My life-partner is African-American, we put her daughter through the Baltimore school system, and now are watching her grand-daughter do very well in the same system. The students who want to learn are the students who learn. The school superindendant is black, the school principal is black, the teachers are mostly black, the mayor is black, the city councilman for the district is black, so who is doing the discriminating? All are Democrats by the way. Pity is, in the last election only 14% of the eligible voters went to the polls, so if they had felt things needed changing maybe more of them should have turned up to vote. Meantime Baltimore spends $18,000 per year per student in the system, more than most other systems in the country, and more than enough to bring in the best educators one would think for the kids who are amost 80% minorities.
I do have another life, other than Charlton Life, so I won't ever get into long discussions with those with well-rehearsed extreme viewpoints as my own viewpoint is not extreme, and quite flexible. Neither will I, unless really pushed, dismiss another's point of view as "bollocks", as is the reactive and insulting norm of some on this forum. This morning, my beans on toast was much more important to me than picking apart a diatribe of manufactured and rehearsed extremism. My point of view is not complicated, I believe that government, as it has become, is too big, too expensive and too intrusive. I don't for one minute want to revert to the "Wild West", and accept that limited government is necessary for defense and infrastructure. I don't accept the point of view that if one fails, one is discarded or left behind, and I feel that the U.S. is remarkable in it's acceptance of failure, and that here everyone gets, at least, a second chance.
What about those that don't get a first chance ?
There are obviously a few who need looking after "cradle to grave".
Or maybe those that are so discriminated against in terms of education that they never get a first chance.
Do you have first-hand knowledge of that?
Is that a serious question ? Why would I need to have first hand experience to know that the education system in the USA is racist and failing the black community. It's on record.
Why every time a community is failing is it a governments fault? I do not and never will buy into that liberal crap, some people are lazy, some people aren't.
I do have another life, other than Charlton Life, so I won't ever get into long discussions with those with well-rehearsed extreme viewpoints as my own viewpoint is not extreme, and quite flexible. Neither will I, unless really pushed, dismiss another's point of view as "bollocks", as is the reactive and insulting norm of some on this forum. This morning, my beans on toast was much more important to me than picking apart a diatribe of manufactured and rehearsed extremism. My point of view is not complicated, I believe that government, as it has become, is too big, too expensive and too intrusive. I don't for one minute want to revert to the "Wild West", and accept that limited government is necessary for defense and infrastructure. I don't accept the point of view that if one fails, one is discarded or left behind, and I feel that the U.S. is remarkable in it's acceptance of failure, and that here everyone gets, at least, a second chance.
What about those that don't get a first chance ?
There are obviously a few who need looking after "cradle to grave".
Or maybe those that are so discriminated against in terms of education that they never get a first chance.
Do you have first-hand knowledge of that?
Is that a serious question ? Why would I need to have first hand experience to know that the education system in the USA is racist and failing the black community. It's on record.
Why every time a community is failing is it a governments fault? I do not and never will buy into that liberal crap, some people are lazy, some people aren't.
Well the source for that is the USA official findings so ?
I do have another life, other than Charlton Life, so I won't ever get into long discussions with those with well-rehearsed extreme viewpoints as my own viewpoint is not extreme, and quite flexible. Neither will I, unless really pushed, dismiss another's point of view as "bollocks", as is the reactive and insulting norm of some on this forum. This morning, my beans on toast was much more important to me than picking apart a diatribe of manufactured and rehearsed extremism. My point of view is not complicated, I believe that government, as it has become, is too big, too expensive and too intrusive. I don't for one minute want to revert to the "Wild West", and accept that limited government is necessary for defense and infrastructure. I don't accept the point of view that if one fails, one is discarded or left behind, and I feel that the U.S. is remarkable in it's acceptance of failure, and that here everyone gets, at least, a second chance.
What about those that don't get a first chance ?
There are obviously a few who need looking after "cradle to grave".
Or maybe those that are so discriminated against in terms of education that they never get a first chance.
Do you have first-hand knowledge of that?
Is that a serious question ? Why would I need to have first hand experience to know that the education system in the USA is racist and failing the black community. It's on record.
