Steve feels it. Scott and Zo feel it. Everybody feels it, it seems: the deterioration of the state of race relations in modern America. How much of it is grassroots, and how much division is being pushed down from above?
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52 replies on “Race Relations”
One of the most insidious tenets of the CRT/DEI dogma is that if you are of the ‘privileged’ race, you are racist in your DNA and must drive the demon out if you have a hope of redemption. This attitude is often espoused by well-meaning people who just want to do the right thing, so they swallow this bilge and think they are doing the right thing in stamping out this so-called ‘inherent racism’ by following the DEI/CRT rules. Those lawyers and the judge in the Colorado Springs court assumed they were dealing with a room of hopelessly racist jackasses who had to be coaxed away from their inclinations. We’re supposed to accept that we are hopelessly racist, and the fact that we don’t think we are is proof that they are right. It’s like that other Leftist religion of Climate Change. In the Leftist mind, having nothing to prove your dogma is true is the very proof that it is.
Make that “Rage Relations”
OK that’s pretty good!
Divide and conquer is an age-old method. Because it works. If we all become Americans, they cannot defeat us. I feel awful that they are bringing back to us the fact that we HAVE to notice the race, or sex, or sexual preference, or gender identity, or, or, the list keeps growing. If they can make us all feel that we have to notice this, then we have to place ourselves in some group or another. And oppose the other groups who identify differently.
One huge shame started with the guy who that punk police guy held down for selling a cigarette. Killed for selling cigarettes. I can’t breathe became the mantra. Had they made this about police brutality, and specific cops who are just that way, we’d have all been on board. And perhaps we could have called for some sort of resolutions. Instead they made it about race (and the cop was not eve white). And then we were all forced to choose a side on the race argument. And it continued to spiral downwards from there.
I sent you a message Scott via the contact link, but I haven’t heard back, and I have other things to deal with. So here it is: Re: Rumble channel(s). Often your videos do not show up on the Rumble channel that has more followers. Which I safely assume is the secondary channel. I have two screen caps which suggest to me, that whoever is uploading when this happens, is uploading it straight to the main channel “Bill Whittle.” I’m relatively certain now, that when you post a video to the secondary channel, it posts to both. So the person uploading these, should be uploading it to “Bill Whittle: Conservative Opinion | Humor”Here’s the first screen cap.
Here’s the second screen cap…what’s missing? Besides Bill’s face in the thumbnail…Rumble still has their own issues with that.
Don’t know where Bill is, but have a friend in Virginia deeply involved with Spectrum over lack of service. This seems to ba a far reaching, wide spread issue. Wonder if it is related to “weather balloons”?
I’m on Spectrum right now. No issues ever for over a day. And issues lasting more than a couple of hours are rare. And typically weather related for over 2 hrs (cable connection down).
Not sure about Virginia, but I’d bet good money that at least part of the problem in California is regulation oriented. I.e. “You can’t do that, you don’t have permission! Fill out these three forms, get the licence, do an environmental impact study, and pay the fees.(bribes)”
There might be a national/corporate “we don’t want to spend money hiring enough techs” aspect to this, but when you have abberant weather events that a local / regional plan does not take into account, even in an act of God manner, you will just be caught with your pants down and things take a while to fix. Whether something really is an act of God or is just bad planning is what kills a company sometimes.
I think Cali just doesn’t know how to deal with various weather events anymore because they have confused climate with weather, plus Harry’s mentioned regulations make it really hard for some people in certain industries to deal with things they can figure out are coming.
True that. I noticed while living in California for a decade and a half that they have no idea how to deal with ‘real’ weather because they’re spoiled by their mild climate. Weather the rest of America just shrugs off causes all sorts of problems in CA. Because that’s when failure points in infrastructure manifest themselves.
In California everything but mild temperatures and dry weather is a ‘storm’. In 15 years of living on the southern end of Los Angeles County I do not recall any weather that I would have considered a real storm. I barely recall seeing some distant lighting, once. The Calinoids were all freaked out about that and thinking it might be the end of the world.
What compounds that is Calinoids think their situation whether climatological, economic or political is ‘normal’ and the rest of the world is unbearable and abnormal.
When I was in the planning stages of moving everyone was telling me not to go because there would be snow and cold where I was headed to. I’m from northern Minnesota and I moved to the Mid-Atlantic … Winter is nearly over here and not even a single snowflake fell this year. I’ll take four distinct seasons over the nuttiness and ill will in California every time.
