Conversational red herrings (five): love trumps hate

Or in other words, "Let's all sing Kumbaya!"

Here's  a few quick reasons why I say no, there will be no Kumbayas here. Love does not trump hate and my dulcet soprano will not be offered to soothe your savage breast (or your guilty conscience). Feel free to clutch your pearls at my willingness to say that out loud.

Here's the thing: singing Kumbaya will change no policy, but then shifting the status quo is not what you're about is it? Quite the opposite in fact. Your intent when you deploy this phrase is to reap two benefits. First, you mean to reap the social benefit of appearing to be concerned about oppression. [You aren't but you get to score the point.] Second, you slyly get to disclaim any responsibility for acting to address it because after all, you are very epitome of the love which will trump hate aren't you? Your love is all that it will take to redress 21 generations of wrongs. Uh huh. Hark! I think I hear the first bars of Kumbaya in the distance.................

What you want is the plausible deniability that this and other similar platitudes give you. You deploy this silly phrase hoping that the not-too-discerning listener will hear only the words. And they do hear only the words and they applaud your New Age philosophy. More discerning listeners hear much more than just those words though. They hear, "I don't want to talk about my complicit silence and inaction. No, what I want to do is to throw the responsibility for peace and rapprochement on you, the victim. Now sing along with me! Kumabaya mah Lord!".

If you ask me, these love trumps hate-rs have zero interest in doing any of the work required to make those words meaningful. They're not really after meaning any way. Love trumps hate (LTH) is lazy faux optimism  (faux-timism?) and, as I've had cause to say recently, lazy optimism is wholly useless.

As with the other four red herrings I've written about [here, here, here and here], this particular herring is lobbed into conversations to stop any honest reflection on what America has done to her own people over the course of hundreds of years. LTH is the ugly status quo masquerading as enlightenment.

Love trumps hate is a lie. Here's the truth:.

Truth 1: Kumbayas will not save POC's lives

We still die prematurely, whether  because of the violence meted out by state actors (Eric Garner or Khalief Browder to select just two) or through a series of unfortunate events that follow Erica Garner, and Khalief's mother Venida.

If the circumstances of our Blackness in America don't shorten our lifespans, our healthcare outcomes are impacted by the places we call home, the care we are able to access and the overall social environment in which we live.

Love can't fix that. Love won't trump any of that.

Truth 2: Black folk have 1/13th the wealth of White families and a rousing chorus of Kumbaya won't fix that

Between the casual racism that keeps us from jobs, separates us from economic security, prevents us from advancing when we do have work and the more noxious kind of racism that deliberately underpays us, there's little hope of POC ever catching up. The POC/White wealth gap is a runaway freight train. It's gone and it ain't stopping cuz y'all ain't paying no reparations and all you do want to do is sing and pretend.  

There's no way for us to secure our children's and our communities futures without a foundation stone of economic security first being laid. Love won't lay that foundation. And ain't no key you can sing Kumbaya in that will help either. Stop trying to baffle me with that particular brand of bullshiggety. 

from Demos

Truth 3: Environmental racism and capitalism kill. Kumbaya ain't the answer to those either

The environments in which minorities and the poor frequently live were built by racism and toxic capitalism (pun definitely intended) and are sustained by ongoing ~isms of various kinds. Flint isn't the only place facing a water crisis. 

Multiple minority and poor communities struggle with water challenges much like those seen in the developing world, but we don't talk about that because not only are minorities invisible, poor people of any color are invisible too. It has ever been thus. "Love trumps hate" is yet another way of avoiding extending that invisibility. It's a way of disclaiming any culpability and shirking all responsibility for righting wrongs.Love trumps hate my hindparts.

Love won't fix any of that, neither will love fix the pipes that must be replaced once toxins have damaged them. Money will fix that. Political will will fix that. Not-so-common decency could fix that but love? Love in action maybe but this namby pamby love-trumps-hate-let's sing-and-hug-it-out foolishness? That serves only as a salve to the conscience. Listless lazy love don't-bother-me-with-the-truth love trumps nothing.  

Mouthing the words "Love trumps hate" affects none of the outcomes that matter. Those words (absent any action to give them weight) don't move the needles of hate, oppression, disenfranchisement, patriarchy, misogyny, transphobia that harm POC routinely. 

Love trumps hate my big toe. But carry on with that. We see you. 

The Intractability of White Supremacy

One of Cornel West's (many) complaints about Ta-Nehisi Coates as I comprehend it, is (according to West) that Coates speaks of White supremacy as if it were intractable. Well, at the risk of inserting my puny self into a war between giants, have I not suggested as much in the last two years of regular writing? I may not be in Coates' realm as a writer, nor West's as a thinker, but I believe we have largely drawn the same conclusion and it is one, I fear, that is hard to avoid. We - Coates and I - are hardly alone in drawing that conclusion. It's kind of unavoidable at this point. 500 years in, I'm gonna say that intractable is the least we can say about supremacy.
Supremacy is intractable. It is not invincible but dammit, it most assuredly is intractable. I'm not sure why there would be an argument about that.
West's other complaint (one of them) is that Coates' treatises don't pay sufficient homage to the generations of fighters in the history of Black America. But that is (respectfully) ridiculousness.
To pick up a pen to write your truth about White supremacy and your place in it, is an act of defiance. To do so and quote Malcolm X, to reference the work of MLK Jr, to speak of Harriet Tubman or Sojourner Truth or Audre Lourde or bell hooks is not only an act of defiance it is also an act of reverence for those who have had the temerity - as you do - to write before you.
And so yes, we fight. For some of us, the fight is in every word we write, every pen stroke is an act of rebellion against an intractable foe.
We stand up. We kneel down. We fight to draw breath. But none of that renders the thing we fight one whit less intractable. Hell, the fact that there are so many writing, and singing, rapping, sculpting, painting, and otherwise channeling their frustrations and rage through various artistic endeavors is evidence of the intractability of the problem. And so to West I would pose this question: WHERE IS THE LIE? Seriously, where is the lie? Is White supremacy not intractable?
Have not White women and men chosen to vote for an alleged pedophile over a Democrat who took klan members to trial over the deaths of four little Alabama girls?

Is this not the very definition of the intractability of White supremacy?
Did not young men scream "Jew will not replace us!" and wail about blood and soil in the streets of Charlottesville not too long ago?
Is this not the very definition of the intractability of White supremacy?
Did not Briana Brochu 'play the race card' and avoid the federal hate crime charge she absolutely should have caught?
Is this not the very definition of the intractability of White supremacy?
Did not *working class (and all other class) White voters* choose a man who is clearly mentally unstable as the leader of their country because beJesusChrist the n*gger was finally out of the House of White Supremacy?
Is this not the very definition of the intractability of White supremacy?
Are not White "Evangelicals" are more wedded to Whiteness than to Christness?
Is this not the very definition of the intractability of White supremacy?
Where. Is. The. Lie?

Where?

Avoiding the truths exposed by the Doug Jones/Roy Moore Battle Royale

Early on Wednesday 13 December 2017, the Talking Heads were at it. The Chattering Class was busy going on about the Black voter turnout that blew Roy Moore's hopes of representing Alabamans in the US Senate to smithereens. While certainly the turnout among Black voters was something to talk about, I'm not sure that it was the thing we needed to be talking about last Wednesday.

Moore was a less (heh heh heh!) than stellar candidate but his lack of success wasn't on account of his less-than-stellar-ness nor was it because the #MeTooers abandoned him. Nope. The only reason that Moore came in second place was that Black folk said "Hell NAW!" and turned out in magical numbers. Moore's numbers with White voters of all stripes were extremely strong, and rather than stare in wonder at Black voters who voted against him, maybe we should spend more than a passing thought for White voters who were comfortable voting for him? 

Rather than tell both the story of Black people voting in tremendous numbers for Jones, and the story of White ones who chose Moore with all his baggage, talking heads have chosen to speak only on one of those stories. No real surprise which one they chose. This is America after all, where race isn't a thing until it is. 

Rather than talk about White women voting in vast numbers (63%) for man who allegedly preyed on young girls, the chattering class chose to play up Black folk voting for girls' safety.

Rather than talk about White men, those girls' fathers, who sided with Moore against accusers, 'journalists' chose to wax on about Black women's turnout (ignoring the Black men who turned out in equally impressive numbers).

Rather than talk about college-educated White folk voting in vast numbers for a man who denies science, the reporters chose to tell stories of Black former sharecroppers who brought souls to the polls. 

Rather than talk about White Constitution-lovin' Republicans voting for a man who was twice removed from the Supreme Court of his state for putting his version of the Bible above the Constitution, the talk was about Black folk racing to the polls to save Whiteness from its own worst excesses of odiousness....not that it was ever framed thus.

No, we won't talk about any of that cuz that doesn't fit the models of how we talk about Black voters, nor indeed does it fit the the ways in which we typically talk about White voters. The noble savage/working class White voter tropes would not survive an honest discussion and so we don't have those conversations at all. We whistle past the graveyard in which those tropes should be buried.

The shock and awe of the Chattering Class is fine I suppose, but the chatterers are also supposed to be journalists. Clearly when race enters the picture asking for journalistic integrity is too big of an ask. These people are well paid to tease out the real story under the obvious one and report or opine on that, but it has become clear to me that all analysis from White talking heads comes from behind the gossamer thin screen of their privilege. Expecting nuance once race enters the pic? Again, too big of an ask. 

Since we can't ask the commentariat to offer insight or nuanced assessment of the vote, let me do it my damn self.

Insight 1:

As Samuel Sinyangwe points out, if 70+% of POC had voted for a candidate accused of preying on teenage girls, not only would we be talking about nothing else, we'd also be pathologizing Blackness. And yet, the silence on pathologizing the White vote here is profound. Privilege is a helluva thing.

Any one of dozens of reporters could have tried to tease out why White voters in such large numbers could find comfort voting for Moore, but nah, that would have been too much like actual journalism.

Insight 2:

Any real journalist could have spent a good 2 minute segment debunking this kind of talk, pulling the rug from under the racists but again, that too would be too much like journalism.

A journalist could have posed the question: "How?" and he/she could have followed that up with the question, "Will there ever come a day when there will be no White commentator who casts aspersions on Black folk?" That would be a great way to pull a thread out of the ugly sweater that is White supremacy thus aiding in its unraveling. But nope, not happening. 

Any real journo could have pointed out that Alabammy is a strict voter ID state, and that this magical thing Mitchell wants to suggest occurred simply could not have, but nope. That's not their job apparently. So Mitchell gets to suggest that Black folks cheated because 'Murica!  And the vast majority of so-called journalists allows that shite to sit out there unchallenged. 

Folk like Bill Mitchell know that diversity is a source of danger for his privilege. Folk like Mitchell also believe fervently that vulnerable people have no real right to opinions (or votes). He knows good and damn well that gaming the Alabama system is damn near impossible, but his ignorant followers don't. And so he wins, Blackness loses, rinse and repeat tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.  Many journalists are clearly as invested in the system of White supremacy, White rage and anti-Blackness, as everybody else is. They have neither professional reason nor personal incentive to debunk the bullshit.  

Insight 3: 

We are committed to missing the lesson and evading any real analysis of voter behavior. I give you Mrs. Betty Bowers. 

