The "unmasking".

The Field Negro education series continues: 

"Trump's White Supremacist DNA On Display Again

by Neil H. Buchanan

Who could have predicted that an unhinged attack on professional athletes would be Donald Trump's final unmasking as a full-on racist?  After everything that he has done and said -- not merely since he announced his candidacy in 2015 but throughout his life -- Trump finally found a way to remove the last shreds of doubt about his bigotry.

This is a good occasion to revisit a point that I made during last year's election campaign, which is that Trump's supposed devotion to America and our values becomes inoperative when he has a chance to be a white supremacist.  When he has a choice, Trump goes with the racist approach, not the American one.

For those who might have been on vacation (or living under a rock) for the past week, a quick summary of Trump's latest outburst might be helpful.

In a bizarre sequence of events, Trump spent last weekend trying to get back in the good graces of his white supremacist base.  The people who were infuriated by Trump's willingness to work with non-bigots to allow "dreamers" to stay in the country were hopping mad, and Trump needed to exploit a quick-and-easy cultural grievance that combined just the right blend of sophistry and racism.

Looking for nonwhites to vilify, Trump decided to attack African-American sports stars, in particular Colin Kaepernick, an involuntarily unemployed football player who last year began silently protesting America's systemic racism by kneeling during the playing of the national anthem at the beginning of NFL games.

The target was not just Kaepernick and other football players, however, as Trump quickly attacked large numbers of black basketball and baseball players, scolding them for supposedly disrespecting America even though our country had allowed them to become rich.  He might as well have complained that they were being "uppity."

For those who might have missed the point, Trump also made sure to say that these young black men were attacking our "heritage," which is the code word that Trump and other white supremacists use to defend things like Confederate statues and other relics of the Jim Crow era.

And if that was not enough, Trump lauded NASCAR for being pro-American, and he then tried to pull hockey into the mix by inviting the NHL champion Pittsburgh Penguins (whose roster actually happens to be Canadian- and Russian-heavy, but no matter) to the White House.  Even in accepting the invitation, the Penguins tried to make it clear that they are uncomfortable being associated with Trump.

So, we now know that football, basketball, and baseball are un-American, whereas auto racing and hockey are patriotic.  No subtlety there.  Why not just go for every other stereotype, waxing poetic about mayonnaise on white bread, segregated lunch counters, and Pat Boone records?

The final proof that this is all about race, of course, was when Trump tweeted that it is not about race.  Even Trump realized that he had to pretend it was about "respect for America," or his twisted version of it.  As NeverTrump conservative Peter Wehner quickly responded: "Of course it’s about race."

Kaepernick is a particularly helpful test case, because he is not one of the supposed "thugs" that Trump and other racists like to talk about as a way to dismiss African-Americans' complaints about injustice.  Kaepernick has a very public profile as a devout Christian, and he justifies his protest (including the act of kneeling) in the explicitly religious terms that Trump's base typically loves.

Kaepernick is understandably appalled that America treats black lives so cavalierly.  Trump obviously does not care about that at all.  When Kaepernick says, "America is doing something wrong, and we can and should do better," he is in an odd way a more articulate version of Trump, who constantly disparages this country and its institutions while claiming that he alone knows how to do better.

Yet it is Kaepernick, not Trump, who is deemed not to love America.  "America, love it or leave it" evidently applies only to those whose criticisms white people do not want to hear.

It is amazing that Trump's DNA-level racism was still not clear to some people after Charlottesville, and I have no doubt that some people will continue to claim that Trump is doing nothing wrong now.  Yet there is something about Trump's attack on black athletes that has clarified the issue for many people in ways that his defense of some "fine people" marching with neo-Nazis and Klansmen did not.

There are, moreover, other "tells" in Trump's repertoire of racism.  When the surprising Brexit vote hit the news in the Spring of 2016, Trump was pleased.  As I noted in a column at the time, however, there was absolutely no reason for an avowed America Firster to care about that vote at all:

"One group of non-Americans voted to harm themselves, based on unfounded fears about other groups of non-Americans who have moved into a country that is not the United States."

What if we were to put something like the Brexit vote anywhere else, not with white (nominally Christian) distant cousins of people like Trump voting to kick out nonwhite newcomers but with, say, one country in South America splitting along some nonracial dimension?

Would Trump care?  No, but in the UK it was all about white people "taking back their country" from the hordes of illegitimate outsiders.  Just as he does not mind using white Canadian and Russian hockey players as props for his "no black athletes at the White House" reception, Trump shows that skin color matters more to him than nationality.

