Racism: We Are All Guilty

what does that mean?? i'm curious. it sounds like igbo but,i dunno

i Guess it'S twi, it means ''Nonsense''

lol. i'm gonna be saying that to my ghanaian friends
hahahaha (laughs evily)

monkey guy

anyone who ask what i mean by monkey guy, it was just the order given to me.

the Correct thing IS ''nkawasea sem''

lol

toshman,

Remember the distortion:

CONGO

"The indigenous peoples of the Congo," he wrote, "are all black in color, some more so, some less so. Many are to be seen who are the color of chestnut and some tend to be more olive-colored. But the one who is of the deepest black in color is held by them to be the most beautiful. Some are born somewhat light-skinned, but as they grow older they become darker and darker. This occurs because their mothers make use of the artifice of an ointment,  with which they anoint their infants, exposing them once they have been anointed, to the rays of the sun, then leaving them there for long periods, and repeating this action over and over,  There are some children who although their parents are black, are born white skinned and although they anoint them and use all manners of artifice they can never be transformed into blackskinned people. And these are regarded by the Congolese as monsters. They have the same features and the same tightly curled hair as the black Congolese, but their skin is white and they are short-sighted, As a result, children in those areas, where a white has never been seen before, would become terrified, fleeing in horror from us, no less than our children here are terrified by the sight of a black also fleeing in horror for them.

[Teruel, Antonio de, Narrative Description of, the Kingdom of the Congo (1663-1664) Ms. 3533:3574/National Library, Madrid, Spain]

SOUTH INDIA

"It is a fact that in this country when a child is born they anoint him once a week with oil of sesame, and this makes him grow much darker than when he was born. For I assure you that the darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than the others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black their devils white as snow. For they say the God and all the saints are black and the devils are all white. That is why they portray them as I have described. And similarly they make the images of their idols all black."

[Marco Polo, The Travels, translated and with an Introduction by Ronald Latham, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1958]

SOUTHEAST ASIA

"For the complexion of men,they consider black the most beautiful. In all the kingdoms of the southern region, it is the same."

[Nan Ts'i Chou, quoted by Rene Gaston Georges Maspero, The Kingdom of Champa. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949]



Black people used to love them Blackselves.

The anscestors. Who knew?

The axe forgets, the tree remembers.

toshman,

I simply read the first post and responded but now as I dig deeper, I have found that you have said some very untrue things.

1. The whiteman did not go to Africa to buy slaves from Africans.

The whiteman came to buy slaves from Arab Muslims(the other white meat).

Let us look at the worst historical example of so called African slavesellers: The Ashanti.

Now please explain why the first interaction between whites and the Ashanti, was whites selling the Ashanti  slaves.

If the Ashanti were such notorious slave sellers, why did the whiteman have to sell them slaves first, at least decades before the Ashanti would be known as notorious African slave sellers and begin selling slaves to the whiteman?

Your like a parrot, repeating the modern whiteman's excuses and lies he  has told you but not really investigating the history for yourself.


2. Hutu and Tutsi fight in Rwanda, happenned because of whites.

At no time has there been a ethnic group called Hutu's and Tutsi's. There was just one group there. This split happenned along the lines of the Ranchers (cattle owning) and farmers in the area. This is where the names Hutu and Tutsi come from. One refers to ranchers and the other to farmers.

Whites came to the area and elevated the ranchers over the farmers.

This is why after the whites were forced out, the majority of the people (hutu's)were angry at the ranchers (tutsi's).

They had sat there for decades oppressing the rest of their own people with whites, and when whites left, they abandoned the tutsi's to take all the blame.

This is going to hurt but I am going to say it anyways: Those Niggers who had worked with whites all those years oppressing thier own people deserve the ass whooping they got.

Maybe now, they can forgive each other and move along.

3. Dictionary definitions that define racism as a feeling in ones heart or mind are totally useless.

Black people could never stop racism against them, you can not legislate or get a law against a feeling in ones heart or mind.

As the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr said: A law can not make you love me, but it can stop you from lynching me and I think that is pretty good. (pp)

In America we distinquish between Racism and Predjudice.

Black people of course can be predjudice, we can have bad feelings in our heart towards others.

Black people can not be racist, because that would require us to have the power to say for instance -- lynch a whiteman with the police helping us.

Racism revolves around power to harm other races.

toshman,

Do remember that in Rwanda, nobody had to die but just like the Shiite minority in Iraq, is blowing up the Iraqi people in an attempt to get back the control of the majority Sunni's, the Tutsi's kept attacking Rwanda in an attempt to re-enslave the majority Hutu's with whites backing these Tutsi's.

You must be unaware that there were already two wars where Hutu's had to defend themselves against the Tutsi's who were funded by whites, from taking their country over.

The Tutsi's greed to get back the control their white backers left them, is the reason for the massacre.

The Hutu's sick of being bombed on, called themselves putting an end to the terrorists in their country, a final solution.

I do not support the massacre but I am not going to sit around pretending that one side were butchering the other and ignore the fact that it was the other side who had been butchering them for decades.

How many times are you going to kick my ass and try to enslave me again before I get up and declare, "I'se tired now" and begin to whoop your ass?

