Tim Wise's Blog, page 13

Tim Wise at University of Wyoming, March, 2012: White Anxiety and the Politics of Resentment

Just found this…a part of my speech at the University of Wyoming in March 2012

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Tim Wise at Fieldston School (Bronx, NY), 4/8/14

My speech in April at Ethical Culture/Fieldston School in NYC, at the Bronx (Fieldston) campus.

Tim Wise Interview w/ Jenn Jackson, 4/15/14: White Allyship, Antiracism and Accountability

Here is my recent interview with Jenn Jackson (Water Cooler Convos), regarding white allyship, antiracism and accountability. I really appreciate Jenn’s work, and the fact that she was so open to having this conversation, even after having been pretty critical of me in print on her blog. I thought she raised good points, even if I disagreed, and so I sought out further dialogue via e-mail. Then she had the idea of doing this interview, and I think it was a positive way to discuss these important issues.

Tim Wise on Sirius XM, Stand Up! With Pete Dominick, 5/1/14

My appearance, 5/1 on Pete Dominick’s Sirius XM show, discussing the week’s race-related news, including the Donald Sterling flap, Cliven Bundy the welfare rancher, broader issues of white privilege and institutional bias, as well as a discussion about racial scapegoating and bias in the debate over social programs in America. Good stuff…always glad to chat with Pete: a great guy and a fantastic talk show host…

Tim Wise at Skyline College, San Bruno, CA 4/24/14

My talk today at Skyline College in San Francisco (San Bruno), CA…an amazing event with lots of wonderful folks, intent on building a more equitable and just world…thanks for having me!

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Hate Swallows: Reflections on the Passing of Fred Phelps

By the time you read this, Fred Phelps will be dead.

Fred Phelps, who more than anyone in the last two decades has come to symbolize the most viscerally evil edge of Christian heterosexism — and who made a name for himself by picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in combat with “God Hates Fags” signs (since naturally, the only reason the soldiers died was because the U.S. is too tolerant of homosexuality) — is no longer among the living. He has cursed his last lesbian couple, picketed his last funeral, fired off his last hate-saturated fax, filled with utterly out-of-context and maniacally pasted-together Bible verses, all intended to prove his point about the hostile homophobia of the Creator.

Well, if there be a Creator, it is probably safe to say that Fred Phelps is even now learning the hard way (at least one can dream), just how incredibly, indelibly wrong he was while tethered to this mortal coil. Would that his demise might soften the hearts of his church, or rather his family (same thing), which continues to pour forth the bilious codswallop handed down to them by their psychotic father and grandfather, a man so besotted with contempt for virtually everyone outside of his Topeka klavern as to call into question how he managed to live this long. Antipathy, after all, eats away at the body as with the soul, and with as much odium as was regularly emitted from the pores of Fred Phelps, his body should well have given out years ago. His soul, or whatever there was of it, had no doubt rotted decades earlier.

And so now the Phelps fury will fall to the remaining elders of the Westboro Baptist Church, people like Shirley Phelps-Roper, Fred’s daughter, who evinces a frenzied, almost orgasmic degree of vitriol every bit as concretized as anything her deranged dad ever managed to show the world. As do the male elders of the church who apparently have been sparring with Shirley, and even went so far as to excommunicate Fred in the months leading up to his demise. Talk about irony: Fred Phelps, kicked out of his own Tabernacle of Spite by those upon whom he bestowed such malevolence in the first place.

Ah yes, and so what goes around really does come around, as Brother Phelps, I figure, is learning right about now and far better than most of us, as he comes to the terrifying realization that hate, indeed, does swallow: sexual pun very much intended. You’re welcome.

It is tempting (and let me be honest here, I mean really tempting) to simply say good riddance to a bastard as completely deserving of the send-off as this one. The pain he has inflicted on the world with his proclamations of divine wrath for the evil of same-sex love is deserving, in so many ways, of nothing better or more thoughtful or more kind or compassionate than that which he put out there. And yet, try though I might, and tempted though I am, I cannot find it in myself to hate Fred Phelps. I’m not sure why, but I figure it has something to do with having looked into the man’s eyes before, and having seen there the fear, the insecurity, and the fragmented psyche of this villain. I have had my own Fred Phelps moment, and what it revealed to me was telling.

It was April, 1995, and I had traveled to Lawrence, Kansas to speak about the intersectionality of racism and straight supremacy during Pride Week at Kansas University. It was only my third event since heading out on the national lecture circuit, and it was quite the honor to be part of the weeklong celebration. As I learned upon my arrival, KU has one of the longest-standing LGBT student groups in the country: it was, according to their version of it, founded just a week after the Stonewall rebellion in 1969. They also put on — or at least did as of the mid-’90s — one of the most spectacular drag shows I’ve ever seen, which I had the pleasure of observing outside the student center, all while Fred and his minions paraded with their placards of putrescent vulgarity. It was quite the visual.

Now needless to say, the Phelps crew was not there to protest me. Their presence at the campus that day was focused primarily on the keynote speaker for the week: Olympic Gold Medalist and champion diver, Greg Louganis, who only that February had come out on national television as a gay man and also as someone who was living with HIV. He and journalist Michelangelo Signorile were the real draws for Fred and the bunch, and so amid signs that said things like “God Gave Louganis AIDS,” I observed the carnival-like inanity of the event, from behind a veil of virtual anonymity. There were no pictures of me on campus posters announcing my upcoming speech, and since I was only 26, not yet graying, and not far removed from the age of most students, I was able to blend in fairly well in street clothes. The Phelps bunch had no idea who I was, so far as I could tell.

