In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
On September 23 2016 21:24 farvacola wrote: Yes well the conservatives in this thread are still struggling to come to terms with the fact that they are voting alongside self-avowed white supremacists, so there are clearly struggles all around. Nonsense future hypotheticals aren't sobering, they're quite clearly getting y'all high as fuck.
I love how you guys on the left are willfully oblivious as to the left's role in all of this. Where do you think identity politics came from? It sure as shit isn't a product of the right. The left has been "voting alongside" racialist (and in some cases, racist), specialist interest groups for decades. So now you're complaining when white's start to collectively wonder "what about us?" Give me a break. The left has been socially engineering with race for about half a century, and over the past generation or so, has reached the point where it is clearly pushing things too far. Hell, y'all are tampering with football now and basically sanctioning riots and looting in cities. These are things that aren't going to be tolerated -- nor should they be.
lol, identity politics existed far before the term existed (Swift comes to mind), and whites aren't collectively wondering the same thing, as this thread is proof of.
You're right, by every indication, the post-2008 recovery has benefitted particular demographics far more than others. It definitely is getting worse every year.
There is no need of american white people to apologise to the next person of colour they are seeing. There is however the need for american white people to understand why there are african americans in the US and why they are poorer, more incarcerated and more likely to get shot by the police. You need to understand your history to see the parallels in the present and realize you are not done with equality.
The same way germans will keep being taught about the third reich so that we never aloow it to happen again. Your people of colour are not equal. You need to do more before you can call them out for not accepting the status quo, you cannot call it racist against white people either. They should not vandal and riot though.
After much thought I have come to a conclusion: It is pretty obvious that America is still running a slave Empire enforced by the police, via prisons that incarcerate black men for nonviolent crimes and use them for forced labor at a disproportionate rate. Cops in the US were originally created for the purpose of catching runaway slaves, their institutional memory is merely becoming impossible to ignore due to the proliferation of video evidence. Shooting unarmed black men is no odd aberration.
On September 23 2016 15:03 ChristianS wrote: Jesus this thread is depressing sometimes.
The last ~24 hours of discussion have put a sobering thought into my head, and I wonder what you guys think of it. Basically, in the last 50 or so years, there's been a strong anti-racist movement in the country as a whole. Laws that discriminate against blacks became widely considered unacceptable, public figures are shunned for expressing racist ideas or using racist epithets. The implied justification was that we as a society were making a concerted effort to eliminate racism as much as possible, and drive whatever resistant strains that survived to . Considered with other historical moves towards equality (elimination of slavery, blacks joining the military, Brown v. Board, etc.), it fit nicely with an overarching narrative of racial progress.
Maybe this is just a problem with anecdotal evidence, but it seems to me those attitudes are completely different in a lot of people today. Hardened Trump supporters often try to deny that Trump is a racist, but far more frequently I see people that just don't seem to care much. They might even lean toward thinking he probably is, but it's just not that important an issue. This is really baffling to me, since for my whole life there's been a widespread cultural agreement that overt racism is one of the ugliest sides of human civilization and absolutely cannot be tolerated, but in the broad view of history, racism is absolutely the norm. Not always as bad as early American South racism, but it's always been pretty normal to distrust people with different cultural and ethnic background than you, treat them worse, value their life less than that of your family or friends or tribe members. I always figured that was just part of progress – unlike humans for most of history, we have cars and refrigerators and computers and a prevailing cultural understanding that racism is bad.
It's a nice stroll through memory lane, but you make a sudden leap into modern times by contrasting the civil rights era with Trump and his supporters. Sit at the back of the bus was racism. Separate eating establishments based on race was racism. Immigration policy isn't. Political invective on several issues isn't (though abrasive speech will still cause others to bristle no matter the subject). You're right to call it anecdotal, and it's intensely subjective. You'll see the comparisons to late 1800s racism and xenophobia, others will see you as a wannabe crusader longing for a bygone era but without a real civil rights cause today.
Worth noting I never said Trump's immigration policy means he's racist. I was honestly more focused on Trump himself. Being prosecuted by Nixon's Justice Department for really explicitly discriminating against black tenants in his hotels back in the 70's. That stuff by Jack O'Donnell about how when he was president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump went off about not wanting a black guy as an accountant because blacks are lazy, and he only wants Jews counting his money. Calling Mexicans rapists. Those shitty stereotypes he embraced talking to the Republican Jewish Coalition. Y'know, that stuff.
But I wasn't really looking to pick a fight either. I don't really long to be a civil rights crusader. The 50's and 60's sound awful, and I'm glad I didn't have to be around for it. I honestly wish that we were having a relatively normal election between, like, Tim Kaine and Jeb Bush, and I could tune out and read the occasional headline without click on it and maybe get around to registering to vote if I had nothing better to do, but I probably never would because I wouldn't care that much who won.
Instead we've got a large, disgruntled population of lower- and middle-class white people who feel that they've been wronged by the world. They think they used to have some kind of glory and power, but now their manufacturing jobs are fading away and they're losing their privileged place in the world, and they feel betrayed and unsafe and powerless. We've got a demagogue candidate who's appealing to this population by telling them that they lost their power because of Mexicans and Muslims and China. He's parading around families of people that were raped or murdered by illegal Mexicans to gin up a rage against these foreigners that are raping and murdering their wives and children. He's saying the whole world is laughing at them because they don't win any more. And he's promising them that if they support him, then by the time he's done, nobody will laugh at them again.
