Emmanuel Acho
Now I'm sure Emmanuel is a nice guy. He seems it. Soft spoken, educated, polite... his charity work is something he should be proud of. But he is woefully misinformed and preaching a message of hate wrapped in a candy coating. Though I'm sure he sincerely doesn't see it that way, bigots always think someone else is the problem.
I was forced to listen to this racist, bigoted diatribe at work in the name of corporate indoctrination 'for all'. But it wasn't for all, it was force-feeding a woke message (intersectional leftist screed) and telling us things that might be heartfelt, but just aren't true. There was no room for dissension or balance. Everyone who disagreed knows that if you disagree with the message of a false narrative or that the solution to racism is more racism and reparations, that you will be accused of being a racist that doesn't like diversity. The company needs more young, ignorant and woke employees than they need older, wiser, skeptical white guys who can think for themselves. So fuck me.
But let's go through his video and points:
Contents
Begging the Question
This whole video is about begging the question fallacy. "Let's assume I'm right, and I'm going to teach you". That's not logic, that's an appeal to emotion or authority. Let's not assume you're right, let's look at the facts and see if you're right: that's critical thinking. But also not welcomed.
He pretends that whites need to be educated on blackness, but never that blacks need to be educated on whiteness, or that there's a counter-point. Thus he gets to be the authority without listening, or understanding. I don't mind him trying to enlighten us to his point of view, but conversation is bidirectional... his dialog was patronizingly unidirectional. Mostly the fault of the format, but also the style.
Whites are the problem!
His premise: the white person is the problem (or his problem), so the white person has to be his solution. In other words, let's assume by nature of the color of your skin that blacks bear no responsibility for the failures of their community or individuals, and whites have all the guilt because of slavery.
Bzzt! Wrong! You first have to show that the problem are white based. He never does that. A few anecdotes that have to go back 75 years to find an example of racism, is not compelling. Emmet Till was falsely abused... but let's ignore that there have been dozens of murders of whites by blacks in just the last year because of BLM's rhetoric (that he's defending). If you want to understand a problem, show me that blacks are killed by whites, more often than whites are killed by blacks. The numbers belie that premise, and show the opposite is true. But it wasn't about meeting in the middle, it was about teaching gullible whites why they need to shut up and take it.
Why are you rioting?
He starts by using a MLK quote, "rioting is the language of the unheard", in order to rationalize/justify the violence. That is fundamentally dishonest. If you listen to King in context, he said that to denounce rioting, not excuse it. So that is a lie of omission (missing context).[1]
However, we've heard the blacks for 75 years. Just because you're heard doesn't mean you're right, or that you deserve the change you're demanding -- especially when you can't agree on what that is. Or you're demanding that blacks be held to a different standard than everyone else.
Most of the cries recently aren't about racial parity, but outrage that they were getting held to the same standards as a white would. Think of Rodney King and the riots there. Whites, Latinos and Asians in L.A. knew that if they had driven drunk, run from cops, assaulted them, gotten tased, gotten up and kept charging them, that they would have gotten the shit beaten out of them with batons too. Blacks are sure it was because of race, because everything is about race to them. But the informed know better. There are ≈10-20 unarmed blacks killed by cops / year for the last decade. There's more of that in Chicago on a bad week. How many were not violently resisting arrest at the time: the average is 1 per year. About the same number of latinos, and twice that number of Asians are killed. These are facts that are ignored.
So Acho's point is that peaceful protests didn't work, and so they need to demonstrate their rage through violence. Except that's wrong. He's denying that any progress has been made since the 1950's? Do you know how insulting that is of a premise? We have black CEO's, and top stars in Hollywood, and removed segregation, and mixed marriages are widely accepted, and so on. There's been huge progress made. So the claim that the lack of progress excuses the violence, is denying reality, and an insult to reality. So he excuses his side doing immoral acts based on the fraud that there's been no progress (nobody has listened or done anything) and that Blacks are as oppressed as ever.
Why do you think White Privilege Exists?
Hint: it doesn't. That's not to say that being black doesn't come with certain burdens, it does. But the same with being white, asian, latino. Most of our burdens in life are not around race -- they're around things like health, wealth, drive, physical looks and abilities (or disabilities), psychological issues, education, your friends and choices, and so on. On a day-to-day basis, way, way, way down the list, is "oh yeah, and what color are you".
White Privilege flips those realities on its head. You didn't have to think of race as much, so that why you were successful. Um, no. Plenty of blacks ignore those lower priorities of race, accept that there are assholes in the world, and succeed. Just like whites. The concept of white privilege denies that the Irish were ever oppressed, that the Persians weren't taken over by the Arabs. That the Jews were slaughtered by the Germans. There is no white identity -- there's a lot of white tribes that hate each other as much as many blacks hate whites for the imagined ease with which they live their lives without blaming everything on race.
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Whiteness can be weaponized
He tells the story of Amy Cooper, basically someone in Central Park that was walking her dog, and when a guy told her to leash it, she called the cops on him. "Black man is scaring me". He lies and says this was a "death sentence" for blacks... except that no black was harmed in that message. The cops didn't harass him, they went after her. The truth was they were both idiots, but she took a lot more grief than he did. Even in the best example that Acho can come up with, he misses that it demonstrates weaponized black privilege, and the flock of woketivists dogpiled on her for not being more sensitive and not the black man. Her life was more impacted than his was.
He goes on to bring up Emmet Till -- a horrible story of racism and the inaccuracies of street justice (lynchings) in 1955. Of course nearly half of lynchings were of white guys. And Acho's Parents weren't even a dirty thought when that happened -- and they came from Nigeria, Emmanuel has no coupling to the slavery experience that he's lecturing whites on. He has to go back 65 years (to before his Dad was born) to find an example of something like that? Do you know how many white guys have been killed for being white by black gangs since then? There have been dozens in the last couple years. I'm not saying blacks haven't taken shit for their race, but everyone has taken shit for it. The way he words it, he's ignoring the context and the other sides suffering, and pretending only blacks who descended from Slaves have suffered that kind of abuse (which he didn't), and that's called bigotry.
This happens all the time: a black guy assaults or kills a white guy, it may not be charged as a hate crime, even if he's calling our racial slurs or saying this is for George Floyd, etc. But if a white guy did that to a black, it would damn well be charged as a hate crime. Growing up, I worked in Watts one some. "Get Whitey" was much more of a threat to me there, as "get Blackey" was in any white neighborhood. There were fewer black neighborhoods than white ones, but pretending that only whiteness can be weaponized ignores the reality that something simple like a slur by Rosanne Barr against Valerie Jarrett, calling her ape-like, was suddenly a fireable offense because Valerie was 1/10th black (which Rosanne didn't even know).
So this guy is such an unconcious bigot that he doesn't even realize he's a bigot. That his examples showing race, and the ones he ignores that shows it cuts both ways, are completely one-sided (in his mind)... whereas in the real world, they are not.
"As a black guy, I sometimes wait not to scare neighbors at the mailbox". Yeah, so? Large white guys have to do that too sometimes, especially if they're muscled, dressed or look intimidating. I'm not that big, and I've done it. That he thinks this is only about race, shows his bigotry/biases.
How come blacks can use the N-word and whites can't?
He invents a long excuse that bears little resemblance to history. Not that his elements aren't in there, but it's only part of the story. It basically boils down to, "we don't like how we were treated 6 generations ago, and that word reminds us of it -- so we get to use it, and you don't". That's all an excuse -- because all cultures names remind them of the injustices of the past. Like the Irish never took shit from the Brits or the Americans. Or the Jews, Mormons, and so on. His excuse is our pain is worse than everyone else's, so fuck you.
In truth, every culture has had slurs. But the American Blacks want to punish the whites for things that their great great grandparents had happen to them... and ignore that whites great great grandparents died to free them. The only country on earth that had a civil war (on our scale) to free a minority group. And one of the major reason the majority of blacks were enslaved? Because other blacks captured them and sold them to slavers. So it's racist to imply that by nature of a skin color you're entitled to say a word, but others with a different color aren't. It's also delusional to think that all blacks have a shared experience because of that skin color, and all whites did not -- there's been a whole lot of race mixing going on, and slavery still exists today -- and white girls are at a premium in human trafficking.
White on black crime, versus black on black crime?
He creates a lie that when a black person commits a crime, they go to jail... but when a white person does, they may not even get charged. That's so amazingly racist and ignorant of the facts, that it makes you dumber to hear it or believe it.
There is more evidence of the opposite. There's so much more crime in poor neighborhoods (often black), and gang crimes, and the culture in the hood is "no snitchin'" -- that you're more likely to get away with a crime, and be sheltered by "the community" if you're black, than would ever fly in a white neighborhood. Claiming otherwise without being able to back it up, is called racism.
The same with he implies that intra-racial stuff is unimportant because it's common -- so the exceptions matter. Fine. Then why don't we remember that a white is like 5x more likely to be killed by a black, than the other way around. And because whites are more common in the population, it should be the other way. So if he cares about the inter-racial crimes because they're unusual -- then why doesn't he care about the bigger problem?
Instead of he changes the topic to, "I need my white friends to stop killing blacks". But he's not interested in fixing the bigger problem of blacks like himself killing whites?!?! As Biden would say, "C'mon man!" -- if you only care about the problem when it's directed at your race (and not by your race), then you're a racist.
Conclusion
His whole point is to assume that Systemic Racism is the biggest factor in ones life. He claims it's just that whiteness has given you a head start in life. Factually? That doesn't exist for many who are white. Just like his disadvantages at being descended from American Slavery doesn't exist (his parents are immigrants from Africa). There's more odds that his family helped the slave trade than most of mine, and more odds that some of mine fought against slavery than his, despite him being darker.
So his racist screed (as polite and erudite as it seems), is fundamentally dishonest, "I'm a bigger victim, look at me". It requires cherry picking facts to fit a false narrative: that the most significant thing people judge you on is color -- and not your demeanor, wealth, looks, health, abilities/disabilities, and other things that have a far, far, far bigger influence on how people judge you than just race. It basically says your suffering can never equal mine, because of the color of my skin -- despite the facts that his suffering is far lower than a very large number of poor whites, asians or latinos. If he buys his own bullshit, he's a self-deluded racist idiot. And if he doesn't, he's being dishonest. Either just irritates the heck out of me.... that anyone would give a spoiled Millionaire credit to whine "poor me", because of things he never suffered under, all because he thinks Black trumps all the other hardships in life, combined.
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