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AlexReynard

I Hate Black History Month

Is it just me, or does Black History Month seem like bullshit? Like something done by white people out of appeasement, rather than sincerity?

Wouldn't it be better to incorporate black history into the 'All White Guys, All The Time' version of history we currently teach? Maybe we could even bother mentioning some Latinos and Asians and women occasionally? Tell the history of HUMANITY, and not just one color of it at a time?

By settling for one month, Black America, you're saying it's okay for the whites to keep the other eleven for themselves. Are you really okay with that? Like, imagine a big fat plantation-owner-type white guy saying, 'We'll give you boys February, but after that it's back to normal! Heh heh!'

Black History Month is the modern day equivalent of the "Coloreds Only" water fountain.

If you wanna be proud that we still keep a vestige of 'separate but equal' around like it's some kinda progress, you go ahead. I'm just sayin', it seems strange to me.





BTW, the title of this journal is a reference to this YouTube video, which I found to be a fascinating object lesson in how we perceive racism. This girl's message is that of true equality, where people are literally not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. And her message is the same as mine: government-sponsored ethnicity-specific 'celebrations' just reinforce the idea that we are different and separate. The thing is, this poor girl  phrased everything in the most tooth-grindingly 'sounds racist as fuck' way possible. And of course, a lot of people judged her by what they thought she was saying, instead of her actual message. After all; a young white girl talking about racism? How could she possibly have anything relevant to say! Amirite!? <irony hammer>

Just for future reference: Learn to pay attention to other people's arguments. Even if it's difficult, try. Don't automatically assume the worst possible interpretation. If you have a knee-jerk emotional response to something someone said, and you reply as if that's their actual position, then that's closed-minded ignorance. You come off sounding like an arrogant, condescending fool. (Like this.)
Viewed: 251 times
Added: 12 years, 1 month ago
 
JamesWN
12 years, 1 month ago
You do know there are more months than just Black History Month right?
Stumpycoon
12 years, 1 month ago
Such as?
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
At my high school, this was the only one the teachers ever mentioned. It was pretty damn bad. The history textbook was as white as a milk factory, and if there did happen to be any minorities, it reeked badly of tokenism.
TTFox
12 years, 1 month ago
Um, wow... good thing I'm black. :/
BerretMC
12 years, 1 month ago
As am I, and I happen to agree w/ him; growing up, I couldn't go a DAY w/o seeing a snippet if Black history facts- from major accomplishments to just plain trivia. But NOW... An old teacher of mine ran into a kid (a BLACK kid, mind you) who was somehow under the impression that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "freed the slaves." -.- And l if you REALLY want to get into the semantics of the issue: Malcom X.
TTFox
12 years, 1 month ago
Well let me break it down to you. Black History Month is for us young generation of the black community who so happens to not know their own culture and ancestor who fought for their rights. Now, if you want to talk about your generation then by all means you guys know more stuff then we do. >BUT< we get up to date things of current people who are still fighting towards us black people and other minorities.

Rather then hearing a lot of white people trying to call us this and that, saying us "Niggers" are the worst thing that have affected the world, or rather the economy of the U.S, also saying that we cause more drug related deaths and shit, bring us to embarrassment due to the fact that some are right, and some are wrong. This journal for one is wrong, the way he said Black History is bullshit is wrong.

Besides... their are OTHER history months that people can say is BS. Hell, everyone can say that LBGT month is dumb as shit.

IMO.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>Besides... their are OTHER history months that people can say is BS. Hell, everyone can say that LBGT month is dumb as shit.

...Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!?

Also, please point out where I said that black history itself is bullshit. Because I think you might have just committed the exact thing I was arguing against.
TTFox
12 years, 1 month ago
Yeah, I did. Because you, Wolfblade, Sho (For showing the video) are correct in some sorts of ways. But its not the fact of which some A.A's need Black History Month depending on what they know, or who they know that made it come alive.

Uh, The LBGT was a figure of speech, like randomness. XD, like... people say Black History is dumb due to racism still out there, other people might say LBGT is dumb due to the fact that ignorant/assholes out there that hate gays and doesn't tolerate it.

Oh, when you said that "Does Black History Month seem like bullshit?" Part made me think that.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>But its not the fact of which some A.A's need Black History Month depending on what they know, or who they know that made it come alive.

My point was that teaching black history is necessary. Only teaching it in one month out of the year feels like exactly the wrong thing to do.

>Uh, The LBGT was a figure of speech, like randomness. XD, like... people say Black History is dumb due to racism still out there, other people might say LBGT is dumb due to the fact that ignorant/assholes out there that hate gays and doesn't tolerate it.

Oh, okay. I worried for a second you were saying LGBT was dumb.

>Oh, when you said that "Does Black History Month seem like bullshit?" Part made me think that.

'Month' is the key word there. This is a case of, I can see what they were trying to do, but in practice I don't think it works. To me, it feels like when a TV show adds a single black person to the all-white cast so they'll stop getting angry letters. It's not genuine, it's just to stop people from being offended. If the school system truly cared about including black history, they would teach it year-round.
TTFox
12 years, 1 month ago
TRUE!!!

My fuckin school doesn't give a damn about it... Here's the part that's funny, Baltimore: <<< Blackest city, no black education. 0vo
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>Here's the part that's funny, Baltimore: <<< Blackest city, no black education. 0vo

Arrrrgh. The sad thing is, I understand why. Teachers in general are either too lazy to teach anything but what's in the textbooks, or so poor they can't help it. And the textbooks don't revise a damn thing usually. This country's education is horrifyingly underfunded.

I'm hoping we see a future where kids are given iPads instead of textbooks. They're way easier to update, and if you want to know more about a topic than just what's in the text, you can Google it right then and there.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>I couldn't go a DAY w/o seeing a snippet if Black history facts- from major accomplishments to just plain trivia.

To me, it feels like it all gets reduced to trivia.
[cheery white teevee commercial voice]: 'DID YOU KNOW that a black man invented the traffic light? Oh, and some kind of Underground Railroad too! Isn't that fascinating? It is almost as if they actually had something to do with history!'

>.< It's that 'we're trying really hard and still not understanding how patronizing we sound' vibe I see a lot from well-meaning PC types.

>who was somehow under the impression that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "freed the slaves."

Ow, ow, ow.

>-.- And l if you REALLY want to get into the semantics of the issue: Malcom X.

I don't remember my history class ever doing anything more than mentioning him. It was like, 'Dr. Martin Luther King jr. was a great civil rights leader! And, um, Malcolm X sorta happened in there too mumblemumble...'
OsirisPM
12 years, 1 month ago
Malcom X is the Magneto to Martin Luther King's Xavier. They were BOTH necessary to get the civil rights movement going, but if a teacher ever acknowledged that, we would be "praising a bad man" as a prof of history once told me when I asked why people only hear about the man AFTER high school.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>Malcom X is the Magneto to Martin Luther King's Xavier.

ROTFL!!! That's a perfect comparison!!

>They were BOTH necessary to get the civil rights movement going, but if a teacher ever acknowledged that, we would be "praising a bad man" as a prof of history once told me when I asked why people only hear about the man AFTER high school.

That's pretty much what I've gathered. And that prof's attitude makes me wanna throw up. A huge problem with the way we present history is the idea that everything can be fitted neatly into 'good guys' and 'bad guys' categories. There's no room for moral ambiguitity. If certain facts don't fit with the accepted narrative of a person, we just cut them out. I remember hearing about what a swell fellow Henry Ford was, then feeling my brain explode when I eventually learned what a Grand Champion Jew Hater he was.
BerretMC
12 years, 1 month ago
>ROTFL!!! That's a perfect comparison!!<

Not exactly Perfect, but the most relevant one. Unlike Magneto who (in the cartoon and movies- I never read the comic), lead an army (or at least his own gang)of mutants to overthrow and retaliate against humans at random, and in general, Malcom X simply stated that "We are people, too no matter what anyone else says. And as such, we have a right to defend ourselves". Given that he was an effective speaker and motivator, w/ that message, in that time period, it is not hard at all to see where the whole "militant" thing came from. And given how Black History gets treated and "taught", it's also easy to see how it stuck.

>I remember hearing about what a swell fellow Henry Ford was, then feeling my brain explode when I eventually learned what a Grand Champion Jew Hater he was.

0.0 Next you'll be telling me that Ol' Honest Abe was personally against the idea of abolishing Slavery. ;p (I honestly didn't know that about Ford, though)
EricAdler
12 years, 1 month ago
I hate to blow your mind, but Abe did not free the slaves because it was The Right Thing To Do, he did it to hurt the 'rebel' states.

Read the text of the Emancipation proclamation carefully; It only frees the slaves in the confederate states, and in fact, it would not apply to states that returned to the Union quickly after delivery of the Proclamation.  The civil war was about States Rights vs. Federal Authority.  The Union was a Strong Federal setup, the Confederacy was a Strong States setup.
BerretMC
12 years, 1 month ago
Oh, I knew that. It was a little joke on my part. In an address he made on Emancipation Proclamation, he said it himself that if he had any other choice, he would have kept slavery going.
EricAdler
12 years, 1 month ago
I think I remember reading about that, in a nutshell he made three main points:

1) If freeing all the slaves would Save the Union, that is what he would do.
2) If freeing some of the slaves, nut not all of them, would Save the Union, that is what he would do.
3) If freeing NONE of the slaves would Save the Union, that is what he would do.

AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>Given that he was an effective speaker and motivator, w/ that message, in that time period, it is not hard at all to see where the whole "militant" thing came from. And given how Black History gets treated and "taught", it's also easy to see how it stuck.

