When I lived in Boston I didn't have cable, we got about 20 channels so it was a decent enough "surf" for me.
One day they had a documentary on some local PBS-style channel about racism in Boston. I didn't watch the whole thing, I mean, I've always figured that New England was pretty darn racist in general, but what I saw was... interesting.
They were interviewing this guy and he talked about what they did in the 50s when blacks started moving in. He was obviously a successful businessman and not at all illiterate or stupid.
(Paraphrased but accurate)
"We didn't want the blacks to live just anywhere so we figured, send them to Roxbury to live with the Jews."
He went to note that real estate agents and renters were told that Roxbury was where the blacks would be allowed to live.
To this day, East Roxbury is mostly Jewish and Roxbury is mostly black.
I haven't seen it so I will make sure to see when it is on next...
Rosemary- imo, it is probably better that Jake is learning this in his home..I think that, given your examples, he was able to ask honest questions and be given semi-straight answers..actually, that should read age appropriate answers..you built a foundation for his learning and you can't beat that :)
Okay, I'm glad I don't get US crap sometimes. I mean we have AFN but they don't show shit like that.
The Klan was evil, the Klan is evil but the shit they showed (going by what you described) was NOT the orginal Klan. The Klan, much to most people's ignorance, was no one conglomeration with an unbroken history. It was started after the Civil War then stopped for the most part in the 1880s. It re-entered the US conciousness in the early 1900s when it became an "I hate Jews, Catholics, Blacks, and Whites we think are race traitors". It reached it's peak in the 30's and fell sharply at the start of WWII. Blessidly it is nothing more than a fringe group of wantonly stupid people - and I hate wontonly stupid people.
But what eats my goat every damn time is that there are no documentaries about the Mexican Mafia, the Black Panthers, American Indian groups, Asian gangs, Muslim Imans, etc that speak the same vile trash. Just the standard ol' "southern people is ignt fools that are all members of the KLAN and hate niggers!" I mean, really, come on now! In the last decade I've heard "nigger" many times, out of black people's mouths! Calling OTHER black people NIGGER but that's not wrong, that's not racist, that's RACE PRIDE!! I've been called a 'honkey bitch' before too, but again that's not racism because WHITE PEOPLE FROM THE SOUTH ARE ALL IN THE KLAN!!
If the word is wrong for me, I don't want to hear YOU use it either. If it's okay for you to use, then I can use it too.
As a side challenge, who can name the word history of Nigger? It didn't start out as a rascist slur...also how about Honkey, Kike and Spik? Several of those DID start out life as rascist...
Hate's just an emotion like any other, and perfectly natural. Indeed, anyone who tells you they don't hate is just a liar. To really understand the Klan you've got to get over that notion that it's "about hate." No, it's about a wounded sense of pride, and a need to feel superior, and a sense that the world owes you something and that you were deprived by The Other. It's also mixed with the feeling of a need to belong to a group, a fraternity.
Honestly the documentary did a pretty good job during the first half hour or so of explaining fairly well that the Klan didn't start as a particularly racist or violent organization, but quickly morphed into a vigilante group. They also explained correctly--although they elided the point a bit too subtly for my tastes--that by 1870 or so the Klan's founders repudiated the organization because it had gotten out of control, and that it stayed all but defunct for almost 50 years until William Simmons "resurrected" (more properly, in my view, created a new organization with the trappings of the old). That was also the point where they added the anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish trappings--the original Klan would likely have had some Jewish and Catholic members.
They also did a good job of mentioning how the Klan was very mixed up in Republican Party politics in Indiana in the 1930s, but somehow managed to miss the fact that it was intimately tied with Democratic Party politics for a much longer period of time and over a much wider area.
“Hate's just an emotion like any other, and perfectly natural. Indeed, anyone who tells you they don't hate is just a liar.”
1. projection In psychoanalytic theory, a mechanism of defense in which various forbidden thoughts and impulses are attributed to another person rather than the self, thus warding off some anxiety (e.g., "I hate you" becomes "You hate me").
“Two extra definitions for the semi-literate, hate-filled Sheppy:”
Oh goody, I’ll add them to my semi-literate (Webster’s Ninth) dictionary definitions, which pretty well describe how the emotion is commonly understood:
1. haten. 1 a: intense hostility and aversion usu. deriving from fear, anger, or a sense of injury b: extreme dislike or antipathy : LOATHING.
