**** Elections thread *****

[bigred]

First I'd like to say that this election did in fact mostly have to do with race, more than economics. They'll play it off as an election over economics, because it's the least morally indefensible path to take on this matter.

I didn't vote for Trump, but I can answer the racial/misogynist/ethnicist aspect of it, as a White Male. When I grew up in school, while we had black classmates, and we were nice to them and all, I can say I did at least, engage in "soft-racism". Most White people can't even agree on what racism is exactly, unless it's extremely overt, and even then you'll get defenders of the racist. But they'll flat out deny anything is racist if it's not extremely overt.

One reason Whites teach their kids not to say "nigger" around Black people, isn't that we're trying to reduce racism in our society. It's because it plays our hand face up when it's that overt. "Soft racism is much harder to detect..

Most Whites, they'll be friendly to minorities to their faces, wave hi to their Muslim neighbors, and be nice to the parents of color who have children at the White parents school. But in the back of our heads I'm sure there is some sense of "I'm superior to you".

I use to be racist/misogynist/ethnicist and hated gays, but it was much more "soft" than outright visiting KKK websites and so on and so forth. I often engaged in soft-racism, and when no one was around, occasionally in overt-racism.

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I removed some of the quote for minimizing size.

I agree with your first paragraph. It has become clear to me in my last week's research (such as listening to the WSJ opinion podcasts and reading other slightly conservative news sources) that the definition of racism is not consistent across the country and there is a large part in America that only considers and/or understands overt racism. Anything less than calling someone the n-word or directly coming out and saying you hate a race is not racism and often a tool of the "biased media." It saddens me that people hear phrases from Trump like "I love the Hispanics. The Hispanics are going to get great jobs." and thinks it's not racist. When you add a modifier of the to groups, you're creating a divide. You're implying an us and a they and you're perpetuating less overt racism.

I struggle with many other points you make in this post. I was taught to treat all people equal regardless of race, sex, religion, etc. As a consequence, I was taught not to use the n-word because it treats a specific race as less than and has a lot of implied hatred.

I would encourage you to challenge the statement you made, " I still haven't rooted it out entirely, I think deep down were all racist in some way or another." To me this feels like a cop out. It feels you're making the statement, I've removed the overt racism and as much of the more subtle racism. Nothing left to do. I realize you're not directly saying this but it's implied.

I've learned through exposure, experience, and travel across the world that regardless of where you're from, your socioeconomic standing, your gender, etc, etc that people are generally good and they want the same things in life. They want to be treated fairly, pursue happiness, love and be loved, and provide these opportunities to future generations. However, typically through fear, they lash out when they feel these values are threatened. Until we can recognize we're the same, truly the same with no hint of an us vs a them, although I will acknowledge people are dealt different cards in life, we cannot progress as a society.

[JimmyS1985]

I removed some of the quote for minimizing size.

I agree with your first paragraph. It has become clear to me in my last week's research (such as listening to the WSJ opinion podcasts and reading other slightly conservative news sources) that the definition of racism is not consistent across the country and there is a large part in America that only considers and/or understands overt racism. Anything less than calling someone the n-word or directly coming out and saying you hate a race is not racism and often a tool of the "biased media." It saddens me that people hear phrases from Trump like "I love the Hispanics. The Hispanics are going to get great jobs." and thinks it's not racist. When you add a modifier of the to groups, you're creating a divide. You're implying an us and a they and you're perpetuating less overt racism.

I struggle with many other points you make in this post. I was taught to treat all people equal regardless of race, sex, religion, etc. As a consequence, I was taught not to use the n-word because it treats a specific race as less than and has a lot of implied hatred.

I would encourage you to challenge the statement you made, " I still haven't rooted it out entirely, I think deep down were all racist in some way or another." To me this feels like a cop out. It feels you're making the statement, I've removed the overt racism and as much of the more subtle racism. Nothing left to do. I realize you're not directly saying this but it's implied.

