Sidebar to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ important article, here’s a scienterrific post from NYMag:
The word discrimination immediately conjures up visions of hostile acts, from mid-century “whites only” signs to redlining practices that stymie African-Americans’ attempts at home ownership.
But an important new paper soon to be published in American Psychologist argues that “in present-day America, discrimination results more from helping ingroup members than from harming outgroup members.” In other words, racist outcomes can arise without much actual racism, simply through the very human tendency to help out people with whom you have something in common.
The co-authors, Anthony Greenwald and Thomas Pettigrew, came to this conclusion after reviewing a wide range of past research on discrimination, from theories of ingroup bonding to a classic study of white- and black-sounding actors calling random numbers and posing as stranded motorists. It’s a provocative finding given that discussions of discrimination in the United States usually center on the idea of one group actively oppressing another. The authors acknowledge that this still occurs (and there is plenty of scholarly evidence about the impact of implicit racism, even among folks with no overt hostility toward racial minorities), but offer up their theory as a means of explaining why we have so many harmful disparities between racial groups despite the facts that explicitly racist policies have been outlawed and public-opinion polls have shown big jumps in tolerance in recent decades…
Yeah, I think Greenwald & Pettigrew may underestimate the level of overt racial animus in modern Americans. But it’s important to recognize how many “majority-Americans” can still honestly believe “I’m not a racist, I’m totally okay with the one Black guy in my office and that Latino family who shows up at our church, and it’s just an unfortunate coincidence those are the only people of color with whom I interact on a regular basis.” Just as a lot of fundamentalists change their mind about the sinfulness of homosexuality when a member of their own family comes out as gay, I suspect a lot of that “big jump in tolerance in recent decades” is less about social uplift and more about how many of us white people have neighbors, co-workers, and family members who are people of color. And I think it’s another argument in favor of “reparations” to involve, for instance, mortgage support for low-income families moving into nicer neighborhoods. Or properly funding Pell grants (or the equivalent), so that not only do striving Black youngsters like Michelle Obama attend Princeton with the ivory-white legacy scions, but some equally determined miners’ kid from West Virginia or Idaho goes to Northwestern, rooms with a Black kid from Chicago, and grows up to be less of a bigot than his parents.
Anoniminous
It used to be called Country Club racism. Darned if I know what it is called now.
? Martin
It’s a bit broader than that. I worked for a few months at an estate assessment firm, and they would only hire USC grads. Every other resume that came to them with a degree from another university went in the trash without even a look. Universities tend to favor hiring their own grads. There is tremendous institutional bias in this country. So if African Americans were only half as likely to get admitted to a school like USC, then that carried down through all of these other opportunities. And I see all manner of biases like these that aren’t inherently racial, but statistically have the same effect.
As Einstein said: “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.”
The african american community is on the wrong side of that social compound interest. The white community is on the right side.
? Martin
@Anoniminous: Country club racism was much more direct and overt.
dollared
In the upper Midwest we called it De Facto Racism. It’s the racism of never actually seeing or interacting with anyone from a disadvantaged group. My hometown of 70,000 had one black family – the air traffic controller.
Anne Laurie
@? Martin: Home Owners Association racism, maybe? All the nice people who don’t (so far as they know) hate non-white people, they just want to be 100% sure that their property values aren’t affected. They’d happily accept Martian-American neighbors, as long as the Purple People didn’t leave their jetpaks parked in the driveway or hang their diaphanous togas to dry in the yard. But a combination of overt economic discrimination (like redlining) and social engineering (who knows what those people get up to, apart from the horror stories on the news?) has convinced them that race mixing is just too dangerous to take any chances…
Coates’ article covers this topic extensively, by the way.
Mandalay
I have my doubts about that.
Accepting that a member of your family is gay is not the same thing as changing your mind about the sinfulness of homosexuality. I’m sure many people accept family members who are gay, but do not wholeheartedly embrace the situation, and still believe that homosexuality is a sin.
Love may conquer all, but it doesn’t change everything.
? Martin
@Anne Laurie: See, I think you’re still looking too narrowly to things that look like racism.
