Tim Wise's Blog, page 30

Tim Wise Speech in Austin, TX. 2/24/11 at St. James Episcopal Church

Here is the link for my recent speech in Austin, Texas (2/24/11), at St. James Episcopal Church

Twisted Dream: The Disappearance of the Real MLK

This essay appeared on Colorlines, under a different title.

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It's been a rough year for Martin Luther King Jr., and for his legacy.

First, as has become an annual ritual, politicians went to church or some other civic gathering for last year's King Day celebration, even as they continued to support public policies that he found abhorrent. Whether continuing to prosecute a seemingly endless and most definitely murderous war, or by supporting cuts to vital social programs, there is no shortage of hypocrisy when it comes to proclaiming fealty to King's vision in words, while besmirching it in deeds, all at once.

Then of course came the venal co-optation of King's crowning public moment — the 1963 March on Washington — by Glenn Beck, this past August. Insisting that it was time to "reclaim the civil rights movement," because conservatives were the ones who "did it in the first place" — an inversion of history so grotesque as to boggle the imagination — Beck inspired a gathering of tens of thousands of disaffected (mostly white) reactionaries, likely none of whom had been involved with the civil rights movement, but who now would be encouraged to see themselves as the inheritors of King's "dream." This, even as they clamored for more tax cuts for wealthy folks and the repeal of health care reform, all at the behest of a guy who once said he would like to kill Congressman Charlie Rangel with a shovel. I will leave it to others far more creative than myself to determine how one might square any of that with the teachings or beliefs of Dr. King. Then again, given the recent statement by a Defense Department spokesperson, to the effect that King would have likely supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, anything is possible.

And this is especially true in a nation that has so thoroughly sanitized and compartmentalized King's message, and King himself, within the pantheon of national heroes. After all, when you can strip away from the public remembrance of this man, his calls for income redistribution, his insistence that the United States had become the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world today," and his proclamation that poverty, racism and militarism were the "triple evils" that America's rulers had not the courage to confront, you can turn even a secular Saint such as he into a milquetoast moderate whose agenda went little beyond the ability to sit next to white people at a lunch counter, or on a bus, or in a classroom.

When conservatives can effectively twist this man's singular line about judging people on the "content of their character" rather than the color of their skin into a reason to oppose affirmative action, even as he openly supported such efforts in his writings and interviews in 1961, 1963, 1965 and again in 1967, it ought not surprise us that folks are a bit confused from time to time about who Dr. King was, and about the principles for which he stood.

The way in which we have forgotten or been misled about King's legacy is never more apparent than when asking children what they know about his message. Sadly, when I have done so, the most typical answer given is that Dr. King stood for not "hitting people," or "not hitting back if they hit you first," or that his message would be, were he alive today, "don't join a gang." While all these things are true I suppose, they rather miss the point. After all, King's commitment to non-violence had a purpose larger than non-violence itself. Non-violence was, for King and the movement, a means to a larger end of social, political and economic justice. Non-violence was a tactic meant to topple racism and economic exploitation, and lead the world away from cataclysmic warfare. That so many young people seem not to get that part, because teachers are apparently loathe to give it to them, renders King's non-violent message no more particularly important than the banal parental reminder that we should "use our words" to resolve conflicts, rather than our fists. Thanks, but if that message were all it took to get a national holiday named for you, my mother would have had her own years ago.

So we compartmentalize the non-violence message, much as we compartmentalize books about Dr. King and the movement in that section of the bookstore established for African American History; much as we have compartmentalized those streets named for the man: locating them only in the blackest and often poorest parts of town.

Were this tendency to render King divisible on multiple levels — abstracting non-violence from justice, colorblindness from racial equity, and public service from radical social transformation — merely an academic matter, it would hardly merit our concern. But its impact is greater than that. Our only hope as a society is to see the connections between the issues King was addressing and our current predicament, to see that what affects part of the whole affects the greater body, to understand that racism and racial inequity must be of concern to us all, because they pose risks to us all.

