Reductio Ad Racism
In the fight for the soul of America,
the side of Democracy cannot be the gentle side….
The forces of illiberalism can never win an election in America again…
The fascist ideology of Trumpism and the minions of Trump must be crushed and eradicated from American public life…
The only rational explanation for people to cling to and maintain their fealty to Trump over the Constitution and American Democracy is race and racism..
Supporters of Trump and Trumpism didn’t vote FOR Trump as much as they were voting AGAINST the humanity, dignity, and equality of black and brown people.
Most of the white people in this country would choose, or permit, an ethno racist autocracy over an egalitarian multi-racial democracy, and a return to American Apartheid and Jim Crow.
Proof of this is in the political calculus of Trump and his minions:
Eliminate black and brown votes as inherently fraudulent and illegitimate, and count only the votes of white people as legitimate, and Trump wins the election by a snow white avalanche…
“Everybody knows that!”, as Trump would say…
This is why White Supremacists and White Nationalists led the violent and murderous charge of sedition and insurrection at the Capitol …
They stand prepared and ready to do it again with or without their racist- in- chief at the forefront…
879 total views, 1 views today
01/17/2021 @ 7:18 pm
“The only rational explanation for people to cling to and maintain their fealty to Trump over the Constitution and American Democracy is race and racism..
“Supporters of Trump and Trumpism didn’tt vote FOR Trump as much as they were voting AGAINST the humanity, dignity, and equality of black and brown people.”
I agree about that.
But I don’t think you’ve made enough of a case for this:
“Most of the white people in this country would choose, or permit, an ethno racist autocracy over an egalitarian multi-racial democracy, and a return to American Apartheid and Jim Crow.
“Proof of this is in the political calculus of Trump and his minions:
“Eliminate black and brown votes as inherently fraudulent and illegitimate, and count only the votes of white people as legitimate, and Trump wins the election by a snow white avalanche…”
You’d need to present more evidence that the majority of Whites in America would allow the vote to be taken away from the Black population. The fact that they believed the President about the election doesn’t add up to that. Most of these people if asked would say “I’m not racist,” but you can’t look non-racist to anyone if you take away the Black vote.
We’re in trouble, a lot of trouble, but I’m not sure you could find that many White Americans who would vote to make it illegal for Black people to vote. I think most of them would be horrified. That’s too racist to face.
01/17/2021 @ 8:41 pm
@Koshersalaami;
“You’d need to present more evidence that the majority of Whites in America would allow the vote to be taken away from the Black population.”
There are more ‘Red States’ than ‘Blue States’.
White folks in ‘Red States’ continually and consistently vote for governors and legislatures that:
Gerrymander black and brown communities;
Create and enforce draconian voter registration and voter ID laws;
Structure voting times and places so as to skew election outcomes;
How much of a case do you need to show that since DOJ oversight of the Voting Rights Act was removed, most of the jurisdictions totally controlled by white legislators have made overt attempts to “take away the Black vote” with precious little opposition or outcry from the ‘majority of white folks’….
01/25/2021 @ 10:29 am
Kosh, the majority of the Caucasian population didn’t care when Native Americans in North Dakota were stripped of their right to vote in 2018. The majority of the Caucasian population doesn’t CARE that in South Dakota there is a Federal Court Order being ignored pertaining to Native American children in foster care (the order sends them home – the state is using them to help meet budget shortfalls so the small fine they are paying the feds for NOT complying with the court order is nothing). Native Americans make up 9% of the population of South Dakota but Native American children make up more than 60% of their foster care population due to the FACT the feds consider Native American children to be “disabled”. I would say that BOTH provide additional evidence that the majority of the Caucasian population would NOT REACT negatively to black people being stripped of their right to vote.
01/25/2021 @ 5:57 pm
Mrs. Raptor,
I wasn’t aware of the vote being pulled from Americans. How did they attempt to justify it?
01/26/2021 @ 9:43 am
Kosh, your question should read:
“I wasn’t aware of the vote being pulled from (NATIVE) Americans.”
There is often something with which you are unaware that can render the nature or scope of an “assessment” defective, deficient, insufficient, or inadequate…
“How did they attempt to justify it?”
Such actions are not always accompanied by “justification”…
Native Americans have been denied the right to vote simply because there are no street addresses on reservations…
Inasmuch as the average American white person is unaffected by such bullshit, the average American white person couldn’t care less and would blithely remain ignorant, oblivious, and indifferent to the fact that the voting rights of non whites are severely hampered and, in some cases, all but eliminated…
01/26/2021 @ 10:23 am
You’re right, that’s exactly what my quote should read. I am aware of voter disenfranchisement efforts of Black Americans but I am also aware that that didn’t exactly go without reactions in the East, certainly not among White Democrats and Greens.
01/26/2021 @ 10:38 am
“…that didn’t exactly go without reactions in the East, certainly not among White Democrats and Greens….”
A distinct minority of white folks. Not nearly representative of the vast majority of white people who couldn’t care less…
01/17/2021 @ 9:49 pm
Several off notes here.
There were black people among the barbarians who attacked the capitol. I don’t understand what they were doing there, and there weren’t many of them, but they were there, side by side with racists. There were Jews among the barbarians. I don’t know how many Jews were there but I know of at least one Jew who was marching beside people wearing sweatshirts proclaiming that six million wasn’t enough.
There are a number of drivers behind this phenomenon. Racism is definitely the most important driver, but there are others. There were many small business owners there who were hoping that the second Trump administration really would kill off Social Security and Medicare, saving them 7.65% of their total payroll costs. There were other people who were hoping for more protectionism from a second Trump administration. There were Christian fundamentalists who were hoping that Trump would outlaw abortion and perhaps even declare the United States a Christian country (which he did, in fact, attempt to do on several occasions in speeches that he gave.) There are other special interest groups with other agendas. There is no doubt that racism and xenophobia were the primary drivers, but the other are also potent forces.
01/18/2021 @ 12:48 am
Alan, there are a variety of those among us, of all manner of stripe and persuasion, who are, have been, and shall remain permanently stuck on stupid…
01/18/2021 @ 1:37 am
Gerrymandering has been used in a lot more situations than racial ones. It was developed, and continues to be used, to minimize the impact of opposing voters, and the point of the populations whose electoral impact is reduced is that they’re opposing voters. It’s a dirty, fundamentally undemocratic tactic. I’ve been Gerrymandered before. And the Black people who were Gerrymandered in Greensboro, NC with me were Gerrymandered by Republicans for the same reason I was: We vote Democratic.
If anything was proven by the recent election, it was that the major effort was disenfranchising opposing voters. That’s what those complaints to Georgia, Pennsylvania, and I think Wisconsin were all about.
Time after time the effort was stopped. And it was stopped largely by White Republicans – Republican appointed officials and Republican appointed judges.
01/18/2021 @ 4:54 am
@Koshersalaami;
Gerrymandering can be shown to have a disproportionate impact by targeting black and/or brown communities with the effect of disenfranchising them.
Federal district courts have ordered redistricting with the result being the election of representatives who are more reflective of the demographics of the area…
More than a few state and federal representatives owe their seats to such rulings.
