A Conversation with Tim Wise About White Privilege, Corrupt White Elites and the "Varsity Blues" College Admissions Scandal

Tim Wise is the author of numerous books including his most recent Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America.

Time Wise explains how the "Varsity Blues" college and university admissions cheating and bribery scandal reflects a pathological culture among America's white elites, the many ways that unearned white advantages and white privilege along lines of race and class operate across all levels of America's educational system, and how "affirmative action" for white folks--especially the rich and upper classes--is the norm in American society.

Tim Wise also explains why the beneficiaries of the "Varsity Blues" criminal conspiracy should be expelled from their colleges and universities.

On this week's show, Chauncey DeVega ponders more examples of this broken malignant reality that is TrumpWorld. First, Donald Trump insults the deceased Senator John McCain and demands that the corpse-ghost thank him for providing a proper funeral. Second, Trump embraces and endorses the vile hateful violent views of his fellow authoritarian, President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, during their recent meeting at the White House.

And there is a fun "Easter egg" for ghetto nerd boys and girls on this week's podcast if they listen through to the very end of the show.

 

From the KKK to the GOP and now Donald Trump

I would like to thank the kind folks who have donated to the June fundraiser. Their kindness and good energy means a great deal to me. The monies raised during this, the first of the twice a year fundraisers, are so helpful in subsidizing my online writing as well as the podcast.

I would like to thank all of the kind folks who have thrown some money into the virtual collection bowl. It is much appreciated. As you know, I am not compensated for my work here or the podcast. Both are labors of love, labors that I learn and benefit from in ways that I cannot easily express. As of the end of the second week of the fundraiser, we are a bit behind the pace necessary to meet this June's goal. If you can, are able, and will please do throw some pennies, gold, silver, into the Paypal logo at the top of the screen on the right hand side bar.

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In the Age of Obama and Donald Trump, the Republican Party and movement conservatives exist in a state of temporal upset. This condition manifests itself in two primary ways. First, today’s Republican Party is a revanchist organization: it is fighting to take back “lost territory” as it yearns for an imagined “good old days” of unrepentant and unapologetic white male supremacy. Second, movement conservatism and the Republican Party are reactionary forces. They are actively working--and have been for many years--to destroy the consensus politics that governed American politics from the New Deal to the election of Bill Clinton.

As such, there are heavy echoes of the past in the talking points of Republican elites and the political noise that reverberates throughout the right-wing news entertainment disinformation machine today.

The right-wing’s paranoid fixations on “Islamic terrorists” are a contemporary version of the Cold War era Red Scare. “Muslims” are now the new “commies”. The public policy goals of the John Birch Society still exert a powerful influence on the Republican Party and movement conservatives. And, as Richard Hofstadter famously described in The Paranoid Style in American Politics, the American Right-wing is still possessed of conspiratorial fantasies where instead of the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joseph McCarthy searching for “Manchurian candidates” and “fifth columnists”, a large percentage of Republicans actually believe that the country’s first black president is a secret Muslim, not an American citizen, hates America, and whose political career is the result of a plot hatched in some other country decades before his election to the White House.

Donald Trump wants to “Make America Great Again” by building a wall between the United States and Mexico, then forcibly deporting millions of “illegal aliens”. His antipathy to immigrants from Latin and South America is a sentiment shared by other Republican politicians and voters. Such animus extends to other groups as well. For example, a plurality of Republicans want Muslims to be banned from the United States. In all, this is the raw and naked nativism of the nineteenth century Know-Nothing Party.

The Sociological Imagination, Racism, and Donald Trump

The sociological imagination is the connection between personal experience and the broader social and political world. This concept is one of the most powerful frameworks for understanding the human experience and how we locate it within a given society and/or cultural milieu.

As such, the sociological imagination has been invaluable in my efforts to make sense of politics in the Age of Obama, the rise of “Trumpmania,” and the radical rightward move of the Republican Party and movement conservatism. Because such interactions are both disturbing and fascinating, I routinely take “human safaris” to overt white supremacist websites and the comment sections of Fox News and similar right-wing entertainment disinformation media. I also respond to conservatives via social media who are made enraged, hurt, and angry by the topics and themes explored by my essays and other work.

