Black America's "blues sensibilities"--as well as that of other peoples who have historically suffered under Power and somehow found a way to survive and triumph--means that laughter is one of the ways that we navigate times of trouble and sorrow. Other people(s) crumple under the littlest of pressure and pain; to both our detriment and advantage Black America marches on, indomitable as the miner's canary, we who are the moral conscience of the United States. This is both a blessing and a curse.
White racial terrorist Dylann Roof has been arrested. He subsequently confessed to killing 9 black Americans in their Charleston, South Carolina church in order to create the spark for a "race war".
However, it would seem that America's white terrorist network is still operative, hitting "soft" but symbolically potent targets such as historic African-American churches.
To point. Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church is the 8th such building to burn down in the approximately 10 days since the Charleston Massacre.
On this unfortunate event, Time offered the following comment:
Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church, a prominent African-American church in Greeleyville, S.C., caught fire late Tuesday. It is the eighth black church in the southern U.S.A. to burn in 10 days.
Greeleyville, about 60 miles northwest of Charleston, has seen similar fires before, the Charleston Post and Courier reports. Mount Zion was burned to the ground by the KKK in 1995, part of a string of 30 fires in black churches that spanned two years.
An investigation into the fire’s cause will begin after it is safely extinguished, chief of the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division Mark Keel told the Post and Courier. He noted that that the thunderstorm that pounded the town of 375 Tuesday evening could have ignited the church. Meteorologist Pete Mohlin of the National Weather Service told the paper there was a lot of lightning in the area around 7 p.m. but he could not say if it had caused the fire.
Parishioners across the south are surveying the damage a string of similar fires has caused this week, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports, starting in Knoxville, Tenn. on June 21 and moving to Macon, Ga and Gibson County, Tenn on June 23; Charlotte, N.C. on June 24; Elyria, Ohio on June 25; and Tallahassee, Fla. and Warrenville, S.C on June 26.
Three of those fires have been ruled arson, one was determined to be caused by a falling branch and faulty wiring, and the others remain under investigation. Several have been blamed preliminarily on lightning; weather in the south this week has been turbulent.While Twitter has been trending the #whoisburningblackchurches hashtag, the mainstream corporate news media has been relatively silent: there is no mass panic about what seems to be a highly unusual series of events in the aftermath of The Charleston Massacre, the F.B.I.'s report on the extreme threat posed by Right-wing domestic terrorists, and the increase in white hate group activities in the Age of Obama.
In these times, we cannot overlook how the Republican Party is the United States' largest white identity organization, and how Fox News and the Right-wing media are their propaganda arm. Together the two have created a logic and worldview that via "epistemic closure" functions as an alternate reality for it viewers. In this bizarro world, white people, Christians, the rich, men, heterosexuals, and "real Americans" are somehow made into "victims". To sustain the Right-wing media's white victimology paranoiac frame necessitates distorting black pain, suffering, and white on black racism, into a series of events that serve white privilege and the white racial frame.
As such, how will Fox News engage in "political aikido" and white victimology propaganda as they discuss (if at all) the repeated and highly suspicious spate of fires at African-American churches?
Some suggested #WhoIsBurningBlackChurches Fox News talking points:
1. Apparently all those black churches used the same electrician.
2. Black people who want to get free stuff from filing fake insurance claims.
3. The unqualified black electricians who got their jobs from "affirmative action".
4. Black "race hustlers" who just want to get attention and make white people look bad.
5. You see this is really a WAR ON CHRISTIANS!
6. Black racists who want to hurt white firefighters!
7. This is a scorched earth strategy to start a race war against white people and get free money.
8. #Blacklivesmatter reverse racists who hate white people and want to start a race war!
9. Black preachers giving pyromania baptisms.
10. Barack Obama of course.
11. This is what happens when the SCOTUS allows gay marriage!
12. Black racists are making Molotov cocktails to use against white people and police.
13. Random solar flares! But the blacks want you to think it is "racism". How can the sun be racist?
14. Black people love to barbecue and cook S'mores. Why make this a race issue?
15. We need to talk about the broken black family and how black kids love playing with lighters.
16. Where are black fathers!
17. Do the math. Black churches burn down all the time. Why are black race hustlers and liberals making such a big deal about simple math!