But then I saw it: a sign that seemed as though it had been thrown together almost as an afterthought. “Wise is a Closet Fag” it read. Instantly I knew that I had arrived. I could think of no better honor than to be enshrined on one of the Phelps family’s pissy little posters. I decided that I had to have it. To frame it. But how to manage the feat? Suddenly it dawned on me and so I sauntered up to the very young man holding it (who I assume must have been one of Fred’s grandkids) and initiated my evil scheme.

“Wait, what?’ I said. ‘Wise is a closet fag? Are you serious?” I queried, incredulous at the prospects of such a thing, and utterly incognito so far as the younger Phelps was concerned.

“Oh yeah,’ he replied, ‘He’s a big ol’ fag!”

Wow, closeted and “big ol’!” Though I wasn’t sure how big a fag I could be while presumably ensconced firmly in a closet, I figured I’d play along.

“Well here’s the thing,’ I said. ‘I’m thinking of going to his speech later, and I think it would be really cool if you’d let me have that sign. I could roll it up and then right when he gets going I could unfurl it and hold it up inside the room. That would really show him, don’t ya think?”

The young man was visibly excited. Unsure what to do in reply to my request, he called Fred over to discuss it. After relaying my plan to his grandpa, Fred began to beam with excitement. “Why that’s great! We don’t get much support here at Gay-U,” he noted, likely thinking himself quite original for having turned the K into “Gay.” I see what you did there Fred. Kudos, you.

Fred stuck out his hand to shake mine, at which point he asked my name. Gripping his contemptible claw tightly I smiled and told him, “I’m Tim Wise,” at which point he yanked back his sweaty palm, wiped it on his jogging suit (which was his uniform for these street protests), and said something about me being a filthy fag. I laughed, several of the students watching it laughed. Hilarity ensued, and needless to say I didn’t get my poster.

I would see him again the next day, from the back of a convertible in which Greg Louganis and I were sitting, driving slowly down the main strip in Lawrence as part of the official Gay Pride parade. It was an event made even more celebratory by the fact that the night before, the townsfolk of Lawrence had voted to extend anti-discrimination protections to LGBT folks. We were all in a festive mood — well, all but the Phelps brood — and as Greg and I practiced our very best pageant waves from the back of the car, there they were, running down the sidewalk, signs in hand, yelling something about the devil and pitchforks and Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and Jesus and bathhouses or something to that effect (though I’m assuming not Jesus literally in a bathhouse, but one can never be too sure).

In any event, it was that look on Fred’s face, both when we were shaking hands and as he was galloping along with our motorcade, screaming from the sidelines, which sticks with me. It was hateful yes, but behind the hate is what lurks always beneath such a thing: a pitiable, pathetic, frightened and very small person, hoping against hope to be big in the world. None of which excuses the evil that was his daily offering to the universe, but which places it in a context that should be all too familiar. To all of us. For even though most will never be so consumed by bigotry as to waste the precious moments of our lives heaping rancid cruelties upon others, sadly, the self-doubt and uncertainties that often propel such bitterness forward — and surely did in the life of Fred Phelps — can and often do impact us all. We have all had those moments, however less extreme they may be when contrasted with the recently departed patriarch of Westboro Baptist.

Fred’s fears were those of a man desperate to know God’s will, and if he couldn’t know it, then he would just project it onto God as a way to make himself feel better, stronger, more righteous. For people such as he, not knowing for sure what God wants of you and what will come in some desired afterlife is too terrifying to contemplate, and only by knowing that others are unclean and impure and unworthy of God can one like Fred Phelps feel important at all, and secure that his own salvation has meaning. It is also the only way that one such as Fred could push aside and control the sexual insecurities, confusions and ambiguities that almost always mark the most extreme homophobes.

And while the rest of our fears may be less totalizing and quite different as to their origins, they can be no less affecting. A fear of financial insecurity, dying alone without the support of loved ones, wasting our lives in a job we hate, alienation from family never to be put right, or just the fear of our pending obsolescence, and the realization that a few hundred years hence, no one will even know we were here: all of these can bring out the kinds of anger that so animated Fred Phelps. It is an anger we then turn on others, or on ourselves, because doing that is so much easier than learning to love those others, or ourselves.

Sappy, I know, I get it. Love yourself, love others: never has a more trite and simplistic message been put forth at the end of such a long exegesis on the life of an evil man. But truthfully, there is not much more to say. And in moments like this I am reminded of it. When those among us who sow evil pass, it is all the more reason for the rest of us to reflect upon what separates us from them. And while it might make us feel good to retreat into some fanciful conceit that we are simply better than they, more moral, more decent, and incapable of such a descent into tragic and debilitating viciousness, the more sober truth is that in some ways we’ve just been lucky.

Somewhere along the way, we had teachers, parents, friends, colleagues or mentors who taught us that only love can conquer hate. And somewhere along the way, Fred Phelps received a very different instruction, as have his children and grandkids. Although some have thankfully emerged from that trap relatively unscathed, and have moved on to places of tolerance and acceptance and decency, such is not the norm in cases like this.

For a family nurtured on anger and reared with rage, it is perhaps only by virtue of some inexplicable miracle that any of its members could ever truly learn to love. But if they have, and if we have — exposed as we all have been to so much rancor and prejudice of one form or another in this world — then maybe there is a God, though one far different and more merciful than the one to whom the Phelps family prays at night.

But either way, God or no, what the life and death of Fred Phelps makes glaringly clear is that, as the old saying goes, time is tight. The clock is running, and our children and grandchildren and friends and partners and neighbors are counting on us, and we upon them. And if we do not resolve to teach love and compassion every bit as voraciously as Fred Phelps taught hostility and acrimony, it will be not Fred, but the rest of us upon whom the ultimate blame falls for whatever hatreds manage to swallow the societies we share. Fred Phelps is no more. But we are still here. And as his family (or at least the majority of it) continues to infect and inject still more of their own with the sickness of which Fred was such a contagious carrier, may the rest of us resolve to balance out that hatred, and all of its lesser forms, with something more lasting.

Bearing False Witness: Reflections on Being Attacked by Lying Right-Wing Christians

I guess it would be too much to ask for honesty from a decidedly right-wing, reactionary and Christian supremacist bunch such as publishes LifeSiteNews, but ask I will in any event. Or rather, I won’t ask, and won’t expect it; instead, I will simply respond to the absurd, dishonest characterization of me that appeared in their recent hit piece on my February appearance at a Chicago Diocesan event concerning racial justice. Almost all the allegations are inaccurate portrayals of my views, and the ones that reflect things I have actually said were taken so ridiculously out of context as to call into question either the functional literacy of the LifeSiteNews folks, or their honesty. Perhaps both.

First, I find it interesting that the authors include my description of myself as “not a Christian,” at the outset of their attack, as if this were somehow pertinent to the larger matter of my views on race (or even religion) and whether or not they deserve a hearing, either in general, or within the Diocese of Chicago in particular. Are the authors suggesting that one who is not a Christian has no place speaking to a church-affiliated group? Or that such a person has no valid insights into Christian doctrine or history? Really? That’s funny, coming from non-Muslims who are quick to pontificate about the supposed evils of that faith, despite not being part of it. So too with Christians who were always very quick to tell me, growing up in the Bible Belt south that my being Jewish meant I was going to hell. Doctor, feel free to heal thyself, in other words.

I am then accused of saying that the Apostle Paul “was not a prophet of God,” which is a comment I don’t recall making in words even remotely like that (mostly because I am not much for judging who is and is not a prophet — I find it a boring conversation), so I tried to follow the link provided for this supposed tweet, only to find that it doesn’t exist, apparently. So I cannot really say what this comment, which I am alleged to have made, was actually about.

I can say this however: my position on Paul, which I have stated in the past and will again (and which really is not a matter of historical dispute) is that he never knew Jesus. So the statements attributed to Jesus in scripture — but many of which actually come from Paul, who never met him, because they were not contemporaries — are not things that can be truly trusted as the words of the Christian savior. And those statements from Paul, speaking for Jesus in effect, are often far more judgmental, harsh, and given to ridiculous theological beliefs like “replacement theology,” (vis-a-vis Jews, who are, in this rendering replaced by Christ-followers as the favored of God) than anything Jesus was ever known to have said. It is Paul who places those notions in the mouth of Jesus. They are not coming from anyone who was actually there when Jesus presumably uttered them. Sadly, much of modern Christianity seems to be Pauline in its orientation, rather than following the actual Gospels. After all, in the Gospels, notions like who is and is not going to burn in hell simply do not figure, because this was not particularly important to Jesus, though it was to Paul, the lapsed Jew who wanted desperately to figure out how to remain in God’s favor without having to observe the 613 mitzvot demanded by the Rabbis. “Saved by grace” works in a pinch, one supposes. It’s a lot easier, that’s for sure, and certainly beats being a good person, or following that part Jesus said, about loving your neighbor as yourself

My comment about Pope Francis, shortly after his installation as Pontiff, is accurate so far as it goes, and I actually deeply regret it, both in tone and content. The story to which it referred, which suggested a link between Francis and various death squad activities in Argentina was and is a deeply disturbing one; and if the allegations therein are accurate, it certainly calls into question the extent to which the current Pope may have been implicated in a truly evil period in that nation’s history: one which, it should be noted, the Catholic Church was inadequately committed to challenging. It is simply inarguable that the church turned a blind eye in large part to the murderous rule of the generals there. Catholics may not like hearing this, much as they may not like hearing how much of the church collaborated with the destruction of European Jewry, but the fact that some precious souls are bothered by historical truth matters not to me. That said, I should not have referred to Francis himself as “evil.” That was unfair and intemperate. I should also point out that I have said many laudatory things about the Pope since that time, and indeed quote him at length in my forthcoming book, for his truly inspired statements concerning inequality of wealth and income. I believe he is a largely progressive leader, committed to social justice, and while I’m sure we still disagree on many subjects, his leadership on matters of economic equality is worthy of praise; and it is praise which I have offered by the way, on the same twitter feed that the right wingers at LifeSiteNews apparently only sought to mine for a handful of “outrageous” comments, while ignoring those that might cut against their simplistic, “Wise hates Catholics and all Christians” narrative.

As for Ratzinger, yes, I think Benedict’s views on many things are indeed evil as with some of his actions. Expanding the inherently bigoted and anti-Jewish Tridentine mass, and lifting the well-deserved excommunications previously handed down to Bishops from the hateful Society of St Pius X, whose reactionary and anti-Semitic history is well established by now, are sufficient for me to see little about this former Pope to praise. This, combined with a doctrinaire condemnation of condom use, even as lack of access to such prophylactics has contributed to the deaths of millions from HIV/AIDS, qualifies as evil to me. And of course, most Catholics do not agree with the official church’s stand on contraception, and certainly most Christians don’t, so I figure I’m in good company here. Anyone who thinks it would be better to let millions die from AIDS, all in the name of sexual chastity, than to provide a means for the spread of the disease to be reduced and thus to save lives, is evil. More than that: you are an accessory to mass death, and all in the service of your own prudish and antiquated sexual hangups. Make note of it please.

