Great post, there is a lot of interesting and valuable stuff in here and I am very glad that you and the rest of the mods took a very explicit stance on the matter!

One thing that stood out to me is this part:

>To be absolutely clear, none of what I have written should be interpreted to mean that white people are inherently evil. It should also not read as a long-winded expression of hatred towards white people on my part.

Race is such a critical concept and a highly loaded topic and I applaud you for raising this issue, while on the other hand I couldn't help but feel a bit sad that this had to be said, though I competely understand. I found that with racism and sexism in white people and men, there is one pretty common reaction that eventually comes up in any discussion, which is that pointing out someone's privilege does not mean that this person has it easy and I think a lot of white and/or male fragility is exactly due to this reaction. I think the clearest explanation of privilege I came across was to define privilege as an absence of struggle in one domain. Being a white man does not mean you have an easy life - it means that on top of the struggles you may face, you don't face the struggle of being discriminated against because of your race (or gender in certain aspects) in most cases.

If I might make one suggestion, I'd highly suggest Robin DiAngelo's book What Does It Mean to Be White?: Developing White Racial Literacy to anyone interested in the topic of racism. While her book White Fragility focuses mostly on, well, white fragility and I can't recommend enough, I found What Does It Mean to Be White? to be a great introduction and basis for the topic. It is like a handbook that she developed through her years of leading antiracist workshops and covers nearly all aspects (though for the experienced reader it might be a bit reductive in some parts) of racism in a highly readable manner.

Farming is pretty recent in human history. Up until a few thousand years ago, all people on Earth lived as hunter gatherers. Luckily, some lived this way up until 40-50 years ago, like the !Kung. There were anthropologists who lived with them while they were still fully practicing this lifestyle. Which means we know a lot about how they lived.

I really suggest this book for anyone wanting to know what the hunter gatherer lifestyle was like. It covers pretty much all aspects of their lives and society. https://www.amazon.com/Dobe-Kung-Studies-Cultural-Anthropology/dp/0030638038

Basically, it was not a hard life. It could be dangerous, sure. There were no modern medicines, there were occasional conflicts within the group and with outside groups (though there was a system in place to resolve them, at least in the case of the !Kung), there were dangerous animals. But really, the normal day-to-day life was not difficult. It was basically just a lot of walking around...you know, hunting and gathering. Also, a lot of leisure time and extremely slow paced.

If you want to understand racists, read one of the really great critical scholarly histories of their movement, some of the rich political psychology work on white identity and racial attitudes, or work on the politics of ethnocentrism. All of these will help you understand real white bigotry and white nationalism in the world, and crucially none of them is white-nationalist propaganda that claims something wild like that white nationalism is some kind of perfectly valid alternative interpretive frame for looking at consensus reality.

I never heard about this one till I read Paved With Good Intentions, and then went searching to find out more about this. Real fucking winner here.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2001/jan/29/20010129-020918-6730r/

>Greg Murphy, at 18, had gained a reputation as a strong-arm neighborhood drug dealer.
He packed a gun and was driven around in a late-model Mercedes-Benz, according to his four-inch-thick criminal file in the Alexandria court clerk's office, and interviews with those who knew him.
By 1992, he pleaded guilty to consensual sodomy in Arlington after prosecutors there agreed to drop a rape and cocaine possession charge against him. Murphy received a suspended three-year sentence.

>Murphy hasn't cooperated with attorneys appointed to represent him. He even punched and knocked out one of them, Jonathan Shapiro, during a hearing in October, shortly after Judge Swersky denied Murphy's request to meet with him privately.

>On Sept. 18, 1993, a simple glance from a stranger around 4 p.m. at a gas station caused Murphy to attack the man, Leonard Riddle, with a ball-peen hammer he had been carrying around in his pocket that day.
He struck Mr. Riddle again and again, prompting one witness to yell, "My God, he's going to kill him."

>An unsupervised Murphy didn't stay out of trouble long. A week later, on April 17, he was arrested after Fairfax County police found 0.8 grams of cocaine and 2.6 grams of marijuana stashed in a bag in his Homewood Suites Hotel room, a Baileys Crossroads hotel where he was staying for a couple of nights.
The room began to belch smoke when a lit cigarette he laid on the bed just before he went off to take a shower set his mattress on fire. Fire sprinklers went off and soon firefighters arrived.
Murphy, oblivious to the sprinklers raining down around him, refused to leave. He was arrested, jailed and released on bail that same day.

