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<p>Do lynch mobs still exist for either race in the way you meant it? And with that established, have blacks ever attacked whites for little or no reason because they did not like them? You can’t use historical racism to justify current racism in any form, or excuse potentially racist actions because of it.</p>
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<p>Did you seriously just say that? Read above, please.</p>
<p>Well if someone has done something to you and also to your ancestors, I should think you also would recoil from them. That is not racist. That is just a natural response to trauma.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier:
“Well if someone has done something to you and also to your ancestors, I should think you also would recoil from them. That is not racist. That is just a natural response to trauma.” </p>
<p>I hope that you keep on posting your tripe. I really do. I think you have lost or will soon lose any sympathizers to your twisted cause and your deeply rooted racism. </p>
<p>It is appropriate to “recoil” from the person who perpetrated a crime against you. To not do so would be foolish. But it is irrational and pathetic to “recoil” from everyone who has the same skin color as the person who perpetrated a crime against you. And it’s also racist, no matter who engages in that ridiculous behavior.</p>
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<p>Agreed. Unfortunately, it happens a lot, especially to black and Hispanic males.</p>
<p>A lot.</p>
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<p>I think you misunderstand me here. I don’t mean that it is appropriate to recoil from everyone who looks a certain way, etc. I mean that when a black person encounters a white person who signals to them danger in the way the cop signaled to Gates, then if that black person has endured the sort of trauma signaled by the white person, and if that black person’s ancestors have endured the same sort of trauma, it is then to be expected that he will recoil from it, just as Gates did. This is why I do not much focus on Gates’s behavior. I understand it. What you might call Gates’s “racism” is nothing more than his valid response to trauma. And I think this is generally the case with blacks. That is what I meant.</p>
<p>I have posted enough here so that any reasonable forum person here knows I have no racism against whites. I have some white ancestry myself, and have white family members. Still, racism is a thing that stretches across many generations, and if current society promulgates it, then racism moves further, to proceeding generations.</p>
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<p>This is a common stupidity we see all too often in these sorts of discussions. Some of us actually think that when a man is severely traumatized by an entire society, then his grandson has no cause to feel also traumatized, despite that the grandson was raised by the son of a man who endured trauma that he then passed to his son, a son that also received new trauma from his society, which he passed to his son, the grandson, who also received new trauma, etc… That is how this works.</p>
<p>My grandparents AND parents grew up in a most wretched time, when whites literally mobbed and lynched blacks. As a child I endured Jim Crow, and a great deal of white racism right into today. I have worked hard not to spread the trauma I have endured to my children. But, of course, American society did it for me. So, now yet another generation of us exists with the certain knowledge, by direct experience, that there are real Americans, and then there are Americans like us, the “others” whose citizenship is still in question.</p>
<p>Fortunately, this does not mean for my children what it meant for me. I was raised at a time in America that offered people few options when it came to defining oneself as a citizen. Either one was a patriot, or one was an “other”, perhaps even a traitor. Being subjected to racism proved I could not be a patriot. I knew of blacks who considered themselves patriots despite racism, and I saw whites applauding them. But this was something I found to be intellectually false. I understood that any society that could not receive me as precisely as it did anyone else, would leave me always at a net loss should I extend patriotic devotion to it. So I have always felt a dissonance here in the White Country where, since being not a patriot, and not a traitor, I was amongst the “others”.</p>
<p>It is radically different for my children. When I asked my son if racism hurts him, he said that, if anything, it is an inconvenience, but only a minor one. I cannot imagine racism being a “minor” inconvenience. Such a thing is foreign to my way of thinking. I suppose the world is a lot smaller for my children than it was for me at their age. My children therefore sense that they have many more options than I did. They are fluent in multiple languages and even now are living in other countries, working, and acquiring culture and greater confidence. They still prefer America, and travel has helped them see the country for the good that is here. But whereas the idea of not being a patriot has always brought me discomfort, they would have it no other way. They are ex-patriots everywhere, even in America, and enjoy this status. It means that when they sense the time coming for them to move along, they can do it without reservation. I marveled at how they planned their trips, arranged their living arrangements, applied for jobs, interviewed, and then moved away from The Land of the Free as easily as if they had moved to the town next to ours. It is a thing I will never be able to do.</p>
