Whites destroy other people's homes

White America’s greatest delusion: “They do not know it, and they do not want to know it”

Pundits and politicians are all too eager to condemn violent protest. How quickly they forget our nation's history

By Tim WiseIt is bad enough that much of white America sees fit to lecture black people about the proper response to police brutality, economic devastation and perpetual marginality, having ourselves rarely been the targets of any of these. It is bad enough that we deign to instruct black people whose lives we have not lived, whose terrors we have not faced, and whose gauntlets we have not run, about violence; this, even as we enjoy the national bounty over which we currently claim possession solely as a result of violence. I beg to remind you, George Washington was not a practitioner of passive resistance. Neither the early colonists nor the nation’s founders fit within the Gandhian tradition. There were no sit-ins at King George’s palace, no horseback freedom rides to affect change. There were just guns, lots and lots of guns.

We are here because of blood, and mostly that of others; here because of our insatiable and rapacious desire to take by force the land and labor of those others. We are the last people on Earth with a right to ruminate upon the superior morality of peaceful protest. We have never believed in it and rarely practiced it. Rather, we have always taken what we desire, and when denied it we have turned to means utterly genocidal to make it so.

Which is why it always strikes me as precious the way so many white Americans insist (as if preening for a morality contest of some sorts) that “we don’t burn down our own neighborhoods when we get angry.” This, in supposed contrast to black and brown folks who engage in such presumptively self-destructive irrationality as this. On the one hand, it simply isn’t true. We do burn our own communities, we do riot, and for far less valid reasons than any for which persons of color have ever hoisted a brick, a rock, or a bottle. We do so when our teams lose the big game or win the big game; or because of something called Pumpkin Festival; or because veggie burritos cost $10 at Woodstock ’99 and there weren’t enough Porta-Potties by the time of the Limp Bizkit set; or because folks couldn’t get enough beer at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake; or because surfers (natch); or St. Patty’s Day in Albany; or because Penn State fired Joe Paterno; or because it’s a Sunday afternoon in Ames, Iowa; and we do it over and over and over again. Far from mere amateur hooliganism, our riots are indeed violent affairs that have been known to endanger the safety and lives of police, as with the infamous 1998 riot at Washington State University. To wit:

The crowd then attacked the officers from all sides for two hours with rocks, beer bottles, signposts, chairs, and pieces of concrete, allegedly cheering whenever an officer was struck and injured. Twenty-three officers were injured, some suffering concussions and broken bones.

Seventeen years later, one still waits for the avalanche of conservative ruminations regarding the pathologies of whites in Pullman, whose disrespect for authority suggests a larger culture of dysfunction, no doubt taught to them by their rural, corn-fed families and symbolized by the easily recognizable gang attire of Carhartt work coats and backwards baseball caps.

On the other hand, it is undeniably true that when it comes to our political anger and frustration (as contrasted with that brought on by alcohol and athletics) we white folks are pretty good at not torching our own communities. This is mostly because we are too busy eviscerating the communities of others—those against whom our anger is aimed. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Panama, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Manila, and on down the line.Below:  White folks not torching their own neighborhood.

Charlie Hebdo's racist cartoons

In the Wake of Charlie Hebdo, Free Speech Does Not Mean Freedom From Criticism

By Jacob CanfieldWhen faced with a terrorist attack against a satirical newspaper, the appropriate response seems obvious. Don’t let the victims be silenced. Spread their work as far as it can possibly go. Laugh in the face of those savage murderers who don’t understand satire.

In this case, it is the wrong response.

Here’s what’s difficult to parse in the face of tragedy: yes, Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical newspaper. Its staff is white. Its cartoons often represent a certain, virulently racist brand of French xenophobia. While they generously claim to ‘attack everyone equally,’ the cartoons they publish are intentionally anti-Islam, and frequently sexist and homophobic.And:Now, I understand that calling someone a ‘racist asshole’ after their murder is a callous thing to do, and I don’t do it lightly. This isn’t ambiguous, though: the editorial staff of Hebdo consistently aimed to provoke Muslims. They ascribe to the same edgy-white-guy mentality that many American cartoonists do: nothing is sacred, sacred targets are funnier, lighten up, criticism is censorship. And just like American cartoonists, they and their supporters are wrong. White men punching down is not a recipe for good satire, and needs to be called out. People getting upset does not prove that the satire was good. And, this is the hardest part, the murder of the satirists in question does not prove that their satire was good. Their satire was bad, and remains bad. Their satire was racist, and remains racist.Not Just a Joke: Reflections on Free Speech, Violence and Mislabeled Heroism

By Tim WiseIt strikes me that we should be able to roundly condemn the senseless and barbaric murders of journalists while still managing to have a rational conversation about free speech, in which empty platitudes about heroism need play no part. For instance, I believe it is possible to agree that free speech is an essential value, and that journalists should have the right to say what they want—even to offend others—without then proceeding to act as though every utterance (just because people have a right to it) is therefore worth defending as to its substance, and that free speech protects one from being critiqued for the things one says.

What I mean is this: I have a right, I suppose, to stand in the middle of Times Square and shout racial slurs or insult peoples’ religions. I could, for instance, stand on a soapbox outside the TKTS booth and say things about the Prophet Mohammed or Jesus or Mary. I could call them all kinds of vile things, and all of it would be protected by the Constitution. And I surely should be able to do that without fear of being murdered for it. This last point in particular is so obvious as to be beyond debate, I would hope. But if I do this, whether in Times Square or in print, it makes me an asshole, and one who deserves to be labeled as such. Not a hero, but an asshole. And I don’t become a hero just because some of the people I happened to insult (and was trying to insult) end up being even bigger assholes than me, and so dangerous and unstable that they decide to hurt me. In that case I am simply the unlucky victim of a bigger and more evil asshole who was unsatisfied with the pen or keyboard as a weapon and decided to use something more deadly. Nothing more and nothing less.

People seem to confuse the principle of free speech with the idea that one’s speech should be protected from pushback; and while violent pushback is always wrong—always—I am more than a little uncomfortable with the idea that we should make heroes out of those whose job appears to have been insulting people they deemed inferior (whether because of culture or because they were just “silly superstitious” believers who deserve ridicule because Richard Dawkins or Bill Maher say so). I’m especially uncomfortable with the political canonization we’re expected to endorse for these satirists, because historically, satire has always been about barbs aimed at those who are more powerful than oneself (the elite, royalty, the dominant social, economic, political or religious group), rather than being aimed down the ladder at those with less power. In the old days, when the King would bring in the jester or the royal fool to tell jokes and entertain the nobility, the court comic didn’t spend 20 minutes doing “can you believe how bad those peasants smell” jokes; rather, he told jokes at the expense of the nobility. The King and his royal prerogatives were the target of ridicule.

So whereas it would be legitimate satire for Muslims to satirize their own extremists in countries where Muslims hold power (and this is done by the way, more than most of us realize), in France, satire aimed at Muslims, who are the targets of organized attempts to restrict their rights and even their presence in the country, is not brave; it’s piling on. Likewise, for Jews to satirize Palestinians in Israel would be asshole behavior, while satirizing the nation’s Jewish religious leaders who have such outsized influence on state politics would be the very definition of legitimate satire. In the U.S., where Christians hold the bulk of political and economic power, satirizing the religious right is quite different from satirizing Muslims who are being targeted in regular hate crimes and who are facing communities trying to block them from having mosques in which to worship.Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie: A Critical View

By Sean EliasThe ridiculous display of support for ‘Charlie,’ particularly in the news media, is disconcerting and demonstrates that many people are equally as uninformed and culturally insensitive as those who promoted the anti-Islamist cartoons. Since the attack, most news outlets have ignored the racism and Islam-tarnishing of Charlie Hebdo and are in a rush to glorify the magazine and deify their racist cartoonists. Ignoring the potential of further inflaming ethno-racial tensions and promoting further anti-Muslim bigotry, a number of media giants, such as the Washington Post, have even decided to reprint the blasphemous cartoons of Muhammad in defiance of what they feel is a threat to free speech.

To state that what occurred is “an attack on free speech” is misguided and plainly ignorant. This is a destructive myth espoused by most Western media outlets in their discussion of this event. See, for example, John Avlon’s The Daily Beast article, “Why We Stand with Charlie Hebdo-And You Should Too,” which naively presents the free speech argument. What Charlie Hebdo’s anti-Islamist cartoons represent is hate images and speech, a defamation of a major world religion and culture, and an obvious attack on Muslims. To cloud this reality is intellectual dishonesty in the wake of reactionary politics.

Stoking the flames of racial hatred through dehumanizing others and their beliefs is nothing new; yet, today it is claimed that those who de-humanize certain groups are expressing their free speech or righteousness in their actions. One might ask why KKK pamphlets that demean black Americans, white nationalists’ periodicals that vilify Jews, and past campaigns of dehumanization by national groups, like the US’s racist cartoons of Japanese, are viewed as intolerable and unacceptable, yet the demonization of Muslims and Arabs is granted a pass.

Islam bashing, Islamophobia, and anti-Arab sentiments are on the rise in Europe, and particularly in France, in large part do to the de-humanizing tactics of people like those associated with Charlie Hebdo. The dehumanization and discriminatory practices of Charlie cartoons provide ammunition for the anti-Muslim intolerance endorsed by rising far right groups in Europe, like the British Freedom Party, National Front, English Defense League, Alternative for Germany, Freedom Party in Netherlands, and PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against Islamization of the West), to name a few. Problematically, with the aid of people who incite discrimination against Muslims, like the cartoonists and editorial staff at Charlie Hebdo, Islamophobia is now moving from the fringes to the mainstream of European societies.Joe Sacco: On Satire–a response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks

The acclaimed graphic artist and journalist Joe Sacco on the limits of satire–and what it means if Muslims don’t find it funny

Black and white rage in Ferguson

Repetitive Motion Disorder: Black Reality and White Denial in America

By Tim WiseI suppose there is no longer much point in debating the facts surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown. First, because Officer Darren Wilson has been cleared by a grand jury, and even the collective brilliance of a thousand bloggers pointing out the glaring inconsistencies in his version of events that August day won’t result in a different outcome. And second, because Wilson's guilt or innocence was always somewhat secondary to the larger issue: namely, the issue of this gigantic national inkblot staring us in the face, and what we see when we look at it--and more to the point, why?

