>You know how many negative stereotypes of Asians are out there? Hundreds.
Yes. But except for a few decades from the 1870s until the end of World War II (and yes, a lot of that sucked), this country doesn't have that bad of a history with Asians here, or at least not nearly as bad as blacks. And there's a huge different between stereotypes and treatment.
>Do I consider that to be a problem? Yes, but not a problem that I cannot handle or pretend that my fellow Asians cannot handle.
You've got no idea what black Americans go through. Really none.
>Am I going to handle it by being hypersensitive about it like you are? Of course not.
>Am I going to handle it by pretending to have empathy like you are? Of course not.
Pretending to have empathy? Fuck you. Seriously.
>Let me ask you this. Why should black people care if you are outraged over the Adam Jones banana incident?
Did I say once that I was outraged? Far from it. Just totally unsurprised.
>Because it demonstrates to them that you are on "their side"?
Why should I care if they think I'm on their side?
>Whoop-dee-shit, that's going to do nothing to break their cycle of poverty, crime, and hopelessness.
Fewer people actually pulling shit like that might make them have more self-respect. But in some ways, the issue is more that the banana-throwing and things like that are a symptom, not a cause.
>But it's going to make you feel better, since you obviously feel guilty that you're "better off" because you're white. Hence the white guilt.
Dude, talking about one incident doesn't make me feel anything.
You don't get it at all... Lee Atwater's deathbed confessional wasn't significant because he was a racist, it was significant because he WASN'T. But he gave away the game -- he was talking about how he and his predecessors used racism against blacks to get votes. This is the architect of the campaign that ran the Willie Horton ads, which were undeniably all about that.
Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.
Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, " Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger." [8] [9 ]
Blacks weren't kept as slaves because they were initially thought of as inferior. They were kept as slaves because since they looked starkly different from white Americans, it was easier to make people THINK they were inferior and justify using them as free labor. As slavery ended (sort of -- sharecropping and convict labor, which were widespread until the 1950s or so), and the powers that be still needed as much cheap labor, it became about making poorer white people think that their problems were caused by others -- Asians, Irish, Italians, Jews, Poles, Catholics -- but particularly blacks, who couldn't even read or vote before and suddenly in some ways could be on the level with whites. The "captains of industry" were able to say -- "Oh? Your wages are low because 'others' are taking your jobs or taking money/benefits from you fine upstanding white people."
That evolved into stuff like Jim Crow, white flight, ghettoization.
And that shit continues today.
The image of "welfare queens in Cadillacs" comes from this incident:
en.wikipedia.org
In the early 1960s, city manager Joseph McDowell Mitchell and the council attracted nationwide attention and the admiration of political conservatives when they attempted to require welfare recipients to pick up their payments at police headquarters. Mitchell later announced a program aimed largely at blacks on welfare, whom many in the community blamed for its economic problems.
Some of the whites who thought this was awful picked would pick up the poor (of course, many black) and take them to get their benefits. So the people getting welfare would be seen getting out of expensive cars to get their welfare checks.
Atwater and his ilk used that false image to divide and conquer. And it goes on until today. And part of the game is -- "no, blacks who are upset about this are the real racists!"
Black adults have problems getting jobs because there aren't jobs for them. A telling statistic I'd never heard until recently -- every quarter or so (I believe) there's a survey done asking Americans asking what their biggest concerns are. I've never heard it broken down by race/ethnic group, but when I did, the #1 concern for blacks was jobs. Because they want them, but there aren't many for them. And the ones that are there are a lot harder for blacks to get than whites. Aside from simple racism (despite our [pretty weak] efforts at affirmative action, where blacks with the same credentials are much likely to get less hired by employers than whites because of people's often latent racism, employers tend not to put their businesses in black neighborhoods. I see it right where I live. Until the city gave tax breaks in the last decade or so to luxury high-rise developers, my neighborhood was mostly black. And the residents could only buy their groceries at shitty, and very expensive bodegas. There weren't a lot of businesses. Now that whites have moved to the neighborhood (look at me -- I'm gentrifying!), the neighborhood went from no supermarkets to three in the last five years, two of which have just opened in the last year. Poor people can't afford cars and the subways were drawn to avoid the main street going through the formerly poorer parts of the neighborhood, so it was tough for them to get to work anywhere else. Even now, the jobs that are being created are fairly shitty -- blacks and Hispanics are manning the checkout counters, probably for eight bucks an hour.
Bottom line, there's a much bigger game here than you're seeing, and you're being played.
-Z |
