“That Conversation about Race” category archive

In the eye of the beholder:

China Hand tries to make sense of the minstrel show. A snippet:

I think there was more to blackface minstrelsy than a) making black people look foolish, subhuman, & not needing or missing basic human rights or dignity and b) thereby allowing white America to reconcile itself to its blithe disregard of the horrors of racism, birthed by slavery but perpetuated by de jure and de facto legal, economic, and social repression after the Civil War.

There was that. Well, there still is that, but a closer look at the minstrel show reveals that the flip side of southern black inferiority was northern white superiority which, in turn, unexpectedly fed back into ideas of southern white superiority.

Read it.

Chauncey Devega dissects the lie.

Read it.

Via Raw Story.

Gins and Tacos points out the misreading.

When I was a young ‘un, it was common for segregationists out to perpetuate “Our Way of Life” (TM) to blame the Civil Rights Movement on “outside agitators,” because, natch “our darkies” (as they would say) were happy working for pittances and living in shacks.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you can’t make this stuff up.

A. It’s own past.

Jon Steward on Ferguson, below the fold in case it autoplays.

Read more »

Jim Wright reads between the lines and exposes the racist underpinnings of Rudolph Guiliani’s recent remarks that Obama doesn’t love America “like us.”

Here’s a bit. Do read the rest; it’s a magnificent post.

Obama is a patriot, Giuliani admits, sure. But different. Not like Reagan. Not like Clinton. Not like us.

That’s what plantation owners used to say when they sold black children away from their parents, when they broke up families: they’re not like us, they don’t love their kids like we do.

That’s what we used to say when we sought our Manifest Destiny across the Great Plains. We’re special. Indians? They don’t love America like we do. They can’t love their kids or their wives or their god like we love ours. They can’t, they’re savages.

That’s what we used to say when we burned down villages in Korea and Vietnam, hey don’t feel sorry for them, they don’t feel emotions the way we do. That’s what we say about Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. They don’t feel pain or loss, they’re not the same as us, they can’t love their kids or their spouses or their country like we do.

That’s what we used to say when women wanted to vote. Hey, god love ‘em but they just don’t think like we do. They’re not like us, like real Americans.

An article in the Tampa Bay Times reflects on the legacy of Judge Lynch.

It is important to remember that the hangings, burnings and dismemberments of black American men, women and children that were relatively common in this country between the Civil War and World War II were often public events. They were sometimes advertised in newspapers and drew hundreds and even thousands of white spectators, including elected officials and leading citizens who were so swept up in the carnivals of death that they posed with their children for keepsake photographs within arm’s length of mutilated black corpses.

These episodes of horrific, communitywide violence have been erased from civic memory in lynching-belt states like Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi.

The article goes on to discuss the efforts of the Equal Justice Initiative to ensure that the memory of those deeds are not obliterated, however much preserving them may discomfit some Southern white folks who long for the Good Old Days, but will not mention just what it was that makes them think those old days were so good.

Unlike another much-derided New York Times story, which neglected to mention just who did the lynching, the Tampa Bay Times article* does not flinch from identifying the culprits.

Give it a read, then follow the link to the Equal Justice Initiative and read the report or download the Executive Summary (PDF).

________________

*In fairness to the NYT, I think the TBT article may have also appeared there. The TBT does not credit its origin.

Chauncey Devega dares tell a truth about the Southern reign of Judge Lynch. Frolicking ensues.

One more time: When you hear someone lament the Lost Cause, ask, “What, precisely, was the cause that was lost?”

Anything else will come back to bite you.

This story has been going on for days in my part of the world and I have been trying to figure out how to blog about it, without success; I could not find a handle, because the smell of bigotry overcame me.

If you cannot be safe from the persons who are sworn to keep you safe, you cannot be safe.

The police chief says, “unreasonable.” I say, “racist.”

Selma and the deaths of Goodman, Cheney, and Schwerner were not that long ago. They were within my lifetime, and hate has more lives than a cat.