Glenn Reynolds quotes Radley Balko:
Unfortunately, I do think there’s something to it. It’s sort of a long story, but here’s thus e gist as I understand it:
Apparently both sides share a heavy burden of guilt. I do remember, back in the late sixties, being shocked by the White Only fountains in the Bogalusa, LA bus station, and the “Negro entrance in rear” sign on the “White Way Cafe” next door.
I suspect that the rural south is less changed than a lot of people realize.
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I’m pretty impressed with the racism in non-Southern metro areas. Boston leaps prominently to mind. (Though I lived there more than in other cities; I don’t know how Boston stacks up with Newark or San Francisco.)
Is there any way to quantify and categorize different types of racism? And other forms of bigotry, as long as we’re at it.
I’m not sure, but I’d suggest that open public signage required racial segregation would be a tip-off that the local underlying racism is more virulent than places that don’t have such things.
I’d further suggest that a school with a “white tree” where, signage or no, blacks are banned from access, indicates the same.
San Francisco doesn’t have such things. There’s no way they could be kept secret, and once the secret was out, they’d be swarmed by thousands of the perpetually aggrieved.
SF’s schools are mostly filled with Asian and Hispanic kids anyway. The Unified District’s students are less than ten percent white.
I think you would find the rural south to be much the same as rural anywhere. It has changed, at least from the racisim on display that was obvious when I was young. As a bit of anecdotal evidence, I offer the following. At university, I was dating a young lady from Wyoming. On our first or second date, the subject of southern racism came up. She was rather harsh in her view of us lowly southerners (she was cute though). A few weeks later, having heard several of her observations about us southern redneck racists (did I mention she was cute?), the subject of Indians (native Americans) came up. She had a very low opinion of those poor folks. An opinion that could only be construed as racist, just directed at a different group. She would never have considered herself as having a racist bone in her body however.
How did she feel about Amerinds who’d entered mainstream American society? People who’d had an Amerind grandparent? Perhaps she was not racist so much as classist or culture-ist.
No, she was just a plain old ordinary racist.
Seperate Mardi Gras parades? Funny that. Particularly since laws making that illegal in the state are the reason that Comus, the first krewe in LA no longer parades.
It appears that Radley, like so many others is seeking to appeal to emotion to make the case that facts cannot.
Because there ARE facts.
Fact–the ‘noose incident’ took place months before this incident.
Fact–the noose hangers were punished.
Fact–the victim of the ‘Jena 6′ was not one of the noose hangers.
But we are supposed to ignore these facts in favor of these appeals to emotion–
White people oppressed black people
White kids and black kids fought at the school.
There was some kind of unofficial ‘white’ tree.
Black people feel that white people aren’t punished as severly as black people.
There are more.
Since this whole Jena thing started black people and activists have been trying to equate something–anything– with the beating these six very good boys dealt out. They are trying to make it a retaliation for white opression at the school. Any incident will do. A white kid cut in line ahead of a black kid–REVENGE!. A white hip-hopper has a better sound system than a black one–REVENGE!
Eventually something will stick. The criminals that beat that poor kid will get off scott free. And we’ll set up the idea, once again, that any action that black people don’t like is grounds for retaliation–even physical retaliation–from any black person on any white person.
We’ll do this because the simple truth, that you don’t get to hit somebody because they say or display something you don’t like, is obviously racist.
Let’s not forget that this is the same state with the chocolate city. Racism is still found everywhere there are ignorant boobs …no matter the color of the skin.
I find the cute Wyoming gal who didn’t like NAs fascinating and not at all inexplicable. Having grown up right off the rez, living in Wyoming, having many friends and relatives who are NAs, and being an anthropologist by profession, I can see at least a few of the many ramifications of this situation.
It’s hard for many folks to grasp that Native American cultures can be as different from mainstream American culture as that of the Hotentots or Swedes. Many folks are shocked, SHOCKED!, to learn that the Dakota attitude toward women or the Shoshone attitude toward centralized authority isn’t in line with modern progressive thought. How can these people live among us and be so different? The natural response is to say “what is the matter with them? Why aren’t they more like us?
None of this excuses bad behavior on anyone’s part, but “the other” will always be with us and will always be a source of conflict. Segregation, whether it was the “whites only” southern manifestation, or the NA reservations we have out west, was an attempt to avoid the conflict, but we’ll never be free from the conflict until we allow that it’s okay to be different and even think differently. I’m not holding my breath until that day.
Good writeup by Jason Whitlock in the Kansas City Star.
A few more details I was unaware of. The Bold is mine:
Jason Whitlock
“That’s the question that needed to be asked in Jena and across the country on Thursday. But it wasn’t asked because everyone has been lied to about what really transpired in the small southern town.
There was no “schoolyard fight” as a result of nooses being hung on a whites-only tree.
Justin Barker, the white victim, was cold-cocked from behind, knocked unconscious and stomped by six black athletes. Barker, luckily, sustained no life-threatening injuries and was released from the hospital three hours after the attack.
A black U.S. attorney, Don Washington, investigated the “Jena Six” case and concluded that the attack on Barker had absolutely nothing to do with the noose-hanging incident three months before. The nooses and two off-campus incidents were tied to Barker’s assault by people wanting to gain sympathy for the “Jena Six” in reaction to Walters’ extreme charges of attempted murder.”
“Much has been written about Bell’s trial, the six-person all-white jury that convicted him of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery and the clueless public defender who called no witnesses and offered no defense. It is rarely mentioned that no black people responded to the jury summonses and that Bell’s public defender was black.
“It’s rarely mentioned that Bell was already on probation for assault when he was accused of participating in Barker’s attack. And it’s never mentioned that white people in the “racist” town of Jena provided Bell support and protected his football career long before Jesse, Al, Bell’s father and all the others took a sincere interest in Mychal Bell.”
“You won’t hear about any of that because it doesn’t fit the picture we want to paint of Jena, this case, America and ourselves.”
Of course, Jason Whitlock has been selected as the House Negro of the Day here.
There are as many black Al Sharpton wannabes as David Duke clones. And you’re right, Bill, this particular form of racism wouldn’t occur in SF. But ask yourself what kind of treatment Ward Connerly got when he tried to actually make the law colorblind. As long as we have a system that rewards “victims”, that’s exactly what we’ll have.
Sounds like a typical Muslim offended by a cartoon.
SF suffers from institutionalized reverse racism and politically correct bigotry.
We’re too busy demonizing and terrorizing smokers to practice the more traditional forms of bigotry. Besides, we’ve just about run most of our black population out of town anyway.
No nooses. Just housing prices.