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    PaulMooneysTongueAngela Helm
    8/12/18 5:49pm

    It’s all nice and kumbaya that he believes empathy is key in making the shift among white nationalist/neo-nazis and garden variety racists. But here’s the question I have for them, where do they become adults and responsible for their own behavior and subsequent change?

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      brosef_dudefellaPaulMooneysTongue
      8/12/18 5:55pm

      When you’re in deep, you can’t always see a way out. They’re in an echo chamber and have their beliefs continually encouraged and reinforced.

      Daryl Davis has directly and indirectly caused a number of KKK members to hang up their robes simply by having a conversation with them.

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      Q-AnonPaulMooneysTongue
      8/12/18 6:11pm

      And when do they develop empathy?

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    La BanditaAngela Helm
    8/12/18 7:06pm

    In the end he’s a little putting it on blacks to solve racism, before he goes to his hotep version of anti facistism. 

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      Mr.DuckSauceLa Bandita
      8/12/18 7:23pm

      Yep, white people, never taking personal responsibility to put that shit on themselves to do better than make other people do double work of fighting institutional racism and racism within white people. Fuck him.

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      FlowStateMr.DuckSauce
      8/12/18 8:54pm

      Yeah, the only way these people learn is if they’re rebuked strongly by other white people. I’m glad this guy isn’t a WS anymore, but to let us off the hook implicitly by laying it at the feet of the people who are harmed by it in the first place is insane.

      If every white “ally” immediately and unequivocally disallowed racism in their presence, it would die.

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    ArtistAtLargeAngela Helm
    8/12/18 5:19pm

    Also, and this is not really going to be a popular thing, but every person I’ve ever worked with—and I’ve helped over 200 people disengage and even my own story—was that the empathy from the people that we least deserved it from when we least deserved it.

    I cannot parse this. WTF does this even mean? It’s not even a complete thought.

    Rhetorical question. I really don’t care.

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      burnedoneanddoneArtistAtLarge
      8/12/18 5:32pm

      I think it means getting empathy from POC, even if they didn’t deserve it, helped break the hate.

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      justanotherlurkerArtistAtLarge
      8/12/18 5:36pm

      I think it was meant to be something like “receive empathy from the people who had the least amount of reason to give that empathy”. The following sentence helps, which is basically PoC working with these people, and helping them with their feelsads.

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    BadOmbreAngela Helm
    8/13/18 1:29am

    Also, there is also this weird implication that black folks aren’t actively involved on a regular bases in circumstances and fields which require empathy. Just thinking of everyday employment, who do they think all of the health care aides, nurses, etc. are these days? I always marvel when I see a young black woman working at a retirement home, because I can only imagine the shit they have to put up with aside from the normal stuff people have to put up with.

    And this is before you get to all of the race-relation work the likes or organizations like the NAACP that we often criticize within the community for being naive/ineffectual.

    The implication here is that we as a community are walking around everyday with a stink-face plastered across our visage everytime we interact with a white person. I think what’s more amazing is that we don’t. I think what perpetually amazes me is that white people can vote for blatantly racist shit like voter ID, repealing healthcare, and candidates who support this shit like this and then complain to us that we’re not be “nice” or helpful.  We can’t keep trying to pull you up off the ground when you’ve constantly trying to lower and debase yourselves in front of us.

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      llaalleellBadOmbre
      8/13/18 8:49am

      This is spot on. Empathy is important and it’s something that has been expected and delivered by marginalized communities to even be able to participate meaningfully in society (along with the examples you give). But it’s not effective without accountability. And accountability is what’s taking center stage right now because empathy can’t get us there alone.

      A lot of the commentary is very similar to criminal justice reform models and restorative justice theories, which I can get behind. But I think the most powerful argument is the point about raising kids in anti-racism households; making that a priority (and not that color blind nonsense but actual anti-racism).

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    BlackMage2030Angela Helm
    8/13/18 8:22am

    Hmm.

    I think he’s in a decent place for the demographic he’s trying to lure away from organized racism. The invasive nature of bigotry in low-key media targeting low-key people is a problem and creates as many tiki-torch losers as it does any other group of ‘phony thwarting’ numb-nuts.  And I think he has a fair point about acknowledging the historic roots of our nation’s systemic racism: Americans need to dismantle 500+ years of colonial propaganda in order to begin winning the war instead of winning major battles and going cold. And yet...