This is not a drill, this is how real life racial persecution gets started. This is the type of movement that used to lead to pogroms and lynchings and blood libel. People get so caught up in the movement and the propaganda and the cult of personality around a charismatic leader that they stop paying attention to facts and policy, to the point that you can explain to them that the crime rate is down, not up, that they lost their manufacturing jobs to the inexorable forces of globalism and no one can bring them back, and that illegal immigrants actually commit violent crime at a lower rate than the rest of the population, but it has absolutely no bearing on how they feel.
My sobering thought was this: what if we're not on an inevitable march toward progress and greater racial equality? What if the anti-racist attitudes of the last 50 years aren't a lasting cultural achievement, but just a temporary backlash against the ugly racism of the 40's and 50's? People saw how hideous that Nazi movement was, and they saw the horrible treatment of blacks in the South, and the lynching of Emmett Till, and the dogs and firehoses deployed against civil rights protesters, and for a while it became fashionable to be against racism.
But now that all that stuff isn't such recent memory, racism takes on all of the advantages that made it prevalent in human society before. Scapegoating is an easy way to feel better about your problems. Stereotyping is almost inescapable in the psychology of how humans understand the world. Many apparent virtues that people are encouraged to cultivate (e.g. loyalty, empathy) can subconsciously promote tribalism (e.g. loyalty involves favoring those you're close to over those you're not, empathy encourages greater connection to people who are more like you). Racial minorities are often small enough in number that society can get weird impressions of them simply from having too small a sample size, and once a weird (especially negative) bias gets in place, confirmation bias and self-fulfilling prophecy effects tend to maintain or expand that bias.
I've been hoping all the bigotry of the Trump movement would be remembered by history as a weird spike of bigotry as the white American middle class came to terms with several realities it had been in denial about for years. But what if history remembers these past ~50 years as that brief period where American society was largely anti-racist?
My sobering thought is this: what if the current campaign against out-of-fashion ideas and racial realism won't be reversed for many years? What if the zealots of today, the current victors of the culture war, won't realize how hideous their own movement has become, nor how the '60s rebellion against authority became a puritanical persecution from authority (cultural leadership brought to you by Your Moral Betters™). Scapegoating and stereotyping of Trump supporters for social ills could continue, as much as I wish it would not. It is intensely psychological and the fight in every generation is to inspire the better angels of our nature.
I'm hoping the atmosphere of moral scolds today are later regarded as a weird period of American history when people embraced racializing every issue to the detriment of true debate on the issues. When language was so bastardized and social media lynch mobs so emboldened that every political opinion was viewed by the color difference of the author & subject's skin. I look with some hope to the next generation. Today's left-leaning culture responds to criticism like a priest to sacrilege, and even young people today can see how bizarre it acts. It's far more likely that today's regress, disguised as progress, continues to win and that's a very sobering thought indeed.
Seems like you're throwing out a lot of punches at stuff I'm not sure if you're assuming I support. I'm also not sure what's meant by terms like "racial realism." It seems to denote a position which acknowledges the realities of race (about which this "regressive left" is presumably in denial), but I'm not sure what realities you think those are. A white supremacist might say they're a "racial realist" for acknowledging that white people are better than black people. An SJW might call themselves a "racial realist" for acknowledging the power dynamics between whites and various minorities in America today, such that a "color-blind" approach can't solve racial issues. I assume you're in neither of these camps, so you probably mean something more along the lines of acknowledging black culture has some toxic trends which contribute to blacks' underprivileged state (which the regressive left insists is a racist position)? I'm only guessing at your meaning here.
But you seem to be opposed to much of the social backlash that currently exists against people and positions viewed as "racist," and I assume you don't think we shouldn't stigmatize actual racism, so you must think the labels of racist and bigot have been over-applied by the left. I might even agree with that. Online articles trying to teach white people about "microagressions" and the like can be alright when they come from a place of earnestly trying to help whites understand how to make racial minorities feel more at ease and less alienated, but when they come in the form of condemning anyone who uses the question "So, where are you from?" in small talk as Grand Dragon of the KKK, I think it weakens the label of "racist" and makes it easier for actual racists to hide behind the cover of just being "politically incorrect." A lot of people that use terms like "cultural appropriation" and "gentrification" to explain how white people are literally Hitler are being sloppy in their reasoning, and mostly just making people think it's okay to be skeptical that they could possibly ever be racist.
So I think you've assumed that I'm a member of that club, and I'm really not. Back in saner times, most of my online arguments were with those very people. But that group mostly just whines and blogs about Miley Cyrus appropriating this or that. This ethnocentrist movement wants to take over the world. I was hoping that, based on a progress-based view of racial equality, America had come far enough that it could tell the difference between telling an off-color joke to your friends (i.e. political incorrectness) and accusing Mexico of deliberately sending rapists across the border (i.e. racism). I was wrong, thus I am rethinking my assumption that racial equality has steadily improved over time and will only keep getting better.
I think this is the first opinion since the "racism war" started about 20 pages back that is actually worth reading.
