Wednesday, July 01, 2015

"The oblivious, casual racism of modern conservatism"

Image result for racist conservatives imagesThe Field Negro education series continues with this timely article from salon.com.


"Sometimes racism isn’t about vicious bigotry and hatred towards those with different skin color than your own, let alone a willingness to walk into a church and massacre nine of those others because you think they’re “taking over your country.” Sometimes, racism is manifested in the subtle way a person can dismiss the lived experiences of those racial others as if they were nothing, utterly erasing those experiences, consigning them to the ashbin of history like so much irrelevant refuse.
In the last few days, since Dylann Roof’s terrorist rampage in Charleston, we’ve seen some of that on the part of those who steadfastly defend the confederate flag, which Roof dearly loved, from its critics. As the flag has come down in Alabama and is poised for removal from the statehouse grounds in South Carolina, its supporters have insisted that the flag is not a sign of racism, even if the government whose Army deployed it made clear that its only purposes at the time were the protection of slavery and white supremacy.

Those who defend the flag consider the black experience irrelevant, a trifle, hardly worthy of their concern. Who cares if the flag represented a government that sought to consign them to permanent servitude? Who cares if segregationists used that flag as a blatant symbol of racist defiance during the civil rights movement? Remembering the courageous heroics of one’s great-great-great-grandpappy Cooter by waving that flag or seeing it on public property is more important than black people’s lived experience of it. That such dismissiveness is intrinsically racist should be obvious. But what of less blatant examples?

For instance, what are we to make of certain comments by Congressman Louis Gohmert, Senator Ted Cruz and conservative media personality Sean Hannity in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing marriage equality nationwide? While those comments were not about race per se, it is hard to deny that their implicit subtext demonstrates a worldview entirely shaped by a white racial frame, viewed through a white racial lens, and one that takes as it starting point a profound disregard for the lives of persons of color: in short, a worldview that is (whether consciously or not), white supremacist to the core.

Start first with Gohmert. Given to hyperbole, one is loath to pay too much attention to the likes of Louis, and yet, his comments in the wake of the marriage equality decision represent far more than his solitary views, so similar are they to the kinds of things heard from many an evangelical white Christian whenever their moral sensibilities are offended. According to the Texas Congressman, because of the ruling, “God’s hand of protection will be withdrawn” from America. In other words, God so loves the world (but hates the gays) that he will either smite us directly, or at the very least no longer offer his thus far really impressive protection from things like economic recession, killer tornadoes, scorching heat waves, disastrous blizzards, a crumbling national infrastructure, and for that matter, racist young men who walk into churches and slaughter nine of his followers in cold blood. Got it? No more “protection” from those things!

At first glance, perhaps this comment seems to have nothing to do with race at all; but think about it. For Gohmert to claim that now God’s protection will be withdrawn is to suggest that prior to this time we were the active recipients of that protection, that to this point God had shined his light upon America, blessing us with all good things, happy at the sight of our superior morality. And yet, for that to be true, one would have to believe that God saw nothing wrong with the enslavement of African peoples for over two hundred years, the slaughter and forced removal of indigenous peoples from their land, the invasion and theft of half of Mexico, the abuse of Chinese labor on railroads, the internment of Japanese Americans—nothing wrong with lynching or segregation. You would have to accept that God is more offended by marriage equality than any of those things, that God was essentially sanguine about formal white supremacy, and willing to extend his protective blanket over us even in the face of that, but somehow so-called “gay marriage” is a bridge too far.

Aside from the loony-tunes nature of such a belief as this, on its face, is it not obvious that the position amounts to an erasure of the lived experiences of people of color? That it diminishes the horrors with which they lived and suggests that those horrors were not horrors after all, at least not in any moral sense that the presumed Creator might recognize? And if so, how can such a belief not be called racist? If I deny your experience, relegate it to the category of the irrelevant, or suggest that the denial of your rights as people of color was morally less problematic than the extension of rights to others, how can I possibly claim exculpation from the charge of holding an implicitly white supremacist worldview? Is one such as Gohmert not clearly implying here that the experiences of people of color do not matter? Or at least not that much? Is he not suggesting that whatever terrors they experienced were basically no biggie so far as the Lord was concerned, and as such, should certainly prove no great distraction for the likes of mortal men and women like ourselves?

