“That Conversation about Race” category archive
Cyber-Bigots Cultivate Virtual Bigotry 0
The Seattle Times takes a deep dive into the proliferation racist zoombombings and finds that they are increasingly coordinated efforts:
Follow the link for their evidence.
Driving While Black 0
Many years ago, in my incarnation as a technical trainer (training is training; the skills are the same, only the subject matter varies, though, natch, you do have to master the subject matter), I was teaching a class about how to implement a piece of security software manufactured by my employer of the time. During casual chit-chat on a break, one of the students, the owner of security business who happened to be a black man, told me a story.
He was visiting his mother, a financially well-situated woman who lived in a gated community outside a major city a little bit north of Toledo, Ohio, in the upper Midwest. He was running an errand at her request and happened to be driving her Mercedes.
The police stopped him because, for some reason, they thought he needed to prove that he belonged.
What, one wonders, might that reason might have been?
Image via Job’s Anger.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Saying the quiet stuff out loud.
The racism is appalling (but not surprising). The stupid, though, is astounding.
And, in more news of the Secesh . . . .
The Two Oaths 0
The Hippocratic Oath is sworn by doctors. If you come to a doctor complaining of a non-existent condition, the doctor will not treat you for it. Rather, he will accept the medical evidence that you have no such condition (and perhaps refer you counseling).
The Hypocritical Oath is sworn by Republican politicians. If you come to them complaining of a non-existent condition, they’ll treat the bejesus out of it.
The Vice of the Turtle 0
At the Idaho State Journal, Chris Huston writes of Republicans’, and particularly Mitch McConnell’s, reactions to Coca-Cola, Major League Baseball, and other organizations who were uppity* enough to take exception Georgia’s new voter suppression law.
Just read it.
(Syntax error fixed.)
______________________
*I use that word advisedly. I am certain it is one that Republicans use behind their closed doors.
(Rotten to the) Core Values 0
At the Washington Monthly, David Atkins uses Tucker Carlson’s recent endorsement of “replacement theory” as a springboard to dive into what passes for (as?) “conservatism” in America’s current discourse. Here’s the crux; follow the link for the rest.
Because it is a fact that white men have held and continue to hold the vast majority of wealth and power in America, you must believe one of two things must be true: either you believe that white men are intrinsically more deserving, or you believe that institutional patriarchy and racism have combined to suppress and oppress women and people of color from gaining access to wealth and power on a level playing field. If you believe the latter, you meet the minimum standard for adherence to modern social liberalism and make yourself a pariah among conservatives. If you believe the former, you are by definition a chauvinist and white supremacist. If you claim not to be a chauvinist or white supremacist, but you believe that no actions should be taken to even protest–much less regulate or redistribute resources–to mitigate structural racism and patriarchy, you are inseparable from chauvinists and white supremacists at a social or policy level. One cannot simply declare the problem solved and assume everyone now has the same opportunities to succeed, because the problem is so obviously not solved at either a social or a policy level, and everyone so obviously does not have the same opportunities.
This is yet another reminder that Richard Nixon’s odious Southern Strategy has come full circle and turned the Party of Lincoln into the Party of the Secesh.
Moneyball 0
E. J. Montini provides the pay-by-pay commentary.
A Question of Identity 0
Dominic J. Packer and Jay Van Bavel explore why bystanders just stand by and onlookers just look on.
Cancel Culture, Republican Style 0
Doing the very thing they were railing against an instant ago. . . .