Writes Emily Lordi, in "The Visual Power of Black Rest/Black people are generally pictured as doing anything but relaxing—as being attacked, or agitating, or performing. The Black Rest Project aims to widen the lens" (The New Yorker).
I don't like to create new tags — you can see I have a tag "I'm not making a new tag for this" — but I have an appropriate tag for this: "idleness." It's been an important tag for me over the years, though I'd never encountered the specific topic of black idleness. Perhaps the topic is avoided because it suggests what has been a racist stereotype: laziness. I happen to have a separate tag, "laziness," and I have blogged about the difference between laziness and idleness.
By the way, let me recommend these 3 books again: "Essays in Idleness" by the Buddhist monk Kenko, "In Praise of Idleness" by Bertrand Russell, and "An Apology for Idlers" by Robert Louis Stevenson. (Those are all Amazon Associates links, and I earn a commission if you use them, but that's not why I'm recommending them.)
पोस्ट्स
७७ टिप्पण्या:
I think the preferred term is “negro lassitude”. On display at locations near you.
Who paid for this Project?
This is what America needs. A Black rest project. The tropes write themselves.
Hey, Ben Crump: Give it a rest!
You! Sunny Hosten! Lean out!
Al Sharpton! Have a snooze!
This is pretty silly.
Unpaid idleness is like unpaid work. Cf. paid work and paid idleness.
"Who paid for this Project?"
I found this — at https://cbvc.nyu.edu/the-black-rest-project — which answers your question if the answer is NYT (The Center for Black Visual Culture is at NYU):
"Using Tricia Hersey’s liberatory framework of “rest is resistance” as inspiration, The Center for Black Visual Culture (CBVC) at the Institute of African American Affairs commits to making Black rest visible. The Black Rest Project (BRP) seeks reparative justice and healing through the exploration of rest as a revolutionary act.... Through strategic partnerships with visionary scholars, cultural workers, artists, and community organizations, the BRP will excavate, curate, and amplify both visual narratives of Black Rest and leisure to create meaningful discourse.... How do we eradicate the lingering feelings of guilt, projected laziness, shame, and worthlessness that often impede Black rest? As America undergoes “The Great Resignation” and re-evaluates its relationship to work, we subject this moment to a deliberately diasporic Black, brown, queer and immigrant lens.""
A person at rest generates less carbon dioxide than an active person.
Sleeping, they generate even less.
This has led to the "Nap for Humanity" movement. It is an environmental movement I fully endorse.
I'm going back to bed. I'm not lazy. I'm saving the planet.
John Henry
Race, race, race, race, race!
Give it a rest.
"all progress is made by a lazy person looking for an easier way" - Lazarus Long
"Be Lazy!" - John Henry
John Henry
So, just to be clear..
Being late is GOOD, if you're a Black.. 'cause you're STICKING IT TO THE MAN
Being lazy is GOOD, if you're a Black.. 'cause you're STICKING IT TO THE MAN
Being illiterate is GOOD, if you're a Black.. 'cause you're STICKING IT TO THE MAN
Being unable to add 2 and 2 is GOOD, if you're a Black.. 'cause you're STICKING IT TO THE MAN
...
Complaining about lack of job prospects is GOOD, if you're a Black.. 'cause THE MAN STUCK IT TO YOU
do i have that right? Just checking. i wouldn't want to make an assumptions
Black idleness and/or laziness is indeed a well-trod stereotype. There's been a lot of research on this topic: the direct stuff is old and the newer stuff is coded to step around accusations of racism. Quite a few academics want to research hot-button topics, but fear losing their jobs and/or cannot get funding to start the projects at all.
In the grander scientific project, Europeans, Asians, and Neanderthals explored and moved to the north as Ice Ages receded. They moved from the tropics to places with severe winters, and they needed to collect, store, and meter their resources to survive the cold/dead seasons. They also needed to build warm houses, make warm clothing, and keep wood fires burning.
