Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

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mockbee
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Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#1 Post by mockbee » Thu Aug 13, 2015 1:15 pm

In Her Own Words: The Political Beliefs of the Protester Who Interrupted Bernie Sanders
by Eli Sanders • Aug 11, 2015 at 5:18 pm

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Marissa Johnson, left, on Saturday at the Bernie Sanders rally in Westlake Plaza. Yesterday, Johnson spoke to the podcast This Week in Blackness about her motivations and political beliefs.


The roar of internet response to what happened in Seattle on Saturday surprised even one of the activists behind the action. But in retrospect, it makes some sense. On that stage in Westlake Plaza, some of the most emotional issues of the moment collided: race, class, age, opportunity, privilege.

Two black women who said they were representing the Seattle Black Lives Matter movement interrupted a rally that had been planned by a multicultural coalition that wanted to celebrate Social Security and Medicare. The main speaker at that rally, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, was an older white man who, two weeks earlier, had tried to communicate his solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in a speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and whose campaign had been working on (but had not yet released) a racial justice platform. Sanders says he will fight harder against racism than any other candidate. One of the protesters who interrupted him, Marissa Johnson, says: "If he's our best option then I'm burning this down."

The crowd at the rally was largely white and thought it had come to cheer a surging Socialist candidate as well as important social programs that keep millions of Americans out of poverty. When the rally narrative they expected was interrupted, the response by some in the crowd of thousands turned ugly. When that happened, Marissa Johnson, one of the protesters, said the crowd had just proved its own racism.

The last person to speak at the rally before Sanders, Washington State Senator Pramila Jayapal, has already, and with great multidirectional empathy, outlined what she feels may be among the roots of what happened in Seattle on Saturday. The "anger and rage that we saw erupt," Jayapal wrote, is "not the problem." Rather, she wrote, "it's a symptom of the disease of unacknowledged and un-acted upon racism."

Yesterday, in an interview with the This Week in Blackness podcast, Marissa Johnson outlined, in her own words, what she was thinking and what she believes. Johnson is a familiar face in the local Black Lives Matter movement and has also expressed policy opinions at local protests stretching back many months. Her ideas are worth exploring.

Based on what she's said, it seems clear that her rally interruption did not originate only from the abstract realms of political theory. At the same time, it was a political action, taken at a political rally in a literal public square, and so the political thought involved seems especially important to consider. It's the serious consideration of political ideas—the rejection of some, the acceptance of others, the evolution of still other ideas—that make a democracy (and movements within a democracy) work.

In that spirit, below are a number of things that Johnson—who so far has not responded to Stranger requests for interviews, though we hope she does at some point—has said while describing her policy ideas and politics.

According to the Seattle Times:

Johnson said she wanted to get rid of all police, whom she labeled abusive and authoritarian. And she called the discussion of body cameras a “farce.”

“I don’t need a home video of my oppression,” she said.

In conversation with This Week in Blackness, Johnson said:

Going after Sanders is super, super important because Sanders is supposed to be as far left and as progressive as we can possibly get, right? ... [In Seattle] we have hordes and hordes of white liberals and white progressives and yet we still have all the same racial problems. So for us, locally in our context, confronting Sanders was the equivalent of confronting the large, white, liberal Democrat, leftist contingent that we have here in Seattle who not only have not supported BLM in measurable ways but is often very harmful and is also upholding the white supremacist society that we live in locally... What we didn't know was that that idea—of the white liberal, the white moderate who's complicit in white supremacy—that that idea would resonate with people nationally and internationally and spur into this larger conversation.

On why she didn't call the Sanders campaign in advance and ask to be a part of the Westlake event:

Part of it comes out of my personal politics, and out of BLM politics. Everybody keeps saying that black people need to be respectable, that they need to ask permission, that they need to work with the timetable that's been given to them. And I absolutely just rebuke and deny all of that... The un-respectability, and the tactic, the way we went about it—every single part of it was very intentional. ... Black people don't need to be respectable, black people don't need to go on your timetable, black people don't need to reach out to Bernie Sanders. If anything, Bernie Sanders should have been courting—before he went to any other major city—he should have been courting BLM. And even at that point, I haven't seen any politician that's done anything for black lives. I don't have any need to meet with them, period. I haven't seen anybody really willing to step it up. So, there's a lot of ways that politicians are trying to get activists swept up in rhetoric, and sitting around the table, sitting around the table to do nothing but repress movements, and so the work that I do in particular is agitational work. Is agitating the political scene, so that people are having these conversations and politicians are forced to do their own work, and do their own reforms, because of work that I've done on the ground.

What about the argument that her tactics are hurting her own cause?

I don't give a fuck about the white gaze. I'm just in another world.

Is she a Christian fundamentalist? A Sarah Palin supporter?

I do need to address that. That's actually really important for me to address, because part of that is true. My parents are both Tea Partiers. I'm mixed. My mom's white and my dad's black. And they're both big Tea Partiers and that's how I was raised. Clearly I'm not—that's not where I am because people leave high school and they go to college and they, like, become an adult and they change their mind... I'm 24... But I do want to say I am a very devout Evangelical Christian... And people who know me locally and nationally in my organizing work know that that is why I do what I do. And so yes, I did run up there and confront Bernie Sanders because of my religious convictions, absolutely. Are they right-wing religious? No. But they're religious in the fact that my religion says you lay down your life for other people and the most marginalized, and so that's what I do. So I guess I am a Christian extremist.

