Profile in cowardice.

It's hilarious to me how some folks (see white people) are shocked at what they are seeing in Charlottesville, Virginia They are openly wonder how we could have come to this. "We have taken a step back when it comes to race relations." Or, "What happened ? We are a better country than this."

Ahhhm, no we are not.

Where have these people been for the past two years? Didn't they notice how the man who is sitting in the White House came to power? How can they watch Donald trump's rise over the past two years and not be convinced that racism is alive and well? I guess many of them were suckered into the phony narrative that all those trump voters were just disgruntled blue collar white folks who had lost their jobs. Some of them even believed that a lot of them were Obama voters at one time. Just like the pundits on television were telling them.  Obviously this is not the case.

Anyway, the alt-right came to UVA this weekend,  and after marching with torches on Friday night, they took to the streets Saturday. That's when things got ugly. Three people are dead after a domestic terrorist used his car as a weapon to kill an innocent protestor,  and two state troopers lost their lives when a police helicopter crashed on the way to the scene. 

As of my writing this post, the president has failed to condemn the white supremacist and his alt-right friends for their actions that brought terror to the streets of Charlottesville. Rather than forcefully and openly condemning them, he blamed "many sides" for the madness and mayhem that visited the sleepy college town of Charlottesville, Virginia.

But why would he condemn them? He needs them to even have a chance of winning again, and they have been his most loyal supporters.  It would have taken real courage to condemn, and our president is a coward. So that was not going to happen.  

We are all the mayor of Charlottesville tonight.

“Well, look at the campaign he ran. I mean, look at the intentional courting––both on the one hand of all these white supremacists, white nationalists, groups like that, anti-Semitic groups, and then look on the other hand––the repeated failure to condemn, denounce, silence, you know, put to bed all those different efforts just like we saw yesterday. This is not hard.”

He added, “There’s two words that need to be said over and over again. Domestic terrorism and white supremacy. That is exactly what we saw on display this weekend, and we just aren’t seeing leadership from the White House.”

*Pic from youtube.com

  
 

Blaming Obama for racism.

 * "Speaking in the wake of the Dallas horrors, President Obama correctly assured us that race relations are not as bad in this country today as they were during the Watts riots of the sixties.

But that was over fifty years ago and is only part of the story.  Throughout the eighties and nineties and into the 21st Century those relations had improved to the extent that none other than the great actor Morgan Freeman could have this 2005 exchange with host Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes.

WALLACE: Black History Month, you find...

FREEMAN: Ridiculous.WALLACE: Why?
FREEMAN: You're going to relegate my history to a month?
WALLACE: Come on.
FREEMAN: What do you do with yours? Which month is White History Month? Come on, tell me.
WALLACE: I'm Jewish.
FREEMAN: OK. Which month is Jewish History Month?
WALLACE: There isn't one.
FREEMAN: Why not? Do you want one?
WALLACE: No, no.
FREEMAN: I don't either. I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.
WALLACE: How are we going to get rid of racism until...?
FREEMAN: Stop talking about it. I'm going to stop calling you a white man. And I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman. You're not going to say, "I know this white guy named Mike Wallace." Hear what I'm saying?

Hear what you're saying?  Boy, do I ever. And that part about "Stop talking about it" - nothing makes more sense.  Since racist acts were already against the law and had been diminishing, the best way to extinguish, or seriously curtail, the remaining racism was to stop talking about it, to stop making such a big deal about it, to call each other by our names and not our races and let the racial scab slowly heal and disappear.

Just a few years later, the scab appeared very much healed with the inauguration of America's first African-American president, a man who would be elected twice. I didn't vote for him for policy reasons, but his election brought tears to my eyes as a former civil rights worker. America's long nightmare, as Dr. King might have put it, was over, at least as over as things could be in this imperfect world.

But it wasn't - not by a long shot. It went the other way. Driven by what I call in my book "nostalgia for racism," racial enmity was brought back as surely as Michael Corleone was pulled back in in Godfather III.

Why?

Power, of course.  The Democratic Party relies on the perceived reality of racism for the identity politics on which it feeds. Racism is the lifeline of the Democrats.

Votes lie there." [More]

I just read *Roger Simon's silly and misguided essay about the rise of racism in America in its entirety.

 

As is to be expected, this political right wing gang member chose to blame America's first black president for the racial fears and hatred that has metastasized among people in the majority population. 

 

Simon uses all the usual tricks of the right wing conservatives who like to pretend that racism does not exist, and that he, and those of his ilk, are not somehow complicit with its spread.

 

He marched with King. He knew Good Negroes who were just so nice. Tears came to his eyes when he saw the election of Barack Obama. (Of course, by his own admission,  he didn't vote for him. Not because of his race of course. Of course Roger.) He longs for the days when Negroes knew their place.

 

Then, of course, like most conservatives, he attacks the entire Black Lives Matter movement. Why? Because, in his eyes, they represent something that is no longer needed in America: racial provocateurs who open the ugly scabs of America's racial history. A history, that in his mind, the rest of us are trying so hard to forget.

  

It never occurred to Simon that the reason that votes "lie there" is because most of the people who belong to his political gang are, in fact racist, and we (black people) know it.   

 

The fact that he honestly believes that America was making racial progress because "the great actor" Morgan Freeman had the nerve (and uppityness) to speak openly to Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, says all that you need to know about him and his ideological soul-mates.

