I know that this is an older thread, but as a human you don’t care about other countries or is America just so special?
No, we are not. You are excluding most of the world, but to be fair, I think most of Americans are like that.
I don’t think that’s fair. There’s the old Biblical admonition to take the beam out of your own eye before removing the splinter from your neighbor’s, and that’s what I see @Johanna advocating. Directing criticism directly at your own community doesn’t require apathy about other communities; it just means that you’re focused on where you can do the most good.
I think reading her words charitably (and in general reading everyone’s words with the best possible interpretation in mind) can avoid unnecessary conflict.
I donno.
I would have felt different had the response not been “because it’s America that is in a dire crisis” rather than something acknowleging that other places have problems but they want to focus on American problems because it’s close to home.
There are a lot of places in the world that are facing dire crises. Many. I’ve got a good from from Uygur who has fled there because they would face possible getting “disappeared” by the Chinese for their political views. The political views that the ruling Chinese don’t like are expressed by a minority who aren’t Han Chinese and don’t want their culture eliminated.
Yes, really shitty things are happening in America but there are ways of saying that you want to keep the discussion on that in such a way that you aren’t discounting real problems elsewhere.
Saying “Black Lives Matter” doesn’t mean other people don’t matter, it means the speaker wants to focus on that topic. We don’t have to help everyone to help a particular group.
Likewise, saying “American Racism is a Problem” is not saying there’s no problems elsewhere, it’s focusing on a particular issue. We don’t have to solve every problem to address a particular one.
It’s the usual whataboutism. It’s possible that there is no topic in the world safe from whataboutism.
Another I dunno. In her stated view there is no racism other than the concepts created “in the 15th century by Prince Henry and Eanes de Zarura to justify enslaving Africans” … the rest is not only not her focus; to her way of thinking it is not.
Whatever. Thread revived by @Eric1 I gotta say, six teens unknown to me “slinging the n-word on a street corner next to me” I for one am not going to go out and “cast on them” … and I would not expect the result of doing so to be a polite discussion about how, Officer Krumpke, we are only using these words because “the US government seems to consistently espouse hatred under our administration”
Glad it went that way. That it got to where stern emails to officials could be written,
Now slinging at a person, harassing someone, yeah, I won’t be the not my problem guy. I risk some after first calling police. I know the teens and more importantly their families, yeah, probably.
Random teens on the street? I personally would not have judged that wise.
I’ve read a good portion of this thread (not all, sorry) but you’re expressing here a general feeling I’ve had that there are at any given time 10,000 worthy causes and how do you know what gets your attention right now?
So I had a pretty thorough progressive anti-racist education, as I have an MSW from a school that required a full year of coursework on the US Black-white binary. And you’d better believe people made some noise about this being the only issue that was required coursework. Well, I happen to think it was important but I was surprised there was no similar requirement for the history and oppression of women, considering 98% of us were women and social work as a profession was largely created by women.
I was raised in an openly racist culture, though my mother was outspoken against racism, it was pretty pervasive everywhere else. And I’ve always brought forth the idea that everyone else has to deal with the same kinds of effects of my upbringing - racist thoughts to be rooted out and so forth. But actually not everyone had family members in the KKK so how do I know what’s on their hearts?
There is a messaging problem, yes. There’s a sanctimony/dogma problem, yes. But I’ve seen so many people protest that they don’t have a racist bone in their body go on to vote for huge flaming racists and racist policies which very much calls their self-assessment into question. And what galls me isn’t even voting for racists per se but the vehemence with which they defend the racism. I hate that. Can’t you just say, “Look, I had to compromise my values here because this other value I had took precedence.” But that’s not what they do. They don’t take accountability.
Anyhow, I try to build anti-racism into my work whenever possible (increasingly difficult in current political federal grants climate) and work against transphobia and all the isms I can muster, but inevitably some issue is going to get left in the dust - many issues in fact - and then we can get into stuff like “Why am I playing video games right now instead of fighting racism?” And as an activist I really had to let go of that need to be always on and have perfect thoughts (I was religious once) and to just do all the things I possibly could do. I don’t think it’s sustainable.
I think there’s such thing as moderation even for critically important issues - especially for those. I’m reminded of how Zen Master and peace activist Thich Naht Hanh responded when he happened to be in the US during 9/11. His monks said “What should we do?” And he replied, “We should go to the beach.” And that’s what they did. They chilled at the beach for an entire day. And then they moved forward into action from a responsive rather than reactionary place.
In grad school I really enjoyed Derrick Bell. One of the things that he said that stuck with me was “the liberation is in the struggle.” The liberation isn’t once you overcome racism once and for all because that’s not going to happen. The liberation is the work itself.
And I think that might be what the OP is driving at when they call it a process.