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American's racial hierarchy is probably about as American as Apple Pie. Hell, it may be a trope associated with America long before Apple pie. It certainly pre-dates baseball or even the flag. America has had an issue with race before it was even a country. Before the Declaration of Indepdence got signed. Race is an American artiery. A crucial one that make up a big part of American's identity. Few things have been with America longer.
With that said, it's a farce, always have been and always will be. It has always been an allagory for a much bigger problem. It has always been a representation of the philsophy of being free vs having the government contorl your life. As America was born as a free nation, it has had to constantly re-test it's commitment to freedom. But it has had a long long war. And it has not been against black vs white. It has been people vs state.
Race however has been the tool of manufacturing useful idiots. The people who are indoctrinated with the religion of race. America's own brand of divide and conquer. The state pull the puppet strings, while it uses this as a way to take away more and more rights. America has kept it's citizens distracted with race issues while it has cut away more and more of our liberterties behind our back. Actually it has been behind our backs, it has been right in our face.
The strategy of the government has always been to put people in fear. And the biggest fear is the fear of the "other". The "other" who are unfit to live in American society, who are criminal and thugs. Who the majority and "normal" people feel they must protect themselves against. And the means justify the ends. If you have to violated due process to eliminate the threat, then go ahead. The silent majority who are not motivated by freedom, but by fear of the "other".
The government has been able to co-opt the majority's tribalist sensibilities to promote all sorts of milestone civil liberty violations. It used the fear of blacks to do a wholesale manipulation of the constitution by inacting the War On Drugs. A war that can't be won. Don't worry, it wouldn't be American's last "war that can't be won". It has been the goto excuse for the War On Terrorism, that does not even make any pretentions about what "victory looks like".
Do you know what defines Hitler's Germany? Not swatiskas, or the Nazi salute. What defines it are tactics. The idea that Jews caused the issues in society. And that it was perfectly fine to use any means necessary to elminate this blight on society. This made people ok giving away their own rights. The promise of security at the cost of freedom.
But America has been doing it way longer than Germany. It has made example out of black Americans and the government has killed black people with impunity, with little to no outrage from the majority. Because blacks are just a stand in for Jews in the American context. And people are willing to give out their own freedoms to eradicate this threat.
The age old and ancient divide and conquer technique. The government's trump card when it comes to controlling people. But the more we play into this divide in conquer technique the more we lose as people. This is why race is just a deadly farce. And as Americans we need to direct all of our angst towards the puppet master. Big government.
Sounds as though the OP is definitely a Walter E Williams fan, who also loves the work of Milt Friedman and other renown "free marketers" who are in that frame of mind that conjures up notions of maximization of profits as a liberating thing for us all. The black conservative (yes there is such a thing) has been beguiled into thinking that the free market wasn't behind their people's enslavement, not to mention absolving those market forces which gave rise to the modern day American ghetto.
There is SOME irony in the fact of these free marketers/black conservatives, and old white professorial economists seem to be making their living off the very state construct they hate so much. The role of state in the civil rights advancements is totally ignored and instead the conservative black sees the real liberating factors for blacks as part and parcel of the much adored free market. Another ignorant conservative myth is one which includes the notion that blacks have been hurt more than helped by government. Seemingly a good excuse to refrain from helping blacks--for their own good..
Hating "big government:" Yes, this also is part of the tilting at windmills pastimes that take up so much of the conservative's thoughts, railing against such a notorious ally of the American markets makes an otherwise humorous conservative hobby seem even more pathetic. The black intellectual has little connection to the ghetto reality, their lives aren't surrounded by the same negatives which power the ghetto social dynamic, they, for the most part are in the same state of mind as the old white conservatives they have embraced as theoretical fellows.
As for Milt Friedman, his particularly strange brand of thinking brought him to conclude that the "social responsibility of business is to increase it's profits," he may have been thinking of another kind of responsibility, but none the less, equated the social aspects of business as being the same as the profit motive. An entirely different business aspect, but not in the mind of an old professor who worked for the state. The truth of our racial divide, with regard to the black citizen, lies in the original sins of a free market, unfettered by government, and totally open to the notion of human slavery as a path to maximization of profit.
Race however has been the tool of manufacturing useful idiots..
Branh, I appreciate you sharing your perspective.. but I disagree with this idea ^.
I think tribalism is a part of the human condition. I don't think it's some illusion created by manipulative governments. People tend to clique up by race in all sorts of social/political settings, in all eras of human existence.
I agree it's destructive when government/leaders manipulate/exploit people's worse racial animosities. But I do think that tribalism is hard-wired into human beings. And shouldn't be dismissed as illusory, or an idiotic cause (?)
My thought is, how to find positive progress & compromise between tribes, instead of dismissively pretending race is all farcical, or 'social construct'.
