Thoughts on the Confederate Flag Apologists

The "Good old Days" and Selective outrage.

Whites love to revel in the past. Whites love to sit and talk about their brave forefathers, how hard they sacrificed, the brave wars they fought in, etc. But there’s a catch: Whites only like to do this when they can revel in positive things about themselves, not so much when it comes to their history of racial oppression on it’s modern day effects.

In Southern Florida, it appears that some White NASCAR fans would like to wave their confederate flag during the races. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,522203,00.html
Start to talk to a white person about slavery and eventually you’ll hear “It’s in the past, nobody owns slaves today, why not just let it go?”, or something similar. Start to talk to them about why they wave the Confederate flag and you’ll hear a litany of reasons, but they’ll never think to say “It’s in the past, we lost, we were defending something (slavery) that was an abomination to humanity, let’s move on”.

White Denial and Rose-Tinted History

You see, Whites who wave that flag (particularly Southern whites) love to go on about the brave Robert E. Lee, go on about the brave men who fought for “states rights” (read that: the right for states to maintain and extend slavery). Whites like to bullshit themselves and sugar coat the past to rationalize their preoccupation with the loss and the fact that they were on the wrong side of the argument of whether humans should be enslaved based off of skin color. The ex-Vice President of the Confederate States himself claimed that White Supremacy was the cornerstone of their culture.

But today Whites rationalize the display of that flag with a number of terrible excuses. The first one being, “It’s a part of Southern Culture and heritage!”

Imagine if a German kid waved the swastika around America or his homeland, claiming it represented his heritage. Why wouldn’t he just wave the German flag? Why does he choose to identify with a flag that took on a completely different meaning from the one of his homelands culture? Similarly, why do Southern Whites not wave the American flag, or even their state flag, to display their heritage and culture? Why wave a flag that represents rebellion against the U.S. and against human rights?

WHOSE Southern heritage, exactly?

One might also notice that it is never Blacks who have generations of family in the south who are making this argument of the flag representing “Southern heritage”. I’ll bet they don’t feel a “cultural tie” to this flag anymore than German Jews feel a cultural tie to the swastika. The truth is that just as the swastika represented a false idea of “Aryan supremacy”, the Southern Flag represents the false idea of “White Supremacy” at any cost, even the rebellion against and separation from the U.S. to maintain it. The confederate flag represents a historical period of White Supremacist rebellion, not "Southern heritage".

So don’t let white people fool you. When they tell you that the Confederate flag represents their heritage, what they’re often saying is either A.) We lost; I’m stuck in the past. Or B. I’m a White Supremacist. Or both.

Just wanted to get that out there.

Tim Wise Article: good read.

http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/hey-dude-wheres-my-privilege-race-and-lawbreaking-black-and-white

Tim Wise writes about 420 festivals across the U.S. and their predominantly White attendants. He also discusses what the drug culture means for different ethnic groups in the U.S.

Excerpt:

Though I tend to agree with those who claim pot has very little negative
health effect upon its users, it does appear to have rather serious consequences
for cognitive function, which would normally be, ya know, a problem at a
college. Indeed, at the big Boulder smoke-out in 2008, white
users demonstrated a drug-induced vapidity that would be viewed as culturally
pathological were it exhibited by students of color. So, for instance, despite
CU Boulder being a highly selective university, they managed to admit the likes
of Emily Benson, who told a reporter she actually came to the school "for the
weed atmosphere," and to be part of the pot legalization movement. Not for an
education, mind you, but to get high. And for this, she took a spot that could
have been given to a hard-working black or brown kid instead, or a working class
white kid for that matter with more serious daily concerns than the munchies.
Call it, stoner affirmative action: a form of preferential treatment extended to
many of the whites at Boulder apparently, including one young woman who
expressed her disappointment upon learning that the cookies and muffins being
handed out by one of her classmates at the 4/20 fest weren't "magical," as in,
filled with even more of the drugs she had already ingested. Bummer: now she'll
have to make do with that one blunt and some Adderall. How will she survive such
an indignity as this?

Meanwhile, as the aforementioned Ms. Benson (from the Kansas City area, and
whose parents must be so proud of her) indulges her habit, and as
thousands of her white classmates do too--many of them styling each other's hair in
dreadlocks, because nothing goes better with white privilege than cultural
appropriation--it is students of color who continue to be
told they are the unqualified ones, that they are the ones
who are unjustly taking up space at elite schools,
that their acceptance into such places is "lowering standards" and
cheapening the value of a college degree.

The irony of it all couldn't be more perfect: a bunch of white college
students clamoring for the legalization of pot, not realizing that
for them it already is, in effect, legal. If they really wanted to see
the laws change, they would be out demanding an end to the racist and classist
war on drugs.

They would be engaged in advocacy, not bong hits, the latter of which make
the former exceedingly difficult. In fact, the only way the nation's drug laws
are likely to change--for everyone--would be if the jails and prisons came to be
flooded with bodies that looked a lot like the ones in the meadow at UC Santa
Cruz and on the quad at CU Boulder. Only if whites start getting locked up will
sufficient pressure be brought to bear to liberalize drug laws. As long as the
ones being locked up are black and brown, the very same whites whose kids are
blazing up (with taxpayer support, via student loans no less), will say nothing.
Perhaps if their little bundles of THC started getting sent to the joint (as in,
the penitentiary, not the other kind), things would change. But don't expect any
of the weed warriors at the 420 events to volunteer for that kind of thing.
Their commitment isn't to social change, after all. It's to getting high, to
self-indulgence, to their own narcissism.

