Now that's a good question. I think our economic empowerment and self-determination at some point will require the transcendence of capitalism itself.
But black owned enterprises may improve our situation, especially if they take the form of democratic cooperatives.
I suggest democratic cooperatives, even though I don't exclude private enterprises, because in such institutions the AVERAGE person can play a bigger role in securing his/her well being and that of the community. I really would like to see folk take a second look at W.E.B. Du Bois's DUSK OF DAWN, and especially the chapter entitled "The Colored World Within."
I've recently published on book on the philosophical thought of Dr. King, and I noticed that he seemed to promote both support for Black enterprises, and the formation of cooperatives among poor and working class Black folk.
King discusses some of this in STRIDE TOWARD FREEDOM and WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY? I also think we can revisit some of the projects of SNCC, and even the 10 Point Program of the Black Panther Party.
One sad thing about what happened after the 1960s, is that too much of the political ane economic thought and proposed programs were forgotten. But some of it is still relevant, even more relevant TODAY than in the 1960s.
-Savant
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Aristotle's comments are found in the POLITICS. Actually, his comments are a bit different from that. He says that the peoples of the East are civilized and intelligent, but lacking in free spirit or courage. The peoples of the West (Europe) are spirited, but more like beasts since they're not civilized nor well developed in the area of the intellect. Only the Greeks, Aristotle believed, possessed BOTH the free spirit and developed reason or intelligence. Therefore, only the Greeks were the elect, fit to be masters of the world. Interestingly enough, Aristotle (and later the Romans) saw Western Europeans--ancesto rs of most white Americans--as savages. In short, he (and Greeks & Romans generally) white skinned people of ancient Western Europe in much the same way as modern Europeans came to regard Africans (and Native Americans), and as many white Americans and Europeans still regard Black peoples. (I don't have the exact references with me now, but I can provide them later). By the way, Aristotle's arguments in defense of slavery were later used by modern Europeans to justify the enslavement of Africans and Native Americans. This is discussed in a book called THE PROBLEM OF SLAVERY IN WESTERN CULTURE
-Savant
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The Foundng Fathers mainly had no resume, nor is that essential for being a good leader. There is no global depression, and at any rate the economy is not worse than when Obama took office. It is not simply erroneous but stupid to claim that the recession is worse now than before. At any rate, depressions and recessions are also an inherent part of the way capitalism works. If you accept capitalism stop complaining about the irrational way in which capitalism works. Also, Barack Obama was never a slaveowner or a mass murderer of Native Americans. Since slavery and genocide are about the worst crimes anyone can commit, Obama--with hi many shortcomings--is superior to the slaveholding and genocidal founders of the republic. Race relations are worse only when you white racists and reactionaries make them worse. After all, whites invented racism. Obama does SHARE some of the responsibility for the troubles between the USA and the Muslim Middle East. But that's because he--like other political leaders are instruments of corporate imperialism. GW Bush started those wars in Iraq and Afghanstan. Obama inherited them. I hold him responsible insofar as he has allowed Bush's war to become his war. Actually, capitalism is turning America into a big ghetto, or a Third World country. And the policies that contribute most to that are the right wing policies of your conservative leaders, and the piratical profiteering of the 1% Yes, the chickens are coming home to roost. Your white corporate overlords are reducing your general standard of living to that of the Black and Latino poor. And until you break with the corporate ideology and racism, until you abandon your racism and enter into solidarity with us, your immiseration will continue and deepen. For those white people who are beginning to open their eyes and do what is needed, they have both my sympathy and solidarity. For the rest of you, well... you're helping to bring ruin on yourselves through your racist blindness and stupid and unreflective adherence to reactionary capitalist values. You're digging your own graves. You needn't be surprise when you are buried by your upper class white overlords---with the aid of your own obtuseness.
