“That Conversation about Race” category archive
Maskless Marauders 0
Honest to Betsy, you can’t make this stuff up.
Presumption 0
Police pummel passenger for being in a “ride share” with a broken tail light.
It is difficult for citizens to respect law enforcers when the law enforcers do not respect either citizens or the law. Just sayin’.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
In The Roanoke Times, an old white man (I can identify) tells of his journey to discover the lie of the myth of the Lost Cause which he absorbed during his upbringing. It is a powerful piece; here’s a bit:
If One Standard Is Good, Two Must Be Better 0
Robin Abcarian looks at the mental contortions that (mostly white) persons put themselves through to deny reality sitting right before their eyes to justify unjustifiable police shootings of black persons, mostly young men.
But step back for a moment. Think of the bigger picture.
And look at it this way: No one should have put a knee on Floyd’s neck in the first place. No one should have shot Blake in the back. No one should have barged into Taylor’s home unannounced.
And, by the way, how is it OK for a 17-year-old white kid to freely roam the streets of Kenosha with an AR-15-style rifle — that he later uses to kill two people while police look on — but a Black man with a knife in his car is considered a threat to a cop standing behind him?
Complicit 0
A recurring phenomenon during the Black Lives Matter protests has been the appearance of white supremacists and other far-right agitators at otherwise generally peaceful protests in order to foment violence.
At Psychology Today Blogs, Rosemary Sword and Philip Zimbardo explore the minds and motivations of white supremacists. They start by citing an interview with former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Elizabeth Neumann, then go on to delve what motivates the embrace white supremacy and that embrace affects the behavior of the embracers.
It ain’t pretty.
Here’s a bit about the Neumann interview; follow the link for the rest of the discussion.
Neumann states further, “White supremacy groups are emboldened by the refusal (of the president and vice-president) to condemn them. The extreme fringe on the right believes the country should be white and controlled by white men…As recruitment occurs, there’s more violence; which we’ve seen the last three years.”
Dropping (What’s Left of) the Mask 0
Afterthought:
The American ideal has always struggled against the American real, and never more than today.
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?