Rolling Thread on Race 2020

last night i watched a video of mcconnell's senate competitor in KY (Charles Booker) for the first time:

I literally almost jumped out of my seat when I watched this. It physically made me react. This is leadership. @Booker4KY #BookerBeatsMitch pic.twitter.com/3dK74xQj6l

— Dave 🌹 (@nodank_) June 7, 2020

he seems really solid. now that Steve King (Lt. Stormtrooper - IA) is on his way to hell, i will my meager amount of out of state political donations to Booker.

i will ^be sending^

Late to the convo, but I grew up in Virginia and cracker was a highly used term to refer to someone perceived as a “poor white” person. I never knew that it was exactly wrong to label people this way until I went to college. Redneck was another highly used term, but referred to a “poor white” who was thought to be “country.” I heard a lot of racist terms against blacks that I knew were wrong and would never, nor did I have any desire, to repeat, but these terms seemed unproblematic to me at the time as they referred to white people. Seems so strange to think about it now.

mark me down as another white southerner who considered "cracker" to be synonymous with "ofay" and only (infrequently) used by older black men and women when i was growing up. "Redneck" or "good ol boy" was generally more charged but was actively reclaimed by, well, by all the rednecks i knew. Distinct memory of having a group of high school seniors take me aside when i was a sophomore and dressing me down for "acting like i was better than a redneck"... I think they meant well by it, sadly. These days "cracker" only brings to mind the Chris Rock routine which I will skip linking to.

I was just thinking that I can't see the word "cracker" without immediately thinking "CRACKER ASS CRACKER" thanks to Chris Rock

fun with wikipedia

Etymology
The exact origins of the word are generally unknown and postulations about the subject vary.

Hungarian
Honky may be a variant of hunky, which was a derivative of Bohunk, a slur for various Slavic and Hungarian immigrants who moved to America from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early 1900s.

Wolof
Honky may also derive from the term "xonq nopp" which, in the West African language Wolof, literally means "red-eared person". The term may have originated with Wolof-speaking people brought to the U.S. It has been used by black Americans as a pejorative for white people.

Other
The phrase honky-tonk refers to a particular type of country music, most commonly provided at bars for its patrons, or more commonly, may even refer to the bar itself.

Honky may have come from coal miners in Oak Hill, West Virginia. The miners were segregated; blacks in one section, Anglo-whites in another. Foreigners who could not speak English, mostly whites, were separated from both groups into an area known as "Hunk Hill". These male laborers were known as "Hunkies".

The term may have begun in the meat packing plants of Chicago. According to Robert Hendrickson, author of the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, black workers in Chicago meatpacking plants picked up the term from white workers and began applying it indiscriminately to all whites.

alternately, here's Dick Gregory's take
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFq_guCZPys

missed this when it happened but good god

https://www.syracuse.com/tv/2020/06/fox-news-apologizes-for-graphic-comparing-stock-market-gains-to-deaths-of-mlk-george-floyd.html

They had a graphic and everything.

Big story in Canada at the moment. (The American equivalent of Mesley might be Katie Couric, at least in terms of stature/tenure.)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/wendy-mesley-suspended-hosting-1.5604973

"You see, Chris Rock has this illuminating bit about the war between black people and n-"
"WENDY NO"

'the sheriff is near!'

NASCAR bans confederate flags. I can only imagine the Facebook groups in my old hometown exploding in pure frothing rage this afternoon.

not only that, they lowercased 'confederate' in the statement lololol

Looking forward to 'the c will rise again!' as the new rallying cry.

Rolling Stone has an article on racism in the porn industry.

Related: An interesting (SFW) 90-minute conversation among a dozen black porn performers about the state of race in the industry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE6DdeoZrTk

Somebody needs to get to Barrington, Rhode Island with a truck and a chain. This is worse than any Confederate monument. pic.twitter.com/oFfP70Ecwe

— 20Debt Peon20 🐐🌮 (@DebtPeon) June 11, 2020

idiots on Confederate monuments/statues: history is important!! we must not forget it, no matter if it's unpleasant
idiots on slavery: that's ancient history! you all need to forget it!

Everybody knows that statues are the sole substantial markers of historical memory and that historians would be utterly incapable of carrying out their work without the continued monumental presence of murderous, slave-owning fascists in public spaces.

These same preserve-our-history types are always really big on cutting school budgets, too. Weird, that.

Who was king of England during the American Revolution? There aren't statues, so I cannot figure it out HELP PLZ

Here you go, bud, it was this guy:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Somerset_House-Strand-Statue_Of_George_III_%26_Neptune.jpg

following up on the NYC birdwatching incident, this NYT profile provides lots of rubbernecking of interest
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/nyregion/central-park-amy-cooper-christian-racism.html

“‘The X-Men’ was a perfect parable for the gay experience,” he told Wired Magazine in an interview in 1998. “The X-Men looked like everyone else, but they learned a deep secret in adolescence that made them different.”

In the late 1980s, Mr. Cooper served on the board of directors of GLAAD, formerly the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and set up his own political action committee to support Democrats for the New York Senate, according to a biography on “Gay USA,” a televised news show about gay issues, which Mr. Cooper occasionally hosts.

