James Baldwin

I remember being aware of Baldwin, but he wasn't a big influencer for me.

I kinda regret missing that opportunity, and I regret not listening better.

More Of This, Please

One of the real problems with 45* as POTUS is the phenomenon of the Drama du Jour. ie: every day, a new, and at least semi-outrageous bit of Sturm-und-Drang comes up that pushes yesterday's High School Fuckaround Bullshit off to the side, forcing us to address this new crap, leaving no time to deal with much of anything, including the issues that really do require some thought and oughta get noticed.

And I'm really hoping nothing in that first paragraph comes as any kind of surprise to anybody.

The good news is that there's some good news once in a while.
WaPo:

The former chief of a small township in New Jersey has been arrested on federal hate crime and civil rights charges for what federal authorities described as a pattern of racist comments and behavior — including slamming an African American teen’s head into a metal door jamb and saying that black people are “like ISIS.”

Frank Nucera Jr., 60, who had been chief of the Bordentown Township Police Department, was arrested, and the charges against him were unsealed Wednesday. The allegations are notable for the blatant racism they describe in a law enforcement leader.

According to a criminal complaint in the case, filed in federal district court in New Jersey, Nucera frequently referred to African Americans by racial slurs and espoused violence toward them.

Tim Wise Redux

A rerun from Tim Wise:

At about 13:30 - "Expectationalism"

Also, listen for things like White Fragility and the weird irony of being called "snowflake" by someone who melts down over casting black people in a movie remake, and the rebuttal for "Reverse Discrimination".

"You don't get on the boat if you're winning."

Lotsa good shit.

Rerun

One from way back - Jay Smooth explains the difference:

Slightly more recent - Jay offers up the proposition that when we're trying to have the Race Conversation, we need to move away from the Tonsils Paradigm towards the Dental Hygiene Paradigm.

Today's Cult 45* Fuckup

I know, I know - I could put up several of these every day.

This gets a special place because Tim Scott is the only black guy in the US Senate, and that makes him kinda important if a schmuck with a reputation as a White Supremacist Asshole happens to occupy the Oval Office.

Now, Sen Scott went to the WH to vent a little bit on 45*'s crappy efforts to handle the Charlottesville thing properly.

NYT:

Tim Scott, the lone black Republican in the Senate, delivered a pointed history lesson on America’s 300-year legacy of racism to President Trump on Wednesday in response to what he called Mr. Trump’s “sterile” response to the riots in Charlottesville, Va., last month.

The president invited Mr. Scott, a conservative from South Carolina who had expressed disgust with Mr. Trump’s equivocal reaction to the white supremacist protests that left one woman dead, to the Oval Office for what Mr. Trump’s staff described as a demonstration of the president’s commitment to “positive race relations.”

When a reporter asked the senator after the meeting if the president had expressed regret, a pained look flashed on Mr. Scott’s face. He paused for a few seconds and replied, “He certainly tried to explain what he was trying to convey.”
It had nothing to do with "positive race relations". This was Cult45 wanting a chance to do a little White-splainin'.

Knowing what we know about 45*'s delicate sensibilities - and his burning need for retribution at any cost - I'm thinking the payback for the Senator daring to lecture POTUS (notice I deliberately avoided reference to "bein' all uppity and shit") it prob'ly seemed like a good idea to fuck up the caption on Scott's big Photo Op. 

Remember - this thing comes out of a Communications Shop brimming with people who aren't on the short list for the NAACP awards.

Just sayin'.

White Like Me

This guy reversed the old experiment (Black Like Me), by creating an online persona so he could step into the shoes of an Alt-Right knuckle-dragger.

WaPo interview with Theo Wilson:

After engaging in endless sparring matches in the comments section, Wilson began to notice something curious: His trolls seemed to speak a language unto themselves, one replete with the same twisted facts and false history. It was as if they had all passed through some “dimensional doorway,” arriving from an alternative universe where history, politics and commonly accepted facts had been turned inside out.

There was the idea that slavery was a form of charity that benefited enslaved Africans; that freed blacks owned more slaves than whites before the Civil War; that people of color make up the majority of those receiving aid from America's safety-net programs; and that investor and philanthropist George Soros is funding protest movements like Black Lives Matter.

You mention that in their forums they're also seeking “answers” to questions. What are they trying to resolve?

In today's America, they're struggling to understand why they'll have less opportunity than their father's generation. They also want answers to basic questions about race in America, such as: What's the point of multiculturalism? Why can only black people say the “N” word? How is racism not over when LeBron James and Oprah have huge bank accounts? How is affirmative action anything other than reverse racism? Why shouldn't I be proud to be white if someone else is proud to be black?

You mention that they also have some “fair points.” What are they?

I think it’s a fair point that leftists are widely tolerant of all kinds of people, but are often quite hateful to those who honestly hold conservative values. There are people who actually believe in God with all their heart. There are people who cannot cognitively resolve a guy kissing a guy. It doesn’t mean they’re seconds away from a hate crime. There is a legitimate human need to want to hold on to tradition in any culture.
Mr Wilson at Tedx Talks

Mixed Up In A Good Way

Charlottesville, Summer of 2017

What can you say about a country where a guy would be willing to lay down his life protecting the rights of people who would just as soon see him dead?

That is indeed a wonderment, but you say, "God bless the United States of America."

Call It Progress - I Guess(?)

Miami Herald

The good news is: the kid wasn't shot.

The bad news is: that's what passes for good news now - that some asshole white cop didn't murder some knucklehead brown kid.

It's unbelievable, but that qualifies as a positive outcome.

It's A Word

"That's our word now - and you can't have it back".

Oh yeah, Ice Cube gave @billmaher the talk he needed to hear pic.twitter.com/i7jYbCtm5P

— Tommy Christopher (@tommyxtopher) June 10, 2017

Pretty strong. And I think I'm straight with it now.

Thanks, Ice.

It's Gotta Be Mutual

Tim Wise on Facebook:

The task is to empathize with the very real class pain of working class white folks, beaten up by global capitalism, while NOT pandering to their racialized sense of specialness, and actively confronting and condemning their bullshit diagnosis for that pain. But it MUST be reciprocal. If working class white folks want sympathy for their very real struggles they MUST empathize with folks of color who have always struggled under white supremacy. And if they are not willing to do this, I believe in steamrolling them, without sentimentality. I do not believe POC owe white people ANYTHING, including sympathy, until and unless those white folks are prepared to relinquish their/our addiction to white normativity and relative privilege. And to disagree with this is to prioritize the needs and concerns of white people, which is to reinforce white supremacy by definition...I will have none of it...white working class folks have benefitted more from white supremacy than POC have benefited from the class system, so the former must make the first move in terms of empathy and outreach...not the other way around...

Visit TimWise.org

Tim Wise

On things we don't like to deal with - or even think about.

Chris Rock Rocks

We might be talkin' about this for a while.

And this too.

And the winner for least funny #Oscars bit goes to @FoxNews' @REALStaceyDash: https://t.co/p0FsTAtxPe pic.twitter.com/Qao1iRSKsv

— Matt Wilstein (@TheMattWilstein) February 29, 2016

Today's Podcast

OUR NATIONAL CONVERSATION ABOUT CONVERSATIONS ABOUT RACE

Authors Baratunde Thurston (How To Be Black), Raquel Cepeda (Bird Of Paradise: How I Became Latina) and Tanner Colby (Some Of My Best Friends Are Black) host a lively multiracial, interracial conversation about the ways we can’t talk, don’t talk, would rather not talk, but intermittently, fitfully, embarrassingly do talk about culture, identity, politics, power, and privilege in our pre-post-yet-still-very-racial America. This show is "About Race."