Even if you could erase all of that stuff, you’d still have racist outcomes. Legacy admits at universities, for example. That’s not based on discrimination but fundraising – it’s a way to get alumni dollars through the door. But how many Yale alums old enough to have college age kids are black? Hardly any. The policy isn’t based in racism in any way, but the effect is inherently racist, and I doubt many people at Yale would spot the racist outcome.
Nepotism, of all stripes yields to these same outcomes. My son is now working in a university lab simply due to his being my son. They love having him in the lab – he works really hard, he’s doing clever things etc. but I can’t deny that there were other kids out there that are equally deserving, but he got the slot because of me and my connections. Now, are we an equal opportunity employer? Absolutely, but we still make unwitting racist hiring decisions. And for an institution with roughly 10,000 employees, we should have a representative demographic makeup of employees, and one that is properly stratified, but in truth we don’t, in spite of having very prominent black employees. And so statistically that benefit my son received is going to go toward the overrepresented white employee population, and he’ll get a certain long-term advantage from that, which (statistically speaking) he’ll pass on to his kids.
Anoniminous
@? Martin:
Depends on which Country Club one belonged to. The one I caddied for was vehemently racist but it was all sub rosa. Had to know the dog whistles to get the message.
ETA: this was back in the 60s. I have no idea what the Country Club set is up to these days
? Martin
@Anoniminous: But I think the study above is something completely different. There’s no dog whistles. In fact, there’s probably a great deal of energy being invested in not having racial biases. Yale invests a massive amount of money recruiting minority students. They actually deliver on that front. The guys I worked for weren’t trying to keep any group out of the office, but their bias for USC meant that job opportunity was going to favor whatever demographic makeup USC has (which I think these guys had no clue about).
This is more about how how we’ve structured society and excluded certain groups from that structure so that our natural inclination to help those around us winds up as a discriminatory measure.
A good friend of mine was out of work for about 6 months. IT guy. Super hard worker, smart, just couldn’t quite get things lined up. His neighbor happens to own an insurance company and offered him a fairly high level job, no interview needed. Now, I suspect that offer would have gone out to any qualified neighbor regardless of race, but how many black people do you think live in the same neighborhood as a guy with a multibillion dollar business? Pretty close to zero. Statistically, a person of color had no chance at that job, no racism involved.
NotMax
Haven’t set foot on a college or university campus for many a moon, but do the dining halls still contain unofficial yet constant ‘black’ tables, ‘jock’ tables, ‘drama geek’ tables, ‘Christian’ tables and such like?
That type of voluntary and habitual self-segregation always irked.
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: That’s still the case in high school cafeterias, according to my sophomore.
TheMightyTrowel
@? Martin: Tangentially related. An emotive piece of reporting/remembering by a black Yale alum on why his black classmates seemed to be dying too young.
AWJ
So, did anyone else notice this Baffler article about the self-styled “neoreactionaries” of Silicon Valley?
http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/05/mouthbreathing_machiavellis
OzarkHillbilly
I must have been channeling my inner Coates these past few weeks. This topic has been niggling around the back of my brain. Hadn’t put any real thought into it yet, but I will now. I’ll print it up and have it for lunch.
This is how racism will end, tho as @? Martin: smartly points out, the problem is much broader than that.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Thanks.
Heh. Never even occurred to me to ask about high school. As I don’t eat lunch, never set foot in the place during all my time there.
May have mentioned it before, but during my truncated career as a high school teacher, the worst class ever was one with 51 students (and 42 seats), which met in a portable classroom far removed from the main building. The school was terribly overcrowded.
Anyway, class would meet for half the period, then the kids would go to lunch and return after that for the second half.
By the time took attendance twice, wasn’t a heck of a lot of teaching time left.
different-church-lady
“Systemic social racism”
This ain’t rocket surgery people. It’s in the water we all swim in, even if any given one of us doesn’t dump it there. Only the willfully ignorant don’t see it.
raven
Pat Lang on race and the Obama Administration:
Betty Cracker
@raven: Aside from the obvious, why is he lumping Holder in with Sharpton and Lemon?
Baud
@raven:
Too bad Lang is white, or I would have taken him seriously.
