Discrimination is but a small part of the otherization/dehumanization and subjugation disempowered groups are subjected to. To focus on discrimination without regard for the broader socioeconomic landscape different demographics find themselves in by luck of birth is to not see the forest for the trees.
Perhaps we should consider what crimes are treated by America as unforgivable as a way to establish common ground and then look at outliers from in groups and out groups for trends? There’s a lot of discussion here that is naive to how social work professionals routinely and successfully resolve these matters. I anticipate rich and colorful debate over the forgivability of rape, child abuse, and murder depending on the offenders demographics, assets, and associations.
Forgiveness is a process that victims undertake for themselves when they are out from the clutches of their abusers. Forgiveness is not a trophy for active offenders to carry as a spoil of their conquest, instead it a badge of shame they honor by being a better human than they were when they willingly harmed our caused others to be harmed tangibly or otherwise. Victims must be extraordinarily supported through their healing journey in any community truly invested in solving generational problems, which is not a process that can be scheduled or timed. Some people may never achieve this and accepting that is non negotiable if our goal is to heal. The offenders must work on themselves to, at minimum, become incapable of ever perpetrating these offenses again and be able to articulate the explicit details of their offenses while taking responsibility for their actions and making personal restitution to their direct and indirect victims. Only when both victim and perp have successfully achieved these ends can they be safely reunited. Those who are incapable or refuse to rehabilitate have no place in civil society, their status or demographics are irrelevant. This applies to gang banging murderers as it does to the architects and agents of slavery, the war on drugs/terrorism, or child abusers whether or not they hold status in their communities, etc.
Demanding forgiveness for ongoing abuses is laughable and shameful. No one is entitled to being forgiven for their wrongs, especially not if they keep doing the same horrible shit over and over and over again.
What's laughable is failing to recognize that regardless of your skin color and socioeconomic status, if you were born in the US, you are one of the most privileged people in the world.
Have you considered that blaming white folks for your all problems might be one of the main reasons those problems persist?
Indians, Latinos, Asians move to the US with no money to their name, work their assess off and achieve success. Do you think they are not being discriminated against?
Your "generational problems" are a minor nuisance compared to the struggles of the rest of the world. Maybe it's time to stop with the despicable victimhood and whining?
Heed my words, the biggest change to well-being of the black community will not come from the policies. It will come from within.
Ah the classic: it’s worse elsewhere so we don’t need to look in the mirror and be accountable for our actions; out of hand dismissal. Just because you’re not ready to look in the mirror does not give you the right to stop others. I hope you get there soon.
I’m not blaming white people as a monolith, but that seems to be what you want to interpret from my post. Telling. I’m blaming the people who made the choice to hurt others, see the bit above about without respect to one’s status, wealth ,or demographics. I meant that. All bad actors should be rehabilitated or imprisoned. Black white pink, gay straight trans or female, or Democrat. These things do not matter for the purposes of identifying bad actors.
Have you no capacity to emphasize with others? It seems you don’t. Minimization, and suggesting victims of state sponsored abuses should shut up and take it because America seems better than your cherry picked examples? Have a long face to face conversation with someone that repulses you just listen while they tell about their life. Imagine yourself in their shoes.
What qualifies you to make sweeping off the cuff assertions about all black Americans? Have you any similar assertions for gay Americans? Lesbian Americans? Trans Americans? Japanese Americans? Korean Americans? Irish Americans? Catholic Americans? Indigenous Americans? American communists/socialists/anarchists? I’d love to hear more of your hot takes on what these large and homogenous populations need to heal.
> suggesting victims of state sponsored abuses should shut up and take it
If that leads to a better outcome for them, why not? I don't believe they should live in poverty for the sake of achieving some weird intergenerational justice.
> What qualifies you to make sweeping off the cuff assertions about all black Americans?
Oh, but I'm actually not talking about all black Americans. Are you aware that the racism you talking about somehow evades Nigerian Americans, with their income being higher than national average, and poverty rate being lower (in fact being less than half that of African Americans)? Somehow they don't feel the same about police brutality.
Can you entertain the thought that this enforced victimhood mentality doesn't help black folks, but hurts them instead?
Why are you assuming that people will live in poverty if we address historical injustices? I’ve addressed this elsewhere but if that were to occur we would have failed at righting these wrongs and invest even more resources to correct this wrong if we had done it correctly the first time. Poverty in America is a governmental failure, and in some cases is intentional (racism is behind the intentional subjugation of these people, see the Nixon tapes as one example) or the result of bad governance and a political process corrupted by greedy people and those driven by hate or delusions to deny reality.
