Without getting into who is right and who is wrong, the recent story referred to as the “Covington Catholic Story” is fascinating because with videos (some an hour and a half long) and numerous eye witnesses, the stories, the narratives, that explain and report what happened, have been so dramatically different.
To quote The Atlantic:
On Friday, January 18, a group of white teenage boys wearing maga hats mobbed an elderly Native American man on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, chanting “Make America great again,” menacing him, and taunting him in racially motivated ways. It is the kind of thing that happens every day—possibly every hour—in Donald Trump’s America. But this time there was proof: a video. Was it problematic that it offered no evidence that these things had happened? No. What mattered was that it had happened, and that there was video to prove it. The fact of there being a video became stronger than the video itself.
Think back about what you believed about this incident, what you believe about this incident, what people you deal with believe about the incident.
Now, imagine no video.
Imagine all of the accounts of what happened are second hand accounts (stories written not by witnesses, but by those who heard about the event from witnesses or others).
Imagine that all of the accounts are written years after the event.
And you have history.
Most history is a reconstruction of a story, or stories, from facts a great deal less clear, repeated by people in simplified fashion, sometimes very simplified, sometimes mercifully simplified (does anyone really care what variety of Tuberculosis Doc Holliday suffered from at the time of the shootout at the Ok Corral?).
It becomes starker when you realize that people are unable to clearly think or argue things that do not agree with their politics.
To quote the British Psychological Society:
In fact the cacophonous online argument about what happened only seemed to explode in volume when the longer video was released — more information didn’t resolve things. At all.
As the Georgetown University professor Jonathan Ladd put it so well on Twitter: “Regarding the incident at the Lincoln Memorial,” he wrote, “it’s fascinating to see motivated reasoning play out in real time over a 24 hr period … Despite lots of video, all interpretations now match people’s partisanship.”
Having facts often doesn’t change the way people interpret what happened or the narratives they tell.
Just keep that in mind the next time you read a history that relies on facts and tells you what to conclude.
Has interesting implications for ancient scripture as well.
More than anything I’ve found myself becoming very wary of anything’s initial report. There always seems to be more to the story so a wait-and-see approach is the better road. With that, most reporting is tailored to bring out an emotional response from the audience, not a thoughtful one.
This is my greatest sorrow. The beautiful human brain is better at self-delusion than anything else. Alas!
It has implications for all religious history and narratives.
I am always very concious when I read Nephi that he is not only the hero, but also the one writing the story.
Geoff-Aus,
I once pointed out to a friend that some passage (I don’t remember which now) should be taken with a grain of salt because Nephi may not be a reliable narrator. He was surprised I would say that because he thought I believed in the historicity of the Book of Mormon. I clarified that I’m suspicious of Nephi as a narrator precisely because I believe in the historicity of the Book of Mormon.
Dsc, it was reading the Book of Mormon as a real text that led to my deconstruction of large parts of it (and some essays here).
We miss a great deal by not reading it with the same lenses we would apply to other works.
I confess: A week before President Trump was inaugurated found me in Washington DC with about 30 boy scouts. These boys are from an affluent suburb in a large city in the American South and some attend expensive private schools, while the rest are in public schools where approximately 30% of the students are bused in from government housing projects. Suspiciously, they seemed most excited about the night hike in DC following the NBA basketball game. The hike, planned by the boy leaders, went past the south lawn of the white house where President Obama was spending his last week there.
After stopping in front of the white house, the 5 oldest scouts, age 16-17, stripped off most of their cloths to reveal shorts that resembled the American flag and danced wildly in the cold (35 degrees F) rain while waving Trump election banners. The younger boys all, every one of them, produced and donned Trump shirts and hats. I was amazed- at first, the level of their interest in the election, and second this demonstration of their unanimous support of President Trump.
The Covington event does not surprise me, or any of my scouts. If the democrats are going to unseat Trump in 2020, they have got to understand this event; why it happened and why variations of it keep getting replayed frequently and how it threatens the lives of the bottom half of the biggest ethnic group in the US who represent 40% of the votes. They are tired of falsely being painted as racists (while not perfect) at the same time being increasingly exploited and denied equal opportunities by reverse discrimination.
