It's Time to Boycott Arizona

[Kobi]

dread,

I have always respected you for the way you communicate ideas and provide history. I did not in any way intend to say anything about you being an angry black person. I apologize for anything that could have been interpreted this way.

We are back to standards... and can you go back in time and apply todays standards to yesterdays reality. Kind of difficult to do. What people believe changes over time thru experiences and new thoughts. What is appropriate today wasnt seen as totally acceptable at the time of the civil war. Can we apply todays standards and judge people for having adhered to the prevailing thought? It is counterproductive.


[At any rate does this have to do with ANYTHING? I was using race as an example of an idea because you claimed that the diversity of ideas--without qualification--is what makes America strong. I was asking--and you have avoided answering--what about racist ideas made America stronger such that now that those ideas are (or were) in attenuation the nation is less strong than when racist ideas were widespread and socially acceptable? So are you saying that my using the history of race in America to demonstrate how intellectually bankrupt the idea that any idea is something that should be accepted no matter how sound it is or isn't, I am somehow saying that white people are responsible for the conditions of my life? ]

I will answer you tho I am not sure what you are truly asking here. And let me finish before you jump on me cuz what I am saying and what you might think I am saying are two different things. Hatred of any kind does make us stronger people. Why? Because it gives us room to grow and develop and see things differently. If we were all purple and all thought the same and did the same and had the same, we would be a pretty boring species. But we are different. And as times change, thoughts and behaviors and beliefs change as well. What we believed 10 years ago is not what we believe today nor is today what we will believe tomorrow. This is a philosophical discussion best suited elsewhere...suffice to say that conflict leads to new thoughts and ways of being.....how can the potential for growth and development be a bad thing?

I might be misreading you but I hear you saying I think immigration is a bad thing. I dont. My family was immigrated here and we Italians in Providence were not allowed to walk on the sidewalks or the Irish would kick our asses.

Controlled immigration is done for a reason...the least of which is to allow in numbers which can be absorbed into a society, an economic system, a socal structure, the fabric of American life. Uncontrolled immigration poses many problems...you know that. If it didnt, all countries would throw open their borders and say come one, come all. They dont, and they dont for reasons.
How many times have we heard of American towns not cities towns having their population double almost overnight from legal immigration? And how they struggled to deal with it to the point of asking this particular group of peoples to stagger their arrivals because they didnt have the jobs, housing or other services to accomodate them? It is not a simple issue.

I still find it hard to believe that the aclu and the feds require months and months to get an injunction. Maybe I am naive but it seems there might be another reason for the delay.

[I'm sorry but I don't see folks who are arguing against a racist law as being racist.] dread, again, who is saying it is a racist law? A legislature passed it, a governor signed it. Who's perspective makes it racist? Yours? Mine? Without judgement, it is just a law. With judgement applied by differing groups of people, it is a good thing or a bad thing depending on your perspective. Does this make you right and me wrong or me right or you wrong? Or does it mean we just are looking at something given our respective experiences and coming to somewhat different conclusions?

Isnt that what this country is about? We, as a people, cannot even agree on "all men are created equal" means. When it was written it meant alll white men. Then it meant white and other men. People can fall back on that tidbit and say constitution says nothing about women so what are women?

Absolutes are problematical in anything because knowledge and values and beliefs change. All I ask for is to not be belittled or called names because I state a reality different from someone elses reality.

I dont think it is too much to ask.



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Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Well, let's see--by what standard? Let's start here. Black people in the 19th century were not considered fully human enough to be citizens. Now either black people WERE human enough to be considered citizens but weren't, in which case an injustice was done or we were not, in which case, Jim Crow was no worse than we deserved. I would argue that it was the former and that there was an injustice. Your mileage, of course, may vary.



Kobi, I'm going to say this once and hopefully I'll never have to say this to you again because the next time I have to say it I won't be anywhere near as polite. It is an extraordinarily bad idea to attempt to plug me into the slot labeled "angry black woman who tries to blame white people for all the conditions of her life". I'm not that woman. No one who has ever read anything I've posted on the Internet can justifiably put me in that slot. You haven't read a lot of my posts so perhaps you don't realize this but I hold only myself responsible for the conditions of my life and, as my local friends and my wife will tell you, I push myself extraordinarily hard. One of the things I use to do so is the following: "to be a successful black person in America you have to strive to be the smartest person in the room--every room, every time. Not pretend to be, not puff yourself up to be, but to ACTUALLY be. You show up early, you stay late. If the average for your field is a bachelor's get a masters. If a master's get a doctorate. If you do ALL of that and still don't get the goodies--then and only then can you call it racism". If you are going to try to put me in the category of 'angry black woman who blames white people for the conditions of her life' you are going to look quite the fool and so take this as a friendly warning against such a doom-ridden path. I don't take insult at much that is said on these boards, the sentence I quoted from you above I take as an insult.

