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| -Land of the Free |
| White men must be stopped |
| 2017-09-04 |
| Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't but the author is whiter than an egg salad sammich on white with mayo. The future of life on the planet depends on bringing the 500-year rampage of the white man to a halt. For five centuries his ever more destructive weaponry has become far too common. His widespread and better systems of exploiting other humans and nature dominate the globe. Not just white folks, but do go on. The time for replacing white supremacy with new values is now. And just as some whites played a part in ending slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow segregation, and South African apartheid, there is surely a role whites can play in restraining other whites in this era. Beneath the sound and fury generated by GOP presidential candidates, Fox News, website trolls, police unions and others, white people are becoming aware as never before of past and present racism. And of anti white racism. Admittedly, this encouraging development is hardly the dominant view. To the contrary, given the possibility that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson or one of their ilk might become president, white supremacist ideology seems to be digging in harder than ever. I don’t take this lightly. Once upon a time I foolishly thought that there was no way that Ronald Reagan could get elected president. Lesson learned. Now is the time to start contingency planning for intensified resistance to mass deportations of immigrants, atrocities against Muslims and extreme danger to African Americans. Atrocities not committed by Moslems noticeably absent. The author's concern is an example of the soft bigotry of low expectations. That said, it would be a mistake to focus only on the negative. Recently the New York Times ran Gordon Davis’ op-ed "What Woodrow Wilson Cost My Grandfather". It is still generating debate. (Gordon Davis and I are both “alumni” of the Northern Student Movement, a 1960s civil rights group.) Davis was writing in the context of the student-led protest at Princeton University over the veneration of its former president, Woodrow Wilson. The controversy stems from Wilson’s viciously racist speech and behavior particularly when he was president of the United States. Tenor of the times. And leftists always want to deny their very background. A subsequent Truthout article by Harvey Wasserman, “Princeton Students Are Right, Woodrow Wilson Was Way Worse Than You Think,” complements the critique. Most of the 776 comments on the NY Times article (as well as 1,600 more on a followup Times editorial) were the predictably negative responses usually heard regarding white racism. Many said some version of, “that was a long time ago when values were different.” Others took the tack that “nobody is perfect and the good things Woodrow Wilson did outweigh the bad of his racism, so let it rest.” A reasonable reaction to historical data. But there was also a substantial undercurrent voiced by those who were open-minded enough to learn. Following are NY Times comments on the article: Jim K. New York, NY 2 days ago As a former Princeton professor, I applaud the students for raising this issue. It’s not about erasing history, but confronting it honestly. This beautiful column makes clear how Wilson’s policies, based on his deeply racist and white-supremacist views, destroyed the lives of thousands of black families. Why should we publicly venerate this person? Why should elitist Northern universities get to insist that we overlook this man’s systematic, consequential racism, while every Southern municipality and retail store is expected to rid itself of monuments and souvenirs of their racist politicians and soldiers. Let’s indeed, every American community, take stock of the deeply embedded racism that has been a part of our history (North and South), recognizing that a thoroughgoing accounting will involve reconfiguring our public and institutional spaces in many ways. Because that has yet to be done, and the younger generation of Black militants will, rightly, not be content until it is. JPBarnett Santa Barbara 1 day ago It’s sad that after having been through 12 years of grade school in CA and graduating from a UC, I just learned this about Wilson. It’s silly that I’m surprised I didn’t learn of his racism I suppose, but I’m glad I do now. My opinion is forever changed.Good for you. Many commenters were startled to learn about a long known but rarely taught side of Woodrow Wilson. White people have a lot to be surprised about. The very nature of white supremacy requires sanitized teaching about slavery, the genocide of indigenous people, the reach of U.S. militarism and many other topics. A lot of unrelated topics. Very few in the US do not know about the Indian Wars, but very few wish to beat themselves over the dead, or to punish themselves decades after the fact, especially if their family didn't partake in actions against Indians. Would the author punish himself if he finds his family had as little as a tangential involvement in actions against minorities? I