You’re positing sexism as being in need of greater remediation than racism, so that you can stop having to talk about white supremacy.
But if sexism were the case—the predominant issue—white women would act for the benefit of non-white women before they did so for white men; i.e., this is what would tend to happen, much the way that if racism were what Black and white people both did, white people would broach the subject in public as often as Black people do.
Clearly, they do not, and clearly, they do not.
I’ve said already: Most females are non-white. Ask them if they suffer more because they are female, or because they are not white.
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In the spirit of clarity, you should forego attempts at poetic, or soaring, speech, and, instead, just write simply.
I don’t understand what you are saying. Most of it appears to be an attempt at avoiding the discussion I urge, by my example, and that white people usually avoid: The discussion that racism is white supremacy.
For example, you say:
What in the world does this mean? That there has not been thirty-five-plus years of racist housing policy, here, not to mention elsewhere? Is that what you imagine? Is that the conversation that you don’t want to have?
In other words, what is your response to the contention that there has been 35 years of racist housing? Is your response, “You probably live OK, Harry. Do you want a bigger house”?
Making fun of non-white people is a very common racist tactic.
I’m not saying that you are a racist. I’m saying that, to the statement, “There have been thirty-five years of racist housing policy in the United States,” the response, “Well, what hovel have you been consigned to, now, in your quest for flashier and larger manse?” is the kind of thing a white supremacist would say.
They would say this for at least two reasons, that I can detect:
a) To minimize the non-white speaker, so as to put an already minimized person “in his place.”
b) To avoid having to talk about white supremacy, to the degree that talking about it leads to eliminating it.
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Q: How do you know that your child is willing, capable, or honest in their efforts to clean their room?
A: When, an hour after you say, “Your room is dirty. Please go clean it,” they call you, say, “Take a look,” and it’s spotless.
What most white people do, instead, is say:
“If you didn’t talk about the dirt in room so much, it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“The room is dirty because you commit so much crime.”
“The problem isn’t the dirty room. The problem is we have a dirty ladies’ bathroom.”
or
“What hovel have you been consigned to, now, in your quest for flashier and larger manse?”
In other words, I believe that the white people who eliminate “Black subjugation” are willing, capable, and/or honest in their efforts to eliminate “Black subjugation.” No one else is credible, or yet credible.
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I don’t know what you mean by “these coercive redefinitions.”
I think, for example, you mean when I say, Racism is white supremacy, or make statements of that nature; ones which take words, or ideas, around race, and “give” them another meaning.
But it’s not clear why this holds so much apparent distaste for you. As I said to @Danny, what you apparently mean, when you say “racism,” is not what I mean when I say racism. So, the only appropriate response you should have is, “What do you mean when you say ‘racism’?”
So, they are “redefinitions,” but of only the most benign sort.
As for them being “coercive,” you’re not bound to define racism as white supremacy. In fact, if you are a racist, you most likely will not do so. Further, if you’re not a racist, you don’t have to agree with my definition. If you don’t, I would simply ask you the same question: “What do you mean when you say ‘racism’?”
Now, because my notion is that racism functions, to a great extent, via words, I’m going to listen to what you say, and I’m going to say if I think that yours is a correct definition, or not, and why; i.e., does it help eliminate racism, or does it establish, maintain, expand, or refine it.
If you’re a person who truly seeks the elimination of white supremacy, you should welcome such a dialogue. If you’re a person who thinks that racism is better than the alternative—justice—perhaps because, directly or indirectly, you get benefits from being white, you will probably resent such a discussion. You might, to begin, pretend to be open to it. But this charade will, eventually, cease.
So, to the first part of your question: As it pertains to white people, my efforts regarding words seems to be going in the same way as usual; i.e., the ways demonstrated on this forum are blandly typical. However, white people are not my audience, primarily, either.
As it pertains to non-white people, many find that these truer meanings conform with their experiences. Others find them jarring. But I am always encouraged by non-white responses to these ideas, because they always seem deeply captivated by them.
