My grandfather started going on a anti-trump, anti-fascism rant and I saw him kind of pause to check if I was that trump cultist lol. It was very heartening
My other grandfather was a vocal racist, sexist, homophobe who died of covid because he believed Trumpās lies. Rot in pieces
Trump literally killed off hundreds of thousands of bigots with his lies about covid. That was silver lining of his term
See this is the good part of the Trump administration, big media doesnāt want to cover
Are we counting the people that ignored reality as the group behind?
Yeah, there was certainly a third group who was willfully avoiding involvement.
There still is, but there was one back then too.
A lot of the time, willfully avoiding involvement still meant ostracizing groups.
I believe theyāre represented in the photo by the man in a white shirt in the top right corner who isnāt paying attention to anything. Kind of on the nose, really.
(Which is a somewhat uncharitable interpretation, he could be looking away in disgust or just happen to glance away when the photo was taken)
Screw being charitable towards that guy, heās bald!
/j, in case thereās any doubt
MLKs letter from a Birmingham jail is a good take on the white moderate in times of inequality. Order matters more to some than Justice or even the law itself. Their inaction is the apathy that the aggressors can pave over in an attempt to look like a larger group than they are.
Every time I read it (not that Iām doing it monthly or anything) I find myself really impressed not only by his wisdom, but by his ability to express it, plainly, for any who care to listen.
Apathy is participation when the issue is bigotry.
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
I donāt understand what the image is depicting exactly, thereās one black person in the picture and sheās sitting there while that guy is about to drip something on the head of the woman next to her?
Is it a picture of white people bullying a group for having a black friend?
This is from the Woolworthās sit-in, where people sat at the segregated lunch counter in protest.
Other people who did not like this verbally and physically abused them.https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-anne-moody-20150211-story.html
Also, the white guy covered in dessert is presumably an ally there to show solidarity and, judging by the size of him, also physically protect them if necessary.
I hope that wasnāt their plan or theyād have found out very quickly that size is a great advantage 1 on 1 but a bigger advantage is being 2 on 1.
Fair enough, but telling the minority group they should try to outnumber the majority group is not exactly helpful
Idk, Mormons seemed to be giving it a good go before the internet hit 'em
Yeah but who wants to be the first one to be punched in the face by that big lad before heās overpowered by the numbers advantage?
One big dude can be enough of a deterrent against people taking things too far.
Lunch counters were segregated in the US. A fairly common protest was black folk sitting at lunch counters and trying to order lunch. This often causes uproar and unrest, riots. I believe the woman whoās about to have water poured on her head is black, itās just that the picture makes her look white, or sheās fairly passing.
I think the woman with water poured on her is white and sitting with the black woman.
My understanding of the two sides were the white people attacking them and the white people sitting with a black person to protest segregation.
IMO thatās why itās 3 sides.
The first side is the black people who want to be able to sit at the same counter as other people and order lunch.
The second side is the white people who want to keep the apartheid system in place.
The third side is the white people who were willing to take the abuse in order to be allies to the black people who were facing the discrimination.
To me, the allies are a different group. They are putting themselves in harmās way for an abstract principle.
Thanks for the clarification
Theyāre having salt dumped on them too, for the grave offense of sitting at a Whites-only lunch counter.
If this mob of hick bullies wasnāt there to torment them, well, black people might eat lunch there. Obviously that would be the end of the world, and all would be lost.
Itās a sit in, protesting laws that said establishments could refuse to serve black people (or serve them horribly,)
This was the form civil disobedience took, where they would go, make a scene, get arrested, and then argue in court that the law was unjust.
No, but also essentially yes
Unfortunately some folks identified with both.
Grandfather was a MoC, he still forbade my mom from dating black men because he thought they were all thugs.
Thatās not identifying with both thatās just adhering to a slightly different cultural norm.
Yeah. Not that unusual for the time.
This is the āgreat americaā they are always referencing.
Some things were great. Some things were not.
Some things were great for a very specific group of people. Most things sucked for everyone else.
Less severe climate change, cleaner environment, no billionaires
I think those are pretty universal
Have you all ever seen the Monsoon Motor Lodge acid attack?
Facebook says this image is fine by them when Nazis post it, of course.
Iād like to know more about this Hot Donut Department
I regularly think about how many of our sweet loving grandmothers were the ones we see in the pictures hurling slurs at the tops of their lungs. How many grandfathers strung up the rope for the lynch mob.
These things all āendedā less than a century ago.