There's all kinds of correlational research on school and workplace differences by race and ethnicity -- those who want to find discrimination focus on discrimination alone. A 'clean' scientific project might compare homogenous Asian, European, and African cultures where there is no opportunity for majority/minority discrimination to occur because there simply is no minority population. If the data revealed similar racial patterns then it'd crush the discrimination narrative, so this doesn't get much attention or funding or publicity.
The last high profile academic researcher of race was likely J. Phillipe Rushton of the U. of Western Ontario. He was posthumously 'canceled' as a racist in 2020 after he died in 2012. And his cancellation followed various earlier cancellations of race researchers. The Canadians similarly cancelled Jordan Peterson...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Philippe_Rushton
???
Photos cant tell their own message? It might be understood. Wrapping them up and putting a pretty woke bow on them might attract a Pulitzer or Nobel. Not earn....just attract.
"How do we eradicate the lingering feelings of guilt, projected laziness, shame, and worthlessness that often impede Black rest?"
The answer is quite simple, in my mind. Decrease our love and dedication to western capitalism and the associated norms and rules which are selfish. Stop undervaluing individual people if we don't know how to monetize them.
To be clear, I fully support free market capitalism as crucial for proper allocation of resources and a space in which people can come together and work cooperatively on increasing the resources and efficiencies in society. (The global automotive supply chain is probably one of the most globally cooperative constructive endeavors ever undertaken by mankind. Washington DC and Bejing shoot daily barbs across the media space, but underneath that unproductive layer there are lots of Americans and Chinese people daily cooperating, getting on calls and solving problems, and doing things that are productive.)
The part of capitalism that says I can get more if I pay you less - that part has to be diminished. There is more than enough for all of us to go around, if we'll share it more.
And what's so great about being super-punctual, never taking vacations or relaxing, and working 12-14 hours a day, anyway?
Blacks can do idleness, what they have to prove is that they can do any cognitive work and aren't highly criminal and take care of their kids.
Work on featuring those.
Glenn Loury on the topic
Oso Negro said...
I think the preferred term is “negro lassitude”. On display at locations near you.
Is there a preferred term for "black woman can't get out of bed" ? Since that is the setting for 3 out of 4 photos, that must be the theme.
It would be better if the author didn't try to make this a significant social movement with statements like:
framed by a broader context that makes it seem like an act of resistance rather than a simple fact of life
Just show a bunch of photos of black folks being idle, and end with a paragraph about how all kinds of people occasionally like to stay in bed and getting your hair washed feels splendid.
This is both a fascinating and an exhausting article.
Oh no, another "Woe b Us" Project.
"Lets wallow in self-pity some mo!"
"The Black Rest Project (BRP) seeks reparative justice and healing through the exploration of rest as a revolutionary act. . . . Through strategic partnerships with visionary scholars, cultural workers, artists, and community organizations, the BRP will excavate, curate, and amplify both visual narratives of Black Rest and leisure to create meaningful discourse."
https://cbvc.nyu.edu/the-black-rest-project
Excavate? Uh huh, if you say so.
They apparently really expect the rest of us to take this nonsense seriously.
“… we subject this moment to a deliberately diasporic Black, brown, queer and immigrant lens.”
Under the current rules, isn’t “diaspora” a code word for a group of colonizers?
Stepin Fetchit was lazy. It was a white racist stereotype that blacks were lazy. Now these idiots want blacks to embrace laziness? Who are really hurting blacks today?
Sleep be racist? Is that correct now?
Quayle said: "The part of capitalism that says I can get more if I pay you less - that part has to be diminished."
How would such a reform be implemented in practice?
"There is more than enough for all of us to go around, if we'll share it more."
You don't think the fact that individuals generally get to keep what they earn affects how much overall wealth there is "to go around"?
And what's so great about being super-punctual, never taking vacations or relaxing, and working 12-14 hours a day, anyway?
Money?
This stuff makes me tired.
My Opa came to this country as an employee of an Italian touring opera company (he was a German makeup artist, hairdresser, and wigmaker; no we don't know how that happened).