I don’t think you understand what rehabilitation entails, America, as a general rule, does not facilitate rehabilitation so it is outside our cultural knowledge. Generally speaking this rehabilitation in practice looks like restorative Justice. Punitive systems lead to worse societal outcomes. Undertaking a restorative Justice project for victims of American subjugation would require actions like paying restitution, expunging criminal records, drawing the architects and agents of these systems of repression under charges for their crimes, returning land stolen from indigenous peoples, etc.
This is not the gotcha you think it is, and if you’re going to refer to a small minority of a demographic you should name them so it doesn’t seem like you’re moving the goalposts when I take you at your words. Police brutality is not a subject up for debate, this term refers to police using force in excess of what they were trained to do. A severe problem in police departments across the country fostered by a toxic culture and poor oversight. What Nigerian or any Americans think about it is a pointless exercise. Either we hold violent criminals to account or we don’t. In America some violent criminals are excessively punished, others are not punished at all and instead celebrated for mercilessly assaulting the right people. These are systemic failures.
enforced victim hood mentality is a racist dog whistle and I’m not going to engage with you further if you can’t help but use hateful language. This article could be helpful in your understanding, however you will need to do the work of relating their examples to America and considering the adjustments to your outlook needed to drop the dog whistles and underlying prejudices.
> if that were to occur we would have failed at righting these wrongs and invest even more resources to correct this wrong
Essentially what you're saying is: if we try policy X and it doesn't work, we need to try even harder. Rinse and repeat.
This is a religious mindset.
You know perfectly well that most of your described actions will never happen. And that is exactly why you put them on your list: it protects you from the evidence that your policy doesn't work. When it fails, you can always claim that we didn't do enough.
> enforced victim hood mentality is a racist dog whistle
Back at you. Your messages reek of White Savior complex.
Repeatedly failing to solve a problem is not religious, it is perseverance. Trying the same over and over against is stupidity and insanity. You don’t seem to understand the fundamental reality that it is harder and more expensive to fix social problems than to do things fairly the first time. Half measures create more problems.
You’re ascribing motivations to me when you don’t understand the definitions of the words you use. I don’t want to make you feel bad, but you might be wise to look up some things before you speak about them.
White savior complex is used to describe people who try and solve problems for people they pity. I suspect you may treat empathy and sympathy as synonymsthey are not. I’m not trying to solve any problems for any groups I’m not part of. What I am is an ally who strives to understand the realities experienced by marginalized groups and I am willing to adjust my perspective toincorporate new (to me) information. I recognize that America only has democratic freedom for rich white men and that in order to make a freer society for all there need to be systemic changes and accountability for the consequences of this power structure must be had. By learning about the experiences of marginalized people I can incorporate their views into my mine and can in solidarity for the solutions these people demand.
> White savior complex is used to describe people who try and solve problems for people they pity.
> I’m not trying to solve any problems for any groups I’m not part of. What I am is an ally who strives to understand the realities experienced by marginalized groups and I am willing ...
A large part of the problem is calling it a racial problem. You're declaring yourself an ally to a racial group which means that the problem then has to be universal amongst your concept of that racial group. If a black person testifies that this isn't a universal race-based problem they aren't listened to (as tautological proof of their statement) but instead lambasted as having internalized white-supremacy or whatever.
Also, 'ally' is a pretentious term in this context. Ally generally means peers who support each other not a paternalistic protector but BLM showed that this isn't how it was being used in a social justice setting. There's a video from Portland during BLM of a black resident trying to talk to a black officer and a white Antifa runs between and starts shrieking at them because it would destroy the narrative if we could simply discuss our problems calmly.
It quickly starts to look like using marginalized people as props in a fight against your political enemies more than actually trying to help them.
You’re putting words in my mouth to use a non sequiter as your argument? Nowhere have I said all people party to all marginalized groups suffer the same amount of racism. There isan ever increasing body of unbiased research unequivocally proving that people who are not rich white cishet men face discrimination, abuse, neglect, poverty, untreated illness, housing insecurity, addiction, and various other preventable adverse experiences. Intentionality explores, in part, where these experiences intersect with demographics.
