Race

American democracy is in peril. And racism will be the sledgehammer that destroys it (9/6/2024)

White Evangelical Racism
I blame him [Trump] for the fact that it's becoming more and more acceptable to be openly racist. What Donald did was prove that racism is a successful platform when you run for office in this country. People like him are out there very openly being racist and white supremacist, and they're getting tens of millions of people to vote for them because either they agree with them or they don't have a problem with it because lower taxes are more important. We're in a really dangerous place. Mary Trump interview with Der Spiegel
"Borders are the single biggest cause of discrimination in all of world history. Inequality gaps between people living in the same country are nothing in comparison to those between separated global citizenries." Utopia For Realists, Roger Bregman
“In America Negroes do not have to be told what fascism is,” the poet and activist Langston Hughes told an audience in the 1930s. “We know.”
"The cynical brilliance of Vladimir Putin's propaganda campaign is that it exploited America's foundational commitment to white supremacy. Spencer Ackerman in the Daily Beast
the white power movement is indeed a real social movement in the United States with a history and strategy, a strategy which relies on decentralized, cell-style organizing. Lone wolves are creatures of the white power movement. The movement “brought together members of the Klan, militias, radical tax resisters, white separatists, neo-Nazis, and proponents of white theologies such as Christian Identity, Odinism, and Dualism” A Short Summary of Kathleen Belew’s “Bring the War Home”
the [Koch] network has built up an alliance between the three pillars of the right wing: the Republican Party, rich corporate elites, and conservative white and evangelical voters opposed to racial progress. The CRT fight helps all three. The Radical Capitalist Behind the Critical Race Theory Furor (8/13/2021) The Nation
American democracy's most dangerous adversary is white supremacy Carol Anderson Guardian
Our challenge is to confront and diffuse the hypocrisy that exists between our ideals; our rhetoric about America as a place of freedom, tolerance and justice for all, a nation in which the Constitution and the Statue of Liberty are our guiding symbols; and our actions. Those of us who are in the dwindling white majority need to persuade our fellow citizens that overcoming prejudice is tested not by embracing those subordinate to us in class and status but by celebrating the reality of successful integration, the leading presence of citizens of color into the nation’s elite. Doing that will benefit all citizens and make America “great.” The time is now to revive the American dream of a “melting pot” out of which prosperity and dignity for all can emerge. Leon Botstein
...if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. John F Kennedy

Antisemitic Incidents Reach New High in U.S., Anti-Defamation League Says (3/223/2023) NYT

Republican Mainstreaming of White Supremacy Fuels Extremist Violence like the Racist Massacre in Buffalo (5/20/2022)

Great Replacement conspiracy theory in the United States

Links

"Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained." Helen Keller
"Over the past few weeks there have been a number of commentaries about Ronald Reagan's legacy, specifically about whether he exploited the white backlash against the civil rights movement. The controversy unfortunately obscures the larger point, which should be undeniable: the central role of this backlash in the rise of the modern conservative movement." Paul Krugman, The New York Times: 11/19/2007
"The World's most dangerous idea is that we are not all the same" Zinny Thabethe
"...long before it was the party of Donald Trump, it was also the party of Barry Goldwater, who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Richard Nixon, whose Southern strategy set the template for contemporary race-baiting campaign; Ronald Reagan, who launched his 1980 general election campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., near the site of the murders of the civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michail Schwerner; and Lee Atwater, the mastermind behind George H. W. Bush's Willie Horton ad." Robert Lieberman. Professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University.
"By cleaving to whiteness, even at the expense of their overall economic interests - which would frankly be better served by solidarity with the black and brown - white workers have fallen into a trap. From colonial times to the present era, racism has divided working people, strengthened the hand of capital relative to labor, and thereby helped further the inequalities that are the material engine of the culture of cruelty."
Tim Wise: Under the Affluence

‘Just the tip of the iceberg’: Kimberlé Crenshaw warns against rightwing battle over critical race theory (3/4/2023)

Are white Christians under attack in America? No, but the myth is winning (3/18/2022) by Alvin Chang Guardian

From ‘Ku Kluxism’ to Trumpism, (9/5/2021) Charles M. Blow, NYT

Welcome to Jim Crow 2.0 (7/14/2021)

The War on Critical Race Theory (5/7/2021)

Tribalism, whether racist, religious, nationalist, sexist, becomes evil when it succeeds in dehumanizing people. It motivated the holocaust, Jim Crow atrocities, border killings, racist and political mass shootings, etc. It is, I think, one of the strong drivers of right wing politics.

Race discrimination is a perennial human problem. Romeo and Juliette, West Side Story, German holocaust, Civil War, KKK, segregationist South, birtherism, border wall, black colleges, current GOP are all examples of a chronic human problem: racist intolerance of people who are different. The GOP wants to ban discussion of it in schools, which will likely exacerbate it.

Since Republican’s strategy relies on racial division, they want discussion of race and gender eliminated from schools, even punishing teachers who comment on it. That eliminates education, as possibly the best way to mitigate the perennial problem.

Inclusiveness is prerequisite for a peaceful, safe community and democracy.. The political right divides people by race, religion, gender, wealth … sets them against each other, and with massive funding hides the problems with political correctness, culture war, or ‘woke’. It gets violent.

1933 Germany. A charismatic leader demands loyalty from his cult-like following, indoctrinates children to believe their country is exceptional, builds a large military to expand and bring its benefits to a wide empire. At the same time, it claims victim hood from other races, minorities, and nations.

There have always been fascists in the US and comparison with 1933 Germany is surreal. The GOP has a long history of racism and is using CRT to gaslight the problem and further indoctrinate school kids. No one is exceptional. Editing history doesn’t change it.

Changes to election law are not only about race, they are an effort to achieve one party rule by the GOP.

People of color and minorities are at higher risk of violence, neglect of healthcare, redlining, poverty, and lack of opportunity than whites.

Fast forward to the present day where refugees from climate stressed and war ravaged countries flood the EU empowering the political right. Hungary and Poland are becoming one party States with outcome assured elections. The EU’s open borders, easy movement of people, and liberal governance is at risk of breaking apart.

The kids should understand that inclusiveness is essential to democracy.

Auschwitz demonstrated what man is capable of. There is a connection between right wing racism, mass shootings, political violence, and genocide.

The Book That Should Change How Progressives Talk About Race (2/19/2021)

Donald Trump’s long history of racism, from the 1970s to 2020 (6/24/2020)

George Floyd’s Death Is a Failure of Generations of Leadership (6/2/2020)

Trump Takes Us to the Brink (6/1/2020)

How Racism Is Destroying America (4/6/2020)

“Make no mistake, today's Republican radicalism, with all of its attendant terrifying brinkmanship, is the grandchild of the white South's devastating defeats in the struggle over racial exclusion” Ta-Nehisi Coates Atlantic essay Fear of a Black President.
Republican efforts on race division helps to kill any efforts at beneficial government programs. Letter to the New York Times (8/17/2018)
White nationalism, at its core, reflects a belief that our nation’s problems would be solved if only people of color could somehow be gotten rid of, or at least better controlled. In short, mass incarceration and mass deportation have less to do with crime and immigration than the ways we’ve chosen to respond to those issues when black and brown people are framed as the problem. Michelle Alexander (01/17/2020)
"Racism is inherent in imperial rule - it's almost invariable." Noam Chomsky: Imperial Ambitions pg 48.
“The President of the United States is a flat-out racist,” David Cay Johnston
In May, an African American named George Floyd, who had suffered from coronavirus and lost his job during the epidemic, was killed by a Minneapolis policeman. In the worst tradition of tyrants, Mr Trump threatened military intervention to the protests that followed. Timothy Snyder's book Our Malady

Hannah Arendt posited that racism justifies political oppression.

The world wide driver of the move to the right is racism... climate or war driven migration with a little help from the Russians, motivated Brexit, threatens to break the EU (NATO too), and elected Trump. It also is a strong driver toward Fascism.

When Trump made an issue of Obama’s birth certificate, it should have been clear that was an appeal to racism. There has been a resurgence of racism since Trumps election. Already we have massive detention camps for families and children at the border. The ultimate result of racism is genocide.

Racism goes much deeper than that. Police violence and mass incarceration keep them from voting and when in prison they can continue to be enslaved. Racism keeps an economic underclass down. It is part of a right-wing attack on democracy by corporate supremacists. The GOP is a cult following an authoritarian leader who relates well with dictators. The racism is a traditional part of fascism.

Countries that base their politics on blood and not inclusiveness can not be democracies, and most likely will never be at real peace. Right wing governments are never good.

Predictably, coming food shortages, water shortages, and climate damage will result in mass migrations of desperate people. Violence is almost certain, maybe nuclear.

See the Forecast.

The 1619 Project examines the legacy of slavery in America. (8/2019)

What we get wrong about the Southern strategy (7/26/2019)

Racism Is an Impeachable Offense (7/19/2019)

Trump, ‘the Squad’ and Racism in America (7/16/2019)

Racism Comes Out of the Closet (7/15/2019)

Racism is a public health crisis’: Milwaukee County leaders call for racial equity (4/5/2019)

Where You Live Determines How You Are Treated by Police and the Law (1/23/2019)

Frustration with Racism Is Coming to the Ballot Box (8/27/2018)

CNN's Don Lemon Fires Back at Trump After Racist Attack: 'I'm Going to Tell You Exactly How I Feel' (8/6/2018)

The GOP's History of Racism And Why the Party Shouldn’t Be Shocked that Its Voters Are in the Tank for Trump (7/23/2018)

Trump's Racist Immigration Policy Faces Criticism, Legal Action (1/28/2018)

Donald Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List (1/15/2018)

Historical Falsehoods That Feed White Supremacy (8/13/2017)

Trump Supporters Were More Motivated by Racism Than Economic Issues

"I Dont Think We're Free In America" (1/2/2017)

Is Racism a Disease? (11/17/2016)

(Letter to the New York Times 7/16/2019) Re “How to Deny Mr. Trump What He Wants?” (editorial, July 16):

Yes, President Trump’s racist attacks on the four congresswomen of color are a calculated distraction from his failed policies. But there is a more ominous evil here. This is not just racism. It is Mr. Trump’s boldest step to tyranny. Tyrants like nothing more than a scapegoat to help secure their power. For many tyrants it was the Jews. For Mr. Trump, it is Muslims and people of color.

This latest outrage is not just a bigoted assault on these four congressional critics of his cruel immigration policies. As your editorial notes, Mr. Trump is using these four women to tarnish his main political opponent, the Democratic Party.

His “love it or leave it” remarks are of a piece with his “enemies of the people” assault on the press, his attacks on federal judges who rule against him, his wholesale shutdown of congressional oversight, his invocations of national emergencies to circumvent constitutional limits, his perpetual lying, his defamatory ad hominem attacks on every political opponent, his adulation of tyrants.

We must recognize that his racism is part of a larger assault on our democracy. It dramatizes the fact that the entire pattern of Mr. Trump’s behavior meets every criterion for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Sidney Rosdeitcher New York: The writer is a lawyer and constitutional law teacher.
"Unemployment is 7.4 percent overall, for African Americans it is almost double that, 13.6 percent. One in six Americans now lives under the poverty line, the highest it has been since 1993. That includes 26 percent of African Americans and 40 percent of African-American children. The disparities persist, not just in our economy but also sadly in our justice system. For example, while African Americans make up about 15 percent of the nation's drug users, they are 36 percent of those arrested, 54 percent of those convicted, and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense." U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
Republican efforts on race division helps to kill any efforts at beneficial government programs. Letter to the New York Times (8/17/2018)
... ignorance is part of a white supremacist state in which the human race is racially divided into full persons and subpersons. Even though—or, more accurately, precisely because—they tend not to understand the racist world in which they live, white people are able to fully benefit from its racial hierarchies, ontologies, and economies. Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (pdf)

Racist Police Killings Worse Than Jim Crow Lynchings (9/27/2016)