As I further argued last year, Trump's embrace of Brexit was an especially clarifying moment, because Trump indirectly acknowledged that Brexit would be bad for U.S. workers.  That is, he noted that the British pound would probably weaken, which would be good for tourism to the UK and thus Trump's golf courses.

But that change in exchange rates also necessarily means that American goods will be less competitive, hurting especially the current and former manufacturing workers who have rallied behind Trump.  The expression of racist resentment by whites in Britain was more important to Trump than helping American workers (of all races).

As I was thinking overnight about what I would write in this column, I recalled that I had revisited the Brexit issue in a column last August, where I pointed out that Trump had asked one of Brexit's leaders, Nigel Farage, to speak for him at a rally in Mississippi.  Farage was the perfect white supremacist spokesman, and he was obviously not one who puts America First.

And sure enough, when I opened my news feed this morning, I saw that Farage is now campaigning in Alabama for the crazier Republican in the Senate primary, the ousted Supreme Court justice Roy Moore, who has been embraced by the racist, nativist right.

On the surface, this is a bit of a puzzle, because Trump has formally endorsed Moore's opponent, Luther Strange, who was appointed to the Senate when Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III became Trump's Attorney General.  This would suggest that Trump is backing the candidate who is not a white supremacist (or is at least less of one), but that would be misleading.

Trump blurted out his initial attack on Kaepernick and black athletes, in fact, when Trump was speaking at a rally for Strange.  Trump all but said there that he preferred Moore to Strange, but he was being forced to mouth support for the appointed incumbent.  Given that so many of Trump's core supporters in Alabama are Moore supporters, Trump was doing everything possible to say, "Hey, I'm still one of you.  Let's unite again behind our shared hatred of black people!"

Farage's presence, then, can be seen not as a repudiation of Trump but as a matter of surrogacy.  For complicated reasons, Trump cannot currently admit that he prefers the more extreme of the two candidates, but his British mouthpiece is there to tell everyone what white supremacists on both sides of the Pond know: Moore is Trump's kind of guy.

In the end, this strange interlude will be best remembered for Trump's decision to use race once again to divide the country, elevating what had been a minor issue into a major racial clash.  That so much of the country -- even the morally backward NFL leadership and many team owners -- rejected Trump's provocations is a good thing, of course.

We could, therefore, come out of this with a double win.  Trump has proved once again that he cares more about white supremacy than anything else, convincing ever more people to stop pretending that he is redeemable.  And large numbers of people -- even his friends -- told Trump that he is wrong.  Not a bad week." [Source] 

*Pic from ibtimes.co.uk.com

Now they kneel.

 *It took the president of the United States calling their mothers bitches for some of these NFL players to finally get one hundred percent behind Colin Kaepernick. 

Today, in a show of solidarity, pretty much all of the players and teams that played either took a knee or locked arms in  a show of solidarity to protest the words of Donald trump.  I am personally no big fan of the NFL and the powers that make up that league, but leave it to Mr. trump to make me find sympathy for an entity that should not elicit any sympathy at all.

I, like the rest of the normal people in America, sat in amazement and watched that surreal spectacle in Huntsville, Alabama, where Mr. trump threw red meat to his base. They called for the arrest of Hilary Clinton, and booed the mention of Senator John McCain, and when the president of the United States called hundreds of women "bitches", they cheered even louder. It was sick on so many levels for an American president to act this way, but this is where we are now. We elected this guy, we can't get a do- over.   

It's not only NFL players who are up in arms about the president. Steph Curry was asked if he will be visiting the White House with his team, the Golden State Warriors, and he gave a very nuanced and diplomatic answer. Sadly, our notoriously thin skinned and petty president was not pleased, so he disinvited the entire Warriors team.

Now it's the NBA's turn to question the sanity and the motivation of the American president. LeBron James actually called him a bum, and  Steph Curry's coach wrote an article for Sport's Illustrated  bemoaning the sad state of the presidency and the current leadership of our country.

All of this has made trump so mad that he chose to tweet about the Pittsburgh Penguins accepting his invite to the White House. 
"
  Donald J. Trump

✔ @realDonaldTrump

Please to inform that the Champion Pittsburgh Penguins of the NHL will be joining me at the White House for Ceremony. Great team!

1:24 PM - Sep 24, 2017"

•   

 Well, I hate to break it to you Mr. trump, but most of the players in the NHL are from Canada. Maybe they just don't understand how dissent and the freedom to do it works.

But then, almost all of the players in the NHL are white. That should make it much more fun and comfortable for the president when they visit.

