Black Uber Driver Threatened at Gunpoint

As discussed ad nauseam one of the bad things about being black in a society that runs on the idea of white supremacy is that not only the police but everyday whites feel entitled to question or to reject black presence in what the white person considers to be a "white" space or at least the "wrong" space for that black person to be occupying. This can be something minor such a secretary mistaking the new black manager for custodial help, something major like a self-appointed neighborhood watchman murdering a black teen and everything in between. 

There is evidence that the resulting continual lifetime "fight or flight" response is not good for black people. This response may be implicated in everything from higher rates of hypertension to higher infant and birth mother mortality rates to higher rates of strokes and cardiac arrest. In short it's not healthy to be stressed out and under attack all the time.

There was recently another reminder of how when information is processed through a racist mindset even the most innocuous behavior becomes life threatening. This incident also displayed how some whites do not view blacks as adults worthy of the respect granted to adults.

MILWAUKEE —An Uber driver says someone pointed a gun in his face in Milwaukee on Saturday, but it wasn't a robbery. He captured the encounter on video and said it's a symptom of Wisconsin's concealed carry law. In the video, a man is seen with a large, silver gun as Uber driver Darnell Smith records the confrontation near 40th Street and Mill Road early Saturday. "Just because you have a conceal and carry license doesn't mean pull your gun out if you think something is happening," Smith said.

White Dallas Cop Enters Wrong Home and Kills Black Man

I want you to imagine that you're peacefully resting, reading, sleeping or just doing whatever you like to do in your own home. 
You hear someone banging on your door. You go to see who's at the door. An armed police officer enters your home without apparent permission and without warrant because she supposedly thinks that this is her home. She then shoots you dead because you're an "intruder" in "her" home. A cynic might say that that scenario is the basic theme of American history and the European invasion of the New World. Well maybe. But it's also the tragedy that occurred to one Botham Shem Jean, a recent college graduate and associate at Price Waterhouse Coopers. I would hope that based on what the facts of the case seem to be now, that the officer who took Mr. Jean's life spends some time in prison and is not allowed to ever again have a weapon or a job as a police officer.

Based on past events though, you never know. I would not be surprised if in the next few days some racist digs up pictures of Mr. Jean playing pee-wee football from the fourth grade to "prove"  that he was some sort of "thug" who got what he deserved. And if the officer is attractive, cries a lot, or gets the right sort of people on her jury she may well be acquitted. Who can say. It's funny that all the people who were wailing and gnashing their teeth and wetting their pants over Colin Kapernick and other Black athletes protesting police violence against Black people so far don't seem to have shown the same level of outrage over Mr. Jean's murder.  I sure they will. Any second now...

Another Black Man Dead: Florida's Stand Your Ground Law

I don't have a problem with people using deadly violence to defend themselves anywhere from the threat or reality of deadly violence. Whether you are in your home, car, or walking the street I don't think that you must let someone initiate and continue felony violence on you and wait and see what their intentions are. I have little sympathy for the carjacker who gets shot in the face by his would be victim, for the rapist who gets stabbed in the yarbles by a woman armed with a knife, for the burglar who gets ripped to pieces by the homeowner's trained Rottweilers, for the mugger who makes the mistake of trying to assault an unassuming kung fu expert..Those criminals knew the risks of their trade; they paid the price. So it goes.

But "Stand your ground laws" ,at least in the case of Florida, seem to be something different. Self-defense should be about using defense proportionate to the attack AND making sure that there is an attack. If someone steps on my shoe, depending on both our moods that day, I may just keep moving and say nothing. I may say something. The offender and I both may end up yelling obscenities at each other or worse. Stuff happens. But whatever happens most people would agree that even if the person deliberately stepped on my shoe I would be (no pun intended) jumping the gun to pull out my firearm and shoot him dead. 

