My heart goes out to the families, children, victims, and all others impacted by the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newton, Connecticut.
America's obsession with guns has played out its dark game once more. We are eating our young because so many believe that America is a gunfighter nation. For them, the "right" to bear arms trumps any reasonable legislation about restricting access to certain types of firearms. This most recent mass shooting, which will likely be the worst incident of gun violence in recent American history, is not going to cause a rethinking of the country's love affair with such weapons. Nor will the mass murder of 20 children and 6 adults by Adam Lanza weaken the NRA's hold on our legislators. The NRA and their clan will retreat back to a default position and rhetorical redoubt where "guns don't kill people, only people do."
These same ideologues, who in the 21st century remain some type of throwback premodern tribesman at the early dawn of human history, are utterly devoted to a fetish object of metal and plastic which they worship as a god. For them, the mass shooting of children in Newton, Connecticut will be a funeral pyre whose light they will read as spirits dancing in the shadows, beckoning to them that more guns equals less crime, and that school teachers--and perhaps even children--should be allowed to carry firearms in school. Magical thinking brings public policy solutions that are not grounded in common sense or empirical reality.
As the details of the murderous rampage trickle out, all of the standard talking points by the media will be hit upon. Was Adam Lanza mentally ill? What type of weapons did he us? Were there warning signs? Acts of heroism by the adults and children in the school will be profiled. The first responders will be praised and profiled. People will cry. The pundits will tear up in an effort to show some personal, human connection, to a story that will feed the next news cycle, and will potentially make a career or two for some upstart journalist or TV personality.
Per our national script, there are several questions which will go unanswered...just as they always do. As I wrote about in regards to James Holmes, the Batman movie killer, there will be no soul searching about why white men are committing these violent acts. In the present, mass shootings have been almost the exclusive province of white men.
One would think someone in the mass media (or who studies gun violence and public health) would find that a mighty curious fact and want to delve deeper into the relationship(s) between whiteness, masculinity, and gun violence.
In all, there will not be a national conversation--one of our country's most overused phrases, what is empty language signalling nothing--exploring if there is a crisis in white masculinity, which in turn is driving these types of horrific crimes.
If Adam Lanza was an Arab American with one of those "Muslim sounding" names, then today's script would be quite different. Questions of "terrorism" would loom large: it would be the default frame for reading the Connecticut school shooting. In all, the United States has a post 9/11 hangover where a moment of national trauma made one group of Americans a perpetual Other.
A person of color who happens to be of Arab descent, and who is Muslim by chosen faith or birth, is not allowed to be a deranged individual who made a choice to kill dozens of people. His or her identity and personhood is one that is "politicized" by default in the West. As such, all actions, however random or outliers, are taken as representative of some type of collective identity, one where terrorism is an inexorable part of its character.
Once more the luxury of being white in the United States is the freedom to have your violent deeds be a reflection of a personal failing, as opposed to a cultural or racial one. On a practical level, White privilege is a set of taken for granted and unearned advantages in life. On an abstract level, white privilege also removes certain questions from consideration regarding such matters as social deviancy and crime. As we saw with James Holmes, and now today with Adam Lanza, an unwillingness to ask those hard questions about gun violence, white masculinity, and crime will only continue to hurt all of us across the colorline.
84 comments:
"Once more the luxury of being white in the United States is the freedom to have your violent deeds be a reflection of a personal failing, as opposed to a cultural or racial one."
How would you defend yourself if he came to your ^ house ? Yes thats what I thought, guns dont kill people, people kill people. I bought my first gun at 27 but could have bought it when I turned 21. Why did I wait ? Because I wanted to know deep down inside that I was a mature adult. I am Mexicano made up of many different ethnic groups. Does Race play a role here ? I'm sure a FBI or CIA profiler could answer that. This is very sad to say the least.
@Anon. Trust me, if these mass shooters were hispanics or latinos the national narrative would be much different. you can take that to the bank.
This is terrible, its not black, white or any other color. Its a tragedy that should never happen. No, guns did not cause this, the unhinged individual that pulled he trigger did. I agree, there should be better back ground checks when buying guns to help identify the crazys out there and there is honestly no need for an individual to own a AK-47 type weapon. However, if you ban guns, the only people that will have them are the criminals. The police cannot be everywhere all the time and yes, if a teacher there or a moviegoer at the batman movie would had a weapon, maybe some of these lives would have been saved.
