riots vs revolutions

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Doug:
>  > I hope you're not dis'ing Fat Joe with this remark. I love Fat Joe.
>
>I was talking more in general terms - about the regrettable phenomenon
>of identity culture that espouses the worst stereotypes and prejudices.
>If a bunch of Poles started calling themselves polacks and singing songs
>how good it is to be stupid and drunk, or a bunch of Jews started
>calling themselves kikes and boasting how greedy and conniving they are,
>or a bunch of Italians calling themselves wops and bragging that they
>are lazy and dirty  - the hell would break loose.  However, when some
>Blacks call themselves niggas and publicly extoll violence and bigotry -
>white media producers and suburbanites start cheerleading.  I find it
>deplorable, but hey, it sells.
>
>Some time ago I read a story in the BG about a Black professional couple
>in the 1930s who made a truly heroic effort to maintain a "middle class"
>life style  and access to "high culture" for themselves and their kids
>despite terrible discrimination they faced.  I thought these people must
>have incredible courage and determination to show up in an opera house,
>a museum, or a restaurant "reserved" for whites - and do so alone, with
>no federal troops or a social movement behind them.  So from that
>perspective, when I see a bunch of Black hoodlums or wannabies wallowing
>in the worst racist stereotypes for the enetertainment of spoiled
>suburban brats - I feel nothing but disgust.
>
>Wojtek

Isn't it rather tragic for blacks or any other racial, ethnic, 
sexual, or other minorities to have to live very carefully so as not 
to fit any stereotypes about them (or rather us, as I fall into many 
categories of minorities in the US) that others might have?

What the dominant group can take for granted is to be able to screw 
up and yet not to have the screw-up chalked up as evidence of 
degeneracy of the entire group.
-- 
Yoshie

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