Confronting African-American Pessimism and "Negroidal Nihilism" in the Age of Obama

Barack Obama takes the oath of office for the second time as president on Monday, January 21 on the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Once again, a black man becomes the most powerful human being on the planet. Black children will continue to see someone who looks like them in charge, and many in the older generation will smile brighter and step livelier, thanking the Creator for allowing them to behold the closest thing they’ll see to the Promised Land.

But there’s a generation in between – too young to remember the bloody Civil Rights battles of the 1960s, and too old to feel unadulterated hope. Some members of this African-American generation see Obama’s accomplishment through a veil of indifference. For them, feeling good about Obama is blocked by a Negroidal nihilism too high to get over; too low to get under.

We have touched on questions of black nihilism several times here on WARN. Taking a cue from Cornel West's sharp observations about how grinding poverty, the color line, consumerism, and other systems of inequality threaten(ed) to generate a sense of lovelessness and hopelessness among the black (and brown) poor, I applied that framework in order to contextualize the ghetto thuggery of Chief Keef, and the triumphant criminal youthocracy which he represents.

Conversations about black nihilism must be approached with great care as one should not essentialize "blackness"; moreover, there are tens of millions of ways to be black in America. Overarching claims and descriptions rob us of our individuality, agency, and humanity.

In thinking about the concept of black nihilism, we must also ask the broader question: is black nihilism any different than American nihilism, born of a corporatist democracy which wages undeclared wars abroad, killing innocents by remote control, all in the name of fighting "terrorism," while the country's infrastructure and social safety net are systematically eviscerated?

Or is black nihilism fundamentally different from American nihilism, because as a people, African-Americans have been the truth tellers, exposed the contradictions of American democracy (quite literally in and on our flesh as those historically and uniquely deemed fit for the status of human chattel in this country) and then forced the nation to live up to its democratic creed?

After Obama's reelection I speculated about the imminent return of the complaint chorus on both the Left and the Right. They are already tuning up the band of disappointment.

In parallel, Eugene Holley Jr. offered up a nice complement to these questions of hope, dreaming, expectations--and yes, nihilism--relative to the Age of Obama in an essay which deserved more attention than it initially received several weeks ago. There he observed:

I’ve talked to some of these folks about how Obama’s election is the potent proof that white supremacy can now be written in lower-case. I’ve pointed out to them that while racism is not dead, it certainly is dead-on-arrival as the unmoving, unchanging, unwavering force that conscripts the black, brown and beige to the gray hells of second-class citizenship. But for some, it’s hard to see the possibilities that await us. They tilt their head, shrug their shoulders, or just give you that old standby: the “Negro, please” look, designed to banish you from the tribe for not knowing “what time it is.”

Afro-pessimism is rampant in the hood, but it also lives in academia...  

Being human, people tend to go inward and internalize the degradation and lack of hope around them. That, of course, is not an exclusively black thing, as evidenced by the sad condition of Native Americans, Kurds, Roma and many other oppressed people on the planet.

While pessimism under unrelenting and brutal conditions is understandable, it ceases to be useful when we refuse to believe that better conditions are possible because believing it sets us up for disappointment. The presidency of Barack Obama becomes too much to process, and we shy away from the work of overhauling negative thinking. We shift into thinking that any kind of African-American advancement is a sham, a trick, a hustle; an unforgivable delusion unfit for those who keep it real.

The last sentence is so damn potent.

Here is a provocative thought: is Cornel West (and other such Obama detractors) guilty, in an ironic fashion, of the same "black nihilism" he identified more than a decade ago in the book Black Popular Culture?

An Interview With Richard Slotkin About America's Gun Culture, Mass Shootings, and History of Interpersonal Violence

During the last few months, We Are Respectable Negroes has focused a great amount of energy on exploring the politics surrounding America's gun culture. 

In the aftermath of a series of mass shootings, culminating with Adam Lanza's massacre of 26 people in Newtown, Connecticut before Christmas, America's epidemic of gun violence has (re)emerged as a pressing issue of public concern, one that directly impacts the Common Good, and which subsequently cannot be ignored.

In the first of a two-part interview about mass shootings in America, I was lucky to speak with Professor Ann Little (author of Abraham in Arms: War and Gender in Colonial New England regarding the connections between white masculinity, the Gun Right, and the historical antecedents which drive a fetish-like obsession with guns on the part of many people in the United States. 

Our conversation was rich and revealing. We worked through some very delicate issues--such as the relationship between Whiteness, aggrieved white masculinity, and how the media framed the Newtown Massacre--that are little discussed by the corporate media. Based on the number of folks who downloaded the show, Professor Ann Little definitely struck a chord.

The second part of this interview features Professor Richard Slotkin, the Olin Professor of English and American Studies at Wesleyan University. He is one of the foremost experts on the connection(s) between America's gun culture, our national mythologies of the West and the frontier, and how such foundational social fictions impart meaning, legitimacy, and identity to the "gun rights" movement in the present. 

Slotkin's book Gunfighter Nation is a go to text for those interested in the historical foundations of America's centuries-long gun culture. His thesis about the connection(s) between what he terms "regeneration through violence," masculinity, and firearms use have been widely discussed--most recently, by the NY Times and its exploration of the movie Django Unchained. 

In this conversation, Professor Slotkin generously offered up his time to We Are Respectable Negroes. We discussed a range of issues ranging from the relationship between guns and American political development; to the Newtown shooting and the connections between the Right, the gun lobby, and neoliberalism/hyper conservatism; and how racial formation and citizenship intersected in the World War One era.

I learned a great deal talking to Richard Slotkin. It was an amazing conversation that came into being thanks to some helpful intermediaries who are friends of WARN, and of course because of the generosity of our guest. 

I have some good folks lined up for the podcast series here on We Are Respectable Negroes. Do share this (and our other shows too) with your friends and colleagues. 

I hope you enjoy this interview with Richard Slotkin.

Hosted by Kiwi6 file hosting.

 Download mp3 - Free Music Hosting.

1:00 Introductions

2:13 What was your initial response to the Newtown Shooting based on your understanding of America's gun culture? 

3:42 How is America an extraordinarily violent culture?

6:12 How did America, as a liberal democracy, come to fetishize guns?

10:00 Historically, how is America's pattern of gun ownership different from Europe? How is wanting a gun a perfectly "rational" goal in the United States given its violent culture?

11:45 How some people feel vulnerable and then decide to need guns. The "equalizer fallacy" and how there is an error in reasoning by those who believe that guns "secure their freedoms and liberty."

13:56 The Hobbesian state of nature and the magical thinking of the Gun Right

15:28 The elites of the Right and the connections between hyper-conservatism/neoliberalism and the "gun right's" movement

19:20 Whiteness, white masculinity, Adam Lanza, and mass shootings in America

22:39 Dealing with the sources of social violence that lead people to think they need guns, and also feel justified in making guns easier to carry in every public space

25:35 How would the NRA respond to black and brown folks joining the NRA in mass and arming themselves against police and/or State violence?

28:55 Race, citizenship, Jim Crow, the Black Freedom Struggle, and gun ownership

34:00 Confronting gun violence by limiting the lethality of guns, improving background checks, making sure that the mentally unstable and poorly trained do not have access to firearms, and confronting the country's deep veins of interpersonal violence

38:08 How did the United States muster the willpower to limit public access to automatic weapons in the 1930s?

44:15 How do we locate Barack Obama, as a black president, in a moment when access to guns may be restricted? How does this complicate (or fit into) narratives about race and citizenship in the United States?

47:12 What was the genesis for your writing the book Lost Battalions about race, ethnicity, and citizenship in the World War One era?

51:22 Where is American Studies going in the future?

An Academic Smackdown: Refuting the Piss Poor Social Science Claim that "Poverty is in Our Genes"

We present a critique of a paper written by two economists, Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor, which is forthcoming in the American Economic Review and which was uncritically highlighted in Science magazine..

In their study, Ashraf and Galor argue that there are strong links between population genetic diversity and the per-capita income of nation states, even after accounting for factors like geography and land productivity. They further contend that the United States, Europe, and Asia are affluent because they have optimal genetic diversity, while developing nations in Africa and the Americas are impoverished because they have either too much or too little genetic diversity.

