The problem of White Supremacy - Spinoff from Buffalo Shooting thread (1 Viewer)

This man was not a cause, he's a symptom. White supremacy and white privilege are woven into the fabric of the USA. To begin removing this stain Schools need to teach a history that includes Juneteenth, the Jim Crow south, the true history of the Reconstruction which includes the slaughter of innocent blacks in New Orleans and other southern cities. Just as Germans tour the death camps, US students should tour a replica of slave ships to fully get the squalid conditions in which other human beings were forced to live. Students can also tour the slave holding pens which still exist in Savannah, Charleston (IIRC) and other cities. Then we can go into eugenics, The Tuskegee studies, and the testing of gas on black infantrymen in WWI.

Turning fire hoses and police on blacks in Alabama who sought only to exercise their right to vote is current events and not ancient history. The newsreels aren't fake news, they're real and a part of life for blacks in the US. Teach the deaths/assassinations of Emmett Till, Medger Evers, George Lee and Lamar Smith.

The US must be dragged kicking and screaming from its white privilege. As others have said, speak up when you see it, don't let them think you agree with them by being silent. I was told a racist joke some years ago and said to the teller of the joke I was bothered by the fact that he believed I might even find that joke funny, then looked at him until he turned and walked away.

It's strange to me to think these things aren't taught. I went to a private, vastly majority white middle school and high school in New Orleans (Holy Cross) and we were taught about all those things. And, it's not as if my school wasn't highly white and conservative. Maybe I was again just lucky that I had the right teachers, an administration that let teachers teach, and parents that didn't interfere, but I also think it was also a different climate in the country where there wasn't this odd war against teaching kids things that the parents might or might not agree with.

And, my daughter went to a private school in New Orleans and then Ben Franklin, which I guess counts as a liberal education in New Orleans, so she learned those things to. As a result, I guess I'm kind of shocked that those things aren't already taught in schools.
 
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1. I grew up in Livingston Parish. This is not a true statement with the people i grew up with. And to this day they are pretty much the same.
I would say it depends on who you talk to. 1 is pretty descriptive of me and my family. But my dad and his parents, much different.

3. Not only have we not discussed this enough, a lot of R's are making laws banning this type of discussion in schools.
Yeah, it's definitely something that needs to be an integral part of history classes at minimum. As suggested by GMR, I'm curious about how Germany incorporated the Holocaust into their curriculums and what we could learn there.
 
I think it's more to it than that

It has to be the 'right' white people stepping up

And the 'right' white people are the ones who carry weight and influence with the racists and the bigots

Rachel Maddow, John Oliver, Anderson Cooper and their three hugging hippie neighbor are NOT the 'right' white people

The racists and bigots could care less what they think or say (and frankly probably enjoy their outrage)

The stepping up has to come from people they don't expect

From people they consider friends, people who they were openly racist with before who say, 'I don't think that's funny anymore', "Dude, I don't think that way anymore', 'we were wrong', 'Don't say things like that around me again'
Agreed 100%. The changing hearts is going to have to happen for those who are either sitting on their hands and doing nothing, or those who are actually stirring sheet up and making things worse. All of the above.
 
Education of racism needs to be a priority. Too many people, including teachers simply don't believe it exists

I've said this before:

There was slavery, slavery was bad, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, then there was racism, racism was bad, then Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks ended racism.

The End.

For decades that was basically pretty much all that was taught, with a little Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas and George Washington Carver added each February

An exponentially better job needs to be done

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Education of racism needs to be a priority. Too many people, including teachers simply don't believe it exists

I've said this before:

There was slavery, slavery was bad, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, then there was racism, racism was bad, then Martin Luther King and Rosa parks ended racism. The End.

For decades that was basically pretty much all that was taught, with a little Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas and George Carver Washington added each February

An exponentially better job needs to be done
Maybe there needs to be more discussion of post-Jim Crow, and even post-MLK racism? If people can see that it's clearly affecting us now and maybe pierce the bubbles some of us live in, that would make it clear that racism is alive and well?
 
And you’d have one person solidly in your corner

Make that deaux!!!!!!

Penalizing the propaganda that weaponizes the hate would b a good start

Yup, it is impossible to have this discussion outside of the world politic....because if we are really be honest here the white supremacy issue is really coming from one side of the political aisle.....
 
Maybe there needs to be more discussion of post-Jim Crow, and even post-MLK racism? If people can see that it's clearly affecting us now and maybe pierce the bubbles some of us live in, that would make it clear that racism is alive and well?

I think that's true, maybe my education was unique but I learned about Jim-Crow, MLK, and the Civil Rights movement. But, what I did not learn about is what has and hasn't happened since then. There is certainly a pervasive thought in educated middle to upper class white America that the Civil Rights movement more or less ended racism. I didn't even know until law school that the State of Louisiana is still under a Federal Desegregation Order right up until this day. People really think all that ended with Brown v. Board of Education. And white people certainly were never taught the long term effects of slavery, centuries of racism, segregated schools, or the current inherent bias and systemic racism.

Edit: And I'll add that for the white people in this country that live in poverty or live near the poverty line, they certainly weren't taught and don't understand that racism exists and that as bad as they have it, it's much worse if you are black in America. They know nothing of inherent bias, the long term effects of slavery, centuries of racism, segregated schools, or the current inherent bias and systemic racism. Which is why they are so vulnerable to be indoctrinated into white supremacy groups and nationalist/populist political causes.
 
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Maybe there needs to be more discussion of post-Jim Crow, and even post-MLK racism? If people can see that it's clearly affecting us now and maybe pierce the bubbles some of us live in, that would make it clear that racism is alive and well?
Agreed

But too many laws being passed to specifically make this illegal
 
Agreed

But too many laws being passed to specifically make this illegal
Maybe, but a law isn't going to stop us from having this discussion if we want to have the discussion. I do agree that the schools are being used as a pawn to justify stifling legitimate discussion of racism and white supremacy in schools.
 
My real education about systemic racism and good old boy clubs came during the investigation I started. I have a bunch of "factors of employment" from the Department of Labor if anyone wants to look. The fact that an impartial investigation can uncover and verify what an internal investigation cannot, it is amazing to me. We need agencies not conducting their own investigations for starters. That way this behavior cannot be covered up.
 
Until racist hate speech is curtailed this is going to continue. Notice the narrative of the mentally ill lone wolf, not all the GRT propaganda he'd been consuming
===================================================

Responding to a horrific evil, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown proposed countermeasures that would make matters much worse. He proposed an outright ban on broad swaths of speech. On top of murder, he would add repression.

Regrettably, CNN host Anderson Cooper did not challenge Mayor Brown’s suggestion. But everybody in public life should challenge it.

Brown is understandably upset. The racially motivated May 14 slaughter in Buffalo was heinous. And it is true that the killer had latched on to the noxious “white replacement theory” promulgated by some elements of the Trumpian right.

On the other hand, the killer had a history of mental health problems. It is ludicrous to assert that the mass shooting is a sign that American society as a whole is racist or that Republicans or conservatives in general are responsible for the deaths. Indeed, the killer’s online manifesto made clear that he hates conservatives and Republicans.

Moreover, one can justifiably believe elements of various voter-replacement theories divorced from ethnic considerations. It is undeniably true that the self-styled “progressive” Left wants the votes of illegal immigrants to cancel out, or “replace,” the votes of U.S. citizens. Americans can and should oppose that agenda even if they want to vastly expand legal immigration of any and all ethnicities.

Such nuances provide context that helps show in real-world terms why Brown’s embrace of censorship was way out of bounds.

Brown was responding to Cooper’s question about whether public figures who push white replacement theory are “complicit in these murders.”

“I think one way accountability looks is to ban that kind of hate speech, that kind of misinformation on public airwaves, in social media, on the Internet,” Brown answered. “It should not be allowed. False information, hateful information, attempts to indoctrinate people in different forms of hate and violence on the Internet and on the airwaves of this nation should just absolutely be banned….”

Obviously, such a ban would run afoul of First Amendment speech protections as they have historically been understood. Speech that is hateful but does not facially incite violence is absolutely protected by the Constitution. Every idiot has the right to say “I hate short people” all day long without government stopping him — unless he indicates that the hatred should manifest itself in violence.........

 
Education of racism needs to be a priority. Too many people, including teachers simply don't believe it exists

I've said this before:

There was slavery, slavery was bad, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, then there was racism, racism was bad, then Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks ended racism.

The End.

For decades that was basically pretty much all that was taught, with a little Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas and George Carver Washington added each February

An exponentially better job needs to be done
Educate kids about how redlining kept blacks from buying homes, about how systemic institutional racism kept blacks out of college, about how construction companies would not do business with minority contractors until government quotas were forced on them.

We either teach all the things mentioned in this thread or run the very real risk that someday a faction of our society will say it never happened or wasn’t really that bad. Oh wait, they’re trying to do that now.
 
It's funny how all of those wanting to keep the Confederate Statues up because tearing them down would erase history, are the same people who only want a very watered down version of history to be taught in schools.
 
Until racist hate speech is curtailed this is going to continue. Notice the narrative of the mentally ill lone wolf, not all the GRT propaganda he'd been consuming
===================================================

Responding to a horrific evil, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown proposed countermeasures that would make matters much worse. He proposed an outright ban on broad swaths of speech. On top of murder, he would add repression.

Regrettably, CNN host Anderson Cooper did not challenge Mayor Brown’s suggestion. But everybody in public life should challenge it.

Brown is understandably upset. The racially motivated May 14 slaughter in Buffalo was heinous. And it is true that the killer had latched on to the noxious “white replacement theory” promulgated by some elements of the Trumpian right.

On the other hand, the killer had a history of mental health problems. It is ludicrous to assert that the mass shooting is a sign that American society as a whole is racist or that Republicans or conservatives in general are responsible for the deaths. Indeed, the killer’s online manifesto made clear that he hates conservatives and Republicans.

Moreover, one can justifiably believe elements of various voter-replacement theories divorced from ethnic considerations. It is undeniably true that the self-styled “progressive” Left wants the votes of illegal immigrants to cancel out, or “replace,” the votes of U.S. citizens. Americans can and should oppose that agenda even if they want to vastly expand legal immigration of any and all ethnicities.

Such nuances provide context that helps show in real-world terms why Brown’s embrace of censorship was way out of bounds.

Brown was responding to Cooper’s question about whether public figures who push white replacement theory are “complicit in these murders.”

“I think one way accountability looks is to ban that kind of hate speech, that kind of misinformation on public airwaves, in social media, on the Internet,” Brown answered. “It should not be allowed. False information, hateful information, attempts to indoctrinate people in different forms of hate and violence on the Internet and on the airwaves of this nation should just absolutely be banned….”

Obviously, such a ban would run afoul of First Amendment speech protections as they have historically been understood. Speech that is hateful but does not facially incite violence is absolutely protected by the Constitution. Every idiot has the right to say “I hate short people” all day long without government stopping him — unless he indicates that the hatred should manifest itself in violence.........


Obviously, the core issue there is that the fact is that the 1st Amendment protects all speech, even hate speech, as long as it doesn't incite imminent violence.

And, I know that some argue that it should not protect hate speech, but I think it's a bad idea to let the government decide what speech is okay and which isn't. Frankly, in the current political climate the government is more likely to limit speech educating children about racism than limit hate speech. So, we don't want the government making those decisions.

And, from a more practical point of view, do we really want speech supporting white supremacy, racism, and violence against minorities to be moved into the shadows where nobody sees it? It seems to me, we want them saying these things in public so that they can be monitored, tracked, and stopped. Otherwise, the FBI, etc. would need warrants to monitor their speech. To me, the failure in Buffalo was a failure to act on information that was available, not the fact that the information and speech was public.
 
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