This is a guest post by Epi Tales, who writes at a blog of the same name, where this post also appears. She writes of herself, "I can’t stop reading. I hate life unless I'm being propelled through the pages of a book in parallel to my 'real' life. As a kid, I read Harriet the Spy, and I was infatuated with the idea of writing. Constantly. Insatiably."
After all the internet hoopla following Joel Stein's "My Own Private India", I am more confused than ever about the racism I experience. The silver lining is wittiness, specifically Kal Penn's now-famous, incredibly sarcastic retort published on the Huffington Post.
Hold on, I’ve got some nostalgia, bear with me: all these mentions of Edison, NJ engender some serious gastronomical and linguistic longing. Walking into restaurants or sweet shops with my then-fiance, I was never addressed in English, only Hindi. It never felt presumptuous, rather inclusive, with the undertone of “I know you know this” and “we share something, whatever part of India you’re from”. Isn’t there some comfort in that?
Now I’m walking around Seattle, which is white enough to find an Indian interesting, yet cosmopolitan enough not to call me a dothead (I think this term is out of vogue anyway). Instead, I find hilarious, yet racist, moments. Last weekend, my mother and father-in-law were browsing jewelry in a booth at the Freemont fair. A kindly older man looks up and says, “Do you speak Hindi?” to which I answer, “yes”. He tries out a few phrases on us, and his accent is respectable. He tells us about his time in India. I groan inwardly -- why is it that every non-Indian male who starts a conversation with me seems to have an insatiable urge to tell me about that one time they were in India? Or how they know Ravi Shankar? Or how I must eat ‘such spicy food’? Yes, one billion of us possess miraculous abilities to eat food spicier than anything you could comprehend. And we’re uniformly spiritually advanced yogis too. Then they want to go to India. And close the conversation by saying how I’m beautiful because I’m Indian. Oh, and throw in an Aishwarya Rai reference, as well as the one Bollywood flick they’ve ever seen.
I’m still rolling my eyes when we leave the dry shelter of the jewelry booth, pressing forward in the now-familiar Seattle drizzle. A curly brown-haired young hippie-looking guy, holding a guitar, loudly addresses us in Hindi, “NAMASTE! Sabkooh sapna hai” except that we could not understand his Hindi, due to his accent. We turn towards him, confused.
“I think he said, ‘sabkooch samne hai’ [everything is in front of you]”, I ventured, to my MIL.
“Wait, really? Not ‘sabkooch apna hai’ [everything is mine],” she responded. Apparently exhausted with our own conjecture, we turn back to the hippie-looking, guitar-holding guy, and ask, “wait, what did you say?”
“Do you guys speak Hindi?” Whoa. There’s that line again. Is this how Seattle-ites greet strangers?
“Yes, of course. What were you saying?”
“Everything is a dream,” he responded. Oh goodness, I thought to myself, he’s starting to flirt, and I am standing here with my in-laws. Who hits on someone with her parents watching? (And, for the record, I wear a wedding ring on my left hand). Polite banter followed about -- guess what -- Ravi Shankar. Eager to end this rain-soaked insipidity, my MIL and I turn to leave. He then turns conspiratorially to my FIL and comments, “aren’t Indian women beautiful?” Really? This dialog actually took place out of a comic strip?
More comedy: at my office, anytime someone speaking to me refers to a project in India or Indian food, they gesture towards me.
While I’m grateful that these anecdotes are neither traumatic nor hate driven, they constitute racism in that I am viewed first and foremost as my race. Similar to how dripping water can wear away rock, or how well-being erodes when faced with verbal abuse (just ask the French government), these small barbs injure a sense of individuality and belonging over time. Place the idea of complete assimilation in this context, and it quickly becomes obvious that integration cannot happen without an accepting environment.
Looking back at the ill-placed Time piece, I can’t quite get angry at Joel Stein even though his piece does an astoundingly good job at missing the point. He opens with “I am very much in favor of immigration everywhere in the U.S. except Edison, N.J.” (italics added) where he explicitly condemns a particular branch of immigrants. He then insults them, saying:
In the 1990s, the not-as-brilliant merchants brought their even-less-bright cousins, and we started to understand why India is so damn poor.
Then he admits that Indians have helped his precious hometown survive economically.
Stein continues to demonstrate his complete ignorance, blessed as he may be with his titular “own private India”, by saying that one billion Indians are “familiar … [with] instruct[ing] stupid Americans to reboot their Internet routers.” If you ask the vast majority of Indians about routers, they might stare at you blank-faced. India is not all Bangalore and high-tech. Still though, reading about Stein’s sense of dislocation when his “town is totally unfamiliar to me [him]” draws real sympathy, even from a member of the group he feels so threatened by -- but isn’t this the reason for all the aphorisms about change? And isn’t this perceived threat the most neatly circumscribed definition of xenophobia? And this is precisely why the scars of immigration remain, even two generations later. But this comes full circle: this is also what Stein and these immigrants share, in addition to the more tangible, crowded space of Edison, NJ.
Calling Stein’s perspective or my experiences offensive isn’t the right word -- nothing that’s outlined here is blatantly mean-spirited, just severely misguided. To my boys, the idea that any generalization can be made about Indian women, i.e., half of a billion people, is indescribably ludicrous. And Stein: nice blinders -- are they hip right now? Because so is the other side of the story.
Showing posts with label white xenophobia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label white xenophobia. Show all posts
Monday, July 19, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
continue to embody the "real americans"
We were founded on a very basic double standard. This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of slave owners who wanted to be free. So they killed a lot of white English people in order to continue owning their black African people, so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian people and move west and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving them a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people.
You know what the motto of this country ought to be? "You give us a color, we’ll wipe it out."
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. . . .
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. . . .
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. . .
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
Be in enacted by the State and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof . . .
Autonomy is freedom and translates into the much championed and revered "individualism" . . . . Eventually individualism fuses with the prototype of Americans as solitary, alienated, and malcontent. What, one wants to ask, are Americans alienate from? What are Americans always so insistently innocent of? Different from? As for absolute power, over whom is this power held, from whom withheld, to whom distributed?
Answers to these questions lie in the potent and ego-reinforcing presence of an Africanist population. This population is convenient in every way, not the least of which is self-definition. This new white male can convince himself that savagery is "out there."
After 1870, Blacks as well as Whites could naturalize, but not others. . . . from 1870 until the last of the prerequisite laws were abolished in 1952, the White-Black dichotomy in American race relations dominated naturalization law. During this period, Whites and Blacks were eligible for citizenship, but others, particularly those from Asia, were not. Indeed, increasing antipathy toward Asians on the West Coast resulted in an explicit disqualification of Chinese persons from naturalization in 1882. . . .
In 1935, Hitler's Germany limited citizenship to members of the Aryan race, making Germany the only country other than the United States with a racial restriction on naturalization. The fact of this bad company was not lost on those administering our naturalization laws. . . .
In 1952, Congress moved towards wholesale reform, overhauling the naturalization statute to read simply that "[t]he right of a person to become a naturalized citizen of the United States shall not be denied or abridged because of race or sex or because such person is married." Thus, in 1952, racial bars on naturalization came to an official end.
I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions which were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. I could measure up to the cultural standards and take advantage of the many options I saw around me to make what the culture would call a success of my life.
My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as “belonging” in major ways, and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely. My life was reflected back to me frequently enough so that I felt, with regard to my race, if not to my sex, like one of the real people.
Deep within the word "American" is its association with race. . . . American means white . . .
[Long-time readers of swpd might recognize this post as a version of a post from last year's United States Independence Day. Sadly, such things bear repeating.]
You know what the motto of this country ought to be? "You give us a color, we’ll wipe it out."
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. . . .
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. . . .
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. . .
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
—The United States Declaration of Independence,
adopted on July 4, 1776
Be in enacted by the State and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof . . .
—"An Act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,"
ratified on March 26, 1790
Autonomy is freedom and translates into the much championed and revered "individualism" . . . . Eventually individualism fuses with the prototype of Americans as solitary, alienated, and malcontent. What, one wants to ask, are Americans alienate from? What are Americans always so insistently innocent of? Different from? As for absolute power, over whom is this power held, from whom withheld, to whom distributed?
Answers to these questions lie in the potent and ego-reinforcing presence of an Africanist population. This population is convenient in every way, not the least of which is self-definition. This new white male can convince himself that savagery is "out there."
—Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark:
After 1870, Blacks as well as Whites could naturalize, but not others. . . . from 1870 until the last of the prerequisite laws were abolished in 1952, the White-Black dichotomy in American race relations dominated naturalization law. During this period, Whites and Blacks were eligible for citizenship, but others, particularly those from Asia, were not. Indeed, increasing antipathy toward Asians on the West Coast resulted in an explicit disqualification of Chinese persons from naturalization in 1882. . . .
