how I know if I am or am not playing this "white" role well... — WISDOMfromPO-MO

If you don't know, then you're not.

like the postmodernism generator. — czahar

So nice to see a mention of an old friend, after all these years.

If one examines Batailleist `powerful communication’, one is faced with a choice: either accept realism or conclude that sexual identity, perhaps ironically, has intrinsic meaning, given that consciousness is interchangeable with narrativity. Thus, la Fournier[2] states that we have to choose between the textual paradigm of context and prematerialist narrative. Sontag promotes the use of Marxist capitalism to attack hierarchy...

it would teach us all a great deal if we had to spend a week in another persons shoes. — charleton

A whole week! I thought walking in somebody's shoes for a mile was enough.

A riot is unplanned, usually, and is ignited by unpredictable actions. A riot may become violent and also be quite unproductive because rioters are generally venting the rage of the times and the moment, and those who bear the cost of damage are usually not the responsible parties.

It takes discipline and planning to organize a useful and productive attack on the corporation and the state. Naturally, states keep a vigilant watch and intervene anything anything resembling disciplined and planned violence, because that could lead to revolution.

If you want to avoid violence, plan ahead and plan how to head off violence before it gets out of hand. (There's no magic about doing this; it takes assertive strong voices and maybe some muscle to keep a crowd from boiling over and start rioting. Maybe a well planned and guided demonstration and march will till result in rioting, but one can try to avoid that outcome (unless rioting is intended. In a revolutionary situation, it may be.)

let me try and disentangle some of this — Joshs

Good luck.

claim of being a male in a Woman's body — Joshs

This isn't literally true, of course. As I said, it's a cliché. It's a metaphor.

My belief is that there is some period during fetal development where such brain structuring for gender takes place. — Joshs

Agreed. The development of the fetus is sequential, and various parts, systems, and features are triggered by hormones from both the mother and the fetus.

It misses the point to dismiss them as purely cultural because that doesn't t explain the complexity of the pattern or he fact that it so often emerges at such a young age. — Joshs

No disagreement here. I imagined (infantile) homoerotic imagery at an early age. The interest in homoerotic fantasy, images, and activity with other males never changed. That's just one element. All sorts of human behavior are determined in pre-natal development through the genes of the fetus from the father and mother and through the genes governing the mother's reproductive system.

Most human features are scattered out on a continuum. Every more or less normal child learns the language of the people around him or her. Language acquisition is built in. But facility in even the native language varies so that some people can't spell worth a damn and other people do well in spelling bees (if they are sufficiently focused and motivated -- which is another set of features.

I think children have a host of not-all-that-flexible features and capacities at birth. However, the culture begins interacting with infants very early on, and thus it becomes tricky to sort out which features were culturally influenced and which were impervious to influence.

The maturing child will develop a unique gait, for instance, and that gait ill remain for life, baring injury or disease. Yes, people can learn to walk in one of several other gaits, but they will tend to revert to the natural one. Remember Jack Benny, the comedian? Jack Benny had a distinctively feminine gait -- he walked like a woman. He exaggerated it at times, and it was always funny -- partly because there was so little else about him that was feminine. It was the visual contrast between the man and the walk. That he walked like a woman, though, is a cultural judgement. The way women walk (just like the way men walk) is culturally influenced, even though biology gives us a certain gait.

Some guys can put on a wig and "become instant females" -- not that they are transsexuals, or particularly feminine, or even homosexuals; they just have the right facial features which when slightly modified (and in the right context) look feminine. Women, of course, can do the same thing in reverse. Everything we do can be (and usually is) judged culturally.

I tend to think people are much more alike than different, and I think this goes for women and men, as well as the Japanese and the French, for example. We are one species, we have a common biological/evolutionary history, we have the same requirements for survival, and so forth. The big difference between men and women is mostly cultural.

You hear about a "post-racial society" sometimes, — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Sometimes one hears about a "post-racial society" and then something happens which pretty much obliterates the idea that we are anywhere close to being a post-racial society.