Ali Speaks

Ali was a hero for me.  It was difficult for me to hear him say these things because people around me were complaining about his politics, and I remember kinda going along with the thinking that he should just stick to boxing.  But there was (obviously) something else at work, and just as with Bill Russel and Jim Brown and Abdul-Jabbar, what I eventually came to realize was that these guys were even more amazing than I had tho't.  Because - how much greater could they have been if not for having to carry all that extra baggage?

http://deehenn.tumblr.com/post/128928717105/when-they-say-not-all-white-people

And btw, for anybody looking to turn this around and say it's a good example of "black racism" and "reverse discrimination" and "the same goes for a white guy having to face ten thousand black rattlesnakes" - that just boils down to Standard-Issue White Guilt Projection; you're voicing the fear that if you let up on him at all, the black guy would treat you just as shitty as you've been treating him, which means you're pretty much admitting to being the  bigot you're so afraid you're being accused of being. 

So try this instead - try to imagine what great things you could accomplish if you weren't having to carry all your extra baggage.  

Coupla New Podcasts

Show About Race:



Death Sex & Money from WNYC:
(can't figure out the embedding thing for this one)

Kids Who Die

hat tip = Color Of Change (Facebook) -or- Color Of Change (YouTube)

White Squad

I guess I'm wishing I could think it was less necessary to take it seriously enough to  consider starting the actual company.

hat tip = FB buddy VWE, via Addicting Info

Messy And Uncomfortable

“No campaign, and no movement has ever prevailed by trying to stay comfortable. You’re supposed to have messy, awkward, painful moments, and get stronger by working past them. That’s what the work requires, and that’s how you get strong enough to do the work, together.” --Jay Smooth

Get Somebody Working On This

Kelly fell flat and Rosie got after her.  And yet somehow the story became all about Rosie Perez being pressured first to make an on-air apology to Kelly Osbourne, and then more or less forced out all together.

A silly buncha baloney, and there's prob'ly way more to it than that - I think so because Bill Wolff is (or should be; or used to be) a shitload better producer than that - but mostly it was a big-time missed opportunity. Perez only heard the part of Osborne's comment that was sure to trigger a negative knee-jerk reaction. Certainly understandable, but it seems pretty obvious Osborne actually meant to show some solidarity with Latinos - in a typically clumsy and over-compensating way that privileged white librul legacy pukes have a knack for doing (been there. done that. got t-shirts, hats, key chains - all kinds of shit), but still.

Anyway, if we can figure out how to let people make the kinda mistakes Kelly Osborne and Rosie Perez made without the whole world blowing up in their faces, then maybe we can have a conversation that leads somewhere other than some fucked up twitter war or facebook feud or media spat or whatever. 

Ever notice how we never end up talking about possible solutions for any of these problems?

Gee, it's almost as if somebody is working really hard to make sure we're only allowed to choose a side and then talk shit about "those people".

So I'm not making excuses for Kelly Osbourne, and I'm not blaming Rosie for reacting the way she did, and I'm not doing any bullshit Both-Sides thing with it. I'm saying we need to take chances; we need to cut each other a little slack; and we need to try to do better.

Brother Jay:

Tim Wise

Re: Cops beating on people - mostly people with dark brown skin, and the ridiculousness of pale people thinking they know much of anything about what it's like to live black in white America.

It is bad enough that much of white America sees fit to lecture black people about the proper response to police brutality, economic devastation and perpetual marginality, having ourselves rarely been the targets of any of these. It is bad enough that we deign to instruct black people whose lives we have not lived, whose terrors we have not faced, and whose gauntlets we have not run, about violence; this, even as we enjoy the national bounty over which we currently claim possession solely as a result of violence. I beg to remind you, George Washington was not a practitioner of passive resistance. Neither the early colonists nor the nation's founders fit within the Gandhian tradition. There were no sit-ins at King George's palace, no horseback freedom rides to effect change. There were just guns, lots and lots of guns.

We are here because of blood, and mostly that of others; here because of our insatiable and rapacious desire to take by force the land and labor of those others. We are the last people on Earth with a right to ruminate upon the superior morality of peaceful protest. We have never believed in it and rarely practiced it. Rather, we have always taken what we desire, and when denied it we have turned to means utterly genocidal to make it so.

 Read the rest of it at Alternet