Someone is always posting something interesting, setting off the Rantosaurus Rex, and then I end up filling their comments page with astoundingly well thought out brilliance, when I really should just direct them here and post the rant in the comfort of my own venue.
Some people get pissed about it, the way some people get pissed easily about a lot of stupid shit. Who'd a thought there'd be rules and Rule Nazis in the bloggosphere? So ok, I'm, slowly learning. So I worked for a little while on this beotch. I might as well re-post it here too. Are there rules about re-posting? Oh yea, eat shit and die motherfucker. This is my crib. I sets the rules, and I HATE fuckin' rules. So here goes nothin'.
Big Dick over there posted something, commenting about a post this guy put up about some group in Virginia, calling out on MLK day for reparations for Black people. That's what set it all off.
I'm of two minds on this subject. I can see why they want them, but I can also see why I and a lot of other hard working White people don't want to have to pony up the money. And don't tell me that they just want to get the money from the corporations or the government, because who the fuck do you think will end up paying the real Bill then? Here's my rant, as it appeared over at Dicks place. I added a few bits to the end. So shoot me. Here we go:
If you listen carefully to the rhetoric of the reparations crowd, what they really want isn't a payback for slavery. It's a payback and apology for both slavery and the hundred years of lynching and discrimination that followed slavery. They want something for the generations since 1865 who couldn't buy a home and then later pass that accumulated wealth on to their kids, and jobs and educations they couldn't get, and the beatings they took, and worse, when they tried to vote. But they make the mistake of calling it reparations for slavery, which allows most white folks, me included, to think and say stuff like "Hey, fuck you man. I never owned a slave in my life". They also want a free and open national discussion of how they were fucked over for 400 years, which most of us (White folks) would like to avoid. It's like getting today's German or Japanese populations to have a frank and open discussion of the atrocities their fathers and grandfathers committed. Good luck on that one. Who wants to be the subject or target of an endless guilt trip for things you personally didn't do?
Thing is, we all (White men), in one way or another, still benefit from the advantage our predecessors had, the "affirmative action" boost that being White gave them, allowing them to get somewhere without having to compete with Blacks, or Women, in the process of making it in this country (lets not even start talking about reparations for women!). Whether they had anything to do with setting up the system or not, they benefited from it, and that's what they want us to pay them for. My point, and my answer to them is simple; every group in the world, at one time or another in history, has ether been fucked over or fucked some other group over in order to make it in the world. That shit is as old as time itself, and the crap you went through back in the day was just your turn. We've all been through it. It ain't gonna change, so you might as well get over it.
Bringing it up in this day and age, with Black people seeing greater and greater success in America, leaves their "leaders" sounding more and more like wining little bitches, living in the richest country in the history of the world, crying about the past as they show off all the "bling" and shit that they've been able to accumulate since. We've all got problems today, so get over it. Tell little wet footed Ramon about yer problems, 'cause he wants our shitty little jobs, and he works harder than ether of us, and he's a hell of a lot easier to put up with a lot of the time.
That's what history is all about. Read a history book sometime. It's all about little groups of people, viewing themselves narrowly as being part of a separate group from everyone else, screwing over their neighbors in a mad dash to keep from being subsumed in the struggle by all the other little groups. Slavery is as old as prostitution, and as hard to get rid of. There are experts out there now who say that more people are enslaved today around the world than were back in the 19 century. That's a fact, and Africa is still the center of it all, and Arabs still run it.
It wasn't till the 18th century that Europeans began to see themselves and others in a different way. The Age Of Reason taught all of us about our humanity, "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", and all that shit. Within a hundred years or so of that slavery in America was over, and being actively suppressed in Africa by the same European powers who'd run it for 300 years. We all got scruples about it in time, and it took another hundred years to get over the legacy of it and end legal segregation.
So it's over and done with right? Naaa, That shit will never be over. It's too deeply set as a part of who we are as a people. And it's still too easy to blame other successful people for your own lack of success, and objectify other people, whether you have any power over them or not. That's human nature. Period. Maybe in a hundred more years we'll see the end of it here, as we slowly turn, ethnically at least, into a country more like Brazil, and it becomes harder and harder to tell the difference between the ancestors of the lynchers and the lynched. Who knows?
And if ya don't beleive me, here's Dave Chappelle's take on it.
Some people get pissed about it, the way some people get pissed easily about a lot of stupid shit. Who'd a thought there'd be rules and Rule Nazis in the bloggosphere? So ok, I'm, slowly learning. So I worked for a little while on this beotch. I might as well re-post it here too. Are there rules about re-posting? Oh yea, eat shit and die motherfucker. This is my crib. I sets the rules, and I HATE fuckin' rules. So here goes nothin'.
Big Dick over there posted something, commenting about a post this guy put up about some group in Virginia, calling out on MLK day for reparations for Black people. That's what set it all off.
I'm of two minds on this subject. I can see why they want them, but I can also see why I and a lot of other hard working White people don't want to have to pony up the money. And don't tell me that they just want to get the money from the corporations or the government, because who the fuck do you think will end up paying the real Bill then? Here's my rant, as it appeared over at Dicks place. I added a few bits to the end. So shoot me. Here we go:
If you listen carefully to the rhetoric of the reparations crowd, what they really want isn't a payback for slavery. It's a payback and apology for both slavery and the hundred years of lynching and discrimination that followed slavery. They want something for the generations since 1865 who couldn't buy a home and then later pass that accumulated wealth on to their kids, and jobs and educations they couldn't get, and the beatings they took, and worse, when they tried to vote. But they make the mistake of calling it reparations for slavery, which allows most white folks, me included, to think and say stuff like "Hey, fuck you man. I never owned a slave in my life". They also want a free and open national discussion of how they were fucked over for 400 years, which most of us (White folks) would like to avoid. It's like getting today's German or Japanese populations to have a frank and open discussion of the atrocities their fathers and grandfathers committed. Good luck on that one. Who wants to be the subject or target of an endless guilt trip for things you personally didn't do?
Thing is, we all (White men), in one way or another, still benefit from the advantage our predecessors had, the "affirmative action" boost that being White gave them, allowing them to get somewhere without having to compete with Blacks, or Women, in the process of making it in this country (lets not even start talking about reparations for women!). Whether they had anything to do with setting up the system or not, they benefited from it, and that's what they want us to pay them for. My point, and my answer to them is simple; every group in the world, at one time or another in history, has ether been fucked over or fucked some other group over in order to make it in the world. That shit is as old as time itself, and the crap you went through back in the day was just your turn. We've all been through it. It ain't gonna change, so you might as well get over it.
Bringing it up in this day and age, with Black people seeing greater and greater success in America, leaves their "leaders" sounding more and more like wining little bitches, living in the richest country in the history of the world, crying about the past as they show off all the "bling" and shit that they've been able to accumulate since. We've all got problems today, so get over it. Tell little wet footed Ramon about yer problems, 'cause he wants our shitty little jobs, and he works harder than ether of us, and he's a hell of a lot easier to put up with a lot of the time.
That's what history is all about. Read a history book sometime. It's all about little groups of people, viewing themselves narrowly as being part of a separate group from everyone else, screwing over their neighbors in a mad dash to keep from being subsumed in the struggle by all the other little groups. Slavery is as old as prostitution, and as hard to get rid of. There are experts out there now who say that more people are enslaved today around the world than were back in the 19 century. That's a fact, and Africa is still the center of it all, and Arabs still run it.
It wasn't till the 18th century that Europeans began to see themselves and others in a different way. The Age Of Reason taught all of us about our humanity, "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", and all that shit. Within a hundred years or so of that slavery in America was over, and being actively suppressed in Africa by the same European powers who'd run it for 300 years. We all got scruples about it in time, and it took another hundred years to get over the legacy of it and end legal segregation.
So it's over and done with right? Naaa, That shit will never be over. It's too deeply set as a part of who we are as a people. And it's still too easy to blame other successful people for your own lack of success, and objectify other people, whether you have any power over them or not. That's human nature. Period. Maybe in a hundred more years we'll see the end of it here, as we slowly turn, ethnically at least, into a country more like Brazil, and it becomes harder and harder to tell the difference between the ancestors of the lynchers and the lynched. Who knows?
And if ya don't beleive me, here's Dave Chappelle's take on it.
