Thank you Torless for accurately describing the race indoctrination nightmare. I was fortunate to work at SF City-Gov when the mayor’s Equity(DEI) program began in 2018 Sep. This allowed me to observe extreme indoctrination coupled with extreme censorship. Those of us who would have presented counter-arguments at each step had our mouths covered with duct-tape. I spoke anyway and loudly. There has to be a very large number of Black Americans who are experiencing extreme pain due to the fantasy story told on their behalf, without their consent. This is causing tremendous psychological harm to everyone. The Equity Program has to be abolished. I am grateful to have lived during the relative societal harmony of 1996-2014.
Presents an intellectually honest appraisal of our decimated race relations. I honestly believe that there is only one race, either one is human or not. Aside from that any assignment of character or ability based upon some superficiality like skin color is ignorant at best, insidiously dishonest at worst. I am weary of the narrative and resultant discrimination it inspires.
Please keep up your important work. Perhaps one day we can all learn to look with a wider, clearer lens.
I thank God I'm of Irish descent. We were enslaved and slaughtered and oppressed for 800 years and have suffered longer than black slaves, and our culture and people were deeply harmed by it all. We were not welcomed in the U.S. with open arms, my people lived in those squalid flats in the mass of humanity that was the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
We just never asked for anything more than freedom, and when we got it we were successful working class folks in 1 generation. 2 generations to break into the middle class. Third generation - mine? All upper middle class, some PhDs, most of us are millionaires on paper. Etc. With NO FUCKING WHINING. I've kept all this for so long and I'm sick of it. If you apply yourself in this country, you'll be shocked at what you can accomplish no matter your background, race - even intelligence.
I'm tired of the whining. My people had it worse than blacks and now we run circles around blacks in free Western societies. Why is that? Simple - we don't do victim politics. Turns out 'affirmative' action is worse for people than slavery. Why do I say that? Well apparently it makes black folks not take advantage of what freedom has to offer since all social progress for blacks stopped once we implemented it. Thanks God no 'do gooders' tried to make the Irish their pets - we'd be stuck in poverty and crime and low living...
Wake up. There is nothing to solve. Blacks have legit, real freedom in this society and also some real privileges. Those who don't take advantage of it get no sympathy from me. They are just lazy losers who like to whine. Problem is you used to not be able to make a career out of doing so.
Thank you so much for this. You've managed to articulate what I've felt for a long time but have been unable to put into words. It has always seemed taboo (especially as a white woman) to feel, much less say, that the current discourse on race has not merely been unhelpful, but actively harmful.
Racism is a power relationship. Is the rape victim responsible for the actions of the rapist? The trauma? The black group's wealth of only 1/2 of 1% hasn't changed since the eve of the American Civil War. Whites had the head start program with the first constitution, the government issue of 2 billion acres of free Indian land to white immigrants plus access to abundant free African labor which mal distributed massive generational wealth and power to whites. White affirmative action programs for whites continued on steroids during Jim Crow.--- immigration laws, social security benefits denied to domestic and farm workers who were mostly black, GI benefits denied to black WWII vets who lived in the south with whites in charge of dispensing it, FHA mortgages mostly given to whites, redlining, government farm subsidies and financial aid restricted to white farmers, white unions denying black membership, blacks being denied medical care at better white hospitals, etc. Whites were more privy to fully participating in free market capitalism and wealth accumulation. Imagine 4 players at the table playing the game of Monopoly. One player Jerome has very little money issued to him to effectively compete. The white players have most of the capital to purchase properties on the board. Jerome keeps landing in jail or bankrupt in a systemically rigged game by white supremacy. Racism is a competitive relationship between groups for ownership and control of resources for wealth and power---human nature. It's a team sport and forfeiture is suicide. Whites accumulated the upper hand. There is no middle ground between black self-empowerment and genocide. Before MLK's assassination, he related, "We got integration, but I feel I have led my people into a burning house... my dream has turned into a nightmare. " I strongly recommend that you read "The Radical King" edited and introduced by. Cornel West. King became more militant before his death, realizing social integration alone was insufficient to improve the conditions of the negro. He was assassinated after advocating that "we are coming to get our checks (reparations)" Black civil rights leaders failed to follow up on the reparations. Social integration can't be deposited into the bank; it's not measurable. Sentimentality is like a child distracting you while another one is picking your pockets. Amazingly, whites have attempted to sanitize MLK for their fallacious purposes. He was disposed by 90% of the white population before his death. Let's keep it real.
