Kenny Mayne: Dear Fellow White People: Or should I have said ‘Caucasian’?

[Berggy9598]

6 hours ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

 

Yeah, I agree.  

 

I try to live by the Golden Rule...do unto others.  Treat everyone like you'd like to be treated.  But when an article like that starts with "I used to think white people were evil."  and concludes it with all white people being cowardly...I dunno, it just makes me sad because it doesn't help anything.  If MLK is the standard on to how to win people over and send a message, this article is way far from that.  I think MLK would be pretty upset by that article.

 

I've said it on here before, you don't get people to come around to your point of view by telling them how stupid they are or how wrong they are.  People these days just want to put others down who hold opposing viewpoints and take the moral high ground for themselves so they can cast judgement on others because that's what matters in America, 2018.  I've got the moral high ground, you don't.  No one's got genuine interest in winning people over and opening up their minds, they're just too busy flinging insults and pissing people off.  

 

MLK's views at the time were met with much more resistance than we make it seem now a days if I'm not mistaken. We can look back now and take for granted the fact that we live in a relatively better world but MLK wasn't always all rainbows and puppies, not because that was his nature, but because he couldn't afford to be. 

 

[Kosher Ham]

^^^

I believe the message of many leaders have been lost in translation. 

MLK, X, Ghandi, etc... 

 

 

 

[Going Commando]

9 hours ago, Sacks 'n' Stuff said:

@BenningRoadSkin Would you consider yourself a racist?

 

Benning is an angry radical but he's not a racist.  He cares more about justice and the plight of oppressed people than any of us.

 

I didn't care for this article though.  Not because of the polemics, but because I thought it flippantly decontextualized and misunderstood history .  When you lose understanding of the past, you also lose the understanding of the truths it reveals for today.

[Spaceman Spiff]

1 hour ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

Benning is an angry radical but he's not a racist.  He cares more about justice and the plight of oppressed people than any of us.

 

I didn't care for this article though.  Not because of the polemics, but because I thought it flippantly decontextualized and misunderstood history .  When you lose understanding of the past, you also lose the understanding of the truths it reveals for today.

 

Disagree, I think he is.  He masks it by saying he cares about justice and the plight of oppressed people.  I am sure he does, but I also think there's a contempt in there for white people.

[Renegade7]

1 hour ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

Benning is an angry radical but he's not a racist.  He cares more about justice and the plight of oppressed people than any of us.

 

You can absolutely lose your way with moral high ground by letting your anger lead the way.  Benning does not care about oppressed people more then anyone here, if I had to pick one, that would be Visionary.  I can only pull so much from someone's post history, real heros don't wear capes or brag about how many people they save.

 

@BenningRoadSkin. I want to defend you on this one, but I cant, your going to have to defend yourself first or at least answer my question I posted earlier.  

[TradeTheBeal!]

Y’know what is the most cowardly thing in the world?  Being a white American in 2018 and dedicating the best years of your life to fighting for the honor of the Confederacy.  Ever met any cowardly little ****es like that, pearl-clutchers?

 

I bet you have.

 

[tshile]

I make it a point to call that **** out when I see it.

 

Unfortunately, around here, you pretty much only see it when a truck with the flag waving drives by.

 

BRS definitely is a militant racist though. I definitely expect him to be part of some radical group, the talk matches it.

[redskins59]

Well, I haven't read enough of Benning to call him a racist. What makes him a racist? He is black, so what is happening in this country affects him more than you and me.

The article posted here has gone viral.  It has generated more than a thousand comments. Posting this article alone does not make him a racist.

Now, if Benning is racist, when did he become radicalized? After Trump got elected?  Before that?  All the police brutality stuff? 

A lot of minorities have probably become radicalized the last year or so.  It is the Trump backlash. I mean, come on, when Obama got elected there was a White backlash, and, yes, a lot of Whites got radicalized.  

I supposed it is the turn of minorities to become radicalized.

[CousinsCowgirl84]

It’s ok to be racist because trump is president... got it.

[Going Commando]

34 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

You can absolutely lose your way with moral high ground by letting your anger lead the way.  Benning does not care about oppressed people more then anyone here, if I had to pick one, that would be Visionary. 

 

Visionary is great, and you're right he cares more than any of us.  But point remains, Benning is not some racist and he cares more than almost all of us.

