Said George W. Bush, appearing today, along with President Obama and Chief Justice Roberts, at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Nice picture at the link of Michelle Obama warmly hugging Bush.
Here's Time Magazine's transcription of what Obama said. Excerpt:
This is the place to understand how protests and love of country don’t merely coexist, but inform each other. How men can probably win the gold for their country, but still insist on raising a black-gloved fist. How we can wear an I Can’t Breathe T-shirt, and still grieve for fallen police officers. Here, the American wear the razor-sharp uniform of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, belongs alongside the cape of the Godfather of Soul.Obama doesn't mention Donald Trump, but last week, Obama said:
We have shown the world we can float like butterflies, and sting like bees, that we can rocket into space like Mae Jemison, steal home like Jackie, rock like Jimmy [sic!], stir the pot like Richard Pryor. And we can be sick and tired of being sick and tired like Fannie Lou Hamer, and still rock steady like Aretha Franklin....
I, too, am America. It is a glorious story, the one that’s told here. It is complicated, and it is messy, and it is full of contradictions, as all great stories are, as Shakespeare is, as Scripture is. And it’s a story that perhaps needs to be told now more than ever.
"You may have heard Hillary's opponent in this election say that there's never been a worse time to be a black person. I mean, he missed that whole civics lesson about slavery or Jim Crow.... But we've got a museum for him to visit, so he can tune in. We will educate him."It would, in fact, be a good idea for Trump to visit the museum, but I've got to say that Obama distorted Trump's statement. Trump did not say "there's never been a worse time to be a black person." That's Obama's paraphrase. Trump said:
"We're going to rebuild our inner cities because our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they've ever been in before. Ever. Ever. Ever... You take a look at the inner cities, you get no education, you get no jobs, you get shot walking down the street. They're worse -- I mean, honestly, places like Afghanistan are safer than some of our inner cities."It's a statement about "African-American communities." A slave was not living in an "African-American community." And Jim Crow was an evil system of exclusion, but to say that is not to understand what life was like in the communities where black people did live. I understand the political motivation for paraphrasing Trump's remark the way Obama did, but that paraphrase pretends not to see what Trump was saying. It's much harder — and much more important — to try to refute Trump's inflammatory statement if you're precise about what he said. And even if you did amass the historical and present-day journalistic record to refute it, why would you be smug?
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89 comments:
"I, too, am America."
The museum was built for Barack. It is all about Barack, 24/7, 365.
Nice catch on Hendrix.
They come to see what they want to see, but they never come to know.
Kinky Friedman wrote that line in his song Wild Man of Borneo. It is as true of Obama and his sycophants as it was with the people Kinky was writing about.
The Museum of African American History is an incredibly ugly building from the outside. I haven't seen the inside yet.
My brother once said years ago that the Mall has become the place to put monuments to assuage our collective sense of guilt. The Holocaust Museum, the Vietnam Memorial, Museum of the American Indian & now this.
Obama really meant to say he would re-educate Trump. That's the goal of all liberals: re-educate those Deplorables just like Mao did.
"I am America..." Obama really said that?
I guess his deep command of history and the music of the generations was working there, summoning the ghost of the Sun King.
"L'etat, c'est moi."
I do not understand all this hyper-ventilation about "the terrible things Trump has said." You go to look at any one thing and it turns out that he did not say what they say he did.
And for things like, say, immigration, what Trump has said we should do is actually mild stuff compared to what the existing laws require us to do.
Actually being an American is playing by American rules, not anything else.
We're going to rebuild our inner cities because our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they've ever been in before. Ever. Ever. Ever
How is it harder to refute this. This statement is a lie. Although there has been a recent uptick in violence in certain cities in the last couple years, the level of violence and poverty is still lower than it was thirty years ago. And how on earth can you claim that African Americans who suffered under Jim Crow or slavery did not live in African American communities?
I know you are totally in the bag for Trump, but to claim that Obama's point unfairly represented what Trump said is just stupid.
Trump is a son of a marriage of first and second generation immigrants to the New York. Slavery and Jim Crow Segregation of the South were not part of the America they came here to live in.
So it's just being white skinned that makes them racists according to Soros's Racial Division Warriors.
Only thousands?
What would have happened if Obama had issued a "signing statement" at his swearing in in 2009 explaining which laws of the United States he intended to uphold and which not?
Freder,
You don't understand the concept of a community.
Is GWB voting for Hillary like his father is?
