Call Me When You’re Serious.

 

Even those in the racism industry are finding it difficult to point to examples of modern racism.  So they have declared their battle won, and have moved on to other things.  Ha!  Just kidding, of course.  The Black Lives Matter movement does not agitate against lack of voting rights, or educational rights, or any other civil rights, because those battles were won decades ago, before most of them were born.  Lacking a clear modern villain, they have created their own, like microaggressions and white privilege.  Since these concepts are more abstract & subtle, and lack the emotional impact of, say, Bull Connor’s fire hoses, they have shifted their gaze even further, away from modern, subtle, implied racists, to historical figures who may have really been actually racist.  So rather than drafting legislation to give black people voting rights, now they are destroying statues.  Even statues honoring the black soldiers that fought bravely in the Civil War, like the one in the picture to the right.  Oops.  Eh, whatever.  It’s the thought that counts, right?

It may seem odd, at first glance.  The guy in the statue has been dead for a long time.  Even if he was racist, he is of no threat to anyone now.  You would think that if they wanted to destroy historical evidence of racism, they might choose to destroy something with a history of racism that is still functioning today and remains a threat to blacks.  Destroying a statue doesn’t help.  The statue is just sitting there.  Destroying Aunt Jemima syrup doesn’t help.  It’s just syrup.  But I have a suggestion for a more practical and important target for Black Lives Matter.  If they want to destroy something with a horrifying record of racism, and that still poses a threat to blacks, they should consider destroying the Democrat party.

How the party of Woodrow Wilson, Bull Connor, Robert Byrd, etc etc etc has escaped the ire of the Black Lives Matter movement is a mystery to me.

And until they do go after Democrats with the same viciousness that they are going after statues and pancake syrup, it will be difficult to take this movement seriously.

Racism in the United States is obviously better than it was, but it remains a serious problem.  It should be discussed seriously, by serious people.  This is important to us all.

Those who vilify Aunt Jemima but vote for Joe Biden (even after the Clarence Thomas hearings) are not helping America address a very real problem.  They’re playing a silly game.  Which would just be silly, except for the deadly serious subject matter.  The importance of our common battle against racism moves their tactics from silly to destructive.

If you want to talk about real problems and real solutions, call me.

If you want to talk about pancake syrup, you can leave me out of it.

Call me when you’re serious.

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  1. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Virtue signaling is a lot easier than being virtuous.

    • #1
  2. GrannyDude Member
    GrannyDude
    @GrannyDude

    Good point, Doc. If one is condemned by one’s history, the Democratic party should be “dismantled.” 

    • #2
  3. CJ Inactive
    CJ
    @cjherod

    Systemic Racism is a lot like Dark Matter: It cannot be directly observed, but our Equations tell us it has to be there.

    • #3
  4. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    GrannyDude (View Comment):

    Good point, Doc. If one is condemned by one’s history, the Democratic party should be “dismantled.”

    It has been.  It is just a vehicle for the radicals now.  That’s why whatever you say about the past of the Democratic Party will just bounce off them.  They don’t care because it has nothing to do with them.  This is America Year Zero.

    • #4
  5. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    CJ (View Comment):

    Systemic Racism is a lot like Dark Matter: It cannot be directly observed, but our Equations tell us it has to be there.

    I have to disagree, or perhaps I’ve misunderstood your analogy. Dark Matter is probably there, and we are clever enough to have discovered it, or inferred it.

    Systemic Racism to me is more like Ether or Phlogiston – it seems like it is there, and it would explain a lot. But it doesn’t really exist; once you see the complete picture and understand things a little better, you see that it is like an optical illusion.

    And until you see it, see past it to the deeper truth, you’re going to be stuck in place.

    • #5
  6. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    The Scarecrow (View Comment):

    CJ (View Comment):

    Systemic Racism is a lot like Dark Matter: It cannot be directly observed, but our Equations tell us it has to be there.

    I have to disagree, or perhaps I’ve misunderstood your analogy. Dark Matter is probably there, and we are clever enough to have discovered it, or inferred it.

    Systemic Racism to me is more like Ether or Phlogiston – it seems like it is there, and it would explain a lot. But it doesn’t really exist; once you see the complete picture and understand things a little better, you see that it is like an optical illusion.

    And until you see it, see past it to the deeper truth, you’re going to be stuck in place.

    I liked both of these comments.

    I’m not sure who is correct.  I think that Bruce is correct that physicists have inferred the existence of Dark Matter.  On the other hand, my layman’s impression is that this is principally because they can’t acknowledge that the gravity equations may be wrong.  I have no idea how this could be, as they do seem to work quite well experimentally.  Those darned stars just don’t cooperate.

