value white lives more than non-white ones

As many of you know (and as not enough Americans in general know), the trial of two white teenagers in Pennsylvania who were involved in last year's beating death of a Latino man, Luis Ramirez, ended last Friday. The verdicts, handed down by an all-white jury, were outrageously light.

Brandon Piekarsky, 17, and Derrick Donchak, 19, were acquitted of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, ethnic intimidation, murder, and manslaughter. Both were instead convicted of simple assault, with additional alcohol-related counts against Donchak.

The simple assault conviction entails a maximum penalty of two years in county jail; without criminal records, Donchak and Piekarsky may not face any imprisonment at all.

Here's the 25-year-old man who was beaten to death. Again, his name was Luis Ramirez. Does this photo remind you too of Emmett Till?



Ramirez died in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, a small, 96% white, blue-collar town. Latino residents live there as well, since it offers affordable housing and work in local factories and fields. Ramirez had been living there for seven years.

The precise facts of this racially charged case seem murky. According to one news account,

The fight began late July 12 when a half-dozen teens, all Shenandoah residents who played football at Shenandoah Valley High School, were walking home from a block party and came across Ramirez and his 15-year-old girlfriend in a park.

Brian Scully, 18, asked the girl, "Isn't it a little late for you to be out?" That enraged Ramirez, who began yelling in Spanish and dialing friends on his cell phone. Scully admitted shouting ethnic slurs. The verbal sparring soon turned into a physical altercation as Ramirez and Piekarsky traded blows, though prosecutors and defense attorneys disputed who threw the first punch.

Donchak then entered the fray and wound up on top of Ramirez. Prosecutors said he pummeled Ramirez, holding a small piece of metal in his fist to give his punches more power. Defense attorneys said Donchak tried to break up the fight between Piekarsky and Ramirez and denied he had a weapon.

The two sides eventually went their separate ways. But Scully kept yelling at Ramirez, leading the immigrant to charge after the group.

Colin Walsh, 17, then hit Ramirez, knocking him out.

An autopsy later revealed that Ramirez died from blows to his head. He was severely beaten, and then kicked to death. But two of his assailants got off with "simple assault." A third, Colin Walsh, pleaded guilty earlier in the week to violating Ramirez's civil rights, in exchange for the dropping of third-degree murder charges.

Why isn't the corporate media all over this racist travesty of justice?

Never mind, that's a rhetorical question, since we all know why. It's just another death, for one thing, and John Edwards' affair or another cute-and-missing white girl are presented to us as if they're much more interesting and important.

But it's also more than that--Luis Ramirez was not white.

In their reports on his death, CNN and the Associated Press did mention that the jury that let off some of his assailants last week consisted entirely of white people. However, beyond merely mentioning that fact, such news outlets did nothing to question the power of whiteness in this case.

Doesn't the similar, widespread lack of interest in such facts among white Americans represent a sort of mass psychosis? A general white state of delusion? Ramirez was human, just like them, but he wasn't white. So he was, in the minds of most white people who have even heard about him, less than human.

To better illustrate how this is so, flip the script and imagine how much attention an opposite situation would get:

A white couple's car breaks down as they're driving along an urban interstate. They stop near an exit, then walk into a largely Latino neighborhood. A similar fight ensues, and the man's partner says that the teenagers who beat him to death shouted anti-white slurs as they did so.

Somehow, an all-Latino jury is assembled, and despite charges of ethnic intimidation, assault with a deadly weapon, and murder, it passes down similarly lenient convictions of "simple assault" to the Latino defendants. No one gets convicted for the white man's murder.

Would the corporate media, and much of white America, be all over this story, demanding a retrial and stoking the flames of anti-immigration, anti-Latino sentiment?

Of course they would.

And since the white-framed corporate media, and white people who have heard about the Ramirez case, are not all up in arms about it, that can only lead to this conclusion--white Americans generally value non-white lives less than they do white ones.

The death of Luis Ramirez may seem tragic to white folks who actually hear about it and listen to the details. But they're just as likely to think that in a way, Ramirez had it coming. After all, he was an "illegal alien," the thinking goes, and this incident never would've happened if he had stayed in his own country, instead of breaking the law by coming here.

Actually, that's exactly how one supporter of his teenage killers put it last December, a minute or so into this video:



This woman's callous reaction to the beating death of another human being is a specific example of the common white tendency to value non-white lives less than white ones. Her focus on his residential status is a diversion from the fact that he was beaten to death. This diversion was undoubtedly made easier in her mind by the degrading associations she's absorbed from her surrounding culture about Latino immigrants.

Most white people are quick to agree that "we're all human." But they rarely see how, deep inside themselves, they actually consider people who are supposedly different from themselves, in large part because of their skin color, as less than human. As less than fully deserving of fundamental "human rights."

Obviously, other people don't see things that way. The Mexican Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) had a representative present at the trial, Gladys Limon. Like other supporters of Ramirez and his family, she was shocked by the verdict, and openly identified Ramirez's death as murder.

''It's a complete outrage. . . . This was murder. Luis Ramirez was murdered. A father, a son, a brother, a partner was murdered. The message the verdict sends is you can kill a person, you can stomp on their head until the person dies, based on their national heritage."

Nevertheless, if white America ever did pay much attention to the death of Luis Ramirez, it's already turned away. After all, there's yet another cute missing girl to worry about; this time, her name is Brittanee Drexel.

I don't mean to make light of Brittanee's disappearance, nor those of the others who make up the steady parade of pretty missing white girls. I'm just dismayed and enraged that cases like hers get so much more attention than the disappearances and deaths of people of color.

Unlike the death of Luis Ramirez, Brittanee Drexel's possible death is deemed especially worthy of attention in part because she's white. Her whiteness makes her all that much more compelling to a largely white audience, and all that much more human.

And the non-whiteness of people like Luis Ramirez makes them seem, to that largely white audience, all that much less than human.

And so it is that non-white people like Luis Ramirez remain all that much more likely to suffer racist abuse, including murder.

white quotation of the week (binyavanga wainaina)

How Not to Write about Africa

Always use the word "Africa" or "Darkness" or "Safari" in your title. Note that "People" means Africans who are not black, while 'The People" means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these.

Throughout the book, adopt a sotto voice, in conspiracy with the reader, and a sad I-expected-so-much tone. Africa is to be pitied, to be pitied, to be pitied, worshiped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Monkey brain is an African's cuisine of choice.

Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable. Africa is the only continent you can love, because you care.

Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers. The modern African is a fat man who steals and works in the visa office, refusing to give work permits to qualified Westerners who really care about Africa. Or he is an Oxford-educated intellectual turned serial-killing politician in a Savile Row suit.

You must always include The Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West. She can have no past, no history; such diversions ruin the dramatic moment.

