Are Blacks Oppressed In the US? A short course.

Sure we fear and loath black people, but we're not racist....

Changing the rules so black people can't get into the decent schools is the sort of thing one might call oppression, isn't it?

 

well, yeah, but at the same time, I think it might not be that bad to bring back the N-word, not because it's a good thing to say, but because it would be much more honest than what we do now, which is not say racist WORDS while being racists. If we're going to be racist anyway, we might as well be honest about what we really think rather than pretend everything is fine and that racism isn't a real thing, while doing racist stuff. As long as we don't hear ourselves use ugly words we can keep up our defenses and not change. Not changing is the point though -- it's hard work, while pretending that you've already changed is not. even with the schools, as long as the kids are eating in the same cafeteria (or not, the food sucked) it didn't matter that there's a colored table and a white table. Hard work over.

I think it would be better to drop all the masks and just talk, no one calling anyone out on anything, just "this is what I think when I'm by myself and I'm not trying to impress you". I don't doubt for a second that both sides are racist, and that we're getting worse mostly because it's a standoff, the one who's honest first loses, and all of that. Which is why celebrity racism is such a huge deal -- if people weren't secretly thinking what these hoseheads said out loud no one would give a fig. If people didn't really secretly believe that Mexicans were using their kids as drug mules, we'd have laughed at the moron who said it, or if we didn't secretly think it would be nice to have black servents, we wouldn't care about Paula Dean. She's just a cook, and no one is going to her for social advice, just like they don't go to Bobby Flay for advice. God knows what kind of crazy things are going through the BAM guy's head.

 

DISCUSSION:

The big point is that we adopt our identity, and then it controls us. We care about those with whom we identify, and about meeting what we think are their expectations. We don’t care about those we see as ‘not-us.’ Let me say those two words again: don’t care. The fancier term is ‘empathy failure.’

And don’t forget we learned that black folks are [n-gg-rs] already. That ‘we’ includes everyone, blacks and not-blacks. The result is that both blacks and not blacks have a bunch of negativity built into the definition of what ‘people like us’ think about blacks. Now there are lots of elaborations on identity, and lots of ways to get past this negativity. But it’s always there, and lots of people never do get past it. Empathy failure gives them no motivation to do so.


CONCLUSION #4:

Identities in America include racial identity. This results in negative feelings about blacks becoming unchanging, defended elements of the personal identities of white people. Due to empathy failure across identity lines, disadvantage and adversity for black people that result from the [n-gg-r] identity do not motivate change.

 

Read about what happened in Tulia, Texas:

Detailed review of the film “Tulia Texas.” http://newsreel.org/video/TULIA-TEXAS

 

it boils down to it always being whitey's fault

 

Defensive dismissal of information based on perceived attack on personal identity on the part of a white person.

 

What happened in Tulia is that an undercover investigator working for the sheriff accused dozens of residents of a small hardscrabble west Texas town of, one at a time, selling him felonious quantities of powder cocaine. The charges were on their face ridiculous; there was no way there was any market for powder cocaine in a dusty little patch of rural Texas, let alone enough of a market to support 46 dealers. The raids arresting the alleged dealers turned up no drugs, no weapons, no money, no evidence of any sort. They were basically poor people living poor. The man accused of being the town's "drug kingpin" was a small-scale hog farmer who lived in a tiny shack of a house. In many cases the 'undercover' evidence against the defendants was false on it's face: names were wrong, descriptions were wrong, and buys were alleged to have happened at places and times when the defendants were provably elsewhere, or when the 'undercover investigator' himself was provably elsewhere. Nonetheless, the first group of defendants tried were all convicted and sentenced to extreme prison terms, of up to 99 years. This scared the remaining defendants into mostly taking plea deals.

The 46 defendants were almost all black, except for a few white people, who were all married to black people or in relationships with them. The whole business is as clear an example of oppression based on race as you'll see short of a lynching. These people were 'legally lynched,' sent to prison for up to life based in the say-so of one man.

