Trump Ups the Racial Ante

What Racism?

To Those Who Claim We Live in a Post-Racial Society ...

Simple question, would we expect a teacher like this to treat black students the same as whites? Would we expect her to teach her students to be sensitive to racial difference? While probably not a bad person, this is the sort of "not so soft" bigotry that unfortunately is rampant in schools today, though rarely expressed in public. 

"Lynching Obama" Tweet Justification

Fundamentalism is one of the greatest threats to democracy, undermining one of the most important aspects of popular sovereignty – the ability to dialogue and debate the key issues of our time. Today we find far too many on the right and, to a lesser extent, left who have completely insolated themselves from anyone and everyone who disagrees with them. There have always been ideologues tone deaf to any idea that challenges their central tenets but it appears the proportion of the populace currently suffering from this ailment has dramatically increased in recent years.

One recent example exemplifies the problem quite well. A man posted a photoshopped image of President Obama with a noose around his neck, his eyes shut and his neck apparently broken. This elicited a visit from the Secret Service, him being fired from his job and a huge negative backlash from the twittersphere. His reaction? He told MPR News, in a recent email response, “My only regret is being called racist when my opinion of the president has more to do with [Obama] being a communist as opposed to being black.” (NPR) Few want to be labeled racist these days, even when they clearly are, but he indirectly seems to be arguing that it is okay to lynch Communists. And what, exactly, about Obama can even be labeled Communist?

Plato wrote of the Big Lie, as a way to control the unruly masses (in their interest, it should be noted), and many on the Left referenced Leo Strauss as an advocate of the strategy when the Bush administration was in power. It was most obviously used by the Nazis in their rise to power, but has been employed by governments throughout history. Yet the new “Big Lies” are coming from right wing blogs and Fox News and far too many uncritically accept these claims and then boil into a frenzy to destroy these perceived demons of the left. Similar trends exist on the left, though in a more muted form and without the racist undertones. In either cases, the new political insularity is a threat as great as the rampant cynicism of the young and one that we must struggle to eradicate if we are to save ourselves from becoming a true Plutocracy in the near future. We don’t need to lynch the metaphoric lynchers as much as remove the noose from a public sphere that stirs up such absurdly retrograde ideas.

Political Cartoonists on Baltimore

Warning, some of these are racist ...

The Right to Choke

NFL Stands with Michael Brown (Kind of)

The NFL will never be mistaken for a progressive organization, given its record on domestic violence, the damage it appears to do to most of its own players, its monopoly/tax-free status and its undying support for the military and militarism. And yet four players from the St. Louis Rams did provide a progressive message yesterday -- displaying signs of racial solidarity and support for Michael Brown by holding their hands up right before their game. It was a nice gesture and, for once, the NFL decided not to punish players for a political statement. Good for the players and good for the league!

Not surprisingly, around the time this was happening a black man in Pontiac, Michigan was stopped by police. Why? Well he was apparently engaging in “suspicious behavior,” as reported by an unidentified caller. And what was that behavior? He had his hands in his pockets. Hmm, that does sound suspicious, you might say. But what if we added the fact it was cold? Apparently mitigating facts like that don’t get in the way of the Johnny-on-the-spot Pontiac Police Department, who did in fact stop him (YouTube video).

The man, a little flabbergasted, said: “There’s got to be 10,000 people walking around with their hands in their pockets.” The police officer responded, “There’s been a lot of robberies.” The two men then had a standoff where both of them have their phones out, aimed at each other to record the incident, while they discuss the absurdity of their predicament. The police officer explains that they got a call about “suspicious” behavior.

So we can add another item to our list of things that are suspicious when black men do them: walking around with your hands in your pockets on a cold Fall day in Michigan.

The Dying White: Demographic Shifts intensify

Change often emanates from generational shifts. But with arguably the most cynical generation in history, it might be the oft-cited demographic shifts that ultimately change the political landscape in America. These five charts show us how quickly those shifts are occurring and what the future of America will look like:

Jon Stewart on Pointergate

Among the stupidest stories of the year is the Pointergate scandal. Not because it doesn’t beg serious questions about political coverage and racism, but because it shows just how pathetic the media is without providing any real pathway forward. For those who haven’t heard about the story, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges was out a few days before election day getting out the vote with a young African American man named Navell Gordon. The young man had a criminal record but had turned his life around and become a community activist working to improve his home town. While out talking to potential voters, the two posed for a picture with each pointing at the other. The subsequent KSTP news story, using an ex-police chief, then claimed this was a gang sign and that the Mayor was thus stirring up gang violence and putting police officers at risk. The obvious racist undertones were hard to ignore and the local and then national media did almost immediately condemn the station for their coverage. And yet the Hubbard Broadcasting Chair said he would not apologize for the story (MPR NEWS).

