You know I love me some Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The race narrative is deep on that show and often goes uncommented upon. Consider for a moment the following: Where else can you see a white frat boy dirty white baseball hat wearing Master Shake, a responsible African American scientist and inventor named Frylock and a lovable Mexican child with the moniker "Meatwad" all living in communal bliss?
I will be on the blogtalk radio show Our Common Groundwith Janice Graham tomorrow, Saturday, September 10th at 10pm Eastern Time. The show has some good history with folks such as Melissa Harris Lacewell (now Perry), Louis Farrakhan, David Neiwart, Matt Taibbi, Mark Anthony Neal, Time Wise and others having appeared there in the past.
The interview will be about 90 minutes or so. I wonder if I can fill that much space with my wind bag mouth utterances and failed efforts at punditry? We shall see. Please feel free to call in. It is always fun to chat with folks who are part of the WARN extended family and you all can make or break any show.
Oh Herman Cain, we love you so. I almost felt bad--for a moment--watching you embarrass yourself on MSNBC after the debate at the Reagan Library.
Like Michael Steele, Clarence Thomas and other black conservatives, Cain is a projection of the stereotypical and incorrect belief by White Conservatives and their supplicants that "affirmative action" promotes less qualified people of color over more qualified white men. Ironically, the Right-wing in America proves their fantasy of black and brown incompetence true at every opportunity with their repeated efforts to put forth "unqualified" upright walking black and brown human chaff who live to give cover to populist Conservatism's most nefarious policies.
If Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh were principled Conservatives they would have called for Herman Cain to step out of the race long ago because he is an "affirmative action candidate" who is taking a space on the Tea Party GOP stage that should be reserved for a more "qualified" white person.
If Herman Cain was a principled Conservative he would step down and admit that he is an "affirmative action baby" who doesn't have the political and intellectual chops to stand with such Tea Party GOP luminaries as Perry, Romney, Bachmann and company.
In sum, Cain is stigmatized by his race, a beneficiary of the soft bigotry of low expectations, and not in a position to succeed because he was tapped on the shoulder by his white benefactors in the Tea Party who wanted a person of a certain color and hue to run for President, and not the most qualified person for the job.
Where is the outrage people? Where is the clamor for justice?
The Republican clown car debate at the Reagan Library went as expected. To my eyes, Perry showed himself to be the talking point D student we know him to be. Thus, he quite predictably showed himself to be the favorite son for the Tea Party crowd.
Romney is the establishment candidate that may not be "red" enough.
Herman Cain embarrassed himself with his pizza-like slogan "999" and then his followup interview on MSNBCduring which he tried to reconcile his love of States' Rights and how he is a product of The Civil Rights Movement. Tragic and sad and funny.
As I tried to watch a man make sense of the inexplicable and irreconcilable I almost--note almost--felt bad for the king garbage pail kid High Vizier of black conservatives that is Herman "Buckdancing" Cain.
Moving forward, I think that Perry's blood lust on the death penalty (was that howling crowd not disturbing?) and refusal to stand down on what some perceived to be a gaffe on Social Security is a points scored moment with the Tea Party GOP primary crowd. That very fact may hurt him in the general election. We shall see...
At present, I sense a bit of pre-fight atmosphere in the air as the American people await President Obama's jobs speech Thursday evening. Unless he goes more than 300 billion in, and calls out the Republicans for their role in the economy and obstructionism where they put party over country and the Common Good, the Left and Progressives will call it a fail.
It's good to be king--except when you are Barack Obama.
Because of the hurricane, the East Coast earthquake, and other matters, I was delayed in discussing psychologist Drew Westen's much discussed essay in the NY Times, a great piece of work that is well worth keeping in mind as we await President Obama's address to Congress later today.
Reflecting on Westen's concerns in "What Happened to Obama?" about the President's narrative and framing of policy, as well as taking McNamara's advice to heart, I would suggest that one of the President's failings has been his inability to tell a compelling story and to call the Tea Party GOP to account as the bullies and faction they have proven themselves to be.
The most damning passage in Westen's NY Times broadside is the following:
Those were the shoes — that was the historic role — that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.
