AAVE, Ebonics, Etc.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=228fq9rietk&feature=player_embedded]

Do any of you have the foggiest idea of what this guy’s saying? I swear to God, he’s speaking a foreign language. There’s no way he’s speaking the same language I am.

AAVE = African American Vernacular English

The guy seems like a real asshole. Practically a caricature of your typical Black ghetto scumbag.

Two years after the video was shot, Corey Lamar Beecher (the man in the video) was arrested and charged with Trespassing and Resisting Arrest. One month previous, he was arrested and charged with Grand Theft Auto. You gotta figure that anyone who talks like that is essentially unemployable at any legal occupation. He seems to have a promising future in store for him.

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126 thoughts on “AAVE, Ebonics, Etc.”

  1. I think something that’s lost on many US black advocates is that for African Americans to become accepted into mainstream society, they must first adopt the cultural habits of the majority (like any other ethnic group). This obviously includes embracing “white” speech patterns.

    1. think something that’s lost on many US black advocates is that for African Americans to become accepted into mainstream society, they must first adopt the cultural habits of the majority (like any other ethnic group). This obviously includes embracing “white” speech patterns.

      Unfortunately, many radical blacks (like those at Abagond) don’t want to get on board with that. They see such assimilation as insulting, anti-black, and even “cultural genocide.”

      While there are many blacks who do assimilate, unlike other groups, a large segment of black America sees assimilation as something dirty and offensive.

      Going back to Assata Shakur, Amiri Baraka, and other black power activists, their attitude is “screw the white man and his ways.”

      Of course, these blacks are not necessarily the majority, but many like them do exist (like Abagond).

      1. You won’t find anyone over at Abagond defending this guy’s mannerism and way of speech. Where do you get that idea? Everyone there believes in the importance of education.

        1. I’m never claimed that people like Abagond defend this guy’s way of speech.

          However, I do recall him once saying that blacks don’t act like that, and they are simply Hollywood stereotypes.

          Clearly, this belief isn’t a figment of the wicked white media’s imagination.

        2. If by that he means most blacks, then I agree with him.

          This guy is part of a particular subculture that is regional. I knew he was from the deep south before I even heard a word. While you might find someone with gold teeth anywhere, it’s most common in the south. This guy would be a laughing stock amongst blacks in NYC or the west coast. They even drive certain types of cars down(like 80s Chevy’s jacked up on huge 26″ tires) there that would draw roars of laughter up north or out west. Even the hiphop they listen to down there sounds completely different than what’s in other parts of the country. Southern hiphop tends to be VERY dumb in lyrical and musical content and most of the southern rappers look and talk like this guy, which in turn sounds NOTHING like Jay-Z or Kanye West. Traditional east coast hiphop always prided itself on its lyrical wit. But to most whites as outsiders, they don’t quite see the differences and can’t see much distinction because they’re just connected to the culture and don’t understand it.

          Robert is right about one thing though, stupidity is being celebrated by this guy Corey. I tend to think southerners are stupider in general(except for places like Miami and Atlanta), but guys like this take to even further extremes.

        3. I tend to think southerners are stupider in general(except for places like Miami and Atlanta), but guys like this take to even further extremes.

          Lol! The Civil War certainly had to be fought in order to end a feudalistic chattel slavery that was anathema to any modern and civilized society.

          However, if the South were to try and secede again, I say fuck it. Let them secede, because they certainly won’t be missed.

        4. I’m not sure the Blacks on this board realize how deeply most Whites probably resent and are disturbed by the Abagond type Blacks, his commenters, and the endless clones all over the Blogosphere. He and his commenter come across as utterly hostile and blaming to Whites.

          Now, I am a liberal guy, I am coming from the Left, and those Blacks on his site piss me off too. I just want to tell them to piss off. I want nothing to do with them, I’m not particularly listening, and I think their whole project over there is negative and counterproductive.

          It’s like we Whites have to undergo some sort of self-flagellating therapy for the rest of our lives or something. I’ll let Robert Jensen do it. We Whites get enough of that as it is.

          Cultural Left talk (now massively appropriated by Blacks) about White Supremacy leaves me cold too. The whole society is White Supremacist. Could have fooled me. If that’s the case, why doesn’t my cool White World hand me a nice cushy job. With liberal Whites, White Supremacy means White Supremacists, you know White naitonalists, neo-Nazis, on and on.

          The Critical Race Theory crowd wants to say that all US society and US White society is actually White Supremacist. Some say White Nationalist. This is the enemy that has to be defeated. Whites must turn our backs on Whiteness and reject it.

          This whole line strikes us as weird, silly, disturbing and unnecessary. It doesn’t resonate, and I’m a Leftist. With more politically normal Whites, it probably goes over like a lead balloon.

          I must say I’m cold to the notion of White Privilege too. I guess that makes me a racist or something. Ok, I’m a racist then. I don’t feel very privileged. These Blacks running around bitching about White Privilege seem to be making a lot more money than I am. If you tell your average struggling White that he has White Privilege, all you’re going to do is piss him off.

          Politically, it’s a game that doesn’t make sense for Blacks. You’re just going to create Tea Partiers.

          And I should point out that any White who has the animus towards Blacks that Abagond and his crowd have towards Whites, well, we usually call that White person a racist. I don’t see why we can’t call Abagond and his crowd Black racists.

        5. You’re right, Robert. There are a lot of Whites who reject the idea that there is some kind of White privilege that they benefit from, and for understandable reasons.

          And yet not a single White person here would trade places with a Black person, if such a thing could be done. Not one. That’s because most Whites fully realize that there is a cost to being Black in our society.

        6. bullshit i wouldent change my skin color to black.

          I had high sat scores, but shitty grades. I could have gotten into harvard if i was black, even with my low academic index. Instead, im stuck at a lower UC school,so im going to have to work my ass off if i want to be respected in normal life.

          Just ask any borderline white college kid. He would want to be black.

        7. I agree with Robert about the Abagond crowd. There is an overt animus towards whites that is surprising to me in this age of Obama.

          It may go beyond that, though. I started posting there to protest what appears to be a strong and barely concealed hostility to mixed race people and mixed race identity on the part of Abagond and several of the commenters. I get the sense that many on this site subscribe to the one drop rule and don’t much care about this issue, but it should be noted that many multiracials are just as much concerned with black racism as white racism, if not more so.

        8. There is a lot of overt racial animus in the world, period. Some people are rather selective about whose overt racial animus is worth getting upset about.

        9. Tis true, Alpha Unit. I suppose it’s ironic that I would complain about Abagond’s bigotry on a “race-realist” website.

        10. See, that hostility to mixed race people is basically Afrocentrism. I understand a lot of Blacks are like that. Great, that means that practically your average Black is a radical. Which I’ve suspected for a long time now.

        11. Some of the animus Blacks have toward mixed-race Blacks doesn’t have anything to do with Afrocentrism, though, in my experience. It goes way back in Black American history, and is rooted in the preferential treatment Whites gave to mixed-race Blacks – some of whom were the offspring of these Whites.

        12. The reasons for black-mulatto tensions are complex. I think some of it has to do with Afrocentrism and the desire to create a cohesive, tidy black identity. Most of it relates to what Alpha Unit noted, though. Racial designations such as “white”, “black”, and so forth refer to both ancestry/phenotype combinations as well as status positions in society. It’s widely thought that “black” identity confers lower status than “white” identity. Thus, many blacks view mixed people who identify as mixed as asserting a kind of superiority. I don’t believe that this is the motivation underlying multiracial identification in most cases. I think it has much more to do with attempting to establish a meaningful self-understanding. Keep in mind that many biracial people don’t have stereotypical African physical characteristics and thus have a hard time convincing others that they are indeed black. However, the status differential issue is not easily separated from the quest for a coherent identity.

        13. It’s been noted by some advocates of a mixed-race category, though, that black adherence to the one drop principle actually serves to reduce the status of blacks. When you treat your ancestry as a stigma others will begin to view it that way as well. Hence, the short-sightedness of people like Alpha Unit.

        14. Where are you getting the idea that I see my ancestry as a stigma, FG? And why are you presuming that I’m “short-sighted”? How do you know that I haven’t myself been subjected to Black racism?

        15. AU,

          When people like yourself maintain that individuals who look basically white but have a relatively small amount of African ancestry are actually “black” (not even mixed race, but black) you reinforce the American white racist notion that African ancestry is a grade A contaminant. That it can’t coexist with other ancestries without corrupting them. This “one drop rule” is only applied to black ancestry (mainly by blacks themselves), and thus serves to sharply differentiate blacks from the rest of the population. The goal of African American political leadership should be to convince the public that blacks are just like any other minority group (e.g. Asians, Hispanics) and not a separate species. Unfortunately, unthinking adherence to the ODR does just the opposite.

        16. I have never in my life asserted that someone who looks White but has a small part of Black ancestry should be considered Black. Ever.

          You are confusing me with someone else.

        17. I understand FG’s point and even agree at a certain level. However, that would probably not benefit blacks politically. Many blacks in Latin America who would easily be considered black in the USA don’t consider themselves black in Latin America. The one drop rule doesn’t exist there, but that hasn’t translated into any meaningful progress for blacks down there. All it has meant in reality is that blacks who looked even a little bit non-black will deny being black in an attempt to flee the social stigma that comes with. Look at people like Sammy Sosa for example who is trying to change himself into a white man like Michael Jackson.

          It can even be argued that the one drop rule is why there was a black civil rights movement in the U.S. and nothing comparable for Latin blacks. Blacks here couldn’t flee racism and blackness by having some non-black ancestry. So blacks were forced to come together and fight as one, rather than divide each other up into dozens of racial designations based on African-ness, with those with more African genes being lower on the ladder. Here, black is black, whether you are light skinned or dark.

