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Alan Hodge's avatar

Well, this old white fucker thinks the Divide Enrage Incite program is working great for the class that put in play. Are relations more tense? Is everybody more pissed off? Is the match getting closer to the gasoline? Our owners should be proud of DEI: it’s working fine. No chance in hell we’re going to put our anger where it belongs when this shit blows.

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Rohn Kenyatta's avatar

Wish I'd said that.

And I have admonished, counseled and warned you about showing me up on my thread...dude.

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Alan Hodge's avatar

You can have it! If you said it, somebody might hear it.

Me showing you up. Sheeyit.

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Rohn Kenyatta's avatar

Your killin' me Satiricus.

Just unsubscribe and go away.

Please.

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Alan Hodge's avatar

Naw, man. I’m like that donkey in Shrek.

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Rohn Kenyatta's avatar

Good grief.

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Geer's avatar

doomed individuals enfeeblement

let’s focus on socioeconomic issues instead of labeling

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Alan Hodge's avatar

So happy to be pointed back to this one, eight months later. Man, Rohn Kenyatta has some hilarious commenters! Well, one, anyway.

I wasn't there for the Black experience in America, being somewhat challenged in the Honk department, but I want to share with a thoughtful author what I seem to be seeing here. To be clear, I think I am agreeing with my friend the author, who makes it awful damn hard for me not to comment on his posts, so here's his reward for writing from the heart.

Here are some examples of what I'm seeing. Make me grateful, change my mind.

Until white people started pretending to help, Harlem was a relatively dignified sanctuary for the Black New Yorker. Was it poor compared to Long Island? Yes. Was it also more alive, more creative, and a more apt expression of Black culture than has been <allowed> since? Definitely. When is it a good idea to listen to whitey's mealy mouth music instead of watching what actually happens?

Neh-frikkin-Ver.

When southern schools were desegregated in the 1960s, a process I was privileged to watch from the white side, where did all those Black teachers go? They were the brightest, most determined, most outspoken, upstanding, and respected members of the Black community. Leading voices, leading characters. Where did they go? Well, they didn't come to teach at my elementary, honey. Lemme put on my Grand Wizard hat, yeah that one, and make a brilliant farsighted guess here: they went begging for jobs and ended up scrubbing floors. Well, okay, maybe the Black community was beheaded, but Black children got educated, right? Sure, they got The Lesson:

"The Nail That Sticks Up Gets Hammered Down"

They also found out their white "peers" were a couple of grades ahead of them, by way of weird things like owning books, and they got a solid blank wall of white role models with white expectations of Black kids. I'm just asking, if whites had wanted to help, wouldn't they have funded Black schools, instead of destroying them? If whites wanted a prosperous, healthy, thriving Black community, would we start by uprooting it and moving it into The Projects, and dispersing all ties of kinship and community to the four winds? Just asking. And please don't get me started on what welfare and food stamps did to Black family life, just don't. I notice that with 10% of the population, Black pregnancies account for 50% of abortions since 1972, but of course that's just coincidence. Not according to plan... nothing to do with finally getting voting rights... or anything...

Bear with me, I'm winding up.

"Yeah, yeah," says the shitlib, "but look at all the good done by Affirmative Action, and college quotas, and ffs, DEI!" Wrong again. Those programs are exactly what you would do if you wanted to make good and damn sure no Black professional anywhere, ever, gets an ounce of respect, no matter how diligent, no matter how smart, no matter how high their performance. In fact, by proof of result, these programs are what you do if you want to make absolutely certain nothing any Black person can accomplish will ever challenge the sneering prejudice of white losers.

We can see it working, sho nuff!

What if Harlem was still the cultural soul of the Soul Nation, with another hundred years of vibrant life and hope behind it? What if southern schools were still taught and run by the best and brightest minds of a Black community where every child had an enforceable legal right to good clean food and water, safe shelter, appropriate clothing, all the healthcare it needed, and all the education it could hold? How much would Black lives matter if that was the case? They'd matter a damn sight more to themselves, for starters. I'm close to tears, here.

My disclaimer, since we're doing that: I don't pretend to Love Black People(TM). On average, I find Blacks slightly more tolerable than whites, but there are plenty of Black people I can't stand. Nor do I pretend I'm unprejudiced or un-bigoted or that I don't live in a race-based culture which privileges my race. Nor do I pretend --buckle in, now-- nor do I pretend not to enjoy my privilege. I enjoy the hell out of my privilege. I owe it a lot, and I'm grateful for it. However, I am what was formerly known as a liberal-minded man. This won't be my America until everybody has a good start and a fair shot. In my little old dried up Southern Boy opinion, that is the absolute bottom-feeding baseline for calling ourselves a society in the first place.

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Rohn Kenyatta's avatar

"...Lemme put on my Grand Wizard hat."

And you wear it well!

HELL, if I didn't know any better I would think you were some Catholic Pontiff.

I have grown quite weary of telling you that you have outdone yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capirote

Now, I shall repent.

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Alan Hodge's avatar

That’s IT! That’s the very Grand Wizard Hat I had pitchered all up in my tiny mind.

If you don’t want comments, don’t be so thought-provocative. Warn me if I’m flirting with the block, though! Liable to kill my ancient white ass. When my tariff bets play out, I’m gonna buy me a subscription. Then you’ll be in a fix!

*Peace with goodwill*

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Rohn Kenyatta's avatar

Good GOD, you are a real piece of work.

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Ed Jordan's avatar

"DEI is more domestic, hypocritical and platitudinal gallus gallus domesticus: excrement." ~ (urine,secretion of chicken), love my homework assignments. 🙃

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Rohn Kenyatta's avatar

Simply put: Chickenshit

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Vivian Barro's avatar

You know I was watching the Harris/Walz rally the other day and wondered why does Harris (like Hillary) always wear those pantsuits? It seems VP Harris has them in every color even! I don’t think there’s anything wrong for a woman to wear a dress even if you are the president. Well said Kenyatta…

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Rohn Kenyatta's avatar

Whew!

And I am certain you get the larger point of how hypocritical and superficial the populace is; in all aspects.

Thank you.

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Ernest Edwards's avatar

"Perhaps a blind, overweight, dress-wearing, baldheaded woman sporting a beard that plays the banjo in her wheelchair is our salvation." Thanks for the humor. I needed that laugh. Good stuff good brother. I look forward to your observations and musings.

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areader's avatar

Funny how baby boomers who benefitted from something want to eliminate it.

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Geer's avatar

i’m not smart enough for this debate but i do like wearing my srilankan sarong

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Geer's avatar

as a card passport carrying european citizen, call me eurotrash, but my european brethren of all stripes and colours generally sound like each other and have the same educational tracks as all

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