Lol @ thinking MLK would be content or thinking that older black people are content to wait for 'the upward trend'.

I'm guessing you haven't read **** from MLK. Maybe start with:

https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Article...irmingham.html

They are not waiting for an upward trend; they have been in it for years. I don't get your point with this article. I never said MLK would be content. He would certainly recognize the increased opportunities available to all people. He would be very aware of what real oppression is.

Don't you think it's time to stop being bitter? Stop playing the part of a victim?

I don't think they're playing the part of the victim. And I would never tell a group of people that are clearly at a disadvantage hat they should shut up and just wait for things to get better. Especially when the only times they've made meaningful progress is when they didn't listen to people like you.

MLK would certainly say the black person in America is still facing real oppression. You might as well tell MLK that his fight for civil rights was unnecessary because they weren't facing real oppression like their slave ancestors.

MLK knew that everything short of true equality is real oppression.

I suspect that MLK would've told Kaepernick and BLM to stop rocking the boat, stick only to protesting on matters that already have overwhelming public support, and never do anything as disruptive as sit out during a song.

And I base this on nothing.

It seems you are talking about yourself considering you think it's correct for Kap to stand.

I think this is a good spot to just slide this in here. I think about this every time anyone says blacks aren't oppressed in this country. It's only 40 seconds long. You have nothing to lose by watching this real quick.

I think a good example is from Jon Stewart where they can send a nicely dressed black man and a shabbily dressed white guy into a building for a segment and it's the black guy that gets stopped.

That was just an anecdote Stewart shared, not a filmed segment.

Ehhh... I feel like those are the types of examples that make the mongidig's of the world rage more, because they are silly and sophomoric. It's the same lazy logic people use to say racism doesn't exist; probably mongidig himself used it at some point: this one time, this thing happened, therefore...

Then again, I'm biased. I stopped being a fan of Stewart and Colbert after that Rally To Restore Sanity. They don't do some insulting **** like that and then trot out some nebulous anecdote. It's like they're trying not to call out racism

Because it never gets old to me:



And finally, New Rule, if you're going to have a rally where hundreds of thousands of people show up, you might as well go ahead and make it about something. With all due respect to my friends Jon and Stephen, it seems to me that if you truly wanted to come down on the side of restoring sanity and reason, you'd side with the sane and the reasonable, and not try to pretend that the insanity is equally distributed in both parties.

Keith Olbermann is right, when he says he's not the equivalent of Glenn Beck. One reports facts, the other one is very close to playing with his poop.

And the big mistake of modern media has been this notion of balance for balance's sake, that the left is just as violent and cruel as the right, that unions are just as powerful as corporations, that reverse racism is just as damaging as racism. There's a difference between a mad man, and a madman.

Now, getting over 200,000 people to come to a liberal rally is a great achievement, and gave me hope. And what I really loved about it was that it was twice the size of the Glenn Beck crowd on the Mall in August! Although it weighed the same.

But the message of the rally, as I heard it, was that if the media would just stop giving voice to the crazies on both sides, then maybe we could restore sanity. It was all non-partisan, and urged cooperation with the moderates on the other side, forgetting that Obama tried that, and found out there are no moderates on the other side.

When Jon announced his rally, he said that the national conversation is dominated by people on the right who believe Obama's a socialist, and people on the left who believe 9/11 was an inside job. But I can't name any Democratic leaders who think 9/11 was an inside job. But Republican leaders who think Obama's a socialist? All of them! McCain, Boehner, Cantor, Palin, all of them! It's now official Republican dogma, like tax cuts pay for themselves, and gay men just haven't met the right woman.

As another example of both sides using overheated rhetoric, Jon cited the right equating Obama with Hitler, and the left calling Bush a war criminal. Except thinking Obama is like Hitler is utterly unfounded, but thinking Bush is a war criminal? That's the opinion of General Anthony Taguba, who headed the Army's investigation into Abu Ghraib.

