Hilarity...

Dude, your just not hip anymore, its Blamerifizzies.
Shizzle.

edited b/c i got to angry and i try not to get angry

[Edited on Feb 10, 2004 by poshpunk711]

Damn, you know that feeling you get when you think you are the only person who has considered a certain school of thought and then somebody else turns around and says exactly what you had been thinking to yourself the whole frickin time...

This issue is way too complex to sum up in a simple little comment. I feel you can't really blame people for not knowing any different. And even though there have been great strides made toward equality, defacto racism still exists. Mostly in the form of stereotyping (which many blacks go out of their way to reinforce). But for the most part I agree with Dante0. I could talk about this shit for days upon end, but to tell the truth I really don't feel like it because in the end usually nobody ever listens.

By the way real "reverse racism" is when you hold a positive view of a particular ethnicity for al the wrong reasons: (i.e. "I only mess around with black guys because I like thugz.)

:sigh:

I smell a brain in this thread.

you give me hope that maybe one day this crap will be far behind us

I would like to know what grades this kid had, what clubs he was in, how many extra curricular programs he was in. I would guess he probably didn't deserve an award. He needs to get his face smacked red. High School kids are mostly insensitve and cruel. (you can usualy thank the parents). With all the hardships that Black Americans had to indure we award them with the coldest, shortest month to celebrate their history. Then you have some prepubesent piss pot (who is just a number on a list of many, old and young) who decides to make a mockery of it.

Makes you wonder doesn't it. No matter what you say you just aren't right. If you say the kids from africa he should be able to apply or whatever, you are a bigot, if you say hes a little cock sucker for doing it , you are drawing a line between black white people. I am just gonna keep my fat mouth closed on this one.

There is nothing wrong with drawing a line of differences, the best way to fully accept someone is to understand the differences, and be tolerant of them. Chances are this kid was brought up in a racist family.

Either that or he has his finger on the pulse of the country and a finely-honed instinct for how to stir up the maximum possible amount of shit. In other words, say hello to the next Eminem folks.

Just because he is white and was born under a racist regime doesn't automatically make him a racist. While you berate everyone for trying see people as equals, you turn right around and make a stereotyping, gratuitous assumption about someone you've never even met, and even go as far as to judge his character. How can you judge the character of someone you don't know, and have never even spoken to?

What you're doing is not judging his character, but it is judging the character of the government of the country he was born in, and systematically applying it to the entire demographic. That's not exactly fair.

The process for bestowing the award and the faculty's motivations are irrelevant. It was dubbed an award for "African-Americans", and by that description, he qualified more than anyone else in the school. Things like this happen when you play word games.

I was born in a lilly white suburb of Cleveland to a father who was a racist and a homophobe, and I was instilled with those values as I grew up. I was a racist, until I actually met a black person, and saw that my general assumptions about their character were wrong. Likewise, I was a homophobe, until I actually met a gay person, and saw that my general assumptions about their character were wrong. Now, more than fifteen years later, I've had several close friends who are black, and my best friend is gay...and I've even changed my father's misguided values as a result. Now, I do not make judgements about people that I'm not in a position to know anything about.

You can go ahead and make judgements about character, without the benefit of knowing their character, and I'll continue to give him the benefit of the doubt, until I learn for myself that he was just causing trouble.

Hmmmn, did I say he was a racist? Nope, I didn't. I siad he was an asshole, and he is. You can ignore the totality of the cicumstances all you like, but he's still an immigrant from the most racially repressive regime in recent history who "ran" for an award you cant run for, a year in advance, on MLK day in a school with a tiny number of actual black people. You don't have to be a racist, or a genius to realize that this was going to upset a whole lot of people for no purpose whatsoever.

Yes, I guess you did, come to think about it. I stand corrected, and I apologize for misquoting you.

I wasn't ignoring the totality of the circumstances. I didn't have the totality of the circumstances. The linked article was five paragraphs and two sentences long, and offered no information other than what happened and what the kid said after the fact. It had no information on demographics, or statements from any of the other kids involved, or how he interacted with his black classmates. While I had no doubt that people would have been upset by it, there was not enough information for me to form a valid opinion as to his character, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

However, your debate inspired me to do some additional research on the subject. And you have no idea how much it kills me to admit that I was wrong, but dayum...

Here's what I found...

"The posters were intended to be satire on the term African-American," Scott Rambo told the Omaha World-Herald.

Scott Rambo was one of the other kids suspended for the incident.

Now, I'm a fan of satire and all, but there are just some times where it's not exactly appropriate. Doing something like this in a school where only 56 of the 1,632 students were black, meets and exceeds the requirements.

Asshole. Through and through.

[Edited repeatedly for the 3.2 billion gramatical errors I made]

[Edited on Feb 05, 2004 by Dante0]

From my cultural anthropology text:

"Popular racial classifications are primarily cultural constructions, not biological realities. For example, the five categories--black, white, American Indian--Alaskan Native, Asian--Pacific Islander, and Hispanic--used by the US Census in 1980 and 1990 are culturally produced legal fictions that have no scientific validity. Culturally defined racial categories mix legal citizenship and ethnicity with naive assumptions about skin color and blood, but they ignore the genetic facts of life. For example, the US government follows a blood quantum rule and recognizes "American Indians" as legal tribal members only if they can demonstrate ancestry of at least one-fourth "full blood." But "full blood" is itself a legal fiction based on previous tribal enrollments. Thus, "American Indian" is legally declared to be biological category. Similarly, an American with a single black grandparent is likely to be classified "black." The underlying myth of such racial categories is that genetically "pure" races exist....
Human racial classifications are scientifically inappropriate for several reasons. Humans constitute a global, polymorphic, continuously interbreeding population. For the past 30,000 years, no peoples, other than a handful of tiny populations on remote islands, have been isolated long enough to produce more than a relatively small genetic distance from any other human populations. Therefore, any scientific classification of people into genetic populations must necessarily be an arbitrary exercise based on variations in gene frequencies...."

(Sorry that was so long; just found it interesting.)

Without actually researching it myself.....

The kid is from Africa, right? How much could he have known about the American cultural landscape and the history of the "African American" experience in the U.S. How long has he actually lived here? He's only like 19 right?

Obviously he could not have been totally ignorant of the racial tensions that run through the veins of the country, but I think he was negatively influenced by his asshole friends who should really know what's going on.

I think the kid may have been a pawn for the four other guys involved to start some shit. I'm not excusing him completely, but with enough coaxing, I'm sure he came to the conclusion (corresctly or uncorrectly) that he was definitely more deserving of the award than anyone else.

For him, the controversy that would occur was probably little more than an afterthought.

Of course I didn't look into it. So I'm talking out of ignorance. (much like he might have been.)

(I love the debate going on here between Dant0 and Reprobate. Glad to see intelligent lifeforms still exist)

Woah, there's a thread about this. I know Trevor personally. He is certainly not racist and was probably just trying to be a smart ass. I found the whole ordeal kind of funny, the way people get all worked up over semantics.

New rule: members are not permitted to bump threads that predate their membership date.

New rule:

Take it easy homes!

New rule: There are no rules.










Alternative Response

Not racist, just insensitive. Great.

I support this.