User loginLive Discussions
Google searchMost popular threads
Weekly Archives
Blog linksAfrican American Political Pundit |
We readTip jarThe Public LibraryReality checksNews sourcesLink CollectionsDropping KnowledgeLibrary of Congress African American Odyssey Who's new
Who's onlineThere are currently 0 users and 17 guests online.
...Syndicate |
You cannot escape mine baleful eye by switching newspapersSubmitted by Prometheus 6 on January 6, 2007 - 11:43am.
on Race and Identity Looks like they're wrapping up the Being a Black Man series at the Washington Post. We got an article posed like 9:30 last night, and four scheduled for Sunday...three of which are retrospectives. Orlando is in the mix. He's kind of playing off the two non-retrospectives that sound kind of hopeful [P6: the previous word is subject to later editing], but all you really need to know about what he says is this:
Spare me. That's all that EVER strikes him. He walked through the door with his preconceptions. Yeah, I got more. I might write it up, since I intend to get to the others. But he's not saying anything he hasn't always said. Patterson has been saying
Patterson has been saying the same thing for the last 15 years. He is a conservative socialogist and thinking he's not from a America he can be "more honest about race" than blacks or whites and be 'fair and balalnced'. Dinesh D' Sousa said that same thing in his book "The End Of Racism' since he was a man of color (whatever that term means) people like him can cut through the morass of the black- white dictum. Patterson's socialogy is not about truth or soloutions but a politcal point, Afro- Americans aren't human beings but expirements (he thinks inner city culture hasn't created anything) for his centrist- conservative poitics. I am to a point where 'racial middleman' like Ogbu, Patterson and immirgrants who want to comment on the race problem in this country are outsiders who are coming from their value system not a knowledge and history of this country's racial and class dynamics which are entwined.
login or register to post comments
I think Patterson would claim Paul Cuffee as proof the impact of racism is minimal at best.
Let's see if I can give Patterson and others of his ilk a "good" victim scenario. In light of the Sean Bell murder and the wounding of his friends: two years ago or so, a young Black Brooklyn teenager (Stansbury) was gunned down like a dog on the roof of his building by one of New York's finest for simply opening the door to the roof. The perp, the cop, was recently given a 30 day suspension for this disgusting murder. For this boy and his family, are they "worthy" victims of racist policing? And as far as Patterson's Jamaica is concerned, it now six days into the new year and on this island of 2.4 million, 26 murders as of yesterday and police officials expect more violence in the upcoming elections. I like to see his paternalistic ill-informed take on his homeland, and the many pathlogies on daily display there.I personally don't think its all politics at work here. Most of these guys are other than their academic payrolls as is often the case, therefore, they are serving their masters agenda or walking orders.
How about that? You mighta started some shit right there... Yeah. Let me be clear. Even though I'm not Jamaican I luv the island and the people there. But I also understand the peculiarites of governing in light of the power relations of larger and small nations, especially those governed by Blacks, back then in the days of hell, and now, that would lead to such social pathologies. knowing these histric circumstances and today's polity precludes me from speaking disparagingly of the the people in the islands and elsewhere for that matter. But it seems folks like Patterson and his ilk seem to think these things occur in a effing vacuum. In short, they have what I would classify as willful ignorance. It's outrageous! Finally, as exhibit and case in point number one, witness the invaluable work of Professors Clayton and Byrd of Harvard Medical School. They have written two volumes of books that details the extent of racist practices in the American health care and its deastating impact on American Blacks to this very day. Moreover, the congressionally mandated "Institute of Medicine" produced a report over 2 years ago detailing the tragic extent of racist medical practices in American medicine and its tragic impact on Black Americans to this very day. Are we supposed to pretend it's not hurtful and life shortening to our people as the "victims" of such devilish deeds?