Racism is, of course, rampant across the television dial, on the evening news as much as anywhere else. But the clear political undertones here are hard to ignore. In fact, in recent years it appears that the conservative bias on the news has only gotten worse. So it was no surprise that Jon Stewart would finally chime in on the story, as he recently did (clip here). Best of all was his list of “Innocent Things Black People Can’t Do or They Look Suspicious:”

· Don't wear a hoodie
· Don't carry Skittles
· Don't carry keys
· Don't reach for a wallet
· Don't drive in a car in a nice neighborhood
· Don't drive in a car
· Don't be a passenger in a car
· Don't knock on a white person's door
· And now……don't point!

Media Racism Continues Unabated

One would think that recent events would make the press more sensitive to the way they handle race and racism in their reporting. One would be wrong, at least among some more local reporters. One in particular, a columnist for Charleston’s the Daily Mail named Don Surber, decided to offer his perspective on the Mike Brown slaying: “This summer I had an epiphany as I watched packs of racists riot in Ferguson, Missouri, in support of a gigantic thug who was higher than a kite when he attacked Ferguson Police Department Officer Darren Wilson, who unfortunately had to put this animal down.”

Humans are, of course, animals, as Nietzsche reminded us, but connotation matters and the racist coding is quite clear here. After being criticized for his words, he offered the following update: “I made a factual error. Michael Brown is not an animal but a man. Big. Brutal. High. His death was justifiable homicide and not a putting down.” The problems with this statement? Well, let’s see – “Big. Brutal. High.” That describes almost every player in the NFL, black or white. So anyone who mistakenly or purposefully kills any of them should be exonerated for “justifiable homicide?”

In a more general sense, nobody besides the officer knows for sure what happened on that fateful day. What we do know with certainty is that a young man of color without a gun was shot by an officer with a gun, the latest in a long list of such occurrences over the past three decades. To make light of the historical context surrounding this case is to do a disservice to the public trying to make sense of its larger significance. Of course, taking an ahistorical perspective on an event while ignoring any deeper social critique is the norm for the media, so I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised.

Considering the Deeper Meaning of the Brown Shooting

As is so often the case in incidents like this, the Michael Brown shooting has been politicized so fast, with different parties having such profound stakes in the results, that we may never know the full truth behind case (WFMY News, Time.com). What we do know, without question, is that another unarmed black youth has been killed by an officer – who shot him multiple times (Autopsy Notes). There have been countless examples of this in the past, though we don’t have accurate information on how often it actually occurs (LA Times).

A few incidents from the past come to mind though, including the infamous Amadou Diallo killing (where a wallet was mistaken for a gun, he was shot 19 times and the NYPD officers involved were exonerated), the Kimani Gray story from last year (an unarmed Brooklyn youth shot four times in the front and side and twice in the back by police and killed), the Timothy Russell case (where 137 rounds were fired into his car, killing he and his passenger, after a chase – no weapons in the car), and the 2004 death of unarmed Timothy Stansbury Jr., who was shot by an officer who claimed to be startled by his presence in a stairwell (see a list of 20 such incidents here). We can, of course, add the shooting of the unarmed Trayvon Martin by the recently acquitted George Zimmerman and the fact that far too many of those committing these crimes, including the officers that beat Rodney King near to death, are later exonerated of any crime. Could it be the new form of lynching in the country, replacing families putting on their Sunday best and traveling from miles away to watch and participate in the live beating and hanging of black men and women, who often committed no crime at all? In just the past week, we also had an incident here in Los Angeles, where a 24-year-old mentally troubled young black man was shot by police while lunging for one’s gun (New York Times), and another unarmed man killed in a Wal*Mart in Ohio (Black Youth Project).

The issue seems to me to revolve around three troubling themes in American society: 1. The cost to African-Americans of systemic, institutionalized racism in schools, the media and among the police. This is not to argue that the police involved are evil or even terrible human beings. I believe it relates more to a culture where we are taught to fear young black men and thus be on guard in ways that too often lead to tragedy. This is arguably also the case in far too many of our schools, as white, middle class (and largely female) teachers engage in the “soft bigotry” of low expectations or creating an overly-disciplined, uncaring environment for youth of color. I have seen this consistently in my visits to schools in New York City and Los Angeles, with the teachers often largely unaware of their behavior, even with black and Latino youth in second or third grade. One could then argue that the media’s general portrayal of youth of color as thugs and dangerous gang members creates a pathology that streams across our culture, fed on my right-wing politicians and pundits and filtering down to the communities themselves, sometimes leading to a sense of self-hatred that can actually manifest itself in violence (see Stan Tookie William’s book or movie on the topic). 2. The outrageous level of violence in our country and our inability to pass any gun control laws or training to police officers about ensuring they don’t shoot innocent, or unarmed, men and boys. The culture of violence that seems to permeate every level of our culture involves a great irony – in that it is often young white males that are involved in mass shooting while young men of color are the ones who end up in prison or dead. Is there a way that a serious national conversation can begin on why there is so much violence, what can be done to stem its spread and how we can properly train officials to try to ensure that incidents like this stop occurring so regularly? One problem with this conversation is the NRA and right-wing media circus, which too often ends these debates before they begin. If tragedies like Columbine or Sandy Hook can’t elicit federal or state action, it’s hard to see what can. 3. The way in which officers and civilians are too often forgiven for engagement in these issues, by the police department, court system and media in general, speaks to how deep the pathology of fear toward black men reaches and how desperately we need to address this issue. Edward Said once argued that the key concern of contemporary society was how people with different religious and cultural beliefs and values could peacefully coexist in the world. That appears to be truer than ever.

