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Originally Posted by roachboy
i see the arguments that ng and shakran are making, but i dont accept the premises. it seems to me that the entire logic of "reverse dscrimination" presupposes that racism is effectively over, an element of an irrelevant past--which it isnt--and that the history of racism around which the united states was built has somehow been addressed--it hasnt and i am not really sure what that would even mean short of revolution (which i would not oppose in principle)---so that problems of discrimination based on something as stupid as skin color is not only a matter of rhetoric and unintended consequences of rhetoric.
to accept these arguments, you have to agree with one or another version of that backstory. i dont.
without that backstory, the reduction of racism to a trope makes no sense.
the trick is that what they are arguing about the effects of racist tropes and their appropriation/usage is not in itself wrong.
so in my view, the problem is not with the arguments themselves, then, but in what these arguments presuppose. there IS NO SYMMETRY that links the situation of white folk to that of african-americans, particularly not if you take the history of the united states into account when you think about this--a history which is still relevant in that is shapes everything about the present state of affairs, like it or not. you cannot simply wish away the fact of domination and its history. you cannot wish the past away.
history's a bitch that way, aint it?
you dont like it, but you cant make it go away.
so long as there is no rapprochement at the level or premises, the thread will simply turn round and round across a pattern of term substitution.
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The basis for history being a bitch, though, is that we here in the early part of the 21 century are being held accountable for the sins of people 300 years ago!!!! And being held responsible for the viewpoints prevailent up to 30 years ago, simply based on the color of
our skin.
There comes a point when you have to say 'enough already!!' and let it go.
We as humans will always have preconceived notions based on appearance, like I'm a firey person based on my hair or someone must be lazy because they're overweight.
We've come a long way, but in doing so, it seems that some things have actually gotten worse instead of better, and being oversensitive and attempting to be constantly PC are among them. I joke around with a young black man at work, such as his telling me that a manager can't leave because they're the only two black men at work; so I responded that we'll tell a Puerto Rican coworker to lay out in the sun more....or that if I get a tan, we'll compare notes. He calls himself the 'token black guy' when he goes out with his friends from work. But we don't joke on the radio, so I guess we're safe, eh? Appearance, differences, et al-they're all there staring right at us and all this PC bullshit tries to pretend it isn't. But I did not own slaves, I didn't practice Jim Crow laws, and I should not be pointed at as if I did and neither should anyone else, any more than any black person should be pointed to(or acting as) as the victim of those times. As long as that continues, the wall of division will continue to stand. And people like Sharpton and Imus seem to take pleasure in adding bricks to it. And why not? It gets them 'known', gives them more air time, more words in the newspaper. But it does nothing to mend fences.