I've learned through exposure, experience, and travel across the world that regardless of where you're from, your socioeconomic standing, your gender, etc, etc that people are generally good and they want the same things in life. They want to be treated fairly, pursue happiness, love and be loved, and provide these opportunities to future generations. However, typically through fear, they lash out when they feel these values are threatened. Until we can recognize we're the same, truly the same with no hint of an us vs a them, although I will acknowledge people are dealt different cards in life, we cannot progress as a society.

I appreciate your input and think you have some, definitely valid points, on what I said earlier.

What made me self-reflect on my own racism in my past as a White, was just doing lots of research if you will, on the racist history of this country.

Two of the books in my personal library reflect this, "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander for one, which outlines a Criminal Justice system which may not be overtly racist and is thus more covert in it's very nature, but still extremely racist at it's very heart.

I love racist jokes, one racist joke I've told is "What did the Black guy do after sex? 15 to life" This is outlined in Michelle Alexander's book, that we have an inherently racist Criminal Justice system. Meanwhile we got White Brock Turner serving a mere 3 months in jail for the exact same crime, and Sam Dubose's killer, simply for the virtue of being a White cop, getting a mistrial in what is pretty much a cut and dry case of 1st degree murder at least for an ordinary civilian, and prosecutors are stymied to only charging him with manslaughter simply because he's White and a Police Officer.

The other book that influenced my belief system today is "Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse". I honestly would LIKE to believe that White Lawmakers had NOTHING but the NOBLEST of intentions when they passed Mass Incarceration laws over the past 2 generations of American History, but it wound up, at face value, being an extremely racist policy of mass incarcerating Blacks. The War on Drugs, based on who's been incarcerated, charged, and imprisoned under these policies, can easily be called "The War on Blacks".

Part of why I had such a hard time voting for HRC in the first place, as well as probably her lackluster performance among Blacks too in the election, was because of how inherently racist the 1994 Crime Bill was. That single bill destroyed probably over a million Black families, when much more productive ways to handle with substance abuse were at her husband's disposal in 1994, namely, legalizing illicit drugs.

Another book that influenced my thought on how I have contributed to the racism in this country, was a book in my library called "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces".

The people who have bore the brunt of this militarization, weren't the Al Queda terrorists who had started sleeper cells within our nation, but a major component was in fact the Black community.

I've tried to deal with my own racism, and actually study the racist history of this country. In light of Trump's victory, I read up on the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, it was a race riot in the wealthiest Black neighborhood in the entire country at the time. And I think it basically boiled down to the concept of Blacks having things as nice as Whites, Whites found deeply offensive and a privilege that should be relegated to Whites and Whites only. The Whites wanted to carry out a lynching in the wealthy Black neighborhood, regardless if they had very loose evidence, as by today's standards there is absolutely no evidence the Black teenager that sparked the riot, did in fact rape a White female teenager.

Because the Whites couldn't carry out their lynching without facing an armed uprising from the Blacks in Tulsa, they massacred them and destroyed their wealthy neighborhood in retaliation.

This country does in fact have a deeply racist, double standard history, in regards of Whites vs People of color, based on my readings.

[surviva316]

Anything less than calling someone the n-word or directly coming out and saying you hate a race is not racism and often a tool of the "biased media."

What the media is very bad at is presenting nuance. They treat racism as an all-or-nothing proposition. Anyone who does anything that's racially insensitive is a racist, and racists are necessarily terrible people, and terrible people should be witch hunted.

First of all, this necessarily contradicts a central tenet of intersectionality, which is that anyone from a privileged perspective necessarily has blind spots in seeing things from an oppressed perspective, and being brought up in a society that systemically represents those people in negative light gives us a slanted perspective on them that we have to work to get past. Regardless of whether or not I'm a progressive or try my best to stand on the right side of history or virtue signal on social media, I am still not perfectly enlightened and am still somewhere on the spectrum of being ignorant on various nuances of various minority perspectives.

Of course, this is the "cop out" you were referring to. The fact that we are all ignorant shouldn't normalize ignorance to the point that we throw our hands up and say there's nothing to be done about it. But that's only if you go into it with the perspective that you only want to be non-racist-enough that you don't feel like a piece of shit. It's like learning poker (or any other self-improvement endeavor); no one who's interested in getting better finds a leak and is like, "Oh yeah, sure, I suck in that particular way, but everyone sucks some way or another, so I'm not going to try and plug that leak."