His post is the saner and nicer version of Kwark's 40% of America is racist posts. And it's unsurprising to me that he, like everyone else on the other side of the issue, struggles with this part of Danglars' post:
My sobering thought is this: what if the current campaign against out-of-fashion ideas and racial realism won't be reversed for many years? What if the zealots of today, the current victors of the culture war, won't realize how hideous their own movement has become, nor how the '60s rebellion against authority became a puritanical persecution from authority (cultural leadership brought to you by Your Moral Betters™). Scapegoating and stereotyping of Trump supporters for social ills could continue, as much as I wish it would not. It is intensely psychological and the fight in every generation is to inspire the better angels of our nature.
I'm hoping the atmosphere of moral scolds today are later regarded as a weird period of American history when people embraced racializing every issue to the detriment of true debate on the issues. When language was so bastardized and social media lynch mobs so emboldened that every political opinion was viewed by the color difference of the author & subject's skin. I look with some hope to the next generation. Today's left-leaning culture responds to criticism like a priest to sacrilege, and even young people today can see how bizarre it acts. It's far more likely that today's regress, disguised as progress, continues to win and that's a very sobering thought indeed.
I read Danglar's post. It's well worded, I just disagree with it, but ChristianS already replied in a far more eloquent manner and I largely agree with that.
As to whether or not his viewpoint is the same as KwarK's, I'll let him reply (I didn't read it that way). My own is that everybody should be on the lookout for their own unconscious biases, and:
On September 23 2016 15:03 ChristianS wrote: Jesus this thread is depressing sometimes.
The last ~24 hours of discussion have put a sobering thought into my head, and I wonder what you guys think of it. Basically, in the last 50 or so years, there's been a strong anti-racist movement in the country as a whole. Laws that discriminate against blacks became widely considered unacceptable, public figures are shunned for expressing racist ideas or using racist epithets. The implied justification was that we as a society were making a concerted effort to eliminate racism as much as possible, and drive whatever resistant strains that survived to . Considered with other historical moves towards equality (elimination of slavery, blacks joining the military, Brown v. Board, etc.), it fit nicely with an overarching narrative of racial progress.
Maybe this is just a problem with anecdotal evidence, but it seems to me those attitudes are completely different in a lot of people today. Hardened Trump supporters often try to deny that Trump is a racist, but far more frequently I see people that just don't seem to care much. They might even lean toward thinking he probably is, but it's just not that important an issue. This is really baffling to me, since for my whole life there's been a widespread cultural agreement that overt racism is one of the ugliest sides of human civilization and absolutely cannot be tolerated, but in the broad view of history, racism is absolutely the norm. Not always as bad as early American South racism, but it's always been pretty normal to distrust people with different cultural and ethnic background than you, treat them worse, value their life less than that of your family or friends or tribe members. I always figured that was just part of progress – unlike humans for most of history, we have cars and refrigerators and computers and a prevailing cultural understanding that racism is bad.
It's a nice stroll through memory lane, but you make a sudden leap into modern times by contrasting the civil rights era with Trump and his supporters. Sit at the back of the bus was racism. Separate eating establishments based on race was racism. Immigration policy isn't. Political invective on several issues isn't (though abrasive speech will still cause others to bristle no matter the subject). You're right to call it anecdotal, and it's intensely subjective. You'll see the comparisons to late 1800s racism and xenophobia, others will see you as a wannabe crusader longing for a bygone era but without a real civil rights cause today.
Worth noting I never said Trump's immigration policy means he's racist. I was honestly more focused on Trump himself. Being prosecuted by Nixon's Justice Department for really explicitly discriminating against black tenants in his hotels back in the 70's. That stuff by Jack O'Donnell about how when he was president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump went off about not wanting a black guy as an accountant because blacks are lazy, and he only wants Jews counting his money. Calling Mexicans rapists. Those shitty stereotypes he embraced talking to the Republican Jewish Coalition. Y'know, that stuff.
But I wasn't really looking to pick a fight either. I don't really long to be a civil rights crusader. The 50's and 60's sound awful, and I'm glad I didn't have to be around for it. I honestly wish that we were having a relatively normal election between, like, Tim Kaine and Jeb Bush, and I could tune out and read the occasional headline without click on it and maybe get around to registering to vote if I had nothing better to do, but I probably never would because I wouldn't care that much who won.
Instead we've got a large, disgruntled population of lower- and middle-class white people who feel that they've been wronged by the world. They think they used to have some kind of glory and power, but now their manufacturing jobs are fading away and they're losing their privileged place in the world, and they feel betrayed and unsafe and powerless. We've got a demagogue candidate who's appealing to this population by telling them that they lost their power because of Mexicans and Muslims and China. He's parading around families of people that were raped or murdered by illegal Mexicans to gin up a rage against these foreigners that are raping and murdering their wives and children. He's saying the whole world is laughing at them because they don't win any more. And he's promising them that if they support him, then by the time he's done, nobody will laugh at them again.
This is not a drill, this is how real life racial persecution gets started. This is the type of movement that used to lead to pogroms and lynchings and blood libel. People get so caught up in the movement and the propaganda and the cult of personality around a charismatic leader that they stop paying attention to facts and policy, to the point that you can explain to them that the crime rate is down, not up, that they lost their manufacturing jobs to the inexorable forces of globalism and no one can bring them back, and that illegal immigrants actually commit violent crime at a lower rate than the rest of the population, but it has absolutely no bearing on how they feel.
