Fun Black History: Preston Theodore King

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Preston Theodore King is an African-American academic and civil rights activist from Albany, GA. The son of Clennon Washington King, Sr., who served as Booker T. Washington’s chauffeur and co-founder of the Albany GA NAACP, Preston King fled to the UK in 1961 from charges of draft evasion at home for refusing to report for his conscription until an all-white draft board addressed him as “Mr.”, the same way that it addressed white draftees.

While in exile, he married Mureil Hazel Stern, a Jewish-British social justice activist and had two children, Oona King (Baroness King of Bow, formerly member of parliament) and Slater King (named after Preston’s brother Slater King, the vice-president of the Albany Movement). He later divorced Stern and, after an escapade with the children to Nairobi which ended with Stern retrieving the children back to London, King moved to Australia to teach at the University of New South Wales in the 1970s and marry a woman of Lebanese descent.

He returned to Georgia after being pardoned by President Clinton in 2000, after an exile of 39 years. He has since taught at Morehouse and Emory.

“Mental Illness” as Insult

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I’ve stopped using the word “mentally ill” or “needs help” as an insult, perhaps for months.

Because really, if you’re “mentally ill” or you “need help”, is that really an insult or is it an acknowledgement of your condition?

If you have gender dysphoria, autism, Tourette’s, or extreme stuttering, those aren’t things which can be “fixed”. Their most debilitating aspects can be moderated and accommodated in order to allow optimal function within larger society.

The neurodiversity movement hit upon language which claims these conditions away from being “diseases”, “illnesses” and “disorders” toward “states of being” within a spectrum of “neurological pluralism”.

But accommodation within the larger society for those states of neurological being is still few and far between, because it challenges what we have been taught about how the brain intersects with our senses, speech patterns, knowledge, education, sex, gender and health. And a lot of people would rather see the “degenerates” removed from sight and mind rather than become “woke” to neurological diversity.

They’re states of neurological diversity, and they need to be accommodated with respect and inclusion.

Mark My Words: For Islam and Whiteness, This Too Shall Pass

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Decades from now, Islam will integrate into the realm of “respectable American religions” for White Americans (Lindsay Lohan?) to join.

The hysteria of today will fade, and “Judeo-Christian” social conservatism will be replaced by “Abrahamic” social conservatism. Some of the most media-savvy conservative ideologues and hucksters of tomorrow will be wealthy, White paragons of family/free-market values who just happen to be Muslim.

This happened to Catholics, Mormons and Jews, who only integrated after the ruling class of this country found that these hated groups could be exploited for their wedge usefulness against some other existential enemy.

Eventually, White-enough American Muslims will become useful to our ruling class against America’s next great existential enemy. And those who engage in cultural warfare and nativism against Muslims will either look pretty stupid or just disappear under the rug of ugly-American provincialism, as do Judeophobes, anti-Catholics and anti-Mormons.

Rinse and repeat….

Terrible Person Gets Canned from CPAC, Simon & Schuster, Breitbart

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Some racist pro-Trump fop from the UK has had a bad 48 hours.

First, The Reagan Battalion, a #NeverTrump conservative blog with interesting origins, posted clips from his interviews in different venues:

This ended up with voices from left and right calling for him to be disinvited from a speaking role at this year’s CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. The CEO of CPAC, Matt Schlapp, tried to run cover for him on Twitter, but eventually acceded to this demand:

But then the hits kept coming.

And finally, after this:

the final shoe dropped:

NOTE:

In the end, feminist writer Roxane Gay was vindicated in pulling her book from Simon & Schuster in protest against Hanrahan’s book deal:

But of course, he then held a press conference announcing another media venture, just like he did at least three times before becoming the “tech editor” for Breitbart, where he ran a group of 44 interns to write his articles.

He’s a lazy writer, and also a lazy, vindictive, harassing, petty publication editor who prefers to rage against both perceived rivals to his business interests as well as perceived enemies of Western civilization. But his antics reached so many lows with which the likes of Steve Bannon and his successor were OK until he lost the support of 6 of his coworkers at Breitbart over his off-color statements and jokes on pedophilia.

Pedophilia/child abuse – not racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, immigrant-bashing, Muslim-bashing, Jew-bashing, ableism, and support for fascist behavior by governments – was the deal-breaker for the far-right.

And ironically, his rhetoric will provide more fodder for those who unjustly believe that LGBT people – even those on the far-right – are uniformly lecherous child abusers. This lie is as disgusting and inhumane as the act of child abuse.

This grifter cynically helped traffic this garbage, and he has temporarily fallen on the sword of the far-right’s literalism which he gleefully helped craft since joining Breitbart.

I hope he keeps losing until he learns humility, honesty and empathy.

“What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization – and therefore force – is already a sick civilization, a civilization that is morally diseased, that irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one repudiation to another, calls for its [Trump], I mean its punishment.”

From “Discourse on Colonialism” by #AiméCésaire (with a swapping out of “Hitler” for “Trump”)

Fighting Nazis

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

There was this one tweet saying something to the effect of “you ever wish that you were back in the Nazi era trying to fight the Nazis? Well, this is your time.”

No.

No I don’t.

Why would I be interested in fighting Nazis? Why would African-Americans be interested in fighting Nazis?

We’ve fought plantation owners and White supremacists alike for over 3 centuries. Right now, we’re fatigued, in pain (some of which is self-inflicted) and at the mercy of a White majority which is experiencing an angry contraction of the social contract.

I find it unacceptable that we have to be in this fight at all.