Thanks to commentor LAMH36. Here’s some other stories worth reading:
From one of the many excellent stories at the Washington Post:
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech inspired the world. It also galvanized the FBI into undertaking one of its biggest surveillance operations in history.
Initially approved in October 1963 by then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the FBI’s wiretap and clandestine microphone campaign against King lasted until his assassination in April 1968. It was initially justified to probe King’s suspected, unproven links to the Communist Party, morphing into a crusade to “neutralize” and discredit the civil rights leader…
William Sullivan, head of the FBI’s domestic intelligence division during the King surveillance program, told the committee in 1975, “No holds were barred. We have used [similar] techniques against Soviet agents. [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business.”…
David Corn, at Mother Jones, goes deeper into Hoover’s ugly obsession:
… For years, Hoover had been worried—or obsessed—by King, viewing him as a profound threat to national security. Hoover feared that the communist conspiracy he was committed to smashing (whether it was a real danger or not) was the hidden hand behind the civil rights movement and was using it to subvert American society. He was fixated on Stanley Levison, an adviser to King who years earlier had been involved with the Communist Party, and in 1962 the FBI director convinced Attorney General Robert Kennedy to authorize tapping the business phone and office of Levison, who often spoke to King. Then Hoover, as Tim Weiner puts it in his masterful history of the FBI, Enemies, began to “bombard” President John Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Bobby Kennedy, and leading members of Congress with “raw intelligence reports about King, Levison, the civil rights movement, and Communist subversion.” Hoover’s priority mission was to discredit King among the highest officials of the US government. Though King scaled back his contacts with Levison—after both RFK and JFK warned King about associating with communists—Hoover kept firing off memos, Weiner notes, “accusing King of a leading role in the Communist conspiracy against America.”…
TNR reprinted the late, underrated Murray Kempton’s report on the original march, including a vignette of a much younger John Lewis:
… If the march was important, it was because it represented an acceptance of the Negro revolt as part of the American myth, and so an acceptance of the revolutionaries into the American establishment. That acceptance, of course, carries the hope that the Negro revolt will stop where it is. Yet that acceptance is also the most powerful incentive and assurance that the revolt will continue…
The result of such support—the limits it placed on the spectacle—was illustrated by the experience of John Lewis, chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Lewis is only 25; his only credential for being there was combat experience; he has been arrested 22 times and beaten half as often. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee is a tiny battalion, its members gray from jail and exhausted from tension. They have the gallant cynicism of troops of the line; they revere Martin Luther King (some of them) as a captain who has faced the dogs with them and they call him with affectionate irreverence, “De Lawd.” We could hardly have had this afternoon without them.
Lewis, in their spirit, had prepared a speech full of temereties about how useless the civil rights bill is and what frauds the Democrats and Republicans are. Three of the white speakers told Randolph that they could not appear at a platform where such sedition was pronounced, and John Lewis had to soften his words in deference to elders. Equal rights for the young to say their say may, perhaps, come later.
Yet Lewis’ speech, even as laundered, remained discomfiting enough to produce a significant tableau at its end. “My friends,” he said, “let us not forget that we are engaged in a significant social revolution. By and large American politics is dominated by politicians who build their careers on immoral compromising and ally themselves with open forums of political, economic and social exploitation.” When he had finished, every Negro on the speakers’ row pumped his hand and patted his back; and every white one looked out into the distance….
Never realized MLK & marchers overwhelmingly supported by Kennedy, DC establishment, vast majority of right thinking Americans. Thanks MSM!
— billmon (@billmon1) August 28, 2013
Joan Walsh at Salon has some inspirational links to the warriors who made the March, and also:
… Yet with all this amazing coverage from the left, the right has gotten almost everything about the march wrong, in a way that’s actually shocking, though I guess it shouldn’t be. Maybe we should be glad that they start from the premise that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a great American hero, albeit one they think his commemorators are misrepresenting. Maybe it’s progress that a man once reviled as a Communist and thoroughly disrespected by the mainstream media – as evidenced by his hostile interrogation on “Meet the Press” the Sunday before the march – is now lauded by righties from Bill O’Reilly to Laura Ingraham to David Brooks as a beloved hero whose dream has been betrayed – but by the left, not by them.