>Two days before Kevin's slaying, on April 17, angry racial notes were found in Murphy's nearby hotel room, revealing that somebody most likely a white child was going to die soon.
"Kill them raceess whiate kidd's anyway," read one note scrawled on the back of a Virginia Department of Corrections memo, according to news reports.

>On April 19, Murphy put a steak knife in his pocket and began to walk the streets of his neighborhood, looking to vent his anger, investigators believe.
Prosecutors say no one may ever know what led Murphy to grab Kevin from behind, stabbing him 18 times and then slashing his throat.

EDIT: Re-ordered the quote for better chronology in this condensed format.

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is author of Engaging the Muslim World and Napoleon's Egypt. He has been a regular guest on PBS's News Hour and has also appeared on ABC Nightly News, Nightline, the TODAY show, Charlie Rose, Anderson Cooper 360, Rachel Maddow, the Colbert Report, Democracy Now!, Aljazeera America and many others.

He has commented extensively on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Iraq, the politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Syria, and Iranian domestic struggles and foreign affairs. He has a regular column on the TruthDig.com. Visit JuanCole.com.

> The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East
>
>The renowned blogger and Middle East expert Juan Cole illuminates the role of today's Arab youth — who they are, what they want, and how they will affect world politics.
>
>Beginning in January 2011, the revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests, riots, and civil wars that comprised what many call "the Arab Spring" shook the world. These upheavals were spearheaded by youth movements, and yet the crucial role they played is relatively unknown. Middle East expert Juan Cole is here to share their stories.
>
>For three decades, Cole has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. In The New Arabs he outlines the history that led to the dramatic changes in the region, and explores how a new generation of men and women are using innovative notions of personal rights to challenge the authoritarianism, corruption, and stagnation that had afflicted their societies.
>
>Not all big cohorts of teenagers and twenty-somethings necessarily produce movements centered on their identity as youth, with a generational set of organizations, symbols, and demands rooted at least partially in the distinctive problems besetting people of their age. The Arab Millennials did. And, in a provocative and optimistic argument about the future of the Arab world, The New Arabs shows just how they did it.

Things people should read to understand education better:

Rothstein's Class and Schools

Richard Ingersoll's Who Controls Teachers' Work?

This article also did a good job of summing up what is wrong with blaming teachers.

Indeed! I'm particularly a fan of Prashad's books "The Karma of Brown Folk" and "Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting" — both of which deal extensively with Black-Brown solidarities.

• The Karma of Brown Folk by Vijay Prashad
  
• Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity by Vijay Prashad

Wow, there is a lot that can be said about this. We need a few hours though. Heres some light reading though,

Howard Zinn

Jabari Asim

Thomas Sowell

All good reads and lends a little perspective on "why so neurotic" about race in America. They did their damnedest to place a system that would make sure this would remain a white man's society. We are still dealing with the fallout.

EDIT FOR BUTTHURTEDNESS: Why downvotes and no comments. Have you guys read these books? Economic weirdness led to a lot of the race problems we have in this country and these books point out some of those. Chris Rock made a joke about it. It's unfortunate that a lot of the weird laws and rules that made distinctions between the races really came into stride after 1776, but they did. Not Only that! That is a nice well rounded list of books. Howard Zinn (Nice harsh look at forgotten history) to Thomas Sowell (Thats as conservative you can get about race without falling into Stormfront territory).

Interestingly, Nixon proposed a guaranteed income plan (abbreviated as "FAP" ... no comment) and it sailed through the house. Nixon became embroiled in scandal, however, and it died in the senate. A senator named Albert Gore was one prominent member who had a large hand in killing it. A NYtimes book review [google search to avoid paywall] from the 1970s goes into some details as to why it died. It also notes another form of guaranteed income we used to have, welfare, formerly "widow's pensions" which were designed as guaranteed income for single mothers.

It wasn't until women of color obtained legal rights to these benefits that they began to slowly be reduced in scope and otherwise have many strings attached ... until welfare as we know it was killed by Bill Clinton in the 1990s, prompting high level officials to resign in protest.

If you are interested in these sort of issues, and the effects that social and economic inequality can have, I cannot recommend a more interesting series of talks than those from Dr. Stephen Bezruchka. Here is a link to one; give it a few minutes and you'll likely be hooked. He addressed Nixon's FAP in the talk I linked (and one or two others from AR).

Don't bother going with Rosetta Stone. It will be pretty much 95% useless to you, as you already understand everything. Rosetta Stone puts next to no emphasis on grammar.

