The problem with having an exceptionally entertaining and interesting discussion in comments is that it really takes away from my blogging time – I’ve got a huge build-up of links that I’ve been meaning to blog about, and yet I haven’t posted a new blog entry for days and days.
I’ve been meaning to link to a post by Prometheus 6, for example, in which he bounces off an old comment of mine (which itself bounced off a comment of Bean’s) to discuss what the meaning of “racist” is. But now some time has passed, and I can’t even find the post. Weird. (Go read Prometheus 6 anyway, there’s always a lot of great stuff at his blog).
Anyhow, the comments to that post (which I maybe just imagined?) led me to read Vision Circle, a groupish-blog sort of thing that is largely (but not exclusively) focused on race issues, and in particular on Black issues. There’s a lot of really excellent blogging going on there. For example, I thought this classification of racism into three classes of action was interesting:
This will include all such insults, slights and disrespect as is generally expected to be found everywhere in this nation. Examples include but are not limited to being ignored by cabbies, flying confederate flags, nazi propaganda, being mistaken for the help, being shown costume jewelry, being asked one’s opinion of, or to account for the opinions of the Fungibles, and most nigger calls.
Class Two – Political Intransigence
Class Two racism involves denials of public accommodation or private standing which are not criminal, yet grossly unfair and unjust. Such acts would include imposition of glass ceilings, racial profiling, white flight, medical misdiagnosis, educational tracking, false arrest, false imprisonment, racist vois dire, racist jury nullification, denials of service with plausible deniability, any institutional individual or institutional racism which must be tried in civil courts and all such active bigotry one associates with hate groups which fall short of incitement.
Class One – Crime
Theft, criminal defamation, cross burnings (now), hate crimes, murder, rape & all that stuff for which America has never made any extraordinary effort to repair.
Also highly recommended: This post, discussing the DLC’s belief that Democrats lose elections because special interests scare regular folks away from the Democratic Party. But in practice, it seems that “special interests” is a code for “black people”… and “regular folks” is code for “white men.”
1. The DLC is arguing implicitly that the success of the Democratic Party comes from following the mandates of the DLC. With the exception of Clinton’s elections in 92 and 96, the Democrats have lost both houses of the Senate, the majority of state governships, and a significant number of state legislatures, under the DLC watch. This signals that Clinton’s election was not so much the norm for the DLC strategy as the exception.
2. White men are the most conservative voting bloc in the country, and represent a special interest themselves. Moving towards this bloc inherently leads to a conservative policy orientation. And given the choice between a conservative-lite and a conservative, there is no reason to expect that the white male will choose Bud Lite over Bud. Plus there is every reason to expect that other constituencies will stay home, feeling their policy preferences aren’t being articulated.
3. If we’re strictly focusing on voting blocs (ACTUAL voting blocs rather than potential ones–I know, I know, focusing on them rather than on getting new voters is another problem but I’m short on space!) the most important voting bloc is NOT the white male, but the white FEMALE. And support for the Democratic Party among THIS group is growing…largely because they feel that the Democrats are more sympathetic on gender and race issues.
And here’s a third example – this time a terrific post about Measure 54, the proposed California law which says that the government shouldn’t even acknowledge race when doing things like measuring inequality or gathering statistics.
So we started counting noses. You can’t look into peoples faces without doing so. The liberated people demanded that they be counted, and that the government of the people started recognizing the people for whom they wanted to be. The census form doesn’t say ‘Colored’. It doesn’t say ‘ex-slave’. It doesn’t say ‘dark complected’. It says black and African American because that’s who we have decided to be.
Anyhow, go check it out..
Amp:
You can’t find the comment because it was on your pre-MT blog. The links in my post still work if you really want to re-read it.
And yeah, Vision Circle is off the hook. Mike Bowen, who rund it, also runs his individual blog, Cobb, which is equally good. He’ll confuse you, though, because he’s a registered Republican but really realistic about neocons because he’s not a Black Conservative. He’s a conservative Black man…huge difference.
Anyway, once I get another project or two settled, I may be posting at Vision Circle as well. There are things I should be writing that would fit there better than Prometheus 6.
I just re-read that.
The post you’re looking for on MY blog is right here.
In this classification, class one specifies “hate crimes,” by which I assume the author means any criminal acts motivated by a desire to harm someone because of that person’s race, ethnicity, gender, etc. However, the author goes on to specify that murder and rape should be considered class 1 racism. Does that mean that the author considers any murder or rape against an African American to be an act of racism, or is it merely redundancy that leads him to list those things in addition to “hate crimes,” which, by definition, encompass rapes and murders motivated by racism?
Amy:
Neither. There was a social aspect to murder and rape in the Confederate States of America that moved them into another category. Murder, lynching—at times a randomly selected Black person—as a method of community control made it qualitatively different than the (admittedly still unacceptable) lynchings of individual white people. Rape was not only violence against women but was also an unmanning of an entire community—and was intended to be so. It was often a rite of passage for white men as well. Again, a whole new class of action deserving of a seperate listing.
(n.b. I am not the author. I simple recognize similar categories)
— still rounds to zero. On jazz and classical diamond jewelry stations, the offerings are still mostly pro forma. jewelryinolog That they exist at all is a swell thing