The attempt by the right to blame President Obama or Black Lives Matter for the horrible torture of a disabled white man by four black folks in Chicago is vile. The crime was a vicious and cruel act by depraved individuals who likely have never listened to a single thing Obama has said, and have no connection to BLM whatsoever. These are not movement activists. They are criminals. They didn't beat up a white person at an Obama rally (the way Trump fans attacked blacks at Trum...p rallies). They didn't attack this man while singing the praises of Obama or BLM. Was it a hate crime? Yes, likely so from the video (both based on race and potentially ableism as well). But that doesn't make it the fault of the president or progressive movements fighting for police accountability. If anything, the President has gone out of his way (more than I would like) to counsel cooperation with Trump, or at least a calm and dispassionate response to the transfer of power. He has done nothing to encourage black folks to attack Trump supporters or whites generally. Nothing. For the right to suggest otherwise is purely for the purpose of whipping up more anti-black hysteria as Trump prepares to enter office: to scare white people and to condition us to give our common sense over to him, to let him "crack down" on black folks and so-called "reverse racism," while studiously ignoring the evidence of systemic anti-black racism all around us, from the justice system to the schools to the labor market. It's a classic bait and switch and must be seen as such...
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But of course she ends with the obligatory, "I'm not racist." Because apparently no white person, anywhere, is, no matter how racist they behave...I'm starting to think that white racism denial is a mental disorder. Or ya know, just really amateurish lying
Kansas is a textbook example of everything wrong with supply-side economics...meanwhile, California's economy keeps the country afloat while ideologically-backward places like this (and pretty much the entire south), under the thumb of white conservatives, drag it down...
Of course he did, because his National Security Advisor is a racist -- but I'm sure that's just a coincidence, working with Trump and all...
End of story...Comey did this for political reasons...this was a pre-election coup plain and simple and is the kind of thing that should result in prison time for all involved...interfering with an election to sway the outcome is illegal if you or I do it...it should be when the FBI does it too. The evidence suggests late-breaking voters post-"revelation" that the FBI was looking at new "evidence" broke dispro for Trump in numbers sufficient to have swung key states...and lik...ely also those "revelations" (which were garbage) suppressed Clinton's own vote turnout...If Obama had benefitted from some shady shit like this, the right would be calling for an immediate do-over; their hard core base would be in the streets with pitchforks...sadly, Democrats will likely take it and try to play nice with people who detest the democratic process altogether and want nothing but power for power's sake...There should be zero cooperation with this Administration under these circumstances. Filibuster everything. Treat them no better than they treated President Obama or would have treated Clinton. Call for investigations over every single shady thing Trump and his pathetic family of grifters does. Every, Single. Thing.
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For those who have inquired -- and several have -- about why I haven't written much (only two articles thus far) since the election, and neither one really analytical pieces about what Trump's victory really means (and neither posted on my site, but rather, on Alternet, Raw Story and/or BK Nation), here's the update:
1. My Wordpress Dashboard on my site is acting up so I'm trying to fix it so I can post there. Should have that back up and running soon, and;
2. My lack of prod...uction is not to suggest I'm not writing. I've been writing pretty much non-stop. I'm putting together a long-form essay (or really more like three long-form essays, or several chapters, but essay style) into a book that would be released in early Spring hopefully. At pace I'm writing right now, I should be done with it by inauguration day. Tentative title: Great White Hoax: Race, Class and the Meaning of Trumpism. I'll probably also post a couple of shorter, Trump-related essays on my site as well in the coming weeks...
3. Because of the election of Trump and the challenges that poses for the nation, the antiracism struggle, etc.-- and the need to get out some important thoughts about how to make sense of it and what to do next -- I am putting on temporary hold another book I was working on, but will still complete and get out later next year. That book, which examines the historical and contemporary fears of black crime and violence (what Jody David Armour has called "Negrophobia") and how it relates to the pushback to Black Lives Matter, the whole "war on cops" narrative and the rationalization of profiling and disproportionate policing and killing of folks of color, is still vital and will be done. Just bumping it in the queue for a bit. That book, which will be called White Lies Matter: Race, Crime and the Politics of Fear in America, should be released by this time next year, from City Lights.
Also, will be doing less regular essay writing and more broadcasting in 2017: looking to launch a podcast very soon, to discuss race and its intersections with class, sex, gender, sexuality, religion, militarism, etc. So, lots in store. Just wanted to give folks an update since there had been several questions about all this...
For those who are confused about why our history of slavery is still relevant -- in addition to the obvious ways in which it contributed directly to the skewing of wealth and opportunity with which we still live -- here ya go...
In the wake of Trump's victory, everyone seems to be sold on the dominant narrative that the Electoral College was created to PREVENT tyrants, because of something Hamilton said in Federalist 68...but putting aside how quick folks are to praise anythi...ng Hamilton said (especially if he rapped it), please recall, Federalist 68 wasn't written before the EC was adopted at the Constitutional Convention. The history of the convention makes it clear what its real purpose was. It was, in effect, to PROTECT the tyranny of southern slaveocracy, by boosting the influence of states where half their population couldn't vote because they were held as property...this and the 3/5 compromise are why the south and its legacy continues to dominate American politics today, despite a civil war that should have crushed it forever.
Side Note: There is also much confusion about the 3/5 compromise. One often hears it said, with much alarm, that "blacks were only 3/5 of a person" according to the framers. This is wrong. To the framers, blacks (at least those in bondage) were not people at all. The 3/5 compromise was solely for the purpose of census enumeration and to boost the voting power of whites in the slave states. The South did not want blacks to count as people, but rather as property. Yet by doing that, they would diminish their own political power, since enslaved persons represented anywhere from 30-50% of their populations. The decision to count enslaved persons as 3/5 of a human was not a REDUCTION in their perceived humanity but an INCREASE, meant solely to empower white supremacy even further. While the enslaved obviously deserved immediate freedom and to be counted as full human beings from day 1, ironically, they would have been better served to have not been counted at all, than to count as 3/5. Had they not counted at all, the population of the south would have been deemed smaller and their political power diminished...which means, theoretically, that the power of slave states to maintain their system would have been reduced and the system perhaps ended sooner.
Anyway, back to the original point: for those who don't think racism had anything to do with Trump's win, the EC alone disproves that: a system set up to preserve white supremacy and enslavement is why he will be president in a month...
This is no doubt why Judge Jeanine is not a judge any more...her temperament and intelligence are both disqualifying. First off, to claim that America rejected the Obamas or the Obama agenda (when Obama wasn't on the ballot) is absurd. Second, about 3 million more Americans voted for HRC than Trump, meaning a virtual continuation of the Obama legacy, and a rejection by most of Pirro's hero. Trump is president because he won about 75,000 more votes than Clinton in 3 states. Th...at is not remotely a mandate, even in those states, let alone nationwide.
Here's the bottom line: The Republican Party and its conservative agenda has only been able to carry the majority vote in Presidential elections ONCE since 1988. Once...that means most Americans do not want the right to pick the Supreme Court, to conduct foreign policy, to set the national economic agenda, to direct energy policy, or anything else. While the right clearly has a mandate in certain states to carry out reactionary social policy -- as evidenced by their domination of state legislatures in the old Confederacy and Midwest -- they have no such mandate nationally and should stop lying, suggesting that the country is with them, when they are not.
People of color reject them. About half of white women and half of white youth reject them. What they have is a mandate from white men over 35 (perhaps 25% of the population) and white southerners, the latter of which is no more important than when the Democrats had that same mandate in 1860--and every bit as venal, seeing as how it's rooted in the same thing.
Damn...Seriously, I know I'm too much of a sucker for great writing. But this is so brilliant, and poignant, as is most everything Coates writes in my estimation...And it reminds me, even with all of my numerous disagreements with the president (in my case, all from the left), and my frustrations and disappointments (and they are not minor), that we are about to replace perhaps the most thoughtful human being ever to hold that office with most assuredly the least thoughtful. ...Someone whose biggest flaw is perhaps OVERthinking stuff and being too measured, with someone who doesn't think things over at all, but just leads with his bilious gut, and to hell with the consequences. Regardless of your politics, you should take a second to really think about this...To conclude, as white America apparently has, that thoughtfulness is a fatal flaw, tantamount to being an elitist snob, is to consign this nation to destruction. This is how the American experiment ends, whether this time, or at some time in the future. We deserve better than this...or at least, people of color do. They deserved better than Obama as well, of course, but if one cannot tell the difference between this president and the one on deck, you are seriously too obtuse to be taken seriously about anything: the time of day, the weather, traffic patterns...anything.