In 1935, Hitler's Germany limited citizenship to members of the Aryan race, making Germany the only country other than the United States with a racial restriction on naturalization. The fact of this bad company was not lost on those administering our naturalization laws. . . .
In 1952, Congress moved towards wholesale reform, overhauling the naturalization statute to read simply that "[t]he right of a person to become a naturalized citizen of the United States shall not be denied or abridged because of race or sex or because such person is married." Thus, in 1952, racial bars on naturalization came to an official end.
—Ian Haney López, White by Law:
(1996, 2006)
I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions which were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. I could measure up to the cultural standards and take advantage of the many options I saw around me to make what the culture would call a success of my life.
My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as “belonging” in major ways, and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely. My life was reflected back to me frequently enough so that I felt, with regard to my race, if not to my sex, like one of the real people.
--Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege and Male Privilege:
A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences
through Work in Women’s Studies" (1988)
Deep within the word "American" is its association with race. . . . American means white . . .
--Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark
[Long-time readers of swpd might recognize this post as a version of a post from last year's United States Independence Day. Sadly, such things bear repeating.]
Saturday, July 3, 2010
fight islamophobia, even though they're outnumbered
Lots of email this week! The conversations at swpd about some readers' stories and queries have clearly helped to discern the intricate workings of de facto white supremacy. Another reader, M, seeks your thoughts about the following incident.
I read your blog almost every day and it is a small source of comfort for me. I have never emailed you with a conundrum, and I see that people often write you with conundrums, but I thought I might give this a go and see what the people on your blog think about how the situation was handled.
I am an African woman in an interracial relationship. My boyfriend is white. My boyfriend is part of a world wide organization that comes together to work on speeches and to critique each other in small groups. These meetings are often 95% white where we live (I've seen one Latina and one Asian man at the meetings).
My boyfriend has been trying to get me to join the group with him to work on our communication skills. I went with him to a few meetings to sort of feel out the group and see if it was the best fit for us. They were all very nice, but I just felt like something was amiss with the group. There were a few very subtle things that made me uncomfortable. My boyfriend did not pick up these things when I did. Nevertheless, I thought the group was good for him and I wanted him to keep attending to improve his communication skills.
Last night, he went to a meeting alone to perform his speech. Following his speech was a white veteran of the club, a very talented, very libertarian, very respected speaker. His speech that day was supposed to motivate the audience to question the ideas that ware taught to them (and replace them with the ideas that Fox News teaches apparently? lol). He started off talking about his life experiences as a pilot, and how it gave him a view of the world from up high. That is where he says gets his perspective on life from apparently...
The speech got a lot darker when he started talking about world views, and started focusing on Islam as a world view. He explained that Islam was a world view that leads to violence and extremism. He went on to talk about 9/11 and how Islam led the attackers into committing the attacks. The logic he used was that the word Islam means "submission", and that while it "supposedly" means submission to god, it "actually" means submission to the world view of violence and hate.
The man won "Best Speech" that night at the meeting.
My boyfriend was pretty stunned by what the man had said, but he was even more disturbed that his words earned him a "Best Speech" award. It felt like the entire club was condoning his views. He came home and told me about it, and as I finished scraping my jaw off the carpet, he decided he wanted to address the speech through an email to the entire group and force them to examine what was said.
I was kind of hesitant to let him do that, because I have been in situations where someone says something ugly, I try to call it out, and a shit storm ensues. I have grown thicker skin, and have learned to deal with it, but he's kind of new to all that. Despite my uneasiness, he wrote and sent the email.
The email explained, in quite a reasonable way, that by allowing this sort of rhetoric into the group, they would be saying to a lot of people of color that they are unwelcome in their group.
He then said to them, "If we had a guest tonight who was of the Muslim faith, we could be assured that he would not be returning. He would have felt isolated and alone, and like we didn't accept him because of his religion. Is that the kind of group we are? Is that how we should treat people?"
He sent it, and then came the responses...this one is from the speaker. This is just a little piece:
"We live in a difficult world. That's normal, and if you believe that everyone should always avoid telling the truth so as not to hurt someone else's feelings, or cast aspersions on their worldview, then you believe in a fantasy world where everybody's worldview should be forcibly made to be the same and we all "just get along" because someone told us that we must."
There was also more flag-waving about freedom of speech and censorship. No one came to my boyfriend's defense in any way, shape or form. He was on his own.
I don't want to be long winded, but I just wanted to ask:
Should I have stopped him from sending the email out? Was he wrong in wanting to make the group think about what was said in that speech? Is he infringing on the speaker's freedom of speech?
He feels what he did was right, but I wanted to know what everyone thought about it.
Thank you so much for listening.
I read your blog almost every day and it is a small source of comfort for me. I have never emailed you with a conundrum, and I see that people often write you with conundrums, but I thought I might give this a go and see what the people on your blog think about how the situation was handled.
I am an African woman in an interracial relationship. My boyfriend is white. My boyfriend is part of a world wide organization that comes together to work on speeches and to critique each other in small groups. These meetings are often 95% white where we live (I've seen one Latina and one Asian man at the meetings).
My boyfriend has been trying to get me to join the group with him to work on our communication skills. I went with him to a few meetings to sort of feel out the group and see if it was the best fit for us. They were all very nice, but I just felt like something was amiss with the group. There were a few very subtle things that made me uncomfortable. My boyfriend did not pick up these things when I did. Nevertheless, I thought the group was good for him and I wanted him to keep attending to improve his communication skills.
Last night, he went to a meeting alone to perform his speech. Following his speech was a white veteran of the club, a very talented, very libertarian, very respected speaker. His speech that day was supposed to motivate the audience to question the ideas that ware taught to them (and replace them with the ideas that Fox News teaches apparently? lol). He started off talking about his life experiences as a pilot, and how it gave him a view of the world from up high. That is where he says gets his perspective on life from apparently...
The speech got a lot darker when he started talking about world views, and started focusing on Islam as a world view. He explained that Islam was a world view that leads to violence and extremism. He went on to talk about 9/11 and how Islam led the attackers into committing the attacks. The logic he used was that the word Islam means "submission", and that while it "supposedly" means submission to god, it "actually" means submission to the world view of violence and hate.
The man won "Best Speech" that night at the meeting.
My boyfriend was pretty stunned by what the man had said, but he was even more disturbed that his words earned him a "Best Speech" award. It felt like the entire club was condoning his views. He came home and told me about it, and as I finished scraping my jaw off the carpet, he decided he wanted to address the speech through an email to the entire group and force them to examine what was said.
I was kind of hesitant to let him do that, because I have been in situations where someone says something ugly, I try to call it out, and a shit storm ensues. I have grown thicker skin, and have learned to deal with it, but he's kind of new to all that. Despite my uneasiness, he wrote and sent the email.
The email explained, in quite a reasonable way, that by allowing this sort of rhetoric into the group, they would be saying to a lot of people of color that they are unwelcome in their group.
He then said to them, "If we had a guest tonight who was of the Muslim faith, we could be assured that he would not be returning. He would have felt isolated and alone, and like we didn't accept him because of his religion. Is that the kind of group we are? Is that how we should treat people?"
He sent it, and then came the responses...this one is from the speaker. This is just a little piece:
"We live in a difficult world. That's normal, and if you believe that everyone should always avoid telling the truth so as not to hurt someone else's feelings, or cast aspersions on their worldview, then you believe in a fantasy world where everybody's worldview should be forcibly made to be the same and we all "just get along" because someone told us that we must."
There was also more flag-waving about freedom of speech and censorship. No one came to my boyfriend's defense in any way, shape or form. He was on his own.
I don't want to be long winded, but I just wanted to ask:
Should I have stopped him from sending the email out? Was he wrong in wanting to make the group think about what was said in that speech? Is he infringing on the speaker's freedom of speech?
He feels what he did was right, but I wanted to know what everyone thought about it.
Thank you so much for listening.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
pose in cowboy drag
Most of the time, I'm like just about everyone else in at least one way -- I don't much care who occupies the position of "Alabama Agricultural Commissioner." In fact, I didn't even know such a position exists. But then I saw a couple of ads for Dale Peterson, a current GOP candidate for Alabama Ag Commish. Peterson's ads immediately register as very, very "white" to me, and now I'm trying to count the ways.
Among the most obvious appeals to conservative white voters here is the nostalgic evocation of the Independent (White) Cowboy Myth. If you say "cowboy" to most white Americans, they'll immediately think of a hat-wearing, horse-riding white man. And yet, as Mel at BroadSnark explains (in a post on "White America's Existential Identity Crisis"), real cowboys weren't actually all that white, nor all that independent:
There is a certain segment of the American population that really believes in the American foundational myths. They identify with them. They believe that America was built by a handful of white, Christian, men with exceptional morals. Their America is the country that showed the world democracy, saved the Jews in World War II, and tore down the Berlin wall.