As for reacting to others who show less overt kinds of racism, I think the public response should be in proportion to the incident. When that football player's wife compared Richard Sherman to a steer that needed to be castrated, it was at the very very least racially insensitive. It should be pointed out that when you're talking about someone from a certain group that has been often dehumanized by society and who a few generations ago was actually bred and sired like cattle, you may potentially offend them in a very deep and visceral way, and any decent human should be sensitive to that. Also, it's possible that both your seething level of hatred and your givenness to compare him to an animal is racially motivated, but I'm not a psychologist so I'll leave you to investigate those feelings within yourself. ... and that's it. That should be the response.

People go so far to virtue signal and (ironically enough) illegitimize and dehumanize people they perceive to be "other" that they turn it into an Us vs Them and nobody learns anything. Often, the person who said the offensive thing just comes out of it feeling like, "Well, these people think that me not being choosy enough with my words makes me a shit smear, and I think I'm more than a shit smear, so they must just be wrong and overly sensitive." Again, this isn't to "defend" people who say insensitive things or to normalize not being self-reflective and honest enough to learn something from a shitstorm like that; I'm just saying that "We" could certainly do a much better job in honestly representing the complexities of racial relations.

Virtue signaling in the intellectual/academic realms can be extremely problematic as well. There is a central tenet in critical thinking that you have to give a certain level of credence to things you're not disposed to believing. I'll try to keep this brief, but basically there's a give-and-take that's necessary in intellectual debate that doesn't work when you're always trying to unilaterally move in one direction. You have to try out potentially dangerous ideas and not just prove them wrong, but really investigate what about it makes it wrong (and, actually very often, what subtleties within it actually prove to be accurate and rework that into the framework you've already built up from other investigations) in order to really learn anything.

If we just white-washed everything all the time, we'd all be like that joke Stephen Colbert always makes where he pretends he's totally blind to race. To get to a place where we recognize differences and explained why certain crimes are more prevalent in certain communities, etc, we had to get through some touchy investigations of issues.

[wufwugy]

What the media is very bad at is presenting nuance. They treat racism as an all-or-nothing proposition. Anyone who does anything that's racially insensitive is a racist, and racists are necessarily terrible people, and terrible people should be witch hunted.

First of all, this necessarily contradicts a central tenet of intersectionality, which is that anyone from a privileged perspective necessarily has blind spots in seeing things from an oppressed perspective, and being brought up in a society that systemically represents those people in negative light gives us a slanted perspective on them that we have to work to get past. Regardless of whether or not I'm a progressive or try my best to stand on the right side of history or virtue signal on social media, I am still not perfectly enlightened and am still somewhere on the spectrum of being ignorant on various nuances of various minority perspectives.

Of course, this is the "cop out" you were referring to. The fact that we are all ignorant shouldn't normalize ignorance to the point that we throw our hands up and say there's nothing to be done about it. But that's only if you go into it with the perspective that you only want to be non-racist-enough that you don't feel like a piece of shit. It's like learning poker (or any other self-improvement endeavor); no one who's interested in getting better finds a leak and is like, "Oh yeah, sure, I suck in that particular way, but everyone sucks some way or another, so I'm not going to try and plug that leak."

As for reacting to others who show less overt kinds of racism, I think the public response should be in proportion to the incident. When that football player's wife compared Richard Sherman to a steer that needed to be castrated, it was at the very very least racially insensitive. It should be pointed out that when you're talking about someone from a certain group that has been often dehumanized by society and who a few generations ago was actually bred and sired like cattle, you may potentially offend them in a very deep and visceral way, and any decent human should be sensitive to that. Also, it's possible that both your seething level of hatred and your givenness to compare him to an animal is racially motivated, but I'm not a psychologist so I'll leave you to investigate those feelings within yourself. ... and that's it. That should be the response.

