:rolleyes: Go back far enough and every single living human has a reason to hate every other single living human, and those reasons are just as valid as your reasons for getting all het up over US slavery.
And your comparison to the Holocaust shows the stupidity of your argument. There are people alive today that were involved on both sides, and there will be people alive for several more years that had parents or grandparents that were involved on both sides. The wound still exists. The same can’t be said about slavery in the US.
In short, get over it. The misfortune of my birth is that I have to hear people like you treat me as somehow responsible for the sins of my ancestors, when I didn’t choose to be white any more than you chose to be black.
Seriously? You’re a bigger fucktard that the last fucktard. Do you simply not understand the direct line from slavery to Jim Crow? Plenty of people still alive who suffered under that. Fucktard.
Well, you would not want to hear it on an empty stomach and your surely would not want to hear it on a full stomach, so I suspect that, laying aside morbid curiosity, you really do not want to hear it.
If I wrote everything I felt regarding this thread and its topics, it would be unmanageably long and aimless, so I’ll summarize in an extremely succinct manner:
It really sucks that many (most?) white people can’t (or more likely willingly won’t) understand the living legacy of slavery. It’s not a stray mark that we can press Undo on. I imagine only someone very ignorant would not be able to understand the effect such a massive system would have to the present day. Nobody would say the Rebolution has no relevance to America today, so why not slavery, which lasted much, much longer?
The recent upswing in historical brushing-aside, which is basically a soft denialism, really disturbs me. In this view of history, everything is up for dismissal. Of course, this is the modus operandi of oppressors with a reputation to defend. Do something bad, sit on it a while, and then tell people to “get over it”. So what’s the due date here? Can we get over 9/11 yet?
Just as a completely random illustration of white privilege, or of how whites are codified as the norm in the mainstream narrative, think to July 4th. It occurred to me as I was watching the fireworks that all the patriotic songs we sing for Independence Day are by and about white people. And why, during the explosions I watched, did they play country music? Why is it obvious that Rascal Flatts would perform a July 4th spectacular, but Usher less so? It’s not PC to ask, but why does the country as a whole gather to celebrate the day when white males received the ability to vote, but not the day that four million chattel slaves were freed almost a century after the country’s supposed independence?
I understand the direct line from racism to it. I think you’re confusing predicates and subjects.
I’m curious, was I the supposed “last fucktard” of whom you so fondly spoke?
Incidentally, if you’re looking for way to bilk some cash out of a horrible situation, it would seem like you’ve found a tenable ground. Sue for Jim Crow because you still have actual living people who were actually harmed by it. You don’t have a generation of people decrying no fair 7 generations later.
The Christians, by and large, aren’t still bitching about some of them being executed some 2,000 years ago.
Middle Easterners aren’t still bitching about the Crusades and how they should be paid for something their very, very distant relatives had to endure.
There comes a point in one’s life where one may dwell in the past as though it’s an entitlement to be an asshole to the world, or where one can accept that really bad shit happened to people they’ve never met, by people they’ve never met. Hell, it isn’t just that no one has met any of them, it’s that they haven’t met anyone who knows anyone who has met anyone who ever knew any of them.
Or, in 10,000 years would it still be a ripe discussion to have about how slavery was bad AND I’m owed money for it because my ancestors some 10,000 prior were slaves? For that matter, had my distant relatives from whom I eventually came been subjected to such cruelty, such depravity, such impecuniousness, I’d take a great deal of pride that given my family’s history, I’m able to be where I am today.
I can’t figure out if this is satire or not. Christians still talk about the martyrs. Western art is full of images of martyrs. And of course CHRISTIANS WORSHIP A CROSS WITH JESUS BEING MARTYRED
Do you resally think the ME isn’t bitching about the crusades? Bush had to do some PR repair after he called going after Bin Ladin a crusade.
And apparently the biggest bunch of whiners are now white people complaing about reverse-racism.
