"When one of my editors suggested I write about Trayvon Martin, I wasn’t sure I could do that. After all, I wasn’t in Sanford, Fla., so I don’t know what happened there.
However, I do know what happens in my heart. It’s easy to condemn George Zimmerman, Trayvon’s shooter, but how am I different than Zimmerman if I don’t examine my own role in racism?
As a white man, I don’t experience oppression — I experience privilege. Just as Zimmerman was given the benefit of the doubt, society also gives me the same benefit, but with no requirement to earn that privilege."It gets worse. You can read his contributory wedge between Americans here.
Burkes, and high-falutin men like him, refuse to look around at the way the world REALLY operates. They are cocooned by their own conceptions and perceptions, and so self-absorbed that they cannot see that their gilded premise rings totally false to the vast majority of Americans who pack their lunch box and trudge off to work every day.
It's all roses that HE has never been "oppressed" or "discriminated" against, but that is not reality. If you grew up poor, or ARE poor, chances are you won't be welcome in a five-star restaurant, what with your shabby jeans and second-hand shirt. If you're blond and blue-eyed, you might not be served at the snack bar at a high school basketball game in Kayenta, Arizona, or be safe taking a midnight stroll down Flushing Avenue in Brooklyn. How about being admitted to a decent college? Owning up to Caucasian genes won't help you there; and if you're of the "male" persuasion? Fuggetaboutit. There are quotas to fill, dammit. If you're a woman over the age of 25, you've been overlooked for a promotion. I guarantee it. Are you short? Fat? Have bad skin? Too many freckles? Bad or discolored teeth? A history of depression, or a chronic health problem? You've been discriminated against. That's life!
Burkes, and people like him, fan the flames of racial divides instead of uniting us all as one people. Men with no callouses on their hands, nor ideas to advance mankind, pontificating from on high, living in gated communities and untouched by the seething masses, are deplorable. I want to grab him by the front of his starched shirt and scream in his face "SHUT UP YOU IDIOT!".
Burkes has, with no facts of the case, decided that Mr. Zimmerman is guilty of murder. He must be! He's privileged because he's "white", isn't he? Guilty! What poppycock. I reject Burkes and his entire column of drivel and nonsense. He may not have "earned his privilege", but it's a safe bet that many of the rest of us (all colors and races) damn sure have. Put a cork in it Pastor Burkes. You're NOT helping.
Egads. Since when is writing about common sense a reason to be fired? When it's not "politically correct", or course.
ReplyDeleteRead it and weep.
BTW, Taki is a magazine started by Gavin McInnes, a Canadian who is a real kick, a regular on Red Eye now and a heck of a writer.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFacts? U wantz facts? No worries, soon all of our chillin's will be edjumacated to know whitey is bad, hoodies is gud. like here for example on a $%&$$%^#@(^& military base no less.
ReplyDeleteBring those weenie smug punks to my home town, and let them wander the streets for a week, among their bro's ...then send the survivors home. Spit.
Well, it's Baltimore, not Detroit but this just in.
DeleteAnd regarding inflaming racial and ethic tension, oh f'ing joy, pseudo-Pastor Terry Jones is here again today. He's all about fighting "Sharia Law", whihc is NOT observed or in effect here, no mater what the idiot Sharron Angle said in 2010 out in Utah. There are more cops around town today than I have e-v-e-r seen. Most of the sane (non-CAIR et al)Muslims (the majority)have already decided the best response is little or no response to the geek from Florida. But he is capable of incitement, so we don't know just yet what will go down.
ReplyDeleteBTW... Jones is a cowardly punk by choosing the elaborate Shiite Mosque on a main road here, scant distance from the main police station, for a couple of reasons: 1) The Shiites are the least troublesome here. 2.) He refused police protection, and the costs, because he knew he'd get it anyway, including State Police, and no doubt some FBI....a tax wasting asshole.
He should try to "protest" at the Joy Road Mosque in Detroit, a very short hop from where he's at ... in Detroit, the cops might come, maybe, perhaps, if he was gutted and hung from a lamp post ... in about an hour or so.
Let me add that the alleged "Christian" preacher chooses Holy Saturday, to a great many of our residents who are Catholic, of the Easter weekend to protest against Islam? Fucking hypocrite. Considering my secularity, even I know what the weekend is about, and it is not about protesting.
DeleteAridog, I detest Jones and his ilk. I'm glad most of the residents of your neighborhood are ignoring him. He's a big-mouthed, low IQ attention whore.
DeleteUpdate: Derb is FIRED.
