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1.5 Million Missing Black Men

nytimes.com

91–100 of 375 posts

Re: 1.5 Million Missing Black Men

#91
post #46

Sorry to be the voice of Bill Cosby but my read of this is that black men are killing each other and then going to prison for it (drug charges are responsible for maybe 20% of people in prison - ie stats would still be largely same without the drug war). And somehow that's everybody else's fault?

A huge number of people are in jail for commiting violent crimes that while not labled "drug related", are still related to the war on drugs. Drug prohibition funds gangs and cartels, which directly leads to a host of other crimes.

If you ended the war on drugs, it's likely that the prison population would drop by much more than 20%.

Re: 1.5 Million Missing Black Men

#92
post #47
post #13

> The black women left behind find that potential partners of the same race are scarce, while men, who face an abundant supply of potential mates, don’t need to compete as hard to find one. As a result, Mr. Charles said, “men seem less likely to commit to romantic relationships, or to work hard to maintain them.” Interesting, I never thought about this side-effect of mass incarceration. Another aggravating factor in…

> women are arguably less war-prone than men I don't think are actually any studies that support this, unfortunately. War simply isn't a consequence of gender, it is a consequence of ideology and fear.

[deleted]

Re: 1.5 Million Missing Black Men

#93

The black women left behind find that potential partners of the same race are scarce,...The imbalance has also forced women to rely on themselves — often alone... There is a pretty obvious solution to this problem which has been legal since 1967. It works well and the babies come out really cute. Weird how the NYT glosses that over...

> There is a pretty obvious solution to this problem which has been legal since 1967. The fact that it isn't illegal doesn't mean that there aren't strong cultural forces working against it on both sides in many cases. Centuries of slavery, followed by a century of overt de jure discrimination and segregation, followed by decades with a common overt racism and discrimination in both official and unofficial contexts e…

...have not produced a black society which sees whites as genuine partners.

This is a problem which any individual woman can solve for herself by being more tolerant.

This really is a simple solution that works with real people. I do it almost exclusively, albeit for semi-superficial reasons [1]. The closest I've ever had to a serious relationship with a person of my own race was a middle eastern woman who self-identified as "white". The world hasn't ended and no one really cares who I date.

[1] I prefer the appearance of black and Indian women to other races. I also find most western women completely un-dateable and excluding western women gives me a mainly non-white dating pool.

Re: 1.5 Million Missing Black Men

#94
post #46

Sorry to be the voice of Bill Cosby but my read of this is that black men are killing each other and then going to prison for it (drug charges are responsible for maybe 20% of people in prison - ie stats would still be largely same without the drug war). And somehow that's everybody else's fault?

Do you have a source for your 20% figure?

Re: 1.5 Million Missing Black Men

#95
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's neighbors would likely disagree about China only wanting to trade. They're very aggressively laying claim to large swaths of sea around the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia that clearly do not belong to them. Annexing water territory that does not belong to them, is no different than China taking Tibet by force on the basis that they proclaim it belongs to them. As such it's clear that plenty of their extre…

In what way would you say those terroritories do not belong to China, or any other country in the region? Or better yet, what makes even places like Canton, Shanghai even belong to China? (Keep in mind I'm not saying these lands do or do not actually belong to China, but I'm merely asking under what grouds do you make these claims)

> In what way would you say those terroritories do not belong to China, or any other country in the region?

All I know is that when one country wants to take what another country currently has, people die. It's the slaughter of impressionable young nationalists in war that I object to, not which country has suzerain over which scrap of land.

Re: 1.5 Million Missing Black Men

#96
post #46

Sorry to be the voice of Bill Cosby but my read of this is that black men are killing each other and then going to prison for it (drug charges are responsible for maybe 20% of people in prison - ie stats would still be largely same without the drug war). And somehow that's everybody else's fault?

It drives me crazy how many people see a problem like this and are determined to conclude that that problem has only one cause.

So one side decides that the (only) cause is that black people wantonly decide to choose a life of crime when they could just as easily have been upstanding members of society. Ergo, it is all black peoples' fault.

And the other side decides that the (only) cause is that the criminal justice system incarcerates black people disproportionately, exclusively out of racism and bias. Ergo, it is all white peoples' fault.

