I thought about the controversy around it for a while, particularly how white racists enjoy pretending that the white-washing of Black characters is 100% equal in every way to making white characters Black, and how they act like both scenarios are equally wrong. This cartoon explains my thoughts on that weak, gaslighting foolishness.
The first one is evil, while the second one is justice -- the righting of a wrong -- and is actually a light form of reparations.
Victor Burciaga - I'm not white and black washing makes me mad.
Ben Jones - I just wish people would quit with the racism stuff. As long as both sides promote it it will not go away.
Muhammad Rasheed - ???
Muhammad Rasheed - Do you really think racism is being "promoted" with these cartoons?
Muhammad Rasheed - I thought it was clear that I was 100% against racism.
Ben Jones - Promoted isn't the best word. I do think that taking jabs at people isn't really the way to open lines of communication.
Ben Jones - True racists won't be reached by your cartoons. All it will do is anger them.
Ben Jones - I could be wrong, but I know those people. I've seen how they react. They need a serious change of heart and I really can't recommend the best way to reach them, but this doesn't seem like it.
Muhammad Rasheed - That's what I want. To provoke their anger. The idea that I should instead coddle their feelings so they won't feel bad -- while they continue to oppress my people mind you -- will only maintain the status quo.
Muhammad Rasheed - When has anything ever changed for the better by coddling the bad guy's feelings, Ben?
Ben Jones - But butting heads with them will achieve the same. It's a sad fact.
Ben Jones - The race war hasn't gotten any better. Anger sure isn't helping.
Muhammad Rasheed - Can you think of any time period in history in which the oppressed class won their freedom by kissing the bad guy's butt?
Muhammad Rasheed - Even within the European historical record?
Ben Jones - Nope, but have you seen the problem getting better or worse in the last decade? People are getting madder and listening to each other even less. Why is that happening?
Muhammad Rasheed - The race war hasn't gotten any better because the oppressed class has been subjugated into silence so that the bad guys get their way unopposed.
Muhammad Rasheed - The problem has been stagnant since the civil rights era because the conversation abruptly halted.
Muhammad Rasheed - This enabled the bad guys to gain ground.
Ben Jones - Anger doesn't create useful commentary.
Ben Jones - How do you get both sides having a productive conversation?
Muhammad Rasheed - You admit to me that at no time in history, even among the centuries of European history, has an oppressed class ever won their freedom by coddling their oppressor, and yet here you are advising me to coddle my oppressor's feelings so they don't get mad about it.
Ben Jones - There's a difference in coddling and conversing. What's your solution? Civil War II?
Muhammad Rasheed - Speaking for my ethnic group, I've spent centuries being run over and exploited by these people, they have grown obscenely rich from their diabolical activities (while telling me I'm lazy mind), and you think I shouldn't be angry about it.
Muhammad Rasheed - Their anger is based on their entitlement. They believe they are entitled to a right to exploit me any time they want to. Naturally, I have zero respect for that faux-anger.
Muhammad Rasheed - The normal and natural bad feelings generated by centuries of horrible treatment is 100% part of the Candid & Courageous Conversation that needs to happen, Ben.
Ben Jones - Doesn't really matter what the anger is based on. As long as either side approaches the issue with anger in their heart then there will be no solution.
Muhammad Rasheed - I disagree completely. The anger is righteous, and to me it is due.
Muhammad Rasheed - Just as I am due compensation for the great wrongs done to me.
Ben Jones - Have you ever opened useful dialog with a racist with that approach and changed their mind in the process?
Muhammad Rasheed - To be honest, considering the nature of the offense in question, simply talking to this figure and somehow convincing him to give up trillions of dollars in wealth he exploited from me, never seemed realistic.
Muhammad Rasheed - Has he not proven that he will literally kill, steal & destroy for this massive wealth he's hoarded at my expense? Logic, reason and civilized discourse never seemed to be a true goal for him in any way.
Muhammad Rasheed - It seems to me, that what he wants to negotiate is for the educated middle class Blacks to accept a tiny little piece of the wealth he has amassed from his exploitation, and in exchange, for us to agree to allow him to continue to exploit the poorest Blacks so he can continue to grow that wealth. That's what he actually wants.
Naturally, this is 100% unacceptable for me, but I expect him to fight to the death to win that scenario, since he only cares about wealth.
Ben Jones - So we're just talking about Trump here? Yeah. I'm pretty sure neither of us will change his mind on pretty much anything.
Muhammad Rasheed - lol No, we're not just talking about Trump, Ben.
The figure we're talking about is a symbolic representative of a collective. The one that fought the bloodiest war in American history because he didn't want to give up his trillion dollar economic slave system. The one that repealed all the Reconstruction laws in fury when he saw the former slaves controlling their own lives in politics. The one that imposed jim crow laws, and terrorized the Black people with white supremacist guerrilla warfare. The one that used gerrymandering and redlining to exploit Blacks through the real estate game, which destroyed Black neighborhoods and plummeted them into perpetual poverty (while calling them lazy, of course). The one that unleashed the designer drugs into Black communities to feed Slavery 2.0 of the mass incarceration for-profit prison system (while blaming the Blacks for it).
THAT guy. You know him.
Muhammad Rasheed - You think that figure wants to actually have an empathetic heart-to-heart with me, when for centuries he's only ever seen me as prey?
Muhammad Rasheed - You know, during the height of slavery and jim crow's brutality, the word he used for my righteous anger was "uppity."
Muhammad Rasheed - As a slave, and as a 2nd class citizen -- legally -- I didn't rate the righteous anger of a full U.S. Citizen to him, you see.
Muhammad Rasheed - So telling me TODAY that I have no right to be angry at centuries of evil inflicted upon me, is to deny my manhood, my citizenship, and my humanity, Ben.
Muhammad Rasheed - His anger is false, and based on the spoiled, savage entitlement of the devil's imp.
Mine is the righteous anger of the wronged.
Ben Jones - And your solution is?
Ben Jones - Sounds like your solution is to be mad. And he'll be mad and everyone will be mad and we'll just keep what we've got now.
Muhammad Rasheed - No. I haven't been allowed to be mad, remember? People like you are always calming me down. lol MLK's "non-violent" tactics were used to sap my anger just in time for the assassinations and COINTELPRO plans of the enemy.
Muhammad Rasheed - You asked me "And your solution is?" because you know I am right about him. You know he will never willingly give up that wealth, nor the means to maintain it.
You KNOW that in the end, there will be only one solution, and my freedom will come at only one price.
Ben Jones - Is there any solution to your anger?
Muhammad Rasheed - Sure. Justice.
Muhammad Rasheed - Tell your pharaoh to let my people go, and pay us our Reparations.
Muhammad Rasheed - Do this and my anger will downgrade to merely the academic kind one feels abstractly from reading about distant historical lessons. Make the wrongs right, and what use will I have then for my anger?
Do this. Free me of these shackles, and free your soul, from the white man's tyranny, please. Thank you.
Muhammad Rasheed - If you do not, then I'll have to take it. The White Supremacist Age is drawing to its close. Aquarius is upon us, and it is time for new things. As an African-American, freedom will be new for me after half a millennium, and the laid up wealth of the wicked is my birthright, you know?
Ben Jones - In other words end racism and you won't be angry anymore. Well that's where we started. Open hearted conversation is the only thing that will affect the future of racism in our country.
Muhammad Rasheed - Define "open-hearted," Ben.
Muhammad Rasheed - I found a racist radio talking head named Rod Dreher about a month or so ago. He believes that racism is the sole fault of "Black resentments." He believes that if only Blacks would simply forgive racist attacks and just don't think about them, racism will be cured.
In other words, he wants us to stay in "our place," and accept our subjugated/exploited state as the natural order of things.
Ben Jones - But that's just stupid, right?
Racism is only a one sided problem is only one side is being racist.
Muhammad Rasheed – "Is that stupid"? I consider his comments to be no less than a declaration of war. If such filth were to assault my ears during this "open-hearted" dialogue you envision, there would be problems.
Muhammad Rasheed - What I expect for him to negotiate at such a dialogue is a limited reparations for the Black middle class in exchange for us to sacrifice the Black poor to his Slavery II sequel. That's what he wants IF he is forced to negotiate at all. Naturally he'll prefer to have his agents continue telling me not to be angry so he can duck ever needing to have that meeting. Only my anger, and the economic force at my command that such anger will wield, will finally get him to sit for that dialogue. Force is the only language he'll snap to over, and economic force more so than any other secular blade.
Ben Jones - If we do true Reparations as a country we will return this land to its original inhabitants, correct?
Muhammad Rasheed - I'm not interested in that. The First Nations may negotiate their own stuff. I'm only concerned with my own.
Muhammad Rasheed - The First Nations deserve their own space for the righting of their wrongs, not as a tack-on to mine.
Ben Jones - Racism man. Maybe it'll never go away.
Ben Jones - Gotta get some work done. Interesting debate. Have a good day guys.
Muhammad Rasheed - Have a wonderful day, Ben. And thank you.
Ben Jones - @Muhammad Rasheed… You do the same.
Mine is the righteous anger of the wronged.
Ben Jones - And your solution is?
Ben Jones - Sounds like your solution is to be mad. And he'll be mad and everyone will be mad and we'll just keep what we've got now.
Muhammad Rasheed - No. I haven't been allowed to be mad, remember? People like you are always calming me down. lol MLK's "non-violent" tactics were used to sap my anger just in time for the assassinations and COINTELPRO plans of the enemy.
Muhammad Rasheed - You asked me "And your solution is?" because you know I am right about him. You know he will never willingly give up that wealth, nor the means to maintain it.
You KNOW that in the end, there will be only one solution, and my freedom will come at only one price.
Ben Jones - Is there any solution to your anger?
Muhammad Rasheed - Sure. Justice.
Muhammad Rasheed - Tell your pharaoh to let my people go, and pay us our Reparations.
Muhammad Rasheed - Do this and my anger will downgrade to merely the academic kind one feels abstractly from reading about distant historical lessons. Make the wrongs right, and what use will I have then for my anger?
Do this. Free me of these shackles, and free your soul, from the white man's tyranny, please. Thank you.
Muhammad Rasheed - If you do not, then I'll have to take it. The White Supremacist Age is drawing to its close. Aquarius is upon us, and it is time for new things. As an African-American, freedom will be new for me after half a millennium, and the laid up wealth of the wicked is my birthright, you know?
Ben Jones - In other words end racism and you won't be angry anymore. Well that's where we started. Open hearted conversation is the only thing that will affect the future of racism in our country.
Muhammad Rasheed - Define "open-hearted," Ben.
Muhammad Rasheed - I found a racist radio talking head named Rod Dreher about a month or so ago. He believes that racism is the sole fault of "Black resentments." He believes that if only Blacks would simply forgive racist attacks and just don't think about them, racism will be cured.
In other words, he wants us to stay in "our place," and accept our subjugated/exploited state as the natural order of things.
Ben Jones - But that's just stupid, right?
Racism is only a one sided problem is only one side is being racist.
Muhammad Rasheed – "Is that stupid"? I consider his comments to be no less than a declaration of war. If such filth were to assault my ears during this "open-hearted" dialogue you envision, there would be problems.
Muhammad Rasheed - What I expect for him to negotiate at such a dialogue is a limited reparations for the Black middle class in exchange for us to sacrifice the Black poor to his Slavery II sequel. That's what he wants IF he is forced to negotiate at all. Naturally he'll prefer to have his agents continue telling me not to be angry so he can duck ever needing to have that meeting. Only my anger, and the economic force at my command that such anger will wield, will finally get him to sit for that dialogue. Force is the only language he'll snap to over, and economic force more so than any other secular blade.
Ben Jones - If we do true Reparations as a country we will return this land to its original inhabitants, correct?
Muhammad Rasheed - I'm not interested in that. The First Nations may negotiate their own stuff. I'm only concerned with my own.
Muhammad Rasheed - The First Nations deserve their own space for the righting of their wrongs, not as a tack-on to mine.
Ben Jones - Racism man. Maybe it'll never go away.
Ben Jones - Gotta get some work done. Interesting debate. Have a good day guys.
Muhammad Rasheed - Have a wonderful day, Ben. And thank you.
Ben Jones - @Muhammad Rasheed… You do the same.
I'm white and I absolutely agree. There are too few black people in media, and if blacks want their favorite characters to be black, fine what's my problem. There are MILLIONS of white characters to choose from, so please, please, don't make the FEW black characters white, and this goes for Asian and Mexican characters too.
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