Who was it who said “why hate people based on their race when there’s a lot of better reasons to hate them?” (I want to say it was Denis Leary, but I can’t seem to find it)
But you see, when you say that, what you are saying doesn’t matter, because what Huey is hearing is:
“The n****** is being uppity and the white folks can’t stand it”
Which proves that Huey is right about autism, and you are a racist. Apparently.
Oh Jesus Fucking Christ!:rolleyes:
It should be obvious that there is a major difference between someone who actually has the power to abuse and harm people with his racism, and someone who is “racist” because he’s fucking pissed to live in a society where even 53 years after the Civil Rights Acts, this country is blithely carrying on in a country that is being governed by a White Supremacist organization. And has the audacity to spout off on a message board.
Major - fucking - difference.
Do I like Huey Freeman’s rhetoric? Maybe not.
Would we have much to say if I sat next to him in a bar? Maybe not.
But whether you realize it or not, you’re proving him right. And he’s right because you all have an idea of what a “productive” social justice warrior should be. That’s all well and fine, but considering you’re not actually, you know, the one who actually has to experience driving while black, I guess he’s telling you he just doesn’t give a fuck what you think.
Sorry, but not every black guy whose had the experience of being shit on by white supremacist America is going to protest like a polite gentleman. We can debate which approach is more or less effective, but if someone wants to go Malcolm X, who the fuck are you to complain about it. Again, it’s not your fight…“brotha”.
Farzle.
I doesn’t bear imagining what Huey hears inside his head when you say that.
So, for the sake of argument, black people are allowed to be antisemites, homophobes, they can use slurs against Asians, Native Americans, Latinos, etc?
You know your argument also applies to people like Fenris and Alessan, correct? You don’t think Jews, of all people, aren’t allowed to be pissed off and bitter?
Seriously, you have no idea how patronizing that is. :rolleyes:
(Again, I don’t care how Huey feels about white people. I do, however, think going after peoples’ kids is fucked up. Shodan may be white. His daughter, however, is not.)
Okay, I’ll stop taking the piss for a moment and see if you can convince me that you/he have some point here. When you say “proving him right”, what do you mean? Proving what, exactly?
If it’s not our fight, and he’s doesn’t give a fuck what we think, then why is he here? Is there any intended productive purpose, or is he just venting?
I mean, you can go on all day about how he has a right to be angry and embittered. Fine. But what’s the point in living a life that seems to consist of: I’m pissed off, so I’m going to abuse white people to show them how pissed off I am, and don’t ever tell me I don’t have a right to be abusive!
Or is he completely different in real life, and he imagines that this online toxic racially abusive performance art is going to lead us to some kind of epiphany about our nature as “white folk”? I mean, he claims that he doesn’t just hang out with black people, but I don’t believe he has any white friends if this is the way he acts IRL.
You’re proving him right in the sense that you are trying to establish the rules of conduct for how black victims can speak to their white abusers. It’s like trying to tell victims of sexual assault what’s a valid claim of assault and how they should and should not feel about it.
He wants you to understand how he feels. He doesn’t give a fuck how you feel, because he’s the one who’s experienced racism, not as some meaningless academic or online debate, but as part of his reality and everyday experience. Talking about experiencing racial discrimination, and living its consequences since the day you’re born…those are two different things.
Do you really feel abused by Huey? Really? He’s some anonymous guy on the internet who apparently has ideas you don’t like. But is that abuse?
This is a place where he can truly say what he wants.
No, not necessarily.
Sure, to a degree. But they did get their holy land.
Do blacks have a holy land? They did have a black wall street once, but…it got burnt to the ground in one of America’s worst race riots.
I didn’t see his comments as racist. I think it was a low-blow, but it wasn’t racist per se.
[I’m quoting you out of order, to put the part I somewhat agree with first…]
Yes. As I said early in this thread, the first thing every person who grew up with privilege should do is shut up and listen, even if it makes us uncomfortable - especially if it makes us uncomfortable. I listened patiently to Huey for a long while in his first “Living While Black” thread before I eventually got sick of his nonsense at post #491 of that thread.
