Zone1 Did W.E.B Dubois create the "Separate But Equal" Black victim hood movement?

[MarathonMike]

Mike, first of all I want to apologize for calling you an ass. Even though I fully meant it, it was still unprofessional and something that I should not have done simply because I know better than to allow others to get me to act out of character and to return in kind what I receive from them. And just FYI, I penned this before I saw your response about my comment.

Having said that, I am not "filtering" IM2's opinions. I do not see everything he posts and most of what he posts he posts for the board not to open a discussion with his colleagues here. He's vastly outnumbered and treated in the worse ways possible because of the protection offered to the worse of your group while we get chastised, punished and banned for merely speaking the truth, however unsavory it may be to some of the members here faking fragility.

Do you even understand why we disagree on your opinion that "systemic racism" no longer exists? I basically discount pretty much everything you say on the topic because you have never indicated how you arrived at the conclusion that systemic racism no longer exists in the United States. Additionally, you aren't knowledgeable enough of the topic to even offer any insight into the subject matter other than your own opinion.

This is just for starters.

I'm going to try an analogy, see if you get what I'm saying.

I can't count the number of times, I have been sleazed or sexually assaulted throughout my lifetime. And the sexual assaults that I'm referring to here is not of the nature of some creep jumping out of the bushes, dragging me in and raping me. I'm talking about what guys refer to as "coping a feel". No one has the right to put their hands on me and I guarantee you, if I do anything much more than give them a dirty look or say something to them like, "that's not cool", I will be accused of overreacting. They have attempted to explain away what they did by telling a story, denying it happened, claiming it was an accident, etc. The last time this happened was within the last 12 months and I'm a friggin senior citizen!

People who have never experienced this, including other women, will try to explain it away as something perhaps that I did ("you must have led him on"), something I misconstrued ("oh he didn't mean it that way") or just will outright deny that it happened ("there must be something wrong with her to make up something like this") or at least downplay and try to diminish the incident. They are so busy trying to excuse away what actually happened that there has never been any concern expressed for how this impacted me, the person who was victimized.

This is exactly the way you act when you start in talking about systemic racism or any racism as a matter of fact. YOU have NEVER been on the receiving end of white supremacist beliefs and policies therefore you don't want to believe that it still occurs and treat anyone who complains about the same way I've been treated when I've been sexually assaulted or sleazed - with denial or minimization or a complete lack of concern or care that it happened ("so what").

Every act of racism, no matter how small is an offense and a violation of the law, just like every act of an unwanted touch is an offense of sexual assault and a violation of the law and my person. Unfortunately for Black people but fortunately for the remaining white racists doing their best to ensure racism never dies in our country, racism in most situations is not a violation of the criminal code.

Words have meaning and you claiming to be using a negative term in a positive manner doesn't fly. An opportunistic is someone with no moral code, one who "exploits chances offered by immediate circumstances without reference to a general plan or moral principle". You're denigrating Black when you refer to us this way as well as calling us victims when you know good and damn well we as a race have been horribly victimized by the white supremacist structure that was put in place to exploit us and our lives from the very inception of this country. And it's patronizing as hell for you to be preaching to us about how we should be grateful for the opportunities afforded us by living in this country. We're ENTITLED to those opportunities because we are American citizens same as you and probably more than you when you consider what we accomplished despite living, working and prospering (within limits) given what we were ALLOWED to work with. There is no such thing as an NDA (non disclosure agreement) requiring us to never look back or mention the U.S.'s history simply because we were afforded an opportunity to improve our lives. We do this because we want our country to be better for EVERYONE but especially for the Black people who may not have gotten the same opportunities we did.

I understand that you all don't like that part of the country's history brought up, but it is YOU who is filtering out only the parts of our history that is palatable to you, not us, we don't have that same luxury to just ignore the ugly parts and only focus on the good parts. But because we've never had that luxury of choosing what WE want to focus our attention on, it has strengthened most of us in ways that you couldn't begin to understand. Just as one example, one of the other members here was posting about how he would never work somewhere where he wasn't wanted. Black people never had that option since we were not wanted in a multitude of places where we worked, at least not by another other than the person who hired us.

Ignorance is a lack of knowledge regarding a particular subject so when I again refer to your ignorance I am not trying to insult you, I'm telling that you don't have enough knowledge about the subject matter to do anything other than offer an uninformed opinion and of course people like IM2 and the rest of us are going to reject that.

I often work with crime victims. How insulting would it be if I were to discount all the things they tell me, to their faces, just because they don't have a witness or anything to corroborate the events they've experienced and the things they're telling me. There are a lot of white people in our country, just think of a group of defense attorneys as an example, who see, firsthand, the damage that the continuation of white racism against Black people wreaks but this is just one of a multitude of scenarios that Black people have to navigate where we are attacked and/or have to defend ourselves, often against people such as yourself claiming that the incidents that we've experienced never happened or "that's doesn't rise to the level of blah blah blah racism"

Is this enough information for you to understand why what you're doing is condescending and offensive?

I appreciate you sharing your personal experiences with racism and apology accepted. I think we fundamentally disagree on the definition of Systemic Racism. As I have stated in previous posts I saw Systemic Racism first hand as a child. Schools, Restaurants, hotels, businesses, bathrooms etc in Alabama that did not allow Blacks access. To me that is Systemic Racism, institutions that prevent access or othewise abuse peoples rights based on Race.

You were violated multiple times by White men who were disrespectful assholes. But at the risk of inviting your anger, it is possible that their abysmal actions were not all rooted in racism but in some cases perhaps they were very physically attracted to you. In other words those same goons might very well do the same with White women, and I'm guessing they did. A sexist asshole is a sexist asshole. In any case, I have to respectfully disagree with you that those are examples of Systemic Racism but possibly Personal Racism.

