• kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    “Racial isolation” itself is not a harm;

    Yes. It is. Isolation inherently breeds tribalism, prejudice, and fear of the other. It is extremely harmful.

    only state-enforced segregation is.

    And what would you call racial Gerrymandering if not state-enforced segregation, Clarence? I mean, apart from voter manipulation and disenfranchisement, that is.

    After all, if separation itself is a harm, and if integration therefore is the only way that Blacks can receive a proper education, then there must be something inferior about Blacks.

    No, the idea that separation is harmful doesn’t presuppose the reason being that black people are inferior. It is harmful because black people are often treated as inferior and are not given equal treatment, resources, and opportunity. Black schools in the Jim Crow south weren’t worse because they were full of and run by black people. They were worse because they were fucking broke. Schools are largely funded by property taxes. And black home ownership has always been lower than white home ownership, and the value of those homes (and thus their property taxes) has always been lower on average. That means less money going to black schools per capita. Less money means fewer resources and opportunities. It’s pretty fucking simple, Clarence.

    I’m sure your next question is why black families owned fewer and cheaper homes. Well, the first and most obvious reason is that black families started with a handicap. They came from poor slaves who had nothing and had to start completely from scratch. White Americans had control of industry, agriculture, commerce, and government. Black Americans had to play catch up once freed.

    Then, when the GI benefits of the returning soldiers of WWII helped millions of white families buy their first homes, those benefit weren’t honored for black soldiers. When new valuable homes and nice schools were being built in the suburbs, those neighborhoods were red-lined, preventing black families from buying these valuable properties even when they had the finances to do so. When new highways and industrial works were being put in, things that bring pollution and drop property values, those things were intentionally built in and around black neighborhoods, robbing the existing black home owners of long term wealth. Do those things still happen now? Mostly no, and never explicitly racially biased. But this is not ancient history. This is in your life time, Clarence. It’s effects are still seen today and black people are still poorer, own fewer homes and less expensive homes as a result of generations of oppressive and unequal treatment. It’s absurd to equate acknowledging black poverty with deeming blacks inferior. This state was inflicted in them, not their fault.

    Under this theory, segregation injures Blacks because Blacks, when left on their own, cannot achieve. To my way of thinking, that conclusion is the result of a jurisprudence based on a theory of black inferiority,” he said in 2004.

    If black people had been left to their own, they wouldn’t have been slaves, wouldn’t have been screwed out of their benefits they earned fighting for this country that hated them, wouldn’t have been forbidden from moving into white neighborhoods, and wouldn’t have had their homes tainted against their will by industry and transport that enriched white people. Let’s also not discount the effects of unequal treatment under the law, unequal enforcement of the law, and unequal justice for crimes against them. Let’s also not forget that at the time the Brown decision was made, black people were still being FUCKING LYNCHED, CLARENCE. This fallacy of “separate but equal” has no legs to stand on. It never existed. Fuck all the way off, Clarence, you fucking sell out self-hating prick.

      • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        You know what’s really sad? How events like this are/were not taught in history classes. Or at least not properly. I had never heard about the Tulsa Massacre until I was an adult. And you know where I first heard about it? The fucking Watchmen TV series in 2019. I did research on it and was mystified that it was not only a real event, but that I had never so much as heard it mentioned before. I did finally learn about it through formal education, but only as an elective course in college about the history of American racial biases. Smh.

        And it’s history like this that is explicitly being filtered out by laws to protect white students from feeling uncomfortable. No student in Florida will ever learn about Tulsa now until those laws are repealed. For the record, I’m white. I think I should have learned about this in high school at minimum.

        • Dultas@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Did you happen upon the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898? I grew up in NC and it was never mentioned in NC history classes. I was in college before I heard about it.

        • psvrh@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          When people like Ron De Santis talks a “war against woke!”, he’s talking about a war on things that make privileged people uncomfortable and poor people pissed off.

          They know that if more “woke” gets out there, it’ll result in the rich potentially having to share.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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      5 months ago

      Yes. It is. Isolation inherently breeds tribalism, prejudice, and fear of the other. It is extremely harmful.

      It depends. If we think about Middle-Eastern and Balkan stuff, physical separation may really be better than mixed living which may turn into a mutual slaughter any day. That would be because cultural isolation doesn’t require physical separation, and other things.

      If we think about poorer and richer layers of the same general culture, with the poorer layers having more people with African ancestry - then yes.

      • S_204@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        You’re not allowed to tell Americans that how they want the world to be isn’t exactly correct.

        Americans even inherently understand this by their nature of forming into their chosen tribes rather than their more historically convenient ones. You see this for left right divide, the rich poor divide along with every other divide in American society.

          • S_204@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            ? You think you get to independently choose your group? You don’t, even among the most progressive.

            You kinda sorta need to be welcome in the group whatever that group is.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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          5 months ago

          It’s a problem with any group of humans really - the majority always thinks that one size fits all, and that their situation and the appropriate solutions are the same everywhere.

  • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    “Racial isolation” itself is not a harm; only state-enforced segregation is. After all, if separation itself is a harm, and if integration therefore is the only way that Blacks can receive a proper education, then there must be something inferior about Blacks. Under this theory, segregation injures Blacks because Blacks, when left on their own, cannot achieve. To my way of thinking, that conclusion is the result of a jurisprudence based on a theory of black inferiority,” he said in 2004.

    Says a well educated black man sitting on the supreme Court of the United States only because of brown v. Board.

    I don’t know if calling this man an Uncle Tom is appropriate so I won’t. But man it sure does feel like he is.

    • masquenox@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I don’t know if calling this man an Uncle Tom is appropriate so I won’t.

