Actually, scientific studies (including a Harva. rd U. psychological study) have indicated for some time that white racial animosity toward Blacks greatly exceeds Black animosity towards whites. This is interesting in light of the fact that Blacks would have more reason to be hostile toward whites than vice versa.. And, of course, institutionalized racism (as a system) is essentially white. Whites are mainly oppressed by other whites, mainly in the form of class and patriarchal oppression.
-Savant
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A few----very few--of those killings have been EXPOSED, innumerable other killing and brutalities have gone unnoticed. And yes, fascistic police terror affects the Black community as a whole, not just the individual victims and their families.
-Savant
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The real demons we have to fight are the upholders of the regime of oppression as well as the system of oppression itself. The real demons also include people who try to pretend that the oppression doesn't exist, and that millions are Black people are hallucinating. And the way in which Blacks can take charge of their own fate is through organizing, through struggle, through building community self-determination and resistance to tyranny. And no, we don't need reactionaries like Louis, but revolutionaries like King, Malcolm, Ella Baker, Eddy Conway, Fannie Lou, and the budding new radicals who unleashed the Black Lives Matters initiative. Any program that claims to uplift the community but counsels against resistance to racism and exploitation is delusional. And yes, the mentality must be changed from passivity to activity, from conformism to radical resistance and fundamental social transformation, from corrupt narcissistic capitalistic values, to revolutionary cooperative values emphasizing community and the dignity of the human person rather the property as the highest of goods. And among those of us who, having lost their footing and sense of dignity, have sunk into what Malcolm X called the "mud of society," we must transform the black criminal mentality into a black revolutionary mentality. Black consciousness doesn't need to be "programmed, " it needs to be LIBERATED.
-Savant
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I recall that one of Adam Clayton Powell's "white" struggles were certain southern senators who resented his presence in Congress, who thought that after all "a n****r is still a n*****r" even if he financially prosperous, educated and "white, bright and damn near white." In short, no matter what the Madwhitewoman says, Adam C. Powell, one time the most prominent black minister of the most prominent black church in Harlem, still identified himself as a black American---and was certainly disdained by many whites for being just that.
-Savant
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There is BOTH racial and class oppression, intricately interlinked, as they have always been in this country. Your experience and that of your father with his European wife is atypical, but also probably not free of racism even if you don't perceive it as such. As for Blacks "failing " (a claim most often made by whites) a lot depends on what failing means and what success is. Even in the time of slavery you had "successful " Blacks (if economic well being, status and other such things is what you mean by success). While the most grievous oppression is suffered by the poor, by working class folk, it is not just the poor black who is oppressed. Indeed, if one reads or listens to them there are a large number of middle and upper class blacks who also feel the weight of oppression. One of them indicates the depth of that feeling in a book called (if I recall it correctly) RAGE OF THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES. The middle and upper classes have affluence in common, but not always the same opinion or views of their experiences. But more conservative members of the Black middle and upper classes do either try to claim (like many right wing whites) that racism isn't real or is only a minor irritation whose impact has been "exaggerated. " They often change their own tune very fast when they find themselves severely challenged by racism---hence Clarence Thomas berating blacks for "playing the race card" but complaining that he was the victim of a "high tech lynching"---k nowing full well the meaning of lynching in the collective racial memories of the nation. I think those Blacks who try to claim that racism is, if not non-existent then or a minor issue, are mainly trying to protect their class status, to show perhaps feel and show that they're a part of the club. Privileged members of other oppressed minorities have behaved similarly in the past, and I guess there's no reason to be surprised to find this same tendency among privileged class African Americans
-Savant
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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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