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Let’s all feel sorry for people who feel attacked and like their freedoms are being taken away because of “cancel culture” and “critical race theory”.
50 or 60 years ago Black people were beat and spit on for drinking out of a water fountain meant for White people only. Yet, people are crying because Fox News is telling them there is a war on Christmas and it’s SO hard for being a straight white Christian male. Oh, the horrors.
Can people stop playing victim. Particularly when the real victims actually suffered a harsh form of discrimination? I mean. How many grandmas & fathers etc lived through a time where they had to eat in the “Negro” section?? Probably a lot. How many people are alive that lived through segregation, supported it and were complicit in black people being spit on and beat? Probably a lot. It was only 67 years ago. Somehow magically all those people aren’t racist anymore? They didn’t pass it in to their kids?
If segregation & slavery were too long ago to care about, then let’s not care about WWII veterans, etc because that happened a really, really long time ago.
That’s a rant because culture of victimization is an ugly trait and I’m so sick of the right always portraying everything as literally the end of times. Storming the Capitol, still holding “Save America” rallies, still feeling like there is a “war on Christmas.” Stop crying, my god. It’s all made up in your head.
Back in the late 50's we moved from Passaic, NJ to Chattanooga Tn. We stayed in a motel for a couple of days while our apartment became available. There was a Rose's next door to the little family run motel.
My younger brother and I were "allowed" to go to the Rose's alone with Mother's permission. We loved the cold water fountains. I was taking a particularly long drink when an elderly black woman patted me on the back of the head and said, "Boy, don't let me ever catch you drinking from this fountain again. Yours is over there near the men's room door". Sure enough, there was a sign above each one describing the people that could drink from them.
Never saw that before, but after a couple of years living in Chattanooga I was well versed in what the races could and couldn't do in town.
Let’s all feel sorry for people who feel attacked and like their freedoms are being taken away because of “cancel culture” and “critical race theory”.
50 or 60 years ago Black people were beat and spit on for drinking out of a water fountain meant for White people only. Yet, people are crying because Fox News is telling them there is a war on Christmas and it’s SO hard for being a straight white Christian male. Oh, the horrors.
Can people stop playing victim. Particularly when the real victims actually suffered a harsh form of discrimination? I mean. How many grandmas & fathers etc lived through a time where they had to eat in the “Negro” section?? Probably a lot. How many people are alive that lived through segregation, supported it and were complicit in black people being spit on and beat? Probably a lot. It was only 67 years ago. Somehow magically all those people aren’t racist anymore? They didn’t pass it in to their kids?
If segregation & slavery were too long ago to care about, then let’s not care about WWII veterans, etc because that happened a really, really long time ago.
That’s a rant because culture of victimization is an ugly trait and I’m so sick of the right always portraying everything as literally the end of times. Storming the Capitol, still holding “Save America” rallies, still feeling like there is a “war on Christmas.” Stop crying, my god. It’s all made up in your head.
You're forgetting something: two wrongs don't make a right.
I am long sick of the polarization of peoples, which come from both sides of the political spectrum. *Both* sides are equally guilty, and to deny that either "side" of the argument is invalid, is to continue the polarization process.
The practice of multiculturalism is an abject failure; the melting pot model is what works best. Multicultalism supports divide, while the melting pot model is truly inclusive: I grew up in the NYC metro area, and had friends of Italian, Irish, German, Greek, Black, Indian, Chinese, and Jewish, cultures; they adopted me into their culture, and I adopted them into mine. The experience was truly enriching, and I am grateful for my upbringing.
But when certain cultures are exalted, while others are downplayed, no matter how noble the intent, polarization occurs, and it's affect is toxic.
I stick out like a sore thumb in this region: I am of Italian extraction, and I talk with a Brooklyn stuccato; there's simply no hiding it. Most deep Southerners are proud of their heritage, and they have absolutely no problem with me, so long as they feel as though their heritage is respected. But if I get in their face, that's when the polarization begins.
If I approach the natives with respect, and if I approach them with sincere curiosity, they willingly engage me - and anyone else - as I have observed. But it's when they feel like they're being disrespected, that the problems begin.
As for me, I have learned that each cultural tradition has it's good points, and the only way society will move forward is by, and through, respectful dialogue.
People on the political Left have many valid points, and while many on the Right use hyperbole, and it's wearisome, that doesn't negate the validity of some of their arguments. And when you disregard a valid argument, alienation begins. And once alienation takes place, the fragmentation of society occurs, along with a lack of societal cohesion.
To those who would win the battle, and lose the war: their practices are quite foolhearty, and I, for one, am sick of it.
Back in the late 50's we moved from Passaic, NJ to Chattanooga Tn. We stayed in a motel for a couple of days while our apartment became available. There was a Rose's next door to the little family run motel.
My younger brother and I were "allowed" to go to the Rose's alone with Mother's permission. We loved the cold water fountains. I was taking a particularly long drink when an elderly black woman patted me on the back of the head and said, "Boy, don't let me ever catch you drinking from this fountain again. Yours is over there near the men's room door". Sure enough, there was a sign above each one describing the people that could drink from them.
Never saw that before, but after a couple of years living in Chattanooga I was well versed in what the races could and couldn't do in town.
Right, that is terrible and oppressive and racist. Telling a human they can’t drink from a water fountain because of the color of their skin is disgusting & dumb. That doesn’t change based on who the oppressor is.
Thank god we’re not in 1950’s Chattanooga and we have the luxury of living in a place & time where no one is being treated that way anymore.
Thank god we’re not in 1950’s Chattanooga and we have the luxury of living in a place & time where no one is being treated that way anymore.
You're right: thankfully, we're not living in a time that was 70 years ago.
