Morgan Freeman on Racism

That's your opinion which you have made off your limited observation of this society, so why do you wish to deny other's their's? I don't get it? Two people can hear the same facts and come to two different opinions and neither is wrong. Whether I agree with you or not...the issue is other's right to call themselves whatever they want--define themselves as white/black/american, native-american, freaky-humanoid whatever...but, ah well.

On the Nat Turner thing...are you guys sure cause I'm 30 and I know they didn't teach it, but I definately remember Harpers Ferry and John Brown.

I remember beign taught in high school all about the significant slave rebellions in the South and the North prior to the War between the States, but it was only during black history month.
And even then it was whitewashed. They forgot (intentionally I think) the blacks who were slaveholders themselves, the blacks who VOLUNTARILY took up arms for the Rebels in the Civil War, and of course the black democrats who were threatened with death at the polling booths in the South by Federal soldiers after the Civil War during Reconstruction.
As long as the WHOLE story of history is known and as long as ther are those around who will twist the truth for their own political agendas, sad to say it but there will always be racism then.

Originally posted by Saphronia
That's your opinion which you have made off your limited observation of this society, so why do you wish to deny other's their's? I don't get it?

ok, that is just a little over the top, dont you think? how could i possibly deny you your right to an opinion. you have expressed it, and i have expressed mine. so what youre saying is that by expressing my opinion in the same manner that you are expressing yours (here on ats), i am denying you your right to express yours. that makes absolutely no sense. i'll be more than happy to agree to disagree on this one, but dont tell me that i am infringing upon your rights simply by expressing my opinion. thats just asanine.

Two people can hear the same facts and come to two different opinions and neither is wrong. Whether I agree with you or not...the issue is other's right to call themselves whatever they want--define themselves as white/black/american, native-american, freaky-humanoid whatever...but, ah well.

and i have not once said that you dont have the right to call yourself whatever you want. i am simply telling you that, IMHO, by using a hyphenated discription of yourself, you are actually retying all the knots of racism that the rev king fought so long and hard to untie. there is absolutely no way to make america a unified, colorblind society as long as members of one race think of themselves as different from members of another....especially when people like jackson and sharpton are trying to convince them that the other races are out to get them.

On the Nat Turner thing...are you guys sure cause I'm 30 and I know they didn't teach it, but I definately remember Harpers Ferry and John Brown.

absolutely positive. 7th grad is also when i first learned about Crispus Attucks, the black man who was killed during the boston massacre before the revolution. the reason i am so absolutely sure of this is because learning of both of these events made me curious about other blacks in history (i was very confused about black revolutionary war heroes in a country of slaveowners), and this is when i started reading about washington carver, the tuskegee airmen, and the reverend king. however, one person i am sure wasnt covered until i entered college was malcom x.

HOLY COW! I am thinking about checking into Belview for a thorough mental evaluation, myself!
He'll be discredited somehow; it might be some old skeletons in his closet, or it might be fabricated BS, but if he tries to be some sort of preacher of this word, he will go down.

Originally posted by Boatphone
Is hell freezing over? Because I agree 100% with Benevolent Heretic & marg6043.

Mr. Freeman is correct.

-- Boat

you have expressed it, and i have expressed mine. so what youre saying is that by expressing my opinion in the same manner that you are expressing yours (here on ats), i am denying you your right to express yours.

No, I meant that universally applying a negative connotation to the use of a self description denies folk the right to express their opinion about who they are. I didn't mean it personally toward you

...retying all the knots of racism that the rev king fought so long and hard to untie. there is absolutely no way to make america a unified, colorblind society as long as members of one race think of themselves as different from members of another

Negative connotation.

Snafu, what do you mean by colorblind society? Because we all can run around proclaiming not to notice race, but isn't more important to accept that there is a difference in skin color because that is the reality. Why does total acceptance mean total denial?

Originally posted by Saphronia

Snafu, what do you mean by colorblind society? Because we all can run around proclaiming not to notice race, but isn't more important to accept that there is a difference in skin color because that is the reality. Why does total acceptance mean total denial?

total acceptance doesnt mean total denial. there are cultural differences between all races of people everywhere. the problem comes when races separate themselves from others. my point is that MLK spent his life trying to convince all americans, regardless of color, that they could and should live together as a multicultural society, not separate from one another. even malcom x figured out the wisdom of this line of thought later in his life. the use of hyphenated discriptions may not seem like a big deal to you, but what does it tell your kids? that they are different from mine. that they should think of themselves as a separate group from white kids or hispanic kids. if we are going to completely irradicate racism in our lifetimes, we have to start with how we teach our children. if we teach them that their friends and classmates are different simply because of their color, than we are encouraging racism.....because that impression will continue in their minds for the rest of their lives.

Snafu, for the most part I agree with you, except on one point.

Where did the cultural differences based on skin color come from?

