re: #63 Islamo-Masonic Vourdalak

I’ll just drop this here and go eat something.

vice.com

After you return with my beer, I like his post, but this seems to be where we digress:

Gay has a point: Most Americans have a hard time balancing more than one aggrieved minority group’s concerns at a time. We ask ourselves if it’s enough just to be mad about sexism without having to muddy the waters with some idle chit-chat about ethnic minorities being constantly labeled as thugs, shiftless layabouts, and excellent pick-and-roll defenders. Can’t we just focus on one thing and get back to the rest later? How to Get Away with Murder is on, and I love that show.

We can discuss sexism and race at the same time even though it is hard. However, are we to dismiss this viral video showing obvious blatant harrassment on the premise that it’s racist or racially insensitive?

Propaganda is designed to shake you out of your complacency and drive you to direct action. What better way to do that than throwing out a bunch of images of intimidating blacks and Latinos in an urban area? It clearly worked, as the video has almost 24 million views as of the time I’m writing this. It’s not explicitly racist, but it’s definitely using race as a tool, and that’s been a smart rhetorical strategy in the United States for a long time-from Abe Lincoln to Lee Atwater to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Race-based persuasion isn’t going away any time soon, not as long as we keep buying into it in droves.

OK, so there is where I get lost. ‘Using race as a tool’ is quite in inference with a dollop of Atwater and Sharpton. That’s pretty over the top.

It’s a very uncomfortable video, no doubt.