******

This definition you want to entertain about the desire in someone's heart being racism.

Is the white definition of racism.

Let's look at a lynching from a white and black perspective:

A non-racist white (let's pretend that one does exist in America) is watching a blackman get lynched.

You know the problem that he sees when he looks around? A terrible desire in the hearts of the whites who are participating in this lynching.

Let us look at it though from the Blackman being lynched perspective.

He will tell you the problem in this situtation is that he has no power to stop the police officer who took him to jail for spitting on the side walk and then later on that same policeman illegally opened the jail cell and took him to where other whites could lynch him.

So be aware that when you are pushing that definition about desire in the heart to harm someone.

You are pushing the white perspective about racism, which is by definition, totally and completely useless to Black people.

What would or could black people do if this was the definition of racism, that we accepted? All become psychologists and spend our time ensuring that whites have good desires in their hearts?

It's a useless white definition of racism that doesn't serve Black people in the least bit.

One has to wonder, why you as a Blackman, an African man would even toy with such a useless white way of seeing racism?

the biggest problem i have on this thread is that people tend to feel that i am supporting the whites. i don't think u feel hurt more than me by the whites but i'm just being objective

may i reiterate myself, this thread is not about wether whites are racist or not. that is a forgone conclusion. we all know the answer even b4 i was born

for the rwandan crisis, i dont think u have the full picture. the hutus were out to annihilate the tutsis. that to me is racism. listen, when u have evil in your heart towards another person, simply because that person is of another race, sister u are racist. if u are now able to carry out your evil on that person, u have added another crime to it, violence,murder,assault etc as the case may be depending on what u've done.

get it, hatred of others b/c of their race is the fundamental basis for racism

i think it funi if the germans tell the jews they are also gulity of racism! oh well we will be back! that is applaullin i think! all the black man that were thrown into the crocodile lake that me black superman is gulity of! we see hmmm! i

but then emmm what was it oh ok i think i remember k emm, if the jews are gulity how come the german appologise! wonder what yall judge and prosecutors make out of this. they were even compensated u know.

one would assume in that case your so called denail white man recognise the extent of the damage being done to my black people! hence not suprise all the half cook meal keep popin up like something?

nevertheless this is not about who is supprotin the your white man it is about recognisin the evil u done and keep perpetuatin, so may i say when we talk sometimes lets be straight!

sori 2post

toshman,

You keep avoiding the clear point, that it is not logical, reasonable, practical, feasible, pragmatic or wise for any Black person to be told that they must spend their lives fighting racism by changing the heart and mind of evil people who are filled with hatred for Blacks.

So by trying to define racism this way, you leave Black people helpless to stop or even fight racism.

We do not have laws against racism in America that deal with the any known or unknown feeling a person has in their heart.

We have laws that take away that person's power to harm Black people unfettered.

That is the point.

I do not consider it reasonable or objective at all, to define racism as some feeling in another person's heart.

When that sort of definition would leave my people helpless.

And there is historical proof in America, that whites have tried to make Black people helpless against racism using that very argument that racism is in a person's heart.

Do you know that whites actually have objected to civil rights laws on the basis of the fact that laws can not change hearts?

This is the faulty type of argument that Dr. King was responding to, when he said: A law may not make you love me, but it can stop you from lynching me and I think that is pretty good. (pp)

He was responding to such an irrational definition, that has wider implications, decades ago.

Here is a real definition of racism:

Principle I. Racism is an ideological, structural and historic stratification process by which the population of European descent, through its individual and institutional distress patterns, intentionally has been able to sustain, to its own best advantage, the dynamic mechanics of upward or downward mobility (of fluid status assignment) to the general disadvantage of the population designated as non-white (on a global scale), using skin color, gender, class, ethnicity or nonwestern nationality as the main indexical criteria used for enforcing differential resource allocation decisions that contribute to decisive changes in relative racial standing in ways most favoring the populations designated as 'white.'

Principle II. The aim of this peculiar post-1492 stratification process has been to aggregate an upwardly mobile and putatively 'white' racial group that is stratified internally and that strives to validate its own ascendancy using a shifting range of 'white' cultural practices which are defined as 'white' not on any presumed biological basis, but on the basis of "ideological whiteness"--a field of racial discourse and representation.

Principle III. The conceptual content of this historic and politically-charged discursive field is sustained by racial agents who in many ways articulate and justify the suppression of "ideological blackness" (and every form of non-whiteness this may entail) which may be accomplished by many formal and informal means of institutional domination, routinized interpersonal interactions, cultural imperialism, or by any other racialized means of information control.

Principle IV. As a generative principle of racism, "ideological whiteness" refers to a dual behavioral process entailing enactments of identify formation and resource access legitimation, both of which were practices once overtly recognized as aspects of "white supremacy," but which now may be more subtly and covertly reproduced as an observable and routine set of implicitly prescriptive, but explicitly disavowed white supremacist beliefs and practices to which all who identify as 'white' (or who behave as 'whitened') are expected to adhere--especially white males--if they wish to maintain their own racial standing as members of these two privileged 'white' groups and assert their negotiable right to privileged resource access.