@anon2. do choose a name please. yes, guns magically shoot themselves. happens all of the time. are we such a sick gun fetishized society that we want to introduce weapons to schools and movie theaters? Will the madness ever cease?
Of course this is a tragedy. But, it is childish simple talk to say let's not talk about color. I am interested in the public health dimension of what is going on. As a matter of safety, what is going on with white men of a certain class background to drive them to commit these types of crimes? Is it a cultural issue? Is white masculinity imperiled somehow? Why are we as a nation afraid to ask what is going on with white men?
good morning from tokyo. i felt compelled to reply to your racist comments. i am a japanese american but i was born and raised in a city full of hispanics and blacks. hope it's ok for me to post on here. i just wanted to say that in japan we have mass murders with knives, not guns. we do not let immigrants or "minorities" play the race card here, to attack us and strip us of our culture. and certainly not to challenge us and make negative comments like yours. we control the few immigrants we let in. God bless America.
The problem was well framed by the author, but I see another phenomenon as well. The American culture is trained to solve problems by use of violence. Waging war is the new diplomacy. We are so oriented to use violence to solve problems that we even create enemies where there are none; we tell lies to justify our use of violence to kill people who fail to submit to our demands. We support what's left of our economy by selling weapons to people that we ought not trust to use them.
Gun laws to prevent the next school massacre? Phooey.
America needs a culture/conscience makeover, head to toe.
The haters are in full attack mode tonight! You've successfully pushed another button. Thanks for the engagement and advancing the dialogue. Kudos!
One would think someone in the mass media (or who studies gun violence and public health) would find that a mighty curious fact and want to delve deeper into the relationship(s) of whiteness, masculinity, and gun violence.
Michael Moore has, in a movie I imagine you've seen, "Bowling for Columbine." I guess he's not quite in the mass media, though.
I don't for sure know what's up with white American masculinity that encourages this kind of acting out; surely university-funded psychologists are studying it. I think it has something to do with having to be bottled up all the time. And with seeing your own kind, white men, (supposedly) in decline and under threat. And with other factors, like insanity. But, yes, why do crazed white men choose this way to act out more than crazed men from other racial groups? It's not JUST craziness.
Dont blame white men there just sick people in this world period
I think your comments are rather heartless and myopic, to say the least. I live in Chicago and our citizens are killing children by the score every week. The only difference is that they are counted 1 by 1 and day by day. But the results are the same. Tragedy, loss, pain from the victims loved ones and useless tears from our cowardly leaders. Racial "gloating" is really the provence of fools. The white backlash against OJ should have made us, "African-Americans", realize that JUSTICE doesn't mean JUST US as it has been practiced by the global racists and those who agree with them.
It's evil to try and connect "white males", as a group, to this tragedy for the sake of a few clicks. Weren't the Atlanta school children murdered by a black man? Weren't the Buffalo Soldiers, who participated in genocide, black? Sudan? Congo? DC Snipers? Clearly both you and Mike Huckabee need to rethink your place among those who want to be considered thoughtful HUMANS.
Right is Right and Wrong is Wrong.
And you, my dear brother, have done evil.
@Anon. do pick a name. racial gloating? what is that? if you mean asking an obvious question that has direct bearing on matters of public health and safety? then i am guilty of doing some critical thinking. this country has a serious problem with gun violence in general; when we deny how white men are disproportionately involved in mass shootings you are betraying the common good. what are you afraid of?
i do think you need to improve your critical thinking skills and confront the obvious fact that the lives of some folks are considered more valuable than others--see how black and brown youth and the poor are expendable in this country. moreover, if you are a critical thinker you have likely noticed the obvious--race matters in terms of the framing of these events. Don't live in denial.
Weren't the Buffalo Soldiers, who participated in genocide, black? - Anonymous3
Anonymous3, how in the world could you equate what was essentially a state of war which included the clash of arms within this country between White men, Native Americans and Blacks (Buffalo Soldiers)? This cowardly, nincompoop Lanza, barged into an elementary school where kids were attending class and totally defenseless and shot them down as if they were pop-up, shooting targets. The kids or the teachers weren't armed at all.