*Pic from abcnews.go.com

       

America in black and white.

My friend Solomon Jones wrote a very insightful and thoughtful article about America's latest case of fictus animo and racial double standard for Philly.com, and I think that it is worth sharing in its entirety.

"SAN FRANCISCO 49ers Quarterback Colin Kaepernick sits down during the national anthem to protest America's treatment of people of color, and he is accused of being a traitor to his country.

Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte is facing criminal charges in Brazil for falsely reporting he was robbed at gunpoint, and, while he lost several endorsements as a result, he ultimately was rewarded with a stint on ABC's "Dancing With the Stars."

Both men are accomplished athletes. Kaepernick appeared in Super Bowl XLVII. Lochte is a 12-time Olympic medalist.

But Lochte is white, Kaepernick is black, and when black men stand up against American oppression, the fears of the white establishment arise. Fears that a single man seated on a bench is the forerunner to violent rebellion; that an athlete with the gall to think for himself is a danger to the order of things.

Rooted in guilt, and watered by ignorance, those fears grow strong in bigotry's soil. Because the truth of the matter is this: So long as Kaepernick is content to collect a paycheck for throwing a ball, so long as he is satisfied with staking his livelihood to a game, so long as his words are restricted to signals on the gridiron, he poses no threat.

But when black athletes awaken to the cruel reality that they too are black, that they too are targets, that they too are susceptible to the treatment that other blacks endure, they become more than leaders on a field. They become leaders in life.

And for that, they must be punished.

Never mind that Kaepernick's right to protest is enshrined in the First Amendment. Forget that his decision to exercise that right is an expression of American freedom.

Kaepernick is a black man, and in the eyes of those who would deny the humanity of blacks, Kaepernick has no right to American freedoms; only the obligation to serve American interests.
I suspect that Kaepernick knew the risks when he sat down during the national anthem. He said as much when he was asked to explain his actions.

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," he told NFL media. "To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

The data back Kaepernick's words. Overall, blacks are 2.5 times more likely to be shot by police than whites, and black men make up 40 percent of all unarmed people shot and killed by police last year, though we make up only 6 percent of the population. Convictions of police officers in such shootings are exceedingly rare.

Those facts haven't tempered the angry response to Kaepernick's action.

In thousands of social media posts and dozens of interviews, Kaepernick has been called a traitor, he's been denigrated as stupid, he's been pilloried with racial epithets, and he has been labeled a coward.
This for doing what America was founded upon - fighting government oppression.

Compare the anger aimed at Kaepernick with the response that greeted Lochte after he was caught on video committing what looked to be a crime. According to video evidence and their own statements, Lochte and three other American swimmers urinated in an alley, vandalized private property, and did not initially stop when confronted by security. Security leveled weapons in their direction, and Lochte and his teammates were forced to pay for the damage they caused.

Lochte lied about that incident, claiming he and his teammates were robbed. He repeated his false story to the media and to the police. Then he left Brazil, leaving his friends behind to deal with the consequences. As a result, swimmer James Feigen was fined nearly $11,000 before he was allowed to leave Brazil, and Lochte now faces criminal charges.

The 32-year-old Lochte was called a kid by apologists who refused to hold him accountable. His false report of a crime was labeled a youthful mistake. He issued televised apologies to a forgiving American public. He was coddled in a display of white male privilege.

Even now, as Lochte faces criminal charges that could result in up to six months in a Brazilian prison, ABC has announced that Lochte will appear on next season's "Dancing With the Stars." [More]

Thoughts?

You can leave your comments right here,  call Solomon's radio program in the morning, or hit him up on twitter. 

*Pic from huffingtonpost.com



 

To stand or not to stand.

Over sixty percent of Americans want to give San Francisco QB, Colin Kaepernick, a piece of their minds, because, to them, he has disrespected America by refusing to stand for the national anthem.

Of those sixty percent, I m sure that more than half of them are supporting the republican nominee for president. He is a man who took multiple deferments instead of actually serving in the military like so many other young men did at the time. (He actually had FIVE draft deferments during the Vietnam war. FIVE!) But back to #7.

It would be so easy to rip him as just another pampered millionaire athlete who doesn't realize how good he has it here in America. "The guy makes millions to play a game for crying loud! Why can't he just cash his checks and shut his mouth? He should just take his black ass to Africa and see how good he will have it there"  But I say good for him for making a  stand (or in this case a seat) about something that he believes in. The fact that he happens to be a famous athlete makes his stance even more powerful, and it will no doubt shine a brighter light on what he thinks is the issue of inequality and institutionalized racism in this country.

