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It’s a nice surprise to chat with you, here, about these things. I was just telling my girlfriend about how much I always loved hanging out with you when I was young, and even remembered this logic problem you gave me when I was maybe 6, about a worm eating its way through a set of encyclopedias of differing thicknesses, but at a constant rate! (Did you know I wound up working as an editor at Britannica.com for a while? Best. job. ever.)

In terms of the thread, on #1, I’m somewhat mystified about why lots of black folks see Sharpton and Jackson as leaders too, but I was also amazed at how many white folks loved Bush and saw him as their “leader.” I still can’t believe how many white folks wax dreamily about Reagan! I look at the Republican field right now, and with the exception of the now-departed Huntsman, I can’t see how ANYONE sees ANY of these assclowns as their “leaders.” It’s literally amazing and terrifying to me.

I agree with you, that family is crucial for community development. I just think there’s this…problematic phenomenon… of white folks presuming to tell black folks about their parenting, being way too comfy talking about dead-beat dads or things like that, which quite a lot of them learned about through the consistently racist idiot lens of Fox News. If “white” folks really care seriously about doing something to help black families in America, rather than just talking prescriptively about what THEY should do, I think white America should take on the abolition of the Drug War while also pressing forward with class actions lawsuits against the penal system for well-documented racial bias in sentencing. (It’s hard to imagine white Americans of conscience actually doing this, of course.)

But my point is that our policing and incarceration systems are well-documented racist institutions. It’s not controversial, it’s fact. So it seems to me that the most effective thing “we” could do — let’s say “we” in this case are those who take the project of making America live up to its rhetoric seriously — would be to force the reform of a demonstrably racist, costly, life-crippling legal system that marginalizes a huge portion of the Black community and disenfranchises them from participating in our electoral system. And part of that would be pushing for an end to the wrongheaded, ineffective, massively expensive War on Drugs. NOT because black folks do more drugs per capita (they don’t; white folks are ahead), but because our drug SENTENCING is so horrible discriminatory.

So, wrt #1, yeah, stable families and good home community, including stable extended kinship structures, are good. We could help in serious and solid, effective ways that don’t involve to-me-nebulous ideas about how black families should start this change with better leadership in their own families.

On #2, you fell into my trap! :) I was making a rhetorical point — anytime some inner city kid does something violent, it’s echoed and repeated. If some poor black idiot gets himself into trouble, guess who gets plastered all over Cops! or one of those shows, which will also surely show a run-down home or graffiti’d drive-up, then put the grieving mom under bright lights, while she’s still in curlers, making her look deranged? I AGREE with you that it’s not fair to characterize white folks as satanic school shooting cannibals with binge drinking problems, but my point was that this is just exactly the kind of thing most white folks in America do wrt their conceptions of black folks in America. They have cartoons in their heads that don’t represent reality, anymore than Jesse Jackson being a leader to the black community is reality.

Empirically speaking, it actually IS true that white folks in America are greater per capita drug “abusers” (take prescription drug abuse into consideration; it’s a “white” crime, in the same way shoplifting is, a sort of lesser category for no other reason than it’s exhibited primarily by white or wealthier people), more frequent binge drinkers, and it’s also true that all of our school shootings have been by white kids. I can dig up those stats somewhere, if you’re actually curious. It’s kind of shocking to see them, because they’re so opposite to the advertised reality. And I’m an athiest who doesn’t really see religion as being of much value (though I sometimes go to Quaker assemblies; Quakers aren’t hypocrites), but it is also true that folks of color are consistently almost twice as likely in polls to report that living a spiritual and moral life, and going to church, are priorities.

On #3, I feel like what I wrote above about sentencing guidelines and the Drug War is real and structural. Prisons are wasting everyone’s money! California has been spending more on prisons than on education for years now, largely because they thought it’d be good to adopt Washington State’s “Three Strikes” legislation, even though it makes no behavioral sense. They bankrupted themselves through this, not through social services or welfare, like right-wing ideologues constantly like to say. it was prisons. Just look at the pie chart of the California budget.