(And for the record, that’s not why I’m not taking him seriously.)
raven
@Betty Cracker: Why is he still on the blogroll? How hard would it be to move him to “Blogs We Monitor And Mock As Needed”?
Baud
A coup in Thailand. Our wingnuts are going to get ideas.
different-church-lady
@raven: Who the fuck is Pat Lang and how did he learn to be such a colossal idiot?
different-church-lady
@raven:
That doesn’t need mockery — that needs oblivion.
raven
@different-church-lady: Ex Special Forces officer VMI grad with a great deal of middle east experience.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Won’t happen — actual coups involve leaving their keyboards.
raven
@different-church-lady: I’ve been on it for two years, no one gives a fuck.
different-church-lady
@raven: Not giving a fuck is an artform around here.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: So once again we have a privileged white male arguing that equal rights are “special” when somebody not white, not male, and not privileged wants them and how horrible and discriminatory it is that privileged white men will have to make “adjustments” to their privileged status to accommodate all these “other”….
Sometimes beating the unholy shit out of someone really is the appropriate response.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Well a hippy spit on him in the airport.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
They just need a leader. Cliven Bundy is that leader.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: At my age and shape, that is probably the best I could do as well.
Baud
With Coates’s article out there, expect to start hearing serious discussion about whether the descendants of former slaveholders should be compensated for the taking of their property. Cuz, BOTH SIDES!
kindness
I don’t have a problem with colleges using race as a factor to achieve a wide ranging student body, but since the Supreme Court in their ‘wisdom’ says that’s racism I’d go with an economic justification. Yea that wouldn’t be as good but it at least would allow schools to tell the Supreme Court their wisdom ain’t so good. And that is no big surprise to us.
Betty Cracker
@raven: It would entail a Thailand-style coup.
Iowa Old Lady
@raven: I read to “faute de mieux” and knew I didn’t want to read the rest.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: They (the slave holders) already said “NO!” back in 1863/64.
Iowa Old Lady
@raven: Also, Lang “feared” the Obama administration would be “hostile to white people” in 2008? What does it say about you if you look at the nation’s first AA president and immediately fear the blahs are going to oppress you?
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: They don’t fear oppression, it is equality that scares the bejeeezzuss out of them.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yeah, I saw Lincoln too.
Aimai
I took a sociology course from tom pettigrew at harvard 30 years ago. He was a wonderful teacher who had been working on race and discrimination for years already. This piece is just one of hundreds he has written. His work has covered all aspects of racism and discrimination not just this one kind.
sparrow
@NotMax: It was the case at my top-tier college 10 years ago. I’m sorry to say that the black kids I became friends with were the ones that ventured over to my table, or approached me in class, or dropped by my room and introduced themselves. I was happy they did, of course. But it wasn’t most of them. It’s not that black kids weren’t welcome, it’s that the burden was on them to integrate. Which I only appreciate now with the distance of time. If they stuck to themselves, very few people would venture over. My (white, Jewish) boyfriend at the time was one of those who would sit anywhere and talk to anyone. But interestingly enough, he grew up in a majority-black neighborhood in St. Louis. I’m pretty sure the rest of the white kids were from lily-white neighborhoods with few minorities.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Heh. Something I did not know before I watched that totally historically accurate portrayal of those trying times.
raven
@Iowa Old Lady: And yet he voted for Obama twice.
Another Holocene Human
@? Martin:
Exactly.
I was recently invited to a (white-run) private organization’s board meeting. They were discussing fundraising and they had been successful raising thousands of dollars at private house parties.
I kept thinking about similar attempts made “by us, for us” in the African-American community and how many of them had failed after a little while due to lack of funds. You can hold a hopping house party in the East Side but you might raise hundreds with many more people there. It’s not lack of the skills or lack of hard work or lack of will–it’s lack of money!
ETA: as income and wealth inequality become ever so more severe in this country, such effects become more pronounced
gnomedad
@Iowa Old Lady:
Haha, yeah, I was going to say that’s some powerful stupid there, but he wrote “faute de mieux” so he (she?) must be smarter than me.
Baud
Mayhew is such a good guy.
