Greg McDermott Suspension, Etc...

[ecasadoSBU]

Identity politics does suck. I do agree that we are Americans first and foremost. And everyone should feel that way. While I'm an immigrant and born abroad I definitely go about my life as an American and never feel like an outsider. I'm not saying we should erase our pasts or our differences. All I'm saying is that we don't have to emphasize our differences all the time. We have far more in common that unites us all.

With that said. Lets go Back to BET!!! Excited for 3PM!

[Django]

We are getting a bit off subject I'm afraid... but I will give my long two cents before this thread gets inevitably locked up.

Yes, there is racism. Yes, white Americans had a crazy head start with land ownership and wealth acquisition (whether by violent means, education, legal system preferences, etc). Yes, there was slavery. Yes, there is still some level of inequality in the system.

With that said. I think culture is a much more significant factor TODAY in the success of an individual in America than the other matters brought up above. Sadly, we don't get to pick which culture gets instilled on us from an early age as our parents and surroundings make that decision for us. Culture is so complex here in the USA because in this country it is greatly influenced by race while I noticed that in other countries I visited the culture you adopt has more to do with socioeconomic standing (Poor, middle-class, wealthy).

Which leads me to my very long actual post:

I brought up the issue of culture in the past to many in my Bronx community and I've gotten grilled so hard for bringing it up to the point that I been labeled "self hating", "white wannabe", "Racist" and all sorts of horrible things. I've come to the conclusion that it is a taboo subject not worth bringing up because it is far easier to blame someone else for all your problems than to assume responsibility and enact change in your community from within. I've lived in the South Bronx for 22 years, a native of the Dominican Republic and I have seen many of my fellow compatriots (Dominicans residing in NYC) pick up a very unproductive and damaging inner-city/Bronx culture that leads to nowhere. The same applies for most of the Bronx natives who I grew up and attended school with. Most of my classmates had a serious lack of appreciation for education, didn't respect our teachers or elders, and fell into gang violence, drugs, and other terrible things.

I couldn't understand it back then, but what the heck made my life so different from them? Well, I had a single immigrant mother with a vastly different culture than most of the people in the Bronx did. She valued education, didn't let me play ball in the block or hang outside with strangers, ensured I did my schoolwork first and that I read my summer books, and surrounded me with my extended family with similar values as opposed to friends/classmates. But for the kids at my local Bronx high school I was just another "white wannabe" which always puzzled the heck out of me. How can trying to get an education and better yourself be associated with "whiteness" in the hood? It's so damaging to our very own black and Hispanic communities.

Over the past couple of year I've come to understand that racial politics, the media, the music/movies/tv we are exposed to does more harm than good and furthers creates a sort of minority complex that destroys the drive to learn and to better themselves of much of our black/latino youth.

Last summer was the worst summer ever for my wife (also a native Dominican) and I, because she was a 3rd year medical student and she literally had to leave our South Bronx neighborhood behind and move into the "Middle Class", mostly "white" Morris Park/Albert Einstein Med housing for the summer as our neighborhood was unbearable with the late night block parties, music, alcohol, drugs, violent crime, riots and looting, on top of the pandemic. But we had no one to defend us because the cops were against the wall with the anti-cop racial rhetoric led by our very own mayor.

Our own community ousted us because the prevailing unproductive "culture" kicks out those from the community that are trying to do good for themselves and for the community. My wife which wants to serve her community felt defeated when she was pushed out by the madness. But the politicians don't want to hear anything about that. It greatly pissed me off to hear Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez bring up that the uptick of crime and looting was due to a rise in hunger and unemployment while I very well knew that the people hanging outside in the block were getting their $600 weekly checks to party all night while I had to get up at 6am the next day to serve at a major NYC hospital in the middle of a pandemic.

So who is going to take charge? Who is going to tell our community that we can and have to do better for ourselves? This is not a white, Hispanic, or black thing. We are in 2021 and we have the internet with a wealth of information to learn for free. Yes, white Americans had a head start. But our modern system is probably the best at incentivizing competition and while it has room for improvement - it works far better than the rest of the world. The USA is probably the only country were so many immigrant groups with difficult experiences have been able to thrive and succeed and catch up (see the Indian-American and Jewish for example).