When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public.
Hopefully, Barack Obama's jobs speech will be a return to his promise as a candidate when compared to the structurally constrained President who has abandoned the power of the bully pulpit in the face of Tea Party GOP harassment, and unthinkably irresponsible behavior that is truly and utterly outside of the boundaries of normal politics.
Westen's piece is a required read. In light of his essay, what are you expecting from President Obama's job speech on Thursday night?
Here is a fun found item that some of you may find of particular interest.
I rarely shill on this website. When I do endorse something, trust me, it is worth your time.
Sadly, Borders bookstore is closing down. Scavenging about, I have found a few gems as Borders liquidates their warehouses. I am now the proud owner of a collected edition of the iconic Willie and Joe comic strip series (a true find) that is all sorts of ghetto nerd cool. I also came upon the Pulp History series. These graphic novels/books (they are hard to put in a narrow category or box) excavate hidden history in an accessible yet sharp way.
David Talbot's Devil Dog explores the life and times of the legendary Marine Corps General Smedley Butler. His adventures were larger than life. The way that Butler's political conscience developed and his personal ethics demanded that he speak truth to power by exposing American militarism, is an arch of a life that is both enviable and ought to be put on the highest pantheon of this country's true patriots.
From policing Haiti, to fighting in the Boxer Rebellion, to standing up to corrupt politicians and rum runners, Mr. Butler was beloved by his troops, respected by his foes, and came to be feared by the financial and corporate elite.
In the lead up to the aborted 1934 Wall Street coup against President Roosevelt, Butler was approached by a cabal of bankers who wanted him to lead a brown shirt group of thugs that would overthrow of the U.S. government.
They misjudged their mark: General Butler would out the financier cabal.
Devil Dog's discussion of the Wall Street plot caught my eye. Whenever given the opportunity, I make sure to reiterate how the Tea Party and the New Right are part of an old Conservative game that is many decades old. Moreover, the Koch Brothers who are the corporate financiers of the "grass roots" Tea Party movement (and other Right-wing reactionary groups) have a deep family connection to the racist John Birch society.
The rhetoric against Roosevelt by the Right-wing during the 1930s and 1940s was eerily similar to much of what counts as reasonable discourse and a political agenda for Conservatives in the present.
Devil Dog describes how the plotters of the coup against Roosevelt approached Smedley Butler:
He told him that Colonel Murphy, his wealthy employer, was working with a group of other powerful men in the financial and corporate worlds to build a "super organization to maintain democracy." These men the bond salesman said, were increasingly concerned about President Roosevelt's policies, which they considered "socialistic." They were deeply alarmed by how Roosevelt was abandoning the gold standard and increasing the supply of paper money to crate government jobs for the poor. They feared FDR's inflationary policies would shrink their fortunes and bankrupt the nation.
They called him a "traitor to his class"--they said he was taking the country down the same road as Russia. Something drastic had to be done to save America. Butler was stunned and infuriated by what he was hearing. But he tried to keep his famous temper in check--he needed to know more. What did these people want with him? Butler asked Macguire.
...A couple of weeks before, MacGuire had told Butler that the "super organization" to overthrow the Roosevelt presidency would be announced soon. The Wall Street man predicted that it would be described benignly, as a society "to maintain the Constitution." Now staring at the newspaper in his well-worn armchair, a chill ran up the general's spine.
Eerily familiar, no? I can swear that I have heard similar rhetoric from Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and the clown car that is the 2012 GOP Presidential field. There is an irony here. In the 1930s, the gangster capitalists were going to use force to overthrow the government. In the year 2011, force is unnecessary as the financier class purchased the keys to the people's government many decades ago.
There you have it. Once more, history isn't even past, it's yesterday...and today.
Here is a great news item with which to start the new academic year. The Right-wing in America is anti-intellectual. We know this. The populist Tea Party GOP brigands even more so.
Yet, we must not sleep on them: Conservatives have a long plan to reshape the academy by destroying tenure (and by implication academic freedom), making sure to fund think tanks and named chairs which push their economic and political agenda despite any empirical evidence in support of its validity, and to push an agenda of "balance" where (white) conservatives are a new class of "minorities" in need of "affirmative action" on college campuses.
