Ta-Nehisi Coates's Blog, page 27

The Case of Renisha McBride

It's been a little more than two weeks since Renisha McBride was killed in Dearborn Heights. An inebriated McBride crashed her car, and somehow, wandered on to the porch of Theodore Wafer. McBride was evidently knocking on the door. Wafer responded by killing her:

The Dearborn Heights homeowner dialed 911, telling the dispatcher: “I just shot somebody on my front porch with a shotgun banging on my door.”

When police arrived, 19-year-old Renisha McBride was lying on her back with her feet pointed toward the door, a shotgun wound to her face, a newly released police report says.

On Friday, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced second-degree murder and other charges against homeowner Theodore Wafer, saying the evidence suggests he opened the front door before he fired through the closed and locked screen door, killing McBride.

“I can’t imagine in my wildest dreams of what that man feared from her to shoot her in the face,” her mother Monica McBride said on Friday. “I would like to know why. She brought him no danger.”

Unfortunately whether Wafer was in danger or not is irrelevant to whether he will be convicted of any crime. He has been charged with second-degree murder. The standard for self-defense in Michigan
    

Yeah, Alec Baldwin Is a Bigot

AP

I stole that headline from Andrew Sullivan, because like Andrew, I don't really understand how there can be much debate about Alec Baldwin's tendency to insult people who have angered him with the word "faggot" ("cocksucking fag" to be specific). "Faggot," like most slurs, is a word used to remove a group from the protections of society. It is not incidental that slurs frequently accompany acts of violence—both systemic (withholding the protections of the law) and personal (beatings, torture and killings). 

Along with that societal estrangement comes an entire series of justifications—physical weakness and immorality being the main ones. When Baldwin calls someone who has angered him a faggot, he is invoking those justifications. He is saying, "Your behavior is like that of a gay man and you should be treated as such." It is not a mistake that this reaction accompanies a temper bordering on violence. 

This is bigotry. And it is not complicated by the fact that Baldwin  supports marriage equality. One need not believe that LGBTQ human beings are equal to support their right to marry, any more than one needed to be an anti-racist to support abolition, or an anti-sexist to support women's suffrage. There any number of self-interested reasons to support the advancement of civil rights. "Let them niggers vote" or "let them fags marry" is actually a politically consistent position. It says, "I don't like you, but I'm not willing to put my tax dollars behind my dislike." Or even, "I don't like you, but I think I can profit from taking this position."

This is progress. But it certainly isn't the end of bigotry. And progressives, in this enlightened age, should not be in the habit of handing out cookies to bigots who happen to be politically sophisticated. One of Andrew's commenters begins by claiming that he feels "slimy" defending Baldwin. The commenter then launches a defense of his right to use the word faggot (and nigger) when angered. But if it feels slimy, it almost always is slimy. It is slimy to want credit for recognizing someone else's humanity, while avoiding a confrontation with the standards for your own. 

UPDATE: Sorry, but I forgot to quote this essential graff from Andrew:

In my view, the gay rights movement is not, at its core, about enacting legislation, or merely a political struggle. It is a moral case for the equal dignity of gay people, and for mutual respect. What deeply troubles me is not so much that one hot-headed actor is a bigot, but that his public support for gay causes is effectively buying him a right to perpetuate the vilest canards and hatreds that have demeaned gay people for centuries. What disturbs me is that pro forma support for various gay organizations or causes gives this man permission to perpetuate the foulest forms of bigotry – and never take full responsibility for it, and to do it again and again, with no penalty or the faintest sense that he has really done something terribly wrong by his own alleged standards.

Dead on. 

       

Yeah, Alec Baldwin Is A Bigot

I stole that headline from Andrew, because like Andrew, I don't really understand how their can be much debate about Alec Baldwin's consistent tendency to insult people who have angered him with the word "faggot" ("cocksucking fag" to be specific.) "Faggot," like most slurs, is a word used to remove a group from the protections of society. It is not incidental that slurs frequently accompany acts of violence--both systemic (withholding the protections of the law) and personal (beatings, torture and killings.) 

