Posted on Sunday, June 25, 2006 - 4:25 pm:

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Do you have Cliff Notes for this stuff?

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Posted on Monday, June 26, 2006 - 1:02 am:

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"Rasputin

will you stop with the madness already!?!?sheesh!"

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Posted on Monday, June 26, 2006 - 10:24 am:

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F. EUROCENTRISM

Eurocentrism is a term used to describe a world view which puts European thinking, values, civilization, history, geography, art and people at the center of its perspective. The lives and cultures of peoples from Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Arab world are put on the margins, or else ignored entirely.

“Eurocentric culture,” which in the United States is a core part of white culture, needs to be distinguished from “European cultures,” that is, the particular cultural expressions of different peoples and nations which reside on the European continent. Defensive white culturalists often call criticisms of Eurocentrism, “Europe bashing.” That is nonsense. Critics are not saying, “Don’t listen to Mozart.” What they are saying is, “Mozart is to European classical music what John Coltrane is to African/American classical music: both are giants in their fields, and should be studied and valued as such.

Most aspects of Eurocentrism were brought to this continent by the European invaders and their biographers. It has been reinforced through the centuries and still dominates educational, scientific and media institutions today. In my opinion, some aspects of what is criticized as Eurocentric are wholly destructive; other aspects are destructive only when they are used to marginalize or ignore other forms of thinking and values. I will try to distinguish between the two:

Examples of wholly destructive ways of thinking;

+ Power as domination over others, rather than power as creative capacity to act; + Either/or logic; as distinguished from a both/and way of thinking; + Destruction, rather than stewardship, of the earth, air and water; + Ownership, rather than stewardship of the land; i.e., land as “private property;” + Ownership of people as private property; + “Despiritualization” of the universe; + Separation of human from connectedness and responsibility in the world; + Violence toward other beings as an expression of manhood; + Belief that one’s religion must be brought to others; “it’s god’s will;” + View of time as linear, including belief in inevitable “progress;” + Belief that there is only one truth, and if you don't see it, you’re damned. + The continent of Europe, or North America, is at the center of the world.

Examples of views that are destructive only when they marginalize other views: + Knowledge can be gained from reasoning, analysis, measurement and counting; + The knower and known are separable; + Sex is an expression of love; + A purpose of families is to create and nurture the next generation of human beings; + European and European American men have created beautiful literature and art.

* *( For a comprehensive critique of Eurocentrism, see Marimba Ani, Yurugu: An African— Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior. N.J: Africa World Press, 1994)

G. HOMOGENEITY: ‘WHITE BREAD’ CULTURE*

Eurocentrism, especially when it gets mixed with the rest of white culture, and sold as a capitalist commodity, promotes a mix of culture that is homogenous, lacking and fearful of diversity. It stifles people’s minds, puts them in a box. It is extremely boring. And, like ‘white bread,’ it comes in a pretty package but has no nutritional value.

(* Inspired by "The Wonder—breading of our Country,” a chapter in the pamphlet, The Subjective Side of Politics by Margo Adair and Sharon Howell. Available from Tools for Change; P.O. Box 14141; San Francisco,
Ca. 94114. Phone 415—861—6838.)

H. SOCIALLY SANCTIONED VIOLENCE

Some African centered scholars say that European cultures developed a belief in the value of violence thousands of years ago, when the earliest peoples on the European continent were struggling to survive in a hostile climate, with few sources of food and shelter. Men in these early tribes had to kill to survive and feed their families. If there were no immediate sources of food available in the forest, they would raid another tribe’s food, often killing tribal members in the process. Norse and Viking mythology which glorifies the bloody warrior, testifies to the accuracy of this analysis.

(See especially the theory of the Two Cradles of Civilization as articulated by Cheikh Anta Diop in The Cultural Unity of Black Africa. Chicago: Third World Press, 1978.)

Europe at the time of the invasion of the Americas and Africa was rife with violence. The English tortured, starved and killed thousands of Irish. Feudal landlords threw hapless peasants off their lands, sending them to the cities to beg and starve. The Catholic Church ordered the burning of thousands of women at the stake as witches in Northern Europe; and expelled the Jews and Moors from Spain during the Inquisition. Virtually every method of brutality that the Europeans would practice on the indigenous and African peoples had already been tried out and perfected on other Europeans.

See Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the White Race. Volume One: Racial Oppression and Social Control. New York: Verso Press, 1994; Karl Marx, excerpts from “The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism,” in Edwards, Reich and Weisskopf, eds., The Capitalist System. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972; the film “The Burning Times;” and Jan Carew, “The end of the Moorish enlightenment and the beginning of the Columbian Era,” in Race and Class: The Curse of Columbus. Vol. 33, january—March 1992, #3.).

In the United States, white rulers never hesitated to inflict violence on oppressed whites. The Pilgrim fathers burnt young women at the stake in Salem. Mine owners hired armies to gun down working class families during bitter strikes in mining towns. Landlords regularly evict tenants who fall behind in their rent. And today’s multi—national capitalists cheerfully throw millions of workers out of work while they rake in billions in profits.

But the most sustained, wide spread, and socially acceptable forms of violence have been, and still are, waged against peoples of color. The United States as a nation state was founded with violence: mass murder of millions of indigenous people, the nefarious Middle Passage during which millions of Africans died; the system of chattel slavery which lasted 300 years; and the brutal war against Mexico in which thousands of Mexican people were slaughtered by U.S. troops. The United States still invades nations of color, murdering and starving thousands.

“Socially sanctioned violence” means just that —— violence that is accepted, tacitly or actively, by the majority of a society. In the U.S., only the forms of violence against people of color have changed over the centuries, not the content or result.

For example, lynching was an acceptable form of white violence against African Americans and Chicanos until a few decades ago. Now that same role is provided by police in communities of color each night. The form is now hidden from white view; the content and result are the same. Another example: in the 19th century, white squatters stole Indian land with the consent of Congress. Today, corporations buy and pollute that land, still with the consent of Congress. Both forms of violence kill people; they just employ different forms of laws.

I. THE CULTURE OF RACIALIZED EMOTIONS

White culture creates and recreates carefully manipulated racialized emotions in peoples of color and in white people. For people of color, internalized racism may produce feelings of 90w self esteem” and a distrust of other peoples of color. The effects of pervasive, systemic racism produce emotions of suppressed and explosive rage. Most often the rage is taken out on other peoples of color. Periodically it emerges in a communal explosion, such as in the Los Angeles uprising. On a daily basis, suppressed rage can be deadly to one’s mental and physical health, producing symptoms similar to those called post traumatic stress syndrome which is common to those who have lived their lives in a war zone.

For white people, the most common emotions are a complex of guilt and sense of powerlessness; a combination of fear, hatred, contempt and fascination especially for African Americans; and an obsession with racialized sex. (The following comments make no attempt to explain these emotional phenomena from a psychological view, but merely to comment on them.)

As a political organizer, I believe that guilt is closely related to a sense of powerlessness. On the positive side, emotions of guilt demonstrate that a human being has not lost all his/her humanity: she still feels vaguely responsible for social injustice. But when she chooses not to act, maintaining that she is powerless, her guilt then emotionally paralyzes her, to the point that she cannot or will not act. (For a satirical expression of this, see Jan Adams and Rebecca Cordon’s “The Wackos at the Anti—Racism Conference” in the Exercise Manual.) I do not believe that feelings of guilt and powerlessness can be resolved by talking. You have to break the cycle and act. In an individual, “Power is the creative capacity to act.”

I believe that fear of Black men is the most important racially manipulated emotion that has held white people captive to the white supremacy system since the colonial era. Some of this fear has its historical origins in white ruling class terror of slave revolts. This fear is in some senses justified, since organized rebellions of African Americans have, since the colonial period, have been the most significant threats to the white supremacy system.

Other whites fear that African Americans would treat them as they have treated African Americans, if African Americans had the opportunity. They fear any organized action of Black people, whether a small group of men walking down the street, or an independent African American organization. There is no historical justification for this fear. It is racially manipulated.

Some of this fear is sexually based, again with its origins in the period of slavery. White males routinely raped women of African descent. After the defeat of Reconstruction, white men and women joined in lynching and castrating African American men, justifying their barbarity with the myth that Black men were raping white women. Anti—racist analysts like Jacquelyn Dowd Hall (“The Mind that Burns in Each Body,” in Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology, edited by Margaret Anderson and Patricia Hill Collins; Belmont: Wadsworth Press, 1992, pp. 397—412) see this sexual barbarism as linked to projections of white male actions onto Black males. This sexual obsession continues unabated today.

Many whites fear that Blacks will wipe out the “white race.” Dr. Frances Cress Welsing asserts in her “Cress Theory of Color Confrontation and Racism/White Supremacy,” (The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors. Chicago: Third World Press, 1991) that whites fear the genetic annihilation of the white race. The majority of whites fear losing any form of political, economic or cultural power or privileges. The expression of these fears has been historically lethal for people of color. Enraged whites time and against have acted violently toward peoples of color. In fact, white mob violence has been a staple of white culture throughout U.S. history.

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Posted on Monday, June 26, 2006 - 7:47 pm:

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I guess I gotta go get more popcorn

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Posted on Tuesday, June 27, 2006 - 12:31 pm:

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J. EXPRESSIONS OF WHITE PRIVILEGE IN PROGRESSIVE CULTURE

White progressive activists are not immune to any of the cultural expressions of white supremacy predominant in the rest of white society. But there are two forms which seem to be particularly deep—rooted in our history: false universals and false analogies.