Because it is a kind of racial Rorschach (is it not?) into which each of these cases--not just Brown but all the others, from Trayvon Martin to Sean Bell to Patrick Dorismond to Aswan Watson and beyond--inevitably and without fail morph. That we see such different things when we look upon them must mean something. That so much of white America cannot see the shapes made out so clearly by most of black America cannot be a mere coincidence, nor is it likely an inherent defect in our vision. Rather, it is a socially-constructed astigmatism that blinds so many to the way in which black folks often experience law enforcement.

Not to overdo the medical metaphors, but as with those other cases noted above, so too in this one did a disturbing number of whites manifest something of a repetitive motion disorder--a reflex nearly as automatic as the one that leads so many police (or wanna-be police) to fire their weapons at black men in the first place. It is a reflex to rationalize the event, defend the shooter, trash the dead with blatantly racist rhetoric and imagery, and then deny that the incident or one's own response to it had anything to do with race.And:Reflex: To deny that there's anything at all racial about the way that even black victims of violence--like Brown, like Trayvon Martin, and dozens of others--are often spoken of more judgmentally than even the most horrific of white perpetrators, the latter of whom are regularly referred to as having been nice, and quiet, and smart, and hardly the type to kill a dozen people, or cut them into little pieces, or eat their flesh after storing it in the freezer for several weeks.

And most of all, the reflex to deny that there is anything racial about the lens through which we typically view law enforcement; to deny that being white has shaped our understanding of policing and their actions in places like Ferguson, even as being white has had everything to do with those matters. Racial identity shapes the way we are treated by cops, and as such, shapes the way we are likely to view them. As a general rule, nothing we do will get us shot by law enforcement: not walking around in a big box store with semi-automatic weapons (though standing in one with an air rifle gets you killed if you're black); not assaulting two officers, even in the St. Louis area, a mere five days after Mike Brown was killed; not pointing a loaded weapon at three officers and demanding that they--the police--"drop their fucking guns;" not committing mass murder in a movie theatre before finally being taken alive; not proceeding in the wake of that event to walk around the same town in which it happened carrying a shotgun; and not killing a cop so as to spark a "revolution," and then leading others on a two month chase through the woods before being arrested with only a few scratches.

To white America, in the main, police are the folks who help get our cats out of the tree, or who take us on ride-arounds to show us how gosh-darned exciting it is to be a cop. We experience police most often as helpful, as protectors of our lives and property. But that is not the black experience by and large; and black people know this, however much we don't. The history of law enforcement in America, with regard to black folks, has been one of unremitting oppression. That is neither hyperbole nor opinion, but incontrovertible fact. From slave patrols to overseers to the Black Codes to lynching, it is a fact. From dozens of white-on-black riots that marked the first half of the twentieth century (in which cops participated actively) to Watts to Rodney King to Abner Louima to Amadou Diallo to the railroading of the Central Park 5, it is a fact. From the New Orleans Police Department's killings of Adolph Archie to Henry Glover to the Danziger Bridge shootings there in the wake of Katrina to stop-and-frisk in places like New York, it's a fact. And the fact that white people don't know this history, have never been required to learn it, and can be considered even remotely informed citizens without knowing it, explains a lot about what's wrong with America. Black people have to learn everything about white people just to stay alive. They especially and quite obviously have to know what scares us, what triggers the reptilian part of our brains and convinces us that they intend to do us harm. Meanwhile, we need know nothing whatsoever about them. We don't have to know their history, their experiences, their hopes and dreams, or their fears. And we can go right on being oblivious to all that without consequence. It won't be on the test, so to speak.
Being Black: The Real Indictment in Ferguson and the USA

By William C. AndersonNow that the grand jury has returned with their decision on the extrajudicial killing of Michael Brown, we should be reminded that even though Darren Wilson was not indicted, Blackness was certainly indicted by the grand jury.

Darren Wilson is free and the police continue to be empowered to kill with impunity. Blackness was found guilty yet again, as witnessed by the many Black slain and their stories. The color some of us carry around can exact a death sentence at a moment's notice. Ever since the formation of the world's greatest empire, Black people have been the eternal scapegoat for all that's been wrong. Our blood waters the roots of war.

There is nothing that can be expressed but grief, anger and frustration at the depraved patterns of this consistently immoral farce that calls itself the "criminal justice system." Kill the Black body and then blame the corpse. This happens repeatedly. Anything is a good excuse to kill a Black person. In Michael Brown's case, stolen cigarillos were worth his death. In 12-year-old Tamir Rice's death this week, it was his unmarked toy gun. And recently, Tanesha Anderson's mental illness made her death worth a violent killing in front of her own family. No matter what, the dead Black body is at fault.

The United States was born out of an incident where a Black man was victim blamed for his murder. It was the Black blood and "mad behavior" of Crispus Attucks that led founding father John Adams to defend the beguiled crown when Attucks was the first American shot down leading up to our nation's birthing revolution. What was his defense of the British patrols overzealous policing? Adams uttered words that would cement our ever-present pattern, stating it was the fault of Attucks "whose very looks was enough to terrify any person." Two hundred and forty-four years after the moment that sparked the fight for independence, we are still dealing with this type of thinking.

Barack Obama, Ferguson, and the Evidence of Things Unsaid

Violence works. Nonviolence does too.

By Ta-Nehisi CoatesIn 2008, Barack Obama's task was to capture the presidency of a country which historically has despised the community from which he hails. This was no mean feat. But more importantly, it was not unprecedented. And just as Léon Blum's prime ministership did not lead to a post-anti-Semitic France, Barack Obama's presidency should never have been expected to lead to a post-racist America. As it happens, there is nothing about a congenitally racist country that necessarily prevents an individual leader hailing from the pariah class. The office does not care where the leader originates, so long as the leader ultimately speaks for the state. On Monday night, watching Obama both be black and speak for the state was torturous. One got the sense of a man fatigued by people demanding he say something both eminently profound and only partially true. This must be tiring.

Black people know what cannot be said. What clearly cannot be said is that the events of Ferguson do not begin with Michael Brown lying dead in the street, but with policies set forth by government at every level. What clearly cannot be said is that the people of Ferguson are regularly plundered, as their grandparents were plundered, and generally regarded as a slush-fund for the government that has pledged to protect them. What clearly cannot be said is the idea of superhuman black men who "bulk up" to run through bullets is not an invention of Darren Wilson, but a staple of American racism.

What clearly cannot be said is that American society's affection for nonviolence is notional. What cannot be said is that American society's admiration for Martin Luther King Jr. increases with distance, that the movement he led was bugged, smeared, harassed, and attacked by the same country that now celebrates him. King had the courage to condemn not merely the violence of blacks, nor the violence of the Klan, but the violence of the American state itself.

What clearly cannot be said is that violence and nonviolence are tools, and that violence—like nonviolence—sometimes works. "Property damage and looting impede social progress," Jonathan Chait wrote Tuesday. He delivered this sentence with unearned authority. Taken together, property damage and looting have been the most effective tools of social progress for white people in America. They describe everything from enslavement to Jim Crow laws to lynching to red-lining.

Ferguson isn’t about black rage against cops. It’s white rage against progress.

By Carol AndersonNow, under the guise of protecting the sanctity of the ballot box, conservatives have devised measures—such as photo ID requirements—to block African Americans’ access to the polls. A joint report by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the NAACP emphasized that the ID requirements would adversely affect more than 6 million African American voters. (Twenty-five percent of black Americans lack a government-issued photo ID, the report noted, compared with only 8 percent of white Americans.) The Supreme Court sanctioned this discrimination in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the Voting Rights Act and opened the door to 21st-century versions of 19th-century literacy tests and poll taxes.

The economic devastation of the Great Recession also shows African Americans under siege. The foreclosure crisis hit black Americans harder than any other group in the United States. A 2013 report by researchers at Brandeis University calculated that “half the collective wealth of African-American families was stripped away during the Great Recession,” in large part because of the impact on home equity. In the process, the wealth gap between blacks and whites grew: Right before the recession, white Americans had four times more wealth than black Americans, on average; by 2010, the gap had increased to six times. This was a targeted hit. Communities of color were far more likely to have riskier, higher-interest-rate loans than white communities, with good credit scores often making no difference.

Add to this the tea party movement’s assault on so-called Big Government, which despite the sanitized language of fiscal responsibility constitutes an attack on African American jobs. Public-sector employment, where there is less discrimination in hiring and pay, has traditionally been an important venue for creating a black middle class.

So when you think of Ferguson, don’t just think of black resentment at a criminal justice system that allows a white police officer to put six bullets into an unarmed black teen. Consider the economic dislocation of black America. Remember a Florida judge instructing a jury to focus only on the moment when George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin interacted, thus transforming a 17-year-old, unarmed kid into a big, scary black guy, while the grown man who stalked him through the neighborhood with a loaded gun becomes a victim. Remember the assault on the Voting Rights Act. Look at Connick v. Thompson, a partisan 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 2011 that ruled it was legal for a city prosecutor’s staff to hide evidence that exonerated a black man who was rotting on death row for 14years. And think of a recent study by Stanford University psychology researchers concluding that, when white people were told that black Americans are incarcerated in numbers far beyond their proportion of the population, “they reported being more afraid of crime and more likely to support the kinds of punitive policies that exacerbate the racial disparities,” such as three-strikes or stop-and-frisk laws.

Only then does Ferguson make sense. It’s about white rage.

The Right’s Vile Ferguson Ploy: Why They Really Want to Focus on the Riots

Supporters of Darren Wilson and apologists for Ferguson officials are desperate to change the subject.

By Elias Isquith[W]hile some of the biggest names out there fell for the trick, focusing on the small number of rioters instead of Wilson’s verdict, most editors understood that the controversy in Ferguson remains what it’s always been: A jarring reminder that the Declaration of Independence’s assertion of universal human equality (the “promissory note,” as Martin Luther King Jr. once called it) remains, for millions of Americans, a debt unpaid.

