Tim Wise's Blog, page 6

Tim Wise on RT (Russia Today), discussing the Baltimore Uprising in the Context of Historic/Systemic Racism

My appearance on RT (Russia Today) news, from shortly after the Baltimore uprising of late spring/early summer, discussing the importance of both an historical and systemic analysis of racism for those interested in understanding the crisis there (and elsewhere). It’s a few months dated, but I just found the link…and it’s still relevant of course…

Kim Davis is No Rosa Parks (and Christian Hegemony is Not a Civil Right)

It is an axiom of modern American politics: whenever someone does something that you really don’t like, they are to be immediately analogized to Hitler. Conversely, when someone does something you support quite a bit, you are to proclaim them the modern day incarnation of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Or at least Rosa Parks.

Thus, this week, conservative politicians and media talking heads have insisted that Kim Davis, the county clerk in Kentucky who has refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses because God, is no less a hero than Parks. She, like Parks, was arrested and thrown in jail for her beliefs, we are told. She, like Parks, is exercising her duty to disobey “unjust laws” (or in this case, an unjust Supreme Court ruling), we are told. She, like Parks, is practicing civil disobedience in the tradition of the civil rights movement. And like the stormtroopers of the SS, those who believe she should be required to treat all seeking a marriage license equally, without prejudice—or else resign if she cannot bring herself to do so—are apparently fascists. Fascists, for believing that discrimination is wrong and shouldn’t be allowed on the part of government officials.

Any day now, to hear some like Davis’s attorney, it will be Christians marching to the ovens, just like the Jews of Europe in days gone by. Of course. Because holding someone in contempt of court for refusing to comply with a lawful order to treat persons equally is exactly like murdering millions of people because you believe them to be a biological pollutant. At the very least it is surely an obvious precursor to such genocide.

On the one hand, it is hard not to overdose on the irony here: conservatives calling Kim Davis Rosa Parks, even as most of their ideological forbears never actually liked the real one. For right-wingers to hold up one of their own as equivalent to the soldiers of the civil rights movement would be hilarious were the claim not wrapped in such an earnest lack of self-reflection. After all, the conservative movement in the 1950s and 1960s detested Dr. King and those with whom he worked to break the back of American apartheid. And no, the votes of Republicans in the House and Senate for the Civil Rights Act doesn’t change that. Virtually none of those Republicans would be considered conservative by today’s right-wing cognitariat (just as none of the southern Democrats who opposed the law could be considered liberal). The conservative movement — best represented by publications like The National Review, or activists like Phyllis Schlafly and candidates like Barry Goldwater — made quite clear their opposition to the civil rights struggle. In the case of Buckley’s publication, they went so far as to suggest that the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham—which killed four young girls and is one of the most iconic acts of white terrorism in the history of the nation—might well have been the act of a “crazed Negro,” hoping to whip up sympathy for his otherwise unjust cause.

Because the right-wing played no part in the civil rights struggle, other than opposing it, and applauding when law-and-order sheriffs beat up peaceful demonstrators—or claiming that the Selma-to-Montgomery march was really just an excuse for black men and white women to engage in “sex orgies” on the side of the road—it makes sense that today’s conservatives would utterly misunderstand the lessons of that movement. But for the sake of those who might be vulnerable to the revisionism of FOX and the modern Republican Party, let us review.

First, Dr. King and the civil rights movement were seeking to ensure the rights and liberties of those who had for so long been denied them. They were fighting for equal rights, not merely their interpretation of God’s will. They were arguing that the denial of opportunities to people of color on the basis of their identity as people of color was an abrogation of the nation’s promises of equality and a violation of the Constitution. Dr. King was a preacher, but his argument was not that segregation should be struck down because God said so; rather, he argued that segregation should be struck down because it was unjust in civil society and in contravention of the highest laws of the nation.

By contrast, Kim Davis and her supporters — who believe same-sex couples should not be able to marry, or that those who oppose such marriages on Biblical grounds should be allowed to discriminate against them on that basis — are not fighting to ensure equal rights. Quite the opposite. They are seeking to restrict marriage to heterosexuals only, thereby perpetuating unequal access to this opportunity. In that regard, rather than Rosa Parks in the Montgomery bus scenario, they are effectively the bus drivers. They are seeking to uphold discrimination and the special favoriting of heterosexuals, much as those bus drivers were upholding discrimination by sending blacks to the back of the bus, treating them as second-class citizens, and thereby favoring white riders. To argue that someone seeking to uphold unequal treatment is the moral equivalent of someone seeking to secure equal treatment is a perversion of language and history hardly worth serious consideration. And yet, such a perversion is utterly mainstream among American conservatives who have done just that by making Davis their martyr.

Second, to the extent that many segregationists (and most all slaveholders) defended their position on the basis of religious beliefs—ones to which they adhered every bit as sincerely as Davis with regard to same-sex marriage—to suggest that such beliefs should be allowed to trump the Constitutional mandate of equal treatment (as articulated by the courts) would again place Davis and her defenders in the camp of those prior bigots, not those who were challenging them. By the logic of those who suggest Davis should be allowed to keep her government position, even as she refuses to dispense the service of that position equitably, teachers with a religious objection to so-called race-mixing should be able to refuse to teach black children in integrated schools and still keep their jobs. County clerks with religious beliefs against interracial marriages should be able to deny such couples marriage licenses, much as Davis is doing for gay and lesbian couples, while still keeping their jobs. Voter registrars with religious beliefs in racial separatism or white supremacy should be allowed to refuse to register black voters, all while remaining on the public payroll.

