Tuesday, December 27, 2011 What Do They Call a President Who Happens to be Black? If You Are Fox News You Call Him a "Ghetto Crackhead"
Malcolm X famously asked, "what do you call an educated negro with a B.A. or an M.A., with a B.S., or a PhD?" The answer? "You call him a nigger, because that is what the white man calls him, a nigger."
Decades later, his wisdom endures.
Malcolm's observation captures the pain experienced by many African Americans, when during their coming of age moment (either before or after the talk about how not to get shot by the police during a routine traffic stop), they realize that being "young, gifted, and black" is not, all things being equal, sufficient for success in America. Malcolm's words also capture the sentiments felt by any black person whose confidence has been described by their managers or peers as "threatening" or "arrogant."
His wisdom also explains the moment when black professors walk into a room for the first time and their students look at each other in shock, wondering if this teacher is "qualified" to teach them; Malcolm's wit also captures the frustration and insult felt by any black or brown person who has been presumptively assumed to be a janitor, maintenance worker, or mail clerk at their job, when in fact, their titles are actually "manager," "director," or "vice president."
Malcolm's comment on the arrogance of white racism also speaks to collective memory: it conjures up family stories of men and women trained as doctors, engineers, and lawyers, but who had to work as Pullman Car porters, maids, and home health attendants because Jim and Jane Crow America was by definition, a system designed to choke out the social and economic mobility of the African American community. Both then and now, white racism does the work of class inequality.
It is a given that Fox News has no love for President Obama. To point, on the Hannity show last week (and without retraction or apology after the fact), Eric Bolling described President Barack Obama, "as a skinny, ghetto, crackhead."
This moment was an object lesson on the white racial frame in action, and the truth of Brother Malcolm's deep understanding of the pathologies of white racism, where any black person, however accomplished, intelligent, and gifted, is de facto seen as "less than," a "nigger," as a person who is not equal to even the most mediocre and lowest of white people.
Black people and black humanity are forever suspect, under watch, and viewed as less than by many in White America. To the white gaze channeled by Eric Bolling, we are perpetual criminals, deviants, over-sexed, libidinous, dangerous, and pathological. These sentiments are a function of the "wages of whiteness," the psychological investment in white supremacy, and white superiority, spoken to perhaps most famously by W.E.B. DuBois more than a century ago.
My surprise at the claim that President Obama shares anything in common with a "skinny, ghetto, crackhead" is rooted in its absurdity. Obama is human. He is imperfect. I often disagree with his politics. Obama is a man. He is nothing more, nothing less. But a crackhead? Impulsive drug user? A hype? Nope. Not ever. Obama's personhood and habitus, his relaxed and effortless black cool pose (even if some do not possess the cultural framework and lens necessary to perceive it) is obvious--and unapologetic.
The inability by some on the Right to see Obama's full and dignified black humanity, as opposed to a default of black drug use, criminality, and omnipresent, irrepressible "niggerdom," is the source of my hurt. I must ask: If the white conservative imagination can frame a man of Obama's abilities, poise, intelligence, genius, life accomplishments, and talent as a skinny, ghetto, crackhead, how do they see the rest of us?
Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS), a potential Republican presidential candidate, has an interesting perspective on the tumults of the civil rights era that swept through his Deep South state.
As Barbour recalls it in a new profile in The Weekly Standard, things weren't so bad in his hometown of Yazoo City, which took until 1970 to integrate its schools (though the final event itself is said to have gone on peacefully). For example, Barbour says that there was no problem of Ku Klux Klan activity in the town -- thanks to the Citizens Council movement, an organization that was founded on the basis of resistance to integration and the promotion of white supremacy.
"You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK," said Barbour. "Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you'd lose it. If you had a store, they'd see nobody shopped there. We didn't have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City."
You know, this should just be under the heading..
THEY ARE WHO WE THOUGHT THEY WERE.
I know a whole lot about the state of Mississippi. From the time I was born until I was 18, I went to Mississippi 4 times a year. After that, twice a year until Mama died. I've been to the Delta. I've been to the Gulfcoast. I've been to the East. Been to the West. Been to Jackson, Vicksburg, Hattiesburg, Yazoo City, Oxford.
And, I'm here to tell you, IMO, when folks talk about the ' New South', they sure in hell aren't talking about Mississippi.
