Race in America

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Queequeg
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Race in America

Post by Queequeg »

Seems a nuanced discussion of race while the fallout from Charlottesville is still settling is futile...

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/opin ... black.html

There are other videos in this series if you scroll down.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Yavana
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Re: Race in America

Post by Yavana »

Queequeg wrote:Seems a nuanced discussion of race while the fallout from Charlottesville is still settling is futile...

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/opin ... black.html

There are other videos in this series if you scroll down.
On the one hand, one can't admit the obvious when discussing race without some individuals from the minority classes jumping to conclusions about the agenda of the speaker and, on the other side, some individuals of the majority class proudly, figuratively, dragging out the tribal and family crests and bellowing about the greatness of the über-diaspora, founders of global civilization, carrying the world on their backs like Atlas only to be weighed down by the heaping chaff of inferiors like Waka Flocka and the mule of a man that is Daddy Yankee. (Westboro seems to have taken down their "godhates" website they created specifically for Daddy Yankee. Not sure why they would do this given the endless entertainment value it provided.)

I think we first have to begin with asserting the fact that differences, of any kind, are a social stressor, but then draw the line from there to the fact that being civilized means mollifying, tolerating, and even drawing dynamic energy from, the energy produced in that tension with the understanding that making use of such energy must be done in a coherent way. Part of our current problem is that multiculturalism doesn't provide that coherent use of energy. Really, culture is the level that such a directing force and ideology needs to exist on, and so maybe what we are failing to develop a kind of "meta-culture." The "SJW" phenomenon seems to be the result of our buggy prototype for this "meta-culture" and proof that it is based in logically incoherent ideology and mistaken premises. We need to collectively reassess some our core assumptions and examine our collective direction in order to secure respect and opportunities to pursue happiness for members of our human species within our global society and its respective cultural regions and legal districts.

Such a rexamination could lead to results such as Switzerland being set aside for ethnic Swiss, India being reserved for Hindus of pure Indian ancestry, China being flooded with immigrants from Central Africa, and various African countries working hard to discover and enable their best and brightest individuals as part of the task of undergoing economic development rather than just bleeding expats—which, I believe, is a project many African nations are already undertaking. Regardless, we have to consider new potential realities.

(PS: There's humor in the last paragraph. Somewhere.)
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Race in America

Post by Kim O'Hara »

:thumbsup:

Personally, I look forward to the day when race/ethnicity is so blurred by migration and intermarriage that it's a non-issue. No doubt we will still find ways to create divisions between "us" and "them" * but it would be great to get rid of this really obvious one asap.

:meditate:
Kim

* such as protestants and catholics in Northern Ireland a few decades ago, which was really about locals vs immigrants.
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Re: Race in America

Post by Strive »

it is sad to see racism still happening in usa. i hope ppl can learn how to luv each other one day

phpBB [video]
shaunc
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Re: Race in America

Post by shaunc »

Kim O'Hara wrote::thumbsup:

Personally, I look forward to the day when race/ethnicity is so blurred by migration and intermarriage that it's a non-issue. No doubt we will still find ways to create divisions between "us" and "them" * but it would be great to get rid of this really obvious one asap.

:meditate:
Kim

* such as protestants and catholics in Northern Ireland a few decades ago, which was really about locals vs immigrants.
Do you think that this Will ever happen. Obviously it's unlikely to happen in our lifetime, but do you reckon that it will ever happen.
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Re: Race in America

Post by Grigoris »

If we do not get over this notion of "self" and "other", we will never get over the notion of "us" and "them".
"My religion is not deceiving myself."
Jetsun Milarepa 1052-1135 CE

"Butchers, prostitutes, those guilty of the five most heinous crimes, outcasts, the underprivileged: all are utterly the substance of existence and nothing other than total bliss."
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Re: Race in America

Post by Fortyeightvows »

Grigoris wrote:If we do not get over this notion of "self" and "other", we will never get over the notion of "us" and "them".
wise words
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Race in America

Post by Kim O'Hara »

shaunc wrote:
Kim O'Hara wrote::thumbsup:

Personally, I look forward to the day when race/ethnicity is so blurred by migration and intermarriage that it's a non-issue. No doubt we will still find ways to create divisions between "us" and "them" * but it would be great to get rid of this really obvious one asap.

:meditate:
Kim

* such as protestants and catholics in Northern Ireland a few decades ago, which was really about locals vs immigrants.
Do you think that this Will ever happen. Obviously it's unlikely to happen in our lifetime, but do you reckon that it will ever happen.
If our civilisation continues on its present path (but manages to avoid any crashes due to climate change, war, etc) then I think it will happen. In some places it's already under way, without us even noticing.
Here in Australia, we used to divide ourselves into the Irish, the other "English" people (Scots were honorary English, whether they liked it or not :tongue: ), "natives" and others. That was only a hundred years ago. Fifty years ago, with post-war migration, the difference between Irish and English (and Catholic and Protestant) began to matter less, and the division was between them, on the one side, and "New Australians" (aka wops, dagoes, etc :rolleye: ) on the other. Then came the migrants from Turkey, Vietnam, ... Sudan, and all earlier arrivals have similarly blurred together.
It seems to take two generations.
Now ... we have floods of Africans into Europe, and Mexicans and other South Americans into the US. I can't see how it won't happen.

:coffee:
Kim
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Queequeg
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Re: Race in America

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I remember going to a reunion of a part of my family that lives in rural Southern Tier New York State - Binghamton is the closest city. It was and still is country. The n-word and racist jokes flowed... I went to another reunion of that part of the family a couple years ago and was surprised to find out that I have second and third cousins with brown skin and non-white partners/spouses. No more racist jokes... I've seen similar in other families where the old bigoted racists had to change their views because all of a sudden, their grandkids and nieces and nephews weren't white or married someone of the same sex...
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Re: Race in America

Post by Strive »

Queequeg wrote:I remember going to a reunion of a part of my family that lives in rural Southern Tier New York State - Binghamton is the closest city. It was and still is country. The n-word and racist jokes flowed... I went to another reunion of that part of the family a couple years ago and was surprised to find out that I have second and third cousins with brown skin and non-white partners/spouses. No more racist jokes... I've seen similar in other families where the old bigoted racists had to change their views because all of a sudden, their grandkids and nieces and nephews weren't white or married someone of the same sex...
more mixing the better man. my mom is a beautiful person n i love her dearly but she has always been saying to me to not marry outside my race. very old views alive in the family but i will do best to change them
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Re: Race in America

Post by Kim O'Hara »

Queequeg wrote:I remember going to a reunion of a part of my family that lives in rural Southern Tier New York State - Binghamton is the closest city. It was and still is country. The n-word and racist jokes flowed... I went to another reunion of that part of the family a couple years ago and was surprised to find out that I have second and third cousins with brown skin and non-white partners/spouses. No more racist jokes... I've seen similar in other families where the old bigoted racists had to change their views because all of a sudden, their grandkids and nieces and nephews weren't white or married someone of the same sex...
:twothumbsup:

That's the way it works, and it's great to know it's (still) working in the US.

:namaste:
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Re: Race in America

Post by kirtu »

Strive wrote:it is sad to see racism still happening in usa. i hope ppl can learn how to luv each other one day

phpBB [video]
Good ad! Although I've never seen such a thing in NYC. The sentiment expressed can be independent of racism. In DC I was told more than once to stop speaking one of my languages because only English should be spoken, etc. (in America's compulsive race identity insanity I would be taken for "white"). I then told them that the United States has no official language. One of them was a former boss (and it was in a government building where I was employed but the person I was speaking with and I were not discussing US government business - which I have also seen conducted between Americans in languages other than English).

Americans are often English-only oriented. But NYC is more an English as a common communicative medium kind of place.

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Re: Race in America

Post by Fortyeightvows »

how long before the tibetan people are indistinguishable from the han?
Will we celebrate that too?
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Re: Race in America

Post by Kim O'Hara »

Fortyeightvows wrote:how long before the tibetan people are indistinguishable from the han?
Will we celebrate that too?
And the Manx from the English, the French from the Spanish, the Germans from the Dutch?
Yes, we will lose a lot of good things as well as bad ones.
But the mixing is inevitable, given good transport, unless Trump-style walls are built everywhere - and we wouldn't want that, would we?

:namaste:
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Re: Race in America

Post by Fortyeightvows »

as buddhists we know of impermanence and that change is inevitable...it's the second sort of suffering because it can often be painful
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Re: Race in America

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Fortyeightvows wrote:how long before the tibetan people are indistinguishable from the han?
Will we celebrate that too?

You are conflating ethnicity and culture, they are related, but the difference matters a lot here. Ethnically, I'm sure Tibetans have already been mixing it up with the Han here and there since time immemorial...

Disappearance of culture has little to do with being able to live together amicably.

Hell, gentrification, neoliberal economics, imperialism, and capitalism play a way larger role in that vein - the disappearance of cultures - than racial tolerance or diversity could ever play.

This nonsense of blaming "multiculturalism" or mixing for the disappearance of culture is just that, imperialism (economic and military) and economic "progress" have a whole hell of a lot more to do with the disappearance of traditional cultures than those cultures dwelling in the same place and getting along ok - which has been going on since the beginning of human history.
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Re: Race in America

Post by Yavana »

Johnny Dangerous wrote: Hell, gentrification, neoliberal economics, imperialism, and capitalism play a way larger role in that vein - the disappearance of cultures - than racial tolerance or diversity could ever play.

This nonsense of blaming "multiculturalism" or mixing for the disappearance of culture is just that, imperialism (economic and military) and economic "progress" have a whole hell of a lot more to do with the disappearance of traditional cultures than those cultures dwelling in the same place and getting along ok - which has been going on since the beginning of human history.
The communist Chinese military invading Tibet had much more to do with putting Tibetan culture in its current precarious predicament than anything you've listed here.

The problem for Tibet is, quite literally, (rather than hyperbolically,) commies.
Fortyeightvows wrote:how long before the tibetan people are indistinguishable from the han?
Will we celebrate that too?
Change is inevitable, that's for sure. How we deal with change is crucial. For instance, if the human body were as robust and adaptable as many microscopic organisms, though we can never attain immortality, we could attain amortality and live indefinitely—even eons—just like that microscopic life does. Just imagine.

My understanding is that there are small Tibetan communities around the world who preserve their culture and tradition to the best if their ability and who stay in contact via modern communication. I wonder if Tibetan diaspora have large families.
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Race in America

Post by Kim O'Hara »

I just came across census figures on ethnicity in Australia - and even I was surprised. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected] ... Article~20
There are some comparisons with the US, Canada and other countries, too.

:coffee:
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Re: Race in America

Post by Johnny Dangerous »

No one in their right mind has considered China anything but capitalist for a long time...this is pretty much common sense.

It differs a little from our model of capitalism, but it's hard to see how it's communist these days in anything but name, and that is true regardless of whether you are a dyed in the wool pinko like me or a right wing whatever.

Anyway, there is no disputing that advanced capitalism is hugely disruptive and destructive of traditional cultures, all one needs to do is look around to see that.
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Re: Race in America

Post by CedarTree »

I think one of the sad things in America right now is there is such a focus on Islamic terrorism and ISIS (Justifiably so), yet there doesn't seem to be as high an understanding that the KKK is the historic domestic terrorist group of the United States of America.

Modern versions of this are the Neo-Nazis and all the other variants.

I think sometimes some Americans don't realize the extent of poverty, alienation, exploitation, and what being a minority in any form (race, ethnicity, socio-economic, etc.) does to the psyche of an individual/group.

In North America there are visible minority groups like African Americans, Latinos, Etc. and so sometimes the ills of society get acquainted with these groups because they seem to be the ones most affected by these ravages.

However in Europe were in certain countries we may only have one or two people (All of which are white) you see these same realities but the association isn't done with race because they are the same race, ethnicity, and sometimes family as yourself. Instead it is because you know they are from the rough side of town.

I have a lot of hope though. America has in many ways been a leader in the world in many areas (historically anyway) and I have met incredible Americans, especially American Buddhists.

If voices of reason, depth, intelligence, and kindness can begin to be heard again and really influence the stage of discussion, debate, and development I think we will get a lot more reason, pragmatism, virtue, and kindness, development happening again.

:heart:

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