white weekend links

• "Race Will Survive the Obama Phenomenon" (David R. Roediger @ The Chronicle Review)

  Early in the campaign, African-Americans were said to support Clinton because of an atavistic questioning of whether Obama was "black enough," as Time asked in a headline.
  
  When Obama did well among black voters, such arguments were immediately cast aside, although there was no acknowledgment in the news media that its earlier reasoning had been egregious. Nor did commentators stop to notice that African-Americans were supporting a mixed-race candidate with a foreign-born father, making them perhaps the most cosmopolitan sector of the electorate. As the campaign progressed, the candidates were said to grapple over who would get the Hispanic vote or the "white male" vote, with the news media assuming simple equations between identity and voting. Crude racial profiling of voters jostled for space with extravagant claims regarding the transcendence of race.
  
  Such careening representations of the Obama campaign reflect an overwhelming desire to transcend race without transcending racial inequality — as well as the impossibility of doing so.

• "An Open Letter to White Voters, or What McCain Really Thinks of You" (Carmen Van Kerckhove @ Racialicious)

  When Palin delivered her stump speech berating Obama at the Florida rally on the same day, an audience member yelled, “Kill him!” Audience members then began shouting angrily at the reporters covering the event, one of them yelling racial slurs at an African-American camera man and telling him to “Sit down, boy.”
  
  Do you bear any resemblance to these agitators? Probably not.
  
  Do you fit the profile of the racist and xenophobic white voter? Probably not.
  
  Then do you really want to support a candidate who thinks so little of you that his only strategy right now is to appeal to your basest human instincts of fear and hatred?
  
  Contrast McCain’s view of you to that of Obama’s.
  
  Despite the harsh realities of racism in America — his being placed under Secret Service protection earlier than any other presidential candidate in history, for example — Obama has never expressed anything but unfailing faith in you.

• "Bill O’Reilly: ‘The Only Person in The Galaxy Who Is Able to Imagine a Raceless Human Being’" (Matt Corley @ Think Progress)

  On Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor last night, Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill argued that when politicians like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin invoke “Joe Six Pack,” they are using a “code word” that excludes African-Americans. “Why can’t an African-American guy be Joe six pack?” asked O’Reilly.
  
  “What I’m saying is that when people think of Joe Six Pack, when — the immediate image that comes to your mind is not a black man. It is often a white man,” said Lamont. O’Reilly then claimed that when he imagined “Joe Six Pack,” he pictured a person with “no color” . . . .
  
  Ironically, Stephen Colbert says that O’Reilly is one of the main inspirations for his character. Colbert’s satirical character defines himself as racially colorblind, often saying, “I don’t see race.”
  

• "Stop the Nonsense and Call Then 'White Voters'" (Roland S. Martin @ Anderson Cooper 360°)

  Wal-mart moms. Soccer moms. NASCAR dads. Small town America.
  
  Seriously. Read all of those phrases, and when you think of who candidates, political strategists and the media are talking about, who immediately comes to mind? I can tell you no one black, Hispanic or Asian!
  
  So, can we just stop the nonsense and say, all at once - WHITE AMERICANS.
  
  I just think it’s so obvious, but it as if we - the collective media - just doesn’t want to say it.
  

• "White Rage" (Renee @ Womanist Musings)

  
  
  

  
  
  White rage at Obama's lead in the polls is palpable. . . .When they refer to him as Barack Huessin Obama and suggest that he is an 'other', what must be taken into consideration is what the binary opposite represents. American means God fearing and white. The resounding wails about the downfall of the American empire are really about fear of the devaluation of whiteness.
  
  Whiteness feels entitled not only to power but safety, thus when it is inferred that Obama is a terrorist it is an attempt to benefit off of the social construction of black males as violent. Though the connections are tenuous at best, no real evidence needs to be offered because the belief is supported by the social construction of the black male body.
  

• "Unintentional Subversive Messages Sent on 14th Street" (missingwhitewomanohmy @ New York Girls Take Over the Blogosphere!)

  I was strolling along 14th Street near Union Square last week when I started to notice tons of flyers scattered all over the ground. I stopped to read one and found that they all said ‘why are you white?’ in big capital letters. I initially thought to myself, ‘Yes indeed, what a relevant question to be posing in this day and age! Why am I white?’
  
  I noticed someone passing the flyers out, so I walked over to get one, still thinking that maybe it was a flyer for a discussion on white privilege, or whiteness, or the history of race in general. I took one. And it was laminated. I thought ‘Wait a second, this isn’t right. Discussions on whiteness don’t usually have the budget for glossy, graphic-artist-designed flyers.’ Sure enough I flipped it over and it was an advertisement for a tanning place.
  

And finally, a message for white folks who think that racism isn't much of a problem anymore: