So last weekend my sons football team is playing the Dawgz. My sons team is made up of mostly caucasians and we are playing a team that is 50/50 white black. All black coaches. People who know me on here know I'm a proud liberal but competition brings out the worst of my nature. We are up 18 going into the 4th qrt. We are setting up shop in the Dawgz backfield and it pissing the other coach off. He starts cussing at his kids and a white referee throws a 15 yard unsportsmanlike. You can just feel the racial undertones. Well with 20 seconds to go in the third their kid rips off a 60 yarder. Same ref throws a flag 20 yards behind the play. It was a block in the back but it didn't affect the play on the field. The coach goes ballistic starts cussing out the ref. Second unsportsmanlike. Now it's 3rd and 25. One of their kids moves at the line. Same ref is proving a point throws 5 yard offsides. It's clearly who has the bigger **** time. Coach says this is f'n pathetic. Ref throws another unsportsmanlike. Wants the coach kicked out of the stadium. No police just 10 coaches and 3 refs and maybe 60 people in the stands. Well the coach says he's pulling his kids and they are going home unless we kick the ref out. THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE I have ever felt at ANY athletic event in my career. I'm just a volunteer for the pee wee program but I've been a head coach in varsity football, wrestling, track, and baseball. I've been around the block.The racial undertones in this thing were palpable. After 15 minutes of mfing the coach leaves the field but goes to the visitor stands. Not out of the facility. The ref is pissed at us for not backing him up on the throw the guy out of the facility. Play resumes but it just puts a damper on the rest of the day. To this day I don't know how we get past it. We don't live in a colorblind world and I think people are more on edge about it now. I'm sure this coach thought whitey was pouring it on him. Then whitey ref pours it on and then the sensible (mild mannered me) starts jawing him when he takes his kids off the field. It just sucked. Plain and simple.

Now fast forward to an espn article I read last night on 12 years a slave. I guess it's just brutal. I'm going to take my kids to see it. I am the white guilt the conservatives ***** about. The black man has been fcked over in this country time and time again. I don't know how we get past it. We don't tell Jews to get over the Holocaust. That was 70 years ago!!! Jew. Well after reading this article I guess the character that Gimatti plays is especially brutal with the N word. Supposedly if you watch this movie any African American will have a very hard time using the N word in any context. If I had one wish it would be that African Americans truly see how disgusting that word is. I guess the movie goes into the self loathing the slaves felt. It tackles a lot of controversial dogmas. If I can find the article I read last night I'll post it. It was a fascinating read.

So in conclusion. I am down for the struggle. I do think the black man has been used and abused. I think our drug sentencing laws are insane. I think prison sentence guidelines have racial undertones. Crack 15 years cocaine 3-5 years types. I think the way we try to educate minorities is pathetic. I'm with you. I'll carry the banner, but sometimes African Americans make it hard on me to carry that banner.

When can we ever have an honest dialogue??? Are race relations better in Europe? What cultures handle it the best? I care. I want to see my fellow man better himself but we are clearly not there. If anything, I think it's worse than the 80's of my youth. We are devolving in some ways.

Thoughts?

Here's the espn article I talked about. read it before you comment.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9870...ears-slave

the first two paragraphs are great


It is a grim sight, the man hanging from a tree. His neck is noosed. His arms are tied behind him. The toes of two booted feet tap, tap, tap in the mud, neither foot firmly on the earth. Each skates a bit. But all that planting the entire foot guarantees is more drudgery. He continues to tap and struggle just the same — for hours and possibly days. The cicadas keep changing their tune. From a distance, we watch him. And from a distance, he is watched. Men and women leave their shacks and go about their duties as if the hanging man were a natural botanical product. They know him, and they know better than to help. He was bad, insurgently so. Now he hangs as an advertisement against insurrection. From a different angle, a finely dressed woman watches the man briefly from her balcony, turns around and heads inside. Children are playing. From the left, a woman, less finely dressed, sneaks him something to drink, and you feel the risk. She bets her safety to water this strange piece of fruit.

I've never seen a sequence that so elegantly uses duration to lay out an ecosystem of power and powerlessness, one that ripples across time, from the 1840s to the 21st century. 12 Years a Slave manages to do that again and again. It coolly clarifies the United States' lasting social underpinnings: the seeds of black anger, black self-doubt, black resilience, white supremacy, and white guilt. The director is Steve McQueen, a 44-year-old Englishman. The screenwriter is the American entertainment-industry veteran John Ridley. Both men are black, and the movie they've made radically shifts the perspective of the American racial historical drama from the allegorical uplift to the explanatory wallop.

Mach, I think today's liberal society and the need for progressives to feel like they're doing something is to make things as easy as possible for disadvantaged blacks, thus unknowingly making it harder for them to be weaned off the system. Most people ultimately do better when they work for something rather than have it handed to them.

Read the link smn. It's really thought provoking.


When the film ended I just sat in my seat. I didn't know where to go. I didn't want to go anywhere. This isn't a post-screening lobby film. You don't quite mill about after. What could anybody possibly say? In part, that sense of speechlessness is a response to the film's muted artistry. In part, it's a response to the movie's transparency. For instance, you sometimes think the n-word has lost its power to appall, and yet every time it is used in 12 Years a Slave — as an appellation, a title, or a matter of fact — it hurts.

You hear the casual but hateful way in which Giamatti says it, and you wonder about the discomfort it must have caused him as an actor, or how Dano must have felt singing a whole bone-chilling ditty that uses the word over and over. Modern attempts to deaden its power by reclaiming it for casual overuse have not worked. The racist deployment of the n-word here only makes it more depressing outside the theater to hear two friends use any variation of it on each other or to listen to a 43-year-old superstar rapper use it nine times in a three-minute song about a white fashion designer. Hearing Woodard's character address Solomon as N----- Platt doesn't lessen the toxicity of the slur. It doubles it.

Thoughts, I was looking for good Halloween prank videos. Dude take a step back off of the ledge.
Obama is doing all he can to rip apart what he thinks are colonial powers anyway.

(10-25-2013 06:59 PM)Machiavelli Wrote:  I am the white guilt the conservatives ***** about ...

When can we ever have an honest dialogue?

For starters, when people realize that the concept of "White Guilt" is manufactured bullsh*t. Thankfully, many people of all ethnic/racial/national backgrounds do realize that, and among such people, the "honest dialogue" you inquired about is actually quite common. But most of us have learned to keep such dialogue beyond the delicate ears of the academic/media class, which is not just allergic to "honest dialogue" but actually condemns and demonizes people who engage in it.

Quote:We don't tell Jews to get over the Holocaust. That was 70 years ago!!!

Actually, I've heard some people say that "Jews" should do precisely that ("get over it"), sometimes using that exact phrase. Granted, the words were not told directly to the face of Jewish people. And granted, too, there are not (far as I can tell) a whole lot of people out there who think that way (for which, I am thankful). But still. A handful of people just do not think the Shoah was that big of a deal. Separate from that, there are a lot of people who think that it was a big deal, but that it is being milked for political reasons by people who have their own agenda that has nothing to do with the original events. To that limited extent, at least, the Holocaust and American slavery do have something in common, after all.

Quote:Supposedly if you watch this movie any African American will have a very hard time using the N word in any context.

For people who think the film will alter the speech-patterns of its audience, here's an "N-word" for you: Naïve.

Quote:If I had one wish it would be that African Americans truly see how disgusting that word is.

What do you think prevents them from seeing it the way you do?

Quote:I guess the movie goes into the self loathing the slaves felt. It tackles a lot of controversial dogmas.

What "controversial dogmas" does the movie "tackle" or attempts to tackle?

Did you read the link? Honest question.

Yes -- I had been on the espn website and saw the article being promoted there.

I'm actually wanting to see the movie, but I'll wait till it's on DVD.

As for all your white guilt, that's on you. I was born in the 80s, have gone to nothing but public, majority black schools (Montgomery and Opelika city schools), then went to one of the more diverse public univerities in the country (UAB). I say all that to emphasize the fact that every black kid I grew up going to school with had access to the exact same opportunities as me. I don't feel bad for slavery, Jim Crow, etc because I had nothing to do with it and this country has enacted lawful reverse racism to try and "make things right."

(10-25-2013 10:11 PM)dfarr Wrote:  I don't feel bad for slavery, Jim Crow, etc because I had nothing to do with it and this country has enacted lawful reverse racism to try and "make things right."

I think we should all feel "bad" for the injustices of the past. We should not feel responsible for them.

I have heard economist Walter Williams say, Yeah it sucked for my ancestors but I am better off in the US than I would have been had my ancestors never been forcibly brought here.

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(10-25-2013 10:14 PM)Native Georgian Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 10:11 PM)dfarr Wrote:  I don't feel bad for slavery, Jim Crow, etc because I had nothing to do with it and this country has enacted lawful reverse racism to try and "make things right."

I think we should all feel "bad" for the injustices of the past. We should not feel responsible for them.

