Not trying to cause trouble but ......

[LisaB]

That's a really good point which. I think, is attached to the need to remain "safe" and also the need to be "right". Both are fear based and are part of what is used to "control the masses". We see it everywhere - especially advertising.

Many times I have traveled down the wrong roads for a while because at the time, they felt like the right roads, but for me, finding out I was on the wrong path, although sometimes painful, was a gift that adds to my ability to have perspective. What's life without risk?

 

[Art_of_Mind]

I'm a tin foil hat type.
For the most part here in the forums I just look at the images and don't read or post much.
This being an art fourm, the events of the past weekend were in part related to art.
If the State decides that something is no longer needed then it gets surplused, becuase that object belongs to (all) the tax payers, since it is no longer needed it is not destroyed, it is to be offered up to the public in the form of a fair auction. The object belongs to everyone, it can not be split up fairly to everyone, there for the only way to remove it fairly is to surplus it, auction it off, and the money goes back to the goverment. How ever buys the object can do what they want with it. Tax payers property is not for who ever is offened by it to come along and destroy it.

forgive the grammer, I'm an artist, not writer

 

[James R.]

uh, how about the fabulous creature in the corner sipping coffee with the smart haircut

This. Was. Awesome.

 

[James R.]

We have troubles here in Canada, too. Multiculturalism is part of who and what we are as a country.

We were supposed to be a country where we see each others' differences and welcome them. We were supposed to experience each others' cultures and beliefs and learn and share. That was the grand plan.


This is still a country where we're not a melting pot. You don't have to assimilate. You don't have to hide your culture, your religion, your sexuality. Canadian is Everyone. But unfortunately...the people who are full of fear and hate are showing up more and more, and being louder and louder about their hate. Xenophobia has slowly but surely crept in and racism has become even more blatant and accepted. It is so disappointing and disheartening to see. Need I point out that the past two years have been particularly bad?

I really do hope that the tide turns again. Not just for us, but for the world.

 

[Carrie58]

There is so much running through my head that I can't get it out in a articulate manner......Lisa I understand the the need to be "safe" but the need to be right ...yah that I've never understood ..... course I don't understand hating anyone for being different .......

 

[xyer0]

Race is useful as a lever to trick the non-rich into fighting each other so they will remain distracted from the actual issue at hand. To quote a character from "Gangs of New York" quoting Boss Tweed: "Always hire one half of the poor to kill the other half." This is an ancient tactic, now brought to new technological heights by the Department of Propaganda through "television news." Carefully embedded rabble rousers turn peaceful gatherings into fear-fanning, hatred-encouraging "crises." Don't fall for it. Love your enemy. Bless those who curse you.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Of all the articles and opinions I've read this last week, I most liked Jane Greenway Carr's, What the white supremacist view of history leaves out.

How does one reconcile "Make America Great Again" with honoring the confederacy? Those who fought on the side of the confederacy committed treason against the United States. They were rebels. They fought and killed citizens of the United States. How is it that Benedict Arnold is a traitor and Robert E Lee is not?

Had the confederacy won the Civil War, it would be different. Just like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are heros rather than traitors because the United States won the Revolutionary War. Had we lost, it's rather likely there wouldn't be any statues honoring those two dudes. More than likely, they would have been imprisoned, and quite likely executed as traitors.

Granted, the discussion and decisions about removing statues honoring the confederacy focuses on the white supremacy thing rather than the traitor thing. Once you recognize the confederacy stood for slavery and white supremacy ... wouldn't you then feel it's a wee bit wrong to honor the confederacy?

I don't believe the confederate statues should be destroyed, or shoved into some deep dark corner of a warehouse. When removed, they are often moved to museums or sold. It's not like they are being melted down for musket balls ... as was the case with the Bowling Green statue of George III in 1776. Of course, that statue was lead, not bronze.

While I feel that it's long past time to remove confederate statues from public parks and public/government buildings, I was appalled at the behavior of those who destroyed the confederate statue in front of the old courthouse in Durham, North Carolina. Watching the video ... it was far too easy to change the words they were shouting and to visualize them dressed in white sheets and the statue as one that honored union soldiers rather than confederate soldiers.

I was in high school when the Vietnam demonstrations and protests began on the University of Oregon campus in 1969. While I only lived across the river in Springfield, Oregon, it felt like I lived a whole world away from that world. Even had I been a few years older and had been a student at the UofO, I doubt I would have gotten involved in most of the demonstrations and protests. Oh, I felt very strongly our involvement in Vietnam was wrong. I also felt just as strongly about the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) as did those who demanded its removal from campus. I just wasn't the type of person to make a scene back then. I'm not sure I am now.

