Why We Need the New Lynching Memorial

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Psst.

I’ve got Irish in me.

And British.

And even a little German and French.

I’m one big melting pot of my ancestors killing each other. It’s nothing to get emotional over, it’s in the past. Look at the bigger picture.
 
That’s the thing, though. The effects of those things aren’t all in the past. They continue to affect people to this day.

Look, I’m libertarian-leaning and quite conservative by my friends’ standards, but the outburst of explicit racism and sexism lately, to the point where even a sheltered white lady like me has to notice it, has been educational. I hope the day comes when we really can just treat differences in race as no big deal (without ignoring that different backgrounds and perspectives can be valuable). But we white people don’t get to make it “all about race” for centuries and then arbitrarily draw the line at which we stop recognizing and talking about such things when everyone else is still telling us that it does still make a difference. We especially don’t get to slap the “racist” and “racially divisive” labels on them for daring to say something.
 
JanSobieskiIII said:
It’s nothing to get emotional over, it’s in the past.
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Except it’s not for a lot of those previously subjugated cultures.

Looking at America, racism didn’t end with the 13th Amendment, the Civil Rights movement, or Obama’s election: why on earth would anyone who’s not living under a rock think it’s dead now?
 
I wasn’t referring to racism being in the past. Of course it’s still present. It always will be, but the United States is one of the least racist countries I’ve ever been too. We’re leagues ahead of most of the world. Saudi’s, Japanese, and Chinese are far and away more racist places than the present day US.

There will never come a day when there are no racist people on earth.
 
I’ll let my black nieces know how racist I am next time I see them 😂
 
I may be wrong, but I’ve got a lot of family that still lives in Northern Ireland, don’t they keep consistently voting to remain in the UK?
 
Usagi said:
But we white people don’t get to make it “all about race” for centuries and then arbitrarily draw the line at which we stop recognizing and talking about such things when everyone else is still telling us that it does still make a difference. We especially don’t get to slap the “racist” and “racially divisive” labels on them for daring to say something.
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This really needed to be said.
 
Usagi said:
That’s the thing, though. The effects of those things aren’t all in the past. They continue to affect people to this day.
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Not really. Blacks get preferential treatment in our society. Lynchings aren’t a modern concern. It is far more likely a White person will be assaulted or killed by a Black person than the opposite.
 
Did you see the map of countries that England tried to invade vs the countries that it did not try to invade?

A Welsh friend told me the English were merely looking for better food 🥘.
 
Oh, dear Lord, really?

I’m not separating out the people (except where certain groups were verifiably more likely to be targeted than others); I’m separating out the phenomena.

The Roman Empire doubtless executed a great many people in many grisly ways. But we Christians, rightly, separate out those who were killed in the waves of persecution aimed specifically at our spiritual ancestors. To die a martyr for Christ was a distinct thing, even if the method or the simple fact of a cruel death happened to others.

Likewise, lynching as a tool of racial domination, aimed primarily at black Americans, was a thing distinct from the broader practice of extrajudicial killing and deserves to be treated as such.

It’s not that black people are super special and more deserving of a memorial. Heck, they would probably prefer this particular reason for recognition had never happened. But they were targeted, because they were black, and so it is proper to recognize that facet of the crimes. Once again, people are “making it about race” now only because previous generations of white people “made it about race” when it happened. The practice was racist, so blame the racists who did it, not the people whose monument is merely reflecting that.
 
Tis true, sadly. My mom once said the Irish have two spices: salt and pepper.
 
Usagi said:
The Roman Empire doubtless executed a great many people in many grisly ways. But we Christians, rightly, separate out those who were killed in the waves of persecution aimed specifically at our spiritual ancestors. To die a martyr for Christ was a distinct thing, even if the method or the simple fact of a cruel death happened to others.
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But we Christians don’t have memorials to White martyrs and a different one to Black martyrs.
Usagi said:
Likewise, lynching as a tool of racial domination, aimed primarily at black Americans, was a thing distinct from the broader practice of extrajudicial killing and deserves to be treated as such.
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OK, but this memorial is for all the Blacks lynched, regardless of reason, and excludes all the Whites lynched, regardless of reason.
 
exnihilo said:
OK, but this memorial is for all the Blacks lynched, regardless of reason, and excludes all the Whites lynched, regardless of reason.
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Are memorials that specifically honor Jewish Holocaust victims racist for “excluding” other groups that died in the gas chambers?
 
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This is where identity politics and post-modern ideology fall apart. There is no logical consistency.

If excluding group A from activity 1 is racist, because group B has activity 1, then excluding Group B from group A’s activity 2 is also racist.

Tear down all the memorials. We’ll use the materials to build something useful.
 
Yes, really. A few small instances of “preferential treatment” (themselves intended to redress past injustices that have left black Americans at a disadvantage to this day) do not make up for living with a constant repetition of small humiliations and an increased chance of ending up destitute, in prison, or dead because of a factor you can’t change.

Yes, there are individual exceptions and people can sometimes greatly better their situations by individual effort. But even wealthy and celebrated black people talk about experiences I don’t share and would never want to have to endure. That is what the “white privilege” thread was talking about — not that white people are automatically more successful in life than others, but that there are all manner of obstacles that we don’t face or even necessarily notice, because we don’t have to.

I didn’t want to believe it either. As you probably did, I grew up believing we had beaten the worst forms of racism and needed only a color-blind society. But I have seen too many accounts by black people of their own lives, right now, today. I either have to believe they are all making that up because I don’t experience it, or take them seriously and start thinking about how we can get things to the point I always thought they had already reached.
 
Usagi said:
Yes, really. A few small instances of “preferential treatment” (themselves intended to redress past injustices that have left black Americans at a disadvantage to this day) do not make up for living with a constant repetition of small humiliations and an increased chance of ending up destitute, in prison, or dead because of a factor you can’t change.
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So some people of a race can be selected to pay for the crimes of their whole race?
Usagi said:
Yes, there are individual exceptions and people can sometimes greatly better their situations by individual effort. But even wealthy and celebrated black people talk about experiences I don’t share and would never want to have to endure.
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Just because people perceive something doesn’t make it so. It seems to me the problem is everything is viewed through the eyes of race. So if something bad happens to a Black person it is only because they are Black. It couldn’t ever be for any other reason.
Usagi said:
I either have to believe they are all making that up because I don’t experience it, or take them seriously and start thinking about how we can get things to the point I always thought they had already reached.
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A lot of it is made up. I can tell you what isn’t made up. A local Black parish wanted a Black secretary and not the White one they had. And they got their wish. That happens all the time. It doesn’t make the news so you can learn about it because it doesn’t fit the narrartive.
 
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