But there are two facets to listening. One is to try to appreciate what it’s like to walk a mile in someone’s shoes. That’s something I’ll try to have almost indefinite uncritical patience to try to hear. The other is to listen to their ideas. Context is still important of course, but ideas have objective value and merit. So you’re not going to tell me that I shouldn’t engage my critical faculties when a person from a marginalized group expresses an idea. I’m not going to apply a lower patronizing uncritical standard (a racist double standard), as though a history of marginalization handicaps someone’s intellect. If Huey’s is expressing his lived experience, that’s one thing. But I’m going to engage and debate the ideas that originate in Huey’s mind on their merits. Do you really think he’d prefer otherwise?
Huey is not being “proven right” - because I never claimed the opposite. I certainly never said that I’d grant him a pass and suck up any awful way he might behave toward me or others, just because he’s black. Voicing your anger is one thing, but I’m not ever going to give anyone a pass on a sustained barrage of toxic bigoted rhetoric just because they belong to one particular marginalized group.
It’s so easy to reduce this kind of identity-based double standard to absurdity. I mean, you basically have to put every human being into a monotonic hierarchy of victimhood in order to establish who is allowed to be how much of an asshole to whom. In the real world, a decent society requires baseline standards that must apply to everyone, and if he doesn’t like that - well so far as I’m concerned he’s welcome to fuck off, and I won’t be wringing my hands that I’m not woke enough.
And here again, if you think otherwise, I think you’re applying a patronizing (and frankly racist) lower standard of social ethics and morality to black people or other marginalized groups.
No, of course not. That’s not what’s at stake here - the fact that his language is abusive does not really concern me nearly so much as his toxic bigotry.
(Disclaimer: I’m a straight white guy)
Here’s the basic problem:
When black people act in a fashion that white people are comfortable with, nothing fucking happens.
Only by violating the comfort boundaries of white people do black people ever get recognized or listened to.
MLK wasn’t a popular figure before he was murdered. A majority of the country disapproved of what he was doing. Naturally not supporting his cause (as it’s understood in various circles) is basically unthinkable to modern liberals (another disclaimer: I’m pretty liberal).
The Black Panthers also suffered for their actions, but they helped create a space for other, less extreme activists to move into the space that they created and foster lasting change. There’s actually a pretty good movie about it called “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution”. Everyone should watch it, especially white people who think they’re “woke”. If the BPP hadn’t been so extreme, and instead had acted “respectful” and hadn’t been “uppity” and hadn’t made white people feel “uncomfortable”, then they wouldn’t have accomplished much. When black people openly carried guns around the California statehouse suddenly white conservatives, including Saint Reagan himself, started thinking that gun control was desperately important. Wait, what? Look up the Mulford Act, AKA “wait, shit, black people are allowed to own guns and carry them around in public!?”
I don’t speak for Huey Freeman, but I’m willing to listen to what he has to say.
I suspect that what he says that comes across as hyperbole is more an expression of frustration than anything else. But not just frustration, there’s some truth in there. He isn’t trolling, people just aren’t fucking listening.
I suspect that every time a white person responds to a black person’s complaints with “well, not me…” it comes across as at best a little ridiculous. Myself included.
Few of us want to imagine ourselves as being racist, but benefiting from a racist system without trying to do anything to change it is, by itself, at best ignorant and at worst racist.
I’ll never claim to understand what non-white people go through, or non-male/non-straight people for that matter. But I’ll try to listen and understand. Maybe other people should, too.
So have you read the “Living While Black” thread? Because you seem to be making generic points about white people and black people that are not responsive to any of the actual problems that people have expressed with Huey.
Oh, they got their HOLY LAND back! Well, then it’s all okay! Everything’s all sunshine and roses for the Jews now! :rolleyes:
The reason I don’t like Huey has fuck all to do with his anger about racism. He’s got plenty of valid complaints there. It’s the fact that he’s an asshole and uses “but but but RACISM!!!” as an excuse. Attacking peoples kids is being an asshole. Period. Claiming, “but I’m an oppressed person!” isn’t a valid excuse. He doesn’t want to be nice? Fine. But then don’t expect anyone else to play nice either. Don’t call people racial slurs, and then claim it’s okay, because you’re a minority, so you get a free pass. (His comments about “imported children”, whatever it was he called Bricker, comments about kids with autism, etc) THAT is being an asshole.
