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  • Locked thread
bobjr
Oct 16, 2012

Roose is loose.
🐓🐓🐓✊🪧

Schizotek posted:

Compare the rhetoric around the two. Even people like Trayvon Martin have a far more violent strait of rhetoric directed towards them than this shithead. No ones calling him a saint, but the visceral aggression directed towards minority offenders, real or imagined, is conspicuously absent.

Yeah, I understand that, I just thought people went from distancing themselves from him while supporting the "Well when you look at X dumb logic" people apply to Trayvon Martin to justify him being killed to actively supporting him. I honestly wouldn't be surprised but to see that leap is just a level I can't even comprehend.

Dexo posted:

This motherfucker has had less negative poo poo written about him than unarmed dudes who got shot by cops. He's just a "sad broken lone wolf, misled kid in need of counseling"

This was brought up at work and I just remember someone adamantly defending that he had one black friend which meant that this wasn't a racism thing, this was something else. I've lived my life in a diverse suburb in between a city and a bunch of super rural areas, so I'm used to some culture clash, but this election taught me people just hide racism. Just after this election I've heard coworkers say "They've done this to us for decades why can't we do anything back?" to someone not standing for the national anthem. I haven't heard the "in need of counseling yet", but I don't know how I could have handled that part and still have a job.

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BirdOfPlay
Feb 19, 2012

THUNDERDOME LOSER

bobjr posted:

Are people actually sympathetic to him? I haven't been paying as much recent attention but I thought it was another situation where they try and separate him from the group as much as possible with the "Lone Wolf acting Alone" defense.

Took a little while to find it, but this piece by WaPo pretty much sums up how the media has painted him with a sympathetic brush. As a white dude from the South, this hits notes I can easily recognize, which is the difference between, well, most anything about every unarmed black man that was killed by police. Obviously, I'm just giving perspective here and guesses, not condoning this poo poo.

Dexo posted:

This motherfucker has had less negative poo poo written about him than unarmed dudes who got shot by cops. He's just a "sad broken lone wolf, misled kid in need of counseling"

Like this is so true, just trying to find this, specific article I came across 4 others of a similar tone. Only guess as to why this is the case is that the press focuses on how whites relate to these issues. Not saying it's good, just trying to explain why. Of course, people just being loving racist is probably a more true explanation.

bobjr posted:

Yeah, I understand that, I just thought people went from distancing themselves from him while supporting the "Well when you look at X dumb logic" people apply to Trayvon Martin to justify him being killed to actively supporting him. I honestly wouldn't be surprised but to see that leap is just a level I can't even comprehend.

That is usually the case. The media says, "Lone wolf. Never know why this happened." But they, sometimes, delve into it and try to paint a picture of "bad circumstances" lead this individual to do these horrible actions. But maybe that's just with these white guys. Besides Roof, I can think of the guy in UCLA (I think?) that stabbed and killed a bunch of students, mainly girls, because "girls didn't like him" or some stupid poo poo.

McCloud
Oct 27, 2005

Lemme ask a question. People in this thread mentioned prisons are being used for what is in practice slave labor. But isn't that actually detrimental to the economy as a whole? The "employer" of the slaves, which I assume is the state, get free labor sure, but if they'd have hired people to do this instead you could reduce unemployment, put more money in circulation, more people buy stuff and even if the state budget takes a bit of a hit everyone is better off in the end, right? It's like a ministimulus. Or am I just dumb? My grasp of economics is sophomoric at best I'll admit.

Regarding the earlier discussion about the white moderate: I never realised how spiteful Americans are. I bought into the myth that the rural voters where just uneducated and ignorant, and that's why they voted against their own interest. I now realise it's just spite. Americans are evil, selfish fuckers, and no amount of compassion and positive rhetoric will overcome this ugly need to make sure someone else suffers, preferably someone who's different.

