Would folks consider stand up comedy satire? Because those comedians mock everyone: themselves, their race/ethnicity, other races, the audience members, you name it. No one is immune. Now the horrible verbal assault of an audience member like Michael Richards did was completely unacceptable, but that was an attack, not humor.
Richards was trying to be funny but he didn’t do it well and it fell flat. He’s talked about it and he and Seinfeld cover it in their episode of Jerry’s web series.
When I look through threads, I sometimes think a better chant might be “Women’s lives matter”, given the assaults in Bloomington thread and others about violence (including one story I posted about a high school athlete who raped an unconscious girl and then bragged about it on video).
An understanding of the metaphor you use would help.
http://chainsawsuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/20141204-patreon.png
I think that image gives a succinct and simple explanation of why it’s Black Lives Matter, and why responding with All Lives Matter undermines the idea and people affected.
I agree with the spirit of what Mrs. Ameer is saying, though I think the word “conservative” generalizes unfairly. A quick look at the comments that follow any Yale Daily News article about the recent action demonstrates the problem: people from outside the college (I’m assuming here) toss around generalized insults about “snowflakes” and “affirmative action admits” without, in many cases, even demonstrating that they read the students’ actual words.
I’m not sure how we want to label those people–the word that rhymes with droll that we can’t use here is overused, “racist” only gets at part of what they’re doing, and “conservatives” unfairly assigns the qualities of a fringe group to the whole. Holloway says it much better than Ameer in the New Yorker interview: “Okay, so we know it’s unfashionable to wear a Klan hood, but look at how these anonymous message boards are operating. That’s not so far from the spirit of planned rallies, trying to terrorize people anonymously.”
I thought Richards’ bigoted tirade was an uncontrolled fit of anger at a heckler, and then at others. I seem to recall he just lost it and was yelling at that and other hecklers. Seemed totally out of control.Then some in the audience started yelling back at his for his inappropriate language. And it continued.
I just found a youtube of it, but its too disgusting to link, IMO.
I like this definition of satire vs. comedy. I’d argue with the the last paragraphs of the text that some comics have satirical elements to their comedy, but that satire is something more specialized and with a more serious aim. However, I did think of a satirist–Jonathan Swift–who doesn’t limit his satire to people in power.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-comedy-and-satire.htm#didyouknowout
I can’t agree more with Holloway: if anyone has any doubt that racism is alive and well, take a look at the message boards under these types of articles. Just because these wackos aren’t wearing KKK robes in public doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
I agree with @classicalmama that it’s unfair to brand the wackos as being members of any one political party. It’s also unfair to brand people with differing opinions as “wackos” just because they don’t agree with you.
There’s a difference between the racist opinions and the opinions that “kids these days are soft/spoiled/entitled, etc” which is a common response to these articles.
I’m interested in this event in the Dartmouth library. On the one hand, I can’t say too much about a protest that goes into the library and (temporarily) disrupts studying. Heck, we used to do that on Halloween with no real purpose. On the other hand, I thought this quote from the Dartmouth article was notable:
I couldn’t help but think of the recent statements from Iran that “Death to America” was just a protest against American policies.
I think one lesson anybody ought to take from all of these cases is that in an age in which anything can be filmed anywhere, you can lose your moral high ground in a hurry even if fringe members of your group misbehave.
I’m sorry, but there is no logic whatsoever to that image and it has little to no relationship to the subject.
If all houses mattered, then the water should be directed towards the burning home, unless, of course, it was clear that the burning home was already too fully involved to be saved, in which case, the water should properly go on the uninvolved structure.
Although, I can see how the owners of the burning home, arriving on the scene amidst the emotional chaos, and being substantially ignorant on the subject of extinguishing residential fires, would scream quite loudly over the decision of the Fire Chief.
I agree. That just seems awful to me.
But it also seems to be that Dartmouth had a fairly toxic atmosphere before this, with the Black Lives Matter exhibit being “vandalized” (apparently it was a display of t-shirts and they were all torn down?), and such. So the anger of the few may be a product of that. Or maybe not, it’s hard to say when we aren’t on campus seeing everything in context.
JustOneDad said: “I’m sorry, but there is no logic whatsoever to that image and it has little to no relationship to the subject.”
The cartoon makes perfect sense.
Here’s the thing to remember. “Black Lives Matter” was a movement to protest real problems faced by the black community.
“All Lives Matter” suddenly appeared on conservative social media almost immediately afterwards. Why do you think that happened? The answer is obvious - to discredit the Black Lives Matter movement and make it appear that the BLM people were somehow discriminating against white people by airing their concerns. To make it appear that the BLM people didn’t care about all people, just about themselves. To imply that black protesters are “the real racists.”
And it worked. It worked very well. You fell for it, along with millions of other white Americans. “What’s wrong with acknowledging that all lives matter? Isn’t equality important? blah blah blah.” Every fratboy and middle aged suburban white person in America seems to think that this is suddenly the most important thing to say, over and over. Like it means something significant in this discussion, rather than simply being a blatant deflection.
No wonder the BLM people are angry about it, and some of them are saying stupid things. They can see how little white people like us really care about their issues, and how easily we are diverted by an empty slogan for a non-existent movement addressing a non-existent issue dreamed up solely to derail their genuine concerns.
I’d be pissed too if I were them, and I would probably say something intemperate.
“Black Lives Matter” is a phrase that’s best understood as the beginning of a sentence. Filling in the rest of the sentence is a Rorschach that’s at the heart of the differing interpretations.
The BLM advocates believe the implied rest of the sentence is “…just as much as white lives.” Because in the past, and often times today, it appears that’s not always the case. And so it’s intended as a reminder.
In my experience, people who respond to BLM with “All Lives Matter” seem to feel that the rest of the sentence is “…more than other lives do.” So they feel compelled to make a counterpoint restating the equality of all lives. They feel BLM is making a claim for special treatment.
I once heard a comedian say that the ALM vs BLM thing was like someone saying “Save the Whales” back in the 70s, and what would have been the response if some pro-whaling group responded with “Save all animals!” OR “save the rainforests” doesn’t mean “screw all the other types of forest”. Those movements began in response to specific threats, as did BLM.
ALM was never a movement, it was only ever a response to BLM, meant to lessen and oppose it.
President Obama’s comments -
^^^ This. Thanks Al2 for posting.
Edited to add:
This should also apply to majority students to listen to others and to speak out when they hear injustice. Many parents already teach this to their children. Speaking out or acting to thwart injustice also supports the issue of bystander intervention to stop sexual assaults on campus. Everyone should listen when spoken to respectfully. But not sure the best advice when people hold certain derogatory views and are unwilling or accept evidence to the contrary. Sometimes it seems like banging your head against the wall with no possibility of breaking it down. Unfortunately, there is a lot of that out there as well.
You can speak for yourself, but not for everyone else.
The facts are that a huge amount of money and effort has gone into the black community, particularly since the Civil RIghts Era. The disintegration of the black family was first documented long ago, yet it continues to fall apart. The message “Black Lives Matter” is best used on the black community, because that’s where it needs to be heeded first.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot in light of the recent activism. In the past, my approach has been to ignore those kinds of comments; why give something so over-the-top offensive the attention of a response? I’m starting to think that it’s important to speak out, though, just so that those ugly comments don’t sit out there with no one protesting their inherent racism/sexism whatever. And to my mind, it’s my work, as a person who is not the target of the comment, to do this.
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Yep. Just like I said in a different thread. Blacks should stop whining and be thankful that we let them even be a part of our white America. Social justice warriors are the real problem. And maybe reverse racism.
That is the attitude that most middle aged white people have these days, and you are illustrating it perfectly.
There is a special category of person who feels that misrepresenting what someone else says is their only real hope for attention.
President Obama has been a true beacon of clarity and insight on this issue, and all would be well to consider his words carefully.