        18. @Tulio,

          A few things.

          First, your post seems to imply that you truly believe in the one drop rule, but not everyone does.

          Let’s assume that the one drop rule is a useful fiction. Say there is a guy in Arizona is predominantly white with a bit of Native American ancestry that shows up in his features somewhat. There are many people like this in the US who are readily accepted as white. Now say that Indians on a nearby reservation are struggling with discrimination and poverty. They and their liberal supporters want additional political support for the Indian cause and they figure that they can achieve this by having the person in question relabeled as pure Indian against his will. Even though he looks white, is culturally white, and is well integrated into white society, he is to be deprived of his social status because Indians are supposedly in need of his help. Would you consider this to be just? Do you think that the many white American with some Native blood would let this happen to them?

          Furthermore, just how much black disadvantage in Latin American can be attributed to a lack of a one drop rule? Black academics argue that a great deal of it can. However, many Latin Americans argue that the most important problem is classism. They say that blacks and Amerinds are disproportionately poor because of the legacy of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism. This disadvantage does not disappear not so much because of racial discrimination (though that is part of it) but because there is a general lack of social mobility for anyone caught at the bottom. Remember, the favelas of Brazil contain people of all colors, including whites.

        19. It should also be noted that skin bleaching is not by any means restricted to Latin American countries. It is common in majority black nations like Jamaica and Nigeria. Women in Asia are also well known for using skin whiteners.

        20. Barack Obama can say, “I’m not black”but that’s not going to change how he is viewed by society. Society is still going to see him as black. Black is a sociological definition as much as it is a racial one. “Black” is pretty much defined by whatever people view you as. Will Smith could be 40% white for all I know, but nobody is going to look at him and think he’s anything but a black guy.

        21. I used to hear a lot of the Abagond-style stuff when I listened to the local Pacifica station back in the 1980s, and it used to really piss me off. I actually became sort of racist for a while because I mistook it for what the average black person was thinking. Don’t forget, this was also the era of Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. But one day I realized it just didn’t matter what these people thought. They had only slightly more influence in their own community than white PC academic whackos have in the majority culture. No black person I met in real life said this stuff to my face, and what did I care if they said it or thought it where I couldn’t see or hear it? My solution: just don’t read Abagond if he pisses you off. It’s not like you’ll see it anywhere else.

          As for white privilege, it’s real. But what it amounts to is being able to drive through Utah unmolested if you aren’t carrying a basketball.

    2. OK. I suppose you can complain about bigotry wherever you wish. I am confused about all this hostility here to Abagond.

      I admit I don’t know him, and I’ve only been reading his blog for about a year or so, but I cannot see the great bigotry and radical fervor that some people are complaining about. What he seems to do is explain where Whites go wrong in their thinking about Black people.

      Is this a radical act in some way?

      1. I don’t know if it’s a radical act, but I don’t like it. I could have maybe been done in a different way and pulled off, but he’s not doing it.

        You know, you listen to these guys, and it’s like, “Ok, we need to do better! I’m going to do better!” Then you come back in 5 yrs and it’s the same old song. Your heart sinks and it’s like, “Wow, we were trying so hard.” Then you come back in 10,15, 20 years and it’s still the same. “Racist! Racist! Racist! Racist! Racist! Racist! Racist!” We can never do right by these characters. It’s so exasperating.

        After a while you decide that these folks cannot be appeased and they are going to make endless demands of us which can never be fulfilled. Plus, with these types, Whites are always wrong, and Blacks are always pure and innocent.

        And yeah, there is some serious animus against Whites there and on all the Abagond-clone (Critical Race Theory) sites. When deciding if a White person can be called racist, I look for animus or advocating stuff that harms non-Whites. No animus, no harm advocated, no racism. Whites who display animus towards non-Whites, I call em out, yeah, they are racists. Deal with it.

        Well, on that basis, the whole Critical Race Theory crowd are a bunch of racists. Abagond, all his commenters, and all his clones are racist. Because the animus towards Whites just reeks off those pages. And the White CRT crowd are White self-haters.

        I have nothing wrong with calling us out for acting bad (the new Tim Wise piece did that pretty well) but boy, Abagond just hits me so wrong. And I’m a leftwinger. I imagine your typical White person would just tell him to take a hike. IOW, Abagond’s yapping away at us, but Whites aren’t listening. Ok, we aren’t listening, so why is he talking to us then. He’s talking the choir and then to the wall. Pointless.

        Furthermore, Abagond/CRT agenda is bad for Blacks. All it does is cause reactive racism/conservatism in Whites, turns them into Tea Partiers and makes them want to vote Republican. All bad for Blacks.

        Look what happened when that idiot Black professor accused the innocent White cop of racism and Obama agreed with the Black. The Abagond/CRT sites went insane for days over this, it was all they were talking about. Obama’s approval dropped 7 points with Whites overnite and it’s stayed down and dropped even more.

        What’s the point of this radicalism? All it does is alienate Whites and make them vote out the Black President. Politically stupid.

        1. I’ve heard of Critical Race Theory, but I had to look it up to get an overview of what it’s all about.

          Some of these ideas sound familiar to me, but I’ve ignored a lot of them throughout my life. I just didn’t have time to be concerned with them, since I had better things to do. I don’t think most White or Black people that I’ve known give this kind of stuff much thought.

        2. Maybe most Blacks don’t care about it, but this is where the Abagond + commenters + clones + Tim Wise / Robert Jensen crowd is coming from. Abagond is pulling most of his memes and themes out of CRT AFAICT. You go over to the real CRT blogs run by sociologists and it’s like Abagond is just pulling stuff right out of their syllabi.

        3. OK. I get it. But the angst that Abagond engenders in some of the people here is truly mystifying.

          What’s starting to fascinate me is not Abagond’s position on race but his strange ability to drive people crazy.

        4. Abagond is also coming from Whiteness Studies, which is pretty much the same thing. Robert Jensen and Tim Wise seem to be very much in the Whiteness Studies mode too. Whiteness Studies probably sums up Abagond better than CRT.

          See, the very notion of White privilege comes out of CRT, and White privilege is now standard talk with educated non-Whites. There is also Critical Whiteness Studies. A lot of these folks are grouped around the charming journal called Race Traitor, run by some Jew named Noel Ignatiev. In their view, the only way Whites can liberate themselves is by being traitors to Whiteness, or rejecting Whiteness.

        5. I am a little more familiar with Whiteness Studies and Noel Ignatiev. All of this business of studying and examining the thought processes and behavior of Whites does seem to infuriate a lot of White people.

          Nobody likes to be scrutinized. Or told there’s something fundamentally wrong with them.

        6. Abagond did do a post on what whites can do about racism where he laid it out. You can do a google search on his site to find it or ask him.

          White privilege exist. I’m beyond even debating it. I have no doubt in my mind that race in part determines one’s social worth in America. This social worth also has a lot of implications, some obvious, some very subtle. For example, why did we only find out about rape in Haiti when a white woman was raped? Nobody cared when it was black women. Similarly, I remember about 15 years ago when a white family got lost in E. L.A. and drove down the wrong street. A Mexican gang opened fired on them and at least one of the whites in the car died. It was blasted all over the news like the world was coming to an end. If it had happened to a Mexican or black, nobody would’ve even heard a peep about it. Whites life is viewed as more valuable, black life is viewed as least. Asian are just a bit below whites, “Latinos”(we usually mean Mestizos when we say this) are a bit above blacks.

          There is a privilege in being white. Whites will say, “well tell that to a poor white”. Well guess what, there are way more poor blacks than whites and whites probably own about 95% of the wealth in the country. And those poor whites should know that if they were ever prosecuted for something, they’d get less punished by a judge than a black that did the same.

        7. @ Alpha

          Nobody likes to be scrutinized. Or told there’s something fundamentally wrong with them.

          That’s one of the primary reasons whites don’t buy into this whole Critical Race Theory stuff.

          Some are genuinely interested in these issues, but aren’t going to get involved in conversations where they get harangued and interrogated.

          I’m not going to join a party where I’m regarded as the party pooper. Besides, what’s the point of involving yourself in a race discussion when everything you say is dismissed as “white privilege,” and you’re even deemed mentally ill if you disagree with what blacks say (*cough* Ankhesen Mie over at Abagond).

          @ Tulio

          I still don’t understand what exactly I’m supposed to do. Most anti-racists are vague on this issue.

          Presumably, I’m supposed to throw a fit whenever a white friend or acquaintance tells a black joke.

          I guess I’m also supposed to associate with mainly non-whites in order to better understand their situation (well, if you’ve read my earlier posts, you’ll know that I was/am a white minority. Been there, done that).

          I guess I am also supposed to completely renounce my whiteness and see myself as a human being.

          I hate to break it to you Tulio, but the Abagond solution towards ending racism won’t work.

          I think the commenter Thaddeus over at Abagond said it much better than I can, but I’ll paraphrase him (don’t worry, Thad. I’m not plagiarizing you!)

          Most whites don’t even think about race, and are just going about their daily lives. They don’t see racism as their personal responsibility or problem, and esoteric ramblings about “white privilege” will sound alien to them.

          Also, this nation is hooked on racial identity. Therefore, when anti-racists say “It’s okay for blacks, Hispanics, and Asians to have a racial identity and pride, but not whites,” that’s going to alienate many whites. Yes, I can understand the logic behind the double standard, but it’s a double standard nonetheless, and it won’t pass for common sense in most white areas.

          Also, as Thad points out, some white people control the wealth and run everything. While most powerful people are white, that hardly means that most whites are powerful.

          I don’t have the power to deny a black person a bank loan, pull black drivers over, diagnose black students with learning disabilities, pass discriminatory laws, etc. The funny thing is that most black Critical Race Theorists have more power and privilege than most people they constantly castigate.

