Tim Wise's Blog, page 2

Joe Biden Destroys Reagan Administration on South Africa Policy 30+ Years Ago – Why He Deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom

If anyone doubts why Joe Biden deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to him today by President Obama, please watch this video. This is from July 23, 1986. It is a hearing on U.S. Policy in South Africa. And in this clip (start at 1:38:50 to see Biden’s key part), he excoriates Secretary of State George Shultz for his collaboration with apartheid. This is a degree of moral clarity almost unheard of in American politics.

It is also among the handful of moments in history that convinced me, as much as anything, of what I needed to be doing with my life. I remember watching this as it happened on C-Span, and being utterly transfixed by it. Sadly, he got so much flak for this that he ended up apologizing for his tone. But he had NOTHING to apologize for, and I still applaud him for it. Please watch…

Alt+Right+Delete: The Disingenuous and Contradictory Rhetoric of White Nationalism

So now we know: White nationalists have been working more on their wardrobe than tightening up the rhetoric and logic with which they defend and present their worldview.

Case in point, Richard Spencer, the Nazi flavor-of-the-month and white nationalist leader whom the media has deemed the movement’s bright and shining star. Although for a while they seemed fixated on Matt Heimbach as the “new David Duke,” frankly Spencer fits that bill better, and for reasons entirely aesthetic. Given a choice between a guy who resembles nothing so much as an unemployed lumberjack or a dandy who dresses in stylish pea-coats and natty vests, I think we all know what happens next. This is the same national media who thought David Duke was the fresh face of racism in the 1970s, just because he had all his teeth, generally avoided the use of racial slurs and was capable of producing multi-syllabic utterances from his mouth hole. In other words, when the white racist bar has been set by semi-illiterate lynch mobs, tobacco-chewin’ Mississippi sheriffs and the likes of George Wallace, clearing it isn’t exactly astrophysics.

But while the movement was seeking to professionalize and become more intellectual, advocating white “identitarianism” and insisting it is no less valid than identity politics on the part of people of color, it has remained startlingly unable to address the ultimate question posed by its politic: namely, how do white nationalists propose to create an all-white homeland in America? Because this, after all, is their self-professed endgame. And more to the point, how could such a thing be accomplished without mass violence against persons of color, as well as Jews, for whom this movement reserves its greatest hatred?

It’s a question I’ve been posing to white nationalists for over two decades. And in every case, those who aspire to any level of intellectual erudition simply dodge it, or seek to change the subject. They do this because they know that even if they can convince large numbers of whites to agree with some of their basic arguments about so-called reverse discrimination, immigration, or the problems of “political correctness,” the revulsion to genocidal movements is rather concretized nowadays, such that any open articulation of the same would immediately sink them. This is why they have to couch their Pepe-as-Stormtrooper memes as nothing serious, as just a joke, as mere satire meant to tweak uptight Jews. It’s why they have to pretend their tweets telling Jews to “get in the oven” are pure irony—something Nazis haven’t done especially well since they opted to call the purging of openly gay SA leader Ernst Rohm, the “Night of the Long Knives.”

Knowing how reluctant these folks are to come clean about their ultimate plans, when I debated white nationalist thought-leader Jared Taylor several years ago, both on the radio and at Vanderbilt Law School, I raised this question. And each time, Taylor punted, insisting that things like “white flight” — whereby whites begin leaving neighborhoods when they become “too diverse” — was evidence enough that the creation of all-white spaces would happen naturally if the government would simply stop meddling with the process via desegregation requirements or anti-discrimination laws. In other words, left to their own devices people would separate of their own accord. Putting aside the extent to which racial separatism or enmity are indeed natural — a subject I’ve addressed both in those debates and elsewhere, several times — the answer was a non sequitur. After all, there is nothing preventing white people from fleeing integrated areas and moving to suburbs, exurbs, or small towns in Montana like the one Richard Spencer calls home. If that were all the nationalists wanted they would hardly require a political movement to attain their goals. As Taylor notes, that already happens and is not prohibited. What is prohibited is keeping non-whites from likewise moving wherever they might like. As such, in the end, more than simple “free association” and choice would be required, and every honest white nationalist knows it. Laws would have to prohibit the free movement of people of color. And those persons of color already living in areas to which whites might like to lay claim — sometimes articulated as the Pacific Northwest, other times the states of the old Confederacy, and still other times the entirety of the nation’s landmass — would have to be purged. So again the question: how do white nationalists propose to bring such a thing about without violence?

