DULUTH, Minn. (AP) — A campaign in Duluth aimed at creating a dialogue about racism is being criticized as offensive.
Billboards and posters around Duluth are hard to miss. One says "It's hard to see racism when you're white." The campaign's sponsors include the YWCA. Executive director Ellen O'Neill says the campaign's ads weren't meant to shock or offend anyone.
Duluth resident Phil Pierson has created a Facebook page objecting to the advertising. Pierson says the campaign messages are jarring and teach a new generation to focus on skin color instead of the idea that we're all human.
Mayor Don Ness says the campaign has been a lightning rod for hate groups outside the community. Ness tells the Star Tribune (http://bit.ly/Awhq0D) he's received dozens of hateful messages and emails from all over the world.
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Information from: Star Tribune, http://www.startribune.com
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
Comments (3)
Add commentAimed at creating a dialogue about racism
This is one of the most offensive ways to create dialogue. By implying that racism is a white thing only, lets all other races off the hook and does nothing more than create the very thing they want to get rid of!
"Mayor Don Ness says the
"Mayor Don Ness says the campaign has been a lightning rod for hate groups outside the community"
So, if a White person disagrees with the racist message, he belongs to a "hate group"?
"Executive director Ellen
"Executive director Ellen O'Neill says the campaign's ads weren't meant to shock or offend anyone."
So, let me get this straight. They get mail from all over the world from "hate groups" which is code word for "white people", who obviously are aware that the billboard WAS offensive and it WAS meant to shock everyone. And the people who put it up didn't notice anything WRONG with it?
Maybe, they were educated in the public school system.
Whites aren’t allowed to argue the point of whether or not they are privileged because they are told they can’t see it anyway. (Convenient circular logic there.)
Non-Whites are not encouraged or expected to take responsibility for their own behaviour, but rather to blame any and all misfortunes on White folk and to interpret every negative experience they have through the lens of discrimination. This isn’t a conversation. It is a scripted dialogue and there is no colour-blind casting—only Whites can play the villain, only non-Whites can play the victim.
The only racism whites have difficulty seeing is the racism directed at them. Whites bow down willingly to this kind of rhetoric, blindly accepting their guilt for the crime of having been born. Whites make excuses for racially motivated anti-White crime, refusing to call it what it is. Whites allow themselves to be brainwashed into believing they have no culture, no tribe, no identity beyond that of the individual.
Indeed, I would venture to say that Whites in general are the least racially aware people on the planet. No thinking Black, Hispanic, or Asian believes that race is only a “social construct,” and they agitate aggressively on behalf of their own people. They speak in terms such as “the black community” or “the Latino community.” They don’t claim to be colourblind. In fact, they see race everywhere they look, are acutely aware of it, and eager to point it out. I doubt the majority of Whites in Duluth think about race much at all or have any real experience with racial issues. That just simply isn’t a part of life in areas that are 90%+ White.
The Un-Fair Campaign is certainly unfair. It’s not about combating racism. I doubt much exists in Duluth, of all places. It’s about furthering the idea of inherent White guilt and creating division within a community as a publicity stunt. Non-whites in Duluth wouldn’t feel as though they were being victimised if they weren’t constantly being told that they are.
In any situation, it’s always important to ask who stands to gain. The people of Duluth don’t stand to benefit from this. All the Un-Fair Campaign will do is create hostility and resentment that didn’t exist before. The elite, however, always benefit when the lesser classes are divided and distracted and spreading accusations of racism is a convenient way to do this.