In the 1920 Duluth lynching (June 15th 1920) thousands of White Americans in Duluth, Minnesota took part in the murder of three black men:
- Isaac McGhie (1900-1920)
- Elmer Jackson (1901-1920)
- Elias Clayton (1901-1920)
When the circus came to town, Irene Tusken, 19, and James Sullivan, 18, both white, went that night. Afterwards Tusken went home, briefly talked to her parents and went to bed.
In the middle of the night Sullivan called the police to report that six black circus workers raped Tusken, a white woman, at gunpoint. The circus train was just leaving town. The police had it stopped. They woke up all 140 black men on the train and lined them up along the tracks.
Sullivan and Tusken could not pick out the rapists – the black men all looked alike to them. Tusken picked out six by body shape and size. The police took some others whose alibis were weak.
Two hours the police questioned the suspects. Nothing. They let seven go and locked up the other six. The police chief and his two top men left town to catch up with the travelling circus to find more suspects.
Word of the rape spread through town.
5.00pm: The street in front of the police station began filling up with well-dressed white people, men, women and children. Young men across the street were eyeing the station.
6.00pm: The evening newspaper came out. It quoted Tusken’s doctor:
I believe she is suffering more from nervous exhaustion than anything else.
7.30pm: Men started throwing bricks at the police station, breaking windows. As one of them put it:
We’re talking about a White American girl getting raped by Black savages and left for dead. What if that girl was your wife or daughter? What would you do? Let’s stop yakking!
8.30pm: With the police chief out of the town, the Commissioner of Public Safety took charge and ordered the police not to shoot:
I do not want to see the blood of one White person spilled for six Blacks.
The mob stormed the station.
11.00pm: With the jail now smashed open, they took out the suspects one by one and brought them up a hill to the lamppost at Second Avenue East and First Street. White men beat them, white women kicked them and stepped on them with high-heel shoes. At the lamppost they hanged them.
The mob was yelling, chanting, cheering, singing, laughing.
Blacks in town had put their children to bed early. They sat in darkened living rooms, some with guns ready. No one could eat or sleep. You could hear the lynch mob a mile away.
At nearly midnight, with three suspects hanged and three still to go, the police chief arrived back in town. He ordered the police to use guns to restore order. The mob broke up and went home, the three dead black men twisting in the wind, ropes creaking.
No one was ever punished for the murders.
In 2003 three statues were put up in memory of McGhie, Jackson and Clayton.
Source: Michael Fedo, “Lynchings in Duluth” (2000)
See also:
- Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” (1965) starts with “They’re selling postcards of the hanging” and speaks of a blind commissioner. Dylan’s father was nine at the time and lived two blocks away.
- Sinclair Lewis’s “Kingsblood Royal” (1947) – has a story of the lynching. Lewis lived in Duluth in the 1940s and talked to blacks who remembered the lynching.
- University of Minnesota blackface video – also from Duluth, in 2012
- phantom black assailants
- The pure white woman stereotype
- black rape statistics
- Emmett Till
- C.J. Miller
- Ida B. Wells
- The police
For AmeriKKKa to atone for her sins, she would have to be reborn a saint and die a saint a thousand times over. Nothing but the Second Coming and Judgement Day is going to make the pain go away.
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Sometimes i wish the second coming, would come on and end all the madness.
-_- reading this, sent chills down my spine as i imaged, those racist white people chanting and yelling for the death of these innocent 20 year old black men.
I was day dreaming about how scared these men were in their final hours and minutes of their life.
Makes me feel so sad for them… 😦
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My God…the terror they experienced, the pain. I think of all of the Black American victims, who have no ‘post cards’, to commemorate their suffering, their torture, their murders. These, will remain nameless, and ‘un-remembered’, left to the ages, the dust, their cries, reverberating in thunderstorms…..
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Dear Self-congratulating, Finger-pointing Northerners,
Your ancestors did it too. Your recent ancestors.
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Abagond
Whites will do what whites do best.
Destroy.
Nothing will ever shock me ever again about these perverted, dysfunctional, lying, conniving, manipulative, ice-mountain dwellers. For them, lacking the Spirit, they must kill. They must maim. They must act out in extreme aggression against Original Peoples. It is simply in their natures.
