Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
You pick an incendiary name, you get flamed.
LATER: Oh, yeah. You should know I called you a crakka-ass crakka MONTHS ago. Had nothing to do with Limberger's slur on McNabb. I NEVER read your blog; it only came up because of a few referrals. Made me say, "Whut? Whut dis crakka-ass crakka want?" 
You did make me temporarily change my policy of not mentioning pretenders. There's another one out there who actually asked for ad hominem but his name isn't incendiary enough and his intellectual pretensions aren't interesting enough for me to even pretend to be interested.
Posted by P6 at October 15, 2003 11:22 PM | Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1992I find it funny how "Mulatto Boy" doesn't allow comments. Just like all those folks who talk hard and have a soft ass.
On point, dawg.
You know ain't nobody half-Black REALLY calling himself "mulatto" either.
Hell, that is one of the reasons I hang around here. Most lefty sites either don't have comments, or there is a shout-down every time a non-left voice speaks up. I have to fight my point here, but I am given the opportunity to fight for it, rather than just getting beaten down without even a nod to reason.
Maybe I just don't run across enough leftish websites, but I have noticed that open comments are fewer on that side of the aisle.
I'm just as picky about right-wing sites that I comment on. Basically Dean's World and tacitus is it.
There are top blogs of both the left and the right that don't have comments; however, most left-wing sites that I visit do. The only survey I've seen suggested that right-wing blogs were less likely than left-wing blogs to have comments.
First, I will address S-Train's comment:
"I find it funny how "Mulatto Boy" doesn't allow comments. Just like all those folks who talk hard and have a soft ass."
Train, please find out the facts before you shoot your mouth off. The reason I didn't have comments is that I was on Blogger Basic, which doesn't allow comments. I am now on another hosting service using MT, so comment to your heart's content. I found your comment disappointing, because I've visited your site (via Cobb) and came away with the impression that you were a thoughful individual with something positive to say. Unfortunately, you have blown my perception. BTW, had you bothered to read, I did have a direct e-mail link at the upper right hand corner of my old blogsite. Somehow that escaped your notice. So much for "soft asses", huh?
P6, I realize that you called me a "crakka-ass-crakka" months ago. I don't generally get around to visiting a lot of blogs on a daily basis, as I have a job and a life outside of blogging. I thought it was worth posting because I found it amusing that anyone would even take issue with my racial identity. In fact, you didn't take issue with any of my posts, just my blogname. You seem upset that it took me so long to discover it. That betrays either a supremely overblown sense of self importance on your part, or the disappointment of a child who isn't getting the attention he wants. I think it's the latter, personally.
I don't understand what is so imflammatory about using the name "Mulatto". It is what I am. While it is true that most Mulattoes choose to identify black - I do not, nor do I feel the need to. If anything, it is you, P6 that is being inflammatory by choosing to make an issue of something that really isn't. In reality I shouldn't be suprised that you would be childish and start calling me names since that seems to be the primary mode of argument you use anyway.
Name calling is the last refuge of a child who lacks a rational argument for his feelings. The first time I visited your blog, I got the impression of an individual who loved to yell "fire!" in a crowded theatre. Looks like my first impression was correct. Drama for the sake of drama.
I'm sorry you feel the need to deigrate me because I don't subscribe to your rigid, pre-conceived ideal of "Blackness". Sorry, I learned long ago that for "brothas" like you, I will never be black enough, so frankly I stopped trying. Must have been the old black man in the apartment downstairs who beat his wife and referred to me and my sister as "God Damn half-breeds" or my babysitter's son who seemed to take great delight in calling us "yellow". Or how about the black children who accused us of "trying to be white" because our mother demanded that we learn and use standard english?
The fact is, I will never be white and I have never been accepted as black. From my reality, black unity is a joke. It would seem that black folks are more than happy to accept me as long as it furthers their agenda, but reject me because I don't agree with that agenda. That's like complaining that the "one-drop" rule is unfair, but embracing it when it suits your purposes. Sounds like hypocracy to me.
I have however, been accepted as an individual by people of many different races and I wouldn't have it any other way. I think for myself, choose my own place in society and choose my racial identity rather than have it defined for me. I like my life. I have dated girls from various Asian, Latino, Black and White backgrounds and shared in the cultural heritage that each had to offer. I grew up in So. Cal. I am half white, half black, and I make the bomb carne asada, rice, beans and salsa. I married a Sicilian/German girl from Washington State who loves R&B, Jazz and Gospel and can make soul food like she was from the south. So much for preconceptions, huh?
