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What's wrong with Derrick Bell?

Brainster said:
Damn right it's offensive. Maybe you don't mind your society being called racist, but I do. And it's worthy enough of comment that the NY Freaking Times included it in its obituary of the man.
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I don't care for aspersions against the US but I couldn't possibly be outraged. We (America) often behave in ugly racist ways. I don't agree with Bell but then I'm as white as they come. I like the market place of ideas. If a minority has a perspective that I don't agree with I'd rather he say it than focus on the offense or outrage about that perspective. So long as Bell didn't slander or libel individuals as Al Sharpton did or behaves as Jane Fonda did during Vietnam (see below) to propagate lies then I'm fine with him.

snopes said:
Ever since her infamous visit to Hanoi, Jane Fonda has maintained the fiction that she was just "trying to stop the war." But she didn't go to North Vietnam to try to bring about peace, or to reconcile the two warring sides, or to stop American boys from being killed; she went there as an active show of support for the North Vietnamese cause. She lauded the North Vietnamese military, she denounced American soldiers as "war criminals" and urged them to stop fighting, she lobbied to cut off all American economic aid to the South Vietnamese government (even after the Paris Peace Accords had ended U.S. military involvement in Vietnam), she publicly thanked the Soviets for providing assistance to the North Vietnamese, and she branded tortured American POWs as liars possessed of overactive imaginations
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Now, if Bell acted in that manner then I'm happy to denounce him.
 
WildCat said:
Keep building those strawmen guys!

I take it none of you want to back up the mindless claim that blacks were more subjugated in 1992 than at any time since slavery?
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if Bell exaggerated, it was not by much.

In 1865 there were new territories to be settled, there were chances for black people to lay claim to and own land and there were opportunities for them to enter the trades and professions that the industrialization of America opened up.

There were, off course, times when the KKKrap and such slime rose up against blacks, but the trend has always been toward full participation in mainstream American society.

More important was the gradual entry of blacks into the trade unions. This brought a lot more of them into the middle class.

But the atttacks on trade unions by the right wing is eroding that structure and closing the door on a lot of people black and white. The less ethical among the right wingers are, of course, trying to convince white working people that black people are keeping them from getting the good jobs.

Disparate application of criminal justice is depriving more black people of the chance even to hold a decent job, let alone get ahead. Just consider the different sentences for posession of the same amounts of crack or powdered cocaine.

Racism is not dead. It is not going to go away of its own accord. It is just going to put on a nicer suit and get a job on talk radio or an internet blog.
 
Derrick Bell said:
The 61-year-old author said he reached his bleak conclusions over the course of a career in civil rights that he now believes was misdirected. Despite all the change over the years, he said, blacks are worse off and more subjugated than at any time since slavery. The only difference now is that there is "a more effective, more sophisticated means of domination."
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A perspective.

  • Hegel: Social and moral progress is the synthesis of the dialectic.
  • Sandel: Social and moral progress is the equilibrium found in an adversarial system.
I'm with Hitchens, I think we do society a better service to seriously consider view points we don't agree with. He gives as an example holocaust denial, which BTW he finds absurd.

If Bell libels, defames, slanders individuals then I think that worthy of denouncing. If he calls for the overthrow of the government or race wars then I think that would be worthy of denouncing him. I've heard some say that he has done so but I've yet to see the evidence for that. If he did then I will denounce him.
 
WildCat said:
Keep building those strawmen guys!

I take it none of you want to back up the mindless claim that blacks were more subjugated in 1992 than at any time since slavery?
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And as usual, denial of what you actually posted about finding racism itself as being non-existent like proof of Bigfoot, and about you being more qualified than someone else to talk about it.

Wildcat said:
People like Bell find racism under every stone, just like a Bigfoot believer sees Bigfoot in every fuzzy blob in low-res videos or out-of-focus still photos.
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Post #15

Simply chanting 'STRAWMEN!!' when caught is unconvincing.
 
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Brainster said:
He believed (or at least stated) ridiculous things, like:

In 1992, he told The New York Times that black Americans were more subjugated than at any time since slavery.
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Well he was not alone in that thought.

Bachmann said:
"Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President."
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What an absurd thought. I wonder how he did her numbers. Did it count as a two-parent household if one of the two parents was an also technically the owner of the child? Most of the accusations about Bell sound like milquetoast. Stupid hyperbolic comments about the realities of being black in American in 92, and a crappy short story. This is the best boogeyman the right wing can come up with?

I'll see your Derrick Bell, and raise you a Strom Thurman, Gelnn Beck, Ron Paul, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, Pat Buchanan, Haley Barbour, the litany of Birthers that have not been disavowed by the party, and the list goes on. The vast majority of the elected GOP establishment can be tied much closer, and for much longer than Obama could be with Derrick Bell to these clowns, and you can find a hell of a lot more repulsive dirt about all of them than a quote from 92 and a bad short story.

If you can't win on the issues, you have to make it personal. What the heck happened to Saul Alinsky?

Daredelvis
 
leftysergeant said:
if Bell exaggerated, it was not by much.

In 1865 there were new territories to be settled, there were chances for black people to lay claim to and own land and there were opportunities for them to enter the trades and professions that the industrialization of America opened up.

There were, off course, times when the KKKrap and such slime rose up against blacks, but the trend has always been toward full participation in mainstream American society.

More important was the gradual entry of blacks into the trade unions. This brought a lot more of them into the middle class.

But the atttacks on trade unions by the right wing is eroding that structure and closing the door on a lot of people black and white. The less ethical among the right wingers are, of course, trying to convince white working people that black people are keeping them from getting the good jobs.

Disparate application of criminal justice is depriving more black people of the chance even to hold a decent job, let alone get ahead. Just consider the different sentences for posession of the same amounts of crack or powdered cocaine.

Racism is not dead. It is not going to go away of its own accord. It is just going to put on a nicer suit and get a job on talk radio or an internet blog.
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What the hell are you talking about? Who are these right wingers saying that black people are stealing their jobs?

I have seen some right wing bigots complain about Hispanics taking American jobs, but cannot recall hearing them whine about black people. Of course, the vast majority of whining about dark skinned people taking our jerbs comes from protectionists like you.
 
BTW:

Does anyone accept Brietbart's premise that this says something about Obama?
 
It's possible to admire someone for something they have done or their general person without having to agree with or defend everything they've said or done. That's even assuming Obama greatly admires Bell, and that the things Bell has said or done that are disagreeable outweigh those things he has said and done that are agreeable.

This is basically one chain where every link appears broken.
 
respect said:
What the hell are you talking about? Who are these right wingers saying that black people are stealing their jobs?

I have seen some right wing bigots complain about Hispanics taking American jobs, but cannot recall hearing them whine about black people. Of course, the vast majority of whining about dark skinned people taking our jerbs comes from protectionists like you.
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Somebody won an election on the issue a few years back. Something in a TV ad with a white hand crumpling a rejected job application while the voice-over explains that this qualified and needy white person was rejected because the company had to hire a black person. I'll see if I can find it.
 
leftysergeant said:
Somebody won an election on the issue a few years back. Something in a TV ad with a white hand crumpling a rejected job application while the voice-over explains that this qualified and needy white person was rejected because the company had to hire a black person. I'll see if I can find it.
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That is probably complaining about preferential treatment based on race, not racism against black people.
 
crimresearch said:
Claims of preferential treatment were what you were questioning the existence of.
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No, that would be criticism of a bad policy for hurting their ability to find jobs, not claims that black people are preventing them from working.
 
respect said:
No, that would be criticism of a bad policy for hurting their ability to find jobs, not claims that black people are preventing them from working.
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No, the claim is that they could not get a job because America is the land of opportunity, but more so for black people. The evidence really supports this point of view.

Daredelvis
 
daredelvis said:
No, the claim is that they could not get a job because America is the land of opportunity, but more so for black people. The evidence really supports this point of view.

Daredelvis
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Right, the criticism is of policies that give some races preferential treatment. Not a criticism of black people themselves. Alternatively, there is a lot of criticism of Hispanics for stealing our jerbs. And a lot of criticism of Asians and South Americans as well.
 
RandFan said:
Does anyone accept Brietbart's premise that this says something about Obama?
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It says that, at least back then, he didn´t give a wet fart about the lengths racist far-right blowhards would go to make him look bad.

But then, if he did, he wouldn´t have gone into politics.
 
A criticism of preferential hiring policies does not support this claim:

leftysergeant said:
The less ethical among the right wingers are, of course, trying to convince white working people that black people are keeping them from getting the good jobs.
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Brainster said:
Derrick Bell thought Louis Farrakhan was a great hero for the people.
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Really? Getting your quotes from a Breitbart website?
Do people never learn that Breitbart and context dont mix. He followed that line (and it is true, love him or hate him Farrakhan was and is regarded as a hero by many black people, therefore it is a simple statement of fact) by saying he didn't agree with a lot of what Farrakhan said or his tactics.

So Brainster, did you fall for more Breitbart "selective editing" or did you just not care if you were doing it too?

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/art..._Tries_to_Tie_Prof._Derrick_Bell_to_Farrakhan
 
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