On calling the crowd at the rally racist:

I would say that anybody who hears me say that, and thinks about their feelings first, is a white supremacist.

Does she hate white people?

Even if I did hate white people, I don't have the political or social power to oppress white people. And it's verifiably false [that I hate white people]. So flip that. The question is actually, Do you love black people? To the extent that you are literally willing to sacrifice your life. Are you on some Underground Railroad type stuff, or are you not? Because that's the tip I'm on. So I think framing is really important.

On her theory of politics:


I don't have faith in politicians. I don't have faith in the electoral process. It's well documented that that doesn't work for us. No matter who you are. So my gaze is not toward politicians and getting them to do something in particular. I think they will change what they do based off of what I do, but that's not my center. My center is using electoral politics as a platform but also agitating so much that people continue to question the system they're in as they're doing it, and that we start to dismantle it. Because I refuse to believe that the system that we're in is the only option that we have. And so we hear people saying—Bernie supporters—"Well, he's your best option." It's like, If he's our best option then I'm burning this down. I think it's literally blowing up—this is why the respectability thing is so important—is that you blow it up so big, and so unrespectably, that you can show people the possibilities outside of the system that they're stuck in. And so that's why I do agitation work.

So I'm not for any politician. But I'm definitely for anything that pulls people further left, anything that gets people asking more questions, and gets us closer to actually dismantling the system that has never, ever, ever, ever done anything for black people and never will. So I'm really trying to see my people get free by any means possible.

On how she's feeling in the wake of the rally interruption and the intense reaction:


I'm great. I feel good. I helped launch a national conversation around race and electoral politics and respectability that still going strong two days later. I could not be better.


This may be the most politically illuminating Augusts prior to an election I have ever seen. :noclue:


I don't agree with shoving an old man to make a point but I find the response from the crowd and general "liberal" public very illuminating. I am from the super liberal NW and have always felt this disconnect that has been revealed dealing with racial issues. I am curious to see where this goes, and right now would have to subscribe to the views that this fellow outlines below.
@11 says: "Will nobody address the issue of consent?"

Your statement reveals exactly the hypocrisy of your privilege. Evidently it has escaped you that the core problem of structural racism is that it affects people who have not given their consent. Their whole lives. And the fact that you are OUTRAGED by a single event that didn't go the way that you wanted it to, that made you feel put out, is EXACTLY how victims of structural racism feel every single day of their lives. Can you put on your empathy hat for a minute and really think about that? Think about how desperately hopeless, how beat down, how disenfranchised you would feel when something like this happens to you every day of your life? I admit that when I saw it happen, I, too, was pissed off. It took me at least a day to realize that my anger and resentment of the 'interruption' were, in the grand scheme of things, a speck of sand compared to how this country has treated black people for over 200 years. This is not white guilt. This is a realization that I was not listening, and was not thinking about others as much as I was thinking about myself.

Get a grip and come to terms with the fact that if you believe that everyone must always be respectful of your time and your feelings, then you are truly the shiniest example of privilege in this city. Because most people don't. They can't even imagine what that would actually feel like if everyone actually was respectful of their time and their feelings. And that is fucking sad.

Jerimiah

I agree with you, but let's not forget that these people are supporting sanders because he is, in part, trying to solve issues of income inequality (which is heavily correlated with racial inequality). So I wouldn't say the audience didn't care about others. They were there because they DO care about others.

PistolAnnie on August 11, 2015 at 8:07 PM ·

You're right, they were there because they care. Which is why the crowd and Bernie were the perfect targets to be challenged to do even better. The gal manufactured a 'teachable moment'. One that many of us needed, even though we didn't even know it, and even if we might resent her for it. It was exceptionally brave, although when you are that desperate to incite change, it probably didn't feel to her like she was being brave - she was just doing what she thought needed doing. And Bernie impressed the hell out of me because he took her seriously, and obviously gave some real thought to what he should do about it - both in the moment, and in the days after.
Jerimiah on August 11, 2015 at 8:19 PM

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#2 Post by JOEinPHX » Thu Aug 13, 2015 4:01 pm

That woman is a retard.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#3 Post by mockbee » Thu Aug 13, 2015 5:23 pm

Her means might be idiotic, and I don't know what she really believes or what drives her and I probably don't agree with a lot of it............... but she is very effective. :noclue:

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#4 Post by blackcoffee » Thu Aug 13, 2015 7:58 pm

I shared this on Facebook today. I'm amazed by the backlash she received. At the core, she's attempting to raise awareness of the disparity between black lives in America and white lives in America. Nearly daily we hear about an injustice done to a black person in the US. Yes, there are injustices done to white people that we might not hear about, but most reasonable people will recognize how insane the disparity is. It's 2015.

Frankly, I think white America should be thankful they're not blowing shit up. If I was smack dab in the middle of a community that was systematically marginalized and/or targeted I'd certainly want to be blowing shit up.

I keep thinking about the Vietnam War Protests. If I understand it correctly, the protests, and the fervor only kicked into high gear when the draft began and suddenly middle class white men were at risk of having to go to war. Before that it was men of color and poorer whites. Same is happening in Seattle. If my white mostly liberal/progressive neighbors were subject to what black communities were subject to, they'd be out in full force. So, the woman attempted to challenge Sanders to step up his game. He needed to. Politicians can't utter, "all lives matter" when attempting to speak to/about the black lives matter. That's missing the point entirely.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#5 Post by mockbee » Fri Aug 14, 2015 3:52 pm

blackcoffee wrote:................ If my white mostly liberal/progressive neighbors were subject to what black communities were subject to, they'd be out in full force. So, the woman attempted to challenge Sanders to step up his game. He needed to. Politicians can't utter, "all lives matter" when attempting to speak to/about the black lives matter. That's missing the point entirely.
Exactly. When a house is on fire, no one says "All houses are important!" when the firetruck shows up. Or at a breast cancer run, who exclaims, BUT ALL CANCERS ARE WORTHY OF A RUN!!! It's idiotic when people say "All Lives Mattter".... :hs:

I think what is so, so illuminating is how pissed off people got, way after the fact. Telling her and the BLM movement how wrong and stupid they were, and giving them pointers on how to "protest" correctly and advance their movement. Well........sorry to break it to them......but, progressives don't hold a monopoly on real change. And what right do they have to lecture a person/group about their oppression....:noclue:

One might then go, well "What right did she have to interrupt?!" Well, she didn't have a "right"...but she did it anyways....and that's the point!

I like this part of someones response:
..........Get a grip and come to terms with the fact that if you believe that everyone must always be respectful of your time and your feelings, then you are truly the shiniest example of privilege in this city. Because most people don't. They can't even imagine what that would actually feel like if everyone actually was respectful of their time and their feelings. And that is fucking sad.
Was she rude? Absolutely.

Was she a bitch? Well, I wouldn't disagree with that, but it's in my nature not to go around spouting that kind of language to people.

Did she do harm to the BLM movement and general relations between Progressives and minority groups? I would say quite the opposite if everyone sees this as a teachable moment, I am quite saddened when I see evidence otherwise.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#6 Post by mockbee » Mon Aug 17, 2015 8:50 am

Activists ‘Feel the Bern?’
By
Charles M. Blow
AUG. 17, 2015


Bernie Sanders is an unlikely phenomenon.

He is attracting massive crowds. His message of economic populism has infused his insurgent candidacy with an Obama-like level of electoral enthusiasm, only his base isn’t as broad (As CNN put it last month: “A June CNN/ORC poll showed just 2 percent of black Democrats supporting Sanders, a figure that has remained unchanged since February. Among nonwhite voters overall, Sanders polls at 9 percent, compared to Hillary Clinton’s 61 percent.”)

Still, Sanders’ candidacy has become something of a movement. But two times in recent weeks, Sanders’ appearances at events have been disrupted by supporters of another movement: Black Lives Matter.

The most recent disruption came at an event in Seattle last weekend, where two female Black Lives Matter supporters prevented Sanders from speaking. Sanders has responded well to the most recent disruption, issuing a thorough and utterly impressive “Racial Justice” agenda that liberally quotes from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and even includes the line: “We need a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter, and racism cannot be accepted in a civilized country.” Further reiterating his commitment, he said at a rally in Los Angeles, “There is no president that will fight harder to end institutional racism.”
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But, not all of Sanders’ supporters could muster his magnanimity. Some were outraged. The protesters were seen as disrespectful and indecorous. Sanders was not only seen as a bad target, he was one of the worst targets because he has a long history of civil rights activism, including participating in the 1963 March on Washington and hearing the King himself.

Some irritation was understandable. But some went too far, repaying what they saw as rudeness with what I saw as crudeness. The conspiracy theories began to swirl and the invectives — including some racist and sexist ones — began to flow. It exposed something that isn’t discussed nearly enough: a racial friction on the left.

There were sweeping condemnations of the Black Lives Matter movement itself, a sense that benevolence had been rebuffed, that allies had been alienated. Some people sympathetic to the protesters responded by making a King reference of their own, pointing to this passage from his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”:

“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

It all quickly became an arms race of overheated accusations.

But, I must say that I, too, found some of the responses to the protesters troubling.

First, some people said that the disruption had caused the movement to lose their support. This seemed strange and extreme to me. How fragile must your support for black lives have been if a rally’s disruption caused it to crumble?

Secondly, centering one’s disapproval of the protesters on white allegiance, rather than black agency, seems to me a kind of cultural narcissism.

The movement, to my mind, isn’t a plea for pity, or appeal to comity, but an exercise in personal and collective advocacy by an oppressed people.

It says to America: You will not dictate the parameters of my expression; you will not assign the grammar of my pain; you will not tell me how I should feel. For these young activists, it’s not ideological but existential; it’s not about a political field but a battlefield, one from which they cannot escape, one on which their very bodies are marked and threatened with destruction.

This is not an esoteric, intellectual debate about best practices, but quite literally a flesh and blood struggle for equal access to liberty and longevity.

In this movement exists a kind of urgency that only proximity to terror can produce, and yes, that urgency can be extreme and discomforting, because it must be. The sedative of all normalcies and niceties are the enemies so long as lives are in danger. The movement is revolutionary out of necessity. Some people operating under those auspices will inevitably employ tactics and select targets with which you disagree. That too is understandable.

But, those who object must be careful not to become “more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”

Sometimes I find Charles Blow to be a little melodramatic, but this piece he hits spot on.



95% of the "progressives", likely white, comments following on the NYTimes adamantly disagree with him, mirroring the following........



Dennis Maryland 1 minute ago

I am sympathetic to both Bernie Sanders as a candidate for President and the Black Lives Matter movement. When I saw that Charles Blow had written a column about the controversy between the candidate and the movement, my first thought was "Good! Someone I know and trust is going to explain what's going on, and perhaps, properly lay blame on those individuals where blame belongs." Sadly, I am mistaken. I sense no genuine progress on explaining what has happened.