Obama's ancestors were not American slaves. His mother was a white academic. His father was a Kenyan economist. Obama was not raised in the inner city. He was raised on Oahu by his grandparents -- one a businessman, the other a banker. He attended a private prep school on Oahu, then attended Occidental college in California, then Columbia, then Harvard Law School.
Obama has more in common with the Bushes, and Trump, and Hillary, then he has with American Blacks.
Or me, for that matter. At the time Obama was a student at Punahou Academy, I was a student at West High School in Minneapolis.
Where is the monument to all the African countries where the blacks sold their fellow blacks into slavery?
None?
Or where is the monument to all the African countries where the blacks sell people into slavery NOW?
None?
Seems like blacks only point out whites that over one hundred and fifty years had HALF of the states involved in slavery.. and had a very bloody war to free those slaves. But I guess that is no biggie to them. Nor is black on black murders, robberies, rapes, gangs, drugs....
No sweat. But they got a beef with what was done long ago by some people who are way way dead.
I understand the political motivation for paraphrasing Trump's remark the way Obama did, but that paraphrase pretends not to see what Trump was saying. It's much harder — and much more important — to try to refute Trump's inflammatory statement if you're precise about what he said. And even if you did amass the historical and present-day journalistic record to refute it, why would you be smug?
Obama’s smugness lies is his confidence that his adoring fan club otherwise known as the MSM will uncritically run the video while simultaneously parroting Obama’s language as talking points in all their progressive populated cable news “panels” and leftwing “guest analysts.”
It’s a cherished and time-honored technique that usually works beautifully on a naïve public getting their news from traditional TV networks and print media, especially when coupled with a mundane GOP establishment candidate, conditioned into timidity by decades of media thrashings and political defeats in the halls of Congress.
But with Trump they seemed to sense early on that the old paradigms might not apply. Thus, the hysterical and self-defeating NeverTrumpers and outbreaks of Trump Derangement Syndrome at every major cable news channel, even FoxNews. It’s all a symptom of a deep-seated anxiety, made all the worse and glaringly obvious by trying to suppress it.
Trump wanting to renegotiate unfair trade agreements, especially when other nations cheat and do not even comply with current agreements, morphs into Trump calling for a “trade war,” according to such pundit luminaries as Charles Krauthammer. And George Will went completely off his rigidly ideological rocker. Sad. But also informative of the level of illogical rationalization from the rightwing establishment.
That’s just one example of out of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of distortions, selective editing and outright lies about Trump over the past months.
Huh. What a shock. It appears Barack Hussein Obama is a thin-skinned, duplicitous,obfuscating, liar.
Who knew?
These sorts of ethnic celebration museums are much beloved of academics, but they involve no intellectual rigor at all. (Okay, that may not be a coincidence.) These sorts of museums don't explore contradictions or problems or hypocrisy or even absolute evil within the black community. Instead, they function like a Hall of Fame, with unabashed and unthinking celebration of their theme. Not that there's anything wrong with that, if you are the kind who thinks pushpin is as good as Plato.
Any truthful statement about African-American communities today would document one of the communities most notable characteristics - black-on-black homicides.
What's that phrase again, "Wallowing in self-pity."
I would like Althouse's opinion on the aesthetics of the building itself. It's an architectural monstrosity in my opinion.
@ Freder Your claim is bogus. From Inner-City Poverty in the United States by The Committee on National Urban Policy, National Research Council (1990) "A disturbing finding, however, was that poverty appeared to be worse in many large cities than it had been 10 and 20 years before. More significantly, poverty appears to be becoming more spatially concentrated in inner-city neighborhoods."
This was the first piece I Googled to see if I could confirm your claim that things in the inner cities are just peachy. The above excerpt was in the first paragraph of the Introduction. Hard to miss.
The headline of this link "Poverty Rates Remain Stubbornly High in Big Cities".
Your claim of best in 30 years gets the bullshit tag - and if you want really depressing information Google "Inner city poverty". Trump apparently knows whereof he speaks.
Yeah, Afghanistan is probably safer than most U.S. inner cities. Syria probably was safer too, until Obama fucked Syria up.
Nobody should have to live in the inner cities. Give each family 40 acres and a John Deere tractor.
This is my favourite humour site.
So the real question, I take it, is:
Were blacks HAPPIER under Jim Crow?
Not more Free, but Happier?
Is it psychologically easier to KNOW their is a ceiling above you, or to BELIEVE there is a ceiling above you?
