Running racism in America thread

Honestly don't know much about the guy - though I like the Seven Summers song. That said - hard not to have hope for a guy after a statement like this. And to root for him. Powerful stuff.

 

And this is just New York. Doesn’t even get into the MAGA nimrods booking rooms and running clubs nationwide.

 

Ordinarily I would say I really don’t need to hear from a celebrity on Day 9 of sobriety. But given the way he has become an anti-hero for the multicultural backlash element, it makes sense that he should try and tamp things down. Now back to the lab for a lot more listening and self-evaluation and addiction treatment.

 

Lansing Catholic under fire for photo of students in KKK garb

How embarrassing for the media

The photo was from 1979. Not really clear why anybody thought it was a brilliant idea to post it online in 2021.

 

Holy shit, that clarification alone: This story has been updated with new information on the origins of the photo and with Lansing Catholic's statement. While school administrators originally believed the photo was taken during a student theater production, they later confirmed it was from a 1978 Halloween assembly at the school.

 

Hmmmm. I wonder why a bunch of high school kids would have been in toga costumes in the fall of 1978. Now that's tough to figure out.

Although certainly in 1978 and maybe even today, fine upstanding Catholic families were supposed to have kept their little darlings free of corruptive influences. Even today I think Catholic school kids aren't supposed to have seen that movie until they're "able to handle it."

I imagine Ku Klux Kid was probably trying to pull off his own crossover concept with the previous huge hit comedy movie from 1974 no good little Catholic kids were supposed to have watched? "Hey Boys, look what I got heah!"

I dunno, all of that kinda makes sense, except not really the Nazi salutes.

And while the KKK scene was pretty funny, I know at my high school in the mid-70s, you'd have got ass-beat wearing a KKK hood in public.

While we're at it, in 1978 most parents and teachers were either WWII vets or family members, and the Nazi salutes would have gone down very badly.

And whatever was going on in 1978, it's still a hell of a question why anybody in 2021 would think it was a smart thing to put on the internet.

 

I'm surprised I wasn't suspended from elementary school - my total understanding of the Nazi's were from Mel Brooks movies and Hogan's Heroes - we thought they were a big joke. I don't think the reality of the Holocaust was brought up until middle school at the earliest. The Nazis were just "the bad guys" we needed to fight. I think the same was kind of true for depictions of the Klan in the '70s. People thought the current incarnation was a joke. They weren't feared.

 

You’re letting them off the hook way too easy. I’m from Lansing (I was in 3rd grade at the time - 8-10 years younger). My parents were born in the mid 40s. Most of their parents would have been born in the ‘30s, past the WW2 generation. Lansing’s always been racist and anti-semitic as hell (as one of the few Jewish kids around I got to experience plenty) and the kid in the KKK outfit knew what the fuck he was doing. I’m sure they learned it from their parents. That was the same year, by the way, that a Nazi-obsessed kid at Lansing Everett (Earvin Johnson’s alma mater) pulled off one of the first school shootings. The togas however were obviously an innocuous Animal House tribute.

 

Lansing Catholic (Central) seems hell bent to stomp in the shit with both feet -- they completely mishandled the anthem-kneeling brouhaha a couple years ago to the extent the majority of their quite limited number of minority students got the hell out.

Unless that was the idea in the first place.

At any rate they don't really need to go digging into 40-year-old yearbooks to dig up illustrations of why Black students might feel a tad uncomfortable there.

 

American culture, by definition is racist, its also sexist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant. It was anti-Catholic until the 60’s, name a Catholic family in a sitcom in the 50’s, the epitome of American Conservativeculture, was a non-denominational Protestantism. Not until Bridget LovesBernie. Henry Ford was a racist son of bitch and anti-Semitic, let’s boycott Ford. Thomas Edison said awful things about Jews, no more movies and light bulbs. No re-runs unless the demographic of the show matches the demographic of the country. Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Hawthorne and Melville, but bye. Did Edith Wharton write of subjects pertinent to the African American experience? Is Faulkner critical enough of the South to pass inspection? Is McCarthy sympathetic enough of Indigenous People and Mexicans to allow his books to be read in public?

Is there a line to be drawn between acknowledging the non-inclusive and actively racist past, a past dismissive of anything not Christian and White and almost always male versus erasing the record of that culture?

For everyone around the world, until 2016, America meant the actual American Dream. Work hard and you can get beyond the station you were born into. A concept beyond world comprehension prior to the 18th Century. So much so that People from Sub-Saharan West Africa, where the slaves were kidnapped and brought into bondage, came to theUnited States willingly and even desperately, for a better life. Those better lives they want are lives shaped around racist and exclusionary practices.

Can we still celebrate America and being Americans without celebrating the racism, sexism and anti-religious undertones?

 

The time has come
To say fair's fair

Jeep has used this name for years, without paying for it