Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by Soppa Saia People » Sun Nov 24, 2019 4:13 am

JulieYBM wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 1:25 am The issue that has made me ever so clearly angry has nothing to really do with whether things are 'better' or not. Yeah, technically, my chances of being left to bleed out after a random asshole cut off my penis and balls in a shopping mall bathroom is a little lower now than it would have been in 1953...but that's besides the point. That sweep-aside of the present is entirely inappropriate to do in the first place. It's...not going to help any of us. 'Brightsiding' this stuff doesn't help me not get constantly harassed by the public, my name constantly ridiculed as "not being my name" by customers or getting called slurs. It doesn't stop me from having to dive back into the closet do I don't get murdered by people if I choose to visit my friends who still live in conservative states. I'm still having to 'strategically transition' and that's pretty d*ng hard on my mental health.
it's just so unhelpful too say "well yeah but things are better now though", like yeah, i suppose so, but that doesn't really mean anything when things are still so shit for queer people, PoC, and women. not to mention that stuff easily gets co-opted by shit heads who use it to gaslight people who wanna use that fact in order to suppress movements and the like. it's just not helpful to anyone, it doesn't change anything and it won't make lgbtq+ people feel better. sure, i won't get beaten to death by someone because they knew i was trans, but i'm still gonna be getting the crap beaten out of me because someone knew i was trans. which is actually why i had to cut my hair too a more masculine style that i hate a few days ago because that just happened, not great.
I have borderline personality disorder, if my posts ever come off as aggressive or word vomit-y to you, please let me know.

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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by ABED » Sun Nov 24, 2019 6:23 am

All valid points, but what's the alternative - cynicism or fatalism? I'm really trying to understand.
The biggest truths aren't original. The truth is ketchup. It's Jim Belushi. Its job isn't to blow our minds. It's to be within reach.
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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by JulieYBM » Sun Nov 24, 2019 11:13 am

Soppa Saia People wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 4:13 am
JulieYBM wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 1:25 am The issue that has made me ever so clearly angry has nothing to really do with whether things are 'better' or not. Yeah, technically, my chances of being left to bleed out after a random asshole cut off my penis and balls in a shopping mall bathroom is a little lower now than it would have been in 1953...but that's besides the point. That sweep-aside of the present is entirely inappropriate to do in the first place. It's...not going to help any of us. 'Brightsiding' this stuff doesn't help me not get constantly harassed by the public, my name constantly ridiculed as "not being my name" by customers or getting called slurs. It doesn't stop me from having to dive back into the closet do I don't get murdered by people if I choose to visit my friends who still live in conservative states. I'm still having to 'strategically transition' and that's pretty d*ng hard on my mental health.
it's just so unhelpful too say "well yeah but things are better now though", like yeah, i suppose so, but that doesn't really mean anything when things are still so shit for queer people, PoC, and women. not to mention that stuff easily gets co-opted by shit heads who use it to gaslight people who wanna use that fact in order to suppress movements and the like. it's just not helpful to anyone, it doesn't change anything and it won't make lgbtq+ people feel better. sure, i won't get beaten to death by someone because they knew i was trans, but i'm still gonna be getting the crap beaten out of me because someone knew i was trans. which is actually why i had to cut my hair too a more masculine style that i hate a few days ago because that just happened, not great.
Goodness, I am so sorry. Oh, gosh. :(
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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by XanatosVanBadass » Sun Nov 24, 2019 11:17 am

ABED wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 6:23 am All valid points, but what's the alternative - cynicism or fatalism? I'm really trying to understand.
No, though I see little hope for America’s future personally. It’s more about never being complacent. As was said, American conservatives use tactics like this to make progressives drop their guard. Deliberately I might add.

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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by ABED » Sun Nov 24, 2019 11:31 am

XanatosVanBadass wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 11:17 am
ABED wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 6:23 am All valid points, but what's the alternative - cynicism or fatalism? I'm really trying to understand.
No, though I see little hope for America’s future personally. It’s more about never being complacent. As was said, American conservatives use tactics like this to make progressives drop their guard. Deliberately I might add.
The only reason to not give up is because you think something will get better somehow. I get what you are saying about some using those tactics, but that's less about the words and more about the intent.
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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by Skar » Sun Nov 24, 2019 11:39 am

ABED wrote: Sat Nov 23, 2019 9:55 pmFor a while, I was bullied mercilessly for no reason other than I was small and shy. I don't like talking about it here because this isn't a therapist couch and it's been nearly 20 years, but I downed a bottle of pills when I was younger because I was deeply depressed and teased horribly in high school, but thankfully I lived to see things get better.
I can relate because I also suffered from severe depression. I'm 29 now and have had suicidal thoughts since I was in middle school. I sometimes wake up and wonder what's the point of living since we're going to die and be forgotten. Humanity could go extinct tomorrow and the Earth would continue spinning like we never existed. The only thing that keeps me going is the hope for a better future. The world is still a depressing place and countless people suffer everyday. Since I'm not religious, hoping things get better is all I have to look forward to and not end it. I personally don't care to live every long but I just try to find meaning in the years I have left.

