Racial attitudes are up against a ticking wind-up alarm clock.

Is this the summer of our discontent?

First, the confederate flag is folding tent and silently stealing away after 150 years of "in-your-face" flamery. Now Latinos are systematically withdrawing from Donald Trump's empire after his disparaging remarks stripped him of considerable mediaclothing. Have we finally gotten to the point where industrialized and sanctioned racism is no longer merchandizable...therefore ruinable?

Vote with your dollars. It's been said. It works. Anyone foolish enough to be hoarding those Stars and Bars memorabelia might take a lesson from a century ago - money became so worthless in Germany that people burned it to keep warm. Winter is coming - that stuff has fueled enough heat for one universe. Let it go. No one will ever buy it again.

We are seeing a shift in something - social awakening, the meter finally getting to the top, or just the freaking heat...but there is good reason for bigots and the old time die hards to begin sweating out some extra Mountain Dew. People are simply not going to let you continue to be assholes. The right to be an asshole is being revoked everywhere...by popular consent. Majority rules. At last.

More like a new brand of @sshole is on the block - the one who decides that their problems are now everyone else's fault.

Do you wanna hear something I've been holding onto that rhymes...



What rhymes with Racist Terror Attack...


Yes...

Blame Confederate Flags...

The USSA, if you don't think exactly like we deem to be socially acceptable, we'll bully you into it!

a reply to: cronemel

Yeah, I'm not so optimistic cronemel. I love your enthusiasm for racial equality, but I don't like the way this most recent thing went down. Did a passionate civil debate precede the taking down of these flags? Nope, human death did. Just like 9/11 preceded radical political changes in the US, so did these killings precede the current political changes. I don't like the precedent that sets: We're becoming a culture where any substantial political changes requires a human sacrifice, requires people to die. That removes power from civil debaters and thinkers, and places it squarely in the hands of killers. We need to get to the point where we think rationally about the whole picture, rather than responding to highly publicized human deaths.

a reply to: ketsuko

Overly dramatic Regressives claim that they're being bullied because they can't bully anymore.

originally posted by: Kali74
a reply to: ketsuko

Overly dramatic Regressives claim that they're being bullied because they can't bully anymore.

It seems the only way many of us were being bullies was by simply existing. Would you like me to flay off my white skin? That's all it takes for me to perpetrate microaggression and get in trouble is to have white skin and for someone else to have a problem with that.

I am waiting for you to simply do what it seems you must in order to remove our hateful existence.

Majority is mob rule..good luck with that
reply to: cronemel

Just like 9/11 preceded radical political changes in the US, so did these killings precede the current political changes.

a reply to: tridentblue

Very good point. It seems like that's the current trend in the United States. Instead of investigating and weighing the facts before making a decision, the U.S. is using these incidents to justify radical changes even if it goes against our constitutional rights. Kind of makes you wonder if there's a secret agenda in the works.

a reply to: WeRpeons

Yep, 6,775 people die in the US every day according to my google search, but the nine are supremely important, we are told by the media. My heart is with those people who die in the ghetto due to gang violence unreported, with those children who die due to unreported abuse, the cancer victims who died due to poisons in the food unreported. All those who's lives aren't important to be part of the official CNN human sacrifice narrative.

True justice will come when we consider ALL deaths, not just those considered useful to current political narratives.

a reply to: ketsuko

*yawn...

I'm also white.

ETA: Do you use Apple for anything, Wal-mart, Sears, Amazon? If so... why do you not write them, boycott them etc? Capitalism is persecuting you, not the government (at least not on this issue) and not massive amounts of individuals either. Or you can just keep hiding under your blankets from the monsters in your head.

originally posted by: ketsuko

originally posted by: Kali74
a reply to: ketsuko

Overly dramatic Regressives claim that they're being bullied because they can't bully anymore.

It seems the only way many of us were being bullies was by simply existing.

Would you like me to flay off my white skin? That's all it takes for me to perpetrate microaggression and get in trouble is to have white skin and for someone else to have a problem with that.

I am waiting for you to simply do what it seems you must in order to remove our hateful existence.

Cool, can use this again
www.urbandictionary.com

White Privilege:

The racist idea that simply being white benefits people in some unexplainable way, and that discriminating against white people is not only okay, but enlightened and necessary.

The excuse some extremists use to justify pretty much any level of racism, as long as it is coming from people of color.



Microaggressions:

Acts or words that are perceived to be insulting by a person who is looking to be insulted, whether or not that was the intent of the transgressor. Usually a symptom of a persecution complex. (n)

Microagression:

Supposedly, a microagression is when you do something offensive in a small innocuous way. In practice it's what happens whenever a white/straight/male does anything, ever. So basically, it's an excuse for liberals to be angry for no reason.

originally posted by: Kali74
a reply to: ketsuko

*yawn...

I'm also white.

ETA: Do you use Apple for anything, Wal-mart, Sears, Amazon? If so... why do you not write them, boycott them etc? Capitalism is persecuting you, not the government (at least not on this issue) and not massive amounts of individuals either. Or you can just keep hiding under your blankets from the monsters in your head.

Actually, no I don't use Apple, Walmart or Sears and seldom use Amazon.

But, you are one of the posters who claims that white privilege is a very real thing, and since the only way to avoid it is to not be white which I can only remedy by either dying or flaying off my skin ...

I asked you how you suggest we go about fixing it.

I certainly don't intend to change what I'm doing because all I'm doing is living my life, so the only way it can be changed at this point is for someone to remove me from existence. Are you going to do that?

That's the question. I'm not going to feel guilty for simply living and being who I am.

a reply to: ketsuko

Acknowledging white privilege has nothing to do with guilt or accepting responsibility for things you had nothing to do with. If you're truly not a racist and I don't think you are then you're already most of the way there.

This is a very tough thing for conservatives to do because they believe or are brainwashed into believing that anyone can make it if they just work hard enough. It just simply is not true, it's much harder for anyone born into poverty to make it than it is for someone born into the middle (well upper middle now) class... now for minorities it's magnitudes harder. Why? There needs to be a bottom, in every capitalist system there has to be a bottom and buttloads of people completely outside the system, especially in the type of capitalism we are dealing with in the west right now. In order to maximize profits, people have to be minimized even to the point of invisibility.

This is most easily accomplished by projecting stereotypes and racism, demonizing and making people feel threatened. That's what needs to be acknowledged. The biggest thing, in my opinion right now, is the justice system... not just the police killing unarmed minorities but the entire system.

I'll end it there for now, if you're actually interested and not just gonna shrug it off I'm glad to continue later.

a reply to: ketsuko

All it takes for me to perpetrate microaggression and get in trouble is to have white skin and for someone else to have a problem with that.

Sure, sure. Making posts like the one quoted has absolutely nothing to do with it.

What a great example of a self-negating statement.

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: ketsuko

All it takes for me to perpetrate microaggression and get in trouble is to have white skin and for someone else to have a problem with that.

Sure, sure. Making posts like the one quoted has absolutely nothing to do with it.

What a great example of a self-negating statement.

A microaggression is me walking into a room or not walking into a room if the people inside that room want to think there was racial intent behind how I did or didn't do it and choose to take offense from it. It that sense, yes, it is very much their problem and not mine. All I did or didn't do was walk into the room or not.

In that sense, the racial problem is on their part, not mine. Or at least, it's only mine in the sense that I'm the wrong race and they make a problem out of it.

You have been keeping up with this haven't you?

a reply to: ketsuko

There is no such thing as microaggression. There are only people choosing to take offence at imagined slights, and people pretending that their deliberately offensive behaviour wasn't really intended to offend anybody.

Fortunately, most of us stop worrying about things like this when we graduate from nursery school!

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: ketsuko

There is no such thing as microaggression. There are only people choosing to take offence at imagined slights, and people pretending that their deliberately offensive behaviour wasn't really intended to offend anybody.

Fortunately, most of us stop worrying about things like this when we graduate from nursery school!

Accept that now you can actually get in trouble for it and lose your job. So, no, most people did not stop worrying about it when they left nursery school.

It's a useful tool for instituting a climate of fear and oppression in the population and keeping them apart, so what makes you think they'd not resurrect it? Trust me, they train people on it in the corporate and business world. It is a very real thing and very real concern. The California University complex just recently released a guidance document instructing professors on microagressions they should avoid to make the campi more "open" and "inclusive."

If you choose to ignore where we are actually heading with all this, then you will stick your head in the sand until it actually bites you in the butt, and by then, you will look around for allies and find out that the rest of us were long ago sold out and your apathy failed to defend us.

originally posted by: ketsuko
More like a new brand of @sshole is on the block - the one who decides that their problems are now everyone else's fault.

Sounds exactly like some subsets of Christians and the Right who blame the downfall of humanity on two guys doing the devil's business behind a closed door

a reply to: ketsuko

Would you like me to flay off my white skin? That's all it takes for me to perpetrate microaggression and get in trouble is to have white skin and for someone else to have a problem with that.

I am waiting for you to simply do what it seems you must in order to remove our hateful existence.

If you want to have an obvious conversation - then lets have it

I am probably at least as white as you Ketsuko

Funny - I don't feel the need to whine about it. I don't feel threatened - at all. I don't feel angry. In fact - I don't see myself as being separate in all this. On the contrary - I feel connected

You sound quite a bit like some folks did back then during the civil rights movement. Things really don't change all that much - do they? Except now it's you that's playing the victim for all it's worth

Get a grip

The only thing that's happened is a flag came down that should never have been raised in the first place

Things are changing - for a reason. You can play that one sad anti-PC note all you want, but that note is the sound of another kind of oppression, another kind of call for an end to freedom of speech

We're all Americans. Only a fool could miss that we're not all equal. It takes another kind of fool to argue that they are less equal and persecuted because they are in the majority

Honestly - I've been embarrassed for my fellow members here more than once or twice - but this last week has been a real eye opener