Great show, guys. Kudos to your wife, Steve.
It was getting much better, but the Al Sharptons of the world were always there, and the Critical Theorists were quietly taking over the universities.
And here we are.
I am an amateur musician who loves to play and sing songs … I’ve been doing Gordon Lightfoot’s “Heaven Help the Devil” … a more obscure song, but it’s got some great lines, including this one that describes what was quietly going building to undo the progress being made even as the progress was being made.
“We have been captured by the thieves of the night”
Great song.
(8) Gordon Lightfoot ~ Heaven Help the Devil – YouTube
In this land of chance do we know right from wrong?
Even at a glance we know the road is long
We don’t owe a single thing to anyone
Most of us do not believe in come what may
Everything we fought for was in vain they say
Even when called upon to throw our lives away
We have been captured by the thieves of the night
Held for ransom if you please
Heaven help the devil may he have a few unpleasant memories
In these times of trial and uncertainty
I have thought what does this freedom mean to me
Is it just some long forgotten fantasy?
Our love for each other may not be explained
We live in a world where tears must fall like rain
Most of us don’t wish to cause each other pain
We have been captured by the thieves of the night
Held for ransom if you please
Heaven help the devil may he have a few unpleasnt memories
To every unsung hero in the universe
To those who roam the skies and those who roam the earth
To all good men of reason may they never thirst
We have wings to guide us through the timeless sea
And faith that will remain through all eternity
We try to be helpful to the ones in need
Yet we have been captured by the thieves of the night
Held for ransom if you please
Heaven help the devil may he have a few unpleasant memories
Lightfoot is tragically under appreciated in my mind. Thank you for sharing!
When did we start capitalizing colors? It seems that everywhere I read about a black person it is capitalized, while white is never capitalized.
And if it takes one to know one, why aren’t those calling out others as racist considered racist?
I used to have a great deal of respect for Maya Angelou until I read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In it, she says that black people cannot be racist because they don’t have power. I thought racism was treating someone differently because of their color. Any person can be a racist, not just those with power. IMO, the color of a person’s skin is one of the least interesting things about them.
I have taken to asking people, before we get into a discussion of racism, if they know why racism is wrong. If they can tell me in one sentence. I can tell you in six words. But I want to know if THEY can articulate it.
It has nothing to do with who has the power. It is wrong at a very fundamental level.
Here’s the answer – and using the answer you can dispense with a lot of things “they” say are racist that aren’t, and call out things they say aren’t as well.
“It is unfair to the individual.”
That’s it. That is what is wrong with racism. Anything tacked on to that is superfluous, and likely intentionally inaccurate.
Perhaps that is a sufficient reason for some, but I find it lacking. There are countless things that are “unfair to the individual.” Racism is actually more than that in it breeds in one “tribe” of humans antipathy toward another “tribe” that leads to ostricization of the “other” and it often leads to violent subjugation and/or destruction of the “other.” None of those behaviors are how we are instructed by our Creator to employ. racism is more than just “unfair” in that it actively intends psychological, spiritual and often physical harm to others. To be “unfair” to the individual, one can exhibit nothing more than apathy/disinterest for another, which, in my mind, is a far less problematic than the antipathy of racism. In short, I cannot saisfactorily articulate my aversion to racism in a single, six-word sentence.
Final note: Some synonyms of antipathy are animosity, animus, antagonism, enmity, hostility, and rancor. All of these begin to describe to be why racism is so abhorrent to me.
Well, yes, it does involve all of those things, but all of those things also accompany countless other things.
The fact that countless other things are unfair to the individual doesn’t mean that it isn’t why racism is wrong.
Racism isn’t always rooted in antipathy, though even when it isn’t it can and does very often lead to it, eventually.
There is, indeed, much more one can articulate one’s aversion to something than stating the fundamental underlying issue that underscores why it is wrong – regardless of whether the particular incident is rooted in antipathy or ignorance.
Point being, if we can’t even agree that is the fundamental starting point, we can’t begin to delve into a rational conversation about all of the other evils it precipitates.
Ah … I see. I was unclear. My point was rooted in my fundamental belief that just because something in life is unfair to an individual does not make it wrong. For example, being born into poverty without charity from the wealthy may be construed as unfair to the poor individual, but that does not make wrong the lack of provided charity. Being required to perform back-breaking manual labor when one’s neighbor does not share his life of ease and comfort may be unfair, but it is not wrong — the wealthy neighbor is not inherently guilty of any wrongdoing.
I could go on, but I think the point is clear that racism is wrong for reasons beyond any perceived unfairness to the individual.
Yes, my point is basically you, personally, being unfair to an individual is wrong. But of course there are all kinds of things that are really beyond our control that are unfair.
To go a little deeper, there are very few things, if any, that are psychologically more painful than being accused of something you did not do, especially if people believe it.
Groups cannot feel pain. Groups are not sentient. Only individuals are sentient, and only individuals feel pain. There may be sets of things that tend to cause more pain to people in some groups than others, true. But invariably, the human emotional root of the pain it causes is the same for everybody.
In other words, when you inflict undeserved pain on another individual, it is THE SAME PAIN that you feel when someone inflicts it upon you.
When we understand this, and see each other as individuals – in some ways another iteration of ourselves, it makes it personal. When you look into a stranger’s eyes you see another human being looking out at you and that person very likely has the same emotions, the same basic fears and worries you have. (Of course, as Jordan Peterson points out, this ALSO means you know how to inflict that very pain on others – which is evil.)
When you look at it this way, you will avoid judging individuals based on what others in whatever group(s) you CAN lump them into, no matter how many or few of them are guilty of whatever “crime” you are assigning to them based on group “membership”.
From there, EVERYTHING that is wrong with racism follows. You are *inflicting* undeserved pain on another individual.
We all have enough undeserved pain inflicted on us by the random forces of the universe. We don’t need to add more to it.
I have an anecdote that I use for young people in explaining the difference between Bigotry and Racism.
Two young people walk into a large lecture hall for Freshman chemistry. They look around and see the place filled with a bunch of Asians. They say to each other we are going to to get swallowed by the curve in this class, let’s find another time slot.
So they go to transfer to a different class and see the rednecks in bibb overalls and John Deere hats. They say to each other, this is the class. We can ride the curve to easy A’s with farmer Joe and his friends.
The first one is bigotry as they have presumed that the group of Asians will excel. It is still bigotry because they are making the presumption based on one outward data point.
The second is racism as not they are making a presumption based upon one outward data point and also that that data point makes the group inferior to them in some way. In this case intelligence.
As a third example, make the second lecture hall full of athletes. Your audience will immediate presume this is racism. Then you can spin it back to them for assuming two facts not given: That the athletes are black and the two students are not.
This is usually met by “but, but but. . .hmmmm”
There must be a subtlety between the first two groups that I’m missing. Couldn’t you also look at the first group and say that because they are Asian the presumption is that they are superior to me?
I hate to try to speak for Ron SAE but I think his point is that some people assume Asians are all brainiacs. So the presumption is that because they’re Asians they’re going to outcompete the non-Asians on a level playing field. Because people think Asians are all super smart …
They’re not. I know lots of Asians, including my Brother-in-Law … They’re just normal people raised with a killer work ethic. I grew up in agriculture so my work ethic isn’t too shabby either.
I haven’t met a lot of Asian geniuses but I’ve met a lot of hard working Asians. Not all of them by a long shot. I’ve known some Asian criminals and drug addicts too. That’s a paint job that’s rarely applied to Asian people. It’s there, because they’re just people too.
The bigotry is in the stereotyping Asians as all over achieving mental giants. The racism is in assuming that white guys in bib overalls and John Deere hats are all stupid. The Asians are not nearly so much different than anyone else and there are a lot of smart white people in work clothes and baseball caps. The assumptions of both bigotry and racism are false tests that lead to false results.
So no, I don’t think the presumption is that they’re superior to you. The presumption is that the people Ron is using in his anecdote will out compete the two class-hoppers he’s using as an example. When that kind of person comes up against competition from an Asian their Asian bigotry tells them they have an excuse to lose so they don’t try.
Then they blame the Asians for their failure. Because they’re bigots and their bigotry defeated them.
Precisely.
I don’t mean to belabor the point, but you assumed the guys in overalls and John Deere hats are white. Ron SAE didn’t say that. Are all rednecks white? Probably most, but all?
I know the term “redneck” refers to someone laboring under the hot sun and getting their neck sunburned. I looked up the definition for redneck on dictionary.com, which says “an uneducated white farm laborer, especially from the South”. So maybe all rednecks ARE white and I’m just splitting hairs.