That is the genius in the reframing of reality offered by the populist Right--just as they created the myth of the liberal media--the Right-wing's spin doctors and Orwellian propagandists have generated the lie that "higher education" is a space run amok with liberals. The truth is much, much, more complicated than the tired, thin and flat version of events commonly offered by Conservatives. Academia is very conservative and traditional in many ways. It is also moving more rightward as corporate models of "profit and loss" are applied to the liberal arts model of learning in colleges and universities.
Now, I admit it. I have repeatedly called the Tea Party GOP "tea baggers." I have had evaluations where sensitive conservatives have complained that I am "mean" to them and do not validate their views; one student even mentioned my "disrespect" towards the Tea Party as "unacceptable."
Confessing further, I also have described Sarah Palin as a person with a head full of nothing, as well as called out the Right-wing populists as "mouth breathers" and neo-John Birchers during my seminars. The truth hurts I guess.
Maybe, they will come after little old Chauncey DeVega next...not holding my breath.
Pay careful attention to how Mike Adams suggests that right-leaning students should use the very mechanisms which Conservatives once condemned as "identity politics" to further break the system. The New Right and the Tea Party GOP are dangerous and dishonest folks who are capable of anything as long as it serves their ideological ends. Until reasonable centrists, progressives, liberals, and old school principled conservatives understand that reality, they will keep on losing, and losing badly.
How to Harass a Tea Partier
Hello Curtis (Curtis Wright is a conservative talk show host in Wilmington, North Carolina):
I want to thank you personally for forwarding a letter from a student complaining about the extent of political indoctrination that is present in the classroom in the so-called social sciences at UNC-Wilmington. While I found many of her complaints to be minor, I was troubled by one obscene reference to members of the Tea Party, which was allegedly made in class by her political science professor. That, of course, was the reference to members of the Tea Party as “tea baggers.”
There is no need to go into great detail regarding the sexual nature of the term “tea bagger.” It is a term that is simply not used in polite company. It certainly has no place in academic discussions held in political sciences classes in front of a captive audience of college students.
College professors who choose to incorporate terms like "tea bagging" into their lectures have long enjoyed the protection of the First Amendment. In recent years, however, universities have decided that their own harassment codes trump the First Amendment. And that provides us with a unique opportunity to teach the teacher a thing or two about the tension between civil discourse and the First Amendment.
UNC-Wilmington defines sexual harassment as follows:"unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when such conduct constitutes an express or implied condition to another person's academic pursuits, university employment, or participation in activities sponsored by the university or organizations or groups related to the university, or is engaged in for the purpose of interfering with such pursuits, employment, or participation, or creates a hostile, intimidating, or offensive environment for such pursuits, employment, or participation."
Obviously, when a male political science professor dismisses a female supporter of the Tea Party as one who enjoys oral sex, he has offended her. And that falls squarely within the university definition of sexual harassment.
The university website further states that: “Harassment at UNCW is taken seriously. Faculty and staff are required to report sexual harassment when it is alleged. Harassment by an employee must be reported to UNCW Human Resources and harassment by a student should be reported to the Office of the Dean of Students.”
The Associate Provost for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, Dr. Jose Hernandez, has been forwarded an email, from a female student, expressing her concerns about the use of the term “tea baggers” in the classroom. Therefore, it is now his responsibility to move forward with an investigation against the professor who has allegedly been using this term in the classroom. I’m sure that the female student feels excluded by hearing obscene sexualized references to her and those who share her political beliefs.
There could be more bad news for professors who like to insult students in the classroom by using obscene references. Recently, the Obama administration issued an order to all universities who receive financial aid from the federal government. Under the order, they are mandated (a patriarchal term if I have ever heard one) to employ a “preponderance of evidence” standard in all campus sexual harassment and sexual assault cases. This means that professors referring to female students as “tea baggers” can be found liable even if the accuser demonstrates that the accusations are only “probably” true.
Using the “probably” standard rather than “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” makes it easier to convict the guilty. But it also makes it easier to convict the innocent. The Obama administration seems to be equally comfortable with both prospects. Furthermore, if universities refuse to employ the lower standard they will lose all federal funding, including all student financial assistance.