Why every time a community is failing is it a governments fault? I do not and never will buy into that liberal crap, some people are lazy, some people aren't.
Well the source for that is the USA official findings so ?
Well whenever I post a link it gets ignored or I get told its not reliable and I should go read the guardian, so my response to you is that link is not reliable and you should go read the telegraph or the mail.
I do have another life, other than Charlton Life, so I won't ever get into long discussions with those with well-rehearsed extreme viewpoints as my own viewpoint is not extreme, and quite flexible. Neither will I, unless really pushed, dismiss another's point of view as "bollocks", as is the reactive and insulting norm of some on this forum. This morning, my beans on toast was much more important to me than picking apart a diatribe of manufactured and rehearsed extremism. My point of view is not complicated, I believe that government, as it has become, is too big, too expensive and too intrusive. I don't for one minute want to revert to the "Wild West", and accept that limited government is necessary for defense and infrastructure. I don't accept the point of view that if one fails, one is discarded or left behind, and I feel that the U.S. is remarkable in it's acceptance of failure, and that here everyone gets, at least, a second chance.
What about those that don't get a first chance ?
There are obviously a few who need looking after "cradle to grave".
Or maybe those that are so discriminated against in terms of education that they never get a first chance.
Do you have first-hand knowledge of that?
Is that a serious question ? Why would I need to have first hand experience to know that the education system in the USA is racist and failing the black community. It's on record.
Why every time a community is failing is it a governments fault? I do not and never will buy into that liberal crap, some people are lazy, some people aren't.
Well the source for that is the USA official findings so ?
Well whenever I post a link it gets ignored or I get told its not reliable and I should go read the guardian, so my response to you is that link is not reliable and you should go read the telegraph or the mail.
Fair enough if you don't accept the findings of The US Education Department. Not really sure what stats you would prefer. Or actually I think I do.
I do have another life, other than Charlton Life, so I won't ever get into long discussions with those with well-rehearsed extreme viewpoints as my own viewpoint is not extreme, and quite flexible. Neither will I, unless really pushed, dismiss another's point of view as "bollocks", as is the reactive and insulting norm of some on this forum. This morning, my beans on toast was much more important to me than picking apart a diatribe of manufactured and rehearsed extremism. My point of view is not complicated, I believe that government, as it has become, is too big, too expensive and too intrusive. I don't for one minute want to revert to the "Wild West", and accept that limited government is necessary for defense and infrastructure. I don't accept the point of view that if one fails, one is discarded or left behind, and I feel that the U.S. is remarkable in it's acceptance of failure, and that here everyone gets, at least, a second chance.
What about those that don't get a first chance ?
There are obviously a few who need looking after "cradle to grave".
Or maybe those that are so discriminated against in terms of education that they never get a first chance.
Do you have first-hand knowledge of that?
Is that a serious question ? Why would I need to have first hand experience to know that the education system in the USA is racist and failing the black community. It's on record.
Why every time a community is failing is it a governments fault? I do not and never will buy into that liberal crap, some people are lazy, some people aren't.
Well the source for that is the USA official findings so ?
Well whenever I post a link it gets ignored or I get told its not reliable and I should go read the guardian, so my response to you is that link is not reliable and you should go read the telegraph or the mail.
Fair enough if you don't accept the findings of The US Education Department. Not really sure what stats you would prefer. Or actually I think I do.
All silliness aside SHG I think it's impossible to knock up a survey that indictes one ethnic background has it harder than another, the institutional racism card gets thrown around too much these days you only gotta look at the society of black lawyers nonsense about the FA, all it shows is more evidence of the PC brigade losing their marbels again.
Let's face it guys, the American Dream, a big part of which was social mobility and the opportunity to pursue wealth may not be totally dead but is certainly on life support. It's this which is the country's big problem. Not Islamic terrorists or Mexican illegals.
I read somewhere recently, probably in the Economist, that there is, now, only one place where you have a fairly good chance of actually achieving the American Dream: it's called Europe. (I guess that's one reason why we are so popular to economic migrants.)
PWS some of the other comments on this
As to the first point, yes, you are absolutely correct. Real wages for workers have staggered over the last 40-odd years. Tracking social mobility on a broad basis in a scientifically verifiable manner is very difficult, but it definitely seems that what increases in social status there are are minimal, and a lot of them come from migrant class (a class near the bottom of the caste).
As for Europe, I can't speak to that. I read a while back that social mobility within England was quite limited.
But, back to the USA, a country I am very fond of, basically and in a language they'd understand, they are going to hell in a handcart. We're talking about a country where around 20mn of its residents live in a caravan. Usually a pretty unpleasant one too. Where one third of its kids are overweight or obese but they still think it's a good idea to bus them to school. And then trash their spacial awareness by making all traffic stop while the buses disgorge their piles of blubber.
Meanwhile the average age of an American's car is 11.5 years and rising. (By comparison, in the UK it's 7.5). American cars, too, are not the fully loaded expensive models we've come to demand in the UK but rather an inferior version with less of the gizmos and a wheezing engine - oh what happened to the glorious V8s? Their actual houses tend to be made of some softwood covered in a lot of Tyvec and clad in plastic, their power cables adorn every street (too expensive to put them underground) and fall down when there's the first winter storm.
I know nothing about cars, but as for obesity, it's certainly a large problem, but it's just one faction of our massive public health issues. I think sometimes it's overstressed that leads to shaming people instead of educating them, let alone trying to change a system where the only food available to poor and working class families is some of the shittiest food.
For years and strangely usually at the behest of its citizens the USA has been focussing on entirely the wrong things. We aspire (however longingly) to the expensive. They demand the cheap, which is why t-shirts are now made in China or Vietnam and last about a week or so. America, whatever happened to the crafted US Cotton T-shirt which was beautifully made and would last longer than a Dodge Ram? Frankly, I think they are in a bad place and no matter who they get as President it will only get worse. No country, where 90% of the population owns a bible and 50% of them believe in a literal interpretation of it, has a snowball in hell's chance of ultimate success. God Bless America cos they are going to need all the help they can get once the mineral wealth is played out.
I don't think we're alone in demanding things on the cheap, and I would venture that the drive for cheap goods is driven by low real wages. Hence the incredible boom of stores like Walmart and Target.
As for the American dream itself, I have long held it to be a myth or fairytale far more than a social truth. If we start toward the end of the 1800s, just before the mass boom of industrialization and migrants mobility of note often took 2-3 generations. While waiting for it, many lived in absolutely terrible squalor. That gap shrunk for some baby boomers, but they were usually white, Judeo-Christian working class people from the "right" part of the country--or they migrated there (my mother is an example of this, she was born in an 800 person town in central Illinois but moved to Chicago).
In general, while the boom of the 50s-70s move many up, it also left many behind. And starting in the 70s, jobs started moving to cities and then gradually overseas, and, well, here we are. And we don't talk about it on a national scale, and instead many small towns and rural areas fight tooth and nail and provide ridiculous tax breaks for any business coming to the area.
My life-partner is African-American, we put her daughter through the Baltimore school system, and now are watching her grand-daughter do very well in the same system. The students who want to learn are the students who learn. The school superindendant is black, the school principal is black, the teachers are mostly black, the mayor is black, the city councilman for the district is black, so who is doing the discriminating? All are Democrats by the way. Pity is, in the last election only 14% of the eligible voters went to the polls, so if they had felt things needed changing maybe more of them should have turned up to vote. Meantime Baltimore spends $18,000 per year per student in the system, more than most other systems in the country, and more than enough to bring in the best educators one would think for the kids who are amost 80% minorities.
Great, a study of one, and genuinely happy for you and your daughter.
That being said, our school system is INCREDIBLY systemically racist. My high school (and, a study of one) had to be re-integrated in 2004, the year I graduated, and on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board, the supreme court case that declared that "Separate but Equal" is not equal.
The most poignant memory for me of class divide (no pun intended) was when we were discussing slavery in AP US History, in a class of about 40, there were not black kids and one hispanic kid. This at a school that was roughly 50% black and brown. But because of the tiers within our school, I can't remember ever having more than, say, 10% of my classes be African American or Hispanic.