If we were a post-racial society, then we would think about race as much as people today think about phrenology - measuring the bumps and indentations in your skull to learn about one's personality. We don't think about phrenology. We are a post-phrenology society. Post racial? Not even close.

Can one be in essence a psychological woman in a man's body? — Joshs

No, one can not.

One may wish one was a woman (when one is a man) or wish one was a man (when one is a woman); one may play the social role of the opposite sex; one may identify with people who are of the opposite sex; one can pretend that one is actually a member of the sex opposite that which one was born into. One may have some degree of feminized or masculinized brain (homosexuals). But in 99.99% of births, one is male or female.

Granted: there are people who are born with ambiguous genitalia which is a problem unto itself. Transsexuality is not thought to involve ambiguous genitalia (at least as far as I know).

You haven't addressed the issue of whether one can distinguish between bodily gender(genitalia, facial hair, bone structure, etc) and psychological gender( cognitive-affective processing differences correlated with masculinized va feminized behaviors ). — Joshs

I'm not a practicing psychologist, neurologist, endocrinologist, surgeon, or any other advanced specialty, so it has not been my job to precisely parse out these distinctions. However, 97% of speakers, writers, demonstrators, and practitioners about and of gender issues and/or transsexualism aren't either. None the less... you ask, can one distinguish...

Many aspects of personhood can be readily observed, or observed given sufficient time and care. From what I have read, from what I have heard from transsexuals, what I have observed most transsexuals were born with genitalia, hair distribution, bone structure, and endocrine system within the normal range of their biological gender. The normal range, however, is quite wide.

The way individuals think, imagine, process data, remember, and so on generally falls within a normal range, but again, the range is wide. Many of the differences among hyper masculine men, the average man, and the effeminate homosexual man will be lost in overlap of ranges. Just for example, the hyper masculine man (exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics, large, muscular body, male dominant personality) can be and sometimes is a homosexual. and not only a homosexual, but one who is sexually passive to boot. Similarly, there are kind of reedy, slightly built men who are domineering male STEM types. There are husbands and fathers who giver every appearance of thinking like "real men" and acting like "real men" but who have a sort of "swishy" style of speaking and who have a lot of "feminine interests" but who aren't at all homosexual or remotely transsexual.

Transgender M to F may be successful ex-soldiers, have lived very masculine lifestyles, think and talk in very masculine style, but may be 45 years old (or more) and decide they are going to become women. So they take the hormones, grow big tits, redistribute the surface fat layer, learn to dress and groom like a woman, but otherwise are still pretty much the same people they always were.

The jury is out on how much alike and how different men and women are. It is pretty much a hung jury, because "the jury" doesn't seem to be able to decide one way or the other. Men and women both argue both sides, back and forth, switching sides as is convenient. There is no consensus on what, exactly, is the same about men and women, except that everyone agrees that they are different.

Not talking about biology here.

The point is that a would be transsexual man can claim to be a woman, not on the basis of biology, but on the basis of psychology, and the range of psychological traits makes that a very hard case to prove or disprove.

It would be easy if transsexuals all had biological mismatched reproductive organs (like a penis and ovaries), and mismatched brains to go along with the mismatched reproductive organs. Unfortunately, that just isn't the case.

I am not a big fan of the "meme" concept, but I think a lot of gender-fluid talk is mostly meme and very little reality. No, I don't trust a 4 year old and his sometimes overly-invested mother to be on the level when the mother reports that her son wants to be a girl, and that he should be seen by a gender specialist, blah blah blah. No, I don't take it at face value when a screwed up teenager (there are such things as teenagers who are unusually screwed up) claims to be transgender. Or neuter, or whatever the fuck they come up with. If 4 year olds can pick up these memes, 17 year olds have been over exposed.