The time has come for conservative students to take the gloves off and start fighting campus indoctrination by turning the weapons of the left against the leftists themselves. By taking my advice and using the “harassment” mechanism, one of two things is guaranteed to happen:
1. We can get rid of scores of leftist professors who create a climate of “intimidation” and “offense” in the classroom.
2. We can enlist the help of campus leftists in restoring the standard of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” in campus sexual assault and sexual harassment cases.
Either way, this should prove to be a win-win situation. Our Founding Fathers would be proud. Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention, Curtis. It will soon be brought to the attention of the general administration as well as the general public.
I am rendered speechless by these clowns. I heard about the above meeting, but only recently has it become available on a consistent basis online.
Are these black supplicants deranged? Are they confused? Self-interested utility maximizing getting paid rational actors? Possessed of Whiteness and false consciousness?
I often mention it because the experience was so revealing, but the White supremacist I hung out with one evening several years back shared something with me that I have heard echoed by others who are more polite in their investment in whiteness--White folks, for the most part, don't respect Uncle Tom bootblacks. They use them, but they mock them in private.
Does the rogues gallery that is modern day Black Conservative slave drivers understand this reality as they get on their knees and offer political fellatio to the Great White Father?
In all, the pledge of allegiance by the black conservative rogues gallery to reactionary White Conservatism is so surreal that it belongs in the exploitation "classic" Goodbye Uncle Tom:
Dude must be auditioning to be the opening speaker at the 2012 Republican National Convention.
H.K. Edgerton is all sorts of awesome. Ta-Nehisi Coates has this up on his Atlantic site and it is going to be fun to follow how his readers respond to this foolishness.
Question: is this video sufficient evidence that Edgerton is non-compos mentis and should be committed to a mental health facility? If I were on a jury Edgerton's performance would be pretty damn compelling evidence that something is a bit off and he needs some meds.
Doubling down, here is a story on Edgerton's run-in with the KKK and how they are none too dissimilar in their racial attitudes from the Neo-Confederate Civil War reenactors that black fool pals around with.
Confederates in Black
H.K. Edgerton speaks wistfully of the "sense of family" that bound blacks and whites under slavery. There was great "love between the African who was here in the Southland and his master," he says.
Despite its poor reviews, Edgerton concludes, slavery served as an "institution of learning" for blacks.
Edgerton sounds a lot like other apologists for slavery — many of whom, like him, pledge allegiance to the Confederate battle flag and the movement around it. But he stands out from this crowd in some significant ways.
For starters, he's black.
And Edgerton is also the former president of the Asheville, N.C., branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) — a group that fellow neo-Confederate Arthur Ravenal, a white South Carolina state senator, described this year as the "National Association of Retarded People."
Edgerton sees no contradictions here. In an interview with the Intelligence Report, he insisted that he's doing his part to "correct the lies" when he suggests that "it was better to be an African in the Southland as a slave than to be free in Africa." He's speaking as a "favored son of the South," he said, when he addresses Confederate flag rallies from North Carolina to Georgia to Texas.
In a lily-white movement that most blacks find deeply offensive, Edgerton seems to feel quite at home. And as he dances to the tune of "Dixie" — sometimes quite literally — he helps gives the cause the appearance of legitimacy.
It is a gloss that frequently racist neo-Confederate groups desperately need in order to maintain the idea that theirs is a movement that celebrates "heritage, not hate."
'I Don't Want To Be Black'
Edgerton is almost unique, but not entirely so. The other prominent black figure on the Confederate flag rally circuit is a former militiaman who recently proclaimed: "I am hereby resigning myself from the black race."
J.J. Johnson, once a leading militia figure in Ohio, offers running commentary on the Confederate flag issue in his Internet publication, the Sierra Times.
"I hope some black person is reading this right now and fuming," he writes in one editorial. "If you think the Confederate flag is insulting to you, you are being used, or as we say it in the hood, you bein' played — for a fool."
