Making A List of Rustbelt America Movies: Reflecting on the Race, Class, and Gender Politics of the New Film "Out of the Furnace"

I do not shill for movies. As readers of WARN know, I tend to write longer critical essays than straight reviews and endorsements of a movie or TV show.  I will have to break with that habit here. Several days ago I was very lucky to see the movie Out of the Furnace. It is one of the best, of the many movies, I have seen this year.

My movie tastes may deviate from general public as well as that of many reviewers. My love of the movie Cloud Atlas is an example. My likely unpopular view that 12 Years a Slave is an expert exercise in film-making, but not necessarily a great biopic, is a second outlier opinion.

Out of the Furnace is a brilliant and essential film with stellar performances by marquee actors such as Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Forest Whitaker, Sam Shephard, William Dafoe, Zoe Saldana, and Woody Harrelson that explores how globalization, deindustrialization, militarism, and class inequality have impacted Rustbelt America and its denizens.

Out of the Furnace is set in and around Braddock, Pennsylvania during Obama's 2008 presidential run and uses that moment as background and atmosphere which forces an uncomfortable question: what will the country's first black President (not) mean for improving the life chances of a multiracial working class who are dependent upon the United States' near dead and dying industrial manufacturing base?

A great film leaves an emotional and intellectual impression on viewers after they leave the theater. More than "what is this movie trying to tell me and us?", a great film drives the engaged viewer to want to learn more about the characters, their struggles, and the larger issues of public concern we as a society are struggling with.

Given my interests in American racial politics, I was moved to reflect on the racial diversity of the communities shown in Out of the Furnace. Race was present and real--as it should be in a movie that purports to any type of "social realism". But, race was not foregrounded in the film. Race is how class is lived in America. Yet, how is that rubric modified when a whole community, across the colorline, is dependent on a dying industry?

And how are the troubles and challenges in multiracial Braddock (and rural Appalachia) damning proof of Charles Murray's thesis in "Coming Apart" about the decline of "good culture" among White America?

Given my family's background, and subsequent travels as a child and teen, I am very familiar with the dead and dying multiracial Rustbelt communities on the East Coast. They are very racially segregated. But, these same communities are also very integrated in their shared working class ethos, culture, values, and sense of pride.

America has been inaccurately described as a "melting pot". Borrowing from Eduardo Bonilla Silva, the history of American society is more akin to that of a cauldron hanging over a fire in to which different European ethnic groups were thrown into the stew pot, while black and brown people were the kindling for the fire which cooked the meal of "Americanness". Globalization, Austerity, income inequality, changing racial demographics, and resurgent white supremacy in the Age of Obama have created the "furnace" for which the title of this movie, intentionally or not by its writers, is a beautiful metaphor.

What other movies would you add if we were making a list of films (within the last 50 years) that intelligently explore the dynamics of race, class, and gender in Rustbelt deindustrialized America?

In addition to Out of the Furnace, I would start with The Fighter, Winter's Bone, and An Officer and a Gentleman. What would you suggest?

Dasani and the Tea Party GOP's War on the Poor Continued: What do Republicans See When They Look at This Photo of a Homeless 11-Year-Old Girl's and Her Family's Room?

Our annual fundraiser here at We Are Respectable Negroes continues. I would like to thank the kind folks who have already donated. If you can find a dollar or two to throw into the Paypal collection, I would be in your debt. My online work is a blessing. It is also work and a labor of love. I appreciate all of you and the support you have given me over the years.

The above image from the NY Times story "Invisible Child" about the life of an 11-year-old girl named Dasani and her family is rich with meaning and context.

Earlier, we talked about how the Right-wing in the United States wants to kill and eliminate poor people and the working classes because they are "useless eaters" and "takers" who are drains on the body politic.

Conservatives and the Right-wing media are naked in how they link stereotypes about race, class, and gender together in a narrative that leverages white racial resentment to advance an agenda which hurts the middle and working classes.

Among other absurdities, Fox News and the Tea Party GOP's bloviators have suggested that poor people in America live a life of luxury because they have refrigerators. What offenses and moral crimes would Republicans and the White Right see in the above photo of Dasani and her family's room at a homeless shelter?

For Republicans, a Homeless 11-Year-Old Black Girl Named Dasani is a "Useless Eater" Who Should Just Die

Al Sharpton did some great work on Monday's PoliticsNation where he further exposed the politics of cruelty that have possessed the Republican Party.

