Maybe I'm trying to be a little too much of a Big-Brain, but I've had to push back against "liberals" who've been taking shots at Chris Coons for doing this - not the fact that he's doing it, but the way he does it - "very dry and sterile".
Criticism of someone's style is legit. If you don't like the way the message is presented, it's less likely you'll take the message in and fully absorb it. But if we're just indulging ourselves in Anti-Intellectualism, we risk missing the point entirely, and that's decidedly unhelpful. The other side is quite accomplished when it comes to dumping on the Dems - they don't need our assistance. And I don't need some kind of School House Rock version, if that's what you're getting at. I'm not a fucking child - I don't require spoon-feeding by way of entertainment.
Stacey Patton, Dame Magazine: There’s a scene in the film The Color Purple—based on Alice Walker’s 1982 Pulitzer-winning novel set in 1930s-era rural Georgia—that has been coming to mind far too often lately with all the BBQ Beckys and Permit Pattys having their moment. In it, the town mayor’s wife Miss Millie, a white woman, walks up to Sofia, a Black woman who is out enjoying life with her children while her husband is pumping gas. Miss Millie, in a moment of peak caucasity, walks up to these Black children, squeezes their faces and kisses them, and compliments Sofia on how clean they are. Then she asks if Sofia would like to become her maid.
- and - I think of Miss Millie every time I hear another story about one of these white women who has been accosting or calling cops on Black people for simply living and breathing, whether it’s mowing lawns, or selling candy, or families having barbecues, or an Ivy League student napping in the library. These Permit Pattys are living archetypes of white females lording their privilege over Black people.
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These hashtagged Beckys are contemporary versions of the plantation mistress and Miss Millie from the Jim Crow era. The growing list of white women calling the police today reminds us that they feel entitled to have a say in and control over Black people’s lives, reinforcing their entitlement by calling in the law when they feel offended. While a few police officers are exhibiting a rare common sense by not attacking or arresting the Black victims, they remain the exception to the rule. The risk of danger is ever-present when a white woman takes out her entitled fingers to dial 911.
If white women decide that they feel uncomfortable, upset, or threatened—again, without any cause or provocation—they know they can always call in the white patriarchal soldiers to back up their racist suspicions. They make those calls with the expectation that they will be believed and the Black person will be “put back in his or her place.”
We’ve seen a lot of think pieces about the “angry white man” in the era of Trump. But what do these stories tells us about white women’s state of mind?
- and - As Tommy J. Curry, author of The Man-Not explains: “Historically, white women have acted as the triggers of white male patriarchal violence. They establish the racial proxemics within societies. For centuries, the alleged hyper-vulnerability white women have had to racialized men and their discomfort around raced bodies has served as the justification for segregation and apartheid in colonized spaces the world over.”
Curry also asserts that the discrimination white women face limits their individual aspirations and controls their bodies in exchange for the safety from and superiority to racialized groups. This gives white women an extraordinary managerial power over Black lives.
But because white women today are also in this place where they don’t feel privileged because of a combination of sexism and general economic crap affecting all but the one percent, they flex what power they do have in weird ways, so they’re less inclined to imagine themselves as oppressors. Their sense of trumped-up fear and vulnerability against people of color, especially Black people, has been historically validated—rarely if ever challenged or questioned—and so if and when they call the police or the mobs to exact violence, they know they will rush to their defense.
In times of national distress, white women need Black people, especially Black women. They are longing for someone to take care of them and they resent that they can’t command that any more. These police calls are tied up with them missing their sense of power.
It's almost as if the self-described greatest negotiator in the history of all mankind is in fact a blithering dimwit, a credulous boob, a man easily overcome by inanimate objects and frequently outwitted by household appliances.
The judge in Paul Manafort’s trial has granted immunity to 5 witnesses. That’s how you know the Russians washed their hands of him: there are 5 living witnesses.
White people policing black presence is not new. I think it's safe to say it had been tamped down a bit, but lately it seems to be making quite the comeback. And I don't think it's just because we can be made aware of it more easily. SPLC documents a pretty significant rise in the incidence of "hate crimes", coinciding neatly with the growing popularity of - oh, I dunno - Donald Fucking Trump(?) Anyway, "If you see something, say something" is a favorite meme of the Daddy State. We can flip that script and use it to hold these authoritarian assholes accountable.
If you search Twitter for the hashtag #FamiliesBelongTogether, a tag created by activists opposing the forcible separation of migrant children from their parents, you might be in for a pop proofreading quiz.
That’s because, in some locations in the United States, the top trending term, the one that Twitter automatically predicts as you type it, contains a small typo, like #FamiliesBelongTogther.
The misspelled hashtag, and others like it, have enjoyed unusual popularity on the social platform.
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This is not an accident, say data scientists, but the result of a deliberate, automated misinformation campaign. The misspelled hashtags are decoys, aimed at diffusing the reach of the original by breaking the conversation into smaller groups. These decoys can dilute certain voices and distort public perception of beliefs and values.
“This is becoming more like a mind game,” says Onur Varol, a postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute. “If they can reach a good amount of activity, they are changing the conversation from one hashtag to another.” It's a very old problem-solving metaphor: Try to eat the whole steak all at once, and you choke on it. So you cut in into bite-sized chunks - and enjoy your meal.