While the right-wing media exists in a state of epistemic closure—where the logic, reasoning, and rationales of the troglodytes stuck within are bizarre and exist outside of empirical reality—it remains essential that we pull back the veil and look inside: The machinations that are produced therein are a threat to the Common Good.

One of the repeated narratives which I have encountered from Donald Trump supporters online (and in person) is that they are not “racists,” are the “real victims” of “political correctness,” and how there is no “evidence” or “proof” that the ascendance of Donald Trump’s pro-fascist, right-wing producerist, Herrenvolk movement is driven by racial animus or bigotry.

Much of these responses—beyond trolling, deflection, and evasion—are standard right-wing talking points for the post-civil rights era and the Age of Obama. An unwarranted sense of victimhood as well as grievance mongering is a perpetual state of affairs for conservatives, from the civil rights era to the present.

Other Trump supporters and Republicans are befuddled by the claim that their party’s present state and its presumed nominee are the result of decades of the “Southern Strategy” and the politics of white racial resentment. Some of them are ignorant of their own political party’s history and present. Others lack critical thinking skills, and a good many are propagandized by the right-wing disinformation machine. Systems-level thinking is a skill conservatives find very challenging, and the majority are simply exhibiting the binary thinking, fear-dominated heuristics and cognition, as well as authoritarian tendencies that are common to their brain structures and political personalities.

The Elizabeth Bathory of American Politics: Donald Trump has Bathed in the Blood of Racism, Bigotry, and Nativism

There are two consistent themes about the American right-wing in the Age of Obama. First, racism and conservatism is now one and the same thing. Second, the Republican Party is the United States’ largest white identity organization. I am not the only person to have made such observations.

Of course, Republicans and conservatives find these twin facts offensive and unbelievable. They hold onto their founding myth of Lincoln and “Great Emancipator” while simultaneously being dependent on voters from the former Confederacy for power—states that still fly and honor the American swastika, a rebel flag of treason and anti-black hatred.

Despite their protests, the evidence is overwhelming.

The ascendance of Donald Trump and his coronation as the presumed 2016 Republican presidential candidate is the logical outcome of a several decades-long pattern of racism, nativism, and bigotry by the American right-wing and its news entertainment disinformation machine.

For example, in response to the triumphs of the black freedom struggle and the civil rights movement, the Republican Party has relied on the much discussed “Southern Strategy.” Lee Atwater, master Republican strategist and mentor to Karl Rove explained this approach as:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N****r, n****r, n****r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n****r”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N****r, n****r.”

Ronald Reagan and other Republican elites would leverage Atwater’s approach to winning white voters and elections. To point, Reagan began his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the locale where American civil rights freedom fighters Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney were killed by white racial terrorists. In that speech, Reagan signaled to the ghosts of Jim and Jane Crow and the neo-Confederacy by stating his support for “states’ rights.”

Canine Coitus, Donald Trump, and the Republican Party

Is Donald Trump's relationship to the Republican Party like that of a hydra? The Man with Two Heads? The Ouroboros? A Frankenstein monster?

Writing at TruthOut, William Rivers Pitt offers up his own metaphor for how best to describe the ascendance of Donald Trump and his takeover of the Republican Party.

Pitt makes the following brilliant and so damn sharp observation:

When I was a boy, we had a small cocker spaniel. Though she was dumber than a can of paint -- she would run headlong into walls on a regular basis -- the pup had moves like Barry Sanders coming out of the backfield. At the sound of a door to the outside being opened she'd come charging, claws raking the hardwood floor. A feint to the left, a jink to the right, a hesitation followed by a surge and she was gone down the front steps and into the world like a blur. Stopping her was like trying to catch smoke. 

Invariably, she would find herself in the company of Big Red, an enormous orange Labrador mongrel who roamed our neighborhood like a massive free-range chicken with rail spikes for teeth. Big Red stood chest-high to the average Buick and had a head the size of a beer keg, while our spaniel was no bigger than a minute, and yet the two of them always managed to figure out a way to copulate.

It did not go well, due to a phenomenon dog people call "The Mating Tie," in which the two creatures become locked together at the rear once the act is completed. Big Red would finish his business and lope off toward whatever adventures awaited him with our poor wee spaniel attached to his rump, dragging her through the dirt as she howled piteously, her little paws scrabbling for purchase. Big Red didn't even notice she was there. 

