Back January of last year, America got a look, courtesy of a cell phone camera of a rider on a BART train in Oakland, CA, at the cold-blooded murder of a handcuffed, down-on-the-ground 22-year-old named Oscar Grant on a train platform.
Yesterday, his assailant, transit officer Johannes Mehserle, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for killing the supermarket butcher with a 4-year-old daughter. (SFGate):
Involuntary manslaughter might seem an unsatisfying outcome for the killing of the unarmed Oscar Grant on Jan. 1, 2009, but it was consistent with the evidence that could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt against former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle. Anything less would have been an injustice. Anything more would have required conclusions about Mehserle’s state of mind that were not sufficiently supported in trial.
The bottom line is that the jury agreed with what any fair-minded person who saw the videotape of the shooting on the BART platform at the Fruitvale Station had to conclude: There was no reason to use fatal force on Grant, who was being physically restrained at the time.
Mehserle, 28, claimed it was an accident, that he thought he was firing a Taser instead of a handgun at the detainee. The explanation stretched the bounds of plausibility, given the difference in weight, feel - and position on his holster - between the nonlethal weapon intended to immobilize and the Sig Sauer P226 pistol that is used to kill. He clearly was negligent.
The thoughtful Adam Serwer, who now has his own feature blog at The American Prospect, reads between the lines of this verdict that captures my sentiment perfectly when I read about the verdict. It’s something you will not see in the above-cited San Francisco Chronicle report that has the ironic headline of “The right verdict in Mehserle case.” What is behind a “technically correct” verdict are also matters that have little to do with precision objectivity, and everything to do with human nature in the U.S. in 2010.
I want to focus for a moment on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. To convict on the higher charge of voluntary manslaughter, the prosecution would have had to prove that Mehserle’s fear of Grant and his friends was “unreasonable.” It decided the crime was involuntary. In other words, Mehserle’s fear? That was reasonable.
Fear is at the core of questions of justice involving the deaths of black people at the hands of the authorities in the United States of America, dating back to when Toussaint L’Overture put the fear of G-d in slaveowners by revealing that their “property” might someday rise up against them. L’Overture still has that effect on some people. Following emancipation we were the days when “justice” was meted out in the South by terrorists posing as vigilantes. Even then, when such atrocities were an accepted part of black life, people inside and outside the South found ways to sympathize with the anger and fear white Southerners felt towards their black neighbors—The New York Times editorialized in the 1890s that no “reputable or respectable negro” had ever been lynched.
Even decades after the Civil Rights era, a cop shooting an unarmed black man is barely a crime—a 2007 ColorLines investigation of police shootings in New York City found that in 12 instances when the victim was unarmed, only one officer was found criminally liable. There hasn’t been a murder conviction on a police shooting in Oakland since 1983. As Kai Wrightwrote in the aftermath of the Sean Bell verdict, “American law has been sanctioning the killing of black people to mollify white fear for centuries…We scare the shit out of America. And that fear excuses just about any reaction it spawns.” Mehserle is profoundly unlucky to be punished at all.
Times change, but the radioactive fear of black people, black men in particular, has proven to have a longer half-life than any science could have discerned. This is not a fear white people possess of black people—it is a fear all Americans possess. It makes white cops kill black cops, it makes black cops kill black men, and it whispers in the ears of white and nonwhite jurors alike that fear of an unarmed black man lying face down in the ground is not “unreasonable.” All of which is to say, while it infects all of us, a few of us bear the brunt of the suffering it causes.
Thank you, Adam, for putting this out there. He also raises the very point I share with my readers time and again. That fear, embodied in the third rail of discussing race matters openly, seems to paralyze otherwise intelligent, highly-opinionated people into silence.
What’s worse is that we we don’t just fear, we fear talking about it. Our president tried once. He mentioned the fear his own grandmother felt for men who looked like he does, and we responded with the level of maturity we’ve come to expect from our political discourse. If you’ve ever had a relative of another race confess to you that they’d find you frightening if they ran into you in a dark alley, you know what he meant. But we fear what this fear says about us more than we fear letting it go.
When can we have these conversations? What will it take for those with privilege to speak openly about this fear, and for those who are minorities to hold back the desire to be defensive to engage.
For instance, why do some white people say they fear or are cautious of all black men after they were mugged by one? If they were mugged by a white guy, they wouldn’t fear all white men. And many blacks fall prey to the same fear, as Adam noted.
We have to explore that fear for what it is, rather than assign guilt for feeling it in the first place. You cannot let go of internalized racism (that is reinforced by our culture) without first owning it and peeling the layers back. And that can only occur in an environment where all concerned let their defenses down.
And that’s where we often fail. So many people just don’t want to take the time or the energy to engage in educating themselves and others in conversations that can involve painful admissions and hard questions that don’t have easy answers.
Sarah Palin releases a web video in which she pays women to dress like bears and pretend to maul socialism or something.
Cable news covers it ad nauseum, and justifies its coverage by saying everyone’s talking about it, even though “everyone” literally only means the people who are talking about how much everyone else is talking about it. The discussion of the discussion is then discussed on Politico, which then uses the completely self-referential dialogue to point out how Sarah Palin is rehabilitating her image and winning the day.
Good news, though it’s sorry that it’s come to this—-the Justice Department is now officially moving to sue the state of Arizona over the “papers please” law. The argument is that the law usurps the federal government’s authority over issues such as immigration law enforcement. I’m sure the lawyers out there could explain why the Justice Department thought this was the best angle, instead of doing something like arguing that the law is fundamentally discriminatory. Maybe the disingenuous attempts to forbid racial profiling in the text of the law while encouraging it in practice make that a harder case to build than you’d think? That’d be my guess.
The most important thing is that Arizona faces resistance to this move to make blatant anti-Hispanic racism official government policy. Beyond just sucking on its face, laws that encourage racism directly also help foster an atmosphere where racism is more generally seen as acceptable. For instance, check out this story about the Apache Junction American Legion in Arizona. Just out of spiteful racism, they banned Cinco de Mayo celebrations at the post, on the scurrilous grounds that it’s not a real Mexican holiday. Which is funny, because I suspect they’d ban it for being a real Mexican holiday if that’s what it was. No matter; in the U.S., Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican-American equivalent of what St. Patrick’s Day used to be, or what gay pride parades currently are. It’s a way of being positive and proud in the face of bigotry, a celebration of diversity, and a reason to have a good time. The only people who can really be against that sort of thing are those that are eaten up by hate.
You can really see, in this instance, how an official act of racism from the government created more hatred and animosity all around. It’s a vicious cycle. The government passed the law, and people, for good reason, protested it. The protesters are perceived by cranky white people as uppity, and probably as illegal, and so they strike back against them by taking racist potshots aimed at celebrations the encourage diversity. This sows even more anger and distrust between neighbors, and for no good reason.
Unfortunately, this means the initial reaction the Justice Department lawsuit will probably be more cycles of racism/protest/increased racism. But it has to be done, because the only other alternative is allowing the state government to continue to stoke hatred against its Hispanic citizens. Official government intervention against racism creates backlashes, but it eventually works to tone down racism—-look at the results of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It created an upswing in some hostilities, and it didn’t actually bring an end to racism, but eventually it helped usher in an era where racists at least had to hold their cards a little closer to their chests. Which is far from perfect, but better than the available alternatives.
Black people wrote to me and told me some things after my last column. Apparently, there are some rhetorical themes that they believe are common, and I am thus offensive when I say that the President is a sweet little girl of a man in contrast to a Samuel L. Jackson or Don King.
Some of these blacks were polite, and admitted that I was correct, but just wanted me to see how their misperceptions could color my article. I want to rub these people’s heads and wish them the best on their path towards dunking and appearing on Def Comedy Jam. I’d even be happy to share grape soda with them on a hot day in Alabama. Others, however, were less civil.
Do I think people are too sensitive? Yes. Do I think I may have overstepped the line? No. How could I? Toni Morrison, a black, once called Bill Clinton our first black president, and nobody believed he was black except for Robert Mellon Scaife and three quarters of the conservative movement.
But I also recognize that my life experience is different from that of most African Americans. And that experience allows me both the luxury of seeing people without the lens of race, but also (sometimes) to fail to imagine how people of other backgrounds might interpret my words incorrectly. Of course, given my lack of racial focus, I don’t even know that these people are of different backgrounds. I often wonder why white people so often think their skin is dark like the eclipsed sun, but then I just figure they’re beat poets. Silly folk.
As my Post colleague Jonathan Capehart wrote on the PostPartisan blog—and explained to me in a telephone conversation—black men are held to a different standard than whites. They are practiced in keeping their emotions under wraps. They can’t “go off,” as some have urged Obama to do in response to the gulf oil spill.
I hadn’t thought of it this way, but I take Jonathan and others at their word that it’s a fact of life for African American men. I trust that their inability to evolve past race gives them credence to relay the thoughts and opinions of others who see race (or, as I call them, racists).
Barack Obama is not a black man. He is just a man. I can no more see him as black than I can see Jackie Chan as Asian or Arnold Schwarzenegger as Austrian. They are all white women in my book.
But I also don’t see Barack as black for a different and more personal reason. I had intended to save this nugget for a future column, but now seems as good a time as any to brag. The President is my nigga.
Barack Obama and I are eighth cousins, once removed. Spiritually, metaphysically, that gives us a bond that makes him as much Kathleen Parker as it does me Barack Obama. As kin, we share a bond that transcends race. We shared a figurative childhood together, playing double dutch on the corner with fatass little Pookie while Crackhead Joe tried to sell us ice cream he stole from the ice cream truck. We figured nobody would ever pay 75 cents for a bomb pop, but Pookie always found the money. Then Pookie got shot one day, just playing ghetto games with kids who had ghetto names.
We shared figurative experiences not just from Barack’s childhood, but also from mine; walking down by the lake and discussing our future hopes and dreams - being captain of the lacrosse team, owning a yacht, becoming president. We would take a boat out and idly lounge around, drinking secreted cans of Budweiser as our skin became red and shiny in the summer sun.
None of this has anything to do with race. I am proud that Barack Obama is my nigga, my homey from the wayback. As his cousin, and as his motherfuckin’ ride or die nigga myself, I am pulling for him to do better.
There is some unstated libertarian law that requires libertarians to adhere to the position that civil rights laws which target private behavior are absolutely wrong, because discrimination will be taken care of privately by the marketplace, as we can see in the South, where but for white supremacist cartels made of private citizens all other private citizens would totally have not been racist at all.
It’s 2010 and black women are still being told their hair is “bad,” ugly, lacks class, etc. If you saw Chris Rock’s “Good Hair”—that’s all you need to know about the pain, the humor and the self-loathing pathology black women (and men) have about natural hair (see my post on it).
And now the style tide has turned in one strange circle, where the women with chemically straightened hair are now being called “trashy.” Sisters, you can’t win. In an article over at Gawker, “American Apparel: Internal Documents Reveal Uglies Not Welcome,” you have to wonder how many people would pass muster for owner generally, but for black women applying for work there, “nice hair” has a different requirement Dov Charney.
Another former [American Apparel] AA manager says that she received the following instructions as to what kind of black girls she should try to hire during the company’s open calls:
“none of the trashy kind that come in, we don’t want that. we’re not trying to sell our clothes to them. try to find some of these classy black girls, with nice hair, you know?”
i will remember that forever, especially the “nice hair” part. he was instructing another manager and i on who to look for during an upcoming open call, and i sat there dumbfounded, listening to him speak while the other manager made “uh huh, got it” sounds on her end of the phone. the other manager on the call with me later became a district manager, and at one point instructed me to tell two of my employees (both of whom happened to be black females) to stop straightening their hair. i refused to do this, but wondered if the mentality behind her request was related to what dov had said.
As everyone knows, I’m an advocate for women dumping relaxers, aka the creamy crack, because that stuff is f*cking toxic. The beauty aesthetic is secondary; natural hair can be beautiful, classy, etc., but as we know, the culture at large doesn’t celebrate the crazy curls and kinks.
Supporters of the Arizona “papers please” law keep insisting that the only motivation for the law is a strict love of law-and-order, and that racism has nothing to do with it. And that anyone who disagrees is the real racist because neener neener neener. We’re expected to believe that this doesn’t stem from a tidal wave of racial hatred that’s rising in Arizona, probably in no small part because of Obama’s election (and beating of a candidate from their own state, adding to the nationalist sentiment). This was a hard story to buy in the first place, but it gets harder and harder all the time to take that excuse seriously.
The latest story coming out of Arizona is just another example. A school in Prescott had a mural painted that used the children of the school as models, and thus the students pictured were a mix of different races. City councilman and AM radio show host Steve Blair decided to throw a shit fit about this, which resulted in a number of adults driving by and taunting the painters—-including the children present—-with racial slurs. In response to the controversy, the school initially decided to tell the painters to repaint the mural so that all the students pictured were white. But the outcry was so swift and dramatic that the school changed their minds, and the principal and superintendent both apologized for the hasty decision. Blair was also fired from his job as a radio show host.
As you can imagine, Blair is insisting that there’s no racism underpinning his anger that non-white people are prominently displayed on a school mural.
It’s good that there were repercussions, of course. But I hope this story doesn’t just sink under the radar, because that it happened in the first place should be enough to make it clear how ugly the situation in Arizona has really gotten. In the bigger picture, I hope stories like this give everyone pause when they feel that urge to run forward and suggest that something like the “papers please” law or Rand Paul’s rejection of the Civil Rights Act must be based in something besides plain old racism. The attempts to keep under wraps the straight-up racism that drives a lot of conservative resentment have apparently been abandoned, and they nuts are just letting their most vicious sides see the light of day. We’d be insulting their intelligence along with our own to pretend that it’s anything but what it appears to be going on.
If there’s one Republican in this country I have sympathy for, it’s South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley. Two men are claiming to have had affairs with her, both of whom are about as credible as a four year old who has no idea how all the cookies disappeared and mommy’s luggage got filled up with mud. Likewise, she (along with President Obama) was called a raghead by South Carolina state senator Jakey “Jakey Knotts” Knotts.
In other words, she’s gotten a sense of what it’s like to run as a Democrat in South Carolina.
As this bizarre internal warfare has raged on, conservatives have run to Haley’s defense. It’s not a bad position to be in; the woman, after all, has been subject to some truly vile smears. But wherever movement conservatives are running to the defense of one of their own, it’s critical to remember that what they’re doing is defending any attack on one of their own. They generally don’t care about the substance of the attack, other than that certain types of attacks allow them to use certain insults in response.
It’s with this in mind that we approach Robert Stacy McCain’s response to State Sen. Knotts’ remarks. And by “response”, I mean “defense of racism when it’s about brown people he doesn’t like”.
Certainly, I’m the last person on the planet to be screaming “raaaaacist” at other people, but it’s shocking enough that a Republican would use such language to describe President Obama. For a Republican to use it against a fellow Republican — Nikki Haley is a Christian of Sikh ancestry — is so wrong as to defy comprehension.
To McCain’s credit, he never actually did scream “raaaaacist” at anyone, so that streak is thankfully left alive.
The dichotomy here is that one can take a vile racial slur, and if it’s aimed (in public) at a Democrat, it’s “shocking enough”, presumably because the PC race pimps are set to bang down his door and turn all of his water into Kool-Aid should he not give some credence to the fact that racism exists. However, if it’s a Republican doing such a thing to another Republican, it’s “so wrong as to defy comprehension”.
There are many things that are too wrong to defy comprehension: the Holocaust, American slavery, Darfur, the continued existence of LOLcats. But an old white guy in South Carolina saying something racist about a brown lady for political gain? That’s actually entirely comprehensible. It’s directions-on-a-can-of-soup comprehensible. If you cannot comprehend that, you do not deserve the powers of comprehension, and should have them repossessed and given to someone who can actually use them. Like a coma patient.
Knotts has apologized and I don’t see any point in demonizing him, but I’m honestly shocked that any politician would go there. It’s unfathomably ignorant. Sikhs are not Muslim and they’re not Hindu. (And exactly how is the fact that Haley comes from a Sikh family relevant to Obama’s Kenyan ancestry?)
It’s not unfathomably ignorant because it’s the wrong slur. It’s unfathomably ignorant because calling someone a raghead is unfathomably ignorant, period, stop. You don’t get not-racist points because you managed to match up the particular stupid fucking thing you wanted to say with the person’s race. What’s the response supposed to be? “I thought you were a giant racist, but you managed to look at my nose and my haircut and correctly identify the broad racial group I belong to. I’m gonna buy you a beer, man!”
When your problem with racism is that someone wasn’t the right kind of racist, you actually don’t have a problem with racism at all. A perversely admirable devotion to accuracy over all other considerations, yes, but no actual problem with racism.
And when you decide to point out the times that you’ve been perfectly fine with racial slurs, you’re just a racist who finds dealing with accusations of racism inconvenient.
Well, I suppose that’s the end of the friendly relationship Rachel Maddow has with the Paul family. I always found her making nice with them irritating, but now I see that it’s possible she was just biding her time. The funniest part of the whole outing of Rand Paul as an opponent of the Civil Rights Acthas to be the way some conservatives are acting like that’s a private matter that isn’t the voting public’s concern, as if Maddow asked him about his bowel movements. Seriously, check out that link—-folks like Dan Riehl honest-to-god think that those who support legal racial discrimination have a god-given right not to have their views aired while running for office. His reasoning is that the public is too stupid to distinguish the right kind of racists—-folks like him who’ve created elaborate ideological arguments based on “states’ rights” and “libertarianism” to promote their racism—-from ignorant rednecks screaming “white power”. However, I’d argue that not distinguishing between the two is evidence of how smart the audience is.
See, smart people would notice that the rise of libertarianism as a popular philosophy coincided very neatly with the rise of the civil rights movement, and therefore the rise of objections to civil rights. You can write this off as a coincidence if you’d like—-I’m sure that Rand Paul and Dan Riehl would argue that you have an obligation to, as an extension of your obligation to help them conceal some of the more unpopular views they hold—-but really you shouldn’t. Conservatives really need an argument that makes support of racism sound like an unfortunate side effect of some strong principles they simply have to put before the dignity and well-being of their fellow Americans, and “states’ rights” and libertarianism conveniently provide that.
What I think people need to wrap their minds around is the fact that the era of segregation wasn’t that long ago, in the grand scheme of things. Certainly, it’s close enough in history that when your average teabagger in his late 50s or early 60s waxes poetic about how the country was just better when he was a kid, he’s referring to an era when segregation was legal. You can say it’s a coincidence that this sort of sentiment is roaring back when we a) have a black President and b) passed major health care reform legislation that’s perceived as taking money from “deserving” older people and handing it over to “undeserving” younger people who just so happen to be a more racially diverse demographic. But that’s like saying it’s just a coincidence that all the characters on “Lost” keep running into each other in the second timeline this season.
I wish I had some positive news to report to the people who
still believe we are now living in post-racial society, but alas, our culture is still infecting children of all colors to believe that white=right.
“Black or White: Kids on Race” is a segment airing on Anderson Cooper 360 this week, with Soledad O’Brien reporting. It’s painful to watch young innocents display such racial bias, particularly the black children, who will in fact face the need to overcome self-doubt and self-loathing that their white peers will not, through no fault of their own. That the Ann Coulters, Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs of the world feed off of racism and bias (that they, of course, claim doesn’t exist) makes it worse.
Don’t get me wrong, the fact that the cultural playing field is not level is not a reason to merely bathe in self-sorrow. Clearly one can do well, succeed and even achieve great success in this country as a person of color despite the disadvantages that result from ingrained biases.
What many whites keep trying to to do is try to skip over the fact that the legacy of slavery is more than the past ownership and debasement of human beings. It is an embedded belief in our culture that white=normal, and everything else is an anomoly. If the world is viewed through that lens, then all of the advantages that convey with white privilege are seemingly available to non-whites, because they don’t believe there is white privilege. We just elected a black man, that does not equal racism is dead, or that our country is ready to see all people as equal. But it hurts deep to one’s core to see children already going down this path.
A 5-year-old girl in Georgia is being asked a series of questions in her school library. The girl, who is white, is looking at pictures of five cartoons of girls, all identical except for skin color ranging from light to dark.
When asked who the smart child is, she points to a light-skinned doll. When asked who the mean child is she points to a dark-skinned doll. She says a white child is good because “I think she looks like me”, and says the black child is ugly because “she’s a lot darker.”
As she answers her mother watches, and gently weeps.
The mother, whose name the study prohibits from being used, says her daughter has “never asked her about color” and that the results of the test were an eye opener, and she says she and her daughter “talked a long time about it”
Her daughter’s perception on race and the fact that the issue was not taken up at home is in many ways typical.
Research and discussions with parents of the children who participated in this study, indicate that white parents as a whole do not talk to their kids about race as much as black parents.
A 2007 study in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that 75 percent of white families with kindergartners never, or almost never, talk about race. For black parents the number is reversed with 75 percent addressing race with their children.
But in some ways, it is about innocent self-identification with images and people who look like them, however, in the absence of a nuanced discussion about race, the vacuum is filled with other information.
Po Bronson, author of NurtureShock and an award-winning writer on parenting issues says white parents “want to give their kids this sort of post-racial future when they’re very young and they’re under the wrong conclusion that their kids are colorblind. ... It’s in the absence of messages of tolerance that they will naturally ... develop these skin preferences.”
And black kids are poisoned by this crap, though not at the levels of the white kids in this study. The original 1947 doll test results show us that in 1947, we had a race problem, and now in 2010 this study shows we still have a problem, despite changes in civil rights laws and the improvement socioeconomic conditions in the black community over time.
It goes back to what I’ve said over and over at my blog and here at Pandagon—we have to get over the reticence to discuss these issues and stop burying them. We have so few skills in engaging in issues about race over the color lines and we fail to acknowledge the need to be fluent in it. It’s as if otherwise intelligent people close their eyes and say “racism is over” 50 times to make it go away.
Why? Because the discussions are full of landmines—emotional, intellectual, complex ones—that are easy to avoid because everyone shares that anxiety. The anxiety of saying something incorrect, stupid, out of turn or fla- out biased, exposing one’s self as full of stereotypes about the other group. Guess what? We all have them and we rarely want to examine them. You’re not alone. Do something about it—for your kids, nieces, nephews and grandkids. You owe it to them to usher them into adulthood without the fears, stereotypes and biases left to be fed to them by our culture.
As we’ve been told over and over by some clueless talking heads in the MSM after the election of Barack Obama, we’ve entered post-racial America. I don’t know what paradise they are living in or what heavy drugs they are taking, but I’ve not seen evidence that electing a black man to the presidency has eliminated racism at every other level of society.
As an example, on the one hand, NASCAR has a broader audience than just the stereotypical “Stars and Bars Redneck” crowd many imagine it has.
When NASCAR was born on the sands of Daytona Beach, Fla., 61 years ago, its fan base likely wasn’t much different from its racing heroes. A sport spawned by moonshine running starred undereducated white males from the South who subsisted on modest incomes.
...With TV ratings and attendance in a three-year dip after steady growth for more than a decade, NASCAR has refocused on catering to a constituency that seems vastly different from the redneck stereotype associated with stock-car racing. There are physics professors who apply mathematics to explain the sport’s wrecks and rule-breaking, and multi-degreed mountain climbers mesmerized by its plot twists and rivalries.
However, no how many more women and people outside of the South become part of the NASCAR audience, it’s pretty clear that its base is, um, not comfortable with the growing diversity of its fans.
“Sure, there are upper-middle-income fans, but mostly they came from modest backgrounds,” [racing consultant H.A. “Humpy”] Wheeler says. “They are very conservative, flag waving and, yes, they drink beer.
“You have to be so careful with what you do. Getting away from banjos in an effort to change the so-called image, they turned a lot of people away. They got away from the roots, and the roots don’t change very fast.”
Demographic analysis found that while blacks represent only 8.6% of NASCAR’s audience, it’s a 12% spurt since 2005. Apparently that fact has caused consternation among some of the blue collar bigots that now have to sit in close proximity to more of “those people.”
In the case of one high-class fan at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway on April 26, he stated his opinion on the matter, and a fan there captured this free speech moment and sent the photo to me…
Given there are a lot of black folks living in Alabama, if this guy got drunk and made a wrong turn into the wrong neighborhood while trying to get home, he may have had a tad of a problem.
How about doing a “caption this” to the pic of this POS, or someone doing some fun P’shopping of this image?
One could argue that since the beginning of the 2008 election cycle, as Obama’s political fortunes rose, there seemed to be a startling increase in open expressions of racism based on the irrational fear of a black takeover of America, with black masses hell-bent on punishing whitey for institutionalized and cultural racism past and present. About the only thing that surpasses that irrationality is the fear of the Brown Menace crossing the border and reclaiming the Southwest as part of Mexico.
I would love to hear from the post-racial crowd, now that we’ve seen the developments in Arizona, for instance, and whether they think we’re in a new age of racial understanding.
Now, some might say, “Oh, they didn’t ban all ethnic studies classes from schools, just the ones that promote ethnic solidarity or resentment.” That would be totally cool, except that the bill as passed is so vague that you pretty much can’t mention a (non-white) ethnicity in the classroom, lest you hurt someone’s fee-fees. What the bill bans:
Prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that:
Ø Promote the overthrow of the United States government.
Ø Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.
Ø Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.
Ø Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.
Here’s how this will (inevitably) play out: it’s [Insert Minority Ethnic Group] History Month. Students are taught about all the wonderful things people in that group did. However, inevitably, someone in that minority group who’s particularly famous will have, at some point, clashed with white people about something or other related to race. Perhaps it’s Martin Luther King, Jr., perhaps it’s Cesar Chavez, perhaps it’s the story of ol’ Bill Johnson who went down to Ace Hardware and wondered why he got a worse deal on his grill than the young white women who flashed cleavage at the cashier. But the discussion will come up, and it’s at that point that the law will step in and put the hammer down. There is no reason you should be discussing racial conflict or identity in this country, because this is America, and everyone in this country is an individual - together.
If it’s so important that these kids learn about their heritage, let them take classes on it outside of the schools or here’s a novel idea: Let their parents teach them about it. Nobody taught me anything about my cultural heritage in school. I learned it from my family and reading about it myself.
I don’t know this Fool. But I’m assuming from years of reading said Fool that he is white. Which, of course, means that in the American diaspora, Fool has been routinely educated about his cultural heritage in classes called “History” and “Social Studies” and “English”.
You might wonder (correctly) if the inevitable effect of this law runs both ways - can minority students say that the teaching of standard, majority-focused narratives would allow them to raise a stink about ethnic solidarity and the like? Of course not! White administrators and white legislators will just say that’s history and tell those silly illegals to sit down and shut up before they’re asked for their papers.
I just can’t wait until the Arizona state legislature bans refried beans as a preventative measure against Latino supremacy. That’s going to be a great day.
(Taking a break from exam studying right now. Sigh.)
If you haven’t heard about the story of Stephanie Grace, the Harvard 3L who wrote an e-mail about not wanting to rule out that blacks could genetically be prone to be less intelligent than whites, you can catch up on the whole thing here. But I wanted to respond briefly to Eugene Volokh’s post on the matter, because it perfectly (yet unintentionally) sums up the troubling racial undertones of the above proposition.
Whether there are genetic differences among racial and ethnic groups in intelligence is a question of scientific fact. Either there are, or there aren’t (or, more precisely, either there are such differences under some plausible definitions of the relevant groups and of intelligence, or there aren’t). The question is not the moral question about what we should do about those differences, if they exist. It’s not a question about what we would like the facts to be. The facts are what they are, whether we like them or not.
That’s perfectly fine as a matter of scientific inquiry (now, whether or not we can satisfactorily define “intelligence” is another matter altogether). Although what, exactly, we’d do with that which wouldn’t be inherently racist, I don’t know. But, different question for a different debate.
Given this, it seems to me that the proper approach to this question is precisely the same as the proper approach to other questions of scientific fact. One absolutely should not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent.
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One should also obviously be willing to be convinced by evidence that shows that, by controlling for the right variables, we would see that those groups are, in fact, identical to other groups under the same circumstances.
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That’s why it seems to me that the author’s statement that “I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent” — or a similar statement, as I suggested, about Jews, or whites, or the irreligious [none of these examples, mind you, were about intelligence - ed.] — is perfectly proper, and in fact is the way that people should approach scientific questions of all sort.
Here’s why this is completely and totally fucking wrong, and indicative of deeply problematic racial bias.
If you are going to lead a scientific inquiry about the relative intelligence of racial groups (assuming all definitional problems are solved and that “intelligence” is a single variable), then there are three potential outcomes, generally speaking:
1.) W (whites) are more intelligent than B (blacks).
2.) W and B are equally intelligent.
3.) W are less intelligent than B.
Whenever this tired old debate is brought up, the only propositions that are ever introduced are 1 and 2. Grace never mentioned 3. Volokh never mentioned 3. Nobody I’ve ever had this debate with has ever mentioned 3. It’s because the debate that you’re having isn’t about science’s ability to measure racial intelligence as a genetic factor - it’s about the defense of racial stereotypes as something you can’t disprove and therefore shouldn’t be so damned sensitive about.
It’s simply not a good faith debate, and it can’t be approached as such. This isn’t idle intellectual curiosity leading to potentially uncomfortable truths; this is goading the forces of “PC” into madness through use of a false and racist binary.
And yes, this is as calmly and rationally as this contention needs to be addressed. If you don’t like it, I’m sure we could test people who say ignorant things for a genetic predisposition to thin skin.
I’ve held off blogging about the new law in Arizona that puts everyone (at least everyone Hispanic) in danger of being treated as guilty until proven innocent on the charges of illegal immigration. It was a classic case of feeling like everything that needed to be said was said better by others. But I’m going to break out and talk about it now, because I want to support the widespread calls for a boycott of Arizona. The Rachel Maddow show did a segment detailing how widespread and probably effective these calls are:
I’m usually against “boycotts”, mostly because they aren’t really boycotts. Most calls to boycott that I encounter have no objective in mind except to give the boycotter cause to feel morally superior. Most so-called boycotts are utterly useless in exerting pressure, and the targets are neither harmed nor seem to give a shit. For instance, the calls to boycott the Superbowl because of the Tim Tebow ad. What was that supposed to accomplish? CBS wasn’t quaking in their shoes. Most boycotts have no goals, no leadership, no real effect. When I asked people who were claiming to boycott Roman Polanski’s movies to punish him for raping a 13-year-old, I asked them if they really thought that Polanski was going to feel that and then….well do what, exactly? He can’t unrape her. He’s probably not going to stop fleeing from the authorities. The answer was usually, “Well, I just can’t allow myself to give money to him,” which is basically a moral argument about picking up a taint from engaging someone who did something wrong. Not that I’m criticizing that per se. I think there’s value in some kinds of moral repulsion, which is why most of us don’t want to kick around with rapists and murderers. But avoiding something because it repulses you isn’t a boycott.
Boycotts have to be targeted, specific, and wide-reaching to work. The Montgomery bus boycott is the reason people like the idea of boycotts, but you have to look at why it was effective. First of all, a specific goal for the action was outlined, which was ending the segregation policy on city buses in Montgomery. The organizers realized that to have a broad impact, they didn’t need broad action. Specificity wasn’t sacrificed to make a general statement. Second of all, the boycott created consequences for those with the power to change things. Surprisingly few calls for boycotts do this. Third, there was leadership and organization. The message of the boycott was very clear to those feeling the effects of it.
This is why I think a broad boycott of Arizona has the potential to work. First of all, it’s specific. (Repeal this law immediately.) It links the consequences to the law, and the consequences have the potential to be strongly felt, as Rachel explains in the video. It’s widespread, with people from all walks of life and all angles providing leadership on this issue. And it’s organized behind a lot of leadership. You have celebrities speaking out, politicians joining the boycott, pundits encouraging it, even sports writers! It has legs, in other words. Plus, it’s very clear that this has nothing to do with hating on Arizona or some errant issues that are attached to it. Just as the bus boycotters weren’t saying that buses were bad, boycotters here are making it clear they love Arizona, but they will have nothing to do with it until they change their ways.
Similar actions were taken against South Africa in the 80s, and I suspect that they also had tremendous effects. Anti-racism activism is particularly ripe for boycott. One reason is that it attacks the heart of racism itself. Racists are often dismissive of the economic and social contributions of the people they seek to oppress. Boycotts can clarify their contributions to society and also make clear the way that we are all interconnected economically, and that casting people as worthless is not only wrong, but simply false.
So yes, while I usually don’t think that boycotts are a good idea, in this case, I think there’s a strong chance it will work. So please, boycott Arizona until they rescind this law. Don’t visit. Don’t follow their sports teams. Send emails to the people who make money off you in Arizona but won’t explaining why. The more specific, the better. Cancel conferences in Arizona. Tweet the boycott. Encourage everyone you know. Always, always, the more specific the better.
I understand the concept of commemorating the history of the Confederacy; many men died fighting for their beliefs and cultural system of the South. However, you cannot separate the fact that slavery played an integral role in the Confederacy. Gov. Bob McDonnell did.
People for the American Way responded:
Virginia Governor Celebrates the Confederacy, Forgets Slavery
Virginia governor Bob McDonnell issued a proclamation last week declaring April to be Confederate History Month. Virginia’s last two governors, Democrats Tim Kaine and Mark Warner declined to issue a similar proclamation. Republican Jim Gilmore, who served from 1998-2002, was the last Virginia governor to set aside a month to celebrate Confederate History. But McDonnell’s proclamation was noticeably missing one feature that Gilmore’s proclamations all had—a mention of slavery.
Asked why he omitted a mention of slavery from his proclamation, McDonnell said, “There were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.”
People For the American Way President Michael B. Keegan issued the following statement:
“Governor McDonnell’s choice to celebrate Confederate History while omitting any mention of slavery is an egregious rewriting of history. Declaring that slavery wasn’t ‘significant’ enough to merit inclusion in his statement is an insult to the Virginians whose past was shaped by the most abhorrent policies of the Confederacy. Issuing a declaration honoring the confederacy is disturbing enough; failing to acknowledge slavery while doing it is inexcusable.
“Governor McDonnell has repeatedly shown himself to be far more radical than his Republican predecessors, and much more extreme than the moderate image he projected of himself during his campaign. This new attempt to ignore the worst parts of Virginia’s complicated past is irresponsible and dangerous. By appeasing his supporters in the radical Right, he has turned his back on his duty to serve all Virginians. We cannot allow our elected officials to practice this kind of dangerous revisionism.”
You know, speaking of the past, when blacks enjoyed the hospitality of the fruits of the Confederacy— shackled, whipped, raped, etc., we can proudly say that Virginia’s risen from the ashes of the War Between the States. Think of it: someone like Bob McDonnell could seek and receive the endorsement of—and have his hand out for election cash from one Sheila Johnson, billionaire co-founder of Black Entertainment Television and president of the WNBA’s Washington Mystics). God Bless America, Gov. McDonnell.
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UPDATE: It appears that Sheila Johnson got her comeuppance for forking over dough to this bigot. Now she’s released a statement condemning his decision to reinstate Confederate History Month:
“I must condemn Governor McDonnell’s Proclamation honoring ‘Confederate History Month,’ and its insensitive disregard of Virginia’s complicated and painful history, the remnants of which many Virginians still wrestle with today.
“The complete omission of slavery from an official government document, which purports to be a call for Virginians to ‘understand’ and ’study’ their history, is both academically flawed and personally offensive. If Virginians are to celebrate their ’shared history,’ as this proclamation suggests, then the whole truth of this history must be recognized and not evaded.”
My, my—is it too late to do an “I told you so” to Ms. Moneybags? The humiliation is deserved, because she not only gave buxxx, she did commercials for the guy and stumped for the bigot. In this video, she starts out with “we need someone who can communicate,” then proceeds to mock challenger Deeds’ stutter. Holy crap.
Here’s her endorsement of Bob McDonnell. Sheila, watch and weep about how much money he extracted from your fat wallet then went home whistling “Dixie.”
Hat tip, PFAW’s Josh Glasstetter., who has some reactions from the right wing below the fold.
Back January of last year, America got a look, courtesy of a cell phone camera of a rider on a BART train in Oakland, CA, at the cold-blooded murder of a handcuffed, down-on-the-ground 22-year-old named Oscar Grant on a train platform.
Good news, though it’s sorry that it’s come to this—-
Supporters of the Arizona “papers please” law keep insisting that the only motivation for the law is a strict love of law-and-order, and that racism has nothing to do with it. And that anyone who disagrees is the real racist because neener neener neener. We’re expected to believe that this doesn’t stem from a tidal wave of racial hatred that’s rising in Arizona, probably in no small part because of Obama’s election (and beating of a candidate from their own state, adding to the nationalist sentiment). This was a hard story to buy in the first place, but it gets harder and harder all the time to take that excuse seriously. 
If there’s one Republican in this country I have sympathy for, it’s South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley. Two men are 
Arizona just banned 
I understand the concept of commemorating the history of the Confederacy; many men died fighting for their beliefs and cultural system of the South. However, you cannot separate the fact that slavery played an integral role in the Confederacy. Gov. Bob McDonnell did. 
You know, speaking of the past, when blacks enjoyed the hospitality of the fruits of the Confederacy— shackled, whipped, raped, etc., we can proudly say that Virginia’s risen from the ashes of the War Between the States. Think of it: someone like Bob McDonnell