Donald Trump's election is proof that white Americans, in the main, do not believe in the nation within which they live. They believe in nostalgia. They believe in a fictive past. They don't believe in the rhetoric of the country -- which after all concerns freedom and liberty for all, and on equal terms -- but the practice, which is something quite different. We are people of the lie, so committed to its perpetuation that we will risk everything just to feel important and in control and strong...white America, in the main, is the moral and practical equivalent of 14 year old boys, only without the innocence. We are just as impulsive, just as vindictive, just as self-centered, but lacking the endearing qualities of naivete that allows one to chalk up bad behavior to a simple lack of reflection, or perhaps the still-to-be-completed formation of the brain. No. We know exactly what we're doing, and how dangerous it is, and we do it anyway. That kind of risk taking is fine when you're a dude-bro bungee-jumping. It's quite a bit less fine -- pathological in fact -- when you do take such risks in the selection of national leaders.
Fascinating how "economic anxiety" supposedly motivates Trump voters, and thus, the logical thing to do is spout homophobic and heterosexist shit in a church...cuz that'll bring the factory jobs back...seriously, people like this...screw them. No alliances, no pandering, no regard whatsoever. Just marginalize them entirely...Not interested in reconnecting them to their humanity. I am interested in politically crushing them. They can believe as they wish. They can spout inanit...y in their tabernacles all day long. But out here in the real world, where the public interest is concerned, they should be rendered politically impotent...they can drown in their fake Baby Jesus tears as far as I'm concerned...Any progressive who counsels us to make "common cause" with people like this because "oh they're hurting, because ya know, the 1% is abusing them too..." yeah, you can miss me with that. I know about the 1%. I also know that people like this want to BE the 1%, not overthrow them and institute a system of equity. They are the enemy too and should be treated as such...you can't win over everyone. Time for social justice movements to cut bait and steamroll some folks, rather than try and play nursemaid to bigotry. We are not counselors or therapists. Time to move on, with or without some people on the train. This missionary mentality on the left -- which says we can build solidarity with most everyone if they just understood the "real issues" -- is bullshit and disrespectful of the agency exercised by our adversaries. These folks know exactly what they're doing and what they believe in. They are not operating on "false consciousness" or whatever other Marxist bullshit we've swallowed to explain every stupid thing they do. They are operating on the basis of whiteness/masculinity/heterosexuality/Christianity as PROPERTY. They believe -- and not without reason -- that they benefit from these identities and they will cleave to the property they already possess rather than fight for the class interests that all good leftists "know" they should fight for, and would if they just took the right critical theory classes...seriously, stop. Are some working class white folks reachable with that analysis? Yes and for them, we must try... Are most? Hell no...and people like this who rock blatant bigotry in the name of the Lord...I wouldn't want them in any coalition I was part of, even if getting them there was possible. They will always be the enemy.
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This may be the most important film, timing wise, ever released...Although I think Baldwin himself may have blanched at the G rated version of his phrase that graces this films title (hint: his famous line was not that he was not "your Negro" or "the Negro", and I will leave it to you to discern rather obviously what his line was), I can't help but imagine he would have been touched by this presentation of his wisdom. That people are rediscovering Baldwin is a sign that perhaps all is not lost...
Franklin Graham is so much of what's wrong with this country: not just the predictable evangelical "you're going to hell if you don't believe what I believe" part." That's banal and minor league...what really is fascinating about his comments here is the part where he says people "want to do the jobs their fathers and grandfathers" did, and thus, don't want to be computer programmers but want to work in factories or whatever...Think this through with me please:
1. Who is he t...alking about? Do you think BLACK people want, by and large to do the jobs their grandparents did? Hell, do you think those black grandparents want their grandchildren to do what they did? Hell no...so..
2. This is some white male shit right here...only white people (and especially the men folk) romanticized the labor of their ancestors. People of color sure as shit know better...they generally value progress and education and having their grandchildren do something totally different and more rewarding than what they did, not because they are ashamed of the work they had to do -- because there is nobility in all work -- but because progress is the name of the game...but white coal miners and lumberjacks and whatnot apparently think backbreaking labor is the highest form of humanity...which brings me to
3. How is this not a form of cultural/racial pathology? Notice, white folks are quick to say that people of color are pathological and don't value education and don't seek to better themselves, but here's this prototypical white southern Christian man basically saying that factory work or whatever should be an intergenerational goal of all "real Americans." What the hell? If black folks were this dismissive of moving up and bettering their station they would be pilloried for it...but whites having minimal aspirations is just fine...
Seriously:
4. I bet not hear one more person tell me how black and brown folks need to take "personal responsibility" for themselves, so long as the white version of that is aspiring to do what your great-granddaddy did, even as the economy and world has changed and left some of that work, for good or bad, in the dustbin of anachronism...
