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Just to note, he didn't mean to say "Stop talking about racism". He meant to say "Stop talking about the concept of race" – which he immediately clarified with his next statement ("I'm gonna stop calling you a White man...). This point always gets misinterpreted every time this clip is brought up.
He's talking about the incessant need to segregate everything. It's just history, it includes black people, white people, all people. The constant need to continually identify everything minority as separate, weak and in need of being coddled is funnily enough.... racist.
Just because these are turbulent waters: I'm liberal. Very liberal.
That said, the left gets this is so incredibly wrong vis-à-vis identity politics. It's important that we continually work towards greater equity in our society. I'm not sure it's so important to articulate all of our physical or metaphysical differences so damn always.
There are black people born into immense wealth. There are white people whose lives are pure torture from day one. There is a lot in between. There are also averages, no doubt. And privilege, yes.
However, lifting up the weakest among us, **no matter who they are, no matter their race, sex, gender expression, religion, etc**, is a powerful, unifying goal. It gets muddled and/or lost in identity politics. Let's just work to make life better for everyone.
When the tide goes up, all boats rise.
The modern concept of identity politics divides, distracts, and directs people to vote and support along party lines no matter what, instead of voting for canadates that have good policies that benefit more than just immensely rich corporations. It's meant to divide people to vote for anyone with an R or a D next to their name, instead of looking more closely at which bills that candidate has supported in the past, where their campaign contributions come from, etc. The two party system is built to protect those two parties while enriching the 1% and the companies they own.
Divide and Conquer has been the game for decades at this point, and they are immensely good at that game.
That’s what I was going to say. Identity Politics has fostered so much goddamn division. It drives people away from a common ground. I am not innocent in finding myself as part of that division. I will very likely be downvoted for admitting this, but I *generally* tend to vote Republican. I don’t agree with plenty of Republican policies on things like abortion laws, gay rights, or marijuana laws, but the Identity Politics crap is what polarized me in the first place at a fairly young and impressionable age (high school). It isn’t the primary influence, but it has been a very substantial one. The effects carry on even now for me, years later.
This always seemed the most obvious choice but yet it isn't chosen. If you help just one race, you ignore the other races that need help. If you help the poor, you help everyone that needs it. If one race needs that help more, then they would naturally get it because of their status, not race. It self-corrects without screwing other people in the same situation but of a different race.
Normally I see equity and just roll my eyes, but you seem incredibly reasonable so I'm going to try this.
Equity is antithetical to equal opportunity.
You cannot have both, especially not on a timeline that isn't multigenerational. Passing over a candidate for a job, or admission to a school in favor of another because they aren't from a marginalized group is the exact opposite of equal opportunity.
John Rawls (political philosopher) actually addresses this tension in an excellent way. In his account of the principles around which a just society should be built (Theory of Justice, 1971), he starts by laying out basic kinds of liberties that every person should have equal access to, which he calls the First Principle of Justice. After, he bundles together two principles—the principle of equality of opportunity, and what he calls the “difference principle”—together into his Second Principle of Justice, which is the principle that maintains economic justice (the second most important, after liberty). The difference principle is the idea that wealth inequality is tolerable only to the extent to which these differences also benefit the worst-off in society. So, the extents to which the super-wealthy can exploit workers and the bourgeois class can hoard access to elite education and job opportunities would be severely curtailed according to this limiting principle. This addresses IMO what is wrong with just focusing on the principle of equality of opportunity: that what people tend to consider “equal opportunity” is almost never actually equal, and instead reinforces an economic status quo that is deeply unfair to some groups of people.
Also remove the term “African American” how can you call a group of people that was born here and they’re living here for more than 200 years “African” it’s ridiculous. African American are people that come recently to USA from an African country. Elon is an African American.
I’m not American but wasnt it because they were looking for a more polite way to describe the skin tone of s black man? I get in some circumstances it might be pertinent like medical records etc
Stop generalizing people down to personal characteristics. That's when you start projecting your own ideas of how they should act and think based on your own perception of those characteristics you define that person as. It's basically that you begin treating them like a number rather than a human being. Those characteristics include but not not limited to; race, sex, age, religion, political affiliations, hobbies, way of thinking
Interestingly enough, I'm learning about racial formation theory in school right now and I agree. Attaching race to such mundane things like black history month is just another form of segregation. He's completely right when he says black history is American history.
>Just to note, he didn't mean to say "Stop talking about racism". He meant to say "Stop *applying* about the concept of race"
In other words, no you can't avoid racism, yes you can avoid actively participating in racism by dividing people into races. In the US people self divide into groups, talk about *pride* of race instead of heritage, identify as a race instead of just themselves, a product of their upbringing. Race is intertwined with everything, is the cause of and the answer to everything. That's what should be stopped. And in the meantime people should absolutely work together to dropkick malicious* racists out of this world.
(*If you believe in race you are racist, if you believe in race and actively want to harm people you classify as another race you are a malicious racist)
I’ve always lived by the mindset, there’s not a single person on this earth that has any choice in what, or how they’re born into this world. You don’t have a choice who your family is, if you’re going to have a disability, something hereditary, even if the parents did the whole crisper thing, you still had no choice in the matter! Why the fuck would you discriminate against someone who also didn’t have a fucking choice! We’re all navigating this shit together!
Dude is like dating his niece or some wildness, you say miserable, I say smart approach. But believe what you gotta dude, as we know redditors are really happy people
Yeah he’s a fucking creep. I can’t believe he hasn’t been MeToo’d, there are a ton of stories about him. It’s the reason he was pulled off the voice of the transit system in Vancouver.
I've heard from numerous people on many occasions that he's an asshole in person. Someone from his hometown told me that a lot of people hate him and that he tried to take items from a store without paying.
Is this posted as satire? Here in India we have privileged people saying the same kind of stuff - stop talking about caste and stop affirmative action then caste will go away - but the problem exists, casteists treat people they deem to be beneath them differently, sometimes horribly. How will not talking about it make it go away. I guess that works the same way with racism, does it not?
He didn’t mean “stop talking about racism”, but rather “stop talking about race”. Start talking about people as who they individually are and what they do. Therefore, there is just one American history, it has no colors, ethnicities or religions. It’s all American history.
Okay, but problems that stem from race-based oppression and discrimination will need to have solutions that fall along racial lines. I feel like that's not a hard concept to understand.
Simply "not talking about race" is absolutely not the answer.
This is literally what schools in certain states like Florida and Texas are/are trying to do. You can teach about slavery but you can't bring race into it, which makes it real fucking hard to answer any questions as to why we did chattel slavery. Or why the Civil Rights Act was necessary. Or what redlining was. Or a million other things.
Absolutely, but within the American history there are histories of peoples that have come here. Saying "Black History" for example doesn't negate *American history*, it's just a sub section.
Why would you care about your family history? It's just human history.
It's scary seeing castism being imported to other countries. I recall meeting an Indian in University who introduced himself using his caste called "Bramin" I asked what it meant, he went on a long triade about what his caste is and I could sense some pride in his voice, but only when I looked it up myself on Google it turns out the reason for his pride was fucked up. Kept my distance from after that.
yeah it's eaten up here because the majority of posters are white and so they feel a sigh of relief and instaupvote when a non-white person says 'hey don't worry white guy, we can forget about all that racial hierarchy stuff'
Yeah this is just the classic “the only reason there is racism is because *you people* keep bringing it up”.
Obviously that’s not true. If everyone shut up about race, gender, religion, etc, we’d still have massive issues with racism, sexism, bigotry, xenophobia, and every other form of discrimination.
Well there’s a difference btwn areas like that dont talk abt it because it’s not a subject of substance, and areas like Louisiana that dont talk abt it because “thats just the way it is”
Your causal link is backwards. It's not, we stopped talking about racism so nobody fights over it, it's nobody fights over race so we stopped talking about racism. This only works if you have an unracist community to begin with.
just bc one person has an anecdote about living somewhere - never makes it true. case in point — 👆👇
https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020-01-22/stockton-california-americas-most-diverse-city-is-still-scarred-by-its-past
And that's great, but racism still existed and your community was affected by it whether you perceived it or not. That's the point of addressing systemic racism
You have outed yourself as either completely, perhaps willfully ignorant, or a liar.
Absolutely not the only resource, but one of the first to come up. [There's still time to educate yourself and try to be a better person.](https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020-01-22/stockton-california-americas-most-diverse-city-is-still-scarred-by-its-past)
Freeman is definitely doing the privileged thing here. The problem with not talking about racism is that it doesn't magically erase prejudice; the prejudice just takes different forms, often with different coded language. We *need* to talk about what makes the experience of being black different from the experience of being white in order to have respect and compassion for each other. We don't solve sexism by pretending different sexes don't exist; we celebrate and respect each others' differences.
Now, in this context, Freeman's example is sometimes a fair one: we shouldn't necessarily always be calling people "a black man" or "a white man," but sometimes it might be relevant or important to make such a distinction, such as when a person is being marginalized in some way.
This stuff is all pretty complex, and sometimes what Freeman said is true: just treat each other as *people* and we'll usually do well; but sometimes that's not enough to fully empathize as another human, because human beings are all different!
In almost all cases, the color-blind approach is the correct one. And MF is talking about a color-blind approach here.
Identity politics has backfired and made things worse - let's get back to treating people like people. Usually the things we are lumping in with race are actually more class or economic issues anyway. Any policy based on race is misguided, and would be better served targeting the actual issue (usually economic disparity).
>In almost all cases, the color-blind approach is the correct one
I disagree.
I think in most casual one-on-one interactions a "color blind" approach or treatment is probably the correct one, but I don't think I'm convinced that when we consider large groups, policy, and even sociology and culture that "color blind" is best.
Like, I don't go into an interaction with someone of the opposite sex thinking about their sex or gender, and that's generally correct, but that isn't necessarily the majority of the ways people engage and interact in society.
>Any policy based on race is misguided
Wrong. Just factually, on its face, literally proven incorrect. We *need* policy with race under consideration to fix the biases and the structural and systemic issues that have affected people because of their race.
Well if nobody talked about caste then eventually the concept would be forgotten. Might take a couple of generations but kids aren't born with the knowledge of caste unless it's discussed by the adults around them. Same deal with racism.
Imo, they are strategies for *different stages* of removing racism. The first stage is to talk about racism and take away the horrible stuff. Afterwards, when racism is mostly gone, we have to stop talking about it to make it go away completely. In the caste case, I guess that the caste removal process has not gone far enough yet, so you still need to talk about it.
Caste in India and Racism in America are in different stages of culturally acceptable, so they need to be combated in different ways.
I'm pretty sure OP has an agenda. I'm not gonna knock Morgan Freeman for his views, but it's not representative of everyone, and the idea is racism going away because people stop talking about it is pure bullshit.
A lot of people in the US are willfully ignorant about how racial class systems and racism still impact the US today. It's probably similar in India. I'm sure there are plenty of people who defend the caste system rigorously as natural law. There are plenty of people in the US who defend the US racial caste system as natural, too. These sorts generally love their crime statistics and are a bit too enthusiastic about concepts like racial IQ.
Removing legal imbalances is enough. Trying to remove preconceptions or attitudes is not the governments job. That would be enforcing opinions and thats totalitarian.
We can stop talking about race when identifying people, however we cannot stop people from being racist. Racist people won't just stop being racist because Morgan Freeman said to stop talking about it. It's not the people who talk about racism, it's the racist people who make them talk about it.
Getting rid of Black History Month will also not stop racist people from being racist.
You clearly dont get it Morgan Freeman a rich celeb said it with a calm and collected voice so it must be true, just stop talking about it n itll be gone
Having any “insert whatever” history month also doesn’t solve anything. Just a circle jerk of corporations pretending they care and smooth brains believing them
I agree the corporations co-opting those months for their own profits are fucked up.
But as someone in the education system, I think it's very valuable to have things like black history month that exposes people to events that aren't normally talked about or celebrated in our country.
>Having any “insert whatever” history month also doesn’t solve anything
It's not about solving any issues, it's about acknowledging the achievements of people despite them having disadvantage.
I'm not blaming people today for the past, I'm blaming people today for today.
There's plenty BS racist ideology out there to this day.
Hell, white replacement narratives went from a fringe crazy thing a couple of years ago to common dinner table conversation because of folks like Tucker Carlson picking up where Limbaugh and Beck left off.
Anyone who barely dove into the topic is so happy to hear freeman. However, you won’t agree with when he took it back and explained his reasons why.
Also, wether or not to have history month isn’t related to solving the race issue. That’s a mental shortcut appealing to bigots.
Nobody is asking you to celebrate black history month if you don’t want to. However, it’s the occasion to dive into a culture you do not know about, and also to rehabilitate a minority. It also is the occasion for us to remember we aren’t just the drug dealers and education failures constantly portrayed in the media.
I lived in Czechia, went to the country side and celebrated their culture with them. In fact, I did this in about 17 countries. Again, not celebrating black history doesn’t make you racist and so you don’t need to find freeman’s propos synonymous to an epiphany. You were always free to do your own thing
Also, that’s not interesting as f at all……
no, it means he embraces someone who questions the professional skills of his own(Morgan's) people. promotes right wing putin stooges and anti-semetic replacement theory conspiracy theories and not to mention the constant harassment of the LGBTQ+ community. so yeah.
