getting woke and SL

[LyricalBookworm]

13 hours ago, Akane Nacht said:

Yikes. Here's my opinion to this and your whole post: If you want to know why racial issues are a problem in your country, go look in the mirror. 

If anyone else has been reading this exchange and is curious about my responses to the issues she has referred to, pardon me if I decline to engage further with this lady. Feel free to message me and ask if you wish, or google it. We yak our heads off online so it's not hard to find. 

To the rest of the posters on this thread, I've enjoyed the discussion!

I just wish to say although only a silent reader, I've really enjoyed your posts on this topic. It is apparent you really put thought behind your words and I've learned a lot so thank you for that. It is appreciated! 😊

[Luna Bliss]

6 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

15 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Anytime we begin to discuss issues of racism and injustice someone from the 'majority' has to step in and

Luckily for humanity..that "majority" is shifting.  REAL SOON NOW we will have a "majority minority", at least in the US.  I celebrate the closeness of that day!

And the white supremacists are shaking in their shoes    

I like the statement I heard from a POC the other week (I believe they were quoting another POC) -- anyway, they said the White people should be glad we only want equality and not revenge.

Edited July 8, 2020 by Luna Bliss

[Pussycat Catnap]

5 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Luckily for humanity..that "majority" is shifting.  REAL SOON NOW we will have a "majority minority", at least in the US.  I celebrate the closeness of that day!

Well the terms 'majority / minority' are not about numbers but about power dynamics in the system. Thus the white minority of South Africa is the 'majoritarian' perspective...

[Love Zhaoying]

24 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Well the terms 'majority / minority' are not about numbers but about power dynamics in the system. Thus the white minority of South Africa is the 'majoritarian' perspective...

LOL! It is actually about numbers. That is the point. It's ok, you can be wrong. OWN IT!

[Love Zhaoying]

27 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

I like the statement I heard from a POC the other week (I believe they were quoting another POC) -- anyway, they said the White people should be glad we only want equality and not revenge.

I'm reminded of an awful Heinlein pulp novel where..the POC wanted "revenge" - and got it.

[Selene Gregoire]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I'm reminded of an awful Heinlein pulp novel where..the POC wanted "revenge" - and got it.

Never, ever diss the Heinlein.  

[Love Zhaoying]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_minority

 

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Never, ever diss the Heinlein.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnham's_Freehold

The work speaks for itself.

[Pussycat Catnap]

21 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

LOL! It is actually about numbers. That is the point. It's ok, you can be wrong. OWN IT!

No. It has NOTHING to do with numbers.

This is basically day 1 lecture of any ethnic studies, diversity training, and so on program. In the concept of race, ethnicity, and gender - majority and minority are about power dynamics. Not population.

The majority-power is quite often outnumbered. Most obvious case: gender. Women outnumber men.

Quote

When we hear the word “minority” we often think of a group with a smaller number of members than the dominant group, but in some cases the “minority” is not a numerical minority. Women have been treated as a minority group even though they outnumber men in the U.S. What differentiates a minority group is that its members are disadvantaged in some way by the dominant group, such as when women are paid less than men for the same job even though they may have similar qualifications and levels of experience as their male co-workers. Consider apartheid in South Africa, in which a numerical majority (the black inhabitants of the country) were exploited and oppressed by the politically dominant white minority.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wmopen-introtosociology/chapter/race-ethnicity-and-discrimination/

 

Pulling out links to dictionary definitions of the words minority and majority is a pointless distraction, one particularly favored by those wishing to discredit challenges against downpression. Such dictionary point to common use of terms, not the sociological usage of them within the context of race / ethnic / and gender topics.

Edited July 8, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[L3r0yj3nk1ns]

educate yourself  

 

[Love Zhaoying]

8 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

No. It has NOTHING to do with numbers.

 

Then - the liberal (NPR) news covers this differently, as does the Wikipedia entry which I posted.

You go ahead and be "right" on this - it does not impact me, as I am a supporter.

[Love Zhaoying]

10 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Pulling out links to dictionary definitions of the words minority and majority is a pointless distraction

Please GO to the link. It is about the terms and how they relate to each other. Not just "dictionary definitions of words".

I say, HAVE A NICE DAY lulz.

And here is where I let you have the "last word" (some people gotta do that).

[Pussycat Catnap]

What the Klansman posting that video doesn't want to acknowledge is that the party's switched placed.

Yes, the Republican party was actually started by Lincoln and co-horts for their pro-union platform. And yes the Democrats were the actual leaders of the Confederacy and after the war many of them were re-seated right back into Congress under that party.

But then 1908 happened and the Democrats became the 'labor party' as a ploy to get votes... but it then took over the platform...

And the Unions happened. And they had to integrate the Unions to stop strike busters. But that led to the Civil Rights movement getting backed by the Unions and Northern Democrats...

... and that led to Nixon telling the Southern Democrats that the Republicans would forever stand against Civil Rights, so come on over to their tent... and Reagan doubled down on that in the 1980s by adding in that the Republicans will 'forever be anti-gay anti-women so come on over if you oppose those groups', bringing in the Evangelicals...

and by the 1990s, and in fact while Clinton was in office, the Dixiecrats had mostly moved over. The very last of them switched parties either while Clinton or Bush Jr. was in office - I forget which...

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

6 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

You go ahead and be "right" on this - it does not impact me, as I am a supporter.

Not if you stick to concepts designed to undermine civil rights...

It's a core part of the 'whites are under attack' movement to confuse talk of power dynamics with numbers and thereby set off a panic...

By that notion... whites in South Africa NEEDED Apartheid because it was a 'minority protection' mechanism...

 

Edited July 8, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Luna Bliss]

15 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

words minority and majority

Would it be safe to say that oppression usually begins with a majority overpowering a minority, but it is maintained by whichever group (majority or minority) managed to acquire the most institutional power?

[Pussycat Catnap]

12 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Would it be safe to say that oppression usually begins with a majority overpowering a minority, but it is maintained by whichever group (majority or minority) managed to acquire the most institutional power?

Not exactly. For a period in the South Blacks outnumbered whites. That has always been the case in South Africa and the Caribbean (*).

It's also long been the case in Mexico and much of Latin America that Whites were the minority - and most of these places are not known for either being egalitarian nor for oppressing their white populations.

In the southwest to California, at many points in times the Mestizo + Indigenous populations were the numeric majority, but the political minority.

In present day Ethiopia... the 'majority power' is a smaller ethnic group that rules over the larger group with extreme brutality. I believe this power dynamic is a long standing one.

 

Can't find good statement on this just yet - but I wonder about the makeup in the UK. I don't think the majority is actually English, but that when you include Wales, Scottland, N. Ireland, etc - that the English are a numeric minority, but the nation is basically defined along their terms - so even in 'less severe situations' the "majority" might not always be a majority.

 

----

(*) A common case held up to help motivate this 'if they outnumber us we're all dead' panic is Haiti of the Caribbean. But if you study the Haitian revolution you find a radically different story of a black and 'colored' (mixed race) population repeatedly trying to "sue for peace", actually winning it and becoming equal citizens of France, only to have Napoleon come in and declare they were all re-enslaved, and then find his men getting slaughtered when they went to enforce such... and the Haitians again suing for peace, only to have their leaders murdered instead of negotiated with, or otherwise defeated in either legit combat or mostly treachery, until the only leader they had left was the most brutal man on the scene, a man who had started his career murdering other blacks for pay by the French, switched sides, killed off all his new allies, and then finally been the one to order the slaughter of all French on the Island (but NOT the English or Americans that had been trading supplies with him, nor the thousands of Polish who Napoleon had drafted and sent to fight him, that rebelled and joined him, only to be the ONLY whites to be given full citizenship in the new nation because he saw them as fellow ex-slaves). And when he ordered the French slaughtered, he had to first slaughter enough of his own men to convince the others that if they refused to kill French, they'd take their place in the firing line... and even after that he had to trick people into handing over French they were hiding by offering to give amnesty any French person handed over instead of hunted out... because no one on Haiti wanted to follow his order to slaughter French whites... and a few years later they assassinated him and then started opening up peace talks...

