A Conversation with Timothy Snyder about how Donald Trump will use the white supremacist terrorism in Charlottesville to further his fascist plot

Timothy Snyder is the first guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is an award-winning professor of history at Yale University and author of numerous books including Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin as well as Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. His newest book is On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

This is Professor Snyder's second appearance on The Chauncey DeVega Show. His first conversation with Chauncey DeVega about Trump's election and the potential for a coup and a fascist regime was read several million times at the online magazine Salon and also shared almost 300,000 times on Facebook. That episode of the podcast was also listened to and downloaded more than 20,000 times.

During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Professor Snyder and Chauncey evaluate the health of American democracy after eight months of Trump as president, discuss how the recent white supremacist terrorism in Charlottesville could potentially fit into Trump's plans for authoritarianism in America, if Charlottesville was a "Reichstag Fire" moment, and how the rule of law is threatened by Trump's regime.

Professor Snyder also explains the historical antecedents and disturbing echoes of the white supremacist and neo-Nazi hate festival in Charlottesville relative to their origins in Nazi Germany.

This week's podcast also features Professor Cedric Johnson.

He is the author/editor of several books including Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics, as well as The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans.

Dr. Johnson is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and African-American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Cedric and Chauncey discuss the new movie Detroit, the accuracy of its depiction of that city's racial rebellion, how the civil rights movement is presented by Hollywood, and share some thoughts on the problematic racial essentializing politics of the much discussed and highly praised film Get Out.

On this week's show, Chauncey DeVega demands accountability from those people who were in denial about the threat posed by Donald Trump, shares a story about filming a documentary, and explains how today's black conservatives are a modern day version of the black people who helped the Ku Klux Klan in the American South after slavery.

This week's episode with Timothy Snyder and Cedric Johnson can be downloaded from Libysn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes, Spotify and at Stitcher. 

A Conversation with Psychiatrist David Reiss and Author Jared Yates Sexton about Donald Trump and His Basket of Deplorables

There are two guests on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. Psychiatrist David Reiss returns to analyze Donald Trump's behavior during presidential debates and to offer his thoughts on the Republican nominee's love of sexually harassing women and other noxious behavior. Writer and New York Times guest columnist Jared Yates Sexton also returns to the show. He shares some stories about violence and vitriol at Trump's rallies, his insights about what happens on Election Day, and ideas about how we should keep the lines of communication open with the Trumpthuglicans.

During this week's podcast, Chauncey talks about Negan and the season premiere of The Walking Dead. Chauncey also shares some thoughts on the new smut film We are the Flesh that he had the misfortune of recently viewing at The Chicago International Film Festival. And Chauncey offers up some on the spot audio of the great late night mayhem at Friday's restaurant and reads some hate mail.  

This episode with David Reiss and Jared Yates Sexton can be downloaded from Libysn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes and at Stitcher.

The Chauncey DeVega Show can now be found on Spotify as well.

A Conversation with Claire Conner about the John Birch Society and its Power over the Republican Party Part Two

We are now in the third day of the June fundraiser here at Indomitable/WARN/We are Respectable Negroes. It is one of two fundraisers that I conduct annually. The other is in December.

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. If you can, are able, and will please do throw some pennies, gold, silver, into the Paypal logo on the top of the screen on the right hand side bar.  

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This week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show features Claire Conner. She is the author of Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America's Radical Right. This is the second part of our conversation here on The Chauncey DeVega Show. The first episode can be listened to here.

Claire Conner is one of the "daughters" of the John Birch Society. In this installment of the podcast, she continues with her great sharing and teaching from last week. Claire tells an amazing story about what it was like to be in Dallas on the day that President Kennedy was assassinated; the role of the radical Christian Right in distorting American life, culture, and politics; why non-voting is a non-starter; and her thoughts on Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump.