Your hero is you, il faut partages, or a beautiful, tragic, international celebrity or aristocrat who now cares for animals. If fiction, describe in detail mutilated genitals, and dead bodies.

Remember, any work you submit in which people look filthy and miserable will be referred to as the "real Africa."

Animals, on the other hand, must be treated as well rounded, complex characters. They speak (or grunt while tossing their manes proudly) and have names, ambitions and desires. Never, ever say anything negative about an elephant or a gorilla.

Readers will be put off if you don't mention the light in Africa. The African sunset is a must.

You'll also need a nightclub called Tropicana, where mercenaries, evil nouveau riche, prostitutes, guerrillas, and expats hang out.

Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances.

Because you care.



That's Djimon Hounsou reading from the essay in a video produced for Bono's online magazine and music service, (RED)Wire. The full version of Binyavanga Wainaina's essay appeared in Granta. Wainaina himself offers further explanation of his essay in a three-part video that begins here.

Binyavanga Wainaina is a Kenyan author, journalist and winner of the Caine Prize for his short story "Discovering Home." He is the founding editor of the literary magazine Kwani?, and he has also written for The East African, National Geographic, The Sunday Times (South Africa), the New York Times and The Guardian (UK). In 2007, Wainaina was a Writer-in-Residence at Union College in Schenectady, New York, and he’s the newly appointed director of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Literature and Languages at Bard College.


[h/t: Jack Turner, Jack and Jill Politics; Renee also has a discussion of the video at Womanist Musings]

offer tips to employees for dealing with workplace diversity

The Delaware Department of Transportation (also known as DelDOT) recently devoted two pages of its employee newsletter to a "Diversity Spotlight," which is a list of tips aimed at enhancing communication and relations between different sorts of employees.

However, rather than recommending what to say or how to say it, the tips consist entirely of things not to say.

What do you think of the Department of Transportation's advice? Do you get official advice like this on your job? And do you ever get questions like this from your coworkers?

The entire two pages can be found here (PDF).

Comments you never want to make to a coworker
WORKPLACE FAUX PAS

Curiosity is natural; and with a diverse workforce, inquiring minds always want to know. How you communicate your inquiries can keep you from offending your co-workers.

How can you go about interacting with your colleagues without putting your foot in your mouth? How do you keep from getting the cold shoulder and creating friction in the workplace? . . .

It is always better to be honest and acknowledge your unfamiliarity when you are curious about a person or a topic. It is never inappropriate to build a better working relationship with your co-worker by getting to know them. You can never go wrong by saying “I really don't know that much about...” or “I’m curious about this, would you be offended if I asked you….?” People will have greater respect for you when you are sincere and admit you are genuinely interested in learning about them.


Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Co-workers

Employees who make the decision to “come out” are usually apprehensive about the kinds of reaction they will receive from colleagues.

• What did your family say?

This is personal and not an opportunity to start gossip.

• I don’t consider you gay.

This is insensitive.

• Have you thought about getting help?

You are stereotyping, telling the person there’s something wrong that should be fixed.

• Never call a coworker a “fag” or “homo.”

This is derogatory, rude, and totally insensitive.

• I didn’t need to hear that.

If you are not interested in the person’s personal life, simply say “Thank you.”

African American Coworkers

• The “N” word

You may have heard comedians or African Americans use the word “nigger” casually. It is never, ever acceptable to use this word in any context. You are asking for trouble; leave this one alone.

• You people

Let’s just say you are asking for trouble when you make this reference. Your focus should be on the individual, not the race or culture.

• Should we order fried chicken or watermelon for you?

This is stereotyping and shows ignorance.

• You are articulate, or you speak very well.

As opposed to what? You may be implying that most African Americans are not well spoken or well educated. Remember a vice presidential candidate made this mistake.

• I am not prejudiced against black people, my neighbors are black.

You are saying it’s all right to treat people differently because you know a few people of the same race.

Asian Co-workers

• You must be the new IT person.

All Asians are not IT professionals.

• You speak English very well, or did you learn to speak English in America?

You are assuming that everyone who speaks with an accent is foreign born. The fact is that we all speak with an accent; e.g., New England, Southern, British, etc. The appropriate approach should be “I’m not familiar with your accent, may I ask where your accent is from?”

• What’s your native language?

Don’t assume because people look differently or speak differently that they are not natural-born Americans or are from a foreign country. Remember we have military bases all over the world; and don’t forget the Peace Corps or Fortune 500 companies with employees and families spending the bulk of their lives overseas.

• Can you recommend a good Chinese restaurant?

All Asians are not Chinese. Take some time to study a world map. The world is made up of continents with many countries, regions, cultures, and sub-cultures. Remember the news reports about a vice presidential candidate who thought Africa was a country.

• Wow, you are from India! My neighbor Ashok Shah is from India; do you know him?

Think for a minute … do you know every American - or everyone who lives in Dover or Wilmington?

White Co-workers

• That’s how a typical white person acts.

You are suggesting that all white people are the same by putting them in the same category. The behavior may have nothing to do with the person’s race.

• I don’t trust white people; they are all racists.

This is stereotyping and totally insensitive. Get to know the person or discuss why the actions may have offended you. Don’t generalize.

• White trailer trash.

Why would you think that referring to someone as trash is acceptable? This is derogatory, and should never ever be used.

Hispanic/Latino Co-workers

• You know we should send all of you back across the border.

Don’t assume because people look differently or speak differently that they are not natural-born Americans. Where did your ancestors come from?

• It is never ever acceptable to refer to a Hispanic/Latino co-worker as a “spic” “wetback” or “hot footer.”

This is derogatory.

• Can you help me out with my landscaping?

Why would you assume that all Hispanics/Latinos are landscaping experts?

• Can you recommend a good Mexican Restaurant?

This is stereotyping and shows ignorance. All Hispanics/Latinos are not Mexicans.

try to get close to black people

Take a look at CNN's Kyra Phillips, boldly addressing some sticky issues with a noticeably black guy, T. J. Holmes. It seems to me that while the ostensible topic here is the personality and style of Barack Obama, Phillips is also trying to cozy up to blackness. Which is what I guess white people are supposed to be doing these days, now that a black man and his family occupy the White House.

Kyra Phillips is also trying to understand here what "black culture" is, and her method is to quiz one of its spokespeople. And I guess since T. J. Holmes is black, why wouldn't he want to serve as a tour guide of black culture? (I look forward to the segment where Phillips serves as the tour guide for "white culture.")

If white folks are feeling a need to get closer to black folks these days, is this a good way to do it? By insisting on awkward conversations, and by trying to define Barack Obama's "swagga"?

feel bad about participating in gentrification

This is a guest post by Phoebe Caulfield, who blogs at Rectory Entrance. Phoebe says about herself, "I'm a twenty-something living in New York. I'm also semi-reformed white trash, an ex-christian, a feminist, and angry."

