gvidas |
07-27-2010 09:57 PM |
Arguing whether or not the NAACP, or Bleitbart, or Fox News, or anything else, is 'racist' is not a very useful conversation.
The point is whether or not the conversation about racial inequality is being advanced; whether what a person, or an organization, does furthers understanding or derails discussion.
Or, to take it further, Ta-Nehisi Coats: "'The Conversation on Race'" at The Atlantic:
Quote:
Expecting an American conversation on race in this country, is like expecting financial advice from someone who prefers to not check their bank balance. It's not that the answers, themselves, are pre-ordained, its that we are more interested in answers than questions, in verdicts than evidence. [...]
Put bluntly, this is a country too ignorant of itself to grapple with race in any serious way. The very nomenclature--"conversation on race"--betrays the unseriousness of the thing by communicating the sense that race can be boxed from the broader American narrative, that you can somehow talk about Thomas Jefferson without Sally Hemmings; that you can discuss Andrew Jackson without discussing his betrayal of the black artillerymen who fought at the Battle of New Orleans; that you can discuss the suffrage without Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells or Frederick Douglass; that you can discuss temperance without understanding the support of the Klan; that you can discuss the path to statehood in Florida without discussing Fort Gadsen; that you can talk Texas without understanding cotton, and so on.
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Ta-Nehisi writes a lot of great thoughts. Right now and for the next 4 and a half weeks or so he's hosting a bunch of guest-blogging. But his perspective on race in America is the most nuanced and reasonable that I have ever encountered:
Quote:
The NAACP's announcement initially struck me in much the same the way. But some hours of considering this have proven to me that my initial skepticism says more about the broad American narrative of race and racism, then it does about the justness of the NAACP's charge.
I think it's worth, first, considering the record of American racism, and then the record of the Tea Party and its allies. Racism tends to attract attention when it's flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping--positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry, they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace, they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible, bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead change the subject and strawman. Thus segregation wasn't necessary to keep the niggers in line, it was necessary to protect the honor of white women.
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Emphasis added. Excerpt from "The NAACP Is Right", Ta-Nehisi Coats @ The Atlantic.
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