Levy Rivers's List: Race and culture

• "I want to draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography and use that map to open as much space for discovery, intellectual adventure and close exploration as did the original charting of the New World -- without the mandate for conquest."

• ) "the role of race in defining how white  workers look not only at Blacks but at themselves"; 2) "the  pervasiveness of race"; 3) "the complex mixture of  hate, sadness and longing in the racist thought of white workers";  4) the relationship between race and ethnicity."2 "Marxism as presently theorized,"  he says, does not help us focus on "why so many workers  define themselves as white."3  He classifies Marxist and presumably Marx-influenced writings  into two categories, the "traditional Marxists," who  are distinguished by their emphasis on class, combined with a  subordination of "race;" and the "neo-Marxists,"  who subscribe to the perspectives of E. P. Thompson in Britain  and Herbert Gutman in the United States, whom he credits with  opening the way for the emergence of "a new labor history,"  particularly by "call[ing] into question any theory that  holds that racism simply trickles down the class structure from  the commanding heights at which it is created."
• Part II introduces white identity  in "the language of class," wherein the European-American  artisans responded to the threat of extinction by capitalist  enterprise by an appeal to a "whites-only" republicanism.  Part III relates the growing industrialization to the development  of a "white" culture, the emergence of "whiteness."  Unskilled European immigrant peasant recruits, resentful of the  routine discipline of industrial employment, consoled themselves  with the social distinction of being free and citizens. Special  attention is given to laboring-class Irish-Americans who, the  author says, combined their political and economic motives with  an "unthinking decision" rooted in repressed sexual  fantasies which they projected onto their image of African-Americans.

• White America's attitudes about race and racism are a mixture of  self-congratulation and defensiveness -- ``Yes, we've had some  episodes of racism and bias, but that's all clearly in the  past.'' But, in truth, White racism hasn't gone anywhere. Its  tenor and tone have mutated; it's now expressed in carefully coded  messages rather than in crudely overt themes. White racism -- and the  White supremacist ideology it reflects and networks of White privilege  it maintains -- are alive and well.
• The oppressive ideal is for privilege to be so deeply embedded and  entwined in the social order that it's hard to see and, thus, hard to  fight. One way that White privilege has been made invisible the  creation of a widely shared sense of aggrieved White victimhood. If  White people are victims of, say, affirmative action's so-called  reverse racism, the real claims of people of color and of women will  make little sense. False claims of oppression dilute the force of real  claims. White aggrieved victimhood is a smoke screen for White  privilege.

• The cult of aggrieved White victimhood was strengthened by media  representations of the Oklahoma City Bombing, which enshrined the  tragedy as "the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil" (now superseded,  of course, by the 11 September attacks, to which most of the comments  here apply equally well). According to the media, the victims and the  institutions that McVeigh attacked were White, which is not to  diminish the deaths of people of color in OKC, but only to recognize  that the public face of the Oklahoma City Bombing constructed by the  media was almost entirely a White face.

      

  But by any objective measure the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot was a worse  act of domestic terrorism than the Oklahoma City  Bombing. White mobs in Tulsa killed about 250 African Americans,  destroyed 1,400 homes, and devastated the Greenwood district of Tulsa,  one of the most thriving and economically vibrant African American  communities in the entire country at that time. (If you want to learn  more about the Tulsa Race Riots, two books are newly  available: Tim Madigan's The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and  teh Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 and Alfred L. Brophy's  Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921: Race,  Reparations, and Reconciliation.) Most White people simply  cannot comprehend the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot as rioting by  White people, but that's precisely what happened. It's crass and  insulting to compare the dimensions of human tragedy, but the media  started the quantification game, and if they're going to play it, they  should be made to play it fairly.

1 more annotation...