Ashraf and Galor have attempted to use human genetic data to contend that the level of diversity present in a population as humans spread out and peopled the world has caused long-lasting effects on economic development. They claim that high genetic diversity (common in African populations) increases the incidence of distrust and conflict, which causes social instability and lower productivity. 

In addition, they argue that populations that are relatively genetically homogeneous (such as Native Americans) are at an economic disadvantage because genetic diversity increases competition and thus innovation. Ashraf and Galor arrive at the controversial conclusion that colonialism might have had a positive effect on development in Africa and the Americas by changing the genetic composition of the colonized territories.

It would seem that what we have here is a Goldilocks theory which purports to link "genetic diversity" in human populations with a given society's economic success and productivity. Unlike that fairy tale, all of the porridge served by Ashraf and Galor is toxic.

I am generally loathe to participate in conversations about the specious link between genes and societal "success." One of my objections is practical. The human biodiversity crowd are either explicitly in bed with, and/or greatly overlap with white supremacists. I have no use for their venom and lies.

As an empirical matter, the foundational claim(s) that there is something "genetic" about socially constructed groups known as "races," and that macro-level social outcomes can be imputed from individual genes in mass lacks both parsimony and rigor. There are simply too many variables involved. Moreover, the base constructs lack validity as individual members of different "races" have more in common genetically with people of different "racial groups" than they do with each other.

I decided to make an exception for the article, Is Poverty in Our Genes? A Critique of Ashraf and Galor, “The ‘Out of Africa’ Hypothesis, Human Genetic Diversity, and Comparative Economic Development.”

Why?

Post racial discourse is predicated upon an erroneous assumption: in the shadow of the Holocaust, old fashioned racism was slayed by the civil rights movement(s) and its allies in the academic, social justice, and scientific communities.

Here, claims of biological determinism are just too antiquated and primitive to be taken seriously. I have long-countered that eugenics, phrenology, and the other assorted scientific enterprises which supported global white supremacy have simply evolved. There are technologies of race. The effort to use the emerging science about the human genome to legitimate long-standing racial ideologies which judge non-whites to be inferior is not new. It is simply an example of the new technologies of white supremacist "racecraft" in practice.

Did You Buy Your Black Baby on Sale at Target This Past Weekend?

Here is something fun and random to start the week.

For those of you who watched the Royal Rumble on Sunday night, are you pleased that the Rock is now the WWE Champion? The powers that be pulled a "Dusty Finish": this was hinted at by the Rock's interview before the match, during which he quite literally channeled one of Dusty Rhodes' most famous promos.



I was hoping for a run-in by Brock Lesnar. There was none. But, in the long view, CM Punk still looked like a champion. He faced down one of the best the business has ever seen, and will wrestle the Undertaker at Wrestlemania. If I had the book, when CM Punk inevitably gets the strap back he should continue counting the days he spent as champion, ignoring the time that he was without the belt. The Royal Rumble also saw the return of Chris Jericho--who almost went the distance. There was also no Batista. Sigh. But the Godfather made an appearance. Cheers.

The ending was predictable with Cena winning...but understandable given all of the variables in play.

Was the pay-per-view worth 55 dollars? No. Was it entertaining. Yes.

Target ran the above ad on its website over the weekend. One of the friends of WARN sent the above screen caption to me with the following observation, "I knew black kids were 'cheap' to adopt comparatively, but this is a bit ridiculous!" I have to agree. Why run off to Africa to adopt a little black baby when they are on sale at Target? The "ethnicization" of blackness is a real phenomenon: imported black babies have a cool factor that the domestic born variety simply lack.

Sometimes you just have to laugh...

A Man Leaves Prison After 25 Years, Listens to Fox News, AM Talk Radio, and Then Realizes That the Country Has Become a Nuthouse

What would it feel like to go to jail for more than 20 years? How would the world change around you? Would you yearn to go back "inside" to regain a sense of "normalcy?"

I had an acquaintance who "went away" for some time. When he got back to the "real world" my acquaintance continued to wash his clothes in either the sink or the bathtub. For several months, he would sleep on the floor, as opposed to the bed, because it felt more "comfortable." He never mentioned anything about conservative talk radio and Fox News. My acquaintance was more fascinated by computers and changes in music editing technology.

But then again, this was back in the late 1990s before Right-wing epistemic closure had a not insignificant choke hold on a good percentage of the American people.

The American electorate is highly polarized. We are not talking to each other across lines of party and ideology. The inability of Congress to function properly reflects this fact; the Tea Party GOP's efforts to rig the electoral college in order to subvert the people's will is a symptom of both a disconnect between the General Will, as well as a highly partisan and dysfunctional party system.

Is the American political system so broken that an ex-convict is the truth-teller, a Rip Van Winkle of sorts, who is best able to call out what ills American politics? Apparently, Michael Santos escaped the metaphorical cave: during his 25 year bid, the rest of us in the "free world" actually became the troglodytes. 

From Slate's interview with Michael Santos, as featured in the piece, "How Is Life Outside After Being in Prison for Over 20 Years?":

Do you consider the world has gone mad? 

Politically, there seems to be a lot more divisiveness in the country. We did not have the “fair-and-balanced” services of Fox news when I began serving my sentence, and back then, the invective of AM hate radio had not yet begun. The political fights in the media sound somewhat crazy. Even though I realize those fights cater to fanatics and they’re in the business of selling advertising, it surprises me that citizens don’t see how a reluctance to work together tears our country apart. From that perspective, aspects of the world do indeed seem a bit out of sorts. 

But even though the world is different from the time before my troubles with the criminal justice system, I wouldn’t characterize the world as having gone mad. It’s just different. I was born in 1964, and I grew up during a time when we were in a Cold War but celebrating peace, for the most part. 

Soon after my imprisonment began, the Cold War ended and a hot war began in the Middle East. That violence brought a lot of change. Suddenly the military was very active, and now our country pays a new price for that activity. Thousands of young men and women have gone off to fight, and when they returned, many veterans found that they didn’t have as much support as it would seem that they needed. That’s kind of sad, but an inevitable result of so much divisiveness that presides over our country.

The political divisiveness doesn’t make much sense to me. I am biased of course, because I served so much time in prison. But I see the criminal justice system as a national disgrace. It costs citizens billions to support, but it perpetuates cycles of failure. Even though scientific evidence shows that investment in education does far more to lower recidivism rates than warehousing human beings, the system keeps growing, locking more people in cages under harsher conditions. No one seems to care that prison budgets grow at unprecedented rates while funds for social services like education, social services, and health care suffer. So yes, from that perspective, that does seem as if the world has gone mad.

Episode Seven is Real: Didn't J.J. Abrams Already Direct a Star Wars Movie? And Wasn't It Called Star Trek (2009)?

 

Among ghetto nerds, one of our recurring arguments is if the Star Trek universe could "defeat" Star Wars in battle. The answer has always been a clear one to me--Star Wars, with the forces of the Empire alone, would obliterate the Federation and any of her allies, including the Borg.

Always the bridesmaid and never the bride, Abrams has apparently come to a similar decision as he is walking away from Star Trek to do Star Wars: Episode 7. When that news broke, I do believe I felt the anguished cries of millions of Trekkers, yelling out, as if something horrible had just happened.

Yet, I do not know if I should be exhilarated or disgusted by this development. Fans of Star Wars could do far worse than J.J. Abrams.

But, my central concern is that Star Wars, now already in the hands of Disney, will further devolve into a mess of meaning--a collection of lightsabers, hyperdrives, and The Force--what is all sorts of flash but nothing of substance. The precedent is not a good one: Abrams did this to Star Trek with his reboot.

There, Gene Roddenberry's vision was reduced to a roller coaster ride that made maximum bank by dumbing down the franchise in order to appeal to a "broader" audience of tweens, and those who want their popular culture to be a truly disposable work of pseudo individualized, assembly line, ephemeral mass culture. As I wrote about in an essay (which I did not post at the time...if enough folks ask, I will share it here) about what J.J. Abrams' new Star Trek revealed about race in the age of Obama, if anything he makes entertaining movies. But, with the exception of Super 8, his movies are rather apolitical, and lack any meaningful social commentary beyond the obvious. The absence of explicit politics in Abrams' (then) new Star Trek is ironically how the movie does its political work.

On this point I wrote:

As an example of the politics as popular culture, J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek signals a deep anxiety and malaise about the legitimacy of politics in the early 21st century. At present, as geopolitical arrangements are shifting, global publics are increasingly plagued by crisis and worry, and familiar social arrangements are threatened by catastrophes both man made and natural, a desire for escapist entertainment is a sign of a deep and collective exhaustion. Ultimately, Abrams’ new Star Trek is political to the degree that it speaks to this anxiety, as well as in how it creates a future where race no longer matters—all the while racial inequality remains highly relevant and potent as a social force in the present.

I love Star Wars. It has meant a great deal to me personally and professionally. I acknowledge that the series has to move forward in order to remain a cultural benchmark. I do not doubt that Star Wars will remain relevant as it is ultimately a centuries-old story of the hero's quest updated for a contemporary audience.

But, if the reactions of my students to Star Wars is any indication--and I am not that much older than they are--there is a huge chasm between those born in the hip hop and Facebook generations. Many of them have never even seen Star Wars in any of its iterations. My hope is that Abrams can remedy this cultural gap while also keeping the core essence of Lucas' morality tale and epic story alive.

Star Wars is at a crossroads. Disney can grow and expand the franchise with exciting projects such as a retelling of The Seven Samurai in the Star Wars universe. Or they can surrender to the worst impulses of marketing and cross genre borrowing by taking cues from Star Wars extended universe novels that either feature zombies, or are homages to movies like Oceans 11.

Abrams' Star Trek reboot was an almost shot for shot and tonal remake of Star Wars: A New Hope. Who knows, maybe Star Trek was actually J.J. Abrams' audition reel in disguise?

What would you like to see in Abrams' Star Wars? An evil Luke? A female protagonist? Should the New Republic be corrupted from within, rotting like a great oak? Would you introduce an extended universe character such as Thrawn?

Racism is not an Opinion: New Research Shows How The Age of Obama Has Encouraged a Resurgence of "Old Fashioned Racism"

As he looks back on his first term, President Barack Obama can take satisfaction from a series of significant accomplishments. But according to a new analysis by a Brown University political scientist, his rise to power has also produced a less-welcome result: A renewed alignment between political preference and “old-fashioned racism.”  

President Barack Obama's tenure in office has been a lightning rod for white racism.

In the post civil rights era, racism is viewed through the white racial frame as a monster slayed. However, while racial inequality is a changing same, and a social phenomenon that is so well-documented in terms of its impact on wealth, income, incarceration, job opportunities, access to health care, education, life expectancy, and overall life chances, there are members of the public and media that would still like to deny the power of the color line in American society.

Some of these racism deniers are well intended souls who believe that ignoring a reality makes it go away. Others are deeply invested in white privilege and truly believe that white folks are oppressed in the post civil rights era. And a good number are just old fashioned racists who have simply adapted their rhetoric to the 21st century.

As I am fond of saying, "racism is not an opinion." There are common sense examples of the enduring power of white racism and racial resentment in the Age of Obama: birtherism, the racially explicit herrenvolk appeals of the Tea Party, and Mitt Romney's sophisticated dog whistles about the unfitness of a black man to be in the White House are readily accessible and clear evidence supporting this claim.

There is also empirical research which documents the influence of white racism and hostility towards Obama on "neutral" matters (for example, those who score higher in terms of white racial resentment even hate the first family's dog); conservatism has been demonstrated to strongly overlap with white racism and racial resentment; Internet searches for racially charged terms have been shown to be highly correlated with how certain regions of the country voted against the country's first black president.

Michael Tesler' article "The Return of Old Fashioned Racism to White Americans’ Partisan Preferences in the Early Obama Era" has provided another arrow in the quiver for those who use empirical data to demonstrate the continual influence of white racism on political behavior in the Age of Barack Obama.

America remains largely segregated for the masses. But, the country has integrated its elite classes in some modest ways. Moreover, it would be a profound error in analysis to overlook how a multicultural elite class and a black president have simultaneously enriched and complicated our national narrative about the meaning of race in American cultural, social, and political life.

Obama's election, and the demographic changes associated with it, i.e. the oft-discussed "browning of America," have been a political enema for the Right. As such, the presence of a black man and his family in The White House has brought to the surface what were thinly disguised--and apparently quite deep--veins of bigotry, xenophobia, and intolerance on the part of the Tea Party GOP.

Michael Tesler details this nicely. His article contrasts "OFR" or "old fashioned racism" (the belief in the inherent biological inferiority of non-whites) with modern racism (a belief that blacks are "culturally" deficient and lack the "American values" of hard work, civic duty, and loyalty) and how the former has returned to prominence in the Age of Obama.

The old school is the new school (again)...it would seem that political fashion is cyclical.

It would seem that Barack Obama has brought some white folks back to the future, and made relatively outmoded attitudes current once more.

There ain't nothing new in the game:

These significant results persist in large part after controlling for the correlation between old fashioned and newer forms of racial animus too. In fact, the evidence suggests that Obama simultaneously activates both OFR and racial resentment. The most plausible explanation for that dual activation is that Obama independently taps into both the classic symbolic racism theme that blacks have too much influence in politics (Sears and Henry 2005), and old fashioned racists’ concerns about the leadership of a president from a racial group whom they consider to be intellectually and socially inferior.  

Regardless of the reasons, though, these independent effects of both old fashioned and newer forms of racial animus suggest that the rapidly expanding social science literature testing race-based reactions to his presidency with less blatant anti-black attitudes overlooks important information about the nature of racialized responses to his presidency.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the election of the country’s first black president had the ironic upshot of opening the door for old fashioned racism to influence partisan preferences after OFR was long thought to be a spent force in American politics. This renewed relationship could have important implications too. We may, for instance, see an increase in racist political rhetoric since such messages should be more relevant and resonant now that OFR factors into partisan preferences. The inherently divisive nature of OFR sentiments also likely contributes to the especially rancorous atmosphere surrounding Obama’s presidency.

More work, of course, is needed to understand just how this activation of old fashioned racism will manifest itself in both elite and mass political behavior during Obama’s presidency and beyond. For the time being, though, it appears that opposition to an African-American president from the Democratic Party will continue providing a veritable avenue for the expression of old fashioned racism in white Americans’ partisan preferences.

Obama Gives an Epic Inaugural Address...How Long Until the Partisans on the Left and the Right Start to Sound the Alarms of Disappointment and Complaint?

On Monday, I could have sworn I heard a "Shoyuken" a la Street Fighter 2 during President Obama's swearing-in ceremony.

President Obama's second inaugural speech was an exercise is beautiful rhetoric, deft use of historical allusions, and promises of future policy-making while deftly avoiding specifics. Obama is a master orator; this second inaugural speech is a classic which will be studied decades in the future.

President Obama's second inauguration was also a masterful exercise in symbolic politics. There was something for everyone in post-civil rights multicultural America on that day. I teared up when I saw the Tuskegee Airmen--great men of iron and steel who loved a country that did not love them back; now they get to see a black Commander in Chief for the second time, in person, on the dais, and as his honored guests.

An openly gay bishop gave the opening prayer. Medgar Evers' widow gave the invocation. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, a Latina from the Bronx and proud affirmative action baby, gave Vice President Joe Biden his oath of office. Our gay brothers and sisters got shown some love in the inaugural parade too. And one of them, Richard Planco, even delivered the inaugural poem.

President Obama's inauguration was a beautiful show and spectacle that presented an updated version of our national mythos, one repackaged for post civil rights America, in which the country celebrates a peaceful transition of power from one administration to the next.

Ultimately, as the folk saying goes, the "sizzle was better than the steak" during Obama's inauguration. My belly is full, for the moment, on Obama's promise of what could perhaps come to pass in these next few months and years. Will he leave us hungry later on? We shall see.

President Obama's inaugural honeymoon with the American people will be ending very soon--and for many, it never began.

Politics as Popular Culture: Of Fracking, Whiteness, and the Movie "Promised Land"

I am lucky in that We Are Respectable Negroes has allowed me the opportunity to chat with a wide range of smart people. In keeping with the "We" in We Are Respectable Negroes, I occasionally feature essays by guest writers.

There are a few repeat folks in the permanent rotation such as Werner Herzog's Bear and Bill the Lizard. Hopefully, I will be able to add a few more to the guest list who sit in on occasion, playing a set or two, in the proverbial jam session here at WARN.

Ben Cooper is offering up some smart analysis in his essay on the movie Promised Land. We first chatted about the TV series The Walking Dead. There, I knew Mr. Cooper had some skills. In this guest post about race, environmental policy, and the movie Promised Land with Matt Damon, I do think that my assessment of his skills were spot on. 

I love a good movie. I thoroughly enjoy a critical read of a popular film which treats it as a serious text that reflects on politics in a transparent and direct manner. Oftentimes race and other issues of identity and power work, most powerfully, in ways where the casual viewer would not see them as being operative. Power is coercive. It is subtle. Power, I would suggest, is also at its most compelling when it is omnipresent--thus rendering it invisible. Promised Land is a vivid--and under appreciated--example of these traits in action.

What do you think of Ben Cooper's first guest post? And do welcome him to WARN if so inclined...

.

.

.

I've been reading the critical reaction to Promised Land, the recent feature-length release that uses the setting of a rural, fictitious town to make an argument against natural gas mining process called fracking. The movie hasn't performed very well among critics, with most dismissing Promised Land as a well-intentioned yet heavily clichéd "message movie", a movie that is much more focused on making a specific point then telling a dramatically engaging story.

One of the film's criticisms came from Tom Carson in an article he wrote for The American Prospect titled "Making Liberal Hearts Bleed in Anytown, U.S.A." 

In his article, Carson argues this: "Political issues come and go, but message movies never change..."

What, I wonder, is the purpose of didactic movies like Promised Land? The unconverted obviously won't go, and the converted won't learn anything they don't know—except, maybe, a few tidbits confirming their suspicion that Hollywood doesn't know enough about 'ordinary' Americans to be trustworthy even when agitating on their behalf. The point of projects like this one can't be merely to gratify the filmmakers' sense of virtue, can it? Unfortunately, of course it can. If you'll forgive me for paraphrasing Megyn Kelly, they're just math celebrities do as liberals to make themselves feel better."

Well, Mr. Carson, I'll see your argument over Promised Land's liberal feel-good math and raise you Promised Land's refusal to acknowledge the fossil fuel industry's long history of environmental exploitation and the United States' collective enablement of such exploitation. I don't like message movies as much as the next pop culture consumer, but there are times when I look at even the most genteel and well-intentioned message movie and wonder, "What planet are you living on?" The release of Promised Land is one of those times.

I understand the rhetorical strategy behind the film's script was written by Matt Damon and John Krasinski: By setting the story in a location that most white American people identify as "traditional"--namely, a rural small town--and then endangering that setting with a controversial subject--such as fracking--white American audiences will be more inclined to sympathize with the besieged and revile the besieger. To follow Carson's argument, such simple-minded plotting robs the script of any real drama--as he put it, the characters "tiresomely shuffle toward incarnating their representative debate roles"--and thus has no impact on public perceptions on fracking. On that, Carson is right.

Watching Django Unchained on Martin Luther King Jr. Day With a Bunch of High White Hipsters is not a Good Experience

On Monday, I watched the Inauguration. I then decided to celebrate by watching Django Unchained, Gangster Squad, and Haunted House. Please do not ask me for the logic of how the latter fit into my viewing choices. I am practical. As the movie Jackie Brown taught us, sometimes you see a movie that starts soon and looks good...or not.

I have commented quite a bit about Tarantino's Django Unchained. It is far from being a perfect film. Nevertheless, Django is one of the most important movies about post civil rights America in recent memory. There still remains much to be said about it. On repeated viewings the movie only improves for me, and the beauty of its little moments and touches becomes even more apparent.

For example, the names of the characters hold a great deal of meaning: one of the caricaturized "poor white trash" on Calvin Candie's plantation is named "Stonecipher" which I take to mean "dumb as a rock." Dr. Schultz has the same last name as Paula Schultz in Kill Bill Volume 2. Given Tarantino's film universe, one would have to assume that the characters are somehow related to one another.

The overseer about to whip a slave on Big Daddy's plantation is reciting verses from the Bible while he, apparently not a master of subtlety, has pages from the Bible pinned to his shirt. Sam Jackson's performance as Stephen is even more potent on a second, third, or fourth viewing. Leo DiCaprio is revealed to be a pathetic villain; Sam Jackson is the true evil, one whose conflict with Jamie Foxx is foreshadowed when the latter tells us how a "black slaver" is lower than the "head house nigger."

Moreover, Sam Jackson's character is a tragic figure who chose to get in bed with White Power in order to navigate a hellish and unfair world. Stephen made a series of Faustian bargains with the Racial State and is bound to them without apology or regret. His father, whose skull was hammered by Candy at the dinner table, made the same bargains too.

Ultimately, Django is not a slave liberator or freedom fighter. He only cares about freeing his wife. Django is also a superhero which is why all of the other black characters are depicted as two dimensional figures who are either 1) complicit with the system or 2) broken by it, and thus rendered silent.

I was a bit tin-eared towards some folks who were a bit more critical of Django Unchained than I was upon its debut a few weeks ago. I apologize for that move.

Sometimes you study a thing too long and you become numb to how certain concepts play out in the real world.

In Cultural Studies, we often talk about the relationship between the audience, the creator of a given text (e.g. films, books, movies, literature, etc.) and/or those who sell or "circulate" it (the corporations, film companies, radio and TV stations) and the object of study itself.

There, we are trying to get at how a public's experiences with a given type of popular culture are situated in society and reflect relationships of power, while also signalling to how audiences' experiences, and the circumstances of how a given cultural text was created, should be taken into account for purposes of analysis and critical inquiry.

Movies teach us how to watch them. Audiences must "buy into" a film for its narrative to "work."

When I first saw Django Unchained, I was fortunate to be with an enthusiastic yet respectful audience. With a few exceptions, all of the people in that screening understood the sensitive nature of the material being presented by Tarantino. They balanced humor with pathos and nervous insecurity at the appropriateness of laughing at a movie about black slavery.

The audience quickly picked up on those cues, and thus became complicit with the narrative and ideology that Tarantino was presenting.

Last night, I saw the film while sitting behind a group of four self-consciously aware and intentionally ironic white hipsters...with their obligatory Asian friend in tow for purposes of a racial quota and politically correct inclusivity.

If this group laughed at everything without shame I would give them a pass. It is the fact that they were quiet during certain scenes such as the slave auction in Mississippi, the feeding of a slave to dogs, or Broomhilda's whipping and torture--which signaled some awareness and choice on their part--and then proceeded to laugh mightily (and immediately in a forced way) at every mention of the word "nigger" which gave me pause.

It was also clear that said group had seen the movie several times as they recited the lines verbatim. Tarantino is imminently quotable. I get that fact. I enjoy his work because of his gift for dialogue.

However, seeing a bunch of white hipsters, with their Asian compadre in tow as racial cover, using a movie about black slavery as the fodder for a joke, is deeply and profoundly unsettling to me as both a Black Pragmatist, and as someone with an appreciation for American history.

Django Unchained is not Snakes on a Plane (and yes, I did see the latter, intoxicated, drinking from a flask while yelling Cobra la la la la at the screen).

In total, I am deeply worried that Django Unchained will, for a whole generation of youth, become the equivalent of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

In the most extreme versions of populism, audiences repurpose popular culture in ways that go against the attentions of the creators, and which subvert the political and social meaning of the text as originally offered.

As such, I pray and hope that there will not be Django Unchained parties at frat houses, hipster bars, lounges, and other such spaces come this Halloween. I know that I will be disappointed. I am all for the carnivalesque and the transgressive. While it is a dark comedy, to my eyes Django Unchained does not lend itself to such appropriations.

Am I being too sensitive? Will Django Unchained just become another excuse for white hipsters and others to say nigger with impunity, joy, and a cultivated sense of ahistoricism that removes any sense of responsibility or consequences for their speech? Is Django that different from much of commercial hip hop in that regard?