For instance, were it not for the indifference to black and brown suffering that animated much of the early non-response to the sub-prime mortgage crisis (which manifested initially in the mid '90s, but received little attention and even less government action), perhaps steps would have been taken to prevent what has become, now, a full-blown housing collapse. But rather than seeing the exploitation of low income folks of color as a national emergency, most politicians and media ignored it, or blamed the victims of predatory lending for being too stupid to read the fine print on their loan documents. As such, the lenders branched out, unregulated for the most part, into whiter and middle-class communities, where they took advantage of folks there too. Now, millions of middle class white folks find themselves on the verge of economic catastrophe, precisely because the suffering of the "other" was ignored for so long, and eventually, as suffering is wont to do, metastasized.

Likewise, if double-digit unemployment had been viewed as the emergency it is, when only people of color were experiencing it (as they typically have been, in good times or bad, year after year for decades), perhaps lawmakers might have seen fit to address the problem. But it wasn't, and so they didn't. And now whites are experiencing double-digit joblessness as well, for the first time in over three generations.

And if we had not long ago racialized the "have-nots" as undeserving people of color, thereby allowing racial bias to block government actions that might have been taken on their behalf — like universal health care or massive investment in job creation — perhaps we would not today have tens of millions of people, including millions of white folks, lacking access to medical treatment or job security. But we did, and so we do. And now we can witness white folks running around, speaking against health care reforms from which they would personally gain, all because of a fear that some of the benefits might go to "undeserving" immigrants of color, or lazy folks (typically perceived as black and brown) who don't want to pay for their own care.

In short, by not understanding the fundamental truth of Dr. King's message that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, we have created a society, forty-three years since his death, where injustice and suffering are rampant. And one in which the dreams of the civil rights movement appear the fantastical products of some Ambien-induced haze. Only by putting away, forever, the safe and sanitized version of this man and his compatriots, might we ever awaken from the stupor and become worthy of that which we celebrate this week.

Service as a Substitute: The Sanitizing of Martin Luther King Jr.

This article is available in full at AOL News, under a different title.

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Perhaps it's no great surprise that Glenn Beck would distort Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s message, as he did when he held a rally for mostly white reactionaries on the 47th anniversary of King's "I Have a Dream" speech in August, all the while suggesting that the group was "reclaiming the civil rights movement." After all, what do you expect from Beck?

But Michelle Obama really should know better.

And since she most certainly does, her message, which I only today received as part of a mass e-mail honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Day, strikes me as particularly disturbing. Even more, it seems indicative of a tendency, many years in the making, for even relatively liberal folks to sanitize the King legacy to a point where it is unrecognizable as the radical gift it truly was.

Read the rest of this op-ed on AOL News.

(And thanks to Gina Misiroglu of Red Room for putting me in touch with the folks at AOL, which is one of the ways she's bringing traffic to Red Room and getting attention for Red Room's authors).

Paranoia as Prelude: Conspiracism and the Cost of Political Rage

Unlike some, I will not attempt to make murderer and would-be political assassin Jared Loughner, a poster-boy for the Tea Party. As it turns out, such a feat would do Mr. Loughner an injustice, ascribing to him a level of sane, if yet disturbing philosophical coherence that he apparently lacks, rather than recognizing him for what he is: a deeply disturbed, likely schizophrenic young man, whose attempt to claim the life of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was motivated by a bizarre and toxic stream-of-consciousness conspiracism, rather than a commitment to conservatism per se.

That said, his acts cannot be fully divorced from the current political moment either, and specifically that part of said moment dominated by reactionary and right-wing voices, among which are included many whose speakers adhere to Tea Party thinking. It is not that Loughner is, literally, a devotee of the right or its organizational edifices. In all likelihood he is not. Rather, it is pertinent — and should not be ignored by those in the media who are trying to de-politicize his crimes — that his paranoid lunacy, the contours of which one can explore thanks to the wonders of the internet, transpired in a nation where paranoia and its peddling have become common fare. In such a place, the Jared Loughners of the world become ever-more dangerous. And it is this about which we should be rightly concerned.

For while Loughner would never have likely contemplated political assassination in a culture where the most pressing issue was, say, a simple philosophical disagreement over tax policy, or the proper balance between interest rates and full employment, or the percentage of GDP dedicated to debt service as opposed to long-term infrastructure investment, that is not the culture in which he (or any of us) lives. Rather, we live in a nation in which it is commonplace, and considered completely rational, for elected officials to believe the President is a foreign interloper. We live in a culture where the nation's most powerful Republican, House Speaker John Boehner, cannot even bring himself to condemn the maniacal lunacy that is birtherism, but is reduced instead to a mere acknowledgement that since Hawaii says the President is a citizen, that's "good enough for him."

We live in a culture in which it is utterly normal, to a degree that has sadly made it nearly banal, to hear multi-million dollar, best-selling authors and talk show hosts suggest that the nation is on the verge of total fascism, death panels for the elderly, door-to-door gun confiscation, and the reconquest of the American southwest by Latinos bent on ethnic war. In short, in a society where paranoia is the daily currency of mainstream commentators, and pseudo-schizophrenic ramblings are elevated to the level of persuasive argument, we ought not be surprised that such a tragedy as occurred on Saturday might happen.

After all, there are many people in any society who suffer from mental illness. Many, indeed, who battle the kinds of demons that appear, from all evidence, to afflict Jared Loughner. Yet hardly any of them act upon their delusions by lashing out at political figures. Most often, when mentally ill individuals become violent, their rage is either focused on persons close by in their lives whom they feel have hurt them (family, colleagues, fellow students, a therapist, a former boss), or it is entirely random and without any seeming pattern or purpose (think Charles Whitman at the University of Texas in 1966, or Mark David Chapman shooting John Lennon). That Loughner's derangement led him to kill a judge and attempt the same with a lawmaker is unlikely a mere coincidence. Events such as this happen at particular times for a reason. There is a reason that Tim McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building happened in 1995, amid the last national bout with reactionary paranoia: a time in which the right was bubbling with theories about black UN helicopters planning midnight raids on patriotic Americans, gun grabs and a supposedly liberal president who was gearing up for the mass persecution of tax protesters and Bible-believing Christians, among others.

It is not necessary to show that Loughner is a follower of Glenn Beck, or Michael Savage, or any of a hundred or more local variants of the same. It is not, in the end, all that important whether he spent time on right-wing websites, or is (as a Department of Homeland Security memo seems to suggest) a follower of the white nationalist group, American Renaissance, or whether he believes (as some of his otherwise hard-to-decipher internet postings hint) that the Constitution is being usurped by the current government because of its reliance on paper money: a prominent meme among the far-right. What matters is that Loughner, like all of us, has been exposed day in and day out, for several years, to the unhinged and paranoiac ravings of persons who believe America is in its "end days," and that the sky is falling, at least metaphorically — and not because of global warming, which is just one more piece of the left-wing conspiratorial plot to confiscate all wealth in the name of nature-worship — but because of the communist/socialist/fascist/Marxist/Nazi/Muslim/Kenyan/terrorist/anti-Christ who occupies the White House.

It is that daily stream of poisonous vitriol from which it is nearly impossible to escape.

In a culture where Glenn Beck plays "Six Degrees of Chairman Mao" every night on his chalkboard, uncannily managing to convince his flock that even the most moderate of Democrats likely hums the Internationale to his or her children rather than regaling them with bedtime stories, we can truly say that paranoia has become not only the prelude to something deadly, but sadly a form of pedantry so everyday in its appearance that we write it off as entertainment, rather than the poison it truly is.

In a culture where political rallies attended by thousands of people feature prominent speakers who suggest the President might well be Satan in the flesh, and marchers who carry signs suggesting "Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's Ovens," or that the President intends to put whites into slavery, nothing should surprise us anymore.