What leads to more frustration?
On a side note: I think Halle Berry is hot.
I am The Replacement Laslo.
Freder Frederson said... [hush][hide comment]
We're going to rebuild our inner cities because our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they've ever been in before. Ever. Ever. Ever
How is it harder to refute this. This statement is a lie. Although there has been a recent uptick in violence in certain cities in the last couple years, the level of violence and poverty is still lower than it was thirty years ago. And how on earth can you claim that African Americans who suffered under Jim Crow or slavery did not live in African American communities?etc etc.
Yeah, abandoned houses for free in Detroit and Baltimore.
No jobs, cheap drugs and guns, everything rosy, according to something printed in a book or on a piece of paper or the internet. Take a walk through the "inner city", give a first person report.
Freder Frederson said...
"We're going to rebuild our inner cities because our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they've ever been in before. Ever. Ever. Ever
How is it harder to refute this. This statement is a lie. Although there has been a recent uptick in violence in certain cities in the last couple years, the level of violence and poverty is still lower than it was thirty years ago"
So, Freder, are you currently living in one of these modern African-American paradises? No? Planning to move to one soon? Freder, please don't tell me that you are one of those hypocritical white liberals who get all worked up about how racist other white people are, but know better than to go anywhere near black people.
And Freder, while I'm on the subject of your non-racism, did it ever occur to you that the fact there *is* such thing as a "black community" indicates that white people are practicing racial discrimination? That's right, Freder. I live among white people because I am a racist. I don't want to be preyed upon by black criminals. I'm straight up about it.
Where do you live, Freder? Does the store on your corner sell individual cigarettes?
When can we expect a Chinese-American or Jewish-American museums on the mall? After all, they would represent cultures vastly superior to that inflicted on the USA by too many Blacks.
Ow! Ow! Ow!
All those dead Yankee soldiers don't get much respect these days, do they?
Could it be that we are "Past Patriotism"?
I hope the hell not.
Though trend-setters applaud.
Perhaps we should offer each of these discontents $50K to emigrate. Maybe Germany or Belgium will take them in.
BTW, I might have suggested the same thing about my leftist-radical movement of the 60's had I been on the other side. And I don't think many of us would have taken the offer.
And another thing: Calling black people 'African-Americans' is a farce. Most have older lineage in this country than do the majority of whites. If people don't want to be just 'Americans', then, well...fuck them!
"...why would you be smug? "
I know it's a puzzle. He's NEVER been smug before.
Smug, Smaug, same diff.
The only one doing any paraphrasing is you and all the other Trump supporters. It's simply beyond arrogant to apply any superlative regarding black Americans' conditions while ignoring every system of oppression that whites subjected them to for 90% of their residence on this continent. Trump says things like this, as do his fellow travelers here and elsewhere, to deny the legacy of their oppression at the hands of white Americans - elite and otherwise. He and the rest of you also do the same when implying that the only black president is primarily responsible for these superlatives. You feed into your evil narratives of how they are both not doing enough (not that there's no truth to that) and that the only presidential role model they know has only made it worse. Obama has not made things worse for blacks. The same racist Tea Party movements that held racist signs aloft, along with their benefactors, are to blame for this economy and you know it. They set out to fail the economy and to make Obama a failure and then have the nerve to ride along as white knights to save everything. The arrogance is repulsive. It is one of a piece of all anti-black oppression that came before it and makes it impossible to separate what they or anyone identifying with them ARE responsible for and what they are NOT.
My, what a long ejaculation!
It's simply beyond arrogant to apply any superlative regarding black Americans' conditions while ignoring every system of oppression that Democrats subjected them to for 90% of their residence on this continent.
FIFY
"The same racist Tea Party movements that held racist signs aloft, along with their benefactors, are to blame for this economy and you know it."
R&B's sole piece of photographic evidence will be that photo from several years ago of a single Confederate flag taken in front of gate. Wait forr it.
Henry Louis Gates Jr.:
" Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America.
And how many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America? Only about 388,000. That’s right: a tiny percentage.
In fact, the overwhelming percentage of the African slaves were shipped directly to the Caribbean and South America; Brazil received 4.86 million Africans alone! Some scholars estimate that another 60,000 to 70,000 Africans ended up in the United States after touching down in the Caribbean first, so that would bring the total to approximately 450,000 Africans who arrived in the United States over the course of the slave trade. "
But yeah, of course the only slave experience that anyone cares about is the US experience.