I went to a large, relatively progress charter school in Los Angeles. Charter schools, rightly, are controversial. They can be a great form of diversity and providing mobility for those who come from poor school districts. Or, they can be a tool for white flight. My school managed to do both, but to the credit of some changes were made around the time I was leaving to integrate classrooms and remove the "tiered" education system that developed (and left white and Asian kids at the top).
Here is an interview with Michelle Alexander, an intellectual who has written extensively on our prison industrial complex, the problem of privatizing prisons, and the racial disparities therein. In this she talks about our schools-to-prison pipeline (you could also do a similar argument for schools-to-Military).
@Leuth I'd generally agree that The New York Times is bourgeois left. Papers here do not break out as nicely and conveniently as papers in the UK. You don't have something like The Guardian on one side, and the Mail or Telegraph on the other. A lot of factors in that, some of them being that because cable news does tend to break out along those lines, papers are more compelled to provide in-depth journalism, I digress this could be a thread unto itself. I've seen very progressive articles in the Wall Street Journal, and the New York times published a series of articles in the lead up to the war in Iraq that were a mouthpiece for the Bush administration.
Had we ever done a proper investigation with accountability into how we went to war, I'd have wanted Judith Miller done for war crimes. Also, if you get a chance, try to find her interview with Jon Stewart, a couple weeks before he stepped down. You can tell that it still bothers him, and I'm not really the frothing at the mouth yelling at the telly type, but I was absolutely shouting profanities that night--it still rankles, to say the least.
All silliness aside SHG I think it's impossible to knock up a survey that indictes one ethnic background has it harder than another, the institutional racism card gets thrown around too much these days you only gotta look at the society of black lawyers nonsense about the FA, all it shows is more evidence of the PC brigade losing their marbels again.
Fascist .
I can only speak for this country, but institutional racism remains a huge, huge problem. As does, it should be added, discrimination against the poor. For more, I recommend the works of Michelle Alexander and "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson.
@SDAddick just watched the Jon Stewart interview with Judith Miller (& Bill Maher's one too). Maher's one includes her line about Cheney being duplicitous...although she claims that was a joke (along with Bush being gullible & wanting to avenge daddy)...if anyone knows duplicitous, it's certainly Miller!
The hypocrite that is Trump - One day it's "so if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the c**p out of 'em...."
And on anotter day after protesters were being punched and kicked at a Trump rally this statement from Trumps team....
Mr.Trump does not condone violence....
Trump is not instigating these violent protests.
But he is telling people it is OK to cause bodily harm to protesters that try and disrupt his rallies. Coming from a potential president of one of the most powerful countries on the planet you would expect a more respectable comment other than "knock the crap out of them."
@SDAddick just watched the Jon Stewart interview with Judith Miller (& Bill Maher's one too). Maher's one includes her line about Cheney being duplicitous...although she claims that was a joke (along with Bush being gullible & wanting to avenge daddy)...if anyone knows duplicitous, it's certainly Miller!
I miss Jon Stewart!
As do I. At times, him and his staff were some of the best broadcast journalists on TV, which is more an indictment of broadcast journalism than anything. And he was really funny.
The hypocrite that is Trump - One day it's "so if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the c**p out of 'em...."
And on anotter day after protesters were being punched and kicked at a Trump rally this statement from Trumps team....
Mr.Trump does not condone violence....
Trump is not instigating these violent protests.
But he is telling people it is OK to cause bodily harm to protesters that try and disrupt his rallies. Coming from a potential president of one of the most powerful countries on the planet you would expect a more respectable comment other than "knock the crap out of them."
The hypocrite that is Trump - One day it's "so if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the c**p out of 'em...."
And on anotter day after protesters were being punched and kicked at a Trump rally this statement from Trumps team....
Mr.Trump does not condone violence....
Trump is not instigating these violent protests.
But he is telling people it is OK to cause bodily harm to protesters that try and disrupt his rallies. Coming from a potential president of one of the most powerful countries on the planet you would expect a more respectable comment other than "knock the crap out of them."
I'd never defend that part of his personality.
But you do defend him though and want this moron to be president. Are you perfectly happy for "this part of him" to have access to all those red buttons that say use with great caution. ?
All silliness aside SHG I think it's impossible to knock up a survey that indictes one ethnic background has it harder than another, the institutional racism card gets thrown around too much these days you only gotta look at the society of black lawyers nonsense about the FA, all it shows is more evidence of the PC brigade losing their marbels again.
