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The color of global oppression is in shades of white
by Herb Ruhs, MD
| Mar. 22, 2008 |
Under the heading of not just unknown and also completely censored I suggest that folks go to warcomeshome.org and listen to the Winter Soldier testimony that occurred last weekend. If it is true, as I believe, that the truth shall make us free, then this is the kind of truth medicine that can do that.
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Re Came tumbling down
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Racism is a very personal issue and needs our personal ground truth involvement to beat it back.
To the extent that we are willing to be fully human, we need to accept the realities of the suffering of all our brothers and sisters.
Love thy neighbor as thyself.
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Chris M. directs us to The American Prospect article "Does Obama
really have a race problem?" by Peter Dreier who says,
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"It is more a class issue in this country than a race issue. It's
that the republicans and their elitist supports playing the old shell
game and trying to convince people there is a race issue so they will
not notice how much they (the elites) despise anyone lower in
economic standing than themselves." |
It is obtuse to state that people need to be convinced "that there is
a race issue." No aware person needs to be convinced that our darker-skinned comrades experience the "race issue" on a daily basis. But
there is a true, if syntactically challenged, element in Mr. Dreier's
observation. Economic elites do fan the flames of racial hatred in
their overall divide and conquer supremacist strategy. However, in
due respect to people of color who encounter very personal aspects of
racism daily, we must be willing to give precedence of consideration
to the individual suffering involved in leading the life of a person
of color in the US.
Growing up in Louisville, Kentucky in the
fifties and early sixties, and keeping regular company with African
Americans, I experienced, through them and with them, what it meant
to encounter racial hatred, violent, mean and cruel. I have proudly
endured the label "N---er lover." My families of origin remain
largely mired in white supremacist feelings.
Besides. if we want to lay the blame for racial hatred at the feet of
the elite, we must also be willing to recognize that the membership
of that group is overwhelmingly light-skinned. White supremacy is not
just a US problem. It is world-wide. Light-skinned northern Indians
show contempt for darker-skinned southern Indians. Light-skinned
Mexicans and South Americans show contempt for the darker-skinned
indigenous people of their countries. Many of the violent conflicts
that rage about the world today have at their roots color
discrimination of a lighter-skinned elite against a darker-skinned
oppressed class. The color of global oppression is in shades of white.
In fact, some things have changed for the better in the US since my
youth on the level of dark-light interpersonal encounters, but the
basic reality of race discrimination remains, particularly in rural
areas. And in the case of the rural South, they have changed hardly
at all. Witness the massive race hatred crime in the wake of
Katrina. Ironically, the most integrated aspect of US cultural life
is now the military, at the same time that our military is sent to
rain terror on the darker peoples of the world.
But whatever positive changes have occurred, recognize that they have
occurred in the context of INCREASING economic elitism in the US. So
I would say that, while it is worthwhile to recognize, with our
heads, the sociopolitical and economic aspect of the problem of
racism, our hearts should focus on the personal suffering of our
darker-skinned brothers and sisters who must deal with things like
racial profiling and brutality inflicted by the police,
discrimination in the workplace, and racially biased economic
exploitation on a daily basis.
Opportunities do occur to stand
together across color lines to confront abuse and exploitation. We
lighter-skinned people should have the courage to share a bit of the
personal risk, on these few occasions, that our darker-skinned
siblings experience daily. We should also be willing to stand up and
witness, loud and clear, against these injustices.
Granted, part of
this work is to do what we can to bring down our oppressive class
system that exploits race as one of its many levers of social
control, but let's not lose sight of the reality of the suffering it
causes and lose our focus by taking an over-intellectual approach to
the problem.
Racism is a very personal issue and needs our personal
ground truth involvement to beat it back. To the extent that we are
willing to be fully human, we need to accept the realities of the
suffering of all our brothers and sisters. Love thy neighbor as
thyself.
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Journalism in the US lost its soul when it acceded to its corporate master's demands that "journalistic balance" meant that equal or greater space be provided to the professional liars of the corporate funded public relations industry. Somehow balance became defined as presenting various versions of the professional lies and largely ignoring the truth.
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I just read This week in the Class War by JS Magruder. I am
impressed by JS's piquancy, and more by his (or is JS a her?)
humanity. It recalls for me the parable of the "whited sepulchers."| |
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness." Matthew 23:27 |
By the way, I seem to have a problem missing some things on UnknownNews unless I keep up with the links in the little yellow band under the masthead. It is probably not a design flaw in the site. It is probably just a design flaw in me.
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That's what the little yellow band is for ...
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Of course I knew that. The problem is not yours, it is mine. I now have a reputation at the local supermarket for not being able to find things on the shelves. I think they may think I am impaired, which I am when it comes to finding things in a clutter in front of me. My wife says it is a male thing. I can sketch complex three dimensional exploded diagrams without batting an eye, know exactly how to pack a moving van, can tell you in a second whether something will fit through a door, but find the tea I want from the grocery aisle, or a link on your web page, and I am lost.
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You just made my husband and I laugh out loud, a rare treat these days. It's definitely a male thing -- you've described Harry to a T, except for the part about having a talent for drawing diagrams. It's a recurring scene when we go shopping: he'll disappear for five minutes looking for something and he'll find the right aisle, but then he'll get all frustrated and say, "They don't have it." And then I'll spend ten seconds scanning the same shelves and put what he couldn't find in our basket...
Re Winter Soldier, I've been spending time yesterday and today at a similar site,
vitalforcenews.bravehost.com/veterans.html, covering last weekend's good work ...
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