During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Chauncey shares his struggles against the psychic warfare of his Right-wing CHUD enemies, is worried about his tummy troubles, discusses the Trumpthuglicans and last week's San Jose protests, people who want to kill him, and cuts a promo on one of the greatest self-hating black Americans of all time--the one and only Jesse Lee Peterson.

After months of teasing "exciting developments", Chauncey finally shares two of the present/future endeavors that he needs support for from the twice a year fundraiser and the good folks who follow the podcast and his other online work.

Part two of this great episode with Claire Conner can be downloaded from Libysn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes and at Stitcher. The Chauncey DeVega Show can now be found on Spotify as well.

50 People were Shot in Chicago Last Week: The Tribune's Profile of a Street Pirate

It was warm in Chicago last weekend. A nice day is an opportunity to catch up on one's "recreational" and "business" matters. To that end, 50 people were shot in gang related violence across the city.

The Chicago Tribune profiled one of the street pirates who was killed in that flurry of mayhem.

Criminals are someone's children. They usually have friends and other people who care about them. Criminals should be humanized even while their deeds are barbaric. To not understand them as 3 dimensional and full human beings risks our not being able to correct the circumstances--if possible--that spawned them.

The sociological imagination is the connection between individual experiences and wider society.

Reading the Tribune's profile of street pirate Pierre Loury is a tour de force of the ghetto underclass: a a full bibliography could easily be compiled annotating the downfall of this teenager.

For example:

Pierre Loury talked about going to college and becoming an engineer, yet he skipped classes for nearly a year in high school. 

He encouraged his little brother to stay in sports and out of gangs, yet he claimed to have joined the New Breeds around the age of 10. 

He spent hours recording rap music in a converted bedroom closet, but toward the end of his short life his Facebook postings show him posing with guns, cash and drugs and talking of chasing rival dealers off his block. 

Still, his family and friends never imagined he would die in an alley not far from his home at age 16, shot and killed by a Chicago police officer last month after allegedly threatening him with a gun.

And:

They both worried as Loury started getting arrested, missing school and running away to a relative's or friend's house. He might have been on his own, but he still faced discipline at home, they said. 

"Even not being here, it didn't matter where we live, he's exposed to danger, period," Hudson said, pointing outside. "I did what I was supposed to do as a mother. When I got wind of the things he was doing." 

Hudson would tell her son, "No, we are not doing this. I didn't raise you like that, you're a leader, you're not going to follow. He would tell me, 'Mama, I'm a do better, I know. The words started matching his actions, and he started doing better." 

Frazier added, "We were hard on him. Pierre was still getting whoopings till he was like 15 with a belt. 

"We never knew he was doing all this stuff because we gave him his privacy," he continued. "He never brought a gun into this house. He has little brothers and sisters, and he's their role model." 

Gripping a tissue, Hudson described her boy as an up-and-coming rapper who liked to listen to Drake, Lil Wayne and Kendrick Lamar. She said a Facebook photo of her son holding a gun beside his face was taken while he was promoting a rap song, nothing more. 

However, both she and Frazier said they did not approve of the photo, which was widely circulated after he died. "The picture was surrounding a song, his finger's not even on the trigger, he just holding a gun," Hudson said. "I don't like the fact that he did the picture, but it's social media, it's a way of expressing yourself. I may have posted something on my Facebook that somebody might take wrong."

Consider me not moved by the "tragedy" of this life. Pierre Loury was a brigand, a public menace, and a plague on his community. Those words are harsh. They are politically incorrect. They may be upsetting to some people. 

Those thoughts are also an observation about how there are activists and others involved in social change work in poor black and brown communities who expend energy on the wrong fights, defend people whose behavior is indefensible, and thus lose moral authority and political capital when discussing serious and important matters of public concern.

Am I being too harsh? What are your thoughts on how Loury's life went wrong? How did his parents and family enable his behavior? Or is the life of a street pirate ultimately about the intersection of failed social structures and poor personal decisions?

So Predictable: Another Black Donald Trump Supporter Goes on the Attack...This Time in Tucson, Arizona

I predicted this several months and weeks ago. I spoke about it on the Thom Hartmann and Ring of Fire TV shows. Black Trumpeteers are on the attack--this time in Tucson, Arizona.

They (and perhaps soon to be joined by Latino Trumpeteers) will be the leading edge of the sword, the most violent and confrontational part of Trump's horde.

Folks "borrowed" my Trump and professional wrestling analysis without attribution. Others will start calling out the black Trumpeteers as though their claims are novel. Just remember where you heard it first folks.

Help me puzzle this one out. Why are the black Trumpeteers so violent? Is is all just internalized racism and a type of Stockholm syndrome where in the midst of white racists they must go out of their way to prove their bonafides? Something else?

Is He a Genius? A Fool? Or Both? Ben Carson Now Has a "Rap Music" Political Ad

This was predictable. Ben Carson is a new age race minstrel for the Republican Party. As such, his routine would have to evolve to fit the cultural norms of the present. But, I could not have imagined how horrible Ben Carson's move would be.

I am confused. 

Ben Carson now has a rap video that is designed to appeal to "black voters". Although hip hop as an art form has fallen so far below the artistic and musical creativity and majesty of even ten years ago (never mind 20 years when Biggie, Nas, Tribe, Outcast, and Wu-Tang released seminal albums) Carson's rap video will of course have no appeal to "black" voters. The only folks who will be moved by it are Carson's racially resentful and bigoted white conservative supporters. Why? Because it lets them feel "cool" and "hip" as they groove to the negro race record croonings of Carson's emcee and the jungle rhythms of the synthesized drum. 

A complication and a possibility. Could Ben Carson be one of the smartest political operatives in the game right now? 

He is fleecing dumb white conservatives of their money, getting rich off of campaign donations, and engaging in a type of post modern performance art and spectacular politics that mocks the stupidity of the American public. 

Help me understand if you would. Is Carson a genius or a fool or both?

A Black Face in a Sea of White: The Curious Case of Ben Carson and the GOP

In a primary season that has seen the most unlikely of candidates, Donald Trump, surge to the head of the GOP pack, perhaps the least surprising development is the ascendance of another political outsider: Dr. Ben Carson. But to understand why Carson’s recent success in Republican polls makes so much sense, one must first take a closer look at the nature of the modern Republican Party.

In the Age of Obama, GOP elites routinely bloviate about their need to expand outreach to people of color, especially Hispanics and Latinos, given the United States’ changing ethnic and racial demographics. Yet, the Party has consistently failed to leverage opportunities to that end. This could be a function of incompetence. Alternatively, such a lack of substantive efforts could simply be a reflection of a political party that is dedicated to white racial resentment and white identity politics—and thus suppressing the votes of non-whites—as its primary electoral strategy.

Given these dynamics, how does one make sense of the curious case of Ben Carson? How then does his surging popularity compute?

Carson’s popularity points out the tension between what is known as “substantive” and “descriptive” politics. Substantive politics centers on a belief in a person’s values and policy positions as overriding other identity-based concerns about governance and political behavior. Yes, the body that an individual is born into matters. But, substantive politics presumes that almost any person can effectively represent a given constituency and its values. Descriptive politics, on the other hand, is the belief that a person’s life experiences and identity, especially if they are an outsider or Other in a given socio-political system — in the United States and West this would be women, people of color, gays and lesbians, and members of other marginalized groups — will lead them to challenge the system or be transformative and somehow resistant.

Ultimately, the tension here is between individuals and systems. Do our racialized, ethnic, gendered, and other identities provide gifted insight and leverage for those we represent in government? Or is it best to vote for and support candidates based on their ideas alone, with an understanding that the system exercises constraints on all actors?

Ben Carson and the "Pro Life" Movement Have More in Common With Slaveowners Than "Abolitionists"

Ben Carson has a habit of making disturbing and ahistorical claims about American life and politics. In rebuffing any suggestion that the United States needs better and more effective gun control laws, he said that the Jews were killed by the millions during Holocaust because they did not arm themselves. In essence, like the victims of mass shootings in America, the millions of people killed by the Nazis were partly to blame for their own deaths. Ben Carson has also said that the Affordable Care Act is akin to America’s centuries-long regime of chattel slavery.

Misrepresenting the horrors of the American slave regime is a standard talking point for today’s “black conservatives.” It is in keeping with their utter disrespect for The Black Freedom Struggle and role as racial mercenaries who serve as the professional “best black friends” and human chaff for the Republican Party—what is the de facto largest white identity organization in the United States.

As I have suggested here at Salon and elsewhere, black conservatives slur the African-American community, and dishonor the Black Freedom Struggle, because to do so is financially lucrative. By comparison, in the United States, those black and brown people (and some whites) who tell the truth about white supremacy and institutional white racism are routinely punished, shouted down, and chased out of the public square. Black and brown people such as Ben Carson who enable white racism are rewarded and praised.

During the opening months of the Republican 2016 primary season, this formula has made him immensely popular among the racially resentful and overtly racist white voters who are the base of the GOP.

On Sunday’s edition of “Meet the Press,” Ben Carson doubled-down on this strategy–and of course continued his very troubled relationship with empirical reality–when he made the following claims about women’s reproductive rights:

“Think about this. During slavery — and I know that one of those words you’re not supposed to say — but I’m saying it. During slavery, a lot of the slave owners thought they had the right to do whatever they wanted to that slave, anything that they chose to do. And what if the abolitionists had said, ‘You know, I don’t believe in slavery, I think it’s wrong. But you guys do whatever you want to do.’ Where would we be?”

In essence, women who choose to exercise control over their own reproductive choices are the same as white enslavers who raped, murdered, worked to death, tortured, and otherwise denied the citizenship and full human rights of black Americans.

He was Sonny Carson: An Impolitic Question. Is Ben Carson a Thug?

Political partisanship heavily influences how a person understands the world around them.

It is a type of lens through which they process information. Political partisanship is also a type of heuristic.

With extreme polarization, a Right-wing media bubble, and increasing authoritarianism, the power of conservatism over its followers is increasing.

The sum result is that a significant portion of the American public are possessed of a hallucinatory ideology and drunk on the politics of disorientation.

Ben Carson, black conservative grifter, traitor to the Black Freedom Struggle, and political blackface actor, is the current ring master in the GOP's 2016 presidential primary human zoo.

On Sunday's edition of Meet the Press, he shared some ahistorical and piss poor claims about reproductive rights and chattel slavery. These are not new talking points. They are boilerplate black conservative Christian fundamentalist Maafa 21 garbage.

But, Carson did bless the public with a new wrinkle and insight his personal mythos:

"As a teenager, I would go after people with rocks, and bricks, and baseball bats, and hammers. And, of course, many people know the story when I was 14 and I tried to stab someone," Carson said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." 

"You know, fortunately, you know, my life has been changed," he added. "And I'm a very different person now."

The man fights brigands at a local Popeye's--until it is exposed that he likely did not. Carson would have armed the Jews and traveled through time to kill Hitler as a baby. Now we learn that he was a street tough who starred in his own version of The Education of Sonny Carson.

A question. Why is Ben Carson not being smeared as a black "thug"? Barack Obama faced (and continues to) wickedly racist screeds by the Right-wing media and its public about his upbringing and youth. But, Ben Carson is idolized.

Is white racism and the distorting lens of Right-wing ideology that powerful? How do white conservatives who love Ben Carson's life story yet hate Barack Obama's life story reconcile the contradiction?

Is Ben Carson the "Coon of the Year?"