There’s a lesson here, one that those outraged by what’s happened this year in Ferguson—and happens countless times throughout America, each and every day—should keep in mind as they contribute to our amorphous yet powerful national conversation. We must not allow supporters of the Wilson verdict to distract us by making this a conversation about rioting or poverty or race. That’s not to say we should condone the riots; and it’s not to say we should avoid subjects that involve issues of race and poverty. What it means instead is keeping in mind that riots are nothing new, that the unique struggles of the African-American community can’t be simply attributed to poverty, and that discussions of “race” that aren’t linked with specific policy changes often result in little more than frivolous declarations of privilege.

If we can combat the dual influences of a Ferguson elite that wants national attention to drift elsewhere; and a national media that dislikes policy and favors more watchable, clickable, shareable and fundamentally empty manifestations of the culture war—if we can do that, there’s hope that even though the killing of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson will always be an obscenity, it won’t have been entirely in vain. Let’s ignore those in American society who would rather debate the merits of trashing a bodega than the killing of an unarmed man, and let’s not listen to those who would use this opportunity to relitigate the civil rights movement, the Rodney King riots or the Trayvon Martin case. Let’s honor the wishes of Michael Brown’s parents and decline to “just make noise” in favor of making “a difference.”

How to define that difference—whether through body cameras on police, constraining the power of prosecutors, mandating that police departments reflect the communities they serve, etc.—is the debate we need to have right now. The culture war can wait.Also:

America’s toxic race rule: Why Ferguson protests revive the ugly “twice as good” myth

Comment:  For more on Ferguson, see Prosecutor's Bias in Ferguson Shooting and Wilson's Testimony in Ferguson Shooting.

Blacks killed because of racist stereotypes

Ferguson reports raise questions on media criminalization of blacks

Twitter campaign #iftheygunnedmedown asks US media how they would choose to represent African-American victims

By Renee Lewis“The traditional narrative is that black people are no good—they’re out there selling dope and shooting each other. And Trayvon, they said he was a little thug … but it doesn’t matter. The Constitution said you can’t go shoot someone on suspicion.”

Kelley said such stereotypes have persisted decades after the civil rights movement because many Americans believe they live in a postracial society—which he said contributes to indifference.

“The fact of the matter is that whiteness presumes innocence and blackness presumes guilt, and you have to prove yourself otherwise,” he said. “This has become routine. We have studies from the Malcolm X Foundation that say every 28 hours a black man dies with his hands up. That’s not a small statistic. That’s incredible.”

Exacerbating the problem, Robinson said, are media portrayals of African-American men in narrow roles.

“A recent Pew Research Poll said most Americans get their news from local news coverage, and local news coverage of black men was relegated overwhelmingly—around 80 percent—to crime and sports,” he said. “The media has a responsibility to delve into stereotypes and debunk them.”

He said such coverage leaves an impression in many Americans’ minds of where different groups fit into the larger culture, and that affects the treatment they receive.

“It impacts how black boys are perceived as valuable or threatening in school. It determines treatment in courtrooms, treatment by police,” he said. “The media has to paint a true picture of society.”Does the Second Amendment Only Apply to White People?

By Keith BoykinWhen a white teenager named Steve Lohner was stopped by the police last month and refused to show his ID after carrying a loaded shotgun on the streets of Aurora, Colorado (the same city where a mass murderer killed 12 people and injured 70 others in a packed movie theater in July 2012), the teen walked away with nothing but a citation.

But when a 22-year-old black kid named John Crawford picked up a mere BB gun in a Walmart store in Dayton, Ohio last week, customers called the police, who then shot and killed him.

Here lies a racial disparity that's difficult for honest people to ignore. How can black people openly carry a real gun when we can't even pick up a BB gun in a store without arousing suspicion? The answer in America is that the Second Amendment doesn't really apply to black people.

Consider this. In the hours since the protests began in Ferguson, Missouri, gun sales spiked in the St. Louis area. It seems some whites are scared to death of violent black people, even though the only person who's been killed in the past week of turmoil in St. Louis was 18-year-old Michael Brown.

Imagine what might happen if black people started buying up scores of weapons at gun stores and posting pictures of ourselves carrying them on the streets to protect ourselves? We don't have to wonder. When the Black Panthers did this in the 1960s, California's Republican Governor Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of white conservatives, signed a law called the Mulford Act which prohibited the carrying of firearms on your person, in a vehicle, or in any public place or street.

In defense of black rage: Michael Brown, police and the American dream

I don't support the looting in Ferguson, Missouri. But I'm also tired of "turning the other cheek" and forgiving

By Brittney CooperI believe that racism exists in the inexplicable sense of fear, unsafety and gnawing anxiety that white people, be they officers with guns or just general folks moving about their lives, have when they encounter black people. I believe racism exists in that sense of mistrust, the extra precautions white people take when they encounter black people. I believe all these emotions have emerged from a lifetime of media consumption subtly communicating that black people are criminal, a lifetime of seeing most people in power look just like you, a lifetime of being the majority population. And I believe this subconscious sense of having lost control (of the universe) exists for white people, at a heightened level since the election of Barack Obama and the continued explosion of the non-white population.

The irony is that black people understand this heightened anxiety. We feel it, too. We study white people. We are taught this as a tool of survival. We know when there is unrest in the souls of white folks. We know that unrest, if not assuaged quickly, will lead to black death. Our suspicions, unlike those of white people, are proven right time and time again.

I speak to this deep psychology of race, not because I am trying to engage in pop psychology but because we live in a country that is so deeply emotionally dishonest about both race and racism. When will we be honest enough to acknowledge that the police have more power than the ordinary citizen? They are supposed to. And with more power comes more responsibility.

Why are police calling the people of Ferguson animals and yelling at them to “bring it”? Because those officers in their riot gear, with their tear gas and dogs, want a justification for slaughter. But inexplicably in that moment we turn our attention to the rioters, the people with less power, but justifiable anger, and say, “You are the problem.” No. A cop killing an unarmed teenager who had his hands in the air is the problem. Anger is a perfectly reasonable response. So is rage.Resurrecting Apartheid: White Police and Politicians are Waging War on Black America

By Tim WiseIs it really a stretch to call it apartheid, even as one after another after another after another black male (roughly one every 28 hours)—and more than a few black women and girls—are gunned down by police or vigilantes in city after city and town after town, unarmed, or armed only with an air rifle in a Wal-Mart? And this, even as white men can point their guns at federal officials or parade around the streets, or in Target or churches or Chipotle, or bars (because guns around booze is always a great idea) or anywhere they damned well please with weapons—real ones, with bullets—and be left to see another day? Or in some cases even lauded as heroes and the new “freedom riders,” standing up for their constitutional rights?

Honestly, when a white man in a place like New Orleans can literally point his weapon directly at not one, not two, but three members of the New Orleans Police Department, and when told to drop his weapon, answer back, “No, you drop your fucking gun,” and remain a breathing, carbon-based life form—as was the case this past April for Derrick Daniel Thomas—then you know you’re dealing with a two-tiered law enforcement regime hardly different from the ones that existed under Jim Crow. Google the NOPD and check out their history if you harbor any doubts about how such an act as Thomas’s would have gone down had he been black.

Hell, when I lived in the city, one of my roommates was punched and bloodied by the NOPD just for giving side-eye after they accused him of robbing a white woman several blocks away. Even after she told them he wasn’t the guy—oh yeah, they shoved him in the car and took him over to her for an entirely improper sidewalk lineup—they still threw him back in the car and headed downtown to book him for resisting arrest. Because apparently denying culpability for a crime you didn’t commit is resisting arrest in apartheid America. It was only when Darryl informed the police that his uncle had been the city’s first black Lieutenant (and having named him, sufficiently scared the white grunt cops) that they resigned to letting him go.

Why should we refrain from the charge of apartheid when police departments like those in Ferguson, Missouri—scene of the latest sacrifice to the gods of white supremacy, and with a recent history of overtly racist leadership and racist brutality against folks of color—continue to patrol the streets of their town as if they were an occupying force in a foreign country? As they include among their ranks the kind of retread bigots who openly berate the people for whom they work as “animals?” This is Sharpeville, 1960 or Soweto, 1976, only with lower body counts (so far). This is Birmingham, 1963, Selma, 1965, only with a midwestern accent, rather than the southern type we’d long been told to expect. Fifty years later and white law enforcement officers are still behaving as if the ruling in Dred Scott—that blacks “have no rights which the white man is bound to respect”—were still operative. Because sadly, and no matter what the Constitution may say, it appears that it is, so much so that it may well become the new motto for police around the country, soon to replace the “protect and serve” emblems on their patrol cars.Comment:  So blacks are killed because of negative stereotypes, but Native stereotypes have nothing to do with crime or violence? That's ridiculous on the face of it.

In fact, Natives experience stereotyping similar to blacks, and it leads to similar problems. For example:

"Natives are criminals"--cheating people via casino corruption, tribal scandals, or phony historical claims. So Americans oppose extensions of Indian gaming, government programs, and federal recognition bids.

"Natives are terrorists"--threatening the "American way" by blocking mining and drilling efforts. So Americans ignore their objections rather than taking them seriously.

"Natives are welfare queens"--living off casino income and government handouts rather than getting jobs. As with other minorities, Americans refuse to fund social services for these "lazy, good-for-nothing bums."

And of course Natives are shot by the police, ignored in hospitals, beaten and raped, left to die in the snow, etc., etc. Again, this happens in part because the mainstream sees them as second-class citizens. As less deserving of justice than white folks.

In other words, as redskins, injuns, and squaws--a kind of subhuman species halfway between civilized man (Caucasian) and mindless ape. Very much like Neanderthals and other primitive cavemen, with which they're occasionally associated. In short, savages.

The point again is how media representations matter. Frank LaMere, Winnebago, put it well:People say that Indians have bigger problems than mascots and use of Native American images, but I disagree. If you can't see me as an individual, then how can you understand the problems we have as a people?

Dunn trial shows America's pathology

Some commentaries on the jury hung over the murder charge in the trial of Michael Dunn, who killed Jordan Davis over "loud music":

Like George Zimmerman, Racist Laws Let Michael Dunn ‘Get Away With Murder’

By Ryan DensonAfter escaping what should have been a 2nd degree murder charge, Michael Dunn is in, “disbelief and it has not sunk in yet.”

