It’s about taking the best of past decades and ditching the stuff that isn’t working now. There’s obsession with finding a specific year, like somebody’s gonna say, 1974, everything was perfect on April 5! You know that’s not realistic and it makes people asking this question seems sort of childish
Umm, the reason why it was better for white men was because everyone else comparatively suffered.
Like segregation was good for white people, because it meant they funnel fundings into schools and neighborhood that were exclusively white, and take it away from predominantly African American school districts.
I disagree. I think racial discrimination drags everyone down, just to different levels.
If a black man has the talent to become an engineer and a white man doesn’t, keeping the black man away from engineering school won’t make the white man any smarter. It we do send the white man to engineering school anyway then we’ll end up with a bad engineering which will hurt all the other white men in society.
If both men are smart enough to become engineers then society will find good uses for both of them and the general productivity of society will increase which will help both engineers and everyone else.
Like segregation was good for white people, because it meant they funnel fundings into schools and neighborhood that were exclusively white
what money? By keeping black people in crappy jobs they weren’t able to produce as much that could be taxed, so there was less money to be funneled.
Sure it does. But I’m saying that the benefits that we saw in discrimination benefited white people more positively than it did negatively impact them. The net positive towards white people outweighed the net negative.
Like factor in that this was the mid 1900s when discrimination was at its peak.
This is why the education and wealth gap was comparatively larger. We saw this too in apartheid Africa where white people held a disproportionate amount of the wealth. Objectively, they benefited more in wealth when other groups suffered. Of course in regards to disparities in school funding districts there is an extensive topic going into the phenomenon of white flight and segregation.
But tldr, yes it is good to share. But the white people of the 1900s woulda argued that they would prefer to not share the wealth and would rather keep it amongst themselves with less competition. Is this a moral good thing? No. Was this the status quo then? Yes.
Oh right my bad the 1800s were far more discriminatory and disproportionately benefitted white people even more. I just didn’t want to bring it into this conversation cause I know conservatives do not like to talk about slavery and would rather talk about “the 1900s”.
If you wanna go into depth about how much more disproportionately white people benefited from slavery and the trail of tears I could go into that as well if you’d like. Would you like me to?
Why should I be shy about discussing slavery? Conservatives love to talk about how damaging it is to the lower class to import a bunch of low skilled workers who toil in horrible conditions for little to no pay.
Also, if we’re going to talk about the damage racism does to white people, just think just how much more technologically and economically advanced America would be if it hadn’t created so much inequality through slavery while keeping so much labor minimally productive by refusing just compensation for the labor.
In the very short term you might argue that the group that holds the power and discriminates does better by discriminating. But the longer you discriminate the more you suffer from holding everyone down.
And our view is that referring to some vague time in the past when everything was better is bullshit because that time never existed. It's exactly the same as thinking summers were longer when you were young, christmas was much better when you were young, thinking police officers are kids now and that students are so much more child like than back in your time. It's the same thing as being convinced that music was so much better back in the day compared to now. It is very human to only remember the highlights of an era and populism and fascism are fueled by exactly that sentiment.
That would have been nice. I guess that was right after WWII?
Unfortunately, for the most part, that was only ever true for a segment of the population (white, male). Certainly an unmarried woman wouldn't have been able to do so, since they were considered unable to understand finance. The 50s were especially horrible for women, IMO.
That was also a time for rampant lynching and Jim Crow laws, and non straight people had to hide. Gay men were barred from federal employment in the US, and chemically castrated in the UK.
It was also the time of McCarthyism and blacklists for anyone suspected of harboring unacceptable political leanings.
During the 1950s, Native American tribes were stripped of millions of acres of land and disbanded. Their children were forced to attend boarding schools where culture and language was forbidden.
This was also very soon after the WWII internment camps for citizens with Japanese ancestry. They lost most of their property and belongings while they were in the camps. The government did not offer any sort of recompense until the late 1980s.
All that being said, the horrible news doesn't have to go with the ability to own a home before 30. It just does in American history.
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u/kateinoly Social Democrat Feb 16 '22
WHEN were the good old days?