That’s ridiculous. You allow zero consideration for the times in which someone lives? So based on that what, 99.999999999999999999999999% of Europeans living before the 17th century were racist? And any doctor or researcher who looks at the role that race might play in disease is a racist, too. Right.
Come on, man. You’re stripping the word of its meaning.
Let’s recap. You said:
I showed you a quote where demonstrates that he thought is was a moral wrong.
Hope that clears things up for you.
Not that I have much comment on the rest of the thread, but, well…yeah. Considering a people of a different color to be inferior is straight-up racism.
It’s just that at the time it was okay to be racist. Which is what Diogenes said.
Yeah, I think they were. And this is from someone who believes referring to institutional racism strips the term of its meaning. They really were that racist back then.
Speaking of which, Stormfront has this on its welcome-page banner:
Not sure if that’s authentic, it does not appear in several lists of Jefferson quotes I Googled, but it sure sounds Jeffersonian.
No, he said he thought slavery was a moral wrong. That’s not the same thing.
If people reject the Obamas because they have an interest in African-American studies and don’t go around treating their race/ethnicity as if its shameful and unworthy of academic discourse in a manner other social groups are treated, then it’s really not Barack who deserves to be called a racist.
If Hillary wrote a thesis entitled “Princeton-Eduated Women and the Female Community” would anyone think that such thing a would hurt her chances of getting elected? Would anyone think that it would hurt Bill’s chances of getting elected back in the 90’s? I doubt it. For some reason, it appears to be taboo for black people to discuss the social issues that affect them without them being called names. They are pressured to pretend as if the pink elephant in the room does not exist because it’s inherently “divisive” to point it out, even in a blandly academic context. I mean, nothing screams blandly academic more than “Princeton-Educated Blacks”. But I guess the concept might be scary to some people.
No, I didn’t say he did - just racism and so forth.
Compare these two statements -
And
Do you feel that a white person would feel equally welcome in both congregations? Would a black one?
Regards,
Shodan
I forgot to add the cite for the one that isn’t a parody.
Yeah, pretty much. It just wasn’t seen as immoral yet.
Well, biologically speaking, “race” has no meaning, but investigating genealogical factors in how they relate to disease is not racist, no. Why would it be?
If a candidate went to a church that said that America was damned because of pornography and homos, I don’t think it would be wrong to try to find out to what extent a candidate shared those views either, would it?
Find out, no. Blindly assert, yes.
So when do we start seeing the media examining John (the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon) Hagee or Rod (the USA was founded by God to eradicate Islam) Parsley? Because while McCain doesn’t actually attend their churches on a regular basis, he sure did do a lot of running after them for an endorsement.
And that’s what’s so annoying about all of this. Look at how many people, even here on the 'Dope, are accusing Obama of being racist. Not by his actions or words, however, but by his associates’ and friends’ words. How much do Obama’s words and actions count? Has he shown *any *sign of racism?
I also find it vaguely amusing that, as a result of all this brouhaha, atheists such as **Diogenes **and myself are defending a minister.
Nothing racist about either version but the white version is stupid in a way that the black version is not, simply because there is no such thing as “white” tradition or culture. "White " people in America are multi-cultural, muti-ethnic and multi-traditional. It is not accurate to parody the reality of culture and traditions inherent to a specific population of African-American slave descendents (referred to in short-hand as “blacks”) to the multiplicity of European ethnicities in the US. I think a more accurate analogy would be to compare “black,” to “Irish,” or “Italian.” Clever attempts to reverse speech referring to “black pride” and so forth to “white pride” are disingenuous because there is no such ethnicity as “whites.” Asd I’ve said, the better anaolgies would be to specific identifications with ethnic heritage. Declarations of Norwegian or Scottish or Jewish pride are not seen as offensive or racist, and Black pride belongs in that same category.
BrainGlutton I concede that I do not have access to the primary sources to verify if the quotations from Jones’ book are indeed accurate to Cone’s words.
