Decision Day on California's Prop 8

Sara wrote Decision Day on California's Prop 8 over on Orcinus.

Go read it right now please. Seriously important, no kidding.

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Something's Happening Here...

(Cartoon by Sean Delonas for New York Post, Wednesday, February 18, 2009)

Something's Happening Here...

It is, to deliberately use the phrase, as simple as black and white.

When you refer to African-Americans as simians, you are being racist. When you refer to European-Americans in the same way, it's not.

For at least a thousand years, people from Africa were denied inclusion in the human family by the cultural, religious, and political institutions of Europe. Insisting Africans were "not entirely human" but some kind of ape-being was not the cause of racism. Racism, like all other oppressions, begins with power imbalance based on perceived survival struggle which eventually becomes widespread enough to infect every system of the human cultures where it is found. At that point, justifications and rationalizations are created to "explain" the lie. The portrayal of black people as monkeys is an ancient attempt to excuse treating them like animals.

Follow the power. If a man is compared to a barnyard animal, it may be offensive but it doesn't threaten the power flow because there is no institutionalized lie which implies it might be true. If a woman is compared to a barnyard animal, it is an attack backed by possible denial of access to power. Which is why I don't use bitch, chick, sow, or cow as terms for women, any more than I would use buck, junglebunny, rat, or vermin to refer to various non-white groups. There is, in my opinion, no "reclaiming" of such terminology while the power structure remains intact, no "subverting" the fact that we are all raised to think of the lie -- and the hate behind it -- first when we hear it used.

The association is there, whether we admit it or not. Even the depiction of two white police officers shooting a chimp (although, in this case, the drawing looks more like a gorilla, which I believe is deliberate because gorillas are more intimidating) would have an underlay of recognizable racism, because a solid percentage of the American population will think "black" when they see that ape. It's an easy, cheap association.

But when the line "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill" is the caption -- with the clear knowledge that our President wrote the current stimulus bill, and in fact a photograph of him doing so appears on the previous page of the same newspaper in which this so-called cartoon appeared -- then there is no arguing the intent of this drawing. The intent is to encourage feelings and thoughts of homicide against our President because he is an African-American daring to break free of his "animal" category, daring to assume economic leadership. Over white people.

I recommend reading BAGNewsNotes, who of course has their finger directly on the pulse. Also recommended is Jack and Jill Politics analysis in "The Connection Between Blacks As Apes And Police Brutality".

I also encourage us to think long-term about what this blatant display means. Pam Spaulding at Pam's House Blend does a consummate job of listing all the racism employed by Republicans and the Right during this last election cycle in her post The New York Post Makes Its Case For a Post-Racial America. It's true that this is business as usual for that crowd. But is also true that as the delusion of their supposed majority is revealed, and as they lose access to power, they will not go gentle in that good night. Their racism is, as Orcinus and Sara Robinson have repeatedly warned, becoming a daily danger, beyond even the threat of violence and death at the hands of cops that every person of color in this country knows on a gut level.

We cannot "nice" and hope this away. We cannot educate infected individuals and leave the system intact. This is not an issue of semantics or artistic freedom. This is a clarion clear call to war. We do not (and I hope will not) accept their terms of battle, but we must pay attention: When a major newspaper in our largest city prints a cartoon advocating the murder of "whoever wrote the stimulus bill", reducing him to an ape out of control, we are facing cultural revolution.

Something's happening here...

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Spike In Death Threats Against President-Elect Obama

(Poster image by Alvin Blair)

Spike In Death Threats Against President-Elect Obama

I sat down to write a post on this and discovered Digby already covered it yesterday, with good detail, so I'll begin by referring you to her post Losin' It: The Secret Service is reporting a spike in death threats against President-Elect Obama which "from Maine to Idaho, it’s the most threats ever made against a President-elect."

The Statesman Journal from Salem, Oregon reports that the Secret Service has warned the Obama family about the dramatic surge in threats, and that they have begun investigating former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin because her attacks on Obama are believed by them to be responsible for the increase in threats.

According to a cited Associated Press count, "One of the most popular white supremacist Web sites (Stormfront) got more than 2,000 new members the day after the election" and had to temporarily go off line because of the increased activity.

The Statesman Journal article states "The verbal attacks by Palin on Obama had provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling 'terrorist' and 'kill him.'"

Eliminationist rhetoric, ably tracked by Dave Neiwert and our own Sara Robinson, is frequently a canary in the mineshaft when a prevailing lie (such as the bedrock of racism in American culture) is effectively contradicted. Our response must deal with the core issue, not just the most evident symptoms. In particular, we must continue on our path of progressive vision without retreating in strategy or downgrading our expectations; we must insist on naming and speaking out against hate speech in all its forms (including from our own ranks, even if it seems to come from a place of "reacting to their attacking us first"); and we must be able to differentiate between examples where constructive dialogue can lead to long-term cultural change versus examples where an imminent threat means seeking legal intervention.

For more reading, check out the Appendix on Eliminationism in America compiled by Dave Neiwert at Orcinus. This appendix supplements Orcinus's 2007 series on eliminationism, and is arranged "by categories of eliminationism, namely: Expressing a desire or a demand for extermination, removal, or infliction of harm; identification of opponents with national enemies; identification of opponents as a target for retaliation or incarceration; expressing a desire for or approval of genocide or murder; identification with vermin or disease."

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