Being brutally honest about the history of race in America isn't espousing racism. Pointing out racial injustice isn't espousing racism. If it is then that list of black men you just pulled out of the hat to try to bolster a point that is flailing about ALL espoused racism. If battling injustice or pointing it out is espousing racism, then MLK also espoused racism. You don't get to have it both ways and invoke black people you've never read in depth to try to prop up a point while simultaneously claim that other blacks (or other non-whites) are 'playing the race card' when those blacks you invoke would ALSO be playing that same card. Secondly, just because a black person brings up the history of race in America does not mean that she is 'relying on the white race to solve racism'. I do not now, nor have I ever, posted anything on this or any other message board that could be read as blaming white people for the condition of my life in even the most wild-eyed interpretation. You will never read anything from me along those lines because it is not how I think. However, I am not going to do you or any other white person the favor of developing convenient historical amnesia and pretend that Jim Crow wasn't profoundly unjust nor am I going to do you the favor of pretending that perhaps there was a point to Jim Crow and maybe it wasn't a bad thing.

I KNOW it was a bad thing, Kobi because black people are human and human beings should not be treated in the way blacks were under segregation. By whose standards? By ANY standard that recognizes that all people are human beings and deserving of some baseline amount of justice, equality and respect. You may not hold to that standard, you may want to play games and say "who is to say if it was wrong to say black people aren't fully human and by what standard" but I'm not in the least bit obliged to go along with it. Until such time as you can demonstrate that I and the people I am genetically related to are not exactly members of Homo sapiens sapiens then segregation was wrong--by any standard that recognizes human beings as human beings and deserving to those things we hold to be self-evidently true.



At any rate does this have to do with ANYTHING? I was using race as an example of an idea because you claimed that the diversity of ideas--without qualification--is what makes America strong. I was asking--and you have avoided answering--what about racist ideas made America stronger such that now that those ideas are (or were) in attenuation the nation is less strong than when racist ideas were widespread and socially acceptable? So are you saying that my using the history of race in America to demonstrate how intellectually bankrupt the idea that any idea is something that should be accepted no matter how sound it is or isn't, I am somehow saying that white people are responsible for the conditions of my life?

I'm curious, have you actually read either Washington or DuBois? Farrakhan is a clown and a charlatan at best.



Kobi, not to put too fine a point on the matter but I have forgotten more about what it takes for a black person to be successful in America than you will ever realize that there is to learn. If you were to live as long as Methuselah you would still never know half of what I know about what it takes to be successful in America if you are black.



You know what's really interesting to me? When we were a growing industrial economy CERTAIN immigrants were okay but certain other ones were not. The Irish weren't okay--when we were a growing industrial economy and then they became okay. The Italians weren't okay when we were a growing industrial economy--and then they became okay. Then it was the Chinese and the Japanese and it took a tad bit longer for them to become okay. And the Jews, of course, had their turn of not being okay. This isn't the first time America has had one of these paroxysms of anti-immigration hysteria and the language has always been precisely the same and in a couple of generations everyone will once again be claiming how immigration makes America stronger and pretending that 20 years earlier, they weren't screaming at the top of their lungs about the latest group to come over the border.



So, Kobi, do you like the idea of American citizens being subjected to humiliation because they happen to share a phenotypic trait with someone who was born in Mexico and is here picking strawberries? Are you okay with that?



Actually, people did think twice about it. They thought twice about it so much that eventually the United States government apologized for violating the civil rights of US citizens. And if you read ANYTHING about the period, you realize that, in fact, it wasn't necessary.



When I hear about Seamus who overstayed his visa being stopped for driving while Irish I'll give that some credence. However, here in the real world the people who need to be careful to have their ID on them--including a birth certificate--when they are out walking the dog are all brown-skinned. Like I said, when I hear about it happening to a white person who some cop thinks looks like he or she overstayed their visa from Ireland, I'll change my tune.



The ACLU HAS sought in injunction and it is working its way through the courts (it's amazing what happens when you pay attention to these things) and the Feds have *also* said that they will challenge the law (again, fascinating what you learn when you actually look into an issue).



I'm sorry but I don't see folks who are arguing against a racist law as being racist.

Aj