We were sitting in the family car waiting for my mother to return from an errand. A man trotted by. The man seemed impossibly old to me—I was 10 and anyone over 40 was ancient—as he nodded a look of affirmation towards my father. Dad, still in his work clothes, smiled back, waving his hand through the open car window.

He then mumbled, “What a fucking coon.”

There were two black men, and one black boy, all within a few shades in skin tone from one another, “high yellow” to dark brown, yet one was somehow marked with a racial slur, uttered by one black man towards another.

My father turned around, leaning towards me from the big front seat of the Plymouth Grand Fury. He sensed my confusion. Black boys and girls, for matters of survival, must be told about the nature of life in a country where the color line still looms, with life chances and survival often decided by the capriciousness, meanness, or random generosity of white people. The noble idealism of colorblind fantasies must be crushed by hard realities, the sooner the better for young black and brown boys and girls.

My father then told me how that man, a black man like us, would do anything to please a white person. He would talk black people down in public, was embarrassed to be black, and lived to win the smiles and approval of white people at any cost…even his self-respect. Such a man is an embarrassment to his race, and himself, and should be shunned.

In private spaces people can share harsh talk and mean truths with a reasonable expectation of privacy. The power, danger, and allure of the Internet and Social Media are that those once private conversations and thoughts can now be laid before before strangers. And those strangers may not be fair players, operating with the best of intent, or intellectually honest.

Last week, Professor Anthea Butler shared her disgust towards Republican presidential primary candidate Ben Carson, describing him on Twitter as “coon of the year.” I share her sense of upset with Ben Carson’s betrayal of The Black Freedom Struggle, willful lies about African-American history and politics, and how he, like other black conservatives from the Reagan era onward, is a professional “best black friend” for the Republican Party and the White Right. Carson, as a leading member of the black conservative cadre, serves as human chaff and a defense shield, a man whose primary purpose is to make excuses for white racism.

A Model Black Conservative: Debunking Ben Carson's Anti-Black Racist Lies About American Politics and History

How black conservatives are human puppets for white racists

Through the first few months of campaign season, one thing has become indisputably clear: The Republican Party is the United States’ largest white identity organization, and openly uses white racial resentment — along with old fashioned racism — to win the support of white voters.

To wit: The Republican Party’s leading 2016 presidential candidates include open racists and nativists such as Donald Trump, as well as “dog whistle” racists such as Jeb Bush, who channel Ronald Reagan by way of “Southern Strategy”-inspired narratives about “welfare queens” and lazy blacks who want “free stuff” from white people.

And then, of course, there is the curious case of Ben Carson, who recently said that black people who support the Democrats are essentially stupid, unsophisticated, hyper-emotional, irrational, and incapable of thinking for themselves. In Carson’s delusional alternate reality, Republicans do not “see race,” and, unlike the Democrats, are the real advocates for racial justice and positive change along the color line in the United States.

Ben Carson is not alone in his twisted fantasy land. He is joined by other black conservatives — a select group of racial mercenaries who are routinely trotted out on Fox News and elsewhere — who, to great approval from white conservatives, also repeat the same anti-black propaganda.

The white racist fantasies given credence by black conservatives consist of several repeated themes.

He is a Traitor: Ben Carson has Betrayed the Black Freedom Struggle

Like other black conservatives he lives in a fantasy world

The Black Freedom Struggle began in America when the first Africans were brought to Florida in 1581. It continued onward through emancipation and reconstruction as black Americans “built a nation under their feet”, resisting chattel slavery, self-manumitting, taking up arms, and then building political and social institutions across the South and the rest of the United States. The Black Freedom Struggle would reach its peak with the Civil Rights Movement and be seared into American public memory with the Great March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and iconic speeches by Dr. King and others.

The Civil Rights Movement continues today with Black Lives Matter and the centuries-long fight by black and brown folks against police thuggery, for a more equitable society, dignity, and full human rights for all peoples on both sides of the color line. The Black Freedom Struggle inspired other groups—women, gays and lesbians, the differently-abled—in the United States to resist and fight Power. It has also been a source of inspiration for people’s movements around the world.

Of course, the individuals who led (and lead) the Black Freedom Struggle are not perfect. They, like all of us, are flawed. Black resistance to white supremacy occasionally (both necessarily and understandably) involved moments of fleeting flirtation with racial chauvinism.

And one cannot overlook how political stagecraft and cruel realpolitik tried to erase the leadership role played by gays and lesbians in the Civil Rights Movement–this is a shameful blemish on the radically humanistic and transformative vision of American life offered by that glorious struggle.

But in all, the Black Freedom Struggle has been a source of inspiration; black Americans are the moral conscience of a nation. Black America has earned that title even as much as it has been unfairly forced upon it. In that idealized role, black Americans are called to defend the weak against the strong, speak truth to power, and force America to live up to the promise of its democratic creed and vision.

This obligation can give strength, clarity of purpose and energy to Black Americans and others who honor that legacy. Being part of a community that is “the miner’s canary” and “moral conscience of a nation” can exact a heavy burden. As such, some black folks have decided that the burden and obligation are too great to carry. Their shoulders are too narrow and weak.

Politics is Professional Wrestling: Why Did Cornel West go on Fox News to Talk About Black Lives Matter?

The school year began yesterday. I am a bit tired and in need of a nap. I was wondering, as you all likely have some thoughts on the matter, why in the hell does Cornel West go on Fox News?

Moreover, why does Cornel West dignify the blonde haired authoritarian Goebbel's white Right dream fantasy that is Megyn Kelly by wasting his time in a discussion of the "black lives matter" movement with her?

And why doesn't Cornel West quickly dispose of the foolishness offered by reactionary white supremacist mouth-breathers in their dishonest yammerings about "black on black crime"?

Cornel West is a highly trained philosopher would could destroy the Fox News white Right on first principles, i.e. why are white American movement conservatives acting like they care about black people's safety and security when their ideology is motivated by anti-black and brown sentiment and policy? Where is all of this concern about black people's safety when white conservatives instinctively defend white on black police violence and thuggery?

Politics is professional wrestling. Cornel, like the other workers, is just playing a role it seems. Disappointing. Or am I wrong?

Goodbye Mr. Reaves: Back in Chicago from Visiting New Haven and Pondering the Closing of My Childhood Barbershop

I am back in Chicago after traveling home to Connecticut for a week-long visit.

I now need to reset, get back into my routine, catch up on some writing, and enjoy the final weekend before school begins anew.

[As a bureaucratic matter, I am making my best effort to post this week's installment of The Chauncey DeVega Show with guest Walidah Imarisha later this evening. I apologize for the delay.]

When I return to Connecticut, I am always happy to see my mother--even while her eccentricities are really starting to annoy me, older folks are allowed such illogical quirks--and I am reminded that "home", however defined, is increasingly about the people and friends still there as opposed to physical landmarks and businesses that may now be shuttered and closed. In all, I had a good time (I also put some work in on the outline of the first 12 issues for my graphic novel/series that I will be pitching to some folks in the next few weeks). I also went to the cemetery where my father is buried. I am not morbid. I also do not believe that you can effectively communicate with a person's corpse. But rituals give us power.

[During said visit to the local in the ground body depository, I was reminded that my father is a trickster because I am damn sure the grave marker is not where it was originally put ten years ago. I also went to my grandfather's tombstone--which I was unaware of until a year ago. He is buried next to a member of the Carnegie family. Talk about an ironic outcome.]

And yes, New Haven pizza still reigns supreme over nearly everyone...bonus points if you get the reference.

New Haven, Connecticut is not the downtown of my childhood. Like so many other college or university locales, Yale has gobbled up and robbed it of its personality. Standardization somehow brings comfort to the little snowflakes who are afraid that the place where they will go to college or university will somehow be different from where they grew up. The horror!

