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    SeanibusTom Scocca
    8/29/13 2:07pm

    I saw a young black man walking toward me on the street yesterday as I walked to my car and I put my cell phone, which I had been holding in my hand, in my pocket for fear he might want to take it. As we passed, completely without incident, we caught each other's eye. I could see he knew what I did and why. I really felt like I sucked at that moment. I judged him 100 percent on his appearance - skin color, age, and gender - without the slightest actual information about him. It's perfectly possible that he is, in fact, a dangerous thug, but it is also possible, even more likely, that he is an utterly normal, law abiding guy not unlike my own sons. I saw him and, with no indication of actual danger, I was afraid of him. And I drove home ashamed of myself.

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      AckSeanibus
      8/29/13 2:11pm

      Honestly? Thank you for admitting that. Race in America would be a much easier topic to discuss if we could all be a bit more self-aware and recognize how we contribute to the status quo.

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      graneadloafSeanibus
      8/29/13 2:14pm

      It's okay. You were probably not the first person to react that way to him yesterday (or on any given day, really). Just don't shoot him.

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    HypocrasyTom Scocca
    8/29/13 2:20pm

    Stop lumping all "white people" together like we're some collective entity that's sole purpose is to rule/destroy the world. It's just as ignorant. Thanks.

    **Also...invest in a mirror. You're about as ginger white as they come. You don't sound progressive or hip. You sound like an idiot.

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      paristexasHypocrasy
      8/29/13 2:36pm

      Amen to that. I don't have white guilt. There's no reason for me to.

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      Tom ScoccaHypocrasy
      8/29/13 2:43pm

      "Ginger"? Are you color-blind, in the literal genetic-defect sense?

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    glassbottomcarTom Scocca
    8/29/13 2:37pm

    Honest question from a Canadian - Is there really a chance the US supreme court is going to take the right to vote away from black people in this day and age? I find that ridiculously impossible. The rest of the article makes sense but I'm confused by this statement and why it's not explained by the author.

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      Tom Scoccaglassbottomcar
      8/29/13 2:40pm

      This: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/…

      And this: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-2…

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      courtneys_keyboardglassbottomcar
      8/29/13 2:46pm

      It's really more a piecemeal attempt to restrict the rights of anyone who would have a tendency to vote Democrat in states where Republicans have control of the state government. It's not a blanket ban or anything so easy to strike down, more a series of bureaucratic bullshit legislative changes. Near a historically black college, they shut down all polling places. Students from that school have to travel a long distance, without the help of public transport in that area. I think I read that 9500 people have to use this one polling place—that has 35 parking spots.

      It's more that they think they can get away with these things now that VRA has been taken out of the equation. Anything they can do to discourage the poor and minorities to vote, they're trying to do. But hopefully the public outrage & protests will get them to knock it the fuck off.

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    Dark man exTom Scocca
    8/29/13 2:05pm

    White people can't help themseleves. They are the cause of all the problems in this world. They wrecked Africa (the world really) with colonialism, wrecked the environment, and will eventually cause a nuclear winter. White people are not good for planet earth...

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      ARP2Dark man ex
      8/29/13 2:19pm

      While I agree with much of your thesis, pre-colonial Africa wasn't a utopia, they had slavery and tribal warfare, and all the other problems that most indigenous people had (including early European whites). But there was a "balance" of sorts; we threw that balance off, by offering bounties for slaves.

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      Maxine Shaw, attorney at LOLDark man ex
      8/29/13 2:21pm

      They committed genocide against the Native Americans, brought Africans into chattel slavery, exterminated the Jews (and everybody around them), placed the Japanese in interment camps, forced the Chinese to build their railroads...we could be here all day, really. I'm firmly convinced that heaven is full of people of color.

      Let's just keep it real. As a collective race, white people suck. They sucked when they disallowed my great-grandparents to choose where they lived and moved out of the neighborhood when that was no longer legal. They sucked when my grandparents had to take the back door to go serve white people in their homes and clubs and had to pay taxes for roads they didn't dare to walk down. They sucked when my mother's school choices were determined by the color of her skin. They sucked when children that looked like me were deemed anomalies for being even halfway intelligent (with the rest of us being herded into special education like cattle), and they suck worse than ever now, because they can't stop whining about how hard it is to be white. Go lynch something, shit.

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    WolvenOneTom Scocca
    8/29/13 8:29pm

    Thank you for reminding my why I hate Gawker proper. Its been a long time since I've read anything that was so intellectually lazy.

    Of course my criticism is obviously impotent rage, fueled by the fact that you've exposed my ugly whiteness for all the world to see. Staying up late and thinking up new ways to make non-whites miserable is difficult enough without you drawing attention to it!

    Seriously though, what the freaking heck?! I thought the entire point of the civil rights movement was to get past racial labels and instead to judge people by their individual character. So tell me, why does it feel as if so many self proclaimed heirs of the movement make the same generalized racial judgements that so many individuals once faught against?

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      Tom ScoccaWolvenOne
      8/29/13 9:08pm

      Read the piece. Thanks.

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      WolvenOneTom Scocca
      8/29/13 9:49pm

      Aaaaand you immediately assume that I didn't. 9_9

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    ady101010Tom Scocca
    8/29/13 2:07pm

    Gawker - trolling and race baiting white people for page clicks one article at a time.

