Meghan and Harry had a chat with Oprah. Which had eventually been broadcasted on TV. Basically, there was nothing new nor really interesting there. For me, anyway. Yet there’s a lot of reaction.
I don’t really care about the reason for which the royals have treated Markle the way they did. About the reason which convinced the couple to speak up. The individual reasons for those who comment on the internet to do it as each of them had chosen to do it.
There are two points I need to make here.
The fact that they are rich and famous doesn’t change the fact that the oppression they’re speaking about is real….Maybe they experience it differently… maybe they have it easier when speaking about it… but opression continues to be dealt. Among us, by people like us.
And, secondly but just as important, those three weren’t discussing about mere oppression. They were talking about racist oppression!
Could this be the reason for so many people taking issues on this subject?
I fully agree with Sowell but the fact that Sowell is right doesn’t change the fact that we’re the ones responsible for present day racism.
Some people are convinced that George Floyd’s death was a direct consequence of racism while others are convinced racism cannot explain much and that each man is responsible for his fate. Or should I have said ‘each person is responsible for their fate’?
First things first. White people demanding that racist policing must be changed is a step further. Only it won’t take us far enough. We don’t need to change a scapegoat – racism, with another.
What? Racism is a scapegoat!?!
Yep! Racism was the scapegoat used by slave-owners to rationalize away the fact that they were using people – fellow human beings, as burden beasts. Racism is the scapegoat used by our contemporaries to rationalize away the fact that African Americans are more likely than their white neighbors to drop out of school and to get into prison. In fact, it doesn’t matter whether you consider that African Americans make bad decisions individually, as a consequence of their race/culture or as a result of having been oppressed for so long. For as long as we don’t acknowledge the fact that African Americans behave exactly like all the other Americans when exposed to the same socio-economic conditions we remain racists. All of us.
“I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.”
What happened since Dr. King’s prophetic words? The American Dream has grown more and more inaccessible, even for the whites? More and more white people feel that nobody hears them?
And too many of those who should have already heard continue to remain deaf? Or, even worse, instrumentalize that rage, already multi-racial, towards their petty political goals?
Nota Bene. Racism worked as a scapegoat exactly because Afro-Americans were so easy to pin-point. To identify as being different. And from ‘different’ to alien is but a small step… This being the reason for people of color being pulled over by the police more often than their white counter-parts. An ‘alien’ driving a Tesla ?!?
‘Racist’ is label. Affixed by others, on people they do not agree with.
Meanwhile, those who entertain, or just display, such sentiments see, or just describe, themselves as ‘defenders of their own kin’.
As ‘fighters for justice’ while those belonging to ‘the other side’ see them as villainous oppressors.
In fact, there are two kind of ‘racists’. The bona fide and the con-artists. Oftentimes both inhabiting the same persona….
The bona fide are ‘somewhat scared’ about what’s going on around them and in dire need of social support – the reason for them huddling together with like-minded people while giving up a sizeable portion of their free will/intellectual autonomy.
The con-artists are those who mimic the fears experienced by the bona-fide in order to gain control over them. Or to otherwise exploit the situation. Oftentimes the con-artists interpret their roles with so much passion that they end up convincing themselves…
Donald Trump is neither.
He has convinced himself that he is so above everything and everybody that nothing will ever hurt him.
He’s not afraid of anything. He cannot, ever, be a bona-fide racist.
Neither is he a ‘fake’ one. He’s simply too smart for that. He actually knows that pretending such things would be bad for business.
I understand that in the current circumstances ‘racism’ ‘sells’ but shouldn’t we refrain from making things worse than they already are? After all we live in this world too, don’t we?!?
What happened there is that in the last 16 years fourteen hundred (1400) kids were raped, mostly by Pakistani men, while the authorities did nothing. Not because they didn’t know, mind you. And instead of trying to understand how come the entire social organism failed abysmally some continue to play the blame game…
The key to all these is the fact that those children were abused not only by the rapists themselves but also by the authorities. Further more the rapists thought it was OK to do what they did (they wouldn’t have done it on such a large scale otherwise but they were horribly wrong) while the authorities should have known, at least deep in their hearts, that they were acting cowardly – to use the least inflammatory word.
And the main hurdle that needs to be overcome is indeed ‘racist’ thinking and ‘politically correctness’ – in the twisted acception that this notion has been given lately.
Racism isn’t about the color of the skin, it’s about putting the blame, squarely and indiscriminately, on ‘the different other’. Ignore the capitalized words while reading the last quoted paragraph and you’ll understand what I mean. Don’t worry that the last sentence has become a lot more powerful this way… those who perpetrated this, both the rapists and the authorities, were not people at all! Regardless of their creed or anything else.
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nicichiarasa 