Tag: racism

What IS racist, anyway?

a long history of bigotry

Richard Nixon.Ronald ReaganITEM: – I suggested stated clearly that I thought a certain orange-haired man was racist. Someone I do not know on Facebook wrote: “Evidence for racism?” Well, it was noted throughout the piece.

Still, I thought I’d try to further explain his long history of bigotry going back to the 1970s and an oral history.

My decision to engage was based on a conversation at the Triennium conference I attended, to try to understand a different POV. I knew he was trolling or sealioning me. But I let it run its course until it inevitably became pointless.

ITEM: Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hidden Racist Conversation With Richard Nixon in 1971 when RWR was governor of California.

“Reagan forged ahead with his complaint: ‘To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!’ Nixon gave a huge laugh.”

Yet some folks on FOX “News” swear up and down that RWR was not racist. Here’s a good rule of thumb: if you refer to black people as another primate, THAT IS RACIST. Prima facia racist.

At the very end of a recent Daily Show With Trevor Noah, you can hear what a stand-up guy Ronnie was. FINDING A BLACK PERSON TO SAY IT’S NOT RACIST DOES NOT MAKE IT NOT RACIST.

Maybe one needs to parse a racist action, which could be of the moment, from a pattern of racism.

“Whenever a person is accused of racism… they instinctively search for any example to bolster their ‘non-racist credentials’, which can be a low bar. When people are motivated to find evidence that they’re not prejudiced, they’re more likely to think having a black friend is really strong evidence.”

Secretary of HUD Ben Carson held a press conference to defend djt’s long-standing racism, and a Baltimore church rightly kicked him off the property.

ITEM: An article in The Atlantic – “We’re All Tired of Being Called Racists”. At a recent pep rally, Brandon Straka, a gay djt supporter, said “Insinuations of bigotry and racism are divisive tactics.” Don’t fall for the classic rubber and glue tactic. POINTING OUT RACISM DOESN’T MAKE YOU RACIST.

ITEM: When traditionally conservative media point out racism, PAY ATTENTION. From Foreign Policy: How Does Online Racism Spawn Mass Shooters?

ITEM: ONE SPEECH DOES NOT NEGATE DECADES OF RACISM. A Teleprompter speech on mass shootings was Completely Inconsistent With Everything He’s Ever Said and Done. The Boston Globe calls him the hypocrite in chief. Here’s what a real president says.

Not news: the racist Twit-in-Chief

Racism is sin

Stern.August 2017.Trump
The cover of the German magazine Stern, August 2017
While I was away in a low-news mode, the story about the Twit-in-Chief attacking four progressive congresswomen of color broke. “Go back” to the “crime-infested places from which they came” was the message. The crowd chanted “send her back” at the North Carolina pep rally, referring to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).

He later disavowed the chants, though he had paused during the shouting, looking on for several seconds, appearing to show approval. The next day, he dubbed the chanters “patriots.” Sycophants such as Veep Mike Pence and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said, “Oh, he’s NOT racist.” The truly dreadful Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he’s “on to something” with those attacks on four congresswomen.

You probably knew all this, but I’m just catching up.

It got me to wonder: what on earth does it take to label an action racist in America and to have it stick? Or is it just impossible? Perhaps, for Republicans, “xenophobia and nationalism are completely fine — just don’t call it racism.”

Mark Evanier linked to what he cheekily called “that bastion of Liberalism,” the National Review. “David French writes that when Donald Trump says something divisive and racist, Republican leaders will not so much as give an ‘ahem’ to express slight disapproval…

“There are many GOP leaders who, quite frankly, understand that they criticize even the president’s racist speech at their own peril. The grassroots have spoken. Loyalty to the president must be absolute, or one risks a primary challenge.”

The Weekly Sift guy attributes this process to his friend and former editor Tom Stites:
Trump makes blatantly racist statements. The responsible press and responsible leaders use racist in describing it. Trump’s confederate supporters think, See? All those elitists are calling me a racist! This pushes their victim buttons and turns their anger on the responsible press and leaders.
Then Trump repeats that he’s about the least racist person you’ll ever meet, and he calls the Squad racists who hate Israel and the U.S. Trump’s racist supporters feel vindicated by their hero.
More of the press becomes confident using the word racist. Trump turns up the volume a bit and repeats his pot-stirring trick. The confederates respond.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
He’s a twisted genius at manipulation.