In "I Don't Want to be Black Anymore," Johnson's most controversial installment to date, he lambastes the NAACP tourism boycott of South Carolina — a measure that helped get the Confederate flag taken down from that state's Capitol building.
For his part, Edgerton manages to remain unfazed when white supremacists show their support at various flag rallies — despite an incident two years ago in which two Klansmen shot up his cousin's house.
"It's highly offensive to me for any member of my family or any member of this community to face that kind of terrorism," Edgerton said after that attack, expressing concern that his relatives might have been targeted because of his position at the NAACP.
But Edgerton still has good things to say about the Klansmen with whom he chatted at a recent flag rally in Stone Mountain, Ga. — the place where the Klan was reborn in the 1920s — although he didn't know then they were Klan members.
"They were willing to shake my hand," he explains.
Well, kind of. At the Stone Mountain event, Edgerton reportedly invited a white woman onto the stage after speaking and gave her a kiss. Not long after, that infamous kiss was being relived on AlaReb, an invitation-only Internet discussion group for neo-Confederates.
"This is what happens when we choose to be inclusionists and integrationists," a woman named Dianne wrote. "If we ask Negroes to support our cause they will expect certain perks, one of which may be the privilege of hugging and kissing the white females in attendance at these events."
A posting signed by David Cooksey, current member and former chairman of the Tuscaloosa County (Ala.) chapter of the purportedly nonracist League of the South (see A League of Their Own), is blunter.
"35 years ago, H.K. would not have even thought of such a disgraceful thing," the posting said in a response to Dianne, "for he would have known that the men would not put up with this violation of a Southern White female! He would have never been seen or heard from again."
...If the Yankee government is the true oppressor for these men, the neo-Confederate movement, in their view, holds the promise of freedom. At an April flag rally in Charleston, S.C., Johnson said he wanted "to see this flag over 49 more state Capitols, because it is a symbol of resistance to federal tyranny."
Edgerton linked his presence at the rally to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "dream that someday the sons of slaves and sons of former slave owners could sit down at the table of brotherhood."
Edgerton often describes his activism as an extension of King's work and the ongoing fight for civil rights. Knowing that few blacks would view King's legacy, civil rights or Southern history as he does, Edgerton seems motivated all the more.
"If every African-American would pick up the Confederate flag," he proclaims, "I would say, 'Free at last, free at last, God almighty, I am free at last.'"
Every campaign enlists its own meta-language. As Randall Kennedy reminds us in his provocative and richly insightful new book, “The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency,” the Obama forces disseminated several messages intended to soothe the racially freighted fears of the white electorate.
On one channel, they reassured voters that he was not an alien, but a normal American patriot. They also made clear that he was a “safe,” conciliatory black man who would never raise his voice in anger or make common cause with people, living or dead, who used race as a platform for grievance. On yet another wavelength, the candidate proffered his bona fides as a black man to African-Americans who were initially wary of his unusual upbringing, his white family ties and his predominantly white political support.
The press viewed this courtship of black voters as largely beside the point for a “post-racial” campaign that had bigger fish to fry on the white side of the street.
I hope you are all having a restful and good weekend. I came upon this piece in today's NY Times Book Reviewand thought it quite fitting for some of our recent discussions about President Obama, race, respect, and identity.
Randall Kennedy and others were spot on during the election of 2008 when they described Obama's candidacy as one where he was in an awkward position as a bound man who had to balance Black expectations, desires, and dreams, along with White anxieties and fears. Obama danced that fine line well enough to win the presidency.
However, the very personality traits and his experiences of upbringing that helped Obama to win the office of the presidency have been liabilities to his leadership while there. The structural limitations aside--and the racially motivated hostility of the Tea Party GOP fully noted--Obama's personality, identity, and personhood are the lived embodiment of an idealistic type of compromise. Consequently, America has a Compromiser in Chief who is not liberal enough for the Left and is too liberal for the Right; he is "too black" for some white folks and simultaneously "too white" for some blacks.
Barack Obama truly is a bound man, and for that reason (and many others) he is teetering on the edge of a failed presidency. Ironically, in one of his greatest moments as a candidate, the American people were offered a preview of Obama's dilemma and how it would lead to difficulties in his leadership and decision making as President.
