The Asian atrocity argument says that it is unfair to talk about injustice done by White Americans without also talking about mass killings by Asians, particularly those of Mao, Genghis Khan and the Japanese Empire. (Never, it seems, those of Cambodia or Indonesia.)
The point of the argument:
- Whites are not uniquely evil. They are hardly even the worst.
- Be grateful that we Whites do not treat you worse.
The underlying moral fallacy:
- The Arab Trader argument – the Arab slave trade does not morally excuse or even lessen the evil of the Transatlantic slave trade: “Everyone does it” is broken moral reasoning. Even eight-year-olds know that. Likewise, the crimes of Mao or Genghis Khan hardly excuse White American crimes.
Possible racist tropes:
- The perpetual foreigner stereotype – Asian Americans seen as Asians not as Americans. In nearly all cases Asian Americans have as little to do with Mao’s crimes, say, as White Americans.
There is also:
- an African atrocity argument (Rwanda, blah, blah) and
- a Native American one (Iroquois, blah, blah, Aztecs, blah, blah). There is even
- a Black American one (black-on-black crime, blah, blah).
But there is no European atrocity argument.
For example, no one tries to play down the evil of, say, 9/11 by talking about the evils of Hitler or Stalin or white-on-white crime. Because that would be nuts. Not even Al Qaeda tries to excuse it as:
- “Everyone does it” or
- “Whites kill each all the time”, or
- “Not as bad as Hitler.”
Acts are evil in and of themselves, not in comparison to the worst example you can think of. Robbing old women is “not as bad as” robbing banks, but it is still bad.
While we are at it:
The body count: the number killed in atrocities (democides) of a million or more since 221 BC, here listed by continent:
- 153.5m Asia (Mao, Genghis Khan, Crusades, etc)
- 112.8m Europe (Hitler, Stalin, etc)
- 27.7m Americas (Aztecs, Spanish conquistadors, etc)
- 5.6m Africa (Sudan, etc)
And since certain white commenters so love to make everything about rates – “The rate is what is important, not absolute numbers!” – here is the number of deaths per year per 100,000 of current population:
- 6.84 Europe
- 1.65 Asia
- 1.33 Americas
- 0.25 Africa
While there is a Eurocentric bias in our knowledge of the past 2,000 years, there is not much of one for the past hundred. So here are the same numbers for the past hundred years (1913-2012):
Absolute numbers killed:
- 86.6m Europe
- 64.6m Asia
- 1.9m Africa
- 1.4m Americas
Rate:
- 117.31 Europe
- 15.51 Asia
- 1.86 Africa
- 1.50 Americas
Note that these are democides – unarmed people being killed by wilful government in/action, like Mao’s Great Leap Forward or Hitler’s Holocaust. It does not count military deaths or civilians killed as an unavoidable side effect of war. So, for example, the Rape of Nanking (1937) counts as democide but not the Fall of Baghdad (2003).
Those who think that to be “fair” we need to bring up “Asian” atrocities also need to be “fair” and bring up “European” ones.
– Abagond, 2013.
See also:
Glad you noticed that. 🙂
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Great article. Whites do this all in the name is White supremacy and their logical that White is right. Whites commit as many crimes as any other race on this planet!
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@ Abagond
Now let’s see how many start reverting back to 2nd grade rationale, saying ” I don’t get it, how you come up with those numbers, you lie….” Thanks so much for making it quite simple in 500 words. 😀
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It’s amazing how no matter what, they think that comparing killing of PoC by PoC seem to be either the same as or more important than European-based and White American-based genocides against PoC or other European and White Americans. Sometimes they even glorify their own crimes against each other in a romantic fashion.
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Going to two primarily Asian schools, I can say Asians are just as racist towards blacks, and more openly so. They will say the n word in ur presence (and I’m not talking about in their language) don’t defend them. Eurasians are pretty much similar in philosophy. I went to china and most were brown skinned like me…in hotels, However I saw more light skinned Asians. (Class difference maybe?)
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I dislike whites just as much as them. But I have worse history with Europeans tho
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But I agree the argument is dumb, because Europeans are the most violent and killed ppl from all continents, smh. The name of most of our countries today come from them.
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I think what a lot of White people don’t understand is that the Black community usually refer to slavery when speaking on continued oppression. This is the problem, there are still so many stands of it.
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yay .br got his thread where is he at
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Abagond:
Is it though?
I think that the point of the “Everyone does it” argument is to illuminate the true nature of humanity. Perhaps it’s this overarching understanding of our species which is not being accepted or acknowledged.
Imagine someone wrote post after post about the history and tendency of brown dogs to bark. Is it un-germane to the conversation to point out that “dogs of all colors in every corner of the world bark, and they always have done so”?
One might further propose that focusing on brown dogs misses the point, and suggests that the author fundamentally misunderstands dog nature.
If one’s editorial perspective is that barking should be curbed, then perhaps a more appropriate line of reasoning is to explain why dogs should go against their nature, and how this can or should be accomplished.
The color of a dog, to someone who understands dog nature, is irrelevant in a discussion about barking.
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I hate this argument. Even if you try to have an intelligent, non fingerpointing discussion or debate about racism, and or why black people feel a certain way about whites… They deflect and use this argument..its a total cop out to me. It’s not respectable on any level. Whether its for the sake of debate, or even on the street level where a drug dealer gets caught and gives someone up to get lesser time. It’s ratting then.. and rat like to do it in a debate.
Btw….
Russia
Ranked as one of the worst for slavery in the entire world.
Greece
More corrupt than most dictatorships.. Greek corruption goes beyond mere posturing and into “failed state” territory.
East Glasgow
Has A Life Expectancy Lower Than Some War Zones…impoverished Ethiopians live longer
And let’s not talk about Israels human rights record
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So Randy.. if I rape and murder your mother..should I get off, or get a light sentence because I pointed out that there were unrelated murder-rapes in another city?
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@Randy
The subject at hand on this blog in general is the racism of America’s past and present. This is not a blog about the human condition in the abstract.
So, to make further use of your analogy: “I don’t care if all dogs bark, if your dog doesn’t stop barking 2:00 AM, you’re getting evicted. It’s disturbing the neighbors.”
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@Randy
That isn’t to say, of course, that racial essentialism isn’t a huge problem in the comments section. But that’s the human condition, isn’t it?
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“Note that these are democides – unarmed people being killed by wilful government in/action, like Mao’s Great Leap Forward or Hitler’s Holocaust.”
***********
The above quote reads like an anti-gun control argument Abagond.
Are you for BLACK/ASIAN/HISPANIC and other people being armed?
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I have to admit, this is one that I’ve never heard before.
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Reblogged this on oogenhand and commented:
Sound moral logic. However, is morality ITSELF defensible? How to avoid abortion by having large families, AND avoid invading someone else’s country?
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I think the article is a fair assessment of the facts and it just reaffirms that the one consistent is that mankind is the one and only evil in this world. It doesn’t matter what part of the world he is from, what religion he follows or what color his skin is, all men are capable of horrible and evil acts against one another. Most abuse or violence carried out by one preying on another can be traced back to yet another violent act or life long abuse. No other living organism on this world is inherently evil except for man. As brilliant as we can be we still cannot get along with each other nor can we take care of our own and we have given up our humanity for an inanimate object (money) is so disheartening, almost makes us soulless. Gotta go, God Bless.
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@William
That’s a ridiculous assertion. Dolphins, Chimpanzees, Lions, Cuckoos, and a host of other animals are capable of horrific cruelty to each other and members of other species. Reptiles regularly kill and eat juveniles of their own species. I’ve seen Orcas toss baby seals violently in the air for amusement. If anything, we’re the least “evil” species on the planet; you never see a Tiger fret about killing and eating its prey humanely.
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Well, least evil animal species. You can’t really call a plant evil, even if it produces deadly toxins.
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Boom
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Randy,
Randy,
“The color of a dog, to someone who understands dog nature, is irrelevant in a discussion about barking.”
This is where the derailment comes in. The discussion isn’t about barking. Never was. It’s about racism, so it’s always about the color of the dog.
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@ Abagond
IMO the “Others Do It Too!” argument is mainly used to dismiss claims of uniqueness. That there is something magical about the nature of some group of people, something others don’t have, that makes them capable of doing things others wouldn’t or couldn’t do. I think it is perfectly reasonable to use “ODIT!” when you are dealing with a person who thinks whites are uniquely evil or uniquely intelligent (the white inventor argument). “ODIT!” does not automatically downplay the significance of the supposedly unique actions, but quite a few of your commenters seem to assume that it does. At least when it is used in favor of white people.
“For example, no one tries to play down the evil of, say, 9/11 by talking about the evils of Hitler or Stalin or white-on-white crime.”
Terrible example. Not only do they use ODIT to point out that they are not uniquely evil, that the thing called “terrorism” isn’t something only they do, that “the West” kills innocent people too, they go further and use their opponents’ crimes to make intentional attacks on civilians seem moral, the thing that a loving god wants them to do.
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@ King
I have to admit, this is one that I’ve never heard before.
Me either (or so I thought). I read the title and thought something was being presented as common knowledge when it’s really just something that has come up only on the blog, from, say, B.R. using it as a point for why American foreign and domestic policy shouldn’t be criticized too much. Then I thought, this is an argument that is a common one or it least it used to be. I’m more familiar with it in it’s political forms.
The post could also be, “Commies are evil bastards and that is why the West (and it’s leader America) are awesome” argument, then it is a broadly known one that had it’s hey-day prior to the fall of the wall.
Years ago I heard Chomsky describe the argument by a different name. It was pretty weird and I had to think about it to figure out what he meant. But he called it the “Thief-thief” argument. The idea, of someone who has a “thief-thief” position, is they come up and steal money out of your pocket or they visit your house and then steal something when it’s time to go home. You’re not supposed to point out the blatant stealing you can see them doing; but of course you do point it out. Then the thief’s defense isn’t that they’re not stealing, rather it’s, “hey look over that way *point out someone else* that other guy is a way bigger thief than me. Don’t complain about me, you should complain about him, so there!”
Getting back to “evil commies”, it’s like not being allowed to complain about capitalist economies because, “you could be living under a ‘commie’ system so just shut up!”
It’s for sure an untenable way to defend a position. Imagine having a conversation or a debate about inflation having eroded a large swath of your purchasing power over the last ten years and your opponent says, “oh yeah, well it’s worse in Zimbabwe, so shut up!”
In some situations this “thief-thief” (to give it a more encompassing general name) argument is hideously immoral as Abagond has pointed in many posts, in other situations it’s dimension of being a totally absurd non-sequitur comes out more prominently, but it seems to always be a pretty stupid argument when you get right at the motivations of where it’s coming from.
From the top of my head the motivational under pinnings seem to consistently be the maintanance of a corrupt and/or faulty status quo or ideology, that is not just and fair for all people, but rather a de facto set of privileges that accrue to those who are aligned with the corrupt/faulty system or ideology.
————————————————–
The examples I came up with are ones we remember or can easily imagine. They seem so obvious that we smile a little and think, “how can anyone fall for such nonsense?” This thief-thief argument can be pretty subtle, I think. I see devious forms of it in the comment section of the blog from some of the more jingoist black commenters, and I see commenters (well meaning people from the humble assumptions I can make on the net) falling for it.
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@ eco
“Others do it too” argument or ODIT. Oh yes, that could be a name for it too. It’s a type of lazy, idiotic and vulgar way of thinking that comes up on the blog very often. It would be nice if we standardized the name of the argument for our (all blog participants) conversations/discourse. I used another name, one that is a little quirky perhaps. The comment is in moderation to King. You fellas let me know what you think of the name I used.
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The Asian atrocity argument is less “others do it too” and more “others were involved in it but you don’t hold them accountable for their ancestors actions”.
Basically; it wasn’t just white people involved in various atrocities throughout the era’s so why hold “only” white people as responsible?
Some kind of left over internalized racism that values white people more than any other so their actions count more?
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What people don’t seem to understand is that the crimes of the past in and of themselves are irrelevant. The perpetrators who are directly at fault for them are dead and have little to no direct connection to most people today. The only relevant thing about these atrocities is how the memory of them affects our society today. Did we learn a lesson from them(holocaust)? Or do we glorify and excuse them(American murder and displacement of indigenous people)? People don’t seem to get the point about American slavery for example, they have the idea that blacks anger, affirmative action, reparations etc. are about the act of slavery itself, whereas in reality those are in response the CURRENT and recent(Jim Crow) racism and associated injustices that stem from and thrive in a culture heavily influenced by past slavery and imperialism(well, the US is still an imperial power, but never mind that(; ). With rare exception, no one here today can say he was affected directly by slavery or genocide, but it’s not unlikely his life has been affected by a culture that was shaped by atrocities of the past. All this goes for WW2 and prior of course, not stuff like Rwanda that still has numerous survivors, whom I solemnly salute. My point is about the holocaust, American slavery, European colonialism etc.
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You know whart the fuking problem is Abagond, the far left has amnesia about it…its a fuking blind spot,like it never happened
I fuking remember the bs coming from the left about “ohh Mao this mao that”..no one even mentined at that time that 50 million were being eliminated
I have to find this out only by research
so yeah , that bs can kiss my behind
real cute, abagond…but you flunk international foreighn affairs..you are naive what is happening down here…as a matter of fact the collective blog knowledge about the reality of anti americanism in brazil , and hypocrocy behind it, is squat on here
fuk the arab trader argument too, you carded me about that when i went out of my way to say the Atlantic trade was worse
You got it @ss backwards .Legion, i proved with out a doubt the bs of chomski, and the crud of chavez…until you can counter that, you sound like you dont know what you are talking about
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I mean its really fucking bullshit when the far left has their dick stuck so fasr up their ass they cant even tell the truth about what is happening in this world
they would rather stay blind than look at the truth
ever see oliver stones south american docu where he praises hugo chavez and doesnt sasy anything about farc
fuck this bullshit Abagond, youndont deserve a decent responce
what the fuck do you think you know about marxism
/ you fucking studied it? oh now after all this time you have mao article
that is fucked up
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I could give a flying fuck whatg anyone thinks, if they are talking about the fucking cold war and just laying out the dirty shit the americans did but dont mention 50 million dead they arer full of horse shit
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Do you like wallowing in naiveness Abagond? you want to go over Brazilian history where they scream bloody murder at America for supporting the dictatorship, when the whole god fucking damn same thing went down in the early thirties and a communist up rising and soviet spies on the scene and a dictatorship afterwards
and these mother fuckers went and trained in china when 50 million are dying of marxist policies
this is total bullshit
fuck it
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@ Legion
I think we are talking about slightly different things. The ODIT I had in mind is simpler – it points out that there is nothing unique about the source of an action, by giving examples of sources of similar actions. That does not automatically justify or downplay the action, but when ODIT is used in favor of white people it is often assumed to be the kind of immoral ODIT you are talking about. There are quite a few commenters on this blog who think white people are uniquely evil and IMO there is nothing unreasonable or immoral about using the simple version of ODIT to show that they are wrong.
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@ eco
Yes, we are talking about differing versions. Sorry eco, I was pretty enthusiastic to put down my take on the post. I read your comment very scantily before. Reread it though and I see what you’re saying now about simply pointing out the non special nature of certain (group) acts. It comes down to a context of how people point out ODIT. Sometimes they are using ODIT out of a no good agenda. Othertimes they are saying, with no agenda, no one has a monopoly on behavior x.
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@B.R.
You got it @ss backwards .Legion, i proved with out a doubt the bs of chomski, and the crud of chavez…until you can counter that, you sound like you dont know what you are talking about
This isn’t about Chavez or Chomsky or loving old dead cold war figures. I simply sketched a version of ODIT the type that is used to shut people up when bringing some issue or system under legitimate observation. Just read what I said, it’s very clear.
Look, the point of the version of ODIT that I point out does not even care if the other group really is evil. People still have a right to complain about their own domestic situations where they are. It is not an argument for a wife beater to tell his wife to cheer up because he only beats her on Mondays while Hank (some other guy) beats his wife seven days of the week. Hank may objectively be worse than this husband who only abuses one day it is not the point to try and find who is objectively worse. That is a cheap game that only helps Mr. Only Beat My Wife on Monday. He gets, to still enjoy whatever power and pleasure is coming to him from carrying out this wrong act of beating his wife.
Do you see the point I made, in the longer post, now? It’s no different than the domestic violence example above.
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Those who think that to be “fair” we need to bring up “Asian” atrocities also need to be “fair” and bring up “European” ones.
It is ABAGOND who repeatedly singles out whites in post after post and year after year while ignoring and minimizing similar behaviors from others. Even crying foul when someone dares point it out. That’s what prompted this post in the first place. For him to now use MY argument is to concede the point and admit his hypocrisy.
Checkmate.
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This discusion is beneath me, what I would quckly ask is
Legion, I said Chomsky said that back at that time, China had better health care than the USA while 30 million died of starvation..I mean really, what do you have to say about that? I never tried to diminish American dirt , ever, I just put it in perspective
Jefe, you mocked me almost saying you just are waiting for me to tie in Mao, black militants and agendas against interracial sex…I proved my point beyond a doubt…what do you have to say about that?
Abagond, I cant have this discussion on your blog with your little fables and pop history , one sided truths , false derailing acuasations , this is hardly reality , I would like to be face to face with you, typing just slows me up the words on the tip of my toungue I would like you to hear and I want to look in your eyes to see if you really have a straight face when you run one of your cookie jar fables
I cant really talk to you here but this is really how I feel about it:
http://www.brazzilmag.com/component/content/article/128-october-2013/13050-in-brazil-95-oppose-black-blocs-action.html
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B.R. you are not on topic. You have missed the point.
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@DaJokah
Ain’t it depressing when not all media outlets (aka The Internet) kiss white azz AND show whites for who they TRULY are.
It affronts the image of white being all that is good & wholesome.
Troll on.
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Da Jokah,
If this blog continues to discuss the behavior of whites, something you obviously have a problem with, why do you keep coming here?
You don’t have to come here. Yet, you do because you want to. And you keep expecting something different?
The fact is that the injustices done by White Americans are hardly ever discussed in mainstream society, at least not in too much detail or with solutions presented.
And I personally have never heard Asian Americans deny the injustices done in Asian history by Asians.
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ha, you are lucky,my post tirade isnt showing up…
take your blue pill and go around in your cirlces about this
seriously, abagond, back in the 60’s mfers just ran around “mao mao mao..the red book..” talking crap…no one ever mentioned 50 million were dying
and it is just absent from the far left diologue, zip nada porra nehuma , its not mentioned at all…and that is bs
i had to find out with my own research..what a scam , what really lame crap
you carded me on the arab slave trader argument when im saying the atlantic slave trade is worse…your fable is not fair…ive called you on it and you dont say anything and bring it up again on this…chumpy
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I dont even have time to play around with this…Im out of this thread
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I noticed that the trolls like pulling numbers and stats out of their anal parts.
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If this blog continues to discuss the behavior of whites, something you obviously have a problem with, why do you keep coming here?
I don’t have a problem discussing the behavior of whites. I have a problem with singling whites out while ignoring and minimizing similar behavior of others.
The fact is that the injustices done by White Americans are hardly ever discussed in mainstream society, at least not in too much detail or with solutions presented.
The hell they aren’t.
And I personally have never heard Asian Americans deny the injustices done in Asian history by Asians.
And I have personally never heard Asian Americans singled out while ignoring or minimizing others.
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@ B.R.
Where have I ever denied Mao’s atrocities or played them down?
From “Japanese history textbooks” (2013):
From “democide” (2012):
From “genocide” (2009):
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@ B.R.
Unfortunately, this is how I feel about American history.
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@ Da Jokah
To use Legion’s example, a wife who is beat by her husband is gong to “single him out” because he is the one doing her harm. Leaving the other wife beaters out of it, even those who are far worse than him, is not “hypocrisy” – except maybe from the point of view of her husband, whose moral judgement is seriously impaired.
So, yes, given my position in history, of course I am going to “single out” White Americans. Nowhere have I EVER said they were UNIQUELY EVIL or even necessarily the worst. Those are straw man arguments whites keep bringing up.
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@ Randy
A better analogy:
Your dogs bit my children, you did not pay for their rabies shots, you are not doing anything to stop them from biting them in the future. Instead you say, “Why are you always talking about my dogs? They are not the only ones who bite children, you know. There are dogs on the other side of town (where your children never play) that do it too. Why not talk about them? Why single me out? You are failing to understand that some dog owners are just naturally negligent. It is part of the dog owner condition.”
White American racism is not “natural”. It is taught. You can see its birth, growth and progress even in the Oxford dictionary. White people are not helpless creatures. They are not even clueless. Deep down they know what is going on. But instead of changing their ways most would rather benefit from the racist inequality of society while making lame excuses for it.
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@ Joaquin
Excellent point. No one would care about slavery and all that if it had no effect on the present.
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@ legion
I like the name “thief-thief” since it makes clear the illogic of it, unlike ODIT, “Others Do It Too”.
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@ Legion
Good summary.
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Thank you Aba.
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Randy’s comment illuminated to me what I think is the heart of the ODIT fallacy as it pertains to racism and oppression. For White people, racism, and perhaps oppression in general,can only be understood in abstract moralistic terms. For us, oppression is a concrete and daily obstacle that has dire, and sometimes fatal, consequences.
So when we speak of racism and little else, they think we are trying to claim that White people are, by the accident of being White people, morally bankrupt people. In truth, we are just confronting the oppression that is actually relevant to our lives. We have nothing at stake in the atrocities of Mao, Genghis Khan, and the Japanese Empire, because we are not their victims. We do have a personal stake in Slavery, Jim Crow, and their legacy in the political, social, economic, and cultural fabric of America and the West in general. (Of course, there are Black people and other PoC who really do think that White people are morally bankrupt because of melanin deficiency or some such nonsense. Were it up to me, I’d ban them too since they add little to the discussion.)
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That has been mentioned and brought up ad infinitum and people still insist that no one mentioned it.
Thing is, the behavior substantiates the thief-thief premise of the post.
I heard first heard about the effect of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution when I was a child 6-8 years old (without fulling understanding it). I think it was from the stories of new immigrants (distant relatives) staying at my grandmother’s house who would go on and on for hours and days talking and screaming about all the horrible things they witnessed. In the early 1980s I had a lot of friends who had just arrived from Vietnam and Cambodia and also spent hours talking to me about what happened to the family and were driven to tears. I first learned about these events from first person accounts and then I learned more about them later from other sources.
Even my Aunt would talk to me about her experience with the Japanese in China in the 1930s. I talked to Filipinos who described to me their experiences during WWII with the Japanese. I definitely had heard about it, although I did not know all the details. But I could go and learn them.
I did not learn about ethnic cleansing of Native Americans and Asians in the USA until WAY after that – after I learned in my late teens that my great-grandfather was lynched and I started questioning what happened to the local Native Americans after I realized it was not covered in our history textbooks. I did not learn about the Japanese American Internment until I was in university. The Freedom Rider event in my mother’s home town in the year I was born was never mentioned in school, and I guess it was so horrific that my own relatives would not even mention it (even though I took those very same buses as an infant from Washington, DC). It was not until about 1999 that I actually learned about it (thanks to the internet), but AFTER my mother died – couldn’t even talk to her about it and the effect that it had on my family. Two of my Aunts ran businesses in black neighborhoods in the city next to where Emmett Till was lynched, exactly in the city where the courthouse acquitted his killers. Yet none of this was mentioned when I was growing up – I didn’t know until decades later that this was a pivotal event which helped to launch the 50s-60s civil rights movement.
I learned about a lot of things just by chance and I started to wonder what else about America has been hidden from me.
Me too, I feel a much greater dearth of knowledge about American history than about the Asian atrocity events. I don’t know all the details of the all the Asian atrocity events but at least I heard about them growing up and could go and learn more about them, take more courses on them, etc. I didn’t even hear about the ones inside the USA itself.
Of course, the USA is not unique in that regard – China has already tried to cover up the Tiananmen massacre and it is not mentioned in the textbooks that were used on, say, for the current crop of university graduates. But please, when I am trying to learn about what happened in American history, people feel compelled to bring up the Asian atrocity arguments (saying, “But YOU ALL need to know this)? I heard about them growing up, but not about the ones that occurred right in the USA.
Now, if a person who grew up in China wants to learn about the Tiananmen Incident, about the *other* facts of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward that were not mentioned, about the re-occupation of Tibet in 1959, etc. that were not taught to him in school, all the power to him. But I will not deflect his search for knowledge by bringing up the atrocities that occurred in Europe and the Middle East. There is something bizarre about that whole train of thought and action.
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Oh dear, in moderation coz I quoted someone else. 😛
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abagond
To use Legion’s example, a wife who is beat by her husband is gong to “single him out” because he is the one doing her harm.
If someone is DOING something then by all means point it out. But make your case like Ghandi not Farkan. Present the evidence without looking for historical garbage to prejudice the discussion. If you can’t build a case based on what’s going on today then you don’t have a legitimate grievance.
So, yes, given my position in history, of course I am going to “single out” White Americans. Nowhere have I EVER said they were UNIQUELY EVIL or even necessarily the worst. Those are straw man arguments whites keep bringing up.
At least you admit you’re singling out whites. But the “position in history” is bunk. You’ve had more opportunity in life than I’ve had.
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I think the post (maybe the whole blog) just emphasizes the great success that white culture has had in subjugating brown and black cultures around the world. I think it has something to do with whites being able to form teams and work together better than a lot of other cultures, that and the use of tools and tactics to make war. I can’t say that the facts are wrong, so, thanks I guess, everyone loves a winner.
What is sad is when two white cultures go after one another, like all the European wars of previous centuries, what a waste of blood and treasure. When brown cultures get after it with one another, it is sad too, but doesn’t affet me as much.
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Yeah, this is just dripping with racial fascism. There is no such thing as “White Culture” outside of America, which is the only place in the world where Europeans can relinquish their centuries of animosity and adopt the same identity. On what grounds do you collapse all the peoples of European and West Asian, who have always hated, oppressed, and conquered one another, into “Whiteness”?
Two “white cultures” destroying each other is tragic, but the subjugation of black and brown people by white people is a “success”, and makes you “winners”? With an attitude like that, it’s no wonder you think we want to kill you all. We just want to be successful after all.
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@Riverside_Bob
Lol, I remember when you were trying to pass yourself off as some holier than thou, color blind conservative. Now you think history can be understood as a series of Race Wars where, so long as White people are triumphant and united, all is right and the world is in its proper order.
_ _ _ _
@Da Jokah
– James Baldwin
Someone who lives in a country founded on the idea that it is perfectly rational to go to war over something as inane as tea and stamp taxes, has no right telling us how to properly address our grievances. We’ve had the right to ruthlessly tear America to pieces a thousand times over according to America’s own standards of fighting for freedom. That any of us are still trying to negotiate peacefully is a miracle.
How is this for a grievance: your country is economic poison to us. Unless it is willing to rectify that (and it won’t), we’d be better off without you.
(http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/tanehisicoates/Sharkey%20Mobility.jpg)
(http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/tanehisicoates/Poverty%20Neighborhoods.jpg)
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@Da Jokah
The real irony in thinking we should be like Ghandi, is that Ghandi’s goal was Indian independence from Britain. Perhaps you didn’t know, or perhaps on some level you truly do understand that it really is best for us to part ways with America.
