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BlueSeats
Posts: 27272
Alba Posts: 41
Joined: 11/6/2005
Member: #1024
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killa, thanks for making this post easier for me and not parading around the nonsense with misterearl and pappabear. Posted by Killa4luv:
Originally posted by BlueSeats:
Well we don't know the background or experience with blacks of the person you were in conversation with, so why come at it with the assumption it's too little or irrelevant, and that he should therefore "trust you on it"? Even if he isn't black himself he might have black relatives, friends, work associates, he might live or work in black communities, or maybe his intuition is just pretty good in such matters.
if such is the posters experience that is what i am asking for. How are his positions developed about the black community and black kids in general? i gave a host of things that inform my opinion on the matter, and again I ask you:
Should the fact that I was a black kid, have black kids, live in a black neighborhood, have taught black kids for 10 years, and wrote my thesis about black kids, make my thoughts on black children a little more relevant than someone without such knowledge? I mean does that matter at all in evaluating my opinion on the topic?
I think it matters a lot. This background info is what ought to give my opinions weight and credibility. It isn’t just about me being black, it is about my personal ties, academic background, and professional experience with the black community, which you obviously don’t have to be black to have. That’s what I’m getting at when I asked are you are member of the community you are opining about? I should have made that clearer. But that’s where the data that my opinions are drawn, comes from. I would expect that an objective observer would give more credibility to my arguments because they are the product of such broad experience with the topic at hand.
And I would likewise assume that someone who claimed to have ‘good intuition’ without any significant such experience or contact, would seem far less credible. My opinion is that much of what we discuss here is of human nature, not black or white nature. I think it's a fair assumption that Isiah, as a bball legend and power executive of the knicks, would have some degree of clout with black kids. It's simply a fair assumption, and all your experience doesn't make it less so. It's a fairer assumption than the one you offered, that an average man on the street is more influential. The average man in the street's opinion isn't known, nor is he on trial, Isiah is. And being black no more qualifies you to speak for all blacks than I am qualified to speak for all whites. With all my experience at whiteness I would never deign to suggest that I know how all whites feel, so I find your proposition flawed from the get-go. I'm jesting here to make a point which is that NEITHER of you are qualified to speak for an entire race of children, yet you feel entitled to do so for black children while attempting to tune out another's reasonable speculation that a HOF PG would have some degree of influence among kids. Even if they're unaware of Isiah, their teachers and parents probably are not, and such is how much opinion is disseminated.
I don’t think its about speaking for a race of children as much as it is about my opinions having credibility. I very openly conceded that I could be incorrect about my assumption, but I stated what I think qualifies my opinion for serious consideration.
As above. However, I will remind you that you stated you also see yourself as qualified to know where whites come from too. I think it's fair for you to assume that you do, but only because you seem a sensible person and we are discussing human nature, not because you are black in "white America". Nobody's asking you to prove that you are qualified to make assumptions on how whites might feel, even though your assumption that all would feel the same is utterly flawed. Furthermore, if someone approached you in similarly and seriously told you that because you speak of yourself as black you can have no idea "where white people are coming from on this," or any other issue involving whites, I'd consider it disrespectful and blustering.
Speak of myself as black? I am Black, we’ve met before.
Killa, this gets a bit philosophical, but on some level you are what you speak yourself to be. You haven't met code, so your impressions of him, or his qualifications with regards to "black assumptions," are relative to what he tells you of himself. And you are fairly light skinned, so I would assume you to be of mixed race. That you speak yourself to be black, as opposed to mixed, speaks to your view of yourself and your orientation to your race(s). None of this is meant to be judgmental in any way, I just found it interesting how far you went to distinguish yourself as black to bolster your assertion that code need s to trust your assumptions while then telling us you know well how whites feel too. But if someone made that remark it would reflect, to me, an ignorance about what it means to be a person of color in a white society. The truth is, the average minority has far greater exposure and contact with white people and culture than the average white person has with any particular minority group. There are white people in this country and city, who have had only the most minimal contact with people of color. The percentage of people of color who can claim the same is much lower, because this is a predominantly white country. Learning about white culture is a matter of survival (work, school, etc.) when you live in a country where white people are the majority. As such, we are not equally uninformed about one another’s culture. I’m not saying that to claim some sort of expertise on white people btw, just to note that, in general, our exposure to one another’s cultutre, neighborhoods, etc, is vastly uneven, and therefore, we are not equally uninformed about one another’s culture. Knowing white culture is not the same as knowing the hearts of white people. Sure, you know more about Christmas than whites know about Kwanza, but why assume that because you know about whites from work and school that whites don't know blacks through the same? All you're doing is trying to justify your position that it's fair for you to assume you know the minds of whites but it's unfair for code to make the same assumption for blacks. As I've stated already, I think it's fair for each of you to make certain logical assumptions, but unfair for anyone to think they can speak for everyone of a given race, as you seemed inclined to do for both races. What I find difficult is the way they are trumpeted out every time we discuss the mis-doings of a black person, or as evidence that a white entertainer is surely racist, or that white posters are racist whether they know it or not, etc. They've been used to try to prove so many things so many times that it's hard to keep up with their point. If your point is that life is harder for the average black than the average white then I agree. But that still doesn't prove Imus is racist, or Isiah did not prey on her gender in creating a hostile work environment for Anucha, any more than, say, a white poster sharing with us that they have many white friends who've been mugged or raped by blacks. Your facts and theirs may both be truths, but their context is inappropriate, if not somewhat manipulative, I'm sorry to say.