13 comments:
*agrees*
They're all just whining. Ya don't hear my people crying, do ya? Nope. We set up to take advantage of the dumb White Man and his ex-slave, the Black Man...we run the casinos! :)
x tCj
Wonderful insight there ol' history guru! You be tellin' the truthes tha!
I've said it before, as you did here, we all have got to become the same color before any of this shit will end. Then some day our ancestors can hate all the blue eyed blondes that manage to squirt through.
My example is the penniless vietnamese boat people that came over here without knowing the language or culture.
A god majority had their own business and homes within a few short months.
Why can't these people that have been unslaved for 140 years and legally equal for 40 stop whining, buck up and make the best of being an American?
Hmmm, FatHairy we've had our disagreements. But you also know from reading my blog, that we actually agree on a lot politically. On one hand I think reparations are an absurd idea. On the other...I don't know what to think. The past - where American history is concerned - is all so frustrating sometimes.
My mantra has always been: take me as an individual and I'll make it on my own. And if I don't, it won't be for lack of trying. And when we all make it to the next life anyone who tried to "block" another person for his or her appearance, rather than the content of his or her character will receive a huge bite on the ass from Karma.
Anyway, I gotta give it to you. This was well thought out and eloquently written.
Happy belated MLK Day! Ha ha ha ha ha!
Man, if there's anything to that karma thing, there's a LOT of folks in big trouble. Hell's gonna be crowded. Maybe heaven is getting to spend a little time as an imp of Satan, pushing klansmen back down in the fire with Pol Pot, Stalin and the others. I appreciate your views, and enjoy your writing. Thanks for coming over.
Couldn't agree more my man...
I could ad a few things here but I'd just be whipping a dead horse.
How about us Micks? Wonder the way we were treated in the early 1900's, isn't it?
Bunch a whiny f*cking maggots.
Hide and watch. If Obama gets in, an apology magically appears out of nowhere.
My great-great-grandfather was a slaveholder. My great-grandfather and his brothers inherited slaves when the old man died. My great-grandfather rode in the Mississippi cavalry. WTF does that have to do with me? I sure as shit didn't inherit any money from them. I don't think anybody owes anybody anything for something that happened to our ancestors. When the Japanese who were imprisoned during WWII were paid reparations, only those who were imprisoned were paid. Not their kids and grandkids.
Excellent point my man. There's no tellin' what my southern ancestors did back in slave times, but I know that in the 1920s, both my maternal and paternal great grandfathers took part in a lynching. It's a fact, widely known in both families. Back in the '20s, someone was being lynched every 2 1/2 days in this country. Every 2 1/2 days! I can't say that has nothing to do with me, even though I didn't inherit any money from those old men. Their land and money was divided up and/or lost long before I came on the scene. When my paternal great grandfather died, my grandfather got $200 in the will, and had to become a sharecropper to make a living. So my father and his brothers grew up picking cotton, poor as hell. If it hadn't been for the opportunities that my father had in WW2, I'd probably be picking cotton now. And I tell ya, the only cotton I'm interested in ever pickin' is when I open a new pill bottle.
Thing is, I can't forget that my dad and his predecessors had advantages from their skin color; when he was educated in the 1930s and when he served in a segregated army in WW2. That was the equivalent of affirmative action, and it had something to do with him eventually becoming a colonel in the Air Force and setting me up be who I am today. I'm not sayin' that you or I owe anyone anything now, but the billions of dollars that have been spent in the last 30 or 40 years have NOT made up for all those centuries of crap that our people heaped on their people to keep them down so we could succeed. Throwing more money at the problem through reparations won't solve the issue ether. I think it's only time that will heal it, which is what I said in the end of my piece.
I agree it will take time. A lot of time. It's too bad there are assholes like Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, and John Conyers, et al picking at the scab.
A good discription of what they do.
AS always, you make a great case for your point and it's hard to disagree with. But, what I found amusing is how you start off just talking and then suddenly get into "shit, fuck, etc."
Yea, I can get profane when I get emotional. Well hell, it's a rich language, and I guess I like to use all of it when the time comes. You should hear me in person. Sheeesh. I have a full pallet of juicy expletives, in several languages, and know how to use them. You know, that old Boy Scout motto was "Be Prepaired".
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