These faux-devotees of the great MLK, these history-challenged concern trolls, remember only King’s admittedly inspiring line about wanting his children judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” They don’t remember that he was a radical, in fact, a socialist. That he was about to launch a multiracial Poor People’s Campaign that was unpopular even with some of his top lieutenants, who didn’t think the movement was ready to venture beyond black issues. They forget the New York Times editorialized against his joining the movement against the Vietnam War (a move that even some of his closest allies, including Bayard Rustin, second-guessed). Their tributes never mention that he died supporting a strike by mostly African-American sanitation workers in Memphis.
Rick Perlstein may have said it best on “Up With Steve” this weekend: “Frankly, Martin Luther King had to be forgotten before he could be remembered.” Or as King’s lawyer, Clarence B. Jones, told Michele Norris on NPR, after the march the FBI considered King “the most dangerous Negro in America.” The right is willfully ignoring what King and the march stood for, and getting away with it….
And Digby calls out a particularly vile tweet / article from the predictably vile Jim deMint, and links to the Rude Pundit eviscerating the Doughy Pantload (mildly NSFW):
… Martin Luther King, Jr. was not conservative. And he is not your cuddly toy. He is not Marty, the Dream Bear. He was an openly socialistic, confrontational radical whose “I Have a Dream” speech asked for nothing less than a complete elimination of white privilege and the destruction of racial and economic hierarchies. As nutzoid right wingers call for the first black president’s impeachment (which would leave a white man with pretty much the same beliefs in the office) and for overturning the Affordable Care Act, how are we doing with that?…
Add your own links in the comments.
MikeJ
King was a commie, unless this is the week when Republicans want to remind us that he had registered as a Republican at one time. Don’t you wish the Republicans were still the kind of big tent party that welcomed communists?
Mustang Bobby
I don’t remember the March all that well… after all, I was only ten and living in Ohio, but I remember what happened after.
If you don’t remember Dr. King when he was alive, you are certainly aware of his life and his legacy, and I don’t just mean because you might get the day off on his birthday in January. Regardless of your race, your religion, your sex, or your occupation, Dr. King’s work has changed it, either during your lifetime or setting the stage for it now. And no matter what history may record of his life as a man, a preacher, a father, a husband, or a scholar, it is hard to imagine what this country — and indeed the world — would be like had he not been with us for all too brief a time.
lamh36
Top Republicans Declined to Speak on MLK Anniversary
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh36: They can’t help themselves.
Patricia Kayden
Repubs keep claiming that Dr. King was a Republican. Why then did the Repubs who were invited to speak today decline?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/28/1234584/-Republican-leaders-asked-to-speak-at-March-on-Washington-anniversary-declined
lamh36
ok, they showed the entirety of the MLK Speech on Chris Hayes and my first thought was, this will probably result in the highest rating ever for Up With Christ…lol
Here’s the whole speech without having to watch Up…lol.
http://youtu.be/smEqnnklfYs
raven
This was my last summer in Chicago before I went into the Army. It’s one reason I laugh when people get all nuts about the South:
raven
Patricia Kayden
@raven: Kind of reminds me of the ugly busing protests in Boston, which was supposed to be so liberal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_busing_crisis
raven
@Patricia Kayden: Yep, Southie.
Paddy
Not sure if I should be outraged or tickled about what an asshat this guy is.
Audio- Deadbeat Dad Ex-Rep. Joe Walsh Rewrites “I Have A Dream” Speach Teabagger Style
raven
@Paddy: Chicago boy, just like the assholes I grew up with.