Why is it so hard to acknowledge that both of these are extreme positions? Both groups of people need to look inward, challenge themselves to fix what is broken, and work together to improve the situation.

Re: 1.5 Million Missing Black Men

#97
post #46

Sorry to be the voice of Bill Cosby but my read of this is that black men are killing each other and then going to prison for it (drug charges are responsible for maybe 20% of people in prison - ie stats would still be largely same without the drug war). And somehow that's everybody else's fault?

>And somehow that's everybody else's fault?

Yah, it's called institutional racism.

Policy generated poverty, sub par educational standards exacerbated by the destruction of the nuclear family, and a significant percentage of people who can't earn livable wages or vote after being filtered through the industrial prison complex.

We are human beings, there is enough history to suggest we behave like savages when reduced to the lowest common denominator.

Btw, murders can be related to drugs with out there being a drug related conviction (ie: gang turf wars)

Re: 1.5 Million Missing Black Men

#98
post #13

> The black women left behind find that potential partners of the same race are scarce, while men, who face an abundant supply of potential mates, don’t need to compete as hard to find one. As a result, Mr. Charles said, “men seem less likely to commit to romantic relationships, or to work hard to maintain them.” Interesting, I never thought about this side-effect of mass incarceration. Another aggravating factor in…

In my experience, having a stable girlfriend for the past 3 years has been like looking in a mirror every month or so.

She calls me out on things that I do habitually or without thinking, usually because they are selfish and hurt her or our relationship in some way. These are habits or personality traits that my close friends and family wouldn't be aware of, but that my girlfriend has exclusive access to as the one with whom I share the most intimate details of my life. She forces me to reflect on why I am the way that I am; sometimes directly when we fight, but often indirectly through her questions and observations.

I'd like to think that our relationship has made us more empathetic and introspective. I don't think it has made me any less extreme in my ideals though.

My personal view is that extremism is generally bred by a low standard of living and a high degree of economic inequality that is forced onto a united group of people that feel like they deserve more than the system has given them. The uniting factor could be race, religion, age - anything, it doesn't really matter.

I've recently been struggling with the notion that, as a 22-year old who is about to graduate, I am to enter an economy and a system set up and controlled entirely by the captains of finance and government who allowed the financial crisis of 2007 to occur, and who have been unable to "fix" the economy through monetary and fiscal reform. This has pushed me towards the study of Bitcoin, a "radical" tool that traditional economists are quick to dismiss as a libertarian/anarchist fantasy. I don't subscribe to any political viewpoint - I simply see a broken system that has destroyed the lives of many of the constituents that it was created to serve through corruption and negligence. Bitcoin is just another tool, such as Quantitative Easing and Interest rate manipulation, that we could possibly implement to reduce the volatility of the financial system and remove some of its susceptibility to greed and corruption.

My interest in Bitcoin nothing compared to ISIS, the PLO, the Black Panthers, or any other minority group that was oppressed and decided to try and change a system that it found unfair and stacked against it. The difference is that these "extremist" groups use violence to fight their battles, because they see the alternative life of dying poor and oppressed as a non-option.

If we were to advance every civilization to a point where the standard of living was high enough and the measure of inequality was low enough, I think we could eradicate most forms of physically violent extremism. Mental "extremism" in the form of thought-experiments pushing the boundaries of the current system would continue, but to the benefit of society in general. Will this ever happen? Probably not.

Re: 1.5 Million Missing Black Men

#99
post #19

Will this have an effect on U.S diversity ? In a way, it may foster more interracial relationships on affected areas

I can't find the study to cite, but if I remember correctly an old study found that while most males of all ethnicities are open to relationships with females of different ethnicities given attractive qualities are sufficient (I could be wrong but only physical attraction was measured in this study); they found that most females tend to only go for males within their own ethnic group. The exception was Asian women wi…

I believe I read the same study, and it went on to find that of women who did leave their ethnic group, there was high correlation to their looks falling outside of what was considered traditionally attractive within said group.

Re: 1.5 Million Missing Black Men

#100
post #58

Black women are unapproachable. Not sure why is that. Are white males not attractive in black women eyes? The effect is the reverse with white women as they tend to flirt with black man, hence the interracial children are mostly from black males and white females. I don't have a study to support this, but I do have personal experience.

Think about the historical relationship between white males and the black population.
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