          I’ve pointed out on previous comments that I acknowledge that white privilege exists to a certain extent.

          To me, “white privilege” is not the wonderful boost that makes all white peoples’ lives wonderful and easy as so many like to think. To me, all it means is that I get to avoid the headaches that comes with being black. Might as well call it “non-black privilege.”

          Yes, it may mean that I have less to worry about than a black person, but it doesn’t mean that I get to cash in my “white privilege” checks and become an executive.

          Therefore, in certain relative terms, it pays to be white as opposed to black.

          However, guess what? One could easily argue that blacks are privileged relative to minorities in virtually any non-western nation. Blacks have far more rights and opportunities than Palestinians in Israel or Uighurs in China.

          This hardly means that in absolute terms, being black is wonderful. Likewise, while whites relatively speaking enjoy more benefits than blacks, it hardly means that most whites in absolute terms are living the high life.

          I’ve demonstrated on other posts that being white is not all fun and games as many suggest.

          Besides, my definition of “privilege” is far different from those in the Critical Race Theory crowd. To be privileged means you come from an economically comfortable background, have access to good education, and enjoy economic opportunities. Yes, one could argue that whites are privilege due to economic inequalities, but that’s much different from the invisible “white privilege” that anti-racists love to focus on. To the extent that whites are privileged, it’s mainly economic.

          The anti-racists can talk all they want about the social advantages of being white, but I hardly see such things as “privileges.” More like being able to avoid certain headaches.

          So again, what exactly do blacks want us to do? Do they want us to contribute to a reparations fund? Do they want us to give up our jobs and university positions to blacks, since all of our success comes solely at the expense of them? Do they want us to volunteer to clean up black neighborhoods over the weekend, since we are clearly responsible for all black problems?

          Really, what am I supposed to do? And give me a better answer than the typical “challenge your friends when they say something racist” baloney.

          Tulio, don’t get me wrong. I think you’re a very reasonable and civil commenter, and I enjoy having conversations with you. Therefore, if I come across as exasperated, it’s not because of you.

          As a white person, I simply get frustrated with all of this Critical Race Theory crap, as well as the vague solutions and self-righteous lectures anti-racists offer.

        8. “Most whites don’t even think about race, and are just going about their daily lives. They don’t see racism as their personal responsibility or problem, and esoteric ramblings about “white privilege” will sound alien to them. ”

          Keep in mind that was true even during slavery and Jim Crow, whites didn’t see blacks as having it bad. So in reality, whites are the last ones you want to ask about how much racism there is in society. In fact that is part of white privilege right there. Not even having to think about race unless you elect to. Knowing that no matter how you screw up, you will be judged as an individual. If you are lazy, stupid, ignorant, boorish or whatever, nobody will attribute it to your race, it will reflect on YOU as an individual.

          As for what whites can do about. That’s a good question. Number one, acknowledge that white privilege exists. Number two, acknowledge that racism does not necessarily mean hate. You can be racist and not hate anyone, you only have to view them as your inferior(often only subtly). If you’ve ever wondered whether you are a racist or not, try the excellent Harvard implicit association test on race. Good test actually. It’s a great place to start.

          https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/research/

          Thirdly, recognize that there has always been affirmative action for whites. Tim Wise has covered this pretty extensively. Whites got home loans and land grants that were denied to blacks. Black home ownership rates would be higher today if blacks had access to these things. But whites never see the privilege they had for all of American history as a form of affirmative action. But when blacks want affirmative action to help catch up a bit, whites consider it reverse discrimination.

          So anyway, as to what practical steps can be done. Start by acknowledging that white privilege is real and that whites have ALWAYS denied it’s existence. Even during times that we unquestionably know it existed. Then ask how does white privilege manifest itself in daily life. Why did Barack Obama’s rating sink amongst whites just because he said a cop acted stupidly. Do you think that would’ve happened if George W. Bush said a black cop “acted stupidly” that arrested Sean Hannity under the same exact circumstance? His ratings would’ve probably gone UP.

          Almost every white American deep down thinks he’s better than me. And I don’t mean simply better at doing something, like a math test, but thinks he’s more valuable than me.

          Racism and white privilege will end the day that race is viewed with the same insignificance that it was in the ancient world.

        9. Keep in mind that was true even during slavery and Jim Crow, whites didn’t see blacks as having it bad. So in reality, whites are the last ones you want to ask about how much racism there is in society.

          Okay, fair enough. But guess what? These whites are the ones that people need to reach out to. They’re the ones you have to convince. And again, esoteric ramblings about “white privilege” won’t do it. In fact, it would be better if we all just left Tim Wise out of the equation, because he doesn’t do a lick of good.

          Number two, acknowledge that racism does not necessarily mean hate. You can be racist and not hate anyone, you only have to view them as your inferior(often only subtly).

          So, I guess we should all go on these witch hunts for “colorblind racists” (as Abagond would call them).

          Look, all humans are prejudiced and have this “them versus us” mentality. You can perhaps create a society that helps eliminate these attitudes, but calling in the thought police to purity white peoples’ subtle biases isn’t the solution.

          Tulio, once again, you’re a bit vague on the specifics.

          Pleas for whites to “recognize that white privilege exists and acknowledge how it manifests itself in their daily lives” is impractical.

          One, most whites are alienated by the term “white privilege” because it implies that all whites are living the high life and that everything they have is unearned. Also, let’s be honest, all “white privilege” means is not having to face the headaches blacks face.

          Two, moral appeals calling for people to analyze how privileged and racist they are is also alienating and more likely to generate backlash. There are other ways to deal with these problems without these condescending “check your privilege at the door” kind of rhetoric.

          I guess in addition to flagellating myself over my unjust “white privilege,” I should also shed tears over my “male privilege,” “hetero privilege,” and even “able bodied privilege.”

          Gee, with all that “privilege,” life should be absolutely no challenge at all, shouldn’t it?

          Almost every white American deep down thinks he’s better than me. And I don’t mean simply better at doing something, like a math test, but thinks he’s more valuable than me.

          This is human behavior, Tulio. People who are members of one group think that they are better than members of another group. These even manifests itself in non-social issues, such as sports teams. Lakers and Celtics fans absolutely hate and despise one another.

          Again, trying to get the thought police to purify the thoughts of white people isn’t the way to go.

          Thirdly, recognize that there has always been affirmative action for whites.

          Again, not the right approach to take. So, do two wrongs make a right?

          Here’s the problem with your angle. Anti-racists always insist that every single nice thing whites have comes at the expense of blacks. After all, there can’t be an up without a down.

          But here’s the problem: If whites are indoctrinated into believing that every nice thing they have comes at the expense of non-whites, then guess what? They’ll reason that any gain made by blacks comes at their expense. After all, if one community wins, another has to lose, right?

          Anti-racists need to stop speaking of this in terms of a zero sum game.

          I think Ta-Nehisi Coates, someone you generally agree with, has the right solution. His solution is far more practical and less alienating than Abagond’s.

          Among his few points:

          1. We need to stop speaking of racism as some force that always helps whites and always hurts blacks. After all, is it any coincidence that the former slave states are the poorest today?

          2. We need to stop addressing the racial gap in these moral, “white privilege” terms, but rather self-interested terms.

          Anyway, he wrote an excellent article on this matter. You should read it.

          http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/31/the_issue_is_black_and_white/

          P.S. I am a “racist,” since that means being pro-white and more likely to look favorably upon my own group than other groups, including blacks. And yes, there are certain black behaviors and black individuals I look down on, particularly those in Oakland.

          Besides, everyone is “racist.” It’s part of being human. Oh sure, you may say “well, race is just a social construct and is unnatural.”

          Fair enough. However, throughout history, all human beings have been prejudiced and harbored an “in group versus out group” mentality. Race is just another one of those dividers, the way I see it.

  2. Abagond doesn’t need me to defend him, but I keep hearing people call him “radical.” When you call someone like Abagond “radical,” what you’re showing is that you don’t really know that much about Black radicalism.

    1. When you call someone like Abagond “radical,” what you’re showing is that you don’t really know that much about Black radicalism.

      Well, I guess by Assata Shakur and Amiri Baraka standards, he isn’t that radical.

      However, he embodies many of the beliefs of radical anti-racists.

      1. That’s the thing. The normative educated Black these days is basically a flaming radical, at least to us Whites anyway. We Whites see all these Tim Wise – Abagond – Robert Jensen Critical Race Theory junk as radical. We also think it’s largely nonsensical. I mean, most Whites don’t even know what “White privilege” means. If you bring it up, they might start laughing.

        This stuff does not resonate with ordinary Whites and most of them think it’s radical PC hooey.

        Further, many to most Blacks I know aren’t even like Abagond and his commenters. This is how a lot of Blacks get when you give them a modern education. I’ve known older Blacks, very well educated, and they are not into this stuff.

        This Critical Race Theory stuff is new, and even most Blacks aren’t into it. It came out of the universities in the last couple of decades or so. It’s really a bunch of educated Blacks preaching to the choir, because most of their own people are not even involved in this conversation. I mean, you say, “White privilege” to the Blacks around here and they will say, “Huh?”

      2. Whites are mistaken, then, if they think that a typical educated Black person in this country is a radical.

        The majority of people anywhere are self-interested and complacent, and that includes a lot of educated Black people.

        1. Those on that site are a certain type of educated Black who have imbibed at the trough of Critical Race Theory. Quite a few educated Blacks are fairly radical. Afrocentrism is pretty popular with that crowd. That said, I haven’t known a whole lot of educated Blacks. Some of the ones I knew never brought up any of this crap.

  3. Oh man! How many black guys such as this have I observed in Oakland? Heck, how many black guys have I observed speaking like this even when they’re upper middle class and living in suburbia?

