While there has been a bit more of an intelligent conversation about sexism and misogyny, the narrative is focused--as often happens with racism--on some public whipping boy outlier (in this case the "Men's Rights Movement" and the "Pickup Artist" community) instead of looking at how Elliot Rodger learned the lessons of violent, hyper-aggressive masculinity from a range of sources in American culture.
American culture made Elliot Rodger. But, to admit such a thing is to force us to talk about gender as a system of power, rape culture, and the myriad ways that Elliot Rodger is an extreme version, the exaggerated case with the volume turned up to the max, lacking the restraints of "normal" impulse control, whose murder rampage was a channeling of the Id of American sexism, racism, gun culture, and misogyny.
In many ways, Elliot Rodger is also a reflection and product of the "pornographic imagination", which is "thinking of women as being defined only through their sexuality and that sexuality to be at the service of men’s desires".
This has been a long week. My analysis of Elliot Rodger's relationship to whiteness and white masculinity has gotten much attention from both supporters and detractors across the ideological spectrum. To my eyes, that is a good thing--if white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, "mainstream conservatives" and some liberals are upset that you stated an obvious truth then you did good.
I also spoke with a racial chauvinist on his radio show. The experience was tedious. It was also good practice. By comparison, I had a great conversation with graphic novelist Box Brown. Our chat will be one of the last podcasts for Season 2 of the series.
This week was one of the busiest traffic wise since WARN began with several posts going viral on Facebook (20k plus hits and thousands of total comments online). I would like to thank those of you who commented, shared, or otherwise helped to circulate my work on the Elliot Rodger's mass murder.
Next week, I have one more post to share--actually the first podcast for season 2.5--on Elliot Rodger in the form of an interview about the topic of white masculinity, violence, and aggrieved entitlement. June will also be our fundraising month here on WARN. I do not advertise on the site, which would have brought some decent money this week given the spike in traffic, but instead do a twice a year fundraiser. If you can, and are able, please do throw a few pennies in the collection bowl.
It is time to cleanse our palate from the sick taste created by the Elliot Rodger saga. Ginger does this in Japanese cuisine. Likewise, a nice sparkling water or Pellegrino soda is a natural pairing with Italian food. For me, when I need to cleanse my mental palate I go to the casino, feed the birds and squirrels, take a long walk on the lake, or watch a mindless movie (or three) at the cinema.
What is your preferred way of hitting the mental "reset" button?
The media's fixation and fascination with the Elliot Rodger murder has sucked up time and energy that could have been spent elsewhere. What matters of significant and long-term public concern have been overlooked and/or under discussed this week? Any news items of finds that you would like to share?
The V.A. scandal? The combat in Ukraine? The admission by the Pentagon that the war in Afghanistan was lost years ago?
As is our habit on Fridays do treat this as a semi-open thread.
The "conversation" on the Context of White Supremacy ran the gamut from concepts of white supremacy, to the role of white anti-racists in the long Civil Rights Movement into the present, and the role of black conservatives in maintaining white supremacy.
As you will hear--in this long 2 hour conversation--at a certain point (about minute 56) it is abundantly clear that I am not going to play along with the host "Gus T. Renegade's" clumsy angle.
I have tried to annotate the program so that you can search through it at your leisure.
The sound quality is a little uneven on the host's end, but for the most part, it can be understood.
[There is some priceless comedy gold here. Gus T. Renegade's obsession with Tim Wise approaches being a type of priapism. Gus T. Renegadealso has a young child (ostensibly, who knows?) that reads a script and asks questions to the guests in a scene right out of the movie "I'm Gonna Get You Sucka". Of course, I don't fall for the hustle. The commercials at the end of the show are priceless comedy gold.]
The Context of White Supremacy online radio show is a helpful reminder of how racial chauvinism can also hurt black and brown people, where because of the traumas they have suffered in a white supremacist society, some of them may lose the capacity for nuanced thought, mirroring the racial ugliness that has been afflicted upon them in an obsessive and neurotic manner.
The interview/conversation is a large file which had to be divided up into two parts.
Your thoughts?
Part 1
11:00 Chauncey DeVega introduced
15:50 Defining White Supremacy
23:50 Understanding implicit bias and the need for a more nuanced understanding of Whiteness and White Supremacy
31:20 People as individuals within and in relationship to systems of power
33:45 The origins of WARN and its title
36:45 Is Chauncey Devega afraid of white people?
40:24 Black conservatives and racism. Are they victims of White Supremacy?
52:50 Gus T. Renegade's obsession with Tim Wise begins
56:00 The danger of race essentialism
56:51 Is Clarence Thomas "white"? Is Clarence Thomas a victim?
63:00 Gus T. Renegade has more empathy and respect for Clarence Thomas than Jane Elliot and other white anti-racist activists
69:00 Parsing the language of "good negro" and "bad negro"
00:35 What does it mean when Chauncey DeVega says that Tim Wise is his friend
02:20 Tim Wise is apparently "rich" from being a white anti-racist
07:27 White social activists should work for free and people of color paid
09:50 Tim Wise is "impatient" and "mean" to a young child named "Justice" who calls into the Context of White Supremacy online radio show
16:55 At which point I ask, why is Gus T. Renegade so obsessed with Tim Wise?
21:40 "Justice" calls in to the show. I refuse to play along with Gus T. Renegade's shtick.