Listen to that speech of the Black Hebrew Israelites. Image a Klu Klux Klansman giving a parallel speech at the MLK memorial site with an equal level of profanity, rudeness, stupidity, and racism against black people. Image a group of black youth not doing very much and then being subjected to the harassment the Covington students have endured. It is unthinkable. The Klansman would be in jail, (if not lynched on the spot) as should the Black Hebrew Israelite preachers (be in jail). They desecrated a sacred temple of American democracy. The NYT is so blinded by their myopic ideology that they torment a bunch of kids and then wonder at the outrage that fuels the Trump base. The editor should fire the reporters and then resign in disgrace.
The reverse side of racism needs to be unmasked (black on white racism) and rooted out before the dreams of Martin Luther King are realized. It would be nice if citizen Barak Obama called out the most obnoxious of the racists on both sides of the problem, not just on one side. This would be an excellent time. At least he is not still attending church at Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago whose sermons were not much better than what we heard at the Lincoln memorial last week.
I am no fan of Trump, he is a false hope and will not deliver on his MAGA promise. His base will leave him but they are not going back to where they are no longer welcome. If anyone thinks Senator Pelosi won a great victory this week, think again. She has only shown to be as childish and stubborn as Trump. She has only strengthened his base and solved nothing in the end. The Covington event is a watershed moment.
The real application for this principle is both scripture and church history.
So much of everything that we talk about is reconstructed narratives that we then treat as bright line fact.
I am cautious about going full relativist here. To throw our hands in the air and persist in a perpetual state of we-don’t-know is irresponsible. While it is important not to jump to conclusions, it is important to try to draw them where we can and identify which parts of a story can be known, which are hazier but still likely and plausible, and which elements are unclear and perhaps plain unknowable. For instance, there are hazy elements about what happened on 9/11 but there is overwhelming evidence that 19 people from the Arab world hijacked planes and flew them into buildings. Propositions that Bush was behind 9/11 or Mossad or that we just don’t know enough to conclude that these 19 Arabs perpetrated the attacks are absolutely preposterous. Plus, we shouldn’t be fooled into believing that proponents of 9/11 conspiracy are opened-minded folks while those who accept the official explanation are closed-minded. Nothing of the sort. 9/11 conspiracy theorists are in fact closed-minded absolutists who are guided by a paranoid speculation that governments around the world are perpetuating false-flag attacks to try to deceive and control populations and refuse to accept well-evidenced ideas that show more complex factors that show non-complicity in governments.
And Mike, you go off on a tangent, but I will indulge in a response. I have heard this narrative that there is racism on both sides and that Democrats are as bad as Trump, but that Democratic voters refuse to acknowledge this, many times before. It is nonsensical false equivalence. For one, we have to distinguish between prejudice and racism. While there is prejudice of the Black Israelites against whites, particularly Trump-supporters, they are not capable of racism against them. Racism is prejudice + power. There is also no equivalence between Pelosi and Trump since they were standing for different things. Pelosi and the Democrats just won the midterms, too. So Pelosi represents more so the will of the American people (the majority of whom are against adding more wall) than Trump does.
“While there is prejudice of the Black Israelites against whites, particularly Trump-supporters, they are not capable of racism against them. Racism is prejudice + power.”
Umm, though it might be rare, (absolutely minorities are far more the victims of racism than the perpetrators of racism), minorities are capable of racism.
For example, if a white woman went to a store in an area/city predominantly populated by Black people and was refused service would that be an example of racism?
(My mother-in-law experienced this in New York City back in 1960. I had a similar experience in 1980’s in Inglewood, CA). Valuable learning experience which opened my eyes to the dehumanizing effects of racism endured for decades/centuries by our black brothers and sisters.
Thanks, Lois. There are numerous other examples. John W. is using a definition coined in 1970, commonly used by anti-racist educators, but also severely and reasonably criticized by others. Check out “power and prejudice” in Wikipedia for a brief introduction. He is pretending that such a definition controls usage of the word and not recognizing that that definition doesn’t appear for example in Oxford Living Dictionaries, where other definitions reflecting common usage do appear (though they also do not capture common usage). John W seems right to me about much of his argument, but the part you focused on rests on an unfounded presumption about how language is used, develops, and who controls the meaning of a word. There have been instances of black against white racism in Baltimore in this century. There have been instances of Hispanic against white (“anglo”) racism in New Mexico in this century. By John W’s definition, the white high school kids who burned down the home of the one black family that dared move into the “Birmingham of the north” (NAACP’s designation) were not racists because they lacked institutional authority. Sometimes I think we’d do better trying to understand how others use words rather than purporting to tell them what those words must mean.
