APP - Dog Whistle Politics

M

midcan5

Member
Repost: I will update later as this topic is in the news again today with the University of Missouri resignation.

Interesting book I am currently reading.

Preface: LEARNING ABOUT RACISM AT HARVARD LAW

"Two themes dominate American politics today: at the forefront is declining economic opportunity; coursing underneath is race. This book connects the two. It explains popular enthusiasm for policies injuring the middle class in terms of "dog whistle politics": coded racial appeals that carefully manipulate hostility toward nonwhites. Examples of dog whistling include repeated blasts about criminals and welfare cheats, illegal aliens, and shari a law in the heartland. Superficially, these provocations have nothing to do with race, yet they nevertheless powerfully communicate messages about threatening nonwhites. In the last so years, dog whistle politics has driven broad swaths of white voters to adopt a self-defeating hostility toward government, and in the process has remade the very nature of race and racism. American politics today-and the crisis of the middle class-simply cannot be understood without recognizing racism's evolution and the power of pernicious demagoguery.

I initially sketched the ideas elaborated here in the Sixteenth Annual Derrick Bell Lecture on Race in American Society, delivered at New York University in the fall of 2011. The professor honored by the lecture series, Derrick Bell, passed away less than a month before the lecture he had invited me to deliver. You may have heard of him . Leading up to the 2012 election, a rightwing media outfit promised a "bombshell" about President Barack Obama. It turned out to be a grainy video of Obama as a student at Harvard Law School introducing Bell at a rally, and then giving him a hug. The warm clasp, media provocateur Andrew Breirbart's group claimed, symbolized Obamas full embrace of an intellectual leader they described as "the worst Johnny Appleseed of a nasty racialist legal theory [that argues] that the law is a weapon of the majority whites to oppress 'people of color.'"

From: 'Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class' by Ian Haney López
 
Not sure. I spend a few years in that area and I'm not surprised by some of the hostility but this appears to be a very complex story and we've only heard a fraction of it so I'm not passing judgement just yet but I'd have to say that when the Governor tells the University President it's time to "Bleep" or get off the pot and he still does nothing....his resignation shortly there after comes as no surprise.
 
Racism has gone so deep into the psyche of Americans, especially conservative Americans, they do not even see it and instead use the 'race card' as a deflection. Amazing how people can so easily be programmed. Below is a bit of an answer for those who can still see.


"LOPEZ: You know, for me, I heard this the speech and the end, and I thought about the way that it seemed connected to a strain of American conservatism that holds that the "real racist" is he or she who brings up race first, brings it up directly and says that it must be considered. It stems from the idea of colorblindness -- a once-liberal idea that essentially held that our race or ethnicity was not all that defined us but we still need to be mindful of how race continues to shape our lives, our options."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...t-tim-wolfes-very-telling-resignation-speech/

"The protesters at this school are saying we are concerned about and we must confront the great moral outrage of racism. And [in this section], the president is saying that we must worry about declining standards of etiquette.

Rather than address the substance of the students' concerns or the structure that put the students in the position that they felt they had to engage in protests, the president is criticizing them for protesting loudly and, I guess, shutting down their football games. And right there, you see the kernel of the problem on this campus. The university president fails to understand the circumstances the students are contending with and essentially dismisses them or, until his resignation, his obligation to listen to them and address them because the students did not ask nicely, they were not dressed in their Sunday best.

In some ways, this kind of fundamental misunderstanding is understandable.

There is a stereotype of African Americans being threatening, and that is embodied in the president’s language, his use of words such as “intimidation.” There is also revisionist myth making about civil rights protests that asks or at this point virtually allows some of us to only look back on them in this odd way. You hear people say things like 'look how neatly dressed they were, they were so polite.'"
 
The University of Missouri situation is certainly presenting a lot of interesting topics for discussion:

1) Race: obviously this was the initial issue here that was being protested. The obvious discussion revolves around what the environment is on campus and specific examples can be given of racial slurs etc... (though the three brought up in this case seem to have zero documentation).

