A World Without Black People

[Lizra]

We covered "Honky" on another thread, a racist expression I've heard my mom-in-law use is "Pickeninnie" SP???? I imagined it to mean the young girls who had to pick cotton all day long. Sometimes she'll just say "ninnies". I
I'm glad lots of this garbage is dying out with the World War two generation. Let's hope the "ghetto attitude" dies out soon too!

[Tessar]

The ghetto attitude will die the day people stop typing like illiterates.

I hant talkd 2 ne o u 4 a long tim.

Both getto and illiterate drive me nuts . And l33t talk is pretty bad too .

[Coney]

Originally posted by Tessar
The ghetto attitude will die the day people stop typing like illiterates.

I hant talkd 2 ne o u 4 a long tim.

Both getto and illiterate drive me nuts . And l33t talk is pretty bad too .

Ghetto and Geek (l33t) the only folks over 4yrs old that still make up their own languages

Still......if that's the way they want to live, who the hell are we to judge them for it?

[The Lady of Ithilien]

Lady of Ith... nice tale thanks for sharing

You're welcome, Afro-Elf. Thanks for bringing up the topic; it can be a difficult, but a necessary one. That's why I mentioned Eyes On The Prize, which had been published/aired around the time I went down to Alabama: just because something appears, in the major electronic and print media, to have been solved nicely doesn't mean it really has been.

Reminds me of another story (am in Bilbo Baggins mode here). Several years ago I went to a writing conference -- am not a writer but this was one of those "anybody can come" conferences to sort of get you in touch with your "inner writer." You get the idea. All the attendees I saw were generally suburban white women (self included). You could pick and choose which talks to go to, and I chose one on racism by a Ms. James (I think her first name was Pearl, but can't remember now, unfortunately); her husband had been a Tuskegee airman (not General James, though).

Everybody went into the conference in Eyes On the Prize mode, and she shocked everybody (except me -- had been to Alabama and New Mexico by then) by not hiding her anger and by "rubbing our faces" in racism through the use of poetry and pictures. In short, she exposed everyone to a facet of the heritage of black Americans it's easy for everybody but a black person (whose skin color leaves them no escape route) to overlook. It was a great talk, and a good way to really come face to face with your inner self, a necessary step to starting to write. However, the attendees were not pleased: what they really wanted was to feel good.

Things are a bit better now -- a newer generation is coming on board, and it is not scarred by the days of Jim Crow and the subsequent angry, confusing days of "civil rights" struggles (I will continue to use quotation marks in this context: real civil rights do not start or end with race). And there are many more "minorities" around these days -- pretty soon everybody will be a minority, and then maybe we can start making some real progress.

[afro-elf]

And there are many more "minorities" around these days -- pretty soon everybody will be a minority, and then maybe we can start making some real progress.

I was thinking of something I read or saw somewhere about how people that that with education things would get better about people living together of different backgrounds. In the Soviet era things there ethnically were pretty smooth. But with the break up the old divisions sprung to life and in group thinking has cause bitter pains.

In Africa tribalism is WORSE than extra-race division.

It seems that people will hate other with that circle growing or expanding depending of the circumstance.

ex. in grad school a lot of the asian hung out together because they had a large cultural comfort zone. BUT we were speaking about the "old" hostilities between korea and japan then things changed. Ond girl said she would have no problems killing a Japanese "friend" if problem between them started again.

[Spock]

I must jump in here and quote Whoopie Goldberg "I'm not a Black American, I'm an American".....when people can get over stigmatizing and fragmentizing and stop demanding that people recognize where they spawned from, then some measure of equality and humanity is possible.

[afro-elf]

when people can get over stigmatizing and fragmentizing and stop demanding that people recognize where they spawned from, then some measure of equality and humanity is possible.

It is a momumentous day. We are in complete concordance.

[The Lady of Ithilien]

Yippee! Congratulations, Spock and Afro-Elf

It seems that people will hate other with that circle growing or expanding depending of the circumstance.

"INJUSTICE, n. A burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back." -- Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary

So many of us, self included, need to look a bit more frequently and closely at what we're carrying and handing out, and to quit weighing the load upon our backs out to umpteen decimal spaces.

[afro-elf]

Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary

great little book

[The Lady of Ithilien]

Yes it is. Bierce had a way of getting to the heart of the matter. His definition of Afro-American, of course, cannot be spoken out loud today because of his use of the "N" word, but I wonder how many, of all skin colors, still hold there is truth in the general thought behind it. A good example of how politics can be no answer at all: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Hence, the importance of books like Dr. Butler's about the long history of American entrepreneurship and a list, such as this one, of inventions by black people. After all, copyright and patent are specifically mentioned in the US Constitution: what a good way to confirm one's American citizenship.

As the US Attorney General who denied one to Jefferson Davis's slave must have known full well.

[afro-elf]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2585553.stm