People go so far to virtue signal and (ironically enough) illegitimize and dehumanize people they perceive to be "other" that they turn it into an Us vs Them and nobody learns anything. Often, the person who said the offensive thing just comes out of it feeling like, "Well, these people think that me not being choosy enough with my words makes me a shit smear, and I think I'm more than a shit smear, so they must just be wrong and overly sensitive." Again, this isn't to "defend" people who say insensitive things or to normalize not being self-reflective and honest enough to learn something from a shitstorm like that; I'm just saying that "We" could certainly do a much better job in honestly representing the complexities of racial relations.

Virtue signaling in the intellectual/academic realms can be extremely problematic as well. There is a central tenet in critical thinking that you have to give a certain level of credence to things you're not disposed to believing. I'll try to keep this brief, but basically there's a give-and-take that's necessary in intellectual debate that doesn't work when you're always trying to unilaterally move in one direction. You have to try out potentially dangerous ideas and not just prove them wrong, but really investigate what about it makes it wrong (and, actually very often, what subtleties within it actually prove to be accurate and rework that into the framework you've already built up from other investigations) in order to really learn anything.

If we just white-washed everything all the time, we'd all be like that joke Stephen Colbert always makes where he pretends he's totally blind to race. To get to a place where we recognize differences and explained why certain crimes are more prevalent in certain communities, etc, we had to get through some touchy investigations of issues.

Very good points.

The point about racial insensitivity should be well considered. Tons of what people call racism is really just insensitivity to peoples' feelings on ideas about race, not racism, not "a person of this color is a certain way because of his color".

To that, however, I'll add that I'm not the biggest fan of promoting the idea that being insensitive is wrong. If I got upset at people for being insensitive about things about me, it would make my life worse because I would be giving them power to harm me that I should not let them have. If I were to get up in arms over others' insensitivity, it would probably provoke them to become even more insensitive. I'm not prescribing a solution here, just perceiving things. I don't know the best way for people to react would be. It would probably be a balance between letting insensitive speech roll off our backs and penalizing it. But I really can't say how that could be achieved. The zeitgeist tends to sway like a pendulum, extreme on one end to extreme on the other end.

[surviva316]

Tons of what people call racism is really just insensitivity to peoples' feelings on ideas about race, not racism, not "a person of this color is a certain way because of his color".

And tons of it is feeling a certain way about someone because of their color, and tons of it is hard to determine one way or another. Notice that even in my example, there is absolutely the possibility that she made the comments that she did because she's given to thinking of people of a certain color acting a certain way as less-than-human. My only point is that we--the virtue signaling social media members--can only take the horse to the water by elucidating certain perspectives; we can't force them to drink by going as extreme as possible with over-stigmatizing certain modes of speech.

If I got upset at people for being insensitive about things about me, it would make my life worse because I would be giving them power to harm me that I should not let them have.

The very very first thing to recognize is that you don't know dick about dick. This tends to really ruffle the feathers of a lot of straight, white males, but I don't know why. For example, gay people generally have a difficult time coming out of the closet, especially people raised in certain environments. There's a reason for this. Can you really say you'd know how you'd feel in a situation where everyone around you called things they don't like "faggots," which not only denigrates every man who enjoys sex with a man but also equates them to kindling for a lynch pyre?

(This is just one example for one downtrodden social group because it's one of the few where deniability is broadly possible, much less evident.)

Even if no one incident will alone cause depression, self-hate, denial and whatever else, the toll of an entire consistent narrative against a certain group can be severe and not really comparable to anything you've likely experienced. Or maybe they're all a bunch of oversensitive pansies who should take it like the Jews always seem to and just be all dry and self-depreciative. Who knows. The most important point is that you and I sure as fuck don't.

If I were to get up in arms over others' insensitivity, it would probably provoke them to become even more insensitive.

Putting the high school lunchroom/4chan logic aside, this isn't really that complicated. If what you do makes others feel bad about themselves, then you--as a decent human--should strive not to do it. If others feeling bad about comments you make empowers you to say even more hateful things, then you're an asshole. Probably worse, actually, more like antisocial.

There might be ways that the person on the other side could--from a utilitarian standpoint--handle it in a way that will have better results for them in certain crowds, but you yourself shouldn't think that someone's "asking for it" by being upset by certain comments. Worry about your own house and stop telling other people how they should feel when you don't really know anything.