• it had discovered the bone in Obama’s closet that would derail his run for the Presidency, Barack kicked down the door of the closet that holds America’s worse skeletons, its race closet.
• So the race closet, stacked to the top with 400 years of skeletons-from the Middle Passage through today’s colorblind racism, is closely guarded by those who know and understand this vile and twisted history. However, this time America started it by trying to radicalize Obama and racialize Obama’s Minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Barack finished it by stating that if you really want to have a conversation about somebody’s racial views - then let’s talk about America’s racial views, in its totality. It was substantive, and it was eloquent.
• Let Hillary Clinton call this speech “just empty words” or another “eloquent speech.” And let those who claim Barack ain’t “black enough” hang their hat on this speech while those who try to diss his “too black” pastor realize that Barack is “too black” to allow himself to be separated from his church and his community. It was a historic moment. We can truly say that after this week, “a black man” is running for President. And by most accounts, he’s still the best candidate in the race.
• They’re back to doubting that a black man can represent a white nation (don’t get it twisted-America is still 69% white). America was poised to default on Obama. The default position is, of course, that only a white can represent all the people. Well, name me one President in the history of America who has represented “all the people?”
• Only two, Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson, sought to eliminate the legalized race caste systems (of slavery and segregation), though both tolerated and participated in societal norms that affirmed racial inequality and separateness (while they were President).
• The thought here is, “White people know he’s black, no need to throw it up in their face” and never blame anything on race - even the obvious racial attacks or the codified ones. As authentic a person as Barack is, it’s his authenticity that has most come under attack from Whites and Blacks. From Whites - in no Black could possibly be this perfect (so hopeful yet non-critical); from Blacks, that no Black could really be “black” and not talk about race. Well, Obama showed how authentic he really is last week, in not running from race and not running from his own. The media could neither “blackball” nor “whitewash” Barack Obama after last week’s speech (and trust me, they were trying to do both). Barack pulled it off.
• For a country that always has something to say, most of it (except for the ideologues and the racial extremists) stood speechless and/or complimentary on the nation’s first publicly televised race speech by a Presidential candidate. There was nothing empty about the speech.
• We just needed someone “black enough” (and honest enough) to talk about it. In trying to castigate one man, the door to America’s race closet was opened by another. The man who would be President, if he would have just remained “post-racial.” Now, he’s black and America’s new race conscience. If America is willing to face up to its past and grow up in the race reality of its future (multi-racial nation), Barack Obama still might be elected President of the United States.

6 more annotations...

• Unlike you, I assume you are an honest hearted and intelligent man with a point of view that is drastically different from mine.
• only points you’ve made
• I am truly embarrassed for you
• Then, a reader wrote and said I took his comments out of context ( a task difficult to accomplish if I never talked about what Obama said). Of course, that same reader never cited a single incident of that, nor did he offer any proof for his accusation.
• Obama’s speech, you changed the subject by getting into the white supremacist accusation. By the way, when you describe yourself as a “Black Revolutionary,” doesn’t that make you a black supremacist?
• Black Revolutionary refers back to the Black Panther days wherein it’s proponents were preaching black supremacy from the roof tops
• post I talked about Dr. King’s dream of people not being judged by the color of their skin.
• Black Revolutionary ideas certainly contradict everything Dr. King stood for. Why don’t you honestly tell us what you think of Dr. King’s dream and then harmonize it with your own “Black Revolutionary” vision for the black community.
• Later in my second post I ask a series of equally pointed questions which I predict you will also ignore.
• But please don’t embarrass yourself any more by saying things that clearly prove you are neither reading nor considering what I am saying. It is truly sad when you do that.
• exercise in existentialism
• Or should we just blindly follow him because he is black? Is that the answer? I have never in my life voted for someone or refused to vote for someone because of the person’s skin color or gender. But that’s just me. I’m sure my “whiteness” is probably the reason for that!

10 more annotations...

• On April 4, 1968, it was possible to make the generalization that being black in this country meant being poor; fully 40 percent of black Americans lived below the poverty line, according to census data, with another 20 percent barely keeping their heads above water.
• Today, about 25 percent of African Americans are mired in poverty. In many ways, being black and poor is a more desperate and hopeless condition now than it was 40 years ago. For those who managed to enter the middle class, however, most of the old generalizations no longer apply.
• But the gap in wealth, or net worth, is huge, even when you control for education, age, family size and whatever else you want to throw in. Still, African Americans control an estimated $800 billion in purchasing power. If that were translated into gross domestic product, a sovereign "Black America" would be the 15th- or 16th-richest nation on earth.
• Then again, if "The Jeffersons" were being produced today, George and Louise probably wouldn't live in an apartment at all. More realistically, they'd be on a cul-de-sac in a suburban community. In Washington and a growing number of cities, more African Americans now live in the suburbs than within the city limits.
• That's not to minimize the prospect that a nation midwifed by slavery could soon have its first black president. But O'Neal did something that would have been equally unimaginable 40 years ago. He rose to become chief executive of Merrill Lynch, one of Wall Street's biggest firms; by all accounts, he was a taskmaster of a boss who cared less about whether subordinates liked him than he did about the bottom line.
• The African American poor are a smaller segment than they were 40 years ago, but arguably they are further from full participation in society than they were in King's era. It's not that they have no interest in climbing the ladder, it's that too many rungs are missin

4 more annotations...

• What do you think of Obama?
   I’m riding my man Obama. I think he’s a visionary. Actually, Barack told me the first date he took Michelle to was Do the Right Thing. I said, “Thank God I made it. Otherwise you would have taken her to Soul Man. Michelle would have been like, ‘What’s wrong with this brother?’ ”
   
    Does this mean you’re down on the Clintons?
   The Clintons, man, they would lie on a stack of Bibles. Snipers? That’s not misspeaking; that’s some pure bulls***. I voted for Clinton twice, but that’s over with. These old black politicians say, “Ooh, Massuh Clinton was good to us, massuh hired a lot of us, massuh was good!” Hoo! Charlie Rangel, David Dinkins—they have to understand this is a new day. People ain’t feelin’ that stuff. It’s like a tide, and the people who get in the way are just gonna get swept out into the ocean.

• America in flames? Sound familiar? The closing lines of Grine Kuzine are really no different from Barack Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright’s “God Damn America” paraphrase of Irving Berlin’s maudlin patriotic tune God Bless America. As a singer of Grine Kuzine, and as a not-too-distant descendant of her fellow immigrant workers, I do not understand the recent hysteria over the U-Tube posting of an out-of-context video excerpt of one of Wright’s old sermons. Jews and Blacks and even the whitest-of-white Americans have the right — and maybe the obligation — to be enraged at polities and policies that misuse or deceive them or that fail to live up to their potential or rhetoric. The hyperbole of songs and of sermons generates reflection and vents steam and diffuses rage even as it broadcasts it.
• Far more interesting and insidious than the slips-of-the-lips of members of Obama’s confessional circles is Hillary Clinton’s decades-long involvement in an oligarchical right-wing prayer breakfast group called The Fellowship, Sound like the stuff of crank conspiracy theories? Writer Jeff Sharlet of The Revealer, a New York University weblog covering religion and the media, has just completed a book on the subject. Will apologies and statements of distancing and denunciation of The Fellowship be forthcoming from the Clinton campaign? I doubt it.

• Walter Rauschenbusch was declared the father of the Social Gospel.
• Richard Rorty's socialist parents, Walter Rauschenbusch's daughter Winifred and her husband James Rorty, moved from churchly circles into the cosmopolitan company of the old New York Intellectuals and at least for a season loved Trotsky more than Jesus. Their son Richard was born in 1931 into a family circle of leftist politics and very progressive social hopes. Frequent guests in the Rorty home included John Dewey, Sidney Hook, Lionel Trilling, the Italian anarchist Carlo Tresca and John Frank (Trotsky's secretary who lived with the Rortys under an assumed name). Richard Rorty confesses that as a boy of 12 he knew the point of being human was to give one's life to fight against social injustice. He also knew the temptations and terrors of radical politics. He knew that Stalin had ordered the assassinations of Trotsky, Tresca, Frank and scores of other anti-totalitarian leftist leaders and intellectuals.

• In one of the most incendiary columns ever written, "Race And The Presidential Election," Bill O'Reilly sets the race-bait bar to record-breaking...depths. Short of saying that Barack Obama wants to sleep with your pearly-white daughter, O'Reilly uses just about every button meant to alarm his white fans to the fact that Barack Obama is BLACK and that just his running for, let alone becoming, president, could set off race-laced fireworks.
• "Obama's second dilemma is convincing skeptical white voters that he and his wife are sympathetic to their concerns. Let's be honest--few white Americans would tolerate a Reverend Wright for five minutes, much less 20 years."

• Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”
• Evidence? John McCain needs no evidence. His campaign is about trashing the opposition, Karl Rove-style. Not satisfied with calling his opponent’s patriotism into question, Mr. McCain added what amounted to a charge of treason, insisting that Senator Obama would actually prefer that the United States lose a war if that would mean that he — Senator Obama — would not have to lose an election.
• Mr. Obama has to endure these grotesque insults with a smile and heroic levels of equanimity. The reason he has to do this — the sole reason — is that he is black.

1 more annotation...

• The obvious, egocentric explanation for why we do this is that it makes us feel better about ourselves. But there are at least two other more innocent explanations, which are based on subtle flaws in our thinking.
  
  The first possibility is that we find it easier to consider the favourable evidence for a single person than we do for a whole group. Consistent with this is the finding that people tend to be biased when comparing any single individual, not just themselves, against a group of others.
• . In other words, it is the difficulty we have thinking about the favourable evidence for groups, as opposed to individuals, that seems to be the crucial factor underlying the "above average effect".

• Poet-performer Jessica Care Moore’s “Love is Not the Enemy: Manifesto for 28″, Moore conveys a tough-minded resilience and a mature return to self in the face of disappointment. She isn’t sure what’s ahead of her, but there’s no doubt about how she’ll face it

• The United States has the highest inequality and poverty in the OECD after Mexico and Turkey, and the gap has increased rapidly since 2000, the report said. France, meanwhile, has seen inequalities fall in the past 20 years as poorer workers are better paid.

• Going someplace is a very modern notion - it suggest progress - a point - utopia. The post modern themes that are part of these many statements decry these notions. Until know I simply thought of my state as a paradoxical mood - a kind of infestation of my spirit. The until I saw the following video.

• Massive budget shortages have brought NPR to the space between a rock and a hard place ... that is: cancellation time.