Suzy Strikes Again:Choose Whiteness
Here is part of Suzy's Letter to the Editor in our local paper. (I posted on the same Suzy's diatribe on Property Rights a few weeks ago) I must admit I admire it's classic eloquence as it reiterates boilerplate dogma. It was precipitated by Obamas preacher and his denunciation of the Stars and Stripes:
"Every citizen in the United States of America has a choice on how they choose to live each day."
This is the essence of Movement Conservatism Ideology and a perfect example of it's intellectual vacuousness. It assumes a perfectly level playing field with no historical notions of privilege or advantage or class. "Equal opportunity" awaits us all in this post-race, post class society. A "New Morning in America."
"They can CHOOSE to take advantage of the opportunities or they can sit on their behinds and whine and blame others for their own lack of DETERMINATION. They succeed...because of the STRENGTH OF THEIR CHARACTER. "
In this idyllic it is all about choice and great people doing great things and getting great rewards because they make great decisions, such as working hard, playing by the rules, brushing their teeth etc. This explains why Suzy has such a big house and new car and her children are in top schools. And conversely, why "minorities" are in slums or prisons.
"Do not blame white people or this country for what you do not have...It is a CHOICE should you not speak english well..take advantage of the opportunity for education...not respect yourself. It is a choice to be a contributing person with good MORAL VALUES ,GOOD WORK ETHIC..to have a desire to learn all one can...to take on a sense of dignity."
So choose dignity and respect, damnit, and lose the baggy clothes! Shut up and contribute your labor, choose new BMWs instead of those old El Dorados! You got bootstraps, grab em and start pulling!
"Every top executive will tell you that attitude is the difference between success and failure. White guilt and the billions of dollars poured out trying to say WE ARE SORRY for a past that we had absolutely no part of... has ENCOURAGED entire groups of people to wallow in self pity and anger which is what happens when you remove incentive and personal responsibility."
This is what Bill Cosby has helped unleash. We (Whitey) apologized , for Christ sake, now get over it. Justice means you are now free to shop at Nieman Marcus along with those "top executives", ( not Ken Lay RIP) ,where perhaps some of that work ethic will rub off on you. Assimilate. Choose wealth over poverty like Suzy did. Resist the urge to take that handout, it will make you weak.
The embedded racism and classism of which Suzy and most conservatives (and many liberals)remain blithely unaware is at the heart of their destructive ideology. Ignorance and pride explains the ease by which they are manipulated to do Capitalist America's bidding, but the dark undercurrent of fear and hate, mixed with Christian doctrine and a whiff of Horatio Algeir, is a poisonous cocktail of reactionary defiance to anyone challenging their comfortable status quo. How much more honest it would be if they just said " We had gunpowder and you had spears, to bad for you" instead of creating all these hollow, aphoristic justifications for dominance and exploitation.
posted by troutsky @ 8:00 AM
14 comments
14 Comments:
Individualism flies in the face of human nature. Unlike other mammals, humans aren't able to allow babies to roam free in the jungle. Humans have more dependentcy than tiger cubs.
Every piece of clothing, from the natural materials, stitching, transport, sales etc. involved a long chain of humans.
Humans do little from scratch alone.
Her argument is the same one I run into when discussing politics with friends. I believe much of this problem is the complete lack of history taught at schools. My old history teacher was the coach and we'd what game film.
watch game film I mean.
It is much more noble to march like Lemmings on LSD off the cliff of collective reality.
The comments of G about history are amusing in that he shows zero clue in that subject. Start with the deaths that follow collectivization and then read it again.
Then we hear LSD type of pop psychology from Retrograde Eye. As you endorse Marx and agree with the party line you are an autonamaton and have no concept of humanity.
Individualism is the heart of human
nature. Ren also has no clue about the animal kingdom. Tigers are solitary hunters. Humans closest relatives Chimps, Gorillas and Baboons (higher than commies in terms of evolution) are social creatures. The sole exception among higher primates is the Orangatang.