Are you telling me that you’re choosing today’s tragedy to compare it with what took place nearly 200 years ago on the plains of this empire of ours? Today’s tragedy is incomparable with groups of men that were fully armed. Come on,..…. quit embarrassing yourself brotha!
Eventually we'll know more about the man who shot those people, but I don't know enough about this case or possess the emotional distance from it to debate the different ways violent urges express themselves depending on various ethnic conceptions of masculinity. I find it really difficult to debate over anything more complicated than whether to drink myself to sleep or stay up all night unable to stop imagining that it was my kids and colleagues.
Maybe in a day or two I'll be able to talk over social assumptions of reasons for violence by ethnicity. And I may even have some point about the focus also being dependent upon the victims of massacres being white. I'll come back then.
"not to challenge us and make negative comments like yours. we control the few immigrants we let in. God bless America."
Mean: Hey Darkie, I don't care about your ideas on race. White kids died here! That's why we have (lie) immigrants in control.
When it's a black guy it's drugs or professional crime. East indian or african then acts of terror. White guy...wells he's not normal.
'the luxury of being white in the United States is the freedom to have your violent deeds be a reflection of a personal failing, as opposed to a cultural or racial one.'
bares repeating
Guns don't kill people. People get killed by guns.
The answer to this question is obvious, given White supremacy. Fortunately, no Blacks were killed, so it does not matter that much.
Mr DeVega, once again you have knocked the ball out of the park with your on target (on pun intended) commentary. Even in death and violence, whiteness trumps again. As long as there are the majority of white males doing the Columbine, Aurora, CO, and now Sandy Hook, there will no introspection.
Oh yeah, don't blame the White men. Wouldn't want to do that.
It's nice, though, that you have readers who are willing to go out of their way to defend the White men, I mean, speaking as a White man.
But yeah, it's a White man thing. I've got an idea about it, too long for a comment, I put it up myself.
Take a few hundred million people, erode their senses of family, community and overall humanity, condition them to treasure fantasies of wealth, fame and power over all other feelings or values, stuff them with junk food, over-medicate them with psychoactive drugs, poison their water, bombard them with divisive propaganda, give them 24-hour access to hardcore porn and gore, addict them to hyper-violent, hyper-realistic shooter games, put them under extreme financial pressure, give them easy access to high-powered assault weapons and implicitly guarantee global fame for anyone who commits a big enough atrocity.... what could possibly go wrong?
Hi, fred. Just an aside. I know black people like to capitalize "black", as an affirmation that it is an ethnic group. It's conventional now, but I've never subscribed to it. To me is still an adjective. I don't capitalize it because some think that by extension you also have to capitalize "white". That raises a set of unintended suggestions. White as an ethnic group. Tricky to say what's correct. Damned if you, damned if you don't. I suggest capitalizing neither.
"Take a few hundred million people... put them under extreme financial pressure, give them easy access to high-powered assault weapons.... what could possibly go wrong?"
Gee, Steve, you make it sound like it was designed that way. Is that why they won't take any legislative action?
What is seasonal mass murder to the AssassiNation? It was with biiter irony that I watched the leader of the AssassiNation shed tears for the innocent children killed. Obviously less deserving of death than the children he kills on a regular basis. What makes it ironic is that despite it having become well known that drone strikes are killing innocent children, to say nothing of innocent adults, the POTUS has done nothing to address the problem. Tears for some tots, for some other tots not.
@nomad:
As I just posted on some lucky chum's FB:
"Does a Weaponized Military Drone classify as a Gun? If so, finally having that *serious* talk about Gun Control might save the next thousand-or-so small children from dying senselessly next year... in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and so on. Seriously: we have pictures of many of the dead kids in the above-mentioned countries... why weren't we as upset about *that* ? There's something seriously wrong with us."
yeah
well said CHAUNCEYDEVEGA
Seriously: we have pictures of many of the dead kids in the above-mentioned countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia)... why weren't we as upset about *that* ? There's something seriously wrong with us." – Steven A
Goo point Steven and concisely stated. Therefore, I suggest halfrican President Obama save those few tears that he did shed for the next drone already en-route to killing another girl while merely reading the Quran or an entire family praying prior to having supper.
From a societal perspective, which is what he's taking, Chauncey Devega is correct.
