Racial Tension Boiling Over: Charlottesville
There had already been a demonstration by White Nationalists in May, which was eerily comparable to Klan rallies of old, complete with flaming tiki torches, designed to evoke fear. This when plans were announced to remove Confederate statues. So forward three months later, when they’re removing them, new demonstrations occur, which erupt into a full blown unrest, with one driver charging into a crowd and killing one person, injuring many others!
The reacting left is being dubbed the “antifa” (antifascists), with Trump adding the term “alt-left” and casting them as violent.
Is this the start of a new Civil War, as some have feared?
White Supremacists Show Up To A City That Didn’t Want Them, Chant ‘Blood And Soil’
A state of emergency has been declared after violent clashes in Charlottesville.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/white-nationalist-charlottesville-virginia_us_598e3fa8e4b0909642972007
Ex-KKK Leader David Duke Says White Supremacists Will ‘Fulfill’ Trump’s Promises
“We are determined to take our country back,” Duke said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/david-duke-charlottesville-rally-trump_us_598f3ca8e4b0909642974a10
Driver in custody after car rams into crowd following Virginia white nationalist rally
http://abcnews.go.com/US/car-hits-crowd-protesters-white-nationalist-rally-virginia/story?id=49179590
This Is What ‘Oppressed’ White Men Look Like
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-oppressed-white-men-look-like-charlottesville_us_598f2ff4e4b09071f699f123
How To Tell If You Go To A White Supremacist Church
How To Tell If You Go To A White Supremacist Church
(And all of this as the other major story is the way Trump’s words with N Korea escalates:
Why Black America Isn’t Worried About the Upcoming Nuclear Holocaust
http://www.theroot.com/why-black-america-isnt-worried-about-the-upcoming-nucle-1797754315)
Elle Dowd (FB)
These Neo Nazis, Confederates, and Klansmen have jobs. Inside institutions.
They don’t just protest one day and then put their prejudices on the shelf when they go to work.
They are bankers who deny loans.
They are teachers who file kids of color through the school to prison pipeline.
They are police officers. Did you see all the Blue Lives Matter flags on the livestream, next to Nazi symbols and Confederate flags?
They vote. They sit on juries. They run for office.
AND. They coach little league and watch Netflix on the couch with their wives and seem like “good guys.”
They have families and friends who have been too nervous or too polite to confront them.
Neo-nazis and white supremacists are celebrating Trump’s remarks about the Charlottesville riots
http://www.businessinsider.com/neo-nazis-celebrate-trumps-remarks-about-charlottesville-riots-2017-8
His “many sides” is obviously designed to be ambiguous and easy to fill in by the Right, to whom these “sides” are all subsets of the “other” side from them: the blacks themselves, BLM, the liberals, the Democratic Party, etc. or “the real haters: the SJW/Marxists who’ve attacked our guys”, said one commenter on the far-right, pro-Trump subreddit r/The_Donald, or the “Antifa”, which is short for antifascist organizations. —Anyone but the Right and the confederate sympathizers themselves.
When Does a Fringe Movement Stop Being Fringe? (Is Charlottesville a turning point?)
Even the most feared white supremacists in the lore of Jim Crow were just regular white men.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/whats-the-tipping-point-for-white-supremacy/536673/
I’ve also seen two people now point out that instead of racism “dying out”, most of the people in these protests are in their 20’s.
I think a large part of the problem was liberals not taking the Right seriously through all those decades of “dog whistling” (the coded racial language made to look “colorblind”), where they ignored it and simply pushed agendas (probably figuring “well, they’re gonna die off soon anyway”), while the conservatives built arguments, that went largely unanswered and thus took root as an entrenched narrative of blame.
This is what could sway a whole new generation, when it really should have been dying out by now. So now, many look up, with Trump in the White House, Hillary who seemed certain, lost, and all of these alt-right people coming out in full force, and it’s like “what happened”?
