Tag Archives: Racism

Ditka – Oppression

Posted on October 12, 2017 | 1 comment

Mike Ditka waxing poetic the other day on the issue of football players kneeling during the National Anthem, had this to say:

All of a sudden, it’s become a big deal now, about oppression,” Ditka said. “There has been no oppression in the last 100 years that I know of. Now maybe I’m not watching it as carefully as other people. I think the opportunity is there for everybody. … If you want to work, if you want to try, if you want to put effort into yourself, I think you can accomplish anything.

Mike.

Over here sparky.

I get that you might not see color when you are dealing with players or colleagues.  I get that you might not be guilty of the profiling and bigotry that many folks are experiencing.  But pssst ….. things have been bad, WAY bad, for black people well inside of 100 years.

Think not being able to vote.

Own a house.
Go to school.
Play in Major League Baseball.
Marrying people you love.
Walking without fear of being killed.

There has been significant oppression in the last 100 years.  And a guy with your platform can’t afford to say otherwise.

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Racism – The Princess Bride Edition

Posted on February 10, 2016 | Leave a comment

Princess Bride

It’s famous : “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”

For years I have found this to be true for society when discussing racism.  The term has lost its original meaning and morphed into a new and dangerous version.  All of this is better said by the Coyote:

I have come to the conclusion that the concept of original sin must be one of those that are quite appealing to humans.

For literally millennia, original sin has been a foundational part of much of Christianity.  We were all born with original sin, and so effectively started life with guilt.  It turns out that it is much easier to exercise power over the guilty than over people who consider themselves innocent.  The Catholic Church took advantage of this power by claiming that no individual could wipe away their original sin, their inherited guilt, without active engagement with the Church itself.  I will leave aside theological arguments** here, but conclude that the Church used the original sin doctrine in part to enhance its temporal power.

As Christianity fades somewhat as an active part of Western culture, the idea of Christian original sin seldom comes up much in any practical way.  But that does not mean the world has abandoned the concept of original sin – no indeed.  Racism is one of the classic examples of original sin – in it, someone born black, or Jewish, or whatever, is tainted with an original sin that they cannot wash away, and makes them somehow inferior to others.

Much of what social justice warriors say sounds racist to me, as they often offer negative generalizations of whole groups based on race, or gender, or sexual preference.  In my naive younger days I used to think that judging anyone based on their race rather than their individual actions and values was racism.    However, SJW’s have managed to change linguistics in their favor, conveniently redefining racism (or sexism) as only applying to those in historically more powerful groups  (e.g. white males).  By this definition, a black woman can never be a racist, no matter how much she negatively stereotypes other racial groups.

Well, OK then.  I am tired of fighting this definitional issue.  So I will just say that SJW’s frequently fall in the trap of believing in original sin.  Whites, males, heteros, successful people – they are all tainted in the SJW mind with original sin, so much that any utterance from any individual in these groups is deemed as having no value and therefore should be ignored or actively suppressed.  This is actually a radical version of original sin that goes way farther than the Catholic Church ever took it, though I would argue it is promulgated for roughly the same reason – to enhance one’s power.

 

** Speaking of original sin, in one of the great misconceptions that Christians have of their own religion, the immaculate conception was not Mary’s virgin birth of Jesus but rather her own birth without the taint of original sin.

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Thoughts On Affirmative Action And Social Policy

Posted on September 30, 2012 | 3 comments

I’m watching the Sunday morning shows just now, something I never do.  It’s either church, football or some other activity going on right about now.  But today the kids are out having lunch with mom and I’m home alone.

I watching MSNBC and the table is talking about the Massachusetts race for senator; specifically the element of race.  Elizabeth Warren received advantages due to the fact that she is one thirty-second Cherokee.  It would seem that by identifying herself in this way she was able to help her early career.

Anyway, the conversation shifted to affirmative action and social policy in general.

Why Affirmative Action

I went to a pretty good source for an answer to this question:

The Racial Justice Program actively supports affirmative action to secure racial diversity in educational settings, workplaces and government contracts, to remedy continuing systemic discrimination against people of color, and to help ensure equal opportunities for all people. As part of this commitment, we are working to defend affirmative action in states that are threatened for a civil rights rollback.

Pretty clear and straight forward.

  • Secure racial diversity in educational settings, workplaces and government contracts.
  • Secure racial diversity in educational settings, workplaces and government contracts.
  • Help ensure equal opportunities for all people.

Three simple goals, easy to understand and noble in its intention.

Is Affirmative Action The Right Approach

Even as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation we have to acknowledge that there is work to do; hard important work.  We have the opportunity to improve the relations between the races here in America.  However, we have to take time to consider that in just 150 years, really, borrowing an allusion from Louis C. k., that’s really the lives of two old people back to back.  We have to acknowledge that we’ve come a very long way.

The reason I mention this preamble is because we have to acknowledge that there are still unenlightened idiots out there who want to continue to discriminate based on race.  We’re not talking about that very small and insignificant minority.  Here I’m talking about the mainstream reasonable individual.  And of THAT population I find no one, not one single person, who feels that any individual should be denied opportunity based on race.

But is that the goal of Affirmative Action?

I don’t think so.  I think that Affirmative Action is a “results based” program and not a “build the base” program.  Think of it this way, I want my kids to excel in school, I want them to hit the honor roll and bring home report card after report card with A’s.  I probably can accomplish this in two ways:

  1. I can enforce strict expectations regarding achievement and insist on homework and study.
  2. I can use my influence with teachers, staff and administration to ensure that substandard grades are changed to more desirable ones.

Both paths result in my goal; Straight A’s.  However, the goal isn’t really straight A’s.  The goal is mastery of the subject such that positive life goals can be reasonably accomplished.  I want my kids to learn to earn those A’s.  Simply giving ’em to them doesn’t accomplish anything; in fact, it may prove to be counter-productive.

This is my beef with Affirmative Action.  The programs put in place often result in “inappropriate  promotion” not based on the merit but on the basis of race.  In the same way that I don’t want to see an unqualified white protestant middles-class male given preference over a more qualified candidate who may be a minority, neither do I want to see a member of a protected class given preference over that same WASP.

I want the gateway to be one of merit without bias of class, of race, of sex or of religion.

In short, we want the ELIMINATION of advancement based on those elements.  We do not want to extend discrimination simply by changing the group of people we discriminate against.

On other words, the goal of any “Affirmative Action” would be to reduce the number of qualified minorities being denied advancement.  It would NOT be to increase the number of unqualified minorities being advanced.

This seems so self apparent as to be bedrock philosophy and disagreement indicates an inherent racial bias.

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Occupy Wall Street: Racism – Zuccotti Park

Posted on January 31, 2012 | 5 comments

There is little doubt that the Occupy Wall Street crowd was supposed to be the Democrat, the liberal, answer to the Tea Party.  However, in typical leftist fashion the movement demonstrated that it is undisciplined, unlawful and unruly.

Where the Tea Party was organized the Occupiers are downright chaotic.  Where the Tea Party showed a discipline that resulted in a point, the Occupy is inexplicably pointless.  And where the Tea Party followed the law, the Occupy demonstrates it’s willingness to rape, to steal, to vandalize and to desecrate.

But how about the claims that it is the Occupy that are guilty of the very sin heaped upon the Tea Party?

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