JHK’s Three-Act Play
O f course, the Freddie Gray riots in Baltimore last week prompted the usual cries for “an honest conversation about race,” and countless appeals to fix the “broken” public school system. So, in the spirit of those pleas, I will advance a very plain and straightforward idea: above all, teach young black kids how to speak English correctly.
Nothing is more important than acculturating ghetto kids out of their pidgin patois and into real English with all of its tenses, verb forms, and cases. It’s more important initially than learning arithmetic, history, and science. I would argue that it is hardly possible to learn these other things without first being grounded in real grammatical English.
When these kids grow up, their manner of speech will identify them and their prospects for success at least as much as the color of their skin — and probably more, in my opinion. Their ability to speak English correctly will be the salient feature in how others assess the content of their character
I’m sure by now that the racial justice hand-wringers are squirming over this proposal. All dialects are equally okay in this rainbow society, they might argue. No they’re not. Have you noticed that TV news, business, show biz, education, and politics increasingly employ people whose parents came from India and other parts of Asia. Do they speak in a patois lacking in complex verb forms? Apparently not. Are they succeeding in American life, such as it is? Apparently so.
Notice that the speech issue — how people talk — is never part of the “honest conversation about race” that we are supposed to have. Has anybody noticed that in his public speeches Martin Luther King spoke regular English correctly, if with a Southern inflection? Has anybody noticed how important that was in his role as “a communicator?” Why is this crucial question of language absent from the public conversation about “the intractable problems of race in America?” Is it because both blacks and whites are too fearful, too cowardly, to face this particular problem of how English is spoken?
Perhaps this raises the specter of IQ. I’d like to know how any IQ test can be meaningful when the person taking it can’t speak the language that the test is given in. I’m sure that any ghetto kid drilled in English for two years would show substantial improvement in such a generalized test. But, of course, first the American people of all skin tones would have to admit that this is important.
We don’t want to. We’d rather wring our hands over “structural racism” and other canards. Why? Because Euro American whites have been programmed to “not offend” at all costs; Asian Americans are too busy being successful; and African Americans are too invested in their own excuse-for-failure industry, wringing money from offense-o-phobic whites.
A year ago, I gave the opening day lecture to the entering honors freshman class at Rutgers, New Jersey’s State University. I swear at least half of that class of about 400 young people was made up of first generation kids of parents from India — owing, I suppose, to the current demographic of the state. Many of these kids were very dark-skinned, as dark as African Americans. Guess what? They didn’t speak in any kind of pidgin patois. They spoke regular American English. Do you suppose during their childhoods that the household fretted about “sounding white?” I doubt it. By the way, not only did these very bright, dark-skinned honors students speak English correctly, they also behaved politely. No fights broke out during the convocation. They effervescently launched themselves into their college careers — and then they went out for pizza.
How about it America? Job number one: learn how to speak the English language. Everything else depends on it. Excuses not admissible.
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Another equally valid pre-requisite should be how to write coherently. And this applies across racial boundaries. I have an acquaintance who teaches English composition at the local community college and she despairs at how often she has to turn papers back to students for rewrites. Apparently the same abbreviations people use in texting are now considered appropriate for formal papers. It’s enough to make you LOL. If you can’t express yourself in the spoken or written form, how can you form reasoned opinions on things like global warming or the Trans Pacific Partnership? Disorganized thinking is the fertile soil for the next Cornpone Hitler, who will tell you what’s wrong and who to blame. Idiocracy, here we come (if we’re not already knocking on the door of the asylum already).
Language does change. I didnt say progress.
I [didn’t] say progress. – Malthuss
=============
Apostrophes are such a hassle.
Note: the system put the apostrophe in.
Excuse me, but you are acting “white” by obsessing with grammar.
Speaking for myself, when America is led by people who cannot speak a complete sentence, who cannot say anything of substance, and just jabber on about abstract “values” and “principles” we do not have, I am not bothered by the broken English of the poor and powerless. And it concerns me no end that Mr. Kunstler and his gang will use the same old stereotypes about Black folks that bigots have been spouting for over 150 years!
When this blog was recommended to me over a year ago I was not warned of the racism that many seem to find in Mr. Kunstler’s message.
I had to put up with this all-American tirade after Ferguson, and I am not at all surprised to see it again.
Take any speech by any American politician or self-appointed leader, any billionaire, and hand it to an English teacher and watch her/him take a red pencil to it. Americans are buried in meaningless rhetoric, and you’re whining about broken English?
Utterly clueless.
Gutenberg guy,
Well said.
If you have no power, and no hope, then you have absolutely no motivation to learn the proper language of your oppressors.
Cries for help are understood in any language.
Today’s post was again full of bigotry and hate.
I have a Southern accent, I guess I am not American.
Jesus Christ, give it a rest! Blacks have enough power to get themselves plenty of gubmint handouts. Obama phones, EBT cards, government do-nothing jobs, affirmative action, etc., etc., ad nauseum. They vote Democrat as a block in their own perceived self-interest. But unfortunately, whitey will not. You see whitey is self-destructive. Witness the thousands of Somalians being imported to Minnesota by self-hating suicidal whites. Do you see blacks in Baltimore importing blonde-haired, blue-eyed Swedes? Of course not. The Swedes on the other hand….
These replies are always amusing, because it confirms that three people ARE still watching MSNBC.
LOL Gutenberg. . Now “values” and “principles” are code words for racist whites. Typical liberal “burn down America to save it” BS.
Wow. Were you wearing your klan robe when you typed that? I hope Kunstler’s proud of himself for writing stuff that attracts the defense of blatant racists like yourself.
Having taken a linguistics course at Georgia Tech on Black English in the 80’s, I learned that “substandard” English is not a scientific concept. It has no place within the science of linguistics. Black English has its own complex verb forms that come from West African languages. Kunstler is embarrassing himself with ignorant claims that Black English lacks complex verb forms.
And does it even occur to him that kids not learning standard American English might have something to do with segregation? Oh, wait! I guess that fact of American life was dismissed as a “canard” of structural racism.
I generally appreciate Kunstler’s work, which makes this post particularly disappointing.
Yes, Jim has taken an unnecessary turn for the worse.
What was once an amusing, well thought out, and acerbic kind of prose, has followed the path of least resistance to its bitter conclusion of blaming the victim, mostly because- I’m guessing- it is easy.
Ah well, this is Amerika after all, and besides, we all respond to aging differently. %)
Bad writing, however, cuts across racial lines
Miasmo,
A couple of things…
“Having taken a linguistics course at Georgia Tech on Black English in the 80’s, I learned that “substandard” English is not a scientific concept. It has no place within the science of linguistics.”
Of course substandard English isn’t a scientific concept. Neither is ‘standard English.’ Both are descriptions of human language behaviour.
“Black English has its own complex verb forms that come from West African languages.”
Hmm. The problem I have with that is the dozen or so Nigerians and Ghanians I have met here where I live in Japan. They speak beautiful, grammatically correct English and were not raised in an elite educational environment. No silver spoons in their backgrounds — concrete brick schoolhouse with corrugated tin. They are in Japan to work in factories, Costco, etc. Their actual, living mother tongues are West African languages. I realize Black English may well have antecedents in West African language, but I find the argument specious that that is the reason for the culturally specific use of “be” in Black English. It impresses me as an evolved, developed linguistic style, a marker.
“Kunstler is embarrassing himself with ignorant claims that Black English lacks complex verb forms.”
More to the point: they are not accepted standard English verb forms, the kind we all had to learn (at least in my generation). It may be that Black English does not lack complex verb forms. That is probably true. But it is also irrelevant to the discussion on speaking and using correct English. I have to add here that young whites, at least to me, sound ridiculous these days with their own inabilities to use standard English. I’d love it if they could get a handle on plurals and possessives.
“And does it even occur to him that kids not learning standard American English might have something to do with segregation? Oh, wait! I guess that fact of American life was dismissed as a “canard” of structural racism.”
I agree with you here. Years ago, when I lived in “the South”, I had to do a little bit of research on Jim Crow and institutionalised racism. Amazing. I even saw it in action on the street, in 1999. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I heard a remnant of Jim Crow politeness rules — the blacks addressing the white with “Mr.” and the white addressing them by their first names. Incredible. As someone having been raised on the west coast, I thought I was in a foreign country.
I interviewed a few black residents of the area, then already in their 40s, 50s and 60s, about their experiences, especially when schools were finally integrated in 1970. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I believe what they told me, but sheesh. Still, they turned their treatment around and overcame the bigotry and prejudice. Stronger generation.
“I generally appreciate Kunstler’s work, which makes this post particularly disappointing.”
I do appreciate his work and wasn’t disappointed. The fact that he didn’t fully address all the hugely variant factors in the discussion of the riots, poverty, joblessness, racism, etc., does nothing whatsoever to weaken the argument for the need for people — all people — to learn the language well. It amazes me that that isn’t a given. If the poor Nigerians and Ghanians I met could do in a second language environment and then come to East Asia and learn a third language as well, then people surrounded by it as first language can do it — if they choose to.
Jim, you lost me. Should kids learn when to speak mainstream English and that failure to do so may have lifetime consequences on their earnings and integration into broader society? Of course. But this is your response to the Baltimore riots? Nothing about the failure of urban planning, nothing about how some US cities are moving toward the Paris model of elite urban core and surrounding banlieus even more desperate and isolated than urban ghettos. I look to you for this kind of criticism. Interesting how your social criticism leans toward individual behaviors and failings while your planning/economic criticism is largely structural. Was it interviews of neighborhood kids in Baltimore broadcast on social media that got you on this line of thinking? Of all the problems facing the country highlighted in these recent events, the failure of a young adult cohort of an economic subset of a minority group in the US to speak like (white) professionals–business people who sell us stuff from China and bankers who sold subprime mortgages among them–is perhaps at the very bottom of what should be our collective concern.
Not to mention, for the most part, the people I saw speaking ‘black English’ on the TV and the internet conveyed a much more serious and nuanced understanding of their situation than the utterly clueless, apolitical white people interviewed in surrounding middle-class areas of Baltimore where the National Guard was making their presence known. The reality of separate worlds less than a mile apart could not have been conveyed any more compellingly.
This has become a huge — and frankly embarrassing — blind spot for JHK in his dotage. Whenever he talks about race, all his nuanced social analysis flies straight out the window. Lots of tirades against “thugs” and never a word about urban planning or lead in the children:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/05/why-freddie-gray-never-had-a-chance-lead-poisoning-is-killing-inner-city-baltimore.html
And while his commenters in the earlier days would have quickly called bullshit on him, that’s not really true anymore — I think in part because his blog has been so swamped with bitter right-wingers who happily supported Bush for eight years and only realized how rotten American society was when a black president was elected (a trend we see across a lot of the alternet-type blogs). I sometimes wonder if JHK’s estate will delete a number of these later blog posts when he’s gone; they mar an otherwise brilliant record. I can only suspect that being a Cassandra in the wilderness for so many years takes a fearsome psychological toll on a man.
wow- nailed it.
“… the Paris model of elite urban core and surrounding banlieus even more desperate and isolated than urban ghettos.”
You mean the banlieus created by the rioting Muslims who have no intention of integrating into French society? The remainder of your comment is pure liberal drivel.
Things sure have gotten a lot worse, relative to when you wrote ‘that book’ about a decade ago.
Sorry to be so pessimistic.
“Things sure have gotten a lot worse, relative to when you wrote ‘that book’ about a decade ago.”
In a retrospective of popular entries at my blog that referenced our host, I linked to another entry that featured his TED talk, then metioned in passing his update on “The Long Emergency” that he gave to TEDxAlbany a few years back. His take was that things certainly have gotten worse.
Speaking of things getting worse, Michigan’s Proposal 1 is polling terribly. The roads are terrible, but the people are not willing to go along with the legislative compromises required to fix them. Therefore, the potholes I’ll be driving over and around on my way to work today will still be there next year. Meanwhile, marijuana legalization is likely to pass next year. In a choice between potholes and potheads, Michigan will choose potheads. I’d rather they do both.
Watch for their governor to privatize Michigan’s entire transportation infrastructure. This is how it works: First you run a public resource into the ground. Then you say, “See, government doesn’t work.” Then you push to privatize it and begin by having a fire sale and giving away an infrastructure the state’s taxpayers spent several generations and billions of dollars creating. Probably to one of the governor’s buddies or a foreign corporation.
Then those taxpayers wake up, the infrastructure hasn’t really been improved, the service is even worse, the costs have skyrocketed, and the private operator now says you’ll have to cough up (pay the vig) if you want those potholes filled.
This is why voters want marijuana. In such a FUBAR situation, might as well get stoned. Government wants pot because of the tax revenue it provides. Suddenly all those lies about pot we’d been hearing for almost 100 years are being laid to rest. But, just wait, our corporate masters will find a way to mess that up as well.
“This is why voters want marijuana. In such a FUBAR situation, might as well get stoned.”
That reminds me of a meme I used in my post saying farewell to Ron Paul’s candidacy. “At least in a Ron Paul presidency we’d be able to legally get high to deal with a Ron Paul presidency.”
Excellent essay. It’s so good, you’re going to take a thorough beating in the comment section as a result. Take it as a compliment when they show up — which won’t be long now. I can hear the Thundering Herd a comin’ — the dust kicked up from their hooves is readily visible on the horizon. I can’t wait.
Nice metaphor. Empty, but nice.
You’re correct. The Thundering Herd to which I referred that has arrived is certainly empty. They’ve been running on it, empty, for quite some time. Just ask Jackson Brown.
Calling people names. Takes me back to the 7th grade. Also reminds me of rhetoricians like Ann Coulter.
Sure why not, my time in the service I noticed that vibrant behavior was correlated closely to IQ. (in the service you can tell IQ roughly by MOS to which you are assigned). The welfare state has delivered us a large cohort of humans which frankly are low IQ/High time preference so good luck with standards of English. Not impossible , oh no I’m not saying that, but you will probably have to take a pole axe to their cultural icons.
Say you are successful, I say that “racism” will get worse. I’ll use Eric Holder as an example stand in, I should use Obama but he is such a damaged individual as to skew my example. Holder grew up isolated from the bad cultural tendencies, some would say he is privileged, certainly wealthy and most certainly the biggest “Race man” seen in power since maybe the Wilson administration a century ago.
I know Utopia right around the corner, one more program they say. Good luck
(Black Vernacular) : Yo, Jimmy, u be nailin’ dat thang dis week! U be keepin’ up da good work now! Piece bruder!
Word! Finally my screen name becomes an issue on CFN. Look up just who Shabba Ranks is and you will find he was born Rexton Rawlston Fernando Gordon, 17 January 1966 and is a Jamaican dancehall musician. He was also one of the first Jamaican deejays to gain worldwide acceptance, and recognition for his ‘slack’ lyrical expressions and content, when “ridin’ di riddim”.
The problem with Jim’s idea is that language isn’t simply the result of the efforts of of a bunch of government subsidized mediocre language teachers in elementary schools. Language has a life of its own, with a multitude of sources and uses. Fluid, ever-changing and simply beyond the efforts at centralized control by those who manage the key aspects of society, language is far too dynamic for Jim’s proposal.
Bill O’Reilly has done several shows that take the same tack as Jim’s column today. Of course O’Reilly ended up looking like a fool and while I would never say that about Jim, I’m afraid that there is no going back on the language of the poor that we have today. We are stuck with what we have and the future is contingent on many things, things basically unknoweable today. The train has already left the station.
Rexton is Jamaican. He speaks Jamaican.
Rural blacks have been in northern cities for over 70 years in large numbers. It was called “the great migration”. Most have not assimilated the language or northern values, but the word “urban” is now used to describe them. The Average illegal immigrant speaks better language and is more well spoken than the most “urban” blacks after a few years of living here. Unless they end up assimilating the language of ghetto blacks. Ghetto is also a word that has been assimilated: they’ve moved into most of the old upperworking class and lower middle class neighborhoods here.
I think you make my point. In seventy years urban populations still speak a different form of English than the norm of the larger, more economically and politically dominant population. Yet they have been subjected to seventy years of public schooling in the English language, basically the same program JHK’s column calls for. Since language has diverse sources, Jim’s call for more centralized, programatic English teaching is just another call for wash, rinse & repeat. It’s not going to be effective.
What about the huge hispanic latinos of our nation? how have they managed the language card? Everything is now bilingual!
Every Walmart and govt agency has bilingual signage and forms. why were not the east indians and pan asians shown the same deference? they are willing to bend, of course. they know who their master be. the black attitude or character has been frozen, lierally, into defiance….to their own detriment.
It’s not going to be effective. – shabba
==================
I agree. It’s not about education. It’s about blacks’ unwillingness to be assimilated into the culture of “the Man”. Given the choice between absorption into the dominant (white) culture and living in squalor they have, and will continue to, choose squalor.
Exactly right, Q. I am amazed at the racism of Gutenberg and others, who are saying that blacks are capable of nothing more than ebonics.
“How about it America? Job number one: learn how to speak the English language. Everything else depends on it. Excuses not admissible.”
Given the context we’re generally conditioned to think we’re in, that certainly seems appropriate. However I’m given to question the context. There’s an emerging consensus among those who’ve held responsible public positions that we might be in for a bit of a surprise during the third quarter, one expected to have dire economic consequences. And accompanying this surprise, the onset of heightened East-West conflict. In six months we could very well find ourselves enmeshed in a world war, another global financial meltdown, a kind of civil war and a revolution simultaneously.
Learn to speak English. Sure, why not?
http://www.thesisa.org
Speak the English language?!
Please say that to those in power. In my lifetime I’ve had to listen to such gibberish as “My country right or wrong,” “Peace with Honor,” I could fill a page or two with the nonsense. “That’s communistic” is a favorite one in constant use.
When people who have microphones and platforms and billions to spend on disinformation, how is it that a bunch of underpaid, politically harassed school teachers are now such a great enemy to “our way of life”? How do you cut through all that bunk?
I just do not get this at all.
Yeah you don’t get it at all. You claim you want unity, but would destroy the very thing that would make it possible. Or do you want Whites dragged down to ghetto culture in order to attain such a noble goal? Or do you in fact just want the status quo of separation to continue? Needless to say, I agree with that.
I ain’t tryin to disrespechew Kunstler. Nome sayin’? But whyownchew jus shut da fuck up?
O’Malley says he is going to make Baltimore the center of his campaign, now that should be quite the trick to actually make a full sized Ferguson the centerpiece of a political campaign fronting for a multi-racial/cultural coalition. Not impossible mind you but highly problematic since Blacks are the core of the D party these days and they know they are being squeezed, and so they riot against fellow Ds so as to get a larger slice of the pie.
Ironic and tragic is it not that the one group that has literally earned their bones to become Americans, to strive for the equality that Thomas Jefferson spoke about when he crafted the DoI is actually the catalyst to burn it all down, thank you Great Society.
And on the political propaganda front I sense that regular whites of the scorned variety are giving up on caring about white guilt, oh boy.
Used to be we had two lines that were acceptable, the first not quite socially kosher but hardly punishable was the reference to our magic guns ( Tea Party Rascal Rider Cavalry). Second line was for the women folk to utter so they sounded nice which centered on mothering the poor dears better than their own mothers and the evil KKK of yore Democratic politicians.
“Who gives a fuck” is now a nearly acceptable answers to these so called dilemnas.
I will just say this: Given its history since Bill Clinton, the Democrats do not deserve the support they receive from African Americans. But then they also don’t deserve the support of union members – or working Americans in general.
They have simply turned away from the promise of the New Deal, and jumped aboard the Reagan bandwagon.
And since they are scared to death to go near economic issues, they shouldn’t be so confident of Latino support. Because if the GOP can find a way to drive a wedge – like with cultural issues – they will. And the Democrats simply won’t know what to do.
They are as much to blame for this mess as the GOP. And the voters notice. Check the turnout in 2014; less than 40%
Mr. K, as usual, has hit it on the head. The very first requirement of any culture is communication and the first requirement of civilized communication is language, spoken and written. If you can’t communicate on a cultural level, you won’t effectively participate in that culture. End of story!
Interestingly, in my many trips to Ukraine, I’ve observed that a passion of parents there is to teach their children English. And, of those engaged in that effort, their English is generally on a higher level of competence than their young counterparts in America. But, also, ominously, their attention is now shifting to German, as that culture replaces America as the model for success.
Please explain how America’s politicians are effective users of the English language. I mean besides the use of lies and empty abstractions.
I am absolutely amazed that you do not see that we live in a society of illiterates – at the TOP of the food chain.
You do what Americans seem driven to do: Blame the poor and powerless for all our problems. They must have super powers indeed.
It’s the same mentality that prosecutes the rape victim instead of her attacker.
Well, how about all the language we hear about rape in colleges and the military? Lots of chatter. Nothing done. Pretty speeches that just cover up inaction are also an abuse of language. Language spoken by graduates of such august institutions as Yale and Harvard.
Blame the poor and powerless for all our problems. – Guten
================
No Guten, we blame the poor and powerless for all THEIR problems.
Many women lie about being raped. Thus your analogy is illustrative of your cluelessness about race as well.
While I agree whole heartedly on the language thing, I’d like point out that this isn’t just a back thing, or a young people thing. I’ve heard plenty of Tea Party types who also couldn’t string a coherent sentence together.
Yes, think about it with white people too. When a white kid speaks poor english, what does one automatically tend to think? This person is a member of the underclass.
The middle aged guy ranting in incomplete sentences about how he knows his rights, Obama’s a Muslim, and chemtrails isn’t any better.
The non-idiots in our country need to be a little more forceful in our non-idiocy.
So, you’re an authority on chemtrails (denial). Why don’t you also throw in the term 9/11 truth, putatively to discredit those who critically question unexplained, obfuscated phenomena and/or events? There are lots of highly educated and articulate people that are concerned about both issues and the complete facts are not accessible to the public.
True, but the Tea Party types to whom you refer are obviously speaking poor English, whereas the black version of poor English isn’t poor English at all, rather it is a sacrosanct dialect called ‘Ebonics’.
In my lifetime more than one president!
Yes, I agree completely. Americans need to be taught how to speak English. Nobody can succeed in America without speaking proper English. Of course, that’s no guarantee, but without it, there’s no chance.
That’s not to disparage the expressiveness of the black dialect of English. As I’ve heard it used, that’s a very musical, descriptive language that can deliver finely nuanced messages in a way that’s much more difficult in standard English. In context, it’s a very sophisticated language. Some say there are no complex verb tenses; I disagree.
Consider this statement by the former Major League Baseball player, Oscar Gamble, on whether or not racism persisted in baseball as late as the mid-1970s: “They don’t think it be like it is, but it do.” This is, of course, grammatical nonsense in a standard-English sense. But it’s actually a very nuanced statement that on the surface means nothing, but communicates quite a lot. The verb “To Be” is used in a number of ways in this sentence alone, with differing shades of meaning. This not the standard language of the nation, but it is a language that expresses forbidden subjects in a very subtle way.
It just isn’t the language of getting things done in America. When you speak the language of the lowest of the classes; the language developed by slaves; guess what rung of the ladder you achieve? That’s not a knock on the language itself, nor does it need to be.
Yes, all students need to be taught Standard American English. Without question or exception.
“They don’t think it be like it is, but it do.”
Please explicate for us the subtly different ways that the verb “to be” is used in this sentence.
I remain skeptical, but am open to elucidation.
By all means. I’m not linguist, but I certainly brought it on myself. Take in the lighthearted spirit intended, please.
“They don’t think it be like it is, but it do.” OK. “They” refers to the public at large, and probably to sportswriters in the 1970s, who were comforted by the notion that racism in baseball was a thing of the past. Mr. Gamble clearly felt that to be untrue.
Translated directly into standard English, the sentence would go, “They don’t think it is like it is, but it is.” Why not just say that? It’s simpler. It’s certainly not as much fun to say. I’m suggesting it’s because that’s not exactly what Mr. Gamble was trying to say.
“It be” isn’t standard English, of course, but it suggests an ongoing state of being unlike “It is.” “Be”-ing is a more active thing than “Is”-ing. “It is” suggests an outside observer noting on something which is passive or inert. “It be” gives some sense of agency and activity to the thing we’re describing; in this case racism in baseball.
Mr. Gamble makes this distinction by choosing the words “They don’t think it be [ongoing, active] like it is [the observation of a static state by an outside observer].”
“But it do.” In this case, Mr. Gamble is using the verb “To Do” as if it were a form of “To Be.” This is very interesting, or at least it probably would be to a linguist (which I am not). This is about as actively as one can express the idea behind the verb “To Be.”
I think a highly educated man skilled in standard English might have said something like, “They don’t think the historical, ongoing, pervasive and structural racism in baseball continues in the present era, but it certainly does continue actively.”
That’s not nearly as much fun to say. Quite the mouthful. Not nearly as artful.
Mr. Gamble was not a dumb guy. While with the New York Yankees, he was a favorite of sportswriters and quite comfortable with the complexities of being that sort of public figure. After his retirement, he spent some time working as a player agent; also not something you’d expect an uneducated guy to do if he were merely dumb.
So, there’s my attempt to translate, dissect and explicate a sentence from non-standard English into standard English. I’m not in any way disagreeing with JHK that all Americans should be taught Standard English. I agree whole-heartedly.
There’s no substitute for fluency in the language of getting things done in one’s country. I just wanted to make the point that an uneducated “patois” can be very expressive, and it isn’t just the substandard utterance of dumb people. That’s a negative and false generalization that isn’t very constructive and opens the door to a lot of other falsehoods about those who are not formally educated. They have enough real problems; I don’t want to subject them to elitism on top of it all.
That’s all I was trying to say.
You have given this the ol’ college try, and I applaud you for it. I even accept your point that the vernacular can sometimes express tones and nuances that might elude standard English.
For example, one of my favorite lines from anything is expressed by a character in Cormac McCarthy’s novel, Suttree: “You completely eat up with the dumb-ass.” If anyone can’t appreciate that, I believe they are the poorer for it.
But McCarthy is a master of the English language, who can marshal innumerable linguistic options to express just about anything.
With all good will toward Mr. Gamble, I can’t help suspect that he may not have possessed many syntactical alternatives to “They don’t think it be like it is, but it do.” And even if he did, if his audience was a white journalist who would be conveying this insight to a predominantly white readership, he might have done well to express his thought in standard English in order for it to have optimal impact.
I don’t think that Ebonics deserves our contempt, but neither do I think that it works to the advantage of those whose only option is to speak it.
Conjugate the verb “to be”
I bee’s
you bee’s
He bee’s
We bee’s
you bee’s
she…it.
I think that just about covers it….
More importantly, what is the point of all of this? Why are you people going on at such length – even to the point of making fun of someone’s English.
The point – the only point – is that the sentence communicates what Mr. Gamble intended to say.
I am much more skeptical of complete sentences full of nice-sounding words and unfounded assertions than I am of a honest statement that does the job, is NOT about dissembling and is NOT full of self-aggrandizing verbiage.
You’d be a hoot in a Shakespeare class.
True, but it doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. How about simple, straight-forward and grammatically correct?
GutenbergGuy, thanks for bringing up Shakespeare. I have long been of the opinion that Shakespeare is due for a needed translation into modern English. Try reading Chaucer in the original English.
I can’t understand more than a third of what is spoken in a Shakespeare play. I think Breaking Bad is a better MacBeth than MacBeth.
Is anybody else bringing this cause forward? It seems a bit obvious.
Is the ‘patois’ revered in some way?
Yes, this is a good essay. Yes, Martin Luther King spoke the queen’s English, was eloquent, promoted non-violence, gave a beautiful speech about the danger of perpetual war, had a dream, and look what happened to him. Not to say it’s not important, it is.
To change the subject, love the 2015 prediction about Las Vegas. Imagine the capital that went into that mirage, indeed. Maybe Moe Green wasn’t a visionary, but an illusionary. Las Vegas is mentioned in the film Fall and Winter, the most profound and one of the most provocative and important films of the past half century, right up there with Surviving Progress. Descendents of native indians should see these films, as well as those who had past lives as native indians. Funny, talking to my 3 year old grandgirl about living and dying the other day and she says “Well, when it’s your time to die, you go, and then YOU COME BACK.” in good English. Out of the mouths of babes.
“Once we were wild and we were beautiful.” Richard Manning from the film Fall and Winter
In Mario Puzo’s famous novel The Godfather, Moe Green was the fictional character probably based on the real Bugsy (Benjamin) Siegel. Meyer Lansky is said also to be represented in the book and the film.
