A week ago, Bill Bennett, Our ex educational guru, suggested aborting all black babies if we wanted the crime rate to go down. Today, we get another gruesome video of a gang of cops kicking the shit out of an older black man who looked pretty darn harmless against 5 police officers.
This is disgusting.
We are a racist nation.
Not only begin "freedom" by enslaving them, lynching them, then declaring them 3/5's human, then having political platforms that were openly anti-black. What was it called, "the southern strategy"?
Now.
It's a passive agressive racism.
But it is still there.
The color of skin is based upon habitating certain areas of geography for billions and millions of years.
Nothing more.
It's amazing how in 2005 we can be so stupid, and quickly forget our horrible past.
Instead of economic models built to help the poor, our system is now set up to help the Uber Rich whatever ways are best for those already wealthy people and the politicians.
How Christian of a Nation can we be if our Christian Energy is used to stop gay marriage, pass tax cuts again and again and again for the richest people in the world, and turn our backs on the poor time and time again?
Posted by ricree101 (Member # 7749) on :
There really are better ways to discuss this than starting of with an angry rant.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
What is the purpose of your post? If it's to convince, maybe you could just pick one position and back it up. If it's to release emotion, well, only you would know if that worked.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
No, there really aren't better ways to discuss it.. As, it is something worth getting very angry about... Extremely angry. Plus, he does make a very powerful point.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
I wonder what is greater evidence of racism: The fact that white policemen beat up a black man, or the fact that so many people have concluded that the white policemen must have done it because of the black man's race.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
quote:A week ago, Bill Bennett, Our ex educational guru, suggested aborting all black babies if we wanted the crime rate to go down.
This is way off base. The statement he made about aborting black babies to reduce the crime rate was an analogy, albeit a poor one. But he even prefaced it by saying, "And I don't recommend this, but what you're saying is like saying...."
That quote belongs in the out of context thread.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:No, there really aren't better ways to discuss it.. As, it is something worth getting very angry about...
Proof would be nice.
Even some semblance of logical progression of argument.
Instead, we constantly get from Thor inaccurate assertions about people's motives, linking of unrelated events, and continual restatement of the same platform.
Again, without analysis. Without nuance. Without even any concrete proposals.
He can't even bother to describe what would be one of the "economic models built to help the poor."
If all you're interested in is cathartic ranting, then this is the best way to discuss it.
If you want to see change effected, this is counter-productive.
Read William Raspberry sometime if you want to see good discussions of racial issues in the U.S. He's quite unapologetic about his views. But he discusses. He meets his opposition in areas of agreements. He tends not to demonize.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
I just had a similar conversation with a friend of mine. (Full disclosure - I live in the deep, deep, deep south. The Marianas trench of south.)
He works with a black guy, and the guy did something which was unquestionably stupid. My friend said, "Dude, you're stupid."
His coworker went immediately to the racist card.
"Man, you're racist!" he tells my friend.
Um, no. If you get called stupid and you did something stupid, that's not racist. If you get called stupid based solely on the color of your skin, that's racist. This is a crucial distinction that a lot of people, of all colors, don't seem to grasp.
Another example: It's not a stereotype to say that black people have darker skin than white people. It's not a stereotype because 1) it's a verifiable fact and 2) it's a value neutral statement.
It is a stereotype if you say, "Black people are lazy because they have darker skin than white people." When you attach a value judgement to a generalization like that it becomes a racist statement. This works if the judgement is positive, too. "Asian people are smarter than white people", is a racist statement, by the same token.
Posted by Zarex (Member # 8504) on :
We used to live in a world where you were called racist if you took the color of someone's skin into account when you judged them.
Now, we live in a world where you are called a rascist if you don't take a person's skin color into account when you judge them.
Posted by Nato (Member # 1448) on :
quote:Instead of economic models built to help the poor, our system is now set up to help the Uber Rich whatever ways are best for those already wealthy people and the politicians.
quote:He can't even bother to describe what would be one of the "economic models built to help the poor."
I don't think he needs to.
In the wake of the hurricanes, the minimum wage was suspended. (So if any locals get a chance to work they might not earn $5.15 an hour?)
80% of the money that Congress allocated was distributed via no-bid contracts. (These contracts had a built-in guaranteed profit, no matter how much the companies spent) -- A subsidiary of Halliburton's is one such company.
90% of the money that Congress allocated went to companies outside of the South.
The tax aid offered to hurricane victims did more to help the rich.