Do Racists Like Fox News, or Does Fox Make People Racist?  (12/22/2015)

How Taxes Have Kept Wealth White (11/8/2015)

Feds Regularly Monitored Black Lives Matter Since Ferguson (7/24/2015)

Slavery's Long Shadow (6/20/2015)

The Most Racist Areas In the United States (5/3/2015)

The Fiery Cage and the Lynching Tree, Brutality's Never Far Away (2/6/2015)

Economic duress may spur racial discrimination: (6/9/2014)

That Old-Time Whistle (3/16/2014)

More on the GOP’s Failed Minority Outreach Strategy (8/16/2013)

Oklahoma Congressman Comes Out As A Birther (8/9/2013)

The Real Threat Is White Supremacists (4/3/2013)

Strong Link Between Racism and Political Preference (1/23/2013)

Colin Powell Accuses GOP of Racism (1/14/2013)

The Politics of Race (12/18/2012)

Romney Pushed Boundaries of Acceptable Racism (11/2/2012)

GOP is Full of Racists (10/27/2012)

Birthers and the persistence of Racial Paranoia

Republicans and Race

Birther Wars - A Racists Playground

The New Old Face of Racism

Bill Maher: What is it About Republicans ? (2/18/2012)

10 Most Racist Moments of the GOP Primary So Far (1/25/2012)

Republican Racism is an Air Raid Siren, Not a Dog Whistle (1/19/2012)

ProPublica review of pardons in past decade shows process heavily favored whites (12/3/2011)

The Backlash Against Obama's Blackness (8/24/2010)

The Reagan Southern Strategy

Why White Supremecists Should Be A Concern For Everyone

White Privilege Shapes the US: Robert Jensen

Video

Jazz Ambassadors (PBS/BBC video. State Department Jazz tours.)

Bibliography

Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition by Francis Fukuyama

American Whitelash, a Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress by Wesley Lowery

Bad Faith, Race and the Rise of the Religious Right by Randall Balmer

A Field Guide to White Supremacy by Kathleen Belew

White Too Long, The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones

‘CASTE: The Origins of Our Discontents’ By Isabel Wilkerson

White Evangelical Racism, the Politics of Morality in America by Anthea Butler

UNWORTHY REPUBLIC: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory By Claudio Saunt

The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity By Robert P. Jones

AMERICAN POISON, How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise, Eduardo Porter

Dying of Whiteness, Jonathan M. Metzl

Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases By Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (pdf)

White Fragility, Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism: Robin DiAngelo Foreword by: Michael Eric Dyson

WHITE RAGE, The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide: Carol Anderson

Are Racists Crazy? How Prejudice, Racism, and Antisemitism Became Markers of Insanity: Sander Gilman and James M. Thomas

The Origins of Totalitarianism: Hannah Arendt

How the Poor Became Black: The Racialization of American Poverty in the Mass Media: Martin Gilens in Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform, Sanford F. Schram, Joe Soss, and Richard C. Fording, eds 2003

The Color of Law

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, James Foreman

Toxic Inequality: How America's Wealth Gap Destroys Mobility Deepens the Racial Divide, & Threatening Our Future, Thomas M. Shapiro

The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, Michael Eric Dyson

Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America: Jay Feldman

The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime and the Making of Modern Urban America, Khalil Gibran Muhammad

White Backlash: Immigration, Race, and American Politics: Marisa Abrajano & Zoltan L. Hajnal

Hanging Bridge: A Lynching Site and a Civil Rights Century: Jason Morgan Ward

We Charge Genocide, the Crime of Government against the Negro People (on-line)

Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates

The New Jim Crow: Michelle Alexander

American Apartheid: Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton

Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal
Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns: Stephen Maynard Caliendo

The Wrongs of the Right: Language, Race and the Republican Party in the Age of Obama: Matthew W. Hughey and Gregory S. Parks

Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class by Ian Haney López (Jan 13, 2014)

Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw et al

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Keeping Down the Black Vote, Race and the Demobilization of American Voters:  FRANCES FOX PIVEN, LORRAINE C. MINNITE, AND MARGARET GROARKE