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 The End of Racism		  New Topic  Reply to Topic
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard

USA
5310 Posts
Posted - 10/21/2009 :  10:12:48  Show Profile Send Gorgo a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Imagine, if you will, a small, predominantly white city with growing poverty and crime in a small, highly segregated black section of its South East side. Imagine that a black university professor in the city warns the local newspaper that “a black man will be killed this summer by a local police officer, probably under unclear circumstances.” The professor also predicts that the town’s “citizens will be insufficiently enraged” by the shooting.


Could Obama's presidency make racial problems worse? Have they already?

...Obama’s victory could perhaps be stoking the fires of an ugly white backlash that gets taken out on defenseless people like the late John Deng. The arrival of a smooth-talking black president gets one kind of reception from white upper-middle-class Democratic liberals in a “progressive” town like Iowa City. It may elicit a very different sort of feeling from less privileged white people....
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter

HalfMooner
Dingaling

Philippines
15831 Posts
Posted - 10/21/2009 :  14:27:03   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send HalfMooner a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Wow, good article. Thanks for the post, Gorgo. Racism ain't a simple problem, is it?
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive.
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard

USA
4907 Posts
Posted - 10/21/2009 :  17:58:54   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Ricky an AOL message Send Ricky a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I'm not such a big fan. The introductory story interjects the terms "white" and "black" in such a forced way that if the races of the characters were not introduced, you would have no idea that the story had anything to do with racism. Even with them in there, I'm not convinced it does.

The author assumes many things showing his/her bias (the line that killed me was, "No such investigation occurs, really." What the hell does that mean?), but I don't think it's worth it to doubt if any of them are true. Certainly there have been some killings in which race played a dominant role, I feel ok with granting the premise of the story even if this particular one is not true.

The real bit seems to be the end, where the author suggests that Obama in the White House will make people prematurely think racism doesn't happen, and that the lower class people may take it out on blacks. And? Each of these is going to happen as blacks come closer to equality.

But do they really make racial problems worse? The backlash that occurred when schools became desegregated in the 60's and 70's I guarantee you was way worse than the backlash Obama generated. But in each case, the pros vastly outweigh the cons to the point where it seems silly to even compare.
Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.
- Isaac Asimov
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Machi4velli
SFN Regular

USA
854 Posts
Posted - 10/21/2009 :  20:36:34   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Machi4velli a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I am pretty much with Ricky, I don't really reject that such a thing could happen with such a motive (there are certainly other verified incidents in recent times), but there seem to be some questionable assumptions. For example, how did the author know what happened before the telecom workers arrived? Didn't they arrive after the guy had been stabbed? Were there other witnesses he/she listed that I missed?
"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking

"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus
Edited by - Machi4velli on 10/21/2009 20:37:19
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