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These social issues vasculate by design to keep the peasants of every color at each other's throats.
The only real war is class war, too bad our owners propagandized us from birth to refuse to fight that particular war.
Now by all means, carry on fighting over the social wedges that are largely caused or exacerbated by our rigged capitalist dystopia.
Just don't be late for work, my fellow capital batteries.
You can't reduce all of society's problems to one source. We need to improve the lives of everyone, and we don't do that by ignoring the plight of minority groups. We can accomplish more than one good at a time.
Not all, but nearly all.
Abortion should be legal and available to all women, that said, around 40% of them are done for economic reasons: https://bmcwomenshealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6874-13-29
Hence the issue is greatly exacerbated by our capitalist dystopia.
I don't think I need to l source the economic growth incentive for exploiting undocumented immigrant labor they invite, while at the same time propagandizing half the country to hate them so they don't gain social footing to get fair pay.
Climate change, hmmm...
Collapse of the nuclear family and birth rate, hmmm...
K-12 educational collapse due to tax breaks for a certain economic class in almost every state, hmmm...
Higher ed being bastardized from a societal necessity to a for profit indentured servant factory, hmmm...
Food deserts and urban decay from big box stores killing main street to eliminate threats and then pulling out of those neighborhoods once succeeding leaving nothing but abandoned disaster areas, hmmm...
I'm sure there are some national problems that aren't caused by, substantially exacerbated by, or intentionally stoked for division by our owner class through their captured governments and bully pulpit, but without addressing our rigged economy and the wealth class gaining more hard power year after year, I'm sorry but it's deck chairs by comparison.
I'm a bit puzzled by this response, to be honest. Yes, there are economic factors in many issues facing our society. However, the causes of abortion are not the same as access to it. And I notice you left out issues that are extremely pressing or even existential to many people, like inequities in policing, medicine (I don't mean access to medicine, I mean inequities in treatment and research), higher ed, as well as denial of rights to self determination for Transgender people and erosion of civil rights for LGBTQ people across the country. Some of these have economic components, but none can be completely solved by economic means.
Of course we need to fix our broken economic system. The inequalities in wealth and the stranglehold that the capital class has on our economy and government are a dire problem. But to tell minorities who are also struggling in many ways that those struggles are a distraction is unconscionable. We can help each other, we don't have to reduce the struggle to make a better world down to a single factor, and to do so will just create more inequalities when we fail to consider the needs to groups besides our own.
Honestly, if we could stop this cultural race war for like two seconds we'd have a way better society. I just went healthcare end high speed rail.
Is there some reason that we can't work to have a more equitable society racially and economically? It's not a zero sum game, we can care about and accomplish more than one thing at a time...
Exactly. Even if the real villain was capitalism all along (spoiler: it is), we can't abandon all of these battles along the way in hopes of winning the war in the end. The fight will take generations and we need to win ground on multiple fronts to have any hope of real, honest to goodness, change.
Reducing economical disparities will solve the so-called "racial" inequalities.
Affordable education, housing and care for all don't necessitate discrimination, even positive.
When an university degree costs hundreds of thousands, the problem isn't the ethnic makeup of the happy few who can afford it, it's scarcity itself.
European state manage to fund a higher education for pretty much all of those that care to try it, it is not an impossible dream.
edit: to clarify, I don't think ending affirmative action before making any general progress is a good idea or will do any good.
just to keep eyes on the prize and be aware of diversion tactics.
How would one sustainably protect/save the Jews (and all the other victimized groups) without first dismantling the Nazi regime?
Sure you can free this camp and that camp without marching on Berlin, but if the machine, the source that propagates it and maintains it remains intact, you're addressing a symptom of the primary cause and they'll just build more camps.
If you resolve one social wedge, they'll stoke another in it's place through the government they fully captured decades ago. Why do you think they're actively unresolving decades settled resolutions through their Federalist Society judges?