I feel this is another sign of how the world is progressing slowly. Years ago, being depressed and having suicidal thoughts would likely be considered an unnatural disease. If you did get any support, it would be meaningless advice like "other people are worse off than you" or "go pray for help". Now it's treated as a mental illness and you can get therapy, medication, and people willing to sympathize with the struggle. I can't afford to see a doctor or get medication but I've found people who supported me through it.

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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by JulieYBM » Sun Nov 24, 2019 11:47 am

I still get my parents utterly flabbergasted when I tell them I have mental illnesses like depression, PTSD and social anxiety. They don't understand that I'm a woman nor do they understand that I'm disabled or have difficulties speaking to people and strangers. It's terrible to live through and comes with constant gaslighting. I can't even muster the strength to talk back when I'm being emotionally abused any more. All I can do is shut down is say or feel nothing. What's the point of defending yourself when that just turns the emotional abuse up to 200%?
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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by ABED » Sun Nov 24, 2019 11:55 am

The point is to live long enough to attempt to find happiness because what's the alternative. I sincerely hope things turn around for you.
The biggest truths aren't original. The truth is ketchup. It's Jim Belushi. Its job isn't to blow our minds. It's to be within reach.
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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by Kunzait_83 » Sun Nov 24, 2019 8:09 pm

ABED wrote: Sat Nov 23, 2019 10:59 pmBecause unless I'm given an unfair advantage (the unearned) I'm not actually being given something like it's a favor, I'm simply not being shackled. My issue with the term is that it's a package deal. It's lumping in people getting the unearned with those that aren't having something unjustly held against them as though they are fundamentally similar. It takes the eye off the real injustice being done - the bigotry. It also makes it seem like I'm better off because someone else was discriminated against. No one benefits. Also, instead of making people more understanding and sensitive to the real issues, it comes off as a term designed to induce guilt.
While I myself have expressed plenty of misgivings of my own about the "Privilege" part of the term "White Privilege" (not in its definition, which is plenty valid and unarguably real, but rather in the optics/rhetorical effectiveness of it; it demonstrably and clearly puts the people who most need to understand it instantly on the defensive), I'm going to attempt as best I can to use an exceedingly personal aspect of my own life to try and help better explain what the term ACTUALLY is talking about, that its a very real thing, and that the purpose of it is NOT to induce "guilt" (that "guilt" is the very first go-to emotion a lot of white people tend to associate with the term is rather psychologically telling in itself, but that's a whole other topic), but rather to describe something that is a genuinely critical and dysfunctional part of American/Western society still that is indicative of so many byproducts of all the ugliness in our racial history having not really dissipated yet.

I've only alluded to or mentioned this briefly in other posts of mine, but for most of my own childhood and adolescence, I grew up in an exceedingly poor and violent slum. This was back in the mid 80s through the late 90s, so the crack epidemic of that era was in full swing, and both the neighborhood I grew up in as well as the vast overwhelming majority of my family and friends were hit the most hard by it. Virtually EVERYONE that I knew growing up as a kid were addicts. My own father was a junkie, as was a good number of my cousins (many of whom I was close to at the time), most of my friends at the time, etc. Hell, even a few of the teachers I had and THEIR family members were junkies back then. That's how pervasive this shit was at the time in areas like this.

The violence in the area also centered around crack: gangs and dealers went to war with one another constantly, and most of my childhood was as much marked by shootings and murders as it was by drug addiction. Even us kids would often get caught in the crossfire a lot, and my elementary school at the time came with a body count: not every kid I went to school with made it out alive. Some became addicts themselves at a stupidly young age (one girl I knew died of an overdose circa 7th grade, when we were all of 13). Others had older siblings that were in gangs and ended up on the wrong side of a drive by.

Junkies used to wander into the schoolyard and leave used syringes on the ground so frequently that we had a whole procedure for how to deal with them that I STILL have memorized to this day. By the time I was 8 years old, I'd attended a LOT of funerals (a decent number of them for kids I went to school with), and the topic amongst me and my friends at the time regarding which one of us could be next and how our families might react to one of us being killed was hardly uncommon.

