Matt had a series of posts a few weeks back about racism and the tea parties. I thought about commenting but, frankly, I wasn't sure what to say. I couldn't tell whether the signs were indicative of the movement, or indicative of a few oddballs. I think it says something that people feel comfortable toting that sort of message to a rally. But my instincts led me to allow for a "charitable interpretation," as one commenter put it last week.
All of that said, I think Matt was on to something.
One common refrain of black Southeners from Robert Smalls to Booker T. Washington to Martin Luther King is the notion that white Supremacy has actually corrupted the white South, that while it is a blight on the physical conditions of blacks, it is a greater blight on the spiritual, moral, and mental conditions of whites.
I never understood how that could be true until relatively recently. But when you think about the embrace of white supremacy by political leaders, you understand that it was not simply an embrace of evil and bigotry, but an embrace of superstition, ghost stories and, ultimately, utter ignorance. At times this has been literally true. There's a short portion in Capitol Men that discusses a late 19th century effort by the federal government to upgrade public schools in the South. For fear that black schools might benefit, South Carolina declines all federal help thus fucking over its white children in the name of white supremacy.
Racism, like all bigotry is, at its root, lazy thinking. Thus the demagouge who employs racism is engaged in a kind of mental corruption, aimed not at the victims of racism, but its alleged benefactors. Thus when George Wallace asserts the following...
In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.
...he is, for sure, defaming black people. But he's also engaging his followers in a seductive flight of delusional stupidity. The "segregation" part of that quote isn't the worst part. It's the white nationalist hoodoo, the unreflective vanity of "greatest people that have ever trod this earth" that's the killer.
Likewise, when Jesse Helms tells white North Carolians that all their economic troubles can be summed up by Affirmative Action, he is telling them, "don't think too hard." When Mike Huckabee goes to South Carolina and says...
You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole; that's what we'd do.
...He's saying, Don't think too hard about history. Go kick some ass.
Of course the problem with mental corruption is that it doesn't really respect borders. There's a short step from Farrakhanesque numerology to believing in little green men. Likewise, a group conditioned to, at once, believe that they are "the greatest people that have ever trod this earth," that the stars and bars actually stand for barbecue, NASCAR and rugged individualism, that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, are exactly the sort of people conditioned to believe that man once hunted dinosaurs, that Obama is (all at once) a radical Christian and a closet Muslim, that global warming is a liberal hoax, that a neurogical diagnoses can be done via video-tape. To be sure, history is littered with smart, well-read racists.But they weren't any smarter for it.
I think this amazing quote from Joe the Plumber says it all:
Queer means strange and unusual. It's not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we're supposed to do--what man and woman are for. Now, at the same time, we're supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I've had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn't have them anywhere near my children.So much of this is perfect--including the idea that "honkey" is the worst slur Joe can think of. But his attitude toward not letting "queers" around his children, is oddly reminiscent. Much as the racist demagouges of yore convinced themselves that the highest aim of black maledom was to bed their fugly-ass daughters, Joe the Plumber is convinced that the highest aim of all queerdom is to spend some time with his snotty-nosed brats.
He's indicative of a demographic that has long been ill-served by its leadership. That works out well for the leadership--at least initially. But over the long-term, the trouble with ignorance is that it trades the "now" for the future. You're betting that those who come after you won't wise up. How's that working out?
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Dude...you need to copyright the above paragraph...infact, you should charge me for quoting you...epic pwnage...also, Acorn...
Agreed. Made of win, sprinkled with awesome.
At this point, though, listening to Joe the Plumber is like indulging the kid who runs around and screams so the teacher will pay attention to him. Just let him keep going until he tires himself out--he can't possibly keep coming up with progressively stupider shit to say forever.
but but but...i'm actually starting to get used to the guy...and you're suggesting he has ADHD?
Don't EVER underestimate the plumbers stupid-fu! scratch that, if he sees this post, he'll see it as a challenge!
For real. I'm quoting this over and over - attributed of course. I would pay royalties in a heartbeat.
Damn I love that this blog puts the contemporary gay situation into historical context better than...well, any of the gay blogs I read. (Recommendations?) Love ya, TNC.
In the midst of this homophobic claptrap is the germ of an idea.
I, a straight man, can sleep in a tent with a group of boy scouts but not with a group of girl scouts. A gay man is subject too the same restrictions. Is it to much to ask that he not sleep in a tent full of young boys for the same reasons that I am not allowed to sleep in a tent full of young girls.
Has anybody dealt with this issue?
What does sexuality have to do with this?
Why would any adult would be allowed to sleep in the same tent as children?
Germ is the word, my man. As in, That thinking is infected with rotten stuff.
Two things to contemplate, as apparently you have no experience working in child care or Scouting:
1) The Boy Scouts are an organization that excludes atheists and gays at all levels in an explicit fashion. They went to the Supreme Court standing on their right to throw out an Eagle Scout from the award ceremony. Not because his Eagle Scout project was unworthy, or because he hadn't been a good Scout by any objective definition since his induction into Weblos at age 5--because he refused to lie when asked whether he was gay.
So Boy Scouts specifically reserve and exercise the right to free association. On another note, an alarming number of boys are assaulted or negligently injured in the care of Boy Scout volunteers every year. Whatever you want to say about the adults who participate in or ignore these problems in Boy Scouting, you know one thing for damn sure about them: They are Not Gay.
2) Girl Scouting is open to all girls and adults regardless of religious beliefs or sexual orientation. GSUSA away from home events, such as camping, are almost always run by trained and employed adults. As part of that training, which I have both received and provided over many years, all adults of all genders are specifically warned against ever sleeping in a tent full of young girls.
It's also never a good idea for one adult to be alone with one child s/he doesn't know well outside of camp, awake, asleep, whatever. When it happens on my watch, the adult responsible for that lapse in judgment is likely getting a bus ticket home for his/her trouble. I don't care that nothing went wrong, it might have. That's how you create a culture of accountability that protects kids and adults.
What the Boy Scouts do or don't do in their training I can't tell you--but if they suggest that you, as a straight man, should sleep in a tent with a group of young boys, check your homeowners' policy for coverage of any issues resulting from that.