Cornel West is Personally Offended that President Obama Used Martin Luther King Jr.'s Bible at the Inauguration

Cornel keeps shanking Obama in the gut whenever the opportunity presents itself. This just hurts to watch.

At this point it is pretty clear that Cornel West is permanently off of the Obama's Christmas card list. Brother West is also not going to be getting a personal invite to any of the inaugural balls or other related events. I do wonder, if President Obama had it to do all over again those few years ago, would he have issued Cornel a personal invite for the first inauguration in 2008?

At this point all of the bad blood is just so much piling on and could have easily been prevented by a simple gesture.

In the abstract, Brother West is correct in how many of Obama's policies are problematic and wanting when viewed from a radically humanistic, Black Prophetic, social justice perspective. However, are black "radicals" (to the degree that Cornel is one given his full professorship and lucrative role as a public intellectual) being fair and reasonable in assessing Barack Obama as the President of the United States, a man who by definition is part of Power as opposed to being outside of it?

There is so much sound and fury from some on the Black Left towards President Barack Obama. Is there anything he can do to silence them? What would make them happy while still allowing Obama to stay in office as president?

I am all for Black Freedom Dreams. If we and our allies did not dream, then Jim and Jane Crow, and the Southern Slaveocracy would not have been brought down. I worry that those Black Freedom Dreams have left too many folks living in a haze, unable to grapple with the waking realities that are politics in the real world. Obama is firmly grounded in the pragmatic politics of compromise and the now: he is blessed and cursed because of that temperament.

Is Martin Luther King Jr. Smiling Down on President Obama's Second Inauguration?

The coincidence of timing between President Obama's second inauguration, 50 years having passed since the March on Washington, Dr. King's Holiday, and the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation is like a type of political catnip or intoxicant that the pundit classes--and those others interested in American history, culture, and life--cannot resist.

Such an alignment of dates could portend something "magical" and inspirational for the President's second term. Alternatively, perhaps Obama's second inauguration, and the alignment of dates which could suggest a radical breaking from standing history and the shadow of the colorline, is simply an easy lede for a story written under deadline.

Whatever the motivation or source, many folks, like those standing outside at the National Mall on Monday, talking in barbershops and hair salons, writing online, or whose editorials will appear on TV, radio, or in traditional print media, are likely asking "what would Martin Luther King Jr. think of President Obama's second inauguration?"

We can try to divine the wishes and thoughts of the departed. Some folks will pretend that they are clairvoyants, at a seance, and can actually hear Brother Dr. King's words and wishes in an act of paranormal and fantastical interpretation.

I am not able to channel the late Dr. King's wisdom about events that occurred more than four decades after his murder. However, we can look to some of his actual wisdom, cautionary words, and insights into the country which he died to improve and protect.

On poverty and war Dr. King famously said:

"(I)n the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers, (a)s I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. 

But they ask -- and rightly so -- 'what about Vietnam?' They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."

Dr. King also astutely connected the price of the military industrial complex and American imperialism abroad to a broken infrastructure at home:

"There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such."

Or race, inequality, and reparations Dr. King observed:

But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. 

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

No one could offer those truth-telling statements and be elected President. This is especially true given the status of Black Americans as contingent citizens whose inalienable rights are forever suspect: no Black American with serious desires to be President (or any other high office), could ever utter such words, or give comfort to similar thoughts in public (or even in private) and be successful.

President Obama is just a man. He is not a black superhero. President Obama is a President who happens to be black. He is not a Black President. President Obama is not the living embodiment of Dr. King or Brother Malcolm.

He is not our shining black manhood as deftly spoken to by Ossie Davis during his funereal oratory for Malcolm X:



Some of you knew this. Others had to be told of its truth.

Barack Obama has demonstrated the veracity of a fundamental belief held by those who study the American Presidency: he is bounded by precedent and the decisions made by those who came before him; Obama will leverage those said happenings to the degree possible in order to advance his agenda; he will not concede power or the expanded understanding of what the office allows he or she who is President to do. And yes, that includes the unitary executive, the imperial presidency, drone strikes, and kill lists.

As he is sworn in a second time, President Obama is a paradox of sorts. He is a President who happens to be black who was reelected because of the overwhelming support of black and brown voters. The (twice) arrival of Barack Obama also heralds the end of Black Politics.

I am unsure if the the ways in which President Barack Obama navigates the political realities of post civil rights era America, with its insincere colorblindness, in the face of vicious and racist opposition by conservatives, is evidence of his genius (or not). As a supporter of Barack Obama, I lean towards the affirmative. Obama is playing a game that is not designed for a man who looks like him; somehow he plays it pretty damn well...whatever you/we/us think of the policy outcomes.

I have no doubt however, that Obama is very mindful of his legacy as the country's first black president, feels deeply beholden to the ancestors and the Black Freedom Struggle, and how the first draft of history will judge his tenure.

Realpolitik can be cruel in its honest truths. With few exceptions, outsiders and visionaries do not become President of the United States of America. The United States is an empire. Men like Martin Luther King Jr., leaders who are killed because they speak truth to Power, are not elected President of the United States of America.

Consequently, it is high time that folks stop using Brother King as a measuring stick for Barack Obama. They were playing very different games; therefore they should be held to very different standards of leadership. There is only one Brother Doctor King. There is only one Barack Obama. They are very different from one another. Both are first ballot hall of fame entries into The Pantheon of Black Exceptionalism and Greatness: deny that fact at your own peril. It is a far better use of one's energies to meditate on the consequences of Obama's elevation to a leading figure in the Black Freedom Struggle, than to deny if said conclusion will come to pass.

I am not suggesting moral cowardice or retreat by Obama's critics, and Progressives, especially. Rather, I would hope that President Barack Obama is judged by the standards of the office, pushed forward by his base to be like Johnson or FDR--or at the very least made to be more accountable to the people and the Common Good, than to the public opinion polls, the financiers, banksters, and his chances of reelection.

Obama is and has never been a "runaway slave." That temperament is not his way. However, President Obama is adept at playing 3 dimensional Star Trek chess. By leveraging this talent he can win a few victories for regular folks on both sides of the colorline. Incrementalism can be a virtue.

Would Dr. King approve? I am unsure. You tell me.

Forget the Mayan Prophecy, Obama's Second Inauguration is a Fourfold Cross Rip, the Greatest Psychic Event Since the Philadelphia Negro Mass Turbulence of 1947

The Mayan Prophecy which was thought to herald the end of all things was proven to be a lie. The masses were duped. Those who understand the true nature of the universe knew that a truly great event, one which would harness energies heretofore never before witnessed in all of human existence, was in fact set to occur at a later time.

Ours is a world of magic--what are really energies and fantastical forces which laypeople hold little understanding of. Any technology sufficiently advanced, or science not fully understood, will be mistaken for it.

For those of us who are seers, and have studied the True Way, we knew that Barack Obama's second inauguration would be the True Happening.

Consider the following.

The universe is full of dark matter which we cannot see through normal means. The unified field theory promises to give humankind insight into the fundamental forces of material existence: once discovered we will then be able to see the mind of God at work.

Ghosts are just psychic impressions left behind by the departed. ESP is an ability to tap into the electromagnetic energy that connects all of shared consciousness.

That presence which you sense, that figure in the corner of your eye, lingering just outside of your peripheral vision, is a shadow person from another dimension. You are his "ghost." He is yours.

There are a multitude of worlds and parallel realities in the multiverse. They can overlap and intersect with one another.

Barack Obama's second inauguration coincides with the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the holiday honoring the elder god Brother Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.. Obama's inauguration is also the 50th anniversary of the great March on Washington. There is great power in this alignment of dates.

Monday will be a day when the energies of the Black Freedom Struggle coalesce and doors are opened across time and space; on that day the normal rules governing this plane of physical existence will be made more pliable.

Although the rules governing this reality cannot be broken, they can be bent during such a moment...for those of us who know how to do so.

The Black Freedom Struggle and the experiences of black folks in the United States (and the West) is surreal. It is an example of "racecraft" in practice.

Black folks are, what Amiri Baraka famously described as, a "blues people." Given black folks' capacity to achieve in the face of impossible odds, and in a situation which is the best/worst of speculative fiction made real, how can we not be magical both by our very nature and also as a result of circumstance?

