Former British Colony in Downward Spiral of Ethnic Violence, State Security Impunity

[Gilrandir]

That's not how you're presenting. You interposed yourself to redirect attention from malgovernance and racial repression to the mixed record of a murdered man. To do this implies that you believe the latter should be emphasized in place of the former.

That's your impression. I speak of no emphasis but of awareness of negative sides which being emotionally invested many Americans tend to overlook or intentionally downplay.

OK, but why and whence? Are we here reproducing irritable gestures lacking mental ingredients?

Even if mental ingredients are aplenty still communicating in the social media is about exchanging personal attitudes mostly.

These labels and the force behind them were applied in an ethnically-discriminatory way as a general practice, but time and again it was constructed as an essentially ethnic disturbance against the state.

Ethnic! Not racial. Ethnic-focused purges were often aimed at white people who were deemed to differ politically (like the Baltic peoples and Ukrainians deported to Syberia).

The Soviet people were not so shut off from Europe that they abraded away the entire cultural and intellectual influence of the 19th century - indeed, the opposite was the case. The Soviet government was intensely interested in promulgating cultural products of Europe in the domains of art, architecture, literature, language, music, etc. In any case we are speaking of widespread ideas so common and basic that they were not much questioned, like the concept of marriage.

This is totally wrong. Soviet authotities were interested in separating the USSR from the rest of the world and creating an entirely new society with entirely new ideology, art, literature, science and even language (see Newspeak) that had nothing to do whatsoever with the practices of rotten capitalism. And if any person working in these spheres was spotted bringing in чуждые веяния and преклонения перед Западом he was at best censured and at worst incarcerated or shot.

You beg the question in assuming party functionaries would be non-racist in identifying racism.

Since anti-racism was a part of official ideology and party functionaries were acutely alert to any (even imaginary) deviations from it I believe my statement holds.

So far, you've been leaning on the excuses that the author had no choice but to wax poetic about the savagery of Africa (and that this would be non-racist in any case), that Russians were too isolated to have a concept of anti-African racism, or that the writings could not by any Scottish definition be racist if the Soviet government permitted their publication. Do you really not see the problem here?

I don't. I wasn't leaning on excuses. I offered plenty of assumptions why Africa was used in the verse and some of them (or all of them taken together) might have served as a plausible explanation. For you, it is easier to explain it by racism (insulting the Scottish along the way), and get done with it. Yet neither you nor me will get down to the core since it is only Chukovsky himself or the people who were deep in his counsels may offer the answer.

If you mean Eddie Murphy's Coming to America, I haven't seen it since I was a small child so I can't comment on what you heard. But, where would black Americans get racist ideas about Africa (or themselves) from? From white Americans.

So American blacks humiliating African blacks is racism? Wouldn't xenophobia be a better fit?

And speaking of racism in movies. I can name plenty of films where the main/super hero is white, as well as many movies (often the same) where the archvillain is white. I also can recall a fair number of movies where the good guy is black (Equalizer, Blade, Book of Eli, all of Dwayne Johnson movies - even the black Hercules seemed appropriate to the director), but somehow the archvillain can never be black (the only exception I can think of is Demolition Man). Isn't that racist?

You've taken the time to emphasize an individual victim's crimes, challenge the idea of the presence of racism in policing,

I never said it was absent, I was surprised at how the black cops can participate in it.

defend police outside the set of those in the act of committing egregious crimes,

Why should good policemen be punihsed if they didn't do anything worth condemnation?

deprioritize black lives in the context of those lives being at issue,

You have suggested Black Lives Matter Too so you depriotized black lives yourself putting them on par with other lives. Which I totally agree with.

and... plus some of the most far-fetched Soviet revisionism I've ever encountered.

You consider explaining official Soviet ideology revisionism? Way to go.

But you're recalcitrant toward the question of advancing racial equality in the US or elsewhere.

If you read my posts again you would definitely see my basic tenet: all people should get equal treatment and be equally punished for whatever crime they committed. If you call this recalcitrance... Carry on!

What does it all amount to?

Arbitrary assumptions, based on misinterpretations and subsequent witchhunt.

If only they had formed a collective council to issue dogma proclaiming the most promising strategy to orient the movement around satisfying the intuitions of the, uhhhh, racially-skeptical. Maybe they assumed people of good will could work it out independently.

To be branded racist as that NBA announcer and get ostracized?

I don't recall you criticizing Trump, but it is possible that I take issue with meritless, incorrect, or otherwise objectionable comments and don't take issue with comments that are not such.

You are right. I didn't criticize him. I mocked him. But since this seems to be the attitude of ALL the people on these boards no one batted an eyelid. That's how attitudes in social media work.

In telling you though that Ukraine is the manor of a Martian grandee populated by cow-human hybrids, I would be offending any number of perspectives at a staggering level.

Judging from the percentage of Zelensky's supporters I would have to agree to this. Ruefully.