It was an unfortunate choice of terms when I referred to two camps of Black thought as "Opportunists" and "Victimists". I like to make up my own terms when I'm writing conceptually but I see why you consider "opportunist" offensive and I'm sorry about that. I have referred to myself as an opportunist especially in my career. While in my 30s and with 2 small kids at home I quit my job and seized an opportunity to make a lot more money as a contract engineer which propelled me to another level of my career. I view opportunism as a good thing.

 

[MarathonMike]

It is certainly true that this OP by MarathonMike is terribly wrong in all its essentials … despite his supposed “research.”

Without reading several of the brilliant pathbreaking historical and sociological masterpieces of WEB Du Bois and studying his long life history carefully, nobody, least of all a typical white MAGA or Trump supporter, can appreciate either his great contributions, or the changes in view he underwent over his long lifetime.

Suffice it to say the contention (or implication) that Du Bois supported a “Separate but Equal Black Victimhood Movement” is preposterous.

At times WEB Du Bois respectfully disagreed with the much more accommodationist approach of Booker T. Washington — the “white man’s favorite black leader” during the Jim Crow era. Washington himself was often viciously humiliated by white men in those grim days. As an ex-slave operating in the South primarily, his activity was influenced and limited by circumstance.

Du Bois even more militantly opposed the first truly mass black working-class “Back to Africa” Garvey Movement in the 1920s, which grew up at a time when disillusionment and hopelessness with the prospect of integration into American society swept up millions in an essentially escapist fantasy. Malcom X’s mother and father were Garveyite activists and their family was harassed & destroyed as a result.

In his last years Du Bois became a Pan-Africanist and finally even an apologist for Stalinist Russia.

None of this negates the tremendous humanity expressed in his finest works, nor the contributions he made to the African-American freedom movement during his long life. As a black intellectual and political leader he stands out as unique, right alongside the earlier Republican abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who also saw his hopes for a genuine “Reconstruction” of American society go up in smoke. None of this can be understood without a much more profound understanding of the separate “black experience” in systemically racist Jim Crow America than our typical MAGA polemicists possess.

The idea, moreover, that Booker T. Washington & WEB Du Bois, or Du Bois & Marcus Garvey, or Martin Luther King & Malcolm X represent some primary axis of modern African-American political thinking … is profoundly mistaken.

Nobody should try to “box in” any racial group in such a way, especially no outsider with so little real historical knowledge or sympathy.

My interpretation of what I read of history is just as valid as yours. Pompous Liberals like you believe there is only one valid interpretation as defined by our colleges and "think tanks". It is that closed-minded snootiness that is finally being recognized and rejected as un-American, and rightly so.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

My interpretation of what I read of history is just as valid as yours. Pompous Liberals like you believe there is only one valid interpretation as defined by our colleges and "think tanks". It is that closed-minded snootiness that is finally being recognized and rejected as un-American, and rightly so.

Your interpretation of this history is preposterous, and is based on profound ignorance. What books of WEB Du Bois have you ever read? I have respect for anyone who knows of what he speaks, even if his interpretation differs radically from mine. You don’t know the history you speak of, so your “interpretation” of it is just garbage.

 

[IM2]

Douglas made that speech in 1852, while slavery was still well in effect and well before the Civil War and is therefore irrelevant in this post slavery discussion of Washington and Dubois.

I believe you denigrate Black men like Booker T., Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele and yes even Pastor Corey Brooks because they are a threat the Systemic Racism/Victim hood narratives pushed by Sharpton, Obama, the Democrats and their Media machine. Black people are the centerpiece of a new push to divide the country with CRT, the 1619 project, and DEI which is why I focus on it. Meanwhile these "Liberal Elites" and their followers ignore the crushing problems in Black inner cities that resemble third world war zones. No American citizen should have to live like that.

There is no such narrative and the words of Frederick Douglass do apply. You don't get to determine things. The blacks you cite are part of the true victim narratiive. The country has never been united and it's because of people like you, Sowell,, Steele, and Brooks. Blacks like these alllow you to continue believing the delusions that you express in your opinions. You're ignorant of the black experience in this country and you only seek words from blacks that confirm your racist opinion and you then use those words to try arguing with blacks.

Booker T Washington made his famous quote during Jim Crow. Given the time, it was a comment so ludicrous that it should never have been repeated. His opinion was equivalent to telling people the earth is flat when all the evidennce shows it's not.. But it got repeated by white racists who used his woords to deny thatt Jim Crow was wrong.

You don't know what CRT is. And if it was what Chris Rufo race pimped, history shows that it's true. I don't know what wroong wiith whiites like yoou but you're just gooing too have to learn to face the truth. You don't get to brag aboout hhow the whiite mann buuillt evverythiinngg and everybody ellse jjuust hhas to genufllct annd say thank you. Whites did oppress non white people. If the truth is going to make you mad, then you better start understanding how mad every non white group is. And if you don't like whites beiing called oppressors, then whites shouldn't have done the oppressing annd whites today should not be making excuses and false equivalences about how things really happened.

I showed you the inaccuracy in the arguments of those blacks you cherish. It is a display of your lack of mental fitness that you need to believe blatant untruths so desperately.

 

[IM2]

“Most persons do not realize how far [the view that common oppression would create interracial solidarity] failed to work in the South, and it failed to work because the theory of race was supplemented by a carefully planned and slowly evolved method, which drove such a wedge between the white and black workers that there probably are not today in the world two groups of workers with practically identical interests who hate and fear each other so deeply and persistently and who are kept so far apart that neither sees anything of common interest.

It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule.”
-W. E. B DuBois

Compare this to

“There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. ... Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs ... There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well.”
– Booker T. Washington

Which assessment of the times they lived in was more accurate?