racism Archives - Page 13 of 33 - Ramblin' with Roger

HISTORY

Both the New York Times and National Geographic have extensive pieces on the year 1619, 400 years ago, when “enslaved Africans first arrived in Virginia.”

A New York Times magazine article suggests America Wasn’t a Democracy Until Black Americans Made It One, by working towards its 1776 ideals. It’s a slow process: Here’s, for instance, the shameful story of how one million black families have been ripped from their farms.

Meanwhile, their U.S. roots date back centuries, but some Latinos still wonder if it’s enough.

Check out the funny-if-it-weren’t-so-pathetic When The U.S. Government Tried To Replace Migrant Farmworkers With High Schoolers.

NOW

It’s to a point where most Latinos now say it’s gotten worse for them in the U.S.

This Week Tonight with John Oliver unpacks Bias In Medicine, based on both gender and race.

Voter suppression is as alive now as it was in the 1960s and earlier.

The conservative Foreign Policy suggests that white supremacists want a dirty bomb, and the regime “is letting them get dangerously close to acquiring one.” It’s no surprise that the Department of Justice HID a 2018 report on white supremacy and domestic terrorism.

When you talk about these things, those who disagree accuse you of just being PC. It has become “a rhetorical reflex.”

AND YET

I watch the Vlogbrothers’ four-minute videos a lot, and it’s not just because their surnames are Green. The authors have an outsized influence on their online community of Nerdfighters.

I was surprised and pleased when John talked about How I (barely) Passed 11th Grade English, which includes a paean to Toni Morrison. Then Hank responded in …Not My Proudest Moment, which was eerily similar in some respects. In both cases, they acknowledged their privilege and part of that was a result of their skin color.

Undoubtedly I’ve said before that I LOVE it when white people talk about white privilege. When black and brown people talk about it, too often it falls onto deaf ears.

I KNOW it’s a small thing, in the grand scheme of four centuries of racialism in what we now call the United States. Still, I need SOMETHING to hold onto, some sliver that it’s getting better, not worse.

Mexican repatriation of the 1930s

A Decade of Betrayal

1500-Mexicans-Loaded-on-Trains I was catching up with a month of four-minute vlogbrothers videos when I got up to John Green’s piece on Mexican repatriation. He was researching a famous painting when he came across a bit of terrible US history that wasn’t in any of the textbooks that either of us had read.

It’s not a secret – there’s even a decent Wikipedia page about it. The narrative is that in the early stages of the Great Depression, there was, of course, a scarcity of jobs. The Secretary of Labor William N. Doak suggested that if there were fewer people, there would be fewer unemployed, and, as President Herbert Hoover put it, “real jobs for real Americans.” This did not prove to be the case.

From The Atlantic: “According to former California State Senator Joseph Dunn, who in 2004 began an investigation into the Hoover-era deportations, ‘the Republicans decided the way they were going to create jobs was by getting rid of anyone with a Mexican-sounding name.'”

A Decade of Betrayal

Professor Francisco Balderrama has literally written the book on the actions, A Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. He notes that Mexicans were targeted because of the proximity of the Mexican border and the physical distinctiveness of the people.

“The federal government imposed restrictions for immigrant labor as well, requiring firms that supply the government with goods and services refrain from hiring immigrants and, as a result, most larger corporations followed suit, and as a result, many employers fired their Mexican employees and few hired new Mexican workers causing unemployment to increase among the Mexican population.”

The term “repatriation: was actually inaccurate, since up to 60% of those sent to Mexico were U.S. citizens: American-born children of Mexican-descent who had never been to Mexico and often did not speak Spanish.

It wasn’t a unified plan. “In Los Angeles,” explained Balderrama, “they had orderlies who gathered people [in the hospitals] and put them in stretchers on trucks and left them at the border.” Others would round up people up in parks and scanning public employee rolls for Mexican-sounding names and send them on special trains out of the country.

From Timeline: In downtown LA “during the 1930s, La Placita Catholic church was a social hub for Mexican Americans and immigrants…

“On February 26th, 1931, they sealed off the area around the church before anyone could realize what was happening and began arresting suspected undocumented immigrants en masse. Families watched in horror as their spouses, friends, and colleagues — 400 people in total — were loaded into vans, and eventually shipped back to Mexico. Many of those detained had been in the country so long they didn’t speak Spanish.”

Read more at this NPR or Teen Vogue. I believe that knowing our history makes us better citizens.

What IS racist, anyway?

a long history of bigotry

Richard Nixon.Ronald Reagan ITEM: – I ~~suggested~~ stated clearly that I thought a certain orange-haired man was racist. Someone I do not know on Facebook wrote: “Evidence for racism?” Well, it was noted throughout the piece.

Still, I thought I’d try to further explain his long history of bigotry going back to the 1970s and an oral history.

My decision to engage was based on a conversation at the Triennium conference I attended, to try to understand a different POV. I knew he was trolling or sealioning me. But I let it run its course until it inevitably became pointless.

ITEM: Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hidden Racist Conversation With Richard Nixon in 1971 when RWR was governor of California.

“Reagan forged ahead with his complaint: ‘To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!’ Nixon gave a huge laugh.”

