General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI am amazed how African Americans are able to control their tempers.
I have lost count how many times I have seen black men murdered by white men on video. I'm white and it pisses me off. I cannot imagine how angry I would be if I were an African American.
What makes it worse is the law in many cases does not bring justice. Even when the murder is on video.
Nay
(12,051 posts)racist -- it goes underground for a while, even for a decade or two, then pops right back out when, for example, Obama became president. You'd think we elected Attila the Hun.
Swaths of white people here are scary and unhinged, and those who are relatively normal still are affected by being raised in a racist country from birth.
And think of how many black people have been 'disappeared' BEFORE there was such a thing as mass videoing. It's a massacre. A complete massacre.
HipChick
(25,485 posts)Just because it's not popping up in news cycles..but it's a day to day reality for people of color..Its called systematic racism...
Nay
(12,051 posts)see a chance to kill an innocent black person and jump on it. The most horrifying aspect of Ahmaud Arbery's murder is that Georgia "was considering charges" in the incident. Gosh, was there ANY QUESTION that someone should be charged with something?? Good lord. You arrest the perps, stick them in jail, and THEN consider what to do with them. But these white guys were treated like they just shot somebody's dog. Imagine the reverse -- two black men shoot an unarmed white jogger just because there had been a white robbery suspect in the neighborhood somewhere. They would be UNDER the jail, dead.
Laws have been changed to make society pay at least some lip service and (legal attention) to discrimination against women, POC, etc., and thank heaven for that, but underlying racist attitudes are still there for sure.
dalton99a
(81,599 posts)PunkinPi
(4,878 posts)― James Baldwin
roamer65
(36,747 posts)Its a LARGE stain on our history. We NEED to be ashamed of it.
After we killed off 90 percent of Native Americans with our imported diseases, we enslaved Africans specifically to replace the Native Americans for forced labor.
This is OUR legacy as European invaders of the Americas.
wnylib
(21,613 posts)Native Americans. I do not believe that you intended any racism in mentioning that, and I am not accusing you of it. But perhaps you are not aware that the disease explanation for diminished numbers of Native Americans is used in both overt and subtle racism as a means of whitewashing history. Very common among academics and in American History courses in high schools and colleges.
It is true that huge numbers of Natve people died from European diseases that they had no immunity to.
It is also true that wars between Native people and European colonists and (later European Americans) were brutal on both sides.
But some causes of Native deaths and anihilations of whole tribes often left out are: Europeans stirring up wars in order to get Native captives for the slave trade (popular in both colonial New England and the Carolinas); taking over Native land, leaving them without survival resources (throughout American history); forced relocations, e.g. the Trail of Tears (ethnic cleansing); slaughters of subdued tribes out of white fears and ignorance of religious practices (Wounded Knee); deliberate starvation on reservations by not delivering supplies agreed on in surrender treaties; offering federal bounties for the scalps of every Native man, woman, and child found off of a reservation. (When supplies did not come in, many Natives slipped off the reservations to locate food for their families.)
In more modern times, from the mid 1800s up to the 1970s, there were the forced assimilation boarding schools where hundreds of Native children died from abuse and neglect, were buried in unmarked graves, and recorded as runaways.
There is still a large problem today in the US and Canada of Native women "disappearing." Their bodies are often never found, but even when they are, the deaths are often not investigated. In some communities, Native women, from puberty to adulthood, are considered "fair game."
roamer65
(36,747 posts)There have been MANY atrocities committed ever since 1492.
My post was centric to the enslaving of African peoples to replace the deceased Native Americans as a slave labor force.
The genocide of Native Americans after 1492 is a whole stain in and of itself. It was and still is a genocide. Hitler actually used it as a model.
wnylib
(21,613 posts)as slaves when enslavement of Native populations did not work, partly due to illness and death, but also because Native people knew the land better than the invaders. They could escape.
Once in America, Africans of the same cultural and linguistic backgrounds were separated, especially those from the same clans. This was to prevent unified rebellions.
madaboutharry
(40,221 posts)It is a testimony to their resolve and dignity.
Response to shockey80 (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
LuckyCharms
(17,459 posts)Nay
(12,051 posts)LuckyCharms
(17,459 posts)I think something was wrong with the poor thing.
Nay
(12,051 posts)LuckyCharms
(17,459 posts)wnylib
(21,613 posts)with racists. They are so hate-filled that it oozes from their pores. Sick, twisted folks. Hard to be around, even if you are not one of their targets.
sarisataka
(18,774 posts)Bye
JHB
(37,162 posts)Rightly so.
Thanks MIRT!
The Polack MSgt
(13,196 posts)Whatta POS
Quixote1818
(28,978 posts)The Polack MSgt
(13,196 posts)jabbering away
LymphocyteLover
(5,654 posts)Still their stress from enduring racism is one reason they have such high incidences of chronic diseases.
SunSeeker
(51,724 posts)PatrickforO
(14,592 posts)When I see such injustice, I'm furious.
We have to come to terms with the legacy of slavery and genocide because this republic can never be what it could be - a real light to the world, a leader in democracy - until we do. We have a heck of a long way to go for that, though.
A heck of a long way.
In It to Win It
(8,285 posts)Iggo
(47,568 posts)StarfishSaver
(18,486 posts)is the propensity of some of our "allies" to dismiss our frustration and anger with tone policing and lectures about not "making everything about race" and "not all white people" dodges.
MFGsunny
(2,356 posts)plimsoll
(1,670 posts)You want to deny any apparent similarity due to skin tone. It winds up as the brush all white folks get painted with. Adding insult to injury is being accused of "white guilt" because you are revolted by the racists behavior.
And some of us get the anger at people who claim to be allies but deny rage at the injustice.
Quixote1818
(28,978 posts)Blacks go through so much and rarely seem to act out at society while angry white men (I am white by the way) often from upper middle class families will attempt to gun hundreds down.