In a media environment where highly paid commentators can keep their jobs even as they insist that those who call for the shooting of government agents so as to stop a world government takeover are "beginning to have a case," or that a national service initiative is just a run-up to the implementation of a literal stormtrooper corps like the Nazi SS, or that "multicultural people" are "destroying the culture of this country," or that Latino migrants are an "invasive species," that seeks to undermine the nation, or that the President is intentionally "destroying the economy" so as to pay white people back for slavery, or that, worse, he and other Democrats are vampires, the only solution for which is a "stake through the heart," to feign shock at the acts of a Jared Loughner is a precious and naive conceit that we can no longer afford.

Whether or not Loughner was influenced directly by any of these words, these verbal daggers aimed at civil discourse, is quite beside the point. For these words, these daggers, are the very ether of the political culture in which he has come of age. They comprise the fabric of the larger ideological tapestry to which he has been exposed. And they are, like any toxin, bio-accumulative in the cells of the human animal, even more so for those whose chemical balance is already dicey at best. Especially when such persons have the misfortune of living in a society that has so completely stigmatized mental illness as to guarantee that most who suffer will receive no treatment.

In such a place as this, to claim that Americans may need to turn to "Second Amendment Remedies" for political change — as defeated Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle did in Nevada — or that Americans should be "armed and dangerous" to resist policies aimed at reducing climate change — as another Tea Party Republican, Michelle Bachmann has — or that perhaps liberal politicians should be beaten to death with shovels — as Glenn Beck said about Congressman Charlie Rangel in 2001 — is to invite chaos. It is to invite murder, whether by loners like Loughner or someone else down the line. It is inevitable. To insist, as Congressman Boehner did, that health care reform is tantamount to "armageddon" — not merely a matter of philosophical difference but the literal end of the world — is to all but invite the unbalanced to start slaughtering the forces of presumptive evil.

That full-grown adults should require a reminder that words have consequences — something even most five-year old children can understand — is pathetic. It would be humorous were the reasons for its present import not so tragic and heartbreaking. Sadly, for those whose entire careers hinge on the hurling of rage-filled pathos, and who have indeed grown rich on the waves of hate for which they have become famous, no lesson is likely to be learned. Because for them, the cost of the lesson is too high. Better to ignore it, to deny that there is any connection between the apocalyptic verbiage to which their lives and livelihoods have become tethered, and the crazed violence of those upon whom their miasma of misanthropy descends.

But if we are to survive as a nation, a culture — or as a planet, ultimately — we'd best begin to demand better of ourselves and others. We'd best commit to a recognition that most of us are just trying to do the best we can, in a world that can be tough and unforgiving. Trying to raise families, keep our heads above water, and do what we think is right. Occasionally we get it wrong, and so do our neighbors. But that doesn't make us, or them, terrorists, or zombies, or stealth Stalinists, or baby-killers, or gun nuts, or Klansmen, or whatever. It makes us, and them, human.

And what is saddest about our present condition, is that this ability to recognize our common humanity, and the decency of most folks, regardless of political philosophy, is seen by too many as a weakness, as compromise, collaboration, impurity, pathology, as evidence that one is no better than the evil on the other side. We have surrounded ourselves with amplified noise machines, which pump only those tunes we are already predisposed to hear, and in so doing we make enemies of our brothers and sisters. We turn politics and the larger, existential fight for justice into a blood sport. Kill or be killed.

Or perhaps both.

But Rand Paul says this is OK…

Today comes the story of of Abbotsford, Wisconsin businessman Mark Prior, who wants to keep blacks out of his soon-to-be-opened "Gentlemen's Club" (also known as a strip joint, or in my part of the country, and by the Neanderthals who actually patronize such places, a "titty bar.")

Why does it not surprise me that the kind of guy who would want to open a "Gentlemen's Club" (which typically involves the hyper-exploitation of women), might also, a) be a racist; b) not know the law which prohibits his stupid ass from barring patrons on the basis of race; and c) be the kind of illiterate who thinks you spell Negroes with a frickin apostrophe before the "s." Perhaps the club should ban people who can't spell. But then again, if they did that, they might not have any customers left.

When Multicultural Marketing Goes Horribly Wrong

Ok, so at first I thought this had to be some kind of practical joke. Some kind of Onion-esque attempt at racial satire. But now, after learning that it's apparently for real, even I'm amazed. And frankly, there isn't much in the realm of racial insensitivity that shocks me anymore.

And so I give you, Hip-Hop Cupcakes: the creation of the marketing wizards at Duncan Hines. What makes them "Hip-Hop?" Why, the black frosting applied to the cupcakes of course, and especially the oversized pink lips that manage to produce Biz Markie-like beats and Boys II Men-like harmony. This is what happens when corporate efforts at multiculturalism — which were always about exploiting consumers and making money, rather than breaking down inequity and creating a just workplace — go terribly, unfathomably wrong.

I am trying to envision the marketing meeting where this idea was first floated. As much as I've tried, I cannot imagine that there could have been any people of color in that room. It is virtually inconceivable that even the most internally oppressed black person could think blackface desserts were a good idea. Even in a nation that made Aunt Jemima an icon, beat-boxing baked goods are on a whole 'nother level.

So here's the meeting, as I'm envisioning it.

Imagine the scene. Three white execs: two men and one woman, sitting around a table in the older white man's office. Outside in the waiting room is the pitch man for the PR firm that was hired to come up with the latest ad campaign for Duncan Hines. The older white executive and the female executive have no idea what the pitch is going to be. They look worried. But the younger white male leans back in his chair with a confident, knowing smile. The meeting begins.

Older White Guy: "So, how are we gonna make homemade cupcakes cool? I mean, nowdays kids can buy gourmet cupcakes at all these fancy cupcake places that keep popping up. Their parents don't want to take the time to make their own. What do we do?!"

Young White Guy: "Well, we may not be able to make homemade cupcakes cool. But we can make 'em hip. As in, hip-hop!"

With that, the door to the boardroom opens, and in comes a white, twenty-something male PR director. He is wearing dark glasses and a Kangol cap, along with several gold chains. The young Duncan Hines exec looks excited. His colleagues are considerably less enthused.

White Female: "What? What the hell is this? Hip-Hop cupcakes? What does hip-hop have to do with cupcakes? And why is he dressed like that?"

Just then, the pitch man pipes up:

PR pitch man: (speaking in what he apparently considers authentic black English): "C'mon shawty, why you gotta be a buster? I ain't tryin' to hear 'dat. Just peep this, yo: the joint starts with some lame-ass yellow cupcakes. And then, this white lady with smoove hands starts pouring black frostin' all up on they shit. And jus' when folks are like, 'what the fuck is this?' some nice, full lips pop up on top, and some eyes too! And they start rockin' some funky-fresh beats, while the white lady is all up on the phone with one of her homegirls from the muh'fuckin' PTA!"

White Female: "Wait, wait, wait, isn't this racist? And why are you talking like that? Is that how you think black people talk? And you think people are going to buy blackface cupcakes?! Is this what we paid you for?!"

PR Pitch Man: "Pshhhh, why you got to be that way shawty, nah mean? Shit, in my hood, ain't nobody buyin' no cupcakes, ya know wha'm sayin? I'm jus' tryin' to reach out and broaden yo' demo — as in demographic — yo!"

White Female: "Excuse me, what? Your hood? Don't you live on the Upper East Side? Didn't you go to Andover? And then Columbia?"

PR Pitch Man: "Damn skippy! Columbia, up in Harlem-world, nah mean? Morningside Heights represent, biotch!"

White Female: "OK, that's enough, get him out of here. This is offensive."

Older White Guy: "Now, hold on just a minute. Maybe this isn't such a bad idea. I mean, we do need to reach the urban market. And frankly, we don't have any better ideas on the table right now."

PR Pitch Man: That's what I'm talkin' 'bout, G-Money! You roll wit' us, and we gonna have O.G.s slanging muh'fuckin' cupcakes on the corner. Straight pimpin' dem' cakes, nah mean?"

Young White Guy: Yeah, yeah, I can see it now. We can do some cross-marketing with Diddy, ya know for some cupcake-flavored Ciroc!