doubt it. Fortunately, gains from past struggles give African Americans increased opportunities to expose what was previously deliberately obscured. Ta-Nehisi Coates is the best known of a new generation of black, indigenous, Hispanic and white writers, scholars and activists revealing ugly realities hidden from most of us. Hidden = obscure Even the New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks has acknowledged this development. “So much of the national conversation this year has concerned how to think about past racism and oppression, and the power of that past to shape present realities: the Confederate flag, Woodrow Wilson, the unmarked sights of the lynching grounds. Fortunately, many people have found the courage to tell the ugly truths about slavery, Jim Crow and current racism that were repressed by the wider culture.” If David Brook is a conservative, then I'm Josef Stalin's lovechild. Admittedly, new information does not necessarily translate into social change. Cherished and deeply rooted beliefs are not easily surrendered. I often think of how long it took for the arguments of Copernicus and Galileo that the earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around, to be accepted. Ideas and habits are stubborn. Systems resist change. Powerful institutions have vested interests in preserving the status quo. That is true. It could take a flamethrower to dig out the parasites in government. By way of example, a recurring concern of those responding to the Times’ Woodrow Wilson op-ed was, “Where will it all end? Will we have to destroy Mount Rushmore?” some asked. Maybe we should. Not just because it honors slave owners Jefferson and Washington, Mount Rushmore is also a powerful symbol of brutality and racism toward indigenous people. Sez you. As idigenous (sic) scholar Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz points out in her book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, “The most prominent struggle has been the Lakota Sioux’s attempt to restore the Paha Sapa, or Black Hills, where the odious Mount Rushmore carvings have scarred the sacred site. Called the ‘Shrine of Democracy’ by the federal government, it is anything but that; rather it is a shrine of in-your-face illegal occupation and colonization.” White racism distorts how we think about virtually everything, including history itself. No one will dismiss Bill O’Reilly’s goofy books about Jesus or Lincoln or Patton or Reagan as irrelevant because, “oh, that was a long time ago, it’s got nothing to do with me now.” As a general proposition people appreciate that we can discover in the present important things we didn’t previously know about the past. Discovery, yes. Use as a cudgel applied to political enemies, no. Not so when it comes to race in the USA. Not for some people anyway. This matters a great deal. In many years of anti-racist work, I have discovered that whites who deny any connection to the racism of the past will also generally deny any connection to the racism of the present. “Please don’t tell me,” cry deniers of systemic white racism. One step removed is the view that we should “accept” the history but must take the good with the bad. This is sometimes known as the “warts and all” theory of history. A variation is the convenient idea that slavery was the “original sin.” Sin, of course, in the Western Christian point of view is inevitable and immutable. If the author were a Christian, he would know that God's love includes forgiveness for past wrongs you have committed. You cannot blame people for the wrongs of their forebears, it is black letter English common law. The best you can do is to pass laws that apply to the living, which this country has done. It will have to be good enough. Anything else is a recipe for violent insurrection. This takes an especially pernicious twist when white racism deniers argue that there has always been slavery as though that itself somehow makes it justified. It’s not true that every society over all time has enslaved people. But even if it were true, the kind of slavery on which the U.S. was built is unlike any other that preceded it. It co-evolved with capitalism and it conflated slavery with “race”—plantation capitalism as the Rev. James Lawson calls it. CSU Fresno scholars Blain Roberts and Ethan J. Kytle put it this way recently in theNew York Times: “New research has gone further, exposing how American capitalism and democracy — once thought to be antithetical to slavery — emerged hand-in-hand with it.” If the author read US history he would know that slavery would have collapsed on its own without the war, because of -- capitalist economics. Slavery, as has been shown throughout history, costs the oppressors far more than had those enslaved been employed as a free people. Hard as it may be for propaganda-conditioned whites to grasp, global race-based capitalism is not a system of the past with lingering effects. It is a living, breathing organism of the present. It is a unitary thing. It is therefore not a good thing with warts. It is one thing. The “good” things always comes packaged with the “bad” thing. The mechanics of how it often works has a name: grand