Harris, 2019.
Repost: Now that Joe Biden has chosen Harris as his pick for vice president in the 2020 US election, this bears reposting. I have added a postscript and some links, but have otherwise left the February 2019 text of the post unchanged:
Kamala Harris (1964- ) is a centre-right Democratic senator from California who is running for US president in 2020. The Clinton wing of the party seems to be moving behind her.
In the 1960s her parents met as grad students at Berkeley. Her father was born in Jamaica, her mother in India. Harris was born in Oakland, California and grew up in a mostly-Black neighbourhood of Berkeley.
In the 1970s, after her parents split up, she lived in Montreal, Canada with her mother and younger sister Maya. She travelled to Jamaica and India to visit family. Her grandfather in India was a diplomat and a Brahman, the highest caste.
In the 1980s Harris went to Howard University (’86), joining Alpha Kappa Alpha, and then got a law degree at UC Hastings (’89).
In 1995 she dated a married man 30 years older than her, Willie Brown, a womanizer and machine politician who was mayor of San Francisco from 1996 to 2004.
Harris circa 2010.
In the 2000s and 2010s she won election after election, becoming:
- 2004-11: District Attorney of San Francisco,
- 2011-17: Attorney General of California,
- 2017- : US Senator.
In 2014 she married Douglas Emhoff, who is White. She has no children of her own.
In 2019 she is now running for US president.
Some of her record:
- In 2004 she stood up to the police in the case of Isaac Espinoza, refusing to seek the death penalty.
- In 2005 she started Back on Track, which helped first-time drug offenders turn their lives around instead of locking them up in prison and destroying their lives further.
- Got bias training for police officers as district attorney.
- In 2009 wrote a book, “Smart on Crime”, where the word “racism” appears only once.
- In 2010 blamed the school-to-prison pipeline on parents. The numbers prove it!
- In 2011 she ??? the Occupy movement.
- Opposed the legalization of recreational marijuana (till 2018).
- Championed the death penalty as attorney general even though she was “personally” against it.
- Refused to defend as attorney general Proposition 8, the expressed will of the people of California to outlaw same-sex marriage.
- Her office argued in favour of overcrowded prisons because California needed the cheap prison labour.
- Refused to quickly investigate certain police shootings.
- In 2015 would not support a law that would require her as the California attorney general to investigate killer cops.
- Went after predatory lenders as attorney general.
- Locked up parents whose children repeatedly skipped school. A policy she pushed – and laughed about. It is right there on YouTube!
- Let Steve Mnuchin and his bank (One West) get away with breaking foreclosure laws at least a thousand times, kicking people out of their homes. Mnuchin is now the head of the US Treasury. No tough love for him.
Top cop: At first she stood up to the police, but over time became another dirty cog in the machine of White supremacy. Willingly so, given her support of marijuana laws and the death penalty. She even started calling herself the “top cop”.
Harris listening to Brett Kavanaugh, 2018.
As senator she champions cash bail reform and outlawing lynching. She is wonderful during Senate hearings when questioning President Trump’s top people.
– Abagond, 2019.
Postscript (August 11th 2020): Harris never did well, not even among Black voters, and dropped out early. But in August 2020 Joe Biden chose her as his pick for vice president as an apparent two-fer (Black and female), in a (probably ill-fated) attempt to simulate the Obama coalition.
Sources: mainly Google Images, Vox, The Young Turks.
See also:
- Notes towards a Kamala Harris media guide
- Donald Harris – her father
- If her campaign does not implode:
- Kamala Harris and Occupy
- Kamala Harris and Black Lives Matter
- Kamala Harris: a media guide
- Alpha Kappa Alpha
- The 2020 election
- Democrats
- Black People: The White Liberal User’s Guide
- corporate and progressive Democrats
- Barack Obama – written in February 2007 at the same point in the election cycle
- Obama retrospective – written in 2017, ten years later
- Hillary Clinton 2016
- Bernie Sanders
- the police
- killer cops
- “tough on crime”
- slave patrols
- The New Jim Crow
- lynching
- cash bail
- Willie Brown
- Steve Mnuchin
- Brett Kavanaugh
- other public prosecutors
- Bob McCulloch
- Marilyn Mosby
- Larry Krasner
712
Abagond 
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU FOR THIS POST, ABAGOND!!!
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Ugh…. rock and a hard place. So we have to endure 4 more years of ??? I totally agree with AOC 2024!
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Copied from someone I follow on Facebook:
“In 2020 we have a Black cop on a presidential ticket with an old racist white dude. This, in a time where there is an actual global uprising against law enforcement. The protests are obviously working because the capitalist class is so scared that they’re putting Black women on presidential tickets. I don’t mean to say that protesters are demanding a Black VP (not even close) rather this is the only card that the capitalist and political class can play to “keep the peace”. Who better to quell righteous anger against jails, prisons, and law enforcement than a Black prosecutor who spent her time in office making sure jails proliferated and Black folks remained incarcerated? Its a huge FU to protesters and abolitionists.”
“The capitalist class is like “oh you wanna abolish and de-fund the institutions that maintain our wealth” well try going against a Black woman who is a first gen daughter of immigrants and a cop. Let’s not forget that she’s also our enemy because she actively upholds the systems that harm us even if she does it with melanin.” #BlackLiberationMatters
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I hope this ignites the people even more when they realize they’ve been played. But, I also worry that a black woman on the ticket will galvanize Trumps base even more.
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I think the word for all black and hispanic cops, which would include Kamala Harris, is “collaborator.”
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I think Biden/Harris is still better than Trump/Pence. We’re faced with a binary choice. One side may be bad but, the other side is terrifying.
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I’ll be nice.
Harris has more charisma than Biden and seems to have a quicker intellect at this point. So he gets a running mate who’s comfortable in the spotlight and will also appeal to some people because of who she is. As abagond suggested, it’s a bit like an inverted Obama, Biden ticket.
OTOH, Kamala still has that record as a prosecutor at a time when many people are not at all happy with law enforcement. IMO, the election will swing on whether Americans are more against the Trump proposition in 2020, than they were in 2016.
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@ Open Minded Observer
“One side may be bad but, the other side is terrifying.”
Agreed. A choice between worse and worser.
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@ abagond
Did you write this Abagond? And what do you mean?
Apparently this paragraph means something, but at a closer look, it is ambiguous, at best.
I think you meant:
“In 1995 she dated a married man 30 years older than her, Willie Brown, a womanizer and machine politician who became mayor of San Francisco from 1996 to 2004”
The way you wrote creates the impression that the woman dated that man because he was a mayor, and that creates the impression that she was dating not by love but mere material interest.
I don’t know the woman but I think this phrase does not seems correct and it’s unfair towards her.
But maybe it’s me. I’m not a native speaker of the language of Albion, after all.
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I have to be honest Harris was not on my radar. I was hoping for a Warren/ Castro ticket. But when that didn’t happen, I accepted it. Now that we are in the time of BLM protest and pandemic and economic crisis, I think she will be a good VP.
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Kamala Harris is standing on Shirley Chisholm’s shoulders.
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@ munubantu
If I left out “from 1996 to 2004” it would be hugely misleading in just the way you said. But the dates make clear the order of events: she dated him and a year later he was mayor.
“Became” might be the better, stronger word, from an English composition point of view – “was” is a very weak verb – but it would not change the basic meaning of the passage.
Dating the man who would become mayor and then, at the end of his term, becoming district attorney of that same city, at such a young age, I think is more than a passing fact. Both are elected positions, so everything is above board, but it no doubt gave her an advantage.
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@abagond I live in California. I can tell you, the political machine picks the candidates. The voters have no choice. Harris was not that young when she became district attorney, but she has little ability to create popularity and resonance on her own. She has in common with Barack Obama that she is a created individual, but Obama knew how to create popularity and resonance. In the only competitive statewide election she was in, for attorney general in 2010, she barely won, a real feat for Democrat in California.
All appearance to the contrary, and the appearance always gives her a jump start, she burns out fast as an electoral draw. She will be the issue in the 2020 campaign, it will be Trump versus Harris.
By created individual I do not mean that the person is not a natural human being, but that certain forces coalesced to promote that person into high place from a very early stage. I am sure Harris was on somebody’s radar even in college, Obama probably earlier. Then there is question of how of a deviation Harris really is. Both of her parents were born subjects of the British Crow
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It fills me with joy to see a Black person, and specially a Black woman to achieve such greatness as to be the Vice President of the most powerful country on earth. Let’s pray that will happen…
I know that next comes the discussion of her merits and what she represents. And some will question. But my joy remains.
An intriguing thought: Both Kamala Harris and Condoleezza Rice achieve(d) great heights but both are childless. Is this just a coincidence or is there a reason why Black women who are great achievers tend to put some more intimate personal achievements aside? Things that most other women achieve, let’s say, easily? Is this somehow related to the so touted academic disparity between Black women and men, that pushes some Black women to walk a desert of opportunities when it comes to love and marriage inside their original community?
Don’t get me wrong. A woman will be a woman independently of having or not children. This is a choice or a destiny. Her value does not depend on that. But the joy of motherhood for most women is an unquestionable fact. In Africa or America. Or elsewhere. It’s in human nature.
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@ munubantu
In the US it is called the mommy track. Women are expected to be the primary care givers of their children (and ageing relatives). That puts them at a disadvantage with their male colleagues who can dump all the child care responsibilities on their wives and concentrate on their careers. So it is not at all a coincidence that people like Harris or Condoleeza Rice or Oprah never gave birth.
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It is probably also not a coincidence that Harris’s father never had a son.
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@ Abagond
Now you are being cryptic. Please elaborate about Harris’ father never having a son.
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@ Abagond
Oprah did give birth — at the age of 14, as a result of rape, to a premature baby who died. Oprah is a survivor of child sexual abuse. It’s possible the trauma was a factor in why she never had any other children.
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@ newworld3000
I agree Harris was groomed for national politics. Likely since her teen or college years.
The problem for most ordinary Americans, especially Black Americans, is who groomed her and to what end?
She has already shown a willingness to serve the powerful and kick down the powerless. Her jailing parents for their children’s truancy in California was horrendous. She is quite a matched pair with Biden who was a lead architect with the 1994 Crime Bill that made more money available for prisons than schools.
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@Mary Burrell…“Kamala Harris is standing on Shirley Chisholm’s shoulders.”
Only because, as newworld3000 stated upthread, they both had “immigrant parents who were born subjects of the British Crown” and were both born here. Shirley Chisholm’s father was from British Guiana and later moved to and met her mother in Barbados.
Other than that, I see no other similarities between the two women. While Kamala was busy being LA’s Top Cop, locking up parents for their children’s truancy, Mrs. Chisholm was fighting tooth and nail for an expanded food stamp program and working to create WIC.
I JUST CAN’T wrap my head around how this child of the Brahman caste will give two shits about my Dalit-looking behind! For example this: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3azjp5/silicon-valley-has-a-caste-discrimination-problem
I’m not surprised at all that she pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, nor that Shirley Chisholm was a member of Delta Sigma Theta. Though now there are some AKAs who look like me, back in the day when I pledged and certainly when Shirley Chisholm did, that colorism sh*t permeated every damned thing, every-damned-where, even in the halls of supposed higher learning.
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@Afrofem
” She is quite a matched pair with Biden who was a lead architect with the 1994 Crime Bill that made more money available for prisons than schools.”
Right.
She’s a great “face” for the campaign but when you dig into the details she doesn’t seem to stand for the the principles that “they” want you to believe the face implies.
I’m not sure whether the fact that many of the issues came up during her campaign for the Democratic nomination mitigates or exacerbates them. Are people already desensitized to them or is she now an easy target of attacks?
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I just can’t with Kamala.
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Fam, these are the two people for whom these damned Democrats want you to vote! {SMDH}:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/08/joe-biden-kamala-harris-vice-president-neoliberalism
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/20/18677998/joe-biden-1994-crime-bill-law-mass-incarceration
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@ Deb
Thanks for the links!
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@ Sharina
I agree with you.
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@Afrofem…Hey there! You’re welcome!
Here’s another very informative one: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/kamala-harris-criminal-justice.html
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@ Origin
If Black people are still enthralled by Black Faces in High Places, then Sen. Harris is a shoo-in as VP. If they have seen the futility of voting for an Obama styled “Black” person, then perhaps her “face” won’t be the draw the Dems are banking on.
Yet, with Trump-Pence as the alternative, a lot of people will share the frustration
Open Minded Observer and I expressed upthread:
“One side may be bad but, the other side is terrifying.”
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Apparently Trump has reduced U.S. troops…not by much…but as a Non-American—I much prefer a U.S. pres who is not interested in waging wars abroad.
A reduced U.S. footprint would free-up American taxes for social services such as unemployment benefits…etc….
One foolish U.S. president already waged an idiotic war and destabilized the Middle East—If Americans want to vote in foolish presidents—the rest of the world can only hope that they choose one that does not wage any more idiotic wars!!!
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@Afrofem
Good points. As I thought, it comes down to whether people are willing to risk another Trump term to express their disapproval of the Dem ticket.
@anon
Trump’s instinctive disinterest in American military adventurism is probably one of the less nightmarish things about his presidency. Hilary Clinton’s hawkishness is one of the things that seriously concerned me about her. I think her influence [as Secretary of State] contributed hugely to Obama’s unwarranted destruction of Libya which caused so much unnecessary suffering and turned it into carrion which even distant Turkey is fighting over now.
However, the relationship between Trump and militarism is more complicated than it appears at first sight. Trump, who probably wishes he were a dictator, is not above using the military as a prop or threatening to turn it inwards on the American people. I see his tear-gassing of DC protestors for a photo-op and even the unexpected drone assassination of Iran’s Soleimani [doubtless to match Obama’s killing of Bin Laden] as performances.
His narcissism means that he can be pushed into military adventurism if he thinks it’ll make him popular. John Bolton tried and failed and was mad enough to write a scathing book after being forced out of the administration. However there are still many hawks in the America political establishment who would love to take advantage of the president. In that sense, he’s still a danger to the world.
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@ anon
“A reduced U.S. footprint would free-up American taxes for social services such as unemployment benefits…etc….”
I wish this were true. At the end of the Cold War, there was a lot of talk about “the peace dividend” (i.e., all the tax money that could now be directed towards social services and infrastructure). Instead, Congress began trying to dismantle the welfare system.
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@ Afrofem
What I meant is that her father not having a son made it more likely, GENERALLY SPEAKING, for him to be more ambitious for her. But that is speaking generally. The particular relationship between her and her father may have been nothing like that, of course.
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Biden/Harris is way better than Trump/Pence, but that is not saying much.
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@ newworld3000
I agree that Harris presents Trump with a softer target than Biden. She will allow him to whip up his base’s racism and misogyny.
