Bort - 2016-02-26
I'd be vastly more supportive of this girl if she didn't accuse Hillary of saying something she didn't actually say (i.e. that all blacks are superpredators), and then demanded Hillary answer for what she never even said in the first place.
If the girl had asked Hillary to defend her support of the 1994 crime bill, or the use of the term "superpredators", those are good questions. But she goes in with the "when did you stop beating your slaves?" questions, which don't deserve to be dignified with a response.
Seriously, saying that all blacks are superpredators would be like something out of Klan rallies in 1870 Alabama. That's a pretty damn offensive thing to accuse Hillary of.
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baleen - 2016-02-26 Yes, she's stupid.
In defense of the insanity of the BLM movement, none of these people have ever felt a moment of importance or legitimacy in their entire lives. Every single moment of their lives is a footnote to somebody else's success story. Their lives literally do not matter. It's hard to imagine what that feels like, because your opinions do matter. Your history is important, your skills are important, and your garbage gets picked up every week.
Yes, they are pathetic and crazy. They have absolutely no guidance at all. They are doomed as OWS was doomed, but then again, none or very few of you guys grew up in a community (community, not neighborhood) where 25% of the dads of the people you knew were in prison, or where the functional male unemployment rate had been lingering between 20-40% for decades.
I try to consider this before I excuse these people as nothing but angry agitators. There's never been an outlet to these opinions, so it ends up coming out as "We are slaves! Nothing has changed since Selma! Pay attention to me now!" If you could feel the level of delegitimacy they've been required to face, it starts to make sense. This isn't a bunch of rednecks who are angry that the government owns a bunch of nice ranchland next to their "ancestral" property, this is a bunch of young people who really are dispossessed at every level.
Also consider that for 20 years people in the black community have been saying this at varying volumes, and then finally, after all the damage had been done by this reactionary incarceration policy, they are finally legitimized by the facts and widespread condemnation: (1) the essential social science "statistics" that had been used by the white establishment to send all these young people to prison for decades beyond what they deserved were completely fabricated, and (2) there are glaring disparities in the way whites and blacks are sentenced, and it took a black activist elected to the White House to point this out.
What ends up getting news? Some kids mug a war hero and the BLM comes up, causing conniptions among the conservative blogosphere.
Why shouldn't they be pissed off.
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Bort - 2016-02-26 Bobonne: gang violence was an actual big problem in the 80s and 90s, and while the "superpredator" notion looks foolish in retrospect, back then we didn't really know what was causing the heavy gang activity (which has since largely died down). The context was gangs, and you know what the distinguishing feature of gangs is? THEY'RE NOT THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY. You really, really want it to be a dogwhistle but it was not.
kingarthur: you still think Jill Stein is a good idea. You lose.
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Bort - 2016-02-26 baleen: I don't think BLM is stupid or misguided in general; they've got a legit cause and there are no shortage of questions our politicians should answer (including Hillary). But if you're going to go to all this trouble to get access to Hillary and ask her questions on camera, don't lie about shit.
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baleen - 2016-02-26 Bort: I can understand the "we didn't know any better" argument from white people. After all, it was a savage time, the 1990s, and we wanted to enjoy the fruits of the .com boom without getting mugged.
I grew up in South Seattle in the 80s and 90s, at a time when crack cocaine was ravaging the community. Garbage was everywhere, crackheads would ask me if I wanted blowjobs on the street, and angry black kids fucked with me all the time to the point that I preferred to stay inside whenever I was in my own hood.
This is really only a slice of the story though. When you look closer at why things turned out this way for these communities, it almost justifies the anger of the ghetto. Here's Chicago as an example:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/the-ghetto -is-public-policy/274147/
South Seattle had a similar problem, but in microscopic terms. Columbia City absorbed the black population during the post-war industrial boom and the triumph of Boeing, but fell victim to redlining like so many other urban populations. The change was sudden. What was once a center of music, bustling commerce, high employment among blacks, had been turned into a miniature Flint, and it was this environment that I moved into in 1988.
The fact that this national story doesn't translate the same between races is a conversation that we really, really, really need to have.
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Bort - 2016-02-26 "The fact that this national story doesn't translate the same between races is a conversation that we really, really, really need to have."
This is probably the smartest thing anyone's said about this that I've encountered.
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Old_Zircon - 2016-02-26 Why are all these activists so fucking stupid?
oh yeah, the Internet.
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Old_Zircon - 2016-02-26 I'm torn on this one, though. I don't think the "superpredators" quote was so much overt racism as it was just plain ignorance. She didn't invent the term and I don't expect she really understood quite what she was saying at the time.
Everyone who grew up in the USA has internalized some flavor of racism, it's an integral part of our culture and it's in all of us in some form, whether we know it or not. And that's a problem, especially when you're a public figure, but it's also incorrect and counterproductive to act like that is directly equivalent to overt, conscious, ideological racism or even plain bigotry.
On the other hand, the quote is really fucking bad.
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Old_Zircon - 2016-02-26 Also, in general, I think Black Lives Matter is a positive thing.
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Old_Zircon - 2016-02-26 "where 25% of the dads of the people you knew were in prison, or where the functional male unemployment rate had been lingering between 20-40% for decades. "
Also I think these numbers may actually be a little low.
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paranex - 2016-02-26
"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." --Martin Luther King
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Caminante Nocturno - 2016-02-26 "Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate uphill." - Wesley Snipes
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Bort - 2016-02-27 The big problem remains Congress, and don't believe for a second Sanders can do a thing about that. A Sanders presidency would be an endless stream of an old man shaking his podium angrily, and impotently, while McConnell and Ryan smile smugly on.
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Caminante Nocturno - 2016-02-26
I predict that all fundraisers will be like this in the future. People will pay up to four figures to scream ineffectively at a public figure.
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