I'm looking forward to seeing it; I especially want to see the wing dealing with African-American Contributions to Science and Technology.
to deny the legacy of their (Black people) oppression at the hands of white Americans
Name a country anywhere in the world where the average Black person has a higher standard of living than poor Black people in the United States.
Name a majority Black country you'd rather live in.
It is long past time to quit making excuses.
The museum looks wonderful and it would be fascinating to see.
However, we seem to be in this moment of time where activists want to keep punishing the country for our history. But history can't change, just as it can't be erased. Acknowledge the history, acknowledge the changes, and keep moving forward.
You know, in a marriage where one spouse cheats, the cheating spouse will often leave the marriage because he thinks he won't ever be forgiven. That's kind of what this moment in time is feeling like. A past fight that keeps getting hashed over and over, but what can we do about it now? All of our problems are not because of that past.
I propose a museum of political outrage.
I'm looking forward to seeing it; I especially want to see the wing dealing with African-American Contributions to Science and Technology.
The average US black IQ is 86. There's a huge IQ overlap, but the difference shows up in public in two places
1. Aggregate statistics
2. Extreme case statistics, the extremely smart, where the odds go way more heavily against blacks.
In other cases, i.e. in normal life, the overlap prevails.
In modern politics of grievance, 1 is blamed on pervasive discrimination (cruel outcome based affirmative action rules result), and 2 is blamed on lack of opportunity.
The bad feedback into normal life is shutting down black ambition by saying it's useless to try in the face of this drummed-up discrimination.
You'll succeed just like anybody else if you get rid of the grievance chip-on-the-shoulder.
While reading the biographies of people like Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton, etc I was struck by the way they treated their slaves. There appears to be a lot more independence than is often represented. Field hands and their families-yes families- were often directed into the wilderness to clear it. Sent out with all the necessary equipment to live on the frontier. Including firearms. House slaves, if asked to perform duties outside of their normal tasks, say at a party or a wedding were tipped by the guests. The money being heirs to do with what they liked. Then there is the fact that in many locations in the plantation south whites were thin on the ground. Slaves outnumbered the whites by a wide margin and yet we hear very little of slave revolutions and outright murder. In may cases, after the civil war, former slaves would simply work for wages for their former masters.
This doesn't excuse the institution, but it does indicate that the relationships between masters and slaves were more complicated than we are led to believe.
I'll go out on a limb and assert that share cropping was much more enslaving to ignorant former slaves than outright slavery.
"This museum tells the truth that a country founded on the principles of liberty held thousands in chains."
Wow, who knew?
Ann, an awful lot of your Bush/Obama transcript is off. Who are you relying on?
Other reporters wrote that Obama said, I am American (not America.)
And you've got Bush talking not compete, not not complete. Big difference, especially when you are writing for the black audience.
Do you want to fix your errors and re-submit your work, or let this stand with you taking potshots at something the men did not say?
The Museum being nothing more than monumentalism seen as virtue signaling...GOT to have their seat at the monumentalism table however horribly bad the architecture..
Obama has not made things worse for blacks.
---------------------
Obama has made things worse for pretty much everyone, across the world
Look at the bloody face of the Syrian boy sitting in the back of the ambulance. Look at the streams of refugees with few places left to run to.
That is the lasting legacy of Obama's foreign policy. He simply piled on to what Bush started. When the world needs a Marshall Plan, a real thinker to help these human lives, Obama cut the biggest check to ... Israel. Something funny is going on, if we continue to pretend Obama is a hero in all of this.
His record is almost up.
The results are in.
His black is fading...
What do you all see? Those in academia may have permanently damaged their eyesight, so busy reading reading reading about the past, never lifting their eyes from their studies.
And the entertainers? They suck from the limited brain cells to puff out the lips and bosoms and bottoms, I think. Nobody expects smarts there.
But can we please stop pretending about the brains of the Obamas and the Clintons already? Personally, I'd rather just pour my chump change into the GoldManSachs funnel myself, and just eliminate the need for the middle-man politician to take a cut. Cheaper in the long run to stop pretending.
Is there a computer graphic available yet, with the bloody little Syrian guy saying in broken English, "Thanks Obama."
Thanks indeed, Mr. President.
Best wishes on your pending retirement.
We'll take it from here...
Signed,
the future Americans on the clean-up crew.
