Politics

What White Americans Get Wrong about Racism

History, Politics / By

White Americans get a lot of things wrong about race.  And I’m not just talking about white supremacists.  Or people bitter about the supposedly undue attention, sympathy, and “breaks” that minorities receive, insisting “real” racism was a problem only in the past, because Civil Rights “fixed” it and anyone complaining about racism is just looking for an unfair edge in America’s level, color-blind playing field.  Or even those who simply minimize and downplay the existence racism. Rather, I’m talking about the small majority of whites who recognize that racism remains a big problem in America.  They often get it wrong.  How? Many of them think that race is primarily about black and brown people.  It’s not.  The fact is, racism is primarily about white people. Minorities suffer the effects of racism, and we must acknowledge and work to end that; however, you cannot cure an infection by simply placing a band-aid over the sore.  You must clean out the wound thoroughly, surgically if need be, disinfect it, and then attack the infection at its root with antibiotics.  In the old days it might have meant cutting off an appendage or limb.  Similarly, racism won’t end or even be substantially reduced by strictly focusing on the suffering of its victims and making amends.  Those are important and necessary first steps, but they don’t get at the core of the problem.  Minority suffering is racism’s result, but racism is caused by what white people think and do. Yes, white people should empathizing with black and brown people (with all human beings, really) and it is vitally important that whites listen to minority voices.  However, ending or substantially reducing racism will not come about until white people talk to each other and sort themselves out.  Because racism is a white problem.

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Fuck It, I’m Staying Here

Culture, Politics / By

My Jewish maternal grandparents came to America just ahead of WWII.  Nearly all of my grandmother’s extended family were wiped out in the Holocaust.  Much of my grandfather’s extended family had previously emigrated to Palestine. My maternal family history illustrates why many modern American Jews continue to view Israel as their ultimate safety net.  After two millennia of vicious anti-Judaism, many Jews believe they can eventually be run out of any country, even Untied States.  American Jews’ sometimes uncritical support for Israel is underpinned by a wistful glance and a knowing nod; if it does happen here, we can escape to there. Even though I am only half-Jewish, my familial immigration history is more recent than most American Jews.   Their ancestors typically arrived here a full generation or two earlier than mine, and most of them did not lose a slew of close family members in the Holocaust like my grandmother did. But unlike most American Jews, I can counter the fear of “It can happen here” with a sense of American belonging that stems from deeply rooted Southern WASP family history.  Depending on which of my paternal branches you follow, we’ve been here upwards of about three centuries. Or so they tell me. Exactly how long ago the Reinhardts, Lowrances, Younts, Dunkles, and Hollers I’m descended from first arrived here is besides the point.  In fact, not having an exact date actually helps; it was long enough ago that no one really knows.  And that feeds into the one common thread binding deeply-rooted white Protestant Americans, despite their many differences in class, education, geographic region, and religious denomination.  It’s the unassailable sense that you belong here because you’re from here. That you’re not really the sons and daughters of immigrants.  Rather, you’re descended from the people who took this land from Native Americans, and who fought to gain independence from the British.  That you’re part of the group who really “earned” it.  America’s your inheritance. You own it. This is also the core of Trumpism: believing you have a better claim to being here than other people do.  That you belong here more than anyone else.  And that you, not them, gets to decide how your country is run: who gets to stand at the front of the line, who’s at the back, and who’s not allowed in at all.

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Move To Canada If Donald Trump Wins? How About Break Up The United States Instead

Politics / By

by Akim Reinhardt Is there anything more clichéd than some spoiled, petulant celebrity publicly threatening to move to Canada if the candidate they most despise wins an election? These tantrums have at least four problems: 1. As if Canada wants you. Please. 2. Mexico has way better weather and food than Canada. Why didn’t you threaten to move there? Is it because of all the brown people? No, you insist. Is it the language? Well then if you do make it to Canada, here’s hoping they stick you in Quebec. 3. New Zealand seems to be the hip new Canada. I’ve recently heard several people threaten to move there. News flash, Americans: New Zealand wants you even less than Canada does. 4. Fuck right off then if you don’t want to be here. As we stare down the possible re-election of Donald Trump, I’ve got a much better alternative: Stay put and begin a serious, adult conversation about disuniting the states. If, through the vagaries of the Electoral College, 45% of U.S. voters really do run this nation into an authoritarian kleptocratic, dystopian ditch, then instead of fleeing with your gilded tail between your legs, stay and help us reconfigure the nation. It might be the sanest alternative to living in Trump’s tyranny of the minority, in which racism and sexism are overtly embraced, the economy is in shambles, the pandemic rages unabated, and abortion may soon be illegal in most states as an ever more conservative Supreme Court genuflects to corporate interests and religious extremists. And of course it cuts both ways. Should current polls hold and Joe Biden manage to win the election with just over half the popular vote, those on the losing side will be every bit as upset. So upset that they too would likely open to a conversation about remaking an America. Indeed, no matter how this turns out, about half the nation will feel like they can no longer live with what America is becoming, even as they live in it. The losing side, whichever it may be, will want to wrest this country back from those who seem increasingly alien to them. So perhaps national salvation comes when the winning side remains open to a discussion the losers will launch about radically redesigning the United States.

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The Bitter End and the Forever Now

History, Politics / By

There is a minor American myth about shame and regret.  It goes like this. In the years following Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation amid scandal and disgrace, polls found that fewer Americans admitted to having voted for him than actually did.  Apparently many former Nixon voters now realized the error of their ways and were embarrassed to admit ever having pulled the lever for him. Everything about this story is false, and the truth of it is worse.  Nixon’s loyal supporters stood by him the entire way, despite his crimes.  His popularity did not retreat behind a wave of shame; it was merely muted by the national embarrassment of his resignation. What does this tell us about today’s Trump supporters? Partisan divisions are much worse now than they were during the mid-1970s, so their fierce loyalty to this sexist, racist charlatan is unsurprising.  But in explaining why, we tend to focus on the Cult of Trump, as if he has special qualities that give him some magical hold over his supporters.  True, in many ways Trump is a unique politician in American history.  Yet given our history, it seems likelier that his supporters’ undying devotion is less about the spells Trump casts, and more about the constancy of American political partisanship. Indeed, the difference between Trump’s and Nixon’s loyal supporters might be more about decibel count than sentiment.  And so by looking back at the steadfast support Richard Nixon maintained right through his resignation, we can better understand the misguided loyalty keeping Trump’s reelection campaign afloat.

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How Black is Not White?

History, Politics / By

During the 1990s, having a black president seemed so impossilbe that some people, including many African Americans, jokingly referred to President Bill Clinton as the first “black president.”  The threshold Clinton had passed to achieve this honorary moniker? He seemed comfortable around black people.  That’s all it took. Because an actual black president was so inconceivable that a white president finally treating African Americans as regular people seemed as close as America would get any time soon. In 1998, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison brought Clinton’s unofficial title to national attention with a New Yorker essay aimed at discrediting the impeachment proceedings against him.  One of Morrison’s rhetorical devices was to check off all the boxes in which Clinton displayed “almost every trope of blackness,” including being raised in a working class, single-parent household, and loving fast food. By 2003, the idea of a black president was still outlandish enough that it served as common comedic fodder.  Chris Rock starred in the film Head of State, a fantasy comedy in which Chicago Alderman Mays Gilliam becomes a fluke president.  And Dave Chappelle portrayed an over the top African American version of President George Bush in a Chapelle Show sketch.  The skit’s running joke was how outrageous and “unpresidential” it would be to have a black chief executive. This was a recurring theme for Chapelle.  Years earlier in his stand up routine he had joked about how the first black president would probably be murdered in office.  But Chapelle was willing to be that first black president because he had a plan to minimize the threat.  He would have a Mexican vice president for “insurance.” “You could shoot me if you want, but you’re just gonna open the border up.” But then came Barack Obama in 2008.  And 2012.  And very likely again in 2016 if not for the constitutional two-term limit.  And just last week it was announced that California Senator Kamala Harris will be Joe Biden’s running mate.  Biden is currently favored to defeat Donald Trump, so Harris is likely to become the first black vice president, and eventually a Democratic presidential front runner in either 2024 or 2028. 2020 feels very far removed from the days when the idea of a black president seemed ludicrously funny, and when one could see shades of blackness in a white president because he was a saxophone-playing Southerner, and was enduring public attacks for sexual indiscretions (the real point of Morrison’s essay). Yet are we really so far away from those turn-of-the-twenty-first century ideas about race in America? Or are white Americans now recognizing that Obama’s election signaled no fundamental change in race relations aside from their own self-congratulatory refusal to still consider race important?

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The Banality of Trump

History, Politics / By

banal /bəˈnäl/ adjective so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring. In 1963 Hannah Arendt famously coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe Nazis who showed no remorse, insisting they were merely doing their job, just following orders. Donald Trump is no Nazi; he’s just an nasty spoiled brat with an undiagnosed personality disorder.  But he is evil much of the time.  And any evil, given enough time and power, can become banal, part of the scenery, a routine we become numb to. In the Age of Trump, the banality of evil can perhaps best be defined as runaway self-interest.  As too many people doing whatever they want, whatever’s good for them, everyone else be damned.  It is banal because everyone has self-interest, and because American culture expects and even celebrates even the most gratuitous pursuits and expressions of self-interest.  But it’s evil because, when unchecked, self-interest leads not only to ugly imbalances of wealth and power, but eventually the erosion of democratic norms. The United States has existed as an imperfect but functioning democracy for over 230 years, longer than any other nation state except arguably England.  For much of that time, Americans have embraced a mythology of the rugged individual.  But in reality, American culture has often found ways to temper self-interest.  Particularly during times of calamity and instability, it has created expectations of sacrifice for the common good that pressure political leaders to limit their excesses.

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On the End of the R*dskins

Culture, Politics / By

Let me start by pointing out that this blog post is for my general readership, which is largely non-Native.  And I of course am not Native.  So all I’m trying to do is contextualize the issue for those who may not know much about it.  I’m certainly not speaking for Native people.  If you’re curious as to what they think but don’t know any Native people you can talk to, there are plenty of Native people writing about it.  And the ones I’m familiar with have been unanimous on this issue for many, many years now. Let’s start with the word redskin.  It’s a slur.  Period.  This award-winning book cover for C. Richard King’s Redskins: Insult and Brand (2015) illustrates the point as succinctly and forthrightly as anything I’ve seen.  Is redskin equivalent to nigger?  I don’t know, and honestly, it’s not for me to say.  But it is unquestionably a racist epithet at least on a par with things like darkie and slant.  The parallel to slant is actually very relevant; more on that below. It’s time, once and for all to dispel the myth that the team’s name has ever “honored” Indigenous peoples in any way.  That’s utter poppycock for several reasons.  First, the name was not chosen to honor Native peoples.  It was chosen in much the same way many early-20th century Indian-themed team names were chosen.  Along with Eagles and Bull Dogs, Indians were seen as an animalistic mascot signifying something distinctly American. Furthermore, the man the team claims it was named for, their former head coach William “Lone Star” Dietz, was a criminal and a fraud.  He was NOT Native.  But he pretended to be.  A dark-haired white man of German descent from Wisconsin, he made a career out of lying about being Indian.

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