Lois and JR,
You’re missing the point, which is that there is no equivalence between white prejudice against blacks and black prejudice against whites. The former has repeatedly diaenfranchised and disempowered blacks, while the latter has had little to no real effects on whites. Racism refers to a systemic phenomenon where one group of people is at a collective disadvantage on the basis of skin color. Are whites anywhere at a collective disadvatage because of black prejudices against whites because of skin color? No. Such an idea is simply laughable.
As for the white woman being refused service at a black owned store being racism, not really. Discrimination and prejudice, yes. But this again is a false equivalence. Nothing ever like Jim Crow has happened to whites in this country, nor would even be remotely possible. Fact is, blacks simply don’t have control over wealth and power in the US, nor have they ever. So I fail to see how they are capable of disempowering whites on the basis of skin color.
JR,
I would also add that, in this case, the Black Hebrew Israelites held the “prejudice + power” necessary to constitute racism under any definition since they were adults intimidating a group of kids.
At any rate, I think definitions of words are governed by their usage, and most people simply don’t mean “power and prejudice” when they think of racism. They think of racial prejudice, plain and simple. It’s also not a particularly helpful definition since it reinforces tribalism, excuses racial hatred by members of minority groups, and provides fodder for white racists to recruit other potential white racists.
John W.,
“Racism refers to a systemic phenomenon…” Why do you get to define the term? As I mentioned above, most people mean “racial prejudice” when they say “racism”. What makes you arbiter of the English langauge?
“Nothing ever like Jim Crow has happened to whites in this country, nor would even be remotely possible.” There are many groups who face discrimination today, but do not face anything like Jim Crow. Does that invalidate their oppression? Is the standard really if it’s something less than Jim Crow, it’s not racism?
“Fact is, blacks simply don’t have control over wealth and power in the US, nor have they ever.” I’m not sure what is meant by this. If you mean that no individual black people have had control over wealth and power in the United States, then that’s patently absurd. If you mean that there are more privileged white people than black people, then that’s true, but it doesn’t get us very far. Keeping some kind of racial scorecard reinforces the kind of thinking that leads someone to attack a Muslim because some groups of Muslims have carried out heinous attacks.
Black Israelites outdid and overpowered the MAGA teenagers? I thought that the teens who were being accused of racial insensitivity over mocking a Native American performing a traditional ritual managed to blunt the thrust of public condemnation against them by releasing videos of the Black Israelites taunting them. Not to mention that the teens have the pundits of the most widely watched cable news shows backing them AND the president himself. Yeah it really seems that the Black Israelites overpowered and got the best of the MAGA teens.
You’re still missing the central point which is about false equivalence and racism being a systemic phenomenon, not the lack of suffering among whites and other groups. Once you can recognize what my central points are and stop trying to hit me with obnoxious zingers we can have a real conversation, Dsc.
The idea that there is this systemic black racism against whites that is having this massive negative impact on whites is a joke. Imagine if Mike Tyson and a scrawny teen got in a street fight. Right-wingers seem overly anxious about the blows that the teen is dealing Mike Tyson and are over-eager to point out this as an example of there being violence on both sides (the bothsidesism fallacy) and when someone points out how brutal Mike Tyson’s blows were against the teen, instead of acknowledging it they ask what about the teen’s blows against Tyson (the whataboutism fallacy) and accuse the other side of a double standard and refuse to call out the harshness of Tyson’s blows until the other side acknowledges the (non)harshness of the teen’s blows against Tyson.
I look at “history” sometimes as a football game. Whether the ball appears to be in or out of bounds can differ depending on where one is seated watching the game. However, there can be cameras that can record more precisely and accurately whether the ball was in or out of bounds. The fact may be that the ball was out of bounds, despite our differing viewpoints. But as Stephen points out, history is a collection of stories told/recorded over a period of time.
“Various types of racism have been described (Jones, 1997): personal, which may be considered the same as prejudice (Allport, 1958); institutional, involving a set of environmental conditions, such as housing market conditions, that favors one group over another; and cultural, referring to shared beliefs about the superiority of one group over another. Racism also often involves control by one group over resources that another group wants or needs.”
