You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘racism’ tag.
Read Wonkette’s take on this laughably predictable piece of racism at the Republican National Convention.
Here is an article written for the Village Voice in 1979. It was written by Lester Bangs, at the time an important music journalist. Entitled “The White Noise Supremacists”, it is about the racism Lester has been encountering in the Punk and New Wave scenes.
Truly worth checking out!
I guess some ICE employees are itching to kick more brown people out of their United States. I’m supposing they got involved with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the hope of making life worse for people of darker hue, and then stuff like budgets and politics and human rights got in the way.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE “BROWN TIDE” and the DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER??
The natural answer is to sue. Certain enterprising government employees at ICE established a natural link to the nativist organization, NumbersUSA. NumbersUSA, with extensive ties to racists of all types, is a big supporter of all the toughest anti-immigrant legislation, and has agreed to fund this lawsuit.
MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN HELL.
John Derbyshire, recently fired from the National Review, a popular conservative magazine, for being too racist (yeah, I guess it is possible), is now finally free to say what he really thinks.
And this loudly-self-proclaimed Conservative has a thing or two to say. On a white supremacist blog he now writes for.
Conservatism. . .is a white people’s movement, a scattering of outliers notwithstanding.
Always has been, always will be. I have attended at least a hundred conservative gatherings, conferences, cruises, and jamborees: let me tell you, there ain’t too many raisins in that bun. I was in and out of the National Review offices for twelve years, and the only black person I saw there, other than when Herman Cain came calling, was Alex, the guy who runs the mail room.
Nail on the head. But why is this?
[C]onservative ideals like self-sufficiency and minimal dependence on government have no appeal to underperforming minorities—groups who, in the statistical generality, are short of the attributes that make for group success in a modern commercial nation.
Oh, I see.
He deliberates what name to give to himself and other “true” non-establishment conservatives.
I actually think “White Supremacist” is not bad semantically. White supremacy, in the sense of a society in which key decisions are made by white Europeans, is one of the better arrangements History has come up with. There have of course been some blots on the record, but I don’t see how it can be denied that net-net, white Europeans have made a better job of running fair and stable societies than has any other group.
Haha, history just “came up with” colonization, imperialism, and genocide! How about that! And whites just happened to benefit from it. What a beneficial coincidence for John Derbyshire.
Normally, I wouldn’t want to participate in making such people’s voices louder than they already are. I choose to highlight occasional instances, like this one, to remind complacent people that overt RACISM STILL EXISTS. And in very prominent places.
Not to mention all the less in-your-face kinds. But that’s what I usually talk about on this blog anyway.
Those following the Trayvon Martin murder case, in which an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by a neighborhood vigilante who has not been charged with any crime, have probably observed that the case seems to draw white racism out into the open.
For example, someone in Michigan altered a lighted traffic sign to say “Trayvon a n—–“.
Martin’s dead body was subjected to drug tests, whereas the murderer, George Zimmerman, was not subjected to similar tests.
Neo-Nazis, paradoxically worried about the safety of whites in Sanford, Florida, have organized armed white supremacists to patrol the streets in search of, appartently, blacks angry over this injustice. Fox News originally reported that they are a “civil rights group”.
On Fox News, Geraldo Rivera suggested that Martin is partially to blame for his own death for being black and wearing a hoodie in public.
On a wider scale, a poll found that people who identify as Republican and/or white are more likely to think this injustice is receiving too much publicity.
As the parents of young black men are forced to have “the talk” about the realities of racial prejudice in America, one white Republican, a very angry one at that, is seeking to get out a different message to young men, one just for whites and Asians: stay away from black people, except rich ones, whom you will need to prove you aren’t racist.
No, I am not exaggerating John Derbyshire’s stance. In fact, his published words are so racist that even the conservative publication National Review fired him over this article.
His article includes such pieces of wisdom as “Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally,” “Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians,” and “The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites.”
He also informs racists on tactics to superficially paste over their racism: “You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with IWSBs [intelligent and well-socialized blacks]. In addition to the ordinary pleasures of friendship, you will gain an amulet against potentially career-destroying accusations of prejudice.”
I hear constantly from whites about how racism isn’t a big deal, isn’t really a factor any more, is just an excuse used by people of color not to achieve, etc. RACISM IS A BIG DEAL. In Martin’s case, RACISM KILLS.
How do you respond to this? A white man dresses “black” and wears blackface to ask BYU students what they know about Black History Month and black people in general. Surprise, it turns out they don’t know much about black history, but they are very conversant in black stereotypes.
Did you know the NAACP is going to petition the UN about the USA restricting the right to vote for voters of color? Year check: 2011.