Princple V. Collectively, the 'white' and/or 'whitened' members of this racially privileged global population tend to bolster their shared political intent to impose patterns of restricted resource access on racially subordinant populations, and aim to preserve their presumably non-negotiable right to prescribe, and even dictate, lessor resource access rights for certain upwardly mobile members of the 'non-white' population whose internalized racism, reliable complicity, and carefully scrutinized willingness to cooperate with racial dominates is always required and rewarded.

Dr. Helan Enoch Page (Associate Professor, Anthropology Department, UMASS-Amherst)

toshman,

Please do not respond any time soon. Really, no offense intended.

Thank God for all Black people, especially those who don't know shit about politics and just want to make you laugh and get you a beer.

I want to jump into this discussion, as I find the exchange between Drusilla and toshmann quite interesting. I personally tend to lean more to Drusilla's operational definition of racism, but, as usual, the devil is in the details.

- Racism, as opposed to simple racial prejudice, must have an element of power included.
- Defining racism in the realm of feelings and attitudes may be correct, but it is practically useless.

- The definition of Racism (or rather contextualisation thereof) by Dr. Helan Enoch Page is too limited for a number of reasons:
1. There's a definite level of framing bias, which makes it insufficiently generic (too focussed on the US situation or by ellaboration the so called western world)
2. It makes, by definition, racism only applicable to white - non-white interactions, thus expluding all possible racist acts or institutions between other groups (e.g. The Chinese racism versus the Tibetans cannot be called racism under this definition)
3. It implies, again by definition, an inherent, biological difference between whites and non-whites, as non-whites are incapable of racism

I find the following definition more useful (although still too specific - my comments in red):

    * an underlying belief in the superiority of one race over another and its right to dominate.
    * generalizing one group of people by believing in simplistic stereotypes of that group.
These elements are the basic buiding blocks of racial prejudice and racism. The power one racial group has over another (either explicitely or implicitely) determines whether or not one can speak about racism.
    * affects every aspect of the lives of communities of colour: social, economic, political, health, etc.
    * may take three main forms (though all work together to maintain a system of oppression):
    * Individual Racism - individual acts that overtly reflect racist attitudes/beliefs. This is the easiest one to identify. ie. racial slurs, jokes, etc.
As this works on an individual level, the power relation needs to be seen in it's proper context. It is possible for a person to be member of a group that is negatively affected by institutional racism to be racist to a member of a group that is more privileged on an institutional level, although the aggregate  of all these racist actions will be less significant on a higher level of analysis. Beware that for the victim of this kind of racism, it doesn't really matter where the chips fall on a higher level
    * Systemic Racism and Institutional Racism-organizational policies and practices at the structural level that indirectly target communities of colour and maintain white privilege. Ie. racism in the criminal justice system (police profiling); racism in the educational system (all white authors on a course reading list.)
This is in my view the most underestimated and misunderstood expression of racism. Because of institutionalised, systemic racism you can have racism without many real racists. This is always a blind spot for the hegemonic, priviledged groups in society and is greatly aided the unconscious expression of the hegemonic value system of the normalised, hegemonic group
    * Cultural Racism-value system that supports and allows discriminatory actions against racially and ethnoculturally marginalized communities. Ie. white privilege.
The Marxist superstructure. Doesn't only work on racial lines, but also on class lines and other normative lines (e.g. what is acceptable discourse?). This has been nearly perfected in the US mainstream media
(from http://www.euroamerican.org/library/definitions_racism.asp )

Especially the three main forms are quite useful in identifying racism

the OP is an idiot for drawing parallels between Nigerian Police corruption and racism.

Infact the OP is an idiot PERIOD.

Race is an artificial construct perpetuated by society due to a Plutocracy that serves to make profit in the Capitalistic world we have lived in for the last half millennia. Do not get it twisted. If the Plutocracy could have enslaved people that shared the same "color" skin as they could they would have. It was simply a matter of logistics. They tried with their "own kind" and it didnt work (obviously because the construct/reality of different ethnicities is much harder to overlook than that of skin color by the societal majority), they tried with the natives of conquered land like the native indians (but this didnt work simply because you will NEVER get a native of his own land to till the land and give the fruits of that labor to an occupying or invading party) so they "imported" African slaves as it solved the prior 2 problems of being a land native and creating an artificial construct of race with heavy emphasis on superiority and servitude and humanity across color lines. If the Plutocracy could have gotten away with enslaving their own people at a cheaper price and reaping more profits, trust me they would not have hesistated to do so.

Looking at the regular "white" person as the problem is a mistake. The regular white person has been conditioned through so called "westerm' culture to believe in their superiority and world dominance as being because of their "race" and this is perpetuated ad naseum along with other artificially created constructs to keep the world at the helm of the members of the plutocracy. Other such constructs are the inherent superiority of Judeo-Christian belief and theology as well as Fascist Capitalism.

We are not all guilty of Racism. Anyone who perpetuates this line of thinking really should be shot for not being able to observe the realities of the world around him/her. Obviously you have no clue what Racism means and what it entails.

Been following this thread, and just to take the bite out of it a bit (I think it is too charged up). . .