 

This forum is mostly white men and it's a microcosm for mainstream views of white men. I joined back in 2008, and not long after, I agreed with what should have been an uncontroversial statement about black quarterbacks needing to be a lot better than white quarterbacks to get the same level of respect, which turned out to be highly inflammatory to a ton of the forum members at the time.  But I guess I was coming out of an academic bubble at the time and I was shocked that most people seemed to be totally ignorant of terms and concepts in the debate as basic as color-blind racism.  Since then, the forum has gotten a little more diverse and tolerant, but not a whole lot.  It still has a disappointing defensiveness and insecurity and ignorance about issues of race and white supremacy that make having discussions about them tedious.  The Stadium is regressive as Hell.  And it's even worse in the actual real life public sphere of the country.  Nobody wants to listen to other groups.  But I think white people, particularly white men, do a much worse job of listening than any other group.

[Zguy28]

7 hours ago, Berggy9598 said:

MLK's views at the time were met with much more resistance than we make it seem now a days if I'm not mistaken. We can look back now and take for granted the fact that we live in a relatively better world but MLK wasn't always all rainbows and puppies, not because that was his nature, but because he couldn't afford to be. 

 

Good article here: http://dagblog.com/social-justice/martin-luther-kings-civility-8618

 

Written in 2011 when conservatives were undermining President Obama's legitimate election and authority and has some commentary on the way conservatives lost civility. Also shows me how modern liberals have begun to move in the same direction due to hatred of Donald Trump and his policies.

 

Quote

I've been worried by a lot of political rhetoric for the last few years, and it's not the name-calling that bothers me. It's the repeated claims that the other side is illegitimate or tyrannical or otherwise outside the civil process, the kind of language that suggests that the speakers and their listeners shouldn't feel bound by the process. Claiming that the President was not lawfully elected and has no authority is not civil; it is an implied threat of political violence. Calling the federal government's most banal and everyday functions "tyrannical" is not civil; if it is not a rhetorical preparation for bloodshed, it is at least an attempt to keep bloodshed open as an option. No one who says such a thing should be trusted. Raving about "Second Amendment remedies" if an election does not go one's own way is a disqualification from public life. So is showing up with a mob when you've lost an election. And peddling obviously false conspiracy stories, claiming that grandmothers will be euthanized by the health care bill or that the President of the United States is trying to destroy the economy in order to impose a socialist system, is an obvious attempt to undermine and delegitimize the very systems that preserve civil peace. This is incivility, a threat to our domestic peace.

That was where I was going to leave things, when the holiday forced me to think about Martin Luther King, Jr., and his approach to our public life. Because Dr. King was profoundly dedicated to peace and civility, but also refused a system that he viewed as manifestly unjust. He did not always abide by the laws or the courts. He did not always obey lawful orders by police officers, and he counseled others to the same eminently civil disobedience. Dr. King did not work within the system, the way someone like Thurgood Marshall did; that does nothing to diminish Marshall's staggering achievements, but makes Dr. King's even more surprising. I have to admit that King, whom I admire, refused to accept the laws and the framework for resolving disputes that I otherwise view as essential to keeping the peace, and yet he made the world a less violent place.

The obvious difference is that King and his followers were willing to suffer, rather than to cause suffering, in order to achieve their goals. They could (and did) step outside the rules meant to prevent civil violence because when they stepped out side those rules they brought no violence and no threat with them. They could break the laws in service of a higher good because they were in a peculiar way the perfect citizens: harming no one and wishing no one harm. They didn't need the rules to preserve the peace because civil peace itself was their rule.

rest at link

[redskins59]

4 minutes ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

It’s ok to be racist because trump is president... got it.

 

Who is racist?  The OP?  How do you know that?  The article posted has gone viral that has generated 1000+ comments.

Alright, define "racist" for me. What makes the OP a racist?

 

[tshile]

10 minutes ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

It’s ok to be racist because trump is president... got it.

 

That's not how I read that.

 

I read it as understanding why people feel the way they do, as opposed to "approving" of being a racist.

 

And I don't know that radical and racist are synonymous here, even though I feel they're being used interchangeably at times.

 

I feel like radical just means your outspokenness has reached a very high level

 

Whereas racism is actually how you treat/feel about people.