Billy Dilly
What King did to piss off the establishment, was to expose the lie that the US was for freedom while the Soviet Union was a totalitarian regime oppressing their citizens, the images of segregation, the murder of those who demanded civil rights, the beatings and the lynchings, the riots at the University of Mississippi when James Meridith tried to enroll. The US was totally exposed.
lamh36
@Patricia Kayden: It’s too funny, people based that on MLK’s niece who is a Rep herself.
But it’s not corrabarated by Dr King’s immediate family
Billy Dilly
@raven: Some things never did change remember Harold Washington when he ran for mayor? Even today you got Rahmbo continueing the tradition of forcing Blacks and Latinos to know their place.
Calliope Jane
@lamh36: I’m very curious about what happened 25 years ago. 1988. Yikes. Any major republicans? Any republicans? This info has to be somewhere.
raven
@Billy Dilly: As long as he was seen to be dividing the races he was safe. When his analysis of race, class and the war in Vietnam threatened to bring the races together, that was it. Just like Malcolm.
Gin & Tonic
@Patricia Kayden: I lived there then, I recall the atmosphere, and I remember first seeing that iconic photo, reproduced in the Wikipedia article but still, I think, under copyright and hard to find a better version of. To me, that’s on a par, as a photograph, with the Eddie Adams photo of Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a prisoner.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lamh36: Alveda King lent her family’s name to Republican group commemorating the March today. To not be accused of nut-picking, I’m going to point out that T.W. Shannon talked about more than just the moose
I still don’t get how the moose relates to the March.
Baud
What policy did King pursue that was socialistic? Or is the term being used here in regards to social welfare programs as opposed to economic socialism?
Gin & Tonic
@Calliope Jane:
Reagan was in California, campaigning for Republican candidates.
Gin & Tonic
@Calliope Jane:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden: I heard today for the first time that Boston is/was referred to as “Up South”. And it wasn’t just Boston or Chicago; barely five years ago we learned that Geraldine Ferraro hadn’t changed much since she ran for congress on an anti-bussing platform. And hero to some Anthony Wiener engaged in some pretty ugly campaigning that had nothing to do with his anatomy.
Joel
@Patricia Kayden: that doesn’t let the south off the hook; it means that less bad is not good. Especially when terrible is your starting point.
raven
@Joel: Someone here said that?
Xecky Gilchrist
@Baud: What policy did King pursue that was socialistic?
Wasn’t he advocating a guaranteed minimum income?
Bob In Portland
Read William Pepper.
Omnes Omnibus
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Something I happen to think is a good idea.
Litlebritdifrnt
Somehow and from somewhere my dogs found two plant pots full of wet soil and scattered them liberally all over the damn living room. I cannot even begin to figure out how they did this.
Mike in NC
Wingers are calling MLK Jr. a great American hero? Not buying that bullshit at all.
More likely they think he was one of History’s Greatest Monsters.
lamh36
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: it’s just too ridiculous.
So we are supposed to take the word of his niece over his grown children, his wife, hell even historic record which shows MLK wasn’t even registered as either Dem or GOP and who never endorsed during his activism any politician???
Wow!
Baud
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Could be. My knowledge is woefully inadequate. I tend to use the word socialism to refer to the relationship between government and business, as opposed to government programs for individuals. But my usage may be overly narrow.
Shakezula
Suspected support by the USSR was how the CIA justified domestic spying on pretty much anyone remotely involved in the CRM. The assumption the Soviets were really running the show was driven in large part by the belief blacks were too stupid to run such an organized machine without help.
lamh36
I don’t watch Maddow much if at all anymore, but the first segment of her show tonight was stellar. Watch it once the video is available.
Suffern ACE
@lamh36: for all we know, he would have accepted a board membership at DuPont and General Dynamics and would have cut up the floor with Charlie Daniels at his 80th bd bash.
We can latch onto whatever we want.
