Tag Archives: Race

Political Rants

Whiteness.

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Full disclosure: I’m a white person. No big surprise there. (Just listen to my music.) And while I don’t consider myself a racist, I know that a traditional American racist world view is woven into my consciousness as a white person. I grew up around racist white people throughout my entire youth, spending a good portion of that in a virtually entirely white school system (in New York state). My third grade teacher said openly racist things in class; chastised me for taking exception to them. My grandfather said racist things, my dad occasionally said things that were borderline racist (as deeply opposed to racism as he was). That is the murky water in which I was steeped, as were so many other white people.

Hey, I'm busy sucking here!And like most honest white people of a certain age, I admit to the fact that sometimes, when there are only white people within earshot, other white people will sometimes say racist things. For most of us, there are a lot of opportunities for this to happen, since many of us inhabit a world made up mostly of people who share our skin color. This is a persistent source of disgust, particularly when the comments come from people who do not by any means consider themselves racist. (Every gaggle a Klan rally, right?)

It’s this sort of insular communion that people like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly have with their audiences. Their broadcasts are like enormous around-the-water-cooler kvetch sessions about dark people of every description. That’s why they can get away with promoting a white resentment line that includes frequent alarms about “reparations” and the like. Limbaugh went so far as to sing the virtues of slave-owning white society, claiming that white people enslaved fewer people than any other race, and crowing about how we “fought a war” to end slavery, unlike other slave-owning people. This is, to my mind, the equivalent of holocaust denial, but barely a peep about it beyond MSNBC and other liberal outlets.

You can hear echoes of this in the comments of that first Zimmerman trial juror who spoke out publicly to Anderson Cooper. Not so much the presumption of innocence as the presumption of good intentions. We’ve all got a little bit of this at least, and it has got to go, or it will kill again.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Assumptions.

So Zimmerman walks. I can’t say as I’m surprised. It is now apparently legal to kill people in Florida, particularly if your victim is black. I should say not exclusively – my neighbor spends half of his time in Florida, and he told me about a “Stand Your Ground” case at his retirement community wherein a Vietnam Vet shot his wife’s lover dead and got off based on Stand Your Ground. The victim was white, but from another country, so that may have been “other” enough for the law. It seems like if your intention is to kill someone, all you need to do is get them alone in Florida and give them the gun, so to speak. So long as there’s no witnesses, it’s your word against theirs.

That aside, let’s consider what this verdict says, in truth:

Not suspiciousKiller Sidewalks. The Zimmerman trial introduced the concept of the sidewalk as a deadly weapon. I suppose this means that any (black) person strolling down the sidewalk can now be considered armed and dangerous. Amazing what legal and logical gyrations we go through to exonerate a white guy who just shot a black guy dead. Who says he was unarmed? He had that deadly sidewalk! 

Thirty Yards. The prosecution failed not only to discredit the defense’s story but to communicate in concrete terms an alternative story that fit the facts.  Martin’s body was found something like ten yards away from the sidewalk. How could Zimmerman have been in mortal danger when the “deadly weapon” (see above) was that far away from where he shot the kid? Why wasn’t the prosecution all over this like a cheap suit?

Silent Witness. Ultimately, the defense put Trayvon Martin on trial. There is one person who knows what happened that night, and he was sitting in that courtroom wearing his stoic wannabe cop face. Sure, he has a constitutional right not to testify. But I don’t see why the prosecution couldn’t have made more of a point of his reluctance to testify.

The Video. I think the item that defines the core issues in this case is the police station video of Zimmerman being processed by the cops after the shooting. He is not only ambulatory, he seems positively casual. The cops treat him at worst like a crime victim, but really more like a colleague. It’s this assumption of innocence in the face of overwhelming indications of guilt that speaks directly to how race plays a role in the outcome. Based on those assumptions, Martin’s body was not properly examined for forensic evidence, the crime scene was not properly protected … the case was lost then.

Note to John Roberts: racism still appears to be alive.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Race to the bottom.

This whole business about Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department staffer from Georgia –  this is an extremely ugly picture, and we’ve seen it before. What’s more, we’re likely to see it again before long.

There’s been enough commentary on this to fill a supertanker, so I’ll just make a few brief observations. What this event tells me most superficially is something I already knew – that the Obama administration is unbelievably pusillanimous. Christ almighty, sometimes these guys make Bill Clinton seem like Hercules (… and he wasn’t). They may be the only people outside of hard-core tea party types that appear to believe everything they hear on Fox news. More likely, though, they are so focused on projecting this image of post-racial America that they respond in knee-jerk fashion to any claim of reverse racism, no matter how unfounded. Combine that with their tendency to throw left-leaning staffers, like Van Jones, overboard at the first sign of trouble (unlike the Geithners and Salazars of the world), and you’ve got a White House that allows Roger Ailes to make their personnel decisions for them. Now there’s a real formula for success.

My main question here is, who is behind this? We’ve heard the names of the idiotic right-wing blogger and the various Fox news spokesmorons. But where did that clip come from originally? Who, exactly, is trying to promote racial resentment among whites? No question but that right-wing elements of the Republican party are exploiting this sort of thing all the time. They have their sources. So… who looked at this video, made the precise edit that would create the erroneous inflammatory impression, then sent it along to the clown-like Breitbart?

One thing we would do well to remember – racism remains a strong undercurrent in American life, and so long as it does, there will be those who will use it to their political advantage. With a black man in the White House – one with an overtly African name – there will always be suspicions on the part of crypto-racists that black people are taking over, pressing their momentary advantage, marginalizing good, upstanding white Christian Americans. That’s why we’re hearing all these ludicrous stories about the “New Black Panthers” – i.e. two dudes standing outside a polling station in a majority black district. That’s why we get Breitbart, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Beck, and Hannity screaming about reverse racism. Even when it’s ultimately demonstrated as bogus, the impression remains with those whose prejudices need only the mildest validation.

Shall we overcome? We shall see.

luv u,

jp