riots vs revolutions

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

Yoshie:
> 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.

I think these are two very different things.  I guess a bigot will
always see negative things in people of different background, no matter
how "careful" or "careless" they are.  But that is altogether different
from somebody deliberately espousing the worst stereotypes for public
entertainment or consumption.  

Self-depreciation seems to be a tactic deliberately exploited by racists
of various stripes.  A few years ago I attended a presentation by a
known racist on JHU faculty (his name was Gordon and I am not sure if he
is still with jhu) showing the results of his study (funded by the
Pioneer Fund) supporting the "Bell Curve" claims.  His assitant (the guy
who flipped his slides and distributed handouts) was a Black guy.  I am
pretty sure that his participation in that openly racist event was a
deliberate tactic to make it appear less racist than it was - a message
of a sort "even some Blacks accept my findings, so it is not as racist
as you may think."  The same thing seems to be at work in the gangsta
rap industry.  

I read somewhere (forgot the source) that when rap first came out in
1980s, black stations refused to play it, but white stations (mostly
college) picked it up.  Seems to be the same trick as the tsarist or
nazi propaganda machines publishing the Protocols of the Eders of Zion
as supposedly 'authentic' Jewish source.

Wojtek