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For the off season we could start a whole section for discussing movies none of us have seen. “Dark Victory” was on TCM recently. It is supposedly one of the classics. I’ve never seen it. What do others of you who haven’t seen the film think of it? How would you retitle it? Name three random people who come to mind when you think of the movie. Extra credit for creative spelling. What makes the movie a classic? How does it compare with the Bette Davis movies you have seen?

HOF response, stevelee

HOF or not, defection is nothing more than attaching the messenger. My shortcomings aside, just tell me that calling all whites racist is the not divisive, offensive and simply untrue. Tell me what’s positive about this indoctrination, not what you think of my admittedly poor spelling skills. Also, tell me that the excerpt of the movie is not an accurate synopsis of the full presentation.

I’m not planning to move to Russia, no matter what you say.

If you watch the clip, you’ll see that the person making that claim first defines “racism” and “racist” in a very different way from the way most people understand it. That’s the key to the whole thing. I personally don’t find it very helpful because drastically redefining a word invites confusion and conflict, and I thought that the speaker was playing on that confusion rather than being very clear that he had redefined the term “racism.”

Unlike apparently practically everybody else it seems these days, if I use the term “racism,” I am meaning an -ism, a system of belief: such as belief that some people are inherently inferior to others because of some concept we call “race,” and the consequences of that belief.

A different use of the term that I have known about for 40+ years is called “institutional racism.” That has more to do with actions, such as slavery, redlining, Jim Crow, gerrymandering, segregation, inferior schools, eugenics, freeway routes, etc., etc. In our society it has been mainly white people who had the power to do these things. Now people of other races might would have done corresponding things if they had the chance. Yes, I know Africans sold other Africans. But generally in the West, they didn’t have the power to enforce institutional racism, hence the idea that non-whites cannot be racists in that sense.

It is not a stretch to argue that institutional racism is more pernicious than individual bigotry. (I’ll spare you an exposition on Ephesians 6 at this point.)

As I said, I would prefer a more pointed definition of “racism,” and come up with better terms for other things that are related. But that ship sailed so long ago. Words have power, but quibbling over them can be the excuse not to deal with reality or history.

Can or should these issues be discussed rationally in a liberal arts college? (Rhetorical question alert.)

Several years ago the Davidson men’s basketball team visited Auschwitz. I am speculating here but their tour of this Nazi extermination camp most probably took three hours or more, but was not followed up by a discussion that included the proposition that the holocaust was just another benign facet of the cruelty of all out war. The point being that certain monstrosities are so evil that no rational back and forth debate on their supposed pros and cons is possible. Certainly, a liberal arts college can debate the opposing sides of many public policy issues such as the abortion controversy now roiling our nation. Not so for advancing the proposition that all whites are racist. In America today there is no condemnation worse than labeling a person as being a racist. Condemning more than fifty per cent of the nation’s population as being racist is to assert that the country is intrinsically evil. That mendacious contention is simply too malignant to be given the implicit approval of a forum for discussion anywhere, unless your commitment to open debate believes that Davidson should invite elderly Nazi Auschwitz guards to argue the positive benefits of exterminating six million Jews. Not gonna happen, nor should it.

Uh-oh! Bringing Nazis into the argument. I feel a thread lock coming on.

Structural and institutional racism take on many forms in the US. Housing is a great example. Home-ownership is the single best way for families to build intergenerational wealth, and until the 1960s, racial descrimination was baked into federal housing policy. LBJ's reforms made such discrimination illegal, but its effects have had long lasting impacts on both wealth and access to housing for non-Whites in the US. Black communities today have lower property values, poorer access to good schools, healthful foods, and safe roads, and are more exposed to a wide range of environmental pollutants and health hazards than white neighborhoods. They are also subject to vastly higher rates of policing, with the outcome being that Black Americans--particularly Black men and boys--are arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated at far higher rates than any ofther demographic group in the country. Black Americans are also far more likely to die at the hands of police and self-appointed White vigilantes than any other demographic group in the country.

https://exhibits.stanford.edu/saytheirn ... /330-names

You may believe in your heart that you are not racist, but if you are White in America, you have benefitted from enormous legal and social protections that non-White Americans have not had access to. We need to talk about this. We need to understand this. And we need to fix this.

MLC67 wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 17, 2024 7:28 pm

In America today there is no condemnation worse than labeling a person as being a racist.

If being called racist is the worst thing that can happen to you, you are living a life of extraordinary privilege.

Everybody knows that racism ended with joe Lewis became heavy weight champion of the world in 1937.

I think the main objection was the mandatory requirement. It comes across as a Red Guard struggle session when you have to watch. Reminds me of mandatory chapel. No one should object to the movie being shown, that’s what liberal arts are all about.

Steve Rodgers wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 11, 2024 5:08 pm

I think the main objection was the mandatory requirement. It comes across as a Red Guard struggle session when you have to watch. Reminds me of mandatory chapel. No one should object to the movie being shown, that’s what liberal arts are all about.

I wonder if it was mandatory in the sense of "If you don't sit down and watch this right now you are off the team" or "I'm showing this movie in class and you are expected to be in class."

No doubt Davidson students are subjected to a lot of "mandatory" viewings under the latter, as they are also subjected to a lot of mandatory discussions about the honor code, sexual misconduct, and how to not drown at the Lake Campus.

If the former, perhaps there are other parallels worth talking about. No one objected when Bob took the team to Auschwitz; in fact, I suspect we all felt a surge of pride. I felt a similar surge of pride--and relief--when I found out our student athletes are also learning about white privilege, and how, for those who have it, it can be leveraged for good.

This pernicious narrative that all whites are oppressors and all blacks are oppressed victims is a lie. No matter how overblown the race war mongers spew this divisive propaganda without any data supporting it, everyone of good faith knows the truth.

The people who threw rocks at a little girl trying to go to elementary school may not regret doing it, but they don’t want their grandchildren and great-grandchildren to find out about it.