Fourteen states have passed a total of 25 measures that will unfairly restrict the right to vote, among black and Hispanic voters in particular.
In addition, the lawmakers of Texas would like to demonstrate their priorities, once again, to the world at large:
In Texas, a law has been passed that prevents students from voting on the basis of their college ID cards, while allowing anyone to cast their ballot if they can show a permit to carry a concealed handgun.
Lewis R. Gordon speaks the TRUTH! Read his amazing article about Affirmative Action in Truthout and revel in his genius.
Some of the wisdom contained therein:
The rewards lavished on many whites in the modern world have not been based on merit. What many people of color discovered upon entering those previously closed corridors was not white superiority but, for the most part, white mediocrity.
Uh oh!
Gordon also writes about a black man, James Weldon Johnson, who passed the bar exam in 1897 with no college background. Whites at the American Bar Association took action:
First, there was the bachelor’s of law. Since many blacks couldn’t afford to go to college, that reduced the pool by a significant number. But since there was a growing black middle class, even with American apartheid, more began to meet that criterion. So, the American Bar Association then required post-graduate study. To sit for the exam, a candidate must now have completed law school, which is, for the most part, three years of study after completing an undergraduate degree. In effect, seven or more years of investment in higher education became the criterion to sit before the bar. The stratagem was effective: the number of blacks qualified to take the bar examination plummeted.
AAAAAAAA! The Truth… hurts. And therefore should be covered up with myths of reverse racism. Ah, isn’t that better?
Back in October and November of last year, I did a lot of talking about some business in St. Bernard Parish, a Parish near New Orleans. You can find my previous update and links to all my writing on this topic here.
In a nutshell, St. Bernard is 81.6% white, and the housing is mostly single-family homes. Some developers are trying to build apartments that will be more affordable to low-income individuals, a group in that area in which blacks are overrepresented. Well, white city leaders have a PROBLEM!!! with this, and have gone to great lengths to prevent the building of this affordable housing, including lengths of dubious legality, which can be found at my link above.
So construction on the apartments finally started, but then:
A roiling battle over four mixed-income apartment buildings in St. Bernard Parish reached a boil Friday, with Parish President Craig Taffaro ordering a halt to construction after the developer’s attorneys forced the case out of a state judge’s hands and back into federal court.
Within hours, however, U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan called foul, ordering parish officials to “purge themselves of contempt” by today at 5 p.m. or begin paying $25,000 per day in fines, then $50,000 per day after Tuesday.
For some reason, Taffaro had ordered this halt “three days after the Parish Council repealed two ordinances that restrict mult-family and rental properties.”
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development fair housing enforcement officials have said they would block federal money coming into the parish — and possibly to Louisiana as a whole — if the parish did not rescind the ordinances. HUD officials said the laws discriminate against African-Americans who are disproportionately in need of such housing in the New Orleans area.”
People, what the hell is going on here?
“I’m not calling Trump a racist. But he ought to quit quacking before people start believing he’s a duck.,” [Goldie Taylor] wrote.
Compare what you see in this video (stupid WordPress won’t let me embed), to this CNN article, which fawns all over unapologetic white nationalists:
James Edwards, host of the “Political Cesspool” radio show, …says white Americans have become the “dispossessed majority” and that coming demographic changes may turn the United States into a “Third-World flop-house.”
…”Whatever mistakes might have been made in our pasts, they have not only been corrected, but they’ve been overcompensated for,” he says.
Now whites are victims of pervasive racism, Edwards says.
“They’re the victims of it every day. Anything a white conservative does that a liberal doesn’t like is called racism.”
POSTRACIAL!!!
So many scary stories, so little time to blog! Here’s the most frightening things I’ve read in the news lately:
Harvard’s “Conquistabros and Navajos” Frat Party
First Annual Salon Baity Awards for Excellence in the Field of Race-Baiting
The Most Racist Campaign in Decades, and What It Demands of Us
School Board Vice President Who Wants All Gay Youth to Die Resigns
Prison Economics Help Drive Arizona Immigration Law
Documents Released by WikiLeaks Confirm Massive US Human Rights Violations
Florida Republican state legislator William Snyder has proposed a great new immigration law for his state, modeled on that one in Arizona. But this one — which GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott supports, of course — has a special twist: White people are exempt!
Those Republican problem-solvers, they can always be counted on to do what’s best for (white) America!
Oh yes he did. Though he did add: “depend[ing] on your definition of diversity.”