Another Holocene Human
@raven: There is now an endless list of such “adjustments” in attitude that are sought by the Al Sharptons, Eric Holders and Don Lemons of the world.
I guess what they all have in common is being b-b-b-buh-buh-buh-blackity black black?
Seriously, ‘all three of these guys are not like the others, three of these guys are nothing alike’.
Especially Don “Paranormal” Lemon.
I’m surprised Lang didn’t bring up Al Roker… maybe he forgot he was black.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: No shit. Unlike all the BS about Venezuela, this is genuinely some reactionary middle class shit, pissed about losing some of their
freedomsprivilege in the face of a popularly elected populist government.But we’re seen this before.
Original Lee
@? Martin: I think a lot of companies have gotten more rigid about hiring from certain colleges and universities in recent years. One of my uncles worked for one of the Fortune 500 companies after he retired from the military. He had graduated from Texas A&M. He told me a few years ago that he would probably not be hired by that company if he were in a similar situation now, because they pretty much only hired graduates from the top 10 engineering schools if they could.
Another Holocene Human
@different-church-lady: Forget the chairborne, the VSPs were sooooooo excited during Bush admin when they thought W had disposed of Chavez and soooooo mad when they failed.
Botsplainer
Just finished Coates’ article, but it ended in mid thought. Is there another page somewhere?
JPL
@raven: Besides you, I wonder who else links to him.
He might not deserve a mention on this fine site and hopefully, his link will soon disappear.
Another Holocene Human
@raven: Sounds like my great-grandparents: sure, they got land through the Homestead Act just given to them when they immigrated, got to keep speaking their own rural podunk European dialect language with their buddies that emigrated too, never mortgaged their farm through the Dustbowl and got food delivered to them by that horrid FDR all through the Depression, kids all prospered due to the New Deal, but they were the real victims! All these people today wanting everything handed to them! And they were discriminated against for being German! Well, theoretically, if they ever stopped humping their sisters long enough to go into town, but it was the principle! God-damned eastern banker j00000000 controlled finances j000000000000z
Conservatism is a fucking brain disease.
I also recently found out there was indeed a Jewish community in the town in Prussia they emigrated from. Stupid motherfuckers. There must have been some trouble in the old country because I was told as a child that they came from much further north. Well, ancestry.com is spinning a different tale. Busted.
raven
@JPL: I don’t link to him. Actually THAT is my issue. Having the link on the blogroll implies an endorsement and generates clicks for him.
Botsplainer
Onto the subject of this thread, once you’ve stolen the labor of blacks, pillaged those who attempted to live to your code, divvied up the land amongst yourselves and enjoyed the capital furnished off that black labor, both liquid and real, what’s wrong with coming up with the ethic of
WOLVERINES!!!
raven
@Another Holocene Human: The trouble was they were about to get drafted!
HRA
I am glad someone has written about the inequality at universities. The experiences I have had at my job began after I was selected to a search committee. It was obvious a lot had been done behind closed doors. When the head of the committee stated where they had sent out advertisement to possible candidates, he stated we did not send anything out to the Black journal. I asked why they were ready to work on without any Black candidates. I was never asked to sit in on a committee again.
It did not take long to realize these committees are formed to cover their a@@es. They have already chosen the person for the job from within the existing employees. Yet, some of my coworkers still think we are an equal opportunity institution.
OzarkHillbilly
There is an old saying that, “You can always come home.” Apparently, Yasiin Bey, otherwise known as Mos Def, is finding out this isn’t true. What could it be that would allow the US to deny entry to a citizen? (he is still a citizen , isn’t he?) The article does not say and I am most curious.
Botsplainer
@OzarkHillbilly:
Overaged expired passport, my guess.
Belafon
@OzarkHillbilly: There is a small part that fears having to compete on a level playing field, but I think a big part of their fear is that blacks will retaliate. It’s what they think they would do. It’s very similar to why they don’t want homosexuals in their locker rooms: They think everyone thinks about sex like they do.
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer: I can’t say for sure, but don’t you think his agent would be on top of such a simple thing before booking a US tour? Then again, it is quite often the simple things that trip us up.