Unfortunately, your lack of a reply to my post, has me thinking that you're not interested in dialoging; you're simply wanting to express things from your vantage point. And while that's perfectly okay, I am disappointed at not having the chance to sit down at the table to talk with you.
You're right: thankfully, we're not living in a time that was 70 years ago.
Unfortunately, your lack of a reply to my post, has me thinking that you're not interested in dialoging; you're simply wanting to express things from your vantage point. And while that's perfectly okay, I am disappointed at not having the chance to sit down at the table to talk with you.
My lack of reply.
Yeah. My reply is in response to a barrage of Posts that read like sensational lBreitbart headlines.
This “We the People” crap is obnoxious. So. Perhaps if we put down the tiki torches for 5 seconds, peopel might engage in more meaningful ways. But there seems to be no reason to give meaningful dialogue to those who simply wish to Own the Libs. Deplorable.
I personally never really cared for any plantations. To me, they are a reminder of all of my ancestors' hard work without proper compensation (proper compensation would have created more wealth and that wealth would've been passed down to the next generations). Much of what we see today within black America is a direct by-product of intentional efforts to mitigate generational wealth and upward mobility.
I get that but I'm thinking about doing one of the tours now that they are properly recognizing the role of the enslaved and their contributions to plantation life. It's a way of connecting with our past: https://www.washingtonpost.com/trave...dleton-mcleod/
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Today (as sad as this is to admit), many of the socialist policies of modern-day democrats probably hold black folks back MORE than they actually help.
Like what? None of the "socialist policies of modern-day democrats" have even been enacted, e.g. Medicare for All, UBI, etc. The closest policy that's associated with modern progressives that's been enacted is the child tax credit which was enacted this year. Black Americans haven't benefitted from most of the New Deal and War on Poverty-era policies (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, etc.) like White folks have over the life of these programs because of the discriminatory ways in which they were locally implemented. And all of those programs constitute "welfare" of some sort, but only one (TANF, formerly AFDC) gets that label because it became associated with a racist trope that goes all the way back to slavery. It's something that's just accepted as true primarily on that basis and in connection with one highly misunderstood and misinterpreted statistic, all other facts be damned.
If there's one so-called socialist policy that's probably holding folks from all races back more than all else, it would be disability and that's not because of the program itself which should be part of the social safety, but in the way it's been abused. That's another topic altogether though.
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We (blacks) are heavily represented in the liberal offices of city hall, but we still have less real power than many of our immigrant brothers and sisters. And trust me, it's NOT a skin color thing anymore because many Nigerians (who on average are actually darker than the typical American black) come over here as doctors and engineers and they're doing just fine.
A few points to keep in mind here. Firstly, immigrant groups are very diverse in terms of outcomes. You can't lump, say, Guatemalans in the same boat as Indians. There are differences in terms of both push factors (conditions in immigrants' native countries) and pull factors (opportunities they are able to take advantage of in the U.S.) among various immigrant groups that shape those outcomes. Second, (non-refugee) immigration policy tends to favor the most well-to-do folks with the capital and resources to do well in America. For Black African and Caribbean immigrants in particular, most are already the cream-of-the-crop in their native countries, are on average older (late 30s/early 40s), married, and highly educated, so it's not really an apples-to-apples comparison to make with the entirety of the native-born Black population. Thirdly, the native-born Black Americans who are doctors and engineers are doing just fine too, and while there's always room for improvement, there are plenty of us represented within those ranks. I know several myself (mostly doctors), as well as friends and associates with all kinds of advanced degrees doing well for themselves. Native-born Black Americans have plenty of "real power," even in Charlotte. And fourthly, we need not fall into the trap of pitting of native-born Black Americans against immigrants ourselves. It's bad enough that too many immigrants have huge misconceptions about Black Americans and attempt to disparage us to curry favor with White Americans to get ahead, just as the Irish and Italians did before them, but we need not help them in this effort--although they usually come to see reality for what it really is as time goes by and if not them, most certainly their American-born children do.
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These thoughts (and many others) run through my mind anytime I hear about a plantation or some confederate monument. Taking down the symbols of an embarrassing past is easy to be honest. Taking down the cultural disadvantages that our past has left us with is a totally different conversation. For example, the most expensive building in the vast majority of American "hoods" is a black church. Um yeah, stuff LIKE THAT is a problem......
I understand what you're getting at, but I don't know about taking down Confederate monuments being "easy." If anything, I tend to see the arguments in favor of keeping them up as reflective of how folks justify the continuing harmful stigmatization of Black Americans in both formal and informal ways. This helps to explain the massive deficit of trust (which you interpret as cultural disadvantages) between Black citizens and larger society that partially explains present-day realities.
Yeah. My reply is in response to a barrage of Posts that read like sensational lBreitbart headlines.
This “We the People” crap is obnoxious. So. Perhaps if we put down the tiki torches for 5 seconds, peopel might engage in more meaningful ways. But there seems to be no reason to give meaningful dialogue to those who simply wish to Own the Libs. Deplorable.
You do realize you're coming into this "debate" by name calling (e.g. "deplorable"); you can't ever wish to win people over to your side of the argument by approaching them that mindset.
It befuddles me, quite honestly: President Clinton's example of "governing down the middle," resolved a lot of would be clamor between people of varying perspectives.
In fairness, I don't read a lot of political headlines as I see them as being negative, so I am a bit ignorant about that which you speak. Anecdotally, however, I can only share from my personal experience by talking to, and with, people locally. Granted...you'll always have a small segment which are unreasonable, but most people can be reached through patient, respectful, dialogue.
The end objective should be to maintain cohesion within society, but alienating people into splinter groups does not foster harmony.
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