Fascist .
I can only speak for this country, but institutional racism remains a huge, huge problem. As does, it should be added, discrimination against the poor. For more, I recommend the works of Michelle Alexander and "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson.
I think its liberals convincing people that institutional racism exists is the problem.
All silliness aside SHG I think it's impossible to knock up a survey that indictes one ethnic background has it harder than another, the institutional racism card gets thrown around too much these days you only gotta look at the society of black lawyers nonsense about the FA, all it shows is more evidence of the PC brigade losing their marbels again.
Fascist .
I can only speak for this country, but institutional racism remains a huge, huge problem. As does, it should be added, discrimination against the poor. For more, I recommend the works of Michelle Alexander and "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson.
I think its liberals convincing people that institutional racism exists is the problem.
"I think" is not an argument without statistics. Look at incarceration rates, poverty rates, education, number of elected officials, etc. and you will see huge disparities. Black people only gained the nationwide right to vote in 1965, and the part of the Voting Rights act that cemented that right was recently overturned by our Supreme Court, leading to ID and registration hurdles that ridiculously disproportionately affecting minorities. If taking away the right to vote isn't institutional racism, then I really don't know what is.
All silliness aside SHG I think it's impossible to knock up a survey that indictes one ethnic background has it harder than another, the institutional racism card gets thrown around too much these days you only gotta look at the society of black lawyers nonsense about the FA, all it shows is more evidence of the PC brigade losing their marbels again.
Fascist .
I can only speak for this country, but institutional racism remains a huge, huge problem. As does, it should be added, discrimination against the poor. For more, I recommend the works of Michelle Alexander and "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson.
I think its liberals convincing people that institutional racism exists is the problem.
"I think" is not an argument without statistics. Look at incarceration rates, poverty rates, education, number of elected officials, etc. and you will see huge disparities. Black people only gained the nationwide right to vote in 1965, and the part of the Voting Rights act that cemented that right was recently overturned by our Supreme Court, leading to ID and registration hurdles that ridiculously disproportionately affecting minorities. If taking away the right to vote isn't institutional racism, then I really don't know what is.
True but we are entitled to an "I think" and as stated on this very thread, regarding poverty rates etc etc "I think" it's time people realise there lazy people in this world, not genetically before you cast the R card but in certain communities.
All silliness aside SHG I think it's impossible to knock up a survey that indictes one ethnic background has it harder than another, the institutional racism card gets thrown around too much these days you only gotta look at the society of black lawyers nonsense about the FA, all it shows is more evidence of the PC brigade losing their marbels again.
Fascist .
I can only speak for this country, but institutional racism remains a huge, huge problem. As does, it should be added, discrimination against the poor. For more, I recommend the works of Michelle Alexander and "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson.
I think its liberals convincing people that institutional racism exists is the problem.
"I think" is not an argument without statistics. Look at incarceration rates, poverty rates, education, number of elected officials, etc. and you will see huge disparities. Black people only gained the nationwide right to vote in 1965, and the part of the Voting Rights act that cemented that right was recently overturned by our Supreme Court, leading to ID and registration hurdles that ridiculously disproportionately affecting minorities. If taking away the right to vote isn't institutional racism, then I really don't know what is.
Hi SD, can you expand on bit in bold please. What ID and registration hurdles are there?
Surely you have to have ID and register to vote - we do here anyway.
All silliness aside SHG I think it's impossible to knock up a survey that indictes one ethnic background has it harder than another, the institutional racism card gets thrown around too much these days you only gotta look at the society of black lawyers nonsense about the FA, all it shows is more evidence of the PC brigade losing their marbels again.
Fascist .
I can only speak for this country, but institutional racism remains a huge, huge problem. As does, it should be added, discrimination against the poor. For more, I recommend the works of Michelle Alexander and "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson.
I think its liberals convincing people that institutional racism exists is the problem.
"I think" is not an argument without statistics. Look at incarceration rates, poverty rates, education, number of elected officials, etc. and you will see huge disparities. Black people only gained the nationwide right to vote in 1965, and the part of the Voting Rights act that cemented that right was recently overturned by our Supreme Court, leading to ID and registration hurdles that ridiculously disproportionately affecting minorities. If taking away the right to vote isn't institutional racism, then I really don't know what is.