- But Evangelical pastors and white power types often refer to Haiti as a reason why they need to keep blacks down, ignoring the actual extremely messy facts over there...

 

Edited July 8, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Selene Gregoire]

51 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnham's_Freehold

The work speaks for itself.

People do tend to be overly critical of works of fiction that turn the tables, especially science fiction. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, they don't want to wear the shoe. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Pixie Kobichenko]

1 hour ago, L3r0yj3nk1ns said:

educate yourself  

 

 

educate YOURSELF & recognize that the parties switched platforms slowly between the end of the civil war & early 20th century.  Pussycat addressed this to you. 
 

I’ve mentioned this in past threads, but I will lay it out again, for additional clarity:  

“Eric Rauchway, professor of American history at the University of California, Davis, pins the transition to the turn of the 20th century, when a highly influential Democrat named William Jennings Bryan blurred party lines by emphasizing the government's role in ensuring social justice through expansions of federal power — traditionally, a Republican stance.”

https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html

Edited July 8, 2020 by Pixie Kobichenko

[Pussycat Catnap]

17 minutes ago, Pixie Kobichenko said:

when a highly influential Democrat named William Jennings Bryan blurred party lines by emphasizing the government's role in ensuring social justice through expansions of federal power — traditionally, a Republican stance.”

The most hilarious aspect of this is that Bryan was ALSO the attorney that argued in the Scopes trial that teaching Evolution should be illegal - a case which he won.

Which shoes that... key figure that he was in changing the parties, his ideas were a work in progress by our modern standards.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-supe-proposes-CAREN-Act-to-prohibit-false-15392969.php

I love that they're calling it the 'CAREN Act'. 😄

Quote

San Francisco Supervisor Shamann Walton on Tuesday introduced an ordinance that would make discriminatory calls for police illegal.

Walton dubbed the ordinance the Caren Act (Caution Against Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies), in an apparent nod to the popularized slang name that refers to an entitled white woman complaining about people of color. The legislation would amend the San Francisco Police Code to make it unlawful for someone to “fabricate false racially biased emergency reports,” according to a news release from Walton.

“This is the CAREN we need,” Walton tweeted.

 

The law aims to “protect the rights of communities of color who are often targeted and victims of fraudulent emergency calls,” Walton said in a statement. “The CAREN Act will make it unlawful for an individual to contact law enforcement solely to discriminate on the basis of a person’s race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”

It should be noted that this law is NEEDED in San Francisco in particular - the tech boom brought about a rapid radical shift in the demographics of the city, that formerly had a moderate black population, high asian and latino populations, into an extremely white town full of folks "Not from 'round these here parts"... so they've been having a spike in 'Karen Calls' when folks move in and look outside their windows and see "all the coloreds out there"...

- and of course, them new transplants from the midwest and elsewhere are driving around the Bay now, getting all up in everyone's business... so we might need CAREN Acts in some of the other cities too, like Oakland in particular...

 

[Luna Bliss]

10 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

I love that they're calling it the 'CAREN Act'. 😄

lol cool...leave it to SF 

Here's a story with a great ending. A 'Karen' was making trouble for a Black couple who simply wanted to build a patio in their own yard, and she called the police on them.  In the end the neighbors attempted to support the Black couple via a protest against the annoying 'karen'.

 

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

 

[L3r0yj3nk1ns]

4 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

What the Klansman posting that video doesn't want to acknowledge is that the party's switched placed.

Yes, the Republican party was actually started by Lincoln and co-horts for their pro-union platform. And yes the Democrats were the actual leaders of the Confederacy and after the war many of them were re-seated right back into Congress under that party.

But then 1908 happened and the Democrats became the 'labor party' as a ploy to get votes... but it then took over the platform...

And the Unions happened. And they had to integrate the Unions to stop strike busters. But that led to the Civil Rights movement getting backed by the Unions and Northern Democrats...