In my opinion, deep and abiding anger (intense hostility) toward a person or group is a form of psychopathogy. It cripples the hater, both emotionally and intellectually (hate breeds ignorance) and the implied statement “everyone hates” is an ugly slur against humankind (and explains why, no matter how much information you have, you fail to understand the world around you). Not everyone hates.
Of course, it’s silly to argue about what couldn’t be a more partisan and immutable belief. Those who carry around hate will nod in agreement with that notion, and those who don’t will feel pity.
"The faults we first see in others are the faults that are our own."(Honore de Balzac)
Shoot, shep, you must hate Democrats. I know because you say Republicans hate Democrats all the time and you say "The faults we first see in others are the faults that are our own."
Trouble is, it took me a while to see that. And, quite frankly, I'm not all that enamored with Democratic politicians. They only look good compared to Republicans. A really, really low bar, I know.
I have a similar problem with Republican politicians. They really only look good compared to Democratic politicians.
It's the problem of trying to build a winning coalition in a nation of 300 million people with wildly divergent interests, and, recently, the habit of all trying to squeeze money out ot the federal government to solve their problems.
Are you sure you wouldn't like to embrace Federalism and let the states handle these issues? I'm sure things would be at least slightly better if I was more worried about about my State Representative, who I know personally and who lives in my neighborhood, or at least visits from Topeka, than worrying about my Congressman, who lives in Washington.
And somehow the black disenfranchisement is the Republican's fault? Well Hot Damn! You must LOVE the Gore camp and all them Southn Demcrats, you know, the ones that VOTED to KEEP Jim Crowe and launched attacks against black folks' ability to think, who kept them in "seperate but equal" schools, who made sure more blacks were in prison than whites and that killin' one wasn't really a crime. Or do you really believe it was Republicans - the Party of LINCOLN that did all that? Oh wait, I know, it IS the Republicans' fault - Lincoln should have just left 'em slaves then we wouldn't have these issues!
You are going all the way back to 1876 and the Fourteenth Amendment. I'll take original meaning Fourteenth Amendment Federalism, thank you very much.
In fact, gimme, gimme, gimme, pretty, pretty please!
Of course the Supreme Court almost immediately invalidated much of the Fourteenth Amendment by ignoring it's original meaning, leaving the problem to be solved much later, by legislation which, still, was enabled by the Fourteenth Amendment, in 1876, when federalism was very much alive.
And if we hadn't accidently created filibusters by allowing the rules which prevented them from elapsing back in, if I recall almost certainly incorrectly, Aaron Burr's time, the problem also would have been solved sooner.
The first section of the Fourteenth says:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The Slaughterhouse Cases essentially invalidated the "privileges or immunities" clause, which, according to the original meaning, would have protected such privileges as voting, free speech, bearing arms and not being lynched. Later much of that protection was added back in under the due process clause.
We certainly don't need the Federal government expanding it's power through ridiculous readings of the General Welfare and Commerce Clauses to prevent Jim Crow lynchings and black disenfranchisement.
I see the problem. You're thinking that I haven't thought nearly as far as I have.
Well, my mind may be it's own little echo chamber, but there is somethin' goin on.
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States..."
Yet they did. And are. And only the federal government can stop them. In this century, Republicans seem the most interested in preventing it from doing so.
Please review the Drug War laws - and your personal favorite business regulations. It's not just the Republicans. The privileges or immunities clause, as written, is essentially non-whacko libertarian. Do you really think the Endangered Species Act is Constitutional under the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment? Especially since the land owner is not compensated? Further more, we used to have the priviledge of hunting on our own land - especially predators which preyed on children and livestock. Not anymore.
There are lots of environmental regulations which abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. I used to have the privledge of disposing of toxic waste in an environmentally safe way and documenting what subsequent owners had to do to keep it safe. Now, if a subsequent owner breeches my safe containment system that I warned him not to breech, I'm liable.
Have I mentioned state gun-control laws - many of which are designed to keep affordable weapons out of the hands of poor people? People used to have the priviledge of affordable weaponry.
So, how does federalism prevent the eradication of species, the pollution of (all of) our air and water, or trafficking in dangerous substances? (Hint: it's a rhetorical question, unless instructing a grade-school civics class).
If you want to live on the frontier, you’ll have to move (and you'd better do it quickly). Otherwise you might want to reconsider the necessity of civilization.
“It is only civilized beings who can combine. All combination is compromise: it is the sacrifice of some portion of individual will, for a common purpose. The savage cannot bear to sacrifice, for any purpose, the satisfaction of his individual will. His social cannot even temporarily prevail over his selfish feelings, nor his impulses bend to his calculations.”
- John Stuart Mill
One day they had a documentary on some local PBS-style channel about racism in Boston. I didn't watch the whole thing, I mean, I've always figured that New England was pretty darn racist in general, but what I saw was... interesting.
They were interviewing this guy and he talked about what they did in the 50s when blacks started moving in. He was obviously a successful businessman and not at all illiterate or stupid.
(Paraphrased but accurate)
"We didn't want the blacks to live just anywhere so we figured, send them to Roxbury to live with the Jews."
He went to note that real estate agents and renters were told that Roxbury was where the blacks would be allowed to live.
To this day, East Roxbury is mostly Jewish and Roxbury is mostly black.
Rosemary- imo, it is probably better that Jake is learning this in his home..I think that, given your examples, he was able to ask honest questions and be given semi-straight answers..actually, that should read age appropriate answers..you built a foundation for his learning and you can't beat that :)
The Klan was evil, the Klan is evil but the shit they showed (going by what you described) was NOT the orginal Klan. The Klan, much to most people's ignorance, was no one conglomeration with an unbroken history. It was started after the Civil War then stopped for the most part in the 1880s. It re-entered the US conciousness in the early 1900s when it became an "I hate Jews, Catholics, Blacks, and Whites we think are race traitors". It reached it's peak in the 30's and fell sharply at the start of WWII. Blessidly it is nothing more than a fringe group of wantonly stupid people - and I hate wontonly stupid people.
But what eats my goat every damn time is that there are no documentaries about the Mexican Mafia, the Black Panthers, American Indian groups, Asian gangs, Muslim Imans, etc that speak the same vile trash. Just the standard ol' "southern people is ignt fools that are all members of the KLAN and hate niggers!" I mean, really, come on now! In the last decade I've heard "nigger" many times, out of black people's mouths! Calling OTHER black people NIGGER but that's not wrong, that's not racist, that's RACE PRIDE!! I've been called a 'honkey bitch' before too, but again that's not racism because WHITE PEOPLE FROM THE SOUTH ARE ALL IN THE KLAN!!
If the word is wrong for me, I don't want to hear YOU use it either. If it's okay for you to use, then I can use it too.
As a side challenge, who can name the word history of Nigger? It didn't start out as a rascist slur...also how about Honkey, Kike and Spik? Several of those DID start out life as rascist...
Honestly the documentary did a pretty good job during the first half hour or so of explaining fairly well that the Klan didn't start as a particularly racist or violent organization, but quickly morphed into a vigilante group. They also explained correctly--although they elided the point a bit too subtly for my tastes--that by 1870 or so the Klan's founders repudiated the organization because it had gotten out of control, and that it stayed all but defunct for almost 50 years until William Simmons "resurrected" (more properly, in my view, created a new organization with the trappings of the old). That was also the point where they added the anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish trappings--the original Klan would likely have had some Jewish and Catholic members.
They also did a good job of mentioning how the Klan was very mixed up in Republican Party politics in Indiana in the 1930s, but somehow managed to miss the fact that it was intimately tied with Democratic Party politics for a much longer period of time and over a much wider area.
On the whole though, fairly well done.
1. projection In psychoanalytic theory, a mechanism of defense in which various forbidden thoughts and impulses are attributed to another person rather than the self, thus warding off some anxiety (e.g., "I hate you" becomes "You hate me").
Or, better yet, “everybody hates”.
You liar.
Yours,
Wince
You liar."
I can live with that but I just hate you for saying so.
hate (noun) 1. To feel hostility or animosity toward. 2. To detest.
denial (noun) ...2. A refusal to grant the truth of a statement or allegation
When your life is ruled by both hatred and denial, as Shep's is, perhaps you lose the ability to understand words like normal people do.
Oh goody, I’ll add them to my semi-literate (Webster’s Ninth) dictionary definitions, which pretty well describe how the emotion is commonly understood:
1. hate n. 1 a: intense hostility and aversion usu. deriving from fear, anger, or a sense of injury b: extreme dislike or antipathy : LOATHING.
In my opinion, deep and abiding anger (intense hostility) toward a person or group is a form of psychopathogy. It cripples the hater, both emotionally and intellectually (hate breeds ignorance) and the implied statement “everyone hates” is an ugly slur against humankind (and explains why, no matter how much information you have, you fail to understand the world around you). Not everyone hates.
Of course, it’s silly to argue about what couldn’t be a more partisan and immutable belief. Those who carry around hate will nod in agreement with that notion, and those who don’t will feel pity.
"The faults we first see in others are the faults that are our own."(Honore de Balzac)
QED.
Yours,
Wince
I have a similar problem with Republican politicians. They really only look good compared to Democratic politicians.
It's the problem of trying to build a winning coalition in a nation of 300 million people with wildly divergent interests, and, recently, the habit of all trying to squeeze money out ot the federal government to solve their problems.
Are you sure you wouldn't like to embrace Federalism and let the states handle these issues? I'm sure things would be at least slightly better if I was more worried about about my State Representative, who I know personally and who lives in my neighborhood, or at least visits from Topeka, than worrying about my Congressman, who lives in Washington.
I can drive to Topeka in an hour!
Your blue state could be bluer....
Yours,
Wince
“Are you sure you wouldn't like to embrace Federalism and let the states handle these issues?”
I see the problem. You’re not looking very far.
Share.
Yours,
Wince
You are going all the way back to 1876 and the Fourteenth Amendment. I'll take original meaning Fourteenth Amendment Federalism, thank you very much.
In fact, gimme, gimme, gimme, pretty, pretty please!
Of course the Supreme Court almost immediately invalidated much of the Fourteenth Amendment by ignoring it's original meaning, leaving the problem to be solved much later, by legislation which, still, was enabled by the Fourteenth Amendment, in 1876, when federalism was very much alive.
And if we hadn't accidently created filibusters by allowing the rules which prevented them from elapsing back in, if I recall almost certainly incorrectly, Aaron Burr's time, the problem also would have been solved sooner.
The first section of the Fourteenth says: The Slaughterhouse Cases essentially invalidated the "privileges or immunities" clause, which, according to the original meaning, would have protected such privileges as voting, free speech, bearing arms and not being lynched. Later much of that protection was added back in under the due process clause.
We certainly don't need the Federal government expanding it's power through ridiculous readings of the General Welfare and Commerce Clauses to prevent Jim Crow lynchings and black disenfranchisement.
I see the problem. You're thinking that I haven't thought nearly as far as I have.
Well, my mind may be it's own little echo chamber, but there is somethin' goin on.
Yours,
Wince
Yours,
Wince
Well, my mind may be it's own little echo chamber, but there is somethin' goin on."
Never doubted it for a minute, Wince.
Yet they did. And are. And only the federal government can stop them. In this century, Republicans seem the most interested in preventing it from doing so.
Please review the Drug War laws - and your personal favorite business regulations. It's not just the Republicans. The privileges or immunities clause, as written, is essentially non-whacko libertarian. Do you really think the Endangered Species Act is Constitutional under the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment? Especially since the land owner is not compensated? Further more, we used to have the priviledge of hunting on our own land - especially predators which preyed on children and livestock. Not anymore.
There are lots of environmental regulations which abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. I used to have the privledge of disposing of toxic waste in an environmentally safe way and documenting what subsequent owners had to do to keep it safe. Now, if a subsequent owner breeches my safe containment system that I warned him not to breech, I'm liable.
Have I mentioned state gun-control laws - many of which are designed to keep affordable weapons out of the hands of poor people? People used to have the priviledge of affordable weaponry.
And on and on.
Yours,
Wince
If you want to live on the frontier, you’ll have to move (and you'd better do it quickly). Otherwise you might want to reconsider the necessity of civilization.
“It is only civilized beings who can combine. All combination is compromise: it is the sacrifice of some portion of individual will, for a common purpose. The savage cannot bear to sacrifice, for any purpose, the satisfaction of his individual will. His social cannot even temporarily prevail over his selfish feelings, nor his impulses bend to his calculations.”
- John Stuart Mill
Yours,
Wince