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Da Jokah
If someone is DOING something then by all means point it out. But make your case like Ghandi not Farkan. Present the evidence without looking for historical garbage to prejudice the discussion. If you can’t build a case based on what’s going on today then you don’t have a legitimate grievance.
Who’s Ghandi and Farkan?
But seriously, like D said, Gandhi wanted to free India from the British Empire. So, that’s a great idea, freeing ourselves from the American Empire 🙂
You’ve had more opportunity in life than I’ve had.
I’m not even going to comment on that one.
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D.
has no right telling us how to properly address our grievances.
What grievances do you or anyone else living today have?
We’ve had the right to ruthlessly tear America to pieces a thousand times over according to America’s own standards of fighting for freedom.
What freedom do I have that you don’t?
How is this for a grievance: your country is economic poison to us.
You link graphs showing a racial economic gap. But, on average, people of similar intelligence earn about the same regardless of race.
The real irony in thinking we should be like Ghandi…
You’re conflating methods with goals. I’m not,
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@Da Jokah
For starters, I’m personally sick of sharing a country with Confederate Flag waving troglodytes. It isn’t just offensive; those people are an existential threat to me and mine, and I want border security to keep them away.
Whether you find my grievance legitimate or not doesn’t matter. King George III didn’t find the Continental Congress’s concerns viable either.
I was speaking in the historical sense. Surely slavery and Jim Crow make for perfectly just reasons to secede from America?
1) The graphs aren’t about income, but wealth. There is a difference.
2) You have no means of verifying the intelligence of the people studied. In fact, assuming that affluent Black families became affluent because of their intellect and familial work ethics, that there offspring slid into poverty at a greater rate than White families demonstrate there is something else at work.
3) African Americans make less money than other races with the same education. This is a well known fact.
(http://blackdemographics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/2010_Wages_by_Education_Chart_opt-300×173.jpg)
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DJ:You’ve had more opportunity in life than I’ve had.
BW: I’m not even going to comment on that one.
Then I will. To name an anecdotal example, a black girl at my school had a GPA of 3.7 and SAT of 1210. Pretty good scores. However, I had a perfect 4.0 and over 1500. Which of us do you think was accepted to Harvard? It gets better. My mother happened to work at the same company as her father. When he was hired, there were more qualified applicants. The only reason he was hired was affirmative action. I know this for a fact because my mother was one of the people screening the applicants. That’s multi-generational affirmative action for the less qualified. Yet you believe blacks are discriminated. It’s the opposite.
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@Da Jokah
In fact, the income gap is worst between highly educated African Americans and highly educate members of other races at a 79% difference instead of a 96% difference between those with less than High School.
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@Da Jokah
It’s too bad you didn’t go to my high school. My guidance councilor was notorious for “losing” college applications that Black students wanted to have sent to “White” schools like Princeton, Moravian, and Seton Hall. Happened to my sister and I, and another student had to march up to the office and watch her send the transcript in 2012.
You have no means of knowing if Affirmative Action is at play, especially since Affirmative Action is all but dead. Perhaps her essay was better than yours. Perhaps she did more interesting extracurricular activities. Perhaps her parents are alumni.
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@Da Jokah
If companies are supposed to only hire the most qualified applicant, young, first time working people could never get jobs.
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@ Abagond
“a wife who is beat by her husband is gong to ‘single him out’
(…)
Your dogs bit my children, you did not pay for their rabies shots, you are not doing anything to stop them from biting them in the future.”
Randy’s analogy works because he talks about collective responsibility and your counterarguments are about an individual’s personal responsibility.
Your analogies would apply here if all white people actively took part in the genocides/atrocities and I’m pretty sure quite a few didn’t. I’m sure you can notice that only the dog owner from your story is responsible for the dogs’ actions, not his whole ethnic group. If you want to blame the whole group you need a different kind of argument.
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D.
For starters, I’m personally sick of sharing a country with Confederate Flag waving troglodytes. It isn’t just offensive; those people are an existential threat to me and mine, and I want border security to keep them away.
And yet 90% of violent interracial crime is black on white. This is in spite of whites outnumbering blacks 5 to 1. That means blacks are 45 times more likely to commit a violent interracial crime. Do you consider that aceptable?
I was speaking in the historical sense. Surely slavery and Jim Crow make for perfectly just reasons to secede from America?
200 years ago I might have agreed with you. But neither one of us were alive 200 years ago.
1) The graphs aren’t about income, but wealth. There is a difference.
Blacks have less wealth because they save less than anyone else. Even blacks who earn more money save less.
http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2009/07/study_shows_blacks_hispanics_s.html
assuming that affluent Black families became affluent because of their intellect and familial work ethics, that there offspring slid into poverty at a greater rate than White families demonstrate there is something else at work.
assuming that affluent Black families became affluent because of their intellect and familial work ethics, that there offspring slid into poverty at a greater rate than White families demonstrates regression to the mean. This is true for every population. However, different populations have different averages so they regress to different means. If you have two sets of parents who are equally smart, the children from the parents whose population has a lower average are more likely to have a lower average as well.
3) African Americans make less money than other races with the same education. This is a well known fact.
Suppose there was affirmative action for whites and asians in the 100m sprint. Letting them run in the race won’t make them faster. You’d have more white and asian sprinters but their group average times would get worse. Similarly, giving someone a degree won’t make them smarter. I’d expect a group getting affirmative action to earn less on average with the same degrees.
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D.
If companies are supposed to only hire the most qualified applicant, young, first time working people could never get jobs.
Young, first time working people do have higher unemployment rates and earn much less. They usually end up taking jobs that older more experienced workers don’t want. Once they get some work history and develop some skills and experience they can get better jobs.
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mussandrad”
No, I would expect you to be prosecuted. However, had your ancestor done that to my ancestor in a time when such actions were the norm, I wouldn’t judge you for it.
D.
I’m not sure I agree. Why care about racism at all if not for the effect it has on the human condition?
D.
I agree with you, however much of the focus of these discussions is not about dogs that are currently barking, rather it’s about historical barking and the context of that.
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Agagond:
I don’t have any dogs.
Most of the dog biting was done by people completely unrelated to me, who came to this country 100 years before any of my ancestors, many of whom themselves got bit.
If you think that it’s morally correct to address historically uncompensated dog bites, then why stop at your ancestors’ claims?
Seems particularly selfish and self-serving to do so. Instead, let’s have a full accounting of historical biting going all the way back to some agreed-upon place and time.
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@Da Jokah
No, but for someone who is supposedly so smart, that is a very foolish assessment of statistics. In 2010, there were 704 black-on-white murders and 413 white-on-black murders, so it’s more like 63%.
(http://projects.wsj.com/murderdata/?mg=inert-wsj#view=all&y=2010&kr=B)
(http://projects.wsj.com/murderdata/?mg=inert-wsj#view=all&y=2010&kr=W)
It gets better. Since you outnumber us 5 to 1, random chance dictates that White people should be the victims in about 60% of incidents of murder committed by Black people. Instead, White people are only the victims in 14% of the 4,765 murders committed by Black people.
It gets even better. We live in a segregated society; we’re far more likely to murder people we interact with on a daily basis. On average, about 57% of the people Blacks encounter are White. So, of the 4,765 murders committed by Black people, random chance dictates that there should be 2,716 White victims, not 704. We aren’t killing enough of you, pardon the dark humor
(http://www.jstor.org/stable/2780040?seq=1)
The gift keeps on giving: On average, only 3% of the people Whites encounter are Black. So, of the 3,896 murders committed by White people, random chance dictates that there should be only be 117 Black victims, not 413.
Here is the best part: there are only 42 million of us, and 197 million of you. So, about 0.00098% of us will be killed by a White person, but only 0.00036% of you are killed by a Black person. In short, my chances of being a murder victim of a White person are 3 times higher than the chances of you being the victim of a Black person.
Firstly, there is no empirical measurement of intelligence, so there is no mean to speak of. Second, if IQ (which I assume is what you’re talking about) were a matter of genetics, IQ shouldn’t increase generation after generation as it has, since the genetic make up of neither American Whites nor American Blacks hasn’t changed drastically over the 20th century. There is no “regression” to speak of; both populations are smarter than they were 50 years ago.
I knew you’d make this argument. Being admitted to a college is one thing, having the intelligence and will power to stay the course and graduate is quite another. In fact, SAT scores cannot predict performance beyond the first freshmen semester. Just as your perfect 4.0 and 1500 SAT score doesn’t mean you wouldn’t skirt the facts and pull stats out of your large intestines.
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Previous comment is in moderation
@Randy
It’s not the human condition I have a problem with you talking about. It’s that you’re trying to shift the discussion by evaluating the morality of racism in abstract terms in comparison to atrocities committed by other peoples. Using the atrocities committed by others to use as a model for finding a solution is perfectly fine, but I am interested in solving concrete problems, not in redeeming the souls of mankind.
Historical and cultural context is critical in understanding the present circumstances. This is where the analogy reaches its limit; canine behavior is much easier to correct than ours.
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OFF TOPIC: Black crime except for how such arguments are like the Asian atrocity argument (black-on-black crime, etc).
To talk about black crime itself, go here:
.
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LOL!
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Da Jokah
Regardless, when you’re young, there is always someone with more experience applying for the job.
You aren’t given a degree, you earn it. If you’re going to make some race realist argument to explain the disparities in wealth, then there is nothing more to be said; I don’t want to share a country with you either.
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D.
Would you rather make unfounded claims and rhetorical arguments you can’t support? The interesting thing about realist arguments is that when it comes to things like height and sprinting no one ever claims the tape measure and stop watch are biased.
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@Da Jokah
Yes, lets just ignore diet and exercise. And schooling too, for that matter. Standardized tests are a horrible means of measuring intelligence. My sister is as clever as I am, but since the daycare she went to didn’t teach her to read as early as I did, she’s awful at learning new things and taking tests; her SAT scores were abysmal compared to mine. Yet our intellect is about equal, and while I am more confident and can comprehend new information with freakish ease, she is actually the better student between the two of us. Depression’s a b****
On that note, while I didn’t get a perfect score, there was nothing in the math section I couldn’t comprehend if given the opportunity to study the subjects. The only reason my score was less than 800 is because there were questions I never encountered before. If you train students to do well on standardized tests, they will do well on standardized tests. Creativity, intuitive understanding, critical thinking, leadership & cooperation, these are skills that SATs do not evaluate.
Question: why is Usain Bolt the fastest man alive when he, like most of the Black Atlantic, has European admixture? Shouldn’t the winner have been a pure West African negroid? Why is African American height closer to White American height than it is to Nigerian or Ghanian height. Even Kenyan women are shorter than their African American counterparts.
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@Da Jokah
Even Koreans living in Japan fare worse in school and employment than Koreans living in Korea. Living in a society that doesn’t accept or value you is what is wrong; you are the problem, but I digress. If you want to believe that DNA is destiny, that’s your prerogative. There’s no arguing with true believers. With a country of our own, we’ll find the true limits of our capability.
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D.
@Riverside_Bob
Lol, I remember when you were trying to pass yourself off as some holier than thou, color blind conservative. Now you think history can be understood as a series of Race Wars where, so long as White people are triumphant and united, all is right and the world is in its proper order.
Well I’m a quick study, I thought I’d learn and share here, trying to ease the friction of racial tension and build understanding among strangers. But it’s clear no one here wants to really adapt to anything, you (and others) seem to prefer grinding on about things can be attributed on your blackness and other’s whiteness. So, I’ve adapted, and I now agree with most of the things you speak of. I can’t argue that you’re wrong, they’re your experiences after all. You’re not as successful as you could have been because you’re black. I’m living better than you because I’m white. My racial tribe has lower crime and higher wealth retention and better job prospects. We have access to better schools and medical care because we’re white. Blacks have to make do with substandard housing, education, medical facilities and employment opportunities. I’m convinced that all of these things are true and I support your efforts secede from the United States. I wish you a blood-less revolution and a country of your own. I think you are particularly correct when you responded to Da Jokah with this comment:
“How is this for a grievance: your country is economic poison to us. Unless it is willing to rectify that (and it won’t), we’d be better off without you.”
You also said
“Ghandi’s goal was Indian independence from Britain. …on some level you truly do understand that it really is best for us to part ways with America.”
I can’t argue with your logic or the historical precedence you reference. Therefore, I agree with, and support your aims. How can I help?
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And I’ll have a coke.
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Hey D.
There may a speed bump on your way to the New Zion – a lot of empty hands held out.
From the 2010 US Census, we learn from Table 543. Persons Living in Households Receiving Selected Noncash Benefit that:
• 20.5 percent of whites, 27.9 percent of Asians, 50.9 percent of blacks, and 53.3 percent of Hispanics (Latinos) received means-tested assistance (this includes means-tested cash assistance, food stamps, Medicaid, and public or authorized housing).
• From that same dataset, we learn that 6.9 percent of whites, 18.8 percent of Hispanics (Latinos), 5.7 percent of Asians, and 25.1 percent of blacks live in a household that receives food stamps/EBT/SNAP.
• Crunching the numbers just a tad farther, we learn that 16.7 percent of whites, 43.8 percent of Hispanics (Latinos), 23.2 percent of Asians, and 39.4 percent of blacks live in a household in which on or more persons are covered by Medicaid.
• How about public housing? 1.9 percent of whites, 4.7 percent of Hispanics (Latinos), 2.5 percent of Asians, and 11.5 percent of blacks live in public or authorized housing.
• And, 4.4 percent of whites, 8.7 percent of Hispanics (Latinos), 5.6 percent of Asians, and 13.6 percent of blacks live in a household that receives means-tested cash assistance.
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@ Randy
If you do not even own a dog then why bring other dog owners into it at all? Why make excuses for dog owners? Why side with them against the bitten children? Either you are in league with the dog owners or do not care about children or both.
