General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: DU ... Just So You Know, It's NOT Our Imagination ... [View all]Moral Compass
(1,520 posts)I'm a fringe character here, but I've been seeing things on DU that I thought would fit right in on some of the right wing sites. That has reduced my desire to become a part what is obviously a very active, well established community.
When I first discovered this site because of a link on another site there were some opinions that could get you banned immediately. That was back in the days of "Top Ten Conservative Idiots"--one of my personal favorites. And the Hate Mailbag (I think it was called that)--which was composed of rambling, misspelled screeds from those who were banned.
Not sure when it changed, but during the Trayvon Martin/Zimmerman time there seemed to be a lot of people who seemed utterly blind to salient facts of the case. In fact, the postings I encountered seemed as fact blind as the people of color that thought OJ Simpson was clearly innocent. There was a definite racial bias that seemed to be emerging.
The same people that thought Zimmerman clearly innocent came down squarely on the side of what I consider our out-of-control intelligence apparatus when Edward Snowden outed the NSA.
Right wing authoritarians on DU? Felt like someone was pissing in my punch.
Then came the Brown murder by Darren Wilson. Then there were many, many postings pointing out that the killing was justified by the irrelevant fact that Brown had just non-violently stolen some cigars from a convenience store and had THC in his system and we all just didn't understand that Wilson just had to empty his gun into Brown.
None of this sounded right to me.
At the least, this has diluted the pleasure I've always taken in lurking about DU.
I don't know what's going on. I'm not truly involved. But I'm about as white as you can get and some of these posters sound racist and right wing (funny how that goes together) to me. So, 1StrongBlackMan, I don't think it is your imagination. The sad truth is we are not and never have been in a post-racial society.
Racism is an ugly, ugly thing. I'm not sure what the answer is. I guess we just have to try to keep the conversation going and hope that understanding will blossom. But you're not imagining things any more than people of color are imagining that there is a white advantage. It's there.
I've had a lot of encounters with the police over the years and not once did I have one even reach for his gun--including the time I exited my car and had a nose-to-nose screaming match with a cop that mistakenly pulled me over for speeding. I didn't get a ticket. Funny how that works.
Keep pointing out the truth and let us strive to be brothers even though it's not that easy.