"How's that gentrification going?"

This might be TMI for an anonymous blog, but I live in Harlem. When we moved to New York, we had a weekend to find our place, and this was the second building we looked at. It was in our price range, on Manhattan, and in a great location relative to Boyfriend's work and where (we presumed) I was going to school at the time. The building was brand new, gorgeous, and just right for us. So we moved to Harlem.

At the time, I didn't think twice about it. My knowledge of New York City and its neighborhoods was pretty limited, and although I associated Harlem with its large African-American population, I knew little of this thing called "gentrification." That's a term that New Yorkers (and I'm sure residents in other cities) throw around pretty often. I didn't even hear it for the first time until we had been here for about two weeks. I can't remember where I heard the term or in what context, but something prompted me to look it up (Wikipedia, natch).

Gentrification is, as Wikipedia defines it, the change in an urban area associated with the movement of more affluent individuals into a lower-class area. Let's not forget that class is hopelessly entangled with race as well, and so in places like Harlem the more honest definition of "gentrification" would be: When rich, white individuals move into a poor, black and/or Hispanic neighborhood. For the city and the affluent people who move to lower-class areas, gentrification is a real boon. It produces more revenue for the city in terms of higher property taxes, changes the character of neighborhoods, and can reduce neighborhood crime rates. The City of New York would like to see Harlem and places like it gentrified. In fact, I believe my building was part of the city's conscious effort to do just that: The city auctioned off "postage stamp" lots for a bargain price of $1 million. My landlord bought one of these properties, and on it she constructed the building in which I sit typing this.

Unfortunately, it turns out those benefits for the city come at a cost. A human one. Higher property taxes mean the current neighborhood residents can't afford their homes anymore. Higher rents on gentrified properties drive up rents of surrounding buildings, and landlords force out their tenants with inflated rents. People who have lived in these neighborhoods for generations suddenly have to find somewhere else to live. People become homeless. And when I say that gentrification changes the "character" of the neighborhood, what that usually means is that it makes the neighborhood "whiter." Suddenly, a neighborhood in which residents have spent years socializing and bonding on their stoops and on the sidewalk is antagonized by white residents who don't understand the culture and make noise complaints. Instead of small, locally-run shops, a couple of Starbucks and Duane Reades move in. Although the wealthy white people who now occupy the neighborhood (and run the government) may see these things as an advantage, they are decidedly not beneficial to the already disenfranchised residents.

When I finally took the time to do some reading about gentrification, I was astounded and saddened at my own ignorance. I didn't know about it when we moved, and I was ashamed to be part of the problem. Correction: I am still ashamed that I am part of that problem. What I saw when we moved was a beautiful apartment in our price range, in a good location, that was well below what landlords in other areas were charging for units that weren't even as nice. We aren't "rich," and so we jumped on the find. But although we aren't rich, we're obviously better off than many of the other residents in Harlem, particularly those who live in the housing projects beside us and across the street. We're especially better off than those who stand in line for the food pantry every Sunday at the church on the other side of us. Oh, and did I mention that we're automatically more privileged in this society than every minority resident in Harlem simply by virtue of the fact that we're white?

So yeah, I feel pretty fucking bad about moving to this neighborhood. And it's not because it's "dangerous" or because residents harass us in some way. To the contrary, in the nearly-year that we've lived here no one has bothered or hassled us in any way that we haven't encountered in other city neighborhoods; I regularly stumble home drunk at 2 am feeling no more danger than I would stumbling home elsewhere at 2 am; and I've never lived someplace where the neighbors have been friendlier. I feel bad that the very act of signing a lease in this neighborhood poses a serious threat to the future of Harlem and its residents. I feel bad that the neighbors who are so friendly might be forced out in ten years' time, and that Harlem will soon become indistinguishable from Park Slope. I feel bad that it's my fault.

Maybe it's because I grew up without much money myself and have faced class discrimination that I empathize with the people whom gentrification adversely affects, but I thought any city resident would be able to see what a problem this is. I guess not, because this week a rich, white professional asked me, in cheerful and optimistic way, "So, how's gentrification going up there?" This is not the first time someone has asked me this question, and it is certainly not the first time someone has asked it as though they were inquiring whether my open, festering sore had healed nicely.

When asked in such a manner, that question boils down to this: "So, how's the forced evacuation of blacks and Hispanics going? And the poor in general? You've driven them out as well? Excellent."

I'm never sure how to answer that question. I try to be diplomatic and polite (something along the lines of "fine" and switching the subject usually works), but maybe I ought to be more direct about my feelings on the subject. What would I say? "Yes, depriving poor minorities of their homes and businesses is going swimmingly. I certainly love waking up each morning and thinking: What can I do today that will squelch the local culture into a bland, white mass?"

We were ignorant when we moved, but we know better now. We would like to move and not be part of this problem anymore, but I will admit that it is difficult, because we fall into what you would call New York's middle class (if it had one). We're somewhere between affording Harlem and affording Chelsea, but there isn't much in the way of accommodating that. We're recent college grads and it will take time before we are able to afford a place in an affluent neighborhood. But there's the rub: I can defend why we, and other gentrifiers choose these neighborhoods on the grounds that high prices elsewhere have driven us out; however, I can't defend doing the same thing to an even more disadvantaged group, especially when we have cause to believe we will eventually possess the earning power to move to those affluent areas that we can't afford now. Many residents of this neighborhood won't ever have that opportunity, and all we're doing is destroying the only place they have so we can have a temporary foothold on our way up.

So yes, we are looking for a new place at the end of this lease, in a different neighborhood. The shitty economy may work in our favor this time, as dropping rents may make those neighborhoods more accessible to us. I can't guarantee that we'll be able to find a place, and I genuinely enjoy our current apartment. But it would sadden me to be part of this problem for much longer, especially now that I know about it. That said, I realize that nothing is going to stop gentrification: What the local government wants, the local government gets. And really, nothing can change the fact that we've already contributed to the problem. But if we move, at least I can finally sleep at night knowing I'm no longer helping the government further disenfranchise the poor. And maybe the next time someone asks me the dreaded gentrification question, I can tell them how I really feel about it.

white quotation of the week (jourdon anderson)

When American slavery ended, some former slaves returned to their white "owners," lured by offers of payment for the work that they'd previously done for free. In the following letter, a freed slave named Jourdon Anderson replied to a written request for his return.


Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson
Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here; I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks here call her Mrs. Anderson), and the children, Milly, Jane and Grundy, go to school and are learning well; the teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves down in Tennessee." The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, to call you master. Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost Marshal General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly--and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future.

I served you faithfully for thirty-two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve--and die if it comes to that--than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson



[This letter appeared in The Freedman's Book, a collection of writings by "colored authors" compiled in 1865 by the abolitionist Lydia Maria Child. These words appear above the letter: "Written just as he dictated it."]

