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[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

This is not exactly false and it is not completely true.

I will surely concede (and I already posted about it today) that people in power act like assholes and tend to want to remain in power. But white people are the ones who decided that they wanted to conquer the entire world and build empires. And they were the ones who actually did it. Hell, the UK only gave Hong Kong back in fucking 1997!

Slavery existed in lots of places, but in many places (including Africa) it was more like indentured servitude. It served as a punishment for crimes or was the result of being a captive of war. White people in this country took it to a whole different level.

All of this aside, what's your point exactly? That white people aren't inherently evil? Yes. We know. That Chris Rock is wrong? Because I don't really see it. The simple fact is, white people in this country have acted crazy. That statement doesn't change because another race in another country also acted crazy. To say that whites here only did so because they were in power and that other races act similarly horrible in other places when they are in power misses his point entirely and really just seems like a defensive reaction to the fact that in this country white people have acted crazy.

The clear takeaway is that a black person's success in this country should not be attributed to progress blacks have made, but the progress white people have made in not completely standing in the way of people they have traditionally treated as subhuman. What's interesting about what he said is that he has taken a perspective that all of us have internalized (i.e., black people are progressing, look at Obama!) and turned it on its head by pointing out that it's white people's attitudes that have progressed by accepting, and actually voting for, a black man to be a leader.

TM

I just drafted a detailed response to this, clicked submit, and then lawtalkers said that I wasn't logged in (which makes no sense since you have to be logged in order to get to the page that lets you post!). I browsed back and my response was gone.

I will try again later on today.