Do We Need A 'Conversation' About Race?

[dilloduck]

 

[PoliticalChic]

So, the instructor says, go ahead, take a cookie....they're delicious. Just try one...go ahead. So you reach out to pinch just one little cookie from the pile and as you do, BAM! He slaps your hand!

And that, friends, is the state of the 'conversation' about race in America today.




The racist AG Holder claims that Americans are too cowardly to bring the subject to the floor... but as soon as one attempts it, takes the bait, Holder slaps your hand with "Holder sees 'racial animus' in opposition"
Holder sees 'racial animus' in opposition | TheHill





Which brings me to John McWhorter. "John Hamilton McWhorter V (born 1965) is an American linguist and political commentator. He is the author of a number of books on language and on race relations."
John McWhorter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


1. In his usual well-considered prose, McWhorter discusses the difficult subject as "in fact, indicative of a certain psychic roadblock in enlightened black thought of late.

2. Theodore R. Johnson III, writing on NPR’s blog to tell us that when we hear an ice cream truck play “Turkey in the Straw,” we must understand that the tune has racist origins..... because ice cream parlors played minstrel songs in the nineteenth century, people in the 1920s and 1930s would have associated “Turkey in the Straw” with its unsavory alternate versions. In response to Johnson, I wrote that by the time those trucks existed, people thought of the tune as simply “Turkey in the Straw,” a song about the farm. No evidence exists that ice cream parlors were ever sites uniquely associated with racist music.

3. ... it is here that we encounter the psychic roadblock I referred to above. For Johnson, the main thing is that somehow, some way, we must “acknowledge” the racist history of that ice cream jingle—even if it requires bending over backward regarding the facts.





4. It’s revealing that Johnson is so deeply committed to showing that there is something racist about ice cream jingles—it tips us off that Johnson is ultimately talking about something much bigger than ice cream. His intent becomes clear in his final observation—that ice cream trucks have played other tunes with minstrel histories, such as the Stephen Foster chestnuts “Oh, Susanna” and “Camptown Races.”

5. No doubt, those tunes were racist in their original incarnations, with their dusting of “Negro” dialect and more (some of the lyrics to “Oh Susanna,” now unsung, show how sick America was at the time). But those songs were written back in the Gilded Age. As time passed, they seeped into America’s pop fabric as faceless little ditties. Almost no one learning “Camptown Races” (doo da, doo da) at camp, or while taking elementary piano lessons, has any idea that the song began as a black-oriented tune.

a. Or, think of what the expression “that sucks” really means—and note that, today, we never do.




6. But the question is how much we need to “consider,” eternally, the history of things .... Your average person is thinking about getting a popsicle or cone. Johnson wants us to stop, mid-lick, and “consider” that 130 years ago, people would have heard that tune and been as likely to associate it with its “Zip Coon” lyric as the “Turkey” one.

7. Johnson’s position is akin to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s in his Atlantic piece, “The Case for Reparations,” which was greeted with something approaching religious rapture in certain corners. Just as Johnson suggests ... Coates wants us to enlighten the person “scarfing their hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.” He wants an America where our racist history is not just something taught in school and commemorated in museums and Oscar-winning films and hit plays, as it currently is. To Coates, none of that is enough; America remains a country that “turns away” from acknowledging racism.

8. .... classifies critics of his first article as the sorts who “don’t get it,” who “don’t want to talk about race.” Coates seems to want America’s racist past to constitute an eternal, gnawing background awareness for all citizens,..."
The Case For Moving On by John H. McWhorter, City Journal 11 July 2014






McWhorter is warning us about individuals who wear their skin color as though it is a suppurating wound that never gets better, and never will.....yet the closest they've come to oppression is picking cotton out of an aspirin bottle.

McWhorter is a wise man....far wiser than the Holder's who aim to keep a wedge between the people of this nation.

So, if we are supposed to move on, which seems like a pretty reasonable idea, why did you start the thread?

That's not moving on. That's bitching and trying your hardest to pick a fight over Eric Holder.

So, what's it gonna be, PC?


By starting this thread, you are propagating the very thing to claim to be against.

Ahhhh, Right-Wing Intelligence, a thing to behold...

You try so hard to sound clever....but you just come across as a moron trying to sound clever.


Bet you hear that a lot, huh?




"By starting this thread, you are propagating the very thing to claim to be against."

No, I'm not.


I'm revealing the duplicity of the Leftists such as Eric Holder who demands such a conversation so that they can use it to as a cudgel to beat good-natured simpletons who don't realize that it is simply a ploy.


It is the Left pretending that there is any efficacy to 'the conversation.'


So, rather than allow a dolt like you to persuade me to allow the manipulation to continue, let me quote Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who said, 'sunlight is the best disinfectant.'

(Although, in your case, I would add that actual disinfectant might not be a bad idea either.)

 

[kwc57]

The problem with discussing race is that in general white people simply are not honest and like to pretend they know whats best for you. If you cant even admit to the concept of white privilege then how are you going to discuss race as a problem? If you cant handle the problems in your own communities how are you going to assume you can tell me what to do in mine?

Oh, oh, oh.....I want to play.

The problem with discussing race is that in general black people simply are not honest and like to pretend they know whats best for you. If you cant even admit to the concept of black laziness then how are you going to discuss race as a problem? If you cant handle the problems in your own communities how are you going to assume you can tell me what to do in mine?

See how stoopid you sound?

Exhibit B. More butthurtedness.

Exhibit A: Cranial Rectal Inversion. What a racist asshat.

 

[Unkotare]

Because most of you race baiting asses are teapers.

This act is getting old, sir. Time to change it up.

Nope, not done yet.

Overdone.

 

[Nutz]

This act is getting old, sir. Time to change it up.

Nope, not done yet.

Overdone.

Nope. Not done.

 

[Asclepias]

Oh, oh, oh.....I want to play.

The problem with discussing race is that in general black people simply are not honest and like to pretend they know whats best for you. If you cant even admit to the concept of black laziness then how are you going to discuss race as a problem? If you cant handle the problems in your own communities how are you going to assume you can tell me what to do in mine?

See how stoopid you sound?

Exhibit B. More butthurtedness.

Exhibit A: Cranial Rectal Inversion. What a racist asshat.

Stop being butthurt. Its pathetic.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Exhibit B. More butthurtedness.

Exhibit A: Cranial Rectal Inversion. What a racist asshat.

Stop being butthurt. Its pathetic.

OK....ready for the bad news, and the good news?

Every time I see one of your posts as the most insipid I've ever seen, you manage to come up with one even more so.

But- while you have no future in writing interesting posts…the good news? You are qualified to write what is the most lucrative of compositions: ransom notes.

 

[Asclepias]

Exhibit A: Cranial Rectal Inversion. What a racist asshat.

Stop being butthurt. Its pathetic.

OK....ready for the bad news, and the good news?

Every time I see one of your posts as the most insipid I've ever seen, you manage to come up with one even more so.

But- while you have no future in writing interesting posts…the good news? You are qualified to write what is the most lucrative of compositions: ransom notes.

That has got to be the lamest post I have seen to date on this website and thats saying an awful lot. I mean its breathtakingly puerile and pathetic all at the same time. How did you accomplish that feat?

 

[PoliticalChic]

Stop being butthurt. Its pathetic.

OK....ready for the bad news, and the good news?

Every time I see one of your posts as the most insipid I've ever seen, you manage to come up with one even more so.

But- while you have no future in writing interesting posts…the good news? You are qualified to write what is the most lucrative of compositions: ransom notes.

That has got to be the lamest post I have seen to date on this website and thats saying an awful lot. I mean its breathtakingly puerile and pathetic all at the same time. How did you accomplish that feat?

Always amusing when an idiot attempts a clever comeback.

It has been observed many times that good writing is a by-product of good reading.

As an extension of this axiom, it appears that the better part of your reading time has involved comic books and the cartoons in which bubble gum is wrapped.

Reform yourself.

 

[Asclepias]

OK....ready for the bad news, and the good news?

Every time I see one of your posts as the most insipid I've ever seen, you manage to come up with one even more so.

But- while you have no future in writing interesting posts…the good news? You are qualified to write what is the most lucrative of compositions: ransom notes.

That has got to be the lamest post I have seen to date on this website and thats saying an awful lot. I mean its breathtakingly puerile and pathetic all at the same time. How did you accomplish that feat?

Always amusing when an idiot attempts a clever comeback.

It has been observed many times that good writing is a by-product of good reading.

As an extension of this axiom, it appears that the better part of your reading time has involved comic books and the cartoons in which bubble gum is wrapped.

Reform yourself.

I concur you are a risible idiot.

Its also been observed that those that can barely conceal their wrath have mental issues.

You should get help for that.

 

[PoliticalChic]

That has got to be the lamest post I have seen to date on this website and thats saying an awful lot. I mean its breathtakingly puerile and pathetic all at the same time. How did you accomplish that feat?

Always amusing when an idiot attempts a clever comeback.

It has been observed many times that good writing is a by-product of good reading.

As an extension of this axiom, it appears that the better part of your reading time has involved comic books and the cartoons in which bubble gum is wrapped.

Reform yourself.

I concur you are a risible idiot.

Its also been observed that those that can barely conceal their wrath have mental issues.

You should get help for that.

I've given you all the remediation I can spare at this time.


Back to serious matters, McWhorter:

12. "To be a concerned black person, many have internalized, requires harboring a feeling that something large-scale is just out of our reach; that we exist as a people eternally unfulfilled; that a shoe has yet to drop. Our identities, so battered by 350 years of brutality and dismissal, feel incomplete. We seek a true sense of nobility, and we find it in the ironically comforting status of the underdog.


13. It isn’t that I, as someone who has written and spoken on race (and racism) now for 15 years, “don’t want to talk about race.” But shouldn’t we focus on race as it exists in the only real world we will ever know—where there has never been a way to settle old scores perfectly, but in the end, what matters is getting over? Change happens, if slowly. As blacks in America move on, we can admit that sometimes, an ice cream jingle is just an ice cream jingle."
The Case For Moving On by John H. McWhorter, City Journal 11 July 2014






So, what is to be gained by this vaunted "conversation"?

McWhorter makes a strong case that, really, nothing.



The constant rehashing is in the interests of:

a. A Leftwing party that talks a good game to convince of their good intentions....that's all this is: talk
b. Individuals who need to keep refueling their anger because they see it as a social trump card.



Time would be far better spent with one of McWhorter's earlier books: "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America"

 

[Asclepias]

Always amusing when an idiot attempts a clever comeback.

It has been observed many times that good writing is a by-product of good reading.

As an extension of this axiom, it appears that the better part of your reading time has involved comic books and the cartoons in which bubble gum is wrapped.

Reform yourself.

I concur you are a risible idiot.

Its also been observed that those that can barely conceal their wrath have mental issues.

You should get help for that.

I've given you all the remediation I can spare at this time.


Back to serious matters, McWhorter:

12. "To be a concerned black person, many have internalized, requires harboring a feeling that something large-scale is just out of our reach; that we exist as a people eternally unfulfilled; that a shoe has yet to drop. Our identities, so battered by 350 years of brutality and dismissal, feel incomplete. We seek a true sense of nobility, and we find it in the ironically comforting status of the underdog.


13. It isn’t that I, as someone who has written and spoken on race (and racism) now for 15 years, “don’t want to talk about race.” But shouldn’t we focus on race as it exists in the only real world we will ever know—where there has never been a way to settle old scores perfectly, but in the end, what matters is getting over? Change happens, if slowly. As blacks in America move on, we can admit that sometimes, an ice cream jingle is just an ice cream jingle."
The Case For Moving On by John H. McWhorter, City Journal 11 July 2014






So, what is to be gained by this vaunted "conversation"?

McWhorter makes a strong case that, really, nothing.



The constant rehashing is in the interests of:

a. A Leftwing party that talks a good game to convince of their good intentions....that's all this is: talk
b. Individuals who need to keep refueling their anger because they see it as a social trump card.