I posted a few months ago about how Boss Hogg Barbour was attempting to whitewash his past, first with some unbelievable remembrances of his time at Ole Miss. Of course, folks tracked down one of the lone Black students during that time period, and she told THE TRUTH OF THE HELL THAT SHE WENT THROUGH.
Let's not mince words here:
Haley Barbour is a RACIST. Plain and simple. No holds barred.
Oh, you can put him in a suit, but, I've been Black in America longer than 3 days.
He's had no ' come to Jesus' moment about growing up during American Apartheid and the evil that it was for the Black citizens of the South. Not one frigging moment of self-awareness.
None.
Instead, we have these repeated attempts by him to whitewash - LITERALLY - the hell that was the South during that time, and Mississippi in particular.
THIS is the Mississippi of Emmett Till.
THIS is the Mississippi of Fannie Lou Hamer.
THIS is the Mississippi of James Meredith integrating Ole Miss.
THIS is the Mississippi of Medgar Evers. Myrlie Evers Comforting Son Darryl Kenyatta During Funeral of Husband Medgar Evers
THIS is the Mississippi of bombing the freedom riders.
THIS is the Mississippi of Schwerner, Cheney and Goodman.
There were a whole lot of White folks who resisted the Civil Rights Movement. A whole lot of folks who saw nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with Black folks being 3rd class citizens in THEIR OWN DAMN COUNTRY.
When they talk about ' taking their country back', they want it back to a time where, quite frankly, ' NIGGERS KNEW THEIR PLACE.'
"Maybe five years ago," he said, "you could've appointed a colored man yourself. Now you simply can't get away with it. They're goin' to have to pick their own leaders. You could've gotten on radio five years ago using these very words, 'George Collins is this ni**er we've appointed,' and could've gotten away with it. I guess they're just goin' through a state of being rebellious and hard-nosed and not listenin' to white people like they used to."
The town has seventeen policeman in all, which struck me as a substantial force for a town of 14,000, and Mace is standard equipment; the policemen carry it on their belts. "You get a drunk," Jeppie says; "you either get him to come with you or you have to manhandle him. You give him Mace and he'll want to go anywhere with you. It keeps that ni**er's head in good shape."
Discipline has likewise been a problem with "the little ni**ers around town. One seven-year-old stole a pistol, but the chief has his own homemade juvenile delinquency kit. He has a belt that's bigger than a Sam Browne belt, and he calls the parents and gets them to come down and take the kid into the basement and use the belt."
Martin Luther King was the most hated man because he showed them for what they were to the ENTIRE WORLD, and when that mirror was put up to them, it showed them in all their ugliness. How dare this Negro say that American Apartheid was wrong and should end. White folks like Haley Barbour and his ilk didn't think anything was wrong with life in Mississippi during that time.
The reason why Barbour and his media apologists must be pushed back against, and not allowed
UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES
to do his whitewash of American Apartheid.
Is because our ancestors who suffered under it, must NOT be forgotten.
The pain. The degredation. The humiliation. The threat of physical violence that they lived under 24/7/365. Not for one year. or two. or three. But nearly 100 years post-the ending of Official Slavery in the United States.
The GENERATIONS that were made to live in literal hell. See, there's a problem when you try to whitewash Mississippi during Jim Crow...
WAYYYYYY too many of us "Negroes" or is it "Coloreds" are still alive....oh, some of us weren't around during that time, but we have parents, grandparents, aunt, uncles, church elders who told us enough stories....and here's the bottom line...
And, no, we're not going to go along with you trying to make it sound better than the hell it was.
The Citizens Council was just the Klan in business suits.
The White Citizens Council at the forefront of integration according to Barbour.
REALLY?
The truth is The Citizens Councils were founded in Mississippi in 1954, in protest of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared public school segregation to be unconstitutional. The councils were dedicated to political activities opposing civil rights, notably boycotts of pro-civil rights individuals -- including a famous instance by the group in Barbour's town. It was distinguished from the Klan by the public self-identification of its members, and its image of suits and ties as opposed to white robes and nooses.
Like I said...the KLAN IN A SUIT.
Coates has written a couple of good posts on this. From Coates
In part, I think, that's because with a mere click of the mouse you can discover what actual Confederates were saying: The declaration of secession from Mississippi
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
That's the declaration of secession from Haley Barbour's home state. He still proudly displays the flag of that cause, the same flag that authored the death of more American soldiers than Vietnam, World War I and World War II combined, the death of Lincoln, and the deaths of countless freedmen and descendants of freedman. In short, Barbour embraces the flag of America's most prodigious white supremacists, and foremost home-grown terrorists. Of all the United States, Mississippi has the highest percentage of African-Americans. Haley Barbour, evidently, knows very little of their history. Indeed, there may not be a governor more ignorant of his constituents in all this great land.
