Rant about Racism and this annoying need for self-entitlement.

[Pockets]

It's kind of sad really that this whole 'Politically correct' movement is such a big thing now. When did people lose their spine? When did men become such pissy little shits that they can't handle words or concepts that they don't like? It's almost like mankind is more concerned about appeasing a bunch of butt hurt, self-righteous, self-entitled idiots than they are about the truth. Please understand that I am the furthest from being racist, I have plenty of friends of different ethnicities and I'm engaged to a Korean woman. But I get so tired of people carrying on about being called 'African-American' instead of 'Black'. Well dumbass, make up your mind. Do you want to be an American or an African, you can't be both!? This pity party about the slave trade bores me to death. First of all the slave trade ended nearly 150 years ago. You haven't suffered the lash or chains, you haven't had your family broken up to be sold at auction like cattle, and you can't say it was only the Black people who were sold into slavery. The Irish were sold into slavery as well. I should know, my family has records of sale for five different members of my family.

And yet, when those people were freed. Did you stick their hands out and say, 'Gimme!' or 'You owe me, because....' No. They pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and went out into a world that felt that they were still only little better than animals and they carved out their place in it. I hear far too often about how the white man is holding the black man down. Yet, I have a black doctor. I've served under and beside black men and women in the US Army. I've been reprimanded (officially and unofficially) by black officers in that same Army. And yet, how are the white people holding you back? The only one's holding you back are yourselves.

People keep talking about white police officers killing black people. Okay, yeah, it happens. Not every individual wearing a badge is an upright guy/gal, some abuse their authority. Sometimes they don't they don't think about their actions. But a vast majority of officers are good people who just want to make a difference. But you also like to ignore the fact that the rate of black on black crime is exponentially higher than white on black or black on white crime? Come on people, stop fooling yourselves.

Stop looking for handouts and take that hand up. Some agonizing over something you haven't experienced and realize that yeah, black slaves got shafted hardcore. But they weren't alone and your ancestors, if they were even slaves, would be ashamed of what you have available but aren't taking advantage of. History is rife with the atrocities of mankind.

[Cycle]

Empathy
noun
em·pa·thy \ˈem-pə-thē\

the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also :  the capacity for this

[Skynet]

It's not like when slavery ended things got better.  100 years of Jim Crow segregation followed, but then when integration came there was still bad things going on.  Slavery and white supremacy were socially acceptable in American society for centuries, and it's only been within the last 50 years that these concepts even started to be stamped out and changed by cultural shift.  It's not going to go away that quickly; change happens, but it happens slowly.

Look up blockbusting by real estate agents, redlining, "ghetto loans" and other policies by businesses to take advantage of and overcharge black families while preying on racial fears at the same time.  This all happened during the 70s, a full decade after the Civil Rights Movement when integration was inevitable.

And it's not a fringe case, or mostly at one race.  Michelle Malkin once said that Japanese interment was morally justified and that we should do the same to Muslims and Middle Easterners today.

Or how when a homeless Latino man got beat up by Donald Trump fans, Trump responded indirectly that they were patriots before the blowback made him delete the Tweet; and he still carries on with stuff like that, just in different ways.  This isn't a fringe yahoo, but a Presidential candidate leading the polls in many places.

Or how many Native Americans still live today in reservations on remote and desolate stretches of land with little in the way of natural resources, and how many US citizens don't realize that they're still around, thinking them all to have been killed off during the times of the Old West.  Aside from Twilight's Jacob, how often do you see modern-day Native Americans in media today?

The US is a great country, and there are few places in the world where I'd like to live, but we are still far from an egalitarian society.  Bootstraps can only do so much when hateful people are still in power and have their views supported by a significant percentage of people.

[Phelan8801]

African-American: An American citizen of African descent.

Not that complicated.

People of every race have a right to define their identity however they see fit, and denying that right to make them fit our standards is disrespectful at best.

Also, yes, black on black crime is higher statistically than white on black, or white on white. There's a good reason for this. As it turns out... most african-american criminals live in heavily disenfranchised, neglected neighbourhoods that happen to be populated by other black people. It's not a hard concept to grasp, I'm not even black or American and I can easily understand the correlation between systematic racism, and a crime epidemic primarily affecting the discriminated race.

[Sho]

Took me a while to respond to this. Took a few deep breaths, and a bit of calming down, since your 'rant' is phrased is arguably the most tone-deaf manner I've seen. Rather than complain about how hard it is for you to be PC (I'll be honest, it sounds pretty similar to you saying 'Gee, it's SO hard for me to be respectful/nice/thoughtful), why don't you take a look at some of the following resources to learn a bit more about why being black in America isn't equivalent to being 'American' as you think they shoul dbe (meaning white American)?

I've gone and put some sources together for you. I suggest you read them. Maybe it will help you understand that there is a huge world beyond what you've been seeing on a daily basis. Also, would love to point out...you say you've worked with black people. Fantastic. How many of them are your close friends? How many of them have you attended weddings/births/deaths with? How many of them are considered in your closest circle of friends?

If you wouldn't consider them your best friends/family, you probably don't have any real concept of what they're going through, and probably shouldn't be trying to speak for them.

Beyond that...don't you think it's a bit insulting to take an entire group of people, lump them together into one giant group and say 'this entire group is, in my view, entirely homogenous and is represented only by this PC movement?'. Generally, both in everyday conversation and in the media, people assume that white people have different views on matters like this. Unfortunately, its often assumed that all black people somehow magically agree on these issues, as your post illustrates, by saying that people aren't from 'Africa', they're 'American', and they're all somehow one group.

1. Africa's not a country, and like Europe, each of its countries has an entirely different identity
2. Many black people in America aren't from Africa, or at least don't identify as being from an African descent so much as they consider themselves Carribean/European/what have you
3. Do you really, REALLY think that police have absolutely no racial bias? Do you really think that police treat white people and black people 100% the same? If you do, I'm happy to provide you a mountain of sources to show you that it's not the case.

Anyways, take a look, read up. I found these helpful. Hopefully they'll show you why being black in America isn't at all equivalent to being white in America, and why we shouldn't ignore that difference but understand it. This is just a small picking of articles, but there are zillions out there, and maybe these will get you started:

Link 1: Quora - What's it like to be black in America?]=https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-be-black-in-AmericaLink 1: Quora - What's it like to be black in America?

2. To Be Young and Black in America

3. The Exhausting Task of Being Black in America

4. 10 Truths About Being Black in America

[Oniya]

This topic is being locked.  If the OP (or anyone else) wants to discuss this topic in a constructive manner, feel free to open a new topic under the guidelines of this board.

Oniya - for Staff.