I think, for many, this is the kind of conversation that they’ve always wanted to have on a life-defining subject—the life-defining subject, for many—but one they rarely get, if ever, from white people, who tend to dominate the discussion of life-defining subjects.
Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
I find this statement abhorrent in every possible way:
GOD cannot take the slave to heaven, who has been kept in ignorance and degradation, knowing nothing of GOD, or the Bible, fearing nothing but his master's lash, and not holding so elevated a position as his master's brute beasts. But he does the best thing for him that a compassionate GOD can do. He lets him be as though he had not been.
“If wrongs are apparent among His people, and if the servants of God pass on indifferent to them, they virtually sustain and justify the sinner, and are alike guilty and will just as surely receive the displeasure of God; for they will be made responsible for the sins of the guilty. In vision I have been pointed to many instances where the displeasure of God has been incurred by a neglect on the part of His servants to deal with the wrongs and sins existing among them. Those who have excused these wrongs have been thought by the people to be very amiable and lovely in disposition, simply because they shunned to discharge a plain, Scriptural duty. The task was not agreeable to their feelings; therefore they avoided it.” [Testimonies for the Church 3:266 (1873).] 5T 676.1
@Harry_Allen, by your metric, simply because you are a non-woman, you are, in fact, a male supremacist. All of your kind (which includes me-) has been so for at least 6000 years.
We cannot help it-it’s just because of our c̶o̶l̶o̶u̶r̶, scratch that, it is because of another physical characteristic we are helpless to change. It dooms us-we do not function as agents to stop male supremacy-even if we tooted for female supremacy from the rooftops all the live long day. It matters not that-individually, perhapos we both do have a gender-equality attitude, and we do use our voice and our supremacy, errr, power, to correct the social structure that enables our supremacy.
Your admonishment that I ought naught write in poetic soaring ways-well, that right there is funny. As English is my second language, I write the best that I can-I cannot help it. It is part of who I am and how I express myself. I could give a whit that you are uncomfortable with my style. I could exhort you to speak in freedom tones, in empowering ways, rather than the way you do, as if you are, presently, in real time, now, a “victim” of my whiteness. You are not-but i suspect you are a victim of your own blackness. You talk about when white people talk about blacks when no blacks are present-well, here you are seemingly talking to just a few folks-seems all white-all the while saying really quite remarkable-shocking-and incorrect things. You will not be discomfited, you will remain unmoved. But-as i suspected-you think that color based discrimination is unforgivable, endemic, cause of all black woes-and gender based (far older, longer, broader, deeper discrimination) is just a “different” little thing you don’t care about. I see them as related-inextricably. Man (racially) has always used power over any other, on basis of gender, first (and still).
Covenant forfeits the notion of loyalty on the basis of gender, race, nationality, culture, education, color, wealth, privilege, role or status. Equality is not a necessity-it is a given.
It is not given by man, it is Gods alone.
You do not have to take it (freedom of equality)-but neither do you have a right to chain me to your gross mis-definitions. I appreciate your thoughts-it has been clarifying. If you cannot see, let me spell it out as I see it. Your demeanor, redefinitions, evasiveness all seem to work against your stated intention to demand justice and claim redress. You are adept at slicing the words responding to you like a stainless steel ginsu knife, and serving them back - but your controverted repast is unpalatable.
Please allow me to exercise my only perfection-brevity. And boundaries.
I will go no further, be well brother. No need to scratch your head why “another white person” just walked away from your words. Hopefully you can glean some non-racist kernel from my defective words.
I’ll discuss sexism after the elimination of white supremacy.
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I’m not uncomfortable with how you write, Timo. As I said, I don’t understand what you’re saying.
If you want to just write, you should just write. If you want to communicate, especially if English is not your first language, you should work to write more straightforwardly. That way, people can understand and respond to your ideas, as I would like to do.
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I don’t know what this means.
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I do write in empowering ways. I write in empowering ways a) for people who are non-white, or b) for white people who don’t consider racism “fun for the whole family.”
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I don’t know if I’m a victim of your whiteness, because I don’t know if you’re a racist.
The only person on this forum that I know is a racist is @ajshep, because, in #38, he said, “We’re a bunch of racists.”