Practiced insatiable Greed that rises to a level that becomes dangerous to society, that makes you more powerful than your single vote, that lets you buy your own regulatory bodies and inform the laws that are supposed to regulate you for the public good needs to be disallowed/criminalized. Without that, it's a never ending game of division wedge whackamole, and you only need to understand who that benefits, the modern masters/profiteers/"job creators."
An economy is supposed to be a tool to better distribute good and services for the benefit of a society, ie the people in it. Our society lives in service to, and is often told we need to make sacrifices for, our beloved 🌈economy. We're doing it backwards, we are being played, it's so obvious that it burns.
I'm just going to quote the comment that you are replying to, since you don't seem to have read it.
Is there some reason that we can’t work to have a more equitable society racially and economically? It’s not a zero sum game, we can care about and accomplish more than one thing at a time…
I don't agree that the sole cause of racial inequity is economic. If you only address the economic factors, then you will still be left with an unjust society. Again, what I am saying is that we can do more than one thing at a time.
To address your analogy, what you're proposing would be like marching on Berlin and leaving the camps in place, and just assuming that the folks in the will be fine once you overthrow the Nazis without actually doing the work to make sure that is the case. In reality, allied forces liberated the camps in the process of marching toward Berlin. That is what I am trying to say. We need to dismantle all of the machinery of oppression, not just the economic parts.
Edit: This probably came across as unnecessarily combative. I'm going to take a step back from this thread for a while. Ya'll stay nice.
For all the camps we've freed that get unfreed, abortion, civil rights, on and on, We NEVER seem to get around on marching on Berlin. In fact, Berlin has has been reinforcing its walls and turrets unopposed for over 50 years. They do make so many jobs after all. We hate the camps, but ignore the ones that commission them.
Not to mention K-12 that isnt in literal ruin, so underfunded that becoming a teacher, what should be one of society's most revered professions, is a life on the edge of poverty. How about our tent cities in every major city filled with our beaten, hopeless brothers and sisters our society throws away like garbage for the crime of not being effective enough capital batteries.
I could get into other stuff but there's just too fucking much. Almost all of which stems from allowing insatiable greed to fester and metastasize until it became an aspirational trait and core value in the US. The Gorden Geckos/Mr Potters/Ebenezer Scrooges were elevated and deified and allowed to run a muck here and warp our nation and increasingly the world to their cancerous, antisocial vision, and everyone outside of the owner class lost, even most who are their most zealous defenders.
If the only war is the class war, why do minorities have to fight (and die) for equal rights? Why are their own class-members among the first to try to stop them from achieving equality?
Once again, social wedges. Indentured servitude never went away, it just rebranded. The almost entirely caucasion owner class did cling to using race as the ultimate tool for coerced labor, but after generations of resistance, and the unquenchable quest for unsustainable growth, more than half a century ago decided that having a racial underclass in a largely white population simply wasn't enough exploited labor to increase their wealth and power fast enough, as it's never fast enough.
The poor, true believer Fox News consuming racists are the cultural remnant of that long abandoned unspoken compact between the wealth class and their once favorite colored, highest ranking capital batteries when it was convenient. Racism is real. Racism is wrong, but to the oligarchs, it's become just another tool to manipulate their labor pool.
Some might see it as poetic justice on the once complacent white peasants who took solace in being the richer, more socially powerful peasants, and that's fine, but unproductive, as we have a common enemy who manipulates and stokes such anymous with the means of major media propaganda they own to maintain productivity. It's easier than chains, it's more insidious than Jim Crow. Just turn half fhe peasants against the other half and they'll never look up. You can't argue with the effectiveness.
Because they've been propagandized to look away from the class war.
20 more years of this SCOTUS in all likelihood. That's what 4 years of Trump got us, and DeSantis's nominees for Florida's SCOTUS make Trump's nominees look like level headed centrists. Unless we get big Democratic majorities, then maybe there's a chance at SCOTUS expansion.
