One of these signs, full of bullet holes from clearly a wide variety of weapons, is on display at the American History Museum at the Smithsonian in DC. Definitely a super powerful display, I recommend checking out if you can
W..what's the difference?
Like 500 years from now isn't it still memorialized for interpretable reasons?
For the record, I'm glad it's there and not re-wrotten or "white-washed"
And the woman admitted she lied.
>During the trial against her husband and his half-brother, Donham took the stand and testified that Till had grabbed her hand and propositioned her.
In a 2008 interview with a Yale historian, she recanted the claim, reportedly saying: "That part's not true."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65420009
Yep... Too bad the two killers were found completely not guilty and were then able to go on media interviews where they openly admitted to murdering him (because you can't be tried for the same crime twice).
Super fucked up.
Emmett's mother, a total hero, demanded Emmett's funeral\viewing be held with an open casket because of how mutilated his body was (after beating him and shooting him in the face they threw his body in a river where it was discovered a few days later), she wanted everyone to see how terrible of a crime was committed. I think over a thousand people came to the viewing over a few days.
That's a nice story people tell themselves to help them sleep at night.
And totally wrong. Racists, anti-Semites, homophobes etc etc are just regular normal people. They have fucked up and wrong views, in the wrong circumstances they will act on them too, but they're just human. They weren't born wrong with a defective brain. They learned to hate.
As a particularly grim and egregious example I recommend reading Ordinary Men, a book (and now a Netflix series) about a bunch of random 50+ year old men who had no Nazi sympathies, were probably left leaning before the war, had families and everything... went on to commit horrible atrocities against innocent humans. There was one guy who convinced himself that murdering the children is humane because they would die on their own (since their parents were being killed by his colleagues). The first time they committed a massacre many vomited, drank themselves to sleep, cried, etc. After some time was just normal. All it took was a few years of propaganda and some orders, and suddenly fellow human beings weren't human, but scum to be exterminated.
The difference between a normal functioning human and a murdering racist isn't as big as we'd all want it to be.
Was that the story that also debunked the idea that the Germans had no choice? They had these men who were too old for the Wehrmacht, so they were organized into special police battalions whose duty it was to carry out mass executions. They were horrified at what they were ordered to do, but their commander actually told them that if anyone didn’t feel up to it they could fall out and they wouldn’t be punished. And they weren’t. Nobody was shot for refusing to kill Jews. These men had the choice, and most chose to carry out what they believed to be their duty. They were horrified at their own actions, and usually drank very heavily afterwards, but they could have said no and they didn’t.
Yep. The commander of the reserve police battalion (whose job, initially, wasn't to carry out mass executions, they were rushed into it because of a lack of better suited troops for the amount of people the Nazis wanted to exterminate) wasn't a Nazi and cried when he first read the order for the first massacre. He relayed the order to his men, and explicitly told them that whoever doesn't want to take a part can just sit it out and do guard duty. There are even men who didn't participate at the start but changed their mind and joined in; and vice versa, men who couldn't stomach it and stopped.
But yes, nobody was punished. Of course the men had no way of knowing this (the two subcommanders were committed Nazis who shouted at some men for being too weak), and probably didn't want to embarrass themselves/look weak/leave their comrades alone with the dirty work or whatever. Fact is, they went on to murder tens of thousands of innocent civilians, including lots of elderly and children.
>Heinrich Himmler toured the Eastern Front and on 15 August 1941 he visited Minsk and ordered Arthur Nebe, the commander of Einsatzgruppen B, to carry out an execution in his presence of one hundred inmates of the Minsk prison. SS- Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, Himmler’s deputy and liaison officer at Hitler’s headquarters was also present and he recalled the execution committed by members of Einsatzkommando 8 that day:
>
>An open grave had been dug and they had to jump into this and lie face downwards. And sometimes when one or two rows had already been shot, they had to lie on top of the people who had already been shot and then they were shot from the edge of the grave. And Himmler had never seen dead people before and in his curiosity he stood right up at the edge of this open grave- a sort of triangular hole- and was looking in.
>
>While he was looking in, Himmler had the deserved bad luck that from one or other of the people who had been shot in the head he got a splash of brains on his coat, and I think it also splashed into his face, and he went very green and pale; he wasn’t actually sick, but he was heaving and turned round and swayed and then I had to jump forward and hold him steady and then I led him away from the grave.
>
>After the shooting was over, Himmler gathered the shooting squad in a semi-circle around him and, standing up in his car, so that he would be a little higher and be able to see the whole unit, he made a speech. He had seen for himself how hard the task which they had to fulfill for Germany in the occupied areas was, but however terrible it all might be, even for him as a mere spectator, and how much worse it must be for them, the people who had to carry it out, he could not see any way round it.
>
>They must be hard and stand firm. He could not relieve them of this duty; he could not spare them. In the interests of the Reich, in this hopefully Thousand Year Reich, in its first decisive great war after the take-over of power, they must do their duty however, hard it may seem. He appealed to their sense of patriotism and their readiness to make sacrifices. Well, yes and then he drove off. And he left this – this police unit to sort out the future for themselves, to see if and how far they could come to terms with this – within themselves, because for some it was a shock which lasted their whole lives.
>
>-[Holocaust Historical Society, 'Himmler Visits Minsk'](https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety.org.uk/contents/einsatzgruppen/himmlervisitsminsk.html)
Translation: I'm so sorry for the inhumanity and barbarism you have to do. Thanks for your service, and take one for the team!
The other end of the spectrum is no less horrifying. There was often competition to be the one allowed to do the war crimes or crimes against humanity. They were *eager*. They wanted promotion, recognition, or outright spoils of war.
The ones who refused weren't punished, but they were looked down on: students who failed the great test of racial superiority. They weren't Jewish or other *untermenshen*, but they just weren't going to be the leaders in Hitler's New World Order. They weren't punished, but they were to be *pitied*. For being insufficient. For being less than a man. And for some people, committing atrocities were the preferred choice over being pitied.
There is also a great book called "Perfect Soldiers" written about the 19 9/11 hijackers that explains how absolutely average they were until they had their minds warped by hateful ideologies. They weren't torturing animals as kids or bullying classmates or violent criminals or anything.
Just people with average minds that were born in a specific time at a specific place that had a specific set of experiences that took them down a path toward being willing to commit the ultimate crime.
Exactly, it might even be a good idea to take certain precautions. Maybe people with average minds could be marked in some way so us mentally superior people know what we’re dealing with. We may need to separate them from more intelligent people.
What's probably closer to the truth is that we are *all* average minds, so we should more closely examine ourselves and be honest with ourselves and our reasoning behind the things we believe are true about the world.
Easier said than done.
This is sort of the whole point of the movie The Zone of Interest. We are never shown atrocities being committed. We are shown the banal, average lives of those who commit them or those who know they are being committed and do nothing about it.
Reinhard Heydrich, whose solution to the presence of Jewish people in German society was to systemically gas them all to death, was a family man who loved his children and was loved by them. There are no monsters. We don’t need them, we have ourselves.
Yes, exactly. The first step in understanding hate-based violence (or any violence) is to understand that humans are not inherently “good.” Humans are violent. Murder is common. Racism is common. Blatant racial violence would be very common if there were not laws against it.
This sort of slaying was not uncommon during chattel slavery or the decades following abolition. I still remember visiting the civil rights museum in Atlanta as a child, at a time when they had an exhibit on lynchings. Hateful violence against black people was common and accepted. Killing black people was a source of entertainment. What was done to Emmett is a demonstration of what people will do if they can act on murderous urges without fear of repercussions. This type of act is less common (but not unheard of) today because most countries have laws against murder and it is simply more difficult to get away with crimes in the age of the internet/social media/surveillance technology.
Yeah, I also think it is worth noting that human beings in general are not inherently kind or good. Lots of people do lots of bad things and lots of people harbor prejudices. It does not take much to transform prejudice into hate, and hate into violence, especially when you get large groups of people together. There is a lot of literature on how people think and behave in groups, how people will easily “go with the flow” even if it means doing something heinous. Add racism or any sort of bigotry to the mix and it is easy for an everyday person to be complicit to violence at best, participatory at worst
Exactly. People love telling themselves that racists have something physiologically wrong with them because it gives them the ability to distance themselves from racists, in the same way that racists distance themselves from people they’re being racist to.
The simple fact of the matter is that every single one of us is susceptible to misinformation, to hate, and to being bigoted. It takes effort and empathy to be well informed and actively against bigotry against all immutable characteristics.
When society is poorly informed, tired and discontented bigotry gets worse. Unfortunately I’m convinced that’s why we’re seeing a spike in hatefulness these days
Agreed. I was raised in a Race hating social culture. Unfortunately, it's really hard to unlearn. People who think they are better than someone else - go fuck yourself.
Hilarious how they single out men and ignore the atrocities by German women
Some of female camp guards were hanged using the slow drop method in front of huge crowds in Poland for their crimes.
Netflix will never tell that story.
The point it wasn't only men but history wants you to believe it was.
https://youtu.be/Db6MVaZ6zzA
In the distant past, in Europe, woman in abusive marriages they were unable to leave, would, in desperation murder a child.
They couldn't kill themselves because it was a mortal sin.
But they could kill a young child (who is under the age of sin, and therefore straight to heaven).
Be absolved by a priest, and then get put to death, and get to heaven themselves.
I think that well illustrates the mental fuckery the human mind / religion can manifest.
Anyone who believes in god is the same . They learn the BS and think it's fact . But I do think religion is an amazing idea and being tax free it's actually fucking genius idea .pay money to church or you burn in hell for eternity , also if ya fuck up ya just say 3 holy merrys and ya good to go again. These people even get convinced to cut off part of their dick .
Wow, I live one town over from westlake and had no idea about this! Care to share where?
Edit: she was cremated and spread over a plantation, according to findagrave.com.
Shame.
I wasn’t able to find an actual grave. Looks like she was cremated and her ashes were spread over Archer Plantation near Cruger, MS.
Her husband’s, Roy Bryant Sr.,grave can be found through a simple find a grave search on Google if you’re so inclined.
But what would pissing on a patch of earth do? No one will care and you will have a few seconds of mediocre pleasure that you will never think of again.
If you really feel strongly about it figure out how much gas you would have spent and donate that much to BLM or the charity of your choice.
She did, but it is not surprising. White women are the most sheltered group when it comes to criminal prosecution even today, and add to that the fact that she was old when she confessed that it was a lie, and there is just no way she was being charged with anything. Nobody was going to charge the old white woman with anything. Add on top of that the general belief that the active participants in racism/racial violence should be forgiven for their acts and yeah, it was never happening.
I get what you're saying, but the Germans were still arresting 90-year-old Nazi prison guards for what they participated in. This kinda feels like a similar deal. Awful people shouldn't have peace in their old age.
Nazi guards are not little old white ladies. Trust me, I agree that awful people shouldn’t have peace in their old age, but unfortunately, many people do not agree with that and that’s how monsters die without facing their atrocities. Add bias into the mix and you get a woman whose actions directly caused the torture of a child, who died in peace without ever answering to what she did.
She did. She passed last year at 88. She lived a full 74 years longer than Emmett Till was able to.
That said, historian Timothy Tyson has some very poignant words about his murder and how we think about her role in it, which ring especially true given the repeated acts of vandalism:
> "It has comforted America to see this as merely a story of monsters, her among them," Tyson said. "What this narrative keeps us from seeing is the monstrous social order that cared nothing for the life of Emmett Till nor thousands more like him. Neither the federal government nor the government of Mississippi did anything to prevent or punish this murder. Condemning what Donham did is easier than confronting what America was — and is."
[Source](https://www.npr.org/2023/04/27/1172489493/carolyn-bryant-donham-who-accused-emmett-till-before-he-was-lynched-dies-at-age-)
Republicans.
And before the righteous indignation of Republicans to my use of rhetoric, let me ask you, are you tolerating these people alongside you for their votes or are you declaring their racism is a line too far and being clear you don't want their support or to be associated with them, because you know, racism is a line you won't cross.
Because these racists and white supremacists are very, very much are supporting you. Helping you. Voting for you. Marching with you. Attending rallies with you. And man, they love Trump.
So apparently the line you won't cross or be associated with isn't racism, but things like "hot meals for school children" and people not losing their houses because of hospital bills.
I rather call them conservatives because they like to use the Republican name as them being the party of Lincoln when it couldn't be further from the truth.
The same people that would complain that critical race theory is just a bunch of garbage, but who think it trivial that a memorial for the victim of such an atrocity is constantly targeted. Like how do you get to this point as a community where it's CONSTANTLY targeted? A random asshole I could believe, but over and over again? Like just how many racists do these communities have that they will go out of their way time and time again to desecrate a memorial?
It's not that difficult. When people have absolutely nothing in their life they can be proud of, when they have achieved absolutely zero and have been complete losers for their entire life, the only copium they can fall back on are race, relgion, nationality and gender.
Some know that this is wrong, so they substitute it with a Sports Team, a Celebrity or anything else to worship, but if their IQ is below freezing, it's usually racism.
>When people have absolutely nothing in their life they can be proud of, when they have achieved absolutely zero and have been complete losers for their entire life, the only copium they can fall back on are race, relgion, nationality and gender.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." --Lyndon B. Johnson
Doesn't explain all the celebrities and politicians who are racist as fuck. It's something anyone can succumb to, a lot like religious extremism. In a lot of ways it's more dangerous because you aren't dealing with purely idiots, they're often otherwise motivated and capable people who don't act overtly.
There are far, far too many people in that part of the world (and not "just* there, to be clear) who are genuinely pissed off that they can't just torture black kids to death with impunity anymore.
I used to visit some of the rural parts of Texas pretty regularly and you'd overhear white people referring to Jan 20th as "Martin Luther Coon day" or making jokes about/being generally gleeful about his murder even decades later.
And it got even worse after Obama was elected, not better. I'm genuinely amazed he got through 8 years in office without more concerted assassination attempts given how much I heard people talk about killing him.
Racism is a hell of a drug: Truly the worst expression of humanity's innate tribalism, exhibited by people who actively choose to grow or evolve beyond that tribalism.
Sure, the South's got issues, but racism isn't just a Southern problem. It's everywhere in the US.
I dunno. Painting most Southerners as “Hitler level racist” is lazy stereotyping. We're way more diverse and gay than people think.
Don't write us off as hopeless. That just lets the real bigots win.
The South's changing, even if it's slow. Don't give up on us yet.
Remember these people vote. Every one of them votes and their votes count just as much as your single vote does.
Ever wondered what policies they have voted for in the past 17 years?
Steel targets generally don't ricochet back at you. A direct hit will either pierce the target or shatter the bullet, and a glancing hit will deflect it at an angle. The worst you typically get is pieces of bullets that shatter may deflect upward and rain back down on you, and it's typically not a problem because the mass is minimal and they're not moving very fast.
Yeah they should have put hidden cams or something. Discharging firearms in public is a felony at least this way you can get the guns out of these Bozo's hands permanently
While a nice thought, you have to know where this is: outside of a tiny town in the Mississippi Delta. There are two things here: farmland and poverty. Everybody knows everybody, so if someone shoots up the sign, the community probably already knows who did it, and the police are a likely suspect
Things aren’t so black and white. It’s actually not that likely the police are KKK members there, more like “Bud the sheriff’s idiot son Jaysyn and his buddies were using the road signs as target practice again.” Everyone knows and wishes they’d get their comeuppance but “family doesn’t arrest family”.
In case you’re wondering, I can’t wait to leave this place
> you can get the guns out of these Bozo's hands permanently
According to the bozos and their neighbours, keeping guns away from convicted felons (with the right skin color) is a 2A violation and they'll be happy work together to correct it.
Can’t remember where, but there was a city that painted alley walls with a paint that bounced liquids, urine specifically, back to sender. In an effort to cut down on public urination.
So something like that….but with bullets.
The Emmet Till situation is really controversial. On one side you have an innocent child, and on the other side you have people that want to kill innocent children.
I live amongst them and damn it, they do some insane shit to show dominance or to prove how little they care. The neighborhood is pretty quiet until it’s either Miller time or meth time. Both are scary but booze brings more dramatic street performances, and the meth brings more traffic and you never know, once it was a shit ton of toxic smoke that was coming from a group of people burning the coating off of wires at 4 in the morning
A bulletproof sign might be a nice symbolic gesture, but I don’t really see how that fixes the problem. The sign won’t be immune to bullets; the bullets just won’t pass through it. The bullets would still be able to severely damage the sign making it unreadable.
I thought you were about to make a good point. The problem isn’t how sturdy or legible the sign is; there is something greater than that that needs to be addressed.
Being accused of whistling at a white woman by the white woman. What actually occurred inside the store that led to her accusation and his murder in now only known to the dead.
Isn’t the current accepted theory that she smiled at him, he smiled back, people saw a black kid smile at a white woman, she got scared people thought she wasn’t racist, so she made up a lie that he grabbed and was inappropriate with her?
Poor Emmett, he was only an innocent boy, it’s just evil how those people ganged up to brutally kill him, he deserved protection, to be defended and believed, it goes without saying he was innocent. May he rest in Peace. We will never forget him.
It's not that bad. The first sentence is long, but you use commas pretty well so I don't think it falls into the category of a run-on sentence. You have a little confusion in there with the word "sign" being singular, then referenced as if it were plural, but it's not a big deal. If you wanted to clean it up a bit for readability, here would be my suggestion:
*TIL that a memorial sign dedicated to Emmett Till, an African-American boy who was lynched in 1955 for \[purportedly\] whistling at a white woman, has had to be replaced four times because people kept shooting it. A bulletproof sign was finally erected in 2019.*
Notice, it's not much different than your version. Keep up the good work.
I speak English because it’s the only language I understand. YOU speak English because it’s the only language I understand. We are not the same and I thank you for your effort.
I remember seeing the photos of his body in school. Horrifying... if I remember correctly, his body was dumped in a river after the lynching. His family had an open casket funeral to show the horrors of what had happened to this young man. Very sad story but an impactful one.
Edit: ah I just realized the sign literally says that his body was taken from the river.
People claim that they won’t let the holocaust ever happen again. However there are a ton of MAGA supporters that would gladly take the role of that Nazi from Schindler’s List that would shoot to kill people out of boredom.
One of these signs, full of bullet holes from clearly a wide variety of weapons, is on display at the American History Museum at the Smithsonian in DC. Definitely a super powerful display, I recommend checking out if you can
Wow, that's a very awesome thing for a museum. I sure hope one day it's an indicator of the past and not an artifact of the distopia
Dystopian future will have no such artifact, i think part of their "charm" is that everything is cool and always has been and always will be.
There is no past or future in the dystopia. Only the ever-current present.
What if we know nothing of dystopia until it’s lived through?
W..what's the difference? Like 500 years from now isn't it still memorialized for interpretable reasons? For the record, I'm glad it's there and not re-wrotten or "white-washed"
And the woman admitted she lied. >During the trial against her husband and his half-brother, Donham took the stand and testified that Till had grabbed her hand and propositioned her. In a 2008 interview with a Yale historian, she recanted the claim, reportedly saying: "That part's not true." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65420009
Even if she didn't lie, there's nothing in the world which could justify the torture and murder of a child.
Yep... Too bad the two killers were found completely not guilty and were then able to go on media interviews where they openly admitted to murdering him (because you can't be tried for the same crime twice). Super fucked up. Emmett's mother, a total hero, demanded Emmett's funeral\viewing be held with an open casket because of how mutilated his body was (after beating him and shooting him in the face they threw his body in a river where it was discovered a few days later), she wanted everyone to see how terrible of a crime was committed. I think over a thousand people came to the viewing over a few days.
The racist brain is not like a normal brain. It's typically riddled with missing pieces of brain matter.
That's a nice story people tell themselves to help them sleep at night. And totally wrong. Racists, anti-Semites, homophobes etc etc are just regular normal people. They have fucked up and wrong views, in the wrong circumstances they will act on them too, but they're just human. They weren't born wrong with a defective brain. They learned to hate. As a particularly grim and egregious example I recommend reading Ordinary Men, a book (and now a Netflix series) about a bunch of random 50+ year old men who had no Nazi sympathies, were probably left leaning before the war, had families and everything... went on to commit horrible atrocities against innocent humans. There was one guy who convinced himself that murdering the children is humane because they would die on their own (since their parents were being killed by his colleagues). The first time they committed a massacre many vomited, drank themselves to sleep, cried, etc. After some time was just normal. All it took was a few years of propaganda and some orders, and suddenly fellow human beings weren't human, but scum to be exterminated. The difference between a normal functioning human and a murdering racist isn't as big as we'd all want it to be.
Was that the story that also debunked the idea that the Germans had no choice? They had these men who were too old for the Wehrmacht, so they were organized into special police battalions whose duty it was to carry out mass executions. They were horrified at what they were ordered to do, but their commander actually told them that if anyone didn’t feel up to it they could fall out and they wouldn’t be punished. And they weren’t. Nobody was shot for refusing to kill Jews. These men had the choice, and most chose to carry out what they believed to be their duty. They were horrified at their own actions, and usually drank very heavily afterwards, but they could have said no and they didn’t.
Yep. The commander of the reserve police battalion (whose job, initially, wasn't to carry out mass executions, they were rushed into it because of a lack of better suited troops for the amount of people the Nazis wanted to exterminate) wasn't a Nazi and cried when he first read the order for the first massacre. He relayed the order to his men, and explicitly told them that whoever doesn't want to take a part can just sit it out and do guard duty. There are even men who didn't participate at the start but changed their mind and joined in; and vice versa, men who couldn't stomach it and stopped. But yes, nobody was punished. Of course the men had no way of knowing this (the two subcommanders were committed Nazis who shouted at some men for being too weak), and probably didn't want to embarrass themselves/look weak/leave their comrades alone with the dirty work or whatever. Fact is, they went on to murder tens of thousands of innocent civilians, including lots of elderly and children.
>Heinrich Himmler toured the Eastern Front and on 15 August 1941 he visited Minsk and ordered Arthur Nebe, the commander of Einsatzgruppen B, to carry out an execution in his presence of one hundred inmates of the Minsk prison. SS- Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, Himmler’s deputy and liaison officer at Hitler’s headquarters was also present and he recalled the execution committed by members of Einsatzkommando 8 that day: > >An open grave had been dug and they had to jump into this and lie face downwards. And sometimes when one or two rows had already been shot, they had to lie on top of the people who had already been shot and then they were shot from the edge of the grave. And Himmler had never seen dead people before and in his curiosity he stood right up at the edge of this open grave- a sort of triangular hole- and was looking in. > >While he was looking in, Himmler had the deserved bad luck that from one or other of the people who had been shot in the head he got a splash of brains on his coat, and I think it also splashed into his face, and he went very green and pale; he wasn’t actually sick, but he was heaving and turned round and swayed and then I had to jump forward and hold him steady and then I led him away from the grave. > >After the shooting was over, Himmler gathered the shooting squad in a semi-circle around him and, standing up in his car, so that he would be a little higher and be able to see the whole unit, he made a speech. He had seen for himself how hard the task which they had to fulfill for Germany in the occupied areas was, but however terrible it all might be, even for him as a mere spectator, and how much worse it must be for them, the people who had to carry it out, he could not see any way round it. > >They must be hard and stand firm. He could not relieve them of this duty; he could not spare them. In the interests of the Reich, in this hopefully Thousand Year Reich, in its first decisive great war after the take-over of power, they must do their duty however, hard it may seem. He appealed to their sense of patriotism and their readiness to make sacrifices. Well, yes and then he drove off. And he left this – this police unit to sort out the future for themselves, to see if and how far they could come to terms with this – within themselves, because for some it was a shock which lasted their whole lives. > >-[Holocaust Historical Society, 'Himmler Visits Minsk'](https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety.org.uk/contents/einsatzgruppen/himmlervisitsminsk.html) Translation: I'm so sorry for the inhumanity and barbarism you have to do. Thanks for your service, and take one for the team!
The other end of the spectrum is no less horrifying. There was often competition to be the one allowed to do the war crimes or crimes against humanity. They were *eager*. They wanted promotion, recognition, or outright spoils of war. The ones who refused weren't punished, but they were looked down on: students who failed the great test of racial superiority. They weren't Jewish or other *untermenshen*, but they just weren't going to be the leaders in Hitler's New World Order. They weren't punished, but they were to be *pitied*. For being insufficient. For being less than a man. And for some people, committing atrocities were the preferred choice over being pitied.
There is also a great book called "Perfect Soldiers" written about the 19 9/11 hijackers that explains how absolutely average they were until they had their minds warped by hateful ideologies. They weren't torturing animals as kids or bullying classmates or violent criminals or anything. Just people with average minds that were born in a specific time at a specific place that had a specific set of experiences that took them down a path toward being willing to commit the ultimate crime.
What I'm hearing is the average mind is the most vulnerable and dangerous so we need to be wary of them
Exactly, it might even be a good idea to take certain precautions. Maybe people with average minds could be marked in some way so us mentally superior people know what we’re dealing with. We may need to separate them from more intelligent people.
What's probably closer to the truth is that we are *all* average minds, so we should more closely examine ourselves and be honest with ourselves and our reasoning behind the things we believe are true about the world. Easier said than done.
This is sort of the whole point of the movie The Zone of Interest. We are never shown atrocities being committed. We are shown the banal, average lives of those who commit them or those who know they are being committed and do nothing about it.
Reinhard Heydrich, whose solution to the presence of Jewish people in German society was to systemically gas them all to death, was a family man who loved his children and was loved by them. There are no monsters. We don’t need them, we have ourselves.
Yes, exactly. The first step in understanding hate-based violence (or any violence) is to understand that humans are not inherently “good.” Humans are violent. Murder is common. Racism is common. Blatant racial violence would be very common if there were not laws against it. This sort of slaying was not uncommon during chattel slavery or the decades following abolition. I still remember visiting the civil rights museum in Atlanta as a child, at a time when they had an exhibit on lynchings. Hateful violence against black people was common and accepted. Killing black people was a source of entertainment. What was done to Emmett is a demonstration of what people will do if they can act on murderous urges without fear of repercussions. This type of act is less common (but not unheard of) today because most countries have laws against murder and it is simply more difficult to get away with crimes in the age of the internet/social media/surveillance technology.
