Korean Job Discussion Forums :: View topic - I was never overly bothered by Apartheid.

Speak Korean Now!

Teach English Abroad and Get Paid to see the World!

Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"

FAQ

Memberlist

Usergroups

Profile

I was never overly bothered by Apartheid.
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4 Next

Korean Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Current Events Forum

View previous topic :: View next topic

Author

Message

Privateer

Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 3:56 pm Post subject: Re: I was never overly bothered by Apartheid.

Smithington wrote:

But it’s not as if South Africa was surrounded by Switzerland, New Zealand and Belgium.

But culturally you, the white tribe, were surrounded by Switzerland, New Zealand and Belgium, and they/we ostracized you for breaking social taboos.

TheUrbanMyth

Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 4:23 pm Post subject:

Popocatepetl wrote:

[
Lets see. You arrived in the US, killed the native people and stole their land, imported and kept black people as slaves- like animals- for centuries, and even today maintain white privelege- but suddenly you're the good guys and its other white people far away that are reincarnations of evil.

The fact that you cannot even self reflect but expect others to bow down into the ground in shame and penitence just shows your pathetic mentality.

Next! Please send someone intelligent

You may think your wit is rapier-like

I rather think it resembles junior league.

Laughing

Ya-ta Boy

Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 6:22 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Nobody was saying blacks should not have been given the vote.

Actually people are.

People are saying oppression is oppression, no matter the particular cause. If the West didn't oppose all oppression, then it shouldn't have singled out apartheid for dealing with.

Four people are thrashing around in a raging river and you are on the bank with one rope. What do you do?

Steelrails

Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 7:23 pm Post subject:

"I was never overly bothered by apartheid"- Says non-black, non-South African. Perhaps you would have if you were black and lived in SA at the time? It doesn't require much empathy to understand that.

Popocatepetl

Joined: 14 Oct 2013
Location: Winter in Korea: One Perfect day after another

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 7:38 pm Post subject:

Ya-ta Boy wrote:

Four people are thrashing around in a raging river and you are on the bank with one rope. What do you do?

Its not just that you chose to help only one. Its that you didn't even care about the rest.

Did western media even highlight oppression in North Korea? Did they even seek to ban north korean athletes from participation? The same goes for a host of other oppressive regimes and genocides. No, the west did not care, at all.

Thousands macheted in Rwanda? hmm..change the channel. Tens of thousands gassed in Iraq? Back to the nintendo.

White folks with swimming pools and mercedes benz being served tea by black domestic staff? Arrrrgggggghhhh!

It was only the sight of other white people having a better standard of living than them that finally spurred westerners into a mad frenzy.

Quote:

People are saying oppression is oppression, no matter the particular cause. If the West didn't oppose all oppression, then it shouldn't have singled out apartheid for dealing with.

Its not oppression you are against.

You ignored mass genocides all over Africa but decided to demolish the most successful country on the continent?

You turned on a pro-western ally and supported terrorists trying to install a communist regime.

All so as to mend your fragile psyche and blot out the guilt of your own (far worse) racist past?

Or was it just a convenient way to reduce a strong economic competitor to being a vassal host for your multinational companies.

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 7:56 pm Post subject:

Popocatepetl wrote:

Did western media even highlight oppression in North Korea? Did they even seek to ban north korean athletes from participation? The same goes for a host of other oppressive regimes and genocides. No, the west did not care, at all.

In fact, North Korea is actually a joke to many westerners, with people chuckling about the ostensible "craziness" of Kim Jong-il as his people have been made to suffer.

Popocatepetl wrote:

Thousands macheted in Rwanda? hmm..change the channel. Tens of thousands gassed in Iraq? Back to the nintendo.

Or even just compare the attention the Palestinians and the Rohingya get.

Smithington

Joined: 14 Dec 2011

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 10:41 pm Post subject:

Steelrails wrote:

"I was never overly bothered by apartheid"- Says non-black, non-South African.

Perhaps you would have if you were black and lived in SA at the time? It doesn't require much empathy to understand that.

And your point is what? That a black person in South Africa would have been upset by the injustice? Same as millions in the Indian lower classes being upset about their plight. Same as the countless millions in South America being angered by their plight. Same with the hundred million other fellow human beings suffering under oppressive regimes in Africa, from East to West and North to South. The vast majority of human beings live under the heel of injustice and inequality. The point is that the West focused its ire on South Africa not because that regime was any more oppressive than its next door neighbors. They focused on the injustice there because it was a case of white people oppressing black people. It struck an emotional chord with certain people living in a certain cultural environment at a given moment in time. It was emphatically not a case of sitting down and listing all the crimes of various regimes across the globe and concluding that South Africa's transgressions were in a category all of their own. They weren't. There were worse regimes then, and there's worse regimes today. I'm glad that black South African's are now free. But there's a few billion people who still aren't free from injustice and brutal inequality. Their suffering is no less than that previously experienced by South African blacks, and no less deserving of attention. The latter simply benefitted from the selective outrage on the part of the West. And the only way to explain it is by referring to cultural and political factors, not on the unique evil that was apartheid.

But yeah, if I was a black person living in South Africa in the 1980s I would have been pissed. But not being a black South African I felt no particular obligation to be selectively outraged just because the oppressive group in question happened to share my skin pigment.

Why hold white Africans to a higher standard than black Africans? Isn't that a uniquely condescending brand of racism? "We don't expect anything better from these other regimes. But you're white - we expect better from you."

Confused

catman

Joined: 18 Jul 2004

Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 4:22 am Post subject:

So again I ask, when should black people in South Africa have been given the right to vote?

catman

Joined: 18 Jul 2004

Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 4:32 am Post subject:

Popocatepetl wrote:

Steelrails wrote:

catman wrote:

So when should black South Africans have been given the right to vote?

The chirping of crickets is rather loud on this thread in regards to that question.

The same people that went bananas about apartheid did not lift a finger to stop Kim Il Sung in North korea, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Saddams genocide of the Kurds, Yaya Khans Pakistani genocide, Stalins gulags, Maos famine, not to mention the Rwandan genocide.

Because...if a regime oppresses its own people, then the west views it as "self-determination".

The problem with this attempted deflection is that the West did not take any military action against South Africa. They only isolated South Africa as a trading partner. North Korea, Cambodia, the Soviet Union etc........were cold war enemies who were never part of the first world global economy. The only solution in those cases would have been military ones.

young_clinton

Joined: 09 Sep 2009

Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 5:10 am Post subject:

TheUrbanMyth wrote:

Popocatepetl wrote:

You may think your wit is rapier-like

I rather think it resembles junior league.

Laughing

Sophomoric is probably a better description. There is a lot of gaps to fill in his information and comparisons to make.

Steelrails

Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System

Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 5:22 am Post subject:

Quote:

. The point is that the West focused its ire on South Africa not because that regime was any more oppressive than its next door neighbors. They focused on the injustice there because it was a case of white people oppressing black people.

Well that certainly was an element. However, I also think that they had a bit more power to influence the situation, particularly through non-violent means.

Also, it was influenced greatly by private citizens wanting to take action not just the government or a few people in congress. It also helped that South Africa had a charismatic figure leading them.

Quote:

Why hold white Africans to a higher standard than black Africans? Isn't that a uniquely condescending brand of racism? "We don't expect anything better from these other regimes. But you're white - we expect better from you."

Well there certainly is an element of the soft bigotry of low expectations. However there is also an element of the fact that the oppressive group shares in large part a language and tradition and culture similar to our own and that we might have more success appealing to them than say, some other regime in Africa or the Middle East.

I'm not saying it isn't without its hypocrisy, but I can understand why it was at the forefront.

Popocatepetl

Joined: 14 Oct 2013
Location: Winter in Korea: One Perfect day after another

Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 5:52 am Post subject:

Steelrails wrote:

Also, it was influenced greatly by private citizens wanting to take action not just the government or a few people in congress.

Hate to burst your bubble, but freedom was not won by you personally, nor the imaginary heroism of armchair protesters in the west.

It is doubtful that your convenient refusal to play the springboks (they were far superior to your teams) or your sanctions and cake sales had any effect on apartheid in reality.

Catman wrote:

So again I ask, when should black people in South Africa have been given the right to vote?

It was given them by the whites - who overwhelmingly voted for reforms in the 1992 referendum. It was partly thanks to them that democracy was born.

Leon

Joined: 31 May 2010

Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 6:30 am Post subject:

Popocatepetl wrote:

It is doubtful that your convenient refusal to play the springboks (they were far superior to your teams) or your sanctions and cake sales had any effect on apartheid in reality.

Yes, the West was scared of their rugby team. If there is anything the West cares less about than repression it is rugby.

Catman wrote:

So again I ask, when should black people in South Africa have been given the right to vote?

It was given them by the whites - who overwhelmingly voted for reforms in the 1992 referendum. It was partly thanks to them that democracy was born.[/quote]

You don't give people rights, you can take them away, but it's not like it was some great magnamonius gift. It was strategic thinking, they were running out of time where they could do this and still be able to exert influence over the outcome.

