You’ve probably already seen the footage of a white police officer named Derek Chauvin cheerfully suffocating a black man named George Floyd to death with his knee while Floyd pleaded for his life. This went viral around the same time as another viral video where a white woman in Central Park called New York police on a black man who posed no threat to her while making sure to inform the police that he was black, and just weeks after video footage surfaced of a black man named Ahmaud Arbery being shot to death by a white former cop and his son while out for a jog.
So race is on everyone’s mind, and rightly so. And whether we’re honest with ourselves or we throw a bunch of verbiage at it to try and compartmentalize away from it, white people are all aware when we watch George Floyd being torturously murdered that there’s no way it could have been us on the business end of that knee. Not because of our impeccable manners or our sparkling personality, but because our skin is a certain color.
And whether we choose to directly acknowledge this reality or not, we’re going to experience discomfort on some level. And mainly what I want to say here is, that’s okay.
It can be tempting to try and distance ourselves from this discomfort by making it about individuals: that individual cop was a bad, bad man and I would never do such a thing, and I didn’t, so I have no accountability here. And of course it’s true that you were not personally directly responsible for George Floyd’s actual murder, but white people who urgently advance that truism are only ever doing so to avoid confronting the more uncomfortable reality that they live in and benefit from a society which guarantees that they will never be on the receiving end of such brutality.
White people have a lot of unprocessed feelings about racism, their role in it and the extent to which they’ve benefited from it, both in America and here in Australia, where the bright sun on my pale skin is a constant reminder to me that I am an alien on stolen land. Those unprocessed feelings will probably express themselves in angry vituperative comments on this essay by white people who are afraid of simply feeling their feelings and getting real with themselves, because this is uncomfortable, confrontational stuff.
“Identity politics!” is an objection I often get when I try to talk about the reality of racial power dynamics in our society, probably because I have a lot of readers who follow me because of my criticisms of the Democratic Party which often cynically exploits race and racism to advance political agendas.
But this isn’t identity politics; it’s not about politics at all. This is about healing, and being real with ourselves.
“Bah, white guilt!” is another common objection. “You just want us to feel guilty! How does white people feeling all guilty help fix racism??”
They always talk about guilt. Guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt. I never brought guilt up, but that’s what they argue against. Which is of course very telling.
Obviously guilt in and of itself is not the objective here. Nobody’s claiming that the world’s racial wounds would be healed if white people just went around feeling guilty all the time; that’s a vapid strawman that is advanced by white people who don’t want to viscerally grapple with the reality of the advantages their whiteness brings them.
But also, why such a fearful, defensive response to the possibility of experiencing guilt? Why treat guilt like it’s made of molten lava? Guilt is just a feeling; it won’t hurt you. You just feel it, listen to what it has to say, and then once it’s been felt all the way through it subsides. There’s no need to fear it, and it’s not legitimate to reject ideas on the basis that they might cause you to experience it.
It’s not about guilt, it’s about consciousness and curiosity. Consciousness of the way racial power dynamics play out in our own lives, and curiosity about the experience of other races in our society.
White people are averse to emotionally processing the reality of their privilege for the same reason rich people aggressively insist they worked hard for every penny they have even though they know they received way more opportunities and advantages than the average person ever sees. Life is hard and abrasive for everyone, even for white people and even for rich people, so acknowledging you’ve received a head start in some way over other people can be one more thing in your mind telling you you’re deficient, in addition to your father’s voice and your first love rejecting you and all the other painful inadequacy stories you’ve got circling through your consciousness.
White privilege doesn’t mean white people don’t suffer or that some white people don’t have it harder overall than some black people. All it means is that having white skin is an advantage, and that all other factors being equal a white person will have an easier time in our society than a person of color. And that this is because our society has been shaped by white supremacy for many generations, leaving many remaining effects.
Healing can’t happen without consciousness. Healing our society’s racial wounds won’t happen as long as white people are compartmentalizing away from the reality that our lives have been easier than they would otherwise have been if we’d been born a different race, and that this is because our ancestors killed, enslaved, exploited and oppressed people who didn’t look like them for many generations before we got here. That while we didn’t personally cause this dynamic, we are interwoven into its tapestry and we have risen above others because of it.
And to be honest, if you really determine to get real with yourself and make your white privilege conscious, you will experience guilt at some point. It’s an inescapable part of the journey if you’re being really sincere and getting really curious about what life is like for people of different races in our society. And that’s okay. Guilt is not dangerous; you just feel through it and continue on your journey. It’s not the final destination in the journey, but it’s a river that you will cross along the way.
There are all sorts of conscious and unconscious ways that white people defensively protect a racist system, even when they don’t think of themselves as racist. You can witness these dynamics in a more overt form by simply scrolling through the comments on any of the videos linked here, full of white people arguing in various ways that this isn’t the atrocious thing that people are making it out to be. (Hint: if the only time you talk about racism is to yell at people that something isn’t racist, then you’re protecting racism.) They can happen in much subtler ways as well, throughout all aspects of our life, and it’s only by making them conscious and feeling the feelings that brings up until they are fully felt that these subconscious white supremacy-supporting mental habits can be noticed and uprooted.
My ancestors came to Australia as prisoners, and some almost certainly would have played some role in the genocide against the people who’d been living here for more than 65,000 years before them. And now I live in a society that is dominated by whiteness, and I’ve benefited from that. I’ve never had cause to fear for my life in the presence of a police officer, in fact I’ve never hesitated to call them if I’ve needed their help. I had an easy youth because my parents came from the race that has been favored by generations of white supremacist policies in Australia. Media I consumed growing up consistently featured people who were the same color as me, consistently feeding me through my formative years the message that I can accomplish anything I want in life. I’ve gotten jobs because I understand the subtleties of white culture enough to know how to speak and dress for different interviews, and because I had many white contacts (it’s not what you know, it’s who you know). There are people who pay attention to my words today who wouldn’t give them as much respect if they appeared next to a profile picture with dark skin. There are many other advantages I’ve had that I can’t even know about, since I’ve never lived a day in brown skin.
This is a reality I need to feel into and make conscious if I’m to play my part in our society’s healing of its racial woundedness. And yeah it can bring up uncomfortable emotions. Being white is weird, man. If we live in Australia or North America we’re acutely aware that we’re disconnected from our ancestral roots, but if we go to visit Europe that feels weird and not at all like home too. We walk through the land surrounded by the ghosts of its previous inhabitants, aware that they had a deep connection to it and that we do not. We’re always reaching for culture because we sense intuitively that that’s something people are meant to have, but everything we grasp fails to satisfy in any meaningful way. We’re aware on some level that we have it better than other races, but we also know that life has been cruel and abrasive to us too, and we don’t know how to solve all the problems which white supremacy has caused.
And if we’re honest with ourselves, it brings up a lot of feels. And it’s okay that it does. It’s good that it does. These feelings need to be felt. Really diving down the rabbit hole of racism and our role in it will move mountains inside you that you didn’t even know were there, and there will be some deep, deep emotions underneath them which will bring burning shame, and big tears. Those tears need to come out though. They’re what’s standing between you and true healing.
And when you have processed through that journey, you will no longer have in you the defensiveness about your own white privilege, and any parts of you which were unconsciously defending and protecting white supremacy in that way will have been purged from your system. And you will be in that respect a much more real and authentic human being, with a much more real and authentic relationship with the world. And the world will feel much more like home to you.
_______________________
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197 responses to “Meditations On Whiteness”
Subject:
‘ADHD’ has been CONTRIVED
—to INCREASE Medical Mafia’s
/ Big Medicine’s Profits, via sale
of dangerous drugs.
It is non-existent!—as sugar and
caffeine cause bad behavior in
our children.
JungianINTP,
-Rick
HAHAHA!!!! This post keeps giving. Here’s the size of Caitlin’s stupidity:
“My ancestors came to Australia as prisoners…” Now, that explains everthing. You are a product of mentally ill and dirt poor ignorants inbreeding like rats. Of course you feel self-loathing as the best way out of your own inner conflicts.
But I love other expressions of immense intellectual defficiency. Here’s one:
“White people have a lot of unprocessed feelings about racism, their role in it and the extent to which they’ve benefited from it, both in America and here in Australia”.
No, Caitlin, white people do not have any of these guilt trips you anglosaxons have. It just so happens your terrorists, anglosaxons, are white. Do not blame the rest of ys for your “kingdom’s” crimes. Fuck you. I am a white European from a country that did not have colonies anywhere in the world. I refuse your suggestion that I should be held responsible for the crimes and the horror you anglosaxons had spread around the world, and still do.
Do feel free to feel guilty for slavery but keep it to yourshitty self, okay?
But Caitlin keeps soiling her panties with more crap:
“Being white is weird, man. If we live in Australia or North America we’re acutely aware that we’re disconnected from our ancestral roots, but if we go to visit Europe that feels weird and not at all like home too. We walk through the land surrounded by the ghosts of its previous inhabitants, aware that they had a deep connection to it and that we do not.”
I agree with your self-evaluation: you ARE weird. I do not feel any of these symptoms of mental disorder you are suffering. When I go back to Norway, I feel at home and completely connected.
You need immediate psychiatric help woman. You are so deeply disturbed, you should not be free to walk alone on the street. If I were to haphazard a guess, I’d suggest you are manic depressive schizophrenic. Your “articles” show that abundantly.
And before you start screaming foul, just so you know, I am European socialist. The true one, not a bogan shitshow like you, who knows fuck all about socialism. But boldly claim to be one nevertheless.
Why are you anglosaxons aportion the blame for your crimes throughout the history on all of us white people?
Call the guilty by their name: feudal, conservative, “christian” (meaning a runaway jewish religious sect), royalist anglosaxons. Do not put me in the same basket with you looters and thieves. I am Slav from Slovakia. I have fuck all to do with your colonial crimes and blood-soaked thuggery around the world.
It is you, the anglosaxons (that includes the Dutch, even worse slave traders), who are to blame for any racism around today.
Along with your “beloved” niggers. If a white man did this, and called a nigger thug, a “blackboy”, niggers would be up in arms for it too. They hate being called “boy”, let alone “blackboy”,
The video above is not mine. I have nothing to do with that video. My link was this one: https://twitter.com/LakeShowYo/status/1267225170143412224
The Left is over-populated by self-loathing White females, often indoctrinated in some Liberal Arts faculty. Never an original thought to be found among them, as they slag their ancestors and take the side of savages who would drag the world back to the Stone Age if they ruled it.
Whites invented the entire modern world: everything electrical, from television to computers to light bulbs, airplanes, submarines and cars, all of modern medicine including antibiotics, central AC/heating…the list is almost endless. The very Internet on which Johnstone posts her screeds was created by Whites. People with higher IQs dominate the planet.
In her “about” section Johnstone describes herself as “Rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerilla poet. Utopia prepper…” LMAO. Good Lord, what puffed-up conceit.
The only reason Johnstone is even allowed to write her nonsense is that she lives in a White society with advanced civil rights where she is coddled and protected. In a non-White society she would be silenced by a slap in the face (or worse) and stuffed right back into the kitchen.
I wouldn’t believe the idiocy of some of these comments if I hadn’t read them. It’s nice to be typing this while seeing Tue Sorensen’s comment above the comment box. My position, as a white American, is to send ALL Europeans back to Europe, a peninsula of Asia (NOT a continent), where people bred so uncontrollably they had to invade other people’s lands and take them over. I actually could return to Germany where none of my family has lived for over 250 years because Germany has blood citizenship, or did last time I checked. The nasty comments Caitlin received for a very well-written essay make it clear that all too many white people are barbaric, backward, and intellectually disabled. (And the dumbest among them spend their time online searching for Confederate flag, white privilege, etc, so they can head to the newspaper comment section or an online blog to spew their vitriol.)
How do you decide idiocy? By identifying people who you disagree with? What is that telling you about yourself?
For starters, it takes one to know one. Then, you appear rather ignorant and oblivious to the historical facts, already mentioned by others, so I won’t bother re-educating yo about these.
The natural fact is that the white racists are mostly English and Dutch, and then only a minority of them. Another natural fact is that the slave trade was almost entirely in hands of jews from the two aforementioned “kingdoms”, arabs and let that be repeated ad nauseam so that white apologists like this self-declared “journalist” never forget, the niggers from Africa themselves. The autochthonous white Europeans were a minute group in that abominable business.
As for “uncontrollable breeding” all I have to say is that you are deranged and delusional. There are a BILLION and a HALF of Chinese, almost as many indians, over 600 millions of arab stinkers, and you call Europeans up for “uncontrollable breeding”!!!!!
The largest white country in the world is Russia with 180 millions of people. As a whole there are around 600 millions of us. Who is really breeding uncontrollably?
Dumbsters like you are the reason why everyone hates the white people. You are begging for it, so these primitives are obliging. Meanwhile, they all want to be white. And you, in your delusions, do not see it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJB2pY8SD48
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiCzHabFvCA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW7_2-snzOI
So who is the real racist here? The white people or the haters of the white people, who themselves are dying to be white and marry a white person?
You white apologists are the lowest of the lowest even in he the blackest country.
Being born in England and emigrating to NZ as a three month old baby left me in a strange no man’s land. I wasn’t a NZ born Kiwi, neither an indigenous Māori, just another POM (prisoner of mother England) incorrectly used by kiwi’s as a perjorative term for modern immigrants of English decent.
My parents were and are British and raised me with a fairly even split between the two cultures. My accent is mostly that of a white Kiwi, although locals would sometimes ask if I was British. The side effects of being taught to enunciate one’s words in order to be clearly understood.
After twenty seven years I never felt that I could call NZ my home. The white kiwi’s with whom I shared my feelings with didn’t seem to share or see my position. Most Māori people passively accepted my presence in their land due to the comprehensive confiscation and subjugation of Aotearoa (New Zealand). A handful of times a disgruntled Māori on a building site let me know in no uncertain terms that I was was an alien in his land. This cut to the bone. The crux is that I can feel a cultural contentment in England even though I’m mostly Kiwi in my upbringing and mindset. I’ve resided in Germany for the last six years and even though I’m also a legal alien who’s married a local I feel at ease with the long standing traditional culture. Both Germany and England are indigenously white and from my experience they offer the roots which will never exist in colonial confiscated lands.
My heart goes out to those whom are born in these lands to parents of European decent. My advice is to empower the native indigenous peoples and to recognise that whilst the sins of our forebearers can’t be erased, we can take conscious steps towards giving back what was unjustly taken.
Almost all cultures have oppressed and subjugated other cultures and creads. It’s not a pissing contest. Simply acknowledge, process and accept the current reality and make a difference for the better.
Hey, “white” apologist, why do not you write about this asian NYT “journalist” openly calling for “cancellation” of white people:
https://twitter.com/Chaulll/status/1266147381344710658/photo/1
Genocide is fine by you as long as it is your own race, right?
You are stupid and a disgrace to every white woman out there.
Hey, white “privileged” bitch, how is this for a white supremacist violence in usa police?
https://twitter.com/kwamerose/status/1266576478424219650
Dark-skinned policeman hitting a light skinned woman, and from behind too. Like a coward that all these niggas are.
Go cover yourself over with your white “privileged” ears and shut up. If you hate yourself for being white, go to africa and let them rape you day in and day out. We do not need your self-loathing shit to project on all of us white people. Stupid racist that you are.
I wonder if this Caitlin female (so as not to “insult” her with the word woman, which contains “man” in it) is white self-hater, or a non-white racist.
I am leaning towards the latter…or former…
Or both.
Race- and Culture-Envy drive much of today’s anti-white, minority-driven attacks—dear Caitlin.
A D L E Y’s // A D L E Y s // A D L E Y‘s whiteness!!!, as WHITE women set the standard for BEAUTY and INTELLIGENCE and GRACE in today’s world:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1095195784191771
-Rick
I am a white ‘australian’, 6th generation, – when I moved up to Kuranda in far north Queensland I had had very little experience of black people, but due to living next to a black community I got to know folk therein, and from there in Kuranda as a whole.
I found the black people, (their insistence on that description, – they were not ashamed) to be far better company than most of my white friends, – perhaps not so interested in philosophical discussions, but far more intelligent in emotional understanding, and good loyal mates.
After I had my relatively small prejudices swept aside I had black girlfriends, 1 from PNG highlands, 1 from Bougainville, *Black – so black you could not see anything except her teeth and eyes when it was dusk, I loved her blackness) 1 from Thailand, an older woman, peasant she would be called, (Yet another prejudice), and although I am not still together with any of them nor am I with the few white girlfirends i have had.
I would have to say that my black girlfriends were generally more real and open than my white girlfriends, – not wishing to be judgemental, but black folk are better company, – I think White Australia should wake up to the immense benefits that Community could bring to our lower ego society and our Black members are just the folk to teach us.
Happy your blacks are so agreeable to you. Here, in the states, they’ve the reputation of pit bulls—warranted or not. -Rick
Caitlin, you are a delusional, brainwashed useless idiots of your masters who manipulate you as they will.
Blaming ALL white Europeans for the past is pure racism.
And you claim to fight against it… Cretin that you are.
Uneducated little “aussie”. Enough said.