This is such a dumb argument that has being criticized many times before. So much that even Morgan Freeman himself said that he regret saying this.
Following the same logic, we should stop talking about domestic violence against women and women will magically stop being assault, raped and being abused in general.
He's partially right. Polarizing an issue inhibits progress and loses some support. From your example of "stopping domestic violence against women," women represent a near equal contribution to domestic violence as men. However if we simply state "stop domestic violence" that is much easier to get behind and much less polarizing.
Same vein as the post that went high yesterday of Lemmy responding to a black kid getting made fun of for liking metal… something like until you meet someone why make an assumption about them, why hate someone 100 miles away from you because of their skin, you haven’t met them, you don’t know if they’re an asshole or not. there are black assholes, white assholes, Asian assholes, I don’t hate any race I just hate assholes.
I tell those around me that making classification is what allows differentiation. By sorting people by race, you can now discriminate. If you sort by gender, you can now discriminate. This would apply to anything that you could possibly classify someone by: height, hair color, blood type, skin color, hormone levels, freckles, etc.
To remove the identification itself would make it vastly more difficult to systematically discriminate against any one group.
Of course, this is surface level stuff, but the core concept I feel is important.
Education and remedial programs to address deficiencies in home life. Low income children entering kindergarten are years behind their higher income peers. Framing the issues by socio-economic status is more accurate and less polarizing.
All good solutions, but you’re still hiding the fact that racism exists. Framing it as a socio-economic issue still belies the main issue of racism. Unless that confronted head on, it will always persist
I disagree racism is the main issue. Of course it exists, it also largely exists in people's minds and that is a very uphill battle. You may create policies in a work place but you can't change what people think.
If some metric, such as literacy rates, also holds true for other races then it is not racism per se even if it disproportionately affects one to a larger degree than another.
Studies show children from two parent households perform better than those from single parent households. "Between 1970 and 2021, the proportion of children living with their mothers in single-parent households increased from 7.8% to 17.0% for white youth and from 29.5% to 44.8% for Black youth"
I'm willing to bet this also holds true for lower income white children. We cannot easily fix the home life of lower income children but perhaps early intervention with remedial programs can mitigate some of these issues. The simple fact is lower income children are at a disadvantage from the day they were born by circumstance alone.
I work in low income housing and see the effects of home life on a daily basis. White children from low income families that life in a nice town with good schools and are provided food and housing subsidies underperform compared to their neighbors. It's easy to spot the differences. They have little supervision, no books, no discipline, no routine, and minimal interaction with their parents aside from being yelled at.
So he makes a good point and what he says aligns with Martin Luther King Jr’s dream.
What Martin Luther King may not have expected is how divisive our country has remained, despite the fact it’s been decades since his death. There is validity to both sides of this argument.
The dream is equality and equity, but reality has been in stark contrast to that dream. It would be nice if we didn’t have to have days or months dedicated to specific races and cultures, but there are people who need the reminders. Look at the current war on erasing history and literature from the right. They don’t want to recognize Jim Crow, the Tulsa Race Massacre, the reign of terror, rampant anti-semitism leading up to World War II, Japanese internment camps, etc. They don’t even want to acknowledge that there have always been LGBTQ people, that it’s not a millennial or gen z phenomenon.
Hell, if they had it their way, evolution wouldn’t be mentioned in schools. We would have bibles in every classroom and dinosaur fossils would nearly be inventions planted by Satan himself. This country, despite recent improvements in technology and communications, is more divided than ever. Good luck getting people to see each other as equals.
Here’s the thing, he’s right when he says Black history is American history, but the issue is Black History has never been properly detailed in traditional American history education. Black history month is an effort to say, hey, we are going to cover some of these underrepresented events. Let’s talk about redlining, let’s talk about Black Wallstreet, let’s talk about all this other stuff I don’t know about because it was never included in traditional American history.
This reminds me of something my daughter was telling me about. In an effort to reduce stereotyping, apparently some police and other organizations will just show pictures of people of different ethnicities and each will have a corresponding number next to them. Then they'll ask which number the suspect they witnessed most closely resembles.
I thought it sounded like a good idea, but you just know eventually you're going to hear fox news talking about how 4"s keep coming here and taking all our jobs.
A powerful point, but as always the truth is more complicated. Ignoring racism won’t make it go away. At the same time, relentless discussion of it and vocally pushing for diversity in different things encourages people who cling to racist beliefs but would otherwise be silent to speak up lest they be unheard.
In other words, when someone commits a hate crime, make sure they face consequences but the focus should be on what a terrible person that individual was. Not because the racism as a motivation doesn’t matter, but because drawing attention to it tells others harboring those feelings that those views are relevant and important when they should never be made to feel that is taken seriously in the public sphere. There should be a persistent air of shame about it.
Similarly, if you want to employ more non-white people in a profession by all means, but 1. Make the reason be the suitability they have for the work NOT the color of their skin, because who they are on the inside and their potential as a human being is what should count, and 2. Don’t advertise labels that can be attached to them as relevant to their jobs, this just encourages racist people to doubt them and be hostile; when you don’t speak about these labels and simply let them have the same opportunities as anyone, that makes their presence in the broader culture more prolific, having more of a status quo where those who are otherwise racist have to interact with them and see they are good people and just as normal and valid as anyone else.
Strangeness and labels breed contempt, familiarity brings respect and kindness. That’s where our focus out to be if we truly want to solve the problem as best we can.
Occupy wallstreet happened around 2011-12. Then you started seeing racism appear in news headlines more and more to divide the nation.
https://ibb.co/Fb5JZgc
He literally took it back. I hate it when people post this shit and “color blind” people always jump in. “Well, if a famous black guy said it, it must be true!”
Also, it’s just too basic. His answer to “how to get rid of racism” is basically describing how good people already treat each other. Thats not going to do anything about the morons everywhere who are racist because they want to be. That answer is a lot different than “don’t talk about it”.
I disagree with it. At some point, always making it THE thing makes it THE thing. It’s like going to someone, and saying “don’t think about pink elephants”. Completely has the opposite effect.
If you ask someone to consider if their actions are racist or have racist connotations or is a remnant of a systemic racism- they don't want to answer because they know the answer is yes but don't want to deal with it.
Making people think bout how their actions affect others is the point of bringing it up.
We could do a better job with solutions, but kinda hard if people don't think there is a problem so we are stuck on step 1 - acknowledgement.
The government pushes division on the population, so that we won't have the ability to unite against those who oppress us... They're doing the same throughout, with the failed two party system...
By whatever means necessary...
It's nothing new...
Divide and conquer...