Of course, when you also have direct uncontroversial evidence of things like Reagan and Co. flying cocaine up from Latin America on their own private airlines, to be offloaded, turned into crack and flooded into inner-cities, so that Administration could fund its dirty illegal Latin American wars, I think it’s easy enough to see the REAL logic of our system.

Two organizations doing solid, real structural work on this are the Sentencing Project (which documents sentencing disparities and seeks reform), and the Drug Policy Alliance.

I’m glad we agree on the Drug War! All it’s done is criminalize a huge portion of Americans. The Drug War is un-American. If we give people better economic opportunities (actual opportunities, not “hand-outs,” to use right-wing code language), maybe figure out our dumb healthcare system so that parents and working people won’t have to be decimated by routine, predictable illnesses, then we WILL be fostering stronger, more cohesive families, ESPECIALLY for the poor, who are disproportionately those of color in the U.S.

You wrote: “What I’m suggesting is give those parents an opportunity to give their children a free education, through college and beyond, or via trade training if they prefer.” – I AGREE COMPLETELY WITH THIS! But last I checked, every higher education program has become more expensive, with no one predicting this will change.

Let me cite something really salient here that I think illustrates a huge fundamental truth about America and the plans of its elites. Nixon commissioned a report seeking to understand how to respond to and quell broad public dissent in the future. The report was many pages long, but it’s summary called for only two things: “The standard of living of the average American must decline, and the cost of higher education must rise.”

Deprive people of critical thinking skills and they can’t effectively respond to the challenges in their environment. Elites very much saw what happened in the 60s as a problem with uppity minorities getting too much sense of entitlement. The public school system — which used to be a gem, an absolute gem, and one of the greatest achievements America’s had — created too many leaders of color. It did what liberals hoped, which was level the playing field, but the true leaders of this country have never been even remotely liberal, and they’ve certainly never wanted an increase in independent leadership.

But you and I agree: we should be funding education, for everyone, and without putting those who seek an education into years of indentured interest-accumulating servitude. Maybe we could quit bailing out banks and giving subsidies to the “defense” industry, or letting our Iraq contractors “lose” tens of millions of dollars, so we’d have more than enough to do just that!

Thanks for the good wishes, Dennis. They’re warmly returned.

1) I think it’s wrong for white well-to-do people who are largely ignorant of black or Latino or Asian culture to presume to lecture them about best parenting or leadership practices.

First of all my point was to have their own leaders emphasis the importance of good parenting. Surely you must agree that good parenting is paramount in changing the culture. Exactly how is this message going to permeate if not injected by their own leadership? What is going to be the catalyst for change, for surely something has to change and if they continue to wait on the white majority then all is lost? It MUST originate internally. As far as their leaders go, I’m sure you are correct that many blacks do not view Jackson or Sharpton as their leader but a significant number do and I have never understood why. I see both of these individuals, and others of their ilk, as doing substantially more harm than good for those they ostensibly are attempting to help. Completely self serving as far as I’m concerned.

2) Last time I checked the facts, after all, it’s always a white kid in the suburbs shooting up his whole school, or engaging in some Satanic death cult ritual, or eating his parents. I’m serious. No school shootings in the inner city, and that was true even before they put metal detectors up all over the place. Or how about binge drinking and rioting?

It is extremely myopic to take such a small example as a manifestation of the overall characteristics of the white majority to single out isolated examples (school shootings) of aberrant behavior of a few white individuals. You have to be kidding when you mention “rioting”. I don’t believe there is any data indicating the white majority is more prone to rioting than minorities. I noticed you mentioned binge drinking but obviate drug use.

3) I tend to think we need to address problems at a structural level, whereas you *seem* to favor more emphasis on values and education.

I’m unclear what the specifics are concerning structural level. The structure is broken, both on the family level and instilling those values which will lead to a happy productive life.

4) I think I’d start by getting rid of all drug laws that disproportionately target minorities and tossing out their conviction records unless they involved violence.