When taken together with the other forms of voter suppression or negation it is clear that white folks benefit from the practices and accept the results with little or no opposition or complaint…
I don’t recall any case where the white people who benefited from gerrymandering went to court seeking to overturn voter suppression laws, policicies, practices, procedures, or protocols, that had the consequence of taking the right to vote and/or be represented away from black and brown people…
01/18/2021 @ 9:08 pm
Ron,
This is going to be a long answer because it comes in two parts. The first part I recently started writing as a post but I lost part of it, wasn’t happy with what I replaced it with, and so I never finished. It has to do with some things you’ve heard from me before.
Culture, and thereby identity, comes from ethnicity, not race. Where an ethnicity identifies itself as a race this gets confusing. For you, I’m pretty sure your ethnicity and race are nearly congruent, only not to the extent that there is now a substantial immigrant Black population that doesn’t exactly share ethnicity with you. For me, they’re completely different. Race for me isn’t tribal at all. Yes, I’m White, and yes, I am a recipient of White Privilege, but I don’t have anything like the same relationship with race that you do. To think otherwise is to think that Norwegians are loyal to Greece or Irish are loyal to Russia. They’re all White but that just isn’t all that relevant.
In the late sixties at a meeting of SNCC, Black members told Jewish members that they should go help their White brothers in Appalachia. To the people who said this it made perfect sense but to the people who heard it it made none. The Jews in that meeting would have thought of the Blacks in that meeting as brothers way faster than they would have thought that way about Appalachian Whites.
Many years later, in 1990, a professor at Maryland (where my wife was working on graduate degrees, I don’t remember which one then, probably Ph. D) by the name of Dr. Janet Helms wrote a book about White racial identity. My wife had a copy and I read it. Dr. Helms was railing about Whites not embracing their racial identity and I read it and thought “No, I don’t embrace my racial identity because my identity isn’t based on my race. In the US, the White umbrella is big enough to have a lot of cultures underneath it, the Black umbrella is not, and so they don’t compare like that. Black Power isn’t equivalent in America to White Power, it’s equivalent to Irish Power. That’s why Black and White as an American racial dichotomy doesn’t work.”
Now I’m going to explain why I went through that exercise. I’m going to talk some about Trump-supporting Whites. What I am giving is my diagnosis. I am not defending them, but mostly They Are Not Mine. We have the same privilege but not the same identity. I would say they would accept me faster than they would accept you and for many that’s true but certainly not for all the guys who broke into the Capitol. Camp Auschwitz shirts suggest that I’m not being invited out for a beer any time soon.
Now I’m going to talk about my take on average conservative White people and racism. Gerrymandering at this point has a whole lot to do with partisanship. To put it differently, if the Black population tended to vote Republican these guys would be giving you rides to the polls. Look at how they talk about immigration and Democrats. They say that Democrats want to encourage immigration because immigrants tend to vote Democratic and it’s all about enlarging the base. Republicans are better than Democrats at concentrating on elections. That’s how they do well at the State level and it’s how they got all that power in 2010 by taking over legislatures in charge of redistricting, leading to Gerrymandering.
The Charlottesville marchers were Nazis. Nazis are different. Hitler wasn’t after us because we weren’t voting for him; Hitler was after us because he hated our guts and at times put resources into mass murder that he pulled from the war effort. Nazis would be happy with Jim Crow.
I know some conservatives, but they don’t think they’re racist at all. They don’t want to think of themselves as racists because they think in principle that racism is wrong. They’re none too careful about that, but if you offered them Jim Crow I don’t think most would go for it. It’s not like George Wallace in the sixties. And in the sixties it was already shifting. In the early seventies Lester Maddox, the governor of Georgia, walked off the Dick Cavett show when Cavett referred to Georgians as racists. Maddox said “Apologize to the people of Georgia!” Cavett said “I apologize to those of your supporters who are not racist.” Maddox walked off in a huff. We both know that Maddox was screamingly racist but it bothered him to have his state thought of like that even then. Racism was becoming something you didn’t advocate in polite company.
Yes, these guys will Gerrymander you (and me for the same reason – because of how I vote) but I don’t think Jim Crow is in our future. If Jim Crow were a danger, George Floyd’s murder would not have gotten as widespread a reaction as it did. We wouldn’t have seen millions of Republicans say “You have a point.” But we did. The baseline is nowhere near where it should be, and I mean ludicrously Nowhere Near, but it’s higher than Jim Crow.
01/19/2021 @ 3:46 pm
This post is not about gerrymandering per se…
Gerrymandering is only one of the several devices employed by racist white legislators who seek to disenfranchise black people because “black people should not control the outcome of any election”.
Your focus on gerrymandering is misplaced and a distraction….
Most white people would be OK with an all white electorate….Too many wouldn’t even notice the exclusion of black voters regardless of the grounds upon which the exclusion was predicated….
01/19/2021 @ 3:59 pm
Do you think that exclusion would be quiet enough to go unnoticed?
01/19/2021 @ 4:07 pm
Not if black people made enough noise about it and, even then, too many white folks would remain oblivious and/or indifferent…
01/20/2021 @ 12:12 am
Why do you think we don’t have Jim Crow now?
01/25/2021 @ 8:44 am
The appropriate question is why do you believe that acquittal of police for killing unarmed black men, women, and children isn’t a remaining and persistent vestige of Jim Crow law enforcement?
The platitudes and euphemisms abound. However, Jim Crow by any other name…
01/25/2021 @ 1:04 pm
That’s a good question. I think it is a remaining de facto vestige but that it is tolerated by many because it is not a de jure vestige, and Jim Crow was definitely de jure. Also, bigotry doesn’t equal Jim Crow. Other minorities have suffered unequal treatment by law enforcement. Some still do. But that doesn’t mean that the majority of White people in the country are prepared to tolerate the vote being yanked from millions of American citizens. The idea that they are is an assertion.
What recent evidence do you have that there is widespread support for legislation that only applies to Black people?
01/25/2021 @ 1:13 pm
Ron, I get your concern, which I would characterize as that White Americans don’t take racism nearly seriously enough. That’s 100% true. I agree with that assessment completely. What I don’t agree with is that the effective way around that includes any kind of exaggeration. It doesn’t need exaggeration. There is so much about racism that is so huge in scope and awful that is airtight that there’s no reason to go beyond it. What going beyond it does is screw up our credibility,. If they’re exaggerating about this, what else are they exaggerating about? Their allegations of racism can’t be trusted.
If I’m going to fight racism (which there isn’t an “if” about) I want credibility. It’s too valuable to squander when I don’t need to squander it. There are thousands and thousands of strong cases. There’s no way in Hell I’ll advocate expending energy on a weak one, and this is a weak one. All it does is screw up our antiracism case.
01/26/2021 @ 12:50 am
The underlying dynamic of Jim Crow law was the fact that the laws and legal system was a direct reflection of the prevailing social and political attitudes of the period.
The notion that “the black man had no rights which the white man was bound to respect” permeated and poisoned the entire society against the interests and concerns of black people re the question of “equal justice under law”.