No Mrs. Bowers. Not quite. 

The actual truth is that plenty of White parents voted for said pedophile.  Plenty of White women voted for a sexual predator. The only thing that's true in your tweet is that most Black people, ninety-some percent, didn't. They also chose not to vote for an unrepentant racist. 

Mrs. Bowers tweet bespeaks the protection of Whiteness. White voters are entitled to vote for whomever they choose, no matter the level of odium the candidate and ultimately, White citizens are allowed to escape the broad implications of their actions. (cf: the global implications of last November's votes for DJT). This is why we will probably never have nice things. White candidates can be as nasty as they wanna be. As long as they are White, voters (and evidently a significant number of them) will find ways to make peace with their cognitive dissonance and cast a ballot.....if they experience any dissonance at all. (again cf the election of 2016)

"None of that will work any more" Mrs. Bowers claims. Somebody please send Mrs. B a breakdown of Moore's voters.

Basically, but for the Black voter, and a tiny sliver of White voters (~30%), Roy Moore would have won Alabama handily. The accusations would have made precisely zero difference, much as they did with Donald Trump. 

So while Mrs. Bowers' tweet is interesting, it's not even close to true and the way in which this tweet is untrue also speaks to a reality that we continue to avoid: by refusing to hold White voters accountable for their votes; by looking at the Black vote as the story du jour here, we miss yet another critical opportunity to ask hard questions about how White supremacy is played out in our voting patterns. 

The Congress of Chatterers has focused in wonderment on Black voters, and have roundly ignored all the other data points that demand at least as loud consideration and analysis. 

And before I had time to collect my thoughts and post my analysis of the Alabama election, Doug Jones said this.........

Translation: "Screw you Black voters. I may yet vote with the very people who would, and often do, do you harm. Thanks for the gig though!"

There's a lesson here. Many lessons in fact. Would that we would learn them. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm starting to wonder when - or if - class will let out. I'm tired learning this particular lesson. Is there nothing else on the curriculum? 

Mind you fall in the hole you dig for somebody else (thoughts on the MAGA agenda)

I've said this before but I'm saying it again, when your politicians 

1. favor of a low (or no) minimum wage;
2. disfavor universal access to health care;
3. disfavor unions - which they present as Right to Work legislation,

then please understand that they are working to set you up to be easily exploitable by corporations.

If you voted for these people because they held these views, then all I can say to you is "Mind you fall in the hole you dig for somebody else!" 

When your politicians write legislation that

1. gives preferable tax treatment to a single university, one that happens to be linked to the Sec'y of Education (even if they later scratch it out of their legislation, the problem of having thought it a good idea remains You don't delete the thinking that led to the writing of this bit of legislation; you can't.);
2. gives relief from billions (with a b) in estate taxes to a group of people that numbers in the thousands, not hundreds of thousands or millions and whose assets exceed $5.45 million;
3. gives permanent tax relief to corporations and temporary tax relief to people (but then I keep forgetting, corporations are people too!)

it's necessary to repeat, "Mind you fall in the hole you dig for somebody else."

And then, la pièce de résistance!, having done those things, and blown a trillion dollar hole in the country's balance sheet, these self-same politicians start squawking about entitlement reform; such reform to include the ‘reform’ (read slashing) of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Children's Health Insurance Program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and anything else they deem extraneous.

Mind you fall in the hole you dig for somebody else. 

SNAP cuts? That'd be the hole you dug for some unworthy person.
Medicare cuts? That's the hole for you.

Medicaid cuts? Hole you dug for somebody else.
Social Security cuts? That one's yours. 

When all of this information lies before you, is it not time to accept that this government is not yours? Is it not time to accept that your government does not have your best interests at heart?

Ah, but that's why you voted for them isn't it? Except you thought you would be able to control the odiosity. LOL.  

Here's the thing: when you keep voting for these people with these radically odious views because you think they will harm someone else on your behalf, this is what's going to happen eventually. Your pet viper is eventually going to bite you. It really is only a matter of time. It's a viper for Heaven's sake! 

This is how ugly policy works. If you explicitly approve the creation of policies that harm others, you also implicitly approve the creation of policy that harms you. In technology, we call that ‘scope creep’ and if you aren’t a hawk about managing scope, it’s almost inevitable. Who's hawk-eyeing ugly policy for scope creep? Anybody? Nope. And that's my point. Ain't nobody seeking to prevent it so you can be sure it will come. As we say in my pays natale (home country), "Mind you fall in the hole yuh dig for somebody else!". 

Here's another Caribbean saying that's equally relevant: "Stone doh have eyes!". Children in the Caribbean throw stones. A lot. We're surrounded by fruit trees and sometimes we don't want to wait for the fruit to fall. And so stones (and sometimes sticks) come in handy. But stones don't have eyes and they could - and frequently did/do - go where you didn't intend them to go.....into windows; up on roofs of neighboring homes, making a helluva lot of noise; into the backs of people's heads; into the fronts of people's heads (I have a forehead scar that proves the truth of that). The same is true of vicious policy. 

Policy - like stones - doesn't have eyes. Every time we give the OK to ugly policy, policy that (we hope) victimizes some group that isn't us - cuts to urban communities for example - we quietly (and inadvertently) give approval for the eventual deployment of the same kind of thinking and policy on ourselves.

Hey, it's a free country, so feel free and comfy doing this. Dig yuh hole! Throw yuh stone! Carry on if it works for you, but know where you're going with this. Or better put, know where you're giving politicians permission to take you.

Lazy optimism vs hope in action.

In response to an article posted on FB the other day, in which the author warns that the US will never be the same again, someone responded that "Yes we will be better! You wait and see Germany!" or some other such rah rah nonsense blindly optimistic thing. I responded of course in my usual not-if-this-this-and-this-continue way. She was not amused, not that I thought she would be. 

