The Privilege to Ignore the Wrongs I Inherit and Perpetuate

 

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CITATION
Rasheed, Muhammad. "The Privilege to Ignore the Wrongs I Inherit and Perpetuate." Cartoon. The Official Website of Cartoonist M. Rasheed 26 Nov 2020. Pen & ink w/Adobe Photoshop color.

Doug TenNapel - Obama said: “There’s a lot of evangelical Hispanics who, the fact that Trump says racist things about Mexicans, or puts undocumented workers in cages, they think that’s less important than the fact that he supports their views on gay marriage or abortion." 
It never occurs to these condescending judges that gay marriage and abortion might actually be more important than the made up claims of racism. They end up saying the racist things they claim to be against, "What can Mexicans know that elites don't?"
Muhammad Rasheed - Doug wrote: "the made up claims of racism"
What are those made up claims?
Doug TenNapel - That it’s so widespread that whites need to claim privilege.
Muhammad Rasheed - There's quite a bit of very intense history that has happened in the last 150 yrs since slavery was abolished. Most of it has been extremely unpleasant for my people, even up into the present day. Between our two groups, one of us has been privileged enough not to think about it at all if you don't want to. Not too long ago, you actually dismissively referred to it as "The Negro Problem." For me, I don't have the option to simply not think about it, since the artificial impoverished conditions of my group are directly caused by it. 
What we refer to as "racism" has been highly politicized into rhetoric that the Democratic Party uses as a tool to empower certain groups while continuing to neglect mine. I'm actually pretty resentful about it, as I watch this Biden-Harris duo take the White House seat, after both had storied careers as violently anti-Black, while pretending otherwise, and their marketing goons smooth over what they've done in the gullible minds of the populace. This ham-fisted and clumsy performance has caused the Republican side to cynically dismiss all of it as a joke, but where does that leave me? On one side I'm neglected and exploited by those who are supposed to be my "allies," while on the otherside I'm dismissed by my traditional rivals and foes.
From where I sit, I cannot imagine a circumstance in which there would ever be an organically, naturally produced motivation for us to ever realistically address the very real problem of racism -- and its economic oppression root cause -- so that we as a country can ever finally put it behind us.
Doug TenNapel - "my people" have never done anything to "your people". There is no black or white, we are people first, perhaps even men second and our physical characteristics of skin color say nothing of either of our identities. I can't be blamed for someone who has two arms like me who enslaved and brutalized someone who looked like you 100 years ago. And you can't be blamed for someone who has two arms like you who kicked a man to death last week who has two arms like me.
If you think freedom is to carry the victimhood of 150 years, that's your privilege. Mine is to not carry the victimhood of the last 150 years of people who were not me. I want you to be happy, Muhammad. I want you to be free.
Muhammad Rasheed - Doug wrote: "'my people' have never done anything to 'your people.'"
In the United States of America, the descendants of the light-skinned ethnic tribes of Europe conspired across class and ideological lines to agree to usurp government & industry to hoard the benefits of wealth & rule just for their own political identity group. This is the nature of "systemic racism" -- it functions as a criminal overclass of colluding racketeer cartels -- who refuse to share wealth, land and rule with the Black American former slave class.
Doug wrote: "There is no black or white"
The aforementioned dominant political class are the ones who invented America's concept of the "black and white" designations, and put them on the books as law. Those laws have led to the economic imbalance we deal with today, as white people control 90% of the national household wealth, while mine control 2.6% of it (in illiquid Baby Boomer property & pensions FYI). For a representative of the group who cooked up the "black & white" scam to proclaim that there is no black & white WHILE the country still maintains the economic imbalances caused by systemic racism, it doesn't come across the way you may think it does.
Doug wrote: "we are people first, perhaps even men second and our physical characteristics of skin color say nothing of either of our identities."
The economic status of our two political groups bear the marks & scars of the nature of our identities, and tell the tale of our country's history.
Doug wrote: "I can't be blamed for someone who has two arms like me who enslaved and brutalized someone who looked like you 100 years ago."
I would never blame you for that specific crime, but you would be to blame if you stood here and denied that the current systemic racism forged in the fires of chattel slavery and the 150 subsequent yrs of domestic terror and forced jim crow segregation shouldn't be addressed on the national level with the great economic wrongs done to the black American Descendants of Slavery finally fixed.
