Derail from Michael Brown: The nature of racism

[arkirk]

If racism were against the TOS, the politics forum would be much quieter.

Racism may lead to racist rants, but not always. Some racists are able to not post rants like that. It is the rant, not the racism, I was commenting on.

Usually the rants are obvious and not worth much in their argument value. What racists and classists do is to couch their arguments in coded words...the best example I can find is in the attacks on social security...."entitlement reform." The danger lies in the unsaid resentments the code words evoke.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Racism may lead to racist rants, but not always. Some racists are able to not post rants like that. It is the rant, not the racism, I was commenting on.

Usually the rants are obvious and not worth much in their argument value. What racists and classists do is to couch their arguments in coded words...the best example I can find is in the attacks on social security...."entitlement reform." The danger lies in the unsaid resentments the code words evoke.

Yes, racists do hide behind code words often (but not all the time you see certain words does it mean you have a hidden racist speaking in codes). It is the blatancy <snip> that is most startling. But if he were to merely post an opinion on how some races are superior to others, while I would still find it startling I would not have this same reaction. I would disagree with it and find it something to argue. But in this case he expressed a desire for the "freedom" to kill people. That is a bit much for me to stomach.

 

[RavenSky]

~~ The Mods

 

[AthenaAwakened]

I wrote this a few years back to describe a phenomenon I kept seeing over and over again.

Acceptable Racism

■A black man is dragged to death behind a pickup truck in Texas
■An Egyptian immigrant is stomped to death by skinheads in Seattle
■A black man walking to store to buy a pack of cigarettes is found the next morning hanging from a tree in a town square in Mississippi

These are three examples of acceptable racism.

Not acceptable in the sense that people are not or should not be outraged but acceptable in that everyone agrees that the victims were killed because of race prejudice and the perpetrators were racists. On these events, there is no doubt.
1.A thirteen year old boy is brutally murdered and his body dumped in a river, tied with barbed wire to a cotton gin fan only to be found two weeks later.
2.The president of the NAACP in Mississippi, currently organizing a voter registration drive that if successful would change local politics forever is walking up the sidewalk to his home and as his family waits for him to come in the house he is gunned down in his front yard in front of his wife and children.
3.A church is bombed in Birmingham and four black girls changing clothes for choir after finishing Sunday school are killed. Their lesson that day, The Love that Forgives.

These incidents too are acceptable incidents of racism and they have an added charm of historical distance.

Some things all these incidents have in common:
1.The victims died
2.The perpetrators were self confessed racists
3.With the exception of Seattle, the incidents all took place in the American south.

People like to keep things in there proper places and people in their proper roles. and the proper place for racism is in the south (because that’s where Jim Crow and slavery were) and the proper perpetrators are admitted racists (no ambiguity, no doubt) and the proper victims are dead black people (postumous nobility).

Once you have established these boundaries, you need never worry about how to define what is and is not racist again. You know: Admitted racists in the south killing black people. Two out three will also define a racist act provided one of the two is admitted racist.

Anything not falling into that particular scenario, can and must be treated with suspicion. This is the first rule of acceptable racism, the prime directive.
■If it is not in the south, what proof do you have racism was involved because it’s southerners who are racists. The north fought to end slavery remember?
■If the victim lives, … This case looks suspiciously like Tawanna Brawley. Can’t trust a live victim. Probably set the whole thing up.
■The perpetrators are not self confessed racists … Then how can we possibly know for sure that they are? We can’t trust the statements of black witnesses. They so often get racism wrong. Innocent until proven guilty I always say (accept when I don’t.)

The first rule (placing racism in the south exclusively) is the easiest rule to break as the Seattle stomping death of a brown skinned man proves.

The self confessed white racist is the hardest rule to break for under the white supremacy, the dominant group holds power of legitimacy of truth.

The dead victim is the most mysterious in that the requirement of it is almost a sacrament, the ultimate expression of the oppressed being allowed to transcend that oppression but at a price. There must be a sacrifice for only in mourning will the oppressor join the oppressed and, if only in a instance, both transcend oppression.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I begin to see the problem. The derail started when I reacted to a post that I perceived as incredibly racist.

But it was only a post, and few people are killed by internet posts. OTOH it was a post about a dead person, Michael Brown. Perhaps. Then again the post was discussing a desire to kill people of certain races. Ok, we'll call this one met.
Self confessed? I don't see how anyone can read the post and not see it as a confession of racism.

The perpetrator of the post is not from the South. There we have it, this was not to be considered qualifying.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Anything not falling into that particular scenario, can and must be treated with suspicion. This is the first rule of acceptable racism, the prime directive.
■If it is not in the south, what proof do you have racism was involved because it’s southerners who are racists. The north fought to end slavery remember?
■If the victim lives, … This case looks suspiciously like Tawanna Brawley. Can’t trust a live victim. Probably set the whole thing up.
■The perpetrators are not self confessed racists … Then how can we possibly know for sure that they are? We can’t trust the statements of black witnesses. They so often get racism wrong. Innocent until proven guilty I always say (accept when I don’t.)

The first rule (placing racism in the south exclusively) is the easiest rule to break as the Seattle stomping death of a brown skinned man proves.

The self confessed white racist is the hardest rule to break for under the white supremacy, the dominant group holds power of legitimacy of truth.

The dead victim is the most mysterious in that the requirement of it is almost a sacrament, the ultimate expression of the oppressed being allowed to transcend that oppression but at a price. There must be a sacrifice for only in mourning will the oppressor join the oppressed and, if only in a instance, both transcend oppression.
[/I]

The problem is that there is quite a trend these days to claim racism when the person who got the bad result is black no matter whether there is any indication that race played a role in what happened. We see enough cases of crying wolf that all claims that aren't iron-clad get treated with major suspicion.

 

[repoman]

yep going all the way back to when Jesse Jackson went to Decatur before he saw the video of the high school brawl in question.

 

[repoman]

JH, can't you see the obvious sarcasm of underseer trying to point white anti-black racists out? It was in the tradition of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal".

Mod, bring back underseers original post, it is very clearly ironic sarcasm.

 

[repoman]

Let's take an example that is further afield than the USA.

China has been really flexing its Naval power recently and in Vietnam there were anti-Chinese riots that started as protests of the chinese naval activities and claims.

I say that China is responsible for much but not all of the response of the Vietnamese crowds. But are Chinese living there personally responsible?

Also, China spin this to show that Vietnamese people are animals and violent losers.

I just think that this is an evolutionary remnant of when we lived in much smaller groups and targeted violence actually had the desired effect. When nations have 100s of millions of people, tribal violence is pretty damn outmoded.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The post I was reacting to is still in the original thread. I do not see it as sarcastic or any sort of modest proposal.

 

[repoman]

I like to watch videos of people in chaos. Twisted, huh?

Anyway, I have seen plenty of riots, fights, tweaking drug addicts, brutal beatdowns, police encounters and so on.

I think that watching this can be more useful than reading news reports or people dogmatically spouting an ideology based theory. True violence is something fearsome to behold.

You get to see groups of people of all races and nationalities pushed to their animal instinct fallback behaviors. I think that general stress levels of the society the person lives in have a great deal of effect on whether things break out into violence. Social stressors are like gas to a flame.

If you are in a very stressed society, your fellow members are likely to be stressed and make you stressed to. When you get stressed you make really poor decisions and if you have had violence inflicted on you from a young age, you will probably be more likely to be violent as well. The speed at which the violence erupts in a truly violent society is astonishing. Only watching these types of videos can impress it.