23:46 Some questions from the listeners to the C.O.W.S. show
48:50 Unintentionally funny commercials from "Racismdaily.com" and "Counterracism.com"
53:07 Gus T. Renegade announces that this episode of the C.O.W.S. show will not be in the archive
I am a fan of Alex Jones and Infowars. I find his work and site very entertaining. It is always nice to get the rub from folks whose work you find "interesting". It would be great fun to go on his show and have a good to and fro.
The 24/7 news cycle is not interested in finding the truth about a given matter, and then subsequently offering up useful information that can in turn be used to create an educated and informed electorate.
Instead, the mainstream corporate news media is driven by superficial discussions of topics of public concern that can drive ratings.
Neither white conservatives nor white liberals want to talk seriously about white privilege and Whiteness as it relates to Elliot Rodger: it would seem that both sides are largely in agreement about the necessity of protecting the nobility and innocence of Whiteness and White Masculinity.
I am fascinated by how race has not been more central to the mainstream media's discussion of Elliot Rodger's murder rampage. By comparison, the conversation about Elliot Rodger and gender is much more sharp and enlightened.
However, I have not seen (with a few exceptions)--and do please share and educate me if I am wrong (I am not able to watch or listen to every broadcast)--a focused discussion of how Elliot Rodger, a white Asian, internalized white racism and White Supremacy against people of color, and then acted upon it through misogynist violence.
Nor have I witnessed a conversation in the mainstream media about Elliot Rodger, the question of "mixed race" identity--I would suggest that such constructs are extremely problematic and facile in the American racial order, yet an increasing number of people are embracing them as a way of distancing themselves from people of color--and the specificmental health challenges around self-esteem and anxiety which some self-identified "bi-racial" and "mixed race" people may face because of their "racial" identities.
I hope that your weekend was restful. As you can see here on WARN, Alternet, and the Daily Kos, I had a busy time--but still got my grub on and went to see X-Men again--with my essay on Elliot Rodger and "aggrieved white male entitlement syndrome" going viral, and trying to get a read on how folks were responding to the argument.
My conclusion? Whiteness and the white racial frame have blinded so many folks. I do not know if their capacity for reason and critical thinking can be salvaged.
[And making the random observation, I was telling a friend how there is no correlation between the number of hits an essay receives and the donations that are given in support of WARN. Fascinating. Very fascinating.]
The show has some history and has featured guests such as Dick Gregory, Tim Wise, Charles Mills, Noel Ignatiev, as well as many other top shelf scholars and activists. It is nice to be included among such good folks. The Context of White Supremacy is also a long-form radio show--2 hours--so there will be ample time to chat and also take some calls. We will be chatting about Elliot Rodger, race in the Age of Obama, my thoughts on Whiteness and White Supremacy, as well as whatever other topics happen to come up.
Hopefully, I will get to dialogue with some of the good folks who frequent WARN as well.
Based on the suggestions of the kind supporters of WARN, I have finally decided to launch a Tumblr site (it has been up for a few days as I tinkered around with the design; now we need to get some followers). It is called "The Negro From Planet X" and can be found at the following url:
I started cross-posting material on Facebook a few months back and it definitely has brought some new folks to WARN. I will be using Tumblr as a way of sharing and linking to material posted here, as well as articles, photos, and other content that fits within my "ghetto nerd" black pragmatism oeuvre. Readers can also submit material to "The Negro From Planet X"--once I figure out how to get the functionality up and running (the tab is not appearing in the navigation bar and the feature is enabled. Any suggestions?).
I always appreciate the support and love from the readers and fans of WARN. I think that the Tumblr site will be lots of fun.
To be forced to include white mass murderers, madmen, and
Right-wing domestic terrorists as part of the tribe is very uncomfortable and
disconcerting.
This is understandable: what reasonable person would not want to excommunicate them from
their community and affinity group?
Only white folks have
such a luxury in the United States: a black rapist, thief, or murderer is de facto a representative
of “the black race” with its “bad culture” and “pathologies”. There is no
parallel for whites. The white murderer, thief, rapist, or mass shooter is an
outlier, “mentally ill”, or some type of deviant whose behavior reveals nothing
about white people en masse.
The boundaries of Whiteness and
white privilege are heavily policed: bad people are “them”; good people are
“us”.
Part of the appeal of “race” as a heuristic device and decision-rule is how it offers simple answers
to complex social questions.
As I often ask, "what shall we do with the white people?"
When an "Arab" or "Muslim" American kills people in mass they are a "terrorist". When a black person shoots someone they are "thugs". When a white man commits a mass shooting he is "mentally ill" or "sick".
Whiteness and white privilege are the luxury to be an individual, one whose behavior reflects nothing about white people as a group.
There will be not be a national discussion of a culture of "white pathology" or how white Americans may have a "cultural problem" with their young men and gun violence. The news media will not devote extensive time to the "social problem" of white male violence and mass shootings.
Ta-Nehisi Coates will be on Melissa Harris-Perry's TV program this weekend. I am curious to see how he parses a long essay into a set of television talking-points. Melissa Harris-Perry is a great interviewer--and an expert on the material covered by "The Case for Reparations"--so the conversation should be very educational for the viewers of the show.
As I wrote here, I am fascinated by the comments that The Case for Reparations has generated over at the Atlantic and the other much less moderated sites across the Internet (speaking of which, one of the moderators of Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog was kind enough to chime in here).