At the end of the day I firmly believe that if you work hard&smart you will succeed in this country. Our community has to instill values of education, entrepreneurship, saving and investing capital, living well within your means. We need to adopt capitalist concepts and use it to move up the ladder. Its the only way. I tell people to buy real estate and to become landlords - they say "for what? that's too much work" yet they are the first ones to complain when gentrification pushes them out. Why don't we pool our savings and buy the rental buildings we have lived for decades and turn them into co-ops? Why don't we own the corner fried chicken joint yet we consume it every day? Why did we loot our independent immigrant-owned pharmacy in the block during the last crisis? So many questions!!!

Thanks so much for this read, so inspiring, I truly appreciate you. PLEASE, even though you had to move, DO NOT think for one minute you and your wife didn't make a difference and will continue to make a difference. I think most of us who grew up with serving others as a lifestyle have felt defeated at some point, but you have to know that people will remember you and your example. Even after you go people will miss you and you will inspire more people than you could ever imagine.

[billyjack]

Wow, this is like an episode of "All In The Family", lol.

I would just say that i definitely don't think it's a "cultural" thing. Life is hard and unfair and full of a million factors beyond our control... small paycheck, job loss, taking on debt, high rent, elderly parent, sick child, divorce, etc...

And the rules of the game are different for different people... It's like setting off on a cross-country race, but at the start some people are given a Ferrari, some a Range Rover (proud sponsor of the Big East) or a Jeep (proud sponsor of the Big East), or a 1975 AMC Hornet (car i lost my virginity in), or an Aries K-Car, or a freakin Yugo... meanwhile, some groups are having their cars sabotaged, and those drivers are just asking people to stop doing that, all the while being blamed for falling behind.

[MUBoxer]

Mullin let me preface my post by saying a lot of what you've posted in your previous three posts I agree with to varying degrees. I think you have failed to connect some dots to why things are the way they are and how systemic racism and lingering effects of actual legal racist policies have impacted race today.

I can relate to what you're saying about being upset about being lumped in with slave owners and antebellum southerners as my moms from Ireland, and my dads mom and dad are from Ireland and Italy respectively. However, you've admitted that you're aware of real estate practices in the past and how white flight effected things but in the same paragraph you seem to negate how these issues relate to education which you've repeatedly insinuated as a contributing factor to their own cultural issues. Let us take a suburb from post Jim Crow, Black Americans are pulling themselves up, many have gone to trade school or even college using GI bills from WW2. Unfortunately, white flight caused housing value to crash in what would become majority African American neighborhoods and what is education directly tied to? Housing value and tax dollars, without those education systems in predominantly african american neighborhoods crashed. Then there was the issue with white businesses leaving and banks making loans extremely difficult for African american entrepreneurs, this caused those same areas to crash even worse and the "successful african americans" then have to sell at a loss essentially bringing them back to the poverty they started in.

That's where the concept of privilege comes in, it's where your ancestors or mine haven't been forced to circle that drain of poverty. Example: My mom grew up in a 2 room stone house in rural Ireland, came here but was able to still attend a decent high school because of the Irish american neighborhoods around Chicago weren't going to move out from her family or force them out to a lesser neighborhood. In a similar instance, an African American family would try to move here from the Deep South, they'd get stuck with a crappy education lacking funding if they were to move to an African American neighborhood. I think it warrants an admission that while me and you shouldn't have the "white guilt" from those bygone eras, we have benefitted from American society despite our previous generations having been at or even lower economically than our African American brothers and sisters were at the same time.

That being said people are absolutely right there's a personal responsibility element, you even include education as a reason for the issues we have now, anecdotally my fiancé's a teacher at possibly the worst MPS high school and started as a cheery "these kids just need a chance from a good teacher" person and now is jaded and beaten down (4/32 kids in her class this AM for virtual school, heck she just wrote a college letter of recommendation for a valedictorian with a GPA of 2.63). This issue has been made worse by society trying to bandaid it by providing greater funding for schools that have more passing students and extra funding for college acceptance. Sounds great in theory but what is actually happening is bad schools are now going pass/fail and we're passing kids who shouldn't be passed. And then sending the top kids to take out huge student loans who don't have a prayer of making it in college (see the valedictorian with 2.63 GPA) which then makes them circle an endless drain of student debt without the advantage of a college degree.

