Racism, Neo-Nazism, and Catholic Teaching

[abucs]

“Do not ever bother with leftists…Try to get into…established conservative media…cynical ego-centric people who can look into your eyes with angelic expression and tell you a lie…this are the most recruitable: the people who lack moral principles, who are either too greedy or… suffer from self-importance, they feel they matter a lot, these are the people who KGB wanted very much to recruit…[the others] serve a purpose only at the rate of destabilization of a nation, for example your leftists in the United States…”

He is describing people who are not leftists, but who “can look into your eyes with an angelic expression and tell you a lie,” who are greedy, lack moral principles, who suffer from self-importance. Who do you think that is?

The discussion was on how Leftists would be killed in Marxist countries - remember?

btw - Conservative Hollywood, media, academia intellectualism as with other sections of society are now Leftist Hollywood, media, academia and intellectualism etc. They were successful in infiltrating these sections to become the useful idiots of the Left Who are they today? They are obviously the Left still following the programming which is why many of us have also fled from the Left.

 

[abucs]

Jim Crow laws are not false history. The need for the Voting Rights Act is not false history. The laws in states such as mine that barred selling real estate to non-whites are not false history.

Being able to do sociological experiments that show that even now there are differences between how black and white applicants for housing and jobs are treated is not a false history.

umm yeah and bananas are cheap this week. So what?

Did someone make the case these things you list are false history?

If they did I must have missed it. Perhaps you posted this to the wrong person?

If you cannot admit the demonstrable facts concerning racism in this country as it was and the extent to which it still is a fact of life, you are going to have zero credibility in conversations about race. Period.

Sophistry that says less than nothing unless it is connected to examples.

If you are going to challenge over-simplified and unjust solutions that will not work, you cannot start by denying that there is even a problem. There is a problem. There are people who by accident of their skin color have important advantages that change the trajectory of lives and careers, advantages that they do not particularly deserve. It is an oversimplification to say that every person with a certain skin color enjoys those advantages, but it is not false to recognize that those undeserved advantages still exist.

Again you have to connect your rants to examples. You are speaking with huge generalisations and assumptions here which looks more like a politically correct sermon rather than a discussion on what was said.

More to the point, the bishops are teaching us the plain fact that racism is evil. They are correct.

Do you see anyone here saying racism is not evil? Honestly the politically correct sermon going on in your head needs to be connected to the reality of what people actually say, otherwise it is literally insanity.

 

[blackforest]

I view it from a different perspective. My wife is a naturalized citizen from the Philippines. Her father followed the rules, and in doing so was separated from his children for a few years.

Saying “get in line” to people that there is no intention of letting in - and spewing moral outrage toward poor Latinos at the border while staying zip-lipped about visa overstays among the affluent - is indicative of a deeply seated cultural problem with racism. And telling people to “get in line” doesn’t refute the racist aspect of these policies.

If we want to delve any further into immigration policy, we should move to one of the many threads already dealing with this issue.

 

[kainosktisis]

I am with you on this. My grandparents & parents emigrated legally to the US from Nicaragua in the 1950s, so I know about the long separations. They became US citizens in time (My mom even served in the USAR, & a couple of uncles & an aunt & some cousins even have served in the US Military in some form or another - as did I).

I also know what it is like to have a young relative killed in a car collision by illegal aliens who just left her pinned in the car.

I also spoke to a very kind priest who’d told me about the loss of an uncle when said uncle tried to escape communist Viet Nam by boat & drowned.

We all have our own stories to tell.

The push today is amnesty for those who crossed illegally, thus giving them a cut in line ahead of those who are following the rules.

We might have common ground about “certain situations”…I would need to know more.

I feel like those before me went through so much to bring us here - at great cost & sacrifice, & I know what you mean when you see others who broke the law seemingly receiving preferential treatment - & sometimes even acting in a very entitled manner - but not all of them are like that.

If I may, I was informed some months ago that in our diocese, there was a sharp drop in attendance at the local cathedral, where there is usually a high Hispanic presence. Upon inquiring, it was discovered that many who’d attended mass regularly were skipping mass…Why? The president’s policies had scared many into believing that they could be picked up at any time, & they thus stopped going to mass. It’s his job to enforce the law, but something’s not right in this case…

I understand that we are not to break the law, but there is something very wrong - even shameful in my eyes - when the poor cannot even come to worship God for fear of arrest…I guess that was the one place on earth where such fears should be allayed…

 

[abucs]

Is that not positive enough for you?

My apologies. I was confusing you and Jump4Joy who said she couldn’t remember anything positive regarding western civilisation in her course…

 

[abucs]

These professors refused the funding, rightly, in order to retain their academic freedom. I would never teach about Oliver Cromwells massacre at Drogheda, Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, or Andrew Jackson’s Trail of Tears “in a positive light.”

