BRIGGS wrote:For a young man to say I think 90% of another race is nasty HATE THEM then go out and perpetuate a murder against that same race two weeks later for nothing more than pure hatred---that is as bad as it gets. We can be politically correct but if these were three white people gunning down an aspiring young African American---cities would be on fire...... What caused this young man to say 90% of white people were nasty and that he hated them--why what caused this? This almost has to be a learned experience from a relative older than him--he was born to hate white people.h--we just saw Bradley Copper with a fine example of closet racism-- but this was on a nother level--scary stuff. I hope that African americans do not have this view of white people---there is nothing a white person who lives in todays world can do about things that happened before they were born--before their parents were born. There is a lady who lives three doors down from me--shes an African American APRN and her husband works on cars---such a nice family. They saved up for 5 years by living with relatives and bought a beautiful--shes from the Bell Vista projects in New Haven. I spent a couple of nights sitting talking into the night with these people and their family/kids I just dont get it theyre beautiful people who obviously just want to live a nice life--isnt thats wht its all about---they are friendly and hard working and if everyone took this avenue--there wouldnt be time to be aracist or think things like that sad sad sad.

I don't like getting into this type of discussion but maybe I can explain it like this. Racisium is alive and well in the USA. This killing was an act of hate and was wrong. Now about the Trayvon case I don't have a problem with Zimmerman being released from jail. It was the injustice that happened after that. Zimmerman was nothing but a watchman and if he suspected someone about to do something bad he should have called the cops like he did and just waited for them to come. But no he wanted to be more than that and that was the problem. That killing could have been avoided. Now these 3 young men that committed this crime will get the full wrath of justice. Zimmerman could have avoided the whole thing in the Trayvon case.
There is a lot of hate out there on both sides. What is the answer?? Well lets take a look at whats happening in Egypt with Christians and Muslims. Thousands of men in the streets all day fighting. Do these people have jobs?? I doubt it.Either there way or you die. Now back to the USA. I believe that when proverty and lack of jobs enter our country you have a lot of angry people black and white and each blaming one another. However those complaining are a minority of the black and white community. As a whole we are peaceful. It's just the few who stir up trouble. I will say this though with out having an African American on the jury of the Zimmerman trial angered lots of people black and white who supported Trayvon. It is wrong to do harm to anyone no matter what his belief is. I am a Christian and my beliefs are strong however I respect the Jewish, Muslims, and all other religions. Just don't try to harm me for what I believe. Hate crimes for what you believe is growing in this country weather religion, gays, female, the crowd you hang with, the school you go to,a Democrat or Republican, tea party or gang affiliation. We are being ripped apart because of hate. Peace!

BRIGGS wrote:

NardDogNation wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:For a young man to say I think 90% of another race is nasty HATE THEM then go out and perpetuate a murder against that same race two weeks later for nothing more than pure hatred---that is as bad as it gets. We can be politically correct but if these were three white people gunning down an aspiring young African American---cities would be on fire...... What caused this young man to say 90% of white people were nasty and that he hated them--why what caused this? This almost has to be a learned experience from a relative older than him--he was born to hate white people.h--we just saw Bradley Copper with a fine example of closet racism-- but this was on a nother level--scary stuff. I hope that African americans do not have this view of white people---there is nothing a white person who lives in todays world can do about things that happened before they were born--before their parents were born. There is a lady who lives three doors down from me--shes an African American APRN and her husband works on cars---such a nice family. They saved up for 5 years by living with relatives and bought a beautiful--shes from the Bell Vista projects in New Haven. I spent a couple of nights sitting talking into the night with these people and their family/kids I just dont get it theyre beautiful people who obviously just want to live a nice life--isnt thats wht its all about---they are friendly and hard working and if everyone took this avenue--there wouldnt be time to be aracist or think things like that sad sad sad.

There are 42 million Black people in this country. You honestly think we have a Sunday Brunch Club where we sit around talking about how much we hate white people? LOL.

No I don't think so(that statement by me was a poor example of trying to understand why this young man said he hated 90% of white people)-- this young man had learned hatred for whites at 16--enough to go out and just kill one for no other reason that hate it appears. I guess thats just scary as hell.

