So, I had another version of this post that I deleted, but I kind of wrote it when I was half asleep and I felt like my tone was a bit harsh, so rewriting it. It's no surprise that over the years my relations with the black political community have been strained. Quite frankly, I see it as mostly their own doing, which is why I kind of went for the throat with my original post. I just get frustrated after a while with this stuff, and with the state of discourse in America. This kind of stuff should not be happening. it's stupid that it is, and it's stupid that we have to seriously entertain this stuff.
The source of this specific controversy surrounds the fact that BLM New York recently pushed back against vaccine mandates, claiming that they are racist. The black community has been very slow in getting the vaccine, and as it turns out, a huge reason why is because they simply don't trust white people to give them medicine, due to past horror stories involving that stuff like the Tuskegee syphillis experiments. While I will be the first to admit our prior treatment to African Americans has been harmful, at some point I have to roll my eyes and say "come on man".
Really, I'm just getting to the point I'm losing sympathy for the black community and its issues. My sympathy on these issues is like a rubber band, you can stretch it a little and you can convince me to support your cause, stretch it a little more and maybe I'll still support it. but that elasticity has limits, and eventually you just get too stupid with stuff and the rubber band will either snap or bounce back to its original position. That's kind of where I'm at with black politics these days.
I'm sorry, but this is stupid, and this is where I kind of felt like my tone was harsh in my last post, but I believe sooner or later, the black community needs to get over it and stop making themselves to be a victim on literally everything. I get it, systemic racism exists, and blacks have been horribly mistreated in the past, but it's getting to the point the black political community's existence is based in this narrative of being prejudiced and distrustful toward whites and mainstream institutions, sometimes dangerously so. At some point, it just gets to the point it gets old, and I'm quickly reaching that point.
Look, the Tuskegee experiments happened 50-90 years ago. And this vaccine is readily available to everyone. Millions of people have gotten it, including whites. I've gotten it and can attest to its safety. Worst I got from it was a day feeling like I had the flu, which was really just my immune system fighting the vaccine, which is what it's supposed to do. There's no insidious using blacks as guinea pigs. As a matter of fact when the vaccine was rolling out I remember people were calling that racist because whites were getting it first and how POC should be bumped up to the front of the line instead. Which, just inflamed me as well, since it seems stupid, and honestly, I dont wanna be pushed back in the name of some politically correct BS. I mean, it's just everything revolves around them, and poor them, and we need to drop what we're doing to sympathize with them, and if you don't, you're racist.
I mean give me a break.
It's the same thing with the democratic party politics, and this issue is a huge reason I'm on board with leaving the democratic party. The amount of hostility I've seen people like Sanders, Yang, and their supporters get from the black community is ridiculous. It was said Bernie lost in 2016 because of the black vote. Never mind the fact Bernie had an incredibly progressive platform, and Hillary had a much more questionable record on African American issues like the crime bill. And then Bernie came back in 2020, explicitly tried to reach out to them, and many of them still went Biden. TO be fair black voters aren't a monolith and there are overriding factors like geography and age that played a role in this, but still, I notice that a lot of black voters have a tendency to wrap themselves up in narratives and make everything about them often at the expense of everyone else's issues.
They seem particularly hostile toward social democratic type progressives like Bernie and Yang, claiming social democracy doesn't help them because new dealers in the past screwed them because that coalition was explicitly racist. Once again I'm mistrusted and progress needs to be held back because of 50+ year old grudges.
Look, I'm not defending my ancestors here. And honestly, I'd be a lot more sympathetic on these issues if my rubber band wasnt being stretched to the breaking point. But, I'm really starting to think this victimhood complex is holding the country back. On coronavirus, we should be striving to eradicate the disease, and we shouldn't be entertaining narratives of the mandate being racist. I'm really getting to the point of saying screw your feelings on that issue. Everyone able bodied should have to get the shot, period, end of story. I don't care about white right libertarians and trumpers screaming about muh freedom, nor do I care about whether this is 'racist". No. We have a pandemic, people are dying, get the shot.
And it's the same on democratic party politics. As long as the black community votes against its own economic interests (or alternatively votes specifically for a form of liberal politics that is about empowering themselves at the expense of others or without helping fix systemic issues that impact us all), progress isn't gonna be made. Maybe blacks might make glacially slow incremental progress for themselves, but within a largely unjust right wing neoliberal capitalist regime that screws us all. I want true freedom, and true systemic solutions, and that means universalism. I'm sick of having to entertain the idea of, for example, forgiving black student loans being a sign of progress, but forgiving white ones being racist. Give me a break.
Honestly, if these guys keep dragging their feet on progress, I'm done. I mean in principle, I'll support them 8-9 times out of 10, but if they're gonna act distrustful toward me to the point that they sabotage me and my issues, well, maybe things will end up going the other way too. After all, I'm willing to work with anyone who works with me on my top issues. And that includes white ex Trumpers. Just saying. You wanna avoid the mistakes of the past? Then let the past go. You wanna cause history to repeat itself? Well, don't learn from the past, after all those who don't learn from it are destined to repeat it.
This is why I say that critical race theory is committing seppuku here. It makes sense on some academic level. Are mandates racist? That makes a nice academic discussion in the classroom, but once it hits the real world, it sounds stupid, and can actually be dangerously harmful. After a while, all of this stuff starts sounding like a parody of itself, and it starts quite frankly backfiring on itself, and hurting its own cause. I want to emphasize this, black political activists, you're hurting your own cause. You are turning people off from your brand of politics. You're pushing things too far, causing white support to backfire on you. There's a lot of situations in the recent past that I've been quite sympathetic to the black community on. I agree with the general aim of black lives matter. I believe what happened to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor was messed up. I believe that Colin Kapernick should've been able to keep his job in the NFL while expressing his political views. I'm a principled guy, and I can support a lot of black causes inherently. But then somewhere along the way the stuff goes from principled to stupid. I've seen BLM supporters criticize cops for shooting people who run at them with weapons like knives and guns. And then there's the vaccine mandate being racist. Somewhere along the way this stuff goes too far, causing would be supporters to then backlash on the movement. These movements literally commit seppuku after a while. Because they start out with the best of ideas and intentions but then get so stupid they end up losing all of their credibility and support. It's just the SJW way I guess. And this is why I've soured on SJW style politics over the years. I went from being a rather quiet ally to an open critic. My views haven't really changed that much on the actual issues. I just end up getting tired of doing the socially performative theater of supporting that stuff only to get stabbed in the back again and again for not being pure enough. No. Enough's enough. This is stupid, and I'm calling it like it is.
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