Since the shooter is a white guy, he is viewed as one person gone bad, and the fuss will die down. Had he been a Not White guy, he would have been viewed as a symbol of his group and a symptom of something wrong with it.
Whether or not there is something wrong with white folks that makes it easier for them than for Not White folks to grab a piece and start mowing down crowds of strangers is up in the air.
But, if the society is willing to "have a conversation" (God! how I hate that phrase about Not White folks, it damned well ought to be willing to have it about white folks.
The failure to "have that conversation" happens because white is considered normal and therefore cannot be aberrant. Q. E. not D.
Please - Give it a Fuck'in rest - I'm so sick of hearing about the White Privilege Bullshit!!!!
Yes, if he were killing people screaming "Allahu Akbar," then yes we would call him a terrorist regardless of his name, but that does not appear to be the case here. Please stop bring race or politics into this tragedy. You bring yourself to the same level as the Tea Baggers.
"I'm so sick of hearing about the White Privilege Bullshit!!!!"
Er...Let me guess. You're white. Right? While you're may be sick of hearing about it --and that's because it's so prevalent-- I'm sick of living it. And believe me, I live with it a heck of a lot more than you hear about it. Most of the time your poor ears is shielded from it, my long suffering friend.
DC sniper John Allen Muhammad had a Muslim name and was black, but he was not referred to as a terrorist, so the point of this article is not valid. The author just has agenda of looking for racism even where it does not exist.
I am a proud Muslim, American, and veteran.
Praise be to Allah!
But here's what I was intending to say.
@SA and BS
Here's a little ditty I wrote the day before our most recent seasonal massacre.
With chemtrails raining god knows what down on us, and Obama’s faux opposition to right wing fascisistic policies, the fatalistic economic and environmental agenda has led me to conclude in 2012 that the American decline into poverty and war is by design. The government is not really trying to make things better. They ultimately want conditions to be bad. Or rather, the shadow power for whom they work want conditions to be bad. The government is merely the executive branch of whatever those forces are. Banksters, reptilians, illuminati. Who or whatever this elite is. The elite’s orientation is towards Eugenics. Depopulation through war, environmental degradation and impoverishment. Aggravated by inordinate -*social pressures*- and -*easy access to deadly weapons*-.
"looking for racism even where it does not exist."
And that would be like where?
cdv, there is a time when not turning a story that isn't about racism into one that is bespeaks someone who can't get perspective.
Sure, there's ALWAYS a racial angle to take with any story in this country. But having the good sense to know when that angle just is not the one to take is a sign of some wisdom that you appear to lack.
Michael Paul Goldenberg you are a wise man.
Mr. (?) DeVega: Yes, it's not hard to see that there is a crisis in masculinity and that it has a strong basis in white racism and the fear of the end of white supremacy. But having said that, the firearm situation in the United States has helped to equalize the ability to commit mass murder. Think back to Virginia Tech ....
@MPG. Be careful of offering up classic examples of the white racial frame in action. The fact that you are not willing to talk about the obvious, i.e. white men doing these mass shootings, and to think critically about it, proves my thesis and is evidence of a deep cultural problem.
This is not the 100 level section of the course today, we are going to be having an advanced conversation.
MPG is truth!!!
One would think someone in the mass media (or who studies gun violence and public health) would find that a mighty curious fact and want to delve deeper into the relationship(s) between whiteness, masculinity, and gun violence.
In all, there will not be a national conversation--one of our country's most overused phrases, what is empty language signalling nothing--exploring if there is a crisis in white masculinity, which in turn is driving these types of horrific crimes.
rotflmbao....,
This type'a'shyte right'chere ^^^^^^^ is straight out of the mind of some geriatric urban, academic feminist, you know, the type squatting her fleshy haunches and smacking her greasy lips on some or another ratchit tenure committee.
If the brothers ever got so determinedly masculine, hyper-feminized hand-wringing like this would never cross our minds, much less see the public light of day.