There are Killings going on in Mississippi, Alabama and other parts of the South every week of black and now Spanish people. The problem is they don't have a whitness. They suspect a hate crime but without a witness you can;t say for sure but it points that way.

smackeddog wrote:

newyorknewyork wrote:

nykshaknbake wrote:

Clean wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:One of them said. " 90 of white people are nasty. Hate them". If this was three white people who wrote and acted like this it would've been the racial incident of the decade. Other way around really haven't heard a peep. I think this is what is the basis of much of the racism we have in the country now. A reverse psychology. Whoever did what here. This is one of the worst race crimes in 20 years and I hope people from all races learn and continue to learn from this. This young man had serious hatred for whites at 16 What caused this?

The difference between these two cases are Zimmerman got away with no questions asked from the police until it became national. These kids were arrested right away. The outrage came from an unarmed kid being killed without ANY questions being asked to the person who killed him, this is not the case with this recent incident. All those involved with the killing in both these cases should go to jail. To equate these two cases is not looking at the details. Justice was played out correctly in one case and was not played out in the other case. The kids were immediately arrested as they should have been. Zimmerman on the other hand had his word taken as the complete truth without any investigation into his claims.

Upon examination of the facts and trial it turns out justice was served up in that case as well. This was despite some really weak evidence(prosecution even bypassed a grand jury) and a frenzied attempt by just about everyone to get the guy convicted.

There was no way to proof that Zimmerman wasn't trying to defend himself so you can't charge him with murder. That's really what it came down to, doesn't mean justice was really served since nobody knows what actually happened except Zimmerman and Martin.

IMO though if you are a 30+ yr old male armed with a gun you should hold some type of responsibility over the situation. Largely based off of Zimmerman's personal walk through of what happened. There are many things that just don't add up to me.

Essentially if anyone ever wants to murder anyone they know, all they have to do is arm themselves with a gun, follow them around at night, approach and confront them and provoke a fight, and when they think you're a weirdo and try and fight back, get out your gun and shoot them. Apparently that's self defense!

You can't have laws where you can antagonize someone into a fight, and then have the right to shoot them if you start losing that fight- sad that people are so deluded with racism that they can't see anything wrong with that.

Papabear Says

Well Said!

misterearl wrote:Scant racism

I have personally seen only scant racism in my 44 years of life lving in Brooklyn Westport and Madison CT with a vacation home in Naples CT.

BRIGGS - thank you. You just nailed why you struggle to describe what race matters are about. It is only about your experience with race. Not history, not intellectual curiosity, not any informed analysis... Just your narrow world view from your front porch.

You completely ignored the statistics which were posted to suit your claim that this singular crime is the worst of the past 20 years. The willful ignorance is staggering.

Until you open your eyes and see through an Emmitt Till or James Meredith, or even a Martin Luther King... you will never understand matters of race beyond your television set.

I'm sorry earl. Can someone describe racism they are going through now. Not this extreme case but rather any example of something they are going through now. I do not understand this in 2013

misterearl wrote:Scant racism

I have personally seen only scant racism in my 44 years of life lving in Brooklyn Westport and Madison CT with a vacation home in Naples CT.

I repeat

Despite the election of our nation's first African-American president, African Americans remain by far the most frequent victims of hate crimes. Of the 7,624 hate crime incidents reported nationwide in 2007, the most recent year for which data is available, 34 percent (2,659) were perpetrated against African Americans, a number and percentage of incidents that has changed little over the past 10 years. According to the FBI's HCSA report, more than twice as many hate crimes were reported against African Americans as against any other group.

BRIGGS - thank you. You just nailed why you struggle to describe what race matters are about. It is only about your experience with race. Not history, not intellectual curiosity, not any informed analysis... Just your narrow world view from your front porch.

You completely ignored the statistics which were posted to suit your claim that this singular crime is the worst of the past 20 years. The willful ignorance is staggering.

Until you open your eyes and see through an Emmitt Till or James Meredith, or even a Martin Luther King... you will never understand matters of race beyond your television set.

I don't even follow the logic of 'I don't see it, so it can't exist'. I've never seen anyone get raped or murdered, so should I therefore conclude that it doesn't happen?! And that people who have experienced it or know someone who has are lying?! Crazy!

misterearl wrote:

smackeddog wrote:

misterearl wrote:Scant racism

I have personally seen only scant racism in my 44 years of life lving in Brooklyn Westport and Madison CT with a vacation home in Naples CT.

I repeat

Despite the election of our nation's first African-American president, African Americans remain by far the most frequent victims of hate crimes. Of the 7,624 hate crime incidents reported nationwide in 2007, the most recent year for which data is available, 34 percent (2,659) were perpetrated against African Americans, a number and percentage of incidents that has changed little over the past 10 years. According to the FBI's HCSA report, more than twice as many hate crimes were reported against African Americans as against any other group.

BRIGGS - thank you. You just nailed why you struggle to describe what race matters are about. It is only about your experience with race. Not history, not intellectual curiosity, not any informed analysis... Just your narrow world view from your front porch.

You completely ignored the statistics which were posted to suit your claim that this singular crime is the worst of the past 20 years. The willful ignorance is staggering.

Until you open your eyes and see through an Emmitt Till or James Meredith, or even a Martin Luther King... you will never understand matters of race beyond your television set.

I don't even follow the logic of 'I don't see it, so it can't exist'. I've never seen anyone get raped or murdered, so should I therefore conclude that it doesn't happen?! And that people who have experienced it or know someone who has are lying?! Crazy!

smackeddog - you are absolutely correct.

Any substantial conversation over race must get beyond superficial, personal telescopes and open wide to the root causes and effects of generations of institutionalized bias.

BRIGGS' rating one case as a watershed for 20 years only highlights a selective reasoning that prefers to ignore hundreds of years, right up to the current day. Of course, any informed second grader can tell the difference between opinion and fact.

The fact is that the same perceptions of race shape our opinion on things like basketball. Why else would there be the added layer of resentment towards a Carmelo Anthony... or the stereotypical opinion of a white player having a high basketball IQ?

Has there ever been a white basketball player with a low IQ?

I cannot think of a single one.

Plus-f**king-one. Basketball use to be considered "the thinking man's game" when Jews were the majority. Sprinkle a few brown faces into the mix and all of a sudden you get the stereotype of the "stupid, undeserving athlete".

smackeddog wrote:

misterearl wrote:Scant racism

I have personally seen only scant racism in my 44 years of life lving in Brooklyn Westport and Madison CT with a vacation home in Naples CT.

I repeat

Despite the election of our nation's first African-American president, African Americans remain by far the most frequent victims of hate crimes. Of the 7,624 hate crime incidents reported nationwide in 2007, the most recent year for which data is available, 34 percent (2,659) were perpetrated against African Americans, a number and percentage of incidents that has changed little over the past 10 years. According to the FBI's HCSA report, more than twice as many hate crimes were reported against African Americans as against any other group.

BRIGGS - thank you. You just nailed why you struggle to describe what race matters are about. It is only about your experience with race. Not history, not intellectual curiosity, not any informed analysis... Just your narrow world view from your front porch.

You completely ignored the statistics which were posted to suit your claim that this singular crime is the worst of the past 20 years. The willful ignorance is staggering.

Until you open your eyes and see through an Emmitt Till or James Meredith, or even a Martin Luther King... you will never understand matters of race beyond your television set.

I don't even follow the logic of 'I don't see it, so it can't exist'. I've never seen anyone get raped or murdered, so should I therefore conclude that it doesn't happen?! And that people who have experienced it or know someone who has are lying?! Crazy!

Neither do I. I suppose much of this mentality is due to a lack of empathy with individuals who do not share elements of their background. It's how you get these conservative types who are anti-gay and then become "enlightened" when one of their kids happen to be gay.

BRIGGS wrote:

misterearl wrote:

smackeddog wrote:

misterearl wrote:Scant racism

I have personally seen only scant racism in my 44 years of life lving in Brooklyn Westport and Madison CT with a vacation home in Naples CT.

I repeat

Despite the election of our nation's first African-American president, African Americans remain by far the most frequent victims of hate crimes. Of the 7,624 hate crime incidents reported nationwide in 2007, the most recent year for which data is available, 34 percent (2,659) were perpetrated against African Americans, a number and percentage of incidents that has changed little over the past 10 years. According to the FBI's HCSA report, more than twice as many hate crimes were reported against African Americans as against any other group.

BRIGGS - thank you. You just nailed why you struggle to describe what race matters are about. It is only about your experience with race. Not history, not intellectual curiosity, not any informed analysis... Just your narrow world view from your front porch.

You completely ignored the statistics which were posted to suit your claim that this singular crime is the worst of the past 20 years. The willful ignorance is staggering.

Until you open your eyes and see through an Emmitt Till or James Meredith, or even a Martin Luther King... you will never understand matters of race beyond your television set.

I don't even follow the logic of 'I don't see it, so it can't exist'. I've never seen anyone get raped or murdered, so should I therefore conclude that it doesn't happen?! And that people who have experienced it or know someone who has are lying?! Crazy!

smackeddog - you are absolutely correct.

Any substantial conversation over race must get beyond superficial, personal telescopes and open wide to the root causes and effects of generations of institutionalized bias.