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Harris was not picked for you blacks. The party knows she was incredibly unpopular with blacks, who see right through her. She’s probably less than 1/4 black, but fully half Indian. The tech titans (largely Indian) and wall street love Harris because they know she will follow their bidding. She stands for nothing, kind of like Biden. They are easily controllable. The DNC believes giving you Biden will be enough to ensure full turnout and 90%+ Democratic votes from blacks, no matter how many times he makes insulting comments about blacks (he didn’t really mean it–he’s just senile). The pundits are saying that Biden has a huge lead, so it must be true. Of course, they said that about Hillary, but that was just a one-time fluke. This time they mean it. Biden and Harris will offshore as many more tech and other jobs as they can, and they won’t hesitate to go to war in the middle east if the Neocons (who, like Bolton, have finally hit some pushback under Trump, but will feel right at home with Biden/Harris) decide it would be good for the oligarchs in charge. But they’ll at least stop any pressure on China because it cuts into globalist profits.
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@Abagond But that’s how politics works. I have argued that Trump’s impetus is in the direction of inclusive labor-oriented conservative populism. I said “direction” because we have seen very little of it, and the Democrats sure are not going to support any element of it even if it is proposed. Just look at how Barack Obama and then Rahm Emmanuel left the proposal for free community college nationwide dead on arrival. This may be a minor issue, but it should have been the feel-good idea of the century so far in the political system. It something that is at once or at least should be, both a good conservative populist idea and good liberal populist idea all at the same time.
Inclusive labor-oriented conservative populism is the great threat to the political left. If it was implemented, it would leave most of their base immune to their incitements. Some massive forces are loose in American politics right now – the white pushback, called racist because whites have to go it alone in the present dynamic – the identity politics driven leftist push – and flat out replacement. I have used the terms “legacy” and “replacement” popuylations. A black guy on a conservative site used the terms “Foundation blacks” and “Settler whites” to cover the idea of the Legacy population of people who were here before 1970 and their progeny. My only quibble is that I make a distinction between the Anglo-Celtic “settler” and the Irish and Continental European “immigrant” whites. This distinction is not dead.
The Replacement population refers to non-European immigrants who have arrived largely since 1970’s and their progeny, although Harris (b 1964) is part of the “replacement” group and first open “replacement” major politician, something Barack Obama was not given his close ties to the Legacy population.
The “replacement” group now has reached a critical mass of 90 million, enough to begin to replace the “legacy” group in all educated professions, skilled work and middle, management. Blacks are slated in principle for replacement as much as whites are but in fact have no real skin in the game. Black will get the same deal post-replacement that they do now, notably outreach and inclusion for the intelligentsia.
The replacement population is composed essentially of the elements of East Asians, South Asians and Hispanics. Though people from these groups may go into various educated professions, upper management, middle management, skilled and even semiskilled work in different proportions, the point is, each group will be content with its position and there will be no friction between them.
Myself, I take the position that all individuals for whom specific arrangements have not been made need to be treated as disadvantaged and have outreach available especially in matters of higher education beyond the bachelor’s degree where applicable. I am serious about the idea that blacks have to be part of it. Few whites understand the issue or are even aware that it is an issue and aware that there are blacks to whom the issue rightly applies. What I consider especially idiotic is the idea Middle American and economically depressed whites are going to benefit if they end minority outreach. I tell them, if you succeeded none of those places now opened would go to you. They would go to the existing white middle class and upper middle class or to other than black “diversity” applicants. I tell them that what happens to other people is not what is happening to you, that you have to state what you want without reference to anyone else. But they don’t quite see the issue and have no leadership capable of defining anything for them. Aggressive black xenophobia, of which Willie Brown was one of the great exemplars, is a force getting in the way. It has to been pushed back against. You, sir, may be one of the outstanding cultural critics of the day, but you are still a xenophobe. Call it justified, but you are.
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@ Abagond
Oh, I thought the not having a son comment had some cultural links to her father’s Jamaican background or something like that.
Thanks for the simple “elaboration”.
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Because of Kamala’s Indian ancestry, I have seen some excitement for her candidacy among people of Indian descent online.This was brought up in this thread for “other reasons” (by one who shall not be named) but it just served to underscore the peculiar pathology of white people.
Obama was 1/2 white!
He had a white mother just as Kamala has an Indian mother and yet many white Americans absolutely despised him. They claimed that he wasn’t American and hate groups became more active during his presidency. So why is it that Indians can identify a “half-Indian” politician yet so many white Americans couldn’t identify with Obama at all?
What is wrong with so many white people?
IMO, there is nothing wrong with black people for empathizing with someone who grew up black in America despite their mixed ancestry. Obama and Kamala may be criticized for their policies, but I’ll never shame black people for being properly developed human beings whose mirror neurons work properly and who are able to see themselves in others.
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Vote in your local elections.
This woman is Obama 2.0
She is NOT for the “little guy”
Vote third party or write in!
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So birtherisim is making a come back. This is so stupid. Are they going to ask Kamala Harris for her birth certificate?
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@ Origin
If that was not a rhetorical question:
They are racist. It is that simple. Being White, unlike being Black or almost anything else, is about racial supremacy and therefore racial purity.
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Strangely, I find myself agreeing with Biff’s assessment in general. Biden was under tremendous pressure to pick a woman of color for VP but, he (and the party) absolutely take it for granted that most Black people would vote against Trump regardless of who he picked. They also take it for granted that long-time democrats of all skin-tones would do the same. They’re trying to create a “feel good” actionable thing to energize young people, moderates, apathetic Whites and especially those 53% of White women who voted for Trump and are now on their social medias professing their newfound wokeness. They can all vote for Biden/Harris and feel good about themselves for solving racism again… just like when they voted for Obama.
Heck, Biden even expressed that he sees “The Black vote” as not being diverse (not exact words but, you know the quote). …and (this may be unpopular) in this particular election, he’s not wrong. The vast majority of Black people will vote against Trump as long as Biden remains slightly less bad. Some will vote for him because they feel comfortable with him since he was VP before… but, I think that might have been more of a factor in the primaries than the general. He’s not Trump. Ergo, the party feels he has certain votes locked up. They’re aware he isn’t particularly popular which makes them afraid of exactly the kind of apathy that took down Hillary Clinton (which Biff alluded to in his remarks about pundits). Harris was a “safe” choice for the exact voters they are targeting with her selection and they’re banking on the fact that people who see her as problematic will vote democrat anyway because, at the end of the day, Biden’s not quite Trump.
Whatever. I hope it works. Then, I hope it’s the last time We The People reward that type of thinking. I’m encouraged by how civic-minded, policy-oriented and energized younger voters have been the last few rounds.
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@abagond
It was a rhetorical question but the explicit answer is appreciated anyway!
I’m positive that hardly any racist white person – hypocritical as they are – would volunteer the correct answer despite knowing it very well.
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@Open Minded Observer
Of course the Dems take the black vote for granted. It’d be a long time since they haven’t. It’s fairly obvious.
The argument for the Clinton/Kaine ticket was the need to beat Trump while also making history with a female president. Such arguments have largely returned in 2020 with a few tweaks.
Still, I had to comment on the break-down by estimated percentage of ancestry when, by that same analysis, Obama should have been loved by almost all white people if it weren’t for something …
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@ Deb
“this child of the Brahman caste”
I would like to add some context on caste and Kamala Harris, but I don’t mean it as an argument with you. I’m no fan of hers, either.
However, as I understand it, Kamala Harris is not herself a Brahmin, because traditionally both of her parents would need to be Brahmin for that to be the case. Kamala’s mother didn’t only marry outside of her race but outside of her religion, and that means she married outside of her caste.
Non-Hindus are technically Untouchables in the Hindu caste system, although in practice it varies, especially due to the effects of British colonialism. But from what I’ve been told, a strict Brahmin would consider a Christian of any race to be far below them in the hierarchy.
Kamala’s mother broke with the caste system when she married, and Kamala’s uncle did so as well by marrying a Mexican woman. The fact that Kamala’s Brahmin grandparents didn’t disown both children for marrying non-Hindus speaks volumes about how progressive and accepting they were, over 50 years ago. I’ve seen major family drama go down in similar situations just recently.
It’s perfectly possible that there was still anti-Dalit prejudice within the family that Kamala was exposed to. But at the same time, it’s also perfectly possible that Kamala has herself been subjected to caste-based ostracism and discrimination by Brahmins outside of her family.
Also, while colorism certainly exists in Indian society, people cannot necessarily tell who is a Dalit from appearance or skin tone. This was alluded to in the Vice article you linked to above:
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@ Origin
re: Clinton/Kaine; Agreed. I think too many people just didn’t believe Trump would win and also didn’t feel good about voting for Clinton so, they just didn’t bother voting. The need to vote against Trump didn’t feel so pressing.
“I’m positive that hardly any racist white person…”
Pretty sure that’s all of us (White people) to some degree as long as you’re not using the White supremacist definition of “racist” which requires racism to originate in the heart and include racist bones.
Speaking only for myself, I didn’t vote for or against Obama based on race. In ’08 I likely would have voted McCain but voted for Obama because Palin… In 12 I voted Obama because he was the most “presidential” president I’ve ever seen and his politics were fairly moderate. However, the privilege to not consider race and what it meant in terms of lived experiences he’d bring to the presidency is unique to Whiteness and I understand that makes me racist (albeit without the rebel flag wavin’ racist heart and bones).
I am curious if you know any White people that think of Kamala as half Indian? I mean, I know bi-racial people who’ve done 23andme DNA things that show them to be more than 50% European who are still very clearly identified and self-identify as Black. Anyone I’ve spoken with has labeled her as Black.
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@Open Minded Observer
“I am curious if you know any White people that think of Kamala as half Indian? I mean, I know bi-racial people who’ve done 23andme DNA things that show them to be more than 50% European who are still very clearly identified and self-identify as Black. Anyone I’ve spoken with has labeled her as Black.”
I was mostly referring to the posts in this thread. I don’t personally know anyone who doesn’t consider Kamala Harris black because she’s also Indian. BTW, since we’re talking about her family, I saw this on twitter so why not share it. This is a pic of baby Harris with her father’s mother.
It’s not surprising that biracial black Americans could be >50% European according to DNA tests since the AA parent could have some European ancestry. It wouldn’t lead them to question their identity the way a white American who finds a speck of recent African ancestry in their DNA might.
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EDIT: Above could be her father’s grandmother. There could be a mistake in the tweet’s caption.
Anyway, I also saw this thread about a NPR interview in which a public defender was refuting some of the things said about Kamala Harris’ record (that she was a particularly harsh prosecutor). I haven’t had time to listen to it all yet, but I’m willing to do so eventually.
Admittedly, some of the early information that came out kind of soured me but I appreciate that manipulation can go both ways. So now that she’ll be probably relevant in national politics for many years hence, I’ve been paying attention the different slants.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2020/08/10/kamala-harris-progressive-pioneer-san-francisco-da-column/3334668001/
Below is a twitter thread featuring video clips of an NPR interview with the public defender who wrote the above article:
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^ Thanks for the links!
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“So why is it that Indians can identify a “half-Indian” politician yet so many White Americans couldn’t identify with Obama at all?”
Ridiculous. They did identify with him (even if to some extent it was subconscious), that’s why they elected him president twice. Many well-meaning White moderates and conservatives joined in that, because they thought it would create racial unity. Instead, Obama stoked the flames of racial strife with Ferguson and other incidents, which led to less police enforcement and literally thousands more (mostly blacks) dead and more and more racial animosity (even as police killings of blacks steadily went down under Trump)…
However, Obama was 1/2 White and raised White. White people absolutely know that. I can very clearly remember the first time I heard him speaking. The freshman senator was on the news at the gym I was at about 15 years ago. And it was like, oh sh izzle that n izzle talks like a White guy!
Kamala has that same thing going, less than 1/4 black, but the Indian side gives her melanin, so we can pretend she’s representative of blacks more than say Stacy (M1) Abrams. She makes soccer moms comfortable and that’s the point, because they need to virtue signal to make themselves feel better.
Harris was polling at like 2% with black people in the primaries. But they are still gonna try to sneak her into the presidency, because they can.. =P You all know she’s a globalist, tech oligarch puppet, but you’ll still support her and increased real inequality under her and the globalists because they tell you every night ORANGE MAN BAD ™.
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@ biff
LOL. Oh please. Obama bent over backwards for White people. Walked on eggshells. Did not do a damn thing about the police until America started to spontaneously combust.
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@ biff
This is a persistent Republican trope: The Stupid Black Voter. Black people cannot think for themselves or know what is in their own best interest, that they are easily hoodwinked, that they understand nothing about tactical voting, that they do not see the Democratic Party for what it is, etc. And that only Republicans, people like Trump, know what is in the best interest of Black people. Candace Owens has this one down pat – along with the Dixiecrat Fallacy.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2019/03/19/candace-owens/
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Consulting “Black People: The White Liberal User’s Guide” (2015), I believe these apply to the Kamala Harris pick:
where Harris is dangled as bait for Trump.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/black-people-the-white-liberal-users-guide/
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@abagond
Exactly,
Which world do people like biff live in?
An entire ideology called “birtherism” – with Donald Trump as one of its foremost proponents – arose around portraying Obama as some kind of un-American Muslim alien who didn’t belong and was illegally occupying the presidency. Yet we have biff today pretending as if Obama wasn’t viscerally hated by huge swathes of white America for being the n***** son of an African immigrant.
LOL.
So the question remains:
If being 1/2 Indian is enough for Indians to embrace Kamala Harris en masse (as proposed by biff) why did being 1/2 white not inoculate Obama against being portrayed as an outsider by so many white people?
Dishonest revisionism does not answer the question.
For even if some white people supported Obama because they “subconsciously” identified with his white side (as proposed by biff) there were surely a very large number who LOUDLY and EXPLICITLY disavowed him DESPITE it and BECAUSE of what else he also was.
So if such behavior is to be expected from ALL people then why propose that Kamala Harris’ partial Indian heritage is SUFFICIENT to lock up the Indian vote?
However if it is NOT to be expected of all people (as implicitly proposed by biff), then why did so many white people hate one of their own ( LMAO ) because he was also something else?
Clearly biff has a “subconscious” understanding that white people are different beasts!
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@abagond
“This is a persistent Republican trope: The Stupid Black Voter.”
In other words, “Prove to us that you aren’t stupid by voting, en masse, for our racist @sses!”
Such a persuasive strategy could only be formulated in the brilliant minds of those thoroughly convinced of their own superiority.
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In my opinion she was chosen so that the democrat ticket could be “law and order” and take that from Trump. Furthermore she’s their to bait Trump into insulting her as he does to other women. The idea being it might turn off enough suburban white women to swing the vote towards the Democrat ticket. I’m skeptical of the second as rascim.runs a.lot deeper then what the DNC thinks.
As far as Harris herself she is a politician more then an ideologue.
As AG she didn’t oppose the anti crime shift in California. She was strongly pro cop and didn’t file any charges against police misconduct during her tenor. In fact she helped block evidence for the police that would have freed some people.