The question was asked of Spencer recently, on at least two occasions. First by a Washington Post reporter and then during the Q&A session following his public presentation at Texas A&M University this week. And in both instances he tried to dodge the implications of his position. Though reluctant to offer many specifics about how one might attain a “white ethno-state” in America, he was ultimately forced to concede to the reporter from the Post, however dispassionately, that bringing his vision to fruition may require actions that would be “horribly bloody and terrible.” Then, at A&M, asked the same question by a black guy who demanded to know what white nationalists would seek to do with him, and how they planned to make it happen, a clearly nervous Spencer — not well-practiced when it comes to staring down a black man daring him to start some shit — was reduced to saying, “I’m not making you leave…You’re a citizen…you’re here.” In other words, he wouldn’t have to go anywhere: a statement that will come as quite a surprise to the Nazi shock troops who need and have come to expect from Richard a more unapologetic approach. Simply put, and using the terminology favored by the movement of which Spencer is such an integral part, he got cucked, hard. In the end, he went from being a brash and bloviating mini-Hitler, ranting to the audience about how “this is our Goddamned country!” to a feeble and frightened child or pathetic internet troll—a persona all too common to the movement and far more ubiquitous than the muscular brownshirt types they would like us to envision. Edward Norton in American History X they are not.

But make no mistake, ethnic cleansing and the violent removal of non-whites is exactly what they desire, no matter how unwilling they are to say so in the presence of black and brown peoples, like the ones upon whom they would need to make war, or simply away from the safe and breezy confines of a national media interview. In their private spaces or writings they acknowledge it, the way David Duke did in his autobiography, where he wrote that America must become an all white nation “no matter the cost or whatever sacrifices it takes,” that it will be necessary for “whites to prevail in a revolutionary physical struggle” over people of color and Jews, that whites must be “Aryan warriors,” and that “before the battle is over, many of us will find a heroic death…a physical revolution may be required…” Their entire worldview is about domination and subordination, and we know this because of something else Spencer has been saying recently, in interviews as well as speeches: the one at the National Policy Institute conference in DC, right after the presidential election, and the one at Texas A&M. Specifically, he has been quite adamant in proclaiming that whites are a people defined by a cosmic impulse to conquer. Although Spencer insists he is not a supremacist because he doesn’t seek to rule over anyone else, the intellectual hard-on you can see him popping every time he professes the conquering impulse of whiteness — and his own admission that he gets literal wood reading about Napoleon — betrays his real sympathies all too visibly. But the inconsistency here — professing to believe in white conquest of others but not domination of them — is hardly the most internally inconsistent part of his worldview.

When Richard Spencer argues (hoping to channel a hyper-masculine bravado quite decisively rendered counterfeit by his stylish haircut and ankle boots), that America belongs to whites because “we conquered this continent” and no matter how bloody the process, ultimately “we won,” he reduces all complex moral and philosophical arguments, both for his side and against it, to a simple equation of “might makes right.” At that point, winning itself becomes the only necessary and entirely sufficient standard upon which to rest a claim to power of any kind. Putting aside the intellectual obtuseness of the standard itself, and how precious it appears coming from a preening fop whose own prep school has denounced him (which is to say he couldn’t even “conquer” St. Marks Academy, let alone a continent), let’s at least acknowledge what the position ultimately does to Spencer’s worldview. Because indeed, if might makes right is to be the standard for evaluating moral claims and if winning makes the winners right by definition, thereby entitling them to ownership of the society and culture they have managed to conquer, then by that very standard — Spencer’s chosen sword upon which to fall — the entire basis for white nationalism is undone. And why? Quite simply because as of now, his side has lost quite a bit.