    Trauma and loneliness is just a small fraction of what gets people into organized racism and if organized racism’s all you’re going to go after then he has a fair approach to reduce membership levels. But it’s the disorganized, the latent, the subtle, the near-constant hum of racism that gets more folks killed, more folks inequitably imprisoned, more folks undervalued, more folks paranoid and angry. That shit doesn’t require broken homes, doesn’t need marginalized parents, doesn’t need socioeconomic disparity to make life hell for people. All it needs is for people willing to use that shit to their advantage and people willing to look the other way for the sake of their personal comfort. 

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      ARP2BlackMage2030
      8/13/18 10:03am

      The latent racism, the looking the other way, etc. enables the more “only a little racists” to grow into full throated white supremacists since there’s no real push-back until it’s too late and they’re holding a tiki torch.

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      CPD1981BlackMage2030
      8/13/18 6:29pm

      Whiteness is a made up concept. Fifty or 60 years ago, it wouldn’t have necessarily included a guy with the surname Picciolini. 100 years ago wouldn’t have necessarily included me. I think what will happen, in the absence of white people actively confronting and rejecting white supremacy, is that lighter skinned Latinos and maybe even some folks of East Asian ancestry will start to be seen as white, start thinking of themselves as white, and buy into upholding and benefitting from white supremacy just like the Italians and the Irish and the Greeks and the Polish all did before them.

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    BadOmbreAngela Helm
    8/13/18 1:01am

    with the exception of Jason Kessler

    Is this shit this man’s job? Why is his little stumpy ass always right at the middle of this?

    I appreciate however Mr. Picciolini has to do himself for the ‘cause. But I’d push back even harder on his set view that white people just “fall” into racism via some childhood trauma. Like, I saw another interview he’s done and he’s always harping about how it’s not about ideology. I respectfully and very, very forcefully disagree with this framing.

    Trauma doesn’t make your racist.  It may very well be a trigger for some for crossing over from passive racism to more aggressive, in-your-face racism. But I tire of this excuse - and that’s what it is - that somehow trauma makes white people hit the streets with tiki-torches and vile words and a fighting spirit.  Sorry.

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      Missy BrujaBadOmbre
      8/13/18 2:01am

      This. All of this. The fact is people of color as a whole have experienced a lot more trauma from this fracked up American system, individual and collective racists, and poverty, but no cares about trauma or why Jamal picked up the gun in the first place when they scream about “Chicago!” or “Black on Black crime!”

      Yet we’re supposed to care Brady’s parents’ divorce turned him into a Nazi?!

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      BadOmbreMissy Bruja
      8/13/18 3:32am

      Look, if Mr. P wants to keep collecting Klan robes from reformed racist like he’s playing Pokemon Go (“Gotta’ Catch ‘em All!”), more power to him.

      But I and tired or being tired of having to pretend we need to study racism more, like we don’t know the cause. You know what the cause is? A racist nation, a nation that for 400 years has rewarded racism, either consciously or sub-conciously.

      Look, I’d rather individual people not be racist, but honestly, I don’t care so long as we dismantle our racist system. I don’t want to have to hear you call me slur, sir, no way. But I’ll be damned if I sit by as my civil rights are being eroded, while you’re sitting here making it harder for me to vote, harder for me to have health care, harder for me to get an education...just harder for me to live.

      No, you do not get to tell me that Timmy called LaShondra a “nigger” at the Sizzler down the street after she took a parking space he had an eye on because his daddy lost his managerial job and threw the family into the working class. Like, just NO...never. I’m done playing that game. Like, they can fritter away with that academic bullshit, but if you want to actually solve the problems created by racism, listen to the folks out here doing the work. Those getting laws changed and people elected to change those laws. God bless the folks that are getting justice-minded county prosecutors elected all around the country, and getting marijuana decriminalization on the ballot, and getting anti-gerrymandering proposal on the ballot, and fighting evil-ass voter discrimination laws in the courts, etc.

      I don’t really care why people are racist, anymore. I know why they are, but I don’t even care. What I DO care about is making them stop, making it hard for them to perpetuate this shit through our justice system. I’ll work (and am working) on the inter-personal relationships on my own time, thank you very much.