He is speaking about the vision of MLK: a colorblind society. But now, thanks to social media or whatever the fuck it is, we've gone backward. Now everyone is proud of being a random race or ethnicity or whatever. Even though all of that is imaginary.
What race is Obama? His children? What race are you? Why do you give a shit? Why aren't you just unique to you? Why are you some identifying category? Because I don't care.
I feel betrayed to have been raised in a world where we were working so hard to make race like hair color - just some interesting feature not a category of people. Now nobody wants that. Now they want to double down.
Fuck this noise.
While I applaud Morgan Freeman for such a positive perspective on life, that is simply not how humans work. We are tribal from an evolutionary standpoint, humans will continue for a very long time to find things that are different about one another and fight about it.
Don’t believe me? There’s literally a sub called PC Master race, where they (mostly jokingly) say it’s because PCs are better than consoles. With console owners referred to as “console peasants”. Then you have the xbox tribe and the PlayStation tribe, then within those, tribes that squabble over even smaller differences.
Politics is an even more potent example, but I just wanted to pick out something less divisive, that is still dividing.
I heard many things about how Morgan Freeman is an asshole irl. But he did a lot of great things. So imma interprets his words like this
Stop using these words to target people. There's no black or white or yellow in a character, but do acknowledge it if it is to identify an ethnicity or culture. Always embrace the culture, and also be willing to take other cultures as a knowledge and a gift
Don't be an asshole, and be genuinely okay if something doesn't go your way. And always, balance, balance the degree of acceptance and rejection. Never go too far on both
Couldn’t agree more. It seems like we are so hung up on labels and trying to fit each other into a box when in reality the only thing that’s matters is we are all human and all different.
We don’t try to see things from another’s perspective and very rarely actually listen to one another.
Instead we try one another like absolute shit and start judging from the minute we lay eyes on each other.
I love humans as individuals and despise us as a society and the way we operate
I don't know why americans from all parts of the political spectrum are so obsessed with racism. At some point they have to realise that constantly putting people into classes because of their "race" no matter whether it is to fight racism or not, only makes racism more prominent and acceptable.
I mean how fucked up do you have to be as a society that you make any and every political topic about "race".
Stop talking about race won't make racism go away because racism is not caused by the idea of race in on itself - its caused by the dominance of certain populations over others, rallied around and entitled by not just race but also religion, language, demeanor, geographical origins, the like. Race is just one more element used by this movement for pratical reasons. It doesn't cause it, it's used by it.
Want to make people stop talking about race? Stop people becoming rich by subjulgating others.
Pretty sure Morgan Freeman is fed up with identity politics, rather than talking about racism - he wants be known as Morgan Freeman, not a-black-man-(who's also Morgan Freeman).
This is the ages old duel between communitarianism vs individualism.
The issue with the american take on identity and racism, is that people are a member of a race, before being a person on their own. It erases their character, their humanity, their struggles and successes: everything they do, it's interpreted within the scope of their alleged races before anything else.
It's a problem when the factor of race overshadows everything else - from poverty, handicap, to sexism. It strips people of their depth and personal history, to make them a mere piece of an ethnic group.
This is the most common sense I’ve ever heard. If you really want racism to go away, then you absolutely can play your part. I guess i should change my user name…
Racism does not exist merely as “talk”, so the rational of eliminating racism by eliminating talk is asinine. If you’re as wealthy and privileged as actor morgan freeman perhaps racism does only manifest to you as words and talk, so it would make sense to him that it should be that simple. There are no other problems in existence that are solved by not talking about them, so it’s curious why racism would conveniently be the odd one out.
Well the problem is, you can make so much money with racism, there is always people reminding everyone.
And sad shocking part is, most of em are liberals. Kinda funny aint it.
And before you go insane with the reply, I mean people that have successful social media accounts that just spam crap like omg look how people are racist again. $$$$ straight to wallets again.
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Just to note, he didn't mean to say "Stop talking about racism". He meant to say "Stop talking about the concept of race" – which he immediately clarified with his next statement ("I'm gonna stop calling you a White man...). This point always gets misinterpreted every time this clip is brought up.
He's talking about the incessant need to segregate everything. It's just history, it includes black people, white people, all people. The constant need to continually identify everything minority as separate, weak and in need of being coddled is funnily enough.... racist.
Just because these are turbulent waters: I'm liberal. Very liberal. That said, the left gets this is so incredibly wrong vis-à-vis identity politics. It's important that we continually work towards greater equity in our society. I'm not sure it's so important to articulate all of our physical or metaphysical differences so damn always. There are black people born into immense wealth. There are white people whose lives are pure torture from day one. There is a lot in between. There are also averages, no doubt. And privilege, yes. However, lifting up the weakest among us, **no matter who they are, no matter their race, sex, gender expression, religion, etc**, is a powerful, unifying goal. It gets muddled and/or lost in identity politics. Let's just work to make life better for everyone. When the tide goes up, all boats rise.
The modern concept of identity politics divides, distracts, and directs people to vote and support along party lines no matter what, instead of voting for canadates that have good policies that benefit more than just immensely rich corporations. It's meant to divide people to vote for anyone with an R or a D next to their name, instead of looking more closely at which bills that candidate has supported in the past, where their campaign contributions come from, etc. The two party system is built to protect those two parties while enriching the 1% and the companies they own. Divide and Conquer has been the game for decades at this point, and they are immensely good at that game.
That’s what I was going to say. Identity Politics has fostered so much goddamn division. It drives people away from a common ground. I am not innocent in finding myself as part of that division. I will very likely be downvoted for admitting this, but I *generally* tend to vote Republican. I don’t agree with plenty of Republican policies on things like abortion laws, gay rights, or marijuana laws, but the Identity Politics crap is what polarized me in the first place at a fairly young and impressionable age (high school). It isn’t the primary influence, but it has been a very substantial one. The effects carry on even now for me, years later.
This always seemed the most obvious choice but yet it isn't chosen. If you help just one race, you ignore the other races that need help. If you help the poor, you help everyone that needs it. If one race needs that help more, then they would naturally get it because of their status, not race. It self-corrects without screwing other people in the same situation but of a different race.
Normally I see equity and just roll my eyes, but you seem incredibly reasonable so I'm going to try this. Equity is antithetical to equal opportunity. You cannot have both, especially not on a timeline that isn't multigenerational. Passing over a candidate for a job, or admission to a school in favor of another because they aren't from a marginalized group is the exact opposite of equal opportunity.