2) Professional protesters: Seems like there are people that want to protest just for the sake of protesting. These can easily be identified by their 'outrage' coupled with a distinct inability to voice their concerns and the outcome they desire without the use of vague platitudes. Here we need to discuss the constant need by some to be 'outraged' and thus lead us down these moronic paths. We can also discuss the complete hypocrisy of the those pretending they are fighting for equal rights/protection/treatment all the while violating someone else's rights. (already a thread in the main section on that)

3) The 24/7 access to the internet and the ability to spark 'outrage' with just a rumor: As we saw with the 'KKK is on campus/being escorted by police/throwing bricks' hysteria that turned out to be nothing but a rumor that almost turned into a panic. This one is ripe for discussion. The fact that this could have easily turned to panic over a bogus rumor is a concern. The ability to post something instantly via fb, instagram, youtube, twitter etc... can be good, but as we see in this case, it can equally be bad. Especially when it is begun by a person of 'authority/leadership' as happened in this case. The student body leader most likely was simply trying to protect fellow classmates with the warning, but he put them in a (understandably) frenzied mode by posting the KKK rumor without verifying. The fact that he told people in the same post he was coordinating with police AND the national guard gave increased credibility to his post. Students feared leaving their campus dorms/apartments etc... and of course other idiots soon followed with additional unsubstantiated rumors.
 
(Black) Jason Whitlock crushes arguments made by white liberals like midcan regarding Missou and racism.



Crying Wolfe Exposes Real Problem


Chicago buried nine-year-old Tyshawn Lee on Tuesday. Police allege gang members lured the boy into an alley and executed him in a revenge killing aimed at his father.


Father Michael Pfleger, a white minister in a predominantly black Chicago community, eulogized Lee and castigated our society, blaming the boy’s death on our “lost conscience.”

How can we argue?

The execution of an innocent black boy draws the attention of a handful of local dignitaries while the death of a black teenager foolish enough to wrestle a cop for control of a gun helps foment unrest on a nearby college campus seven months after then-attorney general Eric Holder destroyed the fallacy of “Hands Up Don’t Shoot.”

Lies stacked on top of lies create the bullshit we’re witnessing in Columbia, Missouri. Clever faculty members, in my opinion, baited a small group of misguided black students into stirring a racial shitstorm strong enough to attract Twitter-addicted journalists looking for their next relevancy hit off the Black Lives Matter crack pipe.

The absurdity of the past week at Mizzou couldn’t be duplicated on South Park.

A 25-year-old, “Fresh Prince” black grad student threatened to starve himself to death under the pretense that the school president hadn’t done enough to stop unidentified white men from uttering the N-word when passing by in trucks and carving swastikas with poop.

The white liberal, Ta-Nehisi Coates-quoting mafia declared Mizzou an unsafe space and a hostile killing field for blacks and opened their media platforms to any person willing to share a story about hearing the N-word while in Columbia the past 50 years.

“Cry Wolfe!” is how this entire episode should be remembered. Liberal academics talked black kids into crying wolf over racially tinged rude behavior so an unpopular president would be unseated.

Adult professors who should be educating kids on the continuing damage of institutional racism, instead built a human shield around a tent city set up to host the starvation of an N-word fighter disguised as a freedom fighter.

A redneck showing his ass with verbal garbage while driving a truck isn’t racism. It’s a redneck showing his ass. Racism is a system of exploitation rooted in race. The NCAA amateurism charade is a solid example. Walter Byers, the white conservative modern architect of the NCAA, described the system he created this way in his 1997 memoir:

“Today the NCAA Presidents Commission is preoccupied with tightening a few loose bolts in a worn machine, firmly committed to the neo-plantation belief that the enormous proceeds from the college games belong to the overseers (administrators) and supervisors (coaches). The plantation workers performing in the arena may only receive those benefits authorized by the overseers.”

You’d think if the Missouri football players were going to strike, they’d choose NCAA amateurism as their cause, not the homecoming king’s hurt feelings. And you’d think if the son of a millionaire was going to threaten to end his life over an injustice, he’d choose an inspiration more heart-wrenching than a poop-stained Nazi symbol.

Why not choose Tyshawn Lee?

Ask one of those liberal academics to explain the connection between mass incarceration and gang violence. They go together like peanut butter and jelly. The ruthless, gang-related execution of a black child is a direct outgrowth of mass incarceration and its corrosive impact on morality, decency and humanity.

Concerned Student 1950 needs to ask Mizzou’s liberal academics to carry them to Tyshawn Lee’s neighborhood and create a safe space there. Seriously. Assimilated, spoiled black kids showing up on modern college campuses and pretending they’re standing on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 is f—ing embarrassing. What’s worse is assimilated, spoiled black journalists selling the righteousness of their cause.