You keep looking for a law or set of laws that specifically identify and target black people as may have been the case during the so-called Jim Crow era…
The legislative language is gone but the underlying social and political attitudes remain…
The laws are more sophisticated and have been updated and appear to be superficially race neutral…
Any pre law college junior could write such legislation knowing that application and enforcement within the context of persistent systemic and institutional racism will produce the ‘desired’ effect of adverse consequences for black and brown populations…
There is no exaggeration in my analysis or assessment that doesn’t already exist in the racist attitudes and behaviors of most of the white people in this country…
01/26/2021 @ 10:00 am
But you’re claiming that the majority of Whites believe that “the Black man had no rights which the White man was bound to respect.” I don’t find that obvious. In fact, the overall reaction and the survey reaction to the George Floyd murder do not indicate that. You’re asserting that point without substantiating it.
Would it be valid to say something like, I don’t know,
“Most Whites would like the Black population of America dead. They would be fine with rounding them up, building gas chambers for them, exterminating them as efficiently as possible, and mass-incinerating their corpses after processing them to make soap out of them”? You could assert that. You could assert it and claim that if I disagree with it I’m minimizing the extent of racism and defending White people. You could claim it’s obvious. Nothing stopping you.
Let’s look at another indicator that might shed some light here: attitudes toward racial intermarriage. As of 2017 according to Pew, 12% of Whites would object to a close relative marrying someone of a different race or ethnicity. Let’s flip that to what else it says:
In 2017, 88% of White people would not object to a close relative marrying someone of a different race or ethnicity. That’s not a Jim Crow number. During Jim Crow, it’s conceivable that that number was reversed. We live in a country with a severe racism problem but we do not live in the America of 1955. Asserting that the only difference for the majority of Whites between 1955 and now is cosmetic is nonsense. White people don’t drain their pools after Dorothy Dandridge takes a dip any more.
01/26/2021 @ 11:23 am
“White people don’t drain their pools after Dorothy Dandridge takes a dip any more.“
There is a widespread notion that racism in America isn’t what it was decades ago. It is often said that we have made progress in some unassailable way. I am highlighting this quote as one examples of that thought expressed.
I disagree. I strongly disagree. Racism doesn’t play out the way that it did in 1955 in fairly superficial ways, but I don’t think it is changed much at all. I also find that the strongest opposition I get to this is from white people. As far as that goes, not much has changed. Whether racist or not, white people always denied racism more than those saying that they were suffering from it. That, in and of itself, is a problem.
I once insisted on taking a race report in a case where my partner wanted to refuse, and told the woman that what happened to her was not a rape. He attempted to convince her otherwise. Why was he so invested in that not happening? He had his reasons. Similarly, why are non-whites so invested in telling Black people that racism has been reduced or is improving? Is it a firm belief in the perception of the person telling you that they experience the racism is not sophisticated enough to know, or is it a lack of trust in that person’s honesty? Why would Pew research know more than any one person experiencing such things, when Pew research is not a person? Why would any collection of poll questions accurately define and communicate the complex social and psychological essence of racism when one can rarely see a cross cultural understanding of the shared humanity expressed? Even Christianity fails to evaluate different types of people as equally human, and it has been in the business since the Roman Empire.
Just because someone doesn’t say, get out of my pool, nigger, does not mean that they are not thinking it in some way. I was told on these pages that I was an undesirable, and I am sure that then underlying venom was racist. That doesn’t shock me. Lots of people can’t help it, and that goes unnoticed. That doesn’t shock me either. If someone doesn’t drain their pool because a Black person swam in it, I’d say that that stems from some change in a superstition belief about skin, or race, but it doesn’t touch the actual racism. If racism exists, it may reside in such superstition to help a person understand it, but when that particular concept is removed, the virus of racism just migrates elsewhere.
Just one of the ways that the heat of racism has hidden itself is in the question of politics. A polled sample may not have as much hesitation about someone marrying out of their race, but they may express resistance to different politics. When that crowd attacked the Capitol, and they sought certain people to kill, they sought women and ethnic minorities, and labeled Pence a traitor to their cause. The racism and misogyny is still there. They just dressed it up in political clothing. Likewise, I think those women and minorities who find themselves aligned with the mob are trying to avoid whatever comes with being the target of the mob.
01/26/2021 @ 7:59 pm
@Koshersalaami;
“I don’t find that obvious.”
Most white people wouldn’t find any of what I’m asserting here to be obvious…
“Asserting that the only difference for the majority of Whites between 1955 and now is cosmetic is nonsense.”
Believing that it is anything but ‘cosmetic’ is a clear manifestation of white privilege.
Which is something else that white people don’t process as ‘obvious’…
This is why White juries can acquit murderous racist cops despite what they can see in a video recording…
I came of age in the 50s and 60s. I lived through and witnessed first hand several decades of “improvements”
with the end result being that the more things “change” the more they remain the same…
My life and my life experiences are substantial testament to that fact…
However, you would prefer to discount my assertion(s) about white people by insisting on substantiation that you can perceive as ‘obvious’ while simultaneously unilaterally and summarily obviating and dismissing my life experience as not being of sufficient substance to persuade or prove that which you cannot, or will not, fathom because, simply speaking, you’re not a black man.
You would do well to replay the Tim Wise clips I’ve posted here and try to learn something before you characterize anything as “nonsense”.
01/26/2021 @ 8:32 pm
BTW
Bitey is spot on and has this dead right…
01/27/2021 @ 1:11 am
Ron,
Do you know why I object to people tossing around the accusation of being a Nazi? Because it trivializes the monstrous extent to which Naziism was awful. Not all persecution is Naziism. Naziism was way more extreme than most persecution.
You’re watching Jim Crow being trivialized like that – in fact you’re trivializing it like that, and you are somehow OK with this. Not all bigotry is Jim Crow. Jim Crow was way more extreme than most bigotry.
You think I’m discounting your experience? You’re doing a great job of that yourself. Who did you marry? What did you do at Yale? Ten years earlier, how possible would either of those have been? Would you have been able to accomplish the same things as a lawyer ten years before you became one? How could you discount the accomplishments of the civil rights movement like that? Gee, Dr. King, you didn’t make a fucking bit of difference. I wonder why you bothered.
I don’t understand how a Black man of your age could say this. Thomas Sowell, maybe. But You?
01/27/2021 @ 1:13 am
I don’t let what changes haven’t happened blind me to what changes have happened.
01/27/2021 @ 12:34 am
Bill,
Don’t ever make the mistake of believing that hypocrisy is worse than persecution. That belief is a luxury borne of not living through persecution on a Jimi Crow level, which you haven’t. What confuses me about Ron’s stand here is that Ron is old enough to know better. He is essentially arguing that life for Black people in the United States during Jim Crow wasn’t as awful as we remember, which is an argument I never expected from him in a million years.
My sole argument here is about whether the majority of the White population would rather see us go back to Jim Crow or would tolerate it if we did. Nothing else. I’m not claiming that we’re in good shape racially. We obviously are not. America is still an extremely racist country. At no point am I arguing that it isn’t.