If one needs any more confirmation that white supremacy remains a real social force in American life simply read the comments in response to Coates' The Case for Reparations.
The Internet is one part of what is termed "the backstage" of modern American racism. It is a space for people to act out publicly what their (semi)private thoughts actually are. Now, take the next step. Those bigots are your neighbors, friends, colleagues, and perhaps even your family members. Meditate on that fact.
For white folks, the above is a thought experiment. For people of color, it is a matter of life and death.
Most of the comments in response to Coates' new essay are standard, white racist, "color blind" talking-points. Consequently, they are uninteresting, merely a reveal of the White Right's intellectual bankruptcy in post civil rights America.
However, there is one emerging meme in the comments against Coates' essay that merits some attention. Contrary to what some racists would suggest--be they active or passive, intentional or accidental, or just drunk on white privilege and the white racial frame--slavery reparations (or for the myriad of other state sponsored crimes against black people in America) are not a "lottery".
I do not want to ruin X-Men: Days of Future Past for those of you who have not yet seen the film. Therefore, I would like to share some general thoughts--and a few relatively harmless specifics--about the movie.
I have just returned from a screening of X-Men: Days of Future Past. It is a fun movie that balances fan service with narrative smarts. When I was in middle school, my friends and I talked about how the X-Men comic's storyline "Days of Future Past" would be the greatest and most awesome thing to ever be put on screen.
I also remember, not too long ago, predicting that a black man would never, in my lifetime, be President of the United States--unless he was a self-hating black conservative in the mold of Clarence Thomas.
Perhaps I am getting old, the world is just turned upside down, or in the spirit of the new X-Men movie multiple timelines have somehow intersected?
Whatever the explanation, I just watched X-Men: Days of Future Past, around the corner from Barack Obama's Chicago home, in a small, sub-par movie theater on a tiny screen seated in front of a coughing, hacking, human behemoth who should have stayed home instead of infecting all of us with the plague, and it was still a great experience.
Who knows, maybe post racial, Age of Obama America, is really the "Days of Future Past" made real...a world that hopefully is not overrun with the Legacy virus.
X-Men: Days of Future Past is a movie that breaks the 4th wall in its efforts to reconcile the continuity problems that exist between the more recent X-Men: First Class and the earlier X-Men movies. X-Men: Days of Future Past's director is winking at us. All that Bryan Singer asks for is a whee bit of faith: if the audience returns the gesture, and subsequently jettisons their cynicism, X-Men: Days of Future Past works on almost all levels.
X-Men: Days of Future Past is a master example of the Deus ex machina moment done properly.
Some questions and quick thoughts on X-Men: Days of Future Past.
A first and obvious observation. Coates is a joy to read. He reminds me of a boxer at the height of his skill and powers...one who is only getting better at his craft. Coates will inevitably be moving on to other things sooner rather than later. We should enjoy watching him work in this public way for as long as possible.
And previewing some of my later thoughts, I worry that The Case for Reparations" will be one of the many things that "smart" and "informed" people claim to have read, but in reality they only skimmed it or gleamed some second hand knowledge--badly processed--from some other person.
Of course, that is not Coates' fault; it is the price of well-earned popularity and the anchor that comes with being a "must read". However, when casual intellectual tourists and drive-by historians discover information that has long been known and understood by inside experts with proper training, a tedious tug of war between the camps can often ensue. I just hope that Coates' very smart and synthetic (in a good way) examination of the lived history that is reparations for Black Americans is a beginning and not an end for how his readers grapple with the issue.
What are your thoughts on Coates' new essay?
Can you recall a recent time when an African-American writer and essayist received this much attention?
Finally, how do we locate Coates within a larger trajectory of American writing on race, class, and the other issues he attempts to grapple with at The Atlantic?
The claim that America is going to become a "majority-minority" nation in the next few decades is a truism that does political work. For Democrats and the left, they see this as an opportunity to expand their voting base by embracing a multicultural America. For Republicans and conservatives, the "browning of America" is a type of threat which they can use to mobilize racially resentful white voters.
However, both perspectives are grounded in a short-term understanding of how race has historically worked in the United States.
A long-term view demonstrates how race is a dynamic process, one that evolves and changes, in response to the political needs and questions of a given moment. As such, who is considered "white" for example, is a reflection of a given arrangement of social and political power: "Whiteness" and who is considered "white" are not fixed or immutable categories.
Truisms and common sense understandings of race do not make them empirically true. New research from the Pew Research Center on the changing racial identities of Hispanic-Americans would appear to upset the "majority-minority" narrative which has come to dominate the media (and the public's) understanding of the color line in the Age of Obama.
In yesterday's post on "trigger warnings", I alluded to how some students are encouraged to retreat to intellectual bunkers, safe spaces, and hugs and kisses rooms in order to "process" difficult encounters that may occur in a college or university learning environment.
I would like to briefly follow up on that post.
There, I did not describe or name the bogeyman that sent students into such a distressed emotional state.
Several years ago, I watched students become unhinged and hysterical in response to Right-wing professional bomb thrower David Horowitz. They cried. They shambled about in a confused state. Some of them were taken to special areas for healing and hugs.