Chris
It’s so nice to know what the Bureau was dedicating all these resources to back in the glory days of the Mafia… you know, which they wouldn’t admit even existed.
MikeBoyScout
I bitch and moan a lot.
But I’m glad to have grown up in the shadow of greatness that is the American Civil Rights movement of the 60s.
Things are better.
No, they are not perfect.
But a tear comes to my eye when I listen to a no shit American Hero like John Lewis. He’s still here. And he bravely calls us to continue the march. It’s up to us people.
? Martin
@lamh36: You should watch more often. She’s been knocking it out of the park on the NC voting rights stuff.
? Martin
@Xecky Gilchrist:
So was Nixon, who also nearly got us universal day care.
fka AWS
@Baud:
Yes, it is.
Baud
@? Martin:
Sometimes I think the Democratic Congress during the Nixon years were the dumbest mofos ever.
lamh36
@? Martin: I’ve realized that I keep my sanity much better when I don’t watch too many of the political opinion shows or news programs, even if the are on “our side”.
So I limit my views to days like today, when big moments happen and I want to hear opinion rather than just snippets.
So today, I actually watched a whole episode of Up With Chris Hayes and the beginning of Maddow, but that’s def gonna be it until the next BIG day
Gex
As it is an open thread…
The 27th was the one year anniversary of when I forced Kate to go to urgent care to check out what was happening with her. I didn’t consciously realize it, of course. So my unconscious mind decided to inform me via earworm. Specifically, “You’re Going to Lose that Girl” by the Beatles.
Very funny head. Very funny.
Chris
@Baud:
“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.”
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
“Why should there be hunger and privation in any land, in any city, at any table when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life? […] There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will. The well-off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds, and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible. Just as nonviolence exposed the ugliness of racial injustice, so must the infection and sickness of poverty be exposed and healed – not only its symptoms but its basic causes. This, too, will be a fierce struggle, but we must not be afraid to pursue the remedy no matter how formidable the task.”
“A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, “This is not just.””
Etc, etc, etc. I have no idea what he thought of Marxism-Leninism or social democracy or any particular political ideology, but the man’s economic ideas, certainly by the standards of the establishment of his time (and probably even more today) were so radical that he might as well have been a Red.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Conservatives always like dead people because they can put words into their mouths.
Baud
@Baud:
I recognize I’m saying that with the benefit of hindsight, but still……
@Chris:
Thanks.
ruemara
Watching LO. There must have been a casting call for disappointed black people on MSNBC. Man, these guys are irritating.
Chris
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Just one of the many things that sucks about being someone like MLK; knowing that if history remembers you at all, then within a generation of your death people you would’ve loathed will be using your good name to prop up causes you would’ve dedicated your entire life to fighting.
lamh36
Today, we celebrate a day in history. Tomorrow on a more personal note, we in NOLA remember that 8 years ago tomorrow, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Southeast Louisiana, and the lives of people in my hometown and others along the gulf coast have never been the same since.
Hurricane Katrina eight years later, a statistical snapshot of the New Orleans area
Hurricane Katrina taught us lessons in dealing with loss: Jarvis DeBerry
I can say without a shadow of a doubt, that Hurricane Katrina changed the trajectory of my life more than any other thing that has happened in my 36 years. So even though it may pass as another day in the grand scheme of people’s lives or maybe even go unnoticed, me and mine will never forget it.
Gex
@Gex: And actually, after some time, I DID find that funny.
Jane2
@Mustang Bobby: I was about the same age and in Canada…it was top news and I recall watching reports of Dr. King’s speech, amid reports out of Alabama and other desegregation hotspots. Of course, the treatment of our own aboriginal people was never mentioned.
At the time, as kids of that age did, I had a penpal from Ohio. We’d been corresponding for some time, and she sent me a letter saying that she was a Negro and she’d understand if I did not answer her. My whole family was stunned that she would think that, and that has always stayed with me.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
We actually ended up talking about Hurricane Katrina during the work presentation that was kicking my ass this week (our department was heavily involved in getting an art exhibit at NOMA post-Katrina to coincide with The Princess and the Frog). None of us realized the date was so close — weird coincidence.
Mike in NC
@lamh36: Yet George W. Bush is still free to walk the streets. Maybe that’s why I’m an atheist.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, can I mention that I’m developing a serious hetero girl crush on Jennifer Hudson? (Sorry, fellas, it’s not the kind of crush that’s in the movies you like to watch when you’re alone.)
First, she made her surprise guest appearance with Macklemore at the VMAs to sing “Same Love,” and now she’s Princess Tiana. I want her to be my best friend now.
Jane2
@lamh36: I visited NOLA a year ago in February. I was shocked at how much in some areas, and how little in others has been done to rebuild. I contrast it with the devastating flood in Minot, ND two years ago….Minot is fine now but I don’t think NOLA will ever completely recover. Federal/social priorities….and they suck.
lamh36
@Mnemosyne: yeah it creeps up on you, but I was thinking about my grandmother who died after Katrina hit and then it dawned on me that the date of her death was coming up and the date of her death is intertwined with Hurricane Katrina, that I cannot remember one without also remembering the other
Jane2
@Mnemosyne: I didn’t see the VMAs but I love Macklemore even though I’m about a zillion years older than the folks I saw in his audience. And she gets my vote too!
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Ferraro’s platform was against kissing?
(I know the second ‘s’ is an innocent typo, but with the word Literalist there as well….)
Drexciya
As we must with Martin Luther King himself, we’re forced by something less than sensitive and less than appropriate to contend with a Civil Rights movement processed by an America that’s capable of having black leaders – who embody the qualities welded into them by the fires of racist dehumanization and the hammer of its ubiquitous political and social exercise – but is incapable of either showing, understanding and glorifying that blackness or identifying the oppressive whiteness that made its creation necessary. As we must with Martin Luther King himself, we’re asked to decouple the reality from the rhetoric until the rhetoric replaces it and create a figure filtered through a white lens that silently holds the priorities of a modern, racist, post-racial orientation held by a white public that’s fine with saying racism used to exist and may still exist, but powerfully resists the notion that its continuance is premised on their silent, daily acquiescence to a racial reality where their success and their thoughts can’t be separated from the racism and racist context they make a show of descriptively watering down, then personally denying.
It’s through that denial that we can celebrate “diversity” as though it’s meaningful without equality or without the ability to reject the social and political enforcement of the white racial frame. It’s through that denial that we can celebrate “progress” sans a voting rights act. It’s through that denial that we can celebrate “safety” sans protection from a justice system that sees black existence as criminal and enforces that presumption by sending blacks to jail more often and longer if they’re not shot first. It’s through that denial that we can celebrate “success” sans a reduction in racially enforced poverty or a systemic increase in racial access to institutions of power. And it’s through that denial that we can celebrate”desegregation” when power is white, when those who hold that power are white, when those tasked to identify and speak against that power are white, when wealth is white and when its acquisition preemptively tiers black poverty.
There’s a convenience in this show and a perversion behind the glib revision of all issues and all social struggles into the black struggle. Just as there’s a racist politicization behind the reductive transformation of the civil rights movement and MLK from pro-black figures rooted in an African American tradition – shaped by slavery and segregation into leaders that organized against white political decisions – to very, very nice people who only wanted blacks and whites to hold hands and be together, because being together is good or something. We’re living through a naked and systematic reversal of the civil rights movement’s “progresses,” and at no time is that fact more visible than now. I can’t really see it as coincidental that one of the only events I’ve seen that’s most explicitly able to appeal to black priorities and black suffering sought not to capture the racial enforcement of that suffering, but sought to celebrate without something tangible to celebrate.