Along with that societal estrangement comes in entire series of justifications--physical weakness and immorality being the main ones. When Baldwin calls someone who has angered him a faggot, he is invoking those justifications. He is saying "Your behavior is like that of a gay man and you should be treated as such." It is not a mistake that this reaction accompanies a temper bordering on violence. 

This is bigotry. And it is not complicated by the fact that Baldwin  supports marriage equality.  One need not believe that LGBTQ human beings are equal to support their right to marry, any more than one needed to be an anti-racist to support abolition, or an anti-sexist to support women's suffrage. There any number of self-interested reasons to support the advancement of civil rights. "Let them niggers vote" or "let them fags marry" is actually a politically consistent position. It says "I don't like you, but I'm not willing to put my tax dollars behind my dislike." or more even "I don't like you, but I think I can profit from taking this position."

This is progress. But it certainly isn't the end of bigotry. And progressives, in this enlightened age, should not be in the habit of handing out cookies to bigots who happen to be politically sophisticated. One of Andrew's commenters begins by claiming that he feels "slimy" defending Baldwin. The commenter  then launches a defense of his right to use the word faggot (and nigger) when angered. But if it feels slimy, it almost always is slimy. It is slimy to want  credit for recognizing someone else's humanity, while avoiding a confrontation with the standards for your own. 

UPDATE: Sorry, but I forgot to quote this essential graff from Andrew:

In my view, the gay rights movement is not, at its core, about enacting legislation, or merely a political struggle. It is a moral case for the equal dignity of gay people, and for mutual respect. What deeply troubles me is not so much that one hot-headed actor is a bigot, but that his public support for gay causes is effectively buying him a right to perpetuate the vilest canards and hatreds that have demeaned gay people for centuries. What disturbs me is that pro forma support for various gay organizations or causes gives this man permission to perpetuate the foulest forms of bigotry – and never take full responsibility for it, and to do it again and again, with no penalty or the faintest sense that he has really done something terribly wrong by his own alleged standards.

Dead on. 

 

       

This Is How You Lose Her

Hall of Famer Mike Webster. George Gojkovich/Getty Images

Given Junior Seau and Dave Duerson, given Tony Dorsett and Brett Favre, and given that these men were the heroes to the kind of parents who would have once put their kids in Pop Warner, this can't be surprising:

According to data provided to "Outside the Lines," Pop Warner lost 23,612 players, thought to be the largest two-year decline since the organization began keeping statistics decades ago. Consistent annual growth led to a record 248,899 players participating in Pop Warner in 2010; that figure fell to 225,287 by the 2012 season.

Pop Warner officials said they believe several factors played a role in the decline, including the trend of youngsters focusing on one sport. But the organization's chief medical officer, Dr. Julian Bailes, cited concerns about head injuries as "the No. 1 cause."

"Unless we deal with these truths, we're not going to get past the dropping popularity of the sport and people dropping out of the sport," said Bailes, a former Pittsburgh Steelers neurosurgeon whose 10-year-old son, Clint, plays Pop Warner outside Chicago. "We need to get it right."

I think that point about truths is exactly right. The NFL has a long history of lying about head injury, its effects and its connection to football. There's really no reason for any parent to listen to anything the NFL says on the subject:

2010-In a display of seriousness over player safety, Steelers linebacker James Harrison is fined $75,000 for his hit on Browns receiver Mohamed Massaquoi in an October game. Somewhat undercutting this display, the NFL sells pictures of the hit on its website.

This includes the idea that the effects of head injury can be dealt with teaching tackling technique--as though Mike Webster did not happen.

But the truth may not be enough, because what if the truth is that not remembering your daughter's childhood is a built-in risk of playing pro football? In my ideal world, the NFL would acknowledge that and then structure its compensation around the incredible risk each players takes when he puts on a uniform. 

       

Richard Cohen in Context

There are a few people defending Richard Cohen's abysmal column today as though it were the victim of a giant reading-comprehension fail. I think this piece by J. Bryan Lowder offers the gist of the argument:

But before I get to that, though, let’s break down what Cohen actually wrote. The offending paragraph is embedded in a longer segment about the mindless, reactionary social conservatism of Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats and how nasty their insurgence was for a more moderate Democratic Party back in the 1948 election. Cohen calls the similarities to contemporary tea-partying Iowans “ominous,” and warily eyes the trenchant, anti-modern (and politically costly) attitude that can emerge when a group of people perceive their “way of life under attack and they [fear] its loss.” Now, it’s true that he doesn’t condemn this faction as forcefully as he might, but my takeaway from the piece as a whole was that Cohen is none too pleased with what their ascendancy bodes for mainstream conservatism.