When, under conditions dominated by race, a white person says that he is a racist, I take it seriously. I do this much the way that if someone said, at a pre-school, “I sodomize children,” I would take it seriously, or, if at an airport, someone said, “I have a bomb,” I would take it seriously.
That is, you should not read “into” my words. I don’t possess much, but everything I do have I got from God, and one gift He gave me was the ability to say exactly what I mean. My sense is that, if nothing else, you detect this quality in my writing.
I am a victim of white supremacy. If you are a racist, I am a victim of your whiteness. If you are not, I am not.
Are you saying that you are a racist?
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This is the kind of thing that a racist would say.
I am not saying that you are a racist. However, I am saying that this is the type of thing that a racist would say.
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This is irrelevant.
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You write as though you skim what I’ve said, and don’t comprehend it.
I will be moved by the elimination of white supremacy. Everything else is, at best, “talking about the weather.”
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Again: You write as though you skim what I’ve said, and don’t comprehend it.
Either that, or, perhaps, you are a racist, and seek to deceive; i.e., deceit being a racist’s chief weapon.
Which one is it, please?
In #51, I responded to your charge that “racism…is essentially unforgivable.”
I said, I do not agree, then, at length, said why. Did you not see this?
As for “color based discrimination,” I’m not sure what that is, but it sounds like white supremacy, as racism is the greatest form of so-called “color based discrimination” in the known universe.
Are you talking about white supremacy? Because, if so, I’d say white supremacy is “endemic”—“regularly found among particular people”; e.g., white people.
As for whether white supremacy is the “cause of all Black woes,” I’ve never expressed an opinion on this.
Of which “Black woes” would you say it is not the cause?
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Again, back to my gift for precision in speech: If I didn’t care about “gender-based discrimination,” I would simply say that.
What I’ve said is that I’m here to talk about white supremacy. You should talk about “gender-based discrimination” to someone who wants to talk about “gender-based discrimination.”
I assume that you want to talk about white supremacy (aka racism). If you don’t want to talk about white supremacy, you should stop writing to me, the way @Danny, @blc, apparently @ajshep, and others have done, because, once the subject is raised, that is what I’m going to talk about, and I’m not that easily distracted from it.
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Yes: The overwhelming majority of females are non-white and, thus, victims of racism.
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See above.
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This is irrelevant.
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I’ve not chained you, or chained you to anything.
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O.K.
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“Demeanor” is “outward behavior or bearing.” It doesn’t apply here, because you are looking at light and dark spaces in an internet post. There is no behavior, by me, that is visible or detectable. I could be writing these sentences while committing gruesome mass murders, visiting the aged and sick, playing paintball, or riding Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure.
“Redefinitions” doesn’t apply, for the reasons I’ve given before. (See #41.)
“Evasiveness” is the noun form of the adjective evasive.
Evasive means “tending to avoid commitment or self-revelation, especially by responding only indirectly.” Synonyms include equivocal, prevaricating, elusive, ambiguous, noncommittal, vague, inexplicit, unclear.
None of these—objectively or subjectively—apply to anything I’ve said. It’s a silly critique. About anything I’ve said that is unclear, I’ve demonstrated, many times, my willingness to clarify it by re-stating, or re-explaining. I’ve mostly done this when statements I’ve said are re-stated another way; e.g., when you called white supremacy “color-based discrimination,” above.
Many times, I’ve said to you, “I do not understand.” You didn’t then re-explain. If any of you had said, “I don’t see why you say that,” or “What do you mean by that?”, I’d go to great lengths to explain what I mean. (See #41, where @Danny said that I “re-invent standard definitions.” I wrote a 15-paragraph response saying why, though this appeared to be the case, it was not necessarily so.)
I’ll repeat what I said in #51, when you previously charged me with being “evasive”—again, without evidence: I’m not interested in giving evasive answers. It’s not my style, or mode. I don’t value it in others, and detest it in myself. You must not understand my answers.
Finally, I have not made a “demand,” and have never mentioned “redress.”
