Yesterday Rodney King passed away. A police brutality victim who was fortunate in that he was being taped when officers unloaded their frustrations on him. The acquittal of the officers who beat him led to the 1992 riot and created a ripple effect throughout our society. Unfortunately there continues to be all too many people who still suffer a fate similar to Rodney King at the hands of people who shouldn’t be police officers. A code of silence and a political culture that venerates police much more than the citizens they are meant to serve have made police irreproachable even in cases of unjustifiable murder. This is just one aspect of an issue that includes lawmakers, judges, and for-profit prisons that leads to Americans having their liberties violated and trampled while creating a permanent underclass that costs the government more and more money each year while there is no estimate to the toll it takes on the people it affects.
Last night I finally caught the season première of True Blood. True Blood is something of guilty pleasure to me so I didn’t really feel any urgency to watch it live but I’ll definitely watch if I’m up at 2 in the morning and it’s on. After watching the show I wanted to get the reactions of others who follow the show more closely and may have caught something I missed or has a unique insight into the show. My first stop was Racialicious where they hold a round table who live blogs the show and has great commentary, this however stuck in my craw a bit.
Tami: So…they’re going for the murderous closeted gay man/gaysexual predator combo? For all the kudos this show gets for diversity, it sure treats marginalized people like shit.
The KKK Chapter in Georgia feels like they’re discriminated against. They’ve been denied an “Adopt A Highway” program in Georgia because of their history, ideology, and the fact that not too many people really want them around. The Daily Intel‘s Dan Amira has the rundown with the whiniest KKK quotes possible from April Chambers.
“I don’t see why we can’t (adopt the stretch of highway),” she said. “Would it be any different if it was the Black Panthers or something? Someone always has some kind of race card.”
We are through the looking glass here people although it should be no surprise that even people who voluntarily decided to join the Ku Klux Klan feel as if they are the real victims. It’s the perfect incident to view the inversion of actual grievances into a political, and publicity tactic in order to insulate from actual criticism or charges of racial bias. We’ve reached the point where the “the only racists are reverse racists” movement has moved beyond parody.
Projection and the trivialization of racial inequality continues apace. Since the height of the Civil Rights Movement there has been a backlash that has taken the thought that black people have just been “playing the victim”. This line of thinking has led many to believe that legitimate concerns are just tools to be deployed to cow opposition which has been adopted wholesale by conservatives in order to advance their agenda. This cynicism in the face of legitimate suffering has impeded the ability of our nation to move past inequalities that persist to this day.
Yesterday Congressman Steve King told constituents that the U.S. should only choose the best immigrants to accept into the nation the way one chooses “the pick of the litter”.
This supercut comes from “Dreams from My Real Father” a movie being pushed that purports to tell the “real” story of Barack Obama and his background. It’s easy to point out the extreme stretches of logic it would take to believe that Obama’s real father is Frank Marshall whose parentage was covered up by his grandfather who was secretly in the CIA. Why his CIA pops could cover up his birth but not prevent his daughter from having a child with a communist is an obvious question but I digress. We could spend all day debunking the “logic” on display here. What people tend to have a tougher time with is seeing through similar jumps in logic about conspiracy theories that are beneficial to their worldview. The odds that there are secret meetings by the world’s most powerful people collude to keep everyone else down are similar to the odds that there are secret meetings between black and Jewish people to overthrow white people. Conspiracy theories provide an easy out for the question of why things are the way they are. Acting as a deus ex machina for the thousands of little decisions and interactions that seemingly govern our world.
After President Obama’s announcement yesterday I’ve been thinking about the LGBT community, the black community and how they intersect in doing so I’m reminded of Bayard Rustin. As someone who started the Freedom Rides, was an early practitioner and Martin Luther King Jr.‘s teacher of non-violent resistance Bayard Rustin holds an enormous place in the history of black folk here in the United States. Rustin like many black folks was also gay. This didn’t stop him from helping to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference although it did lead to him being forced from it’s leadership in 1960. Repeatedly Rustin was ostracized for his sexuality among those of his race even while joining them in fighting for the equal rights and respect as a man that they’d deny him. It seems the advocates of inequality have chosen to replicate this choice on a national level among religious African Americans and LGBT people. In far too many cases religion has won out over ethics and have led us to choose to impose our beliefs on fellow citizens in violation of the rights that should be shared equally among every person. This is one of the reasons that I don’t subscribe to the belief that black people in America are in some way more noble, enlightened or fair than the rest of Americans we are people with biases and motives just the same as the rest. While our place in society and history are unique our hearts and minds operate according to the same principles that have reigned since time immemorial. Yesterday President Obama became the first American President to support same-sex marriage. While I highly doubt this will cost him any votes among African Americans as it has been suggested I’m hopeful it will push forward the conversation about Black LGBT folk and homophobia in our community.
Salon has an excellent interview with American law scholar Kenneth Mack on the way race and the law intersect and define each other. Here’s a quote on civil rightslawyers and their personal experience in the black community at the time.
“What did you learn about the relationship between race and the law by writing it?
By looking at the civil rights struggle through the lives of black civil rights lawyers we learn about the contested nature of racial identity, even in an era where segregation was supposed to make race into something fixed, not fluid.”
I think this speaks to how we think of race as an unchanging dynamic today even though it’s been in fluctuation since the concept was created. Also it works to disabuse people of the notion that there was an overwhelming consensus in the Civil Rights Era as it’s been properly defined when our heroes of yesteryear had many of the intra-community pressures and differences that people still hold today. The interview is great and I’d recommend folks to go read the whole thing.
Let me take this time to disabuse some friends of other stereotypes regarding Africa as well.
- No, you can’t “just go back to Africa” especially if you’ve never been.
- No, you won’t be greeted with open arms in pan-Africanist brotherhood, the people there don’t know you.
- No, everyone does not refer to each other as “King”, “Queen”, “brother”, or “sister” or any variation thereof you’ll probably be referenced to as “the American” or “white man” if they don’t know your name.
- You are a Westerner from a Western country without regard to the color of your skin. Given that, you probably hold all the patronizing and self-serving notions in regards to Africa that is common among Westerners. Check that.
- Yes, you can get robbed, beat up, cussed out and discriminated against in Africa. It’s a continent and it’s full of people not mystical beings who hold the key to a perfect humanity. Africa and Africans aren’t here for your preferred social theories.
All people are inherently self-centered. This is a truism that people apply easily to others but really can’t apply to themselves without constant work. What makes this even harder for some is when they count themselves among a group of people who see themselves as perpetually wronged. Today we are going to talk about just such a group, nerds. Yeah the free ride is over nerds. I’m calling you on your bull and I took AP classes like a Klansman who once dated a black girl I’m one of you so don’t even try to say I’m just picking on you, I’m not trying to hear it. Nerds are people who are constantly portrayed as sexless losers who are constantly picked on in high school. What makes this a problem is that as nerds grow up they gain a ton of privilege but never shed the mindset that they are perpetually under-appreciated. This leads to all kinds of self-centered behavior that basically boils down to being one of the worst kinds of asshole. The one who blames their on everyone else. Read the rest of this entry »