Dog Jones
Nov 4, 2005

by FactsAreUseless

Geostomp posted:

Yup. It's usually just some bog-standard "come together" jabbering as if the media is just shocked that hate crimes could possibly be made by poor, troubled white men. Meanwhile, the latest black man gunned down for no reason is treated as if they're hoping to have a reason to declare him an evil thug and unleash the hatred.

Has anyone done the work of documenting this hypocrisy in the media in a substantial way? By substantial I mean comparing the differing treatment of whites and blacks for a single news outlet or reporter, and not just analyzing the 'media' as a whole.

botany
Apr 27, 2013

by Lowtax

McCloud posted:

Lemme ask a question. People in this thread mentioned prisons are being used for what is in practice slave labor. But isn't that actually detrimental to the economy as a whole? The "employer" of the slaves, which I assume is the state, get free labor sure, but if they'd have hired people to do this instead you could reduce unemployment, put more money in circulation, more people buy stuff and even if the state budget takes a bit of a hit everyone is better off in the end, right? It's like a ministimulus. Or am I just dumb? My grasp of economics is sophomoric at best I'll admit.

There's a couple of wrong assumptions here.
First off, not all prisons are state prisons. The private prison industry is large and, thanks to the election of Trump, growing massively. So that's already profit in private sector hands at ridiculous rates, since inmates are obviously not paid fair wages.
Secondly, even in the case of state prisons, sometimes there are massive incentives for the state to employ prison labor. In the 19th century, the impoverished southern states did not have the money to build prisons, so they leased out their prisoners to private companies for slave labor, in return for massive payments. This helped both the state and the companies. (It was abolished in the 40s, but work release programs live on. McDonalds couldn't operate without prisoners making beef patties and chicken nuggets and so on. Companies also get tax rebates for being kind enough to give those poor prisoners some way to be useful members of society.)
Third, even if you hired free citizens do to that work, there's a conflict of interests here. You're right that reducing unemployment would ultimately be a mini-stimulus, which is good for the state economy (provided the labor isn't outsourced to other states), but the companies who profit from work release programs, and the private prisons that use the slave labor are not interested in the state economy, they're interested in their bottom lines. Even the state budget makers are unlikely to spend a whole lot of money now for hopefully some bigger returns in the future, since that's a good way to lose your seat. And that's not even talking about the all-American "tough on crime" bullshit that pervades the popular culture, especially on the republican side.
Lastly, courts have consistently held that (a) prisoners can be forced to work but (b) do not have a right to be compensated, being paid "by the grace of the state" only. Taken all together it's hard to see a way out of this other than fixing the 13th amendment.

evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003

There's the added bonus of private organisations being allowed to lobby assemblies to maintain the status quo or ease prison labor usage.

Lightning Knight
Feb 24, 2012

Pray for Answer
Slavery is one of those types of economic moral hazards that are bad for the economy and don't make sense in the aggregate but are perfectly fine from a purely selfish standpoint it makes sense because you get to benefit from significantly cheaper labor. Asking "isn't that bad for the economy?" is the wrong question because the people in question only care about their own gains.

Funnily enough however slavery being bad for the aggregate economy is part of why the antebellum South was in tatters economically. The aristocracy had no interest in developing infrastructure because they just imported stuff from Britain by sea and the Mississippi River and demand was chronically lovely because huge swaths of the labor market were unpaid slaves. Meanwhile a disproportionate amount of money and free labor had to be wasted on a preposterous police state because they lived in permanent fear of slave rebellions. By the time of the Civil War they were going through people's mail and recieving abolitionist literature had been made a crime in many states.

This should sound familiar to modern America. :smith:

LunarShadow
Aug 15, 2013


Lightning Knight posted:

Slavery is one of those types of economic moral hazards that are bad for the economy and don't make sense in the aggregate but are perfectly fine from a purely selfish standpoint it makes sense because you get to benefit from significantly cheaper labor. Asking "isn't that bad for the economy?" is the wrong question because the people in question only care about their own gains.

Funnily enough however slavery being bad for the aggregate economy is part of why the antebellum South was in tatters economically. The aristocracy had no interest in developing infrastructure because they just imported stuff from Britain by sea and the Mississippi River and demand was chronically lovely because huge swaths of the labor market were unpaid slaves. Meanwhile a disproportionate amount of money and free labor had to be wasted on a preposterous police state because they lived in permanent fear of slave rebellions. By the time of the Civil War they were going through people's mail and recieving abolitionist literature had been made a crime in many states.

This should sound familiar to modern America. :smith:

Modern policing came pretty much directly from the Southern slave patrols/KKK

Lightning Knight
Feb 24, 2012

Pray for Answer

LunarShadow posted:

Modern policing came pretty much directly from the Southern slave patrols/KKK

Basically. Just about everything in American politics has the stain of slavery on it. We are in a very literal sense a nation built on and around the concept of chattel slavery. It was a relatively new and untested concept in its day and its proliferation was disastrous.

LunarShadow
Aug 15, 2013


Lightning Knight posted:

Basically. Just about everything in American politics has the stain of slavery on it. We are in a very literal sense a nation built on and around the concept of chattel slavery. It was a relatively new and untested concept in its day and its proliferation was disastrous.

I know, just wanted to point out that it wasn't coincidence cause your post , I imagine unintentionally, kinda implied it was.

Geostomp
Oct 22, 2008

Unite: MASH!!
~They've got the bad guys on the run!~

Lightning Knight posted:

Slavery is one of those types of economic moral hazards that are bad for the economy and don't make sense in the aggregate but are perfectly fine from a purely selfish standpoint it makes sense because you get to benefit from significantly cheaper labor. Asking "isn't that bad for the economy?" is the wrong question because the people in question only care about their own gains.

Funnily enough however slavery being bad for the aggregate economy is part of why the antebellum South was in tatters economically. The aristocracy had no interest in developing infrastructure because they just imported stuff from Britain by sea and the Mississippi River and demand was chronically lovely because huge swaths of the labor market were unpaid slaves. Meanwhile a disproportionate amount of money and free labor had to be wasted on a preposterous police state because they lived in permanent fear of slave rebellions. By the time of the Civil War they were going through people's mail and recieving abolitionist literature had been made a crime in many states.

This should sound familiar to modern America. :smith:

Once again, we learn nothing from history because we think ourselves above it all.

Lightning Knight
Feb 24, 2012

Pray for Answer

LunarShadow posted:

I know, just wanted to point out that it wasn't coincidence cause your post , I imagine unintentionally, kinda implied it was.

Ah, no the implication I was going for was that little has changed. :negative:

McCloud
Oct 27, 2005


So what this can be summed up as is this:
Prisoners are owned by private corporations, and the rich use prisoners to siphon money for their own needs. I thought as much, just figured I'd confirm my suspicions.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

McCloud posted:

So what this can be summed up as is this:
Prisoners are owned by private corporations, and the rich use prisoners to siphon money for their own needs. I thought as much, just figured I'd confirm my suspicions.

Don't forget that the rich have successfully convinced everyone else that they too could one day become rich, so it would be ridiculous to do things like expect them to take less profit and hire people at real wages. No, they would have to pass the costs on to the consumer.

DC Murderverse
Nov 10, 2016

"Tell that to Zod's snapped neck!"

I had never read much about Jesse Jackson's presidential runs before, but this Jamelle Bouie article does a really great job of making the case that his rhetoric is the way the Democratic party needs to trend in the future. His argument on Twitter has been that the idea of getting rid of or ignoring identity politics does nothing but pour more cement over the idea that "white straight male" is not an identity, but the norm, and this is probably the best way I've seen him present it (since Twitter is kinda poo poo for actually outlining ideas that don't fit in a tweet or two).