These people have always fought changes to their mythology. They have always resented those of us who pushed to complicate those myths with the realities of slavery, Native American genocide, imperial war in the Philippines, invasions of Latin American countries, and secret arms deals.
And we have been so busy fighting them to have our stories and histories included in the American story that we sometimes forget why the myths were invented in the first place.
No myth illustrates the slight of hand behind our national mythology quite like the myth of the cowboy. In this mythology, the cowboy is a white man. He is a crusty frontiersman taming the west and paving the way for civilization. He is the good guy fighting the dangerous Indian. He is free and independent. He is in charge of his own destiny.
Peterson's follow-up ad is even, um . . . better?
As Mel goes on to explain,
Read Richard Slatta’s Cowboys of the Americas and you will get a very different picture. In reality, the first American cowboys were indigenous people trained by the Spanish missionaries. In reality, more than 30% of the cowboys on Texas trail drives were African American, Mexican, or Mexican-American.
And cowboys were not so free.
Cowboys were itinerant workers who, while paid fairly well when they had work, spent much of the year begging for odd jobs. Many did not even own the horse they rode. Frequently, they worked for large cattle companies owned by stockholders from the Northeast and Europe, not for small family operations (a la "Bonanza"). The few times cowboys tried to organize, they were brutally oppressed by ranchers.
I think Dale Peterson (or rather, his handlers) may also be consciously echoing Ronald Reagan's cowboy persona. In turn, Reagan may have been consciously echoing another rough-and-tumble political poser, Teddy Roosevelt. In all three cases, a white male politician evokes a myth that seems even more "white male" than the man himself. And a crucial part of that white myth is the direct exclusion and erasure of non-white people.
In her book-length study of Roosevelt's self-fashionings (Rough Rider in the White House), Sarah Watts explains the political reasons for periodically dusting off and deploying this hoary white-male myth -- it's a recognition of, and pandering to, ordinary white-male American anxieties, anxieties that still exist today:
Roosevelt emerged as a central purveyor of the cowboy-soldier hero model because he more than any man of his age harnessed the tantalizing freedom of cowboys to address the social and psychological needs that arose from deep personal sources of frustration, anxiety, and fear. More than any other he sensed that ordinary men needed a clearly recognizable and easily appropriated hero who enacted themes about the body; the need for extremity, pain, and sacrifice; and the desire to exclude some men and bond with others. In one seamless cowboy-soldier-statesman-hero life, Roosevelt crafted the cowboy ethos consciously and lived it zealously, providing men an image and a fantasy enlisted in service to the race-nation.
In keeping with changing models of masculinity . . . mass-circulation magazines began to feature a Napoleonic "idol of power," a man of action who used iron will and "animal magnetism" to crush his rivals and dominate nature. Biographers of plutocrats and robber barons encouraged readers to envision themselves in a social Darwinist world of ruthless competition where character alone appeared effeminate and sentimentalism dangerous. Earlier notions of manliness had counseled reason over passion; now the hero must unleash his "forcefulness."
Enter a new type of charismatic male personality after 1870, a cowboy-soldier operating in the new venue of the American West on sheer strength of will and physicality. Eastern readers instantly recognized him as more masculine precisely because he met the psychological desires in their imagination, making them into masters of their own fate, propelling them into violent adventure and comradeship, believing them at home in nature, not in the hothouse interiors of office buildings or middle-class homes.
Writers pitched the cowboy ethos against Christian values of mercy, empathy, love, and forgiveness, against domestic responsibility and the job demands that complicated men's lives and dissolved their masculine will. The cowboy was not interested in saving souls or finding spiritual purity or assigning meaning to death. His code of conduct arose as he struggled against the overwhelming wildness of men and beasts and carved out a prairie existence with guns, ropes, and barbed wire. Readers suspended ordinary morality as they fantasized about life at the margins of civilization and sampled forbidden pleasures of taming, busting, subduing, shooting, hanging, and killing.
In addition, and more to the ("swpd") point, the falsified racial identity of this ideal cowboy-soldier effectively erased the fact that demographically disproportionate numbers of "cowboys" were not white.
At the same time, the cowboy myth was imagined in opposition to darker, dehumanized Others. Whitened cowboys of yesteryear were lauded in Roosevelt's time for having helped to vanquish Indians, of course. However, as Watts explains, a growing nostalgia for antebellum Southern plantation life, including the racial control it represented, also helped fuel the collective desire for such a virile, specifically white ideal:
Northerners adopted a more sympathetic view of Southern white manhood, one in which Southern elites came to be admired for their racial acumen. Northerners abandoned critical views of slavery for nostalgic reminiscences of plantation life in which white Southern men had effectively managed a racial society, keeping blacks where they belonged and protecting white women's virtue. In the theaters, novels, and traveling shows of the 1890s, popular themes of happy plantation slaves reflected Northern acceptance of the Southern white view of race and the Jim Crow limitations on suffrage, mobility, education, and economic life.
Even if many, though not all, Northerners drew the line at excusing lynching, Silber observes, they nevertheless accepted the idea that Southern white men lynched black "rapists" in the attempt to prove themselves men. Concerns about protecting Southern womanhood reflected Northern men's anxieties about promiscuous sexual behavior and the preservation of women's proper sphere. Finding a common ground of white manliness among former enemies . . . helped Northern whites to "cast African-Americans outside the boundaries of their Anglo-Saxon nation," to romanticize Southern notions of chivalry, and to justify turning Southern race relations over to Southern whites entirely.
Born into a wealthy Eastern family, Teddy Roosevelt was a physically weak and asthmatic child. When he joined the New York state assembly at the age of twenty-three, Roosevelt struck others as "unmanly." As Watts also writes, "newspapers and his fellow assemblymen ridiculed his 'squeaky' voice and dandified clothing, referring to him as 'Jane-Dandy,' 'Punkin-Lily,' and 'our own Oscar Wilde.' . . . Duly insulted, he began to construct a new physical image around appropriately virile Western decorations and settings, foregrounding the bodily attributes of a robust outdoorsman that were becoming new features in the nation's political iconography."
In a move reminsicent of George W. Bush's brush-clearing photo-ops on his own "ranch," the young Roosevelt moved to the Western frontier, in order to "harden" his body, but also to wear a series of conspicuous, meticulously detailed frontier costumes. Like the younger Bush, Roosevelt also bought a ranch, apparently for similar self-staging purposes (it's worth noting that the retired George W. Bush now spends most of his time in a suburban home outside of Dallas; he rarely visits his ranch anymore, and if the New York Times is right, when he does, he spends most of his time there riding a mountain bike instead of a horse).
As Watts writes of this photo,
In 1885, returning East after a bighorn hunting trip to Montana, Roosevelt had another studio photo made. This time he appeared as a self-consciously overdressed yet recognizable Western cowboy posed as bold and determined, armed and ready for action. "You would be amused to see me," he wrote to Henry Cabot Lodge in 1884, in my "broad sombrero hat, fringed and beaded buckskin shirt, horse hide chaparajos or riding trousers, and cowhide boots, with braided bridle and silver spurs." To his sister Bamie, he boasted, "I now look like a regular cowboy dandy, with all my equipments finished in the most expensive style." Only the fringed buckskin shirt remained from his Leatherstocking outfit.
Buckskin, he said, represented America's "most picturesque and distinctively national dress," attire worn by Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett and by the "reckless, dauntless Indian fighters" who led the "white advance throughout all our Western lands." Buckskin and whiteness notwithstanding, this 1885 image still seems forced, and his attention focused on the costs, accoutrements, and style of cowboy life. He does not even wear his glasses, without which he could see only poorly.
All of which makes me wonder just what kind of man Alabama's Dale Peterson really is, behind the pose of that everlasting, gunslinging, and white cowboy myth. The pose he's striking in cowboy drag just seems so obviously that -- a pose, and a mighty forced one at that.
Nevertheless, claims are now being made that Peterson actually is that cowboy. As Ladd Ehlinger, Jr., the writer/director of Peterson's ads, explains,
“I decided to stick him on a horse, give him a gun, and make it a John Wayne movie. . . . Some jerks are saying, ‘Oh, it makes us look like rednecks!’ Well, maybe in New York you wouldn’t make an ad like that, but this is Alabama, and here, people ride horses and shoot guns.”
When Peterson saw the ad, he “loved it,” Ehlinger says.
“Because I was basically doing a portrait of him,” he explains. “Not a campaign ad, but a portrait.”
To which I can only say . . . O RLY?
Among the most obvious appeals to conservative white voters here is the nostalgic evocation of the Independent (White) Cowboy Myth. If you say "cowboy" to most white Americans, they'll immediately think of a hat-wearing, horse-riding white man. And yet, as Mel at BroadSnark explains (in a post on "White America's Existential Identity Crisis"), real cowboys weren't actually all that white, nor all that independent:
There is a certain segment of the American population that really believes in the American foundational myths. They identify with them. They believe that America was built by a handful of white, Christian, men with exceptional morals. Their America is the country that showed the world democracy, saved the Jews in World War II, and tore down the Berlin wall.
These people have always fought changes to their mythology. They have always resented those of us who pushed to complicate those myths with the realities of slavery, Native American genocide, imperial war in the Philippines, invasions of Latin American countries, and secret arms deals.
And we have been so busy fighting them to have our stories and histories included in the American story that we sometimes forget why the myths were invented in the first place.
No myth illustrates the slight of hand behind our national mythology quite like the myth of the cowboy. In this mythology, the cowboy is a white man. He is a crusty frontiersman taming the west and paving the way for civilization. He is the good guy fighting the dangerous Indian. He is free and independent. He is in charge of his own destiny.
Peterson's follow-up ad is even, um . . . better?
As Mel goes on to explain,
Read Richard Slatta’s Cowboys of the Americas and you will get a very different picture. In reality, the first American cowboys were indigenous people trained by the Spanish missionaries. In reality, more than 30% of the cowboys on Texas trail drives were African American, Mexican, or Mexican-American.
And cowboys were not so free.
Cowboys were itinerant workers who, while paid fairly well when they had work, spent much of the year begging for odd jobs. Many did not even own the horse they rode. Frequently, they worked for large cattle companies owned by stockholders from the Northeast and Europe, not for small family operations (a la "Bonanza"). The few times cowboys tried to organize, they were brutally oppressed by ranchers.
I think Dale Peterson (or rather, his handlers) may also be consciously echoing Ronald Reagan's cowboy persona. In turn, Reagan may have been consciously echoing another rough-and-tumble political poser, Teddy Roosevelt. In all three cases, a white male politician evokes a myth that seems even more "white male" than the man himself. And a crucial part of that white myth is the direct exclusion and erasure of non-white people.
In her book-length study of Roosevelt's self-fashionings (Rough Rider in the White House), Sarah Watts explains the political reasons for periodically dusting off and deploying this hoary white-male myth -- it's a recognition of, and pandering to, ordinary white-male American anxieties, anxieties that still exist today:
Roosevelt emerged as a central purveyor of the cowboy-soldier hero model because he more than any man of his age harnessed the tantalizing freedom of cowboys to address the social and psychological needs that arose from deep personal sources of frustration, anxiety, and fear. More than any other he sensed that ordinary men needed a clearly recognizable and easily appropriated hero who enacted themes about the body; the need for extremity, pain, and sacrifice; and the desire to exclude some men and bond with others. In one seamless cowboy-soldier-statesman-hero life, Roosevelt crafted the cowboy ethos consciously and lived it zealously, providing men an image and a fantasy enlisted in service to the race-nation.
In keeping with changing models of masculinity . . . mass-circulation magazines began to feature a Napoleonic "idol of power," a man of action who used iron will and "animal magnetism" to crush his rivals and dominate nature. Biographers of plutocrats and robber barons encouraged readers to envision themselves in a social Darwinist world of ruthless competition where character alone appeared effeminate and sentimentalism dangerous. Earlier notions of manliness had counseled reason over passion; now the hero must unleash his "forcefulness."
Enter a new type of charismatic male personality after 1870, a cowboy-soldier operating in the new venue of the American West on sheer strength of will and physicality. Eastern readers instantly recognized him as more masculine precisely because he met the psychological desires in their imagination, making them into masters of their own fate, propelling them into violent adventure and comradeship, believing them at home in nature, not in the hothouse interiors of office buildings or middle-class homes.
Writers pitched the cowboy ethos against Christian values of mercy, empathy, love, and forgiveness, against domestic responsibility and the job demands that complicated men's lives and dissolved their masculine will. The cowboy was not interested in saving souls or finding spiritual purity or assigning meaning to death. His code of conduct arose as he struggled against the overwhelming wildness of men and beasts and carved out a prairie existence with guns, ropes, and barbed wire. Readers suspended ordinary morality as they fantasized about life at the margins of civilization and sampled forbidden pleasures of taming, busting, subduing, shooting, hanging, and killing.
In addition, and more to the ("swpd") point, the falsified racial identity of this ideal cowboy-soldier effectively erased the fact that demographically disproportionate numbers of "cowboys" were not white.
"Many real cowboys were black ex-slaves,
whereas the Hollywood heroes were always white."
Nat Love, African American cowboy, 1876
At the same time, the cowboy myth was imagined in opposition to darker, dehumanized Others. Whitened cowboys of yesteryear were lauded in Roosevelt's time for having helped to vanquish Indians, of course. However, as Watts explains, a growing nostalgia for antebellum Southern plantation life, including the racial control it represented, also helped fuel the collective desire for such a virile, specifically white ideal:
Northerners adopted a more sympathetic view of Southern white manhood, one in which Southern elites came to be admired for their racial acumen. Northerners abandoned critical views of slavery for nostalgic reminiscences of plantation life in which white Southern men had effectively managed a racial society, keeping blacks where they belonged and protecting white women's virtue. In the theaters, novels, and traveling shows of the 1890s, popular themes of happy plantation slaves reflected Northern acceptance of the Southern white view of race and the Jim Crow limitations on suffrage, mobility, education, and economic life.
Even if many, though not all, Northerners drew the line at excusing lynching, Silber observes, they nevertheless accepted the idea that Southern white men lynched black "rapists" in the attempt to prove themselves men. Concerns about protecting Southern womanhood reflected Northern men's anxieties about promiscuous sexual behavior and the preservation of women's proper sphere. Finding a common ground of white manliness among former enemies . . . helped Northern whites to "cast African-Americans outside the boundaries of their Anglo-Saxon nation," to romanticize Southern notions of chivalry, and to justify turning Southern race relations over to Southern whites entirely.
Born into a wealthy Eastern family, Teddy Roosevelt was a physically weak and asthmatic child. When he joined the New York state assembly at the age of twenty-three, Roosevelt struck others as "unmanly." As Watts also writes, "newspapers and his fellow assemblymen ridiculed his 'squeaky' voice and dandified clothing, referring to him as 'Jane-Dandy,' 'Punkin-Lily,' and 'our own Oscar Wilde.' . . . Duly insulted, he began to construct a new physical image around appropriately virile Western decorations and settings, foregrounding the bodily attributes of a robust outdoorsman that were becoming new features in the nation's political iconography."
In a move reminsicent of George W. Bush's brush-clearing photo-ops on his own "ranch," the young Roosevelt moved to the Western frontier, in order to "harden" his body, but also to wear a series of conspicuous, meticulously detailed frontier costumes. Like the younger Bush, Roosevelt also bought a ranch, apparently for similar self-staging purposes (it's worth noting that the retired George W. Bush now spends most of his time in a suburban home outside of Dallas; he rarely visits his ranch anymore, and if the New York Times is right, when he does, he spends most of his time there riding a mountain bike instead of a horse).
Teddy Roosevelt posing as a cowboy
(at the age of 27)
As Watts writes of this photo,
In 1885, returning East after a bighorn hunting trip to Montana, Roosevelt had another studio photo made. This time he appeared as a self-consciously overdressed yet recognizable Western cowboy posed as bold and determined, armed and ready for action. "You would be amused to see me," he wrote to Henry Cabot Lodge in 1884, in my "broad sombrero hat, fringed and beaded buckskin shirt, horse hide chaparajos or riding trousers, and cowhide boots, with braided bridle and silver spurs." To his sister Bamie, he boasted, "I now look like a regular cowboy dandy, with all my equipments finished in the most expensive style." Only the fringed buckskin shirt remained from his Leatherstocking outfit.
Buckskin, he said, represented America's "most picturesque and distinctively national dress," attire worn by Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett and by the "reckless, dauntless Indian fighters" who led the "white advance throughout all our Western lands." Buckskin and whiteness notwithstanding, this 1885 image still seems forced, and his attention focused on the costs, accoutrements, and style of cowboy life. He does not even wear his glasses, without which he could see only poorly.
All of which makes me wonder just what kind of man Alabama's Dale Peterson really is, behind the pose of that everlasting, gunslinging, and white cowboy myth. The pose he's striking in cowboy drag just seems so obviously that -- a pose, and a mighty forced one at that.
Nevertheless, claims are now being made that Peterson actually is that cowboy. As Ladd Ehlinger, Jr., the writer/director of Peterson's ads, explains,
“I decided to stick him on a horse, give him a gun, and make it a John Wayne movie. . . . Some jerks are saying, ‘Oh, it makes us look like rednecks!’ Well, maybe in New York you wouldn’t make an ad like that, but this is Alabama, and here, people ride horses and shoot guns.”
When Peterson saw the ad, he “loved it,” Ehlinger says.