The charges were false, the defendants were all exonerated, after years. Texas law has been changed so that the uncollaborated testimony of one law officer is no longer enough for conviction. But at the time, these ridiculous, utterly unsubstantiated charges where completely accepted by the white community of Tulia; juries voted to convict, and opinion was overwhelming that all those blacks were of course guilty. When charges of error and corruption were made, the town rallied around it's officials, and many to this day do not accept that a gross miscarriage of justice occurred.

It's that last factor that calls out for explanation. It's easy enough to explain away one corrupt undercover investigator. But why did the whole town believe him, unquestioningly, setting aside all the factors that fairly screamed that the charges were fantastic and impossible?

The answer, as I've shown in the readings in this course, is that the white people were raised and programmed to see white identity and black identity as different. Black identity is [n-gg-r] identity. In some cases this belief is unspoken, it's nearly always unexamined, but when questioned it is adamantly defended, as it is a part of the individual's personal identity structure. Negative beliefs about blacks, and positive beliefs about whites, to include the all-white personnel of the criminal justice system, meant that of course the officials were all truthful, and the blacks were all guilty. These unquestioned assumptions are what made the oppression in Tulia possible. Only a few persons participated directly and knowingly in the oppression, but the rest of the white populace accepted what they were doing, denied all evidence that there was anything wrong with it, and gave them the support they needed.

Conclusion #5:

Unquestioned belief in the negative [n-gg-r] identity of blacks has made oppression of blacks possible all across America; throughout our history, and continuing.


This concludes the short course on oppression of blacks in the United States.

 

It always seems that way because it is!

 

I wouldn't necessarily use the word 'fault,' because cultural patterns perpetuate themselves sort-of 'by default,' without anyone planning or intending that they do. Likewise, the vast majority of people do not understand or intend that these patterns have effects that enable the oppression of blacks. People can harbor elements of the [n-gg-r] image without realizing that they do, and can sincerely believe they do not have racist views while doing so. Since their image of themselves is that they are a 'good' not-racist person, they will be angered by suggestions that this is not true.

 

I believe that there is no such thing as a completely 'good' or not racist person. As much as I would like to believe that I am not racist or prejudiced, I catch myself thinking in ways that I shouldn't. Being aware of that portion of self is very important to understanding.

 

trash talking poor will always be poor, you have to act civilized to be treated that way... that goes for white and black trash, it goes for all races

time to teach the young that gangster talk\dress is only going to make people treat you like a gangster.... how do we teach that?

may be cool in school, but not in the real world

.

 

We all have a dark side.

I try to keep mine locked up in the cellar, but sometimes it's fun to let it out.

 

Not everything, but as I said, there's a lot of patterns that point to a systematic shunning of blacks in white society. I don't think it gives anyone a pass, but i think pointing out the pattern of what happens when "not racist" whites are around blacks points to the reality of what people really think. My point is more or less "we aren't being honest with ourselves, and nothing can change until we do". I've always been a fan of the idea of "psychological nudity" when talking about any issue. You don't make much progress when there are all kinds of defenses to prevent us getting down to the bare basics of the problems at hand. If you want to figure out how something works, you have to get at all the working parts, figure out exactly is actually going on. Which is why we're stuck. We're invested in being RIGHT, but if the system is broke, that doesn't effing help.

 

Alas, it a little unusual for people to want to get naked and work on 'really changing stuff.' I mean, that's great when you can do it, but in the meantime, more incremental, face-saving, nudge-things-along tactics should not be rejected.

 

Poor Oprah certainly thinks she is oppressed, so it must be true

 

Black people are oppressed.........by other black people. The vast majority of crime against blacks are perpetrated by other blacks.

In regards to political or economic oppression that is squarely a result of liberal monopoly as they have had virtual uncontested rule over largely minority areas for 60+ years now.

Black Enterprise magazine has a yearly list of top ten best cities for blacks to live in and virtually all of them with the exception of Washington D.C. (apparently for its internships) are located in Republican states or swing states. None of them are located in heavily Democratic states.