The big problem with Bush's comment is that it makes it sound like this is the National Slavery & Bad Bad Whitey Museum. (Maybe it is.) Which of course puts people on the defensive and in default "fuck you and your ugly museum too" mode.
(Please don't shit further on the floor, and then kneel in it, on your way out?)
"James Pawlak said...
When can we expect a Chinese-American or Jewish-American museums on the mall? After all, they would represent cultures vastly superior to that inflicted on the USA by too many Blacks."
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is a block off the Mall, wedged between the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. You might argue that it's about a single event in history, rather than an ethnic minority, but the top headline on the museum's website right now is promoting a film about antisemitism today.
I'm not going to touch the second half of what I quoted, except to leave it there quoted.
Funny how this story made NPR, but not the story that Obama has been caught in a huge lie. But don't worry Hillary lovers, you are getting all of the news!
The Holocaust Museum has always been kind of a puzzle to me. I think we can all agree that genocide sucks. Why does this genocide suck more than all others?
rhhardin said...
I'm looking forward to seeing it; I especially want to see the wing dealing with African-American Contributions to Science and Technology.
Don't be ridiculous. Just think of Miles Bennett Dyson, inventor of Skynet! And all those hackers and chief surgeons and there was that black nerd in Die Hard...
Okay okay, in the real world there was Benjamin Banneker, pinch-hitting architect for the District of Columbia; George Washington Carver, the original Mr Peanut; and Dr. Charles Drew, pioneer in blood transfusion. There's this real world Dyson person, I don't know what he's actually done, but he's famous for being a genius of some kind. I'm sure there are others, perhaps quite a few.
But yeah, odds are if it was a scientific discovery it was made by a Jew or a WASP or some other European, probably a man. John Derbyshire doubtless has all this detail. Of course now the Chinese and Indians are coming to play... and with all the shoving of women down Science's throat these days, certainly something must come of that someday.
The black people I went to school with at Bronx Science are on the same level of intelligence as everybody else who went to Bronx Science. Certainly my good friend Jeff is on a level with me. But then they say there aren't enough of them and they want to destroy the standards. Why don't they do what Heinlein said and just give everybody a PhD?
It can't be a cultural thing, it must be a universal thing to have a drive to achieve and a pride and joy in achievement. Please don't tell me that that's acting white. I really couldn't bear it.
I will miss Michelle. She has been a great First Lady. Whoever wins, her replacement will be a big step down.
Paco Wové: The Holocaust Museum has always been kind of a puzzle to me. I think we can all agree that genocide sucks. Why does this genocide suck more than all others?
Naturally people are going to focus on/feel emotionally involved with crimes against their own. (Jews and the Holocaust, Armenians and the Armenian genocide, Irish and the Great Famine, etc.) Lots of American Jews had direct ties to this, the Holocaust took place in Europe and is part of the history of WWII, and the overwhelming majority of Americans were of European descent - thus more Holocaust knowledge/memorials/museums.
What I don't get is why there's a Holocaust Museum on the U.S. National Mall. OK, it's not on the Mall (one building down), but "mallish" enough to suggest it has some specifically American historical import, something to do with us as a people. It doesn't. So its location there has never sat well with me. (Note: I haven't visited the Mall in about a decade. Please don't tell me that the Mall is now lined with museums or memorials dedicated to crimes that have nothing to do with America, committed anywhere against everybody's ancestors. Wouldn't surprise me. Don't belong there, but seems to be the style these days.)
Anglelyne -- So you would be happier if the Holocaust Museum didn't exist? Or do you just want it far enough from the Mall to make it more difficult for tourists to go to.
Steve Uhr: Anglelyne -- So you would be happier if the Holocaust Museum didn't exist? Or do you just want it far enough from the Mall to make it more difficult for tourists to go to.
Why do you hate Armenians, Ukrainians, Rwandans, and the Irish, Steve? How far are you going to make tourists walk to find out about them, huh?
I guess you didn't understand Paco's question.
Angelyne: of course America has something to do with it. We stopped it.
And, we don't have those things because we had nothing to do with them and we didn't stop them. We did suck up a lot of the fleeing Irish and probably some of the victims of the others but we weren't there and we didn't do anything. Given the heavy Irish intake here it's surprising that they haven't had some kind of a memorial and in fact I assume they have.
A good place for the Ukrainian Memorial would probably be on the site of the (razed) New York Times building.
I'll bet Einstein couldn't make good BBQ.