      “Pick-me” seems to be the going term these days. I just refer to them as bog-standard right-wing grifters.

    • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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      If you think a historically oppressed racial minority can’t raise the funds to build a parallel society equal to an established and segregated majority, then you are the real racist.

      Thats basically what it says. Why the fuck is this guy still on the SC?

    • PixelProf@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      I think he’s basically saying that it’s racist to “artificially” integrate communities, because (I think he’s saying) if they need to be integrated, then that’s the same as saying that black folks are necessarily inferior. I don’t think he’s trying to say they’re inferior, but that laws forcing integration are based on that assumption. So he can be well educated and successful because he isn’t inherently inferior, therefore there is no need for forced integration.

      … Which is such a weird stretch of naturalism in a direction I wasn’t ready for. Naturalist BS is usually, “X deserves fewer rights because they are naturally inferior”, whereas this is “We should ignore historical circumstances because X is not naturally inferior”.

      Start a game of monopoly after three other players have already gone around the board 10 times and created lots of rules explicitly preventing you from playing how they did and see how much the argument of “well, to give you any kind of advantage here would just be stating you’re inferior, and we can’t do that.”

      Man probably got angry at his golf handicap making him feel inferior and took things too far. Among other things.

      • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Honestly I think his core argument is an overly worded “pull yourself up by your boot straps” crap.

      • Madison420@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Correct, he’s being an idiot.

        He’s intentionally conflating disenfranchisement with inferiority.

    • 31337@sh.itjust.works
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      I listened to a guy on a podcast saying that Clarence Thomas was in the Black Power movement when he was young, and that kinda informs his decisions now. Thomas is very pessimistic about black Americans ever gaining equal power in American politics, and thinks black people should focus on things they can control instead (family, business, etc). I guess it’s kinda like an ethnic/right-wing version of “dual-power.” Also, like a lot of leftists I see on here that seem to have given up on electoral politics.

    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      Not really appropriate but you can call him a house

      I’d say your term is more PC

      The problem with his logic is that it ignores that people are bad

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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      Says a well educated black man sitting on the supreme Court of the United States only because of brown v. Board.

      His point is that the harm of segregation is that it simply blocks Black people from accessing society’s resources, which he experienced directly as a child being forced to use a segregated library until he was 13. What he’s arguing against is the idea that Black children need white children around them in the classroom in order to achieve.

      He was born in a literal shack to a family descended from slaves. The theory that he needed more than just having the door unlocked for him is what is so deeply offensive to him.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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        5 months ago

        The ruling in Brown is essentially that “separate but equal” public services and facilities are impossible in practice. I’m other words, his “point” has been very specifically considered by a past Supreme Court, and explicitly rejected. Educate yourself on history before defending that asshole.

        • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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          I’m not defending “separate but equal” and I think you’re wrong if you think he is. He’s saying it’s a harm if Black people are prevented from attending Harvard by law. Same goes for any of society’s resources. It’s a matter of locked doors.

          What he’s arguing against is the theory that Black children need help from their non-Black peers to succeed in school. He’s correct when he states that this theory is founded in an ideology of racial inferiority. His experience growing up in a family of grinding poverty and rising to the highest court in the country is proof against that. It’s easy to see why he would be deeply offended by any theory which invalidates his accomplishments.

          I’m not defending him as a person though. He has some serious issues with conflicts of interest that are deeply undermining the judicial independence of SCOTUS. But the idea that he somehow lucked out and got a free ride through life is preposterous and demonstrably false.

          • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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            He’s incorrect because it’s not founded in racial inferiority, it’s grounded in unequal access to resources and opportunities.

            By denying racist policies being in place to create and maintain inequality he helps ensuring the kids can’t escape racism.

            These people are arguing it’s racist to acknowledge reality, centering the logic around denying that their racist policies have any racist outcomes, and accusing the kids of being at fault for circumstances outside their control.

            These same people would never agree that nepotism driven preferential access for rich white kids is a sign of “racism of low expectations”, but when the kids are poor they will scream that same argument at the top of their lungs.

      • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Ah yes, because the separate but equal worked out so fine in the past. This splitting hairs nonsense is what leads people to believe it was state rights that caused the civil war.

        No, segregation was the problem just like slavery was the problem. Thomas is riding the coattails of all the people who fought for his rights and then spitting in their face.

        That he lucked out, betrayed his own kind, and became a Supreme Court Justice is not some dramatic success story. He was put their to prove a point. And the point is monied interests win over everything.

        Here is a man who could care less for anyone less fortunate than himself proving that corruption is color blind. A man who fashions himself as self made who relied on society every step of the way.

        A man who is so hypocritical that he is unable to comprehend how far he is denigrated his position. Or perhaps he does and that is the whole point

        • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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          He was put their to prove a point

          So you’re telling me there was a grand conspiracy to secretly tutor and groom Thomas through elementary school and high school, through university, law school, and his whole legal career in order to install him in the Supreme Court in order to prove a point… what point is that exactly?

          • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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            Why the crazed conspiracy nonsense when a simple explanation will suffice. He was pushed through the ranks by Reagan and then nominated by Bush for his ideology not for his experience. The anti-thesis to Thurgood Marshall if you will.

            The point is money and power win.

      • VerdantSporeSeasoning@lemmy.ca
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        Yeah, black kids don’t need the help of white kids to succeed. They need their schools funded as if rich white children went to them though.

        Also, school isn’t just about success, it’s about learning to live in a society, one which isn’t just a monoculture. Hard to learn to live together (for all kinds of races & identities) spending entire childhoods separated.

      • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        seem to think he’s arguing for

        No… The point they were making is that he’s arguing against something that he directly benefited from.