How many white women do you know calling themselves black? — charleton

Well, there was this one, at least:

Rachel Dolezal: ‘I’m not going to stoop and apologise and grovel’
Two years ago, she was a respected black rights activist and teacher. Then she was exposed as a white woman who had deceived almost everyone she knew. Why did she do it? — Guardian

because he is changing into the kind of woman which I wouldn't really want as a friend. In a way, I also find his attitude somewhat insulting toward women, because he acts as a caricature of a women in many aspect. I have been told it's normal at the beginning, as transwomen try to get into a more "feminine" mindstate, to overact a lot.... — Akanthinos

To some extent, transsexuality (especially M to F) is a "drag" performance, and great drag requires lots of practice. Most transsexuals are not well off, and have to work with what they can afford. If a transsexual was wealthy, they could afford great clothes, great hair, private lessons, and so on. They wouldn't be going to work in their perhaps rattly looking used-clothing store outfits and absurd wigs on the bus, getting taunted by the teenagers. For the average person, it takes real guts to pull off an act like that.

In Am J Public Health. 2017 February; 107(2): e1–e8 the authors using meta-analysis determined that the rate of transsexuality was 390 per 100,000, or 1.25 million total.

Compared with the general population, a national survey conducted in the United States in 2008 found that transgender individuals were 4 times more likely to live in extreme poverty, had double the rate of unemployment, and had almost double the rate of being homeless.4 In terms of health, transgender individuals had 4 times the rate of being HIV-infected and 28% postponed medical care because of discrimination. Particularly alarming is that 41% of survey respondents reported at least 1 suicide attempt. — NCBI cited

This probably says something negative about me, but the violence to grammar bothers me more than the sexual identify issue. — T Clark

"Transsexual" is busy taking on new, vague, novel, and nonsensical meanings, so the number of self-identified "transsexuals" is likely to rise, especially the category for which the only therapy is the torture of ordinary language.

I use the pronoun that matches their stated destination (he, his, him if F to M, she, her, hers if M to F, or ask. Personally, I'm not willing to use made up pronouns. I use they. theirs, and them when referencing more than one transsexual.

it will add a small percentage. The Social Security system, for instance, has a very low overhead cost. It's low because the function of sending out checks is not expensive.

I have known a number of transsexuals over the last 40 years. I have respected their decision to present themselves as they have, and have used the matching pronoun.

While respecting their persons, I do not believe that a person can become the opposite sex, however. One can play the role, dress the role, think the role, and so forth, but biology trumps gender theory. A transsexual woman is a man who has taken hormones which produce feminization of the male body. A transsexual man is a woman who has taken hormones which produce masculinization of the female body. Stop the hormones, and the body reverts to its normal state.

We can distinguish between treatments that lend an air of verisimilitude to a desired gender change and an impossible gender change. My view will be hotly rejected by most transsexuals. Some will brand me as transphobic, misogynist, hateful, violent, and so forth. This is to be expected. We live in a period when extremes of ideology demand acceptance, and refusal to accept leads to denunciations.

Still and all, transsexuals are persons, and I'll continue to grant them respect as persons. I don't have agree with anyone's ideology.

Donald is a hypocrite, of course, which is such a rarity among people. But really, there are so many reasons to hang DT beside golfing on MLK day. There will be a huge squabble at the gallows trying to decide for which crime he hangs first, like bothering to run for president at all.

I am in favor of the UBI because it would achieve what I consider important humanitarian goals:

1. It would enable workers to take more risks in seeking better employment. As it is now, unemployment is limited and short term, and applies only if one is fired. You can't use UI if you voluntarily quit, and the benefit is short.

2. It would enable workers to acquire enhanced skills and life experiences.

3. It would reduce the fragility of workers economic lives.

4. It would be cheaper to administer than existing welfare benefits because it would be an entitlement rather than welfare programs which require more oversight of recipients.

5. It would enhance workers' quality of life.

The cost of distributing $7500 per year to 150 million adults -- $1,125,000,000,000 -- is a large figure, of course, but it wouldn't be on top of existing welfare programs, t would replace those programs. All welfare-type programs which do not include Social Security and Medicare amount something like... $250 billion; the estimates will vary, depending on what is or is not included. Medicaid is not included, for instance.

What would happen to this annual trillion-dollar-plus distribution?

Much of it would be spent on necessities: food, clothing, shelter, transportation, etc. Some of it would be spent on education, travel, and amusements. Some of it would be saved. Some of it would be spent on drugs, alcohol, gambling, and the like. Some of it would be given to other people. Most of it will be spent, though, and that will have a generally beneficial effect on the economy.

As for the Catholic Church and its institutions, — mcdoodle

It's pretty much the same situation in the U.S., though these downward trends in both lay participation in church and vocations began before the numerous priest abuse scandals began. The Catholic Church is in better shape here than in the UK -- not sure what it's condition in Ireland is. But the priest shortage is very bad to severe.

Vocations began to fall in the 1960s because many priests, nuns, and monks simply could not stand to continue living the kind of life that professed religious were living. It wasn't about sex; it was that the cost/benefit balance of religious life tipped in favor of secular life. The orders' rules for living were too antiquated, too rigid. The lives of the professed were too constricted by the weight of their hierarchy.

Priests found that the life available to them when they weren't working was either dry, empty, and lonely -- life in a rectory with several dissatisfied middle aged to older single men just wasn't healthy, or it involved having a sometimes not very surreptitious sex and social life outside of the church.

What precisely caused many millions of Christian laity to depart the church are varied, of course. A long thread could be devoted to the matter. Well, I quit going to church in the 1960s; it wasn't a crisis of faith; I just didn't find... whatever it was. I am a member of a church now -- first time in many years -- for reasons that have little to do with "religion". It's pretty much just someplace to go, mix with a few people, do stuff with others, that sort of thing. If I didn't live directly across the street, most likely I wouldn't be there at all.

Why do we call these countries "third-world" or "developing" countries instead of "shithole" countries? Because it's disrespectful, ahistorical and imperialistic to call them shitholes when the white man was instrumental in making many of these places the shitholes they are. — darthbarracuda

Of course it's impolitic to call Africa a shithole, especially when you consider just how large and varied Africa is. It's too blunt a shorthand term. Yes, it probably will make diplomacy more difficult for the United States for a while.

And its also the case that many of the problems in these various barely functioning states are a result of very, very bad colonial management. The Belgians fucked over their Congo territory, then left without having contributed much positive benefit. The Dutch, Germans, French, British, and Americans have all operated along similar lines, though maybe not quite as bad as the Belgians.

Empire, whether it be the Ottomans, Russians, Chinese, Moslems, or whoever is usually not popular out in the provinces. Reasonably so -- Empires generally don't exist for the benefit of the provinces: they exist for the benefit of the Imperial center.

But it's also the case that countries (made of people who are, after all, pretty much all alike) can and do make their own sub-optimum situations worse; much worse, quite often. Oligarchy, autocracy, corruption, neglect, and so on don't have to be taught by imperial powers. Little old isolated tribal groups can think up bad behavior on their own, and generally do.

One case study she analyses is that of the Magdalene Laundries for 'fallen women' in Ireland that treated women discarded by their families like something close to slaves: to what extent are (a) present volunteers and members of the charities that ran the laundries responsible for doing something about the charities' past actions; and (b) Church members in Ireland responsible? — mcdoodle

There was an article on the Magdalene Laundries in the New York Times today; what to do about one of the laundry buildings--tear it down or make a memorial?

First, one would need to ascertain that wrong had been committed, and who were the beneficiaries and victims. This is an evidentiary procedure involving investigation and analysis. In many cases where there has been systemic wrongs done, this isn't all that difficult but it could be a lengthy process. It is in the evidentiary proceedings that the unpleasant truth is revealed.