However, if ‘White Power’ is universally recognized as being racist, why can’t we assume the same about, ‘Black Power’? I know the conventional argument about the power differential, but if at this point in history we want to embrace a black President, shouldn’t we resign Black Nationalism to the dustbin of anachronism the same way we do with White Nationalism? It does seem to me to be a bit of a double standard. I understand what Michelle Obama was trying to say in her thesis about the two worlds, but if we are to elect Barack Obama is not the change that we seek the unifying of the two worlds so that there is no longer a ‘White Princeton’, vs a ‘Black Community’? Is not fomenting an ideology along those divisions still racist? It seems to me that the argument for Trinity rests on Tokenism. “A few white people attend that church, therefore it cannot be racist.” It really smacks of a double-standard to me, and I suppose if academic anthologies cannot be relied upon in this case, then there really isn’t a way for me to ‘prove’ what Rev. Wright believes.
I still intend on voting for Barack Obama, but in my gut, “The Government invented AIDS to kill black people.”, seems pretty racist to me, even if I cannot prove by primary sources that it’s rooted in racism.
Jerry Falwell and Pat Roberston both said America deserved 9/11 because of homos and the ACLU, but no one ever asked Bush or the GOP to disavow them. No candidate’s pastor has ever been an issue until now, but I bet if we really went back and started examining them, we’d find all kinds of crap. Hell, Bush’s own “spiritual advisor” was Ted Haggard. I personally don’t care what any of their pastors or clergy or spiritual advisors say. What matters is what the candidate says, and Obama has clearly and unambiguously stated how he feels about America and about race.
Shodan, the two mission statements aren’t comparable.
“Unashamedly Black” and “Unashamedly White” are not mirror statements.
A black person declaring that they are unashamedly black or proud to be black reveals to me something about that person. And a white person declaring that they are unashamedly white or proud to be white reveals to me something about that person, but the two things are not the same.
The black experience is not the same as the white experience. It just isn’t. Blacks are and were for centuries an oppressed minority in this country, that’s just the historical record. Slavery is now unconstitutional, Jim Crow is no longer legally enforced, but the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow lives on. You can’t pretend it doesn’t.
A church that unashamedly remembers its history as a black church has nothing to be ashamed of. A church that unashamedly remembers its history as a white church does have something to be ashamed of–that they were a racist church that excluded blacks because of racism. Black churches weren’t formed by racists who wanted to exclude white people, they were formed by blacks who were excluded from white churches by white people.
Of course, not all historically white churches have reason to be ashamed of their history, because not all historically white churches were racist churches. But lots of them were, and those that were should be ashamed. And sure, there are some racist black churches out there, the Nation of Islam preaches straight-up black supremacy, for which they should be ashamed.
So historically black churches don’t have a history of racist exclusion except as victims of such exlusion, unlike many historically white churches, and therefore a mission statement where they state that they are unashamed of their history as a historically black church seems pretty uncontroversial to me. Wheras a statement by a white church that they were unashamed of being a historically white church would not be.
I have no idea. I think they probably should, and I don’t know why they’re not. Part of it might be that while the right has a Fox News that is willing to take a harsh look at the Democratic canidates, it’s not as true for the left.
Because the corollary to “Black Power” is not “White Power”, it’s “Irish Power” or “Italian Power” or “Scottish Power.”
Should I call out my family for being racist whenever somebody gets liquored up and starts belting out “The Wind That Shakes The Barley”?
IOW, what Dio said in the post directly above yours.
Fomenting an ideology, maybe. But M.O. was doing no such thing. She was pointing out the existence of the division, and held that African-Americans are the ones who suffer the most for it. To point it out is not racist, but to get all defensive about it probably is.
The Catholic parish I grew up in was 100% white. Can we therefore assume that it was a white supremacist organization?
Oh, bull. It’s easy enough to figure out if Fred Phelps is a homophobe. It’s easy enough to figure out if Jack Chick is anti-Catholic. And it’s not because of the composition of either of their congregations - it’s by their own words.
I would not feel comfortable in the second church because I would likely be surrounded by ignoramuses with a persecution complex.