    • #6
  7. Sisyphus (hears Xi laughing) Member
    Sisyphus (hears Xi laughing)
    @Sisyphus

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    The Scarecrow (View Comment):

    CJ (View Comment):

    Systemic Racism is a lot like Dark Matter: It cannot be directly observed, but our Equations tell us it has to be there.

    I have to disagree, or perhaps I’ve misunderstood your analogy. Dark Matter is probably there, and we are clever enough to have discovered it, or inferred it.

    Systemic Racism to me is more like Ether or Phlogiston – it seems like it is there, and it would explain a lot. But it doesn’t really exist; once you see the complete picture and understand things a little better, you see that it is like an optical illusion.

    And until you see it, see past it to the deeper truth, you’re going to be stuck in place.

    I liked both of these comments.

    I’m not sure who is correct. I think that Bruce is correct that physicists have inferred the existence of Dark Matter. On the other hand, my layman’s impression is that this is principally because they can’t acknowledge that the gravity equations may be wrong. I have no idea how this could be, as they do seem to work quite well experimentally. Those darned stars just don’t cooperate.

    It is just slightly possible that they don’t have it all figured out yet.

    • #7
  8. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    White Privilege:

    Taken from The Mystery of the Hansom Cab (and 7 other Traditional British Cozy Mysteries) by Fergus Hume, second story The Solitary Farm, written in 1909, Ch. 12: “Cyril, with the white man’s inborn superiority, objected to this familiarity…”

    • #8
  9. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    And from the same (c)1909 story, all things old are new again with White Privilege toward POC:

    People of color,” added Cyril with the covert insolence of the white towards the black, “don’t usually…”

    • #9
  10. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Dr. Bastiat: How the party of Woodrow Wilson, Bull Connor, Robert Byrd, etc etc etc has escaped the ire of the Black Lives Matter movement is a mystery to me.

    Because it’s not about black lives, it’s about Wokism. Or if you prefer a more traditional term, revolutionary leftism. Communists and the like have a history of latching onto serious problems and then hijacking the movement to fix or improve that problem. 

    • #10
  11. MichaelKennedy Inactive
    MichaelKennedy
    @MichaelKennedy

    You are assuming this is about black lives.  It is not. Those are taken every night in  Chicago by other blacks and no one cares except perhaps the relatives  The three women who started BLM are lesbians and are determined to destroy the family, among other things.  The black family has been pretty well destroyed by The Great Society, so much of the work is  done.  All that remains is to destroy society.  The black woman leader of the CHAZ in Seattle in this video explains:

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/ami-horowitz-video-inside-chaz-capital-hill-frontpagemagcom/

     

    • #11
  12. Eugene Kriegsmann Member
    Eugene Kriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    I have said this before. In the more than 40 years I spent teaching in Seattle Public Schools I saw all of this unfolding. Very little of the things we are now experiencing as a society were evident outside of the academic environment. They were smoldering deep within academia, in the schools and the colleges and universities fed by the advocates of the Frankfurt School. 

    In 1971 Seattle Public Schools introduced their first Human Relations Taskforce. This group of mostly minority people, Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Pacific Islanders spent 60 mornings in my building. Their stated purpose was to increase the understanding of faculty and staff of the differences that existed between the various racial groups. We were a pretty diverse faculty at the time with just about every racial group represented and with few or any problems between us. Our goal was to serve our kids, and, to my way of thinking, we were doing a damned good job of it, a far better job that we were a few years later when the requested changes to curriculum were introduced.

    During the 60 sessions, 20 of which I attended (Since my assignment was to work with Emotionally Disturbed kids, I told the principal that I did not need to start my day working with Emotionally Disturbed adults. He told me that I could stay in my classroom, just not to tell anyone that he had given me permission.) I saw people begin to take sides and attack people with whom they had formerly been friendly or friends. These attacks were instigated and exacerbated by the task force members asking minority teachers to tell white teachers “what they really felt.” As happened repeatedly over the years, blacks dominated the fraternity of victimhood. No one had suffered  as much as they did. A close friend and colleague at the time was Japanese. He had spent a few of his younger years at Minidoka, one of the concentration camps for displaced Japanese-Americans during WW2. He was understandably dismayed at the short shrift he was given by the taskforce. Of all the people I knew on the faculty at the time, he was the only one ever subjected to institutionalized racism. I am sure others might have felt that at one point or another in their lives that they were selected for special treatment or notice because of their race, but nothing to compared with loses Japanese-American citizens suffered under the Democrat administration of FDR. By the end of the 60 days our faculty was in turmoil. It took two years, at least, to undo the damage. White teachers were told that they were part of the White Collective, responsible for every insult ever inflicted on a minority person by a white person. That was something I heard over and over again through years of updated workshops.  Continued below.

