AthenaAwakened
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- Joined
- Sep 17, 2003
- Messages
- 5,338
- Location
- Right behind you so ... BOO!
- Basic Beliefs
- non-theist, anarcho-socialist
WARNING
Clip contains ... Tim Wise (gasp)
Clip contains ... Tim Wise (gasp)
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Do you know the Grimke Sisters? How saying yes could heal the racial divide.
- Thread starter AthenaAwakened
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Anne Coulter, Michael Moore, Tim Wise... we got a spectrum going here.
AthenaAwakened
Contributor
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2003
- Messages
- 5,338
- Location
- Right behind you so ... BOO!
- Basic Beliefs
- non-theist, anarcho-socialist
When you change the narrative, you change perspective. When the only white men you see involved in the battle for civil rights are Bull Conner and George Wallace, white men living today can get very uncomfortable. But when you show them Goodman and Schwerner and Zweig and Reeb, understanding of the situation broadens along with sight.
SimpleDon
Veteran Member
I think that I understand how much racism wears on the people to whom it is directed. That it is the accumulation of hundreds of small slights almost more than the occasional blatant incident that hurts the most.
Racism is based on the bizarre idea that people's abilities, their intelligence, even their athletic prowess, as well as their ambitions and their motivations can be determined by something as trivial as the tint of their skin. We will have problems with racism until the very idea of race becomes so ridiculous that the people who still use it and still believe in it are laughed at and pitied for their ignorance.
As long as we have a political party that sees an advantage in tolerating racism, a party that sees an advantage in tolerating the racists, we are going to have the magnitude of problems that we currently have. They tolerate racism to pit people against one another along racial lines. And they try to to suppress the votes of people along racial lines.
I don't even believe that this political party is filled with racists, they aren't. In some ways it would be more tolerable if they were. Then we could be laughing at their ignorance and we would be trying to punish them for it. But the party leadership is cynically tolerating something that they know is untrue primarily for economic advantage, the opportunity to enrich the few who are the financial support, the driving force of the party and the main beneficiaries of the party's positions.
If I was a leader of the suppressed and the oppressed my number one message would be don't get mad, get even, vote the bastards out even if you have to fight to vote. A lot of good people sacrificed and even died to get you that vote. It is the most powerful thing that you have to fight back, it is intolerable that you don't use it, that you don't make the extra effort to do it. People wouldn't be working so hard to suppress your vote if it doesn't count.
The number one reaction should be to push back, to raise the participation of the people whose votes are suppressed to as close to 100% as possible. This is the thing that the people in this party who want to suppress your vote fear the most. That and the possibility that their current supporters will start voting their pocketbooks instead of voting along the lines of the contrived culture wars.
There, I probably have made everyone mad. But this is simple stuff.
Racism is based on the bizarre idea that people's abilities, their intelligence, even their athletic prowess, as well as their ambitions and their motivations can be determined by something as trivial as the tint of their skin. We will have problems with racism until the very idea of race becomes so ridiculous that the people who still use it and still believe in it are laughed at and pitied for their ignorance.
As long as we have a political party that sees an advantage in tolerating racism, a party that sees an advantage in tolerating the racists, we are going to have the magnitude of problems that we currently have. They tolerate racism to pit people against one another along racial lines. And they try to to suppress the votes of people along racial lines.
I don't even believe that this political party is filled with racists, they aren't. In some ways it would be more tolerable if they were. Then we could be laughing at their ignorance and we would be trying to punish them for it. But the party leadership is cynically tolerating something that they know is untrue primarily for economic advantage, the opportunity to enrich the few who are the financial support, the driving force of the party and the main beneficiaries of the party's positions.
If I was a leader of the suppressed and the oppressed my number one message would be don't get mad, get even, vote the bastards out even if you have to fight to vote. A lot of good people sacrificed and even died to get you that vote. It is the most powerful thing that you have to fight back, it is intolerable that you don't use it, that you don't make the extra effort to do it. People wouldn't be working so hard to suppress your vote if it doesn't count.
The number one reaction should be to push back, to raise the participation of the people whose votes are suppressed to as close to 100% as possible. This is the thing that the people in this party who want to suppress your vote fear the most. That and the possibility that their current supporters will start voting their pocketbooks instead of voting along the lines of the contrived culture wars.
There, I probably have made everyone mad. But this is simple stuff.