Ferguson riots

[Forum]

Daily mail comments section should give you all you'll need

[Harkat]

NWJ I'm not trying to be difficult here. I'd rate you as a good debater for the most part on here so no ill will.

I think that tweet implies some bad things about who has accountability for what. Let me think about this for a sec.

[hubb]

Imo

distrust doesn't come from rap culture but from experience and it's not a political opinion in any way

and its not a genuine community



I would say that the lack of democratic weight means that disenfranchised groups can become apolitical and that that is the most likely outcome

[OGLemon]

Only way to end police brutality is to abandon current property relations.

[nobody]

I bet he smoked a lot of weed tbh, maybe that's why he was so aggressive, and a thief, god knows what else.

[jaydot]

Why is police brutality more publicised than say white/black supremecy-do you think because it's not as well documented

[dickman69]

black supremacy?

gtfo

[jaydot]

black supremacy?

gtfo

You're ignorant if you don't think blacks can be racist too.

[magma]

You could interpret what I'm saying as hip hop artists are the popular voice of the black community, and as such wield great power in shaping the thoughts and actions of that community and by extension how that community interacts with the society at large. It is morally, intellectually, and practically inconsistent to worship lawlessness and all the rest of the community destroying ideals in popular hip hop music and then turn around and claim some right to equality and justice when you don't act equally or justly.

Unfortunately, that would still make it a load of old bollocks.

a) "The" popular voice? A genre of music that is generally marketed at teenagers and twenty somethings? No. It may be "a" voice, but so is Bill Cosby with his "we must do better" rhetoric, so is Spike Lee, so is Barack Obama, so is Jesse Jackson, so is Cornel West... hell, so is Don Lemon. You notice anything about all those voices? They're all forever disagreeing with each other about the same issues regularly in public. Black people, along with all racial groups, are not monolithic cultures unlike what most American media would like you to believe.

b) Hip Hop has been the most popular form of music amongst teenagers from all walks of life for the last 2 decades and whilst it's still very much associated with a very particular strain of Black American by certain areas of the media, it is far more everyman than that in reality. Macklemore has had as much presence in the Ferguson commentary as Killer Mike.

c) Art reflects society, it doesn't create it. Gangster Rap didn't cause the LA Riots, but it's a useful historical source to learn the atmospheres and attitudes that lead to riots. Grime didn't cause the UK riots and I don't think anyone implied it did, but look at it backwards and you could easily think it had. Causality between art and society is a very dangerous thing to start making assumptions about... you might as well blame the GTA franchise for all the carjackings since 1995.

Additional: It strikes me as suspicious how "common knowledge" tells us that rap music destroys society with it's negative images, but bubblegum pop music, which has used largely positive imagery for at least the last 4 or 5 decades has been equally impotent in creating a better society - why are negative things only assumed to be effective? Again, it seems fairly clear that art does not create society, it reflects it. Imagine would've caused World Peace to break out for evermore if music had the power that these news editors think it has.

Of course, plenty of styles of music have been blamed for society's ills. Jazz. Rock n Roll. House music. Hip Hop. Grime.

Do people ever hypothesize that country music, with it's glamorized criminal hero-tales and never-ending stream of "woe is me" is the reason so many white people end up living below-par lives, shortened by drug abuse and violence in that other great symbol of America, the Trailer Park? Should "our" community be "doing better" too? Or is the whole idea of calling a race a "community" only applicable when the membership has a natural tan?

[Phigure]

yessss mag

black supremacy?

gtfo

You're ignorant if you don't think blacks can be racist too.

Reverse racism does not and can not exist you moron

Can some black people discriminate against white people? Sure (but it's negligible anyways). Can they be racist? No

Because racism is not just "i hate _____ people". Racism is not overtly putting on a KKK hood and burning a cross. Racism is a structural, insitutional problem. Racism is when you have these prejudices in attitudes, values, laws, etc ingrained into a culture and its institutions. Black people can't be racist because there exist no systemic, structural factors that support or enable them in oppressing white people (unlike the other way around)

[Harkat]

The only problem I have with that definition is it's pretty anglosphere/western-centric

I doubt whites face proper opression anywhere, that's not the point, but there are lots of peoples in africa for example who I'd describe as being racist towards each other.

[nobody]

Can some black people discriminate against white people? Sure (but it's negligible anyways). Can they be racist? No

Stupid and sheltered thing to say, anyone can be a racist ffs.

[Phigure]

The only problem I have with that definition is it's pretty anglosphere/western-centric

I doubt whites face proper opression anywhere, that's not the point, but there are lots of peoples in africa for example who I'd describe as being racist towards each other.

well i am talking about it in the context of the western world, but the same definition applies elsewhere - if in asia, for example (could be any place where the privileged majority is non-white), there is cultural and institutional oppression of blacks or whites or whatever, then that is racism just the same.

[Harkat]

Are the ethnical conflicts in the former yugoslavia racist?

Anyway I don't think this has much to do with anything. The point is the systematic oppression, wether it's called racist or not.

I think the hip hop violence discussion is interesting BTW NWJ, still thinking

[Phigure]

Can some black people discriminate against white people? Sure (but it's negligible anyways). Can they be racist? No

Stupid and sheltered thing to say, anyone can be a racist ffs.

what i said hinges on the rest of my post. the popular, colloquial definition of racism is really incomplete. when most people, like yourself, talk about racism (in the sense of "reverse racism"), they're really just talking about discrimination on a more individual basis. the difference between discrimination and racism is that there are systemic, cultural, institutional elements that are leveraged in order to discriminate against people.

Are the ethnical conflicts in the former yugoslavia racist?

absolutely, but the society, culture, institutions, etc of yugoslavia are very different than those in the US and most of the western world, so the nature of the racism in that conflict takes different forms compared to the racism in the US

The point is the systematic oppression, wether it's called racist or not.

but in order to combat the systematic oppression, don't you have to identify what's causing it? if you just ignore a huge dimension of the problem, you arent going to be able to successfully come up with a solution

[nobody]

Stop saying 'reverse racism'... how do you think that's a thing? it's just called racism

[Phigure]

*ignores my post and focuses on something inconsequential*

i dont think its a thing, thats just what its frequently referred to as

[nobody]

If someone discriminates someone because of their race, it's racism. It doesn't matter if one person is Chinese and the other is from Brazil, it's still racism, not reverse racism and not just 'discrimination'. Right?

[nousd]

it might help to distinguish the uses of "racism" to refer to both:

an individual's stereotyping on the basis of racialist/ethnic differentiation (i.e. general use)
whereby anybody can be racist

and the related but different referencing of institutionalized prejudice thru power structures
(similar to feminist/wealth/disabled debates about exclusion)
whereby it is very arguable that black Americans don't have enough access to power be racist

(perhaps inferring that if they did a la parts of Africa, they would be)

[nobody]

Can Chinese people be racist? http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from ... e-30210781