-Savant
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Too little, too late. If Barack Obama intended to move on a PROGRESSIVE agenda-against the racists and plutocrats--he'd have needed to do so immediately, certainly not later than the FIRST year in office. He gave signs that he might do that before taking office. When the Chicago Window and Doors workers occupied the plant which intended to lay them off without even their severance pay, Obama actually said that the workers were RIGHT in doing so? This was before President-elect Obama had even taken office. I wondered: "Could it have happened? Can it POSSIBLY happen in politically backward America? A president who is on the side of the WORKING PEOPLE, the poor and the oppressed?" Then we saw him compromise away the health care initiative. OK, it's better than NOTHING --which is what the Republicans offered, and all America previously had. But we could have gotten SINGLE PAYER universal health care, or at least the PUBLIC OPTION. All we got was some tinkering reforms of a still corporate ruled health care industry. Obama at least floated the idea of a bail out for HOMEOWNERS and renters. After all, the banks had been bailed out by both Obama and GW. So, Obama reasoned--and quite correctly--the banks and corporate cliques who destroyed the economy should not be allowed to continue evicting people. At the very least a MORATORIUM on foreclosures and evictions for a year to 18 months ought to be enforced. Sounds good? Yeah, but Obama backed out when he got opposition from Republicans and even some Democrats. Instead of taking his case before the American people and putting pressure on Congress, he blinked. And as I heard Bmore Occupy protestors saying "The banks got bailed out and we got sold out." Why the continued embargo on Cuba? Why the compromise with the cops after the Skip Gates incidents? Can't Obama even defend the BLACK BOURGEOISIE from racist attacks? Why not come to the defense of Mrs. Sherrod --a heroine and (I believe) widow of the Civil Rights Movement? His words on behalf of the Trayvon Martin family was ok, but still too little and too late. OK, there's some movement---also very late in the day--to easy the racially discriminatory judicial practices related to the disastrous "war on drugs." Again, way late in the day. It's so late in the day now that if Obama were to try to morph himself into a synthesis of Dr. KIng, Malcolm X, John Brown, Bill Haywood, and Nelson Mandela --all rolled up into one--there's little that he can do in the two years he has left. And will he do even that little?
-Savant
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Alas, a voice of good sense. But I still think that worker and consumers cooperatives have to be an essential part of the effort to achieve economic self-determination for our people. I don't want all the wealth concentrated in a few hands of a Black Wall Street. For then the situation of the average Black person will not improve much, and we'd be aping the exploitative practices of white America and the white 1% Cooperatives, workers credit unions, cooperatively run banks,etc--all this must be part of the mix. And let silly people worry about IR marriages and who's sleeping with who
Abe Lincoln was a Republican, and so werea majority of Blacks in the late 19th and early 20 centuries. But the Republicans were the most PROGRESSIVE party of that time.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. WAS NOT a Republican. His FATHER was, and he switched to support John F. Kennedy for the 1960 presidential election.
If you look at Dr. King's own writings, you will see that he was SKEPTICAL about both parties. In a collection called THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. he says EXPLICILTY that he did not support EITHER party, and deemed it unwise to do so.
He was about an AGENDA, and agenda of equality and freedom. An agenda of economic justice. His attitude toward any party or politician depended on the latter'sresponse to King's and the Movement's agenda.
-Savant
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While I'm not completely sure about JFK, I'm pretty sure that you're spot on regading the reasons for the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Ironically, it was the Black Panther Party which while not embracing King's nonviolence, were the Black group committed not just to a Black movement, but a movement of the poor and exploited---and unifying the disinherited and the dispossessed. What we learned from the FBI documents related to the COINTELPRO operations is that the FBI were more afraid of Panther IDEAS and PROGRAMS than about a few shotguns and leather jackets some of them owned. Dr. KIng talked about the need for a "radical redistribution of political and economic power"--which is what the Panthers also called for. That's reason, I believe, why King was killed. And the reason why the Panthers were suppressed.
I don't recall that the poster who said that Blacks are far more racist than white offered any empirical data. But you didn't challenge her.
