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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (47382)	1/30/2008 6:29:12 PM
From: Travis_Bickle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541933

There is no reason you should change your mind, your kids will never have to be embarrassed by where they live, or the clothes they wear, or what brand of shoe they have on their feet. "We're not going to practice that, and we're going to reach out to people who are victims of it." There are no victims, victimology is a fraud. People can either stand together, or wither away and die. If they choose the latter, it is nobody's fault but their own. Stand together or lose everything. Imo standing together is the better solution.

To: epicure who wrote (47382)	1/30/2008 7:29:52 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541933

Syb, short of insular clans and Balkinization, maybe Seminole has a point. Racism, its extent, its harm and its cures is a tough subject. We can almost all agree that it's a horribly harmful disease on both an individual level and a societal level and that we ought to do everything we can to eradicate it. But its been around for as long as we know, and usually in a much more nasty form than we suffer in today's America. That's no excuse but the sad fact is that the cure seems to necessarily come in little doses and we do keep getting more of it. I remember the late 60s and early 70s and I think that the actions and visibility of our enlightened legislators, our black leaders and our amazingly talented black athletes, musicians and actors are curing us a little at a time. (Talk about shattering stereotypes....how about Obama?) Having said that, it certainly does exist and our African American neighbors are, as a group, on the bottom of the income and educational scale. Seminole's point, if I'm reading him correctly, is that life is full of hurdles that can victimize individuals and ethnic groups but many groups refuse to stay victimized. We can argue that maybe such groups weren't as brutally victimized, and while that may be true I think it's clear that in the past there were groups that suffered far greater discriminatory obstacles, on average, than black Americans have been suffering over the last couple of decades, and yet they nevertheless found ways to thrive. So why do some of us (I'm not saying you do this) use language indicating they view our African American communities as peopled by nearly self-helpless victims of a society that has stacked the deck against them? And why do some African American citizens sometimes seem to view themselves in that way? Maybe it's their "hope" that's in too short a supply, something Obama talks about so earnestly, and undoubtedly it's a whole host of other things as well, but as many former victims would attest, being a truly oppressed victim surely takes some degree of cooperation from the victim. Ed

To: epicure who wrote (47382)	1/30/2008 7:45:29 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541933

This is one of the times that I think the 15 years I have on you gives us really different POVs. THe 50s and 60s brought such enormous changes for minorities and women that. by comparison, today seems halcyon, an environment that leans far more toward acceptance than exclusion. I can remember being at the country club with my parents in the 50s and hearing some women talking about the most beautiful Asian woman at a table nearby. They were horrible about her. Later I asked my mother why they were so nasty, and she explained that the Asian woman was married to a bank vice president, but that she would never be accepted in our Southern town because she was- Asian. AND he had probably hurt his career by marrying her. It baffled and horrified me. ANd thankfully, my mother conveyed her total disjust with the prevailing prejudice. And of course, there were no blacks at all in the club. Except waiting on us. I grew up with segregated schools until the 9th grade when a black minister from outside was brought in to "break the barrier". His daughter, Curtissa, and I shared classes (I was oblivious to the whole political thing) and now I read her entry in my yearbook with bemusement, "Thank you for being my friend". If I had only known. Then again maybe it would have tainted what really was just a normal friendship, at least for me. Everything is so fraught now with these Meanings. You are completely right about not tolerating any kind of racism. But you are, if you will forgive me, for I don't mean at ALL to sound condescending, a product of the post 60s. Those of us who were raised before the 60s have, I think, a better feel for just how far we have come. How truly awful things were. But without the continuing indignation and anger of those to whom the present still seems unacceptable, we won't go further. So yay for you, and more yays for our kids who can't even figure out why we might use the word "victim".