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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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April 02, 2004
An HL Mencken prediction on race
Call me a glutton for punishment, but the inability of people to have open, rational, civil discussions of racial issues makes me nuts.
Consider this, then, an experiment in civility. How long and how near can we stay to having a calm and useful civil discourse on the following quote from HL Mencken, circa 1925?
What, ladies and gentlemen, in hell or out of it, are we to do with the Ethiop? Who shall answer the thunderous demands of the emerging coon? For emerging he is, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and there will come a morn, believe me or not, when those with ears to hear and hides to feel will discover that he is to be boohed and put off no longer - that he has at last got the power to exact a square answer, and that the days of his docile service as minstrel, torch and goat are done. When that morn dawns, I pray upon both knees, I shall be safe in the Alps, and not below the Potomac River, hurriedly disguised with burnt cork and trying to get out on the high gear.
-HL Mencken from The Smart Set
Consider this as a prediction from the 1920s as compared to how things have worked out over the last 80 years. Consider that we absolutely had Jim Crow as not just bad social attitude, but as the actual law of the land as recently as 50 years ago.
We've done amazing well, really, to be where we are. We've had pretty huge wholesale changes (mostly for the positive) in not just law but - much harder - personal beliefs and social expectations about racial attitudes in just a couple of generations.
When you hear the annoying braying of those who Most Alway Complain that everything and everyone is a white racist plot, put it in a bit of context. Less than a century ago, it would seem reasonable to a man of Mencken's erudition that there would have to be some literal major race war before the black man would begin to get proper treatment.
Even though institutional discrimination against blacks in America is near entirely gone, and social pressures at all levels favor positive attitudes, we still hear the reverberations of the centuries of sickness. When I sometimes hear hysterical black rantings that Don't Involve Valid Arguments, I consider that us now listening to people battling with the ghosts of Christmas past beats the slaughter that our grandparents or great grandparents could have faced in this reconciliation process.
Overall, seems like we're doing pretty good- even if we've got a slight case of the bends.
You will, of course, respond as you wish, but the management requests that we skip all variants of "xxx is a 'racist.'" It may feel good to sling that label- much as it feels good to masturbate. Perhaps both these forms of self-gratification are best indulged privately, however. Either form of self-seduction in this thread will be considered Bad Form.
At this point you're really not saying anything useful that way. Boring. That dead horse has been beat to death worse than Mel Gibson's version of Jesus. The point of interest will be whether someone's words represent truth, not whether you can Pin the Racist Tail on the Honkie. Thanks.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
posted by Al at 4/02/2004 01:39:00 AM
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