I tend to agree with you here. In fact, the more I’ve thought about drug laws, and the fact we are losing the drug war, the more I am in favor of completely removing all drug laws. I believe there is one or more countries which have done so and also provided drugs at no charge. Think of the implications – no drug cartel, reduced crime, and the option to provide assistance free of charge to anyone wishing to remove drugs from their life. The billions of dollars spent to curtail drugs could be used to help those who really need and want the assistance to change their lives.

5) This isn’t about the ‘Murikan work ethic or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps or any of those hackneyed half-lies that prop up American civil religious belief, either, I don’t think. There are countless stories of insanely hard-working poor brown folks; moms with three jobs, or men who do back-breaking labor precious few white folks want to do, for minimum wage or worse. Or how about trying to find work when our demonstrably racist legal system has made it all but impossible to get anything but bottom feeder work?

Here’s the issue, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is by definition impossible. What I’m suggesting is give those parents an opportunity to give their children a free education, through college and beyond, or via trade training if they prefer. You indicate the white majority is only offering menial jobs at low pay. Without an education, what else can be expected? For young and older individuals what I would like to see is pay for learning, be it formal education or learning a trade. Then you will see individuals earn more. What other way is there as we have seen the result of just giving out money for nothing?

I’ve worked in corporate America my entire life and what I’ve observed is the opportunities minorities have been given when they have the proper training to advance through the workforce. They must be given this opportunity. The nuclear family will begin to re-surface and healing and advancement will take the forefront of the movement to improve to the benefit of all.

Brian, I hope all is well with you and you continue your fight to change the way things are because only through the efforts of individuals, and their ability to enlighten others, will change occur.

I’m not sure it’s good to make Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson de facto representatives of the black community, anymore than you can make any white politician a sweeping rep for white folks. I certainly know a lot of black people who don’t consider either of those two their representatives. So to me, that’s kind of a straw man argument. And while I’m also interested in the question you pose — the specific mechanism of reparations, in this case — I don’t see that as a valid criticism of Tim’s argument, because it’s basically saying he should write a book in an interview. We’re not even AT that stage yet, when most Americans aren’t even ready to admit the structural legacy of slavery. If he added that on to this, everyone would spend their time critiquing the specifics of that plan, rather than keeping the emphasis on the history and structural legacy of slavery.

This isn’t about the ‘Murikan work ethic or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps or any of those hackneyed half-lies that prop up American civil religious belief, either, I don’t think. There are countless stories of insanely hard-working poor brown folks; moms with three jobs, or men who do back-breaking labor precious few white folks want to do, for minimum wage or worse. Or how about trying to find work when our demonstrably racist legal system has made it all but impossible to get anything but bottom feeder work? I wish more white or privileged folks who hold these views would actually exposed themselves to true poverty or allow themselves to get to know people in true poverty, and NOT through charity events or expensive trips to impoverished places they leave after a designated period of time. I bet they’d be astonished at how hard a lot of folks in America work, for almost nothing.

I think it’s wrong for white well-to-do people who are largely ignorant of black or Latino or Asian culture to presume to lecture them about best parenting or leadership practices. Last time I checked the facts, after all, it’s always a white kid in the suburbs shooting up his whole school, or engaging in some Satanic death cult ritual, or eating his parents. I’m serious. No school shootings in the inner city, and that was true even before they put metal detectors up all over the place. Or how about binge drinking and rioting? Frat row. White boys. We just don’t call it rioting b/c it’s a bunch of white guys, and we don’t arrest them all and pin trumped up charges on them b/c, well, they’re just boys being rowdy. Stats also show folks of color are almost twice as likely to go to church than white folks.

What we DO agree on is that healthy families and work with integrity are valuable, and that members of any privileged class tend to develop an exaggerated sense of entitlement. I tend to think we need to address problems at a structural level, whereas you *seem* to favor more emphasis on values and education. I think I’d start by getting rid of all drug laws that disproportionately target minorities and tossing out their conviction records unless they involved violence.

I’m not personally expecting reparations to ever happen in America, anymore than they’ve happened for Native Americans. Empire just doesn’t work that way. Power is taken, not given.

One fascinating adjunct to this whole conversation is how America is predicted to become majority non-white by around 2050, and maybe sooner. Some people talk about this like it’s going to be the ball dropping from Times Square, (“Oh, it’s ON now!”), but the more likely reality is that by 2050, the majority of Asians and Latinos WILL be white. Black Americans can never achieve this shift, but the point is that whiteness itself is a semi-fictional, mutable category rooted in power relations. The Irish and Italians BECAME white in America, though they were basically black when they arrived — NO IRISH NEED APPLY, etc. They allied themselves with power: police forces, organized crime, municipal services, etc., and became part of the power structure.

Thanks again for reading and for taking the time to comment, Dennis. Hope you and everyone are well.

The second issue should be the concept of family. The value you place on yourself is reflected by the attachment you have for your offspring. It would seem to be an order of magnitude more difficult for a child to have self worth when abandoned by one or both parents. In raising a child the one issue a parent should strive for is to do everything possible to ensure their children have a better life than they had. To teach them love, compassion, honesty, integrity, respect for others and hard work are the essential steps to the ladder of a happy productive life.

Now let’s begin the process!

In 2010, I traveled to Mongolia for about three weeks after spending six months in China, and I went in part to see part of the herding life of nomads and some of the last free-ranging horses in the world. Unfortunately, many herding families have satellite dishes with zillions of global media channels, and it’s causing problems: many younger family members in Mongolia have seen Western ideals of wealth and comfort, and no longer wish to continue in their traditional lives. They’re flooding the capital city, UB, and living in slums, looking for mining work, rather than persisting in traditional, sustainable ways. The nomad family I stayed with spoke little English but knew all of the words to Lady Gaga’s songs and knew they wanted part of “the modern life.”

A small percentage of those of us in highly developed consumer/industrial nations are aware of how potentially omnicidal and personally/spiritually empty this system of living is, but I found it almost impossible to convey this to people in East Asia. Structurally speaking, the US is still the per capita worst offender when it comes to denuding the planet’s resources, but the so-called “developing” nations are the ones that will exercise a far greater systemic impact in the coming years. We could de-industrialize the US completely, tomorrow, but if China, India, Brazil and other large countries continued on an industrial path, it would make no difference for the planet.

To be clear, I’m not saying the goals of DGR aren’t admirable — it’s actually hard to argue with any of the underyling logic — I’m just curious what thought, if any, has been given to how to globalize DGR’s message.

I’m also curious about two other things that seem common sense, re DGR. The first involves how to openly espouse revolution and the destruction of the current globocorp system without attracting infiltration and disruption by those who are, within this understanding, our real and actual enemies. The radical environmental movement, due in no small part to its effectiveness and POTENTIAL effectiveness, has been heavily targeted, infiltrated, and reclassified as terrorist. There are active, well-documented government entrapment programs in place to incite well-meaning activists to commit extreme acts. These cointelpro ops are particularly pronounced–and sophisticated–on the West Coast.

I attended a DGR event in Austin — a medicinal and edible plant walk I was fairly keen to participate in — and I left early out of frustration. My main frustration was the guide’s up-front assumption that all who came were ignorant and in need of deep spiritual enlightenment: “We don’t see X around us, and we’ve forgotten Y,” etc — a blanket assumption of widespread ignorance that is alienating for anyone who’s not actually ignorant or sleepwalking. There was also very little information given on the walk itself — no more than I could have gotten with a cheap plant guide and a hour’s worth of time.

BUT: My biggest frustration was that the DGR tour “leaders” and lots of other folks, after giving a pithy up-front presentation about being opposed to civilization itself and being committed to bringing about its end, simply could not stop from snapping pictures of everybody throughout the tour. I’m 40, so maybe it’s generational, but are younger people so very ignorant of the invasive, surveilled reality of the times we live in? You should not engage in frankly pre-revolutionary subversive activity while taking pictures of yourself and your comrades so you can post them on Facebook! This is just…stupid. Or intentional, for other, more odious possible reasons I won’t speculate on.

This was just one DGR event, and I don’t hold that it’s emblematic of any others. But I *do* see a lot of Facebook DGR pages and lots of posting of pics and whatnot, and I can’t imagine a better research tool for our oppressors in law enforcement.