But not Jim Crow racist. Jim Crow was so bad that the Nazis used it to figure out how to separate Jews from the rest of the German population. The one drop rule was so pernicious and extreme that the Nazis couldn’t stomach it. Think about that for a minute and remember what the Nazis could stomach. I’m saying that racism isn’t what it was decades ago because racism isn’t what it was decades ago. Your life and Ron’s life since Jim Crow would be impossible during Jim Crow.
Is there still racism that extreme in the United States? Yes, in extremist groups. But in the general population, not like that.
You know conservative Trump-supporting White people. Would those you know best be fine with your right to vote taken away from you because you’re Black? Would they be fine with your being forced to sit in the back of public buses if there were enough White riders on the bus?
Is racism improving? From 2015 to 2017 I’d say it got worse. In recent years there have been two things about racism that have improved: the elimination of the Confederate flag from polite society and the widespread White perception that Black people really are treated worse on average than White people by the police. Both were ridiculously overdue. Both are visible steps. Neither represents a cancelation of racism, just a minor reduction in its severity. And, in terms of the reaction to George Floyd’s murder, we still don’t know what that triggered because so much of it is still in progress, certainly at a corporate level.
I’m not in favor of incrementalism. I don’t think increments are anything to be satisfied with. I am not advising patience.
Will racial government policy improve? It already has in less than a week. It won’t be enough. It can’t be enough. But it will be an improvement among the thousands of improvements it will take. I’ll take the battle victory, but the war’s going to last an awfully long time.
When it comes to Jim Crow I’m not being an optimist. I have no desire to defend White people per se; I’m far more interested in diagnosing them as accurately as possible because that points more specifically to what needs to be done. In the end, that’s the most important question. I want to do what works and the only way we can figure that out is to be very careful with our diagnosis.
01/27/2021 @ 2:57 am
“Most of the white people in this country would choose, or permit, an ethno racist autocracy over an egalitarian multi-racial democracy, and a return to American Apartheid and Jim Crow.”
“My sole argument here is about whether the majority of the White population would rather see us go back to Jim Crow or would tolerate it if we did. Nothing else.”
We might be able to reconcile the differences expressed here when white people are the minority population…
Meanwhile keep an eye on McConnell and the Proud Boys.
01/27/2021 @ 7:57 am
Kosher, I respect you a great deal. I have for years. Don’t you make the mistake that my understanding or knowledge of anything is limited to the years that I have been alive. That’s absurd. That isn’t true for anyone, and certainly not someone approaching 60 years of age. You might want to reconsider that.
Now, since it appears to be necessary, let me explain about what I do know through experience. I spent chunks of my childhood on a farm established by my great grandfather in Talladega Alabama. It’s a small town about 50 miles from Birmingham Alabama. Look it up. That’s a town that my father did not return to after college because white people suggested that he should not, because of his refusal to bow to the insults of Jim Crow. Things could be as blatant as telling him and his little sister where they could sit in a movie theater, or as subtle as telling them what their life experience would allow them to I understand. Their parents, whom I also knew, grew up in that town. I wasn’t barely associated with my grandparents. I knew them quite well. I saw them multiple times per year in their home, and in mine. We maintained a close family relationship. One of the things that Black families do is teach their children from their experience, you know, like other humans do. One of the things we learn is tell others what they can’t possibly know based upon their personal experience. I can’t fathom the hubris it would take to say such a thing.
I knew the manners of their speech, my paternal grandparents, and my maternal grandparents, also from that town. I have had time since I began to hear conversations between them, and other adult family members, like my own parents, to contemplate, and learn about, aspects of culture differences between them and their generation, and mine. I have a personal memory of tracing the evolution of terms like ‘negro’, ‘colored’, and ‘black’…within my own family. I have personal memories of seeing different individuals of different ages use different terms based upon their respective ages…and all associated changes. I remember discussions between my parents about whether or not to drive from Cleveland to Talladega in the late 1960’s because of what the police might do to our family. I recall being put on a plane, and the actual flight and the stranger who sat next to me on the flight, as my father drove to Talladega, and my mother placed me on the plane to be retrieved there by my father. I recall the apocalyptic dizziness from when Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, from a time when I barely understood about the permanence of death. I saw the shock in my extended family, and felt the alienation from our cultural leader, who was thought of as something like our President. I have lived long enough to have the personal knowledge of when a leader like that could not be the actual President, and then evolve into one being from the political class…still taunted with slurs of ‘watermelon’, and ‘Kenya’ etc. I didn’t need anyone to explain to me how white people looked at those people, or talked about them. I was present for all of those conversations.
There’s a suburb in Cleveland called Mayfield Hts. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t. It is adjacent to a part of Cleveland called “Little Italy”. Little Italy in Cleveland is, or was, much like the name implies. What it was also is a center for Mafia controlled neighborhoods. One of those ‘controls’ was keeping Black people the hell out. By that, I don’t mean restrictions on who could buy a house, while I am sure that existed too, but rather, teenagers driving to a McDonalds in Mayfield would be chased out with baseball bats across their windshields if the locals felt so inclined. This is Cleveland Ohio, not Cleveland Mississippi. This is in the 1970s, and not prior to the Civil Rights act. This is after. And THIS is part of why I say, the Civil Rights act changed laws, but it did not change racism. It’s not like mobs look at the newspaper, or the Federal Code and suddenly change their behaviors. The do what they might have done just a few years before. I know that from personal experience. It didn’t take a family dinner with my grandparents to know that.
As a Marine, I personally experienced advice from superiors telling us that we should travel in uniform between cities in the South because it would make a difference in how we were treated. As part of that advice, we were told that that protection in some areas would be limited or non existent in areas that already had military installations because the locals were accustomed to seeing members of the military in uniform. I personally experienced an old southern white barber try to hold back his hatred while giving me a haircut and find that he could not do it after cutting half of my head. That’s personal experience. That happened in the 1980s. The Civil Rights act changed the law, but it did not eradicate behaviors. Assuming that it would is the silliness borne of privilege. That’s what experience teaches you. I personally experienced Marines inviting me to Forsyth Co Georgia for an overnight visit, knowing full well that Forsyth County was a ‘sundown’ town, and being Black in that county meant I would meet with some form of violence. That was in the 1980s. Well within my lifetime, my personal experience, and well understood about what was being offered at the time.
I can recall arriving in Japan and being debriefed about conversations that took place among Black Marines in a barracks, and efforts to separate Black Marines from one another in temporary living arrangements. (No such arrangements were made for white Marines). I was personally interviewed about “what sports of things” did Black Marines talk about. Again, this was the US Government…1980s. Later in a squadron in California, I recall discussions about an incoming C.O. who was Black, and some Marines not being willing to accept that. One particular quote I remember was a Marine saying, “it is just not natural for Black people to be in command”. This was in the 1980s. Jim Crow did not exist anymore, and this was in a region where Jim Crow had not been. The interesting thing though is that attitudes developed in Jim Crow (or Mayfield Hts), can easily travel to California, or anywhere else, and be openly expressed, even though the law had changed. That is personal experience.