I think of this, and I think of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

The conclusion is "beautiful ugly" as I like to say:

The giant orange Lab and the helpless spaniel. Trump and the Republican Party. It's a hell of a thing when humping dogs provide an accurate and appropriate metaphor for the reality of a presidential election, but here we are. "Farce," said screenwriter, author and dramatist John Mortimer, "is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute." Thanks to Mr. Trump, we're about at speed.

I would like to be able to spin such wonderful prose when I grow up. Kudos to William Rivers Pitt for being so lethal with his language.

It is beautiful here in Chicago. I am going to go for my afternoon constitutional and perhaps a nap near the lake. Any news items to share, or matters of public or personal concern that you would like to offer up for consideration?

Is President Polk Worse than Andrew Jackson? A Presidents Day Thought About Two Contemptible Men

On this Presidents Day I have been thinking about Presidents Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk.

Jackson was an "Indian fighter" who invaded Florida in order to kill the self-manumitted black Americans and their First Nations allies who lived there. For that reason (and others) there is a drive to remove him from the twenty dollar bill.

After reading The America Slave Coast, and talking with its authors, Ned and Constance Sublette on my podcast, I have developed a dislike of James Polk as well.

He was a slave owner. This was not uncommon, as men like Washington, Jefferson, and other Presidents were as well. To own black human property was one of the primary ways to accrue wealth and income in the colonies and then later United States. But, to my eyes, there was something especially duplicitous about Polk's involvement in the Black Holocaust (or Maafa) and its slave labor camps, tortures, rapes, death marches, destruction of family, and other crimes against humanity.

As President Polk waged war to expand territories for slavery, he also worked through his cousin to buy slaves, an action that in turn added to his personal wealth.

Writing at H-Net, William Dusinberre offers the following comments about the book Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James Polk:

My New Favorite Online Comment: "I Believe White Conservatives Love Blacks..."

I believe white conservatives love blacks. #Black lives MUST matter because white racist are completely obsessed with black people. I have never seen a group so preoccupied with another. White racist can give us black stats from the number on welfare to the number in prison, while graciously omitting their own. They can tell you the names, ages, even weights of every black shot in Chicago last week, which takes time away from them finding out how many white sex offenders live in their own neighborhoods. They will warn blacks by giving the murder rates of cities like Baltimore and Detroit, but selflessly won't worry about the white serial killers, family killers, school shooters, rampage shooters, rapist, drunk drivers, meth users / dealers / labs, and pedophiles next door. Now that is love and dedication.

Something to start the week.

I often lament the poor state of online public discourse. Trolls, bad behavior, and superficial chatter best suited for argumentative teenagers instead of substantive reflection and dialogue are often the norm and the rule. But there are moments when a real gem shines through the detritus, flotsam, and online mouth exhalations of the online commentariat-wannabe class.

I only borrow from the best. I am not sure if "Rob Knob's" comment on a story featured at Alternet is original, borrowed from someone else, or a synthetic result of reading many other insights and posts. Regardless of its origins, Rob's observation about the pathological obsession that white conservatives have with black people is so very sharp.

My mental Rolodex is now updated; an arrow has been added to the quiver.

Any online gems to share? What are your thoughts on the state of online commenting and discussion? Do you think that comment sections should be "turned off" given how the Right-wing, white supremacists, and others have managed to muck up and derail such spaces? Am I alone in feeling that "progressive" websites about "social justice" and "race" are particularly sub par in how they manage their comment sections?

Politics is Professional Wrestling: America's Greatest "Heel" Donald Trump Versus Univision

Again, Donald Trump has demonstrated how he is a student of professional wrestling. In an earlier essay, I extensively detailed the heel (villain) role that Trump is playing . There was a passage that was edited out of the essay when it ran at Salon, one that is especially fitting given Donald Trump's promo against Univision earlier today. 

[Trump's press conference and stump speech was a clinic in how to get "heat" from an audience. Trump satisfied and moved his supporters; he created anger and rage among his detractors. This is the definition of a perfect wrestling promo.]

I originally included this wonderful description of the modus operandi of the professional wrestling
heel from the book Time Heels: Cheating, Stealing, Spandex and the Most Villainous Moments in the History of Pro Wrestling:

We the heels do not need permission to execute our plans. We decide who, we decide when and there is no guarantee that we will either show up at the match or stay to the end. 

It is our prerogative to demand championship opportunities and we cost others theirs in favour of our own.