Beyond racial examples, such deference to one’s “sincerely held religious beliefs” would allow a number of other horrific abrogations of public responsibility as well. For instance, police who sincerely believe the Bible’s repeated admonitions that disobedient children should be put to death could refuse to arrest parents who murder their back-sassing teenager. District Attorneys with the same “sincerely held” views could refuse to prosecute them because doing so would “violate their conscience” and their interpretation of God’s will. Likewise, a law enforcement official who believed that a woman battered by her husband was insufficiently “submissive” (as demanded of her in multiple Bible verses) could refuse to arrest the abuser, or shirk their investigative responsibilities in keeping with their sick (but quite literal) interpretation of Scripture.

Third, the claim that Kim Davis has a right to her beliefs and religious convictions, while true, has no bearing on her rights as a county clerk. She is not entitled to her job, nor the ability to keep it while refusing to actually do it. Her paycheck is paid for by the taxpayers, including gay and lesbian taxpayers. To suggest that she should be able to draw on public money while refusing to treat all who make up that public equitably is to suggest that LGBT folks should be expected to pay for the performance of services to which they will receive no access—an obviously unfair arrangement, and a particularly disturbing form of taxation without representation. Those who believe as Davis does have every right to their beliefs, and to act on the basis of those in their jobs, so long as those jobs are with religious institutions, which by definition tend to be exclusive and which are exempted from the expectations of other non-discrimination laws. But if you have a public sector job, or one in the private sector but which involves the provision of goods and services to the general public (as with interstate commerce), then your right to discriminate is circumscribed. To hold otherwise would allow the re-segregation of lunch counters, restaurants, movie theaters, and more. Thus, for Davis’s boosters to equate her actions with the folks who fought to end such discrimination, even as her position would enshrine the right of segregationists to return to it (so long as they couched their arguments in religious belief) is especially vile.

And no, it will not do at this point in the discussion to retreat to the old canard that “sexuality is different than race,” presumably because race is immutable and sexuality is somehow “chosen.” Putting aside the question of the fixity of sexual and affectional orientation (or for that matter the fact that race is not actually biological, as commonly believed), such an argument is completely irrelevant to the issue of Davis’s religious beliefs. She is not claiming that same-sex marriage is wrong because homosexuality isn’t biological, whereas race is. No doubt Davis would refuse to marry same-sex couples, because she thinks God said so, even if someone were to march right up to her with incontrovertible proof of a gay or lesbian gene. The issue is not whether discrimination on the basis of one thing or the other is more or less acceptable because of various scientific distinctions. Indeed, to pin one’s religious notions on what science does or does not say would be inherently comical. No, the issue is, should one be able to discriminate in the provision of a public service on the basis of one’s private religious beliefs, whether or not those beliefs are backed up by science. In that regard, and in evaluating the implicit hypothesis involved, religious beliefs about race, sex, gender, sexuality or any other matter are all equally valid as tests of that hypothesis. If one can be allowed to do one’s job (or not) based on sincerely held religious beliefs about sexuality, then one would have to be allowed to do one’s job (or not) on the basis of one’s sincerely held religious beliefs about anything.

To insist that Kim Davis is heroic, let alone on a moral par with those who fought to end legalized racial discrimination in America is simply more evidence of how ignorant, politically craven, or both, the nation’s conservative movement really is. They are not fighting for the preservation of the rights of Christians, which rights are well protected and endangered only in their fever dreams. Rather, they are fighting for the maintenance of Christian privilege and hegemony—for the right of Christian belief to subvert secular law. They must be defeated entirely in their quest for it.

Blue Lies Matter: Exposing Police Propaganda and the Right’s Assault on Justice

It’s always easier to be thought of as a hero, I suppose. The adulation, the uncritical praise, the unadorned love and devotion of millions must be nice; and especially when you’ve grown rather used to it. In the wake of 9/11 — after which tragic day millions of Americans began donning NYPD caps and shirts — such was the life of police officers in America.

So it must be difficult, being brought back to Earth from that place in the nation’s moral stratosphere to which you had been previously elevated, forced to breathe regular air rather than the rarefied form to which you had grown accustomed. It must be jarring to confront the fact that for millions of others, who never bought the caps or shirts, police are not perceived as their friends or protectors, let alone as heroes. Indeed, for millions of those others, they never were; the image never fit with their lived reality, their own experiences attesting to a very different history: one in which law enforcement was typically the first line of mistreatment and oppression. As memory reminds us and as Jill Nelson’s anthology on past and present police brutality documents in painstaking detail:

Police enforced the infamous Black Codes and every aspect of segregation. They were the ones pulling peaceful protesters off of lunch counter stools, turning vicious dogs on the same, and even murdering civil rights workers who dared stand up for justice.

Police participated openly in the brutal lynching of black men and women as well as community-wide pogroms — white-on-black race riots — throughout the first several decades of the twentieth century.