<p>Actually, what I said is completely valid and can be accepted simultaneously with your personal anecdotes. I wasn’t trying to pretend that black people have no right to still lament racism. Rather, I was attempting to assert that responding to any perceived racism with one’s own racism is a not a productive thing to do. It’s one of the reasons I supported the Supreme Court’s decision in the firefighter case so much; it established equality by disregarding skin-color, rather than supporting corrective reverse-racism, which is the ultimate solution to our problem of racial strife.</p>
<p>And naturally, I can’t exactly say I can understand your mentality, because I have never been subjected to anything near the racism you purport to have been (I say purport only because verifying veracity on the internet is impossible; you definitely sound as if you experienced it.) I’ve heard Jewish jokes by other kids in school since about third grade, but it’s nothing more than an inconvenience, as your kids noted. It was probably more of an issue for my great-grandparents and generations before them in the Central and Eastern European countries they immigrated from. I do, however, expect you in your position to understand that historically oppressed races’ aging demands for reparations should never supersede equality for whites, most of whom harbor little or no animosity towards other races - that is, you can’t correct for the past at the expense of those who are innocent, because it is not fair to them.</p>
<p>Maybe this is all just a 1600 year old domestic dispute -HA!</p>
<p>[Harvard</a> Professor Gates Is Half-Irish, Related to Cop Who Arrested Him - ABC News](<a href=“Harvard Professor Gates Is Half-Irish, Related to Cop Who Arrested Him - ABC News”>Harvard Professor Gates Is Half-Irish, Related to Cop Who Arrested Him - ABC News)</p>
<p>WSJ NBC poll</p>
<p>Who is more at fault?</p>
<p>27% Gates
11% Crowley</p>
<p>29% both men equally
31% Don’t know enough to form opinion.</p>
<p>Yes, the courts are the solution for everything. Maybe whites and asians should sue blacks as a group for inflicting more crime on them as a group than vice-versa.</p>
<p>I’m not in the least surprised about Gates’ Irish ancestry. My understanding is that the great majority of AfAms have at least on white ancestor (years ago, I believe I read the percentage was on the order of 75%), and it makes sense that a lot of that white heritage would actually wind up being Irish. This is especially true because there was a time in which being Irish in The United States meant you weren’t actually white. I find that amazing, given the fact that literally no one questions the fact that the Irish are considered white today. But apparently, there occurred a lengthy period of time during which “Negroes” and Irishmen occupied almost adjoining low spots on America’s social totem pole.</p>
<p>Many years ago in Norfolk, Va and its surrounds, it was supposedly not unheard of to see signs on people’s lawns reading, “Ni@#ers and Irishmen Keep of The Lawn”. So, there was a time when blacks and Irishmen felt a sort of kinship in their social standing, and formed tentative political and social bonds. However, that changed completely when The Irish won their logical designation as white people, and were able to “cross over The Jordan” and never look back. I wonder how it is that they went from being “Irish” to just “white”. It’s all very interesting. There’s a book I’ve been meaning to read about the history of The Irish in America that speaks extensively of this strange period in their history, this weird and protracted hiccup in their journey toward being considered “real Americans”. I wish I could remember the name of it.</p>
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<p>Honestly Barrons, you do realize that what you just wrote reads like a resentful little spasm of pique against blacks in general, don’t you? The issue of Law Enforcement’s violation of citizens civil rights under the 1st and 14th Amendments has nothing to do with your particular personal rage against blacks in general, and everything to do with maintaining those values The Founding Fathers (you know—those guys Conservatives vocally worship with virtual evangelical zeal.) codified in those documents which set America apart in all the world. Maybe you’ve heard of them. They’re called The Constitution of The United States, and The Bill of Rights. I’m sorry that it has become obvious that you believe they only apply to persons whom you believe “deserve” their protections, but maybe you can do something about that. Perhaps you could start a PAC to lobby Congress to limit their application to groups or individuals whom you’re not offended by.</p>
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<p>I was under the impression from previous parts of this thread that the only people who were justified in feeling aggrieved towards all members of another race were those who had been personally attacked / wronged in some fashion. So, in other words, it was ok and understandable if a white woman who had been mugged by a black man clutched her purse and ran when she saw any black man on the street, but racist if a white woman who hadn’t been mugged did the same.</p>
<p>But now you have a different interpretation. If a given black man was wronged or traumatized by a white person, it’s ok for his son, grandson, etc. to feel similarly traumatized by whites in general.</p>
<p>Can you explain the discrepancy, Dross? It seems that the argument is that only white people who have been personally victimized by blacks are justified in fearing blacks, but that any black person is justified in fearing whites. Hypothetically speaking, I can’t use my mother’s mugging by a black man to justify fearing blacks, but you can use your father’s treatment at the hands of whites to justify fearing whites.</p>
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<p>Dross - I am reading a book right now about 1960’s Mississippi, which contains in it descriptions of the Jim Crow laws, the attitudes that blacks shouldn’t be even drinking from the same water fountains, using the same bathrooms, and in general were treated as sub-humans. It’s obviously appalling and disgusting. </p>
<p>But can you understand that not every white person in America grew up with the southern Jim Crow mentality? And that some of us had ancestors who were appalled and disgusted to know that southern whites acted that way?</p>
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<p>I will try to justify Dross as best as I think I can. The concept of collective oppression and individual oppression is the dissonance that causes the divergence here. In your example only one white woman was targeted and not because she was white, therefore there is no reason that other whites should feel victimized or threatened. But in Dross example the men were targeted not as individuals but because they are members of a community so an attack premised on their race affects the entirety of the black community because it was an attack on the entire community.</p>
<p>It is the same justification that is used to validate hate crimes laws. Because when you attack someone just for who they are, as opposed to the individual themself, then you attack an entire community. That is why blacks can feel oppressed as a group when one black man is discriminated against on the basis of being black.</p>
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<p>It is unfair to characterize the south in such a harmful way. Sure the south is worse in terms of racial conditions than the north, but it is still a good place to live and there is really little discrimination. Even when I visited Birmingham, Alabama I saw interracial couples (quite a few actually) so the south shouldn’t be blankly insulted. Though i will attest in San Fransisco, I was not treated different from whites at all. In Houston, sometimes people stare when I enter stores but it is just an inconvenience.</p>
<p>Poetsheart, have you ever had the pleasure of reading James Weldon Johnson’s short stories? If memory serves, some of his fiction included allusions to the relationship in the late 19th Century between “the negro” and the Irish immigrant. Quite fascinating stuff, really. For example, apparently it was not at all uncommon for Irish housekeepers at the time to have Black husbands. This was out “in the frontier” places like Ohio (the setting for at least one of Johnson’s post-Civil War stories). And in Professor Gates’ own home state of West Virginia, I gather that Irish and Black miners etc. lived under very similar social conditions until the early 20th Century. Which as a former professor of mine [and an Irish American] once said, made the severe rascism by West Virginia Irishmen toward Blacks quite tragic, as the two groups had much in common, contrasted to the mine owners and company-town hierarchy.</p>
<p>There is a very good play “No N******s, No Dogs, No Jews” by John Henry Richmond which I recommend. </p>
<p>But Mel Brooks, as usual, has the best line. In Blazing Saddles, when Sheriff Bart is rallying the townspeople to fight he brings in the black railroad workers, Chinese workers and the Irish miners:</p>
<p>Olson Johnson: All right… we’ll give some land to the n**<em>s and the ch</em><em>ks. But we don’t want the Irish!
[everyone complains]
Olson Johnson: Aw, prairie *</em>… Everybody!
[everyone rejoices]</p>
<p>This has nothing to do with Officer Crowley, but just in case anyone thinks that there isn’t really any racism in the Boston police force, there’s this unfortunate story in today’s Boston Herald:</p>
<p>[Officials:</a> Hub cop used racial slur in Gates e-mail - BostonHerald.com](<a href=“http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1187845]Officials:”>http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1187845)</p>
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<p>How stupid could someone possibly be to do something like that?</p>
<p>The woman who called 911 held a press conference reiterating her position that the police report was false concerning what she said:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/us/30gates.html?_r=2&h[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/us/30gates.html?_r=2&h</a></p>
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