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Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

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Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#21

Post by pm90 »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #8
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #2

Almost the only people doing well in rural America are those with generational wealth. I know plenty of people from my small hometown that have been doing okay with their farms. One of them has a gravel business. Those without such luck are either moving to a bigger city or experiencing a declining quality of life, and they're coping with drugs, meth mostly. I can't imagine what that would be like in areas that haven…

This is true and is hardly limited to the Old South. Rural Upstate New York is effectively in the same boat. Frankly I think trying to develop rural America to be economically competitive to urban America is a bad idea wrapped in the cloak of a well-meaning idea. Infrastructure and services and much (like 2-5x) more expensive over a wide area. And you need a LOT of infrastrucute to reasonably support a professional c…

I don't know if there's much you can do to induce rural folks to move to urban areas. The brightest kids from rural areas go to colleges, get job offers in the Metro, and move. The ones left behind are either those who couldn't get a job offer, go to college or are too old. What would you tell these people to do?

There just isn't an easy solution other than an intensive retraining in relevant skills. Or aggressively searching for jobs tailored to the skills they possess. (e.g. I remember reading about JetBlue using suburban stay at home women for handling customer support or something).

Also people who are used to their slow-paced, conservative and rural way of life will probably be more than a little shocked by city culture.

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#23

Post by ajross »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #2

Almost the only people doing well in rural America are those with generational wealth. I know plenty of people from my small hometown that have been doing okay with their farms. One of them has a gravel business. Those without such luck are either moving to a bigger city or experiencing a declining quality of life, and they're coping with drugs, meth mostly. I can't imagine what that would be like in areas that haven…

> The question is, how do we get rural economic development going again?

That's like asking how to revive the blacksmith industry in the aftermath of the industrial revolution. These regions aren't declining because of inattention, they're declining because their native industries are shrinking.

Surely there are regulatory treatments that can be applied here to relieve some of the suffering, but "return to the good old days" isn't an option.

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#24

Post by cletus »

occultist_throw wrote: post #18

Ive always taken an unpopular view about slavery. "We never quit doing slavery." It is true the Constitution was amended after the Civil war to include banning of slavery in most circumstances. However, slavery is explicitly still allowed as a "punishment for a crime". Instead of "Black = Slave", it's "Black = criminal , criminal = slave". After all, it only takes only 6-12 angry white men to find you guilty. I would…

Not sure why you're being downvoted (+1 from me) but this is essentially the basis of the Netflix documentary 13th [1]. The thesis is that slavery was replaced by excessive incarceration of African Americans, which were then used as cheap or free labour... much like slaves were.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_(film)

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#25

Post by QAPereo »

megaman22 wrote: post #19
QAPereo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few generations of really focused, quality education would help a lot more. Until then, I'm afraid it's a bit of a mess.

It'll be a bit of a mess in any case. In a lot of rural school districts, you've got better than half of the students on free-and-reduced lunches, and often upwards of a quarter or a third of the students on IEPs. I grew up in such a place, my mother still teaches in that district. You really need to fix the basic underlying economic issues, so that you don't have kids coming to school hungry, and you don't have the…

Absolutely! Frankly I'd argue that feeding your students should be a universal no-brainer anyway, especially when they can't afford it themselves. We know too damned much about the link between ability to learn and retain information, and a good nutritional intake to pretend that schools can ignore it to shave $$'s.

The problem is that public education is public and so it runs into various forms of ideological resistance on that basis. Worse, the power of local districts to shape educational policy leads to predictable deficits, often also driven by ideology/politics.

We have the money, we just choose to spend it on healthcare inflation, and weapons to sell. We don't see an immediate profit in education, so it's sidelined or privatized. We are shortsighted idiots, as a species.

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#26

Post by macrael »

cletus wrote: post #24
occultist_throw wrote: post #18

Ive always taken an unpopular view about slavery. "We never quit doing slavery." It is true the Constitution was amended after the Civil war to include banning of slavery in most circumstances. However, slavery is explicitly still allowed as a "punishment for a crime". Instead of "Black = Slave", it's "Black = criminal , criminal = slave". After all, it only takes only 6-12 angry white men to find you guilty. I would…

Not sure why you're being downvoted (+1 from me) but this is essentially the basis of the Netflix documentary 13th [1]. The thesis is that slavery was replaced by excessive incarceration of African Americans, which were then used as cheap or free labour... much like slaves were. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_(film)

And before that it was the thesis of the book The New Jim Crow. Arguing that the modern incarceration system came into being as a system of control to replace the Jim Crow laws that arose as a system of control to replace slavery.

