a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by bioemerl
bioemerl  ·  3191 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and Kanye West Say About the Black Experience in America

    The less horrible the majority acts, the fewer heroes the minority has to sacrifice.

Hah, still remember how to quote on this site. Been a while.

This statement is an obvious one, it is like saying "if the sky was red, fewer people would need large planes with which to paint the sky"

It doesn't change that sacrifice is required to inspire change. People have to stand up for what they believe in if they want to inspire progress. I am not saying this must be black people, but I would guess that the vast majority of people who care enough about the issues facing black communities are black themselves.

    However, you lack sympathy for the idea that sacrifices should not be required.

In an ideal world, nobody would ever have to work a day, make any sacrifices, or ever do anything. That isn't this world.

    The Emancipation Proclamation was 150 years ago - your arbitrary cut-off of when we started treating blacks as "human". Yet it's still substantially harder to thrive as a minority in the United States than as the majority.

In 150 years we have gone from treating a group of people as less than human to having large and society wide discussions on how we are not properly giving them access to resources, and that they are being targeted more often by police.

I understand that it still isn't truly "right". I understand that there is still more to go, and I understand the frustration around the lack of progress in change in recent years. However, change is something that is slow, especially when regarding culture. These events have and will continue to chip away and cause progress towards a more equal and better society.

    if I'm seven times less likely to go to jail and 21 times less likely to get shot over it, isn't the onus on me to do something about it?

Yes, because if you don't, nobody else is going to. This isn't a matter of what's fair, it's a matter of what works.

    Particularly when all I have to do is not be a douche and accept that sometimes I should go out of my way to be sensitive to people different than me?

All this talk about how white people should be doing more, and this is what you say is all people have to do?

This is nothing. This is the bare minimum I would expect from anyone out there. What I talk about when I mean "going out to change the world" I mean heading out and protesting, hitting the streets, yelling, making noise, making yourself heard and in the public eye. Real activism.

You doing this isn't going to stop police, it's not going to stop the KKK, it's not going to stop cultures in Charleston from stirring up a massive identity around fear and hatred. It's lazy, and that's what I mean. The vast majority of people are lazy, and aren't going to stand up or try to cause change. Doing that is left to those motivated to do so.