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Originally Posted by shakran
I don't think I ever said that. My position is that there isn't any difference between Imus calling a group of black women "nappy headed ho's" and Jackson calling Jews "hymies" or Chris Rock calling white people "motherfuckin' crackers."
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The statement that I was addressing implied that. The whole "reverse racism" concept implies that. I was responding, in an open way, to several people here who would like to use this incident as a platform to highlight what they deem to be "reverse racism" in our culture. It's really quite simple.
When Chris Rock makes a joke about white people its funny because we know it's just a joke.
When a white person makes a joke about black people we have a natural aversion to it because
we know our history of racism in America. Not enough time has passed to heal that gaping wound. Therefore I think it is natural
and appropriate to have this negative reaction against insensitive remarks made by white people about black people. People react to it, both black and white, there's no denying it, and I think it's a good thing. It's a natural thing considering where we've come from. What's so wrong about showing one group a little more sensitivity? And why is that the people crying out the most against this natural reaction seem to start with the "reverse racism" thing and then end up with the "I have a dream thing"? To mask their resentment for having to carry the baggage of the past? I have that dream AND I give credence and space to the very real sensitivity that exists between white and black people that we have inherited.
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That's certainly not my attitude. There's a lot of racism coming from all sides of the ethnic playground. Racism doesn't become better or more understandable or more acceptable based on the color of the racist. That very concept is racist.
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Again, this ignores the point I have been trying to make. I guess I'm not expressing myself very clearly.
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Yes. If they want a colorblind society that judges people based on their merits rather than how light or dark they are, then yes. They're going to have to get over it. I got beaten up when I was in 5th grade. Should I be hunting that guy down now, *cough* years later? I mean, damn, can't you understand why I shouldn't get over it? Yeah, it sucks that I got beaten up, but I had to let it go. It sucks that black people were treated poorly because of their race, but at some point, you have to let it go. It sucks, because it's very natural and human to want to hold a grudge, and to want revenge. But seeking revenge isn't going to help society grow, and it isn't going to end racism.
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What revenge exactly? Being called a cracker? Whitey? What revenge are you talking about? Who is tracking you down?
It will be let go of when the time comes. Institutionalized racism wasn't helping society grow either but it took us 100 years after the civil war to figure that one out...and it took the National Guard and a lot of needless death and violence to actually force it onto the South.
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My goal is to end this asinine concept that people should be treated or viewed differently because of their skin color. That's a goal that will never be realized until we put the past where it belongs, behind us. I'm not saying forget about the past - we should remember the past and continue to learn lessons from it. But if we dwell on the past, and continue holding resentments based on the past, we will just poison ourselves.
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I don't think we are holding onto the past. The past still has a grip on us all. This is what we need to live with. We can't wish it or deny it away and it's not going to disappear overnight.
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Your comparison of Iraq/Vietnam was irrelevant. I advocate learning from the past. If Bush had looked at Vietnam, and had been smart enough to care about learning something instead of witching up his own unfounded beliefs and then refusing to look at anything else, he could have learned from the past. Likewise, we can learn from our appalling past of racism. We can learn that racism is evil, and we can learn that we must never allow it to stain our country again. But until we eliminate racism entirely, we can't achieve that goal.
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It is not irrelevant in the light of our insistence of Vietnam having a bearing on our present, and at the same time denying that our past of racism and segregation has a bearing on it as well. Our past with racism and segregation is the reason we are even having this conversation. Duh!? That's my point.
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What matters is the experience of today. We have all experienced a world in which people actually think skin pigmentation means something. That's bad enough. It's time to eliminate that thought from our society. We can't do that if Imus calls people nappy headed ho's, or if Rock calls people crackers.
We must make a choice. Do we want to wallow in the misery of the past, and therefore never see the colorblind society that we should unquestionably have, or do we want to actually look at TODAY, and figure out how to make a better society for everyone, TODAY?
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This is what I want, too. But it is my opinion that it will take time. And as a white person, I'm fully prepared to be the brunt of jokes and the wild imaginings of people like Louis Farrakhan. And at the same time fully understand and realize that the same kind of talk or jokes made about a black person from the mouth of a white person strikes a different and more painful, more awkward, more uncomfortable chord. There's nothing unfair or abnormal about that.