MLK had a dream in 1963, 15yrs before Mormon God told his Prophet to quit with the racist discrimination. 60 yrs later MLK’s Dream of a colorblind society is considered naive, overly optimistic, since it didn’t work, obviously.

Being naive, overly optimistic, and working as little as possible HAS worked very well for me!!!

My only question remains: what is the order to their relative importance?  (Importances?)

Which trait is #1?

Any help offered to figure this out will be suitably* appreciated...






*Given that I live in a time of Gladys Lot et alia, suitability is always an issue...

But neither of us owns a suit.

Two words: Don't say woke.

Two other words: Jacksonville, last Saturday.

Two more words: Buffalo supermarket

Then there's Dylan Roof. And George Zimmerman. And Derek Chauvin. And on and on.

All those guys are held up as heroes by large swaths of America.

No. America is just as racist as it has ever been. And it will continue to be racist until such time as the president of the LDS church gets up in General Conference and tells his members to stop being racist. He needs to tell them that the racist scriptures are just wrong. He needs to tell them that Ezra Benson was not inspired by God in any sense of the term and any Mormon who continues to follow him will be removed from church records.

I know that the president of the Mormon church has zero influence over the rest of the country. But such actions will serve as a definitive marker for any real progress. Thank you.

Are YOU any closer ?

I don’t remember my attitude towards blacks from 60yrs ago, since I was probably still in diapers, but I wish we were a colorblind meritocracy. I’m all for it!
I do however realize that’s probably not going to happen in my lifetime, due to the fact that we are no closer to realizing that dream now than we were 60yrs ago.

Schrodingerscat wrote in part:

"I do however realize that’s probably not going to happen in my lifetime, due to the fact that we are no closer to realizing that dream now than we were 60yrs ago."

Actually, I think the situation is a bit more nuanced than what you and other posters are portraying here. Keep in mind that a year after Mr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the Civil Rights Act, forbidding separate facilities for whites and blacks, was passed. Two years after the same speech, the Voting Rights Act was passed, making it illegal for especially southern states to keep African-americans from voting. In the late 1960s, the Federal government, as a result of these laws, removed regulations that allowed developers to discriminate against African-americans when selling houses.

In recent years, there have been some U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have slid us back some in terms of these hard-fought legal rights for African-americans but they're not all gone yet. That said, African-americans themselves and their friends and supporters in other races must keep pushing against a newly reinvigorated backlash that has caused the slide and will not stop until that backwards slide is complete. Consider that the strengh of the Voting Rights Act has been limited and that colleges can no longer use affirmative action when choosing students. Also consider that the group that won the affirmative action cases is now pushing to have outreach efforts by employers to have more diverse workforces legally made null and void. Finally, consider that despite all of the progress that African-americans have made legally, they still live shorter and financially poorer lives than their white counterparts. When I consider all of these things, I have to conclude that while we have moved forward somewhat in achieving Mr. King's dream, there is still a long way to go, and much of the heavy lifting necessary to put whites and blacks on equal footing with each other still needs to be done.

All of that AND Nixon’s War on Minorities disguised as a ‘War On Drugs’ is still raging, 52yrs and 10 Presidents later, with no end in sight. Apparently Americans are AOK with locking up blacks at 4x’s the rate of whites since nobody is suggesting we end Nixon’s unjust war on blacks.

Not to mention the 1994 tough on crime law.....

Maybe you think you’ve grown an inch when you recycle this stuff, but you haven’t.

Maybe you think you are cute when you personally attack other posters, but you’re not.

As in almost all matters involving humans, opinions will differ.

You post that the country is not colorblind twice a quarter like you’ve just realized the sky is blue.


Okay. Judicial notice taken.

What is your point?

What I’d *really* like to know is have you read any books by Black authors that were not assigned to you? I’m curious to see how curious you are. Curiosity is a great jumping off point for acquiring insight into others and ourselves. Or you can be incurious, reductive, boring, and uninformed.

It's really about the "show." And the "show must go on. . ."

. . . and on and on and on.