The media is currently reinventing her.
It is hard to see her today supporting defunding the police or abolishing qualified immunity or ICE camps or supporting many of the things progressives and libertarians have been pushing.
She’s a politician so she may move in that direction if she thinks it will further her career or help quell demonstrations that likely will.continue if She and Biden are elected.
I hope it is not a close election. Trump will claim voter fraud and refuse to step down. His supporters will hit the streets and clashes between blm and Trumps supporters will be violent.
They were today in my town. Every Friday Trump supporters on one side of the street and blm on the other. The police at first monitored the protests for a few weeks and now have withdrawn. This embolden Trump supporters to move across the street and starts fights. My son has two black eyes and others were peppered sprayed. It took a bit to drive them back. The paamedics took two from our side away. Same thing happened the week before.
We do have some dressed in black that look like black block but I have decide that its just a fashion statement. They were worthless. Those of us fighting back are working class.
It’s plumber against plumber.
Some have suggested moving our protests to a different part of the city to avoid the violence. Others like myself do not want to give up the block because this is our town.
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Pt. 1: @Soltaire…“I would like to add some context on caste and Kamala Harris, but I don’t mean it as an argument with you.
However, as I understand it, Kamala Harris is not herself a Brahmin, because traditionally both of her parents would need to be Brahmin for that to be the case. Kamala’s mother didn’t only marry outside of her race but outside of her religion, and that means she married outside of her caste.”
Appreciate the context — no heat, no judgement (As Iyanla Vanzant always says!). I’m not NEARLY culturally competent enough about “caste” to either understand, or dispute what you say — I have no Indian friends. What I DO know though, is she credits ALL THAT SHE IS to the influence of her Brahmin grandfather:
https://www.indiaabroad.com/the-progressive-grandfather-who-inspired-kamala-devi-harris/article_7cac1c8b-b4ac-5a43-b15d-00e14d556eae.html
— yet rarely ever shares anything about her Jamaican daddy, OR</> his “interesting heritage”: https://www.jamaicaglobalonline.com/kamala-harris-jamaican-heritage/
Non-Hindus are technically Untouchables in the Hindu caste system, although in practice it varies, especially due to the effects of British colonialism. But from what I’ve been told, a strict Brahmin would consider a Christian of any race to be far below them in the hierarchy.
Fair, because as I said before, I’m not culturally competent enough to dispute what you say.
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Pt. 2: @ Solitaire…“Kamala’s mother broke with the caste system when she married, and Kamala’s uncle did so as well by marrying a Mexican woman. The fact that Kamala’s Brahmin grandparents didn’t disown both children for marrying non-Hindus speaks volumes about how progressive and accepting they were, over 50 years ago.
Is it possible they just ACCEPTED it because there was nothing they could really do about the love, rather than them being soprogressive?</> For 40 years come November, I’ve been married to a “society-identified” white guy who will tell you in a heartbeat he’s a proud, Italian-American. Did my family “disown” me? No — because they knew there was nothing they could do about who I loved. They were accepting is all (trust me, they were never considered progressive).
“It’s perfectly possible that there was still anti-Dalit prejudice within the family that Kamala was exposed to. But at the same time, it’s also perfectly possible that Kamala has herself been subjected to caste-based ostracism and discrimination by Brahmins outside of her family.”
Based on my own experience, I PROMISE you, “there was still anti-Dalit prejudice within the family that Kamala was exposed to,” AND she probably was “subjected to caste-based ostracism and discrimination by Brahmins outside of her family.” As I said, I’ve been living this story for almost 40 years. His father threatened to disown him (couldn’t, he was the baby boy and his wife and her parents weren’t havin’ that!!), his brother’s still a racist, Trump supporter, so is his wife (though me & my boys are excepted from their direct vitriol — wore them down I guess. That, or they realized I wasn’t going anywhere after 40 years and his brother loves the hell out of his family. Makes for some heated “family” gatherings — but we got the millenial kids in the family on our side!). And whenever we went to the small, upstate NY town where he’s from, the prejudice was apparent from folk outside his family.
“Also, while colorism certainly exists in Indian society, people cannot necessarily tell who is a Dalit from appearance or skin tone. This was alluded to in the Vice article you linked to above”
Here’s what I DOknow — though white folk think all Black folk look alike, Black folk KNOW the difference and I’m certain Hindus do too, even if the particular Dalit is not “Black like me,” despite what the Vice article “alluded to.” Just sayin’…
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@ Deb
“Is it possible they just ACCEPTED it because there was nothing they could really do about the love, rather than them being soprogressive?</> For 40 years come November, I’ve been married to a “society-identified” white guy who will tell you in a heartbeat he’s a proud, Italian-American. Did my family “disown” me? No — because they knew there was nothing they could do about who I loved. They were accepting is all (trust me, they were never considered progressive).”
I understand to a degree, being in a 30+ year interracial relationship myself. Speaking broadly, there is no comparison to what South Asian parents are prepared to do. They will disown a child for not wanting to follow the career path they’ve chosen for that child. They will disown a child for not agreeing to an arranged marriage. Or instead of disowning, they will lock that child in a room and/or beat that child until they break down and agree to the arranged marriage. They will yank the child out of school and ship the child back to their home country under the constant supervision of relatives and force the marriage there. In India, there are still people killed every year by their own family for marrying outside their caste.
“Here’s what I DOknow — though white folk think all Black folk look alike, Black folk KNOW the difference and I’m certain Hindus do too, even if the particular Dalit is not “Black like me,” despite what the Vice article “alluded to.” Just sayin’…”
But Dalits are the same race as the other castes which oppress them. Their status was determined by their occupations over 2000 years ago. They were people who worked at jobs that became to be seen as unclean within the Hindu religion, such as leatherwork.
The article you linked to described several Dalits who were flying under the radar of their Brahmin co-workers by changing their names. They wouldn’t be able to do that if there was a difference in physical appearance which all Hindus can discern.
For that matter, “Dalit” itself is not a homogenous group but consists of nearly 1000 different sub-castes.
I don’t think all Hindus or all Indians look alike, but a lot of the differences in appearance are along regional or ethnic lines. I’m not saying colorism doesn’t play a part in the caste system, but the intersection is different from how it has historically worked in the USA.
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@ Solitaire & Deb
What I will say next is mere opinion, not a scientific argument.
From what I see in my corner of the world and what I had the opportunity to be exposed to in other societies, and also what I know by reading, the European colonization of Africa, Asia and the Americas, left a deep in-print in how those societies function today. Therefore, it is impossible to analyze how each of these societies work today without looking at effects of European colonization.
The Indian caste system has the concept of Untouchables who were/are seen as less than people belonging to the castes and we can be tempted to see them extending this rule to everybody not native Indian.
But this would be a gross oversimplification! India was colonized by European (not only the British, but also partially by the Portuguese; in Goa, Damao and Diu) and during all this period whatever the caste system was dictating, it was superseded by the colonial rules. Indian of all castes had to learn to respect the colonizers. It’s very unlikely that this attitude vis-a-vis White people, didn’t remain until today. Therefore, White people cannot possibly be seen or treated like Dalits or other Untouchables. This, definitely, is almost impossible!
Regarding Black people I don’t know for sure but I believe the way those were treated in India by the colonial authorities (the small set of Blacks in India!) influenced also what possibly followed after the independence of the country.
An interesting book analyzing race relations in India and other Portuguese colonies until the dawn of the 19th century is “Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1415–1825” by C. R. Boxer.
The author comments that during a period of time the Portuguese gave in their possessions (Goa, Damao and Diu) a higher rank to their mixed offspring than to children of the Brahman caste. Curiously enough, their mixed offspring was the result of unions (short or long) with native Indian women of lower caste. Therefore, the Brahman had to endure being shoved from the top position they enjoyed prior to the colonization.
After the independence of India from the British, the new country put pressure on the Portuguese to let their colonies of Goa, Damao and Diu. The Portuguese first resisted but later left those possessions and an internal social power dispute followed that questioned the position of the “Goan (=goeses*)” in the new era. Many Goan families left the territory and followed the Portuguese masters to the Portuguese colony of Mozambique in the East African cost.
In Mozambique, people descendant from the Indian sub-continent, are called Indians, but they comprise 3 main groups which see themselves as different and do no mix that much when it comes to marriage. These groups are: Hindu, Muslims (mostly of Pakistani descent) and Christian/Catholic. The Catholic are basically of Goan descent, and result from above mentioned emigration from India that followed India’s independence. I have personally some friends belonging to that group and always sensed that they do not have much appreciation for other Indians. They seem to prefer to mix with Whites**, Mulattoes or even Blacks instead of other Indians.
*Goeses or Goans, mostly mixed or acculturated native Indian of the Portuguese possessions in India, mainly from Goa.
**Today’s Prime Minister of Portugal, Mr António Costa, is a proud descendant of Goans. He is a Portuguese native, son of a White Portuguese woman, but his father lived in Mozambique.
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A few further notes continuing my last comment.
Regarding Mr António Costa, I said that his father lived in Mozambique. This doesn’t mean that his father was split from his mother! What I meant was that he lived part of his life in Mozambique.
Regarding mixed marriage I think that in most cases it is resisted by both extended families to some extent. It’s unfair to see this has a White sin only!
Indian, Africans, East Asians, etc, would resist to see their sons and daughters marry outside their original community. What is White specific is their tendency to rationalize their preferences in the background of a concept of race hierarchy and value of people because of race. Other racial groups would probably do that less, and even when they do, is already under influence of ideas coming from European colonization.
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@ Munubantu
“But this would be a gross oversimplification! India was colonized by European (not only the British, but also partially by the Portuguese; in Goa, Damao and Diu) and during all this period whatever the caste system was dictating, it was superseded by the colonial rules. Indian of all castes had to learn to respect the colonizers. It’s very unlikely that this attitude vis-a-vis White people, didn’t remain until today. Therefore, White people cannot possibly be seen or treated like Dalits or other Untouchables. This, definitely, is almost impossible!”
That’s why I included this caveat:
“although in practice it varies, especially due to the effects of British colonialism.”
I agree with your statement, and I agree that Europeans and people of European descent are not subjected to harsh treatment, whereas there is more prejudice against Africans and people of African descent.
But at the same time, there are still some Brahmins and Kshatriyas who will avoid eating with white people or otherwise interacting in ways that would make them ritually unclean.
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@ Deb
Perhaps I should have explained what I meant by “major family drama.”
That has included:
⚬helping college students get restraining orders against parents who had physically harmed them
⚬threats made against my spouse for “allowing” students in the Asian American student organizations to date each other
⚬ threats made against my spouse for allowing Muslims to join the South Asian American student group
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@MJB
“As far as Harris herself she is a politician more then an ideologue.
…
She’s a politician so she may move in that direction if she thinks it will further her career or help quell demonstrations that likely will.continue if She and Biden are elected.”
I agree with this. She’s so much of a politician that she can seem inauthentic. But if she can be swayed, it behooves everyone to ensure that the wind blows in the right direction.
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Pt.1: @Solitaire…“They will disown a child for not wanting to follow the career path they’ve chosen for that child… They will disown a child for not agreeing to an arranged marriage. Or instead of disowning, they will lock that child in a room and/or beat that child until they break down and agree to the arranged marriage. They will yank the child out of school and ship the child back to their home country under the constant supervision of relatives and force the marriage there. In India, there are still people killed every year by their own family for marrying outside their caste.”
Whew! I’d heard & read about things like that happening, as I said, I’m not NEARLY culturally competent enough about “caste” to either understand, or dispute any of what you say — so I appreciate the lesson! My Black, American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) family’s actions don’t compare to any of that, except for when my mother got pregnant on the island at 22 with my sister, my grandmother threw her out, sending her to live with my grandfather’s sister in Charleston, never to return to live with the rest of her at the time, all girls siblings of whom she was the oldest (surely a combination of shame & her being a bad example). They couldn’t ship her “back to their home country to be supervised by relatives,” because 1) this IS their home country and 2) well, slavery made sure they didn’t know their primarily Igbo/Yoruba relatives in West Africa and they didn’t force her to marry (nor did the guy want to).
“But Dalits are the same race as the other castes which oppress them. Their status was determined by their occupations over 2000 years ago. They were people who worked at jobs that became to be seen as unclean…The article you linked to described several Dalits who were flying under the radar of their Brahmin co-workers by changing their names. They wouldn’t be able to do that if there was a difference in physical appearance which all Hindus can discern”
Surely you’re aware of the history of the “House vs. Field Negroes” here in America, right? From who worked the “unclean” jobs vs those that did not because well, colorism and being “master-adjacent.” And the changing their names thing sounds a whole lot like lighter-skinned Blacks “passing” for white, to the degree that they had dark-skinned slaves of their own — at least in Charleston, I know for sure. When I said, “Black folk KNOW the difference,” I meant it pretty much generally but, folk like Anatole Broyard do come to mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatole_Broyard
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14896871
I look at that photo and I KNOW he was Black, a lot of other Black folk did too.
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Pt. 2: @Solitaire…I know I’m jumping around a lot, but I’m just trying to explain that though she, as well as other folk (particularly the media) keep trying to say she speaks for, or represents ALL Black women, as I compare and contrast my Black ADOS lived experience in America to Kamala’s supposedly, “Black” lived experience here, she does NEITHER for me.
Both her mother and her maternal grandfather were born into a Brahmin, elite caste (quite like many of the families of “free, light-skinned Negroes” I grew up around at my segregated, Black Catholic school — a school whose tuition my parents had to work four jobs to pay so my siblings and I “could have a chance at better lives.”).
My mother and my maternal grandfather were ADOS, “Field Negroes.” Her father, though dark-skinned, was the highly educated “son of plantation OWNERS” (see jamaicaglobalonline link above). My father was ADOS, only three generations removed from slavery and into Jim Crow, with no hope of even aspiring to such an education for himself (though there IS a huge much-sought-after-for-weddings plantation in Charleston, still owned and run by the original plantation owners’ son that bears our last name).
Kamala and I have NOTHING in common but the melanin in our skin, graduating from an HBCU, pledging a Greek sorority there and marrying a “white” guy — not nearly enough for her to be saying, she speaks for me as a “Black woman.” As Zora Neale Hurston once wrote, “All my skinfolk, ain’t my kinfolk” (same went for Obama).
“For that matter, “Dalit” itself is not a homogenous group but consists of nearly 1000 different sub-castes… but a lot of the differences in appearance are along regional or ethnic lines. I’m not saying colorism doesn’t play a part in the caste system, but the intersection is different from how it has historically worked in the USA.”
Like I said earlier, I appreciate the lessons you’ve shared about a subject in which my knowledge is sorely lacking.
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@Solitaire….“Perhaps I should have explained what I meant by “major family drama.”
Like I said in Pt. 1 above — Whew! That’s a LOT of major family drama!
