When does Tim Wise, Morris Dee, and others like them get called racist? Or are you referring to actual racists?
Monstro was smart to bail when she did.
And she deserved it because she came in with a “wah, pitiful me” post, with a side of how fucked up the SDMB is, rather than answer the question. If she wanted to remain silent on the topic, she should have remained silent on the topic.
Coming into a thread just to post about how you can’t answer the question is obnoxious. And when you post obnoxious things, you should expect an obnoxious response–on the Internet in general and especially on this board.
Also, I’m pretty sure she can speak for herself if she’s offended. The idea that other people have to be offended for people of color is part of what this thread is about.
LOL.
You wanna be hurt? Try being the person who thinks genes play an important role in racial differences…
Every day is 1984. 
I gave pretty simple criteria. A guy whose main source of fame and fortune is unrelated to race hustling and/or poverty pimping. Can you come up with someone who fits that category? If you can, then there’s your answer. If you can’t, then don’t ask me. I am not all that up on who speaks about race and poverty these days, whether black or white. (How about Bill Cosby? Colin Powell?)
It’s hard to speculate about what a person from one era would do in another era.
The use of these terms is meant to convey the notion that these people are personally profitting from the problems they ostensibly care about and thus have less moral standing than they pretend to and more importantly have an incentive to exagerate and/or exacerbate these problems. The conditions for this did not exists in MLK’s time.
Now you ask: if he was alive today, would he have transmuted into a poverty pimper/race hustler, with his own non-profit organization paying big salaries to him and his friends and relatives with government support and corporate sponsorship, or perhaps become a political power broker and/or political candidate? Or would he have remained a source of moral leadership? I don’t know. That’s speculation, and pointless speculation IMO.
But the point is that what changed from MLK’s time to now is that the situation is different and the types of leaders are naturally different as well. Back then, the risk/reward calculation would stay to stay home and not stick your neck out for civil rights, and someone who did it anyway had some moral standing. In our times, it can be a way to become “the biggest niggers in New York” (as Sharpton allegedly said re Tawana Brawley) and people look at things differently.
I just meant that in my experience, most white people devoted to writing and speaking about race, tend to be pretty obviously racist. Someone like Wise no, but he has been subject to the criticism found in the OP and the linked article ie here comes the White guy to defend the Black man. During his little facebook blowup last year, some of the more radical voices have called him at least subtly racist.
http://www.gradientlair.com/post/61521224722/i-dont-need-tim-wise-as-an-ally
http://www.furiousandbrave.com/2013/08/9timwise.html
But maybe I am still not hitting the target here, because this criticism is coming from the Black community and I guess the specific topic here is “white people are more accepting of white opinion on racism”.
eta: I guess this whole thing gets called “White Allyship” and is not an undiscussed topic out there.
Oh yes, you suffer soooo much more hurt than others :rolleyes:
Quoting myself there, sorry that’s really a mis-characterization of the OP but it is an apparently common criticism of Wise. He has been accused of being a “poverty pimp” just not generally in those words, as I think we agree that term is generally pointed at Black commentators/activists.
You are 100% correct in saying you are not hitting the target.
Going back to a post made earlier in this thread…
In case you’re still reading (and haven’t figured this out yourself), there’s evidence of what I’m talking about right in this very thread. Let’s take the whole little situation with monstro. In response to your post, she writes:
I read this as a simple commentary. She states that she avoids racial topics on this board and explains why. She doesn’t make any personal remarks about any individuals in particular and she isn’t hostile towards any posters in the thread. And yet her post attracts dismissive, hostile, and gaslighting comments like this:
Never mind that she did answer the silly question that was posed to her. Because she didn’t apparently give the “right” answer, she’s dismissed as someone wallowing in a puddle of victimhood for no good reason.
One should note the irony of this dismissal. In its moronic attempt to refute the validity of saying this board reflexively dismisses minorities, it actually proves it. Why would monstro want to calmly engage the likes of BigT if he’s already throwing barbs at her without provocation? This is the kind of nonsense I’m talking about. The racially biased knee jerkitude that affects our discourse when blacks and others dare to express themselves, but is absent when it comes to whites saying the same things.
In his time, MLK was called a race hustler and much worse. He didn’t become widely seen as a hero until conveniently after his murder. So it’s silly to act as though the names applied to black advocates today are somehow levied fairly and objectively. A lot of the same people who called MLK a criminal rabble rouser are still alive, and the name’s Julian Bond, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson trigger the same reactions in them that MLK’s did.