Hi SD, can you expand on bit in bold please. What ID and registration hurdles are there?
Surely you have to have ID and register to vote - we do here anyway.
So here you don't, and this is going to seem strange to the outsider, because, at its most basic, having an ID to vote makes sense.
That said, where discrimination comes into play is the accessibility of such "Government IDs." The issuing of identification documents are left up to the states (the federal government uses Social Security Numbers), and different states have different rules on how to acquire these IDs-where you can get them (access to offices that issue them can be incredibly limited for the poor or elderly), the documents required to get ID (something that was used to keep black people from voting in the south up until around 1965), and various other hurdles. The laws requiring ID are driven exclusively by far-right Republicans, because those who are effected are disproportionately Democrat leaning.
Most current voting systems use Social Security numbers to verify one person=one vote, and voter fraud is VERY rare (as in it rarely breaks triple-digits).
Hilary is a bad'un, that's for sure, but I'm interested in the reasons why you dislike her.
We've had a couple go arounds of this already. In short, private email server and Benghazi. For some reason "suiciding former business partner" doesn't seem to make his top five!*
*That's an early 90s Vince Foster reference for those of you keeping score.
Comments
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/21/schools-discrimination_n_5002954.html
And on anotter day after protesters were being punched and kicked at a Trump rally this statement from Trumps team....
Mr.Trump does not condone violence....
http://nypost.com/2016/03/19/why-its-time-for-a-trump-revolution/
As to the first point, yes, you are absolutely correct. Real wages for workers have staggered over the last 40-odd years. Tracking social mobility on a broad basis in a scientifically verifiable manner is very difficult, but it definitely seems that what increases in social status there are are minimal, and a lot of them come from migrant class (a class near the bottom of the caste).
As for Europe, I can't speak to that. I read a while back that social mobility within England was quite limited.
But, back to the USA, a country I am very fond of, basically and in a language they'd understand, they are going to hell in a handcart. We're talking about a country where around 20mn of its residents live in a caravan. Usually a pretty unpleasant one too. Where one third of its kids are overweight or obese but they still think it's a good idea to bus them to school. And then trash their spacial awareness by making all traffic stop while the buses disgorge their piles of blubber.
Meanwhile the average age of an American's car is 11.5 years and rising. (By comparison, in the UK it's 7.5). American cars, too, are not the fully loaded expensive models we've come to demand in the UK but rather an inferior version with less of the gizmos and a wheezing engine - oh what happened to the glorious V8s? Their actual houses tend to be made of some softwood covered in a lot of Tyvec and clad in plastic, their power cables adorn every street (too expensive to put them underground) and fall down when there's the first winter storm.
I know nothing about cars, but as for obesity, it's certainly a large problem, but it's just one faction of our massive public health issues. I think sometimes it's overstressed that leads to shaming people instead of educating them, let alone trying to change a system where the only food available to poor and working class families is some of the shittiest food.
For years and strangely usually at the behest of its citizens the USA has been focussing on entirely the wrong things. We aspire (however longingly) to the expensive. They demand the cheap, which is why t-shirts are now made in China or Vietnam and last about a week or so. America, whatever happened to the crafted US Cotton T-shirt which was beautifully made and would last longer than a Dodge Ram?
Frankly, I think they are in a bad place and no matter who they get as President it will only get worse.
No country, where 90% of the population owns a bible and 50% of them believe in a literal interpretation of it, has a snowball in hell's chance of ultimate success. God Bless America cos they are going to need all the help they can get once the mineral wealth is played out.
I don't think we're alone in demanding things on the cheap, and I would venture that the drive for cheap goods is driven by low real wages. Hence the incredible boom of stores like Walmart and Target.
As for the American dream itself, I have long held it to be a myth or fairytale far more than a social truth. If we start toward the end of the 1800s, just before the mass boom of industrialization and migrants mobility of note often took 2-3 generations. While waiting for it, many lived in absolutely terrible squalor. That gap shrunk for some baby boomers, but they were usually white, Judeo-Christian working class people from the "right" part of the country--or they migrated there (my mother is an example of this, she was born in an 800 person town in central Illinois but moved to Chicago).
