Letters to the Editor
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@tommydsz
Every kid in India and Asia (as if India isn't a part of Asia) idolizes Bill Gates? In the black community, they all want to be like Mike? Good thing you didn't generalize.
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ALSO!!!!!
Let's not forget that there is more than one race. John Gibson and Bill O'Reilly of Fox News during primetime telecasts urged white people to have more babies lest white people lose their majority. Now to me that does NOT sound like race is dying. If anything, it's just pausing while it gathers its strength for a new round of horror.
(Yes I know Fox News is full of it, but nonetheless they are a major mainstream source of information, even if its wrong)
Of course it doesn't matter. Racial, ethnic, religious, national identifications are all a red herring when you consider that 2% of the population owns 90% of the wealth. Economic classifications are the only real meaningful indicators of inequality.
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Tommydsz
Yeah baby white folks are ones who are racist.
Cause, like, when a bunch of white thugs jumped on a black high school kid, and beat him badly, why did white leaders march to get the white thugs out of jail?
And how about those black college athletes framed for rape by a white stripper? Yeah and all those professors who publically proclaimed the guilt of the black athletes - man how racist can you be?
Oh and let's not forget the white superstar who murdered his black wife, and got away with it because a white jury refused to convict him.
Feeling comfy yet, couz? You either havent thought this out or you are racist too. Either way, piss off.
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No such thing as "race"
Sorry to tell you but it's been scientifically proven through DNA that "races" do not exist. It's been shown that there is more genetic diversity among the so called "races" than between them. There is only one "race", the Human Race.
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I'd be more inclined to agree if
There are major hurdles to be overcome. The Pew poll found that while large majorities of blacks believe that they are routinely victims of discrimination; most whites believe that blacks are not. This is a fundamental gap that must be overcome.
One of our local columnists (who is black) has devoted her last two columns to this the part of the poll, the part Kamiya merely brushed over. Her take is that white people "refuse to validate black reality."
And then there were the responses to her column. The letters to the local paper in Memphis remind me why I prefer Salon. Three hundred letters in which white people blame all black people for every possible societal ill and black people blame all white people for every wrong they've ever encountered.
Race relations here are still pretty polarized.
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I just don't get the way people react
If a journalist reported that some elite department store was racially segregated -- there would be a firestorm in the media for at least a week.
But Ted Koppel reported that the California state prison system is racially segregated and the media outrage was exactly zero.
This is me, scratching my head.
But it's not just head-scratching, because people were shot to death as a consequence and now there's a big ethnic cleansing case heading to a federal judge where the ethnic cleansing order came from a gang leader inside a state prison.
It's like, creepy now.
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@ Anonymous
"Cause, like, when a bunch of white thugs jumped on a black high school kid, and beat him badly, why did white leaders march to get the white thugs out of jail?"
It's all about equality before the law. Black folks NEED to mobilize to protect their own against the system. May I point you to the case of Terri Shiavo? Whole government mobilized, passed new laws to protect her dead ass. Ever watch or read mainstream news? Notice how they lose the minds when some white person goes missing? Come on!
And how about those black college athletes framed for rape by a white stripper? Yeah and all those professors who publically proclaimed the guilt of the black athletes - man how racist can you be?
You want to tally up the number of innocent black people hanged, murdered, convicted, sentenced to meet a quota or close a file since it was convenient? Do I even need to mention decades of black men being murdered for looking at a white woman? Come on!
Oh and let's not forget the white superstar who murdered his black wife, and got away with it because a white jury refused to convict him.
That case was about money not race. As the famous white comedian Chris Rock said: If OJ drove a bus, he'd be Orenthal the Bus Driving Murderer. Also, see my previous comment.
Feeling comfy yet, couz? You either havent thought this out or you are racist too. Either way, piss off.
I'm not saying the cases you point out aren't wrongs but when you compare the handful of instances where minorities have gotten away with something or have escaped being screwed to the the countless of daily wrongs over the centuries up to the present, then YOU are the racist if you can't see the inequality. I could write pages listing the CURRENT wrongs. Or I could ask you simply how you'd like to be a innocent black man with a cop's nightstick up your ass?
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Yes, race has faded away
All you have to do is watch tv. Lots of successful black people. No Mexicans, except for those who are heavily accented, or really hot!
So, that must mean there's no more problems. Right? Right?
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@ ChillyDogg
"Sorry to tell you but it's been scientifically proven through DNA that "races" do not exist. It's been shown that there is more genetic diversity among the so called "races" than between them. There is only one "race", the Human Race.
I hear ya Chilly, but we were talking about real life not laboratory life.
And how many black people in that lab!?!? (just kidding)
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Utter Tummy Rot
Gary Kamiya should stick to foreign policy - something he can write very intelligently about. This article is laughable. It has the medieval creakiness and irrelevance of a monk arguing whether a seashell is Animal, Vegetable or Mineral. Mr. Kamiya is blind to his own adoption of the very frames that he piously denounces. It's a fine thing for us openminded Salon Writers that those "blacks" - finally - no longer believe "they" are a single "race". What about "whites", Mr. Kamiya? What are your poll numbers on how many "whites" believe that they are a single, separate "race"? Might that figure have just a slight bearing on whether America is entering a new Enlightenment on "race"?
According to Mr. Kamiya, "another reason for the erosion of black racial solidarity could be the increasing numbers of mixed-race people like Obama". Yes indeed we do love our invigoratingly "mixed-raced" Obamas don't we? Here's a medieval paradox: If Mr. Kamiya is advocating the dissolution of racial constructs, then what exactly are these "Races" that are "Mixed" (sic) in Mr. Obama? Why not just call him a Quadroon? That would be about as scientifically accurate as the racialist term "mixed race". Repeat after me: if "race" is dodgy, then phrases like "mixed-race" are even dodgier. There is no such thing as "Race" - "black", "white", or "hispanic"
This article is not about race at all. It is definitely not a much-needed debunking of America's pet psychosis that is the delusion of "race". Rather, Mr. Kamiya's article is the expression of a man who is uncomfortable with a large class of people (his "black underclass") and who wants to argue them - and the savage history that brought them to be - into non-existence.