There are religious types who handle snakes, speak in tongues, or have fits of religious ecstasy. As I witnessed it, in the cult of left-leaning political correctness, personal outrage and tear filled histrionics were a sign of being one of "the elect" or "saved" when facing the likes of David Horowitz.
Like the proverbial old man on his lawn cursing the young kids that are tipping over the garbage cans and listening to "race records" while they drive their fancy new horseless carriages, I shook my head at their antics. I even went so far as to tell them that Horowitz has no power over them, save for the power they give to him. Learn his tricks and those of folks like him; expose their intellectual sleight of hand; deny the Horowitzs, Coulters, and Malkins of the world their frat boy and frat girl political antics; or be practical, cut off their money and source of livelihoods.
Sophomore means "learned fool". As sophomores, and other undergraduates too, they deftly recited all manner of rhetoric from their manifesto on "respect" and "safe spaces", as well as how they were "threatened" by "hate speech". I smiled. I too have done the same thing while a college student.
Is truth-telling not inherently a practice which is dependent on discomfort?
Some on the "left", as well as those others who count themselves among "progressives", are at risk of becoming the very parodies and caricatures that conservatives mock and imagine them to be.
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Should students about to read “The Great Gatsby” be forewarned about “a variety of scenes that reference gory, abusive and misogynistic violence,” as one Rutgers student proposed? Would any book that addresses racism — like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” or “Things Fall Apart” — have to be preceded by a note of caution? Do sexual images from Greek mythology need to come with a viewer-beware label?
Colleges across the country this spring have been wrestling with student requests for what are known as “trigger warnings,” explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans.
In a college and university educational environment where learning has become secondary to pleasing the customer as measured by inaccurate and disingenuous student evaluations, the increasingly ubiquitous trigger warning threatens to stifle learning in the interest of preserving the (emotional and often narcissistic) peace.
The Times continues:
Meredith Raimondo, Oberlin’s associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said the guide was meant to provide suggestions, not to dictate to professors. An associate professor of comparative American studies and a co-chairwoman of the task force, Ms. Raimondo said providing students with warnings would simply be “responsible pedagogical practice.”
“I quite object to the argument of ‘Kids today need to toughen up,’ ” she said. “That absolutely misses the reality that we’re dealing with. We have students coming to us with serious issues, and we need to deal with that respectfully and seriously.”
But Marc Blecher, a professor of politics and East Asian studies at Oberlin and a major critic of trigger warnings at Oberlin, said such a policy would have a chilling effect on faculty members, particularly those without the job security of tenure.
“If I were a junior faculty member looking at this while putting my syllabus together, I’d be terrified,” Mr. Blecher said. “Any student who felt triggered by something that happened in class could file a complaint with the various procedures and judicial boards, and create a very tortuous process for anyone.”
The classroom ought to be a space of mutual respect where students are taught to dialogue with one another and the instructor in the pursuit of empirical and philosophical Truth. We should also be mindful of the various experiences that all of us bring to a given learning space. On practical grounds this raises some questions and challenges. Do we teach to the weakest or the strongest in the room? Should instructors teach to the "median" student with the hope that the best students are not too bored and the weakest students not discouraged?
And how do those of us who teach "sensitive subjects" (this is a term I have become increasingly familiar with--and one that I think is pretty damn accurate--in the post civil rights era, neoliberal classroom where "diversity" and "multiculturalism" are dealt with as obligations and obligatory requirements and hurdles, akin to getting one's drivers license when a teenager, as opposed to rigorous and potentially transformative topics embedded within serious and established fields of study) perform that balancing act?
I, like many of you who work in higher education, have witnessed how the best intentions which led to "trigger warnings" (in the classroom and online) can do a disservice to students' (and the general public's) emotional and intellectual growth. Instead of dealing with challenging speech, I have seen students retreat to specially prepared "safe rooms". Challenging speakers and guests are not approached on their own terms; rather, they are judged to be dangerous and uncomfortable for the university community, the mere presence of the former is a threat to the "learning community".
This move to protect students from "discomfort" is part of a larger phenomenon.
Modern, Western, "First World" society, is typified by the many ways that the state shields its members from "unpleasantness" and "filth".
For example, death has been taken out of the home and is now handled by funeral homes and the mortician. We go to supermarkets to buy our meat so that the industrialized killing that produces it can be separated from the end result, i.e. our meal. The United States' military apparatus of the United States kills people everyday, and its own soldiers suffer, in order to secure resources under the lying banner of "democracy" and "freedom"--what is really wasteful consumerism in which capitalism and democracy are made the same thing--and the American people are shielded from both the process and the outcome of Imperial Violence. Thus, when blowback arrives, they look on like ignoramuses, complicit in their own suffering, mouths agape, asking "why do they hate us so?" "Why do they hate our way of life and our freedoms?" as the towers fall.
For those individuals who are willing to agree to basic principles of good governance and comportment, civil society should be based on mutual respect among its members. Trigger warnings, when taken to extremes, threaten to be devices of censorship which circumvent the difficult conversations and discomfort that are necessary for citizens to fight and advocate for the Good Society in a proper (communicative) democracy.
Schools are where citizens are socialized into a society's norms and values.
Subsequently, what type of students are being created when difficult conversations are prefaced by a "warning", and then said students can then find a way to remove themselves from that unpleasant interaction?