He, his fans and defenders are wallowing in the language of hate crimes. There’s a scary undercurrent at every one of his rallies: “It is language with a very familiar ring: The language of community defense and purification, driving from the body politic any foreign—and therefore innately toxic—presence or influence.” But does it matter?

Like much of our language, ‘love it or leave it’ has a racist history. “it sort of conveys—particularly to people of color—that this is not our home… Historically, when people of color criticize America, they’ve been deemed un-American and unpatriotic, but when white people criticize America, it is normal.” And it takes an increasing psychological toll.

The hardly-liberal Foreign Policy magazine notes in America’s Road to Reputational Ruin: “The decline in U.S. soft power didn’t start with Trump, but he accelerated it… with his racist tweets.”

Yup, the mainstream media HAS been increasingly willing to at least acknowledge when an action is racist. For instance, Fox News’ Chris Wallace Burns Down Stephen Miller Over Trump’s Racist Lies. The CBS reporting repeatedly called his behavior racist, while NBC used that mamby-pamby “that many are calling racist.” (I taped them and am watching now.)

Congressman Elijah Cummings declared he is a racist — ‘No Doubt About It’. Former Vice-President Joe Biden compares him to segregationist George Wallace. In case I’ve been too oblique, yes, I’ve long believed the Twit-in-Chief is a racist. As Sojourners notes, “Racism isn’t a partisan issue. It is sin.”

The thing is, none of this behavior should be surprising, given his history. We CAN wonder, though, what it means to the future of the United States. Does his race-baiting evokes the Nuremberg rallies? Or should we not panic?

What do you think? I tend to lean towards ire/panic.

More susceptible to falsehood than to truth

Anything can be corrupted, polluted or discredited

truthI receive Quotable Notes daily. One from March: “Man’s mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.” –Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536), a Dutch humanist who was the greatest scholar of the northern Renaissance. I don’t know that “the first editor of the New Testament” is correct. But it WOULD appear so.

For the past couple years, in order not to write about him ALL THE TIME, I’ve posted on this date some links about a person who has described himself, more than once as a “an extremely stable genius”.

This has turned out to be an extremely difficult task. It’s not that there’s a dearth of examples of unsettling behavior but rather a plethora of them.

He feels compelled to comment about his claimed expertise in all subjects in some way, even when it comes to offering advice about something for which he is completely unqualified. He offered unsolicited advice on the best way to fight the Notre Dame Cathedral fire. It was met by derision and laughter because the weight of dropped water on a rooftop fire would have collapsed the structure and made things much worse.

He prevaricates brazenly, having lied or misled the American people more than 10,000 times.

He berates senior officials constantly. It’s remarkable how many times his aides ignored his dodgy or possibly illegal requests. He is tired of hearing “You Can’t Do That.” We should all be afraid.

Back in March, his 32 tweets were noteworthy, from a Saturday Night Live rerun he groused about to several attacks on the late John McCain.

He “railed against Shep Smith and other Fox hosts he doesn’t like; called on the network to defend Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro, two hosts he does like.” He’s since dissed Chris Wallace, and the network in general for allowing Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg on the platform.

Nation of Change noted: “No one has yet assessed the full disaster from stripping the office of dignity and competence, plus shredding prestige overseas. When ‘anything goes,’ even changes weekly, then anything can be corrupted, polluted or discredited.”

Frank S. Robinson says he has plan-free fact-free anal sphincter foreign policy. He CLEARLY has no idea how tariffs work.

Robert Reich wrote that, as a result of the tax cuts, “business is booming for connoisseurs of private planes. That’s because the tax law allows businesses to deduct the full cost of buying a plane in the first year of purchase… Some wealthy individuals have even created shell businesses to utilize the deductions.” His golf habit has cost American taxpayers $100 million.

Most Americans believe he has made race relations worse. He again targets transgender people – this time in new proposal to rescind Obama-era healthcare protections.

I could go on, and on, but it’s exhausting. He says he would listen if foreigners offered dirt on opponents; he feels no responsibility to protect the integrity of our democracy.

Should he be impeached? Probably, and for all these reasons. Even Justin Amash, a Republican, finds his actions “inherently corrupt.”

That said, as awful as I find him, he can win re-election in 2020. And THAT depresses the hell out of me.

A fugue

Wilmington, NC coup d’etat of 1898

The mob broke out windows and set the building on fire

Wilmington
Richmond (VA) Planet newspaper, 19 Nov 1898
The only coup d’etat In U.S. history took place in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898. “Almost two-thirds of its population was black, with a small but significant middle class.” There were a number of black businesspeople and civil servants. “A good feeling between the races existed as long as white Democrats controlled the state politically.”

In the Jim Crow south, the race relations were practically idyllic. “But when a coalition of predominately white Populists and black Republicans defeated the Democrats in 1896 and won political control of the state, Democrats vowed revenge” two years later.

The outbreak stemmed “from an editorial published by the Wilmington Daily Record, an African American newspaper edited by Alexander Manly. In response to an appeal for the lynching of black rapists made by crusader Rebecca Felton in Georgia, Manly wrote that white women ‘are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than are the white men with colored women.’

“Moreover, Manly argued, many accusations of rape were simply cases where a black man was having an affair with a white woman. Because it involved the sensitive issue of interracial sexual relations, the editorial struck a raw nerve with many whites and led to bitter denunciations of Manly in the Democratic press.”

“On November 10th, Alfred Moore Waddell, a former Confederate officer and a white supremacist, led a group of townsmen to force the ouster of Wilmington’s city officials… Waddell led 500 white men to the headquarters of the Daily Record on 7th Street. The mob broke out windows and set the building on fire. Manly and other high profile African Americans fled the city; however, at least 14 African Americans were slain that day.

“When their criminal behavior resulted in neither Federal sanctions nor condemnation from the state, Waddell and his men formalized their control of Wilmington. The posse forced the Republican members of the city council and the mayor to resign and Waddell assumed the mayoral seat.

November 10, 1898 is considered a turning point in post-Reconstruction North Carolina politics. The event initiated an era of more severe racial segregation and effective disenfranchisement of African Americans throughout the South, a shift already underway.

Read The Lost History of an American Coup D’État in The Atlantic magazine.

For ABC Wednesday

Three TEDx videos: acknowledge your biases

America works overtime to create a colorblind society, but does this colorblindness perpetuate, rather than resolve, racism?

biasesFriends of mine, a couple at my church, have shown, just in the relatively few years I’ve known them, how amazingly aware they are of cultural biases. It was they who led the adult education discussion at church about Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race and other discussions about white privilege.

There are few discussions more dreadful than black people discussing white privilege. No matter how sensitively presented, hackles are almost always raised. But when white people talk about white privilege, it can be a very different conversation.

Did I mention this couple was white? They moved from a very nice suburban home to a lot in the “inner city” of Albany, where they built a very nice house. When asked about that, they waved it away saying it was no big deal. They’re wrong, but they’re so right about other things, I let it pass.

They had been attending some workshop recently and emailed these three TEDx videos. The first two were cued to a specific point in the presentations, but you should listen to all of them in toto as your time permits.

The Exceptional Negro: Fighting to be Seen in a Colorblind World – Traci Ellis

America works overtime to create a colorblind society, but does this colorblindness perpetuate, rather than resolve, racism? Despite a growing racial divide, attorney, activist and author Traci Ellis says the time is now to have the courageous conversation about the damage done in the name of colorblindness.

Is My Skin Brown Because I Drank Chocolate Milk? – Beverly Daniel Tatum

When her 3-year-old son told her that a classmate told him that his skin was brown because he drank chocolate milk, Dr. Tatum, former president of Spelman College and a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service, was surprised. As a clinical psychologist, she knew that preschool children often have questions about racial difference, but she had not anticipated such a question.

How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly toward them – Verna Myers

Our biases can be dangerous, even deadly — as we’ve seen in the cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner, in Staten Island, New York. Diversity advocate Verna Myers looks closely at some of the subconscious attitudes we hold toward out-groups. She makes a plea to all people: Acknowledge your biases. Then move toward, not away from, the groups that make you uncomfortable.

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