@PhoenixRising, for the record, the Boy Scout are pretty strong about youth-protection rules. (I was an adult leader in my son's troop for a long time.) Those rules require, among other things, two-deep adult leadership, no one-on-one contact, and separate accommodations. Every adult leader must take youth protection training as part of his or her initial training, plus a refresher course at least every two years. See http://www.scouting.org/HealthandSafety/GSS/gss01.aspx for more information.
I make no comment about the BSA's policy concerning gays and atheists.
Very late on this, but TNC, this is a home run. Thanks for the bottom of my heart. This stuff messes with your mind. I know perfectly well I am not attracted to children at all but I make sure I am not alone with a kid in their bedroom; it is always in the back of my mind whether their parents might get a little bit nervous. I shouldn't but I do and it is horrible.
Don't forget, those are his gay "friends" he is talking about. I bet he won't allow his colored "friends" around his kids either.
Helluva post.
Don't forget, those are his gay "friends" he is talking about.
He caught an episode of Will and Grace on TV once, so now he has gay friends.
Do you think his gay friends are the same gay friends Sarah Palin has?
So... this guy is 'friends' with people that he believes will rape his children given the slightest opportunity?
Really?
I guess he's pretty actually open-minded ... noble even.
Or would be if these friends existed, and weren't just an idiot lie.
There's a short portion in Capitol Men that discusses a late 19th century effort by the federal government to upgrade public schools in the South. For fear that black schools might benefit, South Carolina declines all federal help thus fucking over its white children in the name of white supremacy.
Heck, TNC, you don't need to go that far back.
You can just go back to "Massive Resistance."
In 1959, Prince Edward County, Virginia, refused to fund its public schools so that they wouldn't have to be integrated. Until 1964, when the Supreme Court ruled against PEC, no public education was provided, period, for any student, black or white.
Yes, there were segregation academies founded to provide educations for some white student, but the fact of the matter is this: to avoid having blacks educated alongside whites, the county chose not to have education at all.
That's sort of your point in a nutshell, isn't it?
There was a story on the DailyKos yesterday about a businessman who donated furniture and paint to the school Ty'Sheoma Bethea attends in South Carolina. Taking nothing away from the incredibly generous gift Darryl Rosser gave the school, why does this school still have desks that my great-grandfather could have built? This could be why--South Carolina would rather have punished all of their children than help black children. Looks like not much has changed.
Yeah, I read the diary. It was touching but also infuriating because the kids were so thrilled to have what you would think everyone in a First World have. And we are talking about SC, which governor was fighting to not get funds from the federal government to help with school reparations, unemployment etc.
"It's not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that."
Too many '70s movies. Who ever really used honky? Joe ain't that old.
Even in the 80's, when I was in the Army, we were called crackers.
I prefer cracker ass cracker.
The only person I ever knew who said honky said it all the time, Joe, the 70-something year old painter at the hospital where I worked in high school (early 00's). Every white person was a honky, Dr. Honky, Nurse Honky, and even inanimate objects could be honky, honky coffee=coffee with too much milk or cream in it. I thought it was pretty funny.
Joe is my age. We were both raised in rural Ohio towns, in my case a racially integrated one. I was often called honky by some of my classmates in the early grades. I have noted elsewhere that my mom explained that it was descriptive of my ethnic heritage. Since my grandfather had indeed been a Hungarian coal miner, 'honky' was the equivalent of my classmates calling one another 'black'.
My point is not so much that Joe has been exposed to that slur, though I expect that he has been. It's that healthy white people, who realize that TNC's charge here rings true--racism robs everyone of their history and heritage, only white folks have been trained not to notice anything is missing--don't come up with 'honky' as their example of 'hurtful and derogatory insult designed to instigate a fight'.
The lack of empathy to any injury one has not literally experienced is outstanding, but what really calls to me for mocking is the limited life experiences one is drawing from if 'honky' is the slur the subconscious draws up. 'Honky'? Seriously? Bohemian-American, please.
When I worked in Chicago with some "Bohemian-Americans", they referred to each other not as "honkies", but as "Hunkies." That is, of Hungarian background.
"Honkies" reminds me of the movie "Cinderella Liberty" where, in a racially-mixed, non-married "family", a new baby who looked very white (born to a black mother), was described by her black older brother as, "Oh, a honky." In that warm and fuzzy scene, all were treating each other as "just people." The boy had his own view of that, with nervous laughs all around the theater. Outside of TV and movies, I never heard the term in actual use.
Well, anyway, the post is terrific. Let me try to count the "discussions" that I have had with people who say that the Civil War was about "States' Rights." To what?...own slaves, of course. And that the Confederate flag is about "heritage." Cripes, if I had a heritage like that I wouldn't tell anyone. Must be dozens of such discussions. Yuck!
Excellent, excellent post. I'm gonna spread the love on FB and LJ about this...
Doesn't look like that cold is doing anything to your sharpness, Mr. TnC...
"Conditioned" is so key. It is a conditioning, a soaking in and soaking up of ignorance and hate. And so I ask, why would anyone want to pass this on to their children? But, they don't see anything wrong with this narrow way of thinking - so why change? And so the cycle continues. Carefully taught indeed.
And then I'm left with another example you gave, Mike Huckabee - he KNOWS better. He is purposely exploiting the bigotry, feeding it, cultivating. Which I find equally vile. Can there be a lesser of the two evils?
Dude, I gotta go. I never get any work done when I come here. So fucking awesome Coates. I won't call it a come back.
The GOP so proudly celebrated and heaped willfull ignorance and stupidity down the throats of its followers that they hold out failures, idiots and simpletons as virtuous models of human achievement if they can outshout their peers. The right has taken the future of Idiocracy to heart, and there is no room for intellectualism and naunced thought.
Men like Joe were once convenient tools for electoral success in the Wallace-Rove model, and they were just self-aware enough to realize that there was a soapbox available if they wanted it. Not self-aware enough to recognize their limitations or to see themselves through the eyes of an outsider, but just enough to steer the party off course to the point where it is repulsive to thinking people.
Put on your American flag bedazzled denim jacket, throw out your books and reject education as "European". You are special and entitled to the riches of this nation because you vote Republican and have more made-in-China magenetic ribbons on the back of your SUV. The chickens have come home to roost.