Why do I get the feeling that you are not arguing that the West was right to pay attention to the problems and repression of apartheid, but it also should have paid more attention to other similar or worse situations. It seems as if you are arguing the opposite, the West should have left apartheid alone and all the talk about North Korea or other African countries is just a tool to make the West look hypocritical.

Popocatepetl

Joined: 14 Oct 2013
Location: Winter in Korea: One Perfect day after another

Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 8:09 am Post subject:

Catman wrote:

So again I ask, when should black people in South Africa have been given the right to vote?

Leon wrote:

You don't give people rights, you can take them away

I guess you two were outraged for 30 years then (from 1965 to 1997) because mobutu denied the vote to his people in the Congo?

I'm sure you lost sleep when tortured and hanged thouands of innocent people for opposing his rule.

Not to mention how his people starved to death while he embezzled up to US$15 billion.

Did you object more to his personal fleet of mercedes-benz, which he used to travel between his numerous palaces? or was it the fact he built his own airport and chartered a private concorde from Air France to take him and his family on shopping trips to paris... that got to you.

Did you go to the global "down with mobutu" pop concert? oops. There wasn't one. silly me.

And all of it thanks to your country- the US- who installed him and supported him.

Quote:

America's Ally Mobutu Thrives On Corruption As His Nation Crumbles

By Tim Weiner, Inquirer Washington Bureau
Posted: October 30, 1991

WASHINGTON — Twelve days ago, as his starving nation slipped into anarchy, President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire ordered thousands of tulips flown in from Amsterdam to decorate his yacht. The flowers cost $100,000.

As the flowers arrived, Zaire's cities were burning. Its economy was in ruins. Unpaid soldiers and hungry civilians looted homes and stores.

As Zaire burned, Mobutu - America's closest ally in black Africa and Zaire's absolute ruler since 1965 - floated on his pleasure craft in the Congo River 18 miles from the capital city of Kinshasa, maneuvering for power. Last week, to maintain his dictatorship, he fired a newly minted coalition government, sparking riots in which hundreds have died.

Mobutu has jailed, tortured and killed thousands of his political opponents over the years, according to Amnesty International. But what makes him unique among the world's living tyrants is his unparalleled thievery.

"Some dictators leave things behind. Not Mobutu. He has robbed Zaire of all its hope and happiness," said a former prime minister of Zaire long loyal to Mobutu. "He has never seen the difference between his personal cash box and the state's. He is a man who sees nothing and steals everything."

By ransacking Zaire's rich reserves of diamonds, cobalt and copper, Mobutu has bankrupted his nation and enriched himself beyond imagining, U.S. officials say. By most accounts, he has stolen billions.

But every U.S. administration since Eisenhower's has trusted Mobutu to support U.S. interests in Africa. The CIA helped Mobutu rise to power in the 1960s. American aid, overt and covert, has been crucial to his rule. President Bush praised him in 1989 as "one of our most valued friends" abroad.

The Department of State on Monday urged Mobutu to share power with his political opponents but stopped short of calling for him to step aside.

A prominent American businessman in Kinshasa, who related the story of the Dutch tulips, met throughout October with Mobutu's opponents. "Every one of them kept asking: When is the United States going to give him up?" the businessman said.

"The White House doesn't seem to realize that the American silence is devastating" to the opposition in Zaire, said William T. Close, Mobutu's personal physician and daily confidant from 1960 to 1976.

"The White House apparently still considers Mobutu a friend," said Close. ''How else can you explain the silence?"

In 1981, Nguza Karl-i-Bond, whom Mobutu had fired as Zaire's prime minister and sentenced to death, fled Zaire and came to Washington. He testified to Congress about Mobutu's corruption.

"The people are suffering. We have misery and starvation," he said. "The people know Mobutu is personally responsible for this. And our people know Mobutu was placed in power and remains in power today because of the continued support" of the United States.

Yes...I'm sure it moved you deeply.

Leon

Joined: 31 May 2010

Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 8:34 am Post subject:

Popocatepetl wrote:

Catman wrote:

So again I ask, when should black people in South Africa have been given the right to vote?

Leon wrote:

You don't give people rights, you can take them away

At the time I didn't care, but then again I was very young, so allowances must be made. To be truthful at the time I didn't care about South Africa very much either.

Popocatepetl wrote:

Quote:

Yes...I'm sure you cared greatly.

Did you care, about any of this, or is this all a long protracted argument that is really trying to make the case that the West is hypocritical and should leave Israel alone? You're starting to flail around a bit here. What is your interest in this?

Display posts from previous:

	Korean Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Current Events Forum	All times are GMT - 8 Hours Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4 Next
Page 3 of 4

You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum

TEFL International Supports Dave's ESL Cafe