All perfectly true. I meant that the comparison fits in terms of the public perception of King and X. One's practically elevated to sainthood and the other's seen as a supervillain. Yet I totally agree that both of them were equally necessary to their cause. Kind of like how both Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens were essential to the rise of the new Atheism. When a majority suppresses the voice of a minority, you need people who are willing to talk peace and reconciliation, but you also need someone to represent the righteous anger that deserves expression. Before the conversation can make progress, someone has to stand up and shout and force it to start.

>0.0 Next you'll be telling me that Ol' Honest Abe was personally against the idea of abolishing Slavery. ;p (I honestly didn't know that about Ford, though)

It surprised the hell out of me. Not only did he run lots and lots of newspaper articles about those darn Jews, but Hitler actually admired him personally. He received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle; a medal given to foreign Nazi sympathizers who the Germans thought were extra-super-swell. Charles Lindbergh got one too, BTW.

>he said it himself that if he had any other choice, he would have kept slavery going.

O.O I actually didn't know that. Geez, that makes me wonder if maybe that made him the perfect man for the job. Like, someone who was personally against it, yet realized it was necessary, would be able to see both sides and create a solution that was actually implementable. Instead of going too far and risking total rejection, or doing too little and being useless. Kind of like that "Only Nixon could go to China" thing
LupineAssassin
12 years, 1 month ago
Hasn't anyone noticed Black History Month is on the shortest month of the year? Insult?
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
I'm pretty sure I remember Chris Rock doing a bit about that.
EricAdler
12 years, 1 month ago
" ...because THE MAN won't trust us with anything more.


Or something like that.
Jon1305
12 years, 1 month ago
In high school, what month -isn't- black history month...
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
It might depend on the high school. At mine, most of the teachers really didn't care much about academics, so we just read the ultra-cleaned-up, pearly white textbooks.
ravenvenice
12 years, 1 month ago
personally, i am not racist. But black history month is a rather annoying load of BS in my opinion. If one wants to be fair, why not make a White History Month while we're at it? oh wait...that's racist isn't it?

When i was in Job Corps, one of my lunches was pig intestine. Because according to them, since it's black history month, it was something that black people eat. I don't think every black/colored/whatever person would want to eat pig intestine...and anyways, it was bloody nasty.

I support all colors, believing that in the end, we're all the same. we all bleed red right? so let's stop celebrating something that's not fair to anyone else....if you get a month, everyone should.

That's just me though. Have a nice day.
JunkBox
12 years, 1 month ago
Pig intestine, also known as Chitterlings or Chitlins. Despite not being foreign (at least to this white southern guy) it still qualifies as Queasine!
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>personally, i am not racist. But black history month is a rather annoying load of BS in my opinion. If one wants to be fair, why not make a White History Month while we're at it? oh wait...that's racist isn't it?

I'm not a fan of anything where, if the majority did it, it would be seen as racist/sexist/etc.. Oh, but it's okay if a minority does. Having awards shows that only give awards to people of certain ethnicities. Having charities that only donate to one gender's rights issues/diseases. If it needlessly excludes someone, it's not cool. It's one thing if it's something where an issue that affects a minority demands specific action (gay marriage, evil anti-immigration laws). Then, yes. But acting as if your group's struggle is more important than anyone else's is kinda douchey behavior.

I think it annoys me more when minorities do this because, like, 'You've been THROUGH this! You KNOW better!!' Majority populations of any kind are always loutish and whiny about giving up any of their privilege, so while the behavior is still disgusting, it's at least expected. To see the oppressed turn around and act like the oppressor gives me this pang of disappointment. I know it's a common human behavior, but I still want us to be better.

>When i was in Job Corps, one of my lunches was pig intestine. Because according to them, since it's black history month, it was something that black people eat. I don't think every black/colored/whatever person would want to eat pig intestine...and anyways, it was bloody nasty.

>.< I'm guessing they didn't know that a lot of 'traditional black dishes' exist because slaves would be given the leftovers from white people's groceries, and they had to learn to transform it into something edible. While some of these recipes did turn out pretty good (my Aunt makes great blackeyed peas and ham hocks with cornbread), I've never heard anything good about chit'lins from anyone who's eaten them.

>I support all colors, believing that in the end, we're all the same. we all bleed red right? so let's stop celebrating something that's not fair to anyone else....if you get a month, everyone should.

I'm not at all against a personal celebration of one's heritage. There's a museum of African-American history in Detroit near-ish me, and I'm totally cool with that. Because it's not institutionalized. It's okay for a museum to focus on a specific topic. Not so much for a public school curriculum. That kind of stuff should be as genuinely inclusive as it can be.
ravenvenice
12 years, 1 month ago
pretty much summing it up alot better then i could, and many thanks for that. And to both, There is no way i think someone could make pig intestine good...no matter what you call it. Of course the worst part is that they called it chitlins...not telling us what it actually was. I signed up for Job Corps to better myself....not get a free lesson why you don't go on Fear Factor.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>pretty much summing it up alot better then i could, and many thanks for that.

Hee hee. It really makes me feel good to hear that. :)

>And to both, There is no way i think someone could make pig intestine good...no matter what you call it.

I suppose it's possible, but I'm none too keen to test that theory. I can't get over the idea that, 'THERE'S BEEN POOP INSIDE THOSE THINGS!!!'

>I signed up for Job Corps to better myself....not get a free lesson why you don't go on Fear Factor.

LOL! If they bring in a coffin full of snakes, I'd quit. ;)
Alfador
12 years, 1 month ago
" AlexReynard wrote:
I suppose it's possible, but I'm none too keen to test that theory. I can't get over the idea that, 'THERE'S BEEN POOP INSIDE THOSE THINGS!!!'


Intestines have actually been used for sausage casings for bazillions of years. Thing is, I'm not about to eat them without some actual ground-up seasoned meat stuffed inside.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
The magic of not knowing what you're eating before you bite into it!!

I'm lucky, in that I don't have much of a disgust reflex. You could show me autopsy photos while I'm eating spaghetti, and I'd keep eating. Still, perception can easily change the taste of a thing even for me. Tell me a hamburger fell on the bathroom floor before I eat it and, even if it's not true, I'll be hesitant taking a bite.
Alfador
12 years, 1 month ago
I'm much the same way. If I know the food I'm eating is safe, I can chow down while holding a discussion about dirty diapers or gory medical problems. If I think it might not be safe, I'm reluctant even if it probably is. It can get weird though--I'll happily cut moldy portions of bread or cheese off and eat the rest, even though the thought of eating the mold portion nauseates me. And even though moldy cheese may or may not actually be safe, depending on the type of mold. (Though I'm pretty sure the kind of mold you get in an urban American kitchen is way, way less safe than the mold you get in a cheesemaking cave as it ages.)
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
There's also that moment when you bite into something and think, 'Is it SUPPOSED to taste like that!?' There's this seafood salad I regularly get at the deli. I took a bite of it last week and became concerned. I couldn't place what tasted different about it, but I certainly didn't want to fuck with potentially-tainted seafood.
Alfador
12 years, 1 month ago
I had that just a few minutes ago. I made a PBJ for breakfast, and there were two times when nomming through the usual multigrain bread (with peanut butter and jelly within) that I bit into a seed that immediately put me in mind of the bread you usually get a Reuben on, which Wikipedia tells me is rye. As in, just the one seed filled my mouth with the taste of rye bread, each time I bit down on it, while the entire rest of the sandwich had the usual multitude of flavors.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
Weird grain breads are the bane of my existence. My mom used to get this bread that had a million and one little seed-y things and whatnot in it, and every bite was like sinking your teeth into a bird feeder. >.<

BTW, Robby and I are reading Dangerous Lunatics like a radio play to Kanada. We're on Book Two now and oddly, I'm finding it rather difficult to do Alf's voice! I can hear how you sound in my head but it's hard to duplicate!
Alfador
12 years, 1 month ago
a) I'm totally the opposite; I've always loved weird grain breads as long as I can remember. I used to hate crunchy peanut butter, and then while I had braces I couldn't have it at all and felt very satisfied about that... but then afterward I developed a taste for it more than creamy-style. Go figure!

b) Depending on the timing in the day, I might be able to contribute voice acting for you. >:3
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>a) I'm totally the opposite; I've always loved weird grain breads as long as I can remember. I used to hate crunchy peanut butter, and then while I had braces I couldn't have it at all and felt very satisfied about that... but then afterward I developed a taste for it more than creamy-style. Go figure!

Eek, the texture... It feels like I'm eating tiny bones. :P

>b) Depending on the timing in the day, I might be able to contribute voice acting for you. >:3

Typically we've been messing around from midnight till three. When are you usually Skype-able? I've got some good news I've been meaning to share with you 'n Zephon.

Also, I saw Chronicle today. Pretty damned good. The special effects are truly astonishing, and thankfully the story and directing are equally good. Also, as I was watching, I thought, 'They don't need to make a live-action Akira remake. This is it!'
Alfador
12 years, 1 month ago
I'm usually in bed around 9:30-10:00pm. On weekdays I'm almost always available from 6:00pm until then, weekends just about all the time (except when spending afternoon/evening Saturday over at Tacki and Kiffin's, and also I usually need to keep quiet around 7:00pmish Sunday for Zephie calling his mom).
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
Allrighty. I may call sometime to see if you're on.
Alfador
12 years, 1 month ago
Hooray! Today we are going out in the morning/afternoon instead because we are taking Siraj to the airport. (Also 6:30-9:30 on Saturdays and Mondays are RAID TIEMS so even if I wanted to Skype at the same time as raid I couldn't because we have Ventrilo up instead.


...if you're quiet, though, you could always get Ventrilo, connect to our server, and listen in on the goings-on. Might want to have something else to do in the meantime though--just hearing people talk about WoW encounters isn't 100% engaging by itself.)
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>...if you're quiet, though, you could always get Ventrilo, connect to our server, and listen in on the goings-on.

Oh blarg. I have enough applications as it is! I'll just wait and try to Skype you. I'll try to rember, but it's hard keeping the time zones straight in my head.
Alfador
12 years, 1 month ago
I was disgusted when, while I was in college, I heard that a high school student somewhere had been rejected from competing for a scholarship and posters drumming up support for him taken down.  Because he was white, and competing for an African-American scholarship...

...He was born in South Africa. He was quite literally African-American. But because he wasn't BLACK, they shut him down.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
Hearing that requires me to re-use a line I wrote a few years ago:

"If I had a hypocrisy fetish, my boner would be a danger to airplanes right now."
Stumpycoon
12 years, 1 month ago
If people are doing black history month as a chance to highlight elements of history curriculum they feel aren't well addressed, and don't bring other baggage to it, then fine.  

If people are doing black history month as a chance call white people racist, that's actually racist of them.

The fact is that the USA was a colony of a European colony so if you follow the history it's mostly European migrants making a new nation and before that their cultural history in Europe.  Pretending that the reason history is taught that way to be whites-only is racist.  

Now...say someone was omitting non-whites from things like the reasons behind the civil war, or not teaching about slavery in America, or the history of native Americans, then i'd be dead against that.  That would be incomplete teaching and likely stemming from racism.  
But teaching that the Mayflower et al set sail from England is not "white history" and it's racist to pretend it is.

So yes, on that basis I vaguely support black history month.  I like learning new things.  
On the other paw Asian-American month would be interesting just like the history of Asian-Australians is very interesting and underreported.  Or non-English Europeans.  And so on.  There is a lot of history to America (and Australia) that doesn't get covered by tracing back to the countries origins in Europe.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>If people are doing black history month as a chance to highlight elements of history curriculum they feel aren't well addressed, and don't bring other baggage to it, then fine.  

Absolutely. A big part of why I dislike it is that, that's what it should be. But from my experience at least, the reality is that it feels like a half-assed, placating kind of thing.

>If people are doing black history month as a chance call white people racist, that's actually racist of them.

Yep.

>The fact is that the USA was a colony of a European colony so if you follow the history it's mostly European migrants making a new nation and before that their cultural history in Europe.  Pretending that the reason history is taught that way to be whites-only is racist.  

Agreed. What I have more of a problem with is that history textbooks seem to be written like a lazy Hollywood script. They focus on a handful of established characters and portray events as a series of unconnected episodes. And most of these characters happen to be white folks. We tend to ignore anyone who's not already well-known. There are people and events of real historical significance that get ignored in favor of bullshit like George Washington chopping down a cherry tree. A lot of the stuff I was taught in history class was stuff I already knew from watching TV.  Most of the really interesting things I've learned about history, I've learned on my own long after high school. That's fucked up.

>On the other paw Asian-American month would be interesting just like the history of Asian-Australians is very interesting and underreported.  Or non-English Europeans.  And so on.  There is a lot of history to America (and Australia) that doesn't get covered by tracing back to the countries origins in Europe.

Yes, yes, yes. I'd be totally cool with black History Month if 1) real effort went into it and 2) it didn't feel like such blatant tokenism. Like, 'Christ! We gave a month to the blacks! What more do you want? You want us to teach about all the other minorities? That's too much work!!' There is a fakeness I feel from a lot of 'diversity' education. Like most of it is the minimum possible effort to appear as if someone cares. Like the real goal is not to actually learn about under-reported subjects, but just to make sure no group gets offended because they weren't included. That shouldn't be the backbone of our education system. I'm still pissed as hell at the schools I attended for not fucking teaching me hardly anything.
foxboyprower
12 years, 1 month ago
I really do not care but it does seem silly we need holidays to remind us of stuff like this.
Blackraven2
12 years, 1 month ago
Ranting in the furry community about skin colour stupidity and racism is like - dunno

I mean OK dog 'characters' being racist about the felines , or tiger characters being racist about their "no mice neighborhood" is a nice spicing, good for stories, but a racist furry in general seems a bit an oximorony to me.

You need to be open minded to be furry I think.

That being said, I fully agree, next thing we have a reds month and a yellow month and a hispanics month and a canadian month, and when it finally gets to southwestern Tahitian month they'll realize they have no months left, and bitch all over why the north Tahitians got a month of their own and the southerners get discriminated.

When is rednecks month btw?

I want a politicians month. Or rather a politicians season. Thats like tourist season, but unlike those, you're allowed to shoot them :)
JunkBox
12 years, 1 month ago
" Blackraven2 wrote:
When is rednecks month btw?

Any time someone hollers, "Hey, y'all, watch this!"

" Blackraven2 wrote:
I want a politicians month. Or rather a politicians season. Thats like tourist season, but unlike those, you're allowed to shoot them :)

Where the hell is the "Like" button?? LOL!
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>You need to be open minded to be furry I think.

That's pretty much the reason I get so exasperated over kinkbashing. Like, 'You babyfurs are fucking sick!!' Um, excuse me? To a 'normal' person, you're both dogfuckers, so maybe don't be an embarrassingly huge hypocrite, okay?

>When is rednecks month btw?

All of 'em. Especially in an election year.

>I want a politicians month. Or rather a politicians season. Thats like tourist season, but unlike those, you're allowed to shoot them :)

I think Dick Cheney already has something like that.
Blackraven2
12 years, 1 month ago
" AlexReynard wrote:
>
That's pretty much the reason I get so exasperated over kinkbashing. Like, 'You babyfurs are fucking sick!!' Um, excuse me? To a 'normal' person, you're both dogfuckers, so maybe don't be an embarrassingly huge hypocrite, okay?


Yeah. That's different though. That isn't bashing about skin color or heritage, its bashing about opinion. Your kink is wrong and my kink is right is just a variant of the more general "What you think is wrong because only what I think is right."

It's the same stupidity as in racism, but on a higher philosophical level: As should you ever disagree, you're certainly my enemy.

Or to put this stupidity into another catchy phrase - let's use ex president bush's words: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

" AlexReynard wrote:

>I think Dick Cheney already has something like that.


There already is? Damn, you Americans need to learn how to aim ;) *scnr*
Shokuji
12 years, 1 month ago
TTFox
12 years, 1 month ago
HE MADE A GOOD POINT!
Wolfblade
12 years, 1 month ago
That's the point this journal is making, too.

Racism is stupid, but it will never go away by teaching people to highlight their differences from each other, and to act like 'where you come from' is of any importance beyond how you let it affect who you are.

"How do we get rid of racism?" "Stop talking about it."

And that doesn't mean just allow it when it happens. But what people need to learn is ALL discrimination based on irrelevant differences is bad. Stop talking about 'racism.' Start standing up >any< time >any< person is treated poorly simply because of skin color, age, gender, orientation, nationality, etc, etc. '

And most importantly: Teach people to know the difference between unfair discrimination based on irrelevant superficial differences, and appropriate discrimination based on relevant and valid judgments of a person's actual behavior and/or merit.
TTFox
12 years, 1 month ago
It's not how we can stop racism, it's what we can do about it. Really, racism is always not black people of course, but its mainly us thats getting frequently directed by racism. You know whats funny, when black people can say the word "Nigga" only, but if a white person say it, then their racist.

Hm, nope. Its quite frankly dumb as shit cause everyone knows that its just a one word that has no affect over someone life. So, I don't care if a white person say "Nigga" or other racist words ex: "Cracker" "Chink" "Kike" "Fag", it doesn't make a difference, words are words, you can either live with it or just simply ignore.

Also, I'm going to put this in locks... WHAT BLACK PERSON WANTS TO SPEND A WHOLE MONTH LEARNING OR RELIVING THE TORTURE WE FELT MANY YEARS AGO!! -shrugs-
Wolfblade
12 years, 1 month ago
Black people aren't targeted for racism more than any other minority. If a person is ACTUALLY just racist, they're not likely going to hate black people but be okay with mexicans, for example.

The reason Blacks get equated with racism more than others though, is because they make it more of a focus of their culture than others. Yes, this is understandable given that they were slaves and most other minorities didn't become prominent here until afterwards, so there's less cultural influence there. But even so, how much of black culture exists that is NOT defined by or built upon the extreme focus on racism and the inequality between blacks and whites? And how can anyone EXPECT anything approaching equality when so much focus is put on highlighting the things that make us different? You can't be something different and special and better, but also just the same and equal. You can't demand to be treated differently because of your skin color in the same breath as raging against being treated differently.

Whenever any person of any color is not acting by any particular ethnic stereotype, their behavior is called 'acting white.' The absence of stereotype behavior is applied to the white stereotype (not counting rednecks or new englanders or other sub-branches of white stereotypes).

White people don't have to come up with a false caricature based on ignorance and hate anymore to try and paint all blacks as something ugly under the label of "niggers." The Black community, in particular the hip-hop culture, is what currently defines what it means to "be Black" as something that nobody of intelligence, decency, or education is going to find as a positive or desirable stereotype. People like Bill Cosby and Morgan Freeman speak messages of ACTUAL equality and setting differences aside, and overcoming racism by showing that the shit racists say is all senseless and baseless garbage. But they get criticized by portions of the black community that are glorifying, and romanticizing ways of speaking and acting that >validate< what racists say about black people.

Urban/hip-hop culture, the social influences that make young black people see these stereotypes as something to adhere to, and not as something to reject outright - THAT is what is setting the definition of "Black People" as something ugly, and THAT is the biggest obstacle to black people in America truly overcoming the issue of racism.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>and THAT is the biggest obstacle to black people in America truly overcoming the issue of racism.

Well that, and cops. Statistics show that the entire justice system has so much institutionalized racism it makes you want to puke in your mouth to rinse out the taste.

Yes, a huge part of ending racism is for all sides to stop acting as if their personal offense defines the issue for everyone. But it needs to be remembered that there still is real racism lurking about, and that a lot of what we've done to eradicate it has simply pushed it out of visible range. It's still there, just cloaked in code words.
Wolfblade
12 years, 1 month ago
A friend was telling me about how in his town (small, rural, barely-there Louisiana town) there was the specific part of town where all the hookers, drug-dealers, etc, were known to hang out. You simply did not go into this part of town unless you were looking to break a bunch of laws. And, surprise, that was 'the black part of town.' The sheriff was a fat old white dude. Didn't touch that part of town. He was known to say 'what can I do? If I set foot in that area, I'll get slapped with so much discrimination crap, I'll be lucky to keep my job.' So this was just the law-free zone of the town. No cops, no worries. Eventually, he got replaced, and the new Sheriff that got voted in was this big huge black dude. The first thing he did once he was in charge was to go in there, bust the hell out of the criminals. Within a few months, that part of town was cleaned up, stayed clean, and everybody, white and black, loves the shit out of their sheriff. Because he does his damn job.

At some point, people have to let go of the 'police are all racist' thing. Black communities have higher crime rates. It's not because all the cops are focusing on the browner part of town and arresting everybody off the streets. It's because the cops AREN'T in those parts of town. If they do go there, they get stonewalled. Because, of course, all cops are racist. So black communities have to deal with higher crime rates because of... what? White man or police keeping them down? No. They don't want the 'racist' police in their neighborhoods, they don't cooperate, so they have more crime, which means more young people from black communities are susceptible to committing crime themselves. The police are all bad, right? The whole institution of law enforcement is racist, so if you want to defy them, what else do you do but break the law?

Last time I read up on this stuff, Blacks account for 12% of the country's total population, but make up 40% of the prison population. Even if you wanted to say that HALF of all black incarcerations are entirely unfounded on anything other than 'they were black and the cop was racist' - a claim that I would think should be insane to even consider - then you'd still have 20% of the prison population coming from 12% of the total population. Also, the statistics between different cities were fairly consistent regardless of what race was majority. As in, cities with black majority in both population and city government had similar black incarceration rates to cities that were primarily white. One would think that, if these statistics were skewed so much by racism, then you'd see significantly lower black incarceration rates in cities where the police force and elected officials were mostly black. Right? Doesn't make much sense for black cops from black towns to be racist towards blacks, does it?

The statistics are SO skewed that to suggest that the inequality is caused by racist cops is ludicrous. Think about the accusation that HALF of all black arrests are >completely< innocent people victimized by racist cops. How mind-blowingly atrocious would that be? But even that much corruption would STILL not come close to balancing things out. And crime statistics across the world are similarly skewed, so it's not just America that's so distorted.

OF COURSE there are bad cops everywhere, and innocents are hassled by power-drunk cops every single day in every single area. I'd bet there would be more than a slight bit of overlap between the psychological profile of your average cop and the psych profile of your average bully. But to suggest that enough of them are so completely corrupt and racist as to have the whole of the law enforcement institution itself be an intrinsically racist thing, that it goes beyond just unfair harassment, but actual arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of THAT MANY innocents, is bullshit.

Acknowledging blacks are more prone to crime isn't saying "it's just cuz they're black."
Wolfblade
12 years, 1 month ago
TL;DR: I hate the complete dismissal of the ridiculously disproportionate statistics all over the world as just being caused by racist law enforcement. It's bullshit, and it is an obstacle to any hope of addressing the causes of WHY kids from black communities are more susceptible to crime.

It's like any attempt at addressing illegal immigration being dismissed because it focuses too much on hispanics. When a problem concerns X group overwhelmingly more than any other group, any proposed measure to fix the problem that does not focus on X group more than any other group is not going to adequately address the damn problem. I doubt Blacks are more prone to crime "just cuz they're black," it's PROBABLY more because black communities tend to be poorer and with less law enforcement presence/effectiveness. YES, cops have a lot of shit that needs to be seriously addressed and corrected, but the entirety of law enforcement cannot be dismissed as being intrinsically racist. There's no valid basis to do so, and it undermines any hope of correcting the imbalance between races and crime.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>TL;DR: I hate the complete dismissal of the ridiculously disproportionate statistics all over the world as just being caused by racist law enforcement. It's bullshit, and it is an obstacle to any hope of addressing the causes of WHY kids from black communities are more susceptible to crime.

"The War on Drugs has had a devastating impact on the African American communities, on a scale entirely out of proportion with the actual dimensions of criminal activity taking place within these communities. In less than three decades the US prison population exploded from 300,000 to more than two million (majority of the conviction increase for drug violations), resulting in the world's highest incarceration rate, exceeding the rates of a number of regimes strongly criticized by the US government as highly repressive. It is eight times the incarceration rate in Germany, a comparatively developed large democracy. The USA is unparalleled in the world in concentrating its penal activities on its racial/ethnic minorities. In the capital city of Washington, D.C. three out of four young African American males are expected to serve time in prison. While studies show Americans of different races using illegal drugs quantitatively on a similar scale, in some states black men have been admitted to prisons on drug charges at the rate twenty to fifty times that of white men."

Argue with that.

That's from a Wikipedia article about the book The New Jim Crow. It was partly through reading articles related to this book that I came to realize just how bad things are. The author of this book started out thinking the same way you do. But when she started doing research, her opinion changed.

>'what can I do? If I set foot in that area, I'll get slapped with so much discrimination crap, I'll be lucky to keep my job.'

This makes me queasy. Because frankly, it sounds like bullshit. Even if it is true, Is it possible that maybe this has nothing to do with race, and maybe one sheriff is lazy and the other one has a functioning work ethic? Also, one anecdote about a single town is not, in any way, symbolic of how the whole country works. EVERYTHING I have read suggest that this town is the opposite of usual.

You say that even if cops are simply racist, there's still a disparate number of black people in prison. If this was due to a culture of poverty, it couldn't be the cause because you'd see the same number among whites who live in poor areas too. So the only other possibility is that black people are somehow genetically predisposed to crime, which you'd need to explain to me how that's scientifically possible.

The only explanation that makes sense is that, yes, these large numbers of black people are guilty of a crime, but we need to look at what 'crime' means.

If the drug war ended, I have a feeling these disparate numbers would even out pretty goddamn quick. The fact is, white people use and sell more drugs; minorities do more prison time for it. Check out this page, and then tell me how it's possible that in California there is "10 times greater odds of an African-American being imprisoned for marijuana than other racial/ethnic groups." How likely do you think it is that blacks are smoking ten times the dope as anyone else?
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago


We have a system with too many laws, and it is this way for a reason. To ensure that everyone in America is a criminal. So if the police arrest you, there's virtually always something they can charge you with. Police have the same prejudice as anyone else, but they also have authority and the same desire to feel right at the expense of the truth as anyone else too. On an episode of Cops, I remember watching them stop their patrol car and chase down a man who had been doing nothing more sinister than walking. Big surprise: he was black and looked so poor as to be possibly homeless. And he happened to have a small bag of marijuana on him. For that, they are justified in snatching him off the street and depriving him of liberty for however long the courts decide. And hey, it's his own fault: he broke the law. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that privatized prisons make unimaginable profits from prison labor.

>the entirety of law enforcement cannot be dismissed as being intrinsically racist. There's no valid basis to do so

Yes there fucking well is.

This is not an either/or issue. Yes, there are elements of black culture that perpetuate poverty, fatherlessness, the glorification of violence and undervaluing education. But there is ALSO a provably rigged justice system. BOTH are working against black people and NEITHER can be dismissed. Saying that black people just need to commit less crime is like a politician saying unemployed people just don't want to work.
ProjectDemise
12 years, 1 month ago
Wow.  Got a little hot under the collar there?  Made some good points.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
Wolfblade and I are good friends. It's nice to have someone where you know how well they argue, and that you can argue back just as hard and they'll be honorable in how they respond.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
I clicked the 'Like' button so hard I shattered my mouse.

If I remember correctly, Whoopi Goldberg also said something similar: "I'm not an African-American. I'm an American."
Shokuji
12 years, 1 month ago
XD Glad you liked it. =3
Tycloud
12 years, 1 month ago
There is to much that can be debated about this journal.  And my phone is almost dead.  :p. I'm going to to bed.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
If my journals don't spur debate, I get sad. ;)
OsirisPM
12 years, 1 month ago
Black History Month--suggesting that all OTHER historical events happened without black people.

Reminds me of old films about Egypt, where everyone is equally white, or cowboy movies without a single African American...
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>Black History Month--suggesting that all OTHER historical events happened without black people.

YES. My whole point summarized so elegantly it gives me a boner. :)

>Reminds me of old films about Egypt, where everyone is equally white, or cowboy movies without a single African American...

My eyes bug out watching old movies sometimes. I love me some Marx Brothers, but it was in Horse Feathers (I think), where the movie comes to a halt, a few dozen black people have a musical number, and then none of them are ever seen again. It felt like watching someone shoot at a dog to make it dance. >.<
KintoMythostian
12 years, 1 month ago
This is happening too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum_of_Africa... They started prepping the site this week.

I don't understand why this requires a separate national museum, especially because the American History Museum is right next door.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
See, I don't mind that. There are plenty of museums that specialize in single topics. (Hell, there's a Spam museum.) I don't mind a private venue focusing on something in order to tell about it in greater detail than if it was just one exhibit among many.

The difference with Black History month is that it's institutionalized. It's like saying, 'Movies starring mostly black people are fine, but let's only show them in February.' What would the point of that be? Who would that benefit?
KintoMythostian
12 years, 1 month ago
>(Hell, there's a Spam museum.)
I have a brochure from there. :)

>I don't mind a private venue focusing on something in order to tell about it in greater detail than if it was just one exhibit among many.

But it's not a private venue; it's the Smithsonian, directly administered by the US government. Is this not a case of a "government-sponsored ethnicity-specific 'celebrations' just reinforc[ing] the idea that we are different and separate"? Maybe I'm overreacting, but something about it just seems odd to me. Unfair. Favoritism. Something. It's like it's setting in stone that African Americans deserve their own club house that they don't have to share with anyone else... um... shit. That comes across as racist, doesn't it?

Let me try it this way. Either you want equal treatment, or you want special treatment. You can't have it both ways.

On the other hand, I'm not bothered by the Native American museum at the other end of the Mall. I suppose it's because they were Americans before there was even an America. I feel like they should have something.

Sigh. Race is confusing.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>But it's not a private venue; it's the Smithsonian, directly administered by the US government. Is this not a case of a "government-sponsored ethnicity-specific 'celebrations' just reinforc[ing] the idea that we are different and separate"? Maybe I'm overreacting, but something about it just seems odd to me. Unfair. Favoritism. Something.

I just noticed something on the Wikipedia article. It's a museum devoted to African-American history. And it will be built nearby the museum of American history. Umm... Okay, that sounds like EXACTLY the type of unhelpful bullshit I'm against. If you already have a museum of American history right there, why not expand that one instead of having a 'coloreds only' museum nearby!?

>It's like it's setting in stone that African Americans deserve their own club house that they don't have to share with anyone else... um... shit. That comes across as racist, doesn't it?

No, it doesn't. I suspect it's true of a lot of cultures, but white people in this country have been very bad throughout history about 'This is mine and no one else can have it!!' Like a bunch of little boys huddled in their No Gurls Allowed clubhouse. And when black people, or any other group, does the same, it's exactly the same level of childishness. I get that it can create a feeling of power to be able to exclude others from your own special little club. But that isn't behavior to be celebrated, by anyone.

>Let me try it this way. Either you want equal treatment, or you want special treatment. You can't have it both ways.

*coughHearthat,feminists?cough*

>On the other hand, I'm not bothered by the Native American museum at the other end of the Mall. I suppose it's because they were Americans before there was even an America. I feel like they should have something.

I'm not sure how to feel about that one. I suppose, considering that the shit we did to them is literally comparable to the Holocaust, they should get pretty much anything they ask for.
Incaros
12 years, 1 month ago
Ironicly, if you say your against Black history month and actually give a reason like yours [AKA, a good reason. Its rather dumb for black history to be segregated into one month, it should be intermingled with all history. In fact, more history should be thrown in] they will call you racist [if your white/non-black] or, if your black, compare you to Uncle Ruckus from the Bondocks TV show. Personally, I like to think the reasons American Text books are so white is because people are so damn cheap they don't bother upgrading them, even when they print new issues, unless they actually have to.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>they will call you racist [if your white/non-black] or, if your black, compare you to Uncle Ruckus from the Bondocks TV show.

And, double-ironically, to say that someone else can't talk about a subject because of the color of their skin is... <drumroll> ...ACTUAL RACISM!!!


>Personally, I like to think the reasons American Text books are so white is because people are so damn cheap they don't bother upgrading them, even when they print new issues, unless they actually have to.

YES, YES, YES. OH MY FUCKING GOD YES. I cannot tell you how happy I am to hear someone else say this. I'm still furious at the schools I attended for how lazy the curriculum was. It was pretty much just repeating stuff everyone already kinda knew, because that's easier. GRRRRRRRR.
Wolfblade
12 years, 1 month ago
I lived for two years just one exit south of Oakland. I worked a job in a VERY black neighborhood where I was the only white employee, and only a very small proportion of the customers were non-black.

I was harassed, ridiculed, and talked down to DAILY, and on numerous occasions outright threatened, for no reason other than the fact that I was white.

But I can't POSSIBLY know what it feels like to be treated differently because of the color of my skin. Because my ancestors I never knew weren't mistreated like their ancestors they never knew.

More likely because I was not taught from a very young age to see discrimination in every action that doesn't give me what I want by every person who is not my color. No, I don't know what it's like to live my life being discriminated against at every step, but NEITHER DOES DAMN NEAR ANYBODY ELSE born in the last 40 years. Yeah, SOME people have had to deal with actual discrimination many, many times throughout their life, but most of the people who harp on it incessantly have taken countless innocuous and trivial >perceived< slights and assumed racist intent behind them. Because that's how they were raised to perceive things.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>But I can't POSSIBLY know what it feels like to be treated differently because of the color of my skin. Because my ancestors I never knew weren't mistreated like their ancestors they never knew.

I forget if it was Louis Farakkhan or Al sharpton who said that black people can't be racist. I'll bet you'd have some choice words to say to that. ;)

Anyone can be racist. Why? Because we're all people. and all people have the capacity to be arrogant dicks who see their own worldview as the only worldview.

>Yeah, SOME people have had to deal with actual discrimination many, many times throughout their life, but most of the people who harp on it incessantly have taken countless innocuous and trivial >perceived< slights and assumed racist intent behind them. Because that's how they were raised to perceive things.

This reminds me of something I've observed wheneverI've written about rape. Most of the time, the shrillest, most closed-minded people, the ones who hate my fucking guts for writing about the topic, are the ones who've never experienced sexual assault themselves. The people who say they have been? They're usually the ones who are willing to calm down and listen to what I'm actually saying. I think a whole lot of people enjoy feeling like they've got righteousness on their side. But people who've truly suffered have the empathy to usually not want to be like that.


In regards to my own experiences with racism, I really haven't had many. Which is possibly why it's easy for me to look at it a bit more objectively; because it's not a personal issue to me. Growing up, the kids next door were mixed-race, and we got along fine. My best friend since kindergarten's an Indian Muslim. We rarely acknowledge the difference, except to kid each other about it. The city I grew up in was pretty damn white, so the schools I went to typically were too. For three years of high school I moved to a poorer area, which (surprise surprise!) had a lot more minorities. From what I saw, everyone got along pretty well. There was some self-chosen segregation; people sitting at lunch with people like themselves, but that's to be expected of any group. The worst thing I experienced was fakey white PC bullshit, which may explain why it annoys me so much nowadays.
Xavkitsune
12 years, 1 month ago
one thing I wonder while growing up, what is the real difference, besides the amount of Melanin(?) in their skin, between whites and blacks, mind you I am Irish/Norwegian. I never treated any one different due to that, but rather their actions toward me. because of that I have only ever seen one black teen get pissed off at me yet have many white teens hate me, though that could just be because I am a furry.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
There's a handful of differences between races that you can actually blame on genetics. If I remember correctly, black people are more susceptible to sickle cell anemia. Stuff like that. Virtually all the big differences, the ones that people get upset about, are purely cultural.

At my high school, one of the girls who attended had spent her whole childhood in Detroit, and had picked up all the mannerisms, speech patterns, clothing choices, etc. of the black people around her. To the point where you actually had to look twice at her to tell she was white. I found that fascinating. Everything she did was so authentically 'black' that her skin color was the least thing you noticed about her...
Alfador
12 years, 1 month ago
The thing about sickle cell anemia is that it's genetic, and a recessive trait. If you have both recessive genes, your red blood cells are mostly (or all, I don't know) sickle cells, which are very bad at transporting oxygen, and hence you have problems. If you have both dominant genes, your red blood cells are normal.

But if you have one dominant and one recessive, a small portion of your red blood cells will be sickle cells. Funny thing is... sickle cells cause major health problems, but they are completely immune to malaria. The more sickle cells you have, the better your chances of surviving a malaria infection. And the malaria resistance granted by one dominant and one recessive sickle-cell gene is a greater health benefit than the problems caused by the small number of sickle cells...

...IF you live in an area where malaria is prevalent. So it should come as no surprise that sickle-cell genes and the anemia associated with the double recessive version are most common in people whose ancestors lived in areas where malaria has historically run rampant. Both the dominant and recessive gene remain present in those populations because the double-dominant and double-recessive people tended to survive less (from the malaria and the anemia, respectively).

Ain't science FUN?! >:3
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
I think I remember learning about the sickle cell/malaria connection back in science class (One of the few truly excellent teachers I had was Mrs. Meas, and we did a LOT on genetics), but I'd forgotten it till now. Thanks for the refresher!

Of course, it's silly to deny that there's ANY difference between different groups of humans. The ridiculous amount of marathon-winning Kenyans attests to that. But I've never heard of any that really matter. Like, 'this is so prevalent among members of one race that you can reliably predict how anyone from that race will act'. (aside from predicting that white folks get sunburned quicker.)
Alfador
12 years, 1 month ago
You're welcome!

Genetics are a good indicator of physical characteristics and abilities. Cultural indoctrination is a good indicator for behavior. The reason why people muddle the two is because you generally get both from your family.
Xavkitsune
12 years, 1 month ago
I know that now, but it is to show some people grew up with needing to care about the difference of skin colour.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
I'm lucky, really. The two kids next door to me were mixed-race, and my best friend since kindergarten's family is from India. I honestly don't think I ever cared about color when I was little.
SpearWolf
12 years, 1 month ago
I lrn'd in biology that another difference is something around 90% of black people are lactose intolerant, probably due to their ancient ancestors not using cows as food sources as much as the white Europeans. MILK, IT'S WHITE FOR A REASON, HSA;HJFLDJHLKJHLEWKJHWKEHLSKDH I hate myself now.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>I lrn'd in biology that another difference is something around 90% of black people are lactose intolerant

Seriously? I'd never heard that before. Maybe that's why you hardly ever see black people in yogurt commercials!

>MILK, IT'S WHITE FOR A REASON, HSA;HJFLDJHLKJHLEWKJHWKEHLSKDH I hate myself now.

LMAO!
TTFox
12 years, 1 month ago
" This being Black History Month,I would like to ask people to celebrate the similarities and not focus on the differences between people of color and not of color. ~Lynn Swann


" I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history. ~Morgan Freeman


" There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough,honor enough,patriotism enough,to live up to their own constitution. ~Frederick Douglass

AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
I love what Freeman says in that video: "You're gonna relegate my history to a month?" That's as perfectly succinct an argument as I've ever heard.
TTFox
12 years, 1 month ago
Make another debatable journal!! XD
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
I'm thinking that, for balance, I might post an essay I wrote a while ago about how I don't necessarily hate white racists because they're stupid or evil, but because they're such embarrassingly pathetic pussies. ;)
Rakaziel
12 years, 1 month ago
Sounds interesting.
Autumnringtail
12 years, 1 month ago
We had an entire African American History course in high school and it was mandatory, while I wonder if what effect they were trying to bring, at least I've met some really good friends in that class. That much made it important to me.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
Not entirely sure how I feel about them not just teaching a comprehensive American or world history course, though at least it's actually a class. In class you learn things. What do you do with Black History Month? Are we just supposed to sit around all February and think about black history? That's part of why it feels like bullshit to me, because naming something after something else is kind of an empty gesture on its own. There are no guidelines for what we're supposed to DO during February, as far as I know.
ProjectDemise
12 years, 1 month ago
Is it just me, or does Louis Farrakhan come off as a racist, braggart, and all-around pompous ass?

FYI, I don't dislike him because he's black or Islamic.  I dislike him because he's a bigot.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
It's not just you, don't worry.

Actually, him, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson remind me of the three witches from Macbeth. They show up periodically to stir up trouble, probably just for the lulz. ;)
RedReynart
12 years, 1 month ago
I hate Black History Month too. Out of all the months, It seems to be the only one that celebrates race. And what esactly is Black History?

Black is a color of the skin. Not where you came. Hey I came from Haiti, Hey I came from Australia, Hey I'm African.........But not that African! I'm Egyptian where my skin is lighter and my culture differs from the southern Nigerians.

You can see my point? That the definition used in the History month seems to only celebrate the Southern African American Slaves from the point they were freed to the point they abolished segregation. But what about the rest of the people with dark skin? Where is their history?

That is the first issue with the month I have the second being that in part of the first. The history seems to write that all blacks were slaves and that no other race was. When this is false, Whites, Native Americans, Jews, Spainish, Pacific Islanders, and Blacks were all slaves at a time even Blacks enslaving Blacks. This history of course have been whitewashed/sugarcoated/erased/ and forgotted from history..

I really do hate this month.. =/
PantyRanger
12 years, 1 month ago
We were slaves the longest, pretty much. One could also say, the way media interpets us now, we're slaves to our own culture too. I'm not saying that that automatically makes us the worst treated, but still . . . there are some "conspiracies that say our minds are still trapped in slavery, or something like that." Like the reason we are more religious then white people is because we were dooped into being given bibles instead of land for our troubles or something. Looooong conversation, lots of googling . . .  and this is why I'm not christian.
RedReynart
12 years, 1 month ago
Slaves the longest? Is that sarcasm?
 I think the Jews take the cake when it comes to the longest race of being enslaved. The Egyptian Empire from about 5000BC to about 1500BC Used the Hebrews and Jews heavily. The Roman Empire Used Jews and they lasted from about 500BC to about 250ish AD. So in about lets say 3750 years of Slavery compared to Americas history since 1776-1865 of 89 years.. Hmm I have to say that the Jews have something to really say..

America has only lasted just a few hundred years compared to all the other civilizations to rise and fall that have carried on with slavery. From  Egypt, to Greece, Rome, Saracens, Spainish,Gauls, Tutons, Vikings, VisGoths, Turkish, Persians, Chineese, Koreans, Japaneese,. Slavery has been around for a long time and world travel wasn't possible till around the latter 1500's and even then wasn't perfected till the mid 1600's where after then the america's was founded as a steady coloney and needed workers able to build. IE Slavery and the Slave Trade. The histroy of slavey has been so strongly masked by waterdowned history its not even funny. I learned more through my local libraries than by my owns school text books that I was telling my teachers what was what.. Didn't really like me for that but I shure as heck made strait A's..

PS I don't think a Black guy is any more or less Religious than a white. Every practices there own belife.. If christians are the veiw.. XD have you seen Southern Baptists? There quite extreame..
PantyRanger
12 years, 1 month ago
" RedReynart wrote:
Slaves the longest? Is that sarcasm?
 I think the Jews take the cake when it comes to the longest race of being enslaved. The Egyptian Empire from about 5000BC to about 1500BC Used the Hebrews and Jews heavily. The Roman Empire Used Jews and they lasted from about 500BC to about 250ish AD. So in about lets say 3750 years of Slavery compared to Americas history since 1776-1865 of 89 years.. Hmm I have to say that the Jews have something to really say..


> Touche'.

" PS I don't think a Black guy is any more or less Religious than a white. Every practices there own belife.. If christians are the veiw.. XD have you seen Southern Baptists? There quite extreme..


No. Most is not all black funded groups are faith based, hun. Lets forget the extremist for a little bit. You know something is wrong in you culture that if you were to call yourself athiest, you have a better chance being disowned if you were black. We might not be "Westboro Church", but we hold on to christianity like its a block of gold. All the black artists and rappers who thank god and jesus, all the church going "big mamas". Every black family has one more more religious people in there family. The idea, "You aint black unless you believe in god." our culture has developed all kinds of retarded stereotypes for white people, including saying most white people worship the devil or are atheist. I cant count the conversations where that hasn't been said once or twice.

So, yeah, we got the bibles. We got the churches. There's a black church on almost every corner I live.
RedReynart
12 years, 1 month ago
There is no doubt in my mind that they aren't religious. You make a valid argument towards that indeed. There are several Blacks in america though that have diffrent cultures and ethnic background. Remember I am using the word black as a color of skin, this to me is more political correct than saying African American because as I stated earlier directly towards Alex. I can be blacked skin and not African.

Although African American is a larger majority than say Aboriginals from Austrailia. The point being that: There are some cultures that don't even belive in a god. And some that say they do, many christains as example, really aren't heavly into it. They belive in god and pray but don't openly worship him nor go to church. You get that with just about every race. Oh How I do wish though that everyone did have a faith and really was hard on it. Think Though shall not kill,steal, dishonor thy parents etc etc.. Think how much crime and gangs would be taken off the streets. How fewer murders and gas station robberies there would be.. And that goes for all races.. Of course it would cause alot of issues on other matters but eh..

PantyRanger
12 years, 1 month ago
. . . . oh, and don't get me started on the "african american" view on gays. I love my culture, I love being black. So I'm sad when a good chunk of us are so "ignorant."
RedReynart
12 years, 1 month ago
Ignorence is what drives the world and splits it in two.. =/
I wouldn't even know the veiw points because I already hear so much from here and there. But on a brighter side WOOT California.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>Hey I came from Haiti,

Yeah... If a Haitian person emigrates here, are they barred from calling themselves an African-American?

>You can see my point? That the definition used in the History month seems to only celebrate the Southern African American Slaves from the point they were freed to the point they abolished segregation. But what about the rest of the people with dark skin? Where is their history?

<THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE> I love it when somebody makes a point on my journals that I'm ashamed I didn't come up with first. That is completely fucking true. I don't know if this happens everywhere, but I remember that in school, the focus was always on American history. We dabbled in world history a bit, but it was usually stuff we already knew from watching TV. The big picture we got was that America is the most important country in the history of ever, everyone else is just sort of vaguely there and exists in terms of how much we like their hats and food, basically. So, yeah. It's kind of not surprising that we think the history of black people begins when they get brought here.

>When this is false, Whites, Native Americans, Jews, Spainish, Pacific Islanders, and Blacks were all slaves at a time even Blacks enslaving Blacks. This history of course have been whitewashed/sugarcoated/erased/ and forgotted from history..

Because it's so much easier to teach history in terms of simplified, cartoonlike Good Guy vs. Bad Guy stories! The poor black slaves vs. the eeeevil white people. We have a big fucking problem with reducing virtually all our historical narratives to Tom & Jerry cartoons.

>I really do hate this month.. =/

Plus, it always snows like a mofo in February. :C
RedReynart
12 years, 1 month ago
If some one from Haiti came to america, They are Hatician American not African American. Hati is a small island out in the Carribian.  In the same Mix as Cuba, Purto Rico, Jamiaca Etc. There not African dispite apperences. Like Mexicans there culture is a mix of the Europeans and the Natives. IE Mexicans are litteraly a mixbreed of the Spainish and the Aztecs. Over several hundred years they formed there own culture and language. So no Haticians are not African Americans.

Also yeah, I learned more on my own time when it came to history than what the history teachers taught. Sad really. Subjects were so skimed through that it left me thristing for more. Especially that in school it was World History for the first year in highschool then American History then that was it. And from Middle School they were practicly the same text books and the diffrence was that in highschool it was requited for the credits. No wonder why I was on Honor Roll. It was just too easy because there wasn't anything there. I love history especially Ere to the Renaissance. Hate history aft to that. So when it came to Egypt,Rome and Greece I endulged myself for hours in the libraries reading away. I became quite the buff. And learned so much more that the teachers dared not to even teach.. Really really pathetic.. Especially when it comes to American History. How much I hated it. Everything about it was just wrong, everything and was made only to glorify this country as if no other county has the right to exsitance. Seriouly it was like reading Hitler's War Propoganda.. Everything made for glory and to whitewash the truth..
They only hit on key events. Founding Fathers. Abraham Lincoln,Industrial Revolution, Depression, WWII (skiped right over WWI I guess because we didn't really fight in that one dispite americans becoming french and british soldiers just to fight in it isn't good enough) then it went from WWII to the Cold War/Cuban Missle Crisis (and litterally a paragraph on this WTF) and then Vietnam (This was really shorter than the CMC) and Gulf War then that was it nothing more.. Disapointing in all the gaps there inbetween. The largest focus was in the books belive it or not was War.

XD and you wonder why so many countries look at us wrong..

Febuary and snow.. Hasn't yet for me :P
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>So no Haticians are not African Americans.

Well, that was kinda the point. They're dark-skinned, so we'd call them back, except that's impolite so we should call them African-Americans, except they're not African. This is the kind of silliness that results from us using euphemisms to avoid being honest with our language. The problem isn't what label to call someone; the problem is that we feel the need to label ourselves and others at all.

>And from Middle School they were practicly the same text books and the diffrence was that in highschool it was requited for the credits.

I was just thinking about that earlier. In a lot of classes, they seemed to assume that we'd never learned anything so far, so they always started from scratch. We didn't cover new territory, we just studied the same events over and over with varying levels of detail.

>So when it came to Egypt,Rome and Greece I endulged myself for hours in the libraries reading away.

I was pretty into Greek/Roman mythology when I was a kid too.

>(skiped right over WWI I guess because we didn't really fight in that one dispite americans becoming french and british soldiers just to fight in it isn't good enough)

<nod> I remember not knowing a damn thing about WWI until at least high school.

>then it went from WWII to the Cold War/Cuban Missle Crisis (and litterally a paragraph on this WTF) and then Vietnam (This was really shorter than the CMC) and Gulf War then that was it nothing more.. Disapointing in all the gaps there inbetween. The largest focus was in the books belive it or not was War.

Yep. That sums it up perfectly. War was always the focus of my textbooks too. Sure, they mentioned cultural stuff, but it seemed like the emphasis was that war was serious history. It makes me wonder if that's all we see our history as really being. If, subconsciously, that's how we define ourselves. :/
RedReynart
12 years, 1 month ago
There is not disagreements here. All of its is true ..

Sad country we live in isn't it?
But even so its still by far better than most others. "most"
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>But even so its still by far better than most others. "most"

Yes. I try to point that out when I can. America's fuckin' great compared to a LOT of other places. Most of my frustration comes from the fact that we have to potential to be even better, and we don't use it. It's like the finish line is in sight and we just stop and say, 'That's good enough. Let's all sit here and tell ourselves how awesome we are.'
RedReynart
12 years, 1 month ago
Very well put.I agree totally. For example the talk about History and School. We can make it so much more than a lecture and instead of going the distance and making learning fun and having the teachers learn more about their students to understand how they learn. We just give up on it and give a boreing lecture and not even get involved with the history but skim the surface.

And you wonder why the test scores are so darn low.

Biggest Example would be when I was living up in Chicago. School took a feild trip to the shed aquarium 5 times. YES 5 times. And I still am very much pissed at that. What about the Museam of art? The Feild Museam? Places I never had the chance to go to in the few years I been there.
Granted you can still learn much at the Shed but its not something you need to go to 5 times to. And it becomes dull.. Sorta like going part way then giving up.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>And you wonder why the test scores are so darn low.

They're low because the tests are all we focus on now. Instead of teaching kids in a way that they retain, schools are encouraged to cram kids' head full of standardized test prep, which is not only boring but inevitably-forgettable. We give kids no REASON to want to learn. Hell, a lot of times I honestly felt like I was being punished for trying to learn more on my own.

>Biggest Example would be when I was living up in Chicago. School took a feild trip to the shed aquarium 5 times. YES 5 times.

Badass. I woulda loved to have gone on more field trips as a kid.
RedReynart
12 years, 1 month ago
Feild trips yeah I would loved more. But seriouly. I hate them too. You are always in a group and the shed was ment to educate. Instead you have to follow your group and you cant interact with any exibits there. just follow the group and get to go OOOOO AHHHH and get a lecture on this and that.

Same as the tests its all cram cram cram. I hate it.... But heck the benifit of a school feild trip is wonderfull as it gets you the heck out of the class room..

Yeah, test are low because it is all craming and nothing ever being tought is interesting. The teachers don't know how to teach. They go by the books and stay with the books. When it comes to trying to get their students to learn they don't ever take the time to indivisually address that students needs. And hell bells if they are forced.. Example of this would be a Student with an IEP and Indivisualized Educational Plan. Myself I had to have these writed up. Why? Muscular Dystrophy. AKA Parithnial Neuropathy. Its slowly deteriates the muscualar system by attacking the neuro system. I am not as bad as many others. But I cann't write as fast as others not as long. So I can't take all the notes as well as others nor can I ever complete a test with in 5 mins. I can't run track I will fatgue to quick. And because the teachers didn't like haveing to print copies of their notes for the day and give me more time after class to finish a test. I was picked on, not by the students. Oh no but the teachers.

I hate lectures really. I am highly visual and if I see someone else do it first I can most likely copy that same thing. After a few tries on my own of course. I see text and I freeze up.. But that is how they teach, by book.. And because of that other kids with other methods of learning are left out in the dust geting low grades because they cannot comprehend what the teacher is saying. There are no relation ships between students and teachers and there is no fun in learning. Why I spent so much time just reading in libraries. Learned more that way.

I would love it more if teachers interacted more with students. Learning about something? why not show instead of tell, feild trips to a museam to see mummies would be awesome if you are learning about ancient egypt , puru or china. Geting in touch with reinactors to learn about the civil war or revolutionary war. There is so much a school can do to make it all more fun.
Bachri
12 years, 1 month ago
If there is anything I've learned in my 21 years of life, it's that all life is perfectly equal. White, black, asian, collie, mollusk, whatever. We shouldn't pick certain times to try to be MORE equal, as that implies that we were ever less equal.

That is all I have for this discussion.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>If there is anything I've learned in my 21 years of life, it's that all life is perfectly equal. White, black, asian, collie, mollusk, whatever. We shouldn't pick certain times to try to be MORE equal, as that implies that we were ever less equal.

Well said. Though I'd like to continue thinking that mosquitoes are less equal. ;)
misterebony
12 years, 1 month ago
I am now about to pis everyone off. I don't observe black history or white history or any specific history. Coming from a family big into history I know it is supposed to be called just HISTORY. Not White History. Not Black History. Not Ukrainian History. Its HISTORY. And history is meant to involve all people, good and bad, reguardless of where we are from.

Now when will we get a fursons history month? Or, moreover, a voraphiles history month? Ah I am just kidding! (Though it would be neat. ..)
chaosblackwing
12 years, 1 month ago
How is that supposed to piss people off, that sounds like exactly how it should be done: who cares what color the person's skin was, or where they came from, all that matters is what they did.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>Its HISTORY. And history is meant to involve all people, good and bad, reguardless of where we are from.

<applause> Well said!

>Or, moreover, a voraphiles history month? Ah I am just kidding! (Though it would be neat. ..)

Oooh! I'd like to at least take a vore history class. ...Although the students would likely end up all eaten at the end. ;)
PantyRanger
12 years, 1 month ago
I'm black. Black History Month? BET? NAACP? Its all bull-shit. These day, if its black and mainstream and popular its full of bullshit, sorry.

Media has misinterpeted our culture, and we've paid dearly for it. As for people's complaint on the white girl talking about racism? Let me be one to say this in a language they'll understand. "Dem Ignorant Ass Niggas need to shut da fuck up, swag!"
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>These day, if its black and mainstream and popular its full of bullshit, sorry.

If it makes you feel better, anything white that's mainstream is also full of bullshit. Paul Blart: Mall Cop?!?

>Media has misinterpeted our culture, and we've paid dearly for it.

Sadly, this seems to be a trend. I've noticed over time how shamelessly grabby white folks are. We see something from someone else's culture and we wannit! It doesn't matter if we don't understand the cultural significance of it. "Ooh, that's pretty! Ooh, that sounds nice! I want to decorate my livingroom with that!" >.<

I dunno, I've heard that some of it comes from envy. Like, we see cultures that have been around for literally thousands of years, and we've only been here for a little more than 200. <shrug>

>As for people's complaint on the white girl talking about racism? Let me be one to say this in a language they'll understand. "Dem Ignorant Ass Niggas need to shut da fuck up, swag!"

o.o Well-spoken, sir. ;)
SpearWolf
12 years, 1 month ago
I remember when I was with my father shopping in some store in a poor part of town. My dad turns to me as we're in the checkout and whispers, "I can't wait until we move somewhere we fit in." I looked around, genuinely confused and trying really hard to see what he was talking about. After a really long, awkward moment, I realized everyone was hispanic and black, other than me and my dad. I think this is one of my most proud moments, because I was so pure that I couldn't catch on that he was referring to his racism. I just like sharing that whenever topics like this crop up.

