Posted on 01/31/2021 4:01:35 AM PST by Kaslin
There was a time when an allegation of racism was one of the worst things someone could be accused of. Now, it’s a punchline. Back in the day, the word had meaning – aside from an occasional Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson shakedown, it was not cavalierly tossed around to score political points and it was not reported on without something close to irrefutable proof. Now it’s a debate tactic of the left to avoid serious engagement and cover for a lack of factual back-up. Everything is “racist” now, and as someone who actually used to care, who was disgusted at the concept and its existence, thanks to the weaponization of the term, I can’t bring myself to care about it anymore.
When I was younger, one of my many jobs was working in a machine shop that built devices to shape metal. I don’t want to be more specific than that because the company still exists and my account is based solely on what I saw at the time and hopefully has changed, but the company sure came off as racist for the few months I was there.
In one of the many times in which I was desperate for a job, I saw a help wanted sign in an industrial park outside a non-descript building and walked in. After filling out an application, handed it over to the foreman, and after a quick “interview,” I was hired on the spot and told to start the next day. It was amazingly easy.
Happy to have a job, I went about it without paying attention to much else. But it was boring, repetitive work – taking a piece, drilling a hole in it, stacking it in another bin for assembly. Mind-numbing for someone with a desire for more but no drive or clue how to do anything about it would be the perfect words to describe it. But it was a job, and just having a job was the extent of my career goal at the time.
I quickly made friends with a few of the younger guys, one of whom was my cousin, and we’d find ways to make it less awful – which would sometimes involve slamming a 40 of malt liquor and/or smoking a joint at lunch. I don’t recommend doing this and operating heavy machinery, but when I was young, aimless, and dumb, I was young, aimless, and dumb.
One day, the company was hiring again and I noticed people were coming in the way I did to answer the sign out front. I saw several black guys coming in, filling out the application, handing it to the foreman and leaving. They were given the standard blow-off “Thanks, we’re just starting the process of looking” response anyone spending their time filling out applications knows well.
Then a white guy came in and, like I was, had a talk with the boss and started the next day.
I pointed this out to one of my work friends who said it always happens like that. Everyone who worked there was white, something I’d noticed but didn’t think anything of because I was new and had no idea what had happened before I’d started. The place had high turnover, but not a lot of employees – maybe 30? Each time someone left, the pattern repeated itself.
I had a problem with this. I needed the job, but I wanted to see something happen to them because of it. Maybe there was a reason, maybe I was wrong, I had no idea about the inner-workings of the company or its history. I was just a new guy on the shop floor, usually wasted after lunch. But I wanted to get someone with power to look into it, maybe force some change.
I tried calling the local talk radio station a few times, figuring a public airing (without naming the company) might get some attention. The call screener told me they weren’t interested. I called the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), thinking the government could get to the bottom of it. They weren’t interested because I wasn’t the person discriminated against. That struck me as odd, but I didn’t yet know how worthless the federal government was.
In addition to working in the shop, I was working nights at Best Buy, selling TVs. With what the EEOC told me in mind, I told a black co-worker friend of mine about it and we devised a plan to have him come in to apply for a job, and if he weren’t hired but a white guy was, we figured the EEOC would then care. But a week of waiting, he never showed up to apply.
I quit soon after because I hated the job and the place.
I could never stand racism or anyone who was. Not much one person can do about it, I learned, but I never lost the disgust at the concept. And now that disgust is surpassed by the way I feel about how Democrats are playing that card so often, and for everything.
Democrats have declared every arrest, every police officer, even the very concept of enforcing the law to be racist. Every Republican, every independent, every non-Democrat to be racist. Disagreement, dissent, and any bit of non-conformity…
You get the idea.
As someone who cares about the real problem of racism, I can’t bring myself to do it anymore. When no matter what you do you’re labeled a “white supremacist,” what’s the point? If everything is racist, nothing is racist.
Racism, of course, does still exist, but it exists in such small doses and from all quarters. Yet, Democrats have redefined the terms around it to the point that they’ve taken all meaning out of it. Now only white people can be racists, all white people are racist unless they’re sufficiently “anti-racist,” which is code for “Democrat in good standing.”
Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter-ANTIFA rampage, destroying lives and they’re cheered, revered by the “woke” establishment, covered for by the media, even nominated for Nobel Peace Prize.
I’m done. I can’t care anymore. Show me real injustice, and I’m there. But when a political party waters down true injustice to score politically and drowns out reality with their latest tactic, I’m out.
Racism still exists. In a nation of 330 million people there are always going to be a few bigots around, of every color. But this country isn’t racist, fundamentally or otherwise. The Democratic Party is. And as long as they continue to engage in that racism and get away with it, people will continue to suffer and the few real victims who exist will continue to be ignored for the politically convenient and manufactured victims. I’m not going to be a part of it, so I’m going to join the majority who tune it out.
Republicans don’t have the wherewithal to spot it, nor the underpants content to effectively counter it. As long as they remain afraid of the charge, it’ll work. For my part, that kid who scrambled to find someone who cared enough to do what was right has now heard wolf cried too many times, for too many things where there wasn’t a wolf or even a dog to give a damn anymore. If turning people off to fighting real injustice was the goal, mission accomplished, Democrats.
“Haole”
My standard answer to the racism charge is to say:
“Yep, I’m a racist. After all, I support Trump.”
So far that has silenced every Leftist who tried throwing that charge out at me.
No,he didn’t apologize. But his demeanor was sheepish. He knew. Not all people are bad but racism is a two way street.
Thanks.
“Rush said Friday the republicans have to fight RAW.”
True. And so many FReepers still think we have to be polite. Kumbaya. Pfffft!
