Author Topic: Out Damn Blot  (Read 26869 times)

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BT

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #15 on: August 17, 2008, 02:51:11 PM »
Quote
Knute chimes in:

Knutey misses the point.

No surprise.

guess which candidate was the Democrat


Michael Tee

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #16 on: August 18, 2008, 12:33:48 AM »
<<Your remark is racist by reason of the projection of stereotype based on nothing more than color.>>

Your problem seems to be that you have confused "projection of [race-based] stereotypes" with membership in an oppressed group with identifiable group interests.

BT

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #17 on: August 18, 2008, 01:14:15 AM »
And you call Powell an Uncle Tom for no other reason than he is black.

If he were white he would not qualify.

And that makes your remark racist.

You can deny it all you want, you can try to rationalize it all you want, You can minimize it all you want, but the fact remains it is a racial slur.

And you are guilty of perpetuating it.




Michael Tee

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #18 on: August 18, 2008, 08:41:46 AM »
<<And you call Powell an Uncle Tom for no other reason than he is black.

<<If he were white he would not qualify.>>

Powell is a betrayer of his own people.  I could call him a BOHOP, but very few people would know what that meant.  "Uncle Tom" is good shorthand, which everyone gets the first time they hear it, and it also conveys the additional information that he is a black man and the people that he betrayed are the black people, specifically the black people of America.  Yet you complain that "Uncle Tom" is racist language.

Perhaps you are technically correct, in that "Uncle Tom" contains a little too much information, racial information in fact, that is not absolutely necessary.  To call O.J. Simpson "a murderer" would be politically correct, to call him a "black murderer" is giving some superfluous information relating strictly to race, and I think most people would rightly consider the addition of that superfluous information to be racist.  After all, what's his blackness got to do with the fact that he's a murderer?  It's additional information inserted gratuitously, and for sure it's not with the intention of casting O.J. or the race he allegedly belongs to in a favourable light. 

(Where the person is being described in an admiring light and the superfluous fact of his or her race is gratuitously thrown in, with the obvious intention of pride or putting in a plug for the race, I suppose, again technically, that could be considered as technically "racist" but a well-intentioned racism meant to foster tolerance and harmony rather than discord between the races.)

I suppose if I wanted my reference to Powell to be completely free even of technical racism, I would refer to him in strictly race-neutral terms as a "betrayer of his own people."  Rather than deal with the almost inevitable phony questions ("Which people?  He's an American isn't he?  How did he betray the American people?) that would follow such race-neutral terms, from the folks who love to deny that America is a racist nation and that many if not most Americans racist in varying degrees,  I use "Uncle Tom" to make my meaning clear from the outset.  It's also a very evocative phrase, it doesn't belittle or degrade blacks in general or their struggle for freedom and equality, but it does degrade and belittle those few blacks who, through their own convictions have come to genuinely believe the same kind of shit that conservative white Republicans believe.  That's an insight that, but for the stubborness of BT, I would not have had, so, a thank-you and a tip o' the hat to BT for that.

Which raises the question, should a racist insult which offends only a small minority within a minority and which rightly chastises a particularly despicable and pernicious and much larger minority within the larger minority, be abandoned because of the insult to the smallest group concerned?  I dunno, I'm starting to have my doubts, but overall, "Uncle Tom" is such a powerful indictment of men like Colin Powell that my common sense is telling me to keep on using it.   Partly because in most cases the harm to blacks and the service to white racists is so obvious that no black man can rightfully claim the mantle of "genuine belief" in the rightness or correctness of the position.  And partly because everyone "gets it." 

BT

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #19 on: August 18, 2008, 10:26:19 AM »
I still don't think you get it.

A betrayer of his people implies that a person of color must have  dual allegiance and if there is  conflict then those of the same color take precedence.

What is fair and equitable for a white person should be fair and equitable for a black person.

What is unfair and inequitable for a white person should be unfair and inequitable for a black person.

