Tag Archives: racism

Accusations of “Dual Loyalty”

Politics, , , ,

Do Black people in this country know what it feels like to be accused of “dual loyalty”?

Maybe it’s a “privilege” of sorts to have gone 4 centuries without this accusation being leveled at us.

The accusation of “dual loyalty” is not usually directed against the convenient racial underclass, but against those ethnic groups who are perceived as “too powerful”, “too connected”, “too much of an economic threat to the previous, older elite”, “too much in thrall to their place or community of origin”, “too antagonistic to this country’s order”.

In contrast, the accusation against us has been that we violate someone else’s racial/cultural “honor”, “pedigree”, “property value”, “standards”, that our mere presence will spread the “ways” of poverty, crime and other “working class habits”.

At best, some of us may have been accused of being in thrall to Soviets during the Cold War. More recently, as in the case of the White Nationalist terror plot against Islamberg, New York, some of us have been accused of being in thrall to the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

But I perceive an assumption of class in these accusations of parasitism: we’re poor “parasites”, and others are “rich” “parasites”. I think these accusations show a bit of the priorities of the accusers more than those of the accused.

Southern White Working-Class Men Need to Check Themselves

Mitch Landrieu’s speech is the sort of conversation that more Southern White working class men need to have with each other, especially if they’re descendants of Confederate soldiers.

They need to question who this war benefitted, because it wasn’t their farmer ancestors who gained anything beyond death, destruction and deprivation. What class did the framers of the Confederate government come from? Why did these aristocrats prize their way of life as the “Southern” way of life, and not that of the majority of White men who didn’t own slaves?

Why did so many working class White men go along to war and not resist the Confederate draft? Why didn’t more men desert the ranks like Newton Knight did?

The severe class divide between the Dixie aristocracy and the soldiers sent to die in Gettysburg and Antietam is embarrassing. White men who are descended from those soldiers should ask themselves and each other if the fight was worth it or if they got played like an Appalachian fiddle.

Legalizing Weed Leaves the Glass Half-Full

Politics, Uncategorized, , , , ,

I think the states where initiatives and referendums are legal – most of which are out West – will see the greatest advancements against criminal justice abuses in the coming years.

I can’t see Georgia or most other Southern states legalizing recreational marijuana anytime soon. Florida could, since they almost did not long ago.

I’d say that legalizing marijuana and de-felonizing state drug laws is the great cross-racial, cross-religious, cross-class criminal justice struggle of the moment.

But even as more states out West legalize possession and regulate distribution, the racial disparity has persisted in Colorado and Washington with police now targeting predominately young Black/Latino male street dealers for felony distribution instead of possession. I expect a similar report from California in the near future now that weed is legal there.

If racial justice, economic justice and marijuana legalization can intersect anywhere, it’s at this location. Street sales need to be decriminalized, amnesty should be granted to past arrestees, taxes should be temporarily reduced to undercut the underground market, and arrestees should be provided job counseling.

I want to see 0 arrests for anything marijuana-related, 0 people denied jobs for anything​ marijuana-related, 0 people having to sell weed on the street to feed their family.

White Racist Persecution Complex

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White Supremacists/Nationalists/Alt-Right folks LOVE to compare themselves and their plight to that of African-Americans in their demand for “ethno-states”. They devalue actual, living, breathing Euro-descended people in the process.

The thing is, if the slave trade hadn’t happened, if our African ancestors’ families were not forcibly broken up, would we even be describing ourselves as “Black” or even “African-American” in the first place?

We would have been Yoruba, or Asante, or Dahomean, or Kongo, or whatever other ethnicities we would have brought with us to the Americas. We would not have been put through such a genealogical ringer in which only the words “nigger”, “Negro” or “colored” matter in their description of one of a similar skin color.

Instead, our post-slavery ancestry is all we really have. Even the angriest Black Nationalist is doing a lot of (slipshod but well-meaning) compensation for what was taken from us in over 246 years of slavery on the North American continent.

What similar trauma troubles those who yearn for “White Pride Worldwide” or “A White Homeland for Ourselves and Our Children”?

What great historical, enduring cataclysm happened to Europeans or to people of European descent that would see a minority clamor for a militarized “safe space” in the 21st century?

Was it 9/11? Was it the refugee crisis ensuing, eventually, from Euro-American adventures in Iraq + the chaotic proxy war in Syria?

Or was it the Ashkenazi minority and their sufferings of Christian European hypocrisy over millennia? Even now, the genocidal resentment against Ashkenazi Jews among White Supremacists is just as rabid as it is senseless and unfounded in logic. “Show us where the big bad Jew hurt you.”

Nothing has been lost from White rule. It’s still a White Man’s world. It’s still a White Man’s country.

These White Supremacists – the National Policy Institute, for one – are acting like they’ve been losing so much ground for so long, and that Trump will gain back what they’ve imagined as losing.

But their imagined traumas simply don’t compare. And the pain they wish to inflict upon not only people of color but also other White people for flouting their ideals is unjustified and unjust.

I reject the premise for that video of the rainbow person hugging the confederate person.

If I were that rainbow person (and I am), I’d have to tell the confederate person that the “Lost Cause” is a damn lie of rich white Southerners to the poor white Southerners.

I would ask them why they would brandish the legacy of that lie.

I would ask them why their ancestors allowed themselves to be played like a damn fiddle.

Then we’d probably fight in the street.

The Racism of Chicago in the White Conservative’s Mind

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Something I’ve noticed: certain demographics from outside of Chicago love to describe Chicago’s African-American population and neighborhoods as a Third World country, like it is Hell on Earth.

Apparently, it’s not so “dark”, dysfunctional and evil of a place that most of the European-Americans in Chicago proper flee in droves from the city.

In fact, despite decades of petty gang-gun violence largely concentrated in the African-American population, it’s still the third largest city in the United States.

Maybe most of the African-American population is tucked away in a certain physical memory hole called the South Side, where murders happen and outsiders cynically tsk-tsk the surviving residents (or burnish their 2nd Amendment grievances with the bloody cloth of Black gun violence, or rage against the “niggers” and “race pimps” sullying the good name of yet another nice city) before moving on with their day?

Maybe deindustrialization happened, making life harder and encouraging many who had their highest skills in manual labor to turn to drugs, which entailed a turn to the violence which follows?

Maybe the culture of honor in the White South was adopted by us early in our belated freedom, and was brought by us to places like Chicago during the Great Migration when we should have left it in Jim Crow Land?

Nah, none of that could possibly be true! Chicago is just our sideshow, our American Mordor! Let’s always talk about Chicago’s Black people as if they are all crazy, evil and feral, and then pin that on President Obama like we’ve done since 2007.

“Demographic Threats” and Voter ID Laws

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

QUESTION: Among Republican-governed states, Idaho, a state which is 0.6% African-American, has one of the looser Voter ID laws in the United States, requiring non-strict Photo ID.

Map of US Voter ID Laws by State, Strict vs Non-Strict, Nov 2016.svg
By Peterljr888 – Vector map from Blank US Map.svg by User:Theshibboleth.
Information from NCSL.org, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

 

Similarly:

  • North Dakota, with 1.2% African-descended population, has strict non-photo ID.
  • Montana, with 0.4%, has non-strict non-photo ID.
  • Wyoming, with 0.8%, has no Voter ID law.
  • Utah, with 1.1%, has non-strict non-photo ID.
  • Maine, with 1.2%, has none.
  • South Dakota, with 1.3%, has non-strict Photo ID.
  • New Mexico, with 2.1%, has none.
  • Iowa, with 2.9%, has none.
  • Alaska, with 3.3%, has non-strict non-photo ID.
  • West Virginia, with 3.4%, has none.
  • Colorado, with 4.0%, has non-strict non-photo ID.

Meanwhile, the Southeastern United States from Texas to Virginia is covered in Voter ID laws ranging from non-strict non-photo (like South Carolina, Oklahoma and Arkansas) to Strict Photo ID (Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia). Similarly, among the 4 Red States in the Midwest with the highest percentage of African-American population, Voter ID laws range from strict non-photo (Ohio) to strict Photo ID (Wisconsin and Indiana).

And today, Missouri’s GOP is succeeding in getting their Voter ID to the same strict Photo ID level as Kansas and Nebraska; Kansas has 5.9%, Nebraska has 4.5% and Missouri has 11.6%.

I wonder if the Republican rush to stricter Voter ID laws correlates to the percentage of the African-American population under their state governance. Is our mere demographic existence as voters that much of a problem to conservative Whites that the GOP would nationally inconvenience even the White elderly, the White college students, and the White disabled at the ballot box just to spite us?

Why are we such a threat to your interests that the Voter Fraud enemy which you have chosen to curb is usually African-American and perhaps a woman? Are we Black people the ones committing all of the possible or real cases of vote fraud which can be counted on your fingers?

By curbing this fraudulent voter, do you feel safer at the ballot box? Are we the cause of your vote fears, and would it be more of a convenience for you if we left your state? Or is it really the Mexican-Americans?