MLK assassinated 40 years ago today
POSTED BY: Skywalken
UPDATED: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 03:01
VIEWED: 7194
PAGE 3 of 5
As the spokesperson for whites everywhere, I think we should all feel guilty about slavery.
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Let's party like it's 1929.
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I'm realy sorry I missed so much of this! DeepGirl, I'm really glad you came out of your non-confrontational shell to join us, I hope you'll stick around. You seem pretty good at it (I'm a debutant nouveau myself, just bursting onto the scene like the Kool-Aid guy).
So it seems like the real issue of contention here is how people are defined and define themselves. And there's the rub, as 'twere, for the whole objective is to not be defined by race and creed and so on. The only problem with that is it sounds awfully homogeneous (somebody make a gay Einstein joke out of that, would you?); I mean, if you're "community" can't be identified just by looking at you, it probably means you look and act just like everyone else, all those other "unique" people. But maybe the trick is to muddle up the indictators, so everyone has their flair but there's no way of using it to define a group, except possibly as the "mismatched community." So that's the question, I guess, for me: How do you assimilate and acculturate a "raceless" society without becoming bland and boring, like newscasters?
I beg forgiveness, but I was working on a similar theme on my totally unrelated blog, and it seems a propos so I'm going to paste it in here:
There’s been a bit of an uproar about Barack Obama’s statements about his grandmother. I would like, for perspective, to point out that my grandmother was wont to casually and impartially refer to blacks as "niggras," as in "There’s a nice niggra family moved in down the street." In contrast to Obama’s grandmother, however, I think it safe to say that mine was never afraid of black men she met on the street; they stood to attention and called her "Ma’am" just like everyone else.
Race is obviously not a taboo subject to me, as it is to many of my generation (whatever that is). In fact, I think it’s a topic that should be picked at and poked at and turned upside down and shaken to try and figure out what’s inside. I’ve tried to institute a policy of racial insensitivity, which of course gets me called a racist periodically. Following my grandmother’s example (not so much the "niggra" part), I don’t judge anyone by the color of their skin but by the content of their character (now where have I heard that before?). It’s just that so many people suck in the character department; that’s hardly my fault. If somebody acts like a creep or a scumbag, the fact that they’re black doesn’t change or excuse that, unless you subscribe to the belief that blacks or other minority races are somehow deficient mentally or spiritually; and you know, I swear sometimes that’s what people seem to be saying.
An example of this that always sticks with me was during the aftermath of the 2000 election, when Jesse Jackson publicly claimed, as best I could tell, that the "faulty" ballots were too complicated for black voters to understand (I’m not sure what excuse the affluent Jews who voted for Pat Buchanan had). I stood flabbergasted (which is a sight, I’ll tell you); I thought "This is the advocate for the black community?" If blacks needed an insulting paternalism, they had plenty of that going around pre-1865.
The tendency to be patronizing in race issues is bad enough, but worse is the apparent drive to claim as items of cultural or class identity the very afflictions and dysfunctions that any sensible person would want to escape. It’s like the irritating habit of country songs to glorify being a semi-literate wage-slave with little or no dress sense. Maybe your ancestors had no choice but to live that way and like it, but you don’t have to, much less make a cult out of it, one that I’m sure would astound and horrify General Lee or President Davis if they could see it. In the same way, the tragic and senseless tendency of black culture to embrace and iconize criminality, parental neglect, and undereducated moronic victimhood leads directly to the paranoia that believes the government forces drugs on black neighborhoods, and the heartbreaking resignation that greets Jesse Jackson
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Wow.. discussions like this make me ever so glad I made the decision way back in my early teens to just NOT CARE what arbitrarily determined (cause, you know, it is!) "race" anyone technically belonged to.
It sure opened all manner of routes for cultural exploration once you dismiss the artificial divisions and start lookin at people as people.
Someone wants to dislike me, I can give em all manner of better reasons than my skin tone and technical ancestry, cause when it comes right down TO it, this is as stupid as disliking and judging people cause of what color their eyes are.
And for the record, it's even STUPIDER online, when you have no effective knowledge of these things unless someone directly tells you.
I just don't see the point of it, never have.
-F
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'Hero'
The more I read of your posts the fuller, and fuller, and fuller of sh*t you show yourself to be. Obama was talking about SOME black people, SOME of the time. Only you, and racist assholes like you, could say it means blacks in general, and then try and deny you said it. Be a MAN for god's sake and own up to your racism and the careless stupidity by which you exposed it.