Generational wealth isn’t part of my “white” experience. I’ve never been given a pass for it either. The essay doesn’t necessarily discount the hardships on the black American community but points out that until we just stop this racial identity nonsense we are doomed to destruction by it.
The black population of America is in trouble. How is it that the Asian population, many of whom started out in relative poverty, seem to in a single generation become college graduates, become successful professionals and are the least incarcerated. They aren’t “white”
either.
Not all white people were really welcome either. Italians, Irish, Jews and for the most part Catholics, weren’t exactly DAR’s
and had to fight for a place at the table. A point this essay is clear upon.
Even Barack Obama came out to say that systemic racism is a thing of the past.
Are there still racist people, sure, but not all racists are white.
The whole country is in trouble. Half of the population supports this con man and his outlandish conspiracy theories. The SOB did a lot of damage to this country. Many white evangelical Christians still support this narcissistic scumbag.
And crooked Uncle Joe is better??? At least Trump didn’t weaponize any federal agencies like his two predecessors.
Most presidents are narcissists Anybody who wants the job is suspect. One of the Proud Boys founders is a black ex military guy.
There were a fair number of black American males who supported Trump. Mostly conservatives who didn’t think like the people the essay was about. It is a good essay that exemplifies critical thinking and facts, not theory and hype.
Lyndon B. Johnson -" I'll tell what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, you're picking his pocket. Hell, give somebody to look down on, and he'll even empty his pockets for you." 🤡🤡🤡🤡
Thomas Sowell: "Recent scholarship traces the roots of southern violence to the Scots-Irish, who brought a relatively violent “cracker culture” with them to the United States in the eighteenth century. The tolerance for violence inherent in cracker culture was believed to be transmitted throughout the South to other whites and was maintained, in part, through evangelical Christian doctrine.
Some southern blacks were also influenced by “cracker culture,” leading to the emergence of a “black redneck” phenomenon influencing homicide among blacks. Using county-level data circa 2000, this study empirically evaluates the merit of the cracker culture/black redneck thesis. Negative binomial regression analyses for a full sample of counties suggest that a measure of southern cracker/black redneck culture is an important factor affecting contemporary rates of argument homicide among both whites and blacks.
When counties are divided into south and non-south sub-samples, the results are also consistent: a cracker/black redneck culture effect is evident for both racial groups in the south and is also apparent outside of the southern region. We interpret these latter findings as possible support for the thesis that southern cracker/black redneck culture has been transported through migration to non-southern localities."
Lynching is the public killing of an individual who has not received any due process. These executions were often carried out by lawless mobs, though police officers participated under the pretext of justice. Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South. Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutality, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration. Some victims were burned alive. A typical lynching involved a criminal accusation, an arrest, and the assembly of a mob, followed by seizure, physical torment, and murder of the victim. Lynchings were often public spectacles attended by the white community in celebration of white supremacy. Photos of lynchings were often sold as souvenir postcards. 4,743 lynchings occurred in the U.S., according to records maintained by NAACP. Other accounts, including the Equal Justice Initiative's extensive report on lynching, count slightly different numbers, but it's impossible to know for certain how many lynchings occurred because there was no formal tracking. Many historians believe the true number is underreported. The highest number of lynchings during that period occurred in Mississippi, with 581 recorded. Georgia was second with 531, and Texas was third with 493. Lynchings did not occur in every state. There are no recorded lynchings in Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Nevada, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Black people were the primary victims of lynching: 3,446, or about 72 percent of the people lynched, were Black. But they weren't the only victims of lynching. Some white people were lynched for helping Black people or for being anti-lynching. Immigrants from Mexico,
China, Australia, and other countries were also lynched. White mobs often used dubious criminal accusations to justify lynchings. A common claim used to lynch Black men was perceived sexual transgressions against white women. Charges of rape were routinely fabricated. These allegations were used to enforce segregation and advance stereotypes of Black men as violent, hypersexual aggressors. Hundreds of Black people were lynched based on accusations of other crimes, including murder, arson, robbery, and vagrancy. Many victims of lynchings were murdered without being accused of any crime. They were killed for violating social customs or racial expectations, such as speaking to white people with less respect than what white people believed they were owed. --- naacp.org.
On May 16, 1918, a plantation owner was murdered, prompting a manhunt that resulted in a series of lynchings in May 1918 in southern Georgia, United States. White people killed at least 13 black people during the next two weeks. Among those killed were Hayes and Mary Turner. Hayes was killed on May 18, and the next day (May 19), his pregnant wife Mary was strung up by her feet, doused with gasoline and oil then set on fire. Mary's unborn child was cut from her abdomen and stomped to death. Her body was then repeatedly shot. No one was ever convicted of her lynching.
Well anyone needing to look down upon another to feel better is indeed a poor person.
My parents raised us to be children of God and that all humans are worthy with the exception of the wicked. All humans are capable of good or evil. It’s a choice and we will all be judged in time.
Black folks are increasingly at risk with the growing infiltration of white extremist radicals in the military and law enforcement. Also, with the highly skilled and monitized Asians immigrating from China and India. I used to rescue wannabe proud boys from Aryan prison gang rape during my 34-year career with the prison industrial complex back in California. Asian inmates were designated as others. They were usually convicted of extortion and murder. Asian convicts (eg., Vietnamese) extorted Asian businesses for money and protection. The Mexican Mafia (eme) would extort the Italian-related inmates---take their booty for noncompliance. Boston is infested with Irish organized crime.
The Irish are not immune to criminality . No group is without criminal members. The truth is that the biggest threat to black people remains black people.
Historically black Americans were indeed treated very poorly. I think all high school kids should be taught about the horrific crime of lynching. As horrible as that was, it is not the threat it once was and I believe that it is imperative to teach about our past truthfully and to view our present honestly.
No country or sub group is without some darkness in its past . The only way to stop that is with light.
You can hate on Christianity but I think Jesus (Yeshua) was and is the messiah. Not a white messiah, not a black messiah.
This is the best explanation and explication of the absurdity and insanity I've been scratching my head over why it continues for my entire 67 trips around the sun.
I took a class in existentialisn at SFSU and learned about the brutal reality of personal responsibility that each of us labors under whether we realize it or not.
I studied to be an actor and learned how humans build characters for themselves.
Then I became a real estate agent in SF working with people of many ethnicities and saw how insignificant their ethicity was in terms of making big decisions in their life.
Lately I've read a lot about how the concept of race is invalid. I compare it to the Emperor's New Clothes which only the Racists and Anti- Racists see while the rest of us just chuckle at their idiocy and get on with living our lives.
And as of late I've been brushing up on my Shakespeare as I auditioned for and got cast in "Much Ado About Nothing". And having his words in my head lead me to come up with this little stanza I now incorpirate in my writing on Medium.
No one has a race. Everyone has ethnicity.
Do not be belied by the myth of race.
Judge people by their character, not the charcteristics of their ethnicity.
And how about this for some courageous pursuit of individualism on my part;
Last sunday was the first cast meeting and reading of the play in SF. Because of the large cast the director asked us just to introduce ourselves, our character, NOT say something about ourself and tell our pronoun!
Now, you know I'm not going to fall into the trap of identity politics. Trans people, sexually ambiguous people are people too, not spendages of their gender and sexuality, just as none of us are apendages of our ethnicity. In applying to audition for plays prounouns are requested. So i googled how to respond and found a great article on the subject. The author recommended saying "i/me".
So, last Sunday was my time to confront the onslaught. As we went around the circle each cast member dutifully proclaimed their name, character to play and their pronouns. I would have liked to have payed attention to get a grasp for the person and character they are playing. But I was consumed in thought as to what I would say, or not say, about my pronoun.
Finally my turn came ....
And i blurted out as fast as i could say
"I don't mean to be a troublemaker but I am an I/me"
And the response was nobody batted an eyelash. The guy next to me stepped right up and said his name, character and pronoun. My courageous proclimation was anti- climactic to the max.
During a break nobody came up to me to discuss my break with conformity. And believe me there were a few people in this cast who I couldnt tell if they were a man or woman or both or neither and they didn't seem put off either.
You know why? We were all a bunch of artists. Nobody gave a damn what your dick or pussy looked like. Nobody gave a damn what gender you think you are. All anybody cared about is if you were the right person for the part you were cast to play.
First, it was a great essay. You put words to some ideas I often ponder.
Yet, I can hear someone thinking,
"Sure, there may be a noticeable outcropping of black aberration: marketplace success, leadership appointment, and some high visibility. But, so what? Yes, we have a few examples and we are proud of them collectively. But the minute it's noticed, look what happened to Tulsa's Black Wall Street, or Rock, or Jazz, or Blues, or slang, or almost everything we finally get. Meaning, if there is a noticeable trend in black America, it will be stolen, stopped, diverted, consumed, or sold. So, if you think you discovered a growing 'Black Sanctity,' it's gone in 3, 2, 1..."
Anyway...
The discovery of a "Black Sanctity" could easily be an abdication of soft power lines by the colloquial "power structure." It's akin to white flight and the first black residents on the block in the 1950s - doors may open, but people move.
If there was one issue with the essay, it would be this: many (if not all) of the examples and people you used in the essay represent the left, liberal, and Democrats of the black populous. The ideal of a Black Sanctity applying to blacks on the right, whether religious, political, or socio-cultural, feels nonsensical.
Deeply complex, yet in some ways so simple in terms of commonality between white supremacy and black sanctity. The American obsession of race seems never ending.
I love what you wrote... race as a "bankrupt concept". Thank you.
Do you mean to say the Marxist influence on Black power movements is completely wrong ? If this movement becomes elitist and alienates itself from working people and goes into law and academic theory , isn't that the problem?
1. Are class distictions not what divide us? maybe the wrong is confining the argument to one racial tribe and not extending to all people in the same class?
2. Is the American myth of rugged individualism a lie? We are hyper tribal, group oriented. I'm not sure it's a changable human characteristic. Can we over come group identity to see similar class interests? too cynical?
Thank you Torless for accurately describing the race indoctrination nightmare. I was fortunate to work at SF City-Gov when the mayor’s Equity(DEI) program began in 2018 Sep. This allowed me to observe extreme indoctrination coupled with extreme censorship. Those of us who would have presented counter-arguments at each step had our mouths covered with duct-tape. I spoke anyway and loudly. There has to be a very large number of Black Americans who are experiencing extreme pain due to the fantasy story told on their behalf, without their consent. This is causing tremendous psychological harm to everyone. The Equity Program has to be abolished. I am grateful to have lived during the relative societal harmony of 1996-2014.
WOW! I am not one for overstatements, but this essay contains so much fact, and so much reason and logic, I just about OD'd on both.
I'll have to reread this several times just to begin to feel I've absorbed it adequately.
Same!!!
Presents an intellectually honest appraisal of our decimated race relations. I honestly believe that there is only one race, either one is human or not. Aside from that any assignment of character or ability based upon some superficiality like skin color is ignorant at best, insidiously dishonest at worst. I am weary of the narrative and resultant discrimination it inspires.
Please keep up your important work. Perhaps one day we can all learn to look with a wider, clearer lens.
Thank you.
Please keep all comments on my Substack page respectful. Otherwise, I will remove the comment and ban offending member permanently.
I completely agree.
I thank God I'm of Irish descent. We were enslaved and slaughtered and oppressed for 800 years and have suffered longer than black slaves, and our culture and people were deeply harmed by it all. We were not welcomed in the U.S. with open arms, my people lived in those squalid flats in the mass of humanity that was the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
We just never asked for anything more than freedom, and when we got it we were successful working class folks in 1 generation. 2 generations to break into the middle class. Third generation - mine? All upper middle class, some PhDs, most of us are millionaires on paper. Etc. With NO FUCKING WHINING. I've kept all this for so long and I'm sick of it. If you apply yourself in this country, you'll be shocked at what you can accomplish no matter your background, race - even intelligence.
I'm tired of the whining. My people had it worse than blacks and now we run circles around blacks in free Western societies. Why is that? Simple - we don't do victim politics. Turns out 'affirmative' action is worse for people than slavery. Why do I say that? Well apparently it makes black folks not take advantage of what freedom has to offer since all social progress for blacks stopped once we implemented it. Thanks God no 'do gooders' tried to make the Irish their pets - we'd be stuck in poverty and crime and low living...
Wake up. There is nothing to solve. Blacks have legit, real freedom in this society and also some real privileges. Those who don't take advantage of it get no sympathy from me. They are just lazy losers who like to whine. Problem is you used to not be able to make a career out of doing so.