“When I was 20 I applied to the electric company. They guy interviewing me told me at the end of the interview that because I was white and male, I was out of luck. People of color and females were the only ones getting hired...I thanked him for being honest with me and he wished me luck.”
30-plus years ago a white friend of mine interviewed at General Electric in college. He went to a nearly all-black collage, and even had a name that sounded black-ish. The interviewer liked him so much that, even after saying that his job that day was to find blacks to work at GE, he still hired him.
My friend wasn’t attempting to play the game then, as I doubt he even knew of it, but it did work out for him - and this crap has been going on forever.
A manager at a former company of mine said that they simply use the term ‘overhead’ when discussing people they are forced to hire on other-than-qualifications.
This is the inevitable endgame of all things being anything really. If everything is racist , that nothing is. If everyone gets an award then the award is not worth a thing. If you print a trillion more dollars , you just devalue the other 20 trillion.
‘Racist’ has always been a weapon & battering ram. It is used almost exclusively against whites. Even though all races are racist it is rarely if ever used against other than whites. It is probably the most fluid word ever invented and that is in part what make it effective as a weapon because it has no universally accepted definition and is in fact almost always defined by the user. It is Orwellian to the nth degree in todays world as whites are constantly told how racist they are yet it is blacks, Hispanic and other races that not only form race based political, lobbying and social groups by the thousands but they constantly frame things from a perspective of race. It is currently being used to denigrate whites and dismantle the West. It is used to set laws and policies that are decidedly anti-white and ironically very ‘racist’. There is only one way to stop it but I don’t know if whites have it in themselves to do so. I used to think that our children and grandchildren’s wellbeing would be the line in the sand but I am not so sure anymore.
The dems have had it their way for years.. Trump knows how to fight.. and they don’t like it...
the media has sided with them.. they might have sided with the GOP if they had... years ago... found their spine and fought like they aimed to win. Most like to be on the winning side.
Example.. Liz Chaney... Wyoming voted Trump..and then Cheney used her maiden name and voted to impeach. She is feeling the vibration from that vote.
🐿 Now they call all 75 million of us terrorists. 😂
Gun totin’ bitter clinger deplorable racist terrorists who need to be reprogrammed, silenced, forced into special camps. One joke was to toss our children into wood chippers. What a cute sense of humor.
In the meantime they are getting more unpopular all the time. I am curious about a poll: how unpopular are they compared to Benedict Arnold?
you can be nice and be known as this nice person we can roll.
or you can be the person who aims to win.. and fight like your life depended on it.
If I remember correctly.. didn’t barry send orders out troops could not shoot first?
Any deadbeat would consider that a suicide.
They are gunning for us and won’t stop. “Racism” is just one of many such cudgels they are using to beat us. We are faced with a future where, if you step out of line with the radical communist line, you lose your job, career, savings, home, guns, freedom of thought, ability to publish, choose where you live, your bank, and, very soon, your very liberty. When the communist opposition is saying 100 million of us need to be “reprogrammed,” we are deep into Soviet communist territory.
“Racism” is but one tool in their toolbag, but focusing on that is like worrying about a leaking faucet when the whole building is ablaze.
A Republic that ceases to defend itself, descends into chaos.
Choose wisely
The author is correct in stating racism is a punchline. I hope I can shed some light on the reason why it has become a punchline. It boils down to people and through extension, government and institutions, using race as a method of making some people more equal than others. Presently, government, educational institutions and businesses pick winners and losers based on the color of skin rather than on peoples' content of character, ability, intelligence, skill or a myriad of other attributes. You can call that reverse racism and you will be partially correct.
It is a template that extends to gender (the male and female type), transgender (the invented type), sexual orientation, national origin, religious background and political persuasion. That template is one of control. It is picking winners and losers using some discernable characteristic.
We are all guilty of it. I certainly discriminate on a number of those things. I won't give a transgender the time of day. I want nothing to do with Muslims. I believe there are certain roles for women that have long been lost. While I enjoy visiting and enjoying other peoples' cultures, I have no desire for the American culture to be invaded by people from other nations. I will actively fight against people of certain political beliefs, particularly those that want to take my God-given rights.
I call that freedom of association. That freedom trumps any law written by man. Control of one's life and immediate surroundings is a paramount condition of man. Racism isn't going away and neither is a number of other so-called phobias. Get used to it. Associate with those that you want and for the reasons that you want. That is your control. However, realize there is a difference between the things a man (or woman) can change and those that he cannot. That is your conscience.
Republicans did this to themselves. Every time they’re called raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyccccccccccccciiiiiiiiiiissssssssst, they stammer and then stupidly start putting on evidence of how they’re NOT raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyycccccccccciiiiiiiisssssst because they haveblackfriendsdatedblackwomenhiredblackpeoplemetablackpersonplayinggolfwhowasn’tTigerWoods.
This is manifestly dumb. The nitwit Republican reacts as if the assertion was worthy of an actual response.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
The only correct response is: “No, I’m not.”
That’s it. Game over.
You can either change the subject if your accuser is sane. If not, you turn and walk away.
DO NOT ENGAGE.
That’s what they want. Stop it.
Very well stated.
...and “collusion”.
My ex was told the same thing back in the 1970s when he sailed through all the testing for the California Highway Patrol. Aced both the academic and physical requirements and then was told that they had to hire the lesser scoring minorities.
That was probably a Samoan.
Now that you mention it, have you noticed that white cops killing innocent black men has ceased?
Could it be that cops are no longer racist? Or could it be that all the racist cops have been rooted out?
Or could it be that demonicRATS no longer care when a racist white cop kills an innocent black man because they don't want to start a riot in the middle of the current effort to brainwash people into thinking Trump supporters are violent?
Or is something else to explain?
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