I hear that Councilmen Randy Wright and Anthony Burfoot are going to hold a news conference at 2:30 2:00pm this afternoon to announce a plan to hold citywide conversations on the issue of race. Interesting, since Norfolk United Facing Race presented council a proposal to do the exact same thing at the council meeting last week and, as of this writing, NUFR has not been contacting about partnering on this venture. As I am unaware of any other organization in the city that has experience with facilitating such discussions, it will be interesting to hear how they plan to accomplish this.
UPDATE: I see that their announcement is on PilotOnline.
The group will consist only of civic league presidents…The group’s first meeting will be held in February. Topics will include community policing, code enforcement and workforce housing.
Hmm………
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
YOU made the claim, Kathy. Back it up with some data.
I’m not making a claim; I’m making several observations. Look up the terms of presidents, and cross check with national murder data. You will find consistent trends.
But that’s not the real topic here, is it? The real topic involves the discussions in Norfolk. Committed members of a grassroots organization conducted dialogs on race and proposed that a public conversation take place. The originators are being excluded from the process apparently for no good reason.
How does it relate?
Well, as I saw a black minister state the other day on the news, “when black people start respecting themselves, I bet others will follow.”
Race problem fixed.
I loved WRVA 1140’s Mac Watson comment today. He stated he has lived in several areas around the country, and this area was the only one so obsessed with race.
Why do you think that is? Good topic for a thread.
The fact you ask how it relates, highlights the problem in your thinking. If the people so concerned about race and slavery, put that same energy and passion into endeavors that brought them the things they seek, all of us would benefit. As the couple in the article did. As long as some Americans seek to divide themselves from other Americans, they will not be trusted, no matter what their motives. We’re all in this together folks.
Do you think they had some advantage some American born blacks don’t. You would be correct if you said yes. They believe in themselves, had goals, and worked hard to achieve them, regardless of the obstacles, and didn’t try to blame others for their lot in life. Or try to extort money from innocent taxpayers for something that ended 140+ years ago, that no one alive experienced or had a part in.
How does it relate?
Tom,
From Tim Wise’s article: The mother of all Racial Preferences
“Ask a fish what water is and you’ll get no answer, and not only because fish lack the capacity to speak. Even if they were capable of vocalizing a reply they would likely have none for such a question. When water surrounds one every minute of every day, explaining what it is becomes difficult if not impossible. It simply is. It’s taken for granted.
So too with this thing we hear so much about called “racial preference.” While many whites seem to think the notion originated with affirmative action programs, intended to expand opportunities for historically marginalized people of color, racial preference has actually had a long and very white history.
Affirmative action for whites was embodied in the abolition of European indentured servitude, which left black (and occasionally indigenous) slaves as the only unfree labor in the colonies that would become the U.S.
Affirmative action for whites was the essence of the 1790 Naturalization Act, which allowed virtually any European immigrant to become a full citizen, even while blacks, Asians, and American Indians could not.
Affirmative action for whites was the guiding principle of segregation, Asian exclusion laws, and the theft of half of Mexico for the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny.
In recent history, affirmative action for whites motivated racially-restrictive housing policies that helped 15 million white families procure homes with FHA loans from the 1930’s to the ’60’s, while people of color were mostly excluded from the same programs.
In other words, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that white America is the biggest collective recipient of racial preference in the history of the cosmos. It has skewed our laws, shaped our public policy and helped create the glaring inequalities with which we still live.”
Thank you for the thoughtful and polite response.
Please help me understand what the “glaring inequalities” are.
I have assumed that every child born in America since the 1960’s of which I am one, have had the same rights.
Am I wrong?