The Difficulties of Having Racial Dialogues in America

I love how these guys flip between percentages and total numbers as the argument suits them. When we're talking about crime, it's a percentage of minorities committing an inordinate percentage of crime but here he wants to show the whites are more poor so he uses totals instead of percentages because obviously it would fail to bolster his argument. The intellectual dishonesty of these arguments is so cringe worthy.

 

Either ignorance, or dishonesty, or both make it difficult... for example, in her desire to keep the confederate flag part of the MS state flag in place, this state senator claims a black confederate soldier designed the flag... then when corrected, she plays her "Christian" card and "All Lives Matter" spin...

New Albany senator falsely claims Black man designed state flag

https://www.djournal.com/news/new-a...cle_a0278e34-90e8-5b6c-aac3-b543f8c8ae3f.html

 

re: OP's original topic, some of the difficulties are philosophical. Consider for example AOC's statements yesterday:



AOC's statement(s) is surely an expansive conception of what it means to be "black," particularly in light of the added conceptual complexity surrounding the term "Latino":

https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/ask_a_scholar_what_is_the_true_definition_of_latino

Ask a Scholar: What is the True Definition of Latino?

Dario Fernandez-Morera

Dear Ask a Scholar,

What is the True Definition of Latino? Many say its just Latin American people, others say and I believe as well that "Latino" means anyone whose language derived from Latin; Hispanics, Portuguese speaking people, French and Italian. I need someone to clarify the actual meaning and history of the word.

-Jorge Martinez, University of South Florida

Answered by Dario Fernandez-Morera, Associate Professor of Spanish & Portuguese at Northwestern University. Dr. Fernandez-Morera received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. He has published books and articles in English and Spanish in the United States, England, and Spain on cultural issues and theory, Cervantes, sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spanish prose and fiction, modern Spanish poetry, the encounter between Europeans and Amerindians, Modernism, and contemporary political events in Latin America. Fernández-Morera has served in the National Council on the Humanities and as a consultant and reader for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The word latino is a Spanish word that has entered the English language. In Spanish, it means someone belonging to the people of ancient Latium, in Italy, whose language was Latin; so the Romans of course were latinos. Another and related meaning of latino in Spanish refers to someone who belongs to the cultures of the Romance Languages, that is, those peoples whose language, and to a varying extent, whose culture, too, derive from the language and civilization of Rome, which was latin. Among these Romance languages are Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Rumanian. Therefore, all Italians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Rumanians, and Portuguese, as well as all those Latin Americans whose language is Spanish or Portuguese (an English-speaking person from Jamaica would not qualify) are latinos. This last meaning can be found in the English language as well, in the English word “Latin,” when used in some contexts; thus famous “Latin” performers have been Rodolfo Valentino and Carmen Miranda. In this context, the English word “Latin” has carried a certain aura of joix de vivre, or of sexuality, sometimes to the point of caricature and satire.

However, the Spanish word latino has narrowed its meaning when used in English untranslated as “Latin.” This narrowing was clinched when the United States government adopted the term latino officially in 1997 to complement the English word “Hispanic,” which until then had been used to classify, or rather, attempt to classify, people living in the United States who were Spanish speakers, or belonged to a household where Spanish was spoken, or who were somehow of Spanish heritage, or who self-identified with Spanish ancestry or descent. Now, with the use of the word “Latino,” with a capital, this bureaucratic category has been enlarged to include people of non-Spanish descent if they so wish to be categorized. Basically, anyone who can somehow justify the claim, can now claim to be a “latino” for bureaucratic purposes, and many do so in order to reap various forms of government benefits reserved for particular collectives, or “identity groups.”

In addition, the word Latino now serves to categorize those people who come from Latin America, or descend from people from Latin America, where the spoken language is Spanish, but who are not happy with a noun such as “Hispanic,” which is too redolent of Spain, a country to which many of those formerly categorized as “Hispanics” do not want to be connected. This is the case, for example, of some residents of Mexican descent in the United States, who do not want to be called “Hispanics,” but “Latinos.” One reason given is to have their own collective identity separate from that of other collective identities somehow associated with Spain and its heritage. Another possible reason is a desire to be associated with the Mexica (“Aztec”) culture, which was defeated by the Spaniards, and which is frequently and justifiably extolled for its numerous accomplishments and virtues. Given this desire, it is irrelevant that the Aztec culture was one among many indigenous cultures of ancient Mexico; or that the Aztecs subjugated and ruthlessly exploited many of these cultures, and that this was the reason so many indigenous nations in ancient Mexico readily allied themselves with the Spanish conquerors to get rid of Aztec rule; or that most Mexicans today probably have no genetic connection to the Aztec; or that many Mexicans today have as many European genes as they have Amerindian genes.