The truth is, we can do whatever we want. We are not constrained by rules and regulations. Sympathy and morality are for the weak-willed. There are rules in the world of heels of course but never forget that winning is everything! 

Did you honestly think we were your friend or ally? You are online in the spotlight because we say so. Your sole purpose is to serve the great good: our own. 

Heels are arrogant, self-serving, self-involved, cocky, bold, conniving, calculating and treacherous. 

We will strive to annihilate all competition to ensure victory through careful planning and sometimes, even destruction. There can be only one…better us than them.

We can also be made to appear weak in the face of danger. Often we run away when the odds look impossible but never forget that the objective is to win therefore we will live on to fight another day when the conditions will suit our agenda, not yours.

The ideal way to bring down a heel is to have a champion who through force of will, persistence, and righteousness of cause outlasts, outsmarts, and eventually vanquishes them. The heel should also be brought down in part because of their cowardice and other character defects. Fox News made Donald Trump. But, he has chosen to "go into business" for himself, disobeying his masters.

Who in the Republican Party will remove Donald Trump from the spotlight? Or will he, as some heels do, simply choose to walk away when the challenges become to great, all the while giving a big middle finger to the fans simply because he can?

You Have Been Duped: The Republican Party's Confederate Flag Carnival Game Magic Trick

The Confederate flag will no longer fly over the capital of South Carolina. It was taken down on July 10, 2015; an African-American member of the state color guard presented the American Swastika/Treason Flag to the Confederate Relic Room and State Museum. The image and timing are powerful: the Confederate flag, a symbol of white supremacist violence against Black America was removed during the tenure of Barack Obama, the United States’ first black president, and given to the Confederate Relic Room and State Museum by a black man who is employed by one of the founding states of the treasonous Confederacy.

Last week, the Memphis City Council voted to move the grave of Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife from a public park. A monument in his honor will also be removed from the same site.

Forrest was one of the founding members of the Ku Klux Klan, the largest terrorist organization in American history. The Ku Klux Klan is the United States’ version of ISIS, as the former burned alive, tortured, raped, and killed many thousands of black Americans during the decades following the Civil War and through to the fall of Jim and Jane Crow American Apartheid in the middle of the twentieth century.

The removal of the Confederate flag is a triumph of symbolic politics—what is a type of political behavior where the visuals, optics, appeals to emotion, showmanship, theatrics, and other gestures are often a substitute for the instrumental and substantive advance of material public policy goals that impact the life chances of citizens.

The Republican Party is the nation’s largest white identity organization. In the post civil rights era the Republican Party embodies the union of white supremacy and conservatism. Their surrender of one of the United States’ most potent symbols of white racism, white grievance mongering, and racial resentment is a ploy—one that is a distraction from deeper and more substantive political issues that serve the Common Good and the long Black Freedom Struggle.

Ultimately, the Republican Party’s much belated support for removing the Confederate flag is a type of political magic trick and carnival game.

Like the Republican Party, White Supremacist Terrorist Dylann Roof Also has a 'Best Black Friend'...Who Says He Isn't Racist

In the post civil rights era, it is obligatory that every white racist has a "best black friend".

The Republican Party keeps a database of such "trot out in case of emergency negroes" who are human chaff for their white supremacist, anti-black, anti-brown, anti-poor, policies. Clarence Thomas fulfills this role on an elite and institutional level.

Many individual white folks, on both sides of the political divide, in a society that is highly segregated along racial lines (75 percent of white Americans do not have one non-white friend) somehow manage to have a "best black friend" as well. This phantom black friend is not present in their day-to-day lives; he or she is just summoned when self-serving questions about racism or racial propriety are introduced.

White supremacist mass murderer and terrorist Dylann Roof also has a best black friend. His name is Christon Scriven.

He recently spoke to the BBC where he made the following assertion about Dylann Roof:

"Everybody's making him out to be racist but here I am in front of you today as a Black man and telling you that I look at him no different today than what I looked him last week because he never said anything racist to me..."

We discussed this in an earlier post. Human beings of all colors have the capacity to deny the facts--especially when it involves someone dear and close to them having been arrested for a heinous crime.