Columbia ain’t our problem. Chicago is.


That’s not a statement vouching for the purity of Columbia. It’s rational, mature acknowledgment that there are not, never have been and never will be any safe spaces on earth free of rude, uncomfortable behavior by humans. We’re flawed. We do dumb shit.

The appropriate questions for the kids, the journalists and their white, liberal enablers/manipulators are: 1) Which area is more in need of a safe space, Mizzou’s campus or Lee’s neighborhood? 2) Why are liberals pouring the most energy and passion into policing the safest space? 3) Why have those same liberals declared war on the very people and profession (police) they call at the first sign of trouble in the most unsafe space?

It’s all enough to make you think they don’t really have the best interest of black folk in mind. Let me remind you again: In general, African-Americans are the most religious people in America. We are traditionally conservative, which does not mean Republican. The black church, where Father Pfleger serves, has always looked first to create safe spaces where black people live.

I’m not evangelizing. I’m trying to show you who’s on your Day 1 team and who’s driving a limousine offering rides to tokens willing to be used as pawns.

I’m also trying to avoid ridiculing millennials. Whatever their shortcomings are, they’re a reflection of previous generations’ failures. We turned the education of our best and brightest kids over to predominantly white schools. We allowed them to abandon the black church. It’s not difficult to understand why they can’t distinguish between rude behavior and racism.

Liberal elites define racism as “code words” and “dog whistles” and the utterance of the N-word by white people. They reduced racism to a language. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall and our Greatest Generation defined racism as laws and policy.

Teach that in your home, at your church and at school and there won’t be another smokescreen, racial circus the next time faculty decide to overthrow a high-ranking administrator. I’d suggest the media teach it, too, but I can’t reduce the message to a 140-character tweet.


http://j.school/post/133025099640/crying-wolfe-exposes-real-problem
 
Curiously I would agree with much Jason Whitlock says, except for the fact he engages in the same dog whistles, only this time they are aimed at black college students and a journalist. Does he really believe white liberal professors manage the minds of these students? Do they not have a right to protest behaviors they find unacceptable and do not these same behaviors inform the creation of slums and inner cities in which Tyshawn Lee was killed? Should Jason Whitlock think race doesn't matter when it is only name calling, I'll suggest a few neighborhoods in Philly he may want to move into. I'll check back in a week or so to see whether he is still using, 'sticks and stones may...' Good luck is the best I can say, and we'll leave gentrification out of this discussion for now.

Finally his piece misses the forest and most of the trees, even though he sees aspects of our racial environment he doesn't help. The article doesn't address dog whistle politics nor dog whistle racism, he may want to check some history rather than assuming these students are being controlled by the liberal bogeyman. "A man has a right not to be insulted in front of his children." President Lyndon Johnson 'the moral necessity of the 1964 Civil Rights Act'

'Dog Whistle Politics As Strategic Racism'

"Wallace, Goldwater, and Nixon constitute classic strategic racists. In the context of the times, they were all initially racial moderates. They may have harbored tainted beliefs, but racial animosity did not drive their actions. Instead, they concentrated hard, weighing and sifting, to figure out how they could most effectively gain votes. If a more promising route had been available, they would have taken it. But race seemed the most likely avenue, so each opted to harness racial divisions to their agenda of getting elected. This was not about racism, it was about winning. Also, they were not racially omniscient, moving instead within a settled framework of ideas about race that for the most part they took for granted. Even so, unlike most in society, these politicians thought long and deep about how to turn race to their advantage. We've previously defined strategic racism as purposeful efforts to use racial animosity as leverage to gain political power (or material wealth and social standing). By this definition, Wallace, Goldwater, and Nixon acted out of strategic racism.

This last sentence sparks an important clarification. I write interchangeably of "dog whistle politics" and "dog whistle racism." The first is a less freighted term. But the truth is, racial dog whistle politics is dog whistle racism. It is a strategic manipulation of racial ideas in pursuit of political power and (especially once big money conservatives got behind the tactic) material wealth." p48 'Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class' by Ian Haney López


"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you." Lyndon Johnson
 
Call it dog whistle politics but it's classical Machiavellian politics. If you tell a down trodden, disadvantaged or oppressed people that you have identified the villains responsible for their situation and that you have a Solution to those villains you can build a political constituency based on that solution. Hitler is the classic modern example of this when he successfully demonized Jews as being responsible for the catastrophe of the First World War and the ensuing world wide economic depression. The German people bought it. The southern strategy is another example of this form of Machiavellian politics and explains why working class whites ally themselves to a political party which does not have their economic interest at heart.
 
