| <https://tinyurl.com/2lnp7aj5> globaltimes.cn
| | The open discrimination of the past has since evolved into a more
| subtle one .. What's worse, issues that emerged in the US in recent
| years suggest that the human rights situation of African Americans
| has even become worse in many ways. The US has become "most-racial"
| rather than "post-racial."
| | For instance, the problem of police brutality against African
| Americans has triggered protests from the black community in recent
| years. Economically, black Americans had, on average, one-sixth the
| wealth of white Americans in 2019 on a per capita basis, and that
| gap is still widening ..

What this article forgets to mention is the fact that the very last
decades in the US have passed with an increase of "liberal progressive"
narratives in the political and media mainstream.

Historically, the American "liberal left" evolved also as a deliberate
counter-weight to the Soviet "communism", so that it always was pretty
cautious to touch on the topics of economic management/justice, keeping
the "capitalist system" untouched in basics. Instead, their main focus
was on various inequalities of non-economic nature: race, women, sexual
identity. In particular, the anti-racist narratives became predominant
in the US pretty long ago, after the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Nevertheless, the dry statistics show that in the recent decades the
wealth gap between "white" and "black" Americans stays the same or even
worsens (e.g. <https://is.gd/XUCAjC> <https://is.gd/ig1r34>). The
situation is such that for a long time there's a lot of noise about the
issue, but the issue itself steadily remains unresolved. I tend to view
it so that the true purpose of the noise is that it provides some kind
of "psychological compensation" to those who feel disadvantaged, but it
doesn't solve the issue itself in real life. There's no real progress,
but there's a noise, simulation and falsehood.

The latter is what the American "progressivism" seems to be really about:
it speaks nice, it begets attractive expectations, but it doesn't really
solve real issues except it helps keep the populace in loyalty to the
elite corporate management (which in turn seeks to employ this "soft
power" for support of the American hegemony in the world context).

On Sunday, August 28, 2022 at 5:11:22 PM UTC-4, Oleg Smirnov wrote:
> | <https://tinyurl.com/2lnp7aj5> globaltimes.cn
> |
> | The open discrimination of the past has since evolved into a more
> | subtle one .. What's worse, issues that emerged in the US in recent
> | years suggest that the human rights situation of African Americans
> | has even become worse in many ways. The US has become "most-racial"
> | rather than "post-racial."
> |
> | For instance, the problem of police brutality against African
> | Americans has triggered protests from the black community in recent
> | years. Economically, black Americans had, on average, one-sixth the
> | wealth of white Americans in 2019 on a per capita basis, and that
> | gap is still widening ..
>
> What this article forgets to mention is the fact that the very last
> decades in the US have passed with an increase of "liberal progressive"
> narratives in the political and media mainstream.
>
> Historically, the American "liberal left" evolved also as a deliberate
> counter-weight to the Soviet "communism", so that it always was pretty
> cautious to touch on the topics of economic management/justice, keeping
> the "capitalist system" untouched in basics. Instead, their main focus
> was on various inequalities of non-economic nature: race, women, sexual
> identity. In particular, the anti-racist narratives became predominant
> in the US pretty long ago, after the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
>
> Nevertheless, the dry statistics show that in the recent decades the
> wealth gap between "white" and "black" Americans stays the same or even
> worsens (e.g. <https://is.gd/XUCAjC> <https://is.gd/ig1r34>). The
> situation is such that for a long time there's a lot of noise about the
> issue, but the issue itself steadily remains unresolved. I tend to view
> it so that the true purpose of the noise is that it provides some kind
> of "psychological compensation" to those who feel disadvantaged, but it
> doesn't solve the issue itself in real life. There's no real progress,
> but there's a noise, simulation and falsehood.
>
> The latter is what the American "progressivism" seems to be really about:
> it speaks nice, it begets attractive expectations, but it doesn't really
> solve real issues except it helps keep the populace in loyalty to the
> elite corporate management (which in turn seeks to employ this "soft
> power" for support of the American hegemony in the world context).

It depends on whether one is talking about "mean" or "medium".
"Mean" income of black does improve a lot. But "medium" is a different
story.

And then there is the entertainment industry which is progressive among
all progressives. It is dong the utmost in making black respectable and
fashionable. So much so that Kim Kadashian, with Armenian father and
German-Irish mother, is trying hard to pass herself as a black.

Today, African Americans is not a single group, it is fractured at least into
4 groups. A large middle-class class society; a large, relatively speaking,
hopeless group ; a small super-rich and powerful elites who dominate the
headlines. They are often admired by both black and white. And then
there are mixed-raced people and newly immigrated blacks.