    “Hell Nah!” “Dat shit go!” “On Citas!” “It don’t mattter!” “Don’t never say that!” “Fuck dat shit, blood!”

    And the depressing list goes on. Even among blacks at my college who don’t necessarily speak ebonics, I can still occasionally hear those heavy black accents and poor English.

    Many blacks do act, dress, and speak ghetto. Spend some time in Oakland and you’ll see what I mean. The belief among whites that blacks act ghetto isn’t some figment of the wicked white media’s imagination, as the Abagonds would have it.

    Harsh, but true.

    While many radical leftists reject assimilation, I agree with FG. In any large, multiethnic/multiracial society, assimilation and the adoption of common values is necessary in order for their to be basic social cohesion.

    Speaking proper English is always a good start.

    1. This guy is essentially unemployable if that’s the only way he knows how to talk. Not that he wants a legal job anyway.

      Guys like this send the White racists into conniptions. Actually, guys like this drive a lot of anti-Black racism. I don’t know what the solution is though. These idiots like this Corey can’t exactly knock it off.

      Can you understand him? I went to a website and they did a translation of him and then I could understand him a lot better.

      This AAVE is n really a cool dialect or language. It’s a real dialect or language, it’s not really sloppy English or anything, but it’s stigmatized and it sounds terrible to any White person. And the Blacks who talk like this are the worst Blacks. I gave 2 Black neighbors a ride to go shopping a while back. They used me for my ride and made me wait like 2-3 hours while they fucked around inside the store. I went inside once to walk around with them, and one of them told me she was making me uncomfortable. So I stayed out in the car with these three little Black boys. These women didn’t care that they were making me wait. They didn’t seem to care about my feelings.

      Later I saw one of them outside the liquor store with a friend. Both of them were dressed like whores on a Saturday nite. I figure she was selling her ass. Then the other woman, a neighbor, had wild fights all night with thuggish boyfriends, had cops coming over for an ex-husband who was a pimp, and I later heard that she was whoring too as a call girl.

      So AAVE is really spoken by the lowest of the lowest of the Blacks. Given that, why preserve it. It’s a poisonous form of speech, like a Gypsy language, the language of criminals and no-good-niks.

      I gotta admit this guy is kind of funny. I started laughing at him after about the third viewing. If I saw him though, I think I might say, “Don’t rob me.” The guy’s unemployable. He can only make money through crime.

    2. Keep in mind that this guy’s version of AAVE is very extreme, probably the MOST extreme. Even many blacks would’ve have to listen twice to understand him. The majority of blacks probably do to some extent speak AAVE, it can be very mild like you hear when Will Smith speaks. I even hear a little from Obama from time to time when he’s playing basketball or joking around or something. There’s no reason it has to be entirely stigmatized. Though in the extreme form like the guy in the video, they are going out of their way to make themselves an underclass. People like him are rebels and rebelling against society.

      1. We don’t mind mild AAVE. Like this linked Youtube video below, Ebonics Airlines, well, that doesn’t even sound like AAVE to me. That’s just regular Black talk. A lot of us Whites and some Hispanics around here sort of talk AAVE (it’s gotten mixed in with Hispanic talk, and the Hispanic bangers now speak this kind of Hispanic AAVE). We say, “Suuuup, nigga?” “Sup, OG?” “Sup dawg.” And endless variations on that. But we don’t dig the real hardcore AAVE. It sounds…ugh. Sloppy, low-class, down and low, just slummy and no good, like the Black equivalent of the worst kind of uneducated backwoods hick meth freak speak in Whites. It almost seems as if they are celebrating their stupidity, but maybe they’re just talking.

        Of course, as a linguist, I know that AAVE is a perfectly valid lect. It has rules and everything. There’s really nothing wrong with it, just that mainstream society thinks it sounds like shit so we stigmatize it. These dialects are not really “bad English.” They’re dialects, or maybe even a separate language. Just some dialects are esteemed, like Boston Brahmin or the Queens English, and others are stigmatized.

        I don’t like some White dialects. Texan, Okie, Arkie, Southern, Appalachian, yuck. To us California Whites, that talk just makes you sound like a backwards, rightwing, uneducated, fundamentalist, dumbfuck hick.

        But this guy, well, most Whites are just horrified by someone like that. Either that or they think he’s hilarious. I think he’s more funny than anything else.

    1. Just to clarify, you do know that Shirley Q. Liquor is a white male drag comedian, right?

  4. I understood everything he said and words make sense in their own way, he just wasn’t saying much of anything. Just rambling and boasting about nothing. His vernacular comes from deep in “the dirty south” as it’s called, and that’s some of the hardest stuff to comprehend for an outsider.

    Thing is such people understand standard English perfectly fine. They can understand whites. They can probably even talk back in fairly understandable English if they need to talk to a white, but when around their friends, they will revert back to the local lingo.

    1. Meant to add, if you want an example of what I mean, look at the guy Epic Beard Man beat up. On the bus, he was going crazy with the ebonics. But when in the studio being interviewed, he spoke like a regular guy.

      1. Yeah, I suppose they can all speak normally. Those two young women I gave a ride to, the would be carrying on in AAVE the whole time. They did that for 2-3 hours and I could barely understand a word they said. But when I asked them something, they would turn around and speak perfectly clear English.

        1. I guess most blacks are bilingual.

          Perhaps speaking ebonics among themselves is a way of saying “fuck you” to the white man’s English, and that they only speak standard English when they have to.

          If such blacks do want to succeed in mainstream America, they’ll have to drop the ebonics and names such as Tayshaun.

          By the way, the guy Epic Beard Man may have been speaking proper English when interviewed, but something tells me he was putting on an act.

          Certainly, during an everyday encounter on a bus, he spoke naturally in ebonics. I guess he was trying to prove that he wasn’t a thug by putting on a white accent when interviewed.

        2. Whether he was putting on act or not isn’t the point. I was making the point that he understands standard English and can speak it if called upon. That’s the norm with pretty much all black people. It’s called Code Switching.

          Is ebonics a way of saying f-you to the white man’s English? Not really. Thomas Sowell had traced the roots of Ebonics going all the way back to slavery and it has roots in Scotts-Irish dialects. In fact southern white vernacular is a cousin to Ebonics, as far as language rules go. The reason whites and blacks talk somewhat differently is because of social isolation from one another. The same reason whites in New York City and whites in New Orleans sound completely different.

        3. No, it’s not an act, BAG. They really are bilingual. LOL. I’m serious. Those two women in my car were just like this idiot in the video, talking like their mouths were full of marbles. I could barely make out a word they were saying. They may as well have been speaking Greek.

          Then I would turn around and ask them something, and they would both stop speaking babble or AAVE and speak to me in perfect, immaculate English.

          Tulio’s right. It’s code-switching.

        4. I should get Sowell’s book “Black Rednecks and White Liberals.” It looks interesting and insightful.

          You do make a good point about the way poor white Southerners talk. Never having really encountered an uneducated white Southerner in my life, I never really make an association between the ebonics spoken by a black guy in Oakland and Billy Bob in Alabama.

          If I did spend more time around unassimilated white Southerners, I would probably stop subconsciously associating bad English with black English.

          However, when reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” or other Southern white literature, whites in the South do use English very similar to blacks.

          Also, many blacks that now live in big Northern and Western cities originally migrated from the South.

          Yeah, I should get Sowell’s book.

        5. @ Robert

          You’re certainly right about people code switching.

          If I’m around people I’m not comfortable with, I’m not going to act the same way I would around people I know.

          However, the way I speak English wouldn’t drastically change. You would still be able to understand me.

          Well, regardless of whether or not they code switch, I can understand ebonic speaking blacks in Oakland, and vice versa! Lol!

          Still, listening to ebonics and those heavy accents can be painful.

  5. Pardon me for pointing out the racist assumption that there is a common ‘normal’ English spoken by white people and educated blacks. Well, there IS sort of, but it’s not NORMAL – it’s called ‘received’ pronunciation, and it’s useful because it can be understood everywhere. Are there no white regional accents. As I’ve said before, I come from a country, smaller than most of your states, where if you go 10 miles in any direction you find a new dialect no-one can understand. And as for Newcastle in the NE of England…! Here in London some streetwise youngster speak a mixture of cockney patois and hip-hopese that you practically need a dictionary to understand.
    OK, the USA is much more homogeneous, but still you’re bound to get some very local dialects. That’s all this guy is – I know you know that really.

  6. Tulio

    “Thomas Sowell had traced the roots of Ebonics going all the way back to slavery and it has roots in Scotts-Irish dialects.”

    Wow that is crazy, I actually understood most of what this guy said. Ironically I am Scotch Irish and grew up in Appalachia. I guess that makes me a “dumbfuck hick,” and maybe the reason I understood him. I think it is fine to speak with a regional dialect, as long as you can turn it off when it is time to get a job, or speak to outsiders.

    1. Wow, you understood him? That’s great! When I was listening to him at first, I thought maybe he had a Caribbean accent, like Haitian creole or something. Now I see it’s just some supercharged Southern accent that may not even be all that different from the way the Whites talk down there. If the Southern Whites and the Southern Blacks can understand each other’s crazy accents, that implies they are speaking the same language. Yet the language of the Blacks is so much more stigmatized than the similar language of the Whites. I’m sure Tim Wise would draw a lesson from this about White privilege, and maybe he’s right.

      Sorry about my prejudices. Lot of anti-Southern feeling out here on the West Coast.

  7. To Rob:

    Do any of you have the foggiest idea of what this guy’s saying?

