racism Archives - Page 28 of 33 - Ramblin' with Roger

Dealing with that “white privilege” conversation with humor

These are examples of showing, in a satirical way, how white privilege is so ingrained. As Hayes points out at the end, if you had substituted “black” for “white”, it would sound like normal American media chitchat.

One of the things that many right-wing Americans are fond of saying, and there are variations in the wording, is that there are a bunch of “professional black people” stirring up trouble between black and white people. By “professional black people,” I don’t mean black people who are doctors and lawyers and the like. Rather, their profession is BEING a black person. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are ALWAYS cited, and Barack HUSSEIN Obama has been recently added to the mix.

The general narrative is that, racially, things are FINE in America, that we have a post-racial society. I mean, we have a President who’s black! What more proof does one need? Well, none for the Supreme Court, which decides to gut the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action.

Every suggestion that things are NOT hunky-dory has a pushback. The difference in unemployment, wealth, and health care? That’s black laziness, and it’s self-victimization to even discuss it. Trayvon Martin’s shooting? He was a thug. Etc, etc.

In the last forty or fifty years, I’ve been to a number of talks, workshops, etc., in which the notion of “white privilege” shows up, and almost invariably, the air goes out of the room. White privilege, Wikipedia says, “refers to the set of alleged societal privileges that white people benefit from beyond those commonly experienced by people of color in the same social, political, or economic spaces (nation, community, workplace, income, etc.). The term denotes both obvious and less obvious unspoken advantages that white individuals may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice. These include cultural affirmations of one’s own worth; greater presumed social status; and freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely. The concept of white privilege also implies the right to assume the universality of one’s own experiences, marking others as different or exceptional while perceiving oneself as normal.” You can find a whole category on the topic in the Huffington Post.

The reason it sucks the air out of a room, particularly early on, is that it has led to either a rejection of the notion altogether or a wallowing of white guilt with nowhere to go with that. Here’s a decent list about privilege (and no, it’s not just racial).

A popular trope out there is that the (non-monolithic) black community, or Muslim community, is need of Rising Up and Keeping Its Folks in Line. Even black people, such as Bill Cosby, say it. But the great thing about white privilege is that no one would be ridiculous enough to say that about white people.

Until now.

If you’ve heard too much about the “pathology” of black people, you might appreciate Cord Jefferson of Gawker.com showing this Video of Violent, Rioting Surfers Shows White Culture of Lawlessness. But it was astonishing when Jefferson is interviewed on an episode of All In With Chris Hayes on MSNBC to discuss that video. They play it straight, like any other “talking heads” interview on the news programs. It works on multiple levels for me.

June Rambling: an atheist’s prayers, and stillness of the soul

101 Ways to Say “Died” that appeared in early American epitaphs

Useful phrases for the surveillance state.

Long-lost diary of Nazi racial theorist and Hitler confidant recovered.

George Takei remembers the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, which included himself.

Why three states dumped major private prison company in one month. I’ve long been suspicious of private prisons with them “extracting guarantees of 100 percent occupancy.”

Cereal bigotry, Arthur’s response to the Cheerios ad controversy.

SamuraiFrog feels this is the most eloquent and exact statement about fat-shaming ever. And Lefty’s wanting to shake his disease.

Gay Men, Male Privilege, Women, And Consent.

In the literally OMG category: Christian Domestic Discipline… is a movement that seeks to carry out God’s will. “Which specific plan of God’s? Oh, you know, just that all women obey their husbands fastidiously — a dynamic that CDD thinks is best maintained through doling out corporal punishments.”

An atheist’s prayers.

Awkwardneϟϟ, Ken Jennings at his son’s elementary school for the annual “Festival of the Famous.”

Astronomy Picture of the Day: June 18 – A Supercell Thunderstorm Over Texas.

Steve Bissette Working On A Book About Alan Moore, Asks People To Publish His 1963 Stories Online For Free.

Meryl expands on the New York Times Magazine, “Who Made That?” article.

American and British pronunciation of Spanish (loan) words.

How Bugs Bunny saved Mel Blanc’s life.

Shooting Parrots likes to write about roguish folks you’ve never heard of – I’VE never heard of – such as Eugène François Vidocq and Ignáz Trebitsch-Lincoln. Interesting stuff.

To Parents of Small Children: Let Me Be the One Who Says It Out Loud.

Mark Evanier on the wealthy Zukors, the sweet but terrified Stearns, and his compassionate father, who worked for the IRS, part 1 and part 2.

My buddy and former neighbor Diana’s Lean In story.

Melanie: harp lessons, Italian rain, and traveling the world from home. Also, how stillness is a quality of the soul.

I wrote Love and cheating, and what I don’t understand.

Little by little things are disappearing from my house.

According to IMDB, Richard Matheson wrote 16 episodes of the TV show Twilight Zone, which included the “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” segment that was also used in the Twilight Zone movie.

