If you like what we are doing here on WARN, and are able to throw in a few pieces of copper or silver in the begging bowl, such an act of generosity would be very much appreciated.
Have you watched this segment from the BBC in which a black German woman confronts Neo-Nazis and KKK members? If you have watched the clip, what are your thoughts and feelings about it?
In the United States, the triumphs of pluralism and a liberal democratic consensus around the color line as forced into being by the long Civil Rights Movement, and a centuries-long Black Freedom Struggle, ought to be celebrated. Black and Brown folks forced the United States to live up to the democratic creed promised by a full and inspired reading of the Constitution: they saved the country from its own wicked origins as a racial state and a white racist "democracy" founded upon the twin sins of black chattel slavery and genocide against First Nations peoples.
A celebration of this history by its warriors who are still alive and with us, through the voices of the ancestors which we can still hear if we choose to listen, and as lived by the heirs of the Black and Brown Freedom Struggles, can be intoxicating. However, as offered by Dionysus or Pan, it is very easy to get drunk on the ambrosia and other intoxicants offered up by post racial, post civil rights era, America.
The obvious. A black man in President of the United States of America. Why not gloat a little bit...or perhaps even a great deal?
Liberal anti-racist Schadenfreude can be very tempting.
White racists are reduced to shooting cockroaches on their walls with BB guns. The KKK claims it is "misunderstood". White Supremacists are profiled on TV shows like 60 Minutes and their young sons shoot them dead.
Outliers and throwbacks like Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling are mocked and subsequently run out of town on the proverbial rail. Overt White Supremacy is considered such a thing of the past that a significant number of white Americans actually believe that they are somehow "oppressed" in the Age of Obama.
The latter is of course an absurd claim with no empirical support; however, the ridiculousness of such language is an ironic indication of how the Black Freedom Struggle has been so triumphant that foolish and stupid beliefs about the existence of a thing called "reverse racism" are now entertained and accepted as reasonable claims by too many Americans on both sides of the color line.
Throwing rocks and garbage at white caricaturized bigots is easy sport. But, what of the frightening fact that White Supremacists have evolved, remain very dangerous, and the triumphs of the Civil Rights era and "multicultural" America may just be a lull, a moment of detente, in a battle that is still being fought but by other more quiet and stealthy means?
The color line continues to over-determine the life chances of white people relative to black and brown Americans. The evidence is abundant. In almost every sociological and demographic category, from wealth and income to life expectancy, institutional White Supremacy has structured American society such that those who are considered "white" are advantaged relative to people of color.
The number of white hate groups has increased in the United States since the election of Barack Obama.
While the frontstage of White Supremacy--the KKK and other racial terrorist organizations--are depicted as anachronistic outliers of an antiquated racial age by the mass media, the White Right has succeeded in fully taking over the Republican Party, and has refashioned it as the premier White identity advocacy group in the United States of America.
The Republican Party is a White Supremacist organization, and a party in government (one of the only two main political parties in the United States) whose resonance with its public is based upon the whole union of White Supremacy and Conservatism. Moreover, the Tea Party GOP, the most extreme faux-populist element of the Republican Party, are an AstroTurf organization comprised of useful idiots who are doing the bidding of the Koch brothers.
The latter are plutocrats who can trace their political lineage back to the White Supremacist John Birch Society and White Citizens Councils of Jim and Jane Crow America.
The following observation is a truism, a cliche, and a bit of folksy wisdom which persists because it explains so much about the world: the devil's greatest trick was convincing mankind that he (or she) did not exist.
The danger of liberal Schadenfreude in the face of White Supremacy is that too many folks are celebrating a grand victory in the war against white racism fought by their parents, grandparents, and other ancestors which this generation inherited...but did not spend blood or treasure to secure.
The reporter who interviewed KKK members and Neo-Nazis should be applauded for her courage.
However, could it be that White Supremacy evolved, its most dangerous agents either working actively or in passive agreement through banking, police departments, government, finance, real estate, human resources departments, the military, and the educational system to consciously (and subconsciously) maintain and protect White Privilege, as well as the material and psychological privileges that come with being "white" in America?
I doubt that such people would agree to appear in a news clip or documentary where they are outed for the benefit of the viewer who wants to believe that White Supremacy and racism are political dinosaurs of some long ago past.
I wonder, is it possible to celebrate the past victories against White Supremacy in the United States (and elsewhere) while still keeping a keen eye and focus on how those elements remain a clear and present danger in the present?
28 comments:
These young neon-Nazis apparently forgot how millions of their countrymen died as a result of their belief in the superiority of one race over another. History repeats itself. The first time as tragedy-the second time as farce.
Louis Theroux, a British documentarian, once did a program in December 2003 called "Louis and the Nazis." In that program who interacts with Thomas Metzger, a virulent racist. But, Metzger in his ordinary life as a local tv repairman interacts with black folks in a cordial and respectful way. The end of the show is chilling because Thoeroux asks him about this seeming contradiction. Metzger's response, if memory serves me, is that under different circumstances the outcome of his encounter with his regular black customer and neighbor would be very different and violent. Well worth watching.
Institutional racism is a very different reality to confront. It leaves virtually no fingerprints. It is, to borrow from Hannah Arendt, a banal evil. Who is really responsible for redlining? Or, the Wells Fargo policy of exploiting black prosperity churches to sell subprime mortgages? Yes, we know it happened, but there is no story there.
Which brings me to an off-subject point I'd like to raise. Oprah and Magic and others wanted to spend one billion dollars buying the Clippers. Why not invest that money in low-cost, character-centered, historical-narrative movies showing the costs of white supremacy in the past and currently, and, the bravery and responses to white supremacy. I'm currently reading Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms by Nicholas Johnson. The book is filled with stories that reveal character, bravery, injustices, and history that I never knew. Like, the real racial mixture of the "Wild West" being about 20 percent in California. Or, a movie about the Second Seminole War in Florida, about crushing a free black revolt who did not want to be enslaved when the US took control of Florida from Spain.
For one billion dollars, we could have a cinema verite of real characters, real history, real courage, real moral values--instead of what we have today. You can't expect Americans to read history. But, you can get them to watch history. And, you don't need mega-budgets to do it. You don't hundreds of millions of dollars in special effects--you just need a human-scale, character-driven, historical narrative.
Liberals fiddle while Rome burns. We revel in Schadenfreude while the right builds a home grown fascist movement supported by sophisticated think tanks like Cato, Fox, Heritage, Oral Roberts U. What the right lacks in membership it compensates for with strategic investment in facilities and personnel. It employees legions of techies, lawyers, sociologists, statisticians, PR experts, and psychologists who work 24/7 broadcasting dog whistles to the base that fall on the deaf ears of the unsuspecting public, thereby giving the GOP the "plausible" deniability upon which it pitches its "sucker born every minute" big tent. This throws the left off guard playing catch up, trying to figure out what they're up to from one minute to the next. Progressives don't have the right's over funded propaganda machine but we have websites like this which hold the moral high ground while exposing the right as all astroturf, bluff, sound and fury.
Here here, the money would be better spent on media and think tanks comparable to what the right has. While we don't need another NBA team I'll credit professional sports as the last bastion of unionism.
The networks are deep. The Kochs are buying up university departments to produce the "knowledge" necessary to legitimate their agenda. Progressives are interested in the "truth". The Right-wing is interested in winning. Nevermind how the former has developed a whole language and vocabulary to manipulate the public. Lakhoff's work is great on that scary process.
A bunch of clowns bouncing balls. You know my thoughts on black people's pathological obsession with the NBA. You make a great point. Why not take that money and invest it, Magic has done this to some degree, and create community banks, entrepreneurship programs, debt forgiveness, etc.? Makes you wonder....
I will need to read that book. Any more suggestions?
Or do they see themselves as owing those dead Nazis their blood today?
Yes, Lakhoff has their number.
Like Mac Davis asked in North Dallas Forty, are we brutes in gorilla suites or gorillas in brute suits?
The strong professional sports unions show us that we could all be affluent if we would get organized in the tradition of the I.W.W. "Wobblies" documents the first sit down strikes and free speech movement featuring Eugene Debs, John Reed, Emma Goldman.
At The Dark End of the Street. I have another book coming this week, The Non-Violent Stuff'll Get You Killed on guns and the Civil Rights Movement. But, the first gun book has interesting citations.
I'm not anti-intellectual, but research shows that we think first with our emotions. Movies convey emotions and can move you, while a research report does not. Mass education through movies is the way, in my view.
Am I wrong for thinking that is some courageous journalism? To confront people who hate you and would actually be happy if you were injured or killed.
A Case for American History Coates hit back at National Review's Kevin Williamson. I love the title.
A good idea. Two points.
1) Whites will never really confront how white supremacy has built America in any meaningful way. They certainly won't watch it on television. Such programming would be preaching to the converted, screaming at the deaf, and shining sunlight into the eyes of the blind.
2) Oprah will never spend any money on programming that won't produce ratings. That's why she's hip-deep in the Tyler Perry blackface and exploitative reality TV pools.
It is good. I wrote a piece on Williamson but put it away because of the Rodger shooting. She is brave. No doubt. But what comes of it?
good question, something to keep in mind.
I would love to interview local business and politicians concerning their views on race.
Oprah and other wealthy blacks for the most part often go out of their way not to associate with "us people". They have more than enough money but will not use it for progressive issues. You certainly won't see Oprah anywhere near the impoverished urban areas of Chicago or any other town but she won't hesitate to build schools for black people on another continent...
Burning Jews in furnaces and routinely torturing "others" to death actually came from the Middle Ages. So many don't know history, therefore...
No doubt about that but intellectualism and movie making aren't mutually exclusive. A case in point is the new conservative movie industry financed by right wing think tanks. Lone Survivor and The Bible drew audiences of 50 million.
I am no huge Oprah fan. She actually said that she built that school in Africa because Americans, i.e. black people, wouldn't appreciate it. And has she ever had a black child on the show who escape a kidnapping or did something miraculous?
I find it pathetic that of all ethnic groups, it is abundantly clear and shameful that rich black folks are the most worthless. They might as well not even exist. You certainly won't see the wealthy elites of the Japanese, Jewish, Arab, etc., communities not getting it done. There seems to be this disease of "I'm not one of them" that they all seem to catch. I call it "Tiger Woods Syndrome" - doing your best to deny what you obviously are! We have to deal with the awful stereotypes of being ghetto rats, thugs and baby mamas from the white power base and that already sucks. When Bill Cosby, Oprah, suburbia-dwelling black folks, et al embrace this narrow-minded thinking, that makes our work even harder!
You wrote:
"it is abundantly clear and shameful that rich black folks are the most worthless".
Generalities are comforting; specificity is more helpful.
You know my thoughts on Mr. Canablasian Tiger Woods. He is a self-hating clown.
I generally ride with you, but your narrow disdain for the nba is ridiculous to me. "Pathological" is a loaded word.
Plus, you are a football & wrestling fan.
Hmmmm I think you are sympathizing with the ball dribbler crowd. They converted you :)
Sorry, but I can't become "unwhite" .
So they are adopting tactics the Liberals have used for years?
None of the aforementioned groups supports the KKK, Skinheads, Neo-Nazis or anything of that nature. You have bought into the liberal attacks on "conservatives" which they use to help divide and rule. Left left employs an equal number of psychologists, techies, lawyers etc. over 70% of college professors are liberal as is a majority of the news media. When the KKK does something stupid, FOX and the other mentioned is the first to condemn it. But when the Black Panthers do something stupid, the liberal outlets leap to defend and support them.
While you are talking money, according to opensecrets.org, the number one political donor from 1989 to 2014 was "ActBlue" at over 134 million dollars, all of which went to Democrats, and according to rollcall.com 7 of 10 wealthiest people in congress are Democrats. Neither of these are "conservation" news sources. You are deluded if you think that the people leading the Democratic party are any more interested in your welfare than those in the GOP. Most of them just want to get re-elected at any cost.
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