Thursday, May 29, 2014

For Those So Inclined: Here is Chauncey DeVega's Very 'Interesting' Interview on The Context of White Supremacy Online Radio Show

My "interview" on the Context of White Supremacy online radio show was very interesting.

The "conversation" on the Context of White Supremacy ran the gamut from concepts of white supremacy, to the role of white anti-racists in the long Civil Rights Movement into the present, and the role of black conservatives in maintaining white supremacy.

As you will hear--in this long 2 hour conversation--at a certain point (about minute 56) it is abundantly clear that I am not going to play along with the host "Gus T. Renegade's" clumsy angle.

I have tried to annotate the program so that you can search through it at your leisure.

The sound quality is a little uneven on the host's end, but for the most part, it can be understood.

[There is some priceless comedy gold here. Gus T. Renegade's obsession with Tim Wise approaches being a type of priapism. Gus T. Renegade also has a young child (ostensibly, who knows?) that reads a script and asks questions to the guests in a scene right out of the movie "I'm Gonna Get You Sucka". Of course, I don't fall for the hustle. The commercials at the end of the show are priceless comedy gold.]

The Context of White Supremacy online radio show is a helpful reminder of how racial chauvinism can also hurt black and brown people, where because of the traumas they have suffered in a white supremacist society, some of them may lose the capacity for nuanced thought, mirroring the racial ugliness that has been afflicted upon them in an obsessive and neurotic manner.

The interview/conversation is a large file which had to be divided up into two parts.

Your thoughts?



Part 1

11:00 Chauncey DeVega introduced
15:50 Defining White Supremacy
23:50 Understanding implicit bias and the need for a more nuanced understanding of Whiteness and White Supremacy
31:20 People as individuals within and in relationship to systems of power
33:45 The origins of WARN and its title
36:45 Is Chauncey Devega afraid of white people?
40:24 Black conservatives and racism. Are they victims of White Supremacy?
52:50 Gus T. Renegade's obsession with Tim Wise begins
56:00 The danger of race essentialism
56:51 Is Clarence Thomas "white"? Is Clarence Thomas a victim?
63:00 Gus T. Renegade has more empathy and respect for Clarence Thomas than Jane Elliot and other white anti-racist activists
69:00 Parsing the language of "good negro" and "bad negro"

Part 2


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00:35 What does it mean when Chauncey DeVega says that Tim Wise is his friend
02:20 Tim Wise is apparently "rich" from being a white anti-racist
07:27 White social activists should work for free and people of color paid
09:50 Tim Wise is "impatient" and "mean" to a young child named "Justice" who calls into the Context of White Supremacy online radio show
16:55 At which point I ask, why is Gus T. Renegade so obsessed with Tim Wise?
21:40 "Justice" calls in to the show. I refuse to play along with Gus T. Renegade's shtick.
23:46 Some questions from the listeners to the C.O.W.S. show
48:50 Unintentionally funny commercials from "Racismdaily.com" and "Counterracism.com"
53:07 Gus T. Renegade announces that this episode of the C.O.W.S. show will not be in the archive

19 comments:

skilletblonde said...

I'm surprised no one has commented about this audio. Perhaps on the weekend people more will have time to listen and comment. I thought it was an informative, lively dialogue. However, when the host became obsessed with your opinion of Clearance Thomas's whiteness, he dropped the ball on being a respectable host. Then it turned into some personal vendetta he had against Tim Wise. When he played the audio between the 10 year-old doing a rendition of Bill O'Reilly with Wise, I thought, what the hell is this? There was no evidence of Wise being impatient or disrespectful toward the child. I thought he handled the question about being a racist skillfully.



Unfortunately, the host spent the second half of the show protecting his ego, instead of discussing other topics. Ego will kill a movement quicker than anything. What difference does it make if Wise is making a few bucks, or, if Jane Elliott is afraid for her life? This is petty nonsense. As long as their objective is to end racism, that's good enough for me.


Chauncey, you were brilliant, my brother. Thank you.

chauncey devega said...