    1) He says Hello to the camera.
    2) He answers the phone and tells the person on the other end not to discuss “work” because he may be “tapped” likely because he’s a drug dealer.
    3) Wasn’t paying attention for about 15 seconds.
    4) Takes about “Hoes” and having sex with them. He gets it wet and busts it up.
    5) Talks to one of his “Hoes”.

    I understood almost everything he said but disliked almost everything he said.

    1. LOL, yeah, not exactly a fine upstanding citizen. I keep watching this video over and over and laughing harder each time. This guy is damn funny. Sure, he’s a criminal, but let’s put that aside for the moment. He’s good looking, he loves life, he likes to have a good time, and he’s funny! I kinda like this guy, even though he’s a scumbag.

  8. @ Robert

    Well my accent is more Appalachian than southern, I live near the Ohio river so it’s not exactly southern, and yes they are different. I think most outsiders have problems understanding the vocal cadences associated with the Appalachians or the South.

    I once heard an analogy that explained why; think of a line of soldiers all standing upright and proper with space in between them, this is a northern or standard accent. Now imagine a group of very tired soldiers all leaning on each other, this is a southern or mountain accent. The words kind flow into or lean on each other with very little space in between.

    Once you pick up on this lazy phrasing style it is easy to figure out. Like instead of the phrase “do you want to?” in the mountains it would just be “ya unto.” I guess southern blacks do this sort of thing as well. I think the only difference is the slang words.

    “Sorry about my prejudices. Lot of anti-Southern feeling out here on the West Coast.”

    Don’t worry about it, I have been called a hick many a times. I prefer Hillbilly though. 😉

  9. To Tulio:

    This guy would be a laughing stock amongst blacks in NYC or the west coast.

    I don’t know about NYC but he would definitely not be out of place in West or East Oakland.

    1. I don’t know about NYC but he would definitely not be out of place in West or East Oakland.

      You got that right! If anyone wants to see ghetto behavior and excessive ebonics on display, just spend some time riding an Oakland BART train or bus.

  10. To Robert:
    Ivronics translation:

    To the camera:
    “Hello, all of you know who this is, once again I am in front of a camera.
    Pardon me, I must take this call.”
    To the person on the other end of the phone: “Who is this?
    “Let’s not discuss anything that could be construed as illegal over the phone.
    We should always assume that these phones are tapped.”
    Back to the camera:
    “There are many African Americans on Myspace posting rap lyrics that they wrote but,
    in my opinion, they are not going to be successful.”
    Describes his recent experience with oral sex from a woman.
    Goes on to say that I have all of the women watching this “On my team”.
    “Recently I had a sexual encounter. (as far as I can understand he is describing why he had an infidelity..)
    She was highly aroused and I could not resist having rigourous sex with her.”
    Phones rings:
    “Ahh there’s my girlfriend calling me now..”
    To girlfriend:
    “Hello, how are you? Leave me alone, I am not the father of your child.”
    (unclear if the woman is pregnant or has already had a child..)
    Back to the camera:
    “If you want to look me up, I am in contacts on your cell phone. I am in the phone book.
    Stop pointing the camera at me. “

  11. I’m from the Gulf coast and I understood 80 percent of what he said even though I’m white. Although he uses a lot of slang and rolls his words together, he is actually more comprehensible than some of the inner-city blacks in the South. There were a few cooks who worked with me at Olive Garden that I would have to ask to repeat themselves at least three times every-time they spoke to me. There are white people that are as hard to understand as him in the South too, but most of them live around Appalachia or remote rural areas.

  12. There’s book out recently called “Coversate is not word: Getting away from Ghetto” about the need for black self-help, that uses substandard speech as a metaphor for other behaviors that mess up blacks’ lives.

  13. To Alpha Unit:
    [Corrected Text]
    I am confused about all this hostility here to Abagond.

    I am not hostile to Abagond although I often disagree with his conclusions. To the people who have not followed his blog for very long they should know a little of his background. In the past two years he lost a good paying job, his wife became so unstable and threatening he had to leave her (and in the process he gained custody of their kids..) and I believe he also lost his house to foreclosure. As for his discomfort towards Whites it is my understanding that he went to a majority White elemetary/secondary school where he was often racially taunted.

      1. He shared all that personal info on his blog???

        Good thing he writes under a pen name, isn’t it?

        Since those are such intimate details of his life, he probably has to be extra careful around whites.

        One of those whites might happen to be an angry reader, who would be able to deduce that he’s Abagond if they happen to get to seriously know one another.

        Well, that would never happen, because Abagond doesn’t like, trust, nor intimately talk to whites.

        Can’t say I blame him. I can certainly understand where that hostility comes from.

        I’ll just make sure not to befriend those Abagond types in real life!

      2. To Tulio:

        He shared all that personal info on his blog???

        Multiple detailed and depressing posts about his wife:

        http://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/06/06/my-wife-again

        http://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/soap-opera-update

        (There are other posts about his wife also..)

        I would never share such information if it had been conveyed to me privately.

        He also shared the fact that he had been laid off because of the Wall Street implosion. (He had worked as a programmer for a Wall Street Investment Bank..) And I am pretty sure somewhere in his comments he had mentioned he had lost his house due to a foreclosure but I am not 100% about that.

        He has made mention in his comments that he went to school with very naive notions about Whites (probably because his parents were from the Caribbean eg a majority Black culture..) and that it was not a pleasant experience.

      3. To Tulio:

        http://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/my-mixed-up-feelings-about-my-wife/

        I think this post above was the one that made me say egad!

        “Today I go to see my wife. I left her three months ago taking our two sons with me. It was no longer safe to live with her – she had threatened my life too many times and was starting to get physically violent. I was right to leave: I was in far more danger than I knew, as it turned out.

        Today I go back to come to some kind of decision about child custody with the help of a court-appointed family counselor. If this turns out to be my last blog post, then assume the worst.”

    1. So what’s he doing for a living now? Does he now live in an apartment?

      I know about his violent and unstable wife, and that he’s West Indian. I also know that he is (or at least was) a computer designer, and that the majority of his co-workers are white.

      As for his discomfort towards Whites it is my understanding that he went to a majority White elemetary/secondary school where he was often racially taunted.

      I find that fascinating. It seems that the more contact he had with whites, the more he grew to despise them.

      On the other hand, look at writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. He went through his black nationalist phase, but he doesn’t harbor anywhere near the same level of bitterness towards whites. He grew up in an all black neighborhood, attended all black schools, and attended Howard University.

      Therefore, while he does address issues of racism and racial tension, he doesn’t approach the issue from the same “the white man done me wrong” attitude harbored by Abagond. When he does address black people and race, he does so more from an internal standpoint, and doesn’t seem to care much about the thoughts of whites.

      Abagond, on the other hand, is obsessed with whites and their ways.

      Why do I point this out?

      In many ways, the comparison between the two proves my point out about how too much diversity and interaction between different groups yields great conflict. It seems that the more we get to know another, the more we hate each other!

      I know that separation is a bit unrealistic, but it seems like blacks and whites just need a nice, long vacation from one another (and I know Alpha and Tulio won’t agree. Oh well).

      1. To Bay Area Guy:

        So what’s he doing for a living now? Does he now live in an apartment?

        I believe in his About Me section he says he programs apps for the iPhone. Wall Street has largely recovered so he may be working again and I did not see the update. He tends to not give out much detail that would enable someone to identify him. (Albeit he did reveal that he went to Columbia and studied computer programming and Ancient Greek history. )

        It’s not clear if he lives in an apartment or a house but I believe he no lives in NYC.

        Abagond, on the other hand, is obsessed with whites and their ways.

        If you look at his posts from two years ago and before there was little material about Whites. I am guessing this may be a bit of a phase for him. He has probably has more time to surf the net since he was laid off and read WN sites (and as well his blog has been linked at Amren and Stormfront apparently..) so you can bet he has seen some not so pleasant posts from Whites towards Blacks.

        1. If you look at his posts from two years ago and before there was little material about Whites. I am guessing this may be a bit of a phase for him. He has probably has more time to surf the net since he was laid off and read WN sites (and as well his blog has been linked at Amren and Stormfront apparently..) so you can bet he has seen some not so pleasant posts from Whites towards Blacks.

          That’s very interesting. I did browse through his blog and look at some earlier posts. His posts on ancient and medieval world history, politics, literature, and faith are quite interesting.

          Well, as a more recent reader, I guess all I’m seeing now is stuff about whites. That’s almost all he talks about these days.

          Has his blog actually been linked at Amren?

          I don’t necessarily attribute his phase to reading WN blogs, because he doesn’t really spend much time talking about WN’s.

          He spends most of his time chastising so-called “colorblind racists.” He doesn’t seem to care about those Amren types. Rather, he focuses his anger on virtually all whites, with rare exceptions.

        2. These Abagond types are a dime a dozen. There are Abagond clones all over the Black blogosphere. Once they get a little education, especially a university education, they often turn in this direction. Your average Black person doesn’t give two flying fucks about Whiteness Studies, Critical Race Theory, White privilege, color-blind racism, or of that nonsense. They’ve probably never even heard of any of it.

          BTW, the notion of “colorblind racism,” which I find bizarre, comes right out of CRT. CRT spends a lot of time bashing White liberals for being some kind of colorblind racists (whatever the Hell that is). This nonsense has been going on for about 20 years now. Whiteness Studies started around 1991.

          All this anti-White Identity Politics is ultimately a Black bourgeois obsession. Note that CRT types would rant at White favela dwellers in Brazil that they are oppressing the Black and Brown favela dwellers that they live alongside. Oppressing them with their evil White privilege.

          This is all just a fancy way for frustrated bourgeois Blacks resentful about their social climbing travails to blame Whitey but most of all avoid uttering the dirty C-word. As in CLASS.