 

I guess when your standards for true racial equality are so low, we have come a long way.

*Pic from twitter.com

 

  

 

 

         

"Enough Already About Racism!! Racism Is a Thing of the Past."

The Field Negro has found another white man writing about racism. And in an ongoing effort to bring different perspectives about America's problem with race, I would like to offer a cut and paste post of the writings from another one of our friends from the majority population. 

The Field Negro education series continues:

"Racism is dead." "Too many black people are playing the race card." "Affirmative Action is unconstitutional and represents racism against white people." "All Lives Matter." "Political correctness is ruining America."

These and similar sentiments are common, perhaps prevalent, in these times. "Enough already -- slavery ended more than 150 years ago." "I'm not racist and am not responsible for what someone else did in the 19th century."

If that is indeed the case, please use the comment box to explain the following things to me:
Flint, MI is 60% black with 41% of its citizens living beneath the poverty line. Flint's children have been exposed to lead in the drinking water because of a decision to save money. The toxicity of the water was covered up for many months. Grosse Pointe Shores, MI is .6% black. 2.7% live below the poverty line. Please indicate what you think the response would have been if wealthy white children in Grosse Pointe Shores were exposed to lead in the water supply?

A group of heavily armed white men, labeled "activists" by the media, trespassed and occupied federal buildings in rural Oregon. The official response was to allow them to air their grievances, order supplies and allow the situation to defuse over time. Please comment on the likely police response if a group of heavily armed black men took over federal property.

Jim Cooley, a white man, carried a loaded assault weapon into the Atlanta airport. Cooley simply went about his business, supposedly keeping his daughter safe. John Crawford, a black man, picked up an air rifle from a shelf in an Ohio Walmart and was shot to death by police. Please explain what you think might have happened if John Crawford carried a loaded assault weapon into the Atlanta airport or if Jim Cooley shopped for an air gun at Walmart.

A prominent hedge fund manager in Manhattan is a leading advocate for "no excuses" charter schools, such as KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program), Success Academies and Democracy Prep. Well-documented reports reveal that children at KIPP have been punished by being labeled "Miscreants," students at Success Academies have wet their pants due to stress and the refusal to allow them to go to the bathroom, and children at Democracy Prep have been shunned, branded by wearing yellow shirts and literally forced into silence, with other children and adults forbidden to speak to them. This "reformer" is on the record saying that these means of discipline are necessary because these children, nearly all of color, "need it." His own daughters attend Nightingale-Bamford, a highly selective, expensive, majority white, girls school on Manhattan's Upper Eastside. Please indicate the way you believe he might respond if any of his daughters reported such experiences during their school days.

A quick web search yields hundreds of photos of smiling white men in public places, including stores and schools, openly carrying rifles or holstered handguns. Please comment on the likely response if a young black man, wearing saggin' pants with a large brimmed cap askew, entered a school or store with an assault weapon or loaded handgun.

Nearly every student of color in my school has been followed in a store or stopped and frisked by New York City police. I am not aware of any white student, during my 18 years as head of school, being subjected to similar treatment. Please describe the characteristics of these students that might account for the apparently different treatment.

A University of Chicago study examined the "call back" rates for job applicants with black sounding names as opposed to those with white sounding names. Their resumes were otherwise identical. Those with black sounding names received 50% fewer interview invitations than those with white sounding names. Please comment on the resume information that seems most likely to explain the lower number of interview opportunities for "black-sounding" candidates.
I will read your comments with great curiosity. [Source]

Don't read the comments here Mr. Nelson. You will only hear about what a N****r lover you are, and how deluded you are when it comes to knowing what is really going on in Barack Obama's America. And blah blah blah.

In other words, the reason we are still hearing about racism, is because of the abundance of people giving the negative comments you will no doubt read after your insightful essay.

*Pic from esl-educate-school-learn.blogspot.com

Black exhaustion.

The Field Negro education series continues:

The following is an essay that was written for the Los Angeles Times by Dexter Thomas:

"For many black Americans, watching black people die on camera feels like a job. 
It’s not something they’re paid for, unless they are a journalist. But it can still feel like an obligation, because every time a new video is released of a black person being shot by police, black people know that America’s response to that video will affect their lives.

This is why when a judge forced Chicago officials to release video of the 2014 shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Officer Jason Van Dyke, a group of young activists used the hashtag #BeforeYouWatch to encourage people to take a collective breath to brace themselves.
Support your friends, some wrote along with the hashtag. Remember that we all process pain differently, and this will be painful.

The video is disturbing, but in a more abstract way than, for example, the first-person view of the shooting of Sam Dubose in Cincinnati. It's taken from the dashboard camera of a police cruiser, which is too far away to show McDonald’s facial expressions, and the officer is out of frame.

Instead, we can see only the body of McDonald jerk, and puffs of smoke rising as the 16 shots are fired. The shooting is too far away to be able to see any wounds, and the only evidence that there is blood is the faint reflection of a shiny wet pool, glinting briefly in the lights of a police vehicle that arrives after the last shot has been fired.

A lot of people didn’t feel the need to watch the video. Some avoided it. Another common trend in the #BeforeYouWatch tweets was a reassurance: It's OK if you don't want to watch the video.
But for tens of thousands of people, black and otherwise, that decision was made for them when the Daily Beast posted an animated GIF image of the shooting on their Twitter account. Any one of their nearly 1 million followers who was scrolling through their own timeline saw a looped animation of a boy’s body tremoring in the dark.

A widely shared tweet from writer and novelist Brit Bennett needed only 135 characters to summarize the feelings of many: 

A GIF of a black boy's murder feels like a disgustingly accurate metaphor for black death: casually consumed, forever looping, endless.

The Daily Beast later deleted the image after a vigorous outcry and tweeted an apology.
But that didn’t put an end to the part of the “forever looping, endless” cycle that begins every time these videos are released: the backlash of an America that is still afraid to confront its own racism.
This where the exhaustion begins anew.

Each time a video of police brutality is released, a group of optimistic people holds out hope that perhaps, this time, a video will convince all of America that something is wrong.

But when those hopes are dashed, black people are subjected again and again to deflections of the reality of racism, sometimes framed as concern-trolling questions from columnists, co-workers and even family members: Why don’t black people stop focusing on police, and do something about black-on-black crime?

People with the patience to address this question may answer that they do. Too many people just aren't paying attention. They may be able to cite any one of a number of examples, such as the dozens of activists who marched 35 miles in sweltering heat in August to show a commitment to stop gun violence in their own communities.

But they’ll still have to deal with the bizarre racial gymnastics in which people dissect the videos and find something, anything, that could make a black person’s death his or her own fault – if he hadn’t resisted, if she had been more polite, if he hadn’t sold cigarettes. 

And then there’s the tactic of reducing the issue from racism to “a few bad cops” – or, as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said, the officer who shot McDonald "doesn’t represent our department."
But as the Chicago Reporter notes, it appears that the entire department, along with city officials, conspired to cover up the shooting. The autopsy does not match the official police report, and according to an attorney that helped bring this case to national attention, the city government “spent a year stonewalling any calls for transparency.”

Perhaps the latest incident will convince some people that something is deeply wrong in this country. But that won’t be enough. For too many Americans, admitting that the U.S. has a race problem, and that black people bear the brunt of that race problem, is an insurmountable task.
In the protests that will occur during coming days, we enter another stage of the looping cycle: the waiting game.

Many black people will cross their fingers that nobody will "act out" at a protest. Even if everyone is calm, there’s still the fear of being shot by white supremacists, which is reportedly what happened in Minnesota on Monday. But if one person – black or not – throws a stone, the protests could be labeled “riots,” giving Americans an excuse to ignore the root causes.

That would only intensify the cycle of deflection.

Again, black people will have to answer insincere questions from co-workers and friends, and again combat memes of fake statistics on black crime, spread by the most popular GOP presidential candidate.

It’s exhausting.

The activists marching in Chicago don’t necessarily expect all of America, or even all black people, to join them in the streets. But they know that they will be a topic of conversation at millions of dinner tables this Thanksgiving. And they may wonder if the well-meaning folks all across America who “like” their Facebook posts will speak up this time when their uncle starts calling Black Lives Matter a “terrorist group.”

Being black in the digital age is exhausting for the same reason that being brown after 9/11 is exhausting, or being an immigrant, or a woman, or gay, can be exhausting: because whenever the weight of hundreds of years of injustice comes to light, you are told that it is your fault.
And you are left to shoulder the burden, again, alone." [Source]

It is all "exhausting", but we as black folks have to keep pushing and keep persevering like we have been doing for "hundreds of years" in this country. We have to understand the struggle, but we can't use it as an excuse to not maximize our potential. In fact, it should make us work harder. That's what field Negroes do.  

*Pic from chicagotribune.com   

Why "teachable moments" fall short.

The Field Negro education series continues.

Tonight we will read what Kali Holloway has to say.


"'People of color] are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions.' —Audre Lorde

America loves teachable moments, those real-life Very Special Episodes of supposed cross-cultural exchange and transracial learning.

The problem with those teachable moments is that the same people always end up doing all the teaching. In matters of race (and sex, disability, gender and sexuality, but let’s stick to race right now), the marginalized are tasked with being educators. That is, people of color (POC), are expected to be patient and polite racial and cultural ambassadors who provide white people new to this whole “thinking critically about race” thing with a “way in.” The role entails charitably and unselfishly engaging questions, assertions and doubts from white people who’ve previously done precious little thinking about racism and privilege, but often have quite a bit to say on the topic.

When POC refuse to take on this dual role of spokesperson and resource library, they’re often accused of having shirked an assumed responsibility. The idea seems to be that we’ve missed an opportunity, that it’s our duty to hold white people’s hands and educate them, that we’re condemning some poor white person to a continued life of ignorance.

It’s a classic tool of derailing, this feigned helplessness and subtly accusatory question of, “If you don’t teach me, how can I learn?” (Implied answer: “I won’t, and it’ll be all your fault!”) The idea is lazy, circuitous and tantamount to accusing POC who don’t want to have the same tiresome, not infrequently pointless, conversation about race of being complicit in racism. The failure to erase racial inequity doesn’t result from POCs’ failure to be patient with uninformed ideas and questions. We live in a world saturated with racism and its runoff. The people who experience it with sustained regularity don’t always feel like talking about it. And that is absolutely fine.

Because here’s the thing: people of color are not obligated to teach even the most well-intentioned white people anything about race. They certainly can if they want to, but it’s neither their duty or obligation. The onus rests on white “allies” to educate themselves.

Here’s why: Conversations around race are often microcosmic representations of structural racism at large. Derailing tactics like the aforementioned essentially serve to divert the conversation back to territory where the derailer feels more comfortable, and perhaps most importantly, help reestablish the traditional power dynamic. Once again, a person of color must focus on and give precedence to a white person’s opinions and queries—and often, their expressions of disbelief—instead of merely being able to speak their experiences. It’s not irresponsible to refuse to let white voices take center stage in a conversation ostensibly about issues of anti-blackness or racism against other POC. It’s an act of resistance that’s actually called “decentering whiteness.”

Just as often, it’s the result of plain old fatigue. It’s tiring to deal with uninformed white people’s ignorance around race. In those situations, what a white person perceives as a “learning experience” is, for a person of color, yet another confrontation with racial microaggressions. It’s equally frustrating, and incredibly dumb, to have it suggested that because another person who looks vaguely like you holds a different opinion or claims a different experience, your own opinion or experience is invalidated. (“But Stacey Dash says there is no racism…”)

It’s both exhausting and total bullshit to be reprimanded for your tone, should you be perceived as impolite or angry, or told precisely how you, as a person of color, should mind your manners when you talk to white people about race. The implication is that issues around racism should only be recognized when presented in a way that neither upsets nor offends your white audience. (It’s called tone policing, and credit where it’s due, it is yet another brilliant diversionary tactic.)
It’s futile to have discussions with white people who pretend to want to talk race, but actually delight in verbally sparring or debating the veracity of POC experiences. The Internet is absolutely lousy with examples, and no one will ever accuse comment threads of being the place to look for incisive racial commentary. It happens in real life situations as well, of course. Most black and other POC are uninterested in having yet another conversation with white people who articulate ideas about race that are simplistic or essentialist, ill-informed or purposely provocative or inflammatory.

Few people of color gain any reward from trying to talk substantively about issues around race with white people who are willfully and wantonly obtuse about racism. There are white people who genuinely don’t get it, and also those who don’t want to get it—would fight tooth and nail just to avoid getting it—and to all those people, I say good luck and godspeed! Because don’t get me wrong: I have great, honest, difficult conversations about race with friends all the time—people of vastly different races and ethnicities who’ve thought critically about race. But I’m not going to beg anyone to believe that racism is real. Not in 2015, and most certainly not when life is finite. And no POC should have to.

That said, there are also white people who want to get it, who are trying to do the work of actively being anti-racist. If you’re a white person who wants to be an ally, who’s dedicated to learning, who wants to be educated, start by looking it up yourself! Never before have we had in our homes, schools and libraries little boxes that provide such unfettered access to the whole of human knowledge. There exists more literature than you can possibly consume on race, all of it readily accessible, just a Google search away.

Do your own research on why that person doesn’t answer when you ask “What are you?” or why that woman doesn’t want you touching her hair, or why all these people seem so angry. But please stop expecting to have it explained to you by a benevolent POC. To just slightly paraphrase transgender activist Parker Marie Molloy:

Think of it this way: I may not have ever had a professional baseball player sit me down and explain the rules and the history of the game, but I’ve still managed to learn the difference between a “ball” and a “strike.” How did I accomplish this? By consulting the glut of information readily available on the subject online and in print. Interrupting people while they are playing the game to ask basic questions is rude, and moreover, would not be viewed as something players should take the time to address. If I want to call myself a baseball fan, the onus is on me to get up to speed. The resources exist, and if I persist in not understanding baseball, it’s willful ignorance on my part. So how is the learning about or becoming an ally of [people of color] any different?

Yes, of course, learning is good and working to be more consciously and unconsciously anti-racist is great. There should be a lot more of it! But no POC has to serve as any white person’s gateway. Part of the work of being an anti-racist white person is caring enough not to be part of the problem. Start by educating yourself." [Source]

---

Rhetoric and the racist.

I have been extremely busy these days, but I want to stay engaged with you and share knowledge with you when I find it, so I will keep these timely cut and paste posts coming your way.

"In a striking recent video interview, a Guardian reporter presses Pat Godwin, president of Selma, Alabama’s United Daughters of the Confederacy, on the question of whether viewers are right to assume Godwin’s expressed views are racist. Godwin replies, “Well, you have to define ‘racist’ to me. What is a racist?” Godwin’s subsequent comments demonstrate that her question is mainly rhetorical, a gesture meant to indicate that “racist” is too subjective a term to carry any weight, ever. For Godwin,

 

“The word ‘racist’ is, like I say so many times, is like beauty; beauty is in the eye…the eyes of the beholder. Well, if someone is defining racist or racism, it all depends on who’s defining it, because it’s their opinion. It’s their opinion. I’m a racist in the sense that I’m white, I was born white, I’m proud to be white, I believe in my race, I want to see it perpetuated, I want it to survive on this planet. I defend, protect, and preserve my white race.”

When the reporter turns to one of Godwin’s associates and asks him, “Are you racist as well?” he fires back programmatically: “Define racism.”

Though the reporter has already given a working definition, and Godwin a mini-dissertation on defining racism, the gentleman is quick to ape Godwin’s rhetorical strategy — to invalidate any charges of racism by challenging any definition of the word itself.

As an English professor, I’m particularly sensitive to this kind of rhetorical tactic.  I advise students to make a habit of finding more specific language for grand abstractions like “true love,” “the soul” and “finding yourself,” because each of these notions is so boundlessly vague that it means nothing without clarification. The solution, usually, is to historicize, to ground the abstract concept in some historical context so that we know the “true love” you’re writing about is, say, the transcendence of social circumstances that prohibit a relationship between lovers in a time and place of arranged marriages and family feuds.

Similarly, I discourage phrases like “in my opinion” or “that’s just your opinion,” because these are often ways of giving up, or of pretending like there are no gradations of value. “In my opinion” too often means “I don’t want to think any further through this challenging question of value,” the sort of question that may not have a single, correct answer, but certainly has degrees of implausible, acceptable and compelling answers.

People don’t typically fight wars or have heated political debates over mere differences of opinion. Rather, whether we’re arguing about racism, a passage from Shakespeare, an abortion policy or conflict in Gaza, the stakes of each argument vary in intensity, but the fundamentals are the same: Both sides of a conflict think they’re right, not just because of “opinion,” but because of differences of value that can be rooted in and explained by a mix of experience, tradition and faith, as well as logic, fact and evidence. We fight harder when the stakes are higher; but even when the stakes are so negligible that we aren’t moved to quibble, we have our reasons for thinking as we do.

Indeed, if you tell me that my favorite dessert, or maybe even my favorite song, is lousy, I may be content to drop the issue and say you’re “entitled to your opinion”; but choosing to attribute our differences in taste to your opinion doesn’t negate the fact that I have specific reasons to think that, on this matter, I’m right and you’re wrong. If, instead of dessert or music, we were talking about a disagreement over abortion or the death penalty, I doubt we’d be so conciliatory.

Thus, the neo-Confederate challenge to “define racism” is so effective because it forces the average person—that is, the person for whom whether to be racist is not a serious value proposition—to examine a definition that we too often take for granted. (“Why do I like cake so much?  I don’t know; I just…it tastes good!”) And because racism is a complicated notion, whatever equivocation or uncertainty that arises naturally when we think it through can appear, to the neo-Confederate, like a weakness of position.

Accordingly, when Pat Godwin says “define racism,” she isn’t looking for a solid, widely agreed upon definition; she’s hoping for uncertainty and equivocation. And once she gets an on-the-spot, sound-bite definition that’s nevertheless serviceable—the reporter says a “racist is usually somebody who discriminates on the basis of skin color”—Godwin and her associate both question the definition, almost in unison, before Godwin launches into her own personal take. (“The way I look at it …”) Getting to this point in the discussion—“the way I look at it”—was always Godwin’s goal, not just in urging the reporter to define racism, but in telling him right from the beginning “you have to define racist to me” (emphasis mine).

Having established what she takes to be the irrecoverable instability of the term “racist,” Godwin goes on, disingenuously, to appropriate the term “racist” as a term she can identify with. The comment “I’m a racist in the sense that I’m white” aligns being racist with something absolutely benign and widely experienced—the simple fact of being born white—before Godwin slips gradually from a definition of racist as merely being white to a definition more in line with white supremacy, one that also means “defending[ing], protect[ing], and preserv[ing] [her] white race.” I say that Godwin’s identification as a racist in this moment is disingenuous because she fully understands that “racist” is a pejorative term. If she didn’t, both her and her associate wouldn’t have needed to disarm the term in the first place before coyly identifying with it.

That’s why this interview is so telling, not just for the racial mentality of Godwin and the neo-Confederates, but for the right’s racial discourse more broadly. Complaints about “reverse racism,” and pushback against the assertions of the academic left that minority or subjugated groups can’t be racist as such, are often ways of claiming the legacy of white racism as a benign cultural history deserving of its own protections. This is exactly what Godwin is doing when she flippantly identifies as a racist because she’s proud of being born white. She’s trying to convince us that racism is really just white heritage (whatever that would look like), while something more akin to what conservatives call “reverse-racism” is the persecution of whites and white heritage. Hence, “define racism for me” means just that: give me a definition that affirms my worldview, because if not, I’ve got my own definition.

It’s important we understand such rhetorical tactics not simply as forms of racism, but as part of an important history that parallels, and lives symbiotically off of, the history of racism: the history of denying the existence of racism. Whether it’s borrowing the multiculturalist language of discrimination in accusations of “reverse-racism,” or expropriating the term “racist” as a symbol of white pride, the perpetrators subject themselves to a double-bind: They respect the idea of race-based discrimination when they themselves feel embattled or diminished as whites, but deny the same when the victims of discrimination are minorities.

“Define racism” is not an easy prompt with an easy answer, but we do have answers much better developed than Godwin’s opinion-based approach to the question. If we historicize racism, rather than treating it as abstraction or opinion, we find that racism in the U.S. is not just discrimination in general, but a history of a dominant class of European whites subjecting minorities by means of things like the theft of land, the destruction of native populations, slavery, internment, Jim Crow, voting restrictions, restrictions on access to education and home ownership, and hurtful or defamatory portrayals in entertainment and media.

Minorities can be discriminatory or bigoted against whites, but “racism” gains value as a term through its specificity.

Racism is not about general bigotry or discrimination (notice we already have words for those general kinds of human behavior), but the history of systematic forms of discrimination perpetrated by whites. Conservatives vested in notions of “reverse-racism” hate this qualification because they confuse the two-way logic of “discrimination” with the specific historical purchase of “racism” as its own term. But we use “racism” in this specific way because the repeated, race-based subjugation of minorities by whites in U.S. history is a specific phenomenon that merits a name. Attempts to muddle the meanings and associations of that name—“racism”—are so often attempts to minimize that history, to make it disappear by attacking the name we’ve given it." [More here]


*Pic from theatlantic.com
 

Getting beyond prejudice, and solving the racism problem.

I am still on the road,  but I am finding time to read some interesting articles.

"How prejudiced are Americans? The internet knows. Whether it's racism, sexism, cissexism, transphobia, classism, sizeism, or ableism, online residents are watching out for it and pointing it out at tremendous volume. Whole tumblrs are dedicated to meticulously cataloging the prejudiced histories of famous people.

While often useful and necessary, this strategy comes up short. The idea is that by "calling out" individual acts of oppression, we can raise awareness about the myriad subtle ways that prejudice manifests itself. The citizenry, better educated, will adjust its behaviors.

The problem is that white people, our dominant and most privileged socioeconomic group, tend to resist these critiques. In the case of racism, they are the ones who benefit from prejudice, and they squirm out of this stigma in increasingly interesting ways. How? These days, by loudly agreeing with those critiques, thereby signaling that they are meant for other, bad white people.

Think of the guy in critical theory class who embraces radical feminist authors extra-fervently in a bid to escape his own implication in the patriarchy. This bit of political jujitsu is rather "like buying an indulgence," as Reihan Salam put it at Slate.

One might respond that the answer is improved self-knowledge, greater humility, and more self-flagellation on the part of the privileged (see: #CrimingWhileWhite). Sure. But the problem is that there is no possible demonstration of prejudice and privilege that cannot also be appropriated by white people in the service of demonstrating the purity of their own views, resulting in an endless vortex of uncomfortable, obnoxious earnestness. Being a Not-Racist these days is getting very subtle indeed.

But there's another approach that is both simpler and far more difficult. Instead of focusing on individual guilt and innocence, the socioeconomic structure that undergirds racism can get equal or greater billing. If educating the privileged has reached a point of diminishing returns, then attacking racist outcomes with structural policy can make that education unnecessary.

Now, it should be noted that any individual instance of calling out prejudice is surely harmless and heartfelt. It should further be noted that many if not most anti-prejudice activists share these structural goals. The problem is a question of emphasis. Prejudiced words tend to get 10 times more attention than racist acts and structures. For example, Donald Sterling was hounded mercilessly for his racist comments, but largely ignored for his concretely racist actions as a landlord.

And the problems America faces go far beyond one rotten rich person. There's the prison-industrial complex. The stupendous wealth and income gap between black and white. The fact that the police randomly gun down unarmed black men and boys on a regular basis. That's just for starters — and it's getting worse, not better.

Working on those problems is going to take a massive nationwide policy effort. Prison and sentencing reform, ending the drug war, overhauling American policing, and implementing quota-based affirmative action would be a good start. In particular, there is a good case for class to take center stage in any anti-prejudice effort. Nearly all racist oppression is heavily mediated through economic structures and worsened by endemic poverty.." {More} 

I agree with the reforms needed to curb institutional racism, and that economic self-reliance is remedy and possible cure-all for "racist oppression". But what is also needed is a level of individual soul searching that so call Christians found during the Christian Awakenings of the 18th and early 19th century in the United States.

It won't be easy. The "individual guilt" the author writes about, in my humble opinion, is tied to the larger institutions because of the makeup of the people and policy makers who run those institutions.

We will probably never be able to change what is in their hearts, but we can certainly hold them accountable and shame them into doing the right thing-----even if they do so reluctantly.

       

  
    

Mr. Miller's dream for America.

“White men have become the biggest cowards ever to walk the earth. The world has never witnessed such yellow cowards. We’ve sat back and allowed the Jews to take over our government, our banks, and our media. We’ve allowed tens of millions of mud people to invade our country, steal our jobs and our women, and destroy our children’s futures. America is no longer ours. America belongs to the Jews who rule it and to the mud people who multiply in it.”
– U.S. Senate radio ad, 2010


“Our forefathers were absolutely right to be racists and to discriminate in favor of themselves. That racism and discrimination insured racial security, prosperity, and racial survival and procreation. ZOG and the Jews-media tricked us and shamed us out of our racism shame that has weakened us and divided us as a people, therefore cowards, unwilling to resist Jewish enslavement and genocide.”

 – “Cowardice is the White Man’s Survival Strategy!” Miller’s website


Frazier Glen Miller sounds like he is auditioning for a right- wing radio talk show or a prime time show on FOX News. Sadly for Frazier, though, he will be spending the rest of his useless and miserable life in prison.


Still, there are more Frazier Glen Millers out there. Most of them are cowards who comment anonymously on blogs, but every now and then one of them decides to act out his hateful fantasies. Sadly, the end result is what happened on Sunday.


This all reminds me of an interesting article I read today that was written by Michael Tomasky for the Daily Beast.

"Some time back, whenever a big racial controversy erupted, I trained myself into the habit of reading about it at FoxNews.com, just for the unbelievable comment threads. Let’s put it this way: If my friends and I went out to a bar and started playing a “let’s write the racist FoxNews.com comment thread” drinking game, our efforts couldn’t begin to approach what I read there.