White people IQ= 110
Black people IQ = 80
EXPLAIN THAT
Tibor, these estimates are based on tests concocted by white people, – what nonsense, to judge others from your own narrow perspective.
Christ is reported to have said, “Judge Not that ye be not Judged, – simple and easy to understand, as your biased judgement immediately arouses in me a judgement of you, and I would be grateful if you would cease such antisocial behaviour, so we can all appreciate each other.
To judge means to think! // So, Geoff Thomas, go through your day without thinking—which you’ve accomplished by your THOUGHTLESS comment. -Rick
P.S.
By the way, Geoff: From Jesus’ language ( Aramaic ) TO Greek TO Latin TO English, the original term was not “judge,” but CONDEMN—thou shall not CONDEMN! // Jesus would not ask of us: Don’t think! -Rick
Actually, most judgement is thoughtless knee jerk responses, and almost always what the person is coming from is associative thinking, which is mindless thinking and barely thinking at all, – it is repetitive and reactive and totally unoriginal, – it is the state of mind high level forcing advertisers require you to be in to trick you into buying their trash.
Most people never really think about thinking, yet we do have that ability, you might start thinking about thinking, Rick, and therefore avoid making mindless comments, to the benefit of us all.
Yeah, right up there with “racist” ACT and SAT exams to get into college. You know, the one’s that require reading comprehension, math skills, writing ability?
But math is racist now, so is philosophy cause those Greeks and Romans were white; kinda, sorta, maybe; and the Renaissance? What a bunch of savages. Spelling doesn’t matter either, just axe someone.
Black vs Black homicides represent 94% (may vary by year by a few points) of Black murders according to the DOJ; my “judgement” of that fact is that the most dangerous race oppressing Blacks is their own. So much so that a White man murdering a Black man verges upon cultural appropriation.
Christ is also reported to have said “Physician heal thyself.”
Remember Ebonics? Black Leaders stepped forward and killed that stupidity on the front end. They need to do so again with the “poppin caps n doin hoes” culture embraced by an apparently high percentage of their population today.
Then again, I lived in Memphis, TN back when Black Mayoral candidate Willie Herrington ran on an open platform of “I’m going to run every White out of Memphis” and won. 5 terms in a row. Didn’t see a lot of National coverage on THAT aspect of his campaign. But Memphis is a sister-city to Wakanda now, right?
G E N E T I C S , Mr. Braun (( yeah, I’m just driving home your important, astute point )). -Rick
Tibor Braun IQ = 20.
That explains it.
Mike, you do know this page is for adults, don’t you? -Rick
“Judaism is Communism.” Rabbi Waton. // See rabbis surrounding MLK, all of whom embrace an eventuation of communism in America:
https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/a-half-century-later-rabbis-recall-marching-with-martin-luther-king/
-Rick
You are just as stupid as Caitlin Johnstone. You both believe the same jewish bullshit without understanding it. Communism existed long before Marx, Luxemburg, Trotski and similar garbage got their hands on it. The REAL socialist workers movement was infiltrated by jews in 19th century and they used it for their own goals, which from the day one were INCOMPATIBLE with the actual goals of European workers.
Neither of you two understands that you are both victims of the father of “multiculturalism” and European Union, George Koudenhove-Calergi. You both are his useless idiots and soldiers in a war that is not even yours. You are unable to comprehend that Caitlin is an idiot who was brainwashed into believing in “white privilege”, a concept that puts ALL Europeans in the same basket with the few, mostly jews, criminals who were the engine behind the slave trade, as they were for the past 4000 years.
Caitlin would do herself a favour to LEARN history of her UK ancestry and learn how jews were SELLING white poor Europeans on Constantinople’s slave market since the Greek times, and then simply continued when they infiltrated Europe.
I am European, of Germanic origins, from Norway. Norway never had any colonies anywhere. I refuse to be categorised by idiots like Caitlin as a “white, privileged male”. My ancestors have nothing to do with the slavery Cailtin in her monumental ignorance, blames on ALL white people. She is an uneducated bogan cretin with zero knowledge of real history. She is a goy slave designed to spread discord among her own – if she indeed IS a white person – for someone else.
So are you by blaming “communists” for everyhting, when your jewish “christian” church was and still is the engine behind all evil.
So, fuck you both.
Pretty intelligent post, Sven. // Now, stop using the language of a village idiot—to be more persuasive and far-better appreciated. -Rick
Lead by example, genius. Or abstain from being self-righteous patroniser.
Staring into your own face in the mirror does not make you an expert on others. And less hypocrisy would do you a lot of good. If you are here because you are seeking appreciation, you have a lot of issues to work through.
Get crackin’ kid. And abstain from commenting to my posts if all you have to say is self-healing crap. Not interested in your mental problems.
A day late to the discussion. Oh well … Wrote this yesterday … Decided not to post it … Then changed my mind this morning … It’s too long … Maybe no one will read it … Doesn’t matter … Its real.
…..
Ms. Johnstone here reveals the very hook her Enemy has set into her, to ensnare her spirit to serve her Enemy’s own purpose. This is ‘how it goes’. It’s cunningly insidious. Invasive. When we ‘see’ it in ourselves, we can come to understand that we must forgive it when we encounter it in others.
…..
I’m not sure Ms. Johnstone even fully realizes what she is saying, nor its implications. Humankind must adjudicate a ‘reckoning’ with all of Human History’s sins before we can create a world in which people can live together in justice and peace? And all people now alive must be assigned apportioned blame for the sins of people who are now long dead?
…..
All white people must feel guilty for being white people, Ms. Johnstone posits, because some white people, from thousands of years ago into the present, gained possession and control of superior technology, and used their control of technology to cruelly exploit the lives of other people.
…..
A person of Ms. Johnstone’s brilliant acumen must surely be familiar with ‘set theory’, as often represented in Venn diagrams. If we imagine the ‘set’ of all white people now alive, and all who have ever lived, as a large circle, the ‘set’ of White Elites, the people who gained control of superior technology and then used it to oppress other people, is a much smaller circle that fits within the larger circle many times over.
…..
Most white people who have ever lived have been oppressed people. Only a very few White Elites have ever been The Oppressors.
…..
But Ms. Johnstone tells us that ALL white people now alive must accept a proper measure of racially apportioned blame, shame, and guilt, as our proper legacy for having been born white. Our individual identity, beliefs, and racial feelings do not matter. White people are all ‘guilty’ simply because of our race. And men are all ‘guilty’ of being men, simply because we are men.
…..
And somehow such ugly blatant racism, and equally as ugly and blatant sexism, (making such a huge inference, to ‘pre-judge’ individuals on the basis of race and gender alone), which forms the ugly racist and sexist heart of Identity Politics, is not recognized for what it is.
…..
Fight racism with racism? Fight hate with hate? Get people of every race and gender in a state of mind of aroused racist and sexist animosity, and that will somehow help us reach our goal of a more just and peaceful world?
…..
Is THAT your plan? (addressing the advocates of racist and sexist Identity Politics).
…..
We can only free the ‘n***ers’ of the world by making white men the ‘new n***ers’ of the world? THAT’s the ideology that the Left thinks will lead Humanity to a more just and peaceful world?
…..
Do advocates of the obvious racism and sexism of Identity Politics truly understand that there are very nearly a billion white people alive right now, and that about half of them are males? And you want ALL white people, even Slavic people, (whose ethnic name became our word for ‘slave’), to feel personal guilt for the sins of European Elites?
…..
And thus the ‘cult of identity victimhood’ is born. Everybody wants to officially ‘identify’ as an official ‘victim’. Victimhood has come to confer ‘rank’. Being a female human is inherently a state of victimhood. It doesn’t even matter if a female human is born into elite privilege and has exerted power over the course of her entire life. She is female, therefore, by definition, she is, officially, by dictate of official Political Correctness, a victim.
…..
Thanks to Annalogue (and others) for pointing out that the first people that the ‘Elite’ white people, (the ones who had gained control over superior technology), exploited were other white people. The self-appointed, technology empowered White Elites first exploited the people closest to them. A relatively small number of Elite White People relegated most ALL the other white people, the Common People, to ‘indentured’ slave-like status.
…..
My own ethnic heritage is Slavic. As mentioned above, our very word ‘slave’, in English, evolved from the fact that so many Slavic white people were enslaved by Elite Whites, (by the ones who controlled superior technology), that the word ‘slav’ acquired its generalized meaning in English as a person owned/enslaved by another person.
…..
If we did an academic ‘study’, (as surely someone has), if we went back through all Human History and started collecting demographic data about who has been most exploited/enslaved by whom, we would learn that most of the Common People of Europe, most white Europeans who have ever lived, have lived short brutal lives of indentured labor, in cruel servitude, with few freedoms or privileges afforded them.
…..
While African slaves were owned like cattle in the American South, the wage slaves of the North were mostly the indentured white serf/slaves of Europe, who fled to North America in desperation, often goaded by famine and/or threat of violence.
…..
The lives these people led in the textile mills and other factories of the North comprised a hellish existence. Children went to work in the mills as young as 8 or 9, working 12 hour shifts, for a daily bowl of thin gruel, a bed infested with lice, outdoor ‘plumbing’, and the ‘privilege’ of doing it again tomorrow, for every hopeless tomorrow into the future. Everybody that could work had to work, just so there was enough porridge in the pot for a spoonful to go into every bowl.
…..
The din on the textile mill factory floors was deafening. Even shouts directly into another’s ear could barely be heard. The air was full of choking lint, which filled people’s lungs like coal dust does miners’ lungs. Lung disease was a common cause of death, killing many in their mid-30s, when people had already worked over 20 years of 12 hour shifts of soul crushing hard labor in hellish conditions.
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Do any really think these people, these ‘wage-slaves’ were ‘free’? How does the term “white privilege” fit into the story of their lives, and into the story of their European ancestors’ lives of indentured servitude?
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These wage-slaves’ ‘employers’, (rather than ‘owners’), had no incentive to ‘take care of’ these ‘wage slaves’ in any way at all. Whether they died as children from the diseases rife in the filth they lived in from birth, or survived into adulthood to die coughing up bloody cotton lint at the age of 33, PLENTY more desperate European people were unloaded off ships, like raw cattle onto the dock, every day. These people’s lives were as brutal, cheap and expendable as the cost of a pit to bury them in.
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Black African slaves were owned, like valuable cattle, to be used, as beasts of burden, to grow the cotton in the South. But it was the white European wage-slaves in the North, many fled from indentured servitude in Europe, who spun the cotton into thread, and wove it into cloth.
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A healthy strong African male slave was priced at the equivalent of $25,000 US dollars, (in today’s dollars). These people suffered the horrible indignity of being human cattle, but as such they were assigned the considerable value of ‘cattle’, as a measure of productive capital.
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These ‘owned’ people were not ‘expendable’, as were the wage slaves in the textile mills of the North. These people were valuable property, and they were treated and ‘taken care of’ as such. Only foolish farmers do not take great care of their livestock. It is stupidity for farmers not to keep their livestock well fed and properly sheltered, to do everything possible to keep them healthy and strong.
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It is only the subjective ‘coloration’ of our own selective awareness of the long-told tale of Human Tragedy that makes the suffering and plight of people who were enslaved but generally well cared for, somehow seem worse than people enslaved by the same degree of indentured labor, but whose ‘owners’, whose wage-masters, have no investment, no stake at all, in their expendable workers’ safety and welfare.
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The history of the Human Species is a long sad tale. Some would call it a ‘sordid’ tale, a tale of disgusting deeds by stronger people against weaker. Some would call it tragic tale, nobly sung, a tale of many heroes fallen, many victims’ suffering, in Humanity’s Great Quest for ‘humane’ (civil? moral? just?) Spirit and Reason.
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Our Human History is certainly a story full of violence and bloody death of large numbers of people at the hands of other people. Every race of humans that have developed past the most primitive of tribal societies, have developed classes of Elites who have exploited, enslaved, and/or killed other people to serve their own Desires.
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The indigenous civilizations in North/Central America, the Aztec and Maya, practiced particularly cruel forms of slavery. Slavery in Africa goes back several thousands of years, when both slave and slave master were all ‘people of color’. The history of Asia is a saga of ‘dynasties’ of domination of the weaker by Elites.
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No race of humans is uniquely moral and just, nor is any race uniquely evil. If we did a historical demographic data study, do any of us believe that any race of humans can point to a unique history, unique for not deriving from a story of domination of the weaker by the stronger?
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In favorable environmental circumstances, with abundant territory for each tribal group, when tribes do not feel that their security is threatened by other tribes, humans live more moral lives. In times of plenty, the “better angels of our human nature” tend to flourish. Strife recedes.
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The tribal stone-age societies of North America lived in near ideal conditions, in a generous environment. There was plenty of territory. Agriculture and government were just forming up. In the East, tribes formed the Iroquois Nation, which held sophisticated democratic meetings. The Sioux Nation held councils on the western high plains. Cheyenne. Crow … The Cherokee, Creeks, and Seminoles in the Southeast … Families form into clans, clans into tribes, and tribes into nations.
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It was happening in North America just as it had happened in Europe. This is the inevitable evolution of primal Human Tribal Nature into Civilization.
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Had the White Elites not capitalized the technology to navigate across the oceans, with hard metal weapons, and even firearms, had the whites not come, the North American tribes’ populations would have increased, and their technology along with it.
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Europe developed from a stone-age human society. Even Caesar, only 2000 years ago, (in 10,000 years of human ‘civilization’), wrote about the wild Germanic tribes that dressed themselves in animal skins, considered the use of a saddle ‘effeminate’, and took great pride in “not sheltering under a roof” for years at a time.
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North America was a generous environment. Human Society would have developed like it did in Europe. Elite Classes had already formed in pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America. Brutal forms of slavery were practiced among the Aztec and Maya.
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When populations increase, territories become disputed. When territory becomes disputed, survival itself is always immediately at stake.
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One ‘tribe’, whose survival is in danger, will steal another tribe’s territory. Thus war-like culture evolves for tribal survival. Security, life itself, is always more important than ANY other concerns. Men are thus culturally exalted as ‘great warriors’. Women, especially women raising children, are relegated to depend on men to protect them, (Mass Media-fed Wonder Woman fantasies aside), so they have a different status than ‘warriors’.
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Throughout all Human History, “it’s still the same old story, a fight for love and glory, a case of do or die”.The stakes are high for both men and women. Men must fight, and many will die. Many will become slaves. If their men lose, many women, and children, will die as well. And many will also become slaves. Slaves exist only to serve their owners’ desires. Attractive girls and boys and young women will be used to gratify base sexual desires.
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Most white Europeans lived lives of indentured servitude, even to the extent of outright slavery.
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Racism is a sub-set of Tribalism. Race only matters if race is a ‘trial identifier’.
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If one tribe is confronting another tribe, race only matters at all if the two confrontational tribes are primarily comprised each of one race against the other of a different race. Race then becomes a ‘tribal identifier’.
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If both confrontational tribes are primarily comprised of the same race, then race will NOT be a tribal identifier. But other ‘tribal identifiers’, every bit as ‘vehement’ as racial tribal identifiers, will be found. Might be religion. Could be Taxing Authority. Or it could be just the color of a bandana. Once the tribal identifier is applied, objectifying irrational hatred easily follows. That is the nature of our human species. That is our primitive Tribal Human Nature.
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People who hate China are accused of racism. People who hate Russia must be accused of some other ‘…ism’.
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For tens of millions of our Common People, here in the US, their daily lives are constantly assaulted by the deadly danger of constantly ongoing tribal warfare over territory between randomly self-selected groups of essentially similar/identical young men.
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Violence against each other, black-against-black, is lower class African Americans’ greatest threat, far exceeding, (by an exponential factor), the threat of violence from unqualified (‘rogue’) police. The threat of white-against black violence is MUCH lower than the threat of black against black violence, and is also much lower than the threat of black against white violence.
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Black against black violence is the worst violence, by FAR, inflicted on black people.
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If you read the ‘Unz Review’, (where I think Ms. Johnstone’s work has been posted), you will read ‘case stories’ of brutal black-on-white violence, which are often random ‘hate crimes’, (the black person perpetrating violence against a random white person, simply because the black person hates white people in general). Many prominent cases of black-on-white hate crimes are not being reported, at ALL, in our Elite-owned Mass Media.
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The Mass Media Barons want to arouse African Americans to high levels of racial animosity toward white people in general. Why? Why do the Media Barons, (who are almost ALL white people, if we include Jewish people as ‘white’), want Black Americans to feel strong emotions of anger and retribution against white people?
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Isn’t the answer obvious? The more that irrational and highly emotionalized divisiveness can be fomented between various tribal identity groups, the more those groups will fight each other, instead of fighting their Common Enemy, the Elites who are oppressing people of every race, gender, and ‘tribe’.
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That is the primary contention of the people who regularly write about ‘anti-white liberal media’. African Americans are being taught to fear and hate white-people. 3 out of 4 African Americans also “strongly oppose” immigration, for reasons that should be obvious. The people on the caboose of the train, or closest to it, are always the most threatened by people chasing the train to jump on it.