Anyway, over the couple of years before WWI that he spent traveling America and learning Italian and English, he collected postcards. All the local vistas and landmarks from dozens of locales all over the country, which he eventually mounted in scrapbooks, about three or four of them.
He also collected racist depictions of B/black people on his journeys--cheerful, simple-minded rascals and scamps reclining on cotton bales or watermelons, with dialect captions about topics like shirking work for some fried chicken and pie.
Of course, everything in the scrapbooks was on highly acidic paper and attached with dime store glues and tapes, so to view them was to damage them. They ended up in the dump when we renovated the house to sell. (I regret not trying to at least note where he went, besides "all over the place.")
One of my grad school profs for African-American history was a collector of such period, racist, memorabilia--mammy and pappy figurines and such, and would have loved them.
Makes me want to listen to a little Otis. "Sittin' on the dock of the bay . . ."
There appears to be a concerted effort (from education to politics to the arts) to ensure that African Americans are always at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. That this effort is led by African Americans and supported by white so-called liberals is disgusting but in no way arguable.
True racism is embodied in the leftist belief that only through excessive White Guilt will Black Americans ever succeed.
In other words, White liberals are foisting their narcissism and neuroticism on Blacks.
"...rest as a revolutionary act.... "
If we open this up to white participation I am fuckin' Stokely Carmichael.
Of course I'm retired and older than ever expected.
I'll bet some of the AI programs could write hundreds of these "academic" studies every day. And, perhaps they are. (Publish or perish" [pushes a button], there done for this semester.
Did they produce any evidence that the starting assumption--that art makes blacks look lazy--is even true? Most art shows people in idle moments. Are they more likely to be productive if they're not black? I'm open to the claim, but I want evidence.
The luxury of shared responsibility through progressive prices and labor arbitrage under the auspices of pride and prejudice of diversity (e.g. racism).
A person at rest generates less carbon dioxide than an active person.
Yes, abortion, outsourcing, and idleness are affirmative action to address climate change.
Enigma said:
"The last high profile academic researcher of race was likely J. Phillipe Rushton of the U. of Western Ontario. "
Rushton was the last President of the Pioneer Fund which from the Fifties on funded most of the "research" which claimed that blacks have a genetically based IQ deficit. This research was a form of racism, adapted to the times. It emanated from the American/ English Eugenics Societies in that most of the research was done by Society members and was presented at Eugenic Society symposiums over the years. These members included Cyril Burt, Arthur Jensen, Thomas Bouchard, HJ Eysenck, Chris Brand and Richard Lynn. JP Rushton wrote for the American
eugenics society journal. These men are largely forgotten now but their research underlay the claims made in the Bell Curve. These claims are recognized as racism of the type that dressed in statistics, not white sheets, and called itself "scientific" because it presented theories accompanied by graphs. This often impressed the simpler souls among us and they are still repeating the claims made by this type of racism.
But it is an incontrovertible fact that the "research" on this theory did not come from a wide array of independent researchers producing replicable, verifiable research but from a small group with one common outlook, namely eugenics; one common funder, the Pioneer Fund; and one common set of statistics whose raw data was not available for inspection and, in the case of Cyril Burt was not available at all as he made it up. All used the same data to reach one common conclusion. This wasn't science; it was racism wearing a professor's garb.
See:
1. The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund Paperback – May 30, 2007 by William H. Tucker
2. Eugenics Watch https://www.scribd.com/doc/97130973/American-eugenics-society-1945-2012
An Example of JP Rushton's thinking in his own words:
2008 “James Watson's most inconvenient truth: race realism and the moralistic fallacy”, JP Rushton, Arthur Jensen, Medical Hypotheses, v. 71(5):629-40
“Recent editorials in this journal have defended the right of eminent biologist James Watson to raise the unpopular hypothesis that people of sub-Saharan African descent score lower, on average, than people of European or East Asian descent on tests of general intelligence. As those editorials imply, the scientific evidence is substantial in showing a genetic contribution to these differences."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pJESEpEPlI
More navel gazing under the pretense of being a serious social commentary art. With all that is going on in the world, all that goes on in any individual's life, how is this a topic of concern? And how is it taken seriously? I love photography and have viewed works from dozens and dozens of fine art photographers. My word...there are enormous stacks of photos of Black people doing ordinary things in their day. Some of it resting, some just hanging out. Some sitting, pondering things. Interestingly- there are stacks of photos of all sorts of other people doing these same things. Humanity does it all. We're pretty good that way.