Consider this, Kosher. The surface of the Sun is about 6000 degrees Celsius. You might think that it gets cooler as you move away from the Sun. Well, yes, and no. The Corona of the Sun is actually much hotter. The temperature rises to a few million degrees 500 kilometers above the surface. Now, what is the difference between 6000 degrees and a few million degrees Celsius? If you are a piece of Kevlar, it is in the numbers. The difference involves your orientation of a Kevlar heat shield toward the direction of the heat. However, if you are a human being, there is no difference at all. You are vaporized as a human long before 6000 degrees. I say this because people not experiencing racism like to say how much racism has changed because of something that exists in the range between 6000 degrees Celsius and several million degrees. Practically, however, racism is still deadly, humiliating, terrifying, and unjust. There is no recognizable, tradable, useful difference in the change in a few decades. You can’t get this point across to some white peoples who seem to think of it as a bit of trivia. At the level that it is currently, it is not trivial. It is still currently beyond life and death. It is deadly. My state, Ohio, just passed a ‘Stand Your Ground’ law. My life became cheaper the moment that happened. A level of reasoning has been removed from the decision to use deadly force between citizens, and this makes it more dangerous from members of a minority, and particularly a minority which has to consistently prove that it is acting within the law. While the Civil Rights act removed certain aspects of discrimination within the law, laws are also changing to remove restraints on actions against minorities. What the Civil Rights act giveth, ‘SYG’ taketh away. This is 2021. Personal experience.
Finally, Kosher, there have been pogroms that took place separated by centuries. There have been pogroms as recently as the period just after WWII. Some consider an event in Brooklyn in 1991 a pogrom. Why would you expect that racism against Black people would be so significantly changed in the course of a few decades of government action, and accept that deadly pogroms can exist across millennia? The common thread is bigotry, and hatred within the human animal. Laws, and social change do not eradicate these practices. Justice is a day by day effort. There have always been ways around laws, and there always will be. There is a Black young MAGA man in jail as we speak as a result of invading the Capitol. There are many white ones relaxing at home after having been there with him. That tragic soul probably thought racism had significantly changed also.
01/27/2021 @ 9:47 am
Kosher, there are so many problems with that view. Allow me to express another thing to you.
“America is still an extremely racist country. At no point am I arguing that it isn’t.
But not Jim Crow racist.”
I quote you here to explain another focused point about racism. Racism doesn’t exist on a continuum necessarily with a more or less analysis. Some things which would be considered more racist by some are less for others. For example, the severe restrictions of Jim Crow, for some, gave the impression that the laws protected them from racism…as crazy as that sounds. The separation allowed for more freedom for everyone in that view. The concept was even taken on by the Supreme Court. It is a similar sort of thinking that has some believing that a burka promotes freedom for women rather than restricts it. I disagree with both views, but I am just saying that these views exist.
Jesse Jackson once observed that the South would recover from Jim Crow faster than the North because of the different types of racism, and the different practices. There is healthy debate about whether or not that is the case, but it is a legitimate debate. The point I am getting to here is that racism in America was not and is not entirely of the Jim Crow variety or influence. The ways in which individuals and groups conduct themselves with respect to race are mainly superficial. Conventions differ in different parts of the country, but the blood and guts of racial oppression get more similar the closer actions get to your blood and guts. What is the difference if a kid gets his skull crushed in an integrated school in the North, or after class in a segregated school in the South? There is no difference to the skull. One school system may be influenced by Jim Crow, and the other may give itself credit for being integrated, but if you are foolish enough to wade through a violent white mob where Jim Crow does not exist, you may still be just as dead. So, what is Jim Crow racist versus regular old racist? Practically nothing.
Lots of people chose to migrate from the South to the North to get away from conditions in the South. Not everyone who stayed decided to stay merely because they could not leave. Many decided that the devil they knew was better than the devil that they did not. There were dangers in both places. The worst racist treatment Jackie Robinson faced was in Cincinnati Ohio, and while it may have been the Southernmost city in MLB at the time, it was still in the North, the Union…not Jim Crow. I don’t have to drive far from where I am right now to see an entire barn roof painted with the Rebel flag. It is right next to the freeway, Interstate 71. This is far North of Cincinnati.
Like the “hypocrisy” arguments, I am not fond of the racism arguments. While I dislike racism, I often say, racism is legal. I don’t care much about how someone feels. I focus more on what they do, and in what circumstances. I say that because Ron’s approach and mine differ significantly. Ron, from my point of view, seeks to make the point about how someone thinks or feels, which I think have little chance of changing. I try to limit my mention of those things only to cite where I see it differently. My approach is either to hold them to the principles that I hold myself to, or to expose them to the consequences of their conduct…and both if I can manage it. Sometimes that exposes me to the charge of being racist. I understand that. Then, I show that that which they consider to be racist is exactly that which they just did. If they see it in me, they must see it in themselves. My approach is slightly more confrontational. Jane Elliott’s blue eye/brown eye experiment uses that approach. It is harder to deny the experience than it is to deny the concept.
01/27/2021 @ 11:22 am
Bill,
To you I apologize. You’re older than I thought you were. I may have confused your age with that of another friend.
Ron,
When White people are no longer the majority in the US, nothing will change. I wish it would, but it won’t. White people will still have most of the money, by a huge margin. The way the Senate is organized functions a lot like Gerrymandering does, giving an outsized amount of power to smaller states, nearly all of which are overwhelmingly White, which is how Trump became President. They will stay overwhelmingly White.
The Proud Boys are not numerically significant. They aren’t the problem, because their being willing to go back to Jim Crow, assuming they are doesn’t remotely constitute a majority of White people. I’m not arguing that a minority of White people wouldn’t.
To both of you,
There are two kinds of opposites: bipolar and continuum. People forget this. Bipolar is the difference between magnetic positive and magnetic negative. Switching back and forth is graphed as a square wave. Hot and cold, light and dark, these are continuum opposites, determined subjectively by a varying quantity of a single commodity, in these cases heat and light. Racist and not racist is a continuum opposite. Bigoted and not bigoted is a continuum opposite. Antisemitic and not antisemitic is a continuum opposite. SBA displayed antisemitism a whole lot of times in the amount of time I’ve known her but she isn’t Hitler – there is no way in Hell she would tolerate my being exterminated and there is no way in Hell she would tolerate my vote being taken from me. And yet it was just as pernicious for her to believe that my opinion that Trump was more dangerous than Pence was based on my being Jewish as it was for Jan Sand to believe that Bill’s voting for Obama for President was based on his/your being Black. She would argue that it wasn’t my Judaism, it was my Zionism, but that’s the equivalent of someone White telling you that you’d be fine if you were Clarence Thomas.
I”m not arguing that racism isn’t horrible, soul-sucking, exhausting, humiliating, frustrating, frightening, life-threatening, constantly denied by its perpetrators, or insanely pervasive. It is all of the above. I am not trivializing racism.