Indeed, to believe that God protected America all through those periods of formal and overt white racial fascism is to believe that those days weren’t so bad after all—a fundamentally racist worldview that disrespects people of color by definition—or that God is a white supremacist, which view not only disrespects people of color but would likely displease any Creator should he exist and actively intervene in the affairs of man. In which case, Louis Gohmert might want to chew his food especially well from this point forward.

Then there’s Ted Cruz. In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, Cruz took to Sean Hannity’s radio program, where he proclaimed that the previous twenty-four hour period (in which the court not only legalized marriage equality but also saved affordable health care for between 6-8 million Americans) had been “among the darkest 24-hours” in the history of the nation itself. It was a claim to which Hannity responded that he could not have said it “more eloquently” himself.

Really? A 24-hour period during which the court extended rights to millions of people and guaranteed that upwards of eight million wouldn’t lose their health insurance was among the worst 24-hour periods in history?

As bad or worse than any 24-hour period under slavery, under segregation, or during which day-long progression multiple black bodies may well have been strung up from tree limbs?
Worse than the 24-hour period in which the same court issued its decision in Dred Scott, holding therein that blacks had no rights the white man was bound to respect?

Worse than the 24-hour period in which whites bombed and burned the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma or slaughtered dozens of African Americans in East St. Louis, Illinois in orgies of racial terrorism?

Worse than any 24-hour period in which multiple slaving ships pulled into port in cities like Charleston or New Orleans and offloaded their human cargo for sale at market?

Worse than any 24-hour period in which Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Muscogee Indians were forcibly marched westward during the Trail of Tears, or any 24-hour period in which Lakota and Dakota peoples were being hunted in the Black Hills, or the 24-hour period during which Colonel John Chivington led his forces in a sadistic massacre of Cheyenne families at Sand Creek?

Fascinating.

It would seem axiomatic to rational people that any day under enslavement or Jim Crow segregation, or debt peonage or the Black Codes, or the virtual re-enslavement of African Americans that existed even well into the twentieth century in many parts of the South, would have been worse than the 24-hour period about which Cruz and Hannity are so exorcised. But then again, that would only be true for black people, and as such, would not count to the likes of men such as they. And that’s the point: to disregard the racialized horror that defined the black experience every single day for centuries, or to consider it somehow less horrible than a 24-hour span in which LGBT folks were treated as full and equal citizens and eight million people were kept from being thrown off of health care rolls, is to possess a worldview that is not only stupendous in its thoroughgoing mendacity, but also embarrassingly white and implicitly racist. Only someone who didn’t care about the history of America as regards people of color could say such a thing; and one who doesn’t care about said history is engaged in a form of racism by default—guilty of committing racial memoricide by way of their dismissiveness." [Read more]

What's that saying? "Not all right wingers are racist, but all racists are right wingers."

The "rhetoric of modern racism", as Tim Wise calls it, always comes from the right.

Coincidence? I think not.

And I take issue with the title of this piece. They are not "oblivious" to it, and there is certainly nothing "casual" about it.


*Pic courtesy of timwise.org.


38 comments:

  1. Remember Lee Atwater? This bullshit is not accidental.

    -Doug in Oakland

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mutated skin, mutated soul.

    ReplyDelete
  3. But but but the democrats started slavery! You know, those liberal democrats? You're on a plantation!

    BTW, the brothers who put the confederate flag back up after Bree took it down should be the house negroes of the year.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. PX I'm going to disagree with that about the Black men involved with the arrest and putting the flag back up. Those men were PURPOSELY told to do that and very likely need their jobs. Not everyone is in the financial position to do what's right.

      Delete
  4. Anonymous12:22 AM

    Ugh, this is why I hate Tim Wise. I'm not going to disagree with his claim that the Republican Party panders to white racists. It does. It's not that all Republicans are racists, but the party is certainly happy to cater to those who are.

    However, Tim Wise's logic in this article is warped and is based on giving Louie Gohmert and Ted Cruz, two absolutely terrible human beings, way more credit for logic than they deserve.

    Louie Gohmert is borderline retarded, and trying to figure out what's going on inside his empty skull is a fruitless exercise. But in Gohmert's complaints about gay marriage, he's advocating for American evangelical Christianity, which, I'd say, is just a downright ridiculous movement. Their God isn't a racist God, so much as it is an insane one. It's not that their version of God doesn't care about black people; their God literally cares about nothing beyond putting sexual restrictions on people.