Applejinx
Reading ‘Mouthbreathing Machiavellis’, about ‘Mencius Moldbug’ (!) and the fascist coder nerds.
For fuck’s sake. Makes me bitterly ashamed to be an autistic computer programmer. At least I have the social decency to be starving, largely due to not pursuing an orgy of egoistic self-aggrandizement like my business competitors. These people are making a world in which I can’t even function unless maybe I sat around doing a LOT of coke and huffing paint fumes.
I hate them, and I am an alpha nerd. I singlehandedly keep on the forefront of my industry and it means nothing to these guys. Their meritocracy of the nerds is a sham and a disgrace, it ain’t nothing but more in-crowd bullshit and geeks are at least as sadistic and vicious as the ‘unthinking humans’ they would like to believe themselves superior to. It’s all about dehumanizing and assigning individuals to categories, which is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ issue in the first place. I’m doing it too while reacting to ‘Mencius Moldbug’ and his social cancerousness, but at least I know I’m doing it and I’d like to think up a more sophisticated response to that stuff.
If I do I’ll freakin’ let you know, for now I’m just angry, so angry.
OzarkHillbilly
@Belafon:
After a life time of working with these a$$holes I can tell you that a level playing field and retaliation are one and the same thing in their minds eye. One of the benefits of working construction is that you get to see racism in all it’s unadulterated ugliness. Makes it harder to hide it behind a bunch of pretty words.
Of course, my own point of view has probably been colored by all that ugliness in the opposite direction. One thing I do know: Over 35 years in the biz I worked with thousands of carpenters. 2 of them were black.
Another Holocene Human
@Applejinx: The difference between you and them is that they aren’t afraid to lie lie lie to get ahead and you think having honor and taking pride in your real accomplishments is something to be proud of.
I know that’s no comfort–I changed professions.
Joel
This is the subtext of economic inequality.
Another Holocene Human
@Belafon:
And what ugly things creep in the dark behind that fridge, I shudder to contemplate.
Applejinx
@Another Holocene Human: That or I’m just too honest thanks to a bunch of nasty life failures. I _know_ I suck and have big weaknesses and failings. I’m not super interested in pride.
I’ll be proud of this: I looked over those Dark Enlightenment people, their trading cards and quotes and stuff. Pretty much all of them are crazy but they are all crazy in different ways and I don’t hate them all equally, I think some of them are a lot more evil than others. It makes me wonder if there’s a correlation between their evilness and their effectiveness.
The key problem is that the range of human experience is too big to ever reach anything resembling a consensus. So you gotta work out what can be tolerated, what’s private, what’s public and so on. I love (ironically) that some of these guys are also global warming deniers: I wonder how many of ’em have read up on chaos theory enough to even understand what that practically means. Some no doubt will actively choose to encourage climate change on the grounds that more systemic energy and turning the planet into a hostile alien planet without leaving home will be more interesting and make people evolve harder, or some shit like that, much like setting your own house on fire because it’s exciting and you don’t otherwise exercise.
I don’t want to just yell at them. I want to beat them. So I got a lot of work to do. :P
Rob in CT
I think it’s important to recognize that many not only “honestly believe” this, but that for many it’s actually true.
Coates’ metaphor about running up the credit card, stopping, and then wondering why the balance remains is a good one.
Martin, above, may have an even better one with “social compound interest.”
Another Holocene Human
@Applejinx: You’re killing me because you sound like me, you tell yourself the same things I told myself all the time, but all I got for my “realism” was damaged relationships, depression, crippling anxiety, and diminished opportunities.
I would sit down with a cognitive behavior therapist and talk about distorted thinking. A lot of times we tell ourselves stuff at an early age and it becomes our truth, our script, but now that you’re an adult, you have the experience to see that a lot of those things and assumptions just aren’t true. Please consider doing this. Also, it may seem dumb to talk to one of those normals about stuff like this instead of just looking it up online, but it’s funny how having someone prompt you to walk through your own thinking really brings stuff to light. Because these are bedrock beliefs and assumptions, we never really challenge or even think about them consciously.