Republicans want to cut food stamps, believe that kicking people off of unemployment insurance who cannot find a job in an economy where there are 3 people for every available position, and that a particularly evil and twisted version of "Christian faith" justifies punishing and hurting poor people as righteous deeds and acts that mark conservatives as "the elect" who are destined for heaven.

I am not a "Christian". But my understanding of the "historical" Jesus was that he was a man who died fighting State tyranny and would do anything to help the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable. The Tea Party GOP's bastardization of Jesus Christ remakes him into a figure who puts his foot on the throats of the hungry, weak, the vulnerable, and the needy, in order to motivate them into self-sufficiency--or alternatively die from a lack of breath.

For the Tea Party GOP, either outcome is acceptable.

The panoply of Right-wing hypocrites that Al Sharpton calls out, what is a rogues gallery of the cruel and the heartless, are wealthy people who have not taken to heart basic principles such as how noblesse oblige may actually create the social stability necessary to protect the rich while advancing their long-term interests.

I wrote about how the Tea Party GOP wants to kill the "useless eaters" here on We Are Respectable Negroes. I was also fortunate to do an interview on Right of Fire Radio where I explained my argument in more detail.

During that conversation, I made a special effort to "connect the dots" between how the Republican Party's hostility to the poor and working classes is fueled by white racism and an explicit appeal to Eliminationism, i.e that some citizens are worthy of life and others are to be purged and eliminated from the body politic.

[During our annual fundraisers when I talk about how we are doing good work here on We Are Respectable Negroes, and are ahead of the curve on many pressing issues of public concern, Al Sharpton's (and others') echoing of our narratives is just one more example to cite. We are doing something special here on WARN which it matters on a larger scale.]

During his TV segment, Al Sharpton mentioned this heartwrenching piece about a homeless 11-year-old child in New York by the name of Dasani. Her tale of struggle and endurance is both tragic and inspiring. Dasani is a little soldier; Dasani should not have to play such a role in what is ostensibly the world's "richest" country.

America is rotting from within while the very rich smile and gloat. The 1 percent can buy their kids tree houses that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Dasani has to struggle to maintain her dignity while living in the shadow of squalor.

There are no children in Dasani's world. The super rich enjoy an extended childhood and adolescence, one that for many never ends because wealth is ultimately an insulation from the consequences of your choices: thus are the fruits of money and privilege.

The NY Times' story about Dasani and her family is socially responsible and important journalism. The fourth estate should and must do this type of work if it is rehabilitate itself as the watchdog of American democracy. Al Sharpton is to be commended for daring to get close to the truth of how the Republican Party views the working class and the poor as leeches, bums, social parasites, and whose children should be in workhouses or cleaning their schools as janitors.

Yet, The NY Times and Al Sharpton are teasing a harsh reality. Unfortunately, neither are able to state that plain fact for fear of reprisal by the Right-wing noise machine and the corporations which control the American news media. I have no such restrictions.

The Republican Party wants to see 11-year-old children like Dasani and her family die. As viewed by the White Right, they are "untermensch". The language which Republicans and their media use to describe poor, working class, and unemployed people--in particular those who are black and brown--leads to no other reasonable conclusion.

Leeches and parasites are to be destroyed; this is pest control; human leeches and parasites are to be eliminated with even greater expediency.

Little black girls like Dasani are subjected to a social phenomena known as "adultification".

Here, they are not allowed the innocence of childhood or to be vulnerable and in need of help and assistance by majority white society. The White Gaze, especially from the Right, has historically seen black folks as children for the purposes of civic inclusion and democracy (see the GOP's obsession with suggesting that African-Americans are civic children, veritable slaves, on a "Democratic plantation" without agency, as an example). In parallel, black children are seen as adults who can be imprisoned, executed, harassed by police, punished, profiled, expelled, and not allowed their innocence by a criminal justice system or educational system that deems them not allowed the white privilege of youthful error, insecurity, or nurturing.

Moreover, race, class, and gender are inexorably linked in the racial logic and rhetoric of Right-wing (and American) politics. Black women are "welfare queens". Black men, borrowing from Reagan's language, are "strapping young bucks" who use welfare to buy steaks. Because claims about poverty are also claims on morality in American society where the poor "deserve" their fate and have made "bad choices", the myth and cult of meritocracy combines with a centuries-long legacy of white supremacy to further mark and stigmatize children like brave Dasani.