My sobering thought was this: what if we're not on an inevitable march toward progress and greater racial equality? What if the anti-racist attitudes of the last 50 years aren't a lasting cultural achievement, but just a temporary backlash against the ugly racism of the 40's and 50's? People saw how hideous that Nazi movement was, and they saw the horrible treatment of blacks in the South, and the lynching of Emmett Till, and the dogs and firehoses deployed against civil rights protesters, and for a while it became fashionable to be against racism.
But now that all that stuff isn't such recent memory, racism takes on all of the advantages that made it prevalent in human society before. Scapegoating is an easy way to feel better about your problems. Stereotyping is almost inescapable in the psychology of how humans understand the world. Many apparent virtues that people are encouraged to cultivate (e.g. loyalty, empathy) can subconsciously promote tribalism (e.g. loyalty involves favoring those you're close to over those you're not, empathy encourages greater connection to people who are more like you). Racial minorities are often small enough in number that society can get weird impressions of them simply from having too small a sample size, and once a weird (especially negative) bias gets in place, confirmation bias and self-fulfilling prophecy effects tend to maintain or expand that bias.
I've been hoping all the bigotry of the Trump movement would be remembered by history as a weird spike of bigotry as the white American middle class came to terms with several realities it had been in denial about for years. But what if history remembers these past ~50 years as that brief period where American society was largely anti-racist?
My sobering thought is this: what if the current campaign against out-of-fashion ideas and racial realism won't be reversed for many years? What if the zealots of today, the current victors of the culture war, won't realize how hideous their own movement has become, nor how the '60s rebellion against authority became a puritanical persecution from authority (cultural leadership brought to you by Your Moral Betters™). Scapegoating and stereotyping of Trump supporters for social ills could continue, as much as I wish it would not. It is intensely psychological and the fight in every generation is to inspire the better angels of our nature.
I'm hoping the atmosphere of moral scolds today are later regarded as a weird period of American history when people embraced racializing every issue to the detriment of true debate on the issues. When language was so bastardized and social media lynch mobs so emboldened that every political opinion was viewed by the color difference of the author & subject's skin. I look with some hope to the next generation. Today's left-leaning culture responds to criticism like a priest to sacrilege, and even young people today can see how bizarre it acts. It's far more likely that today's regress, disguised as progress, continues to win and that's a very sobering thought indeed.
Seems like you're throwing out a lot of punches at stuff I'm not sure if you're assuming I support. I'm also not sure what's meant by terms like "racial realism." It seems to denote a position which acknowledges the realities of race (about which this "regressive left" is presumably in denial), but I'm not sure what realities you think those are. A white supremacist might say they're a "racial realist" for acknowledging that white people are better than black people. An SJW might call themselves a "racial realist" for acknowledging the power dynamics between whites and various minorities in America today, such that a "color-blind" approach can't solve racial issues. I assume you're in neither of these camps, so you probably mean something more along the lines of acknowledging black culture has some toxic trends which contribute to blacks' underprivileged state (which the regressive left insists is a racist position)? I'm only guessing at your meaning here.
But you seem to be opposed to much of the social backlash that currently exists against people and positions viewed as "racist," and I assume you don't think we shouldn't stigmatize actual racism, so you must think the labels of racist and bigot have been over-applied by the left. I might even agree with that. Online articles trying to teach white people about "microagressions" and the like can be alright when they come from a place of earnestly trying to help whites understand how to make racial minorities feel more at ease and less alienated, but when they come in the form of condemning anyone who uses the question "So, where are you from?" in small talk as Grand Dragon of the KKK, I think it weakens the label of "racist" and makes it easier for actual racists to hide behind the cover of just being "politically incorrect." A lot of people that use terms like "cultural appropriation" and "gentrification" to explain how white people are literally Hitler are being sloppy in their reasoning, and mostly just making people think it's okay to be skeptical that they could possibly ever be racist.
So I think you've assumed that I'm a member of that club, and I'm really not. Back in saner times, most of my online arguments were with those very people. But that group mostly just whines and blogs about Miley Cyrus appropriating this or that. This ethnocentrist movement wants to take over the world. I was hoping that, based on a progress-based view of racial equality, America had come far enough that it could tell the difference between telling an off-color joke to your friends (i.e. political incorrectness) and accusing Mexico of deliberately sending rapists across the border (i.e. racism). I was wrong, thus I am rethinking my assumption that racial equality has steadily improved over time and will only keep getting better.
I think this is the first opinion since the "racism war" started about 20 pages back that is actually worth reading.
His post is the saner and nicer version of Kwark's 40% of America is racist posts. And it's unsurprising to me that he, like everyone else on the other side of the issue, struggles with this part of Danglars' post:
My sobering thought is this: what if the current campaign against out-of-fashion ideas and racial realism won't be reversed for many years? What if the zealots of today, the current victors of the culture war, won't realize how hideous their own movement has become, nor how the '60s rebellion against authority became a puritanical persecution from authority (cultural leadership brought to you by Your Moral Betters™). Scapegoating and stereotyping of Trump supporters for social ills could continue, as much as I wish it would not. It is intensely psychological and the fight in every generation is to inspire the better angels of our nature.
I'm hoping the atmosphere of moral scolds today are later regarded as a weird period of American history when people embraced racializing every issue to the detriment of true debate on the issues. When language was so bastardized and social media lynch mobs so emboldened that every political opinion was viewed by the color difference of the author & subject's skin. I look with some hope to the next generation. Today's left-leaning culture responds to criticism like a priest to sacrilege, and even young people today can see how bizarre it acts. It's far more likely that today's regress, disguised as progress, continues to win and that's a very sobering thought indeed.
If by "struggles with" you mean "has trouble figuring out what he's getting at," you're absolutely right. I mean I've been puzzling over the term "racial realism" and I still can't figure out what it is supposed to mean. I would call affirmative action supporters "realists" for dealing with the reality that the races are treated differently today to the point that the same grades and test scores from two different students does not mean they're equally smart if one is white and one is black. There's good research showing that, for instance, black test takers perform significantly worse if you have them fill out demographic info immediately before a test compared to immediately after.
But the term could just as easily mean something like believing in the "reality" that blacks consistently performing worse on standardized tests means they're genetically dumber. It's only by benefit of the doubt I don't read Danglars post that way, but without that interpretation, I really do struggle to identify his meaning.
On September 23 2016 15:03 ChristianS wrote: Jesus this thread is depressing sometimes.
The last ~24 hours of discussion have put a sobering thought into my head, and I wonder what you guys think of it. Basically, in the last 50 or so years, there's been a strong anti-racist movement in the country as a whole. Laws that discriminate against blacks became widely considered unacceptable, public figures are shunned for expressing racist ideas or using racist epithets. The implied justification was that we as a society were making a concerted effort to eliminate racism as much as possible, and drive whatever resistant strains that survived to . Considered with other historical moves towards equality (elimination of slavery, blacks joining the military, Brown v. Board, etc.), it fit nicely with an overarching narrative of racial progress.
Maybe this is just a problem with anecdotal evidence, but it seems to me those attitudes are completely different in a lot of people today. Hardened Trump supporters often try to deny that Trump is a racist, but far more frequently I see people that just don't seem to care much. They might even lean toward thinking he probably is, but it's just not that important an issue. This is really baffling to me, since for my whole life there's been a widespread cultural agreement that overt racism is one of the ugliest sides of human civilization and absolutely cannot be tolerated, but in the broad view of history, racism is absolutely the norm. Not always as bad as early American South racism, but it's always been pretty normal to distrust people with different cultural and ethnic background than you, treat them worse, value their life less than that of your family or friends or tribe members. I always figured that was just part of progress – unlike humans for most of history, we have cars and refrigerators and computers and a prevailing cultural understanding that racism is bad.
It's a nice stroll through memory lane, but you make a sudden leap into modern times by contrasting the civil rights era with Trump and his supporters. Sit at the back of the bus was racism. Separate eating establishments based on race was racism. Immigration policy isn't. Political invective on several issues isn't (though abrasive speech will still cause others to bristle no matter the subject). You're right to call it anecdotal, and it's intensely subjective. You'll see the comparisons to late 1800s racism and xenophobia, others will see you as a wannabe crusader longing for a bygone era but without a real civil rights cause today.
Worth noting I never said Trump's immigration policy means he's racist. I was honestly more focused on Trump himself. Being prosecuted by Nixon's Justice Department for really explicitly discriminating against black tenants in his hotels back in the 70's. That stuff by Jack O'Donnell about how when he was president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump went off about not wanting a black guy as an accountant because blacks are lazy, and he only wants Jews counting his money. Calling Mexicans rapists. Those shitty stereotypes he embraced talking to the Republican Jewish Coalition. Y'know, that stuff.
But I wasn't really looking to pick a fight either. I don't really long to be a civil rights crusader. The 50's and 60's sound awful, and I'm glad I didn't have to be around for it. I honestly wish that we were having a relatively normal election between, like, Tim Kaine and Jeb Bush, and I could tune out and read the occasional headline without click on it and maybe get around to registering to vote if I had nothing better to do, but I probably never would because I wouldn't care that much who won.
Instead we've got a large, disgruntled population of lower- and middle-class white people who feel that they've been wronged by the world. They think they used to have some kind of glory and power, but now their manufacturing jobs are fading away and they're losing their privileged place in the world, and they feel betrayed and unsafe and powerless. We've got a demagogue candidate who's appealing to this population by telling them that they lost their power because of Mexicans and Muslims and China. He's parading around families of people that were raped or murdered by illegal Mexicans to gin up a rage against these foreigners that are raping and murdering their wives and children. He's saying the whole world is laughing at them because they don't win any more. And he's promising them that if they support him, then by the time he's done, nobody will laugh at them again.
This is not a drill, this is how real life racial persecution gets started. This is the type of movement that used to lead to pogroms and lynchings and blood libel. People get so caught up in the movement and the propaganda and the cult of personality around a charismatic leader that they stop paying attention to facts and policy, to the point that you can explain to them that the crime rate is down, not up, that they lost their manufacturing jobs to the inexorable forces of globalism and no one can bring them back, and that illegal immigrants actually commit violent crime at a lower rate than the rest of the population, but it has absolutely no bearing on how they feel.