Time would be far better spent with one of McWhorter's earlier books: "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America"

You dont have remediation to spare. As it is you havent had enough of it for yourself. I was wondering when you were going to cease derailing your own thread.

Does it concern you at all that you are basically arguing against communication? If there is an issue wouldn't you rather talk it out to find the best way to resolve it? The childish notion that talking about racism is somehow not beneficial is probably the most moronic concept I have ever heard expressed by an adult.

Mcwhorter is an idiot if he thinks its a good thing to pretend you are not black. Basically what I get from him is assimilation. Sorry but thats not going to happen. I love being Black and I'd rather deal with racism than give up what I am.

 

[Mac1958]

Basically what I get from him is assimilation. Sorry but thats not going to happen. I love being Black and I'd rather deal with racism than give up what I am.

Very, very nice to see this kind of honesty.

The predictable result of decades of identity politics, of isolating one race from the rest of American society.

We were expecting a different result?

Sad to see, but it is what it is.

.

 

[dilloduck]

Christoph Meiners....

You got it backwards bro

The term "Caucasian race" was coined by the German philosopher Christoph Meiners

You have it backwards. Meiners used the term "white" to describe the palest of Caucasian Europeans and "dirty whites" to describe darker Europeans.

However, if that is not sufficient Johann Blumenbach wrote a book called "On the Natural Variety of Mankind". He uses the term quite liberally in the book. BTW he was a white guy.

He used the term--he sure as hell didn't invent it.

 

[Taz]

If black people stayed in school, they'd be much better off.

 

[Nutz]

If black people stayed in school, they'd be much better off.

Are you a Tea Partier?

Are you of German Ancestry?

Are you canadian?

Who recruited you to come to USMB?

 

[Asclepias]

You got it backwards bro

The term "Caucasian race" was coined by the German philosopher Christoph Meiners

You have it backwards. Meiners used the term "white" to describe the palest of Caucasian Europeans and "dirty whites" to describe darker Europeans.

However, if that is not sufficient Johann Blumenbach wrote a book called "On the Natural Variety of Mankind". He uses the term quite liberally in the book. BTW he was a white guy.

He used the term--he sure as hell didn't invent it.

Sorry guy. Your simply not bright enough to fool anyone.

Caucasian race - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Blumenbach expanded on Meiners' popular idea and defined five human races based on color, using popular racial terms of his day, justified with scientific terminology, cranial measurements, and facial features. He established Caucasian as the "white race," as well as Mongoloid as the "yellow race," Malayan/"brown race," Ethiopian/"black race," American/"red race.

 

[Asclepias]

Basically what I get from him is assimilation. Sorry but thats not going to happen. I love being Black and I'd rather deal with racism than give up what I am.

Very, very nice to see this kind of honesty.

The predictable result of decades of identity politics, of isolating one race from the rest of American society.

We were expecting a different result?

Sad to see, but it is what it is.

.

The only thing that is sad is the inability of people to respect differences. I dont have be Mexican to appreciate and respect their culture. I dont want to be Mexican though because I like being Black. That in no way makes me think less of Mexicans. I live across the street from a Mexican family and we do a lot of things together. Why do some whites have an issue with everyone not wanting to be white?

 

[Asclepias]

If black people stayed in school, they'd be much better off.

if vermin like you hastened your descent into obscurity Black people would be much better off.

 

[dilloduck]

You have it backwards. Meiners used the term "white" to describe the palest of Caucasian Europeans and "dirty whites" to describe darker Europeans.

However, if that is not sufficient Johann Blumenbach wrote a book called "On the Natural Variety of Mankind". He uses the term quite liberally in the book. BTW he was a white guy.

He used the term--he sure as hell didn't invent it.

Sorry guy. Your simply not bright enough to fool anyone.

Caucasian race - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Blumenbach expanded on Meiners' popular idea and defined five human races based on color, using popular racial terms of his day, justified with scientific terminology, cranial measurements, and facial features. He established Caucasian as the "white race," as well as Mongoloid as the "yellow race," Malayan/"brown race," Ethiopian/"black race," American/"red race.

using popular racial terms of his day

try again