tanalilt:

baxtavius:

jcoleknowsbest:

stfuconservatives:

Found on Facebook with this caption: “The New Jim Crow has these folks thinking they can call you a nigger to your face and dare you to say something about it.”

It’s funny that people in the reblogs are saying that this sticker is not racial… Even though this is how you spell » R-e-n-e-g-e… But don’t let facts get in your way….

If I ever see this bumper sticker (or one with similar racial slurs and hatred) I am keying that car and maybe smashing a window. They deserve it. I don’t care if it’s a random act of violence- that is a terrible person and they need to know that not everybody tolerates their bullshit.

Great idea. Face hatred and violence with hatred and violence.

There are a lot of things you could do that wouldn’t put you in the wrong as well. Think about that - be the better person.

Okay, time to type up a long-ass reply to that. You know I love you, Kaitlyn, so I’m sorry if this gets, I dunno, rude? But yeah.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the trolley problem recently. That’s the thought experiment where you can choose to either flip a switch and kill two people or be passive and five people die. And there’s a lot about being active versus passivity and whether it’s murder and utilitarianism but in the end we a thing or about human nature. One, we almost always pick the passive route because we’re impractical. Consequently, that means evil ideologies can run wild as long as it’s happening to somebody else.

The correct answer in the trolley problem is to flip the switch because unless you know some secret information that values one human life over another, you must save as many people as possible. And that involves activity. You can’t just go to the people about to die and say “Wow, it really sucks that you’re dying, and I could try to do something about it, but you have to understand I would feel guilty saving all of you because blah blah blah”

So anyway back to the point. To defeat the trolley problem we as humans have to act practically and realize the consequences. And that means asking what bumper stickers like this mean. That means asking what a slur like “nigger” means and what kind of person would slap that on their SUV to support their political ideology.

Nigger is a hateful word. Nigger, used in this context against a man who is clearly being hated based on his race, is a signal for danger. I can guess with minimal doubt that this person hates Barack Obama. Not dislikes, hates. And at the same time I can see this is based on race, so we can infer that this person hates a lot of people.

It’s important that it isn’t just discontent, but hatred. Nigger is a killing word. When somebody uses “nigger” to insult you and you are a POC, you run. It’s sad, but true. I’ve experienced it and a ton of people with darker skin tones have as well. Nigger implies violence. Nigger implies random destruction toward innocents.

Now, does that mean this person is going to go assaulting black people? No, not necessarily. Does it even mean they’re okay with it? Maybe not. But they are okay with the idea of hating somebody based on their race, which leads to hatred and violence and oppression whether direct or indirect.

This is an SUV. This is extremely casual and extreme racism. If I see a sticker like this I can guarantee it’s in an extremely white environment with very little minority population. That person who comes back to find a gash on their car is going to know that the person keying their car probably wasn’t just some “nigger” walking by.

At least, that’s what I hope. I hope that any person, especially a white person, will key this car. Because this person needs to see that not only are they wrong, but they are unacceptable. That society won’t tolerate this kind of hatred and passive violence. Which, you know, isn’t true, but it won’t be true until people cannot do this anymore.

If you are proudly displaying your hatred for somebody I will proudly retaliate to tell you that this is not okay. Keying a car won’t kill anybody, but letting racism persist kills people every day.