https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/29/david-simon-on-baltimore-s-anguish Good read from David Simon
I'm going to keep my mouth shut for the most part but, the video of that Mother totally schooling her kid and basically dragging him home by the ear was fucking awesome.
I agree. The really, really shitty part of it is that a large number of media reports are trying to MAKE it about race. Call me cynical, but they are doing what they can to sell papers and gain eyeballs, and a race riot trumps generic, non-racially motivated police stupidity and brutality.
Damn right it was, and it speaks to the fact that it's not one big generalized motivation, it's about a whole bunch of people having their own reasons for doing their different things... some people of all colour peacefully protesting because they believe there is an issue that needs addressing, and some black people looting a 7/11 for no other reason than they saw the opportunity to benefit from it. Very few media outlets are pulling back enough to give you a big, comprehensive view that such a complex situation calls for, because (a) people refuse to acknowledge any aspect of it that they don't agree with or (b) there's no "story" in it. At any one time you can see the kid looter being a wannabe looter, his mom whipping his ass for even thinking of doing it, idiots slicing fire hoses, bloods and crypts declaring a truce because "everyone gotta get their shit together", black kids handing out water to cops, white guys mugging people, black guys protecting the cops from the crowds, and countless other stories across the spectrum. And strangest of all to me is the fact there two baseball teams playing in an empty stadium to a TV crowd.
This is all kinds of awesome. You KNOW that she's just going to hit him harder if he blocks her swings... you could tell right away that she was that kid's mother just by how he was dealing with her. Hilarious!
I think the thing I love most about it is that it is so universally cheered on that not a single bleeding heart twat has gone after her for abuse/assault of her child (that I know of). And that's the way it should be. That kid was not going to attend funeral, he was not going to protest. Goddamn right to go upside his pin head.
The worst fucking part about this entire goddamn thing is all things considered, Nepal is not getting the millions in bleeding heart cash because the 24 hour news beast doesn't even need to get to it they're so full on this Baltimore shit. I am HALFWAY convinced media outlets aren't even truly racist anymore. They just do some racist shit for the first half of an event, then cover how racist shit is for the second half of the event. It's like the fire department with an arsonist on the payroll.
Nope, I've seen it a few times in my FB feed. The people who said it were given the raspberry pretty quickly, though.
Back in the day we used to kill off a celebrity to help us ignore the real problems in the world. Seems we've run out of celebrities to kill.
Fantastic. Now this is happening in NY and DC. I'd love for this to go down in South Texas. There'd be mariachi music playing in the background while the protesters wield pinata sticks and throw cascarones.
No shit. I especially like how they're now telling us "Thug" is an offensive term to minorities. These are "Misguided and frustrated youths." Using that same metric, The Mob must just be "Misguided and over enthusiastic businessmen." The whole fucking world is losing it's collective mind.
When was the last time you heard the word thug outside of the context of a black person? It's not typically used in reference to general violence. It is typically used in regard to black protesting/rioting. Here is a headline from a riot at a pumpkin festival in New Hampshire. "New Hampshire Pumpkin Festival crowd sets fires, throws bottles" No newscaster official mentioned the word thug in regard to that. And that was over pumpkins. I hope we would give a little bit more leeway to people upset about someone's death. This picture does a pretty good job of summarizing the language the media uses to describe riots. Ultimately, I don't even know how to engage with this issue anymore. To me, all of this is clear as day. Our country has some severe issues in regard to race and class. This results in the unfortunate death of many and severely constricts the lives of millions. But most people don't even see a problem. Actually, they do see a problem. But the problem to them are the people I see as victims. As a teacher, I try my best to include current events topics in my class. These protests came up briefly. The discussion didn't go well in my opinion. You can't imagine how cocksure teenagers who have met less than 10 black people in their entire life are about issues of race and class. Anyway it reminded me of when I tried to bring up the Ferguson protests a while back. Me: So does anyone know what is going on in Ferguson, Missouri? Girl just above a whisper: Yeah, some nigger got shot. No one in the class besides me even flinched. Most were about to laugh.
...and then there's this article in the Washington Post this afternoon: Why is America celebrating the beating of a black child?