Update: Thanks to commenter ZacMatic, who found the entire scanned book at Google Books; it's actually called The Freedmen's Book. Also, the letter was published in two different newspapers, the Cincinnati Commercial and then the New York Tribune, before appearing in Child's book.

Update II: There's a thorough, passionate discussion of the likelihood that Anderson actually produced this letter at Rad Geek People's Daily.

associate the term "white" with "white trash," and rarely with themselves

Someone arrived on this blog today by asking Google this question: "Can [a] white person call other people white trash?"

I don't know if I can answer that question; actually, in America, pretty much anyone can call anyone else whatever they like. The likely consequences, though, are more complicated.

How's that for avoiding the question?

Anyway, someone asking that question today is interesting timing, since I've been writing a post about white people who identify other white people as, basically, "white trash." Or "trailer trash," or rednecks, hicks, hillbillies, and so on.

So, when it comes to white people labeling other white people, here's a thing that I've noticed a lot of white people doing--limiting their use of the word "white" to descriptions of white people that they'd also describe as "white trash." When they talk about other classes of people, those are just people, or else "middle-class" people, or "upper-class" or "rich" people (or other kinds of people who happen to seem unremarkably white, like Catholics or Methodists, or New Yorkers or Californians or Midwesterners, and so on).

I think a lot of white people who don't consider themselves "white trash," or working-class, or lower-class, also don't commonly think of themselves as "white." It's a sort of unconscious given for them, a taken-for-granted, unremarkable, and thus (to them) unmentionable part of themselves.

These white people do of course realize that the word "white" describes themselves, especially if something reminds them that they are white, like being in an elevator with people who aren't white, or noticing when a taxi stops for them after passing up a potential black customer.

The word "white" itself has bad connotations. A lot of baggage, you know? Aside from the usual workings of social and cultural hegemony--whereby the dominant tend to see themselves as members of the dominant group less often, and less strongly, than those outside or "below" that group tend to see them that way--many white people don't like to think of themselves as "white" because the word conjures up nasty associations. Like racism, of course, but also specific examples of racism, like lynchings, white supremacists and the KKK, the Civil War, segregation, the Confederate flag, white flight, sterile white suburbs, a supposed lack of culture, bad dancing, and so on.

In the past, and still today, it seems that the white people who care about most of those things, and cling to them, also care about being "white." They even seem proud of being white. So, the thinking seems to go, if I'm white and I don't care about those things--and in fact, I hate those things--then why would I want to declare myself white? I think I'll just be "me" instead, and I hope you'll think of me that way too. (And hey, if you're black, I'll think of you that way too--I promise!)

I spent my adolescence in an upper-middle-class, very white suburb. Among the people I knew, we almost never used the word "white" to describe each other. However, we did use the term "white trash" to describe some other people, and that's basically what we meant when we also described small-town white people as "hicks." Their whiteness was somehow visible, and noticeable enough to label. And ours, we seemed to think, wasn't.

I was reminded last week of this denigrating and distancing thing that some white people do, when I read a column by a white liberal, "politically incorrect" commentator, Bill Maher. I often enjoy his sarcastic, sometimes scathing rants, but I've noticed that like so many comedians and other commentators, he often limits his use of the word "white" to those who are commonly labeled "white trash."

Unlike some other white comedians, Maher does not himself identify as a lower-class white person. Seemingly as a result, his references to lower-class whites are often disdainful. As Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz write in their book White Trash, "Americans love to hate the poor. Lately, it seems that there is no group of poor folks they like to hate more than white trash."

Most Americans know who "white trash" are, or rather, who they supposedly are. The stereotypes are solidly engrained in our culture, and continously regurgitated by corporate entertainment. The most relentless, sickening example I can think of is the 2001 movie Joe Dirt.

In the following scene, Joe (played by David Spade) acts out the stereotype that supposedly accounts for "white trash" stupidity--their sexual attraction to their own family members.




As far as I know, Bill Maher is a self-declared liberal, so you'd think he would be on the side of the poor, instead of the side of the rich (even though he himself must be relatively rich). And in most of the commentary that I've seen and read from Maher, he is on the side of the poor, at least in what he says.

So it becomes paradoxical, or maybe hypocritical, when he slings around classist stereotypes that signal a hateful disdain for poor white people. I noticed Maher doing this common, ironically white thing last week, in a Los Angeles Times column that he wrote about the recent Tea Party protests and the troubled Republican Party.

Right from the first sentence, Maher indicates that he was struck (as I was) by the overwhelming whiteness of the crowds. He also indicates that this whiteness is going to be a big part of his focus on the protesters:

If conservatives don't want to be seen as bitter people who cling to their guns and religion and anti-immigrant sentiments, they should stop being bitter and clinging to their guns, religion and anti-immigrant sentiments.

In this allusion to Barack Obama's campaign-season comment about small-town voters, Maher not only begins by raising the specter of racial whiteness. He also immediately attaches the concept of "white," without even saying it, to lower-class white people.

Obviously, a lot of politically conservative white people--and thus, presumably, a lot of the Tea Party protesters--are not poor. In fact, since Republican policies generally favor the rich instead of the poor, it makes sense that a lot of people with money, white or otherwise, will vote Republican.

Nevertheless, Maher wants to joke sarcastically about Republicans, who are mostly white; since the white people commonly deemed worthy of prejudicial, stereotypical humor are poor white people, his jokes continue to descend downward on the class ladder. Early in the article, he writes,

It's sad what's happened to the Republicans. They used to be the party of the big tent; now they're the party of the sideshow attraction, a socially awkward group of mostly white people who speak a language only they understand. Like Trekkies, but paranoid. . . .

That's not especially classist yet, and in fact, I don't know about you, but I associate Trekkies with suburban, mostly white kids who spend too much time in their basements (not to fling around my own stereotypes). But then Maher continues:

Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota recently said she fears that Obama will build "reeducation" camps to indoctrinate young people. But Obama hasn't made any moves toward taking anyone's guns, and with money as tight as it is, the last thing the president wants to do is run a camp where he has to shelter and feed a bunch of fat, angry white people.

Look, I get it, "real America." After an eight-year run of controlling the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, this latest election has you feeling like a rejected husband. You've come home to find your things out on the front lawn--or at least more things than you usually keep out on the front lawn. You're not ready to let go, but the country you love is moving on. And now you want to call it a whore and key its car.

That's what you are, the bitter divorced guy whose country has left him--obsessing over it, haranguing it, blubbering one minute about how much you love it and vowing the next that if you cannot have it, nobody will.

But it's been almost 100 days, and your country is not coming back to you. She's found somebody new. And it's a black guy.

How many "white trash" markers did you read?

