Even straw has a context
Lucysnow said:
I'm sure the Irish will be happy to hear that they never had to suffer as much as non-white people by the hands of other white people.
Yes, the Irish Catholics suffered so horribly under their Black African Protestant masters.
To the one, I think you're mixing issues. It's not that groups of white people haven't suffered ridiculous oppression. Rather, when in history has white skin ever been subject to the sort of horrors visited upon blacks and indigenous tribes in the Americas? Or Aboriginal tribes in Australia?
Basically I read you saying that its 'ok' to treat another as one would not like to be treated because of some PAST suffering right? Its a valid excuse?
I think you're leaping a just a bit with that.
Why are they too weak? I mean if any human being can 'handle' it then I don't see what is so different about a white human being that they too couldn't handle what happened to indigenous people. Do you think you could have handled being white and protestant on ST. Bartholomew's Day?
I'm not saying they're too weak. You're leaping again. To reiterate:
But could white people really handle the kind of shit we put blacks and indigenous Americans through in this country? Look at the tantrums people throw at the idea that other communities should be given a route to catch up and recover from past injustice. If we don't go forward with those old injustices intact, white people are apparently horribly oppressed. It's not that there aren't questions to be explored in this context, but to go by the rhetoric slung around, these complaints make white people sound like ... um ... yeah. Makes them sound incredibly weak.
I'm of the opinion that white people, subject to the same sorts of oppression, would respond and behave just like any other oppressed people. But to listen to some people
howl that we shouldn't go forward unless we preserve and protect injustices of old, it does raise the question.
Do you see what you are doing?
Actually, I think it's what
you are doing. Tilting windmills. Raising demons to slay. Constructing straw men.
You are saying that the sins of the father rest on the son.
The sins of the father are necessarily visited on the son. The Civil War was a hundred forty-five years ago, and we're still feeling the aftershocks. This is a matter of practical reality, not subjective will.
And you are also saying that its okay to kick someone because you disliked being kicked yourself.
Hardly. Look before you leap. Sometimes it's a long way down a sheer drop.
An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.
Indeed.
This is not about 'complaints' by whites, I am not speaking of any one subject here like complaints against affirmative action or anything like that. I am asking if its okay, open season if you will, to disrespect certain groups because one is a minority. Is it okay for someone to be disparaging towards all Jews because the injustices of Israel for example? Or is this wrong simply because the subject are jews?
Depends on the disrespect, both enacted and perceived.
Racism is a complex and dynamic issue, Lucy. Some people figured that since the slaves were emancipated, everything was well and good. These days, some people think that just because Barack Obama has been elected president, we're officially done with racism in America. Yet look at our history. Land seizures and broken treaties with the tribes. The U.S. Army pursued the Nez Perce across three states. History textbooks, for years, have told myths about black and indigenous people in order to justify and augment white pride. Law enforcement disproportionately targets dark skin; how is it that the vast majority of crack users are white while the vast majority of crack prosecutions are against blacks? Could the Tulia outrage ever have happened if a black officer of similar repute had accused that many white people?
It depends on the disrespect. In the 1990s, Columbus was the object of much dispute. Many accused indigenous and academic interests of unfair revisionism because they questioned the Columbus myth. My generation was taught of Columbus as a hero; most didn't learn of his crimes until college. And yet it is somehow unfair—
racist—even, to point out the bad things about Columbus that we have in his own damn hand.
No, it's not okay to denigrate all Jews for the actions of Israel. Neither is it fair to condemn protests against Israeli actions as anti-Semitic.
I'm asking because if we are looking in society and on these boards to create a modicum of respect then I believe its important that we don't blindly insinuate about any said group.
Fair enough. But one person's blind insinuation is another's natural conclusion from both study and experience. As such, we need to look deeper than the superficial rhetoric itself.
So if we say that white society was or is racist we then take it on and forget that there were whites who fought against slavery and who risked their own lives in order to do the right thing, like taking in Jews during the second world war for example.
Those efforts are important to note, Lucy, but they should not obscure the fact of how much white people have profited off racism over the years, either. And in Germany, you'll still, over sixty years later, find Lutherans agonizing over the question of whether they did enough. I can't imagine having to make that decision. It's easy enough to say what I would have done, but is it true? Can I really know that? Would I, in my late years, weep for my own belief that I didn't do enough?
You speak as if white's have never known suffering and have never known poverty and disenfranchisement FROM ITS OWN SOCIETY, its not true and you know it.
Do you believe or accept that there is a difference between what you choose and what you are?
A white person can be Catholic or Protestant. So can a black person. But a black person can never be white, regardless of what we might think of Michael Jackson. And a white person can never be black except in movies starring C. Thomas Howell or Robert Downey, Jr.