Police assassinated activists fighting for liberation and black self-determination, including at least twenty-seven members of the Black Panther Party, often with the open collaboration of federal agents.

More recently, police have repeatedly engaged in illegal activity, planting evidence on suspects to frame them, as with the Ramparts division scandal in Los Angeles; or protecting drug runners and dealing drugs themselves as in New York’s infamous 75th precinct, or in New Orleans, murdering those who file complaints against them or indiscriminately slaughtering innocent civilians and then covering up the crime as happened on the Danziger bridge in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Police enforce the war on drugs, which has disproportionately targeted people of color, even though according to every study and at every age level, whites use and deal drugs at the same or higher rates than the black and brown. Indeed, one former DEA agent and federal marshal has admitted that he was specifically instructed not to enforce drug laws against white people.

Police engage in profiling and stop-and-frisk, harassing almost exclusively innocent persons so as to get at the statistical few that have actually committed a crime. In part, these practices are the result of a police culture that rewards officers for the number of arrests they make, rather than the number of conflicts they resolve peacefully or for actually having a positive impact on local crime rates. Indeed, cop culture places such an emphasis on control and domination of civilians — as opposed to de-escalation of tension and conflict resolution — that even some law enforcement organizations are beginning to acknowledge the problem.

Police in Ferguson, Missouri functioned for years as the enforcers of a massive municipal shakedown scheme, in which black residents were disproportionately targeted for minor offenses, ticketed and then fined so as to raise money for local government. Cops there essentially operated as revenue collectors, financing city services on the backs of the black and poor. And of course, in the wake of the uprising in Ferguson following the killing of Michael Brown, police responded to protests by deploying military equipment and tactics, sending a message that they were essentially at war with their own people—tactics that even law enforcement partisans are now admitting only escalated the crisis and contributed to occasionally violent counter-reactions by some protesters.

Police threaten to kill black folks and hide the evidence, but are allowed to keep their jobs anyway (as with a recent case from Alabama). Others seem to have a penchant for posting blatantly racist and even homicidal rants on their social media pages or in text messages, in town after town across America: dozens of such cases in the past year that we know of, including one particularly egregious case in San Francisco, in which a group of officers exchanged messages calling African Americans “monkeys” and declaring that all blacks (whom they certainly didn’t refer to in that way) “must hang.” Or another case from Albuquerque where an officer who shot and killed a suspect after a traffic stop referred to his profession as “human waste disposal” on Facebook. And in some of these cases, the racist cops have also been allowed to keep their jobs or to get them back after being fired, as recently happened in Florida.

Police in the all-too-present day beat black suspects without cause and then lie about it, or plant evidence to cover up their misdeeds, or respond to the least verbal challenge with violence, as in the case of Eric Garner who was killed by a Staten Island cop by way of neck compression, simply for telling police to stop harassing him.

Police have too often shot first and asked questions (or not) later, and are far quicker to shoot unarmed black folks than unarmed whites. Or to and then lie about the incident. The shooting of Rice, in which the 12-year old was initially described as being in his twenties, gives horrific specificity to recent research which found that police routinely tend to view black boys they encounter as being considerably older (and thus potentially more dangerous) than they really are, even equating them to apes; and this association has a direct correlation with racially-disparate treatment meted out to such youth.

And when challenged on this behavior, when confronted with the anger that police by their actions have sown, those same cops — people whom we are told are tough and strong, and this is why they became cops in the first place — whine like children, unable or unwilling to withstand criticism. Or they insist that such criticism, regardless of the actions that brought it forth, is by definition hateful or responsible for anything bad that happens to an officer from that point forward. Because police, we are to believe, are brave enough to face bullets and bad guys but not analysis and arguments. That police are increasingly being called to account for their improper and illegal actions — with a five-fold increase in indictments in just the past few months — suggests that the calls for reform and greater scrutiny are working. And to police and their supporters, that’s the problem.

Recently we’ve heard police spokespersons and conservative talking heads blame the growing movement against police brutality and racism for the shooting of officers in Texas and Illinois. Because the Black Lives Matter movement — a loosely affiliated network of activists in more than two dozen chapters — has been raising the issue of police misconduct and the disproportionate use of force against persons of color, we are then to believe that when someone kills a cop it was obviously the fault of “rising anti-police rhetoric,” or some such thing.

Because until Black Lives Matter, apparently, police were never killed on the job.

Except for the fact that of course they were, and indeed, more often than they have been since BLM burst on the scene. Indeed, according to the National Law Enforcement Officer’s Memorial Fund, the first half of 2015 saw a twenty-five percent drop in the number of police officers shot and killed relative to the first half of 2014. In other words, since the rise of BLM, fatal shootings of police have not increased, but exactly the opposite. Even after the last week, during which the shootings outside Houston and in Fox Lake, Illinois occurred, the fact remains that when compared to this same point in 2014, fatal shootings of officers are down from thirty to twenty-six, two of which were accidental deaths during training exercises.

Although CNN recently reported that on-duty police deaths are up (from seventy-three to eighty-five) in 2015 compared to last year, this number is not mostly due to the homicidal acts of criminals, but because of a spike in vehicular deaths, and health-related emergencies like heart attacks on the job. For instance, according to the same law enforcement group mentioned above, law enforcement deaths in 2015 have included thirty-five traffic accidents and twenty-one medical emergencies. Specific incidents (which are catalogued on their website) have included an officer who died when his cruiser hit a deer, another who collided with a cement mixer, another who died exercising at the department gym, another who had a heart attack shoveling snow at a detention center, two who died from cancer contracted while helping evacuees at the World Trade Center on 9/11, one who died from injuries sustained ten years earlier while breaking up a fight, another who died during surgery to repair damage sustained twelve years prior on the job, and one who had a heart attack while detailing his police motorcycle. Obviously none of these incidents can be blamed on Black Lives Matter, although in the last case, the officer was detailing his motorcycle in preparation to serve on an upcoming presidential escort in Kansas, so, ya know, thanks Obama.

Given the disproportionate numbers of officers who died because of automobile accidents or heart attacks, unless someone has evidence that BLM organizers are tampering with police brake lines, or putting extra cholesterol in the doughnuts, it’s sorta hard to imagine how those incidents, tragic though they are, can be blamed on the group, let alone “anti-police rhetoric.”

Of course, the claim by police to that effect was never meant to be examined seriously. It is merely propaganda intended to deflect attention from the very real cases of misconduct and improper use of force against people of color that have been prominently in the news of late. And this we know because interestingly, when cops are killed by white men, those killings are given far less attention by conservative pundits, no doubt because they can’t be linked in the public mind to black activism. For instance, when a Louisiana State Trooper was killed last month by a 54-year old white male (who it appears had also just killed his roommate), the blame-Black-Lives-Matter bunch went silent. So too after the killing of a police sergeant in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho by a white guy with a mile-long rap sheet. Had either of them been killed by black men, as with the trooper in Houston, there’s little doubt that the right would have sought to make the connections, but when white guys kill police, the incidents are viewed as isolated, and the perps merely deranged individuals holding no grudges save the personal. Even white criminals then enjoy a kind of privilege.

No, the entire enterprise is one of political pandering, rooted in a desire to turn the public against Black Lives Matter and black activism more broadly, in the hopes of discrediting the struggle against racism and inequality, whether in the criminal justice system or any other part of American society. It’s a tactic borrowed from a longstanding conservative playbook, and indeed the same kind of accusations — that civil rights activists were fomenting hate and violence — were leveled against Dr. Martin Luther King for years, by those who opposed the movement of which he was a part.

Of course, no right-wing dog whistles would be sufficient unless they included a healthy dose of Obama-bashing. And so we have the blatant politicization of recent cop killings by Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who has blamed President Obama for inflaming anti-police sentiment. This, even as the president has openly condemned these killings and immediately phoned the widow of officer Goforth in Houston after he was murdered last week. This, even as it was the president’s Justice Department that cleared officer Darren Wilson in the shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson. This, even as the killing of police has dropped measurably during the president’s time in office, with only forty-eight officers being shot and killed in the line of duty last year, compared to seventy in 2007, before he had so much as carried a single primary.

Among those paying attention or given to caring about things like facts, it should be obvious that Black Lives Matter does not advocate violence against police. Although individual participants in a BLM action in St. Paul chanted an admittedly offensive chant, taunting police, while marching on the Minnesota State Fair last week, this was hardly representative of the movement as a whole (or even in the Twin Cities). It’s not as if Black Lives Matter has a hymnal of approved chants and songs, which they teach to one another to boost morale. Absolutely none of the shooters of officers in the past year have been linked to the movement, or indeed any antiracist activity or organization, let alone BLM. In the case of Officer Goforth in Houston, his killer appears to have long suffered from mental illness. But blaming the killing on that isn’t as politically bankable as blaming it on black activists, and so such details as these are conveniently downplayed in favor of the preferred narrative.

Not to mention, to suggest that Black Lives Matter is somehow responsible for the killing of police is to fundamentally insult the intelligence of black America; it is to suggest that in the absence of BLM calling attention to cop misconduct, black folks wouldn’t already know anything about it. It is to suggest that black folks were perfectly happy with the way law enforcement treated them until last August when suddenly a group of crafty activists poisoned their minds and made them want to go on a murderous cop-killing spree. That such a notion could only be believed by those who have almost no experience interacting with black folks (at least not black folks in black communities) should be obvious, and no doubt explains why the argument has such purchase on FOX News.

And finally, of course, by the logic of those who blame Black Lives Matter for violence against police, we would have to then blame those who call for school reform or teacher accountability for every school shooting or assault on a teacher. We would have to blame Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform — or perhaps every conservative in America — for the fact that Joe Stack flew a plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas a few years ago as an act of political protest. We would have to blame nuns for abortion clinic bombings and the murder of abortion providers, simply because the former typically oppose the procedure. Needless to say, none of the conservatives who would place the blame for police killings at the feet of BLM would much like linkages such as these, but they are certainly at least as strong if not stronger than the one the right is seeking to make.

Meanwhile, as conservatives take aim at Black Lives Matter, they ignore (or even praise) those like rancher Cliven Bundy and his supporters who openly and brazenly pointed loaded weapons at law enforcement officials last year when the government sought to collect grazing fees that Bundy had been running out on for years. To the right, Bundy and his makeshift militia were heroes, even “freedom fighters,” notwithstanding their clearly articulated willingness to shoot and kill federal agents.

Likewise, they have been disturbingly silent about the Stetson-wearing wanna-be cowboy in Texas who just this week uploaded a video to YouTube in which he announced his plan to kill BLM activists, and really any activists at all who were protesting racism.

So long as the right remains silent about those real threats of violence made by whites against law enforcement and in the last case against black folks, their ventilations about anti-police rhetoric by Black Lives Matter, and their attacks on the burgeoning movement for racial justice and equity should be seen as what they are: naked propaganda in the service of institutional white supremacy and the maintenance of the status quo.

I’m told there are limits to shamelessness, but with the recent accusations against BLM by cops and their PR flacks in the right-wing media, I’m starting to doubt it.

“Undoing Racism in the Nation’s Cities” – National League of Cities panel, 8/25/15, Washington DC

My recent appearance on the “Undoing Racism in the Nation’s Cities” panel for the National League of Cities, at the Washington DC Newseum

Featuring: Clarence Anthony, CEO, National League of Cities; Karen Freeman-Wilson, Mayor of Gary, Indiana; Tim Wise; Matt Zone, Councilmember, Cleveland, Ohio, and 2nd VP, National League of Cities

No, the Virginia News Crew Killing is NOT the Fault of BlackLivesMatter

Just a thought…

Right wingers who are trying to make the horrific murders of the reporter and cameraman in VA somehow the fault of…

Posted by Tim Wise on Thursday, August 27, 2015

Race is a Political Project: Reflections on Why Your Black Friend (Or Candidate) Is Irrelevant

Sometimes the act of denial is the thing that condemns you. It simply gives away too much, suggesting that it was intended more to convince the one issuing it than the one to whom it was offered. And so, when addicts insist to their interventionists that they haven’t a drug or alcohol problem, we generally know where things are headed. So too, we can tell by the ferocity of the proclamation that the addict isn’t much concerned about whether others believe them. The thing is to reassure oneself. Perhaps it is demanded out of shame or guilt—a glimmer of recognition that indeed one has a problem and really should get help—or perhaps the speaker truly believes it. But whatever the case, it is nothing if not wholly unconvincing.

The same dynamic is readily visible in the case of white Americans who insist that we “haven’t a racist bone in our bodies,” even as we proceed to cut loose with any number of vile and demeaning statements about people of color. As if one can call black culture pathological and defective and yet remain something other than a racist. As if one can insist that “most Mexican immigrants” are rapists and murderers and yet avoid the label “bigot” in the process. Racial stereotypes and generalizations—like black tar heroin to the junkie—remain so ubiquitous as to give the game away, no matter the earnest disclaimers of the prejudiced.

This morning offered yet another glimpse into the Alice-in-Wonderland thinking of such folks, embodied by an e-mail sent from someone who, despite echoing Donald Trump’s exhortations against Latinos and Bill O’Reilly’s claims about the cultural depravity of African Americans, promised me he wasn’t racist.

To wit, his penultimate paragraph (right before the part where he told me to go to hell):

“And just so you know, I’m no racist! I support Ben Carson and would vote for Allen West in a heartbeat!”

Although altogether unoriginal in its proclamation of cross-racial conservative unity, it’s the kind of statement I’ve heard often from white folks on the right: their very own version of “some of my best friends are black.” It’s not unlike the iteration offered by white liberals, to the effect that somehow a vote for Barack Obama proves their own antiracist bonafides.

And yet, the idea that one’s willingness to vote for a black person, or the actual having of a real black friend, provides ablative protection from the charge of racism could only be believed by someone who fails to understand what racism is and how it operates. Just as men can obviously be sexist even if they date women and ultimately marry one, so too can white folks manifest racism no matter our willingness to play poker with a black buddy or support a candidate for office whose melanin levels far exceed our own.

Racism—even on the personal level to say nothing of the institutional—never required whites to hate black people, let alone all black people. It never required a totalizing and unanimous antipathy towards persons of color. No doubt there were white folks during the days of enslavement who were genuinely fond of those whom they held in bondage (the latter were helping to make the former wealthier, after all, by doing all the hard work), and yet, said affections hardly altered the fact that by enslaving black bodies they were, by definition, engaged in an act of white supremacy. Their every comfort was derived from racism, every aspect of their being was bound up with the racist subordination of those deemed the “other.” The white slaveowner’s very existence as such was racist to the core.

So too, I have little doubt that there were white folks who felt admiration for indigenous persons even as they participated in (or passively accepted) their displacement from their lands and even campaigns of extermination against them. We know this is true, in fact, as evidenced by Thomas Jefferson’s own statements about native peoples, even as he was among the chief architects of their ultimate demise. In 1785 for instance, Jefferson wrote to the Marquis de Chastellux—who served the American revolution in the French expeditionary forces—proclaiming that so far as he could discern, the Indian was, “in body and mind equal to the whiteman.” And yet, even as he proclaimed a belief in the inherent equality of native peoples, Jefferson was truly a key instigator of ethnic cleansing when it came to the indigenous of the continent. Long before Andrew Jackson it was Jefferson who professed a rapacious desire to move them westward if not utterly obliterate them. In 1813, the willingness of Indian peoples to fight back and resist their purging led Jefferson to write, in terms we would recognize as genocidal were they written by any other statesman in any other country save our own:

This unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilize, have by their unexpected desertion and ferocious barbarities justified extermination, and now await our decision on their fate.

In other words, one can perform racism regardless of one’s personal bigotries or lack thereof. One can indeed be racist by virtue of one’s actions, irrespective of the meditations of one’s heart. And more to the point it has always been the deed rather than the thought about which persons of color have been chiefly concerned. It is the rare black person who would have cared much about how white employers or shop owners felt about them during the days of segregation, after all; rather, how those white folks actually treated black people was the issue. Bull Connor’s maniacal hatred for the black communities of Birmingham would have remained a trifle had he not driven tanks down their streets and turned water cannons on their residents. So too, if he had been given to playing horseshoes every Sunday after church with some local black barber, his enforcement of Alabama apartheid would have been made no less egregious as a result.

Ultimately, what most white Americans fail to understand is that race in this country is not mostly about skin color or ancestry. It never has been. In many ways, race is not only a social construct—as we’ve long heard—but more so, a political one. Indeed, race is a political project in America, and racial categories largely attached to a compendium of beliefs that either serve to reinforce existing relations of political, economic and social power, or to challenge them.

If we look at history we can see that the boundaries of the so-called white race have often been drawn less upon the basis of ancestry per se, and more upon that of ideology. Specifically, one’s whiteness has often been contingent upon the extent to which persons, regardless of ancestry, were prepared to identify their allegiances and interests with those of the larger power structure, which was indeed “white.” So the Irish, who were hardly considered members of the club upon arrival to the United States, quickly learned the value of identifying with the very Anglos who had long oppressed them. When Irish dockworkers in New York City attacked blacks hired to work alongside them in 1863, they were performing whiteness, no matter how the city’s blue bloods may have felt about their qualification for group membership. And when largely Irish mobs attacked a black orphanage that year as part of the city’s Draft Riots—to protest abolitionism and conscription into a war they understood to be for that purpose—they were signaling their allegiance to elites, no matter the famine and servitude to which those same elites’ ancestors may well have subjected their own.

And if we understand whiteness as a political project, then we should be able to comprehend that racism and white supremacy are less about hating persons who are not technically white, and more about despising those who oppose that project and stand in its way. A black person whose politic, whose understanding of America and whose ideology fits with the traditional and dominant white narrative will be embraced, even as a white person whose understanding, politic and ideology opposes that traditional narrative will be rejected. What is being rejected is blackness as a political position, a social position, and as a narrative that challenges the dominant racial lens. White people can embrace blackness as a political project; likewise, people of color can embrace whiteness, and throughout history many have. Many whites celebrated Booker T. Washington, for instance, because they understood him as embracing self-help and rejecting agitation for equality. Though this was a somewhat simplistic reading of Washington, it is still important to note what it means: Simply put, if Theodore Roosevelt could embrace Washington and invite him to the White House, even as he called Africans “ape-like naked savages” and gleefully defended the slaughter of over 250,000 Filipinos at the turn of the twentieth century, it is not possible to believe that support for a black figure alone is enough to insulate oneself from the charge of racism. Indeed, the selective embrace of such a person may only further prove the charge accurate.

Consider some readily obvious analogies. When a Jew embraces Jesus as their personal savior, Christians are quick to hold them up and to celebrate them, which is why evangelicals are so happy to host “Jews for Jesus” meetings in their churches on Saturdays. Those Jews are telling those Christians exactly what they want to hear and confirming what they already believe. Reactionaries love a good conversion story: the Muslim who rejects Islam, the immigrant who embraces the inherent goodness of America and even changes his name to something like Bobby, or the enslaved African who talks about his master in loving and glowing terms and rats out the other slaves who are plotting to rebel against their oppression. But the question is, do those convenient embraces really tell us anything about the larger views held about the groups in question by those who are doing the embracing? If I believe that most Jews are going to hell, and that most Muslims are terrorists, and that most immigrants are coming to destroy American culture, and that most slaves were treacherous and worthy of enslavement, then what does it matter that I carve out an exception or two for the few who ratify my pre-existing reality? How am I not still spiritually anti-Semitic? How am I not a nativist, an Islamaphobe, a racist?

The master was no less racist for the praise he heaped upon his favorite house slave. And no, I am not saying that black conservatives are literally house slaves. That is not the analogy. I am merely saying that supporting certain black people, while rejecting the narrative and politic of black liberation, is a longstanding American tradition, and one that roots its practitioner firmly in the camp of the oppressor and the system over which that oppressor presides. If a person of color endorses a system in which persons of color are viewed as (and largely treated as) unequals and inferiors, then that person of color is an agent of whiteness, just as surely as John Brown was not.

It brings to mind something James Baldwin wrote in his book, No Name in the Street, about the historical delusions with which so many white Americans live, and what it means when black people ratify them:

White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded—about themselves and about the world they live in. White people have managed to get through entire lifetimes in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky: a black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac.

Indeed, and which appellation fits nicely Messrs Carson and West, whose hagiographic understanding of their nation—our nation—mirrors the most absurd westerns in which Wayne starred, and about whom Brother Baldwin would no doubt have much to say.

And so, if race is a political project, let us then choose a side. While choosing blackness, brownness and the politic of resistance will not allow those of us called white to escape the implications of our historical and cultural category or the unearned privileges and benefits that flow from it—just as choosing whiteness will not protect folks of color from racial profiling and mistreatment at the hands of those unaware of their stance—let there be no mistake that embracing a politics of resistance will ultimately help us to regain some of the humanity lost so long ago when our ancestors opted for something quite different and less worthy of emulation.

#BlackLivesMatter, Bernie Sanders and the Problem With (Some) White Progressives

Amid tension between white progressive supporters of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and activists from #BlackLivesMatter — the latter of whom have disrupted two of his presentations to highlight racial injustices they feel are often given short shrift by the former — many commentators have weighed in on the simmering beef.

Some in the Sanders camp have blamed #BlackLivesMatter for their tactics and methods, even while claiming to support their larger goals. Others in that camp have engaged in rather blatantly racist dismissals of #BlackLivesMatter, implying that because activists interrupted their hero, the movement for racial justice and an end to brutal policing was all but dead in their eyes.

On the other side, some have pointed out the way in which the disruptions of Sanders’ speeches ultimately moved the needle forward considerably within his own statements and policy pronouncements, elevating racial justice to a place previously untouched within his campaign. Some have suggested that any criticism of #BlackLivesMatter by whites is by definition racist, and that whites who are not facing the disproportionate brunt of police violence have no right to lecture those who are.

As someone whose entire life’s work has been about confronting racism and white supremacy — and its interrelationship to issues of economic injustice across the board — I am intuitively attracted to the #BlackLivesMatter camp and their position here. I know first hand, and even from my own history, how white progressives can and do often subordinate matters of racial justice to concerns about which we are frankly more comfortable speaking: class matters, the environment, or militarism among them. Despite how obviously connected these issues are to matters of racism (or maybe that’s not obvious to some, and perhaps that is the problem), it is indisputable that white leftists and liberals are far too quick, both historically and today, to minimize black and brown concerns about racism. I won’t recount or even try and document that history here, but if you need persuading as to the claim’s veracity, suffice it to say that either you know nothing about the history of the white left — from the labor movement to the antiwar movement to white feminism to the dominant LGBT liberation movement — or you have only been a leftist for about three weeks, or perhaps both. I’ve written about this elsewhere, notably, here, so feel free to take a read if you’re interested.

Having said that, I also understand the frustration of some within the Sanders camp, including folks of color there who feel, rightly or wrongly, that the tactics of some within #BlackLivesMatter might backfire, or split the movement for social justice, within which we need all kinds of folks, focused on all kinds of issues, including the economic inequality ones upon which white activists are often concentrating. I get it. I do. And personally, I too have questions about tactics and strategy (on both sides), and I suspect that as with most things, there is plenty of legitimate feedback and even criticism to go around, for folks on all sides.

But there is one thing about which I am crystal clear: the place to air those concerns, and to have those discussions is not out here, in the wide and very public world of the interwebs. This is one of the things that sticks out most to me about the white leftie backlash to #BlackLivesMatter: precisely because those folks are not involved in BLM or the larger movement for racial justice, they don’t have anyone in their personal circles or activist circles to whom they can turn and have real heart-to-heart discussions about these things. Precisely because white lefties are so often cut off from the struggles being led by people of color, they (we) lack the insights, the narratives, the humility and the opportunities to hash this stuff out as friends and comrades behind closed doors. So instead, they (we) end up doing dirt in public, completely oblivious to the way in which truly reactionary forces and the dominant media will try and take advantage of those disagreements to drive a wedge in our movements.

That is the problem. The issue is not about being white, and therefore “unable” to criticize black people. Jesus, how anyone could believe that in a culture where white critique of black people is a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute pastime is beyond me. Rather the issue is, are you connected enough to black and brown leadership to actually sit in struggle with them, listen to them, learn from them, and then offer your feedback from a place of solidarity, comradeship and love? Because if the answer to that last question is no, then you shouldn’t be surprised when the black and brown peoples you criticize think you’re full of shit. If they haven’t seen your face in their place, working on the issues that they prioritize as if their lives depended on it – because they do — then why in God’s name should they presume your commitment to the cause? On the other hand, if the answer to the question above were yes, my guess is you wouldn’t be losing your mind about what #BlackLivesMatter folks are doing, even if you had some strategic differences with them. You would take that shit to them, because you would be part of them, or because you actually knew them, and you’d work it the hell out.

And if you don’t know where those circles are, within which you could have those discussions productively, then that is the problem. It isn’t that white folks have to agree with everything black people do. Rather, it is this: until we show ourselves to be folks who are down for the eradication of white supremacy as a primary concern (and not something we’ll get to later, after we address the corporate oligarchy or climate change or Wall Street criminality), then we cannot expect to be taken seriously by those whose ability to put matters of racial justice on the back burner is constrained by this thing we call breathing.

Tim Wise Opening Statement – “White in America” Panel on SiriusXM with Karen Hunter, 6/30/15

My opening comments during the “White in America” panel on SiriuxXM with Karen Hunter. The full program will be available soon, but here is my first statement during the discussion. The conversation took place, June 30th in NYC.

