racism Archives - Revolutionary Misfit

On Fessing Up – Finally

October 3, 2017 by costaricaguy 1 Comment

My last post addressed the issue of the need to be right as the one that might be at the heart of the growing division in our country…

Today’s post is about fessing up – finally, or the admirable trait of knowing when to admit wrongness.

Sometimes we are forced to do so. Like when the facts begin to reveal themselves…

Let’s take a quick inventory and based on that, make an assessment regarding timeliness…

Just this year we’ve seen the following evidence transpire…right before our very eyes…

Racism rearing its ugly head, openly and defiantly, in ways we haven’t seen in some time…with white men holding tiki torches marching to defend the statue of a man who led a rebellion against America, resulting in its bloodiest war, in order to defend the right to enslave humans…

and in the aftermath of the ensuing chaos, a President who saw “good people” on both sides of that issue…

Back to back…to back…category 5 hurricanes and catastrophic once in a thousand-year level flooding with widespread damage and resulting human misery…

A President who insults just about everyone, almost daily, with his twitter feed, in ways that would make Don Rickles blush…and in ways that threaten to ignite global nuclear conflict…

Another worst mass shooting in history by a fellow citizen with an arsenal of weapons that allowed him to mow down almost 60 people in less then 16 minutes…

And despite all that you have this entrenched ultra right-wing who just can’t bring themselves to admit a few things, such as…

That racism really is a pernicious problem in American culture…

That global warming is a real and increasing threat to our lives…

That our sitting President is more than a bit unhinged…

That banning assault weapons makes perfectly good sense, will save (and would’ve saved) many lives, and doing so does not negate the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution in any way.

The last post made what I believe to be the salient point that it’s the stories we tend to tell (and attach ourselves to) that give rise to this reluctance against fessing up…

But sometimes the facts just speak for themselves too loudly to be ignored.

It’s sort of like the scientific method. Now, I’m not a scientist, but I do know it works something like this…

One scientist proposes a theory. At this point it’s no more than an educated guess or hypothesis…in other worlds…a “story”…

That theory is put to the test. It is subject to ridicule and rejection by the rest of the scientific community.

If the theory is able to weather that storm it gets to become accepted truth…a scientific fact.

If not? Well then it’s swept into the dustheap of rejected scientific history.

I don’t mean to pick on the right-wing here…well, maybe I do…perhaps I should.

You see, it seems there are some stories that they’re clinging to that have now been shown to be just flat out wrong.

Many of their stories are failing the fact test.

However, it appears that rather than to be willing to let them go, as any good and honest scientist would in the face of overwhelming factual evidence, they just cling to them all the harder…

They claim that any evidence (or “news”) to the contrary is not factual…it’s fake news they clamor!

Now just imagine if scientists operated that way. Imagine the chaos it would cause in the world!

The very idea of scientific truth would cease to exist.

Every theory (or story) would hold claim to truth and its proponents would take the position that any factual evidence to the contrary is contrived.

I dare say that this breakdown in the scientific method would produce a world that you and I would not want to live in!

Well, this breakdown in political thought is pretty much creating that same level of chaos in our society and our world.

Where will this ultimately lead us?

Not sure about that one…I’m still holding out hope that these folks will come around…

I’ve still got faith that as the factual evidence grows to overwhelming proportions…as it surely is…

that fessing up – finally will appear to be their only option.

Endemic versus Reactionary Racism

June 9, 2015 by costaricaguy 4 Comments

My last post was a rant against the tendency of some on the right to use a sort of “reverse political correctness” against throwing down the “race card.”

In this post I want to make the case that not only should playing the race card be legitimate because it’s still in the deck…

but also because it’s a necessary move towards making it (race) obsolete as a factor in our society.

And I am talking about endemic versus reactionary racism. I will explain shortly.

When events transpire that are tinged with even the faintest scent of racism, the card should appear…every time.

Why?

Because racism is a problem so pernicious that it must be rooted out and eradicated from every facet of our lives.

It is one of the ultimate evils in our (and any) society.

But let’s get straight on what I am referring to by racism.

Every time there is a race eruption, you hear the specious argument that attempts to delegitimize use of the race card since it (racism) exists on both sides of the equation.

But there’s a big difference between black racial attitudes against whites, which I’ll call reactionary racism, and the endemic racism that is the prevalent evil in our society.

Do some blacks (well more than some perhaps) harbor negative attitudes towards whites?

Certainly.

But it’s not because of immutable traits like color, physical characteristics or culture…it’s a reaction to suffering the first 100 years of their involuntary presence in this country as chattel…

and the next 100 being socially, politically and economically oppressed.

That would tend to make one a bit suspicious, perhaps even pissed off.

Attempting to accuse blacks of the same brand of racism as that of the Aryan Nation is like condemning a Jew for hating a Nazi. They don’t hate them because of their blonde hair and blue eyes, Colonel Klink-ish accent or tendency towards anal retentiveness…

they hate them because those assholes tried to exterminate the Jewish race!

You see, it’s reactionary.

I grew up in the South during desegregation and was intimately exposed to racism. I knew very clearly (then, as well as now) that whites didn’t harbor negative racial attitudes against blacks as a reaction to the incendiary political views of the Black Panther party. They hated them because of immutable traits that they (the black people) were born with and could not change.

And that’s where the real evil lies.

So, it appals me when Bill (the bloviator) O’Reilly delivers a spitting venomous diatribe blaming the totality of problems blacks face in our society on their taste in music, or because they tend to be hornier than he would prefer them to be…while completely dismissing the fact that there has been systematic societal oppression against the black race for over 200 years!

The race card, as ugly as it might be, is a necessary tool to eradicate racism. Tweet it Out!

If an event in our society occurs as a possible result of race, it should be thoroughly investigated, prosecuted (if truly present) and bold steps taken to insure against racism’s future presence in a similar situation, so that real endemic racism has a chance of being eliminated as a pernicious societal sin.

That’s what I would term legitimate use of “the race card.”

I could envision that when that happens consistently, the reactionary “racism” that whites often lament will rapidly evaporate.

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Against the Grain

November 28, 2014 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

Here’s a post I wrote back in 2009 that sheds some light on things I’ve said regarding the racial tensions that our nation has experienced recently…

I guess it must’ve been 1975. I’d have been in the 10th grade, a sophomore at West Brunswick High School.

My father had moved our family to Holden Beach, North Carolina, a small “barrier island” on the extreme southern North Carolina coast, only a stone’s throw from South Carolina.

While North Carolina is usually not considered the “deep South”, Holden Beach was close enough. When we moved there in 1965 or 1966 (not sure about the exact date), the schools were still segregated.

For those of you not old enough to know what that means, the whites had their school, and the blacks another.

When desegregation took place in my third year of primary school, a few white families banded together to form a private school where their children could escape the unimaginable horror of attending school with black children.

However, that idea for some reason didn’t last too long, and after two years of attending Lockwood Academy I was thrust into the world of desegregated public school.

It’s not entirely clear to me why, but for some reason I just never took to the idea of racial intolerance.

It may have had something to do with a black gym instructor I had beginning in the 5th grade. His name was Moe Stanley and he became a great influence on my life in those formative years. I became very interested in sports, especially basketball and Moe Stanley helped to fuel that passion. Also our neighbor and close family friend was the head coach of the West Brunswick varsity basketball team, which had a very successful run back in those days.

Now most of the guys who were interested in basketball back then were black. I spent a good amount of time honing my skills on the playground courts with the black kids. I befriended many of them, which served to alienate me from white kids who didn’t think too much of my social inclinations. There were many physical threats, although I don’t remember any coming to fruition.

My dream was to be a varsity star at West Brunswick and when I entered that school in 1975 I tried out for the junior varsity team and made the squad, being the only white player on the team.

About that time I was also beginning to take notice of members of the opposite sex. Given that basketball was mainly an African American activity at West Brunswick, the cheer-leading squad also happened to be color consistent.

One girl on the varsity squad really caught my eye. She was older than me, being a junior. However, my infatuation with her quickly became known by my pals on the team and the word spread to her. We began a quite innocent relationship, which mostly just involved talking on the phone and occasionally hand-holding after games. I might’ve even stolen a kiss, I don’t really remember.

But what I do remember and what has marked me deeply for life is the reaction amongst the white crowd, young and old. My actions were, to put it mildly, scandalous and an abomination. I became an outcast, shunned by white society and threatened even with grave physical harm.

Later, after I “came to my senses” and began to date a white girl, it sent shock waves through me and I would turn pale as a ghost whenever someone would mention the topic. I was reminded often, even by my own family.

Despite the fact that I grew up in an environment where this malady of thought, this cancer of the conscience, affected so many of my peers, I have always gone against the grain. That hasn’t always made things easy for me.

I don’t know exactly from where my rebellion, or nonconformity, originates, but I am thankful that despite the pressures I felt from all sides to succumb to racial intolerance, for the most part I did not.

For the truth is, there is nothing so illogical, or plain downright ignorant, stupid and backwards, than to hate someone, or judge someone, or even think poorly of someone, because of the color of their skin.

I have a great deal of inner rage at the people who judged me so harshly for “siding with the blacks.” And actually, that wasn’t the case at all, I just hated white racial bigotry and would have taken any side opposing that.

While the U.S. has come a long way from the days of ugly racial intolerance and bigotry that I experienced during my high school years, I believe it still has a long way to go.

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The Race Card

September 4, 2014 by costaricaguy 2 Comments

You know, it’s funny how the use of “the race card” is decried as being foul-play by some…

as if racism no longer mattered, or even existed…

Oh noooo, racism shouldn’t even be considered a factor…

When a white cop on a police force that is 95% white shoots and kills an unarmed black teenager in a community that is 67% black…

When our nation’s first black President can’t do anything (repeat NOT ANY ONE SINGLE SOLITARY THING) to please or appease the Tea Party crowd, which happens to be 90% white…

When unemployment among black Americans almost always doubles that of white…

When black Americans account for about 40% of the total prison population in the U.S., despite being only 14% of the total population…

When racist comments from celebrities and business moguls bubble to the public surface, routinely…

When virulent racism can easily be detected simply by reviewing the millions of Facebook comments and Twitter posts about “our” President…

When more than a third of impoverished Americans are black, as opposed to about 13% who are white…

When churches throughout the U.S., especially in the south, are still predominantly divided along racial lines…

When communities throughout the U.S., especially in the south, are still predominantly divided along racial lines…

When in my own experience, friends and acquaintances who would never admit to harboring one iota of racism in public, will readily admit their secret desire to get that [expletive] out of the “white” house…

There’s a lot of talk out there about truth, usually in the form of opinion masquerading as such.

In my opinion, the facts speak for themselves and disclose the real truth…

That the race card is still in the deck and as long as it is, it will and should be legitimately played.

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