Nina Totenberg mentioned Alberto Gonzalez as a possible replacement.

Canada’s looking real good about now.

If you go to less urbanized areas, you’ll find that the racism is more conscious that you might imagine. What happens is that openlyracist attitudes are understood to be both racist and the truth. This is why you can have things happen like the Oklahoma baseball coach thinking he was complimenting a black player by saying “There are honkies and white people, and there are niggers and black people. Dunigan is a good black kid. There’s no nigger in him.”

I’ve spent years arguing with people who have attitudes like this and sometimes I think the only hope is to send them out to the desert for 40 years. Unconscious prejudice is in many ways easier to deal with because you can keep hammering at how their attitudes betray the underlying prejudice but I have yet to find a good way to convince people who think that what they believe is unfortunate and unfair and completely true.

I want to expand a little bit on Lynne’s question. First everything Sarah in Chicago said. Second, a good friend reminded me about the difference between priviledge and rights.

White people, for the most part, can dismiss people of color as pushing an agenda, or too emotional, or _____ (fill in the blank). This, to me, is an example of white priviledge that we must end..immediately!

White men, for the most part, can move through any urban or rural area unaccosted. This, to me, is an example of a basic human right that we white guys keep to ourselves through the mechanisms of priviledge. In this example, my work is not about never leaving the house, but about using my priviledge to speak out and work to expand spheres of safety for white women, lgbt folks, white and of color, all people of color, all people with disabilities….about using my priviledge to increase and enhance the rights of others.

Does this make sense? Sometimes these things are hard to grasp for me, and then harder to right about.

Thoughts anyone?

It’s a pretty thought that one day we might, as a nation, see there was little difference between La Qaeda and the KKK.

But these days, terroism=non-white people. Unless they’re environmentalists.

The form of terrorism that occurred in this country against African-Americans was often government sponsored and carried out by people in LE agencies.

Radfem, current racism and inequality are the tasks at hand. It goes without saying, or one hopes it does. And yes they are separate than past wrongs if you are looking for justice for past wrongs. There will never be justice for the slaves. Never, ever. The task at hand is education and a fair shake now for their descendents.
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Thanks for your response to my question. It might seem “without saying” to you, but are they really separate from the past? Take lynching for example, which was the center of the public apology by the Senate. FTMP, it’s in the past, FTMP, because James Byrd’s torture and murder at the hands of three White men in Texas shows that it’s not all in the past. And I met a guy who probably would have suffered that fate, if he hadn’t been able to escape and find a concerned person to help him.

But if it were, does that mean that its occurance in the past doesn’t impact on what happens today?

I’ve spoken with women and men who’ve been in towns either when lynchings occurred or afterwards. They talked about the sights, sounds, emotions, raw terror, smells, as if they were yesterday, or an hour ago, instead of years. Lynchings were not just targetted at one person, but all Black people, like terrorists might target a particular building like the WTC or the Pentagon, but in reality, all people in the country are the psychological target. The fear of the terrorism of the past is still felt today, and it still governs how much freedom people feel like they have today, and lynching has that impact still on many Black people. Lynching might be gone, but the fear it and other acts of terrorism causes is still there and still impacts people’s lives. Just because it doesn’t impact yours or mine, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Separating the past and present into two separate realities, neatly divided along lines of whether they can be changed or not, is not even possible for everyone, though it might work well for you, is it supposed to be the rule that everyone is supposed to follow? Says who? It’s not fair to ask people who are still experiencing things from the past, in the present to just pretend it has no effect on them to make it easier on other people.

If a Black man is hanging from a tree as has happened in the South recently, it’s never thought, it might be a suicide, like if he were White. And even if it were a suicide, there’s still a lot of fear, from it that it’s something else.

There’s investigations into the incident to determine how he died, whether it was suicide or murder. If it’s a White man, it’s assumed to be suicide or in some cases, accidental death, never a lynching.

Does what happened in the past in the South(and other places) play a role in this, or is it all based on what’s in the present?