Here, Kennedy's new book notes:
The widely held notion that the now-famous race speech, “A More Perfect Union,” ranked with the Gettysburg Address or “I Have a Dream” strikes Kennedy as delusional. The speech, he writes, was little more than a carefully calibrated attempt to defuse the public relations crisis precipitated by the Wright affair.
Far from frank, it understated the extent of the country’s racial divisions and sought to blame blacks and whites equally for them, when in fact, Kennedy writes, “black America and white America are not equally culpable. White America enslaved and Jim Crowed black America (not the other way around).”
The speech was in keeping with the candidate’s wildly successful race strategy, which involved making white voters feel better about themselves whenever possible.
Lauded at the time for its delivery and Obama's mastery of language and poise under pressure, the speech has not aged well. Even then I would urge people, my students in particular, to read the text of the speech as by doing so the utter ridiculousness of its premises are made clear.
Black Americans and white Americans are not equally culpable for the ills and evils of racism and the colorline. Obama equated white anger with black justice claims on full citizenship and opportunity. What is a laughable position. In reality, the latter is moral and just, and the former bitter and wrong.
Why did Obama choose to distort both history and the present by knowingly taking such an absurd and intellectually dishonest position?
While genius and smart, Obama is not a truth teller. He is more invested in compromise and finding a "middle ground" (even when to his own disadvantage) than in winning and fighting the good fight.
Ultimately, there is a great amount of pressure placed on "the firsts" in any endeavor. Like Jackie Robinson, Obama may not have been the best choice, but he was the right person at the right time. Moreover, Obama also has a racial temperament that would soothe white voters just enough to cast the ballot for him.
Brent Staples is spot on in this regard with his point that "...two-fistedness is not his nature. He would never have been elected had he run as, say, a brown-skinned version of the leg breaker Lyndon Johnson. The white electorate might one day be ready for a black president like that, but not yet."
The American people needed a leg breaker to correct this country's direction in a time of declining empire and the Great Recession. Sadly, it seems that with President Obama we got a soother and massage artist. The Tea Party GOP are going to enjoy Obama's services all the way to the end, because like any good masseuse he guarantees them a happy ending every time.
More Jim Crow dreaming. Oh for the good old days when the blacks knew their place.
First, I want to thank Washington Monthly and The Week for giving my pieces on Andre Carson's lynching quip and my interview with Whiteness some love. Much appreciated.
[If you want to amuse yourself just google "Obama needs to be put in place" and see what appears.]
As I mentioned on the Ed Schultz radio show on Monday, the Tea Party GOP's mining of racial resentment and a sense that America is first and foremost a white man's country is nothing new. In fact, during the 2008 campaign McCain-Palin ran an attack ad which demanded that Barack Obama learn to "respect" Sarah Palin, an ad that for my money was worse than the either the Willie Horton or Jesse Helm's Black Hands/White hands campaign commercials.
Given the context of racialized violence, Jim Crow, and lynchings in this country, any ad demanding that a black man respect a white woman is a none too veiled threat that hit all of the right notes for the Tea Party GOP base. It is just ugly. And funny, the ad was aired without comment or protest.
As you know, I love addressing first priors. So I must engage Limbaugh's question: What exactly is the place of President Barack Obama? Where should he be situated relative to the Tea Party GOP and John Boehner?
As President, I would suggest that Obama's place is to lead, and the role of his office surpasses the petty dictates of John Boehner, any other any individual politician, or political party. But then again, I am one of the old school types who believes in normal politics, and not the politics of extortion and hostage taking that has become the modus operandi for a faction of political thugs and bullies known as the Tea Party GOP.
Speaking of going old school. In thinking about this week's meme of "respect" and how the Tea Party GOP and the White Conservative Jim Crow Soul feel entitled to it by birthright, while America's first black President is constantly belittled, and in turn acts as though he is actually comfortable "getting off of the sidewalk and letting white folks pass," I was reminded of the work done by Dr. Frances Cress-Welsing.