Interesting, Mott. So what do you think about demonizing the successful and telling a group they are downtrodden because of them will do?
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Call it dog whistle politics but it's classical Machiavellian politics. If you tell a down trodden, disadvantaged or oppressed people that you have identified the villains responsible for their situation and that you have a Solution to those villains you can build a political constituency based on that solution. Hitler is the classic modern example of this when he successfully demonized Jews as being responsible for the catastrophe of the First World War and the ensuing world wide economic depression. The German people bought it. The southern strategy is another example of this form of Machiavellian politics and explains why working class whites ally themselves to a political party which does not have their economic interest at heart.
Click to expand...


What an interesting analysis. Yet somehow you seem to missing the part where one political party tells a particular group (the poor) that all of their suffering is at the hands of another particular group (the rich).

I guess the irony of your post is lost on you. I can probably answer for you. You will say "In this case it is true"
 
Machiavellian doesn't touch the racist element, it oddly like 'colorblind' which can be used both to excuse and justify is just another idea used to hide the reality of racism. I'm not you are has never gotten past 5th grade thought.

"So how does dog whistle racism wreck the middle class? Racial demagoguery convinces many whites to think about government help in terms of race, and then to reject liberalism and the lessons of the New Deal in favor of the nostrums promoted by corporate titans and loaded insiders. We've already discussed massive tax giveaways to the very rich, attacks on welfare programs, and assaults on affirmative action. Other mechanisms from the 1980s included the hamstringing of labor, epitomized by Reagan's mass firing of air traffic controllers who went out on strike, a blow not just to that union but a clear signal of increasing governmental hostility toward organized labor. In addition, the middle class suffered from economic deregulation, particularly in the banking industry, which led to massive fraud in and the collapse of the savings and loan sector. In a harbinger of financial deregulation's effects following 2008, the ensuing economic meltdown slowed the economy and led to widespread unemployment that endured for years. Beyond economic deregulation, the Reagan administration also began a sustained campaign against environmental regulation, freeing large polluters from government oversight. Justifying this hands-off approach, Reagan infamously belittled the whole idea of controlling pollution by quipping that trees cause more pollution than automobiles.

The predictable results can be summarized in poverty statistics. From 1960 to 1970, as the New Deal expanded into the Great Society, the number of Americans in poverty declined from 40 million to under 2S million. During the 1970s, after the rise of dog whistle politics but before its full hijacking by rightwing oligarchs, the numbers in poverty remained steady. During the 1980s, as Reagan and then George H.W. Bush reigned, those in poverty soared to 3S million. At the end of Clinton's second term in 2000, those mired in poverty had fallen to just above 30 million. But following the Great Recession that marked the end George W. Bush's presidency, over 46 million Americans were in poverty." That's an additional 16 million good folks pushed into the material and emotional hardship of destitution in just one decade.

This book's subtitle suggests that race-baiting wrecks the middle class, as indeed it does. This is not, however, to claim that the purpose behind racial demagoguery is to destroy average Americans-it is not. The point, for politicians such as Wallace and Nixon, was to get elected and re-elected. Simultaneously, big money came to see dog whistling as a way to promote policies that favored society's sultans. These policies are, roughly, the same policies advocated by the malefactors of great wealth during the era of the robber baron: low taxes, a minimal or non-existent social safety net, and corporate control over the regulation of industry. These were, of course, policies that voters had repudiated during the New Deal as well as in the sweeping defeat of Barry Goldwater. Through their newly muscled think tanks and aided by Ronald Reagan, however, the modern plutocrats reintroduced these prescriptions to the American public as a response to the excesses of the civil rights era. Their aim was not to wreck the middle class, but to convince average Americans to support policies that transferred wealth and power to the already extremely wealthy and powerful. Like the nonwhites injured by dog whistle racism, the middle class was not a target-just collateral damage." p74,75 'Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class' by Ian Haney López
 
Thought this thread important enough to deserve a bump.