I guess this borders on her area of, not so much expertise, but interest. And that's fine. Maybe I'm misreading this, but it just seems like making something out of nothing.
As long as we're talking about black people. We mustn't let a day go by without talking about black people - including talking about how we talk about black people.
"Obama was elected, twice, by a mostly white voting bloc. He owns four mansions. He and his wife attended the best colleges. They are living proof that black people can achieve the highest levels of success. Yet he continually whines that black people are victims of white privilege, hostility, and racism. He could have been a president who turned the fortunes of black people around forever, but the last thing a Marxist race hustler wants is a country full of successful black folks. The Marxist needs them poor and angry to get what he truly wants–chaos, then communism."
"It’s been six years since Obama left the White House, and black people are worse off now than they’ve been in generations. President Trump’s policies led to the lowest black unemployment rate in history, yet the Marxists convinced black people he was somehow “racist.”"
https://pjmedia.com/columns/kevindowneyjr/2023/10/22/obamas-racist-chickens-have-come-home-to-roost-n1737106
Dogma and Pony Show said..
You don't think the fact that individuals generally get to keep what they earn affects how much overall wealth there is "to go around"?
Let's do a thought experiment (ACTUAL sociological research would be better, but)..
There are Two companies that make and provide the same thing (widgets i suppose; EVERYBODY needs widgets)
Company A has a set wage structure for all employees (ALL make "a living wage")
Company B has a profit sharing structure, where the more widgets a person provides, the More they make
Questions (thought experiment questions)
Which company provides more widgets to the world?
WHY would ANYONE in company A left their ass off their seat.. EVER? Are there whips?
Which company would YOU rather work for?
"Don't just lay there gettin' a suntan, ain't gonna do you no good anyhow."
-- Slim Pickens (as Taggart)
"And what's so great about being super-punctual?"
You clearly weren't raised in my culture - Midwest, 1960-70s - where punctuality was not only expected but was considered to be a basic courtesy to others.
I still hold with that, despite having lived more than half my life in South Florida, where so-called Cuban time and Black time are commonly observed.
Dog Pony Asks: "How would such a reform be implemented in practice?"
We all each individually repent and stive daily to become more concerned with the welfare of our brother. Turns out even in our capitalist society of today, we ARE our brothers' keeper. But we've allowed politicians and parties to weasel themselves into gain by erecting a coercive system of being a keeper (tax and welfare) enforced through the overwhelming force of the government. Alternatively, we could all just look around us and do it voluntarily, and there would be no poor among us. Surely you can agree that it would be much more efficient for us to do it voluntarily on our own, in our communities and neighborhoods, without allowing the Washington DC rent seekers to thrive of the system.
"You don't think the fact that individuals generally get to keep what they earn affects how much overall wealth there is "to go around"?
I do. I am in no way advocating a forced or coerced system of sharing. I believe everyone should be entitled to keep what they gain from the capital system....at first. The question then is what they do with what they've gained. I am advocating that not every dollar should be consumed by an individual for themselves or put back in the system in the form of capital investment. Sometimes it would turn out to be more efficient to spend that dollar on an immediate need of your neighbor. (Is if 'capital efficiency' for someone to own a house with 14 bedrooms when they only have 3 people in their family?) Someone could decide to help pay for the education of someone in their town. That helps the economy, for what good are more factories from capital dollars when no trained workers?
Also, how about the profits of a company being distributed more in a broad and flatter pyramid, rather than the very steep and narrow pyramid? Wouldn't that spur productivity?
We've been claiming we are a Judeo-Christian nation. How about we actually implement Christ's teachings more? Voluntarily and individually (which is the only way it can be done.)
