The 11 o'clock news last night here in Cleveland had a story of a black man in Canton, Ohio (south of here) who was killed while being arrested in much the same fashion as George Floyd was. Knee on the back or neck, "I can't breathe," repeated but not heeded, only this time the man's death was ruled a homicide by the coroner. I suppose that's something.
Being colorblind is fine ... IF (and that's an "if" the size of Lake Erie!) there is genuine equity and justice for EVERYONE. The stupid, blunt fact is that for people of color, we're nowhere near that, and there are too many law enforcement officers out there who are far more interested in protecting and serving themselves than they are in genuinely serving the citizens of their community. I've heard so many stories of this kind that the names start to blur together, but the color of their skin remains a constant reminder of a problem that jerks like Blumner want to ignore or sweep under the rug for whatever reason.
I've lived in a mixed neighborhood for the last 15 years, and I like it. I have great neighbors on either side of me and I'm glad of it ... and I wonder and sometimes worry if one of them might find themselves subject to such treatment. I don't think I could keep quiet if it did.
I have black families on either side of me, and it's been cool from the get-go. I rarely see this particular town in the news, and I wonder if it's because our former four-term mayor actually answered his own phone and genuinely listened to the people here. I know him personally, worked with him on a State / Church issue which he was positively responsive to. Seriously good guy.
I'm hoping the new mayor just voted in is cut of the same cloth.
I lived part-time in an exclusively white village in Sarthe département when I was a teen and in mixed neighbourhood since 2002. Guess where I prefer to live.
Racism, like religion, is learned behavior. Like religion, many children are indoctrinated with racial bigotry before they reach the age of reason. An unfortunate number of people go through life never being able to get past what they were force fed as children. I don't know what the solution is. I wish I did. One bright spot I'm seeing is the younger generation appears to be a lot more tolerant than their parents. I hope this trend continues.
I agree with you. White flight is an ongoing problem. When kids grow up in diverse schools, it is a lot harder for them to be indoctrinated. When they grow up in private or religious schools, the 'us vs. them' is virtually guaranteed.
White folks keep declaring racism over and done with, a relic of the past that should no longer be of concern to anyone. Racism, unsurprisingly, fails to get with the program and disappear.
They should have been smoking some natural herb instead of locking up folks of color--it's been used for thousands of years for the good of mankind & only the bigots made it illegal in America in 1937.
Yes. We have actual white supremists, in one major presidential candidates potential cabinet, as well as his previous one. This woman is living in LaLa Land.
Anybody who thinks racism is dead and gone need only look at the response to the supreme court's Shelby County decision, which gutted the Voting Rights Act [and for that matter the fact that in the 21st century we still NEED a Voting Right Act]. Red state governors, largely from the old confederacy, immediately implemented wave after wave of voter suppression laws aimed squarely at communities of color.
The simple truth is that the right has no policies which are attractive to POC, women or the LGBTQ community, so their response [as it has been for decades FWIW] is to argue that 'color blindness' is the answer to their deficits. Look no further than the current race for the White House and Trump's racist attacks on Kamala Harris for being biracial - just as he attacked Barack Obama as somehow not a 'real' American ['show me your birth certificate'] because he, too, is biracial.
So, we get tiresome people like Blumner writing article after article basically saying, 'I'M not the racist, YOU'RE the racist for pointing out my racism.' This argument is old, worn-out and false.
Demanding color blindness today is like looking at a car with two flat tires, , saying "ideally, all four tires should work equally well, and I shouldn't spend any more money on one than I do the other." Well ideally yes. But if you don't get those two tires patched because of your idealistic notion of spending the same money on every tire, then you're an idiot. Social fixes do not involve spending resources on everyone equally regardless of race, age, sex, etc. because social problems do not impact everyone equally regardless of race, age, sex etc.
I'm reminded of the 'tampon Tim' stuff conservatives are trying right now. That's another example. What idiot would consider the problem of teen girl school absences and decide that we can't possibly spend money on the issue because then we'd be spending money on women and thus not equally. (Oh yeah...conservatives think that!). As regards to race, the "resume test" still shows racism in employment. Similar tests with home buyers still shows racism in property sales and mortgage loans. Poverty is not equally distributed amongst ethnic groups (and also greatly varies by location and geopolitical factors). School quality still greatly varies by district, and the *systemic* practice of funding schools out of local property taxes keeps them financially unequal. Etc. etc. Thus it makes complete sense for society to spend additional money/resources where the racial and ethnic problems are. It's pretty much exactly the same as the tampon thing, only bigger and subtler.