Doug wrote: "And you can't be blamed for someone who has two arms like you who kicked a man to death last week who has two arms like me."
This is a false equivalency fallacy, since the problems we are discussing with racism are on the group level, not on the individual level of desparate criminal decisions among the lower economic classes.
Doug wrote: "If you think freedom is to carry the victimhood of 150 years, that's your privilege."
This is a strawman effigy fallacy, since I never said that "freedom" was just to walk around impotently complaining to random cartoonists I find on social media, or whatever this line was intended to mean. lol Freedom is to enjoy the full benefits of United States of America citizenry as a fully enfranchised group without being sabotaged, exploited & plundered by the dominant political identity group so they can maintain their high caste position at my expense.
Doug wrote: "Mine is to not carry the victimhood of the last 150 years of people who were not me."
You don't have to carry anything and that's not the point of this discussion from my point of view. The point is a candid & courageous discussion so that we both see what is actually real, pass the screen of partisan ideological bias and the justification illusions conjured up by long-standing family creeds. The freedom to see what is true.
Doug wrote: "I want you to be happy, Muhammad. I want you to be free."
My personal happiness is directly related to that of my greater ethnic group. Right now my ever-complicit US government, currently controlled by members of the Über-selfish criminal overclass and their minions, owes me Reparatory Justice for these 400 yrs of accrued discriminatory disadvantage inflicted upon my people. Once a comprehensive Reparations program is put in place, designed to close the racial wealth gap with just as robust an effort as what whites received in the 20th century to create the middle class, then I will be well on my way towards the happiness you wish for me.
Doug TenNapel - M. Rasheed wrote: "In the United States of America, the descendants of the light-skinned ethnic tribes of Europe conspired" 
you're a deranged racist. My skin color tells you nothings about me.
Muhammad Rasheed - ???
Why are you calling me a "deranged racist?" I am not the one who invented the concept of white people. The descendants of the Euro-ethnic tribes invented that concept and imposed it upon my people literally to reap the massive profits that define Western society. Why are you acting like it's my fault just for coldly defining it with the ideological fluff stripped away?
Your skin color DOESN'T tell me about you, but your kneejerk reaction to the stark facts of our ugly history tells me about you aplenty.
Doug TenNapel - It’s not my history. You demand I accept it based on skin color, which is racist. If I demanded payment because your grandpa raped a white woman I’d expect you to think I was nuts too. You wear Muhammad’s name and Christians in Egypt were beheaded by Muslims. How much of an apology and groveling do you owe me? It’s an immoral way of thinking, and you freely choose it.
Muhammad Rasheed - Doug wrote: "it’s not my history."
It's American history, which means it's OUR history. It's the history of race relations in our country.
Doug wrote: "You demand I accept it based on skin color"
I demand you accept it based on it being the truth of race relations in America.
Doug wrote: "which is racist."
Racist is choosing to perpetuate a system that exploits and plunders a group because you are afraid of losing status.
Doug wrote: "If I demanded payment because your grandpa raped a white woman I’d expect you to think I was nuts too."
That's an ironic false equivalency fallacy considering all of the Black murders, all of the communities and even whole towns burned to the ground because some white woman lied about a rape.
Doug wrote: "You wear Muhammad’s name and Christians in Egypt were beheaded by Muslims. How much of an apology and groveling do you owe me?"
This is yet another false equivalency because you are comparing what went on in an alien sovereign nation that has nothng at all to do with us to what is going on in our own country as we speak. Please stay on topic.
Doug wrote: "It’s an immoral way of thinking, and you freely choose it."
Paying out Reparatory Justice to make up for wrongs isn't "immoral." It is in fact just and right, and the reason we have insurance payouts and courts and all kinds of other methods a civilization uses to make up for societal imbalances when one party has wronged another.
Doug TenNapel - There is no principle to race theory. If a philosophy is “whatever brings victimhood to my skin color is true and whatever brings victimhood to your’s is false, and the opposite regarding privilege” it’s demonstrably false postmodern relativism. Further, I’ll be happy, as will other blacks who live on principle, but you’ll be incredibly unhappy, like all racist whites and blacks if you don’t transcend that philosophy. Come out of them and be ye different.
Muhammad Rasheed - The problem is that a very real economic imbalance was created when the dominant political identity chose as a group to exploit and plunder the wealth of my ethnic group, preventing us from building wealth over generations. Your political identity group now hoards 90% of the national household wealth while the system that exploits me to elevate you remains intact.