False universals: A false universal is a statement which purports to speak for all people, but in reality, speaks only for some (those who are white). The classic example is: “All men are created equal,” the famous statement from the Declaration of Independence. While the statement: has inspired generations of peoples’ struggles for equality, justice and democracy; it is also an expression of the fundamental contradiction of U.S. democratic ‘ideals. The writers of the Declaration of Independence did not intend “all men” to include men of African or Native American descent. The term may not have even included all white men, but only those who owned some property. And it certainly was not meant to include any women, regardless of national origins or class background.

The use of the false universal plagues white progressive discourse to this day. We talk of the women’s movement, the environmental movement, the anti—war movement. But what we mean is the white women’s, the white environmental, and the white anti—war movement. Our false universalism allows us to ignore or trivialize the leadership role that activists of color play in the movements for women’s liberation, environmental justice, and peace and justice, at home and abroad.

False analogies: A false analogy is a comparison between two sets of experiences which emphasizes their similarities and blots out their differences. The use of false analogies, like the use of false universals, originated in the period when white colonists were fighting for independence from Britain. Protesting Britain’s Sugar Act of 1764, John Dickinson of Pennsylvania said,

“Those who are taxed without their own consent expressed by themselves or their representatives.. .are slaves. We are taxed without our consent expressed by ourselves or our representatives. We are therefore...slaves7

(quoted in A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. p. 375)

Ironically, the tax against which the indignant colonists were protesting was a tax on the profits from their slave trade. Thus, it is not surprising that these same rebellious colonists did not think of freeing their enslaved Africans when they freed themselves from the “slavery” of English domination.

Throughout U.S. history, white progressive activists have compared our oppression to that of slavery, or to racism against African Americans, in order to win support for our own struggles. White male workers, brutally exploited by 19th century capitalists, called themselves wage slaves. White women’s rights activists of the same period analogized their oppression to slavery.

The contemporary white womens movement, born out of the African American freedom struggles of the 1960’s, compared the oppression they experienced from sexism to the experience of being oppressed by racism. And in 1993, white gays and lesbians, struggling to end the homophobic ban on their open participation in the military, have often compared their struggle to that of African Americans who demanded an end to segregation in the same institution.

When we use these analogies, we wipe out the distinct history of white supremacy’s impact on peoples of color, especially African Americans. We do not need to use false analogies to demonstrate that non—ruling class white people suffer oppression. Our history is our legacy. Understanding our own oppressions requires us to respect the differences between our histories and the histories of the diverse peoples of color in the United States.
============================== ========================
This lengthy piece on THE CULTURE OF WHITE SUPREMACY was written in September, 1994 by Sharon Martinas and the Challenging White Supremacy Workshop. Please consider this a draft. Your comments, criticisms and suggestions would be gratefully appreciated. Contact the CWS Workshop.

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Posted on Tuesday, June 27, 2006 - 2:46 pm:

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"At least Rasputin writes in English."

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Posted on Tuesday, June 27, 2006 - 3:03 pm:

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Nah, little fella; we haven't been hanging out and I actually have no desire to start now.

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Posted on Tuesday, June 27, 2006 - 5:58 pm:

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Yo'man laid the basis for western racism misconceptions about people and extensive use of organized people activities, like education, religion, etc., as a rationale for the enslavement of people ya' see...

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Posted on Tuesday, June 27, 2006 - 7:20 pm:

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You're asking questions in which 'Ras' had already answered!!! Have you read 'Ras' post at all?

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Well; we see Paulj try to cover his ass, while demonstrating his ignorance. I have NO NEED to uncover my biases .... methinks they're well documented on this web site and VERY CONSISTENT too. btw: NOT WRITTEN in INSECURE RACIST CODE either, like yourself.

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Posted on Wednesday, June 28, 2006 - 11:39 am:

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"I was aiming for a fuchsia day"

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Posted on Wednesday, June 28, 2006 - 1:38 pm:

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If you read my my post correctly, and not filled with your bullschitt-projections (as Time Wise asserts); you would know that I don't deal with your bullschitt code ..... and most other intelligent Black Folk don't either!! So it won't be a big deal if you take your, "...pushing 30 and don't see any meaningful progress in the above-stated situation happening in the next ten years." ass away from here and please don't let the "door-knob hitcha" on the way to being LONG GONE!!

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Posted on Wednesday, June 28, 2006 - 1:46 pm:

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"white bonding"

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Posted on Wednesday, June 28, 2006 - 9:22 pm:

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Black-atcha ..... watching the "because We immigrants are here, Detroit will be a better place" syndrome of 'white, eurocentric supremacy' be expressed. A lightweight read, he is.