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D.
Question: why is Usain Bolt the fastest man alive when he, like most of the Black Atlantic, has European admixture? Shouldn’t the winner have been a pure West African negroid? Why is African American height closer to White American height than it is to Nigerian or Ghanian height.
I suspect the reasons for both are the same. It also makes diet and exercise an unlikely cause of the achievement gap. Africans are shorter than blacks in America because of disease and poor nutrition. Height is a big factor in sprinting. Moreover, the stunting alters body proportions which is also a big factor in sprinting. The fact blacks in America are taller and faster than Africans suggests health is a limiting factor for Africans but not blacks in America. Furthermore, white children from families making less than $10k actually score slightly higher on standardized tests than black children from families making over $70K. I find it unlikely white children from impoverished families have better schools and nutrition than black children from upper middle class families. Nor is age of reading likely to be an issue as you suggest. On the one hand, studies show the benefits of Head Start are pretty much gone by 3rd grade. On the other hand, Finnish students score among the highest in the world on PISA and they don’t even start school until they’re 7.
Living in a society that doesn’t accept or value you is what is wrong; you are the problem, but I digress. If you want to believe that DNA is destiny, that’s your prerogative.
That’s very interesting considering I grew up in a black society. I didn’t feel very accepted or valued and yet I excelled. You didn’t know that because I don’t whine about it. DNA may not be destiny but it is a limiting factor. Only I push my limits while you make excuses and blame others for yours.
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Agabond, this may be off topic but in general terms, if one says that genetics influences intelligence, athletic ability, etc….couldn’t one also claim that genetics also influence personality, morality, etc. So then a group could technically be genetically predisposed to maybe being intelligent but also deceitful or manipulative? I mean if one felt that genetics really controlled things. It would seem fair to say some groups have made a case for themselves as being inherently or uniquely……something? But I don’t believe that garbage so, whatever.
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I think if something were genetic and there was some unique evolutionary advantage in it, it would have spread across humanity by now. If capacity to be evil is something genetic, it probably already is in human DNA. “A man would kill his brother to possess his brother’s land (or property)” was probably just as true 10,000 years ago as it is today.
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In Europe the Romans persecuted members of the early Church causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands – some say millions.
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Da Jokah,
Then I will. To name an anecdotal example, a black girl at my school had a GPA of 3.7 and SAT of 1210. Pretty good scores. However, I had a perfect 4.0 and over 1500. Which of us do you think was accepted to Harvard? It gets better. My mother happened to work at the same company as her father. When he was hired, there were more qualified applicants. The only reason he was hired was affirmative action. I know this for a fact because my mother was one of the people screening the applicants. That’s multi-generational affirmative action for the less qualified. Yet you believe blacks are discriminated. It’s the opposite.
So, just because you didn’t get into Harvard with your 4.0, your 1500 SAT score, and your father, who I assume is a person of color was lesser qualified than other applicants, but was able to get hired and because your mom was one of the people screening the applicants, that’s a glaring example of some kind of oppression against white people in general?
SMH
I won’t dwell on this because you made it about you, and are strolling off topic.
1. You didn’t get into your one and only favorite college. Big deal. You think that black girl was accepted in all the colleges she applied for? Of course not. And if you applied to other schools, as I’m sure you’ve done, and got into one of them, at least you’ve still gotten an education nonetheless. That’s assuming you still went to college. Other than that, stop whining about affirmative action. You know what that’s called? Life. And you need to consider that there are other factors why you didn’t get accepted such as extracurricular activities, economic statuses, etc.
2. Have you ever considered that your mother was the one who helped get your father his job? Still, you blame that on affirmative action? Seriously? In my opinion, You should be happy that he had a job. And when you say that there were more qualified applicants, you didn’t say what ethnicities they were. So, I assume they were white since you used the words “more qualified”. I could be wrong.
Have you ever thought that maybe, your father’s hiring was due to the fact that he had at least one hook-up in the company, not because of his color? Have you considered that at least one person knew him and so, hired him to give him a hand?
Honestly, Da Joker. white people are not being oppressed. Sometimes some whites are not qualified to get the positions or schools they want. Sometimes it’s about who you know as opposed to what you know and what you did or did not do.
And that’s all I have to say because it has nothing to do with the topic.
One more thing: maybe if white people have saw blacks and treated them like human beings since say one, there wouldn’t have been a need for affirmative action in the first place. And besides, the largest benefactors of affirmative action have been white women.
The end.
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Anne
Of course you believe in that “garbage”. Everyone does.
+
brothawolf
I see you’re reciting from your articles of faith again in which blacks are always the victim and whites are never discriminated except when they are then they deserved it and “the largest benefactors of affirmative action have been white women.” 🙄
I’m more concerned with your deplorable reading comprehension. It was her father who got affirmative action not mine. More importantly, I said over 1500.
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Oh no, I feel like I’m being misunderstood. But then I am not trying to defend anything so my comments might be too indirect. It is not wise to fight a battle to defend the honor of those who might be guilty. Especially if one claims not to be guilty of the same crime. Only one person I know of can make that sacrifice and claim it was truly a sacrifice. The rest are just trying to justify theirselves. Thieves always defend thieves it’s their code of ” honor”.
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Da Jokah,
Meet me over at the Open Thread, cause none of what we’re talking about has anything to do with the Asian atrocity argument.
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I cant beleive this thread, Abagond, I cant even type to participate, the anger is so bristling at the notions you are putting forth..Im just going to throw out some things that just beg to be addressed..
Legion, you brought up Chomsky, you tried to ineficiantly avaluate my postition, I tell you Chomsky said Mao’s health care was better than the USA back then , and I said with 30 million dying of starvation, that is ridiculous, and what do you say about that? And that is not off topic at all
After Ive severly debunked various things Chomsky has said , how can you just go on like that didnt happen? you never even could counter my facts
Get this and get it powerfully because there is no other truth, you cant have a discusion about what American did wrong in the cold war and anti capatalism and say Mao, the cultural revolution and back to the feilds mess, the Korean war and the state of North Korea , Cambodia and 6 million eliminated by the Khmer Rouge and the 25 million people eliminated by Stalin and the Soviet Union and the debauch of Castro is off the table…NEVER..that is the lie of the far left..as bad as the right saying social programs are communist or socialism…it is total bs..and I dont trust people that feel that way..they become extremly susect
I could care less about this blog discusion and what is off subject or derailing…my real life isnt off topic..this crap seeps into my real life, rightnow its cronic a bunch of punk lily pons students are tearing up public services poor people badly need , who scream anti capatalistic bs and anarchistic statements, who would be be patted on the back and wouldnt mention Mao either if they came on here
Abagond, you bring in some litle blurbs from your whole blog, almost diminishing Mao and you think this is your representation? Are you mad? Your statistics are the worst example of statistics abuse I have ever seen
is there any indication at all that these 50 million people were eliminated in my lifetime, in the small space of about 8 or 9 years? Can you actualy wrap your brain around that ?
That is what I said to you, “in my lifetime..” and you baloon it to something else…that is an abuse of the truth
My god in the late 60’s, you would hear from the far left, not just the black militants, these referances to “Mao Mao the red book…” like some kinf of passing gas , that smelled putrid, and being on the left , I colld only wonder what the hades tat was…you know it existed, how can you pretend it didnt ? You are darn real refeances to that bs and tying it to 50 million dead is extremly valid in these arguments
Jefe, you are like a jelly fish, I severly tied in black nationalist rhetoric, with anti interracial sex rheteric and Mao and referances to the little red book, some straight from Cleaver himself, and you rattle on like I didnt just put that down your throat..I have tied these things in exceptionaly well, your comments are like cock roaches that run away and scatter when the light of truth is shined on them
and, Abagond, Ive said to you 4 times, your Arab trader argument doesnt cut it at all with me, you have used wrongly, and it lost all credibility at that point, and, I wonder about your agenda about pan POC against white people , you want to hide that brown people did as much damage to black Afro descendants as white people and hide and diminish the impactof things like 50 million dying in my lifetime , as though it doesnt count in discusions about America in world issues .
To take another of your fables that was shot at me, the “hiding behind my poc wife and son” which I absolutly think is the hight of bull crap, which Jefe whipped out too , while he has mentioned 20 times he had a distant relative lynched, after seeing how you feel about these things, I definitly dont trust you, Jefe ,r anyone else on here to think you could look out for the cultureal and survival interests of my Afro descendant wife and son…with these logics and hafl truths, the inability to admit the horrors of one side while looking at all the wrong things in American foreign policy…never examining why we really played dirty…and had to…I am so happy there is no Che, Mao, Castro successful revolution in Brazil…phuc that
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It is because Wp tend to think if you bring up an atrocity commited by WP wp think your implication is that the cause of all horrible things though history are personally thier fault and all P.o.c where perfect though out history. Even though you never said anything of that nature that’s what they hear.So they try to disprove a point you never made. I don’t know why that happened but It happens to gay rights groups feminist movement and other social rights movements but most strongly in race relations.
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Interesting topic in relation to the other topics dealing with racism,history and the moral imperative.
Yes every grouping of our species (except gender ,specifically females) has done wrong/crime.
But now which way forward when the wealthiest and most militarily powerful nation today is america – and it is the leading home of white people and racism.
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I read a portion of the comments to this post.As is obvious to regular readers this post in part addresses certain superficial concerns of a (apparently white male commentor).
And reading some his comments here in response brings to mind a few other issues.
1.Mental illness – how many commentors on the internet in general and this blog in particular myself as well as the blog author included – may have varying degrees of mental bias and distortion.
I consider my own life and the degree of stress factors as well as simple ignorance predisposing me toward bias.
2.Racism is pathological and therefore inherently irrational.
It also effects damage upon numerous individuals rendering them less rational than they might be otherwise.
3.When faced with evidence (much less complaint or discussion) of how criminal and irrational racism is – why do many here seem surprised and upset that – criminal mental ill people would lie and defend their pathology?
If it was that easy The problem would have been solved a very long time ago.
Its something I’ve learned through life long experience as a atheist – so what you see and interpret things rationally and truthfully (as far as you know)
if you can’t completely explain not just why the religious interpretation is wrong,but how and why every religious person got to their interpretation – your analysis is incomplete.
And any attempts a persuasion are futile.
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As this and other posts On abagond’s journey to understand his place in history have shown – while “white” are not the only just as our species is not the only – they are and we are the worst offenders.
The Sapien (humans) , the males , the “white”s
Most aggressive and therefore dangerous forms of biological life.
It seems obvious to me our development of our neocortex to the point of self awareness and reflection is a required evolutionary phase toward what we must discover to be our(life’s) goal.
A note on my past use of “white/albinic” just as abagond posts events or facts of history such as Mount Rushmore or LHOP and reveals the hidden racism involved.
Such Is my attempt with “white/albinic”.
I remember when it’s discussed what and why black or brown skinned peoples skin is black or brown.
It is revealed that it is due to a pigment known as melanin.
However it seems the question is not asked of why and what causes “white” and (light) skin to appear as it does.
And when its claimed that as in all other instances it is a lack of pigmentation not some mysterious , magical quality that bestows inherently superior beauty ,intelligence and morality – well as in the voluminous responses to some of abagond’s post – you know the drill.
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yeah, keep my comment in moderation, abagond, because it cuts too close to the truth..the far left barley mentions or ackowledges the 50 million dying under mao and his marxist ideologies..they have a blind spot about it, amnesia, and just eliminate it from their diologue about what affected american foreign policy in the cold war…you cant tell the truth about the cold war unless you mention what was happening in China at that time
just look at your statistics here…this is the worse use of statistics I have ever seen in my life
in parsing your statistics, you fail to mention that those 50 million died all in my lifetime within a very short time span, what 7 to 10 years?
Did you get that? Ill say it again, and my point always was , in my lifetime, this is the worst human disastor and example of man’s inhumanity to man, 50 million people died , in a short time span , under mao and his marxist ideologies
the far left also comes up with all these deaths atributed to american foreighn policy, but never mentions 100 million died under communism..yes, that is mental illness
and your Arab Trader argument isnt worth anything, younhave accused me of it and you were wrong…its really funny seeing the fogging over into white people are the villains against poc, when those brown people did almost as bad as the atlantic slave trade at destroying black africans and their culture
Jefe, get a backbone , and tell me where my detailed hook up of black nationalist rhetoric combining anti interracial bias, pushing of Mao and the little red book, steryotypes of Armstrongh and tap and armed revolution are wrong? I brought in the facts, and you are just flapping your lips..you said you took a black studies course…but you dont know squat…
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So that is the big real question…why does the far left have a sick vested interest in diminishing the 50 million eliminated by flawed marxist ideologies, by Mao in china, in my lifetime, in a very small space and time…i mean 42 million died in world war 2.. the whole world…
50 million…can anyone wrap their head around that?
yet..the far left diminishesit, like you do here Abagond,or they dont even mention it, like, as they go into micro detail finding fault in every american involvement in the cold war, attributing deaths to americans in countries they didnt even have boots on the ground, yet have severe amnisia about 50 million eliminated in china…or 25 million in the Soviet Union…or 6 million under the Khemer rouge, or thousands more killed by castro than by Pinochet or brazil combined going after Che wanna be revolutionaries,
the hypocracy is stifling, disgusting and pathetic, since it absolutly does carry right over into today with some of the narrative coming from the far left
the far left, equaly disgusting as the far right
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@ B.R.
All of your comments are out of moderation.
