Well, as promised, I moved this from an old thread that was a bit off topic. But it deserves some discussion...
I'm glad you aren't dismissing my comment outright. See below to understand my line of thinking.
Well, I do understand your line of thinking. And, there is a lot there. Don't take this the wrong way and get it twisted... I'm not saying you're a racist. But we're all at least a little bit racist. I'm certainly not above it, myself. Hell, I was a lot worse when I was a kid. I've tried to grow and expand my views. I'd like to think I've largely succeeded, but of course, growing is always a work in progress. What you wrote is almost a perfect crystallization of the white man's perspective on the race problem. But there is a whole lot more to racism than the white man's perspective.
50 years ago was 1966, 6 years before I was born. The Klan was well into their death spiral losing members. Most black people just wanted equality and followed Martin Luther King's message of judging a person my the content of their character and not the color of their skin. While there were certainly still pockets of racism among white people, I don't believe it was a systemic hate of a group of people based on their skin color.
Well, we're a pretty similar age. I'm a couple years younger than that, even... But I definitely do think there was still a pretty systemic hate based on skin color 50 years ago. I grew up somewhat a racist, in a somewhat racist family, in a racist city, just south of the blackest city in the United States, just after the white flight. Where I grew up, though, we had both kinds of people -- Polish and Irish. Maybe even a couple Germans. But they were the outsiders. That was our diversity. No one else was welcome. When I was a kid in the early 80's, there were plenty of people who still ran the niggers out of town at the Ecorse River bridge. They could have what was north of the bridge. We had to keep what was ours. That was reality just 35 years ago. It ain't a proud one, but there it is. That's what *I* grew up living. Sure. I'd like to say I saw how wrong it was and took strides to stop it. But I didn't. Hell, I didn't want to stop it. I wanted to keep my home nice. It takes a long time to really understand how wrong it all was. It truly was a different time, though. It's hard to believe that was just 35 years, but that's all it has been.
Pop culture and society in general were very strongly trying to promote equality. 100 years ago? Yes that gets more shaky, but that's why I said 50 if not 100.
What are you talking about here? There wasn't even the Jeffersons until the mid 70's. I don't think there was even a single TV show in the 60's that showed blacks as even regular people, at all. We've come a loooong way.
What do we have today? We have systemic racism and discrimination against white people, specifically because they are white.
Yeah, there is still some. When you've been a victim for that long, the easy thing is to perpetuate back against the people who victimized you. It's human nature. We're all imperfect humans. And it's hard to forgive. Real hard. Even 50 years is a short term. And that's not counting all the more minor incidents of racism blacks run into.
Like trying to claim your car out of impound.
This goes to the highest levels of government, to the very president of the United States. You have pop culture, the mainstream media, academia and such openly marginalizing, humiliating, shaming and discriminating against white people not because of anything they did, but because of the color of the skin they were born with.
I don't buy this. I don't buy that Obama is any more racist than you or I am. We all have our own realities that we grew up with. Those shape our opinions of later events, and even to a somewhat unconscious degree, shape our responses to them, as well. But a grand racist conspiracy to oppress the white man? I just don't see it. Blacks are sensitive to different things than we are. A lot have had really different experiences than we have.
There are literal hordes roaming the streets and assaulting or killing people based on their skin color being white, all of which is not reported on by the media and largely unpunished by law enforcement despite video evidence. With social media and video sharing such as Youtube we can see what is actually going on and only scratch our heads as to the motives of the coverup.
You can find isolated videos of idiots of any skin color perpetuating violence against people of other colors. There are Klan videos on YouTube, too. It's not a systemic coverup, it's isolated background noise that is amplified by the echo chamber of the internet. And that is the truth on both sides of it.
Then take into account the straight up propaganda we have witnessed the last few years and you can only wonder the motives. The narrative being pushed is that white cops and white people are hunting blacks down in the street for sport, but when you examine the details of each case you find out this is not true, and usually the details show a hugely different story.
It's not straight-up propaganda, though. There is a small nugget of truth to it. You really are more likely to be pulled over if you're black. And, once you're pulled over, you really are more likely to die in that encounter than a white person is. I'm not saying it's straight up racist, because it isn't. There are always circumstances, just as there are snap judgement calls based on split second life-or-death situations.
What is really going on is quite the opposite, whites ARE indeed being hunted for sport based on their skin color (see news I've posted, look up "The knockout game").
And again, the statistics don't really back this up.
There *ARE* race riots going on in recent years and it is getting worse and worse.
Well, the internet echo chamber has really brought tempers to a boil on both sides. There have been some bad calls and bad shootings. And some good shootings that have been misunderstood, too. And a whole lot of gray areas in between. That all end up with dead or gravely injured people. That's hard to see. TV didn't show that shit, but for better or for worse, YouTube shows everything.
I grew up here, so I relate everything to hockey. One thing you learn to realize is that the line between a match penalty and good old-fashioned hard nosed hockey isn't something people can ever agree on. And this is clearly just a game. Life is a lot higher stakes.
If you took a crapload of time to search the alternative media to compile numbers of violent attacks on whites, then couple it with the media onslaught promoting this behavior and you can understand why I make this point. Then take into account of openly institutional discriminatory practices and everything else, you really see the picture i am painting.
Well, that's it, right? The more you look for racism, the more you're going to find it. And that is as true either way.
Just think way back to 2006, just 10 years ago. Would we even be having this conversation? What caused the car to slam on the brakes, slapped into reverse and gas pedal floored?
Well, the blacks weren't as angry back then, so it wasn't a problem. And it really wasn't for you and me. Ignorance is bliss isn't just a glib saying.