As I did during the Niggaro Universe incident, I have consulted with starred physicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson about how to harness the energies of the Emancipation Proclamation's Anniversary, Brother King's legacy of struggle and memory, and the second inauguration of Barack Obama, the United States' first black President.

Dr, deGrasse has instructed me as to the optimal moment on Monday to reach across the divides of space and time, and to send forth your questions to those who are of the Black Freedom Struggle, of the past-future-present, in this dimension, as well as others.

I now need a space to channel these energies. My family memory has provided me the necessary technology.

My great great grandmother was an Obeah woman. As learned through lessons passed down from parent to child, I have constructed a circle of copper and gold large enough to stand in, coated it with hot sauce and bacon grease, put James Brown on in the background, and placed pictures of Brothers Malcolm and Martin, Sisters Tubman and Sojourner Truth, in the four cardinal directions of the circle's perimeter.

I have prepared my sandalwood incense. I have also placed a pot of collards and black eyed peas on the stove. I have put on my vestments as taught to us by the "Black Moses" Mr. Isaac Hayes.

I am now ready to serve as a conduit for your questions come this Monday. Think carefully, as each person is only allowed one set of inquiries.

Who would you like me to summon?

What would you ask them?

What request do you have of them?

And never forget that when dealing with such energies that there is always a price, a cost that will be assessed at some later date. Are you prepared for that responsibility?

Saturday Housekeeping: Disqus and a New Look for WARN

A quick update for the weekend.

You may have noticed a new color scheme and header here on WARN. I believe in making periodic changes and moving things forward. Updating the visuals and the colors is part of that process. The changes are mostly aesthetic, but I have done a few things more substantive as well.

Most importantly, I have finally added Disqus as the tool for moderating comments here on WARN. It is much more robust and flexible than the existing Blogger software. All of the old comments will show up in about 24 hours after they have been imported--which is why I chose to make that change over the weekend have been imported.

For now, I will still leave the system open for readers who would like to make anonymous comments without registering with Disqus. I may change that in the future, but for now I would like to give folks the chance to get used to using Disqus on the site and then migrating away from the anonymous feature in the near future.

My hope is that Disqus will encourage more readers to comment. It will also give me the tools to better moderate in such a way as to keep our conversations moving forward in a productive manner.

I have also added a stand-alone section where you can find links to selected media appearances and other related information on the sidebar. Visitors to WARN have asked for that feature; it was overdue; thus, I implemented it...finally.

I am also going to be taking reader submissions for the header. The details are here. If any of you are photographers, graphic artists, or the like do consider sending in an original image which you think captures the spirit of the "We" in "We Are Respectable Negroes."

If you have any thoughts or suggestions on the new look do send them in. The next step is moving the site to a different url. I will be taking that step in the next few weeks and the site will be configured to auto-direct itself forward. The good folks who come to WARN should not notice any real difference in how they find the site.

Independence, USA: What Does Glenn Beck Have in Common With the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors and Tama-Re?

Outsider communities are a rich and deep part of the American cultural and political tradition.

Glenn Beck is going to start his own John Galtian live action role playing amusing park living community called "Independence, USA." It is fitting that Glenn Beck is imitating Walt Disney. Both believe(d) in protecting the white nuclear family, and creating a fictive world of heterosexual, normalized whiteness, where no Others need to intrude.

Some of his fellow libertarians have played too many hours of the videogame Bioshock and are going to establish their own floating city in the Pacific Ocean. Apparently, these libertarian Otaku did not realize that Bioshock is a cautionary tale--as opposed to one that is inspirational.

Like Jim Jones, Beck and his libertarian Utopian-isolationists are as American as apple pie.

Although Glenn Beck is a reactionary white conservative who believes that Barack Obama hates white people, and wants to "oppress" them, fate is a trickster (as she always is). As such, Glenn Beck has a "brother from another mother" on the other side of the color line.

Dr. Malachi Z. York was a con man and black charismatic religious figure, who with hundreds of followers, established an amusement park and black separatist futurist religious community during the 1990s called Tama-re in Georgia.

Glenn Beck's "Independence, USA" will be a model of idealized John Galtian Ayn Randian libertarianism. There, untenable political theories as offered up in piss poor works of literature will become real for its visitors and residents:

Glenn believes that he can bring the heart and the spirit of Walt’s early Disneyland ideas into reality. Independence, USA wouldn’t be about rides and merchandise, but would be about community and freedom. The Marketplace would be a place where craftmen and artisan could open and run real small businesses and stores. The owners and tradesmen could hold apprenticeships and teach young people the skills and entrepreneurial spirit that has been lost in today’s entitlement state.

There would also be an Media Center, where Glenn’s production company would film television, movies, documentaries, and more. Glenn hoped to include scripted television that would challenge viewers without resorting to a loss of human decency. He also said it would be a place where aspiring journalists would learn how to be great reporters. 

Across the lake, there would be a church modeled after The Alamo which would act as a multi-denominational mission center. The town will also have a working ranch where visitors can learn how to farm and work the land.

Independence would also be home to a Research and Development center where people would come to learn, innovate, educate, and create. There would be a theme park for people to recharge and have fun with their families. 

People would also have the option to live in Independence, with a residential area where people of different incomes could all come together and be neighbors.

Let's compare Glenn Beck's "Independence, USA" with Dr. York's Nuwaubian community Tama-re:

In 1993, York purchased a 476 acre game ranch in Eatonton, Georgia. Approximately 400 followers moved to Georgia with York. The group was once again renamed, The United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors. This group claimed to be part of a Native-American tribe from Georgia called the Yamassee.  

The Nuwaubians claim that they are ancestors of Egyptians who migrated from the Nile Valley to the Georgia countryside prior to the continental drift that separated the continents. These Egyptian migrants came known to be the Yamassee Native Americans. The Nuwaubians have attempted to use their ancestoral lineage to the Yamassee as a basis for obtaining sovereignty from the United States government. 

The name of the Nuwaubians home is Tama-re, or the "Egypt of the West." At the entrance of Tama-re there is a large sign that recognizes the Nuwaubians as a fraternity, Lodge 19 of the Ancient Mystic Order of Melchizedek. Armed guards stand at the entrance to Tama-re. Approximately 100 Nuwaubians live within 15 double-wide trailers within this complex...  

At this current complex the Nuwaubians have constructed an Egytian-style village with two pyramids, obelisks, and statues of Egyptian leaders. The two pyramids are distinct in appearance and in usage. There is a gold pyramid that serves as a trade center. Within this pyramid one can find a bookstore and a clothing store. The other pyramid is painted black with colorful Egyptian symbols painted on the outside. This structure serves as a church. Within the church, loudspeakers play Egyptian chants 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Ultimately, are Dr. York's teachings and those of the Nuwaubians that different from those of Glenn Beck, if not in a resonance of details, but in fantastical thinking?

In fact, nearly every school of "alternative" information popular in the U.S. since the late 60s is represented in York’s hefty output.  

His patchwork approach is not just applied to graphics. A partial list, from my notes, of places I’d encountered Nuwaubian notions before includes Chariots of the Gods and the Rael’s embellishments on that book, conspiracy lit, UFO lit, the human potential movement, Buddhism and new-age, astrology, theosophy and Blavatsky, Leonard Jeffries and other Afrocentrics, Cayce, LaRouche, alternative medicine, self-help lit, Satanism, the Atkins diet, numerology and yoga.  

Many of these York mentions by name. There are also extensive discourses on the Torah, Gospels and Koran, as well as on Rastafarianism, the Nation of Islam and the Five Percent Nation.

Paranoia is paranoia. Cults of personality are very similar across time, cultures, communities, religion, race, and gender. Glenn Beck is a former(?) drug addict, radio shock jock wannabe Howard Stern imitator, faux historian propagandist, snake oil salesman and carnival barker. Malachi York was playing the same game, just with different politics, all the while working towards the same end goal--personal enrichment and power.

The latter was/is far less dangerous and relatively harmless than the former.

Ultimately, who would think that a white populist conservative Mormon who believes in a herrenvolk America, one which is a Utopian playground for Whiteness, unfettered capitalism, and hyper-conservatism, would have so much in common with a black charismatic leader, futurist, and refined street hustler.

