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[Eminem]

http://www.idsnews.com/subsite/story.php?id=28128


maybe I'm only posting this because I went to high school with the author....but, quite an interesting, if somewhat controversial, article. Personally I think he's spot on...

Opinions?

 

[Tarazet]

I disagree. If it wasn't for Black History Month, the only images anyone would ever see of black people in the mainstream media would be stereotypes associated with rap and R&B artists. It does have a certain utility to it.

 

[MIMIC]

I would go so far as to say Black History Month is pretty racist because it increases racial tensions.

...the hell?

 

[MIMIC]

And BTW, March is "Women's History Month"

 

[kumanoki]

He brings up some interesting points, especially how assuaging liberal guilt is not the way to solve racial problems. But he loses focus three-quarters of the way through the article.

 

[kevm3]

martin luther king was a racist too because his actions increased racial tensions too, right?

Give blacks equal representation in history books besides the little slave narratives and maybe we can do away with black history month.

 

[karasu]

That's why diversity events like Black History Month really rub me the wrong way. There's no such thing as "black history" or "Latino history" or "white history."

What is he, divorced from reality?

I'm just gonna assume that he was bored as fuck when he wrote this.

 

[kumanoki]

martin luther king was a racist too because his actions increased racial tensions too, right?

Give blacks equal representation in history books besides the little slave narratives and maybe we can do away with black history month.

History books in Georgia were a laugh riot when I was going through school. They would actually have paragraphs like, "Many years ago, European slavers brought Africans to America, where they were bought and sold. They worked very hard. Then, President Abraham Linconl signed the Emancipation Proclimation. Many years later, a man named Martin Luther King Jr. was born..."

 

[Hitokage]

If people like him don't want there to be references to a "black history", then they are going to have to go back in time and make it so that black people were never segregated socially and geographically. The people themselves were made seperate in the first place, so people shouldn't be so fucking shocked if they go and end up having a seperate culture and history.

 

[DMczaf]

martin luther king was a racist too because his actions increased racial tensions too, right?

Give blacks equal representation in history books besides the little slave narratives and maybe we can do away with black history month.

Reminds me of that episode of The Cosby Show when Theo had to do a paper on the March in Washington where like half the paper was just him reading off a list of celebs and important people who were there because the history book only had like 1 1/2 pages on it :lol

 

[etiolate]

Seperation under spotlight is still seperation and not acceptance.

 

[Hitokage]

Seperation under spotlight is still seperation and not acceptance.

Until public school history cirriculums stop being a boring, whitewashed, deliberately inoffensive monstrosity it's better that they get a mention at all.

 

[border]

This article is just stupid.

I can kind of agree though, that Black History Month should focus a little less on political figures that do make whites a bit guilty and defensive. Why not take a look at Duke Ellington or Robert Johnson instead? Why not have the kids read (early) Langston Hughes or Zora Neale Hurston instead of (or at least in addition to) some horrifying slave narrative?

It's not that the normal historical figures aren't important, but if every discussion generally censors around the injustices of the past then white folks will just get tired of the guilt trip and tune out.

 

[etiolate]

I suppose, but theres a lot more left out of public school's history classes other than black culture and experience. That doesn't take away from the fact black history should be taught, but.. I do think there is some harm being done to race relations by this. It's like when one of my highschools had a multi-cultural day and they assembled the entire school to watch performances celebrating the different cultures of the school and this white kid next to me says "So how do we celebrate white culture? Have a bunch of crackers go out there and chase chickens and marry their cousin?" So you get resentment, because just as much as you are showing the interesting parts of other cultures you are designating the unincluded culture as boring and unworth mentioning. So the black kid becomes the teacher's pet of social acceptance.

 

[kumanoki]

I suppose, but theres a lot more left out of public school's history classes other than black culture and experience. That doesn't take away from the fact black history should be taught, but.. I do think there is some harm being done to race relations by this. It's like when one of my highschools had a multi-cultural day and they assembled the entire school to watch performances celebrating the different cultures of the school and this white kid next to me says "So how do we celebrate white culture? Have a bunch of crackers go out there and chase chickens and marry their cousin?" So you get resentment, because just as much as you are showing the interesting parts of other cultures you are designating the unincluded culture as boring and unworth mentioning. So the black kid becomes the teacher's pet of social acceptance.

This is a slippery slope you're climbing. Let me draw your attention to this thread:
http://67.19.14.110/showthread.php?t=37173

 

[etiolate]

This is a slippery slope you're climbing. Let me draw your attention to this thread:
http://67.19.14.110/showthread.php?t=37173

Yeah, I read that thread before and it got some arguments as anything does. I posted in there about a real idealistic whole instead of racial groups and cultural groups.

I guess it comes down to the fear that if you get rid of grouping as a way to promote acceptance of differences, because grouping seperates people automatically(you really can't have us vs them without an us and them) that you will let the racism flourish again in the shadows. I just get this feeling that there is a lot of fear that racism, coming from whites, will become a norm again if you don't do things like Black History Month. If you just had a human history, the white devil or whatever will eliminate black culture, womens' rights, and civil rights in general.

If you look at something like Prop 54, that was voted down in California during its last election, you see this fear play out. People thought by eliminating the ethnic checkbox you wouldn't be able track racism and it would just explode. There is as much a chance, and a reported occurance, of racism being handed out by merely passing over anyone who checks black on a job application ...BUT the fear of this subconscience racism in white people was greater than the reality of what was trying to be done.

It would be interesting to know why there is this distrust and fear of the light skinned people of today. It's no revelation that there are still racist people, but to think that true equality can't be gone after because we fear each other so much is depressing.

And that very distrust adds to the resentment/white angst issue. People will say something along the lines of "years of slavery outweigh your minor resentment", but that really ignores the fact no culture is innocent of oppression, inhumanity or wronging. Egyptians enslaved the jews, Africans enslaved each other, Africa is still a mess of bloody civil war, the middle east is years of blood and cruelty, the badblood between scottish and english, the entirety of europe has fucked each other over. Of course maybe that's why there is such distrust that hope is seen as an unattainable goal.

 

[DDayton]

Things will be interesting when the largest ethnic group in the USA is "Hispanic".

 

[whytemyke]

What'd the five fingers say to the face?

 

[Phoenix]

I can sum up this article in one word - 'ignorant'.

It was a tough four weeks, but somehow, white people everywhere got through Black History Month. We can now go back to listening to John Denver, watching "Friends" and eating our sandwiches with extra mayo for another year or so.

Uh most people in the United States go through black history month forgetting or not even knowing that it IS black history month and are more concerned with getting something out for Valentines Day.

There is only history, and it's influenced by people of all backgrounds. Some might say that history is written by the victors, but when the victors feel guilty about what they've done to the losers and write the history books to suck up to them, history becomes awfully diverse awfully fast.

Another overwhelming mark of sheer stupidity here too. When history books describe all of the facets of history from all of the cultures that were involved then we won't have a need to hilight black history in particular.

Liberal guilt just isn't the way to go about it. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm rather insulted that every February we have to talk about how much sandwiches would suck if George Washington Carver had never invented peanut butter.

Agricultural chemist, Carver discovered three hundred uses for peanuts and hundreds more uses for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes. Among the listed items that he suggested to southern farmers to help them economically were his recipes and improvements to/for: adhesives, axle grease, bleach, buttermilk, chili sauce, fuel briquettes, ink, instant coffee, linoleum, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, metal polish, paper, plastic, pavement, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum powder and wood stain. Only three patents were ever issued to Carver.

THAT is why it is brought up genius.

I would go so far as to say Black History Month is pretty racist because it increases racial tensions.

Really? What racially motivated action happened during black history month over the past five years? You want an increase of racial tensions, look at what happened when a bunch of white officers beat the crap out of Rodney King. Look at what happened when Texaco, Microsoft, CocaCola, and many many other companies were outright busted for discrimination against their black employees.

This author really just needs to be silent.

 

[Azih]

Crap Article.

 

[Blackace]

OK... Enter Blackace...


Wow... it is funny there are somethings that I think we do in the world to make less racial tension that are really stupid like the whole PC thing. Being called an african american does not make me a part of a whole, it puts me in a group instead of being an american. But to call black history month racist is pretty stupid. increased aweness of any races should be embraced instead of talked about not being fair... if it is not fair then start handing out more months to other races! I'd be down for a Latino history month, Chinese history month, Irish history month and so on. We need to learn from our mistakes. The world is much better race relation wise than it was 50 years ago, but it won't stay that way if all of a sudden we proclaim that racism never happened...

 

[ge-man]

Hitokage hit it on the head pretty well. Black people developed their own culture by fusing elements from their African heritage and what they picked up in their new countries. The recounting of this movement is watered down in general history books that attempt to get the big picture. That's why we have Black History month and other such periods during the year to encourage us to look more closely at our history.