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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wkmac" data-source="post: 980283" data-attributes="member: 2189">bbsam,Some background on how this came up beyond my usual baited field and trickery.  This past Sunday I was invited to attend a lecture by a behavioral scientist and a Oxford biologist who studied under Professor Dawkins.  Yes, it was a group of freethinkers/atheists and no we didn't make fun of you christians either.  And for BCer Just_another_day, 200 years ago it might have been called an illuminati meeting.  LOL!   The image I posted and the video were examples among many that were shown and discussed, not from it's exclusive political angle but rather how people behave, react and how we as a species abandon logic and rational thought to such events.  We may later individually think it out further but quite often a groupthink psychology takes over and the initial reactions hold sway and become the norm rather than a later consideration becoming so.  For the record, this was the only image that had a political connection as there were many religious and other day to day stuff, much I was surprised to have seen but never thought it all the way out.  But too your point that the poster is racist or did this for racist reasons, and let me say, your point was also raised in the lecture as a point of objection but then we were shown the Allen West video and were asked did we consider West racist?  The words and suggestion were the same and yet as a group we didn't consider West racist.  Why?  As it was the image of West as being a victim of racism because of slavery that we didn't consider West a racist, yet the truth of slavery, all races have been victims of slavery.  Once you understood the fuller impact of slavery in it's broader context, the image does loose a lot of it's implied intent to manipulate assuming a racist manipulation was the point.  West's comments on Fox spurred a rash of these types of PR images so this again would beg, if West's comments were the inspiration of the image, a judgement that the image is racist would mean that West himself is racist.When I said I see a human in the image I was being truthful but then having thought it out to some extent allowed me not to be manipulated by the intended purpose nor was West able to convince me that as you put it, he is Harriet Tubman or Rosa Parks for that matter.  I guess for West's next illusion, he'll convince us he's MLK?  My intent was not to offend anyone but rather to provoke thinking, reasoning and logic.  I view racism as nothing more than thought manipulation for the purpose of ceding power to those who manipulate.  To obtain power, one needs a mass of people behind them to look legit and to some degree having a knowledge.  We've long accepted that a majority means or can equal truth.  I know the implications of that statement in regards to other areas and leave that be as I will but in the case of broader society, how we see each other and how easy it is for wedges to be used between us for the purpose of pitting us against, that is the point.  And for the record, I'm not trying to say or suggest racism isn't real, it is real.  However, over the years I've come to believe that most racism is not about skin color itself but rather cultural fear and the irrational fear that one's culture will be replaced by the other culture.  America's culture is and has been almost from day one a multicultural society molded towards one.  Each race that makes up America has taken bits and pieces of other cultures and so embedded them into their own, they may not even see it anymore. I love rock music so I must love black music but then rock means I love european music too.  I love jazz and jazz is uniquely American and considered of black cultural origins. But then the likes of Monk and Mingus would point to Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as big influences meaning European.  If you ever hear of a New Orleans drummer with the band Galactic whose name is Stanton Moore is giving a drum clinic in your area, go at least for the first 30 minutes even if you are not a drummer.  Stanton gives a history lesson of American music beginning in 1850's New Orleans and how the merging of African rhythms and European march beats blended together to give us so much of the music we have today.  We are vastly more culturally connected than we really know. Our culture is almost so Heinz 57 that being called American on a cultural scale is almost it's own race, just no longer measured by skin color.  Maybe on some level, MLK's dream really has been achieved but we're all to bullheaded to see it.  Loose the bullheadedness and the man in the picture becomes human instead of a black man making the use of such emotional trickery meaningless but more important, it strips away the political charlatans like West from the power they seek!jmoHere's another image and since it only shows white people, is this racist because it doesn't show black folk?[ATTACH]6901[/ATTACH]Fact: These are actual prisoners (note the orange jumpsuits) who as their assigned jobs man call centers for a variety of reasons.  Next time you get a sales call or an opinion survey, the person of the other end may well be a state of federal prisoner.[ATTACH=full]6901[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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