Well, let’s not let reality get too much in the way of a good point.
The president would also have a PR nightmare if he got up and said, “Niggers? Yeah, back to the cottonfield with them!” That he accidentally* had a poor choice of words and some people reacted with outrage doesn’t somehow imply that by and large the ME people are demanding recompense from the Christians for it all. But you can understand they’d get a little, um, concerned when using “crusade” in the same explanation as telling them you’re invading their land.
I don’t know if you’re religious, or what, but I’ve never equated praying with bitching. It would seem that your response doesn’t really have much to do with my post, unless you think bitching and praying are synonyms. Do you?
Is wearing the cross some way of saying to the jews, “You killed Jesus; you fuckers! Pay us back, now!”? Or is it a sign to them that they worship someone who was persecuted for his beliefs as a reminder of keeping faith with the sacrifice they think he made? For some people, it’s merely decorative.
But neither of your examples bears on my point because they bring up in the one case a highly localized slip up, and in other a relation never before asserted.
And what did you say to someone who had befriended you and who said that she always had given a fuck and who shared her experiences about trying to make her own reparations for slavery. It was hard and she admitted it. And most people didn’t want to do what she did because it was dangerous sometimes. But she did it for twenty years and took pride in doing something of value – something that would atone. And she loved doing it. You turned on her and attacked her right here on the Straight Dope.
Well, it’s no secret. I am that person. At the moment, I have another project that has to do with racial barriers going down. I wouldn’t tell you come hell nor high water. Because if the past is any indication of what is to come, you would just twist it to try to make it into something ugly and condescending, you would continue to make hate-filled, racist remarks, and you would then continue to whine that “no one seems to give a fuck.”
Using the language of a 19th Century plantation slave to enhance your victimhood is pitiful. You need to show your posts to your doctor: “plenty of scolding for the darkies who deign to mention…” Who uses that kind of language now, Monstro?
The two best Language Arts Supervisors that I ever had were two strong black women. I owe them a lot and so do you. You have your doctorate, right? Do whatever it takes to find your strength and your sense of balance again. You need help. You have not always been this filled with hatred.
Why, Zoe. You really are a very sensitive, self-centered person. I never attacked you on this board, not in the way you’re intimating, but I surely will attack you if you keep kicking up old dirt and playing the Unappreciated Martyr of Racial Injustice. I have a strong kindness for older women like yourself–who seem to be natural nurterers and kindhearts–but I have little patience for people who hold grunges and take offense at minor slights. Grow up or blow up, Zoe. Life is too short for you to take umbrage at a scolding that you SO deserved, even if you have done great things in your life.
And if you want to join the likes of Rand Rover and tell me I’m playing the victim card when I absolutely haven’t, go at it. I’m apparently a lot tougher than you (for some strange reason) and I know how to dust off comments that I find disagreeable without going berserko.
Really, it’s your latest interactions with me that have solidified in my mind that people are just too freakin’ looney tunes to be trusted with anything more than an occassional hello. I hate saying that because I’m dealing with my own mental issues and having positive interactions would probably help, but it’s true. That’s why I ignored your PM to me. You are really making me sick, in the truest sense of the word. Lay off and chill the fuck out, lady.
Re: my comment about me being harmed as much as monstro–i agree with villa’s sentiment that slaveholding hurts the slaveholder in addition to the slave. That is, treating another person as property involves a level of cognitive dissonance and cruelty that is bad for the psyche. Just like monstro’s ancestors (in the broad sense) were slaves, mine were slaveholders, so she’s harmed by the taint of enslavement and I’m harmed by the taint of slaveholding.
Oh, good grief. :rolleyes: Despite the fact that I have no idea what your actual beef is here this is just fucking pathetic. Your ad hominem simpering has absolutely no bearing on the discussion at hand. Attempting to leverage a perceived personal slight by an online message board user to try to score cheap points in a discussion about slavery reparations and white privilege is histrionic, self-centered, and…racist?