This is perhaps the most blatant example of white privilege imaginable:
the ability to do what you want, when you want, without fear of consequence, and
then to have that behavior deemed largely harmless, even when, for others, it
would be viewed as dysfunctional, destructive, and evidence of a profound
cultural flaw.

Mommy! It's the new color-coded Barbies!

http://godheval.net/nabisco-barbies/#respond

On Godheval.net, an example of racism plain-as-day in our society can be shown: OREO BARBIE. This is 1997, not 1964, yet we are told repeatedly by White society that "racism is over, get past it, work hard and achieve". Yet racial stereotypes like "Oreo" for Blacks and "Ritz Cracker" for Whites are perpetuated in our dolls. Nope, no last effect on children whatsoever, right? This being likely said by the same who were yelling the smear of Obama's idea of early childhood education on Sex being detrimental for youth based on -- *gasp* -- age susceptibility.

Nope. No social racism in society these days. Minorities should just "get over it" and "work harder". Racism is only found in "extreme nutjobs" and "KKK members". White people are well to do and don't perpetuate racism (especially when they never bring it up). Right.

Pass it on.

White People, Attention: You have been and are being fooled! PART TWO

(This is part two of the previous post.)

Where were we, now? Oh yeah.

When we left off last time, we were unraveling the beginnings of Whiteness. Whiteness was created only as a contrast to Blackness, Native-Americanness, and in contrast to anything else different. The creation of the White Race did not end with Naturalization for the first American citizens. Whiteness, unlike any other racial classification in the history of this continent, did something that no other classification was able or has been able to do: expand its boundaries and inclusion of “Whiteness”. It is in exposing this that I intend to show that being White in American institutions is at its root one of the primary tools for the retention of a social power structure and is an arbitrary label to maintain class divisions for the elite.

No, Jews and Italians were not always "white". The Irish either.

The arrival of numerous new groups of Europeans in the mid to late 19th century brought with it a crisis for the White identity. Not only did Whites have to contend with the Slave issue and Blacks now attaining citizenship, but now the arrival of new Europeans who had never lived in mass amounts on the mainland. On top of this, Asians made large migrations to America. The European arrivals were comprised heavily of Irish, Slav, Jewish, Italian, and Polish backgrounds. Many of these immigrants had darker features and brought with them different religions such as Judaism and the branch of Christianity known as Catholicism. None of these groups, upon arrival, were considered “white”. In fact, the Irish were considered as “low” as Blacks. The Jews were considered a different race. Bigotry was rampant in literature, such as “The Passing of the Great Race”, dividing Europeans based off of arbitrary lines and pseudo-science.

But wait, you might think, aren’t the Irish, Polish, Slavs, etc. all considered “white” today? Yes. Is this due to some sort of coincidence or all of a sudden White acceptance of different cultures and ethnicities? Not quite. These immigrant groups aligned themselves with White labor and social movements, such as the Irish (http://academic.udayton.edu/Race/01race/white13.htm). European ethnics, previously “conditional whites”, were now melding themselves in with the White majority. Just as in the past as European lower classes were accepted to keep Black power at a minimum threat from the status quo, European ethnics were accepted so long as they conformed to the “melting pot” lifestyle, leaving their lifestyles of their ethnic homelands to Anglicize and form a skin-privileged White culture. Light skinned Europeans could leave their ethnic ties behind and become White. Blacks, Asians, Mexican-Americans all did not have this luxury.

Not just the ability to have a pretty "White" name.

These were not simply social luxuries. There were plenty of structural luxuries. An example of institutionalized White privilege and minority suppression is in the Social Security act, passed in 1935. The act denied benefits to workers of agricultural jobs and domestic employees. The majority of these workers were a good chunk of the Hispanic and Black population of the country. This created opportunities of wealth inheritance that non-Whites would not be privy to. At the same time, many school districts in the Southwest and Texas segregated Mexican-American and Anglo children into separate facilities. The Mexican schools were grossly underfunded and often offered only a grade school education. It was not until the 1960’s that Mexican-American advocacy groups were able to bring an end to discriminatory practices in education to predominantly Hispanic areas and introduce bilingual education to students.

This is not even mentioning the Jim Crow South, sundown towns, lynching, segregation, and social degradation of Blacks. By racializing Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and other groups, Whites became the “norm”, “non-racial”, and most importantly: “Americans”. By the end of World War II, the G.I. Bill pumped money to majority White families and injected even more opportunities for inherited wealth and social status. Whites, who were by and large leaving European, urban enclaves, were now migrating to newly constructed Suburbs. Being Jewish, Italian, German, these things were now less important to the homogenous White identity now formed. On their own, families had French and Italian backgrounds, perhaps. In contrast to “non-Whites”, however, these ethnic pasts were now second to being White.

Worth it in the end?

Thus, the existence of the White race was formed and is today maintained as a contrast to that which is “non-White”. Being “White” is relatively arbitrary. It is not defined by what it is, so much as what it isn’t (Black, Asian, basically anyone deemed racial). Is the White Race something that should have been formed? Is this arbitrary social group, as well the perpetuated classes of “Blacks”, “Asians”, etc. worth retaining?