Who else but those white people "below" people like Bill Maher are commonly described as worried about having their guns taken away; as "fat and angry"; as keepers of a lot of things on their front lawns; and as especially disgusted by the idea of interracial relationships?

At the end of his article, after castigating nearly the entire Republican Party in this classist mode, Maher suddenly shifts into a bifurcated conception of it:

And if today's conservatives are insulted by this, because they feel they're better than the people who have the microphone in their party, then I say to them what I would say to moderate Muslims: Denounce your radicals. To paraphrase George W. Bush, either you're with them or you're embarrassed by them.

A close look at Maher's attempt at humorous commentary reveals some bad logic. He goes from casting aspersions on the "trashy" lot of them, to perceiving them as a group with both loud, attention-getting extremists and moderates. This bad logic comes about because he's known as a humorist, and in order to write funny, he resorts to classist stereotypes, collapsing a bifurcated vision of Tea Party protesters into a singular vision of white trash lowlifes, who exist in a place that's definitely beneath people like Bill Maher. If his appeal to Republican moderates is at all sincere, I can't imagine why he thinks it would work.

So why do some white people do what Maher does here, that is, limit their explicit identification of whiteness to lower/working-class white people?

I think the primary motivation, a mostly unconscious one, is pretty simple. As Wray and Newitz write, "The term white trash helps solidify for the middle and upper classes a sense of cultural and intellectual superiority."

By explicitly or implicitly highlighting the whiteness of "white trash," middle and upper-class white people can escape, once again, the discomfort of being labeled white themselves.

listen to racist music

I've blogged before about the anti-racist music that some white folks enjoy. However, I've yet to call attention to the blatantly racist music that a lot of other white folks enjoy.

Why, for instance, is the following song still in heavy rotation on "classic rock" radio stations and such?

Can you think of other songs that are popular despite their racist content?




As I write, this version of "Brown Sugar" (one of many others on YouTube) has been viewed 1,113,772 times.

(By the way, does the Rolling Stones' tribute to Angela Davis make up for it?)


Brown Sugar
(The Rolling Stones)

gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields,
sold in a market down in New Orleans.
Scarred old slaver know he's doin' all right.
Hear him whip the women just around midnight.

brown sugar
how come you taste so good
brown sugar
just like a young girl should


drums beating cold
English blood runs hot
lady of the house wondrin
where its gonna stop.
house boy knows that he's doin' all right.
you shoulda heard him just around midnight.


brown sugar
how come you taste so good
mmm, brown sugar
just like a young girl should

aw, get down on your knees
brown sugar
how come you dance so good?
aw, get down on the ground
brown sugar
just like a young girl should

I bet your mama was a tent-show queen,
and all her girlfriends
were sweet sixteen.
I'm no schoolboy but I know what I like,
You shoulda heard me just around midnight.

brown sugar
how come you taste so good
aw get down
brown sugar
just like a young girl should.

I said yeah, yeah, yeah,
how come you taste so good?
yeah, yeah, yeah.
just like a young girl should.

white interview : damali ayo

damali ayo's award-winning art has been shown at galleries across the world. She has spoken to colleges, high schools, non-profits and communities in 20 U.S. states and Canada about race, diversity, art and eco-living. damali ayo and her work have been featured in over 100 publications world-wide including Harpers, the Village Voice, Salon.com, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune, as well as CSPAN2's "Book TV" and Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor."

damali's name means "beautiful vision of joy," which is also the name of her blog. She's the author of the books How to Rent a Negro and the upcoming Obamistan! Land Without Racism: Your Guide to the New America.



macon: So what are you doing these days? You've done so much to shed light on matters of race, and whiteness. Are those still topics you're still working on?

damali: Yeah. So, yeah. I'm still working on race. I tried to get away from it for a while and opened an eco-friendly clothing company but the recession ate that and honestly, what I needed was a vacation, not a small business.

I came back right before the Obama election, just after someone called me "nigger" on the street. It was quite the moment. Anyway, I found this world where people think that now that Obama is in office, racism has ended, so that made it even more clear that my work isn't nearly finished. To that end I am writing a new book called OBAMISTAN! LAND WITHOUT RACISM, hopefully to explode the notion that racism is over.

I am also trying to find ways to do this work while finding a sense of joy and levity in it, so the more I work on it the more I turn into a stand-up comedian. My lectures have totally turned into a stand-up routine, which I love. I'm working up a full-fledged routine to launch this fall. I'm thinking of calling it "I Love White People." So yes, I'm still working on race. :)


Well I'm glad you are, and thank you for so many educational and inspiring projects. It sounds like you still have a lot to say on the topic of race, and I think your work so far says a great deal about it--and about whiteness more specifically--that most white people don't know about. And yeah, I think you're often funny too.

Your new book sounds like satire, which is how I read How to Rent a Negro. Satire is risky, of course--some people just won't get it. Did you have that problem with Rent a Negro? I noticed, for instance, that some people went to the web site and actually tried to "rent a negro"!

Yeah. I mean as if I didn't already feel marginalized as a woman, and as a black person, and any other number of oppressed groups that I belong to, I decided to be a satirist. Joy.

But when the world is so absurd, it seems like the only recourse. And sadly, yes, people take it seriously. Sometimes I wonder if there's any hope for progress as long as people are so darn literal.


So given that you're often a satirist, I take it from your new book's title that you see America with Obama--or "Obamistan! Land without Racism"--as a land that is NOT without racism. Is its racism any different from before Obama? Has it decreased significantly, or is it pretty much the same old batch of problems?

Today on the radio I heard Mara Liasson (a fellow Brown alum) say "Obama has 10 people who would fall into the category of 'women or minority' in his cabinet and the fact that we haven't made any comment on that shows us how far we've come." My out-loud response was "AWESOME! TEN people counting women AND minorities, that really makes a revolution in our representative government. Thank goodness! We have come a long way baby."

It's ridiculous. People are breaking their arms patting themselves on the back about this election. There is still so much to be accomplished, I can't even start to say. People think the change is subtle and a famous Desi DJ tweeted the other day that she couldn't get served at a restaurant, and a month before the election someone called me a nigger on my street in my own neighborhood.

So, no. We've still got racism, and with the extra layer of post-Obama denial, it's going to be even harder to get people to fess up and grow. People are lazy, really lazy. The hardest thing about fighting racism is that it requires people to actually do personal growth and analysis--beyond race, just about themselves. This is something most people spend their lives running from, so by the time i come along and ask them to grow, evolve personally with regards to race, they are already pissed off, defensive, and tired.


How did Rent a Negro come about? Was it around the same time that you did your "Reparations" performance art? Did those two projects go together at all?

No. Those two projects didn't go together. During that time I was creating art constantly--it was a great time. I was also learning web design and had just learned how to make forms. It was so long ago--before blogs! Can you imagine? 2003. Anyway, I was excited about making forms and also really burnt out about racial crap and feeling like a black person for hire--the two things entered into my brain and out popped rent-a-negro.com.

