This maxim holds a kernel of truth. The first person into print creates a weaker position for his opponent, that of the criticizer, but also being in print means you leave a record for future folks to be able to see. (Donald Trump is a master of this calling his opponents all kinds of names and making baseless charges which reporters then ask the people targeted to respond to. Most of Trump’s targets make the mistake of responding to the claim/charge; they would be better off asking “Why would you take his word for anything? He is a known liar. Come back when you have some evidence backing up his ridiculous claim and then I will respond to your question.”)
As a prime example of being in print means you leave a record for future folks to be able to see, take the ancient Greeks. They are credited for having invented Western Civilization: they invented science, medicine, philosophy, etc. This is, of course, bullshit. The Greeks, like every other civilization before and since built upon what came before. (In fact they made that claim themselves but racist Europeans of the nineteenth century couldn’t abide with Egyptians and Indians and Chinese being the sources of such things because well, they were mongrel races, some were even Black!)
The ancient Greeks had an advantage though, the written Greek language. That language became the written language of much of the Mediterranean area, whether you spoke Greek or not (written Greek was the lingua franca). For example, much of the Christian New Testament, written by Jews and people who spoke Aramaic, was written in Greek.
This didn’t guarantee your ideas would survive, but it sure helped. We have enough references to lost manuscripts to back up this contention, and the works of Aristotle, one of the finest Greek scientists, were almost lost, but a student of Aristotle had written down most of his ideas and those scrolls were later unearthed and Aristotle took his place in the annals of science. (Whew, that was close.) Were it not for those notes, Aristotle would be a footnote in history at best.
But the people who left no written records are not as well represented. Take for example the wonders of vaccinations. If you look up who invented the idea your source will likely say it was Dr. Edward Jenner in 1796. This, of course, isn’t true. Vaccinations were being done in Africa centuries earlier than that. We have advertisements for slaves who were vaccinated, making them more valuable, earlier than that. But Jenner had a better PR agent apparently. Oh, and he was white, of course.
Greek philosophers did not invent philosophy. Greek astronomers did not invent astronomy. Mariners were navigating by the stars for centuries before Greece existed. In Polynesia, many hundreds of stars were given names before any white astronomers showed up. Similarly medicines were known and used long before the Greeks invented “medicine.” Pharmaceutical companies are still trolling the knowledge stores of “primitive peoples” for new drugs to exploit.
Getting into print first had many, many advantages, but if you are wise, you should ask yourself: from where did they get their knowledge to begin with?
Systemic Racism? Never Heard of It
Tags: class warfare, conservatives, Corporate Greed, corruption, Lying Fucking Conservatives, obscene wealth, Republicans, tax the rich
Right-wing Republicans (Are there any other kinds any more?) are fond of denying that there are no after affects of black slavery in this country and pooh-pooh that claim that systemic racism even exists.
An article in The Guardian yesterday stated:
“When Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate-Austin had their home assessed by an appraiser in 2020, they learned it was worth $995,000. So the Black couple, who purchased their home in December 2016 and spent thousands in renovation costs over the years, decided to get a second opinion. They “white-washed” their property and had a white friend pose as the homeowner. Weeks later, a different appraiser assessed the house’s value at $1,482,500.
“The couple sued for discrimination.”
We certainly wouldn’t want those black folks to have enough money to buy into another white neighborhood and we want to make it easier for a white couple to replace this black couple . . . wait, WTF?
Anyone doubting the existence of systemic racism is exposing willful ignorance. The federal government has admitted to creating a red-lining program that prevented black and brown people from even securing federal or even private loans on houses in white neighborhoods, for Pete’s sake.
And I assume every denial of systemic racism begins with a prologue starting with “I am not a racist, but . . . “ This should be a clear sign the speaker is a racist, because if you feel you have to deny it, you are about to utter some racist bullshit.
Oh, and the Austins won their case.
And, if you still have doubts The Guardian article went on to state that a pair of researchers “analyzed more than 47m appraisal reports collected from licensed appraisers between 2013 and 2022. The data had been made public for the first time, a decade after Howell and Korver-Glenn (the two researchers SR) first pursued it.
They found the gap between the home values of white homeowners and homeowners of color widened over the last decade. When unpacked by race, the results were staggering: appraisers valued homes in white neighborhoods two and half times more than homes in Black neighborhoods. For homes in Latino neighborhoods, the gap is larger, despite the fact that the value of the Latino residents’ homes were bigger than Black residents’.
Systemic racism doesn’t exist my ass.