Re: Bleeding LootBus Shelterz...

Herman Rubin wrote:

> A large number of discriminated against ethnic groups in
> the US have prospered when they took the attitude that it
> was up to them to show what they could do; ask for equal
> opportunity, but then it was up to them to excel as
> individuals even when not given that equal opportunity,
> not to be given something as members of the group.
> 
> This was the program that Booker T. Washington suggested 
> after the civil war.  This was achieved to some extent in
> the "affirmative action" taken voluntarily in the early
> 50s; while there was still overt discrimination, competent
> blacks were sought for in industry and academia.  In fact,
> there were many who got good positions then who worried
> about whether they were that good; this made the media.

  To put it another way, as the author of "Who Prospers?  How Cultural
Values Shape Economic and Political Success" by Lawrence Harrison
(used to be involved in foreign aid programs), the reaction among many
has been, and more need to be,

  "I'll show THEM!"

  Or, as a very liberal Jewish friend of mine in the Pacific Northwest
puts it, almost spitting the words, "You have to BE BETTER!"

  It's not race -- it's culture.

  Incidentally, regarding culture, what I've said elsewhere (in
lobbing a verbal "grenade" into a discussion on something related to
the Middle East), and the Arabs:

  "Visualize Authoritarian Latin America With A Pre-1500 Mentality"

  That, and its further "development" in the form of puritanical
fundamentalist Islam and its incitement to war as well as xenophobia
and mythology related to the same culture (neo-Crusader colonialist
West, etc.) is what we face with not only the succession crisis
sometime soon in Saudi Arabia (the royal family there is divided, plus
others resent the family), but throughout the Middle East and North
Africa.


  Dave Simpson