Not sure where I said that the notion of resurrection needs to be combatted in the public schools, as no link was provided to this claim. I was not aware that this entirely religious doctrine was being taught in public schools, but it surely shouldn’t be. Religious beliefs are not supposed to be taught in such places. Nor do I think public schools should spend any time “combatting” religious beliefs like resurrection in school. I think religious beliefs should play no role in public school instruction one way or the other.

As for my criticism of Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Paprocki, I was chastising him for suggesting that he would hold a literal “exorcism” in response to the state’s same-sex marriage law. Sorry but that sounds borderline unhinged, even insane to me. Exorcism? The church hardly even does that for supposed demonic possession anymore, but now it’s something a Bishop does in response to a democratically-determined law? So yes, I believe that such actions deserve condemnation, but when I said “the official Church should be shunned,” as a result of such foolishness, I am not speaking of laity, or even all clergy (many of whom would agree that exorcisms aimed at same-sex marriage are absurd), but the official, institutional leadership of the church, which apparently indulges such inanity. That is not a condemnation of Catholicism, or Catholics, per se; it is a swipe (well-deserved I think) at the official and institutional leadership, specifically in Chicago and to some extent worldwide (something I also feel to be true about official and institutional Judaism, Islam, and most all organized religion, even as I have great respect for the vast majority of all laypersons in those faith traditions).

As for abortion, I did not say that pro-lifers as a group are “terrorists, plain and simple.” I noted that there are plenty of people in the pro-life (so-called) community who have demonstrated their willingness to terrorize others, physically, spiritually and emotionally, by yelling at them on picket lines at clinics, telling women they’ll burn in hell for using birth control, let alone terminating a pregnancy, shoving pictures of miscarriages in women’s faces, claiming that they are abortion photographs, etc. And this comment, which came in the wake of the murder of an abortion provider, was quite accurate then and now, as there have been over 200 documented cases of anti-abortion terrorism throughout North America in the past two decades: far more such incidents than those perpetrated by Muslims in North America, for instance, and yet we are told to be eternally vigilant about the latter while hardly recognizing the seriousness of the former.

That said, I will also stipulate that I’ve known many in the anti-abortion movement who are lovely and wonderful people, deeply troubled by those terroristic tendencies, and these are folks with whom I’ve worked on numerous other issues, because they were part of the “seamless garment” school of Catholic social justice teaching, which is anti-abortion, yes, but not in a judgmental or condemnatory way, and which articulates a consistent life ethic on matters of war, poverty, capital punishment, etc.

My statement about those who murder abortion doctors was horribly misconstrued, so let me clarify what I said. Obviously such killers are to be condemned, as I assume most all agree. My point, however, was this: to the extent someone actually believes that fetal life is in every way equal to born life, then it is consistent to kill an abortion doctor, just as one would not hesitate to kill a man who was chasing a 7 year old down the street with a butcher knife or gun. I suspect that most all of us would agree, the person who sees the 7-year old being chased by someone who is about to kill that child, would be entirely justified in intervening against that adult, even to the point of mortally wounding them. This would be in keeping with the well-established doctrine of the “vicarious defense of others.” However, most would say that it is not acceptable for someone to kill an abortion doctor as he walks into his clinic in the morning, even though we can know to a high degree of certainty that he will, that very morning, likely be terminating a pregnancy and thus (to those who view fetal life as vested with full personhood), “killing a baby.”

So, to the extent most would allow for the violent intervention in the first case, but not the last, it seems to me that at some level they are admitting, however they might not wish to admit it, that fetal life and born life are actually not morally equal. For if they were, one would have to endorse the same course of action in the second case as the first. And you would certainly have to support imprisoning doctors who perform abortions (which some might), but also the women who have those abortions (which few endorse openly). After all, if a mother conspired with another person to kill her 2 year old, most all would support her being punished and locked up. To the extent those opposed to abortion don’t seek to jail women who “conspire with doctors” to “kill their unborn children,” they are tacitly admitting that the two forms of life are not truly equal. That isn’t to say that fetal life has no value or is worthy of no consideration — a point I actually make in the article from which this larger point comes — but it is to say that the pro-life movement is pulling a punch when they suggest that there is no difference between fetal life and the life of a born child. The entire text of this essay is here, by the way, in case folks are actually interested in what I said and what I believe, as opposed to the caricature of those views provided by professional liars.

As for my views on Christians being guilty of “spiritual terrorism,” this is where the dishonesty of the LifeSiteNews folks ramps up to an almost incomprehensible level. It’s truly astonishing.

Read the article to which this claim is being applied, by all means: , not just the ones favored by professional liars for the Lord. My argument was that to build in exemptions from anti-bullying legislation — which exemptions had been proposed in two states, and which would allow people acting on “sincerely held” religious beliefs to condemn their classmates for homosexuality (or for any other reason) — is to enable bigotry. Students should not have a right to bully others and then hide behind the Bible as their reason for doing so. That is indeed spiritual terrorism. Your religious views are yours, and you are entitled to them. That does not give you a right to evangelize me, or others. Your right to speak your views does not entitle you to my ears, and in a captive environment like a school, for you to go around proselytizing your faith is to force me to hear your speech. I can’t turn it off like a TV station, or radio program. As someone who was spiritually bullied by fanatical and hateful Christian bigots in public schools (and they were teachers by the way), I can attest to the reality of this problem, however much privileged Christians who have never been exposed to that kind of treatment (because the rest of us aren’t so religiously narcissistic as to go around telling people they’re going to hell), might deny it.

I did not accuse parents with traditional views of being guilty of child abuse. I said that parents who teach their children bigotry and keep their children from being exposed to alternative views are guilty of child abuse, and dangerous to society, and for reasons I explain full in the above mentioned essay. The woman I accused of heterosexist straight supremacy didn’t just say that her religious beliefs led her to believe that homosexuality was wrong; she said, a) that she had a right to tell her children that gays were evil and going to hell, and that b) the larger society has no right to tell her children otherwise, because c) her children are her property. That is psychopathy on parade, and socially unacceptable, and again, for reasons I fully explain in the piece. Please read it, seriously.

I did not say that beliefs in miracles or resurrection were “problems for the rest of us” that should be countered in schools, or that parents didn’t have a right to teach their kids such things. Here is what I said:

Along these same lines, if raising your children to believe that God can make the sun dance in the sky, or that people can be resurrected from the dead, or that prayer can heal serious illness without the faithless interference of medicine, gets in the way of their learning the biology, physiology, chemistry and physics they will need to be competent doctors, engineers, researchers or any number of other things, then those teachings become a problem for the rest of us; and thus, the rest of us have a right and indeed, obligation to teach them other things, even when those things conflict with the parochial instructions of their parental units. (By the same token, I should note, we have an obligation to teach people who are a bit too enamored of modern science — despite the way in which it has been used to justify the plunder of the Earth and the domination of nature — a little something about ethics, but that’s another essay for another day).

In other words, I was only speaking of those who allow their faith to interfere with their ability to use science and reason, which are both pretty important for jobs like medicine, engineering, biology, etc. Many millions of Christians, of course, maintain their faith and still accept science — and as such, know it is impossible for the sun to dance in the sky without the world being incinerated — and as such, I was obviously not referring to them. You can believe and teach whatever you want, but because children become adults who interact with the rest of us, your right to teach those things is not an exclusive one: the society has an interest in exposing your children to other views, and then your kids, being free moral agents, will make up their own minds.

Again, and by all means, from which these comments were taken (out of context of course) and decide for yourself whether the comments were inappropriate. I trust reasonable people will be able to do that, and I stand by every word in that essay.

As for my desire for white people to “go die please,” this too hardly reflects my position. I have responded to this often before, as it is an argument made quite prominently by white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups seeking to discredit me; so ya know, nice job LifeSiteNews: you’re in great company and you crib your arguments from some truly stellar sources.

Now, it is true, that I did say some incredibly unkind things about Andrew Breitbart, who likewise said some incredibly hateful and unkind things about me. I also apologized for those statements, to him personally a few days before he passed, and publicly as well. They were inappropriate and I deeply regret them, however much I still believe Andrew was a horribly destructive individual whose entire M.O. was personal attack and cruelty. In fact my tirade against him was provoked by his own thinly veiled threats to expose my personal address to his followers, which of course would have endangered my family, as there are plenty of folks who have threatened me before and, given the address to come find me, might have done so. I still shouldn’t have said those things about him. It was wrong of me, and I did not and do not wish harm on anyone. But that was the background of what was going on in that case. His death was profoundly moving for me, despite our differences, because we are/were both fathers, and I can only imagine the pain his children and wife experienced at the loss of their father and husband.

As for my “looking forward” to the mass death of white people…seriously? Reading comprehension must not be a job requirement to write for LifeSiteNews.

In 2010, I wrote a piece in the wake of the mid-term elections, while, though admittedly indelicate and harsh, was entirely appropriate. In it, I noted that indeed the mostly older white folks screaming about “wanting their country back” are the problem in this country, and for reasons I have explored elsewhere in greater depth: first off, it isn’t “their” country, and the fact they think it is speaks to the sense of white entitlement so typical in this country among many white Americans, especially older ones. Secondly, I was noting that those who nostalgically remember the pre-civil rights era (and who think the 50s were some golden era, for instance, or who wax nostalgic about the good old days) are morally blinded. These days were not good for people of color, or most women, or LGBT folks, or non-Christians. Those days were an oppressive hell for most such persons, and people who don’t get that are an impediment not to some left-wing fantasy of mine, but an impediment to a decent and humane society.

If you believe America was better before the 1960s, you are either an idiot of the first order, or a racist, or both. And so I was saying that older white folks have generally been the ones in the way of progress, which is politically inarguable, and that the society will be a better place when they no longer have the power and prominence they currently enjoy. I think this is true and I stand by it. That doesn’t mean I want them to literally die. But everyone dies, and I do believe that this country will be a better place, and a more equitable one, when it is less white, more multicultural, more diverse, and no longer beholden to the nostalgic fantasies of people who look back on the pre-civil rights era longingly. So I hope the older white folks live a long life, but I am glad that their power is slipping away as the demography of the nation changes. If you are not happy about that, make no mistake, you are, by definition a philosophical white supremacist.

Again, read the actual essay. Aside from the harshness of the language (which tone I wouldn’t take were I to write a similar piece today), I stand by every word. And then, by all means, read my extended analysis of the criticism of the essay, as well. Sadly, four years later, I’m still having to repeat the same points, because some people either can’t read, can’t think, or don’t care about the truth. Dishonesty in the service of Baby Jesus, apparently, is no vice. And at least one of those Commandments handed to Moses doesn’t mean much to conservative Christians.