I guess a love of power and real estate makes for strange bedfellows. I do so very much love it when a plan comes together. Indeed, Crom mocks us all, and does so with one hell of a sense of humor.

According to Fox News Discussing White Privilege with High School Students is Apparently "Indoctrination" and "Anti-White"

At least they didn't quote Brother Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. out of context.

Schools are one of the primary places where political socialization takes place in a given society. They are indoctrination centers that reproduce the values of a culture. Most folks do not want to think of "education" in that way.

In "post racial" America this poses a dilemma: do you teach young people the truth about this country's history and the semi-permanence of the colorline? As an educator, do you discuss how American society is structured hierarchically and where race, class, and gender over-determine life outcomes?

It would seem that if you are a teacher at Delavan-Darien High School in Wisconsin, you should not dare to broach such questions.

Over the last few decades, there has been an Orwellian turn in American education. It extends from grade school to the university level.

What counts as educational content is being dictated by the logic of the capitalist marketplace, teachers are being subjected to onerous surveillance and harassment, intellectual freedom is being made subject to the political aims of outside actors, and the value of teachers is being undermined by destroying public unions, eliminating tenure, and forcing college professors into a permanent contingent labor force.

In total, the response to Delavan-Darien High School's course "American Diversity" is indicative of the impact of hyper-conservatism on public schools. Ultimately, the students (and by extension all of us) lose because they are not being given the critical thinking tools to be active, reflective, and engaged citizens.

Ideally, any controversy over teaching students about an obvious fact--such as how "race matters" in American society--should be dismissed as silliness.

Glenn Beck and David Barton Channel Harry Dresden and Do Magic With History: Did You Know That Kids With Guns Can Stop School Shootings?

Glenn Beck's resident "historian" David Barton is a professional liar. I used to recoil at Beck and Barton's Right-wing perpetual motion alternate reality machine until I realize that they were speaking to the already converted--and thus lost. Those on the Right who live in Beck and Fox News' alternate reality echo chamber have already bought into their world system.

Moreover, because their audience already believes that faith trumps science, global warming is a fiction, tax cuts pay for themselves, and that people rode on the tops of dinosaurs several thousands years ago, the rule of diminishing returns applies: Beck and company are speaking to the converted, lost souls, possessed of anti-intellectualism and conspiranoid thinking, who cannot otherwise be saved.

Glenn Beck is piling intellectual feces on top of a preexisting pile of intellectual feces. Said pile of political scatology will go until said pile collapses. Scant few new folks are likely going coming to the party at that point...I hope.

However, this does not make Glenn Beck and the other Right-wing propagandists any less dangerous. Glenn Beck's dream machine would be admired by Goebbels, Stalin, or Mao. Orwell would also shake his head in frightened admiration.

Beck's ability to create an alternate reality for his followers, one that is internally consistent (in the loosest sense of the word), and where he gets paid to offer up his version of the "truth" is a religion.

It is lucrative; it is based on faith as said process is nothing if not a capacity to believe in that which cannot be proven by appeals to empiricism or rational thought. Faith cannot be disproven by ordinary means.

Thus, the truth is what Glenn Beck, and the High Archons of the Right--Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Hannity--tell their mouth-breathing troglodytes it is. Epistemic closure is one hell of a drug.

As seen in the above clip with Glenn Beck, David Barton helps to turn the con.

Barton pretends to be a "historian." He offers up the certainty that comes with intellectual authority to an audience which both dismisses truth seeking and is suspicious of the academy and professional scholars. Yet, they believe Barton because he provides "proof" for their preconceived beliefs.

Barton's gimmick is to make grand claims, and then to explain how reasonable public policy can be generalized from his specious observations about the historical record. Even if Barton were telling the truth about a made for TV scenario where kids in 19th century America stare down a potential murderer with their sidearms in a schoolhouse that is a mix of Dirty Harry and Little House on the Prairie, said example is insufficient evidence for making informed arguments about what gun control policy in 21st century America should look like.

I am transparent. Whatever I may be, I am a ghetto nerd. Because of that core part of my personhood, I draw inspiration from a range of sources. As such, I am also a fan of the mystery-fantasy series The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. His stories about Chicago, and the magical world which exists parallel (and at times intersecting with our own), is just so very wonderful and creative: I would take Harry Dresden over Harry Potter any day of the week.

Ultimately, great fiction should tell us something about the "real" world. Butcher does not fail in that regard.

I was rereading his book Dead Beat when I came upon this passage about fairies (what Jim Butcher calls "The Fae") and immediately thought about Glenn Beck and his fellow Right-wing propagandists:

"You know, wizard, that I may speak no word that is untrue. Thus is my word given to you."

I eyed her wearily. It was true that the high Sidhe could not speak words that were untrue--but that wasn't the same thing as telling the truth. Most of the Sidhe I had met were past masters of the art of deception, speaking in allusions and riddles and inferences that would undermine the necessary honesty of their words so thoroughly that they might be much stronger lies than if they had simply spoken a direct falsehood. Trusting the word of one of the Sidhe was an enterprise best undertaken with extraordinary caution and exacting care. If I had any choice in the matter, I would avoid it.

Is this not an apt description of Glenn Beck's forked tongue and the power he holds over his listeners and viewers?

Thus, my worries and questions.

What can reasonable, sensible, reflective folks who care about the Common Good do when confronted by the power of willful liars like Glenn Beck and David Barton? Is the only option available to sensible and intelligent folks, when faced with such wickedness, to lie better than Glenn Beck and his lot? To construct our own alternative knowledge systems? How does one beat a master liar who believes his own deceptions?

A Theory of Obama Cinema? "Killing Them Softly" is the Defining Movie for the Age of Obama

I am suspicious of unifying theories which try to explain the relationship between popular culture and politics. However, A.O. Scott's piece in the New York Times on the defining Hollywood films of the Obama era is pretty compelling:

Last year in The New York Review of Books the critic J. Hoberman wondered when we would see an “Obama-inflected Hollywood cinema.” “The longing for Obama (or an Obama),” he wrote, “can be found in two prescient 2008 movies,” citing “Wall-E” and “Milk” as releases about creative community organizers, with Harvey Milk also a political symbol of hope. It may be too soon to identify an Obama Cinema, but the president’s second inauguration seems like an appropriate time to try.

Film is one of the sites where societies negotiate meaning, develop and challenge their own mythologies, and express the hopes, anxieties, and feelings of the collective subconscious. Films talk to us, talk to each other, all the while revealing the "spirit of the age." In total, popular culture is an informal type of public opinion, a barometer for the attitudes of a given society.

Obama's election in 2004 was supposed to usher in postracial America. It did not. Hope and change was met by the twin realities of a coordinated assault on the legitimacy of the country's first black President, as well as how practical governance is an exercise in realpolitik. As such, hope and change had to be surrendered to practical realities--here Obama's right-leaning centrism was greeted by upset on the part of Progressives, and recast as treason and Socialist-Communist-anti-white tyranny by Conservatives.

How do the Hollywood movies made in the Age of Obama reflect these dynamics?

Ten Things to Keep in Mind When Talking About How White Men are a "Problem" in the Age of Obama

We are finally talking in an explicit way about what it means to be white (and male) in America. 

Some of these conversations have been necessitated by the country's demographic changes. 

The election of Barack Obama (twice), and the Republican Party's deep devotion to the politics of white racial resentment have also helped to force a national conversation about the meaning of Whiteness.

And as I and others have talked about in great detail, the recent murder sprees in Newtown and Aurora, where young white men have killed people by the dozens, have demanded that we discuss the relationship(s) between white masculinity, gun culture, and violence.

Many white folks have not responded well to these types of conversations.

Despite the opposition and shrill voices, the flurry of discussions online and in the mainstream media about the meaning of Whiteness in the Age of Obama is a positive development.

What was once an inside game of Left leaning cultural critics, scholars, and social justice types is now more fashionable and mainstream. As such, a chorus of voices are joining the conversation.

Many of these new voices are tempted, quite naturally, to call out the deleterious impact of Whiteness and White elites on America (slavery; Jim and Jane Crow; racial inequality; labor market and housing discrimination; wealth inequality; genocide against First Nations people; the Great Recession caused by an almost exclusively white financier and banking class), as well as the world (Colonialism and Imperialism; environmental destruction; two World Wars).

