Black Lives Matter get police float kicked out of Pride Parade

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

No, I completely disagree, if you got that from my post I should be more clear.

The lack of civilian oversight of police departments in North America is a direct result of racist policies that have been enacted largely by wealthy and prominent members of society.

Police departments and the justice system throughout North America are working by design. Calgarians have experienced this lately with Nenshi and the CPS. Crime is down and police budgets are up, and it's basically political suicide to want to change the equation due to the unassailable presence police have in our society.

The historical role of police and militia is the protection of property and the maintenance of public order. These are valuable, likely inherent to a functioning democracy, but the means don't justify the ends when the tyranny of the majority is enforced at the barrel of a legal gun.

Drug crime is a convenient excuse to root out 'unsavory' elements in society.

I think you need to build a stronger case than that. I sort of follow you.

[CliffFletcher]

Family breakdown is the biggest cause of poverty. Across all groups. But family breakdown is extremely difficult for the state to address, and since we're trying to solve the problem with state intervention, we get dismayed when those efforts don't make much of a difference.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Family breakdown is the biggest cause of poverty. Across all groups. But family breakdown is extremely difficult for the state to address, and since we're trying to solve the problem with state intervention, we get dismayed when those efforts don't make much of a difference.

What came first I wonder, the breakdown of the family unit or racist policies designed to destabilize minority populations and lower classes.

It's a real chicken and the egg argument.

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

No, I completely disagree, if you got that from my post I should be more clear.

The lack of civilian oversight of police departments in North America is a direct result of racist policies that have been enacted largely by wealthy and prominent members of society.

Police departments and the justice system throughout North America are working by design. Calgarians have experienced this lately with Nenshi and the CPS. Crime is down and police budgets are up, and it's basically political suicide to want to change the equation due to the unassailable presence police have in our society.

The historical role of police and militia is the protection of property and the maintenance of public order. These are valuable, likely inherent to a functioning democracy, but the means don't justify the ends when the tyranny of the majority is enforced at the barrel of a legal gun.

Drug crime is a convenient excuse to root out 'unsavory' elements in society.

reads like a conspiracy theory, so now that you have state your opinion, let's see the science

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

What came first I wonder, the breakdown of the family unit or racist policies designed to destabilize minority populations and lower classes.

It's a real chicken and the egg argument.

Slavery came first.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

What came first I wonder, the breakdown of the family unit or racist policies designed to destabilize minority populations and lower classes.

It's a real chicken and the egg argument.

Good point.

Personally, I think family breakdown is a symptom of the problem, but not the root problem. One of the biggest reasons couples break up is due to financial issues, many of which can be traced to racial, class, ethnic and gender inequality(not all of course). And of course it's cyclical and some of it even self-inflicted (there is often backwards class mobility when parents who break the economic cycle stay in the same communities and raise their children in environments that hinder them).

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

What came first I wonder, the breakdown of the family unit or racist policies designed to destabilize minority populations and lower classes.

It's a real chicken and the egg argument.

So who are creating these racist policies? Detroit (the poorest city in America) for example finally elected it's first white mayor in 40 years..most of it's inner city congressional reps during the last 50 years have been black....are these politicians to blame for these racist policies?

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

So who are creating these racist policies? Detroit (the poorest city in America) for example finally elected it's first white mayor in 40 years..most of it's inner city congressional reps during the last 50 years have been black....are these politicians to blame for these racist policies?

You will probably want to start here

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

You will probably want to start here

Yes i get how it works, I am questioning whether you do.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

What came first I wonder, the breakdown of the family unit or racist policies designed to destabilize minority populations and lower classes.

Since family breakdown maps to poverty across all racial groups, and in countries that are much more racially homogeneous than the U.S. (and have no legacy of slavery), then I'm going with family breakdown as the chicken and poverty as the egg.

And I don't believe any malevolent forces drove family breakdown. While economic liberalisation was part of the problem, the decline in religion and falling away of the social stigma around sex outside of marriage played a big part as well. Traditional values around sex and marriage are oppressive, but they have always served as kind of breakwater against the harsh conditions the working class are exposed to. If children have a mom and a dad and they stay and work together as a basic social and economic unit they at least have a chance. It's one of the great dilemmas of a liberal society: do you give people the freedom to make bad life decisions when the outcome is widespread misery and problems for society as a whole?

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

And I don't believe any malevolent forces drove family breakdown. While economic liberalisation was part of the problem, the decline in religion and falling away of the social stigma around sex outside of marriage played a big part as well. Traditional values around sex and marriage are oppressive, but they have always served as kind of breakwater against the harsh conditions the working class are exposed to. If children have a mom and a dad and they stay and work together as a basic social and economic unit they at least have a chance. It's one of the great dilemmas of a liberal society: do you give people the freedom to make bad life decisions when the outcome is widespread misery and problems for society as a whole?

Haven't infidelity rates always been relatively static though? Is it then more of a problem that our society insists on monogamous relationships as the norm? I get there are other reasons why monogamy is beneficial, but if there was wider acceptance of polyamory, leading to more stable marriages (even if they devolved into mutually beneficial partnerships), could that reverse the trend? Sorry, that was a bit of a run-on. Hopefully it made sense.

[Flash Walken]

What does family breakdown even mean?

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

What does family breakdown even mean?

I think he means that the rise in divorce rates and single parenthood contribute to the economic disparity between the upper and lower classes.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by rubecube

I think he means that the rise in divorce rates and single parenthood contribute to the economic disparity between the upper and lower classes.

But the same thing happened to families that weren't 'broken' when men's wages declined to the point where women had to enter the workforce to maintain the same standard of living or just to escape the poor house.

I guess if cliff is saying what you're saying that you could say that is a 'family' breakdown but it seems to me that it is more accurate to paint tjat as an economic breakdown.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

But the same thing happened to families that weren't 'broken' when men's wages declined to the point where women had to enter the workforce to maintain the same standard of living or just to escape the poor house.

I guess if cliff is saying what you're saying that you could say that is a 'family' breakdown but it seems to me that it is more accurate to paint tjat as an economic breakdown.

Well yeah, but it's more fun to blame feminists.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by rubecube

I get there are other reasons why monogamy is beneficial, but if there was wider acceptance of polyamory, leading to more stable marriages (even if they devolved into mutually beneficial partnerships), could that reverse the trend?

I don't know if there's any way to answer this except in a highly speculative way, but it's really interesting and I'm already wondering what Cliff's going to say. But what do you think?

I think I can hear Peter12 furiously typing already.

EDIT: It gets less interesting when ^ that happens. Nevermind I guess.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Well yeah, but it's more fun to blame feminists.

I blame the lack of moral fiber amongst today's rap-listening, flat-cap wearing, saggin' pants having urban youths.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I don't know if there's any way to answer this except in a highly speculative way, but it's really interesting and I'm already wondering what Cliff's going to say. But what do you think?

I think I can hear Peter12 furiously typing already.

EDIT: It gets less interesting when ^ that happens. Nevermind I guess.

Dude, the second post was a joke. Simmer down a little. And yes, I'm also waiting for Peter's "WTF?!" response.

EDIT: On a side note, am I really that much of a Poe?

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

What does family breakdown even mean?

The single-mom catastrophe

...In 1965, 93% of all American births were to women with marriage licenses. Over the next few decades, the percentage of babies with no father around rose steadily. As of 1970, 11% of births were to unmarried mothers; by 1990, that number had risen to 28%. Today, 41% of all births are to unmarried women...

...The single-mother revolution has been an economic catastrophe for women. Poverty remains relatively rare among married couples with children; the U.S. census puts only 8.8% of them in that category, up from 6.7% since the start of the Great Recession. But more than 40% of single-mother families are poor, up from 37% before the downturn. In the bottom quintile of earnings, most households are single people, many of them elderly. But of the two-fifths of bottom-quintile households that are families, 83% are headed by single mothers. The Brookings Institution's Isabel Sawhill calculates that virtually all the increase in child poverty in the United States since the 1970s would vanish if parents still married at 1970 rates...

...Scholars consistently find that unmarried men work fewer hours, make less money and get fewer promotions than do married men.

Experts have come to believe that these are not just selection effects — that is, they don't just reflect the fact that productive men are likelier to marry. Marriage itself, it seems, encourages male productivity. One study by Donna Ginther and Madeline Zavodny examined men who'd had shotgun marriages and thus probably hadn't been planning to tie the knot. The shotgun husbands nevertheless earned more than their single peers did...

- L.A. Times

Two Classes in America, Divided by 'I Do'

...But striking changes in family structure have also broadened income gaps and posed new barriers to upward mobility. College-educated Americans like the Faulkners are increasingly likely to marry one another, compounding their growing advantages in pay. Less-educated women like Ms. Schairer, who left college without finishing her degree, are growing less likely to marry at all, raising children on pinched paychecks that come in ones, not twos.

Estimates vary widely, but scholars have said that changes in marriage patterns — as opposed to changes in individual earnings — may account for as much as 40 percent of the growth in certain measures of inequality. Long a nation of economic extremes, the United States is also becoming a society of family haves and family have-nots, with marriage and its rewards evermore confined to the fortunate classes.

“It is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University...

...Less-educated women are also more likely to have children with more than one man. Analyzing nearly 2,000 mothers in their mid- to late 20s, Child Trends found that a third of those with high school degrees or less already had children with multiple men. So did 12 percent of mothers with some post-high-school training. But none of the women in the study who had finished college before giving birth had children with multiple men...

“That’s a dramatic difference, and it varies by education more than by race,” said Mindy Scott, a Child Trends demographer. “It tells you these families are on different trajectories. Having men in the house for a short time with ambiguous parenting roles can be really disruptive for children.”

- The New York Times

The decline of marriage has been catastrophic for the working class. And it can't all be laid at the feet of those evil capitalists. Having children without a stable partner is a choice. Abandoning your kids is a choice. If we can use social sanction and shaming to reduce racism and sexism, they we can use it to reduce a social ill that has even more egregious effects - women having children without a stable partner and men buggering off and neglecting their children.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

The decline of marriage has been catastrophic for the working class. And it can't all be laid at the feet of those evil capitalists. Having children without a stable partner is a choice. Abandoning your kids is a choice. If we can use social sanction and shaming to reduce racism and sexism, they we can use it to reduce a social ill that has even more egregious effects - women having children without a stable partner and men buggering off and neglecting their children.

Except you can't trot this out without also mentioning the restrictions on abortion and birth control.