Of course, with all of this comes a new wave of whitewashing Lee, claiming he was actually against slavery:
The Myth of the Kindly General Lee
The legend of the Confederate leader’s heroism and decency is based in the fiction of a person who never existed.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/
Here is part of a quote from him:
The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.
On the alt-right site, they’re even trying to disown the driver, claiming there’s a difference between the alt-right and white supremacists, even, he’s a Jew, etc. and right after insinuating he was only reacting to car “being attacked on all sides by a roving mob of Antifa when he slammed the gas pedal and accelerated”. (So which is it? Is he one of you and justified, or not justified, and not one of you?)
So they are the ones “cucking” now! (there’s also a dispute among them as to whether Trump was cucking in his statement).
Finally, a much needed call for the Church to take a clear stand:
White Christian conservatives should oppose protests by white supremacists
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/08/12/white-christian-conservatives-should-oppose-protests-by-white-supremacists.html
you should really dig into black African slave trade and the black slavers that allowed it to happen.
So, by your rationale, ALL aspects of white Europeanism, automatically transfer to American decendants? We’re all Nazis, all rapists, and all racists and slavers at heart because white europeans did? That’s the same rationale that actual racists use to say all blacks are criminals and hoods.
We are a fallen people, utterly imperfect, so, yes, white europeans CAN claim to be the founders of the most moral value system, framed into a governement, that the world has ever known, WHILE being decendants of, related to, or from the same place as, people who committed those terrible atrocities.
The thing is, when you appeal to the Fall, (e.g. “we are all fallen people”, etc.) you don’t get to use that to excuse one group’s participation in the evils of fallen humanity, but then turn around and get to claim for that group the most virtue in human history. You mention the Fall, you’re appealing to the Biblical Gospel, and in that Gospel, it doesn’t work like that. That’s basically “our good outweighs our bad”, and any conservative Gospel tract will tell you no one will be justified by such reasoning. We all have good, from bearing the image of God, but because man did fall, then ALL nations are “concluded under sin”, and all of our righteousness is “filthy rags” (Romans 3).
So it doesn’t matter who did more good. (the point there is, that Western civilization may have done the most good, but ALSO did the most evil, so it basically balances out. And before God, the bad wipes out the good, not the other way around!)
And this is talking about individuals. How do we even figure a “nation” or “culture” we are apart of will carry some merit for us? This is exactly the way the corrupt countrymen that rejected Jesus thought; that because they were apart of the “chosen nation”, they would be “saved” through becoming the rightful rulers of the world through their inheritance and lawkeeping. But in reality, they were as lawless as anyone else, and it came out, and escalated, in the immediate time after Christ (just like things are escalating now, as one group thinks they’re being eradicated), and they too declared in slightly different words that their nation would “rise again”. America or other “Western” nations aren’t even the Biblical children of the Promise; they just assumed they replaced ancient Israel because of their Christianity, but then they’re making all the same mistakes, but should have known better.
This is where conservatives went wrong, and unfortunately, liberals usually didn’t challenge it on a soteriological level (like this post is doing now), but only on a “social justice” level. (Which is why conservatives now think social justice causes are unbiblical).
When Does a Fringe Movement Stop Being Fringe?
Even the most feared white supremacists in the lore of Jim Crow were just regular white men.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/whats-the-tipping-point-for-white-supremacy/536673/
(another small post: “if DonaldTrump had seen Amistad he’d have been like: well, yeah the slavers were violent but I mean c’mon, both sides…”)
If it’s a civil war, pick a side: Donald Trump, white nationalism and the future of America
Tim Wise
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/08/if-its-a-civil-war-pick-a-side-donald-trump-white-nationalism-and-the-future-of-america/
But statuary to confederates are not intended as history texts, and those who erected them — mostly in the early 1900s, long after the war, and during a time when lynching and the re-assertion of white supremacy in the South was at its zenith — never intended them to be so. These are altars of worship, where the faithful come to drink of the blood and taste of the flesh of their Great-Great-Grandpappy Beauregard, whose perfidy and characterological rot they still refuse to face. To defend these statues on the grounds of historical memory is perverse, for they misremember that history entirely and the cause for which Lee and others were fighting.