Best post of the thread.

(10-25-2013 10:23 PM)Clueless Economist Wrote:  I have heard economist Walter Williams say, Yeah it sucked for my ancestors but I am better off in the US than I would have been had my ancestors never been forcibly brought here.

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I used to teach at a HBCU, so I have some idea what goes on there.

After Alex Hailey's "Roots" our dean got very interested in genealogy, and eventually located some cousins in northern Nigeria. The opportunity arose to attend an academic conference in Lagos and he spent the whole business school travel budget to go--we were actually okay with it because he really was a pretty decent boss and he was so excited about the opportunity. When he got back, he was telling us about the trip. He went to visit his cousins in a small village on the edge of the Sahara. They had this three day celebration culminating in a huge feast. The meal was a stew made with very dark meat. He asked several times what it was and got evasive responses like, "Don't worry, it's good, isn't it?" He finally got someone to tell him that it was rats that they kill when they get into their corn cribs. "At that moment," he said, "all I could think of is thank God for the slave ships."

(10-25-2013 06:59 PM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Now fast forward to an espn article I read last night on 12 years a slave. I guess it's just brutal. I'm going to take my kids to see it. I am the white guilt the conservatives ***** about. The black man has been fcked over in this country time and time again. I don't know how we get past it.

We stop helping into a cycle of fatherlessnes... We stop treating them as if it's the white (liberal) mans burden to make them succeed...

Quote:We don't tell Jews to get over the Holocaust. That was 70 years ago!!!

We also don't expect less of them.

Quote:I think the way we try to educate minorities is pathetic. I'm with you.

Im 100% with you... Dumping money into failing inner city schools is a crime against African Americans... SCHOOL CHOICE!

I read the book in college. I'll be interested to see if it is an honest reproduction or a race bating 'pick out the worst' kind of affair.

Personally, I usually have very little time for much of this; believe it or not but I've never owned a slave.

Curious, why don't white liberals have white guilt about American Indians?
Is that because in order to secure America and create what exists the Indians
had to be rounded up. Why are you Liberals not going out to reservations and
helping Indians adjust to Americana?

Wtf is this "honest dialogue"?

People say it like they have a clear understanding of what it would be. Is it some sort of Pay-Per-View event where they'd get a crack panel of racial "leaders", who'd take half of the earnings like a Mayweather fight?

If there's one thing the country has had, it's racial dialogue. If there's one thing most of this country realizes it doesn't need any more of, it's racial dialogue. I think most people realize that our history is our history and its scars will be there for a long time. Those scars aren't as fresh as some say, and they aren't as old and faded as others say. Just like the scars on our bodies, normally we'd forget about them, but there's occasionally a moment when we take notice and dwell on them.

I'd venture to say that 9 times out of 10, race relations in this country are the best in the world.

(10-25-2013 11:48 PM)Bull_In_Exile Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 06:59 PM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Now fast forward to an espn article I read last night on 12 years a slave. I guess it's just brutal. I'm going to take my kids to see it. I am the white guilt the conservatives ***** about. The black man has been fcked over in this country time and time again. I don't know how we get past it.

We stop helping into a cycle of fatherlessnes... We stop treating them as if it's the white (liberal) mans burden to make them succeed...

Quote:We don't tell Jews to get over the Holocaust. That was 70 years ago!!!

We also don't expect less of them.

Quote:I think the way we try to educate minorities is pathetic. I'm with you.

Im 100% with you... Dumping money into failing inner city schools is a crime against African Americans... SCHOOL CHOICE!

To be fair, school choice won't help much if there's no other choice in schools. Do you think a school in the burbs would take them?

Unfortunately, usually the "dialogue" is just pinning all the problems on others and demanding money.

It's ugly to say but that's usually the reality.

I'm also not blind to the issues it's just the "dialogue" coming from the black leadership is not intended to solve problems.

(10-26-2013 01:46 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  Unfortunately, usually the "dialogue" is just pinning all the problems on others and demanding money.

It's ugly to say but that's usually the reality.

I'm also not blind to the issues it's just the "dialogue" coming from the black leadership is not intended to solve problems.

You'll rarely hear the normal black American demanding money (emphasis on normal). I've never actually heard it. It's seems to be a tired thing that people say.

Here's the other thing, there is no black leadership. They kind of fabricated a job for themselves and all forms of media (not exactly run by black people) just kind of go along with it. If it weren't for the media, Sharpton would still be a travel manager for a James Brown cover band. Jackson would've faded in the 70's.