And yet, sadly:
5. I will indeed hear that shit before sundown today, I'm quite certain...because whiteness...
Tim Wise 分享了 Matt McGorry 的帖子
Thanks to Matt McGorry for his kind words about my book and also for coming to a dialogue I was part of at Cal State LA back in November (and for his solidarity generally, from his commitment to intersectional feminism to the battle at Standing Rock). Y'all have seen him on OITNB and HTGAWM, but his most important role is in the struggle for justice...
Posting this photo of me looking like a stock broker with "Under The Affluence: Shaming The Poor, Praising The Rich, and Sacrificing The Future Of America" by T...im Wise .
This is one of the most important important books that I've read this year.
To understand the current economic situation of the United States, including the unbelievable inequality of wealth and how Donald Trump got elected as president, it's imperative that we understand the role that racism has played in keeping poor and working class white and black people divided. And thus, keeping these white folks from realizing that they ultimately have more to be gained in coming together with poor and working class people of color to challenge systems that benefit the the extremely wealthy, (mostly white), elites.
The narrative that has been spun by the right, of people of color taking advantage of the meager social support systems that the U.S. has to offer, is central to the right's ability to keep much of its white voter base from embracing systems of social support that are much more prevalent in the vast majority of other developed nations.
I can't recommend this book highly enough. A great resource for understanding where we've come from and what we must do to move forward.
Aside from his self-satisfying claim to have "earned" his place as an "elite," this piece by Richard Cohen is pretty on the money. We have long been too quick to venerate the wisdom of "real America" or the so-called Heartland, rather than recognize it as no more moral, no more insightful and no more American than the wisdom of people on the coasts or in big cities...working on a farm or in a small town factory does not make you inferior, but it also doesn't make you superior... or more American than someone who codes or writes for the Washington Post, or teaches at a college or performs on Broadway, or whatever.
The nobility of the rural is nonsense we need not indulge. Three quarters of my family come from rural stock and I see nothing in their history that makes them one whit better than anyone else...City and country both have the capacity for good and evil. My own family is confirmation of this. I had rural family that owned other human beings and city family who were Quakers, unalterably opposed to enslavement, and unionists committed to the solidarity of labor. But I also had a great grandfather who was in the Klan -- in Detroit -- and who I suspect participated in the white mob siege on the home of Dr. Ossian Sweet there in 1925; and a small town 3rd great grandmother who was an abolitionist. The capacity for justice exists in all of us.
Although on balance I suspect cosmopolitan folks are less provincial and more open to difference and change, Hitler had plenty of fans in Berlin after all, and Trump himself is a product of NYC. There is no "real America" separate from the supposedly elite one. There is just America. And that is the problem: America has always been a myth unto itself, a promise without portfolio; a fortune cookie missing its fortune... a place where elites make the rules and convince at least half of us they have done no such thing and that we can trust THEM to protect us against the "real elites," who look down on them. But they are the enemy. They always have been. Not rural folks and not city folks. The idle rich, who make their money off the backs of the rest, dividing and conquering us all along the way. They are the ones who convinced my great grandfather that his manhood was best secured by turning on blacks and Jews and Catholics. They are the ones who convinced so much of my generally non-elite family that slaving was a noble and honorable enterprise. And they are the ones I will always dedicate my life to defeating, and am raising my children to see for who they are. The death-eaters who thrive off destruction and tyranny and oppression.
We defeat them in the end. But only if we put aside the idea of a better and worse America defined by geography. Bottom line, most people are born and die within 100 miles of that place. We can't help where we're from. But we can decide where we're going, if not physically, at least philosophically and morally. Choose wisely (no pun intended).
While I generally trend to non-violence, and I believe there are a number of non-violent methods of civil disobedience and political action that are best both morally and strategically, I must say, part of me instinctively prefers this French way of dealing with Nazis...the idea of being loving and kind to people who do not even recognize the right of certain groups to exist strikes me as horribly naive...That is not to say that all racists are the same or even that even all ...white nationalists are. Not understanding the differences between genocidal sociopaths and scared losers, or confused young people or folks with serious pain (but who I would argue are misdiagnosing its cause), is a major flaw for those of us on the left sometimes...but THESE kind of folks, who say this kind of shit? Nah...they pretty well deserve whatever beatdown they receive...more of this please.
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Although I hate the title Alternet gave the piece -- I did not intend to, in effect, credit the formal white nationalist movement for Trump's victory, and I can't stand the pic they chose for it, which has nothing to do with the WN movement per se -- here is my latest, as it appeared on Alternet this morning. I'll post the official version with original title (which also appeared on Raw Story yesterday) on my own site in the next few days...