Tim Wise At Princeton (With Imani Perry) 2/10/14: Colorblindness and the Myth of Post-Racialism

Here is an audio of my 2/10/14 talk at Princeton. First 30 or so minutes are my speech, followed by a dialogue with scholar and Princeton professor, Imani Perry, and then a question and answer session involving us both.

Choosing Whiteness or Humanity: Jordan Davis and the Minimizing of Black Pain

And so a despairing ritual has once again played out, and once again in a Florida courtroom, where apparently some number of jurors find it difficult to accept that a young black male might not be to blame for his own murder; that his killing might actually have been completely and entirely unjustified. Then again, perhaps it’s premature to say it this way. Until the jury or some member of it speaks, we won’t know for sure why they were unable to agree as to the murder charge against Michael Dunn.

Yes, it could be that some among them believed the utterly preposterous self-defense claim put forth by Dunn and his attorney.

This, despite the fact that the gun Dunn claimed to see pointed at him did not exist.

This, despite the fact that he claimed to hear Jordan Davis threaten his life, even over music that was so loud, Dunn said he couldn’t hear himself think (and even though Dunn had by then rolled his window up, suffers from partial hearing loss, and had consumed, by his own admission 3-4 rum and Cokes that night).

This, despite the fact that he then fled the scene and didn’t call police to tell them what had happened.

This, despite the fact that he didn’t mention Davis having a gun to his fiancee, who was with him at the time, until several weeks later.

This, despite the fact that he kept shooting at the SUV which held Davis and his friends, even as that SUV tried to get away from the gunfire.

Sure, despite all of this, some jurors might have believed that Dunn acted out of a genuine concern that his life was in danger. Some people, after all, cling stubbornly to their belief in unicorns, and the idea that the Earth is only 6000 years old, and that God fabricated and then planted all those fossils (which are, shall we say, quite a bit older than that), solely as a way to test our faith. And a full 1 in 4 believe that the sun revolves around the Earth. Some people, in short, are so painfully imbecilic as to suggest that they should never be allowed anywhere near a jury room, whether in Florida or anywhere else.

But then again, it is also possible that the jury hung because although all agreed the shooting was unjustified, some refused to accept that Dunn’s act constituted first-degree murder, while others refused to go along with the notion that it was anything less. Given the defense’s painting of Dunn’s character as generally placid and kind — and given the state’s refusal to impeach this image, by introducing the overtly hateful and racist letters written by Dunn while awaiting trial, or testimony from a neighbor who said Dunn was racist, violent, and had actually approached him to solicit help with killing someone — one can imagine some being unable to see the man in the Mister Rogers’ sweaters (and for that matter, with Mr. Rogers’ voice) premeditating Davis’s death. This, despite the fact that premeditation under Florida law can be formed in an instant, so that it matters not whether Dunn had attended his son’s wedding that night, all the while secretly plotting to kill a black teen at a gas station. That notion of premeditation is a decidedly Hollywood version. It has nothing to do with the law. But perhaps some jurors couldn’t see that. So be it, and the state will get another chance to make that case. Hopefully they will make it better, and this time fully eviscerate the desiccated character of this rancid little man, so that the people of Florida will know: you cannot kill black people simply because you don’t like their music and because they back-sass you when you ask them to turn it down. But if you do, you will be found solely and entirely to blame, and punished accordingly.

Beyond the Xs and Os, however, and beyond the question of what should be done with “Stand Your Ground” laws — which were implicated in this case because of the way Dunn’s attorneys made their self-defense argument and because of the jury instructions — there is another matter, at once more abstract and yet far more important. It is the question of what it might ultimately take for black life to be realized as fully human by some (indeed many) white people? And what it might take for black pain to actually matter? To be seen as worthy of concern, and more than concern, worthy of being seen as equal to white pain, without reservation or hesitation?

I ask this not because whites did in this case what most did in the case of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman — namely, line up behind the killer of the black child and presume that the latter had it coming — for it appears that the racial fault lines were not so neat and tidy this time. Most whites, or so it appears from what is most assuredly an unscientific observation of social and other media, view the killing of Jordan Davis as far less justifiable than the killing of Martin. So there’s that, one supposes; a small peg of progress upon which to hang one’s hopeful hat, for what it’s worth.

But it probably isn’t worth much. After all, even if most white folks actually agree this time with black people, and are appropriately horrified by murder (a type of progress about which one can hardly become too animated, since condemning murder hardly requires much moral fortitude), there are still plenty of us who are not. Too many of us — millions upon millions no doubt — still find it possible to give equal consideration to a white man’s paranoiac and racist hallucinations as to a black man’s life; to believe that the former is just as worthy of our indulgence as the latter, maybe more so.

Or even if we are horrified by Dunn, we cannot allow ourselves to dwell for long in that place, and so we change the subject, and with a rapidity unrivaled in the history of rhetoric. Yes, it is terrible, we say, about that Jordan Davis fellow. But, but, but…what about all those black people killed by other black people?

@mychalsmith have u mentioned any of the 400-500 killed in chicago the past 4-5 yrs ? #dunntrial . you tired of chicago as well ?

— lonnie (@Wake_up_service) February 16, 2014

#DunnTrial now the trial is over we can go back to ignoring the real threat to black teens…other blacks. #chicago

— dominos guy (@jagdan2) February 16, 2014

#DunnTrial who mourns for the dozens of Black kids murdered by gangs in Chicago? Crump? Don Lemon ?