Couldn't agree more TNC. I would like to point out that it is not just racism and bigotry, it is all of the superstitious shit on the left and the right. In fact, I think a very good argument could be made that this is your main problem with African-American leaders when you disagree with them, that they are doing a disservice to African-Americans with some shoddy arguments. You can see the same thing across all races, nationalities and ideologies. The important thing that I think you did an great job pointing out is that it hurts rather than helps in the long run. Especially when it deals with bigotry, this gets lost because people are rightfully worried about the claims that are made and not what those claims do to those who make them.
this situation happens everywhere it seems. the most segragated part of South Africa also has the same problem with white population being dumb because their caricular is geared to teaching survival of the fittest and not educate.
Conversations I have had with self-proclaimed 'not racist' white South Africans:
- Mixed marriages produce 'blue babies' because of differing blood types (this was something some of them claimed to have learned in school)
- Sound rises
- White South Africans are racially pure (despite being a mix of many different European nations)
- Thabo Mbeki is an uneducated monkey (actually, his stupid proclamations about AIDS asides, he was clever enough to get a masters from the same university I went to)
- Robert Mugabe is a sub-human animal (actually,I almost agree here, but the racist overtone was too much to bear)
- People in Europe and the US don't understand that blacks in South Africa need to be treated differently, but of course apartheid was wrong
What are "blue babies"???
As far as I could understand the crap that was coming out of their mouths, they believed that different racial types were more likely to have "incompatible blood types" which might lead to babies being born unable to absorb oxygen correctly. Absolute pseudo-scientific tosh of course.
All the people in question had university degrees, and none of them were actual morons.
I had forgotten this until I read this post, but along the same lines, I had a friend in college (in fact a very smart guy) who had gone to an expensive, generally respected private boys' high school in Memphis where they taught him that black people were better athletes because they have an extra muscle in their legs. It didn't occur to him to question this interesting anatomical fact until he got to college.
I was taught that too, but I got "sonned" in middle school and that's how I learned it was bullshit.
All in Chicago, btw...
...I worked with a lady in ATL that stared at my cousin in shock when she found out she had a cat cause "I thought Black folks were skeered of cats??"
...then there's the lady in Ohio who licked her hand and rubbed my aunt's arm to see if the dark color would rub out--right before she got pimp-slapped like a bad stereotype.
I know folks dont mean much harm by it, but I've never embraced the duty of Racial Enlightener with open arms. Aside from contentious message board arguments, that is!
Who was the comedian who said if you think honkey is a commonly used slur, you have been watching The Jeffersons too much.
For the tea parties, I don't see them as that different from leftist protests, they are protesting something and it draws in all kinds of people who the organizers don't want and can't control. Right wing sites went out of there way to go to anti-war protests to take pictures vulgar anti-semetic signs.
As disturbing as these signs are, I also find the words of Janeane Garafalo disturbing when she went off on how people who dare protest against the government are racist and have diseased brains.
Of course most have heard the Wallace quote over and over, however, I really haven't paid attention to the first part that you highlighted. In the conversations on race that I have heard, your point about it being bad for the race of the racists is rarely made and I think that has been a mistake. It doesn't fit on a bumper sticker like "Mean People Suck", but since I started reading your blog, I have been struck by this idea. There can be a rotting complacency in someone who is white and in America; he may assume that he is living in the best country and he is of the best stock.
It might be stastically correct that such a person will make more money, but if you assume that you will be top of the food chain, a certain segment will feel entitled and won't work to get there. In the end, this is probably a worse type of entitlement than the often scapegoated welfare entitlement. Living in Detroit, I see this in the auto industry and it hits all sides, the left and the right, labor unions and all levels of management.
Right on.
I don't see but a small step from Wallace slinging out "the greatest people that have ever trod this earth" to politicians trotting out the statement that this is the greatest country on earth without any type of context. I'm high fiving everyone as soon as America perfects desalinization on a massive scale or creates an AIDS vaccine, but to just state our superiority as fact without challenging people to uphold that greatness is to tell everyone to keep shopping and have another burger, we rule.
Love your country like someone you respect but are not afraid to call on their shit, not like as I believe Al Franken said, "A baby loves its Mommy."
So true. As soon as some white, working-class "hero" finds out I've got a few sets of initials after my name, he responds with the snotty "oh, you're so lucky, my parents couldn't afford to send me to college" bullshit.
To which my equally white self replies, "Neither could mine. I studied my ass off in high school to snag a scholarship. But of course, you studied very hard too, yes?"
This rejoinder is always met with silence.
Or also like the rest of us, paying off student loans 'til we're 50 years old.
"But his attitude toward not letting "queers" around his children, is oddly reminiscent. Much as the racist demagouges of yore convinced themselves that highest aim of black maledom was to bed their fugly-ass daughters, Joe the Plumber is convinced that the highest aim of all queerdom is to spend some time with his snotty-nosed brats."
Thank you. I've been saying the same thing to try and convince my African American relatives and friends that the players have changed but the song remains the same. The bigotry aimed at gay people is the exact same crap aimed at blacks -- nothing has changed but the target.
Some of the ugliness at those rallies a few weeks ago can also be traced back to your eloquent post. If you've been taught to believe that you're of a superior race and that the worst thing in the world is "race mixing" than how would you feel if the offspring of an interracial relationship is in the White House?
Re: Joe the Plumber--is it possible for something to be sad and hilarious at the same time? This is what conservative commentary has been reduced to?
Re: the tea parties--I agree it's not really fair to lump them all in the category of the fringe nuts who show up at these things, any more than blaming all anti-war protesters if some conspiracy theory nuts show up at their rallies. You can't really control that.
just peeped a blog that looked at the same thing: http://socialsciencelite.blogspot.com/2009/05/joe-plumber-is-afraid-of-queers.html
The guy had recently blogged about Meghan McCain's stance on gay marriage. There's obviously some issues going on in the fragile coalition otherwise known as the Republican Party.
"was to bed their fugly-ass daughters"
lmao!
This same "joke" was made on a previous post on this blog about white racists accusing black men of raping their daughters. I can't find the link anymore- this was several weeks ago. Apparently it was supposed to be funny since of course only pretty women get raped. Several female commenters expressed concern about perpetuating this stereotype, since it feeds into the meme that rape is a compliment and not such a bad thing after all. I know the main point of this post is about race, not rape or sexism, but please, TNC, make your points without making light of rape.
I don't see the rape inference here. A man can want to "bed" a woman without raping her.
That is true in general, but in the context that TNC is referring to in this post, of white racists worried that black men will "bed" their daughters, they're often referring to rape. They sometimes are also worried that the black men will seduce white women and have consensual sex with them, but rape is certainly one of the things they're referencing. And in the earlier post, it was explicitly about rape.
