Watching the evolution of Dope posters is fun. 
Just trying to clarify a point.
He’s good at reading comprehension. It’s just that you’re extremely good at being an idiot.
Boy howdy. Could we all join hands and swear a solemn oath to ignore the biggest moron in the thread?
So: yes. There is a lot of inherent/implicit racism, and it’s appalling. There are two schools of thought that I find interesting, and I don’t really know where I lie between them:
-The Obama school of thought, that suggests that centuries of racism have deformed certain aspects of black culture, such as leading some black children to tear down academically successful black children and accuse them of acting white. Obama has spoken to groups of black graduates and told them they need to fight against this tendency and that black people need to work to change culture.
-The Ta-Nehisi Coates school of thought, that suggests that black culture is 0% the problem, that the problem is 100% racism in white culture; if racist cultural structures are demolished, the problem will be solved.
If you’re very familiar with either school of thought, you’re probably cringing at my summaries of them. I apologize and welcome correction on these summaries. Here’s an interesting piece by Coates that addresses some of these issues.
I’m going to take a wild guess and assume most people are going to fall somewhere in the middle of both.
I know I lean more to Coates than I do Obama, though.
I’m not sure if this is accurate for the TNC school of thought – I don’t think he so much blames “white culture” for racism (though this is a significant part of the problem) as much as “white society and power structures”, which (I think) he argues were put into place (or much of it was put into place) with explicitly white-supremacist goals. I think he argues that white-supremacism was a significant driving force for America for pretty much all of American history, even past Civil Rights, and that many of these structures are still functioning in such a fashion, even if many or most of the people carrying out these policies are unaware of the long-past motives behind them.
I think, anyway. I like TNC a lot – not that I necessarily agree with him on everything.
There’s a wonderful exchange back and forth between Coates and Jonathan Chait dealing with this issue. Folks may want to read both sides.
An important caveat to my summary: what I called the Obama position does not deny pervasive and ongoing racism. That makes it different from the widespread conservative viewpoint that in modern times, the problem is the aftereffects of past racism manifested in current black culture, that we don’t really need to devote significant effort today to wiping out the (in their view) negligible current structures that favor white supremacy.
I wholeheartedly agree, excepting the terms “evolution” and “fun.”
Just don’t reach for you Mexican or someone will think its a gun and put a cap in your ass.
What? “Don’t reach for you[,] Mexican?” “Don’t reach for you[r] Mexican?”
What?
And isn’t it “pop a cap?” I don’t want people putting caps up my ass.
I doubt that they forget. White people claiming to be color-blind often coexists with an assumption that the playing field is level; in other words, they think if everyone ignored “race”, starting today, then racial inequities would disappear. It’s well-intentioned, but very wrong.
I just wanted to say that that was a very good articles and I appreciate you posting it. I hope others will click on the links (and the multiple links in the article that also go into additional thought provoking articles as well).
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I’m going to take a wild guess and assume most people are going to fall somewhere in the middle of both.
I know I lean more to Coates than I do Obama, though.
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Unsurprisingly, I’m sure, I fall somewhere in the middle. It IS kind of surprising to me, as I figured I’d be much more on Obama’s side, but Coates makes some interesting, disturbing and thought provoking arguments that seem equally valid.
You’re stupid, you’re in over your head, and you’re single-handedly ruining an otherwise interesting thread.
Why don’t you piss off?
I think that means you’re basically Hitler.
Shit. I don’t have Facebook. Never have.
Does that mean I’ve broken the Hitler barrier?
What?!? But I didn’t even…
Ohhhh. Sorry, you weren’t talking about me. My bad.
Will you acknowledge, then, that you are a bigot as well?
And that calling anyone a bigot is therefore as useful as calling anyone a human?
Your own argument is that everyone is bigoted. And then you start throwing the word “bigot” at everybody who disagrees with you as though this is a meaningful rebuttal.
By the way, the term you need to familiarize yourself with is “white privilege.” It is a much more effective method of telling all white people they are racist. Most of us will still tell you to fuck off but the bleeding-hearts around here will hoist you on their shoulders as a new initiate to their blame-think mentality.
I don’t have a presence on Facebook. How racist is that?
This isn’t true at all.
“White privilege” does not mean that white = racist. It means that white people do not experience racism the way that black people or Native Americans do. So in a discussion about race relations, a white people’s perspective is going to be very influenced by that limited experience. And because of that, likely off-base.
If I tell a white person that it sucks being a racial minority sometimes and that person tells me they don’t see racism or discrimination, so thus I must be some hypersensitive race-card playing negro, they aren’t showing their racism (necessarily). They are showing their privilege.
To use myself as an example, I once commented on a thread where people were complaining about how much it sucks to be fat and neglected by the media. I said something like, “Ya’ll fat people need to learn how to love yourselves. You can’t expect the world to do that for you!” I wasn’t saying this out of hatred of fatness or fat people (though I suspect I have some subconscious anti-fat bias). I was saying this out of a lack of empathy, as someone who is in the privileged position of never having been overweight. I don’t know how it feels to have a body shape that is vilified by society. Since I don’t know, I should have thought twice about sharing that tone-deaf opinion. Not every opinion is worth sharing.
Yeah, that’s pretty silly. I think health care workers give black people lower doses of pain killers because they think black people are exaggerating the pain in order to get drugs.