But, given Dylann Roof's white supremacist manifesto, penchant for wearing the flags of Rhodesia and Apartheid era South Africa, telling racists jokes, and posing with Confederate flags, it is hard to believe that he was not also emitting such noxious signals of white supremacy while in the company of his "best black friend" Christon Scriven

And perhaps just as disturbing, Dylann Roof told Christon Scriven about his plans to commit mass murder at a local college. Guess what? Criston did not tell the police.

The Culture of Cruelty has warped the ethics, morality, and values of young people on both sides of the colorline. The neoliberal nightmare and the Culture of Disposability is their world: they have never known any other one.

Goebbels Would be Impressed: Republican Madness. Black Folks Were Massacred by a White Supremacist in Charleston Not Because of Race But Because of Their Religion

Some editorial matters. I am public enemy number one for the Right-wing hate media machine because of my basic truth-telling about white privilege, white supremacy, the media, and the Charleston Massacre. It is very entertaining. The Right-wing hate media machine and its supplicants are rolling around in a filthy unclean trough urinal and are desperate for me (and other truth-tellers and people of conscience) to get inside it with them. Yeah right. I just close the door, turn off the lights, throw some bleach and urinal cakes into their filthy public discourse piss bowl, and proceed to lock the door. 

[Other point that folks have asked about, yes, I did in fact postpone the podcast from Thursday because of the horrible situation in Charleston. The show will run next week.]

I was also reminded, moments ago, of how politics in the United States is more akin to professional wrestling than anything else.

As the public discourse around the Charleston massacre continues to evolve you will see a shift from any type of analysis that highlights white supremacy and anti-black violence to one that is more "neutral" and "reasonable" where gun laws become the focus of the debate. White supremacy, aggrieved white masculinity, conservatism, and the United States' gun fetish cannot be discussed as separate phenomena. The corporate news media fails the American people when it fails to present a systems-level analysis of the relationship between white supremacy, white privilege, masculinity, race, guns, and violence.

In this time of tumult and trouble, where black and brown lives are vulnerable, under assault, not valued, and unprotected, individuals are placed in a crucible of truth, one that reveals their personal values, ethics, and morality. Times of trouble are more revealing of one's nature than are times of peace, prosperity, and ease of life. 

In the aftermath of the white supremacist mass murder in Charleston, South Carolina, Republicans and the White Right are showing us who they are...again.

The Fox News Right-wing hate machine has offered up a bizarre and delusional narrative where the mass murder of black people by a white supremacist named Dylann Roof, as the latter shouted that black people are taking away the white man's country and raping his women, is somehow really an attack on Christians. White victimology and the white racial frame are able to transform what is an obvious attack based on race to one that is really an attack on aggrieved and suffering white Christians. White victimology is political and cognitive crack mixed with meth. 

One can go mad trying to unpack the insanity. 

(Why didn't Dylann Roof attack any of the white churches that were nearby and far closer to where he lived? the KKK was/is a Christian identity organization that killed black people, the vast majority of whom were Christians, white slavers raped, abused, murdered, tortured, and held as human property black people who were "Christians" too? Are these barbarisms now anti-Christian violence more so than white supremacist evil?)

Black Americans who are victims of murderous violence by the police, the State, and White Americans, are usually blamed for somehow causing their own deaths. This is the essence of white racial paranoiac thinking. 

To point. Charles Cotton, a National Rifle Association's ammosexual gun fetishist, is now blaming the pastor of Emanuel AME Church for enabling the murder of his congregation:

For Charles Cotton, white people's guns trump black and brown people's right to life.

And of course, the leading Republican candidates for president in 2016 will not speak plainly and directly about the connection between white supremacy and the white supremacist mass murder rampage in Charleston. How could they? White supremacy and conservatism are the beast with two backs, publicly mating in the middle of the street for the entertainment of the Republican base, the whole lot of them on the verge of a healing paroxysm and a priapism of hate.

From where you sit, what have you surveyed about Charleston and the insanity of movement conservatism, the Republican Party, and the White Right in general?

Shameless Self-Promotion: Chauncey DeVega's (Extended) Conversation on Ring of Fire TV About Waco, Race, and Media Bias

My guest spot from tonight's Ring of Fire on Free Speech TV is now online.

This was a very unusual opportunity in that Farron and I had such an extended and good (to my eyes at least) dialogue about racism, media bias, Waco, and Baltimore that Ring of Fire decided to post the whole uncut segment on their website.