Saying "nobody wants to rape an ugly chick" trivializes rape.
Saying "nobody wants to have sex with an ugly chick" reduces women to their appearances- I don't think it's as bad as in the rape case, but it's not really defensible either.
"To bed" is not a euphemism, and it certainly isn't a synonym, for rape. In the Richard Pryor joke, "rape" is very clearly stated. It's not an inference--it's the joke. It was a mistake for me to relay the joke uncritically. I copped to it in comments. This isn't the same.
At any rate, here's the link you're looking for. I think the difference is quite clear:
http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/04/nihilism_and_gay_marriage.php
Just like in the previous post (thanks for the link, TNC), you miss the point.
Rape is a terrible thing, and I don't think anybody here is trying to trivialize it. What TNC's joking about is the stupidity, ignorance, and paranoia of one of the main themes of white supremacy: black men exist only to have sex with white women, by any means necessary.
So while you're understandably worried about trivializing rape, maybe you could also spend time thinking about the trivialization of black men that the "They're coming for our women!" strain of thought causes.
Some brilliant, non-lazy thinking going on around here, TNC.
It's karma. What you do comes back to you.
IIRC, Paul Krugman's previous book made the argument (one that I agree with) that the U.S. never developed a European-style social welfare system because of the same reason.
I don't know about Paul Krugman, but the conclusion is inescapable if you compare any specific social good and how we distribute it--education, health care, where the freeway gets cut and where the train line goes and stops. You name it, racial exclusion influenced it in the 20th century.
Remains to be seen whether we're getting smarter.
This post is the most succinct, well written, so on track for the description of racism in the United States that I am speechless. Well done. I can say no more.
"To be sure, history is littered with smart, well-read racists. But they weren't any smarter for it."
I like your post, but I think you glossed a little over the uncomfortable reality of intelligent, educated racists. It was Martin Gardner's 1957 book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science where I first saw the point made that racism in America was found largely among the uneducated or at least scientifically illiterate, whereas in Europe it was found among the elites and intellectuals, including major scientists.
It is harder to dismiss scientific racism as a mere lapse of character when it was once the prevailing view in mainstream science, to which educated people were exposed. Of course, this is only true of the past. Since scientific racism has declined, its modern practitioners (e.g. James Watson) have little excuse. Still, I do not see racism intrinsically as a function of ignorance.
Agreed. If I want to find some rabid anti-Semites in the U.S., I gotta troll redneck, neo-Nazi gatherings. In Britain all I have to do is go to a cocktail party in Cambridge.
Jeez, it's really that bad?
Speaking as someone born and raised in the UK, but who has spent a lot of time outside of it, no, I would say this is a complete exaggeration - Cambridge especially. Snobbery? Yes. Anti-semitism? Not in any obvious or open fashion. I think someone may just be a little unused to having conversations about Israel.
This is not to say that the UK does not have its own history of racism. If you want to look for the British George Wallace, just google Enoch Powell - an incredibly intelligent, but incredibly wrong and racist man.
Fair enough, and your point on scientific racism is obviously true. But I don't think I claimed that racism was an intrinisic function of ignorance. Not to be a total ass, but I worked pretty hard to avoid exactly that sort of generality. I can't do much more than that.
Fair enough, I just think history isn't simply littered with smart racists, but that was actually the rule rather than the exception in certain places. I may be quibbling with the wording, but I thought it was a point worth making.
Right, but I'm not sure how this contradicts the core point. Nor am I sure how saying history is littered with smart racists, and saying that in certain places that's the rule are exclusionary. I'm not trying to be an ass here. If I'm missing your point, I want to know.
As for me, I don't argue that people who are ignorant are intrinsically racist, or the reverse. I'm aware of the simplistic notion that education cures all which is why it isn't in this post
The argument is this:
Lazy thinking afflicts everyone from the illiterate to the PhD. The points is the racism dulls the intellect. The intellect of the "well-informed" aren't immune.
The idea of "intelligent racists" is only uncomfortable if you think that "intelligence" neccessarily insures you against lazy thinking. I don't believe that. And would never argue it.
Well, I'm worried I'm the one who's being an ass, quibbling with semantics. I'm not sure we're disagreeing, I just was pointing out what provoked my reaction. Considering the predominance of scientific racism in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, I would not have worded it as a mere littering of educated racists. Littering to me suggests they were scattered hither and thither, as opposed to following what was nearly universal thought in the societies of the time.
I do believe that this fact should be a source of discomfort to those of us who respect science and look down upon the wave of extreme anti-intellectualism that has currently taken hold of the right in this country. We have to face the reality that the mainstream science of not too long ago embraced some of the most vile ideas ever invented, and that these ideas underlay the Holocaust and, to a lesser degree, Communism. They even had an influence here in the United States.
I don't disagree with any of that. I think we're just taking the word littered differently. By "littered" I meant basically what you wrote--that it was indeed everywhere. I don't doubt your point at all.
TNC,
This is really in reply to your 2:26 PM, but I can't attach it there.
By the time my generation of southerners was born, racism was just sort of handed down. For many people, it was not so much lazy thinking as no thinking at all. I can remember my mother saying, "That's just the way things are" when we asked her questions about segregation.
There are no "smart racists." There may be smart people who have been racist, but in that aspect of their lives they were as ignorant as any other racist.
I've thought about this my whole life. But I always get back to my core belief that racism is about mostly about ignorance and fear.
TNC: nailed it.
You know, I'm sure plenty of gay people wouldn't want ignorant, tax evading criminals hanging around their children. So fair's fair, I guess.
When I hear him say this, I wonder how much his alleged "gay friends" appreciate his treating them as some diseased leper (or lecher).
I can't believe he has a single gay friend to whom he had told that he doesn't want him near their children. No way no how.
BTW, Did Palin finally produce a gay friend?
Yeah, they used the same outlet of Rent a Homo.
As a gay parent, I assure you that Joe is not the type of carefully selected male role model I want my kids around, so it's pretty much mutual.
Not that I think Joe knows any gay people with kids, from the way he framed his remark. Describing queers and kids as things that are so obviously not connected they form opposing sides of something is not a hallmark of someone who has real, actual gay friends.