@wildswan: "These men are largely forgotten now but their research underlay the claims made in the Bell Curve. These claims are recognized as racism of the type that dressed in statistics, not white sheets, and called itself "scientific" because it presented theories accompanied by graphs. This often impressed the simpler souls among us and they are still repeating the claims made by this type of racism."
You've blindly swallowed the propaganda. I said "high profile" -- not highly respected. None of these guys are forgotten. They are often trotted out as straw-man relics and villains by those who wish to quickly dismiss biology. Eugenics was highly popular from 1883 when first coined by Francis Galton. The eugenicists were consciously purged during the post-WW2 reaction against Nazism, and later during the equal-outcomes Civil Rights era. Race is indeed a crude concept rife with pitfalls, but hardly different from animal breeding / domestication as practiced worldwide for many thousands of years. Now it's the genetics researchers who are breaking down the underlying causes. Shifting to blurry racial overlap doesn't change anything about STRATEGIC AND PLANNED biological breeding mutations carried in DNA that lead to group differences over time.
We can still agree that some human groups have different heights, skin colors, and physical features I hope? We can still agree that farm cows are different from extinct wild aurochs? We can agree that fat-butt sheep were bred to be fat-butt sheep? These follow from DNA and mutations, and surface appearances "race" or "breed" can certainly converge, diverge, or resemble other groups at any time. Social construct = part of the story. Biology = part of the story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat-tailed_sheep
The dogmatic, ideology driven "race is a social construct" framing is functionally broken from the very first step. See USA federal agencies on DNA-driven medical conditions:
CDC on Sickle Cell Disease: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/sicklecell/data.html
NIH on Tay-Sachs Disease: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK564432/
Parents today selectively choose (breed) the sex and characteristics of their young. I don't see this as much different than the Nazi Aryan breeding programs:
https://www.babycenter.com/getting-pregnant/how-to-get-pregnant/choosing-your-babys-sex-what-the-scientists-say_2915
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/technology-allows-parents-to-choose-babys-traits/
https://www.webmd.com/baby/how-to-choose-a-sperm-donor
@wildswan "it was racism wearing a professor's garb"
Are you talking about the black social justice crowd, or the free Palestine crowd, or old white eugenicists, or a subset of Jewish academics? Racism has long been the norm in academia...it just periodically changes for specific favored or disfavored groups...
Black culture will forever be subject to White Liberals trying to explain Black Culture to other White Liberals for the purpose of looking cool and gaining respect among White Liberals. This kind of behavior, actually the rejection of it by Conservatives, is within the popular notion of "live and let live." It's not edgy, but at lest our way does not impose anything on Black Americans or try to whitesplain them to the AWFLs. YMMV.
Dave Begley asked:
Who paid for this Project?
People who were not at rest.
The roots of the "lazy black" cultural stereotype are actually that of the white people who brought their pastoral Celtic culture with them when they emigrated to the American South. Their slaves were steeped in that culture and kept it when they moved into northern cities.
Steve Sailer nailed a few days back:
"Black Naps Matter".
Once you read Thomas Sowell's 'Black Rednecks and White Liberals' you don't view stuff like this in the same context. The laziness being celebrated in Blacks is the laziness brought over from England by the poor whites who settled in the South and whose "redneck" culture the African slaves adopted. Now, that's hard to admit for someone born in the South, but Sowell's evidence and evaluation is hard to deny.
Of course, the "redneck" culture is looked down upon when it is whites exhibiting it. But influences from other whites were impose to push whites to overcome the habits. But for blacks born in America, the habits are celebrated, reinforced by media, music, athletes and movies. After all, to be hard-working and business-like is called "acting white" not "acting German or Jewish" which were the whites who built a lot of businesses in the South in the 19th century.
"all progress is made by a lazy person looking for an easier way" - Lazarus Long
****
Yeah, Thomas Edison was a really lazy bastard, trying over a thousand times to find a suitable filament for his electric light bulb.