In the American universities, the term “Latino” has served a different, though perhaps related purpose: to designate programs of study developed by analogy with such programs as “African-American Studies,” and “Women’s Studies” (now more commonly and wisely re-designated as “Gender Studies,” a term that allows the incorporation of more customers to the program while also widening the field covered by the term in order to study other areas, usually from the point of view of non-heterosexuality). The predecessor of "Latino Studies" was "Chicano Studies," created by university administrators in California under pressure from activist university students; and for the same reason "Women's Studies" morphed into "Gender Studies," so "Chicano Studies" morphed into "Latino Studies," helped again by university administrators' response to activist university students, principally of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent or origin. These “Latino Studies” programs have carved for their practitioners a niche in the competition for scarce university resources, students, tenure-line positions, and office space. The texts read in their courses are written mostly in English, and involve the lives and customs of people living in the United States, although their vocabulary may include here and there words in Spanish. Nevertheless, the faculty teaching these texts written mostly in English frequently end up as part of established departments of Spanish or of “Hispanic Studies,” since English departments often show themselves reluctant to host, even in part, the faculty of “Latino Studies.”
​

I think there's a fair amount of false confidence out there about terms like "black," "racism," and "Latino." That false confidence only makes the possibility of having genuine dialogues about race that much more unlikely.

 

She's preparing for a life of karenism...

 

This is the president's lawyer/adviser and former mayor of NYC on a major news network...

 

I guess her bad history lesson didn't work...

 

I've mentioned before that South American countries like Brazil or Argentina still struggle with their colonial concepts of racial hierarchies, where the more amount of lightness denotes a higher social standing and conversely lower poverty regions are mostly segregated on the amount of black or indigenous tribes inside them. That's the "colorism" AOC mentioned and a simple google search (not Facebook post...) can confirm the **** each South American country has gone through.

I remember visiting Mexico City's National Museum of the Arts and also the National Museum of Anthropology. They go through a lot of pains exhibiting both the spanish colonial lifestyle and also pre-indigenous (Aztec and others) culture. Their revolutions and uprisings during the modern era also had to grasp with racial inequities and "colorism" inherent in each of them much like how African Americans dealt with their identity and varied histories during the Harlem Renaissance. It's not like they have squashed it, but the "genuine dialogue" is there, and it's taking a lot of work.

I'm by no means an expert of LatinX or Black American history, but I recognize people who are willing to have genuine dialogue need to be able to have them through their own initiative. It's just as extensive as "American history" that takes several years to teach to American kids and it's probably totally new.

Heck, we think we know what's going on with Native Americans, but it's more convenient to pin them in the Noble Savage trope hustling Casinos than come to grips to how responsible we are for their Third World statuses. But that's not the United States, carry on...

Soundbites and the cable news reaction pieces chiding "ignorant" soundbites aren't gonna cut it.

 

This is THE example of SYSTEMATIC RASICM. That this white privilege little girl thinks that portraying Aunt Jemima is the "American Dream". Black people should be happy with the scraps giving to them.

 

White Folks.

SMDH.

 

Black people should be happy that a freed slave stayed in the the kitchen...

The actual American dream that was promised to freed slaves that this airhead bimbo ignores was actual ****ing land and property that was promised to them they could have used to generate wealth that they never ****ing got or was stolen from them.

 

He's saying that this type of rhetoric is what makes sheltered white girls like her think that racism is solved and that black people have achieved the American dream and that any remaining poor black people are poor because of their own inability to "pull themselves up from their own bootstraps".

Her thinking that a slave being a mascot for cooking is enough for black people to be content with the concept of the American dream being applicable to them when in reality freed slaves probably would much rather have that land that was promised to them or have their farm land back that was stolen later is white privilege.

 

That's not systematic racism.

I agree about her thinking process.

 

I would say her sheltered bubbled worldview helps sustain systemic racism.

 

Ok.

But it's still not an example of systematic racism.

 

have to side with @jiggyfly on this one

 

@tinman

 

You will always side with any take that is farther from the premise that racism still has systemic effects on black communties. So why even say it? Ya, of course you would. Your views are very predictable (not saying mine are). But I'm not going to pretend they aren't predictable.

 

Autocorrect got me there. Should have been Systemic. My bad.

 

Autocorrect. Should have been Systemic. And Yes, widespread, ingrained into America.