The on-air conversation was about 13 minutes; the "Director's Cut" clocks in at about 25 minutes.

I do not hold back here, as I also speak a bit of truth to power about how Fox News and the corporate media hurt the cognitive, emotional, and thinking processes of their viewers, the damage done by Whiteness to its owners and beneficiaries, as well as call out self-hating black conservatives and their role in today's broken politics and society.

As always, your suggestions, insights, and comments are always appreciated.

How do you think I did? Is 25 minutes of Chauncey DeVega a type of cruel and unusual punishment?

Weekend Semi-Open Thread: Pondering the End of the World at CHI-FI 2015

As is our habit and tradition, please do consider this our semi-open weekend/Sunday thread.

I spent the last few days at CHI-FI 2015. This is a nice regional convention that has a good amount of upside once they get some of the kinks worked out. I can only imagine the challenges involved in planning an event at a major hotel and having to coordinate all of the many elements necessary for it to cohere nicely.

Moreover, and it must only come with practice and experience, little things matter at a convention in terms of procuring talent, guest speakers, and the like. I am sure that the organizers of CHI-FI 2105 will improve their logistics for what will be a great event next year.

[Obvious suggestion and question for all folks planning a "con": please make sure that the chairs of the individual panels adhere to the times listed on the schedule. 

At this year's CHI-2015, the schedules allotted 30 mins more to the panels than what was detailed on the schedule. In addition. some of the panels seemed happy to end early. Perhaps this is a function of nerves by the panelists and chairs? Based on my experience of having been on quite a few panels as a guest and chair, always plan to go over time as opposed to planning to end early. This makes for a huge difference in terms of energy for the audience.]

As a "ghetto nerd"--speaking of which, much love to the folks who have said kind things about the last episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show with guest Dr. Adilifu Nama--I want to see more and better science fiction, comic book, cosplay, popular culture, and other like events as opposed to fewer of them.

CHI-FI 2015's heart is in the right place. I wish them the best going forward. I look forward to next year's con.

I had a good time at the event. Some of the standout panels I attended included the following:

Fun With New Styles in Right-wing Online Talking Points: The Amy Chua 'What Drives Success?' Edition

The Right-wing propaganda apparatus consists of public relations firms, paid trolls, and a very tightly connected network of "news" sites, blogs, TV, radio, social media, and think tanks. Together, the Right-wing has constructed a political ecosphere for the efficient--and overwhelming--dissemination of their talking points and disinformation with the end goal of shaping public opinion to their own ends.

These talking points and narratives are a genre of political speech. They also evolve and change over time. As readers of WARN know, I enjoy tracking the White Right's online memes because they are a useful insight into an alternate political and social reality, one that has come to dominate the Republican Party and movement conservatism.

There are several standard talking points deployed by the White Right in the Age of Obama. Some of these talking points are "old school" and are continually updated to fit a given public policy issue or controversy of the moment.

For example, one of the most common online talking points for the White Right (and conservatives, more generally) involves the dishonest use of crime statistics in order to "prove" that blacks are natural social predators.

A second white supremacist online trope involves referencing I.Q. tests to "prove" that blacks are of inferior intelligence as compared to whites (with the obligatory chaff about "Asian" I.Q. scores used as a distraction from the blatant biological racism at work in such claims).

Anti-black and brown bigotry by conservative political elites in the post civil rights era balances a public norm wherein appeals to biological racism are deemed impolitic, with the tactic of leveraging traditional white supremacist and race essentialist arguments about black inferiority through the language of "bad culture" and "colorblindness".

There is a new/old set of White Right online talking points that I would like to call your attention to.

'America the Beautiful'? The Superbowl, the White Right, and Coca-Cola's History of Racism

White nativists and the present day heirs of the Know-Nothing Party in the GOP--to the degree they can be separated from one another--are upset about Coca-Cola's "America the Beautiful" commercial during the Superbowl. 

Their anger reflects a fear about a changing America where mediocre white people such as themselves are "losing" their country to "undeserving" black and brown folks.

Of course, it is obligatory that the White Right has deployed buckdancing, right-wing, self-hating, political black face performers such as Allen West to serve as mouthpieces for their racist sentiments about Coca-Cola's recent "America the Beautiful" commercial.

History laughs at us all; she does this both for sport and because of her own mercurial nature.