You may find this book useful. It was used in a first year Russian course I took back in university and has plenty of exercises to get you learning grammar, the alphabet and even how to read/write cyrillic cursive. There were many students in that class in pretty much exactly the same situation as you who seemed to find it helpful.

The whole of southern Oregon is racist as fuck. Most of those cities were sundown towns within living memory. The KKK was briefly headquartered in Grants Pass. Oregon's only recorded lynching of a black man was in Coos Bay. They still burn crosses in Medford. The only place I would consider living down there if I were a person of color is Ashland, because the Shakespeare Festival is a big enough mover to force the local government to at least talk about being less racist. Don't just take it from me: Robert Jackson wrote a book about it.

> Which is ridiculous, because I'm pretty sure class is the most important factor with respect to power differentials between people. It doesn't matter if you are white, black, male, or female. If you have enough money you can do whatever you want.

I very strongly agree with this. A huge number of people are oppressed because they're lower-class and poor, not because they're an ethnic minority. The problem is that in most of the western world, race and class are very tightly interconnected, and those two variables are closely correlated.

The Marxist conspiracy theorist in me is inclined to see racism and identity politics as two sides of the same coin: A plot to keep the lower class fighting amongst itself along petty ethnic lines, rather than united against their real oppressors.

In any event, here's some recommended reading for you.

I took the Duolingo Russian course for shits and giggles and cleared it in a couple of days via those 'take a shortcut' options. It's an OK introduction to the language but unfortunately won't get you very far. The problem with apps like these is that they only give you a narrow peak into the language and test what you've learned in a very discrete and limited way. That, and the quality of their limited material kind of sucks sometimes.

I'd start with a basic textbook, this is the one I used in college. You can probably find a used one for a reasonable price. Though I used it in conjunction with a class professor, It's formatted incredibly well and comes with a CD, so self-use shouldn't be too difficult. If you're looking to spend zero money, I stumbled upon this youtube channel with some decent instruction. If you want to stay mobile, I'd recommend the app Memsize over duolingo due to the shear volume of content they have available in comparison.

You can also, of course, ask for help in this sub. There user base here is incredibly kind and helpful. Feel free to ask me anything of you want as well.

SPOILERS: When you complete the Duolingo course all the app gives you is a crappy bird medal on the bottom of your lessons list.

Why do people insist of maintaining their ignorance?

Racism Without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla Silva is a fascinating read and would help some of the people in this thread educate themselves.

This is the generally held scholarly view yes. Want to hear something really cool? Let's say a meteor hits earth, and the only human beings that survived were people in East Africa still in the places where humanity first evolved. That population still contains 99% of the human races genetic variation.


This is a good place to start. If you can find an online version go nuts.

Or you can just go searching for articles about the concept of race from an anthropological standpoint.

Show notes:

Racism Has Shaped U.S. Welfare Policy Since 1935

Alma Carten | August 22, 2016 | The Conversation

Study: Trump fans are much angrier about housing assistance when they see an image of a black man

German Lopez | September 8 2017 | Vox

Black Women: Supporting Their Families—With Few Resources

Gillian B White | June 12, 2017 | The Atlantic

How Racism Tears Apart Social Democracy

Sean McElwee | January 23, 2014 | Huffington Post

Lashing Out at ‘Identity Politics,’ Pundits Blame Trump on Those Most Vulnerable to Trump

Adam Johnson | November 20, 2016 | FAIR

Where's the empathy for black poverty and pain?

Tanzina Vega | May 5 2017 | CNN

U.S. Opens Spigot After Farmers Claim Discrimination

Sharon LaFraniere | April 25, 2013 | New York Times

Racism undermines support for government spending

Sean McElwee | February 16, 2016 | Al Jazeera

Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America's Poor

Noel A. Cazenave Kenneth J. Neubeck | Routledge

There are two questions in play here. First, what is the worth of culture? Second, should the state institute policies which assist cultural minorities with preserving their cultural particularity? This second issue is the issue of multiculturalism. Defenses of multiculturalism will always point to the value of culture. So, learning more about the second issue will help you address the first as well. If you are serious about learning more about multiculturalism, I highly recommend that you start with Will Kymlicka's [Multicultural Citizenship] (http://www.amazon.com/Multicultural-Citizenship-Liberal-Minority-Political/dp/0198290918/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333746069&sr=8-1). This book will give you an idea of why it may be important to institute policies which help to preserve culture, but it will also clearly identify the limits of multiculturalism.

