Let's talk about Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and how unbelievably fucked up this all is

they are oppressed because uneducated white males used to have (some) social/economic/etc. power that isn't (always, immediately) allotted to them today. so as minorities and women gained rights in the 20th century, white males did 'lose something'. you mighta been poor and dumb but at least you weren't the one sitting at the back of the bus. etc.

there's a lot on that subject in stayin alive: the 1970s and the last days of the working class--iirc nixon's efforts to snare white working class votes away from the george wallace wing of the party involved attempts to bring the union bosses that hated mcgovern over to the right. eventually he gave up on trying to horse trade with the likes of george meany and tried to make appeals to the resentments of the white working class a direct part of the election strategy.

wow @ at that richard cohen article. just...wow.

i guess you really can be as racist as you want in print as long as you remember to couch it in "i'm not racist, but..." terms.

"you used to have all these nice union jobs and pensions to yourself, now you have to share them with the black man and the mexican man and before you know it, the gay man will be coming for your job"

xp

nixon established this, and the gop hasn't really changed the tune since.

that Kos article was great

"I think what we have in George Zimmerman is a person who very likely has tried to be a police officer many, many, many times but couldn't for some very good reasons. He has probably tried to apply to police departments and could not pass the entry requirements. Now from the surface you would say this is because of his size. You may surmise that he probably couldn't meet the weight or fitness standard. But I disagree. I would wager that Mr. Zimmerman has probably never gotten past the psyche evaluation. I'm sure laws prohibit the release of applicant information but I would bet that he has applied to at least 2 or more sheriff or police departments in the area and has been declined. You see even in a big city it's a relatively small community. Once you begin applying and fail a polygraph or fail a psych, that follows you. Chances are he's failed a few and has likely been blacklisted. Judging from his demeanor and some of the witness statements he may have some delusions as well. As many voter purges as FL has done it is amazing that this man was able to purchase a weapon after an altercation with police and a DV but I assume that is what having a father in law enforcement will get you. Just from the 30,000 foot view Zimmerman probably never should have been able to purchase a gun. Zimmerman never should have held the job that he did. And Zimmerman never should have been able to get away with murder but he did."

xp thanks for that article big hoos (white Latino here)

I wonder if Zimmerman would have been near-universally referred to as white if his last name had been Gonzales

re: nixon and working class votes

a similar theme has played out in the UK too, and i don't think it's just a case of individual political calculations - white working class men won concessions from employers and government in the era immediately before civil rights started to gain traction. white working class men have always been vulnerable to threats of competition from "outsiders" - this goes back to the 19th century in Europe and the US i think

for example Trade Unions historically have been just as concerned with keeping certain kinds of employee out of their trade as they have been with improving workers rights within it

yep

nixon's 'southern strategy' gets way too much talk. what would have happened if Nixon died suddenly before that came into play? the same basic social structure and forces were there.

much <3 to Rev

multixps

white working class men have always been vulnerable to threats of competition from "outsiders" - this goes back to the 19th century in Europe and the US i think

yeah -- to go back even further much of the anti-slavery sentiment in the US in the 1850s was largely based on a perceived threat to free white labor, much more than any humanitarian sentiments.

stevie wonder telling it like it is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3i9GSbwgvcQ

and i think likewise we can probably trace back a racial rhetoric exactly the same as today's rightwing hatemongering - if "we" don't keep "them" down then one day soon they're going to overrun us - this kind of race paranoia must easily be as old as slavery

xp the reverse was true too, w/ northerners, esp. in new york city, protesting lincoln and the abolitionists (supposedly) for fear that freed slaves would come north and take jobs

nixon's 'southern strategy' gets way too much talk. what would have happened if Nixon died suddenly before that came into play? the same basic social structure and forces were there.

― iatee, Tuesday, July 16, 2013 7:43 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure. he wasn't even the primary guy in his own administration to recognize them.

I think Nixon's introduction of the "silent majority" as a concept was pretty influential.

the right was able to convince a lot of white males that, although by any reasonable measure they still hold the lion's share of power, wealth, and decision-making in this country, they are somehow "oppressed" by the people LOWER than them on the socioeconomic food chain.

This was very much in the zeitgeist in the early '70s -- you can see it dealt with on multiple episodes of All in the Family.

eg, Archie: "I didn't have nobody marching in the streets to get me my job."
Edith: "His uncle got it for him."