I hope for your sake, Mr. Dunn, that is a positive disbelief and you aren’t weeping in self sorrow while a boy lays six feet under, because you avoided death row. At least for now.

I’m just waiting for the NRA to say “stereos don’t kill people, PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE!”

It’s also strange, these Stand Your Ground Laws, because everyone knows they are racially targeting blacks. How do we know? Well the Urban Institute recently found that Whites who kill Blacks in Stand Your Ground states are 354% more likely to acquitted, or not even charged.

The jury did not find Dunn guilty of killing Davis, plain and simple. They found him guilty of shooting at the other kids in the car, as if Davis was never even there, or even a person who had lost their life. It seems that, in Florida, a black boy is expected to obey a white man, and if he doesn’t, then the white man is entitled to shoot him to to death. That is the intent of the law. It has nothing to do with self-defense. Self defense was already a viable defense before Stand Your Ground laws were ever implemented.Michael Dunn’s sick license to kill: The hot-blooded murder of Jordan Davis and Florida’s perverted justice

Dunn created the confrontation, then made it deadly. Under Florida's insane laws, the prosecution was still limited

By Paul CamposConsider how these laws work in the context of Dunn’s actions. Dunn chose to create a confrontation with a group of four young males. He is a middle-aged computer programmer. A middle-aged man who chooses to start a verbal altercation with four teenage boys in a convenience store parking lot on a Friday night knows that he is running a non-trivial risk of suffering great bodily harm, or in non-technical terms, getting his ass kicked.

But because this is America, Dunn has a trump card: the nine-millimeter handgun in his glove compartment, with 10 bullets in the clip, which he has every legal right to bring to the confrontation he chose to start.

And because this is America, the fact that Dunn is white and the teenage boys are black–black boys playing loud “thug” music, to use Dunn’s description–makes it seem “reasonable” to him that the confrontation he started is about to escalate to a point where he will suffer great bodily harm. (In America, being a black teenage male playing loud “black” music in an SUV in a convenience store parking lot on a Friday night makes you a fearsome figure to a middle-aged white man like Dunn).

Furthermore, because this is America, it’s reasonable for Dunn to fear that the scary black boys playing the scary music are armed. After all, there are more than 300 million non-military firearms floating around out there between the purple mountain majesties and the amber waves of grain. That’s no doubt one reason why Dunn has gone to the trouble of securing at least one of them for himself, and (again, perfectly legally) sticking it in his glove compartment, so that it’s within easy reach should he choose to get into a war of words with some black teenage boys in convenience store parking lot on a Friday night.

Choosing Whiteness or Humanity: Jordan Davis and the Minimizing of Black Pain

By Tim WiseSure, despite all of this, some jurors might have believed that Dunn acted out of a genuine concern that his life was in danger. Some people, after all, cling stubbornly to their belief in unicorns, and the idea that the Earth is only 6000 years old, and that God fabricated and then planted all those fossils (which are, shall we say, quite a bit older than that), solely as a way to test our faith. And a full 1 in 4 believe that the sun revolves around the Earth. Some people, in short, are so painfully imbecilic as to suggest that they should never be allowed anywhere near a jury room, whether in Florida or anywhere else.

But then again, it is also possible that the jury hung because although all agreed the shooting was unjustified, some refused to accept that Dunn’s act constituted first-degree murder, while others refused to go along with the notion that it was anything less. Given the defense’s painting of Dunn’s character as generally placid and kind—and given the state’s refusal to impeach this image, by introducing the overtly hateful and racist letters written by Dunn while awaiting trial, or testimony from a neighbor who said Dunn was racist, violent, and had actually approached him to solicit help with killing someone—one can imagine some being unable to see the man in the Mister Rogers’ sweaters (and for that matter, with Mr. Rogers’ voice) premeditating Davis’s death. This, despite the fact that premeditation under Florida law can be formed in an instant, so that it matters not whether Dunn had attended his son’s wedding that night, all the while secretly plotting to kill a black teen at a gas station. That notion of premeditation is a decidedly Hollywood version. It has nothing to do with the law. But perhaps some jurors couldn’t see that. So be it, and the state will get another chance to make that case. Hopefully they will make it better, and this time fully eviscerate the desiccated character of this rancid little man, so that the people of Florida will know: you cannot kill black people simply because you don’t like their music and because they back-sass you when you ask them to turn it down. But if you do, you will be found solely and entirely to blame, and punished accordingly.

Beyond the Xs and Os, however, and beyond the question of what should be done with “Stand Your Ground” laws—which were implicated in this case because of the way Dunn’s attorneys made their self-defense argument and because of the jury instructions—there is another matter, at once more abstract and yet far more important. It is the question of what it might ultimately take for black life to be realized as fully human by some (indeed many) white people? And what it might take for black pain to actually matter? To be seen as worthy of concern, and more than concern, worthy of being seen as equal to white pain, without reservation or hesitation?

I ask this not because whites did in this case what most did in the case of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman—namely, line up behind the killer of the black child and presume that the latter had it coming—for it appears that the racial fault lines were not so neat and tidy this time. Most whites, or so it appears from what is most assuredly an unscientific observation of social and other media, view the killing of Jordan Davis as far less justifiable than the killing of Martin. So there’s that, one supposes; a small peg of progress upon which to hang one’s hopeful hat, for what it’s worth.

But it probably isn’t worth much. After all, even if most white folks actually agree this time with black people, and are appropriately horrified by murder (a type of progress about which one can hardly become too animated, since condemning murder hardly requires much moral fortitude), there are still plenty of us who are not. Too many of us—millions upon millions no doubt—still find it possible to give equal consideration to a white man’s paranoiac and racist hallucinations as to a black man’s life; to believe that the former is just as worthy of our indulgence as the latter, maybe more so.

America founded on race

Some thoughts on what the non-verdict says about race in the US:

The Souls of Black Folk and the Shame of the Dunn Verdict

By Susan Brooks ThistlethwaiteIt is clearer and clearer that in the United States African American lives are not of equal value, especially in states with "Stand Your Ground" laws where a jury was unable to reach a verdict of murder in the shooting death of unarmed, 17-year-old African American Jordan Davis by Michael Dunn, who is white and who has a carry concealed permit.

The unequal value placed on different human beings, according to race, is not exactly new. I have been re-reading W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk for a class I am teaching, and it is staggering how contemporary his analysis is today.

"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line," said Du Bois in 1903.

But in the twenty-first century, with the addition of "Stand Your Ground" laws, as was clear in the Zimmerman case, the "color line" has become a "shooting line."Michael Dunn and open season on black teenagers: The onslaught of white murder

Since Florida cannot defend black life against white fear, the question now is: How should black people respond?

By Brittney CooperMany white folks believe that black criminality has produced white fear and that white fear in the presence of black masculinity is therefore always justified. But the opposite is true. White anxiety and fear and racism have produced the myth of pervasive black criminality. Intraracial black violence is a problem, but white racism has produced the concentrated structures of poverty and lack of access to education that give rise to violent behaviors.

Our national inability to tell the truth about this will only lead to more black victims.

In his famous essay “The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American,” James Baldwin wrote, “Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspoken but profound assumptions on the part of people, and ours is no exception.”

The truth we need to be telling is that the myth of black male criminality is foundational, not incidental, to America’s national identity. Even if there were no black male criminals, to riff on professor Hortense Spillers’ work, they would have to be invented. The presence of black criminals justifies white male rage, white women’s fear and subsequent white male violence.

More from Tim Wise:Ultimately, it is their allegiance to the ideological strictures of whiteness that makes their demise necessary; and it is indeed whiteness that calls forth their inability to fully feel the pain of so-called non-white peoples, and causes them to shift the discussion and the burdens of proof to black and brown folks, whenever harm comes their way. It is whiteness—a paradigm of thought that relies upon the presumption of cultural superiority for those of us called white in this society, and which presumes that we better understand the problems faced by peoples of color than they do, which must be demolished.

In short, for America to live, whiteness must die. Not white people but whiteness. You may not know the difference, but if not, that is your problem, not mine.

Do not misread me here. This is not, dear Nazis who so readily regale me with hate mail, a call for “white genocide.” I do not assume, as do you, that whiteness is an inherent essence of people of European descent. I contend it is a sickness foisted upon us by men who sought to maintain their power and control, and needed some among the Euro-peasantry to help them do it; and so they resolved to make us part of their racial team, even as they had maintained us in poverty for generations in England and Ireland and Italy and France and everywhere else from which our people come.

And so they told us to fear them, and to hate them, and to place our boots upon their necks so that they, the elite, could go about the business of accumulating great wealth at the expense not only of those people over there, but us too.Based on this article:

On the Killing of Jordan Davis by Michael Dunn

Facebook friend Brad asked:What do you think? Has America just "grown up" racist?This led to a discussion of what the Dunn verdict says about America:

Yes, you could say we've grown up racist. I think that the genocide of Indians and the enslavement of blacks are fundamental to our core mythology. Which goes along the lines of, "God gave the American wilderness to the white man to conquer, tame, and develop. Anything that happened along the way was just an unfortunate byproduct."So you'd agree with the author then that "devaluation" of black lives goes back to that?Yes. Basically America wasn't an experiment in creating a melting pot of multiculturalism. It was an experiment in setting up a continent ruled by a cult of white supremacy.

Only since the beginning of the 20th century have the two philosophies--white supremacy vs. melting pot--come into real conflict. We're somewhere in the middle of a transition that might take a few centuries. By the time the "Star Trek" era arrives, we may actually achieve the "Star Trek" ideal.

In short, I concur with the others who say racism is fundamental to America.

P.S. This thread alone would disqualify me for political office if I ever wanted to run. Oh, well.



Blacks are the new Indians

Not "new," exactly, but they face the same problem originally faced by Indians. Namely, that their existence confronted the American mythology of white Christian exceptionalism. How is America the "greatest" country if we have to kill and enslave people to become it?