Name a country anywhere in the world where the average Black person has a higher standard of living than poor Black people in the United States.
So if someone kept twenty generations of your ancestors enslaved, selectively bred them, prevented them from marrying, and destroyed centuries of wealth, education and posterity that could have been built, you're saying you'd be "happy" to be told you're doing better financially than white people elsewhere in the world? Ok, then. I guess you're a happy whore who can be paid off pretty easily.
Name a majority Black country you'd rather live in.
The American constitution does not say "shall tell blacks that they're better off than in other countries and that it treats them better." It sets out equal standards for government treatment of people regardless of race. That's the standard. It doesn't say anyone should have anything better than in other countries, let alone by race - which would be racist, anyway. Does it tell you that as long as you have something better than whites in Europe then you have no additional rights - let alone to equal protection? Does it say that you can be beheaded for not supporting a theocratic government as long as it's not Islam? You're setting some pretty low standards for yourself, racist.
It is long past time to quit making excuses.
Ha. Looks like you're the one making excuses, dunderhead. You're saying the U.S. government can do whatever it wants to blacks as long as you compare it favorably - by one very narrow measure (and where's your source, BTW?) to some other country. Can it treat everyone else as badly as it wants as long as people can say it's "better" for you than in some other country, also? So we don't behead you. Should we castrate you? Or shoot you by a firing squad? Pretty low standards you have there for upholding human rights and dignity. But then, you're an undignified moron.
Also, I'd guess that blacks as a whole have it better in every British Commonwealth nation than they do in America, as far as institutional racism is concerned. I wonder why that is.
But of course, you don't. Because you're more about your entitlement than you are looking at reality. Get mad, feel entitled, blacks are good-for-nothing complainers who have it worse than you for a good reason, etc., etc., etc. We've heard this whine before, poor white man. Keep whining.
Bad Lieutenant: And, we don't have those things because we had nothing to do with them and we didn't stop them. We did suck up a lot of the fleeing Irish and probably some of the victims of the others but we weren't there and we didn't do anything. Given the heavy Irish intake here it's surprising that they haven't had some kind of a memorial and in fact I assume they have.
We didn't fight WWII to stop the attempted genocide of European Jews, so no, that ex post facto rationale doesn't persuade me. Lot of bad things were stopped by winning WWII. (And lots weren't.) Sure, there are memorials to the victims of the Great Famine, just not on the Mall, where they don't belong. (At least, I bloody well hope there aren't any there, and I'm beaucoup Irish, ancestor-wise). We Americans didn't starve the Irish, and we Americans didn't run death camps.
"Well, it's not really on the Mall" makes a slightly better argument, by my lights.
A good place for the Ukrainian Memorial would probably be on the site of the (razed) New York Times building.
Ha. Good one.
I can't wait to visit the "Sorry We Left You to Die in the Killing Fields" Cambodian-American museum. Especially the "Sydney Schanberg Was Initially Excited about The Khmer Rouge But Holy Crap He Realized He Was Wrong" Wing.
It's fine that this exists. I wish, however, we could honestly simply integrate accomplishments and histories to American museums.
If Obama can raise a blacked gloved hand in a fist and still be patriotic, how come I can't point out the Obama hates America as the most free, and powerful nation the world has ever known, point out that after 8 years, the nation is in worse shape domestically, reviled by our enemies, and doubted by our allies...without being called a racist?
On a broader context, why am I a racist simply because my lineage is of european origin?
I wish, however, we could honestly simply integrate accomplishments and histories to American museums.
You do? Me too.
I wonder what would cause someone to think that such things don't exist, though.
Interesting that some people would think a museum dedicated to AA history has nothing to accomplishment. I'd say that if what black Americans have survived through and still managed to contribute over the centuries doesn't count as accomplishment, I wonder what would? Death? Perishing? No creole food, jazz music, blues or rock and roll? No Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong or Jesse Owens? (Some of whom are obviously showcased in it, anyway). My, my. What ignorance is revealed simply by protesting one's perceived treatment. Makes me think a museum like this is more necessary than ever - the amount of unappreciative attitude heaped on other Americans like that. Very sad.
No gospel music?
How much of the massive and wonderful African American contribution to American culture must certain white Americans deny in order to reject the African American experience generally?
You people embarrass me. As an American. I don't care what color you are; it's downright embarrassing. How much must others be disparaged in order to feel good about oneself? I just don't get it. This perspective of cultural appreciation being a zero-sum game like this... It's like you naturally do what you accuse black Americans of doing when defensively accusing them of being "anti-white," whatever that means.