Please - Give it a Fuck'in rest - I'm so sick of hearing about the White Privilege Bullshit!!!! – Anonymous4
Yes, if he were killing people screaming "Allahu Akbar," then yes we would call him a terrorist regardless of his name, but that does not appear to be the case here. Please stop bring race or politics into this tragedy. You bring yourself to the same level as the Tea Baggers. – Anonymous5
Perhaps you’re both the same person. In any event, how dare you state that we should stop bringing “White Privilege Bullshit” and stop “bringing race or politics into this tragedy?” Well, it’s not as simple as you’d like it to be. After all, this is Amerikka, land of the slaves, home of the weak. Of course it’s about race on some level. Whenever race or and individual’s culture isn’t mentioned in such a tragedy like what took place yesterday, Me gets very suspicious.
When those two White cretins in Florida killed Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, there was an immediate rush by White defense attorneys to defend through legalese within their already established racist laws.
Remember, Trayvon was wearing a hoodie sweat-shirt, and how the media and George Zimmerman framed it, that all Black guys that wear hoodies are automatically deemed a threat, a criminal, “up to no good” and therefore, extermination of him was justified.
Remember, when Jordan Davis and some friends sat in an SUV with music blaring, it was considered noise pollution, a cultural nuisance disturbing the good Whites of Jacksonville, FL. And since they were playing loud music, (because only criminal minded Blacks do that) they must have a shotgun within the vehicle and therefore, they were primed for extermination by a White vigilante. Even if it was later determined later that Michael David Dunn was briefly hallucinating and the victim weren’t armed.
But when a White troglodyte like Adam Lanza massacre students at an elementary school, all of a sudden, the media is saliently muted on his race and culture. Before long and such as here, it’s a personal issue, depression, a mental issue, a brain disorder, a singular idiot on a bloody rampage, but never indict the entire White culture.
I hope you get my drift and I hope you feel me, but if not, I understand, it must be because you’re hearing this from a Black man.
And to answer your question, this why we cannot Give it a Fucking Rest!
Thank you so much for this. I was trying to make this point to another white dude on Facebook and couldn't really explain it so well. I've since unfriended him but posted this link in case I have any friends left who still don't get it.
May God rest in peace those little angels! No amount of consolation is enough to comfort the families of victims. Yet that's only what we can do. This tragic incident yet again underlines the need for stringent gun control laws. Hope the GOP would realize the folly of their stubborn opposition to controlling guns.
I'm wondering what happens to the discourse if we accept that it's all of the above. The problem becomes much more daunting and horrific if we acknowledge that EVERYTHING that's been commented on here reflects on the cause of this horrible event, and that America is a hall of mirrors.
While we can and should pick this apart along all kinds of social, racial and cultural lines, the fact remains that if people in this country were forbidden to own guns, events like this would be far less likely to happen. We obviously can't handle this particular freedom. I am far more freaked out by how easy it is to get a gun than I am by the thought of not being able to own one myself.
cdv, there is a time when not turning a story that isn't about racism into one that is bespeaks someone who can't get perspective. – MPG a.k.a. Miles Per Gallon
Huh, Miles Per Gallon (MPG) back again for another spanking. CDV never said it’s about racism. His article merely speaks of imperiled White masculinity and how the media frame massacres such as what took place yesterday as singular, personally related issue as a driving factor as opposed to a deep-seated cultural issue. Therefore, what culture is the most gun-crazed within this empire of ours? What group of people believes for the most part that a semi-automatic weapon is needed for self-defense. What group of people sends lobbyists to Washington to speak on their behalf more than any other group?
I will patiently await your reply!
@Cnu. You are in quite a mood again. As I mentioned in our last conversation where your claims about ethnic cleansing were wholly untrue, what is problematic, inaccurate, misspecified, or undertheorized about my obvious questions?
given your interests, I would think you would be very curious and sympathetic to these obvious puzzles.
@Nomad , @BlackSage: Ya'll better preach!
"But when a White troglodyte like Adam Lanza massacre students at an elementary school, all of a sudden, the media is saliently muted on his race and culture."
""looking for racism even where it does not exist."
And that would be like where?"
@Cnu. You are in quite a mood again. As I mentioned in our last conversation where your claims about ethnic cleansing were wholly untrue
CDV - at one minute in, Tim Reid told you negroes about yourselves on a comically naked level of the game..,
{an I ain't hear you or nary a one'a'ya little winged-monkeys make the slightest peep about Tim's "anti-black" candor - matter fact - I thought staymad was gonna hurt himself in his rush to get his pants down and his cheeks apart}
Admit it YOU.NEGROES.LOVE.WHITE.AMERICA
so stop faking, fronting, and playing....,
cause it all just sounds bitchy...,
most turned out, emasculated "cats" on THE.FACE.OF.THE.EARTH
what is problematic, inaccurate, misspecified, or undertheorized about my obvious questions?
