black and white relations = no es bueno
According to a recent Rasmussen poll, race wars are imminent. Grab your flamethrowers and Mad Dog 20/20!
Okay, not really, but:
Perceptions about the state of black-white relations in America have fallen dramatically since the summer of 2009. But voters are still more optimistic about that relationship than they are about relations between whites and Hispanics and between blacks and Hispanics.
John Cole at Balloon Juice has a delicious rant about it:
It seems to me to make perfect sense that African-Americans are more pessimistic than white people about the status of race relations. Imagine for a second you are black, and look back at the last few years.
A completely qualified black man is a candidate for President, and you endure a grueling primary season where all sorts of shit is dredged up. Crazy black preacher! Kenyan! Black churches! Is he black enough? Is he too black? White people won’t vote for him! He doesn’t think like us! Pals around with terrorists! Secret Muslim! And on and on.
Despite all of that, Obama prevails, and there is a huge sigh of relief in black communities around the nation- finally, a black man can be President! People have a wave of optimism.
And then half the country and the party that represents them completely and totally loses their shit. A guy who on a good day is slightly to the left of Olympia Snowe is now some crazy radical Muslim who who is doing favors for the Black Panthers while shelling money to Acorn. And the worthless shitheads in the media just run with it- “Look- black people suck so much and are so stupid, you can go into their community help centers dressed as a pimp and try to sell white girls!”
Email lists run overboard with Obama dressed up as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose, jokes about no longer being able to call it the White House, and who knows what else make the rounds. Angry white mobs gather around the country screaming about, well, whatever the wurlitzer has them fired up about on any given day. But really, we are told- they are just worked up about deficits. Shirley Sherrod gets smeared. Basically any time black people are in the news for the last year and half, they were being smeared by Fox news and the wingnutosphere.
I’ve been alluding to this for months:
- School teachers letting students wander the halls in KKK robes;
- School teachers teaching geometry and angles by using a “How you could assassinate President Obama” model;
- Firedogfreakout (You assholes really ought to know fucking better. Mr. Preznint? Come the fuck on!);
- Fucking Andrew Breitbart Asshat and his Shirley Sherrod Jihad;
- Glenn Beck accusing Obama of racism for not meeting with the white BP head honcho;
- Orly Taintz and the Butthole Birthers;
- Fox News making shit up and then screaming about it;
- Fox News scaring white people because black peoples is scary, y’all!;
- Slave parties!
What do you think about the state of race relations now?
Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.
[via Balloon Juice]
I think race relations are getting better. However, it’s now easier for the racist fuckers to talk shit because talking shit about the president has always been accepted. But these people have been racist all along. And they’re hopefully a small part of the country. No matter the size of the group, if they’re saying something shocking, word gets out.
So… my answer is: smaller group. bigger voices. keep hope alive.
It strikes me as a careful testing of the waters by those for whom it is a pain in the ass to try to be civilized.
“Can we say this? How about this? Did anyone yell at us for that one? Maybe they’ll get tired of screaming at us and just let it go”… trying to see how far the country can be pulled backward until that beloved “the way it used to be” status is reached.
You can show my your cookies; just don’t drop them.
Seriously, isn’t side by side to close to segregation? What cookie represents integration? Choconilla. I must be tired.
Did you hear how Beck referred to early slavery in the U.S? Few did because Rick Sanchez was shooting himself in the foot last Friday. Check out what this asshat said:
http://www.sharethisurlaboutglennbeck.com/2010/10/becks-history-of-slavery-is-flawed-and.html
I’ve actually had (and didn’t get the chance to really get into it) a conversation about integration and white privilege with a classmate. She didn’t get that some folks still get seated at the back of the restaurant. She actually bust out the “there are minorities in all areas now, politicians, CEOs, you know, if you look for them” line.
I’m also shaking my head regularly at all the “Libertarians” in my FB Friends list who never spoke up during the last administration, but are posting bitter little links like the wind.
I’m an Oreo man, myself.