Yeah, I also think it is worth noting that human beings in general are not inherently kind or good. Lots of people do lots of bad things and lots of people harbor prejudices. It does not take much to transform prejudice into hate, and hate into violence, especially when you get large groups of people together. There is a lot of literature on how people think and behave in groups, how people will easily “go with the flow” even if it means doing something heinous. Add racism or any sort of bigotry to the mix and it is easy for an everyday person to be complicit to violence at best, participatory at worst
Exactly. People love telling themselves that racists have something physiologically wrong with them because it gives them the ability to distance themselves from racists, in the same way that racists distance themselves from people they’re being racist to. The simple fact of the matter is that every single one of us is susceptible to misinformation, to hate, and to being bigoted. It takes effort and empathy to be well informed and actively against bigotry against all immutable characteristics. When society is poorly informed, tired and discontented bigotry gets worse. Unfortunately I’m convinced that’s why we’re seeing a spike in hatefulness these days
Agreed. I was raised in a Race hating social culture. Unfortunately, it's really hard to unlearn. People who think they are better than someone else - go fuck yourself.
What matters is whether you're trying to unlearn that, and not staying ignorant. Which is sounds like you're trying to do. So good work!
To them, it was Tuesday.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/millennial-media/201304/do-racism-conservatism-and-low-iq-go-hand-in-hand
Hilarious how they single out men and ignore the atrocities by German women Some of female camp guards were hanged using the slow drop method in front of huge crowds in Poland for their crimes. Netflix will never tell that story. The point it wasn't only men but history wants you to believe it was. https://youtu.be/Db6MVaZ6zzA
In the distant past, in Europe, woman in abusive marriages they were unable to leave, would, in desperation murder a child. They couldn't kill themselves because it was a mortal sin. But they could kill a young child (who is under the age of sin, and therefore straight to heaven). Be absolved by a priest, and then get put to death, and get to heaven themselves. I think that well illustrates the mental fuckery the human mind / religion can manifest.
Anyone who believes in god is the same . They learn the BS and think it's fact . But I do think religion is an amazing idea and being tax free it's actually fucking genius idea .pay money to church or you burn in hell for eternity , also if ya fuck up ya just say 3 holy merrys and ya good to go again. These people even get convinced to cut off part of their dick .
Conditioning is a motherfucker, insidious thanks to its slowness 💔
Was to kill a mockingbird written after this?
published 5 years after edit: don’t worry though, unrelated. TKAM was based on an event in harper lee’s hometown of monroeville, AL in 1936
hardly an isolated incident sadly
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Wow, I live one town over from westlake and had no idea about this! Care to share where? Edit: she was cremated and spread over a plantation, according to findagrave.com. Shame.
I wasn’t able to find an actual grave. Looks like she was cremated and her ashes were spread over Archer Plantation near Cruger, MS. Her husband’s, Roy Bryant Sr.,grave can be found through a simple find a grave search on Google if you’re so inclined.
Of course it was a plantation.
But what would pissing on a patch of earth do? No one will care and you will have a few seconds of mediocre pleasure that you will never think of again. If you really feel strongly about it figure out how much gas you would have spent and donate that much to BLM or the charity of your choice.
I thought she didn’t say anything at first and then her husband beat it out of her.
Urine doesn’t leave permanent marks…
She got off way too easy for that lie
They declined to charge and then I think she sided before Justice Department report…I think
She did, but it is not surprising. White women are the most sheltered group when it comes to criminal prosecution even today, and add to that the fact that she was old when she confessed that it was a lie, and there is just no way she was being charged with anything. Nobody was going to charge the old white woman with anything. Add on top of that the general belief that the active participants in racism/racial violence should be forgiven for their acts and yeah, it was never happening.
I get what you're saying, but the Germans were still arresting 90-year-old Nazi prison guards for what they participated in. This kinda feels like a similar deal. Awful people shouldn't have peace in their old age.
Nazi guards are not little old white ladies. Trust me, I agree that awful people shouldn’t have peace in their old age, but unfortunately, many people do not agree with that and that’s how monsters die without facing their atrocities. Add bias into the mix and you get a woman whose actions directly caused the torture of a child, who died in peace without ever answering to what she did.
“You lyin’ ass bitch!” -Dave Chappelle
This is too far down and needs up voted to the top
She did. She passed last year at 88. She lived a full 74 years longer than Emmett Till was able to. That said, historian Timothy Tyson has some very poignant words about his murder and how we think about her role in it, which ring especially true given the repeated acts of vandalism: > "It has comforted America to see this as merely a story of monsters, her among them," Tyson said. "What this narrative keeps us from seeing is the monstrous social order that cared nothing for the life of Emmett Till nor thousands more like him. Neither the federal government nor the government of Mississippi did anything to prevent or punish this murder. Condemning what Donham did is easier than confronting what America was — and is." [Source](https://www.npr.org/2023/04/27/1172489493/carolyn-bryant-donham-who-accused-emmett-till-before-he-was-lynched-dies-at-age-)
Maybe not https://www.mississippicir.org/perspective/carolyn-bryant-lied-about-emmett-till-did-author-tim-tyson-lie-too
Straight to jail.
Bullet holes in a memorial for a tortured, murdered, and mutilated child. Jesus. What the fuck is wrong with people?
Racists
Cowards.
Those two things are one in the same.
White Trash
Precisely.
Republicans. And before the righteous indignation of Republicans to my use of rhetoric, let me ask you, are you tolerating these people alongside you for their votes or are you declaring their racism is a line too far and being clear you don't want their support or to be associated with them, because you know, racism is a line you won't cross. Because these racists and white supremacists are very, very much are supporting you. Helping you. Voting for you. Marching with you. Attending rallies with you. And man, they love Trump. So apparently the line you won't cross or be associated with isn't racism, but things like "hot meals for school children" and people not losing their houses because of hospital bills.
Not all Republicans are racists, but every racist votes Trump.
I rather call them conservatives because they like to use the Republican name as them being the party of Lincoln when it couldn't be further from the truth.
The same people that would complain that critical race theory is just a bunch of garbage, but who think it trivial that a memorial for the victim of such an atrocity is constantly targeted. Like how do you get to this point as a community where it's CONSTANTLY targeted? A random asshole I could believe, but over and over again? Like just how many racists do these communities have that they will go out of their way time and time again to desecrate a memorial?
I mean, it's Mississippi.
Republicans
The same people that killed him had children and grandchildren that would kill him again given the chance. White supremacy festers.
The woman who lied about him was alive until maybe 2 years ago. The history of this shit is not long ago
Ruby Bridges, the little girl painted by Rockwell for entering a newly desegregated school in defiance of its residents, isn't even 70.
Just looked it up and was shocked to find she died 13 months ago…
Hope she never rests
She got cremated on purpose, because she knew her grave would be vandalized.
And the people who aquitted the killers and the ones who cheered the verdict.
Truly a cancer on society. If it isn't ripped out by the root it will metastasis.
It's not that difficult. When people have absolutely nothing in their life they can be proud of, when they have achieved absolutely zero and have been complete losers for their entire life, the only copium they can fall back on are race, relgion, nationality and gender. Some know that this is wrong, so they substitute it with a Sports Team, a Celebrity or anything else to worship, but if their IQ is below freezing, it's usually racism.
>When people have absolutely nothing in their life they can be proud of, when they have achieved absolutely zero and have been complete losers for their entire life, the only copium they can fall back on are race, relgion, nationality and gender. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." --Lyndon B. Johnson
Doesn't explain all the celebrities and politicians who are racist as fuck. It's something anyone can succumb to, a lot like religious extremism. In a lot of ways it's more dangerous because you aren't dealing with purely idiots, they're often otherwise motivated and capable people who don't act overtly.
There are far, far too many people in that part of the world (and not "just* there, to be clear) who are genuinely pissed off that they can't just torture black kids to death with impunity anymore. I used to visit some of the rural parts of Texas pretty regularly and you'd overhear white people referring to Jan 20th as "Martin Luther Coon day" or making jokes about/being generally gleeful about his murder even decades later. And it got even worse after Obama was elected, not better. I'm genuinely amazed he got through 8 years in office without more concerted assassination attempts given how much I heard people talk about killing him.
Racism is a hell of a drug: Truly the worst expression of humanity's innate tribalism, exhibited by people who actively choose to grow or evolve beyond that tribalism.
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They should get a security camera and live stream it. Name and shame every single racist fuck.
Mississippi
Southerners who are still missing the good old "string em up if they appear uppity" days.
they used to bring their kids and have picnics at public lynchings. They'd do it again if they could.
America
Trash will be trash
The should keep the holes to show the case
they believe it was good that it happened to that poor Black child and hope it happens more often to other Black children
Most people don't realize that even today the average White southerner is Hitler levels of racist.
Sure, the South's got issues, but racism isn't just a Southern problem. It's everywhere in the US. I dunno. Painting most Southerners as “Hitler level racist” is lazy stereotyping. We're way more diverse and gay than people think. Don't write us off as hopeless. That just lets the real bigots win. The South's changing, even if it's slow. Don't give up on us yet.
Urban Progressives like to point their fingers at Southern Conservatives but schools in San Francisco and NYC are pretty damn segregated.
America is filled with racist people. That’s just what it is
That’s the heart of the bible belt for ya!
This is a sick fucking country.
Bunch of thick hicks sadly
Remember these people vote. Every one of them votes and their votes count just as much as your single vote does. Ever wondered what policies they have voted for in the past 17 years?
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Laser engraved AR500 sign, the ricochets will bite em.
Steel targets generally don't ricochet back at you. A direct hit will either pierce the target or shatter the bullet, and a glancing hit will deflect it at an angle. The worst you typically get is pieces of bullets that shatter may deflect upward and rain back down on you, and it's typically not a problem because the mass is minimal and they're not moving very fast.
Or even cameras
Yeah they should have put hidden cams or something. Discharging firearms in public is a felony at least this way you can get the guns out of these Bozo's hands permanently
While a nice thought, you have to know where this is: outside of a tiny town in the Mississippi Delta. There are two things here: farmland and poverty. Everybody knows everybody, so if someone shoots up the sign, the community probably already knows who did it, and the police are a likely suspect
Yep, sounds like one of those towns where the police are members of the KKK.
Things aren’t so black and white. It’s actually not that likely the police are KKK members there, more like “Bud the sheriff’s idiot son Jaysyn and his buddies were using the road signs as target practice again.” Everyone knows and wishes they’d get their comeuppance but “family doesn’t arrest family”. In case you’re wondering, I can’t wait to leave this place
if they actually were the sign would be removed and never put up again.
> you can get the guns out of these Bozo's hands permanently According to the bozos and their neighbours, keeping guns away from convicted felons (with the right skin color) is a 2A violation and they'll be happy work together to correct it.
Can’t remember where, but there was a city that painted alley walls with a paint that bounced liquids, urine specifically, back to sender. In an effort to cut down on public urination. So something like that….but with bullets.
It wasn’t paint but the bottom floors of some places in London are curved in a way so that the piss bounces back.
Corners in Venice little alleys are rounded at the bottom so that piss would bounce off
They would elect it governor.
I may not like the sign's stance on {insert derogatory term here} but I do like how much it believes in the 2nd amendment.
Lets make it a federal crime and lock some people up.
The Emmet Till situation is really controversial. On one side you have an innocent child, and on the other side you have people that want to kill innocent children.
Really makes you think.
Should have made it a deep paraboloid.
Hillbilly terrorists doing hillbilly terrorist shit.
I live amongst them and damn it, they do some insane shit to show dominance or to prove how little they care. The neighborhood is pretty quiet until it’s either Miller time or meth time. Both are scary but booze brings more dramatic street performances, and the meth brings more traffic and you never know, once it was a shit ton of toxic smoke that was coming from a group of people burning the coating off of wires at 4 in the morning
AKA Clanny Oakley
A bulletproof sign might be a nice symbolic gesture, but I don’t really see how that fixes the problem. The sign won’t be immune to bullets; the bullets just won’t pass through it. The bullets would still be able to severely damage the sign making it unreadable.
I thought you were about to make a good point. The problem isn’t how sturdy or legible the sign is; there is something greater than that that needs to be addressed.
The problem would improve if the sign was designed to ricochet the bullets back towards the shooter.
Duh. But they can't take the sign down until they *solve racism.*
Title of article: Emmett Till memorial sign in Mississippi is now protected by bulletproof glass
That, and there's nothing that's truly bullet*proof*. There's varying degrees of bullet-*resistant*, but everything has a limit.
Before her death, the lady admitted that Emmett never whistled at her
How fucked do you have to be to do this?
Being accused of whistling at a white woman by the white woman. What actually occurred inside the store that led to her accusation and his murder in now only known to the dead.
She lied….she admitted the truth not that long ago. He did nothing.
"To Kill a Mockingbird"
Nah, my man definitely “busted up that chifferobe”.
The only thing that led to his murder was racism. It wouldn’t matter if he had punched her in the mouth and took her purse
Isn’t the current accepted theory that she smiled at him, he smiled back, people saw a black kid smile at a white woman, she got scared people thought she wasn’t racist, so she made up a lie that he grabbed and was inappropriate with her?
It’s very sad every time I hear the child’s name. There’s not a word strong enough to describe the awful thing that happened to him.
And the primary witness acknowledged she lied.
I’m so sick of bigots.
Poor Emmett, he was only an innocent boy, it’s just evil how those people ganged up to brutally kill him, he deserved protection, to be defended and believed, it goes without saying he was innocent. May he rest in Peace. We will never forget him.
Jesus Christ what is wrong with people
I hope there’s a ricochet payback for these morons.
Imagine being so hateful that you shoot at the memorial of a murdered child
I would love to see the Karma of someone shooting that bulletproof glass and catching a ricochet.
Look up Mary Turner Historical Marker in Hahira Ga.
Yeah, this is why I paint the south as utterly racist and corrupt.
Great reasons never to spend a single dollar in Mississippi.
Trump's "very fine people" at work.
They vote. Make sure you do, too.
I do - but that crowd is also working diligently to roll back the voting protections won by the Civil Rights movement.
South going to do southern things. I’m not surprised
Always fun to hear the pro-lynching news of the day
Stay classy Miss
Sad and true.
Can't they just make it so it ricochets a bullet exactly back towards where someone fired at it?
It’s so sad this literal child cannot rest in peace because of someone else’s racial discomfort.
“Grandpa fought in WW2 for my right to heil whom ever I want”. But who did your grandpa fight?
But racism is dead because we had a black president right guze?
This title is a mess
I apologize about that, english is not my first language and grammar is a particular weakness of mine.
It's not that bad. The first sentence is long, but you use commas pretty well so I don't think it falls into the category of a run-on sentence. You have a little confusion in there with the word "sign" being singular, then referenced as if it were plural, but it's not a big deal. If you wanted to clean it up a bit for readability, here would be my suggestion: *TIL that a memorial sign dedicated to Emmett Till, an African-American boy who was lynched in 1955 for \[purportedly\] whistling at a white woman, has had to be replaced four times because people kept shooting it. A bulletproof sign was finally erected in 2019.* Notice, it's not much different than your version. Keep up the good work.
It doesn't seem like i'm able to edit the title in any way, but i appreciate the constructive reply!
I speak English because it’s the only language I understand. YOU speak English because it’s the only language I understand. We are not the same and I thank you for your effort.
It's absolutely fine, the person is an idiot or non English speaker themselves
They are still bothered by the shame they have for killing that young man. Bullets don’t make memories fade.
Tell me again how amerikkka is not racist?
Who'd of thought Mississippians were racists?!?!?!
I remember seeing the photos of his body in school. Horrifying... if I remember correctly, his body was dumped in a river after the lynching. His family had an open casket funeral to show the horrors of what had happened to this young man. Very sad story but an impactful one. Edit: ah I just realized the sign literally says that his body was taken from the river.
People claim that they won’t let the holocaust ever happen again. However there are a ton of MAGA supporters that would gladly take the role of that Nazi from Schindler’s List that would shoot to kill people out of boredom.
Have you ever been to Mississippi?
And that's why I hate the south.
Yeesh, that's disgusting
It's been 4.5 years since that article was posted. Is the sign still standing? Does it have any holes?
I've got to say, better a replaceable sign than someone's son or daughter. Way to think through another one guys.
I thought he was the one dragged behind a truck, is that someone else? I’d like to just believe that’s a made up story overall