I also had never read or heard Jackson's speech from the 1988 DNC. As it turns out, if someone "earns" the reputation of a race baiter, whether or not it's warranted, they get slowly ignored no matter what they have to say. Jesse Jackson is cool.

quote:

When I was a child growing up in Greenville, South Carolina, and grandmamma could not afford a blanket, she didn’t complain, and we did not freeze. Instead she took pieces of old cloth—patches, wool, silk, gabardine, crockersack—only patches, barely good enough to wipe off your shoes with. But they didn’t stay that way very long. With sturdy hands and a strong cord, she sewed them together into a quilt, a thing of beauty and power and culture. Now, Democrats, we must build such a quilt.

Farmers, you seek fair prices, and you are right—but you cannot stand alone. Your patch is not big enough. Workers, you fight for fair wages, you are right—but your patch labor is not big enough.

Women, you seek comparable worth and pay equity, you are right—but your patch is not big enough. Women, mothers, who seek Head Start, and day care and prenatal care on the front side of life, relevant jail care and welfare on the back side of life, you are right—but your patch is not big enough.

Students, you seek scholarships, you are right—but your patch is not big enough. Blacks and Hispanics, when we fight for civil rights, we are right—but our patch is not big enough. Gays and lesbians, when you fight against discrimination and a cure for AIDS, you are right—but your patch is not big enough.

Lightning Knight
Feb 24, 2012

Pray for Answer

DC Murderverse posted:

I had never read much about Jesse Jackson's presidential runs before, but this Jamelle Bouie article does a really great job of making the case that his rhetoric is the way the Democratic party needs to trend in the future. His argument on Twitter has been that the idea of getting rid of or ignoring identity politics does nothing but pour more cement over the idea that "white straight male" is not an identity, but the norm, and this is probably the best way I've seen him present it (since Twitter is kinda poo poo for actually outlining ideas that don't fit in a tweet or two).

I also had never read or heard Jackson's speech from the 1988 DNC. As it turns out, if someone "earns" the reputation of a race baiter, whether or not it's warranted, they get slowly ignored no matter what they have to say. Jesse Jackson is cool.

Every time I suggest this strategy - recruit and endorse minority candidates with drive and skill to run a populist message for everyone - I get yelled at with broadly similar arguments that you would expect against affirmative action. White dude progressives can't even conceive of not running the movement.

That picture of Jesse Jackson is magnificent though. :allears:

DC Murderverse
Nov 10, 2016

"Tell that to Zod's snapped neck!"

Lightning Knight posted:

Every time I suggest this strategy - recruit and endorse minority candidates with drive and skill to run a populist message for everyone - I get yelled at with broadly similar arguments that you would expect against affirmative action. White dude progressives can't even conceive of not running the movement.

That picture of Jesse Jackson is magnificent though. :allears:


At a rally in 1984, some of those farmers arrived wearing paper bags over their heads, to obscure their faces. It wasn’t until later that Jackson learned they were trying to hide their identities from farm bureau officials. “I looked out there, all these guys in hoods. Sort of a little moment there."

Veyrall
Apr 23, 2010

The greatest poet this
side of the cyberpocalypse
That was the most uplifting thing I've read in a while. Thanks.

VikingofRock
Aug 24, 2008




On the topic of slavery, can anyone recommend any good resources on the difference between chattel slavery in the USA and slavery before that? Every now and then I'll run into a person who claims that there was nothing uniquely terrible about US slavery (because the Romans had slaves!) and I'd like a resource to point them to to get educated.

Schizotek
Nov 8, 2011

I say, hey, listen to me!
Stay sane inside insanity!!!
Also Rome (esp the 'Republic') was an overfetishized shithole even by the standards of ancient empires. They shouldn't be seen as a role model for anything.

there wolf
Jan 11, 2015

by Fluffdaddy

VikingofRock posted:

On the topic of slavery, can anyone recommend any good resources on the difference between chattel slavery in the USA and slavery before that? Every now and then I'll run into a person who claims that there was nothing uniquely terrible about US slavery (because the Romans had slaves!) and I'd like a resource to point them to to get educated.

The correct response to "US slavery wasn't so bad because other people had slaves" is an incredulous look and "and you think that makes it o.k?"

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

VikingofRock posted:

On the topic of slavery, can anyone recommend any good resources on the difference between chattel slavery in the USA and slavery before that? Every now and then I'll run into a person who claims that there was nothing uniquely terrible about US slavery (because the Romans had slaves!) and I'd like a resource to point them to to get educated.

Well, IIRC, the Roman system wasn't so heavily rooted in race (Romans could become slaves too), which made it much easier to escape - specific races were not perceived as subhuman 'natural slaves' to nearly the same extent. Could be wrong on that, though.

xthetenth
Dec 30, 2012

Mario wasn't sure if this Jeb guy was a good influence on Yoshi.

Darth Walrus posted:

Well, IIRC, the Roman system wasn't so heavily rooted in race (Romans could become slaves too), which made it much easier to escape - specific races were not perceived as subhuman 'natural slaves' to nearly the same extent. Could be wrong on that, though.

Also freedom for slaves seemed to be a thing that actually happened once in a while.

Morby
Sep 6, 2007

there wolf posted:

The correct response to "US slavery wasn't so bad because other people had slaves" is an incredulous look and "and you think that makes it o.k?"

That's my same response to the "Africans sold other Africans!!!" argument.

Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Darth Walrus posted:

Well, IIRC, the Roman system wasn't so heavily rooted in race (Romans could become slaves too), which made it much easier to escape - specific races were not perceived as subhuman 'natural slaves' to nearly the same extent. Could be wrong on that, though.

No you're on the right track. Slavery in the ancient world was a related-but-distinct beast compared with 19th century plantation slavery, in part because ideas of race that permeate the latter did not exist in the former. I mean sure, Romans thought of just about everyone who wasn't them as barbaric to one degree or another (save a few lucky ones like the Greeks), but that didn't necessarily translate into meaning they were destined or suited exclusively for lives of forced labor. Similarly, the boundary between the lowest classes of Roman citizens (particularly the proletarii) and slaves was much more permeable in both directions (albeit more up than down, after the abolition of debt slavery in the 4th century BCE) than the hard racial lines of American slavery, with much more frequent manumissions (accompanied entry into a liminal state of partial citizenship).

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

xthetenth posted:

Also freedom for slaves seemed to be a thing that actually happened once in a while.

Also also, anyone, literally anyone, the richest slaveowners included, could potentially become a slave themselves if they became unlucky enough in life/pissed off the wrong people/lost a war. The poorest white dude in the South knew he could never become a slave, let alone the white dudes who actually owned black people.

Meanwhile, manumission was an occasional thing throughout slavery, but in the run-up to the civil war, various states in the South were passing laws saying that if a black slave was manumitted he had to leave the state within x weeks or he was free game to be re-enslaved by anyone who cared to. They were really doubling down on the white==definitely free, black==definitely not thing in the 1850s.

Lightning Knight
Feb 24, 2012

Pray for Answer

xthetenth posted:

Also freedom for slaves seemed to be a thing that actually happened once in a while.

It was actually a thing that happened in early American slavery too. The transition from general enslavement of the poor to chattel slavery focused on race is very interesting and forms the basis for the argument that white identity as a construct was pushed in part in America to entrench white landowners by pitting former white slaves and poor people against black slaves. Of course race is a self-perpetuating memetic system so it's not so easy to put down with simple class politics, but the intersection of class and race politics in America is the story of the nation.

As to good sources, I don't have any specific academic stuff on hand sadly. :(

R. Mute
Jul 27, 2011

It's also worth pointing out the context in which Roman and American slavery took place. Anti-slavery sentiment wasn't exactly as prevalent during Roman times as it was during American slavery. If it existed, it was limited to isolated philosophical standpoints and certainly didn't take the form of any type of abolitionist movements. While abolitionist sentiments weren't commonplace during the entirety of American slavery, by the time the USA was formed, it had gained significant traction throughout the world. Historians tend to shy away from judging the past, especially based on modern standards - but even by the standards of the times, American slavery turned into more of an ugly outlier with every year of its existence.