Of course not. It's going to take me a minute to process this. It would be difficult to use Jamaican crime statistics to shut up certain Jamaican ex-patriots without smacking the rest of them the way we get smacked. I don't want to do that. I agree. I mean using the crime profile was just one example. Also, I don't think these folks are 'true' ex-patriots in a real sense because they do display a real caring for their homeland as his tourism piece in the NYT this week suggest. But rather these folks have a kind of distain, or hatred, or jealousy for us. I've seem it at work personally and professionally. They know that the lives most folks in their own homelands are a kind of dehumanzied hands-off colonialism of sorts, that is akin to that of the 1800s and twentieth century, that was manifested until the civil rights movement of the 50s in this nation. So to them, it seems to me, what we have, and what they have, are like night and day. Their struggle, therefore, is to live as humans. Our struggle has evolved to be not just live or be human, but to be treated as 'full' citizens with all of the rights and priviledges accorded therein. Two wholely diffferent scenarios.
So maybe they're trying to distinguish themselves from the "Left Behind" by ragging on the folks whose reputation most closely matches what they're trying to deny? Still not making me happy... Yeah. But their ragging is very general and not specific for one specific group in the Black American community. Note one of his pieces in the Times this week. He was, seemingly, upset because of the failure of some upper echelon Blacks to unsegregate themselves. That is, in other words, his answer for the continued white racism we experience is to place the burden of ameliorating it, continued racism, is for middle and upper class Blacks to inculcate themselves into white enviorns such as suburbs and other cultural endeavers. That, obviously, something, therefore, must be wrong with these negroes, in their refusal to, literally, submit to having cut off their faces to spite their noses, because of their, this specific group of Blacks' refusal to live in, in effect, hostile enviorns, where we are unduly scrutinized, unjustly vilified and otherwise jiggerbooized. And even in tomorrow's Wash Post he keeps harping on the notion that some professional Blacks are keenly aware of their precarious socioeconomic positions because of their race or skin color, and therefore, live accordingly so as to protect their backsides and not get too infatuated with their otherness existence. Huh! We may be crazy, but we ain't stupid!
You gave it up. Then what you are saying is that Jamaican Immirgrants and Afro- Americans have different agendas politically and socially. My Problem with people like Patterson is they wax poetic about their homeland, but if you bring up issues related to their countries while they are criticizing Black American morality watch the anger and borderline wanting to fight you then the tears because you "played" the immirgrant card". They will do what whites do when cornered on their "phony morality", invoke MLK's name about we are all brothas and sistas of the diasporia. After I bring up 2 minutes ago you just called my people a. Immoral b. underachieveing c. inferior to your people
Patterson and others are being phony in their studies and think that if Afro- Americans are the real segregationalists. Black Americans of African descent are assimilated in this society, we have been here in various forms from 1619 to 1830's. So to say we are not assimilated in this society is an insult at best.
I have a problem with anyone who
Almost as patronizing as claiming a significant number of social scientists would say that. I'd bet he couldn't find five sociologists that would sign a statement saying that. Unless they get paid.
He says "the undeniable existence of racism notwithstanding"...but we do have to withstand it. It's a strong headwind. He struggles so hard to convince Black people not to resist racism. He is saying the there is a binary choice between anti-racist intent and personal development intent...an obvious And every so often someone say, oh he's not one of those conservatives, he's not denying racism and I'm like I don't care. I got a metaphor using racism, headwinds and the difference between airspeed and groundspeed half formed. But it's late. Just checked out the Dr. Patricia Williams' counter essay in the Wash Post. Almost brought tears to my eyes. It was considerably more insightful and useful for us. For example, among other things, she mentioned the unemployment rate of New York brothers, which hovers around 50%, it seems, forever. And don't even mentioned Black teen unemployment. BTW, just heard they are going to start an employment program for the young people in Iraq so that they can stop taking potshots and blowing them up. But here in the city? Forgetaboutit. If brothers want "real work" they can get a NYC education and then head upstate to one of the scores of prisons if you want work, at ~$1.00/day because the education was so dysfunctional. willfully so. This is a picture reflected wherever Blacks are a significant segment of the population. I mean you could go on forever. Which brings me back to the people of Patterson's ilk. These assholes will alwas have forum to slam us. Whites find them very useful and they obviously agree to be used. So it's willful. I'd like the enemies of people in their public forums to use persons such as ex-conservative Glenn Loury as a counter to these assholes, in addition to the great Patricia Williams. Damn! She clarified, in words, so many things for me this morning that has been on my mind forever, but was difficult for me to put into words.
|
|
This site best viewed with a jaundiced eye
|
||
