We live with a bunch of racist scum. (White: to move, title)

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by bu2

Why? Are they your relatives?

They're certainly not my personal relatives but I don't want there to be any implication -- by silence or otherwise -- that normal white folks feel or act that way.

We don't. To the contrary, we repudiate and condemn these knuckleheads.

[onemanarmy]

Originally Posted by arjay57

They're certainly not my personal relatives but I don't want there to be any implication -- by silence or otherwise -- that normal white folks feel or act that way.

We don't. To the contrary, we repudiate and condemn these knuckleheads.

We actually need more of this, I commend you. You rarely see normal white folks engaging in debates on how to solve racism.

[ByebyeOhio]

Originally Posted by onemanarmy

We actually need more of this, I commend you. You rarely see normal white folks engaging in debates on how to solve racism.

That's not only extremely untrue, but pretty damn offensive also.

[oobanks]

Interesting, Atlanta and Georgia is suppose to be so much more progressive than our other Southern Counter parts in the south like Tennessee, Alabama,Mississippi, and South Carolina etc., but we are the ones still holding rallies like this here. Not to mention still trying to pass laws that discriminate here in the heart of Dixie. Believe me, the only thing that prevent the passing of these laws is the loss of $$$ so the governor refuses to pass them due to the threat. Now that you can bet your bottom dollar on... When it comes down to it, you are still in Georgia,

[ByebyeOhio]

Originally Posted by oobanks

Interesting, Atlanta and Georgia is suppose to be so much more progressive than our other Southern Counter parts in the south like Tennessee, Alabama,Mississippi, and South Carolina etc., but we are the ones still holding rallies like this here.

"We" aren't. 10-20 douchebags got together to hold their demonstration. It wouldn't have been anything until the BLM idiots showed up to protest something that wasn't even there and caused trouble(the demonstrators had nothing to do with the KKK).

[Saintmarks]

Originally Posted by ByebyeOhio

Always has been. Slavery would not have been possible without the New England docks and rich Union owners (Ulysses S. Grant anyone?)

The biggest problem is when the government (and their media darlings) take issues and interject race into the situation any way they can, then the stupid masses jump on board and spread the hashtags and catch phrases created by the people that want the power. They get it. The people end up being slaves to a different master and unknowingly do their dirty work to divide and re-segregate (safe spaces? C'mon). It's sad. Racism would be an extremely easy problem to fix. You'll always have a small core group of people like the white supremacists but it wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is now. We are far more divided as a nation than we were just 8 years ago. I don't even need to go into too many details as to why.

As a rather conservative white middle aged male, I have had to check the bolded statement above in my own thought patterns. Did the ascendancy of a black man to the highest elected office in the nation cause a racial shift that now is worse? than before Or is black America feeling freer to now voice thoughts and emotions that have been bottled for decades?

I have been on here and have stated the changes I've seen in my lifetime. I know this will shock most posters on here that I am this old (54) but in my life I have seen this happen. First grade in Griffin Georgia (67-68) there was not a single black body in the building of Third Ward Elementary School save for Leonard, the janitor. This is the era that courts were forcing the south to integrate. The resolution? Next year, second grade, we had one or two black children in each classroom and the art teacher (who had no classroom of her own but rotated in the different classrooms) was black. Her name was Mrs. Blue. My twisted mind was evident at that early age in that I marvelled that the art teacher had a color as a name and a color in her skin.

So that was the white power's solution. Put a token black in each room. Call it integrated.

My fourth grade year (we had moved to the family farm in Meriwether the next year) was the year that the black school/white school segregation came to a complete halt. Fall of 1970. All black schools across the state were closed or merged. All the children would now go to school together come hell or high water. Except that is the year that Flint River Academy opened in Woodbury, GA and most of the white students I had gone to school with in Greenville GA in third grade were no longer in my class. The Meriwether School Board decided that we would integrate one way and segregate another. The formerly all black school became K-12 boys school, the all white school was now K-12 all girls. Can't have our white girls going to school with those black boys now.

I lasted 7 days. The parents in our northwestern corner of Meriwether got permission to send us to the city schools of Hogansville. Hogansville, being a mill town did not have the wealth to establish a white academy. A handful sent their kids to LaGrange Academy, but by and large the whites stayed. We had a school about 55% white, 45% black.

We learned to get along and work together. At that age there was still the social norms that were hard to fall away, I can't remember going into the homes of any of my black friends or vice versa. My mom was a piano teacher and had several black students in our home. She was more progressive than me, lol.

At my ten year reunion, I noted that a higher percentage of the black graduates in my class had gone to some form of higher education and had better jobs that a lot of the whites.

At that point I decided that integration had worked. Racism, even tho there were vestiges here and there was over. Just a matter of letting the old guard die off and we would be done. I belonged to an integrated church. We discussed racial reconciliation (church speak for us whites to acknowledge white privilege without calling it that). We had arrived. The year? Oh, about 1999, 2000.

All that history to say, on one hand I can agree with your assertion. We should be past all this. But the voices are being heard that it still isn't over, there is still racism entrenched in systems and society that I am blind to because I am white. Not that I try to be blind, or am racist because I don't see it. Yet I perpetuate racism if I don't listen to my black contemporaries and weigh with equal scales their perspectives. I might not agree every time, but I must, I MUST listen and hear and weigh with a sober heart and mind.

Sorry this went on so long. Can't say what I think and feel in a couple of sound bites. But overt racism by a couple dozen KKK wannabes is not the issue today. And sometimes things are like a rehab of a house.... gotta pull down some sheetrock, repair some rot and bad wiring before you can make it a liveable space. Putting up some paint and wallpaper won't do the job.

[ByebyeOhio]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

Did the ascendancy of a black man to the highest elected office in the nation cause a racial shift that now is worse?

It's not that a "black man" was put into the highest position in the country (possibly the world), it's that a pretentious, divisive, narcissistic racist was put into that position. From the beginning "we won" comments and calling police officers "stupid" for arresting an unruly black professor, to sending people to attend the funerals of black man that were shot by police officers, it was apparent that he is throwing gasoline on the fires of racism, instead of using the unique opportunity he was to unite all races and put an end to the ideas of oppression and inequality.

[Ant131531]

Originally Posted by ByebyeOhio

It's not that a "black man" was put into the highest position in the country (possibly the world), it's that a pretentious, divisive, narcissistic racist was put into that position. From the beginning "we won" comments and calling police officers "stupid" for arresting an unruly black professor, to sending people to attend the funerals of black man that were shot by police officers, it was apparent that he is throwing gasoline on the fires of racism, instead of using the unique opportunity he was to unite all races and put an end to the ideas of oppression and inequality.

Typical right wing talking points. Blah...Blah...Blah...a bunch of white males upset that a white male wasn't elected into office and are going to again be mad when a white female is elected into office this November.

There's a reason why Sanders/Trump are the two who gets the lion's share of the white male's vote.

[ByebyeOhio]

Originally Posted by Ant131531

Typical right wing talking points. Blah...Blah...Blah...a bunch of white males upset that a white male wasn't elected into office and are going to again be mad when a white female is elected into office this November.

There's a reason why Sanders/Trump are the two who gets the lion's share of the white male's vote.

Are you retarded?

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by glovenyc

Unfortunately racism in the US is not a southern problem, it's an American problem.

It's a problem all over the world. I think it would be more accurate to say that it's a human problem.