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It’s probably “unpalatable” because the process I apply shows why what you’re saying is either incorrect, or does not make sense. (See my responses to you in #51.)
Sushi is always unpalatable to the tuna.
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You’ve not perfected brevity.
“Boundaries”? We’ll see.
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In kind.
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See #40. There, I said that I don’t wonder why white people stop talking to me.
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@Timo, properly applied, these exchanges might eliminate white supremacy.
Actually, the remark was said sarcastically in answer to one of your “suspicions”. Similar to the prophet’s words in I Kings 22:15.
In this response, you make buying an Ipad an act of racism. Ergo, all whites are racists.
I would like to respond to that by suggesting three definitions that may clarify this discussing (argument).
White hegemony: This is the fact that Europeans conquered the world and ruled it for about 500 yrs. The colonial period. By doing this they imposed their philosophy, governments, markets etc. on the whole world. even communism is a white method of governing. And when you buy an Ipad, you are taking part in this sort of hegemony, for capitalist markets are a creation of white people. Blacks, and Asians, and Latinos, when they buy and Ipad are immersed in this as well to their good or ill. It is the way the world does business and lives etc. This is the “water” that you speak of. You call it “White Supremacy” but that is really something different. This is a fact of history and has changed the way the world is.
Racism This is the belief that one race is better, more advanced, smarter, or whatever than another. It is an idea about value. Racists look down on others, abuse them etc. If I think blacks are inferior and treat them as such, I am a racist. Blacks can hate whites and be racists as well. You, would reject that last assertion, but I think most everyone else would agree with it. Again, racism is a judgement of value.
White Supremacy Is a type of hyper-racism that believes whites are the only ones that should be allowed to rule over others, and that all others are inferior. That they are the best, brightest, etc., and are the only worthy of rulership. This view is held by a small minority of white people. Neo-Nazis etc. They are violent at times, and quite repulsive to most whites. Those that voted for Obama would not be in this category at all, whether they voted for Trump or not.
Now I can see why you might see the overlap in these ideas, and there is some. But the first is a fact of history that has resulted in the second and third. These ideas are separate, however.
The whole world is affected by the first, but that does not mean that they are racists or white supremacists. Buying an Ipad is not a racist act, but it is one that partakes of #1 above. Most of the world has adopted white dress habits as the way to dress formally. Suits and ties are worn by almost all the worlds leaders when meeting formally. The only consistent exception would be the Arabs who do come in a different formal barb. Even the Swiss dress in suits and ties rather than their own national costumes.
This is an example of White Hegemony. Not racism.
Now to believe that this is the best and only real way to dress would be an example of “White Supremacy”. But most folk would not agree with that.
I might also add that this issue was present in Jesus’ day. The Romans ruled the “world”. They had hegemony, and the Jews were a minority, and a despised one, at that time. Jesus addressed Jewish feeling in the Sermon on the Mount by encouraging them to turn the other cheek and walk the second mile.
Now for a white person to encourage such an attitude to a black person would certainly seem a racist act. But really it is advice about attitude. Jesus did not say the Jews were inferior, but told them to rid their minds of hate toward their overlords. The religion he founded eventually sort of ruled the world through the white hegemony. But of course it was altered, or ignored.
And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
He said unto him, “What is written in the law? how readest thou?”
And he answering said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.”
And he said unto him, “Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.”
But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”
The only person on this forum that I know is a racist is @ajshep, because, in #38, he said, “We’re a bunch of racists.”
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Tell it to the TSA.
I repeat: When, under conditions dominated by race, a white person says that he is a racist, I take it seriously. I do this much the way that if someone said, at a pre-school, “I sodomize children,” I would take it seriously, or, if at an airport, someone said, “I have a bomb,” I would take it seriously.
Put another way, a person who grasps the seriousness of the context acts consistently with it. One who doesn’t, though, should be regarded closely…because he doesn’t.
I accept your categorization of your statement as “sarcastic.” But I do it the way that someone in the Transportation Security Administration might accept you saying, “I was only kidding about the bomb.”
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Is that what you’re saying? Because I’ve not said this.
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O.K. Good.