Look, feel free to call me bitter. Feel free to liken me to bitter melon (caraillie it's called where I come from). I'm entirely OK with it. I prefer to be eyes-open to the world as it is rather than to pretend only to be blindsided by it later. Let me take my bumps now. I'm good with it. 

By Hajime NAKANO - http://flickr.com/photos/jetalone/2914004967/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5133027 

I took away from the exchange a feeling that we are probably lost. We're lost because empty optimism passes for something and clear-eyed observations about the lived realities and what ytness has tolerated for 500 years, is taken as negativity or bitterness.

Call me Betty Bitter then. *shrugs*

Had I the opportunity, I might have asked this NWL (nice yt lady) what, if anything, she had done or was doing to improve America?

Had I the opportunity. I would have asked Becky where she'd stored her pink pussy hat, or indeed, whether she even owned one?

Had I the opportunity, I'd have asked her what she was teaching her children or any children in her orbit, about American history?

I would have asked her, had we had a discussion, whether she celebrates Columbus Day or Indigenous People's Day.

Hey, maybe she'd have had great answers. Maybe she's busy working for the kingdom. Don't know, can't say. But for every one NWL out there working for the kingdom, there are 3 - at least - quietly working against it. Don't believe me? Check out my pieces on Briana Brochu or the People In The Neighborhood.

Listen, bonbon-eating optimism is easy but it's damn useless. Even hope is useless if you won't make yourself useful. 

Neither 'hope' nor 'optimism' on its own means Bo Jack Diddly squat. Neither hope nor optimism is moving the needle off hate. Work is what has meaning. Optimistic work, hope in action those mean something. Those mean that you are willing to get off your ass and do. 

Y'alls optimism, as I said to that woman, never freed one enslaved person, never prevented the rape of a single slave (male or female), never stopped the sale of a child from his/her enslaved parents. 

Y'alls optimism ain't return an acre of land to a Native tribe, nor bring back a dead elder who died having not seen his/her people's land and lives respected. 

Vapid claims of optimism ain't save the life of a single lynched man, woman, or child nor did it stop a water hose or a dog during the Civil Rights era.

Useless optimism never made a single refugee safe. Let's be damn clear. Your blithe adjurations of "I choose optimism", they ain't worth nothin' to anybody who needs relief from the oppressions they face, but carry on. 

Lazy optimism isn't responsible for a single damn thing that has moved the needle on hate in this country.

Do I need to say that again? Yeah, lemme just say it a-damn-gain: optimism alone has achieved nothing. Hard work has achieved it all. Maybe the workers were optimistic, I don't know. I do know that the workers had no reason for any such optimism. They hoped that America could be shamed into doing the right thing, but hope is all they had. America is still only grudgingly doing the right thing and God knows, America takes every damn opportunity to undo the half dozen decent things its grudgingly done (cf voter suppression for example). So don't come at me with your "I choose optimism" bullshit. 

Optimism din do shit. By itself, it never has and never will. Hope + hard work, including the willingness to die, did that. Ask MLK, Medgar Evers, Emmett Till and the five thousand plus lynching victims, the four little girls in a Birmingham, AL church basement, the nine worshipers at Mother Emmanuel AME, Jordan Davis, Terrence Crutcher, Jimmie Sanders, Sandra Bland, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Aiyana Stnsley-Jones, Ramarley Graham and on and on I could go.

Lazy optimism vs hope in action. I'll take the latter thanks. And I'll do my part, one essay at a time. 

We're in a lot of bleeping trouble (thoughts on #MeToo)

We're in a moment.

Some might be inclined to say it's a moment precipitated by Harvey Weinstein, but I'm not entirely sure that that's accurate. I'm far more likely to say that we're in a moment occasioned by the irreconcilable differences between the 53% and the 47%.

Which 53%? You know the ones, the 53% of White women (WW) who blithely voted for a pussy grabber and his trusty sidekick the quiet misogynist; the 53% some small number of whom later took to the streets in droves in pink pussy hats or did they? Is there any overlap between the 53% and the pink pussy-hatted posse?

How many of the 53% of WW who held their noses and voted for the kasually kleptocratic kakistocracy of DJT are now railing against pussy and tittie grabbers in all spheres? Is there one? Are there perhaps two? A dozen? A few?

How many of the 53% who voted eagerly because Jesus sent us Donald, are now just as eager to vote for an alleged pedophile?

As it turns out, a whole damn lot.

From the look of Roy Moore's numbers with evangelical women in Alabama, it is clear that the idea of male predation does not compute with them. Why is that? What is it about what they're learning in church, in their literal reading and understanding of the Bible that leads them to this place? What is it about what's being preached from the pulpits of various evangelical churches that makes room for a belief in their own unworthiness? Starting with the story of Eve, the b*tch who got humanity kicked out of the Garden of Eden, the Bible is chock full of stories of women being used and abused, or shifty, conniving and untrustworthy (Delilah?) or offered up for abuse to assuage men's rage (Lot's daughters) and satisfy debts. It really ain't a stretch to see how these bible-believing women could come to believe themselves to be unworthy.

As important as it may be to take a close look at the 53% and try to understand how their belief system impacts their voting, it's just as important to look at so-called liberal women like Lena Dunham, Hillary Clinton, Camille Cosby and various Al Franken apologists, who have had great difficulty believing that men they know could possibly be rapists or sexual predators.

It's probably not worth asking how many of the women of the 53% have had a change in their perspective in the last year. It's not worth asking because the evidence is that there will be little movement from them. It is worth asking how many of the 47% are in the business of making excuses for men like John Conyers and Franken. How many of the 47% believe, to varying degrees, that their guy isn't as bad as those other guys who are obvs pervs?