Understanding this key point is fundamental to understanding intersectionality, which you would know if you had read the link I shared earlier. I have extended generous benefit of the doubt to you regarding your arguments and assuming, despite ample contrary indicators, that you’re arguing in good faith. I think this comment chain serves to prove that you’re actively arguing in bad faith in violation of the site guidelines. I suggest you read those as well as the article I linked above up thread and reflect upon your words and actions while digesting the content therein.
Once again you’re using words that you do not understand. I don’t know where you’re hearing these terms used in the way you’ve used them but you would be wise to excise that source of propaganda from your life.
so one person got upset and acted poorly? I hope that they’ve learned from their mistakes because they do not represent anti fascism, blm, or me. Anti fascism means to be against fascism. Fascism is anti American so to be antifa is to be patriotic. My families elders did not kill fascists in wwii to see fascism brought to America by our own minority party. America can not be a democratic state and fascistic.
another non sequiter, and failure to understand me. I am trying to speak plainly for you but you need to do your part in trying to understand me. I actually want to help people, especially the marginalized and forgotten. I won’t bore you with the details or doxx myself but I think it suffices to say that I put considerable money and time where my mouth is.
> You’re putting words in my mouth to use a non sequiter as your argument?
I'm quoting you. You wrote those two sentences.
> Once again you’re using words that you do not understand. [Posts link to definition of 'Ally']
That definition is clearly aspirational.
> so one person got upset and acted poorly?
A lot more than one. And when they returned to their group nobody took issue with it. Look at riot footage, a majority of the people burning down black neighborhoods were whites carrying BLM-supporting signs.
> Anti fascism means to be against fascism.
Apparently anti-fascist just means fascist. I'm sure there's an aspirational definition somewhere that says otherwise but actions speak more loudly than words.
> Fascism is anti American so to be antifa is to be patriotic.
Antifa beats people in the street for their political views. That's very un-American! There was literally a USA communist party during the cold war, but there was no USA party in the USSR.
> My families elders did not kill fascists in wwii to see fascism brought to America by our own minority party.
Surprise, it's being brought by the majority party!
> There isan ever increasing body of unbiased research unequivocally proving ...
The article we're discussing is literally about how the institutions sanctioning the research are biased and only accepting research that purports, in its very setup, to support DEI. What we see is an echo chamber where people are expected to agree with those statements.
> I am trying to speak plainly for you but you need to do your part in trying to understand me. I actually want to help people, especially the marginalized and forgotten
This is what I used your quote to show, the type of allyship you are practicing defines problems as being based on intersections such as race, and how that turns into attacks on anyone who disagrees. (Even where that outcome is absurd, such as white people lecturing black people about blackness.)
I have seen Thomas Sowell and Candace Owens being racially attacked, by supposed anti-racist allies, simply because they did not subscribe to the narrative you use. I've seen Antifa members beat unarmed people and claim to be patriots. Behavior speaks louder than words.
Perhaps we should consider what crimes are treated by America as unforgivable as a way to establish common ground and then look at outliers from in groups and out groups for trends? There’s a lot of discussion here that is naive to how social work professionals routinely and successfully resolve these matters. I anticipate rich and colorful debate over the forgivability of rape, child abuse, and murder depending on the offenders demographics, assets, and associations.
Forgiveness is a process that victims undertake for themselves when they are out from the clutches of their abusers. Forgiveness is not a trophy for active offenders to carry as a spoil of their conquest, instead it a badge of shame they honor by being a better human than they were when they willingly harmed our caused others to be harmed tangibly or otherwise. Victims must be extraordinarily supported through their healing journey in any community truly invested in solving generational problems, which is not a process that can be scheduled or timed. Some people may never achieve this and accepting that is non negotiable if our goal is to heal. The offenders must work on themselves to, at minimum, become incapable of ever perpetrating these offenses again and be able to articulate the explicit details of their offenses while taking responsibility for their actions and making personal restitution to their direct and indirect victims. Only when both victim and perp have successfully achieved these ends can they be safely reunited. Those who are incapable or refuse to rehabilitate have no place in civil society, their status or demographics are irrelevant. This applies to gang banging murderers as it does to the architects and agents of slavery, the war on drugs/terrorism, or child abusers whether or not they hold status in their communities, etc.
Demanding forgiveness for ongoing abuses is laughable and shameful. No one is entitled to being forgiven for their wrongs, especially not if they keep doing the same horrible shit over and over and over again.