I’m told I”m White. This is obviously true but I kind of have a problem being told both that I don’t understand Black people because I’m
White and that I don’t understand White people because I’m White. Being White, there’s one thing I experience in this regard that you probably don’t: I am more likely to hear honestly racist opinions than you are. I of course know some Republicans personally, a few pretty well. Here’s something I can tell you:
They’re all offended at being thought of as racist, even not in front of you. That label bothers them. The ones I know tend to fall under the Colorblind category, which of course means they’re blind to racism but not blind to the reaction to it. I’ve known a couple who left the Republican Party because they have limits.
Why are they offended at being thought of as racist? I’m sure you’ve seen this. I’m just telling you that I’ve seen it when no one Black is present.
I”m not arguing that they aren’t racist. I’m arguing that their self-definition means their limit is before Jim Crow. You can’t lie to yourself that far.
I think my argument is being construed backward. I gather you think I’m underestimating how bad things are now. I’m not. I think you’re underestimating how bad things were. We live in a racist country that has had a Black President reelected, that has just had a Black Vice President elected, that is pulling down statues of Confederate heroes (heroes to Confederates), that has taken the Confederate flag out of polite company, that had White protests erupt all over the country – even in small towns – after George Floyd, and you think these people would be fine taking away your right to vote, legally prohibiting you from living in certain neighborhoods, prohibiting you from intermarrying, keeping you out of the lunch counters of their choice, and telling you that you legally have to give up your seat in the front of a bus if a White person boards and wants it. Yes, we can backslide, but I don’t see evidence that we can backslide that far. No one here has made a case that the majority of American White people would go along with that. Asserted it, yes, but no case. The fact that there’s lots of current racism doesn’t make that case because it ignores differences in severity, which count.
If you believe that over 50% of America’s White population is willing to do that, make a case. Asserting one won’t cut it.
01/27/2021 @ 1:57 pm
Bitey, that was a brilliant summation, piece of understanding that could stand to be much more broadly published. It was illuminating and awfully painful to read – both pieces.
01/27/2021 @ 7:28 pm
Kosher, we agree about a large percentage of what we are exchanging here. I think you have narrowed down to where our small area of disagreement is. And this area is a bit of a judgment call either way.
Here it is. You’re right. I think we disagree about what ‘white’ people would be willing to accept, were there to be a sudden change, like martial law, or repeal of the 13th amendment, or whatever. I don’t mean this as a criticism of white people necessarily. I think this is just how people are in general.
During the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, something like only 11%, or perhaps 13% favored revolution. Most people exist somewhere in the middle, and are just keeping their heads down until the new boss is determined. This past year, the future of democracy was on the ballot. You are well aware. That said, only 66.3% of eligible voters actually cast a ballot. More than a third could not be bothered, or were not aware. That’s a massive number for something so easy to do. If the question were the freedom of 12% of the population, I am not convinced that a powerful percentage of the population would stake their lives on it, or their sons and daughters. My life is already staked on it. In my lifetime, that freedom seems more challenged rather than less. As of today, the GOP is trying to find procedural ways to let Trump off the hook for serious crimes against this country.
I think you understand white people, Black people, and history easily as well as I do, if not better. I trust your thinking in ways that we disagree, and I use it for instruction. I have told you that. The one area where I think we differ is in knowing the depths of depravity and cowardice in most humans. By and large, people do not stand up. They dodge. There are precious exceptions, and thank goodness for them, but mainly, populations turn a blind eye to evil just to get by. I would not bet my life that dominant culture in the US would not sell my people down the river, if push came to shove. It would not be the first time.
01/27/2021 @ 9:00 pm
@Bitey;
“I would not bet my life that dominant culture in the US would not sell my people down the river, if push came to shove. It would not be the first time.”
AMEN!!!
01/28/2021 @ 10:49 am
Bill,
You make one compelling argument, the one argument I’ve read that makes me think Ron could be right. That argument is that so many people don’t bother to vote, even in an election like the last one, and the last one had greater turnout (percentage wise) than any within more than a century. If the question is whether a majority of White people would go along with the re-institution of Jim Crow, the population of non-voting White people has to be added to the population of those who voted who would accept the re-institution of Jim Crow. If this election couldn’t get them off their asses, I’m not sure what would, though I don’t really have a right to assume that the reinstitution of Jim Crow wouldn’t get more of them off their asses to vote.
But that leaves a currently unknowable variable. Ron would argue that anyone who would vote for Trump would be fine with the reinstitution of Jim Crow. I don’t think we know that. I wish I remember who I had this conversation with, I think Ron but I apologize if I’m wrong, but whoever it was spoke about having a neighbor support Trump and not understanding why whoever it was found that to be a personal betrayal, that this ostensible friend didn’t care enough about the safety of Black people to make that a factor in his electoral decision. The fact that Trump supported racists so heavily wasn’t important enough to be relevant. As strange as it may seem to us, not everyone looking at Trump, particularly from the Right, is convinced he’s a racist, or at least enough of a racist to make any difference. And so the neighbor was surprised at the reaction.
However, supporting the reinstitution of Jim Crow leaves no room for ambiguity and more importantly no room for deniability: A vote for anyone who supports Jim Crow is a vote against Black people. There is no wiggle room left. You can’t vote to take away the vote from Black people and say “I’m not a racist.” There is no class issue to hide behind, there is no “but the law applies to everyone” like there would be in, for example, greater sentences for possession of crack cocaine than for cocaine in other forms. It’s a straight-up racial racist vote.
I can’t say for sure that Ron’s contention is wrong, but the burden of proof isn’t mine because the initial assertion isn’t mine. This is his contention to prove, not mine to disprove, and he hasn’t done that. You’ve come way closer. My objection is the presentation of a contention as fact without enough hard evidence that it is fact. I can’t know that what he claims is true, and what I do know casts credible doubt.
By the way, I agree with Jonna about your publishing your answer to me in some form. It should be read by more people. My own contention, and it isn’t proven either, is that the one of the two biggest differences between an American White racist and an anti racist is how much we know. The main thing I see when taking to racists or racist enablers or however that amorphousness gets defined is what they think is true. The other biggest difference is how interested they are in finding out if they’re wrong, though this difference doesn’t break anywhere near as cleanly along racist lines.
The scope of what I disagree with has been very narrow all along. I was clear about that at the very beginning, and that can be seen by scrolling up to my first comment. However, a second disagreement has surfaced in the argument since, but I think this disagreement is also a very narrow one, narrower than it looks. That difference is the extent to which Jimi Crow is worse than what has come since.
I”m not arguing that fewer people are racist, though since Jim Crow I think fewer are because the percentage of White people who have been exposed to Black people in equal roles has increased enormously since Jim Crow. One didn’t and doesn’t need to be non-racist to oppose Jim Crow any more than Lincoln needed to be non-racist to oppose slavery. The country could have a decisively racist majority and still get rid of Jim Crow. It probably did.
A quick tangent here regarding my “exposed to” statement above: It is extremely sad that Bill Cosby did something to prevent his being given credit for his role in that. Will he eventually be given credit as someone who contributed something enormous while personally participating in evil? it’s fundamentally the same question being asked about our slave owning Founding Fathers.