“Because I was basically doing a portrait of him,” he explains. “Not a campaign ad, but a portrait.”
To which I can only say . . . O RLY?
Friday, May 21, 2010
claim that the "free market" could take care of racial problems
So what is Rand Paul -- an ordinary white racist? Or a more sinister sort of closet racist?
In response to an onslaught of what he terms "liberal media attacks" after a recent interview with Rachel Maddow -- in which he argued against federal restrictions on business owners' "rights" to refuse service to whomever they like -- Libertarian whiz kid Rand Paul is now claiming that he actually supports the Civil Rights Act.
On his official candidacy site, Paul states,
“I believe we should work to end all racism in American society and staunchly defend the inherent rights of every person. I have clearly stated in prior interviews that I abhor racial discrimination and would have worked to end segregation. Even though this matter was settled when I was 2, and no serious people are seeking to revisit it except to score cheap political points, I unequivocally state that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“Let me be clear: I support the Civil Rights Act because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws."
Like his initial claims in the Maddow interview -- basically, that he's against racial discrimination, but also for allowing businesses to refuse service to whomever they like -- Paul's official response to the firestorm that he's provoked is nothing short of bizarre. It's a blatantly self-contradictory stance being expressed by a (suddenly) national figure (which, come to think of it, isn't all that unusual).
How can Paul logically be for the Civil Rights Act, which forbids businesses from discriminating on the basis of race, and also for the "right" of businesses to do whatever they want, including discriminating on the basis of race? And how can he be for an act of law, but actually for the "intent" of that law? Basically, he can't. And yet, like so many other adherents to Libertarianism, he simply ignores the fundamental contradictions that arise when simplistic theories get tested in the real world.
I think it's great, and pretty entertaining really, that this example of Libertarian ideology -- which Rand Paul and his father Ron Paul both hold so dear -- has been exposed as illogical so early in his candidacy. Rand Paul's bumbling attempts to address his self-contradictory stance, all while completely failing to address it, just might bring about the kind of sunlight that could disinfect a lot of the rising and similarly bankrupt Tea-Party ideology (its adherents fervently support Rand's candidacy).
Such attention might also help to expose an apparently new common white tendency -- explaining away racist actions by saying they're not a problem, because the free market will take care of them.
Rand Paul made this particular argument when he said the following, in explanation of his position on business rights and civil rights: "I think it’s a bad business decision to ever exclude anybody from your restaurant."
Got that? Paul's implication is that businesses that refuse their services in a racist manner will suffer or even fail, presumably because in our "postracial" society, most people will spend their money at businesses that don't practice racial discrimination, because most (white) people aren't racists anymore. The free market is sacrosanct and magical, you see; if the dastardly liberals who supposedly control everything would just let market practices be "free," all problems would be solved. Including racism!
This is the same excuse given, for instance, by that racist justice of the peace in Louisiana. Remember Keith Bardwell, the one who refused to grant marriage licenses to interracial couples? He said that his refusal wasn't racist (of course), because he only meant to protect the children produced by such unions. Then, after the couple obtained a license elsewhere, Bardwell said this:
I'm sorry, you know, that I offended the couple, but I did help them and tell them who to go to and get married. And they went and got married, and they should be happily married, and I don't see what the problem is now.
Got that, all you racism chasers? Bardwell is basically saying, without saying it outright, that even if his actions were racist, that's not a problem, because the couple was free to get their marriage license elsewhere. The market took care of it! And Bardwell himself was supposedly just expressing his all-American, God-given personal right to serve, and not serve, whomever he liked.
I don't know if these two examples justly represent a "common white tendency" (can you think of others?). However, they do help to explain why such an overwhelming percentage of Libertarians are white, and also why a lot of them -- although they'd never admit it in public -- are flatout racists. As Niky Ring writes (in a post entitled "Libertarianism: the ideology of American racists"), "Why are people shocked when a libertarian flips over and there's a Klansman on the other side?"
That's not to say that all Libertarians keep pointy-hooded robes in their closets. But it is to say that it's not difficult to see why the ideology itself attracts so many adamant racists. Now that we have another ardent Libertarian on the national stage, one who's aligned with the similarly, thinly veiled racists of the Tea Party (you know, those crowds of white people clamoring to take "their" country back), here's hoping that the "liberal media" will keep up the "attack" on Rand's self-contradictory stance on the Civil Rights Act. Maybe they'll also be able to figure out just what kind of racist he is too.
[h/t: swpd reader Jon]
In response to an onslaught of what he terms "liberal media attacks" after a recent interview with Rachel Maddow -- in which he argued against federal restrictions on business owners' "rights" to refuse service to whomever they like -- Libertarian whiz kid Rand Paul is now claiming that he actually supports the Civil Rights Act.
On his official candidacy site, Paul states,
“I believe we should work to end all racism in American society and staunchly defend the inherent rights of every person. I have clearly stated in prior interviews that I abhor racial discrimination and would have worked to end segregation. Even though this matter was settled when I was 2, and no serious people are seeking to revisit it except to score cheap political points, I unequivocally state that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“Let me be clear: I support the Civil Rights Act because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws."
Like his initial claims in the Maddow interview -- basically, that he's against racial discrimination, but also for allowing businesses to refuse service to whomever they like -- Paul's official response to the firestorm that he's provoked is nothing short of bizarre. It's a blatantly self-contradictory stance being expressed by a (suddenly) national figure (which, come to think of it, isn't all that unusual).
How can Paul logically be for the Civil Rights Act, which forbids businesses from discriminating on the basis of race, and also for the "right" of businesses to do whatever they want, including discriminating on the basis of race? And how can he be for an act of law, but actually for the "intent" of that law? Basically, he can't. And yet, like so many other adherents to Libertarianism, he simply ignores the fundamental contradictions that arise when simplistic theories get tested in the real world.
I think it's great, and pretty entertaining really, that this example of Libertarian ideology -- which Rand Paul and his father Ron Paul both hold so dear -- has been exposed as illogical so early in his candidacy. Rand Paul's bumbling attempts to address his self-contradictory stance, all while completely failing to address it, just might bring about the kind of sunlight that could disinfect a lot of the rising and similarly bankrupt Tea-Party ideology (its adherents fervently support Rand's candidacy).
Such attention might also help to expose an apparently new common white tendency -- explaining away racist actions by saying they're not a problem, because the free market will take care of them.
Rand Paul made this particular argument when he said the following, in explanation of his position on business rights and civil rights: "I think it’s a bad business decision to ever exclude anybody from your restaurant."
Got that? Paul's implication is that businesses that refuse their services in a racist manner will suffer or even fail, presumably because in our "postracial" society, most people will spend their money at businesses that don't practice racial discrimination, because most (white) people aren't racists anymore. The free market is sacrosanct and magical, you see; if the dastardly liberals who supposedly control everything would just let market practices be "free," all problems would be solved. Including racism!
This is the same excuse given, for instance, by that racist justice of the peace in Louisiana. Remember Keith Bardwell, the one who refused to grant marriage licenses to interracial couples? He said that his refusal wasn't racist (of course), because he only meant to protect the children produced by such unions. Then, after the couple obtained a license elsewhere, Bardwell said this:
I'm sorry, you know, that I offended the couple, but I did help them and tell them who to go to and get married. And they went and got married, and they should be happily married, and I don't see what the problem is now.
Got that, all you racism chasers? Bardwell is basically saying, without saying it outright, that even if his actions were racist, that's not a problem, because the couple was free to get their marriage license elsewhere. The market took care of it! And Bardwell himself was supposedly just expressing his all-American, God-given personal right to serve, and not serve, whomever he liked.
I don't know if these two examples justly represent a "common white tendency" (can you think of others?). However, they do help to explain why such an overwhelming percentage of Libertarians are white, and also why a lot of them -- although they'd never admit it in public -- are flatout racists. As Niky Ring writes (in a post entitled "Libertarianism: the ideology of American racists"), "Why are people shocked when a libertarian flips over and there's a Klansman on the other side?"
That's not to say that all Libertarians keep pointy-hooded robes in their closets. But it is to say that it's not difficult to see why the ideology itself attracts so many adamant racists. Now that we have another ardent Libertarian on the national stage, one who's aligned with the similarly, thinly veiled racists of the Tea Party (you know, those crowds of white people clamoring to take "their" country back), here's hoping that the "liberal media" will keep up the "attack" on Rand's self-contradictory stance on the Civil Rights Act. Maybe they'll also be able to figure out just what kind of racist he is too.
[h/t: swpd reader Jon]
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
pay little attention to terrorism directed against minorities
Did you hear about the mosque bombing in Florida last week?
If not, then why not?
Actually, I think I can answer that second question. Chances are that you didn't hear about this act of domestic terrorism because major newspapers and networks haven't covered it.