We have to deal with the fact that a significant number of White women are (and have long been) willing to split hairs on odiousness, which kinda explains why this shit is at epidemic levels! (And yes, I'm putting this on White women. Go back and look at the chart above again. See where the sisters' support for Moore lies? Their collective name is Bennett and they collectively ain't in it. NWLs, this is on you.)

So the question has to be asked: what percentage of the 47% aren't quite as problematic as the 53% but are damn problematic anyway? Consider Lena Dunham, Hillary Clinton and Camille Cosby (the brown exception proving the rule) because these are women whose liberal bona fides are well known. And yet, Dunham defended her alleged rapist friend (publicly calling his accuser a liar I might add); Camille Cosby continues to stand by her man as did Hillary clinging to the gossamer thin 'innocent until proven guilty' shield. (I also observe that Matt Lauer's wife, a Dutch woman, is alleged however to have decamped for her pays natale, entirely over Lauer's odiosity is she. One might almost be inclined to ask why American women tolerate that which other women find intolerable. Might almost be inclined to ask.....but that's an essay for another day)

While the 53% may believe in an established subordinate place for women that makes liberal women cringe, the 47% are not without sins of their own.

The 53% may hold to a belief system premised upon a woman's being unfit for leadership, and women's general second-classedness in all things, but liberal women have been known to be complicit in the wrong-doing of their men and I'm not sure that that's much better. I could whip out my plantation wives references here, but nope not today. I could reference the women of the KKK but nope, not today. I could draw a correlation between the White women of the suffrage movement, but again, nope. Or maybe I could spare a thought for the role of White women in lynching - either from the perspective of causing the lynchings (Carolyn Holloway Bryant Donham, my favorite whipping girl) or the perspective of the wondrous celebratory events that lynchings became - but nah, not today.

White women - conservative and liberal - have been picking sides and splitting decency hairs for generations. The sexual predation stories of the past several weeks are only another piece of the infinite and complicated puzzle that is American history.

What is becoming clear to me is that we're in a lot of f--king trouble.We are not moving the needle enough or nearly fast enough. The problems within the 47% are the proof of that.

We truly shouldn't be having so much difficulty in separating ugly acts from the potential good a particular candidate/individual represents. But then, if we couldn't do it last November, why the hell would we be able to do it now? How have we changed or grown in the intervening span of time? (Answer: not a whole lot.)

US history is clear: we've never done the amount of growing required to root out ugliness. We're just too lazy to do it. Worse still, we're too seduced by the dual mythologies of American Exceptionalism and "America is great because America is good", as I heard candidate Clinton say during the campaign season. Growth begins with an acknowledgement of shortcomings and neither of our favorite mythologies allows for acknowledgement of past (or present) wrongdoings. We. Ain't. There. Yet. Or probably evah.

We shun the light of truth. We hate the manure of self-reflection. We. Do. Not. Grow.  Or when we do, we call it political correctnes and kvetch about it until we find a politician who is one minute away from calling someone like me a n*gger with all the baggage that word carries.

Call me a liar. Prove me wrong. Grow. Lemme see ya. I dare ya.

Like I said, we're in a lot of f--king trouble.

The Implausible Death of Jimmie Sanders

Cops lie. And they don't lie very well. And it doesn't matter because prosecutors and juries can be depended upon to exonerate them every single time. But make no mistake about it, cops lie. They lie from the very beginning. Then, as facts and witnesses and videotape turn up, their initial story is revised and reshaped into something very different from the original. Oh, it isn't any closer to the truth than the first draft was and it often makes even less sense. But it doesn't matter: the fabrication just has to hold together long enough to get past a jury that is desperate to find cops innocent.

The implausible death of Jimmie Sanders last May in an Appleton, Wisconsin bar is a perfect example. The only facts that don't change are these: there was a fight, a gun was fired, the cops showed up, and a cop shot Sanders. From there, things get fluid.

In the first draft, the cops arrive to see Sanders pointing a gun at Henry Dellum, the man he'd just been fighting with. They shoot Sanders and arrest the Dellum for the illegal possession and discharge of a firearm. As far as the cops are concerned, this was just bad timing for Sanders who seems to have wrestled Dellum's gun away from him only to be confused for the shooter.

In the second draft, Dellum pulls out his gun after fighting with Sanders, fires off a round, misses, and then slips the weapon to his girlfriend to hide just before the cops show up. Video from the bar confirms this version of events but begs the question: why, if the gun was hidden away, did the cops feel compelled to shoot Sanders. But Sanders is Black so apparently investigators didn't see the urgency in resolving this contradiction. Dellum is now charged with attempted murder since, after all, he fired his gun and someone could have conceivably been killed.

The third and final version of events, stitched together by the county prosecutor, has police entering the bar to find a gun-wielding Henry Dellum bearing down on them in an attempt to escape. A cop fires four rounds at Dellum, striking him in the arm and Sanders in the back.

In this new script, Sanders has been recast as an innocent bystander, and an entirely different man is given the role of

Cops lie. And they don't lie very well. And it doesn't matter because prosecutors and juries can be depended upon to exonerate them every single time. But make no mistake about it, cops lie. They lie from the very beginning. Then, as facts and witnesses and videotape turn up, their initial story is revised and reshaped into something very different from the original. Oh, it isn't any closer to the truth than the first draft was and it often makes even less sense. But it doesn't matter: the fabrication just has to hold together long enough to get past a jury that is desperate to find cops innocent.

The implausible death of Jimmie Sanders last May in an Appleton, Wisconsin bar is a perfect example. The only facts that don't change are these: there was a fight, a gun was fired, the cops showed up, and a cop shot Sanders. From there, things get fluid.