Yes, Jefferson was a slave owner, and this fact should be understood and not sanitized or considered a mere time-bound failing on his part (as it often is at the University of Virginia, for instance). But still, there is a difference between someone who said “all men are created equal” even if his actions suggested he didn’t mean it, and those who said (as did Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens) that white supremacy was the “cornerstone” of their new government. One provided us with a flawed yet visible exit from the national nightmare in which he himself was implicated. The others — including leaders in the states who issued declarations of causes for their secession, and in each case named the maintenance of slavery as their purpose — would have extended that nightmare in perpetuity, and without hesitation. Whether Jefferson intended it or not, he gave us a blueprint, however blood-spattered, for building a functioning democracy. Lee and his cohorts had no interest in such things, nor the vision to even imagine them. And that matters.
The Real Story Behind All Those Confederate Statues
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/08/the-real-story-of-all-those-confederate-statues/
“Most of these monuments were not erected right after the Civil War. In fact, all the way to 1890 there were very few statues or monuments dedicated to Confederate leaders. Most of them were built much later…during times when Southern whites were engaged in vicious campaigns of subjugation against blacks…to accompany organized and violent efforts to subdue blacks and maintain white supremacy in the South.” [Particularly 1895-1915 with Jim Crow, and 1955-1970, the Civil Rights era. The statue in Charlottesville, IIRC was inbetween that, in the 20’s, when “Jim Crow reigns safely throughout the South”. This is “something that even a lot of liberals don’t always get”].
See also: https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/whoseheritage_splc.pdf
Tools of Displacement: How Charlottesville, Virginia’s Confederate statues helped decimate the city’s historically successful black communities.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2017/06/how_charlottesville_s_confederate_statues_helped_decimate_the_city_s_historically.html
Race, the Gospel, and the Moment
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/race-the-gospel-and-the-moment
Franklin Graham: Blame White Terrorism On Those Who Voted To Remove The Racist Monument
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/formerlyfundie/franklin-graham-blame-charlottesville-voted-remove-racist-monument/
Also addressed now (as I’ve mentioned before) is why the Jews are being included in the hatred:
Why the Charlottesville Marchers Were Obsessed With Jews
Anti-Semitic logic fueled the violence over the weekend, no matter what the president says.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/nazis-racism-charlottesville/536928/
‘Jews will not replace us’: Why white supremacists go after Jews
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/08/14/jews-will-not-replace-us-why-white-supremacists-go-after-jews/
“The successes of the civil rights movement created a terrible problem for white supremacist ideology. White supremacism — inscribed de jure by the Jim Crow regime and upheld de facto outside the South — had been the law of the land, and a black-led social movement had toppled the political regime that supported it. How could a race of inferiors have unseated this power structure through organizing alone? … Some secret cabal, some mythological power, must be manipulating the social order behind the scenes. This diabolical evil must control television, banking, entertainment, education and even Washington D.C. It must be brainwashing white people, rendering them racially unconscious.
What is this arch-nemesis of the white race, whose machinations have prevented the natural and inevitable imposition of white supremacy? It is, of course, the Jews. Jews function for today’s white nationalists as they often have for anti-Semites through the centuries: as the demons stirring an otherwise changing and heterogeneous pot of lesser evils.”
I had focused on Jews being blamed simply because blacks did not have enough power to be blamed for everything, such as world economics, so they had to shift to another group, which happened to be the Jews, who had already originally been blacklisted by corrupt Christian views as the “murderers of Christ” and then blamed for the problems of Germany. But this shows they are also specifically being resented for supposedly promoting this other race of “inferiors”. The Nationalist site Firstfreedom mentions “the ultimate goal of the One World Order – to brown AmeriKa and annihilate our Anglo-Celtic-European culture!”