A bomb in Times Square failed to explode recently, and just about everyone in the U.S. heard about it. A bomb in a mosque succeeded in exploding last week, and next to no one in the U.S. has heard about it.
Why the difference? Why the double standard?
My presumption that next to no Americans have heard about the Florida mosque bombing isn't quite accurate. Many, many Muslims in the U.S. have heard about it. And many of them are expressing dismay that so few others have heard about it.
At MuslimMatters, Hesham A. Hassaballa writes,
On the evening of May 10, there was a small explosion and fire outside a Jacksonville, FL mosque. According to a fire department investigation and officials of the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida, worshipers heard a loud noise outside the mosque, and there was a small fire that was extinguished. The damage was described as “very minimal” by a Jacksonville Fire and Rescue spokesperson. Thank God, no one was injured in the attack.
According to the Council on American Islamic Relations, mosque officials reported that an unknown white man in his 40s entered the mosque on April 4 and shouted “Stop this blaspheming.” He was chased away by worshipers, but he reportedly said, “I will be back.” Now, it has been determined that the explosion was due to a pipe bomb, and it is being investigated as a possible act of domestic terrorism. “It was a dangerous device, and had anybody been around it they could have been seriously injured or killed,” says Special Agent James Casey.
Yet, you would not be faulted for not knowing that it even occurred. Most of the news coverage has been local in Florida. There has not been nearly the same amount of coverage at the failed bombing in Times Square.
Now, of course, the size of this pipe bomb is nothing compared to the size of the truck bomb allegedly placed by Faisal Shahzad. The mosque bombing was perpetrated by one individual, and it increasingly looks like the Taliban in Pakistan were behind the attempted bombing in Times Square. Obviously, an attack on Times Square in the middle of a tourist/theater district is much more of a story than an attack on a mosque in Florida.
But just as the Times Square bomb could have really done harm, the pipe bomb could have also done a lot of harm. FBI officials noted that the blast radius could have been 100 feet. In addition, The FBI Special Agent in Florida, James Casey, had added: “We want to sort of emphasize the seriousness of the thing and not let people believe that this was just a match and a little bit of gasoline that was spread around.” The attempted attack on Times Square was rightly called an act of terrorism. But, as this news report says: “The FBI is looking at this case as a possible hate crime, and now they’re analyzing it as a possible act of domestic terrorism.”
A pipe bomb that explodes outside a mosque causing a fire a possible act of domestic terrorism? What if a pipe bomb exploded in Times Square? Or outside a church? Would this be called terrorism? Of course it would. . . and it should. So should this attack on the Jacksonville, FL mosque.
At examiner.com, J. Samia Mair entitled her article on this double standard with my post's opening question (which I borrowed from her title): "Did you hear about the mosque bombing in Florida last week?"
Mair notes that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has announced a $5,000 reward for information regarding this act of terrorism, and she also notes that CAIR has
“questioned the silence of public officials and national media about a bomb attack.” CAIR reported that “media coverage has for the most part been restricted to Florida and that there have been no public condemnations of the bombing at the national level.”
Like Mair, and like most of us, I haven't seen or read any national news regarding this terrorist bombing of a mosque. I suspect this silence is a symptom of the white-framed corporate media's rigidly limited narrative for "terrorism," which conceptualizes it as a "Muslim" thing, as well as an "Arabic" thing.
The racist result of this limited framing is that acts of terrorism inflicted on non-white spaces and people don't receive the attention they deserve. And in turn, one result of that lack of attention is that the perpetrators -- like the one in this Florida bombing -- often elude identification and arrest, sometimes for far longer than the people who perpetrate, or even plan to perpetrate, more stereotypical forms of terrorism.
I'll leave the last words on this xenophobic and racist double standard to J. Samia Mair:
I don’t recall seeing anything [about the Florida mosque bombing] on the national news. Surely, if the FBI considers this incident possibly "domestic terrorism" it should garner some attention. I can’t help but to wonder that if a church or synagogue had been bombed -- no matter how small the explosion -- there would have been some sort of national coverage.
[My thanks for info on the Florida bombing to swpd reader Katie]
If not, then why not?
Actually, I think I can answer that second question. Chances are that you didn't hear about this act of domestic terrorism because major newspapers and networks haven't covered it.
A bomb in Times Square failed to explode recently, and just about everyone in the U.S. heard about it. A bomb in a mosque succeeded in exploding last week, and next to no one in the U.S. has heard about it.
Why the difference? Why the double standard?
My presumption that next to no Americans have heard about the Florida mosque bombing isn't quite accurate. Many, many Muslims in the U.S. have heard about it. And many of them are expressing dismay that so few others have heard about it.
At MuslimMatters, Hesham A. Hassaballa writes,
On the evening of May 10, there was a small explosion and fire outside a Jacksonville, FL mosque. According to a fire department investigation and officials of the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida, worshipers heard a loud noise outside the mosque, and there was a small fire that was extinguished. The damage was described as “very minimal” by a Jacksonville Fire and Rescue spokesperson. Thank God, no one was injured in the attack.
According to the Council on American Islamic Relations, mosque officials reported that an unknown white man in his 40s entered the mosque on April 4 and shouted “Stop this blaspheming.” He was chased away by worshipers, but he reportedly said, “I will be back.” Now, it has been determined that the explosion was due to a pipe bomb, and it is being investigated as a possible act of domestic terrorism. “It was a dangerous device, and had anybody been around it they could have been seriously injured or killed,” says Special Agent James Casey.
Yet, you would not be faulted for not knowing that it even occurred. Most of the news coverage has been local in Florida. There has not been nearly the same amount of coverage at the failed bombing in Times Square.
Now, of course, the size of this pipe bomb is nothing compared to the size of the truck bomb allegedly placed by Faisal Shahzad. The mosque bombing was perpetrated by one individual, and it increasingly looks like the Taliban in Pakistan were behind the attempted bombing in Times Square. Obviously, an attack on Times Square in the middle of a tourist/theater district is much more of a story than an attack on a mosque in Florida.
But just as the Times Square bomb could have really done harm, the pipe bomb could have also done a lot of harm. FBI officials noted that the blast radius could have been 100 feet. In addition, The FBI Special Agent in Florida, James Casey, had added: “We want to sort of emphasize the seriousness of the thing and not let people believe that this was just a match and a little bit of gasoline that was spread around.” The attempted attack on Times Square was rightly called an act of terrorism. But, as this news report says: “The FBI is looking at this case as a possible hate crime, and now they’re analyzing it as a possible act of domestic terrorism.”
A pipe bomb that explodes outside a mosque causing a fire a possible act of domestic terrorism? What if a pipe bomb exploded in Times Square? Or outside a church? Would this be called terrorism? Of course it would. . . and it should. So should this attack on the Jacksonville, FL mosque.
At examiner.com, J. Samia Mair entitled her article on this double standard with my post's opening question (which I borrowed from her title): "Did you hear about the mosque bombing in Florida last week?"
Mair notes that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has announced a $5,000 reward for information regarding this act of terrorism, and she also notes that CAIR has
“questioned the silence of public officials and national media about a bomb attack.” CAIR reported that “media coverage has for the most part been restricted to Florida and that there have been no public condemnations of the bombing at the national level.”
Like Mair, and like most of us, I haven't seen or read any national news regarding this terrorist bombing of a mosque. I suspect this silence is a symptom of the white-framed corporate media's rigidly limited narrative for "terrorism," which conceptualizes it as a "Muslim" thing, as well as an "Arabic" thing.
The racist result of this limited framing is that acts of terrorism inflicted on non-white spaces and people don't receive the attention they deserve. And in turn, one result of that lack of attention is that the perpetrators -- like the one in this Florida bombing -- often elude identification and arrest, sometimes for far longer than the people who perpetrate, or even plan to perpetrate, more stereotypical forms of terrorism.
I'll leave the last words on this xenophobic and racist double standard to J. Samia Mair:
I don’t recall seeing anything [about the Florida mosque bombing] on the national news. Surely, if the FBI considers this incident possibly "domestic terrorism" it should garner some attention. I can’t help but to wonder that if a church or synagogue had been bombed -- no matter how small the explosion -- there would have been some sort of national coverage.
[My thanks for info on the Florida bombing to swpd reader Katie]
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
refuse to acknowledge racism when it's pointed out to them
In the following CNN segment (sorry if a commercial appears first), Tim Wise briefly summarizes his most recent viral-post, "What If the Tea Party Were Black?" A Tea Party leader, Jenny Beth Martin, then enacts a common white tendency -- refusing to acknowledge the racism that someone else is pointing out -- by spilling a bunch of Tea Party talking points instead.
As Wise points out, the topic of this CNN segment is actually the topic of his post -- the differential treatment of differently raced protesters -- but that topic just doesn't interest Martin. As usual for white folks, other things seem more important than racism, which I guess is just, you know, a kind of side issue, something for the minorities to whine about in their limited way, something that actually died a long time ago, and if it didn't die then, it certainly died on that fateful, hopey-changey day that Barack Obama became president (and so on, etcetera, ad nauseam). And just because I as a white person am almost completely surrounded by other white people, and just because practically no white people, including the white-framed corporate media (with the kudo-worthy exception of Don Lemon), find that a racial problem, when it would find similar crowds of non-white people a racial problem, well, that's nothing alarming, or even worth pointing out, really. Unless you've got some kind of old-fashioned ax to grind. Or race-card to play. Or pet cause to promote, because you're really trying to hypocritically advance your own self-interest.
Ad nauseam. I sometimes get nauseous from trying to get obstinate white people to see racism. Do you?
[transcript below]
Transcript:
TIM WISE, AUTHOR, "COLOR BLIND" (via telephone): Well, the premise is very simple. We, as a country, tend to view white political anger very differently than anger or even just, you know, activism when it's evidenced or evinced by people of color. I just wanted people to think about, for example, you know, what would the public perception be? What would the discussion be on FOX News, for example, if thousands of mostly black protesters who were angry about some particular bill that was being considered by the Congress went to Washington, surrounded lawmakers on their way to work and yelled at them? Forget the whole spitting or the racial slur piece of it, just the yelling at them to do what they wanted? How would that be perceived? The fact is we know the civil rights movement knew they couldn't act like that. A, they had too much class. B, they realized that if they had done that, they would have been viewed as an insurrectionary mob. Likewise, the comments made by, you know, traditional mainstream conservative talk show hosts are the kinds of things that no black or brown commentator could get away with.
LEMON: I want to let Jenny Beth get in here. Does what Tim says make any sense to you? Does the racial makeup of the movement make any difference in terms of your tea party message?
JENNY BETH MARTIN, CO-FOUNDER, TEA PARTY PATRIOTS: We're ordinary citizens standing and we're standing up for three things -- fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets. And these three principles, they transcend race and they apply to everyone. The out-of-control spending the government is doing right now, it's going to affect our children and our grandchildren. Regardless of race, it's going to affect all of them, and that's what we're concerned about.
LEMON: So you don't think that the racial makeup, you don't think Tim's argument has any credence? You don't buy into it?
MARTIN: I don't -- I don't think so. We don't have --- we don't tolerate racism within tea party patriots. We focus on those core values. And when people aren't listening, sometimes you have to raise your voice.
LEMON: Yeah.
MARTIN: There's anger out there right now, and anger is OK as long as it's channeled in the appropriate manner.
WISE: You know what, Don? Don, there is a lot of anger on the part of Arab-Americans who are being profiled all the time since 9/11. But you and I both know, and I think Jenny would agree, that if Arab- Americans were to voice their displeasure at racial profiling, and frankly the way in which neither party, Democrat or Republican, have taken it very seriously, and were to go and yell at lawmakers to pass some type of anti-profiling bill, that they would be seen as terrorists. They would be seen as insurrectionary. I mean, that's the difference. And so, Jenny, you know, is talking about her movement not being racist, that's not the topic this evening. The topic is do we perceive mostly white folks' anger over whatever topic, whatever the issue is differently than we would if it was people of color? I think the answer to that question is obvious.
LEMON: Tim, you have a new book coming out, Color Blind, and I think it's very interesting. It's a very provocative point in your book that President Obama, and maybe some Democrats, might be doing the country a disservice when it comes to matters of race. What do you mean by that?
WISE: Well, the argument in the book is a little bit deeper than that. What I talk about in the book is that unless we are willing to call out the problem of racism in housing, in education, in health care, actual acts of discrimination, which I document fully in the book, what ends up happening is that, number one, by not calling it out, we reinforce the denial that is so prevalent, particularly among white America, that the problem is real. The second thing we do is in the case of the president, if he's not willing to call out some of the blatant racism, which I think is behind, for example, the Arizona SB 1070 or the blatant racism which occasionally manifests in some of that tea party opposition, the more radical edge of it, he's not willing to call it out. I think it actually undermines his credibility. When things are that obvious and you're not willing to -- some credibility in the public and that's one of the points I wanted to make.
LEMON: John is sitting here. I don't think John agrees with you.
RIDLEY: I don't quite agree. I do think when there's racism, you've got to call it out. And you see what's going on in Arizona. I don't think anyone has a problem saying that there are elements of this law that are clearly racist. But I do think one of the big problems that we're facing moving ahead in the 21st century, it's more socioeconomic. If you are a person of color --
LEMON: Hang on. Hang on. I'm going to let you finish your point. I'm going to let you finish your point. But even the Congressional Black Caucus and some very prominent leaders, Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, a number of people are saying the president is not focusing on issues that are important to African-Americans. Some are saying the president is not focusing on issues, including immigration is not strong enough on issues,
WISE: Don, it's not just -- it's not just that.
LEMON: Or for brown people. Go ahead, Tim, real quick.
WISE: Don, it's not just that, I mean, the claim that it is mostly socioeconomic. Let's take health care.
I document in the book specifically how the racial disparities in health care between whites and people of color are not mostly about economics. It is not mostly about do you have coverage or do you not. The studies are very clear that the reason people of color, especially black folks, have worst health outcomes are two things. Number one, the cumulative effect of racial bias over time and secondly, the actual dispensation of unequal care by doctors.
RIDLEY: Tim, I would just jump in very quick.
LEMON: John, go ahead.
RIDLEY: Sometimes when we start to segregate some of these issues and say they are merely black issues or white issues, you start to go away from the fact that they are our issues. Again, for people of color who are not economically challenged or doing well, those issues are very different from anyone who is economically challenged and facing those same issues. So I think as we move ahead, yes, we should call it racism when it's there. Again, in Arizona, we see folks doing that, but I think that we do get into a rut as people when they start saying, this is merely a black issue, this is merely a white issue, and not -- and President Obama is president of the United States.
LEMON: And he does have to walk a tightrope when it comes to this.
RIDLEY: I think he does have to walk a tightrope, but he is our president.
LEMON: Yes, yes.
[full transcript here]
As Wise points out, the topic of this CNN segment is actually the topic of his post -- the differential treatment of differently raced protesters -- but that topic just doesn't interest Martin. As usual for white folks, other things seem more important than racism, which I guess is just, you know, a kind of side issue, something for the minorities to whine about in their limited way, something that actually died a long time ago, and if it didn't die then, it certainly died on that fateful, hopey-changey day that Barack Obama became president (and so on, etcetera, ad nauseam). And just because I as a white person am almost completely surrounded by other white people, and just because practically no white people, including the white-framed corporate media (with the kudo-worthy exception of Don Lemon), find that a racial problem, when it would find similar crowds of non-white people a racial problem, well, that's nothing alarming, or even worth pointing out, really. Unless you've got some kind of old-fashioned ax to grind. Or race-card to play. Or pet cause to promote, because you're really trying to hypocritically advance your own self-interest.
Ad nauseam. I sometimes get nauseous from trying to get obstinate white people to see racism. Do you?
[transcript below]
Transcript:
TIM WISE, AUTHOR, "COLOR BLIND" (via telephone): Well, the premise is very simple. We, as a country, tend to view white political anger very differently than anger or even just, you know, activism when it's evidenced or evinced by people of color. I just wanted people to think about, for example, you know, what would the public perception be? What would the discussion be on FOX News, for example, if thousands of mostly black protesters who were angry about some particular bill that was being considered by the Congress went to Washington, surrounded lawmakers on their way to work and yelled at them? Forget the whole spitting or the racial slur piece of it, just the yelling at them to do what they wanted? How would that be perceived? The fact is we know the civil rights movement knew they couldn't act like that. A, they had too much class. B, they realized that if they had done that, they would have been viewed as an insurrectionary mob. Likewise, the comments made by, you know, traditional mainstream conservative talk show hosts are the kinds of things that no black or brown commentator could get away with.
LEMON: I want to let Jenny Beth get in here. Does what Tim says make any sense to you? Does the racial makeup of the movement make any difference in terms of your tea party message?
JENNY BETH MARTIN, CO-FOUNDER, TEA PARTY PATRIOTS: We're ordinary citizens standing and we're standing up for three things -- fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets. And these three principles, they transcend race and they apply to everyone. The out-of-control spending the government is doing right now, it's going to affect our children and our grandchildren. Regardless of race, it's going to affect all of them, and that's what we're concerned about.
LEMON: So you don't think that the racial makeup, you don't think Tim's argument has any credence? You don't buy into it?
MARTIN: I don't -- I don't think so. We don't have --- we don't tolerate racism within tea party patriots. We focus on those core values. And when people aren't listening, sometimes you have to raise your voice.
LEMON: Yeah.
MARTIN: There's anger out there right now, and anger is OK as long as it's channeled in the appropriate manner.