PR Pitch Man: Aw, hell-to-the-yes! Now you feelin' it. Diddy could be all up in the club, gettin' his swerve on with some hottie, and jus' when you think things are gonna get all freaky and shit, he's like 'try this!' and he hands her the vodka, and then a moist dessert cake all in one move! That's the shit!"

Older White Guy: "Yeah, and he could look at the camera and say: 'P-Diddy Cakes. The P-stands for Puddin.'"

White Female: "Oh My God, you cannot be serious! This is awful!"

Young White Guy: (ignoring his female colleague): "Yeah, and then we could do like a whole product line. How about, Notorious P.I.E.?"

PR Pitch Man: "For realz…Or check this: Straight Outta' Cobbler!"

White Female: (with her head in her hands, disgusted): "Uggghhhh…"

Young White Guy: "Or Mack-Daddy Macaroons!"

Older White Guy: "Or how about, 'No Justice, No Cheesecake!"

White Female: (sarcastically): "Or how about we go all out and make 'Black Power Brownies!'"

(All the men in the room stop laughing and smiling. They are silent as they stare at her.)

Older White Guy: "Now, Denise, let's not get carried away. We can't say 'Black Power.' It might upset white consumers."

Young White Guy: "Yeah Denise, and if there's one group we can't afford to offend, it's white people! You should know that. What were you thinking?"

PR Pitch Man: "Fo' shizzle 'Niecy. You need to check yo'self, 'fore you wreck 'yo'self!"

Older white guy: (lamely mimicking the PR pitch man): "True 'dat homie, true dat!"

(The men erupt into laughter, while the PR man does a classic "raise the roof" motion above his head and the three men practice gang signs in the boardroom mirror. Denise exits the room, her head hung low.)

Young White Guy: "I smell a Clio in our future! Not to mention a multicultural marketing award!"

Older White Guy: "Whoop Whoop!"

Being Thankful for Clarity and Focused Rage

This essay is available in full at AOL News, under a different title.

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Thanksgiving has always been among my least favorite holidays.

Not merely because of the mendacity of the traditional narrative regarding its origins — you know, the whole "Indians and Pilgrims living in harmony" nonsense that conveniently ignores the genocide being planned even then by the latter — but because confining gratitude to one day of the year always seemed rather ungrateful. It always felt to me the way Yom Kippur did as a young Jewish kid: one day of atonement meant to paper over the really lousy stuff you had done the other 364 days.

Nonetheless, because it is the time of year when we're asked to reflect on that for which we are grateful, I'll play along just this once.

Unoriginal though it may be, I am thankful for my wife, our daughters, close family, good friends, strong coffee and great wine, in that order. But if that were all, it would hardly be worth commenting upon. Such sentiment has been voiced before, and more elaborately by others.

So as I sat at my desk, contemplating what I might offer that would differ from the traditional boilerplate, I happened to glance up at my wall, at which point I fixed upon a photograph that has long inspired me, and which I came to own last year: a gift from my wife. This, I thought, is something for which I am grateful. Not the gift itself, but the message conveyed by the photo, an iconic image from the civil rights era: a photo of Dave Dennis — at that time an organizer with the Congress of Racial Equality — speaking at the funeral of James Chaney, one of three civil rights workers murdered in June 1964 in Philadelphia, Miss.

Read the rest of this op-ed on AOL News.

(And thanks to Gina Misiroglu of Red Room for putting me in touch with the folks at AOL, which is one of the ways she's bringing traffic to Red Room and getting attention for Red Room's authors).

Arguing With Xenophobe Bear: Volume Two of the "Bears and Bigots" Series

Here's Volume II of the "Bears and Bigots" Series on Xtranormal. My second animated creation…

Rainbow Bear Confronts Homophobic Bear – My First Xtranormal Video

Here is my first animated short, created at xtranormal.com. This one addresses homophobia and heterosexism. Future installments will examine racism, privilege and white denial, among other things. You can create your own at their website, so check it out!

The Difference Between Guilt and Responsibility – Video Clip 10/6/10

Here's a clip from my October 6 speech in Detroit, for the Michigan Roundtable, in response to a question from the audience: