“Stop resisting!” The police shout. Then they turn and the white cops see they are no longer human. They shoot but the bullets hit and the things run them down and suck their blood and tear them limb-from-limb. Then they return to human form. Now it really is racism. But would such revenge fantasy want to go the human to non-human route?
Better the stupid racism idea dies after 400 years since it was planted by the White Maritime Empires that divided people up both biologically and by class, created it from their religion (Aryan Christianity) and “racism” when they and their new “natural physicians” took their prejudices and used them to put pale skin people on the top and the blackest of dark colored people at the bottom of a hierarchy they also created. In both cases of religion and science they were on top and everyone else were “lesser races” and may not have been altogether human by their reckoning. Among their own were “lesser classes” of white men with women always behind them. Still with us even if most have lost that train of where it came from it still affects us all. Until the elements of it stop being used and accepted and treated as if they are natural law, we will still be in its thrall. And not before.
Wells suggests this idea in the following passage from the novel:
And before we judge them [the Martians] too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished Bison and the Dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?—Chapter I, “The Eve of the War”
This also challenged the Victorian notion of there being a natural order, in which the British Empire had a right to rule through their own superiority over subject races.42
Social Darwinism
The novel also dramatizes the ideas of race presented in Social Darwinism, an ideology of some prominence at the time it was written. The Martians exercise over humans their ‘rights’ as a superior race, more advanced in evolution.44
Social Darwinism was a theory which applied Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection to ethnic groups and social classes. It suggested that the success of these different ethnic groups in world affairs, and social classes in a society were the result of evolutionary forces, a struggle in which the group or class more fit to succeed did so; i.e., the ability of an ethnic group to dominate other ethnic groups, or the chance to succeed or rise to the top of society was determined by biology, not by the effort of individuals, and the offspring of the dominant groups were destined to succeed because they were more evolved. In more modern times it is typically seen as dubious and unscientific for its apparent use of Darwin’s ideas to justify the position of the rich and powerful, or dominant ethnic groups.45
Night-Gaunt49[Bozo is Boffo] over 6 years ago
“Stop resisting!” The police shout. Then they turn and the white cops see they are no longer human. They shoot but the bullets hit and the things run them down and suck their blood and tear them limb-from-limb. Then they return to human form. Now it really is racism. But would such revenge fantasy want to go the human to non-human route?
Better the stupid racism idea dies after 400 years since it was planted by the White Maritime Empires that divided people up both biologically and by class, created it from their religion (Aryan Christianity) and “racism” when they and their new “natural physicians” took their prejudices and used them to put pale skin people on the top and the blackest of dark colored people at the bottom of a hierarchy they also created. In both cases of religion and science they were on top and everyone else were “lesser races” and may not have been altogether human by their reckoning. Among their own were “lesser classes” of white men with women always behind them. Still with us even if most have lost that train of where it came from it still affects us all. Until the elements of it stop being used and accepted and treated as if they are natural law, we will still be in its thrall. And not before.
Night-Gaunt49[Bozo is Boffo] over 6 years ago
“WAR OF THE WORLDS”
Wells suggests this idea in the following passage from the novel:
And before we judge them [the Martians] too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished Bison and the Dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?—Chapter I, “The Eve of the War”This also challenged the Victorian notion of there being a natural order, in which the British Empire had a right to rule through their own superiority over subject races.42
Social Darwinism
The novel also dramatizes the ideas of race presented in Social Darwinism, an ideology of some prominence at the time it was written. The Martians exercise over humans their ‘rights’ as a superior race, more advanced in evolution.44
Social Darwinism was a theory which applied Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection to ethnic groups and social classes. It suggested that the success of these different ethnic groups in world affairs, and social classes in a society were the result of evolutionary forces, a struggle in which the group or class more fit to succeed did so; i.e., the ability of an ethnic group to dominate other ethnic groups, or the chance to succeed or rise to the top of society was determined by biology, not by the effort of individuals, and the offspring of the dominant groups were destined to succeed because they were more evolved. In more modern times it is typically seen as dubious and unscientific for its apparent use of Darwin’s ideas to justify the position of the rich and powerful, or dominant ethnic groups.45
grocks over 6 years ago
“People See Black Men as Larger, More Threatening Than Same-Sized White Men” http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2017/03/black-men-threatening.aspx
Masterskrain over 6 years ago
This is more accurate to a LOT more people then they would EVER admit!
JeffreySGreen Premium Member over 6 years ago
De-escalation training would serve cops and their communities well.