Re: A statue- complete with banjo-pickin slave, honoring a racist songwriter was taken down and white people are calling it reverse racism
What is "myopic" is that you think that this is in the past (e.g. "What blacks have faced in the colonies and in America.") It's STILL going on, and you've got not just blinders on: you are BLIND, PERIOD. It's still happening. Every single week. Yes, you project a striking degree of racism. Doesn't make you a bad person, just an ignorant one.
The truly myopic are those who refuse to see what is happening around them, past or present.
It's still going on? Are blacks sent to the back of the bus? Can they eat at lunch counters with whites? Do they have to use a separate drinking fountain? Can they marry whites? Are they forced into involuntary servitude?
Some things are going on, it has little to do with a statue. The incarceration rate for young black men is disproportionate. Cops are far more likely to shoot black man than a white. The poverty rate is higher than the general population, teen pregnancy rates are higher.
The drop out rate is higher, many who do graduate are functionally illiterate. I am sure that I did not cover all problems due to my lingering myopic attitude and blinders.
I would ask you this; What do any of the problems that I through my ignorance have noted have to do with the removal of a statue?
I stated a post a few years ago about the fact that it was illegal to teach a slave to read. I said that even after the slaves were freed and their children went to supposed 'separate but equal' schools that these children were at a disadvantage because they came home to illiterate parents and had no support. I went on to say that the test scores today in predominantly black schools might still reflect this disadvantage as it would take many generations even after integration for the black community to be on an equal footing.
Well, some fellow Jubbers came out of the woodwork and were pissed because of that thread. They were mad and assumed that I was saying that blacks were not as smart as whites.
Take a look at the test scores in schools where the students come from a background where education was a priority, dare I mention Asians and Jews? there score the highest as they come from homes where studying and learning were on the front burner.
So, what might be done to 'fix' society today? When it comes to black men being shot, all Americans need to express outrage and the cops who do it to unarmed men need to be sent away. The practice of blacks receiving a harsher sentence that a white has to change. Once a person is 'in the system' they are likely to stay there, it's called recidivism just in case some might think that I have not cracked a tome as of late. Society must evolve past these things. But prison is an industry, perhaps that needs to be addressed?
I would however suggest that sometimes we need to clean our own house. How about programs aimed at inner city and low income adults
with school aged children that would bring them up to speed in their reading and math skills so that there children would have someone to help then with their homework? Teenage pregnancy could be addressed in a number of ways, but taking down a statue is not one of them.
Malcolm X once asked black people this question; Who told you that your skin was the wrong color or that your hair was the wrong texture? (not a verbatim quote) Well, it seems to be a rhetorical question. It was the white man. If you want to break the chains of poverty, illiteracy, single mothers and drugs and violence forget that statue. Forget Star Bucks as well. Forget slavery, forget hatred and bitterness. Forget victim hood and complaining, look at your skin and your hair, there ain't a damned thing wrong with it. Rise above those like me who you accuse of being ignorant, blind and myopic.
I said this in a post not long ago, I hate being redundant. When I was 13 I was sent 'away', it was a bit of a rough place, physical and sexual assaults were a daily occurrence. But one great, wonderful thing came out of it, I was away from those who told me that I was stupid, retarded and no good. I was there a few months before I realized that my mother, brother, school teacher and some fellow students were wrong as hell, there wasn't a damned thing wrong with me. Sure my thinking was a little different, I was socially awkward and didn't 'fit in' with the majority. But for the first time in my life I knew that I was fine.
So, if you and others want to be condescending and call me myopic, or think that because you have a formal education that I am just some dropout dummy, I would tell you that I never 'dropped out', I shook the dust from my feet and proved those who had said that I was a retard that they were wrong.
If taking down a statue provides some pleasure go for it, I would suggest that it is time for the black man to tell the white establishment to get lost, rise above them and not look back.