Either way, comparing the two is basically committing a historical fallacy for a reason.

Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Lightning Knight posted:

It was actually a thing that happened in early American slavery too. The transition from general enslavement of the poor to chattel slavery focused on race is very interesting and forms the basis for the argument that white identity as a construct was pushed in part in America to entrench white landowners by pitting former white slaves and poor people against black slaves. Of course race is a self-perpetuating memetic system so it's not so easy to put down with simple class politics, but the intersection of class and race politics in America is the story of the nation.

Yeah, the danger of manumitted slaves making common cause with poor whites was one of the chief reasons South Carolina restricted manumissions, making it essentially impossible without a direct act of the state legislature by the 1820s. Similarly, after 1806 Virginia required freed slaves to leave the state within a year of manumission or be re-enslaved, with more or less ended the practice.

quote:

As to good sources, I don't have any specific academic stuff on hand sadly. :(

Just to scratch the surface, some good reads on slavery, particularly with an eye to race-class relations, in the early republic/ante-bellum period are: Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South by Brenda Stevenson, Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion and Identity in Gabriel's Virginia, 1730–1810 by James Sibley, and of course Winthrop Jordan's White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812.

Militant Lesbian
Oct 3, 2002
On the topic of slavery and how it's still affecting America, I would like to mention the book Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters. It's an alternate history novel set in a US where the Civil War never happened and slavery is still legal in 4 states in the year 2016. It revolves around a free black man who's working (under duress) as a bounty hunter to track down escaped slaves in the northern states, but the real genius of the book is how it shows how much of modern society is still the same despite the real world having abolished slavery. The way he shows constant microaggressions and institutional bias against black people in his world mirrors our own world, and really shows how little actually changed by our abolition of slavery.

From NPR's review of the book:

quote:

"It's a world, for instance, where the righteous pride themselves on eating food and buying clothes that have the so-called clean hands seal of approval, meaning they haven't been produced by slave labor."

It goes heavily into the whole problem of white folk agreeing that it's a bad thing, any paying lip service to the idea of abolition, but not actually putting forth any real effort to get rid of it when doing so might mean inconvenience for themselves, and touching on ideas like the white people running the so-called underground airlines are working to get slaves to freedom, but are reluctant to have any black people actually have any agency in running things because, of course, the white man is the perfect saviour to come in and rescue all those poor helpless souls, and it is the white man's burden to bear.

I'm actually pretty shocked that the writer is a white guy because the book as a whole is so drat woke, but it exists and it's a good read, especially if you can get some of those wishy washy white moderates to read it and realize that they need to do something besides blame minorities for things like Trump.


botany posted:

There's a couple of wrong assumptions here.
First off, not all prisons are state prisons. The private prison industry is large and, thanks to the election of Trump, growing massively.

Ah, one small correction here, at the present it is actually beginning the process of shrinking: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/18/justice-department-says-it-will-end-use-of-private-prisons/

At least until Trump takes office and of course does the boneheaded thing we can all expect him to do and start expanding private prisons again despite all evidence showing that they're no cheaper and not as effective as government owned prisons. But under Obama at least, we had started getting rid of them.

Militant Lesbian fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Nov 29, 2016

botany
Apr 27, 2013

by Lowtax

HotCanadianChick posted:

Ah, one small correction here, at the present it is actually beginning the process of shrinking: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/18/justice-department-says-it-will-end-use-of-private-prisons/

On the federal level. This doesn't impact state decisions. Coincidentally, as your own article points out:

quote:

While experts said the directive is significant, privately run federal prisons house only a fraction of the overall population of inmates. The vast majority of the incarcerated in America are housed in state prisons — rather than federal ones — and Yates’ memo does not apply to any of those, even the ones that are privately run.

