Detroiters visiting Marquette

[lilpup]

Discrimination is only as damaging as it is wedded with power. I'm not gonna complain if I can't get a seat at the local all-black craps game, now, am I?

Are you? Even if the game is in West Bloomfield and you're from Detroit?

[Detroitnerd]

I don't feel the need to prove your ignorance.

If you can't prove or don't want to prove I'm ignorant of anything, then why the veiled implication that I am ignorant? Oh, that's right: It's your typical one-liner pot shot because you can't resort to intelligent conversation about this. [[See above)

Why not? You equated the beating of black men during the 1943 race riot to a institutional racism claim, what's the difference? Read what? History? Please. It's the same, no matter how many times you read it. It doesn't change. What changes is within the here and now. which you can't seem to get into for some reason.

No, that was a discussion of institutional and popular racism. And a wide-ranging one at that. Describing real examples of whites beating, killing and otherwise attacking blacks. To compare it with one unnamed, unspecified example of a black-on-white beat-down? That's just silly. Or an attempt to deflect and not understand what is being discussed. America's heritage of white-on-nonwhite racism is so stark, so ugly, so longstanding that to compare it to one person getting beaten up [[Again, where? When? Against what specific person? This is never said by you.) is ridiculous.

I guess gaz has presented a whole lot more in the way of possible facts that you are capable of digging up. But they are just as subjective as well in terms of fault and blame. I can't see that applying for a second mortgage to visit family in Africa is a very prudent choice, but if you want to call it racism, OK.

I have already given you some examples. Perhaps in your haste to dismiss them you missed them: Sentencing provisions, lending tendencies, redlining, education, etc. As for your other remarks about visiting a family in Africa, that sounds just like you. Just creepy enough to be inferred as racist, and just vague enough for you to cry bloody hell if anybody accuses you of it.

Maybe that's a good tagline: Metro Detroit White Racism: The racism that dare not speak its name.

Gee, you would think that you were there... I was.

Do you realize that? No, of course not.

Of course I don't realize it when you say that the incinerator was a plot by a black mayor to destroy a white neighborhood. Because it was a mixed neighborhood, not a white one. So, yeah, I wonder, if you were there, what kind of attention were you paying. Were you, like, 2 years old?

[Detroitnerd]

It takes a college professor to figure out that paying 3.5% percent for 5 years and then having to pay either a lump sum or 15% at that point is probably not a good idea?

Those aren't my words about mortgage lending documents. Somebody with a bit more experience said that. It was Alan Greenspan. Take his word for it if you like.

[Detroitnerd]

I would like to know how certian people are FORCED to go to payday lenders, pawnshops, and high cost mortgage lenders. If you do not have the credit or sufficent resources to use a specific service then you cant use it. Hell, when i was a paperboy I could still join a credit union that would give me a savings account. That is not a funciton of race but a function of socioeconomic status.

I would also argue that the people losing their homes are losing them due to job loss or because they entered a backside-heavy loan. If it was the latter then is it racisim that they didnt do the research into the loan terms and do the financial planning to ensure that the funds would be available to pay the bills?

Again, lenders were the ones selling these bad products. They got higher bonuses for them, regardless of whether the people could pay. They've found forged documents and lots of other examples of lenders pushing these loans on the people who could least understand them, often minorities.

[Detroitnerd]

Are you? Even if the game is in West Bloomfield and you're from Detroit?

Nice laugh line. But, that's not my "local" crap game.

[lilpup]

Nice laugh line. But, that's not my "local" crap game.

Because while you were busy bitching and pointing fingers they all passed you by.

[DetroitPlanner]

What does any of this drivel have to do with visiting Marquette? The Kilpatrick Family? The fact that the clown that posted this stuff in the first place should have never had anyone respond to him?

[guito13]

Again, lenders were the ones selling these bad products. They got higher bonuses for them, regardless of whether the people could pay. They've found forged documents and lots of other examples of lenders pushing these loans on the people who could least understand them, often minorities.

So this is not a racial issue then, its an educational issue. Last time I checked DPS was in the middle of the pack in terms of spending per pupil so why is the education lacking then?

