I grew up in the ghettoes of East Baltimore and I'm now myself a university professor. I had some scary run ins with the cops while in the hood, and have had some since I've become a "successful black professional. " You can certainly say that I've changed, that my "mindset " is different in many ways from what it was whebn at age 17 I was nearly killed by cops in Johnson Square. But I don't see the police or judicial system has change a hell of a lot since then. In fact, some of my encounters with cops (especially but not only in the South) often revealed ressentiment on the part of cops that I was educated or successful. You speak of Skip Gates. Well his former colleague mentions being arrested by the police who refused to believe he could be wearing such fine clothes or driving a car unless he was a a dope dealer. I happen to KNOW Dr. West (for there are only a handful of us Black philosophers in the USA), and I recall his mention to me of being arrested and detained on suspicion of having raped a white girl. The cops actually tried to pressure her into identifying Cornel as her attacker. Thank heavens she didn't cooperate. ("Brother Savant, I'd probably STILL be in prison if they had convinced that white girl to lie on me" he said). West also mentioned the usual annoyances of being able to catch cab in Manhattan (even slovenly dressed white men and women being picked up as cabs passed him by. Barack Obama mentions his own experiences with racism which he records in DREAMS FROM MY FATHER and AUDACITY OF HOPE. I think that many "successful " class privileged blacks are closing their eyes to what is happening and claiming, as I heard two black bourgeois (one male, one female) say in some other thread that only ghetto criminals, hoodrats and thug trash have reason to worry about police violence. That might come as a surprise to Arthur MacDuffie, black entrepreneur bludgeoned to death by cops in Miami in 1980 (with, as usual, the cops being exonerated). That certainly came as a surprise to a young sister and daughter (whose mother is a black judge in Bmore) when she was arrested on Greenmount Ave with no charge, and then manhandled for daring to question the cops about why she was being arrested. (That young lady was a student of mine). And I could go on and on. Others may delude themselves. I refuse to be deluded.
-Savant
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I've seen data which indicate that Blacks (considering their per centage in the nation as as a whole) are murdered by cops something like 15--20 times more than whites. You can say that there are far more poor whites than poor Blacks--indeed poor whites might out number the entire Black population. But there can be no doubt that PROPORTIONATELY Blacks are poorer. Similar with police terror: Possibly more whites are killed, but PROPORTIONATELY more blacks are slain by cops, and under circumstances they're not likely to be killed if they were white. And since Coretta mentions Henry L. Gates, when he was arrested a number of his white colleagues admitted that under the same set of circumstances they most likely would not be arrested. But if it were them probably the police wouldn't have been called nor paid any attention whatsoever. And if Obama was white he wouldn't have had to calm nerves with a beer party after stating---the correct understatement---t hat the cops acted stupidly.
-Savant
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The majority of Black people (including many "biracial " folk) agree with me. Even Barack Obama, though he'd want to tone it down, would agree, and have said things similar. Only he has to appease a lot of people--people with more power than is possessed by the black population. And when Blacks are fighting to change society, to resist injustice they are precisely dealing with their own issues. But whites who won't face the realities of racism and injustice, but rant on tirelessly about "black failures,' clearly do not want to deal with their own issues--their own demons, and the demons haunting the corrupt social order of the USA. By the way, to generalize based solely on your personal experiences often leads to fallacious reasoning and confusion.
-Savant
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Ironically, I did not initially take you to be a French Catholic, except nominally. Of course, I knew that Roman Catholicism was the majority religion in France. Mais les majorite des intellectuels francais qui j'ai recontrait etait plus laique ou (en anglais) secular. Jusqu'au temps j'ai lu votre pensees au thread "Islam and the Black Race" je ne sais pas que vous etes religieux. Les philosophes avec j'ai parlait en France n'etait pas tres religious. Naturellement, I didn't meet many devout French persons au Sorbonne a conferences "Groupe d'Etudes Sartrienne." Aussi, le majorite de mes favorite ecrivains et philosophes Francais n'est pas tres religieux: Voltaire, Rousseau, Zola, Camus, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Merleau Ponty, Foucault, etc. I think I made the mistake of pre-reflectively assuming that French intellectuals whom I met were mainly secular. But as the saying goes "You live and learn."
-Savant
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C'est vrai....Mais les tyrants "secular " tend to turn their ideologies into ersatz religions very similar in mentality to the fanaticism of the worst of traditional religions. Mao becomes a kind of god and the red book a bible. Tom Paine, American revolutionary supporter of the French revolution (nearly executed by Robespierre) notes that one found a mentality in some of the Jacobins similar to that of the Inquisition, with the guillotine replacing burning at the stake. Robespierre tried to found a secular faith, but it proved as repressive as older faiths. And, of course, Hitler became a godlike figure and his Mein Kampf a kind of bible. The problem, as Bertrand Russell put it, is probably less WHAT these ideologies believed than the WAY in which they're believed it. Marx offers a critique or hypothesis and his followers turn it into gospel. No wonder Marx wrote "Je n'est ne suis Marxiste.
-Savant
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Imperialism is an evil system of global exploitation; but the players, the dominant groups, are the ultra-rich 1%. The ruling classes. This system and those classes are the enemies of Blacks both here and abroad, and indeed are the enemies of humankind. Ordinary people are primarily the victims rather than perpetrators of imperialism. Only a political idiot thinks that ORDINARY Black Americans, or ordinary folk of any group, are responsible for imperialism. Until very recently the ruling classes had NO black or brown members--at least not in the West. (Japan is a different picture altogether). For the most part the ruling classes and the system of imperialism--roote d in capitalism--is still white, but not totally. I really do think people ought to study the history and nature of imperialism, especially we in American have (since WWII & Soviet collapse) live in the land that is the strongest pillar of imperialism. The one way in which ordinary folk might bear responsibility for the evils of imperialism is by supporting the imperial policies of the government, or maybe even by adopting an attitude of indifference regarding what the government and the corporate power structure is doing in our name, and often with our tax dollars.
-Savant
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