          This Abagond guy has such a shitty life. Nice fat college degree (Ancient Greek Studies – Classics, at that!), nice big fat corporate hotshot job on fucking Wall Street programming for ruling class bankster types, nice car, nice apartment in some big city, yeah, he’s got it tough man!

          Fuck this guy. Some rich privileged Black guy resentful that he can’t climb even higher up the fuckin corporate ladder ranting at me, poor me, and saying I’m privileged. Fuck him. Probably makes in 1 or 2 months what I make in a year. But I’m privileged, and he’s not. Right dude. Like, whatever.

        3. I find the whole notion of “colorblind” racism rather bizarre as well. Some blacks and anti-racists even say that in some ways, they prefer Jim Crow Southern bigots because at least they’re honest. They also constantly deride white liberals as fake.

          Well, as the always insightful commenter Thaddeus pointed out, in just a few months, those “fake” white liberals will likely be put out of power, and blacks can go back to enjoying those non-colorblind racist conservatives.

          Yeah, if it weren’t for so-called “colorblind racists,” there wouldn’t have been so much progress over the past few decades.

          Some rich privileged Black guy resentful that he can’t climb even higher up the fuckin corporate ladder ranting at me, poor me, and saying I’m privileged. Fuck him. Probably makes in 1 or 2 months what I make in a year. But I’m privileged, and he’s not. Right dude. Like, whatever.

          I find it ironic the way many CRT types are on balance far more privileged than the majority of white people they constantly criticize for being privileged.

          This is a phenomenon among educated bourgeois blacks. One of the reasons why “The Cosby Show” (which I love, by the way) isn’t accurate is because there’s no way an upper middle class black family rarely if ever talks about race.

          Sure, they may not talk about it all the time, but watching the show and you would think that race didn’t exist at all.

          Avoid uttering the dirty C-word. As in CLASS.

          These CRT types act as if class doesn’t exist, and that all white individuals are collectively part of this evil machine, regardless of individual background.

          I challenge any one of them to enter a rural white area and tell the locals that they’re “privileged.”

          Yeah, that will go well!

          Thankfully, there are many reasonable blacks, such as Tulio and certain people I’ve known.

        4. A colorblind racist is someone that insist that America is a colorblind society and the real racist are people who insist that race is an issue. For example, many whites think that because we have a black president, that is proof that America is colorblind and that racism is essentially history. However many of these same people would probably shit bricks if their daughter brought home a black man.

          Even Tim Wise himself admits his own racism. He said that while boarding a flight once, for the first time ever there were two black pilots. He said, “my instant reaction wasn’t free at least, thank god almighty we’re free at least, my first thought was can these guys fly this plane?” I actually admired his honestly, because I can guarantee you every single white in that plane was thinking the same thing even though they would deny it if asked. He then said that he “caught himself” and realized that just being in a racist society makes him absorb racist notions. Obviously the two black guys flew the plane just fine since he lived to tell the story.

          People can talk about this being a colorblind American, but if even someone as thoughtful on race as Tim Wise harbors some racism, I can only IMAGINE what an average white thinks. I don’t even think Tim Wise would deny being 100% non-racist. Belief in black inferiority is such a deep(yet publicly unspoken) belief that people don’t even see it unless the issue is forced. And then of course some of the more unabashed racist like Jared Taylor will say that belief in black inferiority is justified and beneficial to society.

          So hopefully that explains what color blind racism is all about. Yeah, most people aren’t into this stuff because it takes a certain nuance in thought that most people don’t possess. Only egghead types like those that read this or Abagond’s forum are interested in these things, and that’s not the majority of people. Remember, we’re all pretty bright guys , but the average IQ is 100, which is really pretty low compared to most of us here.

        5. @ Tulio

          I perfectly understand “colorblind racism.” I just don’t agree with the implications made by CRT’s.

          To me, “colorblind racism” is simply racist people denying that they’re racist. To me, that’s simply denial and the fear of admitting racial prejudice. I don’t think we need a special term “colorblind racism” to describe it.

          Let’s face it: People are prejudiced, harbor fear, anger, contempt, and other human emotions. We all prejudge others and favor our own group over other groups.

          To me, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I admit, when I’m riding BART in Oakland and I hear blacks speaking poor English, dressing and acting ghetto, and conveying thuggish behavior, I do look down on them and regard them as inferior. Even when listening to certain Middle Class blacks speak English and talk among themselves, I feel contempt.

          There are many elements of black culture and thought that I look down upon. I do strongly prefer whites over blacks. Again, to me there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

          I am very pro-white, and am interested in white survival. So yes, I do harbor prejudice and racial bias. Though I don’t hate mulattos, I wouldn’t be too pleased if my daughter (if I do have a daughter in the future) brought home a black man. I want my descendants to resemble me.

          To the extent that I am “racist,” (really, what is a “racist?” It’s got to be one of the most overused, yet most poorly defined words) I certainly am not a “colorblind racist.” I’ve come to accept and embrace my white ethnocentrism and racial prejudice.

          Like Robert said, white ethnocentrism (which is basically seen as racist) feels soooo much better than white self-hatred (which I used to harbor).

          In general, “colorblind racism” (or what CRT’s like to call “aversive racism”) is overblown as some horrible phenomenon among whites. Everyone is prejudiced and harbors bias. That’s perfectly natural. As long as they’re not harming others, they shouldn’t be viciously castigated.

          But yes, I do agree that these “colorblind racists” should at least admit it. They should unashamedly embrace their prejudiced, pro-white views. That way, they’ll encourage other whites to man up and stand up for themselves against PC cultural Marxism, and they’ll avoid the charge of hypocrisy.

          On another note, Tim Wise is full of shit. Keep in mind, the man is a polemicist who makes his living denouncing whites as pathological, “melanin-challenged” racists.

          He can speak for himself, but he cannot speak for most whites. He is not some magical authority on our lives.

          Also, we’ve already been over this, but his offensive, self-righteous approach won’t work. He has every right to call us “pale faces,” and “melanin-challenged,” but I in turn have every right to tell him to fuck off.

          He can take his CRT crap to someone who cares.

          Like Robert said, every race has its traitors.

          Blacks have Clarence Thomas, Jesse Lee Peterson, and Larry Elder.

          Hispanics have Linda Chavez.

          Asians have Michelle Malkin.

          American Indians have David Yeagley.

          And we have Tim Wise, Robert Jensen, and others (the overall list of traitors is simply what immediately comes to mind).

          I’m not about to listen to a race hustling polemicist tell me that I’m fundamentally flawed and that he’s an authority on my life. Tim Wise can go fuck himself.

          Again, Tulio, I understand CRT, “white privilege,” “institutionalized racism,” etc. However, as I’ve said before, understanding does not equal acceptance.

        6. One last question for you BAG before I head off to bed here.

          Let’s say there is a black guy and a white guy dangling off a cliff, you can only save one. These two guys are equally decent people. Do you:

          a) save the white guy
          b) save the black guy
          c) flip a coin(assuming you had time to do such)

          My answer is c. Flip a coin. Race would play zero role in who I saved. It would be like asking would a I save a person with green eyes or blue eyes if I could only save one.

          I remember a WN who once said that he would let every black in Africa die if it meant saving just one white.

        7. Let’s say there is a black guy and a white guy dangling off a cliff, you can only save one. These two guys are equally decent people. Do you:

          a) save the white guy
          b) save the black guy
          c) flip a coin(assuming you had time to do such)

          Interesting scenario. I’ve noticed that you like to indulge in thought experiments.

          So, are you saying that those two individuals are completely similar in terms of temperament, decency, intelligence, productivity, and all other traits?

          Well, this will sound bad, but if those two individuals are completely the same, I’m going to reflexively elect to save the white guy.

          Is this because I hate the black guy and wish to see him dead? Of course not. However, if I can’t save both, I’m going to save the person to whom I can relate. I’m going to save the person who most resembles me.

          Besides, I’m not like Two-Face from “The Dark Knight.” I don’t leave serious situations up to chance.

          Now, if those two individuals were vastly different and all else wasn’t equal, that would alter my decision and force me to seriously reflect.

          However, the way you presented it, all else was equal.

          So yes, I would save the white guy.

          I know that you find such a sentiment repugnant, hateful, and morally bankrupt. However, since you asked for my honest answer, that’s it.

          Again, this doesn’t make me a genocidal hate monger. If I’m forced to reflexively choose whom to save, I’m going to save the person that I can best identify with. That’s human nature for you.

          You are more egalitarian and humanist in your thinking. While I don’t entirely agree with you, I have to admit that I applaud your faith in mankind and your greater tolerance of others.

          *Sigh* I guess I’m just more cynical and ethnocentric than you.

          It would be like asking would a I save a person with green eyes or blue eyes if I could only save one.

          Not quite. Last time I checked, there weren’t eye color riots, battles over busing and affirmative action related to eye color, or hatred, distrust, and tension between people with different eye colors.

          I see the point that you’re trying to make: It’s foolish to judge people based on physical appearance.

          However, I hardly think you can compare race to eye color.

          Tulio, I know that you find me overly cynical and a bit Machiavellian (as you put it) in my thinking, but that’s the way I see things. I wish I were more optimistic and humanistic in my approach, but I just can’t see things that way.

        8. What is aversive racism?

          How come these CRT idiots never call these other races on their racist shit? Like Blacks, for instance. Oh yeah, Blacks can’t be racist, LOL. You know, you tell your average White person that and they shake their heads and start laughing. It goes over like a lead balloon. They’ve been saying this, “Blacks can’t be racist,” crap for about 20 years now, and it’s just not going over with Whites.

          To me, animus is racism. I don’t harbor animus towards Blacks, so I’m not racist against Blacks. Sometimes I think bad thoughts about Blacks, but that’s more if they are acting really ghetto or low class than if they are just living while Black. I would not want to think bad thoughts about Blacks just due to their race. That would really bother me. I guess I do sometimes, but I struggle against that stuff.