 

The late Jimmie Sanders

In the first draft, the cops arrive to see Sanders pointing a gun at Henry Dellum, the man he'd just been fighting with. They shoot Sanders and arrest the Dellum for the illegal possession and discharge of a firearm. As far as the cops are concerned, this was just bad timing for Sanders who seems to have wrestled Dellum's gun away from him only to be confused for the shooter.

In the second draft, Dellum pulls out his gun after fighting with Sanders, fires off a round, misses, and then slips the weapon to his girlfriend to hide just before the cops show up. Video from the bar confirms this version of events but begs the question: why, if the gun was hidden away, did the cops feel compelled to shoot Sanders. But Sanders is Black so apparently investigators didn't see the urgency in resolving this contradiction. Dellum is now charged with attempted murder since, after all, he fired his gun and someone could have conceivably been killed.

The third and final version of events, stitched together by the county prosecutor, has police entering the bar to find a gun-wielding Henry Dellum bearing down on them in an attempt to escape. A cop fires four rounds at Dellum, striking him in the arm and Sanders in the back.

In this new script, Sanders has been recast as an innocent bystander, and an entirely different man is given the role of brawling with Dellum. In this version, the cop is given a new motivation for shooting and is judged, therefore, to have acted appropriately. Henry Dellum is now charged with the murder of Jimmie Sanders since it was his felonious actions that set into motion the chain of events that led to Sanders' death.

But there's a gaping flaw in this third version. We know Dellum gave his girlfriend the pistol to hide before the cops arrived. We know this because 1) she was formally charged with aiding and abetting, and 2) cops eventually retrieved Dellum's gun from where she had hidden it under her car, and 3) it was on the fucking videotape. But whoa! If Dellum gave his pistol to his girlfriend to hide, how could he have been brandishing it at police when they entered the bar? This is critical because the gun justified the shooting. No gun, no reason to fire four rounds into a crowded bar.

Yet these unlikely and contradictory facts bring us to a bizarre legal case: the cop who actually shot Jimmie Sanders is not considered responsible for his death but Henry Dellums, who never shot at (or even fought with) Sanders, is considered guilty of killing him.

And that's where we are now: one Black life ended, another Black life forfeit, and a ruthlessly fraudulent white (pseudo) supremacist injustice machine that just keeps grinding along.

America. On any given Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday. Or.....

  brawling with Dellum. In this version, the cop is given a new motivation for shooting and is judged, therefore, to have acted appropriately. Henry Dellum is now charged with the murder of Jimmie Sanders since it was his felonious actions that set into motion the chain of events that led to Sanders' death.

But there's a gaping flaw in this third version. We know Dellum gave his girlfriend the pistol to hide before the cops arrived. We know this because 1) she was formally charged with aiding and abetting, and 2) cops eventually retrieved Dellum's gun from where she had hidden it under her car, and 3) it was on the fucking videotape. But whoa! If Dellum gave his pistol to his girlfriend to hide, how could he have been brandishing it at police when they entered the bar? This is critical because the gun justified the shooting. No gun, no reason to fire four rounds into a crowded bar.

Yet these unlikely and contradictory facts bring us to a bizarre legal case: the cop who actually shot Jimmie Sanders is not considered responsible for his death but Henry Dellums, who never shot at (or even fought with) Sanders, is considered guilty of killing him.

And that's where we are now: one Black life ended, another Black life forfeit, and a ruthlessly fraudulent white (pseudo) supremacist injustice machine that just keeps grinding along.

America. On any given Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday. Or.....

Witness to My Privilege (by Easy G)

Sometimes the depth of my white privilege takes me by surprise. If, say three years ago, you had asked me if I felt the justice system was here to protect me, I'd have given you a perplexed look and said something about the Amerikkkan INjustice system being a joke.

In a way, the joke was on me.

Because if I really didn't believe at some deeper, unexamined level that the justice system was here to protect me, why did I get so frustrated with cops for taking two months to find the man who shot me? Why did I feel so angry when a judge granted him bail? Why did I feel so abandoned when another judge pushed the trial back two years?

If I didn't believe at some deeper, unexamined level that the justice system was here to actually give me justice, why did I feel so violated when the prosecutor consistently allowed the defense to dismiss my ordeal and diminish my pain? If I didn't believe the justice system valued my life, why did I feel so utterly betrayed when the judge assessed that my bullet wounds and trauma were only worth a 120-day sentence?

My cynicism, it turns out, had always only been a conceit. When, for the first time in my life, I desperately needed the State's protection and justice, my innate white privilege assumed - no, was absolutely CONVINCED - that cops and prosecutors and judges would provide for me. And when they didn't quite come through? Frustration and anger, abandonment and violation and betrayal.

But here - right here - is that truly daunting moment where I get a glimpse past my privilege and an inkling of the gulf, the heart-rending distance, between my experiences and the those of the actually oppressed.

The cops didn't help me much, no, but they didn't add to my injuries when I called 911. And, for as long as it took them to apprehend my shooter, they eventually got him, right? The DA didn't sabotage my case before the grand jury, the charges were comprehensive and serious. The prosecutor took a guilty plea to a judge and, if ultimately the judge gave me a weak measure of justice, it WAS justice nevertheless.

What did Anthony Lamar Smith's family get for their murdered loved one? More than many, actually. Charges were actually filed and, after an interminable six-year wait, there was a trial. The judge may not have wept for the defendant (as mine did when she handed out a light sentence) but he did something far more insidious: the judge ignored DNA and video evidence of guilt in an acrobatic effort to declare a murderer innocent.