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And , Id seriously like to know, from the far left, and in a very true introspective look, why, they in a cronic, consistant , constant mannor, why they either try to diminsh the 50 million dead from Mao in China , like Abagond does here, even using small blurbs that were actualy questioning the validity of bringing it up, as this thread does, or, they cover it up, or , most amazing at all, just isnt in their narritive at all…zip, nothing, not one peep…about an event so huge and horrifying in my lifetime, that it absolutly dwarfs anything else going on at that time
I mean surly anyone arguing against bringing it up, calling it derailing or off topic, has to admit that on the narritive in the far left , it just isnt mentioned…this is a fact, i see it to death from the far left down here, and it plays out right on this blog…you justhavew to admit that, to not is in serious denial…
the problem with making up arguments to face Fox news followers, diminishes the truth and takes the disscusion down to the third grade
you have to do better than thast with someone like me who actualy has experianced the far left narrative to its fullest extreme, and can see its hypocracies and lies right next to the far right hypocracy and lies up in the States
im looking for truth in this, im not pitching an agenda, for sure not the fox news agenda
diminishing what happened under Mao in china in my lifetime, by the far left borders on grotesque
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Abagond:
I think there are several reasons why a person who doesn’t “own a dog” would be interested in the subject. I can think of a few off the top of my head:
– Intellectual curiosity
– It’s a active social welfare issue in our society
– The desire to know how to properly educate one’s children on the matter
For me, the last item has primacy. My children are no doubt going to learn of these debates, especially given the PC / left-bias of most schools, and I want them to be able to think critically on the matter, and look beyond the “received wisdom”.
Your accusation about “siding with the dog owners” suggests that fairness is related to one’s personal interests in a matter. I’d argue that non-objective justice isn’t justice at all.
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ok, Abagond, thanks…and I admit, the ones using gotesque language, I kind of thought they wouldnt get on…because I was venting a gutteral outrage at a reality I live with…this is not an intellectual blog disscusion foer me, that rules like derailing and off topic make any sence when the on the ground realities are blatent and emotional…these people destroying public property cronicly right now in Brazil, are a perfect example of the far left in denial who I guarentee you, wouldnt mention Mao and the realities of the cold war where they got their rhetoric from…you see…exact same process as the interracial anti sex rhetoric coming from the black nationalists who supported Mao…they just cant look at the reality of what was happening in china at that time, and just go wrapping themselves in tired rhetoric…and, in Brazil now, these mostly white lame pampered students, destroy property poor black Brazilians need badly
I cant take this hypocracy
and, I still say I like and respect your blog, especialy on white racist issues..I just have big dissagreements on your positions on international American involvement in the last 60 years or so
some issues, are pretty emotional for me on these international subjects involving american invovement, which by the way, I have said is dirty…there is just another side that needs to be examined
I just dont buy you cant look at the whole story..you have to see the whole perspective or a one way narrative will just make people beleive only that rationalisation and never the whole picture
I would never say dimminish the Atlantic slave trade to look at the Arab slave trade….
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@ Randy
That was a dodge. You explain your interest in the issue but not why you side with dog owners.
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abagond:
It’s not that I’m intentionally trying to side with the dog owners, but rather trying to fit the “claims for past bites” interest into a historical perspective that applies the same standards to everyone.
If you could travel freely in time and space, you’d likely find that any group of people was at one point the dog owners and at other points the ones bitten. History moves on. Injustices are paved over.
In asking for historical dog bites to be compensated, this process is altered, and a particular time and place is designated as the origin point, and from then on injustices are being tallied up and bills submitted.
That appears to be an inherently arbitrary process. Why should one group’s injustices be handled so differently from those of every other group throughout history?
I’m looking for a justification for this “unique treatment” that isn’t a double standard. Absent that, the prevailing standard seems overall more fair.
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…so, I would apreciete some kind of honest explanation, free of rationalisations, why the far left , either seriously diminishes mao and his actions, or doesnt mention it at all?
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…and,look, even lets suspend my judgement on this, I mean , surly we can agree that the far left either diminishes the Mao 50 million dead subject, or doesnt mention it at all…I mean we can agree on that, cant we? I see this a blatent fact, I have never ever heard in one anti American docu I see down here all the time,one mention that at the same time as the cold war, the Marxist ideology under Mao somehow killed or eliminated 50 million people..in a very short period of time…all this happening in my lifetime..I mean you hear all about South America and Africa…but never what happened in China
so , I just would like to hear why?
I mean, the far right doesnt talk about it because somehow, someway, outside of the vision of the main public, they , and the rich elite of all parties, have put the China question under the rug, because they are doing so much big business with China it would be detrimental to bring it up at all
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@ B.R.
1. There is no Black Hive Mind. Just because some black militants back in the 1960s turned a blind eye to Mao’s crimes does not mean that I do. And, in fact, I do not: Three times in posts I brought up the fact that he has killed tens of millions of people and made no attempt to excuse it.
2. This blog is not about Evil in General. It is about American racism. Mao’s Great Leap Forward has nothing to do with racism. Ideologically it was communist, not white supremacist.
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When I was in High School, at the tender age of 14, I took a course in Asian Studies, in a High School that was less than 1% Asian and 30-35% black. 40% of the course focused on China and about 1/4 of it talked about the Great Leap Forward, including the failure of the rural collectives and the tens of millions that died in the famines because of it. It was only about 15-18 years after the event (and around the time of Mao’s death), yet it was not deemed too recent to talk about in High School class and I was not deemed too young to learn about it.
There was NOTHING on
– Jim Crow
– Brown v. Board
– Rosa Parks
– MLK, Jr.
– Lunch Counter sit-ins, the Freedom Rides
– Emmett Till
– Little Rock or U of Miss. desegregation
– Voter Rights, March on Selma
– Civil Rights Act of 1964
– Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965
– Malcolm X
– Thurgood Marshall
– Loving v. Virginia
– Fair Housing Act
Those events were no more recent than the Great Leap Forward, yet no one in High School mentioned it. I wonder if I had taken American Studies class in China if I would have actually learned more about the US. I did not learn about those things until WAY after High School and not in a class.
After the Wounded Knee incident occurred in 1973, I didn’t know any of the story about it, and they did not discuss it.
Did not learn even about older history (ZILCH)
– Japanese American Internment
– lynchings of Blacks or Chinese in US history
– what happened to the Native Americans in the area we lived
– Key milestones in the African-American civil rights movement 1895 – 1954
(They mentioned Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson, but it stopped there).
– W. E.B.Dubois or Marcus Garvey
– History of N.A.A.C.P.
– sharecropping
– Wilson’s invasions and wars
– Chinese Exclusion Act
– Any race riot or massacre
– Any prior American genocide or ethnic cleansing (Only had a brief footnote about the “Trail of Tears”)
– the life of an antebellum slave
– Frederick Douglass or John Brown (and yet Frederick Douglass’s estate was only a few miles away).
– establishment of all black towns (some were only about 15-20 mins away from me)
There was *some* mention of the Middle Passage and slave ships. Chinese *contributed* to the building of the Transcontinental railroad (although I learned nothing about their *contribution* to the mining industry).
So, my high school, had the foresight to teach me something about the failure of the social policies of the Great Leap Forward and the tens of millions who died in the resulting famine, but failed to teach me anything about all the stuff that was really relevant to my daily life and about the history of the place I grew up in. I guess they indeed felt that “I REALLY needed to learn about that so that I can put all the stuff I didn’t learn in proper perspective.”
At least “Roots” came out the following year. I learned something from there and after that, that someone named Alex Haley had helped Malcolm X to write his autobiography, which I did not read until university.
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Abagond, you cannot use the “black hive” argument on me, Ive used it myself as an argument, that is not what Im saying at all and I think you know that..you cant hide behind that, and it never was my point, most black political agendas didnt push the Mao thing at all, and Ive said that…they had the good sence to not go Marxist
Your problem is when you start fogging white racisn into “Americans only make war on poc”, and any implication that it is white people versus poc around the world…an implication that is voiced by some posters on here
Yeah, wellJefe, I told you I knew about the Japanese internment berore the mid sixties so , Im saying that the notion that white Americans werent aware of it is bs…and I have never heard of the great leap in school and especialy from the far left and the unbeleivable numbers involved
and you said you took ‘black studies programs’…you know, the more you open your mouth, the more strange contradictory things come out…would you please get some kind of consistancy in your personal narrative , because my black studies classes covered those issues…and Im Im starting to wonder about you
and you both cant, and dont seem to have the ability to answer why is it totaly absent from the far left diologue?…independant of your small oh so generous blurbs in threads , actualy trying to say they are trotes for racism, Abagond
I mean , for you all, its like in some vacuum, totaly some event that happened off to the side that was just independent of all the events the USA was involved in at that time and doesnt have any relevance
and that is the bs part my god:
China was in direct combat in with the USA in Korrea…is somebody actualy going to say that , with the startaling differance in North and South Korrea, that it was US aggresion? that is when it really gets beyond beleif
China sent arms directly to Viet Nam
People from Brazil, who were trying to fight ther Che revolution, Ive seen them admit they trained in China
80 percent of all arguments against USA foreign policies are centered around cold war activities….Mao is definitly not off the table disscussing Americas cold war policies…those huge amount of deaths is the ideologue the americans fought so dirty against
so I ask again, why is it absent from the far left diologue ?, with a huge exception for you, Abagond , with your small sentances barley admitting it happened, and what you learned in Asian studies courses and the frightened panicked freak outs of your relatives freinds jefe..I mean Ive heard the far left position on steroids, down here, and it just isnt in there…
Why would an event so magnamously huge, so horrifying and ominous, so related to the ideology driving it..and that ideology was conflicting with the whole world and failed miserably, not be mentioned by the people pushing the far left narrative?
Seriously, if we are only talking about white racism, that is one thing, and i still dont accept marxism from the far left militants, hey white or black or Asisn, but I wouldnt bring it up
but fogging white American racism into American foreign policy, implicating America only makes war on poc, and you have said that, Abagond, trying to iplicate white people against all poc…no, that screams to bring in some re calibrating reminders of some of the real things that were going on back then
cmon…50 million eliminated, in my life time, in a small period of time, all because of flawed ideology practices in farming techniques and an out right purge in the cultural revolution? and the far left is silent on this?
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I never said that and those were not covered in my US history class. I think it was too soon after the civil rights era and those topics were still taboo.
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“joined the african American clubs in school…” now just a dam minute, you say you didnt take African studies….but joined the African american clubs in school…
and you didnt discuss things of African american history?
And you used this , to tell me you had awareness of black culture? And you did say that black Americans have weak culture
Really, you are getting full of it…and losing credibility by the minute
it just shows your weak position and how you try to weasal in and out of things you say…i dont like wasting my time looking for these things, but if you are going to play this bs game with me, I see how full of it you are
and abagond, that is strange of you to use the black hive argument on me…my gosh,you arnt arguing with me,and the direct points i am making and ther questions Im asking….. you are arguing your points, not dealing with the truth im confronting you with and not really answering my question, why does the far left diminish the horror of what mao did under his regime?
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@ B.R.
You will have to ask the Far Left why they diminish the horror of what Mao did. Do not ask me to defend a position I have not taken.
My education was very much like Jefe’s, give or take. We were taught all about the Evils of Communism – the Cold War was still on. Meanwhile there was tons of black history they left out, like most of it, that would have been far more useful to know.
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I’m seeing people here saying things that basically amount to “oh why are you singling out white people, the Chinese and Ghengis Khan were just as bad, boo hoo hoo!!”
Ok, I got a good analogy for that, say you’re my roommate, and you always leave our house a dirty mess. When I come to complain to you about the squalor, you get outraged, telling me “why are you just picking on me for being messy, the guy across the hall is twice as bad!!! I’ve done the odd half assed job of cleaning this place before too and the guy across the street has never done that, why don’t you go complain to him, or go up in there and clean up for his roommate’s sake if you care about messiness so much.”
Ok, although I’m terribly sorry about the situation next door, the guy who lives there isn’t turning my home into a pig pen, and secondly, I shouldn’t have to go hunting around the whole neighborhood trying to clean up every other bad roommates mess before I’m allowed to endeavor to wrong the wrongs in my own house.
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*right the wrongs in my own house*
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@Kiwi,
First of all, some remarks:
– White people have different backgrounds too. They might not all see things the same way.
– We cannot tar them all with the same brush. I have seen some whites married to non-whites who are very aware of their racism and some that are blind as a bat.
– My mother’s case is very different from your uncle’s. She is a woman and her experience was a generation earlier. I’ll try to address some of it below.
(Warning, long post)
My mom was sensitive and aware of racism, but I suppose there were some things she learned growing up that she could not just shake. Some of this might belong better in the other threads, but I’ll try to tie it here.
She grew up in the Deep South under 100% segregation in an area with strong KKK undercurrents. She was raised by black mammies. Her mom had previously been a schoolteacher who had only taught in white schools and her father was a deacon at the local Southern Baptist Church. After she was born, her parents ran a grocery store near the central main road into town (but on the white side of that road). White people bought the nicer cuts of meat up front. Blacks went to the back to get the lesser cuts of meat and the entrails. Even though she grew up in that environment, she knew that there was something not quite right about it.
When I read Loewen’s book, esp. his analysis of the relationships between blacks and whites in the pre-60s Deep South, it struck a strong chord with me. Some of those books help explain things that one cannot figure out themselves. For example, he explained why whites would employ blacks to cook for them, but would not touch meat that was cut by a black butcher. It would seem intuitive that the cook would have more intimate contact with the food that the white people were eating than the butcher, but he explained the reasoning process that ran through the minds of southern whites.
Her parents told her that she WOULD attend Emory University or U. of Alabama and marry a nice white doctor. She wanted none of that and when the FBI came to her high school to recruit workers, she signed up and took the bus to Washington, DC.
But, when she started dating my father, it hit her smack in the face. Did you see the scene in “Dragon: The Bruce Lee story” when they were dating and they were refused service at restaurants? They had to go eat dinner at Chinese restaurants? My mother told me the same story way before that movie came out. There were all sorts of places where suddenly she could not go while she was dating him. And Like wordynerdygirl, drunk white sailors tried to pick fights with them (“Why do you want to be with that ch*nk? Come out with us.”) . She told me once she punched one of the white guys in the face.