I would love nothing more but to finally be free of the evils of "race theory" -- to come out and be different -- as it has been forcefully imposed on my people by the group who invented domestic terror as we know it for that very purpose, and in order for me to get out from under it I need the artificially widened racial wealth gap closed. I need my Reparations (paid out by Congress) and the economic inclusion promised me by the 1866 Civil Rights Act.
Doug TenNapel - If you want the benefits of my actions, you should follow my actions. If you don’t like your results, you should do what successful blacks and whites have always done to succeed, and it was never to wallow in victimhood. That’s a first class ticket to the bottom. But if what you’re doing is working, then good on you. I feel sorry for people who put their happiness in the hands of race baiters. You should watch the documentary “Uncle Tom” by Elder. He goes into the anger-programming of white liberals to keep blacks crippled and enslaved to government.
Muhammad Rasheed - Doug wrote: "if you want the benefits of my actions, you should follow my actions."
If you are referring to the centuries old actions of your political identity group, then I would never, since these actions are evil. If you are actually talking about your actions that led to your personal career, then those are irrelevant.
Doug wrote: "If you don’t like your results, you should do what successful blacks and whites have always done to succeed"
Politics is about Group Economic Uplift, not about individual career choices. Among every group you can find some individuals more successful than others -- there were wealthy freedmen during the very height of the chattel slave era after-all -- but how the group is doing as a whole is a matter of successfully working the political system as a bloc. For example:
(Lenoir, 1935-4-22) Public works projects to build dams lifted the entire region out of poverty. But since they were managed by local governments on a segregated "Jim Crow" basis, Black Americans were systematically excluded from getting the benefits.
Doug TenNapel - No, I mean my actions of getting up at 5am and drawing every day for 50 years. It’s not weird how many people black or white succeed with a work ethic. Also, i can sit on the couch and take on any 209 year old political identity you want and I’d still be a failure. Your victimhood will forever block you from the simplest achievements in life. But like I said, that’s your choice. I do hope the govt walks by and drops a truckload of reparations on your lap. Then after you’ve squandered it (because you refuse to practice the discipline that earns it) you’ll have to get onto my plan. So do it now, or do it later. Or blame my skin color for every problem that your skin color experiences. If I had half my talent but your skin color and slightly left leaning politics, I’d have twice the opportunities in the arts and academia, and I’d probably get into Harvard too. I don’t care, because I’m not a victim. My job is to get up at 5am and draw.
Muhammad Rasheed - Doug wrote: "No, I mean my actions of..."
Again, politics is about group economic uplift, not about individual career choices. The example I provided above demonstrates both how it can be used to improve the economic conditions of an entire community, as well as providing an example of how my own people are traditionally locked out of access to the nation's wealth-building ownership by the Über-selfish colluding cartels of white men who refuse to share wealth, land & rule with my group.
Doug TenNapel - The Barbary pirates were Muslims who held more white Euro slaves than USA whites owned blacks. If I stub my toe and demand payment from you, I doubt if you’ll take me calling you a selfish colluding cartel will gain much ground. Work hard and have fun doing it. You’ll be happier, wealthier and have the confidence of a job well done. You’ve put the hope of your success in the hands of other people and that’s a big mistake.
Muhammad Rasheed - Doug wrote: "the Barbary pirates were"
This is the same false equivalency fallacy you used with the Egypt thing, which again has nothing at all to do with race relations and the linked economic imbalance in our United States of America.
Doug wrote: "If I stub my toe and demand payment from you"
Demanding payment from me for your own self-inflicted clumsiness represents an attempt of false equvaleny even clumsier than what is described within the analogy skit itself.
Doug wrote: "Work hard and have fun doing it."
I dismiss your 'bootstrapperism' comments out of hand since they are completely irrelevant to any political discussion, as the latter is entirely focused on Group Economic Uplift which you seem to have a problem understanding only when it comes to the artificially impoverished conditions of the American Descendants of Slavery. Curious.
But I will indeed work hard to continue to spread awareness of the issue with the short-term goal of my group's political unification so that we can successfully pressure our government into paying out the long overdue Reparatory Justice we are owed.
Doug TenNapel - Good luck.
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MEDIUM : Scanned pen & ink cartoon drawing w/Adobe Photoshop color.

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