So far in this semester, one of my professors had us go to this opera about black history, write a paper on Jackie Robinson, and maybe some other crap I don't remember. It's all kind of a joke, somehow. Why does it need to be separate? Why is there black history and then normal history? Why did my history professor last semester claim Reconstruction was wrong and we simply should've let black people fend for themselves during the Jim Crow era (keeping in mind we had black students in the room, and no one spoke up against anything he said)? I live in a really southern place, so... I don't know, it's all just a giant farce. No one cares, and everyone here hates black people.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>After a really long, awkward moment, I realized everyone was hispanic and black, other than me and my dad. I think this is one of my most proud moments, because I was so pure that I couldn't catch on that he was referring to his racism. I just like sharing that whenever topics like this crop up.

That's pretty cool. I'm hoping we eventually become a society where race is something that's noticed, but we don't define people by it. Like, we notice a person's hair color, but we don't use it as a judge of their character.

>So far in this semester, one of my professors had us go to this opera about black history,

An *opera* about black history!? God gawd, I can't imagine how pretentious that'd be. I am not a fan of opera. The overacting gets on my nerves and they always seem to end with either a wedding or death en masse.

>Why did my history professor last semester claim Reconstruction was wrong and we simply should've let black people fend for themselves during the Jim Crow era (keeping in mind we had black students in the room, and no one spoke up against anything he said)?

O.O ...Because he's an asshole in desperate need of firing.

>I live in a really southern place, so... I don't know, it's all just a giant farce. No one cares, and everyone here hates black people.

And this is why I'm no fan of stuff like black history month: because it doesn't DO anything. There's lots of PC ideas that are very well-meaning. But good intentions are not enough to solve problems. The biggest thing that will heal racism is the passing of time. Until then, we're not helping things by being dishonest. And that includes forcing people to act like they feel something that they really don't. I'd rather we let everyone, even racists, speak their minds. Because an idea that's spoken is one that can be addressed and discussed. It doesn't make someone not a racist to force them to never say anything racist.
TheKaiser
12 years, 1 month ago
I agree with your Journal Alex :)
DJPoopypants
12 years, 1 month ago
I am rather in your corner when it comes to the month seeming more born out of appeasement than sincerity. And I guess about a lot of the other racially unfair stuff, but ah I doubt it's gonna really change. And thus I try not to think of it too much. Luckily doesn't really affect me in any way hehe
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
I think it will change eventually. A lot of people are getting fed up with this wussy, dishonest PC bullcrap. Hopefully, in a generation or so, we'll have a society that is equally sick of both racism, and ineffective, insulting 'anti-racism' stuff.
Rakaziel
12 years, 1 month ago
Hard to say much about it, I do not live in America and they do not segregate American history here (he had some of it in our English classes). Making a Black History Month feels much like they are polishing some parts of Afro American history to distract from other parts and it is more about giving them a token than actually doing anything substancial. Then again, I have no insight in the matter so this is just my gut feeling.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
In something like this, gut feelings do matter. If something feels immediately like a bad or ineffective idea, it should at least be examined whether it is or not. Part of why I dislike Black History Month so much is that we're all supposed to agree that it's a wonderful idea and never say anything bad about it. In general, I don't like anything that tries to control my opinion of it. I don't care how well-meaning something is; if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

>feels much like they are polishing some parts of Afro American history to distract from other parts

Yes. That's another part I dislike. In all the 'black history' I've been taught, black people never do anything bad. It's like white people feel like they have to make up for all the godawful racism by pretending that throughout ALL history, blacks were always victims and always in the right. I've said elsewhere in this journal that we have a HUGE problem with framing history in terms of 'good guys' and 'bad guys'.
ZephonTsol
12 years, 1 month ago
So man. That's a lot of wordyness in here and yet, I think it might be time to get down to something you and WB touched on, but didn't quite flesh out.

The whole argument inevitably boils down to racism. Is it racist to relegate a month and ONLY a month to black history? Is it racist to NOT observe a month? Morgan Freeman had a point, but we keep dancing around the heart of the matter in that it all boils down to people being afraid of being racist and the legal ramifications that come with it. There is indeed a prevalent fear in our society today that if you are perceived as racist to someone, you'll get in deep shit. True, there ARE people who are punished for it, but sometimes slip ups happen and there are, like it or not, black people out there who would take advantage of that. They look for racism in everything and wave it around as a sword, claiming their right to after all the pain we put their people through.

Even though they themselves have no basis for comparison to that pain.

It's not a fun thing to think about. I remember being brought into the commander's office once while I was in Korea because one of the more...vehement Black history month supporters got pissed at me because I made pretty much the same argument to another friend (who was black and who tended to agree with me) that Freeman made: why should it be just one month? Seems stupid to shove it all in one month instead of just putting it in the curriculum. It made me feel like I was being punished for being white when I wasn't trying to punish anyone for being black.

It was only because my friend Herman (who still has one of the best smiles on any person I've ever met anywhere) told them to back the hell off and said that I'd not said anything racist, just had my opinion on the celebration. It was my right to have an opinion that didn't agree and to be punished for it stood against everything we in the military were trying to accomplish. The woman who accused me was told to be quiet and unless I actively called her a nigger or whatever, she should just forget about it.

We're afraid. We're afraid to step on anyone's toes because we could be punished for it and in some ways, racism against white people for their perceived wrongs is WORSE than racism against black people or any other people. But the point is that it's happening all over everywhere and the best way to fix it is to do what Freeman suggested.

Stop talking about it. Stop looking for it. Stop feeling slighted at people who honestly don't mean it. Stop finding fault in each others physical form and start finding fault in their thinking, in their actions, in their aggressive behavior towards anyone else to hide their own fear that there may, in fact, be nothing wrong. Start challenging people who believe in "____ Power". Start focusing on taking out government boon programs that benefit one skin color over another or one heritage over another. Start focusing on using that money to benefit EVERYONE. By keeping the segregation going through those programs, we encourage it down below. We say it's okay for the black man to hate whitey because whitey's always out to get him.

Newsflash: White men are NOT out to get black people and vice versa. I would come and kick your ass no matter your skin color if you ruined my life. And so would you! That's the point. Skin should have NO effect on it and because we are forcing it to, we've locked ourselves in this loop.

<sigh> It's stupid. It really is. There's no equality to it for either side. It's just more hatred spinning out of control and neither side wants to make it stop because, in the long run, it's easier to keep it going.

Gay pride, black pride, furry pride...ugh...how about being proud to be a human, a thinking, feeling, loving person able to make judgments based on logic? Be proud to be alive. Be proud to be able to feel.

Be proud that you can love, regardless of your color.
Rakaziel
12 years, 1 month ago
All things considered the diffenerent "_____ Pride" movements are movements of defiance against what the group behind the movement considers discrimination. By themselves such movements are a good psychic defense mechanism, the problem only start when the fight is over but the paranoia that someone is out to get you still lingers. It may not be as traumatic, but the problem itself is comparable to those of war veterans with PTSD. So in the end it boils down to the question how to treat collective paranoia.

At least that is my current view on things.
AlexReynard
12 years, 1 month ago
>Morgan Freeman had a point, but we keep dancing around the heart of the matter in that it all boils down to people being afraid of being racist and the legal ramifications that come with it.

Absolutely. A while ago I was thinking about race, and realized that I honestly would be less comfortable meeting Don Cheadle than I would Johnny Depp. They're both actors who I really like and think are talented, but the difference comes down to skin color. Not that Cheadle's skin color itself would make me comfortable. I realized that the fear of interaction wouldn't be from him, but my own fear of accidentally saying something that could be taken as racist. I do honestly get scared of talking to not-white-people because I don't want to embarrass myself.

It's a good thing that our culture regards racism as unacceptable, because it is. But we've gone past condemning actual racism to condemning any mention of race at all, regardless of intention. And always casting white people as the villain and black people as the victim is just as insulting and damaging as the old stereotypical bullshit about men always being the agressors and women always being helpless. We have good intentions, but we still can't stop thinking of things in very narrow definitions. Intent no longer matters.

I chose this title because I got so pissed at the responses the girl in the YouTube video got. Especially that one I linked to. It was so arrogant and patronizing and WRONG it made me sick. Just because you speak in a 'wise old black lady' voice doesn't mean you're saying anything true. I left a comment on that video saying: "I had to stop watching at 2:02 where you called her a racist. Shame on you. For starters, nothing you said relates to the point she was actually making. You continually misunderstood what she was trying to say. Was she awkward in making her point? Sure. She's young. She is not a racist; just inexperienced at talking about an overwhelmingly touchy subject. Maybe racism would fade faster if we weren't so quick to pounce on innocent ignorance and label it hatred. How about forgiveness instead?"

>They look for racism in everything and wave it around as a sword, claiming their right to after all the pain we put their people through.

Any minority who knowingly exploits their people's history to gain unearned sympathy or favors is no better than some honky using his white male privilege for the same ends.

>It was only because my friend Herman (who still has one of the best smiles on any person I've ever met anywhere) told them to back the hell off and said that I'd not said anything racist, just had my opinion on the celebration. It was my right to have an opinion that didn't agree and to be punished for it stood against everything we in the military were trying to accomplish.

Herman sounds damn awesome. Still, it's sad that whoever was deciding the case wouldn't look at the situation objectively until a black person said to. :/

>By keeping the segregation going through those programs, we encourage it down below.

Very agreed.

>We say it's okay for the black man to hate whitey because whitey's always out to get him.

I can't imagine what it does to a person psychologically to be told that they will always be a victim of this huge, vast conspiracy.

>I would come and kick your ass no matter your skin color if you ruined my life. And so would you! That's the point. Skin should have NO effect on it and because we are forcing it to, we've locked ourselves in this loop.

<applause>

>Gay pride, black pride, furry pride...ugh...how about being proud to be a human

Because it's so much easier to glom onto a group and feel pride in their accomplishments than to do something worthy of pride as an individual. ;)
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