When you look at the insistence of how the white race is the greatest and has created everything good in civilization, yet their domination is nevertheless on the wane, and their prided civilization is going down (you can even see this discussed in the Stormfront forum discussion “Are We Really White Supremacists?”), it’s like “that wasn’t supposed to happen!” Everyone knows all about the patterns of other great historical empires: Rome, The Muslim empire, Egypt, Babylon, etc. and the lesson of no matter how powerful they are, they still get too big for their own or anyone’s good (and often become decadent as well), and then burst. But no; not us!
There is just no thought (even among those on this board who disclaim “supremacy” in favor of mere “separation”, but still as “more intelligent”, etc.) that you are still just a mortal man, and everything mortal man does is stained with corruptibility and will fail). So someone else has to be blamed for this, and attributed this power that is [for the moment] greater, but nevertheless evil, with the promise that the good power will eventually prevail.
This has clearly become a religion, and as it emanated from a “Christian worldview”, you wonder what happened to the conservative teaching on the sinfulness of all men (which they loudly and incessantly berated liberals and other religions or irreligion for rejecting)? That no man or nation can point to their technological advancement as having any merit before God.
For one of the other familiar sellouts:
https://www.allenbwest.com/2017/08/13/ok-folks-heres-really-happened-charlottesville-everyone-missing/
He just needs to be sent back into the past and see how good this political philosophy he defends would have treated him. (Or if they got their way and took the nation back, where he would be. And this isn’t even the mainstream Right we’re dealing with anymore; this is the alt-right, and you ain’t even a “good one”, no matter how much you champion their beliefs; there are no “good ones”; you got the brown skin, you got the genes; you’re still just an “n_____”!).
This one does make a point I’ve noted on “privilege theory”, which may be true in one sense, but it’s a matter of tact, in constantly shaming all whites for it:
http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/23/how-anti-white-rhetoric-is-fueling-white-nationalism/
Maine Gov. Paul LePage Says Taking Down Confederate Statues Is Like Removing 9/11 Memorial
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paul-lepage-911-memorial_us_5995e421e4b0a2608a6aa557
FB discussion:
Christian Pyle “Would only be true if the 9/11 monument was to the terrorists.”
Mel Stewart “Here’s an idea. We erect a monument to Bin Laden at ground zero so we never forget. Sound good?”
Sharon Thomeczek Brohammer “You make too much sense for this group!😉”
Stephen Tonnies “…taking down the statues doesn’t change history. These statues are nothing to do with history. They just glorify men who were on the wrong side of history. These men were traitors to the legitimate government of the United States. They seceded from the USA to form their own country. Why do we revere them? You won’t find many statues of Washington and Jefferson in Great Britain. Washington and Jefferson were at least fighting against a Distant government that was screwing the colonies over with no representation. Very very different to the reasons for the Civil War.”
Connie Jaquess “9-11 memorials are for the victims. Confederate monuments are honoring Confederate War heroes. Big difference.”
One big story all day is that even:
Stonewall Jackson’s Great-Great-Grandsons Call for Removal of Confederate Monuments
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/17/exclusive_stonewall_jacksons_great_great_grandsons
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-monument-beautiful-statue_us_5995a71ae4b06ef724d6ef65
"ERIPEDIA" 
This guy nails it!
Here’s a suggestion that out [US] racism might have even influenced Nazi, Germany!
Hitler’s American Model:
The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10925.html
Mike Pence’s Answer On Confederate Statues? Build More!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mike-pence-confederate-monuments-built-more_us_599c72f3e4b06a788a2c4cd9
(“We ought to be celebrating the men and women who have helped our nation move toward a more perfect union.”)
This would just continue the pattern behind the old ones being put up. Any time they feel they are losing, they want to erect these things! I would say it was a “security blanket”, but it’s much more offensive than defensive!
The Confederacy was a con job on whites. And still is.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/community/chapel-hill-news/chn-opinion/article135987178.html
A new round of racial tension with a virtual repeat of Eric Garner, and a few smaller racial clashes as well. The glaring inconsistency is how white conservative protesters to Covi shutdowns are allowed to threaten statehouses, armed!
