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Originally Posted by mixedmedia
When Chris Rock makes a joke about white people its funny because we know it's just a joke.
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No. It is not just a joke, and frankly it's not funny. All Rock is doing is once again reemphasizing that skin color is a material difference. He, like every other racist, is poisoning our society.
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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.
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We should have a natural aversion to ANY form of racial taunting. It's not funny to call me a cracker. It's not funny to call a Muslim a camel jockey. It's not funny to call a Mexican a beaner. It's not funny to call a black man a nigger. It's just, plain, not funny.
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What's so wrong about showing one group a little more sensitivity?
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Because it's inherently racist. Hey, you're black, so I'm gonna treat you differently. What's wrong with showing EVERYONE that sympathy?
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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"?
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Once again, I have never nor will I ever use the term "reverse racism." There is no such thing. It's ALL racism. We end with the "I have a dream thing" because Dr. King had this figured out 40 years ago, and society still hasn't gotten smart enough to catch up to him. Judge people on their behavior. Not on their skin. It's a really simple concept, but for various reasons people are afraid of it.
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To mask their resentment for having to carry the baggage of the past?
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I will not pretend that I do not resent being blamed for slavery. I do. Absolutely. Slavery is not my fault. I didn't institute it. I didn't participate in it. None of my ancestors participated in it (we didn't get to this country until after it was abolished anyway) but if they had, I still would not be responsible for their behavior. I cannot control or change events that occurred long before I was born. I find them reprehensible, but I refuse to take the blame for them.
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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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If you truly have Dr. King's dream, then you are pursuing it the wrong way. Dr. King hated racism. He didn't hate only a specific kind of racism. He hated racism. All of it. Every last bit. If you really want to realize his dream then you will fight racism, no matter who is guilty of it.
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What revenge exactly? Being called a cracker? Whitey? What revenge are you talking about? Who is tracking you down?
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Yes, being racist to those who's ancestors were racist to your ancestors is a form of revenge. And it's stupid. And it won't make things any better no matter how long people do it.
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It will be let go of when the time comes.
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And I say that time is now.
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Institutionalized racism wasn't helping society grow either but it took us 100 years after the civil war to figure that one out
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And this justifies us taking another century to figure out how we should live? Just because people in the past were idiotic jackasses doesn't mean we have an excuse to be such 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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No, it's not. But as I mentioned we can remember the past without letting it poison us. Excuses such as "when the time comes" and "it won't happen over night" are just that. Excuses. WHY won't it happen overnight? Because racists don't want it to happen. We must purge that influence from our society.
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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.
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No one is denying anything. I don't deny that our past has a bearing on our present. I am saying that we must recognize that and take steps to prevent the past from poisoning our present. We must be willing to let go of the hate.
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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.
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I am not so willing. Not because I feel offended when some idiot calls me a name. I have thicker skin than that. But I'm not willing to let anyone get away with being a racist because I am sick to death of dealing with racism. Racism is asinine. There is absolutely no basis in fact or logic to think differently about someone because they are a different color. We humans like to run around saying we're the smartest creatures on the planet, oh how wonderful we are, yet we're too damn stupid to figure out something as basic as the concept that people should be judged on their merits. I'm frankly tired of being a member of a group (humans) that revels in its own glorious stupidity. We humans as a species have an awesome potential to grow, and it's about damn time we started doing it.
And thanks, NG