In class (yes, everything I post will reference stuff I’m learning in school, because that’s what graduate school does to you) we learned a term called “Moral currency.” Like, if you voted for a black man to be president, you can get away with being racist somewhere else. I think I have the term right. I have the idea right anyway. Please don’t let this be on the test! Anyway, yeah, so, there is this idea that doing good in one area lets you be an asshat in another, and that’s what I feel like is going on a lot right now.
Along with one of the worst backlashes in recent history. See women’s lib and then the reaction to women’s lib. Women win the vote and then get the pointy bra of doom. Women get Roe v Wade and then get “I can bring home the bacon, fry it in a pan, and still show my man he’s a man.” A black man becomes president, and within the last few years here at my very prestigious Northeastern School, a noose was hung on a black female professors office door. And that’s the blatant stuff. The micro aggressions have been running rampant for years.
The best think I can say about all of this is that it is forcing people to talk about race, and I think we need to keep talking about it until there really is nothing left to talk about.
Ummmm…. I think there is plenty of hate and bigotry to go around. Nothing new about that. Love may be stronger than hate, but hate has a longer shelf life and the advantage of simplicity. It is also evenly distributed across race, (if you believe in that concept), gender, sexual preferences, religion… you name it.
I’ll take Obby over Dubya, Bubba, or Hillary 7 days a week and twice on Sunday, but hey… that IS a pretty low bar. He did not address trade agreements or the Wall Street cartel, and Lord knows Hannity or Maddow don’t regard those issues as sexy enough to keep their ratings up. But at the end of the day those are the issues on which most all of us have common ground.
A conversation about race is about all we do. The verdict remains the same. We have met the enemy and he/she is us. We divide in all of our wonderous diversity, and they laugh all the way to the bank. Literally. They have been dividing us like that since colonial times. All they do is change the dynamic and all of us, especially White and Black, bite on it.
Maybe we oughta talk about that.
I’m just sayin….
totally. do you blog? i’d be interested to read about how awful wall street is and etc., but i just don’t get as angry about it, i guess. maybe that’s my privilege shining through. :)
I don’t blog. I’m not that interesting and besides… I’m lazy.
The current issues with Wall Street, Trade Agreements, and even Immigration, at least in terms of the real economic impact, and by extension, social impact, may not make you angry. But they do have direct impact on the things that do make you angry.
I can tell you this much: If you read “Wealth of Nations”, ( Yeah, I know, dead White Male, get over it.) then consider deregulation, from Bush the First right up until Obby’s reforms, you will see some serious discrepancies between Adam Smith’s notions of a market economy, and what these people actually do. No small business could survive operating like these guys, STM. Another piece worth reading as you contemplate a lot of this is Lenin’s “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.” You will be amazed by how much of this material leaps out at you considering current events. The chapters on Banks and the Oligarchs are of real interest.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm
You can find a good synopsis on Tarp here. If you are interested, you can find Obby’s financial reform bill online too.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/tarp-the-long-goodbye/
Look at it this way… if you are ever having trouble getting to sleep… this stuff can help.
i read wealth of nations a looooong time ago. i will check out those links. thanks!
i love that fuckin cookie
Hahaha lava. You rock. I missed this comment!
I’ve pondered this lately too, and I’m not sure. On the one hand, we’ve certainly made a lot of progress over the past few decades, and while the election of a black president is a sign of that, anyone who thought that would automatically catapult us into “post-racial” status wasn’t thinking straight, in my opinion. But still, Obama’s election means something.
The people who yammer on about “American exceptionalism” are generally the worst race-baiters. But if there is something exceptional about the US, it’s the very thing those who fetishize the concept constantly undermine: our commitment — in theory, at least — to diversity and equality.
Has another country ever elevated a minority to the top job in a democratic election? Ever in the history of the world? Maybe, but I can’t think of another example.
Perhaps the decibel increase is due to sheer panic: Not only is the president black, which scares the bejeebus out of some people, but the demographic tide is turning. That’s what all this “take our country back” crap is about. Panic.
Actually, the black-and-white frosted cookies are called “Amerikaners” in Germany. They might be on to something.