— Wilhelm II (@knightofgood) February 16, 2014

Ah yes, what about Chicago? Chicago having become the new Detroit or DC or Compton or wherever: the geographic fulcrum of white anxiety, even as — it should be pointed out — homicide rates in that city, and specifically among black folks, are actually down considerably from previous years, and now stand at their lowest point since 1965, much as crime rates are down in virtually all major cities, and more broadly, throughout the United States.

Some not-small portion of whites, it seems, will almost inevitably change the subject to that which is more comforting to us, and which requires of us no moral or historical reckoning, no grappling with the underbelly of our national existence, no uneasy wrestling with our patriotism. And so we’ll quickly bring up “black-on-black” crime, or the rate of out of wedlock births in the black community, or something, anything, about the evils of rap music.

But let us be clear: rap music did not kill Jordan Davis. A white man, who had been led to believe (and no doubt by other white people) that rap music was an audible confirmation of thuggishness in its black listeners, did.

Jordan Davis was killed by a white man, who had learned well the lessons of his country, handed down by other white men going on 400 years now. The fact that some black men have also internalized those lessons — that black life is not worth much and as such can be disposed of with nary a second thought — does not change the identity of the teacher.

Indeed, the fact that more black males are killed by other black males than by white men like Michael Dunn does not change anything. Nor is it even remotely worth noting at moments such as this. In fact, to so readily leap to that deflection suggests a level of callousness beyond even that which one might have suspected was possible. After all, even during the height of American segregation and enslavement, more blacks were killed by other blacks than by whites, if simply because most violent crime has always been intra-racial (because in a racially-divided society, we tend to live around others of our same race). But what are we to make of that fact? There were also more blacks killed by King Leopold in the Congo than by whites in the United States, but that would hardly have rendered the architects of American apartheid less worthy of condemnation or overthrow. The white man who would have referenced the Belgian empire and its crimes each and every time the NAACP raised its voice to protest yet another American lynching in those years, would rightfully have been seen as a pitiable propagandist, a grotesque and puerile apologist for the inhumanity of his own people. So too should we see Bill O’Reilly and Ted Nugent in this way, whenever they meet evidence of white animus against blacks with yet another chorus of “they do it to themselves.”

The reality of blacks killing blacks in 1916 (and please make a note of it, Sean Hannity) wasn’t the problem for Jesse Washington, in Waco, Texas. The problem was a white mob, convinced that he had raped and killed a white woman. The mob, of course, felt no need to wait for a trial to determine the truth of that charge, preferring instead to mutilate Washington’s body and pose for pictures beside his charred corpse, which pictures would later become souvenirs much coveted by locals, who despite their moral and behavioral depravity no doubt managed to still see themselves as members of some superior race.

The reality of blacks killing blacks in 1920 wasn’t the problem for Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie in Duluth, Minnesota ; it was Irene Tusken and James Sullivan — a white couple — who claimed to have been assaulted, and Tusken raped, by the three black men, who were part of a traveling circus. Without evidence or an actual trial the three were lynched. That somewhere that same day in America there may well have been a few black folks killed by other blacks, could not, cannot and does not diminish by one iota the stain on Duluth from that crime, or the one upon the white people who stood by and let it happen, or even gleefully participated.

That somewhere in America a few blacks were likely felled by other blacks on August 28, 1955 is of no importance whatsoever when it comes to how we understand the death of Emmett Till that day at the hands of deranged white men in Money, Mississippi. It does not make their crime less important, and it sure as hell does not suggest that those who used his murder as a rallying cry for the civil rights struggle, including his mother, were somehow “ignoring the real problem” of black violence, or missing some bigger picture.

To be sure, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was not, for all those years, “missing the point.” She understood it all too well. That neither Rush Limbaugh nor likely more than a handful of his rabid listeners have even heard of her is all one needs to know, and it should disqualify them, morally, from so much as even opening their fetid mouths to speak on issues of race, ever again.

And to so rapidly pivot to “black-on-black” crime when confronted by yet another example of the white-on-black variety is especially precious coming from those who trumpet every case of black-on-white violence as indicative of some widespread social phenomenon, while conveniently ignoring that whites are roughly 4 to 5 times more likely to be assaulted by another white person than by a black person. In other words, doctor, heal thyself. And watch out for your white neighbor. It is he, whether a fan of Meek Mill or George Strait, who poses the greatest danger to you. Yet this specter of white-on-white crime never haunts you, indeed fails to register even sufficiently to allow you to utter that phrase, which does not, so far as I can tell, even exist in your vocabulary.

Worse still, the artless dodge about black-on-black violence is tantamount to telling your mother that although, yes, you did break a window playing baseball outside, it was Billy who insisted on playing so close to the building, and so the blame must really be shared. Surely I am not alone in having had a mother who, in such a moment, would have quickly launched into some parable about a bridge, and whether I would follow Billy were young Master William to decide to hurl himself from it in the manner of a damned fool. Or in modern terms (and in words that my mother would have likely been thinking if yet too genteel to verbalize), Fuck Billy. Own your shit.

Those who engage this time-tested duck-and-cover are properly understood as amoral monsters, too besotted with smug and solipsistic contempt for the intelligence of black people (and even some whites) to be viewed as remotely worthy of serious engagement. They cannot be reasoned with. They must be destroyed, and by that I mean politically, not physically, for by their hatreds and disingenuousness they shall surely consume themselves. They will need no help from us in that regard. But in the political sense, oh yes; they must be utterly trounced at every turn and pushed to the shadows of our political and cultural discourses, rendered as marginal as the old Know-Nothing party, or the German-American Bund. For they are no better, no more moral, no more capable of human empathy than these. They deserve no pity, no serious contemplation for their cruel and ignominious buck-passing. They deserve political and social death, finally and completely.