During these last few years, the United States has experienced a long moment of peril and tumult along the color line in an era of supposed "post racial" colorblindness, and when a black man is President of the United States. In a democracy, the news media, as the 4th estate of government, has a responsibility to provide reliable information, clarity, sound commentary, and insight for the American people so that they can pressure their leaders to make good governmental policies.
On many matters--especially those regarding racial, gender, and class justice--Fox News and the Right-wing noise machine have worked directly opposite of that responsibility and principle. Their coverage of the Charleston Massacre, and subsequent events such as the burning down of multiple African-American churches in the last week, are a further example of how they have abandoned--if they every had it all--any sense of responsibility to truth-telling and the Common Good.
Perhaps Fox News and its auxiliaries can surprise and amaze--in the best sense--with how they discuss the spate of fires at historic African-American churches in these recent days? I doubt that is possible, as to do so would be contrary to their raison d'etre as the mainstream corporate news media's preeminent mouthpiece for the politics of white racial resentment and white victimology in the post civil rights era United States.
17. Do the math. Black churches burn down all the time. Why are black race hustlers and liberals making such a big deal about simple math!
During these last few years, the United States has experienced a long moment of peril and tumult along the color line in an era of supposed "post racial" colorblindness, and when a black man is President of the United States. In a democracy, the news media, as the 4th estate of government, has a responsibility to provide reliable information, clarity, sound commentary, and insight for the American people so that they can pressure their leaders to make good governmental policies.
On many matters--especially those regarding racial, gender, and class justice--Fox News and the Right-wing noise machine have worked directly opposite of that responsibility and principle. Their coverage of the Charleston Massacre, and subsequent events such as the burning down of multiple African-American churches in the last week, are a further example of how they have abandoned--if they every had it all--any sense of responsibility to truth-telling and the Common Good.
Perhaps Fox News and its auxiliaries can surprise and amaze--in the best sense--with how they discuss the spate of fires at historic African-American churches in these recent days? I doubt that is possible, as to do so would be contrary to their raison d'etre as the mainstream corporate news media's preeminent mouthpiece for the politics of white racial resentment and white victimology in the post civil rights era United States.
11 comments:
Fox News talking point 18: I guess now liberals will want to ban lighters.
In the right wing Fox alternative reality universe, if your car runs out of gas it's Obama's fault. So I'll go with blame Obama.
But only if they are forced to deal with this issue, otherwise they're happy to ignore it.
But imagine if a "muslim" walked into one of those snake-handling Christian churches and blew away nine members and admitted that he did so because he hated Christians. And then 10 such churches subsequently burned down. Homeland Security would put the nation on high alert. Fox would be droning hate 24/7. And every other word from talking heads mouths would be "terrorist" and telling us "we are all snake handlers today."
Just goes to show that, in America, Black Lives Don't Matter to them.
I guess all that hell fire and brimstone spontaneously combusted. # RWterrorismrunsamok. How many more fires and massacres will it take for the media and officialdom to acknowledge the obvious?
Black institutions, civil rights, and individuals have been under assault for well over 200 years in South Carolina alone. There have been literally tens of thousands of racist beatings, lynchings, and murders. The recent assault on Emanuel AME church wasn't the first assault on that church. It wasn't the first time one of their pastors was murdered. That particular church has been burned down, outlawed, and violently assaulted on multiple occasions simply because black people were gathering in it. Despite all this, Fox News and the various participants in the GOP's presidential ass carnival will deny that there is any racism in the US, or that these acts are the natural outgrowth of a racist pro-gun culture that their party has enabled for 50 years.
#9 is so outrageous that I wouldn't doubt it for a second that FoxKlan would have uttered it "on air".
it's #17, at least for the rest of the msm.
after ignoring it, the msm all seemed to come up with the same story, from the same source no doubt, church fires happen all the time, "nothing to see here".
the usual pattern
Like the flag, this to is a tradition.
From my cold dead hands! Suck it libtards!
In another forty years America will be half non-white. If nothing else it's going to give our side a fighting edge. And I guess that's part of what's triggering this so called race war. They know that time is not on their side; and if their gene pool is anything to go by they seem to be a lot less outbred than their enemies.
If a muslim blew away someone like Pat Robertson or Brian Fischer, I'd clap and smile over it. It would make me ten times happier than news of Bin Laden's death
http://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/583643304983564290/photo/1
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