Then too, even as a teen, mobs frightened me. They still do. Whether that mob is carrying torches and shouting slogans in support of or against equality. There is no controlling a mob ... there is no reasoning with a mob. I do not ever want to be part of a mob. To lose control of myself to the point I would find myself spitting on or kicking a destroyed statue ... or a person. Imagining myself in the middle of mob and becoming part of a mob is just as terrifying to me as being the target of a mob.

Like Carrie, I don't quite get this "Racism" thing. I don't get white supremacy. I don't get why "Jews will not replace us," is even an issue. I don't get why equal rights / equal pay / health care for all are even controversial issues.

 

[RAMWolff]

To me using the word RACE is just a way to emphasize people being different species ....which they are not.Or a way to feel superior over others .......I am 59 years old, female ,overweight, American mutt ,I have put "human " in the RACE space on every employment application I have ever filled out . And I am old enough I shouldn't let this get to me but the whole stupidity(in my opinion) of it does. When are we going to grow up??as a whole ??
RAMWolff I definitely love you ,you are a intelligent ,talented , CARING ,being and that's what's important in my book .......
Mz B loving you too

 

[Carrie58]

Satira Capriccio you just expressed alot of the stuff running in circles in my head and you did it way better then my brain will allow ..........
Back atcha Wolff man!!

 

[Alisa]

Like Carrie, I don't quite get this "Racism" thing. I don't get white supremacy. I don't get why "Jews will not replace us," is even an issue. I don't get why equal rights / equal pay / health care for all are even controversial issues.

It's maybe this simple (ah, if it was!) - what if everyone would follow the Golden Rule: Treat people as you want to be treated. We're not perfect, any of us, and we don't always do and say everything correctly, but if everyone aimed for that, we'd have a very different world.

I can't comprehend hating a group of people who are not intending to cause others harm, just because of their race, the color of their skin, religion, sex, sexual preference, weight, whatever.

I had one time, on a bus, as a young teen, where I was a target of someone spewing religious insults, and it was terrifying. I've been a target of people saying mean things about my weight. I grew up in an middle/upper middle class neighborhood and as a young child in the early 60s, I experienced "white flight" when one family on our block sold their home to an African-American family, and one by one, the others sold THEIR homes, till only a few white families were left. I'm extremely proud that my parents, who had talked about moving BEFORE that, decided that because of this, they would NOT move. We stayed many more years, in what, guess what? STILL a middle/-upper middle class neighborhood, just with most of the residents having black skin instead of white, through the death of my father, and more years after, until my mother decided to move into an apartment because the kids were now in college.

There's no place for discrimination against people who are trying to peacefully live their lives.

 

[Art_of_Mind]

If this is real, no need to worry about a race war.

 

[Kalypso]

Carrie and Wolff you are absolutely right. But I would just like to address what McGyver said. Actually children DO react, which is normal, they just don't automatically fear and hate.

When I was a pre-schooler we were living in a country that was like 98% homogeneous. One day when my parents took me to the beach I saw this young, black man and I got so worked up. He was different and I felt the need to point it out to my parents commenting on his dark skin, pointing and probably doing it loudly with excitement. But that's all it was, a novelty that excited me.

Then we went back to the States when I was to start school and finding myself in a classroom with other kindergarteners of various races and colours did not faze me in the least because by then the novelty had worn off.

Many, many years later I was watching a film, Miracle at St. Anna, which was a WWII film taking place in Italy where the 92nd Infantry division was sent. (for those who don't know, the 92nd was a division only of black servicemen since it was segragated for both world wars). Anyway, in the film one of the soldiers saves a little Italian boy and as he's leaning over him to see if he's ok the boy wakes up and comes face to face with a very big, tall and heavyset black guy probably the first he's ever seen in that remote mountainous Italian village. His first reaction is to exclaim "Un giganto de Chocolati!" and sticks out his tongue and licks his face to determine if he was indeed made of chocolate. I think that scene beautifully gave insight to the thoughts and reactions of the child.

The point is, humans are naturally curious about everything but fear of difference leading to hate is something that is not natural and is instilled which gives me hope that maybe some day when blinding dogmas are wiped out we can start living as it was naturally intended for us.

 

[AetherDream]

Alisa your comments are very well put. I have long hoped for a day in which we all can just identify as people regardless of our individual differences. What is "NORMAL" is for each of us to be unique individuals, with a multiplicity of ideas, talents, ways to be, ways to love, and all of us in shades so numerous that none of us look or think exactly like another. If I had one wish that I could give to this world, it would be that we all learn to accept that diversity in every form, human, animal, plant makes this planet a place of beauty and wonder and we should look for ways to love rather than ways to hate.

