Professor Gates, Harvard's Pride

[classicman]

Sorry to hear that about your car S123 - maybe they'll just total it and give you a shiny new one.

[Shawnee123]

Fuckboy is going to buy me a brand new car to replace the car with 599 miles on it. I finally am mad...he broke the law and I'm the one sitting here in the dark while the insurance companies play their little games.

Can't wait til that little fucker throws the race card, which is where he was headed last I heard (it's a conspiracy against me, he says.)

Yeah, he's black, and from a foreign country. Do I care? No, he threw that card into the ring and I won't put up with that shit.

We weren't around many black people when I was little. (My dad was a foreman on highway construction and we travelled around and lived in some very remote places until I was halfway through first grade.) Before I went to preschool, my mom says she told me "Your teacher, Mrs ____ is black, and you haven't seen a black person." My mom hasn't a racist bone in her body: she wanted me to understand and not be surprised. She said I shrugged and said "is she nice?" I didn't even care when I didn't even know what it meant. Incidentally, my mom thought she was wonderful and from what little I remember I thought so too. *shrugs*

So to have that shit thrown around, and especially at ME, doesn't sit well with me. I quit making excuses for fucking up my life and changed it: why do I now pay for people who won't take responsibility for their own mistakes?

Boohoo, I'm a victim. Yeah, well, so were my ancestors. Bite me. kthxbai.

[Elspode]

Flint hits the nail squarely on the head. White folks are *not* allowed to comment on race. Only people who are *not* white are so allowed, and they can bash away with all the forces of righteousness, without making the qualification that "assholes are assholes, not just white people", and it is not only acceptable, it is *encouraged*.

So I ask us all...which race is more racist? And how are we to have a dialogue towards easing tensions, righting wrongs and coming together if we cannot point out, honestly and openly, our cultural foibles that may work against us?

There are tests of this. Try throwing a White Heritage Festival and see how far you get. Then call for a Caucasian History Month in all schools. Have a White Film Festival, an Association for the Advancement of Caucasian People or a WET (White Entertainment Television - lots of reruns of Leave it to Beaver, I presume). You, the hypothetic organizer, would instantly become the most racist, bigoted person on the planet. Yet each and every one of the proposed entities I speculate above has it's African American counterpart. So how come it isn't racist in that context?

Racist is racist. Like being an asshole, it is not the province of a single color, religion or ethnicity. Racism is a two way street, period. The time has past for standing upon wrongs which cannot be undone, but which have been put as right as they can be at this point in time. Time to stop pointing fingers and to roll up the sleeves and get on with the hard work of getting on.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Elspode

Try throwing a White Heritage Festival and see how far you get. Then call for a Caucasian History Month in all schools.

Well, when I was growing up, pretty much every day was Caucasian History. The only African American figure I remember studying was George Washington Carver. Other than that, it was all dead European dudes, settlers and Indians (the phrase "Native American" hadn't been coined).

I learned about John Brown, Sojourner Truth, and W. E. B. DuBois on my own dime.

Of course, I also don't remember studying anything about Haym Solomon in public school, so it wasn't just African Americans who were left out.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Elspode

Flint hits the nail squarely on the head. White folks are *not* allowed to comment on race. Only people who are *not* white are so allowed, and they can bash away with all the forces of righteousness, without making the qualification that "assholes are assholes, not just white people", and it is not only acceptable, it is *encouraged*.

So I ask us all...which race is more racist? And how are we to have a dialogue towards easing tensions, righting wrongs and coming together if we cannot point out, honestly and openly, our cultural foibles that may work against us?

There are tests of this. Try throwing a White Heritage Festival and see how far you get. Then call for a Caucasian History Month in all schools. Have a White Film Festival, an Association for the Advancement of Caucasian People or a WET (White Entertainment Television - lots of reruns of Leave it to Beaver, I presume). You, the hypothetic organizer, would instantly become the most racist, bigoted person on the planet. Yet each and every one of the proposed entities I speculate above has it's African American counterpart. So how come it isn't racist in that context?

Racist is racist. Like being an asshole, it is not the province of a single color, religion or ethnicity. Racism is a two way street, period. The time has past for standing upon wrongs which cannot be undone, but which have been put as right as they can be at this point in time. Time to stop pointing fingers and to roll up the sleeves and get on with the hard work of getting on.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

why do I now pay for people who won't take responsibility for their own mistakes?

You may end up becoming a little more conservative after this experience. Just think, a whole life time of similar experiences and you change in the end.

[Shawnee123]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

You may end up becoming a little more conservative after this experience. Just think, a whole life time of similar experiences and you change in the end.

If we define conservative as "has lost faith in humankind and has given up on believing that hard work is what gets you ahead rather than lying cheating and stealing and playing victim" then yes, I suppose you're right.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

If we define conservative as "has lost faith in humankind and has given up on believing that hard work is what gets you ahead rather than lying cheating and stealing and playing victim" then yes, I suppose you're right.

That's it!!!!

[Clodfobble]

You did grow up a long time ago though, Rich. It was far more balanced when I went to school in the 80s and early 90s, and even moreso today for my kids' curriculum.

[Elspode]

My kids have all been in HS within the last ten years, and from my observations of their curriculum, the situation is now, if anything, reversed. Overcompensation, because Caucasians are bad, m'kay?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Elspode

The time has past for standing upon wrongs which cannot be undone, but which have been put as right as they can be at this point in time. Time to stop pointing fingers and to roll up the sleeves and get on with the hard work of getting on.

Not for The professor, he's one of the leading proponents of reparations.

Originally Posted by richlevy

I learned about John Brown, Sojourner Truth, and W. E. B. DuBois on my own dime.

John Brown? The John Brown, white abolitionist, I learned about in school?
They didn't have time to teach us about every person that did exceptionally good, or bad, things. Only the ones that had a major impact on the course of the nations history.
Like the Civil War, it would take a whole school year to cover it, so only major turning points, not every campaign, were covered.

[Shawnee123]

OH NOES...I has converzionz.

[TheMercenary]

I have always defined being conservative much differently than the norm.

[TheMercenary]

This was pretty good.

If this sounds like an improbable Hollywood drama sketch, it isn't nearly as far-fetched as the notion that this "beer summit" as it's been called will be a "teachable moment," as President Obama has opined, in the nation's long struggle with race. It may smooth over the problems these two men have with each other, but it will do nothing to change the different vantage points from which they and others of their respective races view the world. It is these differing worldviews that have created the gulf between blacks and whites in America, a gulf unique to the dynamic between these two races.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/..._away_rac.html

An interesting perspective. I am not really sure that this "beer summit" did much to advance the rift between majority-"minorities" and the police.

[glatt]

And is it just me, or did all the pictures of that summit make it look like the cop was the only one to take a swig of his beer. It's beer, people. You drink it.