My first grade teacher was killed by a motorcycle gang member right smack during the middle of our school year with her. And at the high school close by, kids would often bring guns into school, and both other students and teachers alike were frequently killed. This was more than a decade/decade and a half before Columbine as well, which will be relevant in a moment. As recently as around ten years ago, my hometown was still among the FBI's top ten most dangerous cities in America.

In terms of racial makeup, the neighborhood of course was predominantly and overwhelmingly black, Puerto Rican, and Dominican. I was part of one of two subsets of white minorities in the area: an Italian community and a Polish community (I was in the former). By the time my family had gotten us the hell out of there, I was around 14 years old, and had been diagnosed with PTSD of a level of severity that, according to most of the best psychologists at Yale that I'd seen, was mostly common in war veterans.

When we moved out, we moved into a VERY white middle class suburb, which is where I attended high school and is the town where I still live to this day. All of this I bring up to illustrate an important point regarding "White Privilege".

Back when I was a kid, street fights were a VERY common thing I had to deal with. I'd get into physical street fights with all kinds of people (usually WAY older than me) for all kinds of fucked up reasons. Sometimes it was due to racial tensions. As a kid, I'd sometimes express how I didn't understand why in some cases my whiteness was held against me: from my perspective at the time, I was stuck in the same horrible situation as any black or brown person in the area. I knew many of the same people, I'd cried for and mourned many of the same friends who were senselessly killed, my own family was stuck in the same economic death spiral as any other black family who was also there. Racial resentment to me, within that context, made EXCEEDINGLY little sense. "We're all in the same shit together" was my thought at the time.

It wasn't until my family managed to move us out of there and I spent more time living in a middle class and predominantly white suburb that it REALLY clicked, and I understood what today we would call "white privilege". When I moved to my new town, the way I was treated there compared to the (MUCH fewer in number) black and latino kids in the area could not have been more night and day different. As overwhelmingly safer as my then-new hometown was, the racial issues were FAR more severe, as the predominantly white town often regarded the small populace of black and latino people with an INSANE level of suspicion and mistrust.

Police racism was a FAR bigger issue there than it even was in my original (and vastly more violent) hometown. At the time I was going to high school (the very late 90s and early-most 2000s) there was a clique of kids there who were part of an actual skinhead, Swaztika-wearing, Heil-Hitler saluting Neo Nazi gang. I used to see them often in this local convenience store down the street from my house that was run by an Indian/Hindu family, who were EXCEEDINGLY nice people. The Nazi kids would frequently be there harassing them, throwing rocks through the store's windows, yelling and chanting things like "Gandhi-fuckers go home!"

There was also a very famous incident at our actual high school building (circa 2000/2001 or so) where we had like this long 4 day weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday) off for I can't even remember what reason now. When all the buses, teachers, and faculty returned the following Tuesday, the ENTIRE (and I mean the E-N-T-I-R-E) school building, from one end to the other, was tagged up with Nazi graffiti. Swastikas, Iron Crosses, all manner of racial slurs (of a kind you'd have to go into the bottom-most depths of a place like 8chan to see thrown around so casually), and they were EVERYWHERE.

And what's worse, they not only covered the high school building with them, they also went and covered the neighboring preschool right down the street with them too. So parents and their toddlers arrived at the building that day to be greeted with slogans about burning and gassing all the Jews, blacks, and gays and whatnot (called by VASTLY more vile, disgusting names obviously) staring them in the face.

During that same time period was when I met and started hanging out with a lot of my closest, lifelong friends. One of whom is someone who has occasionally posted here on Kanz in the past (I won't out who he is out of respect), and who is half black himself. He used to take NO END of shit for his race back then, both from the aforementioned Nazi clique, as well as even the local police in the area.

And herein comes the "white privilege" part of all this and why I go into all these details. Most of our "high school clique", myself obviously included, were white. We would go out walking around town all together as a group VERY frequently, almost every other day and every weekend. Most of us were goth/punk-looking kids, with all kinds of chains, spikes, studs, piercings black clothes, trenchcoats, etc. covering us from head to toe.

The ONLY times we were EVER bothered or harassed by the cops? When the aforementioned half-black friend was with us. Whenever HE happened to be walking with us, those were the ONLY times we would EVER be stopped by a patrol car, and get questioned and patted down. Often in a very hostile and aggressive manner. Whenever we'd ask what the problem was, the response we'd usually get was "We looked like a street gang."

