Andrew Sullivan's "Chocolate City"

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Chocolate City

The left now argues that, since racism is not a personal moral choice but a structural oppression, blacks de facto cannot be racists. Liberals now argue that, although some element of choice is involved in a racist statement or act, minorities--especially those who have suffered in the past--should have more leeway than whites in being bigots. Fewer and fewer members of the American intelligentsia still believe what liberals once held sacred--that there is never any excuse for shunning or condemning anyone because of his or her race. Hardly anybody still maintains that allowing blacks to be more racist than whites is in itself racist because it robs individual blacks of the expectation that they can be as moral as anyone else.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), July 15, 2001

Answers

What a biased and flawed article. All of the little tricks are inserted to enrage deep seated bigotry in those who act politically correct on the outside while harboring a conviction that "they" are once again proving to be typical colored people.

Since a person cannot come right out and talk about black people like they used to (and still do in some places), the game these days is to find blacks that show the same bigotry that was standard against them 30 years ago and cry and whine about it.

Oh looky there! Did you hear what that Black person said??? And they are getting away with it, it is sooo wrong to talk about a member of another race like that!! I'm outraged!!!

Bullshit. They are outraged because society will not accept them saying things like that against Blacks and other minorities so they have to find every example they can of Blacks doing something wrong so they can scream about it.

Just like a little kid, they have to tattle to mommy that the other child is doing something wrong so mommy won't notice what they themselves have been doing.

Just imagine the statement "There is a real sense among white Washingtonians that the city is slipping away from us" appearing in the Post. Maybe in a Ku Klux Klan newsletter.

Seems some people have very short memories or are too uneducated to be aware of the cries of home values going down when a black family tried to move into a white neighborhood. Except it still happens.

So this bullshit about how racist some blacks are, and that it is supposidly accepted for them to be racist is just that, bullshit.

Black racism is just as unacceptable as white racism. If people are too afraid to speak out about it then they have a problem within themself, don't blame it on society.

Articles like that are just another sly, sneaky form of racism, under the pretence of outraged and shocked at unacceptable behaviors in others. All the while it allows people to tell each other that it confirms their beliefs and they were right about "them" all along.

Give me a break, this is the same old propaganda machine that rode out of texas and into the white house.

-- Cherri (jessam6@home.com), July 16, 2001.


Once again, this piece takes a very small piece of evidence (one bylined article, expressing a personal point of view and published in a newspaper) and starts making unbacked assertions like "the left now argues...", and "liberals now argue that...", and "fewer and fewer members of the American intelligentsia still believe...".

But, Lars, didn't you notice that Mr.Sullivan is making breathtaking leaps of inference, far, far beyond the bounds of what is rationally justified by the evidence he produces? He uses the logical fallacy of an appeal to emotion to manipulate his audience. Actually, he doesn't just use this fallacy, he hammers it until your head rings.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Sullivan would not be able to prove any of the assertions he makes about what "the left" or "liberals" or the "intelligentsia" argue or believe, because they are wrong. The point of view he ascribes to them (that blacks cannot be racist), far from being widespread, is held by a tiny number of people, who attract notice mainly because of the irrationality and peculiarity of their opinion.

It wouldn't matter if he could dig up quotes from somebody with the letters Phd after their name that said blacks can't be racist. All that would prove is what we all know - even Phds have goofy opinions and crave attention.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), July 16, 2001.


LN--

I haven't seen a survey on how many persons claim that "blacks cannot be racist" but I do know I have heard/read that POV more than once, usually by a very ideological person like Sharpton or Julianne Malveaux (a real piece of work, that one). I'm glad you don't accept the notion that blacks cannot be racist.

Based on previous remarks that Cherri has made about black-on-white violence in Seattle, I thought she also believed that black racism was (sometimes) a reality. Yet in her next to last paragraph above she accuses Sullivan of racism. She sounds like FS.

I tried to raise the issue of changing urban demographics a few weeks back with a thread "gentrification" featuring my own highly original words, no copy n paste. There was little discussion generated so when I encountered this article, what the heck, copy n paste my brains out.

Sullivan's example may be unique, I hope so. But I do think urban demographics are a-changing. Middle class types of all races are bidding up the price of conveniently located, architecturally exciting inner city neighborhoods that have lapsed into slums in the last 60 years.

The crack-houses will move somewhere else. Likewise poor neighborhoods. Let's hope they don't end up in the same place again.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), July 16, 2001.


I do believe that blacks can be rasist. Being a liberal (which I had not thought myself to be before the past year on this forum) I think it is discusting and morally wrong for Blacks to have the same attitude as the old segrigated southern whites had 30 years ago.

What makes me mad is this turkey is trying to say that liberals think it is acceptable and justifiable for blacks to be bigots.

Especially today, where there is a hell of a lot less blatent, open bigotry used against them then was done to their parents and grandparents.

As for white bigotry, it still exists and a lot more then conservatives will admit.

When I moved into the house I am renting, in 1988, I had a very sick infant son. I moved into an "all white" neighborhood. The people in this neighborhood did not like the fact that my daughter (and infant son who they had never seen) had a black father. While I was at the hospital he took our daughter over to meet the parents of a little girl she had met and was playing with.

Silly him, he thought it was the normal, neighborly thing to do.

A few days later the little girl told my daughter that her daddy was a nigger. Silly me, I thought the thing to do was to talk to the parents and let them know that their child had offended my daughter.

The girl lived with her parents and grrandparents. The grandmother informed me that "Well, he is a nigger" and this is our neighborhood and we don't want your kind living here and we are going to do everything we can to get rid of you.

My son came home for only 8 days of his short 5 month life. He was on oxygen with a canula and had a feeding tube in place due to reflux. He could not be layed down in a horizontal position unless he had been without the feeding tube for a few hours because he might asperate if he vomited. I was standing on my balcony with him in my arms when a little boy with a slingshot started shooting rocks at us. I handed my son to my daughter (7) and told her to hold him upright in her lap and ran after the kid. He lived over a block and a half away. I followed him to his house and told his parents what he had done. They said they didn't want us in the neighborhood. It seems they had all been talking about me and also another neighbor, who is hispanic with children who also had a black father, and decided they would do anything it took to get rid of us. Of course their children listened and reacted as children do.

Needless to say we still here, 13 years later. We have endured over a decade of public degradation from these neighbors and their children. There was one day when my daughter and I were taking a large amount of books out of the car into the garage that were given away from a local college (which we were going to take to my daughters school). Two little boys, about11 or 12 were across the street with a megaphone yelling "The fucking brown bitch in the fucking brown car" at my daughter. I timed it, they did it for over twenty minutes.I had taught my daughter that there were ignorant people who were prejudiced and that they had a problem, that she should not let their words control or hurt her. I had explained that they were insecure and had to try to belittle others in an attempt to brace up their own ego's.

Throughout the years, especially when I was a foster parent, the neighbors harassed me and my children. They called the police on us, turned me into CPS a number of times and complained to my land lord whenever they got a hair up their ass. Some of them have even moved out of the neighborhood because we didn't. One woman had a daughter who liked to yell obsentities at me and would stand across the street from my house and do it. She would stand there and yell the kind of things the troll on this list likes to spout- nigger lover ect. If I said anything to her she would get her mother who would come down and tell me she was "turning me in" to Child protective services for harassing her child. When another kid asked her why she (the girl) did what she did to me, she answered "because I can". Her mother was a deaken at the church across the street from me and I finally had enough. I went into the church one sunday and at the top of my lungs and told her I was tired of her daughter standing outside and saying (what the child was saying), that she would wait for me to come home and scream these things at me and Why was she aloowing her children to do these things?

Needless to say she was embarrassed in front of the other members of the church. She went to the assistant paster who set up a meeting between us. I told her exactly what my children and I had to put up with for over a year, that her daughter bragged that it was okay with her parents to do it and that her(the mother's) reaction (to threaten me) was just as bad as what her kids did. She pouted and said "what do you want me to do, beat my kids"?

I told her no. ThaT I didn't believe in hitting kids, but to just tell them to stop doing it. Or I would bring charges against them for it.

smirk

So the assholes who like to say shit to me (and Anita) are not in the least bit origional and not doing anything "shocking" or upsetting to me because I've heard it before and know it comes from something wrong within themselves, not any fault in me.

I'm not a hypocrit who believes it's ok for one "group" to show bigotry against another just because it was done to them. When blacks show bigotry they are just lowering themselves down to the leval of those whites who are bigots against blacks.

Like I said above, the article above is just another form of encouraging bigotry, the methods are different but the effects are the same.

Oh, and I smile at my neighbors when I go past them.

-- Cherri (jessam6@home.com), July 16, 2001.


Lars, I am sure that if there are people foolish enough to say blacks cannot be racist, there are more who will be willing to get on board and repeat it.

There was a parallel in the deep south during Jim Crow, where gentile whites would assure one another that it couldn't be racist to think blacks were all [fill in the derogatory comment], because it was only the truth and besides, the poor souls couldn't help being like that - and it was such a pity, you know.

In this modern case, the "reason" why blacks can't be racist is because whites all benefit from racism and because blacks have been treated so badly by so many whites for so long that any form their anger takes and any white target they choose to take out their anger on is justified - it only justice, you know.

Both arguments are plain old self-serving rationalization. Both are wrong. But rationalizations are attractive and no amount of wishing will rid the world of it entirely.

Cherri,

I am sorry your neighbors are such hateful people. I am glad you are strong and enduring.

I also agree with you that the "tone" of the article was racist. It took an article that embodied a few offensive attitudes but recorded no offensive actions and tried to imply that all leftists and liberals were in cahoots with all blacks to encourage rampant racism against whites and somehow this was a growing threat agianst whites and civil society. As such, this article was just as much an incitement against a group as the article he was criticizing. So, if he was right and the first article was racist, then he deserves the same label for the same reason.

I am sure Lars will disagree.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), July 16, 2001.



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