From: "R" <rhisiart at charter.net>
you're being very tactful, charles. i feel like i'm looking at the tip of the iceberg. since it's your iceberg, show as much or as little as you like. but let me ask:
how do you think us white folks are doing?
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CB: :>) Not that great.
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do you think the white folks are enlightened enough to change and eradicate racism?
^^^ CB: Yes, I think you have got it in you'all, but we are going to have to work some to bring it out.
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are the white folks moving fast enough for you, and in the right direction?
^^^^ CB: No, and starting with Reaganism, they started moving backward from where they had got through the civil rights movement success, et seq.
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i'd say our record hasn't been so good since the neodixiecrat carter administration. that's going on thirty years. remember how jesus ... i mean "jimmy" carter's church didn't allow black members? (that rabbit who chased him had the right idea.) what i've been seeing these past 30 years reminds me so much of a latter day replay of Reconstruction, with a few new twists.
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CB: Yes, there is a certain spiral of history effect, seemingly.
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but i'd much rather hear your opinion, and the opinions of others.
it's OK focusing on white folks and their attitudes and actions. in fact, it's essential. but i believe there also are elements in the black community that need attention, non-dominant or not.
^^^ CB: Sure, there is a certain "knot" of reciprocal determinations here where self-help for Black people is very necessary, however, fundamentally, anti-Black (colored people in general) racism is the priority problem to be solved.
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a sample list: 1. clarence thomas 2. condi rice 3. ward connerly in calif and on the road 4. the NAACP's failure to get the phony felon list in florida destroyed, despite winning the lawsuit 5. colon powell 6. several other opportunistic black republicans, who believe getting ahead is being republican 7. last but not least, the "black" president, bill clinton. i haven't read his autobiography. to anyone who has read that pointless tome: is there anything in it about race? remember how the "black" president was dead set against changing the law to make charges for possession of crack equivalent to powder cocaine charges? "No," was his response when asked if he'd even bring it up.
you see, the reason i think these areas (just a token few) need attention is that whenever the white folks who aren't so enlightened look at race, they listen to wealthy, successful afro-american "spokes persons" who say things are just fine in the black community and everyone's happy; that programs like affirmative action aren't necessary -- and, in fact, are an insult to the afro-american people; that "reformed" (thanks to the republicans, neoDixicrats and the "black" president) welfare mothers benefit from working two jobs and still being under the poverty line; that blacks who are willing to work are doing well but the rest are lazy, shiftless, resort to a life of crime and violence, and deserve what they get. and so forth.
^^^ CB: Yes, I see what you mean. It is a very difficult riddle to solve, getting white people to see through these illusions. It is especially difficult when the racism is the main weapon of the capitalist ruling class against the working class, and therefore all the main institutions of indoctrination still inculcate it in mass, white thinking.
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as a reflection of the attitudes fostered by ignorant whites and self-serving black republicans, people on the list may know that just a few days ago an unarmed black man was beaten by Los Angeles Police peace officers after surrendering. much like the rodney king beating of a few years ago, if you're familiar with that. the beating, like the king beating, was caught on video tape and aired, over and over again, on TV. over and over so people who are afraid of blacks and who get off on TV programs like Cops, where blacks are the bad guys, can enjoy that vicarious thrill of watching an unarmed, defenseless black guy get the shit beat out of him.
the police chief, a former new yorker, is making mostly the right moves ... it seems. yet, one thing that stuck in my mind regarding the PR follow-up to this crime and civil rights horror was the story about how the LA chief of police had turned to religious leaders in the black community for ... who knows what. this rings of exactly the way whites and black religious leaders always got together to control people in the black community during the jim crow era. plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.
^^^^^ CB: Yes, although the Black church was also a root of organized resistance at some points.
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at this point, i'm wondering if it's at all possible to have a fully candid discussion of racism on this list. or if that's even the purpose of the list. doug will have to weigh in on the latter if he chooses.
R
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CB: I think you are doing the right thing in urging a discussion and trying to have one. There have been many discussions of race through the history of the list, arguments and debates , too. So, Doug has by implication ( if not specific statement in the "prelim") included it as a list topic.
I think a good issue for white people to discuss is the _material_ ( not moral) basis for reparations and affirmative action. How do wealth and class/status advantages get inherited, such that white people can't say "all that was before I was born " ? Furthermore, what _about_ the Black middle class , and even more, what about Black drug dealers and others who harm the Black community ? How is it that Black people are not "doing it to themselves" at this stage in the history of American racism ?
I'm willing to discuss these with you, but I stand by my main assertion that the solution to racism in America is not in the hands of Blacks , but in the hands of whites.