My point about comparing during Jim Crow to post Jim Crow is that the difference in the consequences of racism is too big to trivialize. We currently live in an America where laws with negative racial consequences (as opposed to, say, Affirmative Action) are generally efforts to get around Federal law whereas back then we lived in an America where laws with negative racial consequences simply were the law. In many places back then, egalitarianism was illegal.
What we have now is not comparable to that. There’s a difference between encountering frightening instances of racism and encountering them every day. A certain amount of what you encountered was unexpected. During Jim Crow there was nothing unexpected about any of it. You lived through pieces of what your grandparents lived through. I don’t think they would tell you that things aren’t different. I think they might very well tell you that not enough is different, and that’s true, but for people who experienced both I doubt that anyone would be willing to go back because, I don’t know, back then you knew where you stood. Uncertain occasional evil is an improvement over certain constant evil, but that doesn’t make uncertain occasional evil acceptable. The second clause in the previous sentence doesn’t negate the first.
01/28/2021 @ 11:40 am
@Koshersalaami;
The conversation you refer to was not with me…
I don’t recall who it might have been…
“I can’t say for sure that Ron’s contention is wrong, but the burden of proof isn’t mine because the initial assertion isn’t mine. This is his contention to prove, not mine to disprove, and he hasn’t done that.”
Your approach would be correct within the context of rhetorical convention.
However, I decided to take this argument outside the box of rhetorical rules of engagement and flip the script as it were…
In the fight against racism, it is not enough to declare oneself to be passively non-racist.
In my view one must become, and prove oneself to be, an active and vocal anti-racist.
In this matter, there is no middle ground.
As far as I’m concerned that segment of the white population that is silent, oblivious, indifferent, or ignorant are as racist as those who openly and overtly engage in racist speech and behavior…
I’m no longer interested in the futility of proving that most white folks are racists…
As far as I’m concerned, most white people are racists until they can unequivocally prove that they’re not…
01/28/2021 @ 12:45 pm
Kosher, the other day you said that you had me confused with some other person. I don’t see another person by the name of Bill in this thread, and you have referred to me by two names…inexplicably. I have assumed it was me both times.
Now, at one point I was not certain if you were thinking clearly. Now I am sure that you are not. The portion you listed was not the only portion of my argument that is compelling. If you were to break it out, there would be many. Also, in its entirety, it is compelling. You’re making a number of flaws in your argument.
First, you’re assigning certain meanings which are not valid. When I said that 66.3% of the population bothered to cast a vote, that figure was not against other years, and the other years are not relevant. The 66.3 percent is against the question of democracy or no democracy. You adjusted it by comparing it to previous years to ameliorate it. That is not valid. The percentage I cited should be judged against itself and the question of democracy alone, given the context. Comparing it to other years only measures the trend of voting or not voting. That was not my meaning.
Second, my argument is entirely independent of Ron, or his argument. ROn need not even exist for my observation. As I stated earlier, Ron’s approach and mine are very different. For example, Ron’s argument is that,
“As far as I’m concerned, most white people are racists until they can unequivocally prove that they’re not…”.
Not only do I not agree with that, and not only do I believe that it is an impossible standard, I don’t even care if some, half, or most white people “are racist.” “Racism” is too loaded a concept to be of any use. Racism does not determine conduct absolutely. Racists may act in egalitarian ways, and non-racists can act like cowardly idiots. I find no use in making a determination of racism. To state that is to have never heard me…ever. Again, I don’t give a fat rats ass how they feel. I focus on what they do. You can’t make an absolute connection from feelings to actions.
Third, I am not arguing about the “re-institution of Jim Crow.” I have scrolled back and I do not see where that is the context. The context is broader than that, and “Jim Crow” is used as an abbreviated concept for what we are discussing. It should not be. Like I said before, racism existed, and exists in places where Jim Crow did not. Also, racism in America existed before Jim Crow. Consistently circling the notion of whether or not white people, in any proportion, would agree to bringing back Jim Crow and only confuse the point, not clarify it.
Let me give a small example of how slippery and confusing that sort of bad focus is. The consent decree from the voting rights act covered areas in the South where Jim Crow had been. Section 5 required that certain states had to receive federal approval before making changes could go into effect in their voting laws. It did not apply to stets that it did not apply to. Now, much of what got Trump elected, where racist attitudes were part of the motivation, happened in states where Section 5 had never been required. The coming and passing of Jim Crow, and of Section 5 had no bearing on this. Similarly, when Lincoln signed the emancipation executive order, he merely freed enslaved people in states where slavery existed. He did not free all of the enslaved. It is not a huge thing, but not a small thing in that it sets up the imbalance that still exists in our country, even though slavery technically does not. Even after the elimination of slavery, and Jim Crow, there are substantial differences in how races are treated in the North and the South. There are cultural vestiges of those institutions. And frankly, vestiges of Jim Crow should not be surprising since it ended in my lifetime.
To refocus, I said these historical movements could happen because most people do nothing. I said, most people do not stand up. I said, it only takes a highly energized few to make some very awful things happen when not enough of the people in the middle can be energized into action. THAT is why comparing 66.3% compared to previous years doesn’t matter. In a vacuum, 66.3% of people voting on the question of should democracy remain is far too low.
Ron may be right about the majority of white people. I can’t say that I know otherwise. I say that I believe otherwise, and my calculation is based upon what they are likely or not likely to DO. Hear me for once. I honestly don’t give a shit how they feel.
01/28/2021 @ 2:27 pm
Bitey,
I am not thinking that clearly. If I had, I’d have never used more than one name for you, for which I really apologize. That is a bad oversight. I’m usually good about that.
The point about comparing the percentage of the eligible population who voted in 2020 vs. previously is in saying that even in a good participation year we don’t have much. This is as good as it gets and it still sucks. More to the point, it’s still dangerous in that it gives extremists more latitude.
I am not separating you and Ron sufficiently, probably because I erroneously assumed at one point that you were defending his argument. The point about whether the majority of White people would go along with a reinstituting of Jim Crow is Ron’s, not yours, though in spite of that you just made some very valid points in talking about that, particularly that Jim Crow was not national policy so much as state policy. If you didn’t live where Jim Crow was during Jim Crow, the abolition of Jim Crow is not nearly as big a deal, and so racism is more of a constant. Though I remember racism being worse in result and more free in expression in New York when I grew up, the difference isn’t as big. That I would not remember that is presumably a White mistake, meaning I had the luxury of forgetting it.
The friend I confused you with is not active here, but I talk to him online often.
The only thing I think I’m right about is that I don’t think the average American White would tolerate a return to Jim Crow, though “return” is regional. However, you agree with me on that, so that’s not relevant to our conversation.
01/28/2021 @ 5:52 pm
“Tolerate” is a tricky word. I think the average American, white or otherwise, would tolerate the hell out of Jim Crow. The average American tolerated the zero tolerance policy which took kids away from parents. Toleration is not the same as fighting for or against something. I see evil tolerated daily. I almost wrote a post about it today, but decided not to.