Similarly with panhandling for reparations--I was creating a work about panhandling as work and it wasn't turning out as i wanted. At the same time there was a lot of coverage of reparations on Capitol Hill. The two went into my head and--whammo--within a few months I was panhandling for reparations.




I suppose satire can lose its punch when you explain it, but if you're willing, could you explain what you were basically getting at with the Rent a Negro project?

Satire does lose its punch when it is explained, which is why the site doesn't have an explanation. One of my grad school profs once told me that i needed to pass out flyers explaining my panhandling performance and i felt like he had lost all touch with the fact that it was a work of art. Sad.

But anyway.

It's like this. My friend is a mechanic. If she's at a party and people ask her questions about cars, she tells them to come back to her office during office hours and she charges them. Fair, right? But if you are a person of color in our culture, people feel like they can bombard you racially not only with questions but with ignorance, need for absolution, touching, feeling, singing, rhyming, rapping, and mimicking what they perceive to be your language and culture. This is not only deemed acceptable behavior in our culture, but when people of color speak out against it we are treated as if *we* are the ones stepping out of line.

I decided to explore that experience, and what i see as extremely rude and poor-citizen behavior, by positing this as a commercial interaction--that like the mechanic, have people treat me like a professional person of color.

And in this country, this world, once you put a price on things--people suddenly perceive it to have a value. I wanted people to see that they were 1) treating people of color like servants 2) expecting us to work for free and 3) show how much that service should really be valued at-- which is a way to get at the cost of ignorance. In addition, I wanted to modernize the language of "ownership" of black people into a legal modern-day post-slavery form. I discovered that "renting" summed it up in that white people think they can borrow that racial experience and then return or reject it when it no longer suits their tastes, needs, whims, or folly.

Finally, i was excited to carry the work of Dick Gregory and Godfrey Cambridge, who originally coined the term "rent a negro," into the 21st wired century.


At one point, the book advises those who are planning to rent about how to start a conversation with the black person that they're renting. It suggests that they begin by approaching them as an expert about blackness, with questions like, "I bet you have an interesting opinion on this, being black and all," and "I have a situation I bet you could help with . . . there is this woman at my job, and well, she's black . . ." Your point there seems clear--"White folks, don't expect expertise about blackness from black folks."

I'm wondering, though, about something that's sort of the opposite. That is, I think black people often know some things about white people that white people themselves don't know. If that's true, then they often are sort of like experts on race, but not necessarily the kind of experts that whites expect them to be. Should white people start listening more to non-white people about themselves, and about racism? If so, how could that listening be encouraged or facilitated?

Nice observation. I often feel like I am an expert on white people. The thing that people do not understand is that when you are treated as a second-class citizen in any society--you are required both legally, institutionally and for your own survival to be well versed in the ways of the first-class citizens of that society. Thus people of color spend a lifetime learning about white people, observing white people and learning how to interact with white people on a variety of levels--from how to get ahead, to how to not get killed.

White people must start listening to the observation and experiences of people of color with regards to whiteness. We'd all move along so much faster then. In my "fixracism.com" project, the second step for white people is "LISTEN." It's just that simple. You don't know it all--in fact you know very little because you are only required by our society to know about yourself. For a change of pace, stop thinking about yourself, your reactions, your 401K, your right or wrong, your defensiveness and all the white people you are afraid you'll be compared to and just hear people of color. Just listen.


Yes. Along those lines, I've been interested in the word "ignorance" lately, especially how it's related to the word "ignore." I think a lot of white ignorance or naivete about racism comes from ignoring it. It's often not that they don't know about it; it's more that they don't want to know about it, or they pretend they don't. Is that anything like what you were getting at in your book with SIS, the "Selective Ignorance Syndrome"?

HAH! i forgot about that. yes. i also call it willful ignorance or for short, laziness.

In this world of resources-at-our-fingertips there is simply no excuse for ignorance about anything. My biggest pet peeve lately is that white people always want a new and fresh explanation, as if the ones that people of color have been writing and saying for centuries just aren't good enough. It goes to that spoiled thing that happens when you are the center of your society--you get lazy and want everything brought to you on a platter.

People are going to be pissed that i said that.


I think some white readers who basically get what you're saying with this satiric handbook could still sort of fall back on themselves with it, instead of becoming more genuinely anti-racist. By that i mean, they might just see its many insights into black/white relations as recommendations for merely learning how to seem less racist themselves. Do you see that as a potential problem with How to Rent a Negro?

Not so far. It doesn't allow that. I am proud of that book. It holds the reader accountable and that's good. The feedback I've gotten is that there's no where to squirm.


The kind of racism that the book addresses seems mostly to occur on an individual, interpersonal level. Has the book been criticized at all for not addressing systemic or institutional racism? Do you think it actually does address racism's broader contexts and effects?

The book hasn't been criticized for that but I have. However, it's part of the racist system that we expect the people of color who speak up to be experts and active on every single corner of the universe while white people are still contemplating why they can't use the "n word."

Okay, now all your readers had a moment to contemplate that and we can get back to the convo.

See how easily distracted white people are?

Anyhoo . . . I don't do institutional oppression. I know it, I've studied it, if pressed I could write a darn thorough paper on it, but the place in which I have chosen to situate myself is between and among people and our interactions. I think there is a way that the learning that happens (if it is true good, effective learning) between people can "trickle up" to the powers that be.

And, in my understanding--for example, when I work with young white men, I feel that they are very likely the future "powers that be," so my work with individuals eventually finds its way into those power structures via the people who build them. I feel proud that one of my "kids" has been a legal clerk, a military lawyer and will probably run for office one day. Every time he's in a room, I'm in the room. I know that for sure. I think it's actually quite subversive, the way I approach things.


That makes sense to me. So, you said that your lectures are becoming like a stand-up routine. Is that a tactic for addressing what I'm guessing are largely white audiences more effectively? Or is it a result of your personality, or maybe both?

My whole life I've said "if i had any balls, I'd be a stand up comedian." I guess I'm finally growing a pair.


Can you share a bit of your current humor with us? Or if that won't translate here--are there particular topics or behaviors that you joke about?

OMG. Well. hm. i am working some with race and some with just my societal observations--it's a cool doorway into things. One joke i am working up goes something like "so, if you think that your dog is racist--don't you think you should do something to address this?" I mean I have really met people and their dogs--who bark at me and then the person says, "my dog is so racist" like it's funny. This makes me equally mystified and angry, and i think this kind of behavior is emblematic of our larger problem.


Any idea when your new book will come out? And do you have other projects in the works that you can say anything about yet?

2010 for the book. As far as other projects...not at the moment. I am really loving doing my "I Can Fix Racism" lectures though, and they are very funny. All of your readers should go to my web page right now and invite me to come to their school or community. It's a night you will not forget.