And that's an article from August. You're wrong on the current trend as well:

http://www.citylab.com/crime/2016/11/why-private-prison-stocks-are-soaring/507626/

quote:

Among the big winners buoyed by Donald Trump’s victory? The private prison industry. Shares of CoreCivic (formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America) and GEO Group, the two biggest players in the business, jumped 43 and 21 percent, respectively, the day after the election.

Over the last week, their fortunes have continued to rise as Trump’s recent public statements affirm his aggressive deportation plans.

Tiny Brontosaurus
Aug 1, 2013

by Lowtax

HotCanadianChick posted:

On the topic of slavery and how it's still affecting America, I would like to mention the book Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters.

That book sounds really interesting but please call us black people,. not "blacks."

Militant Lesbian
Oct 3, 2002

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

That book sounds really interesting but please call us black people,. not "blacks."

Edited, apologies.

Tiny Brontosaurus
Aug 1, 2013

by Lowtax

HotCanadianChick posted:

Edited, apologies.

The blessings of Oprah upon you



And here's a fun article about our queen Hey Y'all Oprah Called Me

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

My friend works at a recording studio and a little while ago they had some sort of secret client. Suddenly a ridiculous amount of security showed up. She thought it was going to be some head of state. It was Oprah!

Calibanibal
Aug 25, 2015

VikingofRock posted:

On the topic of slavery, can anyone recommend any good resources on the difference between chattel slavery in the USA and slavery before that? Every now and then I'll run into a person who claims that there was nothing uniquely terrible about US slavery (because the Romans had slaves!) and I'd like a resource to point them to to get educated.

THE book on this specific topic (comparison of systems/types of slavery) is David Brion Davis' The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture. Do note that it was written in the 60s and older editions still contain the word 'negro'

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.

DC Murderverse posted:

I had never read much about Jesse Jackson's presidential runs before, but this Jamelle Bouie article does a really great job of making the case that his rhetoric is the way the Democratic party needs to trend in the future. His argument on Twitter has been that the idea of getting rid of or ignoring identity politics does nothing but pour more cement over the idea that "white straight male" is not an identity, but the norm, and this is probably the best way I've seen him present it (since Twitter is kinda poo poo for actually outlining ideas that don't fit in a tweet or two).

I also had never read or heard Jackson's speech from the 1988 DNC. As it turns out, if someone "earns" the reputation of a race baiter, whether or not it's warranted, they get slowly ignored no matter what they have to say. Jesse Jackson is cool.

I watched that speech when it was live on TV. It was one of the rare moments when I felt that politicians could be more than power-hungry shitbirds that stepped on the people they were supposed to represent.

My patch is not big enough. I'd vote for Jackson in a heartbeat.

Veyrall
Apr 23, 2010

The greatest poet this
side of the cyberpocalypse
Me too :(

negromancer
Aug 20, 2014

by FactsAreUseless

Calibanibal posted:

THE book on this specific topic (comparison of systems/types of slavery) is David Brion Davis' The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture. Do note that it was written in the 60s and older editions still contain the word 'negro'

I don't mind the word negro. TBH, I don't think I've ever met another black person that has been bothered by the word negro. I think that's in part by it being the preferred term (relative to everything else we were called then) and you would frequently hear and see it in Civil Rights Era media.

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blackguy32
Oct 1, 2005

Say, do you know how to do the walk?
Has there ever been a black Superman? I was at the gym and started thinking about how the movie Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman might have played out if Superman was black. Like how would the World react to basically a god figure being a black person.

Have any comic books touched on that kind of subject matter?

negromancer posted:

I don't mind the word negro. TBH, I don't think I've ever met another black person that has been bothered by the word negro. I think that's in part by it being the preferred term (relative to everything else we were called then) and you would frequently hear and see it in Civil Rights Era media.

I know that in Academic papers, it is a big no-no. But there are still organizations out there that still use it for historical reasons. Same as with the term colored. I do remember that my dad used to call me "negro" when he was mad at me about something.

blackguy32 fucked around with this message at 08:25 on Nov 30, 2016

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