ReplyDeleteHow utterly ridiculous. Rich Lowry, coward extraordinaire, explains the tail-tucking, whimpering executive decision this way:
"Anyone who has read Derb in our pages knows he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer. I direct anyone who doubts his talents to his delightful first novel, “Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream,” or any one of his “Straggler” columns in the books section of NR. Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer."
I'm not a regular follower of Derbyshire, but he did cross some PC lines in his article on "Talk." He's white, not the color of Al or Jesse or Malik Shabazz, so he's toast with major media outlets now.
DeleteMy question is this: Precisely when are we, both black and white and in between, going to be willing to talk frankly with each other, without code words and concealed feelings? Talk with each other and resolve problems rather than inflate them? Quietly listen to what the other guys are saying, ask questions, find answers?
We actually believed we'd begun that step in the 1960's ... but we were naive, as it all blew up by the 1970's, and the race pimp businesses were begun, conversations where loud interruptions are de rigueur and listening is a lost art. In short, we failed. In my opinion we failed because among other things, the news media refused to let scandal and hyperbole go, to not hype the 1% of morons, of any color, who grabbed their headlines.
When will the national media, print, cable, television, and on line, deign to recognize excellence in accomplishments by black CEO's and inventors by publicly making a big deal out of it ... as much as they do for white CEO's, sports figures, etc? Or black rappers ... as if that's all they can do? Why did the media vigorously enable the "Mandingoing" of Herman Cain ... possibly the most publicly racist stunt in the past two years? Torn from the pages of a 1950's Jim Crow ass bodice ripper book of no repute?
As well as belittling his business accomplishments with unending, flippant "pizza-related" comments.
Deletelady red, thanks for the update on Derb, I'm not surprised.
DeleteI'd like to know what others here think of his actual article.
Well, had he stopped with his number 10, I would have been in full agreement, even though personally I would probably not be able to turn my back on someone in obvious need of help.
DeleteBut why he felt the need to go into the relative intelligence levels, which whether true or not, can easily be explained away by cultural and educational disparities, rather than genetic.
I can only say it is too bad he did not stop before he did.
Meanwhile, Sharpton and Jackson must be peeing their pants in ecstasy this morning after getting word of events in Tulsa:
ReplyDelete5 blacks shot by 2 whites.
"Two arrests have been made in the North Tulsa shootings that left three African American men dead, FOX23 reports.
Cops apprehended two white males -- 19-year-old Jake England and Alvin Watts, 32 -- at 1:47 a.m. local time, KOKI reported.
They will be charged with three counts of murder and two counts of shooting with intent to kill...
*snip*
..."There obviously still is a lot of investigation" ahead, Willingham told The Associated Press by telephone. "We don't' have a motive at this time. We are still asking questions and hopefully that will become clear in coming days."
With all the crapola being spouted lately, I'm sure black Americans in Tulsa are a bit edgy. Scary stuff, if all you hear about day and night is how whitey is the bad guy.
It wouldn't surprise me if these two yahoos are targeting black folks; all the drama stirs up the nuts. I doubt this would have ever happened without the Trayvon Martin dog-and-pony show. Good job, NBPanthers.
Effers.
The link at the bottom of the article takes you to the Fox News story, where a motive is suggested, and recorded: Jake England on a social site says ... "Today is two years that my dad has been gone shot by a f****** n***** it's hard not to go off between that and s---- I'm gone in the head.
DeleteRIP
. Dad and s____ I
. Love and miss u
I think about both of u every second of the day"
The story says only a "person of interest" was pursued, no charges in the earlier shooting, purportedly of England's of his father. I'd note here that I don't recall Jesse or Al popping down to Tulsa to race bait over the earlier shooting either (2 years ago).
None of this justifies the recent killings, any more than anything justifies the earlier killing, but I find it irritatingly interesting how details get left of here and there.
It is also possible that the Florida killing hoopla by race baiters has "inspired" irrational folks, of all colors, elsewhere to act out.
Jesse Jackson, who should know better, in as much as he originally really was with Martin Luther King and purportedly supported King's ideals, even remarked once when he heard footsteps behind him how relieved he was to turn and see it was a white guy .... but no, even he can't bring himself to make a large public issue of black on black crime, which is the majority of crime, at least where Jesse lives and where I live.
The fact he goes only for the not-black on black crimes tells me it is a selfish publicity scam. And no, I am not going to call Zimmerman "white" any more than any government form lumps Hispanic and White together.
None of this bodes well for the Republic, now that the Jug Eared Messiah has run off at the mouth (again) ... it is now a national issue manufactured from the thin air of a shooting in Florida that other wise wouldn't get print space next to the daily homicides in Chicago, New York, Miami, Los Angles, etc. etc.
As for the now defiled Sanford Police Department ...could it be that they didn't rush to judgment to avoid another Casey Anthony (Florida) miscarriage of justice?
Let's start a pool: how long before Obama just has to make ignorant comments on the Tulsa shootings? My bet is by tomorrow morning. Never let a distraction populace dividing crisis go to waste.
DeleteApparently, our enlightened betters are unaware that not all latinos are named Gonzalez and not all Indians are named Running Bear.
DeleteThese two in Okla. look Indian to me.
Quite possibly, and for the enlightened betters it gets so confusing, ya know, distinguishing between Hispanics (who all have at least some Indian blood)and white folk (many who also have Indian blood).... only on government forms are Hispanics and Whites and Indians different, other wise they all be white, mutha f'er. We now have 1% of 12% of our population calling the shots. So much for the superior intelligence of white folk and their 65% odd demographic.
DeleteI'm done with my homework so I can now post on teh interwebs. Yayz. (I feel like I'm about 13 again. And not in a good way.)
ReplyDeleteFirst of all I hope folks had a happy Easter.
Lowry is indeed a coward for not identifying which parts of Derbyshire's piece are nasty and indefensible. Presumably he wouldn't fire Derb for merely being "politically incorrect"; if he would have, he might as well join MSNBC and be done with it.
Most of what is good about Derb's piece can be boiled down to this: Use probability and statistics to reason about race. Politically correct thinking has made Mathematics a subset of Crimethink. This cannot stand.
That said, I will point out the part of Derb's piece I personally found reprehensible: an unqualified imperative to avoid rendering aid to Black people. I'd assume that a proponent of traditional values would understand that such a hardening of the heart comes at a personal price. You cannot walk past a person in need and remain the person you were. You render aid so you yourself can remain human. Of course, if the degree of risk becomes measurably and intolerably high, and the "distress" of the person in need is de minimis, then one may balance that out. But Derb doesn't address this. He simply delivers an injunction.
Yes, rendering aid comes with some risk and that risk might increase conditioned on the race of the person needing aid. But Derb offers no data for this, only anecdote. To argue numbers and then conflate your conclusions with "narrative" is the very worst use of statistical argument in rhetoric. Advising against aiding ones fellow human on account of race - as a categorical imperative - is evidence of having surrendered to some very base instincts indeed.
Well said, lewy, well said.
ReplyDeleteI would very much like to agree with you, lewy, but in this case I find that I cannot. At least not honestly.
ReplyDeleteLook what has happened to Zimmerman. He "did the right thing," he "manned up" and he was "involved in the community," including volunteer work for the local NAACP.
res ipsa loquitur
I think that there is an element in randomness, as well. There are times when we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.
DeleteWhere Lewy says: To argue numbers and then conflate your conclusions with "narrative" is the very worst use of statistical argument in rhetoric.
DeleteI agree completely. As for race making a difference in Good Samaritan activity is debatable. Personally, skeptic that I am, Detroiter that I am, I avoid helping anyone who I suspect due to time, place, body language, and condition of need. In other words, I see a buring car with a person still in it ... I'd come to a screeching halt and try to estricate the person from that car ... but I see a car apparently disabled on the side of the freeway at 0300 hours with a guy standing by it flagging other cars ...nope, I go right on by ... and if anything about that scene looked a bit genuine, I circle back for another look.
Now if my car is bumped from behind on a city street or freeway ... you can depend absolutely on the fact I am A) not going to stop, B) have drawn my gun, and C) am heading for the nearest police precinct house.
Similarly, if I see a stranger strolling down my street, head swiveling like a bobble head doll, carrying a paper bag containing something not bulky but fairly heavy ... you can also depend on me to reach for a gun, but keep it concealed, before I ask "can I help you" as they pass by my porch ... which I always do for two reasons: A) They really might be lost and need help in this immigrant neighborhood and B) or they're sneaking assholes and I want them to know they've been seen ... and understood. Now if they are wearing hoodies and walking in a small group down the center of the street, not the side walk, I'm not going to ask squat ... I know what they're doing ... and 95% of the time they are black, the other 5% will be jive ass Arabs who try to act black.
What's the "paper bag" got to do with all that you say? It is a "Detroit thing" ... the de rigueur way to carry an easily disposed of hand gun ... one you can grab and shoot inside the bag, etc. You can bet you butt if said stranger(s) reach inside his/her/their paper bags while walking near me, I'm very likely to fire. I am too old now for all that Mu Duk Kwon/Tae Kwon Do shit.
Sorry ... it's a tough world out there, predators everywhere, be kind as you can, but survive.