There are only a pitiful few incidents here and there, and it's all a big joke.
Hanging nooses is just a silly gag. Blacks and Hispanics need to quit being so hypersensitive about everything, and just let it go. Racism, when it refers to Whites, is always in quotes, implying it does not even exist, while other races are constantly accused of racism against Whites that is actually real. So it is as if the only real racism problem in the US is against White people.
The usual response is to say that these people are just a bunch of lying racists.
I will, however, say that there is a bit of truth to these accusations. Racism by Whites is dramatically exaggerated in the US, and every little comment or scribble is inspected for the horrible crime. Hispanics and Blacks in particular are far too wont to yell racism over every little thing, in many cases over mostly or completely innocent comments.
Entire subjects that do not necessarily have anything to do with racism are walled off and forbidden from discussion. On the other hand, non-Whites get to bash away at Whites for all of their racial crimes, past, present and future, while Whites are supposed to sit there and take it, groveling, like guilty supplicants. There is a presumption that non-Whites are incapable of racism and that Whites are automatically filled with it.
This is all nonsense, but it's a product of the Left in the US and the West that started this crazy conversation about 40 years ago. They've been quite successful selling this silliness to the public.
On the other hand, there surely is racism in the US. I don't think much of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), but they do have an interesting list of racist incidents in the US for the first three months of 2008. It seems pretty incredible the amount of this stuff that is going on, or is it?
One thing for sure - you rarely hear about it in your own town. Considering what a multicultural society we are, it is amazing that there is not much more of this going on in every reasonable-sized city just about every day. Right? Or am I wrong?
You will note that simple name-calling is apparently not listed, and is not a crime. Some of the stuff on that list seem a bit of a reach. In the course of a fight, or altercation, racial slurs are uttered. Now we have a hate crime.
Auburn, California (Legal Developments)This strikes me as an excess. There was an altercation. A fight? A verbal fight, or a physical one? In the course of the altercation, some slurs got uttered. This is a crime? I'd like to know some more facts about this case.
Published on 03-06-2008
"Lance Clements, 37, was arrested on hate crime related charges after he allegedly made racial slurs against a black student and a Hispanic student during an altercation."
Unfortunately, in a free society people get to call each other names, and in the course of fights, people will just call each other any slur that comes to their minds that seems to apply to the person they are fighting.
For instance, in the past ten years, I did call a Black man a nigger once. On the other hand, I'm going to say I'm not a racist.
He ran a recycling place and I used to take my bottles up there. He got mad at me when I did not separate my browns from my greens from my clears. I forget what happened, but a shouting match ensued. This is not normal behavior for me - I'm a quiet guy and I don't get into it much with people. In the course of this argument, I called him a nigger. Not once, but a few times.
Not because I'm a raving racist; I'll say I'm not, and you're welcome to disagree. More because at that moment I hated him, he was Black, and fishing in my bag of tricks for insults, it seemed appropriate. If he was fat or ugly, I would have insulted him on those bases.
I've since talked to a Black woman I know, and she was quite upset that I did that. I'm going to think about whether I want to do that again.
I wonder how often this sort of thing goes on? In the course of fights and shouting matches, angry people will say stuff they would not ordinarily say. Not out of racism or bigotry, but because in a fight, you use any ammo you've got.
Most of the other stuff on that list is pretty clear-cut and straightforward. I was shocked by the amount of anti-Semitism in the US. I don't like the ADL, and I think they go nuts about anti-Semitism, but you can see quite a few cases on that list of anti-Semitic graffiti on Jewish institutions, vandalism of Jewish graveyards, actual assaults on and threats against Jews, etc.
I was appalled by that, and surprised. For the first time in a while, I will throw a shout out to the Jewish groups who are publicizing this, while deploring their efforts to code as anti-Semitic a wide variety of comments and writings that are generally not. The ADL types go overboard, but there's clearly an anti-Semitism problem. Things are complicated.
On the White Nationalist boards, there is a lot of talk about how most assaults by Blacks against Whites are accompanied by racial slurs. Typically, the police deny that a hate crime occurred. The White Nationalists have an interesting point, and if White assaults combined with slurs get hate crime attachments, it's about time to start slamming a lot of Blacks with the same stuff.
I guess the assumption is that the Black criminal victimized the person just to be a criminal, and that racism was secondary, and therefore the attack was not primarily bias-motivated, instead it was primarily dirty criminal-motivated. Perhaps that is so, but fair is fair, and there appears to be a double-standard here.
There were 104 incidents over a 93 day period in the first three months of 2008. That's a little over one a day, and most all of these incidents are pretty serious.
A 2005 report by the US government found that there were 191,000 hate crimes in that year. That's 600 a day! That's 24 an hour. One every two or three minutes. Does that seem credible?
I wonder what standard they were using to judge what is a hate crime? The same as in the SPLC list? If so, there's still a big problem here in the US. But if they are using everything down to my little argument above, the report is pretty meaningless. Someone might want to get ahold of that report and see what's really in it.
White nationalists say that in a multicultural society, these sort of incidents are to be expected and are in fact normal. Why? Because a certain amount of racial hostility is to be expected in such a society. Are they right? If not, why not?
The appropriate response to this issue is the Middle Way, as the Taoists say. Not to overemphasize racism and exaggerate it out of all sanity, and not, on the other hand, to say that it barely even exists anymore.
For the record, SPLC does list several anti-immigrant groups that do not strike me as racist in any way, shape or form. SPLC says:
These groups generally attack immigrants as individuals, rather than merely disagreeing with immigration policy. Some have close ties to white supremacist ideas, groups and individuals.That statement is just wrong about several of those groups. The groups listed are:
- American Border Patrol
- California Coalition for Immigration Reform
- Save Our State
- American Patrol/Voice of Citizens Together
- Rescue Without Borders
- Federation for American Immigration Reform
- Social Contract Press
- Emigration Party of Nevada
- Border Guardians
- American Immigration Control Foundation/Americans for Immigration Control
It seems like any group screaming about the illegal alien invasion of the US is going to get tagged with a racist label. That's where SPLC is so wrong and does a lot of damage.
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