It isn’t Just White Privilege, it’s Right Wing Privilege As Well.
Political affiliation plays a significant role in how organizations and individuals are treated and portrayed.
View at Medium.com
Stop by the old conservative Christian board, to see what’s going on in light of all the racial news. I find a thread entitled “shall We Rename America?” and
•
•”the statues that are being defiled from the Civil war era are bellwethers. Our response/reaction to their destruction are being carefully watched to determine if Americana of even greater significance will be scheduled for destruction.”
So I then join in and ask ”
Here’s a question about defending these things: weren’t these leaders (of the CSA), quite literally, enemies of the USA?
Or if people think the CSA represented the true “America” (her “values” and “heritage”, while the USA were at the time the “northern aggressors” and I know there were those who thought that way), then why would conservatives ever love and defend the flag of the USA? (Like in the battle over the national anthem). How do you have both flags, when they were opposed to each other?
I’ve never heard this point addressed; only that it’s “history”. But all sides of history are not celebrated.
The responses:
•”I question the motives of those tearing down statues. So long as they are throwing their little extremist temper tantrums I will not support any discussion or concern they may feign that they have.”
•”Tear them all down (our history), rip them all out, (infants in the womb), burn it all down (inner cities), anyone still doubt that the devil seeks to steal, kill, and destroy? There are evil spirits behind all of this. Is it any wonder that his people do the things they do. It has always been there waiting, now it is coming out in the open. These are the kinds of things that destroy countries and cause civil wars. Our country is more fractured and divided than it has been in a long time.”
•”there is satanic forces involved in much of this, as almost seems like the Kingdom of Darkness is now trying to come out in the open to fight!”
•Another person quotes Eph.5:8-16 to add to this
(This certainly goes along with the idea that these are sacred shrines of worship, as Wise has been pointing out!)
•”They don’t care about the statues. Their goal is to cause a big enough stink that some right wing group will retaliate with violence, so that the left wing agitators can claim victim status and support their media claims that everyone who isn’t a peaceful communist like them are violent extremists. It’s all laughable.”
The person I enter a back and forth with says “They were states in union. The Civil War established a lot more than slavery (to include establishing states roles and rights within this union). It resulted in a stronger federal government (pros and cons).
The history of the US includes the divisions wrought by the Civil War. The Unions position was that those states could not leave the union and therefore the Confederacy cannot be viewed as a force external to and against the US. They were stares legally within the Union (we apply the victor’s conclusions here).”
He then begins arguing against “history reduced to racism. The Civil War was about more than the evil of slavery. And the evil of slavery was much more complicated than mere racism.”
Someone else asks what else, then, and he of course mentions “states rights and the nature of the union. It was about economics.”, and that slavery was not “merely” racism, because blacks in Africa sold them into slavery.
I copy and past the quotes of Confederate leaders such as
Alexander H. Stephens “Cornerstone Speech” (“Our new Government is founded upon…; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.“);
William T. Thompson, Confederate flag designer “we are fighting to maintain the heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race. As a national emblem it is significant of our higher cause the cause of the superior race, and a higher civilization contending against ignorance, infidelity and barbarism.”,
The “Declaration of the Causes Which Impel the State of Texas to Secede From the Federal Union”: “the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.”
and General Benning: “What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction . . . that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. . . .”
And commented:
And yes, slavery was economic (the big business of the times), and naturally, it would become an issue of “states rights”. It’s now being pointed out how “race” was in fact conceived and being used to justify the “business”! That doesn’t make either issue any less important.
It doesn’t matter whether slavery was “the only issue”; it was indelibly woven into everything. So it’s not “reducing” anything to point this out; it’s reducing something to say “oh, that was just one minor issue among other more important stuff”, as some seem to argue.
