HawkGold
Well-Known Member
An article worth the read. Why is it important to Iowa football and maybe basketball. How Iowa does on the field this year as well as off the field will possibly impact the football program for years. We've seen a dip in recruiting. The coaches need no more missteps for sure, but an understanding needs to be built. https://www.news-gazette.com/opinio...gn=blox&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
I'll post a few highlights. He does post the obvious history back before the civil rights movement so I won't bother with those, you can read them. The writer is a retired USDA worker and involved in the Mennonite Church. It is of particular interest to me having grown in a Mennonite town in Iowa that at one time drove out a black teacher in my lifetime.
— Between 1986 and 2010, when Congress mandated a minimum five-year sentence for distribution of five grams of crack cocaine, a cheaper form of the drug mostly used by Black Americans, and the same five-year prison sentence for distribution of 500 grams of powder cocaine, a more expensive drug used mostly by White Americans but with the same effect as crack cocaine?
— In the 1990s, when according to Harvard Professor David R. Williams, Americans had been exposed to sufficient negative messages about Black Americans that 80 percent of White Americans hold unconscious bias against Black Americans?
— In 2006, when Blacks comprised 15 percent of American illicit drug users, 37 percent of those arrested for drug violations, 59 percent of those convicted and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison?
- In 2018, when data from 800 cities and counties showed Black people were arrested at a rate five times higher than White people?
— In 2019, when Black defendants were 22 times more likely to receive the death penalty for crimes whose victims are White, rather than Black, a bias the Supreme Court declared “inevitable”?
— In 2020, when the police report on the arrest of George Floyd read: “He was ordered to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later”?
Without a video, this would have become one of the 99.3 percent of police killings that do not result in charges.
— In 2020, when Black women were three times more likely to have a maternal death than White women, and 66 percent of these deaths were considered to be preventable?
— Are we a racist society in 2021, when Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told senators that the greatest domestic threat facing the United States comes from “those who advocate for the superiority of the White race”?
If you identify as a White person, it is likely that you will not think of yourself as racist, but the reality is that to grow up in the U.S. is to grow up with racist attitudes.
That doesn’t mean we are all inclined to join the KKK. It doesn’t mean that we have a moral failing.
It does mean that we have absorbed all of the negative stories about Black people, and they are firmly implanted in our psyche.
To not be racist takes intentional action, individually and collectively, to repudiate these pervasive distortions that have caused so much damage and suffering.
It is the result of deliberate policy that the median family wealth for White people is $171,000, compared with just $17,600 for Black people. For most of the history of our country, Black people were punished for any attempt to make their lives better, and then we wonder why their lives are not better.
We will continue to be a racist society as long as those of us who have profited enormously from generations of accumulated wealth, which was methodically denied to Black people, do not recognize the injustices of those structures and actively work to change them.
‘We must take the appropriate actions to correct the inherent bias’Systemic racism will end only with our intentional effort to see society for what it is and what it has done and is doing to Black people.
It is ironic that at this moment when it is critical that we learn the history of how Black people have been treated in our country, multiple state legislatures are passing laws that will make it illegal to teach that history.
Teaching this history is objectionable only for those who see the truth as a threat to the myth of White supremacy. Rejecting this history forces Black people to survive in an invented world that denies the reality that they live every day.
We can begin to remove systemic racism only when we begin to learn our history, not as we would like it to be, but as it is. With this knowledge, we must take the appropriate actions to correct the inherent bias in our current institutions that were established in a society that was defined by racism.
It will not be easy. It will not happen automatically. It will require structural change, but it is necessary if we are to be the country that we proclaim to be.
I'll post a few highlights. He does post the obvious history back before the civil rights movement so I won't bother with those, you can read them. The writer is a retired USDA worker and involved in the Mennonite Church. It is of particular interest to me having grown in a Mennonite town in Iowa that at one time drove out a black teacher in my lifetime.
— Between 1986 and 2010, when Congress mandated a minimum five-year sentence for distribution of five grams of crack cocaine, a cheaper form of the drug mostly used by Black Americans, and the same five-year prison sentence for distribution of 500 grams of powder cocaine, a more expensive drug used mostly by White Americans but with the same effect as crack cocaine?
— In the 1990s, when according to Harvard Professor David R. Williams, Americans had been exposed to sufficient negative messages about Black Americans that 80 percent of White Americans hold unconscious bias against Black Americans?
— In 2006, when Blacks comprised 15 percent of American illicit drug users, 37 percent of those arrested for drug violations, 59 percent of those convicted and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison?
- In 2018, when data from 800 cities and counties showed Black people were arrested at a rate five times higher than White people?
— In 2019, when Black defendants were 22 times more likely to receive the death penalty for crimes whose victims are White, rather than Black, a bias the Supreme Court declared “inevitable”?
— In 2020, when the police report on the arrest of George Floyd read: “He was ordered to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later”?
Without a video, this would have become one of the 99.3 percent of police killings that do not result in charges.
— In 2020, when Black women were three times more likely to have a maternal death than White women, and 66 percent of these deaths were considered to be preventable?
— Are we a racist society in 2021, when Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told senators that the greatest domestic threat facing the United States comes from “those who advocate for the superiority of the White race”?
If you identify as a White person, it is likely that you will not think of yourself as racist, but the reality is that to grow up in the U.S. is to grow up with racist attitudes.
That doesn’t mean we are all inclined to join the KKK. It doesn’t mean that we have a moral failing.
It does mean that we have absorbed all of the negative stories about Black people, and they are firmly implanted in our psyche.
To not be racist takes intentional action, individually and collectively, to repudiate these pervasive distortions that have caused so much damage and suffering.
It is the result of deliberate policy that the median family wealth for White people is $171,000, compared with just $17,600 for Black people. For most of the history of our country, Black people were punished for any attempt to make their lives better, and then we wonder why their lives are not better.
We will continue to be a racist society as long as those of us who have profited enormously from generations of accumulated wealth, which was methodically denied to Black people, do not recognize the injustices of those structures and actively work to change them.
‘We must take the appropriate actions to correct the inherent bias’Systemic racism will end only with our intentional effort to see society for what it is and what it has done and is doing to Black people.
It is ironic that at this moment when it is critical that we learn the history of how Black people have been treated in our country, multiple state legislatures are passing laws that will make it illegal to teach that history.
Teaching this history is objectionable only for those who see the truth as a threat to the myth of White supremacy. Rejecting this history forces Black people to survive in an invented world that denies the reality that they live every day.
We can begin to remove systemic racism only when we begin to learn our history, not as we would like it to be, but as it is. With this knowledge, we must take the appropriate actions to correct the inherent bias in our current institutions that were established in a society that was defined by racism.
It will not be easy. It will not happen automatically. It will require structural change, but it is necessary if we are to be the country that we proclaim to be.
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