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It merely acknowledges that guilt is ascribed to the group you're in. Since we all belong to groups and acknowledge group boundaries, since we all judge people--to greater or lesser extents, perhaps, but we all do it-we are concerned about group appearances. We're primates, after all.
You don't mention rope in the house of a man whose been hanged; that doesn't mean that you assume that everybody's going to assume you were the hangman.
My family never lynched a black man. As far as I can tell, they were never with 50 miles of a lynching. I've never met anybody who claims to be the descendant of a black man that was lynched. I have a fairly odd sense of humor and poke fun at just about everything. It's not out of the question that I could somehow build a joke or pun around lynchings. Perhaps "black men were often the lynch pins of impromptu social gatherings." Or perhaps refer to the lynchers as "strange brutes." Of course, it would be highly intolerant, downright freeperish and knuckle-dragging to take offense at lynch puns, right? (Personally, I suspect that this will be expunged from the record as too offensive.)
Yet when black lynchings have arisen in conversation by virtue of being a white who not only wasn't involved but whose ancestors weren't ever involved I'm not expected to *not* make offensive puns but to actually show sensitivity towards blacks who weren't involved and whose ancestors weren't obviously involved. "How fair is that?" you may ask. Heck, you essentially *did* ask.
I think it's reasonably fair. I can argue it's not always reasonable, but I can also understand how it is reasonable. (By the way, I've been told I have the empathy of a rock. Not a particularly empathetic rock, at that.)
This is different from accepting responsibility for lynchings (although, to be honest, there are those, white, black, and other, who would somehow assign a least a modicum of vicarious responsibility to me). It's acknowledging that people in one group are sensitive about it and modifying my behavior so as to either show respect for or at least not irritate those sensibilities.
Similarly, my friend Koz could make 9/11 jokes but was smart enough to not to. 9/11 was perceived as an attack by members of one group against another. Therefore, sensitivities are at the group level in exactly the same way as black lynchings were deemed to be an attack by members of one group against another. It doesn't help that many of the condemnations of the Muslims who committed and planned the attack were delayed, and the early condemnations all reeked of "this is not helpful" or "this will make us look bad" or "this will cause Islam to be mocked." Other condemnations all said these men could not have been Muslim--followed up by its being a Western or Jewish conspiracy, i.e., they didn't even bear the designation "Muslim." What was needed is "this was immoral and wrong" and "they considered themselves Muslim, but they were pigs and dogs--whoever calls himself Muslim and encourages such people insult Allah and should be banned from mosques as infidels." In some cases, "leaders" got to that point, often months after the attack. However, in those cases those "leaders" also failed to speak for a hefty percentage of Muslims--just as the Pope doesn't speak for 7th Day Adventists.
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