“That Conversation about Race” category archive
Know Them by the Company They Keep 0
At the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Peter Gariepy suggests that, instead of going to court to block a KKK member who wants to run for the Republican nomination for governor of Missouri, perhaps, instead, the Republican Party should ask itself why a KKK member feels at home running for the Republican Party’s nomination.
The Blame Gamer 0
Afterthought:
“Woke” is worn out; “DEI” is the new proxy for “n-word.”
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
At AL.com, Frances Coleman argues that the words might be different, but the thought’s the same. A snippet:
It may not have the same rhetorical ring as George Wallace’s “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” but it puts the point across.
Precedented 0
Michael in Norfolk has seen it before the mythmaking before. A snippet:
More at the link.
(Broken link fixed.)
Stray Thought 0
I suspect that, if I looked up “truth” in my trusty Roget’s Thesaurus, which I’ve had for forty years, I would not find “divisive concepts” listed as a synonym thereof.
But, if I had an updated version, I think I just might.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Brandeis professor Robert Kuttner observes that
Republicans in the former Confederacy seem determined to refight the Civil War.
Follow the link for his reasoning.
To Whitewash or Not To Whitewash, That Is the Question . . . . 0
Writing at the Des Moines Register, an Episcopal pastor and descendant, as he recently learned, of slaveholders ponders on what to tell his young son about his family’s past. It is a thoughtful and worthwhile read; here’s tiny bit:
Is this really how we want to raise our children — sheltering them from historical complexity and implying that they don’t have the strength to reckon with their peoples’ past?
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Actions have consequences. Here’s the lede from the news report at my old Philly NPR station:
Aside:
I became a member of the NAACP when George W. Bush was elected president. (One does not have to be a “colored person” to support the NAACP.) Somehow, I sensed that the Republican Party was headed in the wrong direction. I must say, though, I did not realize just how wrong a direction it was.
I am not sanguine.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Via David Pakman’s Youtube page, Brittany Page explores the New Secesh’s attempts to whitewash (I use that term advisedly) slavery and slaveholders. (As my two or three regular readers know, I have found David to be a reasoned and reliable commentator.)
Afterthought:
I had ancestors who wore the grey. Indeed, one of them is immortalized in the Harper’s Ferry wax museum signing John Brown’s death warrant.*
I do not deny them, but neither do I try to justify what they did. (Understand, perhaps, as one who trained as an historian, but not justify.)
Those who refuse to learn from past evils doom themselves to repeating them.
_________________
*I may have mentioned this before in these electrons, but it was a moment for me when, on a visit to that museum some years ago, Second Son, still in school at the time, looked at the exhibit and said, “So, he was on the wrong side.”
That brought home to me with emphasis that, yes indeed, he was on the wrong side.
It was the wrong side then, and it is the wrong side now.
And it is still rising again after all these years.
Establishmentarians 0
Long-time Baptist pastor Stephen Jones argues that right-wing extremist they-call-themselves Christians get it precisely backwards:
Follow the link for context.
A Notion of Immigrants 0
Thom debunks the Muskrat lies.
Aside:
Remember, Elon Musk is an immigrant to America.
Perhaps that is ipso facto evidence that we need to erect higher barriers to entr–oh, never mind.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
In a compilation of clips, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar skewers Onnald Trump’s racist hate-mongering.
It is a sad and depressing truth that hate sells, for it finds an eager market.
Reason is hard.
Hate is easy.
Republican Thought Police 0
In the course of a longer article about the Republican Thought Police in Alabama, Dr. Robert O. White II reminds us something George Orwell once wrote:
Follow the link for the rest of White’s article.
From the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Stinkin’ 0
The editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tells a tale of devolution.
Know Them by The Company They Keep,
Still Rising Again after All These Years Dept.
0
One wonders just precisely what must one do so as to be given an “honorary membership” in the Ku Klux Klan.
Republican Family Values 0
“Suffer the children” is a Republican family value.
Aside:
See the comments that Thom mentioned regarding the Heritage Foundation at this link.
As one who trained as an historian specializing in U. S. Southern, it seems to me that the “heritage” that the “Heritage” Foundation claims to represent is little more than unreconstructed white Southerners’ myth of the “Lost Cause” dressed up in Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.