Thank you so much for this. You've managed to articulate what I've felt for a long time but have been unable to put into words. It has always seemed taboo (especially as a white woman) to feel, much less say, that the current discourse on race has not merely been unhelpful, but actively harmful.
You might be interested in what Curtis Yarvin has to say on this topic: https://graymirror.substack.com/p/three-questions-for-richard-hanania
Yarvin may be an acquired taste, so take what you like and leave the rest, as they say in AA.
Racism is a power relationship. Is the rape victim responsible for the actions of the rapist? The trauma? The black group's wealth of only 1/2 of 1% hasn't changed since the eve of the American Civil War. Whites had the head start program with the first constitution, the government issue of 2 billion acres of free Indian land to white immigrants plus access to abundant free African labor which mal distributed massive generational wealth and power to whites. White affirmative action programs for whites continued on steroids during Jim Crow.--- immigration laws, social security benefits denied to domestic and farm workers who were mostly black, GI benefits denied to black WWII vets who lived in the south with whites in charge of dispensing it, FHA mortgages mostly given to whites, redlining, government farm subsidies and financial aid restricted to white farmers, white unions denying black membership, blacks being denied medical care at better white hospitals, etc. Whites were more privy to fully participating in free market capitalism and wealth accumulation. Imagine 4 players at the table playing the game of Monopoly. One player Jerome has very little money issued to him to effectively compete. The white players have most of the capital to purchase properties on the board. Jerome keeps landing in jail or bankrupt in a systemically rigged game by white supremacy. Racism is a competitive relationship between groups for ownership and control of resources for wealth and power---human nature. It's a team sport and forfeiture is suicide. Whites accumulated the upper hand. There is no middle ground between black self-empowerment and genocide. Before MLK's assassination, he related, "We got integration, but I feel I have led my people into a burning house... my dream has turned into a nightmare. " I strongly recommend that you read "The Radical King" edited and introduced by. Cornel West. King became more militant before his death, realizing social integration alone was insufficient to improve the conditions of the negro. He was assassinated after advocating that "we are coming to get our checks (reparations)" Black civil rights leaders failed to follow up on the reparations. Social integration can't be deposited into the bank; it's not measurable. Sentimentality is like a child distracting you while another one is picking your pockets. Amazingly, whites have attempted to sanitize MLK for their fallacious purposes. He was disposed by 90% of the white population before his death. Let's keep it real.
Sure.
Generational wealth isn’t part of my “white” experience. I’ve never been given a pass for it either. The essay doesn’t necessarily discount the hardships on the black American community but points out that until we just stop this racial identity nonsense we are doomed to destruction by it.
The black population of America is in trouble. How is it that the Asian population, many of whom started out in relative poverty, seem to in a single generation become college graduates, become successful professionals and are the least incarcerated. They aren’t “white”
either.
Not all white people were really welcome either. Italians, Irish, Jews and for the most part Catholics, weren’t exactly DAR’s
and had to fight for a place at the table. A point this essay is clear upon.
Even Barack Obama came out to say that systemic racism is a thing of the past.
Are there still racist people, sure, but not all racists are white.
The whole country is in trouble. Half of the population supports this con man and his outlandish conspiracy theories. The SOB did a lot of damage to this country. Many white evangelical Christians still support this narcissistic scumbag.
And crooked Uncle Joe is better??? At least Trump didn’t weaponize any federal agencies like his two predecessors.
Most presidents are narcissists Anybody who wants the job is suspect. One of the Proud Boys founders is a black ex military guy.
There were a fair number of black American males who supported Trump. Mostly conservatives who didn’t think like the people the essay was about. It is a good essay that exemplifies critical thinking and facts, not theory and hype.
The Fulton County District Attorney prosecuting Trump is the daughter of a defense attorney and Black Panther. Lol!!!!
Lyndon B. Johnson -" I'll tell what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, you're picking his pocket. Hell, give somebody to look down on, and he'll even empty his pockets for you." 🤡🤡🤡🤡
Funny how all these white extremists that are such a threat to blacks aren’t the people shooting them by the dozens every weekend.
Leftist nutters never seem to be concerned about that.
Christianity is a chauvinistic murderous cult!
Thomas Sowell: "Recent scholarship traces the roots of southern violence to the Scots-Irish, who brought a relatively violent “cracker culture” with them to the United States in the eighteenth century. The tolerance for violence inherent in cracker culture was believed to be transmitted throughout the South to other whites and was maintained, in part, through evangelical Christian doctrine.
