Rolling 2014 Thread on Race

Wow. That is mind-boggling.

I mean... what

http://www.buzzfeed.com/durgachewbose/finding-myself-in-the-first-person

Good stuff here

― 龜, Monday, 8 December 2014 14:17 (5 hours ago) Permalink

There a certain reverent tone in articles like this that make them incredibly difficult to get through

Strange Fruit was also the name of John Peel's record label for 18 years, of course. Presumably chosen on a similar rationale that the records were outside of the mainstream.

omg @ strange fruit pr

great pr there ladies

My name...is a cloud...over which the rainbow...of white mouths...mispronounce...the leprechaun...of my innocence

Xxp

Serious question (before I'm blamed for being the foreign guy judging the US again): are the civil rights movement, Jim Crow laws, Emmett Till et al on the standard curriculum in primary or secondary education all across the US? I mean, is it even possible to not know what 'strange fruit' refers to once you get out secondary school?

I can't remember if the song "Strange Fruit" was ever discussed in my history classes.

On a certain level, public education in America is certainly to blame for instances of ignorance such as this (and for many, many more problems besides).

I can see that, but the rest? The lynchings etc? Is that on the curriculum nation wide, or does it still depend on the state you're in? Xp

Not sure if I want to blame education, just wondering if it's an accepted, integral part of education. As it should be imho.

I'm being charitable enough towards the owners of this firm to assume that the question in this situation is: why would you use an established phrase as the name for your company when you clearly didn't know what it meant and you clearly spent no time researching its meaning/origin?

I did not learn the reference until I got a Billie Holiday record in my mid-20s. Had only heard of the record label.

I went to enough different public schools (13) to say definitively that the quality and content of public education varies wildly from school to school.

I think it's safe to say that that particular song is not part of any standardized curriculum in US schools

But are the lynchings and JC laws etc?

Idk how you can name your company something without having Google image searched it first.

yes. xpost

xp High school was a long time ago, and I remember my history classes teaching the Reconstruction period in a general way, but my classes rarely made it past WWII. Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement may have been mentioned in a class I took called "20th century America," but lynching certainly was not; and the class was an elective in any case.

it reminds me of that mitchell and webb sketch about the laundry place that names themselves "touching cloth" without knowing what it means, just cause its a popular phrase

I knew about the song from an early age, but likely only because my dad was an enthusiast of this music. I don't believe it was ever brought up in any class I took prior to college. For that matter, I only learned about Emmett Till from watching Eyes on the Prize when it first aired; he wasn't mentioned in any classes, either.

"Strange Fruit" is that song about alimony right?

I'd never heard the song or or the phrase until some time in the last year maybe? I'm kind of clueless though--but nonetheless it's probably not that surprising for someone not to know. It IS surprising that they didn't do any background on their own company name though?

Thanks Phil an Crut

they should have gone with Queer Fish obv

The problem is less that public schools in the US don't instruct students on the meaning of "Strange Fruit" than it is that public schools in the US don't instruct students on basic critical thinking skills.

^^^

i had zero exposure to the civil rights movement in school until the college level, but do have memories of my fifth grade teacher screening the entirety of "Gone With The Wind" in our history class and carefully informing us that the Civil War was not about slaves and that the Confederates didn't really lose. So yeah, that was the eighties in the rural south.

I remember learning about civil war/reconstruction/Jim Crow/civil rights from an early age but I'm not sure how much of that was down to exposure from my parents/books and what was from school

yeah me too
my parents probably talked about it a lot
i don't think i knew about "strange fruit" til college though

there were lots of civil right themed movies in my youth, but I can't remember learning about that stuff in school

I distinctly remember in elementary school being into this series of book bios that were all called "Meet [insert famous personage]", which were all about presidents except for the one that was about MLK.

In second grade, we had a unit on the Civil Rights movement that lasted several months. Learned more about it that year than in all the other years prior to high school combined.

damn forks, that is fucked
ftr didn't know about the song "Strange Fruit" until relatively recently either

High school was a long time ago, and I remember my history classes teaching the Reconstruction period in a general way, but my classes rarely made it past WWII

ditto

yeah that's about it for me. i learned most of what i know from reading baldwin in college.

though i do remember a teacher laying out the specific meanings and differences among the various key words: racism, bigotry, chauvinism, bias, prejudice, sexism, segregation, etc. homophobia wasn't on the list tho.

i remember watching a birth of a nation and talking about lynchings in middle school or high school. the real oversight imo was with '60s and '70s civil rights stuff, which i do not remember discussing in any class in any capacity

yeah our history classes didn't get to the 60s

I read Black Boy and Invisible Man and a bunch of other related stuff in hs English class. Autobio of Malcolm X, some other things I'm probably forgetting.

I honestly can't remember learning much about civil rights in K-12. I mean, I'm sure it was addressed at some point but by no means extensively. Most of my early education in that regard was in seeing the contrast between the fairly well-mixed schools I attended through junior high followed by my two practically all-white (like <1% PoC), rural high schools. Eye opening.

this is enlightening to me; I was in public school in the '90s-'00s and we talked about the civil rights era a ton. my high school textbooks even went through the Clinton presidency! we rushed through everything after the Vietnam War though. (and our science textbooks were published in the '80s iirc)

in the 80s no one wanted to talk about the 60s ime, it was morning in America etc.

morning in america was pretty dark

Ha, my eighth grade teacher went on a tirade about Ronald Reagan and how terrible things were going to be with him as President.

Went to school with steelworkers kids, it was a very liberal school, we learned civil rights history, labor history, social reform movements. Of course this was in Illinois, where we spent plenty of time on the evils of slavery.

Knew the song in high school from listening to it, but it wasn't really part of classroom civil rights discussion. Then at college, found out that the song's writer was also worthy of interest when his adopted granddaughter decided to talk about him (and her real grandparents) in a writing seminar.

I'd never heard the song or or the phrase until some time in the last year maybe? I'm kind of clueless though--but nonetheless it's probably not that surprising for someone not to know. It IS surprising that they didn't do any background on their own company name though?

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Monday, December 8, 2014 2:48 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OMG, look at what Alex Jones has been saying:

Alex Jones' wild new Ferguson theory - http://www.salon.com/2014/12/07/alex_jones_wild_new_ferguson_theory_partner/
http://www.salon.com/2014/12/07/alex_jones_wild_new_ferguson_theory_partner/

He says Obama is trying to start a race war.

At least maybe now some of his liberal followers will stop posting links to him and get wise about conspiracy theory and its ugly history in the US.

in high school I learned that Andrew Johnson was a blinkered and dim but pitiable figure, "Radical Republicans" went "too far" with Reconstruction, and Woodrow Wilson was a god.

Oh my. May I ask where this was? I went to grammar school in Illinois in the 1970's, where social studies could have been re-named: "Why the south is and was bad, bad, bad."

Anyway, article on white power and Klan music on Spotify, Amazon and iTunes:

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/12/04/as-apple-moves-to-remove-hate-music-from-itunes-other-retailers-remain/

I find it amazing that there was actually a band who called themselves The Klansmen and that they actually titled an album Fetch the Rope. That feels like a deleted scene from Spinal Tap or something equally ridiculous.

also they are brostep and wear cardigans