Tuesday, December 10, 2013

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?

13 comments:

Bryan Ortez said...

I wanted to bring up a couple of things from your post yesterday. First on the extended childhood of the super rich, I think it also applies to the middle classes. They often get privileges that insulate then from economic failure, it's pretty crazy. I've worked since I was 16 years old while I had friends who didn't get any jobs until their mid twenties. It's amazing how much they would complain or disdain working when it was such an ingrained aspect of my existence by then. Yes, I worked and went to college at the same time and managed to make good grades while affording my rent.

The adultification of young children of color. I tried to emphasize that with someone when we were having a conversation about gang violence. I said something to the effect of them expecting black children who may grow up with gangs in their life having to make tho se decisions or facing very grisly scenes in their early childhood, they were dismissive as if everyone has to endure that decision making or it was their fault for living near them in the first place (their parents fault). They should just move.

There was a story I shared with them to prove my point. I think a twelve year old boy was beat and thrown down a flight of concrete stairs where he died, I can't remember the city. Police believed it was gang related, perhaps he declined an invitation to join. They didn't have anything to say that I can remember other than, well they should have moved, or he shouldn't have been hangin out with those thugs anyway.

justthefacts said...

All this handwavy "talk" isn't going to change a thing. The white folks over whom you obsess feel no empathy for little bottled-water girl or her family. They are NEUROLOGICALLY disinclined to feel anything for them or for you. Consequently, no amount of hostile, dismissive, aggrieved, and frankly pathetic and helpless talk, is going to change that fact on the ground.

Because they feel no empathy for you, they are not only not moved toward collective action on behalf of a child with whom you empathize, your incessant tirades against them for their true and sincere feelings toward her and toward you only serve to further alienate and antagonize them and hasten the day when interpersonal withdrawal and fragile tolerance is replaced by bloody aggression.

These are the simple, straight-up and plain facts of the matter. Talk all you want, but you are on your own, and these people will never willingly agree to have their earnings and their wealth appropriated by the government to support your irresponsible fecundity.

KissedByTheSun said...

Chauncey I'm begging you to please leave this comment up for all to see. People need to see that what your speaking about is living and real.

justthefacts said...

Not only is it living and real, it's self-sufficient, heavily-armed, dangerous, and fed up with all your whiny, parasitic bullshit.


Do you seriously believe you're entitled to my earnings to support your ineducable, malnourished, oppositional and useless to the future offspring?

Bryan Ortez said...

I had a guy tell me these couple of things yesterday:

"Not a problem Bryan, if it were up to me, I'd have a muslim holocaust and nuke every islamist country. Push back....against what YOUR morality and that of liberals in general?...you can shove your morality up you ass...and take the tirade you are about to enter into and self righteously do the same with it.
As for Japan, too bad that is all the civilians that died, I would have preferred millions.
Any other questions?"

"If it were up to me I'd put lib scum like you in gitmo style prisons, charged with high treason and sedition. Yes post your little pictures, so cute. Eventually the pendulum will shift our way as it always does, and the likes of you can end up like your hero che guevara, bullet riddled. If it ain't blood and iron, it just doesn't matter"

This really came out of nowhere.

justthefacts said 'fed up with whiny, parasitic bullshit'

These guys are the ones bitching up a storm all over the place. It's impossible to have an engaging conversation with folks like that.

justthefacts said...

lol, nobody's interested in all your bellyaching talk. We don't want to hear you and we damn sure don't want to support you.



Women beg and bitch for what they want/need. Men go to war for it. Put up or shut up.

chauncey devega said...

since you requested I will make an exception this time within limits.

chauncey devega said...

Adultification is a process I was just informed about a year or so ago. It isn't just children of color, but the poor too. And remember, this isn't about "biological" race it is about social stigma and being the Other in a society. There are many examples of like processes in other societies and points in history too.

Peter Blood said...

“These guys are the ones bitching up a storm all over the place. It’s impossible to have an engaging conversation with folks like that.”

LOLZ, your definition of “engaging conversation” is “shut up and bend over, racist!” Ha ha, those days are ending, see, now we’re bitching up a storm all over the place!

Nathanwartooth said...

Thanks for the laugh. When I read the title I thought "What does a brand of water have to do with anything?" then I realized that the mother named their child after a brand of water! HAHAHAHHAHAHAH I laughed for a good minute.


But you know what I do see here in the picture? Blacks living 10000x better than their cousins back in the third world. They have a TV and clean beds to sleep on that aren't invested with insects and disease.


Blacks have shown they can't build anything even closely resembling the conditions in the picture. So instead of asking whites for MORE charity, they should be kissing the feet of every white they see and thanking them for not kicking them out of their beautiful civilization.

rikyrah said...

EVIL ass mofos...the entire lot of them.

joefriday said...

This statement of truth will doubtless be deleted by the limp-wristed little proprietor of the establishment, but it's the unvarnished truth of the matter.

Bryan Ortez said...

Absolutely.


I was forced to defend myself by some conservatives simply for not agreeing with them. They were basically pointing out things that could be considered as symbolic racism. I was trying to point out that children often have to make very difficult decisions in their lives or deal with tremendous consequences from someone else's decision in their life.

It was my attempt to not let them derail a conversation about white perceptions toward people of color (I think it was related to George Zimmerman's trial).