Or maybe I just need to drop this, although I really like talking with you two!
One thing that really chaps my hide is when I’m reading something someone else has written where the writer just presumes the reader will know a significant datum and proceeds as if it were common knowledge. I did that to you and I apologize.
‘Redneck’ to me has been a common term that applies to straight white lower-middle class/high-lower class working people since as far back as I can remember. There were no people of any color but white in the schools I grew up in.
Where I went to school we had three classes or cliques of kids. Rednecks, Freaks and Jocks.
Rednecks were the kids in clean, serviceable but worn clothes trying to ‘learn their lessons’ so they didn’t get in trouble at home. They generally had a parochial attitude about things and this group while not solely from religious families contained a preponderance of religious members.
Jocks were kids whose grades were not as vital so long as they were sufficient to remain on whatever sports team they were playing for. The parents of Jocks generally put a premium on athletic performance over scholastic achievement.
Freaks were kids who embraced the counter-culture whether their parents approved (and generally that was not the case) or not. Freaks were the pot-smoking dopers that drew marijuana leaves on their notebook covers.
I didn’t really fit well into any of those groups and being as we moved when my Dad found a better job every couple/three years — I remained an outsider to a greater or lesser degree in school. When I matured enough to understand what was going on around me I was glad of my outsider status because it freed me from a degree of peer pressure and allowed me to date the cute girls from all the other cliques. 😉
So now you know the framework that applies when I use the word ‘redneck’. Again, I apologize for assuming everyone else would know how the word ‘redneck’ generally applies when I use it.
ACTS – if you had grown up where you live now, your Marine hide, neighbor helping, multiple generator owning, reliant on himself, gun owning self would probably be considered as a redneck by your neighbors, and it would be used as a term of endearment!
No matter where I live, people still think I am in the mafia.
I’ve always considered being called a redneck to be a compliment. I’m surrounded by people who would mostly call themselves rednecks and I fit right in. 🙂
So you can imagine how badly I didn’t fit in when I lived in California. My neighbors there hated me. I didn’t hate them, I reserve hate for the deserving and you have to deserve it a lot for me to hate you. Hate is serious business.
I did view them as a bunch of nitwits though. Nitwits are common but they’ve been allowed to overrun California. Sort of like having a cockroach infestation that you deal with by leaving food on the floor and counters. Then when you turn on the lights and they all scurry away you think you’ve fixed your cockroach problem …
That’s California in a nutshell. That the cockroaches have stripped of anything edible.
School as a kid was a different matter. I didn’t fit in with the rednecks because my Dad insisted that I could never wear jeans to school. Jeans were work clothes reserved for work and casual activities. In Dad’s way of thinking that didn’t include education. I had jeans, couldn’t wear ’em to school. I always had to wear knit slacks and a button shirt which was kind of the wrong uniform for the redneck clique, wrong for the jocks and way wrong for the freaks. But …
You’ve piqued my curiosity — Why do people think you’re in the mafia? From my point of view that’s not complimentary. An opinion of mine that didn’t change even after I binge watched The Sopranos a few months back. Mafioso are bad guys.
You don’t seem like a bad guy to me for some reason. 😉
I have run into a lot of people over the years who tend to assume that being of Italian decent and from the Bronx means that you are at the very least mafia adjacent.
Add in that my maternal grandfather actually had his own business in Hell’s Kitchen where he actually had to make his weekly payments (worth it to him, he was never accosted by the every day riff raff). As an aside, he hated GoodFellas. Said the guys he knew almost never cursed and were extraordinarily polite. They wouldn’t hurt anyone without a reason or permission. Heh, guess that doesn’t make a good movie. But I figured Scorsese would know.
I did know some connected people, but didn’t know they were until much later.
Add further that since leaving the NYC Tri-state area at 17 I have lived in fairly rural places where I have been informed on more than one occasion that I have “a hard edge” and don’t suffer idiots well. At all. Well, more than one person figured I got to SW VA through witness protection.
People watch too many damn movies.
And have their own bigotries.
I had an HR Mgr one time who actually was married to one of John Gotti’s nephews (not a connected guy, but very adjacent). Nobody but me knew that. Someone in the company once asked her if I was connected. She almost wet herself from laughing so hard.
I apparently once made a guy quit a job by going “all New Yorker” on him (this comment from another NY’er, another female, who made it down here). Guess “all New Yorker” means holding someone to account when they tell you they are going to get something done by a certain date and getting reasonably torqued when it doesn’t happen and all updates given led me to believe all was OK.
She said I never once raised my voice but my demeanor was very intimidating.
I have no earthly idea what the hell that actually means. I am 5’9″ and at the time maybe weighed 180. How am I intimidating to anyone, much less a 6′ 200# adult male? She said that I have a look when I am pissed that is very reminiscent of Michael Corleone and scares people down here. I guess I don’t have a good poker face. I always thought I hid when I got mad. Mrs Ron and Ronette think differently. They always know when I am really torqued, just not why.
They say I get quieter and people can tell that I am trying not to yell. Ronette told me as a teenager she’d rather I just yell and get it out.
But, yes, considering someone Mafia or even Mafia-adjacent is not, to me, complimentary in any way. To the yokels (I am still a Damn Yankee though I have lived in my home for 25+ years) I think they consider it exotic.
People who still live in big cities really have no idea what the rest of the country is like. I have lived in 5 distinct areas east of the Mississippi, and the non-city people have lots in common with each other, and very little in common with big city people.
Wow, that’s really interesting. I wonder if every guy with an Italian name has that same problem?
I’ve known plenty of Italians and even lived in Rome and Piombino for a while. I guess I’m just not ‘sensitive’ to the Mafia aspects of Italian heritage.
Where I grew up there were no Italians. Only Scandinavians, Germans and what we called “Bohunks”. (And a very few Indians who for whatever reason decided the Reservation wasn’t for them.) Bohunks are Bohemians. Not the artsy-fartsy type, the slavs from the defunct kingdom of Bohemia which is now the westernmost province in Czechoslovakia.
Bohunks are ghastly tree hating people. When they build a house they cut down ALL the trees on the building site, pull the stumps and never plant any more. You can tell where a Bohunk built by looking at the naked yard that’s nothing but grass.
Of course, not all of them are that way, some of them married Scandinavians or Germans and assimilated into a reasonable culture …
Many have been my friends over the years, don’t get the idea I dislike them. They’re hardworking, hard partying types and very amicable. Some of the girls are way past gorgeous too.
It’s kind of funny when you describe a personality trait that mirrors mine. People who know me know that when I get quiet I’m really angry and very likely about to do something about whatever ticked me off. My sister calls that state “calm and blank”.
So I don’t think that’s an Italian thing, I don’t have a drop of Italian blood and I do it too.
Those people who clear cut all the lots in a neighborhood drive me nuts. We specifically picked where we live because they left the trees. (I have removed 29 trees in 25 years).
I am very unusual as being not very emotional. The typical Italian is more Sonny than Michael. The time from calm to pissed is pretty quick. But for whatever reason, I adopted the opposite.
I will cry much faster than I yell. I think the rattlesnake is poor development. Why warn your prey that you are about to strike? That makes no sense.
I laughed out loud when I read your description of your classmates — rednecks, freaks and jocks! Sounds like the groups in my high school. Thanks for the laugh!
🙂
Rednecks, freaks and jocks. You are missing some high school types. Of which I was one. Outcasts/nerds. (Nerds being a subset of outcasts). Had very few friends outside of band (band geek) and other nerds. Picked on a lot. Never sure why. When I could, I made sure the bullies got appropriate response. Verbal? Back at them or ignored. Physical? Once someone ended up with a bloody nose. And it wasn’t me. Really did not get into trouble about that. Known bully. But often I could not know who did what.
Like the 2 times I was shoved down stairs. No big damage either time. Once was only 4 steps, and the other somehow I landed on my feet. A bit stunned, but otherwise unhurt.
I sort of included myself in the ‘outcasts’ group but I used the word ‘outsider’. I didn’t join in much of anything, preferring my hunting and fishing over after school activities. I just couldn’t be bothered with school stuff when I didn’t have to be in school. Except for Drama that is. I liked Drama class and starred in several play productions which took up some after school time in the spring when I wasn’t hunting and fishing.
I hate bullies. I’m not very nice to them. Perpetually being ‘the new kid’ it seemed that the bullies always had to try me on for size. My response was always maximum violence delivered energetically and enthusiastically at the first opportunity.
In hindsight this worked out well for me in the Marine Corps. Marines are big on maximum violence. When I first heard the unofficial Marine Corps motto of “No better friend, no worse enemy.” — I knew exactly what that meant.
I wasn’t very good at not knowing who did something. 😉
I wanted the bullies to know that if they messed with me there were consequences. I had learned that a little early maximum violence saved months or years of pain and persecution. So I was generally looking for an excuse to beat the crap out of the first unmistakable bully I encountered.
One time a high school senior hit me on the top of the head with his class ring turned upside down so the impact from a slap was concentrated on the ring fittings/jewel. That freakin’ hurt, a lot.
I hadn’t done a thing to him. Nothing at all. I didn’t even know who he was but I knew he was the one who hit me.
So eyes watering I did my best not to act like anything had happened. I didn’t want to scare him off. We were on our way out at the end of a school day in the fall and it was somewhere in the vicinity of my third day at that school. When we exited the main doors I grabbed him, turned him around and ran his face down the exterior brick wall of the school. Using his head to deliver a couple love taps to the brick for good measure. It would have been pretty much impossible to not know who did that to him, there were a LOT of witnesses. Who cheered. As far as I know he still carries the scars to this day.
I always tried to be nice. Not necessarily because I’m a nice person. I’m not a nice person. More so that if I wasn’t nice to people there was no doubt whatever I did they had it coming. I always gave as good as I got, if someone was nice to me then I was nice to them. If they weren’t then what happened to them was their own just desserts. It was open season on their ass as far as I was concerned. I could be very creative during open season.
Some people think ‘nice’ and ‘weak’ are synonyms. They’re not and that can be a life altering mistake to make. In my case it’s going to lead to an attitude adjustment every time.
I wasn’t one of the ‘nerds’ either. When I broke my back and had to find a new means of making a living I went into IT because it’s something I had kept up on a lot since it became a thing.
My daily ‘uniform’ was a white shirt, black jeans and expensive western boots. With a black leather blazer if the weather was appropriate. I didn’t look like a nerd and to this day when I tell strangers I work in IT they always say something to the effect of — “I’d never have guessed that’s what you do for a living. You don’t look like a computer geek.”
Appearances can be deceptive.
Friends say this about me: “Beware the wrath of a patient man.” and “Beware the slumbering dragon and stir it not awake.” I don’t get mad easily, but when I do”😠 I can take time. As I sometimes say “I don’t get mad. I don’t get even. I get justice.”
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
Sometimes physical if immediate reply to physical. Otherwise, my Chemical Engineering and other nasty tricks using my mind come into play.
When was shoved down the stairs, both times it was from behind and a lot of people were around me. And no-one told me anything. Possibly unclear to those around who did it.
The mentality of the Marines appeal to me. I think a lot like them. But physically? I’d never get past boot. Not from what I heard. I have never been able to climb ropes in gym, and I tried. I did think about the Marines. Thought about possibly enlisting in the Navy. Just didnt. Got a job first.
And, man, was I a nerd. Took Calculus and got an A when I did not need to. Six in class. Three dropped out. It was me, the valedictorian and salutatorian left. And I helped them get an A. I found it easy. They struggled until ii broke it down.
And yes, I used Calculus in my engineering job.
I used the term “Redneck” as it has been applied to people, by themselves, around whom I live and went to college. These are largely white, southern, outdoor loving (hunting and fishing) types who are ready to help out a neighbor, drink a little too much, raise a little cane and put family and faith above most else.
My B-I-L and his son are self-described rednecks, and if I need help on a project around the house they are the first ones I call.
The stereotype is that they are that smart, but usually they have much more common sense and ability to fix things than do most others.
So, yes, in my anecdote the room full of Rednecks is largely white.
Just as an example of people being able to make themselves feel superior to another group regardless of the color of that groups skin.
Not all college athletes are black either.
The fact that people will presume this shows their own bigotry.
Susan, you and ACTS are both generally correct. The bigotry – i.e. judging someone based on a single characteristic, in this case was that the Asians would be smarter and outperform the average. Grading on the curve as we called it back in the day, got ruined by people performing too well.
It is not necessarily true, but it is the stereotype.
It is not racism, per se, because it is not demeaning.
However, believing that they will outperform the country bumpkins is racism, since the two are deeming the “rednecks” to be inferior. regardless of melanin level.
