Says the man with “nig” in his user name.
I’m too tired to do binary math.
Say what?
If you’re reading along in a thread and suddenly come to a Starving Artist wall o’ text post, it’s probably safe to skip it.
It wasn’t so much that they told the music venue the band was Skrewdriver. It was that they insinuated that they’d burn down the venue if the concert went ahead.
Mostly, it was just that Skrewdriver crowds tended to destroy anything they came into contact with, including nightclubs and bingo halls, though.
This is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about when I talk about liberals crying “racist” at every opportunity and shutting down dialog on race. The point, which I’m sure you already know, is that by confronting racism in a dignified way, such as MLK and other civil rights proponents did, opened people’s minds to the inhumanity invovled in racism and created sympathy toward the people subjected to it, which in turn changed people’s minds and caused them to rethink and change their racist attitudes. Those early civil rights demonstrators were effective in changing minds; drain bead’s approach isn’t. I can guarantee you that not one person will be made less racist because of the way she is reacting to this situation, and the target of her ire will most likely become even more entrenched in his racism than he now. Plus, like I said there could be negative reverberations harmful to blacks should the restaurant owner decides it’s just too risky from a business standpoint to employ them.
But still, I’ll play your game. Given that the goals and impact of Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech still resonate strongly today, I’d say “well-spoken” is a pretty good way to combat racism. Of course if you have an argument in favor of inarticulateness being a helpful solution to racism, I’d be interested to hear them.
To be honest, it’s a way of trying to get through. Sometimes people will resist polite attempts to question their motives, but if you hit them between the eyes with it, they may in time, once the resulting anger subsides, give a little thought to the subject and question, even if only to themselves, whether perhaps their adversary had a point. The OP strikes me as that kind of person. Still, it was probably a mistake to include that poster-specific comment in a post intended for a general audience, and I apologize to anyone else who may have been offended by it.
There are situations where jilling and eating somebody is not only acceptable behavior but will be strongly encouraged by the recipient.
Nah, you’ll just piss them off.
Hell, I was agreeing with you, and it pissed me off. 
Yeah, and guns carried by cops use exactly the same chemical propellants as guns carried by crooks. Eeeek! :eek:
Oh great. Now there is a group of Mexican restaurant workers who are terrified they are going to be fired if they don’t change the channel fast enough when they see you pull into the parking lot. It wasn’t as if the lookout’s life wasn’t stressful enough already.
And how about World War II? The Nazis were using tanks and airplanes. So obviously we shouldn’t have have used them. We were just fighting the Nazis at their level.
You do realize, I assume, that Dr King wasn’t considered dignified and well behaved? He was considered a criminal and a dangerous radical. He was surveilled by federal agents. He was thrown into jail. He was shot and killed by a cracker.
The civil rights movement wasn’t about sitting down and rationally discussing things with the racist scum because that isn’t possible. It was about telling them people weren’t going to take it any more. It focused on direct action - strikes and boycotts - and included from the early days illegal action.
Neither King nor anyone else could have done a thing about racism if the American people as a whole weren’t sympathetic to the cause. And the reason they were sympathetic to the cause was because of the way civil rights marchers conducted themselves in the face of fire hoses and police dogs, and because of the way the words of civil rights leaders like King resonated with them as human beings.
In short, King may have broken some of the laws of the time, but he wasn’t a thug.
And no, he didn’t sit down and discuss things with racists, but he made progress by showcasing the humanity of black people and working to increase understanding on both sides instead of stamping his feet and calling people names and stirring up hatred on both sides.
The key to eliminating racism is empathy and understanding, and King and other civil rights leaders of the day understood that. It may be more satisfying to yell at racists and call them names and demand that they be fired and so on, but all you accomplish by that in reality is to create more of the very thing you’re supposed to be fighting.
Again, I’d wager that had Dr. King’s methodology prevailed over the last forty years or so we’d have a lot less racism than we have now, where it still exists to a much larger degree than any of us would like but has simply been driven underground…something which, curiously enough, the OP seems to favor. There isn’t a word in her OP that indicates a desire to find ways to change that type of thinking, only a desire to see it driven underground. Don’t you think it would be better to try to adopt behaviors that work to reduce racism rather than simply adopting the attitude that if you’re going to be a racist you’d damn well better not show it?
This has to be a joke, given the rest of the poster’s whinge, I mean… surely no one could be that oblivious…
You have to understand. Liberals must always hold themselves to a higher standard and can not fight for their cause so thus can not attack in any form. If a conservative comes along and needs to fight for their cause they may ‘hit them between the eyes’.
It all makes sense if the goal is to tie liberal’s hand’s behind their back and beat them senseless. If you were thinking SA is actually ever trying to offer constructive advice to liberal movements you’re out of your mind. He’s as disingenuous as they come.
Oh yeah? Well, I disagree with your disagreeing with my disagreement.
So Freedom of Speech is only for the government, not anyone else? Fire his ignorant ass then. He’s free to say what he wants (in the form of his bumper sticker), and he’s free to enjoy the consequences of it.
I would disagree, but you are correct to point out the distinction.
Again, in the interests of clarification (I feel like I’m coming across as a know-it-all somehow, and I don’t mean to), freedom of speech is more accurately described as from the government; in other words, the government may not restrict your speech in any way.
I’m sure, SA, that you were making a mistake when you conflated the actions of the guy who observed the bumper sticker with my own. A simple reading comprehension error, right? It wouldn’t be like you to jump to conclusions about someone.
Racism is a funny thing and certainly isn’t monolithic, no matter how badly people want to reduce it to simple black and white terms. And reaction to racism is certainly problematic and oftentimes is blind of any logic as a purely reactionary force. I know, I have sometimes found myself in the middle of the fray. One time, I found myself in the middle of a beatdown outside of a bar, protecting a mexican girl from a whole gang of black girls. They were beating the shit out of this girl for no apparent reason, other than she was different. The black bouncers just stood there and watched. I managed to get her out of the beating and kicking mob and hold them off… I’m sure she would have been seriously injured or possibly killed if I hadn’t been there. As a parting shot, after I had gotten her to safety, I used the “N word” for the first and last time in anger with an adrenal coursed, “Stupid Ni**ers!” And still today, though I probably saved that girls life I still can’t help but feel a bit guilty about that puffed up last shot and apparently racist curse. Another time, I practically ruined a relationship with family members because I got in their face and wanted to fight because they were frankly being disgustingly racist about Mexicans. That almost blew up into fisticuffs, and although they were not right, neither was I, and I regret starting that fight. Recently, on this board, I used the term “jew down” which I am kind of torn about, because, it’s quite a part of my local language and has certainly lost any racist connotations it might once have had by its rather lighthearted use as a synonymn for “to bargain” and it’s “owned” usage. We also still call the Salvagers who come around on Garbage day, “The Sheenyman”. And all of that is part of our dialect which probably goes back quite far… and although I can see the argument as to why that might be racist to other people… well, to me it’s an innocent quirk of my language and culture, although, I really feel no hate for Jews or Blacks, or any people as a monolithic race. Language, intention, and character can be many different things, not always hate or bigotry.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott almost shut down the Montgomery public transportation division and threatened permanent dismissals of many employees from bus drivers to mechanics to civil servants and corporate execs (the Montgomery bus company was a hybrid of city employees and for-profit contractors) and others and had many ripple effects (e.g. downtown business that had formerly had many black customers had less as blacks shopped closer to home or did without since they couldn’t use the bus). While it did bring national attention to segregation it did NOT rely on the American people for tea and sympathy and effectiveness but was one of the most effective non-violent “by our own bootstraps” measures in U.S. history. Ultimately transportation officials and bus company executives came to the peace tables and gave in not because of outside P.R. but because they had a choice of “give in or go broke”.