Just as a football game has more than one quarter, so too does history proceed beyond the opening moments of the competition. Spencer would have us stop the clock and call the game after that point at which white Americans had conquered, wrested control from both their British overlords and the indigenous of the continent so as to forge a new nation. Unfortunately for Spencer and his entire crew, they have spiked the ball short of the end zone and with plenty of time on the clock. Because some of those whom his team defeated — for instance the black folks whose labor was central to the creation of the new nation in the first place, and who were initially defeated in the sense of being rendered non-citizens — remained to fight another day. And ever since that initial victory, Spencer’s team has been losing quite consistently. They lost in the abolition struggle and the Civil War. They lost yet again during the civil rights era. And they have lost spectacularly in the culture war, seeing as how multiculturalism is thoroughly dominant in all areas of American society today, from music to literature to fashion to cuisine to politics to theatre.

Frankly, if Spencer really believes that might makes right and winning is all that matters then he should, by necessity, consider Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, MLK — hell, even Beyonce and Lin-Manuel Miranda — his personal heroes. Somehow I’m guessing he doesn’t. And if winning is all that matters, then bet on black. Having spent the weekend in DC and having toured the new Museum of African American History and Culture I can assure Spencer and all who think like him, folks of color have been overcoming bigger and badder than they, and for a very long time. Among other items, the museum includes iron shackles, an auction block and the handle of Lester Maddox’s axe. If these didn’t stop black folks — and the rest of the exhibit is testament to just how completely they failed to do so — it is doubtful that a movement led by a hipster racist in a tweed vest is going to accomplish it.

The very fact that roughly 100 million Americans of color now call this country home and have survived everything the Richard Spencers of the world have thrown at them, and continue to grow as a share of the nation’s population, and increasingly define the culture, is, by Richard Spencer’s own moral standard, proof that they now “own America” too and have the right to claim it. After all, if might makes right, one must acknowledge that white nationalism remains a minority movement, even among a majority population. Donald Trump’s victory does nothing to suggest otherwise. Trump got tens of millions of votes. Richard Spencer inspired fewer than 300 Nazi-con dude-bros, reality-show burnout Tila Tequila, and someone known as “Pistachio Girl” — seriously, a Philadelphia woman known for selling pistachios and singing to fans at Phillies games — to come to his DC conference. In short, white nationalism is still a movement of losers. Although I do not presume that this renders them by definition illegitimate (might makes right is not my standard, after all), if we are to take Spencer’s paeans to conquest seriously, then he must assume that his own movement is without merit.

To claim that victory is its own justification is not only tautological in the extreme, it renders all of Spencer’s other arguments irrelevant. When he insists it is perfectly valid for whites to collectively promote their interests as a racial group, one need not even spend the time explaining why this differs fundamentally from people of color doing the same (since the latter are organizing for a place at the table, while the former are seeking to keep the entire table to themselves and deny opportunities to the marginalized). Rather, with power identified as the only relevant standard, we can simply answer that most whites reject actually doing that as whites, and do not agree with a movement that asks them to organize on that basis. Which means they have lost that argument, and therefore, having lost, the argument need not be taken seriously.

Where he claims that whites are the victims of “reverse discrimination,” one need not even bother demonstrating the factual and analytical absurdity of the notion, as I have done previously, over and over and over and over and over again. Rather, with power and winning as the only relevant matrices, we can just say, “Oh well, too bad.” Just as discrimination against people of color sprang from them having “lost” to more powerful whites who imposed those conditions upon them, so too then, one could suggest that whites have simply lost, both to people of color and antiracist whites who have created things like affirmative action so as to produce greater equality of opportunity and limit previously unearned white advantages. And having lost, most recently at the Supreme Court in the Fisher case, their position is thus without merit solely because it was defeated by the more powerful side. That’s not my argument, but it is certainly the one that flows logically from his.

Where Spencer and his followers insist there is a movement for “white genocide” masquerading as diversity and multiculturalism, one needn’t even bother with fashioning a comprehensive rebuttal to such vacuous nonsense. Rather, and using the logic that says winning is all that matters in determining the legitimacy of a given arrangement, we can simply retort, “tough!” After all, the genocide of indigenous persons was accomplished, by Spencer’s acknowledgment, with violence and bloodshed, but to the winners go the spoils. So suck it up buttercup, a mantra the directionality of which he cannot then limit, but rather must apply back against he and his, apparently too weak to stave off the forces of inclusion.

And when Spencer’s minions exclaim their dismay at the power wielded by Jews, whom they believe literally run everything, from media to banking to politics to most of corporate America, their own “power means legitimacy” equation makes it entirely superfluous to even bother pointing out the puerile ridiculousness of the charge. Rather, we can simply inquire as to how the strong and virile white men who conquered the continent by dint of their masculine virtues became so weak and flabby as to be rendered politically and culturally impotent in the face of the Hebraic forces of darkness that have vanquished them? Oh, and then we might do well to remind those driven to apoplexy by their current dispossession of the very standard articulated by their fearless leader. Far from being a horrible injustice, according to that standard, said dispossession would be ineluctably legitimate simply because it happened. The notion of might makes right would validate their subordination to those Jews, obviously smarter and more capable than they, who had defeated them in such a splendid and totalizing manner.

And again, I do not assume these arguments proper, because I do not assume that winning is its own moral principle. But Richard Spencer does, and so long as he does, he is admitting that in the end his movement is dedicated to total war against anyone he and his do not deem white. His is not a movement of intellectual and moral principle. It is a movement of conquest, domination and control, which seeks power for power’s sake—an entirely fascist precept, incapable of existing side by side with any pretense to democratic norms or institutions. If we are to fight it, we must understand this. His is a movement that, unchecked, cannot lead to anything other than mass violence and the complete extirpation of those seen as standing in its way. If might makes right — and it does in the worldview of white nationalists — they cannot be expected to accept a partial victory (as they did in the past) and not see it through to the end. Their goals, however much they try and hide them, are genocidal. They must simply be stopped.

By any means necessary.

Tim Wise on A.M. Joy (MSNBC) to Discuss Faux White Victimhood and Real White Fragility 12/3/16

My appearance on A.M. Joy to discuss white claims of victimhood caught on viral videos and what they really say about whiteness, privilege and fragility

Tim Wise on the Myth of White Victimhood and the Reality of White Fragility (AM Joy, MSNBC, December 2016)

Short clip in response to a series of viral videos in which white Trump supporters claimed to have been victims of “reverse racism” and went berserk in public places…

Tim Wise on CNN to Discuss Race, Racism and the Trump Cabinet 11/19/16

My appearance on CNN to discuss the real racial problem with Donald Trump’s cabinet picks. It’s not the lack of diversity…it’s the ideological backwardness

Discovering the Light in Darkness: Donald Trump and the Future of America

“One discovers the light in darkness. That is what darkness is for. But everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith…I know we often lose…and how often one feels that one cannot start again. And yet, on pain of death, one can never remain where one is. The light. The light. One will perish without the light…For nothing is fixed, forever, and forever, and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have…The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. And the moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

— James Baldwin, “Nothing Personal,” 1964

So first, remember to breathe. It won’t change what has happened, but it will keep you alive; and this, as it turns out, is indisputably helpful for what must come next. For only the living can resist.

I wish there were some way to spin this, to soften the sharp edges of these blades slicing into the connective tissue of our nation, but there is not. There is only the scythe, ripping collective flesh and tendon, swung by a deranged reaper and those who saw fit to hand him the tools with which to do such damage.

I wish there were some way to blink really hard, like I used to do as a child when trapped in a nightmare, thereby finding release from the clutches of whatever monster was in hot pursuit. It worked every time in dreams. But sadly, this escape route began to fail me years ago, right around the time I discovered that some monsters are real, some dreams incapable of circumvention. Ever since I came to appreciate that some disasters must simply be faced.

I wish there were a refresh button like on the web browser, only this one situated atop the political system and its electoral process, which, when clicked, would load a different reality altogether. But there is no such button. There is no clearing the cache, so to speak.