And are so-called liberals and progressives aware that they are giving conservatives, especially racist reactionary white conservatives, a loaded gun that will inevitably pointed at their foes with the defense that "talking about racism and white privilege makes me upset or uncomfortable and I don't want to be in this class!"
Or in the worst case scenario, what will liberals and progressives do when conservatives, being far better organized on the collegiate level than their peers, conspire to use "trigger warnings" as a way of bullying faculty who they have targeted for dismissal in a moment where too many administrators are cowards, mere cogs in the corporate university?
My goal was to offer an essay that would crystallize some complex concepts down into a deliverable form that would be accessible (and useful) to interested readers who may (or may not) have a deep familiarity with this literature and research. I would like to believe that I followed through on that premise.
A good editor can take something good and making it very good--as is what I hope happened here.
Conversely, a bad editor and can take something good and make it very bad. I have been fortunate in my few years to have had more of the first experience.
At some point, in the inevitable Egotrip style book where I compile (and expand on) some of my best and favorite work from WARN, 10 Things Everyone Needs to Know About White Supremacy will most definitely be included.
[I have been approached several times about doing a book project for WARN. Unfortunately, the creative visions did not match up. Kickstarter, or a small press, seems the way to go. The question becomes will readers pay for content which they can get for free? How to build on the existing content to do something new and valuable?]
I have a few questions. Which of the two versions of the essay do you prefer? If you were going to expand on any of the 10 points, what would you include? Do you have any suggestions for materials--books, articles, movies, films, etc.--that you have found helpful or essential in trying to understand white supremacy, racism, or white privilege?
10 Things Everyone Needs to Know About White Supremacy is included below. . . .
The use of the phrase “white supremacy” is ubiquitous in American political discourse. This is a result of many factors. Primarily, the election of Barack Obama and the United States’ changing racial demographics have created a reactionary backlash from white conservatives.
White supremacy is referenced in relation to specific news events as well. For example, the murder rampage by the neo-Nazi Frazier Glenn Miller, the recent weeks-long debate between pundits Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jonathan Chait about “black pathology”; birtherism; stand-your-ground laws; and the open embrace of the symbols and rhetoric of the old slave-holding Confederacy by the Republican Party have been framed and discussed in terms of white supremacy.
Conservatives and progressive often use the phrase “white supremacy” in divergent ways. Conservatives use the phrase in the service of a dishonest “colorblind” agenda, evoking extreme images of KKK members and Nazis as the exclusive and only examples of white racism in American life and politics. Conservatives use extreme caricatures of white supremacy in order to deflect and protect themselves from charges that the contemporary Republican Party is a white identity organization fueled by white racial resentment.
Liberals, progressives and anti-racists use the phrase “white supremacy” to describe the overt and subtle racist practices of movement conservatism in the post-Civil Rights era, and how American society is still structured around maintaining and protecting white privilege.
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the landmark Brown versus Board of Education decision that marked the end of legal school segregation while also being one of the first victories on the road to tearing down Jim and Jane Crow.
I am a product of the Brown versus Board of Education decision. I grew up in a racially integrated neighborhood and attended racially diverse public schools. Legal segregation may have been ended by Brown but informal segregation by others means continues(ed) in those spaces. As is common today, because of school tracking black and brown students were disproportionately put in a remedial and below average cohort. White students were/are grossly over-represented among honors and higher tracks.
As an elementary school student I accepted this as natural and a version of Darwin in action--until I was put in a remedial classroom by a lazy white student teacher for no other reason than because I was black, and she was rushed in doing the next year's tracking assignments.
In middle school, I fell ill with "noble negro" syndrome and thought myself exceptional for being in the "upper" track, one of a few black and brown students to have that "honor". High school brought me back down to Earth, grounded by a realization that race and class matter in such a way, and outcomes in life are not always based on merit, that there are some clubs and cliques which I will simply not be admitted to. I realized that the "AP" and "national honors" students were no smarter than me; they were simply better connected and had parents that harped and complained; I vowed to get my revenge later.
Brown versus Board of Education, and the end of Jim and Jane Crow, was a revolution in American social and political life.
Guillermo Del Toro’s movie Pacific Rim has nothing to fear from Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla film. Likewise, JJ Abrams’ movie Cloverfield is far from perfect, but it is more interesting and entertaining than Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla.
Unfortunately, American/British filmmakers have demonstrated once again that the intangibles of “Gojira” remain outside of their grasp.
The new Godzilla movie is a marginal improvement over Roland Emmerich’s horrible film of the same name. This is no great complement. Godzilla 1998 was cinematic refuse. Godzilla 2014 is tedious and uninteresting: it is boring. The new Godzilla is more like the friendly pet monster of the late 1970's children's cartoon than a force of nature, a legend, and the almighty King of the Monsters.
His weaknesses are many.
The new Godzilla is apparently prone to exhaustion, like a man once he expends his manly seed, after using his atomic breath.
Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla is also very obliging to the human beings in the film and seems to go out of his way to avoid causing undo harm to their cities, personhood, or other property.
Who knows? Maybe Godzilla is part of a long line of insurance adjusters or actuaries?
The citizens of San Francisco are thankful for Godzilla’s courtesy and kindness as they give him a standing ovation—and maybe even the keys to the city—at the end of the movie.
Gareth Edwards showed great heart and creativity in his 2010 independent film “Monsters”. To the (then) delight of Godzilla fans, the skill on display there made him the natural choice for the 2014 reboot of the Godzilla franchise.
