[quote]You know what, Allan, Flu and JF. Every time an African-American doesn’t get the job that’s given to a white person, it isn’t about racism.
However, let’s not act like racism doesn’t exist. OK????
[/quote]
There’s not doubt there is racism that exists. It happens directly or indirectly.
The direct ones are the easy one to address. Disciplinary action, lawsuits,etc. That takes care of a really egregious display of racism. I doubt in modern society this really is predominant issue. And if there is, the social/economic backlash is enormous, as it should be.
Indirect racism is stuff that *could* occur hidden. And I emphasize *could*. BUT frankly, you really can’t be sure if it was racism and you really can’t fix it by a public policy, legislation,rules, or educating the public. For example, as an asian, I can probably point to numerous occasions where I see asians passed up for promotions/etc. It could be a whole slew of reasons, though the one always cited is “language barrier” and other reasons about not “bullshiting enough”… There many be some relevancy, there may not be. Hell, I don’t know because a lot of decisions get made behind closed doors.
BUT, you really can’t put on the blinders and say I feel i was discriminated or a victim of racism, can’t identity who/what specifically it was, then blame everyone who is “white” on it, and worse try to force public policy on everyone who is “white” in the hopes of making things equal for yourself.
It doesn’t work that way, and doing so proves nothing more than one’s own bigotry to “white people”, not to mention it probably makes “white” people who never thought about race to begin with sick and tired about having to be P.C. all the time. Ironic, because often times i feel white people are the true “victims” of all this PC nesses that our society has imposed.
And this is precisely the issue I have with Jesse Jackson and the Rev. who, as a public figure, exclaim things in such a way to suggest “all white people” as racist or discriminatory itself is racist. It implies a double standard. On one hand, it’s asking for making things equal, but on the other hand it’s asking for an unequal playing field. Truely an oxymoron. This is the same double standard that says it’s perfectly fine for a black person to call another black person with the N* word, or for one asian to refer to another asian as a chink or riceboy wannabe, because these are things no white person would ever be able to say in public. Or as a more recent example, why it was perfectly acceptable to put a t-shirt picture of President Bush (a public figure) on a monkey, but anyone that puts on a tshirt a picture of Obama (a public figure) on a monkey is immediately branded a racist.
If Jesse Jackson or anyone else wants to truely level the playing field for minorities, ok fine. Let’s do this 100%. Let’s start with college admissions, specifically into engineering and medical. I personally would love to see the college admissions quotas into medical/engineering dropped such that well qualified asian applicants are not routinely turned away because there were “too many asians applying”. Why don’t we start talking about this being “unfair”, and unequal, and discriminatory?
If we really want to make things have more racial balance, why don’t we start implementing affirmative action programs into are national sports teams? I don’t see too many asians playing for the San Diego Chargers or for any other NFL team for that matter. I think there should be an affirmative action program that places underrepresented asians into the NFL. Meanwhile, in the NBA, why don’t we brand Charles Barkley as a racist? Afterall he did hurl all those insults about what a sh!tty a player “Chinaman” Yao Ming would be when Yao first started, despite Barkley being a shitty playing, shitty attitude player….Ah, because if we were to do that, our NFL/NBA/ML BB teams would really start to suck bigtime if these teams didn’t comprise of the “best” players (though, it actually might help the San Diego Chargers and Padres, since they suck anyway). As to no surprise, Jackson in mum silent in these cases.
You can’t have a double standard that says it’s perfectly acceptable for a minority to be a racist or treat people (either of their own race or others) in a derogatory way but expect everyone else to treat you back in some exemplary way.
It’s been proven in society that this sort of one-way relationship is doomed to failure. A spouse that routinely treats the other spouse like shit and at the same time demands exemplary treatment from the other spouse will inevitably result in an extramarital affair or divorce.