And their children and grandchildren inherited some of this knee jerkitude too. They don’t want to admit it, but it’s not hidden very well.
He would have “transmuted” into those things only because that’s how he’d be perceived by people who think in these terms.
That doesn’t logically follow.
That a lot of people were opposed to MLK is not a new revelation. And so many of these people said nasty things about him. OK.
It does not follow that anyone who says these same nasty things about other people who are doing many other things in other circumstances are wrong. Even if those other people have the same skin color as MLK.
If you’re just saying that in your opinion Jackson and Sharpton are indistinguishable from MLK (in terms of being race hustlers) then that’s fine. Everyone gets an opinion here. I disagree with you.
It does shows that black advocates are labeled pejoratively in ways that have more to do with the bias of the labeler than anything else. You’re insisting that blacks like Julian Bond have come by their labels honestly (presumably because you see him and others through a negative lens), but surely you can how awfully convenient that is.
People who called MLK names were able to rationalize their actions too. You may seem him a moral crusader today because you think his cause was legitimate, but that is a matter of perspective, not fact. Collectively, we pay more attention to MLK’s sacrifices than what he personally gained from the movement. But he gained a lot. Celebrity, money, power, a following. He was the original “race hustler” and “poverty pimp”, but folks today aren’t conditioned to see him that way because he was martyred.
I don’t have anything to add to what I’ve previously said, which addresses your latest comment IMO.
But FTR, I did not at any point say that Julian Bond was a race hustler. I don’t know anything about Julian Bond. Marley claimed that JB was called a race hustler (or poverty pimp) for saying the same things as a white guy (Krugman) who was not called that name. He thought this was proof that the term is about skin color. My response was that the more important distinction is that he is head of the NAACP while Krugman is a distinguished economist.
In sum, Bond may be a race hustler and he may not be a race hustler - I don’t know, and my only knowledge that he was ever called a race hustler is from this thread (not that I doubt it). My only point, again, is that the meaning of the term race hustler is a profiteer from racial strife, which is something that can be applied (correctly or incorrectly, as the case may be) to heads of race-based organizations and not to people whose accomplishments are not race-based.
I am more familiar with Jackson and Sharpton. They are a couple of slimeball race hustlers.
I was responding there to you and maybe the others that jumped on my ass for asking a pretty straightforward question. “Is the Dope particularly bad”. All that “how dare you?” was pretty out of the blue and maybe I over reacted but I think you guys did too.
If Jesse Jackson has been called a poverty pimp, it’s because he’s long established himself as a corporate shakedown artist. If a business is accused of racist practices, Jesse Jckson will be on the spot and will tell the CEO, “I can make this problem go away… but it’s gonna cost you. A nice check payable to PUSH would be a good start, and a spot on the board of directors for me, my son or one of my cronies would be nice…”
As for Al Sharpton, some of us will never forgive or forget his rabble-rousing on behalf of Tawana Brawley.
Why are you phrasing this as a hypothetical? There’s no “if” here. When you type the words poverty pimp into Google and hit the space bar, the third recommended term is Jesse Jackson and the fourth is Al Sharpton.
And then there were his statements during the Crown Heights riots and his overall pomposity. But I talk about my disdain for those things without using racially charged language that compares him to a street criminal.
Rep Barbara Lee was referred to as a race hustler by O’Reilly last month for criticizing Paul Ryan’s racially-loaded rhetoric.
Paul Krugman also criticized Paul Ryan for the exact same issue. Was he lambasted by O’Reilly and branded a race hustler? I can’t find evidence of that. This, despite him being much more scathing and explicit in his critiquethan Lee was.
Neither Krugman or Lee are heads of the NACCP.
So what is the explanation this time?
A circular definition for a nonsense term.
I’m asking you for your opinion. How can I post your opinion for you?
I’ll skip the part where I pretend to be surprised you’re not reading up on these issues very much. Anyway, Google will show you plenty of people calling Colin Powell a race hustler. I agree you probably won’t find anyone calling Bill Cosby that- I think the extent of his commentary on race was two or three speeches five to ten years ago. It’s s not really his purview.
However you can find plenty of modern day people calling MLK a race hustler.
If only I could get orcenio to extend to me that level of tenderness and concern.