You see, Republicans keep staking out a position that is further and further right, and then demand Democrats meet them in the middle, which is now not the middle anymore. That's the reason health care reform is so watered down; it's Bob Dole's old plan from 1994. Same thing with cap-and-trade; it was the first President Bush's plan to deal with carbon emissions. Now the Republican plan for climate change is to claim it's a hoax.

But it's not. I know that because I've lived in L.A. since '83, and there's been a change in the city: I can see it now. All of us who live out here have had that experience. Oh look, there's a mountain there! Government, led by liberal Democrats, passed laws which changed the air I breathe for the better. OK, I'm for them! And not for the party that is, as we speak, plotting to abolish the EPA. And I don't need to pretend that both sides have a point here. And I don't care what left or right commentators say about it; I only care what climate scientists say about it.

Two opposing sides don't necessarily have two compelling arguments. Martin Luther King spoke on that Mall in the capitol, and he didn't say, "Remember folks, those Southern sheriffs with the fire hoses and the German shepherds, they have a point too!" No, he said, "I have a dream, they have a nightmare!" This isn't Team Edward and Team Jacob. Liberals, like the ones on that field, must stand up and be counted, and not pretend that we're as mean or greedy or short-sighted or just plain bat**** as they are. And if that's too polarizing for you, and you still want to reach across the aisle and hold hands and sing with someone on the right, try church!

Heh, that's what I get for grunching; the dumb **** already did it:

He finds out the Brown shooting details are a banana peel and writes off not only BLM but apparently all protest over racial grievances, current and historical, even though black folk getting shot/killed by the police over nothing is a constant thing!

But hey, turns out Mike Brown wasn't literally standing with his hands up saying don't shoot, so chessmate!

I don't expect BLM to kowtow to idiots when picking catchy slogans, but I do expect Stewart to not come with lame anecdotes.

I'm not sure why it matters and I never claimed it was a filmed segment. It's worse as a filmed segment, imo. And affirmative examples (aka showing racism exist) aren't equivalent to negative examples. Because logic and all.

And I don't care that it makes the mongidigs of the world rage more. There are no examples that wouldn't make them rage more because they start from the premise of 'racism doesn't exist and things are so much better for the black person than they were 50 years ago'. If you refuse to make any argument that will enrage the mongidigs of the world - you're part of the problem. Because they've been making the same arguments for hundreds of years.

The point of the anecdote is to show the lazily ignorant but still generally well meaning (aka, the majority of people) that black people still face discrimination every single day. And while lots of the individual examples might seem trivial it would clearly get exhausting over time.

Edit: And to be clear - it wasn't even an anecdote. Stewart was saying it happens all the time when they do these things. He wasn't describing a one-off thing that happened.

5ive, like how do you show the lazily ignorant the problem? What's your solution?

So far it starts with "Don't use anecdotes". Ok... what's next?

anecdotes are hard to beat as an intro. Plus If you get lucky the person who hears them will encounter a similar situation one day and it will chime.

I had forgotten our laws that allowed the death penalty for not holding a job, being a contributor to society, or not being an upstanding citizen.

Thanks for reminding me.

Are things better or worse for blacks since BLM started?

I have no idea. I don't think I've seen data showing things are better or worse, but I'm open to seeing some.

My gut is that people are talking about problems that have long been over looked. So in that sense, it seems better. Going back to MLK - I'd argue he made things worse for a lot of people before they got better. Riding at the back of the bus was probably a heck of a lot better than walking miles every day (I don't expect you to get this reference).

I'm also inclined to say that BLM shouldn't get a whole heck of a lot of the credit either way.

I met Rosa Parks. I was working at a resort at the time. She was there with a fairly large group of people. A van pulled up and her group climbed aboard. Ms Parks was last to get on. I said there is plenty of room in the back ms Parks. My heart sank the second I said that, realizing the unintended symbolism of my statement. Ive met a lot of famous people. This was one of my favorite moments.

Cool story bro!

I love that one of his favorite moments is being an unintentional ******* to Rosa Parks

Good Monday morning NFL fans !!!1!