Also, the fact that he was able to articulate his position in such a thoughtful manner was also refreshing. Obviously it is something that he has thought about, and he did not come to his decision overnight. Watching his impromptu press conference at his locker made that all too clear.

It's also nice to see that he is getting support from some of his fellow NFL players, it can be awful lonely out there on principle island; especially when you are a professional athlete who is expected to be a role- model while toe the party line.  

This country has a lot of problems, but one of the beautiful things about this country is that we have a Constitution that allows us to speak up about those problems without having to worry about losing our freedom. And we are also free to  disagree with each other as many have chosen to do with #7.

I love all the people having jersey burning ceremonies because the guy just made them so mad. ("This is America, damn it!! If you don't like it n****r you can leave.") It's sentiments like that one of course, which make Kaepernick's act of defiance even more irradiating. I doubt seriously if the folks making those types of vitriolic attacks see the irony in all of it.

I have loved ones who fought and died defending the First Amendment right of people like Kaepernick to refuse to stand for the anthem, as well as the rights of those who choose to call  him out as a piece of shit or idiot for refusing to do so.
Personally, I stand for the national anthem, as, quite frankly, I would for the anthem of any country. That's the Jamaican in me. But if someone chooses not to for whatever reason, I am honestly not bothered by it, and if that person happens to be a high profile athlete making a social or political statement; I say go for it.

“To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder".

OK, so it isn't Tommie Smith and John Carlos, but this isn't 1968, either. Although we seem to be getting back there really fast.

*Pic from latimes.com.

Ink and ignorance.

Please believe I am bumming today. The folks who gave us Boardwalk Empire found it necessary to rub out one of my all time favorite television characters, Giuseppe "Gyp"Colombano Rosetti. (If Bobby Cannavale doesn't get serious Emmy considerations there ought to be a congressional investigation.)"Barney Google With the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes." Classic!

So anyway, I want to talk about this Sporting News columnist who found it necessary to rip -San Francisco 49ers QB- Colin Kaepernick because of all the ink that he is sporting. Yes, you read right; a sports writer criticizing an athlete, not for his play, but for his decision to wear tattoos.

Now, as is to be expected, the writer is being accused of racism by Dr. Boyce Watkins and others. At first glance it would seem that this is race neutral ignorance on the part of the writer. I mean wearing tattoos pretty much crosses all racial and demographic lines here in America. But then, after reading more of what he wrote, I might have to agree with folks accusing this moron of having a problem when it comes to matters of race.

"The column’s opening line, (written by David Whitley) makes an immediate comparison between Kaepernick’s ink and inmates at a California state prison:

“San Francisco’s Colin Kaepernick is going to be a big-time NFL quarterback. That must make the guys in San Quentin happy.”

Whitley didn’t stop there:

“[Kaepernick] is the CEO of a high-profile organization, and you don’t want your CEO to look like he just got paroled.”

Whitley also draws a line between the tattoos of white quarterbacks Ben Roethlisberger and Alex Smith and the tattoos of black quarterbacks Michael Vick and Terrelle Pryor:

“I realize not all NFL quarterbacks are pristine. Ben Roethlisberger has a “COURAGE” tattoo on the right side of his upper body. Smith has one honoring his Serbian heritage. They can’t be seen when the players put on their uniforms.

Then there are Michael Vick and Terrelle Pryor. Neither exactly fit the CEO image, unless your CEO has done a stretch in Leavenworth or has gotten Ohio State on probation over free tattoos.”

In other words, not all tattoos are created equal." [Source]

Actually, Mr. Whitley, all tattoos are created equal.

Still, I am used to folks like David Whitley making ignorant statements on matters of race. What I will never get used to are folks like David Whitley trying to justify it by playing the "some of my best friends", card.

"Shortly after the column was published, Jason McIntyre of influential sports blog The Big Lead tagged Whitley as a “racist” and nearly all hope for constructive criticism or discussion was lost.

Instead of acknowledging that his column was ill-informed, untimely and offensive to many, Whitley chose to deflect. Whitley chose to declare his non-racism.

Whitley chose to reveal he has two black daughters through adoption.
Finally, via Twitter, Whitley chose to sarcastically refer to himself as “David" Duke,” the former KKK grand wizard:

Actually, if i am going to be honest, I respect David Duke more than this clown. He wouldn't try to deflect from his ignorance by claiming that he has black friends or black adopted children. You know exactly where folks like David Duke are coming from. David Whitley, on the other hand, no so much.