On the self inflicted insinuation about "modern rap music", I recently read a book that talks about MLK's directives to over spend on suits and cars etc to get your "foot in the door" into white society so that you wouldn't be judged by the color of your skin. But white america now complains about mismanagement of money. See the rock and the hard place? Either you're a hoodlum viewed by white america or you yourself mismanage your money to try to put your best foot forward. That's why I made a point earlier about many of MLK's lesser known beliefs have not worked for the African American community as a whole. It's obviously taken a turn from polishing your car and buying a gentleman's suit over the years but thats where the prioritization of "guci and versaci" comes from initially. I don't think it's fair to just say this materialistic money mismanagement is solely an African American issue as there's a similar issue in poor white rural america only with "big toys" (trucks, atvs, motorbikes, expensive guns, boats).

You do mention culture, and I agree about much of that concept. Until a culture acknowledges it's own faults and a way to fix them there's not much another culture can do that'll work. That being said, I think it's important for us to acknowledge the lingering effects of prior policies even though they seem to be ancient history.

We can all agree this is a nuanced multifaceted issue, I think a lot of people simply want to say "it was over after jim crow" but it's not like that was a magic wand across the nation that preventing different loan rates, redlining, cop mindsets, judge mindsets, heck even in medicine they surveyed residents and a majority assumed that black skin was A) thicker and would require larger more larger painful needles to penetrate and B) that black individuals have a higher pain tolerance? And because of that the majority of black individuals are denied pain killers (even during labor) These are the type of things you can't pin on their community, that's on us.

As an add: The African immigrants vs African American success is a very interesting topic but a debate for a different time as it doesn't quite relate to lingering issues from legal racism.

[MullinMayhem]

Billy, made me laugh with the car reference and virginity lol. It's your opinion to think that, but at the end of the day, we make our own choices. Life is a series of choices. No one is "forced" to do anything. And if you think they are, the onus is on you or those who agree to demonstrate how and who is doing it explicitly. If you are told you are a victim and nothing can ever possibly be your fault, what you do is have many people live up to a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. And you just cause resentment and thus segregation. Who would want to hang out with a perceived "oppressor" that is said to "hate" them? If you have 2 children and you blame every shortcoming of one on the other kid (even when that kid made plenty of poor choices) "holding them back" day in and day out, that doesn't result in responsibility or unity. It leads to division, suspicion, and hate. This is why we are so divided as a country right now. If we treated our children this way, we'd be accused of child abuse pitting them against each other based on immutable characteristics for things that are much more in their control than they think. We saw what can happen in WWII when you have evil people play this thought out to its logical (and tragic) conclusion. What good can possibly come from blaming 65% of the country for literally every shortcoming POC may have in life? No good at all. MLK said only light can drive out darkness. Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Hate begets more hate. Love begets love. If everyone puts down their swords for a minute the way we did after 9/11 and come together, the country would be in a much better place today. High fatherlessness rates, out of wedlock births, embracing negative culture/values like instant gratification, identity politics, crime, etc. only leads to misery.

[ecasadoSBU]

Wow, this is like an episode of "All In The Family", lol.

I would just say that i definitely don't think it's a "cultural" thing. Life is hard and unfair and full of a million factors beyond our control... small paycheck, job loss, taking on debt, high rent, elderly parent, sick child, divorce, etc...

And the rules of the game are different for different people... It's like setting off on a cross-country race, but at the start some people are given a Ferrari, some a Range Rover (proud sponsor of the Big East) or a Jeep (proud sponsor of the Big East), or a 1975 AMC Hornet (car i lost my virginity in), or an Aries K-Car, or a freakin Yugo... meanwhile, some groups are having their cars sabotaged, and those drivers are just asking people to stop doing that, all the while being blamed for falling behind.

Yea, that all sounds good until you start realizing that so many other non-white groups also started behind and all of the sudden are leading the race and beating the Ferraris on their own race.

I absolutely believe that long term discipline, hard& smart work will beat the leaders at their own game. Why? Because the leaders often get comfortable, get lazy, and just sit on their capital hoping it will give them fat returns.

Now, the moment you make a person feel that he is not in control of his own destiny is the moment you will forever destroy that life and his drive for self-improvement. Don't continue furthering that agenda. I know its well intended. But it does more harm than good.

Yes, we need social programs that help the economically disadvantaged catch up. Yes, we need anti-bias training and all those good things at the workplace and in our public institutions. But that isn't enough. We also need people to be held accountable and to assume the responsibility to learn, play the capitalist game, and climb the ladder. That's really the only way for long term success of my community

[Xudash]

ecasadoSBU thanks for your perspective. None of these issues are easy. The only way to gain perspective and understanding is to have open dialogue about different experiences. What’s great about the American experiment is that the tent is a big one and I agree that hard work and perseverance can be the great equalizer. Your story is a great one—child of an immigrant constantly working towards their American dream. Thanks for sharing.

MM you are right. There are many variables that make it a complex issue. Using my Nova friend as an example as well as ecasadoSBU sure this is still America. Hard work overcomes a lot. My point was that in comparing the two of us, the pressure applied to him daily because of skin color is not an experience I have ever had to deal with or even think about. But for him, even during a diversion—a college hoops game with Alum friends— he was still treated as something less. That was a simple snapshot in time. He’s told me about far worse. So to your point, yes, he was counter-cultural and his upbringing led him to get a great education and job. But that education and socio-economic status still does not overcome regular occurrences of being “put in his place.” In this instance by a couple security guards merely because of his skin tone. As someone who genuinely loves the guy it was a heartbreaking moment because the implications of it all was painfully obvious to us all.

The following is my opinion based on how I have come to understand the subject of Biases:

Biases are REAL. We have all sorts of positive and negative biases (aka stereotypes) in our mind as soon as we meet someone. The problem with biases is that they exist in the human mind and its impossible (at least for now) to control people's thoughts. What we CAN control as a society is to ensure that biases are not codified into legal system, that they are reduced to a minimum in the judicial system (i.e: by having a balanced and diverse Jury), and that our economic system remains free from biases (i.e: redlining, Jim Crow, hiring policies, etc)

The reality is that some groups disproportionately benefit from positive stereotypes/biases while others are disproportionately harmed by negative stereotypes/biases:

I say that the best approach is to live with the biases and do the best to change them from negative to a positive one with your actions. What do I mean by that?

(1) I can spend my whole life being pissed off and discouraged that the only thing people think when I say I'm a native of the D.R is that I must be a good baseball player, and that I can't possibly be a good IT programmer...

OR

(2) I can work hard to be the best programmer I can be, encourage other Dominican-Americans to become programmers, and slowly as the rest of the population encounters more Dominican-American programmers the baseball bias will be neutralized or will evolve into a positive bias. NOTE: There will always be a bias - the question is whether a sub-population benefits from more positive ones than negatives


Does that make sense?

So white Americans, largely due to the benefit of their aggressive (literally) head start have been able to somewhat proportionately distribute themselves across the socioeconomic pyramid to the point that the biases people have regarding white Americans are largely neutralized. For example - There is a pile of negative biases linked with rural Appalachian Whites, but there is bunch of positive biases linked with Urban whites from NYC/Boston, and so on. White Americans are all over the ladder to the point that it becomes difficult to "stereotype" them.

Now, Speaking for my Hispanic-Americans and black American brothers - what we have to do is work our butts off to ensure that there are more successful examples of us out there to change those stereotypes. But we have to work 3x as hard as everyone else to catch up using the capitalist system. The fact of the matter is that no matter how much we complain about the current negative biases linked to our groups - nothing will change unless we climb the ladder in more proportionate numbers. White Americans won't help us there - no one will. Why would anyone help you in this competitive system? It's up to us to take charge - to live with the negative biases for now and not let them discourage you, but instead use it to drive you to get you to who you aspire to be.

The problem with our current 21st century approach is that we want to force people to change their biases. That will never work. You cannot change what a cop, what a professor, what CEO thinks when he first sees you no matter how many laws you put in place. However, you can show with effort and hard work that you don't meet their negative bias when they first met you. Once they see more of you in numbers their biases will slowly start changing and they will want to hire more of you -because not hiring you will place them in a competitive disadvantage.

Now, going back to your Nova friend. He can either (1) feel demoralized and enraged and never attend another game or (2) he can take the other route and look around and question why there is such few people that look like him attending CBB game (trust me - I question why there aren't enough Hispanics that look like me when I attend the BET) and take charge and say "I will do everything possible to mentor/teach my community so that the next generation of Nova alumni have more people that look like me so that I can change that negative bias into a positive one"


Any other approach is business as usual and will do nothing to help our community grow stronger. If you need more proof just look at the last 60 years. What proportion of our population makes part of the middle class? Upper Class? Now, go ahead and compare with pre-1960s. Not much has changed, right?

ecasadoSBU -- One of the best posts I've ever read on any subject in my life.

If an individual is focused on improving themselves so that they may lead a purposeful life on an ethical and moral basis, then that's the individual I want to know. Race be damned, if you will. And always keep the finer, enriching aspects of a culture as cultural members lift themselves up by taking advantage of what this country has to offer. That is what makes this such a great country when the positive aspects of different cultures mingle together (e.g. St. Patrick's Day, Cinco de Mayo, etc.). Food, music, dance - the whole smash. It would get immensely boring if we were reduced to only having afternoon tea with chamber music.

It won't be easy (to Gumby's point about his friend's personal experience and your eloquent discussion concerning biases). But it beats giving up, making excuses, copping out and invoking all forms of "anti" responses that lead to further damage, destruction and deeper biases. Burning cities? Looting? No. Sorry. Not a good look and certainly the wrong way to respond, even in the face of prejudice and bigotry and whatever else is out there that is stirring up all this angst.

A purely anecdotal example of where I believe you're coming from: I am a white,64-year old male who happens to have Marvin Gaye in my top favorite musical artists list. Might be a silly way to look at it, but all I'm saying is that Marvin Gaye was a gifted man with a talent and purpose, who appeared to lead a good, responsible life and who wrote damn fine music. I could care less that he was black. In fact, his beautiful music was partially the product of his culture. His troubled preacher father shot him to death because he apparently envied his success. What's Going On?

[xman]

Great discussion here guys and I appreciate an overall positive dialogue on such tough topics.

[MUBoxer]

Just want to point out that Marvin Gaye had a well documented drug problem, violent clashes within his first marriage, the. an open marriage, multiple suicide attempts, some other stuff mixed in there too. I'm just saying you can't say he lead a responsible life anymore so than half of the rappers or rock stars out there.

Damn fine music though, damn fine

[MullinMayhem]

Agree, great posts and civility all around. I think it becomes more clear to go with the children example.

Let's say you have Mike and John as sons. Say, 8 yrs old or so. Mike is very successful in school, has lots of friends, and does very well in sports. John on the other hand, has difficulty in school, some friends but not as many, and does not do well in sports, because he does not put in the effort required. As the father, you come over to John who looks upset and jealous. You tell him, "listen John, you are doing everything perfectly...the only reason you aren't succeeding like Mike is because Mike is oppressing you. You are a victim of him. He hates you and wants you to do poorly". Imagine telling him that every day 24/7 for years and years and years. How do you think John is going to grow up? Is he going to be successful? Probably not. Is he going to want to achieve and put the work/effort in to succeed? Why should he? After all, Mike only exists to tear him down. He is a victim and is hopelessly oppressed.

All this mindset does is create a cancer for race relations. You can acknowledge some head starts, previous inequalities, current inequalities, but we will never, never, never see anything seriously improve until the change happens from within the so called oppressed group. We need more positive male role models in the inner cities. No not Meek Mill or LeBron. More like Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Lawyers...welders...construction workers...doctors...teachers. We need town halls, we need meetings, and we need POSITIVE culture promoted. That IMO is the main way to solve much of these issues if they are embraced. Many inner city kids think their only ticket out of the hood is to be a rapper or athlete...or sell drugs. Not true. They can go to a trade school and make an easy $100k+ with tons of potential for overtime and maybe make way more. They probably don't even realize that.