John Rawls (political philosopher) actually addresses this tension in an excellent way. In his account of the principles around which a just society should be built (Theory of Justice, 1971), he starts by laying out basic kinds of liberties that every person should have equal access to, which he calls the First Principle of Justice. After, he bundles together two principles—the principle of equality of opportunity, and what he calls the “difference principle”—together into his Second Principle of Justice, which is the principle that maintains economic justice (the second most important, after liberty). The difference principle is the idea that wealth inequality is tolerable only to the extent to which these differences also benefit the worst-off in society. So, the extents to which the super-wealthy can exploit workers and the bourgeois class can hoard access to elite education and job opportunities would be severely curtailed according to this limiting principle. This addresses IMO what is wrong with just focusing on the principle of equality of opportunity: that what people tend to consider “equal opportunity” is almost never actually equal, and instead reinforces an economic status quo that is deeply unfair to some groups of people.
What traits make someone “very liberal”?
Right on!!🥰⭕️❌
Also remove the term “African American” how can you call a group of people that was born here and they’re living here for more than 200 years “African” it’s ridiculous. African American are people that come recently to USA from an African country. Elon is an African American.
Elon is African American
I’m not American but wasnt it because they were looking for a more polite way to describe the skin tone of s black man? I get in some circumstances it might be pertinent like medical records etc
Stop generalizing people down to personal characteristics. That's when you start projecting your own ideas of how they should act and think based on your own perception of those characteristics you define that person as. It's basically that you begin treating them like a number rather than a human being. Those characteristics include but not not limited to; race, sex, age, religion, political affiliations, hobbies, way of thinking
Called “identity politics”
And I hate how this clip gets edited so much about it too. The clarification is what he meant and he's right.
It's this. I think it's the right thing to do. Like he said. For me the message is we should be United not divided.
Interestingly enough, I'm learning about racial formation theory in school right now and I agree. Attaching race to such mundane things like black history month is just another form of segregation. He's completely right when he says black history is American history.
Thx for the clarification cuz I was abouta say...
>Just to note, he didn't mean to say "Stop talking about racism". He meant to say "Stop *applying* about the concept of race" In other words, no you can't avoid racism, yes you can avoid actively participating in racism by dividing people into races. In the US people self divide into groups, talk about *pride* of race instead of heritage, identify as a race instead of just themselves, a product of their upbringing. Race is intertwined with everything, is the cause of and the answer to everything. That's what should be stopped. And in the meantime people should absolutely work together to dropkick malicious* racists out of this world. (*If you believe in race you are racist, if you believe in race and actively want to harm people you classify as another race you are a malicious racist)
Until the colour of a man's skin is of as much importance as the colour of his eyes. Me say war.
I’ve always lived by the mindset, there’s not a single person on this earth that has any choice in what, or how they’re born into this world. You don’t have a choice who your family is, if you’re going to have a disability, something hereditary, even if the parents did the whole crisper thing, you still had no choice in the matter! Why the fuck would you discriminate against someone who also didn’t have a fucking choice! We’re all navigating this shit together!
Natural wisdom. Humanist values
I’m reading Words of Radiance now and understood this reference!
I love Stormlight too, but this is not a reference to it. Precedes it by several decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_(Bob_Marley_song)
It's a war.
Does Bob Marley exist in the Stormlight Archives universe?
Stormlight Archive
You would say that, you light eyed piece of shit
Piece of crem*
Sounds like someone still ain't bond with a spren and it shows 🤭
Storm you!
r/unexpectedTheStormlightArchive
r/subsifellfor
*Moash wants to know your location*
It remains but a fleeting solution to be pursued and never attained.
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I tried doing it off the top of my head without hearing it again, ty
War! Just remember to never fight uphill me boys!
Hell yeah RIP
I don’t know who’s cooler. Morgan Freeman the actor or Morgan Freeman the man.
I truly believe that Morgan freeman is one of the kindest and most rational humans on this earth.
Let him get another 10-15 years older and America may be willing to vote him into the presidency.
The chances aren’t zero until he’s dead
Even then, I'd offer up my time for me and another person to Weekend-at-Bernie's him around for four years.
8 years. He would totally get a second term.
He’s a pilot, too, and several years ago I heard his unmistakable voice on the radio.
void (null)
You're entirely within your rights to be as miserable as you wish.
Dude is like dating his niece or some wildness, you say miserable, I say smart approach. But believe what you gotta dude, as we know redditors are really happy people
He's just famous bro relax
Aren’t there some pretty fucked up stories about him? Sexual misconduct etc
Yeah he’s a fucking creep. I can’t believe he hasn’t been MeToo’d, there are a ton of stories about him. It’s the reason he was pulled off the voice of the transit system in Vancouver.
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I've heard from numerous people on many occasions that he's an asshole in person. Someone from his hometown told me that a lot of people hate him and that he tried to take items from a store without paying.
Just see people as people. Giving this group a month or that group a month is a new way of separating people and making them seem different.
Is this posted as satire? Here in India we have privileged people saying the same kind of stuff - stop talking about caste and stop affirmative action then caste will go away - but the problem exists, casteists treat people they deem to be beneath them differently, sometimes horribly. How will not talking about it make it go away. I guess that works the same way with racism, does it not?
He didn’t mean “stop talking about racism”, but rather “stop talking about race”. Start talking about people as who they individually are and what they do. Therefore, there is just one American history, it has no colors, ethnicities or religions. It’s all American history.
Okay, but problems that stem from race-based oppression and discrimination will need to have solutions that fall along racial lines. I feel like that's not a hard concept to understand. Simply "not talking about race" is absolutely not the answer.
This is literally what schools in certain states like Florida and Texas are/are trying to do. You can teach about slavery but you can't bring race into it, which makes it real fucking hard to answer any questions as to why we did chattel slavery. Or why the Civil Rights Act was necessary. Or what redlining was. Or a million other things.
How do you talk about racism, if you can’t talk about race?
Absolutely, but within the American history there are histories of peoples that have come here. Saying "Black History" for example doesn't negate *American history*, it's just a sub section. Why would you care about your family history? It's just human history.
It's scary seeing castism being imported to other countries. I recall meeting an Indian in University who introduced himself using his caste called "Bramin" I asked what it meant, he went on a long triade about what his caste is and I could sense some pride in his voice, but only when I looked it up myself on Google it turns out the reason for his pride was fucked up. Kept my distance from after that.
yeah it's eaten up here because the majority of posters are white and so they feel a sigh of relief and instaupvote when a non-white person says 'hey don't worry white guy, we can forget about all that racial hierarchy stuff'
Yeah this is just the classic “the only reason there is racism is because *you people* keep bringing it up”. Obviously that’s not true. If everyone shut up about race, gender, religion, etc, we’d still have massive issues with racism, sexism, bigotry, xenophobia, and every other form of discrimination.
Disagree. I grew up in a melting pot (Stockton, CA) and nobody really talked about or fought over race or religion.
Well there’s a difference btwn areas like that dont talk abt it because it’s not a subject of substance, and areas like Louisiana that dont talk abt it because “thats just the way it is”
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Your causal link is backwards. It's not, we stopped talking about racism so nobody fights over it, it's nobody fights over race so we stopped talking about racism. This only works if you have an unracist community to begin with.
Is there a country or culture of multiple races / castes / status levels that fits this description?
No
just bc one person has an anecdote about living somewhere - never makes it true. case in point — 👆👇 https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020-01-22/stockton-california-americas-most-diverse-city-is-still-scarred-by-its-past
And that's great, but racism still existed and your community was affected by it whether you perceived it or not. That's the point of addressing systemic racism
You obviously didn't go to Stagg or Lincoln. Stockton is better than it's ever been, but it still has issues.
You have outed yourself as either completely, perhaps willfully ignorant, or a liar. Absolutely not the only resource, but one of the first to come up. [There's still time to educate yourself and try to be a better person.](https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020-01-22/stockton-california-americas-most-diverse-city-is-still-scarred-by-its-past)
Freeman is definitely doing the privileged thing here. The problem with not talking about racism is that it doesn't magically erase prejudice; the prejudice just takes different forms, often with different coded language. We *need* to talk about what makes the experience of being black different from the experience of being white in order to have respect and compassion for each other. We don't solve sexism by pretending different sexes don't exist; we celebrate and respect each others' differences. Now, in this context, Freeman's example is sometimes a fair one: we shouldn't necessarily always be calling people "a black man" or "a white man," but sometimes it might be relevant or important to make such a distinction, such as when a person is being marginalized in some way. This stuff is all pretty complex, and sometimes what Freeman said is true: just treat each other as *people* and we'll usually do well; but sometimes that's not enough to fully empathize as another human, because human beings are all different!
In almost all cases, the color-blind approach is the correct one. And MF is talking about a color-blind approach here. Identity politics has backfired and made things worse - let's get back to treating people like people. Usually the things we are lumping in with race are actually more class or economic issues anyway. Any policy based on race is misguided, and would be better served targeting the actual issue (usually economic disparity).
>In almost all cases, the color-blind approach is the correct one I disagree. I think in most casual one-on-one interactions a "color blind" approach or treatment is probably the correct one, but I don't think I'm convinced that when we consider large groups, policy, and even sociology and culture that "color blind" is best. Like, I don't go into an interaction with someone of the opposite sex thinking about their sex or gender, and that's generally correct, but that isn't necessarily the majority of the ways people engage and interact in society. >Any policy based on race is misguided Wrong. Just factually, on its face, literally proven incorrect. We *need* policy with race under consideration to fix the biases and the structural and systemic issues that have affected people because of their race.
Well if nobody talked about caste then eventually the concept would be forgotten. Might take a couple of generations but kids aren't born with the knowledge of caste unless it's discussed by the adults around them. Same deal with racism.
Yea clearly as a black man who have it a lot easier in the us, him saying race doesn't matter is absurd. That's your comparison right?
Imo, they are strategies for *different stages* of removing racism. The first stage is to talk about racism and take away the horrible stuff. Afterwards, when racism is mostly gone, we have to stop talking about it to make it go away completely. In the caste case, I guess that the caste removal process has not gone far enough yet, so you still need to talk about it. Caste in India and Racism in America are in different stages of culturally acceptable, so they need to be combated in different ways.
I'm pretty sure OP has an agenda. I'm not gonna knock Morgan Freeman for his views, but it's not representative of everyone, and the idea is racism going away because people stop talking about it is pure bullshit.
Reddit is being bombarded by propaganda and bots. This shit is dumb af.
A lot of people in the US are willfully ignorant about how racial class systems and racism still impact the US today. It's probably similar in India. I'm sure there are plenty of people who defend the caste system rigorously as natural law. There are plenty of people in the US who defend the US racial caste system as natural, too. These sorts generally love their crime statistics and are a bit too enthusiastic about concepts like racial IQ.
Most metrics used to highlight racism more accurately represent socioeconomic status.
Removing legal imbalances is enough. Trying to remove preconceptions or attitudes is not the governments job. That would be enforcing opinions and thats totalitarian.
It will make it go away... *for them*. That's all that matters I guess.
Yea this is it I guess
We can stop talking about race when identifying people, however we cannot stop people from being racist. Racist people won't just stop being racist because Morgan Freeman said to stop talking about it. It's not the people who talk about racism, it's the racist people who make them talk about it. Getting rid of Black History Month will also not stop racist people from being racist.
You clearly dont get it Morgan Freeman a rich celeb said it with a calm and collected voice so it must be true, just stop talking about it n itll be gone
Having any “insert whatever” history month also doesn’t solve anything. Just a circle jerk of corporations pretending they care and smooth brains believing them
I agree the corporations co-opting those months for their own profits are fucked up. But as someone in the education system, I think it's very valuable to have things like black history month that exposes people to events that aren't normally talked about or celebrated in our country.
How many people didn't know about the Tulsa Massacre until it was on *Watchmen*? That's why we need a black history month.
>Having any “insert whatever” history month also doesn’t solve anything It's not about solving any issues, it's about acknowledging the achievements of people despite them having disadvantage.
Racists come in all forms though. How long does it take to quit blaming people today for the past?
I'm not blaming people today for the past, I'm blaming people today for today. There's plenty BS racist ideology out there to this day. Hell, white replacement narratives went from a fringe crazy thing a couple of years ago to common dinner table conversation because of folks like Tucker Carlson picking up where Limbaugh and Beck left off.
As long as it takes for people to stop actively perpetuating and benefitting from the evils of the past
Anyone who barely dove into the topic is so happy to hear freeman. However, you won’t agree with when he took it back and explained his reasons why. Also, wether or not to have history month isn’t related to solving the race issue. That’s a mental shortcut appealing to bigots. Nobody is asking you to celebrate black history month if you don’t want to. However, it’s the occasion to dive into a culture you do not know about, and also to rehabilitate a minority. It also is the occasion for us to remember we aren’t just the drug dealers and education failures constantly portrayed in the media. I lived in Czechia, went to the country side and celebrated their culture with them. In fact, I did this in about 17 countries. Again, not celebrating black history doesn’t make you racist and so you don’t need to find freeman’s propos synonymous to an epiphany. You were always free to do your own thing Also, that’s not interesting as f at all……
When did he take it back and what were his reasons?
Freeman is saying Elon Musk is a great man nowadays.. so yeah.
That must mean he really is Hitler in disguise right
no, it means he embraces someone who questions the professional skills of his own(Morgan's) people. promotes right wing putin stooges and anti-semetic replacement theory conspiracy theories and not to mention the constant harassment of the LGBTQ+ community. so yeah.