You are a person of Solomon and Conan like strength and patience. This experience was tedious and boring. It was also very revealing for how white racism hurts black and brown people. The conversation also made--and is making me--do some critical self-reflection.


I wonder what about my tone and writing would make anyone think that I would have any tolerance for race essentialism.


I don't get it. Moreover, what about my work here on WARN, radio interviews, and elsewhere would make some think that I waste my time on foolishness and play along with it?

Craig said...

It started out well, i was really getting into it but the host dropped the ball. I think he ran out of material to advance the discussion and became argumentative based on a cycle of personal feeling. I remember being like this in college. I was an art major and would defend critique of my work by trying to trap the semantics of the speaker. It took awhile to learn how to evaluate the substance of my own work as it exists in the world and like skilletblond mentions, not let ego get in the way. This is why your work, chauncey, is so valuable. You are dealing with things that go to the core of truamatic emotions which triggers the ego to protect; but you have your research and your writing, difficult crafts, that compel scrutiny, evaluation and reconsideration which convinces the ego to settle down and listen.
I'm wondering if you had a difficult struggle with your own ego early in your education and if you can recall a breakthrough point.

truthhurts said...

Negroe puh-leeze!

You're obnoxious as fuck, and not anything any sane or sensible person would hold out as a "teacher". You've never even been responsible for anyone but your damn self? wtf do you purport to know and have experienced that would make you wise to anyone but another overripe juvenile delinquent?

You're insecure as fuck, thus the now heavily moderated echo/fellatio chamber.

Your transparently self-promoting subject matter expertise - which has no practical value except to low self-esteem, belly-aching losers core of traumatic emotions rotflmao - is infinitely more caustic and damaging than it is curative and correcting.

Your whole infantile schtick is a waste of time - and you are a community-college level schmuck stuck in this sorry little dead-end forever.

Craig said...

You had a lot to offer but he didnt know how to bring it out; he doesnt really know the nature of his own work. It seems he's interviewed a lot of good people but I bet he smothered them the same way.

jimA thompson said...

Trying to keep the conversation centered around the dynamics of implicit bias kept it flowing, for me. There's such a clear definition seperating the wonderfulness of Afrocentrism with what can come across as being so tormented you find ways to deny how much you're obsessed by it, you waste time as the host did with what he feels is clever tricks. I had stepped away from my laptop it wasn't clear if I heard him say he was going to archive it or not, until today. Thanks for putting it up adding the timeline was a nice after-thought.

joe manning said...

Its shows that we need less Marcus Garvey and more Julius Wilson. Its tragic that Renegade and his callers have internalized racist hate so much that they turn it back against themselves thereby blocking their capacity to connect the dots. Race essentialism is synonymous with racism; parish the thought that every race and ethnicity naturally engages in primitive tribal warfare. By definition the human rights movement is a rainbow coalition.

Myshkin the Idiot said...

okay, finally got to listen to the whole interview. very interesting. It seems you guys are parsing out similar ideas and coming to head at small, critical details. It's unfortunate.


I think he makes a good point about how when black conservatives are rolled out as the "tip of the sword" (as you said, which I agree with) people jump on them and it does cause you to focus on people of color that pursue goals counter to anti-white supremacy.


They do need to be held accountable, though, for the views they assert. I have witnessed a black conservative jumping to defend his white conservative allies. White folk sit back while he disparages poor black folks. Then I have to argue more with him, while they all call me a liberal racist and encouraging a "victim mentality".


He should have archived it, unless it's just because he didn't record it.

zazen99 said...

Kudos to you for maintaining in the face of manifest foolishness. Clearly there is a lot of hate and ignorance at both extremes. To quote the tag above :"sometimes black people make me sad."

chauncey devega said...

He wanted to throw the interview down the memory hole for a variety of reasons. None of them were technical.

chauncey devega said...

It was unfortunate he chose to proceed in that manner. Even more so that he thought I would play along. Ego is a problem we struggle with our whole lives. Re: school and learning? Remove yourself from the conversation and argue the facts, theory, and data. The "I" can be a beginning, it cannot and should not be the ending.

chauncey devega said...

