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

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?)

feel like every time I feel like this situation won't get any uglier...

fuck civility - anybody who shares that link for reasons other than "fuck this guy" deserves infinite dick punches. I'd almost respect these assholes more if they would just own up to their goddamn racism instead of their disingenuous pretending that they're just reviewing facts objectively and "this is what they arrived at".

jfc

http://www.latinorebels.com/2013/07/16/the-travyon-martin-la-protest-video-the-mainstream-media-wont-show-you/?fb_source=pubv1

yep

they took a fucking freeway. big up.

speaking of "reviewing facts objectively"......(xposts)

one of the things i've been seeing a lot of in the past couple of days is the use of "race" as a euphemism for "racism", particularly by members of the mainstream media (e.g., "the extent to which race played a role in the Zimmerman affair is a matter of great controversy...."). the conversation becomes so abstract and sanitized, and the concept so multi-directional. abstractions like these greatly facilitate the transformation of atrocities into mere news items and "issues" to be considered, and perhaps to some extent "addressed". (hell, at times "racism" itself feels like a cop-out, when what's being talked about is murderous hatred and fear of black people on the one hand, and fierce, blinding, refusal to let go of white privilege, on the other).

Anyone read that questlove piece everyone's wetting themselves over? Kind of felt for the woman in that, although impossible to tell if racist or justifiably avoidant of any potential danger.

xp good point, part of the media's "fair and balanced" attitude. unfortunately it legitimizes a belief system that has led to the murder of a young man because he was black, which is fucking irresponsible. like, they treat it as equal sides: on the one hand violent racists who have no problem with an innocent young man being gunned down for the color of his skin, and their equal counterparts the people who are under the gun because of the color of their skin. seems objectively fair to me.