No at all! What I am saying, though, is that I'd much rather spend my time fostering love and a unified future with my black brothers and sisters, as opposed to cramming dark, hateful history into their heads. The future is NOW not BACK THEN! It's one of the reasons I fully support the efforts of the Woodson Center, 1776 Unites, and others.
Cramming dark hateful history into their heads. What an utterly condescending statement. You think Black people don't know their history? Or the systemic racism that exists now? Do please try whitesplaining somewhere other than sports boards among a nearly all white audience. Don't talk about slavery, Jim Crow, lynching, or voter suppression going on right now. Ignore it and it goes away! Don't upset white people.
I do think Winston Churchill said it best, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” But instead of doomed, I think there is a certain segment of this CRT pearl-clutching that would be very happy to repeat it.
Meanwhile, don't forget to keep a hopeful, watchful eye on some of the positive efforts other folks are doing. It's not all wrong, nor in vain. Try your best not to scoff.
I mean, I guess that's one way to approach it. But I've never been one to bury my head in the sand. As a matter of fact, it's that ugly history which my people survived and in some ways thrived (think soul food and negro spirituals) which make me proud. Growing up, it was truly a source of pride in that we KNEW we were strong for the simple fact of what we'd gone through. Also, it does not have me walking around here fueled by anger or hate and that was taught to me by my mother. She was born into 1930's Alabama, then moved as a teen to 1940's Oregon, probably the most racist state outside of the south. And she still managed to have love for EVERYONE. Talk about overcoming.
My dad was from Alabama and I was born in Georgia. We moved here in the late 40s and I remember the trip. We lived in Oswego, later renamed Lake Oswego when they merged with Lake Grove and it was incredibly racist. I knew dirty jokes about every race except the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. My father was a bit of a racist until I was 12 and that was when he went 180 degrees the other way and said he didn't blame Blacks from being angry with Whites. Actually he confessed to me that he was never really comfortable with being a racist and that was because he was a naturally curious person who didn't feel quite right about being a racist. He switched and became a flaming Liberal. I also became a flaming Liberal when I was 12 which suddenly made sense to me. My father then went on to tell me that my 1/16th Indian (Cherokee) meant that I could not attend a public school by law in the state of South Carolina and this hit me like a ton of bricks. What a bunch of backward people they are in that part of the country. Now, Lake Oswego is decidedly Liberal. The old and stupid days are gone forever.
Thanks for that. I don't think you and I differ at all when you talk about love for EVERYONE. That said, I suppose I do have a bit different understanding/approach to all of this than some in here. It's not the only approach. It's another approach. That's OK, though. I really can appreciate Kay Coles James' (a Black woman) takes on some of what's going on here. She's the president of the Heritage Foundation - an organization that, for whatever reason, Sly chooses to poo-poo. Here is a piece from the WSJ. It's an insightful article on the woman. I hope you'll check it out. I'll copy the last few paragraphs. On Being Black and Conservative The Heritage Foundation’s president on the racial progress she’s experienced, the problems that remain, and becoming a target of Fox host Tucker Carlson. .......Mrs. James almost sputters—“You can tell that I struggle even to find the words”—when I ask what she thinks of the New York Times’s “1619 Project,” which attempts “to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619,” when the first slaves were brought to Jamestown, Va., “as our true founding.” That dubious history, Mrs. James says, hurts the cause of racial reconciliation. “It does harm because it creates a false narrative about what the real problem is, and if you don’t understand what the real problem is, you can’t come up with real solutions,” she says. “If the real problem is the individuals in this country who still harbor [racism], then I think you need to come up with some ideas for how to influence individuals in this country to change.” She has two ideas for conservatives who are “looking for a prescription about what we can do at this moment in our country’s history. First, push back against the left’s assault on American institutions. Second, “showing up and being there” individually. “It is amazing to me how often we don’t show up.” Mrs. James has been showing up for decades. She served as an assistant secretary of health and human services during George H.W. Bush’s administration and in George W. Bush’s White House. She was a spokeswoman for the National Right to Life Committee. She became president of Heritage in 2018, and last year she was “canceled” for the first time. Google employees signed a letter decrying her inclusion on an artificial-intelligence advisory committee, which the company then abandoned. Mrs. James also shows up at the Gloucester Institute, a nonprofit she founded in Virginia that operates leadership and educational programs for minority college students. The organization says it works with hundreds of students a year, and Mrs. James meets with students and alumni several times annually for conferences, mentoring and informal discussions. One of its objectives is to “cultivate a society of ‘solutionists’ within minority communities,” according to its website. “My heart’s desire there,” Mrs. James says, “is to raise up a generation of future leaders who can employ critical thinking, who can dissect arguments, who can work across ideological, philosophical and party lines to solve the most important problems of the day.” She describes her own conservatism not only as a political philosophy but a common-sense outgrowth of her experience. “The reason that I am a conservative today is because I know—I have seen with my own eyes, I have experienced it in my own life, I know—that conservative values and principles win the day,” she says. Mrs. James has never shied away from race. “Being black means something,” she wrote in 1995. “If you want to know me, want to understand me, want to be my friend, then you must want to know what being black is.” But unlike today’s progressives, she doesn’t disavow “colorblindness.” It is “something we aspire to,” she says. But “I celebrate the fact that in the African-American community we have a rich culture that I have no interest in erasing.” In the present unrest, Mrs. James takes encouragement from what she’s seen in America since her childhood in that newly integrated Richmond school. “Out of all that came someone, me, who genuinely believes that this is not a racist nation,” she says. “But it is a nation where race is still a factor and still matters and it still exists within men’s hearts. I by nature am an optimist and I by nature recognize the redemptive power that can exist within one’s own heart.” Do young black students in the Gloucester program share her hopeful outlook about America? She doesn’t hesitate: “Oh, they really do.”
I suppose if this was Germany we would hear I love the Jews and let's talk about the accomplishments of Jewish people and not the ugly history. Do you know Hitler cited Jim Crow laws in American South as model for Nuremberg laws? Studies show Black people are much less likely to receive aid from FEMA following a disaster than white people with comparable losses. Investigation shows FEMA is not deliberately discriminating. But to receive compensation for loss during disaster a person must show proof of ownership of property. For a century and more Black people were shut out of the court system. So if a Black person managed to acquire property he or she would simply tell the children who got what and it continued through generations with no written title. Hence no legal proof of ownership. This is taught in law school under rubric of critical race theory as an example of a legal practice that even though no longer in place still results in racial discrimination. That is what is being banned. Last night watched PBS program on Marian Anderson. Should they have just talked about her beautiful voice and ignored racism she faced her whole life? How even when internationally famous she still couldn't eat in many American restaurants?
Meanwhile, organizations such as the Woodson Center are rolling up their collective sleeves and gettin' at the business of helping lives on a daily basis. https://woodsoncenter.org/how-we-help/programs/
Did you read the article I shared about Kay Coles James? Here's a vid, as well. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/news...-theory-and-celebrating-juneteenth/vi-AAL9d5S
ABM, you are a very good person although in my opinion your politics are all fucked up. However, politics is not my feeling about an adult's caliber. Hence in my opinion, in spite of your mystifying love of the worst in politics you are tops and I take my hat off to you in front of anyone, anytime. If friends couldn't look past blemishes here and there we'd have no friends and Lord knows I've got more than my share of blemishes and thank God my wife can still remind me. As you know, I'm a religious man, so it shouldn't be a surprise that Christ is my prime example of the ability to look past a person's blemishes.