My mother used to refer to Indian owned motels as āPaki palaceā, used to tell me not to run away with a black man like the neighbour who was in a biracial relationship did, and I distinctly remember a family friend yelling ārun you N word runā when an African guy was running an Olympic race on TV.
So that was all really fun.
Had it easy then! ;)
Well my grandparents wouldnāt have been allowed in that shop, given there was an embargo in the us against people like my grandparents until 1943, though its not at all why my grandfather hated America and Americans for most of his life.
Your point is well taken about not being allowed in the country, but I have a feeling that this may have been later than 1943 based on the non violent reactions of the racists and that this looks like a sit in. Sit-ins were a key part of the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s but I donāt know how prevelant they were before that.
Could be wrong. If someone knows for sure lmk
Clutch link. Thank you.
HOT DONUT DEPARTMENT
For a second I thought they had their own police outpost.
Were any of these kids found and interviewed later on in life?
The kids getting abused, yeah.
https://www.crmvet.org/nars/greensit.htm
The kids doing the abusing - strangely, no. No oneās interviewed them so far as a quick search could tell.
Interestingly, the waitress not pictured here was interviewed for StoryCorps. https://storycorps.org/stories/woolworths-lunch-counter-waitress/
That was in Jackson, MS, as opposed to the Greensboro one.
Wow, interesting! Thanks for the reading material.
I see 3 groups in this picture.
- pro equity activists (front/center)
- anti equity reactionaries (front/left)
- ācentristsā (back/right)
Pro-equity is the only moderate position.
False dichotomy is false. People are complicated.
If your moral certitude is so easily triggered that this purity test gets a āhell yeah.ā Then can you please pause to reflect?
My parents were on both sides of this. I am a very long distance from where they were. They taught me one thing, thought another.
Which does that make them?
You canāt use ācertitudeā and ātriggeredā in the same sentance, it makes you sound like you copy pasted random shit from a script online about how to counter argue anti racism.
Homie, take a deep breath. This is a picture of civil rights protesters being attacked by explicit white supremacists. Thereās no false dichotomy here. The moderate whites didnāt show up to attack civil rights protesters, or kill them, or set up bombs to kill anyone of color in KKK terrorist attacks. They stayed home, and clicked their tongues, possibly wagged a finger. Thereās no nuance here, you showed up to protest for civil rights, or you showed up to support white supremacy, or you stayed home.
If you think thatās āāmoral certitudeāā (seriously stop using words you donāt understand, your embarrassing yourself) youāre just a fucking idiot or a white supremacist.
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I canāt imagine what you think moderate means. If youāre protesting civil rights, you arenāt on the fence. Youāre willing to die for equality. Which there were white civil rights protesters that died [edit: violently murdered] for doing this. They werenāt in the middle.
Iām not directly addressing the image. Iām addressing the text.
The text says there are two choices and only one is possible for any individual as their legacy of thought.
The picture is a defining moment in time. It catalyzed change. The legacy of thought that was passed to me was mixedā¦
That said, can you help me understand how the text message embedded helps move the racial conversation forward? Or how its message is at least not harmful to engaging those who need help to see the flaws in their racial mindset?
Because once Iāve demonized people, I donāt communicate with them as well. I think thatās fairly typical, really.
Right now the post just looks like an empty virtue signal that helps people feel righteous while also erecting bigger walls.
The text references the photo. How can you āaddress itā without addressing the photo too?
ā¦ And then you address the photo anyways. Itās almost like youāre not even trying.
Iām speaking to the textās message of a dichotomy. The image is context but it is not the entirely of the message.
Well. If I take what your saying here out of all the context you included, then youāre really not making sense are you?
Iām growing increasingly skeptical of āpeople are complicatedā being anything more than a method of shaming people for discussing certain subjects.
We need to discuss groups of people and that inherently involves generalising their beliefs. Nobody is going to track down every single person in that photo and confirm the nuances of their racism just in case they thought it was the line for hot doughnuts, so the conversation people are having here becomes impossible.
Your motherās specific views on black people donāt matter to any conversation people are having in academic or social media circles. Weāre all perfectly aware that individuals have more complex opinions but weāre not talking about individuals.
But even more bizarrely, why do you think your motherās views are some kind of āgotchaā? She was racist when it came to you dating a black person, which she inherently attempted to hand down to you. For the purposes of this conversation, we absolutely know what group she belongs to. Sheās doesnāt get a free pass just because she didnāt have the whole set.