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What did they mean by “white hegemony”? In other words, what did they mean by hegemony that is “white”?
When did this period of “white hegemony” begin?
When did it end?
Why did it end?
What replaced it?
In what manner did “white hegemonists” relate to non-white people during the period of “white hegemony,” in all nine areas of people activity: economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex, and/or war?
Did the white people ever mistreat non-white people, during the period of “white hegemony”? If so, in what ways?
Did they mistreat other white people in the same ways that they mistreated non-white people?
Why did they “impose” “their philosophy, governments, markets etc. on the whole world”?
In other words, why not just run their philosophy, governments, markets, etc., letting the desirability of these systems be self-evident? Why “impose”?
What, different, would a racist have done, with their philosophy, governments, markets, etc., relative to the whole world?
What, different, would a white supremacist have done, with their philosophy, governments, markets, etc., relative to the whole world?
More questions may follow.
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Well, perhaps. Or, perhaps, it is an “O” in the molecule H2O.
In other words, we’re just starting the process of investigating the facts of your answer. So, your conclusion remains to be seen.
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How?
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What is a fact of history and has changed the way the world is?
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A “belief” is an idea, and an idea is composed of thoughts. These thoughts may be made up of truisms, formulae, wants, concepts, etc., etc. However, beliefs, like thoughts, are immaterial. They exist in the mind, which exists “in” the brain.
For example, at one point, President John F. Kennedy believed that the United States should go to the moon. He had a belief about this. Now, I don’t know when he first came up with this belief—let’s call it moonism. He may not have even come up with it. He may have gotten it from someone else. But we also know that, at some point, he became so convinced of its truth, he began to share it.
We know this, because JFK began to speak this belief. He said, for example, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things.” Now, he probably had many beliefs and thoughts, and almost certainly did not speak them all. For example, he might have thought, “I’d like to have Marilyn Monroe and Mimi Alford in a six-hour three-way.” But, as far as we know, he never said this.
But, again, he did speak about moonism, as I just said. He did this most famously in the September 12, 1962 speech, given at Rice Stadium in Texas, that I quoted above. Now, this wasn’t the first time that JFK had shared his idea. He’d done it, a little over a year before, in May, 1961, before Congress. However, these events, and others, were efforts to establish and maintain moonism.
Of course, the expansion of moonism came over the next several years; a period that JFK, killed in November 1963, did not live to see. From Wikipedia:
Landing men on the Moon by the end of 1969 required the most sudden burst of technological creativity, and the largest commitment of resources ($25 billion; $107 billion in 2016 dollars) ever made by any nation in peacetime. At its peak, the Apollo program employed 400,000 people and required the support of over 20,000 industrial firms and universities.
We call this period “The Space Race.” You’ll agree that, by this point, the moonism idea—that “[white] men should go to the moon in this decade”—was not merely thought, or speech. There was a lot of action behind it. Of course, the greatest action of moonism took place on July 20, 1969, when [white] men landed on the moon. Of course, they did this again, and again, and again, further refining moonism.
In like manner:
There may have been a point when so-called “white people” came up with the idea of “white people,” or “the white race.” There may have been a point where they thought that “the white race is better, more advanced, smarter, more valuable, or whatever than any other.”
However, if this had just stayed an idea, or a belief, I’d have never known about it, because I’m not white. I only know what white people think by what they say, and do: Thought, speech, action.
So, over a period of centuries—let’s call this period The Race Race—white people apparently took actions to make their thoughts and words real; i.e., to make racism real; to make it clear to a disinterested third party—say, Martians—that “the white race is better, more advanced, smarter, more valuable, or whatever than any other.” As with moonism, this was done through a process of establishing, maintaining, expanding, and refining racism.
Put another way, calling racism a “belief” is like calling moonism a belief. Each may have started out as a belief. But their truest believers saw to it that it didn’t stay that way for long.
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They do.
Or, they may merely think, speak, and/or act in ways that have the same effect as being looked down on, or abused.