Money was ridiculously thrown around where it wasn't and kept from causes that did need it. (Did you know how much money Carnival Cruise Lines got for providing some floating hotels?)
--------------- Edit: Zarex, I think that it is very reasonable to investigate possible racist motives in the beating case. Do not assume racism outright, but we should discern when it is present and fight it.
Posted by Treason (Member # 7587) on :
A link to the story or video of the cops beating up the guy would be nice... (well, not nice-but you know what I mean)
Posted by Nato (Member # 1448) on :
Thank you, Nato.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: A week ago, Bill Bennett, Our ex educational guru, suggested aborting all black babies if we wanted the crime rate to go down.
Thor, you should know better than this. I'm no fan of Mr. Bennett, but -- as has already been pointed out -- he specifically said this as an example of something ludicrous and unthinkable.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Its true there aren't many ways to discuss this, if your quiet and passive about it then those with the power to change things can safely ignore it and maintain the status quo.
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
People use the -ism card to get what they want nowadays. Here's a classic example. The woman in the story is white, but she plays the ageism, sexism, sizeism and singleism cards simultaneously.
Racism is sick. I can't begin to understand why skin color, of all things, should matter. Nor why I, whose family wasn't even here at the time slavery was happening, am somehow at fault for it because of the color of my skin.
I know racism exists. I think the solution is to refuse to engage in it, and to refuse to acquiesce to it. I was at a bank once, and the white teller looked right past the black guy standing in front of me and motioned me up to the window. I said, "I think this man was before me."
A week later, I was at the customer service department of a Woolworths (yeah, this was a few years back) in Washington Heights (the area of Manhattan known as Spanish Harlem). I'd been waiting in line for 10 minutes, and I was next up. Shortly before the person in front of me finished, a Hispanic woman walked in and got into line behind me. As soon as she finished with the person in front of me, the Hispanic customer service woman waved the woman behind me forward. The woman didn't even give me a semi-apologetic glance as she walked past me.
There's nasty behavior out there. But when I once related this story to someone who was fulminating against white privilege, her response was to tell me that the two situations were not comparable at all. That when an oppressed group acts like that, it's not as bad as when an oppressor group does. That, I maintain, is a racist attitude.
Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
I don't have a lot of time to go more detailed, but I did have a thought about this situation and thought I should share a bit of it. Please be gentle, it's incomplete...
I think people are missing the bigger issue; classism, which I think is the root of modern racism. In the absence of any evidence that minorities are inferior, social ills that exist in poorer urban areas are ascribed to those minorities.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
Not that it is a good thing, but this isn't a rascist nation, its a rascist world. Rascism occurs in every nation where a minority grows big enough that the majority feels threatened.
Posted by Avin (Member # 7751) on :
The neighborhood I live in is probably about 60% white, 40% black.
The public elementary school right in the middle is composed of about 99% black kids, 1% white kids.
Why? All the white kids parents have petitioned for some reason or another (often good reasons, because the "black" schools are so horrible) to be moved to a different school, or go to private schools, etc.
This is not an isolated occurance. The net result is that all the schools in this area are either almost all black or all white, despite the fact that we have large numbers of both populations, sometimes living right next to each other.
Tell me, weren't public schools supposed to be desegregated? Why do we still have segregated schools?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Because, deep down, most people LIKE segregation, and will self-segregate in any way they can. And I'm not just talking about race, here.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
The problem with segregation is that it was a rule imposed by the government. And separate was not equal.
You can't do anything about it when a community chooses to segregate itself.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
The US government is attempting to do so, El JT de Spang. I'm not convinced it's a bad idea, either.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
How is the government currently attempting segregation?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
I think he meant that the the US government is attempting to do something "about it when a community chooses to segregate itself."
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
Ahh, that makes more sense.
Posted by 0range7Penguin (Member # 7337) on :
I think its the next generations that we have to look to. Every generation is more excepting and less segregated than the last. Notice I didnt say less racist, so im not accusing the current generation of being racist, just more segregated than further generations. We have done away with slavery and have made bold steps towards destroying racism. But what we still have is people notice differences. Even a non racist has to be on gaurd about what they say so that they wont be percieved as racist. What i mean is the previous example about calling someone stupid because they did something stupid and they immediatly get called racist just because that person is black.
The problem is even if were no longer racist we still constantly take race into account.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yes, Dagonee's interpretation is correct. That's what I meant.