Jim and Jane Crow America was not limited to the iconic visuals of public memory such as segregated water fountains and discriminatory seating in buses. White supremacy was a total social order, one that extended even to soda consumption, and its marketing, in the United States.

Richard Sherman and the Perils of Alpha Male Black Masculinity: I Wonder, What Would Happen if He Channeled 'Conan the Barbarian' or 'The Gladiator?'

I am meditating on what the silly controversy about an alpha male multimillionaire athlete named Richard Sherman, who completed a highlight reel reception during the Seahawks' victory over the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, reveals about the precarious nature of black masculinity and celebrity in the post civil rights era.

A moment of confession. As much as I respect the sociology of sports it is hard for me to muster up any sense of disgust or upsetness about a group of millionaires putting on a public show to hype up the Superbowl. We always sell "the sizzle not the steak". Moreover, I think that as demonstrated in his interview with Skip Bayless, that Richard Sherman is a bit of a jerk who is premature in his proclamations of career-long greatness.

However, please do not misunderstand my thoughts about Richard Sherman. The negative response to his interview on ESPN from some people, across the color line, is a telling moment--one that reminds us of how black men are held to higher standards of comportment and public behavior than white folks in American society.

Why? American society is profoundly uncomfortable with confident, assertive, black masculinity. There is a paradox here: black masculinity is feared, worshiped, and loathed--often at the same time, and by the same people. The mass media and culture industry profits from the spectacle.

Two questions.

What if Richard Sherman (or another successful and confident black male athlete) gave a speech similar to that of Russell Crow's character from the movie Gladiator?

Would he be loathed and criticized? By who?

What if Richard Sherman (or another successful and confident black male athlete) gave a declaration of life's virtues and meaning akin to that of Conan: The Barbarian?

Would he be loathed and criticized? By who?

Richard Sherman is causing a ruckus because he is a confident black alpha male who destroyed his foes--and then boasted about it--without any worries about being "classy" or appropriately deferent. Why should he? And are matters either that complicated or simple?

Fighting the Easy "War in Snow and Ice" Here in Chicago: Even the Italian Alpine Troops of World War One Would Likely Say That This is a Damn Cold Day

It is mighty, mighty, cold here in Chicago. I gave into curiosity and went for my traditional "snow walk" last night and today. I love the snow. I like a good blizzard. We ghetto nerds take any chance necessary to pretend we are on Hoth with Luke and Han.

I will spare you the obligatory "And I thought they smelled bad on the outside" joke. 

Even by my winter loving standards, 40 below zero turned me around as I sought shelter. May the fates have mercy on animals, the homeless, and any other folks who do not have ready access to warmth.

I am about to eat a homemade bowl of Vietnamese Pho soup, watch Netflix, drink some beer, and get ready for work on Wednesday. As I watched the temperature plummet to dangerously low levels here in Chicago, I was reminded that everything hurts in extreme cold, basic movements are made difficult, and simple tasks made complex.

For my ghetto nerds and grognards, can you imagine fighting a war in such an environment?

In most other countries, 2014 will bring public discussions and memorials for the one hundred year anniversary of World War One. America is a world onto itself. Thus, we do not concern ourselves with World War One because World War Two is the only war in human history that really "mattered".

The cult of the Greatest Generation was born out of American triumphalism at the end of the Cold War. Its blinders remain. American Exceptionalism will ensure their long-term hold on the country's sense of geopolitics.

Nevertheless, the 100 year anniversary of World War One has generated some great discussions both online and in print.

Sitting in Your Childhood Bedroom While Wondering if Mikhail Kalishnikov Got a Ride to Heaven With Santa Claus and Reading Langston Hughes' Poem "Negro" as an Antidote To Phil Robertson's Racism After Discovering Sex Books in a File Cabinet and Elsewhere

I hope that you all had a nice ChristmasHanukkahKwanzaa--or other pagan and otherwise made up holiday you chose to celebrate (or not)--this week.

My journey home--and now back--is almost complete. I have eaten too much Chinese food. I discovered that a foul concoction called "scotch beer" is just as hellish as the name implies.

I have also tried to write while sitting at a Panera and suffering the yammering of yentas complaining about the difficulties of their stay-at-home rich people suburban housewife manufactured drama. The white new money classes who talk in loud tones at mid-tier dining establishments about first world problems for all to hear is mighty entertaining...for a moment, and only for a moment, before it quickly becomes tedium.