For example, “people who kill other people with cars”—let’s call them crash-ists—may:
a) plot speed, direction, wind vectors, aerodynamics, and timing for running over and killing people with a particular make and model of car; or
b) may just get out, and accidentally leave their car in neutral at the top of an incline.
In both instances, death by car follows.
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You are, if so.
Or, if you merely think, speak, and/or act in ways that have the same effect on Black people as being thought of as inferior, or treated as such, you are one. (See above)
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Absolutely. Many do, including many who say that they do not.
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Aamer Rahman doesn’t agree with it. The people you hear laughing, as he tells his joke, don’t. Most Black people sure don’t, and most white people wouldn’t either, once one defines racism correctly.
Talking about “Black racism” is like talking about “the Haitian space program.”
Or, think of it this way:
Your wife may bake cookies, be good at it, and even sell some of her tasty wares to local stores. But you wouldn’t call what she does “NABISCO.”
Only one cookie-maker gets to call themselves NABISCO. Only one cookie-maker has a 1,800,000-square-foot facility in Chicago—the largest bakery in the world—with more than 1,200 employees who produce 160,000 tons of snack food every year. Only one sells $674.2M—nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars—worth of Oreos®, alone, every 365 days.
If what NABISCO does is “NABISCO-ism,” or “NABISCO Supremacy,” you can’t use the word “NABISCO” to describe what your wife does, one sheet pan at a time, even if she makes a delicious toll house. NABISCO is in another galaxy of operation.
Black people may, any and all of them, hate white people. White people may, at the same time, any and all of them, love and adore Black people.
But only white people have a hatred infrastructure to produce global hatred effects, whether they like Black people or not. Only white people, collectively, have a system; a race system. That system is racism. Racism is white supremacy.
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See above. The racists (white supremacists) are the only ones whose “judgments of value” stick. They’re the only ones whose “judgments of value” compel all others—especially non-white people—to say, “What is my response to this?”
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See all of the above.
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Where is there some overlap? Talk about all of it.
Even more, why is there some overlap?
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So, you’re saying that the first is a fact of history that resulted in these other facts of history.
Correct?
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What is separate? Talk about the separations, please.
Are these all of the separations? If not, what are the rest?
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What makes those who are affected by “white hegemony” racists or white supremacists?
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What is “a racist act”?
What would make “buying an iPad” “a racist act”?
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What would make “wearing [white] suits and ties” “a racist act”?
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Of what issue are you speaking?
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What was Jesus saying would happen, to what problem, if Jews did this?
How would this take place?
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Why do you say that?
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Did the Romans say that the Jews were inferior?
Did the Romans say that they, Romans, were white?
Was Paul a Roman, or a Jew?
What was Jesus’ advice designed, by Him, to accomplish?
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By whose efforts did it “sort of rule”?
How was it “altered, or ignored”? Please give some examples of these actions.
Was it “altered, or ignored,” by “white hegemonists,” “white racists,” or “white supremacists”?
I can’t bear to watch you dig yourself in deeper, Allen, you, a pastor of a church that still in 2018 has racially separated conferences due to rampant, cruel racism at the highest levels, going back to its inception, sanctioned by “Inspiration.”
A church that widely honors, and accepts blood money from, a racetrack owner who boasts of aborting 250,000 babies, and who was especially eager to abort Black and Hispanic babies, and publicly said so in egregiously inflammatory terms.
Racism alone could sink this church, even if it didn’t have numerous other fatal besetments.
I’m not going to read or write more in this thread.
Your done, fine.
Are you saying that being and Adventist is why you feel you have not been neighbor?
I have heard Dwight Nelson preach against the black conferences, but black folk have resisted such a move for their own reasons (I think most whites are rather embarrassed by the regional conferences, and would gladly disband them.).
I pastored a church in Hammond that, though in the “white” Indiana Conference, was majority black about 60% or so, at least of the group that attended. More blacks are attending at the NW church as well, with a major increase there, it also being in the Indiana conference, and not the Regional one. So, the boundaries are blurring. At both, we had deacons and elders based on ability, not race, and there were plenty of each in each. I even tried to get a black woman, very qualified, to be head elder at one church, but it was resisted by her black sisters, so she took her name away.