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@munubantu…“…the European colonization of Africa, Asia and the Americas, left a deep in-print in how those societies function today. Therefore, it is impossible to analyze how each of these societies work today without looking at effects of European colonization.”
Agreed!
“India was colonized by European (not only the British, but also partially by the Portuguese; in Goa, Damao and Diu) and during all this period whatever the caste system was dictating, it was superseded by the colonial rules. Indian of all castes had to learn to respect the colonizers.”
As you mention the Portuguese, I can say I saw that strong influence in my conversations with locals as well as during tours of ruins on my several, searching-for-crumbs trips to The Gambia. And let’s not forget that even here, Black folk “had to learn to respect the colonizers.”
“The author comments that during a period of time the Portuguese gave in their possessions (Goa, Damao and Diu) a higher rank to their mixed offspring than to children of the Brahman caste. Curiously enough, their mixed offspring was the result of unions (short or long) with native Indian women of lower caste. Therefore, the Brahman had to endure being shoved from the top position they enjoyed prior to the colonization.
Thanks for the book reference! Reading it will give me more information as I try to compare and contrast Kamala’s background to our ADOS experiences in America. Legacy really, really matters to me and I have a mixed granddaughter who my son’s making sure knows “from whence she came.” Both my sons look Black like me (just a few shades lighter) and both identify as such. They grew up going out to the Sea Island from which my legacy grows every summer, being “seasoned” by both their grandmother, who died in 1996 and their great-grandmother who died in 2002.
“Regarding mixed marriage I think that in most cases it is resisted by both extended families to some extent. It’s unfair to see this has a White sin only!…What is White specific is their tendency to rationalize their preferences in the background of a concept of race hierarchy and value of people because of race.”
Oh I agree! In my case, my family was accepting only because they knew who they’d raised! That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have preferred that I’d chosen differently. The first time they met my husband out on the island, my grandmother pulled me aside and asked me, to ask my husband to cut her grass (because she never would’ve asked him herself. Hell, she barely looked him straight in the eyes that day because that was never what a Black woman of her era would do back in the day!
After showing him where the mower was in her shed, I came in the side door of the front porch where she, my mother and one of my aunts still living on the island were sitting and talking. I heard my aunt say, “I don’t know why Debi married that white man! The first time he calls her nigger, she’ll see!! “ My mother and grandmother were both echoing their agreement, until I joined them on the porch and asked, “What if that never happens??!!” In unison, they all three told me, “Just wait!” It’s never happened, or I wouldn’t be here almost 40 years later. But again, you’re right from my perspective, because his Dad, his brother and his brother’s wife particularly, all rationalized their preferences for a wife for him, based on a concept of race hierarchy and value of people because of race (like they get a damned say!).
Again, thanks for the book reference and the lessons because — as long as I breathe I learn. It’s for conversations like these that I’ve had with you and Solitaire on this topic that I keep coming back to Abagond’s blog!
Thanks for this platform to learn, Abagond!!
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Origin said: “Prove to us that you aren’t stupid by voting, en masse, for our racist @sses!”
Pure projection! Voting “en masse” for anything is a sign of stupidity or at least lack of individual thinking. Obama got 93% of the black vote. Meanwhile, almost 40% of those “racist” Whites supported him.
Most of you denizens here, if you’re honest, will admit that Obama didn’t make your lives any better, and that increased globalism is actually making things worse… You guys think things used to be more liberal and now moving rightward overall (which is ridiculous), but we can all agree that things were better (especially if you take out the purely technological progress) overall for the middle class (normal folk) in the US a generation ago (better still two). You can see it clearly in the opportunities your kids will have…
That’s one reason I appreciate all of the nostalgia from Abagond’s posts… on some level, he gets it…
but then even you talented tenth folks can’t make the mental leap to the conclusion that the globalists you intend to vote for in Biden+Harris will just continue that trend.. or maybe deep down you’re scared if you don’t vote “en masse” the way you’re supposed to that you’ll get called names like that evil Candace Owens person who has dared to imply that her people may have personal agency and should take responsibility for their actions, instead of blaming every thing on the evil White super villains, the only people with any personal agency (and you can’t see therein is a kind of implied White supremacy that you perpetuate).
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You can’t stop “globalization” Biff. Now you are being nostalgic.
We live in a world where Information, transportation, labor, banking ect is tied to a global economy. Neo.liberalism helps support that.
The jobs and factories are not coming back. Trump can’t bring them back and neither can Bernie.
I value world trade over world War. We need less war and more “trade”. The problem is the U.S. manufacturers less stuff to trade. So we are left with trade deficits and a consumption/service economy
If new manufacturerimg happens in the future in the U.S. its likely going to be done by A.I. and robotics.
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MB:
You’re ignorant of history. In the 1920s it seemed like globalization was unstoppable too. But then the US closed its doors for a few decades and things became a lot more equal. (Now we’re getting more and more like the gilded age in terms of inequality…)
Trump brought a number of factories back already. He was setting record unemployment lows week after week (including for African Americans) before this largely self-imposed economic crisis hit (Sweden kept open and now have almost 0 cases, though I don’t think they were forcing infected people into nursing homes like they did in NYC..)
Donald Trump is the first US president in decades not to start any new wars (check Wikipedia’s “List of wars involving the United States”). If you believe the globalists won’t start more war in the Middle East and elsewhere if they get back in charge, you haven’t been paying attention.
More AI and robotics means we can do it here in the US and we need less low skilled/unskilled labor. All immigration should be legal–i.e., what the people of the US decide to allow in through their elected representatives–not what big business sneaks in through the back door for their cheap labor (with taxpayers picking up the tab for the social benefits).
You practically make my points for me..
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We can’t roll the clock back to 1921.
Back then each country had their own banks that were not connected to other banks in neighboring countries. Today the banking systems are interconnected across the planet save for a few countries like Venezuela and Iran.
Furthermore corperations are international and likewise are spread across the planet.
American companies have invested billions in China to manufacture things. Same with Germany and other countries. Products that used to be produced exclusively in Germany are manufactured in China and the U.S.
Japan has factories in Mexico and the U.S.
To end globalism would remove all of that and throw the world into economic implosion, bank faliures and stock and bond market would collapse around the world. On a global.scale that would likley result in war on a scale we have seen since WW II.
Today’s socialism we have in Europe is not the same kind of centrally planned State owned socialism that Europe had in the thirties. It’s still capitalsim but more taxation for broader safety nets then what we have in the U.S.
Even though China is communist it benefits from capitalism.
The planet is run by a Corperatacracy that is spread out on a global scale. That is who politicians, world “leaders” protect and maintain.
So even though Trump talks about “making America great again” his main interest is keeping the U.S. stock market up and health and that means maintaining what we have now.
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@ Deb
“I’m just trying to explain that though she, as well as other folk (particularly the media) keep trying to say she speaks for, or represents ALL Black women, as I compare and contrast my Black ADOS lived experience in America to Kamala’s supposedly, ‘Black’ lived experience here, she does NEITHER for me…. Kamala and I have NOTHING in common … not nearly enough for her to be saying, she speaks for me as a ‘Black woman.'”
I hear you, and I’m not trying to convince you otherwise. I definitely can understand why you feel that way, and as I said earlier, I’m no fan of hers, either. I’m just trying to explain that — while there are some similarities — the caste system in India was different in ways that don’t make a close parallel.
“Surely you’re aware of the history of the “House vs. Field Negroes” here in America, right? From who worked the “unclean” jobs vs those that did not because well, colorism and being “master-adjacent.” And the changing their names thing sounds a whole lot like lighter-skinned Blacks “passing” for white, to the degree that they had dark-skinned slaves of their own — at least in Charleston, I know for sure.”
Yes, I am familiar with that history, and yes there are similarities. But please bear with me, because there are also some key differences.
Brahmins could not accept food cooked by Dalits. If they ate it, they would become religiously polluted and have to undergo rituals to purify themselves. The nearest example I can think of is in the Old Testament, where there are all those lists about what causes a person to become unclean, and what rituals they have to do to cleanse themselves, and how long their unclean state will last, which are all different depending on the situation and you wonder how they ever kept it all straight.
So a Dalit could never be a cook or any other type of personal servant in the big house. Their very touch caused ritual impurity, which is why they were called Untouchables. It would be more like a situation where the plantation owner had field slaves but would only allow white servants to work in the house (and I don’t know if that ever actually happened, just giving it as a theoretical). If a Brahmin family was going to hire a cook, that cook would have to also be Brahmin.
Another distinction is that work which made someone dirty and sweaty wasn’t necessarily unclean in the sense that the Hindus mean it. For example, the Sudra caste were traditionally farmers, laborers, and artisans, but they weren’t Untouchables.
The concept of “unclean” is instead tied into the religion, especially the concept of reincarnation, the sacred nature of cows, the ideal of vegetarianism, and ritual pollution versus ritual purification.
Dalits were historically involved in trades like leatherwork and butchering, and eventually not only were those occupations seen as ritually unclean but so too were the Dalits themselves. Because of this, you could theoretically have a situation where a Dalit didn’t even work with animal carcasses but labored in the fields, and yet he would still be unclean. And the next field over there might be a Sudra laboring just as hard among the same type of crops, and yet he would not be unclean.
Dalits also got relegated to some literally dirty work, like cleaning latrines, but in Hinduism these activities also are ritually impure. It isn’t only that it’s disgusting work like you or I might think of it, but also that for the higher castes there would be religious implications and corresponding duties and rituals. So they shoved it off onto the Dalits, who they considered to already be unclean in the religious sense. Which was a terrible thing to do; I don’t want to justify it, but I hope maybe it’s clearer that the dynamic was somewhat different.
There was also an intricate set of rules for how the four main castes were allowed to interact with each other. I don’t even pretend to understand the complexity of it. One thing I do know, however, is anyone can eat food that has been prepared by a Brahmin — which is why the temple cooks come from their caste and not the lower castes.
“I appreciate the lessons you’ve shared about a subject in which my knowledge is sorely lacking.”
Thank you. I have learned so much from you over the years, and am glad to have some small amount of knowledge to offer in return. I also love reading about the strong family you and your husband have built together; it gives me hope for this nation’s future.
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“we can all agree that things were better (especially if you take out the purely technological progress) overall for the middle class (normal folk) in the US a generation ago (better still two).”
When was the Golden Age for middle-class African Americans, Biff?
1955?
1920?
Name the generation and the decade(s), please.
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A while ago some press was suggesting that Nikki Haley could be a future US Presidential candidate of South Asian extraction. The first one. To the extent that Kamala Harris is also part South Asian and if Biden really wins, it seems that she can beat Nikki Haley, coming first so close to the top!
By the way, can I put a naive question here: who would like Nikki Haley instead of Kamala Harris as VP or POTUS?
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@ Solitaire….Thanks again for all the teachin’ — it’ll help me sound reasonably intelligent when I discuss this particular topic with other Black folk, because those conversations are being had about her all over!! And, as H.L. Mencken once wrote, “…I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.”
Glad to know that I’ve brought some good thoughts/ideas to Abagond’s table and I certainly appreciate your kind words about my family. We keep working at it everyday so that when we’re dead and gone, they’ll at least have been prepared (as best we could) for the world we’ll be leaving them.
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@munubantu…“By the way, can I put a naive question here: who would like Nikki Haley instead of Kamala Harris as VP or POTUS?”
Nikki Haley was in her second term as governor of SC when I Iived there for three years from 2014-2017. Trust me, there’d be PLENTY Republicans who’d vote for her as either VP or POTUS! White folk in Charleston loved her! I, on the other hand do not and with good reason:
https://www.salon.com/test2/2014/10/15/nikki_haley_its_ok_to_have_the_confederate_flag_at_the_statehouse_because_not_a_single_ceo_has_complained/
https://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/dont-let-nikki-haleys-transformation-fool-you/Content?oid=5983856
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An interesting piece on : “What Kamala Harris means to Indian Americans”
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/15/opinions/what-kamala-harris-means-to-indian-americans-singh/index.html
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“Refused to defend as attorney general Proposition 8, the expressed will of the people of California to outlaw same-sex marriage.”
Abagond, this is the type of overheated rhetoric the RIght uses whenever the mechanisms of democracy allow one segment of the population to limit the civil/human rights of another. Do you seriously think refusing to defend a discriminatory ballot initiative is a blot on her reputation?
A ban on a key plank of LGBT civil rights won a popularity contest in California twelve years ago. So what? Racially restrictive covenants were popular among lily-white homebuyers back in the day. Does that make them right?
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@ chrisgrigsby
I added that because she likes to excuse the more draconian parts of her record by saying she was just carrying out the law, her hands were tied! It is super disingenuous coming from her.
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@ biff
You said:
Then Solitaire said:
Yes, do tell.
A fundamental flaw in your argument is that you keep harking back to some mythical golden age of wisdom and prosperity, which, if it ever existed, was almost certainly Whites-only. It is a conservative argument that appeals to the haves and have-beens, not to those who have been screwed by the White power structure for hundreds of years.
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I don’t know where to put this but frankly I’m beginning to worry the USA democracy is in serious danger as President Trump wants to undermine the access to vote for significant swaths of American citizens, by disabling the use of the postal service in the process. You should worry too.
Maybe a full thread discussing this issue is asked for.
P.S.:
I’m sorry to say this, but your country is beginning to resemble a Third World dictatorship.
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munubantu, hilarious. The US has had absentee voting for many many years. All you have to do is request the ballot be sent to you in most places. Now, some states want to mail ballots to everyone, even if they didn’t ask for it. Because some people are concerned that this sudden departure from our long tradition might result in voter fraud, you are saying we are a third world dictatorship. It’s a ridiculous claim, but shows the international media has been feeding you false propaganda wherever you are.
Solitaire and abagond, you’re changing the subject. I’m talking about the whole country, not just the small black minority. You can see opportunities decreasing in most places with each generation. Look at what a young college grad could look forward to at graduation (now mostly student debt, and having to wait a really long time to buy a home and potentially start a family), and it keeps getting worse. Most people can see that. Your longing for a time when the Democratic party was further to the left as you see it (i.e., supported the middle class and the rank and file union members, instead of the elite), shows this.
That said, I don’t see things as having gotten better for African Americans generally, especially not in the last generation, though that experience is somewhat related to specific big cities–When Giuliani cleaned up NY, for instance, that made things a lot better for New Yorkers, especially people of color–Bloomberg’s stop & frisk stuff actually worked too if you look at the numbers (now NY is pretty well screwed by De Blasio’s crazy policies and people are leaving in droves). But overall, look to when the black family began falling apart and it’s much further back. The destruction of the middle class, rise of the welfare state and discouraging of the nuclear family has hit blacks especially hard. You’ll complain about segregation, etc., and maybe you can point to gains for the talented tenth primarily from affirmative action (which came at the expense of more qualified people who didn’t have the right skin tone), but for most people they are actually happier when they are in a stable family unit and what happened in Detroit (with the loss of all those great middle class jobs), is more relevant than AA at Harvard or Goldman Sachs. On a related note, no one who has actually studied the numbers, really thinks women are happier overall after being “liberated” to go work full time, so their family can (if the father is there) try to buy the same home with 2 incomes that could have easily been bought for 1 a generation prior… but you’ll come back with some social justicey response that ignores the underlying reality unfolding before your eyes…
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@ Biff
“Now, some states want to mail ballots to everyone”
Some states switched to mail-in ballots only several election cycles ago. Where was your outrage then?