The thing is that I have never believed a word Joe has ever said. When he first appeared on the national scene, I suspected he was a Republican plant, paid off by Republican operatives for the sake of McCain's last-minute, desperate stunt:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/where-mccain-lost-it.html#comment-1931509897533471686
Now I'm not so sure about the "paid off" part, but I do believe he has spent his entire time as a public figure essentially trolling for the right-wing fringe, saying anything they want to hear. He practically admitted it after the election was over, when he suddenly began to attack the man he had been energetically campaigning for and who was singularly responsible for making him famous. It was like watching an insect eat its mother.
The "gay friend" line is a cliche on the homophobic right. We, of course, are automatically reminded of similar lines about black friends or Jewish friends, but most of Joe's fan base take such claims quite seriously.
It is actually possible to be prejudiced against a group that includes some of one's friends. Roald Dahl made anti-Semitic remarks, and he definitely had Jewish friends. But Joe's homophobic remarks are so brutal in a very direct, personal way that I can't imagine any self-respecting gay person putting up with them for a second. It isn't like he's some Archie Bunker type whose views you might be able to look past; he is forging a public career out of hate. It would be like Father Coughlin claiming to have Jewish friends.
Racism does do horrible things to the soul. A family friend recently told her racist stepson that he needed to pray for President Obama if he had such bad feelings towards him because of his race. The stepson replied "You need to pray for me before I can pray for him." When you are so far gone that you cannot even pray about your attitude, there is a huge problem.
when words, ideas and history come together as they have in this entry it's pure alchemy. thanks for a gold nugget.
to bring together 2 of our fave topics: exposing racism and classic vids....i share this...Salt and Pepa in IMAGINE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYkReVxoaYo
i've always loved this song. indeed "when i shine, baby, you shine". it calls on everyone to raise themselves up. the actual video is a bit of a missed opportunity - i wish they'd reunite and make a new one. but let the song speak for itself....
Their place in the hierarchy.
As long as blacks were "in their place", not being "uppity", a white man -- no matter how poor and ignorant -- could not be the bottom rung. Upper-class or educated white men can afford not to be racist, because they won't fall to the very bottom just because blacks are in the hierarchy. But the further down the ladder a white man is, the more threatened he is by black equality.
I think the exact same process drives homophobia in the black community. As long as homosexuals are despised, no straight black man can be the very bottom of the social scale.
Absolutely. I know a handful of true racists. All of them have a serious class axe to grind. Several are people who had educational or other opportunities that they squandered by making bad decisions when they were young, and now they are in a social position that they think is "beneath" them, and they're bitter about it. I get the impression that racism is their way of convincing themselves that, well, they're still better than somebody. I only know one professionally successful, wealthy racist, and he's a dude from a blue collar background with embarassingly bad grammar. I could be wrong, but I'm thinking that even though he's well off he still perceives himself as having to struggle to keep from being socially "under" most of the people he interacts with, so the racism could come from the same place. Also, he's bitter that Tiger Woods is a better golfer than he is. :)
I've never heard that idea related to homophobia before, but I certainly think it's a good theory that deserves some research. It's funny how a post about racism can also tell us a lot about the roots of homophobia.
Yes but why is the place in hierarchy so important. Why is it worth making your life and the lives of your children materially worse off in order to preserve. Fine, be pissed off because you screwed up but most people who feel that way are different with their children. They may fight the fight but they want better for their kids. But not in this case, in this case its to hell with your kids education if it means the darkies get some help too. This requires a very negative view of the world, the inverse of optimistic and in that regards, a very unAmerican attitude. Yet it has been here since the beginning.
The contrast is with my wifes people, eastern European immigrates that arrived in the early 20th century and went to work in the steel mills of Cleveland and Pittsburgh. They were bigots, my wife was told she could date who ever she wanted but never bring home a black man. But they did not confuse 'the fight' with what was materially better for them. They understood that better unions made both their lives and the lives of blacks better and that better schools made both their children's lives and the lives of black children better. They were fine with that. These dumb-ass hunkies (the origination of the term 'honkey') fresh off the boat from eastern Europe understood something that my true blue American hillbilly relatives that had fought in the American Revolution never understood. It is one thing to be proud, another thing to be stupid. And I cant find where the stupid comes from. I reject the standard 'they are ignorant' explanation. This is too deep, too old a trait to be dismissed that easily.
People who have this attitude, in my experience, often discourage their children from getting "more education than your old man" or "thinking you're better than us". This goes along with the prideful ignorance: they *don't* want better for their kids, not consistently, because that would mean that their own lives aren't good enough.
It comes IMHO out of a culture that was and is very devoted to luck rather than effort as a way to better yourself -- the Strike It Rich mentality that is as much (or more) a part of American culture as Yankee (boo hiss) ingenuity or pulling youself up by your own bootstraps. A friend points out to me that it's all a very *local* way of thinking: when you don't (and maybe can't) trust that big efforts (at the state level or above) will do any good, you stick with what you know works. And what works for them is that a white man is always better than a n*gg*r.
I agreed with you until you said,
"I think the exact same process drives homophobia in the black community. As long as homosexuals are despised, no straight black man can be the very bottom of the social scale."
Here is the issue that I have with this. If you were saying this in regards to sexism and misogyny amonsgt straight black men towards black women concerning control and hierarchies then I would approve. However homosexuality crosses races and the race of the homsexual involved makes all the difference. This in reference to homosexual white males would be disingenious at best.
The root of any homosexuality in the black community is two things: religion and hypermasculinity amongst some (let me stress the some).
Who said, "It was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight."?
Someone famously said, "It was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight."
I've been reading your blog for almost a year now, and man. That was possibly your best post ever. From insight to prose. I only wish people sent smart chain-emails, this would be a classic.
very well said...and so, so true.
Not quite.
I am in deep accord with everyone about the awesomeness of this post. I agree with every word. Let me add some thoughts. The more I think about the South (and these days, I think about it often), the more I realize a few things:
The "idiosyncratic" economy and history of the South in 19th and 18th centuries has left an imprint so deep and pervasive that us Northerners (I'm from Miami - that's the North) don't fully grasp it. "Race" retains an operative force there which underlies more than we realize. And not just race. Look at any map of the US which color-codes health and quality of life and attitudinal data by county: in almost every metric (lifespan, happiness, attitudes on race or culture or politics or basically anything at all), the South (let's say from central Texas to West Virginia) is unique, extreme in some dimension, clustering together. It's a separate country.