There is and there should be no different rules for different people.

And yet your use of Uncle Tom implies there is and should be and your use perpetuates any remnants of the old jim crow regiment.

It is a term meant to keep people in line, no different really than a burning cross on the lawn.



.




Knutey

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #20 on: August 18, 2008, 10:50:13 AM »
Quote
Knute chimes in:

Knutey misses the point.

No surprise.

guess which candidate was the Democrat



This only proves that you still live in the remate past and missed the whole 20th century when racists became Republicans:
http://www.strom.clemson.edu/strom/bio.html


BT

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #21 on: August 18, 2008, 11:05:03 AM »
Past is prologue.

Your side has never proven that the Republicans have taken the mantle of racism from the Democrats who have a long and illustrious history of same.


Knutey

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #22 on: August 18, 2008, 11:43:51 AM »
Past is prologue.

Your side has never proven that the Republicans have taken the mantle of racism from the Democrats who have a long and illustrious history of same.



Didnt have to- Y'all proved that.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=208

Michael Tee

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #23 on: August 18, 2008, 12:01:54 PM »
<<A betrayer of his people implies that a person of color must have  dual allegiance and if there is  conflict then those of the same color take precedence.>>

Obviously, people have interests and interests have groups.  If you want to call membership in an interest group "dual allegiance," then be my guest.

A black man has an interest in seeing that lynching is punished, that education is freely available to all regardless of colour.  And that applies whether or not he personally or his immediate family were likely to be lynched, or were going to be well-educated in any circumstances regardless of publid policies.  There's such a thing as group interest, call it what you will.  The rich whites certainly have no difficulty in recognizing their class and its interests, and neither does any black.

Amianthus

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #24 on: August 18, 2008, 12:19:15 PM »
A black man has an interest in seeing that lynching is punished, that education is freely available to all regardless of colour.

Can you show where Powell is against either of those?
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. (Benjamin Franklin)

Michael Tee

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #25 on: August 18, 2008, 12:55:33 PM »
<<Can you show where Powell is against either of those?>>

Never said he was.  Lynching and public education are just two examples of where a special interest group might find a special interest.

Powell's Tomming consists of his participation in a white man's military which oppresses people of colour and dark-skinned Third World people all over the world to execute a racist foreign policy of exploitation.

sirs

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #26 on: August 18, 2008, 01:06:51 PM »
ROFL
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

BT

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #27 on: August 18, 2008, 01:59:45 PM »
Quote
Didnt have to- Y'all proved that.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=208

One man does not make a party. I'll see your Lott and raise your Byrd.

BT

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #28 on: August 18, 2008, 02:01:32 PM »
Quote
A black man has an interest in seeing that lynching is punished, that education is freely available to all regardless of colour.

And whites don't believe in these things?

Who do you think passed the laws that make lynching and separate but equal illegal.

Your logic is seriously flawed.


Michael Tee

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Re: Out Damn Blot
« Reply #29 on: August 18, 2008, 04:51:07 PM »
<<And whites don't believe in these things?

<<Who do you think passed the laws that make lynching and separate but equal illegal.

<<Your logic is seriously flawed.>>

Your logic is childishly simplistic.  These laws were passed during the Cold War when both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were competing for world influence and the Jim Crow legacy was just too much of an albatross for the U.S to carry in the race.  As more and more Third World countries fought their way out from under colonialism, they were new clients to be won, and Senator James O. Eastland and his ilk were not the men to win them.  Little Rock Central High was not the image the New Frontier wanted to project to the world.  Racists were thrown under the train by the ruling Democrats, which forced many of them, as we have seen, into the Republican Party.

This did not change the underlying racism of the ruling classes, but it did drive it out of the public eye.  While blacks in America were no longer to be clubbed, whipped, hosed or bitten by attack dogs in public on U.S. soil, the bloodthirsty managers transferred their war on non-whites to the rice paddies of Viet Nam.  And who better to feed to the cannon of war than the Black American?