Wonderful, isn’t it Barb, the things bright children can say, and in perfect English.
Let’s extend this discussion somewhat. “Press one for English.”
Yes, there’s a parallel there. Those elements of America’s immigrant communities that choose to cling to their language and culture rather than assimilating wind up for the most part in low-income segregated communities.
Seems like a reasonable proposal.
One thing to consider: If our nation has a substantial difference in language between the economically successful segments of society and the urban poor, is that not liable to be a factor that further estranges the urban poor from the rest of society?
Yes, simply put. It is absolutely a factor. It’s both a symptom and a cause of that estrangement. It’s not just rural black patois either. Rural Southern white English is taken as an indicator of lower educational, social and economic status as well.
i think y’all are raising the point of simpler verbage don’t mean dumber or lacking goid characer. Ask samuel clemens.
I don’t buy the argument completely.
Maybe you are confusing the language with the surly attitude that many disadvantaged inner-city punks have. It is the attitude that people find threatening and that makes employment difficult. The same language in the mouth of humble well-meaning folk with pleasant attitudes leads to better results.
True, but there’s an association between the language and the attitude. As with the clothes, and all the other ways people communicate and send messages about themselves.
My father gave me a lot of bad advice, but one of the best and most useful things he ever told me was, “When you’re down to your last $20, get a haircut, shine your shoes, and wash your best clothes.”
Nowadays that might take more than $20, but the point was valid. I had occasion to put that advice to work a few times, and it paid off. A good command of standard English and a generally engaging attitude multiplied the effect, to be sure.
Those were the days! Nowadays, one can be well dressed, well groomed, and well educated, but still be unable to find decent paying work. Once the money is gone, where will the next meal come from?
Poor people, especially young urban black males, feel the need to be conversant and competitive on the street because that may be the only place they can be rewarded.
enter tge drug trade…stage right.
I have to give Jim credit, he has been trolling more in recent years and that’s a good thing. The internets, let’s not deceive ourselves, are mainly used for cheap entertainment, and where’s the fun if you can’t troll and hurt somebody’s precious “feels”. I’m tired of living in PCville where you can’t call a ‘spade a spade’.
On a more serious note: It is shocking how much idiocy/illiteracy can be seen in the late great USA. It’s probably most advanced in inner city blacks, but honestly I even see it among suburbanites who, in my area anyway, are majority white. It’s a disease. What the Hell are they teaching in schools these days?
Look, I’m not a Brahmin or a Rebbe nor do I have any pretensions of gnomos whatever. But this is getting ridiculous. Learn to speak a proper tongue you bunch of knuckleheads, it doesn’t have to be the King’s Own English, but it ought to be something borderline recognizable to human beings.
It’s perfectly recognizable to me. First, though, I would ask, based on the performance of our political class, what do they teach folks at Harvard and Yale?
You could fill a major university library with what Mr. Obama doesn’t know about 20th century history, based on his WWI speech alone. And when a politician uses abstractions like “justice,” “freedom” and “democracy” these in fact are disturbingly unfamiliar to me. And then add “principles” and “values” and pretend these words mean something in a society that won’t even prohibit child labor in toxic tobacco fields. Or murders people by remote control.
They are just words, rhetoric used to manipulate and control. The question is how do you make them happen? What do they look like in the world of experience?
Another one of your short sited platitudes. Language investment would be one with a good cost analysis, but without jobs/money to gowith it would be a waste. Please, this things is about jobs/money.
You and so many others always seem to think that “jobs” are always something someone else should supply? What’s wrong with people creating their own jobs, by learning to do something useful? That could include skills in construction, child care, cooking, auto repair, etc. Where are the entrepreneurs in these communities? I read stories all the time about neighborhoods that aren’t served by a grocery store, as if someone who lives there couldn’t start one, or a food co-op. Go to just about any Third World country in the world, and you’ll always find a small neighborhood grocery store that someone from that community started helping the people who live there at the same time creating a job for himself and maybe a couple of other people.
If you tried to start a small grocery store in, say, Hamilton Hill you’d be dealing with very high taxes, high crime, crumbling infrastructure and denial of service. Oh, and race-based animosity as well, if you weren’t black. I think most of these problems are caused by government. I could go on for days.
Imagine if you were the guy who got roughed up over some cigars, in Ferguson. Ferguson isn’t even that bad of an area, relatively. The President of the United States, and the Attorney General, come out in support of the guy who attacked you and stole what you worked hard for. Almost unbelievable.
Almost all jobs in this country are furnished by creative people who form organizations that need labor as part of their equation.
We all cannot run a grocery store. We need help. Just basic jobs for the unemployed, is what is needed. Do ot confuse the system with welfare.
Short-sighted, not short sited. Go with is two words. “These things,” not “this things.” Learn the language dude.
In my profession, we would call this res ipsa loquitur.
Yes, but you would also pronounce it badly. The legal profession butchers Latin.
Incorrect, Zoltar. While other members of my profession may mispronounce Latin, I do not.
Vescere bracis meis!
If you pronounce Latin correctly, my hat is off to you for not minding being regarded as an oddball by your legal peers.
The fact remains that your profession uses Latin for the purpose of mystification, calculated to translate into increased fees, and to induce awe in blog posts.
But that, of course, is not actionable. De minimis non curat lex.
I guess I can’t reply directly to you, Zoltar. All jesting aside, yes, you are correct that Latin is often used to mystify. I confess to using it sparingly in legal argument when necessary to hammer home a point.
This reminds me of a great comedy routine by a guy who was originally a doctor. He asked what the word “stat” meant and was told it was Latin for immediately. Just what you want to do when you’re in a medical emergency, use a word from a dead language that nobody understands. Like the police, chasing a suspect and yelling, “Congelatum!” or Latin for “freeze.” He ends the piece with the judge finding the cop justified in shooting the suspect, saying, “Well, he did say ‘congelatum.’ Case dismissed.”
Maybe the cops should have been saying “congelatum” in Baltimore or Ferguson? Just sayin’….
Point well taken on language. Now lets deal with the real problem, jobs for citizens of this country. It is our country , you know, and all our citizens have different appearances, and traits. They are equal though in citizenship.
Bingo! The English of many posters is abysmal, and these posters are probably more erudite than average Americans. People without the ability to express themselves cleary in their native tongue may wind up saying “Know what I’m saying?” over and over again – because others DON’T know what they are saying.
“Know what I’m saying?” – Isha
==============
Thanks for reminding me about this phrase. I DETEST it. It ranks up there near the top in the pantheon of black vernacular along with ‘motherfucker’ and ‘you raciss.’
These are errors typical of speech recognition software, which should be outlawed, except for those not able to use a keyboard.
” Please, this things is about jobs/money.”
Good grammar.
I read a news story this morning stating that Obama as part of his legacy wants to create “job training centers” for youth of color as if he isn’t president of all youth in this country, and as if such centers or programs don’t already exist. Poor white kids need not apply. I always thought that one of the purposes of schools was to make people employable. It’s all so predictable. Never change or get rid of the dozens of overlapping programs, but use their failure as the excuse to create new ones. He’s had the bully pulpit for 6 1/2 years during which time he’s blamed Bush, or the cops, or the 1% for so many of our social ills. He could have been the perfect person to tell certain people of our society to straighten up and quit blaming others for their problems.
I think that people like Obama don’t know what already exists. He kind of grew up in a vacuum.
He did have the idea of persuading some of the tech companies to accept two-year degrees for some jobs for which four-year degrees had been required, but weren’t really necessary. He doesn’t apparently understand that four-year degree requirements for entry-level jobs, and even the very locations of some of these places (in the middle of the woods?) are designed to discourage the ‘underclass’ from even applying.
Anyway, people who manage to sit through grades 13 and 14 without stabbing their classmates over food, because it was free, just like high school, aren’t going to be successful in STEM fields. There are too many foreigners coming in on work VISAs for employers to be bothered with semi-literate locals.
Well there are the armed forces, white man’s affirmative action gold star for federal employment. Of course once there the race mongers are waiting, but it is job training.
Man! The poor really have an awesome amount of power in this country!
regarding poster comment: “As I’ve heard it used, that’s a very musical, descriptive language that can deliver finely nuanced messages in a way that’s much more difficult in standard English. In context, it’s a very sophisticated language. Some say there are no complex verb tenses; I disagree. ”
Give me that motherfuckin gun, nigga
You motherfucka
Yo, where is yo baby moms, mothafucka?
She my mothfuckin bitch.
What planet do you live on? These guys are degenerating into 9mm spearchuckers, and the guilty white culture is too busy pretending everything is fine the way it is, until the liquor stores burn.
Well said, Paulo. I was thinking the same thing. There’s nothing musical about incorrect grammar. It just reveals that you’re either stupid or uneducated.
Stupid and vicious speech is stupid and vicious no matter how elegantly phrased. That’s not what I was talking about.
Paulo nails it. Any book on American Black English has three entire chapters devoted to the correct use of mother*cker, mother*ckin’. It is all very elegant and nuanced.
Nothing vicious in my statement. It was a simple truism: if you can’t speak the language correctly, it reveals that you are either: 1) not very smart; or 2) under-educated. Therefore, how a person speaks reveals volumes about that person.
This represents what proportion of African Americans in this country?
Being oblivious to the world around you will not protect you.
Maybe you should watch less TV.
While I agree with this essay, I don’t know how one would change the language issue on a broad scale. While young urban blacks hear proper English being spoken by their teachers (mostly, I hope!), by their employers (if they have a job), on TV (such as black broadcasters), and by the bi-racial president, it hasn’t made any difference. Their entertainment of choice (rap and hip-hop), peer groups, and what they hear in the home far outweighs these other potential influences. Peer group is probably the strongest force: when you think about first-generation immigrants, they CAN’T WAIT to start speaking the adopted language and being accepted by their new peer group.
I sometimes visit a library branch where there are usually some immigrant parents, speaking to each other in a foreign language, but their little ones are checking out books written in English. A free library is a treasure trove to them.
These kids won’t be left behind.
By the way, I get monotonous, but it is a fact that in some of the “worst” public schools in NYC, the children with immigrant parents do just fine.
You have to remember, Americans love stereotypes. it makes life so much easier for them. And America is now run by /divide & Conquer LLC.
In the Jim Crow South Black kids were prohibited from using the public library. It was against the law. Their separate-but-equal schools had to steal unwanted books tossed out by white schools because their schools had no funds for books.
Despite this, African Americans built their own schools and colleges and worked to educate themselves.
All the while under the threat of random death at the hands of white supremacists.
So you see, all these “good times” over the state of poor people just offends me. Mr. Kunstler.
It’s ironic that your namesake, Gutenberg, did more to promote literacy and education than anyone else in history, yet here you seem to be promoting ignorance.
How do you get monotonous?
An important post!
Speech forms the way we think, and the way we think influences our actions. The more complex and nuanced our language skills, the more freedom we have to navigate a complex environment. It’s even possible to counter some of the more destructive actions that might be prompted by our basic animal instinctual motivations if we are able to ‘think through’ the possible outcomes of such actions.
If one’s speech is bereft of verb tenses, then it becomes more difficult to reflect on the past or project into the future. Ebonics exists only ‘in the now’ and the resultant cognition is reflected in the knee-jerk behaviors of individuals schooled only in this primitive dialect.
The verb-tense problem is but one of many of the limitations of Ebonics. It is difficult to think introspectively when one’s language is heavily reliant on gesture and intonation…I could go on.
Ebonics is more than just a language problem – it’s a thinking problem
Sapir/whorf hypothesis….language shapes perception. Good point.
I think it’s a good point too. When people can’t fully express themselves, they risk being misunderstood. In some neighborhoods, being unable to resolve perceived differences verbally leads to stabbings. That’s a gesture.
Another thing you people forget is how the media works. If they’re going to interview someone on the streets of Baltimore or Ferguson, do you think they’re going to look for someone who can speak in complete sentences? No. That wouldn’t be dramatic enough; it just wouldn’t sell enough widgets. The choice can also reflect even an unconscious racism – believe it or not.
Here’s an example: Back in the day, when the media showed anything about a Gay Pride march, they went right for the leather queens and the men in drag. Nothing wrong with them, but it shows the mentality of news reporting in the USA.
At that time the selection of these two groups kept Americans alienated from us queers because these images fed the stereotypes that filled the “mind of America.” We are as varied as any other group in this country, and that applies to all “flavors” of Americans.
“If one’s speech is bereft of verb tenses, then it becomes more difficult to reflect on the past or project into the future.”
Sorry, but that sounds like a load of shit. Humans have the instinctual ability to “reflect on the past or project into the future”, even without language at all. Are you seriously suggesting that the lack of proper usage of verb tenses illustrates an individual’s inability to fully anticipate the consequences of his actions, to project into the future? If I say “I do” when I really mean “I did”, does that mean that I don’t know I did, that I cannot reflect on it? Bullshit.
Humans (Homo Sapiens that is) would not exist at all without language. Our evolution – especially our advanced cognitive abilities – was driven by language. In a very real sense, language created intelligence rather than vice-versa. Check out Derek Bickerton’s ‘Adam’s Tongue’ – a great read on this topic.
Sophisticated societies breed complex, nuanced languages, often with sub-dialects for the lower classes. This happens organically rather than by design. There is nothing novel in any of this.
And for gods’ sake pull up your pants! Remember when we were supposed to learn Ebonics? It’s white liberals perpetuating this. They need to have some downtrodden folks to “help”.
I’m a Progressive – a Social Democrat I’ve been told – and I thought it was about a thing called Christian Charity. Which is dead in this so-called Christian nation.
Won’t feed a hungry child but will spend $2 billion/day on war and call themselves Christians.
Please.
You misunderstand. Ebonics was being taught in the 80s. We were all supposed to understand the language. As though speaking properly was somehow an insult to the Black community.
Aiding people in distress is not necessarily a “Christian” thing. I’m saying that perpetuating limiting elements of Black culture by the liberal set has actually produced a permanent subculture to guide through programs and “help”. Guess who benefits from the grant money these programs receive. The Black mother on Food Stamps. NOT!
My comment was not about you anyway.
‘Given the context we’re generally conditioned to think we’re in, that certainly seems appropriate. However I’m given to question the context. There’s an emerging consensus among those who’ve held responsible public positions that we might be in for a bit of a surprise during the third quarter, one expected to have dire economic consequences. And accompanying this surprise, the onset of heightened East-West conflict. In six months we could very well find ourselves enmeshed in a world war, another global financial meltdown, a kind of civil war and a revolution simultaneously.’
Learn to speak English. Sure, why not?
Sounds delightful, eh, we all know how we go out before we come in. Looks like we’re in for nasty weather. Hope you have got your things together. There’s a bad moon on the rise.
And then in its wake the two parties will spend at least $2 billion on a presidential campaign.
2016 could be one bumpy ride.
Our language is the envy of the world, perhaps our most important export and, as one who is “to the manor born”, I appreciate that it is my native tongue and that I didn’t have to learn it as a second language. Meanwhile those from abroad are picking up this tool and using it to get ahead. Some say Baltimore was about class not race and nothing denotes class faster than ability or inability for skillful use of language.
And? So what’s your point?
There is an historical issue here that is hard for me to address, but I’ll try.
African Americans brought here as slaves over 500 years ago. Systematically kept down even after emancipation. Migrated north from the south, from cotton picking to American industrial jobs. Jobs went overseas to save the Industrialists money. People, black and white, left behind in rotting cities. Cops keep them in line by beating and killing them. Now we have cell phones and internet to show what’s been going on for years.
Indians immigrate here, from a country of over 1 billion people, much more recently AS highly skilled professionals. The best and brightest master English while becoming doctors and engineers. Come to USA to ply their trade, and send their children to good schools where they learn to speak English well, and become examples for nigger hating white folk as “dark skinned, as dark as African Americans” people who can master English
I’m glad American nigger haters feel free to express their views on a site like this. Nothing is going to change until Africans Americans fight the system on the street.
No, nothing is going to change until the Negro ceases to embrace his victimhood….
The hatred is a two way street. Black on white violence is much more prevelant at this point in hisory. Rightly or wrongly, people do what they perceive is in their own best interest( ie. white flight). Cultural imcompatability is just to great for there not to be conflict. It is just human nature. While you can force people to go to school together and get along in the work place, you can’t force people to associate in their private lives.
Really? There were slaves? Glad you pointed it out. Anybody who is in favor of education and learning language well in particular, or expresses any admiration for people who come here and achieve academically despite a language barrier must hate black people.
I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself now. Good job.
You’re welcome. Thanks for hating niggers
Most of the Indians immigrants I run into own and work at convenience stores. They also speak better English and are more well spoken than most of the Cleveland blacks under 30. The teenage ebonic speaking blacks will occasionally try to make fun of the accents.
The African americans are incapable of owning and operating convenience stores. The class of white people capable of doing that generally moved out decades ago to get away from the blacks. The Indians make more money operating convenience stores here than they would make in India. They also make more money operating convenience stores than most white high school and college graduates.
I’ll never forget the man in Louisiana, a white man who voted for Bobby Jindal. He said, “He’s not like other n-words.”
(Out of respect for my parents, a couple of Adlai Stevenson Democrats who abhorred racism, I cannot use that word.)
Real English is spoken in Britain, not North America, technically speaking.
Secondly, Black people do not control the public school system, so if Blacks are miseducated (in a country that made it a capital offense for Blacks to learn), it is at the hands of White Supremacy.
Thirdly, all Indians or Asians who speak English don’t sound like white newscasters. In fact more often than not it’s hard to understand them at all. That being the case why aren’t they being killed by police? All white people don’t sound like newscasters. Go to any area of the country and you will find a different version of English. Couple this with the fact that when schools and neighborhoods were integrated there was white flight and the public school were basically financially starved.
Conforming to White Supremacy is impossible for a Black person, even if the cross all the T’s and dot all the I’s (dress, talk, act right etc), because under White Supremacy an clean cut educated black person is basically a well trained animal.
Blacks aren’t being killed because of how they sound; they’re being killed for what they look like because under White Supremacy.
Your position is a strong illustration of cognitive dissonance.
I don’t see what you are saying conforming to what goes on in the real world.
We just had a black Education Commissioner here in New York. We never had segregated schools here either, by the way. My father and his parents went to school with black children. We also have black people on the local school boards, when they choose to run.
Black people are being killed for what they look like? We have had white men killed by police locally too.
You ‘position’ is an example of just what we’re talking about.
And we have a Black president, and that means that White Supremacy is a myth.
Blacks in position in a system of White Supremacy means that that particular Black person will have certain privileges on an ever evolving plantation (Just like some Blacks on a slave plantation had certain positions of privilege and were treated a little better than the majority of the slaves). If a Black person in a position of privilege decides to speak up for Black people or against the system of White Supremacy, he will lose his privilege.
Give me a list of (unarmed and innocent of a capital offense) white people who are killed by police and there is no due process. I could give you a long list. In fact, ARM white people are NOT attacked or killed by the police.
And your position confirms not only cognitive dissonance, but that you are in fact a White Supremacist in denial who ascribes to this mantra: “The negro has no rights which the white man is bound to respect”.
So in other words, Blacks will only be free when Whites are their slaves, either directly or via the Welfare system. They already have the second but they really desire the pleasure of the first.
If living in White Majority system means oppression, then could and should leave. The only other alternative is that Blacks get to stay and we have to leave, or be genocided, either directly or via forced miscegenation.
So what does Black Freedom really mean to you in terms of Whites? Slavery, Dispossession, or Genocide?
Do you understand the welfare system? Do you even know what welfare is? Can you have this conversation? I have no problem suffering a fool for a minute or two.
And really, the question isn’t what we will do to or with Whites; the Negro question is what do you propose we do with Black people in America.
No, the two questions go together as long as the races are stuck together. You refuse to accept that Whites have legitimate needs, thus condemning them to slave away for other races. I reject that. I’d give Blacks their own country in the deep South. Obviously that’s not going to happen so the borders will have to be established the old fashioned way….
“You refuse to accept that Whites have legitimate needs, thus condemning them to SLAVE away for other races”
An unfortunate choice of words.
New York may never have had official segregation of schools, but there is an economic segregation of schools to this day.
Your papa went to school with black folk? Well shut my mouth, that makes you extra special.
The problem with this critique is that it is to specific. I live in Oregon, which is relatively white. So the idea that Ebonics is the reason for black youth failures is a bit erroneous, if anything I would argue it is a result. I would say it has more to do with black youth finding their own identity ( however self defeating) in a society that offers empty images of what an adult is supposed to be. This is true across the color board. I can think of none wise elders effecting the mainstream pulse in this American Culture.
Funny that race is the theme this weak. Yesterday i was thinking of such things. I have since distilled my thesis on the subject; in terms of racial identity units, and in general; Black people are black peoples problem, White people are white peoples problem, Asian people are asian peoples problem, and onward and so forth, hey hey, what what!
” I live in Oregon, which is relatively white”
point being that there is plenty non-eloquence in talk and self expression round here. In fact talk of things real, is highly frowned upon, and instead talk is resigned to the most superficial for the most part.
…furthermore a productive conversation about how black people should speak might be a pointless conversation for the all white male readership of this blog to be stabbing at? My bad; the 99.9% of this bogs readership who is white male (myself included). This can only be a productive conversation for black people to have, unless it is a general conversation on race issues.
Is it even possible to have an “productive conversation” on complex issues here discussed within the constraints of the Ebonics dialect?
I agree with you somewhat on that point, but it is mostly white people who I hear constantly discussing what to do about the problems of being black, so a different viewpoint from a white person is pertinent to that discussion, isn’t it?
I, for one, think it is. Consider Professor Higgins’ viewpoint as expressed to Colonel Pickering:
“Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?
This verbal class distinction, by now should be antique.
If you spoke as she does, sir, instead of the way you do,
Why you might be selling flowers too!”
Or jacking cars, selling drugs, pimping whores, etc….
You make a good point. I think part of this self-defeating behavior is a response to their perception that the society at large has little use for them or to offer them. So: why bother? Why bother to speak better, dress less clown-like, go to the polls, show more initiative in forming businesses? In other words, to fit in? Chance of success is likely to be very low. It’s a vicious cycle. A dilemma.
The irony, as Kunstler has pointed out, is that the early civil rights movement was about inclusion, acceptance, participation in society. Since then, much of the black sub-culture is about separation and dropping out, in effect.
That’s part of the problem. Whites often feel guilty about living in good White places and desire “diversity”. When they get it, they secretly don’t like it, but can’t admit that to themselves. So they leave the chaos and violence and pretend they are looking for “fresh air” or “good schools”.
Well how much should a nation expect when it’s young citizens were aurally weaned on the communicative brilliance of this former president:
“One thing is clear, relations between America and Russia are good and they’re important that they be good”.
Of course many of the people from this site who also lament the mangling of English also voted for the former president who made the comment above. Indeed, they virulently defended this president from ‘Ivy League/liberal academics’.
If you are white, proper English usage is not required:
“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?
You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.
As yesterday’s positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured.”
— George W. Bush’s butchering of English.
And matriculated thru two Ivies, how bout that?
With a Gentleman’s “C” average, if I recall correctly….
Baltimore public schools are a very rich, if broken. The school system per pupil spending is second *only to NYC schools.*
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-05-21/news/bs-md-ci-census-schools-20130521_1_school-system-per-pupil-spending-districts
I don’t see what IQ has to do with poor urban black dialect. IQ measures raw intelligence, and the tests are designed to control for language and culture.
Freddie Gray probably had an IQ in the low 70s–much lower than the black average–possibly because his lead exposure and his rocky beginnings gestating in his crack-addict mom’s womb.
Here’s a research question for sociologists: what percent of poor urban blacks are born to mothers who used drugs and alcohol during pregnancy? How do the life outcomes of those children compare to those of children born to mothers who didn’t use drugs or alcohol during pregnancy? Control for IQ of parents.
Also, I don’t see what skin color has to do with race or intelligence. South Asians are often darker than American Blacks, but are descended from completely different ancestral populations.
People have been propagandized to believe race is just skin color. No one would believe that two different breeds of dogs were the same because they had the same color fur. That would be a denial of commonsense.
A Chihuahua and a Great Dane are the same species. To compare the two is like apples and oranges. My Yorkies are night and day compared to my departed German Shepard’s, The Yorkeys are certified killers. Terriers bred to kill rats. They kill mice and chase squirrels, Can’t catch the squirrels but mice are fair game.The Shepards were not. They were guard dogs. Loyal to there last breath. I miss them dearly.
Yes but the breeds are so different – just like Blacks and Whites. That’s my point and you are agreeing with it despite yourself.
a denial of [commonsense].
Janos: That should read common sense; two words. That’s the noun form–actually a noun phrase: a noun, “sense”, modified by the adjective “common”.
The “commonsense”, form, one word, is an adjective. As in, “That’s a commonsense approach to solving the problem.”
“racial justice hand-wringers are squirming over this proposal”
Not me. I favor racial justice and believe the system is rigged against blacks and Hispanics and, for that matter, all minorities.
As I teach these kids, I have pretty good success in showing them the Language of the Powerful as a key to gaining power. It’s as if I have given them a superpower.
As I remind them, “if you want to change the rules, learn to talk like The Man. Then you can stick it to the Man.” The School of Rock reference still resonates. In a few years, I’ll need a new pop-culture one.
This language-as-power idea works, at least at the sort of place I teach. If you are in a neglected public school, however, I don’t know what can be done.
And in their little minds, “the Man” means Whites. You are an enabler of Black Racism and Violence.
If you really want to expand their minds, ask them why they don’t care about Black on Black violence, either cop or otherwise. But that doesn’t bother you either, right?
Damn all those Chinese, Japanese, Jews, Iranians, Koreans and Indians who are bucking the rigged system. Obviously the system needs a rethink in order to shove them back down….
I think Siobhan is right, that as long as there’s whole industries devoted to black dysfunction you will never see any amelioration in black behavior or living conditions whatsoever.
Too many people’s careers and salaries – just for starters cops, judges, prison guards, social workers, parole officers – depend on black misbehavior. Without a multitude of young blacks to chase down and lock up what would they do? What other career options are there for sociology majors?
And let’s remember the academic industry that devotes itself to the study of the problems, a compassion industry that involves itself in weeping and lobbying for money.
Given the money to be made out of all this, how likely is it that any of the above professions devote themselves to finding solutions? Amelioration of black distress? More likely its propagation.
There are a lot of people involved with city school districts who fit that description. I’m not talking about teachers, either.
They seem to measure their success by how many kids they get into some kind of ‘program’, and how much money they spend, and not by any results. I think if some kind of valid performance measures were developed, these programs would be proved to have negative effects.
Exactly. And of course they “love” their clients and want more of them. It’s their bread and butter. OF COURSE they favor them over ordinary Whites who work and pay taxes. So when people like this attain real political power, their policies can’t but penalize the productive class and ultimately down the system.
Makers, Takers, and Fakers. The Fakers ally with Takers and destroy the Makers.
The question of race is inextricably related to class. Class is inextricably tied to the economic system.
Because the elites have chosen to gut the US industrial base through free trade, there simply isn’t any place for HS grads or HS dropouts to go — especially since vocational training has been simultaneously gutted.
Problems of race and class have a solution — get rid of the neo-liberal capitalism that has been in place for the past 40 years.
I think you are right, but if you are someone heavily invested in keeping things as they are, it is so easy to keep people divided over ‘racism’, that they won’t ever talk to each other.
The TEA Partiers and Occupiers really should be on the same side.
You’re implying that black dysfunction is caused by economics, which is only half the story.
But it’s an important half. And it’s true that Baltimore had a thriving steel and shipping industry that could support low-skilled labor, and now that’s gone. Suburbanization has allowed blacks and white with IQs above 100 to get out. Now the main employer is Johns Hopkins.
Massive immigration since 1965 hasn’t helped blacks any either. Here in Chicago it’s uncanny how few black employees I see in a city that is a third black. Blacks used to work in restaurants and retail, but they’ve been totally replaced by Mexicans. It’s only a matter a time between blacks team up with Tea Partiers and conservationists to enact an immigration moratorium.
Go back to an organic way of life that values the People, their history and traditions? Now you’re talking my language. Nothing is more organic than Blood and Soil. Normal Whites value themselves and don’t want to mix their blood or share their soil with other groups.
If you listen [not so] carefully these dark days, you’ll hear just about every American’s lingo severely constrained in nuance of meaning (lack of vocabulary, tangled metaphors, twisted/”incorrect” idioms, loss of trenchant colloquialisms, etc.).