These moves are exhilarating. Yet, they often lack precision, a thinking through of end goals, and a consideration of the long plan going forward.

After "Django Unchained" Will There be a Remake of "The Black Klansman?"

This sounds like one of my post-coitus race conscious chats after riding Space Mountain across the colorline. And I thought I was original? Damn me my hubris.

I learn something new everyday. I was reading Orgtheory when I came across the above gem of a movie mentioned in the comments about the (recent) and oft discussed movie Django Unchained.

From what I can discern, The Black Klansman is about a black guy that can sort of pass, and looks like some of my cousins, who then infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan, after they kill his daughter, in order to bring them down.

This brother is no Walter Francis White; however, he is very didactic and entertaining.

Whatever one thinks of Tarantino's body of work, he will be acknowledged for disrupting how mainstream audiences and critics view B-movies--those late night gems, drive in classics, and other guilty pleasure genre flicks--that were thrown on to the dustbin of film history before he and others in the postmodern turn elevated them to the level of "respectable" films.

It is true that popular culture is ephemeral and disposable. I have been long sympathetic to Adorno's concerns about how popular culture advances the agenda of Power and elites by offering up a space for the masses to self-medicate by projecting their dreams, anxieties, and hopes onto cultural objects, as they make themselves whole through consumerism.

Nevertheless, there remains something to be said about populism, and how regular folks repurpose popular culture for their own ends.

Popular movies can make money, be distributed through the Hollywood system, and still offer some type of political comment and critique. It is just harder for these types of movies to do so.

Now, we have Django Unchained. In the near future, I am hoping for a remake of The Black Klansman.

Will Lee Marvin's The Klansman be showing up again as well? And who would star in the movie if you were doing the casting?

Are there any B-movie classics that you think are worthy of being reinvented for the Age of Obama and 21st century audiences?

Taking on the Silly Talk from the Gun Right: A Modern Historian Debunks and Exposes the "Hitler was Pro-Gun Control" Mythology"

It is routine that references to Hitler and Stalin are used by many on the Right when questions about gun control are raised in the United States. It is particularly noteworthy that allusions to two of the greatest killers and tyrants of the 20th century are commonly used to criticize the country's first black president.

Hitler was a racial fascist. Obama is a black man who happens to be President, and whose very existence is terrifying to conservatives and the White Right because of their yearning for a return to a herrenvolk "real America." The Right's efforts to tie the two figures together is no accident: it plays on fears about "white oppression" while also legitimating the Right-wing media's eliminationist rhetoric in the Age of Obama.

The masses are asses--for the most part. The use of Hitler and Stalin are ways of triggering deep anxieties and fears about universal historical villains in order to make a point about basic and quotidian matters of public policy.

Moreover, the Right-wing media are masters of the politics of emotion, creating alternate realities, and alternative knowledge systems. For example, see the popularity of a piss poor piece of "research" such as the book Liberal Fascism or the work of pseudo historian David Barton.

One of our guest bloggers, the one and only Werner Herzog's Bear (who also happens to be an expert on 20th century Germany) has kindly offered up a great essay exposing the silly talk and foolishness surrounding the claim that Hitler was "pro-gun control," as well as the Gun Right's maniac anti-historicism and anti-intellectualism, more generally.
.
.
.
Now that gun control is back on the national agenda, the Hitler metaphors are flying fast and furious again. They were last lobbed about during the heady days of the Tea Party's ascendance and its attendant crusade against universal health care. Back then the pea-brained likes of Louie Gohmert and Jim DeMint warned of a path to fascism, now it's the NRA and Drudge Report likening gun control to Nazism.

As someone who has spent years studying modern German history, and has the degrees to prove it, I feel it is my special duty to debunk this garbage. Lying behind both the Tea Party and gun proliferators' use of Hitler is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature and historical context of the Third Reich. The misconceptions about that murderous regime are pretty much accepted in mainstream American life, and the Right has done an able job of exploiting them.

In our day the Nazis have been completely dishistoricized, turned into stand-ins for remorseless evil. There is no more effective way to label your political opponents bad and dangerous than by making such comparisons. Most Americans seem to think that Hitler was some kind of evil genius, that his followers were mindless automatons, and that his whole regime was one man's psychopathic power-trip.

This cartoon-villain understanding of the Hitler regime, reinforced in countless films like Inglorious Basterds and Raiders of the Lost Ark, makes it easy for the public to be swayed by the NRA's Hollywood scenario. In their counter-narrative, ordinary Germans (and German Jews in particular) could have grabbed their guns and brought down the Third Reich, if only those guns hadn't been taken from them.

This view of history is idiotic and deluded at best.

The esteemed historian Omer Bartov, in a recent Salon article, makes it clear that even if Hitler's opponents had guns, it would not have changed a thing: “Just imagine the Jews of Germany exercising the right to bear arms and fighting the SA, SS and the Wehrmacht. The [Russian] Red Army lost 7 million men fighting the Wehrmacht, despite its tanks and planes and artillery. The Jews with pistols and shotguns would have done better?”

The people who bring up these misguided Hollywood scenarios are also likely ignorant of how the Nazi state treated insurgents. Guerilla attacks on German troops on the Eastern Front often resulted in reprisal executions that killed hundreds for every German slain. 

The conspirators against Hitler in the failed 1944 plot on his life ended up being horrifically tortured and killed, their agonies filmed for the Fuehrer's amusement. Hitler responded to the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris at the hands of Herschel Grynszpan in 1938 by unleashing the horrific Night of Broken Glass as vengeance. 

In the improbable scenario of German Jews (who were a very small part of the population) arming themselves and shooting Nazis, it only would have meant much worse visited upon the Jewish population.

One especially major problem with the pro-gun use of the Nazis as a cautionary tale is usually the case with other would-be invokers of the Third Reich. Namely, they just take things completely out of context, that context being the Nazi ideology of racist nationalism. Just as communism was the philosophy behind the Soviet Union, the Third Reich was a racial state governed by the principles of racialized nationalism. 

For example, abortion rights foes like to invoke Hitler as a supporter of abortion because the Nazi state pushed "non-Aryan" and disabled women to terminate their pregnancies. However, abortions were banned for Aryans, a change from the more liberal laws of the preceding Weimar Republic. (In this light the Nazis were more anti than pro abortion.) Anyone who tries to analogize about Nazi Germany without taking its ideological basis into consideration will inevitably go wrong.

Context greatly illuminates the issue of gun control in Nazi Germany. As the Salon article notes, Germany's 1938 laws on firearms were actually less restrictive than those of the Weimar government, which had enacted strict gun control at a time when armed militias threatened the stability of the nation after World War I. They were only more restrictive for Jews and other targets of Nazi oppression. 

 To contextualize further, German laws at the time restricted Jews in all kinds of ways, banning them from universities and other public places, and restricting them from engaging in most professions while effectively making it next to impossible to own their own businesses. These restrictions are only the tip of the iceberg, and the restriction on guns a mere fleck on that tip. The prohibition on Jews owning guns had little to do with any Nazi desire for gun control, and a whole lot to do with creating racial outcasts.

Here's one last bit of context, and one that's highly disturbing. The evil villain view of Hitler leads one to believe that the majority of Germans did not like this tyrant, but were kept in line by the security appartus of the Nazi state. On the contrary, while the Nazis never got a majority of votes in legitimate elections, once they consolidated power Hitler gained the support of the vast majority of the population. 

The most disturbing thing to me about the Third Reich is that it needed popular support to enact its agenda, and the public was more than willing to oblige. If ordinary Germans had greater access to firearms at the time, I can't imagine it would have made much of a difference. Armed insurrections most likely would have been used by the state to justify even greater control and authority.

The decontextualized, inaccurate understanding of Nazi Germany used by the Right is one of their most pernicious tactics, since it abuses the historical record while poisoning our political discourse. It also distracts from the fact that firearms kill thirty thousand people in America every year. 400,000 Americans died fighting against Hitler and his allies in World War II, at our current rate we're losing that number to guns deaths every thirteen years or so. I think it's time we focus on the real carnage going on right now, rather than ghosts of tyrants based off of a willfully wrongheaded interpretation of the past.