Even if I thought that this person might be a later threat at the time that I used deadly force against him he was no threat. So self-defense doesn't apply. Also I shouldn't be able to go around deliberately stepping on people's shoes and shooting the first person who responds physically, claiming I was standing my ground. In practice however, Florida's stand your ground law gives the benefit of the doubt to the shooter, regardless of the circumstances, especially if the shooter is white and the decedent is black.

LARGO — Prominent civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump stood in front of the Pinellas County Justice Center on Thursday and demanded justice for the family of Markeis McGlockton.
Flanked by the slain man’s parents and girlfriend, Crump told reporters that McGlockton’s shooting death last week was "cold-blooded murder ... by the self-appointed, wannabe cop Michael Drejka."

Black Men Don't Belong Here!!!

I don't know if these sorts of incidents are actually happening more frequently or if we are just hearing about them more often but they give the lie to the bromides that (1) people don't notice race or (2) that Black American men get any sort of benefits from patriarchy. In both cases referenced in this post the unfounded fears or aggression of white women led them to confront and invoke the threat of state violence against Black men. 

Fortunately for the men involved they managed to avoid being shot or assaulted but it could have just as easily gone the other way. It is impossible for me to imagine social sanction for a Black woman claiming to be in fear of her life by the mere presence of a white man or seeking to bully him out of the public space if all he was doing was minding his own business. In both instances white women made automatic assumptions that blackness was not allowed in their surroundings and needed to be expelled. 

There are of course younger Black people who look back at the responses of Black Americans to state sponsored segregation and violence before 1970 or so and find them lacking. If these sorts of incidents continue to occur we'll find out who really is ready to stand up to the Beast, so to speak, and who was just flapping their gums. If you're Black in America, particularly a Black man, you have to be ready for this sort of thing. It can happen any time any where. We've seen a white woman in South Carolina assault Black boys at a pool, a white man in North Carolina demand to see a Black family's pool id, a white woman in Tennessee try to kick a Black family out of the pool, a white woman in Yale call the police on the fellow black student taking a nap, and too many more incidents to mention. Clearly most white do understand just whose side the police are likely to take. I do think that Trump's election has given permission to certain people to share their true feelings. 

(FOX 11) - A man told his story about an experience he described as racial profiling in a neighborhood where he was parked in his car. Ezekiel Phillips said if he weren’t black, a white woman would have never felt threatened by his presence. “You don’t have to call 911 on me. Talk to me. Ask me my name,” Phillips said.

Einstein, Politics and Art

There have been many situations in which artists of varying talent levels have been accused of committing or proven to have committed nasty acts, often criminal, often against women. Others have been accused of saying or believing foul things about women or people of different races, religions or nationalities.. Recently this has led to many people claiming that in order to show our disdain for the artist and his bad actions or thoughts and support for his alleged or actual victims we should remove the artist's works from our playlists, cd players, theater stages, movie and tv screens, galleries, or bookshelves. Other critics of an even more puritanical bent, or perhaps just jealous, have argued that the artist's work itself is hopelessly flawed because of his bad thoughts/actions and thus must be completely expunged from existence and memory. They have argued that by definition anyone who believes or behaves a certain way can not produce work that is worth anything.

I've written before on how I find these approaches short sighted and limiting. But it's of course ultimately a personal and rather arbitrary decision as to which art you patronize. There are artists whose works I don't appreciate because I was exposed to something ugly they said or did before I was exposed to their creative work. And there are artists whose work I appreciate even though were we ever to meet there would likely be nothing but mutual disdain if not hatred. So it goes. But even in the case where I dislike an artist for whatever non-art related reason I have, I still believe that the value of their work stands apart from my subjective response to them. A non-art example of this recently popped up with the reveal of Einstein's travel diaries.