Anyone else pick up the communist overtones in Gravy's post? How about we stop trying to ascribe certain ideas to words and just leave it at that. Anything that can be posted on facebook really has no place on here. I hate when people post up simplistic memes, with obviously bias images and wording, and try to convince people that that image is actually representative of a larger societal truth. Just like I hate it when soccer moms talk about how vitamin C will cure a cold (it won't) I hate how people post a meme and try to say society is exactly like that
You're probably just trying to be a shit, but in case you're serious: You have to think about how the word is used and why. Words have meaning beyond their simple dictionary definitions and to try and ignore that fact is idiotic. There is a large gap between denotation and connotation. "Connotation: the emotions, values, or images associated with a word. The intensity of emotions or the power of the values and images associated with a word varies. Words connected with religion, politics, and sex tend to have the strongest feelings and images associated with them. For most people, the word mother calls up very strong positive feelings and associations--loving, self-sacrificing, always there for you, understanding; the denotative meaning, on the other hand, is simply "a female animal who has borne one or more children." Of course connotative meanings do not necessarily reflect reality; for instance, if someone said, "His mother is not very motherly," you would immediately understand the difference between motherly (connotation) and mother (denotation)." So yes, the current dictionary definition of the word thug doesn't include any mention of black people, but the connotation of a word matters as much as the denotation. What is the connotation of the word thug in 2015?
Gravy, whats the implication for a person who discusses the connotation of the word thug on the internet and won't let it go?
Heaven fucking forbid that we actually call someone a thug when they're actually being, you know, a thug. Just like they call a white Irish dude a thug when he mugs someone outside a bar, or any other situation where the actual fucking definition of the word fits. But oh HELL no, if the fucker is black, then we can't allude to any fucked up associations some people may have about it... oh hell no! "You're fat". "No I'm not! I'm big-boned... or fluffy... or have a thyroid condition... don't call me fat, that hurts my feelings and makes me ashamed." "you're black." "No I'm not, I'm African American". Tell that to the black dude from South Africa or the UK... they look at you like you're nuts. "you're a thug". "No I'm not, because I'm black, and you can't call a black guy a thug because that's like calling him a nigger." No, it's not. Fuck this. You co-opt a term into your culture, then you live with the results. Just because it was a black kid being called a thug, does NOT mean it was racial. And if you say it is, then fuck you, and get your head out of your ass. What it is is a bunch of people, predominately black, that are looting and vandalizing the area... so call it like it fucking is. It reminds me of an MMA fight I saw where there were two guys dressed in identical shorts, had identically coloured hair, same glove/tape colour, and the announcers were struggling to describe who was who. Well, one of them was white, and one of them was black. Since when has it been so fucking socially wrong to say someone is white or black? It's a fact, nothing more. It's everyone's fucked up associations that are the problem. That needs to stop. All this "we need to have a dialogue about it" crap is for naught if we can't actually use the proper words to discuss this shit. Deal with it, don't bitch about it. Or how about we get all fucking pissed off because you're not using white dudes to portray "thugs"?
You know, the more I look at those pics of the riots and looting, the more I realize that finding the white guy in the pic is like a bad game of Where's Waldo. Why do you suppose that is? Do you think that it's a black vs white thing? No. It's not. This stuff is happening in a predominately black neighbourhood, so it only stands to reason that there will be more black people involved. THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT A FUCKING RACIAL THING. That's the point I'm trying to make... IT'S NOT RACIAL. A guy got killed, who happened to be black, at the hands of police. It's the media and the people with soap boxes that are making this a racial thing. Don't be that gullible, and see the real issue at hand... the "thug" police force and their actions.
I disagree with a lot of what you just said (a lot of which had nothing to do with anything in my posts). However, I'm resisting the temptation to get into it because in the end I think you're sort of right. This is a distraction. The problem I have with the word in this context is that it is used to dismissed everything. "Oh, they're just a bunch of thugs." Cue nothing being done about the real problem at all. I'd like to think that I'm not "all fucking pissed off" about the use of the word thug. I am "all fucking pissed off" at people ignoring the systemic problems and racism in this country by focusing on the destruction of property in Baltimore. I see your point. But that neighborhood didn't appear overnight. "Segregation and poverty in West Baltimore are rooted squarely in federal policy. Redlining of Baltimore neighborhoods, conducted under the auspices of the Federal Housing Authority, helped to ensure that black residents were segregated into black neighborhoods and built less equity. In 1995, a federal judge foundthat the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development had violated the Fair Housing Act, placing public housing only in poor black neighborhoods and thus concentrating and perpetuating a cycle of poverty. The government also failed to prevent Wells Fargo from a new form of redlining leading up to the housing bubble, in which black residents of the city were targeted for discriminatory lending." Source. We're just going to have to agree to disagree at this point.