If Barbour wants to praise the good people of Yazoo City for their extraordinary restraint in not employing violence as they hounded from their community those black parents brave enough to demand a decent education for their children; to laud their public disavowal of the local Klan even as they turned a blind eye to its activities; or to extol their grudging cession of the inevitability of court-ordered integration after fifteen years of stalling, for its absence of lynchings or riots, that's his prerogative. For the rest of us, though, Yazoo City should serve as a poignant reminder that the civil rights struggle really was "that bad."
Yes, it was THAT BAD..
And Barbour and his media apologists don't get to run away from that.
EVER.
Rachel Maddow points out Boss Hogg and his attempted whitewash of the Citizens Council.
Barbour and his ilk want to be seen better than who they were AND ARE.
The answer to that is not only NO, but HELL NO.
Town has the answer for Barbour:
Somebody needs to have a voiceover of Barbour saying "It wasn't that bad" over images of hoses and dogs on people, COLOREDS ONLY signs, the John Lewis beatdown, Rosa Parks, National Guard at people's universities, etc.
I guess Elena Kagan is such a blank slate that Republicans have to find others to attack.... even the dearly departed. They were apparently so desperate this week that they dug up a class paper that Kagan wrote decades ago, before she even entered law school. Of course they failed miserably with that effort.
But what annoyed me most was the way that Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee used Kagan to attack Thurgood Marshall - a giant and American hero. Listen to the highlights of the hearings from last week, where Marshall is repeatedly brought up, attacked and diminished by Republicans. The effort was led by Senators Lindsey Graham, John Kyl, and Jeff Sessions. Their racism was plain to see and it was clear that they were playing to their base - their white Southern audiences back home. By targeting Marshall, they were attacking civil rights, desegregation, and equal justice...all the things he stood for. In their attacks (in front of at least one Marshall family member) they painted Marshall as a radical...as a judicial "activist". Marshall's opinions as a judge -upholding the idea of fairness, equal rights, etc- were out of the mainstream (although there is no evidence of that whatsoever). What they were really criticizing was Marshall's career before he became a judge. They were basically saying that Brown v. Topeka Board of Education was not decided correctly and was a result of Marshall's work as an attorney & agitator, and a result of an activist Supreme Court which overturned years of segregation. They suggested that since racism, esp. Jim Crow, was the law of the land, and was well established, settled law.... someone like Thurgood Marshall was a radical and activist because he came along and stirred things up by daring to challenge what had been legal precedent prior to May 1954. In other words, these Senators were sending the not-so-subtle message that Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 case that upheld segregation in schools, should have been allowed to stand as it was settled law. Racist to the core.
Why has the national corporate media allowed this to go almost unchallenged? I saw the segments on MSNBC...but I have not heard much from any other outlet. Unreal.
Senator Al Franken provided a pretty good rebuttal - see video.
Besides Al Franken.... few Senators/House members have spoken out against this blatant racism.
This comes on top of efforts by racist jackasses like Glenn Beck who want to hijack the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington as a way to mock Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights struggle. Beck says he wants to "restore honor" and dignity to America..... as opposed to MLK, advancements in Civil Rights, and that nigra being elected President.
Hear Rand Paul's NPR interview from yesterday...where he reiterated his views... on the same day that he tried to downplay his position on Maddow. I guess he's like John McCain. Some days, he's a maverick, and other days (depending on the political winds) he's not. Paul is a part time racist then in the same way I guess.
Wow... It is amazing how America has moved to the extreme right. Hear interview. This is, in part, the result of the Conservative media controlling the narrative for so long.
Paul says he has a Tea Party mandate... (in other words, he believes a mandate from the racist Tea Party = A national mandate). What is sad and scary about that is.... he may be correct. With the nations swing to the right... and with the idiocy of the American electorate... anything is possible.
There is a good chance that this man will be in the Senate after the November elections. A Tea Party Senator.
"The two parties have combined against us to nullify our power by a ‘gentleman's agreement' of non-recognition, no matter how we vote ... May God write us down as asses if ever again we are found putting our trust in either the Republican or the Democratic Parties." -- W.E.B. DuBois (1922)
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