There is no upside, no rosy scenario, no way to interpret what has happened but as a crushing defeat for the notion of multiracial and multicultural democracy, for religious pluralism, for sex and gender equity and for whatever advances were achieved over the past eight years–hell, in the past 80 years–in regard to these things. To suggest that everything will be okay is to traffic in empty platitudes the ultimate veracity of which we won’t know for some time, but whose accuracy at present should be considered quite a bit less promising than the projections of pollsters on election night. It will not be okay, and possibly for a long while.

Don’t get me wrong: The sun will rise and set, and babies will still laugh, and people will still fall in love. And in case you were wondering, there will still be music. Even comedy. Although, if it is true that comedy is tragedy plus time, we might need just a little more time. But as for the rest of it, well, that remains to be seen.

So first, remember to breathe.

Because although this moment offers very little if anything positive upon which those committed to justice can hang their hats, there is, as Baldwin noted, a light in the darkness, somewhere. It is our job to find it. To seek it out as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.

As we look for it, let us acknowledge the obvious: This hurts. It hurts to see a nation elevate someone to the office of the president so utterly lacking in knowledge, so incurious about the world, so averse to criticism, so marinated in the politics of revenge, and so hostile to so much of humanity. And to elect such a man as would openly boast of sexually assaulting women, encourage his supporters to attack protesters and offer to pay their legal bills when they do, and shut the door to immigrants seeking a better life, just as his family once did upon coming to America, is more than painful. It is stomach-churning.

So first, remember to breathe.

Because you are needed. Mourning is fine for a moment. Take two if you need. Tears as well. But at some point, and it needs to be soon, in place of the tears and the pain we must substitute courage and fortitude.

It won’t be easy, but nothing worth having really is, and if democracy is worth having, well then, I suspect we’ll have to fight for it. After all, if we’re being brutally honest we didn’t have real and functioning democracy before Donald Trump; indeed we haven’t had it at any point in 240 years. And so the situation today is much like it was on Monday, and last week and last year. Yes, Trump represents a more extreme iteration of all the pathological and destructive tendencies so long embedded in the culture. But the fight itself, in terms of direction and focus is no different than it ever was. If anything, perhaps the need for it will be even clearer now, the veil having been pulled back revealing to millions–especially perhaps white liberals–what most people of color already knew.

Namely, that racial division, prejudice and suspicion, are the most potent fertilizers in American politics and always have been. In every generation, every step forward, every bit of progress for the black and brown has faced a resounding pushback, or what Van Jones called “whitelash” on election night. And so we ought not be surprised that as the United States moves towards an ever-more diverse and multiracial tomorrow, some would take that as their cue to revisit this peculiar pastime.

Read Carol Anderson’s brilliant book White Rage and you’ll see that Trump and Trumpism is but the latest manifestation of a generations-long phenomenon nearly as old as the republic itself. When enslavement ended and Reconstruction offered a modicum of hope to those who had been so recently owned as property, whitelash drove blacks back into virtual bondage with Black Codes and vagrancy laws and convict-lease arrangements and Jim Crow. And the rope, from which thousands swung. Strange fruit.

But take note, black people survived, even as some black persons did not. And they are still here, unbowed, unbroken, unapologetic and unafraid. Donald Trump will not change what the mob could not.

When millions of African Americans moved north in the great migration, they were met again with a new assault: more lynching and race riots–pogroms truth be told, orgies of violence–in which their communities were burned and bombed, children were killed, all to intimidate and crush the spirit of those who demanded the right to be free and to pursue opportunity for their families.

But take note, black people survived, even as some black persons did not. And they are still here, unbowed, unbroken, unapologetic and unafraid. Donald Trump will not change what the mob could not.

Mexican Americans were run out of the country in the 1930s by the tens of thousands–even those who were citizens of the United States–so as to open up job opportunities for white men during the Great Depression, in a wave of xenophobia and bigotry much like the one we are facing now.

But take note, Mexican Americans survived. And they are still here, unbowed, unbroken, unapologetic and unafraid—after all, their ancestors were in all likelihood here on this land long before yours or mine. Donald Trump will not change what war and conquest could not. The spirit that yearns for freedom and opportunity is too great.

When segregation was struck down, whites responded with massive resistance, shutting down schools to avoid integration, creating private white flight academies, hurling hateful words and bricks and rocks and bottles at black families seeking an equal education for their kids. But again, black people survived. Donald Trump will not change that. He cannot break what Bull Connor could not, what Sheriff Jim Clark could not on the Edmund Pettus bridge, what George Wallace could not, what Deputy Cecil Price could not in Philadelphia Mississippi, what Byron de la Beckwith could not when he murdered Medgar Evers, what the killers of Malcolm and Martin could not. What J. Edgar Hoover could not. Trump is not nearly that strong and folks of color are most assuredly not that weak.

When the civil rights movement succeeded in breaking the back of formal apartheid in America, whites responded by moving increasingly to a reactionary politic of “law and order” and mass incarceration, even for minor offenses, and the rollback of affirmative action; and when Barack Obama became the nation’s first black president, whitelash took the form of birtherism, led by the man who now will lead the nation, and the Tea Party with their desire to “Take their country back,” and assaults on the Voting Rights Act.

With every step forward, they have been greeted with anger and hostility and the howling rage, either violent or political, of the white masses, who have been led to believe that hegemony was our birthright, that America was ours, and that all others resided here only at our pleasure and for our purposes, subsisting on a guest pass that could be revoked on a whim. Thus the hostility to immigration, thus the whitelash to the thought that we might actually have to share space–not only physical space but even the very notion of what it means to be American–with those who look different, pray differently, or speak a different language of origin.

But through all this, people of color have survived. And they aren’t going anywhere. Even the indigenous of this continent whom we tried so hard to eliminate remain, and they are standing tall at Standing Rock and elsewhere to remind us that we are not God and they are not gone.

And they want you to know, me to know, all of us to know, that they intend to fight as they have always had to fight. Because although the struggle against white supremacy and the whitelash that is its signature move might be new to some of us, for people of color, it’s called Monday, the beginning of a new work-week.

So to all those white liberals or others appalled by the victory of Donald Trump–folks who are perhaps only now discovering your country, only now coming to see with clear eyes what your nation is really about (has always been about)–welcome to the first day of your new job.

Now punch the clock. And get to work. But first, remember to breathe.

Tim Wise on the Rock Newman Show, 9/28/16: Police Violence, White Denial, Election 2016 and Movement Building in the Age of Trump

My appearance on the Rock Newman Show to discuss Donald Trump and the politics of prejudice, police accountability and violence, and movement building before and after the November 8 election.

Tim Wise on AM Joy (MSNBC), 9/24/16: Trump and the Racism of His Phony Black “Outreach”

Tim Wise appearance, 9/24/16 on MSNBC’s “AM Joy” with Joy Reid, Mark Thompson, Leah Wright Rigueur and Jimmy Williams to discuss Trump and the coded (or not-so-coded) racism of his “black outreach” efforts

Tim Wise on the Chauncey DeVega Show 8/19/16 – Trump, White Resentment, Electoral Politics and Crime (Among Other Things)

My appearance on the Chauncey DeVega Show, from August 19 — forgot to post earlier. Here we discuss the bright line connections between the David Duke campaigns of the early 90s and the Donald Trump campaign of 2016: what’s similar, what’s different, and what are the dangers ahead…Also we discuss broader issues of white racial resentment, the politics of race and crime, movement building and the unfortunate inadequacy of pure logic and facts when it comes to political organizing…among other things…

Tim Wise on WGN (Chicago), 9/2/16: Colin Kaepernick, Racism and the National Anthem

My appearance on WGN (Chicago’s) Morning News program, September 2, 2016, to discuss Colin Kaepernick, the National Anthem, and his ongoing protest against police violence. For some reason, the chyron at one point says Tim Wise: “Dear White People,” (the name of an excellent movie that I had nothing to do with), rather than “Dear White America,” the name of my book that they mentioned. They finally fix it in the last few minutes.