racism
gregladen | October 3, 2017Visiting Arkansas, hanging around briefly with some people in the Real Estate business, I found a lot of hatred of Mexicans, whom they unimaginatively referred to as "spics" but making it clear they were talking about Mexicans, not some other spics. Sitting with a group of people talking about racism in an urban neighborhood in near Minneapolis, I found zero mention of dislike between whites per se and blacks per se. But Poles and Tibetans, they were very much disliked by people who were mostly but not all white. Years ago I remember being shocked by a fellow anthropologist who expressed a…
gregladen | September 18, 2017A lot of people will object to the title of this post. I will be told to take the post down. I will be told to modify the title or to change what I say in the post.
Nope.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is correct, and his presentation is brilliant. Watch the following interview (in two parts) and read his book We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy.
Chris Hayes is correct to point out that the historical source of Coates title is critically important and deeply disturbing (this is something we've talked about here in the recent past). He is incorrect, as Coates points out near the end of…
gregladen | September 14, 2017You'll remember that Philando Castile was killed in cold blood by a St. Anthony cop, who was later acquitted with the defense that "he was a black guy, I wuz scared."
A couple of days ago, tragically and sadly, a cop in a town near me was run over by a driver who was probably on drugs and drunk, who was told by the courts she was not allowed to drive because she is so dangerous but was driving anyway. That is very sad. That particular cop was said by others to be "one of the good ones" and I believe that. He had a boy Huxley's age, in the same school system (but a different building). The…
gregladen | September 6, 2017It is very rare that I find myself yelling at the TV when Rachel Maddow is on. She is very good at historically contextualized nuanced well informed analyses. But when I watched a segment of last night's show (on the Internet, I have no cable) I was shocked to see that she missed something really important. If, that is, it is real.
In the segment below, she makes the point that there are two "clear through lines" in the whole Trump thing. One is the love of Russia and Putin by Trump, his unwavering stance that Russia and Putin can do no wrong. The other is the consistent "vehement antipathy…
gregladen | May 23, 2017In The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction, Charles Lane describes the events -- several years of events including the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, though only briefly -- that led up to the Colfax Massacre. What happened was incredibly complex and only a very detailed description can do justice. But, I'll try to summarize it his way: A war was fought over slavery, and slave holders lost. A conflict then ensued between the new, victorious, anti-slavery government and the racist pigs of the Confederacy, who…
oracknows | May 16, 2017Over the last few years, I've been doing a recurring series that I like to refer to as The Annals of "I'm not antivaccine." Amazingly, it's already up to part 23. It's a series based on an oft-repeated antivaccine claim that is either a like or a delusion (sometimes both), namely the claim made by antivaccine activists ranging from Jenny McCarthy to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the latter of whom is best known for making such claims after likening "vaccine-induced autism" to the Holocaust. (Indeed, RFK, Jr. takes denial to a ridiculous extreme by proclaiming himself not just "pro-vaccine" but "…
gregladen | February 2, 2017The Dogs Still Bark in Dutch
I grew up in the old Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, now known to you as the State of New York. There, I carried out extensive archaeological and historic research, and along the way, came across that phrase, “the dogs still bark in Dutch.”
It is an idea that might occur to a denizen of Harlem, the kids off to Kindergarten, sitting on his stoop eating a cruller, or perhaps some cole slaw with a gherkin, and pondering the Dutch revival architecture down on Wall Street.
There was a war between the Dutch and the English in the 17th century, and as a result of that…
gregladen | January 30, 2017A brief update: This morning, Senate Republicans set aside the rules that say that both parties must be present, with at least one member, for a committee vote to advance a Presidential nominee for a cabinet appointment.
In other words, as outlined below, our system is based not only on enforceable laws but also on rules that only work if everyone involves agrees to not be the bully on the playground who ignores the rules. The Republicans are the bully on the playground.
The system requires honest actor playing by agreed on rules. So, without the honest actor, you get this. This fits…
gregladen | January 15, 2017A lot of people are just catching up on who John Lewis is. One way to do that is to read his memoir, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.
U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) is presented with the 2010 Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
He is a senior African American Representative to the House who was famously involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, along side Doctor King. If you watch any news at all you've seen him plenty of times. He is now also known as the latest person Donald Trump decided to denigrate and insult on Twitter.
I would like to see everyone…
gregladen | November 24, 2016Clinton beat Trump by a large margin, by electoral standards. A couple of percent is actually a lot these days. Yet so far it appears that Trump won the electoral vote, even though those votes are not yet cast and who knows what is actually going to happen.
But this year, strange as it it and stranger thought it may become, is not the strangest ever. That goes to 1876.
Wow.
gregladen | November 22, 2016Question: How do we wipe out racism by making racists not be so racist?
Answer: We don't.
We do something else that actually works.
The expanding Trump-fueled conversation about racism
It has been absolutely fascinating to observe myriad conversations reacting to the Trump electoral win. All the usual suspects are engaged, but also, many others who had previously been little involved, or not at all involved, in the national political conversation, are saying things.
And along with this has come a certain amount of method or concern questioning. I won't call it trolling because only some…
lborkowski | November 22, 2016In the days following the 2016 election, reports of hate crimes and harassment have spiked, and experts have described it as being worse than in the immediate aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks. Between Wednesday, November 9 (the day after the election) and the morning of November 14, the Southern Poverty Law Center had collected 437 of hateful intimidation and harassment – and noted that “many incidents involved direct references to the Trump campaign and its slogans.”
I spent part of the weekend reading news and opinion pieces about Donald Trump and US racism and xenophobia. The excerpts…
gregladen | November 12, 2016OK, lets start out with the assumption that it does not matter who you or anyone else supported in the last election or what your politics are. If it happens, hypothetically, to be the case that a vulnerable person feels threatened by some sort of bully, wouldn't you like that vulnerable person to know that you are an upstanding citizen of good character who is willing to stand up for that person? This is especially true if you are a teacher, or you work in a retail business, or any place where there might be bullies and victims.
One way to convey your willingness to stand up against…
gregladen | October 18, 2016My current model (subject to change) puts Arizona in the Clinton Column. This is the prediction that has resulted in the most head scratching from those observing this, but it turns out that the Clinton Campaign seems to agree. Clinton surrogates, including Chelsea, Michele Obama, and Bernie Sanders will be in the state over the next few days.
Frankly, I worry about good people going to Arizona stumping for a Liberal Democrat. Perhaps that is because of my own experience living there for several weeks. During that time a local desperado was arrested and made a court appearance, and his…
gregladen | September 18, 2016Update:
From WCCO:
An Islamic State-run news agency claims the man who stabbed and wounded eight people at a mall in Minnesota before being shot dead by an off-duty police officer was a “soldier of the Islamic State.”
Original Post:
We know nearly nothing about the Saint Cloud attack, but I'm going to offer some preliminary context-related thoughts anyway. Not conclusions or guesses, just context. (See below for some basic info on the attack.)
One thing you need to know is that Minnesota is a state with the least racist and most socially and culturally enlightened people in it. And, some of…
gregladen | September 18, 2016Back to school special:
I'd like to note that not every teacher who "moves to a school in the suburbs" does so for bad reasons. Some of them do so after being handed a $10,000 per annum pay cut and a contract with zero chance of a raise for the indefinite future or something else along those lines. In other words, while I strongly agree with Olivia Fantini, she may have some unexamined privilege of her own in blaming teachers for their own victimization.
Taxpayers, anti-tax organizations, and the elected officials bought and paid for by them are at the root of most of our problems in…
cmonforton | July 8, 2016Citizens shot by police. Police shot by citizens. Citizens shot by citizens.
Too many victims. Terror. Tears.
Somebody else's neighborhood. Never in mine.
Racism, disrespect, mental illness, hatred, anger, economic inequality, hopelessness.
Rationalizing? History. Reality.
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The Gun Violence Archive lists more than 27,390 gun-related incidents in the U.S. which have occurred since January 1, 2016. The result includes nearly 7,100 deaths. Some of the latest additions are those who sadly made this week's headlines: Officer Lorne Ahrens, 48, Philando Castile, 32, Officer Michael Krol, 40, Alton…
milhayser | March 16, 2016Would it surprise you to learn that the top movie at the North American box office, a computer-animated family film made for children, is a nakedly racist allegory, a celebration of the urban police state, and an insult to the entire animal kingdom and the natural world at large?
The premise of Zootopia is simple: a country bunny named Judy (yes, she's a rabbit) leaves her parents and her hundreds of siblings behind for a life in the big city. The difference between rural and urban living is the first ugly dichotomy the film establishes: farming carrots with your family is framed as a dead-…
aardvarchaeology | November 11, 2015In countries with a big metal detector hobby, the stereotypical participant is an anorak-wearing, rural, poorly educated, underemployed male. I don't know how true this cliché image is. But apart from the anorak, it's certainly an accurate description of the core voter demographic behind the rise of racist right-wing populist parties. These people have trouble finding jobs, and they have trouble seeing through the racist propaganda that tells them they would have jobs and girlfriends if it weren't for the bloody furriners.
I'm known as a detectorist-friendly archaeologist. I've made many…
lborkowski | July 13, 2015A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
The excellent "Unequal Risk" series by the Center for Public Integrity's Jim Morris, Jamie Smith Hopkins, and Maryam Jameel ("Workers in America face risks from toxic exposures that would be considered unacceptable outside the job — and in many cases are perfectly legal.")
Sarah Kliff at Vox: Do no harm ("There's an infection hospitals can nearly always prevent. Why don't they?")
Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic: Letter to My Son ("Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body -- it is heritage.")…