Finally, considering the issue from the other side, as I did in a previous post, it is worth considering why there are no instances in recent memory of an unarmed white youth being shot by the police? If there is, I certainly don’t remember reading about it in the papers or hearing about it on television. One hopes that reason will someday soon intervene anew in the political and media arenas; for now, we are stuck within the tectonic pull of the spectacle and its endless supply of entertaining, well-packaged pabulum surrounding issues of life, death and our collective future.

Best of the Racial Profiling Political Cartoons

Racism A-Go-Go

A popular trope that developed around the time of the Obama election in 2008 was the notion of a “post-racial” society (Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? or check out a whole list of recent books in this “genre” here). I’ve already written about the rather absurd claim, made among white and black social critics, media pundits and politicians of a particular ilk – considering the Trayvon Martin case among a host of others just this year. But the last week has brought more anecdotal evidence that any nod to a “post-racial,” or more specifically “post-racist” society is a long way off. And these examples don’t even need reference to the reality of dramatic income and wealth differentials, incarceration rates, unemployment rates, educational and testing gaps and life expectancy differentials. A few examples should suffice to show the way race continues to dominate particular frames within the news cycle:

§  A high school football game was cancelled in a suburb North of Boston because racist graffiti was painted on the side of a black player’s house: ESPN. The graffiti read “"Knights don't need n------," aimed at the eighth-grader playing for the freshman and JV teams.

§  Jason Whitlock of ESPN wrote this troubling article in response to recent debates about the use of “n****” by black athletes, after an incident in the NBA, with Charles Barkley and Michael Wilbon among others claiming white people should not have the power to frame this issue. I agree with the latter two, particularly as we could argue the capture of the n-word is a perfect example of transcoding, taking a derogatory term and undermining its power by redefining it and using it yourself. But notice the general tone of the article, including the following argument: “lack American culture has been turned upside down and corrupted by mass incarceration, the destruction of the traditional family unit and commercial hip-hop music. The impact of these corrosive forces can be seen in the values and perspective of African-Americans across economic and class lines. We have a new normal. As it relates to the N-word, Barkley and Wilbon, like many African-Americans, have adapted to the new normal. The N-word is a cherished possession.”

§  Last week, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post wrote the following editorial piece regarding Christie’s chance of gaining the GOP nomination for president in 2016. The following passage caused an uproar, particularly as the editor decided not to redact it in any way: “Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.” Notice how he attempts to use the old rhetorical device of saying what something isn’t, right before he says something that is? It’s an old trick, but one that still works with those too lazy to think much.

§  Debates continue to rage around the bullying incident between the troubled Richie Incognito and black player Jonathan Martin, who walked away from the team after Incognito’s racially charged hazing and threats. Incognito has been trying to justify his actions by claiming everyone does it in a Fox interview, while others argue that Martin is the one to blame in the incident for allowing it to get “out of the locker room” or not reporting Incognito earlier (see here, for example)

§  As three of the four incidents are from the world of sports, this might be a good time to note how often racism finds its way into sports – even those dominated by black athletes. I already wrote about the racism in European football several months ago, but there are plenty of examples here in the U.S., beyond those noted above. For one, is the tendency to focus on the athleticism and, often, animalistic features of black athletes while talking about the intelligence and hard work of white athletes. This is truer at quarterback than any other position, with the record-breaking freshman season by Cam Newton largely ignored last year while Colts wunderkind Andrew Luck receives treatment seemingly one step below that afforded a football deity. We saw the divergent treatment of Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire in their homerun hunts, even as there appears to be increased embrace of difference in the sport in recent years. And then there is basketball, where the few white athletes in the entire league worth talking about are again deified as “geniuses” who are the “smartest guys on the floor,” have “basketball smarts” or other epithets that define them as more intelligent than their black peers. Finally, is the world of sports announcing, where a white announcer tends to be the host among the black athletes that surround him – with the most ridiculous case being Terry Bradshaw – thus reinforcing the notion that blacks can entertain us, but only with a white guide to keep them under control (much like those “white savior” inspirational films about white teachers civilizing the “savage barbarians” in their classroom).  

Maybe It's Time for Another March?

What the Zimmerman Case Tells Us about America

I have not followed the Zimmerman-Martin case with much interest, as media spectacles of these sorts generally bother me. But it has been impossible to ignore and the not guilty verdict rendered by the all-female, sex member jury yesterday certainly does give one pause. What, if anything, does it tell us about our legal system? How does it relate to larger debates on race and gun control? How does the case relate to masculinity? I will consider each of these in turn.

The first point to be made regards the rather troubling Florida laws that allowed for this decision in the first place. Florida has a very broad definition of self-defense and allows for deadly force in response to imminent threat. However, as with the Zimmerman case, it’s extremely hard to prove that someone was in imminent threat. Zimmerman’s lawyers claimed as much, but it seems telling that he wouldn’t take the stand in his own defense. The reality of the case, as summed up well in an op ed in the Miami Herald (Link), is that a man with a loaded gun saw a black teenager he thought was suspicious, called the police, was told not to pursue the teen, did so anyway, got into a confrontation with said youth and then shot him dead. Even if the teen was in fact threatening his life, which seems unlikely, none of this would have happened if he simply let the teen take his skittles home with him. If legal systems across the country adopted the stand your ground standard in Florida, I feel the country would soon feel like the wild wild west, with racial, class and even age profiling leading to even more senseless deaths than already occur in the U.S. each year because of our lax gun control laws.

This leads to the second point, about said gun control laws. Far too many innocent people are dying every year because of the ready access to weapons. I have made this point repeatedly on this blog and this is yet another example of the danger that exist in providing access to hand guns much less “assault” weapons. Given the power of the military and even police forces today, the old argument that we must remain armed to fight back government tyranny is absolutely absurd, coupled with the fact that largely peaceful revolts by people across the Middle East have sprouted democracy from the ashes of dictatorship. Gun control makes sense to everyone except the NRA, the corporate interests that back them and conservative pundits who need ammunition to keep their audiences angry and buying their ghost written books, redundant, hate-filled podcasts, rabble rousing t-shirts, patriotic hats and other Fox-bling bullshit.

The question of race is clearly at the heart of the matter. To put it simply, if we reversed roles, it is hard to believe the discourse and media framing surrounding the case would have been the same. Let’s just consider the alternative scenario for a moment. There have been several robberies in a working class black community over the past year and several men decide to start a neighborhood watch. A white teenager buys some skittles at a local 711 and decides to walk through said neighborhood on his way home. A black kid, who is a little scrawny and has been mugged in the past, sees the white kid and thinks he is suspicious. He approaches the white kid, who confronts him and a scuffle ensues. In the scuffle, the black man, who is armed, shoots the white kid in self-defense. Now, is there any chance that black man would get off? Would Fox News dedicate most of its “news” programming to defending the black man for months on end? Would people question the white teenagers background and conclude that he presented an imminent threat to the black man? Enough said on this point, I think.

Finally is the question of masculinity, which has been largely ignored in this trial. The emasculation of the American male has arguably been occurring for over a century, often indirectly reflected in popular culture from superhero comic books and films to Film Noir to Action Films and American Dream fare like Rocky (is it an accident the Italian Stallion beats a black man named “Apollo Creed” who is rich, successful, brash and wears an American flag during the fight?). Since the conservative revolution of Reagan, and maybe even earlier (look for example at King Kong, where a big ape is brought to America in chains on a boat from a far off island, serves as a slave to American consumers, breaks free, falls in love with a white woman and ultimately dies (“twas beauty that killed the beast”)), the restoration of masculinity lost by the white working class male in the 70s has been placed at the doorstep of affirmative action. Even as the claims of reverse racism are often absurd, they continue to dominate the conservative media landscape and political scene. Zimmerman was framed as a “soft” man who had failed to realize his dreams of a military or law enforcement career, a short, stocky guy who feared for his life against a young, MMA-trained black man who seemed steeped in that lost masculinity. But is it surprising that a young black male pursued by a Latino male on his way back from the store would confront that man? Is a teenager really to blame for a show of masculinity in the face of what appeared to be racial profiling? Are the challenges to masculinity brought on by the success of feminism and changing nature of what it means to be a man and a woman really the foundation for justifiable homicide? These are questions that should have been a larger part of the debate, rather than tired old racial stereotypes and notions of justifiable use of guns.

In the end, an unarmed black teenager was shot by a half-white, half-Latino man with a gun, who had pursued that black teenager for no other reason than his race. No one except George Zimmerman knows what happened that night, but do we really want to live in a society where that is acceptable?