I find it difficult to escape that this ceremony and this event didn’t exist to hold black hands through a newly awakened struggle so much as it existed to make sure that the anger, outrage and perspective necessary to respond appropriately to racism is pacified by the shadow of yesterday’s ghosts and yesterday’s racism; crying through white voices and white-accountable priorities for peace, integration and non-violence in response to a racial circumstance that’s given power and permanence by the opposite of those things.
Despite reality, they want us to see the American dream as something that’s collectively “ours.” They want us to see America as our country, and its non-black portions as potential and active variants of “our people.” They want us to see beyond the immediacy of black suffering and beyond the sweat and blood of an ignored black struggle to make rules out of the exceptions, and pretend that their minimal successes can also be ours. In the face of a new hammer, striking a new blade from an old forge, they want to deny the need to be sharp.
Sometimes, a black president, with a black wife, and black children silently pursuing black priorities with a black attorney general within an actively hostile system and a similarly hostile public can satisfy me. Their existence is radical, their presence is positive and their symbolic significance is undeniable.
But it is not enough.
It is not enough.
As an aside, I see it as consistent with instead of contradictory to the white priorities of our modern age that – lamh36 aside – Anne Laurie was incapable of linking a single black person or black writer when she decided to give us a plethora of apparently anti-racist and situationally appropriate articles. It is not anti-racist to filter racism through predominate whiteness. It’s not anti-racist to view black history from a white lens. And it’s absolutely not anti-racist to make white supremacy and whiteness the face of your anti-racist action. If reality and the self-serving conception of white liberals as black allies is to ever collide, we should demand a lot better than this.
fka AWS
@Chris: There was a great documentary somewhere on Netflix, iirc, that took a look at King’s later speeches and actions, and by the time he was assassinated, he was much more radical than even the 1963 speech. No wonder everyone wants to hush that up.
Mnemosyne
@Jane2:
That “Same Love” performance was what people really should have been talking about, because it brought down the house. And I loved the symbolic touch of having the curtain of American flags around him — I didn’t watch the rest of the awards, so I have no idea if they did that for every performance on that stage, but it seemed pretty pointed.
Jane2
@Mnemosyne: I saw him first on a Colbert clip, and then in a full streamed concert. He captures the thinking of his generation and every time I read another whiney “millenials will be the death of us” article, I think, oh they have it together in ways we never could do. But of course, the MSM (good Lord, I sound like Palin and other whiney wingers!) concentrated on the slut-shaming.
Drexciya
By the way: Emmett Till died today.
He’s still dead.
His killers admitted what they did and as a symbol of American mercy, the justice they faced was death at old age.
That’s my America. And yours.
Mnemosyne
@Jane2:
He had me at “Thrift Shop,” which goes from talking about the joys of thrift shopping to denouncing consumerism and corporate-generated fashion trends and then back to being goofy.
Calliope Jane
@Gin & Tonic: The more things change… Thanks so much for this. I wish I could say I was surprised, but no.
Mnemosyne
@Drexciya:
I want to say that times have changed, but Trayvon Martin is dead while George Zimmerman is walking around a free man, so I can’t.
ETA: And Martin and Till died for committing the same “crime” of not being sufficiently deferential to a white man.
fka AWS
@Mnemosyne:
No, actually, you can. Times *have* changed. Maybe not as much as you or I would like, but there’s a black man in the White House, and a lot of good has been done since Emmitt Till was murdered in cold blood. @Drexciya is doing the purity dance, and it’s a fucked up dance.
Jane2
@Drexciya: Yes, and it should be acknowledged. However, we Americans/Canadians are not a particularly historical bunch, and we’d rather whitewash “I Have a Dream” than actually look at our history.