If Sharpton, and The NY Times, were able and willing to offer up the basic and fundamental truth about how Republican rhetoric about poverty and people of color is not "innocent" political gamesmanship or mere bombast, but rather how the Tea Party GOP actually feels about the "useless eaters", they would tell a plain truth: the American Right-wing wants to see little innocent black girls like Dasani die...or at the very least conveniently disappear.

They are "surplus" people to be eliminated. Why? For conservatives, and those other who adhere to an Ayn Randian culture of cruelty that is intermixed with a a worldview and ideology in which conservatism and racism are one in the same, the sins of the mother and father are passed down to the child. As such, stalwart and strong little girls like Dasani are tainted with "bad culture"--and perhaps even bad genes.

As understood by contemporary Republicans, why should the United States' social safety net support and protect the poor and working classes when American elites can choose to instead enrich the 1 percent, while also continuing to support Wall Street and the Corporateocracy, those who are the "makers" and not the "takers?"

How Can You Resist Sending Them a Thank You Note on My Behalf? A Dollar for WARN's Annual Fundraiser is a Dollar That Raises the Ire of a White Supremacist

I would like to thank the kind people who have donated to We Are Respectable Negroes' annual fundraising drive. Your generosity is so very much appreciated and welcome. It really does encourage me forward in my writing here and elsewhere.

There is no such thing as bad press--to borrow from that cliche and truism. I have been lovingly mentioned by white supremacist websites on more than a few occasions. I also enjoy their literate and inspired hate mail. I use it as a model for my "fun with yellow journalism" essays.

Some of  our white supremacist--they call themselves "race realists"--friends at Mindweapons in Ragnarok were kind enough to show their displeasure towards my post in support of Professor Shannon Gibney and how neoliberalism is using white supremacy to destroy academic freedom while also reshaping American society to the further advantage of the 1%.

Mindweapons in Ragnarok appear to be oblivious to how the global power elite are using the white working class, and ginning up white racial resentment (and likely mobilizing white supremacists and the White Right) against people of color, to advance the former's hold on power and their efforts to further redistribute it upwards to them.

I am a self-interested agent. I love a bit of irony in my trouble-making too. I think it would be great fun if fans of WARN (and those who just like to mock white supremacists more generally) would throw some change into our annual fundraiser and then post a thank you note or quick comment to that end on the website Mindweapons in Ragnarok.

I Have No Particular Emotional Attachment to Nelson Mandela. But, I Wonder if Sixto "Sugar Man" Rodriguez Will Perform at Nelson Mandela's Funeral and How Long Until Republicans Try to Claim That Reagan and Mandela were Allies?

I wonder if Sixto Rodriguez will be given the opportunity to sing a tribute at Nelson Mandela's state funeral? Would be perfect and appropriate, no?

I wonder how long until the American conservative propaganda machine tries to rewrite history so that Reagan and Mandela were allies? In reality, Reagan supported Apartheid South Africa and opposed the movement toward divestment and the efforts by black South Africans to bring down that evil regime. Republicans are feckless in their lies. They have tried to claim Brother Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Why not go for Mandela too?

I am not a fan of hagiographies. Such as that may be, when a world leader of great importance passes way he or she ought to be allowed that moment.

I understand the importance of Nelson Mandela to global and American racial politics, anti-colonialism, and people's movements. However, I have no particular emotional attachment to Nelson Mandela.

I was thinking about my (non) reaction to Mandela's death during the obligatory public memorializing which occurred yesterday upon the announcement of his passing, and the tears and upsetness shown by some in the commentariat class on TV and elsewhere.

I am solidly a part of what is known as the "hip hop generation".

Like those men who were too young for World War 2 and then too old for Korea, I missed the anti-Apartheid movement because of my generational moment. I remember all of the discussions about Apartheid, watching Mandela being mentioned on The Cosby Show, reading about how students a few years older then me were involved in the American divestment movement, and listening to song lyrics that referenced South Africa's wickedness.

But, I was not politically active. My political consciousness had not yet developed enough to make the connection between the evil of Apartheid and why I should really care enough to spend the personal energy to get involved when their were girls to chase, video games to play, and rumored and unheard of hip hop mixed tapes featuring legendary MC's who were like legendary titans to track down at the corner store and during trips to New York.

