Split Thread Tearing Down Statues Associated With Racial Injustice

[metacristi]

Nope - it was and is well investigated and documented by distinctly non-progressive bods, you know the pillars of society, the great and good. For example from the inquiry that established the existence of institutional racism you had : Sir William Macpherson - high court judge and former soldier and Tom Cook a retired deputy chief constable. Not known for being "progressives".

Almost 30 years later, after rapid changes in the way police operates already in the mid 90s, and yet the 'racists' are somehow still there unmoved...I would suggest a better idea let us return to the struggle for social rights for all instead of playing the racial card and defend indefensible sensitivities of minorities (plenty), when all you gain is a sort of inverse racism I would suggest that Reason must prevail.

 

[Mumbles]

"Oh no, soon they'll be shooting the sign denoting where Emmitt Till's body was found!"

Oh, wait, the sign's bulletproof now. Guess why?

"Uh...well...They'll start shooting up Fred Hampton's tombstone!"

Got some bad news for you, buddy.

Sorry, this has been going on for decades, and until now it's been pretty damn one-sided. If people had spent some time caterwauling about these and other examples of churches, graves, statues and the like of black people being desecrated by white supremacists, I might take this more seriously.

But y'all that are complaining didn't even think about it even now, so I really don't. **** the white supremacy statues, take them down, do it correctly, or let the kids do it for you and risk them going too far.

ETA: Personally, I'd suggest doing it professionally, *decades* ago, but seems y'all had to wait until the paramilitary cops started beating up white people who objected to black people getting choked, shot, and tazed to death to consider it, and the kids are on a rampage.

And take the stupid battle flag out of state flags, and change the school names back from the slavers and terrorists, too.

 

[Darat]

Almost 30 years later, after rapid changes in the way police operates already in the mid 90s, and yet the 'racists' are somehow still there unmoved...I would suggest a better idea let us return to the struggle for social rights for all instead of playing the racial card and defend indefensible sensitivities of minorities (plenty), when all you gain is a sort of inverse racism I would suggest that Reason must prevail.

Then put forward some rational arguments rather than yet more of your "just so" tales and "I assert therefore I am right" nonsense.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Exactly what was said by the man who was interviewed out in Portland about why he participated in the pulling down of the statue of Thomas Jefferson.

And exactly the reason why the wrong statues are getting pulled down. If you leave a cancer untreated for a long time, you can't cut it out without taking healthy flesh with it. Leave it long enough and it kills the whole organism. At the moment everyone's complaining that it's getting very difficult to tell which are the cancerous cells and which are the healthy ones. That's not a sign that the cancer needs to be left alone.

Dave

 

[JoeMorgue]

Elaborating on this. Joe, you want to stick to Confederate statues. That's awesome. So do I. However, when I see a mob with ropes pull down a statue, I know that it will not stop with that statue. And it didn't. Now we've got an empty plinth in Golden Gate Park where General Grant used to be.

No. Screw that racist apologetic nonsense.

Black people have been "asking" to take the statues down for years and we didn't listen. Hell my home state pretty much made "Not being racist" illegal.

They used the system and it didn't work.

Now they are just taking it into their own hands and the argument is "Oh noes well now we can't trust you... you're a MOB"

We make is so they can't use the system, then use the fact that they have to work outside the system to prove they aren't trust worthy.

Again I'm just so utterly impressed by however black people are handling it, it's always wrong.

If you didn't want any collateral statue damage, you should have listened when they asked nicely. Now they aren't asking anymore.

 

[Thermal]

Elaborating on this. Joe, you want to stick to Confederate statues. That's awesome. So do I. However, when I see a mob with ropes pull down a statue, I know that it will not stop with that statue. And it didn't. Now we've got an empty plinth in Golden Gate Park where General Grant used to be.

That isn't some sort of hand wringing. It's not a straw man. It's not a slippery slope fallacy. It's a real, actual, statue lying on the ground, and it was entirely predictable based on the rhetoric of those tearing down the statues of Colston or Davis. It was easy to see this coming, and here it is.

Entirely predictable, yes. When it hits the point of open raising hell, reason gets lost and they all come crashing down. Which is why, despite the arguments here, we should be talking about ALL of them, to work it out before the pissed off kids redecorate thoughtlessly.

 

[Bob001]

And?

And there's no legitimate reason or rationalization to preserve these tributes to traitors. Tear'em down.