It got much worse.
She got pregnant. Abortion was illegal and her parents would not take her in. Marriage was the only option, except that it was illegal in all the surrounding states except in DC itself. They could get a marriage license, but no church would marry them. They finally found a young new pastor that would marry them after many sessions of counseling. They could not rent an apartment. My mother had to rent one first in her maiden name and have her husband move in later.
Her father literally had a heart attack when they heard she was getting married. Her parents refused to attend the wedding. Also, the time they were dating was exactly during the time of the Great Leap Forward and right after McCarthyism. Chinese had been demonized as evil heathen communists that let their own people starve to death. She had married the evil enemy. (BTW, she was working at the FBI and saw that the FBI had files on many Chinese-Americans because they were all profiled as communist insurgents). (also, I don’t get how people think we don’t know about the atrocities of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. If I recall in my childhood, it was rammed down our throats – it was in the news and on TV daily, along with the Vietnam War. The atrocities in the USA, however, were covered up.)
After the birth of their son, they had a fight. My mother went home to her parents and tried to ask them to move in with them for a while. Her parents flatly refused her. Only decades later did I learn that that occurred just a couple days after the Freedom Rider incident in her hometown. I realized when I was older that they refused because they would not allow her to bring the mixed race baby to live in their household (and let the neighbors and their business associates and customers know).
Our building got blockbusted so they suddenly had to move (something like doubling the rent, forcing all the tenants to leave). Problem: all the affordable neighborhoods in DC were getting blockbusted and non-black people were moving to MD and VA. But MD and VA had anti-miscegenation laws. They had to move, and there was no place to move to. VA was far worse, so they took a chance with MD. (I think MD already began to discuss repealing their interracial marriage bans around that time – they actually repealed theirs in 1967 just a few weeks before Loving v. VA). But again, no one would rent to my family, so my mother had to rent the apartment first and have her family move in later (My Aunt who was married to a Chinese-American could find an apt in VA, so the main problem was the marriage.)
A few years later, the neighborhood got blockbusted again. That time, they built a new elementary school in the neighborhood (the one I would attend). They thought “GREAT”, only 5 mins. walk from school. But they ended up included mostly the all-black neighborhoods nearby in that school’s district, and my school was about 55% black. Whites moved out in droves and my parents were afraid that the school would become 98% black like the other schools in the area. The neighborhood we lived in went from 95% white to 90% black in just a couple years. They decided to buy a house further out in the suburbs. (The elementary school did indeed become over 90% black just before they had mandatory desegregation.)
But that new neighborhood – OMG scary. They attacked and vandalized our house and stole our property and hoisted signs “GET OUT {racial slur}”. And we were still refused service in public places many times. After 6 months, my mother went up and down the street and knocked on each of the neighbors’ doors. She told them that we moved in the neighborhood, and we were not moving out, that they had already notified the police of the incidents, and the next time it happens they would find the perpetrators and have them arrested. The incidents did die down and our house was no longer subjected to daily attacks. The bullying, however, never stopped until I left and went to university. I applied and got accepted to GA Tech, but I decided to go in the other direction, to Boston. It is the university capital of America and where I wanted to be. I wanted to experience something other than the South.
My brother was not keen on attending university, unless he could play football in Alabama, either Univ. of Alabama or Auburn. He was a huge fan of Bear Bryant. But, my mother did not let him apply to any universities in the South. She was afraid that he would be bullied and hazed due to the racial climate there.
I am giving some background information to try to make a few points.
– My mother was aware of something amiss in race relations in the South, but as someone who grew up on the white side of that divide, it was not clear to her what to do about it.
– Finally she saw and experienced racism first hand and had to devise ways to navigate around it. She also learned how religion and politics are involved.
– She recognized that many of the racist arguments of the time were ridiculous. In time she got to have close friends from a wide array of racial and ethnic backgrounds and even decided to select to live in a majority black neighborhood after she divorced. I have never been to an activity more racially and ethnically diverse than my mother’s funeral.
So, I cannot say that my mother was completely “blind” to racism. She saw it every day and noticed it. She had no problem working with or living next to blacks or Asians or Latinos and did not do anything like avoid going to those neighborhoods or anything. She recognized the problem with applying stereotypes. She rejected her parents’ use of the Bible to validate discrimination against blacks or to condemn interracial marriage. She would join her black colleagues for a drink or meal in all black neighborhoods and would think nothing of it, and had no problem with her kids socializing or dating anyone of any background. (Actually, the neighborhood she lived in was over half black already, so most of the areas she patronized had mostly black customers anyhow.) Her black colleagues (which was about half of them) loved her and always came up and told me how fine and classy a lady my mother was.
However, what she was blind to was that sense of “white privilege” that I can’t exactly put a finger on, but which I sensed all the time. Also, she never quite got the idea of “internalized racism” and how it affects POC. I suppose that, in the end, she never identified directly with the recipient of THOSE racial messages and treatment (as opposed to the more overt racism that she did experience for the choices she made) and could not quite get what the problem was. Examples:
– She felt that she should get certain service or treatment merely because she was white. I think she got that from a combination of her white southern upbringing and the fact that she USED those techniques to get service while she was married to my father (eg, renting an apartment or hiring professional services). I used to challenge her on why she felt she deserved that entitlement, but she just felt that that is the way it is.
– She did not understand what it was like to be POC and to be subjected to the US educational system, when you are grouped with a people that is omitted from your nation’s history or appear as token references to contributions to white people history and culture.
– She did not understand the effects of internalized racism and did not grow up with being stereotyped by her teachers and employers for that. She told me she understood that (she was teased as a child for having a German surname and labelled Nazi by her schoolmates), but it is not the same as internalized racism. She was aware that my father was hazed at work and I was bullied in school and in the neighborhood, but she thinks people should just “get over it” and let those things roll over your shoulder. She used to use my brother as an example as someone who handled it better, but I saw him as someone who was desperately trying to be white, eg, he would join groups of white boys who would go around the neighborhood and harass blacks. (Does she mean that that is how I should avoid getting bullied? I wanted no part of that.)
– She did not understand the effect of being demonized as g**ks or evil commies. My father came home complaining about it, but it was difficult for her to sympathize. A Korean war vet or Vietnam vet would say to me “I fought in the war so that you g**ks would not come here to this country.” but I really don’t think my mother knew how to help me there. I think my mother just dismissed it and then later that night, my father hit her for some other reason. That is also why I could empathize some with those transracial adoptees. They are demonized in society and their white parents have no idea how to deal with it. I would love to help them.
– She did not protect me from the abuse from her parents. They told me that the Bible condemned what my parents did and what I was, and we would go to hell for it. She also told me that Chinese were evil heathens who let their own people starve. (Did you ever wonder why white people started saying let’s eat all our food. just think about all the millions starving in China – I am sure it became popular during the Great Leap Forward – but by the 1990s I think more people started to say “Think of all the people starving in Africa”). Anyhow, my grandmother told me that the only way I can redeem myself and avoid going to hell was to marry a white person and raise my kids as white. Maybe by the time I had grandkids, they would be able to be white (and I could go to heaven). But I think what would happen would be to have grandkids like Asplund – people who could pass and identify as white, but who still suffered from having a grandfather who was mired in severe internalized racism. I also did not want that for myself.)
– She advised me that that it is better if I tried to act and think more like a white person. It would make life easier for me and white people would accept me better. That advice did not make me feel good at all. It meant that I would have to be someone I did not feel comfortable being.
– She got a bit concerned after she found me hanging around more non-Americans (ie, around people that were neither white American nor Asian American nor black American), but I don’t think it alarmed her TOO much. She just told me it would be better for me if I focused more on adopting more white American ways of thinking and doing. Before my mother’s mother died it alarmed her greatly. She told me that she could no longer accept me as American and if I ever married one of them, my family and children would then all be foreigners. That would still be true even if it were with an Asian American. I was angry at first (I was an American, so of course my kids would be American), but afterwards, I stopped talking to her about it. Later she started losing her memory and then passed away so I didn’t have to deal with that anymore. I have to say my mother did step in to say that I didn’t have to marry a white American woman to remain American but her mother simply dismissed it.
So, in short I would say — my mother was not blind to racism in the USA. Even in the post civil rights post Affirmative Action era she noticed and acknowledged it. She freely associated with persons of various racial and ethnic backgrounds and probably saw herself as colour blind. She did not brand Asian-Americans as foreigners — so I think she rejected the perpetual foreigner stereotypes (unlike some of the white commenters married to Asians). She would not associate events (eg, atrocities) in Asia directly to Asian-Americans, which she saw as American. She elected to buy a house in a neighborhood less than half white and had no problem with having majority non-white neighbors. She even was aware of white privilege and even consciously utilized it when she had to navigate around racist incidents.
She was not like Joshua Solomon. She knew that blacks and Asians received horrific (and some not so horrific, but inconvenient) treatment from whites. She did not have to pretend to be black to know that. She never thought that Affirmative Action gave all sorts of privilege to blacks and took it away from Whites. She believed Whites retained their entitlements, so I don’t think she would agree with some of those commenters on this blog.
What she was blind to:
– “White Privilege” is not the natural order of things. It is something constructed from years of history and indoctrination from education and the media. When I questioned her about it, she would just tell me that that was the way things are. She seemed to think that white people were born with certain entitlements (eg, “I’m white; why would they treat me that way?”)
– the severe effects of internalized racism. She thinks non-whites should just ignore racism or let it roll off their shoulders, or at least think “there is nothing wrong with being black or Asian” and just drop it and prod forward. She noticed that people wished that they were white, but she thought they were just being silly. I don’t think she realized where it came from and its effects, and that she was part of the problem (eg, I really think she unconsciously felt that whites were a higher racial status even though she would never say it outright). I think she divorced her husband and eventually died without understanding the role that internalized racism had in tearing apart her marriage.
I assume that your uncles married your Aunts post-80s in the west coast. They did not date and marry in a Jim Crow environment and I assume that your uncles were not born and raised in the Deep South. Post-80s, AF / WM couples faced little ostracism in public (eg, in housing, public services, education, etc.) so your uncles probably never faced overt racism from family or community for choosing to marry an Asian. They might be more blind to those aspects of racism than my mother might have been more aware of. They seem to hold on to those perpetual foreigner stereotypes. I suspect that they still cling to the notion of white privilege.
Asian male bashing, in some respects, is worse today than 50 years ago (or even 30 years ago). Asians in general were demonized – evil, heathen, communist, make war, attack us, etc. In turn, Asians were dehumanized as soulless g**ks by whites — however else could they go to Asia and kill them without batting an eyelid! Even women were dehumanized. An Asian woman with a white man was stereotyped as a prostitute going after a GI. A white (or even black) man who dated / married Asian women were stereotyped as going after prostitutes. Mixed Asian kids were stereotyped as Amerasian kids who were children of a whore.
I can’t say when the situation changed, but it seemed to occur in the 1980s. There were no more anti-miscegenation laws. I suppose that that is the time when there were finally larger numbers of Asian-American women born and raised in the USA (who could speak perfect English and get their own jobs). USA was no longer directly at war in Asia, and there was no legal barrier to marriage and dating, so I guess white America decided to flip the script and not label Asian women as whores. They were also promoting the Model Minority stereotype to separate Asians from Blacks and put the white guys on top. White men could maintain these stereotypes and still date Asian women by bashing Asian men mostly. Asian women maintain this cognitive dissonance by bashing Asian men themselves (hence, “The Joy Luck Club”). And so now we are in the here and now.
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Jefe, That is false they would mention what was happening in China back then, I never heard about fiftymillion being eliminated…I grew up in the states, your depiction has nothing to do with my experiances , no one said starving kids in China, it was Europe…could you ever be so wrong?
Yeah, Kiwi, just show what a bigot you are, I have a comment in moderation on the other thread about your hang ups…you really got issues
And, Jefe, if you were such an unwanted child, why do you have a brother?
Abagond, not a very in depth answer , just because you think you arnt far left doesnt mean you cant speak on it…you are close enough to hold hands, you did study marxism…not a black hive mind indeed, and, as I said, your opinions on American foreign policy should be judged outside of black white paramaters, its you trying to fog it into a racist issue , implicating me in that process , and I refuse to let you do that
Seriously, the responces to me on here are weak , filled with falsities , and, its a pretty low leval disscusion…what a disapointment
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but BR,
you can’t claim Jefe’s experiences are false and yours are “more valid” — if I’m not mistaken, you both grew up in 2 different regions of the USA.
and as we know, different regions produces different mindsets, ways of life, slang, etc… and I’m sure the school systems or local government has different priorities. Even today, Texas and Arizona might have more of an interest in suppressing Mexican American or Chicano history than say Georgia or Florida…
my understanding of those times was that the Mason-Dixon line changed a lot of things, especially rhetoric.
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Yeah, well that would be my point, but Jefe is implying that is the way it is, like both of you were wrong about your descriptions of Brazil..if I dont say something , these things get passed off as fact
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And how old was Jefe when that was happening in China…I saw the national news and it was never a huge item…also, Im asking about the far left
You know, Jefe, has gotten his facts wrong before, has been not straight up in his answers, I have every reason to question statements he makes
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Of course everything should be open for discussion, I’m just saying that nothing is written in black and white, wayyy to much grey in between.
when did you and I have a discussion about Brazil?
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@ B.R.
You are trying to get me to defend Mao’s policies and I simply will not do that. Should I make you defend slavery because People Like You not only practised it but defended it to the death and still, even now, make excuses for it and display the Confederate pro-slavery flag? Should I apply a White Hive Mind to you? Wouldn’t you find that insulting?
