srothstein wrote: ↑Sat Jun 20, 2020 9:53 am
Nickgibson72 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 20, 2020 9:33 am
Yes let's keep using images stolen off the internet to prove our points without actually doing the research. The ignorance I speak of is all over this website. Every thread on here has racial undertones throughout. And here I thought Texas was supposed to be this great state filled with the nicest people you'll ever find. All I've seen since moving here is a state filled with racists. And this thread is just proving that. The OP didn't outright say it was talking about the black community, but we all know that's exactly who it was aimed at.
I disagree with your claim that every thread here has undertones of racism. There are a few, but it is few. Texas is not filled with racists. There are some, but it is a small percentage of Texans. In general, since I moved here I found Texans to be among the nicest and friendliest people in the world.
If you perceive racism where it is not intended, the racist might be you instead of the person making the post. Yes, the OP in this thread was targeting the Black community, or at least the lower class Black community. I agree that was obvious because the word "privilege" is generally used only with the descriptor of "White" and the OP was responding to that. If someone is making racist claims (i.e. White Privilege) is it racist to respond? Is it better to just ignore it? I am a big believer myself that "White Privilege" is a made up thing that does not really exist. You may feel otherwise. And of course, that is your right. One of the great things about Texas, and generally about the US, is that we are all allowed to have our own opinions on things.
I don't know how long you have lived in Texas, but if no one has said it before, Welcome to Texas. As you travel around the state and meet people, I think you will find that as a general rule, Texans are among the nicest and friendliest you will meet. You will meet some you don't like and you will meet some I wish were not in Texas. It is a fact of life that people are not a monolithic group where everyone is alike. I have a personal rule that says in any group, there are 10% bad people. It can be Texans, Cops, Teachers, Whites, Blacks, Preachers, Kids, Politicians (well, that one is probably higher than 10%), Truck drivers, Pedestrians, Dog owners, or any other way you break people down into groups. You just have to learn to ignore the small minority and get along with the good people. It makes life much more pleasant when you do.
This ^^^^
There is a popular saying that goes something like this.... if you meet a [bodily orifice] in the morning, then you met a [bodily orifice]. But all you meet all day long are [bodily orifices], then
YOU'RE the [bodily orifice]. Texas indeed has some racists, but nowhere
near a majority of Texans are racist. And I can tell you as a transplanted Californian who moved here in 2006 at the age of 54 that California is
chock full of left-leaning white racists whose primary racist expression is the particularly toxic racism of lowered expectations.
People of color are more often than not strong and proud. Weakness of character is not in them, and it is
demeaning to them to
expect something less than strength of character, and strong and proud behavior. That is why weakness of character and behavior should never be tolerated or expected
BY anybody,
FROM anybody.
I am old enough to remember when black unemployment, black children born out of wedlock, black single parenthood, black abortions, black drug use, and all the other ills which currently plague certain segments of the black community occurred at far
lower rates than they occur at today....and this even goes back to the bad old old days of Jim Crow, when the face of specifically anti-black racism was far more overt and forward-facing. And that’s just the racism faced by black Americans.
I am old enough to remember when the term "underprivileged" included
whites who were born into poverty too. And to anyone who actually
studies these things with impartial intellectual honesty, poor whites lived in exactly the same conditions back then as did poor blacks, and poor whites today live in exactly the same conditions, with exactly the same social maladies, as do poor black people today.
How did any of LBJ initiatives help poor whites any more than they helped poor blacks? The answer is they did not, and poor white communities today suffer under the exact same oppressions of gang violence, drug addiction, single parenthood, etc., etc., as those which oppress poor black communities. If that is so ...and it manifestly
IS SO... then how can that continued poverty and lack of social advantage be blamed on "systemic racism"? The painful truth is that it cannot be thusly blamed.
This does not mean that racism doesn’t exist, but it DOES mean that it is not systemically baked into American society. If and when it exists, it occurs at the individual level, and literally NOBODY is exempted from this accusation because of their race. Yes, there exist white racists. But there also exist Black, Hispanic, and Asian racists; and to
DENY this is, in and of itself, racist.
Racism is not a racial trait, it’s a
character trait. And constantly charging a man with racism, and accusing him of insensitivity to his own racism because of his privilege works
EXACTLY like this.....
If you
repeatedly accuse an innocent man of stealing your bicycle, repeatedly call him a thief, repeatedly
demand compensation for the loss, repeatedly call for the passage of laws making it a
greater crime if he steals your bicycle in the future than if he steals someone else's bicycle, call for his de-platforming because he refuses to bend the knee to your mau-mauing, and then you react to his refusal to bend the knee by burning out his business and beating him with bicycle locks, several
utterly predictable things are going to happen .... exactly NONE of which are going to get you the result you want.
Why? BECAUSE HE'S AN INNOCENT MAN.
That does not mean that you give up the fight for social justice. There IS such a thing. But it DOES mean that you have to do two things: one is that you have to direct your energies against the appropriate target, and in EVERY case, that is the individual racist; and the other is that you have to own your part in things. The fact that there exist black Americans millionaires and billionaires is proof that the system is not
systemically racist. It also proves that those individuals refused to be entrapped by the myths. Further, if you examine the lives of say, Will Smith's or Ben Carson's children (to pick one from the left and one from the right), or any other rich black entrepreneur, are they or are they not more privileged than say the children of any middle income white postal worker or truck driver? I would argue that they are FAR more privileged than those white children. They’ll never be one or two paychecks from the unemployment line. They’ll never face the decision of having to eat beans and rice so that they can afford new clothes for their kids at the beginning of the school year. They will
always have access to travel and cultural events that even I, as the son of upper middle class white parents never had. Why? Because
privilege is largely tied to
financial status, and not to race.
Ben Franklin was extremely wise when he said:
“I am for doing good to the poor, but...I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
Ben Franklin would not have favored LBJ's "Great Society", and for those looking for racism in every corner and under every rug, sometimes a cigar is
JUST a cigar, and nothing else.
Don’t ever be a
kafkatrapper.
And FYI, when I moved here from California, I sold my home in a black neighborhood that I loved, and moved away from neighbors that I loved, in a neighborhood in which my family were the only whites for a few blocks around. I’ve got nothing to apologize for.