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    5senses4urselfAngela Helm
    8/12/18 11:10pm

    Regarding empathy from POC:

    Lately I’ve noticed that I become very angry when I see white people in Black spaces. Not so much because they are there, but because they saunter in, all at ease and comfortable, expecting to be readily accepted with open arms. They seem to think their privilege is welcomed everywhere. Either that or they love the idea of the benevolent Negro.

    I want so badly to ask them “ Would I be able to walk into YOUR neighborhood / country club/university/ coffee shop/church/cookout the same way you walked into ours?”.

    I'm not advocating treating people badly. I'm just saying that white people checking their privilege at the literal and figurative door would also be a good starting point.

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      ARP25senses4urself
      8/13/18 10:09am

      I agree, but to many white people, they don’t know any better. They’ve always felt comfortable and entitled to be where they are (except for “those” neighborhoods), given their upbringing and current state of racial affairs. So, you’re talking a subset of a subset, of subset that can actually act with a overt level of humility.

      The problem I see is that you can’t force that to happen. You can educate, listen (even when you want to choke a white person), AND have consequences for their actions. This last one is what is too often missing.

       

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      Nene33ARP2
      8/15/18 2:41pm

      But the reason that so many of them do not know any better is because they aren’t held accountable.  Black folk are held accountable for what another black person did about 20 yrs ago that has no relation or bearing to them (I’m being a little dramatic).

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    jcn-txctAngela Helm
    8/12/18 6:08pm

    I’ll admit some of what he said, I didn’t understand but one thing come through is the idea of “taking care of people”.

    In regards to the country’s future, the demographics are changing, they are getting browner. Minorities as a whole are younger and have been getting more education and having more children. It may be and has been a white (older) majority for the last 250 years but based on latest data, 2040 whites will be the new minority.

    There is no way racism is going to get fixed but it will eventually fade away since angry, white males started a new on-line movement/club/society where being an involuntary celibate or “incel” is a place for angry, single guys can grumble how badly women ignore or treat them.

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      Torslinjcn-txct
      8/12/18 10:20pm

      The problem i have with that is....

      A) It suggests inaction by suggesting the problem will solve itself.

      B) It is optimistic.

      It isn’t like they can’t see possible demographic changes, and it’s not like there haven’t been regimes where a racial majority has rigged things to stay in power.

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      Cardi B's Other Shoejcn-txct
      8/13/18 7:21am

      It would probably fade away faster if “good” white people stood up to the racist white people in the moment and iced them out of society, but that won’t happen because white people are cowards.

      So the “better” option is to make black folks wait another 100 years...as long as we do it peacefully ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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    Mercenary ChefAngela Helm
    8/12/18 4:48pm

    He went a little ‘Jedi’ on you at the end, there...

    Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, hatred leads to the Dark Side.

    He’s not wrong, but still...

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      TheReasonableOneMercenary Chef
      8/12/18 7:27pm

      Thats why I find so many white men’scurrent nStar Wars rage so pathetically ironic. It’s like they don’t even recognize their own inner Darth Sidious.

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    borgohurisAngela Helm
    8/13/18 12:15pm

    These isolated vocal, white supremacist thugs aren’t really the people we need to be concerned about. It’s the productive, social racists we need to be concerned about. The white people who will vote over and over again for policies that hurt people of color. It’s the people who join school boards, who head companies, who build businesses or run social media platforms.

    We need to focus on what motivates white people not breaking their hate. We go in, get what we want and fuck the rest. Just because white people are happieror loved doesn’t mean they will know what the right thing is to do. We get them to do the right thing by making it the thing that makes sense to them at that moment and that doesn’t necessarily mean changing their heart. White people are fickle, want to feel like the good guy but again none of that means we need to be empathetic.

    This conversation about white people from white people is moot. We need to focus on strategy and anticipating the next iteration and manifestation of their racism and how we will deal with that. We keep looking at the obvious racists, we need to look at all these “good” racist white people. These so called allies. They troll around these threads. They pander. They try ti raise Black children. They teach in schools. They hire people of color. Keep your eye on them and focus our efforts on getting the most.

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