 

[bruto]

We only talk about statues being torn down by mobs when there are news stories about statues being torn down by mobs.

Yeah? What's your point?

I have a pretty high opinion of Don Miguel de Cervantes, but it just never comes up on these forums until someone tears down his statue.

I think it is too bad that some statues are coming down which shouldn't, but if you look at what you just wrote, perhaps what you're saying is the very point you're questioning. We only talk about statues being torn down when mobs tear them down, because that seems to be the only way to get them down. People have been objecting to some of these things for a very long time, and nothing happened, except for promises and mealy-mouthed platitudes about history, and (in some cases) reactionary laws to protect them.

Political and social leaders who have been obstinately deaf to complaints for years are suddenly clutching their pearls and whimpering "there's no need to shout."

We see a mob on the street and lament, but too many of our leaders have been a mob, just wearing suits and uniforms.

 

[Steve]

No. Screw that racist apologetic nonsense.

Black people have been "asking" to take the statues down for years and we didn't listen. Hell my home state pretty much made "Not being racist" illegal.

They used the system and it didn't work.

Now they are just taking it into their own hands and the argument is "Oh noes well now we can't trust you... you're a MOB"

We make is so they can't use the system, then use the fact that they have to work outside the system to prove they aren't trust worthy.

Again I'm just so utterly impressed by however black people are handling it, it's always wrong.

If you didn't want any collateral statue damage, you should have listened when they asked nicely. Now they aren't asking anymore.

 

[Steve]

No. Screw that racist apologetic nonsense.

Black people have been "asking" to take the statues down for years and we didn't listen. Hell my home state pretty much made "Not being racist" illegal.

They used the system and it didn't work.

Now they are just taking it into their own hands and the argument is "Oh noes well now we can't trust you... you're a MOB"

We make is so they can't use the system, then use the fact that they have to work outside the system to prove they aren't trust worthy.

Again I'm just so utterly impressed by however black people are handling it, it's always wrong.

If you didn't want any collateral statue damage, you should have listened when they asked nicely. Now they aren't asking anymore.

A point well made.

 

[Thermal]

No. Screw that racist apologetic nonsense.

Black people have been "asking" to take the statues down for years and we didn't listen. Hell my home state pretty much made "Not being racist" illegal.

They used the system and it didn't work.

Now they are just taking it into their own hands and the argument is "Oh noes well now we can't trust you... you're a MOB"

We make is so they can't use the system, then use the fact that they have to work outside the system to prove they aren't trust worthy.

Again I'm just so utterly impressed by however black people are handling it, it's always wrong.

If you didn't want any collateral statue damage, you should have listened when they asked nicely. Now they aren't asking anymore.

I seem to recall over the last few years that confederate flags and statues were being brought down, responding in the slow way that government responds to everything. Seems like people were in fact being listened too. That doesn't justify mass vandalism.

How active were you in getting them torn down? Popping a weekly email to your representatives, were you? Harassing them at lunch?

You prob did squat, like the rest of us. Maybe talked a little on a forum. So don't look down your nose at people who prefer to have government plod along in its bogged down in paperwork way than have mobs ignoring the people to do whatever they want.

 

[Steve]

I seem to recall over the last few years that confederate flags and statues were being brought down, responding in the slow way that government responds to everything. Seems like people were in fact being listened too. That doesn't justify mass vandalism.

How active were you in getting them torn down? Popping a weekly email to your representatives, were you? Harassing them at lunch?

You prob did squat, like the rest of us. Maybe talked a little on a forum. So don't look down your nose at people who prefer to have government plod along in its bogged down in paperwork way than have mobs ignoring the people to do whatever they want.

I am never impressed with this argument. It leads nowhere. The implication is that one should not agree with the actions of a particular group unless one actively participates in the same actions. Why is verbal support insufficient?

 

[Thermal]

I am never impressed with this argument. It leads nowhere. The implication is that one should not agree with the actions of a particular group unless one actively participates in the same actions. Why is verbal support insufficient?

Verbal support is great. Big fan of it, myself.

But you don't get to quip "you should have acted sooner" when you have been sitting on your own thumbs all the while.

We are a "WE".

 

[Gilbert Syndrome]

That's literally 90% of the "Whhhaaatttt? I'm just talking!" discourse.