Ted Cruz used a particular argument when he spoke to the Senate chamber during the vote to certify the election. His argument never suggested that he had evidence, or that there was evidence that the election was stolen. He knows that it wasn’t. His entire argument was that certain people “feel” that the election was stolen, and it is his duty to speak for them. First of all, that’s false. It is not his duty. Secondly, feelings have no place in the matter. Feelings can’t be proven or disproven, so to anchor a position on them is intentionally deceptive. He had an evil intent, and greater evil resulted from it. That evil has not even run its course. Lots of people will continue to make arguments with “feelings” as the foundation of their arguments. That is an uncontrollable evil.
America, and much of the world, is tolerant of that sort of dance around truth, evidence, and reality. Kafka wrote about it. Orwell wrote about it. Stalin used it to disastrous effect. It is presently growing in our society. Tucker Carlson is currently retrenching with this type of trick, and there will be violence that results from this before long. Within all of that tolerance will be the endangerment of minorities lives in our country. DHS has issued a threat warning about white supremacist violence. Tolerance makes this possible. While dominant culture is tolerating, and not mobilizing against these forces, these forces will take positions of power. I am not impressed with what dominant culture (generally most white people) would or would not tolerate. Nazi Germany was tolerated…until it wasn’t. Tolerance is for lactose and sriracha sauce, not for opposition to hate ideologies.
01/25/2021 @ 3:37 pm
In lightning—I’ve imminent thunder snow—great eye-stinging news late last p.m. with journalist Tom Browkaw on Omaha Beach. The Veterans reminiscing Brokaw ‘thoughts over’ his Greatest Generation paradigm and the indelible PTSD survivalism of those from the LCVPs whose boot prints embellished FREEDOM upon the blood soaked Normandy sanded. Contemporaneously I thanked the Lord that President Trump did not grow a mustache. And struggled for something to say—remained silent—and spun Richie Haven’s Woodstock performance of Freedom. Today I wish upon a star. Maybe tarp Gloria’s weeping cherry afore the wind velocity blows the goats away. O maybe groom my smart phone of all these defunct digits of the suicides I’ve known. Potentially scribe a haiku incorporating hob nails and vinegar. Maybe vet an essay imploring the Oxford types to focus on gang violence. WOW Imagine just graced my drums…4 the DAY!!
…not the only 1…
01/28/2021 @ 4:24 pm
Tom Brokaw was eulogized on the occasion of his retirement as someone who reported from the beaches during World War II. Tom Brokow was born in 1940. I don’t think he was on the beach in 1944.
01/25/2021 @ 3:50 pm
ought read Normandy sands…O that’s right the eagle and the dove…must be 180-24s from fireflies…Wouldn’t it be great fun to release 1,000 hummingbirds in a mental hospital…0u-la-la
01/26/2021 @ 10:15 am
They’d shit everywhere
01/27/2021 @ 8:07 am
Oh…and another thing. You’ll almost never mention “hypocrisy.” I don’t like hypocrisy arguments generally. I mention this because you suggested I not “confuse…”. Here is the thing about hypocrisy. Hypocrisy involves holding someone to task for their principles as compared to their actions. Racism is not like that. Racism is about UNIVERSAL principles of justice…compared to their actions. I am not concerned about someone being unprincipled unless I am caught in some relationship with them. If I ruined someone to be unprincipled, I end the interaction, and sever the relationship. That individual can not be trusted. The lie I received about “flounce dress” is just one example. It was called both an “honor” and intentional mean behavior. That is the type of hypocrisy that I point out in its involvement with me, and then leave the hypocrite and his lack of principles to his unprincipled life. Hypocrisy is a weak argument, in my view, for general purposes. A person is free to be as unprincipled as he chooses. I wont confuse hypocrisy for persecution because, frankly, I don’t give a damn about hypocrisy as it does not apply to me.
01/27/2021 @ 10:25 am
Bitey’s summation nails it:
“…[P]eople not experiencing racism like to say how much racism has changed…”
“Practically, however, racism is still deadly, humiliating, terrifying, and unjust. There is no recognizable, tradable, useful difference in the change in a few decades. You can’t get this point across to some white people who seem to think of it as a bit of trivia. At the level that it is currently, it is not trivial. It is still currently beyond life and death. It is deadly.”
Paraphrased from Bitey’s commentary in this thread…
There’s no way I could have said this any better myself.
01/28/2021 @ 8:46 am
“The fact that there’s lots of current racism doesn’t make that case because it ignores differences in severity, which count…”
Kosher, I missed this earlier, and I would like to address it because it is a very good example of how we understand this differently. You seem to be evaluating “severity” by either the number of incidents that you see, or the type. I think this misses the brutal effect of intimidation in a big way. You are not always going to see how a brute attempts to use control over his potential victim. Balled fists, weapons, and even words can be hidden in clothing, or coded messages. Threats can exist in the form of statues in city parks. They don’t always take the form of punches thrown, or shots fired, or racial expletives uttered on a public bus. If you pretend that it is not happening when you do not see or hear it, you are missing most of it.
So, you do not necessarily see it is often because it is not necessary to do. There is a method that kidnappers and murderers use when they take control over their victims. They give them some sort of message which says, ‘don’t try to resist’, or ‘don’t try to run away’. Why do they do that? They do that because they want your assistance in your own subjugation. It makes it easier for them, and removes some of their risk. What you see as lack of “severity” may just be a lack of hope. So, rather than rely on just what you see, consider what you do not see. Consider the wealth disparity between white and Black people in America. Is it a result of effort, intellect and moral uprightness? Hell no! And yes, while many liberals deny it, it seems to me that they actually believe it. Why do you not see representation in political offices in numbers that reflect percentages of the population? Is it a lack of concern for public service? Absolutely not. There are all sorts of factors which are much harder to see than forcing someone from a seat on public transportation.
Racism or racist oppression is like a form of terrorism. The power of it is with the genie in the bottle. Just because you don’t see the genie working his tricks does not mean the threat is not being employed. The power of the threat exists while the genie is still bottled, not when it is released. America is less obviously racist because it uses more sophisticated methods which get the effect without letting the genie out of the bottle.
01/28/2021 @ 7:09 pm
@Bites:
(WOLF moon rising here in F. Delano Roosevelt’s rusty ol’ haL0;} Accolades to your text$ and my Mediterranean guess is you’ve an encyclopedic archive of LAPD recallable reporte’: (weirder and weirder! reporte’ ‘searches’ to Covid 19)
O! WHY WERE THERE NO POLICE ESCORTing
Senator Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel:
[…] Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy June 5, 1968 […]
Do U know?
Please detail. pray👀tell True? False?
When you get time.
I ask as these horrific assassinations R generational PTSD moments.
Also, my dreamed shattered resilient VIETNAM ERA mind vets detail on Sirhan Sirhan and honestly did not know he is an educated man…really makes you wonder. …really wonder.
Can you help me out with this?
01/28/2021 @ 8:01 pm
Honestly, JPH, I don’t know why there was no escort for RFK. That was many generations of police work before the current one. As I recall, Rosie Greer and Rafer Johnson were working casually as guards for Kennedy. One of them allegedly wrestled the gun away from Sirhan. I’m sure you know all of this, and much more than I do about it. I’m sorry I wasn’t any help, and flattered that you would think to ask.