Hey Neil!

Thanks for the insight on the concepts.

My experiences on how people progress up - and down - the socio-economic scale is a bit different. I've personally worked with some who've come here from other lands, with little more than the clothes on their backs and knowing next to no English. They've now left my locale, and are doing much better than a great many Americans.

These acquaintances and friends come across the spectrum of nationality.

As far as the Jew goes, I am referring back to Exodus. After they left Egypt, God expressly forbade them to treat any other nationality as they had been treated by Egypt. I read that as it must have been on the minds of not a few descendants of Israel, else God would not have seen the need to address it in the 4th Commandment listed in Deuteronomy 5.

The concept is easily extended to any child of God from any ethnicity that experienced/is experiencing the same tragedy kind of Israel did at Pharoah's hands.



Again, perhaps not worded as well as needed. Bigotry is wrong wherever it is found. That is the extension of the argument found in the Book of James (James 2:1-4). He uses the rich as an example, but replace rich/poor with any other socio-economic contrast pair (labor/management, degreed/non-degreed, black/white) and you get the same result: partiality and prejudice is sin, no matter how it gets served up.



Great point. I know full well they don't feel genuinely accepted by there peers. Then again, that's the consequences going down through time they must deal with. Neither side wins.

That's the lose-lose proposition America now finds itself in, Neil. Maybe it's me, but I don't see a win-win proposition coming out of it.

Shutting out any part of the debate, or framing the issues one-sidedly, will only further the divide.

You can say that some arguments of reverse discrimination are a promotion of self - so are some arguments of discrimination as well. I simply make the argument discrimination in any direction is an evil to be avoided. That has been a conviction of mine made decades ago.

To say discrimination in one direction is bad, but the other direction is justifiable and good, to me is an argument that is untenable on its face.



I made no insinuation of personal guilt, and I am glad you initially meant no intention that I should. However, sad thing is you now seem to indicate I do. I am so very sorry you misread my reply to mean I must have something dark that I should be guilty of. It was a comment about typecasting and stereotyping - no more, no less. So sorry you couldn't see that.



Later...

back to the original question...

First, I am enjoying this discussion. I am also pleased that the heated debate is not as warm as it could be.

Second, to answer your question, Stan... A comment that sounds racist to one person doesn't necessarily sound racist to another. Therefore, with sensitive issues involving the different races, and black/white issues specifically, I would say that probably we can't talk about this subject without sounding racist to at least some.

After sharing my observations based on my experiences, I have tried to end my posts with a Biblical suggestion (after stating the human impossibility of solving the problem). I will stress that there are NO human solutions, just as there are NO human methods to entering God's kingdom.

A friend of mine years ago would hammer constantly on our need to be fully surrendered to Christ and abide in Him. I can offer no better answer.

It's unbelievable how scared whites have become of even mentioning race for fear of being called racist. I have a friend who is a white pastor and some blacks are trying to force their way on him. Here's the 411:
1. They love their services to run into the mid afternoon. If it's a communion Sabbath, an 11 AM service could let out at 2:30 PM.
2. For most (not all) it's all about the color. 96% of blacks voted for Obama even though they didn't understand or didn't agree with his stand on the issues.
3. Jesse Jackson would get a standing ovation in most black churches even though he cheated on his wife, made a baby with that relationship, brought her to the White House on the pretext of counseling Bill Clinton who had troubles of his own.
4. Most blacks support the racist NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, BET, and other organizations.
5. 70% (80% in Indiana) of black babies are born out of wedlock. They're raised by angry black women. This anger is passed to the children who create more illegitimate babies, commit crimes, end up in jail, and blame the white man.

If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive, I think he would vomit at the sight of his likeness displayed with the abortion loving, far left, socialist, liberal, Democrat who cannot produce his birth certificate, with an angry wife who has not been able to practice law since the mid 1990s. MLK said that he longed for the day when people would be judged on their character rather than their color. Anytime something wrong is pointed out to most (not all) blacks, they say that you're a racist.

I know more about blacks than most blacks do. I was married to a black woman, and as an actor, I have played black people in plays and films.

How to prevent white flight? Tell blacks from the pulpit that the white man does not plan and scheme how to keep the negro down each morning. Tell them to stop the sexual addiction, and be fathers and husbands to their families. Unfortunately, most pastors have been neutered long ago and won't tell that to their congregations.

That's what I call direct speaking





g

so what?



That is probably the most ignorant statement you have posted in a while. How would you know this. What evidence to have to support your bogus assertion. None. You just make stuff up because it fits your twisted agenda.



Again how would you know that. This is the essence of racism. From your own mind you produce these prejudicial assertions that make all black people to feel, think and act the same. I guess you were one of those against the voting rights act and desegregation because who knows what those blacks will do do with all that freedom.



You evidently don't even understand what racism is and that's probably why you can't recognize it in yourself. Any organization that would speak to black interests is terms racist to you. Stunning ignorance, worthy of a white supremacist.

"They are raised by angry black women". Maybe your black woman was angry. I can see why she had to listen to such foolishness.



LOL!



LOL!



I'm glad you posted that. I helps to understand where all this comes from. You need to go back and resolve those issues and not release your venom on us.



Again you speak from the pit of your own ignorance. Its sad.

Man, you are even more twisted than I thought.

White flight is a term for the demographic trend in which white people move away from urban neighborhoods that are becoming racially desegregated to white suburbs and exurbs.[1][2][3] The phenomenon was first named in the United States, but has occurred in other countries as well. A major contributing factor for the start of this trend in the United States is considered to be the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which began the process of desegregating the country's public schools.[4][5]

Some scholars have noted the impact of redlining, mortgage discrimination, and racially restrictive covenants on white flight: these factors denied or increased the cost of services (such as banking and insurance) to residents in minority suburbs and minority inner-city neighborhoods.[6][7] Some social scientists suggest that the historical processes of suburbanization and decentralization are instances of white privilege that have contributed to contemporary patterns of environmental racism.[8] In some of the largest cities in the United States, the trend started to reverse itself in the 1990s through a process called gentrification.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

Rats!!! The thread is steering away from the subject again.

But the polarization of the comments (some directed to the posters), further demonstrates my assertion that human nature is what's in the way, here.

Translation = Human nature says "I'm better than you". That's not a servant attitude. The servant approach breaks down when the servant is taken advantage of by the served. The servant wants to have some kind of reward for serving, and will soon quit if not treated fairly.

The kingdom of God shows us that servants remain as servants even though they are not being fairly treated (look at Christ). That is where we need to be someday (soon, I hope).

In the church, we still have injustice and we still have servants quitting their commitment.