The impact of this is sustained and all-consuming. I was rummaging around my university library last week, postponing work on what I was supposed to be doing, when I opened a book called "Uptown" on Appalachian white immigrants to Uptown, Chicago in the 60s and 70s. It's was written from a broadly countercultural and activist perspective in the 70s, anthropological in style and personal in focus; most of the book was interviews with poor whites who moved from places like West Virginia to Chicago as the coal mines closed down. Every interview followed a certain pattern: the subject would talk about daily life stuff, the hardship of work, or of other hassles like medical care, then talk about how they like or don't like Chicago, and then - *inevitably*, without it being brought up - start railing on about "the Negroes"... for pages and pages and pages. How they think they are better than us, how it's ok when they live far away but how hard it is to live among them now that they are in the city. These long, long tirades would always derail the interview into a discussion of race, clearly without the interviewer's encouragement or intent. It was obviously on the interviewees mind all along. So anyway, I think we forget how much of a deep, deep preoccupation race is, in various disguises, in communities throughout the American South. Like TNC said, it's warped and distorted so much.
It's one of those cases where the social arrangements of one hundred, two hundred years prior, while no longer extant materially take a very, very long time to die culturally, wreaking all kinds of havoc in the process.
Let's close with the most revealing quote of all time, Lee Atwater on his deathbed. Pardon the language.
"...You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger...."
That basically says it all.
whoa, I wrote a lot. And I didn't say much. Sorry.
I dunno homie, I know plenty of parts of MIA that are nothing like the North. Great post otherwise.
I dont mean to quibble, but plenty of the pathologies you attribute to the South are still alive and well in Miami.
I would just like to remind everyone that you needn't look back to the to nineteenth and mid twentieth century for examples, Sanford in SC is a contemporary example of this narrow thinking.
xaphoo: I agree with a lot of your observations, but I would add one important caveat, which I should have noted far above:
American racism doesn't begin and end in the South.
Joe the Plumber, for example, is from Ohio. Frederick Douglass was enslaved not in the South, but in Maryland. Albert Louima was sodomized in NYC. Rodney King was beaten in L.A. And so on and so forth.
Racism in the South has always been very visible, however, partly because it was institutionalized, and partly because the South was (and still is) where blacks formed the largest minority group; maybe Montanans would have been passing Jim Crow laws and lynching blacks just like in Mississippi, but there just weren't many black people living there, while in some counties in the South, blacks are actually the majority.
Interestingly, those folks from West Virginia probably had relatively few black people living in their mountain neighborhoods, at least compared to my old stomping grounds in North Carolina, but they still managed to accept the myth of white supremacy.
My suspicion is that racism thrives far more in the white underclass, wherever it may be, than in the South per se; it's just that in the poorer places in the South, the white underclass is pretty sizable, as is the black population. That's why you get a George Wallace in Alabama, as opposed to Wisconsin.
Again, not to quibble but I still consider much of Maryland the South.
TNC, Im sure you may have your own opinions, but I believe the Mason-Dixon line ran north of Baltimore?
Anyway, when I visited family in Salisbury MD where the slave auction blocks used to be, where you pass the ancestral homes of Harriett Tubman and Frederick Douglass on the way across the Bay to Bay Bridge, I was quickly reminded that parts of Maryland are definitely the South.
Indeed, the Mason-Dixon Line actually goes in two directions. One leg of it forms the Maryland-Delaware border from the southwest corner of Delaware up to the triple point with Pennsylvania, and then the other, more famous leg forms the Maryland-Pennsylvania border.
So yes, Maryland is on the Southern side of the M-D Line. And yes, it was a slave state, and didn't Lincoln have to send federal troops to the statehouse to prevent it from seceding?
Also -- the continuation of the MD-PA border line that continues as the WV-PA border.
American racism doesn't begin and end in the South. Joe the Plumber, for example, is from Ohio. Frederick Douglass was enslaved not in the South, but in Maryland. Albert Louima was sodomized in NYC. Rodney King was beaten in L.A. And so on and so forth.
I live in L.A. and while it's not "the South," the overwhelming majority of the residents are not the leftist intellectual elites they're stereotyped to be. There's a lot of provincialism, even among the large populations of non-Caucasian ethnicities. Racism, sexism, and homophobia are definite presences here. It's so weird; I'm a white person who takes public transportation every day, and when I hear other (mainly privileged) white people talk about public transit, they say things like "oh, NOBODY rides the bus in L.A." Which makes me think they consider poor people and nonwhites to be nobodies, like they stare right through them as if they were invisible. (As an aside, the "nobody rides the bus" thing is absolute ignorant bullshit; the Metro is always crowded.)
Oh man, I could have written that. I, too, am a white guy in L.A. who rides public transit to work every day, and yes, I'm professional, not poor. There are a lot of myths about L.A. that people believe, even some of the ones who live here. Anybody who says "nobody rides public transit in L.A." is telling those of us who do --- and yes, it's very crowded --- that we're nobodies.
And yes, believe it or not, we're not all wannabe actors or screenwriters, the women don't all have fake boobs, we're not all blonde, we're not all Barbra Streisand limousine liberals, we don't all eat sushi every night, we're not all physically fit, etc. The people you see on "The Hills" represent maybe 1 or 2% of the population here.
Don't forget that West VA was part of VA until the Civil War. Most, not all certainly, of WV was not slave country. WV whites, mostly but not all, were on the Union side, and Congress formed WV into a State, due to this reality.
"But he's also engaging his followers in a seductive flight of delusional stupidity. The "segregation" part of that quote isn't the worst part. It's the white nationalist hoodoo, the unreflective vanity of "greatest people that have ever trod this earth" that's the killer."
Oh, man, you've hit it.
I don't do WoW because there are already two realities running in my head.
One is defined by this benighted white bullshit, in which my people got the material benefits and the stupidity, and life is about trying to shovel it away. Try reading about the Cherokee and the Creek in Georgia: my ancestors were in on that crap, too. And the places they lived are dying and disintegrating because white idiots would rather be ignorant and unemployed than risk decent jobs for the people who live in the next broken-down house down the road.
And then other is this a bright sunlit place where the right guy gets to be President and we get to get some work done that needs doing.
I can't all the way put together how they're one reality, which is why I keep coming back to read more.