     

    • #12
  13. Eugene Kriegsmann Member
    Eugene Kriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    These workshops were an annual affair, eventually they were run by professional companies like The Courageous Conversation. Always the stated purpose was to bring people together. What actually occurred was a seminar in which members of the White Collective were accused and attacked and were never given any penance they could perform or other act of contrition other than to bow down ( as we have seen recent example of ), or just accept that they were irredeemable . There were no solutions, no corrective measures, only abject guilt and submission. I always found it interesting, but unsurprising, that so few administrators participated in these exercises. These were purely directed at the hoi polloi. I suspect that the techniques were similar to those used in communist countries for reeducation camps.

    What is happening now on the streets of our cities seems a continuation of that process. They don’t have a goal of new laws or amendments. They are really interested in only one final goal, power. They want to be in control. Once there, as in the French Revolution, they will, they think, be able to create a perfect world of pure anarchy. Of course, we know the outcome of that. When these “revolutionaries” gain control they begin eating their own. Revolution is a continuing process, perfection an unachievable goal. Ultimately, it is, as a humorous depiction of a corporate struction showed, like a tree full of monkeys all trying to climb to the top. The ones above look down and see nothing but smiling faces. The ones below look up and see nothing but a**holes.

    In the end, what we are seeing is a lot of mediocre and lazy people, unwilling to do the hard work but wanting to be on top, spreading anger and hatred for no other purpose than their own aggrandizement, as they perceive it. To a large extent, I think that defines the current state of the Democrat party.

    • #13
  14. Goldwaterwoman Thatcher
    Goldwaterwoman
    @goldwaterwoman

    Percival (View Comment):

    Virtue signaling is a lot easier than being virtuous.

    I don’t understand why Aunt Jemima Syrup is racist. If anything, I would think it’s complimentary to a good cook? But racist?

    • #14
  15. Eugene Kriegsmann Member
    Eugene Kriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Virtue signaling is a lot easier than being virtuous.

    I don’t understand why Aunt Jemima Syrup is racist. If anything, I would think it’s complimentary to a good cook? But racist?

    If I can try to explain. The image is of a black woman from an earlier time, something of a stereotype, not a bad one from my point of view, but one that some black people think is an image of someone not a lot better off than a slave. 

    I grew up in New York City. We always had black, live-in maids when I was a child. For many of my black friends the idea of a black woman leaving her children to live with a white family and take care of their children is somewhat appalling. I can understand that. I am not ashamed of having had those women in our home. They were loved by us, and we felt that they were part of our family. That, unfortunately, isn’t the way it was perceived at the time by their families. They see the type of work they did as demeaning. The image of Aunt Jemima is a throwback to that time. I have often heard it said of certain neighborhoods that the only time you saw a black person in that area they were in a maid’s uniform. It is a sad image of a less enlightened time, a time long, long gone.

    • #15
  16. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Virtue signaling is a lot easier than being virtuous.

    I don’t understand why Aunt Jemima Syrup is racist. If anything, I would think it’s complimentary to a good cook? But racist?

    Blacks are being expunged from the culture.  See Hattie McDaniel.  Her Academy Award-winning work was expunged, then reinstated with a Trigger Warning.  My guess is that it’s privileged white liberals that did it.

    • #16
  17. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    What strikes me as odd is that I’ve never seen any white people I know buying or using Aunt Jemima products.  So now what, black people can only buy and use ” white peoples'” pancake mix and syrup?  And somehow this is “progress?”

    (I only use Bisquick.  Aunt Jemima especially, has – or I guess, had – so much sugar it makes – made? – my teeth hurt.  Does this mean that black people will start buying Kruzteaz or whatever, maybe even Bisquick, and then add lots of sugar to it, so it’s what they’re used to?)

    • #17
  18. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    They’ve already found a replacement.

    Cuzzin Rocco’s Pancake Syrup. On the shelves of finer food stores everywhere.

     

    • #18
  19. MichaelKennedy Inactive
    MichaelKennedy
    @MichaelKennedy

    Eugene Kriegsmann (View Comment):

    I have said this before. In the more than 40 years I spent teaching in Seattle Public Schools I saw all of this unfolding. Very little of the things we are now experiencing as a society were evident outside of the academic environment. They were smoldering deep within academia, in the schools and the colleges and universities fed by the advocates of the Frankfurt School.

    In 1971 Seattle Public Schools introduced their first Human Relations Taskforce. This group of mostly minority people, Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Pacific Islanders spent 60 mornings in my building. Their stated purpose was to increase the understanding of faculty and staff of the differences that existed between the various racial groups. We were a pretty diverse faculty at the time with just about every racial group represented and with few or any problems between us. Our goal was to serve our kids, and, to my way of thinking, we were doing a damned good job of it, a far better job that we were a few years later when the requested changes to curriculum were introduced.

    snipped

    These attacks were instigated and exacerbated by the task force members asking minority teachers to tell white teachers “what they really felt.” As happened repeatedly over the years, blacks dominated the fraternity of victimhood. No one had suffered as much as they did. A close friend and colleague at the time was Japanese. He had spent a few of his younger years at Minidoka, one of the concentration camps for displaced Japanese-Americans during WW2. He was understandably dismayed at the short shrift he was given by the taskforce. Of all the people I knew on the faculty at the time, he was the only one ever subjected to institutionalized racism. I am sure others might have felt that at one point or another in their lives that they were selected for special treatment or notice because of their race, but nothing to compared with loses Japanese-American citizens suffered under the Democrat administration of FDR. By the end of the 60 days our faculty was in turmoil. It took two years, at least, to undo the damage. White teachers were told that they were part of the White Collective, responsible for every insult ever inflicted on a minority person by a white person. That was something I heard over and over again through years of updated workshops. Continued below.

     

    Blacks seem to be adopting the Zimbabwe and South Africa model for  governing. I don’t think this will turn out any better for them

    • #19
  20. MichaelKennedy Inactive
    MichaelKennedy
    @MichaelKennedy

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Virtue signaling is a lot easier than being virtuous.

    I don’t understand why Aunt Jemima Syrup is racist. If anything, I would think it’s complimentary to a good cook? But racist?

    This is a decision similar to the Gillette decision to market to transgenders.  The marketing director there is Indian and seems to have no understanding of American culture. I wonder who is making these decisions to destroy 100 year old brands?

    • #20
  21. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    MichaelKennedy (View Comment):

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Virtue signaling is a lot easier than being virtuous.

    I don’t understand why Aunt Jemima Syrup is racist. If anything, I would think it’s complimentary to a good cook? But racist?

    This is a decision similar to the Gillette decision to market to transgenders. The marketing director there is Indian and seems to have no understanding of American culture. I wonder who is making these decisions to destroy 100 year old brands?

    But Gillette still exists, right?  Apparently, Aunt Jemima won’t.

    • #21
  22. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    MichaelKennedy (View Comment):

    Blacks seem to be adopting the Zimbabwe and South Africa model for governing. I don’t think this will turn out any better for them

    My thoughts exactly, but I didn’t want to be labeled as racist.  Oh, and by the way, your comment is racist.

     

     

    • #22
  23. MichaelKennedy Inactive
    MichaelKennedy
    @MichaelKennedy

    kedavis (View Comment):

    MichaelKennedy (View Comment):

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Virtue signaling is a lot easier than being virtuous.

    I don’t understand why Aunt Jemima Syrup is racist. If anything, I would think it’s complimentary to a good cook? But racist?

    This is a decision similar to the Gillette decision to market to transgenders. The marketing director there is Indian and seems to have no understanding of American culture. I wonder who is making these decisions to destroy 100 year old brands?

    But Gillette still exists, right? Apparently, Aunt Jemima won’t.

    I understand the corporation lost billions after the fiasco.  The Aunt Jemima brand is owned by Quaker Oats and Pepsico.  Uncle Ben’s Rice, another victim of BLM is owned by the Mars company.  Both are world-wide brands being destroyed,.

    • #23
  24. Sisyphus (hears Xi laughing) Member
    Sisyphus (hears Xi laughing)
    @Sisyphus

    This isn’t the first time either of those brands has come under fire for their emblems from motivated protests. I’ve known reasonable people who found the imagery patronizing and offensive. Personally, I don’t care for the products, being of poor quality compared to similarly priced offerings.

    Still, obviously these are big brands that are satisfying a significant niche of the market. So how many picoseconds will it take for that niche to be filled by a black free branding strategy with very similar quality and price points? Fewer black faces in the public square to draw fire. 

    Or they could hire Angela Davis as product spokescommie and calm everything down.

    • #24
  25. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    MichaelKennedy (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    MichaelKennedy (View Comment):

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Virtue signaling is a lot easier than being virtuous.

    I don’t understand why Aunt Jemima Syrup is racist. If anything, I would think it’s complimentary to a good cook? But racist?

    This is a decision similar to the Gillette decision to market to transgenders. The marketing director there is Indian and seems to have no understanding of American culture. I wonder who is making these decisions to destroy 100 year old brands?

    But Gillette still exists, right? Apparently, Aunt Jemima won’t.

    I understand the corporation lost billions after the fiasco. The Aunt Jemima brand is owned by Quaker Oats and Pepsico. Uncle Ben’s Rice, another victim of BLM is owned by the Mars company. Both are world-wide brands being destroyed,.

    Well, it seems likely they can continue using the old names in the rest of the world.  So they don’t have to change everything, EVERYwhere.

     

    • #25
  26. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    kedavis (View Comment):

    MichaelKennedy (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    MichaelKennedy (View Comment):

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Virtue signaling is a lot easier than being virtuous.

    I don’t understand why Aunt Jemima Syrup is racist. If anything, I would think it’s complimentary to a good cook? But racist?

    This is a decision similar to the Gillette decision to market to transgenders. The marketing director there is Indian and seems to have no understanding of American culture. I wonder who is making these decisions to destroy 100 year old brands?

    But Gillette still exists, right? Apparently, Aunt Jemima won’t.

    I understand the corporation lost billions after the fiasco. The Aunt Jemima brand is owned by Quaker Oats and Pepsico. Uncle Ben’s Rice, another victim of BLM is owned by the Mars company. Both are world-wide brands being destroyed,.

    Well, it seems likely they can continue using the old names in the rest of the world. So they don’t have to change everything, EVERYwhere.

     

    A lot of people just go by the picture. It give them a reason to look at the other brands. Choice points are bad if it’s your regular customers making it.

    • #26
  27. MichaelKennedy Inactive
    MichaelKennedy
    @MichaelKennedy

    Datsun learned a harsh lesson when they decided to change the brand to the company name in Japan.

    • #27
  28. Eugene Kriegsmann Member
    Eugene Kriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    MichaelKennedy (View Comment):
    Blacks seem to be adopting the Zimbabwe and South Africa model for governing. I don’t think this will turn out any better for them

    I have always thought that the model that blacks in the US have followed is that of Liberia. You may remember that a large number of former slaves were “repatriated” to Liberia where they rapidly created one of the most repressive, corrupt, and dictatorial regimes in Africa. As I understand it, the current leaders are still the descendants of former slaves, not people whose families never left.

    Without putting too fine a point on it, I have seen enough blacks in leadership positions in Seattle Public Schools to know that what happened in Liberia was not a fluke. A relatively recent Superintendent was fired after a couple of years due to a series of rather lucrative contracts were awarded to black contractors who took the money and did no work. She was not a Washingtonian, had no links to the city, and had been hired from somewhere out of the south after a lengthy search to find a qualified black for the position. We did have a terrific superintendent who happened to be black, but he, unfortunately, died a few years into his term. He was a former Army general, a man of impeccable integrity, a real exception to the hucksters and jivers who manage to work their way up the ladder of politics in the black community.

    I could detail quite a few specifics of completely inappropriate, Affirmative Action hirings that took place in Seattle schools, teachers who were barely literate, administrators who were totally incompetent, and security people who stole expensive electronic devices from the schools in which they worked. To my way of thinking, it has less to do with race than with hiring people because of their race rather than any qualifications they demonstrated. Using race as a major determiner of the appropriateness of a particular hire is a good way to insure that whoever gets hired is going to be minimally competent. It also insures that the Peter Principle would be seen in all of its clearest details. When people are placed in positions for which they are not qualified they will ultimately find ways of using their positions that are more in line with their particular skill set.

    • #28
  29. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    Eugene Kriegsmann (View Comment):
    When people are placed in positions for which they are not qualified they will ultimately find ways of using their positions that are more in line with their particular skill set.

    Brilliant point.

    • #29
  30. Goldwaterwoman Thatcher
    Goldwaterwoman
    @goldwaterwoman

    Eugene Kriegsmann (View Comment):
    could detail quite a few specifics of completely inappropriate, Affirmative Action hirings that took place in Seattle schools, teachers who were barely literate, administrators who were totally incompetent, and security people who stole expensive electronic devices from the schools in which they worked.

    One thing our newspaper of record, the Seattle Times, has done a poor job of is reporting the huge increase in school administration costs as student enrollment has decreased. My children all graduated from schools in the Shoreline school district where an entire high school was shut down due to lack of students and turned into offices for administration. The parking lot, prior to Covid, was full to the brim of admin employees. Meanwhile, school bonds ,which supposedly benefit the students, pass overwhelmingly in election after election as we see costs escalate out of control. 

    • #30
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