by evilgenius » Thu 23 Apr 2020, 14:45:49
At the risk of being called a racist for being white and talking about it, I would like to talk about the racial issue brought up by noobtube. Some of the accusations brought up are correct, in my opinion.
Red lining, among other things, is not that far in the past. I didn't grow up in a racist state, but when I was a kid my family was going through part of Kansas. We came across a restroom that had 'colored' and 'white' signs over separate entrances to the same restroom. Black people have had to deal with being deliberately put down in my lifetime. Still, I maintain, it is the lack of opportunity that has plagued black people in the US more than direct oppression. I loved how noobtube characterized cop lovers. That's a great, and subtle, point, but gaining political power by cleverly interacting within the system is possible. To do that, however, you have to stop complaining and get to work. That is what worked so well when the get out the vote movements were occurring in the sixties. You don't get to merely complain about how bad things are when there is some character problem on your part that has led to some of your problems. Getting out the vote was entirely positive. Not voting as a community, such that you allow a minority to politically dominate you, is not.
I will make an assertion about the nature of community, but I don't think noobtube wants to hear it. That is just that whites are far more independent than blacks in general. You do see white people leaving where they've come from and making a go of it somewhere strange to them far more often than you see blacks. That sort of independence is key to getting a handle on risk. But I'm not certain that's got anything to do with whiteness. I think that capitalism has taught whites that. Whites are not a homogeneous group. Many of the class struggles were first realized as whites did that. They had to learn to take advantage of opportunity. Sometimes they had to force it. The labor movement is case in point.
Those things might be changing. When I recently went back to finish college, I was glad to see many more black people in school than I anticipated. I was used to thinking about the situation the way noobtube wrote about it. Black people, and women in general, are going to school in numbers that are revolutionary. The future will not be like the past.
Also, in my last couple decades of working, I have seen many more blacks working at what used to be white only jobs. Work places in America are more multicultural than ever. Black people are making advances on that front as well.
A person could call Barack Obama an Uncle Tom too, I suppose. He had great political and oratorical skills. But there are people who would merely say he was acting white, and that's why he was elected. They'll say he was just another white president. That speaks to the class issues which also surround this topic. Some things about class are very neutral in nature. Others are awfully charged. I've brought this up before on this site, somewhere, but I remember talking to a black man I know about Obama before he became a front runner. Back then, he was not getting a great deal of support from black people. The jury was still out. Turns out, they were concerned whether he was an Uncle Tom. Hillary had a proven track record. At first, she seemed safer. But Obama was not promising to be only the black people's president. He was promising to be America's president. At first Jesse Jackson was more popular with black people than Barack Obama. I think why he was is down to attitudes about class, not race.
Capitalism has taught whites a lot of things. For the winner take all aspect, however, you have to go back before capitalism was a thing. Colonialism has more in common with medieval Christianity, particularly the attitudes surrounding the crusades, than it does capitalism. I'm not anti-Christian, but we have to be honest. There is a problem embedded in Christianity that has never faced much scrutiny. That is how too many Christians can be blind to the humanity of those they come across, only seeing people as needing to be saved. If they have to kill them to save them, so be it. And colonizers tended, almost always, to see their countries as actively involved in whatever the Christian struggle was. Missionaries were a crucial aspect of colonialism. They didn't just introduce religion. They brought a forest of ideas, many of which were enslaving to the mind.
Several groups/nations did try to play along. The Cherokees come directly to mind. They developed an intricate modern to the day culture in response to the threat of whites settling their land. They thought they would nullify the colonialist's arguments for the way they were treated. That didn't work for them. They got ground under by 'manifest destiny.'