I also heard plenty of adults in my extended family in New Jersey griping about how blacks were working less, getting more, etc.

it's a central theme of Rabbit Redux iirc

I think it's important to be able to switch back and forth between a "bad as it ever was" historical understanding which sees these racist/othering tactics as predictable and common while also being able to marshall a more emotional and direct response to "right now." It's hard to hold both of those ideas in your mind at the same time but I think for the purposes of being hopeful, effective, and suitably desperate you need to keep them "open" to each other, as it were.

so yea theory and historical analysis risk quietude but I think that risk is sometimes worth running because its the means of figuring out more effective responses to oppression.

i think we can acknowledge that current versions of racist panic have long historical roots and still challenge their current versions, sure - in a way i find some small comfort in the fact that these ideas have existed before because it means they've also been challenged before

The phenomenon happened in Miami in the sixties. Just as blacks entered the low middle and middle class workforce suddenly they had to compete with a hundred thousand Cubans who not only took their jobs but advanced fairly quickly and in ten years had attracted the notice of the GOP. Joan Didion touches on the development in her Miami book.

Interesting piece comparing/contrasting the Zimmerman case w/ Bernard Goetz. The GUardian Angels guy who championed Bernard Goetz thinks Ziommerman is a whackjob.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/12/bernhard-goetz-on-george-zimmerman-the-same-thing-is-happening.html

White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must be protected. Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity has to be proved by the willingness to conquer fear through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask questions before taking action. Mass media then brings us the news of this in a newspeak manner that sounds almost jocular and celebratory, as though no tragedy has happened, as though the sacrifice of a young life was necessary to uphold property values and white patriarchal honor. Viewers are encouraged to feel sympathy for the white male home owner who made a mistake. The fact that this mistake led to the violent death of an innocent young man does not register; the narrative is worded in a manner that encourages viewers to identify with the one who made the mistake by doing what we are led to feel we might all do to “protect our property at all costs from any sense of perceived threat.” This is what the worship of death looks like. — bell hooks, All About Love

bell hooks OTM.

tbh the 'capitalism' one is not that unreasonable, the rest otm

really? property must be protected 'at all costs'? sounds terribly unreasonable to me.

yes 'at all costs' is kind of ambiguous, but 'protecting property' is not in itself bad in the way that the other stuff is imo

I'd get on my hippy horse and argue that

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2182/1796006939_056c586498.jpg

(okay sorry, trying to bring some levity back itt after the past few days, my apologies)

:D

oh man i really didn't mean for my hippy horse to kill the thread, i thought it might bring us all back together.

thread's been taking (much needed) intermittent breaks all day i think

much needed

Notable that the bell hooks excerpt is from 2001.

"The result was a quintessentially American tragedy — the death of a young man understandably suspected because he was black and tragically dead for the same reason."

this is a disgusting sentence

otm

i wrote a paragraph about it, but couldn't post it because it was not fit for publication.

Aside... Thomas Frank's What's The Matter With Kansas also great at detailing the history of bait-and-switch conservatism.

oh jfc:

You might have thought the Trayvon Martin case was about race—that George Zimmerman thought the unarmed teenager was a criminal because he was black. Today, in certain corners of the Internet, you are wrong. It's Martin who was the true bigot. As Rush Limbaugh told listeners Tuesday, "Zimmerman got beat up because Trayvon thought he was gay."

In an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan on Monday night, Rachel Jeantel said she told Martin to run from George Zimmerman because he might be a rapist, during their phone call in the last minutes of Martin's life. "For every boy or every man who’s not that kind of way, seeing a grown man following them, would they be creeped out?" she said. This is not new. When Jeantel said the same thing in court in June, it didn't make much news—people were focused on her "creepy-ass cracker" description of Zimmerman instead of the rape angle. But now, it's the main story on the Drudge Report. Limbaugh spent a good part of his radio show talking about it. Lots of conservative blogs picked it up.

from here

just so tired of this stuff gaining actual, real traction

yeah a righty friend threw that at me today and i was dumbfounded

i'm not sure he's a friend after all this shit

oh jesus

Good Lord.

GOod lord.

And by that logic if a woman was being stalked/harrased by a man, turned and said STOP FOLLOWING ME and say, punched/kneed him in groin to get away, ITS STILL OK TO SHOOT HER DEAD I mean what the FUCK, Limbaugh.

Yeah, OTM. Even if you're willing to buy the premise that TM thought GZ was a gay rapist, punching someone because you think he is going to rape you is not the same as beating someone up just for being gay. (And yeah, does Limbaugh now advocate gay men using deadly force to protect themselves from homophobic attacks?)