My sobering thought was this: what if we're not on an inevitable march toward progress and greater racial equality? What if the anti-racist attitudes of the last 50 years aren't a lasting cultural achievement, but just a temporary backlash against the ugly racism of the 40's and 50's? People saw how hideous that Nazi movement was, and they saw the horrible treatment of blacks in the South, and the lynching of Emmett Till, and the dogs and firehoses deployed against civil rights protesters, and for a while it became fashionable to be against racism.
But now that all that stuff isn't such recent memory, racism takes on all of the advantages that made it prevalent in human society before. Scapegoating is an easy way to feel better about your problems. Stereotyping is almost inescapable in the psychology of how humans understand the world. Many apparent virtues that people are encouraged to cultivate (e.g. loyalty, empathy) can subconsciously promote tribalism (e.g. loyalty involves favoring those you're close to over those you're not, empathy encourages greater connection to people who are more like you). Racial minorities are often small enough in number that society can get weird impressions of them simply from having too small a sample size, and once a weird (especially negative) bias gets in place, confirmation bias and self-fulfilling prophecy effects tend to maintain or expand that bias.
I've been hoping all the bigotry of the Trump movement would be remembered by history as a weird spike of bigotry as the white American middle class came to terms with several realities it had been in denial about for years. But what if history remembers these past ~50 years as that brief period where American society was largely anti-racist?
My sobering thought is this: what if the current campaign against out-of-fashion ideas and racial realism won't be reversed for many years? What if the zealots of today, the current victors of the culture war, won't realize how hideous their own movement has become, nor how the '60s rebellion against authority became a puritanical persecution from authority (cultural leadership brought to you by Your Moral Betters™). Scapegoating and stereotyping of Trump supporters for social ills could continue, as much as I wish it would not. It is intensely psychological and the fight in every generation is to inspire the better angels of our nature.
I'm hoping the atmosphere of moral scolds today are later regarded as a weird period of American history when people embraced racializing every issue to the detriment of true debate on the issues. When language was so bastardized and social media lynch mobs so emboldened that every political opinion was viewed by the color difference of the author & subject's skin. I look with some hope to the next generation. Today's left-leaning culture responds to criticism like a priest to sacrilege, and even young people today can see how bizarre it acts. It's far more likely that today's regress, disguised as progress, continues to win and that's a very sobering thought indeed.
Seems like you're throwing out a lot of punches at stuff I'm not sure if you're assuming I support. I'm also not sure what's meant by terms like "racial realism." It seems to denote a position which acknowledges the realities of race (about which this "regressive left" is presumably in denial), but I'm not sure what realities you think those are. A white supremacist might say they're a "racial realist" for acknowledging that white people are better than black people. An SJW might call themselves a "racial realist" for acknowledging the power dynamics between whites and various minorities in America today, such that a "color-blind" approach can't solve racial issues. I assume you're in neither of these camps, so you probably mean something more along the lines of acknowledging black culture has some toxic trends which contribute to blacks' underprivileged state (which the regressive left insists is a racist position)? I'm only guessing at your meaning here.
But you seem to be opposed to much of the social backlash that currently exists against people and positions viewed as "racist," and I assume you don't think we shouldn't stigmatize actual racism, so you must think the labels of racist and bigot have been over-applied by the left. I might even agree with that. Online articles trying to teach white people about "microagressions" and the like can be alright when they come from a place of earnestly trying to help whites understand how to make racial minorities feel more at ease and less alienated, but when they come in the form of condemning anyone who uses the question "So, where are you from?" in small talk as Grand Dragon of the KKK, I think it weakens the label of "racist" and makes it easier for actual racists to hide behind the cover of just being "politically incorrect." A lot of people that use terms like "cultural appropriation" and "gentrification" to explain how white people are literally Hitler are being sloppy in their reasoning, and mostly just making people think it's okay to be skeptical that they could possibly ever be racist.
So I think you've assumed that I'm a member of that club, and I'm really not. Back in saner times, most of my online arguments were with those very people. But that group mostly just whines and blogs about Miley Cyrus appropriating this or that. This ethnocentrist movement wants to take over the world. I was hoping that, based on a progress-based view of racial equality, America had come far enough that it could tell the difference between telling an off-color joke to your friends (i.e. political incorrectness) and accusing Mexico of deliberately sending rapists across the border (i.e. racism). I was wrong, thus I am rethinking my assumption that racial equality has steadily improved over time and will only keep getting better.
I think this is the first opinion since the "racism war" started about 20 pages back that is actually worth reading.
His post is the saner and nicer version of Kwark's 40% of America is racist posts. And it's unsurprising to me that he, like everyone else on the other side of the issue, struggles with this part of Danglars' post:
My sobering thought is this: what if the current campaign against out-of-fashion ideas and racial realism won't be reversed for many years? What if the zealots of today, the current victors of the culture war, won't realize how hideous their own movement has become, nor how the '60s rebellion against authority became a puritanical persecution from authority (cultural leadership brought to you by Your Moral Betters™). Scapegoating and stereotyping of Trump supporters for social ills could continue, as much as I wish it would not. It is intensely psychological and the fight in every generation is to inspire the better angels of our nature.
I'm hoping the atmosphere of moral scolds today are later regarded as a weird period of American history when people embraced racializing every issue to the detriment of true debate on the issues. When language was so bastardized and social media lynch mobs so emboldened that every political opinion was viewed by the color difference of the author & subject's skin. I look with some hope to the next generation. Today's left-leaning culture responds to criticism like a priest to sacrilege, and even young people today can see how bizarre it acts. It's far more likely that today's regress, disguised as progress, continues to win and that's a very sobering thought indeed.
If by "struggles with" you mean "has trouble figuring out what he's getting at," you're absolutely right. I mean I've been puzzling over the term "racial realism" and I still can't figure out what it is supposed to mean. I would call affirmative action supporters "realists" for dealing with the reality that the races are treated differently today to the point that the same grades and test scores from two different students does not mean they're equally smart if one is white and one is black. There's good research showing that, for instance, black test takers perform significantly worse if you have them fill out demographic info immediately before a test compared to immediately after.
But the term could just as easily mean something like believing in the "reality" that blacks consistently performing worse on standardized tests means they're genetically dumber. It's only by benefit of the doubt I don't read Danglars post that way, but without that interpretation, I really do struggle to identify his meaning.
Can you provide a source for that? The example thats trotted out regarding girls testing is regularly debunked so I'd really like to see a source for your claim.
The original test didn't even have a control group just btw. Fucking ludicrous to suggest that it's real.
On September 23 2016 22:12 Nevuk wrote: After much thought I have come to a conclusion: It is pretty obvious that America is still running a slave Empire enforced by the police, via prisons that incarcerate black men for nonviolent crimes and use them for forced labor at a disproportionate rate. Cops in the US were originally created for the purpose of catching runaway slaves, their institutional memory is merely becoming impossible to ignore due to the proliferation of video evidence. Shooting unarmed black men is no odd aberration.
Yes, that is an accurate portrait of the country that run a civil war to end slavism within itself and follow trough with the rest of the world.
If you wanna go trough the history rabit hole, did you know muslims captured millions of slaves (from Europe and Africa), but have no black population because they castrated them?
On September 23 2016 22:12 Nevuk wrote: After much thought I have come to a conclusion: It is pretty obvious that America is still running a slave Empire enforced by the police, via prisons that incarcerate black men for nonviolent crimes and use them for forced labor at a disproportionate rate. Cops in the US were originally created for the purpose of catching runaway slaves, their institutional memory is merely becoming impossible to ignore due to the proliferation of video evidence. Shooting unarmed black men is no odd aberration.
The United States is a paranoid, overworked, nationalistic, overtly religious mess. All the while it idolises money and overall capitalism. While also being a cultural behemoth never seen in the history of the world making it substantially isolated. There's nothing to learn from neighboring countries like Canada or Mexico. One has been ripped apart by revolutions for most of it's existence the other is part of a Commonwealth. That got it's leanings from Europe.
Now throw in one of the most selfish and greedy generations, baby boomers, and you have a toxic mix.
On September 23 2016 22:12 Nevuk wrote: After much thought I have come to a conclusion: It is pretty obvious that America is still running a slave Empire enforced by the police, via prisons that incarcerate black men for nonviolent crimes and use them for forced labor at a disproportionate rate. Cops in the US were originally created for the purpose of catching runaway slaves, their institutional memory is merely becoming impossible to ignore due to the proliferation of video evidence. Shooting unarmed black men is no odd aberration.
Yes, that is an accurate portrait of the country that run a civil war to end slavism within itself and follow trough with the rest of the world.
If you wanna go trough the history rabit hole, did you know muslims captured millions of slaves (from Europe and Africa), but have no black population because they castrated them?
The middle east is still slaving away, good luck if you're a Pygmy in Africa.
I've come to the conclusion that being born in a western nation is about as good as it gets in the main, and that people routinely make themselves victims.
On September 23 2016 22:12 Nevuk wrote: After much thought I have come to a conclusion: It is pretty obvious that America is still running a slave Empire enforced by the police, via prisons that incarcerate black men for nonviolent crimes and use them for forced labor at a disproportionate rate. Cops in the US were originally created for the purpose of catching runaway slaves, their institutional memory is merely becoming impossible to ignore due to the proliferation of video evidence. Shooting unarmed black men is no odd aberration.
Yes, that is an accurate portrait of the country that run a civil war to end slavism within itself and follow trough with the rest of the world.
If you wanna go trough the history rabit hole, did you know muslims captured millions of slaves (from Europe and Africa), but have no black population because they castrated them?
Always this “others did it too” argument... So? How is the Arab slave trade relevant to the current situation in the USA?
On September 23 2016 21:24 farvacola wrote: Yes well the conservatives in this thread are still struggling to come to terms with the fact that they are voting alongside self-avowed white supremacists, so there are clearly struggles all around. Nonsense future hypotheticals aren't sobering, they're quite clearly getting y'all high as fuck.
I love how you guys on the left are willfully oblivious as to the left's role in all of this. Where do you think identity politics came from? It sure as shit isn't a product of the right. The left has been "voting alongside" racialist (and in some cases, racist), specialist interest groups for decades.
On September 23 2016 22:12 Nevuk wrote: After much thought I have come to a conclusion: It is pretty obvious that America is still running a slave Empire enforced by the police, via prisons that incarcerate black men for nonviolent crimes and use them for forced labor at a disproportionate rate. Cops in the US were originally created for the purpose of catching runaway slaves, their institutional memory is merely becoming impossible to ignore due to the proliferation of video evidence. Shooting unarmed black men is no odd aberration.