“The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it’s a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black in America and you fall in love with a white person, race doesn’t matter when you’re alone together because it’s just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters. But we don’t talk about it. We don’t even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we’re worried they will say we’re overreacting, or we’re being too sensitive. And we don’t want them to say, Look how far we’ve come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we’re thinking when they say that? We’re thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don’t say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn’t matter because that’s what we’re supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable. It’s true. I speak from experience." Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

"Black people think in terms of we because we live in a society where the social and political structures interact with us as Black people." from https://thsppl.com/i-racist-538512462265

"...One did not have to be very bright to realize how little one could do to change one’s situation; one did not have to be abnormally sensitive to be worn down to a cutting edge by the incessant and gratuitous humiliation and danger one encountered every working day, all day long. The humiliation did not apply merely to working days, or workers; I was thirteen and was crossing Fifth Avenue on my way to the Forty-second Street library, and the cop in the middle of the street muttered as I passed him, “Why don’t you niggers stay uptown where you belong?” When I was ten, and didn’t look, certainly, any older, two policemen amused themselves with me by frisking me, making comic (and terrifying) speculations concerning my ancestry and probable sexual prowess, and, for good measure, leaving me flat on my back in one of Harlem’s empty lots. Just before and then during the Second World War, many of my friends fled into the service, all to be changed there, and rarely for the better, many to be ruined, and many to die. Others fled to other states and cities—that is, to other ghettos. Some went on wine or whiskey or the needle, and are still on it. And others, like me, fled into the church." James Baldwin Letter from a Region in My Mind - The New Yorker
 
There is a conservative, republican meme that controls the thought process of the average conservative or republican, it is that government, and especially democratic or liberal government supports minorities through various policies. These policies become dog whistles, say welfare, food stamps, inner city, crime, etc and the republican citizen hears the whistle. Thought is missing and it is missing in so many ways. Given that, I thought this piece worth sharing. Of course today in republican run states, policies support the wealthy and corporations, thus the appeal of Trump and Sanders. The grand irony of the appeal of these presumed outsiders is the same ideas that manage their minds have turned against them in the global economy. But darned if they know why? Brainwashing takes many forms.

'The Racist Roots of a Way to Sell Homes'

"From the 1930s through the 1960s, most African-Americans could not get mortgages because the government had deemed neighborhoods where they lived ineligible for federal mortgage insurance, the Depression-era innovation that made mortgages widely affordable."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/29/opinion/the-racist-roots-of-a-way-to-sell-homes.html
 
An interesting piece on a topic Americans cannot and do not face. When we grew up we were what would, or could, be called white trash. Mom lived her religion, she did, rather than preached and she had more children than my father's job would support. Did we consider ourselves 'white trash' of course not. Dad looked his heritage, so the better off probably thought this was all we could be. LOL

But the poor whites in this nation do not in my opinion see the true causes of their stagnant position. A few of my brothers and I made it to that rarefied air of upper class, most didn't but still do OK. Mom preached education. So how is it that the jargon, and especially conservative republican propaganda, keeps the working white poor, working white poor and still gets their vote? I think I know. Anyone else?

"The deep roots of “white trash” in America: “Not only are we not a post-racial society, we are certainly not a post-class society”

http://www.salon.com/2016/07/09/the...ty_we_are_certainly_not_a_post_class_society/


"Racism introduces absurdity into the human condition. Not only does racism express the absurdity of the racists, but it generates absurdity in the victims. And the absurdity of the victims intensifies the absurdity of the racists, ad infinitum. If one lives in a country where racism is held valid and practiced in all ways of life, eventually, no matter whether one is a racist or a victim, one comes to feel the absurdity of life." Chester Himes
 
Trump's shows how little America has changed.

"Over the next few months, pundits and scholars will dissect this election. Many will find fault with Hillary Clinton and her campaign. Some will blame James Comey and the FBI. Others will hold the third-party candidacies of Jill Stein and Gary Johnson responsible for her defeat. But most will talk about the discontent of working-class white Americans, how elites dismissed them with scorn and treated them with condescension, and how they, in the end, rejected the status quo and the economic philosophy that has left them behind. These are the folks Donald Trump called “the forgotten men and women of our country,” and this election will be read as their revenge.

But that is a lie. To be sure, non-college-educated, working-class white men overwhelmingly voted for Trump. But what the early exit-poll data, with all of its flaws, reveal is a much more complicated picture. The fact, and it is one this country must confront, is that the majority of White America voted for Trump to be the 45th President of the United States. According to the results of the Edison Research’s national election poll, 53% of white women voted for him and 48% of young white people supported him. Large numbers of college-educated white women (45%) and men (54%) voted for him. What is becoming increasingly clear is that White America, writ large, supported the candidate who wants to ban Muslims, build a wall on our southern border and deport undocumented workers; who calls himself the candidate of law and order; and who degrades and demeans women. This isn’t the revenge of working-class white men alone. White America—and I mean those who see themselves as white people, not as those who happen to be white—has struck back." Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. Nov. 9, 2016, Time Magazine


"Will Trump make America great again? The question is absurd. The real question is this: when was the country great, and for whom? In the not-so-distant past, it was certainly better for union members who could earn a living, for educators whose jobs were not tied to test scores, for anyone who worked in manufacturing. The country is better now for people of color, for gays and lesbians, for women, and for the disabled. This progress has been grotesquely misinterpreted to mean that the country is worse for white people. Such thinking is false logic. One does not rule out the other. Straight white men, especially those who have inherited family fortunes, are doing just fine in America. The problem is that some of them are trying to ruin it for the rest of us." By Chris Offutt

'IN THE HOLLOW, The changing face of Appalachia — and its role in the presidential race' Harper’s Magazine / November 2016
 
I'm glad to see so many views on this thread, an important topic that once again reared its ugly head in this election.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyng...t-right-a-dumping-ground-for-trumpian-losers/

https://aeon.co/ideas/why-the-nazis-studied-american-race-laws-for-inspiration

"White men went 63 percent for Trump versus 31 percent for Clinton, and white women went 53-43 percent. Among college-educated whites, only 39 percent of men and 51 percent of women voted for Clinton." https://newrepublic.com/article/138...ory-college-educated-whites-not-working-class


"The main hypothesis concerning group-think is this: the more amiability and espirt de corps among the members of an in-group of policymakers the greater the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and the dehumanizing actions directed at out-groups." Irving L. Janis in 'Sanctions for Evil'
 
Check out thecritique this month, excellent piece on last election etc. This editorial was one part of the coverage.

"Given the reality of its particular past, however, the obstinacy of white superiority seems inevitable for America’s foreseeable future."

"If you weren’t an Afro-pessimist or a racial realist before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, then you might be now. By Afro-pessimism and racial realism, I mean the general idea that racism has been so indelibly dyed into the fabric of the United States that it likely is permanent. We can’t seem to scrub it out, no matter which laws, civil rights movements, good intentions, protests, or other anti-racist elbow-grease we bring to the task. This isn’t an abstract, ahistorical claim. It takes the concrete details of history very seriously. In fact, doing so is precisely what points to the plausibility of Afro-pessimism and racial realism."

http://www.thecritique.com/articles/duboisafropessimism/

“What would you say to a soft, brown face, aureoled in a thousand ripples of gray-black hair, which knells suddenly: ‘Do you trust white people?’ You do not and you know that you do not, much as you want to; yet you rise and lie and say you do; you must say it for her salvation and the world’s; you repeat that she must trust them, that most white folks are honest, and all the while you are lying and every level, silent eye there knows you are lying, and miserably you sit and lie on, to the greater glory of God”. W.E.B. Du Bois, 'Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil'
 
I came across this quote recently and it asks a question few ever think of - why? Also I am reading 'White Trash' and learned that even white trash were once called the N word. Fascinating read.

"What white people have to do is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a ‘nigger’ in the first place, because I’m not a nigger, I’m a man. But if you think I’m a nigger, it means you need him. The question you’ve got to ask yourself, is, if you invented him, you the white people invented him, then you’ve got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that, whether or not it is able to ask that question.” Baldwin

http://contemporarycondition.blogspot.com/2017/03/horror-blackness.html
 
One of my favorite writers on topic.

'The American civil war didn't end. And Trump is a Confederate president'

"In the 158th year of the American civil war, also known as 2018, the Confederacy continues its recent resurgence. Its victims include black people, of course, but also immigrants, Jews, Muslims, Latinos, trans people, gay people and women who want to exercise jurisdiction over their bodies."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top