She was exalted during the heyday of 1980s and 1990s Afrocentrism, but has since had her work met with controversy. Regardless of how Welsing's thesis on race and identity has held up in post-racial America, her observations about how racism is a function of the insecurities of Whiteness, and a need to maintain group superiority, seemed spot on given the pathologically obstructionist behavior of populist Conservatives in the Age of Obama.
Where blacks had since slave days been expected to step off the sidewalk to allow white persons to pass unimpeded-failure to do so could result in being murdered-some communities with the new century began to require blacks to keep off the sidewalks altogether when any white children were occupying any part of them. Much the same held for the roadway, where blacks could expect to be stopped by police if they dared pass a white driver. So offensive to white sensibilities was a black driving an expensive car that even well-to-do African-Americans kept to older models so as not to give the dangerous impression of being above themselves...
One requirement was to sometimes illogically cede the right-of-way to a white driver-or even to a black driver who was chauffeuring white passengers. At many four-way-stop intersections in the South, the right-of-way was determined not by who reached the intersection first, but rather by the race of the drivers. When confronting a white driver who was female, a black male driver in the South could and sometimes did face a life-or-death decision. Compounding the difficulty facing African-Americans was the lack of universality of any of these conventions. In some places whites did maintain normal driving rules. But in others, Jim Crow was more important than highway safety.
Boehner just pulled a "boy you best get off the sidewalk and let a white man pass moment" in his demand that the President reschedule his jobs speech scheduled for next week before Congress. If President Obama is not careful the Right may get him for "reckless eyeballing."
Of course and once more, the Tea Party GOP are behaving like spoiled children.
Here MSNBC's Richard Wolffe is spot on: to casual observers the spat over the time of the President's speech on the economy, and how it "conflicts" with the Republican debate, seems mighty petty. This obstructionism on all things is the dominant political strategy by the GOP in the Age of Obama, and it is fueled by a deep hostility to Obama's legitimacy as President.
As I have suggested many times, the idea that a Black person could be in the White House is too much for the White Conservative Soul and the white racial frame to handle. The symbolism is anathema to their conception of America.
In our discussions of race and American life, social scientists and others tend to focus on institutional forces, disparities in resources, the law, and power. There is another element to this country's centuries-long struggle against white racism and for true and full citizenship for all Americans. That element is respect and dignity. Of course, most black folks can recycle stories of our kin and colleagues, where in both the past and present, the hurt was not so much that someone said or did something "racist" (as we are certainly made of sterner stuff than that). Rather, the hurt is because we were not given the basic respect earned and deserved as American citizens.
The examples here and now, in the past and the present, are legion.
When we are followed around stores and asked to show our identification when making a purchase and the white person in front of you was not.
When you walk into a seminar to conduct a training session or teach a class and there is the eye roll or anxiety by those in the room that somehow you are not competent to teach them.
When doctors and lawyers and engineers had to take jobs as Pullman car porters and shuck and jive for the pleasures of white people in order to earn a wage with which to take care of their families.
When grown men and women were called "Auntie" or "Uncle" by whites because "Sir" or "Madam" was an impossible utterance.
When the Birthers, the Graders and Donald Trump led a witch hunt and demanded to see the transcripts of the President, a Harvard grad and University of Chicago professor, because he could not possibly have earned his bonafides (and they remain curiously silent about Rick Perry's abysmal college career as a "Gentlemen D" student).
In sum, these are moments where black Americans as a community have been collectively slapped in the face and denied their dignity simply because of the color of our skin, and the ways that race works to locate people in a hierarchy of "naturalized" relationships. America no longer has laws demanding that blacks get off the sidewalk when whites pass, or that African Americans cannot try on clothes or hats at a store without buying them first.
But, the intangibles of full and equal respect from whites towards non-whites cannot be legislated: history's weight is too great and private thoughts and attitudes are often immune from legal precedent. In the United States, one of white supremacy's most damning and difficult legacies is that for centuries the lowest, most ignorant, stupid, lazy trashy White was elevated above the most educated, refined, literate, and hard working black person.
The Tea Party GOP and their foot soldiers are drunk on that legacy. They may claim to respect the Office of the President, but they most certainly don't respect the man. And no small part of that is because he is Black.