BRIGGS' rating one case as a watershed for 20 years only highlights a selective reasoning that prefers to ignore hundreds of years, right up to the current day. Of course, any informed second grader can tell the difference between opinion and fact.

The fact is that the same perceptions of race shape our opinion on things like basketball. Why else would there be the added layer of resentment towards a Carmelo Anthony... or the stereotypical opinion of a white player having a high basketball IQ?

Has there ever been a white basketball player with a low IQ?

I cannot think of a single one.

Mister earl. Bringing up 100 years ago is one reason racism is persisting. You pass this ideology to your kin and this is a reason why a boy in Long Island attacks another youth or why a youth from Oklahoma says he hates90% of white people. Why he's heard the race rhetoric from their parents with mentalities of stored hatred like you have

Why is teaching a kid history considered a source of racism?

IronWillGiroud wrote:

Clean wrote:

IronWillGiroud wrote:Lol at Americans and race. Especially white Americans. Not that I done feel American, just that you guys found like naive school children on race. It is pretty funny in a sad way

I think what plays a huge role in the existence of racism is ignorance. I know that is an obvious statement, but What I really mean is that the root of that ignorance about the other race is due to willful segregation. In NY I always notice the different communities that are completely different ethnically. In this specific drive I am remembering I passed Black,White,Russian and Jewish communities. It is this willful segregation where stereotypes and misconceptions about other races are born and cultivate.

I personally grew up in an all black neighborhood and did not see a decent amount of people that were not cops or teachers until I was into my teen years. I am sorry if what I am about to say sounds racist or stereotypical, but It is not and I am just stating the makeup of the area I lived in. All the Asians in my area owned beauty shops,Chinese food stores or nail salons, all the middle eastern people in my area owned the corner stores and the only white people I saw were cops and teachers.

I am not sure if my mother noticed this and purposely sent me away to summer camps to interact with people from different cultures. While I sometimes had conflicts during those camps due to cultural differences this is where I learned that everyone is the same no matter what race they are. However, I did have a big blowout with a white counselors due to cultural differences. Due to me living in a predominantly black area all my life I grew up using the N word that ended with an A a lot to my friends and we all knew hat it was out of love. However when I first got to this camp I was still a child and did not develop that filter to change how I talk to different groups of people. To make a long story short I called a councilor the N word a couple of times ending with an A without noticing it because we were cool. He did not like that and we constantly got into arguments no matter how many times I tried to explain myself. I almost got kicked out of camp for this.

I am sorry for this long post. I don't usually like posting long posts but I felt this one might help people understand things from my perspective. Maybe it won't help at all, but it still felt good to write it. Also, I am too lazy to proof read so sorry for the errors in advance!

haha, the counselor took it too seriously,

which is kind of my point, that race is soooo serious in America, it's almost funny to watch,

when it really isn't that serious.

i think on a local level, when you're really out there and working and interacting with people in diverse environments, you'll find that race is definitely noticed, even explicitly acknowledged, and that that's where it ends--- the group moves on with its tasks and goals,

I highly recommend you pick up a newspaper before making ridiculous comments. I constantly here of how the civil unrest in Greece has led to ethnic minorities being targets of conservative and neo-Nazi groups. I seem to also remember a number of racist gestures occurring during Fifa tournaments including bananas being thrown at Black players (see Theirry Henry). In Latin America, they may not be burning crosses on the front lawns of ethnic minorities but they sure as hell do a damn good job in relegating them to the fringes of the country/society. Only exception there appears to be comes during soccer season in which winning supersedes any other bias'. OLE!

Mister earl. Bringing up 100 years ago is one reason racism is persisting. You pass this ideology to your kin and this is a reason why a boy in Long Island attacks another youth or why a youth from Oklahoma says he hates90% of white people. Why he's heard the race rhetoric from their parents with mentalities of stored hatred like you have

First BRIGGS, i got nothing but love for any Fan of the Knickerbockers. your assumption that my passion is based in hatred is so far off based it is sad. The Answer Man believes in the power of the human spirit in any form it comes in. Period.

100 years ago? Your resistance to knowledge, and hard core defensive stance, is remarkable. 100 years ago?

Maybe its time to get outside the country club and listen (or better still, study) to another cultural perspective for a change.

Just a thought.

Racism definitely exists but it is built on non-existing "differences" among arbitrary human regroupings (e.g. Mostly based on skin color because it is easily seen, again a continuous diversity resulting from the sun strength and adaptation to various environnement)