People have to act on the opportunity they're being given. Saying that all of societies inequities are so because of racism is a bullshit, lazy and disingenuous argument. Do you want to hear MY opinion on why the black community continuously does worse in these societal outcomes? Because they are fed a lie by the left that the world is inherently racist and against them, therefore there's no point in trying to be successful, since their success will always be derailed by the evil white people who occupy positions of power.

You tell that to any person, regardless of race and the chances that they will be successful are greatly diminished. It destroys motivation to work hard and make something of yourself. And then, when many of these people do fail, thus completing the self-fulfilling prophecy, that affirms their believe that society is indeed rigged against them and is the reason for their failure. Then this myth is told to a new generation of children and the ugly cycle repeats itself.

It's funny, because for all of the statistical measures that the modern left uses to showcase the plight of black and hispanics and of course, the privilege that whites apparently enjoy, Asians are actually the racial group that come out on top in pretty much all of them. How can that be, in a society that was designed exclusively for the benefit of white people? I'll tell you why. Because that's a lie and because Asian culture, by and large, stresses the importance of self sacrifice, personal responsibility and hard work. That is why they reign supreme at the top of the socioeconomic charts, even above the majority group (whites).

You are oversimplifying. To understand why PJW is not accepted as a source, you need to understand two distinct evaluations of a source.

1) The partisan lean of the source.

2) The intellectual honesty of the source.

A source could be radical left or radical right and I would give them the time of day if they are intellectually honest. Yes, PJW is far right, however, what disqualifies him from consideration as a source is not that he is far right, but that he lacks intellectual honesty. As I've previously said, it isn't that I believe him to be wrong regularly, it is that I believe that he doesn't have any interest in being right unless it is convenient for him. Someone like that has no value in a discussion whether they are on the left or on the right. You are free to head over to The US Politics thread and see me making essentially the same determination for several far left sources last week or so after looking through some videos that were posted. Examples like Kyle Kulinski and Jimmy Dore are people on the left who lack intellectual honesty and as such, lack any value in a discussion.

Okay, but then be willing to admit that the modern left wants equity, not equality (of opportunity). It's exactly what I said then. They do not want a meritocracy. Because you can't have equality of opportunity (meritocracy) and equality of outcome (equity) at the same time. They are two incompatible philosophies. I think equity is a fool's game and history has shown time and time again how dangerous it is. So I am very much against it. Lastly, I don't agree that women and minorities are still suffering in the West. Can you find individual examples of racism? Of course. Unfortunately, you're never going to be able to completely cleanse the world of bigotry. Human beings are fundamentally flawed and that's just one manifestation of their imperfection. The existence of individual examples does not mean the entire system is corrupt though. And that's where the modern left loses me.

Mk, so you would agree with the issue being environment but you think it's the environment of people talking about social inequality. I would say it's more likely to do with lacking generational wealth. I think that's a greater predictor off success or failure than whether or not you were taught identity politics in school. 

Your second paragraph is reasonable only if we assume all socioeconomic groups are perfectly elastic (not sure this is the right term, but basically that a person in one socio economic group has just as much chance as ending up in higher or lower groups then any other) but that isn't the case. Poor families tend to stay poor and rich families tend to stay rich. For centuries the US made sure that one specific racial group was as poor and destitute as possible, and now they want to simply stop and think things will work themselves out instead of doing things to counter how hard they fucked the group in the first place. If we're talking on the order of centuries again perhaps this would all work itself out, but I think policies should be designed to try and counter the detrimental situation this group has been put into. 

This is because Asian immigrants are filtered for those that have the resources to make a cross continental trip. Similarly, if you look at Nigerian immigrants they have a greater percentage of postgraduate degrees than the native population, because of how our immigration system filters applicants. Black Americans are just not in the same situation. 

I appreciate your intellectual consistency. Having said that though, I bet there are instances where you (and I) would agree with Kyle Kulinski and Jimmy Dore. I just ultimately disagree with ever dismissing someone entirely. To me, it's close-minded. You'd have to be pretty extreme to cross that line for me, if that's even possible at all. If you ever change your mind and check out the video, again, I would be happy to hear your counterpoints, if you disagree. I call bullshit when I see it, but I honestly can't find it in his arguments and I watched the video several times. If you care to humour me sometime and are willing to show me that I'm wrong (if that's what you believe after seeing it), I'll be all ears.

Alright, I guess an example is in order. 