If someone shoves someone down the stairs, they’re being an asshole. I don’t care what their race/religion/age/sexual orientation is, they’re an asshole. If someone insults a family member of mine, for no reason, they’re an asshole.
His claims that we’re attacking him because he’s black would make about as much sense as me saying you’re attacking me because I’m a woman.
Do you have any idea how incredibly patronizing your attitude is? Black people can’t HELP being emotional – they’re so oppressed and fed up, they have no other way of acting. It’s so insane.
The reason people believe he’s a troll, (not a racist), is because a.) he only posts about one subject and one subject only and b.) he posts only in the Pit. Those are usually big signs that someone’s a troll, no matter WHAT they’re posting about.
There are no winners in the Oppression Olympics.
(I listened to what he had to say. I dropped out a long time ago)
I skimmed it, especially paying attention to the last few pages. I read both these threads and spent some time formulating my post above. My main take-away was that people hijacked the shit out of a thread about the suffering of black people to try to alleviate their guilt about their own inaction, along the lines of “but I can’t possibly be racist…” At the very least we should make an effort to learn and attempt to understand, though understanding will probably elude us.
And accusing Huey or being racist? Well, tough shit. Everyone’s racist. It’s up to us how much we’re willing to recognize and act on it.
If someone says “white people are racist” and the response is basically “no, you’re racist!” Well, that’s hypocritical as shit as far as I’m concerned. Black people are perfectly justified in being angry at how things have gone for them in the US, and I don’t think it’s my place to judge.
And basically my point is that if Huey wasn’t provocative then this thread wouldn’t exist, and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. He’s confrontational because he has to be, or else he gets ignored, and the very real problems that he’s trying to address get ignored.
Is he offensive? From a white perspective, even a baseline liberal white perspective, yes. But is he wrong? Not my call. I’m not fit to judge his experiences in this country. Are you assuming that you are? Mighty fucking white of you.
So your handing out patronizing lectures on how we should all listen and understand like you do. But you haven’t actually bothered to read the thread.
And I’ve never “assumed” anything remotely like this. I’ve emphasize several times the diametric opposite - that the first thing we must always do is shut up and listen - and you seem to know nothing about the actual complaints against Huey’s behavior. So obviously you haven’t bothered to read this thread either.
Fuck off, you patronizing idiot.
There is a difference between listening to what people have to say and accepting their bigotry.
I fucking tried when he first got here. I tried to help him. Hell, it was my idea to push for a “Living while Black” thread rather than his that sounded accusatory. And, for a short while, it seemed he was trying not to offend people.
But that went out the window. And even then I tried to help. But the Bricker situation is exactly when I gave up on him. I decided that, if a white racist had said that shit, they’d be on my ignore list, and so I treated him equally.
I still question if he’s real, because assholes like him are exactly the right wing stereotype. I also question it because of that post where he sees how many times he can slip in the n-word. There was no fucking reason for it.
I can’t say I have a lot of black real-life friends, but I’ve discussed racial issues with black people all the time, and at most they would use the word once, when discussing the word itself.
The deflection is strong in this one.
And you still don’t comprehend that this is the equivalent of “some of my best friends are black…”?
Discussing race is not the same as understanding the experiences of someone from another race.
Oh, I see you went to the Huey school of rhetoric (earlier reincarnated as asahi’s “struck a nerve”). When faced with criticism, ignore the substance of the criticism and accuse the person of being “fragile”. If someone gets pissed off at you, you must have fearlessly spoken the truth, because it’s not as though other things such as acting like a supercilious hypocritical wanker ever gets a reaction out of people.
You two would probably get along just great - you could tell people that one of your friends is black.
If you want people to take any of your dickish patronizing comments seriously, at least have the respect to go and read the fucking threads that you’re commenting on, rather than projecting/manufacturing what faux pas you imagine we have probably committed and telling us where we went wrong.