“That Conversation about Race” category archive
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Brian K. Fennessy looks up the history of Confederate statues. What he finds is no surprise: they were statues to racism. Here’s the nugget:
Racist language pervades the dedication speeches. If one assumes that the speaker is excluding blacks from the term “southerners,” when its use clearly meant only white southerners, then white identity politics are present in every speech. But speakers were often more explicit. 14 speeches explicitly invoked “our Anglo-Saxon ancestors,” “love of race,” or “your own race and blood.”
Follow the link for examples.
The Court Is in Sessions 0
Above the Law’s Elie Mystal reacts to reports that Attorney General Sessions wants to investigate Harvard Law’s Affirmative Action program. A snippet (emphasis added):
African-American Harvard students are fully ready to stand on our “merits.” In fact, we’ve yearned and strived to be judged on our merits our whole lives. We’re not necessarily thrilled to be judged on merits according to the white man, as strained through the racially biased lens of his standardized testing. But if that’s the unrealistic standard, we’re ready for that battle too. Harvard blacks standardize test pretty well.
One Thing Is Not Like the Other Thing 0
The Charlotte Observer’s editorial board notes the hypocrisy of North Carolina Republicans’ claim that undoing the effects of their racist redistricting is somehow itself racist.
“Call 911” 0
Alex Steed shares a story of privilege.
Remembrance 0
Badtux notes the intellectual acrobatics. The gist:
Class Facts 0
Badtux marvels at the obtuseness of the punditocracy in not realizing that the “working class” comes in all colors. A snippet:
Hint: The white working class hasn’t been in play for Democrats since 1964. No Democrat has won with a majority of the white vote in any election since then. Not Jimmie Carter. Not Bill Clinton. Not Barack Obama. None.
Hint: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed in 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 was passed in 1965.
Flag Daze 0
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution’s Maureen Downey quotes a powerful letter by a college professor about the kneeling protests at football games.
I cannot excerpt or summarize her article and do it justice. Just read it.
The Persistence of White Supremacy 0
Thom and the Reverend David Billings explore the persistence of white supremacy in America.
A Matter of Lives 0
Writing in The Charlotte Observer, Tiffany Capers describes her own first #metoo moment, then moves a new topic to the discussion. Here’s an excerpt, in which she highlights some hypocrisy.
Do please read the rest.
It Wasn’t “Gone with the Wind.” It Was Never There. 2
Will Bunch deconstructs John Kelly’s misguided and historically–what’s a stronger word than “false”? Oh, yeah, complete and utter bullshit–claim that the Civil War resulted from a “failure to compromise.”
Indeed, it resulted from a refusal–the South’s refusal–to compromise.
Here’s a bit from Bunch’s article (follow the link for the rest).
The Civil War was not the result of “a lack of an ability to compromise,” but because 11 American states were determined to fight — to the death, if necessary — to defend a way of life in which an oligarchy of plantation owners became wealthy by enslaving human beings, based upon the color of the skin.
Kelly’s statement reflects what I have pointed out before–that the North may have won the war, but the South won the peace, weaponizing racism and propagating propaganda about a “land of gracious living” peopled by “Southern gentlemen and Southern belles” that never existed except in Gone with the Wind and other pieces of preposterous puffery, while papering over the violence and brutality that created for those “Southern mansions.”
That propaganda has penetrated the nation’s soul and perverted white Americans’ view of themselves, of their virtues and faults, and of their fellow citizens and residents.
Seeing the effects is easy.
You just have to open your eyes.
Tales of the Trumpling: Snapshots of Trickle-Down Trumpery 0
Trumplers in training:
Gloucester County Christian School officials are investigating the incident and trying to identify the culprit, said Pastor John Mark Turner, the campus administrator. The school’s board could impose a suspension or expulsion, he said.
Double Jeopardy 0
Solomon Jones sees a tell in how Trump has responded to Myeshia Johnson, the pregnant widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, one of the soldiers who fell in Niger. A snippet (emphasis added).
Myeshia Johnson is both. Therefore, it seems, she is unworthy of the respect that Trump afforded Navy widow Carryn Owens when Trump led Congress in two minutes of applause for Owens during his State of the Union address.
Follow the link for the rest.
(Link fixed.)