Anne Laurie
@Drexciya: I’m always open to suggestions, if you want to provide links. But I’m a white woman of a certain age, and I don’t want to “appropriate” African-American writing that I might be accused of misunderstanding.
rikyrah
@Drexciya:
thanks once again for bringing it.
dww44
@lamh36: Well, actually, I did watch it and all Chris’ interviews afterwards, then the Rachel show where I learned about Nelson Rockefeller and the Promissory Note that MLK spoke about that day, and then the Lawrence O’Donnell show after that with highlights of other speeches and shout outs by Eugene Robinson to Carter’s speech and to Jaime Foxx’s. Seems a couple of black leaders on his show weren’t impressed with Obama’s speech. Too timid and too middle ground. No grabbing of the mantle and pushing it forward.
Anyways, guess I’m an MSNBC junkie (at night only) and think Chris is one of the smartest political pundits around on any network and is able to hold his own with anyone (except that former McDonald’s CEO last week ).
gwangung
Well, you could ask for help. And being open about your ignorance is helpful (though, come to think of it, that has the happy property of being its own solution).
And since being wrong is something that happens to everyone, being mortally afraid of making a mistake is probably not going to be a fruitful approach. “Being a white person of a certain age” doesn’t mean you can’t try….
Drexciya
@Mnemosyne
So are many judges and jurors who’ve been responsible for disproportionately sentencing black people to death sentences. So are many police officers who’ve shot unarmed black kids for the dire crime of assuming that they’re free citizens of a free country. That would be true whether Trayvon died or not. A persistent reality for black people – particularly in impoverished black neighborhoods – is just more obvious now.
But let’s not forget, racism is not a “white male” thing that’s the exclusive purview of white male power. Emmett Till wasn’t murdered for no reason, he was murdered because he was perceived as having whistled at a white woman who apparently didn’t come out and say that didn’t happen. The white men who killed him used the protection of white female virtue as their rationale for killing him. That proximity to white male power has always been a consistent dynamic in gendered expressions of racism, and neglecting its mention (which I’m not saying you’re doing) is dangerous.
That danger was given voice and given form when Juror B-37 stepped forward and defended Zimmerman from the perspective of someone who benefits from the murder that resulted from his actions. Her racial fears were given a reprieve by the thought that someone is willing to protect poor, put upon white women from scary, murderous, criminal blacks on her behalf, and she responded accordingly:
This is a thing. This is a thing that, in some white women’s mind, justifies the murder of the innocent, the non-threatening and the unarmed. We should never forget that this is a thing.
Drexciya
And lest I forget, Macklemore is actually a perfect example how much white Millennials don’t get it. They’re willing to appropriate and borrow the trappings of progress, social awareness and social consciousness but they’re entirely unwilling to adopt the substance. Which is why Macklemore – who made his bones by acting as yet another white gatekeeper for a genre that doesn’t belong to him – thinks he’s in a position to talk down to and critique a genre he does not and never will meaningfully belong to. Macklemore’s success not only comes from a place of privilege, but his portrayal in the white-centric media as a rare, pro-gay voice in hip hop simply adds more fuel to the erasure of gay black and progressive voices within in hip hop. I’d say more, but my problems are given a much better voice here. There’s a persistent racism in discussions of hip hop and Macklemore embodies that and gives it fuel. And black gay rappers have noticed.
ETA: Cakes Da Killa is awesome.
Drexciya
@Anne Laurie
First off, it’s not appropriating if all you’re doing is quoting it and attributing it. It’s not that difficult to make sure you’re quoting something race conscious or at least non-white without it confirming your own biases. I didn’t even get the sense from your post that you tried or that you wanted to. Second off, if your ethnic background precludes you from incorporating black voices in your posts, why do you think you’re capable of writing for a blog that represents a coalition that wouldn’t exist without the very same POC’s you don’t think you can capably include? Racism and white guilt aren’t an invitation to bow out for fear of offending and being offended; it’s a responsibility to step up and do what wouldn’t be done if you didn’t do it. The power is yours. Exercise it well, exercise it inclusively or not at all.
But yeah, I have a suggestion. Here you go.
ETA: Or what gwangung said.