In fact, there has been numerous studies over several decades which show that whites are more racist than blacks. Among other things racism is the bad faith choice of believing that one's race is superior or more human than another.
That attitude has been found far more often among whites than among Blacks. Indeed, there have been studies which show that more Blacks than whites believe in equality..
And recent Harvard U psychological studies showed that even negative reactions to Blacks by whites are more common than such attitudes of Blacks toward whites.
The opposite is true, and always have been true. First, it was WHITES who inventedd racism and created the racial caste system.
Numerous scholarly studies have shown this over the past several decades. Moeover, there is no record of discrimination against whites by Blacks, no evidence that a majority of blacks hold attitudes of racial superiority toward whites.
But there is plenty of evidence of such discrimination against, and racist attitudes towards Blacks by whitesl Those are the FACTS.
You have yourself shown these attitudes of racial superiority in this very thread.
Even your view of Obama as America's WORST president is more likely due to racism than to an objective knowledge. And yes, there is plenty of bias with you. Not like the ranting racism of an OhReally, but simply racism expressed in more circumspect tones.
Yes, the truth does hurt. No wonder so many of you whites avoid it like the plague.
-Savant
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You obviusly know nothing about racism except how to be racist. Racism is (among other things) a system of dominaion, as well as the self-deceiving choice of believing one's so-called race to be superior to others.
Whether the plight of Blacks have gotten worse, and whether this is due to Obama, is open to debate.
If you assume that Obama is the CAUSE of a worsening plight of Blacks when you cannot prove it, then you're guilty of the fallacy of False Cause (post hoc ergo propteer hoc).
A deteriorating capitalist system is causing a worsening of the lives of everyone. Only you're too silly to see it.
I fault Obama for not adopting a tough stand against white racism and corporate privilege. His belief in "bipartisanship" is either naive or opportunistic. And the idea that Mainstreet and Wall Street can have the same interest is patently absurd.
If anything, I hold him responsible for being TOO right wing. We must wage WAR against reactionaries, plutocrats and racists--even agains white racists who have the effrontery to charge their victims with racism.
On the other hand, Barack Obama actually owes the Right for being stupid enough to hand him his victory on a silver platter. I've never seen anything so cartoonish as the REpublican campaign of 2012.
Also, Obama may even owe the stupid conservatives for helping to turn out the Black vote in his favor. By 2010, there was a survey which indicated that about half of AA college students stated they were disppointed with Obama. Writers in AA newspapers were angry that he wouldn't seem to fight for anything, but mainly tried to do deals even with his enemies.
Then after the Republican wave of 2010, those stupid Republicans initiated a number of laws restricting voting rights, and especially designed to suppress the Black and Latin vote.
The very indignation this aroused in the Black community and (I at least suspect) in the Latin community, helped turn out the Black vote in anger against the Republicans.
By the way, there is no global depression. So Obama couldn't have turned a recession into a global depression. In fact, some economists claim he didn't go far enough. The Recovery act may have EASED the recession, but it was not the kind sweeping progressive reform which could have significantly cut unemployment(though unemployment is modestly decreased).
As for Obama being the WORST president? Worst than tose who waged genocidal wars agains the Indians and helped protect and manage an abominable slave empire which shamelessly called itself a republic? Worst the paranoia and persecutions of McCarthyism under both Truman and Eisenhower? Worst than GW who slept on the job while Al Qadea did its evil, who then started two wars which caused hundreds of thousands of lives while devastating the economy?
I doubt that. I've no illusions about Obama's leadership qualities. But he's far from the worst America has seen. Were you able to view the worls outside the the distorting lens of your white supremacist racism, you might have a more balanced picture.
-Savant
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Worst than the Nixon regime which orchestrated via CIA) the 1973 military coup in Chile, killing the democratically elected president Allende, destroying Chlean democracy, and imposing one of the most murderous military fascist states in Latin America?