Thank you so much for your time, damali, and I'm really looking forward to your next book. And, I hope, to seeing your anti-racism stand-up routine some time.

Macon--let me thank you. It is so refreshing to see someone take on the role of holding up a mirror to white people that I think is so important. and white people can do it and not get as tired, angry, or downright bored as I have gotten at times. I really hope you and others like you send me quickly to a happy retirement.


We'll try to do our best. One other thing--you got around some when How to Rent a Negro came out--what was it like to be on Bill O'Reilly's show? And is he as much of a mega-jerk as he seems to be?

Bill is a giant white man with a shit-ton of make up on. He was oddly nice to me. No, really. The producer and my publicist, who was there, were all freaked out. The pre-interview the producer did with me was ten times harsher than ol' Bill. My mom liked it. She told me to send him a card. I did, I sent him one of my "we don't talk about racism" race greeting cards.


damali ayo's bout with Bill O'Reilly is on YouTube here, as is some documentation of her piece "Living Flag: Panhandling for Reparations." She explains the latter here, and her own extensive site is here.

feel uncomfortable about hugging

This is a cross-post from Daniel Cubias's blog, The Hispanic Fanatic. Cubias also does a column for the Huffington Post, and he writes of the Hispanic Fanatic, who may or may not be an alter-ego, that he "has an IQ of 380, the strength of twelve men, and can change the seasons just by waving his hand. Despite these powers, however, he remains a struggling writer. . . . the Hispanic Fanatic is a Latino male in his late thirties. He lives in a Midwestern city, where he works as a business writer. He was raised in another Midwestern city, but he has also lived in New York and California. He and his wife own a house where two cats and a dog call the shots."



prepare for impact

It wasn’t happy hour. It was more like unhappy hour, and it was held at a bar near my former place of employment. At the end of this going-away party for all of us who had just been downsized (see my earlier post on this), the time came to say goodbye to my former colleagues, make sincere but doomed promises to stay in touch, and exchange final hugs.

Actually, I pretty much had to skip that last one.

You see, I live in the Midwest, and most of my ex-coworkers are born-and-bred white middle Americans. As such, they are as comfortable with the idea of hugging as China is with dissent.

One of my friends, a woman I had worked with for years, announced beforehand that she rarely hugged her family members and never her friends, so I would have to settle for a handshake. Her preemptive strike was because she knew my propensity to embrace people.

It’s not that I’m touchy-feely. Indeed, I’ve been accused of being reserved, aloof, and even insensitive. On any given personality test, I always come back as introverted and quiet (not shy; there’s a difference). Bubbly and outgoing are among the last adjectives one would use to describe me.

So where does all this hugging come from? You guessed it: the Latino gene.

Hispanics hug out of instinct. We hug loved ones and acquaintances. We hug when saying hello or goodbye. We hug when overjoyed and when offering condolences. And yes, we will even hug you.

The cultural reasons for this are unknown to me. But it’s a very real phenomenon. Suffice to say, we’re perplexed at white America’s reticence and (I’ll just say it) uptight attitude about being touched.

This can lead to painful interactions, which I have witnessed at times, where the white person sticks out a hand, and the Hispanic person looks at it as if mystified at what to do with the offending object. Depending on the relationship and the setting, you may as well spit in a Latino’s face if a handshake is the best you can offer.

Even my wife, of fine German-Irish stock, was thrown off by my tendency to wrap my arms around people. I hugged her once when we were still in the “just friends” stage of our relationship, and she figured I was up to something . . . ok, she was right about that one. But that’s not usually the case.

The point is that my wife, who is extroverted and expressive, was confused by my behavior. These days, of course, she reciprocates the bone-crushing clasps that my family dishes out as greetings. It’s what we do.

And on a larger level, and at the risk of getting all New Agey, isn’t this the exact right time to hug? With a collapsing economy and nonstop wars going on, I would think more Americans would appreciate a comforting embrace.

But in fact, just the opposite is true. Over the last few years, for example, several public schools have tried to ban hugging among students. It’s supposedly to decrease the odds of a physical confrontation. The irony, of course, is that a hug is the least threatening gesture that one can make. Such policies are clearly more about America’s sex-phobia and the discomfort that adults feel whenever they see teenagers touching each other. But that’s another post.

What it all means is that at some point, every American has to decide if he or she is going to follow the example of Hispanics (who, as I’ve stated many times before, are clearly taking over the country) or withdraw into a cold world where the nearest one gets to being touched is receiving an extra emoticon on the latest text message.

In any case, if you’re meeting a Latino for the first time, remember that we’re ok with a handshake for the initial encounter. After that, however, it has to be a business meeting or similarly inappropriate setting to keep us from wrapping you up.

Either that, or we really don’t like you.

laugh at overbearing white guys

Now that Barack Obama's been elected and he's hiring all sorts of non-standard people--like women, and brown people, and such--is the white American male in decline? Could the white male even be said to be "in crisis"?

How about it, white guys--are you feeling a loss of power? Is your self-confidence slipping, along with the sense of entitlement that people like you used to be able to count on?

Over at AskMen.com, they're dispensing advice on how to boost your confidence. But then, who do they choose for the article's accompanying photo of supremely self-confident masculine success? A black guy!

(AskMen.com)

As the guys at AskMen.com know, it's important to not only feel confident, but also to project confidence. It needs to radiate from you, like musk, and if it doesn't, you've gotta find ways to pump it up:

Even if you're reasonably assured most of the time, it is beneficial to do a little mental strengthening every once in a while. It feels good to be self-confident, which perpetuates more confidence, impresses people and brings you success.

A difficulty here is that you not only have to project confidence, you should feel it too. And for American white guys, who get bombarded more and more with Sarah Palins, Barack Obamas, Tiger Woodses and Nancy Pelosis, and then get represented themselves mostly by clowns and losers like Joe the Plumber, Jay Leno and Timothy Geithner--well, it's hard sometimes to keep feeling that confidence that you're nevertheless supposed to project.

So what's a white guy on his way up supposed to do these days? How about . . . design a new business card! Or maybe, make money by convincing other, less confident guys to redesign their business cards. . . and act very, very confident while doing so . . .




Actually, the guy in this video is a motivational speaker named Joel Bauer. He's also the author of a book with this charming title: How To Persuade People Who Don't Want To Be Persuaded: Get What You Want--Every Time! Videos of Joel Bauer selling various sorts of manly advice are popping up all over the Internets. He's getting lots of laughs, in ways he probably wouldn't appreciate.

Here's another one that's making the rounds. In this clip, Bauer (who identifies himself here as "a real person") promotes a self-defense boot camp, with the help of his understandably sullen daughter.