I’ve read a lot of books by black authors that were not assigned to me, “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America” by John McWhorter is the lateast one I’ve read, but I read just about everything he has to say in the NYT and in his podcasts with Glen Lowry and Coleman Hughes, all black men, all pragmatists, who agree things like Affirmative Action does more harm than good and hasn’t fixed the problem of racial discrimination. We should do real things that help real people who really need it the most, like ending the drug war, sending poor kids to college and or trade school, and feeding poor kids.
That’s my point.
And theirs



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2023 08:45PM by schrodingerscat.

McWhorter has said many times that he favors affirmative action and only wants to change the basis from race to socioeconomic class, which he says is close to the same thing.

Deny it if you will, but that changes nothing.

I agree it should be based upon socioeconomics, not race.
It’s an insult to blacks who can get ahead based upon their own merits, despite racism. And it discriminates against Asians for doing well on standardized tests.

Once again you miss the point.

McWhorter says socioeconomic affirmative action would have virtually the same effect as race-based affirmative action. Support would flow to some poor white folk as well as most black people and by definition flow away from wealthier people, most of whom are white or Asian.

You may see the two strategies as starkly different but no one else, including McWhorter, does.

I love coming of age books, biography and memoir. Always Running. My Name Is Asher Lev. Edie [Sedgwick]. A Fine Balance. La Maravilla. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between.

People are so interesting and their lives are so complex and rich. So, yes. I want to read about the kid in Storm Lake, IA who rode a tractor to school when it snowed because I don’t think I’ll meet him. But he’s probably worth getting to know.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2023 09:56PM by Beth.

I think we can all agree that "How you're raised" has a lot to do with intolerance.  "Train up a child to do things the 'right way'!"  But the 'right way' has so many definitions.

Of course, parents' training can be rejected ... in both directions.

I'm voting for the notion that there is less racial prejudice overall but that the expressed prejudice gets a great deal more press.

Growing up in the 50s and 60s, I was totally unaware of just how severe the mistreatment of Blacks could get in the Deep South...

I lack the capacity to offer a nuanced and unbiased view.

That said I think the only true change has been the visibility of hatred and lynchings due to the ubiquity of cell phone cameras and the internet.

By all measures, hate crimes are up. Hates crimes up =/= racism down.

The Tulsa massacre has not been repeated. There is still racism, but do blacks fear for their lives on a routine basis? A black dude can walk down the street with a trophy blonde girlfriend without being lynched, or run through per Brigham Young's rhetoric.

The modern era is a lot different. Being a minority is different. There was a time they'd pull your teeth to make dentures or rape you to get slaves on the cheap. I wouldn't go back to that.

But I agree that 60 years of pretending to be on board with MLK hasn't solved racism or Black poverty. You still have to pose as white to get an accurate house appraisal.

Hate crimes are up because all crimes are up. The current economy is aggravating widespread anomie among Americans who feel betrayed by a system they gave the best years of their lives to only to be abandoned for the gods of the marketplace. Without a functional social contract, crime will continue to rise and the poor will bear the brunt of it.

The thing that saves us may be that the rich fear the poor.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2023 12:31AM by bradley.

bradley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Tulsa massacre has not been repeated. There is
> still racism, but do blacks fear for their lives
> on a routine basis?

Well, maybe we could ask them about that. In Jacksonville perhaps.

It's easy for people who don't have to think about their skin colour to think it's not a big deal. Unfortunately, it seems to be though.


> A black dude can walk down the street with a trophy blonde
> girlfriend without
> being lynched

Maybe. Maybe not. This is the tragedy of it all.


> The modern era is a lot different. Being a
> minority is different.

Maybe a person in the minority group would beg to differ with the assessment some of those in the majority make, if they even think about it, that all is well.

Because it really isn't. Obviously.


> There was a time they'd ... rape you to
> get slaves on the cheap.

Sorry - I don't understand this. No doubt I should.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2023 12:27AM by Nightingale.

bradley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> . . . but do blacks fear for their lives
> on a routine basis?

Do you lack a television, bradley, or internet access to cell phone videos?

Of course black people fear for their lives on a routine basis.

>The Tulsa massacre has not been repeated. There is still racism, but do blacks fear for their lives on a routine basis? A black dude can walk down the street with a trophy blonde girlfriend without being lynched, or run through per Brigham Young's rhetoric

https://apnews.com/article/mississippi-deputies-guilty-pleas-civil-rights-e4937b4cd1d2ed2388b2fd1c3aeefcb9

"The terror began on Jan. 24 in a racist call for extrajudicial violence that felt like it was from a bygone era.

A white neighbor phoned Rankin County Deputy Brett McAlpin and complained that two Black men were staying with a white woman inside a Braxton home. McAlpin told Deputy Christian Dedmon, who texted a group of white deputies so willing to use excessive force they called themselves “The Goon Squad.”

Read the article for the gruesome details of what happened next.

But then not all racism is manifested with violence:

https://www.kansascity.com/news/article278703549.html

"Kansas college accused of forcing out Black students must reform after DOJ probe

A community college in northeast Kansas has reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice following the agency’s investigation into racial discrimination that allegedly forced out Black students. The agreement requires reforms at Highland Community College, where Black students were allegedly “targeted for searches and surveillance” and were more harshly disciplined than white peers, the Justice Department said Monday. That unfair discipline reportedly led to the removal of Black students from campus housing or expulsion from the college.

The then-athletic director was accused of trying to reduce the number of Black athletes at the college, leading to an “unprecedented” number of Black athletes getting expelled. The college’s security singled out Black students for room and car searches, while the administration frequently delivered “excessive sanctions for minor and even bogus infractions,” according to the lawsuit."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- "I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."

I can't speak to Alabama, but where I live in central Maryland, children of all races go to school together and get along with one another. Kids are remarkably open-minded, and are often able to rise above their parents' prejudices. It's the adults who have some ongoing issues.

When the U.S. becomes majority minority, perhaps that will truly begin to change.

We are closer than what the media shows.

I am very pro - giving everyone an opportunity. I work, live, and play with people of other races. And I applaud anyone who rises to the top and succeeds. I see African-Americans thriving in sports, entertainment, business, media, etc, like never before.

The Dream has been or is at least in the process of being realized. Yes...it's been slow. But it's happening. The media and certain politicians don't realize it, or even worse are trying to make it go the other way.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2023 12:11AM by Maude.

Racism is a psychological crutch, a state of mind based on self perceived innate superiority based on belonging to a group or caste.

"Colour Blind" is not the same thing as being "Colour Neutral."




https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/29/226833165/studying-how-the-blind-perceive-race


Law professor Osagie Obasogie walked into a movie theater to see "Ray," a biopic about the musician Ray Charles, and walked out with a question that would drive eight years worth of research.

"I was really struck by how Ray Charles had this really interesting understanding of race throughout his life even though he was blind throughout his early childhood," says Obasogie, who teaches at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. "I just wanted to learn more about how blind people understood race. I never had thought about it."

Obasogie started by interviewing 110 individuals who were blind since birth. His full research on the topic will be published in a book, Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race In The Eyes Of The Blind, that hits shelves in November.

The professor mentioned that some of the individuals he interviewed took offense at the notion that sighted people would think blind people are unaware of race. And that not being aware of race somehow made blind people morally superior.

Race factors into so much of our everyday lives, but as the professor discovered, it can mean even more to those for whom skin color isn't readily apparent.

Beth Rival, president of the Connecticut affiliate of the National Federation of the Blind lost her sight at age 19. "You know, sometimes we're more sensitive [to differences in race]. It doesn't matter to me if someone's black or orange or whatever. It never has, except I did grow up where my parents were in a white neighborhood ... but those prejudices are with you depending on where you grow up."

"What mattered to blind people most was the very trait that they could not directly perceive," said Obasogie. "And the reason why it mattered to them so much was because they were part of the social process and part of the social influences that teaches us to treat these differences as particularly important."

Anybody, thank you for the above post. As a totally blind person living in both California and Arizona, I could usually tell who was African-american and who was Caucasian by their voices--most black people I've met have strong southern accents which didn't apply to most of my fellow Caucasians.

Now I am going to offer a little more information on the schools that blind people attended. Two years ago when COVID was still very much on most people's minds, I attended a Zoom session dealing with blind schools during the Jim Crow era. It turns out (and I was surprised by this, though I probably shouldn't have been) that separate schools for blind white and African-american students were built during the Jim Crow era; in other words, if blind country singer Ronnie Milsap and blind R&B singer Ray Charles were both educated in the same state (they were not), their education would have taken place at separate and, in Ray Charles' case, inferior facilities to the education Ronnie Milsap would have had, and that would have included their musical education as well.

MLK Jr would have found it inconceivable that some black activists now campaign FOR racially segregated spaces in some workplaces and colleges.

Brazil is more progressive in this area than the USA, but that's not what you wanted to hear.

Fascinating topic.

I see a lot of progress in some areas, and some serious setbacks in other areas.

If you really want to see racism, go to Asia.

In China, for the movie poster for Little Mermaid, the color of the actress was not only lightened, she was moved out of a prominent position. During the pandemic, a black man living in China got a video of a MacDonalds worker holding a sign in English that said, "No blacks allowed."

In Japan, they're just as racist, but they are more covert about it. Many real estate agencies are open about their policy of "no foreigners", but they hide behind, "We don't have anybody who speaks English." I sometimes see "No shoplifting" signs in English, the insinuation being that only foreigners steal. The funny thing that Japanese don't realize is that I had to go through a more rigorous background check to get my visa than I went through when I passed the bar. Still, when I walk home from the gym at night in my sweats, women run across the street so they don't have to pass too close to me, even if that means running through oncoming traffic. A fast moving bus is safer than a big white man.

Still, my wife's family is absolutely awesome. She's from a small town and the people there are wonderful.

I've been to at least a dozen countries in Asia and 20 around the world. In my experience, the US is one of the LEAST racist countries.

I was shopping on AliExpress the other day and noticed that skin-whitening dietary supplements are a thing.

bradley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was shopping on AliExpress the other day and
> noticed that skin-whitening dietary supplements
> are a thing.

In many parts of Asian, light skin is a sign of affluence.

Having a suntan means you are a manual laborer. Having light skin means you lead a privileged life. You get to work indoors instead of doing manual labor outside. Or you stay indoors because you don't have a job like a white collar worker, who the upper class also consider plebs. You don't have to walk outside to a train station to ride public transportation, which is for plebs. You drive everywhere. Or if you're really wealthy, you have a driver.

It has very little to do with race. I don't know many Asians who want to be white. They get plastic surgery to get rounder eyes, but they don't want to be white. They consider whites uneducated and undisciplined.

The obsession with light skin is comical because having a tan from playing golf is ALSO a sign of affluence.

Humans are funny. They provide endless entertainment for me.

This is never so evident as at golf courses I have played, where Asian women show up looking like extremely devout Muslims...

Thank you white people from Utah with all the answers.

PHIL, I think you are correct, we are asking the wrong people the question about racism.

Think.

Reaaaalllllyyyy think.

Think about all of the comments, off-colour (ha) jokes, etc.

Racism persists because (certain white) people want it to exist.

African Americans are roughly about 15% of the total US population. Most minority populations get absorbed into the majority population eventually, but there is such a social taboo against intermixing with people of sub-Saharan orgin in America that the population remains seperate and distinct. Add to this the social, religious, economic, geographical, and political seperation and you wind up with a seperate and distinct population of people who are kept apart.


If you are white, think about people you know who proudly proclaim their ancestry from various European ethnic groups versus the number of people of white people you know who proclaim they are part Native American or African American. Probably not many. Ever wonder why that is?


Now think about people you consider to be "black" but are in fact no different from the average "white" person in speech, language, manners, culture, and so on. Why do you think such a person is different from you? Just because their skin or hair is different? Or if they're "mixed" they are "tainted" or "marked" and can't be like you? Why do they have to be regarded as different?


Now think about what it would be like if there weren't any racism. Black people would be no different from you, live next to you, go to school with you, work with you, marry your children, be part of your family, your church, your social organisations, and so on. The "fear" of this is constantly being dredged up by racists.


Now think about the stories that you were told about being "special" or being "created in the image of God." Think about why it is that you (most likely if you are the average white American) didn't grow up seeing many non-white people in your town or neighbourhood. That's because your forbearers engineered it that way. Our modern world was deliberately set up to be "white," and your parents and your parents' parents told you lies about other people who didn't look like you "wanting to be with their own kind." Unless you live in a mixed neigbourhood in or near a major city, you probably live in an area that is almost all white. Nowadays, every city or urban area in America is becoming more and more ethnically diverse and racially mixed, while rural and exurban areas are still almost all white -- and maintain the cultural biases of previous eras.


Dr. King's dream is basically the American Dream.


The problem is that there are still racist white people who think that their way of thinking is still "normal" and "acceptable" and don't see it that way.


Otherwise, they wouldn't be "special" in their own minds any more.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2023 01:54PM by anybody.

The majority of humans (thus the basis for what is 'normal') want to project what the majority consider to be a positive image.  And so we try to either divest ourselves of negative traits or hide them.

And it's a lot easier to "tear down" someone else than to "build up" who we really are.

Majorities make the rules, and minorities suffer the consequences.  Remember the Rwandan Tutsi v. Hutu massacres?  Skin color wasn't the issue...

While on my mission in Mexico, I learned that there are born and bred Mexican citizens who believe that because they are 'pure' descendants of Iberian ancestors, they are better than the Mestizos, who predominately make up the upper classes of the country.  Indigenous people populate the lower tiers.  There is a lot of prejudice against them...Brown on Brown prejudice; but thankfully, few massacres occur anymore.

I think/believe that prejudice exists because humans are lazy, and finding a way to stand out to feel "better" about yourself is a universal characteristic, and racial markers allow us to bond with those who are like us.

Racism will only end when my famous eight-foot-tall, baby-eating space spiders finally show up and attack us; you will not give a hoot about the racial characteristics of the human next to you in your foxhole.  You will embrace that person as your boon companion.

It takes a modicum of both intelligence and honesty to see yourself for who you really are and to admit that visible physical characteristics do not mean doodly squat when it comes to who you really are.

Absent my space spiders, will humanity reach the goal Dr. King set for us?  No.  With zero effort at all, we are able to improve our internal self-image just by effortlessly tearing down whoever is near us based on nothing more than outward appearance.

Because, as a species, we're just too f---ing lazy; the temptation is too great for the majority to resist.  We may reach a point where the majority of us rein in outward expressions of our superiority, but the "knowledge" will still be in us, "I'm whiter, taller, thinner, prettier, more toned, smarter, trendier, more talented, athletic, studious, kinder, etc.," and the final puff-piece, "...more tolerant."

Until the baby-eating spiders show up, evolution has no need to weed out the traits involved in racial prejudice.  When they do show up, prejudice will die out because if you're not willing to team up with another human because of prejudice, your chances to procreate diminish.

"racial markers allow us to bond with those who are like us"

Except for us freaks. If nobody is like you, skin color is a useless metric either way.

Maybe it's useful for pretending you have something in common, but I see it as a sham. Even worse is the doctrine of group identity. If the group is a bogus construct, group identity is nonsense. We are in the land of make believe, like religion. It's true if and only if you believe it.

You are right. The appearance of Baby-Eating Spiders, or "Bess," as I call them, has a salutary effect on human cooperation.

The remarkable social contracts that Western countries forged in the late 1940s were based firmly in the struggles against German, Japanese, and then Soviet Besses. We've forgotten the lesson and deconstructed those social contracts and are shocked at the result.

Clearly the world needs one or more Besses, someone else to hate for a while instead of hating each other. That's when we'll learn that skin color isn't important.

Absolutely not. Since the end of slavery, Southerners and right-wing, racist people of all sorts have tried to inflict a second form of slavery on the Blacks, whether sharecropping, Jim Crow, or wholesale arrest of Black men and lending them out to farmers and others, chain gangs, etc. Whatever comes and goes, they come up with new ways. But locking up Black men whenever they can find a flimsy reason for it, and just killing the Black boys and men whenever the cops are just frustrated by a Black person standing his ground, has continued. Now they have discovered a new way to legally disenfranchise Black people, not allowing them to vote. So, no. It hasn't gotten better at all unless we're looking at it within a smaller sphere that personally affects us. Otherwise, no change. No change at all.

Definitely better. And getting better. Better than the 1960’s? Are you kidding me?

Jobs, income, education— it’s all better. Of course we still have a bunch of crazy racists but they’re up against a massive number of younger people who see the world much differently.

It’s still f’ed up but much better than it was and going the right direction. That’s why we’re seeing the racists raise hell. They see the wave. I don’t think they can stop it.