“Because to people of goodwill, admitting people to elite universities based largely on one's race puts an unfortunate asterisk on the academic careers of those admitted through an unfair process. It harms the very people it purports to help.“
But legacy admissions don’t?
Reality is that legacy admissions are more prevalent than affirmative action admissions and have worse academic outcomes, they are the folks who are being admitted without the academic rigor you claim the people of color are lacking but aren’t. Affirmative Action does not see a person of color and automatically enroll them, they see a qualifying application and note that it comes from a person of color to move forward. Anyone who claims they didn’t get in because a black person took their place, probably wasn’t qualified or as qualified as they thought they were. I have experienced similar vitriol being a woman in the military. A so-called friend became upset when I passed him in rank, claiming the only reason was because I was a female and the powers that be gave me advantages he didn’t get. But he didn’t complete the training I had that was required for the promotion, he wasn’t passing his PT (physical training) requirements to attend, but I did. I struggled with PT, so I worked on it on my own to pass. I didn’t get special treatment. (He claims it’s because women have easier requirements but he didn’t even pass a female PT test.) I also had more loyal troops because I was a good leader, he was just a bully. The thing is that I qualified and he didn’t, I got promoted and he didn’t and he wanted to find an excuse rather than fix himself. But the system was already rigged in his favor and he couldn’t make it, so it must be me who is cheating. Same with all instances of Affirmative Action pushback.
Legacy admissions is a great example of conservative failure to see systemic racism. Prefer the grandchildren of people the school admitted in the 1950s...you know, back when the school didn't admit blacks or Jews. Nope, no possible racist outcome in that system.
Humanity...ALL of humanity...came from Africa. This fact is inescapable. To hate others because of their many degrees of skin tone is to ultimately hate yourself.
White is a lack of pigmentation. This becae necessary as people moved away from warm sunny equatorial climes of Africa. Dark skin was inhibiting the formation of Vitamin D from the sun. So lighter skin started appearing in the gene pool to allow formation of vitamin D. White skin is actually a lack of pigmentation. So whites are actually LESS human than Blacks.
Yes and no, it was more due to a change of diet from hunters-gatherers to farmers who caused the depigmentation. When cultivators from Anatolia finally made their way to England, the local population had a darker skin.
I guess I need to change my diet then since I'm red-headed, blue-eyed, and can get a sunburn indoors when sitting too close to the window on a sunny day.
As a person from Alabama, I usually try to avoid talking about racism because quite honestly, I feel like I'm in a no-win situation most of the time on this issue. This time, I think I'm going to speak up.
I've seen the sort of racism that still lives today. I've seen the way the system privileges having white skin over any shade of brown, the way historical racism is still hurting families of color today, and the way most of my superiors have had white skin. Anyone who honestly believes racism is a thing of the past is probably a beneficiary of the system as it currently stands. Affirmative action was helping until it got axed; and while I would never claim it to have been a perfect system it was certainly better than nothing.
The Civil Rights movement did not, despite various claims, fix it all. The problem is too big for any single generation to fix it alone no matter what some folks might want to claim. This one requires that we all work together on every level, and refuse to allow certain very noisy groups to have their way.
Thank you, Mr. Chavanu, for your well written and thorough take-down these sneaky racist ideas that might otherwise lull some people into complacency. We need more thoughtful essays like this one to understand and hopefully address racism as the social failure it is.
That reminds me that systemic racism was in the background of the new version of "The equalizer", in particular in one rpisode where the aunt is brutalised by a white customer who then has the gale to call the cops. When she proved she was the actual.victim, the cops were about to leave when she stopped them, asking why they were leaving without asking if she wanted to press charges. At the end of the episode, she confess her tiredness knowing her grand niece will have to fight the same fights she did more than 40 years ago.
The dream of a color-blind society is misguided and denies lived experience. A black man graduates magna cum laude from Harvard University, later decides to run for president, and is challenged to prove he's American-born by a man who earlier had paid for a full-page NY Times ad to advocate for the death penalty for 5 black youths falsely convicted of rape in Central Park.
"Come, come, this is supposed to be a happy country. Let's not argue and bicker about whom enslaved who's ancestors for hundreds of years, then terrorized them, and built a political, social, and economic system to maintain racial supremacy for all time."