You're a woman. One can presume with some safety that you have faced circumstances in which you were, as a human being, denigrated for being a woman. In the past, you would be obliged by law to open your legs for your husband on a regular basis, or else you weren't being a good enough wife. In the past, you would be expected to let sleazy men fondle you because that's what you were worth in the workplace. Men have been the empowered political majority of aeons. And look what makes them feel ashamed of being men. They have to be accused of being violent criminals—rapists, child molesters, &c.—or women. In the gay fray, we find that the empowered majority of men would absolutely freak out if they were treated the way they treat women.
Yes, white people treat each other like shit. But as a collective identity, they have
never been treated the way blacks were in America, or indigenous tribes in the Americas and Australia. And, yes,
you know that.
Else you wouldn't be leaping to battle straw men.
So basically you are saying that white people are inherently racist and everything European culture has ever done or produced was at the disadvantage of everyone else.
No, that's what you're saying I'm saying. There is an inherent degree of racism in white culture, but in many—perhaps most—cases its circumstantial background noise.
We are, as a species, emerging from a zero-sum presupposition. Simply because the results of our former paradigm aren't always pleasing doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to them. But people have, for as long as people have existed, exploited one another. This is a general fact of life. It's also one that is within our power to change, but that's a long process and we're working on it.
However, some exploitation has been based on stupid divisions. Catholic and Protestant? I think the world is sick of that one. Still, though, one is not born Catholic or Protestant the way one is born black or female.
Jesus I wonder what Thomas Paine would think if he were alive right now? Burn the Rights of Man I suppose I mean what good was it all right? All of European art, music, literature, scientific and social advancement all boils down to a racist agenda perpetrated against the rest of the world (the non white world) 
I just wanted to check on this, as I might have made a mistake at the outset.
Am I supposed to be taking you seriously at this point?
If we are to speak in such a way then can I join in and speak of all the harm jews have brought to the world with their scientist and his a-bomb? I mean they should all really be ashamed of themselves especially considering present crimes and misdemeanors currently going on in the evil jewish state of israel. I mean the Japanese treated the Chinese like shit but hey at least they ain't white right? And hell they never created anything that killed so many.
Again, I just want to check up on this. And, no, this isn't a joke like last time.
Can you tell the difference between various forms of accusation and condemnation, for instance, those based in reality and those based in fantasy?
The A-bomb was a Jewish conspiracy? Or did it simply involve some Jews? The Manhattan Project was headed by Lt. Gen. Leslie Richard Groves, descended from Huguenots. But, what, were the other 130,000 people who worked on the project all Jews? And President Franklin Roosevelt, was he a secret Jew?
The only thing we can conclude about the Jews from the atomic bomb is already self-evident: The fact of being Jewish does not automatically bestow a person with perfect righteousness.
As to the Japanese, that's a stretch, even for you. One could just as easily point out that the Chinese weren't white enough to warrant our help against the Japanese. The truth of or entry to the War in the Pacific is far, far removed from that.
Right and all blacks should be proud but all whites should not be proud of anything produced by their culture since the only thing that is of any importance was slavery and colonialism.
Well, at least I can tell Gustav he was right.
How about this: Would you please offer us a source for a quote in your topic post? I would appreciate an opportunity to consider the broader discussion surrounding the question of,
What have you to be proud of thats exclusively "white"?
After all, I constructed a fairly specific example of a context in which that question becomes valid:
Even in my lifetime, there have been loud debates about white people building the country. Okay, fine.
But, of course, that's irrelevant to you, because it's far easier to simply maintain your own context and deny others theirs.
So cough up the link, please. Let us see where that question came from in the first place. If you're going to misrepresent me, why should we presume you're representing the original question accurately?
Ah, but of course. You have no context for it:
Tiassa: I would ask, then, what was the context of the white pride question?
The context is the same as it would be for any race. Does one have the right to be proud of their culture. You're response seems to be no.
Of course. We trust you.
So basically you are saying that because of all of the world injustices piled up on one plate and offered for us to vomit over that members cannot be treated equally on this board. In other words its wrong to be disparaging against someone's nation, religion or race as long as its non-european or non-western and not atheist because they all at least have it coming to them.
Thanks for clearing this all up for me Tiassa.
Don't thank me. You're doing all the clearing up for yourself. Hell, I'm just a mannequin to dress up according to your needs.
Damn man you should have more self-respect. In this day and age no Black person would have put up with that kind of malarky .
I'm sure that makes sense. In your own context, of course.
You want context:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=95380
There are others but I can't be bothered right now to dig them all up.
Of course you can't. We understand.
Then again, that particular thread is a disgrace. With such a dishonest premise for the opening post, no wonder it was buried in Free Thoughts.