Blow references only one participant in the entire series of episodes when he writes "Sanders has responded well to the most recent disruption ..." but follows that up with generalizations that only confuse: "not all of Sanders’ supporters could muster his magnanimity" and " some went too far, repaying what they saw as rudeness with what I saw as crudeness." And finally: "There were sweeping condemnations of the Black Lives Matter movement itself ... ." No names, but a fair amount of anonymous finger pointing.

I had hoped this column would help me get beyond the only significant fact I've been able to uncover so far: Thousands of people attempting to hear Bernie Sanders speak in public, unable to do so because of a few uninvited speakers wanted their message to drown out the candidate. While I sympathize with the Black Lives Matter movement, I doubt these tactics will garner much support from the people they are directed at.



Dave K Cleveland, OH 2 minutes ago

Larry Wilmore explained it perfectly: "Black lives matter, but black manners matter as well!" Reserve your rudeness for people who don't support what you stand for, please, or this will rapidly degenerate into the Judean People's Front versus the People's Front of Judea versus the Popular Front of Judea ("He's over there").

The whole thing makes about as much sense as attacking Al Gore for not caring enough about the environment.


John Burke NYC 4 minutes ago

Wow, Blow is going over the top in defense of what amounts to political hoodlumism -- reminiscent of a time when Communist thugs used to break up Socialist meetings in NYC. These two self-appointed BLM "activists" sought to shut Bernie Sanders up. It's that simple, Blow, and their existential anxieties do not even come into it.

Not incidentally, the people King referred to as "white moderates" were NOT the 1964 equivalents of today's pro-Sanders progressives. He was referring to supposedly moderate political leaders, such as those in Congress, who urged the movement to "go slow." King keenly understood the difference between them and those thousands of whites who, like Bernie Sanders, were staunch allies in the struggle.



Wynterstail WNY 13 minutes ago

Where was the ask? In 30 years of advocacy work, one of the first things you learn is, to formulate your "ask." There did not appear to be any thought-out request in this nonsensical grandstanding attempt. People do get a little weary of being forced to treat this particular issue, and this alone, as if common sense and normal consideration of others should justifiably be suspended in the need to further the blaming game, while Democrats, liberals, progressives, et al dissect and split hairs over who really does harbor racist ideas.




Meanwhile..............




Image



Go fucking figure.................. :balls:


I suspected but really didn't realize how dense my "group" really is.......:no:

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#7 Post by mockbee » Mon Aug 17, 2015 9:14 am

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/17/opini ... eft-region

Okay.......looks more like 98-99% of comments on the article are completely oblivious........ :no: :hs:


One afternoon was ruined for the white progressives. One afternoon RUINED! :mad:

Essentially saying........ that's it, no more, or less, support for you 'people', you've lost credibility........ :essence:


When Dylan Roof killed nine upstanding citizens in a church, he was forgiven by many in the congregation and community.

I'm not saying that reaction is required or appropriate, but the disparity of the events and of the reactions is deafening...... :noclue:

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#8 Post by Angry Canine » Wed Aug 19, 2015 4:47 am

The inertia retained from slavery is like trying to stop continental drift. And look at how that goes. Even with the mass of Asia against it, the Indian subcontinent is still pushing up the Himalayas with its inertia.

I used to think this might be worked out by the time Gen Xers were becoming great grandparents, but now I think it will take centuries. It will take interracial breeding until there aren't many people that are of distinguishably different race. And I expect there will still be people that consider any distinct racial identity as superiority.

This is the sort of thing that makes me comfortable with my impending exit, and glad that I didn't create any children to leave in this mess of a world.

As for the people that respond that "all lives matter" to "black lives matter" they are either missing or actively suppressing the point. It's not a call to "kill whitey" it's an absolutely legitimate gripe about how the whole police and criminal justice system treat them dramatically more harshly.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#9 Post by Hype » Wed Aug 19, 2015 12:42 pm

I used to think this might be worked out by the time Gen Xers were becoming great grandparents, but now I think it will take centuries. It will take interracial breeding until there aren't many people that are of distinguishably different race. And I expect there will still be people that consider any distinct racial identity as superiority.
This is a problematic view for a bunch of reasons. One big reason: there's a pretty strong objection to this from black folk who see this as nothing more than a way of "lightening" black people, and an attack on black culture, which has had to deal with European beauty standards and so on... And you can see how destructive it is if you look at the phenomenon of black women seeking out white men for stable relationships -- presumably because of the assumption that black men are more likely to be lower-income earners, more likely to be jailed, and more likely to cheat, leave, etc. All things that might be statistically true but the causes of which can't plausibly be racial in origin, but rather historical and racist. So there's been some backlash to say that black people should try to have children with, and pursue relationships with, black people rather than whites, not out of hatred but out of a desire to avoid the mistaken view that racial mixing (with white skinned people) is the solution to making lives easier for minorities.

I don't think the view is quite right, since it discounts the agency of particular black people (to choose to have children with whomever they find themselves in loving stable relationships with), but I can see why some people are pushing for it (or against the idea that "marrying white" is a solution to "black" problems).

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#10 Post by mockbee » Wed Aug 19, 2015 2:04 pm

Sean
Greenwich, Connecticut 4 hours ago

NYT reporter Maggie Haberman writes, "For any white Democrat, the Black Lives Matter movement poses problems..."

Really? Why? Black lives do matter, and the Democratic Party is the one major party in this country that has championed civil rights. This is the party to which most African-Americans belong. It was the Democratic Party that championed the Civil Rights Act and The Voting Rights Act, even knowing that White southerners would decamp to the Republicans.

And to suggest that Ms. Clinton and former president Bill Clinton would be "stung by allegations of racism" is absurd. The Clintons are some of the most forthright leaders on civil rights in this country.
P.S.
Portland Oregon 4 hours ago
This is the intelligent, articulate leader that we need! It was the first honest and frank discussion about what it takes to move social issues from ideas or feeling of helplessness to movements that empower. She was respectful but would not be intimidated. She did not make excuses, she just laid it all out. Go girl!
NancyC
Long Island, NY 4 hours ago
Hillary Clinton showed more "cobbler's awls" (as the Cockney rhyming slang would call them) than Bernie Sanders. At least she was willing to stand and confront the BLM activists, who couldn't even answer her question about what actions they wanted the government and society to take. It's starting to look like their only goals are to offend people and get whites to feel bad about themselves. (Pointless, since liberals already do, and conservatives never will.) It's going to take them a while to learn that such tactics never actually succeed in improving the lives of anyone, black or white.
:banghead:



"Wah?....Huh?....Blacks aren't satisfied with all the 'progress' we've made in the last 50 years...? Oh, they're just being silly.......Hillary has this covered and then some.....nothing to worry about, nothing to see here......."

:neutral:


I will give Hillary credit for taking the time to talk, but to turn it back around and say - "I hear you but.....HEY! Fix it yourself if you want something fixed!".....hmmmmmmm.

Also, why can't all discussions be so frank....... I think we could go a lot farther in less time than this crotchety campaigning system we have now with about a bazillion to many dollars wrapped up in it.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#11 Post by Angry Canine » Wed Aug 19, 2015 2:11 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote: This is a problematic view for a bunch of reasons. One big reason: there's a pretty strong objection to this from black folk who see this as nothing more than a way of "lightening" black people, and an attack on black culture, which has had to deal with European beauty standards and so on... And you can see how destructive it is if you look at the phenomenon of black women seeking out white men for stable relationships -- presumably because of the assumption that black men are more likely to be lower-income earners, more likely to be jailed, and more likely to cheat, leave, etc. All things that might be statistically true but the causes of which can't plausibly be racial in origin, but rather historical and racist. So there's been some backlash to say that black people should try to have children with, and pursue relationships with, black people rather than whites, not out of hatred but out of a desire to avoid the mistaken view that racial mixing (with white skinned people) is the solution to making lives easier for minorities.

I don't think the view is quite right, since it discounts the agency of particular black people (to choose to have children with whomever they find themselves in loving stable relationships with), but I can see why some people are pushing for it (or against the idea that "marrying white" is a solution to "black" problems).

I'm sure there were isolationist Neanderthals as well. But where are they now? They're embedded in small parts of DNA that carry on among the current population. Racial differences today are far narrower than the differences with Neanderthals was.

It's evolution, and it doesn't much care about pockets of resistance. The different races are a result of millennia of isolation and inbreeding. We're only in the first few decades of a truly global society, nature will find its equilibrium, regardless of what "purists" of any race want, and this goes far beyond the black / white social injustices of the US. The only thing that will stop it is collapse of modern civilization, and a return to isolated pockets of inbreeding people. But it doesn't happen within a single human lifespan...we won't get to see the results.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#12 Post by Hype » Wed Aug 19, 2015 2:37 pm

That's a really weird way of thinking about how evolution works. Generally, evolution doesn't operate just through breeding out differences -- this isn't obviously beneficial, nor is the existence of variation within a species in the few alleles to which race has any bearing obviously evolutionarily maladaptive (like... almost none... melatonin production, some slightly different resistances to disease from historic exposure, eyelid-folds, hair types... not much else).

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#13 Post by Angry Canine » Wed Aug 19, 2015 4:23 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote:That's a really weird way of thinking about how evolution works. Generally, evolution doesn't operate just through breeding out differences -- this isn't obviously beneficial, nor is the existence of variation within a species in the few alleles to which race has any bearing obviously evolutionarily maladaptive (like... almost none... melatonin production, some slightly different resistances to disease from historic exposure, eyelid-folds, hair types... not much else).
But you generally think of evolution as adapting to different environments in isolation, but this is the opposite case of long separated variants coming together in a new environment. Traits that apply to success in the combined environment will flourish, while both irrelevant traits allowed to continue in isolation, and specialized meaningful ones, that applied in the isolated environment, but don't in the new, will just sort of get smoothed out over countless generations. In this respect humans are no different than any other animal. The wild card is the societal desires to maintain the isolated variant that they somehow perceive as "superior." The sort of thing that results in nationalism, racism, and genocide.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#14 Post by Hype » Wed Aug 19, 2015 5:13 pm

Angry Canine wrote:
Adurentibus Spina wrote:That's a really weird way of thinking about how evolution works. Generally, evolution doesn't operate just through breeding out differences -- this isn't obviously beneficial, nor is the existence of variation within a species in the few alleles to which race has any bearing obviously evolutionarily maladaptive (like... almost none... melatonin production, some slightly different resistances to disease from historic exposure, eyelid-folds, hair types... not much else).
But you generally think of evolution as adapting to different environments in isolation, but this is the opposite case of long separated variants coming together in a new environment. Traits that apply to success in the combined environment will flourish, while both irrelevant traits allowed to continue in isolation, and specialized meaningful ones, that applied in the isolated environment, but don't in the new, will just sort of get smoothed out over countless generations. In this respect humans are no different than any other animal. The wild card is the societal desires to maintain the isolated variant that they somehow perceive as "superior." The sort of thing that results in nationalism, racism, and genocide.
I don't really understand what you're talking about wrt evolution. I don't think evolution has anything to do with this. Most of what's associated with race isn't directly genetic -- as I said, there are like... five... genes... that are associated with visible phenotypic racial differences, and this is far less than the number of genes involved in visible phenotypic differences between members within any given race. The fact that increased melatonin production is adaptive near the equator and certain other traits are adaptive near the poles doesn't imply anything about "race mixing", since presumably you don't just mean people looking alike, but also the blurring of ethnic and cultural boundaries that also separate people. But then those are stark within races to begin with: think the difference between, say, Slavs, Scots, and South Africans.

True, historically 'slavs' were excluded from straightforward inclusion in Europe (at least, Western Europe), despite the Caucasus being literally where Slavs are from... But the point is that cultural and ethnic differences, nationalisms and hatreds, don't always track racial lines.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#15 Post by Angry Canine » Wed Aug 19, 2015 10:16 pm

I don't think melanin levels are as simple as equatorial proximity. Inuits and Eskimos have a pretty dark complexion, and they had thousands of years in a less equatorial climate than even Nordic peoples, much less people from the rest of Europe.

As for ethnic and cultural boundaries, television, air travel, and the internet, are already working hard to knock those down.

We're kind of straying from the original subject, but my point was that we're only a century and a half past full on racially based slavery in the US, and if the damage done by that is ever going to heal it is going to take more than a couple centuries. Especially with such large segments on both sides actively working against it. Whites that want to halt/reverse progress, and blacks that seek "revenge." There's no revenge to be had. The perpetrators of the atrocities are a hundred years or more dead. But they've left all of us, black and white, with an unfathomable mess. And blacks still have the shit end of the stick in the aftermath.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#16 Post by Hype » Thu Aug 20, 2015 6:16 am

Angry Canine wrote:I don't think melanin levels are as simple as equatorial proximity. Inuits and Eskimos have a pretty dark complexion, and they had thousands of years in a less equatorial climate than even Nordic peoples, much less people from the rest of Europe.
One proposed answer to this is that the Inuit, unlike the Nordic peoples, were not naturally selected by inability or ability to produce vitamin D from UV light because they quickly learned to attain all the vitamin D they need from diet. Thus, there was no selection pressure on melanin production, and it didn't disappear. (Side note: I've just noticed I wrote 'melatonin' above when I meant melanin... whoops.. :bday: )

It's important to remember that natural selection is almost entirely about death. Adaptations are adaptive ("selected for") just in case that organism is able to breed (or help close relatives breed -- see: homosexuality and altruistic behaviour) ; selection is rarely a matter of strictly positive benefits, but rather of getting an advantage over others in the reproduction game, and those others, regardless of what genes they have, will only survive in kind if they can reproduce. So basically the major mechanism of natural selection is death (there are other mechanisms but they aren't as strong). Skin colour is selected for just in case those without it die before having children (or have less children over time). Racial mixing doesn't require that those who don't mix will necessarily have a disadvantage. In fact, you could argue that birth rates suggest the opposite.
As for ethnic and cultural boundaries, television, air travel, and the internet, are already working hard to knock those down.
They probably said this about radio and newspapers before World War II...
We're kind of straying from the original subject, but my point was that we're only a century and a half past full on racially based slavery in the US, and if the damage done by that is ever going to heal it is going to take more than a couple centuries. Especially with such large segments on both sides actively working against it. Whites that want to halt/reverse progress, and blacks that seek "revenge." There's no revenge to be had. The perpetrators of the atrocities are a hundred years or more dead. But they've left all of us, black and white, with an unfathomable mess. And blacks still have the shit end of the stick in the aftermath.
This I agree with entirely.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#17 Post by Angry Canine » Thu Aug 20, 2015 5:47 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
Angry Canine wrote:As for ethnic and cultural boundaries, television, air travel, and the internet, are already working hard to knock those down.
They probably said this about radio and newspapers before World War II...
And they were right. But like genetics it's not a single human lifetime sort of change. It's accelerating. Big difference from news from the other side of world the next day, to ordinary people in real-time contact with others around the globe and accessing information, and entertainment from other parts of the world.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#18 Post by Hype » Thu Aug 20, 2015 7:22 pm

You know the Dutch in the 17th Century were in contact with Japan... right? Like... This isn't new. It's just faster. It doesn't necessarily change anything. :noclue:

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#19 Post by Angry Canine » Fri Aug 21, 2015 2:03 am

But more a matter of a few sailors, merchants, and heads of state were in far from real time contact, and trade. And most of the major civilizations had some contact and trade well before that. But that's a huge difference from ordinary people being able chat, play games, work together on art and music, and even visiting far away places on holiday. Less than 200 years ago a 50 mile trip over land was still a major undertaking for ordinary people, in most places.

For instance when I was about 20 here in Kentucky, me and two friends decided on the spur of the moment to go to Buffalo for wings. Now. As in idea to on the way in under an hour with no more planning than a styrofoam cooler of drinks, and a road atlas . 36 or so hours later we were in a bar listening to live jazz in Toronto. Go back 175 years and visiting Toronto from here as poor 20 year olds is the thing of unfulfilled lifelong dreams. If poor boys across the river from Cincinnati would have ever even heard of Totonto then.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#20 Post by Hype » Fri Aug 21, 2015 10:45 am

Angry Canine wrote:But more a matter of a few sailors, merchants, and heads of state were in far from real time contact, and trade. And most of the major civilizations had some contact and trade well before that. But that's a huge difference from ordinary people being able chat, play games, work together on art and music, and even visiting far away places on holiday. Less than 200 years ago a 50 mile trip over land was still a major undertaking for ordinary people, in most places.

For instance when I was about 20 here in Kentucky, me and two friends decided on the spur of the moment to go to Buffalo for wings. Now. As in idea to on the way in under an hour with no more planning than a styrofoam cooler of drinks, and a road atlas . 36 or so hours later we were in a bar listening to live jazz in Toronto. Go back 175 years and visiting Toronto from here as poor 20 year olds is the thing of unfulfilled lifelong dreams. If poor boys across the river from Cincinnati would have ever even heard of Totonto then.
I'm pretty sure the printing press and the development of vast sea trade (rather than the silk road) networks and commerce made it possible for a lot of people to know a lot about a lot of new places in the 17th century. I guess I should admit that I keep bringing up the 17th century (and especially the Netherlands) because that's my area of specialization -- I literally get paid to work on the history of ideas in this period, so it's something I can use off the top of my head, but it doesn't really matter what the exact details are since the general point is that it's way more difficult than one might think to try to make claims about what these kinds of advances actually do to the ways that people live and interact with each other. It's one thing to say that some new technology allows faster x or y, or more x or y; it's another thing entirely to say that precisely how that might change people's ways of thinking or dispositions or relationships with one another in substantive ways.

You're obviously not wrong that actual physical trips are faster now... but there's no obvious extrapolation for what speedier connections does for people, relationships, etc. There's really only conjecture based on broad assumptions, and I find that really uninteresting.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#21 Post by mockbee » Fri Aug 21, 2015 2:09 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
You're obviously not wrong that actual physical trips are faster now... but there's no obvious extrapolation for what speedier connections does for people, relationships, etc. There's really only conjecture based on broad assumptions, and I find that really uninteresting.
If you don't believe that speedier connections (& processes) necessarily equates to progress (or diminishes progress for that matter) Do you see that any other indicators (that have quantitatively changed over time) would point to any progress in human relations? What hope is there if "progress" does not equate to better situations? And progress seems to only mean, do things faster with more efficiency in our western sensibilities. It makes no difference ones political or cultural affiliations. We all use resources and all affiliate with certain clans and there is no indication that will ever change. Of course, we must always use resources, its the clan part that one might hope could be an outlier.

Evidence from liberals reactions to BLM seem to indicate to me that clans show no political, social or (of course) racial/ethnic biases.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#22 Post by Angry Canine » Fri Aug 21, 2015 2:40 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote:I'm pretty sure the printing press and the development of vast sea trade (rather than the silk road) networks and commerce made it possible for a lot of people to know a lot about a lot of new places in the 17th century. I guess I should admit that I keep bringing up the 17th century (and especially the Netherlands) because that's my area of specialization -- I literally get paid to work on the history of ideas in this period, so it's something I can use off the top of my head, but it doesn't really matter what the exact details are since the general point is that it's way more difficult than one might think to try to make claims about what these kinds of advances actually do to the ways that people live and interact with each other. It's one thing to say that some new technology allows faster x or y, or more x or y; it's another thing entirely to say that precisely how that might change people's ways of thinking or dispositions or relationships with one another in substantive ways.

You're obviously not wrong that actual physical trips are faster now... but there's no obvious extrapolation for what speedier connections does for people, relationships, etc. There's really only conjecture based on broad assumptions, and I find that really uninteresting.
Like I said, more than a human lifetime to pan out. We'll be dead for centuries before it plays out and proves right, or wrong. And while it may be conjecture, it's not wild unreasoned conjecture. How many people are growing up now with the two sides of the extended family in two vastly different cultures, and parts of the world, yet both very much in their life. That's both racial, and cultural blending. Even 100 years ago, such children would be effectively severed from one side of the family. Unless they were families of great wealth, with lives that allowed for frequent long ocean voyages. Among the more ordinary people, a mixed marriage would almost always have had family ties of an emigrant virtually severed before the parents of that child even met.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#23 Post by Hype » Fri Aug 21, 2015 2:43 pm

mockbee wrote:
Adurentibus Spina wrote:
You're obviously not wrong that actual physical trips are faster now... but there's no obvious extrapolation for what speedier connections does for people, relationships, etc. There's really only conjecture based on broad assumptions, and I find that really uninteresting.
If you don't believe that speedier connections (& processes) necessarily equates to progress (or diminishes progress for that matter) Do you see that any other indicators (that have quantitatively changed over time) would point to any progress in human relations? What hope is there if "progress" does not equate to better situations? And progress seems to only mean, do things faster with more efficiency in our western sensibilities. It makes no difference ones political or cultural affiliations. We all use resources and all affiliate with certain clans and there is no indication that will ever change. Of course, we must always use resources, its the clan part that one might hope could be an outlier.

Evidence from liberals reactions to BLM seem to indicate to me that clans show no political, social or (of course) racial/ethnic biases.
I think that some things have led to real differences in the way that people relate to one another and think about themselves. The medicalization of mental illness is one case that I think has led to some pretty profound progress (though slow and messy and not always helpful). You're right that there's sometimes a conflation of efficiency with rationality and progress (in fact, pretty much all modern economics thinks this and doesn't see a problem with it), but I think it's pretty clear that this doesn't say anything about how human beings actually change and progress and adapt to things. Targets seem to shift but the behaviours of groups seem pretty stable over time.

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#24 Post by farrellgirl99 » Sat Aug 22, 2015 3:16 pm

BLM launched a new website tonight with details on reforms they would like to see.

http://www.joincampaignzero.org/#vision

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/21/9188729/po ... paign-zero

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Re: Black Lives Matter/Liberal Agenda

#25 Post by mockbee » Sat Sep 12, 2015 3:46 pm

Bernie Sanders and the Black Vote

SEPT. 12, 2015

Charles M. Blow


COLUMBIA, S.C. — Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders spoke Saturday to a half empty gymnasium at Benedict College in South Carolina. The school is historically black, but the crowd appeared to be largely white.

This underscores the severe challenge facing the Sanders campaign: African-American voters have yet to fully connect to the man and the message.

An August Gallup Poll found that Hillary Clinton’s favorability among African-Americans was 80 percent while Sanders’ was only 23 percent. A full two-thirds of blacks were unfamiliar with Sanders.

This could pose a problem after the contests in overwhelmingly white Iowa and New Hampshire, where Sanders has surged to tie or best Clinton at this point, give way to contests in Southern states with much more sizable black populations.

South Carolina will be the first test. According to The New York Times, 55 percent of South Carolina Democratic primary voters were black in 2008.

Yet current polls show Hillary Clinton with a massive lead over Sanders in the state. And those polls show Vice President Joe Biden leading Sanders, even though Biden has yet to announce whether he’ll run.

That’s why it’s important not only for Sanders to spend more time in the state, but also why it is important for him to pick a venue like Benedict College.

But appearing at the college, a favorite speaking spot for Democratic primary candidates trying to boost their black vote in the state, is by no means a sure path to victory.

Bill Bradley spoke there in 2000 when running against Al Gore. Gore crushed Bradley with 92 percent of the caucus vote. Carol Moseley Braun announced her candidacy there in 2003 but had to withdraw before the primary in the state. Al Sharpton and Wesley Clark spoke at the school in 2004, and both lost the state. In 2008, Clinton visited the school the day before the primary. She only won one county in the state.

Sanders is hoping for better.

There is an earnest, if snappy, aura to Sanders that is laudable and refreshing. One doesn’t sense the stench of ambition or the revolting unctuousness of incessant calculation.

There is an idealistic crusader in the man, possibly to the point of being quixotic, but at least it doesn’t come off as having been corrupted by money or power or the God complex that so often attends those in pursuit of the seat behind the Resolute Desk.

Sanders’s message of revolutionary change to save a flailing middle class and challenge the sprawling influence of what he calls “the billionaire class” has struck a nerve with a fervid following.

I spoke with Senator Sanders by phone on Friday for nearly 30 minutes about his campaign’s need to reach more African-American voters, and I asked if he was worried about this need to broaden his appeal.

While he resisted the word “worried,” he did acknowledge that: “Clearly, if we are going to do well nationally, it’s absolutely imperative that we aggressively reach out and bring the African-American community and the Latino community into our campaign, and that is exactly what we’re working on right now.”

Sanders seemed to understand the challenge ahead of him. He has to win the African-Americans who supported Obama and do so against Clinton’s enormous name identification and the deep connections the Clinton machine has built in the state. And then there’s Biden.

But Sanders’s ability to win Obama’s supporters may have been made difficult by his associations. On Saturday, Sanders campaigned with Dr. Cornel West, who recently issued an endorsement of Sanders.

West’s critique of the president has been so blistering and unyielding — he has call Obama “counterfeit,” the “black face of the American empire,” a verb-ed neologism of the n-word — that it has bordered on petulance and self-parody.

Sanders must bank on his strongest suit: policies. In June, his campaign issued a press release entitled “Sanders’ Agenda for America Helps Minorities” that touted his civil rights record as well as included economic remedies like raising the minimum wage and providing tuition-free college.

Part of Sanders’ problem is that he hasn’t been able to properly promote his message of helping minorities.

I ask Sanders if he believes that the coverage he has gotten has been fair and equitable. Rather than complaining about the quantity of coverage, he complained about the quality, what he called “the soap opera aspect of politics.”

He explained: “So if I go up on a stage and I slip on a banana peel, do you think that will make the front page of the paper? Will it be on CNN? Probably will. Meanwhile, I have talked in 20 different speeches that 51 percent of young African-American kids are unemployed and underemployed. Do you know how much coverage that’s gotten? How much?”

He answered his own question:

“Every single speech that I give I talk about that. I don’t know that it’s made the newspapers yet.”

Well actually, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have published articles that included essentially that statistic from Sanders. In addition, NPR, ABC News, Newsweek, the Huffington Post, The Week, National Review, RealClearPolitics, Salon, Vox and Alternet have published similar articles as well. But, I guess I get his point: He needs more — more quality and quantity to reach this essential audience.
Bernie's going to need a landmark event to shake things up, or he is doomed.

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