Also, they’re mailing the ballots to every registered voter, not everyone.
“Because some people are concerned that this sudden departure from our long tradition might result in voter fraud, you are saying we are a third world dictatorship.”
Munubantu referred specifically to what’s happening to the postal service. Why is the new postmaster removing and trashing mail-sorting machines that cost millions of dollars?
“Solitaire and abagond, you’re changing the subject. I’m talking about the whole country, not just the small black minority.”
If you want “the small black minority” to vote Republican, you’ve got to give them a reason to believe they won’t be left behind yet again when things start to improve for the rest of the middle class.
Here, I’ll revise my question. Which generation was it when things were best for the American middle class? Name it, please.
“Look at what a young college grad could look forward to at graduation (now mostly student debt, and having to wait a really long time to buy a home and potentially start a family)”
You don’t think this has something to do with Republicans cutting taxes for the rich? Decreasing funding for higher education? Allowing income inequality to soar?
“But overall, look to when the black family began falling apart”
You mean slavery?
“On a related note, no one who has actually studied the numbers, really thinks women are happier overall”
You never did answer my question about whether women should only wear skirts.
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Kamala Harris’s counterpart a hundred years ago, the Democratic Party’s pick for vice president in 1920, was Franklin Roosevelt.
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@ munubantu
I agree. It is clearly moving in that direction.
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“affirmative action (which came at the expense of more qualified people who didn’t have the right skin tone)”
See, Biff, this is why you never get anywhere. You think you can insult people’s intelligence and that will convince them to vote for your party.
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@ biff
You are literally saying Black people were happier under stop-and-frisk, nay, under Jim Crow itself. Shall we try for slavery, like Michele Bachmann:
(https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michele-bachmann-addresse_n_896990)
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I thought this article might be of interest:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/lower-caste-indian-singer-embraces-centuries-old-slur-caste-pride-is-driving-her-success/2016/09/29/8c68bef0-84c6-11e6-b57d-dd49277af02f_story.html
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@ Munubantu
Several states are considering taking the Trump administration to court over the situation with the postal service:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/postal-service-state-lawsuits-election-trump-administration/
A group of citizens already filed a lawsuit in New York earlier today.
Hopefully there are still enough checks and balances in our system to prevent Trump from stealing the election.
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Abagond, I don’t expect to convince you or any of the other regular commentators here to vote for Trump (you’ll follow the 93% herd) any more than you’ll convince me to vote for “don’t underestimate his ability to F things up” Biden, but maybe some open minded people will stumble on your site and at least see good counterarguments to your Narrative.
Most blacks won’t say they like stop and frisk, but they’ll say they appreciate a safe neighborhood and strong economy. Most just aren’t able to connect the two (with the media’s help). I call em as I see em. You’re going to witness first hand what De Blasio’s trashing of the police does for NYC. Enjoy my friend.
Nice to bring up 150+ year old slavery into the argument. Very helpful I’m sure. If Whites with a conscience didn’t end the practice globally most blacks would still be in slavery somewhere in Africa and/or the Arab world, but I’m not supposed to mention that =X.
Love Solitaire’s question about women and skirts. I’m sure she asks all her Muslim friends about that. Should men dress in women’s clothes and wear make-up? Why not? Abagond and his sons shouldn’t be afraid to show their feminine side. Does the Bible say it’s abomination? Let’s disregard that part.
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@ Biff
“Love Solitaire’s question about women and skirts. I’m sure she asks all her Muslim friends about that.”
Hey, you were the one who brought up transvestites in the other thread, and the one going on about how we should return to the morals of the “good ol’ days.”
The first organized and concerted effort to popularize women’s pants in the USA was met with outrage and derision. It was called unbiblical, an abomination, unwomanly, immoral, and unnatural. The efffort quickly died in the face of overwhelming public disapproval.
Is this one of the eras you’d like to return to? You still won’t say.
Muslims are all over the place when it comes to women’s attire, despite what you may think. Muslim women in some parts of the world wore trousers way back when a European woman could get burned at the stake for doing so.
Pakistani Muslim women regularly wear pants called shalwars as both everyday clothing and formal attire.
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@Solitaire…I LOVE that link!!! Explains a lot about what you were telling me about the not-quite-connection to Black American “colorism” regarding the Brahmins, but also speaks to the Black American experience in America, particularly this:
“In recent years, Dalit singers have taken back the word in the way African American rappers embraced the n-word.”
And this: “Mahi says caste pride is the first step toward that: “First you should be proud of who you are, then you rise up to destroy all caste identities.”
Thanks!
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@ Deb
I’m glad you liked the article!
You might want to compare the photos of Mahi in the article to the photos of Kamala’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, as a young woman. They are not just different castes but different ethnicities. Mahi is a Punjabi from the north of India, and Shyamala a Tamil from the southernmost tip.
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The idea of “returning to family values” is a myth.
The same issues that happen to families today are no different then the immaginary golden years.
Domestic violence, sagitory rape, abortion available for the rich but coat hangers for the poor, pedophilia, incest, adultery, prostitution, gambling ect.
Many of these things were hidden from the public eye and not talked about like they are today.
Racism was a family value along with homophobia and xenophobia.
I don’t want to return there.
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@Solitaire…“You might want to compare the photos of Mahi in the article to the photos of Kamala’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, as a young woman. They are not just different castes but different ethnicities.”
First thing I noticed!!! That’s why I said, “Explains a lot about what you were telling me about the not-quite-connection to Black American “colorism” regarding the Brahmins…”
Keep the teachin’ comin’!!!
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@ Deb
I wasn’t quite sure if you were referring to the photos or something in the text of the article. Now I know!
I’m guessing Ginni Mahi looks a lot more like your internal image of an Indian woman? That’s because there is rampant colorism in Bollywood. Women who are as dark as Kamala’s mom aren’t likely to make it as an actress or a model. At the same time, though, Dalits of any shade or ethnicity are very underrepresented in Bollywood because of caste prejudice.
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@Solitaire…Got your “lesson” as soon as I saw her face!
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MB said:
“The idea of “returning to family values” is a myth.
The same issues that happen to families today are no different then the immaginary golden years.”
Oh.. all those statistics and reports that show much better results in almost every area of life: staying out of prison, graduating high school, holding a decent job, having a family, etc., for children that grow up with both parents (rather than just a single mom) are all lies and so there’s no use worrying about that stuff… I see.
Meanwhile, when the Washington Post reported that fewer than 10 unarmed blacks (most of whom actually were threatening and posing an immediate risk to cops) were shot last year, maybe that’s a lie too..
Forget about the1000s killed every year in black on black crime, let’s focus on those very few unarmed blacks killed by cops (even if cops proportionally kill unarmed whites more when you look at number of police interactions)
BECAUSE BLACK LIVES MATTER. AND IF I SAY IT A HUNDRED TIMES AND BURN DOWN YOUR CITY MAYBE YOU’LL GET THE POINT!
There’s no way to encourage traditional two parent families of course.. it’s a myth, but communist utopia with great results for single moms and everyone with lots of government support is real!
You pretend to be some freedom fighter supporting the people and then say oh well, can’t stop globalization, so why even try to slow it down? Let’s support the globalists and all their wars and their offshoring of American jobs and support of the elite… Great idea! Don’t Underestimate Joe’s Ability to F things up Biden and Heels Up Harris are your team and big business is in your corner!
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@ Biff
“Oh.. all those statistics and reports that show much better results in almost every area of life: staying out of prison, graduating high school, holding a decent job, having a family, etc., for children that grow up with both parents (rather than just a single mom) are all lies and so there’s no use worrying about that stuff… I see.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: European nations where the percentage of unwed mothers is much, much higher don’t have these negative results. Perhaps it’s because those other nations don’t make it so hard for a single mother to earn a living wage and juggle her responsibilities.
As much as you like to think this is a new problem, it’s not, although in earlier generations the cause was more commonly death. Many children grew up in single-parent homes, or with multiple step-parents, or were put into orphanages when their remaining parent (father or mother) couldn’t manage to care for the children by himself or herself, or were placed in indentured servitude, or were left to fend for themselves by begging in the streets.
Did you know that in the USA into the mid-1800s, a widow did not have automatic custody of her own children? Instead custody went to her deceased husband’s oldest male relative, usually his father or uncle or oldest brother. His family could legally make decisions about the children — like binding them out as indentured servants — against the mother’s wishes. They could even legally prevent her from ever seeing her children again.
Is this one of the eras you’d like to go back to? So far, you refuse to say.
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Solitaire:
There’s no specific time that was some magical utopia in every area of the country for all groups. We both know that. You’re trying to force me into naming some specific time just so you can take issues with it, when I’m just saying it’s obvious we’ve been moving in the wrong direction in terms of improving most people’s lives (particularly when you subtract out advances in technology) for some time.
There are a couple smaller European countries with centuries’ old traditions of couples living together like man and wife, but not actually marrying. And you’re using that to argue against considering all of the considerable evidence that single mommiehood is terrible in the US and particularly for the black community? Bringing up the mid 1800s into the discussion re: recent single mommiehood is pretty ridiculous. Overall, historically, there was a much higher rate of kids living with both parents (if they were living) than now.. The fact that you guys don’t even acknowledge the severity of the issue (let alone take any action to address it) shows that you guys don’t really care about improving your communities.
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@ biff
You cannot name when this supposed golden age existed because it never was. Your argument might as well be based on rainbows and unicorns. And sugar plums.
Of course it was right to bring up slavery because that is where your ridiculous argument leads, where Michele Bachmann was dumb enough to take it to, doing her own reductio ad absurdum.
She is wrong that slave times were some kind of bastion of two-parent households. Hardly. Not when White people were in charge, many of whom seem to see nothing wrong with family separation, even now. They did it to Black people, they did it to Indians, and lately have been doing it to Hondurans. It must be one of their hallowed family values from their magical Golden Age. Cue sparkly rainbow. Yes, please do lecture us on family values from the Good Old Days that never were.
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@ biff
This is the research that your Black pathology argument grew out of:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/the-white-ethnographic-gaze-the-1960s/
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@ biff
If family values are so important, then how in the world can you support someone like Trump? Does moral character still matter, or is that so 1998?
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@Biff
I can see a way of interpreting your words to mean that creating an equitable society based on a time when a single-income household could afford to own a home, car, vacations, and whatnot might be preferable to an equitable society based on a time where a two-income household is necessary for that same lifestyle. What’s odd to me is that would require more of a Bernie Sanders approach than what I feel like you advocate for. Instead, you advocate for a president that is entirely focused on increasing the wealth of the wealthy and sowing the seeds of division among the populous based on everything from race to wearing masks during a pandemic. Biden may also be interested in increasing the wealth of the wealthy but, may try to avoid further dividing the country and might appoint/hire staff with actual leadership experience to lead us through the remainder of the pandemic, the economic disaster that will follow it and the decimation of the public education system that will result from virtual schooling during 2020-2021. All of which is necessary if we are ever to begin constructing an equitable society.
But, in the end, I do not think it is an equitable society you seek. The tropes you recite hearken back to a time when a woman couldn’t work, and if she could, she couldn’t earn enough to support herself anyway so, she was stuck relying on a man to support her and her children. Are two parent households preferred? I don’t really know the research, but even if I grant that premise, are they more preferable when a woman has a choice in the matter? Would single-income households be great? Maybe, I know I’d happily be a stay-at-home dad if that were an option. But, again, big unions, raising wages and redistributing wealth to make that a reality is not very Republican. Which is why your arguments all feel disingenuous.
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@ biff
My Narrative? Please elaborate. Break it down for me. I am curious. Or is it just glorified name-calling on your part?
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@ Biff
I almost spent a ton of time looking up stats, but I decided not to, because quite frankly I’m sick of how you skip out of a thread whenever it gets too tough for you and then show up in another thread once again repeating your same basic points. You aren’t even interesting to debate.
“There are a couple smaller European countries with centuries’ old traditions of couples living together like man and wife, but not actually marrying.”
Not true, but as I said, I’m tired of doing the research for you when you have no intention of engaging in a real debate.
“Bringing up the mid 1800s into the discussion re: recent single mommiehood is pretty ridiculous.”
Not anywhere as ridiculous as constantly bringing up some mythical era when everything was so much better. You’re comparing recent sociological trends to the past, but you won’t say which past. As long as you’re not going to identify the era you’re referring to, I’m just going to have to guess, aren’t I?
“Overall, historically, there was a much higher rate of kids living with both parents (if they were living) than now.”
Your qualifier of “if they were living” is hysterical. That’s like saying “there was a much higher rate of kids living with both parents (if they weren’t divorced)”. You simply can’t subtract a substantial amount of the population to cook your numbers.
And you know what? Both parents could be alive and still the kids wouldn’t live with them. Check out the records for indentured servitude and see how many of those kids had two living, married, cohabitating parents who still indentured out children as young as 5 to be raised by an unrelated family. There are entire books written about this subject, and on the death rates of parents, and the number of children being brought up by step-parents or in orphanages. But we all know you’ll never crack open one of those books.
Your problem is you don’t know your history. You may know dates and places and the names of battles, but you don’t know how people actually lived. You’ve gotten your ideas of American life from the rosily inaccurate pictures in your school textbooks — like the ones of the first Thanksgiving with a bevy of bright-cheeked Pilgrim women preparing the feast. Do you have any idea how many of the Mayflower wives and mothers were still alive at the end of that first winter? I bet you don’t.
“There’s no specific time that was some magical utopia in every area of the country for all groups. We both know that.”
If it never existed, why do you keep bringing it up?
“when I’m just saying it’s obvious we’ve been moving in the wrong direction in terms of improving most people’s lives (particularly when you subtract out advances in technology) for some time.”
No, it’s not obvious.
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Eh, I don’t have the time or desire to try responding to all the weird counterarguments you all throw up. I know I won’t convince you guys personally. That’s fine. If a couple of your readers come and have second thoughts about the Narrative then that may be something worthwhile.
The Narrative is the one the elites and media try to tell about the country. You basically parrot these talking points.. for instance not recognizing the death of Floyd was manufactured controversy (purposely not letting out body cam tape that largely exonerated the cops–showed Floyd was acting crazy, super high, resisting arrest and saying he couldn’t breathe long before he was taken down for months while cities burned–not caring at all about the many people who died because of their irresponsibility) or recognizing that BLM is actually a communist affiliated Satanic group.