In other words, this isn't simply a black-white problem, as Gyasi Ross explains:

Celebrating Killers: Yes, Natives Should Care About a Dead Black Teen

By Gyasi RossNative Mothers and Fathers: your brown skin little Indian boys’ lives are in danger. Teach them that their beautiful brown skin and powerful long, dark hair puts them in danger. Tell your beautiful brown little Indian girls that they’re a target to be sexually assaulted just for being them—it’s a fact. Let them know that their attackers—both the boys and girls—will never be punished. In fact, they will be celebrated. Hold those powerful descendants of the first people of this continent close. Tell them that you love them. Every single time they go outside or to the store or to the mall, there is a possibility that they can be tried, convicted and executed of being too brown, too scary, too virile. "Their hair is too long." "They have too many tattoos." Treasure their time—their lives mean nothing to America. In fact IF, God forbid, they were to be tragically killed, there are many who would celebrate that death.

Little Indian boys like thug music, too. Like Jordan Davis. Little Indian boys wear hoodies, too. Like Trayvon Martin.

They are no different than these little Black boys who keep getting killed for being Black. Their crime is the color of their skin; they are tried and convicted in the blink of an eye. Now, I know that there are Natives who don’t like Black folks, and Black folks who don’t like Natives, therefore we see each other as "different." "It’s just those ghetto Black boys getting killed." or "It’s just those damn Indians getting killed."

White supremacy doesn’t see any of as any different. At all. How do I know this?

Because white supremacy celebrates those who kill us.

Killer Michael Dunn was somehow convicted of attempted murder, but not murder. Killer George Zimmerman will have a reality show at some point and was already scheduled to be in a celebrity(!!) boxing match, profiting from the name he made while killing Trayvon Martin. Bernhard Goetz—pre-reality TV—became a semi-celebrity and had people willing to pay his legal defense. The point? People celebrate when white people kill young Black men.

As MLK pointed out, celebrating those who take brown lives ain’t nuthin’ new.

Christopher Columbus. Kit Carson. The 20 Medal of Honor winners of the Wounded Knee Massacre. Abraham Lincoln—the Great Emancipator, Honest Abe—ordering the largest mass execution in US History when he ordered 38 Natives killed in Mankato, Minnesota.

We’re in this together. These murders affect us. My son carries the royal lineage of chiefs and spiritual healers and protector/warriors, yet he is a suspect each and every time he goes outside because of his powerful brown skin. Just like the little Black boys. Just like every other brown man in this Nation. We gotta stop lying to ourselves that we’re somehow different and protect our babies together.The huge amount of violence against Natives, especially Native women, is part of the same problem. From curtailing the safety net to blocking immigration to hyping crime, white America devalues brown lives in innumerable ways. It's all about maintaining the Puritan vision of a select group of Euro-Christian Americans as God's chosen people.

For more on Trayvon Martin and related matters, see America's Dual Justice System and Zimmerman Verdict Shows America's Pathology.

Below:  1890: Chief Spotted Elk lies dad in the shnow after the massacre at Wounded Knee. Twenty soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor for their deeds."

Ani DiFranco's white obliviousness

As you may have heard, Ani DiFranco, the white liberal feminist folk singer, got in trouble for scheduling a retreat at the slave-owning Nottoway Plantation in Louisiana. Some postings on the subject:

…But How Dare You Complain to Me: Ani DiFranco, White Obliviousness and Historical Memory

By Tim WiseDespite realizing that, as she put it, “tragedies on a massive scale are not easily dealt with or recovered from,” and that “pain is stored in places where great social ills have occurred,” DiFranco insists that her intentions were noble. Rather than utilizing Nottoway so as to forget the past, she was utilizing it so as to remember, because, and these are her words: “I believe that people must go to those places with awareness and with compassionate energy and meditate on what has happened and absorb some of the reverberating pain with their attention and their awareness.”

Sure, like Dachau, where I’m quite certain she would never have thought to schedule a writer’s retreat, even if she were in the middle of a European tour at the time, such that getting there would have been a cinch.

That not only DiFranco, but indeed most white people, would flinch at the analogy between Dachau and Nottoway is predictable and largely suggestive of the problem with white people, or at least our propensity for blinkered historical memory. That we cannot recognize the similarities between a forced labor camp in the U.S.—which Southern plantations were, by definition—and a forced labor camp like Dachau (which, unlike the more deliberative death camps operated by the Nazis, was mostly a site of detention rather than extermination), indicates our inability to squarely face the genocide, physical and cultural to which our people mostly assented for hundreds of years on this soil. We do not allow for the pain of black peoples to equate in our minds—or the larger national imagination—to the pain of European Jewry, no matter that the transcontinental slave trade resulted in the deaths of millions (on the forced marches to the African coast, at sea, and once in the so-called new world), and no matter that the system of white domination that was central to enslavement still operates, albeit in a different form, and that the legacy of slavery itself is still evident in patterns of wealth accumulation (and its opposite) very much operative in the 21st century.

While Germany has long confronted the horrific truth of its history, we still have not, principally because most white folks aren’t, by and large, up to the task. Indeed, in one of the most deliciously repulsive ironies in curricular history, one is far more likely to find an American classroom ruminating on the tragedy of the European Holocaust than its American counterparts, be they perpetrated against black folks or indigenous persons. In fact, and as I’ve noted elsewhere, one isn’t even allowed to equate these things, or even use the same words, like “Holocaust” (with a capital H, no less, and perhaps even a trademark symbol) or “genocide” to describe them, unless one wishes to face the wrath of American apologists, who equate nicely with the current operators of Nottoway, all of whom insist upon how humanely the slaves owned by John Hampden Randolph were treated.
Glamming Up Slavery: Ani DiFranco's Plantation Paradise

By Jessica Ann MitchellFeminist folk singer Ani Difranco has enraged fans by hosting her upcoming “Righteous Retreat” at Nottoway Plantation in Louisiana.

As someone that grew up in Georgia, I’ve seen that a lot of White southerners and northerners view plantations as glamorous vacation hubs. For many, plantations are serene settings for family gatherings, weddings and retreats. There are even housing communities that are presented as high class by adding “plantation” to the name.

The gruesome realities of plantations are almost non-existent in their minds because the pain is not tied to their historical framework. There is almost always a careful removal of a realistic identity of masters, their descendants and the privilege that comes along with the erasure of history. So when people like Thomas Jefferson are discussed, the excuse for his participation as a slaver owner/rapist is, “He was a man of his time.”

The focus now turns to his legacy as a founding father rather than as a racist, enslaver and sexual abuser. This history is often avoided or shunned which leads to the cloaking of actual events. It allows for privileged groups to remain unbothered by very meaningful lived experiences on terror filled plantations.

The focus on the lavish and decadent lifestyles of the plantation owners trumps the fact that patrons are directly basking in the riches accumulated from the mass enslavement of African American people. Some would like to think that times weren’t so hard for “the slaves.” The Nottoway Plantation’s website specifically states, “It is difficult to accurately assess the treatment of Randolph’s slaves; however, various records indicate that they were probably well treated for the time.”DiFranco "apologizes"

Ani DiFranco’s faux-pology: White privilege and the year in race

With most white people not having to confront the true history of plantations, honesty about race remains elusive

By Brittney CooperWe ended 2013, the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation—a year in which one of the most popular movies, “12 Years a Slave,” chronicled the horrors of slavery in Louisiana—with Ani DiFranco huffily canceling her plan to host a “Righteous Retreat” for artists at Nottaway Plantation in New Orleans. That, ladies and gentlemen, sums up your year in race. I understand that most white people never have to think beyond notions of the idyllic and pastoral when it comes to plantations. That these places continue to represent sites of untold horror, violence and humiliation for black people is the very kind of knowledge against which white privilege inoculates.

The whole point of being white is that you are never supposed to feel uncomfortable in space. To the moon and back, the world is yours. This past year, “pure” white space has been procured and subsequently sanctified through the precious spilled blood of black bodies—Trayvon Martin, who got no justice; Jonathan Ferrell, who asked for help in the wrong neighborhood; Renisha McBride, who did the same.

In her faux-pology, which doubled as a notice of cancellation, DiFranco claimed to “get it.” But from her passive aggressive chastisement and her choice to accuse her naysayers on social media of engaging in “high velocity bitterness,” she obviously doesn’t really get it. She acknowledged that “the pain of slavery is real and runs very deep and very wide,” but saw as “very unfortunate” “what many have chosen to do with that pain.”

No doubt, Ani discovered this week, that social media is no country for white women’s foolishness on race. Unfortunately for her, she chose to launch this retreat at the same time that another unfortunate white feminist soul launched a twitter campaign called #stopblamingwhitewomenweneedunity. And after a year of looking at Miley Cyrus’ non-twerking ass, everyone has had enough.And a broader look at what white feminists like DiFranco are doing:

A Year in Review: The Top 10 Most Racist/Privileged Things White Feminists Did in 2013In honor of the #stopblamingwhitewomenweneedunity hashtag (started via this Huffington Post article penned by the delightfully clueless Adele Wilde-Blavatsky) I’ve decided to put together a top ten honoring the many interesting methods white feminists employed this year to promote unity between themselves and feminists of color.

From refusing to defend feminists of color against attacks from the patriarchy (or from other white feminists for that matter), to deriding feminists of color for not being feminist enough, to blaming feminists of color’s oppressions on their own cultures (instead of, you know, patriarchy) white feminists sure have a funny way of expressing their desire for unity with feminists of color.Even though this posting is mainly about white privilege as it relates to blacks, it applies to Native issues as well. The same power and privilege is behind Thanksgiving pageants, Halloween costumes and parties, and Indian team names and mascots. It's about reinforcing the American mythology of the benevolent European "settlers" who tamed the "wilderness" and brought civilization to the "New World."

Educating DMarks about systemic racism

Once again, correspondent DMarks disagreed with one of my postings: The Myth of Reverse Racism. Once again, he's wrong and I'm right.

DMarks wrote:There is no reverse racism. It is all racism, and it does indeed include instances such as affirmative action denying white people of jobs just due to their skin color.Tim Wise addressed your affirmation action "argument" in the passage I quoted. Go ahead and dispute his points if you can.

Simply declaring that he's wrong--that affirmative action is racist--isn't an argument. It's an assertion of your beliefs. It's the opposite of what I'm looking for and a waste of our time.

DMarks also disagreed with the cartoon I posted:

The final comic, by the way is completely invalid, since it doesn't look at people as individuals, but only generalizes on race.No, this cartoon is completely valid as a generalization about the ongoing racism in America, which is perpetuated by institutions that no one person can change. Your ignorance of this structural, systemic racism doesn't change the fact of it. You obviously can't touch it with anything resembling an argument, so you simply wish it out of (your) existence.

As a white man, you're a perfect example of white privilege in action. You don't experience racism against your entire social group, so you can't imagine such a thing. You can't imagine laws or policies that discriminate against an entire race. The only racism you recognize is on the individual level.

Poor whites, rich blacks?Downtrodden, poor whites almost outnumber Blacks... a reality ignored in this comic.Tim Wise talks about the "downtrodden, poor whites" in many of his essays on race. As he's noted many times, blacks face discrimination beyond that faced by poor whites.

Again, your ignorance of his arguments, despite his making them repeatedly, says more about your obtuseness than anything. You're literally ignoring anything that doesn't fit your white worldview.

And who's trying to help poor whites as well as poor blacks? By extending unemployment benefits, food stamps, and other parts of the social safety net? Liberals, that's who.

Conservatives don't care about poor whites much more than they care about poor blacks. They'd be okay if the world's poor people shriveled up and died. That way, rich people wouldn't have to deal with them.



Rich and upper middle class blacks exist in large numbers, another reality ignored.Which numbers would those be? Quit making fact-free assertions and provide the evidence to back your claims.

I've addressed the idiotic claim that Obama proves we're in a post-racial world many times. Mostly recently, in The Obama/Oprah Myth.

Go ahead and address the myth if you can--again, using facts and evidence to support your claims. Your faith-based belief in the goodness of white-majority institutions doesn't interest me.

Returning to the cartoon, my basic response to you is...so? Poor whites need help despite the lack of racism against them. Rich blacks don't need help despite the racism against them. And...?

What does the existence of these two groups have to do with racism against the third group: poor blacks who don't have the means to overcome racism? Nothing whatsoever?

It's like saying, "Dogs have fleas, but cats also have fleas, and fish don't have fleas. Therefore, dogs having fleas isn't a valid concern." Apparently you don't realize how ridiculous your "argument" sounds.

Systemic racism > individual racism

This posting is a typical example of how you conservatives deny, defend, or excuse the racism in our midst. Talking about how individual whites discriminate against individual blacks is missing the forest for the trees.

For every example of "individual" racism you could come up with, I could come up with several of institutional, structural, or systemic racism. By seeing only one kind of racism and ignoring others, you're missing most of America's racism.Any individual denied opportunity due to skin color is a victim of real racism.Yes, and any group denied opportunities due to skin color is a victim of real racism also. Institutions such as governments, businesses, and universities discriminate against racial groups as a whole, dummy, not just against individuals.

Are you even aware of these laws and policies? Was the South's Jim Crow legal structure just a matter of individuals discriminating against individuals? How about corporations such as the Washington Redskins, Urban Outfitters, or Victoria's Secret that use racist marketing techniques? How about Supreme Court decisions that refuse to recognize tribal sovereignty because white Christians "discovered" America? How are any of these racist examples a matter of denying opportunities to individuals?

They aren't, obviously. They're all example of institutional racism against groups. You've seen such examples in this blog--thousands of them--yet you don't understand them. Worse, as this posting proves, you ignore them. Hence the proper use of the term "ignoramus" to describe you.

P.S. to Anonymous: No, I'm not going to ban DMarks. But I may set some of my postings on racism to "no comments"--including this one. Any content-free comments that amount to "I disagree" or "You're wrong" are a waste of everyone's time.

If anyone wants to respond to this, you can e-mail me. If you come up with a valid argument--one I haven't addressed and dismissed already--I'll post it.

Conservatives dream of white Christmas

What the controversy about white Jesus and Santa tells us about the conservative mindset:

It’s wrong to worship ‘white Jesus’

By Susan Brooks ThistlethwaiteJesus, Christians believe, is God-with-us. Thus, when someone insists Jesus was “white,” the theological implication is that God is white.

In fact, doesn’t God, in our cultural stereotype, look a lot like Santa? Old white man with a long white beard?

A great illustration of this point happened on Wednesday night when Megyn Kelly declared on her Fox News showthat both Santa Claus and Jesus were white.

Jesus and Santa are enormously powerful images for Americans and it is not surprising, as the U.S. is becoming ever more racially diverse, that there would be a visible contest over whether Jesus and Santa are white.

This is the frontline of our struggles over what it means to be an American and a person of faith today. Racial prejudice has actually increased since the election of Barack Obama, as an AP News Poll taken earlier this fall shows. This is due, I believe, to an increase in racially polarizing rhetoric since President Obama’s election, and it is both culturally and religiously harmful.

Kelly’s comments were elicited by a piece in Slate, “Santa Claus Should Not Be A White Man Any More,” by Alisha Harris. Harris writes movingly about the dominant culture white Santa and its effect on her as a kid.

But Alisha Harris’s childhood experience should be disregarded, according to Kelly, because it is contradictory to dominant cultural and religious norms. “Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it has to change, you know?” she added. “I mean, Jesus was a white man too. He was a historical figure, that’s a verifiable fact, as is Santa—I just want the kids watching to know that.”

Santa, of course, is a fictional character based on the 4th century Saint Nikolaos of Myra who lived in what is now Turkey.

Jesus, however, was an historical figure and he was not “white.”Dreaming of a White Jesus (and a Real Santa): Reflections on Conservative Derangement

By Tim WiseTo be perfectly honest, I find it quite shocking that anyone would be, well, shocked, by Megyn Kelly’s recent insistence on her FOX show that Santa Claus and Jesus are both white men, or even—and perhaps this is the bigger point—that Santa Claus is real. After all, when one works for a news outlet devoted to the daily propagation of fiction, fabricating such nonsensical details as these can’t exactly be seen as a deviation from an otherwise reality-based norm. These are people for whom man-made climate change isn’t happening but the “War on Christmas” is. People who will no doubt soon proclaim said war to be clear evidence of growing anti-white hatred, given the “verifiable” whiteness of the holiday’s two primary figures, as Kelly put it late last week.

Oh, and yes, I know, she has tried to rationalize her comments, to explain them away as a joke, a mere stab at open mic night perhaps, presuming for herself the mantle of a comedian—a profession for which she is no more qualified than the one she currently inhabits. She was just kidding, and oh yeah (as even she admits), she spoke too soon when demanding that “Jesus was white,” so, ya know, sorry about that one! It is at this point that dear Ms. Kelly should probably be reminded that one cannot, in moments like this, have it both ways: it cannot be both a joke, and at the same time, something you meant so literally as to then necessitate a retraction on the Jesus part. It’s like a criminal suspect saying they didn’t shoot the other guy, and anyway, it was self-defense.

No indeed, humor doesn’t require correction when the subject matter turns out to be absurd, because absurdity was the point. Retraction is for self-professed news people when they get the facts wrong, as she did. She was just supposing that none of her audience would notice, or care, as none of her guests did that day: people who sat there smiling all around, and raising nary a syllable of objection when she said that Santa “just is white.” One wonders if such silence would likewise have obtained had she chosen to proclaim equally rational positions, such as the “verifiable fact” that the Easter Bunny just is fluffy, or that the Tooth Fairy, just is the most beautiful winged creature in the known Universe.

Now don’t get me wrong, if there were a Santa Claus, there is very little doubt that he would have to be white. After all, no black man could manage to work only one day out of the year and not be called lazy; and surely no black man could get away with breaking into millions of homes, even if he was bearing presents. Some cop or neighborhood watch captain would surely have taken him down long ago, convinced that the red suit he was wearing signified gang colors. So, and let me be the first to admit it: in a world where Santa actually existed, along with unicorns, pixie dust and the Lorax, Megyn Kelly would have a damned good point. Note, this is how one can make a joke about Santa being white, without reinforcing white racial normalcy: but of course no FOX personality would choose to make the joke this way, because such a joke would require, first, an acknowledgment of the reality of racial profiling and anti-black racism, neither of which conservatives can afford to countenance. This is why conservative race humor isn’t funny, just racist; please take note of it. Thank you.Wise's point:What this means for most white people is simple enough. Even though no anthropologist or historian of first century Galilean Jews—which is to say Palestinians—would believe that Jesus could have been white, if that’s the image in the stained glass of one’s church, or on the Christmas card sent to you by your great-aunt Millie, well then, what do anthropologists know anyway? What is science compared to what makes us feel better? Indeed, this is the irony of Megyn Kelly’s rant last week: while she was lambasting an African American essayist who had argued that a white Santa was insufficiently inclusive—by telling her that “just because something makes you uncomfortable doesn’t mean it has to change”—the fact is, it is Megyn Kelly and white conservatives the world over who apparently need Jesus to be white. Which is why they changed him so as to make him such, even though many of the earliest depictions of him hewed more closely to the logical and historical truth. This truth is one that, it should be noted, has been explicated clearly by forensic anthropologists based on the available period-specific evidence, in their reconstructions of the face of Jesus. Suffice it to say that their scientifically more compelling image is one that would not only be rejected by most whites (and surely most who rely on FOX for their news), but would likely provoke them to deep and abiding anger.

Which brings us to the far more important point: namely, why do white people apparently require white heroes, icons and saviors? Because we quite obviously do. Surely one cannot think it coincidence that Jesus has been so rendered ever since Christianity came to be used in the service of European supremacy? Surely one cannot find it a capricious and fanciful whim—or mere artistic contrivance—that would cause Michelangelo, Mel Gibson and thousands more between to envision Jesus as essentially one of ours? Likewise, and on a far less serious note, do we really believe that Santa has “always been white” as Limbaugh put it—or as Kelly herself did in her defense, when referencing films like “Miracle on 34th Street”—because there were no darker actors capable of chortling “ho ho ho,” and rubbing their prodigious bellies?

No indeed, there are no coincidences here, and however much Megyn Kelly now wishes to play victim, proclaiming herself the unjust target of “race baiters,” such a conceit is rich and even precious coming from her: someone who spent several hours a few years back hyping an entirely nonsensical story about the New Black Panthers, and how they were intimidating white voters at a polling place in Philadelphia in 2008. And this she did, even though in all the hours of coverage she could produce not one actual voter at the precinct who claimed to have been intimidated (and indeed, there were none), and although even the leading conservative on the Civil Rights Commission, which investigated the charge called it much ado about nothing.