As for slavery, if you can’t understand the full impact it had on slaves in the past AND their descendants today, then I don’t think you can really educate others or do the “fair shake” thing b/c Whites tend to downplay or totally negate its affect and we expect everyone else to do like, so we feel better about ourselves and our vision of reality where we are heroes and not villains.

How do we educate our kids, when we don’t know the full truth ourselves? We can’t, or else we are propagating the same myths.

You can’t undo the past, but you don’t have to repeat it.

When the woman was quoted as saying how a paper and a pen can accomplish what lynching did in the past(bad paraphrase), what does that mean, if you don’t have an understanding of the past?

Why do many people associate lynching with capital punishment, meaning one has replaced the other? What are the links between the two practices?

These are just some examples. There are many others, I’m sure.
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Noone needs to call somone a racist if you are using terms like “white male paradigm”?. I mean, honestly. You don’t even really have to use catchphrases- if you are impugning someone’s decency because they resent being made to feel responsible for something they had nothing to do with, or my decency because I dare to consider their point of view, words like racist aren’t neccesary.
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So to avoid offending people, including Whites, or White men, we can’t discuss the white male paradym or talk about white-supremacism and its role in our country? We can’t actually talk about racism, in a way that challenges White privilage, with out calling or being accused of saying(without actually, saying) someone’s a racist. Well, that’s a convenient set of rules to AVOID any discussion of racism and its relationship to White privilage altogether. Certainly not without handholding, and where did we learn that it was our right to have our hands held, hmmm? But then again, Whites can walk away from race any time it gets uncomfortable for them. People of color can not.

Or it can be all about impugning someone’s right to feel resentful, rather than the issue at hand. Another convenient dodge. I know, because I’ve used this one myself too, more than once.
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I want you to understand something: I love Black History Month. Every MLK Day, I mentally say a little prayer of thanks to Martin Luther King and I say to people who roll their eyes at all the inclusivness (not many people I know do this, but it has happened) that Black History is everyone’s history and this is what I will teach my daughter. Civil Rights for the decendents of the slaves in this country were brought about remarkably peacefully and we ALL are indebted to the leaders who appealed to people’s sense of decency and fairness instead of waging a generations long war with no winners like happens in many parts of the world. ”
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I love holidays too. It’s a shame though b/c one month isn’t enough time to hold all of Black history, and one day isn’t big enough for MLK, jr.(never mind all the civil rights heros) and it’s a good day to reread my favorite work of his, which is Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

The Civil Rights era was a great one, but wasn’t all that peaceful and it lasted many generations. It was as hard fought as any war, lasted longer than most wars do, and created a lot of martyrs including children, six of whom were murdered in one 24-hour period in 1963. Not enough people responded out of common decency and fairness, nearly soon enough.

Even its leaders weren’t all peaceful, as there were different philosophies in how it should be done. And there’s been considerable backlash by um, the White male paradym since, so it’s still ongoing.

And how many civil rights leaders survived the 1950s, 60s? How many were killed? And who did the feds(often portrayed as heros in what passes for history and that particular odious Alan Parker film) spend most of their time spying on and harassing anyway?

What inspired me was the sheer acts of bravery, each day, even by the littlest children. Wow. Especially considering the era was so peaceful and all(not). I figure if the least we can do is maybe discuss or listen to a bit more than we’re personally comfortable with about racism and white privilage, even being called racist!!!!, then relatively speaking, that’s a small price to pay.

(it was not. who filled most of the jails early on during the sit-ins, anyway?)

A lot of great things happened, but there was terrorism, bombings, murders, throughout the entire era. All done to try to destroy the movement’s leaders, its resolve and to instill fear in anyone who might benefit from it. Another reminder from the past, that with agitation for rights, comes pain and fear and repercussions. That’s something that is still remembered today.

And that’s my overall argument. Appeal to people’s sense of decency and fairplay, not guilt. Make people understand. And be fair to them while you are doing it. If I am constantly defending myself for being white, I won’t be able to hear you
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decency, fair play, will all due respect, I’m not used to dealing with either in these parts, though the guilt’s not exactly there either. More like smug entitlement. Maybe it’s regional, but I doubt it. :-(

If we’re constantly ready to defend ourselves for being white, then we were never really listening to begin with.

Noone needs to call somone a racist if you are using terms like “white male paradigm”. I mean, honestly. You don’t even really have to use catchphrases- if you are impugning someone’s decency because they resent being made to feel responsible for something they had nothing to do with, or my decency because I dare to consider their point of view, words like racist aren’t neccesary.

I want you to understand something: I love Black History Month. Every MLK Day, I mentally say a little prayer of thanks to Martin Luther King and I say to people who roll their eyes at all the inclusivness (not many people I know do this, but it has happened) that Black History is everyone’s history and this is what I will teach my daughter. Civil Rights for the decendents of the slaves in this country were brought about remarkably peacefully and we ALL are indebted to the leaders who appealed to people’s sense of decency and fairness instead of waging a generations long war with no winners like happens in many parts of the world.

And that’s my overall argument. Appeal to people’s sense of decency and fairplay, not guilt. Make people understand. And be fair to them while you are doing it. If I am constantly defending myself for being white, I won’t be able to hear you.

And the statement of not being able to go back and right those wrongs, is that a way of saying that if people want to talk about them, then they should just be quiet then?

“Mike and Sam quite reasonably are reacting defensively and negatively to being called racists or responsable for historical racism’s leavings.”
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Racist. Hmmm, I don’t recall calling anyone here a racist except for people self-identifying as such. I don’t think that’s a word that’s actually been thrown around all that much here. But it’s one that Whites, when we are defensive on race, pull out of our hats and accuse others who challenge us on our believes and prejudices, of calling us racists. That’s an old defense mechanism.
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“And quite apart from racism itself, white Americans are always given the responsability of understanding other groups’ cultural values, while being asked to put aside or dismiss their own. This is a non-productive and divisive tactic. ”
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White Americans are NOT told or given the responsibility to understand other cultures. And if asked, many of us wouldn’t know, understand other cultures living in this country, and what we think or are so sure we know, is usually negative and most often always wrong.

Everyone learns about the European(primarily Anglo) culture and its role in the “founding” of this country in school. Until very recently, any other perspective has been excluded. There’s no one set of cultural values even for Whites, and Whites of various ethnic backgrounds celebrate their cultural values and histories in this country. There’s none or litle complaint if they do it, that is seen as “American”. However, when other peoples celebrate their culture or heritage, i.e. Mexican-Americans, then there’s plenty of howling and complaints.

When Whites celebrate their individual cultural heritages, be they Irish, English, German, Italian or otherwise, that’s NEVER seen as divisive, like it is when Mexican-Americans for example, celebrate their cultural identities.

Divisive, unproductive, other common words used to protest against people challenging the White male paradymn in this country. They are seen as divisive, when it’s really the paradym that exists which divides and excludes many people in this country.

We’re never asked to put aside our own histories.

“I won’t feel guilty for whatever priveledge I have inherited. I feel lucky, maybe underserving, but not guilty. Who knows what suffering is hidden in my heritage? Who cares? The question should be: will the suffering endured by the African captives brought over as slaves be all for nothing or no? And making white people walk around feeling defensive, or men for that matter, is pointless.
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Pointless for who? For people who actually have to rethink their privilage in this country, maybe. But it seems to me that if white people’s discomfort over slavery is being said in the same breadth as “African captives” suffering, then that’s a problem, because dialogue about race and racism in this country as far as Whites are concerned tends to only go as far as their comfort level and tolerance for it, and that’s never really all that far.

Just this: you start with a group of people whose culture is the default. Then you introduce a bunch of other cultures, which is good. However, they develop the wrongheaded idea that “culture” is something exotic, foreign, new. Then they look around and cannot see anything exotic, foreign, or new _to them_ that’s also labeled “white,” except maybe some wishing stones with Celtic knots carved into them, and they decide that there’s no culture that belongs to white people. Then they get jealous of things like Cinco de Mayo and Black History Month–a whole month! Where’s White History Month, huh?–because having a heroic inventor and social philosopher on currency is nothing like having a heroic inventor and social philosopher referred to as, “the peanut guy.”