If that is too much for you, I suggest that maybe you avoid my blog since it seems to cause you so much heartburn. I have made it my mission in life to tell the truth. If that means exposing the hypocracy of black folks who bitch and whine about racism yet practice it themselves, then so be it.
You make the comment:
"You did make me temporarily change my policy of not mentioning pretenders. There's another one out there who actually asked for ad hominem but his name isn't incendiary enough and his intellectual pretensions aren't interesting enough for me to even pretend to be interested."
If you think I'm a "pretender" with "intellectual pretensions", then present your arguments forcefully, using facts and reason, not drama, namecalling and bluster. Somehow I don't think you're capable.
Face it son, you're out of your depth.
I hope you feel better now.
BTW, you've got trackback autodiscovery turned on. You shouldn't manually add the trackback URL to the list because when you link to an MT post in your text, autodiscovery sill handle the ping. Your way you send out two pings.
Yes, I deleted the duplicate.
Well, one good thing came out of this thread -- I found out that Mullatoboy switched to MT, so he has an RSS feed. I've blogged about it before, but people who don't have feeds are below my radar. It isn't that they aren't good -- I would love to read Madfish Willie, for example -- but if it ain't in my aggro, I can't keep up.
Hell, if P6 didn't have that comments thing in the corner, I couldn't even keep up with my comments here. (BTW, is that a plugin that is openly availible?)
Well, I hope you and mulattoboy live happily ever after.
The comments list isn't a plug-in. It's straight out of the manual:
<MTEntries recently_commented_on="20">
<a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$>(<$MTEntryCommentCount$>)</a> <br />
</MTEntries>
I need it to keep up too.
Wow P6, I find your pomus "upity" black attitude to be one of the main reasons there is no unity among blacks. But I learned a long time ago that opinions are like A$$ holes, everyone has one. I'm bi-racial also, but perhaps you don't like that term either, and have had to find my own little place in the world without much regard to what anyone thinks because black or white your crap all smells the same.
Oh ya, just wanted to let you know the only reason I even came to this blogsite was because of mullato, i'm sure half the hits you get are as a result of links from other pages, and believe me you don't have much to say. If I had stoped by on my own, I guarantee the first would have been the last time.
Well. The lack of Black unity is due to my pomus "upity" attitude.
I guess you told ME.
Since we're dealing with the "biology is destiny" crew:
- My daughter's mom is Japanese and Irish. My daughter makes damn sure I'm not unfair to a quarter of her heritage.
- I have no problem with mixed race. We're ALL mixed race.
- NO Blackperson, not even you, Blue, calls themselves Mulatto. Hence my assumption that The Mulatto Advisor is a crakka-ass crakka.
- I did fine for hits before Robert started sniffing around here. I never linked to him because I don't need traffic from that source or any like it.
- Since you feel I have nothing to say, you'll suffer no loss by not coming back, right? Good.
NO Blackperson, not even you, Blue, calls themselves Mulatto
True. Only mulattos, not black people. (That one was too easy to pass up.) What is with the "white or black" thing? Is this some sort of reverse one-drop rule? If you acknowledge one drop of white blood, you aren't black anymore?
Are there some negative conotations to it? To some people, yeah. To some people it evokes images of the old "Octaroon" classifications, but we aren't going to get beyond that point if we toss all of that down the memory hole. To me, "Mulatto Boy" (the name, not the person) says, "yeah, I know what you think, and it doesn't matter, because you aren't going to shame me with your words. 'Hey, mulatto!' Hey what?" You can't taunt someone with thier name.
True. Only mulattos, not black people. (That one was too easy to pass up.)
You should have passed it up, because it's a stronger, more offensive version of what I myself said.
To me, "Mulatto Boy" (the name, not the person) says, "yeah, I know what you think, and it doesn't matter, because you aren't going to shame me with your words.
Mulatto, quadroon and octaroon has histroy and context. The voluntary assumption of these "titles" are a rejection of the African component of a person. Saying "I'm Black and fill-in-the-blank" is different than saying "I'm not Black, I'm mixed," and a person, like Crakka-Ass Crakka, who takes such a title and then pretends to be speaking from a Black perspective is offensively full of shit.
The voluntary assumption of these "titles" are a rejection of the African component of a person.
This is the part that I don't get. AFAIK, Mulattos, quadroons and octoroons were put down the same at the time. "You're not quite as oppressed, (boy,)" doesn't mean that you aren't oppressed.
You're right, they were all oppressed. To paraphrase Malcolm X, pulling the knife half-way out of your back isn't really progress.
