{"id":10005,"date":"2010-04-25T14:06:16","date_gmt":"2010-04-25T21:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=10005"},"modified":"2010-04-25T14:06:16","modified_gmt":"2010-04-25T21:06:16","slug":"tim-wise-on-imagine-if-the-tea-party-was-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=10005","title":{"rendered":"Tim Wise on "Imagine: Protest, Insurgency and the Workings of White Privilege"*"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read the whole thing.<\/a><\/p>\n

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters \u2014the black protesters \u2014 spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn\u2019t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester \u2014 these black protesters with guns \u2014 be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that\u2019s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation\u2019s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country\u2019s political leaders if the need arose.<\/p>\n

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.<\/p>\n

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: \u201cHe\u2019s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.\u201d Because that\u2019s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama…<\/p>\n

In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?<\/p>\n

To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark \u201cother\u201d does so, however, it isn\u2019t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and \u201cAmerican-ness\u201d of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.<\/p>\n

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Really, read the whole thing.<\/a><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

*Title changed; see comments.<\/p>\n

ETA: This post was originally made on facebook<\/a> where it’s backed up by links. There are probably reasons to prefer this version to the one I linked. Either way, though, it’s an excellent essay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read the whole thing. Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}