As the Kaep Kronical unfolds, we've seen college and high school footballers, following the lead of their sister volleyballers, taking the knee this weekend. Students, of course, are in a far different situation than the professional soccer and football players who are also protesting.

Soccer pro M.Rapinoe didn't take a knee before yesterday's match. Instead her Reign team stood and locked arms during the anthem. In the NFL, we had a few Dolphins take the knee. We had a Chef, a few Titans, and a few Patriots, raise their right fist. Notably, the Patriots raised their fists upon completion of the anthem. The Seahawks team, including Jeremy Lane who took a knee last week, as well as the Chefs team, stood and locked arms. Notably a NFL boss, head coach Pete Carroll, joined the Seahawks in protest.

As for the reaction, well so far there really hasn't been anything substantial to speak of. Sure, bitterness is running rampant in the MSM pundit class, among some celebs (like MLBer Jason Verlander's fiance, WTFBBQ), among the usual suspect pols, and of course Donald Trump. Anecdotally, I'd say 75% of the NFL viewing public is anti-Kaepernick. Sure, #boycottNFL got all 'trendy' on Friday. But that anger hasn't transferred from Kaepernick, the second string QB, over to the NFL y/o their sponsors. There is no actual boycott at this time. Amazingly, we haven't had our 'Dixie Chicks' moments.

As I mentioned in my OP, I'm not primarily interested in the vilification of Kaepernick. I'm more interested in this carving out a place for on-the-clock protest in the professional sports work place. This quote from The Wall Street Journal deserves sharing...

Tonight we have a MNF doubleheader: Stealers @Washington 4:10 pdt, followed by the return of the LA Rams @49ers 7:20. The 49ers team features Kaepernick, and Eric Reid, who took the knee last week

Better, and better for all rank-n-file folks. AINIC.

Obviously this guy's in favor of anything anti-American!!!1!

I guess I'm saying "Don't JUST use anecdotes" but if you need to, use a bunch of them. Even better, anecdotes coupled with stats and historical facts are powerful but a single lazy anecdote is bleh.

Like I said, maybe I'm being too harsh as I was using an excuse to vent my biases about Stewart.


All true, but it can backfire as a single anecdote just needs a single negation.


Ehhhh... Maybe just disregard me here. I'm probably being overly critical of Stewart. The Daily Show DID have a lot of good segments that actually exposed stuff the way that anecdote was meant to. I'm just holding Stewart to a much higher standard than the avg joe saying "this one time this racist thing happened".

This is great and all... but everytime you talk/post you can't be expected to do a full thousand page thesis with data and examples showing the entirety of the black experience in America.

The 'anecdote' (and again, its not actually an anecdote because they're saying it happens a lot) really speaks to me on how subtle and pervasive discrimination is. If it doesn't speak to you, that's totally fine.

No, it doesn't. An anecdote about the racism that someone experiences can't be negated by an alternative time they didn't experience racism.

That's not correct. A single anacedote can negate some theory but the only thing that negates an anecdote is demostrating it was made up. The problem with anecdotes is it's common for people to give them more significance they deserve (and that they are often made up or mistaken) but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

JJs example was a good use of an anecdote. A bad use is for example, when people deduce that vacinnes cause autism because they've heard about some autistic children who had vaccinations.

(I'd make the same point about reasoning from first principles btw. It's a very useful thing to do even though it's often given too much significance.)

500 pages then for half the black experience then?

But srsly, look at the context:

I added that in an edit, maybe you missed it.

Look, I respect your intellect a bunch and I don't want to get into a tiff, so you not understanding is probably my fault.

But,

'Anecdote' is a dumb word, it has too many closely related definitions.

And,

It doesn't speak to me because I agree with the premise it's trying to convey and therefore think there are better ways to express the same idea.

I mean, aside from data and stats and a thesis, just from a storytelling perspective, flesh it out more! This wasn't a guy saying something in passing at the water cooler, it's a guy with an international TV platform.

Ok, this was clearly my fault due to poor phrasing. I meant the person on the receiving end of the anecdote experiencing the alternative and extrapolating.

I don't mean what IS TRUE, I mean what an idiot believes.