[Detroitnerd]

Because while you were busy bitching and pointing fingers they all passed you by.

Bitching and pointing fingers? Is that what you think? No, I thought my style was more the drunken tavernkeeper roaring in your face ...

[Detroitnerd]

So this is not a racial issue then, its an educational issue. Last time I checked DPS was in the middle of the pack in terms of spending per pupil so why is the education lacking then?

Do you seriously need somebody to explain to you how money spent per pupil does not produce equally representative reading comprehension in students?

Let's put it this way: If some kid is malnourished by a young age, doesn't get lunches, lives in some crazy household with a family that cannot even read themselves, in order to get as good an education as a student who has none of these problems we will need to have:

a) Just as much money as a student who has none of these problems.

b) Twice as much money as a student who has none of these problems

c) Five times as much as a student who has none of these problems

d) None of the above; this student will never be as well educated as somebody who had none of these problems

Take your pick. I think it's pretty obvious.

[Vox]

If you can't prove or don't want to prove I'm ignorant of anything, then why the veiled implication that I am ignorant? Oh, that's right: It's your typical one-liner pot shot because you can't resort to intelligent conversation about this. [[See above)

Like I said, I don't have to prove your ignorance. Infer whatever you wish into that and also read below for more evidence.

No, that was a discussion of institutional and popular racism. And a wide-ranging one at that. Describing real examples of whites beating, killing and otherwise attacking blacks. To compare it with one unnamed, unspecified example of a black-on-white beat-down? That's just silly. Or an attempt to deflect and not understand what is being discussed. America's heritage of white-on-nonwhite racism is so stark, so ugly, so longstanding that to compare it to one person getting beaten up [[Again, where? When? Against what specific person? This is never said by you.) is ridiculous.

Snark snark... Suffice to say that this was a family member that received the beating. Also never park in a known drug area while white either.

I have already given you some examples. Perhaps in your haste to dismiss them you missed them: Sentencing provisions, lending tendencies, redlining, education, etc. As for your other remarks about visiting a family in Africa, that sounds just like you. Just creepy enough to be inferred as racist, and just vague enough for you to cry bloody hell if anybody accuses you of it.

Maybe that's a good tagline: Metro Detroit White Racism: The racism that dare not speak its name.

If you read the articles that gaze posted, what I wrote was from that article. What a maroon.

Of course I don't realize it when you say that the incinerator was a plot by a black mayor to destroy a white neighborhood. Because it was a mixed neighborhood, not a white one. So, yeah, I wonder, if you were there, what kind of attention were you paying. Were you, like, 2 years old?

No. Then I would be just like you.

[bartock]

Do you seriously need somebody to explain to you how money spent per pupil does not produce equally representative reading comprehension in students?

Let's put it this way: If some kid is malnourished by a young age, doesn't get lunches, lives in some crazy household with a family that cannot even read themselves, in order to get as good an education as a student who has none of these problems we will need to have:

a) Just as much money as a student who has none of these problems.

b) Twice as much money as a student who has none of these problems

c) Five times as much as a student who has none of these problems

d) None of the above; this student will never be as well educated as somebody who had none of these problems

Take your pick. I think it's pretty obvious.

Right, and the middle/upper middle class Black family who did not grow up this way, lives in Rochester Hills with the same sleepy suburban lifestyle that gets pissed on here, will have their kids' higher education paid for to the University of Michigan if they can muster a 3.25 at a blue-ribbon high school, while the DPS students will be just as you've said, and the white counterparts at the suburban school will need a 3.8 to get in to U of M. And we'll all celebrate how this form of discrimination makes us so much more diverse and scratch our heads as to why the poorer school districts can't "get it together."

[Detroitnerd]

Note that I'm being very patient with you and all you're doing is throwing one-liners and accusing me of snark that just ain't there. Your family member got a beating from black people and, therefore, you and black America are even now, I suppose. Cool.

[guito13]

Do you seriously need somebody to explain to you how money spent per pupil does not produce equally representative reading comprehension in students?