In general, while the boom of the 50s-70s move many up, it also left many behind. And starting in the 70s, jobs started moving to cities and then gradually overseas, and, well, here we are. And we don't talk about it on a national scale, and instead many small towns and rural areas fight tooth and nail and provide ridiculous tax breaks for any business coming to the area.
That being said, our school system is INCREDIBLY systemically racist. My high school (and, a study of one) had to be re-integrated in 2004, the year I graduated, and on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board, the supreme court case that declared that "Separate but Equal" is not equal.
The most poignant memory for me of class divide (no pun intended) was when we were discussing slavery in AP US History, in a class of about 40, there were not black kids and one hispanic kid. This at a school that was roughly 50% black and brown. But because of the tiers within our school, I can't remember ever having more than, say, 10% of my classes be African American or Hispanic.
I went to a large, relatively progress charter school in Los Angeles. Charter schools, rightly, are controversial. They can be a great form of diversity and providing mobility for those who come from poor school districts. Or, they can be a tool for white flight. My school managed to do both, but to the credit of some changes were made around the time I was leaving to integrate classrooms and remove the "tiered" education system that developed (and left white and Asian kids at the top).
Here's something on the problem with Charter Schools:
http://people.howstuffworks.com/charter-school.htm
Here is an interview with Michelle Alexander, an intellectual who has written extensively on our prison industrial complex, the problem of privatizing prisons, and the racial disparities therein. In this she talks about our schools-to-prison pipeline (you could also do a similar argument for schools-to-Military).
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/26_02/26_02_christensen.shtml
@Leuth I'd generally agree that The New York Times is bourgeois left. Papers here do not break out as nicely and conveniently as papers in the UK. You don't have something like The Guardian on one side, and the Mail or Telegraph on the other. A lot of factors in that, some of them being that because cable news does tend to break out along those lines, papers are more compelled to provide in-depth journalism, I digress this could be a thread unto itself. I've seen very progressive articles in the Wall Street Journal, and the New York times published a series of articles in the lead up to the war in Iraq that were a mouthpiece for the Bush administration.
Had we ever done a proper investigation with accountability into how we went to war, I'd have wanted Judith Miller done for war crimes. Also, if you get a chance, try to find her interview with Jon Stewart, a couple weeks before he stepped down. You can tell that it still bothers him, and I'm not really the frothing at the mouth yelling at the telly type, but I was absolutely shouting profanities that night--it still rankles, to say the least.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/07/01/how-the-iraq-war-still-haunts-new-york-times/199946
I can only speak for this country, but institutional racism remains a huge, huge problem. As does, it should be added, discrimination against the poor. For more, I recommend the works of Michelle Alexander and "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson.
I miss Jon Stewart!
Poverty doesn't equal poor governing every time.
What ID and registration hurdles are there?
Surely you have to have ID and register to vote - we do here anyway.
That said, where discrimination comes into play is the accessibility of such "Government IDs." The issuing of identification documents are left up to the states (the federal government uses Social Security Numbers), and different states have different rules on how to acquire these IDs-where you can get them (access to offices that issue them can be incredibly limited for the poor or elderly), the documents required to get ID (something that was used to keep black people from voting in the south up until around 1965), and various other hurdles. The laws requiring ID are driven exclusively by far-right Republicans, because those who are effected are disproportionately Democrat leaning.
Most current voting systems use Social Security numbers to verify one person=one vote, and voter fraud is VERY rare (as in it rarely breaks triple-digits).
For more, here is something from PBS (a pretty neutral source):
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/why-voter-id-laws-arent-really-about-fraud/
Here is a New York Times editorial from the editorial board. NY Times tends to lean left, probably somewhere between The Times and The Guardian:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/opinion/the-big-lie-behind-voter-id-laws.html
And from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU):
https://www.aclu.org/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet
Hilary is a bad'un, that's for sure, but I'm interested in the reasons why you dislike her.
*That's an early 90s Vince Foster reference for those of you keeping score.
More on the "Clinton body count": http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/bodycount.asp