>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>>Ravi says:
>>
>>>the acts of a
>>>white lynch mob going after a black man in the deep south is
>>>significantly different from an opressed afghani mob going after
>>>an innocent white man.
>>
>>Had Robert Fisk been a black man in the South assaulted by a white
>>lynch mob, he would not have likely lived to write an article, as
>>there wouldn't have been any white Good Samaritan with courage
>>enough to step forward, stop the mob, and escort him to safety, in
>>the manner that an elderly Muslim man did in Fisk's article:
>
>i would however avoid this line of reasoning as i am sure at least
>one example can be found of a white person protecting a black person
>from a lynch mob in the annals of history.
You know I'm not a Popperian. :->
Perhaps, a good number of whites wish that there had been one instance at least -- the wish fulfilled in a cinematic fantasy in the Cohen brothers' _O Brother, Where Art Thou?_
As American lynching was a politically institutionalized practice, however, one white man's courage would not have helped, so my post was indeed misleading. Such a courageous white man would have, most likely, himself been lynched. The elderly Muslim man in Fisk's article could protect Fisk because the mob attack wasn't part of a political institution like American lynching.
>rather, imho we need to
>hear brad's view with respect to the analogies that were clarified
>in the various responses to him (i.e., displaced afghani refugee mob
>bombed by US airplanes != powerful white mob lynching helpless black
>person, illogical acts of rage born out of frustration and
>helplessness not caused by "upbringing" or "racism" and is not the
>same as well-planned acts of violence and terror by groups in power,
>etc, etc).
It's characteristic of ideology to make such inversions, for instance suggesting as if dispossessed Afghan refugees were structurally in the same position of power as white supremacists. -- Yoshie
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