Black Doctor Prevented From Entering Her Own Neighborhood

I've written before about how one of the most persistent elements of American anti-Black racism is the idea that some whites have that a given Black person doesn't belong in a certain space and can or must be challenged. Some racists can't believe that anyone Black can legitimately own or enjoy nice things. These challenges can range from anything from hard looks and slow service at an upscale restaurant to extra demands for id when writing a check or using a credit card, to mistaking a co-worker for a criminal or janitor all the way up to physical attacks by the police or others. This all goes back to slavery and formalized Jim Crow. During slavery Black mobility was severely limited and had to be literally signed off on by a white of sufficient authority to grant it. Blacks, free or otherwise, who were caught in "white" areas without some sort of pass could run into some serious trouble. This attitude has never really gone away. Most Black people can tell a story in which this racialized hostility is revealed either in a minor or major way. The other day it was a Black doctor's turn.

ATLANTA — A Black doctor is upset at a man who she says racially profiled her when he blocked her from entering the community that she has lived in for about eight years. A part of the nearly 30-minute exchange was captured on camera. A police report indicates that Nnenna Aguocha stated she was attempting to enter the Buckhead Townhome community after just coming off an overnight shift when another property owner stopped her at the gate entrance. She said he parked his car under the gate arm and refused to move forward to let her in, despite her repeated requests. "He got out of the car and threatened to call the police on me because I was trespassing," she said in the video recording taken at the scene. "This is racial profiling at its finest."

Roseanne Barr Goes Full Racist

On twitter, actress Roseanne Barr compared former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to an ape. She then gave an half-hearted apology and deleted her tweet, saying she was leaving twitter. White racists have always made comparisons of black people to apes. "Planet of the Apes" is a particularly popular metaphor when used to refer to black people. I've seen that one used by numerous bigots over the years. The thing about the phrase is that the person using it is basically waving a flag saying "I'm a racist!". It expresses the essence of white supremacy, the belief and practice that the black person isn't fully human. This is what allows people to justify slavery, police brutality, segregation, exploitation, and murder. If Black people are not human but instead a subhuman primate of some kind then obviously normal human morality does not apply to whites' interactions with Blacks.

Roseanne Barr, one of ABC's biggest stars, apologized after a bizarre, racist Twitter rant Tuesday morning, and then announced she's "now leaving Twitter."
ABC had no immediate comment. Following the rant, one of the show's consulting producers, Wanda Sykes, said she's done with the show. "I will not be returning to @RoseanneOnABC," Sykes tweeted.
Barr is notorious for tweeting about pro-Trump conspiracy theories and other controversial topics. This week she repeatedly attacked prominent Democrats.

In one of the tweets, she wrote, "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj."
Barr was responding to a comment about Valerie Jarrett, a top former aide to President Obama. CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski responded to Roseanne on Twitter about the Jarrett comment, which she replied was "a joke."

Black Men Arrested At Starbucks Speak Out

You may have heard about the Black men arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks while they were waiting to have a business meeting with a possible partner. Charges were dropped. The white female manager who called the police within two minutes of the men's arrival allegedly did so because the men hadn't purchased anything and had asked (and been denied) a chance to use the bathroom. There have been other incidents at other Starbucks locations but this is emphatically not solely a Starbucks problem. This is a white racism problem or to be more precise as some of the people behaving in this manner towards Black people are not white, it's an anti-Black racism problem, particularly an anti-Black male attitude. Again, incidents like this are why I am so dismissive of anyone who argues that Black men are oppressive patriarchs. You can say a lot of things about patriarchs but they don't get arrested and perp-walked out of an establishment for the crime of annoying or scaring someone who isn't Black. 

We see again that the mere presence of Black masculinity in a public space badly scares some people and/or sets them off. Just as in Fort Worth, or in Rochester Hills, being Black in public causes some non-Blacks to either wet their pants in fear or feel that they must immediately show the n****s who is the boss. What sort of citizen are you if you can literally be arrested because someone thinks that you didn't order coffee fast enough? You're certainly not a first class citizen. The men speak about their experiences below:

Rochester Hills White Homeowner shoots at Black Teen for asking directions

I've written previously about how racial stereotypes and assumptions can be hurtful or irritating and harmful to your career or health. However, when the people who make snap judgments are armed and fearful, such assumptions can be dangerous to your life. We see white cops do this with black people on a regular basis. But police are not separate from their community, but a part of it. The ultimate problem is not with the police but with people in all job categories who see black skin and immediately assume the worst.

