If you want a window into contemporary racism and self-delusion, click here. (Granted, why would you want to look through that window?)
The link is to a discussion I started, as jharris, on the message board of my alma mater, Louisiana Tech University. I posted a video of President Bush pointing out some of the terrible history of lynching. I was hoping that might have an effect, since most of the people on that board admire Bush, though I never believed it would turn people around exactly.
This is the kind of culture I grew up in. More often than not, I'm pissed off about that fact.
4 comments:
The link to the Bush video doesn't seem to work. Couldn't help but notice the irony from from one unenlightened commentator stating how much "progress" has been made in race relations. The distorted and subtly offensive way he presents his argument is evidence that "progress" hasn't been made far enough.
I told you it was ugly.
For me, those comments reveal just how many white Americans have been unable to take responsibility for the crimes of their demographic
Disturbing, disappointing glimpse of one sector of my homeland. I'm a female African American Yankee currently living in post-Katrina South after living in CA, CO, MA and KY and here's what my experience suggests: racism is alive and well in the South, in the North, in the West and back East. I haven't found a place yet where I can escape it. And even more stunning and frightening than Racism (I use the word as a basket for all manner of rude, hateful, ignorant and bigoted thought and behavior by "white" people and all kinds of ignorant, violent, small-minded, self-loathing thouht and behavior by "black" people and all manner of evasive, indirect, self-serving thought and behavior by folks who are neither "black" nor "white")is the rampant inability to think critically and disheartening inability to apologize or forgive that seems to be the American way. I think it's our stuck-ness, stubbornness and inflexibility that will be our ultimated demise.
Having lived in that culture, I think one aspect of their racism that rarely gets considered is their joylesness. So many of the pleasures that liberal or free-thinking people take for granted--sex, drink, unfettered laughter--is frowned upon if not outright sanctioned. They are chaste, sober, and humorless; they are miserable.
How is that relevant? Because the only "pleasure" that isn't sanctioned is an individual's assertion of superiority over another. Indeed, that idea is at the heart of fundamentalist theology. I also think that proclivity speaks to their reluctance to let go of their racism.
Also, when one is as miserable as they are, it can be hard to love another.
Of course, I'm not making excuses for them. Just offering my understanding.
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