Edit: I'd also recommend Okin's ["Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?"] (http://www.bostonreview.net/BR22.5/okin.html). [Here] (http://www.bostonreview.net/BR22.5/kymlicka.html) is Kymlicka's response to Okin.

even successful black well dressed black people will experience the same kind of micro-aggressions, while many may brush them off others won't, it's being the only Muslim guy on a telephone call while the English lads diss ISIS, it's the loud conversation about the IRA being murderous bastards in front of an Irish person or the Irish jokes or the pathetic attempts at Irish accents if you respond you are unreasonable, guilty, not one of us.

This piece

http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/newformations/05_25.pdf

comes from a much longer essay, which you can find in this book

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Multi-Racist-Britain-Directions-Practice-Questions/dp/0333332490

His insight into British society is really interesting, you can download it on libgen.io

Disclaimer, I dislike Identity Politics and I think white Identity Politics is the most pernicious. I was kind of hesitant to share this as I didn't want people to think its some sort of nod of approval of Identity politics... But this bit of research is pretty interesting Hope you find it so as well.

>Ashley Jardina is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University. Her research explores the nature of racial attitudes, the development of group identities, and the way in which these factors influence political preferences and behavior. She is primarily interested in how Americans are responding to increasing diversity, and her current project explores the conditions under which white racial identification and white consciousness among white Americans is a salient and significant predictor of policies, candidates, and attitudes toward racial and ethnic groups. She is also interested in the study of gender and politics. Her dissertation won the 2015 American Political Science Association award for the best dissertation in race and ethnic politics.
>
>Ashley recently published a new book, White Identity Politics, that “offers a landmark analysis of emerging patterns of white identity and collective political behavior, drawing on sweeping data.” In this episode Ashley speaks with Chris about her book, and how she found contrasting attitudes between white people in America who identify with their race and white people who don’t. She also explains how previous generations of political scientists have been mistaken in conflating the issue of racial prejudice and the issue of identity when explaining the politics of white Americans.
>
>Related Links
>
>White Identity Politics by Ashley Jardina
>
>Dangerous Frames: How Ideas about Race and Gender Shape Public Opinion by Nicholas Winter
>
>The Disturbing, Surprisingly Complex Relationship Between White Identity Politics and Racism, New Yorker Q&A with Isaac Chotiner
>
>Interview with Ashley Jardina on the New Books Network
>
>Transcript
>
>This is a transcript of the episode.

Susan Miller Okin

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Multiculturalism-Women-Susan-Moller-Okin/dp/0691004323

At least the aspect of total work hours has been debunked. Richard B. Lee eventually concluded that the !Kung work approx. 40 hours a week in a later publication (well, it's a book really).

http://www.amazon.com/Dobe-Kung-Studies-Cultural-Anthropology/dp/0030638038

Edit: though I don't know how relevant are the Kung since Sahlins was more focused on the Australian aborigines,

> The definitions that I am referencing are from “The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality” with Tracey E. Ore describing race as “a group of people who perceive themselves and are perceived by others as possessing distinctive hereditary traits.”

That's the definition in what you linked which is different from what you're saying.

I said this above to someone else but to save time just paste it here.

Its the absolute truth. I went to see Time Wise speak. He wrote this book http://www.amazon.com/White-Like-Me-Reflections-Privileged/dp/1932360689
If you are white you are a racist. Its important to understand this concept. It doesnt mean you are in the KKK either. Its a difficult concept to understand but your brain basically cant help it. You are prejudiced against other skin colors whether you know it or not. Tim Wise is one of the leading experts on racism in america today and probably the foremost white racism expert. If you dont believe me either read the book or you can go to his site http://www.timwise.org/ He can probably explain it better than I can because like I said its a difficult, complicated concept but absolutely crucial to being able to do something about racism.

You’ll find that this subreddit is a roughly even mix of (1) half-baked 1st year undergraduates who had a really interesting thought while on shrooms and want to share it with everyone, and (2) bitter PhD students who have 0 patience for the uninitiated.

As for citizenship theory, if you want to read more, I suggest this book (also by Kymlicka). If you happen to be Canadian, you might also be interested in this report (large PDF) on the accommodation of minorities in Quebec, which was coauthored by philosopher Charles Taylor.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0816634394/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0816634394&linkCode=as2&tag=theaero-20

I recently read this which is an interesting view on racism in Britain

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Multi-Racist-Britain-Directions-Practice-Questions/dp/0333332490

You should read "paved with good intentions" for a good scholarly piece on race.