Police just happen to be the most likely to get away with acting on racist assumptions. Fourteen year old Rochester Hills, Michigan high school student Brennan Walker missed the bus to school. He had to walk. He didn't know the route as well as he thought he did. So he knocked on a door in the neighborhood to ask directions. Well the woman of the house thought that he was trying to break in. She screamed. And the man of the house grabbed his shotgun and shot at young Master Walker. Rochester Hills is about 25 miles north of Detroit and like many southeastern Michigan communities is filled with the kinds of people who aren't too happy about black people breathing the same air they do. Walker is lucky to be alive. I am trying to imagine asking for help and being shot at. That will leave an emotional scar on the young man. People saw him and for no other reason than his race and gender assumed he was a deadly threat at the tender age of fourteen. How will his parents explain that to him? Being Black means you will never get the benefit of the doubt. Period.

The walk to school turned terrifying for a Rochester teen who says he was shot at after he stopped to ask for directions. Fourteen-year-old Brennan Walker missed the bus and tried to walk to school, but got lost after he couldn't remember the route.The freshman wasn't hit, as the shot missed him as he ran away.

Water's Wet, and Black Men Still Face Discrimination

Finished school 
Qualified
On the job
Still denied
It's so hard to win in the skin I'm in
The Skin I'm In
Chairmen of the Board
You may recall a few months back a writer at The Root wrote a pandering fact free poorly argued and reasoned article that claimed that Black men, no excuse me, heterosexual Black men (have to hit ever last intersectionality bonus point) were "the white people of black America." By this the writer apparently meant that Black heterosexual men wielded unearned and unfair privilege over everyone black who didn't fall into those category. According to the writer Black women did all the work while Black men just showed up at the last minute, took all the credit and the biggest piece of chicken. Even for that writer, that piece stood out for its complete lack of cited empirical data to support the author's contention. I wasn't the only person who pointed out that the piece was making a conclusion that not only wasn't supported by the available data but also that was bluntly contradicted by said data. 

Well time moves on and glory be there is yet another study that confirms that Black American men (the authors didn't bother to try to qualify sexuality) are getting it in the neck. Black American men aren't the "white people" of any group. Black American men aren't wielding privilege over anyone, least of all Black women. You should read the article and the study for yourself of course. 

Black boys raised in America, even in the wealthiest families and living in some of the most well-to-do neighborhoods, still earn less in adulthood than white boys with similar backgrounds, according to a sweeping new study that traced the lives of millions of children.

The Resurgence of Nationalism

Politics is not a field where predictions are easy to make. We learned that from the 2016 election. People are complex. They want different, oft contradictory things. Although the Right is currently ascendant in American politics, Republican Representatives and Senators are not always unified. 

Without the spectre of President Obama to scare their base, Republicans don't have as much in common as they thought they did. They failed to deliver a legislative replacement to the PPACA. Trump signed a budget that was widely seen as a loss for conservatives. Republicans disagree on immigration levels. The Right's overreach and the disdain that many on the Left hold for Trump means that the Left could make strides in Congress in 2018 and possibly even win the White House in 2020. Who knows? But that's all movement on the political surface. 

I'm more interested in the underground political resentments that helped to get Trump elected in the U.S., made Brexit a winning policy in the UK, put a scare in the French establishment which has President Macron sounding like Marine LePen, caused Italy to shift policy on immigration, saw the rise of anti-immigrant and racist parties in Italy's most recent election, brought the virulently anti-immigrant German party Alternative for Germany to Parliament for the first time, made Hungary and Poland turn to the right, just brought another anti-immigrant party to power in Austria, and has seen the Czech Republic refuse to take in any more refugees.

Amy Wax and Racism

It is darkly ironic that University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, whose heritage is such that were she unfortunate enough to have been in Eastern Europe during WW2, would have found herself deemed as Untermensch, or subhuman, and thus promptly slotted for efficient extermination, has spent a great deal of her professional life arguing that Black and Brown people (though most of her disdain seems reserved for Blacks) are inferior to whites mentally, culturally, and morally. I don't expect that slavery or racial extermination will be on the American agenda anytime soon but if those things did make their return and you happen to be Black or Brown, don't try to hide at Professor Wax's house. Because she would certainly turn you in. We do have free speech in this country. You can be as racist and as hateful as you want to be. And Wax has been. The limit apparently is when you step beyond your opinions and make a statement of fact that isn't true. Wax may have done that with her latest comments, which is what allowed her employer to rein her in a bit. 

University of Pennsylvania professor has been stripped of all of the first year law classes she has been teaching after it was revealed that she feels black students are inferior to other students, the HuffPost is reporting. According to the report, professor Amy Wax, who teaches at the prestigious university, was engaging in an interview with Brown University professor Glenn Loury, when she made her controversial comments.

Racist Fireman Attacks Black Child

Racism is a moral sickness. But I feel no pity for those who suffer from it. They are too busy trying to make my life and the lives of those who look like me, hell. I believe that you have the right to think or believe whatever you want. But when those thoughts or beliefs become insults or physical assaults then I also believe that it's incumbent on everyone else to teach you or as some would say "learn you" a sharp lesson of the type Tywin Lannister might impart.

A White firefighter from Kansas recently decided that it was the correct thing to do to shout racial slurs at a lost Black toddler and spit at him.
I think actions like this show that racism isn't going away with the younger generation. It's not based on "economic anxiety". It's based on pure hatred. 

OVERLAND PARK, KS (KCTV) -
Police say a racial slur was hurled at a child at a Hooters off Metcalf Avenue.
KCTV5 News spoke to a witness who was at the restaurant and he said he was dumbfounded by a statement the firefighter made to police. “He basically said get that little ‘blank’ up off the floor,” the witness recounted. “The n-word started to get thrown around.”

The comment left the witness speechless. He said he was about 5 feet away from the altercation inside Hooters on Monday around 8:15 p.m. He said he saw a child wander away from his family and, when the family member came to retrieve the preschool-aged kid, is when another customer used a racial slur and spat at the child. He thought a physical altercation would follow, but instead police were called to the restaurant.

Black Children Threatened at Michigan School

Parents complain that authorities aren't doing enough to find the sender of a racist, threatening email to six black students at the Washtenaw International Middle Academy in Ypsilanti that included the words "Go Trump."

The recent message also has the n-word and ends with seven skulls and crossbones.

Students interviewed tell Andrea Isom of WXYZ that they're scared.
"They did inform us that the email did come from the school, around 3:30 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 29. The student whose name is in the email, has been back into the school community,” says parent Ronald Ellerson, who feels authorities aren't responding properly. The Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department tells the station it takes this matter seriously. Spokesperson Derrick Jackson issues this statement: 

I want to ensure all involved that we take incidents such as this very seriously and that deputies have been working to identify who the sender of this email was. Several students have been questioned as part of the investigation and deputies will continue to gather the facts. Once the investigation has concluded we will then forward our report to the prosecutor.

One would hope that the recent events in Parkland, Florida would serve as a horrible reminder of the cost of silence and inaction. One would hope that school administrators and legal authorities would be doing their best to determine who sent the threatening email. It's important to know if this email, as seems likely, was actually created by someone inside of the school. This is of course the same school which recently saw a bomb threat made. Students should not be going to a school where they have good reason to feel unsafe.

