- 07 Jun 2020 14:32
#15098316
Layman I am an international socialist politically. I am not a moderate. If you see my profile? I am a -10 economically and a -7 socially. They matched my ways of thinking politically with those of Nelson Mandela. Which pleased me because the way he made it to the South African presidency in a profoundly racist nation with apartheid laws and so on? Was by believing profoundly in one man and one woman and one vote. And by also saying that many had to come together and be unified in purpose. For a new nation. One in which white South Africans and black South Africans could live together and forge a society together. But it had to be as equals under the law, and as being treated equally in many ways.
It also acknowledges systemic racism. If you study Mandela's life? He was in his early life never exposed to white people and their apartheid system til he was more or less 9 years old. Why? His father was part of an all Black community that had always lived in South Africa. He was not an immigrant in some foreign land @layman . He was in his element.
I don't believe in living in the past at all. South Africa had settlers. Afrikaaners, and people of Dutch extraction, English extraction and people from India living there and people despite having all kinds of crazy, anti-humane racist laws? People interact and they mingle. It was against the law to intermarry and to give rights to the African native people if you were of European descent. All of that was part of the scheme to not have any social or economic mobility and it was steeped in many beliefs that had to do with holding on to land and power. As most racism is.
Have any of you who are arguing about racism or how much you hate political correctness or how much you think the looters, rioters are damaging the society--or like @Political Interest talking about that discrimination against whites is also a problem? Have you studied for years African American history? I am asking because the first sign of respect you should have for an ethnic or cultural group in the world? Is to study their history with some depth.
Everyone studies English history and European histories in a conventional way in schools. People learn about the Queen and the history of the monarchy of England and Queen Elizabeth I, etc. Do they study the history of the native peoples all over the world with the same sort of dedication? The excuses are, 'those people are primitive, they were cannibals, they were unintelligent, incorrigible, not teachable, dumb, dirty, unable to create tall, skyscrapers, technology, were not studying in universities, etc." All of it designed to make them DISAPPEAR, to make them INVISIBLE, to strip them of any self agency, self respect, self determination and self responsibility. On an individual level and on a systemic level.
Why do they do this? To keep them in a position of not taking ACTION. To change their lives, and their circumstances because it is benefiting a certain group who needs that to NOT CHANGE. It is a reality.
All people have a history. All people. Some think that because they don't because they are not part of European history? Are racist people for sure. Why continue in the fiction that other people don't know anything if they are not part of your ethnic group's history? That is ignorant and foolish.
But how many of you have taken the time to study the history of Africa? Nation by nation? Its geography, its peoples, its histories, its social and economic developments and how that was handled? How many of you have dined in a home of an African and asked them great questions like, "What does education for your children mean to you?" or "Why did you come to the UK or the USA, or Australia etc?" Or philosophical questions like "What does a sense of community mean to you?" and or "What are your political beliefs or religious beliefs and what do they mean to you personally? How have those beliefs shaped your life?"
I can guarantee you that if you do that and you sit down and talk like civilized human beings with people from the culture you refused to study or acknowledge fully as you would with a group of people whom the society deems primitive, and less than and not as worthy culturally than your group? You will wind up discarding all that unadulterated false and inhumane subconscious thinking and start taking action===action that is desperately needed to change the racism and change the ignorance and the assumptions that underlie all those thoughts....all put there by people on the very elite top to make sure that things don't change for the better.
Unity between ordinary and working people is something easily done when people talk about things they have in common. And human beings as a general rule have a lot in common. Especially the majority of people in the world that under capitalism have to work for a living or they can't be housed, have running water or electricity and food. Basics.
It is struggle for the vast majority of humanity @Political Interest but what I find inexcusable is the lack of dedication to finding common ground with others and taking a deep interest in their lives. Be interested in human beings different than you are in background, class, race, and knowledge and everything else. Give the basic respect to them of the reality that is you are a human being living a life? You have experiences. Those experiences are valuable. They are a source of knowledge and of truth. If that was not true? Why read books, articles, videos, movies, etc and all written and organized sources of information to understand our worlds? It is based on a human being experiencing life and then interpreting those experiences and compiling facts and compiling concepts derived from those experiences. You study math to understand how numbers work and how the concept of more advanced mathematics works. A variable can be 'found out' by its relationship to other numbers. That means you don't know what that hidden number is? But you can get the answer by putting it in a context with other numbers that you do know what the value is?
Human experiences are valuable. Thinking that one group of them are worthless? Because someone in some political or economic interest shapes attitudes socially and they don't want unity or they don't want you to be interested in other cultures, other people's histories and lives because if you did? You might find common ground? And the racists and the ones who never have done the work on this website are suddenly judging and saying?
I want to judge these people but without knowledge? That for me is the essence of racist thinking. Do you want that to be how you deal with your life? I don't.
layman wrote:@Godstud do you remember the 1980s or what about the 1970s? The police back then and people in generally were another species with these things.
I am open to the possibility there may have been some shorter term regression and I suggested some of the reason for that.