The 15,000 dollars spent on Monsters is infinitesimal compared to the new Godzilla movie’s 160 million dollar budget. Unfortunately, those great resources were not able to improve a film that fails to provide either the social commentary of the 1954 classic or the fun “men in suits guilty pleasure” of the Japanese Toho sequels.
White racists like Donald Sterling are racial piñatas. They are a fun and easy target. When people like Donald Sterling are hit and burst, a moment of public racial catharsis takes place.
It is very easy for “good” people to chase the overt, cartoonish, white racist out of the public square on a rail. However, it is far more difficult to examine one’s own complicity with white privilege and white supremacy. The monster is easy to slay; the polite racist who looks like “us”, and behaves “politely”, is far more difficult to confront.
In all, exiling a white racist like Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy is a fun act.
It is harder to talk about substantive matters like structural racism.
American society is extremely segregated along lines of race and class. Unfortunately, both in the present and the past, there are people of color who have made a tactical choice to be complicit with the forces of white supremacy for personal gain. As Frederick Douglass so wisely observed, “power concedes nothing without a demand”. By extension, there are individuals who have have decided to surrender to it as a survival strategy and means of personal enrichment.
I am under the weather with a cold that is 1) the result of someone getting my toe nails or hair and putting a curse on me or 2) the sudden change in temperature here in Chicago which saw a dip from the mid to high 80's to the 50's today.
There is nothing worse, in my opinion, than a summer cold. Damn its power.
Earlier today, I was fortunate enough to chat with Professor Micheal Kimmel, author of the book 'Angry White Men", for the podcast series here on WARN. We talked about white masculinity and mass shootings, "angry white men", and if "masculinity", however defined, is in crisis. I also have the final two interviews for Season 2 of the podcast lined up--the topics to be discussed will include video games, comic books, and professional wrestling. Ghetto nerd goodness.
For the remainder of the week, I will be sharing short some thoughts on the "good nigger" "bad nigger" logic of Donald Sterling re: Magic Johnson, and also returning to our conversation on the movie Belle and the political economy of the Transatlantic slave trade. There are also two other essays that I have outlined, which depending on my mood and how the cold medicine is making me feel, I will soon finalize.
However, contained within the document are some disturbing admissions about how the United States Strategic Command would be hamstrung in deploying its forces against the undead, that the military expects to be overrun, and it will be forced to retreat to the few (two or three) secure bases in the continental United States. The United States Strategic Command also does not have 30 days of food and supplies that it could use to support operations for forces that are behind a barracked perimeter.
I am an unapologetic fan of Aaron McGruder's TV show The Boondocks. I have written about his genius and sharp insights about race and politics on several occasions. Along with David Chappelle, I include McGruder among the great philosophers of the politics of the color line in post civil rights era America.
Smart political and social satire/comedy involves making the viewer uncomfortable as a way of creating a space for some type of catharsis and intellectual awakening through laughter.
In that way, pain can be healing.
The best comics understand their role as the psychologist truth-teller who embraces parrhesia. There is a cost to telling the truth: the great comics stand naked before the world which is why they so often destroy themselves by self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, committing suicide, or dying early deaths because they have ravaged their bodies and minds in an act of self-sacrifice for the public.
Pain can also hurt.
The new season of The Boondocks has been very uneven in terms of the quality of the writing and how the show uses a contemporary social issue (the "new" poverty of the black middle class and the elderly) as a plot device to animate--pardon the pun--the narrative.
Aaron McGruder is no longer involved with The Boondocks: this is apparent as the show has embraced obvious sources of pain and conflict as thematic devices but has not offered, so far, any smart or subtle payoffs for the setup. In all, something is now just "off" with The Boondocks; its comedy is a crude, heavy, sledge hammer that is mining hurt and (black) pain, while denying the viewers any redemption through comedic insight or wisdom.
It is a serviceable, basic, and at times entertaining exploration of the "science fiction" genre that does not insult the average viewer, all the while leaving the more expert and inside audience member unfulfilled and likely annoyed--but still interested as the show encourages the latter to feel smart while yelling at the TV screen.
Thus, The Real History of Science Fiction is the very definition (and problem) of high brow popular culture.
I trust that I am not alone in this habit, but as I watched the first three episodes of The Real History of Science Fiction, I found myself counting the number of writers, actors, and expert commentators who are featured on the show and that are not white (The Real History of Science Fiction is marginally better in terms of including white women--but one of those writers is the obligatory Ursula K. Le Guin).
How many people of color are on The Real History of Science Fiction as of the third episode?
I am going to see the new movie, The Retrieval later today. I do so with some anxiety and trepidation as the movie tells the tale of a young black teenager who is used as bait by white slave hunters in order to capture free and runaway African-Americans during the Civil War.
I am less concerned about the historical veracity of such a tale than with the question of "why release this movie now?" And will The Retrieval be used as a weapon by those (racist) white Americans (and others) who scream "they did it to themselves!" when the crime against humanity that was centuries of white on black slavery and murder in the New World is made a topic of private or public conversation?
Film is a space where the collective subconscious negotiates its anxieties, hopes, dreams, and fears. Film is a projection, quite literally, of a society making sense of itself. Most important, film is about the present not the past.