In truth, I cried, real sincere tears, when the news broke that early afternoon that the Notorious B.I.G. had been shot and killed. I do not have any tears for Mandela. I doubt that a man of his modesty and dignity cares about how the public chooses to grieve and memorialize him. Funerals are more for the living than they are the dead.

Teach me something if you would.

For those of you who are deeply attached to Mandela, and perhaps who participated in the anti-Apartheid college protests and divestment movement in the United States and elsewhere, how are you feeling in this moment? Is the upsetness about the loss of Mandela or is it more a mourning of a political innocence and youth now in the more distant past because of age?

First the "Knockout Game" and Now This! Unspeakable! Sunny, the Obama Family's Black Racist Dog Attacks Innocent White Child During Holiday Event at the White House

Our annual fundraiser here at We Are Respectable Negroes continues. I would like to thank the kind folks who have already donated.

I do not advertise here at WARN. This is a decision that I have made in order to keep the website free from such encumbrances or obligations. I also do not receive compensation for my writing at the various websites, and other venues, that have featured my work.

Instead, I offer up the twice a year begging bowl that lasts approximately two weeks. If you can find a dollar or two to throw into the Paypal collection, I would be in your debt. My online work is a blessing. It is also work and a labor of love. I appreciate all of you and the support you have given me over the years.

If you like and enjoy the type of work I am trying to do here on WARN, please support our fundraiser if you are able. I try to offer something different and unique in terms of the balance between news analysis, commentary, and entertainment. I doubt you will find pieces such as the following at many other online magazines or news related websites.
  
Readers of We Are Respectable Negroes know that I am fascinated by the rhetorical style and of tone of late 19th and early 20th century American newspapers. The coincidence of the White Right's "knockout game" moral panic, and the Obama's family dog knocking over a white child who was visiting the White House, is too perfect a combination to ignore.
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Our wonderful country, a beacon of civilization and greatness for all of the world is once more under assault! How can she and her people survive being violated at the highest levels of office by a corrupt negro president whose blood pulses and runs with the most befouled and savage blood of deepest darkest Africa while our good and innocent women and honorable men and elderly are run down likes rabbits in the great hunt by the most lowest members of the colored race and its giant negro warriors who howl and bay at the moon like savage werewolves as they see White Civilization as a target for rapine lust which their swollen purple lips utter and vomit out as the so-called "knockout game!"

Never before has a standard so foul flown above a marauding army. The black destroyers are wicked and cruel. They are street pirates more fit for the waterways of the Caribbean or enslaving white women and men off of the Barbary Coast than of polluting America's streets! The negro hobby and sport that is the knockout game is drapetomania unleashed on the good and noble white people of this great nation. It must be stopped!

The bravest truth tellers who embody all the best of the American creed and the power of the free press have trumpeted the black wickedness of the hooga mooga's savage knockout game assault on American civility and decency. The negro cowards pray upon the innocent and the weak. Hopping out of bushes. Attacking in fearsome packs like the driver ants of their colored race's ancestral home in the jungles of African, cutting down and destroying all in their wake without mercy. The knockout game thugs offer no parlay to their victims. Without the honor of even the noble red savage of the Old West, or the feminine races of East Asian, the white toothed black savage attacks any white person they can find!

Intrepid white journalists have documented this catastrophic tsunami of negro violence. Our greatest cities have been overrun by roving bands of black highwayman. New Haven is under assault and its most great institution of higher learning, Yale University, is plagued by this menace. When our best minds are not even allowed peace and protection what will come of our great nation, dragged down by alien blood which has proven itself resistant to all manner and patience at civilizing its impulsive and violent ways?

Beyond the "Knockout Game" and Colin Flaherty's "White Girl Bleed Alot": Know Your Enemies. What Other Books are Popular with White Supremacists on Amazon.com?

We are in the fourth day of our annual fundraiser here at We Are Respectable Negroes. I would like to thank the kind folks who have already thrown some money into the collection bowl. Such gestures are very much appreciated. I am very impressed and touched by them.

I do not advertise here at WARN. Nor, do I receive compensation for my writing at the various websites, and other venues, which have featured my work.