You are assuming this.

Even if it were true that the course specifically was only concentrating on the good things of western civilisation this would be a very good thing, especially since we live in it and there has been so much propaganda against it, starting with Russian infiltration of education and existing now in the surviving politically correct victim politics strain of this infiltration.

 

[PetraG]

Sophistry that says less than nothing unless it is connected to examples.

OK…one of the original uses of the term “white privilege” is a list of things that a white woman writer recognized she didn’t have to deal with because she was white. She proposed it as a “work in progress” kind of list even at the time, so take it for what it is worth.
I was an adult in 1988 when she wrote this, so I can attest that many of these things have gotten much better. I am also old enough to attest to this list being spot-on when it was published.
If you’re as old as I am, for instance, you’ll remember the time when black football players were somehow good enough to play every position except quarterback but somehow competent blacks could not be found to coach professional teams. I’d like to say it has all changed, but let’s face it: it hasn’t. Still, it has gotten better.
Meanwhile, I think it is fair to say that people presume that white males are safe from all these things, and they’re not. Instead, I would say that now that things that a few white men do is more likely to be taken as evidence of how the majority of white men think and act. Instead of erasing the stereotypes against persons of color, a certain boldness about holding stereotypes about whites, especially white men and whites in the working class, has grown up. Do whites who experience this resent it? Of course they do! There is nothing wrong with that. It is prejudicial and wrong.
To read her whole paper, see:

The Origins of “Privilege” | The New Yorker

cont.

 

[PetraG]

cont.

1. I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.
3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
4. I can be reasonably sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, fairly well assured that I will not be followed or harassed by store detectives.
6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely and positively represented.
7. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
10. I can be fairly sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.
11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another woman’s voice in a group in which she is the only member of her race.
12. I can go into a book shop and count on finding the writing of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can deal with my hair.
13. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance that I am financially reliable.
14. I could arrange to protect our young children most of the time from people who might not like them.
15. I did not have to educate our children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
16. I can be pretty sure that my children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others’ attitudes toward their race.
17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.
18. I can swear, or dress in secondhand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
22. I can remain oblivious to the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
24. I can be reasonably sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.
    cont

 

[PetraG]

cont.
25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.
26. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of my race.
27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out of place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.
29. I can be fairly sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.
30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn’t a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.
31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.
32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.
33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing, or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.
34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or selfseeking.
35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.
36. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.
38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative, or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.
39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.
40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.
43. If I have low credibility as a leader, I can be sure that my race is not the problem.
44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions that give attention only to people of my race.
45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.
46. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin.

 

[abucs]

and what I am saying is this is a racist concept used to silence people and attack western civilisation. It is evil.

I live in Asia and I am a Caucasian . There are things that advantage Asians here as you would expect. That is a natural part of life. To me to go around here and tell people about their Asian privilege would be mean spirited, narrow minded and critical of Asian culture.

No matter how many advantages I might list, to promote the concept of Asian privilege and try to use it in a pseudo social justice way to change society here would be disrespectful and presenting a victim politics narrative that creates evil not goodness.

The very concept is used in a racist way to attack ones civilisation.

If I did that here I would have to first make a pact with the devil because I would be attacking good people here living their culture. This only works if you have been emotionalised against the culture in the first place. This is where the Soviet infiltration spoken about above comes in because they admit this is exactly what they set out to do and what they have successfully done.

 

[PetraG]

I live in Asia and I am a Caucasian . There are things that advantage Asians here as you would expect. That is a natural part of life. To me to go around here and tell people about their Asian privilege would be mean spirited, narrow minded and critical of Asian culture.

That’s really nice of you, but you seem to be implying that the US is a “white” culture and that it would be “mean spirited” for blacks to be treated as if they belong just as much as anyone else. Instead, they’re supposed to be satisfied with a situation in which things advantage people with white skin “as you would expect” because it is “a natural part of life.”

Please tell me that is not what you mean…because what you are describing is a culture in which Asians have an advantage for no other reason than their outward appearance.

Why would we want that? Our culture is a culture of meritocracy, a culture that doesn’t concern itself with looks when the job isn’t about looks:
As Yogi Berra put it: So I’m ugly. I never saw anyone hit with his face.

More to the point, we belong to a universal Church which rejects the notion of accepting racial favoritism as a fact of life. Instead, the Church condemns racism as an evil, rather than condemning those who object to it.

No matter how many advantages I might list, to promote the concept of Asian privilege and try to use it in a pseudo social justice way to change society here would be disrespectful and presenting a victim politics narrative that creates evil not goodness.

The very concept is used in a racist way to attack ones civilisation.

