Friday, April 10, 2015

Colorblind White Racism and the Right-Wing Media's Response to the Killing of Walter Scott


Instead of posting a new episode of the podcast known as The Chauncey DeVega Show, I would to continue our conversation about the killing of Walter Scott.

Next week, I will be posting two new episodes--one on Tuesday and one on Thursday. My conversation with author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nick Chiles about his new book Justice While Black is extremely relevant to the events in the Walter Scott case.

If folks did not have a chance to listen to that episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show when it originally aired, they will find it very illuminating and helpful.

I would like to return to some of the themes discussed in my essay "How Will White Conservatives Defend the Killer Cop Who Shot Walter Scott?". As it has gone around the Internet (now shared more than 10,000 times on Facebook), my question has received several types of answers.

These include the typical, "this is race-baiting and white conservatives will condemn the killing of Walter Scott like anyone else would!" to the more intelligent, and I think spot on, "the Right-wing media will either be silent on the issue or will instead choose to condemn the killing as proof of how 'fair' and 'not racist' the criminal justice system actually is".

The latter point is very insightful: white supremacy in the post civil rights era often works via a superficial condemnation of obvious racism and racially motivated violence against people of color as a means of advancing a type of White Racial Logic which deems racism and white supremacy as things of the past, outliers and aberrations in contemporary America.

Colorblind racism is a feature of post civil rights era America. As such, it has colored the Right-wing media's response to the killing of Michael Scott.

For example, Fox News, the Right-wing's largest and most influential purveyor of disinformation and outright lies, devoted several segments to discussing the murder of Walter Scott by the white thug cop Michael Slager.

On The Five, panelist Greg Gutfeld suggested that when viewing the video recorded murder of Walter Scott by Michael Slager, he "doesn't see race" but rather one person being killed unjustly by another.

Gutfeld is delusional.

Unless he has a problem with his vision, Gutfeld most definitely sees a white cop shooting an unarmed black person in the back.

Here, the White Gaze and White Racial logic refuse to "see" or acknowledge race. In doing so, white supremacy is advanced and sustained because the social and political context of white on black violence and inequality is removed.

Fox News' Greg Gutfeld is also demonstrating a second component of colorblind racism: the theft and misappropriation of anti-racist language.

Concepts such as "oppression", "victim", "racism", and "equality of opportunity" have been hijacked by conservatives who want to protect and expand systems of white privilege.

Subsequently, the White Right has succeeded in creating an upside down political imaginary where it is white people who are somehow "oppressed" by non-whites, the "justice claims" of white people have somehow been denied, and Brother Dr. King was a conservative Republican. This is bizarre and anti-intellectual thinking; it is intoxicating for a large swathe of White America.

Fox News' "Hannity" offered an additional example of how white supremacy is sustained in an era of colorblind racism. He featured a comical "debate" between professional black Uncle Tom sycophant and white racist political feces eater Jesse Lee Peterson and Leo Terrell.

As is his shtick, Jesse Lee Peterson defended the killing of Walter Scott. In response, Leo Terrell walked off of Hannity's show in disgust.

Colorblind white racism (and the more honest "old fashioned" racism and white supremacy) deploys black and brown people to give voice to anti-black animus. Black conservatives fulfill this role for the White Right on a macro level political scale. Similar work is done on a micro and inter-personal scale when individual white folks say "my black friend said it is okay because..." or "I can't be racist because my 'best friend' is 'black'".

Colorblind racism is the dominant mode for white supremacy in the post civil rights era. However, more traditional and overt forms of white racism still exist. They often subvert the efforts by the White Right and conservatives to mask their anti-black racism with more "neutral" language about "culture", "personal responsibility", or "fairness".

Conservatism and racism are so conjoined in the post civil rights era and the Age of Obama as to be almost indistinguishable from one another. Moreover, the Republican Party is the United States' largest white identity organization.

Critical thinkers and observers of American social and political life should not be deceived by the Right-wing media's opening gambits in response to the killing of Walter Scott by the thug police officer Michael Slager.

The contemporary Republican Party and movement conservatism are fueled by anti-black racism.

Their media can express momentary shock and concern that an unarmed black man was shot dead on video by a corrupt police officer who then lied about the events to cover up his crime. But, the White Right must ultimately (and inevitably) default back to their "brand name", what is a standing rule and prior of hostility and racism towards Black America.

What types of responses to the killing of Walter Scott have you seen online? Best? Worst? Any good writing or analysis on the subject--narrowly or broadly--to share?

19 comments:

Kyle Younger said...

Crystal Wright chose to do the Black on Black crime thing and completely ignored the fact that Walter Scott was unarmed and murdered. That woman sickens me.

chauncey devega said...

It pays. Self-hating negroes on speed dial.

Gable1111 said...

Right wing conservative media (O'Reilly, Hannity, Fox et al) are condemning this as an isolated incident, an aberration, which supports their frame that it's simply not possible for these cops to ever lie about their deadly encounters with unarmed black men. That it's typically the fault of the black monsters getting their just due.

But in so doing they undermine their implication of innocence thusly: if all these incidents of police killings are supposedly always the fault of the victim, and its just black folk lying in every case, why is it that the two times we have video (Garner, Scott) we see unmistakably murder being committed and not innocent officers doing their jobs, "in fear for their lives," acting in self defense?

Had a Santana come along and video taped the killing of Brown, it would probably have been every bit as horrific as the murder of Scott. Slager followed the same script as Wilson, but was only tripped up by video.

Buddy said...

I never understood the "black on black crime" response to a cop shooting a civilian. Because a cop is a representative of the state and LAW ENFORCEMENT and should be held to a higher standard. I don't get Crystal's logic.

joe manning said...

The cops want cop cams so they can control and edit the video and limit its exposure. A bill before the Texas legislature would criminalize persons who film policing activities. It also bars people from filming their interaction with the police and only allows corporate media to film police in public. The bill doesn't have much chance of getting out of committee because its even to opaque for the righties, but this presages things to come. thefreethoughtproject.com/texas-representative-seeks

chauncey devega said...

There is no logic. The White Right and their black sycophants have created an alternate reality.

balitwilight said...

Colour-Blind racism... Remember the movie "Alien" where someone described that monster as "the perfect predator"? French, Portugese, Spanish, British and Dutch settlers invented the perfect monster for oppression with their "black"/"white" "races". Its genius legacy is that those who benefit from it (of course!) zealously enforce its mythology (if slyly at times) - but many who suffer the most from it unwittinlgy enforce the mythology even 400 years later.
Just as caste IS oppression, "Race" IS racism: that is all it was created for. Why would I ever see myself as a category invented by a White Gaze seeking to oppress me? However, people who claim to be "color blind" are not allies of dismantling racism. Claiming "Color Blindness" is a silly denial of one's racism. When I walk into a roomful of people it would be very silly if I said I was "hair-colour blind" and could not see who had black hair, or who had auburn hair or yellow hair. But it would be sinister for me to say that everyone with auburn hair is a "red race"... who deserves to be enslaved...and even if their children have yellow hair, they are still magically "red children" (see Obama). This is the 17th century lunacy Europeans designed - and the caste system that I (and many others increasingly) are learning to repudiate. "Black, Bi-racial, Multiracial..." these are all the children of the Portugese slaver.
As long as, in any class full of children, someone can say "will the children of colour please stand up", and all the "white" children remain seated...? then this "race" con-game is doing its work. All of us are "people of colour". And those from 3/4 of the world population called "people of colour" today have nothing in common but the White Gaze and a racist framework. Seeing the damage and injustice that this 17th century caste system has wrought, I will resist those categories with my last breath. I see people of many skin colours, many hair colours, many features, many ancestries. I, for one, am definitely not colour-blind. I see colour. However, I am race-resistant.

Anne O'Nimmus said...

Faux News et al probably never look at the fb page 'Killed By Police'. The death toll just a couple of hours ago, with the year only 101 days old, was 322. If not a fb user, there's also a .net which keeps the listings. How can such high numbers be isolated or aberrations?

Buddy said...

And those from 3/4 of the world population called "people of colour"


When they're not being called "non-white"

ryan said...

except that there were African American witnesses to the Brown killing whose testimony was fairly close to the story told by the police officer.

Gable1111 said...

There were also witnesses who disputed the police officer's story. In fact, there were many witnesses who's testimony disputed the officer's story, and their testimony was discounted by the "prosecutor" before the grand jury.

INDYOO7 said...

Chauncey your site is an oasis of intelligence that always puts me back in mental alignment. Thank God I found you. As far as Republican deniers of racism, are you familiar with Alfonzo Rachel and Kevin Jackson. Whenever situations like this occur, these guys get quite as a church mouse. I can always depend on them to berate the democratic party, while giving the party of Lincoln a pass. They can talk endlessly about black criminal pathology but never about racism. I find that they like to pass off racism as being only the Democrats who are capable of inflicting it. I am not fooled by the left/right paradigm. Racism is not mutually exclusive to one political party. I see both the common denominator being white people.

INDYOO7 said...

That is conservative tactic 101, deflect, deflect, deflect. Lee Atwater was a master of this and the Republican party has been running with that playbook for a couple decades now. It's how they try to invalidate a valid point. Bring the topic back to the discussion at hand is the simple way to cut through the bs.

INDYOO7 said...

Ring! Ring! "Hello diss iz Jesse Lee Patterson speaking." "Oh Jesse, another white cop has killed an unarmed black man." "So what's the problem?" "Well can you help take the heat off us. All these accidents are starting to wake black people up." "Well I will be happy to hep in any way I can." "Thanks Jesse, the checks in the mail." "Tank you boss."

chauncey devega said...

White fragility is an important and key concept. Sister Elliot is the truth. I love how the white students can't use race to try to trump here wisdom. She is a real soldier.

chauncey devega said...

Oasis. Goodness! I need to sell that as an additive in some overpriced bottled water :)


Good folks like you help to make the water run in what is not an oasis but rather (I hope) a real pond of good, clean, refreshing water in the digital wilderness.


Whole convo--as you know--about liberal racism.

INDYOO7 said...

Whenever you reply to me its like I'm a moth to the flame. Where else can I hope to hear from the moderator? Keep it up and I'll keep coming back for more....no homo.

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