Archive for category Racism
The Nostalgia Trap
Posted by Glenden Brown in American History, American People, GLBT issues, Human Rights, Racism, Society, This Blog on May 19, 2013
I’ve written about the ways in which many conservatives seem to yearn for yesteryear. This morning, historian Stephanie Coontz offered a fascinating and compelling article in the NY Times on the dangers of nostalgia:
In society at large, however, nostalgia can distort our understanding of the world in dangerous ways, making us needlessly negative about our current situation.[snip]
Happy memories also need to be put in context. I have interviewed many white people who have fond memories of their lives in the 1950s and early 1960s. The ones who never cross-examined those memories to get at the complexities were the ones most hostile to the civil rights and the women’s movements, which they saw as destroying the harmonious world they remembered.
Read the whole thing, it’s worth it.
Note to Shit-Kicking Conservatives: We (U.S. & World) Are Moving on Without Your Tired Lame Bigoted Asses.
Posted by Cliff Lyon in American People, Conservative, Homophobia, People Are Nuts, Racism, Republicans on March 17, 2013
Each years CPAC showcases the steady, incremental march toward the obsolescence of conservatism. And while conservatives are by nature regressive and behind the times, as the brutal velocity of progress in science, communication, education et. al. increases, conservative ideas are more obsolete than ever. Traditional Conservatism is by all accounts, DEAD.
The Republican Party has become authoritarian out of necessity. Moderates are leaving the party in increasing numbers. Inter-party calls for sanity fall on deaf ears. Example: CPAC went for Birthers and extremists like Trump and Gomert over far right assholes like Chris Christy.
At The Intersection of Racism and Policy
Posted by Glenden Brown in American History, American People, Racism, This Blog on March 14, 2013
Provocative ideas from Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jamelle Bouie on the ways in which public policy and racism are connected and mutually reinforcing.
Coates first.
The “I’m not racist even though I’m doing something actually racist right now” rationale is linked to the notion of racism as something worthy of societal condemnation. That is a good thing. As Sugrue identifies in his book, you see a post-World-War-II consensus forming in the 1950s that racial discrimination actually is wrong.
An Open Letter to all People Who Hate the President
Posted by Cliff Lyon in 2008 Election, 2012 Elections, Barack Obama, Bigotry, Conservative, Conspiracy theories, Racism on March 7, 2013
Reprinted in full from Progressive Press
“It’s fine to be a conservative who disagrees with Obama politically. He is a fallible human being. Like any politician, he deserves criticism now and then. Progressives criticize him all the time because his policies are more conservative than many thought he would be.
If you would say “Obama is wrong on this issue and here’s why”, I could respect that. But it’s something else to be a hard-core Glenn Beck parroting, Bush-was-God, Obama-is-Satan, damn-the-facts, anyone-who-disagrees-with-me-is-a-communist, conservative.
Sometimes it’s hard to comprehend the level of hatred you have for President Obama. This hatred is not about dissent and it began long before he even took office and doesn’t seem to stem from anything he’s done as president. Read the rest of this entry »
Faux News: Frightening Black Man Alert!
Posted by Shane Smith in 4th Estate (Media), Racism on November 6, 2012
This is my favorite video (in a tight race let me tell you) so far this election season. Listen to the Faux News racist crew explain how frightening and intimidating the scary black man is… as he holds open the door for a woman heading in to vote.
Voter suppression! Intimidation! Bullshit!
The Onion writers are kicking themselves right now.
A Romney Supporter Reported Me To Facebook? I Am Blocked for 7 Days.
Posted by Cliff Lyon in 2012 Elections, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Mormon LDS, Racism, Republicans, Tribalism & Blind Obedience to Authority on November 5, 2012
Facebook censorship or whiny Republicans or both?
The party of the KKK, or why I wish we had real conservatives
Posted by Shane Smith in American People, Conservatives, Philosophy, Racism on November 3, 2012
Data, facts, prejudice. All in one tweet and one sentence, via DailyKOS.
How does race shape the vote? In NJ poll, whites uneasy w/racial change back Romney 9-1; those ok w/it back O by 3-2. http://t.co/…
— @RonBrownstein via web
In other words, not all Republicans are racists, but almost all racists are Republicans.
The last line is of course a variation on the words of John Stewart Mill, who said (roughly, I am too lazy to pull it up right now) “it is not true, as some have claimed, that all conservatives are stupid. It is however demonstrably true that the vast majority of stupid people are conservative.”
This is becoming more and more of a problem for the American conservative. It is indeed true that I am pretty liberal in my leanings. However it is also true that pragmatically speaking I expect my government to lean only very slightly liberal. The reasoning is that a slight lean means progress. With almost no exception, the good life, the proper politics, the reasons we stay in society… The qualities of what Aristotle would call a eudimonaic or flourishing life, have come down to us through liberal policies. We are better for having given suffrage rights to everyone. We live better lives for having ended slavery. We improve quality of life for having weekends and less hours worked per week. We raise the standard of living for all by giving maternity leave, and so on, and so forth.
Read the rest of this entry »
Hatred for the Kenyan Usurper Means Romney Can Get Away With Literally Anything
Posted by Cliff Lyon in 2012 Elections, American People, congress, Conservative, Conservatives, Holly Richardson, Hypocrisy, Liars (politics), Lying, Mitt Romney, Racism, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh, Tea Bag Party, Utah Politics on October 12, 2012
This is the most honest, well-written encapsulation of what we are experiencing in the election.
Fresh lies from Romney, or the Republican Congress
Driftglass Writes: Don’t me wrong: I appreciate the careful documentation the Many Lies of Team Romney during this election season. But I look at those efforts less as the drafting of a bill of particulars against the GOP, and more like Josephus gathering up an armful of books from burning Jerusalem and documenting the great city’s demise from a perspective in the ruins.
Why? Because for the Conservative 47% of the active electorate, the day Willard sewed up the Republican primary was the day it stopped mattering to them what lies Willard shits down their throat. Willard has calculated (correctly) that their bottomless, mindless, berserk hatred for the Kenyan Usurper means he can get away with saying and doing literally anything and then completely reversing himself hours later. And so, unless he transforms himself into a Scary Democrat Negro (hence my graphic), he has the base locked down.Willard has calculated (correctly) that the average “undecided” voter is an idiot who is barely aware that Barack Obama is President, much less who said what when. Lies? Truth? All the “undecided” knows for sure is that people on both side should stop being so mean!
Willard has calculated (correctly) that most of American media is a joke run by hacks with the moral compasses of Tijuana donkey show pimps, who are congenitally unable to call a liar a liar and who get paid on commission each time they say “Both Sides Do It” when a Republican shits the bed in public.
Random Conservative idiots with spluttering apoplexy
Pointing to each morning’s fresh lies from Team Romney, or the Republican Congress, or Boss Limbaugh and his legions of imitators, or random Conservative idiots with spluttering apoplexy, has become the the bread and butter of Liberal teevee, radio and print. And good on them (us) for providing that service.
It does, however, beg the question, “Who the Hell are they talking to?” Because there is no referee in this fight, kids.
There is no umpire, here: no impartial judge; no jury of 12 men good and true.
For us, the playing field will never be level and we must stop playing as if it were, because there is no cavalry coming to rescue us…but us.
And most importantly; remember that however long the odds or however discouraging a given day might be, we are a hardy and tenacious stock and our clear understanding of who we are and where we came from gives us a secret weapon that no movement based on a contempt for reality and a tissue of lies can match: the power to summon giants.
Address of John F. Kennedy upon Accepting the Liberal Party Nomination for President, New York, New York, September 14, 1960…
I am as guilty as the media is for investing too much energy pointing out the lies only to have them fall on deaf ears. The soaring level of hypocrisy, obvious as it is outrageous, among the righteous, morally superior, religious and/or otherwise just plain racists is sufficient evidence to anyone who is paying attention that morality is unilaterally customizable on an ad hoc basis for the pedestrian religious right (Republicans) in this country.
So I will no longer entertain moral arguments from religious Republicans. From now on, I shall withhold my otherwise generous respect and civility in discourse with these well-groomed, Bible-thumping cretins. For the first time in my life, I finally understand how entire nations stood by and watched and/or helped Hitler exterminate millions of innocent men, women and children without a shred of self-examination. They were merely Republicans by a different name.
One more thing:
Calls for civility, especially from some in the Mormon community deserve your contempt. They are a gratuitous demand we excuse the “Many Lies of Team Romney” we’ve see during this election season. The uncommon duplicity, distortion and noise coming from Republicans is as violent assault on our Democratic principles as the illegal Republican assault on our voting rights.
Civility is speaking out against this assault. Incivility is defending it.
Utah Valley Magazine’s Version of Women of Color . . .
Posted by Glenden Brown in 4th Estate (Media), Racism on July 10, 2012
Must be seen to be believed.
From Gawker:
“That was not intended as an ethnic comment,” Bennett told me when I called to ask her if she was familiar with the traditional understanding of the adjectival phrase in question. “It was just clever wordplay. It was that women add color, and there’s more than one meaning of color.”
So does her magazine employ any actual women, or even people, of color? “We don’t. I definitely don’t think we’re ethnically diverse. But we did have an article in this issue about the first African American Miss Utah Teen USA.” So there’s that.
Arizona Can Do Without My Tourist Dollars
Posted by Richard Warnick in Bigotry, Civil liberties Infringement, National Politics, Racism, Republicans, The Constitution on June 25, 2012
This morning, the partisan right-wing U.S. Supreme Court went against all precedent and upheld the constitutionality of part of the Arizona “papers, please” law (SB 1070). [It may be an exaggeration to say the law was upheld, see comments and update below]. I assume this law will now go into effect in Arizona. The only thing I can do about it will be to stay the hell out of Arizona as long as they have this racist policy in place. I wrote an e-mail to the Arizona Office of Tourism this morning.
It remains to be seen if copycat laws in Utah, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina will be allowed to go into effect. Every person in Arizona and states that pass S.B. 1070-like legislation will be required to carry proof of their legal status at all times or face the possibility of being detained. In practice it will be people of color that bear the brunt of these policies.
The encouraging news is that the first year after passing S.B. 1070, Arizona saw an estimated $141 million in losses from conference cancellations. The impact on the tourist industry from this first year alone totaled more than $250 million in economic output and close to 3,000 lost jobs. Ongoing economic impacts on Arizona tourism might encourage them to rejoin the Land of the Free.
UPDATE: David Dayen on FDL:
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer put on a brave face and described the ruling as a “victory,” because it did not quite invalidate the entire law. However, it left wide open an overturning of the one key provision that remains. That’s the “show your papers” part of the law. If actual Arizona implementation violates federal statutes or results in unconstitutional equal protection violations, it can be challenged again. In Arizona, the home of Joe Arpaio, that is almost certain to happen; this law can and will be revisited at a later date. Having most of the law thrown out before implementation isn’t anything that could conceivably be described as a “victory.”
UPDATE: Media Matters: Fox News not giving up.
Fox News reacted to news that the Supreme Court struck down most of Arizona’s controversial immigration bill, SB 1070, by citing arguments that the one provision that was not immediately thrown out is “the heart of the entire bill,” while Fox Nation claimed the decision was a “defeat for Obama.” Fox’s attempt to find a silver lining is unsurprising, as it has long been a staunch supporter of the statute. But the court’s decision was overwhelmingly against the bill and the remaining provision could eventually be overturned.
UPDATE: Women immigrants tell of life in fear thanks to ‘Papers, please’ laws
Recent Comments