What I'm wondering about this latest Internet sensation of sorts is--as people laugh at the "douchebaggery" of Joel Bauer, are they also laughing at a certain kind of white guy, the assertive, entitled, hyper-masculine white guy? If so, does that laughter also register this kind of guy's declining power these days?

As scholars and philosophers and such tell us, socially constructed modes of identity are really all just performances. Society presents us with various scripted roles, and we reject or adopt them as we sit fit (or sometimes, as we feel pressured).

Maybe this kind of white American masculinity, which Joel Bauer performs and promotes with such clueless sincerity, is being laughed right off center stage. Let's hope so.

fail to realize that "the war on drugs" is actually a war on people

American Violet is a new movie that exposes the racist effects of America's decades-long "War on Drugs." It tells the true story of Texas resident Regina Kelly, a young mother of four who was swept up during a series of racially motivated drug raids.

Film reviewer Clay Cane declares American Violet "the first must-see film for African Americans in 2009." I haven't seen it yet, but it looks like a must-see for white Americas too, since most of them fail to realize that the "War on Drugs" is actually a war on people, most of them black and most of them poor.

This movie had a limited release a couple of days ago--if you've seen it, would you recommend it? And are there other films or resources you'd recommend on this topic?





For many Americans, the election of President Obama was the final nail in Jim Crow's coffin.

But it only takes fifteen minutes in any courthouse, watching the parade of black defendants arrested on drug charges, to realize racism still haunts us. Ostensibly color-blind, the enforcement of the US drug laws disproportionately targets black Americans.

Across the country, whites smoke weed and snort cocaine with relative impunity. Blacks and whites engage in drug offenses at roughly comparable rates, but the heavy hand of the law falls on the darker shoulders.

Blacks, for example, are currently arrested on drug charges at more than three times the rates of whites. They are sent to state prisons with drug convictions at ten times the rate of whites. Although there are approximately six times as many whites who use and sell drugs as blacks, almost half of state prisoners sentenced for drugs are black.

Researchers have documented and advocates have decried these racial disparities for two decades. But they are no accident. Although there have long been far more white drug offenders than black ones (not surprising given that blacks are only 13 percent of US population), the "war on drugs" was not created to curb white drug use. It was born in the mid-1980s when crack hit the streets; it was quickly demonized, and it was widely thought (albeit erroneously) to be linked exclusively to blacks. While "drugs" and "tough on crime" were the words used by politicians wooing an anxious white electorate with draconian new drug laws, the real, although unspoken, subject was race. The image of black drug dealers lurking in alleys rivaled that of Willie Horton in the panoply of white fears. . . .

--Jamie Fellner,
senior counsel of the US Program at
Human Rights Watch

appreciate opportunities to release their repressed racism in public

(Huffington Post; if you don't get
the reference, click here)

A lot of white Americans just can't swallow the idea of a black president. Especially one with Islamic something-or-other in his background, a supposedly uncertain place of birth, and a name that's so un-American it rhymes with that of a world-famous terrorist.

(source)

Now that Sarah Palin is no longer winking her way through racist innuendos at Klan campaign rallies, public expressions of white resentment are by and large verboten. Aside from muffled conversations with co-workers, and frustrated rants behind the closed doors of their homes, these people have had few chances to get together with others of their own kind and publicly unleash their white resentment.

But then this week, along came a chance for the repressed to return, in the form of nation-wide Teabagging Parties. Thousands of right-wing protesters turned out to (cluelessly) protest high taxes, in crowds that were at least 99% white. Not all of them could be fairly called "racists," but such homogeneous gatherings certainly attracted those who proudly wear that label.

"Stand idly by while some Kenyan tries to destroy
America? WAP!! I don't think so!!!
HOMEY DON'T PLAY DAT!!!"

As some intrepid reporters noted beforehand, white supremacists made plans to seize this day. Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times quotes the following note of encouragement, which appeared on a white nationalist web site:

"I think every [White Nationalist] needs to not only attend the April 15th Tea Party nearest you," writes one online boot boy, "but then stay involved and help provide leadership to this movement."

He continues, stating, "I believe that this is the white revolution we've been waiting for. It doesn't look what we expected but this is it...For the first time, white people (a.k.a. the lemmings) are finally awake and taking to the streets...Right now the movement is about taxes . . . but with leadership and guidance we can help turn this movement into a lot more.

"So turn off the computer. Take off the red laces and fold your jeans over your Doc Martins [sic]. Hang the storm trooper uniform in the closet. Take off the robe. Reverently fold your Confederate flag and put it away for now. Become one of them. Join the marches and help organize future events in your neighborhood. Go slow . . . don't hit people with WN philosophy all at once."

Clearly, most of the protesters were not hardcore white nationalists. Indeed, much of the racism on display was rather muted; most participants seemed to know that if what they had to say was to be taken at all seriously, they had to downplay the racist elements of their ostensibly anti-taxation message.

Then there were the tone-deaf, ahistorical trivializers of an earlier outbreak of virulent racism, the Holocaust:






When white protesters happened upon the jarring sight of a rare, conspicuous negro in the crowd, most of them probably flashed an approving grin of surprised delight. And then kept moving, of course.



The Tea Party protests got plenty of corporate media coverage--far more, it seems, than the millions more who protested the impending invasion of Iraq, such a long time ago.

Remember those protests, and how little coverage they got? Why did these people think that their protests would get much attention? Oh, wait, they did get attention, a lot of attention . . .

But what didn't get covered much at all was the white elephant in the room, or rather, out on the street. Did you hear any mention on TV--let alone any analysis--of the overwhelming whiteness of these crowds, and of their varied expressions of white racism?

Unfortunately, that's a rhetorical question, since I'm pretty sure you didn't.

And that's sad, and frightening. The racism of the Tea Party "Movement," such as it is, deserves extensive coverage, because it's not a merely marginal phenomenon. And it's not a declining one either. As a recent Department of Homeland Security report notes, "the economic downturn [is] invigorating rightwing extremist activity, specifically the white supremacist and militia movements."

We shouldn't let the anti-taxation message of these protesters override the other forms of resentment they feel. When these folks say they're "not going to take it anymore," some of what they're referring to is their trumped-up, racist fear, of supposedly invading hordes of people with non-white skin.

I'll leave the final word to Jill Tubman, who writes over at Jack and Jill Politics,

My main concern here is that the heated rhetoric around the protests could lead to violence against African-Americans, Jews and Latinos if some Tea Party recruits go from non-violent to violent. That’s why it’s important to drag the masked racism here out into the daylight, so we can deal with it and force denials from their movement leaders before certain elements become more brazen and people start getting hurt.




Most of the images above are from here; more documented atrocities here and here (actually, the supply is virtually unlimited).


UPDATE--A couple of gutsy white folks who also attended the protests--race traitors?

(source)

Regarding the whole "Obama's a tax-and-spend Socialist!" canard: