Many of you might have heard of 'The Case of the Reverse B'.
Pittsburgh police say a McCain campaign volunteer made up a story of being robbed, pinned to the ground and having the letter "B" scratched on her face in a politically inspired attack.Maurita Bryant, the assistant chief of the police department's investigations division, says 20-year-old Ashley Todd is being charged with making a false report to police.
Todd, of College Station, Texas, initially said a black man robbed her at knifepoint Wednesday night and then cut her cheek after seeing a McCain sticker on her car.
Yet another attempt to incite racial tensions based on the commonly held belief that black men make a hobby of molesting white women. What is most amusing in such racial stereotypes is the hypocrisy embedded in them. Reality is the diagonal opposite, and such stereotypes are a means to justify this reality. First there was slavery. Eventually after much pain the blacks found freedom but found themselves completely disenfranchised.
A popular mechanism of disenfranchisement was by poll tax, where a fixed sum needed to be paid for the right to vote. This tax essentially excludes poorer sections of the population. Many of the Southern States employed this technique. It was successfully copied in South Africa as well.
As a result blacks had no political, economic or social leverage whatsoever. Organizations like the Klu Klux Klan routinely lynched them at the slightest lack of subservience. Lack of opportunity lead to poverty, poverty lead to increased crime rates and drug use, and this vicious cycle has in some sense continued to this day.
If one watches a typical Western, one cannot miss the guy with the leather skins and feathers in his head - the American-Indian. He is usually portrayed to be wild, out of control, marauding the nearest gentile town and spreading terror among is denizens. Though there could have been some historical tensions between the two communities, reality couldn't be farther away from this image. Today, American-Indians form a smaller part of the population of the United States than possibly even Indians who have emigrated from Asia. They live in secluded reservations where alchoholism is rife, people are poor and opportunities for education and employment non-existent. It is not entirely clear who marauded whom.
Another incident that comes to my mind is from Indian history. On April 13th 1919, General Reginald Dyer lead a massacre of over a 1000 unarmed Indian civialians over a matter of 10 minutes. This admirable act was performed 'to teach a moral lesson to the Punjab.' After this act, he had to return to the UK, where a 'Sympathy Fund for the Punjab' collected over 26,000 pounds (1919 pounds not 2008 pounts), for his benefit.
Of course, these incidents cannot hold a candle to the biggest hypocrisy of them all. That of Mr Hitler and his friends Mr Goebbels, Mr Eichmann, Mr Goring who incinerated an entire race while accusing them of a litany of crimes.
My friends, beware of racial sterotypes, and when you encounter one, be very clear who is the oppressor and who is the victim :).
A popular mechanism of disenfranchisement was by poll tax, where a fixed sum needed to be paid for the right to vote. This tax essentially excludes poorer sections of the population. Many of the Southern States employed this technique. It was successfully copied in South Africa as well.
As a result blacks had no political, economic or social leverage whatsoever. Organizations like the Klu Klux Klan routinely lynched them at the slightest lack of subservience. Lack of opportunity lead to poverty, poverty lead to increased crime rates and drug use, and this vicious cycle has in some sense continued to this day.
If one watches a typical Western, one cannot miss the guy with the leather skins and feathers in his head - the American-Indian. He is usually portrayed to be wild, out of control, marauding the nearest gentile town and spreading terror among is denizens. Though there could have been some historical tensions between the two communities, reality couldn't be farther away from this image. Today, American-Indians form a smaller part of the population of the United States than possibly even Indians who have emigrated from Asia. They live in secluded reservations where alchoholism is rife, people are poor and opportunities for education and employment non-existent. It is not entirely clear who marauded whom.
Another incident that comes to my mind is from Indian history. On April 13th 1919, General Reginald Dyer lead a massacre of over a 1000 unarmed Indian civialians over a matter of 10 minutes. This admirable act was performed 'to teach a moral lesson to the Punjab.' After this act, he had to return to the UK, where a 'Sympathy Fund for the Punjab' collected over 26,000 pounds (1919 pounds not 2008 pounts), for his benefit.
Of course, these incidents cannot hold a candle to the biggest hypocrisy of them all. That of Mr Hitler and his friends Mr Goebbels, Mr Eichmann, Mr Goring who incinerated an entire race while accusing them of a litany of crimes.
My friends, beware of racial sterotypes, and when you encounter one, be very clear who is the oppressor and who is the victim :).