[Zguy28]

I don't think he is a racist. I just think he has gone too far and has let his anger cause him to reject civility. Hopelessness can do that. If he so chose, he could be the next MLK, but instead of being a consistent steady force that seeks to win people's conscience, he would rather slap them out of it, which does no good.

[skinsmarydu]

1 hour ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

 

Disagree, I think he is.  He masks it by saying he cares about justice and the plight of oppressed people.  I am sure he does, but I also think there's a contempt in there for white people.

For sure. 

But I won't fight him. A black woman with my same name is very possible, so for me, to have an advantage sucks, just on the color of ****in skin.

 

 

[Going Commando]

1 hour ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

 

Disagree, I think he is.  He masks it by saying he cares about justice and the plight of oppressed people.  I am sure he does, but I also think there's a contempt in there for white people.

 

I think we're too quick to say the calling out of something as racist is racist and it demonstrates a confusion of terms and issues in the debate.  Racism is an ideology where a person believes one ethnic group is inferior to another in some regard because of some phenotypical and behavioral manifestation of their genetics and/or environment.  In the US, racism most typically takes the form of an ideological support for white supremacy.  White supremacy is a principle of social organization that has consistently placed ethnic groups with white skin above ethnic groups with darker skin in a very wide array of consequences.

 

There is an important difference between saying someone is a coward if they support injustice and white supremacy, even indirectly, and a coward by virtue of their culture or genetics.  The article was clumsy and ignorant and unpersuasive, but it wasn't racist.  It certainly wasn't an argument for black supremacy.  It was an attempt to use polemics and extreme speech to shock the conscience of an unsympathetic audience and galvanize support from a sympathetic one.  I don't like that methodology because it's the preferred tool or Right Wing propagandists and it's hostile to nuance and true understanding.  It comes from a place of ignorance, as it does in this article.  I don't think the author understands white people.  But the truth is that this kind of inflammatory and oversimplified argumentation often works.

[NoCalMike]

The article came off as somewhat inflammatory, I can agree with that, but whenever these topics come up I feel like we go right back down the same territory we were when BLM first started up and white folks (not all) were instantly outraged and started saying, "All Lives Matter" as if BLM was ever trying to argue that only Black Lives Matter.  I feel some folks were just ignorant, but then you had the pundits and a lot of people that knew better taking advantage of their ignorance by stoking more flames of fear. 

[redskins59]

Actually, read the mailbag below:

https://www.theroot.com/the-roots-clapback-mailbag-the-longest-clapback-ever-1827035080

 

Besides the racist messages that he received, there are Whites who actually agree with him.

 

 

[Going Commando]

14 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

Do you agree with this?

 

Quote

I thought white people were evil.

I was right.

 

 

Fair question.  It was a stupid claim and an an ugly, self-defeating bigotry.  The author is a clumsy writer and his angry attempt at a snappy conclusion undermined his argument and contradicted the beginning of his article.

 

I honestly wonder how much value there really is in trying to change the terms of debate by staking out the most extreme position.  It's alienating and fundamentally unpersuasive.  Black thinkers and writers and activists can't set themselves up opposite of white supremacists and do like them.  You can't win an unfair fight by trying to do the opposite of your opponent.  White supremacists don't have to persuade the masses to do anything because white supremacy is already the order of our society.

[EasternNCbywayofNOVA]

15 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

I think we're too quick to say the calling out of something as racist is racist and it demonstrates a confusion of terms and issues in the debate.  Racism is an ideology where a person believes one ethnic group is inferior to another in some regard because of some phenotypical and behavioral manifestation of their genetics and/or environment.  In the US, racism most typically takes the form of an ideological support for white supremacy.  White supremacy is a principle of social organization that has consistently placed ethnic groups with white skin above ethnic groups with darker skin in a very wide array of consequences.

 

There is an important difference between saying someone is a coward if they support injustice and white supremacy, even indirectly, and a coward by virtue of their culture or genetics.  The article was clumsy and ignorant and unpersuasive, but it wasn't racist.  It certainly wasn't an argument for black supremacy.  It was an attempt to use polemics and extreme speech to shock the conscience of an unsympathetic audience and galvanize support from a sympathetic one.  I don't like that methodology because it's the preferred tool or Right Wing propagandists and it's hostile to nuance and true understanding.  It comes from a place of ignorance, as it does in this article.  I don't think the author understands white people.  But the truth is that this kind of inflammatory and oversimplified argumentation often works.