Cash, your point is well-taken. There's no doubt that anti-black racism exists in all poor white communities (with the arguable exception of poor white humanities grad students), but I would say that it doesn't exist in the same way. It's a different type.
I lived in Chicago for a while, where black and white have lived in constant proximity for a century; there were plenty of racist and culturally conservative people there of Irish or Polish or Italian ancestry, easy to see. But their racism didn't prevent them from being very proud of Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey (an appreciation not, however, extended to that other hometown hero, R. Kelly). Would a white cultural conservative in Birmingham or Atlanta be proud of a homegrown African-American celebrity? I don't think so...
Poor urban whites in the North might see urban black communities as rivals for power and resources (that's why urban politics takes on the racial hues that it does.); but poor whites in the south are concerned with race as the primary structural component of society, there is a sense in which political and social life is concretely structured around it, and blacks are not rivals but enemies. Look at that map of which counties voted less for Obama than for Kerry: the white South.
To put it another way, Jim Sessions said "boy" to a black colleague not only because he thought he was lesser on account of his race. That would be too simple, it's racism only as a form of lazy classification, like what my immigrant grandmother would say to my sister's African-Caribbean boyfriend ("who is he? I hope he's not like those other people!"). Rather, Sessions behaved that way because it was his role as a southern white politician. That's what he's supposed to do, that's why he's there, that's his identity. Classic, historically-loaded race-gestures like that would never occur to Michelle Bachman, crazy as she is.
I have relatives and in-laws from various communities that can be, in an American context, sometimes racist. Latin Americans of European ancestry, rural white people from the Rockies, Middle Eastern working-class folks. Among the older generation, all, in an unguarded moment, might say something anti-black which rankles me and amounts to a lazy racism. But this racism is not really built into their lives, it's not important to them, it's just a kind of residual bias from their upbringing. They don't bring it up, there's a sense in which they don't really care about it but just fall back upon it. They can be convinced; some of them voted for Obama. There's no question they would welcome a black person into the family, even if it requires some delicacy, at least at first. They wear their racism like a change of clothes.
I don't want to just descend into a mere rant against the South. I've never lived there. So correct me if I'm wrong. But this is the way it seems. My dad spent his formative years in North Georgia: he agrees with me.
Well, the way I've always heard Southern racism defined (in what is unquestionably an oversimplification) was this:
"In the South, the racists didn't care how close blacks got as long as they didn't get too high in society. In the rest of the country, the racists didn't care how high in society blacks got as long as they didn't get too close."
An oversimplification, but one that was brought home to me the first time I visited the Missouri home of a friend's grandparents. I was in the small town for about three days before I suddenly realized what was creeping me out so much. There were no black people there. None. For a guy raised in an area where 25-30% of the population was black, it was downright eerie.
I mentioned it to my friend and he noted that in 1904, a group of Hungarians had attempted to settle in the town and had been run out. There was never much chance of a black community forming there.
The other difference I'd note is that in the South, racism has been an explicit and historical part of the culture, and Southerners are reminded of that fact on a regular basis.
In the rest of the country, however, while racists may have been at least as numerous as in the South (check out the growth of the KKK in the Midwest in the Twenties, for example), they were to a large degree able to pass--er, so to speak.
If a guy opens his mouth and grits fall out, a lot of people are going to assume he's a racist because that's what they associate with the South. A guy with an Ohio accent doesn't face that. On occasion I get oversensitive about it, but in the light of Jesse Helms' having represented my home state for three decades, I can't really blame people.
Oversimplification maybe, but BRILLIANT in its simplicity.
"In the South, the racists didn't care how close blacks got as long as they didn't get too high in society. In the rest of the country, the racists didn't care how high in society blacks got as long as they didn't get too close."
I've heard this quote too and rather thinking it's an oversimplification I would say it's just plain wrong.
If racists whites in the South didn't care how "close" blacks got how can we explain sundown towns?
If racist whites in the North didn't care how high in society blacks got how can we explain the institutional racism that still exists in segregated schools?
Again, it is an oversimplification but I can call your sundown town and raise you a Black wet-nurse who would typically spend more time rearing their master or boss' white children than the master or the mistress themselves. Even as the south is a bedrock of racist tradition, the undeniable African influence on the language, the food, the music, the myths, etc. suggests a counterintuitive close cultural relationship even as the political relationship was sternly, sometimes violently patrolled.
Humans are nothing if not contradictory.
I meant relationship between races, for the sake of clarity.
There is a certain knowing familiarity between Blacks and Whites in the South that belies the hostility racism, or maybe defies it even. Not to soften the perniciousness of it, but its more like a "the Devil You Know" deal, forgive the NOI style pun.
The South has at least two different geographies.
Cotton/tobacco/rice cultivation took fairly flat land and made slavery profitable. The Appalachian parts didn't allow that kind of agriculture. Today, you find intimate racism, between people who live a stone's throw apart, in the flat parts, and don't-want-your-kind-here racism in the hilly areas.
I just did a quick tour of suspected sundown towns of Georgia listed at http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/sundowntowns.php, and they are indeed mainly in the northwestern, Appalachian part of the state. There are also some greater Atlanta suburbs on the list.
Both bad, but different kinds of bad.
Sporc, this is in response to your other comment above as well: if you haven't seen it, look for a copy of Tim Wise's excellent explanation of this phenomenon. It's called 'White Like Me'. Tim, in his exploration of his family's history, brings into focus both how and why 'white' had to be invented as a condition of Europeans taking over this continent.
Bumper sticker: 'White' as we know it was constructed by the upper classes of immigrants, to prevent the majority of non-Indian laborers imported to carve their style of civilization from a wild continent from getting with each other and walking off the job(s), into the rich forests of Appalachia, instead of producing stuff to be exported back to Europe.
I'm not suggesting that I'm proud of those among my ancestors who took the deal: Work off your passage as agreed, and your bonus is getting to be better than somebody--unlike in Scotland, you're no longer the bottom of the social ladder!
It's embarrassing, but I understand why they thought the fact of being above somebody else WAS what they had to pass down. Recognizing that there are plenty of whites who think inherited racial status is a legacy worth preserving doesn't change whether I'm actively rejecting that heritage, or excuse them--it's just understanding what is.
Since it IS an admitted oversimplification, there are obviously aspects of it that are indeed wrong, but I think others are pretty accurate.