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Caught between brutal gang territorial wars on the one side, and the highly advertised brutality of some police on the other, people in poor minority communities have no one to trust. “When those that make the law, break the law, then there is no law”. Many inner city ‘zones’ become effectively ‘lawless’, where the police do not even claim control. Police fear for their own lives in many situations, in many neighborhoods. The population is heavily armed.
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The more brutal that social conditions become, the brutality at some point begins to feed itself. We’re well past that point. People are being encouraged, through skillful manipulation of Mass Media, to hate other people. When they do, those people often hate them back.
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That’s EXACTLY what the people who own ALL the Mass Media want most of all. They want everybody, or at least every ‘tribe’, to hate every other.
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Big Hint, folks … When the Mass Media Barons are hyping your political line, they’re doing that to serve their own purposes. When your Enemy owns ALL Mass Media, and Mass Media are giving you sensationalized publicity, do you think it’s more likely that they are stupid, or that they are using you to further their own “divide and rule” designs?
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Brutal enmity between tribes is not less when race is not a tribal identifier. People of every race are quite capable of demonizing/dehumanizing tribal hatred against other people of the same race.
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Race and Class are somewhat interrelated. Higher percentages of people of color in the US are poor, but most people of color in the US are NOT poor, and almost half of all poor people in the US are white.
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Intra-national perspective is different than inter-national perspective. Global economy and currency exchange rates come into play. Mass migrations are always threatening to the lower classes of people in the target nations. ALWAYS. It has nothing to do with race. People simply instinctually realize that massive numbers of new people coming into the territory means more intense competition for survival.
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There are very nearly as many poor white people in the US as poor people of every other race combined. Counting gets very specific, and is complicated by the fact that some Hispanic Americans identify with European (Spanish) heritage, rather than with indigenous/’mestizo’, people-of-color heritage.
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If we count only “non-Hispanic whites” as whites, about 61% of Americans are white. But if we count those Hispanic Americans who consider themselves ‘white’, (because they identify more with their European heritage), as white, then about 73% of the US population is white.
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It’s worth keeping in mind that we have a significantly large number of people who are generally lumped into being identified as “people of color”, but who are Hispanic Americans who actually consider themselves as “white”.
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Most people of color in the US are NOT poor. 52% of African Americans are either middle class or upper middle class. 59% of Hispanic Americans are either middle class or upper middle class.
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There are about 16 million poor white people in the US. There are about 8.5 million poor Hispanic Americans, and about 8.9 million poor African Americans. 48% of all Americans living below the official poverty line are white people.
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Race and class are interrelated, but not always in the ways people think they are. People identify with their class interests more than with purely racial interests. Among the 52% of African Americans who are either middle class or upper middle class, the higher they are on the income scale the more likely it is that they will identify more with the political/class interests of other middle class people, regardless of race, than with the interests of poor people of their own race.
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The idea that we must come to some ‘reckoning’ with all of History’s sins, assigning proportional blame, and presumably some sort of punishment, to the current descendants of past sinners, before we can make any progress toward building more just societies, just makes it that much harder to even imagine EVER accomplishing any meaningful objectives that advance us toward our goal.
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If Ms. Johnstone believes, as she appears to, that assigning blatantly racist, and blatantly sexist blame and guilt on white people, and specifically on white men, regardless of any individual beliefs, based solely on racial identity and gender, serves some useful/constructive purpose in terms of uniting people’s energies against the power of the Elites, … Well … That is certainly an interesting conclusion.
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Let’s stir-up/exacerbate as much general racial animosity in the society as possible, so we can make progress toward a more just and peaceful world?
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Let’s do exactly what our own Enemy, the Elites who own all our Mass Media, most want us to do. The Media Barons are sensationalizing some crimes, especially police against black crimes, and white against black crimes, with widespread ‘hyped’ coverage, while very selectively ignoring others, especially black against white hate crime.
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Let’s divide ourselves into mutually antagonistic groups, based on pre-judged racial identity? That’ll make us better able to organize political opposition to the control of us ALL, to control of ALL the Common People, by the Elites?
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That’s your official party-line plan?
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Uhhh … Okey doke, then. Thanks for weighing in, but I just think there are other messages, much more powerful than this message of racist and sexist guilt and punishment, that will be more successful in terms of uniting the Common People in opposition to the power of the Elites.
A wise and dear friend, a now-deceased professor of English literature, once explained to me the distinction between two words often (mis)used interchangeably: guilt and shame. As a white American who has always tried to treat black people with the same decency I try to treat white people and other other people of “color,” I have never felt GUILTY about how black people were and are still treated by many of my white American (or European) ancestors or present bad actors. But if I didn’t feel SHAME over this long and sordid history/pattern of mistreatment, there would, I believe, be something wrong with me. It’s SO goddamn obvious, and just like two, the innumerable other wrongs you point out don’t make a right. To make this point another way–if I do something awful, I should feel guilty. But if my son does an awful thing, despite my having been a good and loving parent, my proper feeling is shame.
Challenge my thinking—not just erase it!
You may be part of the reason we’ll destroy this planet: FEAR of truth-telling, dear Caitlin EDITOR.
Maybe take the time to read Caitlin again….
R Zwarich:
Your IQ is way, way up there! // Hope readers here make a paper copy of that. Thanks for your efforts at composing it. // Bravo! -Rick
Cops, especially white cops working black neighborhoods should just stop doing anything. Stop writing tickets. Stop talking to any strangers. Stop trying to enforce any laws. Simply collect your paycheck and go home. Give them what they want. Then let them save their own asses when these riots start spreading out into the other neighborhoods.
stop murdering them. that’s what they want.
When they stop killing each other for street cred; police shooting “innocent” blacks dead in the entire Nation amounts to what? A couple of three day weekends on Chicago’s South Side?
More Whites killed by Police than Blacks doesn’t fit your narrative, which is why you don’t bring THAT up.
In about 50 years there will no longer be a country with a majority European population – a few maybe. I doubt, that the world will be a better place then. Group identity and an inherent automatism to categorise everything are part of human existence. Thus you will have always “racism”. You simply have to deal with it. Morgan Freeman said, the best way is not to talk about it. I think, this is true, because whenever you make an issue of it, you kind of re-enforce differences and group identity.
You will also want to analyse which, let’s call it “ethnic groups” co-operate best with each other. I suggest for instance, that the population mix in Hawaii works quite well: there basically only Polynesians have misgivings against the Europeans, which basically stole their land in a deplorable act. Relatively poor is the relationship between Malays and Chinese in SE-Asia, which eg., led to many Chinese fleeing Indonesia to Australia just a decade or so ago. Look, by which means tensions are “smoothed out” in Malaysia and Singapore. Most “multicultural” nations have more or less substantial issues. Look at India, Africa (lots of cross-tribal rivalries) and Brasil.
Look at Australia, where the politicians’ standard phrase “society of remarkable tolerance” has been replaced by warnings against racism.
Societies will always have social and racial hierarchies, and it is always better to be on top of the pecking order. In America some Europeans realise, that they are transformed primarily via immigration into a minority (the population under 20 is already majority “Non-European”) This is not an outcome neutral process, as other groups are probably more racist than Europeans. In South Africa, eg. you have the largely unreported killing of European farmers going on. They amount statistically to more than 200 homicides on that group per 100,000 (Australia general ca. 1/100,000. It is all very complex.
Academics tend to have a different vie on this issue, as they are generally with people of their societal strata, and people with a higher IQ tend to have less group identity and are less afflicted with religion.
What the crimes mentioned in the article above is concerned: a court shall act swiftly on them. The less talk about “racism”, the more effective will be the outcome for society. I hope, I was polite enough.
nicely put!
Corporate news headline …..
“Boston Marathon cancelled for 1st time in history.”
Really?
There was of course a point in history where Boston, MA didn’t even exist, much less hold a marathon.
What do they teach in journalism schools these days?
Common sense is obviously not on the curriculum.
A few inconvenient facts. Impressions have always been that the US south before the civil war was chock full of slave owners. Less than 2% owned slaves. White slave traders didn’t go into the African jungle to get slaves. It was black Africans that gathered up the soon to slaves, usually those from a different tribe, and sold them to traders. Those that they didn’t kill of course as they raped and pillaged other tribes. The African slave trade, as well as the butchering and exploitation of blacks by blacks, continues to this day. No whites involved in the Rwanda genocide or when Idi Amin and his successor butchered rival tribes. Much has been made of the great black African empires of the long ago past but fail to mention most if not all were built upon blacks enslaving other blacks. Much has been made about the whites stealing the land to colonize what turned out to Rhodesia, now human rights abuser Zimbabwe, and South Africa from the blacks that occupied the land. The inconvenient fact is the whites traded for the land and dealt with the locals. An even more inconvenient fact is that those local blacks were butchered or driven off by invading blacks who now claim they were the original settlers of the land which is a huge lie. The white settlers were there long before the current blacks who were butchering interlopers.
You had to be very rich to own slaves.
Slavery only worked economically on large plantations. Big tobacco plantations, or cotton plantations, or rice plantations.
Small famers, family farmers did not own slaves. If you had some acres and were trying to make a living from it, you couldn’t afford a slave. Such a farmer couldn’t afford to buy one and would lose money on the deal if they were that foolish.
Slave auction records show prices up in the hundreds of dollars, sometimes over 1000 dollars. This was in a time when an average American never saw as much as a whole dollar bill. A dollar bill was like seeing a $1000 bill today. If it happens, its rare, and you remember it.
Nope, those Southerners who marched off to stop the Yankee invasion of their homes were not slave owners. A few of the officers, maybe. But even then, not all of them. Certainly not the ones who’d been living on US Army pay before the war.
more excuses snedly arkus….more standing up for racist white domination using deflection.
Are you suffering Race-/Culture-Envy, or are a simply a self-hating Whitey? // Just curious. -Rick
All I’ve got to say about this notion of “white privileged” is that …..
…. I am from Appalachia.
(Sorry, I know the Australians don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m from where the movie Deliverance was set and from where the X-Files staged shows on snake-handling preachers. The point is that every one of these middle class kids complaining about white privilege had trainloads of more privilege than I did.)
———
This world today is a highly racist and sexist world. I grew up in the 60’s, so I had an idealistic hope that we as human beings were going beyond that. As a part of a counterculture, I experienced a world where there was no racism and sexism. We had thrown away the common culture, and created our own and from the beginning we decided we didn’t need that stuff. It was wonderful. And you had to be there to even have an idea about what I’m talking about.
Yet today, the world is more sexist and racist that it was.
Racist statements and humor are common. What has changed is the races you can joke about. Now you can say anything you want about white people, Russians or Chinese. I regularly see highly racist statements and articles about all three. You know what those Chinese are like, don’t ya?
Sexist statements and humor are also common. What has changed is the sex you can joke about. Almost all popular comedy is about the failings of men. All comedy now seems to revolve around a stupid, hopeless men. Women are now of course all brilliant and smart.
Racism and Sexism are about Power. People use both to gain Power. They use racism to gain Power. They used it when they said blacks couldn’t govern or vote. Racism is still used today on a regular basis. But now it is said that a White person must be opposed. It was important to elect Obama because he was Black. It is frequently said in general that white people have too much power. In political contests, we are often told that it is wrong to support the White person over a person of color. This is naked, raw Power being grabbed, with racism being a tool. The same is true for sexism. We must vote for a Woman President because she’s a woman. We can’t elect the Man because we’ve been ruled by men in the past. Pure Sexism being used to grab power. Elizabeth Warren is a posterchild for both, with her claims of being Native American combined with her support me because I’m a woman platform. Now she says make me VP because I’m a woman.
Racism and Sexism are alive and well and very popular today. There was a point in my lifetime when I thought we might be on the path towards eliminating both. But not today. Now the world is all about pieces like this that start with a racist basis and which rely purely on stupid stereotypes of White to try to make a point.
To the 40 year olds and younger out there, we tried to leave you a better world. We thought we had made progress, and that the following generations would carry on. But you resisted and made this world into crap because you couldn’t resist racism and sexism as tools to grab power or to make money typing a column.
Francis, think you have a truth-telling book in you.-Rick
Beautifully put, Francis Underwood. I really like what Caitlin wrote and also freely admit to being exactly as powerless as any other person on the planet to amend history – without just trying to re-write the historical narrative to suit my ends and exactly as the gender and race-based power-grabbing soothsayers of the last few decades…adding yet another twist to the rope of the ongoing, self-torturing human story.
As much as I appreciate what you wrote, something that disappointed me about your story here, Caity, is that like so many Westerners seeking the elevation required to get their figurative fingers around the conceptual edges and grasp in words the whole of this race conundrum (and I know it’s tough not to lose readers by getting ‘too stratospheric’ in perspective while doing so), yours seems unironically oikocentric, written from the cloistered perspective of a White Westerner who has never spent a great deal of time outside the confines of the White West, where – like all who are not in the ruling demographics, based on wealth, race, or religion – Whites are just as readily discriminated against as any other race.
This is something of which those of racial minorities and raised in Western nations are also inconveniently ignorant. They’ve never lived anywhere but in a White majority society, with all of its fruits as well as the disadvantages, to them, of it having been engineered to suit the needs of its dominant, pre-enlightened Whites. They are blind to the benefits of being themselves increasingly enfranchised Westerners because they have been purposely sensitised to their race to such an extent that they cannot now see past it. They’re angry about history and unable to interpret current events outside of the current narrative, that serves the ends of the globalised power elites.
So, given the above, we are fast approaching a situation where this is becoming routine in our own nations…and basically because the White liberals advocating for Globalisation, have no idea the near-future misery for which they may be gimp-suiting themselves, by trashing the thin and brittle veneer of arguably the most advanced, egalitarian civilisation this world has ever known.
Europe , The Americas and Australia were built by the same cultural force that spawned Europeans. Yes, exactly as with previous (and likely future) empires, non-Euros were not enfranchised, did much of the muscle and leg work and were treated poorly as a reward…but such also is the nature of slavery and the exercise of naked, unopposed power: both by their compulsive nature need show little by way of compassion or magnanimity.
So, while White people may be a visible majority in the above-mentioned places, we are a scarily small minority in a borderless, globalised world.
And race-conscious White people – many made this way by having their race rudely pushed into their faces by the identitarian power play – are both painfully aware of it and healthily scared for their children (if not themselves) about how ugly the power transfer taking place will get.
Because this is – as Francis mentioned – all about power. Not guilt. Not reparations and certainly not about actual history.
Cops kill white people too you dumb ass racist bitch!
Look up the stats and you’ll see they actually kill far more white people, but the media only gives a shit when a white cop kills a black man! Black cop kills black man, no media, white cop kills white man… who cares.
Stop buying into and spreading the MSM bullshit!! The cops are the enemy, not white people! There is also the fact the most racist group on the planet are ghetto blacks in the US who blame everyone but themselves for the fact that they are worthless scum!
Dumb ass white Leftist useful idiots like yourself are not helping matters any.
Shuush…. you can’t say that. (OK, you really can’t call her the racist part. That’s obnoxious and crude. But beyond that, you can’t say that police kill white people too.)
It is true that police kill white people of course. Lots of them. All the time. But you can’t say that. It is now a holy cause that police only kill white people. They teach that in journalism school.
When Michael Brown was killed, it looked like, for just a moment, like there might be a big uprising against police violence in general. I went to those protests on those first days, and it was a multi-racial crowd against police violence. Plenty of white people get killed, but you won’t hear it. Where I lived, the protests were also about the police killing of Latinas. For the first day, it looked like it might be the start of a movement against police violence.
Then Black Lives Matter appears. It became all about race. That split the crowd, because now the BLM was telling everyone else that this was a Black Thing. The Democrats and the MSM jumped on the same bandwagon. And now a few years later, there is no hope of a general uprising against police violence. There is only a struggle which is contained and minimized and nothing will change. Because they successfully made it a Black Thing.
Everyone who makes this a White vs Black thing and not a Police vs Citizens thing is helping the police.
Too bad this site doesn’t have an Edit feature …..
” It is now a holy cause that police only kill white people”
is an obvious typo. Should read ….
” It is now a holy cause that police only kill black people. They teach that in journalism school.”
My apologies. I misread the original comment at first. When I fully noticed its obnoxious and crude nature, I tried to revise my comments to make it clear that I did not support that part of it. In the process, I suppose it was almost inevitable that a typo would result.
During the LA riots in the 60’s Martin Luther King flew in to offer his help. He was run out of town by the local black leadership as they didn’t want their slaves freed. White slavery ended long ago but black slavery continues to this day in the US. A fact bleeding heart ignorant people fail to comprehend as people like Caitlin push the garbage of whites should feel guilty and only whites are racist. Because of that any hint of black racism is swept under the rug. Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, and others of their ilk have made themselves rich and powerful by their black racism and they never get called on it as they blame whites for it as a reaction to white racism. Maxine Waters is not condemning the riots in Minneapolis or LA and instead is blaming it all on Trump and plenty of ignorant white apologists will fall for it instead of calling out the black leadership for their lack of condemnation. One black guy dies at the hand of a white guy and Maxine and the rest are all over it yet you never see these same people, or Black Lives matter, on the streets of Chicago or Baltimore decrying black on black violence and deaths. They show up in safe white areas to do spout their self service hate. Hate of their own as they steal from them and encourage bad behavior. Blacks like Bill Cosby and Charles Barkely have mentioned many times that blacks are themselves the biggest cause of their problems and are stomped on by self serving blacks and white guilt media. 60 Minutes Australia did a piece on the black crime in Chicago a few years ago. They went to all these local black leaders who decried the violence and all said it was up to whitey not them to fix. They help create and live the problem and want their supposed oppressors to fix it.
A white cop uses bad judgement and Minneapolis burns. Yet two black men literally execute a white Walmart on the job employee and it barely makes a ripple in the media. A few other white people lately were executed by blacks and it barely gets a mention. What rarely gets mentioned is the vast of amount of crime against blacks, especially murder, is done by other blacks. Huge amount of blacks doing crimes to whites. Look up the stats. The impression the media leaves you is all the blacks are peace loving souls and whites are all racists looking to collect a black scalp. Blacks riot and loot and they are called innocent protestors while white peacefully protesting, no looting or vandalism, and they are labeled Nazi’s or white supremacists by the media.
Blacks have already got their reparations many times over. Billions spent on housing projects all over the US trashed and turned into drug infested garbage dumps by the same blacks they were built to help. Generations of blacks on welfare because they prefer the handouts over getting a job. Free food and medical care. Affirmative action where intellectually inferior minorities get moved ahead of smart ambitious whites or Asians. Schools like Harvard giving blacks a free ride, and preferential admittance, while others pay through the full ride. Government programs that mandate that certain amount of contracts must be given to minorities instead of the best.
There is far too much ignorance, as evidenced by Caitlins column and some comments, out there as people fall for this white privilege propaganda and forced to feel guilty so as to ignore they are getting played by those with an agenda. The Civil War was spun into a war to end slavery when it was no such thing. It was economic. If it was about slavery the North would have freed all the slaves the day after the war started. For proof it wasn’t about slavery look up the Emancipation Proclamation that “ended slavery”. It only applied to states under the control of the south in the hope that any slaves fighting for the south would pack up and go home now that they are free leaving the south with a shortage of soldiers. Many northern states still had slaves as were some territories, like Missouri, and none of their slaves were freed.
I was in a meeting where the Nader Campaign of 2000 was trying to get the support of the Black community. The answer was that they could only support Black organizations and Black campaigns.
It is quite obvious when one is around politics that Black leaders make their living from that status, and they want nothing to upset that apple cart. The only thing they cared about was their power and their money and their status and they would do nothing else.
It was a rather frustrating meeting.
It was funny because they supported Al Gore, who 12 years before had been running as a conservative, Reagan-supporting Democrat trying to rally the old Southern Racists back to the Democrat cause. Of course, Al Gore had already had several of his re-inventions by then, so they were happy to support Gore. Just like they are now happy to support a re-invented Joe Biden who is now champion of the Black people instead of the White Corporate Law and Order Man fighting against the super-predators.
To the South, the war was about the Constitution. Or about how the Yankees had broken the compact. It takes some reading of history to understand this. A quick coverage on ‘racism’ in journalism school won’t cover it. To the South, the Yankees using the Federal government to erase slavery was a complete rupture of the Constitution and how America has governed.
I’m glad slavery was abolished. I’d send wage-slavery down the same path. Especially in this age where it is used to force people to risk their lives to work and thus survive.
But, everything the South said about the Constitution and the Yankees has come true with the America of today that completely ignores the Constitution. It is highly likely that path started the day the North invaded the South. Certainly the path of Yankee war crimes includes the Burning of Atlanta and Sherman’s March to the Sea. They put Sherman in command of the whole army after the war, and in WW2 named a mediocre tank after him. The US government and military is happy to follow along his trail of crimes.
Snedly Argus! So much truth-telling on this page—you’ve nailed the RUSE to the wall with your analysis! -Rick
Dear Caitlin Editor, is it you or some snooper looking over my shoulder here?—as I had written: A R K U S.
-Rick
Ms. Johnstone has lost herself.
I’m sick and tired of this same old dog that don’t hunt. White privilege is a mockery of reality, my family, on both sides, came from Europe, and went down into the coal mines, my father’s side, Scots, since the 1730’s my mother’s side, since the 1830’s. My grandfathers on both sides, were the first in their families not to go down in the mines, my grandfather McClain, graduated 8th grade, equivalent of high school, working his way through school, got a two year “teacher’s certificate”, but it paid less than a sweeper in a boiler, at the power plant, where he worked for forty years and retired. My grandfather Van Hoose, was a self taught finish carpenter, moved to West Virginia, from coal country Ohio, to build houses for miners, working a new mine.
Both my parents worked their way through school, then college, no help, my Mom pursued library sciences, spent over fifty years as an adult literacy professional, most of it in Chicago. My Dad got a degree in band, spent six or eight years in the navy, got a job with UPS, and ended up a millionaire, because he worked forty years averaging 100 hours or more a week, and spent less than he made.
Both my sisters worked their way through college, no scholarships, my elder sister and I both marched in Chicago for civil rights, until we got out of school, and went to work, we each got a small bit of stock from our parents, but we all three were married, independent, and well on our way to our own wealth, me, a mechanic, machinist, and tool maker, I bought a machine shop over forty years of work, never less than two jobs, always as many as I could, raised two adults, my sisters each earned their own way, we are all well off, not from heritage, but long hard work.
“White privilege” is code for “you never had to work for a living”, I’ve worked a job since I was six, have no need to work, but wouldn’t know what to do otherwise. I grew up my youth, in Barcelona, then Naples, the “smartest men in the world” were short brown men, who knew how to cut stone, erect a building of stone structure, dead accurate, perfectly square, doing all the measuring with a linen cord, and a plumb bob, they knew how the pyramids were built because they still built buildings the same way. I learned more in Naples, same thing only brick structure, again, all calculations done with a linen measuring cord and plumb bob. Both the apartment buildings I watched built, were more square, more perfectly aligned and laid, than any modern building in America, what they taught me, got me to engineering, without being able to do math on paper, I’m extremely dyslexic, barely graduated high school, am self taught as mechanic, machinist, tool and die maker, electronics tech, master gunsmith, all gotten by reading books, and doing it.
I live among about 80% black farmers, in North Carolina, because I chose to be here, best race relations I’ve ever had, I’m family, to many on my road, and they are my family too. Most have met, coming to my shop, to have a part made for an old or antique tractor or other farm equipment, parts can’t be had, and I take cash, meat, vegetables, meals, and we all get along quite well.
I just lost my wife two weeks ago, from long term multiple sclerosis, and this carnivorous bullshit, she’s been bedridden for several years, she just never expected to be allowed to go outside in the sun again, and either quit breathing, or her heart stopped, simply overcome by this idiotic lockdown, and lost all hope.
I generally agree with much of what Caitlin says, but this “white privilege thing” is over the line, and your take on “capitalism” is ridiculous, we don’t have any such thing here, in the U.S. except underground, everything you have to say is about “crony corporatism”, better known as “fascism”, which has been our way since the war of northern aggression. It wasn’t about slaves, it was about Wall Street, trying to force all trade to go through New York, and the south saw no reason for bankers in New York to take profit off produce from the south.
The colonies started with “white slaves”, and “Native slaves”, whites died too easily, “natives” simply didn’t work, were willing to die, rather than be slaves. Consider the word “slave”, and find its origin, whites were slaves first. Slave trade was conducted by the Zulus and a couple other warring tribes, white men couldn’t survive in the jungles, they were the last “traders” in the slave trade.
Slavery as a condition, is a result of war, always has been, back to our earliest beginnings. Before that, we just killed the losers, it’s people who can or can’t get along, not color, race or religion. I’ve been all around the world, got along with people everywhere I went, just worked hard, got respect, and gave it for those who also worked, and had skill. There are worthless people all over, because they won’t accept the notion of earning their daily bread, by the sweat of their brow. Yes, lots of people would rather hate, than deal with working, get over it. Growing up as a kid, many of my heroes were black, because they did things like invent “the mechanical shoe laster”, or took peanuts, invented bio-chemistry, produced 300 different useful bio-chemicals from the peanut, and taught us we could eat them if we cooked them. Before George Washington Carver, they were only fodder for ruminants, animals with four stomachs, boiling or roasting them, modified the proteins and allowed humans to digest them. It’s a whole lot easier to get somewhere, if one is willing to do any job, anywhere, at any time, I’ve done it all my life, just like the rest of my family. No, I got no inheritance, it all went into a charitable trust, focused on literacy, medical advances, and teaching people how to work themselves out of poverty. It was my family’s work, all my parent’s lives, they both did it to their last days. I’ve been hearing this shit, all my life, while I was busy working.
Semper Fidelis,
John McClain
Vanceboro, NC, USA
Wow, such a long commentary. Not going to bother reading it because it starts off sounding exactly like what Caitlin predicted. She never claimed that white people do not have to face difficulties, just that a white person is FAR, FAR less likely, if arrested (by accident of course!), to have a knee put on their neck WHILE HANDCUFFED. Or shot while jogging. Or threatened with the police for asking some lady to respect the leish law…
Steve, search FBI crime stats. You’re way off base. -Rick
Thank you for sharing your insights and experiences with us, John. Good posts, both here and in other threads. I am very sorry to hear about your wife’s passing. All the best to you and your family as you deal with your loss.
Celebrating your breaking into RT with a bottle of wine of the very best. You deserve the largest possible audience.
I know very little.
I do know that a wise man:
Trust only in Lies.
Believes only in the Absurd.
And Learns to Expect the Unexpected.
We need to ask those “why and how” questions, to understand “why and how” it works, so that the correct countermeasures can be employed effectively.
The answers are in hidden in plain sight and can be revealed if we ask the right questions.
These answers are present in the the history of Humans in Europe, who experienced more than 3000 years of wars and the resulting oppression, which encourages ignorance and fear, to “go along, to get along,” such that the ignorance and fear become habits for survival. Those habits are passed down through generations throughout history.
Those habits promote immature individuals who mentally and emotionally unstable. The mental and emotional instability is demonstrated in the ways that Occidentals have treated the common folks in their communities throughout history. It is also demonstrated through the imposition of the widely distributed system of oppression throughout the world since the 1400’s.
Humans tend to share that which they have in abundance or believe they have in abundance.
If one has an abundance of food, shelter, or clothing, then those things are shared. If one has an abundance of joy, grace, or Love, then those things are shared.
If one has an abundance of hate, mayhem, or misery, those things are shared. This explains why “misery loves company.”
Occidental cultural history, is replete with examples of pathos. We are living in that history, and are subjected to the developing oppressive systems based upon that history.
This is not a sensationally haphazard or emotionally charged assessment, designed with the intention of deriding of one group of Humans, in favor of another. Nothing will be prospered by it, because it would counterproductive to Human advancement. I will supply examples to support my assessment.
For example the writings of Fr. De las Casas, make the writings of the Marquis du Sade sound like a fairy tales for children.
This assessment is designed to explain and share my observations to help clarify the importance of self correction, in order to attain self direction, through understanding within the context of becoming truly Human, in our being.
Eliminate oppression, then oppressor and oppressed are also eliminated. Then the real mature business of Human cultivation can proceed and we can All live an efficiently profitable, prosperously Peaceful existence.
“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” is an old popular expression that illustrates the habits of ignorance and fear, used to not only shut mouths, but also short circuit ones thinking.
The short circuited thinking, becomes subordinate to the thinking of the criminal syndicate of con artist that causes one to betray oneself and ones own good sense and rational thinking, with lies. Belief in the lies makes one an enemy to oneself. When one is an enemy to oneself, then one will not speak truth to power of any kind, even if it is the truth to the natural power within oneself!
If the truth of oneself is absent from oneself, then all else is likely distorted and the self is disoriented in favor of oppression. It appears normal and produces oppressors and oppressed in the external relationships with others, and the relationship within oneself.
A system based on constructions of “make-believe,” does generate and branch out in to other systems based on that same “make-believe,” while creating unwitting victims who blindly conform to its ridiculousness, to continue the process.
I am merely an Umpire in this Life. I must call them as I see them. I try to do this by responding with logic and reasoning based on facts, while employing compassion and empathy. This is necessary for those of us who are the “de facto clinicians” to cure this dis-ease so that Justice can ensue. For this to transpire we must see the game for what it is and “raid the game.”
We must expose machinery that manufactures fear, the parts of the machine process and its inner workings, so that the expsure empowers others to face and adequately conquer their fears. The machinery of so called “whiteness” is the same machinery of royalty. It is only based upon illusion and not real achievement by the individual.
Just because yo’ mama is Betty Crocker, don’t mean you can cook too!
Uncovering the origins and understanding the context of the dis-ease of called “Whiteness” and its derivatives, such as the inventions of race, racism, racial inferiority/superiority, etc., allows sober examination and analysis to cure the dis-ease, that interrupts and corrupts the process towards establishing societies of Human beings who practice Justice, so that we can All, progress in the loftiest fashion using our best potentials.
For anyone who is seriously interested in unraveling the confusion of the make-believe, by obtaining facts, to arrive at the truth, I consider “The Mismeasure of Man,” by Stephen J. Gould required reading and most worthy of mention and examination. It exposes the sham to which many are mentally shackled and fearfully invested to their disadvantage.
The references in the book are based upon scientific and historical information. The second edition of the book contains a chapter which critiques the inconsistencies in data interpretation, of the “Bell Curve,” by Herrstein and Murray.
This chapter is especially important when we consider, that currently the trend is to make “data,” the “new god,” by overuse of the buzz word, that drives agendas designed to further extend oppression, and to confuse, humor and soothe the mentally/emotionally unstable character of the members of the dominant culture and those aspiring towards that aim.
We are all connected to any Human who has or ever will exist. Race is a fabricated make-believe based upon the dis-ease of “whiteness.”
Calling oneself “white,” is inconsistent with the definition of white, which is the mixture of all colors. Categorizing others based on this flawed concept and others accepting the categories, are examples of the dis-ease.
Without the creation of the concept of “whiteness” there would not be the concept of race or racism.
Uncovering the origins and understanding the context of the dis-ease of called “Whiteness” and its derivatives, such as the inventions of race, racism, racial inferiority/superiority, etc., allows sober examination and analysis to cure the dis-ease, that interrupts and corrupts the process towards establishing societies of Human beings who practice Justice, so that we can All progress in the loftiest fashion using our best potentials.
it is disturbing that most folks are not operating as if they truly understand the importance of matters in general or specifics related to matters of importance. Perhaps it is because they really do not really understand, which explains their reactionary behaviors which are conditioned, making it easy to accept narratives, that stampede them towards the direction of the slaughterhouse for processing.
Being alert is natural and a good first step. However it is useless if one does not think. It does not mater what one knows unless one can and will think. It is a sad case when one ignores ones own thought processes. Being ignorant of ones own thinking, is to be ignorant of ones own self.
Unfortunately, most folks are not trying to enhance their understanding or investigate,examine and analyze, why they think, as they think. My observational opinion is that they are conditioned to be “rushed into a sense of urgency,” that limits them in to a binary thought pattern for expedient reactions, rather than efficient responses that question the validity of the narratives or directives. They become lazy thinkers who are unaware of the treasures within themselves and the truth of their own personal power.
Being rushed into a sense of urgency is about mental manipulation and the work of spoiled brats, con artist, salesman and tyrannical regimes. Unfortunately, many of “our folks” have fallen into this trap of imitating these behaviors in their personal lives, such that they become mini-oppressors in associations that include friends and family. This in my opinion has eroded the sense of community.
Blind Ridiculous Conformity is a very dangerous example to set for children. Why are adults/grown folks, succumbing to the whims of emotionally/mentally unstable madmen without basic questioning?
“Schooling is what someone else gives you. Education is what you give yourself.” -Mark Twain
“Only the educated are free, only the vigilant remain free.” -Epicteteus
“A sucker is born every moment.” -P.T. Barnuam Patron Saint of United Fakes of America
The behavior that I observe, is the result of brain pollution that has been fine tuned over the decades designed to control behavior. Lazy thinking is about as dangerous as lazy thinkers who merely go along to get along. We must protect ourselves from both.
Those that put their faith in the state have been conditioned to be misguided into not seeing, hearing, or thinking unless directed by the whims of system lords.
There are some relatively benign events that take place that one should be alert to, that have far reaching consequences and indicate that some foul play is involved and skulduggery is afoot!
For example, the celebration of the new millennia/century took place all over the earth, a year earlier than it should have? Why the sensationalism and expensive pageantry? Maybe it was to see how many were willing to conform to misdirection.
There are some events that go ignored due to the introduction of “hope and change” based upon sensational emotional fervor that override reason, even though caution is indicated. This is where your assertion of “being alert” is extremely valid.
For example, Barack Obama taught Constitutional Law, won the Nobel Peace Prize, and won the presidential election. It was difficult to determine initially whether he was “Real or “Memorex.” (I really hope that you are old enough to understand that reference.)
With these facts available it was important to “Be on Alert,” to any of his actions that contradicted his credentials,awards, etc. This means that one should expect president who taught constitutional law, to uphold he constitution better than any president who had not the same expertise.
A president that received the Nobel Peace Prize would not initiate or maintain wars, close AFRICOM and other invasive interventions; secret “black prison torture sites such as Guantanamo Bay. One would think that such a highly credentialed president would be “The One” to establish change, based upon justice in favor of the entire population. One would think that a “whistle blower” or any true investigative journalist would have a safe haven under the administration of such a highly esteemed official.
The first contradiction I noticed was that Obama was silent on the murder of Oscar Grant which took place a few weeks before his inauguration, but was a protective “show boat” regarding the temporary detention of Henry Louis Gates. Sadly Obama, not unlike many citizens failed to speak truth to power. He was an extension of all the presidents before him. A collaborative crime syndicate of con artists, oppressive mass murdering, serial killing gangstas who purposely disadvantage the unwitting for personal gain.
So “Being on Alert” for inconsistencies of patterns and sequences has its validity within the context of those who establish the substrate of oppression and injustice that dictates the lifestyles of the oppressed.
“Being on Alert,” is most relevant regarding what is “presented” as problems and “presented” as solutions. We must be aware in a society inundated with the practice of performance art to separate the presentation from the real thing. Just as shadow follows substance, form follows function. We must use our most developed, sharpened discernment to protect ourselves from self deception.
Science is science. History is history. Presentations of either topic demands the scrutiny of critical thinking which includes investigation, examination, and analysis because in the best case scenario anyone can be mistaken. In the worst case scenario anyone can fool you with distortions of history or science if discernment is not enabled.
Over the last few years, the phrase “on the right side of history,” has been popularized and employed to emphasize the importance of behaviors that are beneficial for the common good. What is the right side of history? Do they refer to true history or the distorted presentations, which are designed to take command of those who have been programmed not to question why and how they know or think?
The concept of political “Left and Right Wing,” for me is misleading in a system that seems to have an oppressive agenda that has a 3000 year history of oppression. Authoritarianism is and has been the order in that keeps the system intact. The system will protect itself. The system is comprised of willing replacements from the so called right and left. The agenda remains the same.
Solution: Self Correction for Self Direction
The most important solution is that we as individuals must first understand the importance of Loving our own self, to the extent that we seek the truth of our self, in order to speak the truth to power within our self, so that we can speak truth to power that oppresses us. That is the Human Connection which is the source of Ubuntu.
Anything less, is betrayal of the self, and conspiracy with the oppressors against oneself and is counter-productive for the cultivation of self, and Becoming an Human in our Being.
We are here to set the correct examples. It takes work and determination
“Race” is to the idea, “human,” as ”breed” is to the idea, “canine,”—and, driving home the point, the laws of GENETICS are universal for plants and animals and men, so that race is not just a CREATED concept but scientific fact! // Try and tell dog breeders that “races” of dogs do not exist—that the pit bull breed isn’t genetically inclined toward violent aggression while both border collie and poodle incline toward high intelligence: RACE / BREED / GENES. -Rick
P.S. You have two hemispheres: Left brain, considered to be logical/masculine. And Right brain, considered to be emotional/feminine. That’s the origin of Left/Right politics. Don’t dismiss REALITY, CHZ. -Rick
In the song “Black or White” by Michael Jackson, he sings the poignant words, “I’m not going to spend my life being a color”.
But clearly, most of the human race is hell bent on living their entire lives AS A COLOR. People use skin color as an excuse for behaviors including abusive behaviors. If it wasn’t skin color, it would be some other excuse to treat others in some way.
I am not white. I am not black. I am not red or yellow or brown. I am a member of the human family. I do not judge anyone by skin color but instead by (as Dr. King said) what is their character.
Skin color is a massive distraction used by all sides from real issues: Injustice is injustice. A crime is a crime. Dehumanizing behaviors by anyone of any race are dehumanizing behaviors. All these things are destructive viruses within the human family. Skin color is not the appropriate identifier of such viruses. Skin color is just a simple way of identifying “The Other”… meaning anyone who does not look or think like you do. And for many people, anyone who does not look or act or think like you do is committing a great sin… “Why, I am SO WONDERFUL we need EVERYONE to be just like me!”
The truth is, we’re all victims of something. Victims of a system that conspires to rob us of our humanity. A system that steals our futures and our joy. A system designed to pit us against each other. Yes, we are all victims and minorities of some kind. But none of us must allow ourselves to ever be defined or limited by that. Once we do that, the dehumanizing system wins and it’s lights out for the human race.
Listen to the rest of “Black or White”, esp. the rap part. Michael Jackson had more to say about the issue of racism – “on a global scale”.
I get your point though: Everyone should look at the “(Wo)Man in the Mirror.”
We brought them into homes fractured by divorce, distracted by mindless entertainment, and obsessed with the pursuit of materialism. We institutionalized them in daycares and afterschool programs, substituting time with teachers and childcare workers for parental involvement. We turned them into test-takers instead of thinkers and automatons instead of activists.
We allowed them to languish in schools which not only look like prisons but function like prisons, as well-where conformity is the rule and freedom is the exception. We made them easy prey for our corporate overlords, while instilling in them the values of a celebrity-obsessed, technology-driven culture devoid of any true spirituality. And we taught them to believe that the pursuit of their own personal happiness trumped all other virtues, including any empathy whatsoever for their fellow human beings.
No, we have not done this generation any favors.
This very relevant article can be read here:
From 9-11-01 to COVID-19, It Has Been a Perpetual State of Emergency By John W. Whitehead!
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/from_9_11_to_covid_19_its_been_a_perpetual_state_of_emergency
Brilliantly put! -Rick
He’s up the road from me, in Charlottesville, VA. —Rick
I bet that’s a lie too.
wel, well, another male Chauvinist is gonna bite the dust…if all goes well.
the murder is obvious. cops are supposed to combat crime not commit it. but the solution is lost amidst all this brouhaha of condemnation. we’ve been condemning racism for far too long. so it exists past all consternation…
our impeccable manners or our sparkling personality….i loved those words! i’m gonna use ’em when possible.
but i think we must pursue remedies with more alacrity. this is a national emergency and wold wide.
we need to assure totally free health care for our poorest starting all welfare at the bottom. eliminating bailouts for the wealthy, and tax reductions and capital gains discounts {which only affects those rich enough to have any} to pay for it. we have to discontinue the il wells depletion allowance. do workers get tired arms legs or shouldes, allowances. and if corpo piggies were people how could they be allowed to buy and sell each other?
but most importantly our war budget is immense and it eats up our happiness which we were created as a nation “in pursuit of.”
do all this and others similar i forget to include and we can add in free public education, nothing for private educational propaganda machines, and make it free all the time anytime all ages and as many doctorates as you can pile up. one still has to buy your own food and housing even in Norway.
we especially owe this to our depressed minorities and to all women. reparations are i order for women –the first slaves–and maybe the last, all African-Americans, indigenous people, Asians, atinos etc. and if you wanna get race and ethnicity out of it…simple! just make it universal for everyone. The wealthy won’t want to go to public schools anyway. so no matter for them. Oxford and Harvard have created more wars than any two public colleges anyway.
once people get even up with education and health we shall see what comes. i know that young men are wild. and as i drove a taxi for some years i often heard a common piece of advice by old-timers: “Do not get iberal in a taxi.”
this was because with passengers usually sitting behind you, and you with cash in pockets, you could get robbed or lose “runners” easily…and the remedy for this was credit cards via Uber and Lyft. So now a black man might not be able to get taxi any more due to no cell phone or credit card. i picked up everyone. on trips with black men sitting behind me to the projects i asked for money up front. young white boys did this also. and i was assaulted by Mexicans once. trust is not valid where there is poverty. you may only expect desperation. which is what fascism just loves.
checkout the real unemployment rates…those include people who gave up looking.
black on blackcrime deminishes the charge that the poor only attack cabbies or wealthy. in fact the word “honky” applies to a more affluent white man who honks outside the his black girlfriend’s house.
Our foreign policy is also korrupticle to da max: any election we don’t like south of the Alamo we wipe out and install our own fascist dictator. you name it we did it. in every nation from Texas to Tierra del Fuego.
so, say hello to the Mara 13 Salvatrucha….the last word means trout (or blade, or shiv) saves.
I’ve coined this term for police officers who go-off on perpetrators, who taunt police and taunt police and taunt police and name-call police and name-call police and name-call police 24/7:
P E R M A N E N T Traumatic Stress Disorder. And, yet, what they did can’t go unpunished. -Rick
“Race,” like “Middle Class,” is a concept created in order to prevent class war. It is also an excellent example of how entirely imaginary ideas can have profoundly damaging impacts on the world.
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We embrace (right) or coddle (left) ignorance. Whether it is something to be praised because it shows a truer knowledge, a common-sense that those eggheads just don’t have, or a sympathetic gaze and soft touch, because it was the unequal system which helped keep them ignorant.
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A group of ignorant people is fucking dangerous. Whether they’re surrounding you and picking up some rocks, or just vocally supporting barbaric policies—it doesn’t matter—they’re a fucking threat. That doesn’t mean you need to kill them, just as you don’t need to kill all predators just because they might do something bad. But you be fucking aware, wary, and understand the power wielded.
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A war or ignorance—now there’s a ‘War on X’ that would actually be worth fighting. And it must be fought like a war. Whether that is a cold or hot one, it does not matter, but the stakes are not simply your preferred option not being chosen, a workable compromise chosen, but life and death, if not for you, surely for millions of sentient feeling emotive creatures around the world.
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally, he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.
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Let’s spread some goddamn discontent like they’ve never seen before:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/k1omyaf0r73shvk/Twenty-Twenty-four.pdf/file
This article goes into the statistics a bit more, but it’s wrong to state that white people aren’t victims of police brutality, or that unarmed white people are not killed by police. The fact that it’s not shown in the MSM on a 24-hour loop does not mean that it doesn’t exist.
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shootings-gun-violence-racial-bias-crime-data/595528/
Police brutality is a HUGE problem, and it certainly seems like George Floyd was unjustifiably killed by that cop. I have yet to read about or hear anyone try to defend the cop in this case. That being said, I agree with others who’ve suggested that it’s not necessarily about race as much as it’s about class. A white man who looks like he “doesn’t belong” in a good neighborhood is just as likely to have the cops called on him as a black man. What matters is if they appear to look “threatening” (think face/neck tattoos, shaved heads, attire that is favored by criminals, etc.), or if they are acting in a suspicious manner — lurking around with no apparent purpose, or walking too slowly past people’s houses and looking into yards or windows, etc..
If we genuinely want to have some sort of harmony among people from different backgrounds, we will need to focus on our similarities instead of our grievances with one another. ID politics is poisoning our society and causing even more divisiveness — it’s causing the extremism. As others have stated, some people are driving and benefitting from this division; it’s certainly not the working/middle classes who stand to gain from it.
Having worked in law enforcement for a number of years, as an Asst. DA in NYC, what I have seen is that the brutality by some police officers was clearly coming from racism, and did not happen just because a person was poorly dressed, a person disrespected them, or a cop had an attitude. As a white man, I believe we should all be very much against all forms of inequality, but in the U.S., including in NYC, racism is still the worst one, the one that that makes for the murders by police officers. It is the form of hate that most needs to be furiously opposed, and wanting to minimize the problem only adds to the hate because that is really saying “Oh it is not so bad. No need to be so against this. We are all suffering.” Unopposed or halfheartedly opposed evil will only grow and take more lives. One can be 100% against racism now, and vehemently insist every police shooting be investigated by, for example, an independent agency.
I agree with Caitlin that white guilt should not be ignored. Guilt, I have learned from a great thinker, tells us where we are not what we want to be, and can be used as a force to have us change. Ms. Johnstone’s column has stirred me to think more about what I and other white people get out of racism, including certain privileges. Just because we have not gotten all we deserve, was never an excuse to be soft on an evil that is taking lives right in front of us.
I accept both the facts and the sentiments of Caitlin’s post on racism (What well-meaning person wouldn’t?), but I do not accept the frame in which these facts and sentiments are put forward. Specifically, the frame I reject, and urge Caitlin and others to reject, is “privilege,” a word promiscuously and mindlessly bandied about these days. What’s wrong and pernicious about using that word in discussing the outrages of racism, or any other evil inflicted upon one group of people by another, is that it involves by necessary implication (however subtle and inadvertent), the adoption and reinforcement of the sick, ugly, and stultifying view of human existence upon which neoliberal capitalism is predicated. Do we really want to say that a human being is “privileged,” because he or she is not always under the boot of oppression, is instead able to experience a modicum of quality of life without constant threat or assault? Does this not necessarily imply as a corollary (by the application of the same “logic”) that living in an omnipresent state of oppression is in fact the norm or the average or the mean; i.e., that such precarity is the default position of human existence? Is this not precisely the perverse frame in which neoliberal capitalism views human existence–as a relentless, brutal, competitive struggle of the individual to rise up over (or on) the backs of the masses to avoid being trampled, to use whatever means he or she can to escape the fate of the myriad being crushed by existence, to become one of the lucky ones, the fortunate ones–one of the PRIVILEGED ones–who has managed to escape the misery of the common human condition? To all of this I say “HELL NO!” The default position of human existence, the kind of life we should ALL expect to be able to live–the norm, the mean, the average, or whatever you want to call it–is the enjoyment of at least a basic level of decency and security, which should not, must not, be considered a matter of being “privileged” but rather merely a matter of being human. So let us call out evil, racist and otherwise, with all of the passion and precision that Caitlin pours into this post, but let us be careful, DAMN CAREFUL, to use the right words when we do this. Let us not unwittingly fall into the trap of buying into and reifying the hateful values of an evil worldview in which the vast majority of people are fragile and disposable serfs who must serve and please elites or find themselves under their boot; a worldview in which the expectation of more from life than this, not even to speak of a demand for it, is fantasy and impudence and blasphemy; a worldview in which those who nevertheless happen to experience a minimally decent life in the midst of this maelstrom should consider themselves “privileged” as opposed to being only normally human like everyone else should be. THAT is where the revolution begins.
When we are in competition with a black person fr a job and we get it because we are white, isn’t that privilege?
I believe what Newton Finn is saying is that a more appropriate word to use would be “advantage” or in some cases “significant advantage.” Because it shouldn’t be considered a privilege to NOT have the boot of oppression constantly on your neck, that should be a normal condition for everyone but of course it’s not.
You’re still forced to sell your labor in order to avoid starvation or living under a bridge. So by arguing privilege in that situation you are obscuring the real injustice.
No, if I get a job for which I’m qualified but which a black person, denied that job because of race, would do better, it’s not so much that I’m “privileged” as that the black person is clearly oppressed. If we define “not being oppressed” as “privileged,” as somehow the exceptional, then we elevate oppression, by implication and connotation, into the usual and customary mode of human existence. And that unintended elevation plays right into the hands of the malevolent neoliberal narrative we’re all trying to unravel.
You make good points, Newton. Thank you.
If I’m in competition for entering Harvard and they lower the entry requirements for Blacks and raise them for Whites and Asians, isn’t THAT “privilege”?
We live in a very competitive society. Whenever a white person gets anything that an African-American should have gotten (because he deserved it more e.g. was better qualified) and the white person got it because of racism, isn’t it privilege? Just like in Wall Street financial firms there is male privilege when it comes to promotions and compensation, and avoidance of punishment for sexual harassment. But then there is proportion. Racism is openly taking lives in front of us.
Again, no, it’s not a PRIVILEGE. We should not get into the mindset that because a group of people are horribly oppressed and continually treated unfairly means that we, who are not so oppressed and treated unfairly, are therefore privileged. Quite the contrary. We are being treated humanely, as we surely should be, and they are being treated inhumanely, as they certainly should not be. Being treated with ordinary decency, as every human being deserves to be treated, must not be deemed some sort of privilege unless we want to maintain that decent treatment is something other than the way it should be for ALL human beings. The very essence of privilege is to be set apart from the usual, the average, the commonplace. This little linguistic bait and switch may seem subtle and nit-picky, but it goes to the very heart of the oppressive neoliberal worldview.
Extremely well said. And to go just a bit further – the role played by that the most supremacist people on earth must be pointed out.
Who are these supreme supremacists? That would be Jews. They did write the Torah in which they named themselves God’s Chosen. Jews also wrote the Talmud, the most vile, supremacist, hate filled book on Earth.
Jews and other virtue signaling whites will be quick to denounce this comment. One argument that will be made is that most Jews aren’t even religious and many are actually atheists. So what? they still IDENTIFY as Jews. Most of the Jews I know are atheists yet still celebrate Passover (where God kills all the Egyptian Goy babies – what a beautiful thing to celebrate right?!).
Read Gilad Atzmon. Read Ron Unz. Read the Nation of Islam’s brilliantly researched books about the outsized role Jews played in the slave trade over many centuries. Read about the disgusting, poisoned roots of the founding of the ADL.
On the subject of the ADL (written mind you by a devout, conservative Jew – Ron Unz) this article, read by a truly open, critical and ethical mind will give you what you need to be free, to see things as they really are:
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-the-adl-in-american-society/
You left out Mein Kampf.
So what did you learn when read about the real founding of the ADL and it’s incredibly destructive role in society since that founding?
In case reading truth burns you like elvish rope burns gollum, here’s an excerpt:
“In January 1993, the San Francisco Police Department reported that it had recently raided the Northern California headquarters of the ADL based upon information provided by the FBI. The SFPD discovered that the organization had been keeping intelligence files on more than 600 civic organizations and 10,000 individuals, overwhelmingly of a liberal orientation, with the SFPD inspector estimating that 75% of the material had been illegally obtained, much of it by secret payments to police officials. This was merely the tip of the iceberg in what clearly amounted to the largest domestic spying operation by any private organization in American history, and according to some sources, ADL agents across the country had targeted over 1,000 political, religious, labor, and civil rights organizations, with the New York headquarters of the ADL maintaining active dossiers on more than a million Americans.
Not long afterward, an ACLU official who had previously held a high-ranking position with the ADL revealed in an interview that his organization had been the actual source of the highly controversial 1960s surveillance on Martin Luther King, Jr., which it had then provided to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. For many years Hoover had been furiously denounced in the national media headlines for his use of tapes and other secret information on King’s activities, but when a local San Francisco newspaper revealed that an ADL spying operation had actually been the source of all that sordid material, the bombshell revelation was totally ignored in the national media and only reported by fringe organizations, so that today almost no Americans are aware of that fact.
I am not aware of any other private organization in American history that has been involved in even a sliver of such illegal domestic espionage activity, which appears to have been directed against almost all groups and prominent individuals—Left, Right, and Center—suspected of being insufficiently aligned with Jewish and Israeli interests. Some of the illegal material found in ADL possession even raised dark suspicions that it had played a role in domestic terrorist attacks and political assassinations directed against foreign leaders. I am no legal expert, but given the massive scale of such illegal ADL activities, I wonder whether a plausible case might have been made to prosecute the entire organization under RICO statutes and sentence all of its leaders to long prison terms.”
What is your point? White people have no right to self-defence? Who was kidnapping and selling white people for three thousand years into white slavery throughout africa, arabia and asia distorting their genetic makeup so much that they now believe themselves to be the “white people” too?
Get real. Caitlin bogan is a delusional racist for attacking the white people for some perceived “racism” that lasted, what, 200 years? And was completely managed by the jews. Just look up the names of uk and Dutch slave traders. You may actually learn a thing or two.
Thank you for your important comments. Healing is a wonderful thing to do. Unfortunately our cultures don’t support that. If Einstein is correct and you can’t solve a problem on the same frequency that it was created, your blog definitely moves the conversation upwards.
Thanks also for owning up to the fact that your ancestors were indentured servants. I always find it interesting as a US citizen that when the issue of slavery comes up — the whites who speak say some variation of, not me, my folks owned no slaves. Like those were the only people in that world. No overseers, slave catchers w/dogs, accountants, lawyers, etc. — lots of folks were around, doing good and not so good deeds. And if I’m correct, smile, there were probably more at the bottom than at the slaveholding top.
You are correct.
“there were probably more at the bottom than at the slaveholding top.”
This indicates another dynamic that is seldom, if never explored The slaveholding top were the elite. If a slaveholder had 7 or more slaves, he was exempt from fighting as a matter of commercial enterprise, i.e., for business reasons.
Some slave holders, like Gen. Nathan Bedford Forest, chose to fight and even took some slaves with them.
Why did so many Confederate soldiers fight in he Civil War, if they had no slaves? I understand if they thought their land and possessions.
Maybe like soldiers of today, who claim to be “fighting for our freedom,” but can never explain the meaning of freedom, they lacked discernment to think clearly and freely.
“Why did so many Confederate soldiers fight in the Civil War, if they had no slaves?”
Actual numbers of the time show that around 2% of “Southerners” had slaves, so why fight? Cause it was about much more than slavery.
Taxes begin in the House of Representatives; population heavy Northern States controlled the House. Laws were passed by the Northern States that prohibited the South from selling agricultural products to other countries (penalty taxes), while setting prices upon same to benefit Northern Manufacturers.
Also, a “civil” war involves groups fighting to be the ones controlling the whole country; that was the North. The South just wanted to separate from the North for cause, much like America separated from England originally.
We need jobs.
We need full employment at $32hr jobs and racism will stop.
Everything else is bullshit.
Talk about reductionsim, oversimplificiation…
Not really, because full employment at high wages would completely reconstitute the society we live in. Hostility, fear, and suspicion levels would drop way down. Selfishness, racism, and other forms of stupidity would not disappear, but they’d be far more manageable.
What do you do with the ones who aren’t interested in working for a living?
Would “full employment” end the 70% unwed motherhood rate among Blacks? How about the 94% Black on Black homicide rate?
How about those of all races who believe thieving is better than working? You know, politicians.
The same thing I would do with all of the racist idiots who post comments here: tolerate their existence and wish them well.
And full employment probably would reduce unwed motherhood–not that I think marriage is such a great idea anyway.
As for “races believing,” of course I know you’re joking, but it’s worth point out in passing that races do not have beliefs; only people do. Politicians choose to enter thieving for a living; nobody chooses their race
Tom Laney has a point, although racism wouldn’t be completely eliminated but it would be significantly mitigated under the conditions he suggests.
So instead of a likely collapse due to inequality you shall simply make it more likely we collapse due to overproduction and/or resource wars.
You’re on the right track though: You need to stop making people needlessly struggle. But you don’t do that by giving everyone a bullshit job, no matter how well it pays.
Thank you for this! As a white, middle class, middle aged North American woman, for many years my defensive reaction to any mention of white privilege was “It’s not my fault that my ancestors were assholes! Why should I be punished for their sins?” But we’re not being punished, we’re simply being challenged to become aware, acknowledge and make restitution when possible. Now that I’ve realized this, my defensiveness has subsided.
Curious what restitution you have in mind for ancestor atrocities. Remember back then it was as normal to them as safe spaces are today. What atrocities are we unknowingly doing today that will make our ancestors cringe with guilt. It is a mistake to judge history through our so called enlightment. Future generations may judge this to just be a crazy and misguided period of history.
We don’t need to wait for the judgment of future generations. It’s plain as day right now that we live are living in a crazy and misguided society, to put it mildly. The only question is whether this is a historical feature or a universal one.
If one professes capitalism (I don’t) then one holds that private property is sacrosanct. So if you’ve stolen something, you must pay it back; and even if you’ve unwittingly benefited from the theft, you must pay back. Accordingly to this eminently sensible logic, we should be returning US land to Native American descendants and to Mexico, and paying massive reparations to the descendants of millions of slaves; and that would just be the beginning.
Of course it’s not practical, and the people who call themselves capitalists are just thieves anyway, so it won’t happen. But it is by no means impossible to imagine how we might at least begin to approach the problem, if the benifeciaries really cared. Which, for the most part, they don’t.
And even if one is not a capitalist, it still makes sense that we should return what we obtained through theft… Since we didn’t do the crime ourselves, we don’t need to apologize or feel guilty, and no one wants to hear it anyway. Feeling guilty is not paying back. Paying back is paying back.
I think the idea is that restitution is not to atone for your ancestors’ crimes, but to even things up between you, who have benefited, and the descendants of the victims, who are still handicapped because of them.
Implying that the black race is “handicapped” is not, in my view, a constructive way to see the problem. You don’t need to be handicapped to have a claim on something that was stolen from you or from your great-great-grandparents.
Yes! Excellent point! Let us begin with all those MILLIONS of white people kidnapped by jews and arabs for the last three thousands of years and sold throughout the africa, arabia and asia into white slavery.
Black tribes in Africa, to this day, fight for land and/or resources. Typically, you murder the current inhabitants and take their stuff. Unless they have a “value”.
Face it, without slavery most American Blacks wouldn’t exist cause their ancestors would have got a dirt nap instead.
If you want to consider REALITY that is.
The richest woman in America is a Black called Oprah. You need to re-think the concept of “oppression” and theft.
” Future generations may judge this to just be a crazy and misguided period of history.”
I doubt it.
From what I observe, the future generations will be even more lacking in the capacity to ask the right questions in order to obtain the right answers.
Questions like:
What kind of man would enslave his own children and grand-children, with the intent of perpetually enslaving future generations?
What kind of a man would have children with his own children, being both father and grandfather to the same child, and keep them enslaved?
What did religion, morals, or ethics mean to them?
If slaves were considered animals, beast of burden, or less than Human, why would the master bed them?
What was the animal of choice for bestial pleasure before they had slaves?
What do you mean by judging history? There is history and the presentation of history. The presentation is not written by the vanquished. It is written by the victors, who practice self aggrandizement that soothes their egos, to elevation gods, by hiding their crimes against humanity.
Even today, the “con artists plan-demic” lacks basic rudimentary questioning for the same reasons.
Questions like:
Why are adults following obeying adults, to observe social distancing edicts, from adults, who are not practicing social distancing themselves?
Is this a good example to set for ones children?
What proof is available that social distancing is effective measure?
Why don’t I research the matters of virology and epidemiology, so that I can better inform myself, instead of blindly conforming and complying, especially since I live in a nation that has had internet accessibility for 35 years, and a public library system for about 150 years?
What happens when the demands are reversed and someone want to continue or begin to wear masks?
What other order, demand or implied law will they conform too next because “they say” so?
Your “future generations” are victims of BRCD, Blind Ridiculous Conformity Disorder.
Nothing to see here. Not to worry. They will of course conform and comply to the system lords who are a crime syndicate of con artist.
Like too many people you see history as linear instead of cyclic. Your enlightened view is going to be crashing down in the next few years in a similsr manner to the french of their enlightenment hundreds of years ago. No one is more deluded than the enlightened because they think they know it all.
Wow! Tell me more oh enlightened one!
A remnant of our nomadic tribal ancestry. When “not like us” did indeed represent danger. Unfortunately, there are a number of sociopaths of all colors making a fortune off the exaggeration of our differences. Lest we forget, the greatest racial atrocities by far have been by dictate of whatever gang of Psychopaths In Charge at the moment. Fear and division are the primary tools of the tyrant.
Reading “The Fire Next Time ” by James Baldwin changed my life. It is the most important book ever written about racism. It was first published in 1963 and it’s even more relevant today, than it’s ever been.
Thank you, Caitlin, for making us question our deep-seated prejudices at a time that’s crying out for self-examination.
Cops probably would have reacted they same way had the person been white, brown or yellow. It’s the cop culture, the militarization of our police, and, in some cases, their training with the Israelis. Are their racist white? Sure, some. But an affinity for one’s own race is there in most people–including blacks.
Correct. This whole article shows the power of narrative. Black and hispanic cops are just as cruel but the press ignore them and focus only on the mean white cops. Thus whitey is suppressing and being racist. When you throw up reality instead of narrative you are misguided or stupid or heaven forbid racist. People hate to have their narrative destroyed by reality.
Nice of you to include blacks as people.
Where did you learn that most people have an “affinity for their own race.” It seems undeniable that most people have an affinity for their own in-group–perfectly understandable as an unfortunate consequence of evolutionary psychology–but there is no innate reason whatever to use skin color as the criterion for “in” and “out.” If your sibling is a different shade (or even color) than you, does that put him/her in the “out” group??? And if your community is integrated but the one down the block is segregated, then you might well have an “affinity” for mixed group and a disgust for racist assholes. Which would be great…
The cops would NOT have acted in the same way if the victim was white, because they would have been afraid of the consequences. In particular because they did this right out in the open, with perfect confidence that they’d get away with it.
There is a pecking order of being in or out. Tribe, sex, race to name a few. Do police profile, yes they do. If we had properly profiled, 9/11 could have been avoided. Police keep order and abuse that power along the way. Sweep them away and the army will be on us next. The military have even less tolerance for the populace. They are trained to shoot first. Stop complaining about our police. Go live in Thailand or Malaysia for a few years then you just may appreciate them a little.
I don’t see where I specifically complained about the police, although I’d be happy to do that if you like, since I despise them. We see here exactly how they “keep order.”
The police in Thailand actually did me a good turn once, but I don’t like them either.
But I don’t know what you’re going on about, anyway. We’re talking about a coldblooded, out-in-the-open murder. Attacking or defending police work in general has nothing to do with it.
It wasn’t murder, victim did not die from lack of air; current charge is third degree manslaughter.
It should also be noted that both victim and cop knew each other, working together at a previous job.
In short, variables not shown in the video.
The charge is irrelevant, obviously. (There usually isn’t any charge when a cop murders somebody, so does that mean we should all just shut up?) The fact that they knew each other (if true) is irrelevant; most murders involve people who knew each other. Choking someone to death in broad daylight in front of cameras, when you’ve warned that the victim is dying, is cold-blooded murder by anyone’s definition–except perhaps in the opinions of racists and other people of bad faith. You should be shamed of writing such filth.
Correct. It simply isn’t true that whites are never mistreated, brutalized and even murdered by police. And you are right about the militarization of cop culture. At least one entire book has been written about that.
Hi Caitlin & team, re racism & how “all” whites benefit from it.
Have a read of Jim Goad’s “The Redneck Manifesto” for a different view. Goad points out the European elites traditionally preferred to enslave poor members of their own race as land-bound serfs and so on. Especially including indentured labourers (euphemism for temporary slaves). As a descendant of American indentured labourers, Goad has fairly strong views. He says European Indentured labourers were treated even worse than African slaves. African slaves were a lifetime purchase. It made sense to look after them comparatively well to extract a lifetime’s work out of them. An indentured labourer might be with you only for seven years. There was little to lose by literally working him/her to death.
There’s talk about compensating the descendants of African slaves. None about compensating the descendants of indentured (murdered, crippled, abandoned to starve) European labourers. Divide and rule strikes again?
I’ve no wish to defend the indefensible antics of European elites, but fairness, objectivity and all compels pointing out they came comparatively late to the game of enslaving races other than their own. And got out of it comparatively early.
There’s another race, whom it is various kinds of -ist or -phobic to name, who have traditionally and still without apology enslaved races different from their own. Usually of religions different from their own. They are still at it. Leave it at that. It’s against the law of my own and a lot of countries to criticise those slavers. Divide and rule.
Of course this can’t be denied: No group has suffered more cruelly from slavery abuses than black African women and their children.
What I do question is European elites were non-European slaves’ longest and worst abusers overall. Some European elite members recognised slavery is evil and worked to abolish trading in and owning fellow human beings. People like William Wilberforce and the Grimke sisters opposed St Paul and much of the Christian Bible to do this. Wilberforce was no saint. No doubt he was selective: deaf and blind to the sufferings of European children in the Industrial Revolution’s mines and factories for instance. You could argue no one can fight wrongdoing successfully on too wide a front.
As a low-income woman of European descent I’m not aware of having enjoyed much white privilege. But am well aware of decades of my children and myself having been discriminated against by smug, virtue-signalling European-descent elites. And by their toadies. My seven year-old once asked, “Mum, why do teachers make a fuss of the brownie kids?” The knife that twists in your heart when you hear your child say that. Divide and rule again.
Jim Goad is right when he says white elites will ally themselves with anyone to stomp on the poor of their own kind. They have always hated poor whites. Read classic fiction by Dickens and others. Note the funny-haha way poor whites speak. Compare this with elite white brayings written as “normal” speech. I could go on but hey, probably said enough.
Class oppression is not near as popular as racism. Thus no one pay any attention. It is better to frame it as race oppression. That way we ignore the rich for oppression and blame each other instead.
Thank you for the book title. I’ll read it. As a black America woman, who taught low-income students of every race, religion and nationality in a downtown Chicago community college for 30 years, retired, and began studying the Transatlantic Slave Trade, I get frustrated by these events and the conversations that follow because NOBODY looks at the money.
The question to always ask — who makes money from this reality? Until everyday people start to appreciate how — beyond divide and rule/conquer (depending on white/non-white), the most correct answer to the question — the invisible, never present, elite whites. Even the white woman, who lost her job, her bosses will probably replace her with someone for less money — there are LOTS of desperate workers out there.
Coincidentally, these are the same Europeans who were responsible for creating the economic enterprise that we still play today. Yep, there were LOTS of indentured servants (often ex-convicts) in the Americas and in Australia — a good question to ponder, how many? If everyday whites embraced that number, along with events like Bacon’s Rebellion, we might figure out a way to not always fall for these divisive culture wars.
There really are others emotions beyond guilt and then blame. I hope you agree it’s time to vibrate higher. Let’s wake up.
We need to ask those “why and how” questions, to understand “why and how” it works, so that the correct countermeasures can be employed effectively.
The answers are in hidden in plain sight and can be revealed if we ask the right questions.
These answers are present in the the history of Humans in Europe, who experienced more than 3000 years of wars and the resulting oppression, which encourages ignorance and fear, to “go along, to get along,” such that the ignorance and fear become habits for survival. Those habits are passed down through generations throughout history.
Those habits promote immature individuals who mentally and emotionally unstable. The mental and emotional instability is demonstrated in the ways that Occidentals have treated the common folks in their communities throughout history. It is also demonstrated through the imposition of the widely distributed system of oppression throughout the world since the 1400’s.
Humans tend to share that which they have in abundance or believe they have in abundance.
If one has an abundance of food, shelter, or clothing, then those things are shared. If one has an abundance of joy, grace, or Love, then those things are shared.
If one has an abundance of hate, mayhem, or misery, those things are shared. This explains why “misery loves company.”
Occidental cultural history, is replete with examples of pathos. We are living in that history, and are subjected to the developing oppressive systems based upon that history.
This is not a sensationally haphazard or emotionally charged assessment, designed with the intention of deriding of one group of Humans, in favor of another. Nothing will be prospered by it, because it would counterproductive to Human advancement. I will supply examples to support my assessment.
For example the writings of Fr. De las Casas make the writings of the Marquis du Sade like a fairy tales for children.
This assessment is designed to explain and share my observations to help clarify the importance of self correction, in order to attain self direction, through understanding within the context of becoming truly Human, in our being.
Eliminate oppression, then oppressor and oppressed are also eliminated. Then the real mature business of Human cultivation can proceed and we can All live an efficiently profitable, prosperously Peaceful existence.
“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” is an old popular expression that illustrates the habits of ignorance and fear, used to not only shut mouths, but also short circuit ones thinking.
The short circuited thinking, becomes subordinate to the thinking of the criminal syndicate of con artist that causes one to betray oneself and ones own good sense and rational thinking, with lies. Belief in the lies makes one an enemy to oneself. When one is an enemy to oneself, then one will not speak truth to power of any kind, even if it is the truth to the natural power within oneself!
If the truth of oneself is absent from oneself, then all else is likely distorted and the self is disoriented in favor of oppression. It appears normal and produces oppressors and oppressed in the external relationships with others, and the relationship within oneself.
Excellent comment, Vinita. I agree.
You are correct:
“The question to always ask — who makes money from this reality?”
“Yep, there were LOTS of indentured servants (often ex-convicts) in the Americas and in Australia …”
Much like today those “ex-convicts” few were imprisoned violent, and many for victimless crimes, like debt. They were convicts of “debtors’ prisons.”
Debt is easy to impose on an ignorant population.
A very easy way to make money.
Follow the money. Follow the money/power through the history.
When one reviews the beginning of the short story by Charles Dickens, “Scrouge” or “Christmas Carol,” it should occur that Scrouge and Marley worked at a financial brokerage exchange house.
The big money maker was slavery and anything connected to it. Wood, cloth, tar, metals, etc., to make the boats; indentured military manpower to protect investments, and of course slaves.
Many of the owners were from Scotland. I suspect that the cooperative business venture was a caveat from the elite Brits to the wannabe elite Scots was due to the Battle of Bannock Burn, which help to seal the alliance between the two.
The Scots were sold out earlier by Robert de Bruce who surrendered William Wallace, then later by “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” who enjoyed the sweet life in Venice masquerading as a hero of the cause.
I recommend reading “The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade,” to begin to connect the dots of the global oppression that continues today.
You show how stupid black people are. Not ALL Europeans were colonisers. Only a few countries, and then these were the rulers, not the ordinary people. The ordinary people were treated much like the black slaves.
Everyone was treated the same by the few with the money. And the few with the money were jews and “nobility”.
Not ALL Europeans.
But what would your black brain know about these subtle differences? You have been brainwashed and despite the slavery being long gone, you are still a slave in your head.
Do not blame the white people of today for your own failings. Blame yourself.
If you want to understand why it feels like there is something very wrong with the way whites are being scapegoated, you really have to read Ron Unz and then go straight to one of his key sources, the NOI’s 3 volumes all sharing the title:
The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews
Vol 1 – The Jewish Role in the Enslavement of the African
Vol 2 – How Jews Gained Control of the Black American Economy
Vol 3 – The Leo Frank Case – The Lynching of a Guilty Man
Here is a link to the NOI’s store and to these books specifically:
https://store.finalcall.com/collections/the-secret-relationship-between-blacks-and-jews
Here is a link to Unz describing the books and the incredible power (and complete racism) of Jeff Bezos, the ADL and those who support such racist censorship.
https://www.unz.com/article/amazon-bans-the-secret-relationship-between-blacks-jews/?highlight=NOI
The intro to the article:
The banning of four Nation of Islam Black history books by Amazon, the largest bookseller in the world, provides a perfect opportunity to examine the wickedly racist ways Jewish power is wielded in America. Amazon provided no warning, no reason, no hearing, and no opportunity to respond—it was a blatant mockery of Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos’s own creed, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” It is, however, perfect proof of what The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad said: the mental resurrection of Black people will anger our oppressors and cause them to react punitively and viciously.
You left out Protocols of the Elders. You keep leaving out the best ones!
https://archive.org/details/protocolsofthelearnedeldersofzion/page/n13/mode/2up
Mike, you made some good comments earlier. But your mind is colonized. Do some reading of the materials that I’ve provided you.
Do you think Talmud is harmless?
Do you think the ADL is harmless?
Do you notice that Israel is allowed to have it’s wall but not us. Israelis are incredibly racist especially against Arabs, but really all Gentiles. Israelis do not allow migration into their country except by Jews. Of course if you’re Jewish but also Ethiopian watch out. Israel is not a good place for you to be. Do you notice that the ADL, a staunch defender of Israel, does not accord the same rights to Americans as it does to Israeli’s?
Do you think it’s ok for anyone or any group to call themselves “God’s Chosen” or in the case of Americans “the Indispensable Nation” or “American exceptionalism”?
Do you not see how the average stupid Americans and average stupid Jews actually get screwed by accepting this kind of thinking? That the worst crimes are perpetrated in their names because the little people believe in their chosenness?
Ron Unz is definitely worth reading if you are interested in the power of narrative. Lots of carefully documented, well-thought out analysis and history. His list of banned books is a treasure trove. His web-site is a great place to visit daily to catch up on the latest news and thought from a good selection of analysts, philosophers, poets and journalists.
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Mike’s comment on the Protocols of the Elders may or may not have been facetious, but I believe Ron had some interesting things to say about that as well.
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At first, when I came across the occasional article by Ron I didn’t know what to think. It was so provocative and challenging. Maybe it’s true and maybe it’s not, but it’s good to learn some alternative ways of seeing things.
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Imagine, for example, a religion that is based on a psychopathic entity who promises earthly power to those who obey him without question. What might be the consequences? What is the psychological impact of male circumcision eight days after birth? In the bronze age, how might a commandment against idols impact commerce and diplomacy between nations? How is this worldview still relevant today, even amongst self-proclaimed atheists and Buddhists? What is the Garden of Eden story telling us about that worldview? Is Christianity really a continuation of Judaism? Why is anti-Semitism even a thing, and how could it have lasted since ancient times? These are not simplistic questions, and they don’t have simplistic answers.
Equality never was meant to be a tool for lawyers and clergy to proclaim ownership of the distribution rights. Equality is something we give ourselves.
Exactly. The professionalization of struggle and activism is just as toxic as the professionalization of everything else.
Is it only racist police abuse when you’re black and regular “normal” acceptable police abuse if you’re a privileged white person?
Catilin, In reading your article I can’t tell if you’re part of the controlled resistance or just absolutely clueless.
If there is “white privilege” then there is also “black privilege”. And privilege is something usually granted by an owner, creator, inferior tribunal court, king, tyrannical government and sometimes by parents and guardians of children. And where you have black and white slaves, because you are owned or subject to inferior tribunal courts, kings and tyrannical governments, slaves are seemingly granted privileges to keep the slaves jealous and angry at other slaves. Keep the focus on the street. Don’t let them start thinking about those that put them on the street.
Since Ferguson, Eric Gardner and Charlottesville the state along with its propaganda media have made it about race and not the police state, it’s legalism that allows for…excuse me…begs for police encounters and courts and legislators that continue to make self-evident rights privileges and further limit liberty.
But I digress. After all it’s all about racism and white privilege. Repeat and say again. “IT’S RACISM AND WHITE PRIVILEGE.”
Give em’ credit they play us like they own us. “Put the dogs in the pit and tease them with a little privilege. That’ll make for a good fight and entertainment. Look how we got them to accept quarantine. Live brainless sardines they are.”
“Not because of our impeccable manners or our sparkling personality, but because our skin is a certain color.”
This is simply not the case. As socialists have noted, and as statistics on police violence bear out, this is a class issue and not a race issue. To cast it in racial terms is to be distracted from reality and to fall into the narrative of identity politics. If white people look at the video and can’t imagine themselves in a black man’s place that is a failure of individual imagination and not a reflection of the facts. One would have thought, Caitlin, given your propensity to lecture the world on the power of narratives, that you might have avoided falling into one quite so easily yourself.
Your familiarity with the use of male Bovine excrement is truly inspiring, SOPO. Note, the man was driving a car, so how is it about class?
It is a race issue, it’s xenophobia plain and simple – it’s something that is built into us and some of us have sufficient intelligence and awareness to rise above it, you seem to have missed the boat.
Your familiarity with the world “xenophobia” seems to have missed the boat. And even if this a race issue, that has nothing to do with “intelligence”–there are plenty of brilliant racists, while my dumb cats and some of my stupidest human acquaintances show no racism at all. In fact if you have to “rise above it” you’re already lost, since how did you fall into it in the first place?
Socialists like to cast this stuff into the “class” category, which is fine by me, but I think it misses a lot, too. But it’s certainly true that, even in the US, cops kill more whites than they kill blacks. I’ve seen them brutalizing white people myself; Caitlin is not correct that this can only happen to blacks.
And they do it in part because they’ve cast themselves in a brutal role, and they think they can get away with it. And they especially think so with black victims, since they’re rarely held accountable.
Please dont throw up facts. It ruins the narrative. Cops are racist. Get on board the crazy train and keep your facts to yourself.
Indeed.
you’re right when the video surfaces of the cop kneeing a white homeless guy in the neck. it will come up, just to prove Caitlin wrong. it can be both a race issue and a class issue. i can imagine the cops doing this to a black guy in a suit and tie, … a white guy in a suit and tie? … not so much.
For people to grasp the roots of racism and white supremacy, you need to know the history behind its origins.I strongly recommend “ The Cost Of Privilege, Taking on the System of White Supremacy and Racism,” 2017 edition by Chip Smith. For me, that book is amazingly detailed, and has a sharp analysis of the roots of white supremacy in the USA. It talks about the invention of the white race, and the socio economic as well as political benefits secured and continued by the perpetuation of the myth of White supremacy and race.
The tragedy has been that whenever struggles got intense and posed a real threat to the capitalist system in the US, white supremacy and racism had always been used to successfully divide the working class or mass struggles…..that is how severely embedded this ideology of white supremacy and racism is in our society. And don’t think it is in Australia and USA only. The imperial structures of control since the days of the Raj and colonial conquest are all based on international White Supremacist ideology ( First European, then American).
I have seen many white people (Europeans and North Americans) who, when they understand and absorbed this history, take the responsibility of correcting this long and terrible injustice, no guilt involved because unless this is so, it is a race to the bottom for everyone.
The pandemic is not the cause but the result of capital’s reckless disregard of our fragile relationship with Mother Earth in its frenzied drive to accumulate. Now, the open sores of capitalism can no longer be hidden or bandaid over, the economic, social and political fabric is ripping apart. The unrest globally will spawn either revolution or extinction, and if we do not struggle to bring forth a better system, capitalism will impose fascist rule on us……which corresponds to the rise of open murders of people of colour, sabre rattling for a war with China, strong arming lesser nations with nuclear blackmail, sanctions and choke-holds on their economies, etc.
I am very much with you, Caitlin, as we need more people to be more vocal to change the narratives spun by corporate media. And to get involved in activism and in organising.
“Corporate narratives” are a disgrace, of course; but we do not honor the memory of Mr. Floyd by casting his story in self-serving narratives of our own, as so many of us are doing here (probably me, too). And while the “social fabric” may be “ripping apart,” go back and look at lynching pictures from the old south (or at death camp pictures or other atrocity pictures; there is no end to them (look at some factory farm pictures, too, while eating lunch…)) and it’s hard to imagine there was much fabric there to begin with. If we think people are doing this because of skin color, or because they’re being manipulated by imperialist elites, or because of whatever other stories we come up with…I just don’t think this explains anything. People are doing it because they are human, and because they are confident that no one will stop them. So what we need to do, as you say, is get active, and organize, and stop them.
Do you intend to go join the riots taking place right now. They are active.
A little tough for me logistically, since I live in Japan. But it’s a great question. If I were anywhere in the vicinity, I most definitely would go.
But of course, saying I’d do something, and actually doing it, are different things. I knew I was vulnerable when I wrote that. Good for you for calling me on it.
Now there’s a kind of honest self-reflection you don’t see much these days. Exactly the kind of individual we could use for the cause, friend.
It’s horrible to watch a man dying while he and the surrounding crowd are begging for his life. So sick. I just wish I could reach into this video and save this man’s life.
What would happen of course is you would be handcuffed beside him with a knee on your neck trying to catch a breath and charged with obstruction and most likely resisting arrest.
Could they really handcuff you if you’re reaching in through a video? How would they get to your neck?
Which highlights why when thoughtful individuals finally stop standing by they would be foolish to simply wound their oppressors. If your destination is a cage anyway, might as well make it worth it.
Live well. Die Well.
In this case, aren’t you glossing over the more important point, which is that the apparent racism we see in these events is really the continuation of a power dynamic that goes back to the crime of slavery–where colonists who happened to be white proceeded to steal the lives of millions of people who happened to be black, for purely selfish reasons. So then they also needed to rationalize their actions to themselves and their kids; they needed to start slave patrols (today’s police) to keep it going; and the disgusting processes of human psychology then began feasting on all of the mental crap that got kicked up… There is no reason to believe that the evil cop in the picture has racist feelings per se (he’s married to a Hmong woman, his partner-in-evil is Asian; these are clearly not white nationalists); but what is dead certain is that he believes he can get away with this because he knows our society STILL does not protect black humans, who are STILL treated as slaves. It’s just another happy lynching.
Of course the ubiquity of phone cameras is now changing this particular dynamic, providing vast amusement for we in the audience. We watch in delight as poor lost souls like the woman pictured above–and hopefully the cops here, too–soon find themselves on the receiving end. They become powerless, now, as the society turns on them… (And notice that society can turn on them very viciously, even though they;re not black. Because it’s not about skin color…)
I don’t think it’s helpful learning to feel “white guilt.” Instead, we should insist on living in integrated communities; we should demand that everyone be empowered, and live in that demand ourselves; and we need to try to come to terms with the crime of slavery, which out-Holocausts the Holocaust.
And even if we do all that, we will still be left with human psychology, which will soon find other ways to turn everything to shit–but maybe the colors will be different.
It is wrong to attribute todays standards to historical times. Slavery was legal worldwide back then. It was practiced regularly in Africa and around the world. It was simply the strong preying on the weak. Indentured service was just a step above absolute slavery.
With due respect, who gives a fuck that it was legal? Lots of atrocities are legal, in large part because the people who make the laws are evil shitheads. What difference does it make that Africans did it to themselves, and that they sold the slaves to the whites? If a pimp sells you his 6-year old daughter (son?) and it’s legal to fuck her (him?), does that mean it’s okay to do it?
Are you saying that it’s an admirable thing that the strong prey on the weak? Does that mean if you see me walking along one day and you have a gun and I don’t, you can just shoot me?
Of course the strong DO prey on the weak; we don”t even need the words “strong” and “weak” since they’re built into the word “prey”. But that doesn’t mean that we should run our society on the principle that that’s fine.
And to suggest that the slaveholders were “strong” confuses the issue, anyway. The slaveholder’s society was “strong” in the sense that it was technologically advanced, but the slaveholders themselves were just human detritus…
And if there is a hell (there isn’t) all the slaveholders, and all the Africans who sold slaves, and probably all the rest of us too, will be going there; and God will be living there, where he belongs.
You are using todays standards on historical times. You are an armchair quarterback so to speak when you do this. If you lived back then you would have thought nothing about it. Easy to get indignent and judge history. What makes you judge of history using your own optics based on society standards today. For all we know slavery may come back in vogue a couple hundred years from now and freedom was considered an abberation.
Today’s standards are giving us atrocities all around us, and I reject them. I am using my own standards. I am not indignant about history, and I am not a judge. I’m just making comments, like you.
We do not have freedom today; and if we did, you’re right, it would probably be an aberration… And it seems to be moving further away as we speak.
There have been plenty of free people throughout history who have recognized how evil slavery is, and who worked to end it, and in some cases died in the effort. They were certainly not getting their standards from their historical period; they were getting them from the same place I hope I’m getting mine.
By using the argument you do, you ignore all those at the time who disagreed but had no platform and durable forms with which to express it. You give injustice a pass.
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As Mike points out, you have marginalized, fringe groups railing against injustice today that are simply accepted. To, in the future, simply excuse these crimes we commit today because we were ALL simply ignorant is to allow the elite to define the narrative, even after they are long dead.
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In all times there were those who demanded injustice cease. Never forget this.
Ms Johnstone the mistreatment of minorities has been “commonplace” from the beginning of time. It is almost a ” sin” to give a damn about anything foul that ever happens to any minorities. Human beings are killed every day because they ” look different “! The “owners and the masters” shove hatred down our throats every day and night. Our society is not capable enough to get away from the hatred because it is inside the very core of our nature. Hate is us!