Back around 1950, there was a big change happening in this country. Suburbanization! There was a mass move out of cities and into suburbs, which largely created the picture of "The American Dream" which we still hold today. Those communities where every house looked the same with a small yard and a white picket fence were being built rapidly around that time, largely on the Federal Government's dollar. That is because the Federal Housing Administration provided subsidies to these huge projects which allowed the houses to be sold far cheaper than would otherwise be possible. They were so cheap that buying these houses were in many cases much cheaper than holding rent in the cities.

But, the FHA at that time had a policy: They would only provide these subsidies to developments that were non-mixed race. As such, these communities, that were popping up across the country and providing people with tons of wealth on the federal government's dollar were largely restricted to only white people. Not only was the initial sale barred from non-white individuals, but in the contract for purchasing a house, individuals were barred from selling to non-white individuals.

So what happened? Middle and lower class whites moved out of cities and into these suburbs across the country, creating a huge transfer of wealth due to the subsidies and the lowered costs of housing. To facilitate these communities schools cropped up, funded by people that had the money to make sure that they were good schools. These communities thrived due to the influence of the Federal government.

But what of the cities? Well, the large migration out of cities took a lot of wealth with it. This created concentrated pockets of poverty in cities. Without the middle class whites to help foot the bill, the quality of schools declined, the quality of housing declined, the quality of public services declined, meanwhile, these largely minority communities were still paying more for housing than the people who were able to move out. The white communities saw better schooling and decreased costs allowing them to amass generational wealth, while the black communities were trapped with high payments and poor schools cutting off their ability to amass wealth.

Eventually, the FHA repealed this and the day was saved, right? Well, no. These communities were still stuck in concentrated poverty, unable to amass wealth and without the school quality to reliably escape. The systemic barrier was removed, but the consequence was not address. These disparities are still seen today. We see that even factoring in income, white families have a much higher wealth than black families, we see that school quality is much lower in minority communities, we see that housing is still poor but expensive in minority communities, while suburbs are still overwhelmingly white (and moving is much more difficult without those federal subsidies that allowed white families to leave cities). 

The effects of this policy are still able to seen decades later because nobody cared to address them. The assumption that everything will level off once we remove certain barriers in the law simply doesn't work because the ripple effects are often just as damaging as the initial cause. 

This is definitely true as well, but how can one make the claim that Western culture is designed only for white people to have success? That's where all of these calls for "dismantling whiteness" come from. The idea is that Western society's ideals are inherently white ideals and thus, other cultures / races cannot succeed in that system. Yet, somehow, Indians and East Asians come here and wipe the floor with the native population in these various measurements of success. I just can't understand how these two things can be squared. If western society is an oppressive structure (to anyone who isn't a straight white man), how do so many immigrants come here and become incredibly successful?

Recently, the Smithsonian Institution claimed that rationality and hard work were racist, because (apparently) they are strictly white ideals. This is pure insanity. Pretty sure many other cultures were busting their asses off before much of the western world was even formed.

I don't really have any goal of "dismantiling whiteness" so I can't speak to that. I read slightly into the Smithsonian thing but not enough to have an opinion. 

I am solely arguing that certain groups have been historically fucked and that doing that for centuries, getting rid of those policies, but doing nothing to counteract their effects is not a true equality of opportunity. It's like when I talk to a libertarian (you should look into that btw, seems like you'd like it) about access to healthcare and they say that everyone in America currently has access to healthcare because they can buy it if they have the money. I'm talking about access to actually getting healthcare while they are talking about access to the billing department that can turn you away if you don't have the money or insurance. 

I'm with you (and the rest of the left) for like... 90% of your argument. I might not agree with every minute detail, but I generally agree with the overall premise. I think where I disagree is with the solution to the problem. I don't see how something like affirmative action (a discriminatory practice by definition) is helpful. I don't see how demonizing white people and blaming them for every stumble of the black community is helpful. I don't see how defunding the police in areas with higher than average crime rates is helpful. By the way, I'm not claiming that these are YOUR suggested solutions or anything like that. But they are suggestions being pushed by many prominent left wing politicians and pretty much the entire Democratic party.

I don't plan on talking too much about that chart again, but I do want to say, on the topic of sources, this is exactly what I was criticizing. Instead of linking to the "Smithsonian Institution", you linked to an Op-Ed from the conservative "American Enterprise Institute". If you click on their link to the chart at question, you are brought to an Op-Ed from the conservative "The American Conservative" and within that second Op-Ed is a picture of the chart at question.

Just link the chart, dude.