          I try to treat Blacks just as good as I would treat a White person of the same caliber. I’m not sure how good I am at it, but I do try. Treating them less well than a like White person is so wrong. Treating them 1% less is 1% wrong. Treating them 100% less is 100% wrong. It’s also a sin, religiously speaking.

        1. Indeed. I guess he really is going through a phase right now.

          Also, the posts of his that I read the most are the ones which receive the greatest hits, which more often than not are about race.

          I still find his non-race posts very interesting, in spite of being introduced to him during his white obsessed phase.

      2. I haven’t yet read the Coates article. I do consider Coates to be one of my favorite black thinkers, though I think he’s 100% wrong on the illegal immigration issue.

        As for Abagond vs Coates, I don’t think one can say being away from whites made Coates less hostile, or being around whites made Abagond more hostile. I think that’s a very individual thing. If anything, I’d say the more whites a black has grown up and hung around, the more likely that person is to have white friends and even marry white. My sister grew up in a white suburb in a southern city. She has hung with mostly whites and pretty much only dated white men from what I saw. I have now have a half white niece. Really, my sister is basically just a white girl who happens to have black parents.

        As for blacks and white needed a vacation. I have white friends and get along with whites(and other races too of course) fine in normal day to day life. Separation isn’t even on my radar. Heck, even “some of my best friends are white.” 😀

        Oh, and what would you do with the mulattos? Like my niece?

        1. Oh, and what would you do with the mulattos? Like my niece?

          Generally, I don’t have a problem with mulattos as people. However, I do resent the implication that mulattos like Obama “represent the new America” and are more attractive.

          Just remember, for every Halle Berry, there’s a Joakim Noah!

          “some of my best friends are white.”

          LOL! Ah, Tulio, you certainly have a good sense of humor!

          The funny thing, however, is that I’ve never actually encountered a white person who pulled out the whole “my best friend is black” crap.

          I don’t know, perhaps that’s because I spent most of my middle and high school days around non-whites.

  14. To Bay Area Guy:

    Has his blog actually been linked at Amren?

    I don’t know.. he says he has gotten a fair amount of traffic from links of his blog posted to WN sites.

    I don’t know why he has posting more frequently about Whites but I have to think the stresses of his life have made his tone a bit sharper.

    1. I have to think the stresses of his life have made his tone a bit sharper.

      One cannot separate the personal from the political. Regardless of what studies or books we read, our views are almost entirely shaped by our personal experiences.

      1. Also, for those that say he’s preaching to the choir, I think he pretty much that the site is made as an expression of black thought, not to win over whites.

        1. Interestingly enough, Abagond finally found a legitimate reason to ban white troll and persistent spammer No Slappz.

          I guess slappy will have to find a different black blogger to annoy!

        2. I wasn’t sure what to say about slappz. Even when Abagond would make a non-racial post, slappz would find some racial angle and before you knew it he was attacking black people. I feel like there are a couple black posters as bad as slappz, like that one girl who is very afrocentric and goes into frequent inane rants, can’t recall her handle at the moment. She kept saying that she things I’m a white troll pretending to the black and attacked me because I didn’t think the ancient Egyptians were black. She’s was as bad as slappz.

        3. I’m guessing that the afrocentric black commenter is Herneith. She has ancient Egyptian buildings as her avatar, and believes that anyone who denies that the Egyptians were black is a racist (including prominent Egyptologist and expert Zahi Hawass).

          Another loony black commenter on that site is Erzulieredeyes. Despite calling whites a cancer, bukkake faces, and child and dog fuckers (well she used less foul language), she’s married to a white man.

          I also recall your exchange with her where you warned her to be careful when traveling to Russia. She basically blew you off, and said something along the lines of

          “I’m not afraid of those skinheads. They got a problem with me, they better watch themselves.”

          Yeah, tough girl, you go on and take on those skinheads! *rolls eyes*

          She may be able to get away with her aggressive and offensive language towards whites here, but she’s gotta be high out of her mind if she thinks her sassy “I’m a strong black woman so you best not fuck with me” attitude will fly in Russia. Heck, just being seen in the wrong place could get her beaten, raped, or killed.

          She’s truly a piece of work.

          I wonder who will take slappy’s place!

        4. By the way, Tulio, what exactly do you think the ancient Egyptians were?

          Abagond and other black commenters claim they were black, while Robert claims they were predominantly Caucasoid.

          Hard to know what conclusion to reach in this Ancient Egyptian race controversy.

        5. Abagond said they are black by the standards of what is considered black in America, i.e. the one drop rule. Ancient Egyptians portrayed Nubians as black, but not themselves, judging by the paintings.

          There you go, Erzulie is the one I was thinking of. I had no idea she’s married to a white man. But that goes to prove one of my theories. Blacks that seems racist are probably a lot less racist than you think and whites that don’t seem that racist are probably a lot more racist than you think.

          She’d be a fool to go to Russia and start acting out. I don’t know if she’s done any international travel before, but Russia is a very bad place for a black person to start. Even black Americans working for the embassy have gotten the shit beat out of them by skinheads.

        6. Oh, and as for what I think the Egyptians looked like, I would guess that they looked similar to the modern day people of southern Egypt and N. Sudan. I think they were a mix of different things. Some of them were white and some were black, it was a crossroad of races. I think blacks lived further north back then than they do now too.

        7. Bukkake faces! LOL! That’s a good one. Yeah, those Black commenters over there just rub me the wrong way, just to put it mildly. A lot of them are simply Black racists. A lot of Blacks are racist. Studies have shown that 34% of Blacks are racist, as opposed to 31% of Whites, so they are more racist than we are.

          If animus is a definition of racism, then Blacks are definitely racist, because a lot of them have animus towards Whites. That’s a good definition. I figure if a White has animus towards any race, they are racist, at least to some extent.

          Now, if you can kind of sort them out on an individual basis, and, while having animus towards them, you realize that there are good and bad ones, and at least treat the good ones well, you’re doing pretty good. That pretty much describes me when I was teaching in Black schools.

          I was getting furious towards Blacks as a race, but I still liked a lot of the Black students and most of the Black teachers and admins, as long as they were cool and friendly.

          If Whites are not allowed to have animus without being racist, Blacks should have be allowed to have animus either. CRT people say Blacks have a right to be pissed because we treat them wrong. Thing is, there are millions of Whites who insist that they have a right to hate Blacks because Blacks did them wrong in some way. So that argument should not be allowed to fly.

          I just looked up aversive racism. It’s a bit ridiculous. This is what Abagond is on about all the time? Good Lord. Blacks have worse problems than that. I also have a hard time figuring out if I even have aversive racism myself. Maybe I do!

          I sort of agree with BAG in a way. I don’t have animus towards Blacks in general these days, but that’s mostly because I don’t have a heck of a lot to do with them! I’ve found that the best way to lack animosity towards Blacks is to have little to do with them. It seems like the more you start getting involved with a lot of them, the more the animosity grows.

        8. I don’t agree about Egypt. They probably looked exactly the same way that they do now. Studies show that they were 91% Caucasian and 9% Black, same as they are now. They haven’t changed in that way at all.

          Interesting what they said about Blacks. They wrote that Blacks were great entertainers, comedians, musicians and sportsmen, but they weren’t really all that smart.

          So I guess the ancient Egyptians were RACIST! LOL.

        9. “Interesting what they said about Blacks. They wrote that Blacks were great entertainers, comedians, musicians and sportsmen, but they weren’t really all that smart.”

          What’s your source for this?

        10. My White liberal Mom has been saying that for many years now. She has a 150 IQ and got through two years of law school at Berkeley. I don’t know what her source is.

          If you don’t like that, you *really* don’t want to read accounts of the first White explorers to Africa either. I’ve read some of those.

    1. To FG:

      Wikipedia cites sources indicating the modern Egyptians are on average about 60% Eurasian and 40% Sub-Saharan African

      Quote from the article:

      “Luis, Rowold et al found that the diverse NRY haplotypes observed in a population of mixed Arabs and Berbers found that the majority of haplogroups, about 59% were of Eurasian origin. They found that markers signaling the Neolithic expansion from the Middle East constitute the predominant component. The remaining 39.5% were clades that belonged to Haplogroup E, the predominant Haplogroup in Sub-Saharan Africa. E3b was the predominant African clade of Haplogroup E found in the Egyptian population. E3b is the haplogroup characteristic of Afro-Asiatic speakers and evidence suggests that E3b originated in East Africa. About 9% of were clades associated with Sub-Saharan Africans who are not Afro-Asiatic speakers.”

      The Haplogroup E3B has African origins but it also widespread in Greece and the Balkans:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E3b
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Y_Hap_EM-78.PNG

      Perhaps Robert can go into details about his rationale.

      1. They also look like they’re 60% white and 40% black. Just take a glance at pictures of Anwar Sadat.

        1. To FG:

          Just take a glance at pictures of Anwar Sadat.

          Anwar Sadat’s mother was Sudanese, which probably gave rise to his appearance.

          “Anwar El Sadat was born on 25 December 1918 in Mit Abu al-Kum, al-Minufiyah, Egypt to a poor family, one of 13 brothers and sisters. His father was Egyptian, and his mother was Sudanese.[1] He spent his early childhood under the care of his grandmother, who told him stories revolving around resistance to the British occupation and drawing on contemporary history.”

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_El_Sadat

          I speculate that ancient Egyptian looks pretty much how they do now…. lighter in the North and darker in the South… with the possible exception of places like Alexandria which was a Greek colony. To the best of my knowledge there was not an almost wholesale replacement of the population such as what happened in much of the Americas. Basically Egypt was one of the best food producing regions for many centuries. The goal of the conquerors was to maintain that economy, so basically for the most part the workers remained the same but there was an exchange of rulers.