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
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I think we all agree that people should be judged on "the content of their character" as individuals. The problem is that societal trends can only be studied by separating people into groups based on common characteristics. If we have a group of people that is made up of individuals all diverse in many ways, how do we find the source of a societal problem. You begin by separating the one large group into smaller groups based on a common characteristic. Lets say that we have two groups that when looked at together are as diverse as the human race itself, but Group A has only one unique characteristic that makes them different from Group B. This difference is of no significance in and of itself, but when we compare statistics on the groups we find dramatic differences in some societal trends.
.........................Group A..........Group B
Incarceration Rate......_2,531/10k________393/10k
Out of Wedlock Childbirth...._69.9%_______23.3%
High School Dropout Rate........_11%_________6%
The first thing we do is look for other common factors among the two groups and select smaller samples that account for these differences such as income, marriage rates, education etc. When we compare "apples with apples" we find that Group A still has statistically significant differences from Group B. At this point it is reasonable to assume that the one unique characteristic of Group A has some correlation with the trends in that group. Assuming we are looking at these groups with the intent of solving social problems, and assuming we see alarming negative treads in the statistics for group A, it is reasonable for those in Group A and Group B to be concerned about the negative impact on society as a whole. The idea that Group A would reject the concerns of Group B is counterproductive to solving the issues that almost all in both groups see as harmful trends for society. No one likes to be lumped into a group based on statistics, but that's what is necessary to make informed decisions on the measures needed to correct deficiencies in our society.
It turns out 85% of serial killers are white males. I happen to be a white male. Why would I take offense from this mere statement of the facts. It would be different if someone said that because I am a white male I must therefor be a serial killer. The problem is, if all white males took offense to this statistic, and objected every time someone tried to discuss what can be done to stop serial killers, it would benefit no one but the serial killers.
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There's a difference between saying "85% of serial kilers are white males" and "white males are serial killers". 'Hero' quite accidentally said what he meant, which is 'blacks are ...'
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And, uhm ...... what's your excuse for defending that ?
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Define "white"...
Hell, define "black" - I mean, someone who is very dark could be descended from Zulu, Samburu, Bambara, Ibos, Dogon, Fulani, or any combination of cultural and ethnic lines, some even crossing into mediterranian turf, could be some egyptian or yemeni in there....
For all you know they might be of indian ancestry, so you know, it's wholly abitrary and thus ridiculous to try to shoehorn folk into brackets by skin color alone since there are so MANY cultures and ethnicities that they could have come from.
And us lighter folk are even worse, to pin it down to one specific ethnic and cultural line as a primary, so tricky in fact it just ain't worth caring about unless yer into Eugenics or something.
For all you know, you could be a Berber or Kayble and directly related to someone who looks completely different than you!
It's really a seriously idiotic criteria to judge people by, in any way, shape or form.
What we are, is AMERICANS, by virtue of the language, citizenship, and culture we have elected to stick with, perhaps grudgingly since we were born here, or even quite satisfied, it is an identity which we accept and acknowledge, often with a pride based on geographical location and State/City identification as well.
Once you really understand, really GET that concept, the idea of race, especially determined by color alone, just becomes downright ludicrous if not offensive.
I just don't understand why folk cling to a whole concept that makes no actual SENSE.
-F
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
There's a difference between saying "85% of serial kilers are white males" and "white males are serial killers". 'Hero' quite accidentally said what he meant, which is 'blacks are ...'
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And, uhm ...... what's your excuse for defending that ?
You're the one running around RWED calling anyone who doesn't jump through your politically correct hoops a racist. Calling someone a racist because they didn't use the exact language you find appropriate is idiotic, but coming from you that's not surprising. It says a lot more about you than it does Hero or me. People like you are so eager to stir up racial divisions where they don't exist, it seems to me like you're the racist here.
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"it seems to me like you're the racist here"
Just a bit touchy on the subject, are we ? And, oh yeah, did I say anything about anyone's 'race' ? Kinda hard to stir up racial divisions when you're not saying anything about race, don't you think ? Now 'Hero' OTOH had lots to say about blacks, and you defended what he said. So the people stirring up racial divisions would be ---- you.
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
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