101 Ways to Say “Died” that appeared in early American epitaphs.
to me

There’s a great new documentary out called 20 FEET FROM STARDOM. The movie is about backup singers – those incredibly talented musicians who you rarely hear about but are on all your favorite records. Coming to the Spectrum in Albany on July 5 – I WILL see it.

How a maudlin song became a children’s classic.

Great Coverville podcast honoring Cyndi Lauper, who won a Tony AND turned 60 this month; oh, I might have suggested it. Dustbury celebrates as well.

I’ve been ear wormed by Our State Fair, the opening song from the 1962 film ‘State Fair’, not a great movie, but the first non-kiddie film I ever saw.

In honor of summer, a visual representation of The Rite of Spring.

Tom Lehrer singing about The Elements, then and THEN.

K-Chuck radio: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and cover songs and songs about Superman.

And speaking of the guy from Krypton: Superman was promoted at the 1940 New York World’s Fair. But who played him? It is a mystery! Also, Original ‘Superman’ Co-Star Interrupts ‘Man of Steel’ Conversation in Movie Theater Restroom.

That purported gay/black antipathy thing

There DOES seem that there is a certain hostility by some black leaders towards what certain goofy people call “the gay agenda.”

Arthur at AmeriNZ asked a question earlier in the month:

Here’s something that worries me…: Racism. The spokesperson for the leading radical rightwing religious-political anti-gay hate group seemed to go WAY out of his way to praise black Democratic legislators in Illinois for not supporting the freedom to marry. That same hate group, of course, famously said that one way to defeat marriage equality was to deliberately create divisions between the LGBT and Black communities. All too often, LGBT people buy the racist propaganda hook, line, and sinker. And, it seems to me, some Blacks are too willing to buy the propaganda of mainly (or exclusively) white anti-gay groups.

So, I’m wondering two things. First, what do you think can be done to expose the racist lie of division for what it is, and second, how do you think we can persuade the two sides to ignore the (white) man behind the curtain who’s trying so hard to sow racial division?

One of the things that I’ve long believed is that “justice for all” ought not to be a meaningless slogan, but rather the reason people who don’t SEEM to be affected should support the rights of, for lack of a better phrase, the “other.” Whites should support black civil rights; men, women’s equality; straights, LGBTQ justice. (That’s one of the reasons I didn’t much like NYC mayor Ed Koch; he seemed to stir up hostility between blacks and Jews, when they had been traditional allies.)

Yet, in my freshman year at college, my next-door neighbor was astonishingly hostile to me, from the get-go. He was gay, and I always wondered if he had heard what I had heard somewhere or other, that black people did not like gay people, and therefore dismissed me out of hand.

To the specific point, there DOES seem that there is a certain hostility by some black leaders towards what certain goofy people call “the gay agenda.” I think some of it clearly comes from religious leadership. You saw this in the Prop 8 vote in California a few years back. All that so-called down-low behavior of some black men so closeted, they even hide it from themselves, comes from some cultural/religious disconnect.

I knew one openly gay black man – worked with him, actually – who was supposed to be coming home for Thanksgiving when he was about 21, but he felt his family wouldn’t understand his sexual orientation and would be unforgiving. They never knew where he was for decades. When they discovered that he died, 26 years later – from something I blogged about – they were devastated. Perhaps in the intervening years, their position on homosexuality had changed and having been in contact with his sister after his death, I believe it had.

Mostly though, and the video you linked to after the Illinois defeat of marriage equality actually touches on this, it’s a bit of an oppression competition. The gay rights movement has appropriated some of the language of the black civil rights movement of the 1950s and later, rightly so, I believe, but some black folks of a certain age just don’t like it. I kid you not, it sounds a little like “hey, they can pass for straight, but I can’t pass for white; we were enslaved, they weren’t.” And so on. It’s less an antipathy towards gays per se, as much as it’s a “make them wait their turn, keep them in their place, until WE achieve full civil rights” thing. This is incredibly parochial, and dare I say, stupid; “a high tide raises all boats,” and all that.

That said, I also do believe other nefarious forces are at work, quite possibly poised to embarrass one person: Barack Obama. The President comes out for marriage equality a year ago, and it passes, in one form or another, in a half dozen states, including in the Midwest. Where does it fail? In the state from which he was elected, Illinois. Can this be a coincidence? (Cough – Koch Brothers – cough.) Maybe, but I’m too cynical to believe it.

What to do about it? Oh, probably nothing. Let them just die off.

But you know what random thought flashed through my mind? That ad you pointed to with this back-and-forth:

“[Attractive young man] clicks to buy [a Kindle Paperwhite] and suggests [he and attractive woman sitting next to him] celebrate with a drink.

“‘My husband’s bringing me a drink right now,’ chirps she.

“‘So is mine,'” smiles he as they turn and wave at their male loved ones sitting together at a tiki bar.”

