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Tulsa once had what was known as Black Wall Street. There were too many successful black men, so 1921 in the whites massacred everybody. They even brought in pl
by Fricken 6mo ago
Tulsa once had what was known as Black Wall Street. There were too many successful black men, so 1921 in the whites massacred everybody. They even brought in planes and dropped bombs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
- b112 6mo ago[flagged]
- Fricken 6mo ago[flagged]
- b112 6mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- the_gipsy 6mo agoIt's... pretty simple.
- b112 6mo ago[flagged]
- uoaei 6mo agoYour refusal to interact with subtext has me guffawing. I wonder if you even recognize what you're doing. In the history of revolution, there is never (except in elementary school) all that much weight put on the singular act which instigated the final result. The conditions in place (Jim Crow laws, Southern pride, etc.) lead up to a final moment which our monkey brains like to point to as the cause but in reality there is a simmering cultural froth which could boil over in any number of ways: it just happens that one of the ways is what's described in the Wikipedia article, but it could have started many other ways. All of our understanding about the experience of being Black in the US during that time helps to contextualize the extreme and disproportionate outburst of violence by the White population as racially motivated, serving under an ideology best described as ur-"Great Replacement Theory". In simpler words, the destruction of Black Wall Street is not without precedent, indeed this was merely one of the more famous and complete examples of destroying the wealth that Black people enjoyed, if only briefly due to the hate of those visiting violence upon them.
- rithdmc 6mo ago> I wonder if you even recognize what you're doing. "Don't feed the trolls". They absolutely do know what they're doing.
- kennywinker 6mo agoYou really read a single wikipedia article and think you understand what happened and why? Impressive levels of dunning-kruger on display. Go read a book about it, and then if you still want to, you can tell us why this interpretation is wrong.
- cauch 6mo agoBut you are doing the same as what you are complaining about. Racism is a complex phenomenon not limited to the simplistic view "they don't like black people". This representation is doing a disservice when some truly racist people are then justifying their actions and beliefs by saying "I cannot be racist, I'm friend with the garbage man who is black: he is a good black man, is polite to me and stay at his place. So, if I'm not racist, what I'm doing is just legitimate". In the context of Tulsa, it is difficult to believe that the frustration of racist people seeing black people more successful than them has not contributed to the situation. It seems very natural and logical (and that's even the core of "white supremacy": it clearly states that white people deserve a better position in the social hierarchy than black people: white supremacy framing is all about how some classes are reserved to white people and not black people), and if you are claiming that it is not the case, you are the one with the burden of the proof. While you have a point on raising that racism should not be reduced to only a class issue, you should have raised that as a precision around the discussion instead of presenting it as if racism has absolutely nothing to do with class and class sentiment. To take back your parallel, what you do can be seen as: "A person entered a bar and was raped" (what you say) vs "A woman entered a bar and was raped". While nobody here claims that men cannot be raped, there is social phenomenon that create a gender imbalance, and it is important to not reduce the situation to "it has nothing to do with gender and the social norms around it". In the rest of your comment, you, yourself, are doing a lot of interpretations. The fact that someone noticed that a class factor may have had an impact does not mean that they or all readers will conclude that it is the only way racism can happen (that is a huge stretch: if they know what happened at Tulsa, they very probably know a lot of other cases where the "only due to class" theory does not hold up). Same for "victim blaming": the fact that they were successful were obviously not used to excuse the massacre or pretend that somehow it was the black people's fault, the context is clearly to condemn the white racist people (and the success of the black people seems to be presented as an obvious additional factor on the racists, as it is obviously unfair to pretend that some people don't have the right to be successful). I think the first comment was not totally perfect and would have been 100% fine if they would have simply added "class was one of the factor". But I think your reaction has way more problems and does a bigger disservice by reducing racism to a framework that can easily be instrumentalised by real racist people.
- Spooky23 6mo agoOh it was becuase of their race for sure. For the type of man who joins a lynch mob, the only thing worse than a black man being black was him being “uppity”. The black community resisted the lynching and stood up for the poor bastard they wanted to murder. Their prosperity as a community and individually gave them the fortitude to fight back. It wasn’t “because they were rich”. It was because they had agency and dared to stand for their rights as a community. For a person who believes that the color of your skin makes you an inferior or superior human, that is an unforgivable affront.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- Bnjoroge 6mo agoyou are incredibly naive, ignorant or oblivious if you dont think a primary reason was because of their race in TULSA in 1921. Cmon man -read some history
- lukan 6mo agoWell, I am also having trouble with stating it as a fact, that the reason was they were too wealthy. Might have played a role later, but that is not clear to me from what is stated on wiki: "The massacre began during Memorial Day weekend after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a white 21-year-old elevator operator in the nearby Drexel Building.[25] He was arrested and rumors spread that he was to be lynched. Several hundred white residents assembled outside the courthouse, appearing to have the makings of a lynch mob. A group of approximately 50–60 black men, armed with rifles and shotguns, arrived at the jail to support the sheriff and his deputies in defending Rowland from the mob. Having seen the armed black men, some of the whites who had been at the courthouse went home for their own guns. There are conflicting reports about the exact time and nature of the incident, or incidents, that immediately precipitated the massacre. According to the 2001 Commission, "As the black men were leaving, a white man attempted to disarm a tall, African American World War I veteran. A struggle ensued, and a shot rang out." Then, according to the sheriff, "all hell broke loose."[26] The two groups shot at each other until midnight when the group of black men was greatly outnumbered and forced to retreat to Greenwood."
- Spooky23 6mo agoSo you take issue with the idea that an out of mob that burned down 35 blocks of a mid sized city was motivated by envy and resentment of the prosperous black community. Instead, you assert it was a mob that assembled to lynch a young man who was arrested for assault after he stepped on the foot of or grabbed the arm of a white female elevator operator when he tripped in the elevator. I guess they got out of hand when there was resistance to their murdering the kid. Why is that distinction so important to you?
- rectang 6mo agoThe broader theme of antagonism to Black success motivating the thoroughness of the destruction is a common observation about Tulsa.
- b112 6mo ago[flagged]
- shakna 6mo agoNice to see sealioning is alive and well on HN.
- Muromec 6mo agoBut do we actually have a proof that ** bombed *, maybe they bombed their own school to make you feel sad?
- notahacker 6mo agoHere's a contemporary opinion, from the state attorney general at the time, the highest ranking person in a judicial apparatus that didn't prosecute anyone for participating in it. Looks like the fact that "the Negro" was so rich he didn't "accept the white man as his benefactor" was a pretty big deal... The cause of this riot was not Tulsa. It might have happened anywhere for the Negro is not the same man he was thirty years ago when he was content to plod along his own road accepting the white man as his benefactor. But the years have passed and the Negro has been educated and the race papers have spread the thought of race equality.
- b112 6mo agoThere is no discussion of wealth in your quote. And further, that quote supports what I've been saying. It specifically says "the cause of this riot was not Tulsa", and "It might have happened anywhere". If it "might have happened anywhere", it therefore has nothing to do with the unique high-wealth of this area.
- Muromec 6mo agoWould you feel bad if it was actually true? Would it pose even a minor inconvenience for your life if that was exactly the case? What's the problem anyway.
- gzread 6mo agoRead between the lines.
- pmc123 6mo ago[flagged]
- stonogo 6mo ago[flagged]
- gadders 6mo agoThat's the urban myth, yes.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- kennywinker 6mo agoWell documented historical events aren’t urban myths.
- gadders 6mo agoPeople died, yes. But there was no white supremacism. There was no Wall Street. It was just like any high street. It was triggered by an attempted rape.
- kennywinker 6mo ago> there was no white supremacism People were murdered and homes and businesses destroyed by a white mob because they were black. How is that anything but white supremacy? > There was no Wall Street. It was just like any high street. It was one of the wealthiest black communities in america at a time. “Black wall street” was a nickname, not a literal description of a stock exchange. > It was triggered by an attempted rape. No, it was triggered by an attempted lynching of a black man. Or if you want to be more specific, because the community there stood up to protect the arrested man. It was triggered by a black community stopping a lynching. Your assertions are an ahistorical revisionist fantasy.
- spwa4 6mo agoAre we now not at all allowed to reference problems in other societies? We can complain about western society, and complaints from 100 years ago, when even my grandfather wasn't born yet, are valid criticism of America/Europe/... but things that happen today in India, Pakistan, Turkey are off limits?
- joe_mamba 6mo ago[flagged]
- oh_my_goodness 6mo agoWho complained about bringing up the foul stuff that goes on outside the US?
- bandofthehawk 6mo agoNo one did of course, but it's a common tactic of distraction to try to focus the attention on something else. That way people don't have to experience the discomfort thinking about the negative thing going on in their own society.