Megyn Kelly is not the victim. And it is not race-baiting to suggest that there might be something troubling about the racialization of Jesus as a white man, or that there might be something even more troubling about a grown and well-paid news figure insisting that Santa is anything. Whether one wishes to address it or not, there is a reason these icons have been rendered white, especially Jesus. It would hardly have done, one supposes, to allow the more historically accurate Jesus to predominate in the church paintings, as Europe branched out, seeking to conquer the globe in the name of money and power and land, proclaiming the inferiority of the darker types all the while (and most ironically, their spiritual inferiority). It would have been decidedly more difficult, one might imagine, to enslave and brutalize and rape and murder the black and brown, if those who did the deed had then to enter their churches on the Sabbath and pray to a savior whose visage bore an uncanny and haunting resemblance to the man they had just lynched the night before, as the Romans had done on a cross with another brother so many years before.

To make the savior of the universe (at least in Christian eyes) a white man is to make possible, literally, the enslavement of brown and black peoples, the evisceration of still others and the conquest of their land in the name of white superiority. These historic crimes are almost unthinkable in a society where truth and historical accuracy were valued more than white skin. Which is to say, when conservatives insist Megyn Kelly’s comments—and the beliefs of millions—that Jesus was white are only a matter of personal preference without consequence, they write and speak as if history didn’t happen. But it did, and it matters, however painful it might be for white people to face.Comment:  The point about Jesus and Santa isn't to prove their race. It's that conservatives feel the need to "own" them, the Founders, God, et al.

By claiming that God, Jesus, Santa, and anyone else they consider an authority figure are white, they're claiming the supremacy of whiteness. They're claiming white Pilgrims, Founding Fathers, pioneers and cowboys, et al. made America great. That is, whiteness made America great. or simply white is great.

For more on the subject, see White Students Complain About Race Talk and GOP Claims Racism Ended.

The myth of reverse racism

Whine Merchants: Privilege, Inequality and the Persistent Myth of White Victimhood

By Tim WiseWhenever these matters are broached, the vast majority of us rush to protest: How dare schools or employers consider race in hiring or admissions. They should be colorblind, we insist, merely admitting or hiring the most qualified! And more to the point, we proclaim, targeting folks of color for opportunities, by definition, means discrimination against us. Such efforts make us the victims, even, on some accounts, treating white people “exactly” like blacks were treated under Jim Crow segregation.

So, yes, it remains the case that even when black folks have college degrees they’re nearly twice as likely as comparable whites to be out of work; and Latinos with degrees are about 50 percent more likely than comparable whites to be out of work; and Asian Americans with degrees are about 40 percent more likely than comparable whites to be out of work. And yes, even whites who claim to have criminal records are more likely to be hired than equally qualified blacks without records, but still, can anti-white lynchings be far behind?

And yes, blacks and Latinos combined only represent about 13 percent of students at the most selective colleges and universities—the only ones that actually practice any kind of real affirmative action for admissions—and there are twice as many whites admitted to elite schools with less-than-average qualifications as there are people of color so admitted, but still, can any rational person doubt that whites will soon be limited to mere token representation at the nation’s best educational institutions?

That such hand-wringing about so-called reverse discrimination reeks of intellectual mendacity should be obvious by now. Despite years of so-called reverse racism, whites remain atop every indicator of social and economic well-being when compared to the African Americans and Latinos who, it is claimed, are displacing us from our perch: employment data, income, net worth; you name it, and we are the ones in better shape without exception.And:This is why, despite affirmative action—which may well be eradicated (at least so far as higher ed is concerned) by the Supreme Court within the month—white racial advantage remains a real and persistent phenomena in American life, and one with which fair-minded persons should still be prepared to grapple.

To claim that affirmative action not only disproves white privilege, but indeed suggests its opposite—black and brown privilege—as many have argued to me via email exchanges, is to ignore the entire social context within which affirmative action occurs.

It’s like protesting that sick people are privileged, relative to the healthy, because there are no hospitals for the latter.

It’s like complaining that the poor are privileged, relative to the well-off, because no one sets up soup kitchens to serve the affluent; nor does Habitat for Humanity ever show up to build mansions for the rich.

Why Reverse Racism Isn’t Real

By Sara LuckeyI spend a lot of time on the internet. I write in various places on the internet, I interact in lively and active commenting communities at different websites, and I partake in a multitude of online forums that have an ongoing and pretty continuous stream of communication between the contributors. Ya know what I’ve noticed? Any time a PoC starts to talk about their experiences with racism, a white person chimes in to derail the conversation and talk about their own experiences with ‘reverse racism.’ And yes, I’m going to say ‘any time’ and not ‘sometimes’ because I have never once been in an internet dialogue amongst commenters and observed a PoC bring up their experience with real, actual, systemic or overt racism and not encountered a white person trying to make it all about their experiences with perceived racism. Not once. It happens every time. Ya know what else? That shit is tired, played out, and incorrect. So let’s talk about why reverse racism isn’t real and why white people need to let that one go.

Racism exists when prejudice+power combine to form social constructs, legislation and widespread media bias that contribute to the oppression of the rights and liberties of a group of people. Racism is systemic, institutional, and far reaching. It is the prevalence of racism within social structures and institutional norms, along with implicit and explicit enforcement by members of a group, that allows racism to run rampant and unchecked. America is a country seeped in white privilege, and our social structure is built on colonization and forced slave labor that then turned into further systemic and ongoing oppression of PoC. We have a culture that presents whiteness as the norm and all else as ‘other’ or different. White is presented as the beauty ideal, the main face in the media (unless we’re talking about criminals, then PoC get unfairly misrepresented), the standard, the regular. It’s a structural problem that affects the perceptions of jurors in criminal cases, admissions to colleges, funding for public schools, welfare and food stamp programs, the redrawing of district lines that affect where we vote, who we see represented on T.V. and how, what schools people have access to, what neighborhoods people live in, an individual’s shopping experience, access to goods and services; it’s extensive and a part of the fabric that let’s whiteness remain dominant in American culture.And:Reverse racism isn’t real because we live in a culture that supports and enforces whiteness as the norm and PoC as other. If you experience discrimination, prejudice, or bigotry, it’s valid to be upset about it and want to talk about it. It is not valid to claim that it is reverse racism, and certainly not valid to claim that it is racism on par with anything like the institutionalized racism that PoC will come into contact with. When a white person starts talking about reverse racism, what they’re really doing is derailing a conversation to make it about them. Their white privilege leads them to believe that what they say both matters and needs to be heard and is important and the conversation should stop to focus on their perceived ills. You know what? When somebody is talking about racism they have experienced, that conversation is not all about you, nor should you expect it to be, so stop with the derailing and just listen and learn.

When white people complain about experiencing reverse racism, what they’re really complaining about is losing out on or being denied their already existing privileges. And while it may feel bad to realize your privilege is crumbling and the things you’ve taken for granted can be taken away from you, it is unfair, untrue, and disingenuous to call that experience reverse racism.Comment:  Don't bother bringing up Obama, Oprah, and various black sports and entertainment figures as if that proves anything. Critics have dismissed these arguments hundreds of times already--for instance, in The Obama/Oprah Myth. Unless you have a new argument, one we haven't heard before, do as Luckey says. Shut up and listen to the real victims of racism.

For more on the subject, see White Students Complain About Race Talk and GOP Claims Racism Ended.

Zimmerman acquitted of Trayvon's murder

The verdict on George Zimmerman's killing of Trayvon Martin is in: not guilty. Conservatives are predictably glad that a white man got away with killing a black boy, while liberals are predictably angry.

For starters, let's note that the liberal outrage isn't necessarily over the verdict itself:

On the Killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman

By Ta-Nehisi CoatesI think the jury basically got it right. The only real eyewitness to the death of Trayvon Martin was the man who killed him. At no point did I think that the state proved second degree murder. I also never thought they proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he acted recklessly. They had no ability to counter his basic narrative, because there were no other eye-witnesses.

I think Andrew Cohen is right--trials don't work as strict "moral surrogates." Not everything that is immoral is illegal--nor should it be. I want to live in a society that presumes innocence. I want to live in that society even when I feel that a person should be punished.That said, observers say the prosecution made several mistakes. One was not focusing on Zimmerman's initial aggression:How does 2013 Florida have a (Stand Your Ground) law that seems cut and pasted from 1881 Tombstone? Because let’s be clear here: according to current Florida law, you can get a gun, follow an unarmed minor, call the police, have them explicitly tell you to stop following them, then choose to ignore that, keep following the minor, get into a confrontation with them, and if at any point during that process you get scared, you can shoot the minor to death. And the state of Florida would say ‘Well, you did what you could.’John Oliver, The Daily ShowAnother was not focusing on Trayvon's race:

Zimmerman saga was all about race

Let's get real

By Paul CamposTrayvon Martin was stalked by George Zimmerman because he was black. Trayvon Martin is dead because he was black. George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin because the boy Zimmerman killed was black.

If you deny these things, you are either a liar or an idiot, or possibly both.

Nothing above requires the conclusion that the jury’s verdict was wrong as a matter of law. Florida’s laws, in their majestic equality, extend to people of all races the right to engage in vigilante killing that eliminates the sole witness to that killing. To point this out is neither a defense of those laws, nor a claim that they will in fact be applied equally. In other words, to blame this jury in this situation is to miss the point.Zimmerman verdict: A green light for racist vigilantes

This verdict allows every paranoid, sub-intelligent, vigilante with a gun to go on victimizing black youth

By Rich BenjaminZimmerman’s stooges and apologists claim that his deadly encounter had nothing do with race. And that his trial and acquittal have nothing to do with race. His defenders effectively portrayed him as a hapless Samaritan who got in over his head. Meanwhile, they tarred Trayvon as a menace who failed to properly justify his existence.

These presumptions colored every moment of the Police Department’s botched initial reaction and the trial.

