I worked with guys in the 90s who would have flat out racist conversations in the break room

I work with people today who have flat out racist conversations in the break room -- and I'm a fucking school bus driver in a fucking very liberal school district (Harris signs outnumbered trump signs by about 30:1 last year). They just use the word "native" instead of a worse n-word, although I had one coworker who used the worse n-word repeatedly. Another guy uses the g-word whenever somebody mentions that they like Chinese food. I enjoy watching his head melt when I say I'm going to get Korean or Ethiopian food. I almost got him to try Liberian food until he found out where Liberia is lol.

On the plus side, these are all older people in their 60s or 70s. The kids themselves are far more egalitarian. I also grew up in the '80s and although us kids were not really overtly racist, you still had kids segregating themselves racially as far as social groupings were concerned. Today I see lots of groups of mixed kids.

I'd generally agree, but say that for folks who still feel a need to get their racism bone exercised they still do. racism is a lot quieter now. on an uptick, but still orders of magnitude better than the 80s and 90s, which had to have been orders of magnitude better than the 60s and 70s which I didn't experience. But there weren't folks getting hosed down by the fire department just for the gall of attending integrated schools in my decades growing up. We had apartheid bullshit.

Honestly having grown up in the 80s I feel that racism is tolerated a lot less today.

I don't know about that. I think we were only starting to make progress, and the push back from the racists is a big part of where Trump came from.

If we just go back to when all the cars were lead fueled boats and one hard working man* could support a whole household by working a fairly paid job…then it’ll all be great again

*terms conditional upon skin color and ethnicity of surname of said man. Anyone black queer or other need not apply

GREAT!

Yea, I don't like the view point that so many people seem to hold that Trump and just fascism in general popped up out of nowhere. Like a lot of this was been a long time in the making and Trump is just one of the ways it's come out.

Or just public school in the south.

Redlining.

Did they though? 1860s was slavery, and there was a huge war. Bloodiest war still to this day in American history. With the end result being that slavery ended.

Now, you can say racism didn't end after that, and you'd be right. Racism never ended to this day. But on the scale of atrocities, racism, then slavery, then mass extermination camps.

So, if the extermination camps are farther down the line than slavery, and America DID NOT get away with slavery, then your logic does not hold up.

I'm not defending any of what happened. I'm just saying if Hitler looked at an already failed policy, then he couldn't possibly use it as justification with what he did.

A far better line of logic is saying he used Americas killing of Native Americans as the blueprint for his camps. Which he absolutely did, and which America absolutely did get away with. Still to this day Native American population numbers just might be the lowest of all the races, simply because of how very very close to total extermination they came 200 years ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs

At least 18 separate gangs in the sheriffs alone. Just list the ones who aren’t and you’ll be done wayyyy faster

There is basically no way to determine your nationality from this comment and I hate that.

I hate being defined by the country I was born in

At least that was the narrative I recall.from back in that day. Was fox News a thing already?

The heavy right-wing stuff was cordoned off in AM Talk radio. Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Michael Medved being some of the more popular shows. But I believe both future VP Mike Pence and Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick got in on the act in their early years.

So what? Maybe he was, and that excuses that police Beat the stuffing out of him?

The systematic beating was both the cause of and result of Rodney King's police chase. King feared the wrath of the LAPD/LASD and the police believed repeatedly beating suspects would make them less likely to complicate arrests by fleeing in the future.

Sort of a vicious cycle of violence used to justify the next round of violence.

Oh yeah, "criminal" is conservative dehumanization 101 and has been for a long time. That and the whole race/class thing. Combine the two and the horrors you will overlook are endless!

i mean my area of study was elsewhere, but i focused the financial back and forth between the crown and the colonies back in college (so you know, undergrad level of understanding 20 years ago) and taxation seems to be more than just a slogan ("taxation without representation"). it was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back where the locus of control of their supposedly democratic form of government was removed from them, and they were still expected to bear (what the colonies somewhat unreasonably, somewhat reasonably felt were) undue burdens necessary to maintain an (ceaselessly warring and expanding) empire.

To me, woke isn't "educated". It's more in line with "aware".

Give you an example. I'm white. At the time of Rodnry King I would have been about 9 years old. So, my whole outlook of the world is based on the adults around me, and the tv.

Rodney King was a one of those pivoting points for America. My family was shocked by what they saw. Police? Abusing their authority? That's unheard of!

And at the time, most white people had ZERO idea that was a regular occurance. The video tape is what changed that. The woman who filmed it shined the first light onto injustice that had been going on for centuries.

At the time I went to an all white school. I think there was 1 black kid. He was 2 grades above me, so I never really talked to him.

The next year, when the Rodney King trial was going on, I had changed schools. I was in a mostly black school now. And it was a TOTAL shift from what I had known.

I started learning that I saw Rodney King as four corrupt cops who did an outragious, totally out of character set of actions. I saw it as an isolated incident in a rare time of cops being violent against someone.

What I was then told is story after story from students that never made the news. Stories of their own lives. Stories of our local cops doing similar things. Maybe not as harsh as 4 cops beating one man, but we all know today the types of stories I heard in 3rd grade.

Point is, yes, I was educated back then on the harsh realities that black families go through, and have gone through, for generations.

But the difference between being educated, and being aware, is that I told my sister everything I heard back then.

Two years ago in my apartment building my upstairs neighbor was being absurdly loud.

I was on the phone with my sister at the time. She suggested I call the cops on them. I said "No. I want them to be quiet. I don't want them dead."

And this is where educated vs aware comes in. My sister had been educated just as I was in the 90s what had been happening. I was aware NOT to call the cops. My sister thought I was being difficult and dramatic.

Now, I don't KNOW the cops would have shot my neighbors. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they would have written a fine and left. But the fact that it's a very real possibility is still something I'm very aware of. While my sister had been educated, she isn't aware on a day to day basis that her life is different than others purely because of her background. It's not something that she's thinking about, even if she's been taught.

Thats educated vs aware.

People said that in the open.They never liked the follow up which was how was that relevant to his murder when his arrest was for a fake $20.