Eminem (was: Influenced by GR?)

[jbor]

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>From: Terrance <Lycidas at worldnet.att.net>
>To: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
>Subject: Re: Eminem (was: Influenced by GR?)
>Date: Wed, Jul 26, 2000, 6:20 AM
>

> I'm not so sure it is, I guess it depends on how it is used.
> That color is the discriminating factor gives me pause. Here
> in the states, discourse on race and racism was, up until,
> say the the mid to late 70s, generally framed in simplistic
> terms--color. The stark polarity of balck/white conflict, as
> it has been propagated, we have always known, embraces none
> of the true complexities of racist behavior.
 snip

I really think that skin colour is and has always been a very real criterion
of racial discrimination. To draw a little parallel: when the British
settled in Australia in the 1780s they brought their own slaves along with
them -- the convicts. These convicts were white, and generally paupers and
petty criminals: children, men and women who had stolen a loaf of bread or
poached off the local lord's estate, forgers and the like. In England at the
time most crimes worse than property damage were punishable by hanging. But
the indigenous people in the new colony were black. As soon as the white
convict-slave had served his or her time they became free citizens. The
social stigma of the convict colony passed within a very short space of
time, by 1900 at least I'd say. I mean, who on the street or in a job
interview could recognise that someone's parents or grandparents had been a
convict. Of course, the oppressive treatment of the black indigenous tribes
continued well into the 1970s (and the stigmas and prejudices live on now).

Compare this to the history of civil rights in America. The stigma of
slavery lived on in the laws of the land until the 1960s at least, over one
hundred years after the practice was abolished, for the descendants of
slaves could be identified by their skin colour. Oppression was their
birthright.

No amount of "ivory tower" proselytising is going to alter this.

> It's complicated, but every morning I see the black
> Columbian students kiss the White Columbian students on the
> cheek and the white Columbian students kiss the black
> Columbian students, the Sudanese hang with Poles for some
> reason, Communisim they tell me, but I suspect it's
> something else,  the Korean and the Mexicans girls giggle

They're all "Americans" too, aren't they?