I used to feel angst for my ancestors when reading about the pain they went through. I still do but now it’s on a different level. They never left us. They watch over us as we struggle to rediscover who we are. Whites will reap the salty, bitter benefits of their evil very soon as they implode under their own social construct.
Whatever comes their way, it’s long overdue. But on some level I do feel sorry for these creatures lacking melanin. It’s as if they can’t help themselves.
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This is disgusting its funny to me how white people felt blacks and natives were savages when really they were.Just because blacks and natives didn’ know god or didn’t have guns and didn’t speak english they were savages? But the whites who spoke english,believed in god,and carried guns were not.The whites who killed women and children were not savages.The whites who lynched black men based on hearsay and destroyed communities based on one persons testimony were not savages.The whites who raped women and sold their husbands and children were not savages.If that is what non savages do i’d rather be a savage. The natives who welcomed them and showed them how to survive in the new world were savages.Whites think ppl are savages simply because they are different,speak different languages,have a different skin color,so the whites had to teach them. Oh yes the white mans burden of having to teach these savages how to speak english and work for him.Its like whites want everyone to be like them so they won’t feel left out even when the people welcome them so they won’t feel left out.Its not enough they want people to be like them they don’t want to compromise and learn someone else way of life and respect it, no they want them to conform and learn their ways.
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This right here is what the people who say racism is dead and get over it ,it happened hundreds of years ago need to see.The whites say get over it when it comes to slavery and how can something that happend hundreds of years ago affect you.I say yes slavery did happen hundreds of years ago ,but what about jim crow.There are people still alive who can remember the horrors of that time.There are people who recall things like this happening to a family member.Then they are silent *crickets*
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This country has alot to answer for. I still can’t imagine how supposed decent human beings would design post cards of dead victims. This is just gruesome and horrendous. And the monument is just the city of Deluth’s way of apologizing for their animal behavior.
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” This is just gruesome and horrendous. And the monument is just the city of Deluth’s way of apologizing for their animal behavior.”
*******
I, personally, don’t want America’s apology! Let the nation pay the same way it’s been done for thousands of years – compensation for kidnapping, lose of live, torture, unpaid wages, outright theft of land and labor, etc, etc in the form of monetary restitution – exactly like those whom are found guilty of civil/criminal crimes are still penalized today! If America is truly sorry (that’s doubtful, but it’s besides the point) let her show it where it counts – via her purse. (Yeah, she’s supposedly broke, yet notice how her elitist rich keep getting richer!)
Damages, pain & suffering, etc have been paid to all manner of wronged people/parties. Why not us???????
And for those of you descendants of “chattel” slaves who are against such a payment, I will be happy to accept your unwanted share. : /
Cash payout – that’s REAL JUSTICE!!!
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@mstoogood4yall–‘Its like whites want everyone to be like them so they won’t feel left out even when the people welcome them so they won’t feel left out.’
But there’s the irony–I think they want to be like everybody else. Globally they are the outsider. The ‘other’. The ‘afflicted’. It is fascinating to me how their culture has successfully conned and brainwashed the majority of the world’s population into believing the exact opposite. I think HOW that happened and WHY it has held sway for so long is what black people need to study and figure out. It’s like we have a case of worldwide cultural & historical amnesia. I liken them to the Lilliputians in Gulliver’s Travels–I think lynchings like the one above drives home point of their absolute rabid paranoia in relation to the ‘giant’ they have lulled to sleep for centuries. The slightest movement will send them into a frenzied ‘beating’ of the giant back to unconsciousness. Hence the need in my opinion to erect an artificial, protected environment that ensures their survival. Global apartheid is what we now all live under b/c of this. I really think that white people’s history is the ultimate cautionary tale for hue-manity–it exemplifies the biblical verse: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?…although I’m sure some would question whether there was anything to lose?
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@Matari–now you must know the white man ain’t comin’ outta pocket for shat. He actually believes he did us a favor. We should be happy to be livin’ close enough to rub elbows with God’s direct representative on dis here earth. And if we nice, he might even put in a good word for us. What I wanna know is why are there so few of us who ‘get it’ and see thru all the lies and mythologies and why so many people of color ACT like we were made to suffer at their hands and are simply waiting for the great hereafter? It’s like the law of self-preservation doesn’t exist for most. The living dead if you ask me.
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Man, Abagond…. I can’t take this. So much evil in this world. I see the nature of the Beast has not changed. Minnesota then and now. This story is heartbreaking. I wish the Black youth of today got a history like this, instead the watered down Whiteman worship taught in schools today.
