June, 2015 archive

At Psychology Today Blogs, Robert W. Fuller tries to explain why racism persists relentlessly. Frankly, I find the latter portion of his post to be jargon-filled gobbledegook, but I think this bit is worth notice:

Color differences are not the cause of racism, rather they are excuses for debasing one group to another group’s advantage. Racism persists because the degradation in which it trades serves the purpose of predation.

The wellspring that sustains racism lies in the practice of preying on the weak, with the added twist of first systematically handicapping potential targets so as to reduce the risk to predators.

Brendan, who has some German ancestry, makes the point adeptly. A snippet:

I think if I was to “honor” my family’s heritage by flying a Nazi flag from my front porch, I’d be the neighborhood pariah. It wouldn’t matter a tinker’s damn what my pathetic excuses were: that flag would be seen, rightly, as the flag of race hatred and terrible violence that killed millions of innocent victims, not to mention the lives of the soldiers engaged on the battlefield. Why is the Confederate Army flag–which stands for treason, rebellion, the right to own and sell people, and the deaths of more Americans than in any other war we’ve been involved in–any different?

Do read it.

Chauncey Devega considers the intersection between media and Dylan Roof.

In the Bangor Daily News, a transplanted Virginian recounts what he was taught about the Civil War and how he realized it was a lie. His story sounds similar to mine, even though we grew up about as far apart from each other we could be and remain within the borders of the Commonwealth. Here’s the bit about his schooling; follow the link for the discovery of the lie.

Growing up in southwestern Virginia, the far corner of the state tucked deep into the Appalachian Mountains, we were never far from the shadows of the Civil War and its legacy.

The “Southern Cross,” as the flag is sometimes called, was portrayed as a symbol of independence and bravery in battle – “heritage, not hate” as the saying goes.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

We studied the Civil War in school, learned the names of the generals, visited the battlefields and the graves. The “Lost Cause” was ingrained in us early on. The mythology passed on.

Werner Herzog’s Bear wonders whether the time has come for Republicans to reap the whirlwind they have conjured up. Here’s the opening of his post:

Back when the Tea Party winds stared blowing back in the early parts of this decade, I wondered whether the Republican Party had signed a devil’s bargain. It was encouraging the support of fringe elements that had long been outside of the mainstream of American politics, all in order to benefit politically from the rising feelings of resentment among white people.

One such example is the Republican eagerness to put the grievances of the “open carry” movement into law, as just recently happened in Texas. This is a movement that worships guns and views the Second Amendment as a protection against tyranny, as if the only thing standing between the status quo and a dictatorship is a bunch of dudes carrying AR-15’s into the local Chipotle. Voters who vote on gun issues tend to be highly motivated, so the Republicans are willing to break bread with armed vigilantes if it means electoral success.

Follow the link for more. After you read it, you will likely conclude, as did I, that Mr. Bear is an optimist.

Dick Polman follows the money. A snippet:

There’s an old saying in politics: If you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas. And there’s no better illustration than the longstanding ties between the contemporary southern-based GOP and the white extremist group known as the Council of Conservative Citizens.

This is the group that runs the website that educated Dylann Roof in the ways of racial hatred; we know this because Roof reputedly said so in an online manifesto. He educated himself with some bogus crime stats on the CCC site – about how blacks supposedly kill whites in droves – and he wrote, “I have never been the same since that day.” In all likelhood, he also noticed the CCC’s so-called statement of principles, which opposes “all efforts to mix the races of mankind.”

And now it turns out that, since 2011, group president Earl Holt III has donated lavishly and exclusively to Republican candidates: Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum. Plus a slew of Republican House and Senate candidates: Michele Bachmann, Tom Cotton, Joni Ernst, Thom Tillis, Mark Sanford, and Chris McDaniel. Plus a slew of conservative PACs on the Republican right.

Back in the olden days, when I was a young ‘un, it was the White Citizens Councils. That was where the respectable racists, the ones who didn’t (admit to) wearing sheets, hung out.

The names change, but the bigotry remains.

As an aside, this is the perverse outcome of Nixon’s odious Southern Strategy. Nixon hoped to harness Southern racism to maintain a Republican majority, but the Southern strategy went out of control, as appeals to hatred and bigotry are wont to do.

Racism is now the user; the Republican Party is the tool.

Click for the original image.