Sometimes when I read this sort of stuff, I have the feeling that we are almost baiting the Apocalypse, that we are hungry for end-times and a climatic battle.
Five years ago I wrote, probably naked, thusly:
There’s a creepy part of the whole Christian side of things, that every “real” Christian honestly believes The Rapture will occur in their lifetime. “Of COURSE the world will end and Jesus will come back while I’m here; why else am I a super-Christian? Why else am I going to church? What’s Neil Diamond doing here?”As well as:
they're even MORE offended to think that the world would come to a final, dramatic end without them. As if they weren't invited to the ultimate party. Chagrined! No "true believer" when asked when the end of the world will come ever says "oh, millions of years from now;" they always say "oh yeah, April!!!!"Which is to say yes, Mr. Coates is correct.
1 comment:
TNC knocks it the fuck outta the park with this:
It's quite worse than this. The white racist siege mentality misreads the basic nature of the African-American experience. What most white people are doing in this situation is playing a game of "If I were you, I would..." and you can insert anything there from "kill you" to "take your job" to "seduce your wife and daughter." That's what I did to you, so why wouldn't you do the same to me, right?
This is the logic of "Barack Obama is going to discriminate against white people." It holds that white and black are two sides of the same coin, two interests and if ones on top it must, necessarily, subjugate the other.
What the logic fails to understand is that black people do not define themselves as simply the opposite of white. They don't see this as Lions vs. Bears. They are, in their minds, Americans. Their fight is almost regardless of white people as an entity. The point isn't to do the reverse of segregation. It's to get what is due to me as an American.
It's very hard to understand this because so much of our conversation conflates American-ness with whiteness. (9/11 made that a lot harder.) Even in the black community you find that conflation. But if you look at the history you find a consistent trend of African-Americans enamored with the mythology of America, and trying to get their piece of it.What happens to white people in the process of that fight is beside the point.
It's not that they're particularly compassionate. They just have different, widely misunderstood, interests.
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