http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/newsletters/n412.htm
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Craig Bodeker – A Conversation about Race
www.aconversationaboutrace.com
This 60 minute DVD is a timely addition in the ongoing dialogue of
civilization. Filmmaker Bodeker credits US Senator and Presidential
Candidate, Barack Obama, for giving him the impulse to explore the concept
race when, on 18 March 2008, Obama gave a speech in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, where he said: “Race is an issue we can no longer afford to
ignore….”
Bodeker interviews around 50 individuals in Denver, Colorado, to explore the
current conventional wisdom swirling around this concept of race and its
extension ‘racism’ and ‘racist’. He shows how there is a vague, subjective
non-concise definition operating within individuals who use the ‘hammer’ of
racism-racist against whites.
The following questions canvas the concept of racism/racist and the
responses elicited reveal how the concept race became a social construct, a
belief.
Q.1: Do you see racism in your daily life?
Q. 2: What is racism?
Q. 3: Can you give an example of the racism you see?
Q. 4: Are blacks better than whites at basketball?
Q. 5: Are whites better at things?
Q. 6: Why do white students score better than black students on standardized
tests?
Q. 7: Can you name a public figure who is a racist?
Q. 8: If people of colour intimidate white people is it racism?
Q. 9: Do blacks commit more crime than whites?
Q.10: Have you ever been a racist?
Q. 11: Was America a white nation?
Q. 12: Did Indians ever kill other Indians for their land?
Q. 13: Are white people becoming a minority in America?
Q. 14: How do you feel about immigration from Mexico?
Q. 15: Why do people disconnect?
Q. 16: Are races real or are they a social construct?
In his many asides Bodeker points out how unchallenged disconnects make up
the conventional wisdom on racism, which essentially boils down to white
bigotry. Blacks, Hispanics, Jews are all allowed advocacy without an ‘anti-‘
slipping in, while white advocacy is associated with supremacy. For example,
anti-white bigotry is writ large in commentary associated with the question
of testing; whites outperforming others is explained away by implying whites
cheat/cultural bias, but that Asians outperform whites is dismissed as
irrelevant. Hence, advocacy for blacks, Latinos, Jews, is permitted but not
for white people – why not?
Of course, I need to mention that for Holocaust Revisionists this kind of
nonsense – the word 'disconnect' is better here – is nothing new. Here the
shut-up words, as John Bryant called them, are used in an attempt to stifle
any meaningful discussion about the Jewish Holocaust-Shoah: hater, Holocaust
denier, antisemite, racist, Nazi, and the latest, terrorist.
Fredrick Töben
Adelaide
3 September 2008
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