So these things are naturally offensive to people, just like abortion and the other “moral” issues are offensive to others (including some who are offended by both). Both violate the commandments of God (Matt.7:12), yet removal of the former is being equated with the moral issues, and it’s the devil, and just a conspiracy by those trying to pitch Communism, etc. (which is all the same stuff people said about King, yet now many conservatives claim to respect him). The Devil was just as active back then! Even if there were/are people getting involved with an ulterior agenda like that, it doesn’t change the fact of what these people themselves said they represented.
He begins insisting “race is not the basis of slavery”, keeps reiterating blacks sold other blacks into slavery, and puts the 3/5th clause squarely on the North. Another person snarks “Sooo….slavery in the US was worse than slavery that sold slaves to the US? Good grief”
My response:
From those quotes, it was more than simply “involved”. They’re saying that was their whole “foundation”!
Africans may have sold other Africans into slavery, and everyone knows others had slavery (including today), but that was simply normal subjugation of tribes who lost a war. They did not build a whole philosophy, genetic theory or religion (“curse of Canaan”, etc.) that dehumanized the enslaved groups. If it were just owership and not the other stuff, you probably wouldn’t have the same outcry against slavery today, nor the fight to end it. It’s also known that some slavers was what was known as “indentured servanthood”, which met the need for labor, and they would gain their freedom after awhile. But what we see in those quotes clearly is a premise of permanent natural inferiority that they themselves said was their whole basis.
When the African merchants sold slaves, most captured in war, “At that time, there was no concept of being African – identity and loyalty were based on kinship or membership of a specific kingdom or society, rather than to the African continent.” (The slave trade’s effect on African societies – Implications of the slave trade for African societies – Higher History Revision – BBC Bitesize) It was once in Western captivity, that this thing called “race” became the deciding factor, and people discriminated against for it (whether by slavery, its replacement Jim Crow or anything else).
That’s what I meant by “racism as the basis of slavery”; “basis” being not a timelike meaning of causation, but as the already established [by then] rationale (justification), that the people were inferior. The Confederates weren’t protesting “We bought those slaves from the African merchants, and [no matter who they are], taking this property from us is just one of other more important things we are seceding over”. What they said was was that “we are fighting to maintain the heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race”, and “the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition”.
So no; no one here is saying “racism” came first; nor does it make a difference at this point. The Confederates didn’t care who started slavery; they just didn’t want it to end, and had built a whole belief system to justify it (which would actually suggest his point “racism was not the cause”; it came afterward, as the effect). So that’s not what’s being argued against.
As for who was behind the 3/5 clause, we all know both sides believed the blacks were inferior. It seems nearly everyone did. But the South was the one pushing to maintain more overt subjugation.
He keeps trying to blame everyone else; England, the African merchants, and the North being “just as racist”. It’s like the US slaveowners’ motives basically become colorblind (it was the preexisting system of slavery and nothing else, and it all came to them from other people anyway, like they were just innocent, unbiased beneficiaries). And now, color-based “racism“ only came later on. The same beliefs that drove the hatred after emancipation stemmed from before emancipation and are what were expressed by the Confederate leaders.
As for the North, again, no one is saying they weren’t racist.
Still, racism and slavery had become completely intertwined in the US, by those who’ve clearly stated fighting for both. So whether one is “reduced” or “simplified” to just the other, this is why people are against the Confederacy today.
Then, another person in an exchange with someone else says
“So what is the point? Namely that we dare not imagine we are in a position to condemn those of past generations based on our own perceptions as though we are better, more moral than they simply because we are not committing their particular sins in the same way they did. It could be that we are worse. Certainly the Left is—much worse.”
I join in: Then why do we often judge the current generations by the past ones? (The whole point behind MAGA, and much preaching on “morality” over the centuries). When people take all the stuff the Left, the “godless” , etc. do and say “it’s just the times”, we condemn it as “relativism”, saying “God changes not”. It seems to be assumed that the people of the past followed God more, and then the nation “turned” from this (hence, we should go “back”). But we see these areas where they had done a lot of evil, and we say “don’t judge them; it was just the times”! If we ackniwledge it was wrong and unscriptural now, then it was wrong and unscriptural back then too, whether they realized it or not, just like whether the modern generations realize sin today or not.