Rob in CT
@sparrow:
The demographics at the college I attended back in the 90s was something like 92% white, 3% black, 3% hispanic, 1% asian, 1% “other.” Give or take.
Very early on, due to being thrown together in a sardine can of a freshman dorm, there was some diversity in the group of people I hung out with. Given the above demographics, this meant 1 or 2 black students in with the rest of us. After a few months, even they faded out. I don’t remember why, or if there was a reason in particular. We sorted out, it seemed. The tiny black population ended up largely keeping to themselves.
Years later, my fraternity made its one and only outreach attempt. We invited a hispanic frat over for a party (the 20-yr old version of “wanna come over and play?” – beer pong instead of blocks). They came, they hung out, and we never saw them again. We were a collective 8 out of 10 on the geek scale so maybe that was it, I dunno. But that was the sum total of our efforts.
There are multiple things going on with this, of course, and most of them do not require that anyone be an asshole.
Rob in CT
@Rob in CT:
Fascinating.
2014 demographics for my alma matter:
65.4% white, 5.9% black, 4.5% Asian, 3.3% hispanic, 7% multiple/other, 9.5% foreign (not sure how much of these are white, but I’d guess at least half?), 4.5% “unknown.” If I make some assumptions (always dangerous), I figure this basically boils down to ~75% white. Still very white, but less so than I remember it being. I bet they changed the way things are tracked (it seems more granular now) at some point. The data I found only goes back to 2001, whereas I graduated in ’98…
Stella B.
My mom is 78 and if you ask her about race, she’ll say, “I can’t believe I used to think that way, but I didn’t know better.” When she was young she had never been exposed to many African-american people, much less middle-class African-Americans.
balconesfault
In other words, racist outcomes can arise without much actual racism, simply through the very human tendency to help out people with whom you have something in common.
I’d be very careful with defining these as “racist outcomes” … because you have the tendency within the Jewish Community to support each other that can suddenly start looking very sinister. Perhaps “racially based outcomes”?
maurinsky
@Betty Cracker:
I have to say that is not the same around here, at least not broadly. I have seen a sea change in interracial interaction since my older daughter graduated high school till now, when my younger daughter is in high school. When older daughter was there, there was a lot of self-segregation – in the lunchroom, in after-school activities, etc. For example, there were maybe 2 people of color who participated in choral or orchestral programs. 8 years later, this is not the case. My younger daughter’s boyfriend is black, and they met in the school musical and other music activities (he is actually a Katrina survivor from New Orleans – his family was spread out far and wide after the hurricane and he spent two years in foster care before they were reunited in our town). Her friends look like a United Colors of Benetton ad – I think she’s the only one who is solely of European heritage (my parents are from Ireland). The only downside to this is that there seems to be less awareness in her group of the vast number of ways that the lives of African Americans have been violated economically, socially, etc.
Steeplejack
@OzarkHillbilly:
The article now has this note at the bottom:
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
Remember Rahinah Ibrahim, the Malaysian academic who was put n the US no-fly list and sued to be removed from it? When her daughter Raihan — a US-born American citizen — tried to travel to the US last year to testify for her mother. The US directed MAS in writing not to let Raihan board her flight in KL. (Raihan’s lawyer obtained a copy of the letter from MAS.) Then, when the judge asked why Raihan hadn’t showed up, DOJ lawyers lied in court, saying she must have missed her flight. I am not aware of any of those lawyers being sanctioned for what is surely serious misconduct by officers of the court.
Bob In Portland
On the eve of their “election” there appears to be a false flag operation in eastern Ukraine.
Since when do irregular rebels take out a column of armored vehicles which have helicopter gunship air support without suffering any casualties?
Also, do any of our Balloon Juice generals have an explanation as to why after two months the Ukrainian army hasn’t been able to make any gains in its “war on terror”?
Chris
@Mandalay:
Yes, but I don’t think the average person ever put enough thought into homosexuality to view it in such abstract terms as “it’s a sin,” or from the other side, “it’s a right.” The average American was never against homosexuality because of what he read in the Bible. The average American was against homosexuality because “ick.” I would guess that many of the people who’ve changed their minds about gay marriage in the last twenty years or so are people whose main concern has gone from “ick” to “I want [my child, my friend, whatever person in their life came out of the closet] to be happy.”