How does an armed adult defy the policy, chase down a youth, kill him, and then turn around and call it self defense? Defense from what? A fleeing kid? Was Trayvon Martin seen for his humanity? Or as a “fucking punk”? Are black men seen for our humanity or as three-fifths of a fucking punk? This verdict will have devastating consequences. It is an implicit green light for every paranoid, sub-intelligent, vigilante racist to go on victimizing black youth. Trayvon Martin is dead for no reason other than being black.

Why do Zimmerman and some Americans feel entitled to police black and brown people like vigilantes? Why did the Sanford Police Department test a dead boy’s body for drugs in “standard operating procedure,” yet failed to test a live man’s body for alcohol or drugs? Why did the Sanford Police Department fail so miserably during the critical immediate hours after arriving on the scene?

Since our juridical Establishment often turns its head--or even winks--at the prevalence of racial profiling and police brutality against black and brown people, why should anyone be surprised by Zimmerman’s chase? Or by his acquittal? Implicitly and explicitly, the law condones his racial paranoia. The so-called rationales used to design and peddle “Stand Your Ground” laws and “Stop and Frisk” laws, and immigrant policing laws, fuel a vigilante mentality allowing some Americans to feel entitled to self-police others.

Even before the verdict, the Police Establishment warned black people not to riot--as though that were a foregone conclusion--without delivering Zimmerman’s supporters the same warning. The warning not to riot--in its substance and tone--recirculates the dogma of “black men as menace.” The chase, the trial, the warnings not to riot, the acquittal all compound the passive-aggressive profiling of black and brown people.Defending Zimmerman = racist

Tim Wise explains the racism in the Zimmerman case for those who still don't get it:

No Innocence Left to Kill: Racism, Injustice and Explaining America to My Daughter

By Tim WiseI am fully aware that there are still those who would admonish me for even suggesting this case was about race. Not just the defenders of George Zimmerman, with whom I shall deal in a moment, but even the state, whose prosecutors de-racialized this case to a point that frankly was as troubling as anything the defense tried to do. Maybe more. I mean, the defense’s job is to represent their client, and I cannot fault them for having done so successfully. But the prosecution’s job is to make it clear to the jury what the defendant did and preferably why he did it. By agreeing to a fundamentally colorblind, “this isn’t about race,” narrative, they gave away the best part of their arsenal before the war had really started.

Because anyone who still believes that this case had nothing to do with race—or worse, that it was simply a tragedy, the racial meaning of which was concocted by those whom they love to term “race hustlers”—are suffering from a delusion so profound as to call into question their capacities for rational thought. And yet still, let us try to reason with them for a second, as if they were capable of hearing it. Let’s do that for the sake of rational thought itself, as a thing we still believe in; and for our country, which some of us still believe—against all evidence—is capable of doing justice and living up to its promises. In short, let’s give this one more shot.

Those who deny the racial angle to the killing of Trayvon Martin can only do so by a willful ignorance, a carefully cultivated denial of every logical, obvious piece of evidence before them, and by erasing from their minds—if indeed they ever had anything in there to erase—the entire history of American criminal justice, the criminal suspicion regularly attached to black men, and the inevitable results whenever black men pay for these suspicions with their lives. They must choose to leave the dots unconnected between, for instance, Martin on the one hand, and then on the other, Amadou Diallo or Sean Bell or Patrick Dorismond, or any of a number of other black men whose names—were I to list them—would take up page after page, and whose names wouldn’t mean shit to most white people even if I did list them, and that is the problem.

Oh sure, I’ve heard it all before. George Zimmerman didn’t follow Trayvon Martin because Martin was black; he followed him because he thought he might be a criminal. Yes precious, I get that. But what you don’t get—and by not getting it while still managing to somehow hold down a job and feed yourself, scare the shit out of me—is far more important. Namely, if the presumption of criminality that Zimmerman attached to Martin was so attached because the latter was black—and would not have been similarly attached to him had he been white—then the charge of racial bias and profiling is entirely appropriate.

And surely we cannot deny that the presumption of criminality was dependent on this dead child’s race can we? Before you answer, please note that even the defense did not deny this. Indeed, Zimmerman’s attorneys acknowledged in court that their client’s concerns about Martin were connected directly to the fact that previous break-ins in the neighborhood had been committed by young black males.

This is why it matters that George Zimmerman justified his following of Martin because as he put it, “these fucking punks” always get away. In other words, Zimmerman saw Martin as just another “fucking punk” up to no good, similar to those who had committed previous break-ins in the community. But why? What behavior did Martin display that would have suggested he was criminally inclined? Zimmerman’s team could produce nothing to indicate anything particularly suspicious about Martin’s actions that night. According to Zimmerman, Martin was walking in the rain, “looking around,” or “looking around at the houses.” But not looking in windows, or jiggling doorknobs or porch screens, or anything that might have suggested a possible burglar. At no point was any evidence presented by the defense to justify their client’s suspicions. All we know is that Zimmerman saw Martin and concluded that he was just like those other criminals. And to the extent there was nothing in Martin’s actions—talking on the telephone and walking slowly home from the store—that would have indicated he was another of those “fucking punks,” the only possible explanation as to why George Zimmerman would have seen him that way is because Martin, as a young black male was presumed to be a likely criminal, and for no other reason, ultimately, but color.

Which is to say, Trayvon Martin is dead because he is black and because George Zimmerman can’t differentiate—and didn’t see the need to—between criminal and non-criminal black people. Which is to say, George Zimmerman is a racist. Because if you cannot differentiate between black criminals and just plain kids, and don’t even see the need to try, apparently, you are a racist. I don’t care what your Peruvian mother says, or her white husband who married the Peruvian mother, or your brother, or your black friends, or the black girl you took to prom, or the black kids you mentored. If you see a black child and assume “criminal,” despite no behavioral evidence at all to suggest such a conclusion, you are a racist. No exceptions. That goes for George Zimmerman and for anyone reading this.

And here’s the thing: even in the evidentiary light most favorable to George Zimmerman this would remain true. Because even if we believe, as the jury did, that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, there can be no question that were it not for George Zimmerman’s unfounded and racially-biased suspicions that evening, Trayvon Martin would be alive, and Zimmerman would be an entirely anonymous, pathetic wanna-be lawman, about whom no one would much care. It was he who initiated the drama that night. And even if you believe that Trayvon Martin attacked Zimmerman after being followed by him, that doesn’t change.

But apparently that moral and existential truth matters little to this jury or to the white reactionaries so quick to praise their decision. To them, the fact that Martin might well have had reason to fear Zimmerman that night, might have thought he was standing his ground, confronted by someone who himself was “up to no good” is irrelevant. They are saying that black people who fight back against someone they think is creepy and who is following them, and might intend to harm them, are more responsible for their deaths than those who ultimately kill them. What they have said, and make no mistake about it, is that any white person who wants to kill a black person can follow one, confront them, maybe even provoke them; and as soon as that black person perhaps takes a swing at them, or lunges at them, the white pursuer can pull their weapon, fire, and reasonably assume that they will get away with this act. I can start drama, and if you respond to the drama I created, you are to blame, not me.A Washington Post columnist helpfully demonstrates how Zimmerman's defenders are as racist as Zimmerman is--exactly as Tim Wise said:

Richard Cohen is terrified of black people

Washington Post columnist understands racial profiling, because hoodies are the "uniform" of crime

By Alex PareeenWashington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote an offensive, poorly reasoned column about racial profiling. In 1986. And also this week. And once or twice or let’s say perhaps a dozen additional times in the interim. The occasion of this week’s installment of “Richard Cohen explains why black men should be treated as second-class citizens for the safety of us all, which is to say rich old white men” is the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin. Cohen is very sorry that Martin is dead due to Zimmerman incorrectly assuming him to be a criminal of some sort based solely on Martin’s demographic profile—in other words, Cohen is sorry that Martin is dead because of racial profiling—but on the other hand, Cohen argues, racial profiling is correct and necessary because black people are scary, at least when they wear certain things.I don’t like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize. I don’t know whether Zimmerman is a racist. But I’m tired of politicians and others who have donned hoodies in solidarity with Martin and who essentially suggest that, for recognizing the reality of urban crime in the United States, I am a racist. The hoodie blinds them as much as it did Zimmerman.A “uniform we all recognize.” “We all.” “We.” Richard Cohen speaks for us all. Or “us” “all.” That one incredibly dumb assertion, stated with perfect idiotic certainty in the first-person plural, is exactly the sort of thing that makes Richard Cohen America’s worst columnist on America’s worst opinion page.

In the world outside Cohen’s tiny boomer rich guy bubble, “a hoodie” is worn by … nearly all young people and plenty of not-so-young people. To call a hoodie part of a (universally recognized!) “uniform” of Dangerous Black Thuggishness makes about as much sense as invoking high-tops or baseball caps. It is the “uniform” of youth. But then, to Richard Cohen, youth plus blackness makes probable cause.And please, spare us any talk of how Zimmerman is Hispanic, not white:

Is George Zimmerman white or Hispanic? That depends

For white Hispanics, our privilege can always be undercut. Zimmerman bet on his whiteness--and now he's entrapped

By Isa HopkinsIn the cascade of social media responses to the verdict in the death of young, black Trayvon Martin, the racial and ethnic identity of assailant George Zimmerman has been as bifurcated as the rage and relief. To those grieving an injustice, Zimmerman was a white man; those who celebrate his acquittal have been quick to point out that Zimmerman is, in fact, not white at all, but Hispanic. How can such a basic fact of a man be so disputed?

The truth is, Zimmerman is both: white and Hispanic, one a racial category and the other a marker of ethnicity, an accusation and an exoneration, respectively, inverted from their usual exculpatory order. Both are social constructions, but the former relies on skin color and ostensibly biological features, while the latter is a designation based on country of origin. Many Hispanics are dark-skinned, but many are not. It’s a confusing identity in a land that has traditionally preferred its divisions to be more clean-cut, and it’s one that even we white Hispanics struggle to understand.The key point:The genius of white supremacy is in its elasticity: It can expand to include the not-quite-right, the off-whites, when necessary, and then otherize and eject us when convenient.Bottom line: Zimmerman is white, racially speaking. End of story there.

For more on Trayvon Martin, see Black Youth Killed Like Trayvon and Racial Profiling for Blacks and Indians.