And yeah, Henry Ford was incredibly lazy, barely able to rouse himself to invent and implement the automobile assembly line.
And yeah, Martin Luther King Jr was really a lazy bastard, crusading for black civil rights and the end of racial segregation.
And of course it was lazy physicists who designed and built an enormous multi-billion dollar accelerator to detect the "God particle", the Higgs Boson.
Shall we now fisk the claim that "behind every great fortune is a great crime"?
@ Quayle:
I appreciate your response. I certainly have no quarrel with your argument that individuals, in regard to their own wealth, should be charitable toward those in need. However, people who run businesses shouldn't feel morally obligated to refrain from reducing labor costs as a means of becoming profitable or MORE profitable. In a way, that's being charitable with someone else's money, whether it's that of the shareholders or of the consumer who will inevitably have to pay higher prices for the business' products or services.
"Also, how about the profits of a company being distributed more in a broad and flatter pyramid, rather than the very steep and narrow pyramid? Wouldn't that spur productivity?"
I went to google and typed "company where", at which point google offered "company where everyone is paid the same" as the first search option. Clicking that and looking at some of the results of that search, it appears a number of companies have tried this, with varying results.
Maybe they should sell carbon credits because they certainly are breathing less than non-idlers. We can call it reparations.
@ Dog and Pony:
However, people who run businesses shouldn't feel morally obligated to refrain from reducing labor costs as a means of becoming profitable or MORE profitable. In a way, that's being charitable with someone else's money, whether it's that of the shareholders or of the consumer who will inevitably have to pay higher prices for the business' products or services.
I actually agree. The corporate needs to be healthy for the good of all those who depend on it. Sometimes flex must happen - whole branches must be lopped off to keep the tree alive. And I'm not saying that the salary of the CEO woudl go even 1 week to cover some holes that appear in the P/L.
But I am saying that we could probably have much more healthy organizations if we reduced the hubris at the top and ran broader and flatter pay pyramids.
To me it is not about coercion. It is about being efficient, smart, and caring. We could all be so amazingly wealthy with only a few changes.
Quoting the late Professor Hugh Nibley of BYU: "Brigham Young also noted, however, that if the wealth were equally distributed one fine day, it would not be long before it would be as unequal as ever, the lion's share going to the most dedicated and competent seekers for it. True enough. But wealth is not lunch, and to make it such is an offense against nature. Let us say the lunch is equally distributed one day, and soon one man because of his hustle is sitting daily on seventy thousand lunches while many people are going without. He generously offers them the chance to work for him and get their lunches back -- but they must work all day, just for him and just for lunch. Lunch and the satisfaction of helping their generous employer to get hold of yet more lunches (for that is the object of their work) are all they get out of it."
LOL! Heroism at rest…
rhhardin said...
"Blacks can do idleness, what they have to prove is that they can do any cognitive work and aren't highly criminal and take care of their kids.
Work on featuring those.
Glenn Loury on the topic"
What a thing to say. White Americans haven't even proven that about themselves. The whole world thinks you literally stole this land, stole black lives, and you supposedly are burning up the planet for your kids. Good job in the Criminality and Thinking Dept.
Blacks don't have to "prove" a God damned thing to anybody. Like most blacks, I could give a fuck about Glenn Lowry, John McWhorter, or any of the other ahistorical assholes conservative whites like, who I never see hanging with other blacks. They're all part of the sinister Booker T. Washington wing of the Civil Rights movement, which got rejected by the rest of us, and fell apart a long time ago. I have friends still like that - good ones - but they don't offend, as a matter of course, like those sneering bitches you admire.
They know, after slavery, black people wanted to be EVERYTHING - politicians, clowns, poets, doctors, entrepreneurs, musicians, artists, etc. - so to have someone say no, you can only work for a white guy, say, in a factory or as a sharecropper, was just horrifying. We'd have no Louis Armstrong, and American music wouldn't have become the phenomenon that it did, if everyone had always been practical - especially when it's obvious white people aren't. They do what they want, whether they got money or not, with nothing to "prove" to anybody.