I want to thank the kind donors who have thrown monies into the begging bowl. I also want to thank the good person who sent me an Amazon gift card. How cool! So appreciated.  

Instead, of advertising or hounding folks on a regular basis, I offer up the twice a year begging bowl.

If you like and enjoy the type of work I am trying to do here on WARN, please support our fundraiser if you are able.  

My plan is to end the fundraiser by the end of next week. If folks throw in a dollar or two we can end our pledge drive early. One dollar, two, three, or five all count towards the total. We Are Respectable Negroes in a labor of love. I am driven by your comments, support, and good energy.
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Have you ever gone to a website, and after reading the comments left there by Right-wing trolls, been astounded and shocked by the detachment from reality they have demonstrated?

Do you often wonder if conservatives, the troglodytes and foot soldiers who befoul the comment sections of news websites, are deranged, existing in an alternate reality, one with its own set of facts?

If you have answered "yes", then you have witnessed the power of populist conservatism and its intentional, practiced, and deft ability to manufacture propaganda for the purpose of shaping public policy and public opinion. This has been called "the right-wing noise machine"; it can also be described as "epistemic closure" wherein conservatives are part of a cult and religion, advancing a disinformation campaign that would have impressed the Nazis, Mao, or Stalin.

The moral panic of the "knockout game"--which is still exciting Right-wing types into acts of public political masturbation and race-baiting as seen on Twitter, Fox News, and elsewhere--is an example of this phenomena in practice.

Propaganda is made most effective through repetition, and the creation of an alternative knowledge system that is divorced from the facts--yet, one that is encouraging, validating, and stimulating to its believers.

On issues such as global warming, the economy, healthcare, and the Constitutional divide between church and State, the Right-wing establishment in America (and elsewhere) has created its own "knowledge industry". The information is junk; yet, it has appeal for its audience because such propaganda validates and rewards the ignorance (and activism) of low-information voters who are usually working against their own collective self-interest.

I acknowledge skill, craft, and hustle when I see it. To point. Right-wing "black on white crime reverse racism race hustling" genius Colin Flaherty is "my man in Amsterdam"--to quote the great movie Pulp Fiction.

He is also a snake oil salesman whose seminal text for the Right-wing, White Girl Bleed Alot, has been thoroughly debunked as an example of piss poor research and social scientific endeavor.

However, in conjunction with WorldNetDaily, Flaherty has been able to use his supposed expertise as an "authority" on the national "plague" that is "black crime" for great effect and personal profit.

Most of the stories about the "knockout game", what is really just a tired post Civil War era narrative about he natural criminality of African-Americans, cite his specious work.

White Girl Bleed Alot does not meet the most basic standards of social science research. However, it is damn compelling for those who are already primed to believe in both old fashioned and symbolic racism.

White Supremacy is magical thinking. White Supremacy's magic is made "scientific" by "truth" claims that dishonestly present "statistics" and "facts" in support of its worldview.

[I can imagine the objection. Why criticize a text because of the political ideology of those who choose to buy it? I am old school. If White supremacists cheer on your work, then there is likely something fundamentally flawed about it. If White Supremacists cheer on your work, and a given author does not denounce and rebut them in a substantive way, then said author is likely in bed with those same White Supremacists.]

Knowledge is an output of a larger system.

The philosophical, empirical, and pedagogical priors of this system do intellectual work and buttress claims of "fact" and "science". Moreover, intellectual work and truth claims are based on appeals to expertise and an ability to cite and reference other research as foundational and necessary for advancing and "proving" the "reality" of a given observation.

Footnotes and other types of citations are examples of such practices. White Supremacists try to substantiate their facile lies, which are deceptively couched as truths, in much the same way. The Right-wing noise machine has created a knowledge industry to that end. Comments on websites, especially by conservatives, are often made by professional trolls, bots, and those who are hired by public relation firms to advance the Tea Party GOP agenda.

Those folks who have purchased or clicked on Flaherty's work on websites such as Amazon.com have left a type of intellectual biography in their wake. The comments on the "knockout game" online also reveal the ugly White Supremacist  knowledge machine which is driving the meme.

Reasonable and intelligent people must be careful and suspicious about the appeal and allure of the knockout game meme; it is spurious and silly to us; the racist trope of the knockout game is compelling for many other people.

Consequently, an analysis of the the habits of those people who are trying to develop "expert" knowledge on White Supremacy is very revealing about the bigger political and social agenda at play.