Now as far as the “highest levels”, I don’t know of any “rampant cruel racism” of which you speak. but of course it seems you take the same tack as Harry, so see more or less all whites as racist, unless they hew to his definitions. I am not sure he is the final arbiter.
About the blood money, I am not aware of the issue, but would certainly condemn it if it is so. That is another issue. I have been disappointed by some of the decisions of the church, but do not presume to be in on all that goes on at the top.
The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, saw abortion as a solution to the “black problem”, but I see little condemnation of her.
I quit posting to Harry because of your feeling about posting on race. He has answered, but I will not answer him. You feel I dig myself deeper because I do not take your position on being apologetic for all that others do, either in God’s name, or as personal decisions in the even distant past.
I am not responsible for other’s actions. Nor are you. You are free to protest, but to apologize is not your purview, as you did nothing wrong. Unless you did, but it is quite unclear to me that you have.
In another thread I asked Harry if racism was an unforgivable sin-he answered in the negative, trotting out how the character who plays the character of Kramer on “The show about nothing”, ie Seinfeld was “forgiven” and his career continues. If this is evidence that racism can be forgiven (perhaps even by Harry, we can pray), hen I offer Meghan Markle as evidence racism no longer exists. Imagine, a black person (or at lest half), kin to the very white English Crown!
I too will not engage Harry on this subject, but will comment that his claim that you are a racist because you sarcastically claimed it (as have I and others on this thread, but perhaps not as overtly)-his comment “tell it to the TSA” (as if you had “sarcastically or whatever” spoken “boom” at an airport) is instructive, and way over the top. Imagine, changing the context of your sarcasm, to suit his narrative. Harry perhaps believes he is the official director of the “racism safety administration”, and as such has license to misdefine “words” and concepts to suit his grindstone. His ax is dull bludgeon.
We need an Absolute Compass now more than ever before. . . .
We lost our bearings
Following our own mind
We left conviction behind
Fear of the future
Springing from sins of the past
Hiding the hope that would last
How did we ever wander so
Far and where do we go from here?
How will we know where it is?
True North
There’s a strong steady light
That is guiding us home
True North
In the lingering night we
Were never alone
True North
We need an absolute
Compass now more
Than ever before
True north, True north
Wonders of nature speak
To us all of Your plan
Why would we run from Your hand?
Laws of the earth, just like
The laws of the heart
Only begin where You are
How did we ever wander
So far and where do we
Go from here?
How will we find it again?
Turning back to where
You meet us
We will follow where
You lead us
There is Truth inside
Your dwelling
We have come to face
True North
There’s a strong steady light
That is guiding us home
True North
In the lingering night we
Were never alone
True North
We need an absolute
Compass now more
Than ever before
True north, True north
It seems to me that a “balanced and healthy hermeneutics never excludes” other people’s current imagination, circumstances and level of understanding, for wouldn’t that do violence to them?
The “whole hermeneutical circle” must pass throught the Dark Woods, where the Direct Way is lost, forever.
—Cassandra of Perelandra
b) You know the answers, but don’t want to supply them
Every question I’ve asked arises reasonably from what you’ve said to me, or could so rise. That is, your statements aren’t brute facts. These are your interpretations of historical moments, presumably offered to me as proof that racism isn’t white supremacy; that this isn’t its sole functional form.
They don’t say that to me. As my questions may indicate, almost everything you’ve said has a caveat.
You said:
In response:
There can be a dialogue. What do you think we’re doing right now?
But, unlike white supremacy, in a dialogue, you don’t get the last word.
You make an argument, I make a counterargument, you make a counter-counterargument, and so on. Dialogue. Apparently, your notion of dialogue is that you make a statement, and I respectfully listen.
As a pastor, you may be used to making public statements that don’t get questioned. But this isn’t your pulpit.
You said:
In response:
I’m not trying to help you. I’m trying to reveal truth. As anyone who reads your statements, then reads my responses to them, may see, your agglomeration of would-be facts doesn’t aid the revelation of truth or the production of justice. They are suspect.