The United States is a paranoid, overworked, nationalistic, overtly religious mess. All the while it idolises money and overall capitalism. While also being a cultural behemoth never seen in the history of the world making it substantially isolated. There's nothing to learn from neighboring countries like Canada or Mexico. One has been ripped apart by revolutions for most of it's existence the other is part of a Commonwealth. That got it's leanings from Europe.
Now throw in one of the most selfish and greedy generations, baby boomers, and you have a toxic mix.
On top of that the current generation has no context or reference for how violent and horrible the past was. They are shown 20 people destroying a car on CNN and told that is a riot. As CVS is destroyed and we bemoan it on facebook, talking about how much nicer people were during the civil rights movement. But during that movement a single riot destroy 1,600 buildings. We lose people in an attack on an embassy and everyone is told its the worst thing ever, but we lost 16,000 people in 1968. We claim support our Troops, but refuse to hold our politicians accountable for not helping them because we are more concerned with beating the respective left/right.
We are so safe and so well off that we have lost all context for how bad is could become again.
On September 23 2016 22:12 Nevuk wrote: After much thought I have come to a conclusion: It is pretty obvious that America is still running a slave Empire enforced by the police, via prisons that incarcerate black men for nonviolent crimes and use them for forced labor at a disproportionate rate. Cops in the US were originally created for the purpose of catching runaway slaves, their institutional memory is merely becoming impossible to ignore due to the proliferation of video evidence. Shooting unarmed black men is no odd aberration.
Yes, that is an accurate portrait of the country that run a civil war to end slavism within itself and follow trough with the rest of the world.
If you wanna go trough the history rabit hole, did you know muslims captured millions of slaves (from Europe and Africa), but have no black population because they castrated them?
Always this “others did it too” argument... So? How is the Arab slave trade relevant to the current situation in the USA?
I see a lot of white shaming and USA bashing in this thread in general. For example America is still running a slave Empire enforced by the police. That is not even close to reality, while no one raises their voice to critizice actual brutal racism and sexism that is currently going on in a bunch of middle eastern countries, where woman legally do not have rights (and blacks were hunted out of existence).
The west is still a beacon of rationality and civilization, and the greatest place to live in the entire history of the world, by far. Obviously it can be better, but we should be turning to our core values that created this great civilization, not the other way around as the left is trying to.
On September 23 2016 22:12 Nevuk wrote: After much thought I have come to a conclusion: It is pretty obvious that America is still running a slave Empire enforced by the police, via prisons that incarcerate black men for nonviolent crimes and use them for forced labor at a disproportionate rate. Cops in the US were originally created for the purpose of catching runaway slaves, their institutional memory is merely becoming impossible to ignore due to the proliferation of video evidence. Shooting unarmed black men is no odd aberration.
Yes, that is an accurate portrait of the country that run a civil war to end slavism within itself and follow trough with the rest of the world.
If you wanna go trough the history rabit hole, did you know muslims captured millions of slaves (from Europe and Africa), but have no black population because they castrated them?
Always this “others did it too” argument... So? How is the Arab slave trade relevant to the current situation in the USA?
I see a lot of white shaming and USA bashing in this thread in general. For example America is still running a slave Empire enforced by the police. That is not even close to reality, while no one raises their voice to critizice actual brutal racism and sexism that is currently going on in a bunch of middle eastern countries, where woman legally do not have rights (and blacks were hunted out of existence).
The west is still a beacon of rationality and civilization, and the greatest place to live in the entire history of the world, by far. Obviously it can be better, but we should be turning to our core values that created this great civilization, not the other way around as the left is trying to.
tons of people call out that behavior in the middle east. your assertion that noone is raising their voice against it is flat out wrong.
On September 23 2016 22:12 Nevuk wrote: After much thought I have come to a conclusion: It is pretty obvious that America is still running a slave Empire enforced by the police, via prisons that incarcerate black men for nonviolent crimes and use them for forced labor at a disproportionate rate. Cops in the US were originally created for the purpose of catching runaway slaves, their institutional memory is merely becoming impossible to ignore due to the proliferation of video evidence. Shooting unarmed black men is no odd aberration.
Yes, that is an accurate portrait of the country that run a civil war to end slavism within itself and follow trough with the rest of the world.
If you wanna go trough the history rabit hole, did you know muslims captured millions of slaves (from Europe and Africa), but have no black population because they castrated them?
Always this “others did it too” argument... So? How is the Arab slave trade relevant to the current situation in the USA?
I see a lot of white shaming and USA bashing in this thread in general. For example America is still running a slave Empire enforced by the police. That is not even close to reality, while no one raises their voice to critizice actual brutal racism and sexism that is currently going on in a bunch of middle eastern countries, where woman legally do not have rights (and blacks were hunted out of existence).
The west is still a beacon of rationality and civilization, and the greatest place to live in the entire history of the world, by far. Obviously it can be better, but we should be turning to our core values that created this great civilization, not the other way around as the left is trying to.
You do know that the people doing that are mostly white. Maybe a few Asian too. Maybe a few more black people hang out in this thread beyond GH. I'm not 100% sure of the demographic make up of this thread. But I bash america and commit the dreaded white shaming. I'm also white as the driven snow, ancestors are Irish and Swedish. I can't even tan.
And the west got to be what it is by being critical of itself, not patting itself on the back for "doing it right."
EPT