To Robyn Blumner. What would you think about this version ? “Secular Humanism and the Sexist-Blind Society”. If you are offended, maybe you should think again about how your editorial can be perceived. If you are not, then you are part of the problem and you should STFU for at least 5 minutes and listen the people who know more than you. Starting with them, the relevant part start at 4'5
Noted fallen from grace sexist Lawrence Krauss reportedly sexually harassed several women aboard a cruise ship conducted by the CFI, the CFI proceeded to ignore this complaint and let Krauss return several times over, nothing was done about Krauss' harassment as it was deemed that Krauss celebrity status *strikethrough*among neckbeardsstrikethrough* was more important than actually providing justice for sexual harassment victims."
Until cataract surgery, it was always, "Okay, where did I leave my glasses?" as I wander the house looking for the light to glint off the metal frames. Now I can actually see them when I take them off. (Need reading and computer glasses, plus they didn't quite fix the astigmatism in one eye, so I still wear glasses all day)
The 11 o'clock news last night here in Cleveland had a story of a black man in Canton, Ohio (south of here) who was killed while being arrested in much the same fashion as George Floyd was. Knee on the back or neck, "I can't breathe," repeated but not heeded, only this time the man's death was ruled a homicide by the coroner. I suppose that's something.
Being colorblind is fine ... IF (and that's an "if" the size of Lake Erie!) there is genuine equity and justice for EVERYONE. The stupid, blunt fact is that for people of color, we're nowhere near that, and there are too many law enforcement officers out there who are far more interested in protecting and serving themselves than they are in genuinely serving the citizens of their community. I've heard so many stories of this kind that the names start to blur together, but the color of their skin remains a constant reminder of a problem that jerks like Blumner want to ignore or sweep under the rug for whatever reason.
I've lived in a mixed neighborhood for the last 15 years, and I like it. I have great neighbors on either side of me and I'm glad of it ... and I wonder and sometimes worry if one of them might find themselves subject to such treatment. I don't think I could keep quiet if it did.
My next door neighbor is a black lady, and I love her to pieces. I know her whole family.
I have black families on either side of me, and it's been cool from the get-go. I rarely see this particular town in the news, and I wonder if it's because our former four-term mayor actually answered his own phone and genuinely listened to the people here. I know him personally, worked with him on a State / Church issue which he was positively responsive to. Seriously good guy.
I'm hoping the new mayor just voted in is cut of the same cloth.
I lived part-time in an exclusively white village in Sarthe département when I was a teen and in mixed neighbourhood since 2002. Guess where I prefer to live.
Racism, like religion, is learned behavior. Like religion, many children are indoctrinated with racial bigotry before they reach the age of reason. An unfortunate number of people go through life never being able to get past what they were force fed as children. I don't know what the solution is. I wish I did. One bright spot I'm seeing is the younger generation appears to be a lot more tolerant than their parents. I hope this trend continues.
I agree with you. White flight is an ongoing problem. When kids grow up in diverse schools, it is a lot harder for them to be indoctrinated. When they grow up in private or religious schools, the 'us vs. them' is virtually guaranteed.
I saw that with my own grand kids. There were children of color in their private school, but they were all upper middle-class kids too.
White folks keep declaring racism over and done with, a relic of the past that should no longer be of concern to anyone. Racism, unsurprisingly, fails to get with the program and disappear.
It's baked in. The bigotry of two hundred years didn't make it into law, culture, procedure, and practice?! What the hell are people smoking?
It was more like 400 years.
They should have been smoking some natural herb instead of locking up folks of color--it's been used for thousands of years for the good of mankind & only the bigots made it illegal in America in 1937.
True true, that 200 years set the foundation of the national project for the next 200.
True true. That previous 200 years set the foundation of the national project of constructing the next 200.
True true. That previous 200 years set the foundation of the national project of constructing the next 200.
What they AKSHUALLY mean is that we should shut up about racism and stop trying to make them feel guilty about all the racism they’re still doing.
🎯Ever so much this^^^^^^^
Yes. We have actual white supremists, in one major presidential candidates potential cabinet, as well as his previous one. This woman is living in LaLa Land.
Anybody who thinks racism is dead and gone need only look at the response to the supreme court's Shelby County decision, which gutted the Voting Rights Act [and for that matter the fact that in the 21st century we still NEED a Voting Right Act]. Red state governors, largely from the old confederacy, immediately implemented wave after wave of voter suppression laws aimed squarely at communities of color.
The simple truth is that the right has no policies which are attractive to POC, women or the LGBTQ community, so their response [as it has been for decades FWIW] is to argue that 'color blindness' is the answer to their deficits. Look no further than the current race for the White House and Trump's racist attacks on Kamala Harris for being biracial - just as he attacked Barack Obama as somehow not a 'real' American ['show me your birth certificate'] because he, too, is biracial.
So, we get tiresome people like Blumner writing article after article basically saying, 'I'M not the racist, YOU'RE the racist for pointing out my racism.' This argument is old, worn-out and false.
Well said.
Thanks, Natalie!
Demanding color blindness today is like looking at a car with two flat tires, , saying "ideally, all four tires should work equally well, and I shouldn't spend any more money on one than I do the other." Well ideally yes. But if you don't get those two tires patched because of your idealistic notion of spending the same money on every tire, then you're an idiot. Social fixes do not involve spending resources on everyone equally regardless of race, age, sex, etc. because social problems do not impact everyone equally regardless of race, age, sex etc.
I'm reminded of the 'tampon Tim' stuff conservatives are trying right now. That's another example. What idiot would consider the problem of teen girl school absences and decide that we can't possibly spend money on the issue because then we'd be spending money on women and thus not equally. (Oh yeah...conservatives think that!). As regards to race, the "resume test" still shows racism in employment. Similar tests with home buyers still shows racism in property sales and mortgage loans. Poverty is not equally distributed amongst ethnic groups (and also greatly varies by location and geopolitical factors). School quality still greatly varies by district, and the *systemic* practice of funding schools out of local property taxes keeps them financially unequal. Etc. etc. Thus it makes complete sense for society to spend additional money/resources where the racial and ethnic problems are. It's pretty much exactly the same as the tampon thing, only bigger and subtler.
“Because to people of goodwill, admitting people to elite universities based largely on one's race puts an unfortunate asterisk on the academic careers of those admitted through an unfair process. It harms the very people it purports to help.“
But legacy admissions don’t?
Reality is that legacy admissions are more prevalent than affirmative action admissions and have worse academic outcomes, they are the folks who are being admitted without the academic rigor you claim the people of color are lacking but aren’t. Affirmative Action does not see a person of color and automatically enroll them, they see a qualifying application and note that it comes from a person of color to move forward. Anyone who claims they didn’t get in because a black person took their place, probably wasn’t qualified or as qualified as they thought they were. I have experienced similar vitriol being a woman in the military. A so-called friend became upset when I passed him in rank, claiming the only reason was because I was a female and the powers that be gave me advantages he didn’t get. But he didn’t complete the training I had that was required for the promotion, he wasn’t passing his PT (physical training) requirements to attend, but I did. I struggled with PT, so I worked on it on my own to pass. I didn’t get special treatment. (He claims it’s because women have easier requirements but he didn’t even pass a female PT test.) I also had more loyal troops because I was a good leader, he was just a bully. The thing is that I qualified and he didn’t, I got promoted and he didn’t and he wanted to find an excuse rather than fix himself. But the system was already rigged in his favor and he couldn’t make it, so it must be me who is cheating. Same with all instances of Affirmative Action pushback.
Legacy admissions is a great example of conservative failure to see systemic racism. Prefer the grandchildren of people the school admitted in the 1950s...you know, back when the school didn't admit blacks or Jews. Nope, no possible racist outcome in that system.
To racists/bigots/haters...
Humanity...ALL of humanity...came from Africa. This fact is inescapable. To hate others because of their many degrees of skin tone is to ultimately hate yourself.
White is a lack of pigmentation. This becae necessary as people moved away from warm sunny equatorial climes of Africa. Dark skin was inhibiting the formation of Vitamin D from the sun. So lighter skin started appearing in the gene pool to allow formation of vitamin D. White skin is actually a lack of pigmentation. So whites are actually LESS human than Blacks.
Yes and no, it was more due to a change of diet from hunters-gatherers to farmers who caused the depigmentation. When cultivators from Anatolia finally made their way to England, the local population had a darker skin.
I guess I need to change my diet then since I'm red-headed, blue-eyed, and can get a sunburn indoors when sitting too close to the window on a sunny day.
You can, if you are ready to procreate a few generations of hunters-gatherers. About 10 should be enough.
I'm too lazy and soft to be a hunter-gatherer.
It's for the youngsters. Elders cut stones, tan leather, cook, make clothes and jewellery, try to keep the children alive…
If the white supremacists each had their DNA tested they would be aghast at the findings.
The original article has big “I ate last night so world hunger is solved” energy. Topped with “pointing out my racism is worse than me being racist.”
“The real racists/facists are the ones who point out my racism/facism!”
"We have come a long, long way, but we still have a long, long way to go before the problem is solved." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
As a person from Alabama, I usually try to avoid talking about racism because quite honestly, I feel like I'm in a no-win situation most of the time on this issue. This time, I think I'm going to speak up.
I've seen the sort of racism that still lives today. I've seen the way the system privileges having white skin over any shade of brown, the way historical racism is still hurting families of color today, and the way most of my superiors have had white skin. Anyone who honestly believes racism is a thing of the past is probably a beneficiary of the system as it currently stands. Affirmative action was helping until it got axed; and while I would never claim it to have been a perfect system it was certainly better than nothing.
The Civil Rights movement did not, despite various claims, fix it all. The problem is too big for any single generation to fix it alone no matter what some folks might want to claim. This one requires that we all work together on every level, and refuse to allow certain very noisy groups to have their way.
Thank you, Mr. Chavanu, for your well written and thorough take-down these sneaky racist ideas that might otherwise lull some people into complacency. We need more thoughtful essays like this one to understand and hopefully address racism as the social failure it is.
That reminds me that systemic racism was in the background of the new version of "The equalizer", in particular in one rpisode where the aunt is brutalised by a white customer who then has the gale to call the cops. When she proved she was the actual.victim, the cops were about to leave when she stopped them, asking why they were leaving without asking if she wanted to press charges. At the end of the episode, she confess her tiredness knowing her grand niece will have to fight the same fights she did more than 40 years ago.
My house was on fire. I closed my eyes, and the flames went away.
So you missed the hot firemen:
https://images.app.goo.gl/dkgxMhjtg1tRw7Zd9
The hot firemen are in Greece.
The dream of a color-blind society is misguided and denies lived experience. A black man graduates magna cum laude from Harvard University, later decides to run for president, and is challenged to prove he's American-born by a man who earlier had paid for a full-page NY Times ad to advocate for the death penalty for 5 black youths falsely convicted of rape in Central Park.
Those 5 were later found innocent, IIRC.
I believe they proved they hadn't done it, before he posted the ad, if I recall correctly.
"Come, come, this is supposed to be a happy country. Let's not argue and bicker about whom enslaved who's ancestors for hundreds of years, then terrorized them, and built a political, social, and economic system to maintain racial supremacy for all time."
To Robyn Blumner. What would you think about this version ? “Secular Humanism and the Sexist-Blind Society”. If you are offended, maybe you should think again about how your editorial can be perceived. If you are not, then you are part of the problem and you should STFU for at least 5 minutes and listen the people who know more than you. Starting with them, the relevant part start at 4'5
https://youtu.be/dwxiiQB0hZ4?si=PRiMGK8BvqLQR9le
https://youtu.be/dwxiiQB0hZ4?si=PRiMGK8BvqLQR9le
Check your privilege.
From RationalWiki's take on CFI
Noted fallen from grace sexist Lawrence Krauss reportedly sexually harassed several women aboard a cruise ship conducted by the CFI, the CFI proceeded to ignore this complaint and let Krauss return several times over, nothing was done about Krauss' harassment as it was deemed that Krauss celebrity status *strikethrough*among neckbeardsstrikethrough* was more important than actually providing justice for sexual harassment victims."
Dropped the ball big-time, CFI.
OT
For those of us who wear glasses:
comicskingdom.com/rhymes-with-orange/2024-08-11
Bet this happens to a lot of people. It's happened to me. :)
I have done it with glasses, my phone and most embarrassingly, my baby daughter.
Until cataract surgery, it was always, "Okay, where did I leave my glasses?" as I wander the house looking for the light to glint off the metal frames. Now I can actually see them when I take them off. (Need reading and computer glasses, plus they didn't quite fix the astigmatism in one eye, so I still wear glasses all day)
Never had that problem. My glasses do slide down my nose, or they did until i purchased an Opti-grab. (There may be some side effects.) https://www.emojirequest.com/img-facebook/CrossEyedEmoji.jpg
wish she would sue fox "news"
https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/jk-rowling-elon-musk-imane-khelif-lawsuit-1236105185/
they need more lawsuits
It's amazing she won a gold medal despite the hatred poured on her.
Shows how good at her sport she really is.