly. Black people do have darker skin however. There, you wanna compare, compare that. That makes sense, it can be measured, and you don't have to worry about your own cultural biases prejudicing your conversation.
Terry, dearheart, I'm not supporting the "it's someone elses fault I'm <insert problem here>". I beleive everyone has the responsibility to overcome their upbringing and move forward no matter who they are. For some it is far easier said than done.
Everyone has a choice once they realize they have a choice and are old enough and wise enought to excercise their choice. Children have no choice as to who they are born to, and how they are raised. Being adopted by and raised and baptized at 14 as a JW was actually beyond my choices as a child. Yes, including baptism. Once I had a choice in the matter, I exercised it. Unfortunately there are a (very) few leftovers that after almost 40 years OUT that still affect me today.
When I was in 6th - 8th grade I was beat up regularly by blacks - boys and girls - because I was white, and I was fat, and it was during the late 60's, and when I tried to feebly fight back, I was ganged up on. Believe it or not I understood what the situation was: I was being targeted as the source for so-and-so's woes because of the times, AND each of those violent individuals were just that: individuals responsible for their actions. Unfortunately, as a minor, I was unable to get away from the situation, and my parents blamed it on JW persecution and to turn the other cheek. I wanted to change schools and get away from the violence. Most of THOSE children who were violent had 2-parent homes!
But I also saw the source of their angst... their parents. Their parents parents. The Black Revolution. It was a huge issue that came out of centuries of slavery and racial oppression, and attitudes being passed on from one generation to another. (Not dissimilar in other ethnical/cultural/racial/socio-economically oppressed groups.) I hope you dont' say it didn't exist at a group/racial level because I experienced it AND I am a better person for having experienced it! Part of the outcome is I have a better understanding for ethnic/cultural/economic predudices and the huge effort it takes to overcome that kind of background. And because I was oppressed, religiously and racially, and I have overcome it, I have been looked on in a different light from those who would have otherwise been predudiced by my white skin.
I have few predudices today. I have them, I'm human. I am also smart enough to take each INDIVIDUAL as they present themselves, no matter what they look like or where they come from. As an adult, I've actually had more work-ethic difficulties from a different cultural/ethnical/racial/religious background, but I'm not going to go into that here, nor elsewhere because it's personal.
Perhaps we're more connected than we thought we were: Debunking the Concept of 'Race'
Published: July 30, 2005
Black Americans who explore their family histories typically hit a dead end in the early 19th century, when black Americans who were slaves were not listed in the census by name. Now some black Americans are trying to fill in the gap with genetic screening tests that purport to tell descendants exactly where in Africa their ancestors came from. But, like most people, those who think of themselves as African-American will need to search well beyond Africa to find all of their origins. This point came through with resounding clarity recently at Pennsylvania State University, where about 90 students took complex genetic screening tests that compared their samples with those of four regional groups. Many of these students thought of themselves as "100 percent" white or black or something else, but only a tiny fraction of them, as it turned out, actually fell into that category. Most learned instead that they shared genetic markers with people of different skin colors.
Ostensibly "black" subjects, for example, found that as much as half of their genetic material came from Europe, with some coming from Asia as well. One "white" student learned that 14 percent of his DNA came from Africa - and 6 percent from East Asia. The student told The Daily Collegian, the student newspaper, earlier this year: "When I got my results I was like, there's no way they were mine. I thought it was just an example of what the test was supposed to look like. Then I was like, Oh my God, that's me."
Prof. Samuel Richards, who teaches a course in race and ethnic relations at Penn State, uses the test results to shake students out of rigid and received notions about the biological basis of identity. By showing students that they aren't what they think they are, he shows them that race and ethnicity are more fluid and complex than most of us think. The goal is to make students less prejudiced and more open to a deeper discussion of humanity. If the genetic testing fad pushes things in this direction, it will have served an important purpose in a world that too often thinks of racial labels as absolute - and the last word when it comes to human identity.
In America, Japanese who were American citizens were stripped of their homes and businesses and taken to concentration camps.
The only people who were allowed out of these camps were young men who agreed to fight against their own countrymen in order to prove their patriotism.
Japanese before WWII
Let's use your own psuedo logic about the Japanese. Prior to and during WWII, what kind of culture did the Japanese have? Was it modern? Industrial? Organized? Were they bought and sold like cattle? Were they educated/literate?
After WWII, did the Japanese people suddenly have zero cultural foundation? Did they live in a country where they were 3rd class citizens?
Japan’s culture was steeped in the rituals, beliefs, and philosophies of Shintoism and, later, Buddhist philosophies. Intertwined with these beliefs was a reverence for a monarchy believed to have a divine conception. Japan was until the mid-nineteenth century a feudal state, ruled by Shoguns or feudal lords.
DEFINE: FEUDAL Political and economic system in which a king or queen shared power with the nobility, who required services from the common people in return for allowing them to use the noble's land.
Japan became an aggressive imperial power itself. The causes and developments of the Pacific theater in WWII are complex, though Japan was unquestionably an aggressor toward her neighbors. Between the end of the China War and the end of WWII, 20 million people had been killed in Asia by Japanese forces.
At the end of the Second World War, Japan was in ruins. Most of its major cities were reduced to rubble, and its industrial infrastructure was decimated. A primary concern during the early years of occupation was the looming danger of famine. Given such circumstances, Japanese officials directed the nation’s energies toward industry. For at least the previous two decades, increasing portions of Japanese society had been set on a path of total military mobilization. In the postwar period, everything was simply redirected from the creation and maintenance of a great national military-industrial complex to a purely industrial complex. This may be an oversimplification, but in essence it is accurate.
Japanese citizens are regularly required to put in some of the lowest-paid workweeks in the advanced industrialized world, and death by overwork, or karoshi, remains a real problem. Placing industry above all other national priorities has meant that the quality of life for the average citizen has failed to keep pace with the Japanese "economic miracle."
Gee.....I've heard of "inflated" opinions; but, how did all that SPACE get into my last post????
Your neighbor sounds just as ignorant as the president of Mexico, who said a few months ago that Mexicans come to the US to take jobs that "even black people won't".
Gee.....I've heard of "inflated" opinions; but, how did all that SPACE get into my last post????
lol, Terry, I've found that if I post in Firefox browser, it adds space, and then it gets even more space every time I go to edit. I can go in and fix it with an Explorer browser edit however. If that's not the problem, then perhaps there was some code that came with your text when you copied and pasted from whatever web-site that came from?
First of all we are ONLY talking about those blacks who bring shame on themselves by refusing to work, blowing off an education, impregnating women and leaving them irresponsibly, wallowing in self-pity because their great great great grandfather was plantation bound and who set worthless examples for youths by glorifying violence and sadistic treatment of women. Right?
If you respond, "Right, but they can't help being that way."....I have to wonder about your thinking.
Such behavior is and should be inexcusable.
You are excusing it.
You can't.
Nobody is forced to act in such a manner in any society. Only the lazy and weak-minded sociopaths seek such behavior while resorting to blaming the "other guy" for his choices.
Neither blacks nor whites nor other ethnicities are PRONE to such behaviors. Race does not compel. It is personal choices which are at the root of these destructive acts, which, in turn, bring reproach on the community of race by default.
Do you see the difference?
If you excuse bad behavior by pointing to worse behavior then you are distracting the focus from the individual choice to the pressure of social injustices. That is a magic trick that won't fly here.
You never answered my question as to how the black people who chose educational excellence and hard work managed to escape all these naughty white people and their prejudices. There are many many hard working black people who insist on excellence for themselves and their children who rival and transcend the white trash around them going on to brilliant careers and superlative accomplishments. How did they do it? How did they escape your paradoxical whirlpool of ancestral bad attitudes? You never explain that.
An individual in society can only be held accountable for what his own actions are. Otherwise, we fall into the Adamic sin fable where you are no better than the worst thing done by your ancestors. That isn't justice; that is myth and illogic parading as cause and effect.
T.
James 4:11 & 12
Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
Proverbs 22:2
Rich and poor have this in common:
The LORD is the Maker of them all.
In the final analysis, the most important thing to be observant of is the fact that we, one and all, are nothing less than flesh and bone, nothing more than dirt. The same fate that exist before one, exist before all. We will all have our eyes close permanently, oneday. Be that naturally or after having been forced to be eternally put to sleep, we will all wither away and die, in theses shells anyway. I am not, nor will I ever try to place myself in a position that makes me the final judge of the life that is lived in another man's or woman's shoes.