[Poopadoop]

Putting the high school lunchroom/4chan logic aside, this isn't really that complicated. If what you do makes others feel bad about themselves, then you--as a decent human--should strive not to do it. If others feeling bad about comments you make empowers you to say even more hateful things, then you're an asshole. Probably worse, actually, more like antisocial.

This is pretty much it. If you're actions offend someone you can't blame that person for getting upset and say 'it's your fault for letting it get to you'. That's just not taking responsibility for your actions.

There's a lot of times in life we don't understand why people feel or react in a negative way to something. Anyone who's been in relationship knows that. If your attitude to your partner is 'well it shouldn't bother you so I'm going to keep doing it', then yeah, you're the knob, not them.

[wufwugy]

The very very first thing to recognize is that you don't know dick about dick. This tends to really ruffle the feathers of a lot of straight, white males, but I don't know why.

Since we're talking about divisiveness, this theme has been knocked into us for decades and it is divisive. Trump probably wouldn't be president without it either. If I posted every video I saw of Trump supporters being beaten to a pulp due to being Trump supporters, this thread would be nothing but videos of Trump supporters getting beaten to a pulp. If I posted every example I've seen of gay people claiming that they are more afraid of coming out as Trump supporters than they were of coming out as gay, this thread would be nothing but posting about gay people who are afraid of people harming them because they supported Trump.

My life has included some of the worst shit that can happen to a person, but because I'm a straight white middle class male, I don't understand pain and oppression. I am told that I don't get it and that my back should be like a duck's back. Then the non-straight-white-male is told that whatever grievance they feel, if they can claim it is unique to how they were born or where they grew up, is important and special and tragic and it makes them more understanding of pain and oppression.

Funny story (or not funny): I've witnessed far more racism against whites than against non-whites over the years. I discussed an element of this with a friend, and he just laughed. His rationale for why the examples I gave weren't racism is because he doesn't care if somebody does that stuff to him. The irony is that he cares very much when people do that to non-whites. This is part of the media and intelligentsia hoax. They've hoaxed us into thinking whites don't experience racism because whites are "above it" or members of the faux "first class citizenry", and they've hoaxed us into thinking that non-whites are all oppressed by racism and they need saving. We've been hoaxed into white guilt, which makes us feel like we are the problem; and we've been hoaxed into the white savior complex, which is that it's up to us grand whites to save the poor, unsophisticated non-whites.

Putting the high school lunchroom/4chan logic aside, this isn't really that complicated. If what you do makes others feel bad about themselves, then you--as a decent human--should strive not to do it. If others feeling bad about comments you make empowers you to say even more hateful things, then you're an asshole. Probably worse, actually, more like antisocial.

Note that I meant "up in arms" instead of "feeling bad". The provocation that being up in arms over being offended is reasonable. I understand why people don't respond well to crybullying. I doubt the Trump phenomenon happens if not for all the crybullying of late.

[surviva316]

Since we're talking about divisiveness, this theme has been knocked into us for decades and it is divisive.

I don't know why this needs to be divisive. I don't know what it's like to be a woman. When an issue comes up that concerns women, I open my ears to women because they have a special perspective on the discussion. I don't take this as an insult to my intelligence.

As an example that isn't directly relevant to intersectionality, I've way too often seen people have extremely strong opinions on what rape victims would "logically" do in certain situations or how it should be handled. These are opinions that I've almost never seen shared by victims of sexual assault and that isn't borne out by any research on the issue. If these self-proclaimed "rationals" would shut up for a second on their completely inane speculation, they would learn a thing or two about what it's like to be a rape victim--perspectives that aren't much likely to be gained by sitting in an echo chamber with fellow non-rape victims.

This is an extreme example, but just trying to illustrate that it's extremely reasonable to recognize blind spots in your own perspective and listen to people who have a special insight into that particular topic. White males very often get offended by this perceived accusation of ignorance or feel censored by being shut out of the conversation, but it's just a fact of life: if you're not black, the best way you can learn about what it's like to be black is to shut up and listen, and so on for being gay, a woman, a religious minority or anything else. This perspective on the issue shouldn't divide us. If you want to enter the conversation, just listen for a bit.