I wasn’t alone. Liberal websites started feasting on these threads. And so, a couple of years ago, Ailes & Co. got wise. Stories about race were, at least in my disheartened experience, closed to comments.

Fox acted, I recall, back in February 2012, when the thread on Whitney Houston’s death made even many conservatives a little jumpy. Here’s a taste: “Whitney is just an inferior lo w life ni gg er that needed to go, no tragedy, no loss…” “Any death is a tragedy you heartless bastard…” “not nignogs their death is a plus…”

Well, at least there was that person in the middle there! But these threads were poisonous, and they didn’t appear just on Fox. They’ve been all over conservative websites and have bled into some mainstream ones, too. Lord, the things I read in comment threads on North Carolina newspapers’ sites in their stories about the “Moral Monday” protests. Believe it or not, conservative readers, I don’t go flinging the r-word around loosely. But these comments, hundreds, thousands of them, were just thuggishly racist. Nothing else to call them.

Beyond these, we have numerous instances of low-level (and sometimes not so low-level) Republican Party officials—Republican Party officials—making racist jokes about Obama. Here’s a little chrestomathy of some of them. If you follow the news closely, you know that hardly a…not quite a week, but let’s say hardly a fortnight goes by that some local GOPer doesn’t show up in the news explaining that he “didn’t mean any harm” in sending that email to friends showing watermelons piled up on the White House, and he’s sincerely sorry “if it offended anyone.” Often, of course, it’s something more malevolent than that.

And now it’s supposed to be controversial when Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) says, as he did Sunday on CNN, that “to a significant extent, the Republican base does have elements that are animated by racism”? Please. You have to be living a life of willed ignorance and denial to take issue with what Israel said. (The link above, by the way, is to the FoxNews.com story; if you scroll down you will indeed see the inevitable and darkly amusing sentence “Comments are currently closed for this article.”)

...We should not, then, even be debating whether what Israel said is true. Sadly, we shouldn’t even be debating why Republican politicians won’t discuss it. My little hypothetical above showed why. None of them has the stones to. Some, Rand Paul and others, talk a little in general terms about how the party needs to “change” and “modernize.” But to spell out what that change and modernization would involve, in racial terms? No one will confront that." [Source]


They will not change. There are too many Frazier Glen Miller types out there who won't let them.  
 




  

Riley Cooper's "redemption".

Sorry to hear that poor Justine got fired. I guess [white] membership doesn't  have its privileges like it used to.

Don't worry Justine; I am pretty sure that you won't catch AIDS by simply standing in an unemployment line.

But I move on.

It's Sunday here in America, which means that it's time for some football.

My Eagles are trying to win the NFC East and only that hated team from Dallas stands in their way.

So anyway, I recently saw an article about my team and one of the rising stars in the receiving group; Riley Cooper.

In case you don't remember, Riley was the dude who dropped the N- word to an African American security guard at a country and western concert. It was all caught on tape, and poor Riley had some "splaining" to do.

It was touch and go for Riley there for a minute, but now he is having a good season, and they are writing articles about his road to redemption.

"Cooper is a big, strong target who has deceptive speed. He's a solid blocker and brings attitude to the field. But for the first three seasons of his career, he displayed his vast skills only during practice and couldn't carry it over to games.

"What he's doing now is shocking, to be honest with you," said a longtime NFL executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "To this point, he has shown things he previously wasn't able to show."

Is it opportunity? Added motivation to prove himself? Vick said he always saw great potential in Cooper. When the receiver was a rookie, he spent the entire 2010 preseason with Vick, who called him his "go-to guy." But they never really meshed together on the field. It wasn't until Vick injured his hamstring in October that Cooper finally started putting up big stats with second-year quarterback Nick Foles.

Cooper caught four passes for a career-high 120 yards against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 6. He had three touchdowns and another career high with 139 yards three weeks later against the Oakland Raiders.

"Sometimes, you just click with guys, and, sometimes, it takes a lot of time to get comfortable with one another," said former NFL quarterback Mark Brunell, an ESPN analyst. "It may take a year or two years to really get to the place where there's a real connection there. Nick and Riley haven't been together that long, yet they're able to do some pretty special things. What's happening in Philly is kind of fun to watch."

Eagles receiver Jason Avant said Cooper looks up to Foles and the type of person he is.

"Just the way he lives his life," Avant said of the quarterback. "If they go somewhere, Nick is a little bit different. He doesn't drink or do certain things. I think he's a positive influence for him in a lot of different areas."

Avant said that ever since Cooper was a rookie, he had a reputation for working hard and having a temper that needed to be controlled. In the heat of competition, Avant said, Cooper was "liable to say anything."

"He had to work his way back with a lot of people," Avant said, "a lot of black guys on the team. He had to go to some of those guys and let them know his heart about the situation. He did, and I think guys received him.

"I can tell you this, that Riley experiences more racism than anybody. Being a white receiver in the NFL, that's not a … I'm out there with him. For years, I've heard some ridiculous things, that he doesn't deserve to be out there. That's happened way before this incident. I don't want to say it to be a cop-out, but what I'm saying is that him being in the position that he's in, it happens in this league. So you have to have that mindset to have a merciful heart."

I need a break!

Poor Riley has experienced racism from NFL defensive backs because he is white.

Jason Avant seems like he might be a nice guy, but he really needs to get a clue. Riley Cooper doesn't need his sympathy, he has a very large support system around him who is all too willing to do that and a public who is all too willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The silly article about his "redemption" is a classic example of that.

I really don't want to hear about how tough Riley Cooper has had it or how hard he has had to work to win over his black teammates. That security guard he was calling nigger around all of his beer drinking country and western friends is who I feel sorry for. Some poor guy earning $9 an hour (probably his second job) just to makes ends meet, and he has to get the business from some jerk of a football player. That's who deserves our sympathy.



Ironically, it was the man every pet owner in in America loves to hate, Michael Vick, who is credited with making it easier for Cooper to get back in the good graces of his African American teammates.

"In late July, after the news of the video broke, a humbled Cooper texted Vick. He thanked the quarterback for standing up for him, for publicly forgiving him at a time when Cooper desperately needed an ally. It was a hot, tension-filled summer in Philadelphia. Teammates, especially new players, were angry and didn't know Cooper, didn't trust him. Cooper issued a public apology, but even older players, such as LeSean McCoy, said they'd lost respect for him.

"I knew how guys were thinking," said Vick, who lived through his own controversy for his involvement in a dogfighting ring.  "I overheard guys talking. Some of the things, I just didn't like what I was hearing. I knew it had to be corrected. I just felt like I was obligated to make sure that this locker room stayed intact."

Good for Michael Vick. He put his team first. Not good for Jason Avant, he doesn't understand real racism.

Riley, just keep catching footballs and we will be cool. Your performance on the football field is all I care about.

Your moral awakening and "redemption" is between you and your conscience.


  

The ignorance of Erin Burnett and the "white privilege" industry.

Thanks to Oprah Winfrey, we now know that even when you have access to a billion dollars, "color arousal" can still affect your life. It's one of the sad realities of living in a color aroused world. We have all been there: The white guy or gal with barely a high school education shading you in an expensive store or high end area because they think you don't belong. It has happened to Oprah before, and given her age and status she can expect it to happen to her again.

But this post isn't about Oprah and her experience, it's about one particular anchor woman reporting on it.

Lately it has been the norm for those in the majority population to shout down claims of racism. FOX News has been leading this ignorant meme parade, but thanks to clowns like Erin Burnett over at CNN, the torch of ignorance has been passed.

CNN's Erin Burnett, covering the story of the Swiss store that told Oprah Winfrey a purse she wanted to see was "too expensive," offered a cringe-worthy assessment of the situation. Burnett first falsely suggested that Oprah herself was trying to play the race card and then compared Winfrey to a hooker.
Burnett's remarkably tone-deaf commentary can speak for itself. At the beginning of the segment, she played a clip of the Entertainment Tonight segment during which Oprah first told the story.

In the clip, Winfrey says, "I could have had the big blow-up thing, and thrown down the black card and all that stuff, but why do that?" Burnett then picks up the interview with filmmaker Safiya Songhai.

Oprah's made it very clear. She thought this was an act of racism; she was subjected to racism. She says, look, I could have thrown down the whole black thing, but I chose not to.

"The whole black thing," Burnett says. Winfrey could have "thrown down the whole black thing." Except that it is obviously not what Winfrey said. When Winfrey says "thrown down the black card," she makes a gesture as though she's putting down a credit card. Because that's what Winfrey means: she could have laid down the exclusive black American Express she carries to show that she could afford the purse, but she didn't. Winfrey even accentuates "card" — "I could have thrown down the black card" versus "the black card" — but Burnett doesn't pick up on it. Because to Burnett, Winfrey is being overreactive in suggesting it's about race.

I am sure Burnett knows what at Amex black card is, in fact, I bet she probably has one. So her not picking up on the fact that Winfrey did not mean the "race card" but that she was literally talking about a black card was even more mind-boggling.

But this is where we are in America; the people who report on the news and who are supposed to be leading the national conversation on things such as race are all morons who bring their own ignorance and prejudices to the table for the rest of us to ponder and digest.

Burnett, speaking from her perch of white privilege, was quick to downplay Winfrey's experience and blame it all on Winfrey's own racial sensitivities. The fact that Winfrey happens to have a big bank account makes her actions even more egregious in the eyes of people like Burnett. "How can she cry racism when she has money and America has been so good to her?" As if that makes the sting of racism hurt less.

"Burnett says that it may not have been about race — it may instead have been like the scene in Pretty Woman, when a prostitute is turned away from a high-end store. "It's sort of like that moment," Burnett says. She continues:

They didn't want a hooker in their store, and they knew she was a hooker. But you look now, and they say, well, was it just that they thought she couldn't afford it. And if so, even if it wasn't overt racism, did they say, well, because this woman's black, she can't afford it.

This is literally what Burnett says. The most generous assessment of that statement is that perhaps the store wasn't being racist, they simply thought that because Winfrey's a woman who's black, she can't afford it.
Which is the definition of racism. 

It's easy to see how race played a role in Winfrey's experience. Burnett tries twice to suggest it's not, first by implying Winfrey threatened to play the race card (which she didn't), and second by saying that it may have just been because they assumed Winfrey was poor because she was black (which is racist). [Source]

Of course it is "racist". And Burnett is no different than the woman who served Winfrey in that store in Switzerland called Trois Pommes.