My friends know they lost the debate about how black people should conduct their lives, and are grateful for their children's options now, so they don't get all offended. And they know blacks aren't "guilty" for the crime of not knowing things no one taught us. And they definitely don't think we have to "prove" anything to white people.
If anything, white people need to "prove" they can stop creating 'the other', and looking down their nose at them.
"As America undergoes “The Great Resignation"
That aged like milk.
Here's the pre-podcast Joe Rogan, talking about what a stupid society white people created, and how nobody talks about smart things, generally. He left out the part about blacks being responsible for it, or having to "prove" that we're better than the society we live in.
Booker T Washington left a wonderful example of hard work and persistence in facing obstacles. He did not eat the bread of idleness. I found his story inspiring.
"'When we talk about Black people and time,' [one curator] says, 'we’re talking about stolen labor, stolen time"
Being in bondage to the slave mind is truly sad, and almost impossible to break free from. But the first step is to realize it's all in your head. And the second thing, is to understand that the shit the unnamed curator said is the method by which he earns his bread and butter -- by keeping you in bondage.
"Free your mind and your ass will follow."
- Funkadelic (July 1970)
"Dave Begley said...
Who paid for this Project?"
Slavers.
"This has led to the "Nap for Humanity" movement."
So nappy, then?
"There appears to be a concerted effort (from education to politics to the arts) to ensure that African Americans are always at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. That this effort is led by African Americans and supported by white so-called liberals is disgusting but in no way arguable"
And in no way surprising. The very existence of the Democrat Party (and all the attendant graft) depends on keeping the mass of Black Americans in a state of dependency and resentment.
The self-interest of White Democrats has not diminished a jot since Jim Crow.
"My Opa came to this country as an employee of an Italian touring opera company (he was a German makeup artist, hairdresser, and wigmaker; no we don't know how that happened)."
That is the most interesting sentence I have read all year. You could open a great novel with that.
"Im not making another tag for this."
Ha.
CJinPA said...
"As long as we're talking about black people. We mustn't let a day go by without talking about black people - including talking about how we talk about black people."
I don't know if you're black or not, but I can tell you, as a black person, it's fucking maddening, and depressing, to be forced to live this way. The frustration of other people talking about us, in print and in person, pretending we live anything near 'normal' lives in America, when w'ere singled out, as individuals and a group, every single day, is just as weird as it gets. And definitely another reason for reparations.
Or did you and yours wake up today to this level of scrutiny?
"...we ARE our brothers' keeper."
When Jesus spoke those words where and how, exactly, was he referring to the governing authorities?
Gee, I always looked at this as guidance on how I should live MY life.
"You could open a great novel with that."
I could try. I think there are Great American Novels all around us, but I'm too lazy to write mine.
I've got some short stories stashed away somewhere, whose kernals are things from my life, but if the long form suited me I would have written more for work. I published enough not to perish, but mine wasn't a publication-demanding field and I wasn't teaching faculty either.
Free Manure While You Wait! said...
"Being in bondage to the slave mind is truly sad, and almost impossible to break free from."
You're here, talking about black people - no one else - and about black people being lazy, and now mentally trapped. Which are topics which have extended all the way back to slavery. Not me - you. That does seem difficult to break free from.
"But the first step is to realize it's all in your head."
You're here, talking about black people - no one else - and about black people being lazy, and now mentally trapped. That's NOT all in our mind: you're gaslighting yourself to your own actions.
"And the second thing, is to understand that the shit the unnamed curator said is the method by which he earns his bread and butter -- by keeping you in bondage."
I'm more suspicious of white people who claim to know what's going on inside of my head. If that's true, they have more power to keep me in bondage, by lying to me, than anybody else: They're fucking psychic.
"Free your mind and your ass will follow." - Funkadelic (July 1970)
Like that one line about character in Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, white people are very very specific about what black sayings they promote - and how they turn them around to use AGAINST blacks. Do you know any other great Funkadelic songs? You do realize the quote above was directed at white people, right? (Funkadelic knows black people have never had a problem getting our asses free.) For someone concerned about getting us out of mental bondage, twisting our messages around is pretty uncool and reeks of bad faith.
BTW, the real name of the band is Parliament/Funkadelic. Just like Hamas has a military wing, so does this band, and that was Parliament. So, while you were misinterpreting their lyrics, and rather than saying we're trapped, they were telling whites we were "gaming on you," as they told blacks to look forward to Washington, DC becoming a Chocolate City, because white leadership didn't have sense enough to "come In out of the rain."
That's probably why we went from being the richest nation on Earth to one that can't pay reparations in my lifetime.
"Blacks can do idleness, what they have to prove is that they can do any cognitive work and aren't highly criminal and take care of their kids."
I remember when a single question exposed American whites as stupid, and criminal, in the name of caring for white kids. So I can see why you'd say that, I guess. We just wanted to live differently than that is all.
At the risk of a "some of my best friends are black" moment, I can assure you that my African-American wife, her sister, and their friends make frequent references to 'black people time' when organizing events.
Does this count as reparations? Because if it does we may already be paid up in full.
I once watched a black engineer from Baltimore fall asleep in front of a black engineer from Nigeria while the Nigerian was trying to explain to him how some piece of equipment worked. The Nigerian looked at me and asked "can you believe this?"
I told him I had lived in Baltimore all my life, so of course I could believe it.
To another post I wrote that sociology is conclusions in search of results.
"explore the complexities of rest for Black people"
There ya go.
The Crack Emcee:
we're better than the society we live in.
It would be simpler if you simply responded to anything with that.
Bunkypotatohead said...
Does this count as reparations? Because if it does we may already be paid up in full.
I once watched a black engineer from Baltimore fall asleep in front of a black engineer from Nigeria while the Nigerian was trying to explain to him how some piece of equipment worked. The Nigerian looked at me and asked "can you believe this?"
I told him I had lived in Baltimore all my life, so of course I could believe it."
Y'allI love Africans so much, you probably should've bought some.
"Blacks can do idleness, what they have to prove is that they can do any cognitive work and aren't highly criminal and take care of their kids."
This statement astounds me. When I served on the U.S.S. Kilauea, the ship's song was "Take This Job and Shove It" by Johnny Paycheck, a man described by his friends as the equivalent to a Crip - a gangbanger - basically a thug. He was known for shooting people, and destroying every good thing that ever came into his life, but he was such a hero to the United States Navy, his ethos was blasted at full volume everywhere we went. And there was so much chaos on that boat, from all the suicides, drug dealing, and people leaping over the side, there was some kind of major investigation initiated, to get to the bottom of it, which I don't really think they ever did. It just was what it was. The "insane asylum" of the movie M.A.S.H. on the open seas.
But you think American blacks need to "prove" we - what? Aren't from here?
"In the early 90s once I was watching TV and there was all this hubbub about NWA and Gangsta Rap and how it was just too violent. I stop watching this because I actually like NWA and Gangsta Rap, so I switched over to the Country Music channel and saw Johnny Paycheck being interviewed. And he had just got out of jail for shooting a guy. Like he really shot a guy. And I thought 'Why isn't anybody worried about Johnny Paycheck? Why isn't Connie Chung picking on him?'"
I can't speak to this sterotype. Every black person I've ever met has been a hard worker. Except for that lady at the DMV.
As you silly people talk about Black idleness
you might want to abandon your casual and upfront racism
and let people rest from your shit
Otis Redding is larger and bigger and more amazing than your reductive and stupid chatter
Rusty said...
"I can't speak to this sterotype. Every black person I've ever met has been a hard worker. Except for that lady at the DMV."
See? Now that's worth coming here for.
I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
"Alaska Airlines pilot Joseph Emerson was on MAGIC MUSHROOMS when he 'tried to shut down plane's engine' after saying 'I'm not OK': Dad-of-two charged in federal court and also faces 83 counts of attempted murder"
But it's blacks who need to "prove" we're cognitively coherent and not criminally inclined.
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