"My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened."
"He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears."
Michel De Montaigne.
Black people seriously need to stop listening to those who condtantly tell them they're victims.
Some of us don't.
Assholes like Smollet are quite frankly ruining things for the rest of us. There is no place on Earth I would rather live, and I mean that literally. Assholes like Smollet who seek to throw gasoline on race relations not only F things up for whites, but for *everyone*.
The country and the world in general are much poorer places for dicks like Smollet. His selfish and narcissistic attempt for pity and to attack conservatives as a bonus hurts blacks as much or even more than whites. To be quite honest, I'm not ashamed to say that if he hanged himself in his prison cell I would be quite happy.
Smolett isn't ruining anything except for the credibility of the LBGTQ establishment. That's who his hoax was for & they were the only ones vocally supporting & exploiting his hoax early on. In the wake of his hoax LBGTQ protection laws were passed & millions of dollars were raised for their organizations. LBGTQ have a long history of erroneously conflating to issue of anti black racism with homophobia for their own benefit & this was very much a case of that. Early on black people were actually being criticized for not supporting him (Because they knew it was a lie from the start). In fact Smolett's brother recently released a video on social media criticizing black people for being "homophobic" for not supporting him. Smolett's hoax is an LBGTQ problem.
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Maybe if you could see it from our side.
I'm 64 and remember when racism was 100X worse. I had trouble getting an apartment when I showed up in person, auto dealers wouldn't let me take a car on a test drive alone if at all, I got watched like a hawk whenever I was shopping, etc.
Fast forward 30 years and things improved dramatically. I live in a small New England suburb (ie: mostly white) and am loving life. I can go to any business or restaurant and be welcomed with a big smile and handshake, neighbors stop and chat when I'm out sitting on my porch, and everyone on our street comes to my 4th of July bash.
But just like Putin managed to get the world to once again hate Russia after all the advancements Russia made in the world, asshole racists (I don't care he's gay) like Smollet and his white liberal enablers are once again getting people to hate us back people.
None of what you said counters the points I made about how Smollet's actions were done for the benefit of himself & the LBGTQ establishment (the only ones who exploited his hoax) & not black people who never supported it. As a biracial man who prioritized his identity as LBGTQ, his hoax was in no way reflective on black people when they never supported him to begin with & unlike his fellow LBGTQ, benefited nothing from it.
shareIt's not just Smollett. Race hustlers galore, white and black now, like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi, are making race relations in this country worse and worse. Critical race theory is making it worse. Smollett is a relatively minor player on all this, but he's certainly actively participating in it. We were, as you yourself have observed, getting closer and closer to the ideal of MLK Jr. -- a colorblind society, where what you look doesn't matter. Then along come these race hustlers, and they they're calling that racist. In laser-focusing on race, in looking at everything through the lens of race, and in saying what we need now is actually more racism, just directed at whites this time, they're dividing people, and tearing the scab off of what had been a healing wound, and then rubbing salt into it. Their philosophy is basically that, yeah, two wrongs actually do make a right.
That won't create the "equity" they claim to want. And it certainly won't improve race relations. It will do, it is doing the opposite. Ask almost anyone now and they'll tell you race relations are worse than they've been in decades. People like DiAngelo and Kendi, and those who listen to them are why. They are dividing people into competing identity groups, pitting them against each other, and creating new resentments and hatreds that will fester down through more generations.
I almost can't blame the black people that lean on the race card like they do. Can you imagine having that power at your disposal? Anytime anything happens bad to you, or anytime you fuck up, or anytime something in the world happens that you don't like, you can cry racism, and practically suffer zero push back. I seriously think a lot of them do it subconsciously, rather than face the truth of accepting responsibility for themselves.
shareThe problem with that is, it's a recipe for weakness and lifelong failure. Any crutch you lean on will make your muscles atrophy. It makes you weaker. That's why you need to cast it aside as soon as your ready to stand on your own again. We grow and improve by learning from our failures and mistakes. But for that to work, you have to be willing to accept responsibility for them. As author and businessman W. Steven Brown put it: "People fail in direct proportion to their willingness to accept socially accepted excuses for failure.” Embrace excuses for failure, and you remove any need to examine your own behavior and see what you could have done differently to achieve success.
You can't control the world around you, but you can control you. It may be natural, even instinctive, to lean on an excuse, but the instinctive action isn't always the right one. In fact sometimes it's downright fatal. When you're caught in a rip current, for example, it might be instinctive to swim for the shore as hard as you can. But the way to avoid a watery death is to keep your head, swim parallel to the shore to get out of the current, and then head in.