But even in the midst of change I dared to hope that the black barbershop, one of the leading and most important historic institutions in the African-American public sphere/counter public, would stand as a redoubt.

This was also a source of disappointment.

Ben Carson, Cornel West, Michael Brown and the Myth of Black Forgiveness, Passivity, and Happy, Spiritual Singing, Negroes

One of America's greatest cultural lies and rituals is the myth of black forgiveness for the racial violence done against black folks by the State and/or individual white people.

The Ritual lacks justice: it is not recuperative, redistributive, or restorative. The Ritual is phony and empty. But, it is part of the glue and salve that helps to cohere American society lest the weight of the unequal debits of gain and plunder through violence and exploitation along the color line tear from one another, the whole democratic project thus falling down.

There are many acts in The Ritual; it is unending.

Black conservatives are human chaff and totems that white racists on the Right use to excuse-make for their white supremacist beliefs. As such, Republican primary season presidential candidate Ben Carson's role is to tell White America what they want to hear about black people. He is the human puppet and voice box in a black conservative See 'N Say toy. Carson contributed to The Ritual this week where he reaffirmed the myth of the happy passive spiritual singing negro, and his belief that rapscallion trouble-making black "radicals" are at the root of what ails Black America:

The Harm That One Negro Can Do: Journalistic Malpractice. The Washington Post Runs a Story About Black People Who Love the Confederate Flag

 

I offer a question for a Tuesday night.

Today, The Washington Post ran a story on black Americans who defend the Confederate flag. The Treason Flag and American Swastika are symbols of white supremacy and anti-black violence. Yet, it has confused and wayward and bigoted defenders--apparently on both sides of the colorline if The Washington Post's story "Why this black defender of the Confederate flag says slavery was ‘a choice’" is to be believed.

Black folks who defend the Confederate flag belong in a human zoo; nevertheless they still have the ability to shape public perception and opinion.

Yes, and granting that it does feature racist writers such as Richard Cohen, The Washington Post is supposed to be a "journal of record". And yes, we do live in a twisted moment that is the bastard child of postmodernity where delusions and unfounded opinions are elevated to the same standing as established facts.

With those observations having been noted, would The Washington Post feature a story about Jewish people who are Holocaust deniers?

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.

The Christian Right's Worst Nightmare? Black Israelites and Indiana's 'Religious Freedom' Law

Indiana's "religious freedom" law, i.e. a bill designed to legalize discrimination against gays and lesbians under the shield of "religious freedom" has been a source of national controversy. Indiana was ultimately forced by the corporate money wing of the Republican Party to modify its "religious freedom" law with the following amendment:

Specifically, the new language says the RFRA does not authorize a provider — including businesses or individuals — to refuse to offer or provide services, facilities, goods, employment, housing or public accommodation to any member of the public based on sexual orientation or gender identity, in addition to race, color, religion, ancestry, age, national origin, disability, sex or military service.

The proposed language exempts churches or other nonprofit religious organizations — including affiliated schools — from the definition of "provider."

[While it is problematic, and has always seemed to be an affront to the supposed secular values of America as a liberal democracy, tax exempt religious organizations are yet somehow still allowed to violate civil rights laws. This is an ugly pimple that should be popped; stare decisis has to this point protected it from being lanced. It is a blemish that the American body politic will be forced to live with for the foreseeable future.]

The rejection of Indiana's religious hate law is not a total defeat for the culture warriors in the Republican Party.

The Christian Right are not ashamed of their actions: secular resistance emboldens them.  Why? like most fanatics, they are animated by a belief in a mythic narrative of struggle against overwhelming odds that gives further credence to the cause.

No, the American Taliban and ISIS, will pivot and pursue other options in order to further bend and ultimately break the wall separating church and state in the United States.

The Folly of Lawrence Otis Graham: So a Child of the Black 'One Percent' is Called a 'Nigger'...and Guess What Happens?