Just to be clear @Tainari88 i am not saying people should just sit and wait. I am certainly not arguing against these protests either.
Simply questioning strategy.
Layman I am an international socialist politically. I am not a moderate. If you see my profile? I am a -10 economically and a -7 socially. They matched my ways of thinking politically with those of Nelson Mandela. Which pleased me because the way he made it to the South African presidency in a profoundly racist nation with apartheid laws and so on? Was by believing profoundly in one man and one woman and one vote. And by also saying that many had to come together and be unified in purpose. For a new nation. One in which white South Africans and black South Africans could live together and forge a society together. But it had to be as equals under the law, and as being treated equally in many ways.
It also acknowledges systemic racism. If you study Mandela's life? He was in his early life never exposed to white people and their apartheid system til he was more or less 9 years old. Why? His father was part of an all Black community that had always lived in South Africa. He was not an immigrant in some foreign land @layman . He was in his element.
I don't believe in living in the past at all. South Africa had settlers. Afrikaaners, and people of Dutch extraction, English extraction and people from India living there and people despite having all kinds of crazy, anti-humane racist laws? People interact and they mingle. It was against the law to intermarry and to give rights to the African native people if you were of European descent. All of that was part of the scheme to not have any social or economic mobility and it was steeped in many beliefs that had to do with holding on to land and power. As most racism is.
Have any of you who are arguing about racism or how much you hate political correctness or how much you think the looters, rioters are damaging the society--or like @Political Interest talking about that discrimination against whites is also a problem? Have you studied for years African American history? I am asking because the first sign of respect you should have for an ethnic or cultural group in the world? Is to study their history with some depth.
Everyone studies English history and European histories in a conventional way in schools. People learn about the Queen and the history of the monarchy of England and Queen Elizabeth I, etc. Do they study the history of the native peoples all over the world with the same sort of dedication? The excuses are, 'those people are primitive, they were cannibals, they were unintelligent, incorrigible, not teachable, dumb, dirty, unable to create tall, skyscrapers, technology, were not studying in universities, etc." All of it designed to make them DISAPPEAR, to make them INVISIBLE, to strip them of any self agency, self respect, self determination and self responsibility. On an individual level and on a systemic level.
Why do they do this? To keep them in a position of not taking ACTION. To change their lives, and their circumstances because it is benefiting a certain group who needs that to NOT CHANGE. It is a reality.
All people have a history. All people. Some think that because they don't because they are not part of European history? Are racist people for sure. Why continue in the fiction that other people don't know anything if they are not part of your ethnic group's history? That is ignorant and foolish.
But how many of you have taken the time to study the history of Africa? Nation by nation? Its geography, its peoples, its histories, its social and economic developments and how that was handled? How many of you have dined in a home of an African and asked them great questions like, "What does education for your children mean to you?" or "Why did you come to the UK or the USA, or Australia etc?" Or philosophical questions like "What does a sense of community mean to you?" and or "What are your political beliefs or religious beliefs and what do they mean to you personally? How have those beliefs shaped your life?"
I can guarantee you that if you do that and you sit down and talk like civilized human beings with people from the culture you refused to study or acknowledge fully as you would with a group of people whom the society deems primitive, and less than and not as worthy culturally than your group? You will wind up discarding all that unadulterated false and inhumane subconscious thinking and start taking action===action that is desperately needed to change the racism and change the ignorance and the assumptions that underlie all those thoughts....all put there by people on the very elite top to make sure that things don't change for the better.
Unity between ordinary and working people is something easily done when people talk about things they have in common. And human beings as a general rule have a lot in common. Especially the majority of people in the world that under capitalism have to work for a living or they can't be housed, have running water or electricity and food. Basics.
It is struggle for the vast majority of humanity @Political Interest but what I find inexcusable is the lack of dedication to finding common ground with others and taking a deep interest in their lives. Be interested in human beings different than you are in background, class, race, and knowledge and everything else. Give the basic respect to them of the reality that is you are a human being living a life? You have experiences. Those experiences are valuable. They are a source of knowledge and of truth. If that was not true? Why read books, articles, videos, movies, etc and all written and organized sources of information to understand our worlds? It is based on a human being experiencing life and then interpreting those experiences and compiling facts and compiling concepts derived from those experiences. You study math to understand how numbers work and how the concept of more advanced mathematics works. A variable can be 'found out' by its relationship to other numbers. That means you don't know what that hidden number is? But you can get the answer by putting it in a context with other numbers that you do know what the value is?
Human experiences are valuable. Thinking that one group of them are worthless? Because someone in some political or economic interest shapes attitudes socially and they don't want unity or they don't want you to be interested in other cultures, other people's histories and lives because if you did? You might find common ground? And the racists and the ones who never have done the work on this website are suddenly judging and saying?
I want to judge these people but without knowledge? That for me is the essence of racist thinking. Do you want that to be how you deal with your life? I don't.
La historia de mi amor
se pudiera encontrar
en cada corazón,
en cada soledad.
Silvio Rodriguez
se pudiera encontrar
en cada corazón,
en cada soledad.
Silvio Rodriguez