Some southern blacks were also influenced by “cracker culture,” leading to the emergence of a “black redneck” phenomenon influencing homicide among blacks. Using county-level data circa 2000, this study empirically evaluates the merit of the cracker culture/black redneck thesis. Negative binomial regression analyses for a full sample of counties suggest that a measure of southern cracker/black redneck culture is an important factor affecting contemporary rates of argument homicide among both whites and blacks.
When counties are divided into south and non-south sub-samples, the results are also consistent: a cracker/black redneck culture effect is evident for both racial groups in the south and is also apparent outside of the southern region. We interpret these latter findings as possible support for the thesis that southern cracker/black redneck culture has been transported through migration to non-southern localities."
Lynching is the public killing of an individual who has not received any due process. These executions were often carried out by lawless mobs, though police officers participated under the pretext of justice. Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South. Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutality, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration. Some victims were burned alive. A typical lynching involved a criminal accusation, an arrest, and the assembly of a mob, followed by seizure, physical torment, and murder of the victim. Lynchings were often public spectacles attended by the white community in celebration of white supremacy. Photos of lynchings were often sold as souvenir postcards. 4,743 lynchings occurred in the U.S., according to records maintained by NAACP. Other accounts, including the Equal Justice Initiative's extensive report on lynching, count slightly different numbers, but it's impossible to know for certain how many lynchings occurred because there was no formal tracking. Many historians believe the true number is underreported. The highest number of lynchings during that period occurred in Mississippi, with 581 recorded. Georgia was second with 531, and Texas was third with 493. Lynchings did not occur in every state. There are no recorded lynchings in Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Nevada, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Black people were the primary victims of lynching: 3,446, or about 72 percent of the people lynched, were Black. But they weren't the only victims of lynching. Some white people were lynched for helping Black people or for being anti-lynching. Immigrants from Mexico,
China, Australia, and other countries were also lynched. White mobs often used dubious criminal accusations to justify lynchings. A common claim used to lynch Black men was perceived sexual transgressions against white women. Charges of rape were routinely fabricated. These allegations were used to enforce segregation and advance stereotypes of Black men as violent, hypersexual aggressors. Hundreds of Black people were lynched based on accusations of other crimes, including murder, arson, robbery, and vagrancy. Many victims of lynchings were murdered without being accused of any crime. They were killed for violating social customs or racial expectations, such as speaking to white people with less respect than what white people believed they were owed. --- naacp.org.
On May 16, 1918, a plantation owner was murdered, prompting a manhunt that resulted in a series of lynchings in May 1918 in southern Georgia, United States. White people killed at least 13 black people during the next two weeks. Among those killed were Hayes and Mary Turner. Hayes was killed on May 18, and the next day (May 19), his pregnant wife Mary was strung up by her feet, doused with gasoline and oil then set on fire. Mary's unborn child was cut from her abdomen and stomped to death. Her body was then repeatedly shot. No one was ever convicted of her lynching.
Well anyone needing to look down upon another to feel better is indeed a poor person.
My parents raised us to be children of God and that all humans are worthy with the exception of the wicked. All humans are capable of good or evil. It’s a choice and we will all be judged in time.
PS: Lyndon Johnson was the typical democrat A$$.
Black folks are increasingly at risk with the growing infiltration of white extremist radicals in the military and law enforcement. Also, with the highly skilled and monitized Asians immigrating from China and India. I used to rescue wannabe proud boys from Aryan prison gang rape during my 34-year career with the prison industrial complex back in California. Asian inmates were designated as others. They were usually convicted of extortion and murder. Asian convicts (eg., Vietnamese) extorted Asian businesses for money and protection. The Mexican Mafia (eme) would extort the Italian-related inmates---take their booty for noncompliance. Boston is infested with Irish organized crime.
https://share.newsbreak.com/4omy1hln
The Irish are not immune to criminality . No group is without criminal members. The truth is that the biggest threat to black people remains black people.
Historically black Americans were indeed treated very poorly. I think all high school kids should be taught about the horrific crime of lynching. As horrible as that was, it is not the threat it once was and I believe that it is imperative to teach about our past truthfully and to view our present honestly.
No country or sub group is without some darkness in its past . The only way to stop that is with light.
You can hate on Christianity but I think Jesus (Yeshua) was and is the messiah. Not a white messiah, not a black messiah.
"despised"
This is the best explanation and explication of the absurdity and insanity I've been scratching my head over why it continues for my entire 67 trips around the sun.
I took a class in existentialisn at SFSU and learned about the brutal reality of personal responsibility that each of us labors under whether we realize it or not.
I studied to be an actor and learned how humans build characters for themselves.
Then I became a real estate agent in SF working with people of many ethnicities and saw how insignificant their ethicity was in terms of making big decisions in their life.
Lately I've read a lot about how the concept of race is invalid. I compare it to the Emperor's New Clothes which only the Racists and Anti- Racists see while the rest of us just chuckle at their idiocy and get on with living our lives.
And as of late I've been brushing up on my Shakespeare as I auditioned for and got cast in "Much Ado About Nothing". And having his words in my head lead me to come up with this little stanza I now incorpirate in my writing on Medium.
No one has a race. Everyone has ethnicity.
Do not be belied by the myth of race.
Judge people by their character, not the charcteristics of their ethnicity.
And how about this for some courageous pursuit of individualism on my part;
Last sunday was the first cast meeting and reading of the play in SF. Because of the large cast the director asked us just to introduce ourselves, our character, NOT say something about ourself and tell our pronoun!
Now, you know I'm not going to fall into the trap of identity politics. Trans people, sexually ambiguous people are people too, not spendages of their gender and sexuality, just as none of us are apendages of our ethnicity. In applying to audition for plays prounouns are requested. So i googled how to respond and found a great article on the subject. The author recommended saying "i/me".
So, last Sunday was my time to confront the onslaught. As we went around the circle each cast member dutifully proclaimed their name, character to play and their pronouns. I would have liked to have payed attention to get a grasp for the person and character they are playing. But I was consumed in thought as to what I would say, or not say, about my pronoun.
Finally my turn came ....
And i blurted out as fast as i could say
"I don't mean to be a troublemaker but I am an I/me"
And the response was nobody batted an eyelash. The guy next to me stepped right up and said his name, character and pronoun. My courageous proclimation was anti- climactic to the max.
During a break nobody came up to me to discuss my break with conformity. And believe me there were a few people in this cast who I couldnt tell if they were a man or woman or both or neither and they didn't seem put off either.
You know why? We were all a bunch of artists. Nobody gave a damn what your dick or pussy looked like. Nobody gave a damn what gender you think you are. All anybody cared about is if you were the right person for the part you were cast to play.
"Judge people by their character, not the charcteristics of their ethnicity."
Yup, this. Rest, tripe.
My thoughts in a nutshell post-reading:
First, it was a great essay. You put words to some ideas I often ponder.
Yet, I can hear someone thinking,
"Sure, there may be a noticeable outcropping of black aberration: marketplace success, leadership appointment, and some high visibility. But, so what? Yes, we have a few examples and we are proud of them collectively. But the minute it's noticed, look what happened to Tulsa's Black Wall Street, or Rock, or Jazz, or Blues, or slang, or almost everything we finally get. Meaning, if there is a noticeable trend in black America, it will be stolen, stopped, diverted, consumed, or sold. So, if you think you discovered a growing 'Black Sanctity,' it's gone in 3, 2, 1..."
Anyway...
The discovery of a "Black Sanctity" could easily be an abdication of soft power lines by the colloquial "power structure." It's akin to white flight and the first black residents on the block in the 1950s - doors may open, but people move.
If there was one issue with the essay, it would be this: many (if not all) of the examples and people you used in the essay represent the left, liberal, and Democrats of the black populous. The ideal of a Black Sanctity applying to blacks on the right, whether religious, political, or socio-cultural, feels nonsensical.
Again, good read.
Deeply complex, yet in some ways so simple in terms of commonality between white supremacy and black sanctity. The American obsession of race seems never ending.
I love what you wrote... race as a "bankrupt concept". Thank you.
Do you mean to say the Marxist influence on Black power movements is completely wrong ? If this movement becomes elitist and alienates itself from working people and goes into law and academic theory , isn't that the problem?
1. Are class distictions not what divide us? maybe the wrong is confining the argument to one racial tribe and not extending to all people in the same class?
2. Is the American myth of rugged individualism a lie? We are hyper tribal, group oriented. I'm not sure it's a changable human characteristic. Can we over come group identity to see similar class interests? too cynical?