I read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Racism-without-Racists-Color-Blind-Persistence/dp/0742516334

I know the ideas you are speaking of. That said, I thought book was complete garbage. I cannot overstate how bad I thought the book was.

I do not want people to assimilate to the "dominant culture." I want people to assimilate to norms that promote human flourishing. Cultures differ in ways other than the superficial: food, music, and dress. Communities can differ in their beliefs about honor, purity, violence, sexual freedom, masculinity, etc.. I consider it a duty to critique ideas and values that hinder human well-being.

Also, I hold the parochial tribalism of "their culture" and "our culture" thinking to be unimaginative at best and immoral at worst. The world is getting smaller everyday. I can communicate with people all over the globe. Is anyone suggesting that I shouldn't engage in a dialogue with my fellow human being where we try to persuade each other of the merits of our ideas?

P.S.
If you say that I shouldn't critique another culture's values, then you are not in my culture. My culture is one of robust scrutiny of all ideas. And because you are not in my culture, by the logic of non-intercultural criticism, you cannot critique me.

There's an entire volume of responses to Okin that is truly worth the read. Being something of a modern liberal myself, Nussbaum's response to Okin and Okin's response to many of the critics are outstanding.

If we are to take seriously the separateness and equality of persons then the concept of ethnicity almost becomes immoral in itself, because it can be construed as an attempt to undermine both separateness by construing all people of a certain ethnicity as being morally tied to each other, and equality by construing certain ethnic groups (an accident of birth) as having more or less value. The project of modern liberalism and arguably modernity and the Enlightenment in general is an attempt to ground morality in universal truths or meta-moral truths that transcend the division created by nationalism, tribalism and racism. The rational and reasonable individual is the unit by which a moral or political system is to deal with and be judged by.

You know, Google works wonders. All of this stuff is out there clear as day, but I guess I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. A lot of folks on here are in different regions of the world and may have different experiences that don't allow them to see the same thing I see. So I'll clarify as best I can.

To know what "thug" or "gangsta" culture is, you have to see it first hand. In my 2nd year of college I worked/volunteered in a home for troubled youth. The males in this facility were all part of this culture. They spoke the same way, dressed in a similar way, used the same slang, listened to the same music, had similar demeanor etc. Their medical charts all revealed drug use and petty crime. All of them hated school and all displayed hyper-masculine traits. Fist fights were a very regular occurrence. It goes deeper than this, but just know that visually, you can start to create a personality profile of a person in this culture. Culture is a performance people put on for the world.

Now that we've established the identifiable traits of "thug" culture, you have to make the logical conclusion that, if a) "thug" culture glorifies violence, guns, misogyny, and drugs, and that b) violence, guns, misogyny, and drugs are common characteristics of crime, then "thug" culture must somehow be linked to crime, and vise versa.

See:

• Cummings, A. P. (2010). Thug Life: Hip-Hop's Curious Relationship with Criminal Justice. Santa Clara Law Review, 50(2), 515-546. (Cummings observes that "many commentators agree that some type of divide exists in hip-hop between that which is positive and uplifts the black and inner city community (socially conscious rap) and that which is negative and serves to degrade women, perpetuate violence, maintain stereotypes, and injure the black and inner city community (bling or gangsta rap).")
  
  
• Kubrin, Charis E. (2005). Gangstas, Thugs, and Hustlas: Identity and the Code of the Street in Rap Music. Social Problems, (3), 360 (Kubrin finds that: "Recent research on identity, culture, and violence in inner-city communities describes a black youth culture, or street code, that influences adolescent behavior, particularly violent behavior.")
  
  
• Tucker, C. (2006). OUR OPINION: Racism pales in comparison to thug culture. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta, GA).
  
  
• Tucker, C. (2007). The 'ideals' of thug culture are destroying black Americans. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta, GA).
  
  
• (2009). Thug culture: More children are born, brought up into the gang lifestyle. Daily Press (Victorville, CA).
  
  
• (2010). Sharpton decries thug culture. Winston-Salem Journal (Winston-Salem, NC).
  
  
• Wozniak, K. H. (2016). Neighborhoods, Culture, and Violent Crime. London: Oxford University Press.
  
  If you want even more data, you can study the lyrics of artists like T.I. and Gucci Mane (both went to prison for gun charges). You can watch music videos as well.
  
  You can also read/listen to what Thomas Sowell thinks of "thug" culture.