Let's put it this way: If some kid is malnourished by a young age, doesn't get lunches, lives in some crazy household with a family that cannot even read themselves, in order to get as good an education as a student who has none of these problems we will need to have:

a) Just as much money as a student who has none of these problems.

b) Twice as much money as a student who has none of these problems

c) Five times as much as a student who has none of these problems

d) None of the above; this student will never be as well educated as somebody who had none of these problems

Take your pick. I think it's pretty obvious.

Can't throw money at those kinds of problems. That requires laws that truly hold people accountable for their actions. In addition, it requires that the culture that is creating this type of faimly is revisited and adjusted from within. That takes exactly zero dollars just people being honest with themselves and looking inward for help instead of outward.

[Detroitnerd]

Can't throw money at those kinds of problems. That requires laws that truly hold people accountable for their actions. In addition, it requires that the culture that is creating this type of faimly is revisited and adjusted from within. That takes exactly zero dollars just people being honest with themselves and looking inward for help instead of outward.

You can't throw money at these kinds of problems, but it does take money. Lots of money. It should be intelligently allocated. Feed kids when they're young so their brains aren't damaged. Give them preschool, headstart, kindergarten. Provide safe, attractive places for recreation or, heck, just daydreaming. Provide counseling for kids with crappy homes. Maybe having an auditor general with teeth for inner city school districts would probably help remove some corruption and ensure the money does its job. I think that ending the War on Drugs would be a good step, making being a hoodlum a lot less lucrative. Having afterschool activities is good. Individuals who choose to mentor are heroes, IMHO.

I don't think you're going to be able to change people's parents. [[I base this upon my parents ... oy!) I don't think you're going to be able to change a culture or force parents to pull their families up by their bootstraps, or with any lectures. Bad parents are a problem best ameliorated by ensuring the kids have access to alternatives to home.

[Detroitnerd]

Right, and the middle/upper middle class Black family who did not grow up this way, lives in Rochester Hills with the same sleepy suburban lifestyle that gets pissed on here, will have their kids' higher education paid for to the University of Michigan if they can muster a 3.25 at a blue-ribbon high school, while the DPS students will be just as you've said, and the white counterparts at the suburban school will need a 3.8 to get in to U of M. And we'll all celebrate how this form of discrimination makes us so much more diverse and scratch our heads as to why the poorer school districts can't "get it together."

If you ask me, the majority of today's college graduates are illiterate, white and black. I cringe looking at the résumés that come in.

[bartock]

If you ask me, the majority of today's college graduates are illiterate, white and black. I cringe looking at the résumés that come in.

I feel the same way, but figure I'm just getting older and more pissy.

[Detroitnerd]

I feel the same way, but figure I'm just getting older and more pissy.

I'd have said "pissier."

Seriously, though, the degradation of education is across the board, IMO. I estimate my late 1980s high school diploma is the equivalent of a four-year liberal arts college diploma today.

[Vox]

Note that I'm being very patient with you and all you're doing is throwing one-liners and accusing me of snark that just ain't there. Your family member got a beating from black people and, therefore, you and black America are even now, I suppose. Cool.

Oh by the way, here's the link to the story I used as an illustration. Refied her mortgage to pay for taking time off for a trip to Liberia to go to her mom's funeral.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/...rimination.htm

[Detroitnerd]

Oh by the way, here's the link to the story I used as an illustration. Refied her mortgage to pay for taking time off for a trip to Liberia to go to her mom's funeral.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/...rimination.htm

It's a sad story, isn't it? And the main point of the article is that minorities were steered into these toxic products. But, far from a "trip to Africa" she was going to her mother's funeral? Why'd you leave that out? That's a very emotionally important ritual for a lot of people, and it doesn't seem unreasonable. People have refied for less, but she got hosed. Sad as f**k.

[Vox]

It's a sad story, isn't it? And the main point of the article is that minorities were steered into these toxic products. But, far from a "trip to Africa" she was going to her mother's funeral? Why'd you leave that out? That's a very emotionally important ritual for a lot of people, and it doesn't seem unreasonable. People have refied for less, but she got hosed. Sad as f**k.