My life has included some of the worst shit that can happen to a person, but because I'm a straight white middle class male, I don't understand pain and oppression.

I wouldn't necessarily say this. First-of-all, pain or hardship or even victimhood aren't sufficient for this conversation.

Oppression is, but how widely are you defining it? I know ong has shared stories about being a "spazz" at his school, and I've welcomed his perspective on this. I don't know how much it extended beyond schoolyard stigmatization and into every aspect of life, quite like being a black guy named Jamar can, but it is something that I would consider at least a moderate form of oppression.

I'm sure there are any number of genres of oppression for straight, white males (eg: dwarfism, being a male DV victim) and I would of course have open ears about these things too. Of course these things will almost certainly come with their own differences and being able to appreciate that and hear out others on seemingly similar issues will always be a gainful exercise.

Again, almost everything in this conversation is nuanced and almost none of it should be treated as an all-or-nothing proposition. If it seems that I am guilty of putting things under too big of umbrellas, there's a good chance it's because I'm simplifying ideas to convey them clearly and succinctly without having endless qualifiers and parenthetical asides.

This is part of the media and intelligentsia hoax. They've hoaxed us into thinking whites don't experience racism because whites are "above it" or members of the faux "first class citizenry", and they've hoaxed us into thinking that non-whites are all oppressed by racism and they need saving.

Instances of legitimate oppression are much rarer going one way than the other because one group is in power and the other isn't (talk about being dangerously reductive with my wording, yikes!). I'm part Irish and part Italian (essentially 0% Anglo). In history class, I learned about the shit "my people" went through in Boston and New York and Philadelphia at the turn of the century and saw racist (or ethnicist) cartoons and caricatures that were published in papers, and I laughed them off. Hell, I even had to stop drinking due to personal problems with alcohol, and I don't bat an eye at people making Irish drinking jokes.

It's not because I have enviably thick skin; it's because it's so alien and silly to me. No one actually thinks less of Irish people these days, no one actually passes over my resume because I have a lot of vowels in my name, I don't actually feel like I need to hide the fact that I had a drinking problem lest it legitimize hurtful stereotypes about "my people," etc. I just scoff it off with my typical white-male "Like you could fucking say anything that could hurt me" hubris. Same for when I was a white dude living in Harlem. I got angrily called a cracker once or twice; nothing more than a funny story for me to share. It's not a double standard for me to expect otherwise the other way around.

Again, there are exceptions to this. Let's take a divorced male who gets <50% custody with his kids for no reason other than he's not the mom. If he were to get upset about people saying that dads suck, I'd understand. There have been white people who have been the victim of hate crimes at the hands of black people. The list could go on, I'm sure. It's just by default, the people who make up whatever percentage of hiring positions and whatever percentage of legislative positions, etc, are not going to be the ones being oppressed.

Are there black people who have shitty views about white people? Same for women about men? Of course! But not a whole lot of sane people condone this (even if maybe, from some removed perspective, some "understand it," whatever that might mean for whatever individual case).

[wufwugy]

I don't know why this needs to be divisive. I don't know what it's like to be a woman. When an issue comes up that concerns women, I open my ears to women because they have a special perspective on the discussion. I don't take this as an insult to my intelligence.

As an example that isn't directly relevant to intersectionality, I've way too often seen people have extremely strong opinions on what rape victims would "logically" do in certain situations or how it should be handled. These are opinions that I've almost never seen shared by victims of sexual assault and that isn't borne out by any research on the issue. If these self-proclaimed "rationals" would shut up for a second on their completely inane speculation, they would learn a thing or two about what it's like to be a rape victim--perspectives that aren't much likely to be gained by sitting in an echo chamber with fellow non-rape victims.

This is an extreme example, but just trying to illustrate that it's extremely reasonable to recognize blind spots in your own perspective and listen to people who have a special insight into that particular topic. White males very often get offended by this perceived accusation of ignorance or feel censored by being shut out of the conversation, but it's just a fact of life: if you're not black, the best way you can learn about what it's like to be black is to shut up and listen, and so on for being gay, a woman, a religious minority or anything else. This perspective on the issue shouldn't divide us. If you want to enter the conversation, just listen for a bit.

