Running racism in America thread

Unfortunately, yes.

While it might scan that I'm dwelling on details, it seems like the tags and descriptors we still use play a part in how some of us see acceptable latitudes in behavior. The right conversation was started over the use of some of the regional identifiers last year. The problem was, the solution was a wrong and wrong-headed feel-good measure that ended up victimizing people with less clout and money.

I am not sure what the solution is beyond waiting out the racists who don't seem to die off fast enough.

In the interest of disclosure, I use the word "Dixie" in one of my work environments. If the Dixie Chicks now want to be the chicks, and Lady Antebellum want to be Lady A., that's their business. They went about it the wrong way. In both cases, they were the 800-pound gorillas plucking names from established artists with active careers. Frankly, if I was part of an Aussie group and "The Chicks" took my name, I'd consider changing to "The Chooks."

To get back on track, their bad behavior actually shut down a more important discussion on using or not using names with bad associations. Many of us here have tried for years to create a cultural new South that acknowledged the truer nature of who we are now. It's not always successful.

I do not know for sure if the people who misbehaved at that event were using their identity as a part of the "University of the South" as an excuse for how they behaved. They might have been as awful if they attended Middle Tennessee or UT of Vanderbilt.

 

Great googily-moogily. What a last 7 or 8 pages this has been.

 

I'm guessing SP is doing a few reps on the bench press and some push-ups.

 

My rabbi marched with MLK. I never once heard a racial or bigoted epithet of any kind in my house growing up. But I heard plenty of "shvartze this" and "shvartze that," mostly from people of my grandparents' generation.

When you're at the bottom looking up, the view rarely changes.

 

I was in a poker game in college freshman year and I was doing well, a rarity. One of the guys I was playing with, a guy I partied with everyday for months, went to bars with and football games with started calling me a dirty Jew, Kike and other shit every time I won a hand. I took his money and never talked to him again. But the other people at the table, none of whom were Jewish, may have told him to shut up once but told me to ignore it a dozen times. I’m so privileged

 

I’ve been trying most of the day to come up with how I want to try and say this, and I’m still not real settled on it.

I feel like a lot of times we white folks shut down when the “important conversation” is mentioned or implied because the risk/reward ratio is completely unbalanced. If the upside looks like a stair on the staircase, the downside looks like the Grand Canyon in comparison.

I think there’s a decent-sized chunk of people who aren’t at all set on being racist or bigoted or even especially mean to others, but just sort of go through life being dopey and insensitive because they’ve never really had to think much about the consequences of what they put out there.

But it isn’t that they see themselves as untouchable. On the contrary they’ve absorbed the lesson that being considered racist is a social (and often financial) death sentence in today’s America. And they are so terrified of that label they will go into a blind panic if they think anyone is about to get close to calling them that.

Panicked people don’t rationally engage in discussions about their behavior or their cultural background. They scramble to put as much distance between themselves and the perceived danger as possible, and they don’t much care who they run over to get there.

I have no good solution for this. Clearly the way we did it for centuries when we could dehumanize minorities with no consequences is wrong. Handing out slaps on the wrist doesn’t feel like my judgement call to make as part of America’s most favored subgroup. But it feels like we have to make some safe path back for people to acknowledge the wrong and be restored to a full-ranking part of the circle.

Otherwise we’re going to spend more wasted years duking it out over “cancel culture” and never making it more than about a third of the way up Maslov’s pyramid.

 

Agreed.

When the lawsuits started, I reckon many people who were on the cusp of joining the conversation took a look at the mess and said, "Oh, shoot. Never mind."

 

Oh, and while you didn’t mention my name on here, it is sort of an elephant in the room. I picked it out nearly 20 years ago (!) as a geographic identifier more than anything. With the exception of one hellish winter in DuBois, Pa., this is the region I’ve lived in and loved my whole life. Once upon a time I had a naive hope that it could be redeemed and improved without losing the distinctive characteristics that set it apart from everywhere else on earth.

I still feel like it suits me, but if it causes upset or struggle for others on here, I’m happy to ditch it. None of my fond memories are more valuable than making others feel welcome too.

 

My website has "Dixie" in the name. Not sure I'd change it, but I've got enough content on there to show it's not a haven for CSA apologists.

 

As you found in trying to frame your post, this is a large part of the problem: There is seemingly no good way to engage in discussions of race or other sensitive issues when they are between people who are, and who are not, a minority, without sounding, or being, or coming off as, offensive, whether that is the intention or not.

Because we aren't each other. We don't have -- can't have -- each other's perspectives. And when we try to share them, things inevitably go off the rails.

The other very real issue is that, yes, we really are way past slavery in the eyes of many. There's a large segment of white people for whom it is, rightly or wrongly, long-ago history now. It causes anger when something they were never involved in is continually brought up, as if there's something they can do about it at this point. And, it also causes, well, just plain ignorance. Not everybody who says or does a wrong or dumb thing is necessarily racist. And yet, they are nearly always accused of it.

More often, though, they're just ignorant -- not very aware or thoughtful, or perhaps not up on that history, or smart, learned, experienced or knowing enough to even realize that they may be offending some people's sensibilities. That's not to say it's right and that the standard shouldn't be raised. But oftentimes, it's probably not as wrong as some people may make it out to be, either.

It is a divide that may never be totally bridged, precisely because such issues are so difficult to discuss. And even if started, such discussions are too quickly and easily shut or shouted down, walked away from and silenced, usually because of anger and frustration or a lack of calm and unforgiveness on both sides. Blacks and whites both will need to be able to see things as not-quite-so-black-and-white if we're to really get above and beyond the racial fray.

 

Hmmmm.

Catholic order pledges $100m in reparations to descendants of enslaved people

 

Let’s see the cash padre, or it means shit.