bargains. Here the author is projecting his own views onto those he opposes. No sale. The mother of all grand bargains is the U.S. Constitution which accommodated slavery in several ways, including the notorious three-fifths clause. While the Constitution was by no means the first grand bargain, it solidified a pattern that continues to this day. The New Deal, as Ira Katznelson demonstrates in his book Fear Itself, was another grand bargain that combined “progressive’ achievements such as union rights and Social Security with reaffirming the power of Dixiecrats and the institutions of Jim Crow. The author fails to mention all the above were Democratic Party institutions which survived the New Deal era by 20 years. Katznelson is white. So am I. So are many others now writing and speaking honestly and openly about the enduring power of white racism. That is valuable because it strengthens the idea that whites can come to terms with reality, past and present, as opposed to the myths we are encouraged to believe. As we do so, another world does become possible. When you write "honestly and openly about the enduring power of white racism", and condemn your race for something the living did not do, you are paving the way for your own demise. Of course white people can’t “save” the world. That mindset is the problem not the solution. But we can help. As Vietnam antiwar leader Rennie Davis points out, it is when we stop being invisible to each other that we start to become a movement. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #17 Actually, I agree. I think all white men should go on strike for a month or so. Most farmers, truck drivers, policemen, firemen, construction workers, railroad engineers, factory workers, etc. are white. So, after a while when the food stops getting grown, harvested and delivered; when calls to police are largely unanswered; when buildings burn to the ground because almost no firemen respond - then people will see what it is like with no white men around. Of course, this will never happen. Most white men have families that they need to feed and protect. Note: I am not being racist here. MOST of the people (roughly 3/4) in the US are white. Half of them are men. Most of the workers in the fields I mentioned are men. |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2017-09-04 14:04 |
| #16 #11 does anyone have a psychobabble decoder I can borrow? You should be able to find one nearby. Just find and listen to a cuckoo clock. It's amazing just how accurate they are in translating psychobabble. |
| Posted by: Seeking cure for ignorance 2017-09-04 13:08 |
| #15 It's Salon; he blathered to a receptive audience. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2017-09-04 12:05 |
| #14 I'll give him credit. He has a lotta nerve thinking people are actually gonna read all that. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2017-09-04 11:20 |
| #13 Author is another in a long line of utopian trollers. The "new values" are the same old values dating back to Cain & Abel, one man to rule them all, the masses being nothing more than slaves. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2017-09-04 11:20 |
| #12 For 500 years, they've exploited their fellow man and plundered the planet. It's time they rein themselves in Nah, we need to plunder the other planets that present fewer problems from snow flake whiners. Get on with the logging operations. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2017-09-04 10:18 |
| #11 does anyone have a psychobabble decoder I can borrow? |
| Posted by: jack salami 2017-09-04 09:01 |
| #10 Salon evicted - can't pay rent worth every penny you pay for their opinions |
| Posted by: Frank G 2017-09-04 08:52 |
| #9 ..ah, the Zimbabwe or Caracas model. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2017-09-04 08:14 |
| #8 It's just a communist explaining that the massive advances in living standards white capitalism have brought are now bad and we still need communism (with him as king) to correct this. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2017-09-04 07:56 |
| #7 Too much weed is evident. Runs on and on thinking I guess he is saying something important. |
| Posted by: Dale 2017-09-04 07:49 |
| #6 I thought Affirmative Action stopped the evil ones. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2017-09-04 06:51 |
| #5 p.s. It all, mutatis mutandis, sounds very familiar - are white men the new Jews? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2017-09-04 05:20 |
| #4 Another Helter Skelter leftist. All the OTHER white people are the bad ones. Not me. I'm spe-e-e-e-e-cial. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2017-09-04 05:17 |
| #3 Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't but the author is whiter than an egg salad sammich on white with mayo. But is he a man? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2017-09-04 05:17 |
| #2 So why doesn't the white author set a good example and "stop" himself? Perhaps we need the rye/revolver pic here. |
| Posted by: PBMcL 2017-09-04 01:20 |
| #1 This guy's a certifiable lunatic, and I only read the first paragraph. |
| Posted by: Raj 2017-09-04 01:17 |