Tim Wise's Blog, page 33

Some Jackhole is Investigating My November Speech at Colorado State…

I love it when right wingers go on stupid ass fishing expeditions, hoping to uncover some untoward activity on the left, when there is, in fact, nothing at all interesting going on. Case in point: some stupid right winger has apparently filed a Freedom of Information Act request to Colorado State University, trying to discover the terms of my contract there, where I will be speaking on the 4th and 5th of November.

A few things are worth noting here, and specifically to the kind of knuckle-dragging trolls who went to the trouble of trying to get this information:

1) Hey dumbass, the FOIA only applies to federal government actions, and has no applicability at all to the contracts signed by state colleges. Try Google before going on a fishing expedition next time.

2) If you wanted to know how much I was getting paid for the two days, all you needed to do was call the organization that books my events, or the school itself. Or shit, just e-mail me. I would have told you. I am giving 4 separate presentations in the two day period. For those, CSU will pay roughly $7500. I will receive $5250 and the non-profit, radical, educational organization that handles my bookings will receive about $2300.

3) Please note, this is a lot less — and I mean a whole lot less than any right winger on the lecture circuit receives, even for one presentation, let alone 4. Sarah Palin, for instance, gets a minimum of $30,000 or so for just opening her uninformed, uneducated, stupid-ass mouth for 20 minutes and then leaving, which comes out to about $90,000 an hour. As for me, I'll speak for roughly 6 hours total in order to make the $5250. While that is still damned good money, I realize, it comes out to less than 1/10th what Palin makes. So unless you can find objective evidence that Sarah Palin provides 10 times more insight than I do — which you couldn't prove if your life depended on it — I think you have very little about which to complain.

Hope to see your pathetic ass in Fort Collins in November…

New Study: "Colorblindness" Reduces Kids' Ability to See, Challenge Racism

There is an incredible new study out, which confirms the inherent weakness and actual dangers of colorblindness as a way to challenge racism. According to the researchers from Northwestern, Stanford and Tufts, taking a colorblind approach with young children — such as instructing them to "focus on what makes us similar" rather than dealing constructively with difference and challenging bias directly — actually reduces the likelihood that those young people will recognize discriminatory...

Full Interview with Laura Flanders for GRIT TV, 9/24/10

And here is the full interview to go with the previously posted clip…We discuss health care, safety nets and race, the problems with colorblindness and post-racial liberalism, and the Tea Party folks, among other things…

More GRITtv

Interview on GRIT TV with Laura Flanders, 9/24/10

Here's video of my recent interview with Laura Flanders for GRIT TV. This segment is on the racialization of the nation's safety net and the way in which white racial resentment has contributed to inadequate support for all in need, including millions of whites who are now finding that they too need comprehensive health care and other forms of social support. I'll post the full interview soon.

$&*# Right-Wingers Say…

The last few days have been especially filled with right-wing race-baiting and resentment, not to mention general nastiness so befitting reactionary white men with large audience share.

To wit the following:

On September 22, Rush Limbaugh's fill-in host announced his plan for creating national unity. No, it wasn't to address the predatory lending of banks and mortgage brokers, especially in poor communities of color. No it wasn't to create a unifying national health care system. No, it wasn't t...

Assimilation is Not Enough: American Muslims as Modern Cherokee?

Great post at Ta-Nahesi Coates' blog from last month (which I only saw today), in which he notes the parallels between anti-indigenous sentiment towards the Cherokee during the years of Jacksonian White Supremacy (known to "scholars" as Jacksonian "democracy"), and today's anti-Muslim bias. Despite the ways that both Cherokee and American Muslims sought (or have sought) to largely assimilate within the dominant culture, they were/are still hated and feared, calling into question what it will ...

"Birtherism With Big Words" — The Ignominious Return of Dinesh D'Souza (WITH UPDATE)

Over at the American Prospect's Blog site, (the guy who first called me the "Uncle Tom of whites") somewhere into next week, taking on his absurd contention that Barack Obama's worldview is "Kenyan anti-colonialism." This meme, which took off after Newt Gingrich picked it up and ran with it last week, is, as Serwer notes, "Birtherism with big words." It is symbolic racism, from someone who has made his career engaged in the same. To wit, D'Souza's 1995...

"Birtherism With Big Words" — The Ignominious Return of Dinesh D'Souza

Over at the American Prospect's Blog site, (the guy who first called me the "Uncle Tom of whites") somewhere into next week, taking on his absurd contention that Barack Obama's worldview is "Kenyan anti-colonialism." This meme, which took off after Newt Gingrich picked it up and ran with it last week, is, as Serwer notes, "Birtherism with big words." It is symbolic racism, from someone who has made his career engaged in the same. To wit, D'Souza's 1995...

South Carolina White Conservatives Show Their Racist Asses…Again (This is a Historical Constant, Actually…)

But remember everyone…just because we dress up in confederate uniforms, and pose for pictures with black people in antebellum period clothing (which is to say, black people representing slaves) doesn't mean we're a bunch of racist jackasses…

This is what the white right is all about. This, and absolutely nothing more.

How to Make Sarah Palin Look Rational: Christine O'Donnell's Special Brand of Stupid*

Wow, the Tea Partiers just make it so damned easy to ridicule them. Just when you thought nobody could make Sarah Palin look informed by comparison, along comes Christine O'Donnell, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Delaware, she of the "masturbation is a sin" school of evangelical Christian silliness. O'Donnell is such an extreme religious whack-a-doodle that she actually thinks it is always wrong to lie, including LYING TO HITLER ABOUT HAVING JEWS IN YOUR HOUSE during World War Two...