by JohnDenver » Sun 16 Aug 2009, 08:22:08
Let me first say, I'm not interested in racial slurs and so forth. I want this thread to be civil. Mods, I hope you'll help me out with that.
That said, a number of things have got me wondering about the racial situation in the US (and Europe).
1) Here's one. About a week ago, Pops started a thread called
Race Riots or Worse. In the thread itself, he just mentioned civil unrest, and steered clear of the race issue. So why use the title "Race Riots", Pops? Why is race on your mind? And why not talk about race, after naming a thread "Race Riots"? It's seems weird. It's like you want to talk about it, but not talk about it.
2) I read the thread
US Now a 3rd World Country, and I got a similar impression. Pretorian asks "What is a 3rd world country?" and nobody seems to state the obvious, i.e. that a 3rd world country (as the term is commonly understood) is a poorly managed country inhabited/run by black or brown people. In other words, "3rd world country" is a code word for race.
For instance, Detroit has been called a 3rd world city since the 1990s, and in fact some blacks in Detroit government have even worn that designation with pride:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')nder Coleman Young, Detroit's longtime and aggressive mayor who is forever excoriating "racism," Chafets says that "Detroit has become not merely an American city that happens to have a black majority, but a black metropolis, with all the trappings of a Third World city -- showcase projects, an external enemy and the cult of personality. Detroit has even developed a quasi-official ideology that regards the pre-Yound era as a time of white colonialism, ended by the 1967 insurrection and its aftermath.
"Not surprisingly, some of Coleman Young's closest associates identify readily with Africa and the Third World."
LinkSo why not just cut to the chase and talk frankly about race, instead of using the code word?
3) Last month, I returned to the USA after a long absence (I live in Japan), and a lot of things surprised me. For example, I was watching CNN one day, and there was a whole afternoon where every anchor, every story, every commercial was black. They were talking about the black president (Obama), Skip Gates, the black head of the Republican party, free medical care facilities for black men, blurbs for the special "Black in America 2" being repeated incessantly etc. etc.

I realize it's not like that all the time, and I'm not saying there's anything particularly wrong with it, but it was kind of jarring to see long swaths of time where CNN was essentially the Black News Network.
At the same time, I found that most of my relatives, and family friends, we're expressing almost rabid hate for President Obama. The degree of bile honestly shocked me. Not that I particularly support Obama, or even care that much (I don't live in the US). But I never really hated the man. He seemed to be a capable, intelligent and idealistic person, and I respected him as I would any other President. But that's not the reading I got from people around me in the US. A whole lot of people absolutely bitterly hate the man, and are looking to cut the man down by any means necessary. It's hard to avoid the impression that there's a racial element underlying the bitterness.
The more I thought about it, the more the pieces seemed to come together. Pops wondering (obliquely) about "Race Riots"; people saying oblique things like "it's not my America anymore" or "the US is a 3rd world country"; the rabid hate for Obama that seemed to go beyond just partisanship, the subtext of the healthcare protests (i.e, take the money from working white people to give health care to poor black/brown people and illegal immigrants).

I'm not sure what to make of all this, but there seems to be some kind of a backlash forming amongst white people in the US. Maybe you folks who live there can share your perspectives on this phenomenon. Similar things seem to be happening in Europe and the UK, for example the recent election of white nationalist candidates to the European Parliament.
Thoughts?