Hey here's a radical idea. We can still discuss things after we fix them. No laws says we can't.

We can get rid of the racist traitor statues and the Pancake box "Mammy" images and all you delightful people can still talk about it "What... where on a message board that's the point... we're just talking is all" people can still just be talking.

But no.... we have to talk "first" for some reason.

Again, I keep seeing this argument, yet I've seen nobody demanding we talk before doing anything.

I've literally stated more than three times in this thread alone that of course we need not discuss things before taking action, although I do wish some people would think before taking some action, certainly regarding the William Gladstone situation here in this city as one example.

 

[Gilbert Syndrome]

You are aware of the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" I assume? And you know that from that Uncle Tom did become a derogatory term. Now you may not like it, and you may be able to show usage of "uncle" which is using it as the normal family relationship descriptor. However calling anyone from the black community an "Uncle" whatever is clearly meant by many if not most who chose to use the term as derogatory and belittling.

I'm aware of it, I'm just unable to figure out why the brand name of Uncle Ben's somehow becomes less racist if you take away the black guy. That to me is just hiding the racial connotations and saying hey, Uncle Ben could be anyone now! when we know he's not anyone, he's a black guy called Uncle Ben. Obviously, they're not gonna change the name itself.

 

[Gilbert Syndrome]

Nope. We're talking "during" the changes. And from the sidelines

Surely you can see that by even attempting debate on this subject on an internet forum, you're halting the quest for equality among races...

 

[Distracted1]

No. Screw that racist apologetic nonsense.

Black people have been "asking" to take the statues down for years and we didn't listen. Hell my home state pretty much made "Not being racist" illegal.

They used the system and it didn't work.

Now they are just taking it into their own hands and the argument is "Oh noes well now we can't trust you... you're a MOB"

We make is so they can't use the system, then use the fact that they have to work outside the system to prove they aren't trust worthy.

Again I'm just so utterly impressed by however black people are handling it, it's always wrong.

If you didn't want any collateral statue damage, you should have listened when they asked nicely. Now they aren't asking anymore.

A laudable sentiment. Behave in a proscribed manner- or suffer the consequences of not doing so while accepting that it is your own fault.

 

[metacristi]

Then put forward some rational arguments rather than yet more of your "just so" tales and "I assert therefore I am right" nonsense.

I'm afraid there is no ''institutional racism', at least nothing which to justify the widespread 'violent progressive actions today (after all even vandalism perpetrated by the Suffragettes cannot be justified if we look retroactively, in spite of a way worse off situation for women at the time). And when even merely advocating a return to the peaceful fight for social rights (all inclusive, a characteristics of liberal-progressivism before mid 1990s, without playing the card of 'racism' leading to the the excesses of cultural relativism) is labeled as a sign of 'racism' one instantly knows that the whole edifice is rotten to the core.

That's the reality, after roughly 1995 progressivism went astray, the shift towards protecting the sensitivities of minorities with all costs a disaster, what we have today is a sort of illiberal progressivism (often irrational I'd say). You do not read, I've already offered sufficient justifications but who to understand?

 

[Gilbert Syndrome]

Yeah, North African and Middle Eastern slavery as an economic force predates the Atlantic slave trade by a good bit. IIRC, the Middle East is still the larges beneficiary of slavery today, specifically in the form of sex slaves.

Many of the UK's sex-workers are vulnerable women who're trafficked from all over, Europe, Asia, etc. They're ill-treated, terrified and in most cases, abused. Not many people give a toss about them, oddly enough, much like the many thousands of homeless and destitute people here, none of whom have the benefit of being care-free enough to actually be insulted by various food mascots or statues because they're too concerned with finding a place to sleep and locating a warm meal. It was unsurprising to see so many young "woke" middle-class kids just casually walking by all of those homeless people without giving them a glance. Finding out how you can help people in your hometown isn't difficult to do, there are so many registered charities and groups that are actively trying to make their communities better for all, black, white, gay, straight, yet every year they're left crying out for volunteers, funnily enough.

 

[JoeMorgue]

A laudable sentiment. Behave in a proscribed manner- or suffer the consequences of not doing so while accepting that it is your own fault.

Spare me your pearl clutching.

You're playing the "Well I don't negotiate with terrorist!" card against black people who just don't want to stare at statues of people who fought a war to keep them in chains everyday and who tried to do it "our way" for the last 60 years.