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK24680/ )
“Racism is a whole set of beliefs about that which justifies those feelings and tries to make the case for differences that we find are innate, permanent, and are the basis for action, the basis for discrimination, or even for an institution that will be based on these differences. In other words, it tends to turn into a kind of inequality or hierarchy based on these ideas. So you’ve got to get the ideology in there for it to become racism rather than mere prejudice. ”
https://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-experts-02-02.htm
John W. I think I get the point you are trying to make. Perhaps a better label for what I described is racial prejudice. As I pointed out there is no comparison between the level of racism or racial prejudice experienced by our black brothers and sisters and white people in this country. White people need to lead the way in recognition of the past and current state of racial prejudice against blacks. Full stop. Most of us have a very scant understanding of history in regard to his issue. For example, most of us are ignorant of the discrimination that occurred under the GI bill that disadvantaged for generations, black people serving in the military.
Lois, I agree. The term racism encompasses a whole range of ideas, systems, situations, and expressions. My responses have been motivated by this emerging narrative on the right which seems quick to dismiss claims of racism from the left as exaggerations, overreactions, and political correctness gone awry, but almost overly eager to claim victimhood of white males to racism. This narrative ridicules claims of racism coming from the left almost to the point of denying its actually racism, but them loves to accuse the left of being racist over the silliest and most ridiculous things. Instead of calling out the extreme elements of the right for being racist, I often hear people giving them a pass and instead blaming left-wing oversensitivity for creating the alt-right. Absurd.
John W.
You are missing the point about power. At that moment, the Black Hebrew Israelites were adults hurling offensive slurs. The kids were kids waiting for their bus. In that moment, when no one knew that this whole scene would end up on national television, who had the power? And what does it matter that some cable news pundits or even the president have their back? Their reputations have still been tarnished, all as a result of things that the BHI protesters did. Even after more facts came out, people were still attacking the kid with the smirk on his face.
“Native American performing a traditional ritual” The fact that you are saying this is part of what I’m talking about. Nathan Phillips wasn’t performing a traditional ritual. He wasn’t the victim of some kids invading his privacy while he was minding his own business in a ritual. He inserted himself into a conflict between the boys and the BHI protesters. The boys were already chanting (as high school students do), when Phillips came by beating a drum. Why he confronted one of the boys when it was the BHI protesters that were belittling and mocking Native Americans is beyond me. But I suspect it had something to do with the boys being non-threatening, whereas the BHI crowd had made threatening comments and, being adult men, were capable of inflicting actual violence.
“The idea that there is this systemic black racism against whites that is having this massive negative impact on whites is a joke.” Who’s arguing that? Even Mike, who appears far too sympathetic to the MAGA crowd for my tastes, only argued that white Americans sometimes are on the receiving end of racial slurs and prejudice. Are white people in America subjected to racism far less frequently than other races? Absolutely. Does that fact make racism against white people OK? Absolutely not.
Your Tyson analogy is nonsensical but telling of your attitude. There is no battle between the races where we can measure the blows by one against the other. We are individuals, not part of some racial monolith. There are individual racists, and there are acts of racism (overt and subtle, conscious and unconscious). So, to fit your analogy, there are individual blows. When Mike Tyson hits a scrawny kid unprovoked, we would condemn that and recognize the magnitude of the damage. But that doesn’t excuse the scrawny kid hitting Tyson unprovoked. We can recognize that one is worse than the other, but we don’t get to wave away the immorality of the latter just because one party has more power than the other.
Before you jump in with it, yes, the kids did the tomahawk chop. Yes, that is offensive, and the kids need to learn why that’s offensive and face some kind of education/discipline over it. But even that was in response to a bizarre situation unolding in front of them, with an old man inexplicably beating a drum in their faces with one of the men with him telling the boys to go back to Europe and denying the science that we all share a common heritage coming from Africa. Doesn’t excuse it, but it does provide context.
“At that moment, the Black Hebrew Israelites were adults hurling offensive slurs. The kids were kids waiting for their bus. In that moment…”
Such an interesting question. Short term, the Black Israelite had the power (because of their age alone). Long term (both historically (at least representationaly) and in terms of life expectations of both groups) the kids had the power (because of race and socio-economics). That the kids held the long-term power was likely a strong reason for the Black Israelites targeting them.
Dsc,
1) How did BHI overpower the teen group? To have power over someone means getting them to do what you want. I fail to see how BHI got the teens to do what they wanted.
2) My main idea has always been and continues to be that the idea that there is racism on both sides is a false equivalence since white prejudice has had and continues to have a marked negative effect on blacks, whereas black prejudice against whites hasn’t had much of a negative effect on whites. Do you agree or disagree that this is a false equivalence?
*You misinterpreted the Mike Tyson analogy as whites (Tyson) vs. blacks (teen). No. Tyson = racial prejudice against blacks and the scrawny teen = racial prejudice against whites.
Also being capable of inflicting violence has nothing to do with power. Someone could beat me to a pulp for not doing what they demanded I do. If so I would charge them with battery and attempted murder, and if they were caught and tried and found guilty them the power of the law would ultimately overpower them. Power dynamics in any relationship usually aren’t that simple. How one has the upper hand in any relationship is attributable to a wide range of factors. Collectively blacks have never had the socio-economic or political upper hand in the US. Same goes for Native Americans.
John W
1) Is racism about getting people to do what you want? That seems like an awfully ideosyncratic view of both power and racism. Sometimes it’s about intimidation, territory, or putting someone in their place. I think all of those applied to the BHI group, both with respect to the Native American group and the Catholic boys.
2) As I pointed out before, the false equivalence argument is a straw man. I know only of fringe groups that seriously argue that racism against whites is a major threat. Defrauding a poor old lady of her pension is far worse than making up deductible expenses on your taxes, but that doesn’t make either ok, and it doesn’t change the fact that both are fraud.
If someone has the ability to beat you up they don’t have power? That makes no sense. All you’re saying is that at some later time, you have recourse to some greater power. That in no way negates the power the first person has in the first case. That would be like saying racists have no power because discrimination based on race is illegal.
Again, why are we looking at groups collectively? Does a poor white kid in a minority-white neighborhood benefit because white people have power elsewhere? What you are describing is racial scorekeeping, which perpetuates racism.
Dsc,
1)How did BHI overpower the teens? You agreed with me saying that racism is prejudice + power but can’t explain how BHI overpowered them. Shouting insults at people is not necessarily an assertion of power over them.
2) Do you agree or disagree that what Mike wrote above on race its a false equivalence or not? Stop beating around the bush. No one was trying to make the case that racial prejudice against whites was right.
I need to get $1,000 out of a guy. He won’t give it to me. I beat him up and he still won’t give it to me. I take him to court and still can’t get it from him. I am powerless against him. If I kill him it does me no good, since I can’t get the money. You don’t understand power.
“Does a poor white kid in a minority-white neighborhood benefit because white people have power elsewhere?” Most likely, yes. Statistically speaking. Whites of all socioeconomic backgrounds fare better than blacks of respective socioeconomic backgrounds.
“What you are describing is racial recordkeeping, which perpetuates racism?”
This is a thinly veiled way of calling me a racist for talking about races collectively. Because the real racists are those left-wingers who keep taking about social justice and categorizing people according to race. This is exactly the kind of right-wing nonsense I have been taking about that emanates from Jordan Peterson and other pseudo-scholar hacks who claim to be experts on race and racism without having even studied it in depth. Ideally races cease to exist and we evaluate each other as individuals, yes. But we don’t get there by just pretending that racial groups don’t exist. Social justice has only ever come by people who talk at length about race and point out the disparities between different racial and ethnic groups.
John W.
No, I did not say that racism is prejudice plus power. In fact I said that it’s just racial prejudice. What I did say is that even under the erroneous “prejudice plus power” definition, the BHI protesters were racist because, as adults in their element, they had power over the kids through intimidation. They intimidated both the kids and the Native American group. If you don’t see the power disparity in that situation, I can’t help you. I think you are being willfully blind to it.
There are problems with what Mike wrote, but false equivalence is not one of them.
No, John, it’s you who doesn’t understand power. If you kill someone, you clearly have power over them. Compulsion is not a necessary element of power.
Let me lift the veil for you. If you think that racial hatred is excused when it’s directed toward whites, then you are a racist. If you think that it’s ok for the Black Hebrew Israelites to hurl insults at a group of Native Americans as totem pole worshippers or to call the white kids fa**** lovers and crackers, then you’re a racist. If you are treating people one way solely because of race, then yes, you’re racist. If that’s not you, then no, you’re probably not a racist.
Racism is still alive and well, and white people typically aren’t the victims. Racism is often unconscious. I’m certainly not opposed to pointing subtle instances of racism or policies designed to prevent it. The right does a poor job of dealing with those issues, and the far right is becoming a place for full-throated racists to feel comfortable. But the far left is so far from Dr. King’s dream that they are perpetuating racism by continuing the pernicious practice of racial scorekeeping (*not “recordkeeping) and excusing racism when directed at some groups.
John W I love how faithfully you follow the liberal/progressive script in your discussion with Dsc. First you take a commonly used and accepted word and give it a new and specific definition, ie racism only applies when there is power. Then you berate your opponents who don’t use your personal definition. Then when your opponent takes you seriously and analyzes the power dynamics, as when Dsc illustrates who had power in that moment at the memorial you come back with a new and even more absurd redefinition of power, ie “… being capable of inflicting violence has nothing to do with power.” It’s a rhetorical sleight of hand that would make any 3 card monte huckster on the streets of NYC proud.
Dsc,
1) Answer my question. How did BHI have any power over the teens? Where is evidence of that?
2) So there is no false equivalence between collective racial prejudice against whites and that against blacks? And then you proceed to make false equivalences. The false equivalence fallacy is the opium of the conservative/libertarian mind. It is what assuages the pains of wanting to claim conservatism but having such reprehensible representatives of conservativism in the federal government. The bothsidesism and whataboutism to which you, Mike, and others on here appeal is the refuge of cowards. Racism has been and continues to be rampant among conservatives and libertarians in both overt and more particularly subtle ways and you can’t stand the fact that it is among conservatives more so than liberals so instead of owning the problem as a conservative you obsess about trying to point out some non-existent double standard on the part of liberals when it comes to racism. Furthermore you obsess about there being rampant racism against whites. Please. Whites are collectively no more the victims of racism than Mike Tyson would be the victim of a scrawny teen landing a few blows on him in a hypothetical street fight.
I am going to go ahead and declare a solid victory against you here. You clearly can’t defend your points let alone respond to my questions. You know exactly what I mean you just know you’re wrong and hate that you don’t have the ability to articulate a cogent and coherent rebuttal, so you resort to smoke and mirrors defense tactics and ramble on incoherently like a childish incoherent buffoon. You keep hacking away at that straw man you’ve created. You keep drinking the koolaid of false equivalence that has clearly poisoned your inability to reason.
KLM, you want to take me on? How about actually reading what I wrote and responding to my main points.
John W,
I answered your question. If you don’t think a group of adults hurling racial slurs at teens don’t have power over them, then you have a bizarre, idiosyncratic definition of power. But if you insist on showing a result, then the kids left although their bus hasn’t arrived. The BHI successfully asserted their territory.
You can wax philosophical all you like while attacking arguments I didn’t make*. You have a habit of doing this. It makes you look ridiculous, as KLC has pointed out.
Are you really so childish that you have to declare victory? Like the proverbial pigeon, you’ve knocked over the pieces, defacated on the board, and are now strutting around as though you’ve won. That is truly infantile nonsense.
*I never defended conservatives. I never claimed that there is rampant racism against whites; in fact I expressly disclaimed that. I don’t consider myself broadly conservative or libertarian, so your guilt by association argument is as misplaced as it is fallacious.
Your childish challenge to KLC is petty and hypocritical.
John W, do I want to take you on? Where do you think you are, in a middle school locker room or underneath the bleachers at a football game? But let me respond to one of your main points. By all complete accounts it was 4 adult men, the Black Hebrew Israelites, who created the tension at the monument that day by throwing slurs at the high school kids and the Native Americans. Nathan Phillips, a 70 something Native American man has stated that he wanted to defuse the situation. If that is true why didn’t he stand in the faces of the BHI and bang his drum? Or why didn’t he stand equidistant from the two groups and bang his drum? Why did a grown man choose to stand inches from the face of a child and bang his drum? I think the answer to those questions is simple, Nathan Phillips intuitively understands what power is and how to use it better than you do.
Dsc,
Desperate as usual to land blows (using the same critiques that I level at you) and you end up looking like more of a clown.
By your definition of power, MLK and his non-violent movement were overpowered by violent white supremacists, simply because the latter used violence. You keep repeating yourself (violent attacks and insults equal power, prejudiced insults against whites aren’t OK (no one said they were)) when I’ve refuted your points time and again. You persist in false equivalence and bothsidesism when I’ve refuted that. Is there racial prejudice from the left, of course. Is it to the same extent as that emanating from the right? Not even close. Taking about racial groups and interracial conflict doesn’t perpetuate racism. That’s absurd. Raw bigotry and hatred perpetuate racism. Denialism about the actual state of racism (which seems to afflict you) also perpetuates racism.
Your repeated attempts to try to label the left as just a racially prejudiced as the right are weak and ridiculous.
KLM, you come at me swinging as them try to address my points, but don’t even seem to know what they are. Try again.
John W
You throw a tantrum while calling me childish, and then you’re surprised that I called you childish? Oh, please! Your ad hominem garbage hurled at me is nothing more than a projection of your own failings.
“By your definition of power, MLK and his non-violent movement were overpowered by violent white supremacists, simply because the latter used violence.” Yes, in some cases violent white supremacists exerted power over MLK and his movement. And yes, ultimately we got civil rights legislation, so MLK et al ultimately exerted political power to achieve their goals. The question of power is not a zero-sum game; people and groups have it in varying magnitudes at different times. But I’m confused. You said “Collectively blacks have never had the … political upper hand in the US.” You appear to be asserting that MLK had power. If you meant something else, please clarify.
“You keep repeating yourself … when I’ve refuted your points time and again.” Get over yourself. You haven’t refuted anything. I keep repeating myself because you keep failing to address what I’m saying.
“Is there racial prejudice from the left, of course. Is it to the same extent as that emanating from the right? Not even close.” This is probably a true statement, to the extent that there is a coherent definition of right or left. The current president has made numerous racist statements, which are a greater cause for concern than racism on the left given who holds governmental office right now. But I’m not really interested in comparing the wrongs of the right with the wrongs of the left, despite your continued insistence that I’m engaging in “bothsideism” and “whataboutism”. My point is, and has been, that 1) the BHI protesters in this case engaged in blatant racism and 2) it is absurd to proclaim that “they are not capable of racism against [whites].”
“Taking [sic] about racial groups and interracial conflict doesn’t perpetuate racism. That’s absurd.” True. It’s a good thing that I never said what you seem to be attributing to me.
“Raw bigotry and hatred perpetuate racism. Denialism about the actual state of racism [unsupported ad hominem redacted] also perpetuates racism.” Absolutely true. Which is kind of my point: denying that this particular BHI group engaged in racism perpetuates racism.
“Your repeated attempts to try to label the left as just a racially prejudiced as the right are weak and ridiculous.” I take great pains to NOT lump people into groups. When pressed, I did make some broad statements about the “right”, “far right” and “far left”. I’d like to take this opportunity clarify that I’m attacking certain ideas that are more prevalent in each of those groups.
I’ll let KLC speak for himself or herself, but I will note that you’d be more credible if you got the name right (once is a typo, twice is being obtuse).
Dsc,
We’ve established that BHI (at least the members of it confronting the teens) is a hate group motivated by racial prejudice against whites. I don’t disagree, and. I condemn BHI for this type of behavior. It doesn’t fully excuse the teens for their behavior, however (and you seem to agree on that). You can call them racists too, fine (I am more concerned about false equivalence). But the thrust of black racial animus against whites just isn’t the same as the other way around.
When we look at racism in context over time, there has to be 1) recognition of systemic racism (which disempowered minority groups aren’t capable of, since their prejudices against others on the basis of race hasn’t really disempowered or taken away privilege from whites) and 2) a respect for distinctions in terminology (for this reason I am hesitant to attack BHI as ardent racists). If we call everything racism, it cheapens the real stuff. Yes, the left overreacts to racism and calls things racist that shouldn’t be. At least there is among the left attempts to identify the more subtle forms of racism that continue to disadvantage minorities. But this idea coming from the right that whites are huge victims of racism is far more egregious.
John W.
I had some minor issues with your response, but I’ll just say that I agree by and large with what you just said.