Detroit Grocery Sells Expired Food

I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia. In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people, the coloreds. They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.-The Godfather

Until very recently there haven't been many large chain groceries located within the city. The majority of Detroit liquor stores aka "party stores", food wholesalers, and small to mid size grocery stores happen to be owned by people of Middle Eastern descent. Some of these businessmen and businesswomen have a reputation for a certain disdain for their predominantly black and often impoverished clientele. 
This distaste can be expressed in any number of ways. I don't live in Detroit any more so there's no reason for me to shop at such stores. Even when I did live in Detroit I rarely shopped at those stores as I was taught never to spend money with people who have nothing but contempt for you. Unfortunately some consumers in Detroit evidently feel that they have no choice but to spend money on inferior goods and services. More's the pity.

Disgraceful. The Kit Kat Grocery store on Harper near Van Dyke on Detroit's east side, which has a history of health code violations, sells packaged food with expiration dates as far back as 2015, Hank Winchester of WDIV discovers. 
Winchester of "Help Me Hank," a consumer advocate feature on WDIV, finds Sister Schubert rolls that expired in April 2015, Jimmy Dean sausage with a use-by date of September 2016 and bologna that expired on Aug. 29, 2017. The hamburger meat had freezer burns. A box of Betty Crocker potatoes was sealed with Scotch tape and had a best if used by date of November 2017. 

Retail Racism in West Des Moines Old Navy

Well meaning people often try to comfort themselves by thinking that racism is something that is only found in a few backwater states or among low class low iq people or a problem that can be dodged by wealth, correct diction and classy style of dress or something which will be reduced if not eliminated by the vigorous application of free market principles. Unfortunately none of those statements are true. Racism is worldwide.There's no place in the U.S. which is certifiably racism free. Something as innocuous as attempting to purchase goods or services can be dangerous to your emotional and physical well being. Maybe it's waiting for a restaurant table longer than everyone else or being refused entry into a nightclub. Maybe it's being followed around a store because the employees automatically assume you're a thief. Maybe it's a clerk who wants two pieces of ID when you pay with a check or credit card when you just saw her decline to demand the same of the white customer in front of you. Maybe the landlord who agreed over the phone to rent to you has just rented the unit when he sees you in person. 

Whatever it may be spending money with people who dislike you or distrust isn't a good idea. Often their animus can be far greater than their desire for your money. And many people who think this way won't shy away from letting black people know how they feel in word and deed. A recent example of this caught my eye.

Prison Abolition: Good Idea??

I can't remember the cartoonist's name but somewhere in my home I have an old newspaper comic cut out that shows a smirking sheriff about to hang a depressed looking criminal. The comic's caption is a quote from the sheriff. It reads something like "Of course I realize that society is partially to blame for your crimes. Unfortunately I only have enough rope for you!"

If you talk to most people about their ideas on individual responsibility, punishment, crime, rehabilitation and the like you will find that many people tend towards one of two differing schools of thought. Many (not all) conservatives will be clustered around the idea of "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime!". Some will (knowingly or not) have a pretty healthy dollop of bigotry mixed in as well. They think the individual is responsible for committing the crime, and must pay the cost. Punishment is important. These folks usually aren't that concerned with rehabilitation or repayment. They are interested in punishment. They are often indifferent to why someone committed a crime. If one group of people commits more crimes or has more run-ins with law enforcement than perhaps those people have some personal problems to fix. People who think like this can be still be persuaded to look beyond punishment as the key purpose of the criminal justice system but only if other important (to them) points are raised like cost. Saying that prison is too harsh usually won't evince too much sympathy from these citizens. They will retort that the criminal should have realized that before they committed a crime. There is an axiom that a liberal is a conservative who just got arrested. With the opioid epidemic in full swing some conservatives have suddenly become open to non-prison alternatives for those who look like them.

