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Thread: What are you reading 2019?

  1. #71
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    I am reading Is Marriage For White People.

    The book is about how marriage has declined and continues to decline in the African American community. It also describes all sorts of social and lifestyle problems that come with this marriage decline. Very eye-opening and disconcerting!

    But quite a compelling read.

    I hope that the author suggests some paths forward to remedy the problems. But I am only halfway through.

  2. #72
    Senior Member iris lilies's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ultralight View Post
    I am reading Is Marriage For White People.

    The book is about how marriage has declined and continues to decline in the African American community. It also describes all sorts of social and lifestyle problems that come with this marriage decline. Very eye-opening and disconcerting!

    But quite a compelling read.

    I hope that the author suggests some paths forward to remedy the problems. But I am only halfway through.

    It isn’t so much marriage itself that is tied to stable family institutions. It is the fact that serial monogamy in the United States is much more short-lived then in those European countries we love to emulate. Their marriage rate is lower but parents stay together for longer periods.

    This is one of the truths illustrated in that book you talked about here a couple years ago called Promises I Can Keep. I really like that book and I even bought a Kindle copy. I dip into it now and then when I’m in my one of my “kids these days! Get off my lawn! Society is going to hell in a handbasket! “ phases. Use it to beef up my confirmation bias. Haha.

  3. #73
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by iris lilies View Post
    It isn’t so much marriage itself that is tied to stable family institutions. It is the fact that serial monogamy in the United States is much more short-lived then in those European countries we love to emulate. Their marriage rate is lower but parents stay together for longer periods.

    This is one of the truths illustrated in that book you talked about here a couple years ago called Promises I Can Keep. I really like that book and I even bought a Kindle copy. I dip into it now and then when I’m in my one of my “kids these days! Get off my lawn! Society is going to hell in a handbasket! “ phases. Use it to beef up my confirmation bias. Haha.
    This book discusses the Swedes, and others in European nations, where while they don't marry, they do stay together to parent.

    But this is a book that is very complex and it often points out how it seems like the crises of the black community eventually become the crises of the white community.

    The book is written by a black man who is married to a black woman and they are raising their three sons together.

  4. #74
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    I haven't yet read either of the books mentioned but often wish it weren't so easy to make babies. I just read today that a great deal of current mental illness is caused by traumatic events (or neglect) during the first three years of life. I have seen some really bad parenting lately and it makes me sad for their children and their future who don't have any other role models.

  5. #75
    Yppej
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    Pinkytoe I guess it depends on how you define mental illness. Knowing people who suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and addiction to me it is a biological brain disorder with a genetic component. PTSD may be another story.

  6. #76
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yppej View Post
    Pinkytoe I guess it depends on how you define mental illness. Knowing people who suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and addiction to me it is a biological brain disorder with a genetic component. PTSD may be another story.
    I think it is less about how you define mental illness and more about how mental illness is actually defined in reality.

  7. #77
    Yppej
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    Too many great parents are blamed for their children's medical conditions. In Biblical days people were with illnesses were blamed. For example, in John 9 the disciples ask Jesus, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?".

    2000 years later and people are still looking to point the finger at someone. At least we no longer say people with epilepsy are devil possessed.

    Anyways, I am currently reading Just Kids about Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe.
    Last edited by Yppej; 6-21-19 at 8:43pm. Reason: Correct spelling

  8. #78
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    So I finished Is Marriage For White People.

    It had a very peculiar thesis.

    The thrust of his idea for a solution is for black women to marry white or Asian men as a way to pay it forward for future black women. The thought being that if black women start marrying Asian and white men then black men will have to get their acts together, then future black women won't have to marry Asian or white men; they can go back to marrying black men.

    I am obviously radically boiling it down and simplifying it just a smidgen but really, this is the thesis.

  9. #79
    Yppej
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    The Immortal Irishman.

    I was not aware how cruel the English government was to the Irish.

  10. #80
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yppej View Post
    The Immortal Irishman.

    I was not aware how cruel the English government was to the Irish.
    My mom, who became Irish about ten years ago (we were Finnish before that), rants about this often.

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