Beth Macbain

Already did that a couple times this weekend. Peeve: Sex headaches.

Someone fed the gremlins after midnight. Best just to close the forums and go to bed.

And some people certainly have no trouble with blaming all black people for looting...

It’s history and facts. Sorry reading and educating yourself is such an inconvenience? It says something when white people won’t even let the black community have MLK without having to make sure white people get some credit somehow.

Not exactly. Read up on what life was like for those freed slaves in the south after the Civil War and the Black Codes. Union soldiers stuck around for a minute then high-tailed it back up north because they didn’t really give a damn about blacks. The north, including Lincoln, were still racist as hell. It’s not so much that the the Union Army was concerned with freeing the slaves - they had no intention of letting the country get split in two and lose all that cotton, not to mention the territories both the north and south were laying claim to. The South fought for the right to own people. The North fought to not let the south secede. As for MLK, white people also killed him, among other things.

That’s difficult to answer in a way that doesn’t sound like the “Some of my best friends are...” kind of I’m-not-a-racist racism. When I was in 8th grade, so about 35 years ago, a (Black) friend and I were walking back to the locker room after gym class to change. We must’ve been running or something because I said, “My knee hurts,” like I’d twisted it or something. When we got to the locker room, she absolutely went ballistic on me. She was crying and fighting me, like physically attacking me. At first I thought she was playing around but she wasn’t. I had no idea what had happened. Things were fine, we’d been talking and laughing, and suddenly she was trying to kill me. Some other girls got her to calm down a little and say what was wrong. When I said, “My knee hurts,” she heard the big N word instead of “knee hurts”. I’ve never forgotten that - how angry and hurt she was. That word was used fast and loose by a lot of people in my little trashy redneck town, but I was a friend and not one of those people in her mind. She was hurt and betrayed by me. I corrected what she thought she heard, and it ended with a hug, but that has stayed with me since then. I never wanted anyone to feel the way she felt, and the more I’ve thought about it over the years, the more I realized how often she heard that word in that sh!tty little town. It’s sickening to me. I won’t even visit my hometown and that’s a big part of why. I’ve been told it’s changed. I don’t believe it. I don’t know if that helps you to understand my feelings or not. I saw that as a kid, and I’ve never seen anything to make me think racism magically disappeared. This just feels to me like something in our collective conscience has been shaken. I don’t know why it was George Floyd’s death that did it - maybe how blatant it was? The cop knew and didn’t care that he was killing him AND being filmed? That there is no way even the most racist of racists can deny that his death was anything but lynching by knee? I don’t know. I just know something feels different. I certainly don’t blame any black people who are suspicious - why wouldn’t you be? White people have never come through for the black community before, so of course you don’t trust us. I’m still going to stand beside you, though, and try my best to listen and do whatever I can to help make real change happen.

That is truly a bunch of goofy ass nonsense. Dano posted something with intent to hurt Selene. He knew it would before he hit that send button. I apologized to Selene because some careless, ignorant jackass went out of his way to hurt her. It was grotesque. I do not apologize for apologizing to her. Careful... you’re spilling your colonialism. The problem in what you are saying is that there is no “we”... not even a royal one. There are people in the UK who do not feel they we you do - with good reason. Racism is on the rise in the UK.

You can admit you have biases, and though you can also noodle with the tests when you get the gist of what they’re doing. If nothing else, I think the tests can help people who go through life with blinders on realize that they, too, have biases they’ve never even given a thought to.

Er... thanks for the advice, but my entire life is pretty much devoted to charity. I work for one, and my hours aren’t exactly 8-5. Yes, it is a human services charity, and yes, what is going on in the US directly affects our clients in huge ways. No one looks down or up at me. I prefer to look people in the eye. And I’m 50 years old and extremely capable of forging my own path in life, and my ability to look beyond the end of my own nose to feel empathy towards other human beings regardless of my own life experiences is a strength, not a weakness. What I find so strange is that while a lot of (white) Americans seem to be ready, and want to have these conversations about racism and police brutality, Europeans, Australians, and New Zealanders seem to want to prevent the conversation, and not allow us to recognize the very real problem, and actually start defining and implementing solutions. What are you so scared of? That you’ll be forced to look at the racism your own countries and stop pretending it doesn’t exist?

I’m not speaking for you. I’m apologizing for atrocious behavior of people who share my skin color. Two completely different things.

I sort of knew this story, but I didn’t know all the details. Be like Peter.

Yeah, but my fellow white people keep horrifying me and somebody needs to apologize for them.

JFC... I need to remember that I have certain people blocked for a reason. Selene, I’m so sorry for that hateful display of ignorance.

Care to show me that in any 501c3’s mission statement?

I’m not 100% on all the rules here, but I’m pretty sure this means you have to name the baby after me. 😝

Emoting a punch in the nut sack works well, too.

What? Every night @Ebbe Linden calls to tell me a bedtime story, @Quartz Mole arrives to tuck me in, and then every morning @Patch Linden calls and sings “Good Day, Sunshine” to me just before @Soft Linden arrives to make my breakfast and draws a bath for me. Everyone knows we get one personal Linden or Mole at our beck and call for each premium account we have, right? What? Nobody else gets that? Never mind.

This is my jam:

Daily Wire... lol.

Spending my Saturday afternoon watching the statue of Jefferson Davis get ripped out of our state capital with our governor and his kids overseeing it, so for once I get to proud super proud of being a Kentuckian for a minute.

Because I don’t want anyone seeing this and thinking that I equate the importance of this issue with a life-or-death issue. I was being mostly tongue in cheek when I started this thread. I believe it’s a valid issue, but there are more important fights right now. Perhaps if I had used something other than the word “equality” in the title, I wouldn’t care as much. Now it just looks tacky to me.

With all that is happening in the world today, this topic now seems even more ridiculous in comparison to the life-or-death fight the black community is facing right now. I’m asking for it to be deleted.

I just did the Presidential bias one. I'm shocked - SHOCKED - that I show a strong preference for Thomas Jefferson over Donald Trump. If they wanted to make it hard, they should have used Hitler.

People in Kentucky think I'm bizarre because I just flat out won't associate with people who have guns. There are people I work with that I know have guns in their cars. Go to lunch with them? NOPE! I've left restaurants before because I've spotted guns on people who are clearly not law enforcement on duty. I hate 'em. HATE THEM. I've only done the skin tone bias test so far, and I was pretty pleased with my results but I'm also aware that I was slowing down and having to think more than I wanted to a couple of times.

We did one at work about a year ago for all our management team (about 120 people). It was no surprise to anyone that our very privileged white CEO was several steps ahead of anyone. Well, no surprise to anyone but him. I think he was truly shocked. The one we did was probably 50 or so questions. It was pretty stunning to see some of the people who stepped forwards and back on different things. I know we all took something away from it, but then we didn't do anything else. I need to bring that up to my supervisor since she's heading up our diversity and inclusion initiatives.