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      Ricki Spanish Harlemady101010
      8/29/13 2:26pm

      Yes, because any mention of race is trolling? People want to have a "conversation" about race until we do, then it's trolling and race baiting. I didn't know some white people were so thin-skinned.

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      Cam/ronRicki Spanish Harlem
      8/29/13 2:29pm

      Finger-pointing and pissing contests are definitely conversations, but they usually end with bloody noses.

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    CopperboomTom Scocca
    8/29/13 2:06pm

    Why are you continually referring to white people as if we are indistinguishable from one another? As if we are a monolith that all behave the same?

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      Johnny ChundersCopperboom
      8/29/13 2:18pm

      I think this piece requires a more thoughtful reading then you are applying. Scocca quotes white voices at both the local level (the guy watchin' TV) and national level (Ingraham, Parker). To the extent that these voices, which have evolved in something like racial isolation, shape policy and national events, they are the voice of Whitey.

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      speteCopperboom
      8/29/13 2:24pm

      Not very enjoyable, is it? Keep that in mind the next time you see anyone talking about "black culture," which was Tom's entire point.

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    Young Mozzarella SticksTom Scocca
    8/29/13 2:07pm

    Hey Tom,

    Please post all the angry butthurt emails you're going to receive because of the post.

    Thanks

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      Wilfred PerezYoung Mozzarella Sticks
      8/29/13 2:20pm

      Every single one in its original form PLEASE

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      Snacktastic Part II: the Snack AwakensYoung Mozzarella Sticks
      8/29/13 2:33pm

      I suspect there will be a lot of emails without good capitalization.

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    SingUsASongImtheSchianoManTom Scocca
    8/29/13 3:59pm

    I'm white, and I agree with some of what you're saying. However, can someone rationally explain to me why it's racist to require ID to vote? I think it's a good idea, and I can't see how asking this of people is racist.

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      Tom ScoccaSingUsASongImtheSchianoMan
      8/29/13 4:09pm

      Empirically, it depresses poor and nonwhite voting, functioning as a sort of second-order poll tax. And the people who are pushing for it are quite aware that it has this disparate impact.

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      youareivanSingUsASongImtheSchianoMan
      8/29/13 4:22pm

      election fraud isn't perpetrated by the people who vote it's perpetrated by the people that count the votes and control the ballot boxes. it's much easier for one person who has control of the ballot box to stuff 100 false ballots in than it is to find 100 people that will vote twice, not get caught, and then not tell any one.

      news21, a carnegie-knight initiative on the future of journalism education, mounted an effort to determine how much voter fraud occurred since 2000 and found out of hundreds of millions of ballots cast in the u.s. only 633 incidents of voter fraud happened.

      voter id doesn't address the real problem with election fraud. so if asking for people's ids won't stop election fraud then why ask for them? because you've made the accurate calculation that the people you don't want to vote are much less likely to have the id's you are asking for which results in preventing them from voting thus giving you an advantage in the election.

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    AnthonyPMTom Scocca
    8/29/13 8:53pm

    This article is so disgustingly racist it is quite shocking. I'm frankly quite sick of the media and other fellow intellectual light-weights who think they can refer to a "white race" for one and then even go so far to call a mass conspiracy of "whites" against everyone who they deem to be "non-white" (usually black americans, another wholly ignorant stereotype that goes against sense of identity anyone could ever have besides the interpreted color of their skin). I am not white. You call me white. I am Italian-American. My family came here in the 70s. My father never saw a non-southern italian until he got on the boat to come here. my culture is nothing like anyone elses because its a mix of agrarian southern italian traditions and immigrant new york realities. believe it or not i probably have more to identify with the migrant central americans who populate my former italian neighborhood than anyone else. I, and others like me vote as individuals. No one ever gave us anything. My family has been discriminated against EVEN WORSE in the pas than most minorities in this country (did we ever fight a world war against mexicans or poles?? yeah the post war was CRUEL and HORRIBLE for Italians in this country). You people negate history and culture. You disgust me, and if any of you racial white washers ever try to tell who I am, out from behind your sobbing blog posts and bullshit lyrics, I drop you on your face ON MY STREETS. Not white streets, black streets, jew streets or whatever. Everyone is their own person in this country and you get what you sacrifice for. Get a better argument. You say these things because you HAVE NO IDENTITY. Honestly and truly if you think this way, in these polarities, you are pathetic.

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      Tom ScoccaAnthonyPM
      8/29/13 9:01pm

      Italian-Americans did not have it worse than most other minorities in this country. (Your "family"? In the 1970s? Get over yourself.) That claim is ridiculous. And that's even accounting for the fact that they did sometimes get lynched by white people. Read some history.

      I'm telling you this as an Italian-American whose ancestors got here at a time when they didn't necessarily qualify as "white" (let alone American) off the boat.

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      anton-jonesTom Scocca
      8/31/13 5:33pm

      Yea, I'm with you there. My background is Slovenian so not only were most of my family slaughtered before they made it to Canada, but once they got here they had to work for their citizenship. My grandfather laid track for CP Rail for a year and a half straight and my grandmother was a live in maid and seamstress in Ottawa. They did not get paid, they had rooms and meals and were given enough at the end of their service to afford a few month rent. Their community was incredibly marginalized as their numbers were so small compared to other immigrants (families and communities were separated and scattered across North and South America). Read Slovenia 1945 if you're looking for more details.

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