Remember it's not enough to just vote in the general, participate in your primaries too and encourage your friends and family to do the same for both federal and state/local office. The people who are most eager to right these wrongs quickly and through drastic action are usually the underdogs for their nominations. Removing Republicans in favor of Democrats will help most of the time regardless, but how much it helps depends on which Democrats we are electing. It's the difference between slowing the bleeding for 2 years and actual meaningful change.
Biden will sign a new Judicial Act if Congress puts one in front of him so don't worry about that or how wishy washy he might sound in the meantime. He may be lukewarm on SCOTUS expansion in hypothetical discussion, but when the paper is on his desk, he'll sign it. But it's up to us to give him a Congress that would do it and state governments that will sue to put cases back in front of a relegitimized SCOTUS after the fact.
The latest in a series of measures ensuring that future generations will be mired in problems which we've been inching away from for centuries only to dive right back into them on a regular basis.
the worst generation at it again
Me, still waiting for those "checks and balances" to kick in:
I'm sorry, did you meant the "checks and balances" that will be cashed for lobbying against the common interest of citizens? /j
Reminder, the framers were imperfect products of their time, many of whom owned slaves, suggested landowners be the only class allowed to vote, and created a flawed document that, while ahead of its time a quarter millenia ago in the age of gunpowder muskets and speed of horse communication, blue screened windows 95 style a long time ago in the face of modern scale and structural societal change.
Y’all need to fucking vote blue in every election to stop this shit. No third party shit, no “both sides,” no “my vote doesn’t matter.” If you actually want to stop this kind of stuff, you have to vote for democrats in every election.
voting blue because that's the only option
what? why? how did this happen?
Because that's how republicans are recorded to vote republican every time, so realistically other choices are just splitting the votes and leaving the republican votes strong.
For the forseeable future unless the republican base breaks they win elections where others try to vote on third party. Because they're voting purely for party and just assuming party is looking out for them.
Race shouldn't be a consideration in whether to admit a particular student. But it should be used on an ongoing basis to ensure that the admission process is applied fairly.
Then, if it's determined that there's a racial bias in admissions, the root cause should be analyzed and corrected. Are students of one race better prepared academically? That's a problem that needs to be fixed at the high school level (or earlier). If you admit students who aren't prepared for college-level courses, you either have to spend resources on remedial classes, or have a lot of students from that race drop out.
Are students of one race more able to pay? If we want everyone to have the same chance at education regardless of background, maybe college should be fully government-funded.
That’s a problem that needs to be fixed at the high school level (or earlier).
What ability does a private university like Harvard have to affect the equity of primary or secondary education across the entire country? This sounds good, but who is doing the fixing? The same people who are stripping away the ability for colleges and universities to address inequity by considering it in their admissions policies are also strip mining public education. Maybe AA was a bandaid but ripping off the bandaid because it would be better to fix the injury, but having no ability or will to fix the injury, just means that now you're bleeding all over the place.
It's about competitive college admissions. Rich students get college prep, tutors and extra curricular activities to give them an edge. Not having to work through high school is also a massive advantage.
Would Asians finally be less discriminated against in college admissions now? Your scores are all perfect but too bad we're full in the list of Asian admissions
Yes, instead different groups that were having their scores weighted against systematic discrimination they faced will no longer stand any chance of getting in even though the degree of grit and achievement to get there was higher, in the face of that discrimination they faced to get there. And so systemic discrimination will be that much more self-reinforcing.
Wealthy asian applicants, already over-represented in elite institution admissions, will likely be even more over-represented in the coming years. And as diversity falls, so will education standards, since diverse student populations have been conclusively shown time and time again to increase education standards.
I work in graduate education, and about 30% of my work is in admissions. My life just became very complicated.
Clarence Thomas probably considers this his shining achievement. He has had a personal vendetta against affirmative action forever, despite benefitting from it himself.