I do agree with the denial thing, though. Way back when I was working in a movie theater and we had a new usher hired. 4 of us, including the new guy, were talking, and we told him to talk to one of our coworkers, Berry, about how to do something or other (this was over 13 years ago). The new guy asked who Berry was. One person pointed to a group of ushers standing further down the hall and said he was over there. New guy asks which one. His question was answered with several, "ummm"s, and one person saying he was the tall one, to which the new guy noted they were all about the same hight and reiterated that he needed to know who to talk to. I came out and said, "the black guy". My two coworkers looked at me with a horrified expression, while the new guy said, "thanks, that's all you needed to say," and went to talk to Berry.
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So I don't believe in ignoring skin color completely. If Berry was the only blond in the group, I would have said, "the blond guy." However, that, by no means, should mean that Berry should be part of a different culture because his skin color is darker than mine. That's what it means, as far as I understand, to be racially color blind.

i understand what youre saying JJ, but IMHO, there is a huge difference between a general description of someone (white guy, black guy, blond guy, light-skinned guy) when trying to single a person out in a crowd, and labeling yourself with a hyphen.

Originally posted by snafu7700
i understand what youre saying JJ, but IMHO, there is a huge difference between a general description of someone (white guy, black guy, blond guy, light-skinned guy) when trying to single a person out in a crowd, and labeling yourself with a hyphen.

I agree. I won't call someone an African-American. I think its derogatory, condescending and alienating. They're not African-Americans, they're Americans. Born and raised right here in America, just like myself. Why do we have to distinguish ancestral nationalities if the person's skin color isn't white?

I think the reason we have distinctions based on skin color such as __American is because of the political correctness of the nineties that has now been taken too far.
There was a movement among many minority communities to "get back in touch" with their original heritage. So in order not to offend anybody, some person in Washington (probably a white person) came up with the idea of no longer calling minorities Mexicans, Blacks, Cubans etc.... They came up with these PC labels like African American, Latino American.
It gives lip service to the fact that they're American but still seperates them by class. To be honest I don't know too many people of color that this bothers, although there are some that wish to be called simply by their names if you know it.

Originally posted by SpecAgentDW
There was a movement among many minority communities to "get back in touch" with their original heritage. So in order not to offend anybody, some person in Washington (probably a white person) came up with the idea of no longer calling minorities Mexicans, Blacks, Cubans etc.... They came up with these PC labels like African American, Latino American.

youre wrong. the NAACP was the first entity to use the phrase "african-american" because the terms "colored" and "negro" were felt to be too racist. every other racial group followed suit and started labeling themselves with hyphens as well. we have finally gotten back to a point where it is alright to physically describe someone as "black" or "white" without being offensive.....we need to keep moving in that direction.

Of all the [ethnic group]-American terms, African-American is the only one that is racially based, rather than based on the status of being an immigrant or the child of immigrants, and where one's parents or oneself immigrated from. We call someone an Irish-American or an Italian-American or a Chinese-American meaning they or their parents came from Ireland or Italy or China. But someone whose ancestors came from Ireland four or five generations ago is not called an Irish-American. Yet a black person is called an African-American even though his or her ancestors probably lived in America for more generations than is true for most white Americans. Seems to me a rather misleading term except when applied to immigrants from Africa or their children.

Black Americans other than those immigrants aren't African-Americans, they are descendants of Africans who were forcibly dragged to these shores and enslaved. Those Africans didn't immigrate, they were kidnapped. Their African culture was largely lost, their religion and language became that of their captors, and they developed a subculture based not around being African but around being slaves. That subculture persisted, with some changes, after emancipation, helped in its persistence by institutions and attitudes on the part of mainstream (i.e., White) law and culture that kept most of them in a kind of serfdom for years thereafter.

This is not the kind of trauma that a people overcomes overnight. Nor is it the kind of experience that easily provides beneficial results.

Things like the term African-American, and Black History Month, are (fairly ineffective) ways that we try to cope with this horrible, ragged wound stretched across centuries of our history as a nation. America was, in part, founded on a great crime. From that crime rose racism as it has existed in this country, in the black/white sense, and also the stepchild known as Black culture. Black people, unlike any other Americans except perhaps Native Americans, must, if they are to be successful in life, somehow rise above both racism and Black culture. And I think that may be where Freeman is coming from, as a successful Black man. To be successful, he had to overcome not only White racism, but also the ingrained attitude of inferiority that permeates Black society in this country.

About Nat Turner and John Brown. I think a history course that neglects Turner is pretty pathetic, but the fact remains the event wasn't as seminal or important as Brown's raid. Granted Turner came a lot closer to success, but in Brown Southern slaveowners saw, not just a slave revolt, but a White Northerner butting his head in and trying to provoke a slave revolt. This arguably stirred the resentments leading to secession, which led to the Civil War. So indirectly, Brown's raid caused 600,000 casualties, massive destruction, and the 13th-15th Constitutional Amendments, and that makes it more consequential than Turner's revolt.