Or those presidents who administered the destruction of Mosadegh in Iran in 1953, toppling a progressive democratically elected regime in favor the the brutal despotism of the Shah? Or who engineered the destruction of Patrice Lumumba's democratically elected regime in the Congo, precipitating the unending misery (beginning with Mobutu dictatorship) which continues even today?
Or the propping up of the murderous fascistic, Nazi-esque apartheid regime in South Africa--a crime for which both Democrat and Republican administrations share guilt.
NO, those who are claiming that Obama is the WORST president in American history are guided by white racism and reactionary political and social values.
-Savant
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By the way, you try to switch horse in midstream--those both horses are losers.
Intially your argument--if we can calll it an argument--is that the fact that Blacks voted 97% for Barack Obama was evidence of racism. As if voting for a Black person is somehow of racism.
When challenged on your non-substantial conception of racism, you modified it by arguing (or implying) that because Obama was (on your allegation) the worst of all presidents, then then the fact that most Blacks voted for him was evidence of Black racism.
But you offered no evidence that Obama was the WORST president (probably because only your racism incllined you to assume such).
Then you claim hat Obama created an economic crisis--or global depression---which you also cannot prove. And so, Blacks who voted for Obama given that ALLLEGED fact, were displaying racism.
Now you say that Black racism is in "black victimhood"--a vague buzz intended to deny and deflect from the reality of white racism by charging with racism the actual targets of racism.
A few things:
The state of the capitalist economy is not as bad as under Bush. Since here's little good about capitalism, I won't say it's betrer--just not as bad at the moment. But even if the economy had gotten much worst during Obama's administration, that wouldn't prove that Obama CAUSED (your implicit assumption); and hence those grounds for regarding Obama as the worst president wouldn't hold.
By ASSUMING not only that the eocnomy is WORST, but also that Obama is the CAUSE, involves you in committing the Fallacy of False cause. You must offer convincing EVIDENCE that he is the cause--assuming (as I do not) that the economy is much worse, and in a state of depression. Obama is another corporate politician. And there have been MANY worst than he--including the previous one.
Actually, the machiiations on Wall Street have more to do with the state of the economy than actions by either Obama or Bush. Corporate power rules the state, not vice versa.
But even if I granted ALL your dubious assumptions about the economy and Obama's role in it, that wouldn't prove that Obama is the WORST president ever.(Would we not have to consider Hoover even worst after charging him with the Great Depression? Or Bush under whom the current recession began?).
And there are other considerations such as the human rights violations of previous administrations I mentioned in earlier posts.
Moreover, the fact of Blacks voting for Obama wouldn't prove that Blacks are masters in a system of racial domination of others, priviligeging themselves and underprivileging others. Nor would it prove that Blacks (more so than whites) are guilty of the self-deceiving choice of believing that their "race" is superior or more human than other races.
It isn't just that your claims are the OPPOSITE of what most Black people see and experience. Tons of scholarly research over time show that racism is PRIMARILY (though not exclusively) a WHITE practice in America. Decades of psychological tests (including one done at Harvard SINCE Obama's initial relection) demonstrates this. Numerous studies by human rights groups--including Amnesty International--point to the PREDOMINANCE of WHITE RACISM, not Black racism. Which is not to say that Blacks CANNOT be racists, only that they are far LESS LIKELY to be, even when we're talking about ATTITUDES.(Institutional black racism is virtually nonexistent). You live in a myopic world.
-Savant
Ig reakkt?Yet widespread dsicrimination against people of color and women continues in the marketplace. Sorry, I can't buy your rightwing talking points,
You need to read and/or watch some real financial news.
barock's justice dept., EPA, FDA and an army of other agencies have been preventing businesses from hiring in the name of equality and fairness. It's one of the many ways barock turned recession to global depression.
The black racism is in your victimhood. barock's the worst President in history and he keeps blaming everyone but his own lazy azz.
At any rate, there's no global depression. In fact, America was on the verge of a depression BEFORE the 2008 election. Had it happene there would have been a global depression, perhaps at least as bad as the Depression of the 1930s.