If I did that here I would have to first make a pact with the devil because I would be attacking good people here living their culture. This only works if you have been emotionalised against the culture in the first place…

You are mistaken about this. Please read what the Church teaches about racial discrimination.

 

[abucs]

Yes to meritocracy, yes to a universal church of brotherhood and a definite no to anti western racist concepts of white privilege.

People having advantages because they share human traits with other humans is natural and I would suggest beneficial whether it be here in Asia or in white, black or mixed areas in the United States.

What is wrong is that when people hear this they are programmed to think this (through education and media) is supporting the exploitation and abuse of people who do not share certain traits.

This is the false religion of politically correct identity politics

Concepts like ‘white privilege’ is part of that religion.

 

[abucs]

You are mistaken about this. Please read what the Church teaches about racial discrimination.

Mistaken in which way?

 

[PetraG]

Mistaken in which way?

Mistaken about this:

People having advantages because they share human traits with other humans is natural and I would suggest beneficial whether it be here in Asia or in white, black or mixed areas in the United States.

No, giving preference to people just because they are like you in some accidental way is not just.
The Church teaches that this kind of favoritism is wrong.

 

[abucs]

btw some of those above on this woman’s list are laughably lame and the very presence of some of these on the list show a clear stretching to try and find privilege.

 

[abucs]

No, giving preference to people just because they are like you in some accidental way is not just.
The Church teaches that this kind of favoritism is wrong.

No I strongly disagree. If someone likes football I am more likely to spend time with them. If I see another Caucasian in the bar where we are the only white guys and I don’t know anyone else I am more likely to start a conversation with him. If someone has the trait of being loud and abusive I am more likely to avoid them. If there is an earth quake at a shopping centre I am going to rush to my mothers aid first.

This is natural and I would suggest beneficial.

A religion who wants to enforce a humanly defined equality on people to stop this is evil.

 

[PetraG]

btw some of those above on this woman’s list are laughably lame and the very presence of some of these on the list show a clear stretching to try and find privilege.

She said it was a work in progress when she wrote it; it was a first draft.
I think you’d have to agree that other things are not laughable but sad or even apt to elicit a reaction of righteous indignation? Things like
3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in
an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
(Yes, there is still housing discrimination…)
5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, fairly well assured that I will not be
followed or harassed by store detectives.
13. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to
work against the appearance that I am financially reliable.
15. I did not have to educate our children to be aware of systemic racism for their
own daily physical protection.
19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and
behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I
haven’t been singled out because of my race.
34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative, or professional,
without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do
what I want to do.
40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race
cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

 

[PetraG]

No I strongly disagree. If someone likes football I am more likely to spend time with them. If I see another Caucasian in the bar where we are the only white guys and I don’t know anyone else I am more likely to start a conversation with him. If someone has the trait of being loud and abusive I am more likely to avoid them. If there is an earth quake at a shopping centre I am going to rush to my mothers aid first.

This is natural and I would suggest beneficial.

A religion who wants to enforce a humanly defined equality on people to stop this is evil.

You are listing non-accidental qualities…that is, you want to talk about football, you talk to someone else who knows something about football.
I had a friend, by the way, who knew a great deal about football, but because she was female she was not believed. She had to prove it in a way that guys who had also never played the game did not have to prove it.
You have yet to explain what is “beneficial” about making knee-jerk judgments about people you don’t even know because of their outward appearance. In the end, after it was accepted that she actually was an astute observer of the game, her opinions were valued. It was silly to assume someone was a master of a body of knowledge (or couldn’t have some knowledge) based on their sex or their race when you have no knowledge of their background.

The Catholic Church is not trying to enforce a “humanly-defined” equality on people. Read the story of the Good Samaritan, if you want a divinely-inspired story about making knee-jerk judgments about people based on race.

Neither did the Apostles reject the complaints of those who contended they were being unfairly treated due to unfair distinctions based on culture (in this case, language):
At that time, as the number of disciples continued to grow, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. So the Twelve called together the community of the disciples and said, “It is not right for us to neglect the word of God to serve at table. Brothers, select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint to this task, whereas we shall devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word." Acts 6:1-4

 

[abucs]

I still think there are silly ones on the list which create a false picture of reality and anger people because of what it purports to say in a divisive way.

 

[PetraG]

I still think there are silly ones on the list which create a false picture of reality and anger people because of what it purports to say in a divisive way.

Notice that the list is 30 years old. You know what it is like to watch TV and see essentially no Europeans. Now imagine you were in your home country, a place where your family had lived since early in the 1800s. Why would people of good intention feel it was OK to treat you as if you were an outsider?

Now consider that Christians believe that one of the things that will determine fitness for eternal bliss is treatment of strangers! I don’t know where you hide preference for people you know at the expense of people who need to be accepted in that scenario.