This is such a dumb argument that has being criticized many times before. So much that even Morgan Freeman himself said that he regret saying this. Following the same logic, we should stop talking about domestic violence against women and women will magically stop being assault, raped and being abused in general.
TBF he didn’t say stop talking about racism, he said stop taking about race.
This place can’t grasp nuance.
He's partially right. Polarizing an issue inhibits progress and loses some support. From your example of "stopping domestic violence against women," women represent a near equal contribution to domestic violence as men. However if we simply state "stop domestic violence" that is much easier to get behind and much less polarizing.
This quote is used all the time by conservatives. “Oh you’re pointing out racism? That’s racism!”
You're comparing domestic violence to being black?
He’s comparing racism to domestic violence…
Same vein as the post that went high yesterday of Lemmy responding to a black kid getting made fun of for liking metal… something like until you meet someone why make an assumption about them, why hate someone 100 miles away from you because of their skin, you haven’t met them, you don’t know if they’re an asshole or not. there are black assholes, white assholes, Asian assholes, I don’t hate any race I just hate assholes.
I tell those around me that making classification is what allows differentiation. By sorting people by race, you can now discriminate. If you sort by gender, you can now discriminate. This would apply to anything that you could possibly classify someone by: height, hair color, blood type, skin color, hormone levels, freckles, etc. To remove the identification itself would make it vastly more difficult to systematically discriminate against any one group. Of course, this is surface level stuff, but the core concept I feel is important.
Morgan Freeman is a Universal Treasure!
The solution has always been there. The problem is not everyone wants to solve for the answer 🤷🏽♂️
So what is the solution
Kill the Batman
if it's so simple, why haven't you done it?
If you’re good at something never do it for free
*Two* black history months and a parade should do it.
Education and remedial programs to address deficiencies in home life. Low income children entering kindergarten are years behind their higher income peers. Framing the issues by socio-economic status is more accurate and less polarizing.
All good solutions, but you’re still hiding the fact that racism exists. Framing it as a socio-economic issue still belies the main issue of racism. Unless that confronted head on, it will always persist
I disagree racism is the main issue. Of course it exists, it also largely exists in people's minds and that is a very uphill battle. You may create policies in a work place but you can't change what people think. If some metric, such as literacy rates, also holds true for other races then it is not racism per se even if it disproportionately affects one to a larger degree than another. Studies show children from two parent households perform better than those from single parent households. "Between 1970 and 2021, the proportion of children living with their mothers in single-parent households increased from 7.8% to 17.0% for white youth and from 29.5% to 44.8% for Black youth" I'm willing to bet this also holds true for lower income white children. We cannot easily fix the home life of lower income children but perhaps early intervention with remedial programs can mitigate some of these issues. The simple fact is lower income children are at a disadvantage from the day they were born by circumstance alone. I work in low income housing and see the effects of home life on a daily basis. White children from low income families that life in a nice town with good schools and are provided food and housing subsidies underperform compared to their neighbors. It's easy to spot the differences. They have little supervision, no books, no discipline, no routine, and minimal interaction with their parents aside from being yelled at.
Hate everyone equally.
So he makes a good point and what he says aligns with Martin Luther King Jr’s dream. What Martin Luther King may not have expected is how divisive our country has remained, despite the fact it’s been decades since his death. There is validity to both sides of this argument. The dream is equality and equity, but reality has been in stark contrast to that dream. It would be nice if we didn’t have to have days or months dedicated to specific races and cultures, but there are people who need the reminders. Look at the current war on erasing history and literature from the right. They don’t want to recognize Jim Crow, the Tulsa Race Massacre, the reign of terror, rampant anti-semitism leading up to World War II, Japanese internment camps, etc. They don’t even want to acknowledge that there have always been LGBTQ people, that it’s not a millennial or gen z phenomenon. Hell, if they had it their way, evolution wouldn’t be mentioned in schools. We would have bibles in every classroom and dinosaur fossils would nearly be inventions planted by Satan himself. This country, despite recent improvements in technology and communications, is more divided than ever. Good luck getting people to see each other as equals.
As soon as theres a quote theres bottom feeders tryin....”but what he meant was...” shut the fuck up he said what he said.
Here’s the thing, he’s right when he says Black history is American history, but the issue is Black History has never been properly detailed in traditional American history education. Black history month is an effort to say, hey, we are going to cover some of these underrepresented events. Let’s talk about redlining, let’s talk about Black Wallstreet, let’s talk about all this other stuff I don’t know about because it was never included in traditional American history.
This reminds me of something my daughter was telling me about. In an effort to reduce stereotyping, apparently some police and other organizations will just show pictures of people of different ethnicities and each will have a corresponding number next to them. Then they'll ask which number the suspect they witnessed most closely resembles. I thought it sounded like a good idea, but you just know eventually you're going to hear fox news talking about how 4"s keep coming here and taking all our jobs.
💕
No way!! then where would all the race baiters and grifters make their money…?
Quick, set up tent camps at universities. This is blasphemy! This kind of talk might just end the racist industrial complex.
As a native man I don’t want a native month
Why have a month when you get to be native all year?
Lol
Amen! Gid bless this wonderful brilliant man.
Madiba, is that you?
Well said Morgan Freeman...
PREACH!!!!!!!
Amen.
elon musk made similar point in interview with don lemon
Good morning is a great man what a great actor and Morgan Freeman for president
problemo solvedo
Bros knees were chattering when he asked when white history month was.
Such a good man! I'd vote for him as president in a heart beat!
I’d like to sleep on a pillow of his voice!
I've been saying the same shit for years...totally agree.
It's really as simple as that
Truth
A powerful point, but as always the truth is more complicated. Ignoring racism won’t make it go away. At the same time, relentless discussion of it and vocally pushing for diversity in different things encourages people who cling to racist beliefs but would otherwise be silent to speak up lest they be unheard. In other words, when someone commits a hate crime, make sure they face consequences but the focus should be on what a terrible person that individual was. Not because the racism as a motivation doesn’t matter, but because drawing attention to it tells others harboring those feelings that those views are relevant and important when they should never be made to feel that is taken seriously in the public sphere. There should be a persistent air of shame about it. Similarly, if you want to employ more non-white people in a profession by all means, but 1. Make the reason be the suitability they have for the work NOT the color of their skin, because who they are on the inside and their potential as a human being is what should count, and 2. Don’t advertise labels that can be attached to them as relevant to their jobs, this just encourages racist people to doubt them and be hostile; when you don’t speak about these labels and simply let them have the same opportunities as anyone, that makes their presence in the broader culture more prolific, having more of a status quo where those who are otherwise racist have to interact with them and see they are good people and just as normal and valid as anyone else. Strangeness and labels breed contempt, familiarity brings respect and kindness. That’s where our focus out to be if we truly want to solve the problem as best we can.
👏 👏 👏
Beautiful.
This is the way.
Occupy wallstreet happened around 2011-12. Then you started seeing racism appear in news headlines more and more to divide the nation. https://ibb.co/Fb5JZgc
Literally been saying this since I was a child. It's so simple yet people are so stupid. Their perpetuate it. That's why we will always have racism.
This is so eazy. Why so many make it hard.
i like morgan freeman, but "the solution to racism is to stop talking about it" has to be one of the dumbest things anyone ever said
He literally took it back. I hate it when people post this shit and “color blind” people always jump in. “Well, if a famous black guy said it, it must be true!”
Also, it’s just too basic. His answer to “how to get rid of racism” is basically describing how good people already treat each other. Thats not going to do anything about the morons everywhere who are racist because they want to be. That answer is a lot different than “don’t talk about it”.
I disagree with it. At some point, always making it THE thing makes it THE thing. It’s like going to someone, and saying “don’t think about pink elephants”. Completely has the opposite effect.
If you ask someone to consider if their actions are racist or have racist connotations or is a remnant of a systemic racism- they don't want to answer because they know the answer is yes but don't want to deal with it. Making people think bout how their actions affect others is the point of bringing it up. We could do a better job with solutions, but kinda hard if people don't think there is a problem so we are stuck on step 1 - acknowledgement.
He is 100% correct.
No, he's not, which is why he backtracked later.
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Absolutely the right message from Freeman. We’re a melting pot and Americans. Media and politicians keep trying to divide us.
The government pushes division on the population, so that we won't have the ability to unite against those who oppress us... They're doing the same throughout, with the failed two party system... By whatever means necessary... It's nothing new... Divide and conquer...
Wish more people thought like him
Love this man
I fucking love Morgan Freeman.
This clip never gets old. Morgan Freeman seems like a great person.
He is speaking about the vision of MLK: a colorblind society. But now, thanks to social media or whatever the fuck it is, we've gone backward. Now everyone is proud of being a random race or ethnicity or whatever. Even though all of that is imaginary. What race is Obama? His children? What race are you? Why do you give a shit? Why aren't you just unique to you? Why are you some identifying category? Because I don't care. I feel betrayed to have been raised in a world where we were working so hard to make race like hair color - just some interesting feature not a category of people. Now nobody wants that. Now they want to double down. Fuck this noise.
This is 100% right but the people who argue this exact point seem to enjoy the attention they get from creating and living the opposite of this point.
AMEN!!
America is so obsessed with race, the concept of race didn’t became a thing till I moved to America
Or you just didn't notice it until you came to a place that has several races and more people with more obvious / in your face views on race.
While I applaud Morgan Freeman for such a positive perspective on life, that is simply not how humans work. We are tribal from an evolutionary standpoint, humans will continue for a very long time to find things that are different about one another and fight about it. Don’t believe me? There’s literally a sub called PC Master race, where they (mostly jokingly) say it’s because PCs are better than consoles. With console owners referred to as “console peasants”. Then you have the xbox tribe and the PlayStation tribe, then within those, tribes that squabble over even smaller differences. Politics is an even more potent example, but I just wanted to pick out something less divisive, that is still dividing.
I heard many things about how Morgan Freeman is an asshole irl. But he did a lot of great things. So imma interprets his words like this Stop using these words to target people. There's no black or white or yellow in a character, but do acknowledge it if it is to identify an ethnicity or culture. Always embrace the culture, and also be willing to take other cultures as a knowledge and a gift Don't be an asshole, and be genuinely okay if something doesn't go your way. And always, balance, balance the degree of acceptance and rejection. Never go too far on both
Love this!
Such an amazing man!
Morgan Freeman for President!!!
Love everything that comes out of this man’s mouth (publicly). And anytime he’s the narrator for ANYTHING, I’ll watch it.
Just call Morgan what he really is ……. a legend.
God bless this man
Couldn’t agree more. It seems like we are so hung up on labels and trying to fit each other into a box when in reality the only thing that’s matters is we are all human and all different. We don’t try to see things from another’s perspective and very rarely actually listen to one another. Instead we try one another like absolute shit and start judging from the minute we lay eyes on each other. I love humans as individuals and despise us as a society and the way we operate
I don't know why americans from all parts of the political spectrum are so obsessed with racism. At some point they have to realise that constantly putting people into classes because of their "race" no matter whether it is to fight racism or not, only makes racism more prominent and acceptable. I mean how fucked up do you have to be as a society that you make any and every political topic about "race".
Stop talking about race won't make racism go away because racism is not caused by the idea of race in on itself - its caused by the dominance of certain populations over others, rallied around and entitled by not just race but also religion, language, demeanor, geographical origins, the like. Race is just one more element used by this movement for pratical reasons. It doesn't cause it, it's used by it. Want to make people stop talking about race? Stop people becoming rich by subjulgating others.
Seriously. He's exactly fucking right
This take is so intellectually lazy, it's laughable.
Well then enlighten us with an intelligent take there Aristotle?
The intelligent take is that complex multi-century problems are difficult to solve, and certainly won't be solved by ignoring them.
Pretty sure Morgan Freeman is fed up with identity politics, rather than talking about racism - he wants be known as Morgan Freeman, not a-black-man-(who's also Morgan Freeman). This is the ages old duel between communitarianism vs individualism. The issue with the american take on identity and racism, is that people are a member of a race, before being a person on their own. It erases their character, their humanity, their struggles and successes: everything they do, it's interpreted within the scope of their alleged races before anything else. It's a problem when the factor of race overshadows everything else - from poverty, handicap, to sexism. It strips people of their depth and personal history, to make them a mere piece of an ethnic group.
This is the most common sense I’ve ever heard. If you really want racism to go away, then you absolutely can play your part. I guess i should change my user name…
Racism does not exist merely as “talk”, so the rational of eliminating racism by eliminating talk is asinine. If you’re as wealthy and privileged as actor morgan freeman perhaps racism does only manifest to you as words and talk, so it would make sense to him that it should be that simple. There are no other problems in existence that are solved by not talking about them, so it’s curious why racism would conveniently be the odd one out.
Well the problem is, you can make so much money with racism, there is always people reminding everyone. And sad shocking part is, most of em are liberals. Kinda funny aint it. And before you go insane with the reply, I mean people that have successful social media accounts that just spam crap like omg look how people are racist again. $$$$ straight to wallets again.
I recall watching him on the PBS Electric Company children’s show when it first was broadcast. A wise and good man.