Eminem (was: Influenced by GR?)

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> ----------
> >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. 

Well, I'm not so sure, but it certainly has been a very real
criterion of racial discrimination in the Modern West.
Anyway, what I'm suggesting is that racial discrimination is
very complicated and that black/white polarity or  color, be
it skin color, eye color, hair color,  while it has been a
very real criterion, may not be the best way to frame the
issue, since color cannot account for racism's many forms,
complex practices, and various victims. This is where
sophomores argue that lighter skinned blacks discriminate
against darker skinned blacks and that slavery was not
unknown among black races prior to their contact with the
white man and blah, blah, blah, but it is not my purpose to
blend this issue into shades of relative gray. 

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).

Yes, I'm not trying to minimize, depreciate, or how shall I
say, diminish or dilute  (just thought of Twain's
'Pudd'nhead Wilson') the crimes or sins, the hideous
practice of discrimination based on color or the part color
has played in the protracted discrimination perpetrated
against peoples of color. Again, I'm suggesting that
delimiting the issues with the stark polarity of balck/white
conflict, which is how it has been construed by those that I
think advance the status quo, even though it is known, that
this simple binary lie account for  few if any of the true
complexities of racist behavior. Again, what we often talk
about is a pared-down image of racism, one that delimits the
definition of its forms, its perpetrators, and especially
its victims.

> 
> 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.

Oh, but that won't stop it. 
> 
> > 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?

No, not yet.

Shit'n'Shinola, now we have something to talk about....