I am an individual an it is at the core of my American identity.
Now for mindless slogans that commies require.
ALL HAIL CHE SPONGE BOB MAXIMUM ALL
KNOWING LEADER OF THE UNWASHED MASSES.
SMASH INDIVIDUALITY WE SHOULD ALL LOOK LIKE OUR LEADER CHE SPONGE BOB. SINCE GRAEME WEARS HIS UNDERWEAR ON HIS HEAD AFTER DRINKING WAY TOO MANY THE REST OF US SHOULD FOLLOW HIS EXAMPLE
IGNORANCE IS BLISS VIVA STUPIDITY
See this. Our buddy was caught trolling. He forgot to sign out as Beakerkin, and attacked himself as Eitan.
Beakerkin's problem with Che, goes back to the post where he challenged him about Colombia. He not only couldn't meet the challenge, he couldn't spell Colombia.
Humans individuality in the abstract, is different than other mammals. Humans are more socially needy.
You are three steps behind Ren.
You are quite ignorant of the human condition. The again humans like Greg
are meant to be tossed under the bus
when expedient.
Once again you are three steps behind
and have no clue.
Normally I'd take you to task for, as usual, emphasizing a forgotten truth at the expense of its alternative. Let's make the sermon brief: believing that one can do nothing without the help of others is a recipe for bitterness and failure.
Still, I've been reading a book titled The Peter Principle. It makes a rather strong case concerning the inefficiencies--and implicit injustices--of any system, including our own capitalistic one. Moreover, his theories square with my limited experiences in cubeland.
Wiser is right, one can do plenty on one's own. But through cooperation, teamwork, and collective effort ones can do a great deal more!
Since Wiser has invoked the word "bitter," a politically charged word right now, I'd like to point out that Beakerkin is bitter for getting spanked on the Colombia post and the working class is bitter for getting a raw deal.
One very important omission from the ridiculous "pull oneself up from the bootstraps" argument is that everyone is talking about what the poor should do to save themselves. Wiser, don't you think it's only fair to question the fairness of the system? Don't you think we should demand that humans unequivocally end their dominion over other humans. Through the logic asserted by Suzy and Co., it is okay to exploit humans who aren't earning their keep. Doesn't this position ignore history?
I agree and promote personal accountability everyday as a teacher, but I can walk and chew gum at the same time and realize that no matter how much we'd like to wish away our crimes (white men) and continued exploitation, and that we'd like "bitter brown people," "the poor" to channel their anger into some self-affirming, positive energy to elevate themselves and to stop blaming others for their problems, IT'S NOT POSSIBLE!
Wouldn't it just be great if they'd undo our crimes for themselves and simply depend on themselves for needs, dreams and desires? Aren't they just caught in a dependency cycle of self-pity? We all love those Hollywood films of black principles teaching black kids to do it themselves, that they ain't gonna git no help and that they should show the self-respect and pride to choose righteousness. That's the world Suzy and Bill Cosby want, but it's stooped in racism.
"We reservation Indians don't get to realize our dreams. We don't get those chances. Or choices. We're just poor. That's all we are.
It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you're poor because you're stupid and ugly. And you start believing that you stupid and ugly because you're Indian. And because you're Indian you start believing you're destined to be poor. It's an ugly circle and there's nothing you can do about it.
Poverty doesn't give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor." --Sherman Alexie
Actually, I agree with everything Suzie wrote. Of course, the way she writes it makes her look like an arrogant bitch, but she is 100% right.
As long as some black people remain convinced that white racism is so strong and so pervasive that it can prevent them from EVER succeeding in life, well, many of them won't even be trying. No rational person ever tries to do something impossible.
Ironically, it's Suzie, arrogant and all, that encourages them to work hard. You, on the other hand, by exaggerating white racism and its power, discourage them from trying.
What color is that skin Sonia is wearing in her avatar?
There may be some lazy,corrupt,"undeserving" Haitians eating mud cookies today, or New Orleanians for that matter, but it is not for me or Suzy or Sonia to judge their character. All we can do is show compassion and try to empathize.
As for Beaks knowledge of human nature and his anthropological/biological "proof", I think the research remains inconclusive. Marx's attempt at anthropological proof was just as absurd.Consider the difference between individualistic and individualism.
Wiser , when you say "the injustices of any system" you are ignoring or dissing the imaginary, the system you and I and others could come up with if we had the space to create it.
CheBob, great how you tied in this current dust-up over the "bitter" comment.On so many levels there exist taboos when talking about damaged or dependent or "challenged" or sociopathic etc people. We all lead lives of quiet desperation, eh? We don't know what Suzy does with her frustration!
lazy, corrupt, "undeserving" Haitians eating mud cookies today, or New Orleanians for that matter, but it is not for me or Suzy or Sonia to judge their character
You are missing the point. It's not about "lazy" people. It's about hard-working and perfectly rational people having their dreams taken away by people (black and white) telling them "you're black, so even if you study hard, even if you work hard, nasty white people are going to keep you down, prevent you from succeeding, so don't even try"...
That's how racism destroys the black community.
Sonia,
Are you seriously blaming blacks' current reality on people (I assume you are blaming the left) telling blacks that they are black so they won't ever get a fair shake? You don't think existing disadvantages (social, educational, political, and economic) at the point when slavery or civil rights ended or current ones have played any role in shaping the subsequent history?
So, if we could rewind the history clock and return to the 1950's and 60's what would you have done? Establish equal civil rights and then say "alright, we are all equal now...ready...get set...GO! Don't blame me for the past 200 years. If you don't win it's your own fault. See you in heaven"? Would this have done the trick by teaching blacks to buck up? "Where's your thick skin boy? Toughen up, no one is gonna do it for you. By the way, thanks for all those years of hard work that built my palace."
Aren't you thereby saying that by ending slavery and then (90 years later) giving blacks civil rights means that there was no need to catch blacks up educationally, economically, politically, etc. in order to give everyone roughly the same starting line?
What role did slavery play in the collective conscious of black America? Did it instill a sense of inferiority? If it did, how does a society address this setback (assuming of course there is a genuine and concerted effort to change this)?
The key was and continues to be, an education/conscientization which includes a historical perspective that doesn't pretend that the system isn't racist, imperial and stacked against you. The system is all of these things and so we cannot ignore them. (Please note that it was your own editorial comment putting words into mouths when you said: "so don't even try.")
It seems to me that Suzy and Co. have nothing to complain about except the possibility that they might have to share their booty with those from whom they've stolen it. It strikes me as dumbfounding that Suzy is whining about minorities whining! Wow! That is a feat of irony that would have made Orwell blush! All the way back to Plymouth Rock, how did Suzy get all her stuff? Hard work? Good moral values? The right god? A long memory truly is a revolutionary and subversive act.
What difference does one's starting point make in determining who one will become? Please do not fill your answer with exception after exception of amazing individuals that overcome the odds. Please have the intellectual honesty to admit that these people represent a self-evident exception to the rule.
It seems obvious that you and I both have been educated, feed, housed, and even clothed (at least at one point in our lives anyway) unlike the majority of the world. Can either of us even begin to imagine the psychological head-start we've always had in confronting the economic, political and social realities of this world?
Che Bob,
Are you seriously blaming blacks' current reality on people (I assume you are blaming the left) telling blacks that they are black so they won't ever get a fair shake? You don't think existing disadvantages (social, educational, political, and economic) at the point when slavery or civil rights ended or current ones have played any role in shaping the subsequent history?
One doesn't exclude the other. A perfect analogy for the history of black people in America would be people being forced at gunpoint to live in a very deep hole until 1865, and then being left there completely ignored until 1965, when ladders called "civil rights" and shovels called "welfare" and "affirmative action" were thrown there by well-meaning whites. Since then, some blacks have been climbing the ladders, and others have been digging deeper...
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