In passing; great article on this I just saw:
View at Medium.com
They Were Monsters In Their Own Time
Of course we can judge ‘historical figures’
His response: “The point is that you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, or poke at motes in the eyes of others when you have logs in your own, yet that is precisely what the Left is about. They want to destroy the good foundations of society, not improve upon them.
People from all over the world want to come here for the opportunities. Leftist policies would destroy those opportunities—they are clueless about how those opportunities are created.”
I don’t even get into the whole left-bashing thing with them anymore. As we see, that’s their excuse for everything: the evil of the left; —them over there, never us!
So I just say:
I think both sides tend to poke at the motes in the other’s eyes while ignoring the logs in their own. All generations are equally sinful, and as apart of that will ignore one set of sins and focus on certain limited virtues they hold but the other is seen as lacking in. The whole definition of “conservative” and “liberal” is either conserving the previous set of values, or ‘liberating’ from them and adopting new ones. Again, both sides contain virtues that may have been held and evils ignored at one point and both set aside later; or virtues ignored before, and rediscovered later, while sins (and percieved sins that weren’t always so) that were shunned before were now accepted. So yes, this involved “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”, but I think the people pledging allegiance to divine absolutes should know better than to get into this “the generation/century/political wing/party that held our values is better than yours” game.
If you uphold these “foundations” like they are a standard in themselves, to judge but not be ‘judged’ by this horrible ‘godless’ modern generation where everything is apparently wrong, then people will think it implies that they must have been right about that other stuff as well. That’s why people are opposing these things.
This person just responds with the “Progressive Left is about tearing down and destroying what was before, as though they have some sort of utopian perfection to replace it”, (and also that “they are not liberal”! He’s probably defining “liberal” as “classic liberal”, which is basically another term for a moderate conservative or libertarian. Again, he just cannot get beyond “But the Leftists…!”)
The first person, again:
Still, those confederate leaders themselves tied the two issues together, and not just after emancipation. And what happened is that the people RESENTED the forces (North, Left, liberals, etc.) forcing change (and whether those forces were ‘racist’ themselves or not). THAT’s why racism went into the next century to the present. It’s largely resentment that something has been ‘taken’ from them and given to these ‘undeserving’ people. This argument makes it all aboot one ‘PARTY’, but that is what’s oversimplifying it, as well as isolating and splitting all evil off onto some “others, over there”
He continues with “the 1930’s forward” and the Great Depression, and then adds “the black community today has benefited from slavery (based on the fact that life in America, even as bad as it apparently is here, is a better standard of living even for the poor than is tribal Africa). That does not mean slavery is a good thing. But it does mean that God uses all things for His glory and people need to realize the larger picture.”
I don’t see how you can completely separate racism from the 30’s onward from before that. Again, the people forced to give up slavery resented the forces that made them do so, as well as the former slaves themselves. You acknowledge this now, but are not looking at the full ramifications of what this would mean (i.e. how it would play out over time).
They immediately tried to replace slavery with things like debtor’s prisons (where they had many right back on the plantation) and other forms of discrimination, and even violence. Blacks had managed to make gains as great as becoming governors (fulfilling General Benning’s dread!), but when the North pulled out, and their influence was removed, this was quickly halted! The KKK arose, terrorizing not only blacks, but also those sympathetic to them. They created the stereotypes of the blacks being dangerous violent criminals and rapists to justify all this (continuing from Benning: “The consequence will be that our men will be all exterminated or expelled to wander as vagabonds over a hostile Earth, and as for our women, their fate will be too horrible to contemplate even in fancy”), and produced propaganda like Birth of a Nation promoting this and the KKK.
That now is into the 20th Century. This just continued through the 30’s, and resentment grew then and beyond, as they were forced to make more and more concessions on race.
If people in high places like Benning believed as they did, then when slavery ended, they did not just drop those beliefs and fears (and the whole “black” issue), only to be suddenly picked up again in the 30’s.
And since people say “God uses all things for His glory and people need to realize the larger picture.” regarding slavery, then why don’t they see it that when when it comes to changes they don’t like. So God “used” slavery (to save them from their tribalism), but taking down monuments (that offend people) is the work of the Devil! Why?
He insists:
“One thing leads to another, but in the end has lost relation to the original as to have no meaningful relationship at all.”
How are they not connected? The people clearly stated black inferiority in the days of slavery and the Confederacy, and they did not stop believing that, and then start believing in it again in the 1930’s. People passed down beliefs, feelings and the overall resentment from generation to generation. Remember the slogan, “The South shall rise again!” They did not drop it in the 19th century.
Regarding the argument that the issue is not “race”, Ian Haney Lopez Dog Whistle Politics points out that the whole concept of “race” was just a convenient mechanism to justify slavery of Africans and expropriation of Native Americans.
Because he discusses the fact that a lot of racism is “strategic”, he also acknowledges more of these points:
This is exactly what the person was saying. No one is denying this. But the point is, that the Confederates went beyond strategy and made it animus, during and after slavery (either that, or lied about their true intentions), and this is why their memorials have taken on a negative connotation.
From what the person said earlier, this splitting 20th century racism off from slavery is obviously another attempt to pin all racial problems afterward on the Democratic Party. Yet it’s the people opposing the Democrats who more often spew classic racist stereotypes (of those bygone centuries), such as the blacks only wanting “free stuff“ (i.e. “lazy”), and all the crime (“dangerous”), etc. and now framing it as concern for the people, because it’s all the Democrats’ fault for taking advantage of their desire for “handouts” (i.e. they’re not too bright and easily duped by a partisan scheme like this). This is what people are finally recognizing now, and why they reject the other party.
Trying to isolate it to just a party is playing politics, not trying to offer a solution. Any party can be racist, and many blacks certainly question the past history of Biden. But all either is doing is pointing the finger back and forth.
In this thread or one of the others, someone mentioned, in general BLM and lack of “forgiveness”. Here’s a good answer to that:
https://gen.medium.com/what-the-amber-guyger-case-reveals-about-white-america-78afb5d0f3b3
“They don’t want forgiveness. They want to be excused.”
In other news, related because these types thinks everyone is out to get them in favor ob blacks and at the expense of white conservatives; also just found this article:
https://gen.medium.com/why-conspiracy-theorists-think-fema-is-building-camps-to-imprison-americans-dc49845140e8
Another good one, from awhile ago:
View at Medium.com
Edit: here’s another excellent one:
Stop Defending the Confederacy
A call to end romanticizing white supremacist ideology
View at Medium.com
Yes, Africans Did Sell Africans Into Slavery
A beloved talking point that ignores how White people reshaped slavery in Africa
View at Medium.com
Just a Reminder; The Confederates Lost the War
I think somebody needs to tell them.
View at Medium.com
Now, the Right has finally shown its true colors; making good on their longstanding mullings to actually attack the US government! —But they continue to blame “antifa” and “BLM”:
TYT: Trump Loyalists Blame Antifa For US Capitol Siege
Points out how infiltrating the other side was always the tactic of the far Right. And that the cops see blacks as enemies, while empathizing with white right wingers; hence essentially welcoming them right in!
https://gen.medium.com/we-know-why-police-went-easy-on-the-pro-trump-terrorists-fcf1c9ae21d3
https://johnpavlovitz.com/2021/01/10/a-nothing-revolution/
“What precisely were they overthrowing?
What exactly were they protesting?
How specifically had this nation so grievously wronged them?What precisely were they overthrowing?
What exactly were they protesting?
How specifically had this nation so grievously wronged them?”
Keeping in mind that Rightism puts down “victimhood” and often preaches “thankfulness” to others!