“That Conversation about Race” category archive
Base Desires 0
Werner Herzog’s Bear takes a close look at Donald Trump’s base and suggests the economic anxiety is secondary to his cultural factors in his appeal thereunto. A nugget (emphasis added); follow the link for the rest.
The fundamental issue beneath this cultural anxiety is that the country is changing in ways that Trump’s people don’t like. It’s becoming less white, less rural, less Christian. Trump voters are concerned that they will no longer be the unquestioned norm in American life. This is why “cancel culture” is such a potent meme for them. This is why my trip to an Italian deli in mid-June included an old white guy yelling a profanity-laced tirade at the owner about statues being toppled.
Tales of the Trumpling: Snapshots of Trickle-Down Trumpery 0
One of the things that I have trouble wrapping my mind around when I read of conduct such as this, beyond the hatred and the bigotry, is the plain down-home rudeness of it all.
“Can That Be Called Violence?” 0
I received an email recently from a friend of mine (it was not sent solely to me; I was but one of a number of addressees).
I met him some years ago. shortly after I moved to these parts, when I worked on his sadly unsuccessful campaign for local office; we have stayed in sporadic touch since then.
My most vivid memory of him is of the time we dining with a black woman, a mutual acquaintance and political activist, who had grown up in Connecticut; we were trying to explain to her what is was like to live under Jim Crow, he from his perspective as an African American sailor stationed in these parts in those days and me as a white guy, a native Southerner, who grew up under Jim Crow and went to segregated schools.
I am sharing this with his permission. It’s a powerful letter; because of its length, I’ve placed most of it below the fold.
I Too Am Human!
America’s problem with race has deep roots, with the country’s foundation tied to the near extermination of one race of people [Native American] and the enslavement of another [African American]. Racism is truly our nation’s original sin….with many more sins as follow-up. To make it lasting, they made it systemic. Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist environment.
What I just said sounds a lot like violence to me!
What escapes many people is that the whimsical killing of enslaved Blacks in this country during slavery, and even after, by white folks, without punitive consequence, is based on laws passed by white politicians, who happened to be plantation owners as well. Can that be called violence?
The New Secesh 0
Methinks The Roanoke Times editorial board has a point. They suggest that “social” media is not connecting persons, it’s separating them. Here’s snippet:
This process of self-isolation is hardly new. Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing wrote a book about this back in 2008. “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart” looked at how people have been self-segregating themselves by ideology in a way we haven’t seen before.
Follow the link for the entire article.
Bat Signals 0
Will Bunch looks back at the Republican convention coronation. An excerpt (emphasis added):
Only 26 hours after the disgraced former Party of Lincoln hit rock bottom by inviting racial vigilantes into your living room came the heartbreaking yet utterly predictable response: American carnage. Two people lay dead in the streets of strife-torn Kenosha, Wis. The 17-year-old — his life, too, forever broken by the lies of a movement he’d embraced — was finally arrested. But only after calmly walking right past police officers who apparently were there not to prevent disorder but to preserve it.
Do please read the rest.
Twits on Twitter 0
Aside:
I’m hardly alone in noticing that one of the side-effects of Trumpery has been granting tacit permission to racists to abandon the dog whistles for, you will pardon the expression, Trumpets.
All the News that Fits 0
David dissects the right-wing spin about the killings in Kenosha.
