Do you agree with bending your knee to show contrition?

Post Reply New Topic

Do you agree with bending your knee to show contrition,
For white privilege?

For me, this is a very recent phenomenon.
I wouldn't do it in a pink fit.
Am I a bad person?

On another note, since that now ex-cop took a knee on Floyd, even though I know the symbolism of taking a knee came first, it seems rather macabre to me to be doing it right now in the current context.

lol
Good point.

Contrition--I think you are misusing the word. People "take a knee" to show solidarity with Black Lives Matter, and it's not universally a thing of "reparations" and all that...

Kneeling for contrition usually has two knees; using one knee is called genuflection. These are ancient religious & hierarchical gestures.

I would never do it when the national anthem is being played.

When it is not being played I don't know. It might depend on if I want to show solidarity with specific people demonstrating.

Over here some policemen are doing out of solidarity or to prove they are not some occupation army. Now, demonstrators are expecting it of them. If they don't do the protesters take a knee in the middle of an intersection. Very SJW of them. I don't think the police should cave in. Their job is to be neutral. I find it hypocritical when demonstrators protesting racial bias demand the police be biased towered their side.

How dare protesters expect police to not be in favour of racial bias. How dare they take a stance on a matter of basic human rights? Personally I partially agree with you, no cops should be forced because the cops who are in favour of applying racial biases should be fired and never rehired to work in that field.

Not wanting to take a knee does not equate to favoring racial bias. Wanting to stay neutral on the job does not equate to being a racist, it equates to acting professionally.

It depends on what the issue is. Being pro-decency isn't unprofessional.

I think these cops who kneel in solidarity with the protesters are trying, but trying isn't enough. For a meaningful change to take place, we should all dig deeper and dismantle racism at its roots, not just defund the police and re-allocate the money to community resources that can actually benefit community members (although that helps).

The U.S. was built on stolen land, mass genocide, slavery, and other forms of exploitation; these have to be addressed, and I'm afraid even the white liberals who are currently out protesting aren't ready to face the music and give up the privilege that has let them blissfully ignorant of the number of black/brown/indigenous people dying systematically until maybe three weeks ago.

I don't like it. IMHO it's an invitation for white people to virtue signal more than they already do. My problem with virtue signalling - it's a person getting some sort of promotion for doing nothing more passing meme's around with their friends on Facebook or wherever else and when it comes to taking a knee it's just taking the same vulgarity and bringing it off the internet. It doesn't seem like something people who are really trying to move forward social causes do, it's much more the territory of clever fakes, white knights, and taking a knee or even kissing a boot is something a billionaire could do just as easily as anyone else right while they're automating or outsourcing thousands of jobs.

I think my biggest takeaway in the last few weeks is just how savvy accelerationist and groups of similar orientation on both the right and the left, even as non politicians and non-state actors have figure out how to 'not let a good crisis go to waste', including the likes of Boogaloo. Our country is a powder keg right now, set up for all kinds of attempts at interference, so we should feel even more responsibility than usual to get these things right as fast as possible - demonstrate with action that our system has no place for law enforcement or anyone else who brings this kind of shame and public distrust down, and it's sad that it would have to be even that reactionary but - when economics are good and civil cohesion looks like it's not going anywhere, people seem to get sloppy and right now we really need to be thinking much more carefully about keeping civil cohesion and what kinds of responsiveness to problems that actually requires.

Isn't singing a national anthem virtue signalling? It is just as much virtue signalling to stand up and place your hand over your heart (or whatever) as it is to kneel or not do so. The only difference is one virtue signal is to say everything is good now, while the other is that it is not.

Going to be honest, although I took part of it through school and scouts, I think that expected virtue signalling can be kind of dumb, especially if you find a problem in how things are now. And actually finding a way to connect your beliefs to alter that signal to a cause you believe in, it is much braver, if at risk of getting little attention if you can't organize something.

If you don't want to take a knee, then fine, don't feel like you are forced to do it. But just know that if you refuse to stand for what that gesture meant, then what do you stand for? The dumbest thing about the whole kneeling thing is that people decided for themselves what the footballer was signalling, they acted like he was spitting on the graves of soldiers, they did not listen to what he said, and then they act like what is happening now is out of nowhere.

And, if you are refusing to do it because you don't believe ins something like white privilege, then yeah you probably are a bad person. Just like the people that met Black Lives Matter by saying Blue Lives Matter, or All Lives Matter, you really are not standing up for the rights of everyone, but just so you don't have to face that some people have things out of their control worse.

So a few things to parse out. In one sense, with the national anthem, you have an entrenched culture where at the beginning of a school day or at the beginning of a sporting event it gets sung. Culture's not immutable, it can be changed, we may have had a perfectly good reason for having chosen those times and to do it at all that may or may not still be relevant. The issue of virtue signalling is some combination of a few things - 1) whether a gesture actually is of any good or helps in any way beyond conferring status to the person whose taking the action and 2) if it's the kind of thing that a person whose actually looking at the issues and trying to get under them would want to go anywhere near. Maybe some caveat back the other way - some people would say politicians have to kiss babies and this is that layer of social exchange, it's always been a bit crass and foreign to me because it seems to be about feeling alone.

As far as the national anthem myself - I suppose I'm neutral on it, ie. I don't have a problem doing it but at the same time, if I look at myself as a US resident, the notion that I was born here and my life is contained here means that if I see blemishes on this team's history (particularly the ones that are getting brought up with recent events or the killing of native Americans) I want to contribute in what ways I can to bring things forward and help prevent us from making the same or similar mistakes or really what were amoral gains, so the goal is to then evolve the thing forward. The best way I can see to do that is to see what can be done to life people up.


Not being the most social person my preference tends to be giving to charities where I really feel like they're on to something helpful, and I like to boost the signal of lucid thinkers on any given topic. If I can find someone who I really think is nailing this topic in a way that's in the best interest of relations between African Americans and police districts across the US then I'm both very interested in boosting their signal as well as giving to causes that they'd recommend.

And that is what people are doing when they are taking a knee, they are signal boosting a message that they think is nailing a topic. That is what it was but people outside of the movement started to describe it as being disrespectful or being meaningless, and why do you think they might have done that?

I think people tend to over emphasise the nobility to giving to just any old charity, especially when it might be questionable what messages you are standing behind. For instance, the historically popular Salvation Army had quite a bit of controversy for some of its anti-LGBT policies, being rather discriminatory, and then one might have questioned if all people donating to the Salvation Army signal boosting a partially hurtful cause. It can be up to people to educate themselves on what something stands for, and can be total ignorance to just buy into something from their framing.

Good point,
But I think there is a splash-over, depending on the context.

There is another phenomenon where whites actually prostrate in front of coloured people, and ask forgiveness for being white.

I'll see if I can find a youtube clip.

I think that acting like this is a thing is ridiculous, and instances are either taken out of context or people who have know idea what they are doing. It stinks of cases of people creating strawmen to discredit the movement. BLM is not telling white people to apologize for being white, just as feminists are not telling men to apologize for being men.

Why are you acting like this is a thing?

This is what I was referring to:



Ya gotta hand it to the "The Pepe",
He is rarely ever wrong.