So, yes, eva’bahdeez got some larnin’ to do… along with a cultivation of lifelong curiosity and playful imaginations. (English is such a rich language in nuance of meaning; why not use it?)
I find it curious that people will insist that inner-city black populations have a cultural dialect they inherited or something, when I knew their parents, and my parents knew their grandparents, and none of them spoke that way.
Regarding the IQ test dilemma.
For deaf people who are about to attain majority age, there exists a roving test crew that visits various centers and tests these people, not by words that must be correctly understood, but through the use of devices that are provided in increasing difficulty.
First are dexterity tests – use the tweezers to pick up the metal peg and transfer it to the other side. The watchful eye also sees how the person does it – do they choose the most efficient way, or are they orderly, lackadaisical, and so on.
Later, it’s take a tumbler lock apart – and back together. The subject has as long as they need – most fail. Another test involves assembling a bunch of pipes and collars from smallest diameter to largest – it’s a rather tricky exercise – many fail here as well.
The bottom line, however, is the aptitude is not measured through the ability to follow written instructions as deaf people often cannot write a concise sentence nor can they glean the actual true meaning of a written sentence, or paragraph. Sure, most can read the words, but the variety of interpretations of all the words can be startling.
Anyway, at the end after the points are tallied, a surprisingly accurate result is given – the test measures intelligence, motivation, and offers insight as to the person’s ability to succeed at a place geared to further their education – and allow them to overcome regional deficits, or lousy parents dumping their deaf kids off at a useless boarding school.
Prior to oil and entitlements (and overpopulation), a deaf, blind cripple had to survive on his own means – guess what a common job for such a person was?
Cobblestone placement professional!
There’s more than just the obstructionism of people who have no interest in black people improving their lot.
Upstater is right, he sez:
“The question of race is inextricably related to class. Class is inextricably tied to the economic system.”
I think it was this last Friday on PBS Newshour in the Shields and Brooks segment, Mark Shields talked about the deleterious effects of de-industrialization on the living conditions of blacks. Now, David Brooks being a conservative, could even agree with this.
Why, you ask? Because Shields didn’t use that un-mentionable word – offshoring. That word being of the four letter variety to conservatives especially but also to the intelligentsia (like those working at PBS) who couldn’t give a fig about the condition of people they look down on as inferiors, those being working class folk.
See, globally, there’s been no de-industrialization. It’s just that the American oligarch class moved those industries, as Mr Angelos said, to third world dictatorships like China, who used their military and police muscle to suppress their work force and ensure docile compliance.
Upstater is also right when he said; “Because the elites have chosen to gut the US industrial base through free trade, there simply isn’t any place for HS grads or HS dropouts to go — especially since vocational training has been simultaneously gutted.”
Of course this off-shoring ruined the life prospects of a large segment of American society both black and white. In that sense offshoring/de-industrialization was/is a class issue more than a race issue. But, blacks being black, got hit harder and worse.
I’d like to hope that there’s hope that somehow the lame-stream news media will be able to one day spit out that foul word – offshoring – and not use watered down terminology like de-industrialization or outsourcing. Neither describes what happened and what ails the world.
Now, neither downtrodden Chinese industrial workers nor the now un-employed American workforce can afford to buy industrial output. The demand gap has been plugged by accumulating piles of private and public debt.
It doesn’t take an economics Phd to figure out that this road goes right off the cliff.
I also wonder how any nation that doesn’t actually produce anything can be considered safe from a defense standpoint.
Good point. Of course, for anyone with an ounce of common sense, it isn’t safe. I think it was Bill Gates that raised the issue a number of years ago. Putting all this industrial capacity overseas, in China no less, is idiocy.
How do you finance this massively expensive defense establishment with an all volunteer military without the productive capacity and tax paying capacity of industry and well paid industrial workers?
It’s no wonder that the US is sitting on a 18 trillion dollar debt time-bomb. And that’s just federal government debt.
Spanish will be the dominant language in future America, with the urban barbarians speaking some polyglot combinations of language and slang– loaded predominantly with curses.
Because there is such a thing as Black English, I have noticed some black people change the way they speak when other blacks are around. The problem is that they are seen as “acting white”. Unfortunately, that also applies to those same kids when they bring homework home & work on it and they don’t miss school. There is tremendous pressure on them to avoid being seen as too white. Unfortunately, in my profession, I see lots of job applications from all races, & let me tell, you they are largely misspelled, incoherent and the penmanship ain’t so hot either(when it’s hand written). It’s not just the black kids, there is a race to the bottom in our school systems and it involves the majority of kids, it’s just that it seems more obvious with regard to blacks.
It isn’t just black people. I grew up in a rural area in Minnesota. My family was highly educated, but broke. I knew a lot of poor, Nordic white people. They were usually very poorly educated, and what people would call “White Trash.” They had very limited expectations from life, which were usually confirmed by their experiences and outcomes. When any of them showed academic aptitude, this was mocked and discouraged. Those who persevered ended up limiting or cutting off ties with their families and childhood peers. They were considered to be putting on airs, and thinking they were better than everyone else in their family and social circle, and shunned; often it wasn’t them severing their ties. “College Boy” was not a term of endearment. There’s a long tradition of anti-Intellectualism in America, and it flourishes today; not just in Black America, either.
When college-educated blacks come to teach English in Asia, they are usually quite competent. Our supervisor did have to remind Quanisha that “aks” was not a word to replace “ask” and that “befo” actually had two more letters at the end.
The great irony is that her Japanese was amazing.
Is anybody else bringing this cause forward? – Peakfuture
===============
Are you kidding me? Who here on this blog has tried harder to maintain Standard American English than me? No subject than Jim’s post today is dearer to my heart. And what do I get for it………. threatening emails from our host to “cut it out” or I’ll be banned. I guess we are to believe the myriad errors seen daily at this site are not really errors but just fat-finger typos.
In case this comment proves to be my death knell at CFN I’ll say my goodbyes right here. It’s been fun these past 8 years. See ya’ll around the campus.
Q. Shtik
Q-Shtick–
I send you scolding emails when you post trivial and fatuous remarks, not for your interest in written English. — JHK
If this comment section were limited to only profound thought it would be a slim section indeed.
P.S. We can take liberties with the spelling of the handles we go by… so it’s Shtik not Shtick
Remember, morality is the grammar of Being. I could never get you to admit that there was a difference between helping someone as you helped me with the proper spacing of the hyphen, and just jumping someone who made a mistake and said tail instead of tale.
Hmm, correct English, pidgin patois and potheads. Try Jamaica. They speak the Kings English perfectly as well as pidgin patios, and they are potheads. Something to look at.
I definitely skew towards liberal and multi-cultural but, Jim, you have absolutely nailed this issue. The language issue is symptomatic of our national DERISION of education and intelligence.
I am currently working as a Headhunter on BioPharma/Medical Device PhD-level positions and the candidates are overwhelmingly Immigrants or first-generation Americans. It is rare to fine a “person of color” or even a white person with the requisite education and qualifications for these roles. The vast majority are either Chinese or Indian.
Worse yet, our education systems to produce these people is collapsing while places such as South Korea, China and even the city-state Singapore are cranking out Hard-Science (Biology/Chemistry/Physics) PhD candidates by the thousand. The nations have invested in building universities and make them available at little or no-cost to their best-and-brightest young minds.
Innovation and Development of new science has traditionally been one of our Nation’s strong suits. What happens went the brains are no longer in the USA?
PS – The largest Contract Manufacturer of Pharmaceuticals is going to be Samsung in South Korea within the next year. Why is such a small nation able to corner such a big industry? Coordination between Government, Industry and Education.
“The language issue is symptomatic of our national DERISION of education and intelligence.”
I was writing the same thing as you were posting this. Entering the USA after a time elsewhere, renders the problem obvious.
Well, the Christian right wants nothing to do with education; education loses them members.
Exactly. The Government must coordinate the other two. That’s Fascism. Under Plutocracy, the Corporations control and just do what they want to make a quick buck with no regard to the good of the Nation or People. Obviously we are a Plutocracy.
Given that definition, most of the developed World is under a Plutocracy. ( which is a depressing thing to think about.)
If we do collapse due to a shortage of cheap energy combined with financial shenanigans, that’s one ruling class of “people” I won’t miss…
Of course there was the vice presidential candidate who spoke in gibberish named Palin.
Does that excuse other people from speaking English correctly and meaningfully?
No, equally disturbing. Just to say the language standard for a vice presidential candidate should be higher than that of a common person.
There is a great divide between being correct AND being meaningful. I would value meaning more in importance than being (politically, grammatically) correct. Audience is very importnt when considering words. paragraphs do not mirror verbal communications, nor should they in interpersonal context, why we have an internet lingo.
highschool does not prepare students for the different professional lingos they must master. HS teaches one how to teach themself.
most of our language skills are learned at home from mom.
A point well made here. The human species has probably a 50/50 chance of making it, but at least we’ll speak well. And hey, with more and more states legalizing marijuana, like the dinosaurs, for our demise, we’ll be high.
Earth first, we’ll destroy the others later. Don’t rest in peace Larry Gibson.
I recently heard a proposal from someone for boarding schools for ghetto kids. Maybe that’s the answer – get them out of their corrosive environment into some place where bad behavior and bad language isn’t tolerated. If you keep them thru grade six or so, maybe they’ll have a chance.
Incidentally, I notice at the mayor, prosecutor, and chief of police in Baltimore are black, and they manage to speak good standard english.
Patois is only a manifestation of the underlying problem, as I think JHK understands.
A poster upthread quoted some notable who said, “They don’t think it be like it is, but it do.” This is readily translated into grammatical English as, “Some people do not understand our plight.”
This translation has two effects: first, rather than terminating the dialogue, it expands the dialogue by implicitly asking, “Who are the “some people”?, Who is the ‘us’ referenced by “our”? What is the plight?”
Second, the translation sounds alien; or as some might say, “hah fallutin boo-alshee-it.”
This second effect exposes the real problem, which is the deeply anti-intellectual attitude in the USA, which is peculiar to the USA among all industrialized countries. When a majority of the population view a medium-sized vocabulary as the attribute of an alien with subversive motives, the culture is in trouble, with the economy not far behind.
As here we see.
Good observations.
It is ridiculous that something so painfully obvious (an entire subculture content to stay illiterate etc. while whining about things like “income equality”, “institutionalized racism” and “white privilege etc.) is something that’s off the table in the *discussion*.. It harkens back to your brilliant piece Jim “Thuggo and Sluggo”.. It’s a subculture which aspires to remain forever infantile.. The tragic (becoming tragic-comic) wish to remain infantile through all of life.. It’s sitting around in your own waste.. wondering LOUDLY what the smell is..
And White kids throng to this new rebel identity – which is so lauded by the popular entertainment media. It’s acceptable, while their own rebel identity is not.
Mexican popular identity is completely a rebel one. Perhaps White kids can start identifying with this one too or instead. It’s probably a better one than the Black. It could hardly be worse.
Great post, Jim!
Not to take anything away from your post and the insightful comments following, but I’d take it one step farther. I expect little agreement, but in my opinion Americans should be learning to speak at least one foreign language, fluently. We might thereby be doing better on the international stage than we are. I suspect that few international journalists speak the language of the country to which they are assigned, to say nothing of our own diplomats.
How many Chinese begin learning English in kindergarten?
All of them!
Blame it on the “gummint;” blame it on the “skoolz;” blame it on economics or class; blame it on whatever you will.
It all starts in the home (please read here a mother and a father being responsible for children) as the incubator of social success including communications.
When a demographic subset has an approximate 70% plus out-of -wedlock birthrate, one does not have to look too far to see the outcome.
Secondly, when certain psychographic characteristics are propagated and maintained as acceptable; even the most anti-social ideations and behaviours will come to pass and be considered normative.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, when whole cultural industries ( work relentlessly to undermine any normative behaviours, and instead churn out a torrent of the most vile messages the final product here in the U.S.A is the Hip-Hop Nation. A subculture which revels in its hatred and contempt for all cultures except its own anti-culture.
Yep. They hate us for our freedoms.
I think you’ve identified the real causative factor. The “cultural industries”. The fact is that behavior, regardless of its being anti-social or otherwise, is seen by our operative culture as being “opportunity”. Those who don’t conform to “standards” are just seen as another subgroup to be marketed to. Part of the marketing program directed at the subgroup involves supporting the notion, directly or indirectly, that the behavior which defines the subgroup is A-OK. If I’m trying to sell something to them, I’m hardly likely to tell NASCAR fans that they are devotees of the mindless wasting of gasoline to satisfy their adolescent fantasies. No, rather, I’m probably going to lionize the behavior they support and with which they identify. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Pequiste and AKlein…have drilled down to the kernel of the issue with an economy of words and focus of message/thought that makes the rest of today’s posts seem like blind mice stumbling about. The NASCAR fan analogy is brilliant. Kudos to you both.
Was it Tipper Gore (I’m not a huge fan) who took the first stabs at blunting the lyrics and message of hip-hop gangsta music/culture way back when? She was laughed off the stage at the time for her dim understanding of what constituted diverse “black culture” and expression thereof. So how’s that idolatry of the “bad black boy” rapper working out for us now?
70% out of wedlock births of African-Americans? WTF?
Establishing a standard dialect wouldn’t hurt, though it would be hard to enforce. But it has nothing to do with IQ. And it’s more a symptom of isolation than a cause of it. But JHK knows this… It’s just bizarre what this blog has turned into over the years.
Josh says: << It’s just bizarre what this blog has turned into over the years.>>
Do you mean that a conversation about American race relations is inappropriate? Are you unaware that there was a major riot in Baltimore last week, resulting in the destruction and looting of 200+ small businesses? Please explain what you mean?
..and ferguson misdouri….and los angeles some years ago…and the list gors on…
Apologies for my flip comments. You deserve a more thoughtful reply and you’re right to call me out on it.
My remarks were just a lazily worded expression of disappointment, in what seems to me like an increasing tendency on your part to narrow your focus in the face of large-scale problems, to the point of myopia.
As a native Baltimorean, I’m plenty tuned in to these riots. I grew up near the border of the city, in a white neighborhood, but I have done public interest work in the neighborhoods where the riots occurred. I have family members currently working in the city schools, and I have colleagues whose establishments were threatened by looters last week. The unrest has been at the forefront of my mind, along with the difficult social conditions that produced the unrest and the excruciatingly difficult work that will be required to repair the civic fabric of America’s most troubled cities. What I am worried about is whether, as a country, we’ll actually summon the will to do it. And your simplistic comments about black speech don’t make me feel encouraged. I can’t help but notice how, in recent years, whenever you’re confronted with urban problems that are really hard, your analysis gets simplistic.
A couple of years ago, you visited Baltimore and posted an entry on this blog with pictures of the city, wisely noting that Baltimore is a “wounded city” from a civic design perspective. As a longtime reader of yours, I think I understand what you are implying about the wounded civic culture and lack of community when you make such criticisms, and I agree. It’s all true about Baltimore. However, in that blog posting you also wrote off large swaths of the city as “ghetto,” which is unfortunate. From a design perspective, a lot of Baltimore’s triumphs happened in the late 19th and early 20th century in beautiful neighborhoods that are now African-American. As fantastic as the civic design was, it wasn’t enough to save the city from dysfunction, any more than a well-designed New England village square would save its citizens from the plague. Some of Baltimore’s loveliest, most well-proportioned neighborhoods erupted in violence last week. So I think a tour of the real Baltimore – away from the yuppified, redeveloped harbor, for instance – could have given you the opportunity to question some of your intellectual assumptions about the significance of design in urban life, and perhaps to ponder other kinds of root causes and potential solutions. And isn’t that something that all thinking people relish – the chance to challenge ourselves and refresh our minds with new conundrums, hopefully in the service of new ideas down the road?
As I tried to suggest in my flip remarks, I agree that it would help poor, isolated black kids improve their economic prospects if they were able to better communicate with mainstream white society. But the lack dialect is not going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, both you and I know that the root cause of black isolation is the fact that it was violently forced upon them for so long. Most of Baltimore’s African-Americans came north from Georgia and the Carolinas during the early and mid 20th century in search of industrial jobs and a way out of southern segregation and oppression. They brought with them the patois that they developed over the centuries and which linguists call BEV (Black English Vernacular) or AAVE (African American Vernacular English). It’s a variant of English with some syntactic differences and a much different rhythm and flow than white English, but it’s got nothing to do with IQ or the ability to think. You’re right that Martin Luther King gave his speeches in white English, but he did so with a kind of black music which signaled to his black listeners that his native dialect was really theirs. (Needless to say, the unique music of black America has powerfully informed white America’s music, from Hoagy Carmichael to Elvis to Tom Waits.)
So for all the urban design aspirations we may have, and for all the irritation we might feel at the disconnection from mainstream white society that poor black kids grow up with, I just wish we could find a way to provide all the kids in Baltimore’s poor neighborhoods with great schools full of dedicated teachers, connected up to innovative vocational/technical, community college, and professional job internships and apprenticeships. That way, they could learn a trade or profession and really make something of their lives. I can assure you that this would reduce their isolation and get them interested in participating in the American mainstream rather than looting the local CVS.
I also wish that we could provide them with family support in parallel with that effort, helping them build new families even when they themselves come from hopeless, drug-addicted backgrounds. Remember the one black mother who slapped her son around and dragged him away from the looters? Not a sophisticated parenting technique, for sure – but she’s the one who knows what it takes to keep her son away from the lures of violence and chaos that threaten that neighborhood. She and a million other mothers and grandmothers like her are keeping many young kids afloat in Baltimore. As many aid workers have known for decades, the really crucial unfinished task is to get the fathers to stand up and turn away from the street. Many efforts have shown some success in that effort, but in the end, it will take more better-paying jobs to give men in the community enough of an incentive to walk away from the dysfunctional culture they have known. That’s not going to happen just by complaining about it, if we don’t find a way to change things.
I hope that the recent unrest in many places around the country is an indication that black America will no longer tolerate its own hopelessness, any more than it will tolerate the police brutality that has apparently been swept under the rug for generations (much more than I was aware). Things seem gloomy now, but I think there may be some hope in the generation ahead, if both black America and the country at large can seize the moment and start paying attention to the hopelessness of poverty and the precariousness of middle-class life in America today. But I have to tell you: Your post today, with its flip dismissal of black speech, is in no way a serious response to the events of the last week. If the readers who follow your blog owe you a little respect, based on your legacy of sensitive reflection on civic life and our duties as public citizens, then you owe your fans some much more serious thinking about the depth of the crisis we are in and what can be done to make things a little better, one neighborhood at a time if necessary.
If I were your editor, I would encourage you to turn off that voice in your head that just wants to be pissed off and snarky, and turn that other voice back on which is keen-eyed, sensitive, reflective, and capable of producing creative and intellectual masterpieces (including The Geography of Nowhere and – if I may say so – “In Memoriam: My Dog Chloe,” a heartbreaking literary essay (or memoir?) that you generously make available to the public for free on this Web site. Kind of irrelevant, I guess, but I just wanted to praise it.) Your intelligence, sensitivity, and sense of humor are tremendous, as is your bravery to just state your beliefs and damn the consequences. As a fan of yours, I really just hate watching your analysis shrivel up and seeing you squander it on micro-issues like hoodies and black speech. There’s so much more to it, and I don’t believe that you don’t know that.
Is race really the problem? if so, how is it that 3 of the six Baltimore police charged are black? Are they “self-hating” blacks?
I notice that, too, how the cops were racially proportioned but not sexually. there is only one woman and she is black. i heard a proscuter suggest on the news she would be the first turncoat to avoid prison time.
so, the converation has to be about culture rather than color.
Just because a person from India speaks proper English it doesn’t mean that have anything to say. Indeed, many from those countries–say, China and India–are just tracing the contours of what is considered grammatically correct. From ‘the outside in’ in other words
An Emerson or Ruskin, on the other hand, searingly searches for just that right choice of words to communicate complex ideas. Their English is imbued with content; thus the outer contours are formed from the inside out. And some of their ideas penetrate the contours of style–English in this case– and become “Eternal Art”.
Farrakhan has some of his own ideas to communicate and he developed his own idiosyncratic and eloquent linguistic presentation.
Moreover, in a society that increasingly mirrors the constant use of computers, our ‘brains’, in many ways, identify with acute, abrupt and square like expression: Twitter utterances in the land of tweet- tweet bird brains. Soulless, square box architecture, the abandonment of cursive writing, police ossifying into a rigid para-military structure and even pro athletes mimicking a military demeanor–all of society is increasingly constrained, compressed and ‘boxed in’, singularly compartmentalized if you will.
There is more than one way to insert ‘The Chip’.
And speaking of tracing the contours of style, country music has devolved into jingoistic decadence; simpering mannequins patriotically posturing and singing in exactly the same way and saying exactly the same things. Patsy Cline would be ashamed and disown the entire sorry lot.
Have something to say and the words will, via educational effort, will naturally follow IMO
‘it doesn’t mean that THEY have anything to say.’
Most communication – these days – is not spoken.
I’ll say that. [pun intended].
‘country music has devolved into jingoistic decadence’
The music is no longer country and the words are ‘Bro Country’.
Yikes.
If I’m reading you right you’re referring to all the hand gesturing of ‘gangsta culture’? Or were you referring to former President Bush’s incredibly long pause in his debate with Kerry when he finally managed to utter an ‘it’s hard work’ remark? (OK,just messin with Cold on the last question.)
Lack of verbosity in, say, classical music, might be more intellectually evocative, allowing the listener ‘complete the story. Likewise, a plethora of lyrics might be more akin to journalism and the court stenographer than poetry.
Apparently the modern day female is an expert in non-verbal communication, or at least for those informing themselves via Cosmopolitan or People magazine.
And I’ve heard it told that in certain rough sections of the British. Ireland and Scotland one should be very careful when looking another person directly in the eye as this might be construed as an invitation to throw down.( Maybe a good idea to wear sunglasses should one choose to vacation in the land of rain and clouds.)
I think Gil Scoot Heron gets his point across very succinctly but not too many would like what he has to say:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGaoXAwl9kw
Buck Stud says:
<< Indeed, many from those countries–say, China and India–are just tracing the contours of what is considered grammatically correct. From ‘the outside in’ in other words...>>
What a fatuous and racist thing to say. Asian and Indian Americans are merely pretending to speak English correctly? Shame on you.
“Because Euro American whites have been programmed to “not offend” at all costs.” That explains the KKK and the Nazis. I was wondering why there was such a lack of anti black sentiment in the south and mid-west.
Brilliant.
You outdid yourself.
‘Because Euro American whites have been programmed to “not offend” at all costs.’ That explains the KKK and the Nazis. I was wondering why there was such a lack of anti black sentiment in the south and mid-west.
What’s your point? That Whites once tried to defend their Culture and Nations? And for that they were demonized by the Elite and now by factotums like you?
Unfortunately you’re right about the KKK. They were defending their culture — the culture of slavery. And the Nazis were protecting their racial purity by killing off the undesirables.
Well, sometimes protecting your culture and race are really not good ideas. Sometimes they are and lead to bad ideas.
How could you tell I was a factotum? I try to keep that hidden.
Any my original point was to show JHK that there is much that beggars description, that simple solutions are idiotic.
Are we supposed to be sad that our Ancestors conquered this continent for themselves and their progeny? Now we’re supposed to give it “back” to Asians, Mexicans, etc? Why? Are you to postulating that only Whites have done things like this? Or just posturing?
Oh, man.
So, long time reader, listener, etc., etc., first time caller.
Jim,
As a student of urban design and decay you must be quite well aware that societies, communities, people and places all develop together and inform each other. Language is just another piece of that interrelated set of ideas that people use to form and maintain community, identity and social structure. (i.e., culture.)
Every time you or I make a vocabulary or syntax choice while speaking English, there’s the invisible weight of your entire lifetime’s worth of memory and judgement bearing down on every element. And everyone, consciously or not, continually aspires to present themselves in the way they think is most accurate, most correct, or most authentic to their own self-identity. The way they “ought to”, based on every moment of their life up to and including this one.
Asking a set of people to present themselves differently is in effect asking people to change themselves internally. The effort one has to make when communicating to someone who speaks differently is to understand that they speak differently because they have an entirely different life from yours. The pressure of the history of their existence means that words can have entirely different connotations (or even, sometimes, denotations).
So, in a sense, you’re right – they speak a different language. But there’s a reason – they live in a completely different social and cultural environment than you. Aside from what it says on the maps and what the modern nationstate system says and what the money looks like, it’s another country. And it can be another country even to two families living next door to each other – all that’s required is for these two families to never speak to each other, to have completely separate media environments, different interactions with authority, different interactions with groups of people in society — and you’re living in two different cities in two different countries that just happen to look the same. (Which reminds me, I should get around to finally reading “The City and The City” by Mieville…)
Maybe the right move would have been, a hundred years ago, making a concerted effort to combine Black and White cultures in a way that resulted in a new synthesis that was universally American, but that hasn’t actually happened. So now there are two cultures here in the same physical space, overlapping here and there, misunderstanding each other’s language, one with power and one without.
Something like that synthesis is happening in ways, and can happen, and might happen – and must happen, if there’s to be some light at the end of the tunnel. Without it, there will always be a White Establishment that requires you to participate in White Culture and learn and speak White American English for you to begin to have real access to power, real respect, or real worth. Every time you propose that all Black people need to do is speak like you do, dress like you do, and act like you do, you’re just asking them to not be themselves in their own country, to not speak their own language and to not have their own culture, in their own homes.
At the end of the day, the real question for you is: can Americans have independent cultures or not? Because right now, they do. If you want to get rid of them, you have a lot of very bloody work to do.
Great comment. Lots of food for thought there. Language is one of the most telling indicators of culture.
Well said. It hasn’t worked and it’s not going to. The first thing Blacks did when Universities were opened up to them (by Affirmative Action and discrimination against Whites) was to demand separate everything.
We need to stop fighting reality and let separate peoples go their own way. Trying to keep them together is going to be increasingly bloody as Baltimore has shown.
Although there really wasn’t much blood, if any, in Baltimore — at least not as a result of the “protests.” Some fires, some looting and some bruises. Not so much blood. And a ton of hype and social engineering.
Mike says: <<...in a sense, you’re right – they speak a different language. But there’s a reason – they live in a completely different social and cultural environment than you....>
I thought the whole point is that black Americans should not have to be confined in ghettos, but rather fit into the better places and positions that non-blacks inhabit. Your reasoning seems to conclude that giving them the means to accomplish that — command of intelligible English — should be discouraged because they might leave the ghetto.
Your comment is further proof that we desperately need and honest conversation about race.
Per your proposal, we have to consider how culture influences language and how language influences culture. Teaching Black children intelligible English is, or should be, mandatory, but alone it’s not enough — not even close. The formidable thug component of Black ghetto culture will seek to undermine those efforts so something must be done to mitigate that as the first wave of the recipients of this proposal “graduate” and move up and out. The kids who are well-intentioned are bullied into submission and speaking intelligible English in the hood will solicit one beating after another. What can, or what should, be done to prevent that so this can take hold and flourish — if your proposal was even considered which is a big IF.
I’m not talking about leaving anyone in a ghetto, I’m saying that ghettos exist on both sides. A gated community in Florida is a white ghetto.
Your proposition is, in effect, that black americans make themselves more white. What I’m saying is that’s not going to happen – the best you can hope for is a future American culture where both white and black Americans feel equally comfortable, and it’s not going to look like either culture independently, and the language isn’t going to be like either language (sociolect, actually) independently.
This is already happening, bit by bit, in popular culture, and trying to contain linguistic evolution so that it’s “intelligible” to you is a fool’s errand. You’re probably not going to like it, but it’s inevitable.
I think the real issue here is access to education and family support for poor people, and this language thing is just getting in the way. While there is such severe stratification of educational outcomes, while the successful and comfortable are going to completely different schools, what actual real benefit is a poor inner city kid of any ethnicity going to get from speaking “properly”? He’s not getting anything out of it unless or until he’s out of there. Until that point, he’s just speaking a foreign language in his home country.
Werd!
I meant werd and not ird bcause that is ghetto talk for “i agree wid you!”
Normally I’m on board for >90% of J H K’s suggestions, however this;
“How about it America? Job number one: learn how to speak the English language. Everything else depends on it. Excuses not admissible.”- JHK.
Is putting the cart before the horse.
