No kidding. Cue the rant about a character from a television musical? What the hell?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
Printable View
No kidding. Cue the rant about a character from a television musical? What the hell?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
Well I will clarify a little. I suppose if someone didn't look at any candidate whatsoever and just went to vote, and just thought "hmm I'll vote for him because I'd like to have a black president" - that is different. There are different motivations for that.
However if someone is "serious" about voting and doesn't even consider the other candidate because they want to vote for the black one, then yes, that is discriminatory and just as bad.
If you look at the history of the treatment of African Americans in the United States and then say what you are saying now, the absurdity leaps out with a blinding supernova-like flash. I can't believe I even have to explain this. How is negative bias different from positive bias? Really?! Comparable to racism is voting for a representative of a long-suffering, long-segregated group that not 50 years ago hadn't the remotest chance of assuming the presidency? Ok then. I'm done. This thread is wearing on me. Your odious additions to it are like the further spreading of an already vile rash.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
Let's get one thing straight. I am talking about the ISOLATED ACT of voting for someone solely based on THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN. Obviously the person who doesn't vote for Obama because he is black has a better chance of being a bad person than the person who does it for the opposite reason. That is because they have a much better chance of being actively racist. You have morphed my statement into a battle of KKK vs someone wanting a black president. You are misrepresenting me. The isolated act of voting for someone solely based on THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN is equally bad both ways.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
And what does slavery matter? There have been many different races that have been victim to much worse enormities than slavery. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by getting specific, but many of them happened to be predominately white. Yes maybe not in America, but that does not matter. We are talking about humanity after all.
It is a bad path to go down. You are still rationalizing discrimination.
So you want to think in terms of stereotypes, but you know that if you actually employ stereotypes in this discussion you'll get your a$$ handed to you so you use a television show which is really a collection of stock characters as the basis of your argument? That's really, really, really stupid.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
Since most of your beef is with gay culture, can we assume that this comment on a David Bowie avatar is your attempt at a douchey jab?Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
I'm a glutton for punishment....Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
What the African slaves had to endure in America is perhaps unrivalled in terms of harshness and degradation throughout the history of mankind, excepting the holocaust of course. Maybe you are not aware of how they were captured, shipped, kept, hunted, lynched. You must not be. Predominantly white? Oh please do elaborate. I could use a chuckle.
I'm rationalizing discrimination? If I were American I may have voted for Obama just because he's black. Am I racist? No. I'm white myself. My friends and family are white. Most of the people I admire are white. But a black man getting elected president of the United States is a beautiful, significant thing.
Need I even retort? I should delete my last response. You slew yourself with this statement.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
You obviously aren't a very big David Bowie fan. The Bewlay Brothers is the greatest song ever written, and it just happens to be by, David Bowie.Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
I have written 6 short stories about experiencing David Bowie music.
You should watch The Man Who Fell to the Earth. It stars David Bowie and is much better than the labrinth.
And my beef with homosexuality? Seriously?
Okay good, it seemed like a dick move.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
Seriously what? You're going to have to address the first half of my post, because you seem to want to discuss reality as it appears on television which is just a waste of everyone's time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
Also I could respond to your beef against abortion but I've already spent a lot of my litnet time writing a pretty decent reply to anything you might say, here.
No one should even engage Bewlay anymore. He actually said this. I know, hard to believe. But there it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
You have no damn clue about enormities of mankind. I'm proud of you knowing about the Holocaust, but there are many genocides worse than that even.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
The concept of not treating human beings differently because of their skin color is larger than any catastrophe. Am I being idealistic? Yes. But there is nothing wrong with that.
"But a black man getting elected president of the United States is a beautiful, significant thing." - you are misrepresenting my argument. I never contested this. Your side of the argument right now is defending discrimination of whites because blacks have been mistreated in the past. You are not defending "a black man being president of the US a beautiful thing" because I never opposed that.
It is a bad path to rationalize discrimination. What if a man had his wife and daughters raped and dismembered by 6 black man? Would he be any less justified to resent black people than you are by voting for someone solely because they are black? Using your logic, he is more justified, as he has been negatively affected by that specific race worse than the average person voting for Obama (for being black).
If the need to not discriminate hinges on whether or not someone has been hurt in the past, then really you are getting away from humanity.
The odd thing is that at one point you had it read "what does that matter?" Then you edited it to "what does slavery matter?" Did someone slip me a dose of some hallucinogen earlier? Is ignorance and insensitivity on so staggering a scale even possible? Apparently.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
You jerk. Way to take something completely out of context.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
That is because originally the second paragraph was the first paragraph. I added a first paragraph, and I needed to specify slavery because it would have been confusing otherwise.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
Since blacks are allowed to discriminate more than whites because of slavery, then Jews also should be able to discriminate much much more than blacks. And then Kulaks. And then Chinese. And so on and so on and so on.
I'm talking about the people who are guilty of what I was talking about. Dehumanizing gays. There are people guilty of that. Not everyone who is pro-gay marriage is guilty of that. Like me for instance. There are many who are, and those are the people I was talking about. Kurt and the makers of Glee are guilty of it, so I talked about them.Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
How many barns did you have to raid to gather enough straw to stuff together this straw-man? You are completely disregarding the context. Black people were so marginalized in the US that it sent shockwaves when a black woman went to sit at the back of a bus. Think about that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
It is the inverse of racism to elect a black man president solely based on his skin colour. If someone voted for Obama out of hatred for the white race, then yes, that is discrimination. But I'm sure many of those who voted for Obama were happy too when they voted for Clinton.
I shouldn't even be answering you. You said "what does slavery matter." You need say no more.
Blacks were considered 3/5ths a human being.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
The Nazis stopped burning them and buried them instead because they figured it cost too much to buy the gasoline to burn thousands of them at a time.
So that must give Jews so so so so so much leeway when it comes to discriminating! They can practically walk up to a German and spit in their face! Hell, maybe even more!
No, sorry. That explanation does not cut it, especially since you continue to attempt to downplay the horror of African enslavement in America. When I read one description of how the slaves were transported in the hulls of the ships, in spaces so small they could not turn over, FOR WEEKS, many of them going insane as a result, I literally felt the urge to vomit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
The context I said "What does slavery matter?" was the equivalent of me saying "What does slavery matter?" when having an argument with someone about what the best song from the Beatles was. It is completely irrelevant because we are talking about humanity, which is not influenced by bad things have happened because bad things have always happened and always will happen so if bad things that happened influenced humanity than humanity would be one ****ed up and obsolete thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
I'll admit that it is not just as bad. Usually when I say that I say "almost". I forgot this time. It is still a bad path to go down though.
What are you on about now? Oh, the Jews suffered more so the Blacks can't complain? Really?! You are vampirically draining from me what little faith in humanity I still have.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
You are saying that blacks suffered more than whites so whites can't complain and discrimination of whites isn't as bad.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
Discrimination is bad. Period. If you altered how "bad" something was each time a catastrophe happened, there would be no sense of humanity left.
The difference is I am looking at the whole picture while you think you are special because you care about other people being tortured and hurt. That doesn't make you special. You are expected to care. The important thing is to not allow things to happen again, and rationalizing discrimination is not a good pathway.
God you're so dense. I was clearly mocking your line of thinking. How did you miss that?
So what is your opinion of abortion? You know, since 1/3rd of all potential blacks in America are aborted? More black babies have been aborted since 1972 than blacks died during slavery. Why the selective outrage? Oh yeah, they weren't born yet, so what do they matter?
The essence of humanity is not something affected by catastrophes. It is beyond that dimension. If every enormity affected the essence of humanity than there would be nothing of it left.
I'll admit that it is more understandable to vote for a black president because they are black as it is to not vote for them because they ARE black, but only because it is understandable for a human being to act out of emotion. However if you can stand back and look at the way things SHOULD be, which in this circumstance there is no reason not to, people really SHOULDN'T judge someone based on their skin color. That is wrong.
For example, let's say that some guy had his daughter raped and murdered by 6 black men. Should that father resent or mistrust all black people because of that? No. But would I be more understanding if he did as opposed to someone who has never had any harm done to him by a black person? Absolutely. Ideally, if you can help it, skin color should not come into play either way.
This is what I am saying. Please see that because you seem to have distorted my message, or maybe I did a very bad job explaining myself.
And you know it was a bush-league move of you to take my "What does slavery matter?" out of context. There is no reason for you to do that to me.
Again, here go you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
I didn't mean that argument and knew it was a low-blow. I was very angry. I've calmed down a bit now. I don't like it when people misrepresent what I am saying, which that guy was very guilty of doing.Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
The only people who I think are inherently inhumane or whatever when it comes to abortion are the people who parade it as a triumph in liberty and woman rights. There are people like that, and they make me sick. Look at the motives for murder and the motives for abortion, and the reactions the murderer and the person who had an abortion has. They are completely different in every way. That is because it is a lot different. However the people who can look at such an unfortunate thing and come away with the conclusion that it is a proclamation of liberty and "the woman doing what she wants with HER body!" ... All I can say is that they have a terrible disconnect.
They are who I was talking about.
I agree with most everything you said in what you linked me to, except for this:
Whether the woman in question falls into any of the above-mentioned reasons to get an abortion or if there is some other reason, the fact remains that it is her body. She is the one who is going to have to endure all of the pain and suffering of the labour process and the pregnancy. Denying her the right to choose how to operate her own body is to deny her the most basic of human freedoms.
No, the most basic of human freedoms is being able to live in the first place. I don't see how you can argue that.
Belaway and Darcy - you are both talking about two different things....10 posts in and none of you have yet to undersatnd that the other has understood nothing of what you were saying.
@Belaway, yes voting a man based on skin color, is wrong, does not matter if he is whte black green or red, a moral man votes for the best men, not the one with his favorite color.
But Obama was undoubtedly the best man at the time. So your argument is mostly irelevent in fact, tough in theory it makes sense.
@Darcy, everyone agrees that the fact that a black man could get elected president considering America's history is a beautifull thing. Also if you think what the americans did to the affricans is one of the worst acts of human history, you are ignorant in said departmen. It is a typical act of human history. Genocide, slavery, brutality are common troughout all of history.
But yes in the context of America, it is nice to see a nation progress so far in such little time.
Also Obama is not black, he is half-black. Huge difference. The day a man with the complexion of terry crews becomes president, that will be a day to rejoice.
Nah, many people have exercised their feedom by choosing to die. Choice is liberty, not life.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
I guess that someone could argue "is the choice to kill liberty?" Well, I guess it is technically, but that's taking "freedom" too far for social animals like humans. We live in large groups so there are trade-offs: I don't want my family or friends to be slaughtered, so I give up some freedom for that not to happen. Someone might also compare killing to abortion, and say that if freedom doesn't extend to murder then why should it to abortion which some might consider comparable. In that case, I'd refer them to my other arguments and point out that to equate abortion to killing is to radically oversimplify a complex social issue.
Actually that annoys me, too. I don't think that a young girl who just chose to have her father's baby aborted wants to be congratulated for her bravery and hear about how she's struck a blow for civil rights.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
Not to mention a BA in English is only 12 classes over a 4 year period, so that averages out to be 3 classes a year. How much can a person really cover in so short a time period in their courses? Not to mention I remember having a discussion with Mortalterror a little while ago on Lit Net in which he asserted that many people he knows with BAs in English spent too much time reading contemporary work in their courses, while getting little to no background in the older classics. So Wolf's claim that students are forced to only spend their time with the Old Masters doesn't match up well with everyone else observations.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
I guarantee you that 5 years after her abortion she isn't going to be reminiscing about her "bravery".Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
The bigger question is that of course a single teacher is biased. A single school. Or single Academy. But if you look to hundred academies, curses, teachers is just an illusion to consider all of them have the same bias (which obviously would cease to be bias).Quote:
Originally Posted by Drkshadow03
One could easy make a case for: This place does not teach enough african literature. This does not teach woman literature. This does not teach popular literature. This that and that. But as student you can opt the kind line you will follow and form yur own bias.
All his list proved is that his argument does not follow: several of those authors are marginal authors and are widely studied. Baudelaire for example, thanks to Walter Benjamin use of the author is almost pop to exaustion in social studies. I find hard to believe he is ignored, I just remember to see some guy impressing a girl with a few verses of Muse Malade, which the girl was impressed just because it was Baudelaire. Of course, most people has just a general notion about Le Fleurs and not all rest, but obviously in studies dedicated to French literature or even in France, Baudelaire must be as pop as coca-cola.
That is simply not true. American slavery was especially brutal. For instance, in Ancient Greece a slave was more akin to a farm-hand, he or she was not dehumanized and brutalized as the African slaves in America so often were. And when you consider that there was another century post-abolition of rank discrimination, so bad that, like I said, the mere act of a woman moving to the back of a bus sent shockwaves, the tragedy of the Africans' experience in America is thus seen to have been far-reaching and immense.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander III
The differences between Barack Obama and John McCain lay mostly in rhetoric. The greatest difference between them was that one represented a race that had endured centuries of abuse and discrimination. To want to see that once enslaved, once lynched, once grossly discriminated against race assume the presidency is neither racist nor wrong. Like I said and Bewlay conveniently ignored, many who voted for Obama were likely happy when they voted for Clinton.