In 1998 he launched “Queer Nation,” a pioneering gay web comic that envisioned L.G.B.T.Q. superheroes fighting the scourge of a right-wing world order. It was partly inspired by his parents, he told Wired, who were active in the civil rights movement.

“From what I saw, she was very devoted to her animals,” said Maria Meade, 60, who lives in a nearby building. “The only thing I’ll tell you is she never spoke directly to a person. She always spoke through her dog, and in a baby voice. It was really bizarre.”

Alison Faircloth, 37, a neighbor and dog owner, recalled that last winter, she came upon Ms. Cooper on the verge of tears outside the building’s lobby. A doorman had cursed at her for no reason, Ms. Cooper told her. Ms. Cooper vowed to get the doorman fired, Ms. Faircloth said.

But when Ms. Faircloth asked the doorman what had happened, he told her that Ms. Cooper had complained about a broken elevator, then cursed at him after she barged into a security booth and had to be removed by a guard.

the stuff about her lawsuit against her married lover is just sad.

this woman sounds like a walking nightmare

I know that this is a story that is being shaped to a particular narrative etc but she really gave the author a lot of source material

The depth of their respective characters are certainly one of the reasons why this story sticks around. You'd be hard pressed to randomly pick a more intelligent, compassionate, considerate and media savvy person than Chris Cooper for the target of this bullshit.

When I saw the picture at the top of the article, I was surprised Amy Cooper agreed to pose for a photo for this article. Then I realized the credit for the photo belongs to a neighbor who is quoted later in the article... hm.

Pastor Louie Giglio, rapper Lecrae and Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy "had an honest conversation about race and the Church" on June 14.

Here's an example of why words and their meanings matter.

"White Privilege" vs. "White Blessings" pic.twitter.com/VkSP6RP0t1

— Nicola A. Menzie (@namenzie) June 16, 2020

fuck outta here with this

ah so the issue is simply gently assuaging the ruling class with delicate language and then the empowered white masses will wholeheartedly embrace disenfranchising themselves of centuries of economic, political and policing power, why didn't you SAY so; if only we could've tried this earlier

The standard take in France at the moment is pure galaxy brain material: ‘to speak of racism is itself racist; true non racism is absolute obliviousness to racism because race doesn’t exist; QED’.

I really wish I could find a primary link to the study where they compared the racial attitudes of toddlers raised in colorblind houses compared to houses where race was discussed where the allegedly colorblind kids showed extreme bias against black people

is it this one / does the link work?
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797610384741

I think that’s it! Thank you!

it shouldn't be difficult to grok that ignoring racism or racial difference, either in individual circumstances or within larger demographic groups, is not the goal. IMO the road worth traveling for anyone not immediately under fire is actively acknowledging racism as the all-pervasive and pernicious thing it is and then striving for greater change on a daily basis through respect, equity, acceptance, inclusion and appreciation while simultaneously vocally and financially supporting political change to a corrupt system, not co-opting or presuming lived experience, not applying singular traits to any group and just generally not being an asshole when you can help it.

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php

Aunt Jemima is over, only took 130 years
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/aunt-jemima-brand-will-change-name-remove-image-quaker-says-n1231260

hooray, now i can stop arguing with my hidebound colleagues

AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa.

— APStylebook (@APStylebook) June 19, 2020

on the other hand

The NYPD initially said they had no record of anything matching this description. When we showed them a photo of cops at the scene, they said a commanding officer had closed the case.

"It's clear what this is," one of the witnesses responded. "Someone knew what they were doing." https://t.co/dNJmd0QRmX

— Jake Offenhartz (@jangelooff) June 19, 2020

How very reassuring

it appears one of the suicides that was being reinvestigated for possible lynching is closed, as video was found showing the man committing suicide: https://www.sbsun.com/2020/06/19/video-shows-malcolm-harsch-hung-himself/

hardly a solace as it's still a tragedy, and the rest still need thorough investigation. and fucking Rand Paul needs to quit stalling the lynching bill.

This is of course something the Black Panthers did in the late '60s in the Bay Area, and prompted Reagan to enact some form of gun restrictions. I'm not sure that will be the outcome in Oklahoma now.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/19/oklahoma-city-black-gun-owners-2nd-amendment-walk-trump-rally/3221046001/

fucking Rand Paul needs to quit stalling the lynching bill.

fucking mitch mcconnell needs to quit stalling. he could bring up the bill at any moment and pass it 99-1.

but he's working with rand paul to stall it in order to...save rand paul dignity? i have no idea. i know i should have a "want to die" list, but they are both near the top of it

yeah basically both of them need to fuck off and choke on peanuts

sorry, i meant "i know i should NOT have"

but despite knowing i shouldn't have that list, yeah a peanut death would be great, i'll take that

I just saw someone on Twitter call Shaun King "Chalka Con" and I am beside myself

!!! There's a whole list of jabs at him! "Talcum X" is a personal fave.

I am also partial to "Martin Luther Cream"

Shilli Vanilli lol

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Nicknames for Shaun King:
Talcum X.
Martin Luther Cream.
Pale Revere.
Tupac Sugar.
Alexander Scamilton.
Chaka Con.
Snow J. Simpson.
W.E.B. Defraud.

— Martin Luther Kang Jr. (@memeballcards) August 22, 2019