Nothing if you have ovaries and are in heat after some snaggle-tooth dood.
given your interests, I would think you would be very curious and sympathetic to these obvious puzzles.
nah...,
You'll have to pry the black steel from my cold, dead, fingers too.
I'm not puzzled in the least.
The Lanza boy is a poster-child for lack of parental investment and familial neglect - and - a nutter to boot.
He just happened to have access to significant continuity of fire.
What in the world are you talkin bout CNut? I'm really having a hard time following. I know masculinity equals guns. I got that part. Blacks are born cowards and idiots. Check and double check. And we don't got the right parents. In a word we hopeless. Got it. Needn't waste any more palaver. I think you just like polemics and hearing the noise of your bilious exhalations.
Was I fawning over Reid? If I was I was doing it before he showed up Member? I said he had the greatest black show of all times. So it was already clear what I thought about the man before he got here. You'd have the same reaction if one of those eugenicists you admire so much showed up in response to something you'd said. GTFO.
"an I ain't hear you or nary a one'a'ya little winged-monkeys make the slightest peep"
I mean, lissen to this shit. Monkeys, jiggaboos. Dude throws around more racial epithets than Archie Bunker. You sure you ain't part white? Raised by klansmen perhaps?
They've been talking about
"black on black" crime as a pathology of black males for the last 3-4 decades. So doesn't that make it obvious to question why white men are frequently the perpetrators in mass murders, like yesterday's disaster?
That its "racism" to raise the question prove's Poussaint's point.
@Nomad & CnU: now don’t chuckle, but...
@SA. I would buy all of those for a dollar to quote Robocop. He and I have similar taste.
excellent
A touch inconsistent, though, no...? Wink.
i see nothing incon....im sorry. what were you saying?
@Nomad, it behooves you to ignore CNUtty's posts. I've observed that when CNUtty is successfully pinned on a point, he begins to make racial slurs. He does this because he's incapable of conversing on an adult level. This is what leads me to believe that he's either a tragic mulatto the CDV referred two a couple of articles ago or he's a neo-Nazi.
Yours truly,
Blakk Sage
I've observed that when CNUtty is successfully pinned on a point, he begins to make racial slurs. He does this because he's incapable of conversing on an adult level.
lol, what alternate reality thread wuz you readin Blakk Stooge?
@CNUtty, thanks for proving my point again!
Blakk Sage
Jesus! Steven Augustine said it perfectly:
Take a few hundred million people, erode their senses of family, community and overall humanity, condition them to treasure fantasies of wealth, fame and power over all other feelings or values, stuff them with junk food, over-medicate them with psychoactive drugs, poison their water, bombard them with divisive propaganda, give them 24-hour access to hardcore porn and gore, addict them to hyper-violent, hyper-realistic shooter games, put them under extreme financial pressure, give them easy access to high-powered assault weapons and implicitly guarantee global fame for anyone who commits a big enough atrocity.... what could possibly go wrong?
Perfectly said. Your words should be set to music.
- Buddy H.
America’s youth, like its soldiers have been desensitized to killing human beings.
http://cnet.co/Y7v3L8
http://stanford.io/Rx9stW
The preeminent terrorist on the planet is a self-proclaimed Afrikan American,Barack Obama. How many children have his drones killed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen? OBTW, Mali is his next target.
http://bit.ly/TUwBlA
"America’s youth, like its soldiers have been desensitized to killing human beings."
I wonder what role movies play. Nowadays you can see people hacked up and blown away in very graphic terms. It's considered entertainment. Seems to me a steady diet of such imagery and murderous callousness would be desensitizing. Worse, stimulating to thus susceptible to emulating what they are being exposed to. Also, though I've never watched those forensic crime TV shows, they strike me as predicated on a ghoulish coldness of the soul. People who could examine a dismembered body at a horrific crime scene...and then go get lunch.
Nomad: way up the thread, but thanks for the feedback about the "B" and the "W."