WISE: You know what, Don? Don, there is a lot of anger on the part of Arab-Americans who are being profiled all the time since 9/11. But you and I both know, and I think Jenny would agree, that if Arab- Americans were to voice their displeasure at racial profiling, and frankly the way in which neither party, Democrat or Republican, have taken it very seriously, and were to go and yell at lawmakers to pass some type of anti-profiling bill, that they would be seen as terrorists. They would be seen as insurrectionary. I mean, that's the difference. And so, Jenny, you know, is talking about her movement not being racist, that's not the topic this evening. The topic is do we perceive mostly white folks' anger over whatever topic, whatever the issue is differently than we would if it was people of color? I think the answer to that question is obvious.
LEMON: Tim, you have a new book coming out, Color Blind, and I think it's very interesting. It's a very provocative point in your book that President Obama, and maybe some Democrats, might be doing the country a disservice when it comes to matters of race. What do you mean by that?
WISE: Well, the argument in the book is a little bit deeper than that. What I talk about in the book is that unless we are willing to call out the problem of racism in housing, in education, in health care, actual acts of discrimination, which I document fully in the book, what ends up happening is that, number one, by not calling it out, we reinforce the denial that is so prevalent, particularly among white America, that the problem is real. The second thing we do is in the case of the president, if he's not willing to call out some of the blatant racism, which I think is behind, for example, the Arizona SB 1070 or the blatant racism which occasionally manifests in some of that tea party opposition, the more radical edge of it, he's not willing to call it out. I think it actually undermines his credibility. When things are that obvious and you're not willing to -- some credibility in the public and that's one of the points I wanted to make.
LEMON: John is sitting here. I don't think John agrees with you.
RIDLEY: I don't quite agree. I do think when there's racism, you've got to call it out. And you see what's going on in Arizona. I don't think anyone has a problem saying that there are elements of this law that are clearly racist. But I do think one of the big problems that we're facing moving ahead in the 21st century, it's more socioeconomic. If you are a person of color --
LEMON: Hang on. Hang on. I'm going to let you finish your point. I'm going to let you finish your point. But even the Congressional Black Caucus and some very prominent leaders, Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, a number of people are saying the president is not focusing on issues that are important to African-Americans. Some are saying the president is not focusing on issues, including immigration is not strong enough on issues,
WISE: Don, it's not just -- it's not just that.
LEMON: Or for brown people. Go ahead, Tim, real quick.
WISE: Don, it's not just that, I mean, the claim that it is mostly socioeconomic. Let's take health care.
I document in the book specifically how the racial disparities in health care between whites and people of color are not mostly about economics. It is not mostly about do you have coverage or do you not. The studies are very clear that the reason people of color, especially black folks, have worst health outcomes are two things. Number one, the cumulative effect of racial bias over time and secondly, the actual dispensation of unequal care by doctors.
RIDLEY: Tim, I would just jump in very quick.
LEMON: John, go ahead.
RIDLEY: Sometimes when we start to segregate some of these issues and say they are merely black issues or white issues, you start to go away from the fact that they are our issues. Again, for people of color who are not economically challenged or doing well, those issues are very different from anyone who is economically challenged and facing those same issues. So I think as we move ahead, yes, we should call it racism when it's there. Again, in Arizona, we see folks doing that, but I think that we do get into a rut as people when they start saying, this is merely a black issue, this is merely a white issue, and not -- and President Obama is president of the United States.
LEMON: And he does have to walk a tightrope when it comes to this.
RIDLEY: I think he does have to walk a tightrope, but he is our president.
LEMON: Yes, yes.
[full transcript here]
Saturday, April 24, 2010
condemn illegal workers instead of illegal employers
As a televisual satirist, Stephen Colbert dances along a fine line; by provoking laughter over serious subject matter, he runs the risk of trivializing his chosen topics, as well as other people's pain.
In the following episode of his regular segment, "The Word," Colbert takes on Arizona's new, draconian, and blatantly racist anti-immigrant law. I appreciate the points that Colbert gets across here to his mainstream audience, but there's one factor in this decades-long immigration "debate" that I wish he'd also covered -- the persistent focus on workers, rather than on those who illegally employ them.
Amidst the laughter he provokes, Colbert makes several excellent points. He also provides a phrase that I think deserves the meme-like status of his earlier linguistic creation (the word "truthiness"). By which I mean: with a great national debate on immigration coming up soon (or maybe not so soon?), I hope the term "Juan Crow" catches on to describe not only Arizona's new law, but also the misguided, vitriolic and commonly white sentiments behind it. Unless, that is, the term perpetuates the stereotype that most Mexican men are named Juan?
However, one important point Colbert leaves out is that discussion of immigration is almost always focused on the workers, instead of on the (mostly white) employers. After all, by hiring these border-crossing workers, aren't they also doing something illegal? If so, why is there so much focus on the workers, and so little on the employers?
As Joe Feagin points out at Racism Review,
One critical part of the “immigration debates” is just how powerful the conservative framing of these issues is. Conservatives frame it as “illegal immigrants” or “illegal aliens,” while even liberals are focusing on “undocumented immigrants” and “immigration problems.” This is yet another example of how we get trapped in deep unreflective frames.
How about reframing the entire debate as about “lawless employers,” “illegal employers,” and “illegal employment”? Mostly white employers are certainly at the center of this national “problem.”
Yes, that's an answer right there, isn't it -- conservatives manage to frame most national debates, thanks in no small part to the ubiquity of corporate media outlets, which naturally promote and enact business-friendly conservative policies. And so, in turn, most Americans, conservative and liberal/progressive alike, tend to play along.
Thank goodness for the Internet, eh? Or maybe . . . not? Are the grassroots possibilities of the online revolution managing to shift the corporate media's framing of such debates? Can anything be done, for instance, to get most people thinking about illegal employers, instead of workers?
At the very least, we can find out online about forms of action we can take that the corporate media fail to mention. Here, for instance, is an online petition you can sign -- "Shame on Arizona" allows you to sign the following pledge to boycott the state: "As long as racial profiling is legal in Arizona, I will do what I can to not visit the state and to avoid spending dollars there."
I've never actually been to Arizona, which I gather is beautiful; needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, supporting the state's (soon-to-be ironically flagging) economy by "paying" a visit no longer interests me.
h/t for the video: Irene's Daughters
In the following episode of his regular segment, "The Word," Colbert takes on Arizona's new, draconian, and blatantly racist anti-immigrant law. I appreciate the points that Colbert gets across here to his mainstream audience, but there's one factor in this decades-long immigration "debate" that I wish he'd also covered -- the persistent focus on workers, rather than on those who illegally employ them.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |
| The Word - No Problemo | ||
Amidst the laughter he provokes, Colbert makes several excellent points. He also provides a phrase that I think deserves the meme-like status of his earlier linguistic creation (the word "truthiness"). By which I mean: with a great national debate on immigration coming up soon (or maybe not so soon?), I hope the term "Juan Crow" catches on to describe not only Arizona's new law, but also the misguided, vitriolic and commonly white sentiments behind it. Unless, that is, the term perpetuates the stereotype that most Mexican men are named Juan?
However, one important point Colbert leaves out is that discussion of immigration is almost always focused on the workers, instead of on the (mostly white) employers. After all, by hiring these border-crossing workers, aren't they also doing something illegal? If so, why is there so much focus on the workers, and so little on the employers?
As Joe Feagin points out at Racism Review,
One critical part of the “immigration debates” is just how powerful the conservative framing of these issues is. Conservatives frame it as “illegal immigrants” or “illegal aliens,” while even liberals are focusing on “undocumented immigrants” and “immigration problems.” This is yet another example of how we get trapped in deep unreflective frames.
How about reframing the entire debate as about “lawless employers,” “illegal employers,” and “illegal employment”? Mostly white employers are certainly at the center of this national “problem.”
Yes, that's an answer right there, isn't it -- conservatives manage to frame most national debates, thanks in no small part to the ubiquity of corporate media outlets, which naturally promote and enact business-friendly conservative policies. And so, in turn, most Americans, conservative and liberal/progressive alike, tend to play along.
Thank goodness for the Internet, eh? Or maybe . . . not? Are the grassroots possibilities of the online revolution managing to shift the corporate media's framing of such debates? Can anything be done, for instance, to get most people thinking about illegal employers, instead of workers?
At the very least, we can find out online about forms of action we can take that the corporate media fail to mention. Here, for instance, is an online petition you can sign -- "Shame on Arizona" allows you to sign the following pledge to boycott the state: "As long as racial profiling is legal in Arizona, I will do what I can to not visit the state and to avoid spending dollars there."
I've never actually been to Arizona, which I gather is beautiful; needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, supporting the state's (soon-to-be ironically flagging) economy by "paying" a visit no longer interests me.
h/t for the video: Irene's Daughters
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