And the multiculturalism idea might inadvertantly set up an erroneous understanding of culture and cultural appreciation when paired with that misconception. If we become used to seeing (multi-)”culture” as alien and conspicuous, something to be sold to an unaccustomed mainstream, then it might be harder to see the culture that white Americans belong to and are centered by as a tradition in its own right (duh) rather than an impersonal default with no inheritors.

So it’s not just that ketchup is seen as “normal” and salsa as different and strange. Salsa is coded as expressive and interesting, attached to a specific (exoticized) tradition and (exoticized) people, whereas ketchup is boooooring. It doesn’t occur to anyone to be grateful that ketchup is on every restaurant counter in the country. So you have all these people wondering where the hell their culture is, and forgetting that it doesn’t seem terribly exotic or profound precisely because it’s universally acknowledged and disseminated.

To be charitable to Elena, perhaps what she is trying to express is that the majority white American culture used to be a given, and anybody who was not white and/or born in America was expected to assimilate. But like your pie analogy, some people feel that any effort to make room for individual cultural preferences means giving up pieces of what they know and grew up with.

My high school used to have a Slave Auction as a fundraiser every year. Certain seniors were sold to the highest bidder to be their slave for a day. There were limits on what you could make your slave do, but almost nobody saw this as offensive for years and years. I think this went on until the 1980s. And when somebody finally got the light bulb and stopped it, a number of people were upset, because this was something the school had always done - it was traditional!

What’s the quote again - “Fish don’t notice the water they’re swimming in”? Something like that. Because white people own the majority culture, we don’t notice it until we become informed about others.

Agreed.

But I don’t think it’s that people see dignity as a finite resource. I think that they’re worried about giving up the material goods and opportunities that privilege opens up. And things like high-paying jobs, big houses, etc., are finite and zero-sum, but only in the “pie” sense: at the level where they become luxurious.

I mean, my child will still get an education if his school can’t afford the dsl connection this coming year, but some other child won’t if his school has thirty-year-old history textbooks.

Um. Elena? That’s exactly the point of the metaphor. Dignity, respect and equality before the law are not finite resources.

But that’s not how people who whine about losing their privilege see it. They feel entitled to their privilege, as though it’s a tangible thing. They believe allowing others the same rights and freedoms and responsibilities THEY enjoy will take away from their own rights and freedoms and responsibilities. They do not believe it’s possible to make the pie bigger, or make more pie. It’s THEIR pie, dammit, and if you want to sit down at the table and eat, you’ll take what you’re given and you won’t complain that your slice is half as big as everyone else’s, because if we gave you a fair share then there’d be less pie for us!

white Americans are always given the responsability of understanding other groups’ cultural values, while being asked to put aside or dismiss their own

Gee, I’m white, and I’ve never been told that I should “put aside or dismiss” my cultural values. Of course, I also don’t believe there is a monolithic block of “white” cultural values that all “white people” share.

Here’s what I expect frou you if that’s true. I epxect you to take people who spread that attitude to task. I’m sure some thread somewhere will bring up racial issues again. I’ll be looking forward to your honest and accurate ideas on race privelage, and equality.

Have a truly supper splendiferous, utterly faaaabulous day. Go treat yourself to a manicure. Get your chest waxed. You deserve it.

You wrote, “And making white people walk around feeling defensive, or men for that matter, is pointless. ”

I, for one, do not feel defensive about being called racist or sexist. And I am a white man.

That you and Mike and Sam feel defensive about being call racist, and I and others on this blog do not, suggests to me that the discomfort of feeling rests with the three of you, not with the information being exchange on this blog.

It has been my experience over the years that the defensive you and Sam and Mike feel is part of the process of coming to understand your place in the world of white and male privilege in which we live.

Feeling defensive isn’t a bad thing. It, like all other emotions, pass.

The question I have is: why do have to dismiss as “counterproductive” the arguments brought up here as a way of addressing your defensiveness?