The most 'aha' connection there was that a shocking percentage of black men have felony convictions of some sort or another, and we deny felons the right to vote in most states. Jim Crow indeed.

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#27

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

cletus wrote: post #24
occultist_throw wrote: post #18

Ive always taken an unpopular view about slavery. "We never quit doing slavery." It is true the Constitution was amended after the Civil war to include banning of slavery in most circumstances. However, slavery is explicitly still allowed as a "punishment for a crime". Instead of "Black = Slave", it's "Black = criminal , criminal = slave". After all, it only takes only 6-12 angry white men to find you guilty. I would…

Not sure why you're being downvoted (+1 from me) but this is essentially the basis of the Netflix documentary 13th [1]. The thesis is that slavery was replaced by excessive incarceration of African Americans, which were then used as cheap or free labour... much like slaves were. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_(film)

It's being downvoted because it's pushing a false narrative that it's only black people that are being incarcerated, and they're being incarcerated explicitly for cheap labor. There are major issues with regards to race in America, but real life is more nuanced than "it's happening because racism."

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#28

Post by eropple »

ashark wrote: post #17
eropple wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's part of it. The other part is transit. Cars are bad; I don't really want to ever own one again and I definitely don't want to have to drive one every day if I do. So anywhere I'd want to move would need to either be super walkable or have transit. And small cities usually, IME, aren't the first and don't have the second. I live in a 50K-population city adjoining Boston, so they exist, I just don't know how wel…

Inexpensive, 100%-no-car-required, and decent schools is... a tough set of requirements to satisfy in the US. Hell, getting any two of those is an accomplishment.

True enough. I'd pass on the third, at least for now, for the first two. But those two alone is a mess.

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#29

Post by wolco »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #8
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #2

Almost the only people doing well in rural America are those with generational wealth. I know plenty of people from my small hometown that have been doing okay with their farms. One of them has a gravel business. Those without such luck are either moving to a bigger city or experiencing a declining quality of life, and they're coping with drugs, meth mostly. I can't imagine what that would be like in areas that haven…

This is true and is hardly limited to the Old South. Rural Upstate New York is effectively in the same boat. Frankly I think trying to develop rural America to be economically competitive to urban America is a bad idea wrapped in the cloak of a well-meaning idea. Infrastructure and services and much (like 2-5x) more expensive over a wide area. And you need a LOT of infrastrucute to reasonably support a professional c…

The one thing America has is a high rural population compared to say Canada. Moving more people into cities is a bad approach we need to spread people around the country and raise up small towns instead leaving them.

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#30

Post by aaron-lebo »

cletus wrote: post #24
occultist_throw wrote: post #18

Ive always taken an unpopular view about slavery. "We never quit doing slavery." It is true the Constitution was amended after the Civil war to include banning of slavery in most circumstances. However, slavery is explicitly still allowed as a "punishment for a crime". Instead of "Black = Slave", it's "Black = criminal , criminal = slave". After all, it only takes only 6-12 angry white men to find you guilty. I would…

Not sure why you're being downvoted (+1 from me) but this is essentially the basis of the Netflix documentary 13th [1]. The thesis is that slavery was replaced by excessive incarceration of African Americans, which were then used as cheap or free labour... much like slaves were. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_(film)

There's some truth to it but the original post is way too simplistic.

They are suggesting that prison, even today, is equivalent to slavery. There is injustice within the modern prison system, but prison is not slavery, at least in the right context it is a place for punishment and rehabilitation.

Sure prisons make a profit off their prisoners, but those profits are nothing like those obtained by slavery, it's an extreme exaggeration and the problem with the justice system isn't just race, if someone wants to suggest that.

removal of slavery as a punishment

What is actually being proposed here?

To say we "never quit doing slavery" is to ignore the massive improvements and lives dedicated to get rid of actual, you know, slavery.

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