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I read this over 4 days ago and lo, and behold. I guess not everyone does what they say they are going to do. 😛
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@Kiwi,
Sounds like they bought into the Model Minority Stereotype that was actively being promoted in the US since the 1980s (esp. by the Republicans). I attended an Asian Americans for Republicans banquet where Robert Dole (the Republican candidate at that time opposite Clinton) and the whole rhetoric was right out of the Model Minority Stereotype. They were trying to attract Asians to the Republican party by demonstrating how different they were from Blacks and Latinos. They don’t need Affirmative Action and want to join society on the same par with white people.
I don’t think they attracted as many as they were hoping.
Yes, stereotypes regarding Asians have changed, esp. for women. They changed the stereotype from gold digging hooker (who is a little bit evil and cunning) to subservient purring kitten. Asian men used to be evil, soulless, heartless g**ks, now they are just little boys who play video games and never grow up.
I think it is partly attributable to the Model minority stereotype. Before the stereotype, Asians were evil heathens part of the Yellow peril. After the stereotype, they had to make them good somehow (but of course, not better than whites). I guess make them into subservient children. For males, however, that means they stay little geeky boys. But I think the Yellow Peril stereotype is still very much alive. Just wait for war to break out over the islands in the East China Sea or South China sea. Or if Chinese companies start to own majority shares in weapons contractors or telecommunications companies. Asian Americans will have to stay vigilant.
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Abagond, where did I ever acuse you or imply you are defending Mao’s policies? I asked why does the far left dismiss , deny, play down , doesnt ackowledge the 50 million dying under Mao when disscussing the cold war
The big question is why are you so quick to cite derailing or off topic to refer to this tragedy, and your basic thread here is how white people hide behind it and the racist trotes, when my position has nothing to do with racism?
, And I proved my hook up on the interracial thread, with anti interracialsex attitudes linked with rhetoric from the far left black nationalists, with affinity and support of mao and the little red book, put downs of black american culture, and armed revolution…and I out how flawed some of the logic coming from the far left was,and how it gets parsed and packedged and spit out today…like passing gas…note I said that there were many things coming from black nationalists that were valid
You cannot critique american policy in the Cold War , and say 50 million dying under mao is off the table..or 25 million eliminated by the Soviet Union…etc
To really disscuss this horrible 30 million dying in the feilds , you have to go and really critique the ideology that would force people to beaurocraticly follow party rules,and follow orders that would only crash them into death and ,those who had to report to the top, padded their figures to gain favor,
its a tremendous verification of how marxism can make serious mistakes that cost lives in dimensions that cant really be comprehended, and this purge of th cultural revolutioin, that 20 million can just be eliminated for not looking marxist enough…that is why there was so much dirt on all sides..people were fighting dirty against this ideology..and based on those numbers, who can blame them
I face this hypocracy down here all the time, and Im way ahead of seeing your position and all its angles , ive seen it blown up in technicolor, and being forced to look deep down inside to see what really did happen in the cold war , just to deal with the crap blowing about how evil america was and how much blame is put on america,I found a much larger complex story, with groups of people who did want armed revolution, who did look up to Castro, Che, the Soviet union and, of course, Mao, and how some trained in china, for armed revolution…these people are as much to blame asd the dictatorship, for the chaos that ensued in the country…
.and their adherance to mao and his ideologies is extremly on the table, and you want to slap derailing on trying to pull back the covers and expose all these dynamics that were in play
And , Abagond, once again, publicly on your blog, I apologise for being rude to you, but not for my position on this or my intensity
People are doing a great job keeping this on a banal low leval disscusion about 50 million people dying under Mao, that is why I go to Brazzil dot com for my international world affairs disscusions..at least I can vent the way I need to
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@Kiwi,
I really want to know how the Model Minority stereotype got started and who pushed it. All I know is that it was first used in print in 1966 (eg, the US News and World Report article) and it became part of the Republican political agenda in the 1980s. I wonder if they were the ones who started it back in the 1960s as a sidebar tactic to the Southern Strategy. OK, blacks moved over to the Democrats. Let’s pull off the southern whites (the anti-black party). OK, now let’s pull off the educated Asian-Americans (you’re the shining example of the American dream, not like other minorities). In the meantime, they vilified blacks as thugs and freeloaders. They replayed the negative images of blacks from the race riots and then “got tough on crime” (ie, DWB, SWB, stop and frisk, etc.). It was Nixon that started the War on Drugs. Start to wonder if he used that as an excuse to target blacks and Latinos.
I suspect that your parents have NEVER attended an Asian American Studies class nor did any extensive reading about the history and culture of Asians in America. They believed what white people told them. They never let the truth enter into the US history classroom. They believe that the Model Minority stereotype is based on fact, not some propaganda promoted by whites.
You seem interested in the topic. You could be an alternate voice to Frank Wu, someone who also grew up as the son of Taiwanese immigrants in a whitewashed American environment. Start by taking a course on Asian American Studies and zero on a topic that interests you. Maybe something about how the Model Minority Stereotype has led to complete amnesia among the post-80s Asian-American generation, leading to the problem of “Vincent Who?” Imagine if all post civil rights African-Americans said “Emmett who?”.
I remember the Vincent Chin incident. I remember when anti-miscegenation was the law. I remember the schools before desegregation. I remember when the term “Asian” replaced the older terms (eg, “Oriental”). I remember when the stereotypes were evil, cunning, heartless and Yellow peril (and for females, whore). I know that the Model Minority is nothing more than a stereotype promoted by special interests. And all of this has happened just in the last 30 years.
Planning to do something about it?
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And, Abagond, maybe you dont subscribe to the poc against white people, and white people are the most evil of all, but, some commentors come from there, and if i stand up to them, and prove that white people arnt any more evil than the Cultural revolution in china, and i get slapped with derailing or off topic, then something is off…and , my point isnt that Asians are as bad, my point is man’s inhumanity to man is universal, and same with the Arabs, they are only six inches behind the Atlantic slave trade for damage done to black Africans, they dont get a pass in my book, so, I dont buy your Arab trasder argument pointed at me, save it for fox news followers who beleive the bs
yeah, Jefe, I guess it spoils your banalising the Cultural Revolution , for me to regain my composure and not let this sink to some kind of dissmissal of mao and the 50 million dying under him while the world was in an epic struggle for ideologies, that eventualy one crushed itself under the weight of its flawed
it would be too easy for you to run your sometimes flawed studies and research…let alone, when I firmly prove my point about linking anti interracial sex rhetoric with affinities for Mao and the little red book, you disapear, you cant say anything, because I didnt run off at the mouth, I brought in the facts, about that history, while you claim to know about black culture because you joined some “Afro american culture clubs in school” whoopie dee
I mean, jefe, i got a lot of respect for the trials and tribulations you have gone through…I respect your concerns for the asian story, and the info you bring in, but, you nhave come up short with me, supporting , against me, because I see your good statement above,Kiwi’s stares (Kiwi, you turkey, how can you not be looking at that asian woman with a white man if she shoots a stare at you..how did you see that? you must have been looking at her in the first place) and queasiness at interracial couples, and you whipped out the hiding behind my poc wife and son, not a good idea with me, and , you just let your position wiggle around too much when I actualy call you on it..
Linda, pointing out jefe’s inacuracies about Brazil, thinking it was more white, or Detroit is blacker, is important because he puts a lot of emphasis on his research and studies….to make a statement like that and not touch it lets people who read it think that is a fact and everyone goes about their merry way, when in truth, Brazil is more Afro descendant than european, 60 percent of Brazilians have Indian DNA, there are huge pockets of people who are white by anybodies standards, huge amounts of people who would be black by anyone’s standards, and inbetween, the largest varieties of mixtures between black, white , Indian, with some Asian and Middle East thrown in…what seperates this mixture from the USA and the Caribean is how wide these varieties and mixtures play out in a big way..you see all the varietions, the past octeroon, into the pastels etc…the graph of statistics you brought in on another discusion with someone else, was not correct, I didnt want to undercut you, but in the interest of highlighting some of the things Jefe has said are inacurate ,I have to point this out, and since you are somewhat sticking up for his point, I have to show this tendancy of him to be inacurate sometimes…it wouldnt be fair to address you about that and not show you also brought in inacurate information about brazil, like he did…and by the way, any international news reports could be seen by everyone, and because i never really remember off hand a report, not that there was never one, about stating 50 million were dying under mao’s regime then its false for him to imply it was on the news in a visible notable way
but this is just banalising it, the most important point Im asking is, why does the far left go into denial about this, quafing down to the people like Abagond, (and other people more so than him) who doesnt consider himself far left ,but will slap derail onme if I bring it up ,when I can prove its relevant …which then no one really ackowledges, its like it means nothing, go on slapping derailing and off topic ( in truth , Abagond has been generous with me about this< Im talking about in the narrative, in general)…now I agree you can slap it on fox news followers, but no one is making the distinction, and my position gets fogged into racist trotes
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Hey man, you lost that ages ago.
Why don’t you cut yourself a thick piece of chocolate cake? Now that is something *truly* evil!
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ha Now that is the best thing you have suggested…pass the coffee
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@ jefe and B.R.
I dont even have time to play around with this…Im out of this thread
I read this over 4 days ago and lo, and behold. I guess not everyone does what they say they are going to do. 😛
Yeah, wth!
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“Blacks went to the back to get the lesser cuts of meat and the entrails.”
__ __ __
While intestines certainly are entrails, a more delicate / less offensive term for entrails as a food item is ‘offal’. Even then some may take offense to that term as well. I supppose it’s similar to calling swine flesh as food, ‘pork,’ or cow flesh as food, ‘beef’; sheep as ‘mutton’ et cetera.
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“BR,
to make a statement like that and not touch it lets people who read it think that is a fact and everyone goes about their merry way, when in truth, Brazil is more Afro descendant than european, 60 percent of Brazilians have Indian DNA, there are huge pockets of people who are white by anybodies standards, huge amounts of people who would be black by anyone’s standards, and inbetween, the largest varieties of mixtures between black, white , Indian, with some Asian and Middle East thrown in…what seperates this mixture from the USA and the Caribean is how wide these varieties and mixtures play out in a big way”
Linda says,
I remember that conversation I had with Alicia and I also mentioned that I was not speaking about Brazil or any other non-Spanish identified country… I’m aware that Brazil has a large Afro-descended population and that’s why I specifically stated I was not referring to Brazil in my discussion
Linda @ Thu 17 Oct 2013 at 02:16:12
“first off, lets leave out Brazil because then we would have to include Suriname and Guyana… we are talking about majority Spanish-speaking countries.”
Most defenders of the US “one-drop” rule like to drag in Brazil and Dominican Republic as examples of a Latino countries “blackness” because these 2 countries have large African descended populations
(I always felt that if they truly knew anything about Latin America, then they don’t need Brazil to prove their points, they could easily bring in Columbia or Venezuela to highlight Spanish countries with sizeable homogenous African-descended populations) — you should have chimed in, your views would have been welcome.
As far as the chart goes, that chart was about National “self-identifications” not actual DNA genetic information… and based on the chart of how people “self-identify” (not my, Linda’s words, but a study where people self-identified)
in Brazil, people self-identified as the following: 53.8% as “white”; 0.0% as “mestizo”; 39.1% as “mulattos”; 0.4% as “Amerindians”; 6.2% as “black”; 0.5% as “Asian”; and 0.0% as “creoles”
but yet, on the reality ground, as you pointed out, a large amount of the population on average is genetically “mixed-race” but there is also people who are not racially mixed and represent “homogenous” ethnic communities, such as the German-descended Brazilians like Gisele Bundchen
The point I was trying to bring up in my comments to Abagond, was that he should not omit the term “Hispanics” as a racial identifier because then, he is placing Latinos into a false dichotomy and into a stringent “either/or” category of being either black or white — (with nothing in between as if there is no such thing as “mixed-race”)
Being mixed-race (Asian, African, European, Amerindian) and based on “how I look” (phenotype), I might be considered “Pardo”, black, mestizo/moreno or white depending on who is Looking or what Country I’m in — my point was that labeling people is subjective and it’s subjected to Regional racial outlooks.
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so sorry to disapoint you, Legion…I guess Chomsky saying health care was better in the 60’s for Mao’s China, than the USA, while 30 million were dying in the feilds of starvation kind of puts it all in a nut shell…If Im not here hammering away on that, it takes the preasure off…bla haha..by the way, how was that off topic?
Ill tell you all , though, as the white pampered students down here , who call themselves “the black block”, go breaking phones, bank machines , and buses, screaming anti capatalist phrases along with marxist and anarchistic statements and grafiti and protesting the olympics and copa,, while its the workers party in power and a communist party member is in charge of the olympic commitee , the hypocracy and unfocused reality of these people really shines through
and , these are people who are making an ideological hook up, and that is why, you cant really escape looking at Mao, Stalin, Castro, Che, North Korrea , Khemer Rouge , etc , their ugly spector haunts us today…the rhetoric haunts us today , the hypocracy haunts us today
it isnt a secret why black militant nationalists , alighning with marxism , admiring Mao, and putting preasures of loyalty in relationships and banning interracial couples with whites from their meeting, couldnt help sounding flawed…this ideology has a poison rhetoric, and mandates that push the limits of sensibilities and common sence, in many respects, it poisons anything it touches
So, I dont forget anytime soon, how this past is seeping right down into today,and for me, there is no question of the relavance of the Back to the Feilds, and Cultural Revolution on any discusions of american foreign policies and Brazil is a major education for me about these issues and ideologies…I am so thankful that I was forced to wake up and get a real education about what happened, the good, bad and ugly, and to find out the real truth under the hype from all sides…I can never think the same asgain
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ell, I hear what you are saying , Linda, and, yes, i was reffering to that chart, and, i didnt know your statement about Brazil related to that chart..you are right about you could be classified various ways depending on where you are
the thing about Brazil is, it is so huge , so enormous, I think you could fit the entire carribean basin inside Brazil, and brazil has a huge diversification of cultures that can vary from two neighboring cities in neighboring states
I dont know, but, its population may be near what all other hispanic countries in South America put together equal…just guessing, but, it might be close
and because of its tremendous size , and diversity, its a perfect nation to try to understand this cold war dynamic…and how the people who were doing the armed revolution, admired Mao, some trained there, and some are in huge power in the country, now
The normal story would be America led the dictatorships and killed and tortured huge amounts of people
Brazil, over a space of maybe under 20 years, the dictatorship killed less than a thousand people, chile 3000, argentina was big time with 30 thousand or so, and this is screamed ad infinitum…while armed revolutionary groups, as popoular as these black blocks today, which sais 95 percent of the people dont like their methods , were assasinating people, kidnapping them, bombing places that killed people and training in cuba, China and the soviet Union, in the name of their ideology
while their ideology , in Mao’s china , killed 20 million in the cultural revolution and 30 million implementiong Marxist concpts and beaurocracies …I dont want to ever forget
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suposed to be “well, I hear what you are saying..”