If I actually felt devalued by the system, how much more so did Anthony Lamar Smith's family (or Trayvon Martin's or Walter Scott's or Terrence Crutcher's or Philando Castile's) feel without any conviction to show for the life that was stolen from them? How valueless did Tamir Rice's family (or Aiyana Stanley Jones' or Michael Brown's or Alton Sterling's or Sandra Bland's or Freddie Gray's or, or, or...) feel with no charges filed at all?

I rage every day about far greater injustices than mine. And, even if I was a victim, I was never oppressed. So (if it's not too late), I won't cry too much about how things turned out. Nor will I thank this wretched excuse for a justice system for the limited return on my unearned privilege. Instead, I'll continue to unpack my racism, learn about oppressions beyond this mask of my white privilege, and curse oppressive Amerikkka until Black lives truly matter.

Conversational red herrings (four): "You're just playing the race card"

To be clear race is not a card. Race may be the first thing you see when you see me; it may be a significant part of who I am; it may even have informed how I was raised and how I move through the world, but it is not some lever (or 'card') that we use to ease our way in the world. That shouldn't need to be said but there, I said it.  

The question must be asked, when a claim is made that a POC is 'playing the race card' what is it that is actually meant? What is it that you think I/we am/are doing? Is it that we're not sufficiently self-effacing about our race and your awareness of our difference is somehow our fault? Perhaps it means that we are shining the light of truth into the darkness of your understanding, and your discomfort with that is our fault? 

Here's the thing with the race card, history will attest to the fact that it is not POC who typically play it. Rather, it is the majority who wield it with alarming regularity. The majority has been wielding the race of the minority as a weapon for 21 generations. Native land theft? The Trail of Tears? Wounded Knee? Native genocide? Buffalo slaughter of the 1800s? Enslavement? Jim Crow? Lynching? Redlining? COINTELPRO? The War on Drugs? Mass incarceration? Police brutality? And on, and on the list goes. Yeah, somebody's been playing the race card alright, but it ain't who you've been taught to think it is. 

In an online conversation not too long ago, a gentleman offered that Obama had divided this nation by suggesting that racism was everywhere. (Because apparently before Obama the nation was whole.  Apparently. ) Obama had, in effect, played the race card. Repeatedly and jin so doing, HE had divided the nation. 

Loosely translated, what he was saying was that calling Whiteness out on its documented history of using race as a weapon to destroy Black and brown communities is playing the race card.  [Subtext: actually writing legislation or encouraging behaviors that harm POC isn't.] Er, OK. Got it. 

So when Carolyn Donham Bryant lied and claimed that Emmett Till had sexually assaulted her, whistled at her, said sexually explicit things to her, what was that? Wasn't that her using the race card (and tapping into ugly racist tropes) to cause fatal harm to a fourteen year old child? 

Bryant's use of the presumptions of virtuous White womanhood as a sledgehammer was a particularly deft use of the race card. And it worked, as she knew it would. Young Master Till didn't see the end of his fourteenth summer and she has seen eighty of them.

Bryant's husband's and brother-in-law's immediate application of violent White manhood and righteous anger to deliver swift 'justice', and the jury's eventual acceptance of same, was absolutely the playing of the race card.

When the all-White jury, despite evidence, found Milam and Bryant innocent of all charges, the jurors participated gleefully in a game of White Guys Always Get The Trump Cards.  

When 2017's Carolyn Bryant Briana Brochu used her bodily fluids to infect her roommate Chennel Rowe, Brochu started a new game of I'm White, I Win. 

When the 45th resident of these United States (the pee is in St. PEEtersburg) can use an event commemorating the contributions of Native American code talkers to cast aspersions on a woman who claims Native heritage, who is it exactly that's playing the race card?

It's comforting to think that calling white people out is playing the race card I suppose, but - to use a very British idiom - that argument holds no water. As the childrens' song says, "There's a hole in the bucket dear Liza, dear Liza, a hole." Neither Liza's bucket nor that argument is holding any  water.  

There's an easy (to me) explanation for the 'race card' evaluation of a comment. I suspect that when folk hear shades of things they've done, they recoil in horror.....not at themselves, oh no!, but rather at the speaker for holding a mirror up to their faces. But is it my fault if you ain't like what you see in the mirror? I'm just holding the mirror. This has been America's way for 500 years: when called out on its bad behavior, the majority has blamed those who would do the calling (cf the responses to the men losing their jobs for being pr*cks at work) rather than look at itself and its ugly ways. 

The problem doesn't lie in the truth that POC tell, the problem lies in who is shamed by that telling. The anger at Obama and others like him, is at their tearing the veil of plausible deniability to shreds. White America has too long chosen to live behind an Emperor's clothes-esque veil of post-raciality. Sweetie, you're nekkid. Deal with it. 

In typical White fragilismus style, rather than OWN the truth, White America would rather blame the teller than face the truth; folk would rather blame the doctor than face the disease and the difficult course of treatment that lies ahead. 

There's too much information out there to excuse the level of ignorance it takes to proffer "You're playing the race card" as a response to a real criticism of this supremacist society. Read a book, preferably one written by someone non-White. Read an essay. I've written plenty myself and I'm late to the writing game. I'm confident that reading can and will cure you of any need to toss this particular red herring into the middle of a discussion. 

At this point, ignorance is a choice. 

Conversational red herrings (three): stop living in the past

Coming in third in the race of the conversational red herrings is "Stop living in the past!".

This red herring, typically lobbed when the arguer runs out of fact-based arguments to add to the conversation, seeks to suggest that at some point in time racism ended; that there was a hard stop somewhere along the way. If there was, I missed it. Me and the rest of POC America.

The only reasonable response to "Stop living in the past" is................

but sometimes more than that is required. Here's my "more".