He’s not the racist. PEOPLE OF COLOR ARE THE RACISTS. Against… themselves. That’s his argument. To wit:
“And I would say if you would spend any time talking to any person from what the establishment calls the ‘minority identification,’ the difficulties, the harassment, the intolerance, the abuse that they suffer comes from within their own community — if for example you’re a black person coming to our rally — your own relatives, your own family.”
…”"The first thing you ought to do is marvel that anybody of color dares to have the courage to show up in the company of this grassroots movement.”
Truer words have never been spoken, Dick.
Perhaps you are familiar with the visceral fear and hatred that the mere mention of Ebonics evokes among certain, more light-colored segments of the population.
Perhaps a little linguistics-speak will dampen their fear and fancy academic-y jargon will dull their hatred. Well, probably not, because learnin is communist, but I can dream.
You won’t regret reading this awesome piece by Greg Bloom.
Included is this brilliant idea:
A proposal for dismantling racism: Let’s eat together
We affirmed the radical notion of sitting down and eating together as a starting point for building relationships, gaining historical perspective, sharing culture, learning from each other, offering practical tips for healthy cooking/eating, supplying food for those is need, discussing future action, recognizing who is missing from the table, and action to bring them into the circle next time. Many of the key ingredients to dismantling racism.
Building on the example of the People’s Kitchen Collective in Oakland we see endless potential in this model. Here are some ideas:
* Work to raise $$ so the meal can be free to all or on a sliding scale
* This example was a meal for 200 people
* Invite 20 people to come help prepare the meal
* Invite 4 people to teach one dish each
* Set up 4 stations and have each cook discuss the role this dish plays in their culture, where the ingredients come from (work to include the growers whenever possible), and how food can be used for organizing in their community
* Have the 20 cooks report back what they learned to the larger group
* Collectively say grace/thanks for the food!
* Offer discussion questions for each table
* Send each guest home with the recipes and whatever ingredients you can provide (especially cultural spices or things harder to find)
* Discuss who is missing from the table and what collectively can be done to include them next time
* Set a date for next meal!
Certain second-wavers would have it that I don’t use the word “feminist” too much because I am weak, or afraid to use it, or have given in to some sort of societal pressure not to stand up for women’s issues.
Wouldn’t you know that my fraught relationship with that word is the result of self-education, listening to the voices of marginalized women, and a large amount of introspection? You see, I was able to use my own brain power to autonomously decide “feminist” is problematic, just like any normal human being!
To wit, “feminism” has become so closely allied with, and claimed by, women of privilege that to claim it would be a vote of support for privileged (mostly Western, white, middle-upper class, heterosexual) women and against the repeatedly expressed concerns of the rest of us: trans women, queer women, poor and low-income women, women of color, non-Western women, differently-abled women.
I haven’t just seen this on the blogosphere, in the various wars where WOC critique white feminists’ passive racism, and a bunch of white self-described feminists leap into the breach to try and silence the WOC voices and validate the white ones. I have seen this in real non-computer-mediated life. I have literally observed white feminists deliberately push women of color back to the margins just as the WOC are trying to push to the center. I have seen queer women’s specific needs regarding sexuality, relationship formation, and child-care sidelined as less important. And etcetera.
I have seen white feminists get angry at the suggestion that power within this supposedly all-inclusive women’s movement be shared. Race is a separate issue, a distraction from the sisterhood, they say. So is disability. So is recognizing the very different life experiences of women from different social classes.
It is almost too painful to even discuss what cisgendered feminists say about trans women. Let’s just say that the majority of cisgendered feminists aren’t at all convinced that trans women’s issues are worth a modicum of their time.
I can’t use the word feminism anymore without thinking about all of this. The liberation of privileged white women has little to do with my liberation. Until feminists realize that “[their] liberation is bound up with mine” I don’t have much motivation to join their exclusive movement.
Please read this article at the Guardian to get the perspective of a woman of color on this matter.
The Southern Poverty Law Center calls him “The Puppeteer”. Michigan doctor John Tanton is behind more of America’s anti-immigration organizations than you would think. It is really creeping me out how the animus of one person could spawn such a powerful hate movement. The more I read and see of the current anti-immigrant movement, the clearer it becomes that it is simply where old-school racists have come to shelter in a society that is hostile (well, more than previously at least) to open statements of racial animosity. Their race-based fears are given the cover of a supposedly race-neutral patriotic intent, and a professed concern for the “law” hides a concern for racial purity and cultural hegemony.
Then you have John Tanton. According to the SPLC, he founded, funded, or provided leadership to a who’s who list of nationalistic hate groups: American Immigration Control Foundation, American Patrol/Voice of Citizens Together, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, Californians for Population Stabilization, Center for Immigration Studies, Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA, Population-Environment Balance, Pro English, ProjectUSA, The Social Contract Press, U.S. English, U.S. Inc.
Along with a small handful of wealthy donors and sympathetic politicians (Tom Tancredo!), he has crafted a movement which if not massive in membership is at least massive in influence.
Read this article about Mr. Tanton to learn more than you ever wanted to know about the inner workings of the anti-immigration movement in America.
Jan Brewer, AWESOME governor of Arizona, recently explained on TV some little-known and untrue reasons to hate and fear immigrants:
1. They’ve been beheading people in Arizona.
2. A whopping 87% of illegal border crossers have prior criminal records.
3. The majority of ALL undocumented workers who come to America work as drug couriers for Mexican drug cartels.
She forgot to mention that 96% of “illegal border crossers” are also terrorists associated with Al-Qaeda forming sleeper-cells of Latino crypto-Muslims ready to strike our heartland at any moment, but I’ll forgive her that omission because she is very busy saving real Americans from the brown menace in so many other ways.
The Arizona Guardian did some fact-checking and wasn’t able to verify any of these claims, and since they are part of the liberal media, that only makes me all the more certain that what Brewer says is true.
Arizona Elementary School (Almost) Whitened The Faces Of Its Own Students On A Mural Because Some Racists Yelled At It
From the Huffington Post:
An Arizona elementary school mural featuring the faces of kids who attend the school has been the subject of constant daytime drive-by racist screaming…
From AZ Central:
A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school.
The project’s leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children’s ethnicity. But the school’s principal says the request was only to fix shading and had nothing to do with political pressure.
From Mother Jones:
While creating the mural, “We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars,” said artist R.E. Wall of the Prescott Downtown Mural Project. “We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics).”
I assume you can fill in those blanks.
Prescott Councilmember Steve Blair said on the radio:
“I am not a racist individual, but I will tell you that depicting a black guy in the middle of that mural, based upon who’s President of the United States today, and based upon the history of this community when I grew up, we had four black families, who I have been very good friends with for years, to depict the biggest picture on that building as a black person, I would have to ask the question, ‘Why?’” (Blair was mistakenly identifying the Hispanic boy on the mural as black.)
Back at Mother Jones:
The school district head and the principal, confronted with a crowd of protesters, made a dramatic about-face and announced by bullhorn that the mural would remain as is. “Miller Valley made made a mistake,” said principal Jeff Lane. “When we asked R. [the artist] to lighten the mural, we made a mistake.”
*My note: “hispanic” is not a race. A person can be hispanic and white, hispanic and brown, hispanic and black. Just saying.
h/t Shenanigans.
My Daughter, Her Hair, and the Seattle School District
Sez Charles Mudede at the Slog:
…just last week, my daughter—who is 8 and happens to be the only brown person in her Accelerated Progress Program class at Thurgood Marshall Elementary—was ordered out of the classroom because her teacher did not like the smell of her hair. The teacher complained that my racially different daughter’s hair (or something—a product—in the hair) was making her sick, and then the teacher made her leave the classroom. My daughter was aware of the racial nature of this expulsion not only because she was made to sit in a classroom that had more black students in it (the implication being that this is where she really belongs, in the lower class with the other black students), but because her teacher, she informed me, owns a dog. Meaning, a dog’s hair gives the teacher less problems than my daughter’s human but curly hair. Most white people do not have to deal with shit like this. Shit that if not checked and confronted will have permanent consequences for the child.
The lawyer hired by the Seattle school district, if he knows anything, knows that THERE’S NO RACISM HERE!
Any allegations of racial insensitivity or negligence are “wholly untrue,” [Kevin] O’Neill says, “because, well, because the district would not tolerate employment of a teacher that has racial animosity towards a student.”
…However, O’Neill also says he doesn’t know what exactly happened or “the reasons that this child was asked to leave.” Until the investigation is complete, he says, it’s unclear what was offensive about the hair product that reportedly made the teacher sick, why the district hadn’t done anything for three days, whether an incident like this had ever occurred before, whether anyone had spoken to the teacher about the incident, whether school district rules prohibit any cosmetics, or what current or future steps are required for the investigation.
Mudede concludes with:
Feeling the seriousness of this situation, we decided not to send our daughter to school until the teacher had medical proof that our daughter’s hair or something in her hair was to blame for the nausea. (The last thing you want to happen to your daughter is for a teacher to faint or vomit at the mere sight of her.)
Days passed and the school took no action. This unresponsiveness left us with no other choice than to turn to a lawyer.
h/t Scorn
POST-RACIAL!!!
Recent Comments