Asking what ethnicity the two guys are is just a bonus dig.
Divisive, dividing diversity.
The “melting pot” became a mosaic.
I believe I wrote this response a few years ago to a tangential topic, but: if you want to visit a place where, in my opinion, Martin Luther King won his argument, then come to Cleveland, Tennessee where I live.
We moved here from Queens New York six years ago, and while our old home wasn’t a terribly tense setting for racial issues, there is a notable improvement here. We spend a couple of mornings each week at the local YMCA, and I just wish you could come and see the interchange in the exercise rooms; plenty of mature and older white citizens are on friendly and familiar terms with black members shooting the breeze about sports, working out, whose kid is doing how well and so forth; the stuff people talk about in other words.. My wife felt the need to prove the superiority of her cornbread recipe to one charming individual a fellow who was born on some Carribean island, not here via New York; she made up a plate of her recipe, then another the next week when he didn’t show that day, plus another plate for two of her women friends, one of whom is black.
And all of that is only slightly exceptional. People just get along, and it’s great. I find myself wondering, why is it we are so much smarter than all those people we see on the newscasts?
Just a thought or two. I went to college in 1972 after growing up in a town in southwest Wyoming where there were no black people, and a fair number of Mexicans. My first real exposure to the black community were with those attending the same college and to be honest, all I saw were other people and had no preconceived ideas. Now jump ahead about 20 years and if you want to know where the current divide began just “follow the money”! People like al sharpton and jesse jackson discovered that there were millions of dollars to be made by fanning the dying flames of what was left of the race issues of the ’50s! They were, and still are, aided by the leftists, especially the media, who want nothing more than to pull down this country.
What can we do about it? Beyond recognizing that the majority of Americans just want to be Americans, raise their families, and get on with there lives, I don’t know. So much damage has been done by the few profiting from it we may not ever recover. My best guess is that we continue to associate with like minded folks regardless of race, religion, etc. and promote that in our communities and hope it spreads out.
Great point about Sharpton, et. al. In an alternate reality, when nobody knows the name Tawana Brawley and therefore had never heard of Al Sharpton, we would never have backtracked so far as a society.
When your livelihood depends upon tension between people of different ethnic backgrounds, then you will create more tension.
BTW – I personally try very hard not to use the word race in these discussions. There is actually one Human Race. Genetically we are all compatible and of one race. Ethnicity is a different matter. But people from Italy and Poland today are different than my parents who were born here.
People from Kenya today are very different sociologically from those whose families have lived here for 6 generations, however their ancestors got here, slave or slave trader.
AMEN! That closing story and commentary says it all, Steve. I think that I can speak for me and many others that your wife’s response in that court room causes many of us to remember that we are proud Americans — regardless of our skin pigment.
The fact that the guys are not getting clicks from the crowd that provides clicks to the other sort of discussion forums is to their credit.
Turns out on Thursday The New Neo had a post sort of addressing this topic: Racism as all-purpose accusation by black politicians was normed by Obama. https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/03/02/racism-as-all-purpose-accusation-by-black-politicians-was-normed-by-obama/
There is now a whole racialist industry out there raking in the green from promoting this black vs. white discord. The color we should be seeing on the faces of the people in this industry is the color of shame.
Given that the concept of real diversity means we have a range of talents and abilities, such that it is impossible for us to ever obtain real equity in results (and certainly not equality of results), and that as part of human nature it means some people are included and some excluded from various groups, functions, and activities. DEI should and will DIE, because it ignores the reality of human beings.
The corollary query is just how long do you provide for affirmative action to help boost and correct past wrongs, before the result is worse than the intent, and raises questions of “the soft bigotry of low expectations”? I.e., expecting to find enough black people with PhD’s in geology to populate all geology departments (and oil companies) with 13% black professors is an absurd goal, and unattainable in any case. Maybe the sports leagues should also start their own graduate school? 🙂
I was born in 1950 and watched all the strife that happened in the Deep South, especially. Then over the years, my area of the country improved and people have been able to get along and live in the same neighborhoods. I’ve also watched nearly all the other areas of the country devolve into racism. It’s amazing how things have changed for the better and for the worse. We in the South still, for the most part, are accepting that people are different, not only in color, but in mindsets. I’m so very glad that, so far, we have survived the divisiveness that Obama kick-started during his terms in office. We know what horrors will happen if we start hating each other again. I’ve believed since the days of Obama that the South will be the last bulwark of love of God, family, friends and country. Now if the rest of the country will learn what we learned.