History casts a long shadow. Even when particular events come to an end, the consequences follow. Hurricane Sandy occurred in 2012. Five years later, the impacts are still being felt. Folk can't just turn the page and go on. Enslavement likewise ended in 1862, but the long term impacts continue. Jim Crow? Segregation? The Civil Rights movement? Each of these was a time-bound and time delimited event. Impacts of each continue long after the era formally ended. This is true of all parts of US history. History's events cast a shadow and history's shadows, some of them mighty long, prevent sunlight from penetrating certain dark corners of this nation. So when you say to me, "Stop living in the past!" it becomes immediately clear to me that either (i) you don't really know the history, or (ii) you haven't done the juxtaposing of that history with contemporary acts. Let me help you with that.

Here's a brief history lesson for your edification.

Example 1
History
1703: Connecticut assigns punishment of whipping to any slaves who disturb the peace.

History's shadow
2016: Black teens at pool party terrorized by Texas police officer. Someone called the police cuz, you guessed it, Negroes disturbing the peace.

2013: Michael Dunn shoots at a retreating vehicle carrying several teens, including Jordan Davis. The cause? Loud music. Negroes disturbing the peace of a nice White male. The end result? Jordan Davis, Black child is dead. He's 17.

While Dunn was eventually sentenced to 90 years for his crime, it took two tries to see him convicted of the murder of young Jordan Davis. Dunn's first trial ended with guilty verdicts on four charges, including three of attempted second-degree murder, but for inexplicable reasons, the jury was unable to agree on a first-degree murder charge arising out of the very same incident.

It is useful (and important) to remember that young Mr. Davis didn't die because of something he did (unless you count his mouthing off to a White man, how familiar is that?), but rather he died because of what he represented in Dunn's mind. That right there is very much a part of history's long shadow in America.

Example 2
History
1703: Rhode Island makes it illegal for Blacks and Native Americans to walk at night without a pass.

History's long shadow
2012: Trayvon Martin is killed by a neighborhood watch 'officer', while walking - at night - in his father's neighborhood. Young Mr. Martin was unfamiliar and therefore dangerous.

In the 1700s Rhode Island didn't make this 'crime' one punishable by death, but America in the 2000s sure has. We've determined that any number of offences committed by POC are reasonably punishable by death. On the street. Where we will leave your exposed remains for instructional purposes. Walking while Black is one of those offences, as is selling CDs, cigarettes, standing at a bus stop, and leaving parties early.

Example 3
History
1712: New York prohibits free Blacks, Native Americans, and mulattoes from owning real estate and holding property.

History's long shadow
1933: FHA is routinely subsidizing builders who are mass producing entire subdivisions for Whites only.

Through the FHA's support of discriminatory builder behavior, ghettos and Whites-only middle class enclaves were created. These situations didn't arise accidentally. The FHA had a significant hand in creating these environments and it is no stretch to draw a straight line from housing policy to disparate educational funding for communities of color in these United States.

It would not be unreasonable to charge the FHA with responsibility for the disparity between Black and White wealth. Whites currently have thirteen times the household wealth of Blacks. Thir-facking-teen. That ain't no accident. Discriminatory lending hampered the growth of Black wealth and limited community wealth (on which school funding is based) thereby inflicting lasting harm on the educational, professional and economic prospects of POC for three or four generations and likely into perpetuity. That ain't no damn accident, so don't tell me no sh*t about living in the past the past ain't passed us yet.

History's even longer shadow
2008: In the run up to the mortgage crisis of 2009, who do you think was targeted with sub-prime mortgage loans? I'll give you two guesses to be generous but you really only need one. Minorities.

It may no longer be legal to simply exclude people of color from one's lending policies. That sh*t is seriously frowned upon these days, but fleecing them? We ain't got no trouble with that! So organizations have gone from not letting POC access capital to letting us access over-priced capital and then putting us out on the streets when our entire financial house of cards comes tumbling down because other areas of economic fragility give way under the weight of White supremacy.

Example 4
History
1730: New York state regulates meetings of slaves

History's shadow

2015: Straight Outta Compton debuts in theaters, to heightened security concerns, because Negroes.
Wherever two or more Negroes are gathered together, sh*t's bound to pop off right? I mean, it's been thus since the 1700s! We all know Black people are bad seeds. The lot of 'em.

Example 5
History
1740: South Carolina passes a comprehensive Negro Act making it illegal to move abroad, assemble in groups, raise food, earn money or learn to read.

History's shadows
2010: Raising food.......
Black farmers, long frustrated in their dealings with the Department of Agriculture, win a massive lawsuit against the agency. Whether they will ever receive owed payment is yet to be seen, but history's shadow is clear.

2017: Assembling in groups...........
Jefferson Beauregard Se(ce)ssions' DOJ comes up with the term Black Identity Extremists to describe assemblages of Black folk who have the temerity to agitate for the recognition of their rights and equal treatment & protection under the law.

This move is quintessentially American. This move is the typical pro-status quo anti-Black schtick of every preceding era in American history. The act contains shades of the FBI vs MLK Jr.; shades of the FBI's COINTELPRO operation; shades of the FBI vs the Black Panther Party. "The purpose of this new [sic] endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize". Their words, not mine.  I'm going to guess that that language will appear forty years from now in the newly (at the time) released documents about the FBI's Black Identity Extremist work.

From the FBI vault doc on COINTELPRO

Don't tell me to stop living in the past. There is no past. There's never been a hard stop to the ugliness America has to mete out to POC. 

It is said that past is prologue. Well, that's a nice idea but it suggests that we have a past. In America there is no past, there is only present continuous and it is really only people who are not likely to be directly affected by that continuous  present who can offer up this particular red herring without an iota of shame.