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shakran · 01-26-2004, 08:54 AM

THE AWARD AT THE SCHOOL WAS CLEARY INTENDED TO BE GIVEN TO A BLACK STUDENT WHATEVER TERM THEY USED TO DESCRIBE THE STUDENTS RACE.

Then the award was racist and shouldn't have been there. Listen, if we want to solve the race problems, we have to stop making such a damn big deal out of race. All this does is say "BLACK PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT! THEY'RE VERY DIFFERENT! That's why we need a special award only for them!"

That's about the stupidest way you could possibly go about trying to get people to stop thinking in racial terms. As long as people continue to think of someone's race first (it's never "that lawyer who lives down the street" - it's always "that black guy who lives down the street") then race will continue to be an issue.

(put on your fire suit. Rant ahead)

RACE IS IRRELEVANT when evaluating a person. Before this thread, I never knew BuddaH was black, and I didn't give a damn either. I judged him based on what he said, not on what he looked like. Him being black doesn't make what he said any different than if he'd been a white guy saying the same thing. Wouldn't it be nice if we could approach the real world like that, where (as Dr. King said) people are judged based on what they do rather than their genetics.

That's why I applaud the actions of these students. They saw a situation that, in the absolute best case scenario, will create an officially sanctioned divide between the races, highlighting that blacks and whites are fundamentally different and need separate programs. They didn't like it and decided to make a point. And of course, the school responded in the same fashion as that elementary school did to the kid that figured out how to use Windows Messenger. They said "Hey! Kids are thinking on their own! Shit! That's not supposed to happen - we're supposed to have a bunch of mindless automatons in here that we can drone to until they're adults! We're supposed to have a nice easy job and instead these kids are thinking! Suspend 'em!"

Which of course sends the message that if you're black and don't like something related to race, you can shout about it till the cows come home. You can even make a multimillion dollar career off of flaming racist "comedy" as long as it's racist toward whites (Chris Rock). But if a white guy sees an injustice toward whites and comments about it, he's a racist, he's in the KKK, he's Hitler's protege, etc. It's a ridiculous double standard.

I'm not for a minute denying that black people have had a tough row to hoe in this country. Slavery and the rampant discrimination that followed slavery's end was abhorrent, and I'd like to think that if I were living during that time I'd have been fighting against it, but the fact is, I wasn't. I never owned slaves. I never made black people drink out of separate fountains. I never discriminated based on their skin color, and I'm frankly tired of being treated as though I committed all these crimes. No black person alive today was the victim of United States slavery, so I wish people would stop harping on it as though they themselves were tortured in the cotton fields.

The bottom line is that society bitches and moans that race is an issue at all, yet society continues to take great strides in MAKING race an issue. If you don't like sunburn, get the hell out of the sun. If you don't like racism, stop promoting ANY FORM of it.

01-26-2004, 08:54 AM	#72 (permalink)
shakran Tone.	*THE AWARD AT THE SCHOOL WAS CLEARY INTENDED TO BE GIVEN TO A BLACK STUDENT WHATEVER TERM THEY USED TO DESCRIBE THE STUDENTS RACE.* Then the award was racist and shouldn't have been there. Listen, if we want to solve the race problems, we have to stop making such a damn big deal out of race. All this does is say "BLACK PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT! THEY'RE VERY DIFFERENT! That's why we need a special award only for them!" That's about the stupidest way you could possibly go about trying to get people to stop thinking in racial terms. As long as people continue to think of someone's race first (it's never "that lawyer who lives down the street" - it's always "that black guy who lives down the street") then race will continue to be an issue. (put on your fire suit. Rant ahead) RACE IS IRRELEVANT when evaluating a person. Before this thread, I never knew BuddaH was black, and I didn't give a damn either. I judged him based on what he said, not on what he looked like. Him being black doesn't make what he said any different than if he'd been a white guy saying the same thing. Wouldn't it be nice if we could approach the real world like that, where (as Dr. King said) people are judged based on what they do rather than their genetics. That's why I applaud the actions of these students. They saw a situation that, in the absolute best case scenario, will create an officially sanctioned divide between the races, highlighting that blacks and whites are fundamentally different and need separate programs. They didn't like it and decided to make a point. And of course, the school responded in the same fashion as that elementary school did to the kid that figured out how to use Windows Messenger. They said "Hey! Kids are thinking on their own! Shit! That's not supposed to happen - we're supposed to have a bunch of mindless automatons in here that we can drone to until they're adults! We're supposed to have a nice easy job and instead these kids are thinking! Suspend 'em!" Which of course sends the message that if you're black and don't like something related to race, you can shout about it till the cows come home. You can even make a multimillion dollar career off of flaming racist "comedy" as long as it's racist toward whites (Chris Rock). But if a white guy sees an injustice toward whites and comments about it, he's a racist, he's in the KKK, he's Hitler's protege, etc. It's a ridiculous double standard. I'm not for a minute denying that black people have had a tough row to hoe in this country. Slavery and the rampant discrimination that followed slavery's end was abhorrent, and I'd like to think that if I were living during that time I'd have been fighting against it, but the fact is, I wasn't. I never owned slaves. I never made black people drink out of separate fountains. I never discriminated based on their skin color, and I'm frankly tired of being treated as though I committed all these crimes. No black person alive today was the victim of United States slavery, so I wish people would stop harping on it as though they themselves were tortured in the cotton fields. The bottom line is that society bitches and moans that race is an issue at all, yet society continues to take great strides in MAKING race an issue. If you don't like sunburn, get the hell out of the sun. If you don't like racism, stop promoting ANY FORM of it.