Please substantiate your statements with details and context.
Cry me a river Caitlin. The reality is the majority always hold a privileged position over the minority. Nothing is fair so grt ovrr it. Be it christians in a muslim state or sunnis opppressing shites it happens. Even africans oppress each other based on tribes and dialects. You get no sympathy from me. No I dont feel guilty or even need to process it. This kind of crap makes my backside hurt.
“Get over” injustice, eh? Nah. If you don’t like it, go back to reading Stormfront. You’re part of the problem, turd.
Go cry with Caitlin. I dont sit up at night fretting about injustice. If you wish to spend your time focusing on how awful the world is go for it. I am too busy just trying to get by like the rest of humanity. Turn off the news and go live your life. However if you want to be a virtue signalling justice warrior more power to you.
Balance reporting? // BLACK on WHITE CRIME
https://theredelephants.com/black-on-white-nursing-home-attacks-are-extremely-common-just-like-black-on-white-attacks-in-general/. -Rick
Why should we trust you when we already know you are a liar? I mean, you already admitted that you lied about Mao, why wouldn’t you lie about something else?
You got awful quiet all the sudden.
I’m not quiet, but censored, John. // It’s a struggle to get in here—and reproach the Mao-loving anarchist in you. // I’m not your librarian. Search Google. -Rick // P.S. Someone keeps erasing my message window.
Erasing your message window? Are they also sapping your precious bodily fluids?
I’m not quiet, but censored, John. // It’s a struggle to get in here—and reproach the Mao-loving anarchist in you. // I’m not your librarian. Search Google. -Rick
A more productive and useful emotion in this context than guilt about one’s whiteness would be anger at injustice. Anger at the injustices embedded in a society built on racial hierarchy can be felt by and can unite people of different races. This can lead to a common commitment to build a better society by eliminating these injustices for the benefit for all. That is, to build a just society. On the other hand, I believe, focusing on guilt this way divides people based on race and offers no clear remedy, no obvious course of action that might lead to a more just society. In this context, guilt based on race undermines rather than promotes healing.
Guilt is at its root a negative emotion. It does not lead to positive feelings or positive action. It is essentially socially imposed. It comes from outside ones being, not from inside, not from its core. That is why people instinctively react in a resentful, defensive, self-protective way. It closes a person’s being down rather then opening it up to change and new ways of looking at the world. It isolates. It does not unify.
On the other hand, anger, while it can be dangerous and destructive, is basically a positive emotion. It releases energy. It can break barriers and unify. It leads somewhere. It comes out of one’s being, ones core. The difficulty is how and where it is directed. Directed at another person or at oneself, it can be destructive. Directed at injustice, at a common sense of unfairness based on empathy, in defense of another’s common humanity, it can be a powerful affirmation of unity and a generator of change. To my way of thinking, much more positive and productive than guilt.
Another reason why anger at injustice is a better way to heal oppression than guilt is that — however unjust it may be — the task of healing the wounds and deformities of an unjustly divided society falls not only on the oppressors, but also on the oppressed. Exploring the guilt of the colonizers without dealing with the healing needed by those who have been colonized is unlikely to lead to a healthy society for anyone. This insight, while now out of fashion, was expressed by Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and many other Black leaders. It remains valid. Common anger at injustice allows a healing process that can unite both black people and white people in what is must be a common task. This cannot be avoided.
Running around having anger at injustice accomplishes nothing except ruin your day. Go plant a tree or pick up some roadside trash. It will be far more productive and make you feel better.
Well, what a wonderful approach, Khatika. -Rick
Liar.
Hard to see how your approach does much about correcting the injustices. About as effective as telling everyone involved just to “Be nice!”
It doesnt but the roadside at least looks a little nicer.
Please do your trolling somewhere else. You are not adding to the conversation.
You’re clever. -Rick
You’re clever, KATIKA
.-Rick
Logical, compassionate, well stated.
When we admit to ourselves that everyone else is just as human as we are this will end, and the world will be a much better place.
I am as white as a sheet of paper, and the most trouble I have ever had out of any people, by a pretty wide margin, is white people. When there is nobody else around to ‘lord it over’, we generally just start doing the same thing to one another. I have not the slightest clue as to why this particular evil has elected to inhabit the consciousness of our race, nor have I the slightest clue as to why our race has chosen to accept this evil as part of its consciousness.
At this point, that’s beside the point. We have to admit to ourselves, truthfully and honestly, that we are no more than human. We also have to admit to ourselves, truthfully and honestly, that nobody else is less than human. That’s what it is going to take. When that actually does happen we, as a race, will be able to truly become human again.
That will be a very big step in the right direction for us all.
THANK YOU, CAITLIN! I’m going back down to check out what I missed. <3
This happens way too often to be allowed to happen, Black guys being murdered by low IQ officers while they are already in handcuffs. This shit has got to stop!
Enough of this Covid -19 bullshit! Today’s 20 minute rant.
Well stated.
Solution: Self Correction for Self Direction
The most important solution is that we as individuals must first understand the importance of Loving our own self, to the extent that we seek the truth of our self, in order to speak the truth to power within our self, so that we can speak truth to power that oppresses us. That is the Human Connection which is the source of Ubuntu.
Anything less, is betrayal of the self, and conspiracy with the oppressors against oneself and is counter-productive for the cultivation of self, and Becoming an Human in our Being.
We are here to set the correct examples. It takes work and determination
I love you Caitlin Johnstone – you articulate so beautifully my position in this ancient land of Australia and which I have spent much of my life both here and abroad figuring out – aided by friendships, students, professional colleagues, academic studies and till now (71) continual reading and study and doing my best – not to speak for anyone really but myself and the things I have uncovered out of exactly the same kinds of origins here as you. Had I been at meetings with John W Howard when others stood and turned their backs on him I would have done likewise. When former Australian politician (almost enough said with that kind of job) the ugly (of word and spying deed) Alexander Downer claimed – as if a positive thing – that he was of the (South Australia) “nation-builder” Downers he was almost immediately howled down as people pointed out the strong involvement of his grand-father (Sir) John Downer in the massacres and land theft from First Nations peoples across the northern part of Australia (now the Northern Territory – Darwin its capital. Just this morning came to me a distressed message from a scientist mate in the US – had I seen the news about police? I had not – but went on-line to find this latest death of citizen (Black) at the hands of police. Police who carry weaponry and almost unfettered rights to do whatever they like to citizens. It is an ugly country – but then again – here in Australia – Deaths in custody – ongoing. Murders of Indigenous women – unsolved – cold cases – un-investigated – generally. Cruelties of Indigenous peoples incarcerated for all manner of pettiness. Keep on holding up the mirror, Caitlin. And thank-you so much yet again!
the australoid liberal kable might well like to assuage its pathologically altruistic self-hate by leaving the country it clearly does not see as its rightful home and remigrating back to where whites are indigenous.
because staying in australia is apparently theft, ugly and cruel when whites do it.
kable has a problem however, as the europe and uk his ancestors left is now increasingly black and arab and afghan, as the capitalist class which plays no role at all in any jabber that kabel and his globalist ilk emit in their neoliberal apologetics, has long since decided on the need to maintain aggregate demand in euro economies by importing limitless welfare migrants.
check statements since ca 1990 in the business press incl. those by peter sutherland or sarkozy.
so kable would find himself as a hated white in a country, whether uk or germany or sweden, which will rather let him die at the hands of low-wage migrant carers in a rest home than allow him to stay in his rental municipal housing earmarked now for a large black or arab family.
prio to migration, kabel however must pay reparations as befits a compassionate moral aussie, the question is to whom, because the western hunter gatherers in the uk of 10,000 years ago were replaced firstly by anatolian neolithic farmers and and around 3000 bc once more by yamnaya.
note the euphemism, replaced.
oh dear, kable, as your genes are largely yamnaya with minimal input from 10,000 and 8,000 bc any more, check your dna makeup, how can you buy your sjw ethical way back into europe, where you too can pretend to be first nations?
because countries belong to those who can defend them, kable.
as beneficary of yamnaya white genocide, get over it.
Yup, a lot of hate in the world, especially in the US and not just about race, over here in our wonderful nation I think most people get more enjoyment out of hating than they do out sex. Speaking of, we all know about the hatred towards Julian Assange, so this morning I found this in my inbox that Massage was/is a Mossad asset if not an Mossad agent himself. What do you think? Here’s the link;
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/05/24/monsters-among-us-assange-mossad-connection-now-proven-beyond-a-doubt-an-intel-drop/
Oh, Roy…come on! More dishonest attack on Julian. Of course it’s untrue. Most CIA Trumpian era false news/etc is nonsense.
This is not much different than the smear campaign against Gadahfi and his Green Book.
Thank you for articulating this so beautifully! This has really knocked me off my pins.
No Justice No Peace… Have a nice day and night. TY Caity. Wage Justice for Peace…
Why don’t we stop talking about “white” people? I’ve never seen a white person, have you? Toilet paper is white, snow is white, milk is white, bandages are white, starched nurses uniforms years ago were white, the teeth of people of all skin shades are white, but no one has white skin. Pale-complexioned people are obviously not white but a sometimes blotchy combination of pink, yellow, olive, even orange in some strange cases, often with blue, gray, brown or purple splotches, even when they don’t have skin diseases. So why call them “white?” What does it mean to be white rather than just lighter-skinned?
Obviously it’s a label that enables caste and class distinctions and allows some to imagine themselves higher up on some fantasy of racial hierarchy. Even the U. S. Census includes “white” as a category in which you can claim membership. Interestingly, “white” is at the top of a long list of racial categories on the census form but is the only one for which color is the marker; the others are all defined by geographic origins.
How and why does this white thing work?
It seems clear that the claim to “whiteness” wraps those with pale skins in a mythic mantle of virtue and innocence and, at least in our culture, helps to establish fair skin as somehow the default condition of real humans. Everyone else is thus assumed to be flawed and even, by some curse, “colored.” Even the current woke vogue for describing persons “of color” seems to buy into that bizarre notion—as if the so-called “white” people were not also of some color. It’s actually insane. In fact, its very looniness might be part of the source of its power, the way the crazy guy who comes into your train car and starts yelling truculently suddenly owns the car and clears it out at the next stop.
Why don’t we start saying “lighter-skinned” instead of “white?” No longer associated with the pure, puffy clouds of heaven, lighter-skinned people may then be accurately perceived as deficient in something most of the world has, namely some richer, more fulsome pigmentation in their skins. (Given the popularity of sun-bathing and tanning salons, it seems likely that many palefaces already feel that deficit.)
It’s no news that the stories we tell about the world and our experiences in it are the way we make sense of its almost unbearably confusing complexity. You frequently urge your readers to take control of “the narrative.” Perhaps, if we stop saying “white” to describe pale-skinned people we’d shift the narrative just a little and help change assumptions about who people are.
I’m not suggesting a public campaign: that would invite derision and stupid controversy. Instead, people of good will can just stop calling other individuals and groups “white” and start saying “lighter-skinned.” (I try and acknowledge that it’s not easy to break old habits.) They may be asked what they mean and they can explain. If they choose, they can do a little low-key proselytizing, suggesting to family and friends that they do likewise.
I realize that, in the face of the enormous, seemingly inexorable evils of bigotry and racism, this must seem like a trivial gesture. But, then, words matter. The words we use to describe things become confounded with the things themselves. Why, after all, have lighter-skinned people, despite the obvious mislabel, been designated “white” for a few hundred years? Worth a try? It’s easy and requires no investment or fundraising.
I lived many years in Japan. I used to point out colours exactly as have you here. My complexion is pink (an Anglo heritage). My brother – olive-skinned – could have sat amongst half my students – face covered – and not been remarked upon as different. I’d have been lucky to find a tiny percentage of 1% of Japanese who might have had a complexion similar to my own. I used to put a sheet of white paper against my arm, my face – and we’d all see at once the silliness of “white person”! The real point though is that the word used makes no real sense – that our blood – within a tiny rage of variations is universal – that beneath our skins – we are all the same human race! Forget the old Jesus chorus:(Red yellow black and white – all are precious in his sight) – just remember we are all precious – in the sight of all of us.
LOL. There are white people they’re called albino; as for blacks if you’re going to throw up such a ridiculous argument, pitch black, shinny black, has got to be the most beautiful color for a human being, of course you don’t see that much of it here in the States, but then again the souls of white people in the States is close to that of anthracite coal so what they lack in skin color they make up for in hate.
Yea, Eugene.
How and why does this white thing work?
Very well, if one blindly conforms to ridiculous behaviors and does not speak truth to power within oneself.
“Whiteness is a psychosis — you can’t have a reasonable explanation.” – Kehinde Andrews
Snow is white. Cotton is white. The albumin of cooked eggs is white.
No Humans are white.
A person calling himself, something that he is obviously not, is mentally/emotionally unstable.
The so called label of “white” as applied to Humans is inconsistently elastic, and is the root of Racism. It is the continuation of the oppressive practice of European style “Royalism.”
“… the U. S. Census includes “white” as a category in which you can claim membership.”
It is also true that U.S, Employment Applications also have the same category.
The interesting thing about the employment application, is that Northern Africans are also included in this category.
This means that the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, would have been categorized as, so called “white.”
Check the article and video below, for some perspectives.
“The way we remember this history is so bad, that we actually think we can find comfort in this system which killed tens of millions, probably hundreds of millions of people, rape, murder, torture, famine,” Kehinde Andrews
Video: Black Professor Unleashes Flood of White Tears After On-Air Clash Ensues When Guest Says the British Empire ‘Wasn’t All Bad’
https://atlantablackstar.com/2020/02/05/video-black-professor-unleashes-flood-of-white-tears-after-on-air-clash-ensues-when-guest-says-the-british-empire-wasnt-all-bad/?fbclid=IwAR2KKaIQkKJBClk1ANdjav7dCXvOdZUosUdwRG-yFBkQkUC4YVjZVRpFBI0
Dr. Phil and Girl who says she is white. Read the comments.
I don’t get this whole line of argument; it’s just a complete waste of air. Everyone knows that “white” and “black” are referring to races and power relationships, and not to the actual spectral reflectivities of human tissue. Would it help if we go back to more descriptive terms like “place-face” and “darkie”? We are faced with real evil, and wasting time trying to get people to start changing their words to suit your sensitivities…will play right into the hands of the most evil among us. There are plenty of things “people of good will” can do, and should do, to stop the madness…but one thing they shouldn’t do is try to get people to change normal genetically-programmed linguistic habits.
Yeah, words do matter. How about just going out there and shouting at people to stop killing each other. The bystanders yelling at the cops to stop were using language correctly (even though no one listened).
Then again….Maybe you’re right. Maybe if they had said something like “get your knee off that guy because he’s not really black, he’s just significantly off-white”, maybe the cops would have broke up laughing and everyone would have gone home happy.
dear mike:
language, for one thing, is not genetically-programmed. (sic)
and making a joke to prevent murder is something you should try on your own murder and see if it works
Halle Berry for example does not speak ebonics. no duh. nor does Condi Rice.
There is plenty of evidence that language is programmed in our genes. I can’t imagine what the “sic” is for.
I don’t even know who Halle Berry is; and I don’t know what a monstress like Condi Rice has to do with anything we’re talking about here.
Of course I was being facetious about the joke to the cops, trying to point out how ridiculous your argument is.
As for “my own murder,” I see how carefully and politely you use language when you get angry. Just what I expected…
My bad, I thought you were the guy who wrote the original post.
So now I’m just confused. What’s your point?
The point is that so called whiteness as a definition for any Human is mental illness. It is a disease, an mental health crisis.
We need to ask those “why and how” questions, to understand “why and how” it works, so that the correct countermeasures can be employed effectively.
The answers are in hidden in plain sight and can be revealed if we ask the right questions.
These answers are present in the the history of Humans in Europe, who experienced more than 3000 years of wars and the resulting oppression, which encourages ignorance and fear, to “go along, to get along,” such that the ignorance and fear become habits for survival. Those habits are passed down through generations throughout history.
Those habits promote immature individuals who mentally and emotionally unstable. The mental and emotional instability is demonstrated in the ways that Occidentals have treated the common folks in their communities throughout history. It is also demonstrated through the imposition of the widely distributed system of oppression throughout the world since the 1400’s.
Humans tend to share that which they have in abundance or believe they have in abundance.
If one has an abundance of food, shelter, or clothing, then those things are shared. If one has an abundance of joy, grace, or Love, then those things are shared.
If one has an abundance of hate, mayhem, or misery, those things are shared. This explains why “misery loves company.”
Occidental cultural history, is replete with examples of pathos. We are living in that history, and are subjected to the developing oppressive systems based upon that history.
This is not a sensationally haphazard or emotionally charged assessment, designed with the intention of deriding of one group of Humans, in favor of another. Nothing will be prospered by it, because it would counterproductive to Human advancement. I will supply examples to support my assessment.
For example the writings of Fr. De las Casas, make the writings of the Marquis du Sade sound like a fairy tales for children.
This assessment is designed to explain and share my observations to help clarify the importance of self correction, in order to attain self direction, through understanding within the context of becoming truly Human, in our being.
Very well said.