The reason that American Ghetto-Blacks speak that ridiculous “patois” [*] that passes for the badge of *African-American Authenticity*, is because those school districts were essentially defunded. You will notice that the Boomer-generation dwellers in those same areas can speak fairly standard American English… They spent their formative years in schools that hadn’t declined past the point of no return.
SO, once again the bottom line to this issue is the ‘bottom-line’ of everything in the USA: MONEY. And that is something that will not be forthcoming – for any number of pathetic “excuses” (we’ve heard so many over the years, just pick one).
Cheers!
—
[*] And it is a “patois”, in the truest sense of the word.
Wrong. Black schools typically get more money than White ones. And often Black students trash brand new facilities in a kind of orgy of negative creativity. In their hearts they know they are getting things they don’t deserve.
Is there a link to a valid source for that assertion?
Jim, you had to know the “yeah, well what about them over there” argument would be trotted out — and it was. I knew someone would mention Dubya to support their lack of an argument. I have news for the “yeah, well what about them over there” crowd; the folks you’re referring to when you say “yeah, well what about them over there” aren’t burning down every city in this great, but crumbling, land of ours. Take George W. Bush for example since some of you have pointed to him as lacking elocution. He’s not burning down American cities nor has he burned any down. He was considerate enough to take his “protest” to Iraq rather than burn down his own house. The “protesters” could learn from him, but instead they despise him and embrace the Black president with the vanilla White, creamy center who is throwing them under the bus in everything he does.
If Obama’s so concerned about injustice to Blacks, he could start by federally mandating cannabis as legal and all drugs for that matter and use the savings and tax revenue to fund drug education, regulation, intervention and rehabilitation. Instead, he supports the multi-million dollar, or billion dollar, cartels and even sells them weapons while “his people” get sent up for minor drug possessions.
Fast and Furious Guns / Drug Money & Banks
My suggestion has to be part of the solution or else what we’ll get is a lot of articulate convicts instead of inarticulate convicts like we have now.
I will concede that JHK has a point about some blacks lack of the ability to speak and write correctly. I realize that the lack of ability to read and write correctly will limit your chances in life. As a black middle aged man, I would like to offer my small perspective on some of the problems I see in Baltimore and American life in general. I would like to educate some whites on one minor fact, there are a lot of black people who are just as disgusted by what’s going on out here as you are. A lot of black culture has been hijacked I feel in order for TPTB to limit competition and to profit from the resulting dysfunction of policies that have been put in place by the system. You are not being exposed to black culture, you are being exposed to an underclass culture with a black face on it. The prison industrial complex is a great money maker, gangsta culture, makes sure that the supply of bodies to feed that complex stays constant. Deindustrialization of this country, wage stagnation, the demise of small businesses, the destruction of the family unit by welfare also are great contributing factors. I know that some of this sounds like victimhood, but thats what a lot of these young people have been taught. When you are not exposed to something thats positive, see people in your life getting ahead by getting an adequate education, apply over and over for jobs that are no longer there to support a family, they don’t put together in their minds that they have to adapt to the changing conditions in this country, they just give up. They see education as a criticism, not something constructive that can help them later in life. Too many people in this country also have no other recourse but to try to find a job, but the jobs are not there, and also there is one fact I never see mentioned, corporate America is not for everybody, thats where the small businesses came in and the small farms and the trades that would take up the slack, you don’t have as much of that any more. These young people are adapting to their surroundings which is an underclass culture.
@Woe
An impressively wise response. Thank you.
Woe writes: << They see education... as criticism...>>
Well then they are making a mistake and there are consequences for that. I’m sorry to say, it ends up being just another excuse for failure.
not everyone sees success as going through four years of college in any language. some people are satisfied with having small jobs and raising families that produce good citizens.
These people are young and have adapted to their surroundings, which is their area is an underclass culture. Not every young black in Baltimore is immersed in that culture, but that’s where you see the cameras are being aimed at. There are more and more people who are failing in the system of all races. You are being exposed to one facet of society. You a looking at a symptom of a disease.
Yes,
and as having done four years of “social work” in an urban ghetto, your comments mirror my experience and observations…there is a sickness in the culture, for all the reasons, correct and otherwise.
Gangsta rap supplying the meat for the prison industrial complex to eat…man that is perfect. The Baby Boomers got suckered into one of those in the 1960’s. Bunch of mostly British rock stars used drugs, everybody wanted to be just like them, and presto instant receptive market for illegal drugs. When you look back on British history and the opium wars, you know it was all contrived.
Jim No offence but from over here in Ireland where we know something of discrimination you look like a plain old racist. When you next scrutinise what’s wrong with your fucked up country you might want to try a little introspection. Always blaming the victim is really very poor analysis and does not help your understanding.
Lol. The African population living in Ireland is 1.7%. In Ireland whites make up 95% of the population. You have absolutely nothing to tell us about race.
Motherf*cker from motherf*ckin Ireland calls Jim a mother*ckin racist. ( I translated the sentence into black English).
what about the black irish…all they need are brown eyes and hair.
Hey Mike, don’t you have some laundry to pick up from the Magdalene? You and your country are ones to talk. The only thing good to come out of Ireland was the snakes. Make sure on your way to, or back from, the Magdalene Laundry you say hi to Father Ollie (Oliver O’Grady for those who aren’t privy). You’ll probably find him hanging out near the playground.
You are really a creep sometimes. No doubt you wish the English had succeeded in their genocide of the Irish, the so called potato famine.
No doubt.
Yes the Irish have been taught to hate themselves by hating White Americans. To make up the sin of being White, Ireland is now bringing in Blacks as fast as possible.
Ireland is doomed because of people like michael connolly. He doesn’t even have enough pride to capitalize his own name.
Nailed it.
Nailed it Q. I don’t think it was satire, just p*** poor english.
Should piss-poor have a hyphen? Let’s ask some of the “protesters” in Baltimore.
Nailed it. You don’t have a pot to piss in but you too cool to be cool, thas why yous cold.
Let’s see your pot. Or maybe not on second thought.
Should piss-poor have a hyphen? – Cold inquires
===============
Merriam-Webster uses a hyphen but Urban Dictionary does not.
Speaking of hyphens, it’s sad how many women lost their hyphens at a very young age. ;o)
It is sad — many to their fathers, no less.
Boy, it really seems, reading through these comments and the variety of perspectives and analyses, that there’s little to be done. The race issues are so densely interwoven, so intractable, so potentially explosive (as we have seen), and have developed in such an undirected “organic” way that they are, in the end, just impossible. Even to talk about them is fraught with difficulties in most social settings. I’m quite pessimistic that a broader level of trust and mutual respect can ever be achieved.
Petro,
Well said. Your words can be adapted to fit many issues facing us.
They could be shortened into two words as well i.e. “It’s hopeless”
* * *
For my money the most cogent piece Kunstler has posted in weeks.
Nailed it.
Nailed it. – seawolf77
================
In case y’all haven’t noticed, “nailed it” is the new “spot on.”
Mashed potatoes!
Yes Petro, it’s time to be moving on. We have other fish to fry. Blacks need to their own culture again, apart the incredibly destructive media, welfare worker parasites, and insane communists and social justice warriors. And we need the same. As Lincoln said, we both suffer from the presence of the other.
What’s he’s trying to say with this barbarous idiom is that each race needs its own country to go along with its own culture. Body and Mind. One per customer.
To whom are you referring in this comment? What barbarous idiom? Who is the “he?” Quit being such a creep.
You’re cool and you’re White. Why not call yourself Ice Cream? White Chocolate is already taken.
Nice catch btw. The wonky software took this post way down the page from its intended target. I was replying to the Blacks have Black problems, Whites have White problems, etc.
Will a black man who speaks perfect English have an easier time getting a cab in NYC?
All cabbies in New York are white racists who speak impeccable English.
It matters much more whether he is wearing a hoodie and falling-down pants or adult clothing.
so if a white guy is dressed that way he must be a rich hip hop producer/singer.
Jim, there is a very interesting monologue at ‘Takis’ by JD, where he mentions Japanese visiting Trenton, NJ and the looks on their face. Worth a few minutes. The talk can be scrolled thru if you dont want to hear all of it.
Just like the girl in the provocative outfit deserves to be raped.
Petro May 4, 2015 at 2:19 pm #
‘Boy, it really seems, reading through these comments and the variety of perspectives and analyses, that there’s little to be done. The race issues are so densely interwoven, so intractable, so potentially explosive (as we have seen), and have developed in such an undirected “organic” way that they are, in the end, just impossible. Even to talk about them is fraught with difficulties in most social settings. I’m quite pessimistic that a broader level of trust and mutual respect can ever be achieve’.
Unfortunately, you are most likely right Petro. It may be too late for us to ask ourselves the question of the decade. What is progress? The question is put out there in the film Surviving Progress, and if you think about it, it’s a tough question to answer without bringing up some inanimate object. Peace of mind should be the real measure of social progress, sadly it would seem, that we are not going to get there. The institutions of higher learning offer success, once one becomes indentured with debt, if one doesn’t have a scholarship. What is success? The cousin of the last question. The thought for the week, the rich man isn’t the one who has the most, but the one who is happiest with the least.
Yes and remember Jim’s post industrial paradise, Union Grove, is White. Maybe some Black fan could write a Black version set in the South. No such paradise will be multi-racial or cultural. You need a basic homogeneity to get people on the same page. That’s the only way a culture can get started or be maintained.
that was not fair…you can only wrote about what you know.
Wasn’t there a black family there?
Yes Pete, there was. But Brother Job says he brought his people to Union Grove to get away from Blacks and inter-racial violence and was relieved to know there were so very few.
What do you think of the Dutch Black Peters? They are an important part of Christmas over there, one of the last bastions of Dutch culture. The Black immigrants have been rabbled roused into thinking that they are “racist” and now protest and attack the Black Peters. Black Peter is humble and good, a true servant of St Nicholas. Thus they are not good role models. Black “Dutch” kids need obnoxious rappers and gang bangers obviously.
1. The United States has no official language.
2. What most people speak in the United States is American English, which is a dialect of proper English, and even American English varies from region to region in the United States.
3. Language evolves. For example, 1,000 years ago this was English:
On angynne gesceop God heofonan and eoroan.
‘In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.’
Does this example (from the book of Genesis in the Bible) suggest that English has deteriorated over time?
If employers required it, would you bother to learn Ebonics in order to get employment? Would you resent having to learn Ebonics just to be hired? Would you then speak Ebonics at home or at social gatherings with your white friends? Think about what you are asking Blacks to do.
The point is to evolve together as a speaking community and culture. Multi-Culturalism throws a monkey wrench into the gears and breaks the machine of the Nation. Intentional since the Globalists don’t want separate nations by definition. They’ll tolerate the façade for a while of course – as long as there’s no there there, no reality, no uniqueness.
I’ve long contended that “offense-o-phobic” whites, almost always of the politically liberal variety, are largely responsible for maintaining blacks in their posture as THE bottom of the class structure of American society. No matter how many other ethnicities we bring in, they immediately rise above blacks in comportment, language skills, and engaging in all of the behaviors needed to advance in socioeconomic status.
So what are offense-o-phobic whites doing? They’re BEHAVING MORE AND MORE LIKE GHETTO/PRISON BLACKS. That includes ghetto affectations of language use (“What up, bruh?”), affectations of bodily adornments (sorry, Nelson, but tattoos and piercings weren’t your invention), and an increasingly angry, anti-intellectual bent as the Indians and Chinese outcompete your lily white asses.
American Anglos need to ask themselves when they’re going to start parenting their kids in ways that don’t involve “permissive parenting” like allowing that first little tattoo, then the nose/lip ring, and so on. Blacks aren’t falling. They’re where they’ve always been in American society. Whites ARE falling and, suddenly, many of the hipper honkies see blacks as their brothers instead of seeing blacks as an omen of where they’re headed if they don’t get their act together.
Very, very true!
Here’s why (not just) blacks don’t want to sound or dress like those who run the dominant paradigm, and here (sort of buried in there) is why immigrants from certain parts of the world do.
this culture is commercial. It is post industrial consumerism.
Outsource manufacturing to spend more on entertainment and advertising.
The rising tide has lifted all boats.
People enjoy using their cell phones and mp3 players and televisions to
listen to pidgin ghetto English.
It is the post industrial free market. Post industrial consumer culture has
a higher defect rate.
All of the savings are swamped by policing/security/imprisoning/special
education costs.
Post industrial economy relies on sprawl and real estate bubbles. It is necessary to keep slumming places up to create higher demand/prices for new
real estate and gentrified urban enclaves
Interesting post, Dogger. About that higher “defect rate”, don’t you find it fascinating that the cell phone is seen as a technological ADVANCEMENT yet how many times IN YOUR LIFE has a landline dropped your call?? Answer is likely to be in single digits if you’re over 50. Anyone who has owned a cell phone for a couple of decades has had conversations with 3 or more drops … maybe hundreds of such conversations.
We’ve traded “convenience” for failure. Yet is it “convenient” when one’s dopey friends interrupt social outings because they “have to take this call”??
The reason why “post industrial economies rely on sprawl and real estate bubbles” is because real wages have declined since the 1980s so municipal, county, and state governments (all bloated by overpaid bureaucrats) look at increasing real estate bubbles as a way of increasing tax bases. That’s why after the crash of ’08-’09 several cities like Stockton, CA went immediately bankrupt.
Indeed, if you want to look at the REAL reason why both Demos and Repubs WANT massive immigration it’s because upper and upper-middle class Indians and Chinese come over here and buy expensive houses in places like CA … a tax boon for starving government kleptocracies.
Everything is about allowing the continued bifurcation of American culture into the “useless eaters” (read: the now huge lower-middle class) and hapless gentry who will be taxed to death to sustain huge public sector bureaucrats in their seats of power. It’s not the rank-and-file cops, teachers, and nurses bleeding the system. It’s the city halls around the USA where chiefs and “city managers” and the like get huge salaries and $300K-$400K annual retirement salaries.
The “gentry” are simply tax fodder and everyone else is viewed as lackeys to pour coffee, janitorize buildings, and sweep the streets.
Well said. New doesn’t always mean better. And even if does in the sense of faster or whatever, it still might not be better in the human sense. In old Manhattan, there was a system of pneumatic tubes that could send a message from Wall St to Harlem in seconds. Certainly better than bike messengers – or maybe even fax machines? The operators were known as rocketeers. You’re a techie: What was the power source of “pneumatics”? Maybe we should embrace our Steam Punk future with a will.
I’m far from the only White Nationalist who is a fan of Mr Kunstler. He has quite a following among us.
http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/05/the-first-steampunk/#more-54855
Language and complex concepts are intellect. Intellect is language and complex concepts.
The problem in the United States of America is not racial or cultural in regard to the lack of language skills. The abysmal states of language proficiency and cognition are ubiquitous. “Ain’t that America.”
Wasn’t it one of the founding tenets for the middle and lower classes in this country? I would guess that widespread ignorance is a design feature of this nation. And the dumbing down has accelerated from the last third of the 20th century until now.
That is to say, this is a dumb fucking country and I count myself right in the middle of all that dumbness.
But as George, above, alludes, “There ain’t no time to wonder why. We’re all gonna die.” There are bigger turds in the soup than the crappy state of the language. That is an issue, like most these days, that is way past its prime.
or so says…
~toktomi~
Maybe it is a “dumb fucking country” but when most people stopped at high school they still wanted their kids to respect intelligence and, if they were “college material” (a term that died about 1980), get intelligence to get out of hard manual labor jobs.
As for language, there’s a HUGE difference between rural grammatical malapropisms (like “He didn’t go nowhere”) and all the black “hipsterisms” that have invaded common parlance (“What up, bruh?”, “Where you going’, dawg!?”). One is simple ignorance and the other is a form of not-very-well-hidden defiance of “common parlance” in order to be seen as an “individual”. Sorry, but uniqueness of being isn’t established in ten seconds by use of euphemisms or in a couple of hours by visiting the tattoo/piercing parlor. All these “nonconformists” are so alike it’s comical.
There are bigger turds in the soup than the crappy state of the language. – toktomi
=============
Sorry, I must disagree. Language, and in the present case under discussion, black vernacular, is a huge turd in the soup. Obviously our host thinks so too or he wouldn’t have written today’s blog post.
JHK, while I empathize with your despondency over blacks’ misuse and abuse of the English language, I would heartily disagree with your assertion that “structural racism” in the US is a canard. It does exist. So why learn the language of a society that doesn’t fully accept you?
If almost everyone in this country was a racist EXCEPT for the people I’ve personally heard arguing that racism is a significant factor inhibiting black achievement, that would still mean there were enough tolerant, fair-minded people among the population that racism couldn’t, in fact, be a major obstacle.
How many people could you have, ” , , , personally heard arguing that racism is a significant factor inhibiting black achievement , , , “?
Let’s be very generous and say that number is 100,000. Then that leaves millions who are racist. Which means that racism could indeed be a major obstacle to black achievement, contrary to your conclusion.
Or did you mean something else?
Make no mistake about this: Americans don’t REALLY want Indians and Chinese over here getting the good jobs and being the valedictorian of local high schools. You learn the language for the same reason Asian immigrants have learned it: To succeed economically. Blacks speaking in ghetto-speak or “Ebonics” that think proper English is “giving in to the man” are like a man who points at a gun at his own foot saying “Stop or I’ll shoot!!”.
White Americans, Chinese, and Indians are ALL terrified of American blacks because of their propensity to be violent. American blacks can only undo this by not continually shooting themselves in the foot under the guise of pouting over “non-acceptance”.
JHK this is the first thing I’ve read (or heard) of yours that seriously bums me out.
I work in an office full of people who make six figures and speak HORRIBLE English. They’re mostly (a) Chinese or (b) Ukranian. Their English skills are atrocious, and many are even outward (client or vendor) facing.
Privilege begets privilege, wealth begets wealth. Your claims sound awfully harmonious with the chorus of those who delight in blaming the victims.
Do you think your office is the exception or the rule, Meat? I really don’t know, but would agree with JHK that knowing how to speak good English has got to be advantageous.
All cultures have an Elite. The question is not Elite or no Elite, but rather a good Elite or a bad Elite, an Elite that is loyal to its people or a traitorous one that seeks to replace them with coolies from the four corners of the Earth.
I’ve seen offices out here in Silicon Valley where there are a lot of Eastern Europeans/Russians and all kinds of East Asians. Language proficiency is a constant fight for them but they’ve got a work ethic that spoiled white kids cannot match. Also, while they struggle with language, they continue to try to master it on the fly which is very, very difficult. They don’t see themselves as “victims” of Anglo culture.
As long as blacks see themselves thusly, they will always be the perpetual underclass. Whites are following them in this direction. I just saw a Chevy commercial on tonight’s Houston-LA basketball game and white people are saying things like “This car is really dope”. Yes, let’s ALL be “victims” and speak in ghetto hipsterisms.
Historically, most “victim” cultures are outsmarted, outmaneuvered, and out-disciplined by their “conquerors”. As a White American I refuse to be a “victim” and I refuse to be a wannabee black hipster so everyone is my homey. Really, Meat Wad … blame the “victims”?? Yes, the poor blacks made 40+ years of Affirmative Action and quotas into a joke because they’re “victims”. What a bunch of malarkey!!
I work in an office full of people who make six figures and speak HORRIBLE English.
let me guess, these people have a SKILL there’s a demand for?
pray tell, good knight
fodase
Exactly!!
janos: “The point is to evolve together as a speaking community and culture. Multi-Culturalism throws a monkey wrench into the gears and breaks the machine of the Nation.”
Oh, really? So, nuclear superpowers like the USA and India are broken? Nonsense! India has over a dozen official languages and is not broken. 65% of India’s population is 35 or under. They speak 23 major languages, giving the country a strong competitive edge in the coming decades.
Canda is multilingual and is not broken after 45 years of official tolerance of all cultures and two official languages.
Belgium has three official languages. Luxembourg is a trilingual society, with three official languages and a trilingual education system. Neither Belgium, nor Luxembourg are broken.
Switzerland has four national languages… but is not broken.
Multiculturalism is no monkey wrench! Nor is multilingualism. Globalism is here to stay, whether you like it or not.
India has seldom been united. As it is, there are several movements of secession at the moment, as well as a powerful, land based Maoist insurgency.
Canada may yet break up.
Belgium, the Flemish and the Walloons hate to each other. The Government crushed Vlams Blok that wanted freedom for the Flemish.
Switzerland is a marvel of political genius. The different cultures agreed to stay separate in their own cantons. In other words, this doesn’t agree with your mix everything together and hope for the best philosophy. If only our States had the freedom of the cantons!
Get real. India is a shithole with shanty towns in between opulent high rises. They’ve never gotten it together well enough to be broken ’cause they were never “fixed” in the first place.
Globalism is the source of all the magnificent new disease vectors in America and is the primary reason why the US is utterly dead meat to low-cost foreign goods suppliers. Globalism IS the “race to the bottom” to see who is willing to degrade themselves to be that supplier. Ever look at the clothes labels in a Kohls or a Target store. “Made in Bangladesh”. “Made in Cyprus”. “Made in Vietnam”. Yeah, that’s your “globalism” but have no fear. Even sweat shop personnel want a real life eventually.
Nonsense! India has over a dozen official languages and is not broken. – wpa
===============
India is actually quite fucked up. I think their tendency to take a shit anywhere they damn well please is a big factor but multiple languages doesn’t help. Read “An Area of Darkness” by V.S. Naipaul (an Indian). Last name spelling could be wrong.
And
Katherine Boo’s ‘Behind the Beautiful Forevers’ …
Feb 9, 2012 – Katherine Boo’s first book explores the lives of residents in a Mumbai slum.
Canada is not going to “break up,” Janos.
Russia, China, Japan, Indonesia, Iran… all have small secessionist parties that go nowhere. The existence of a small group advocating secession does not mean a country is broken.
The existence of official tolerance of multiculturalism and the existence of more than one national language, does not mean a country is “broken.”
We live in the age of internet. We are more connected trans-nationally now than ever. Globalization is here to stay. There is no going back. We are sharing world views, products, ideas and cultures… worldwide.
The problem is not American blacks. The problem is James Kunstler. American blacks intuitively know and understand that the Vatican slave plantation will not be changed and cannot be changed. They walked away from it.
It is the supposed “intelligent” people, people like our writer and critic, James Kunstler, that completely fail to comprehend the obvious. Instead, they engage themselves in the utterly idiotic pursuit of trying to reform the system. But the system cannot be reformed.
The only way to change the system is to let it die and disappear. Walk away from it. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s”, and let it collapse on his fscking head.
What about the Israeli Blacks? Do they have just complaints against Ashkenazi or Sephardic racism? The Blacks are Jews too, Mike.
The complaints are legitimate. That’s the reality of dealing with the gov mafia. Our Vatican/CIA-installed gov mafia is no different than elsewhere. Thankfully, the country is small enough for the people to still keep that mafia in check.
Will you take your frigging unending Papal conspiracy theory to another site. Christ, man, you are the most one-trick rhetorical pony I’ve ever seen. Usually, people with your idea of what’s “obvious” can be found in large numbers in insane asylums where schizophrenics can recite all manner of false attributions ’til the cows come home.
You are being farmed, like the dumb ugly mean beast that you are.
One day my words will ring true even in that hopelessly propagandized and callous brain of yours. I hope it is a long time from now — that they have made full use of you and of your kind.
American blacks intuitively know and understand that the Vatican slave plantation…………………. mika.
=================
OH MY FUCKING GOD!! The Vatican again!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the first time I’ve ever seen you use a derivation of the word fuck. Way to go old chap. You’re in rare form these days. The shoulder must be recovering nicely.
Jesuit Nazis.
Most of the Quebecois support French as the official language of Quebec. Many support political separation. It is not small. Countless English speakers were ruined when French become the official language up there. The same thing will happen here if and when Spanish becomes mandatory for Government workers.
China has a very situation in Turkestan and of course, Tibet. Your blasé acceptance of Tyranny amazes as always. I can’t accept it and I’m glad that I can’t.
Russia fought a war against the Chechens who want their freedom. That’s not over either.
Trying to fix language is a fool’s errand. I find myself regularly using words in ways I never would have thought of just a few years/decades ago. One example is “disrespect.” When did that become a vowel, “He disrespected me so I shot him.” Or, “text,” as in, “I just texted my wife that I would be home soon.” Compiling a list of these would be fun.
When did that become a vowel, – LLPete
================
You mean verb, right?
Vowels are a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y
“The same thing will happen here if and when Spanish becomes mandatory for Government workers.” –Janos
The proof I have provided of countries with two or more official languages (Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland), is an indication that countries can function well with an educated multicultural citizenship.
Given the number of Hispanics here, I hope Spanish is adopted officially in the United States, with job preference given to those who speak Spanish fluently.
It is easy to say Blacks should learn English. I want to see the shoe on the other foot: Spanish spoken here… let’s see how many white English speakers walk their talk and learn Spanish.
I suspect white English speakers will just lazily choose not to learn Spanish. Even if that means choosing to remain unemployed and becoming dependent on the State, like certain people y’all are criticizing in Black America.
God forbid Americans be required to learn another language! I disagree, Janos, with tyranically imposing English on everyone.
That’s the ticket, James. Switzerland is proof that a widely educated citizenry works far far more than it’s any indication the multiple languages work.
However, let’s get real about Spanish in America. Am I to assume that any ethnicities which pour over a country’s borders illegally are to IMPOSE their languages on the countries they’re invading? Doesn’t sound right to me.
I’m impressed by the improving quality of JHK’s comments section. It wasn’t too long ago that the exchanges so frequently turned into a food fight after one or two comments that had I just stopped reading them. This is good.
Hey Jim I don’t think Language Arts is high on the agenda at Baltimore HS. Maybe back in the day when Edgar Allen Poe and HL Menken went there, yes. Not now. For what its worth Baltimore spends $15,000 per year per student to educate its kids, 2nd in the US only to Washington, DC. Of course the teachers are heavily unionized and there might be as many as 200 diversity Coordinators and Multi Cultural Facilitators on staff at $250,000 per. What, you think they come cheap? Needless to say these salaries drive up the average. On any given day at least 50% of Baltimore City public school students are reported as absent, which is a clue that a free education is not all that important to them.
No, the course of study in Baltimore, as in most American cities, covers the 3 Rs: Racism, Reparations, and Revenge. Want extra credit? There’s a 4th R, rioting. Everybody gets an A.
brh
SBPDL,
A few years ago, Frontline did a special on high school dropouts.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/dropout-nation/
One of the things that really stuck with me from that show was how “programs” are used to obfuscate the dropout rate and make it look like students are doing better than they are. A student transfers out of a real high school into a “program” and then they’re not counted as dropping out, even if they never show up to the “program.”
It’s a giant shell game, where the net result is a lowering of standards and special concessions made for black students.
I have a few ideas for improving educational outcomes for black students:
Show up to school. Pay attention in class. Don’t interrupt the teacher. Don’t fight with the other kids. Do your assignments and hand them in. Work on your reading and writing skills beyond what’s expected of you in class. Don’t stay out late on school nights. Don’t make babies. Don’t hang out with criminals. If you’re going to drink and get high, save it for the weekend.
You know, the stuff that most white families consider basic, minimal expectations.
Even among the “students” who “graduate,” I’ve wondered how many of them are:
*utterly unable to solve for x in the equation 7x-1=20,
*utterly unable to name 5 Native American tribes,
*utterly unable to write a coherent 5-paragraph essay on a subject of their choosing,
*utterly unable to name 3 rights guaranteed under the first amendment,
*utterly unable to correctly label 20 states on a blank map of the US,
*utterly unable to explain how solar eclipses occur,
*utterly unable to name the last 5 US presidents,
*utterly unable to name 4 countries on the North American continent,
*utterly unable to pick the nouns and the verb out of “Jane went to the store,”
*utterly unable to name the major organs in the digestive tract,
*utterly unable to locate Ancient Egypt on a world map,
*utterly unable to name the head of the Roman Catholic church,
*utterly unable to express 1.8 as a fraction,
*utterly unable to say, “Good morning, how are you?” in any foreign language,
*utterly unable to convert 32 degrees Fahrenheit into Celsius,
*utterly unable to state 1 fact about the former Soviet Union,
*utterly unable to explain how earthquakes are generated,
*utterly unable to name 5 countries involved in World War II and which sides they fought on,
*utterly unable to name 3 plays written by Shakespeare,
*utterly unable to name 10 elements on the periodic table, and
*utterly unable to explain what interest is and how it’s calculated.
In short, how many of them are totally ignorant and utterly unable to account for 13+ years of public education at taxpayer expense, almost to the point where we should just let them drop out after 6th grade and not waste our time beyond that.
It’s a black hole that we keep shoveling money and resources into.
Anonymous
We can’t “educate” blacks out of this mess. It’s been tried my friend. Even if you could teach a black classroom all the stuff you wrote about, they would be released back into their community where it would avail them nothing.
Meanwhile, I’ve seen real-world I.Q. and performance tests criticized because they don’t have black experiential stuff on them. But after years of dumbing down the tests, dumbing down the classroom material and instruction, the system still can’t spit out most black kids as graduates.
Your list was impressive, but you realize that in modern academia it would be considered as not only culturally prejudiced and without relevance to today’s youth, but it could possibly be judged as racist at worst and a micro-aggression at best.
As penance, you should be tested to determine if you are not:
utterly unable to name five current NFL draft picks
utterly unable to name Wiz Khalifa’s current rap hit and its chart position
utterly unable to identify the artist who performs “Truffle Butter”, or summarize its message
utterly unable to name a reasonable street price for a set of stolen “rims”
utterly unable to define the word “bae”
utterly unable to name at least three non-Governmental organizations that will subsidize or fully cover monthly utility costs for the underprivileged
utterly unable to accurately describe the dance known as NaeNae
utterly unable to define at least two meanings of the word “dubs”
utterly unable to name five slang terms for each of the five most popular street-sold, psychologically active drugs
utterly unable to give the current street retail cost of a “bundle” of heroin.
utterly unable to name the number of doses in a “bundle” of heroin
utterly unable to point out the anatomical region known as the “back” on an anatomy chart
utterly…well, damn, you get the point.
But wait you say, the stuff you mentioned is actually useful information!
Yes; but sadly, half of this crap I just named is useful in the “community”.
…….
…..
BULLSEYE!
There is a strong case to be made for ^reparations^:
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
I agree, WPA, and whites are ready to take payment for letting unqualified blacks in jobs and schools for 40+ years and letting better qualified whites have to suck hind teat.
We can start with reparations for the businesses burned out in the riot. Then reparations for that white cop in New York shot in the face by the black criminal. Let’s work back from there.
The Jews got them.
The way to do this, IMO, is to call the dialect they are learning “General American”, as it was called when I learned it as part of Voice and Diction class in Drama school. If they want to consider it to be a separate language, fine, as long as they learn to speak it when necessary. They can talk Ebonics at home if they want to. Can’t call it “real” English as this will enflame the politically-correct crowd.
gdmedia, it already has a name: AAVE.
Merriam-Webster definition of AFRICAN-AMERICAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH
: a nonstandard variety of English spoken by some African-Americans
—abbreviation AAVE
AFRICAN-AMERICAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH
: a nonstandard variety of English spoken by some African-Americans
==================
Some?
Cut me a break. Do a blindfold test. I will correctly identify blacks by speech and inflection 9 out of ten times.
Training American blacks to speak proper English might help to make black people appear less threatening, and, hence, more employable. As it stands, I wouldn’t hire most black males. They’re too scary!
Simple truth, Pucker. Simple. By the way, if you’ve worked around and with Asians and Indians for decades and had casual chats with them you’d find out that EVERYONE is afraid of black American males. It’s not just a white phobia.
The condition of the black male in American society is akin to that of Frankenstein’s creature in Bavarian society—terrifying.
A few weeks ago I was watching an old war movie with my nephews, movie was ’12 O clock High’ about Bomber Command over Europe in 1944 … even after 70 years it was good. Listening to the dialog between Gregory Peck, Dean Jagger and Gary Merril my 12 year old nephew commented “They talked different in those days. They sounded like real men.”
“Slang is the language hatred and ignorance”, Louis Ferdinand Celine, ‘Journey to the end of the Night”.
A poster earlier mentioned Sarah Palin; critical of the way she talked. Its true she didn’t go to Yale or Harvard but to State U in Idaho. Myself, I still find it remarkable I could travel 8000 miles from here (CT) and still speak English with Alaskans and feel at home. Sarah Palin doesn’t have command of the language like, say, Maxine Waters or Shiela Jackson Lee, that’s true. She speaks a more working class American English. There is an upper class English you hear in these parts, at the elite universities — John Kerry Speaks it — I used to hear it at Wesleyan, I could never master it myself. Listen to NPR and you’ll know what i’m talking about. Its a class thing. Words start in the front of the brain, in the forhead, and travel to the back of the tongue. Its a funny thing in CT. This town was settled with people largely from Essex, England and we have our own way of speaking the English Language. 30 miles east of here, on the other side of the Connecticut River, its a totally different dialect.
brh
Any thoughts [or facts] on the ‘shooting in Texas’ at Pams party?
You have got to believe the Feds would have had somebody there. But then again with Obama, maybe there were ordered to “stand down” and “give those who want to destroy, room to destroy.”
Typos make me crazy! Uh-oh, perhaps I am being culturally insensitive. I shouldn’t be so “white” about typos.
Muslims in North Texas have argued that they are being goaded into retaliating against the political and social majority. The Mayor of Irving (rich suburb of Dallas) who proposed a law that says no other laws (Sharia law no exception) would be recognized by the governing board other than the U.S. and Texas Constitutions. She went on the record to say she met privately with the local Sharia Law advocates to ask their Okay with moving that motion forward. The local “Muslim Brotherhood” said the motion was Okay privately but publicly protested it anyway.
Now we have a large group drawing caricatures of Mohammad knowing what happened to others in Europe who did the same thing. Asking the local authorities to protect them in the PROBABLE event a radicalized Muslim or Muslims would try to kill them.
Like JHK says. We need an honest dialogue about how we conduct ourselves in public and private life in this country. Why should our tax dollars be used to protect people who are being insensitive and inviting retaliation in order to prove their superiority? We can not dissociate ourselves from the reality of our skin color and our preferences for those that are like us. So can we honestly assert that we are NOT racists or that we DO NOT PROVOKE the terrorists whoever they are? It’s the same old argument about whether or not a woman deserves to be raped who dresses like a hooker and hangs out with violent drunkards.
Oh, I forgot the bit about the Muslim organization doing damage control online by stating in writing that BIGOTS should not be targeted for stoning and shooting by Muslims.
Because stoning yourself is VERY difficult, and often ends with the deaths of innocent bystanders.
Event seemed a little provocative, Malth.
But free speech is free speech. We had to endure Maglethorpes ‘Piss Christ’, remember that? Libs said it was art, called us neandrethals, said get over it.
How about that cop, taking out those two Muslims. armed with assault rifles, with his service pistol only. That’s a mighty cool hand and some good shooting you have to admit
Its a little ironic JHK linked events in Baltimore this week with speech and language, one of the masters of the English Language HL Menken being born in Baltimore and a lifelong resident. If only he could see his city now, what its become.
Lester Holt from NBC did an interview with Freddie Gray’s family today. You’d think Freddie had disovered a cure for cancer and wasn’t a street level heroin dealer with 20 arrests, who’d spent most of his adult life in prison. And Lester failed to mention the whole family was heroin addicts. He must have forgot.
Malthus, are you on the west coast?
brh
I wonder how many of Heroin Dealer Freddie’s clients overdosed on his heroin and died? Black lives matter (well, sometimes).
Read for a laugh: http://www.inquisitr.com/1699419/black-lives-matter-protests-have-black-students-with-failing-grades-demanding-a-free-pass/#Ort2KDYufhJBpaeD.99
Is that a form of dark humor or black comedy?
This was written by a college student: “I would really like to see the normal grading system suspended for this semester and replaced with a no-fail mercy period. Administrators should require professors to exercise complete flexibility in what students are saying they can produce academically.
“Require that every professor listen to what their students are saying and if that means rather than writing a paper students instead meet with their professor to simply discuss in groups their paper topics or if tests are taken collectively with professors there are ways to make sure we are learning what we are supposed to be learning in ways that are not so taxing in times like this.
“Students in this moment should have complete access to alternative modes of learning while we process what’s happening. Basically, no student especially black students and students of color should be failing a class this semester. A ‘C’ should be the lowest grade students can receive this semester. Professors should be required to work with students, who would otherwise be at risk of failing, to create alternate means of accessing knowledge.”
At Oberlin, no less.
Actually the Ivy League and small lib-arts colleges and universities in America have become THE worst perpetrators of “victim mentality studies” and political correctness. They’re the types of “scholars” who want to abolish English words like “fireman” because “man” is in the word and we cannot upset angry dykes or femme bots.
James spoke of the “offense-o-phobia” whites have developed regarding the knee-jerk “offense reflex” of blacks in America. The same could be said about males in America in relation to women. Notice that TV commercials routinely make the man of the house look like a DOLT and I don’t know of any that make the man look like a genius at the expense of a woman.
That the request you cite was made at Oberlin was no surprise at all. The days when lib-arts schools actually engaged in making literate, numerate beings with terrific critical thinking skills are over. Now they’re mostly into Effete Education for the creation of indignation.
commercials routinely make the man of the house look like a DOLT and I don’t know of any that make the man look like a genius at the expense of a woman. – Therian
===============
Well… it’s not as stark as Dolt vs Genius but there is this one commercial that amuses me every time I see it:
The husband is outside fixing something and his wife emerges from the side door holding a pair of blue jeans fresh from the laundry. She begins to gently berate the husband for having left their “orange” money in his pant’s pocket and he needs to be more careful because the orange money is what they are saving for retirement.
Husband tries to slip a word in edgewise but she continues her rant. Finally she stops and he says “those are YOUR jeans.”
I laugh every time I see it.
One of my personal favorites is a commercial where the hubby is laboring under a sink, putatively to discover where a clog is located. Then the wifey shows up need and tidy with her little flowery dress saying: “Honey!! You coulda just used Instant Plumber!!”. The hubby just gets this “Duh!!” look on his face.
This is what I was referring to about the “Genius/Dolt” thing. In any case, however one wishes to characterize it, the usual formula in commercials is Women == Smart/Practical and Men == Dumb/Impractical. The irony of this is not lost on me because if you observe husband/wife pairs it’s usually the woman who wants to go on spending sprees for junk and the guy who is the force of restraint (esp. with kids).
Hollywood has been trying for decades to create new “truths” about the sexes that aren’t true and never have been true in all of human history. Groucho Marx had it right: “If a man wants a happy marriage he’ll keep his mouth shut and his checkbook open.” ‘Nuff said.
The “Student in this moment” should have complete access to the job market. He should be removed of all of his parental support and allowed the satisfaction of working his way through college, as many of the readership has done.
Taking a job in an “urban area” would also allow him to further bond with “students of color” and enjoy a rich cultural experience that he will remember for the rest of his life.
“have done”…,
“times like this” and “process what is happening”…
I have a attended colleges and universities and I think I know what they mean to say…they are failing to meet the expectations of their class.
AWE.
That’s a big deal? It means you are a moron? Or that you will never ever never earn 4 million dollars a year?
What does that REALLY mean?
All grading should be suspended until … well, until there is no more injustice in the world. https://home.oberlin.edu/
Thanks vengeur…
I noticed in the slides that a colored faculty member seems to be chewing out a very pale student…and the student was accepting it thoughtfully…because it’s all about the future and the world THEY want us to live in. Because, what do 20 year olds really know about the world outside of Oberlin College or even the North American Continent?
The student for the suspension of the traditional grading system (most of whom grade on a curve) may have discovered they have NO ARTISTIC TALENTS WHATSOEVER.
Great German movie: “The Downfall of Berlin”. Also called “A Woman in Berlin”. The movie is based on the diary of a German woman who lived through the rapes of the Soviet occupying army. It seems that German women adopted the survival strategy of giving themselves to the highest ranking Russian officer who would take and defend them. Bizarre movie.
I wonder how one would describe the survival strategy of black women in the ghetto?
The black women do the raping.
In one photo of the recent Baltimore race riots, a fat black woman was clutching an armload full of about 30 bags of Doritos corn chips. I wonder how long it took her to munch her way through 30 bags of Doritos corn chips?
What about the black woman who recognized her son in the mob and went after him to get him back home…he wasn’t about to defy her.
So one woman goes after her wayward son and drags his raggety butt home. Another woman goes after a particular brand of corn chips. I would file this under Brand Loyalty.
Anecdotal evidence never has been a valid rhetorical tactic nor will it ever be. Yes, we all saw the woman who grabbed her son and, I believe, even smacked him around a bit. Obviously she is a rare woman engaging in a rare act. Otherwise, there’d be one helluva lot less cocky, young black men strutting about doing things like cold-cocking innocent passersby or doing smash-and-grabs in convenience stores like Michael Brown.
Doesn’t the word “Jack” mean to steal?
“In March 2012, a new line of Doritos were introduced: Doritos Jacked. The chips are 40% larger than standard Doritos.[44]
In March 2013, Doritos redesigned its packaging and logo as part of its first global marketing campaign. The “For the Bold” campaign will use crowdsourcing initiatives from 37 countries, emphasizing Dorito’s focus on its consumers “living for the moment” attitude.”
Americans are now 40% larger. Doritos is only following an obvious trend.
Good point today, Jim. Everything seems predicated on “political correctness” nowadays rather than simple common sense. I think many blacks are so angry and defined by their “lesser” lot in life that they’d rather act out and cling to a ghetto-thug culture that does nothing to elevate them as human beings. Even if they can’t be better, they can at least differentiate themselves with unintelligible ghetto-speak, baseball caps worn backwards and pants that look like they’re stuffed with diapers. These people certainly don’t engender confidence that they’d be able to hold a real job.
But your point also goes for those who immigrate to this country. I know Mexicans who have been in this country for 10 or more years who can barely speak English. In certain parts of town, there are stores where there are more non-English speaking customers than there are those who speak English. They show no interest in learning the language, or otherwise assimilating into American culture, all while paying for their groceries with subsidized American food stamps.
Then there are the government/social service phone lines, where the option to choose English, Spanish, Russian, etc. from the automated menu only encourages immigrants that they don’t need to bother to learn the language, or try to make themselves more American in any way. It begs the question why these people come to the US at all, other than to avail themselves of the bounty of free social programs that await them.
If in some alt universe where the ghettos were much smaller and the residents were instead a modern facsimile of archetypal small town New England Yankee citizens we would still be facing every financial/energy and environmental threat we now do.
I am not here to defend explain or justify any culture or sub culture but simply to point out they have little or nothing to do with JHK’s big picture so what’s the point of these posts.
rapier,
I agree that this subject doesn’t have much to do with our looming predicaments, but it does have a lot to do with how we might face them. In thoughtful solidarity and mutual respect, or as a few ragged and ravaged survivors of the class wars?
Again, to me, it’s all about waste. In this case, a waste of talent, intellect and information.
Beyond that (personally), I don’t believe there’s anything to say. Committing cultural and ‘actual’ suicide is a bigot’s specialty… to the utility and glee of the Overlords.
Thanks for your input and best of luck.
Languages related to European Russia (1 million or more speakers)
Russian – 137,494, 893 speakers
English – 7,574,303 speakers
Tatar – 6,500,000 speakers
German – 2,069,949 speakers
Chuvash – 1,640,000 speakers
Bashkir – 1,450,000 speakers
Turkish – 1,340,000 speakers
Ukrainian 1,300,000 speakers
There are, in total, over 100 spoken languages in RF, and that is for native (not recent immigrant) population,
Different administrative regions may have different languages as the official state language, for instance Crimea has 3 official languages: Russian, Tatar and Ukrainian.
Obviously, the common unifying language and culture is Russian,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_of_Russia
Interesting stat sheet, Finca. Bottom line is that there are more Russian speakers in Russia as a percentage than there are English speakers in the USA!! The numbers underneath “Russian” are for very token amounts. There are an estimated 11 million illegal Mexican immigrants in the USA and, as of 2014, an estimated 25 million TOTAL Mexican immigrants (legal + illegal). This means that Spanish is the primary language of around %8.3 percent of the population. And, of course, i haven’t even moved on to all the people whose primary language is Mandarin or Cantonese or Hindi or Farsi or anything else.
One of the reasons for bloody civil war in Eastern Ukraine was the refusal of Kiev’s authorities to make Russian the official language in that part of the country with over 90% of Russian-speaking population.
Gutensomethingorother said: (Out of respect for my parents, a couple of Adlai Stevenson Democrats who abhorred racism, I cannot use that word.)
Whenever I see statements like this, Charles Bukowski’s The Genius of the Crowd comes to mind. It reeks of self-righteousness and that self-righteousness is like hemlock — there finest art.
The Genius of the Crowd
I suggest you use that word if not once, at least fifty times a day until it eviscerates your self-righteousness. Samuel L. Jackson would tell you to do the same. Black folks use it all the time and as much as a term of endearment as an insult. Its uses these days are much more versatile but you do the word a disservice and all those who were once referred to as that word by censoring it. Let its meaning organically transform or let it die an organic death from a dearth of relevancy inertia. To tyrannically censor it is to give it a greater and more destructive power and influence than it would otherwise naturally have.
their
Jim, I’m surprised you haven’t been accused of genocidal tendencies with this proposal. Some on the wacky Left, or many perhaps, believe that any suggestion of assimilation is a call for genocide. Lefties love reservations. I think I’m going to have to do a post called No Reservations as a play on words considering Bourdain’s former show of the same name.
Speaking of language, we used to call the sycophant nothing but a “suck up”. But then we all joined society and learned to appreciate and emulate the more linguistically refined ass kissing sensibilities of the piggy back artist.
Anyway, it’s not only those on “the wacky left” asserting that assimilation is not possible as this “Fred On Everything” post suggests:
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Sowell.shtml
And speaking of ‘tracing contours’ and people starting to sound like each other such as the monotone drudgery of current country music, but is CFN, with its ‘burgeoning White Nationalist” readership (according to our resident White Nationalist authority Janos Skorzeny), starting to read eerily like so many other “Fred On Everything” sites?
I probably shouldn’t ask such questions, but JHK termed a comment I made that was steeped in semiology considerations/observations as “racist”. Which I found strange since he was also calling for ‘an honest dialogue’ on race. And also strange since he wrote ‘shame on me’ ?
And yet for over a year he allows Janos to incessantly link up to such sites as “Daily Stormer’ and other similar sites?
Personally, I think JHK tolerates Janos because Janos articulates himself wonderfully, even artistically at moments. Thus, JHK–IMO– is more of a formalist and an aesthete, than say, a true critic of culture with all of its historical/economic/societal/etc narrative implications.
Indeed, what could be more of an Ivory Tower view than waving aside ‘structural racism’ as nothing but a canard?
Yeah you really got taken to the woodshed but here you are back at it. Kudos. Good point about Asians too. How is there going to be any recovery for America, economically or culturally, if such people keep pouring in? As if we don’t have more than enough diversity already.
I’ve considered that theory about why I’m allowed to stay. But I think it’s more that he wants a suppressed point of view to be heard – one that he agrees with partially but hates at the same moment. Mr Kunstler obviously has a deep love for traditional American Culture, at least the Yankee version, but he can’t reconcile that easily with his Liberalism which demands that it be open to everyone, no matter how alien or from far away. Obviously that’s a contradiction. He goes back and forth on it, sometimes taking more one position and sometime more the other. He lets himself go further to the right or nativist side in his fiction. Needless to say, I think this is the correct position.
Hey Stuck Bud, you can call me all manner of things but sycophant or “suck up” isn’t one of them. I’m just calling it as I see it and you call that calling “sucking up.” Ironically, Black kids who would dare to use intelligible English would be called “suck ups” by the thugs who run the ghetto and make sure ghetto culture remains thee dominant culture, so thanks for that example.
“They show no interest in learning the language, or otherwise assimilating into American culture, all while paying for their groceries with subsidized American food stamps.”
All while entire America is living out of subsidized welfare provided by the “developing” nations.
Why would so many Mexicans try to get to US if their own economy was not ruined by the NAFTA agreement?
Why would so many Libyans try to make it to EU, while drowning in the ocean, if not for US and EU destroying the functional state in Libya?
Austria says no to US International judicial terrorism
Austrian court refuses extradition of Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash to US
An Austrian court has refused to extradite Ukrainian billionaire Dmytro Firtash to the US. He is wanted on bribery charges but the court said political motivations lay behind the US move.
Lawyers argued the criminal case was intended to exert pressure on an influential man who Washington saw as a representative of Russian interests in Ukraine and a disruptive factor in its politics.
http://www.dw.de/austrian-court-refuses-extradition-of-ukrainian-oligarch-dmytro-firtash-to-us/a-18422693
A split in “Trans Atlantic” unity?
Events in Ukraine can develop according to the following scenario: conflict between Poroshenko and the Nazis from various institutions will reach a point of incandescence, when war breaks out between them. Poroshenko will be replaced by the Nazis. Now that is being prevented by the US, but if the impasse continues in Ukraine and the US need a different regime in order to prevent the creeping destruction of America by starting of full-blown war in Europe, US may agree to the Nazis.
And then all go according to the classical scheme. The war in Europe begins in Transnistria. The Nazis hit it from the Ukrainian side, Russian peacekeeping troops come under fire (like it happened in Georgia in 2008), States lure Moldova into fighting, Romania enters the conflict, and this is a NATO country. So NATO will begin direct involvement, first in Romania, then involving the Baltic States and Poland. Ukraine will go up in flames. Germany will feel increasing heat. Europe will be faced with a choice: to increase the isolation and armed pressure on Russia. Russia will have no choice but to participate in hostilities. This situation is the salvation for America.
The heads of the major countries have already understood – the war is awaiting them. From now on, no one can live the way he lived and unlikely to be able to keep what he thought was his. There is no choice. There are things that have to be done, even if you know where it will lead.
https://vk.com/dadzi?w=wall206013411_183183%2Fall
Barack Obama nominates General Joseph Dunford, the Fighting Joe, who now holds the post of commander of the US Marine Corps, for Joint Chiefs chairman.
Recall that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the highest-ranking military officer in the US armed forces and the chief military advisor to the US president, the National Security Council, Homeland Security Council and defense minister.
Quite pointedly it looks when the chief advisor to the President for Homeland Security is becoming a Marine general, who previously directed the suppression of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
Whom the Marines, the Green Berets and the Seals and other elite federal forces in Texas, Utah and New Mexico are going to suppress now?
English may be spoken here, but it’s not the official language of the United States. Perhaps a good start would be to make it so.
While language skills can certainly help one rise out of poverty, I think better solutions are policies to reduce the number of children born into poverty in the first place. Currently, we encourage those in the welfare system to have children, most of whom, by and large, will be its future recipients. Instead of tax breaks that encourage those in poverty to start families, we should incentivise the less fortunate to stay single, work, save, and prosper.
Oh, they’re staying single, Exscotticus. But that’s not stopping them from having children.
Well knock me over with a feather……….. I just looked up from my computer monitor to my muted TV and saw on CNBC (business show) the face of Miami Heat star, Chris Bosh. I un-muted, curious to hear how this black man would come across. Surprise, surprise! He is a very articulate and tech savvy individual.
This week I think that JHK’s essay is really “off”. Yes, it’s probably true that the average black kid is disadvantaged by not being able to speak in standard English. I say “average” because I cannot say that about the big-time rappers – they seem to be doing quite well, their language skills notwithstanding. In fact they’re doing quite well because of their language skills. Frankly, I do not think there is a specifically black “problem” in the US. The problem is that we have a society based upon values that are toxic to sustainable human existence, and blacks, given their collective misfortune over several centuries, are closer to the margins. Because they are closer to the margins, their discomfiture with the current societal structure is more fundamental, hence more dysfunctional and violent. Do any of you readers really believe that the law-abiding, English-speaking white guy who spends his day “working” on mind-numbing, meaningless “work” in a corporate cube is better off than a poor, Ebonics-speaking black guy shoplifting at the local convenience store? If anything, the black guy has a better intrinsic understanding of his position in the grand merry-go-round. Shall I elucidate? OK, here’s the truth; Nobody gives a rat’s ass. And that, my friends is our shared cultural cross we all bear. Do something about that and most of our societal ills will take care of themselves.
I should add that my assessment is really no different than JHK’s. JHK writes that we need to get back to basics, to end the fetishism with financials and revert to a simpler, more realistic and earnest way of life. He writes that we are an evil people and we deserve everything we get. There are ample examples of the verity of that assertion. Not only is “not giving a good fuck about anybody else” accepted as perfectly OK, in our culture it is considered almost a virtue! Given this, how the hell can we expect anything but dysfunction?
Amazing that the governing elites/academic elites/shot-callers/supposed opinion makers of such a supposedly multi-cultural country like the US to not learn a fucking thing about the cultures of the multitude of people they let into the country. Which is that a lot of these folk see individualism in the US has having gone to ridiculous extremes and gone completely amok.
As you say, not giving a good fuck about anybody else. Which, when this attitude is extended to immediate family and clan, means baby-daddys that bug out on their kids, women that out-source child-care for the sake of career, a large majority of black women pregnant out of wedlock with no visible means of male participation and support which also goes for an increasing percentage of white women. And all the mess and mayhem that comes out of all this. Which translates into schools that can’t get around to actually teaching for all the out-of-control kids they have to cope with.
I know, I know, we shouldn’t over-generalize because over-generalization is the sign of simple minds over simplifying complex problems. But, if we’re going to be all high falutin with the data and evidence, there must be alternate explanations for the functionality in society for non-white Asians like Indians and Koreans and Japanese and Chinese. So let’s hear them.
Can’t be as simple as men having half a mind to sticking around and parents taking care of their kids? Nah…
We mustn’t have Liberal Hubris and deny Blacks their moral agency. That would be to deny them their humanity. So once we really listen, what are Blacks saying? They are saying, Feel unity with me though I feel none with you. We want separate everything – on your dime.
Once we really listen to Blacks and what they want – any sympathy for them will vanish like dew in morning sun. Replaced by hatred? Not necessarily, justice will suffice. And justice will demand separation.
Remember what Plato said, if the Perfect City does not exist, the just man will live as if it did nonetheless. The Black shoplifter adds nothing to life but only “takes”. The White drone needs to awaken of course. But at least he’s not hopelessly cynical and grasping. In a Collapse, yes the shoplifter will probably do better. The drone has to be ready for him to come calling.
Janos, certainly recognize your point about moral agency is well taken. But let me assure you, I do not subscribe to the notion of the “noble savage”; I make no suggestion that disruptive, anti-social black behavior is somehow acceptable or noble and shouldn’t be charged to their account. What I do suggest is that our culture has become so dehumanized and debased that it can make no sense to anyone, regardless of race. The demands we place on people really do not make sense. In this way I think this parallels your thoughts. Let’s put it to the test; how can we complain about a black kid looting a few goodies from a convenience store, but not do anything about a John Corzine who was in the epicenter of a major financial looting frenzy? We are completely inconsistent. Our “leaders” ignore the 600lb gorilla at the dinner table. The takeaway from this? Go away, we don’t care what you think, you don’t matter. If you can get away with it, go for it. Think it’s wrong? You just don;’t have any balls, Quit whining.
Well I can’t disagree with that. Steal a little and you go to jail. Steal a lot and you become President. Chinese Political Philosophy has this as its first principle: what the great do, the common people will imitate. If our Elite are without morals or scruples, we can’t expect anyone else to be either – unfortunately of course. Someone or ones will have to start a renaissance, morally, economically, and politically.
Didn’t Jesus say something about this. “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”
What a [fatuous] and racist thing to say. – JHK to Buck Stud
================
Ha ha ha…….. Jim says Buck has gas… ha ha. ;o)
Don’t you mean FLATOULOUS?
You have to pay attention to the winking smiley face.
It was meant as a play on words.
AKlein asking CFN ——— “Do any of you readers really believe that the law-abiding, English-speaking white guy who spends his day “working” on mind-numbing, meaningless “work” in a corporate cube is better off than a poor, Ebonics-speaking black guy shoplifting at the local convenience store?”
=================
The answer is a resounding YES.
I was that white ‘cube’ guy (although I eventually graduated to an office with a door, although the walls did not extend all the way to the ceiling) who did mind-numbing work that most would consider soul killing. One’s work is what you make of it. A well constructed, eye-pleasing and meaningful Excel spreadsheet was to me a Renoir. In the concise written report to management I was David Foster Wallace writing Consider the Lobster.