So with what you just posted, do you consider a large part of the black power movement racist? 

Do you not think that all ethnic groups feel a sense of superiority in some way?

to say otherwise is kind of patronizing isn’t it?

There is a very thin line between pride and feeling supreme that can get ugly and messy. 

 

The thread title alone deserves every bit of heat expressed in this thread. 

 

 

[Renegade7]

@stevemcqueen1. We've talked before about the wealthy trying to divide us anyway they can so we don't unite against them.  Articles like this is exactly what they want.  Even if Benning's heart is in right place, he and others have to realize when their doing their work for them.  We did not get this far by fighting fire with fire, it doesn't matter to me how many people agree with this article, the damage done is not worth it.

 

@EasternNCbywayofNOVA. If you don't look at black power in the context of stuff like the willy lynch letter, you won't understand why it has nothing to do with black superiority.

[grego]

51 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

I think we're too quick to say the calling out of something as racist is racist and it demonstrates a confusion of terms and issues in the debate.  Racism is an ideology where a person believes one ethnic group is inferior to another in some regard because of some phenotypical and behavioral manifestation of their genetics and/or environment.  In the US, racism most typically takes the form of an ideological support for white supremacy.  White supremacy is a principle of social organization that has consistently placed ethnic groups with white skin above ethnic groups with darker skin in a very wide array of consequences.

 

There is an important difference between saying someone is a coward if they support injustice and white supremacy, even indirectly, and a coward by virtue of their culture or genetics.  The article was clumsy and ignorant and unpersuasive, but it wasn't racist. 

 

 

i agree with the general definition of racism you post, but even by that definition, an entire race of people are being labeled with a negative connotation- evil or cowardly. still, if the article stated 'black/hispanic/asian/native american/jews, etc are evil/cowards, its clearly racist. and if one believes that, i would say that person is a racist. 

 

i dont think the writer is clumsy, though. i think he wrote exactly what he meant- an article that was purposefully inflammatory. 

[EasternNCbywayofNOVA]

Discussing a topic like this in such a forum can get very messy. This thread wasn’t a good idea. Usually isn’t when you have to start off with effff it. 

[CrypticVillain]

15 minutes ago, grego said:

i dont think the writer is clumsy, though. i think he wrote exactly what he meant- an article that was purposefully inflammatory. 

Now we're getting somewhere...

Y'all spent 4 pages attacking each other and whatnot... What about media? How can these bammas continue to add fuel to the fire and not be held accountable for it. I'm starting to think the whole damn point of this article was just for the headline.

[Llevron]

1 hour ago, Zguy28 said:

I don't think he is a racist. I just think he has gone too far and has let his anger cause him to reject civility. Hopelessness can do that. 

 

He has actually said that multiple times in the past. He, like many, feel like there is no point is 'playing nice' anymore and I 100% understand his point. I disagree, I mean look at this topic in particular, but I understand it. 

 

Fun example is the dick I work with. I am in a position of service at my current job. Office manager/ facilities manager type of deal. I have a cat that works here that habitually steps over the line (do this. NOW. You have to do what I tell you thats your job be a man about it). I gave him many chances to fix that and I said it the nice way. This marked year two for him and he has gotten worse. Just last week I had to unlock angry black man mode (only black guy in the office, so I really REALLY didnt want to go there). That got results. But I had to 'take it' for a while before I got to that point. Benning doesn't want to take it anymore. And has zero desire to hide that fact or play nice. 

 

Point is eventually you get worn down and you understand that playing nice doesn't always work. So **** it. Lets fight. 

 

I have been trying to stay away from this topic because I have been to some of the places Benning and im assuming the author of the piece have been and there are things in it that I absolutely agree with (given less of a broad stroke). But I know that **** will not be well received here and I know this isn't the battleground I need to choose to fight (and die) on. 

 

Know your audience. 

37 minutes ago, CrypticVillain said:

Now we're getting somewhere...

Y'all spent 4 pages attacking each other and whatnot... What about media? How can these bammas continue to add fuel to the fire and not be held accountable for it. I'm starting to think the whole damn point of this article was just for the headline.

 

Thats exactly what it was for. Black Sean Hannity.