Racism, Straight Supremacy and the Futility of “Oppression Olympics”

Here’s a fascinating story, indicating the inherently fucked up nature of the company known as Facebook…

So, a few days ago I posted the below commentary on my Facebook friends page and Facebook fan page. It was a relatively sober-minded defense of the struggle for LGBT liberation, and a critique of those who have sought to minimize the importance of that struggle, in comparison to the struggle against racism. For some reason, some idiot complained to Facebook like a little 3-year old, apparently offended by my comments, and claiming that they violated Facebook’s community standards, even though they did not. But some precious little soul can’t stand having their homophobic worldview challenged so they decided to report me to Facebook…sadly, rather than actually reading the “offending” post, FB just believed the word of the precious little pathetic nobody who complained and as a result my ability to post on Facebook was suspended for 24 hours, with no chance for appeal; and my prior post was removed. Here is the post. Judge for yourself how any remotely rational person could believe this post violated any standard of decency.

___

Here we go, and I’ma lose some folks over this. And I can hardly find even two shits to give…

Lately, I’ve come across many folks on FB and elsewhere, whose race politics are largely impeccable, but whose views on sexism/patriarchy and straight supremacy/heterosexism are retrograde nonsense. They play “oppression olympics” insisting that those fighting for LGBT equality are fighting for lesser important causes, or that until people of color are fully liberated from white supremacy (well, at least black men–not necessarily black women) all others should wait (including, presumably LGBT people of color!) or that since LGBT folks can supposedly “conceal” their identity, they are not really oppressed the way POC are. All of this is puerile, ignorant bullshit, not quite as bad as the views of some that homosexuality is just something foisted upon black people by whites as a way to destroy black men–a view believed by some otherwise educated people despite the fact that homosexuality has been observed in literally hundreds of species, not likely influenced by whitey–but not much better. To this, I have the following to say. Too short for an essay, but perhaps appropriate here. Make of it what you will. I am not interested in debating it, by the way, so don’t bother. I won’t be trolled on this. Trust. Just like I won’t listen to stupidity from white LGBT folk who say things like “Gay is the New Black,” and for the same reasons: ignorance deserves to get smacked down from whatever source.

—–

To those who insist there are fundamental differences between the oppression of people of color, as people of color, under white supremacy and the oppression of LGBT folks, as LGBT folks, under heterosexism/straight supremacy/cis-supremacy, take note: just because two things are not precisely the same does not mean they are not similar enough to both warrant concern and protection. And the claim that LGBT folks can “conceal” their identity and thus have one up on people of color who cannot is putrid: poor people can “cover up” their poverty but they are oppressed under capitalism and deserve to be protected from oppression on that basis. Jews can lie about being Jewish — and many have, through history, so as to protect ourselves from anti-semitism — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important to challenge that form of bias and prevent it…light skinned black folks could conceal their blackness and “pass” but having to do so was soul murder, and if found out…well, we know what happened. Those who claim that LGBT folks can conceal who they are — and who likely wish they would do this for reasons having to do with the claimants’ own sexual insecurities more than anything else — are engaged in a ridiculous and oppressive conceit, just as monstrous as telling light skinned POC that they could or should conceal their identities. No one should ever have to lie about who they are to make YOU comfortable or to gain full and equal treatment. And if they do anyway, this should not be seen as a privilege or advantage, but a testament to the evil of the society in which they live. The closet is no Get Out of Jail Free card. The closet IS a form of jail, mental if not physical. And yes, it kills. And if you don’t know, now ya know…

Freedom and liberty are all or nothing deals. Anything else is bigotry and cannot be dressed up as anything else. And the dichotomy of “people of color OR LGBT folks” as victims of mistreatment reinforces the notion that LGBT folks are all white, thereby ignoring the dual reality of LGBT folks of color who live with BOTH oppressions, and likely don’t appreciate the idea that their reality can be ranked in terms of some oppression olympics. It’s moments like this in which I wish James Baldwin or Audre Lorde or Bayard Rustin could come back and kick some folks full-on in the ass. Such comparisons are unproductive, and would allow indigenous people to tell black folks to stop complaining, I suppose — which would also be unjust — simply because 98% of the indigenous were wiped out in the Americas, which is a far higher body count than that imposed upon African Americans. But if that argument would offend you (and it certainly offends me) then so too must these comparisons between anti-LGBT oppression and anti-POC oppression be seen as offensive. Oppression must be resisted because it is wrong, and for all reasons and against all persons. Notions of comparative suffering are inherently ridiculous: they would allow segregationists during early Jim Crow to say stupid shit like, “well black folks, count your lucky stars that you aren’t in the Belgian Congo, where King Leopold is killing 10 million blacks–God Bless America,” or telling Japanese Americans to stop complaining about internment camps because they could have been in Tokyo when we firebombed it, or Hiroshima or Nagasaki when we dropped atomic bombs…it’s all just nonsense meant to avoid the fact that the person who says shit like this is seeking to rationalize oppression…

That is all. But it matters.

Racism, Heterosexism and the Absurdity of the Oppression Olympics

It’s not much…just a short rant, but I mean it, and you can take it however you choose…

Here we go, and I’ma lose some folks over this. And I can hardly find even two shits to give…Lately, I’ve come…

Posted by Tim Wise on Monday, July 6, 2015