And Bewlay, I did not take you out of context. The context is that you think what the African Americans endured was nothing in the larger view of things. You say things like slavery should not alter us. Its not just slavery. Its discrimination. Blacks couldn't even vote in the early 1960s. There are many people alive today who can remember that time. I suppose if they rejoiced at Obama's electoral victory and felt happy that a black man had become president you would call them racists. Even if, like me, they were white.
That is simply not true. American slavery was especially brutal. For instance, in Ancient Greece a slave was more akin to a farm-hand
Ummm... I think you seriously need to brush up on your history. The brutality of American slavery was in no way unique. Look to the Brutality of the Romans, the various "Barbarian" tribes, the Vikings, the Chinese during the An Lushan Rebellion to say nothing of Mao, the Mongol Invasions, the Russian Civil War, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, the Witch Hunts, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, Expulsion of Germans after World War II, Armenian Genocide, Aztek Human Sacrifices, Rwandan and Darfur genocide, etc... Some involved greater losses of life; some less, but this is not the issue. All revealed the darkest side of humanity and its willing participation in brutality and the dehumanization of "others". Yes, the experience of slavery and the subsequent institutionalized racial discrimination in the US had a profound impact that is still being felt. Do you imagine the experience is any less for the Native Americans, the Jews of post-WWII Europe, the Chinese post-Mao, etc...?
The differences between Barack Obama and John McCain lay mostly in rhetoric. The greatest difference between them was that one represented a race that had endured centuries of abuse and discrimination. To want to see that once enslaved, once lynched, once grossly discriminated against race assume the presidency is neither racist nor wrong.
You seem to be employing some rather slippery logic here. Employing race as the determining factor in an election or in hiring or in accepting a student to a university is "racist" regardless of whether it is done in order to rectify past racist policies. One does not rectify a past bias by reversing it in the present. One rectifies it by eliminating such biases altogether. To have voted for Obama based solely upon the color of his skin (And I might note that I did vote for him) would most certainly be "racist" and "wrong". Indeed, I might add it would amount to stupidity as well. The election of the President of the United States is far too important a matter to be left to a preference for a certain skin color, hair style, or religion. The President of the United States is not merely some symbolic figurehead. If he were, then surely I would say go ahead... elect the black guy simply because you wish to prove to the world how far we have come as a nation. But such is not the case. The proper way of electing the President is to consider which individual, regardless of race, gender, gender preference, religion, political party, etc... will likely prove the best leader for the nation as a whole.
By the way... slightly off topic, eh?
I consider the position to be precisely that - a symbolic figurehead. Also, people who voted for Obama likely also voted for Clinton, who was white.
The Africans were seized and taken across the sea, shackled to a foreign land, forced to drudgery, considered less than human, discriminated against for centuries, as a matter of policy up until a few decades ago. For centuries. And I would also consider it a positive development were a Jew elected Chancellor in Germany, an aboriginal elected Prime Minister in Canada.
Many of the atrocities you mention are centuries or even millennia old. The suffering of African Americans is still fresh in the national consciousness.
Maybe the logic is weak, but I don't see how anyone could be faulted for acting here out of emotion, for caring most for the symbolism of a Black man becoming president.
And yes, very off topic.
I think Bewlay Brother dwarves some kudos for actually arguing pretty coherently, really, considering that first rant.
"Dwarves"? That's a heck of a malaprop. Can I ask what your other train of thought was that crashed into this one? :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
:lol: No, it's just the stupid autocorrect on my iPad, which I'm very close to turning off. Though, I think "dwarves" makes it more interesting than "deserves."
Darcy... serious question.. do you know who Josef Stalin was?
Oh and Darcy, you know there is still slavery going on in Africa right now as we speak, and it is blacks enslaving blacks.
Can't say I do. Who was he?Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
Maybe I spoke too soon.
I'm waiting to be enlightened. Names sounds Russian. 19th century novelist perhaps? I really like Dostoevsky and Gogol. Maybe I'll check this Josef Stalin fellow out.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
Dostoevsky and Gogol are really great literary thinkers and I always got fascinated by these gigantic personality .Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
1. It's trimester, not semester.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother
2. You wonked up the quote tags.
3. What are you trying to argue? I thought you said that you agreed with my points.
No ****.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother