Ding, at Bitch Ph.D. blogs in response to a recent article that Kathleen Parker wrote about how recent immigrants might not “understand” American values due to the fact that they haven’t been here that long:
Pat Buchanan wants me to ‘be grateful.’ He wants me to shut up and be grateful I live in a place that suffers from the worst case of degenerate racism, a place that makes no significant movement toward recognition of or reconciliation for its white supremacist past. But here’s our chance! Here’s a moment – a gorgeous, breathtaking moment! And what do we do with this moment? We say he is not (and by extension, we are not – I am not) a ‘full-blooded American’!
Oh, America, you make we wanna holler!
Not to be a blog-whore, but like many, I wrote about Parker’s dismaying, infuriating article too. I put it in the context white supremacy, which I think is still an applicable term for America today. Parker, Buchanan, and Hillary herself get away with veiled (and not so veiled) calls to white solidarity that would have toppled Obama a long, long time ago, had he made any such calls to black solidarity.
Obama has from the start consciously distanced himself from black causes and recognized black leaders. This distancing consternates (?) many African Americans, and many white progressives, but as a presidential candidate he’s playing in a game, a white supremacist one, and if he didn’t follow the rules, including this double standard, his candidacy wouldn’t stand a chance.
Like bell hooks, I think “white supremacy” is an apt label for contemporary white dominance of the social order, but like the word “feminism,” and the word “racism,” “white supremacy” has been marginalized, to the point where almost everyone thinks it only fits extremism. I’m struggling now with having adopted the term habitually in my own thinking and writing, versus knowing that it takes a lot of talking to most white folks before they can see the term’s suitability for American reality in general.