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The ugliness of Whiteness is a bunch of thieves who should own their history. They benefit from wrong but can wash their hands of it with innocence and denial, where the greater umbrage is that someone would dare to question the origins of their self-made myth of uplift and righteous individualism.
When Rick Perry's Niggerhead "scandal" broke a few weeks ago, I suggested that the more interesting element to the Washington Post expose on his family retreat and racist nostalgia was that he heralded from a sundown town.
While a few folks signaled to this hidden history--where black Americans were forcibly expelled from their homes and communities throughout America--most among the pundit classes went with the simple frame where racism involves mean words, a bogeyman still lingering like a crazy grandma under the stairs or secreted away in the closet...even into the Age of Obama.
The documentary Banished is a real gem. It explores the ethnic cleansing of Forsyth County, Georgia and the material, psychological, and material consequences of that crime which linger into the present some hundred or so years later. The history is the present: when sociologists and economists discuss the causal variables that explain a wealth disparity in America where whites have 2 dollars for every 10 cents that black Americans possess, they need to look no farther than the events documented in Banished.
White racism involved the systemic denial of opportunities for wealth creation and wealth accrual by black Americans. The Racial State subsidized the enrichment of whites as a privileged class in a zero sum game which involved the denial of the same opportunities to all citizens across the colorline. Perhaps, one day policy makers will be able to have a reasonable and mature conversation about justice--reparations in this case--where making communities and people financially whole will be understood for the public policy imperative that it is.
Do check out Banished before the copyright monster comes and takes it down.
6 comments:
"White racism involved the systemic denial of opportunities for wealth creation and accrual by black Americans. The Racial State subsidized white wealth creation in a zero sum game that involved the denial of the same opportunities to all citizens across the colorline."
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
This is the part of Racism and White Privilege that gets conveniently ignored...always. This is also how White Racial Framing skirts around its own crimes while blaming Black people for their poverty.
Great find, cd! I'd never seen this before - and I'll wager that many folk, Black, white or Other have not either. I immediately thought of Tulsa as I began to watch it and I'd intended to comment, adding it to the list. But then I saw, at the end, that Marco addressed it as well. Really no need for me to comment further, the film sadly, says it all.
Mind if I post it in my sidebar (with attribution of course!)? I think as many people as possible should see it. Let me know...
@Heavy. Back to your corner, no knocking out whiteness allowed!
@Deb. Sure, share, share, share alike.
Thanx, cd...
"Perhaps, one day policy makers will be able to have a reasonable and mature conversation about justice--reparations in this case--where making communities and people financially whole will be understood for the public policy imperative that it is."
Never going to happen, whiteness is still a bunch of thieves they haven't changed at all they are just getting better at refining it.
Since they consider Black people subhuman they feel fully justified in the unjust treatment of Black people and they intend to keep doing it until the end of time.
@ Robert
Well said.
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