Bear in mind: we looked and dressed like gothy punks back then ALL THE TIME. And would NEVER get stopped by the cops EVER, unless the aforementioned half black friend was with us. And the kicker? He himself was one of the ONLY ones among us who DIDN'T dress in a punk-like fashion. He was ALWAYS dressed in a perfectly clean-cut, average manner. And of course, he'd be the one who'd get the brunt of the questioning and attention whenever we did get stopped. Anytime he was NOT with us? Fucking nothing. Ever.

Its gets worse. The aforementioned Nazi clique of kids in our school would also constantly try and start trouble with him, usually trying to pick a physical fight with him. They'd throw things at him, they'd get up in his face trying to goad him into throwing the first punch. They would never even refer to him by name: they would usually refer to him as "the half-breed". They would also however try picking fights and starting trouble with the rest of our (again, largely white) group, myself included. Their reason? We were, and I quote, "traitors to our race" for hanging out and being friends with him.

Again: this was back in 1999/2000. In a blue northern/coastal state.

Speaking of the timeframe: Columbine happened in 1999, right near the end of my Freshman year. That incident had a TREMENDOUS impact on me and left me seething with anger. Obviously I felt horrible for the kids who were murdered and their families. But in a broader sense beyond that, I was LIVID at the time with how the wider mainstream media had treated the incident. Columbine, even to this day, is STILL regarded my most people in the mainstream as "the first real serious school shooting". It was the school shooting that really first brought the problem of school shootings into the mainstream discourse.

This angered me because I had seen and been witness to SO MANY other school shootings where I used to live since more than a decade+ prior to Columbine. And what's more, I was well aware of plenty of OTHER school shootings in OTHER poor & black neighborhoods that were all the way the hell on the other side of the country, so I knew VERY well even as a small child that it wasn't JUST my city that was somehow "unique" in that regard: it was a HUGE thing LONG before Columbine ever happened.

The difference of course was obvious: Columbine happened in a upper-middle class and overwhelmingly white town. All those other gobs and gobs of school shootings, they were in not just very poor, but largely black/brown cities. THOSE "didn't count". School shootings ONLY became a REAL and SERIOUS problem in the eyes of the media and the mainstream of this country when it touched the middle class white neighborhoods.

ONLY THEN did we, as a broader society in America, suddenly feel compelled to push the panic button on school shootings and treat it as a national crisis. Before that? All those decades before when SCORES of black and Latino kids (children even) were getting the back of their heads blown off in schools in poor, poverty stricken areas all across the country since all the way back in the 1970s and 1980s? Including kids that I knew and was friends with growing up? "Eh, sucks to be them" was effectively the mainstream media's response. Or rather, it was ALWAYS racialized whenever they came up in the news back then: "The problem with crime in black neighborhoods" and so on. When it happened in a white, upper-middle class town though? "NATIONAL CRISIS, OH MY GOD WHAT'S HAPPENING TO OUR KIDS?!"

As much as such glaringly massive things like that had an impact on me and how I viewed race relations in this country, it wasn't even so much THOSE incidents that left the biggest mark on me as it was the little things, the smaller details in how differently I was perceived once I moved and changed towns.

In my old neighborhood, for all the problems and horrors and violence that it contained, I was NEVER generally treated much differently by the cops, by other white kids, or what have you compared to most of the brown kids. In my then-new/current town though, I can't possibly count the number of times some asshole white guy would tell a ridiculously stupid and shitty racial joke, and look to me directly in the eyes to laugh along with them and regard me like "C'mon man, you know what I'm talking about. You know how THEY are, right?" Or how often black/Latino folks that I'd met during and post-high school would be regarded VERY differently from me whenever we'd hang out together. In even the most minor ways.

Going into a store, even though I was the one who often dressed in torn denim, chains, skulls, and black leather, the store owners wouldn't be eyeballing ME, but rather the dark-skinned friend (who usually looked perfectly normal) accompanying me. I'd be spoken to with great politeness and courtesy, whereas they would be spoken to quickly and harshly and with incredible suspicion (and in a few cases had even threatened to call the police on them if they didn't "buy something and leave" quickly enough).

Or all the times white dudes my age at the time (teens and 20s) would recount to me INCREDIBLY petty, frivolous "suburb kid" problems as if they were the most tremendous burdens imaginable (such as how being laughed at once by a girl they had a crush on or whatever, as if it was somehow the most traumatizing, existential horror imaginable that scarred them for life more than anything else), and just instinctively expect me to be able to "relate" to them and the experience, because the built-in assumption was that I had the same exact kind of comfortable, sheltered childhood and upbringing as them.

Or when black and Latino kids that I knew in my latter/suburban town would be treated and regarded (in both major and subtle ways) as if THEY were the "dangerous ghetto kids", when oftentimes they lived in the same middle class suburb their entire lives as the person treating them like they were an NWA member, and I was in fact the "ghetto kid", which almost NO ONE would suspect from me at a glance, and instead would treat me as if I was more "one of them".

Why? Because I'm white, and thus when I go out into the world, no matter WHAT I dress like or HOW I act, I'm passing. Its the goddamn stupid-ass, utterly meaningless SKIN COLOR that people are noticing first and foremost and paying the most attention to and judging me based off of. In this case, judging my white-ass FAVORABLY as opposed to whichever people with me who might happen to have darker skin color.

And moreover, there was the fact that my family even WAS able to make it out of our old town AT ALL in the first place. Most of my childhood, we were incredibly poor and thus couldn't afford to live anywhere else. It was only when my mom was able to get a very good promotion at her job that she was able to make enough money to afford a house in a better area and get us the hell out of there. Again though, my family is white/Italian/Greek. Had my mom been a black woman? Its VERY statistically possible (even perhaps likely) that she WOULDN'T have gotten that same promotion and we'd STILL be there today. Who knows if I'd even still be alive right now to type my bullshit on this dumb forum. (This is also, incidentally, why things like Affirmative Action were/are important and aren't in fact "reverse racism" as meatheads often like to frame it).

In fact, a GREAT number of the kids I grew up with are indeed STILL living in that other town. Many/most of them are black/Latino. A few of them have even died in the years in between.

Even the way my old hometown is carved up is like a distillation of all the racial and economic dysfunction we still have in this country. ON the upper end of the town is the downtown area, where both city hall, the business district, and the college community are located. That area of the city is FAR more economically upscale and MUCH more relatively safe and clean. Whereas the lower end of the city is almost ENTIRELY made up of crack houses and filthy, scuzzy apartments and housing projects (like the one I lived in as a kid), with far more drugs, gang activity, and violent crime.

These two COMPLETELY DISPARATE sections of the city are separated literally by A FEW BLOCKS, and they're like Yin and Yang mirror extremes of one another. Some of the biggest politicians in the country can often be found in the downtown business area, and its practically a stone's throw away from one of the worst, most disgusting slum areas in the whole state. And while the downtown business area is still fairly ethnically diverse overall, NONE of the politicians, doctors, professors, etc who often go to do business and work there can EVER be found going even remotely NEAR the lower end of the city where I grew up. Never. It DOES NOT happen. The two ends of the city have an invisible barrier between them that no one talks about or acknowledges outwardly, but that EVERYONE who lives there is well aware of and knows about.

My point in all of this is: I've walked my whole life with one foot in BOTH of these worlds. Half my life was spent living in squalor and crime-ridden horror, and the other half in relative economic safety and comfort. And even within that first half, I could SEE with my own two eyes how VASTLY different the other side of the pond was and was treated.

Economics play a VAST chunk of the role in all this first and foremost: lets not lose sight of that, obviously. But the people (broadly speaking here, not aimed at anyone specifically) who think that race ISN'T also a factor in these problems, and a significant factor at that... you're simply living in denial. You're living in a fantasyland delusion to make yourselves feel better and more at ease about the ugly reality that exists in MANY parts of the country still.

And sadly, there are a LOT of people in this country (most, though not all of them, white) who live DEEP in this state of denial about these things. In the current state we're in, are things BETTER than what we had before? Of course they are. Obviously things are overall generally better, and NO ONE denies that. But "better" isn't the same thing as "problem solved". And for people who are STILL living in the thick of it (like I was for most of my life) these problems NOT being solved yet mean ALL the difference in the world between living and dying. Literally living and dying, not figuratively or hyperbolically.

For the people who AREN'T living in the thick of these problems, who are fortunate enough to be at a safe distance far away from it... repeating ad nauseam "Yeah but things ARE better" is NOT fucking helpful, nor is it in the least bit comforting to those who are still seeing their loved ones murdered in the streets. We KNOW things have "improved" but that ISN'T the point.

The point is to get us the rest of the way across the "finish line" (so to speak) so that NO ONE'S life is ruined or is treated disproportionately differently anymore, either over how much money they have or what their skin color/race happens to be or whatnot. And while these problems not being "gone" yet might not mean as much if you're lucky to be far enough away from them to not be touched by their fallout, it means EVERYTHING and more to those who aren't so lucky. To the countless moms who've held their child dying in their arms from senseless police gunfire, from drug overdose, from gang activity, from lack of access to basic healthcare and decent housing, and so on.

I was damn near ALMOST one of those kids myself. SEVERAL times growing up. And a TON of kids I knew and grew up with weren't NEARLY as lucky as me (nor as white) and they're in the ground in a box today as a result.

THAT is what "white privilege" is. It doesn't mean that you're life is perfect or rosy if your white, nor does it mean that white people can't have horrible lives. What it means is for all the problems a white person can have, there is EXCESS AMOUNTS MORE different sets of problems that we WON'T ever have to deal with by sheer nature and virtue of our skin color and how we're assumed and judged by it.

You can be a well off middle class black person in a suit and tie going to pick up their kid from school near a bank in a nice part of town, and still have this happen to you because of your race. Likewise, you can have a whole history in your life of violence and fighting from growing up in drug gang territory, and yet be 100% assumed my society to be completely innocuous and harmless if you're as lily-white as I am.

People who either DON'T make these assumptions about race (or who DO but try to bury it deep down within them in denial) often assume that MOST people are just as unassuming about race as they are, because THEY don't see it happen (and of course if you happen to be white, you often WON'T see it happen as much), because THEY don't make those assumptions (or if they do, then once again bury it in deep denial), and because people tend to project their personal biases and experiences out onto others, regardless of statistical and factual reality. And indeed also because in some ways things HAVE improved overall across the generations, which makes the denial that much more readily easy to accept.

But racial bigotry on a wide, wide scale DOES still happen, and in quite a great abundance, regardless of whether you've personally been exposed to it or not, and regardless of whether or not you personally believe it still happens. Its still out there, its still a serious problem, and its still hurting people and destroying countless lives, even today. And of course, it plays a fundamental role (alongside economics) in how grotesquely horrible our lowest classes of people are still treated by the broader swath of society.

To this final point here:

ABED wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 11:55 amThe point is to live long enough to attempt to find happiness because what's the alternative. I sincerely hope things turn around for you.
I posted this article already a page or two back (that expressly deals with this question) but I think people largely glossed over it: so I'm gonna repost a portion of it here, with the most significant points in it bolded by me.

Mychal Denzel Smith wrote:As president, Barack Obama helped to popularize Martin Luther King, Jr.’s quote, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Obama so loved the quote that he had it woven into a rug in the Oval Office. It became a favorite of op-ed writers and well-meaning liberals, who used it to remind their audiences of the long road ahead for those committed to progressive politics. Often, Obama used it to temper the hope his presidency inspired, to remind those who had placed their faith in his message of change that it would not be one singular moment, such as the election of the first black president, that would usher in a new and just society.

The dawn of the age of President Donald Trump has restored to that quote some of the meaning lost in Obama’s repeated use. We say it to ourselves now because we need to believe, even as all visible signs of progress are eroded, that the world we seek lies waiting for us, just on the other side of this hellscape. It is not going to show up tomorrow, but knowing that it will show up someday should help fortify us for the fight ahead.

This use of the quotation, though, carries the risk of magical thinking. After all, if the arc of the moral universe will inevitably bend toward justice, then there is no reason for us to work toward that justice, as it’s preordained. If it is only a matter of cosmic influence, if there is no human role, then we are off the hook. This isn’t how King meant it, as evidenced by the work to which he dedicated his own life.

His use of the quote is best understood by considering his source material. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” is King’s clever paraphrasing of a portion of a sermon delivered in 1853 by the abolitionist minister Theodore Parker. Born in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1810, Parker studied at Harvard Divinity School and eventually became an influential transcendentalist and minister in the Unitarian church. In that sermon, Parker said: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.”

King’s single sentence is a more tightly wound rhetorical punch, easily deployed for immediate inspiration, but it carries the unintended effect of suggesting that justice is inevitable, so that no matter what we do now, the arc of the moral universe will care for us later. Parker’s sermon, however, forces us into a more active role. He starts by admitting that he does not “understand the moral universe,” which King’s more declarative statement elides. He is less sure of that universe’s contents and of where it may lead, since the “arc is a long one” and his eye “reaches but little ways.” Unable to “calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight” he is left to “divine it by conscience.” This could still be read as somewhat passive.

Parker is not reaching out to bend the arc himself; rather, he is envisioning what it must look like through his own seemingly enlightened conscience. As an abolitionist and Christian, of course he is sure the arc bends toward justice, or else his work and faith must both be called into question. But his uncertainty about the moral universe is what makes his strong faith a necessity. For Parker, there is no guarantee, that he sees clearly, of the moral universe doing as he wishes. It is only through his own conscience, and thereby his own actions, that justice will be achieved.

King’s quote leaves little room for such uncertainty. The arc will bend toward justice; he knows it and wants for us to know it, too. But the longer a quote is divorced from its context, the more easily it is manipulated to unintentional ends. And there have been efforts to ensure this does not happen. In a 2016 interview with CBS, former Attorney General Eric Holder cautioned that “the arc bends toward justice, but it only bends toward justice because people pull it towards justice. It doesn’t happen on its own.”
In other words: no matter how hopeless things seem, we ALL have to keep pushing forward and fighting for what's right. Us simply resigning ourselves to inaction or passivity in the thinking that "things will somehow find a way to work themselves out, because they always have before" is a guaranteed way to help ensure that things DON'T end up working out for the better. Because when things worked out for us and improved in the past, it wasn't natural or automatic: we fought and struggled our way there. Against not just the adversity of the bad actors in all this, but also against apathy and indifference.

And in ANY long-running fight or struggle, yes its certainly important on some level to acknowledge and recognize how far we've come and how much has been accomplished. But to get TOO lax into that thinking when the work HASN'T yet been completed, when millions of people are STILL suffering (as they are now) and losing their lives needlessly... that kind of sentiment, when repeated too often or over-relied upon, allows for a lackadaisical attitude to take root.

"Why bother struggling for better? Things will work out and improve, since they generally have before." Ignoring the fact that things have ONLY improved before because people (like MLK) didn't just sit idly by and accept "good enough". They still pushed ahead and fought for more and for better, not satisfied until that improvement applied for EVERYONE, everywhere.

"Things are better now than before" only carries so much weight only so far, especially when we're talking about all the myriad of people out there who HAVEN'T been helped yet and who HAVEN'T seen the material gains of these improvements impact or touch their lives yet.

Yes we've come far: but we're not done yet, and there's still a LOT more work and improvement to be done. And there are still a LOT of people out there who are still fighting for their lives and are on some level depending on the rest of us to not sit on our laurels and just accept things as "good enough as they are" and to join them in still fighting for better, so that NO ONE is left out.

The point is: you DON'T give up, no matter HOW hopeless things seem. You KEEP fighting and pushing ahead. Because a better, more fair and just life for all matters more than almost anything else, and as far as anyone can tell for certain, this is the ONLY life we get. So it falls upon us to make it count for something.
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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by ABED » Sun Nov 24, 2019 8:28 pm

Did anywhere in any of my postings did I even remotely imply bigotry is solved or doesn't exist or the world is inherently just or that there isn't a long way to go? Lord knows I know that. My area of focus is on economics, so while I don't know the particular struggles of LGBT+ people, I understand the feeling overwhelmed and like we're going over a waterfall while everyone seems like they are paddling towards the waterfall. The US seems all too happy to embrace some form of statism and the one thing keeping me from curl up in a ball and die is looking at the long term. Even if it's in my lifetime, humanity has been through some truly horrific prolonged periods but we've also come out of them. It takes generations, but it does happen.

Thank you, I naively didn't think someone would use words of encouragement to try and lull people into passivity, but that wasn't what I was doing.
The point is: you DON'T give up, no matter HOW hopeless things seem. You KEEP fighting and pushing ahead. Because a better, more fair and just life for all matters more than almost anything else, and as far as anyone can tell for certain, this is the ONLY life we get. So it falls upon us to make it count for something.
Maybe I didn't do a good job of saying it, although I'm at a loss to think of anything I wrote that would imply otherwise, THIS sums up what I was trying to get at perfectly. I am an atheist so the promise of an afterlife does nothing for me. We only have this life and I have to believe there's a better tomorrow. So please, please understand that if I am giving some form of encouragement, that I am not doing it cynically.

As to your point about privilege not being designed to induce guilt, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. I've seen and read too damn much from the left to believe that's not the case. Like any package deal, there are valid parts to the concept of privilege, but I've seen people drop that term at the drop of a damn hat not to get people to understand where their blind spots are, and that their experiences aren't everyone else's, but to silence them.
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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by JulieYBM » Sun Nov 24, 2019 8:50 pm

I got p*ll*d o*er by a c*p while driving through Ar*z*na to hang out with DemonRin and I was scared to death of the c*p hurting me. Luckily I got through without any trouble but I froze up like hell when he asked to check my car to make sure I wasn't smuggling marijuana. Luckily he didn't ask about the bras and medicines I had in my car.

I can't imagine how terrified a black woman would have felt...
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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by Polyphase Avatron » Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:13 pm

I don't think anyone here meant to say or imply anything along the lines of 'everything is better now, so you have nothing to complain about'.
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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by Ryuji-Otogi » Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:34 pm

White privilege is a myth. Carry on.

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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by jjgp1112 » Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:44 pm

Ryuji-Otogi wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:34 pm White privilege is a myth. Carry on.
My man, how are you gonna look at just a sliver of Kunzait's post and then post such a nonsensical, dismissive response? Because his post accurately describes white privilege form a guy who's been on both sides of the coin.

As a black guy I can say pretty damn clearly it exists. Hell, I go to an ad school. It's 90% privileged white liberal types who recognize their own privilege and try to do better.
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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by MyVisionity » Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:48 pm

ABED wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 8:28 pm As to your point about privilege not being designed to induce guilt, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. I've seen and read too damn much from the left to believe that's not the case. Like any package deal, there are valid parts to the concept of privilege, but I've seen people drop that term at the drop of a damn hat not to get people to understand where their blind spots are, and that their experiences aren't everyone else's, but to silence them.
I'd be interested to know who these people are that you refer to as trying to silence people. Academics? Scientists? Politicians? Commentators?

Or are you suggesting that the very origins of the concept of social privilege are about inducing guilt within people? That the term itself was created for such a purpose?
jjgp1112 wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:44 pm
Ryuji-Otogi wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:34 pm White privilege is a myth. Carry on.
My man, how are you gonna look at just a sliver of Kunzait's post and then post such a nonsensical, dismissive response? Because his post accurately describes white privilege form a guy who's been on both sides of the coin.

As a black guy I can say pretty damn clearly it exists. Hell, I go to an ad school. It's 90% privileged white liberal types who recognize their own privilege and try to do better.
I wouldn't even have taken the bait right there, to be honest.

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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by ABED » Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:59 pm

MyVisionity wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:48 pm Or are you suggesting that the very origins of the concept of social privilege are about inducing guilt within people? That the term itself was created for such a purpose?
That's not its primary purpose but it's inherent in the way its used.
MyVisionity wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:48 pmI'd be interested to know who these people are that you refer to as trying to silence people. Academics? Scientists? Politicians? Commentators?
Yes, no, not that I can recall, yes, also far more "debates" on social media than I care to admit. I even once saw it used that way at a debate about education reform between one of my old college professors and a leftist professor. Sorry I can't recall the specifics of what was said, it's been 7.5 years since that debate.
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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by Polyphase Avatron » Sun Nov 24, 2019 10:10 pm

Ryuji-Otogi wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:34 pm White privilege is a myth. Carry on.
How would you define 'white privilege', in your own words?
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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by JulieYBM » Sun Nov 24, 2019 10:38 pm

You can have white privilege, not feel guilt about it and also not be an asshole. Heck, you can have those former two attributes and be an actually decent human being an ally to minorities.

Ryuji-Otogi has nothing of substance to add to the discussion. He is specifically trying to bait people and waste their time. Why? Because he hates you. Like a bad comedian he thinks he is funny when he punches down, down upon the minorities he hates so much.
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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by Jord » Mon Nov 25, 2019 1:58 am

JulieYBM wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 10:38 pm You can have white privilege, not feel guilt about it and also not be an asshole. Heck, you can have those former two attributes and be an actually decent human being an ally to minorities.

Ryuji-Otogi has nothing of substance to add to the discussion. He is specifically trying to bait people and waste their time. Why? Because he hates you. Like a bad comedian he thinks he is funny when he punches down, down upon the minorities he hates so much.
Wow, talk about poison.
Please don't ruin this thread with your negative assumptions, bashing other users. If Ryuji-Otogi experiences his life in a different way, we should respect it and allow him to express it.You could have a civil discussion with him about his viewpoint.
Instead you label him. Labeling people for having a different mindset other than yours is a very dangerous thing. That is what actually creates and fuels hate but maybe that's a lesson you still need to learn in life.

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Re: Toei should promoto Piccolo more as a LGBTQQIP2SAA character

Post by jjgp1112 » Mon Nov 25, 2019 3:02 am

Jord wrote: Mon Nov 25, 2019 1:58 am
JulieYBM wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 10:38 pm You can have white privilege, not feel guilt about it and also not be an asshole. Heck, you can have those former two attributes and be an actually decent human being an ally to minorities.

Ryuji-Otogi has nothing of substance to add to the discussion. He is specifically trying to bait people and waste their time. Why? Because he hates you. Like a bad comedian he thinks he is funny when he punches down, down upon the minorities he hates so much.
Wow, talk about poison.
Please don't ruin this thread with your negative assumptions, bashing other users. If Ryuji-Otogi experiences his life in a different way, we should respect it and allow him to express it.You could have a civil discussion with him about his viewpoint.
Instead you label him. Labeling people for having a different mindset other than yours is a very dangerous thing. That is what actually creates and fuels hate but maybe that's a lesson you still need to learn in life.
Ladies & gentlemen, if the OP's purpose for this thread weren't any more apparent...
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