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Forgive me if this offends anyone, but I’m not too optimistic that this country will get any divine punishment for their sins, nor will I believe that racist white people will receive any retribution that is way past over due.
I see it like this, if the white man deserved punishment for this, it wouldn’t been done by now somehow. If there was such a loving, almighty being, that being wouldn’t have allowed this and more to happen in the first damn place. So, this talk about the Second Coming – to me – is just more wishful thinking for a man who seems to care about us as much as white people care about us.
Anyway, this story is but one example of the hell we call live that we live in. It is hell because this society continues to hide it’s sins and insanity all for power. Honestly speaking, if America were to collapse right now, I would party like never before. I would celebrate like it’s 2999. America deserves to fall and more. Period.
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@brothawolf–I disagree that they won’t get their comeuppance. I believe just b/c we don’t ‘see’ it doesn’t mean it’s not happening and in motion. I think on a personal level if you have seen evidence in your personal life that every action has an equal and opposite reaction or ‘what goes around comes around’, then why would it not be so on a widespread level? I believe the universe always seeks balance and once things have tilted too far to the extreme either way, the universe seeks correction. Nobody can make me believe that the Creator sanctions the conditions that we see here. Global apartheid seeks total control and dominion over God’s creations when I believe God doesn’t even seek that! He knows we’ll find our way to Him inevitably. Or maybe He is waiting for that law of self-preservation to kick in before He sends assistance? If we as the global majority don’t think we are worthy of freedom, then maybe we are not? Are we willing to die and kill for it? What percentage of the world is really willing to fight til the death for what they feel is their birthright? How complicit are we in our slavery? If we really feel that God bestowed the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to all and certain entities deny us those rights and we do essentially nothing; then maybe we don’t have as much faith in our higher power as we’d like to believe or just maybe we really don’t value life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as much as we’d like to believe?
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Abagond, thanks for this post. I am African brother who is grateful to hear about the realities of contemporary black people in the US.
I have to agree with Legion, judgement day never comes for some people unless there is deliberate action. For me, its like watching a lazy incompetent work colleague get a promotion over the hard working people. i have seen that too many times, and I have to say, you watch them double or even triple thier salary and then they get head-hunted to another job for an even better package. And people say, ‘surely he will get caught out as a fraud and incompetent’ but it never happens.
My experience is that justice is something you fight for, never given simply because you are a nice person or somethings that happens when the perpetrator realizes the error of his ways.
The axe forgets but the tree remembers, as some people say.
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Stories like this always hurt me to read. I just think about how those men must have felt standing there praying that this girl doesn’t pick them out of the lineup and praying that they will be lucky enough to see and provide for their families again. It’s heartbreaking that humans can treat other humans this way.
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There’s a ‘postcard’ with a lynching of 5-6 bodies on a single light pole. That one haunted me for years when I was child. There are also some of lynched black women. A story I remember reading, was of a pregnant woman who attempted to save her husband, but of course was unsuccessful. The mob then tied her up to a tree, cut the baby out of her stomach, which fell to the ground. The infant began crying, and the crowd fell upon the infant by stomping it to death. Gruesome stuff.
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Face it brother wolf, the USA is not like countries like Germany or Poland,where a people that was divided is united, it is like Kenya, the Netherlands or the UK, a bunch of people(s) put together by forces in history (often a small group of male whiteys) and who have to pretend and to learn they are one people, in one country. Countries who have tried this much longer still aren’t there, if religion is the problem, secularity may be the solution, or widespread atheism, in the case of race or ethnicity miscegenation seems to be the quickest way to eliminate the problem.
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@Oyan (@OY_aN) The incident you are speaking of is the Mary Turner lynching. That is like a horror story. That was just animalistic, There was nothing human about those individuals that participated in that awful incident. I can’t help thinking are they burning in hell. On the day they took their last breathe did they remember their transgression.
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the 1920 Duluth lynching and many of the other lynchings in the United States is truly an American Horror story.
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@nmaat433 What would be the point of punishing present day white people for what their ancestors did? You wouldn’t punish a 25 year old German for the holocaust. They had absolutely nothing to do with it. They are as innocent of it as a Jew. Likewise, I am as innocent of lynching black people as abagond is. So why talk of commupance? Commupance for what? You can only hold somebody responsible for their own sins. Those people that did it may have got their commupance after death (or maybe in a future lifetime). They are the ones who deserved it.
Whatever evil you do in life, if you have a baby, that baby is innocent and doesn’t deserve punishment or commupance for your sins. We have to do better than our ancestors but we can’t be blamed for what they did.
That’s how I see it anyway. If there is any lasting impact on white people as a group, I’m not sure what it is.
You also talk about the freedom of the global majority…black people are not the global majority. There are a billion black Africans so that’s 1/7th of the world. Economic development is what they need and it is happening in many African countries at last. The 1.3 billion Chinese are already on their way up and will have the world’s biggest economy soon. They will probably take over America as the most powerful nation.
@diaryofenegress sorry but you are an ignorant racist. Anything white people have done is a reflection on human nature, not the nature of white people. We are not that far apart genetically. Blacks and whites have the same potential for good and evil. What you are espousing is just another crass racist ideology that will do no good at all. Human nature is pretty much the same everywhere.
Why did Europeans dominate the world? http://www.youmeworks.com/why_europeans.html
It is not because they were inherently better but it is also not because they were inherently worse!
There were African kingdoms and empires that dominated other neighbouring Africans and enslaved them. Europeans just happened to develop ahead of Africans and native Americans and had the right political circumstances to go exploring. Then they built empires on a global scale, instead of an inter-continental scale, because they had the power to do so. It happened to be Europeans that did this but it could have been some other people because human nature is the same everywhere in the world. If the Chinese had continued their explorations in the 15th century instead of turning to isolationism, they might have ended up with African colonies. East Asians have certainly proven themselves amply capable of empire building. That’s humans for you (at that stage of moral and social development in history anyway). So please reform your thinking.
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I wholeheartedly agree with brothawolf’s statement, if people of color want justice, we’re going to have to take it, no merciful god is going to give it to us.
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” So please reform your thinking.”
~~~~
Still trying to tell us what to do and how to think. Like our thoughts aren’t valid and they know the white…oops meant RIGHT way of thinking. I love how some people come here telling us how to think…when they have never walked a mile in our shoes. The condescending and sanctimonious attitudes get old quick.
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Again, I apologize if my earlier comment offended anyone. It’s just that stories like this and more make me wonder what kind of god we really have that would do nothing but allow this to happen over and over again. I have a lot more to say about this, but I’m afraid of derailing this post.
Steve,
Who is punishing present day whites for what their ancestors did? Also, who’s to say that it ended in the past? Stuff like this continues to happen. Maybe it isn’t as extreme as the Duluth lynching, but the condemnation, demonization and destruction of black people in this country is still continuing mostly due to white racism. Yes, it still happened in the past, but why is it most people would rather not be bothered with that as opposed to other events like WWII, the Fourth of July, Columbus’ so-called discovery of the Americas, and other moments of history redone, retold and celebrated?
Your comment towards diaryofanegress is especially telling if not morally absent:
“Sorry but you are an ignorant racist. Anything white people have done is a reflection on human nature, not the nature of white people. We are not that far apart genetically. Blacks and whites have the same potential for good and evil. What you are espousing is just another crass racist ideology that will do no good at all. Human nature is pretty much the same everywhere.”
You’ve just excused the genocide and enslavement of millions upon millions of Africans because to you, that’s human nature. You think that since there are other horrific moments in history such as the Holocaust, then it’s not as bad as we’re making it and we shouldn’t talk about it as if it were. That is sick.
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Also Steve, like darqbeauty says, don’t tell us how to think. We are not the same, and we no longer take the word of the white man to be the truth.
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And in the bible of the religion that so-called christians foisted upon black people there is a verse that says ‘the sins of the father will be visited upon the sons and the daughters’…but on the other hand, that same bible was used to justify slavery by pointing to the biblical curse of Ham. Of course, if we were speaking about PAST sins then this might be applicable but since we know that racism is still very much alive (since, like unearned white wealth made off the backs of 250+ years of free black labor, has been passed on from generation to generation) and we also know that global apartheid and white skin privilege are very much alive and well today; then the point attempted is moot b/c there is NO past when it comes to the crimes against humanity that the lynching above glaringly exemplifies…it has simply become swathed in code words; gone high tech, is so entrenced that it has become 1st nature; and is unspoken but always understood. When global apartheid and it’s gatekeepers and supporters are long dead and gone and their progeny exist no more–THAT’S WHEN the debt will be paid. UNtil then, skirt the issue, ignore it, suppress it, troll sites aimed at black people (why? is someone paying you to come here? You on Co-Intelpro duty?), pretend you don’t know what we are saying (you-a speak-a mutha-fluckin-a english-a)…in the end, what you insinuate is past, is NOW, is the everyday existence as every Trayvon or Jordan illustrates…so YES YOU WILL PAY. YOU. YES I SAID YOU. So again, what goes around DOES indeed come around. And you may not ever admit it openly to us, but out of the mouths of babes. When Obama won his 2nd term, on twitter, 1 kid asked: Is this our payback for slavery? Can we just call it even now?…Not hardly.
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I’d be interested brothawolf, in what kind of divine justice you would have better liked to have seen. I hear where you’re coming from. But what would the world set right look like in your eyes?
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And this did not happen in 1800’s but in 1920. Jazz age, speak easies, flappers and first hot rodders, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, our grandparents were kids etc.
Horrible terrible piece of history of US which should and must be told honestly to all.
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@Oyan,
That woman lynched was Mrs. Mary Turner. She was only 19 and eight months pregnant with her husband’s child. Her husband and a couple of other young men were lynched because lynched just because. Mary–having the guts to stand up to injustice spoke publicly of her husband and the other men’s lynching. She publicly stated that it was wrong and something needed to be done about it. Upon finding out her statements the same mob increased to several hundred took her from her home and did the unthinkable.
No one was ever charged for her murder either.
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^woops too many typos–that should have read “lynched just because”
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^
“The white mob hangs Mary Turner from a tree. A couple of them douse her with gasoline and motor oil. Another takes a match. When she has finished burning, a man steps forward with a pocket knife and slits open her abdomen. Out tumbled the prematurely born child. Two feeble cries it gave—and received for the answer the heel of a stalwart man, as life was ground out of the tiny form.”
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King,
I don’t know off the top of my head. I would like to see the whole global system of white supremacy, white privilege, and white racism destroyed somehow and replaced with all of humanity recognized as being human by systems that benefit everyone. I’m not asking for their to be a utopia of sorts, but this current reality is severely lopsided on so many levels and people everywhere, including whites, are suffering because of it.
I’m sorry if that’s not the answer you’re looking for. It’s the only one I could come up with at this moment.
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“I would like to see the whole global system of white supremacy, white privilege, and white racism destroyed somehow and replaced with all of humanity recognized as being human by systems that benefit everyone.”
*******
I like this!
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This awful Duluth lynching says so much about 2 oppressed parts of society: coloured people and women. White men think they own their women. In these terrible days (are these days really gone?), the white could not imagine women willingly wanting to be with someone no matter their skin colour, so a lot of black men got lynched for having a perfectly willing white girlfriend/lover. Also, they could not imagine a white man having a black girl friend for love and not just for sex. But on the other hand…these white idiots thought that all black men wanted to have sex with a white woman. So many good looking black girls, why should they have wanted a white gal on principle??? It says something about the whites seeing white women as their property. Is there anywhere a real and precise testimony from Miss Tusken? I think not. Was the whole tragedy unleashed upon rumours? But do not kid yourself. The human soul is dark and cares little about skin colour. I have seen black people act in a similar way as these white devils in Africa, soldiers or tribesmen who were in the majority. One of my friends from Nigeria was repeatedly raped by a Yoruban policeman because she is a Biafran and in polical opposition. She is a journalist, educated and beautiful and he was trying to kill her soul.
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The land of the free…
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@phoebeprunelle; We are on the same page informing Oyan about the Mary Turner incident. When I read about that this past summer in the book Glorious by Bernice Mcfadden I couldn’t believe so called human beings could be such savages. That is just such a horrific account of a violent attack on human beings. Just unbelievable. I just cant wrap my head around such demonic behavior.
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@ brothawolf
Any answer you wanted to give was the ‘right answer.’ I wasn’t looking for anything but your honest opinion on it.
Matari likes it. I do too.
The last part sounds a bit like utopia though. The White Supremacy System is a big problem, but I don’t think it’s our ONLY problem, as human beings. Even if you eliminated it, you’d still have Sexism and Classism—not to mention many other personal and deep seated human vices.
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@Brothawolf
The problem with us human beings is that we are good at seeing how others cause problems, but we don’t do enough soul searching to check if we might be problematic too. Answering hatred with hatred means hatred goes on, it means we have been poisoned. How can we avoid that and yet not remain targets?
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At the root of the issue, why are white people so unapologetically violent and who ? Gave you the ok to do so? Feel free to answer- white people only
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Why should only white people answer? Wake up: violence is part of being human. People get violent if they have power but feel threatened (=are scared) and think the only way to solve the “problem” is to either scare the others into submission or eradicate them altogether. And that’s because when there is a group of like minded scared idiots, stupidity is just compounded and then they talk big and posture to each other, until there is no other options but to act. Trouble is, it is awfully hard to fully eradicate one group (see the Jews in WW2, and the Jews need to learn from that in their actions against the Palestinians) and then, if you abuse people too much, they stop being scared and rebel, and then the once powerful group get it in the neck. It is not just the Whites, get out of America and look at the world, it’s just us human beings! Violence begets violence
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@ E. again: maybe you meant the violence of the guy (White male youngish) who just killed 27 little children and their teachers. Maybe white males are more prone to this sort of violent lash out when they are mentally ill? Maybe it is because the ideology that it’s all right for whites to go shooting others has penetrated the mind of a certain type of people with mental issues? That needs studying properly and scientifically becausee god knows it needs to be addressed.
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Good men, good times. We need to bring it back.
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@Larry Clone?
what do you mean?
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King,
I knew my answer may have sounded like a utopian fantasy, but what I was really saying it that humanity today is caught up in a system of color arousal with the lightest being the most pure and the darkest being the most vile. I only want their to be systems that benefit everyone and not just the global minority.
What I know is that such a system will still have people falling through the cracks. For instance, crime will continue, but I’m tired of prejudice. I’m tired of the fact that in today’s world, the color of your skin predetermines your criminality according to the so-called justice system. I’m also tired of the same notion that gives society a reason to continue suffocating us with any method to retard or halt our overall advances and when there are those who do make it are seen as a result of some sort of unearned beneficiary policy.
In other words I know there are bad people in this world from any and all backgrounds. What I find infuriating is that badness is always associated with dark skin and those with that mindset are free to oppress them without any consequences.
annef1,
That is true. We don’t do enough soul searching and reflecting. As a result we end up making the same mistakes per generation. I know mankind in general is guilty of this.
And I also agree that hatred begets hatred. I do not believe that treating our enemies the same way, or worse, as they’ve treated us isn’t the way to go. As far as incidents like the 1920 Duluth lynching goes the black community could’ve risen against the racist whites and lynched them. As far as I know there was no revenge, even though the mob deserved it. (I could be wrong though).
Everyone,
This is why I scoff at trolls who LOVE to cite crimes where a white person was robbed, raped or murdered by a black man. I do not condone this or any other crime, but they way it’s always presented is always to highlight black racism as being as bad or worse than white racism. I scoff at that because (a.) some of their stories have been false and (b.) such crimes are no where near even a fourth of the magnitude of white racism against blacks that still exists. No. I do not applaud any criminal who harms another no matter what the color of the suspect or victim is. But some white racists are sick enough to do so. It’s not about the crime with them. It’s about the color of the suspect and the victim that matters.
Racist will see this post and either praise the white racist mob, or dismiss it in place of black-on-white crimes. It doesn’t matter that three men were murdered by a violent mob. They think that the black males lynched deserved it because they believe they raped a white woman as they hold that stereotype near and dear in their hearts. Again, they are more concerned with the color of the skin of the characters than the content of this story see it as some scientific proof of black criminality.
The reason why blacks are color aroused is because that has been going on for years and years and it pains us. It pains us that such acts could happen simply because of skin color and the damning myths associated with skin color. It reminds us that back in the day, not too long ago, black people are not seen as human beings worthy of human dignity. And we still see it today all the time.
I’m sorry to ramble, but even though it happened in the past, and most whites prefer we leave it in the part, it can not be ignored or excused.
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annef1,
I checked out Larry Clone’s facebook page, and I think he/she is referring to the angry white mob as the ‘good men’.
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@Brothawolf
Thanks for having checked the facebook page. The mind boggles and my heart is sinking, if the pic is indeed Larry Clone, she is young…On the one hand there is hope,on the other it does prove how poisonous all of that is.
You are right too in saying that coloured people (who do have the numbers in many cases) have not rioted and rebelled half as much as they would have had reason to.
I will tell you a story. I was travelling by train in Switzerland. Trains thereare organised in such a way that you have 4 people in twos facing each other each side of the corridor. There was a white mother with her small daughter and in front of them a woman who turned out to be from Senegal. I was bored so I was listening from the other side of the little corridor (sorry folks, I am an eavesdropper. You learn a lot that way and I am never malicious). The little girl started to chat up the Lady from Senegal and they all had a rather lively fun time. And then at some point, this lady said: it is nice that she is not afraid of me, being black. The little girl’s mother, to her credit looked back in complete amazement and said “why should she?”. My heart sank, and I was thinking this lady from Senegal had been successfully brainwashed and made hers the notion that black is scary. Are Angela Davis and Black is Beautiful forgotten? My God would that mean that black babies are scared of their own parents? All sorts of things were going through my mind, I ended up rushing to the toilet to have a cry.
May I give you brothawolf, and all of us who do all they can to make this world a more just and less prejudiced and violent world a great big virtual bear hug wishing you the best for the coming year?
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@annef1 I think someone needs to put a rope around Larry Clone’s neck.That would solve the problem rather quickly in my opinion.
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@Kushite Prince
Tempting isn’t it??? Violence begets violence so maybe not the best idea, she’d just become a martyr to a CAUSE THAT DOES NOT DESERVE MARTYRS…but maybe if a rope was put around Larry Clone’s just for a few moments, just so that she could feel the fear and the injustice of such a practice and understand it’s not the way to go about things, and then think differently…A convert to a cause always works twice as hard 😉
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@annef1 Yeah I hear you.It is quite tempting.lol Yeah I see your point though.
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Brothawolf, I made a comment on another thread, coming out of my “listening mode”, and frankly, Im comfortable in that mode for now. Ive got definite reasons for this, which Ive gone into,and, now, there are other factors and directions on this blog that Im not really happy about , for sure nothing against Abagond, but, I need to make sure my angers are not going to tip me into a situation I could get banned..
But, the thing that always atracted me to this blog was the high leval discusion about racism and black white issues especialy in America..I find the discusions about foreign affairs and America’s part in the world sadly lacking in the whole truth about what is happening and all too often , complex issues and events are broken down into the most tiring assymetric cliches, and, believe me, I lived in a country for 26 years with anti Americanism raising its putrid smelling head in my presence enough to make me a long time ago start delving deeply into the real histories where I live now and what happened , and how it evolved and the severe hypocracies are blinding people from the real truth, which is deeply complex and 4 sided…and it angers me…and I dont want to get banned here…so dont anybody try to answer what I just said, unless you want to take it to http://www.brazzil.com where I can use the kind of language that would get me banned here ..
that being said, this is one of those threads I think is valuable to this blog, and, I apreciete your passion and diolougue on this…
White Americans just need to be quiet and listen….they need to listen to the people who are subjected now and to these actions in the past, and hear the indignation and justified anger at these disgusting actions….they should just let people vent their feelings on it and try to absorb why people who are victoms of these kind of actions are angry . And they should support their fellow American citizens about it and let those citizens say how they feel about it and what should be done….they should just listen..
Ive always been impressed with your diologue, you too Matari, since I became unbanned, and reading you all before….
I only want to say that, in a very slow , for sure painful way, I think the dynamic in America is changing, inspite of racist white Americans, they will be a minority and yes, I know they have much power, but, very slowly the power dynamic is shifting also…what 70 percent middle class black Americans means is that, this system can be beat…its been a heavy struggle and wasnt handed on a platter, but , it is a reality…
I look forward to reading you comments …and, hope you will understand my desire to not comment so much or enter into some of the diologues here
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[…] Isaac McGhie (1920) – a white mob in Duluth, Minnesota lynched him and two other black circus workers on suspicions of rape. Twelve were charged, no convictions. […]
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[…] The 1920 Duluth lynching […]
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White people do things like this and still tell themselves everyone else are the savages and uncivilised. When you can stab and gut a pregnant woman, regardless of her colour – you are a sick twisted animal. In fact even animals dont kill people like this. Look at them standing staring at these dead mutilated bodies, having a picture taken. That isnt normal.
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