Maybe you actually believe the country is getting better and things are getting better for average people, but if so you’re so obtuse there’s no point in continuing discussions. There’s a reason “Make America Great Again” resonates with voters and it’s not because things have been going great… and life opportunities are better than ever for young people.
Donald Trump has personal flaws of course, but the Dems are the party of pure evil at this point. You ignore completely the 10s of millions killed by abortion. The signature issue of “social justice” results in practice in less equality and more division, see e.g., the thousands killed by the Ferguson effect and hundreds killed even this year in increased violence. Letting in illegal immigrants destroys the middle class and benefits the very wealthy/elites.
Christian morality has been thrown out and a false god of “equality” created. People are literally bending the knee to this idol. The left supports all kinds of sexual immorality and degeneracy–next thing will be normalizing pedophilia. They are trying to turn the country into a third world country demographically and trying to tear down all the founding values of the country, including getting rid of the first and second amendments–and yes plenty of people talking about taking down Lincoln’s statue–particularly the one in DC where he’s emancipating a former slave. Most recently you’ve seen calls to get rid of police, wanton violence and destruction and burning of Bibles… How can it get any clearer? The Republican party and Trump are far from perfect, but they are trying to stop the current insanity.
You’ll all be shocked when there’s a huge, unprecedented collapse within the next couple decades I’m sure. Maybe much sooner. But you don’t have eyes to see, so nothing I describe to you matters… It’s just sad because the globalist elites will only make your lives worse, but somehow they’ve convinced you of the opposite..
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@ Biff
If you don’t like it here, go back to Europe.
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@ biff
Snopes on the Portland Bible burning that you have referenced at least three times:
and:
(https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/portland-protesters-burn-bibles/)
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@ biff
And you know this how? Or is that yet more Russian propaganda?
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@abagond…“And you know this how?”
🤣🤣🤣🤣
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Communists are atheists, are they not?
And atheists don’t believe in Satan.
So how can BLM be both Communist and Satanic?
Is this just another case of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks?
This is Biff: “The democrats sacrifice fluffy unicorns to Satan, and BLM holds midnight chants to invoke the ghost of Karl Marx. But you’ll never understand that, Abagond, because you’re too blinded by logic…”
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@ Solitaire
“…I’m sick of how you skip out of a thread whenever it gets too tough for you and then show up in another thread once again repeating your same basic points. You aren’t even interesting to debate.”
Ain’t that the truth.
Biff is an empty suit. He comes in and empties his pockets with the same BS Rightwing talking points ad nauseum. Perhaps he or she thinks we don’t see/read/hear those hollow arguments on other media outlets.
Fascinating that biff does not present links or cites reputable sources. He or she merely repeats his own impoverished opinion. Or maybe it is not so fascinating. After all we have all heard similar biffing and moaning from bigots most of our lives.
When faced with factual information he or she cuts and runs back to Breitbart, et al. for recharging.
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@ Afrofem
Biffing! I like it!
I agree: he does not seem to understand that we have heard his “counterarguments” our whole lives, that they are crafted to appeal to him and his fellow bigots, that to Black people they are kind of offensive. “Tone deaf” is the polite term.
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@Biff
I know your last post wasn’t aimed at me because it was all a giant strawman targeted at a made up narrative that you’re convinced everyone that doesn’t support Trump must have bought into. However, the post was priceless. You really pulled out all the stops and almost went full Alex Jones with alternative facts and unsubstantiated nonsense. So, I appreciate the insight into just how much the media you consume has skewed your reality. Be careful or you might find yourself standing in a Pizza joint pointing a gun into an empty supply closet.
Calling out the Dems for being pure evil when it’s the Republican elite that have a secret initiation of drinking urine out of a golden chalice to show allegiance with Trump… OK, I made that up but, that’s how “out there” your post was.
Anyway, we do have one statement from that post in common though:
I too lack the time or desire to try responding to all the weird counterarguments you threw up.
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=) You guys wouldn’t get so mad if you didn’t know in your hearts that what I’m saying is true. If I showed evidence that BLM’s founders had strong ties to communism and that they have a stated goal of breaking up the traditional family, you wouldn’t care anyway.
I don’t provide links because those always put my posts in moderation, and you wouldn’t trust any of my sources anyway… Well, here’s a quote from a source I’m sure you can get behind with my comments inserted in caps. Please read and enjoy:
“June 2020 is developing into a unique moment in history that has brought together seemingly unrelated issues and highlighted the intersectionality of oppressions. Black Lives Matter protests have marched across Pride month with outcries against police brutality in the U.S. and around the world. It echoes the Stonewall riots, which black transgender women—who’ve often been victims of police brutality–were an integral part of. These women have been forerunners in the struggle against racism and the defense of LGBTQAI+ rights.
OH YES, SURE YOU CAN ALL AGREE!
All these struggles have been embedded in American history with each one flaring up at certain times, usually after a major public tragedy. While mass demonstrations regarding these issues normally occur after a flagrant incident, the underlying issues are systemic and insidious. Even though there have been minor advances in each cause, it is the system that enables these oppressions to persist that must be dismantled and restructured to enable the abolition of racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, police discrimination and other abuses of power. Because of this hierarchical system that allows for white supremacy and privilege, saying “Black Lives Matter” is so important. To deny acknowledgment that some lives matter more in our society is the paramount reason why this phrase is crucial. The pushback against the BLM rallying cry insisting that all lives matter is ignorant and naïve. Yes, all lives should matter equally, but the reality is that some are valued less. It is easy to claim “all lives matter” when you haven’t experienced firsthand the other side of the racist system. If all lives did matter equally, it wouldn’t be so hard for everyone to say these simple three words, “Black. Lives. Matter.”
YES, BLACK LIVES MATTER! THESE GUYS GET IT!
Multiple facets comprise the current wave of civil unrest that deserve closer scrutiny. The power of protest, when protests turn into riots, how society reacts to both, destruction of monuments, the politics of civil unrest, the policing of society and the militarization of police are just a few of these facets. While all these conversations are important, the one glaring commonality among them is racism. If we take a closer look at each of these issues, racism plays a role. Racism is built into every aspect of our society and systems we live by. Being that this is the case, racism needs to work into how we educate our children, how we choose our leaders, how we consume and spend our money, and every facet to the way we conduct ourselves in our daily lives. Black people and people of color are forced to consider race every day; it is a privilege if you don’t have to.
WHY IS BIFF CITING THIS INCREDIBLE SOURCE OF TRUTH? WE DON’T DISAGREE WITH ANY OF THIS.
Racism and all other forms of oppression are contradictory and completely incompatible with Satanism, particularly The Satanic Temple’s Satanism. Of course we have all been raised within the current white supremacist and patriarchal culture and so have internalized a lot of racist and other discriminatory thought, but through Satanism and the tenets, we can start to unpack and dismantle the system within ourselves and work towards dismantling the system externally. In a 2017 Washington Post article, TST co-founder, Lucien Greaves states, “…it must be said that nothing could be more antithetical to modern non-theistic Satanism than racist ideologies. We embrace a large diversity of individuals from a wide spectrum of political and cultural backgrounds, but we’re all unified by our respect for individual rights and pluralism.”
WOW, MAYBE SATANISTS ARE THE GOOD PEOPLE?
We are unified under Satanism, by the tenets, and by our collective urgency to obliterate racism and the systems that allow it to remain a part of our lives. Racism is our adversary; it’s an obstruction of justice and we must resist it and think critically to overcome it. As Lilith stated in the Alphabet of Sirach, “I will not lie below. We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.”
WOW, SATAN BELIEVED IN SOCIAL JUSTICE!
Finally, to cite the Invocation, “Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of One or All.”
Hail Lilith! Hail Satan! [Duck] Racism!
WOW, SO BRAVE!
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Here is the link:
http://thesatanictemplenyc.com/anti-racism-with-satan
Here are some facts about the Satanic Temple:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Temple
Biff, what you quoted does not prove BLM is a satanic organization. It proves only that the Satanic Temple recently published a statement of support for BLM in the same way that many other religious and secular organizations have done.
Putting more than two links in one comment automatically throws the comment to moderation. You can avoid this by breaking up your comment into multiple comments with only two links each. Have you never read Abagond’s comment policy?
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BLM is Satonic !!! lol
Now you are reaching Biff.
I posted an article in the open thread describing an Eco Fascist group with some left path occult links. Thats actually verifiable.
I was raised in a conservative Christian home and benifited from being white. So I’m very familiar with Biffs arguments.
At some point in my life I started questioning everything that I had been taught to be true.
And now this is where I am at today.
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Solitaire, you’re right. Maybe these Satanists aren’t so bad after all. Turns out they are just atheists after all, who happen to yell “hail Satain” and perform some Satanic rituals… all to make those evil conservatives mad of course!
And, you know, no one can prove who was burning stacks of Bibles at the BLM/Antifa protest. Maybe just some random people with no affiliation or some right wing wreckers.
After all, it’s very common for people to burn stacks of Bibles at Trump rallies with large crowds howling in approval, dragging people out of cars and beating them up for being the wrong skin color or supporting the wrong politics… not a big thing.
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MB, so brave, just like Katy Perry! The Satanic Temple welcomes you!
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@ biff
So if anti-racism is Satanic, does that mean you cannot be a good Christian and anti-racist at the same time? That racism is a core Christian belief?
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@ biff
Oh yes, Trump supporters are so gentle! Oh so gentle!
You really do live in a bubble.
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@ biff
You are still ducking and dodging. I haven’t seen a single link to a publication or site that supports your fantasies:
➨…BLM’s founders strong ties to communism (Old style bigots use that baseless claim against M.L. King decades ago) boring
➨…burning stacks of Bibles at the BLM/Antifa protest (now Antifa gets throw into the mix) still boring
➨…burn stacks of Bibles … with large crowds howling in approval, dragging people out of cars and beating them up for being the wrong skin color or supporting the wrong politics (interesting…where are the videos?) only slightly less boring
Where are your links, quotes and videos? Share and share alike, biff. We want proof.
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“The Republican party and Trump are far from perfect, but they are trying to stop the current insanity.”
Would that be the “insanity” of eating food and having a roof over your head? They are certainly trying to stop those “insane” practices for large groups of Americans.
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Despite the fact that I don’t agree with much of anything biff has to say, I will add that he is a relatively intelligent man. Which is why it shocks me that he even follows QAnon logic. Though I have found that a lot of “well meaning” whites also buy into this.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/25/qanon-facebook-conspiracy-theories-algorithm
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Sharinair:
You guys buy into the idea that only stupid guys from flyover country are conservative. Couldn’t be further from the truth. Without wanting to dox myself, I will say you guys would all know the schools I went to, and I was a National Merit Scholar back in the day (one of the few colorblind awards left). I don’t directly follow Q and don’t mention him or his ideas intentionally here. Not sure how much of what he says is real or just intended to inspire our side, but the overall effect of getting people to question the Narrative sold by the mainstream media is definitely positive.
Abagond, plenty of well meaning Christians think they are doing God’s will by fighting what they perceive as racism. The thing is the Bible never directly mentions racism, and the term wasn’t invented until last century or widely used till the latter part of last century. Human civilization did just fine without it.
The Bible talks about loving your neighbor and treating others with respect. It talks about the offer of salvation to all. There shall be neither Jew nor Gentile, man nor woman, doesn’t mean there are no differences between the groups, as the Bible is very explicit about different roles for men and women. It does mean all can be saved, and God does not only favor the strongest or smartest.
That said, nothing in the Bible indicates that all group have the same average intelligence or characteristics, in fact plenty in the Bible ascribes different characteristics to different groups. Furthermore, separate peoples or nations are ordained by God and recognized in heaven. The idea that all people would be garbled together in one nation and language is against the plan of God. That’s a sign of the Beast and it was what the tower of Babel represented.
The vast majority of those devout White Christians who fought against slavery back in the day never thought that blacks and Whites had the same average intelligence or that blacks and Whites should intermarry. The vast majority of Northern Whites who fought for integration in the South would never want their kids going to a majority black high school (it’s still the case for liberal elites). Be honest, most of you wouldn’t wan that for your kids either if you could avoid it, if there wasn’t a way to screen out most of the bottom 50% of blacks, who can be very violent. Being a Christian doesn’t mean you have to ignore easily observable reality about different groups of people. God is not a god of lies.
You shall know a tree by its fruit. BLM is evil and produces evil fruit. If they cared about black lives, they would be trying to reconstruct the nuclear family instead of destroying it. They would care that more than half of big city black babies are aborted and that thousands more die every year to intercity violence, rather than focusing solely on the 10 or so unarmed blacks killed by police every year (most of whom were not totally blameless in their deaths). Getting rid of police in black neighborhood kills more blacks. Period.
Hopefully, more White Christians will wake up to the reality as we become a minority and see that other groups take care of their own first.
The things I’ve described are all easily searchable if you can avoid the first few mainstream media Google disinformation hits…
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@ Biff
So Jesus wants you to come to Abagond’s blog to tell all the black folks that they are stupid and violent and inferior to white folks?
Is this what living in imitation of Christ means to you?
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And you’re kidding yourself if you think you’re the only National Merit Scholar here. That’s not even particularly impressive. If you were a Fulbright Scholar, maybe.
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Like I said above, an empty suit with no proof. Just biffing and moaning about the “evil” Black Lives Matter movement — to Black people.
Black people’s lives mean everything to Black people. The lives of our children, our elders, our relatives, our neighbors and our friends are precious to us. Black Lives Matter is not some hollow marketing slogan for Black people, it is our reality.
Our African ancestors outlasted slavery, Jim Crow and the Illusion of Inclusion Era. Black people will outlast the current crop of Euro-American bigots like you.
das Ende
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Solitaire:
Let’s try some reading comp here. My main point in this thread has been that BLM, and indeed most of the current Democratic party platform, is observably evil.
I was asked questions about “racism” and Christianity, which I responded to. “Equalism” is a false god, and it has become the god of this age in the West. If you don’t worship it publicly, you lose your ability to take care of your family. The kneeling and Bible burning is a new low though…
I don’t think I have ever used the word “inferior” about different groups of people. I don’t call people racial epithets. Believe it or not, I get along with a wide range of people in my own life. However, when discussing policies and world events, e.g., re: BLM, I will push back against the lies. Overall, blacks will never be happy in the US under the current system, because they are told they are exactly as smart, even on average, as everyone else, but they will never achieve as much (again, this is speaking as a group), absent significant genetic change. They are treated like kids and never urged to take responsibility for their own community. In short, they are fed a bunch of lies. No one is doing you guys a favor by pretending those lies are true.