I’ve since seen the ad on the TV show Modern Family. Now if any of the participants were BLACK, you KNOW that would give the thing a whole ‘nother spin.

TV: controversy over a Cheerios ad?

She was adamantly against mixed-race marriage. “What about the children?” she proclaimed. They’ll never fit in, they’ll be scorned by both blacks and whites, and be outcasts in society.

My fascination over a cereal ad – no, actually, THE Cheerios ad featuring an interracial couple and their child – is that all the hate it has engendered doesn’t surprise me at all. The argument from opponents – besides the scatological responses so bad that General Mills had shut off the comments on the YouTube video – is that “they are throwing” miscegenation “in our faces”, whereas the cereal producer’s claim is that they’re showing the diversity of the population. There has been a clear uptick in the number of mixed-race marriages in the US this century.

Of course, you KNOW what the real problem is for some people with that ad? It suggests that black people and white people were – hold onto your hats – having SEX! When you first see the ad, one could assume that the girl might be adopted, but seeing the dad pretty much eliminates that option. The long-standing taboo about interracial sex in the United States is still very strong, from white male slave masters and black female slaves to the young black Emmett Till getting killed for looking at a white woman too long.

This reminds me of a situation about 35 years when my girlfriend at the time, who was white, went apartment hunting for us, and she found a nice place. But the surprised look on the landlord’s face when I showed up to sign the lease was priceless. Rather like the look on the faces of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy when Katharine Houghton brought home Sidney Poitier in the movie Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner.

About 25 years ago, I was having some general philosophical conversation about marriage with this secretary in an office in which I was working as an intern. Very nice woman, and particularly to me. But she was adamantly against mixed-race marriage. “What about the children?” she proclaimed. They’ll never fit in, they’ll be scorned by both blacks and whites, and be outcasts in society.

Obviously, I have a vested interest in trying to make sure the Daughter lives in a better world than that. Her preschool was ethnically diverse; her elementary school is somewhat less so, but we hope for the best. Our church is predominantly white, but with increased diversity, including, most recently, an influx of Asian Indians.

You just keep trying to make a decent world for your child, which is pretty much irrespective of race.

BTW, Chuck Miller knows the woman in the Cheerios ad.
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Of course, I remember Jean Stapleton in All in the Family, who died recently. THE most disturbing episode of that series is referenced here.

R is for Roger, redux

I’d been a fan of Roger Moore since I watched him as Beau Maverick on the television show Maverick.

As I’ve undoubtedly noted, the name Roger comes from the Germanic roots meaning spear bearer, specifically “famous with the spear.”

When you think of the first name Roger, who are the first people you think of? (I mean besides me, of course.) That was the question in this segment of the TV show Family Feud; I’m sorry it is incomplete.

Here’s a list of celebrities whose first names are Roger. The ones that immediately came to mind are some I mentioned three-and-a-half years ago when I last did R is for Roger, plus these that I inexplicably left off:

Roger Clemens – in 24 seasons with the Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, New York Yankees, and Houston Astros, he won the Cy Young as the best pitcher in his baseball league a record seven times and pitched a perfect game in 1994. He would have been a lock for the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2013 except for allegations of him using performance-enhancing drugs.

Roger Federer – the tennis player from Switzerland had spent 237 consecutive, and at this writing, 302 total weeks at number 1 in the ranking and has won 17 Grand Slam singles titles. He’s considered by many to be the greatest player of all time.

Roger Staubach – in an 11-season career, all with the Dallas Cowboys, the quarterback out of the Naval Academy had a Hall of Fame career. I wasn’t much a Cowboys fan, since they were/are rivals with my New York Giants; nevertheless, I always liked him personally.

Sir Roger Moore – I’d been a fan since I watched him as Beau Maverick on the television show Maverick, then as Simon Templar in the TV series The Saint. But, of course, he’s best known as Bond, James Bond, in seven movies. See his other credits.

Roger Waters – he was a founder member of the rock band Pink Floyd, serving as bassist, vocalist, and principal songwriter. In the 1970s and 1980s, the album Dark Side of the Moon spent years on the charts; Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall were other hit albums. He has been performing The Wall all over the world without his former bandmates.

Roger B. Taney – he was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States (1836-1864), and the first Roman Catholic to sit on the Supreme Court. While he dealt with many other cases, I know him for just one: writing the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), that ruled that black people, who were considered inferior at the time the US Constitution was written, could not be considered citizens of the United States, whether slave or free.

Roger Williams – the theologian who left England, only to knock heads (figuratively) with the Puritans, and eventually founded the state of Rhode Island as a place of religious tolerance.

Roger Rabbit – he is the frantic, neurotic title cartoon character of the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The film also starred the live human Bob Hoskins, and Roger’s animated human wife Jessica, who is not bad; she’s just drawn that way.
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My review of the late Roger Ebert’s autobiography.

ABC Wednesday – Round 12