Racial discrimination is still widespread but a lot of subtle as you have
correctly described.

ltlee1, <news:ee86ebec-d8b8-4035-89ae-68902cf0ff49n@googlegroups.com>
> On Sunday, August 28, 2022 at 5:11:22 PM UTC-4, Oleg Smirnov wrote:

>> | <https://tinyurl.com/2lnp7aj5> globaltimes.cn
>> |
>> | The open discrimination of the past has since evolved into a more
>> | subtle one .. What's worse, issues that emerged in the US in recent
>> | years suggest that the human rights situation of African Americans
>> | has even become worse in many ways. The US has become "most-racial"
>> | rather than "post-racial."
>> |
>> | For instance, the problem of police brutality against African
>> | Americans has triggered protests from the black community in recent
>> | years. Economically, black Americans had, on average, one-sixth the
>> | wealth of white Americans in 2019 on a per capita basis, and that
>> | gap is still widening ..
>>
>> What this article forgets to mention is the fact that the very last
>> decades in the US have passed with an increase of "liberal progressive"
>> narratives in the political and media mainstream.
>>
>> Historically, the American "liberal left" evolved also as a deliberate
>> counter-weight to the Soviet "communism", so that it always was pretty
>> cautious to touch on the topics of economic management/justice, keeping
>> the "capitalist system" untouched in basics. Instead, their main focus
>> was on various inequalities of non-economic nature: race, women, sexual
>> identity. In particular, the anti-racist narratives became predominant
>> in the US pretty long ago, after the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
>>
>> Nevertheless, the dry statistics show that in the recent decades the
>> wealth gap between "white" and "black" Americans stays the same or even
>> worsens (e.g. <https://is.gd/XUCAjC> <https://is.gd/ig1r34>). The
>> situation is such that for a long time there's a lot of noise about the
>> issue, but the issue itself steadily remains unresolved. I tend to view
>> it so that the true purpose of the noise is that it provides some kind
>> of "psychological compensation" to those who feel disadvantaged, but it
>> doesn't solve the issue itself in real life. There's no real progress,
>> but there's a noise, simulation and falsehood.
>>
>> The latter is what the American "progressivism" seems to be really about:
>> it speaks nice, it begets attractive expectations, but it doesn't really
>> solve real issues except it helps keep the populace in loyalty to the
>> elite corporate management (which in turn seeks to employ this "soft
>> power" for support of the American hegemony in the world context).
>
> It depends on whether one is talking about "mean" or "medium".
> "Mean" income of black does improve a lot. But "medium" is a different
> story.
>
> And then there is the entertainment industry which is progressive among
> all progressives. It is dong the utmost in making black respectable and
> fashionable. So much so that Kim Kadashian, with Armenian father and
> German-Irish mother, is trying hard to pass herself as a black.
>
> Today, African Americans is not a single group, it is fractured at least
> into 4 groups. A large middle-class class society; a large, relatively
> speaking, hopeless group ; a small super-rich and powerful elites who
> dominate the headlines. They are often admired by both black and white.
> And then there are mixed-raced people and newly immigrated blacks.
>
> Racial discrimination is still widespread but a lot of subtle as you have
> correctly described.

Indeed, the entertainment industry promotes the pro-"black"/pro-"color"
fashions (as well as pro-women / anti-men ones). Although, in this field,
the "blackness" became fashionable even before the public discourse in
the US became predominantly anti-racist. "Black" fashions significantly
influenced development of some musical genres since the 19th century.

The official data <https://is.gd/hSeLvh> reports disparity by Mean about
4, while disparity by Median about 6-8. It means wealth inequality within
the American "black" community is higher against "whites". Relatively
small group of rich and those super-rich, as you have written, improves
"mean" more than it improves "median".

The fact a small group of prosperous "blacks" maintains fashionable image
and "dominates the headlines" is what I've interpreted as "psychological
compensation" (for those more regular "blacks" who are not doing as well),
and the fact the entertainment industry seeks to make "blacks" fashionable
may be, within the US context, good in itself, but it has no impact on
lives of most average people, as the statistics (not only wealth but also
crime, health, education etc) show the gap keeps persistent over decades.

This situation does not look quite healthy to me.

Or at least it's not something that could claim to be really progressive.

On Monday, August 29, 2022 at 4:24:08 AM UTC-4, Oleg Smirnov wrote:
> ltlee1, <news:ee86ebec-d8b8-4035...@googlegroups.com>
> > On Sunday, August 28, 2022 at 5:11:22 PM UTC-4, Oleg Smirnov wrote:
>
> >> | <https://tinyurl.com/2lnp7aj5> globaltimes.cn
> >> |
> >> | The open discrimination of the past has since evolved into a more
> >> | subtle one .. What's worse, issues that emerged in the US in recent
> >> | years suggest that the human rights situation of African Americans
> >> | has even become worse in many ways. The US has become "most-racial"
> >> | rather than "post-racial."
> >> |
> >> | For instance, the problem of police brutality against African
> >> | Americans has triggered protests from the black community in recent
> >> | years. Economically, black Americans had, on average, one-sixth the
> >> | wealth of white Americans in 2019 on a per capita basis, and that
> >> | gap is still widening ..
> >>
> >> What this article forgets to mention is the fact that the very last
> >> decades in the US have passed with an increase of "liberal progressive"
> >> narratives in the political and media mainstream.
> >>
> >> Historically, the American "liberal left" evolved also as a deliberate
> >> counter-weight to the Soviet "communism", so that it always was pretty
> >> cautious to touch on the topics of economic management/justice, keeping
> >> the "capitalist system" untouched in basics. Instead, their main focus
> >> was on various inequalities of non-economic nature: race, women, sexual
> >> identity. In particular, the anti-racist narratives became predominant
> >> in the US pretty long ago, after the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
> >>
> >> Nevertheless, the dry statistics show that in the recent decades the
> >> wealth gap between "white" and "black" Americans stays the same or even
> >> worsens (e.g. <https://is.gd/XUCAjC> <https://is.gd/ig1r34>). The
> >> situation is such that for a long time there's a lot of noise about the
> >> issue, but the issue itself steadily remains unresolved. I tend to view
> >> it so that the true purpose of the noise is that it provides some kind
> >> of "psychological compensation" to those who feel disadvantaged, but it
> >> doesn't solve the issue itself in real life. There's no real progress,
> >> but there's a noise, simulation and falsehood.
> >>
> >> The latter is what the American "progressivism" seems to be really about:
> >> it speaks nice, it begets attractive expectations, but it doesn't really
> >> solve real issues except it helps keep the populace in loyalty to the
> >> elite corporate management (which in turn seeks to employ this "soft
> >> power" for support of the American hegemony in the world context).
> >
> > It depends on whether one is talking about "mean" or "medium".
> > "Mean" income of black does improve a lot. But "medium" is a different
> > story.
> >
> > And then there is the entertainment industry which is progressive among
> > all progressives. It is dong the utmost in making black respectable and
> > fashionable. So much so that Kim Kadashian, with Armenian father and
> > German-Irish mother, is trying hard to pass herself as a black.
> >
> > Today, African Americans is not a single group, it is fractured at least
> > into 4 groups. A large middle-class class society; a large, relatively
> > speaking, hopeless group ; a small super-rich and powerful elites who
> > dominate the headlines. They are often admired by both black and white.
> > And then there are mixed-raced people and newly immigrated blacks.
> >
> > Racial discrimination is still widespread but a lot of subtle as you have
> > correctly described.
> Indeed, the entertainment industry promotes the pro-"black"/pro-"color"
> fashions (as well as pro-women / anti-men ones). Although, in this field,
> the "blackness" became fashionable even before the public discourse in
> the US became predominantly anti-racist. "Black" fashions significantly
> influenced development of some musical genres since the 19th century.
>
> The official data <https://is.gd/hSeLvh> reports disparity by Mean about
> 4, while disparity by Median about 6-8. It means wealth inequality within
> the American "black" community is higher against "whites". Relatively
> small group of rich and those super-rich, as you have written, improves
> "mean" more than it improves "median".
>
> The fact a small group of prosperous "blacks" maintains fashionable image
> and "dominates the headlines" is what I've interpreted as "psychological
> compensation" (for those more regular "blacks" who are not doing as well),
> and the fact the entertainment industry seeks to make "blacks" fashionable
> may be, within the US context, good in itself, but it has no impact on
> lives of most average people, as the statistics (not only wealth but also
> crime, health, education etc) show the gap keeps persistent over decades.
>
> This situation does not look quite healthy to me.
>
> Or at least it's not something that could claim to be really progressive.

Showing black Americans as respectful, successful, and fashionable certain makes
the White Americans feel better. They can readily claim the Black Americans are
well treated or more than well treated. It also makes many Black Americans more
hopeful. Geopolitically, it contributes to the image that the US is really a human rights
power as US politicians have often claimed. And it does not ill treat its minorities like
other nations because it is a democracy.

Reality? A lot has changed but a lot has yet to be changed. Systemic discrimination
is still widespread. The most obvious is different quality of education which contributes
to the school-to-prison pipeline among young Black Americans. And of course, frequent
real life tragic show of police killing Black Americans. Often for trivia or imagined crime.