No.  If he's holding up a mirror it's to himself.  Not the world.  But himself.  Not a pretty picture.

As I've said before, if he wants to post rationally and defend his arguments people will engage him.  If he wants to desend into name calling that's a different question.  And I'll happily discuss my breakfast menu.

What a crazy thread.  It is tempting to start cutting it up into the several interesting topics it has touched, but that would be too much like work.  

CD brought up the karma question again.  I've been pondering it and I'll start a new topic for that one.  http://www.bermudasucks.com/forum/index.php?topic=3804.0



Yeah, Blanks, your position on the subject is a well known matter of record.  I'm glad you mentioned one of the challenges of choosing to Tank someone.  That isn't my reason Tigga isn't banned, or Tanked.  It is because he plays the rules masterfully; not unlike Premier Brown.  Tigga pushes the limits of the letter and spirit of the 'law' here and when he goes over the line, he goes back from that position to post moderately again.  Trolling, sure!  Distracting from a topic, duh.  But, not breaking the member agreement, or backing away when he does.

Tigga, please answer me this... have I or any of the moderators treated you differently because of your race?  While I was interested to hear about the attitudes on the ground during your visit, I'm more interested to hear what you think about the assertion of "institutional racism" here on the forum.  

(argh, had written a rather lengthy response only to have it nuked by yesterday's site problems. abbreviated instead)

Can I just point out that this thread, with a few exceptions, is very good and it's refreshing to have a frank discussion without it being completely derailed by certain people. Good on y'all. And briefly, as I tried to summarise in a previous post in here, Jonny/CD - Tigga is not a mirror, he is not doing anything other than trying to destabilise and discredit the discussion on here of others. And he gets a kick out of it.

I think the actual topic is really interesting, and crucial to Bermuda moving forward rather than getting stuck. Having thought about it for a long time, my 'definition' of institutionalised racism fits quite snugly in with the figures that Guilden produced earlier. Which is, the average 25 year old white Bermudian in, say, accounting, should make precisely the same salary as the average 25 year old black Bermudian in accounting. That is not the case today, and until it is, I strongly believe we have a problem and it is institutionalised racism. And it has to be kicked out of Bermuda as soon as possible, full stop. It is all of our responsbilities, as a government, employers, and just Bermudians to stop it.

However, in my opinion institionalised racism is not the explanation of why the average 25 year old black Bermudian makes less than the average 25 year old white Bermudian. If a higher percentage of 25 year old white Bermudians have been to better schools, achieved better qualifications and are therefore better candidates, then they should see higher salaries reflective of this. Now you can argue all day about the reason for the above being true, ie, public schools failing, poorer households requiring kids to do more work at home and less school work, lack of proper parenting and so forth - and these help to explain it. But they are not examples of institutionalisd racism.

They are examples of a broken system, broken homes and a broken mentality. You can point the finger at governments, individuals, policies and so forth that have caused this, but it is not institutionalised racism. And until Bermudians stop defaulting back to racism as the reason for all of our woes, and acknowledge that until we get better standards of free education and an incentive system in place to get black Bermudians performing in schools and getting world class degrees, we will never move forward.

So I guess the point is that if you treat two people doing the same thing, ceteris paribus, differently because one is white and one is black, that is racist. But at CD/Jonny - Tigga and Biggie don't do the same thing, therefore they're treated differently.

mike i think U are fair-minded twd me a as  a moderator - i don't think ur fair-minded twd the plp  but that's another issue.

in re; to inst. racism n this forum - i'll point to LIF's comment that whites are better paid not because of inst. racism but because they are better schooled - why are they better schooled? probably because of remnants of the separate but inequal practices of inst. racism - we're talking about a society where it was illegal for our great grandfathers to have an education - get serious

and b4 anyone starts whining about me playing victim - i did my masters and my brother is doing his phd in the uk on full scholarship

i think that people on this site equate racism w/ hate - so when they r accused of being a racist - their knee jerk response is to say - i don't hate blks - i can't be racist

racism has never been about hate - plantation owners were racist yet they still let their blk female slaves breast feed their white children which is a well documented practice - that's not hate - most of blk america is of mixed blood because of white slave owners having (sometimes consensual relationships) with  slaves - that's not hate

racism is an almost unconscious belief of superiority based on ur skin colour - this site is a perfect example of it - if i were from mars and all i knew about bda was what i read on this site i would assume that whites are honest and good while blks are corrupt and bad - but when u bring this up to many of the posters - they go crazy

put it like this - ms. bda, the national football and cricket teams, the gombey scene, county cricket, league football, the bulk of the social scenes in bda - are all dominated by blk bdans - if i were to ask those blks who run those orgs if they were consciously excluding other bdan cultures - they'd day no - but u can't argue with the numbers - something is happening on an unconscious level that creates such an envirnoment that only blks are taking part in these areas - i mean cricket and soccer are British religions - yet in bda they're all blk

i went to a county cricket game last week and their was only 1 whte guy - and i actually went up to him and commended him for having the guts to be the only white dude out there

so the question is - if this site is meant to be a discussion forum for bdans - why is the population of this site 90% white & male - cuz judging from facebook and myspace there are a lot of blk bdans online looking for debate - but they don't come here

so sorry that my shackles bother u mambo

Oh!!!!!!!! .....I thought Toronto had a "No Shackle" law.......Damn Cannucks....oh I get it...you got arrested again...got it nah bro...........

Okay ... here we go ... Rummy, tigga gave a sensible reasoned response ... without including his normal rants ... and there you go ... really I know you are trying to joke here but you are effectively derailing ... so ... frankly ... its not funny ... and falls flat ... desist ... or I will ... well lets just say this discussion as originally posted on "catchafire" will effectively be at an end.