I’m aware that there are some very smart people here, which is why I sometimes try reasoning with you all. However, the best I can reasonably hope for is that some reading this page (probably non-commenters) would have second thoughts about BLM type grievance groups, but it’s hard if that’s all they see on CNN/MSNBC/ABC, etc. (and no, I don’t watch TV anymore at all myself) and most mainstream (read leftist) sites, like MSN a long time ago and Yahoo very recently have disabled all comments so that no one can even publicly question the Narrative.
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Afrofem:
I’ve given plenty of evidence. You really think links will change your mind? here’s one re: BLM’s origins and goals: https://www.sweethomenews.com/story/2020/07/01/opinion/blm-not-what-it-appears-to-be/23185.html Guess what, it won’t change your mind even though the info in it is correct.
Just keep repeating BLACK LIVES MATTER and burn down another city to prove it, rather than taking any personal responsibility and working within your own communities to fight the things that are really ending and harming black lives (hint, it’s not police violence, which has observably been decreasing for many years).
They say the cockroaches will outlive us all..
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@ Biff
You don’t have to use the word “inferior” or a racial epithet when you say something like this: “but they will never achieve as much … absent significant genetic change.”
You obviously believe that different races as a group have different levels of intelligence and different abilities.
As a Christian, do you believe God created some groups of his children to be inferior in intelligence to others?
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Here’s another link, since you keep asking for them. Please do the victims the honor of reading at least the first 10 or so entries before twitter shuts this down. Ask yourself why these never make the news.. these are people too…
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@ Biff
You wrote:
“You guys buy into the idea that only stupid guys from flyover country are conservative.”
But then you wrote:
“Just keep repeating BLACK LIVES MATTER and burn down another city to prove it”
when you KNOW that no one here is burning down anything.
It’s not the first time you’ve expressed this sentiment and not the first time you’ve been told it isn’t true. Seems like you’re the one who’s bought into some ideas about people on the other side of the political fence.
Recently you have started to claim that you’re writing for the lurkers. I don’t think that’s true. I think you enjoy writing your screeds about how terrible black people are on a website where you know black people will read them. Everything about your behavior points to it. You’re behaving like a bully — and just like a bully, disruptive antisocial behavior gives you perverse pleasure and makes you feel important.
This isn’t really about black people at all. It’s about your hunger for attention and your desperate need to feel superior. I’m sorry that you despise yourself, but projecting it onto others will not make anything better.
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@ Ruki
Post deleted for moderated language:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/comment-policy/
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/whitey/
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@ biff
This Twitter account has the very same problem that you accuse BLM of: selective outrage. Just as most Black people are killed by Black-on-Black crime, so most White people are killed by White-on-White crime.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/selective-outrage/
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@ biff
Are you racist?
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@ biff
Re: Is BLM Marxist?
From PolitiFact:
More:
(https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/jul/21/black-lives-matter-marxist-movement/)
Almost any Black activist organization of sufficient size is going to have Black Marxists. It is one of the main strands of Black political thought in the US. That does not necessarily mean the organization itself is Marxist or pushes Marxism.
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Tropes detected:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/the-black-on-black-crime-argument/
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/selective-outrage/
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/black-pathology/
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/race-realism/
Stupid Black Voter
outgroup homogeneity
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/11/09/the-republican-bubble/
and no doubt others.
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@biff
“You guys buy into the idea that only stupid guys from flyover country are conservative.”‘– I am sure some people do but here and other black dominant blogs have not made that assumption. However, most theories presented by Qanon are wild and irrational. People who follow them would have to be sheep in my mind because any rational person would research the validity of those claims. That is why it is a shock to see you pushing their ideas because they are really farfetched.
QAnon has infiltrated several groups pushing their ideas. I hear people who are not typical followers of any political group quoting their theories and it is shocking.
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Biff: “The Democratic party is evil”
Meanwhile at the convention:
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outrage is not needed when the culprit is in jail biff.
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@ Solitaire
“I think you enjoy writing your screeds about how terrible black people are on a website where you know black people will read them. Everything about your behavior points to it. You’re behaving like a bully — and just like a bully, disruptive antisocial behavior gives you perverse pleasure and makes you feel important.
This isn’t really about black people at all. It’s about your hunger for attention and your desperate need to feel superior.”
Yes. Right down to the heart of the matter.
The USA and Europe are full of White males (and some females) who have every advantage and privilege, yet refuse to do the hard work of self-actualization. They never become the best version of themselves because they don’t even try. They skate on Whiteness.
Then after a life of unfulfilled dreams and mediocrity, they spend their days and nights trolling for majority Black, non-supine Asian, Latin, Arab, feminist or LGBTQ sites that still allow open commentary (many prohibit commenters like biff). There they spew venom on people they fear.
This is an especially fraught time for Euro-slackers. They can see that the systems that supported them and their ancestors are starting to crumble. Though the decay process will take some time, they delude themselves into believing they can turn things around with the same tools their ancestors used: hyperviolence and duplicity.
At most, those tactics will only slightly delay the inevitable. The people of the world will become more connected. Eurocentrism and the color caste system will fade away. We are not heading into Utopia, but the structures that give biff’s life meaning will not exist in a century. Maybe less.
Meanwhile, biff drives by this cafe and tosses as much unsubstantiated muck he can find from his hate sites. No links, no videos and no quotes from sources that don’t conform to his own bigotry. Just more and more fantastical falsehoods.
I actually feel sorry for biff and people like him. They have surrendered their ability to think, reason and feel for themselves. They’ve just become zombie creatures shuffling, twisting and jerking around in response to their masters propaganda.
Talk about wasted minds….
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@ Biff
You said to me upthread:
“Let’s try some reading comp here.”
But so far your attempts to provide supporting sources reveal a lack of reading comprehension and analytical evaluation on your part.
First you Poe’d yourself with the Satanic Temple essay (and arguably Dunning-Kruger, too).
Then you promised Afrofem links to real sources. I expected to at least see some quotations from The Bell Curve.
Instead, you offered up a letter to the editor published in a small-town newspaper! An opinion piece written by someone whose credentials appear to consist of living in a town that was 93.3% white according to the last census.
That letter’s arguments are laid out with the same paucity of statistics or citations from academically rigorous studies that characterize your comments here. The longest quote is from a novel.
Abagond has already explained the weaknesses of your third attempt at citing sources.
Opinion pieces from small-town newspapers that sound almost exactly like your comments on this blog do not equal substantive evidence.
Did you not learn critical thinking skills at these schools the names of which we all would know?
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@ Afrofem
“The USA and Europe are full of White males (and some females) who have every advantage and privilege, yet refuse to do the hard work of self-actualization.”
And also Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, large chunks of Latin America….
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Well, abagond, at least I drove up your post count here.
You guys helped prove my point that the links don’t matter. You NEVER stop and say wow.. that’s compelling.
Likewise, your “politifact” link might as well be “politileftwingliesandpropaganda” to me.
BLM is the poster child for “selective outrage”. A couple points re: interracial violence:
–black on White crime is about 9x as common as White on black crime, but the media does not report it nearly as much. If they reported all the interracial killing consistently, sympathy for BLM would collapse. Would you support and protest together with WLM groups trying to get equal media coverage and awareness?
–You simply couldn’t come up with a comparable list of Whites gangraping black women or raping and killing very old black women or these horrific home invasion and torture scenarios for Whites doing that to blacks. All you could point to are microagressions and situations where the response to a young black man acting badly or perceived to be doing so got out of hand.
–Why is it only a “hate crime” if it’s White against black?
–Most major reported incidents of recent anti-black racism have turned out to be hoaxes.
–It’s not really much consolation that the perps in the link I sent will spend a few years behind bars for horrific murders if they keep happening and no one in society cares.
–Why shouldn’t Cannon Hinant’s story be as important as George Floyd’s?
Re: asking if I’m a “racist”. That’s kind of like modern day asking if you still beat your wife. Or in abagond’s specific case… if his wife still beats him. Saying I have black friends or did XYZ to help blacks is no protection.
I’ve said before that word means nothing to me and people like me. We’re racially aware and supportive of our own people the same way that almost all non-Whites are. In person, I do what I can to treat individuals with dignity and respect, regardless of skin color.
Would you call someone sexist because they recognize that men are more likely to be physically violent than women or ageist because they realize young men are more dangerous than old men and act accordingly? Of course not! If you have to throw out common sense, then terminology like “racist” is less than useless.
Anyway, back to the point of this thread, Heels up Harris is kind, sincere, principled and really cares about the African American community (not just the Silicon Valley and Wall Street types who happen to fund her). And Orange Man Bad (actually Very Very Bad), so please support her and the Global Elite/Big Business who only want what’s best for you!
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@ biff
PolitiFact is a fact-checking website. It is far more reliable than some rando letter to the editor. Letters to the editor are put on the editorial page because they are opinion not fact.
If you are going to shut yourself off from facts and logic, it is small wonder you have put your faith in a orange-hued con man.
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@ biff
Who said that Harris is “kind, sincere, principled and really cares about the African American community” or anything remotely like that? Was that from the original post? It is a strawman argument. Maybe you are confusing this thread with Democratic Party propaganda (MSNBC, the Democratic Convention, etc).
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@ biff
You are implying you are not racist because racism is true. By that definition no one is racist because, duh, people only believe what they think is true.
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@ biff
Because no one had to burn down the police station to get an arrest. It is not the killing part that outrages people so much as the getting-away-with-murder part. Also, Hinnant was not killed by the state, by the supposed upholders of law and order. Also there does not seem to be any racial motive.
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@ Biff
“In person, I do what I can to treat individuals with dignity and respect, regardless of skin color.”
Because you know, in real life, there will be negative repercussions if you don’t.
Online and anonymous, however, you don’t behave the same way. You seek out communities of color like this one to harass and belittle and bully.
Because you can get away with it, and because it makes you feel good to treat these individuals with disrespect and contempt.
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biff you sound stupid, trying to go sideways and pretend your ‘example of an individual’s pain’ is not crime stats boiled down,
but i will say, the economy is tanking and people are getting really pissed and there are assault rifle shootings every weekend in several us cities it is not going good for anyone if you ask me and i am aware you did not.
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biff so fake, man wow… kinda like trump’s version of grojo, sorry and ONLY with regards to the ccp
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abagond, re: politifact, if you were making a site for leftwing propaganda and lies, would it be more effective if you said what it really was or if you called it a “fact-checking website”? MSM is full of lies and more and more people are waking up.
The point is, despite how bad you know she is, you’ll still vote for Kamala and don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to F things up Biden. I honestly don’t see what you think you will gain from that. Trump delivers record low unemployment and takes the first steps in a long while to reduce inequality (greater wage growth at the bottom than at the top), but you’d rather go back to globalism with the party that will defund police and let cities burn.. making everyone’s lives worse and achieving nothing of value.
Attacking police or defunding them only hurts blacks. You only care because the cop in Floyd’s case happened to be White, even though the numbers say black cops are more likely to shoot/kill suspects than whites. If a 5 year old black boy was shot point blank by a White man for accidentally getting on his lawn you can bet there would be tons of coverage and accusations of racism. I would feel a lot worse for that boy than for Floyd (after seeing him repeatedly resisting arrest and knowing he took enough drugs to kill himself already and was complaining about not being able to breathe long before he was taken down after resisting arrest).
Solitaire, not sure why you take persona offense. I’m not calling you names or being disrespectful here. This site is one of few that allows discussion and debate of controversial topics. Other than MSN and Yahoo where I check mail/financials, I don’t go to other left-wing sites (most have banned comments) or seek out “communities of color”. Just interested sometimes in seeing how people on the left, and people of color, perceive things, so I stop by here. As I said above, I just don’t see the left offering you anything except empty promises and economic misery.
v8driver, and you don’t see that this shutdown is arbitrary? What happened in Sweden or Korea? No shutdown and no economic misery. And overall no massive amounts of COVID. Remember how at first the point was just not to overwhelm the hospitals while we developed herd immunity? Never came close to that, and then the goal posts kept getting shifted. All of this shutdown is self-inflicted, largely to hurt Trump and the economy he had gotten going.
That said, there are folks on the right who wonder if letting the madness move quickly isn’t better, as it shows people the endgame and the misery to come, statues toppled, constitutional amendments obliterated and lawlessness as cops are removed–and if collapse and reset is coming why not get it over with? The big liberal cities are the places most hurt by these destructive ideologies.
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@ Biff
In what way have I taken personal offense? Please explain.
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Biff,
The left is pro civil liberties and anti wsr.
The green party and libertarian party match when it comes to civil liberties and opposing war. They diverge when it comes to economics and the libertarians suck when it comes the the environment.
The L.P. Is a big tent and home to a lot of rascits/bigots (rights for me but not for thee)
Maybe 15% are anti rascit and leftist.
The Dems talk a lot but really aren’t interested in dialing back State firce or relinquishing police powers.
Both parties support a surveillance state, war abroad.
Where I live we have Trump supporters practicing their first amendment rights and BLM protesting across the street from each other.
This attracted self identified fascists who attack
with pepper spray and violence. They are not all white: Some are Hispanic, Armenian and Philippino.
The police are biased in favor of the Trump supporters but then thats not surprising since some protestirs have giant f*ck the pollice signs lol
In your mind Biff everything is clear cut between right and left, black and white ect. The left wants communism ect. Socilism will destroy the economy ect.
When the truth is the country is run by rich oligarchs, and corporations that donate to both parties and a political and media class that benifts directly from that.
So not much change will come.to your life Biff if Biden is elected despite what Fox news tells you.
As for us we will have to keep marching in the streets and keep the pressure on.
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Fascists and white supremists in my town.
https://itsgoingdown.org/antifascists-are-facing-off-against-the-far-right-backed-up-by-local-cops-weekly-in-sunland-tujunga/
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@ biff
If not PolitiFact, then what sources of information do you trust?
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A tow headed girl child killed by a stray round! Prepare a PR statement, we’ll have herbal tea and nilla wafers by the garden!
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“Trump delivers record low unemployment…Attacking police or defunding them only hurts blacks…I don’t go to other left-wing sites… or seek out “communities of color”…What happened in Sweden or Korea? No shutdown and no economic misery…statues toppled, constitutional amendments obliterated and lawlessness as cops are removed….”
Ah yes, the Goebbels “Big Lie” technique. Just keep repeating falsehoods with no proof of veracity. Links, quotes and videos are not provided because most comments biff writes are not true. He uses repetition in lieu of truth.
Fact: Lowered unemployment under the first few years of Trump were due to policies set in place by Obama.
Fact: The police “attack” Black communities, not the other way around. Protesting the murder of Black citizens by tax-supported police (who enjoy total impunity in their actions) is not an attack, it is a demand for justice.
“Defunding” the police is a catch all term for right-sizing bloated police budgets. In most municipalities, police budgets gobble up half of all government spending. Spending for police comes at the expense of human needs like housing, education and healthcare. Those sectors have been progessively underfunded for decades.
Fact: I have seen comments by biff on other left of center sites, including one where a young bi-racial White and Asian man was expressing anger about the dysfunction of White male/Asian female unions. I witnessed the same goading and the same lack of veracity on biff’s part there.