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No "misleading" comments please ....

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Paulj: Go back to sleep ..... you aren't capable of comprehending what your own people wrote about you.

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Liberals try to suppress facts that counter their vision.

Despite the warm glow of self-satisfaction that the liberal vision confers on liberals, ugly facts keep intruding to undermine that vision. Some liberals eventually jump ship and defect to conservatism when the facts keep piling up too high to ignore.

This takes time, of course, and in the meantime there is a never-ending supply of new young people to become charmed with the liberal vision and replace those who have become disenchanted with it.

Other liberals hang on to liberal ideas to the bitter end -- especially when the end is not that bitter for them personally, when they live insulated lives in academia, the courts, foundations and other places where there is no price for liberals to pay for being wrong, no matter how disastrous the consequences for others.

Still, facts are a danger to the vision. In recent times, those on the left have increasingly sought to suppress facts that go counter to the vision.

Research dealing with innate biological differences are of course anathema to those with the liberal-left vision. Even research that turns up cultural or other behavioral differences between groups is almost as great a danger.

Both kinds of research undermine the notion that there are "solutions" that government can impose to eliminate differences, gaps, disparities or "inequities" that liberalism claims to be able to eliminate.

Scientific research into differences in the way male and female brains function is denounced by radical feminists, who are calling for a ban on such research. No matter what the MRIs say, the radical feminists say all differences are due to "society."

Liberals have worked long and hard to get the very word "sex" replaced by "gender," since sex is an innate biological fact while gender is an arbitrary social designation, much as the French language assigns the female gender to the noun "plume" for pen.

It is a sign of how easy it is to stampede large sections of society that so many people now find it necessary to refer to gender instead of sex, even if they have not bothered to consider what the difference is or why they have changed what they say.

When it comes to racial and ethnic minorities, liberal politicians and judges can make it literally a federal case to give IQ tests to black children. Among the facts that we would never have known if some people did not find ways around this taboo is that black IQs have risen in recent times.

The greatest danger to the liberal vision are facts about the consequences of liberalism itself and the laws, policies, and ways of life that the left has spawned.

That the black family, which survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination, has disintegrated in the wake of the liberal welfare state is only one example.

Liberals have been driven to the desperate expedient of attributing this and other social pathology in today's ghettos to "a legacy of slavery" -- even though black children grew up with two parents more often under slavery than today.

Blacks only a generation or two out of slavery also had higher rates of employment and lower rates of crime than today.

The illogic of the "legacy of slavery" argument only illustrates the desperate attempt to salvage the liberal vision.

The very people who argue this way would never be guilty of such illogic in discussing something that was not such a threat to their vision.

One of the most telling examples of the social destructiveness of the left's welfare-state vision can be found among the white slum dwellers in Britain described in the brilliant and insightful book "Life at the Bottom" by Theodore Dalrymple.

There it is not possible to blame social degeneracy on slavery, racism or any of the other things cited as causes of the behavior and consequences found among blacks in American slums. Yet the results are virtually identical, right down to children beating up classmates for trying to get an education.

The vision of the left, full of envy and resentment, takes its worst toll on those at the bottom -- whether black or white -- who find in that paranoid vision an excuse for counterproductive and ultimately self-destructive attitudes and behavior.

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Posted on Friday, June 30, 2006 - 12:15 pm:

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Damn this thread is obnoxious.

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Posted on Friday, June 30, 2006 - 12:27 pm:

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ravine, the key is to not post on this thread, so it will drop from sight. that is why i do not post on this thread.

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Posted on Tuesday, July 04, 2006 - 9:16 pm:

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White supremacy is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent; for the purpose of establishing, maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power and privilege.

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Posted on Thursday, July 06, 2006 - 2:32 pm:

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As you read this, please remember that this is a very tentative beginning of a new effort by many white activists in the U.S. to explore the meanings of white culture. Most analysis on white culture has been done by activists and scholars of color. Their work has inspired me to begin to do my own homework.

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Posted on Sunday, July 09, 2006 - 12:07 pm:

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Ras is most assuredly Detroityes.com's resident evil. Can Lowell or another one of the veteran posters reveal the true reason Ras is given free reign on this forum? Forumers such as Ras is the reason this forum has fallen out of favor with me. I just don't get how Ras can be so disruptive and be allowed to remain a forum member.

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Posted on Sunday, July 09, 2006 - 1:59 pm:

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Ras is most assuredly Detroityes.com's resident evil. Can Lowell or another one of the veteran posters reveal the true reason Ras is given free reign on this forum? Forumers such as Ras is the reason this forum has fallen out of favor with me. I just don't get how Ras can be so disruptive and be allowed to remain a forum member.

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