The fruit of this ‘drudgery’ was marriage, a home, three kids and eventually retirement with a pension. I’ll take this over a vocation of Ebonics-speaking shoplifter any day.
Thank you for your service.
Fortunately, English being the language with the richest vocabulary, there exists a word that adequately defines you. You, sir, are a prig.
I think it’s philosophical legerdemain to imply that black guys who rob convenience stores have a BETTER understanding of their place in the American cosmos than people who do boring jobs without falling into a criminal lifestyle as a modus operandi.
Work is a four-letter word and most of it since time immemorial has been far from enjoyable. It’s only with the moral relativism of the most recent few decades that we seek to justify antisocial and violent behavior as a sort of “just rights of the oppressed”. This just in … we’re ALL “oppressed” but only SOME of us “adapt” to this with mayhem and pillaging.
Are the pillagers gaining in the sentiment ratings? Please.
Therian, this has nothing to do with “sentiment ratings” or oppression. It has to do with leadership’s creating a functional, sustainable social order – or not. Modern moral relativism is political action, but not the action of the black guys robbing the convenience store, but rather that of highly-placed white so-called “liberals” supported by legions of cubicle-based operatives (i.e. drones). Why do some black guys rob convenience stores? Because they can. Simple. How is that any different from the hedge fund manager who can make a fortune with financial legerdemain, which can, and often does, loot the average investor and certainly the average saver? The hedge fund manager is a genius, right? Oh, you’ll say, but the hedge fund manager’s actions are legal. Usually true. But who wrote those laws? So, bottom line, the hedge fund manager does it because he can.
Therian, you should inspect your own thoughts. Perhaps you’re framing the issue in a way such that you are on the “good” side. I won’t castigate you too much for that, since it’s a human failing we all engage in from time to time.
What the hell are you talking about? Your points are so abstruse as to be indecipherable. “Cubicle-based operatives”?? There are so many people who work in cubicles that it’s safe to say that they’re not ALL liberals who somehow support the financial elite. Which hole did you pull this idea out of?
The number of “hedge fund managers” in the USA is a very tiny number. There might be like a hundred or two of them. Compared to the number of uncivil urban black males they’re practically nonexistent for statistical purposes.
I should inspect MY thoughts? At least when I make points they’re understandable and not full of philosophical circumlocutions which make outrageous extrapolations.
That’s too bad regarding your inability to understand complex reasoning and abstract thought. I forgive you for your lack of ability in that. You can’t help your inadequacies so there’s really no need for apologies.
I bet Hillary can’t do this.
Go Jeb!
https://twitter.com/JebBush/status/595599618735386625
And Q. Shtik, seriously, what’s up with you? It’s as though it’s a new & improved you. Are you on pain medication? Cannabis? There’s suddenly a spring in your step that wasn’t there before. What gives?
Language is a border, a dividing point. Many blacks don’t seem to care about speaking proper English. As JHK observed in his books, they are invested in a black culture that ultimately is not white culture. They just don’t want to be us, and that includes speaking.
All well and good, but in the meantime, there is no urge to create a black nation or ethos; instead, they are content to be a dependency people, and their leadership encourages this.
The white ruling class keeps up the civil rights myth, and refuses to hear any white complaints that are outside the accepted orthodoxy. Say what you really feel about blacks, and you won’t be killed, but you will have no right to exist. Also, there is a general decline in white culture, mostly, but not entirely, because of black inundation in culture, which is now part of the troika of what passes for American culture: shopping, TV, and sports. It pleases the ruling class to have us as stupid and as compliant as we can be.
I never liked King. I thought he was a fraud and was someone else’s man. The way he spoke, with all that sonority and hallelujah tone seemed phony and appealed to non thinking people. I also found Johnson like that. ‘Ah come to yew tonight with a heavy heart…’ whenever he said that, that meant he needed more cannon fodder for ‘Nam
I did like Malcolm X. He was very direct, forceful, and when he spoke, I knew he was his own man. I could see him sitting across from me in a café and talking.
Another example are black names: Shaneeza, Taneisha…etc. They aren’t us. Whites have caught the disease. Leeza, Deena, Joary…There is a communal lack of intelligence and leadership. Like JHK says, we’re a clown country.
As for Indians, yes, many speak proper English, but three times I’ve gotten telephone spiels from them, and although they’re speaking English, I can’t understand what they’re saying, even after repeating it over and over. I just told them I want to talk to an American, and hung up.
But our society can abdicate culture, but not technology. William F. Buckley recalled a conversation he had with Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange). Burgess had taught at CCNY, and recounted how he had to keep watering down language for the new crop of uneducated students, kids who wrote about ‘Makbett’, and whose papers were barely literate, but the department approved them. Then Burgess quoted a manual for a stereo set in complete, technical English. Literary society, he said, was willing to abdicate intellectual, rational and coherent thought while the technical side of America wouldn’t budge.
Almost. Flammable used to be inflammable, but was changed because it was feared people wouldn’t know it meant fire.
Even black newscasters lapse into foah, goin’ and doin’ and ‘splain.
Much like white news folk say rilly. f’instance. I’m 62, and people do speak more stupidly then I remembered…or at least back then, someone corrected their grammar, or told them Leeza was improper spelling.
Per Merriam-Webster dictionary:
1. Origin of INFLAMMABLE
French, from Medieval Latin inflammabilis, from Latin inflammare
First Known Use: 1605
2. Origin of FLAMMABLE
Latin flammare to flame, set on fire, from flamma
First Known Use: 1813
You raise a great point about the flexibility of language and the reasons for change to the language and its use. For instance, the use of the term “Flammable” has an earlier origin in widespread use than you suggest. All armaments sent to Europe by the United States during WW2 gradually became labelled FLAMMABLE.
I get your frustration with the seemingly inexplicable changes to language, particularly the concatenated names that apparently lack any substantive origins. I just don’t think adding a new shift of English teachers are Ghetto Elementary and Ghetto High and demanding that the youths in attendance learn to speak and write “proper” English is going to have the slightest effect on the economic development of inner city Baltimore. It just looks like another pork barrel project. The money would probably be better spent on prisons to accommodate the never ending stream of new criminal arrivals from America’s inner cities.
and people do speak more stupidly [then] I remembered – meargen
================
I’m on board with all your beefs but………..it’s [than]
Alert. Alert. Subject reverting to proscribed behavior. Subject is in our sights. Term-in-ate. Ter-min-ate. Termin-ate.
I got a call from an Indian call center who spoke pretty good English right up until the money shot when they would lapse into sing song. I kept asking them to slow down and finally after two people the manager came on and did the same thing. Finally I got her to slow down and I realized what they were doing: using their accent and way of speaking (absent up to that point) as a way to force the transaction thru awkwardness, or the callere being too polite to ask them to repeat themselves. Utter creepiness.
Janos, I suggest that they lapse into sing-song happens because they too are embarrassed by having to be deceptive to make a living. Hindu philosophy and cosmology allows for dog-eat-dog. It’s still an unkind strategy.
That’s false attribution. Anybody in sales or support is basically reciting from a canned spiel … regardless of whether they’re located in India or Peoria. Of course, Hindu philosophy led to the caste system but haven’t you been paying attention to the concentration of wealth worldwide whether it be in Buddhist countries (China) or Christian countries or Muslim countries.
Where ISN’T it “dog-eat-dog”??
You’ve just validated Janos’ position regarding relations between races. I’m still averse to accepting dog-eat-dog as inalienable. But it may be, that I concede. And if so, then the obvious path is to stick by your own kind – exclusively. The logic being that you are more likely, presumably, to be cut a break.
Apparently rudeness by American callees has driven some Hindu callers into therapy. They feel guilty at some level because they know they are part of the ruthless persecution of White Americans. It speaks well of them, but yeah, they wont stop. You are right: they see the world as dog eat dog and they want to be on to top. If one wants to be good, they renounce the world. The idea of transforming it is alien to them.
And the urge to transform the world in Christianity has been co-oped by the Elite as a moral justification for their rule. As if kicking Swedes out of their government housing to make room for Somalis is “social justice”. As for Judaism, Tikkun Olam IS Communism.
Hillary recently said: “We need to be honest about race and justice in America.”
http://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369288/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430867382&sr=1-1&keywords=clinton+cash
There are other issues at work here:
The first is the matriarchal nature of African American society. Women run everything and neither get nor even expect any support from those who sire their children in too many cases.
This then leads to children with absent or distracted parents who allow their children to grow up like stray animals.
Many African Americans are bilingual and they are perfectly capable of speaking and comprehending standard American English as well as their own particular dialect of street jive. That they choose not to can be traced to their lack of familiarity with their other tongue and also their disinterest in becoming familiar by practicing standard American English.
It is interesting also to note that blacks from the Caribbean countries like Jamaica, Barbados, and the Bahamas where they learned English
in British run schools are quite fluent in the language–as are those who hail from the African countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Zimbabwe (the former Rhodesia).
Those in the Caribbean and from the African continent were also subject to racial prejudice from and economic exploitation by their colonial masters. The primary difference between these groups is that in the US the black family was effectively destroyed by using the adult slaves as so much breeding stock to be sold and traded like cattle at an auction.
Those other exploited Africans were not subject to several centuries of such familial destruction. This is not something that can be fixed by such easy bromides as “wear pants that fit you” and “learn to speak American English”–as important as that advice is–without also understanding how African American inner city society has gotten the way it now is.
Caucasian Americans are as unaware of either their privilege or the racial prejudices that have enabled them as a fish is of the water in which they live and on which they depend to continue to exist in the manner to which they have grown accustomed. Not that it should matter but for the record I am a retired public school English teacher who is male, Caucasian, and has taught in some nasty inner city schools.
Thanks for a great comment. What a dose of the truth!
Right. As if African Blacks had a Civilization before European contact. As if they were just like us and not polygamous, stone age cannibals.
But I agree: the best thing for us (not them obviously) would have been to leave them in their primal ignorance. We can’t handle the Weight of Glory, the White Man’s Burden any more. Under Liberalism, we turn it into a guilt complex that has been weaponized against us by the Enemy, leading to a suicide complex.
Janos, as usual, the apologist above thinks that the few really educated blacks in places like Nairobi represent ALL of African blacks. Again, the truth is prosaic and sad. The actual reality is that the average African IQ is around the 70 area while over here they’re “geniuses” averaging 85. Mr. Poet is yet another fact-challenged poster. I’ve known many who’ve done some pan-African travel and they said nobody who is sane would venture it without an arsenal of weapons in their vehicles. Once again we get slogans which, like those of Orwell’s books, are 180 degrees different than reality.
So in other words, we should let the Blacks destroy our Culture and Nation because they were slaves once upon a time? Go to Hell.
What result if the government cuts off their Welfare subsidies—Shock Therapy?
According to the author of the book “Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry”, Britain is experiencing similar problems with their urban blacks.
However, it seems that in their rhetoric British blacks don’t blame “slavery” and “white privilege”, rather they blame “Imperialism”.
Exactly. Blacks always have an excuse and Liberal Whites always enable them and take their side against their own people and culture.
wpa_ccc,
Please read the link and explain to us why David Stockman is full of shit.
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/blogger-bens-basically-full-of-it/?utm_source=wysija&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Mailing+List+AM+Tuesday
Don’t worry, Mr. Q, they are all full of it – because neither side is allowed to tell the truth.
And the truth is: US Economy is nothing else but an artificial superstructure on top of modern crypto-colonial system which is crumbling before our eyes.
What’s up with all the aging white trash biker sissies wearing doo rags. Most of them don’t have knappy hair to dekink and set……in fact, most of them don’t have any hair at all on top……
What’s up with all the aging white trash biker sissies wearing doo rags. – nsa
==============
You could have fleshed out the image further by inserting the word potbellied between aging and white.
From “Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry”, a chapter discussing black violence in London, England:
“Others pleaded for understanding because the perpetrators of the violence may have been ‘dealt bad cards.’ Skant Chandan said the violence is perfectly understandable because it is the result of ‘colonial invasions.’ Scholars of Critical Race Theory in the United States often say slavery is the cause of disproportionate amounts of black mob violence and black on white crime. But slavery was almost non-existent in England. The slave trade was outlawed in 1807. An anti-slavery legal judgment form 100 years prior to that declared black people are ‘free; one may be villain in England, but not a slave.'”
They came to England voluntarily yet still they play the race card. Oh England had an Empire? Fine. Then why do Blacks act the same way in Sweden which never had 3rd World colonies?
The real reason for Black misbehavior is the intrinsic nature of Blacks themselves when confronted by White weakness. It bring out the beast in them.
We do need a Conversation about Race – with normal Whites doing most of the talking and Blacks doing most of the listening. Weirdo Whites who seek moral absolution by betraying their own Culture, Race, and Nation need to be shut out completely. They have nothing to add since their “contribution” has proven worthless and pernicious to say the least.
Just a note; I watch a lot of foreign movies, and as an item of curiosity, I have noticed that when a movie involves drugs, the drug dealers are always portrayed as black. It doesn’t seem to matter where the movie is made, whether it be Holland, France, Spain, etc., the dealers are portrayed as black. This is just something I’ve noticed over a long period of watching movies. It’s not meant as a condemnation of black people, it’s just something I’ve noticed.
With release of 5-th generation Armata tank, Russia puts an end to the West’s long-held post-Cold War supremacy in battlefield armour
Armata will outclass current western models like the US Abrams, Britain’s Challenger, and Germany’s Leopard, putting an end to the West’s long-held post-Cold War supremacy in battlefield armour.
Equipped with an armoured capsule to house the crew and an unmanned, remotely controlled turret with an automatic weapons loading system, some have painted the Armata T-14 as the forerunner of fully robotic armoured vehicles.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/11583987/Vladimir-Putins-new-tanks-to-be-revealed-at-Victory-Day-parade.html
I’d add that I’m particularly offended by our various presidents using terms like “bad guys”, “folks”, etc.
Or maybe it’s just their way of letting the public know they consider us 5 year olds.
The refusal by Vienna to extradite Ukrainian oligarch Firtash to Washington – a consequence of the fundamental contradictions between the EU and the United States and the reluctance of Berlin to open their markets to the Americans.
It is noteworthy that the statements about the readiness of Berlin to sign a TTIP agreement establishing a free trade area with the United States are no longer heard.
Preventing a war in Transnistria is impossible without Europe, Berlin in particular.
Otherwise we will have to fight seriously for a long time, shedding tons of blood.
Man, Jim really hit a nerve this week! Lot of smart people, lot of interesting comments.
My favorite: EvelynV, ‘Its hopeless’.
That pretty much sums it up!
Oil is back up above $60 but nobody seems to have noticed yet. Just looking around my little world here I wonder how much longer things can go on as they are: massive traffic jams every day on the interstates, flaming wrecks daily with dead bodies on the road which everybody accepts now as normal, at the state capitol massive deficits which suddenly disappear and can only be examples of the endemic accounting fraud on every level Jim writes about, and worst of all the goddam lies and obfuscation perpetrated by the Ministry of Truth, aka the Mainstream Media we are subject to day and night.
Have you heard, ‘Baltimore is beginning to heal’, and is ‘Getting back to normal’, yeah, thats the latest line, which should make everybody a little nervous because ‘normal’ means a nearly a murder per day and heroin trafficking on a truly monumental scale? From what I can see there’s trouble brewing in all American cities with sizable black populations and burning season is set to commence sometime around Memorial Day and could last all the way to Halloween and beyond. In some cities there isn’t a lot left to burn so what the place looks like afterward is anybody’s guess. The upshot of all of it is any whites still remaining, even diehards, hipsters and jazz musicians, will be clearing out and heading for the hills.
How do you like it now, Gentlemen?
brh
It’s finally out, the documentary about the rape of Germany after WW2. I don’t want to watch it either – anymore than I wanted to watch the video about the police siccing their dog on a man who had already surrendered. The dog bit him in the face and then held on. But it is my duty to watch such things since they are the Truth. And it is your duty as well.
The Orangutan is telling you not to go down that beach since you wont like what you find. I am urging you to go anyway. Which is more important to you: feeling good or the Truth? Choose.
http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/hellstorm-exposing-the-real-genocide-of-nazi-germany/
Hey Vlad, it wasn’t the Americans doing the raping in Germany in May, 1945, it was the Red Army, sanctioned by Stalin himself. It was official military policy.
Anyway, its not a nice thing, but what the hell did the Germans expect after all the BS they pulled on the eastern front? Big Hugs? Kisses on the cheek? Manna?
what difference does it make now anyway, 70 years on? We got enough now to worry about right here right now.
Spent the day trout fishing up by Ozones. Planned for all day but caught creel limit (5) within 2 hours, had to go. Incidentally, for the first time in my life the DEP enforcement officer came around checking fishing licenses. Nobody started yelling about their rights, gave the officer attitude, or was an asshole about it. There were no riots.
brh
The Americans did their share. And the Russian Beast was supplied and funded by America.
You can’t deal even with the military truth – that the Russians broke the German Army. You guys were just support and a distraction. Imagine how much better the world would be if America had joined Germany instead and attacked the Soviet Union from the Pacific.
In other words, you aren’t going to watch the video. You don’t want to know. You are listening to your inner Orangutan and not the best part of yourself.
Janos, I watched perhaps a third of the video, finally left off after the bombing of Dresden.
Seems clear enough the allied policy was to kill every living thing in Germany at the time if possible.
Undoubtedly if the Germans had had the upper hand they would have carried out similar strategies. It’s pretty hard to dismiss the example they set using Jews, Polish intellectuals and anyone else they defined as inferior to themselves.
So what do we take from this. If you take in all of history as far as can be reached, the story is virtually identical as one culture displaces another.
The monsters of the id take over every time when blood is involved.
What to take from all this? War is hell but in our country now fewer are left to remind us, so in time history will repeat once again.
Why would joining with Hitler have produced a better outcome. Russia to me doesn’t seem so bad.
Absent Russia the mongols would have swallowed what is now Europe whole.
There are no intercultural configurations that you can imagine that would not eventually lead to the same kinds of outcomes.
The current citizenry was fortunate to be born in a thin sliver of history where a generation or two had the good fortune to escape the unimaginable suffering and horrors that 99% of all humans who have ever lived have not.
Evelyn: And what have the Victors done? They are turning Europe over to Islam and Black Africa. That’s their sum total allegiance to Western Civilization: Zero. Do you think Hitler would have done such a thing? Sorry, I take my own side. Unless Whites get out of their heads, give up their evil dreams of absolute moral perfection, and get back into their bodies, reclaim commonsense and normal emotions – we are finished.
Also remember, Hitler had the English Army trapped at Dunkirk – and let them go. He had a most profound admiration for England and the greatest desire for peace even at the 11th hour. I agree that his attitude towards the Slavic countries left much to be desired. And not all National Socialists agreed with him on this either.
US dependency on the World’s Welfare increased in March
March 2015 Trade Gap is $51.4 Billion
The U.S. monthly international trade deficit increased in March 2015 according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U.S. Census Bureau. The deficit increased from $35.9 billion in February (revised) to $51.4 billion in March, as imports increased more than exports. The previously published February deficit was $35.4 billion. The goods deficit increased $14.9 billion from February to $70.6 billion in March. The services surplus decreased $0.6 billion from February to $19.2 billion in March.
http://blog.bea.gov/2015/05/05/march-2015-trade-gap-is-51-4-billion/
Since China and Russia are busy setting up alternative to US Dollar trade settlement mechanism, the US will not be able to repeat the trick they did in the aftermath of the first wave of financial crisis in 2008-2009 when the FED looted the Foreign Reserves of the majority of the nations.
The formal trade deficit does not take into consideration artificially skewed pricing schemes when the cost of design and development of goods by “developed” nation by the order of magnitude exceeds production of tangible goods in “developing” nations.
Since except for the development of new weapons systems, new iPhones, fraudulent “alternative energy” schemes and harmful GMO foods, West is not bothering too much in technological development, they are rapidly loosing the right to advantageous pricing.
If re-calculated fairly, trade deficits could be much higher than the official numbers.
Every five years or so the FED performs a stock split 2 to 1 in the corporation called “The United States of America”, where the stockholders are the Central Banks of “developed” nations and the shares are the copies of US banknotes and participation is mandatory, or else.
The problem is, the FED forgets to issue additional shares to the majority of its stockholders.
It appears that paying on its debts was never the intention of US – for instance, what happened to US Treasury holdings by Iraq and Libya?
Berlin, July 1945 under the ‘bloody’ occupation by the Red Army
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5i9k7s9X_A
Indeed, such were the joys. Did your father ever repent for his part in this? Also watch this. The Truth will come out and cannot be hidden for much longer.
http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/hellstorm-exposing-the-real-genocide-of-nazi-germany/
You luv the Germans. They started Two World Wars. Whats to luv?
Wrong. Judea declared War on Germany years earlier. Then the Poles began to persecute and kill ethnic Germans in the land that had been stolen from Germany after WW1. The Poles felt confident that the British would help them since they had a treaty of mutual defense. Needless to say, the British did nothing, thus enabling the commencement of WW2 as per the plan of the Elite.
Watch the Greatest Story Never Told if you want to learn the history.
Hitler, for all his faults, was fighting against the Bankers and Globalists and for Western Civilization. This is basic basic – and you (and so many others) can’t put aside the propaganda and simply see it. The answer is as always, spiritual warfare against your own mind, which has been poisoned through no fault of your own. But it is your responsibility now.
Hitler was a tool of the Catholic Church. Emilio Pacelli/Pope Pius XII was part of the Black Nobility. He was Hitler’s mentor. You still believe there are good guys and bad guys. If you are on the world stage, you’re a bad guy. It’s the cost of admission.
Pius the 12th wrote one encyclical after another condemning National Socialism. Try harder.
If they were all the same, why did the Capitalists and Communists unite to destroy the Fascists? And would do so again? Because Fascism is different and against their globalist ambitions.
As soon as I read Jim’s new posting, I knew it would be a banner week for the number of comments this week at CFN. Kind of like, ” My movie career is fading, so I’ll start appearing nearly nude in public and I’ll get a lot of publicity.” I’m not saying this is the same in Jim’s case, just that it reminded me of that.
Today is my birthday – I finally hit the big three score and ten. I’m still trying to comprehend it.
Since it’s such an introspective day for me, I can’t help thinking that it seems everyone hates everyone else. All I know is that I try – not always successfully – to not be mean. Everywhere I go someone is yelling at somebody. Humans remind me of a bunch of chittering monkeys flinging poo at others. Why can’t we be unfailingly polite to one another? Sometimes I get really tired of all the conflict.
Last night we visited our granddaughters and read “Ferdinand the Bull” to our four year old. I couldn’t help thinking how nice it would be if we all spent a lot of time smelling the flowers.
Yes, I was once one voice, now I am many. Tomorrow I will be a multitude. Remember that beautiful song in Cabaret? The only one? Tomorrow Belongs to Me. The Folk are awakening. The Battle is not over until we say it is. And we will not say so until we are free again in our own lands and nations.
Happy Birthday Bill!!
speaking of poo…
jhk should interview baltimore’s John Waters. He grew up and still lives there. He is a successful white guy directing movies focusing on the outcasts of society…he finds value and stardom in the taboo. hairspray could feature an all black cast and still work.
Thanks Q. Shtik. You got me.
Poet makes the historical point, but we’re here now, and I don’t think we really are happy as an ENFORCED multicultural society. Minorities are forced upon whites, and whites can’t keep them out. Blacks are group that simply won’t fit in. They are too different and caught up in the historical grievances Poet has described. I want to stay away from them, and most whites do, but we have a dependent relationship. Blacks (and other minorities) need white culture and prosperity to survive. I would like to see blacks become a separate nation (as JHK theorizes about in his books), but they won’t. They’ll simply take over our culture and state.
If I’m a racist, then that’s what I am, but it’s apparent minorities are being dumped into white parts of the country to diminish white power, such as Maine and Minnesota. I doubt JHK would like to see a thousand Somalis sent to Saratoga Springs.
The problem with all of this re The Long Emergency is what will happen to everyone when the oil runs out, food is rationed, and people have divided loyalties. A homogenous state, whatever color, will be better able to face reality.
Yugoslavia is the prime example of a cobbled together multi state that fell apart and shouldn’t have existed in the first place. America is based on unreality, The suburbanization of America is JHK’s main example, but everyone has their own unreality. To the official black leaders, it’s still 1960 and we’re desegregating lunch counters, and another 10 billion dollars dumped into the slums will solve all our problems. Same with John Waters and the artistic (?) class. Forget crime and stagnation. We all just gotta sing and dance, yeah! Gotta be FREE, man! To the war class, another war against ‘terrorism’ will bring peace. To the corporate types, it’s the bottom line.
If America separated into four different ethnostates, everyone would be a lot happier, but that’s too real. Too many people will fight to the death to keep the illusion of a democratic state. The spirit of Blanche DuBois is very much with us.
According to the dictionary, racism means prejudice against other groups. But the Left has added kinds of other meanings onto it. So now, any love Whites have for themselves is labeled as racism. This secondary and illegitimate meaning is never applied to any other group except Whites.
Liked you post, but have to take issue with you on what you say about Mr Kunstler’s books. Where does he say he wants Blacks to have their own nation? I wish he said that but I don’t remember any such thing. In truth, he remains very divided on the issue, loving traditional White American Yankee Christian culture, yet unwilling for it to have the right be to be exclusive and be able to defend itself. He might have said he wished Blacks still had their own traditional American culture. That was Christian and could jibe to some extent with White Christian culture.
Just splitting up the country is too simplistic. I live in New England, which is considered by many to be one region. But within that region are many differences: eastern Massachusetts is a lot different than the Western half. Southern New Hampshire is more like the Boston area than like northern New Hampshire. Much of Connecticut is more like New York than the Boston or Providence areas. Even upstate New York is a different world than New York City.
The issue is that people inherently can’t get along with others, and that has mostly nothing to do with geography. Split up America and we would have the same problems.
Those differences are small compared to the greater regional differences – and those are small in turn compared to the Racial differences. You’re nitpicking – a favorite Jewish tactic. You don’t want America to recover. You want it to become part of some New World Order with your people on top and in control.
Btw, this desire may be unconscious. I’ve seen this secret ethnic Will to Power in some of my Jewish friends.
Caucasian Americans are as unaware of either their privilege or the racial prejudices that have enabled them as a fish is of the water in which they live and on which they depend to continue to exist in the manner to which they have grown accustomed.
funny how minorities (ugh can we just stop the rancid minority thing?)
with talent (athletes, scientists, engineers) get decent to awesome jobs and ergo don’t suffer from some alleged ‘racism’.
until the (almost 100% black) horrible behavior derails them, viz. nba (oh god) and nfl (oh god) murdering and wife-beating athletes.
it’s no longer a race thing, most people dont give a hoot in hell what your skin color is. it’s a behavior thing, no one wants to be forced to associate or suffer at the hands of beastly ignoramuses who refuse to better themselves and who violently demand that those who do behave acceptably give them money and special privilege.
minorities get this to some degree. i’m sure bill cosby is being torn to shreds right now as not being black enough. just like condoleeza ‘white rice’ was.
you’d think the president, in his eternal melanin-derived wisdom, would come on tv and tell certain people to grow up, value education, family life, hard work, and avoid drugs, out of wedlock frankensteinian dysfunctional families, massive violence, disgusting music that implants and reinforces colossal pathologies, etc.
time to distribute trash bags of all color and throw out the garbage, white trash bags, black trash bags etc.
life is simple, act decent and everything pretty much works.
this comment is useless.
fodase
“Life is simple, act decent and everything pretty much works.”
But that’s the rub, isn’t it? Apparently humans as a whole aren’t able to act decently. That makes a simple solution almost impossibly difficult to implement.
People have different interpretations of what is decent and everyone thinks their version of it is the correct version. Hitler considered himself and his cause decent and virtuous. He convinced the majority of Germans of his and his cause’s virtuosity. Had he won and had his cause prevailed, his brand of decency would rule the day, so as we see, just as choice of language stunts the ghetto dweller so too it stunts the allegedly more “decent” amongst us. I wonder what Chomsky, being a linguist, has to say about this subject?
He convinced the majority of Germans of his and his cause’s [virtuosity].
============
his cause’s [virtue].
Virtuosity is a whole different animal (as I’m sure you know)..
I’m what O’Reilly would call a “lib-tard” but if you want to work in an industry outside of fast food and big box retail you have to communicate in the oppressor’s tongue. Go to a job interview, even if the owner is a person of color and speak in a manner that is not consistent with standard English. There will be no call back. Good luck to all.
From European Theater of Military Operations
Judging by the emerging trends, the Ukrainian summer campaign, which begins right before our eyes, will be conducted in a much more leisurely pace, but will set crucial goals – both from the Novorussian Armed Forces (NAF) and the Ukrainian side(UAF). That, unfortunately, will very likely mean the internationalization of the conflict – which is still likely to draw in both Russia and NATO – and do it just as inevitably, as the confrontation between the NAF and the UAF.
It bring out the beast in them. – Janos
==============
Yes, it certainly do.
I missed one letter and you do this? Admit it, you can’t help yourself, such is your egotism.
I missed one letter and you do this? Admit it, you can’t help yourself,
=================
I admit it. As I’ve said for years, I’m OCD… nothin to do with ego.
That’s possible. In which case, your mind and perhaps even ego have to become stronger to fight the obsession.
Many blacks don’t seem to care about speaking proper English. – meargen
===============
Really? Ya think?
Happy 70th Birthday, Bean!
That is a significant and relatively large round number that can give one pause. It’ll make you sit on the can in the position of Rodin’s Thinker.
If I sit on the can too long I’ll get hemorrhoids.
To paraphrase Paul Krugman’s NYT op-ed piece of May 4th: “the horror one sees in Baltimore is about the devastating effects of extreme and rising inequality.”
A rioter sits on a front stoop. The brim of his Orioles cap protrudes straight out over his right ear. His dazed homey swigs from a bottle in a brown paper bag. Down the block of unkempt and mostly boarded up homes a small grocery store smolders.
The rioter with hat askew says “you know, Boomquida, I’m damn incensed about this rich-poor gap.” (TM – fodase)
“Did your father ever repent for his part in this?” — Janos
My farther built the first Russian Uranium enrichment plant in Chelyabinsk-40, one of many steps that lead to creation of the first Soviet Atomic bomb in 1949.
He was always proud of his role in that great project that saved numerous civilian lives from burning in the A-blast of american nuclear weapons like the Japanese civilians did in 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I am very proud of my farther.
Considering who ran the Atomic Energy Commission, and from whom the Soviets probably got the material, and also the general triumph of the Jewish America after the War – I consider it highly unlikely that Russians were even in danger of being nuked in the years after the war. In the brief Renaissance of White America as epitomized by McCarthyism, it might have happened. The assassination of Kennedy was the end of any chance for White America.
Patton wanted to conquer Russia and had second thoughts about the whole War against Germany. He never made it back.
Did he reject Communism in the end, like Dr Zhivago?
To paraphrase Paul Krugman’s NYT op-ed piece of May 4th: “the horror one sees in Baltimore is about the devastating effects of extreme and rising inequality.”
what utter nonsense. why can’t anyone tell the truth in the effed up united states?
why can’t anyone bloody just SAY THE TRUTH?
THERE IS AN ENTIRE RACE THAT ISN’T INTERESTED IN EDUCATION, ACTING PROPERLY, TAKING CARE OF THEIR DAMN CHILDREN, GETTING ALONG WITH OTHER RACES, WORKING FOR A LIVING, RESPECTING THE LAW, OR ADVANCING THEMSELVES IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM.
GOOD PEOPLE ARE SO GODDAMN SICK OF THIS.
fodase
So they’re like this in Brazil too? Bet they don’t get away with as much though.
I’m guessing this is where you and your alter, wmca__wpga, part ways. All “they” need is a dose of that magical energy abundance youse guys tout at this space day in and day out. There’s no need for intelligible English or education or a job or work. All “they” or anyone have/has to do is just soak up all that abundant energy like a tree soaking up sunshine on a rainy day.
Well? Don’t keep us in suspense…who are those sorry bastards?
All I can say is “damned right”. The United States might be the only developed country on earth where the inner cities of the eastern half of the country are dominated by the GHETTO. In Europe, it’s considered a mark of distinction to live in Paris or Moscow or Copenhagen. The upper middle classes, for the most part, don’t want to live in suburbs in Europe because they cannot find culture or lively social lives there.
In the USA, we experienced the White Flight of the 1960s because, essentially, white property owners saw blacks invading their neighborhoods and feared two things: A severe decline in property value (because everyone knew that blacks didn’t keep their homes up and so the whole neighborhood had a severe housing price decline), and, of course, violence. These whites who fled weren’t all hardcore Republicans, rednecks, or anything of the sort. They were simply people who believed the evidence of their senses. The White Flight had no party affiliation and was neither liberal nor conservative.
My own parents were part of that White Flight of the 1960s when they moved out of Philadelphia in 1961 for the reasons cited above. It had nothing to do with “racism” and everything to do with witnessing an awesome lack of character in their new neighbors. Like “Fred on Everything”, it’s time to put this idea that only whites are racists to bed. It’s time to start addressing the racism of the black AND Hispanic (well, Mexican … no Spaniard would tolerate being called “Hispanic”) communities and their anti-evolutionary attitudes toward education, the rule of law, and the very idea of what constitutes “culture”. What do I mean by that last clause? I mean nonsense like hip hop “culture”? WHAT culture? When was the last time you ever heard about a murder before, during, or after a symphony? In hip hop “culture”, knifings and murders before, during, and after concerts are just their way of saying “How do you do!!”.
Fodase,
Is it true that when a private plane flies over a favela, the ghetto dwellers all shoot at it? Some kind of sport down there….like skeet shooting up here.
According to the book “Clinton Cash”, Hillary and Bill Clinton raised over US$130 million for the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was US Secretary of State. The Obama Administration and then Senator Kerry were so concerned about the blatant conflict-of-interest that the Obama Administration entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with Hillary prior to her becoming US Secretary of State that Hillary would disclose all deals involving contributions to the Clinton Foundation. After becoming US Secretary of State, Hillary reneged and never disclosed anything. And Hillary later deleted her email server.
The formal name of the Clinton Foundation is “The Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation”.
the aging white-trash biker
===============
I see in the aging white-trash biker an individual with a desperate need to advertise his affiliations. He does not function well, or at all, as a lone wolf. He needs you to know that he has associates and to draw your attention to this fact he thunders noisily down the byways with his cohorts, 30 strong, wearing his “colors” and a large red kerchief flapping from his back pocket. He is sartorially locked in a ’60s-’70s time warp. His faded tats, braided beard and multiple ear piercings have limited his job opportunities to roofer and auto mechanic and he is okay with that. He drinks Bud from a can. He does not blog.
“Now is the time to be honest about race and justice in America.”
– Hillary Clinton
“Did he reject Communism in the end, like Dr Zhivago?” — Janos
Communist ideology played ever decreasing role in the late Soviet Society, was more an expression of loyalty to current political regime than loyalty to idea.
Also, it was an important prerequisite of career making. My father, purely technical person, had to join the ranks of the Communist party of the USSR in his fifties just to retain his high-ranking post in civil engineering.
Global Zero Group – retired high-ranking military of various countries (including USA and Russia) released a report that points to increasing risks of full-scale nuclear war caused by the growing tensions between Russia and the United States and their corresponding response strategies of “retaliatory strikes”, which will follow immediately in response to the signal of the attack, and possible errors caused by, for example, the growing cyber-threats and provocations.
http://www.globalzero.org/files/global_zero_commission_on_nuclear_risk_reduction_report_0.pdf
They are right; the risks of nuclear war are increasing. But the rejection of the strategy of immediate retaliation, will allow the suppression of a considerable part of Russian nuclear complex as a result of unexpected treacherous blow from American submarines, and increase the risks, not decrease them. Most frightening is the financial and energy instability of the current system in the United States, which may lead to the launch of the most vicious vindictive projects (Hitler 2.0).
In general, before the withdrawal of the United States to a stable state with a balanced budget and trade balance, I would have kept my eye on them, treating them like a rabid dog, who can throw out anything, even at a threat to their own lives.
China, Russia to sign a host of cooperation deals during Xi’s visit to Moscow
Energy cooperation will top the agenda of a summit meeting between Russian President and his Chinese counterpart in Moscow, China’s Ambassador to Russia said
BEIJING, May 4. /TASS/. China and Russia will sign a host of deals on energy, finances and investment during a visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Moscow on May 8-10, Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Chen Gopin said on Monday.
http://tass.ru/en/world/792927
It seems that the European Union will have to do without Russian gas, and oil, too. The US will have to give up their role of being a design office for the Chinese plant, along with the opportunity to control the supply of energy to China. US will lose ability to influence the world oil and gas prices as well as quoting energy in US Dollars.
454 comments, and counting, about it being hopeless. If that isn’t irony, nothing is. Good grief. In the old days, when things were hopeless people crawled under a low-hanging shade tree or a bush and died like an ailing dog. These days, they comment about how hopeless it all is 24/7 until their fingers bleed and their carpal tunnel flares up. Blogging has given unacknowledged hope, and zombie life, to the heretofore hopeless. It’s a dystopic salvation of sorts — relegating those who have lost the faith to an eternity of unacknowledged and unappreciated hopelessness commentary.
The reasons US wants to extradite Ukrainian oligarch Firtash is that he knows a lot of details about the last Color Revolution in the series of “Arab Spring” – the Maidan in Kiev in 2014.
The refusal by Austrian court to extradite him gives us hope that the European Union will soon decide whether he is a trembling pitiful creature, in a sense – a colony of the United States, or still has the right to their own interests.
Russians lead cash exodus from Britain
Against the backdrop of growing concerns about the domestic political climate in the UK and the outflow of Russian capital after the imposition of sanctions investors withdrew from the country 356 billion dollars over the past 15 months,
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/economics/article4429596.ece
London-Russian offshore economic elite has a choice: swear allegiance to Russia, return the money to their homeland, and their companies into Russian jurisdiction, thus acknowledging the supremacy of state interests over the interests of individual businesses, or do not return, join the ranks of “non-system opposition in London,” standing on the path of Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky. Those who choose Russia will be burning their bridges with the West and those who will choose the West will lose their businesses in Russia.
What do you want to bet, at the so called ‘Rally 4 Peace’ in Baltimore on Mothers Day, featuring the artist formerly known as Prince, there will be beat downs, shootings, and possibly another full blown riot? Also, when charges are dismissed against all 6 police officers, sometime this summer, expect a riot then too, not only in Baltimore but all over.
In fact from here on in you can expect riots to break out at any time, any where, for any reason, or for no reason at all.
The Day of the Locust is at hand.
EvelynV kind of made me seem paranoid for suggesting whitey avoid urban areas this summer, but I think its good advice still.
brh
Thanks for the advice. I guess we’ll have to cancel our camping trip to Southside Chiraq this summer. We were really looking forward to it. I guess it’s Salt Lake City instead. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s nice — and maybe I can pick up an extra wife or two while we’re there. Beats getting shot & killed.
Does the V in EvelynV stand for Valvano as in Jim Valvano? For some reason when I see that V it makes me think of Jim and then I get all choked up. He was a great coach and died way too young. He never got to experience the sheer bliss of one-and-done rent-a-player as coach.
I think EvelynV is the former Being There, artist from Manhattan.
She never liked me too much. Not sure why.
Same reason as Wage: you’re too traditional in a blue collar kind of way. A Yankee good ol’ boy in blue union suit. Also she’s friends with Wage who also didn’t like you. Remember, the ideological IS the personal.
You actually thought that by killing the Johnny Reb would make these people like you? Or killing “Nazis”? You are just a Nazi waiting to happen in their book.
Any progress fighting with the Orange Monster inside your head?
If push came to shove, I see BRH more as a partisan than a Nazi. At least that’s his profile per his file.
A Nazi is any White they don’t like. You are still too rigid. These words are theirs and mean whatever want/need them to mean. Ditto Anti-Semite or Racist.
Throw away your dictionary. Vandalize public statues too. They are White and therefore oppressive. Do you think your shop wont be vandalized like the Asians shops in Baltimore were? You have to become inwardly Black if you want to be a small time Libertarian. Maybe sell incense and things Blacks like. No guarantees but it will give you a chance. Also convert to Islam – that’s what the Elite plan to do. Of course they were never Christian to begin with nor will they be real Muslims. Money is their (and your) God.
I shouldn’t admit this. My parents had a quirky sense of humor. The V stands for vulva.
A lot of so-called liberal intellectuals like to drive Vulvas. Thanks for sharing, Evelyn. I had an Aunt Ethel once. She was an ex-nun and liked to paint.
Oh, shit!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r29k_T_o9To
When I saw this video, I thought, ‘this is exact kind of “mobilizational music,” which a country preparing to go to war, produces.’ There is nothing wrong with patriotism, as long as it does not degenerate into nationalism, but this mantric repetition of “Russia! Russia! Russia! Russia!” makes me feel very uncomfortable, because it is either designed to elicit “mobilizational feelings” or, even worse, to cater to the already ‘mobilized’ state of the population.
I am not saying that Russia is about to attack anybody. But what I am saying is that there are numerous signs that Russia is acting like a country preparing for war. Also, I am not criticizing Russia, because she is preparing to go to war, I am only saddened (and frightened) by the fact that Russia feels that she has to do so.
Finally, I find it both scary and discouraging that the general public in the West is kept blissfully unaware of the fact that, as of right now, the west and Russia are on a collision course. How could anybody oppose something he/she is unaware of?
http://russia-insider.com/en/military/more-signs-preparations-war/ri6570
How can you have patriotism without nationalism? Care to try and make a distinction? This should be amusing…..
FincaInTheMountains said: …that the general public in the West is kept blissfully unaware of the fact that, as of right now, the west and Russia are on a collision course.
I like your optimism. I never quite thought of riots as blissful but I guess they can be if one changes their perspective radically enough. Thanks for prompting me to do just that.
As far as your collision course alarmism is concerned, what she said:
Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That!
You could deal with riots, no biggie, not the first time either…US got a pretty potent counter-insurgence apparatus.
You’re as bad as Howard Stern. You want to make this kid cry by telling him any day now all that money he’s singing about can go up in Russian flames? That’s sick and sadistic, Finca. Let them enjoy their bliss while it lasts.
There’s nothing cuter than a 7 yr. old Black kid rapping about money, bling, bitchez and hoes.
Napoleon here, intoxicated
with recent fortune, vainly waited
till Moscow, meekly on its knees,
gave up the ancient Kremlin-keys:
but no, my Moscow never stumbled
nor crawled in suppliant attire.
No feast, no welcome-gifts — with fire
the impatient conqueror was humbled!
A.Pushkin. Eugene Onegin, 1823
What’s up with all those goofy ghetto names the afros saddle their offspring with? Must be lots of cynical snickering in committee meetings across the fruited plain…..”any input from the minority community, LaKeisha?”……”and now a power point presentation on red zoning from our esteemed colleague, DeShawne”……. Any race this stupid deserves to suffer mightily…….
I like Orenthal (OJ’s first name, conceived by an aunt, I think, the family’s maker-upper of names out of thin air) and Debrickashaw. Sorry for any incorrect spellings.
The latest murdered cops – Liqouri Tate.
Mamas fav booze, Id guess.
And Liqouri was Black.
I’m guessing this is where you and your alter, wmca__wpga, part ways. All “they” need is a dose of that magical energy abundance youse guys tout at this space day in and day out. There’s no need for intelligible English or education or a job or work. All “they” or anyone have/has to do is just soak up all that abundant energy like a tree soaking up sunshine on a rainy day.
thanks for pointing that out, yes, the failing black race just needs solar + wind energy to cure all their ills.
that’s what me and wpa_ccc always say.
that old “magical” energy abundance that provides Spain with half its electricity, Denmark with over 100% on numerous days per year, and Germany, Europe’s number one energy consumer, with millions of MwH.
CFN, along with the majority of the black race, is hopeless.
fodase
Cold writes:
“Hey Stuck Bud, you can call me all manner of things but sycophant or “suck up” isn’t one of them. I’m just calling it as I see it and you call that calling “sucking up.”
When I and others threw some examples of Bush’s speaking snafus you jumped in and condemned those comments because we had ‘no argument’ against JHK’s assertions–or so you claimed. And in doing so you completely ignored the fact that JHK’s assertions are undermined by his contention that ‘structural racism is a canard’, which, in essence, short circuits and represses the possibility of having the honest conversation on race that he claims to want.
In other words, no historical or economic factors are worth considering because those structural considerations are a “canard”. Instead it should simply be a matter of ‘drill baby drill’ via proper English instruction. (And I am not disagreement with his contention that improved language skills would bring improved economic prospects for SOME African Americans. After all, not all African Americans are ‘Ebonic’ speakers.)
Socrates was always going on about how he ‘really didn’t know’. And he wasn’t, IMO, being coy or self-deprecating as many have claimed; he was simply stating the reality of the nature of the
dialectic process: Factors are constantly swirling and moving and to know completely is simply not possible. So to claim authority while arrogantly subverting the dialectic process with absurd comments such as ‘structural racism is a canard’ is to plant one’s self in the soils of the anti-philosopher and to grow where no great thinkers throughout history have sunk their roots.
Of course, on sites like this, many of the participants denounce subjects such as sociology and philosophy as nothing but ‘librul intellectual tripe’ so when a host of such a site bounces the ball of anti-intellectualism off of his nose like a barking seal his audience is only too happy to applaud as you did in your defense: Arf.arf.
Rodin used to start his sculptures with four views: the front, the back and both profile views. After these primary views were established he would begin to refine and the four primary views would become eight and then sixteen and so on. In concert with these views, he would also view his subject from above and below and all angles in between: The omni-directional vantage point. Eventually he would arrive at a stopping point but with the realization no final resolution had been achieved but just a beautiful sculptural that evidenced a visually dialectic process.
And then there are relief sculptures—some ‘pot-boilers’ much lower than others.
The great, deep thinkers are not afraid to walk around an issue; they don’t construct roadblocks with signs reading ” Road Closed, Canard Ahead”. Indeed, they welcome the trip into contradictory lands because they realize that such ventures potentially place their thesis into even more firmly entrenched ‘correct territory’ — or not. The honest journey in other words, even if the eventuality contradicts the thesis.
To talk a walk around an issue without throwing up intellectual roadblocks such as “canard” is to keep a mind supple and watered with empirical nourishment. To ‘stake out a position’ is to court the rigidity and ossification of the non-ambulatory mind: myopically certain and inquisitively rigid.
Interestingly, we see many elderly types who have ossified belief systems almost as if the mind mirrors the arteriosclerotic processes which transforms the streams of life into stagnating ponds. And how perversely ironic, that at just about that exact time when the elderly begin to covet ‘stability and security’, the Body taps the shoulder of the Mind, and whispers, “sorry pardner, I am no longer able to provide you with security or stability”.
So fuck it. Maybe the only way to stay a little bit younger and elastic a little bit longer is to cast aside those albatross belief systems and their anchors of mental cement.
Okay, you got me, but it wasn’t me being a sycophant, it was me playing devil’s advocate. As far as I’m concerned, there are no right or wrong answers when it comes to this topic and many others. It’s all in the eye of the beholder. Does anyone think they could ever persuade or influence Janos at all about anything, for example? And remember, I was banned not once, but twice from this space. Sycophants don ‘t get banned. And truthfully Buck when I made my comments I wasn’t even thinking of you or about you. Honest injun. One thing I will say I’ve learned is to not take any of this too seriously. Life’s too short to fret about perceptions of abstractions.
Cold, I have to be brief for now but your own writingS/post are very considered and through just for the record–and very well written IMO…
very considered and [through] just for the record – Buck to Cold
===============
thorough
I’m trying to learn visualization – new muscles for me. I’m using a little Buddha statue as recommended by the Dalai Lama. My mind keeps putting it all over the place. It helps to make the Statue huge like some of the statues in the East in the big Temples. Then I can make it small again. Also try to see it with my eyes open. The inner light quality is important. I’m using the setting sun to cast a slightly reddish glow over the golden body of the Buddha. This honors Amitaba, the Buddha of West while showing his unity with Sakyamuni Buddha.
When a hobo dies, the other hobos say he’s caught the Westbound.
No woman wanted Rodin when he was a great but unknown artist. But when he attained fame, then they threw themselves at him. Telling, is it not?
Meanwhile, men are dying in the freezing water as the women row away from them to save themselves as the Titanic sinks. They will be there forever in a deep sense. Like all acts of infamy, it is all but eternal.
amazing comment!
thanks for taking the trouble.
http://thepunditpress.com/2015/05/05/michelle-obama-museums-intimidate-minorities/
Something has to be done. Or else museums will have to get the CVS or ISIS treatment. How are White creations relevant in a post Caucasian culture. They better get relevant or else. Maybe get rid of all that crap and put up pictures by little Black kids about racial oppression. And graffiti art too.
My Lord, Jim- should I congratulate you on your new audience?
I don’t know if this is just new to me or just the unanticipated net result of years of semi-apocalyptic cultural criticism?
Your writing over the years has, at times, struck me as bordering on bitterness, but combined with an apparent racial component- your blog has attracted an – ahem- distinctly “klanish” group that I didnt realize existed.
I guess I wasn’t paying close enough attention.
Like everything else in this world, I guess we’ll wait and see where this takes you.
good luck to us all. %)
In other words, good White people are always against themselves and for other people, the more wretched the better. Since Blacks always meet that criterion, they are in effect, your God.
Well said, Janos. Yes, we’re NOT ALLOWED to be for ourselves because that would be racial pride and that’s only non-racist if you’re black or Mexican. You know … LA RAZA and all that. Have you noticed that a lot of these “noble savage” worshippers never comment on things like La Raza because it’s the 80,000 pound elephant in the living room that they dare not notice.
Can you imagine what would happen if we created the NAAWP, the National Association for the Advancement of White People? Within five minutes all the spinmeisters in the world would be on every blog in America calling us “thugs” or “brutes” or “nazis” or “klan” but an NAACP is right as rain in their minds. La Raza is right as rain, too. Just ask them.
These are truly execrable, Orwellian people because they have nothing but their slogans which, like the “Ignorance is strength!” slogan of “1984”, is 180 degrees the opposite of truth.
There’s suddenly a spring in your step that wasn’t there before. What gives? – Cold N. asks Q
=================
Bought me a pair of Air Jordan’s. Six feet tall, 74 years old and I can dunk.
Your writing over the years has, at times, struck me as bordering on bitterness, but combined with an apparent racial component- your blog has attracted an – ahem- distinctly “klanish” group that I didnt realize existed. I guess I wasn’t paying close enough attention.
yes, the commenters here are calling for blacks to be hung, tortured, enslaved again, have no rights, be treated like animals.
that’s what klanish means.
that’s what you mean, right?
I guess you weren’t paying close enough attention, like you say.
fodase
No one has said any of that. We just want to be free of them. Then they can thrive as they always do when free of the curse of the White Man, that is to say, not at all. But that will be on them and not us. After all, “rights” is a White concept.
Your consciousness is very deeply divided on this issue. It is your koan. You keep jumping from one side to the other as if it was the San Andreas fault. You must study it until it all falls into place – enabling you to become yourself.
So your writing has been DISINGENUOUS … thanks for the admission. We’ll be sure to not take you seriously in the future. That’ll be an easier task after this post where you claim that we want to “hang”, “torture”, and “enslave” blacks again and to treat them like “animals”.
Let’s be very, very, VERY clear about one thing: They’re doing all they can to treat EACH OTHER like animals without the intervention of any other ethnicity. Of course, to cite FACTS like this makes us “racists”, right? They’re raping, pillaging, and murdering at rates that are 500 to over 1000% of the general population. Yet here you are claiming that WE are a lynch mob full of slave masters who are treating others like animals. Maybe you should go into writing pulp novels because fiction is obviously your thing.
Fodase, Is it true that when a private plane flies over a favela, the ghetto dwellers all shoot at it? Some kind of sport down there….like skeet shooting up here.
not quite right. they shoot at police aircraft above the favelas. they took down a police helicopter with a 30 cal. a few years ago.
guess who sold (and sells) them the heavy arms?
the police. who make about $400-500 a month. so they sell machine guns to the crims for thousands.
fucking stupid country.
Latins are also just beyond the pale.
My vote is for the return of the global British Empire.
Savages everywhere you turn.
fodase
Now you’re talking. We’ll make you a White Nationalist yet. Your wife will just have to understand….
According to the book, “Clinton Cash”, on his last day in office, former US President Bill Clinton pardoned the billionaire fugitive oil trader Marc Rich. Rich was buddies with Muammar Qaddafi, and the Ayatollah Khomeini and traded oil illegally with Iran. Rich was wanted by the FBI for US$48 million in back taxes and faced 325 years in prison. The pardon came after Rich’s ex-wife donated $100,000 to Hillary’s 2000 Senate campaign, $450,000 to the Clinton Library, and $1 million to the Democratic Party.
Yes. And that pardon is old news.
He created or owns ‘dixie cups’? Styrofoam cups?
“Now is the time to have an honest discussion about race and justice in America.”
– Hillary Clinton commenting on the recent Baltimore riots.
See ‘Taki Mag’, various by Derbyshire.
‘Now is the time to have an honest discussion about race and justice in America.”
S/he who controls the language wins the debate.
The [phoney] ‘debate’ is framed in saying non Whites are oppressed by ‘YT’ [whitey].
What word do blacks use in the ghetto to refer to money? Don’t they refer to money as “Chedda” (as in Cheddar cheese)? (Why do blacks use the metaphor of “Cheddar Cheese” to describe money? I don’t get it.)
That Marc Rich gave the Clintons some “Chedda”!
Now is the time to be honest about Chedda in American politics.
Bill Clinton earns on average US$8 million per year from giving speeches, mostly to foreigners. Bill Clinton is paid typically US$500,000 to US$750,000 per speech.
Bill and Hillary have got The Chedda!
How do ghetto blacks pronounce “Mother’s Day”?
In all fairness, Blacks aren’t the only ones with the ridiculous names. Check this list out. There are a fair share of Whites with absurd names on that list. I always liked the name Plaxico. We thought about naming our son Plaxico but settled on Lunesta instead. The kid’s really sedate and laid back — he lives up to his name. He’s more of a sleeper than a slouch though.
The 25 Funniest Athlete Names in Sports History
Best one of all time: Dick Butt Kiss — what were his parents thinking?
In all fairness, Blacks aren’t the only ones with the ridiculous names. – Cold
===============
One wonders why people named Robert are called Bob, and John becomes Jack, but most of all we ask why Dick is a nickname for Richard.
I carpooled for a couple of years with a guy named Richard and he was quite insistent on being called only Richard. His last name was Kurtz. Think about it… Dick Hurts.
I had a co-worker named Elaine Murray. Her boyfriend’s name was Murray Dick. What are the odds, right? They married but she refused to take his last name. She didn’t want to be known as Mrs. Dick. Years later they struck a compromise and changed their last name(s) to Dickson.
I knew a little Italian girl back in the forties whose last name was pronounced “uppuh-fanny.” Oh the cruelties…..
One guy involved in the great books movement was named Stringfellow Barr.
Janos, new book out, reviewed in WSJ today, ‘Swansong 1945’, by late German novelist Walter Kempowski, covers the last days of WW2 in Germany, a period you frequently refer to. It got a pretty good review.
I’m trying to figure out, in Baltimore, why the Mayor, the Chief of Police, and the States Attorney would call in the Feds to investigate their own police department for civil rights violations, the Department they themselves are responsible for, in charge of, and rely on to enforce the law and keep order in the city. If there are any failures in that Department doesn’t it fall on the mayor and the chief, ha? Are they calling upon the Justice Dept to investigate themselves? About 1/2 of police officers in Baltimore are black to begin with. To me it doesn’t make any sense; maybe I’m missing something. Of course affairs in Baltimore is news from 2 weeks ago and we’ve already moved on to some else, namely did Brady have anything to do with deflated footballs. Nevertheless, we haven’t heard the last of Baltimore IMO
brh
Tanks! Wish I had a tankard of good German Ale right now. Good for what ails you, a veritable liquid lunch. Ever try alewifes? Are they like creel?
So if I read this, you’ll watch the documentary? Is that the deal you brokered with the Orangutan?
Rush said something fascinating: the authorities knew the Patriots were doing this. Instead of just stepping in and stopping it, they let them play the Super Bowl with illicit balls so they could “gotcha”. In other words, somehow political people got involved and not just regular officials. As you know, pro-Sports is now used to indoctrinate people into PC.
My tentative theory: Tom Brady in his outward aspects at least, is the epitome of Aryan Man – driven, ferociously competitive, gifted in both the physical and mental aspects of the game. He’s become bigger than the game and must be taken down and besmirched. Watch the original movie Rollerball which showed the same thing in a much more brutal fashion.
The Jewish owner seems 100% behind Brady. But if true, (I admit not being sure!) this comes from far above this gentleman.
Vlad whats this about orangutans? You’ve got me stumped.
brh
It’s clear from my previous posts to you. The Orangutan is obviously messing with your mind, making you forget what I wrote. It’s like what Charlie Sheen said in Apocalypse Now, As long as I keep laying here, I’m getting weaker and Charlie’s getting stronger. The Orangutan is your Charlie.
‘Tanks’ was an album by ‘TRex – Marc Bolan’.
Also, before I go, Fincain, you put a lot of work into your posts, that’s obvious, but you might be wasting your time here because I believe not 1 person out of 10,000 care in the least about Ukraine, Russia, Putin, Poroshenko, Crimea, none of it. Maybe you’re being paid, maybe not. You claimed to have lived in the USA, in Chicago; you should know this, if its not happening inside our borders, doesn’t affect minorities, and isn’t about sports, we don’t give a sh-t. People are distracted by the trivial and inconsequential, that’s just the way it is now in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
brh
I’m trying to figure out, in Baltimore, why the Mayor, the Chief of Police, and the States Attorney would call in the Feds to investigate their own police department for civil rights violations, the Department they themselves are responsible for, in charge of, and rely on to enforce the law and keep order in the city. If there are any failures in that Department doesn’t it fall on the mayor and the chief, ha? Are they calling upon the Justice Dept to investigate themselves? About 1/2 of police officers in Baltimore are black to begin with. To me it doesn’t make any sense;
The Question of the Day, Sir.
Because you can’t reason with unreasonable people.
It’s like being married.
fodase
BRH, for those of us who aren’t brain dead zombies, at that’s a statistically insignificant number, it’s obvious they’re, who the they is/are, going to make any and every event, come hook or crook, fit a predefined narrative and agenda. The real focus should be the nature of that narrative and agenda. To me, it looks as though they’re, once again whoever or whatever this they is/are, are looking to implement a South Africa-lite on America and this is just the prologue. Buck, I’m not on board with that. If you had children, I’m assuming you don’t from what little you’ve told us about yourself, you’d understand. I’d be less likely to understand it if I didn’t have a wife and children. Does this mean I’m in league with Janos or a member of his tribe? No, not at all. I’d prefer to view it from the perspective that Janos is welcome to be part of my tribe so long as he can control his urge to prove to the world how much he doesn’t know — something he does regularly at this blog.
If we want to talk honestly about race then we have to discuss the fact that whites are also subject to racist abuse from blacks and Mexicans. I personally know two white kids who are now being home-schooled because they suffered ethic intimidation and abuse at both public and charter schools with predominantly Mexican populaces.
I also know a custodian who works in a very large school district comprised of both predominantly white and Mexican schools. The white schools, I am told, remain largely graffiti free–a custodial nightmare– and the restrooms largely free of feces spread on the walls,, piss on the floors, toilet paper dispensers ripped off the stalls, rocks stuffed into the urinals etc,etc, etc. So it’s no mystery which schools the custodians clamor to work at.
Likewise, it’s no mystery why society has more or less self-segregated at the educational level and why white liberals, despite their egalitarian multi-cultural pretensions, also send their own children to white schools when the rubber meets the road–choosing an educational locale for their precious offspring.
All in all it’s a ugly subject. Having said that it’s worth mentioning, IMO, that those doing the intimidating and vandalizing are probably a small percentage of the populace as mayhem and destruction is inherently more immediate and visible: Centuries to construct a cathedral, seconds for a bomb to destroy it.
At the end of the day JHK is right in his pragmatism. The best way out of the ghetto is to learn proper English. And he’s also right that others–say, Indians and Chinese immigrants–know this reality only too well and will economically annihilate those lag below on the lower steps of English language ladder. At the same time, a little acknowledgement please, that it’s not all a matter of “Free Will’ in the ghetto or barrio. Many factors are also deterministic.
And BTW, compared to infinite knowledge, we all know next to nothing. Janos does, however, know some things.
Thank you Buck. You laud with faint praise, but laud nonetheless.
You think it’s bad now for White kids? Think how bad it’s going to get for them as Whites get weaker – and for the rest of us. You may well find yourself wishing for the White Republic before you die – or perhaps even much sooner. The Elite plan to give them free reign you see. Unite America by making us into everyone’s nigger.
You said it Buck. All the Big Libs in these parts send their kids to private boarding schools like Porters and Hotchkiss. At the same time they back to the hilt all measures to bus Hartford kids out to our local public schools, with predictable consequences.
Everybody keeps their mouths shut, if they know what’s good for them.
brh
You are two castes below me, a Vaisya or merchant, with your subcaste perhaps Gandhi or Grocer. You canl have a place in the new White Order, but it wont be as a thinker. Your caste must submit to those above you. If not, you’re for the road. Watch the move The Road to see what this means.
God help us, then.
You can get straight news about conditions in SA from the Daily Mail in London, and it ain’t good news either, brother.
We are starting to get our full measure of African Rule, and learning what African Rule really means.
About 40% of whiteys in the US voted for this, probably a much higher percentage for those who frequent this site.
How do you like it now, Gentlemen?
brh
“My vote is for the return of the global British Empire”
It’s been back for at least 15 years now, along with new Opium War in Afghanistan.
Donetsk Republic Nationalizes Banks, Draws Ire Of NATO and World Banking Cartel
In a tiny corner of Eastern Europe, a fledgling Republic struggling with the day-to-day hurdles of warfare and shaky ceasefires, has succeeded in doing what has long been overdue in the most powerful nation on the face of the earth – it has nationalized its out-of-control banks and put them to use for the good of the people.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-donetsk-republic-nationalizes-banks-draws-ire-of-nato-and-world-banking-cartel/5447630
Good start!
Russian tanks on White House
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X34Zv77VL3Q
A Russian youth group released a video seemingly showing activists projecting footage of the Moscow Victory Parade on to the walls of the White House in Washington, DC. The group blasted President Obama for undermining Russia’s WWII victory celebrations.
Initially, when Russia began to resist and even managed to defend part of the post-Soviet space by forming it into the Customs Union, and then into the Eurasian Union, not only in the US but also in Europe they did not believe that this was serious. According to them it was impossible to get out of the hole Russia was in after defeat in the Cold War.
When it became clear that Russia has almost got out from the pit and now shakes off, looks around and decides what to do next, united West (Europe and the United States) recalled the unknown source of incredible Russian power, which allowed the Russian to climb over and over again after severe setbacks and go paraded in the capitals of yesterday triumphant victors. Judging by the panic that swept the West, it does not matter whose capital should expect the liberators first, and where they are going to stop and will they honor tradition according to which the Russian had never crossed the Atlantic.
$5 to the man who can cite the genius behind the phrase:
“All hail the next champeen of the world!”
Who was the jeenius, and who was he referring to? Circa. 1980,
give or take a few years either side.
—————————————————————————
Oh Great Russia, Thou Mother of Slavs & Giver of Life
To Cossacks,
From Volgograd to Urkutsk Do Thy Praises Ring in the
Ears of FincalIntheMountains(of Honduras), Whose Tiny
Solar Array Does Not Enuf Electricity Make.
Woe Unto Thy Enemies (like Denmark), Whose Ships
Shall Be Targeted by Thy Nuclear Missiles, While Thy
Shenannigans Do Upset the World Order and Cause
Central Banks To Yea Tremble in Their Contemplations
of Crossing Thy Putinesque Plans.
Why Oh Why Doeth The Nations Not Recognize Thy
Greatness?
Oh Great Mother Rossiya, Pray For Us Non-Russians
Even as FincalIntheMountains(of Honduras) Doth In
Between Yea These Many Posts Which Do Verily Vex
The Rest of Us.
Mother Russia, We Thank Thee For Not Starting WWIII
Yet,
Even Though We Do Know That It Was Almost Started
The Other Day When Oh Great Putinarmy Shot Down
Two US Missiles ALmost Before They Could Yea Rise
Up From Their Unholy Launchpads,
Though Nothing Was Officially Said,
If Only To Avert An International Incident, Or So Sayeth
FincalIntheMountains(of Honduras).
We Are All Scared Because of Thy Really Fast Missiles
That Cannot Be Tracked or Shot Down & Which Can
Knock the Unholy United States For a Loop.
fodase
Obviously, your poetic skills need a little work
China and Russia today signed over 30 new agreements in Moscow regarding joint investment projects in Euro Asian Infrastructure
Among them was a new high-speed maglev line that will connect Moscow and Beijing, joint development of Sukhoi Superjet for civil aviation, expanded energy pipelines to China, agricultural development of Russian Far East.
If US will not drop its imperial ambitions and desire to live off colonial system, and will not start normal economic development and investment into National business infrastructure, in a few years it will turn into a third world country with crumbled infrastructure, but plenty of green toilet paper.
BREAKING NEWS FROM THE AMERICAN INJUSTICE DEPARTMENT: Newly appointed Attorney General Loretta Lynch to launch investigation into police misconduct in Baltimore P.D. Looks like that “honest conversation about race” will have to wait until saner heads prevail in Washington. Here’s a question for all the so-called “progressives” in the Democrat party: If police can be held accountable for their treatment of young, black males why can’t young black, males be held accountable for their treatment of police? Why are we investigating the police and letting the criminals off the hook? There seems to be a complete disconnect in the Democratic party these days when talking about race: it’s perfectly okay, even encouraged, to blame the failures of black America on white people, but any discussion on black responsibility for black America’s failure to thrive is strictly verboten. Of course we all know where this will lead. While good-intentioned Democrats aren’t allowed to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy of the party leadership, what’s to prevent the Tea-Party wing of the Republican party from exploiting the issue for their own gain? They’ll point out the Democrats hypocrisy and mendacity to the voters, Hillary will cry foul, but the bad guys will have the high moral ground again.
Learning to speak standard English in elementary school sounds like an excellent goal for every child. Visiting former Brit colonies in the islands, I’ve found that the locals speak their own dialect, but can instantly switch into the Queen’s English, probably enunciating better than I do. They must learn it in primary school.
I sometimes wish I understood Black English better, though I’ve been hearing it all my life. When I work in our local soup kitchen, the cook and his assistant are constantly cracking jokes, but I only understand about 1 out of 5.. missing a lot of good laughs!
I’m surprised, given the topic and your mention of Black English. that nobody has mentioned “The Dozens”. I once asked a couple of black dudes who of what the “Dozens” were and they just laughed; obviously I should have asked what “The Dozens ” was!
If you wanta play the Dozens
Play them fast.
I’ll tell you how many bull-dogs
Your mammy had.
She didn’t have one;
She didn’t have two;
She had nine damned dozens
And then she had you.
Why revolution is impossible in Baltimore? Baltimore, as oppose to Kiev, does not have an American Embassy.
I hope I write this in good English. Who cares about Sofia Vulgera’s
embryos or Mr. Brady’s deflated balls? Not me, and I am getting tired of hearing about Hillary Clinton already and we are, how many months out?
The culture is in media. Terrifying
posted 8, May 2015 – Alexandria. Beatley Library now powered by solar.
Do you happen to know if there are any good schools that teach the art of ventriloquism? I think that I need a gimmick? Maybe a dummy that looks like Bill or Hillary Clinton? “Ventriloquism, or ventriloquy, is an act of stagecraft in which a person (a ventriloquist) changes his or her voice so that it appears that the voice is coming from elsewhere, usually a puppeteered “dummy”.”
Good idea. I’d also like to seen a cartoon series of the Clintons behind bars, Chelsea too, all in the same family cell.
Thanks for bringing us back to solar successes. Petroleum age is drawing to a close, we are in energy ascent etc.
Cyprus pins hopes on Australian solar technology to make shift away from oil
News that a Texas city is to be powered by 100% renewable energy sparked surprise in an oil-obsessed, Republican-dominated state where fossil fuels are king and climate change activists were described as “the equivalent of the flat-earthers” by US senator and GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz.
Australia could source 100% of power from renewables by 2050, report finds
New energy storage plant could ‘revolutionise’ renewable sector
sorry CFNers, you had your day and were wrong.
fodase
Foundations for an energy storage plant in Ireland that could “revolutionise” the integration of renewable power into electricity supplies will be laid within weeks.
The plant will use a motor-generated flywheel to harness kinetic energy from the grid at times of over-supply. This will then be released from submerged turbines at times of supply shortfalls.
The project in Rhode, County Offaly, is expected to launch commercially in 2017, with an operating capacity of 20MW.
Although the system will initially feed off all energy in the grid – clean and dirty alike – it has the potential to resolve the transmission system operators’ dilemma of how to store large amounts of energy created during windy or sunny conditions for instantaneous use when the weather changes.
At the moment, such energy shortfalls are compensated for with fossil fuel generators such as coal or gas-fired power plants, or by hydro pump storage. Unlike conventional coal and gas generators which have an efficiency ratio of 35-40%, the flywheel operates at upwards of 85-90% efficiency.
“The hybrid flywheel is a disruptive innovation with the potential to revolutionise the system services market, decoupling its provision from electricity generation by delivering energy-less system services,” Jake Bracken, a research manager for the Schwungrad Energie project, told the Guardian.
that old nemesis of jhk, technofantasy…
fodase
Do economists and winos mean the same thing when they talk about the “Ripple Effect”?
How about proper everything in education– English written & oral, mathematics, history, and shocker– Civics. Nobody teaches Civics.
The nation this should be and the nation it is, are largely an outcome on the education of people who weren’t even taught the Bill of Rights or the history around the Constitution.
I see your point, but also know that plenty of white, wealthy idiots (we won’t even discuss morals and ethics here) go on to become quite successful.
The ability to speak and write properly can be an advantage, but people of color still need to get out the first word to get in the door. White people, pretty or not, just walk right through – then prove our idiocy (or not) with the first words.
Guess you never heard of Affirmative Action. Whites are the least represented at Harvard per capita. Jews are the most represented.
Congratulations to everybody on 70th anniversary of Victory Day – collective British, American, French and Russian victory over the Nazi Germany.
Russia To Power Arctic Drilling With Floating Nuclear Reactors
It would sit in the icy waters of the Arctic, and provide a constant supply of electricity to a massive rig drilling for oil. They could be mass produced, potentially cutting the cost of drilling projects. The twist? The electricity on these floating power plants would come from a nuclear reactor.
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Russia-To-Power-Arctic-Drilling-With-Floating-Nuclear-Reactors.html
US should lease one of those to provide fresh desalinated water to California.
This is a must-read–
I have no time, but want to share this AT (Asia TImes article by Pepe Escobar.
http://atimes.com/20…/…/why-the-u-s-war-on-terra-is-a-fraud/
Hitler: Mid-20th century version of Islamic State, courtesy of Anglo-Saxon bankers. Even super-cultured and technically advanced Germany was brainwashed in just a few years to extreme version of Arial nationalism – all thanks to deflation and extreme austerity measures of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning
Anglo-Saxon Bankers? More like Jewish. Complete obfuscation by an obfuscator.
And what have the Victors wrought? Turning the West over to the 3rd world for the benefit of the Banker and Capitalist class. And guess what? The Fascists knew that this is what they planned to do.
Janos, you hardly could call Prescott Sheldon Bush a Jewish banker.
However, I could agree with you that some of Jewish banking families, built into Anglo-Saxon financial model, also participated.
Before Hitler, there was Giuseppe Mazzini, agent of British Admiralty, who in 1848 overthrew several European governments in a series of “revolutions” to promote the interests of British Empire.
British long time ago learned how to use “revolutionary” tactics to weaken their competitors. Modern days US is a good student of bloody British Empire.
http://www.dailystormer.com/white-lives-matter-flyers-cause-outrage-because-all-whites-deserve-to-die/
Simple logic. What is wrong with saying White lives matter? We don’t have to explain our position, you have to explain yours.
You can get yogurt from milk but not milk from yogurt. Thus milk is ontologically senior or superior. Likewise, you can get slang from language but not language from slang. In relation to a legitimate language, it can be expressive and interesting. But on its own and compared to a language, it is inferior. Ebonics is trying to make a system of slang into a language and it is distinctly inferior – as are all Black languages compared to English. So maybe water is just finding its own level.
Some would argue that language is in a constant state of evolution and history certainly seem to prove that: A mere social construct if you will. For instance, early humans certainly didn’t start out with “yogurt’ but with the grunts and groans of milk as you assert. But has English degenerated from the time of Shakespeare, or has it become more ‘yogurt’ like?
You always seem to adapt a rationalist, a-priori point of view. But I have to believe ‘legitimate language” is not an innate and intrinsic fact of the universe but both a constructor and reflection of the society in which it communicates.
I’m not saying I think Ebonics is on equal footing with legitimate English; I do not believe that. But how do you explain/prove what constitutes a “legitimate language” given the fact that languages evolve over time? Again, I think you place yourself into the a-priori, intrinsically innate corner to superficially legitimatize your declarations without having to delve into complex and contradictory elaboration and exploration.
On the other hand, what constitutes and characterizes a superior language even if that language is a social construct and not an innate given? Perhaps it is the use of words that deliver the most bang-for-the-buck. For example, I could have used “efficient” and “expressive” in the last sentence instead of a cultural/regional colloquialism to achieve a more potent,svelte meaning. Similarly, you could have used excoriate but instead used ‘taken to the woodshed’.
And what about refine and condense until poetry is achieved ? Is this the ultimate in linguistic “yogurt? Or are we heading back full circle to the “sound symbolism” –Zaum–of the Russian Futurist poets and the first grunting inflections of human beings?
Geez, Buck, let’s get a little convoluted, shall we?! If you are “not saying” that “Ebonics is on an equal footing with legitimate English” then why does the tone of your entire post seem to be implying just that very thing. Okay so language is fluid and changes. Tell us something we don’t already know. It doesn’t mean that it’s ANARCHIC, though.
Fair enough Therian but I’m playing a bit Devil’s Advocate. I’m sure you’ve heard the rap many times as a former higher ed instructor. You know, the ‘colonial’ imposition of language etc, etc, etc.
And yet there is some truth to all that. For instance Gaelic was a repressed language and I doubt many would confuse it with English.
But was it more “legitimate”–that was the point I was trying to get, what determines, constitutes a legitimate language.
For instance Gaelic was a repressed language and I doubt many would confuse it with English–should have read:
confuse it as an Ebonics like derivative of English.
Well this might be a parallel: Black used to have families just like Whites. But now they usually don’t. But in Africa, the pair bonding and nuclear family is also weak, with kids often sent off to live with relatives. So is American Black culture degenerating or just returning to what’s natural to them: sometimes polygamy but in any case, weaker nuclear families but strong clans and tribes (Crips and Bloods).
And if it is a natural development, does that make it as good as what we have or used to have? Or maybe it’s just different because the conditions are. After all, Whites used to live more that way as well.
As for language, I’d have to know more to say that Ebonics is returning to African roots. And from what I’ve heard, African Languages are very slim when it comes to concepts. In that realm, they are definitely inferior to what we have developed.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. We have descended from a higher place. We didn’t have to invent speaking; rather we have to remember our true language.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. We have descended from a higher place. We didn’t have to invent speaking; rather we have to remember our true language.”
This is what I was referring to above; you always fall back on ‘God A-Priori’ lol.
Lol? Why lol – unless you believe that chi comes from matter, mind from chi, or consciousness from mind. You do? Then the Lol’s on you.
“Australia could source 100% of power from renewables by 2050, report finds”
Sure they could. All they need to do is to cut their consumption by 98%.
To Al Sharpton and Rev. Farrakhan:
Happy Mutha’s Day!
Sure Australia could. All they need to do is to cut their consumption by 98%.
chalk another one up for ignorance.
Australia has the most solar radiation of any country on earth, I believe, and got 11.11% of its 2014 energy from renewables.
So that’s about 6 times more than you give it credit for.
It was 0% 10 years ago.
If you spent 1% of the time researching what’s actually going on in solar successes as you do on your zany russia posts, you might learn something interesting.
A new analysis of government data compiled by Green Energy Markets finds Australia on track to not only hit 22% renewables by 2020, but reach an unprecedented 51% of all electricity by 2050.
sorry, you and your fellow CFNers lose badly, as usual
Nevertheless, we salute you as we soar high above your nagging outdated doubts and into the age of superabundant, clean and endless energy
Oh yeah, Spain currently getting 20% of all its electricity from the WIND.
Explain how that’s not possible, moi drug.
fodase
So they now want to teach courses in American universities in Ebonics?
Indian businessman, Vikram Chatwal, gave lavishly to Bill Clinton and to the Clinton Foundation to buy US Secretary of State Clinton’s consent to India’s nuclear arms build up. Vikram Charwal is referred to as the “Turban Cowboy”.
Vikram Chatwal, the Turban Cowboy, was later arrested on heroin and cocaine charges.
Despite the magnitude of the Victory Day celebration in Moscow, the main event took place the day before
Three dozen agreements signed between Russia and China, it is not just serious, it is very serious.
Ask yourself one question, whether the Russian-Chinese Union is self-sufficient? Could they live in a world where is no one else? And could United States and Europe live in a world where there are no Russia and China?
By signing the agreements, Russia and China just pushed the whole of Europe and the United States to the margins of history, and very elegantly so. West pipeline route puts the final dot to the problems of European supplies.
Creation of a joint long-haul civil aircraft completely eliminates reliance on Boeing and Airbus. Sukhoi Superjet closes the short and medium routes.
But the most important thing is this:
Beijing and Moscow have agreed on construction of an integrated transport infrastructure, which after construction, besides tightly binding Chinese and Russian economies, will also make unprofitable any sea routes from Asia to Europe, controlled by the Americans.
And how it is going to be financed? China passes US Treasuries to Russia, Russia returns them to the issuer, selling dollars for rubles and using rubles to fund the process. The amount of greenbacks that will be involved in the process is absolutely unprecedented.
New Russia-China alliance latest diplomatic, strategic blow to Obama
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/30/china-russia-alliance-challenges-us-western-domina/?page=all
Can you continue this tomorrow – if theres a new thread from JHK?
“So the notion of ‘good vs. bad English’ is simply one more institutionalized prejudice. The belief that some varieties of English are inherently inferior to others is no different from the belief that some skin colors are inherently inferior to others: both are beliefs that rest on historical accidents of who had privilege and power at a crucial moment in history, not on scientifically-describable superiorities of one over the other.”
http://cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba/Ebonics.html
Meanwhile, as JHK asserted, recent arrivals from other countries such as China and India are learning how to speak proper English for practical economic reasons and also–perhaps not a small point–their first exposure to English was more likely than not, to ‘proper instructional English’.
“Black English” on the other hand, is a derivative of the Southern White Plantation which also was not a culture/society of ‘proper English’ speakers –or at least according to some Black English ‘scholars’.
More ‘excuses for failure’ as JHK asserts or something worthy of contemplation and consideration? If “The Marketplace” knows best–which would be an ironic concession by those who continually contend’The Market’ in its current form is basically a fraud– then it’s probably time to move on.
Black skin is superior in today’s environment and they are great runners too. It’s everything else about them that’s a fail. Their English is inferior just as African languages are, just as their minds and hearts are.
You’re a scumbag
I had something I was going to say, but instead I decided to say fuck it.
So, fuck it. Foda se.
It’s not worth it. Not one person’s view will be altered appreciably by what they read here. Mustard seeds and mountains as far as the eye can see.
The Swedish government formed from a bipartisan coalition that includes “greenies” submitted to Parliament a proposal for the introduction of taxation on alternative energy.
Business representatives, parasitizing on solar energy subsidies, resignedly concluded that the “everything’s lost.” Even the government Energy Agency released a comment that the government proposal “designed without taking into account the implications for the solar industry.”
The Solar Energy racket of the government subsidies got it first significant blow from one European country.
Good start!
http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=6161970
Readers of CFN have overlooked a proven source of cheap clean energy…..the Hamster Wheel Generator. Look at all the advantages: low start up costs, easy maintenance, no interruptions, no technical barriers to overcome. Yes, the energy source does emit some “pollution” but is all organic! The only component missing to make the venerable Hamster Wheel economically viable is a gargantuan solar/windmill style subsidy. Fod and WPA…..get cracking and research this wonderful energy source on the net……..
This is a test.
http://imgur.com/
Nope, not what I hoped for.
FBI director: Zero tolerance pot policy kills our ability to hire cyber war programmers
FBI director James Comey said this week that the bureau may be forced to change its drug policy because the U.S. could not find enough programmers who did not use marijuana to fight cyber crime.
http://www.rawstory.com/2014/05/fbi-director-zero-tolerance-pot-policy-kills-our-ability-to-hire-cyber-war-programmers/
Stoners on the job: Nearly 10% of Americans went to work high
A new report has found nearly 1 in 10 Americans are showing up to work high on marijuana. Mashable.com conducted the survey in partnership with SurveyMonkey, and found 9.7 percent of Americans fessed up to smoking cannabis before showing up to the office.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102009068%20
Under the influence of the US business community interested only in increasing their own profits, sale of marijuana has become the fastest growing sector of the US economy. If the efforts of its legalization in all 50 states will continue, in the coming years the market of marijuana could become equal to the organic food industry.
Now, we could change the infamous phrase of W. Bush – “If you want to help your country, go shopping” to “If you want to help your country, get stoned”
US suffers another episode of “Creative Destruction”
It has been about a month since the Minister of Energy of Russia Novak announced the countries through which the infrastructure of new gas pipeline “Turkish Stream” will have to pass: Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria.
We should’ve expected sooner or later all kinds of surprises on that route. And they began – and rather sooner than later. Macedonia, which is already an extremely troubled country, was attacked by Albanian militants, who are believed to have come from Kosovo.
TASS reported on the death of four policemen and eight militants. There is no doubt that the attacks will continue, and quite frankly the principal cause is the prior consent of the government of Macedonia to provide its territory for Gazprom’s project.
Isn’t the Kosovo one of the latest nation-building projects of US State Department organizing Islamist narco-state in the middle of Europe?
Pretty good photo of young Russian Marines in the Victory Day Parade in Moscow May 8. Kids looked like they knew what they were about; proud, eager and jubilant, and not worried about whether or not a tranny latrine is being installed back at the barracks, or if its still ok to carry a bible in your kit, so as not to offend the homosexual and Muslim soldiers.
brh
For the first time in history, Russian Defense Minister Shoigu made the sign of the Cross before the beginning of the celebrations
For one thing, nobody in his right mind would suspect Shoigu of ever doing anything just “for show”. The man has an immense capital of popularity and credibility in Russia and he has no need for political hypocrisy. Furthermore, those who saw the footage will immediately see that Shoigu was very concentrated, very solemn, when he did this.
Shoigu quite literally asked for God’s help in one of the most dangerous moment in Russian history in which he, the Russian Minister of Defense, might be called to take momentous decisions from which the future of the planet might depend.
Does that mean that Shoigu converted to Orthodoxy? Not necessarily. Buddhism is very accepting of other religions and I don’t see much of a contradiction here. But the fact that the first Russian government official to begin the historical Victory Day parade by making the sign of the Cross and appealing for God’s help is a Buddhist, is, in itself, quite amazing.
To see this Tuvan Buddhist make the sign of the Cross in the Orthodox manner sent an electric shock through the Russian blogosphere: everybody felt that something amazing had happened.
http://russia-insider.com/en/history/something-truly-amazing-happened-today/ri6696
You just got yourself a former reader. Fuck you, kunstler you scum sucking racist, sexist piece of dog shit.
Writing this kind of mindless trash puts you in my garbage dumpster with all the other low life bastards of medialand.
I hope you stay in your hysterical little white bubble in upstate and rot.
Pidgin patois? Your generalization is not only disgustingly inaccurate but you don’t even know the definition of the words you’re using.
Success in the future by learning English? you retard, there won’t be any jobs for them to be successful in English or not, and you should know this if you weren’t blinded by your compulsive racist bullshit. You’re a Jew like me kunstler, so you should know what it means to be swept into an abstraction and negatively categorized.
But I guess you are just a senile, pathetic old man now – hurry up and drop dead already. I’ll never read your puerile blog again and I hope others follow suit.
Well, I could agree with you that language skills in the current environment with no meaningful jobs are not going to help much, but why so much passion?
Wow. Five years later and this remark by “former reader” looks even more desperate, delusional and deceptive than ever. Bizarre.