On Tue, 3 Apr 2001, Lester Kenyatta Spence wrote: > On Tue, 3 Apr 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > > > is oh so exciting. > > > > y'all should shut up and read this article: > > http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_1_whats_holding_blacks.html > > > > and please, post about a million more times about it. we'd like that. > > Ok....I'll start off first. Homeboy is a hack, the article is wack, and > I'm not surprised at the level of his anti-black attack. > I don't want to perpetuate this off-topic thing any more than necessary, but ...
I think that articles such as this deserve careful reading, and refutation. I am a resolutely, eternally liberal guy, but I think conservative counter-arguments to liberal notions are quite valuable. If we never question our own beliefs they become brittle. To deny that racism isn't a clear and present fact of American society is absurd to me, because I'm white, and I'm around a lot of different people. I meat people all the time who not only prejudiced against blacks, liberals, gays etc, but positively revel in that fact. I'm more comfortable actually with people who are straight up about it -- there's so many other who find a way to stealth it into the discourse without showing their true colors. And is it just me, but when Chris Rock does his schtick where he talks about how righteous black folks hate niggers, doesn't your skin just crawl? And yet I've heard that argument, maybe in more polite terms, over and over again from some black folks. I'm a Quaker so I believe the light is God in everyone, and if you speak to the light in people their best comes out. That, as I see it, is the central failing in most of the debates over race and ideology. Folks find it easier to win arguments when they demonize the opposition.