Belle is also opening today. It is a beautiful period drama where it would appear that love conquers all, as the "mixed race" black child of a white nobleman tries to navigate her liminal racial existence in a Jane Austen-like period drama. Its trailer was shown before 12 Years a Slave. During my screening, the audience smiled, muttering in more than a low whisper that "they have to see Belle, it looks so wonderful and heartwarming".
12 Years a Slave was cinematic medicine; the trailer for Belle was a nice, light, tasty, treat. Americans love their junk food.
Written by Misan Sagay, this British historical drama is getting the "inspiring true story" treatment, though the inspiring parts aren't true and the true parts aren't inspiring. Dido Elizabeth Belle was the illegitimate child of an African woman and a white captain in the Royal Navy; deposited at the estate of her uncle, the esteemed jurist William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, she grew to young adulthood in social limbo, too low to dine with the family but too high to dine with the servants. Sagay turns her plight into a Jane Austen-style romance involving both sincere and scheming suitors, which allows the writer to unpack the social attitudes of the time. Her invented narrative works much better than the ensuing legal drama based on the 1781 Zong massacre, in which British slave traders tossed their sick slaves overboard; Murray ruled on the case as lord chief justice, and though the verdict is presented here as a blow against slavery, it was really a more mundane question of insurance law.
Sometimes, the truth does manage to assert itself.
I posted two long essays this week. I would like to thank those of you who waded through them, commented, and shared them online and elsewhere.
Our eyes can glaze over as we become exhausted from reading long(ish) form writing. This is true even if those essays are relatively short. You likely have noticed that reading online has changed your ability to process and retain information. Apparently, there is an emerging body of empirical research which supports that intuition.
Do not abandon your hardbound, softbound, real world, tangible books. They are where the knowledge resides. Feel them. Smell them. Write in them.
I have some semi-related questions and observations; do please comment as you feel is appropriate.
1. I am always reflecting on what we are offering here on WARN. Would you like more long-form essays or short essays? Should we be doing more quick posts where we just share links in a one paragraph or so post? Alternatively, do I post too frequently or not frequently enough? Giving too much or too little time between sharing?
2. More than a few folks have asked me about an email list or newsletter/compendium that would bundle up some posts from the site and also include news items suggested by readers. I was uncertain about whether to proceed. Thoughts?
3. I finally installed Google Analytics on the site. Apparently, and this is contrary to what I expected, there are more readers here on WARN than I expected from Statcounter, etc. Good stuff. Thus, the following question: how can we encourage those lurkers to chime in and comment more often?
4. Do you think having a link on the sidebar that includes a way to buy or otherwise access the many books we talk about here on the site is a good idea? I am also thinking of keeping a running compendium of articles, books, and other resources via a link on the sidebar which readers can access and explore. A WeAreRespectableNegroespedia? Would you contribute?
5. Following up on the above. We have a nice bunch of readers who comment on a regular basis. I am so appreciative of all of them--and of course the folks who donate their hard earned monies to encourage me forward here on WARN (speaking of which, I need to write a thank you note).
Thus, I would like to do something random.
How about you introduce yourselves to each other and to me? Why do you come to the site? What are you up to in "the real world"? Any hobbies or random factoids to share? What are you feeling or thinking about? Recipes to contribute? Fun pet stories? Me thinks you get my drift...
I am making that request because I regularly talk to a few of you online via email and I am so impressed by your candor, sincerity, and intelligence. I tell myself that it would be great if those voices could interact more often.
If you are a lurker who tends to be quiet and watch--there is nothing wrong with that--please chime in too. It has been more than a year since we changed the comment policy here on WARN. I am so glad that I made that difficult choice. This is a salon. Do let yourself be heard.
Whiteness is myopic. Whiteness is also a type of selective remembering and forgetting. Whiteness allows its owners and subscribers to cherry-pick from history in order to fulfill a hard times myth of exclusive and extreme white ethnic struggle, or to deny that they, because their people had “difficulties” in America, are somehow now incapable of being “racist”.
The converts—the Poles, Russians, Italians, Slavs, Jews, and others—whose people have only recently crossed over in 20th century America from being “quasi white” to “fully white”, are among the most visceral and impassioned defenders of Whiteness.
They are like the religious convert prone to fundamentalist zealotry, strapping a bomb on their bodies, railing against the “non-believer” or “apostate” in order to prove that he or she is the truest of the true believers.
Being late to a party often means that one tends to drink a bit too much in order to catch up with the guests who arrived either early or on time. Religion and racial identity often follow the same guidelines.
The person whose people are one or two or even three generations removed from crossing over from nebulous Whiteness to those now considered “normal” and “regular” white people often find themselves working hard to be more “White” than any other “white” person.
My relatives, by blood, kinship, or adopted, always warned me to watch out for a white person who just figured out that they are in fact “White”. Why? Because people like that are very dangerous and treacherous. Their race pride, based on nothing but a new found discovery that they too are now able to put their foot on a black or brown person’s throat (or even those who they view as not "really white") is so tempting to them—few can resist its power.
Whiteness can be a slippery possession. It is also a performance where some try to outdo their peers in a day-to-day competition along the colorline, fighting to protect and earn White Privilege.
Princeton University’s Right-wing angry white male wunderkind Tal Fortgang has received much attention this week for his spirited essay in defense of White Privilege.
Tal Fortgang is a beneficiary of fortuitous timing: the last few weeks have seen a storm of white folks behaving badly; he is the newest star of the moment.
During the Age of Obama, the primary purpose of black conservatives is to provide a shield and proxy for the racism of the Republican Party.
In that role, black conservatives such as Alan Keyes, Allen West, Jesse Peterson, Herman Cain, Benjamin Carson, Armstrong Williams, Niger Innis, and their ideological kin are enlisted to advance the agenda of the White Right.
They are human props, marionettes, and ventriloquist dummies for white conservatives that provide fuel for the naked bigotry of throwback racist caricatures like Cliven Bundy whose meditations on “The Negro” publicly surfaced several weeks ago.
Black conservatives also serve as human chaff and cover for the more “evolved” white supremacy of Paul Ryan and his concerns about “dysfunctional” “inner city” black people and their “bad culture”.
In all, black conservatives are expert performers in a type of political blackface routine that involves disparaging African-Americans in ways which would bring howls of condemnation if done so by a white person.
Like the gay or lesbian who is a professional homophobe, or a woman who is an anti-feminist, the black or brown person who publicly (and disingenuously) criticizes other people of color is viewed as some type of a noble truth-teller by many Americans.
I admireTal Fortgang's hustle. It takes lots of cultivated hubris and myopic whiteness to write such dreck--and then to defend it on national television:
There is a phrase that floats around college campuses, Princeton being no exception, that threatens to strike down opinions without regard for their merits, but rather solely on the basis of the person that voiced them. “Check your privilege,” the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year. The phrase, handed down by my moral superiors, descends recklessly, like an Obama-sanctioned drone, and aims laser-like at my pinkish-peach complexion, my maleness, and the nerve I displayed in offering an opinion rooted in a personal Weltanschauung.
“Check your privilege,” they tell me in a command that teeters between an imposition to actually explore how I got where I am, and a reminder that I ought to feel personally apologetic because white males seem to pull most of the strings in the world...It was their privilege to come to a country that grants equal protection under the law to its citizens, that cares not about religion or race, but the content of your character...It’s not a matter of white or black, male or female or any other division which we seek, but a matter of the values we pass along, the legacy we leave, that perpetuates “privilege.” And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Social media, a slow news cycle, and being a white victimologist wunderkind in the Age of Obama does have its advantages. Moreover, being a privileged white male victimologist wunderkind at Princeton University, who can use his privilege to get some shine, while also denying the existence of empirical realities such as white racism and white privilege, is some Three-Card Monte 3D Star Trek chess gamesmanship.
There is also a beautiful ugly irony at work in Fortgang's essay: he is denying the existence of white privilege and he is Jewish, a member of a group that recently earned their "whiteness" in the second part of the 20th century. His ancestors in the United States knew a great deal about the realities of white supremacy and white privilege. Many of them were not even be able to gain admission to an Ivy League institution because of a anti-Jewish quota system.
One of the powers of Whiteness is its ability to create amnesia among white folks. Fortgang is an object lesson in that fact.
I am loathe to feed Tal Fortgang's ego by rewarding how he successfully trolled too many folks with his essay in Princeton's student newspaper. But, Fortgang (and those on Fox News and elsewhere who are enabling him) is the future-present of white racism and white supremacy in the post civil rights era.
One of the causes of the Great Recession was how rent-seeking, corrupt, casino capitalists and Wall Street hustlers, were able to game the system with the knowledge that there would no real consequences for their destructive behavior.
Many of them likely went to business school and/or majored in finance or a related discipline while undergraduates. These criminals had a liberal arts education. But somewhere along the way, they may not have taken courses in philosophy or ethics. If so, said financial gangsters did not internalize a sense of justice, a sense of linked fate with other people, or the basic principles of secular humanism and the Common Good.
Allowing for those in the financier and plutocratic classes who are sociopathic (I do not mean this as a mere turn of phrase or fun play on words; I encountered one such person in a classroom who proudly announced that his goal in life was to be fabulously wealthy, he would lie and cheat to that end, and destroy anyone that got in his way. I told this student that the poor have to eat and he would be the meal) it is readily apparent that too many students simply check off the mental boxes to get a grade and do not reflect upon or internalize knowledge as a means towards critical self-reflection. As the university becomes more of a trade school and degree mill those outcomes will be increasingly common.
The inverse of a student who does not learn or internalize material in the best spirit of how it is taught or intended is the person that takes information and uses it for contrary or ethically problematic ends.
It is a wonderful day here in Chicago. Spring is here--if only for a moment. I am going to go take a walk near the lake, feed the squirrels and other animal friends, and then do some reading while eating Popeye's chicken outside. I am a sophisticate that way.
My essay on Cliven Bundy that asked "what if his militia/goon squad was black and running amok in a white community?" is approaching 9,000 shares on Facebook via the Daily Kos. That is good stuff; the challenge is how to translate that back here to We Are Respectable Negroes (any suggestions?).
One of the commenters over at the Daily Kos mentioned the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and what it could potentially teach the American people about State power and citizens' resistance. I recall hearing about the Great Railroad Strike in high school. Ignorance should create a hunger for knowledge. I need to be fed by learning much more about the Gilded Age with a special emphasis on People's protest and resistance movements against the robber barons and plutocrats during that era.
[If you have any reading suggestions or movies that could be useful to that end please share them.]