racism

[resodko]

Only because I've seen so many poor from depressed neighborhoods and generations of crime and drugs pull themselves out of it by becoming Christian and keeping their own integrity. I'm so fortunate to have so many close friends who have extremely poor families and yet keep themselves unspotted from the world.

i taught in the rochester city schools, which district ranks dead last among all 438 public school districts in upstate ny

and i taught in the adjacent suburban district which consistently scores in the top five percent


the biggest difference in the student population (besides amount of melanin)?

parental involvement

parents night in the city was a ghost town - we had classes where not a single parent showed up

in the suburb? sro - typically mom was in the student's seat and dad was standing in the back

and after days and weeks of being used to those classroom full of twenty-five kids, max, to have them overflowing with big people? :noway:

 

[The Barbarian]

Greenville had problems with the issue long after the sign came down.

About 20 years ago, a police officer perjured himself to get an innocent black engineer sent to prison for robbery. He was targeted because an elderly white person reported a black man sitting in a city park.

In fact, it was Fortenberry's curious testimony in the trial's punishment phase that solidified the prosecution's case against Geter. Fortenberry said that he had called Bamberg County, S.C., where Geter had grown up, and had spoken to its sheriff, Ed Darnell. Fortenberry testified that Sheriff Darnell had told him Geter was "a bad character." Prosecutor Isenberg suggested in argument that Geter was a suspect in some 30 South Carolina robberies. Attorney Sigel did not challenge this testimony in court, explaining later that he "had trusted" Isenberg's pretrial word that Geter had a reputation in South Carolina as "a troublemaker, liar and robber."

But at a November motion for a new trial, Sheriff Darnell swore that he had told Fortenberry a different story. "I told him I didn't know Geter, I had no record on him, and he wasn't even mentioned in my file," says Darnell.
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20085690,00.html

Geter's fellow employees worked to get him out. Although his boss testified that he was at work, and could not have driven 50 miles, pulled off the robbery, and then driven back to work in less than an hour, the jury convicted him. Eventually, it all unraveled, and Geter went free:

Last December after months of intensifying publicity, Geter was released from jail and granted a new trial. Then, in March, all charges against him were abruptly dropped when a new suspect—an ex-convict—was arrested. After 19 nightmare months Geter returned to his design engineering job at E-Systems, a military and electronics contractor, and began again to plan for his wedding... "I'm human. Of course I have some bitterness. I need a span of time to alleviate it. I trusted the police and they really hurt me. But the love given to me from colleagues, my family and friends has helped."

 

[resodko]

... a new suspect—an ex-convict—was arrested....

was he black?


'cause if he was black, that kinda blows your whole "they're racist because they look for black perps when a black guy commits a robbery" schtick :idunno:



it's still hilarious though, just not like you planned, probably :chuckle:

 

[Town Heretic]

Yet Robert Byrd is still considered a saint by some on the left.

Truman was in the Klan as a younger man and look at the Wallace turn around. Byrd I don't know as much about but I suspect you're looking at that in him, at least in terms of his politics (after Mencken you stop trying to guess what's going on under the hood notivationally speaking).

 

[The Barbarian]

Like other bigoted Dixiecrat lawmakers, Sen. Byrd tried his hardest to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and did so for 14 hours on the Senate floor. And he opposed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, though he favored the 1968 Civil Rights Act. Furthermore, the senator from West Virginia opposed the nomination of Thurgood Marshall, the nation’s first African-American Supreme Court justice. Byrd even went to then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover — who participated in ruining the careers and lives of many black civil rights leaders – to see if Marshall had any ties to Communists that could torpedo his nomination.

And yet, Robert Byrd evolved—he changed for the good. He apologized for his intolerant past and declared that he had been wrong...Sen. Byrd displayed a mix of conservative and liberal points of view in his later years. Remarkably, though, his politics resonated with the African-American community and came out on the right side of issues that are of concern to black voters. Byrd enjoyed a perfect 100 percent rating from the NAACP. He proposed $10 million to fund a Martin Luther King National Memorial in Washington, DC. The senator received a 67 percent rating from the American Civil Liberties Union, and a 65 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters on environmental issues. He forcefully and eloquently voiced his opposition to the war in Iraq under President George W. Bush, and voted against the confirmation of Obama’s controversial treasury secretary Timothy Geithner.

We should condemn the man’s racist past, but honor his recent accomplishments. And we should respect his ability and willingness to transform his mind and move beyond his circumstances and upbringing. Robert Byrd did not die as a leader of the Klan, because he had buried that racist past a long time ago.
http://thegrio.com/2010/06/28/the-evolution-of-robert-byrds-racial-politics/

Like Wallace and Lester Maddox, Byrd came to realize he was wrong, apologized for his views and actions, and made amends as best he could. It's to his credit that he did.

Contrast him to unrepentant racist and child molester Strom Thurmond, who fled to the republicans after the democrats renounced racism.

 

[Tambora]

Greenville had problems with the issue long after the sign came down.

About 20 years ago, a police officer perjured himself to get an innocent black engineer sent to prison for robbery. He was targeted because an elderly white person reported a black man sitting in a city park.

In fact, it was Fortenberry's curious testimony in the trial's punishment phase that solidified the prosecution's case against Geter. Fortenberry said that he had called Bamberg County, S.C., where Geter had grown up, and had spoken to its sheriff, Ed Darnell. Fortenberry testified that Sheriff Darnell had told him Geter was "a bad character." Prosecutor Isenberg suggested in argument that Geter was a suspect in some 30 South Carolina robberies. Attorney Sigel did not challenge this testimony in court, explaining later that he "had trusted" Isenberg's pretrial word that Geter had a reputation in South Carolina as "a troublemaker, liar and robber."

But at a November motion for a new trial, Sheriff Darnell swore that he had told Fortenberry a different story. "I told him I didn't know Geter, I had no record on him, and he wasn't even mentioned in my file," says Darnell.
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20085690,00.html

Geter's fellow employees worked to get him out. Although his boss testified that he was at work, and could not have driven 50 miles, pulled off the robbery, and then driven back to work in less than an hour, the jury convicted him. Eventually, it all unraveled, and Geter went free:

Last December after months of intensifying publicity, Geter was released from jail and granted a new trial. Then, in March, all charges against him were abruptly dropped when a new suspect—an ex-convict—was arrested. After 19 nightmare months Geter returned to his design engineering job at E-Systems, a military and electronics contractor, and began again to plan for his wedding... "I'm human. Of course I have some bitterness. I need a span of time to alleviate it. I trusted the police and they really hurt me. But the love given to me from colleagues, my family and friends has helped."

Oooooo, that came up when I was talking with some folks here.

They said that Jeter graduated college with an engineering degree and started work at E-Systems (a government contract aerospace facility that worked on such contracts as Black Hawk and Combat Talon).

When the police arrested Jeter, he told them to just ask his boss at work where he was that day the robbery took place.
They asked who his boss was, and where he worked.
When he said he was an engineer at E-Systems, the officer driving the sqad car just laughed at him, and said. "You're lying. We know blacks don't get good jobs in this town".

 

[JPPT1974]

The country and world have come a long, long beyond way since race. And getting along. But also have a long way to go. To get to know one another. And look beyond race, color, creed, sex, and religion even.

We have come a long way but have a long way to go!

 

[The Barbarian]

When the police arrested Jeter, he told them to just ask his boss at work where he was that day the robbery took place.
They asked who his boss was, and where he worked.
When he said he was an engineer at E-Systems, the officer driving the sqad car just laughed at him, and said. "You're lying. We know blacks don't get good jobs in this town".

I think E-Systems was at that time, still run by Ross Perot, who didn't give a flip what race you were, so long as you worked long hours and got results.

 

[aikido7]

wait - you think the north korean governmental news agency is the tea party? :freak:

Yes, in the sense that both groups are far "right wing."

 

[PureX]

After reading much of this thread, I have to say that racism is a more complex phenomenon than I had previously realized.

I had assumed that racism was just bigotry based on race. And bigotry is essentially just the act of psychological scapegoating. It's the psychological act of projecting one's own fears, anger, and resentments onto someone else (usually a stranger) so as to externalize it, and falsely 'transcend' it, in oneself. It's a way of raising one's image of oneself up by slandering someone else. And it's not only dishonest, it's harmful to everyone, especially to those people being scapegoated and slandered.

But there seems to be other, lesser versions of it that do not involve deliberate scapegoating. Such as the very real fear we might feel in reaction to our psychologically 'profiling' of others. The fear we might feel, for example, when confronted by someone who presents a violent, criminal, or otherwise defiant image or demeanor. I lived in inner city Chicago for many years, and the street gangs there had certain colors that they would wear so they could identify each other. They also had special hand signs and graffiti symbols they used to mark their territories. And naturally, if I were confronted with a young black or hispanic male wearing those colors, flashing those signs, or I saw gang graffiti on the walls around me I would immediately consider myself to be in heightened danger. And this wouldn't be because I wanted to scapegoat them, or make myself feel superior to them. It would be because because they are violent and dangerous people who want me to fear them, and so I do. They want society to 'think badly' of them. And any cop working in the inner city would not last long if he didn't understand and react accordingly to these dangerous 'profiles'.

There is also a natural fear that people have of other people who are 'different'. And that's simply because we humans survive and thrive by knowing how to control and react to our environment. And other human beings are usually our greatest environmental threat. So it's important to us that we feel we know how to interact with others without danger. But if those 'others' are significantly different from us we become nervous because we feel we don't understand them well enough to predict how they will behave if we have to interact with them. And this fear, too, is not based on a desire to scapegoat anyone. Nor is it totally unreasonable (though it may well be unwarranted). It's simply a natural human reaction to the "strangeness" of some other humans.

And it would be quite difficult for us to differentiate the projection and scapegoating of bigotry from these other more natural forms of fears and resentment that occur within ourselves relative to others. And in fact they are very probably intertwined. Which explains why racism is such a difficult and intractable human character trait, and flaw. And also why we so rarely are able to recognize it in ourselves when it's so glaring to others.

 

[resodko]

Yes, in the sense that both groups are far "right wing."

you might as well say they're both carbon based life forms :idunno:

 

[resodko]

After reading much of this thread, I have to say that racism is a more complex phenomenon than I had previously realized.

I had assumed that racism was just bigotry based on race. And bigotry is essentially just the act of psychological scapegoating. It's the psychological act of projecting one's own fears, anger, and resentments onto someone else (usually a stranger) so as to externalize it, and falsely 'transcend' it, in oneself. It's a way of raising one's image of oneself up by slandering someone else. And it's not only dishonest, it's harmful to everyone, especially to those people being scapegoated and slandered.

But there seems to be other, lesser versions of it that do not involve deliberate scapegoating. Such as the very real fear we might feel in reaction to our psychologically 'profiling' others. The fear we might feel, for example, when confronted by someone who presents a violent, criminal, or otherwise defiant demeanor. I lived in inner city Chicago for many years, and the street gangs there had certain colors that they would wear so they could identify each other. They also had special hand signs and graffiti symbols they used to mark their territories. And naturally, if I were confronted with a young black or hispanic male wearing those colors, flashing those signs, or I saw gang graffiti on the walls around me I would immediately consider myself to be in danger. And this wouldn't be because I wanted to scapegoat them, to make myself feel superior. It would be because because they are violent and dangerous people who want me to fear them. They want society to 'think badly' of them. And any cop working in the inner city would not last long if he didn't understand and react accordingly to these 'profiles'.

There is also a natural fear that people have to other people who are 'different'. And that's simply because we humans survive and thrive by knowing how to control and manipulate our environment, and other human beings are our greatest threat. So it's important to us that we feel we know how to interact with others without danger.

But if those 'others' are significantly different from us, we become nervous because we feel we don't understand them well enough to predict how they will behave if we have to interact with them. And this fear, too, is not based on a desire to scapegoat anyone. Nor is it totally unreasonable (though it may well be unwarranted). It's simply a natural human reaction to the "strangeness" of some other humans.

And it would be quite difficult for us to differentiate the projection and scapegoating of bigotry from these other forms of natural fears and resentment that occur within ourselves, and within others. When in fact they are very probably intertwined. Which explains why racism is such and difficult and intractable human character trait, and flaw. And also why we so rarely are able to recognize it in ourselves.

well that was a whole lot of nothing


did you have anything cogent to contribute?

 

[Quincy]

And it would be quite difficult for us to differentiate the projection and scapegoating of bigotry from these other more natural forms of fears and resentment that occur within ourselves relative to others. And in fact they are very probably intertwined. Which explains why racism is such a difficult and intractable human character trait, and flaw. And also why we so rarely are able to recognize it in ourselves when it's so glaring to others.

It's a very complex issue PureX, indeed. At some level, racism is aggressive ethnocentrism and on other levels it's just pure ignorance and hate. It's not something that is a trait of any particular generation and I think it's more of an irrational reaction than deliberated line of thought.

I don't know about other places, but here in eastern KY there are people who hate Eminem, because he is too black but they would have happily voted for Herman Cain instead of Romney. Romney is Mormon, which is far worse than being a fully assimilated conservative of African descent.

Actually, racism is far too confusing of a topic when you move past the stereotypes and actually examine real world views and statements.

 

[aikido7]

you might as well say they're both carbon based life forms :idunno:

If you're talking about science or genetics, you are absolutely correct.

I am looking at both groups in terms of "patterned thinking" and critical regard. And, of course, national politics.

By the way, I am curious as to whether or not both groups have flat screen TVs?