Why is there still racism today in 2024?
Neo Nazis marched through Ohio almost a week ago.
It's like a mindvirus we can't get rid of.
It's like a mindvirus we can't get rid of.
26-30, F
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Richard65 · M
In my humble opinion, the rich elites, who control markets, media and banking have forever formulated division between the poor/working class/races in order to sow constant division and prevent a focus on wealth inequality and to alleviate the fear of the proles banding together and turning their collective focus onto them (they are few and we are many). Historically, when the proles have turned their focus that way, the elites met Madame Guillotine and Monarchies were executed in basements. That's not something they want. Racism is a control mechanism and we all fall for it, every time.
Richard65 · M
@SW-User racism as we understand it (as a mechanism of economic/cultural imperialism) was actually "officially" created by the Portuguese around 1450. A little-known factoid.
LordShadowfire · 46-50, M
@SW-User Manufactured, my adorable аss! I can tell you the real way it came about if you're interested in actually learning something instead of BSing your way through life.
SW-User
@LordShadowfire It's in this book, which I have read.
It was controversial among Americans because it told a lot of inconvenient truths. Things they didn't want to hear. Including how racism was deliberately stoked so that white servants would not join together with others to overthrow their white masters.
Howard Zinn is no conspiracy theorist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_United_States
It was controversial among Americans because it told a lot of inconvenient truths. Things they didn't want to hear. Including how racism was deliberately stoked so that white servants would not join together with others to overthrow their white masters.
Howard Zinn is no conspiracy theorist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_United_States
LordShadowfire · 46-50, M
@SW-User Oh, my goodness, I didn't realize you got that information from a book! Well, we all know that if it's in a book, it must be true, right?
Here's a couple of hot takes on the book from the article you provided:
Edited because I accidentally included the same quote twice.
Here's a couple of hot takes on the book from the article you provided:
In The New York Times Book Review in a review of A Young People's History Of The United States, volumes 1 and 2, novelist Walter Kirn wrote:
That America is not a better place—that it finds itself almost globally despised, mired in war, self-doubt and random violence—is also a fact, of course, but not one that Zinn's brand of history seems equal to. His stick-figure pageant of capitalist cupidity can account, in its fashion, for terrorism—as when, in the second volume, subtitled "Class Struggle to the War on Terror," he notes that Sept. 11 was an assault on "symbols of American wealth and power"—but it doesn't address the themes of religious zealotry, technological change and cultural confusion that animate what I was taught in high school to label "current events" but that contemporary students may as well just call "the weirdness." The line from Columbus to Columbine, from the first Independence Day to the Internet, and from the Boston Tea Party to Baghdad is a wandering line, not a party line. As for the "new possibilities" it points to, I can't see them clearly.
That America is not a better place—that it finds itself almost globally despised, mired in war, self-doubt and random violence—is also a fact, of course, but not one that Zinn's brand of history seems equal to. His stick-figure pageant of capitalist cupidity can account, in its fashion, for terrorism—as when, in the second volume, subtitled "Class Struggle to the War on Terror," he notes that Sept. 11 was an assault on "symbols of American wealth and power"—but it doesn't address the themes of religious zealotry, technological change and cultural confusion that animate what I was taught in high school to label "current events" but that contemporary students may as well just call "the weirdness." The line from Columbus to Columbine, from the first Independence Day to the Internet, and from the Boston Tea Party to Baghdad is a wandering line, not a party line. As for the "new possibilities" it points to, I can't see them clearly.
Professors Michael Kazin, Michael Kammen and Mary Grabar condemn the book as a black-and-white story of elite villains and oppressed victims, a story that robs American history of its depth and intricacy and leaves nothing but an empty text simplified to the level of propaganda.
Edited because I accidentally included the same quote twice.
SW-User
@LordShadowfire Howard Zinn was open about his bias. It's a pretty liberal interpretation. But then, isn't all history an interpretation? Doesn't make it any less true, though. His claims are well-documented and well-researched. I wouldn't have thought of you as a MAGA.
LordShadowfire · 46-50, M
@SW-User I'm going to assume you made a typo there, and didn't mean to call me a Trump cultist. But the fact remains, racism is an evolutionary holdover from a time when humans who looked similar banded together to protect themselves from large predators. To say that it was invented in order to cause division is ignorant. That is my point.
Now, if you had made the assertion that existing prejudices were encouraged by those in power, I would not have argued that point.
Now, if you had made the assertion that existing prejudices were encouraged by those in power, I would not have argued that point.