Carson? What a dumb fuck.
Actually that is where he is getting it from. There was an economist who said unemployment is more like 42%. Essentially he took the entire lot of working age peopleâŚso 16-65. and then said well anyone not working 40 hours per week in a job is clearly unemployed. Well no jackwagon. There are students, early retirees. Disabled. independently wealthy. part time workers. stay at home parents. etc etc etc.
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Because Carson is factually right.
But, being on the other team and pursuing adversarial goals, the happy mutants seem eager to dismiss the statement instead of just dismissing his intent. Which I consider to be essentially a tribalist blindness, in violation of principles of rational inquiry and discourse.
Iâm sort of a vigilante advocate of procedural fairness. Thatâs just my thing in life.
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Seems to me that youâre acting more like the pedantic political equivalent of a Grammar Nazi.
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Perhaps. But grammar errors donât tend to have real-world repercussions. Errors in thinking do.
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If thereâs one thing that will overturn the white dominated hierarchy, itâs black people fighting with other black people about âlegitimacy.â
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Itâs kind of part of everyoneâs experience. When someone answers the phone you can tell they are talking to their mother (the one exception I knew to this rule was someone with Aspergers). We all have work voice and home voice. The difference for black Americans (and all visible minorities) is that they have to face a higher level of scrutiny on their work voice. A black person working customer service has to be more polite and more friendly to get the same positive reaction, and even then they know there are some people who will never accept any level of service as good enough.
I think the same thing applies to being âpresidential.â Obama just had to be more presidential than anyone else in the field. Ben Carson did too, if he wanted to win. At this point, since we know the outcome, it would be pretty hard to seriously say that Obamaâs upbringing didnât in some way to prepare him for that better than most (better than most everyone, not just most black Americans). But I think there are two variables that are impossible to separate out for an individual: how good is someone at doing what they need to do (appear presidential) and how much is the standard inflated for that person. In the population we can see that the standard is clearly inflated for black Americans in virtually any role (even winning a grammy for rap), but we can only prove that on the aggregate (hence police get away with killing because they are judged on the individual case).
If we imagine âpresidentialnessâ was quantifiable Obama needed to be 10.5 presidential and Ben Carson, being âblackerâ needs to be 10.8 (or, more likely, being republican and black needs to be about a million), or maybe Carson and Obama both need to be 20, itâs just that Obama actually is 20 and Carson is more like 18 (or -20 when he starts talking about the pyramids). Since presidentialness is not quantifiable (with current technology) I think the discussion of whether Obama had it easier is moot. What we can say for sure is that he had it harder than if he had been white.
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Whatever Carsonâs other⌠idiosyncrasies, I canât fault him on this particular observation. Obamaâs experience doesnât seem typical of the average African-American (whoever that unlucky person is), and I donât think itâs wrong of Carson to point that out, even for out-and-out political advantage. The barrier of âno Black presidentâ has been broken now, but that doesnât mean that Americans should follow the white inclination to hang up the boxing gloves and retire now that itâs been âprovenâ that Americans arenât prejudiced or whatever rationalisation they have for voting for the same old white guys again.
By all means, other non-white politicians should be banging on the door to the Oval Office, saying that theyâre more Black than the other guy, or more Latino or female or whatever, if it will get them votes. Thatâs how it works, right?
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They fear the black rageâŚ
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I still think thatâs a silly thing to point out, because BY DEFINITION the first person to break the race barrier to the White House was going to have an atypical experience for people of that race.
ETA: If Hillary wins this election then her experience wonât be typical for women of her generation either.
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And whatâs the âerror in thinkingâ that you think youâre helping us to see?
I doubt that anyone here is failing to see that Obamaâs upbringing was unusual. Thing is, thatâs not the issue at hand.
You characterized the âhappy mutantâ tribe here this way:
But AFAICT, no one here is dismissing the claim that Obamaâs upbringing was unusual. What is being dismissed and ridiculed is, yes, Carsonâs obvious intent in bringing it up. Heâs trying, in his own sad, twisted version of âtribal blindness,â to claim that his urban upbringing makes him more authentically African American, and thus more viable as a president than Obama.
To the extent that thereâs a happy mutant hive mind here, I donât think itâs oblivious to the claim that Obamaâs upbringing was unusual. Itâs just focused on something thatâs more significant than that (Carsonâs foolishly ironic deployment of identity politics). And itâs come to appear that if anyone is on a team âand pursuing adversarial goals,â itâs you.
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Well, sure, but Obama looks atypical even when you restrict the pool to Black politicians, who are going to be atypical compared to the average Black person. Politicians are an atypical lot, looked at one way, or theyâre hyper-typical representatives of a political species, looked at another. Obamaâs an outlier, either way.
And, yes, the first person to do X is going to be unusual, logically and experientially, but that doesnât mean that Carsonâs wrong to point out the unusuality of the first Black president.
This is an excellent point, but you are being considerably more charitable than I to attribute it to Ben Carson. Still, you are right, if he can somehow get Republican votes by claiming to the âblackestâ man to run for president, then⌠well, I would say âmore power to himâ except that he would apparently already have the power to completely re-write reality.
I guess for me this is less about second guessing Ben Carsonâs right to talk about his experience of being black in America (I wouldnât do that) and it is more about shaking my head at how crazy Ben Carson is.
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Republicans, and particularly Trump, seems to be appealing to people who either do not have internet, or completely fail at google-fu. The worst I can find quickly (from last year, mind) is Camden, NJ at 12%. Maybe we should be asking who, exactly is so damned concerned about the unemployment rate? Is he trying to appeal to senior citizens worried about having enough whipper-snappers to keep social security flush?
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I have a problem with employmentâŚbut not unemployment.
My concern is why have bottom workerâs wages only risen at a fraction of the rate executive compensation has risen over the same time frame? Solve that damn riddle.
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I have edited my statement to make it clearer. Of course it wasnât illegal most states, but in the others they could be arrested for being married and or spending the night together.
I can afford to be charitable, heâs not my potential president. Still looking forward to a non-white Prime Minister, here. Or member of the Royal Family, either would be good.
Even a crazy clock can be right once a day. Or not, I dunno.
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I see Carsonâs commentary on Obamaâs background as a variation of the attack other GOP politicians have been using against Obama for years: âThis President is DIFFERENT and kinda FOREIGN and SUSPICIOUSLY WELL-READ and not a REAL AMERICAN like you and me.â
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You can make that obvious by saying âIf Hillary returns to the White House, then her experience wonât be typical for women of her generation eitherâ
back when I was a kid we had to walk 5 hectares to get grain from the pyramid to make our bread. Can Obama say the same?!?
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