Your post is a has been from another era. It sounds like a speech to politicized hippies in 1968 Berkeley. But I will agree on one things: the government is using race to keep us divided so they can maintain their power. ' The use affirmative action', multi-culturism, fair housing act. school busing, integration, and many little tricks to keep people feeling rejected by race(affirmative action), forced to live amongs people that we would rather not live around(fair housing act). forced to send our children to schools that we know are inferior(school busing), forced to live and work and play amongst many people of different cultures with different interests and values and not being within our legal rights not to be around them. Yes, I agree that we, the people, are being put in many helpless situations that we don't agree with.
When it comes down to average every day people they don't care what someones skin colour is but it is our Government that has pitted us against each other. Thinking about what we see today it is the Democrat party that is still playing the race card and creating a division along race and colour lines. They will shout that it is not so but those with their eyes open know it to be true.
If anyone opposed Obama they would often call that person a racist for speaking out.
Trump has done little to show that he is a racist but the Lefty media has painted him as one despite that he employees people of all colours in his many business's. He also employees many women but they call him a misoginyst? They call him Hitler yet his favorite daughter Ivanka is married to a Jewish man, she has converted and they are raising their kids in that faith?
Divide and place Doubt in the minds of people is a lesson right out of the Democrat playbook.
I am so glad that Trump won the election because he is the one that is causing people to wake up, take notice and get involved in politics. I have no doubt that if Hillary had won we would have been massaged back to sleep with her assurance and the media supporting her that we are all going to be Ok meanwhile we are napping and the country is being flooded by people from dangerous areas of the world were the common chant on the streets is "death to America" .. amnesty to millions of people who cut the line and broke our immigration laws and the destruction of our institutional heritage such as the second amendment. While all this was going on the Clinton foundation would have been getting richer and richer from foreign donations and the only ones to complain would be FOX news and Right wing talk radio.
It is interesting what the OP suggests and it does make sense when you think about the connection the Dems have to the media. We have seen peaceful protests by their members turn into riots of looting and burning, where authority is questioned under the microscope of public opinion and physically attacked merely for doing their jobs of trying to keep the peace and this is all televised to us 24/7 on CNN.
It is hard to be accepting of young black people when you see members of this group jumping on and setting fire to Police cars. Their actions are to be feared and it is all perfect for the front page news agenda.
...The strategy of the government has always been to put people in fear. And the biggest fear is the fear of the "other". The "other" who are unfit to live in American society, who are criminal and thugs...
So our government always puts people in fear of criminals and thugs?!? I've heard and read many conservatives express their fear of criminals the thugs, but I haven't read or heard this coming from our government, if you have an example, please post a link...
Quote:
Originally Posted by jertheber
...The black intellectual has little connection to the ghetto reality, their lives aren't surrounded by the same negatives which power the ghetto social dynamic, they, for the most part are in the same state of mind as the old white conservatives they have embraced as theoretical fellows...
Great post, thankfully black conservatives probably have as much effect on our politics as liberal teabaggers...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Babe_Ruth
...I think tribalism is a part of the human condition. I don't think it's some illusion created by manipulative governments. People tend to clique up by race in all sorts of social/political settings, in all eras of human existence.
I agree it's destructive when government/leaders manipulate/exploit people's worse racial animosities...
You've never heard that opposites attract? I think tribalism is just ignorance and prejudice handed down from one generation to the next. But I agree with you that tribalism isn't an illusion created by our government. Who the hell does?!?
Quote:
Originally Posted by nickerman
...But I will agree on one things: the government is using race to keep us divided so they can maintain their power. ' The use affirmative action', multi-culturism, fair housing act. school busing, integration, and many little tricks to keep people feeling rejected by race(affirmative action), forced to live among people that we would rather not live around(fair housing act). forced to send our children to schools that we know are inferior(school busing), forced to live and work and play amongst many people of different cultures with different interests and values and not being within our legal rights not to be around them...
It's not our government who's using race to keep us divided, it's conservative racists.
So the government forces you to live among people would rather not live around?!? I've never heard that Americans can't live where they want. If our evil government would go so far as to allow minorities to live where they want, racists can do likewise. You've never heard of 'white flight'?
Opposing civil rights for all our citizens has been a hallmark of white conservatives since we took the whips they used on their slaves from their cold dead hands. Somethings never change...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cape Cod Todd
...It is hard to be accepting of young black people when you see members of this group jumping on and setting fire to Police cars. Their actions are to be feared and it is all perfect for the front page news agenda.
Claiming that black people are to be feared because of the acts by a small minority is a typical conservative tactic. I haven't heard of any liberals claiming we should fear and not accept young whites because our worst domestic terrorist attack was carried out by a young white militia member...