    I mean, their interpretation of the Bible is so absurd, it's like they've never even read the Scripture to which they claim to have dedicated their lives. Going by the way they act, here is what right-wing fundies believe the Bible consists of:

    Page 1 -- Do not put your pecker here
    Page 2 -- Do not put your pecker there
    Page 3 -- Here's another place your pecker should not go
    Page 4 -- Nope, pecker can't go here, either
    Page 5 -- It's really important you keep control of your pecker
    .
    .
    .

    And so on. Repeat for thousands of pages. Avoiding having the "wrong kind" of sex is the only important thing in the universe, apparently.

    Meanwhile, Ted Cruz is nothing but an attention-seeking bomb-thrower. He never does anything that isn't some sort of pointless stunt calculated to draw maximum attention to him, consequences be damned. He doesn't care about his party or his country or really anything other than Ted Cruz. He is a "reality TV senator."

    To Ted Cruz, anything Republicans don't like is a cataclysmic disaster requiring the most radical solution imaginable.

    Marginal tax rates went up one percentage point?
    WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED! BLOW UP THE GOVERNMENT!

    Environmental regulations are going to cause gas prices to increase by ten cents a gallon?
    WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED! BLOW UP THE GOVERNMENT!

    The FDA is changing the nutrition label on his favorite brand of breakfast cereal?
    WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED! BLOW UP THE GOVERNMENT!

    Obama didn't say enough mean things about Muslims this week?
    WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED! BLOW UP THE GOVERNMENT!

    Thowing the mother of all temper tantrums every time he doesn't get his way certainly makes him a despicable person ... but again, it doesn't prove he's a racist.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous2:32 AM

    Tim Wise. A White Jew, pretending to hate himself and make excuses for Black Dysfunction.

    Imagine that, it's racist not to pander and coddle to Blacks and empathize with the experience of their life that they create.

    What a bunch of whiney little arrogant, petulant children. The life you create is filled with dirt, crime and dysfunction.

    We are not your parents.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous2:46 AM

    Yīshēng said...

    Mutated skin, mutated soul.

    Darwin thinks you're not human. You are pretty damn ugly and stupid.

    ReplyDelete
  7. "We are not your parents."

    Have you looked in the mirror recently?

    You will see a pudgy morbidly obese face, piggy little eyes, lank, unwashed hair, a stupid "talking cunt" beard, and a grease stained baseball cap.

    You will never be anybody's parent.

    ReplyDelete

  8. Wrong PC, it could be a parent, just not to one of us. :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. BUT RACISM!!!!!

    BUT WHITE SUPREMACIST!!!!

    BUT!!! BUT!!!!! WHATS ABOUT THE POOR PEOPLES OF COLORS!!!

    OH MY JEWISH BUTT HURTS!!!!



    No mention of Fox News or Bush? Somebody needs to get fired over at the racial grievance industry.



    Thankfully blahs have a self-hating Jew to help them piss and moan.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous8:32 AM

    The Purple Cow said...

    "We are not your parents."

    Have you looked in the mirror recently?

    You will see a pudgy morbidly obese face, piggy little eyes, lank, unwashed hair, a stupid "talking cunt" beard, and a grease stained baseball cap.

    You will never be anybody's parent.

    Uh-huh. Notice. I KNOW you have brown eyes and sheep hair. YOU however have to make up a fantasy of some damaged white person, to make you feel better about who you are normally.

    I don't want to be your parent. Get off my back and take responsibility for who you are, stop blaming strangers for endless times of evidence that you are inferior.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I notice field isn't posting about black church burnings 2015 anymore. Could it be only two are being investigated as arson? None are being investigate as a hate crime?

    Unless there is a white Republican, the NRA or Fox News to blame field won't be posting about black church burnings anytime soon.

    ReplyDelete
  12. "Uh-huh. Notice. I KNOW you have brown eyes and sheep hair."

    Well, you got that wrong.

    **
    " YOU however have to make up a fantasy of some damaged white person, to make you feel better about who you are normally."

    Ohhhhh, you don't know me at all do you?

    Any long-term posters here will tell you I have absolutely no problem feeling good about myself.