I tend to over-capitalize, way more than the style guides suggest. So the "Black" and the "White" are not so much political statements as just my style.
I'm not sure that I agree that black and white are adjectives in this usage. Sheets of loose-leaf are white, I'm not white by a long shot.
Language: for one thing, it's constantly changing, so I don't worry too much about what the style guides say; for another, when I write in this language it's my damn language and I feel very free to take liberties. I believe that everybody should feel the same freedom.
I will say, I was a little surprised that there could be those who felt that Black should be capitalized while White should not. I'm not offended by the value judgment, only by the inconsistency.
America is cursed and has been since the days it began its evil ways.
Very good points. Someone was expressing how "great" America is... I asked why, they're response was our military. They measured "greatness" on the capacity of distruction. Violence is now deemed "heroic".
You're a Japanese American idiot.
"I will say, I was a little surprised that there could be those who felt that Black should be capitalized while White should not. I'm not offended by the value judgment, only by the inconsistency."
Not really inconsistent when one considers the power imbalance. But I'll leave that for someone else to explain. Of course, if you're like me you capitalize what you like. But if you going to communicate with black people you should be aware of that, lest you be misread. Bottom line tho, whites who capitalize "white" are generally reactionary white nationalists. Just a friendly heads up for communicating on black forums.
@fred
"Sheets of loose-leaf are white, I'm not white by a long shot."
LOL! Coal is black. Guess what? I'm not black.
@makheru bradley
"America’s youth, like its soldiers have been desensitized to killing human beings."
The most deadly video game.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-woes-of-an-american-drone-operator/5315869?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-woes-of-an-american-drone-operator
@Black Sage
"Nomad, it behooves you to ignore CNUtty's posts."
I believe you may be right. They don't call you Black Sage for nothing.
"In all, the United States has a post 9/11 hangover where a moment of national trauma made one group of Americans a perpetual Other."
As a result, Arab-Americans lost their status as Whites. I'm not sure that the Lebanese-Americans, whose ancestors have been here for generations and had been as accepted as the Greeks, Italians, and Armenians, have all figured that out yet.
@Pinku. It will be interesting to see how Arab's sense of whiteness--especially among Syrians and others who were amongst the first to grandfathers in as "white people" will change over time. I think they are pretty safe as given demographic shifts Whiteness has to expand and recruit new members in order to stay dominant. That has been the rule historically on such matters. Will the pattern continue?
Nomad: thanks for the insight, and thanks for the gentle character of the schooling.
We Irish have to stick together.
And now it's time to go Wacky-Deep Meta: show of hands... how many out there can tell that this is The Worst Acting Job of the Week... and who has any feasible theories as to why this guy is acting?
I worked at a Funeral Home for four years (family business, ya'll) and I have seen *every* possible shade, degree and symptom of Human Grief... even the brave, stoic, "Must not Break Down and Cry" variety... and THIS ain't Grief. THIS is the nervous-energy body language of a Bad Actor trying to stick to a script.
Again: why?
Any Humans versed in actual *Human Behavior* care to address this baffling incongruity? And the sinister implications thereof...?
PS I won't be arguing this one out (I know full well what the standard reaction is)... I only hope to signal to anyone out there who sees through this scary situation (like William Shatner on that b&w plane with a flying monkey on its wing) that you are not alone!
scene...,
Granny Goodness gonna get them guns!
"Rev" Al just now rejected the fact that single mothers are exceedingly hard-pressed to raise adolescent boys and play a significant role in compliant medication/criminalization standards of care that get difficult boys put on SSRI's or amphetamines.
Adam Lanza was a terrorist.
@Steven
Eerie synchronicities too.
http://www.pakalertpress.com/2012/12/19/keha-i-was-forced-to-sing-die-young-lyrics-after-newtown-ct-shootings/
@Nomad:
Thanks for that; I see that you see, Bro! Why is it that the Evil always seem to have the strongest Imaginations...?
Well, you know. Ever since I saw 'kite, plane, must, hit, steel' I know the Evil are into rituals and cryptic signals.
And using kids.
I mean, check out the occult Bushes. You can't make this stuff up. He turned the stars on the GOP elephant upside down, for petes sake! Can you say "Baphomet"?
oops forgot link
http://aislec.wordpress.com/2012/12/16/behind-the-bushes/
Post a Comment