The Holocaust Museum has always been kind of a puzzle to me. I think we can all agree that genocide sucks. Why does this genocide suck more than all others?
Because it was the culmination of one of the oldest continuous irrational hatreds known to Western civilization. And because it was the largest. And because it showcased just how technologically advanced the Germans could be in their killing, if still quite morally backward.
What I don't get is why there's a Holocaust Museum on the U.S. National Mall. OK, it's not on the Mall (one building down), but "mallish" enough to suggest it has some specifically American historical import, something to do with us as a people. It doesn't. So its location there has never sat well with me.
Probably because America was unusual in deciding that it would have nothing to do with one of the oldest prejudices in dedicating a government that offered "to bigotry no sanction; to persecution no assistance." I don't know if that's really much of a justification, or even a very good one. But it's probably the best rationale.
How much must others be disparaged in order to feel good about oneself?
You should be able to answer that one, R&B.
Does the Holocaust Museum special gifts to the nation and the world of Jewish-American scientists, et. al.?
Since the District Of Columbia will not honor my CCW licence I will not travel there to look at all but one (Guess which one) of those museums. Why? The "government" of the DC is more interested in protecting Black criminals than honest citizens of all races.
You should be able to answer that one, R&B.
Neither critical thinking nor enthusiastic requests to avoid double standards constitute disparagement.
Paco Wové said...
The Holocaust Museum has always been kind of a puzzle to me. I think we can all agree that genocide sucks. Why does this genocide suck more than all others?
Better PR.
Rhythm and Balls: Jewish refugees (who were not any threat at all to the national security of either Germany or the USA) were not allowed to enter the US during the '30's, the exception being a handful of distinguished scientists, artists and actors. Who was President then and which party controlled Congress? Answer: The same president and party that put Americans of Japanese descent in camps.
I am starting to think that Trump is the only candidate that actually cares about the black community. Obama, Hillary, the democrats and the democrat media just want to keep exploiting them for votes.
Most Americans don't really care what color you are. Or where you came from.
No.
We only want to know just a couple of things-
Are you self-identified as American? Is this your country.
Do you love her like we do- warts and all?
Are you a person who takes responsibility for yourself? Do you support yourself to the point where we can count on you to be able to help in a community crisis?
In "mansplaining" terms- are you a "stand-up guy?" (or gal)
If you answer yes- you are our brothers and sisters- Americans. If not, citizen or no, you are not. We have respect for our American family. We do not respect those who live here only to exploit our system.
That's the way it is whether you like it or not.
Live with it.
We do every day.
Re: some who feel Trump is wrong on this:
In 1965, black out-of-wedlock births were 24%.
In 2012, black out-of-wedlock births were 72%
Very bad. Trump is right.
I went into the Holocaust Museum with my girlfriend. The museum itself was nice, but the main exhibit, which required a time reservation, left us both walking out of their looking shell-shocked. The main thing with the Holocaust, compared to other genocides, was that the results were captured on film by the Allied liberators. Unlike, say, the Khmer Rouge's killing fields (which left us only mounds of skulls) or Stalin's atrocities. If the Nazi's had a little more time to cover everything up, leave no survivors just mass graves, then we'd be talking about the Holocaust in the same way we talk about Mao's Great Leap Forward.
So if someone kept twenty generations of your ancestors enslaved, selectively bred them, prevented them from marrying, and destroyed centuries of wealth, education and posterity that could have been built,
20 generations? I can do the math. If you count from the first slaves arriving 1619 to the 1865 14th amendment. link that is 246 years of slavery in the US. 246/20 = 12.6 yrs. That means every single generation would have to have been procreating at the age of 12 or so. Now, while people did produce at younger ages, I refuse to believe that every single black woman had children at that age. Not every one.
Facts are facts. Slavery was a horrible thing. However, being hysterical and exaggerating doesn't make your argument more powerful.
We have not had slavery in this country for over a century and a half. 150 years. No one alive has been a slave. Maybe a great grand parent or other long lived relative, but slavery is in the past. Get the fuck over it. Move on.
I have no white guilt because I am guilty of nothing. My ancestors were Quaker, fought in the Civil war on the Northern side to free the slaves. BLM can go pound sand. Keep it up, though, and I might decide to become a racist. Why not?
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