Pointing out the fallacy in a post that weaponizes shaming is not shaming. I have not shamed.
If you feel ashamed by my words, then my point is poorly made or this is another attempt to bring things away from understanding and dialogue and back to how to resume righteous feeling.
We need effective persuasion. We need facts. We need discourse to change things.
Saying 60ish years ago a person was on a side and ergo absolutely made only one line of thought their legacy is a false dichotomy. I was taught equality until, as an adult, my parents didnāt like interracial dating.
I used their holy book, reason, love. Not shame. Shame galvanizes and rarely leads its target to engage in open dialogue needed to move things.
Some people deserve shame. But we, the left, are galvanizing wide swatches of the population against the very points we say we want to engage and spread. That means conversations we need to have, like CRB are getting rejected without even being heard in any meaningful way.
Weaponized shame on a mass scale says more about feels than it does about maturity and getting our stated goals.
And I suspect well over half the people driving these galvanizing mechanics are not the people CRB would most benefit. If youāre a literal white crusader hell bent on dividing the world into the worthy and the enemy, I gotta wonder why.
I want a world where the realities of the past are discussed frankly. I want it decades or centuries ago. If I canāt have that, I want it now.
How are we to have the conversation when our āenemiesā galvanize enough to throw out the modest things that at least allowed toe holds? Does shame build dialogue?
What is the goal of the original post really?
Where were my parents in that picture? Silent. Absent. But not approving of the bullies. Not all the way aware of the shadows of their thoughts, but definitely sympathetic to those being bullied.
Otherwise, letās divide the world into the blameless and allies. Iām 50, Iām not blameless. But Iāve been an ally. I read, I engage, I vote my awareness of history and obvious enduring issues.
But Iām not blameless. Even the me that dated interracial, and married interracial had learning to do. Still do. Being righteous makes my own education less likely. How can I learn when Iām certain of my righteousness? Iām a fucking middle aged white dude. What do I know about living a black life? Even as a parent of biracial children I cannot attest to living a black life.
I have no holy hill to stand upon. I have no conviction so superior I can feel justified in placing my feels in they way of progress. And feeling righteous will only get in the way of hearing the voices of the actually oppressed.
I think thatās happened enough. Virtue signaling whit folk (like me?) need to book up, read, educated ourselves beyond the facts. And we need to realize as we rightly become angered by history that that history still isnāt about us - or if it is, itās more about other populations. And we need to leave enough space and humility for those to be heard.
And to learn how to be effective allies.
Iām not arguing against urgency. Iām questioning the efficacy of lumping people into a vast bucket scorned sinners. OP wasnāt attempting to save or redeem those who were wrong.
It sought righteous feeling as an endpoint.
And fuck that noise. I want a more righteous reality. Thatās my goal. And Iād like it with urgency. And I donāt care if I have to be humble and teachable along the way. Hell, that even sounds like a good idea.
There are ways to have the conversations Iām sure you want. But a Pic that says a person much choose ONE and does so with the kind of conviction I usually see from a virtuous white personā¦ Iām not sure thatās how we do it.
Ya follow?
Race is nuanced. Why a variety of people in the black commimunity are uncomfortable with interracial datingā¦ Thatās also nuanced. Itās best not handled as a strict either/or because shitās complicated.
And history matters. And the white disrespect of blacks throughout history may only run to the present in a new form. White folk arenāt the story. The impact of white folk in historyā¦ That is.
How we make inroads, thatās a conversation worth having too.
Can you tell me how Ops post helps?
I think youāre misunderstanding the purpose of shame in society, and yes there is a purpose. The goal is to ensure anyone still forming their opinion that these certain opinions are unacceptable in our society. It isnāt to change peopleās minds who already have them made up.
Shame is a useful tool, and saying it should never be employed is throwing away a tool that can shape the future to be better. Sure, we should also try to convince people to hold better opinions as well, but we arenāt really donāt that with this post, are we?
I specifically said some people deserve shame. Itās a lot of words and, tbf, if you didnāt read them all (not an aspersion), I really wouldnāt blame you (promise).
Shame is useful as a way to divide a group. Sometimes thatās justified. That doesnāt mean that itās always done prudently.
Not arguing against it. Arguing against its ubiquity.
Overall, Iād prefer reasoned argument to innoculate against bad ideas but I dunno thatās always viable.
I think the white people in that image are not representatives of their race, they donāt represent all white people or white Americans. The person making the meme understands that, and many people who saw this image do so as well.
The disgust people feel at the action of those people is not extended to any random white person. The disgust I feel when I look at that picture is only reserved for anyone who wants to maintain or promote regressive policies or actions. Humanitarian ideals extend to everyone, regardless of race.
Edit: I think the āpick oneā part of this meme youāre referring to is about picking humanity over tribalism, and not white vs black.
And yes, people should be allowed a chance to self-actualize without the baggage of their grandparents past. I think thatās only fair. The thing about self actualization is that you donāt have the right to self actualize into someone who stomps over the self actualization of others.
I am sorry, whatās your point? Can you elaborate?
I was encouraged to read biographies of important black figures in US history. About Abraham Lincoln. Various different things that very naturally led me to see blacks as peers.
Then i dated a black woman. Same person who was happy and strongly encouraged the books had strong negative reaction to dating.
Which is the parent. The post says to pick **one. **
It is not a nuanced or adult take on people. It is a reactionary purity test of an adolescent mind (regardless of OPās age).
The same parent was both. OP does not allow that. But my mom was not purely one. Years of encouragement of specific reading wasnāt an accident.
Dichotomies. Brightnlines of either orā¦ Are very often false choices that deceive the credulous or unskeptical.
And the fallacy your employing in the false equivalence. Just because your parents had the benevolence to allow different colored people into their public places and history lessons doesnāt mean they see them as equals.
The definition of racism is the belief that one race is inherently better than another. Good enough to share spaces and history books but not to mix blood doesnāt scream āwe are all humans and equalsā.
So itās not a far leap to assume that your parent only accepts other races as far as their society of context has gone.
So itās not a huge leap to assume which side of the photo they wouldāve been on if their society of context was the one from the photo.
Obviously your parent wouldāve been sitting at the table in defiance of that societyās cultural norms, defending their personal beliefs
ā¦right?
These purity tests and shaming celebrations arenāt helpful.
They were never helpful when they were done to minorities. Effective for a time? Yes. But it galvanized.
I donāt need a galvanized enemy. I donāt need one that believes nothing will ever be good enough because a past sin means forever being a sinner.
We need discourse, persuasion and actual rhetoric.
Iām not saying bad is good. Iām saying effective isnāt the same as feeling righteous.
My parents arenāt who they were. But these tactics arenāt what changed them.
These tactics look like theyre far more about the feels than they are about changing things. And, no, Iām not defending gradualism. And my parents learned. But shame was never what did it.
Iām not the right person to be arguing tactics with, that wasnāt my point. I just pointed out a fallacy in your argument since you did so in theirs, in the spirit of equality.
That being said I do think thereās room for all kinds of relativism in our society, but I donāt think you can apply relativism to racism. You either believe someone is a complete human just like yourself even if they happen to have more or less melanin - or you donāt believe that. There is no halfway point.
Now you can use your persuasion tactic of choice to walk people to that conclusion, but I believe that anything short of that is still racism and exclusion but with caveats.
Either/Or thinking on race only gets so far. If a person thinks all acts can be objectively judged as racist, not racist, or not racially relevantā¦ Then theyād be wrong.
Because itās not just white folk that are complicated. Itās everyone. And there are differences of opinion (and history) within communities.
Some acts are overt. Some are obvious to the trained observer. And someā¦ Will be met with varying reactions.
Whether an act has racial implications at all, will also be in dispute.
Believing in equality isnāt the same as acting on it. Belief isnāt the metric. Behavior is.
My parents believed and taught equality. They ājustā thought the races should be separate. That that was a racist attitude was lost on them until it was forced.
Iāve had blind spots. Iāll find more. We all have them.
Listening, reading, searching our attitudesā¦ Questioning why we did things how we didā¦ This is how we keep momentum.
White certanties of virtue isnāt the progress people think it is.
I think that when it comes to race thereās only a binary possibility.
Your parents held a belief that mixing races was wrong. What was at the root of that belief? Some races are inherently not good enough or clean enough for their family, children or grandchildren. That is the very definition of racism. Your parents were racists, just not on the level of a clan member. There can be varying degrees of racism, but you either hold racist beliefs or you donāt.
Thatās the crux of the argument here;
-
I think that if you hold racist beliefs you are racist
-
You think that a non-racist can hold racist beliefs.
I would love to hear an argument that changes my mind but so far I havenāt heard one.
-
I truly believe the thought exercise required by this meme is the actual basis for the backlash against CRT.
