magerette
Hedgewitch
- Joined
- October 18, 2006
- Messages
- 7,834
But then I believe we owe other human beings("everybody else") a lot in terms of respect and equality regardless of race, gender, class, etc.You don't? .
I pretty much agree with Rith's statement above. Lincoln's assassination was a loss that changed the whole ballgame. Slaves freed back then had an incredibly tough life, then and for many years after and forty acres and a mule would have worked for many of them. At least it would have been something. But at this point the people who suffered the most from slavery have already done so and the people who directly caused it are dead. Making society racially positive is what's on our plates now.I mean maybe not you personally, but I believe the government SHOULD have paid reparations to slaves. It's too late now because they are all dead, but it might have changed the trajectory of our progress.
...What about us? Yeah we were set free, but often with nothing.
Yes, I kind of grasped that --but I wasn't speaking out of the famous 'liberal guilt syndrome.' I don't feel that guilt particularly since I believe I only have to be responsible for my own thoughts, beliefs and actions. I was just trying to make a point about people being who they are. I don't condone excuses and victimization, but I just don't see how what Gates or the cop did can be separated from who and what they are. That doesn't in my mind make either of them racists. A racist is a bigot in all things, and always a victim, always pushing fear and mainlining the drug of willful ignorance....@magerette- The "debt" thing was actually my way of being politic. Perhaps giving in to PC muddied the message. Let's try this--how long are we going to allow the sins of the past to excuse actions of the present? Nobody's denying the racial injustices of the past, but it's been 2 generations since the civil rights movement "won". I'm consistent, too, since I don't tend to validate Jewish excuses 3 generations after the Holocaust, either.
Not really, not in the way I think you mean. If a white man verbally abused a cop of any race in his own home in the same situation but without the racial epithets I'd feel about the same way about the incident. The 'black experience' part is what came out when the testosterone began to flow on Gates' end , and the handcuffs came out on Crowley's. I think both are predictable results of men of their cultures and experiences losing their tempers in the situation, and maybe an indication of general racial tension, but not that either person is a died-in-the-wool bigot. For that you look at their whole lives, and I think they've both been exonerated of that charge...snip..
Ultimately, the stance on your side is that Gates' misbehavior should have been ignored by Crowley because his "black experience" somehow merits him a broader scope of acceptable action.
Some are, I agree, Some of the commentators I've heard have definitely gone that route and played not just the race card but the whole victim deck. But I wasn't, I hope....So all these people defending Gates by claiming racial bias are, in fact, being hypocritical. You know how I get with hypocrites.
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2006
- Messages
- 7,834