Of course, a few highly ambiguous phrases (that probably should have been edited out) in the “gag” sentence make this reading harder, but let’s try. “Conventional” is the most unfortunate word choice, with its connotations of “common sense,” “widely shared,” or “unremarkable”; as many critics have already pointed out, studies show that disapproval of miscegenation is none of those things today. But recall that Cohen has been describing a limited, if still very much extant, mindset that (he at least wants us to believe) is not his own; in that worldview, dislike of interracial marriage is very much conventional, as is dislike of former lesbians—these are literally the conventions of that social group.

This is not a very good defense. I read the entire column. I saw the preceding grafs where Cohen offers a rough history of the Dixiecrats and segregationists wing of America. And then I read this:

Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled—about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York—a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts—but not all—of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.

The problem here isn't that we think Richard Cohen gags at the sight of an interracial couple and their children. The problem is that Richard Cohen thinks being repulsed isn't actually racist, but "conventional" or "culturally conservative." Obstructing the right of black humans and white humans to form families is a central feature of American racism. If retching at the thought of that right being exercised isn't racism, then there is no racism. 

Context can not improve this. "Context" is not a safe word that makes all your other horse-shit statements disappear. And horse-shit is the context in which Richard Cohen has, for all these years, wallowed. It is horse-shit to claim that store owners are right to discriminate against black males. It is horse-shit to claim Trayvon Martin was wearing the uniform of criminals. It is horse-shit to subject your young female co-workers to "a hostile work environment." It is horse-shit to expend precious newsprint lamenting the days when slovenly old dudes had their pick of 20-year-old women. It is horse-shit to defend a rapist on the run because you like The Pianist. And it is horse-shit for Katharine Weymouth, the Post's publisher, to praise a column with the kind of factual error that would embarrass a j-school student.

Richard Cohen's unfortunate career is the proper context to understand his column today and the wide outrage that's greeted it. We are being told that Cohen finds it "hurtful" to be called racist. I am sorry that people on the Internet have hurt Richard Cohen's feelings. I find it "hurtful" that Cohen endorses the police profiling my son. I find it eternally "hurtful" that the police, following that same logic, killed one of my friends. I find it hurtful to tell my students that, even in this modern age, vending horse-shit is still an esteemed and lucrative profession.

       

Richard Cohen In Context

 

There are few people defending Richard Cohen as the victim of giant reading comprehension fail. I think this piece by J. Bryan Lowder offers the gist of the argument:

But before I get to that, though, let’s break down what Cohen actually wrote. The offending paragraph is embedded in a longer segment about the mindless, reactionary social conservatism of Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats and how nasty their insurgence was for a more moderate Democratic Party back in the 1948 election. Cohen calls the similarities to contemporary tea-partying Iowans “ominous,” and warily eyes the trenchant, anti-modern (and politically costly) attitude that can emerge when a group of people perceive their “way of life under attack and they [fear] its loss.” Now, it’s true that he doesn’t condemn this faction as forcefully as he might, but my takeaway from the piece as a whole was that Cohen is none too pleased with what their ascendancy bodes for mainstream conservatism.

Of course, a few highly ambiguous phrases (that probably should have been edited out) in the “gag” sentence make this reading harder, but let’s try. “Conventional” is the most unfortunate word choice, with its connotations of “common sense,” “widely shared,” or “unremarkable”; as many critics have already pointed out, studies show that disapproval of miscegenation is none of those things today. But recall that Cohen has been describing a limited, if still very much extant, mindset that (he at least wants us to believe) is not his own; in that worldview, dislike of interracial marriage is very much conventional, as is dislike of former lesbians—these are literally the conventions of that social group.

This is not a very good defense. I read the entire column. I saw the preceding graffs where Cohen offers a rough history of the Dixiecrats and segregationists wing of America. And then I read this:

Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.

The problem here isn't that we think Richard Cohen gags at the site of an interracial couple and their children. The problem is that Richard Cohen thinks being repulsed isn't actually racist, but  "conventional" or "culturally conservative." Obstructing the right of a black humans and white humans to form families is a central feature of American racism. If retching at the thought of that right being exercised isn't racism, then there is no racism. 

Context can not improve this. "Context" is not a safe-word that makes all your other horse-shit statements disappear. And horse-shit is the context in which Richard Cohen has, for all these years, wallowed. It is horse-shit to claim that store owners are right to discriminate against black males. It is horse-shit to claim that Trayvon Martin was wearing the uniform of criminals. It is horse-shit to subject your young female co-workers  to "a hostile work environment." It is horse-shit to expend precious news-print lamenting the days when slovenly old dudes had their pick of 20-year old women. It is horse-shit to defend a rapist on the run because you like "The Pianist." And it is horse-shit to praise a column with the kind of factual error that would embarrass a j-school student.

Richard Cohen's unfortunate career is the proper context to understand his column today and the wide outrage that's greeted it. We are being told that Cohen find it "hurtful" to be called racist. I am sorry that people on the internet have hurt Richard Cohen's feelings. I find it "hurtful" that Cohen endorses the police harassing my son. I find it "hurtful" that police, following his logic, killed one of my friends.  I find it hurtful to tell my students that, even in this modern age, vending horse-shit is still an esteemed and lucrative profession.

       

Richard Cohen on Black-White Marriage

Here's a fairly amazing paragraph from Richard Cohen's latest:

Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled—about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York—a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts—but not all—of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.

Right. I'm not racist. I just don't recognize my country. Also, the sight of you, and your used-to-be-lesbian black wife, and your brown children make me sick to my stomach. It's not like I want to lynch you or anything. 

       

The Lost Battalion

The Open Thread is yours. But mostly it's Emily's. 

       

Delineating Evil

A few months ago, when I was digging into some Eric Hobsbawm, I got into a debate with some members of the Horde over how to view Hobsawm's adherence to communism. I defended Hobsbawm's allegedly reflective outlook against many who saw him essentially indulging in a European version of Lost Cause-ism. I want to say that I was dead wrong and my interlocutors were right.  In that wrongness, I think is an important lesson. 

I understood, say, the Soviet bloc under a general rubric of "bad" or "evil" or "not good." This is insufficient for one who endeavors to be a thinking person. To be human is to be detailed and individual, and thus to see inhumanity  you must not submit to the temptation of seeing people's oppressions as an undifferentiated muck of pain.  Part of the job of writers, historian, artists and intellectuals is not allow evil to become inhuman, amorphous and globulous, to make sure that we don't get lazy, that the contours of particular evils are delineated and precise.

I should have known better than to do this because one of my pet peeves is the way the black struggle in American gets lumped into the broader "People of Color/Women/Poor/Gay etc" gumbo. Activism sometimes necessitates a melding of interests. But I am not an activist. I'm not sure what I am. But I am sure of what I want--to see clearly, that is to say  without self-serving apology or self-flattering caveat or self-justifying analogy.

The following paragraphs from Tony Judt reminded me of this. Here is evil perceived clearly and communicated directly:

The scale of the punishment meted out to the citizens of the USSR and Eastern Europe in the decade following World War Two was monumental—and, outside the Soviet Union itself, utterly unprecedented. Trials were but the visible tip of an archipelago of repression: prison, exile, forced labor battalions. In 1952, at the height of the second Stalinist terror, 1.7 million prisoners were held in Soviet labor camps, a further 800,000 in labor colonies, and 2,753,000 in ‘special settlements’. The ‘normal’ Gulag sentence was 25 years, typically followed (in the case of survivors) by exile to Siberia or Soviet Central Asia.   In Bulgaria, from an industrial workforce of just under half a million, two persons out of nine were slave laborers. In Czechoslovakia it is estimated that there were 100,000 political prisoners in a population of 13 million in the early 1950s, a figure that does not include the many tens of thousands working as forced laborers in everything but name in the country’s mines. ‘Administrative liquidations’, in which men and women who disappeared into prison were quietly shot without publicity or trial, were another form of punishment. A victim’s family might wait a year or more before learning that he or she had ‘disappeared’. Three months later the person was then legally presumed dead, though with no further official acknowledgement or confirmation. At the height of the terror in Czechoslovakia some thirty to forty such announcements would appear in the local press every day. Tens of thousands disappeared this way; many hundreds of thousands more were deprived of their privileges, apartments, jobs. 

   

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Richie Incognito's Accidental Racism: An Apologia

Former NFL player Nathan Jackson makes a full-throated defense of Richie Incognito over at New York. It's worth focusing on Jackson's notion that Richie Incognito was well within his rights to call a black man a half-nigger:

Through the TV screen, Richie Incognito looks like the big jerk. But we don’t understand the context, intent, or perception of the joking that goes on in that locker room, or whether it was perceived as joking in the first place. The voice-mail in question sure sounds like a joke, albeit a bad one: It allegedly involves Incognito using the N-word and offering to poop in the dude’s mouth.

Of course, no one but ESPN’s Adam Schefter takes the mouth-defecation threats seriously. I mean, imagine the logistics there. But that Incognito called Martin a half-N-word is worth discussing. Out in society, the word nigger still excites and appalls, and a white man who is unlucky enough to utter it, even in jest, is forever labeled a racist. But inside an NFL locker room, the meaning of the word has washed out. There are white men who are so close to their black brothers that their lexicon is identical, and they communicate with the same phrases, jokes, and nicknames.

Some in the media were quick to label Incognito a racist, but some of his black teammates defended him. Every NFL locker room is full of proud black men who have a keen eye for the intentions of their white peers. If Richie Incognito said the N-word in a malicious way, those teammates would have taken care of the problem.

The thinking here is unfortunate. If I am found on camera inveighing against  "hook-nosed Jews," to call myself "unlucky" would be deflection and self-serving understatement. The word "unlucky" presumes that virtually all adult white men can be found, at some point, in full on Michael Richards-mode and those of us who shame them for it are the real culprits.

This is is accidental racism, which is to say white innocence, at its finest. Richie Incognito did not choose to employ  the most incendiary slur in the American lexicon, so much as he was caught by some peeping Tom (who happened to be the victim.) Riley Cooper didn't physically threaten a black security guard with a phrase that has been accompanied some of the worst acts of terrorism in our country's history, some rude voyeur videoed Cooper relieving himself in public. 

It's that same white innocence that allows for Jackson's claim of brotherhood and his invocation of "proud black men." We have heard a lot about the peculiar context of the locker-room. I think we should remember the peculiar context in which the locker-room exists.  The locker-room is a workplace controlled--almost entirely--by white people. In this sense we are all in locker-rooms, workplaces with different rules, but with white control remaining constant. I see no reason why the NFL should be immune to the basic laws of American gravity.  On the contrary, players, like all workers, have interests--among them, securing food for their families and loved ones.  Players, not unlike workers, do this by subverting individual interests in favor of the interests of their employers.  

I highly doubt that the invocation of "nigger" has "washed out" of NFL locker-rooms. More likely, is that players simply can't afford to be bothered fighting over it. This is not so different than any other work-place. White people relying on black people to be their conscience will very often be disappointed. We come to work to put dinner on the table. Charging me with taking my work-time to list the reasons why calling me a "half-nigger" might not be a very good idea is the magic that transforms your ignorance into my burden.

The limits of using work-place friendships to analyze something that happened outside of the workplace, are evident in Jackson's notion that "nigger" is the  ultimate statement of fraternity. White people who actually spend time around black people--not black individuals whom they know from work, but black people with their families, in their communities, with their parents--will quickly notice that using "nigger" actually isn't a barometer of closeness. I'm black and I don't call even some of my best friends nigger. They, unlike me, are offended by it. Black humans, like most humans, are different from each other. But to grasp this, you must have to have relationships with black humans that go beyond your job. 

That is why black players defending Incognito is irrelevant. Those players are free to invite Richie Incognito to call their voicemails and threaten their lives, and threaten their mothers, and threaten to shit in their mouths, and call them half-niggers, and when it all becomes public hold a press conference in which they laud Incognito as the second coming of Lincoln.

But Martin doesn't have to live by their standards. Arguing that he should because, like, these other black dudes I work with it said it was fine, is myopia.