Man, 11 pages! And I haven't seen the thread since page 3. Reading through some of it, I can't help but think that a lot of people don't understand what "racism" is or how it affects society. But anyway . . .
Aegis,
That's not going to stop fanatics from projecting on to you.
Of course I understand that. But I have no reason to think that Wright is a fanatic
who is projecting that onto me.
No one alive in this country has been enslaved. No one alive has done any enslaving, yet people still cry about it and use that as an excuse for their shortcomings.
Well, that assumes that they're only using it to "excuse their shortcomings," and that none of slavery's effects can still be felt. Not everyone thinks that -- Justice Marshall, for example, thought that affirmative action was necessary not only to overcome discrimination today, but because the effects of slavery were still felt in large parts of the country.
Additionally, there
actually are lots of people who were alive when half the country used the power of the state to enforce Jim Crow. Let's say the formal end of Jim Crow was the Civil Rights Act of 1968 -- that's only forty years ago. I'm sure there are people who post here who were alive before then. As Obama originally pointed out in the Philadelphia speech, there are people from an older era who hold on to old frustrations that they experienced. (Since then, of course, Wright has attacked Obama and Obama dumped him.)
But this is a tangential (although interesting -- you always deliver, Aegis) issue. My point is that there's no reason to think Wright doesn't like white people as such.
MobBoss,
Because its simple. If the US Government is a 'white racist institution' that means it is filled with 'white racists' .....I fail to see how that does not mean that the government is 'racist white people'.
Because the government need not be "filled" with racists to be "racist." If only a small portion of the people in the government are racist, then its policies will be tilted towards racism, even if the rest of the people aren't racist at all. For example, not every white person in the Jim Crow South was racist; and yet the Jim Crow South was clearly "racist."
Cleo