Yet some folks on FOX “News” swear up and down that RWR was not racist. Here’s a good rule of thumb: if you refer to black people as another primate, THAT IS RACIST. Prima facia racist.

At the very end of a recent Daily Show With Trevor Noah, you can hear what a stand-up guy Ronnie was. FINDING A BLACK PERSON TO SAY IT’S NOT RACIST DOES NOT MAKE IT NOT RACIST.

Maybe one needs to parse a racist action, which could be of the moment, from a pattern of racism.

“Whenever a person is accused of racism… they instinctively search for any example to bolster their ‘non-racist credentials’, which can be a low bar. When people are motivated to find evidence that they’re not prejudiced, they’re more likely to think having a black friend is really strong evidence.”

Secretary of HUD Ben Carson held a press conference to defend djt’s long-standing racism, and a Baltimore church rightly kicked him off the property.

ITEM: An article in The Atlantic – “We’re All Tired of Being Called Racists”. At a recent pep rally, Brandon Straka, a gay djt supporter, said “Insinuations of bigotry and racism are divisive tactics.” Don’t fall for the classic rubber and glue tactic. POINTING OUT RACISM DOESN’T MAKE YOU RACIST.

ITEM: When traditionally conservative media point out racism, PAY ATTENTION. From Foreign Policy: How Does Online Racism Spawn Mass Shooters?

ITEM: ONE SPEECH DOES NOT NEGATE DECADES OF RACISM. A Teleprompter speech on mass shootings was Completely Inconsistent With Everything He’s Ever Said and Done. The Boston Globe calls him the hypocrite in chief. Here’s what a real president says.

Not news: the racist Twit-in-Chief

Racism is sin

Stern.August 2017.Trump — The cover of the German magazine Stern, August 2017

While I was away in a low-news mode, the story about the Twit-in-Chief attacking four progressive congresswomen of color broke. “Go back” to the “crime-infested places from which they came” was the message. The crowd chanted “send her back” at the North Carolina pep rally, referring to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).

He later disavowed the chants, though he had paused during the shouting, looking on for several seconds, appearing to show approval. The next day, he dubbed the chanters “patriots.” Sycophants such as Veep Mike Pence and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said, “Oh, he’s NOT racist.” The truly dreadful Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he’s “on to something” with those attacks on four congresswomen.

You probably knew all this, but I’m just catching up.

It got me to wonder: what on earth does it take to label an action racist in America and to have it stick? Or is it just impossible? Perhaps, for Republicans, “xenophobia and nationalism are completely fine — just don’t call it racism.”

Mark Evanier linked to what he cheekily called “that bastion of Liberalism,” the National Review. “David French writes that when Donald Trump says something divisive and racist, Republican leaders will not so much as give an ‘ahem’ to express slight disapproval…

“There are many GOP leaders who, quite frankly, understand that they criticize even the president’s racist speech at their own peril. The grassroots have spoken. Loyalty to the president must be absolute, or one risks a primary challenge.”

The Weekly Sift guy attributes this process to his friend and former editor Tom Stites:
Trump makes blatantly racist statements. The responsible press and responsible leaders use racist in describing it. Trump’s confederate supporters think, See? All those elitists are calling me a racist! This pushes their victim buttons and turns their anger on the responsible press and leaders.
Then Trump repeats that he’s about the least racist person you’ll ever meet, and he calls the Squad racists who hate Israel and the U.S. Trump’s racist supporters feel vindicated by their hero.
More of the press becomes confident using the word racist. Trump turns up the volume a bit and repeats his pot-stirring trick. The confederates respond.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
He’s a twisted genius at manipulation.

He, his fans and defenders are wallowing in the language of hate crimes. There’s a scary undercurrent at every one of his rallies: “It is language with a very familiar ring: The language of community defense and purification, driving from the body politic any foreign—and therefore innately toxic—presence or influence.” But does it matter?

Like much of our language, ‘love it or leave it’ has a racist history. “it sort of conveys—particularly to people of color—that this is not our home… Historically, when people of color criticize America, they’ve been deemed un-American and unpatriotic, but when white people criticize America, it is normal.” And it takes an increasing psychological toll.

The hardly-liberal Foreign Policy magazine notes in America’s Road to Reputational Ruin: “The decline in U.S. soft power didn’t start with Trump, but he accelerated it… with his racist tweets.”

Yup, the mainstream media HAS been increasingly willing to at least acknowledge when an action is racist. For instance, Fox News’ Chris Wallace Burns Down Stephen Miller Over Trump’s Racist Lies. The CBS reporting repeatedly called his behavior racist, while NBC used that mamby-pamby “that many are calling racist.” (I taped them and am watching now.)

Congressman Elijah Cummings declared he is a racist — ‘No Doubt About It’. Former Vice-President Joe Biden compares him to segregationist George Wallace. In case I’ve been too oblique, yes, I’ve long believed the Twit-in-Chief is a racist. As Sojourners notes, “Racism isn’t a partisan issue. It is sin.”

The thing is, none of this behavior should be surprising, given his history. We CAN wonder, though, what it means to the future of the United States. Does his race-baiting evokes the Nuremberg rallies? Or should we not panic?

What do you think? I tend to lean towards ire/panic.