There are, of course, people who still haven’t and never will change their minds, for whom “it’s a sin” will always trump everything no matter how unhappy it makes people in their lives, just like there are people for whom “it’s a right” will always trump everything even if they personally don’t know any gays. But most people are neither, IMO.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Ah, we were wondering how you were going to explain that. I thought it was those Ukrainian grandmothers building gunships in their kitchens.
“False flag.” Good one!
Bob In Portland
From the BBC:
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Bay of Pigs, Gulf of Tonkin, aluminum tubes, we stayed 12 years in Afghanistan because Osama… Lumumba in the car trunk, Guatemalan freedom fighters, Nicaraguan freedom fighters, Bolivian freedom fighters, Chilean freedom fighters. Curveball, or Speedball, or whatever his codename is. Judith Miller. Operation Phoenix. No, our government never lies to us, and all those false flags and excuses for war, they’re history. They must not count because, Mnem, you never discuss them or admit to America’s wrongdoing. False flag ops are the way we do business. Maybe you’re incapable of seeing it, but eventually the left will recognize it’s the same old okeydoke. Do you think that any of that billion-dollar loan that went with Hunter Biden is buying mercenaries?
Really, why wouldn’t fascists use a false flag? They get to shoot soldiers who won’t fight for them and they give the US more reason to “isolate” Russia.
By the way, it’s been about two months now that the Kiev coup government has been waging this anti-terror war. How come there are no results? You have an answer for that? I didn’t think so.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
You realize we all know there’s no point in talking to you, right? You can’t pull your head out of the past and see reality anymore.
Here’s my last attempt to shock you into reason: current events in Ukraine have nothing to do with the US. We are totally inconsequential there.
Sorry, but the US is not actually the center of the universe. Other countries have their own politics and politicians who act in what they see as their own best interests.
I know you think the rest of the world are just puppets dancing to the US’s tune, but you really need to get over yourself. The US isn’t that important anymore.
johnny aquitard
@Another Holocene Human: What profession did you switch to, if you don’t mind me asking. I’m curious what profession a programmer nerd can switch to — it seems the skills would be valued (i.e. someone will pay for) only in programming.
Nathanael
@? Martin: *Some* white communities are on the right side of the social compound interest.
Others aren’t. The elite have tried to convince them otherwise by saying “at least you’re not black” — using racism to create false consciousness — but there are white communities in the US which have been on the wrong side of social compound interest for very long periods; the Appalachian lower classes are the usual example.
Unfortunately, in the US, pretty nearly all black communities are on the wrong side of it, as you note. Obama wasn’t in a black community, of course.
The history of racism in the US is that it was invented in order to make slavery easier to implement, ’cause it was easier for the people in power if they could just look at skin color to decide whether someone was a slave or not. Evil people are lazy. But remember, the slaveholders were happy to enslave Native Americans — and early on, perfectly willing to enslave other Europeans if they were able to get away with it.
The people who study hierarchy will tell you that the distinctions get finer grained as you get closer to the “elite”. In fact, the 0.1% are setting people against each other and trying to keep people obsessed with their position relative to the nearby people in the hierarchy, so that the 0.1% can maintain their stranglehold on power. You used to have to be pretty close to the 0.1%, or study a lot, to even recognize this going on. But now the 0.1% are getting so outrageous — acting like they are completely above all laws — that their behavior is in the newspapers repeatedly. Maybe more people will start to realize what’s going on.
Nathanael
@Amir Khalid:
It is worth noting that preventing US citizens from returning to the US is a severe violation of international law, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and United Nations rulings, *among other treaties*. (It’s also a Constitutional violation, of course.)
The right to return to your country of citizenship is actually a bedrock principle of international law. (Largely because it prevents countries from dumping “troublemakers” on other countries.)
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001098.html
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001106.html
The US government is still engaging in this particular human rights violation. Eventually one of the countries which the US is “exiling” citizens to will file a serious diplomatic complaint.
http://www.nationofchange.org/us-citizen-prevented-returning-home-1328458356