The bigoted Rutgers professor really got under my skin. Normally that kind of race bullshit doesn't bother me; maybe here it was the emphasis on spiritual deficiency.
Now, I'm an atheist and materialist, but I was raised Roman Catholic, and the RCC (for better or worse) is a global institution, so the idea of racism has always been forei…
The bigoted Rutgers professor really got under my skin. Normally that kind of race bullshit doesn't bother me; maybe here it was the emphasis on spiritual deficiency.
Now, I'm an atheist and materialist, but I was raised Roman Catholic, and the RCC (for better or worse) is a global institution, so the idea of racism has always been foreign and, frankly, disgusting to me. I was raised to believe that, regardless of creed or birth, every human individual is created in the image of God, and, therefore, has immeasurable worth and dignity.
The idea that all "White people" are racist is abhorrent.
I'm glad you brought up being Catholic in regards to racism.
I come from an Irish Catholic family, and although my grandparents were all born at the turn of the century, none of them used racist language ever and were not racist people. They lived in a time and place where casual racism was common, so they were out of step with the culture at times. They believed exactly what you do.
I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore, but there are some things I really admire about the church.
We were raised to be racist against the neighboring town and every year we burned an effigy of their high school football team and then went there and fucked shit up. I mean I was home reading, but the collective we.
A kid burned our school down shortly after (or maybe before I’m old now and it jumbles) because he wanted to get rid of his permanent records so he lit the file on fire and put it back in the cabinet.
Basically. One year two kids lit themselves on fire accidentally while trying to burn “Johnny Hoquiam” and when they put themselves out in a mud puddle they were praises as heroes.
It’s also how I know prejudice doesn’t go away. You can only manage it. You wouldn’t know driving from one town to the next they were different. Everyone looks exactly the same. And yet we hate each other.
I’m an Aberdeen Bobcat for life so feel free. Also have you seen Charlie Choker? It’s the giant wooden mascot for the community college that looks like a serial strangler.
There are also distinctly American reasons Catholics are more anti racist than protestants. Irish Catholics were a distinct underclass.
My Catholic grandmother grew up in a very rural, very white place. I'm not sure if she ever met more than a handful of nonwhite people tbh. She was extremely sensitive to racial issues and would often express support for the plight of Black Americans because when she was growing up the KKK harassed her family for being Catholic, leaving her with a deep empathy for others experiencing that kind of hatred
What struck me is that she has the lines of "a politics of superior and inferior beings is not the way to go" and then immediately talks about how white people can't understand because they are "so corrupt, and their thinking is so morally and spiritually bankrupt about power" that they can't let go of power out of fear and a lack of vision.
And then how her reason for rejecting a project of violence is not because it ostensibly harms a victim, but because it causes the perpetrator's soul to suffer.
Yes, 'we shouldn't give ourselves over to thinking one race is inherently worse than an another like all white people do. They're so corrupt they're afraid to give us power because they're afraid of what we would do if we had it. We SHOULD kill them all, but that might sully our perfect souls and make it more like their horrible white ones'. WTF.
Yeah. Saying that white people cannot understand something AND saying you do not believe in inferior or superior beings - how is that not inconsistent?
That got under my skin, too. I wondered how recent that was. Still, I feel like we're moving away from the era when voices like that wielded more authority.
The bigoted Rutgers professor really got under my skin. Normally that kind of race bullshit doesn't bother me; maybe here it was the emphasis on spiritual deficiency.
Now, I'm an atheist and materialist, but I was raised Roman Catholic, and the RCC (for better or worse) is a global institution, so the idea of racism has always been foreign and, frankly, disgusting to me. I was raised to believe that, regardless of creed or birth, every human individual is created in the image of God, and, therefore, has immeasurable worth and dignity.
The idea that all "White people" are racist is abhorrent.
I'm glad you brought up being Catholic in regards to racism.
I come from an Irish Catholic family, and although my grandparents were all born at the turn of the century, none of them used racist language ever and were not racist people. They lived in a time and place where casual racism was common, so they were out of step with the culture at times. They believed exactly what you do.
I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore, but there are some things I really admire about the church.
We were raised to be racist against the neighboring town and every year we burned an effigy of their high school football team and then went there and fucked shit up. I mean I was home reading, but the collective we.
https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Bonfire-explosion-injures-students-1100540.php
Actual link just because we have had too many episodes about psychopaths lately.
A kid burned our school down shortly after (or maybe before I’m old now and it jumbles) because he wanted to get rid of his permanent records so he lit the file on fire and put it back in the cabinet.
I hope one day my son will not believe anything I tell him and have one of those knitted white sweaters you wear as a cape.
Basically. One year two kids lit themselves on fire accidentally while trying to burn “Johnny Hoquiam” and when they put themselves out in a mud puddle they were praises as heroes.
It’s also how I know prejudice doesn’t go away. You can only manage it. You wouldn’t know driving from one town to the next they were different. Everyone looks exactly the same. And yet we hate each other.
I’m an Aberdeen Bobcat for life so feel free. Also have you seen Charlie Choker? It’s the giant wooden mascot for the community college that looks like a serial strangler.
There are also distinctly American reasons Catholics are more anti racist than protestants. Irish Catholics were a distinct underclass.
My Catholic grandmother grew up in a very rural, very white place. I'm not sure if she ever met more than a handful of nonwhite people tbh. She was extremely sensitive to racial issues and would often express support for the plight of Black Americans because when she was growing up the KKK harassed her family for being Catholic, leaving her with a deep empathy for others experiencing that kind of hatred
Wow- my grandpa had the same stuff with the KKK. They burned a cross in the front yard of his family's farmhouse.
For me its not the racism, for me, its the open call to violence (and perfunctory hedging) from an agent of a respected institution.
What struck me is that she has the lines of "a politics of superior and inferior beings is not the way to go" and then immediately talks about how white people can't understand because they are "so corrupt, and their thinking is so morally and spiritually bankrupt about power" that they can't let go of power out of fear and a lack of vision.
And then how her reason for rejecting a project of violence is not because it ostensibly harms a victim, but because it causes the perpetrator's soul to suffer.
Yes, 'we shouldn't give ourselves over to thinking one race is inherently worse than an another like all white people do. They're so corrupt they're afraid to give us power because they're afraid of what we would do if we had it. We SHOULD kill them all, but that might sully our perfect souls and make it more like their horrible white ones'. WTF.
I forgive grievances a lot more easily than I forgive logical inconsistency.
That immediate display of hypocrisy was unintentionally hilarious.
Yeah. Saying that white people cannot understand something AND saying you do not believe in inferior or superior beings - how is that not inconsistent?
For me, it was really Rutgers' silence about one of their professors' racism and open calls for violence.
It’s really unbelievable that the university has said nothing about this. She strongly insinuated genocide and...nothing.
This is fine, but everyone gets the vapors over a metaphor? Their European counterparts must find American academics deeply unserious.
That got under my skin, too. I wondered how recent that was. Still, I feel like we're moving away from the era when voices like that wielded more authority.