That is his style. I also know exactly what his playbook is, I did my homework. Very doctrinaire and simple thinking. I was hoping things wouldn't go that way but unfortunately they did.

anonymous said...

Unfortunate, I am unable to get the audio to play. Tho generally I have a problem to get even his achieved media to play. I am very interested in listening to this pod cast. Anyone have any suggestions for an alternative way to access this on a smart phone? The little I could catch I could readily understand tour viewpoint and Renegades view. Overall, glad to see that you are now on tumblr and that you were a guest on C.O.W.S.

Louis Dixon said...

For technical reasons I, thankfully, couldn't listen to the first half - but the second was enough: A firm reminder that, for centuries, sound was used as a method of torture. Don't. Do That. Again.

Like Ted Cruz, Renegade's clumsy AND quick, but still digging in the wrong spot - so there's no reward in listening to him. Why do you say you're friends with Tim Wise? Why do you say he's cool? Really? What could anyone imagine was there possibly to be gained, for he or his listeners, by that line of questioning? And not archiving such an abundance of idiocy is dishonest beyond words.

As you know, I co-host a stupid little radio show, and race made an unexpected visit to the proceedings, causing a little bit of friction. I only mention it because my show is supposed to be frivolous and got serious.

Yours, apparently, was the other way around,...

chauncey devega said...

I was exhausted afterwards and needed a drink. Well several. Thanks though.

SabrinaBee said...

Wow! Weird. I can see how doing this interview was tedious, it was tedious to listen to. Not sure what he is really on about. He seems to be trying to discredit the work of Tim Wise and others, simply because they have to eat. Doing work like that requires research, through archives that can seem endless, and takes hours to pour through. To suggest that anyone should do it for free when they have a family to maintain, that is ludicrous. His work is sound and accessible. Becuase there are minorities who have done the work that are not recognized, means that they are not as accessible. Should we then simply ignore the others who are doing the work and have it out there for consumption, because they are white? That makes no sense.

And he really ought to be ashamed of his "gotcha" moment for Time Wise. If it was not obvious that that child was being coached, encouraged to be rude, combative, and that the call was anything but genuine, then the sky is not blue. I don't blame you for laughing, or for cutting the repeat scenario off at the head. Were they offended? Probably, but seeing as how they just displayed a history of doing the very thing you were trying to avoid, I don't see why they should be.

The Clarence Thomas question, I was hoping you'd say that his wife certainly thinks he's "honorary" enough. I think other posters are correct, this man's ego was jumping out at you over the airwaves. He had a point to prove and was desperately trying to prove it, while trying not to. To the point of seeming incompetent.

I don' know who or even if he is incompetent, as this is the first I've heard of the show. But to suggest not calling those of our own race out, that do the work of hurting the blacks, in image and deed, speaks of malpractice. We can walk and chew gum at the same time and calling attention to both, does not take away from either. Clarence Thomas, Crystal Wright, and Herman Cain are not victims trying to survive in a white man's world. They are people who have gained some measure of influence, in terms of leadership positions. The have decided to use that influence to lend towards, ensuring that they stay in those positions, at the expense of other blacks.

chauncey devega said...

You wrote:

"There's such a clear definition seperating the wonderfulness of Afrocentrism with what can come across as being so tormented you find ways to deny how much you're obsessed by it, you waste time as the host did with what he feels is clever tricks"

Please clarify. Tormented? Obsessed? "you waste time as the host did with what he feels is clever tricks"


Do tread carefully. Perhaps you listened to a different interview than the one I participated in.

Myshkin the Idiot said...

I suffer my naivete gets the best of me. hence the name, the idiot, as it can render one dumb in the face of truth.


It was perhaps your rebuff of Justice's inquiry, your laughing at the Tim Wise bit. His obsession with Wise began at minute one with clip of him arguing with Crystal Wright.

Bomani Ajamu said...

If any of you think that a white person is actually going to help end a system that their ancestors created, is totally wrong. I have been to a Tim Wise lecture. I thought I was at a Jodeci concert after witnessing all the Black females fawn all over him. I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Wise has a Black female in every city he speaks in. Just my two cents.