How much, and for how long, do you protect your child from life's harsh realities?

If you are the parent of a child who is the Other, what if any special obligations do you have to prepare them for the world as it is--as opposed to the world as you would like it to be?

Lawrence Otis Graham, author and public face of the black bourgeois, shared a very sad and honest story about how he failed to properly prepare his child for life in an America where racism and white supremacy remain powerful social forces.

I would think that the boule would be very embarrassed and upset by the following anecdote about how the black rich have discovered that money is not a shield against white racism.

While the observation may be impolitic to some, to me, the following scene is high comedy straight out of Chappelle's Show:

Not many months ago, my children and I sat in the sprawling living room of two black bankers in Rye, N.Y., who had brought together three dozen affluent African American parents and their children for a workshop on how to interact with law enforcement in their mostly white communities. Two police detectives and two criminal-court judges — all African American — provided practical suggestions on how to minimize the likelihood of the adolescents being profiled or mistakenly Tasered or shot by inexperienced security guards or police officers. Some of the parents and most of the kids sat smugly, passing around platters of vegetables and smoked salmon — while it helped to have the lessons reinforced by police officers, we had all heard it many times before.

Lawrence Otis Graham's son is broken by a direct encounter with white racism.

This is just sad and pathetic:

The boarding-school incident this summer was a turning point for us — particularly for my son and his younger siblings. Being called a nigger was, of course, a depressing moment for us all. But it was also a moment that helped bring our surroundings into clearer focus. The fact that it happened just days before the police shooting of Michael Brown increased its resonance for our family. Our teenage son no longer makes eye contact with pedestrians or drivers who pass on the street or sidewalk. He ceased visiting the school library this summer after sundown, and now refuses to visit the neighborhood library, just one block away, unless accompanied. He asks us to bear with him because, as he explains, he knows that the experience is unlikely to happen again, but he doesn’t like the uncertainty. He says he now feels both vulnerable and resentful whenever he is required to walk unaccompanied.

He Does Not Have a Magical Belt or Switch: Adrian Peterson is Not Pootie Tang

I had a nice birthday weekend as my march towards decrepitude continues forward. I watched and enjoyed the great new movie The Drop. I was titillated by the Star Wars burlesque show: I did not know that I could be so attracted to Han Solo or that Obi-wan Kenobi was in fact a petite woman with very enticing small breasts. However, my mid high tier dining experience at Maggiano's was very disappointing. They have really fallen off and are now banished from my culinary go to list.

Perhaps, Maggiano's has embraced the horrible cost cutting practices that are detailed in this report about Olive Garden?

I am a people watcher and listener. If "do you remember when?" and chatting about the weather are the most banal of conversation topics, between both friends and strangers, respectively, then talk about sports between men who are strangers is at least in the same tier of emptiness.

During the last few days I have overheard several conversations on the bus, at parks, in the casino, at the bar, etc. about the recent misdeeds and bad behavior of NFL football players Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson.

Ray Rice savagely sucker punched his then fiance and now wife Janay Palmer. She was knocked unconscious. Rice then proceeded to drag her out of an elevator like a bag of manure or hay. Rice has been permanently suspended from the NFL. I have heard too many men defend him from the consequences of his deeds. To their eyes, what Rice did "wasn't right" or "cool"--this phrasing is important because it is far less than a full condemnation--but he should not be banned from football because that is not "fair".

I do not have the sports gene. I enjoy a good football game. I love the theater and athleticism of professional wrestling. But, my manhood and masculinity are not validated by an over-identification with what strangers are doing on a field or in a ring. I doubt that I am alone in this regard.

Of course, the few defenders of Rice were the loudest at the local tap, demanding attention from others. Other men nodded in agreement or muttered almost mute disagreement. The boisterous fool alpha male won out. We are just naked apes; naked apes love to congregate at the local bar on Sundays during football season.