That blog on WordPress.com was called Longing For Death: The Half Asian Reality; The Truth About Asian Women and White Men, from the half-Asian son of a Racist White father and a Violent Chinese mother.
The author of that blog received so much abuse, he made his blog private. It is now deleted from WordPress.com.
Fact: Sweden has some of the highest rates of infection in Europe. Their rates are so high, the Swedes are barred from many European countries for the time being.
South Korea on the other hand, has enjoyed low infection rates because they took the virus seriously from the beginning. They had rigorous testing and the population masked up at the start of the pandemic. No need for an economic shutdown in South Korea.
Opinion: Toppling statues of slave owners and slave traders (like in Bristol, UK) is not a sign of disorder, but long overdue actions. Why should people who profited from human misery be valorized?
Fact: The obliteration of constitutional amendments started some time ago. One amendment rarely mentioned by those who biff and moan about lost rights is the Sixth Amendment, the right to a jury trial. According to an introduction to an article by U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff in the New York Review of Books:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/11/24/why-you-wont-get-your-day-in-court/
Ditto for the Seventh Amendment: the right to take a civil dispute to a jury of our peers.
We won’t even get into the functional loss of the First Amendment, the rights of speech and assembly which the right wing media calls “burning down our cities”. Nor the Fourth Amendment which prohibits “unreasonable” searches and seizures. A lot of Black people have and continue to die due to erosions of the Fourth Amendment.
Opinion: Police are the most lawless sector of our society. Under the guise of ‘law enforcement” they beat, torture, rape, steal and murder with total impunity.
Fact:Police in the USA murder over 1,000 citizens per year. In eight US cities, the police murder Black men at higher rates than the overall US murder rate. Those cities are: Reno, NV, Oklahoma City, OK, Santa Ana, CA, Anaheim, CA, St, Louis, MO, Scottsdale, AZ, Hialeah, FL and Madison, WI.
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org
Repeating falsehoods don’t make them true, biff.
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Solitaire, sure you’re not taking things personally. Just accusing me of “bullying” when I come in here as the sole voice on the right and get shouted down by half a dozen commenters..
Michael Barker, the Biden ticket will be much more pro-war than Trump (who started no new wars and is getting troops out as quick as he can). The neocons have all defected to Biden’s side. Also, the globalist elite you pretend to hate support Biden, not Trump. You really don’t get it. I’m glad some people in the LA area are standing up to Antifa thugs. Where I live, any sign of support for Trump would result in assault and/or severe property damage. I did see a truck with “Cannon – ALM” written on the rear windshield which gave me hope. Never seen something like that before in all my years here. Pics shown in the article you link try to make the Trump supporters the bad guys. Showing a patriot holding an American flag next to another guy holding a sign saying F the police would be a more accurate contrast. Anyway, you don’t seem disturbed to have similar beliefs with the Satanists.
Abagond, why try to trap me by asking for sources you’ll just trash? Tucker Carlson is the only somewhat mainstream guy who gets what normal people care about. Try watching his show for once. You might actually agree with a lot of what he says. No, I don’t read Breitbart or Neocon warmongering sites..
V8Driver, keep driving, as you never seem to have anything substantive to add.
Afrofem, trying to fact check me–no, the numbers in Sweden look pretty good recently, way way down. Yes, there was a site that, as far as I know, shut down like a year or more ago, that I commented on sometimes dealing with White/Asian issues. That was long ago, doesn’t invalidate my point about my current habits. I was much more involved here many years back when Kiwi was around to talk about how bad Whites were from an Asian perspective. Hope the police get removed from your city (as long as you don’t live near me) and you can experience the joys of that first hand.
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biff,
You are not being challenged on this site because you are “the sole voice on the right”. LOL!
You are challenged because of a pattern and practice of repeating rightwing falsehoods.
Many of the commenters get their news and information from a variety of sources. Those sources run the gamut of left to right and beyond. They have no problem sharing links, quotes and videos that buttress their arguments.
In my reading online, I will sometimes follow a link to The American Conservative. I don’t often agree with their conclusions, but they at least have the integrity to provide factual in the form of links, reputable statistics, quotes and videos. They provide information to back up their arguments.
You don’t share sources because you are either repeating talking points or making things up as you go along.
As to trimming police budgets, I came across an LA Times article from earlier this month, that describes the strain police are putting on city budgets. According to the article, “Deputies accused of being in secret societies cost L.A. County taxpayers $55 million, records show”:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-04/sheriff-deputy-clique-payouts
They behave like motorcycle gangs. While reading the article, I thought of the television series Sons of Anarchy. LA sheriff’s deputy cliques would fit right in. Plus they get the taxpayers to clean up their messes while they enjoy impunity.
They and their counterparts nationwide are the epitome of Toxic White Masculinity. There are better, cheaper and saner alternatives to these ruffians.
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@ Solitaire
…also Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, large chunks of Latin America….*
Very true. Thank you!
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@ Biff
“Solitaire, sure you’re not taking things personally. Just accusing me of “bullying” when I come in here as the sole voice on the right and get shouted down by half a dozen commenters..”
I would describe what I’m doing as identifying behavior patterns such as your repeated disparagement of black people’s intelligence and your inisistence that black people as a race are significantly more prone to violence. I don’t consider those kinds of bigoted taunts as being a “voice on the right,” but perhaps you believe that all right-wingers share your assessment of the black race as inferior — which if true just gives black people all the more reason to avoid the Republican party.
I note that you have not provided one example of any place where I took anything you said personally.
You also like to characterize people here as being angry at you, such as this quote from upthread: “You guys wouldn’t get so mad if you didn’t know in your hearts that what I’m saying is true.”
But I’m not mad now, and I haven’t once been mad at you. While I can’t speak for anyone else’s internal emotions, I’ve yet to see a commenter lose their temper with you. In particular, Abagond notoriously has a very long fuse and almost unlimited amounts of patience with racist blowhards.
No one is shouting you down. People have been trying to have in-depth discussions and informed debates with you, which is not at all the same thing as shouting you down.
“Anyway, you don’t seem disturbed to have similar beliefs with the Satanists.”
However, it’s difficult to have a constructive debate with you when you persist in repeating talking points that have already been thoroughly discredited. I’m surprised you would even bring the satanist thing up again, considering how badly you owned yourself. Most intellectual thinkers would be mortified at making such an egregious error, much less compounding it into a logical fallacy.
Concerning Sweden, you’re making the mistake of looking at the raw numbers without adjusting for population size. Sweden’s rate of covid-19 deaths per million is one of the highest in the world, above even the United States.
Sweden has also taken a serious economic hit, which has been discussed on the coronavirus thread, with supporting documents.
As far as the current trend in new case numbers, it’s far too early to tell if it will have any lasting significance, as we have seen over and over again in various U.S. states.
South Korea may not have instituted a full economic lockdown, but neither did the United States. And it’s simply inaccurate to imply that South Korea is taking the same laissez-faire approach as Sweden when in fact the government has closed public schools multiple times, barred spectators at many sporting events, urged citizens to work at home, and shuttered clubs, bars, and other businesses to contain hotspots. Furthermore, just this week there has been a new outbreak in South Korea centered in a conservative Christian church whose members sound a lot like the anti-maskers in the USA.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/asia/south-korea-coronavirus-shuts-down-again-intl/index.html
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/world/asia/coronavirus-south-korea-church-sarang-jeil.html)
“at first the point was just not to overwhelm the hospitals while we developed herd immunity”
That was never the point. Herd immunity can’t be developed in only 4 to 8 weeks.
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@ Biff
“Just interested sometimes in seeing how people on the left, and people of color, perceive things, so I stop by here”
You don’t actually seem interested in anyone else’s perceptions, only in repeating yours over and over and over again.
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@ biff
I did try that. Last summer for ten days I got all of my news from Tucker Carlson:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2019/07/23/ten-days-of-tucker-carlson-a-news-diet/
His two main talking points at the time:
#1. Immigrants are lawbreakers who threaten the nation.
#2. President Trump is not racist. Democrats just call him that because they hate him.
I did NOT “actually agree with a lot of what he says” – he came across as a racist fearmonger!
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@ Afrofem
“Many of the commenters get their news and information from a variety of sources. Those sources run the gamut of left to right and beyond. They have no problem sharing links, quotes and videos that buttress their arguments.
“In my reading online, I will sometimes follow a link to The American Conservative….”
It’s already crossed my mind that several regular commenters — were they so inclined — would be perfectly capable of playing devil’s advocate and easily providing those supporting documents which Biff appears unable to locate.
“That blog on WordPress.com was called Longing For Death: The Half Asian Reality; The Truth About Asian Women and White Men, from the half-Asian son of a Racist White father and a Violent Chinese mother.”
I read some of that blog when you linked to it awhile back. The author struck me as being in a very emotionally fragile place. Sadly, it’s unsurprising that you saw Biff there.
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FWIW, I’ve been listening to Rush Limbaugh since the early 1990s, and later on to Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Alex Jones. I’ve also read plenty of Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter. Hasn’t changed my mind about one single thing.
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@ biff
No. I do not much care for Black killer cops either:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/william-porter/
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@ biff
I notice you give Trump credit for low unemployment but not for high unemployment. Cute.
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@ biff
This is one of your fantasies – that you are so right that even when people say they disagree they must be lying. Not just us, but even PolitiFact and the whole mainstream media:
But if all of them are lying, then why not Tucker Carlson too? What makes him so special?
How can you tell who is lying and who is telling the truth?
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abagond asked, “How can you tell who is lying and who is telling the truth?”
These questions of yours are bizarre to me… It’s very clear if you have eyes to see.
You have to compare what is said with observable reality. Also, you shall know a tree by its fruit.
No city that BLM has done major “demonstrations” in is better for it. Looted and burned down businesses don’t help the people there. When police don’t strongly enforce the laws, many more blacks die (as shown in city after city).
If you search for “BLM” and “communist” Google prioritizes sites like politifact, vs. for example New York Post (in this case), which many more people read, because it’s controlled by leftists–a sign of manipulation (= lies). Then the politifact site doesn’t even dispute that the founders were trained Marxists, but doesn’t get into their clearly stated desire to destroy the traditional family and replace it with sexual deviancy. Yes, many people don’t understand it’s a Marxist anti-family organization that brings destruction and division every where it goes. But isn’t that the point?
If you really don’t get that killing millions of babies, destroying the family system ordained by God and promoting sexual deviancy instead is “evil”, especially when groups like the “Satanic Temple” are echoing all your talking points, then I don’t know what to say… I really tried to help you, abagond, but I can’t open your eyes by myself.
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@ biff
Those Satanists you keep bringing up are not real Satanists!!!! They do not believe in Satan. They are a parody religious organization set up to mock the religious right.
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@ biff
Then why in the world do you put your trust in Trump? He is a massive liar. And a literal scam artist. You do know about Trump University, right?
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abagond,
Don’t be a fool. God is not mocked.
No one has ever (to my knowledge) said Trump is perfect. In a healthy country someone like him would never be President, but we don’t have a healthy country. He’s had some business ventures that didn’t work out so well, he’s bended the truth sometimes and he’s a philanderer. No denying that. But he’s been better than the alternatives.
Joe Biden is worse on every measure (except the philandering–though he had some with his current wife). What he’s done for his son with China is a betrayal of the country (Russian stuff was on Trump, by contrast, was a lie and wild goose chase). Biden got caught in blatant lies and plagiarism and had to drop out of a presidential campaign more than 30 years ago–not exaggerations and half truths like Trump is famous for, but blatant falsehoods he knew were 100% false. He hasn’t improved with time, though now each time he tells a whopper one questions whether it’s dishonesty or dementia. The media treats him with kid gloves of course, so Biden’s lies are glossed over and hidden, while all of Trump’s statements are under a microscope.
The important question for you is whether Biden and his globalist controllers would help the country. Despite his flaws, I believe Trump genuinely cares about helping the country’s middle class (e.g., America first on trade, more enforcement of immigration laws, no more wasteful wars), and that’s why the globalists dislike him so much.
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“…killing millions of babies, destroying the family system ordained by God and promoting sexual deviancy… “
Millions of children around the globe under the age of five die each year of malnutrition. They are all someones baby. Do you weep for them? Are you indignant on their behalf? Do you do anything to alleviate their suffering?
There are a multiplicity of “family systems” in the world. How, exactly, do you know which one is “ordained by God? Did God write out an “ordained family system” handbook that we may all consult?
“Sexual deviancy” is in the eye of the beholder. What may be “deviant” to one person is standard operating procedure to another. What goes on between consenting adults is their business. Consent and adult being the central conditions.
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@ Afrofem
If we want to talk about God-ordained family structure, then we need to talk about bringing back polygamy. And eunuchs. And maybe infanticide. At least if we are taking about the god of the Bible, which I presume biff is.
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@ biff
Sorry, but that is straight-up delusional.
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@biff
You make excuses for Trump but Biden’s “flaws” are somehow a bridge too far. How curious.
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Kamala’s father would easily have passed off as a white man in the state of Tamil Nadu. Her mother comes from a conservative brahmin community of India , more conservative perhaps because they are indo-aryans settled among dravidians. Mr Harris would be shades lighter than the average Tamilian . An easier pill to swallow. Go through matrimonial advertisements in the Indian media and see that Mr Harris’ “wheaten complexion” is in big demand.
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@ Abagond
“Those Satanists you keep bringing up are not real Satanists!!!! They do not believe in Satan. They are a parody religious organization set up to mock the religious right.”
How exactly did Biff get a reputation here of being smart?
I’m not seeing it, but maybe he was different back in the day?
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@ Solitaire
I don’t think it’s a matter of being smart or being not smart. Biff is simply making a campaign for his favorite candidate. One must respect his militancy.
Wake up all folks. The pre-election campaign is already under way! Everything is on stake this time.
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@Solitaire
Despite his views, biff was never one of those who went off of baseless information. He did atleast present information that was researched, even if he twisted it to fit his narrative. That is why I am a bit saddened by his current display of religious paranoia and QAnon logic. It isn’t what I remember of him.
Again I don’t agree with what he says but I have respect for him( long time antagonist he is) and do view him as an otherwise smart man.
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@ sharina
I think he has moved from fact-based thinking to tribalistic thinking, as have many Republicans:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2018/11/02/tribal-epistemology/
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Thanks, everyone. I’ll have to take your word for it.
Tribal epistemology seems to dovetail with cult of personality.
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Just came across a Dalit’s view of Sen. Harris in this tweet:
“chithis”, indeed.
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@ Abagond
…polygamy. And eunuchs. And maybe infanticide.
Yes.
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@Afrofem
Thanks for posting Thaiyaam’s tweet. It hits the nail on the head!
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https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/04/us/caste-discrimination-us-trnd/index.html
Wherever they go they bring the awful system with them.
East Indians in the USA.
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