Doctor Langstrom
I want to be FEARED!
LOL, every race out there has good reasons for wanting to kill whiteys.
Sexual violence redux
- Thread starter Stephen Daidalus
- Start date
Doctor Langstrom
I want to be FEARED!
No. That makes you a person who didn't vote for him. Duh.
Doctor Langstrom
I want to be FEARED!
Because you aren't comprehending what I'm saying. I've heard people make racist remarks about the President both times he was elected into office. People who haven't said anything that heinous ever before. And all of a sudden it comes out in waves just because now we have a black President. Disagree with the man's politics and policies all you want. But the minute the n-word and calling him a monkey is thrown into the mix, I lose all respect for the person. Even if that person happens to be a relative of mine.
Stephen Daidalus
Well-Known Member
Punching people because they piss you off is wrong. Both are adults, but if my 125 lb nephew punches my 240lb brother, my brother can laugh it off. But if my brother punches my nephew, the nephew might end up in the hospital. There is an imbalance in power. In this case, it's based on physical strength. But it could be economic strength or representation in government or vulnerability to institutional violence. The question is still the same, though. Do we need to spend equal amounts of time persuading these two of the dangers of punching? If all we want to do is moralize, sure. But if we are actually interested in reducing harm, we need to concentrate our efforts on the bigger guy, or the one with more power because he does more harm. This is rational.
Stephen Daidalus
Well-Known Member
It is an offensive joke in so many ways, yes. But the fact that he can say, 'They are going to hold us down and fl*ff in the ass forever,' and everyone can laugh without feeling remotely threatened is a pretty good indication that white people are still extremely privileged -- not just economically and politically, but socially and culturally as well.
Stephen Daidalus
Well-Known Member
Medea
The Shadow Queen
I agree with your first sentence and see the overall point you are trying to make, but a 130 pound person that actually knows what they are doing, like a black belt in both Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Karate, can do far more damage than a 250 pound beefcake that never threw a punch in his life. So, if the 250 pound man throws a punch at the 130 pound man, he might be making a big mistake. The knowledgeable man almost never strikes first, because he has far less to fear in a situation he is familiar with. My point is, sometimes the ones with the power are also the ones with the greater knowledge, and we need to concentrate on the fringe elements, the ones without the knowledge, from taking those with knowledge from power.
Stephen Daidalus
Well-Known Member
We can imagine all sorts of scenarios in which a smaller, ostensibly less powerful person can actually win a fight against a bigger opponent. Maybe he has a knife or a gun in his pocket, he's got some super crazy bad-ass MMA moves, he can melt people's brains just by staring at them, whatever. That's totally besides the point. I'm not pretending that anyone in my scenario has any secret powers. What they have is what they appear to have. In that scenario, the point is that the person with power has the ability to do far more damage than the one without. What I'm trying to get across isn't complicated.
Call me a 'honkey' or 'cracker' or 'whitey' or wtf, since I'm English, 'limey' and I don't care. The terms do not bring to mind lynchings and beatings of my people, or burning crosses, or burning churches (with everyone still inside). Now, perhaps if I go into the worst, most crime infested part of the 'hood', and I'm surrounded by <gasp> a bunch of angry residents referring to me in those terms, the word might take on a more threatening tone (because, yes, I admit, I'm still stupidly affected by this racist and absurd idea perpetuated by the media that it's dangerous to be white in a black neighborhood). But if you're a black person in America (and in most of the western world), you are always in the white man's hood. Even when you're in your own, you're in his as well. And it is dangerous. The history tells us this. Hell, the nightly news tells us this. The threat, the meaning, the history that underpins racial epithets aimed at people of African descent is always present when they're uttered by a white person, regardless of intent. It's a much, much bigger deal when white people say stuff like that. And what's true of racism in the use of epithets is true in other sorts of racism too, whether it be job discrimination, unfair portrayal in the media, tokenism, or racial assumptions such as the one which led Zimmerman (and a great many law enforcement officers who engage in racial profiling) to assume automatically that a young black male in a hoodie is suspicious enough to be confronted with violence just because he seemed out of place. Out of place, indeed. That shouldn't even have crossed anyone's mind at all. But it did. And it's a big fl*ffing deal. That's all I'm saying.
I really don't know what you're saying here. You're suggesting that we need to make sure the fringe who lack knowledge are prevented from taking power from the majority who have it? Could you explain in a bit more detail, with examples perhaps?
Stephen Daidalus
Well-Known Member
First off, as I said, I think the danger of being white in an 'ethnic' neighborhood is wildly exaggerated and is largely the stuff of urban myth. Whereas to see the dangers of being black in a white neighborhood, we need go no further than Trayvon Martin and the thousands upon thousands of similar examples that we have over time.
Second of all, as I pointed out, even if this is true, even if it's true that a white guy can't go into worst ethnic neighborhoods -- Like you wanted to be there anyway, right? I mean, you were just dying to go, weren't you? You are really missing some great stuff there. It kills you not to be able to go there -- In any case, even if it's true that there are a few places where it's dangerous to be white, the black guy is in danger from white violence EVERYWHERE he goes. Cops might kill him in his own neighborhood because he still looks suspicious, because they still engage in racial profiling, because some people employed by the government and permitted to carry guns and use deadly force are still very racist.
Edit: If you understand that I am using this example as a metaphor for economic and political injustice it may become clearer.
Stephen Daidalus
Well-Known Member
Yes. I bet you have some black friends too. Me too. Yay! Okay. Now that we have that out of the way...
Zimmerman was hardly a one-off bizarre aberration in otherwise historically peaceful and lovie dovie white behavior.
I believe you are taking my stories/examples way too literally.
OrexxerO
Active Member
Historically, you are correct, yet for this decade? Look at how long that was on the media for its racial charges by a white attacking a black person! Your saying this happens basically on a weekly basis then, why isn't the media constantly showing this to us? I mean, this one idiot, Zimmerman, does do something really stupid, and the media have a field day, the way you talk Black people everywhere are being shot at by Zimmermans.
Stephen Daidalus
Well-Known Member
Those with non-European ancestry everywhere are being denied jobs because of the color of their skin; their resumes are being trashed because they have 'ethnic' sounding names; when they go to work and are the only non-causcasian in an organization, everything they do is given extra scrutiny; if they screw up, it's assumed to be because they're some race or another or some religion or another, not because they're human; they are denied mortgages and business loans; they are denied housing; they are being arrested for no reason, or otherwise harassed by law enforcement, by border patrol, by customs, by security officials in every capacity; they never know when they are simply pulled over for a traffic violation whether they will end up being beaten or even killed; when they are convicted of a crime, they are given longer sentences.
You know why all this stuff is not in the media? Same reason you taking a dump isn't on the nightly news. Because it's so incredibly common that it's not newsworthy. Everyone knows it's happening. You are one of the few people I've conversed with who actually denies it, and I must admit, I do find that rather astounding.
I cannot remember a single incident in my entire life in which being a member of my particular race has resulted in a negative consequence for me. Not a single incident (and I have wandered through some of those supposedly dangerous neighborhoods in New Orleans, on foot, in the middle of the night at at time when the crime rate was much higher than it is now). I'm curious. Can your black, Latino, Muslim, and Hindu friends say the same?
Stephen Daidalus
Well-Known Member
When I said it wasn't newsworthy, I was referring to the paragraph I had written right above that. Generally, one more black woman not getting a job because her interviewer is racist and she can't prove it doesn't make the news, no.
But the aggregate effects of racism on income, incarceration, wealth, and representation in government and in boardrooms IS newsworthy and is reported on all the time.
But the aggregate effects of racism on income, incarceration, wealth, and representation in government and in boardrooms IS newsworthy and is reported on all the time.
Stephen Daidalus
Well-Known Member
And what was newsworthy about Zimmerman was not that he was a Latino guy who killed a black guy. It was that he did it, and the cops let him go -- until the media, at the behest of the victim's family, raised a stink. If he'd been charged right away, or if the Martins hadn't complained, you might never have heard about it.
Edit: Do I blame Martin's family for insisting that the case be investigated more deeply and taking their case to the media to get those results? Of course not. If my teenaged cousin was shot to death when he hadn't even been witnessed committing any crime, I would be screaming bloody murder and demanding justice. Wouldn't you?
PS Edit: It's ironic that the topic of this thread is sexual violence, and yet we are talking about racism. But if I had to choose one case involving murder that most resembled a rape case, it would be Trayvon Martin's case.
The victim is accused of doing drugs or of stealing -- days or perhaps weeks before he is killed.
His character is being questioned, including his school records and social media posts, to determine whether he might have 'deserved' to be killed (whether killing him would have seemed reasonable to the mind of the shooter because the victim had a 'history' of crime or possibly of acting suspiciously).
He is accused of provoking the attack by being violent.
He is even accused of dressing in such as way as to make the perpetrator's actions seem more reasonable and understandable. (Hoodies are now the new male slutware that justifies a violent response. Perhaps we need a thread entitled, "Do black men who wear hoodies deserve to be shot?" We could invite Geraldo to post in it.)
Most importantly, whether a crime took place or not, has nothing to do with whether Zimmerman actually did the deed, since that's not up for debate. The entire question centers around how the perpetrator perceives the victim's behavior prior to the shooting.
In rape cases, the victim's testimony that s/he didn't consent is often discredited as a result of targeted character assassination. In this case, the victim can't testify at all.
Edit: Do I blame Martin's family for insisting that the case be investigated more deeply and taking their case to the media to get those results? Of course not. If my teenaged cousin was shot to death when he hadn't even been witnessed committing any crime, I would be screaming bloody murder and demanding justice. Wouldn't you?
PS Edit: It's ironic that the topic of this thread is sexual violence, and yet we are talking about racism. But if I had to choose one case involving murder that most resembled a rape case, it would be Trayvon Martin's case.
The victim is accused of doing drugs or of stealing -- days or perhaps weeks before he is killed.
His character is being questioned, including his school records and social media posts, to determine whether he might have 'deserved' to be killed (whether killing him would have seemed reasonable to the mind of the shooter because the victim had a 'history' of crime or possibly of acting suspiciously).
He is accused of provoking the attack by being violent.
He is even accused of dressing in such as way as to make the perpetrator's actions seem more reasonable and understandable. (Hoodies are now the new male slutware that justifies a violent response. Perhaps we need a thread entitled, "Do black men who wear hoodies deserve to be shot?" We could invite Geraldo to post in it.)
Most importantly, whether a crime took place or not, has nothing to do with whether Zimmerman actually did the deed, since that's not up for debate. The entire question centers around how the perpetrator perceives the victim's behavior prior to the shooting.
In rape cases, the victim's testimony that s/he didn't consent is often discredited as a result of targeted character assassination. In this case, the victim can't testify at all.
