[QUOTE=TitoFan;1649258]
Quote Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing View Post
Quote Originally Posted by TitoFan View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing View Post


You boil it all down to money, and that's great. I'm not disputing your point of view. But we're focusing on two different things. You're focusing on the effect. I'm focusing on the cause. Of course the CEO's of the world are going to cave to public pressure, if it endangers their bottom line. No one's arguing that.

My focus continues to be on the segment of society that all of a sudden has "developed a conscience" and is behind these name change demands. I couldn't care less about the CEO's. They're spineless in their own way... and will lean in any direction the winds blow, just like politicians. The driving force is always going to be a controlling segment of society. In this case the woke mob that thinks changing name brands and team names is going magically make problems go away. It's a mindless, transparent, shallow, B.S. way of thinking.

But yes... it's still the CEO's who cave and perform the name changes. I think that much is clear.

My disgust is with the "window-dressing", token-clamoring segment of society, who... it might be said... are as racist, sexist, and ethnic-biased as the best of 'em.
If it's "public pressure" then it isn't a "woke mob" is it. Unless the majority of the general public is a woke mob. These guys are not spineless. They've spent half a century completely ignoring the woke mobs of their day. What they're not ignoring is majority opinion in America. The majority has gone all woke mate.

Semantics.

Let's not call it a woke mob, then.

Here's the facts:

After decades of existence for some of these known brands and team names... "all of a sudden" they're now deemed offensive and must be changed. Never mind that nothing of substance is ever done by the government to truly alleviate the plight of the minorities. It's those damned syrup brand names that must be changed. Doesn't matter who demanded it... who caved... why they caved... the economics involved... none of it. What matters is that these demands are viewed as misdirected, distracting, frivolous, tokenism, and lazy reaching for low-hanging fruit by some of us.
There's nothing the government can do to significantly alter the problems that minorities face that they haven't already done given the demographic/voting makeup of the country. Things aren't going to change substantially in that respect in our lifetimes. In fact there's a good chance things will get worse. Here's one example why:

https://www.salon.com/2023/11/06/apo...ve-christians/

and the other example is the forthcoming wave of black Africans migrating to America. Regardless of the current situation in countries south of the border it looks like the flood of immigrants from the south will slow to a trickle and in a decade or three new workers will have to come from the only part of the world with explosive population growth and a surfeit of young people -- Africa. This is unlikely to improve race relations.

There is a lot of little stuff like this that can be done. People being constantly reminded of the past by rice and syrup and whatever is one little thing that's easy to change. Another is removal of Confederate monuments. The thing that got me about the monuments is that it turns out the majority of them weren't put up at the time, they were put up as a big fuck you by pissed off white people in the 1960s after the various civil rights bills were passed. I'd like to see those things put in museums rather than destroyed because they're definitely part of American history and heritage like their proponents say they are but not in the ways that they think they are. There should be a visible record of just how attitudes were in America towards black people even in the civil rights 1960s era. Especially in that era.

I just hope things don't get worse in the future but all signs point to them doing so unfortunately.

But there's nothing the government can do that they haven't already done given the circumstances. One party wants to do various stuff, the other party wants to reverse what has already been done. The GOP has demolished one of the 1960s civil rights bills, the voting rights act, which they've turned into Swiss cheese and they're going after the rest of the bills from that era in the future now they have the 6-3 Court. Even if the GOP weren't teying to wind things backwards what else could be done anyway? You can't change what's in peoples' hearts.