Well, if you weren't so intent on hosing people, I may have thrown it in. Still a trip to Africa, no matter what. And if one can't afford to go, I guess that I would have to think twice having to refinance my home to do so. Note that this was a "taking time off" trip. I think a funeral is a worthy thing, but I guess I could see where I would have to skip it if I had to refi my home. Note that the refi process isn't an instant thing either. I wonder how that worked?

[Detroitnerd]

Who's hosing who? Not little ol' me.

Anyway, do you see a double standard here at work? Dum-dum administrators want to put a poison factory next to a neighborhood that's half-white, half-black. It's racist deracination! But when it has been proven that minorities were steered to lousy loans, well, that's a personal matter. She shouldn't have refinanced for something as frivolous as her mother's funeral.

There is something about all this that fails to get down to facts. Or to the origins of your bitterness. Or why you feel the need to lob accusations of "white guilt" against people who see black Americans as ... Americans?

[Vox]

Who's hosing who? Not little ol' me.

Anyway, do you see a double standard here at work? Dum-dum administrators want to put a poison factory next to a neighborhood that's half-white, half-black. It's racist deracination! But when it has been proven that minorities were steered to lousy loans, well, that's a personal matter. She shouldn't have refinanced for something as frivolous as her mother's funeral.

There is something about all this that fails to get down to facts. Or to the origins of your bitterness. Or why you feel the need to lob accusations of "white guilt" against people who see black Americans as ... Americans?

You forgot the little

Not at all a double standard. It's simple economics. People that couldn't get loans by normal means were steered into that trap, regardless of color. I suppose that doesn't matter much to you, though. I'd have to think about doing that. I can't imagine what she paid for that house anyway.

Poletown wasn't even Poletown until the term was coined during the process. I guess it was half black according to some, but I'd bet that the vast majority were renters or living in the Greylawn Apartments at the time. And when they peg the Poletown label on "half", I bet they arent considering the southern half of the neighborhood that died anyway due to the incinerator. Keep beliving what you want then, I really don't care that much anymore. At least I don't have to deal with shitty racist policy anymore. I just have to deal with shitty policy.

[Detroitnerd]

Not at all a double standard. It's simple economics. People that couldn't get loans by normal means were steered into that trap, regardless of color. I suppose that doesn't matter much to you, though. I'd have to think about doing that. I can't imagine what she paid for that house anyway.

Now, we are talking about several different news sources, including a thoroughly vetted documentary, all saying that minority borrowers were consciously steered to predatory loans. How can it be that you know better than all this and can dismiss the evidence with a few sentences? That's not how rhetoric works.

Poletown wasn't even Poletown until the term was coined during the process. I guess it was half black according to some, but I'd bet that the vast majority were renters or living in the Greylawn Apartments at the time. And when they peg the Poletown label on "half", I bet they arent considering the southern half of the neighborhood that died anyway due to the incinerator. Keep beliving what you want then, I really don't care that much anymore. At least I don't have to deal with shitty racist policy anymore. I just have to deal with shitty policy.

I see. When I provide statistics to you, what I get is a lot of "I guess" and "I bet." The statistics are matters of public record. I'd think you'd want to do the research -- that is, if you aren't too worried that they might challenge your prejudicial view of events as you selectively remember them.

Even today, Hamtramck proper is about 15 percent black. And, far from being all rowdy renters moving in, 30 percent of them live in houses they’ve occupied for 30 years or more. And that’s despite contentious “urban renewal” and freeway building programs that kicked many of them out.

But I get it. You were the only hard-done-by person. Somehow, the black people who were forced to move or slowly poisoned or burned out have even evaporated from your memory. And you insist on calling the city racist. I think thou dost protest to much. Are you familiar with the psychological term "projection"?

[brizee]

The continued trash back and forth on this thread shows a refusal by both sides to accept that discrimination goes in every direction.

I'd too like a cited example of one of us "blacks" stating we have a corner on the discrimination market.