Have you challenged your whiteness yet?

[Bulk VanderHuge]

Protests in the name of causes I believe in can be bullshit as well. Blocking roads, shouting at people trying to eat dinner, and generally disrupting peoples lives that may have nothing to do with the cause is bullshit regardless of what I think of the cause.

As to your follow up question, the lack of distinction between the two is what causes most threads on this board to devolve into mud slinging.

Hard to argue with any of that.

 

[Stuffshot]

Protests in the name of causes I believe in can be bullshit as well. Blocking roads, shouting at people trying to eat dinner, and generally disrupting peoples lives that may have nothing to do with the cause is bullshit regardless of what I think of the cause.

As to your follow up question, the lack of distinction between the two is what causes most threads on this board to devolve into mud slinging.

I agree with this post. I wish you had said this earlier.

 

[iuwclurker]

I don't think any protest is bullshit. We have a right to protest anything in this country and I stand by that. The cause doesn't matter much if at all.

I think your question really is about how a protest is carried out. Rosa Parks sitting in the front of the bus is a legitimate protest. Unruly gangs shutting down interstate highways about Rosa Parks isn't legit. This "calling attention to" argument is BS and is simply a rationalization for assholes to be assholes. A protest should address the issue being protested, it shouldn't be a general social upheaval to change a discrete and identifiable injustice.

Colin Kaepernick's National Anthem protest was particularly BS and shortsighted. Kaepernick attracted a following. Kaepernick put a dagger in the heart of an important unifying event. The end result is that Kaepernick destroyed the most basic cohesive element and social common purpose needed to carry out the object of his protest. He can't possibly succeed now. His protest wasn't violent and really didn't really disrupt lives, yet it did enormous damage.

I stand by my lawyer comment. Almost all important social change begins with a smart, creative, and dedicated lawyer making a case. A little old lady with hot coffee and a good lawyer did more to address corporate arrogance and abuse than all the Occupy Wall Street protests put together. There is a reason for the "First thing we do is kill all the lawyers" comment in Henry the VI. But there are a couple of exceptions, woman's suffrage and prohibition come to mind.

On Kaep’s kneeling for the Anthem

I think you’re missing some of the significance of his action and I think your mistargeting some of the damage you’re referring to.

Kaepernick‘s sacrifice of his career and focus on his cause has emboldened and empowered untold numbers of people to speak up, demand change, vote and so forth. You may not be aware of the importance of his sacrifice but in his community his sacrifice spoke volumes. There’s no way to know how much his sacrifice contributed to two Democrats winning in Georgia Senate race this year but I would argue a non-trivial amount.

As far as the damage to his purpose and any collateral damage to society, I think you’re pretty far off base. First, to use your metaphor the burned-out lunch counter can be repaired after which anybody can eat there. The damage to peoples lives caused by whatever the injustice was, not necessarily repaired.

As is well known and documented, Kaepernick didn’t think up the idea for kneeling to the Anthem. It was a white military guy who suggested that as a way of being respectful. Respectful. I repeat, respectful. Kaepernick did not, I repeat not, create the controversy. The controversy was created by, dare I say, dumb people who insisted that he was being disrespectful and manufactured feeling offended by the truckload. That stupidity rose all the way to the Office of the President. So Kaepernick kneeling had another unintended effect, it showed that we have a stupid problem in this country. That’s a problem we will have to deal with as we go forward. Democracies don’t thrive when the citizens are being stupid or doing stupid.

 

[jet812]

I agree with this post. I wish you had said this earlier.

I did multiple times, but am only willing to be insulted (or watch people with similar values as me get insulted) for having different values and a different line of thinking so many times before hitting back.

 

[anon_mlxxvlbug9dpa]

Inside a Battle Over Race, Class and Power at Smith College (Published 2021)

A student said she was racially profiled while eating in a college dorm. An investigation found no evidence of bias. But the incident will not fade away.

www.nytimes.com

"We used to joke, don't let a rich student report you, because if you do, you're gone,' said Mark Patenaude, a janitor."
"This is the racist person," [the student] wrote of [the cafeteria worker], adding that [the janitor] too was guilty. (He in fact worked an early shift that day and had already gone home at the time of the incident.)"
"Rahsaan Hall, racial justice director for the A.C.L.U. of Massachusetts and [the student's] lawyer, cautioned against drawing too much from the investigative report, as subconscious bias is difficult to prove. Nor was he particularly sympathetic to the accused workers."

Wow.

Update

Black Intellectuals Demand Smith College Apologize to Smeared Workers, End ‘Anti-Bias’ Training

More than 40 African American intellectuals are asking Smith College to end the “forced, accusatory ‘anti-bias’ training” that was mandated for campus service workers after a student falsely accused some workers of racially-profiling her. The letter, obtained by National Review, was sent on...

news.yahoo.com

 

[Lucy01]

Checking my Whiteness with watching spring break in Miami! If blacks want respect they need to stop this kind of behavior and act civilized!