Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

After all these conversations below, now you go and quote a song from the movie Song of the South?

Sheesh...you just like poking folks with sticks, don'tcha? ;)
 

Some people just ask for it! :-)

You know that he-needed-killin' law you hear about as a viable defense in these parts? There's an online bloggy corrolary: the he-needed-poked-with-a-stick axiom.
 

Rudy...goodn to hear bout your wonderful day...but mine aint gotn off so good... turnips, chickens, jerky from the smokehouse, my wild tobaccy & my boot derringer, all amissin. Only one explanatory...that thievin bastard, bigfoot!! And trust me, aint nothin like a 7 ft 400 lb. hairy feller runnin round with bad gas, a wild tobaccy buzz, & a itchy trigger finger...well, cept for ex-ms loney #3's paw at our weddin, but leastin he had on pants some of the time. Well, Ima go hide out 'hind the mercantile & wait for him to come to buy some more bullets (& some rolaids).
 

D'you reckon Bigfoot and the Boggy Crick Monster are cousins, or one and the same?!
 

Somewhere over the rainbow
blue birds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can't I?
If happy little bluebirds fly
beyond the rainbow
Why oh why can't I?
 

We're offended!
 

Grow up.
 

They prefer to be called "little people."

And telling them to grow up is just insensitive.
 

Gasp! Insensitive slob!
 

Bait set out, taken, hook set.

Hey, Feodor, once I get another cup of coffee in me, I've got a couple questions for you over at my blog. They are non-snarky, and somewhat serious, so I'd invite you over there, since you seem to have some sort of issue with me (not ER or Alan or anyone else).

I hope you have a rag on your shoulder, dude, cause Mr. Bluebird has a tendency to poop.
 

Poke them again ER, poke them again.

"Song of the South", one of the travesties of the over-bending by the isolated urban angry black-power male chauvinist separatists in the 1960s was the attack on the African/Creole folk stories and dialect that the Disney "Song of the South" pretty much accurately represented.

It was basically a black on black crime abetted by knee jerk white liberals. The Creole community in the South not only allowed the black African stories to flourish but embraced them and included them in their over all culture.

The Uncle Remus stories where told in the black vernacular so of course they were racist, except that the black vernacular was a legitimate form of English. But somehow the black power movement wanted to reject all those "Uncle" things and jump all the way back to an mythical and idealistic "Africa", that in and of itself was about as real as a Disneyland attraction.

The strongest Creole cultures were along the Mississippi River. Ber Rabbit was alive and well there for 400 years.

All of the characters in the "Song of the South" occurred in one form or another on every Creole plantation across the South. Look up the Laura Plantation on the web and read about the folk tales from there.

So urban out of touch blacks said Uncle Remus is racist and "poof"!!!!! away goes 400 years of folk tales told by blacks to blacks about blacks and more importantly about whites. POOF!!!! Gone.

Ah, Black politics, God help the white man that's fool enough to stick his, uh er ..nose in there.
 

Amen, and thanks DrLobo. You're the only grownup here when it comes to race stuff.
 

The grownups are blaming "urban out of touch blacks"?

There's a new one from the Southern white man.

How about this as a suggestion: white racists were mining black vernacular culture and manipulating shallow presentations of them in order to spread racist stereotypes. So black leaders naturally wanted to quiet the source material and build a new popular image of the black militant.

Instead of black on black crime abetted by knee jerk white liberals, how about a strategic move - with unintended consequences - as the strongest reaction they could think of in the face of virulent white racism

Does that carry any water?

Nah, 'cause ER says blogs can't be that smart. "As a communication venue, a blog is useful but severely limited. It's one-dimensional. It's foolish to draw any broad conclusions about anyone on such slim pickin's."

Allow me to be the fool and say I hear vestigial redneck rationale here that aint pretty.

I think sometimes we don't hear ourselves still saying "nigger" when we say black man. But we do sometimes, especially when we are inexplicably not thinking very much.

We white peopel are always better when we think harder. It's because we have good intentions. But we have ingrained inherited tendencies, and, boy, do they show up here.

Arrogance is pointing that out without enough sensitivity. Foolhardiness is to keep doing it.

ER, I'm admit my guilt.

I'm a Yankee. Shoot me.
 

I heard a talk once at a conference about how the internet can transmit "packets of healing energy." I have absolutely no idea how that paper got accepted, but of course we all were dubious about the ability of a stream of electrons to carry such information. (I asked about the TCP/IP protocols for these healing packets, but didn't really get much of an answer.)

Anyway, perhaps the authors were more right than I gave them credit for, because here's Feodor claiming to read people's minds via a few blog comments. (And the conclusions he comes to are interesting, to say the least.)

I still wonder about the TCP/IP protocols for magical packets of mind-reading energy, but I'll have to ask my I.T.-guy husband about that one.

I'll also have to re-read that paper now that I have more proof in the magic of the internets.

Happy Holidays!!
 

What? Do you think that by quoting my words back at me you're demonstrating something profound?

Blogs are limited by definition if they are anonymous, as this one is. You don't know anything about me other than what I choose to reveal at any particular time. Nor do I you!

That's especially important to keep in kind on potentially explosive topics. Everybody has an opinion and a belly button. But without knowing the credentials, academic and otherwise, and experience one brings to a given topic, you have no way of knowing anything at all about the legitimacy of someone else's perspective. Blogs not being "smart" has nothning to do with it.

Dude, it's time for you to start your own blog. One, you have more things to say than can fit into other people's blog posts, and two, you need to learn first-hand what it's like to be misunderstgood despite your best intentions.

And I love Yankees. My kid is fixing to marry one. Arrogant pricks, not so much.
 

Rudy if you aint mindin, allow me to reverbalize a compilation from y'days contemplationals w/some moderflocations...the add ons can jus' be lagniappe:

An early morning visit to the wild celery patch has got me feelin all fellersophical.

Judging from some cantankerinesh & contendalism being evokated from particular posterizers(draw your own concludintions), I thunk of this here analogical to maybe assist some in perspectivating.

'member when sheriff Lobo got deputy Perkins to guard up the lake that had the record sized bass in it...& not long after, deputy Perkins shot the bass? Well, deputy Perkins didnt shoot the bass cause he didnt like fish or cause he wuz hungry...he shot it cause he wuz a dumb-ass... and you sorta spect dumbasses to do that sorta thing, cause its in they nature.

So, you can spect jackasses to say jackassish stuff, dipshits to say dipshittish stuff, & a-holes to say stuff bout people bein ignorant how they race is makin others fear'em, & how being ignorant of that ignorance jus' shows how ignorant they are, cause thats jus' what a-holes do(again & again & again & ...)

So when he, I mean they, do, jus' member why it wuz deputy Perkins shot that bass & know its jus' its nature.

And BTW, I aint white or brown, & the Loney ('people') clan gots some artifactuals & soovieneers that aint got no historical signifiers cept for resentin, braggin & jus' plain meanness...so I aint much shockified by lil' blankets & pictures & folky songs, & I aint carin a whole lot bout the fragile perceptials of those thats pussyfied to the point that theys gotta preach 'bout how their abstract inner-dumbass judge/jury worldview has done gottem more enlightened than everbody else. People liken to that is why most wanna get hammered when theys gather for the hollerdays, causin theyd rather vomit from overdrankin than from havin their cerebrals overloaded with pisspoor, guiltmongerin'- mycrapdontstinkbutyoursdoes- condemnateral-jawjackin from a blowhardy with word diarrhea.

Happy hollerdays again!

& sidethinkin, if BJ McKay had them 7 lady truckers follerin'em all the time, why you reckon he had him a monkey?
 

And Rudy, in what I reckon is a snort of good news...bigfoot done left a dead emu on the front porch 'smornin...it wuz one of ol' man Perkins mankillers...I'm figurin that he's tellin me that if I'sa tolerate his thievin that he'a be protectin us round here from them bloodthirsty pseudo-owstriches, sorta like a Loney Mountain Mafia, cept it aint Italians, though he does seem to like guns & cussin... & to answer yore question bout BF and the boggycreek feller, I'm reckonin that theys jus' kin, cause las' spring BF stole my duck waders jus' so'n he wont get his feet wet when the meltin runoff started... he seems real particuler bout gettin his feet wet or muddy, so he aint much on boggy or creeks
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

So much - for weeks now - about how I'm wrong.

Nothing as to whether I'm wrong.

Looney's mad because I took a shot at Brittany Spears. Southern manhood comes to rescue trailer trash. Plenty of songbook history there that I know he could astound with an encyclopedic knowledge thereof.
 

We're offended!!

Anyway, it's a double-wide.
 

Feodor, I don't think yer wrong in yer opinions. I think yer wrong to judge anybody so throughly based on some blog comments.

Also, above: Strike "arrogant," insert "sanctimonious." My bad.

Also, Jesus died for trailer trash. All colors. ... Fact is, Jesus *was* trailer trash. Watchr yer mouth.
 

Now, now, feet-oder...aint nobody attribunated anything to you...jus' generalizationals... hell, Confusee hisself woulda been proverbinatin 'bout sheriff lobo & deputy perkins if he'da had a tv-set... now if yous feelin that youre wrong, thats tween you & god, but I aint thinkin nobodys gonna hold your confessional against you; I for one think its mighty big of you to admit your wrongdoins...& aint nobody soundin mad but you, but I figures you'a be feelin better now since you done did yore repentin...who knows, you might even get cured of yore redneck/hillbilly phobias & prejudicinations.

An I aint knowin what you talkin bout for as trailor trash & britney spears, 'ceptin maybe I mighta scrolled by their referrals in one of yore 10 page word-diarrhea manifestals...& btw, I usually gotta have dinner bought for me fore the manhood gets talked 'bout... & for as encyclepedies, I'm hopin' you aint gonna publish another one in your backtalkinals. 'member, less is more

happy hollerdays!!
 

Trailer trash is what one does with one's life not where one lives.

My prick is not sanctimonious, but it is arrogant.

I say, "we white people are always better when we think harder," and that is sanctimonious arrogance, but "prick," is what?

And Dr. Spam uses (under the cover of tiresome routine) "jackass" "dumbass" "asshole."

Who says "urban out of touch blacks" (uppity nigger by another name) and that is opinion?

You say, "I think yer wrong to judge anybody so throughly based on some blog comments," and then do a lovely word replacement in order to be more precise about judgments made on blog comments.

ER, do you hear out of Both ears? Or, like me, is one more deef?

That's right, I'm calling you a one-good-ear only deaf man who doesn't hear "nigger" very well, especially when it is being whispered all over your blog.

Now which part of that sentence are you going to take issue with and exactly with what clarity will you argue your case?

If history is a better judge than me, the answer seems clear.
 

Someone needs a time out.
 

A nap at least. LOL
 

I'l be here when you wake up.
 

Feodor,

That should read jack***, dumb***, & ***hole...my apologies...I'm policin up my typicals case'n the lil'uns is readin the webbernet... yore repentin is done already bearin fruit, seein' hows I'm mendin up my ways, as my heart cockels was warmed up by yore recantationals...I aint got no trailor, but if I did, I'd be pickin up all the trash 'round it.

Now, I suggest you change'n yore typicals to n***er, case'n brown people is readin, r**necks, case'n ER is readin, wh**e t**sh case'n any wh**e t**sh is readin, & Br***ey S***rs case'n shes...course I aint sure'f she can read, so dont bother on that one. I aint seen nothin bein mean twards my clan, but I'll keepa eye out.

I sorta like gettin called Dr. Spam, beins that makes about 80% of my daily culinarilies...once again your new leaf turnin as evidenced by yore personalized endearmental term has me all sentimentalized ...I would cry if my tear ducts wuznt seared shut by a tragic crocky-pot accident.

happy hollerdays feodor!
 

Dr mincemeat,

Lest you think I am too removed from my redneck heritage, I'll say that the rednecks I respect are the ones who, when they go to the outhouse, finally sh** instead of just always passing gas.
 

Sadly, Feodor refuses to listen. Nor does he hear very well. "Whispering nigger all over your blog"? Dismissing Britney Spears as "trailer trash"? Wow. What you give with one hand - let us be ultrasensitive to what we think are the sensibilities of minorities - turns in to slapping around a young woman who, in all likelihood, suffers from a multitude of mental issues, not least of which is getting thrust in to the glare of the spotlight at far too young an age. While I am no fan of her "music", I am certainly sympathetic to her sufferings as a human being. As far as the "trailer trash" comment goes, it seems that Feodor just doesn't quite understand that shouting one insult is quite as bad as whispering another, regardless of the target.

Again, I feel like I'm dealing with Marshall Art here. Dude - lighten up.

Dr. Bill is a glorious addition to ER's growing community of commenters; I'm just glad he is both smarter and tougher than some others, and can deal with your somewhat childish retorts.

BTW, Dr. Bill, how were the emu steaks provided by your big hairy friend? I've had ostrich and it was kind of tough, so just curious.
 

feodor-- dr. mincemeat? outhouse, sh**, & gas? you musta learned that type'a tongue lashin when you wuz on the Yell debater team, huh? Sadly we didnt have a debate team at Mexico City Community College Online Medical School. Now, I'll overlook such salty verbiosity since'n you done already repented of your wrongdoins, and yous probably jus' doin a lil' backslidin--jus take it day by day man...an Im figurin you got yoreself removed from yore redneck heritage cuz they kept beatin the hell outta you...however, us Loneys are a peaceful clan, & usually settle our differentials over a spirited battle of Leap-Frog

Geoffrey-- Loney Mountain mannerisms requires than any bigfoot-kilt livestock/poultry/kinfolk be returnt to the owners or closest kin. Ol' man perkins was awful sore, but he still gave me the feet, which is my flavorite part anyways. And BF aint really a friend...more like a hairy-er & better mannered Tony Sopraner
 

Feodor, I reckon we're just gonna be fightin' kin then. Fightin' -- but kin. And you really do come from redneck stock, you know that kin is thicker'n religion. Or whisky. Or the ink on marriage certificates and such. :-)

But come on. If you can see "nigger" where it don't exist, then you can name-call whether you think you are or not. But you have, all plain like.

Dr. Bill, this made me blow cigar smoke out'n one end and hot cider out t'other! "Im figurin you got yoreself removed from yore redneck heritage cuz they kept beatin the hell outta you."
 

Speakin' as the lone dadgum liberal of any stripe among my fambly of origin, I mean I get that.
 

I am not at all surprised that GKS has more time for Ms. Spears than city black folks being called uppity.

One really doesn't have to pretend to be a mind reader to see moral scotopia.
 

Rudy--speakin as the one dadgum feller in my tribe with a tail, I 2nd that emotion

Feodor, that moral scotopia dont just wash off now, so you better start usin some protection...trust me, Im a docter
 

One more thing Rudy...it aint none'a my business which ends the cider and smoke came out of...but be careful bout doin that too much...trust me, Ima docter.
 

Once again, Feodor, you aim carefully, yet somehow shoot yourself in the ass. Who says I have "more time"? Who said anything about uppity? God, you pretentious dork, you have no clue how insulting you are. Isn't at least possible in your universe to have concern for both? Isn't it possible for my concern to be equal, or at least relative to the circumstances of each.

You hear and read far too much racism for my taste. Again, dial it down a notch, man. You really, really don't get me at all, and every time you try, you just make an ass out of yourself.
 

Drlobojo, who almost always has something rather balanced and nuanced to say, brings up black vernacular pertinent to the post.

But he stops one step too short while still going beyond most. He says, "So urban out of touch blacks said Uncle Remus is racist and 'poof'!!!!! away goes 400 years of folk tales told by blacks to blacks about blacks and more importantly about whites. POOF!!!! Gone."

What is left unsaid is:

1. why were black militants in the position of denying the black vernacular (and denying MLK as well, for that matter but lobojo wouldn't claim that black men assassinated him)?

2. why was black vernacular an issue and who made it thus?

3 why the use of 'urban out of touch blacks," "black power movement," and then, with a capital "Black politics." You guys claim to be into memes, what are the memes here? Any clear honest suggestions?

4 who has set about reclaiming black vernacular in ways that aren't just art appreciation, archeological interests? To whom do slave quilts, Remus stories, creole and gullah culture mean life and death? Walk through a black vernacular exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum and observe the reactions. Life and death seen clearly on the faces of black folks with ties to the South (which means 90%). It's like going to a major exhibit of Byzantine Icons - why are these short, swarthy people genuflecting and praying? Life and death are in those quilts, in those icons. Life and death of family. Her family, his family, their grandfather escaping from Smyrna/Izmir without grandmother.

Are we really grown up to agree with blaming blacks, any blacks for the racist ways in which Remus was used? Is that where the blame lies?

If we think so, we are whispering "nigger," "uppity nigger" at that, when we presume to believe that the forces of racism that warp all of us, black, yellow, white, red are found at a source anywhere but with white hegemony.

Until the good white people can stand each other and clearly nod without guilt, without obfuscation, without shouting down the psychologically threatening awareness of our constant elisions, until then, St. Nick will wear the white beard as insignia that he is a stand in for a blue eyed Jesus, trailer trash though he may be.
 

We are all Huckleberry Finn and we're only half way along the journey with our inner, and outer, Jims.

Though GKS claims that he isn't even on the river. "Never seen a river. I don't really know if rivers exist."
 

Re, "then, with a capital "Black politics."

We agree. Gratuitous capitalization is rampant.

I'll let DrLobo decide whether to get down in this muck with ya, Feodor, but he has credentials and scars on race relations out his white ass. Which you couldn't possibly know. Which is why, again yer makin' one out'n yerself -- 'cause of garden-variety what-you-don't-know-you-don't know.
 

ER, you misunderstand.

Drlobojo supplies only the most artifactual example of where the rest of us are. That he does so is because he sees pretty far down the road. When you are 90% good, the 10% sticks out.

But when you said "grown up," you supplied the conscious cheerleading to the less than conscious elision.

Our 60% good makes a mirage of the other 40%. There is so much of it, it all blurs.
 

Do what?
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

Thank you.

If he stumbled (which is up to him to discern), it might be because of his own battle scars. Like my great-grandpa, the rebel; he was crippled in hand-to-hand (hip broken by being whipped with the breach of a rifle, his pension records say).

If I stumbled (which is up to me to discern), it might be because somebody's been ridin' my own ass until I'm limpin' a little myself.

OTOH, you might be sufferin' from your own brand of odd racism. Self-loathe much?

Don't know what I'm gonna do with you, Feodor.
 

Stop flirting with me, Feodor.

Seriously, you keep calling me racist on absolutely zero evidence, other than the fact that, as a white man in a society permeated by white supremacy, I suffer from the ailment. What possible evidence have you elided to conclude that I am some sort of bigot? I daresay "none" because none exists.

Please stop, or I really am going to have to get medieval on your ass.
 

I don't know why Feodor took this comment down. It was clear. So, I'm puttin' it back up.


Feodor said:

"Drlobojo missed a step because he is trying hard.

"The rest of us, following behind, are missing steps because we aren't trying hard enough. You cheered him on and tripped.

"If we study his mistakes, we might learn something."


And, speakin' of learnin' somethin' Feodor learnt me the word "elision." Not sure he's usin' it right, tho.
 

Sorry, I am rushing and being vague.

Drlobojo is digging a little bit in the history of black critical thought. He is pointing out the weaknesses of various schools of black thought: the black power movement, nascent black anthropology and sociology as a generational shift from Negro thought in the same domains, etc.

What he fails to include is impact of the famous findings of Kenneth Clark (little black girls preferred white dolls) on the black academy. Alarm bells went off and the need to defend black children's self image from the deeply structured social acid of a white hegemony on black identity.

He posits that northern black urban know-it-alls - maybe an amalgam of black academe and the Stokely Carmichaels - stamped down the black vernacular out of a combination of prejudice against their less educated southerners (not doubt present as it is in most Americans) and a need to jettison everything that was not militant.

Where he makes his mistake is to infer a fantasied connection between himself and people like himself with southern black creole people against northern arrogant black leaders.

Southern black people knew then that, though northern blacks may judge them inappropriately, they would never be stabbed behind their backs or lynched on tress behind their shacks by Stokely. They could never, ever be sure of the white man who seemed to enjoy their oral stories.

Black academics and black militants had reasons born out of the black experience to move excessively in the direction set by a narrow ideology and the results of psychological experiments of the virus in black identity formation. It was anti-white power, never anti-southern. They worried that their southern brothers and sisters were too latent due to the greater power gap in the south.

Black people need white people to release them from their fear. That fear has different sociological structures in different parts of the country.

White people need black people to release them from their guilt. And ditto.

Drlobojo knows a lot and puts it into play. Is he to be "scolded" for coming up a little short by anachronistically, hyperbolically, and inappropriately applying "black on black crime"?

Yes. But at least he is in the pool trying to reach the other side. I see white people enjoying the lounge chairs from my place in the pool.

Except for Dr. Spam. He's in the bar chatting up the bartender.

And GKS, he's never seen a pool. He doesn't believe it exists. He hears "pool hall" and showed up at the wrong place.
 

I am using it in the expanded way we used it to criticize philosophical or theological systems that had

1. fault lines of missing connections, or

2 implied conceptions that were not acknowledged, or, most pertinent and damaging,

3 contradictory conceptions very much present but unacknowledged.

Elisions of thought.

And BTW, IMHO to all the above. Before someone says that I'm trying to read minds or give myself the name of Heracles.
 

I've been accused of racism -- bizarrely -- because as an editor I've gone out of my way to get black people in the news. I go out of my way because I have to go out of my way. Because the ways I routinely go are all white. Does that make sense?

Same with teh gays.

Don't tell me I'm not in the pool. Not that you did. Just don't. Unless you want to be In. Cor. Rect.
 

But here directly, I'm fixin' to bne in a burger joint with my Bird, and her YB, and Dr. ER and one of her friends.

Y'all mop up the blood when yer done, 'K?
 

First rivers, now pools.

Seriously, Feodor, help out this poor benighted fellow and tell me just what the hell you're talking about.
 

Ass riding is over. The babe is making movements to get head down.

Except to ask why GKS speaks in old video quotes? He likes playing in black face, I think.

In Connecticut, there is the phenomenon of white teenagers calling each other "whigger." I can see GKS delighting to join in.
 

You are trying my patience, boy-o. Make it clear, make it plain. If you think I'm a bigot, please just say, "I think you're a bigot."

It will only prove, once again, how seriously arrogant, stupid, misguided, etc. you are on zero evidence whatsoever. Since, however, he has been my judge and jury, and my testimony if our of bounds, all I will say in my own defense is that I certainly have neither the need nor the desire to try and prove him wrong. Indeed, I don't have to prove anything to someone as big an arrogant doofus as he continues to show himself to be.

You see, Feodor, you are showing that ignorance isn't bliss. It's just ignorance. Knowing nothing about me is proving dangerous.
 

Re, "there is the phenomenon of white teenagers calling each other "whigger."

I call myself a "Friendian" sometimes, for "friend of Indians."

And, y'all, let's all play nicer. Please.
 

GKS,

I don't think you're a bigot.

As far as I know, I think you are a good white man who wants to be and probably is a friend to the black man, among others.

But of course my opinion means nothing either way.

Melodrama to say that you own your heart, you own your rhetoric, you own the "self" you put on the internet.

The problem is that these things we own we do not entirely control. There is a greater or lesser remainder that gets out of our mastery and is there for others to see.

All of us know that and have an array of methods to try to cloak what goes out from us but without our approval.
 

Uh oh. The ERs are watchin' "White Christmas" on ABC Family! We're gonna be in troooouubbbble!
 

Feodor--allow me to vacate for the moment my 'tiring routine'...
my nomadic 'clan' settled in the Neutral Strip in SW La. shortly after the civil war. They were an amalgamation of several 'peoples' that were either fleeing from authorities for crimes real & imagined or from a war whose outcome would be of little benefit to them. By this time they had shed 'native' attire for overalls & suspended britches. Sadly, what they lacked in cultural unity & tradition was replaced by a penchant for killing & stealing. Atrocities were frequent & reciprocal. After a couple of decades, what was left of our clan either intermarried with the locals or found a less violent locale. When the Neutral Strip was no longer neutral, understandably there was no great outcry to give bushwhackers any acreage. My closest ancestors went north to 'Loney Mountain' though I have a host of relatives that remain right there where the Neutral Strip once was. We are well aware of who we are and what we were.

I understand your passionate pleas for white people's reflection & renewed efforts to facilitate the healing of racial divides. Parsing blogger comments with the intent of personal proscription isn't going to hasten such.

I keep my hair short to avoid tonto comments & dont blink when referred to as a Mexican. I've never complained about paying taxes or paying for healthcare, and didn't go along with others in the clan for assignment & the accompanying benefits. My brown & white neighbors & friends don't fear me nor I them. We all fight our own battles & demons every day & I've never imagined that 3rd party browbeating or stereotyping to be of any assistance towards success. I'm 2nd class in a 2nd class, and I do not need any other person to free or release me from anything. I have no resentment toward any other color and carry no guilt for the blood my clan shed. I am owed nothing but gladly pay what I owe everyday...respect, kindness, assistance, and responsible citizenship. I gather that most who frequent here do just that. I humbly suggest that you respond in kind and cease causing strife by your constant psychoanalysis of every utterance...trust me, Im Bill Loney, & Ima docter...and Rudy is my friendian, & I aint talkin no more bout my family tree, specially when theys bigger turnips to pick...like, did yall know that the lil' date on the milk jug aint jus' a suggestion?

And Feodor, you really outta get that moral scotopia taken care of...I could write you up a subscription for amoxicillin & gettit cleared up purty fast; trust me, Ima docter...and yore right, if yousa give me directories to that swimmin pool, I'll go to courtin with the barkeep, beins that shes got less facial hair than me.
 

With due respect to Feodor, after thinking at work last night over some of your comments, I understand, I think, a little better what it was you were trying to say. While still offensive, it is so in a different way, because it is still presumptuous, still arrogant, and still condescending. It is also, of course, still wrong.

You honestly think I am not aware of the independence of words once they leave? You honestly believe that I am so callous towards those who still are considered less than full members of our society that I casually, and as you say of drlobojo, with a whisper, refer to them in racist tones?

Having made my peace with the demon of race-hatred - which I have written about at length and in all honesty - I do not feel I need to wear it on my sleeve that I am not like those "other" white folks. The first priority any of us have, as individuals, is to treat other individuals as just that - with all the dignity they deserve as individuals. To assume some righteous stance at all times is as demeaning as a racist attitude. Respect includes allowing others - all others - to be different without assuming that difference is a detriment.

I am still a little puzzled over your taunt because I managed to express compassion for an individual you dismissed as "trailer trash" and also for "urban blacks" . While the latter may not need my compassion, nor even my understanding, so much as that I allow them the freedom to not be so labeled, but to be who they are free from categorization.

Had you spent just a bit more time, and been a bit more attentive, to some of the things I have written and said, here, there, and elsewhere, one thing you need to know about my approach to life is that I reject all dichotomies. There is no "either/or" in life; there is no "either/or" in God's call for us to love and serve the world. When St. Paul wrote that Christ came to free us for freedom's sake, I believe he meant exactly that. For that reason, to turn around and allow oneself to be bound by some obligation, no matter how noble, or even just and right, is to fall back in to the trap of slavery to sin.

Since you are relatively new, you might be surprised to learn that, the first time ER mentioned his affinity for the Confederate Battle Flag, I was just as adamant in my opposition to it, and for many of the same reasons, as you have been. The big difference between us that I also understood ER's reasons, and the legitimacy of them, and I allowed them to be real, substantive, and meaningful for him without adding my own baggage, or the baggage of others, to it. Once I said my piece, and he said his, I let it lie, and continue to do so.

I also happen to know that drlobojo's comment about what happened to the old slave folk tales is a pretty accurate description; I also happen to believe, as well, that you have also a part of the tale as well. There is no reason why both should be considered contradictory, or mutually exclusive, because each tells part of a much more complex story.

The point, however, is that whether it's here, or your own blog should you choose to start one, or wherever, you, too, should be aware of how you come across. The differences between you and the rest of us isn't really all that large at all. The only exception, to my mind is this - none of us has yet, I think, had the temerity to insist that the others are unaware of the weight of history upon our language, and therefore unconsciously whisper any kind of bigotry at all. We allow each and all to be fully human, which means while we are created in the image of God, we still have a lot of work to do to make up for cracks caused by sin.
 

Bless you, Dr. Bill -- and I reckon it pained you somethin' fierce to get all them words spelt right and said good.

I figured we's kin. There's a Cajun strain of my fambly that used to be centered at Reddell, La., which ain't far from Mamou, which looks like it's hard by, if not acchally in, that Neutral Strip. And the Yankee side of my own clan come from Virginny, by way of south Indiana, then south Illinoise, then to Indian Territory in the 1870s -- for the same kinda reasons; to get away from somethin' involvin' bars and a cell, or mebbe a rope and a tree limb. After, of course, helpin' charter a Christian Church (Disciple) sommers around Bloomington, Ind.
 

Dr. Loney -

How nice to be able to share thoughts and conversation.

You and my father may have a lot in common. He was known as “Chief” all of his life because he looked much more like the Cherokee heritage just two generations away from him than he did the white farmers from Maine and Tennessee.

My black Panamanian in-laws see pictures of him and see a Mexican or el Tejano.

(I look more like my mother of whom my dad said, “she can burn under a street lamp at midnight.”)

My father is cherished in memory: for his mock rain dance, his sandstone beginnings near the Red River, his dark hair and brown skin, whirling a baseball at the end of a rope to teach me to hit. Justin Wilson was his favorite comic along with Redd Foxx and Cosby. From the back seat I would lean my chin on his brown arm as he drove us toward vacations and family gatherings. He was the only one of his family who left his town of 800 and worked for the railroad in the burgeoning city of Dallas. Growing up, we would visit my cousins for Xmas and summers. I had a healthy middle-class childhood; they struggled enormously.

As a child, my father was also called “the Philadelphia lawyer,” which may resonate with many here. He worked up from the yard to the office and worked closely with black men and a few Tejanos.

Part of our connection also was to argue about a lot of things with a lot of words. He had made his big leap in the world and he was satisfied where he was in suburban DFW. My pushing to keep expanding out into the changing world was too much more added to the burdens, costs, and victories he had accumulated.

The black men my father worked with he respected and introduced me to them. Black people he did not know but saw on the news or talked about as “they” were other things.

Again, the resonance here is clear.

My point: the world is bigger than you neighbors of whatever kind. And that bigger world is on your doorstep and already in your home in a way that it was not for my father. We are a people increasingly miscegenated in blood, value, religion, and market.

I know who my father was as a man. I know who I am as his son. I know who I am as a white man and how I have been made better by experiences and mentors and friends outside of Texas and the particular Texan moral scotopia. Perhaps, too, I can see Northeastern moral scotopia. In sociology, the outsiders’ perspective is often honored as a more objective perspective because of their relative unaffectedness by clan blinders.

The world is at us already asking to be partners in a universal notion of rights, equality, opportunity, shared burdens and mutual responsibilities.

But we still have old habits running around deep inside at the corners where whispers come from. How could we not? We are Americans in identity, identities formed by our history, identities formed by our shared history of white hegemony and the blood of millions of all sorts.

ER is right in that the social power issues contained and symbolized by the notion of “Confederacy” is not dead. Why not? Fear and guilt still live at a substratum for Americans. It is only part of who we are, but “nigger” is a word that cannot be killed. Why? Because I am my father’s son and he is his and you are yours. Black, white, brown, yellow, we are all niggers when we see niggers, even when we don’t “see” them. Self-claims of purity have always been suspect.

The world is here already; the past, too. Our anxieties are normal and to be expected. They are, in fact, healthy signals to pay attention to something… if we can but hear them.
 

Relatedly,

ER asks if I self-loathe much. No. I never did though many did in graduate school.

But I have come to find little nutrition in the notion of "white man" taken as a whole. After all, the "white man" as a concept is not very old and shifts all the time.

In time whiteness will disappear entirely as will the entire notion of race. Manhood, of course, is a pride and comes with me wherever I go, even to a blog.

Theologically, Jesus Christ incarnates humanity and divinity in one individual, and I find that I am almost totally taken up with concerning myself with how my deification (as mediated by Christ) is going and that of those around me.

I take my theology wherever I go, even the internet - though it need not be evangelical in a Christocentric fashion.

The education and the people who have poured their gifts into me are also sources of great pride.

When issues are discussed here that are of an ideological, conceptual nature I like to join in with the full force of who I am as a person.

When the topics are kittens, rubber mallets, how boyfriends will always replace fathers, these are the journeys of life that can be shared and are not points of moral finesse, points of contention where ideas matter.

As I have written before, I am familiar with the cultural call of, "Dude, why so serious?" I have usually found such calls to be made in contexts where the function is avoidant than common sense.

Do I expect to change minds? 50-50. Can I be somebody else? Nope. Don't have a choice. Can I be a better me? Abso-effing-lutely.
 

We are all found here along with our "cracks caused by sin" to which GKS refers:

www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/politics/18text-obama.html
 

Do you know that you're preaching here to the choir? You are. We know. We agree.

Some of us sing with different accents and intonations than you do. That's ALL.

So give it a rest and be a merry gentleman!
 

Loney was prescribing medicine. I disagree with the diagnosis and was prescribing something different.
 

"Can I be somebody else?" Feodor asks, then answers negatively, only to contradict himself by saying he can be a "better me", as if somehow being "better" is not being "somebody else", i.e., another set of experiences, assumptions, deviances, errors, more books read, fewer days left to live, etc.

But, I digress. Your point that sometimes "don't be so serious" is avoidance is true. Except, of course, when it's not. Sometimes, it is important to be serious - but not about oneself. It is important to remember that sometimes the things we deal with are serious. Life and death serious. We, though, are just folks. The call to lighten up is avoidance up until the point when all it means is what the words on the screen say - lighten up.

It's Christmas Eve. Pet your dog, kiss your kid, light a candle, and dream of Three Musketeers Bars (never had a sugar plum myself, and they don't sound very tasty).

And Merry Christmas.
 

Hold on now Feodor...

"Chief" & "mock rain dances"?

What, no "peace pipes" and "fire water"?

If I go into 'loney talk', am I then an "Indian giver"?...should I retreat to my wigwam?

You reckon you could amaze me with a cigarette lighter...I mean 'magic fire starter'?

Well, at least you didnt say n****r again...or am I just a red one?

...Doc now retreats to his wild tobaccy patch =)
 

Feodor-- I's jus' joshin on you:)...But oddly 'nuf, I do got a bad habit of givin stuff away an' askin fore it back...man, I done stereofied on myself!!

happy hollerdays! again

Rudy--Mamou aint quite near the Neutral Strip...look on yore mappy questor for westport & hineston for the E/W bounds, N/S-not sure. But I been to Mamou(a bunch) when I spent a summer in La. Besides N'orlens, its where everbody want to go fore Marty Graw. Its mostly coonasses(cajuns) & Mulatters, & theys some of the most bassakwards(pot callin the kettle black...I know) but lovable crawfish-eatin, zydeco-playin, rice-growin people on the world... I got crazy in luv with one of'em lil' yeller blue-eyed girls, but her papa wouldnt bout to let her leave with a feller what had a tail & was darker than them.
 

nother thing Rudy, wikipedier says a lot bout them boundaries...they mighta been the formals, but our family writins had us hemmed in twixt them two villages I mentioned...it was purty much white on either side of them... but that 12 mile wide stretch of woods wuz where nobody wanted to travel thru for reasons I talked on previous...you can probably find somethin on some of the fightins on the webbernet, but we gotta lot more writins bout it than been webbernized...if you read anything on it, the redbones wuz those that married off with the locals
 

Happy Holidays, Dr. William Loney.

Have you read Will Campbell's The Glad River?

And if so, how is it. I read Brother to a Dragonfly, which I liked and Providence which didn't grab me and Also With You which was helpful.
 

Feodor---now dont tell me you know about The Glad River? I aint knowin much bout Campbell, cept that I got sent that book a spell ago from kin that lives in the former neutral strip & I bout felt like I coulda been in it...heck, I'm familiarized with most of the places in it cept for a couple... one of the main boys in the book is a 'Redbone'...my papa would bout come to blows w/people fer callin him such...thinkin maybe cause we wuz most probably more that than the Coushatta/Choctaw he claimed. Now itta read good fer me cause I aint heard much different talkin' all my life...btw, I CAN spell & can do rightly well when necessary, but I like to jus' type it how I feel it from my heart...I like to josh abit, probably too much, but I aint 'coverin under a tired routine' as to how I like to verbalize. If you aint much keen on that, the read might grind on you at the expense of the message, which is how I'd like to/try live my life ...but as a truth, most people in that locality aint much different than that book, racial stuff included; I dont reckon I'd much wanna live there, jus' visit.

I aint read the others though...believe it or not, since I wuz lil', I aint read hardly anything cept stuff by John Bunyan, Jay Williams, Arthur Pink, Jonathan Edwards, Christopher Ness, John Owens & Phillip Mauro...that readin list there got a long story behind it, & we wuz raised to shun 'modern print'. One might can guess what papa & grandpapa wuz. But that there book'a sure warm up yore heart cockels & might even make you cry...course I cant cause'n my tear ducts got seared shut it a tragic crocky-pot accident. Thanks fer puttin a wag in my tail:)
 

Dang. take a little time out for Xmas and come back and find the house has done blowed away.

Sure a lot of demons lurking in the comments on this subject. So much has been said that adequate rebuttal, explanation, or education can not be had. But here's a few points.

1. Creole: Southern American French Culture (not black nor white but both, and its strong contrast to the Anglo southern culture).

2. Uppity Urban Niggers (aka isolated urban angry black-power male chauvinist separatists):Richard Wright, Langston Hughes & Ralph Ellison et. al. of the Harlem Renaissance and their influence on the black radicals of the 1960s.

Black on black crime: The put down and political attacks on the old school, G.W. Carver, academics and writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and others. Sometimes know as the Dubious/Carver debate, it was in fact a black civil war, the outcomes which has yet to be resolved by the black community.

Black Politics: The Intra Black Communities struggle with their own internal taboos, stereotypes, degrees of blackness, skin tone policies, etc. all of which are considered "family" matters, no whites allowed.

And specifically:
F: "If we think so, we are whispering "nigger," "uppity nigger" at that, when we presume to believe that the forces of racism that warp all of us, black, yellow, white, red are found at a source anywhere but with white hegemony."

White hegemony?

Racism is based in the medulla oblongata and its fear of strangers and territorial imperative is rampant among all people everywhere. "White" stands out more today and over the past several centuries than the others due to money and guns. Our problem is that we do not recognize racism as a lizard brain function and then attack it at that level. It can never be mitigated, cured, or done away with. We have to keep it "caged", and out of our civilized behavior, our culture, our laws and policies.
When ever it escapes its detention, we have to get the whip and the chair and drive it back in.
It is not a "racial" problem, it is not a "moral" dilemma. It is unacceptable human behavior left over from our evolutionary past sort of like our appendix(s?).

Poke 'em again ER.
 

Rock on, DrLoboJo. Spong would say about the same thing about sin-selfishness-self-preservation.

And merry Christmas!
 

"What he fails to include is impact of the famous findings of Kenneth Clark (little black girls preferred white dolls) on the black academy."

Cause and effect are a main line bitch in the real world. If the selections were caused by what SCOTUS declared would it not have been changed by school integration, and yet it persist.
 

First Scotipia, now Scotus...we's havin an epidemic...I'll get my saltly water & leeches! Hang on yall!!
 

Drlobojo took a wrong turn and now turns it into a driveway.

1. How can anything be a renaissance and Isolated? Or needlessly angry?

I have been thinking that one way into black political thought for white people is to read thoroughly in the debate between Richard Wright and James Baldwin and their proxies.

Usually the liberal finds Baldwin more amenable at first. Notes of a Native Son is a powerful indictment and represents the considered response of civil society. But Wright (and Irving Howe, though heavily damaged by Balwin's words) still presents undeniable and aggravating logic in his aesthetic and ideological reasons for writing Native Son. Black Boy and American Hunger themselves are a kind of defense which Baldwin cannot erase.

Drlobojo, IMHO, holds up the responses of civil society from the white point of view. But he mistakenly throws in Zora Neal Hurston with assimilation. Her relationship with her white benefactor was increasingly ambivalent and finally a source of artistic control that she would not abide. That she becomes the hero of Alice Walker is evidence that JO is reading shallowly.

Carver was undone by DuBois and subsequent studies and hasn't been mined as a valuable source of thought for decades.

Again, "civil war" in the black community is hyperbole and stigmatizing hyperbole at that. Are Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama at civil war?

2. Evolutionary psychologists are always on the alert for their material being used as an easy out for moral behavior. JOs thoughts are exactly their worries.

Is the R-Complex responsible for the Enlightenment economics of the triangle trade? No. For the efficient use of space designed in slave ships? No. For the apparatus of chattel economies, discipline, use of mass and conversion psychology for control of large populations? No.

These instruments of slavery are the products of reasoning minds using reason in inhuman ways for advantage. The R-complex is a piece, a motivatory piece of violent motivations. But it is only a beginning place to talk about any such phenomenon.

The phenomenon itself is explained by a whole lot else. Is Gandhi or MLK explained away by the evolutionary role of altruism? Hardly.
But no evolutionist would write off slavery as a sad byproduct of the evolutionary brain.

That is motivated escapism. And inhumane use of science. And covers over white hegemony for reasons that the primitive brain enjoys.

Plain speaking.
 

Racism = Slavery ?

Hurston's put down and conflict with Baldwin, Hughes ect. = assimilation and problems with a white Boaz

"Carver was undone by DuBois and subsequent studies and hasn't been mined as a valuable source of thought for decades."

Not hardly......

What goes around comes around. Feodor isn't aware of the ongoing conflict between vocational and academic learning going on in the whole of higher education today.

The HBCUs strugle even today as to which they should be.

"But no evolutionist would write off slavery as a sad byproduct of the evolutionary brain."

No biological basis for the practice of "slavery"? Hum? Only humans practice slavery?
 

Hurston is going to be a mixed witness in our discussion. While she was a Republican of sorts, she opposed Brown v Board because she thought integrated schools would water down the cultural transmission work of black education. This was not "vocational" oriented.

Hurston's benefactor turned controller was Charlotte Osgood Mason.

The HBCUs have devolved to vocational education as a reality not as a mission. It is a problem with American education and class advantage not a commitment to churn peanuts. My wife is a grantmaker in education, a black grantmaker, and knows most of the HBCUs by personal contacts.

Here in the north, vocational education is seen as "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

Racism does not equal slavery. Contemporary American identity partly = systemic remainders of slavery partly = racism.

The biological basis for xenophobia is not target specific. The "other" is defined by a number of cognitively driven criteria. Unless you want to argue that the lower brain sees color. And the evidence of history goes against such a claim. Color, as a "moral" hierarchy criterion, is a creation of modernity and the Enlightenment.
 

F: "The HBCUs have devolved to vocational education as a reality not as a mission."

Actually as the findings in "Adams vs. Richardson" have been declared by the 13th District Court of D.C. the "vocational" mission of the Southern HBCUs were the result of assignment by the various State Governments and as such were a vestige of the dualism contained in their separate but equal constitutional or statutory laws of segregation. The recent devolution of HBCU missions back toward "Carver" are part and parcel of the overall higher education dilemma.

Feodor, every time you seemingly answer a direct question you tend to slip sideways a cog or two. Re: ask about a biological basis for slavery, you address the biological nature (or lack of it)of xenophobia.

Besides if pressed to select one biological reason for xenophobia/slavery/racism/etc. and any other "otherness" factor I, as a bonafidedee geographer, would always claim "Territorial Imperative" as my preferred cause for the effects. Territorial Imperative is a biological activity buried so deeply into life's' being that even the algae on a rock fight for it.

Ah ha, Xmas is over! To bed, early to rise, early to Penney's to catch some 'Fiesta Ware' dishes hopefully at a deep discount.

Hope all had a good and satisfactory Xmas!
 

Just for you all's information, Disney is planning to release the S of the S on Blue-Ray and DVD in the near future.
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

Feodor--I think you done tree'd the wrong squirl
 

(Sorry, Dr. Loney)

JO,

My meager findings concerning Adams v Richardson:

1973 - Adams v. Richardson:
A federal appeals court approves a district court order requiring federal education officials to enforce Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (which bars discrimination by recipients of federal funds) against state universities, public schools, and other institutions that receive federal money.

Perhaps you can elucidate.

So the triangle trade is an aspect of "territorial imperative"? Shipping millions of Africans into a non-African territory is territorial imperative how?

Perhaps you can elucidate.

I think your "territorial imperative" is a much better biological description of the instinct that results in xenophobia. But I cannot see how it applies to the importation of chattel slavery. Indians were plentiful near the conquered territory. Eventually, so were Spaniards, the French, then the Mexicans.
 

Re, "Indians were plentiful near the conquered territory."

Amd some of them held slaves (memb ers of other, conquered tribes, I mean, quite literally as an expression of the territorial imperative.

Then, the Five Civilized Tribes' mixed-race leaders held black slaves as part of their own attempts to embrace the territorialism of the greater European powers, in hopes, at least partly, of getting those greater European powers to leave them be.

So it seems to me.
 

Fedor ask:"So the triangle trade is an aspect of "territorial imperative"? Shipping millions of Africans into a non-African territory is territorial imperative how?"

Well now that one has a simple direct answer. As the Arab territorial expansion (driven obstensively by religious pressure) from the 10th to the 16th centuries put pressure on the Eastern African populations they pushed Westward into other's territories in a domino effect. Traditionally in African (and generally all other tribal) warfare the best captives were kept as slaves and all the rest sacrificed.
Of course there was initially a Eastern flow of slaves into the Arab territories and still is to this day. But with the arrival of the Portuguese and others along the Western shores looking for something valuable, then the "surplus" captives became trade items. As the "Indian" slaves in the Caribbean proved unsatisfactory as slaves. Then the Europeans went back to the West African market, and bought black slaves. This of course put pressure on supply and gave the more powerful tribes more reason to expand their stomping grounds because they would have more captives by doing so. And so forth and so forth.

Much of what we believe to be the complex and well thought out "civilized" activity of government, economics, science, politics etc. are often a multiplex of basic innate behaviors and responses of our lower functions.

Thus we miss having effective solutions because we treat the symptoms and not the cause.

As Wyatt Earp so aptly put it, if you have to stop a runway wagon that you can't catch up to, shoot the horses not the driver.

Thanks, for the intellectual exercise. That ham and pumpkin pie was slowing down my frontal lobes.
 

Oh yes and the reason that the African populations made better slaves than the American populations was that the Euro-African complex of viruses and bacterias had been shared so long that the Africans could survive the interaction with the European slavers/slave holders and not die off. The American populations were being devastated by the importation of these killer biologicals. An amazing example of how a virus travels and expands its territory is detailed in a book, "Pox American". I highly recommend it to anyone curious about American History.
 

Adams V. Richardson:

Having written so much about "Adams" that it takes up six linear feet of shelf space as bound volumes, I care not to elucidate further.

However if you interest is real, then google: Adams case OCR

That will give 108,000 hits about the Adams case that are almost all pertinent. In addition my name and former position is used within that 108,000 hits way too many times. There's a puzzle for you.
 

Who knows where to download XRumer 5.0 Palladium?
Help, please. All recommend this program to effectively advertise on the Internet, this is the best program!