    Also, I suspect my characterisation of your appearance is more or less bob-on. You DO have a talking cunt beard, you ARE obese, and you DO wear a baseball cap.

    **
    "I don't want to be your parent."

    Relax you are not. 40% of intelligence is inherited, so the chance of someone as dumb as you being a parent to someone as smart as me is vanishingly small.

    **

    "Get off my back and take responsibility for who you are..."

    And now we get to the core of the matter. The white grievance industry.

    NOBODY is on your back son. This fantasy of the downtrodden white man burdened by having to carry black folks is exactly that: a fantasy. The reason your life is such a disappointment to you is because of you and your incompetence. Stop trying to blame black folks for your failures. If you expended half as much energy on getting an education as you do on hating black folks you might have got somewhere in life. Instead all you can do whine and complain about how hard it is being a white man in a country run by white men. Diadems. Get over yourself.

    **

    "...stop blaming strangers for endless times of evidence that you are inferior."

    WTF??? "endless times of evidence"???

    What does that even mean?

    Is English your second language? If so, you need to work on your grammatical skills. If not, your intellectual situation is even worse than I thought.

    I don't think even the dumbest banjo-playing toothless slack-jawed yokel would feel inferior to the likes of you.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Somewhat off the immediate topic but of general interest -

    @uptown steve -
    In case he clocks in today, he expressed skepticism about Millennials being just as racist as their parents. Based on my own personal experience, too, I came to similar conclusions. I'm in NYC, not at all typical of the rest of the country, but the cultural landscape nationally seemed more tolerant, more indifferent to the racial divide than formerly. Now here's another article claiming that Millennials are just as racist as their parents, and based on polls:

    http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/07/02/never-mind-rising-again-it-never-went-anywhere/

    Maybe what I read as Field's lack of optimism is well considered.

    ReplyDelete

  14. Kinky_Con said...
    I notice field isn't posting about black church burnings 2015 anymore.


    I'm sure FieldNegro has a good reason to go crickets.


    Black Suspect Arrested After Racist Message Discovered Outside Predominately Black Church
    http://denver.cbslocal.com/2015/06/30/suspect-arrested-after-racist-message-discovered-outside-church/


    Wouldn't a Black man understand the Black reaction to seeing threats from the KKK on their church?

    Black people now use the KKK to scare other Black people.

    ReplyDelete
  15. ROTFL @ PC, that's the comeback of the year!!

    BTW, one of Field's whiner failures is Asian, which explains all the discussions about Black men (or should I say the penis of Black men), and the obsession with me, a Black woman Scientist that's ~5'8" tall married to a man that's 6'5" tall.

    He is intellectually AND OBVIOUSLY, physically inferior!!!

    ReplyDelete
  16. PoopAvenger12:57 PM

    Fuck white people. Fuck them up their asses.

    ReplyDelete
  17. The Purple Cow said...
    Any long-term posters here will tell you I have absolutely no problem feeling good about myself.



    And loving white penis.........

    ReplyDelete
  18. Go Pack Go1:04 PM

    The level of retardation here is astonishing. Purple Cow is just a belligerent asshole who can't win an argument to save his pathetic life. Yisheng might be one of the dumbest human beings I've ever had the misfortune of encountering and reading online. And PilotX is too busy with Field's dick in this mouth to be of any real use or importance.

    You people are fucked.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Yīshēng, baby-boo, no one is obsessed with you here.

    You come to this section everyday posting about how superior you are to white folks and commence to racial insulting everyone.

    Megalomania is a psychopathological disorder and is treatable. Have you thought about getting help?

    I will pray for God to heal your heart and mind.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Anonymous4:15 PM

    KC, "Thankfully blahs have a self-hating Jew to help them piss and moan."

    8:29 AM
    --------------
    "blahs" is a racist insulting term that is even nastier than the n-word. You are such a racist.

    ReplyDelete
  21. SFNorCal4:27 PM

    I wish I was black so that I could be treated special.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Go Pack Go said...
    The level of retardation here is astonishing.
    >>>>>

    Ding, ding, ding (pun intended, "little man")!!!!

    Pass this man a fortune cookie and "one dalla", ROTFL!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  23. Actually, KKKuckoo, I come here everyday to see Field stick it to people like YOU, so the entire world can read how hateful and mentally disturbed Americans like YOU are.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Anonymous4:33 PM

    Anonymous SFNorCal said...
    I wish I was black so that I could be treated special.

    4:27 PM
    -----------
    Well, you come from a line of slave masters...so what's your problem?

    ReplyDelete
  25. Anonymous Anonymous said...
    Well, you come from a line of slave masters...so what's your problem?
    >>>>>>>>>>

    Whooteemoos were too poor to own slaves in fact, many of them WERE slaves.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous10:35 AM

      Here we have it ladies and gents! Finally a blah person admits that their time as slaves was neither special nor unique.

      Every race has been through it at one time or another. Does this mean blah people can shut the fuck up about slavery now?

      If your situation wasn't unique and other races went through it also why are you constantly whining about it?

      Shut up, teach your kids to not act like animals in school (which will help with getting an education) and start lifting yourself up. If every other race can come to America and succeed, you should be able to do this too.

      Educate the niglets that education isn't ' da white mangs thang' and the black community might actually start making some real substantial gains in this country.

      Until then blah people will stay on the bottom rung, continuously being passed by foreign immigrants.

      It's in the hands of blah people, no one can do it for you. Shape up.

      Delete
  26. Hey Field, a much appreciated thanks for the side bar shout out to Black women entrepreneurs!!!

    ReplyDelete
  27. Go Pack Go4:57 PM

    Thank you Yisheng for proving my point. What the hell are you even talking about most of the time?

    ReplyDelete
  28. McFred5:23 PM

    @ Go Pack Go, Kinky, Josh, etc.

    Anyone with half a brain can see that Yisheng is nothing but a worthless, classless, dumbass bigoted cunt and whore.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Yisheng5:39 PM

    Anonymous Go Pack Go said...
    Thank you Yisheng for proving my point. What the hell are you even talking about most of the time?
    >>>>

    So much for the "smart Asian" meme.

    ReplyDelete
  30. ctrl+halt+del5:40 PM


    RIP Patrice Lumumba b. July 2,1925

    ReplyDelete
  31. Yisheng5:40 PM

    @5:23, YO MAMMA!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  32. Anonymous6:16 PM

    Yisheng, that is a very beautiful picture of you in your avatar. Wow! I had no idea you were so beautiful and shapely. And you are very smart.

    I bet there are some jealous white folks like KC, and some anons on this blog. You know how the Whites here can't stand a bw who is flawless.

    You go, girl.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Well said sir...well said.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Quote: Kinky_con

    "And loving white penis........."

    Sorry no.

    The smaller things in life do not interest me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous10:37 AM

      Also why whites aren't very interested in blah people's IQ. Too small to think about.

      Delete




  35. شركة نقل عفش
    اهم شركات مكافحة حشرات بالخبر كذلك معرض اهم شركة مكافحة حشرات بالدمام والخبر والجبيل والخبر والاحساء والقطيف كذلك شركة رش حشرات بالدمام ومكافحة الحشرات بالخبر
    شركة مكافحة حشرات بالدمام
    شركة تنظيف خزانات بجدة الجوهرة من افضل شركات تنظيف الخزانات بجدة حيث ان تنظيف خزانات بجدة يحتاج الى مهارة فى كيفية غسيل وتنظيف الخزانات الكبيرة والصغيرة بجدة على ايدى متخصصين فى تنظيف الخزانات بجدة
    شركة تنظيف خزانات بجدة
    شركة كشف تسربات المياه بالدمام
    شركة نقل عفش واثاث
    شركة نقل عفش بالرياض وجدة والدمام والخبر والجبيل اولقطيف والاحساء والرياض وجدة ومكة المدينة المنورة والخرج والطائف وخميس مشيط وبجدة افضل شركة نقل عفش بجدة نعرضها مجموعة الفا لنقل العفش بمكة والخرج والقصيم والطائف وتبوك وخميس مشيط ونجران وجيزان وبريدة والمدينة المنورة وينبع افضل شركات نقل الاثاث بالجبيل والطائف وخميس مشيط وبريدة وعنيزو وابها ونجران المدينة وينبع تبوك والقصيم الخرج حفر الباطن والظهران
    شركة نقل عفش بجدة
    شركة نقل عفش بالمدينة المنورة

    ReplyDelete