What follows are some of the books purchased by the white racists who also have shown interest in White Girl Bleed Alot.

The well-springs of the weak "factual" claims which serve as the ammunition for a coordinated campaign of cyber racism are readily apparent in the sophistry presented by these "scholarly" works.

• White Apocalypse/Conscience of a Right-Winger, by Kyle Bristow
• Racism Smascism, by James Edwards
• White Identity, by Jared Taylor
• Jihad, by Arthur Kemp
• The Brigade by H.A. Covington
• The Darker Side of Evil Paperback by Andre Nicholas Turner
• Rise of the Black Serial Killer: Documenting a Startling Trend Paperback by Justin Lee Cottrell
• Black Racism, White Victims: Reverse Discrimination, Black-On-White Crime And Other Legal Problems Paperback by John Publius
• The Un-Civil War: BLACKS vs NIGGERS: Confronting the Subculture Within the African-American Community by Taleeb Starkes
• White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century by Jared Taylor

Amazon.com and other booksellers have removed many anti-Semitic texts from their sites. Why do they continue to provide an outlet for anti-black and brown White Supremacist tracts? Why are people of color not treated with the same respect?

What are some other books, articles, and online resources which you have found to be frequented by White Supremacists? Please share those materials so that we can build a reading list that can be shared online with anti-racists and others who want to remove them from the marketplace of ideas.

Semiotics and the Politics of Representation: How Do You Interpret These Images From American Vampire, Boardwalk Empire, and of Female Marines Ready For Combat?

We are in the third day of our annual fundraiser here at We Are Respectable Negroes. I would like to thank the kind folks who have already thrown some money into the collection bowl. Such gestures are very much appreciated. I am very impressed and touched.

I do not advertise here at WARN. Nor, do I receive compensation for my writing at the various websites, and other venues, which have featured my work.

Instead, I offer up the twice a year begging bowl. I am the worst fundraiser ever because I open my hands and ask that after you take care of home, friends, family, pets, and other commitments, that if you can find a dollar or two to throw into the Paypal collection, I would be in your debt. My online work is a blessing. It is also work and a labor of love. I appreciate all of you and the support you have given me over the years.

If you like and enjoy the type of work I am trying to do here on WARN, please support our fundraiser if you are able. Here is something a bit different for We Are Respectable Negroes. I learn so much for all of you. Please teach me something. I am eager to hear from you all.

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As long-time readers of We Are Respectable Negroes know, I am very interested in what popular culture reveals about a given society's political values, norms, beliefs, and order.

Film, TV, music, books, music, graphic novels, art, etc. are insights into our collective subconscious. They all do powerful social and political work precisely because of the unstated assumptions--both by their creators and audience--that come with them.

The fancy term that we use to describe the study of systems of meaning, signs, codes, and how various types of "texts" relate to one another is called semiotics. Semiotics is also concerned with the symbolic power of a text and how its deeper meaning is more important than the surface interpretation.

[I prefer to reduce that very complex and rich concept down to a few questions. In terms of a photograph, what does this image say to you? What is the image communicating to the viewer about society?] 

Images are not neutral. Human beings possess racial and gendered bodies. Images are also products of a given social and political moment: consequently, images reveal to the viewer something about a moment in time (that may or may not be universal).

Individuals read meaning into those images and moments relative to their own social locations and what we as viewers take to be "normal".

What Happens When Neoliberalism and White Privilege Meet in the College Classroom? Black Professors are Disciplined for Talking About Racism

We are in the second day of our annual fundraiser here at We Are Respectable Negroes. I would like to thank the kind folks who have already thrown some money into the collection bowl. Such gestures are very much appreciated.

I do not advertise here at WARN. Nor, do I receive compensation for my writing at the various websites, and other venues, which have featured my work.

Instead, I offer up the twice a year begging bowl. I am the worst fundraiser ever because I open my hands and ask that after you take care of home, friends, family, pets, and other commitments, that if you can find a dollar or two to throw into the Paypal collection, I would be in your debt. My online work is a blessing. It is also work and a labor of love. I appreciate all of you and the support you have given me over the years.

If you like and enjoy the type of work I am trying to do here on WARN, please support our fundraiser if you are able.

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The noted historian Eugene Genovese once said that a teacher is not doing their job if they are not making their students uncomfortable at least once every class.

Genovese's wisdom about how effective teaching and learning should challenge and disrupt a student's priors and beliefs does not apply to those faculty who do not have tenure or are contingent labor. Genovese's rubric most certainly does not hold for professors who happen to be female or people of color.

For example, see the experience of Shannon Gibney, an African-American professor who was disciplined by administrators for making white students "uncomfortable" because she dared to talk about structural inequality in her classroom.

Salon details how:

A black female professor at Minneapolis Community and Technical College was formally reprimanded by school officials after three of her white male students were upset by a lesson she taught on structural racism.

Shannon Gibney says that the students reacted in a hostile manner to the lesson in her Introduction to Mass Communication class, with one of them asking her, “Why do we have to talk about this in every class? Why do we have to talk about this?”

“His whole demeanor was very defensive. He was taking it personally. I tried to explain, of course, in a reasonable manner — as reasonable as I could given the fact that I was being interrupted and put on the spot in the middle of class — that this is unfortunately the context of 21st century America,” she explained in an interview with City College News.

Gibney says that, after this initial comment, another white male student said, “Yeah, I don’t get this either. It’s like people are trying to say that white men are always the villains, the bad guys. Why do we have to say this?” These students continued to argue and disrupt the lesson until Gibney told them that if they were troubled by her handling of the subject, they could file an official complaint with the school’s legal affairs department.

The students then filed a complaint, and Gibney was formally reprimanded by the school’s vice president of academic affairs for creating a ”hostile learning environment” for trying to educate her students about the existence and operations of structural racism.

As an African-American, who for several years has taught on the college level, I can empathize with Gibney's sense of frustration (and likely anger) at being punished for doing her job, and the abuse she received from several white students who were "offended" that race was discussed in class. I would suggest that the greater insult for Shannon Gibney is not that these entitled and narcissistic students complained. Rather, it is that her superiors took such intellectually vacuous and petty complaints seriously.

Like most people of color who are members of the professional class or work in higher education, we can offer up many examples of our experiences with day-to-day racism and white supremacy. These challenges are especially problematic, because people of color who are members of the professional classes quite literally have the paper to prove their competence and training. Yet, for many white folks (and some black and brown folks who have internalized white supremacy) this is not enough. The bonafides may be present, hung on the wall, in the office, or listed as the authors of monographs and chapters in books; but, for a particular type of person, they/we are not "qualified" because our not being "white" is a de facto statement of our inherent lack of talent and ability.

The "Knockout Game" and the Myth of the "Liberal Media"

I have begun our annual fundraiser here at We Are Respectable Negroes. I do not advertise here at WARN. Nor, do I receive compensation for my writing at the various websites, and other venues, which have featured my work.

Instead, I offer up the twice a year begging bowl. I am the worst fundraiser ever because I open my hands and ask that after you take care of home, friends, family, pets, and other commitments, that if you can find a dollar or two to throw into the Paypal collection, I would be in your debt. My online work is a blessing. It is also work and a labor of love. I appreciate all of you and the support you have given me over the years.

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How do we reconcile the following observations?

According to conservatives, the news media has a "liberal bias": this is a foundational tenet of the Right-wings propaganda and disinformation campaign against the American people.

Black youth are running amok in mass and attacking white people across the country in a bacchanal of violence known as "the knockout game". 

But, if there is a "liberal media", why is the knockout game story being circulated by such "liberal" news outlets like MSNBC, CNN, The NY Times, USA Today, and others? Why would the liberal media legitimate the knockout game narrative instead of suppressing or covering it up?

The "liberal media" is a myth and a lie. There is no liberal media; there is only a corporate media. 

The knockout game is a moral panic wherein isolated incidents of random street crime are reframed as a nationwide plague upon innocent and vulnerable white people by deviant and naturally criminal blacks.

The sensational allure of the knockout game is drawn from the same racial and cultural imagination as D.W. Griffith's infamously racist film Birth of a Nation. The cultural trope of the black brute, rapist, and thug, are as central to American memory as is George Washington, apple pie, and the myth of rugged individualism and American exceptionalism.

Consequently, the allure of the knockout game for white conservatives and the Right-wing media (in an era where racism and conservatism are one in the same) is irresistible and instinctive.

The supposedly “liberal media” is influenced by similar forces.