      2. E3B isn’t really Black. It’s just sub-Saharan, that’s all. It’s the same clade that in Ethiopians is called their Caucasian component. Ethiopians are 57% Black and 43% Caucasian, and the Caucasian is E3B. It’s ancient Caucasian from the Middle East around 20-25,000 years ago. It’s like a Middle Eastern Caveman. No one knows what those early Caucasians looked like.

        No way are Egyptians 60% Caucasian and 40% Black. If they were, they would not look like they do. I’ve seen some Egyptians lately, and they don’t look like that. People who are around 50-50 Black White in that region are the Ethiopians, the Eritreans, the Beja, the Nubians, the Sahelians.

        More or less your Horner look. Egyptians do *not* look like Horners. Egyptians just look like Caucasians, although some do look more Black, especially as you get towards the South, they start looking Blacker. It’s Nubians who are 50-50 Black-Caucasian. Compare a Nubian to a North Egyptian – they are very different looking.

        1. This all sounds quite weak to me. Both genetic testing and eye-balling suggest that the ancient Egyptians were what Americans would refer to as a “mixed race” people, though they did not think of themselves like that. The reason why Afrocentrists can point to certain artistic depictions of the Ancient Egyptians and claim that they were black and Eurocentrists and point to others and say that they were white is because the Eyptians were a mixture of both. In fact, they recently uncovered what is thought to be Cleopatra’s sister Arsinoe and the forensic evidence indicates she was “mulatto.”

      1. I would never refer to them as mulattoes because that’s not how they viewed themselves and I’m not into appropriating other people’s heritage like Afrocentrists and Eurocentrists are. However, the evidence on their ancestral origins can be used to counter the claims of these two groups.

      2. I don’t think they were mulattos, but no one really knows who they were. They differentiated themselves from the Nubians, who they enslaved. The ancient Egyptians are mysterious people. The few tests that have been done show most of their DNA coming from the Middle East. Their origin was in Eritrea. They were brown, as opposed to the Libyans, who they depicted as White.

        I think they were at least partially Black, but not much. I doubt if that makes you a mulatto. More likely it makes you look like a modern-day Arab or Berber.

  15. Here’s a partial translation of what he’s saying, I think. “Yah man, ya’ll know who this be. Once again on this muthahfuckin camera thing. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Who dis there? Hold on Hold on don’t be talking bout the work on the phone calm down man you know these cops got the phone tapped man……Like I was sayin Theys alot of nigga’s on the little thang Myspace doin alot of rapping they aint making nothing happen you feel me? Hey my boy he idenitifies as A…. when I come by…. I dont want to do all that without the (dick?)…….Im on this shit all day everyday. For all you little hos that saw my dick, I got all you all hoes up on my (jeans?)But I fucked ya. The pussy was good. I had to have been soaking wet. I beat it up. If you was at my house you left walkin crazy. If I was at your house you couldnt get in the shower till the next morning. But you feel me, ….what you reckon that hoe callin me now… Hold on hold on… hello? Man leave me the fuck alone that aint my baby. Hey man Y’all know what it is. You want to find me, Look me up nigga I’m in the phone book. Go through your mama’s contacts, I’m in the phone, haha, get that shit outa my face man.”

    It is interesting how similar he sounds to people who speak Gullah, which is still spoken on an island off the coast of South Carolina, and originated in West Africa when British slave traders taught Africans a simplified version of English. When slaves reached the states, their language had to continually change to avoid having it be understood by white people. For example, “This train is bound for glory” meant the underground railroad and the escape to freedom. But after white people began to learn what that phrase meant, it had to change. AAVE evolved as black people sought acceptable ways to express their sorrow, their hatred of oppression, and their spirituality. Slaves found in Christianity a way to adapt to the old spirit religions (voo-doo) of Africa. Religion, as well as music, became one of the most important mediums for black people to be able to escape oppression and connect with their African heritage. Most West African languages rely on the tonal qualities of speech to relay meaning, this quality was carried over in AAVE, resulting in a sing-songy kind of pattern of speech. Because slavery and later, racism, kept black people from obtaining education, complexity of African American speech had to evolve on its own, and much of its complexity continued to rely on tonal quality. So the pattern of an ever-changing, coded, sing-song language that only black people are meant to understand continues even today. It may sound “simplistic” and “uneducated” to someone who doesn’t understand it but there are many layers of complexities in the African American Vernacular.

  16. I know this is an old thread, and I hate to harp on the ubiquitous Tim Wise, but this made me laugh out loud:

    @ Tulio “Even Tim Wise himself admits his own racism. He said that while boarding a flight once, for the first time ever there were two black pilots. He said, “my instant reaction wasn’t free at least, thank god almighty we’re free at least, my first thought was can these guys fly this plane?” I actually admired his honestly, because I can guarantee you every single white in that plane was thinking the same thing even though they would deny it if asked.”

    No, actually you can’t guarantee it, whether you believe it or not.

    I am not free of racism, but it would never occur to me to worry about a black airline pilot. I have lived around enough black professionals that it wouldn’t phase me. The primitive part of my brain sees a uniform and thinks “oh, that guy must know what he’s doing”, whether he does or not.

    Maybe Wise’s surroundings were whiter than mine, but isn’t Nashville a pretty cosmopolitan city? I’ve wondered where Wise’s excessive guilt and need to project it on all white people comes from. I haven’t read his books. This anecdote makes me think that he might have come from a more racist background than a lot of us white people and that he can’t believe that there are some of us who didn’t grow up with the exact same indoctrination that he did.

    1. Excellent comment.

      Tim Wise frequently loves to make use of the psychological term “projection,” when describing the fears and prejudices of white racists and white people in general.

      Essentially, he believes that whites stereotype blacks in order to hide from their own inadequacies, and thus are projecting their pathologies and insecurities onto black people.

      Well, from reading Tim’s work, he admits that he was a mediocre student, and apparently his Jewish grandfather owned a liquor store in a black neighborhood (from the reviews I’ve read of his memoir. I don’t know how true this is). Apparently, one of his great grandfathers was a klansman.

      He also talks about his own past deviant behavior every now and then as a way to highlight the pathological ways of white people.

      His argument is essentially that despite his own failures and mediocrity, he benefited from “white privilege,” which allowed him to make it.

      I do think that he projects his own personal inadequacy and mediocrity onto all white people as a result of his own demons as well as his Southern upbringing.

      Also, I don’t want to really get into this too much, but from articles I’ve read of his, he dealt with some shit from white Christian kids on account of being Jewish. Even though he claims to be an agnostic now, he still sees himself as ethnically Jewish.

      So I think part of his crusade is motivated by a desire to get back at the goyim.

      Don’t read his books. He’s simply a race hustler who makes his living by agreeing with everything black people say.

      1. He looks very similar to King Hussein of Jordan, which I guess comes from the Middle Eastern background of Jews.

      2. “He also talks about his own past deviant behavior every now and then as a way to highlight the pathological ways of white people.”

        I think that ‘s the root of my irritation with him. The way he universalizes his personal experience is arrogant, self-indulgent and counterproductive. It’s also a way to keep the focus on Tim rather than on people of color. I’ve seen several black bloggers make this last point. It’s hilarious that one white guy has taken over the whole anti-racist industry. He’s the same hustler he was in high school selling fake IDs, and apparently thinks that confessing this over and over makes it okay. LOL.

        The most effective anti-racist writing I’ve seen lately was a blog thread where people of color were invited to share their experiences of reading the classics in school. Their personal stories were very moving and gave me much more of a view into what POCs go through than anything Wise has ever written. Wise’s idea that only white people can speak to white people is patronizing nonsense.

        I could go on about him, because he perfectly illustrates why bourgeois liberals are full of shit.

        My library has White Like Me. You’re right that he’s a hustler, but I might read it for the laffs. Maybe I should do a book report.

        1. The way he universalizes his personal experience is arrogant, self-indulgent and counterproductive. It’s also a way to keep the focus on Tim rather than on people of color

          So true.

          For example, in one of his articles, he begins with an angry complaint regarding his latest lecture.

          (in case you haven’t noticed, he always starts off his articles, with rare exceptions, by pointing to an angry email or complaint. Without these angry criticisms, he would be out of business)

          He talked about the whole myth of the black victim mentality, how ignoring racism won’t make it easier to overcome, etc.

          Then, in order to illustrate his point, he talked about how as a little league baseball player, he had to prepare himself to face the pitcher, and he went into that in some detail.

          Of course, he thinks he did it just to support the argument that far from ignoring it, blacks must face racism head-on in order to conquer it.

          But methinks that he just used that article as an opportunity to talk about his little league baseball experiences.

          In general, I’ve noticed that these white Tim Wise anti-racist types just looove to talk about themselves.

          You’re right, it’s narcissistic, arrogant, counterproductive projection on his part.

  17. This is about 60% intelligible to me. If I listened to it for while I think that intelligibility would rise to 80%.

  18. Yeah I know this is an old thread and I’ve missed out on a great conversation here, so I’ll just comment on the video. I understood everything he said up to the comments on myspace without reading the transcriptions, the part about hoes and sex was harder to follow but it was clear he was talking about having sex. I understood everything again from the part where he spoke to his girlfriend on the phone. It’s obvious to me that he is from somewhere in the South and this is supposed to AAVE, but for me the only real difference between his speech and that of most white Southerners is that he is speaking very very rapidly.

  19. Honestly, Robert, you can’t understand this guy?

    He’s speaking English, all right. Wacked out, but it’s English.

    If you’re trying to discredit blacks like this, then you have failed.

    Then again, I can also understand Geordie.

    Sincerely,
    frenchrobot

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