Ultimately, it is their allegiance to the ideological strictures of whiteness that makes their demise necessary; and it is indeed whiteness that calls forth their inability to fully feel the pain of so-called non-white peoples, and causes them to shift the discussion and the burdens of proof to black and brown folks, whenever harm comes their way. It is whiteness — a paradigm of thought that relies upon the presumption of cultural superiority for those of us called white in this society, and which presumes that we better understand the problems faced by peoples of color than they do, which must be demolished.

In short, for America to live, whiteness must die. Not white people but whiteness. You may not know the difference, but if not, that is your problem, not mine.

Do not misread me here. This is not, dear Nazis who so readily regale me with hate mail, a call for “white genocide.” I do not assume, as do you, that whiteness is an inherent essence of people of European descent. I contend it is a sickness foisted upon us by men who sought to maintain their power and control, and needed some among the Euro-peasantry to help them do it; and so they resolved to make us part of their racial team, even as they had maintained us in poverty for generations in England and Ireland and Italy and France and everywhere else from which our people come.

And so they told us to fear them, and to hate them, and to place our boots upon their necks so that they, the elite, could go about the business of accumulating great wealth at the expense not only of those people over there, but us too. If they could keep us fighting perhaps we wouldn’t notice as they plundered our labor, encircled the common land and made it their own, sent our people to war to fight and die for their gold. And accumulate they have, with great aplomb, and with our pathetic acquiescence. And they laugh at average, workaday white people with no less disgust than that which they hurl at blacks; and they begrudge them a living wage too, and affordable health care, and affordable college education for their children, and they prattle on about how only those who make enough money to owe income taxes should be allowed to vote and how the more you make the more votes you should have. And how, if you aren’t in the 1 percent it’s because you don’t work hard enough. Got that white people? Do we hear them now? No, of course not. Because we’re too busy fearing and hating black people and rap music and immigrants from the global south. Suckers.

Whiteness is a lie, a ghost, a legend, a will-o-the-wisp, but one that we have believed for so long that it seems real to us, and allows us now to blame black people for the death of Jordan Davis and Trayvon Martin, and Renisha McBride, and Amadou Diallo, and Oscar Grant, and of our country, which stopped belonging to us the minute we cut that side deal with the landowners in the colonies, and agreed to wage war on the indigenous, and go along with the enslavement of Africans — the minute we decided to become white.

Many years ago, during a family reunion, a great-aunt asked me – she knowing what I’m about and what I do for a living – whether or not I thought there was ever going to be a race war. She asked it much as you might expect an older white person to, with a gravity and fear in her voice betraying real terror. Still living in the same house in which she had resided for decades, and having seen the neighborhood around her become increasingly black, she felt certain that it was only a matter of time before something horrible would befall her. I told her then, and I will say it again now — only with more certitude and evidence with which to make the case — that no, there is not going to be a race war. Rather, we are in one now, and have been since that first boat landed at Jamestown, piloted by Christopher Newport: a renowned pirate who regularly raided ships for the English elite, and who I should note with no pride, but rather quite a bit of disgust, was my 13th great-grandfather.

Ever since that day we have been engaged in a race war. While white people might not have realized it, this was only because for so long, those we sought to cow and control were disallowed by and large from fighting back. Or rather they did, but news of those rebellions, of those acts of resistance, were studiously kept from our ears, as we were instead regaled by Uncle Remus tales and assurances that the targets of our iniquities were quite content with their lot.

But for several generations now, during which time it has become impossible to cover up the truth — that they were not happy but quite a bit something else — white folks, by and large, have been in the midst of an existential crisis. We have been so reliant on the fraud called America, and have for so long basked in the supposed glories of our truly odious history, that we find it almost impossible to understand why the rabble protest and revolt and refuse to roll over. Why one such as Jordan Davis might tell Michael Dunn to “fuck off” when asked to turn his music down, rather than simply reply, “Yessa Boss, right away Boss, sorry to bother you.” But black people do not have to be polite anymore, however much politeness itself might be a virtue. They do not have to cower, or prostrate themselves before the presumed authority of sad and febrile pus-balls of hatred like Michael Dunn. Deal with it.

And as for the race war, let there be no mistake. It is on, and has been since long before you or I came in. The only question now, white folks, is this: Which side are we on? The side of whiteness — a lie that has left us with nothing but the vanity of skin, which vanity I should note will neither pay our rents, nor our hospital bills — or the side of humanity, which, should we choose it, might yet provide a small sliver of hope that all is not yet lost?

#DangerousBlackKids – A Twitter Meme to Challenge the Dehumanization of Black Youth

Found this really inspiring today: An ever expanding Twitter meme called #DangerousBlackKids, which was started to both mock and directly confront the seemingly never-ending dehumanization and criminalization of black youth. In the wake of the Michael Dunn trial, which hinged on whether Jordan Davis essentially provoked his own murder at the hands of Dunn (a question on which the jury, of course, disagreed), it is more important than ever to push back against this perpetual criminalization of the black body. Although Twitter and other social media can never accomplish this goal on its own, it’s a good place to start.

So click to read more, and pass it around. And if you have pics you want to add, do it on Twitter with the hashtag #DangerousBlackKids

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