In all, those are mild complaints for what was a nice trip home, one that was subsidized by the readers and friends of We Are Respectable Negroes. I appreciate all of your support and wish you only the best for the new year.

[Some personal sharing and random thoughts for the holiday and new year. Do share your own thoughts too, and treat this as more or less an open thread for these days when we are traveling, distracted, and when posting may be light.]

Returning to a childhood home is a life ritual which allows us to reflect on the promises we made to ourselves (and family) those years ago and the dreams of where our lives would be in that far off nebulous future that came into being too fast and too soon. When I return to my childhood home, I always look through old books, pictures, and papers. This is a scavenger hunt of my recent and mid past life. It is also therapy. I hope that I am not the only person who likes--or is that some time of masochism in practice--discovering essays written in high school, "genius" papers from college, or love letters and mixed tapes made for "the one", the person you knew that you would marry when you were 17?

I was laying in my childhood bed, conducting my end of year life inventory, listening to Coast to Coast AM on the radio, and looking through some of books that are still in the bedroom. As much as we grow and change from our teen years to twenty or so years later, the seeds of who we are--or are running away from being--are likely still present there. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teach me something if you would.

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

History and Context Beyond the White Right's Obsession With the "Knockout Game": What is Your Favorite Moral Panic?

The knockout game meme is gaining more traction. How can a few thugs not attract the attention of the national media when the story involves black men and boys behaving badly?

To the degree that the truism "if it bleeds it leads" accurately describes how the news media frames issues, "if it bleeds its leads even more" if the victims of a crime are white and the accused perpetrators are black.

[I will also make a prediction. The knockout game will be expanded to include reports of black women and girls participating in this street hooliganism. Such a script fits the white racial frame by furthering the logic that black women are not really "feminine" in the same way as white women, and thus even less valuable both because of race and the "unique" and "negative" qualities that white racism associates with black female identity.]

Here, I described the knockout game foolishness as a "moral panic". This phrase is being used quite frequently in discussions about the topic by the media. However, and I am guilty of this as well, few commentators have actually defined the concept.

Precision is important in these matters. Moral panics are not necessarily the same thing as urban legends or general concerns about crime and social disorder--although there are many overlaps between the categories.

There is a large literature on the concept of moral panics which attempts to locate them in a specific historical, political, and social context. The most simple definition is that a moral panic consists of a hysteria or upsetness focused by the public(s) on an episode or series of "troubling" events which is amplified and circulated by the media as a sign of some deeper fissure or break in standing social norms and values.

These moral panics often focus on some type of Other which can be marked as being "abnormal", "dangerous", "immoral", or "deviant". Predictably, these panics overlay neatly with existing social hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, class, and age.

The knockout game hysteria fits these criteria: it features long-standing white supremacist fixations on "black criminality", is focused on young people of color, resonates with fears by white people regarding America's changing demographics while reinforcing the White Right's vacuous lie that white people are "victims" of "reverse racism" in the post civil rights era, and is disseminated by the Right-wing media apparatus.

Moreover, the way that the knockout game moral panic has been circulated by the news media is a very chilling echo of how race and rumor were historically used to incite white racial pogroms, spectacular lynchings, and other types of terrorism against African-Americans. Of course, there is an important distinction: the knockout game is an example of wanton street thuggery by criminals; the lynching tree and racial terrorism were rituals of mass white violence against innocent black Americans.

However, the apparatus and narrative structure of these two different racial moral panics are very similar. The suggestion that all black people share some responsibility for the knockout game (thus, our "leaders" should condemn it), white society should be especially fearful of this menace, and young black people should be subjected to group punishment, is not too far afield from rumors of black men raping white women, engaging in rebellions against white authority, or otherwise being "uppity" and provoking white on black violence.

America and Europe have a long history of moral panics. Some of my "favorites" include the following:

1. Witch trials during the Middle Ages
2. Fears about role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and their purported link to Satanism
3. White slavery and how white women were being made into opium addicts and sex slaves by Asian men
4. Refer madness and cocaine addicted black men praying on young white girls
5. The Roma kidnapping "white" babies
6. Comic books and the corruption of American youth

What are some of your favorite moral panics? And how do they relate (if at all) to the White Right's dream and obsession about the knockout game?