... and that led to Nixon telling the Southern Democrats that the Republicans would forever stand against Civil Rights, so come on over to their tent... and Reagan doubled down on that in the 1980s by adding in that the Republicans will 'forever be anti-gay anti-women so come on over if you oppose those groups', bringing in the Evangelicals...

and by the 1990s, and in fact while Clinton was in office, the Dixiecrats had mostly moved over. The very last of them switched parties either while Clinton or Bush Jr. was in office - I forget which...

 

There was only one dixicrat that switched parties, Strom Thurmon...educate yourself instead of using ridiculous Klansmen comments

[Mollymews]

6 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

The remedy is for Whites not to think they are better than POC because they have lighter skin.  Once we stop having this bias toward POC, the bias which prevents them from acquiring equal admittance to colleges and jobs, and equal representation in government, their oppression will begin to fall away.  I think if you talk to most POC in this country they'd rather we not DO anything. If you read our History the solutions we've come up with to "help" have mainly harmed.  I trust POC to find their solutions once we stop thinking of them as inferior, although I do recognize the effectiveness of some stopgap measures remaining in place until that time comes and I hope they will continue (like affirmative action).

What is too frequently occurring in America though is based on a common notion in America and elsewhere, that if you insist on talking about racial divisions then you are the one causing the division. It's a way of basically telling the person who is rightfully complaining about an injustice to shut up.

We have to be willing to let the aggrieved people express the injustices they have lived, the pain and anger they feel, before any healing can take place. To attempt to solve the problem our way (oh just drop this racial division thing, we are all one people, I don't see color, or here I'll fix it by doing X... blah blah blah) is putting the cart before the horse, and exhibiting extreme disrespect toward those who have not had enough of a voice in this country for so many centuries.  

lets examine this

the central tenet of this argument is that it makes oppression about the oppressor. That if we just cure the oppressor then the consequences of oppression on the oppressed will disappear.  This argument pre-supposes that thinking ourselves superior to others is a disease, when it isn't. The drive to be superior is hardwired into people - the drive to be competitive. At its most base, winning the competition increases the opportunities for survival until it doesn't

this drive can be harnessed beneficially as well as detrimentally

beneficial example, Olympics competition. Somebody is going to win the event.  When this happens then at that moment this person will be the champion, they will be the superior and will get a medal for it

detrimental superiority example. South Africa during the apartheid years. Preventing people of color from playing sports for their nation, and excluding people from other countries competing against the South African national teams

we don't need to wait until a person is cured or healed before change can be effected

sticking with South Africa: South Africa changed before white people cured/healed themselves. It changed when black people were given the vote (universal suffrage). A actual action which was done by the then white De Klerk government despite an overwhelming majority of white people in South Africa being opposed to universal suffrage

de Klerk didn't do this because he thought the south african black people were his equal. He did it to prevent South Africa descending into civil war.  The drive to survive overtaking the white nation's drive for superiority. The drive for superiority works right up until it kills you

the remedy is to stop the oppression now - stop hitting me. This is about the victim. It is remedial for the victim

when the oppressor is prevented from hitting their victim then we can talk to the oppressor for as long as it takes about how they feel about not being able to hit the victim.  This conversation is remedial for the oppressor.  The conversation is not about what the oppressor feels about hitting people. Is about how they feel about being prevented from doing this. How will you, the oppressor, adjust your thinking now that you can't hit people

[L3r0yj3nk1ns]

3 hours ago, Pixie Kobichenko said:

 

educate YOURSELF & recognize that the parties switched platforms slowly between the end of the civil war & early 20th century.  Pussycat addressed this to you. 
 

I’ve mentioned this in past threads, but I will lay it out again, for additional clarity:  

“Eric Rauchway, professor of American history at the University of California, Davis, pins the transition to the turn of the 20th century, when a highly influential Democrat named William Jennings Bryan blurred party lines by emphasizing the government's role in ensuring social justice through expansions of federal power — traditionally, a Republican stance.”

https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html

again, there was only one dixicrat that switched parties, Strom Thurmon...educate yourself