November 29, 2016

My problem with the "we shouldn't normalize white supremacy!" argument...

...is that white supremacy is already normalized here in the United States of America, the so-called Land of the Free. And this has been the case ever since many human beings - men, women, and children - from various, diverse peoples who live in Africa were brought here against their will to be cruelly, viciously, violently, and sadistically exploited - economically, sexually, culturally. This has also been the case ever since the indigenous peoples who were here long before European colonists arrived and then savagely and brutally took over much of this continent by stealing the land, (human) labor, and other resources and claiming them as their own - and that which was not claimed for a particular Crown or Empire was claimed by (male) colonists as their "private" property - and all of this was done in the name of "Civilization." And the American racial hierarchy that has enslaved - and continues to enslave - all persons of color is the consequence of the slavery, colonialism, and imperialism that people of color were subjugated to by those who benefited from slavery, colonialism, and imperialism.

This racial hierarchy, in other words, was constructed by white people for their own benefit, to legitimize their subjugation, exploitation, oppression, enslavement, even murder of everyone else. It didn't matter to the white colonists that the "everyone else" category was, in fact, an extremely heterogeneous mix of rich, complex peoples, cultures, and societies, with their own particular histories, economies, and religious, spiritual, and folk traditions. Everyone else was seen - seemingly paradoxically - as both inferior to White Civilization, and threatening to White Civilization. This contradiction is soon resolved, however, by recognizing that the Other ("everyone else" who were excluded from the conception and ideology of White Civilization, in one way or another) had to be inferior for white supremacy to exist. In other words, white supremacy - by definition - is threatened by any acknowledgment of the fundamental equality of all people, and all peoples. The only solution, then, is to treat "the Other" (which also includes women and LGBTQ persons in addition to persons of color) as inferior to, as less than, as fundamentally sub-human.

All of this is how rich white men who owned slaves and were fundamentally afraid of democracy itself - true, authentic democracy, for all people (and peoples) from all walks of life - could write such beautiful phrases like, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them include Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Only by excluding all women outright and denying the humanity and human agency of men who were not white, were not rich, did not own property, and/or were property themselves (black slaves) could the United States of America - and the corresponding ideology of "Americanism" - ever exist in the first place.

I posted a thread a little while back that pertains to this very topic:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/118758367

The reality is that white supremacy is normalized in the USA, and extremely so. And the reasons for it are very, very deeply embedded into the entire history and conception of "America" and what that even means - all of which is history that continues to be made in this very moment, this present time: Right. Fucking. Now.

We'd be much better off, IMHO, by, rather than advocating against the normalization of white supremacy, instead advocating for the de-normalization - and eventual destruction - of white supremacy.

November 26, 2016

There's an asymmetrical perception issue between rural areas and big cities/metros

Specifically, between the least populated (and often, least in terms of population density) regions/counties/towns, and the large, densely populated, diverse, wealthy, and extremely culturally influential (if not essentially dominant) metro areas like those of New York, DC, Los Angeles/Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area...basically, the East and West Coasts (with places in the interior like Chicago and maybe Denver also approaching that status).

The divide is not just one of cultural perspectives and perceptions of the other culture, it's asymmetrical in the sense that, while most people in America's metropolises (particularly the largest and most cosmopolitan ones) have little (if any) awareness of what life is like "out there" out in "the boonies" (other than crude media stereotypes - very often manufactured by people whom have never even set foot in a rural community (and have no desire to, much less ever live in such a community), rural Americans certainly know at least some of the thought/opinions/perspectives of the "city-slickers" - specifically, those of Hollywood, the mainstream news media, and other figures and institutions who, quite frankly, are ELITE. And rural people see the loudest, most influential voices in the media and the broader culture being almost entirely from large, wealthy, cosmopolitan, metropolitan, and LIBERAL areas (all of which seem to be correlated, certainly from the view of rural America) talk about rural people and their communities like they are authorities and experts on them - in spite of the fact that most of the media pundits are very far removed from "the country" - and deeply resent their snobbery, their lecturing, their acting like they know people they don't know (much less, respect), and all the rest of it.

This, IMHO, is a BIG reason for Clinton's very poor performance in so many rural counties in the US - even counties in which Obama won in both 2008 and 2012. While both big metropolitan and rural/small-town residents have many misconceptions regarding each other, the difference is that rural Americans actually do hear (and see) "big city folks" talk about different subjects (including rural America) - and on a daily basis, at that - while the converse is emphatically not true. Who's "uneducated " again?

November 23, 2016

While I don't think violence is the answer

I have no respect for the shameless concern trolls in the media who rant and rave about protests (which are almost EXCLUSIVELY nonviolent) but are silent (or worse) about all the violence inflicted daily on black people and other PoC, the poor, the homeless, and the mentally ill, and the fact that so much of the violence is inflicted on them by those who are sworn to protect the public. And these concern trolls are almost to a person, rich white assholes. They have no shame, no class, and no respect. Fuck them.

November 7, 2016

27 of the 55 delegates to the 1787 US Constitutional Convention were slaveowners

Just about half. These are their names:

Richard Bassett (DE)
Jacob Broom (DE)
John Dickinson (DE)
George Read (DE)
William Houstoun (GA)
William Few (GA)
William Samuel Johnson (CT)
Daniel Carroll (MD)
Luther Martin (MD)
John Francis Mercer (MD)
Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer (MD)
William Livingston (NJ)
William Blount (NC)
William Richardson Davie (NC)
Alexander Martin (NC)
Richard Dobbs Spaight (NC)
Pierce Butler (SC)
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (SC)
Charles Pinckney (SC)
John Rutledge (SC)
John Blair (VA)
James Madison (VA)
George Mason (VA)
Edmund Randolph (VA)
George Washington (VA)
George Wythe (VA)
Robert Morris (PA) (though he didn't actually own any slaves, he owned a slave ship and was heavily invested in the slave trade, so for all intents and purposes...

In addition, 12 of the 43 men who have served as President of the United States owned slaves, eight of whom owned slaves while serving as POTUS:

George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
James Monroe
Andrew Jackson
Martin Van Buren
William Henry Harrison
John Tyler
James K. Polk
Zachary Taylor
Andrew Johnson
Ulysses S. Grant (mostly through his wife)

Additionally, James Buchanan was somewhat of a borderline case since his brother-in-law owned two slaves whom Buchanan bought and then hired as indentured servants.

Of those 12, only two (Washington and Jefferson) were delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention. So that's 10 other Presidents who owned slaves.

Just remember: the current President of the United States could very well have been owned by any one of the men listed above, had he lived within one and half to two or so centuries ago. And his successor as the Democratic presidential nominee, and likely (fingers crossed) successor as President of the United States, would also have been considered the property of her husband on the account of the fact that she is a she.

I don't think a lot of people - even a lot of Democrats/liberals/progressives/left-wingers - realize the significance of all of this. Really puts things into perspective, doesn't it?

Sobering.

November 4, 2016

Funny how the first time a majority of Southern whites voted for the Republican presidential nominee

was in 1964.

After this, a majority of white Southerners voted for open segregationist George Wallace or the "Silent Majority", "Southern Strategy" Republican nominee Richard Nixon (though it should be noted that in the 1968 Republican presidential primaries, Ronald Reagan - who, like Goldwater, also strongly opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act - was the initial favorite of the Southern delegates. The man most responsible for wooing the Southern delegates from Reagan to Nixon? Strom Thurmond).

You know the rest of the story: Nixon won the entirety of what had been the "Solid South" for an entire century, and won due to the overwhelming support of Southern whites; then, the "born-again", evangelical Southern Baptist from Georgia i.e. Jimmy Carter won much of the South with overwhelming support from black voters, combined with a significant minority of white voters (though Gerald Ford still narrowly won Southern whites, and - it should be noted - the nominally pro-civil rights Ford had been pushed significantly to the Right by a strong and bruising primary challenge from Ronald Reagan); then in 1980, Reagan himself was elected President with the strong support of Southern whites as well as many white voters outside the South who appreciated his unfounded racist anecdotes about "welfare queens from the South Side of Chicago" and had also liked the fact that he had launched his presidential campaign with a speech in support of "states rights" from the same town in Mississippi where three pro-civil rights volunteers had been murdered by the Klan not two decades earlier; and after Reagan, Southern whites (along with many Northern whites) never again voted for the Democratic Party, and certainly not at the presidential level.

From Willie Horton to "Sister Souljah" and "welfare reform" (note that white Southern Baptist Bill Clinton was the only post-Reagan Democratic candidate to win any states in which Southern white voters were a majority - and even then, only did so while pandering to racists, regrettably), from the horrible, underhanded and unfounded racist rumors that Karl Rove spread about John McCain in 2000 on behalf of adopted Texan and Holier-Than-Thou conservative Christian George W. Bush, all the way to the virulent racism directed at America's first Black President from the "Tea Party", the "Birthers", and Republican racists in general; and the fact that all of this horrifying racist bullshit that has been unleashed in "post-racial America" (*pukes*) has resulted in Donald "Birther" Trump, Stormfront's dream-come-true candidate, being nominated as the presidential candidate of the Republican Party...well, what the fuck has happened? Ugh!

To say that Lincoln is turning in his grave would be to make an incredible understatement.