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and , yeah, after seeing this docu today, about a marxist communist Brazilian, who opted for armed revolution, who actualy went to China for more political indoctrination, it just keeps cronicly shooting home the fact that , you really cant have a political discusion about american foreign policy with out bringing up Mao’s atrocities…
its so much more than sdeeing this docu about an armed communist in the 60’s…
its that people who follow this ideology , right down into today, will make docus and write books and tell the lies and half truths , and try to push their agenda and influence people…I mean for gosh sake, these people talk about him going to china, they rail against everything American, implying a che revolution would have been glorious…yet, not one mention of mao and 50 million dying…at about the time this guy went over there…
and people would dare tell me this is derailing and off topic?
I reject that catagoricly!!
and I will gladly bring in my comments over here if i think its relevant
but, just look at this thread!! its hardly an honest look…its actualy trying to diminish it , playing it off as a trote whites use for racism…i call that tripe
i feel sorry for people who try to sluff this off, like it isnt important, or isnt relevant today…the hades it isnt…you all arnt understanding the real world…I see this up close and personal, its very real in the world i live in…its like people want to negate my experiances and keep it in their narrow outlook of the truth
I feel very blessed to have the insights i do, i didnt expect them, but the choices I made for something else also had a serious political education and cambio fluctuations wrapped in the process
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gees , abagond, you might as well have just called this my “PraetX” thread, since mao’s atracities , marxism, anti americanism, and the arab trader argument are where we really dont see eye to eye…if you threw in SSA and anti interracial sex, I would definitly own this thread…
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Da Jokah said
“Then I will. To name an anecdotal example, a black girl at my school had a GPA of 3.7 and SAT of 1210. Pretty good scores. However, I had a perfect 4.0 and over 1500. Which of us do you think was accepted to Harvard?”
Even back in the late eighties when i graduated prep school, people were doing all kinds of community service and stuff to show their ‘worth’ to colleges, i think it’s even worse now, overall, this is a spurious argument. I got waitlisted at Columbia but I was smokin lots of pot back then and well, I got a full scholarship to St. Bonaventure. I got accepted at Boston Univ. Engineering School, looking back I should have gone there. I got a 1400 on the SAT’s and my GPA was probably like 3.4 or something i dont even remember dude.
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i should have gone to USC a year early, i got an offer for to leave my senior year of HS and finish in 3 years, eh, who knows, man, I shoulda joined the marines after school, whatever,
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Hey, it’s yours. 😛
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@Kiwi
You can take cue from how Japanese-Americans would have spent their Summer of 1941. I bet many of them were going to church picnics, watching their kids playing little league baseball and let their kids go to overnight boy scout or girl scout trips. Families went and bought cotton candy after riding the Ferris wheels at the the county and state fairs. Chinese-Americans were demonized more than Japanese-Americans at that time. Now look at how they spent the Summer of ’42! It was nothing like what Gary Grimes and Jennifer O’Neill did in the movie with the same name. (I am chuckling to myself now – I remember when I was 10 and hoping I could grow up to be like Gary Grimes. :P). Before the end of the war China became America’s “friend” so they repealed the Exclusion Act, but redemonized China in 1949. After redemonizing China, Hollywood came out with a couple of movies about Japanese-Americans during the war to make whites feel better about themselves:
– Go for Broke! (1951 film)
– Bad Day at Black Rock (1955 film) – which was about a Japanese-American that was murdered and whose son was killed in Italy in the Japanese-American regiment, yet did not feature a single Asian in the whole movie in an attempt to absolve white guilt in the form of Spencer Tracy
Compare this to the ones made decades later
– Come See the Paradise (1990) (by that time it was acceptable to feature white leading men with Asian-American women and Asian-American men as subprops and cardboard figures)
– American Pastime (2007) – Have you seen this one? Features a romance between the leading Japanese-American male role and a white girl. Guess how it turns out. 😛
But Yellow Peril is a recurrent theme in America, around for 160 years. The main fear is not about going to war with China, but about LOSING that war. The Model Minority Stereotype is relatively new. Are you a fan of Star Trek? I was looking for clips from the Original Series episode which depicts the scenario where America fought that war with China and LOST. It gives you a glimpse into Asian stereotypes in America at that time. It is called “The Omega Glory” and aired Mar 1, 1968. Most of the videos are not available where I am, but I did find one.
(http://fliiby.com/file/289677/p2qa0aznjx.html)
Note the themes:
– Yankees v. Communists
– Communists are EVIL; White men are the good guys of history and the future hope for mankind
– Asian men are rugged and masculine but cruel and heartless; females flirt after white men (Captain Kirk) – their images are dehumanized and females conform to the prostitute stereotypes (of that era)
– Cold War Theme – America is there to save the world for freedom and democracy
– white men revert back to primitive savages like American Indians when they are driven from the towns and cities, and try to raid the “Asiatic settlements”
–> Note how all the stereotypes compare to today’s Model Minority!
Even Abagond did some posts about that theme about America being taken over by Asians:
The last one makes me chuckle too as the guy who is the head of Marketing for Pizza Hut in Greater China is a close friend of mine. 😛
Have you tried Pizza Hut in China? 😛 😛 😛
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@Kiwi,
My reply to you is in moderation.
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@ B.R.
1. I am not saying that Mao should never be brought up. I am not saying America is worse than Mao. But to bring him up at the very moment when the sins of America are being discussed, THAT is a derailment, that is the “Billie stole some cookies too!” argument, that is the Arab Trader argument, the thief-thief argument, the ODIT argument, whatever name you want to call it (Do moral philosophers have a name for it, does anyone know?). Legion’s wife beater example is just what I mean. Acts are evil in themselves, not by comparison.
2. Suppose this blog was about the Holocaust and commenters kept saying, “What about Mao?” How should I handle that?
3. So far as I know, Mao never took a position on interracial relationships, neither during the Great Leap Forward nor during the Cultural Revolution. I could be wrong of course, and maybe his stand on those things led to the death of millions. But, barring that, there is no reason to suppose that just because black militants were wrong on Mao they are NECESSARILY wrong on interracial relationships. People are wrong about some things and right about other things ALL the time. You need to show a more solid connection than that.
4. What part of my own thinking comes from Mao?
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Abagond , I apreciete this chance to answer
for number 2.The holocaust is extremly complex , comparing mass murders is very healthy…its not complete to not know that the Nazis were fighting the communists , who had eliminated 25 million people in the Soviet Union…its not complete to not know the other millions destroyed in the holocaust, and how prfoundly world war 2 was responsible for all this crazy dynamic rolling after that , from Israel, to Mao…
How can we measure millions? I mean that 50 million happened in my life time , in how short a period? I never think of it as Asian, I think of it as ideology, same with 6 million eliminated by the Khemer Rouge…
number 3. Well, here is why the phenominal political education Im getting down here in Brazil helps me to understand why Mao, 50 million and his ideology, are relevant right down into today…and it has nothing to do with watch out for the commies
Right now , there are cronic riots in the streets of many cities in Brazil , amid many peacful strikes and protests…people infiltrate, sometimes in colaboration with the protesters, sometimes not, they break public property poor people need, 95 percent of the population doesnt agree with them, they just dumped horse you know what on a place I pass all the time protesting to make bus fares free, I nearly got caught in 3 or 4 of these violent protests out on the road or coming back
and, they scream marxist, anti capatalistic, anarchistic phrases…they arnt coming near to getting at the real problems that affect people…and,you have the people in power, who are ideologicly aligned with mao, they even gave safe haven to Batisti, a communist Italian killer of 4, only to show that these ideological hookups are for real…and the ruling party doesnt get really called out and the head of the olympic commitee is from the communist party of Brazil…I mean the hypocracy is boggling
As far as anti interracial relationships , tied into black militants, who also touted the little red book? Well, Abagond, its time to at least go back and untie some of the knots…its time to really go back and say that was bs , and we should never of had to be led to think it was ok…the mao referances wasnt just from the black nationalists, and since interracial relations is what I have been into most of my life , I do have a stake in defining what I think some of the bs was
and that is why tap and Armstrong are in there too…those are things i absolutly identify with, that i knew it was wrong, and the source of these things put together was a militant stance…that did have good things also…but , its time to say those other things were no good…and the ideology that tied many of the people who pushed the flawed agendas , comes from the people they admired…sure, its not all militants, and, certain wings must have weighed sway on others, the recent auto biographies of panthers released, makes no bones of their marxist leanings and studies of Mao..Ive already proved it
and, I proved people were just parsing phrases and rhetoric from exactly that era, not the nation of Islam, or Garvey..but rhetoric specific to that era, some of it was marxist ideology (meaning the rhetoric from that era).For me, those things are just tied together in an ugly packedge..because I know, there were other things that black American militants addressed that contribute greatly to you being able to protect your children, and how to be wary…I would never deny that..
.but attack flawed marxist ideology, even the watered down “all capatalism is bad” versions, that are into today, yes,
in the same packedge as unrealistic demands of loyalty in sex, mandates with complex psuedo psycho analysis of why any black person would have sex with awhite person, carelessly judging black culture and artists, a very marxist, religious, capatalist passtime , yes…
and, you cant have a discusion on the cold war without mentioning mao…look, aabagond, lets forget your position for a minute, its a fact , the left, mostly far, isnt able to mention Mao, and fifty million eliminated by him and a flawed ideology…its just absent from their diologue…or , like you , its diminished , quickly flushed to derail…but i see in the streets right now, people pushing this flawed ideology..in a new pseudo, doesnt know what death is yet, but the rest of Brazil does…42 thousand a year or so…those mao followers in Brazil who went in for armed revolution didnt know what death was either..they got hurt bad…yeah, by USA supported dictatorships..they did train in china, some of them
yeah…its very relevant today…especialy where I live
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Im bringing in a comment from the “Pillars” thread to not derail:
Reading the review of Allen is dreadful..he has done research for dates and legal papers, but he cant hide his ideology
My gosh, “burgoise” is a ridiculous term , used in the communist manifesto, condemming anyone starting their own business…do you know how ridiculous that sounds? How many black American business men would be classified as “burgoise” by marxist standards?
he wants to look at the plantation as a capatalist structure , I always saw it like a communist structure, everybody has to work for the “state-estate”. he calls the plantation owners “the elite” and , I see the plantation owner as more like the dictator…cuban doctors sent abroad to work in other countries, based on agreements they have made with Castro, havr to send the majority of money back to Cuba
and, his attemt at trying to find when “white” came into play, takes no consideration for the huge slave trade happening in the caribean and latin America, especialy Brazil….they all had their histories of coming up with the races and defining “white”
many words in describing slaves , like “pickananies” are words with Portuguese origins…the concepts of describing race and “white” could just as well have been influenced from these other slave traders, the Portuguese did as big slave trade as anyone
A lot of good factual research and info,way too much of this guys ideology laced into his opinion, that really does cloud the truth…I just dont trust these descriptitons from people stuck in that reality
Legion, Abagond,…Abagond mentioned in the other thread about something Jesus and then searching the globe looking for villains like mao, and, Genghis Khan
The Jesus thing has nothing to do with me, but, I have absolutly been one of the people who use mao a lot, and Genghis Khan…are you going to tell me that I am not implicated? Are you agreeing now that there is a link with militant sixties nationalist rhetoric , their mao leanings and marxist leanings , and the kind of flawed agendas that couple with this ideology like white on rice, like anti interracial sex psycho analysis and destroying black culture? That you can find this rhetoric parsed and spewed out today in anti interracial discusions and its unbeleivable the energy it wastes?
Then that is fantastic, and Im sorry, I had no need to counter you both…I must have been over sensative
because the rhetoric from this ideology, is a poison..i saw it in this Allen book review, allen cant rise above his ideology, super imposing it over the truth, and making errors in the process….”negro”, the term used to describe black people back then, has Spanish and Portuguese origins, indicating those north american colonists got one of their race identifying terms from another language…he never mentions that
but, its the dogma and rhetoric of communism, marxism and their leaders, like mao , that is some of the worst part…how can people stomach it? how can they speak the putrid robotic dogma, with stiff semantical flawed agendas, and mandates everyone is suposed to bow down to and not question , while doing great damage…and you dont see a better example than the dogmad flawed rheteric and mandates than the damage from the mandates of loyalty from black men and women, and the damage from that coming down into today..that is straight out of the page book of those ideologies , in the political making it a mandate sence….white racists did it to, but more like facism…trying to mandate people’s sexual habits is some political agenda contro from the start
and, im sure you agree with this…you can not talk about the cold war without including mao and the 50 million killed, and 80 percent of anti american foreign policy critique is from the cold war…
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