After watching the documentary about Paul Simon and his album Graceland it really reminded me of some things and I wanted to open it up to discussion here. Much of this is stuff that many of us all know already but the question is why does it continue. You look at two examples. One in our own backyard and one across the sea.





What I cannot understand is why we cannot move forward and get away from these feelings. Seems like the Civil Rights movement in this country fought so hard for equal rights and then you fast forward and what do we deal with......Reverse racism. What you did to us was wrong segregation needs to end....." Well the truth is Segregation has just morphed into something else and it's mental.





I didn't know what racism was growing up for many many years. In fact my
first introduction to racism was when I was 7. I had a disagreement
with a kid across my way and his mother came storming up to our house
accusing me of calling her son a N*****. Now my mother knew it was BS
because I had never heard the word before. The other mother stormed off
and I asked my mom what that word was? Her reply was "A word that is
nothing unless you make it so." Never knew what that meant until many
years later.





Why is the word Cracker ok but the word N***** is wrong...........Don't
they mean the same thing? Is it less of a offense to attack me verbally
for being White then for me to attack you verbally for being Black? If I
meet you on the street I give you the same equality that I give anyone
else. If you respect me as a human being I respect you the same......We
may not agree on things but we are both human beings. If I give you
respect and you turn around and treat me with disrespect and I call you
out on it and then you call me a racist as a result.....How is that
progress.........How is that equal rights?!





And then you add politics into the debate. This is something that has always drove me nuts. Playing the race card.........


"If you don't support this cause or vote for this man because he's African American you are racist. To me pointing out a persons skin color as a reason to vote for them is also Racism! If the person is who I believe should lead this country then I will vote for him but just because of some idea of guilt that I should feel because of what previous generations have done is stupid. I plan to vote for Romney in November because this country is already fucked up and I really don't want 4 more years of the same guy fucking it up. Does that make me a racist? No what it makes me is a individual who is making their opinion based on facts.





The media does not help things in the slightest. Case in point the Trayvon Martin/Zimmerman case. If Martin made the choice he made his family has to deal with the consequences of his actions.....And that is that their son is no longer on this earth. If a kid broke into my house with the intention of doing harm to my family for example.......White or Black or Asian etc it doesn't matter if you come into my house with the intent of harming me and my family you are dead.....You took your life into your hands and made the decision to steal and that decision could cost you everything........That's not racism that is the consequences of actions.





When I see things about Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton sticking themselves in a situation they have no business being in only to stir shit up it pisses me off. "You don't help the problem assholes....You make it worse."





This kind of morphing of the idea of Racism isn't just with us. I bring up Africa a lot because it's almost a perfect comparison as to what is going on here.  Leaders of the ANC Julius Malema, Robert Mugabe, Jacob Zuma, the list goes on and on. They claim they fought to free they're people from the tyranny of colonial oppression but once they got that instead of saying "Ok we need to set a new pace." They turn around and perform the same kind of racism they fought against the White man for............And in most cases on their own people.





I know most say why should I care...........The reason why I care is what happens in Africa also has similarities of what is happening in this country.





I might be Naive to think we can live in a world where eventually Racism will die but what I can do is do my best to teach my children if I have them what I have learned and hope they will make things better.





Sorry if this seems all over the place but the issue has a lot of different points to it.
 
 

the only color I hate is pinkos

In for incoming solutions to our racial problems.

Because only whites to include white Hispanics can be racist......duh.

75% o fthe race baiters such as Sharpton, Jackson, Jackson lee and the others
would cease to have a reason to be on TV, get paid, intimidate business for donations and
continue the malstrom of hate it all breeds..

There is zero reason to hate any ethnic group just because of their bloodlines.
Except the Irish, of course.

Aye.

People like to hate people who don't look, act, pray, whatever like them.  Its human nature.  The Media is a business, if they don't create drama no one watches and they don't get paid.  Screw them.

Bottom line there are useless assholes of all color and creed.  Sure culture and all that may be relevant in the city you live in or in the former colonies in africa.  But bottom line I hate useless assholes and try to surround myself with people interested in enjoying life and not fucking it all up.

People like conflict, they like killing each other.  Its part of the game.  Honestly since we got really good at it in 1945 massive conflicts have been greatly reduced.

I think you need to research the etymology of the word "racism;" where it comes from, how it is used and what it really means.

You are asking the right questions, but one of the continuing problems is that at the foundation of every man's thought and reason are pre-theoretical axioms which represent essentially religious commitments, even if not formal or doctrinal; they may be Christian, pagan, animistic, humanistic &c.  They are presuppositions that a man holds that are basic truths he accepts, whether they actually true are or not, and to question them is absurd.  The problem is that very few people engage in the hard work necessary to become epistemologically self conscious - in other words to know what their pre-theoretical axioms are and whether or not they are rooted in truth.  In turn, in attempting to discuss issues like authority, politics, God, sociology &c becomes wasted effort because those involved in the discussion don't have the philosophical tools at hand to resolve the issues and once they run counter to the other persons pre-theoretical axioms you are then dismissed as ignorant, retarded, incomprehensible, morally degenerate &c.   They don't understand epistemology, what they know, why they have knowledge and worse they don't know what they don't know - what their pre-theoretical axioms even are.

Consider India and the caste system, outcasts accept their lot in life, it is a self-evident truth - a pre-theoretical axiom of that society and Karma rules through re-incarnation.  People born in the lower caste don't try to better their position in life because they don't believe it is possible, and those above will not allow it either.  Consider Nazi Germany, it's essence was not totalitarianism even though that is what we have been taught; rather it was a new racial foundation of society.  If that could have become the ideal and common assumption of the society the totalitarian methodology could have been relaxed.  Our citizens don't trouble their consciences about the execution of Nazi's and their sympathesizers at Nuenberg because they held to wrong and treasonable beliefs.  The same holds true for our Civil War, it is extremely difficult to engage in any profitable discussion about reality because it is presupposed as true that slavery is evil and brutalities that did exist are presented as being universally true.  Reality is a stark contrast and you can't point out the truth that two centuries of social progress occurred for the African in a three month boat ride.  No, it is believed he was a nobel savage and taken from a free and self-directed life, there is a reason for that belief even if not factual that is rooted in philosophy.

Our society is founded upon self-evident truths consistent with it's pre-theoretical axioms forming the ethics of society; the descendents of humanism of the European enlightenment which is a competing religious philosophy grafted into the American populace, however, have completely different beliefs and demand disestablishment of the existing order and replacement with theirs and they are willing to engage in whatever political, social, economic or violent warfare is necessary to realize their goals.

Every culture is a theology realized and has self-evident truths consistent with its pre-theoretical axioms and none can be tolerant of assaults against it's fundamental self-evident truths.  It can extend tolerance to opinions and beliefs peripheral to its foundation without suffering collapse and in peaceful times may temporarily enjoy questioning of its central fundamentals.  But when that grows more than questioning and becomes subversive then a defense follows and the dogma's are enforced and the greater the threat, the more rigid the defense.

In every society, though, political liberalism begins as theological liberalism, not the other way around.  Anyway, I could go on to hash out a brief analysis of this in our country to get into the roots of racism, but I'm out of time.  If you want to continue the discussion I'm willing, if not that is ok as I understand most are utterly bored by discussions they don't perceive as practical.  A good exercise would be to peruse this recent thread on the civil war which has some very good material in it, but attempt to do so dispassionately examining the statements and discussion of participants attempting to understand their presuppositional beliefs instead of the content of their conclusions, the former determine the latter.  If you can do that it will help you be able to put the present issues of social conflict into a context for more thorough analysis.

Cordially,

Col. W.

The good Colonel speaks well here.

Agreed.

Agreed,

stealth Irish hate thread.

+1

If you mean the brythonics, I'm all good. Never been a celt fan, especially the Gaels.

But my family is heavily Saxon and Norman, with a lot of German as well.  One Irish lass, but I figure she was mostly Viking anyway...

FIFY

There's only two things I can't stand. People who are intolerant of other peoples cultures........And the Dutch!
 

Intolerant dutchmen beware, apparently you get a double dose!