Why do certain black people say it is impossible for them to be racist?

[MrPerfectMan]

I just don't get why people let what happened to their dead ancestors (who they'll never met), effect them. I can understand being racist if you've been the victim of it yourself, but if it hasn't, and it only happened to some long gone ancestor, it's time to let it go. Remembering the pain forever, is not going to make it better. Especially if it never happened to you.

 

[bankside]

And, just to sum up, I reject that academic tradition as largely vacuous internally incoherent self-defeating propaganda in much the same way that a medical school might reject a "school of chiropractic."

I think its tenets are either impracticable as far a what will actually end racism, to constrain the public in ways that will end racism, or actively undermine credible efforts to address racism. And I've yet to see any convincing counterarguments since that school of thought started its big break-out on the academic scene in the 90's.

I'd love to know what will replace it, because perhaps then we'll be able to resume the work of dismantling racism.

Until then I think it is as useful an approach to dismantling discrimination and racism as Marxism is to improving the economy, which is to say, not at all.

 

[IamNoah]

I just don't get why people let what happened to their dead ancestors (who they'll never met), effect them. I can understand being racist if you've been the victim of it yourself, but if it hasn't, and it only happened to some long gone ancestor, it's time to let it go. Remembering the pain forever, is not going to make it better. Especially if it never happened to you.

You are mistaken if you think complaints about racism are about things that happened to long dead people. It's a common error. Don't make it again and expect my civility in return.

 

[bankside]

I just don't get why people let what happened to their dead ancestors (who they'll never met), effect them. I can understand being racist if you've been the victim of it yourself, but if it hasn't, and it only happened to some long gone ancestor, it's time to let it go. Remembering the pain forever, is not going to make it better. Especially if it never happened to you.

I don't get that either. But that's a bit beside the point because people usually complain about reasonably concrete examples of things that happen to them personally. And in my view we owe those people our solidarity and our support, and (this is the key part) not because dead white people enslaved dead black people, and not because nothing bad happened to me or to you last week, but because something shitty happened to the person who is complaining about the specifics of it.. We're human. When one of our fellow humans is fucked over, we're supposed to stand up.

 

[JohnnyAnger]

I just don't get why people let what happened to their dead ancestors (who they'll never met), effect them. I can understand being racist if you've been the victim of it yourself, but if it hasn't, and it only happened to some long gone ancestor, it's time to let it go. Remembering the pain forever, is not going to make it better. Especially if it never happened to you.

Perhaps the whitest thing I have ever read. As if racism is purely about long ago ills............

 

[otters]

I just don't get why people let what happened to their dead ancestors (who they'll never met), effect them. I can understand being racist if you've been the victim of it yourself, but if it hasn't, and it only happened to some long gone ancestor, it's time to let it go. Remembering the pain forever, is not going to make it better. Especially if it never happened to you.

You are mistaken if you think complaints about racism are about things that happened to long dead people. It's a common error. Don't make it again and expect my civility in return.

I just don't get why people let what happened to their dead ancestors (who they'll never met), effect them. I can understand being racist if you've been the victim of it yourself, but if it hasn't, and it only happened to some long gone ancestor, it's time to let it go. Remembering the pain forever, is not going to make it better. Especially if it never happened to you.

Perhaps the whitest thing I have ever read. As if racism is purely about long ago ills............

Well, apparently you have not the faintest idea that you have an invisible knapsack, MrPerfectMan. Which is—since you're an educated person living in US America I guess—quite an enigma for me: http://www.justusboys.com/forum/threads/432248-Am-I-racist

 

[IamNoah]

This is your second attempt at forming this point. I still do not follow it.

 

[MrPerfectMan]

Just people I omitted other acts of racism in that one post, doesn't mean I disregard them. I was just referring to one aspect of it.

 

[otters]

Just people I omitted other acts of racism in that one post, doesn't mean I disregard them. I was just referring to one aspect of it.

Oh, really? To my ears your statements sound very akin to those of Germans who demand the Jews may simply "forget" what the Germans have done to them. (Hint: systematic mass murderer by Nazi Germany, holocaust).

 

[MrPerfectMan]

Ha, not nearly the same thing. Take for example, if I do something to hurt you. Years pass, I even try to make amends, but no matter, you keep bringing it up. There's a fine line between remembering history, and letting it make you a victim so that you always shove it in someone's face. Just something that can happen to anyone.

 

[otters]

Ha, not nearly the same thing. Take for example, if I do something to hurt you. Years pass, I even try to make amends, but no matter you keep bringing it up. There's a fine line between remembering history, and letting it make you a victim so that you always shove it in someone's face. Just something that can happen to anyone.

O.K., I see you should go back to your friends in the Klan.

 

[peeonme]

I just don't get why people let what happened to their dead ancestors (who they'll never met), effect them. I can understand being racist if you've been the victim of it yourself, but if it hasn't, and it only happened to some long gone ancestor, it's time to let it go. Remembering the pain forever, is not going to make it better. Especially if it never happened to you.

I hardly feel that blacks in the USA are under any obligation to separate their mistreatment in to portions of history, it started with slavery.
Slavery was ended, then it went to segregation, discrimination and the "jim crow" laws. Many blacks who are with us today remember the days before the civil rights act of the '60's.
Many blacks today still live a life of being pulled over for DWB, that's driving while black. Many still get stalked by store security guards.
Many still earn less than their white counterparts.

It would be convenient for the white bigots if they could say "that parts over with, drop it". Then they could point the finger at the black man and claim that it's his own fault that he lives in the ghetto.

 

[MrPerfectMan]

O.K., I see you should go back to your friends in the Klan.

Time to get real.

I hardly feel that blacks in the USA are under any obligation to separate their mistreatment in to portions of history, it started with slavery.
Slavery was ended, then it went to segregation, discrimination and the "jim crow" laws. Many blacks who are with us today remember the days before the civil rights act of the '60's.
Many blacks today still live a life of being pulled over for DWB, that's driving while black. Many still get stalked by store security guards.
Many still earn less than their white counterparts.

It would be convenient for the white bigots if they could say "that parts over with, drop it". Then they could point the finger at the black man and claim that it's his own fault that he lives in the ghetto.

True, but that's not what I was referring to. There are true victim card players in every walk of life.

 

[JerryPic]

 

[pat grimshaw]

Victimhood is now celebrated in current popular culture in the affluent western countries; we even have celebrity-victims. Modern welfare states now allow welfare-recipients to offer noblesse oblige to those of their choosing.

 

[peeonme]

True, but that's not what I was referring to. There are true victim card players in every walk of life.

No doubt, if I feel that one is playing the card I don't listen, but, that doesn't mean that we should tune out the truth.

 

[peeonme]

It's ok to be gay because it's ok to be gay. Taking pride in our gayness doesn't make it ok. Gay is natural.
White pride is used by those who hate blacks. Hating your fellow man over skin color is not natural and is nothing to be proud of.

 

[otters]

Well, since we all know that Pat Grimshaw denies to be descendant of mostly harmless convicts, one can reckon he's proud to be descendant of sadist wardens — "White Pride" obviously.

 

[IamNoah]

If the words "White Pride" did not so frequently come attached to violence, exclusion, murder, poverty, etc then yes it would be strange to associate them with hate. But those words do come attached to all those things. So I'm assuming that you are offering this failed 4-chan meme because you are a racist? In any event ethnic pride is stupid.