But those title holders also oppressed those who were "less white". The degree of "whiteness" was a matter of pride and social standing. It's what stands at the root of the color discrimination within the Black communities. And the Mulatto Advisor invokes all that.
You think I'm rude to CAC - Let someone come up as The Octaroon Advocate or some shit.
I will have to concede some ground on this one. I was pretty shielded from the internal black strata until I spent some time working at a black record label, and it still usually escapes my notice unless it is pointed out. Then again, the same principle stands. How does changing the words change the situation? That street runs both ways. How much of your aversion to the word stems from your direction?
Ah.
I don't object to the word per se. Knowing how the word is perceived in general, seeing a distinctly right wing viewpoint presented as "The Mulatto Advocate," and have YEARS of experience at these race and online discussions, I conclude this is a white person behind the blog.
If I were to meet this person and discover he or she is Black, I would have to have a long conversation about why s/he chose that name. The name is a gesture, you see. Specifically, it is flipping the bird at Black folks. And THAT is what I object to.
Now, if CAC IS mullato, perhaps it feels the bird has been flipped at him or her and is returning the gesture. I would understand that...a lot of mixed race folks DO feel that way (witness Blue above). I can get with rightous anger, since I do that sort of thing myself sometimes (I don't offer infinite forbearance so I don't expect it). I can accept it and move to the many, many political points I feel CAC has wrong. But if it's a white person, and I STRONGLY feel it is, the the gesture is gratuitous.
Now, if CAC IS mullato, perhaps it feels the bird has been flipped at him or her and is returning the gesture. I would understand that...a lot of mixed race folks DO feel that way (witness Blue above). I can get with rightous anger, since I do that sort of thing myself sometimes (I don't offer infinite forbearance so I don't expect it). I can accept it and move to the many, many political points I feel CAC has wrong. But if it's a white person, and I STRONGLY feel it is, the the gesture is gratuitous.
This is part of what I can't get. Why does it matter what color he is? Isn't the whole point of this exercise to get to that "judged by your character" place? Words are words. Black text on a white page (or, in your case, white text on a black page.) The ideas behind them don't have a color.
This seems a lot like the reaction of "you aren't a real black man" to any black non-Democrat. Being a libertarian, I get to meet a lot of them. I've also seen them dealing with other people, and they tend to keep thier views to themselves. This is making it pretty clear why they do.
A person's color will matter as long as we are socialized differently. Words are more than letters on paper to most people. They have context.
You're having a problem understanding because you, like most Libertarians, deny the validity of ALL context, never mind that this denial is the only context in which the outlook makes sense.
I don't think that we deny the validity of context; we seek to marginalize context for the sake of objectivity. That isn't just semantics. One is ignorance, while the other is an active rejection.
But don't you see that the active rejection is a bigger problem than ignorance? Don't you understand it REDUCES objectivity?
If I were hostile to you, I would call it willful ignorance. That's what people who live the context you choose to disregard call it.
Can you see this?
I see why you would think those things. That doesn't make you any less wrong. I can understand something and still not care. I can understand something as extreme as what would cause someone to be a serial killer, but I'm not going to condone it.
One thing that I think you are missing -- marginalizing and failing to see at all are vastly different things. I've looked at the context, and nine times out of ten, I say "tough titty." On the tenth, I pony up my own cash to solve the problem rather than pointing a gun at my neighbor and telling him to do it.
I'm missing nothing. This isn't about caring, this is about accuracy.
Phelps, the context that you're marginalizing exists. You do not give it the weight that REALITY demands. Therefore you reduce, or even lose your objectivity.
If you marginalize the impact of something because you don't care about it, you create error. If you overemphasize something because you care about it, you create error. And our collective power is such that error can destroy our culture, our society, ourselves.
We
cannot
afford
error.
ESPECIALLY those errors that come about because we ignore what's plainly visible. Like Libertarians do.
Who's ignoring context and reality now? Error happens. The end. You mitigate error until the rate of error becomes acceptable. I am a firm believer in the philosophy that "It is better to let a hundred guilty men go free than to imprison one innocent man", but that philosophy has limits. 100:1? Absolutely. 1000:1? Yes. 10000:1? I think so. 1000000:1? Nope. That guy in between 10K and a million is going to have to take one for the team.
Who's ignoring context and reality now?
You.
I think I'm done here. I'm a firm believer in the saying "head bleed, walls don't." And frankly, as a Libertarian, you're a lot more practiced at ignoring the truth than I am at tolerating people who ignore the truth. So this conversation, in particular, is a wrap.