I now live south of the Mason-Dixon. I have lived several places in the South and travelled extensively in what was the old Confederacy. The change in the South has been nothing less than miraculous.
The South sort of ‘woke up’ and en masse stopped cutting off their own noses to spite their faces. Prosperity and stability followed. Today two of the most prosperous, safest places to live in the US are Texas and Florida. If you looked at the situation in those states in the 1960’s you would never have expected that sort of turn-around.
That sort of miraculous transformation didn’t happen overnight or by accident. It was a function of leadership. Many types of leadership; political, civil, religious and community among others. They all decided that they wanted a change and made that change possible.
There have always been good people of good will in the South. Those people who objected to overt racial discrimination had to keep their heads down and their mouths shut because “this is the way things are done in the South”.
When it became possible, when leadership said “Hey, we have got to change this” and gave those people permission to step up and work to make things better … They did.
Now the opposite is happening. Democrat Leftist leadership is taking us back to the days of Jim Crow. Anti-white racism is just the flip side of the coin from anti-black racism. The people doing this know damn well that this will lead to considerable anti-black racism as a reaction. Racism begets racism, it’s a positive feedback loop. In fostering any racism the Left is promoting all racism.
It’s comforting to think that the South is probably the least susceptible to this dastardly tactic. I’m glad I live down here now.
Over 150 years ago the South participated in a schism that split the nation by seceding from the Union. It may very well end up that the South is the salvation of the Union in modern times. I find that exquisitely ironic.
Melissa Green – congratulations to you. I hope that if I am ever in a similar situation I have the gumption to not play the role of NPC.
Steve – just more proof that you over married (just like the rest of us).
Deep Steve Green is interesting!
I was in a majority black, inner city, Atlanta public high school in the 70’s. Got along well enough to be in a funk band and be student body president. I have first hand knowledge of how the Civil Rights Bill wrecked the black community, tearing apart the nuclear family by paying for babies out of wedlock and substituting worship of government for worship of God. It is the worst thing done to any Americans except the Indians.
Obama’s legacy piled on, making grievance and victimhood a desired status over self-reliance and working past whatever inhibits you living the life you love.
We will only get along when we realize the skin suits we wear mean nothing compared to our everlasting souls.
Um, I agree with most of that with the exception that I don’t see anything in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that would account for …
Are you sure you’re referring to the Civil Rights Act and not Lyndon B. Johnson’s horrible “Great Society” social experiment?
It was Johnson’s “Great Society” that implemented his ‘war on poverty’ policies, an enormous program of social welfare legislation that did the things you’re pointing out.
It can and has been argued that Johnson did that to win the black vote, which had been largely Republican even after the Civil Rights Act. It was after all the Democrats that promoted and codified racial segregation in the South. Johnson saw a way to basically buy the poor black (and to some degree white) vote with funds from the public coffers.
Johnson abused the Civil Rights Act to pole vault his own disastrous Great Society policies over the bar. People were amenable to change and Johnson abused the good will of the people for political gain. He used the Civil Rights Act as an excuse to implement his program(s) of ‘the total elimination of poverty and racial injustice’. By which he meant buying votes to keep poor people dependent upon government programs. A wolf done up as a sheep if ever there was such a thing.
If there is fault there, it all lies on Johnson’s head and not on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The reason I’m pointing this out is so that we don’t get the idea floating around in here, and maybe see it leaked to our enemies, that Conservatives are opposed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
We should not be, as far as I can tell. The abuse of it that followed should be something we are against. In my opinion.
John F. Kennedy first proposed the legislation but it was Republicans that rammed it through the Congress. It was Democrats, including Robert Byrd (Joe Biden’s Klansman buddy), William Fulbright and Albert Gore Sr. (Al Gore’s daddy) that worked the hardest to thwart that legislation. They and other Democrats attempted to filibuster the legislation and Republicans tipped the scales for a majority vote to break it.
conflagration! it all ran together to me at the time. thx.
Lol, I think you mean ‘conflation’, which is the combining together of different elements, not ‘conflagration’ which means an intense and uncontrollable fire. Damn that spellcheck and it’s evil ways!
You’re welcome either way. 🙂
you’re on fire!
ROFL (Running On Fire Laughing)