John Henry

John Henry was a little baby, sitting on his papa's knee
He picked up a hammer and little piece of steel
Said "Hammer's gonna be the death of me, Lord, Lord
Hammer's gonna be the death of me"

The captain said to John Henry
"Gonna bring that steam drill 'round
Gonna bring that steam drill out on the job
Gonna whop that steel on down, Lord, Lord
Gonna whop that steel on down"

John Henry told his captain
"A man ain't nothing but a man
But before I let your steam drill beat me down
I'll die with a hammer in my hand, Lord, Lord
I'll die with a hammer in my hand""

Now the man that invented the steam drill
Thought he was mighty fine
But John Henry made fifteen feet
The steam drill only made nine, Lord, Lord
The steam drill only made nine

John Henry hammered in the mountains
His hammer was striking fire
But he worked so hard, he broke his poor heart
He laid down his hammer and he died, Lord, Lord
He laid down his hammer and he died

John Henry" is a folk-blues song that is more closely associated with the Appalachian-Piedmont blues tradition than the Mississippi one. Like many of the best folk songs, it may have been based on real life events. It was certainly used as a rallying song during the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties. It has foreboding, superhuman heroic acts, and of course, death. In the very first stanza of the song the hero, then just a child, knows that he's not long for this life and will die in a heroic sacrifice. Of course, the nature of the sacrifice is debatable, especially in today's post-industrial world where physical labor often is considered suitable only for people not smart enough to do anything else. There are many different interpretations of this song. As with most blues songs there are several different lyrical variations. But every version hits the key points. John Henry was a steel driving man who, when threatened with loss of his livelihood via automation, takes up the challenge and beats the machine, but only at the cost of his life.

Columbus Day

1492. The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them..

Here is how the pirates were able to take whatever they wanted from anybody else: they had the best boats in the world and they were meaner than anybody else and they had gunpowder...The chief weapon of the sea pirates, however, was their ability to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was much too late, how heartless and greedy they were."-Kurt Vonnegut
This past Monday, October 9th was Columbus Day. It's a federal holiday but many people do not receive the day off. Increasingly Columbus Day has become a flashpoint between people who would like to bring to light that Columbus wasn't really a good man as the term is understood today or in 1492 and between those who see any attempt to revise bad history as a simplistic attack on whites, Italians, or Western Civilization. I was reminded of how the second group thinks when I was listening to a local white (supposedly liberal) radio host bemoan the city of Detroit's planned renaming of Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day. The radio host and most of his callers were of the opinion that everyone (by which they meant non-whites) was just too sensitive these days. They said that well sure maybe Columbus did some bad things but Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't perfect either. 

And in their view because America existed now that made everything okay. The radio host closed out with what he thought was the devastating conclusion that Columbus was good because "our European ancestors never would have made it here were it not for Columbus".  Wow. How can anyone argue with that logic.

NFL Protests

Donald Trump's attack on black athletes kneeling during the national anthem is red meat to a white base who are, not to put to fine a word on it, racist.

Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, say, ‘Get that son of a b---- off the field right now. Out, you’re fired!’ ”

The Republican voting base not only has a high level of animosity toward black people, just showing them a picture of a black man changes how they think on a variety of issues. This isn't news to anyone who bothers to read comments on stories in their local newspaper or heaven forbid, yahoo. But it's good to have data to back this up. Inevitably whenever a black athlete or other celebrity takes a political stand that questions the status quo around justice in America many non-black people question the black person's intelligence. Additionally they start to call the person "lazy", "spoiled", "ungrateful", "entitled", "pampered", "arrogant", or "overpaid" among other epithets. This language almost exactly tracks the language of white slave owners upset that their former slaves were leaving the plantation or the language of European colonialists bewildered and angered that they were being kicked out of Africa. 

This view of black progress, that achievement or success is only being allowed or tolerated because of white munificence, is a fundamental building block of white racism, regardless of whatever other politics the person displaying such racism might have. It's found among liberals as much as among conservatives. It's just expressed a little differently.