Institutions that were responsible at the time for the wrongs done need to be investigated to determine which of them still exist. Again this is a fairly straight forward procedures. The order that operated the Magdalene Laundries may still exist, and whether it does or not, the Church of which the order was a part still exists -- but that needs to be defined.

The resources of the responsible agents or their successors have to be assessed. Then a court, probably, or a office established by the courts, would have to establish the degree of liability. Finally, a payout of some kind (either in a radical change of the organization or a liquidation of its assets) can be executed.

In the various priest-abuse cases in the United States, all this has been carried out in adversarial court proceedings. What has happened in several dioceses is that the settlement has liquidated a good share of the church's assets, sending the church into bankruptcy. If the hierarchy of the church was morally bankrupt, then financial bankruptcy seems reasonable

One of the reasons for adversarial litigation is that parts of the church will vigorously resist being classed as a liable property. For instance, a Catholic owned hospital in the diocese might enter into the litigation to protect itself from the court's decrees.

It has not been an altogether satisfactory result, in my opinion. The institution itself doesn't seem to have be sufficiently chastened. During the long proceedings in the Minneapolis Saint Paul Archdiocese, the church was very persistent in its resistance -- continuing to obfuscate, cover up, and so forth. That behavior became part of the overall case. One archbishop was replaced, only to find that the replacement also had problems of covering up, and so forth

I would guess wading into the Irish Catholic Church's behavior would be similarly complicated by layers of resistance and deceit. And this would go for other organizations too, whether it was Magdalene Laundries, Apple, Microsoft, government agencies, and so forth. Problems are always stacked up several layers deep.

Investigation and Litigation isn't going to have the same cathartic results that a Truth and Reconciliation procedure will. Something that combines both? Not sure here. We know that the courts can extract substantial penalties and benefits for victims but it isn't in a position to reform the church.

Just one case among many possible cases of systemic wrongs.

I take it you are demanding a general social responsibility, rather than the accounting system that reparations would require.

I agree that tracing the consequences of slavery up to 1864, and then since 1865 is inordinately complex. In addition, there was more than one system of oppression operating throughout the period of slavery There was in the colonial period, a system of white-worker indenture which was often a short-term slavery; there was a system of share-cropping (mostly in the former confederate states) that was a no-win game for either white or black sharecroppers. Capitalist operations were always somewhat exploitative, but some times grossly exploited their workers, black and white together. We can't leave out the American Indian who was subjected to genocidal policies, or Chinese railroad workers who were very cruelly exploited.

The basic principle of redress should not be "your ancestors were slaves" (or severely disadvantaged in some other way) but rather, "you have been disadvantaged in this present time". Let's call "the present" the last X number of years. Let's say "since the end of World War II", or 70 years (give or take...) Seventy years takes in government policy which benefitted, or harmed, the young people of the late '40s and '50s, and the one or two generations since. Segregation of schools was ruled unconstitutional in 1954, but since then multiple solutions to redress educational inequality have been subverted. Cuts and restrictions in the social safety net that existed in 1970, for instance, have made life more precarious for poor people of all races.

Many of the bad things that happened to people int he last 70 years have happened through the action of the State, or through the acquiescence of the state. After 1954, many parents in the south decided they would take their children from public schools and place them in new private schools created for the purpose of avoiding school desegregation. The state may not have instigated these moves, but it validated this effort to subvert integration. Individuals may have disapproved of welfare programs, but The State, of course, provided the social safety net, and it was the state that moved to reduce it.

There are actions that were harmful to some communities, but were not carried out by the state. The owners of industries which moved from one part of the country to another, then moved from this country to other countries to reduce labor costs are responsible for job losses in the communities they abandoned. The state was not directly responsible.

Individuals, whether workers or industrial magnates, will have to make their own amends. The state, however, has a collective responsibility, and can be collectively compelled to make structural amends.

There are two government agency acronyms that are most relevant: Housing (FHA) and Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) cover the areas where Government can be held most responsible. Bluntly discriminatory housing policies, acquiescence to subverting efforts equalize education for all children, and the general area of health and welfare.

There is no likelihood in the foreseeable future that the government will do a damn thing about redressing systemic wrongs, but that's what we should be working for, and the sooner the fewer new wrongs will be done.

Sovereign nations are entitled to pick and choose. Most of them do discriminate, and the main problem with that is when they claim they are not (but actually are).

Nations have a right to compose their demographics as they see fit. Healthy demographics are good for the long run -- not too large a percentage of dependent elderly in relation to younger workers who both produce taxable income and provide care, for instance. Not too large a population of very young people. It's great while they are young and most productive. They will all grow old at the same time, and then you have a mushroom shaped distribution.

On the other hand, a healthy nation needs reproducing young people OR one has to import them by immigration and other methods. Japan is not replacing its own population and is resistant to immigration. They have a problem.

Nations need a balance of males and females. India, among other countries, has deflated the female population through abortion or killing of infant females, producing a surfeit of single males.

long-distance truck drivers — Agustino

Ah, well... don't know much about long-distance truck drivers. No, I think DT probably has fairly high standards and likes sex in a quality location with excellent room service -- i.e., a Trump Hotel™.

I think one could ask whether DT is happy -- not sure he is.

One of the themes that runs through FIRE AND FURY, the book about the campaign and the Trump White House is that Trump & Co. didn't expect to win the election, and were as shocked as everybody else was. It wasn't a "real run" for the White House. I don't know... doesn't sound plausible to me. But I don't think DT had/has/will have a very clear idea of what goes on in the Government from the Government POV. There are something like 2 or 3 million employees in the executive branch, and they most definitely aren't all parasites. But a man with a short attention span who doesn't like to read isn't going to obtain an overview of that large an operation.

Long-distance truckers have to pay attention for hours on end; DT lacks that capacity, apparently. He is 70 years old; 70 isn't too old, but one isn't all that adaptable at 70, either.

As a Mother I would suggest not within ear shot. I would say you should ask Timmy about it but Timmy is in the well at the moment. lololol — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Timmy is in the well? What does that mean? A code, obviously...

No?

No ceiling on admissions?

No, not insomnia - it's the gradual shift from normal sleep time. I don't like it, but I haven't gotten it under control. I slept from 10: 30 pm to 1:30 am, then woke up -- wide awake. I'll probably have to take a sleeping pill for a few evenings, get to sleep early, then wake up early. Hopefully that will get me into a more normal sleep cycle.

Who says? Anybody who wants to offer an opinion on the matter. Hey, it's a free country. Tell it like you think it is. You are perfectly free to offer an opinion on whether x, y, or z got more or less than they deserved.

This is the first time in my life feeling ashamed for being an American. What Trump said today was something only authoritarian dictators do. Shit like this does not fly in any type of democracy. — Posty McPostface

Stop being ashamed, or at least, find something worthwhile to be ashamed about.

Trump isn't America. Obama isn't America. Kennedy isn't America. Reagan isn't America. America is a polyglot, cosmopolitan mix of many people who mostly get along pretty well together. The President is never equivalent to the country. Neither are Representatives, Senators, Supreme Court judges, etc. They are a piece of America in the same way that everybody else is.

I can't recommend Fire and Fury because it really isn't that well written. But several things are said about Trump that seem to conform to reality:

• The man doesn't read much of anything, and apparently hasn't read much of anything for quite a long time. Yes, he has received higher education, but that was about 50 years ago. 50 years is plenty long to lose one's mental edge.
  
• The man watches TV for most of his information. People who watch a lot of television news get a very skewed view of the world, especially on cable news, which runs all the time.
  
• The man is inelegant, something of a slob. That is not a character flaw, it's a flaw in manners, especially for a position which is supposed to be characterized by very good manners. But Trump isn't the first president who was inelegant.
  
• Trump may be quite rich, he may be involved in a lot of real estate, but I don't get the impression he was deeply involved with nuts and bolts management. That's OK for real estate operators. One can hire nut/bolt staff to take care of the details. But he is in a position where nuts and bolts matter, and he isn't prepared.
  
• He is reported to have a very short attention span. This is problematic for people in jobs like Leader of the Free World who need to track major issues all day long, just about every day. He probably feels very overwhelmed, as no doubt he is.
  
• He's used to being insulated from sturm and drang. Rich people can do that. Unfortunately for Trump, the White House is Strum and Drang Central. He's going to be pelted with S & D whether he likes it or not.
  
• As a rich man, Trump is used to doing what he feels like doing. What's the point of getting rich if you can't at least hire a hooker if you feel like it. So he had sex with a porn star. Big deal. It's just that hiring hookers and bedding porn stars (and then later paying them a bag full of money to shut up about it) is discordant with being a public figure who is supposed to be clean enough for family viewing.

I loathe Trump and his whole class, but really, let's stop being shocked, SHOCKED!!! when he behaves the way everybody who didn't vote for him predicted he would behave.

Who says? Who is to judge — charleton

Click bait phrasing. People can, should, or may feel guilty for personal behavior. I don't think people should feel guilty for governmental or corporate policies they had nothing to do with and wouldn't have been able to affect, unless they were in charge of policy making, which most people are not.

People shouldn't feel guilty for being the beneficiaries of bad policies--up to a point. Folks are not personally responsible for being white, in the majority (70 years ago whites were a larger majority in the US), or that their government gave them benefits it didn't give other people. We can at least be aware of the difference made by either getting the benefit or not getting the benefit. Blacks didn't get the FHA benefit, and it consigned them to poverty which white folks who got the benefit were not consigned to.

We can also be aware that not all whites received the benefit. When the FHA was in full swing, one had to have enough income to afford to buy a house, even an FHA mortgaged house. Lots of white workers with families could not afford to buy a new house, even at favorable terms. Large scale developments of mass produced housing were not built everywhere. They were generally built adjacent to large urban areas, and not in rural areas. In the 1950s far more people still lived in small towns and rural areas than they do now.

So, lots of whites were not beneficiaries and it affected them in ways similar to the ways it affected blacks -- it was a big missed opportunity.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/05/racism_in_real_estate_landlords_redlining_housing_values_and_discrimination.html — PostyMcPostface

The article links to this book, Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City [Baltimore] by Antero Pietila. Haven't read it, but it looks like a good read.

I've focussed a lot of my attention on Chicago, just because segregation was so much more massive there than it was in Minneapolis, which I am more familiar with, and because Chicago's housing segregation and racial history is better documented. Chicago's problems are just much more spectacular than those of fly-over states. Baltimore looks like a good city to study too, with plenty of archival material available.

One of the interesting bits in the red zoning maps in Boston was the reference to "cosmopolitan populations" a code word for undesirable ethnics from Europe. I don't know why they used that term, because in the same paragraph they would state "Jewish infiltration a threat". Or black infiltration, poor infiltration, welfare infiltration.

Posty, you did a FINE JOB. Here's another good book for those interested in the topic:

Family Properties: How the Struggle Over Race and Real Estate Transformed Chicago: Beryl Satter, Picador, 2010.

Beryl Satter's father was involved in an effort to help black people resist and defend themselves from being ripped off by the post WWII Chicago real estate industry. It was a valorous but loosing battle, but the book provides a lot of up-close and personal stories about dispossession rather than stats and maps.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/19/498536077/interactive-redlining-map-zooms-in-on-americas-history-of-discrimination — Posty McPostface

This is a really useful link to examine housing assessments in the late 1930s-40s. Lots of maps of cities showing what was considered (at the time) good, stable, declining, and "hazardous for loaning mortgages" neighborhoods.

thanks for finding the information.

Of course, we don't "need" more Haitians, and we actually don't need more Norwegians here either--there are plenty here already. Besides which, the US would now be a step down for the Norwegians.

Immigration patterns have a history. In the 19th century, Europeans were favored over all others, Europeans didn't just show up here, a lot of them were recruited in Europe. At the time, a major population infusion was needed to populate, cultivate, and work in the western 60% of the country. Europeans remained most favored until early in the 20th century, when we decided that there were too many eastern Europeans here. Then after WWII, there were a couple of major changes, shifting favored status to people south of the Rio Grande. Later on this was changed again, opening more places for Asians, and various Africans, currently West Africans.

It should be noted that all the large batches of immigrants, whether European, African, Asian, or South Americans have almost always resulted in friction with prior arrivals and nattering by political elites. Relatively recently arrived and comfortably settled Northern European immigrants weren't thrilled with all of the Ukrainian Jews and Italians getting off the boat in the late 1800s, early 1900s. Later on the conflicts were between Italians and Puerto Ricans, and so on. Today Italians, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Russians, etc. are the establishment. Mexicans, Hmong, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indians, etc. the earlier wave. The new arrivals currently upsetting the apple cart locally are from Somalia and Burma (not the Rohingya). In this state it's the Karen people from Burma, or Myanmar. In a while they too will be the earlier wave of immigration.

Really, the US doesn't need any more immigrants at all. There are enough people here to meet labor needs (and then some) and to keep the demographics reasonably stable. From a global warming point of view, the more people who live like Americans, the worse it is for the global climate.

New York City, which is probably the only part of the US that Trump (and quite a few of the political elite) knows well--if that, even--is becoming too expensive to absorb new immigrants from poor countries. It's a culturally rich stew, of course, but poor people have a hard time making it in NYC because of rising rents and the other usual costs.

True enough, the US would experience some losses if we expelled all the Haitians, Salvadorans, Hondurans, and some others. The bigger problem for these people would be their forced return home. First, poor countries would lose the remittances their expat citizens send back home. For El Salvador it's a huge hunk of their economy. Second, a country like El Salvador doesn't have the means to reintegrate 200,000 people arriving over a fairly short period of time (like a year or two). Third, El Salvador has the highest murder rate outside of war zones. That's because of gang activity started in southern California and then repatriated to El Salvador.

The situation in Haiti and Honduras are of course different than for the Salvadorans. Haiti used to be either food self-sufficient or close to it--not centuries ago, just decades ago. Now its not, and it wasn't population growth that changed that. It's not only a shit hole, it's a badly fucked over country for which several other countries, including the US, are responsible. Then there have been earthquakes and hurricanes which haven't helped.

Speaking of the Congo, as TimeLine was, "The Congo" had been subjected to a really bad colonial regime by the Belgians, and then were further screwed around with after independence by various countries, and their own thugs.

You realize that there is a legal framework for refugee acceptance, right? — Akanthinos

Actually, I do understand something about the process by which people attain refugee status. Refugees are often in dire straits, and the process by which they get from a refugee center in Kenya, for example, or one in Turkey or Thailand, to Sweden or the United States, Canada, or... is slow and difficult. But that wasn't the question I was asking.

The question I was asking was NOT about refugees, but how does the UK prioritize non-refugee would-be immigrants? Many on the various roads around the world are not refugees. Many are migrants, seeking better opportunities than they can find at home.

It isn't a pickup line. It's a flirty conversation. — Michael

That would be a workable flirty conversation only if you had already engaged in sexually exploitative behavior and were in the eager queue to take off on runway # 1, like, she facing you, your arms around her waist, she pressing herself against you, her lips a tongue flick from yours, and so on.

What was disgusting? Tell me so I can send more of it.

only regret I have was that I didn’t study Latin harder in school so I could converse with them." — TimeLine

Learning Latin wouldn't have helped. They speak Spanish, Portuguese, and an assortment of Amerindian languages. Some even speak English without an Australian accent--always a plus.