In the Jim Crow South, schools, rest rooms, drinking fountains, theaters, etc. HAD to be segregated (the thinking was) so that blacks and whites would be reminded of their respective places in the society.
But black people were obviously all around the schools, drinking fountains, theaters, etc. in some numbers; if there hadn't been a significant number of black people in the area, there would have been no need to designate certain things for whites only.
For a perceptive takedown of racism and bigotry, this excerpt was disappointing:
"Much as the racist demagouges of yore convinced themselves that the highest aim of black maledom was to bed their fugly-ass daughters, Joe the Plumber is convinced that the highest aim of all queerdom is to spend some time with his snotty-nosed brats."
Is it necessary to bring women's looks as a measure of their worth into this? It's not the key to your point here, so it comes across as a rather unthoughtful invocation of sexist memes. Again, things like this are disappointing in a piece that effectively breaks down and analyzes other forms of bigotry.
It's not a bigoted statement though. It's reacting to the racist's belief that his daughters are more beautiful and worth preserving than another person's daughters. It's reacting to and negating an aspect of the racist's truth. Their daughters may or may not be beautiful, that isn't the issue.
Out of context, it could indeed "come across as a rather unthoughtful invocation of sexist memes."
In context, that sentence does important work. It points out that the delusion is so strong it assumes a sexual interest that clear-headed people would think very unlikely. Yes, it's a loaded, angry, elbow-throwing way to say it, but that's part of the point
Please precisely identify the sexist meme, I'm invoking. I'm willing to listen and debate, but I need to know what I'm responding to.
Playing devil's advocate here: If looks aren't the issue, why mention it? The idea that you're trying to present, T-N, if I'm right, is that it's silly to assume black men want white women as a whole. If you say "fugly-ass" daughters it makes it sound like "we don't want your daughters... assuming they're ugly. A little Uma Thurman action though..." Not the point you wanted to make, I think. (And I know the quote above is from caleb, not you).
In other news: Black athletes date hot blonde models! As opposed to white athletes, who are dating brunette radiologists! :)
It's worth going back and looking at some of the literature I'm referencing here. The racist didn't simply hold up his daughter and wife as "better than" but were held up by virtue simply of their whiteness as the most beautiful. The notion that a black male may not want anything to do with their daughters never entered into the conversation. Physical beauty (not intellectual horsepower, not sense of humor), as ridiculous as this may sound, was intrinsic to the argument--that and chastity, but that would only make things worse.
It's also worth noting that this myth continues up until this very day. By ethnicity, black men are actually the least likely group of men to marry interracially. But the notion, which Zack jokingly alludes to, that black men are out there chasing anything and everything white (and strictly on the basis of whiteness) is pretty much received wisdom. It's funny how that works--in my younger years, it was that perception that caused me to personally rule out the possibility of interracial dating. I feel differently now. But of course I'm no longer single.
Anyway, writing this makes me uncomfortable, and I see how you might take offense. But I don't know any other way to say it, and I'm convinced that that was the way to say it.
Thanks, T-N. This statement clarifies your point to me. Much appreciated.
You're betting that those who come after you won't wise up. How's that working out?
Excellent question! Answer: not too bloody well, but if you're in the mood for pizza in the morning we'll have Eric Cantor and Jeb Bush come to the local chain near you in order to "listen" and discuss "new ideas."
This entire post is hilarious, incisive, and altogether made of win. Applause!
To focus on racism or any ism for that matter recognizes the injustice of it but also ignores the that 'isms are based on common personal experiences. We can not ignore individuals personal experience and expect 'isms to end. In the South, in America and the World for that matter, matters of racism are a result of common experiences. It is better to ask what are these common experiences? And I would not stop with Joe the Plumber. Clashes of culture are usually at the heart of 'isms. To merely say "it is racism stupid" is ignoring the real issues, and is in itself just as ignorant as racism itself.
Arrogant, group-reinforced, ego-based ignorance--which is to say intentional ignorance, despite much accepted evidence to the contrary of the hate-holder's position--are the tandem that create the fertile soil of ethnic hatred, and perpetuate the ability to dehumanize other people by assigning them to a recognized group. Call it what you will it's the same disease, for the same reason: the hater is a small, threatened, insecure person who can only find comfort by invalidating the humanity of another. How else to explain the proto-klan "heritage, not hate" crowd, the Holocaust deniers, those who believe that "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are real and not some fraud cooked up by Czarist thugs. It all comes from the same poisoned well. Speaking of which, let's remember that Joe the Plumber is someone who chose to deal with other people's shit for a living--or at least to pretend that he does. A metaphor for his views if ever there was one.
Coates,
wow what a way to find the ghost of racism in the tea party protests. You quote wallace who uttered those words over 60 years ago. I hate to bring this up, but many southerners have evolved in their thinking on race relations since then. I think that is partly why so many blacks have moved back to the south from the north. I am not from the south, but i think it safe to say that Helms and Wallace (two dead white men) do not speak for the majority of white southerners.
Blacks are moving down South (since you are a self-proclaimed black Republican, it is natural that you will look this fact over)for homes and better opportunities. The cost of living in Norther Cities such as New York is putting more and more of a strain on black families and individuals. More are moving down South for quality housing etc... not because white Southerners are anymore or less tolerant.
Rhonda,
Two points, is there really any doubt that northern cities are the least tolerant racially? I mean, i live in boston. After the forced bussing of 1974, the city has never recovered racially. Let me refresh you memory about the "tolerance" of the North. Skokie, Il, bensonhurst, ny, crown heights brooklyn, amadou diallo, yousef hawkins, rodnie king, the list is endless.
Im not arguing for southerners, but lets at least be intelectually honest. The north is no bargain and the south has definately gotten a bad rap. But is guess that begs the question. Is the south that racially intolerant towards black folks? Where is the evidence? coates speculations not withstanding!
"But over the long-term, the trouble with ignorance is that it trades the "now" for the future. You're betting that those who come after you won't wise up. How's that working out?"
Ask our kids when they're paying for the "stimulus" package and a busted medicare, medicaid, social "security" and the ignorant spending fest that just took place as our first black president, of Hope and Change, set us back into crushing debt for the next 5 generations.
Economic ignorance will hurt a lot more in the long run.
But when the Black Congressional Caucus visits Cuba and heaps praise on a dictator, the hope for any meaningful change runs pretty thin.