Agree. For obvious reasons, it's important to hear each side.

Adjunct: I think people from the "non-victim" side have been wrongly shutdown in their opinions. Regarding rape, it has gotten to the point where it is "wrong" to say that women are more likely to get raped if they get blackout drunk around nothing but horny teenagers. We're allowed to have the conversation about how men who rape are bad, but we're not allowed to have the conversation that women are in part responsible for keeping themselves safe.

Instances of legitimate oppression are much rarer going one way than the other because one group is in power and the other isn't (talk about being dangerously reductive with my wording, yikes!). I'm part Irish and part Italian (essentially 0% Anglo). In history class, I learned about the shit "my people" went through in Boston and New York and Philadelphia at the turn of the century and saw racist (or ethnicist) cartoons and caricatures that were published in papers, and I laughed them off. Hell, I even had to stop drinking due to personal problems with alcohol, and I don't bat an eye at people making Irish drinking jokes.

It's not because I have enviably thick skin; it's because it's so alien and silly to me. No one actually thinks less of Irish people these days, no one actually passes over my resume because I have a lot of vowels in my name, I don't actually feel like I need to hide the fact that I had a drinking problem lest it legitimize hurtful stereotypes about "my people," etc. I just scoff it off with my typical white-male "Like you could fucking say anything that could hurt me" hubris. Same for when I was a white dude living in Harlem. I got angrily called a cracker once or twice; nothing more than a funny story for me to share. It's not a double standard for me to expect otherwise the other way around.

History has shown us one way for oppressed groups (like the Irish once were) to become no longer oppressed groups (like the Irish are today): regardless of the oppression, take personal responsibility, stop being a victim, and start embracing the values that lead to a better life. The Irish, Italian, and Jews have done this at large. A small proportion of blacks have done this. I would argue that it is MUCH harder for blacks to do it, because racism against them has been more institutionalized*, but that doesn't change the fact that we only know of one way out of this hole. That which digs the hole even further is the cult of victimization. We should listen to grievances and try to end grievances, but we've gone way beyond that when it comes to a handful of non-white, non-male demographics.

Here's an example for how out to lunch we've gotten: I once worked with a black guy and we had no issues with each other. He misheard something I said and thought I was being racist. What was his reaction? He threw a fit. He contacted several bosses and threatened to quit if I wasn't fired. I was in a whole heap of trouble at first. But I explained things to my bosses (who were also black) and they agreed that I was misheard and that I didn't say anything racist. Of course, from the beginning I knew that the only thing that mattered was what the offended person thought and that I would be fired if he remained mad, so as soon as I heard he was mad, I pulled down my pants and apologized profusely. I hadn't done anything wrong, but I ended up virtually apologizing for him having wrongly heard me and explicitly that I didn't understand what it was like being black in such a racist world. It was nonsense, but at the time I believed it.

Anyways, the reason I'm telling you this story is because it is an example of why black communities continue to have it so hard. His behavior was very standard where he grew up. His starting point was that whenever there is a question, he is the victim of racial oppression. A sign that his community was climbing itself out of this hole would be if he did not throw a fit and did not blame others, and instead tried to prove that racism has no merit. It's the Booker T Washington thing, more or less. But of course his name is heresy in some circles.

I actually feel sorry for the black guy I worked with, because he was a nice guy and he and I became better friends after the incident. He didn't mean any harm and he was very pleased when things resolved nicely. Even though I was a victim of the cultural norms of victimization that were knocked into him all his life since I very nearly lost my job over it, he was probably even more of a victim of it since it probably clouds his every social interaction.

It would be totally fine if the standard was to express grievances. But the standard today for way too many is to be perpetual victims. This hurts us all. It hurts those it's trying to help the most.


*The institutionalization is thought to be from racist white southern types, but it's not. It hasn't been from that demographic for many decades. The institutional racism that harms blacks so intensely these days is the same that Thomas Sowell discusses turned his safe and rapidly growing in prosperity Harlem home of his youth into the gangland it is today: the welfare state directed at keeping blacks dependent and the drug war.