Blue, I am not trumpeting this out to defend Isiah, I understand that, which is what made their arrival confusing as this was a conversation about Isiah I think I’ve made my postion pretty clear on him, I am not an Isiah defender in the slightest. I do know, however, that the position that you, the author, and others are taking on the quote is false and misleading. He never gave quasi approval or said it was OK, I went through great lengths to prove that point, and you ignored it, although I’ll admit my post was rather lengthy. The words he used simply don’t say what you and others are claiming they do. If you think that’s how he feels, that’s one thing, but if you go by his quote, that is very straightforward in the sense that he doesn’t think one is acceptable and the other isn’t. I never claimed he said it was okay. But he made the statement for a reason, and it's been asked many times what that reason was, and I've yet to see your answer. I take it your point is that if any of us really wanted justice we'd tackle these larger issues routinely, as I take it you try to do. There's certainly some validity to that, but we need to maintain digestible portions or things become unwieldy. For instance, I could throw the same charge at you and say if you really cared about justice you'd defend women, gays, immigrants, Jews, Arabs, etc, with equal vigor as you do blacks, and since you don't you're a fraud. However, I trust you would if you could, but you know it would be cumbersome to do so at every occasion, an thus it's better to stick to the topic at hand. I'd like to believe you'd extend the same trust to a white.
First, I do attack all of those things you mentioned. I’m an anti-racist, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-racism and i've done this in things in my life in general and on this board in particular. I see racism as the single biggest barrier to fixing this country, so I take it seriously. I speak up on behalf of all of the groups you named on this board as well as in my personal life. Being black helps me to understand what it is like to face obstacles because of how others see you, so I use that as a point of reference to imagine what other groups of people must go through in this society.
Likewise, being male and heterosexual help me to understand what it is like to be privileged in certain ways that women or gays are not. I'm not some perfect human being who never has steped on anyones toes, I'm someone who tries, who makes an earnest effort to uderstand these problems, and i often see the reverse happening with white folks when the issue at hand involves a black person. I also will freely admit that people of color aren't always using their situation as a point of refeence to understand what other people are going through (blacks who dont like gays, latinos who dont like blacks, etc.) and do often become defensive and unwilling to admit things when they reflect badly on other blacks, and it is because Institutionalized racism is the elephant on the room, and if whites can't or wont see it, in spite of the mountains of evidence which document it, we are starting off dishonestly, or at least not truthfully.
Killa, I sense the kind of guy you are and I'm proud of you. And of all the guys I've ever gone head to head with you're on the short list of "opponents" I've enjoyed the most. I just think it's difficult for blacks to appreciate whites unless they can provide certain bona fides of blackness, like that they are activists, do social work, are in mixed marriages etc. Then, when such bona fides are presented they are typically laughed at and used as "proof" that the person IS a racist. Your former sig of Bobbs34, or whatever his name, is one such example. Further examples can be found in this thread, like pappabear and misterearl exposing me as a racist, or of avoiding the painful truth, or whatever their blather was. I really feel most of these racially oriented threads (why again is a sexual harassment case a racial thread?) become little more than snares of entrapment. Certain blacks seem poised on the edge of their seats, sifting through word after word, looking for an opportunity to pounce and declare "Ahaaa, I got one! Another cracker racist pretending to be otherwise. You can't fool us!! See! Racism is everywhere and this proves OJ is innocent!!!" You get what I mean. If white people internalized the notion that blacks and latinos in this country are systematically discriminated against, and that that discrimination has already done very real harm to those people’s lives, communities, and subsequent generations, there is no way they would be so bothered by the trivial and hypothetical racism of Isiah Thomas, or the isolated injustice of the OJ case.
It is an obvious glaring hypocricy when white people ignore patterns of abuse that hurt people of color and damage their lives, but speak out loudly and often about one-off words of prejudice or the rare injustice that effects white people. Its too dishonest a position to take, and it just drives a wedge between us and understanding.
The media plays a HUGE role in this, but I'll stop here.
You've been going back and forth with Code and I and I haven't noticed either of us "speak out loudly and often about one-off words of prejudice or the rare injustice that effects white people." It's like this. Start a thread showing statistics of higher infant mortality rates among black children, or unfair lending practices toward blacks, etc, and I'm behind you all the way. But raise them in cases against Imus or Isiah and we struggle over relevance and context, not whether they are true or not. These issues are only elephants in the room when you drag them in. The logical inference in your doing so is that you are using them as part of your defense of isiah, which you say you are not, or to somehow pawn them off on the person on the other side of the keyboard, as if Code or I are responsible for institutionalized racism. Otherwise I don't get the point of their inclusion at such junctures. |
9/25/2007 2:42 PM
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