As usual, you white racists know nothing about racism except how to BE reacists while projecting your racism on others.
The "victimhood" iis basically a buzz word of the racist right, to which you obviously belong. if Blacks call you out on your racism you bitch about "black victimology," and insist that whoeveer calls uyou out on your racism is a racist. It's as idiotic and dishonest as it would be for a 19the Century European anti-semite (or 1930s Nazi) charging the Jew for being racist when Jews called them out for racism.(Which actually DID happen. Sartre notes that in ANTI-SEMITE AND JEW)
Racism, in REALITY, is a SYSTEM of privielge and underprivilege; a system of domination and oppression, not just sentiments of racial hostility. But on the level of attitudes involves the bad faith choice to believe that one's so-called race is superior, or more human than another. You exhibit that attidues very often, as do many other reactionaries in Topix.
"Victimhood" has nothing to do with racism. The usual assumption of reactionaries when the speak of "Black victimhood" is that Blacks are only pretending or imagining themselves to be victims of racial injustice. But that's simply untrue, and the TONS of reserach about the continuation of racism and injustice againsts Blacks (and other peoples of color even) means that it is not in our imagination. But in REALITY. YOUR own racism is reality. But nowdays many of you racists choose the dishonest dodge or projecting your racism onto others.
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I not only have a position, but effectively critiqued and destroyed your idea the "racism" of Blacks is evidenced by Blacks voting for Obama. Due to your racist arrogance, and your intellectual incapacity to answer my critique, you simply took the attitude of being dismissive and repeating your refuted position.\ 95% of Blacks voted for LBJ and for Bill Clinton. Your problem with Obama are not the LEGITIMATE problems that a progressive and honest citizen might have. Your REAL problem is with him is racial. And you express your racism while projecting it on others. Whites tend to devolve because of their immersion in racism, which often takes the form of subservience to conservatism---whi ch today means most often the Republican Party. When the Democrats were the MOST RIGHT WING PARTY (at least in the South), they were embraced by the same kind of people whom now embrace the Republican Party. When Goldwater came out against the Civil Rights laws--thereby guaranteeing that at LEAST 90--95% of Blacks would vote for Johnson in 1964---we saw the beginnings of the movement of racist white Dixiecrats voters and politicians to the Republican Party. (Ironically, my parents vote for Spiros Agnew, with some regret, because Md. Democrats ran the segregationist Mahoney for governor. This was the first and last time they voted Republican). Nixon's "southern strategy" and Reagan's thinly veiled racist appeals helped to consolidate reactionary and ignorant white voters behind the Republican banner. No wonder a KKK GRAND DRAGON stated that the Reagan platform couldn't be any better unless it was written by the Klan. As for affirmative action, it is an effort--inadequate though it has been--to redress damages inflicted by centuries of racism. Hence the logic of it is antiracist. Interestingly enough, Dr. KIng--whom you like to appeal to without understanding--als o FAVORED affirmative action, often on both racial and class grounds. He compares it to the reform measures taken in India to redress the damage done to the "untouchable. " (Try READING King and studying some work by King scholars, you nitwit. Start with WHY WE CAN'T WAIT) Most opponents of affirmative action have been, like you, white racists crying about racism. As for Obama's qualifications they were as good as average, maybe BETTER than average, considering that most American presidents have been mediocre--or LESS. He's certainly one of the best educated persons to occupy the office. He HAD to be to get elected. White privilege might allow a white moron to get elected, but Blacks don't have that privilege. My objection to Obama is that he had an historic opportunity to lead the nation--albeit against stiff racist and reactionary opposition--in a more progressive and humane direction. He COULD have been, as Colin Powell mistakenly called him, a TRANSFORMATIONAL leader. But he settled for being mere another transactional politician with the usual political deals He could have inspired progressivism, but instead helped to contain it. Now he talks, like Dr. King, about economic inequality and economic justice. Fine. Only it's too little, too late.
-Savant
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