 

[JOdel]

The underlying issue isn't race. It's tribe. People are going to resist being held responsible for anyone but members of their own tribe. And they are going to automatically limit who is going to be considered "tribe" to a number that they find manageable.

And the minute that anyone starts pushing a culture founded on the scarcity of resources, the knives come out.

 

[daywalker03]

Like Carrie, I don't quite get this "Racism" thing. I don't get white supremacy. I don't get why "Jews will not replace us," is even an issue. I don't get why equal rights / equal pay / health care for all are even controversial issues.

I've never had a problem with people of color; my mother's second husband was born in Puerto Rico, and I've attended school where at least half of the students were Latino and Negro. More recently, my mom found out that her biological family was originally from Poland and may well have been Jewish.

On the subject of Health Care for All, to me it's not that the idea is controversial, it's the idea that people with the ability to pay more for said health care should pick up the burden of those that can't that is. My view is that truly affordable health care should be available to everyone, not just those that couldn't otherwise afford insurance, nor should carrying insurance be mandatory.

 

[Bonnie2001]

Much as I don't like the extreme right or neo-nazi types, they do raise a compelling point about statues. The point is, what's to stop the lefties getting even braver and marching on the Washington monument to demand its removal?
In history class, I read that George Washington had hundreds of slaves, even insisting those that ran away and fought for the South be returned to him after the war. Also he made an 83 year old slave work until the very end. Even though he set the freeing of his slaves in his will, that freedom wasn't to happen upon his wife’s death and ensured she got use of them until then.

 

[James R.]

Much as I don't like the extreme right or neo-nazi types, they do raise a compelling point about statues. The point is, what's to stop the lefties getting even braver and marching on the Washington monument to demand its removal?
In history class, I read that George Washington had hundreds of slaves, even insisting those that ran away and fought for the South be returned to him after the war. Also he made an 83 year old slave work until the very end. Even though he set the freeing of his slaves in his will, that freedom wasn't to happen upon his wife’s death and ensured she got use of them until then.

"The lefties"

Really.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Bonnie, there is a big difference between George Washington and Robert E Lee or Jefferson Davis ... or any of the confederate heros.

George Washington was not honored for having slaves or for fighting to keep the right to own slaves. For most of us (or at least, I think for most of us), slavery is unacceptable. That our founding fathers were also slave owners is uncool. Maybe the founding father statues should be removed. Even though their cause was freedom ... that freedom was only intended for white men. Or perhaps more specifically, white male landowners. Maybe we should consider the morals and ethics of our heros ... not just the "heroic" things they did. Maybe there is something wrong in honoring as father of our country a man who believed some humans were property. So ... I suppose I might well fall into that "lefties" camp.

Then again ... George Washington isn't being used as a symbol for hate. So for now, I'm ok with keeping the statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in place :wink:

Make no mistake. The southern states seceded, formed the confederacy, and started a war for one reason. To protect the right to own slaves. The Civil War was not comparable in any way, shape, or form to the Revolutionary War / War for Independence.

Early confederate monuments mourned dead soldiers and tended to be built in cemeteries. However, about 35 years after the Civil War, when Jim Crow laws were passed meant to disenfranchise African-Americans and prevent integration, the south also began erecting monuments in front of state buildings glorifying confederate leaders and the confederate cause of slavery. A second spike in erecting confederate monuments occurred during the Civil Rights movement.

Removing confederate monuments is comparable to European countries removing monuments to Hitler, Goebbel, Lenin, and Stalin.

 

[Bonnie2001]

Thanks Satira. Your post is very good and explains a lot. That stuff isn't in history books, they don't give the fuller picture.

I guess many great leaders have some skeletons in their closets, but their good deeds outshine them. For instance, Winston Churchill gave the green light to bomb Dresden when he knew it was crammed with refugees and that the war was almost over. Also he and the other Allied leaders agreed that long established German communities in Poland, Czechoslovakia and other countries have their properties confiscated and the people forcibly kicked out of those countries and sent to Germany and Austria. About 12 million Germans were evicted, 600,000 died during the forced move.
So even great leaders don't always do the right thing, or it might seem right at the time but be judged differently in later years.

 

[RAMWolff]

None of us are perfect, not even kings, queens or world leaders. We all make mistakes but their mistakes can sometimes really mess things up for generations and even centuries. Man is flawed in every sense of the word and if anyone thinks that's not true they live in a very narrow bubble! *POP*