Originally Posted by Cape Cod Todd ...It is hard to be accepting of young black people when you see members of this group jumping on and setting fire to Police cars. Their actions are to be feared and it is all perfect for the front page news agenda.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sd-bound
Claiming that black people are to be feared because of the acts by a small minority is a typical conservative tactic. I haven't heard of any liberals claiming we should fear and not accept young whites because our worst domestic terrorist attack was carried out by a young white militia member...
There is nothing typical about it. When the average person sees black teens and 20 somethings acting like fools, tearing the place up, committing criminal acts and jumping on police cars do you have a sudden urge to invite them into your house to watch TV or do you fear that they might come onto your property and trash the place?
It isn't a conservative tactic or a liberal tactic it is common sense to want to avoid people like this.
I think it is really sad that our media chooses to lead their news cycle with video of young black men acting like idiots. How many times did we see the video from the recent hurricane footage where the young black people were looting the sneaker store. Sad.
The media shows us these images to spread fear. The liberal media has taken a page from the Democrat playbook and they are trying to divide the nation along race lines.
I have seen far more images and video that has young black people acting like fools than I have seen videos of young black people acting like good citizens and helping each other.
What are we to think? What is the average person that follows CNN and the others like they are the gospel to think?
They relish the chance to show black youths acting like hood rats because that pushes the division agenda.
Originally Posted by Cape Cod Todd ...It is hard to be accepting of young black people when you see members of this group jumping on and setting fire to Police cars. Their actions are to be feared and it is all perfect for the front page news agenda.
There is nothing typical about it. When the average person sees black teens and 20 somethings acting like fools, tearing the place up, committing criminal acts and jumping on police cars do you have a sudden urge to invite them into your house to watch TV or do you fear that they might come onto your property and trash the place?
It isn't a conservative tactic or a liberal tactic it is common sense to want to avoid people like this.
I think it is really sad that our media chooses to lead their news cycle with video of young black men acting like idiots. How many times did we see the video from the recent hurricane footage where the young black people were looting the sneaker store. Sad.
The media shows us these images to spread fear. The liberal media has taken a page from the Democrat playbook and they are trying to divide the nation along race lines.
I have seen far more images and video that has young black people acting like fools than I have seen videos of young black people acting like good citizens and helping each other.
What are we to think? What is the average person that follows CNN and the others like they are the gospel to think?
They relish the chance to show black youths acting like hood rats because that pushes the division agenda.
Perhaps you need to get out and meet a broader range of young Black people, because when you paint an entire group with a broad brush based on a few people from a group...that's prejudice.
I've said this before, but for most of my adult life I lived just outside of Washington, D.C. I would go down into D.C. often on the weekends, sometimes at night. Some of my white friends were scared. Especially if they saw a small group of young Black men together. But, in the end, I guess they were right. I got robbed 3 times in D.C. -- one of "Blackest" cities in the U.S. Trouble with your scenario, however, was that the 3 guys who robbed me were White.
Forget about the media. Don't you have the intelligence to filter out what is real if you distrust the media? Stop making excuses. The reflection is on you, not the media.
...They relish the chance to show black youths acting like hood rats because that pushes the division agenda.
While folks like you relish the chance to promote fear and loathing of an entire people based on the acts of a few. All because that pushes the division agenda that no one heard about until your racist leader took office...
While folks like you relish the chance to promote fear and loathing of an entire people based on the acts of a few. All because that pushes the division agenda that no one heard about until your racist leader took office...
UGHHHH. I can read between the lines of the news cast but I don't make up stuff when I read between the lines of posts on CD.
How can you say that no one ever heard about the race division before Trump when CNN and others were showing us live action shots of peaceful protests that turned into riots, roving bands of idiots shouting things like "pigs in a blanket fry them like bacon" which is about killing cops and otherwise acting like fools while Obama was President.?
I don't relish promoting fear and loathing, I'm just stating what we have all seen on national TV.
Many years ago I worked in a tough city and I worked along side a bunch of black guys. A few I hung out with after work and on days off but most were real trouble. They stole anything that wasn't nailed down, they drank, used drugs, solicited prostitutes but they had to be white, and lived what rap music would call a the thugs life. I wonder how many of them wound up in prison?
These are the guys that would have been jumping on cop cars and setting fires to them.
The original post was calling the racial divide in America a dangerous farce and I merely commented that the farce has been perpetuated to the average white American by the Liberal media when they show us the terrible actions of young mostly black men.
We all know that it is not all young black people that act violently but there are many that would dismiss black people because of the actions of a small percentage and that is no farce.
America has a long way to go before everyone accepts everyone and reaching that goal would be so much smoother if the news would stop highlighting and the young black men themselves would only stop perpetuating the negative stereotype that had plagued their people for generations.
I always thought that race relations would improve under Obama. He was a smart man that was able to achieve the highest office in the land but instead of inspiring "his" people to study hard and apply themselves it seems that he allowed them to keep making excuses.
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