Bill Cosby says Zimmerman-Martin Case is about Gun Ownership, not Racism

[Luke34]

I agree that there really are racist people. I think you would have to be foolish to say otherwise. However, I don't think racism is behind practically everything like some people would like to have us believe. "Racism" being at the root of many things is a convenient answer for some people. The fact that it's not always the truth, however, is, well, not conducive to some people's personal and political agendas.

I don't know of anyone who thinks that it's ALWAYS racism. That would be crazy. But a lot of people seem to take some sort of tack like "Well, he doesn't actually hate black people in his regular life, guess it's not a race thing then!" Race issues are way more subtle than that.

[aftertheflood]

People who use the phrase "playing the race card" a lot seem to believe that race is not a thing and that no one is ever influenced by anyone else's race whenever they do anything.

Also I'm pretty sure that the "'playing the race card' card" gets played at least as often as the actual race card (in the true sense of the term - i.e. a non-racial conflict being racialized illegitimately) does.

Not necessarilly true. It is like the proverb of the boy crying wolf. It is highly probable that any time something adverse happens to a black man it will find the cry of racism as part of its construct. An example would be the college kid who yelled out his window "shut up you water buffaloe" at a bellowing drunk and got kicked out of school because the drunk happened to be a black female of unpleasantly plump dimensions! I would suggest that what happen to anyone who accuses another of racism is that they should a near certain defeat in civil court if they can not prove the accused to be racist beyond reasonable doubt.

[dan]

"Correctly"? I don't remember anyone claiming the officer was actually correct. The choice was between "an honest mistake" and "a racist mistake" (after all, Prof. Gates was in his own house) (and also, it was Henry Louis Gates, who is, um, quite well-known in the literary/academic world, and not just "the President's friend"...).

So, if I recall correctly, when an officer warns you to stop yelling at ten o'clock at night or he will arrest you for disturbing the peace, it's appropriate to continue yelling?

I don't think so.

[Warrior4God]

I don't know of anyone who thinks that it's ALWAYS racism. That would be crazy. But a lot of people seem to take some sort of tack like "Well, he doesn't actually hate black people in his regular life, guess it's not a race thing then!" Race issues are way more subtle than that.

Well, when I hear of any negative situation that involves a person that is Caucasian and another that is not Caucasian, and that happens all the time in the real world, 95% of the time the first thing out of the non-white person's mouth is, "It happened because I'm" (insert race here)... So, granted, it may not happen ALWAYS, but it sure happens a WHOLE LOT.

[NHL Fever]

People who use the phrase "playing the race card" a lot seem to believe that race is not a thing and that no one is ever influenced by anyone else's race whenever they do anything.

Also I'm pretty sure that the "'playing the race card' card" gets played at least as often as the actual race card (in the true sense of the term - i.e. a non-racial conflict being racialized illegitimately) does.

Can you think of a single example of this? I can't. There's no way to play the 'he's playing the race card' card in court for example, which is the most common card playing area. Playing the race card is institutionalized by laws that focus on race, so there's no avoiding it. Like saying you are insane - it's a standard and completely normalized approach to finding a way out of dealing with your own actions.

The race card works because its kept alive by groups that focus on playing it. They ultimately only hurt the race they are trying to help though. When you focus on race with affirmative action, special privileges or other particular reservations or discrepancies...you only accomplish to ensure that division remains strong and in the public eye. The best way to get rid of this card, is to actually treat everybody the same.

No groups in history have been advanced by policies favoring them or complaining about them. In contrast, many groups who were actively persecuted against at one time do quite well now despite, or perhaps because of, no official movement constantly crying about them. A few example would be early immigrant groups like Mennonites, Italians, Ukrainians who were all strongly disliked by their Anglo/Irish peers, and of course the Jews who are perhaps the most persecuted but most successful group of all time. More recent example include Asian immigrants who tend to come over with nothing but tend to do just fine.

The constant and unending railing about how everything from car dents to electrical outages to spilling mustard on your shirt is because of racism, has done incredible harm to the black community in the US and the native community in Canada. Different value systems have different results. The best proven way to overcome this if you look over history, is to let circumstances help forge the value system instead of trying to change reality to accommodate the value system.